Nintendo announces Switch Lite, Apple updates Macbooks, and a wild email from Foxconn

Nintendo announced a new Switch! Nilay, Dieter, and Paul discuss what's different with the new model and what's being updated with the original one. But first, continuing coverage of Foxconn's factory in Wisconsin — this time with a cryptic email. Next: new Macbooks! Kind of. Apple updated the Macbook Pro and Air and got rid of the 12-inch Macbook and its butterfly keyboard for future models. There's a whole lot more like a Zoom security flaw, a new streaming service, and of course some FCC talk. 🎶This week's theme song 🎶Foxconn will only create 1,500 jobs, says Wisconsin governorNintendo Switch Lite is a smaller, cheaper Switch built exclusively for handheld playNintendo is updating the original Switch with a new CPU and storageApple is reportedly giving up on its controversial MacBook keyboard …Apple discontinues 12-inch MacBookApple is silently removing Zoom’s web server software from MacsApple Watch eavesdropping vulnerability forces Apple to disable Walkie-TalkieI’m Jad Abumrad, and This Is How I WorkA small notebook for a system administrator WarnerMedia confirms its Netflix rival will be called HBO MaxAT&T says it will automatically block robocalls ‘in the coming months 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 new MacBooks, we talk about the Nintendo Switch, we unfortunately talk about HBO Max, and we talk about a pretty wild email from Foxconn. That's The Vergecast, coming up next.

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• 1:09Speaker 03

  Neelai, I'm going to direct you to the meaning of AI, 8K, and 5G, but then you should leave us alone.

• 1:20Speaker 03

  Leave us alone, leave us alone, leave us alone, leave us alone. AI means new generation of ability and self-driving cars. 8K means smart, safety, and security through 8K technology. 5G means pioneering medical solutions and health cloud network. Leave us alone, leave us alone, leave us alone, leave us alone. It's just

• 2:03Speaker 03

  AI, 8K, and 5G. What makes that so hard to believe? Leave us alone, leave us alone.

• 2:18Speaker 03

  Leave us alone. Leave us alone. Please leave us alone.

• 2:24Nilay Patel?

  Oh my God, I didn't have, I don't think I've ever heard that part. Hello. And welcome to the Verge Cast, the flagship podcast of the Fox Con Troll Society. I don't know, man. I'm Neelai. I'm your friend. Dieter Bone is here. Hi, also your friend this week. Sure. You can't trust that wily bone. Paul Miller is here. Hello. So that song was written for us by Jackson Hayes. You might remember Jackson, he wrote the CDA 230 song a few weeks ago. There's a lot to talk about. There's new MacBooks. There's new Switch. I just want to start, I don't know if you, people listening saw my tweet from, I guess, a couple of days ago when you're listening to this. If you're having a pull over in a car like a Twitter, that's healthy. But obviously we've been covering Fox Con a lot, right?

• 3:07Nilay Patel?

  It's like, it's where I'm from. If you've listened to this show, you know, I'm very interested in what Fox Con is doing in my hometown of Racine, Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin. And it is just, it's, it's reaching like absurd levels, right? So last week, Fox Con's special assistant to the chairman, Louis Wu, gave this like interview in this like hazy campaign video. You know, Terry Gu is like running for president of Taiwan. He's the CEO, Chairman of Fox Con. He's retiring to run for president of Taiwan. So they made this video that's like about how great he is. And this guy, Louis Wu, was in the video. And he mostly talks about how great Terry is and, you know, the hint is like, he should vote for president.

• 3:50Nilay Patel?

  But in the middle, he talks about Fox Con, Wisconsin. And he's like, we're not used to working like this. It's like we're in a glass fishbowl and we're the only fish, right? Like all this scrutiny. I'm like, guys, like all we're, like literally the only question is like, are you going to build a factory? Like, that's not the most scrutiny in the world. The problem is the answer is no. So like, yeah, probably feels a lot of pressure. So I wrote this story, like he complains, he can't just change their plans whenever he wants to, even though they signed a contract. It probably bothered some Fox Con people. Then this week, the governor of Wisconsin, Tony Evers, goes on CNBC and he's like,

• 4:28Nilay Patel?

  I have some clarity in what's going on with Fox Con. I've been to the site. It seems like they're going to make like tablets and phones. Maybe it's unclear whether they're actually going to build a display factory. Because like they're pouring concrete. You know, we have some clarity. It's gonna be 1,500 jobs.

• 4:42Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 4:43Nilay Patel?

  You might remember that Trump promised 13,000 jobs and that the factory would be the eighth wonder of the world. And now we're down to like, so now we're probably assembling some tablets and 1,500 jobs. So I can write that up, like Wisconsin's governor says it's only 1,500 jobs. Foxconn has bought these empty buildings around the state called innovation centers for the AI 8K 5G ecosystem. No one knows about it. I mean, these are like the jokes now. Like I feel like when we write about Foxconn, I'm like a stand up doing a bit. I'm like, it's been 90 days since Foxconn told us it would issue a statement and they didn't. And like,

• 5:16Speaker 04

  And you're, you're on like the sixth city of your tour and you're just like, it's repeating the same jokes again.

• 5:20Nilay Patel?

  Because they're like, nothing has changed, right? And like when Josh Jezza, who's our reporter, who's doing more work than me on this story. Talk about it. We're like, the story is that nothing's happening. So we have to like make that interesting every time. So we, we've just started to like build the, these little, these little reminders of things like shorthand, like it's been 90 days since they said the buildings weren't empty. The buildings are clearly still empty. They promised a statement. They haven't given it to us. Anyways, I put that out. It's one of the shortest stories I've written for the verge this year. It is like maybe 500 words long. Like here's the governor said. It goes out and the usual suspects like tweet it and retweet it. Great. Like hours later, I get this email that title is just AI 8K plus 5G. It says what you heard in the song. It says, Neelai, I'm going to direct you to the meaning of AI 8K plus 5G.

• 6:06Nilay Patel?

  But then you should leave us alone. And then in all capital letters, it says, leave us alone. And this is a scene in the timeframe and there's some time code of the video below with a link to YouTube video. AI means new generation of mobility and self-driving cars.

• 6:19Speaker 04

  Why?

• 6:20Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. 8K means smart safety and security through 8K technology.

• 6:25Speaker 04

  What?

• 6:25Nilay Patel?

  Which is a tautology. I just want to point that out. 5G AK means AK, obviously guys. 5G means pioneering medical solutions and health cloud network. Which is incredible. And then in all caps, once again, it says, leave us alone. This is one of, one of the two wildest emails I've ever received.

• 6:46Speaker 04

  No, to me, you don't, you can't say who this is from. It's from like an anonymous, it could be, it could be a completely anonymous troll, or it could be like from the president of Foxconn. You have no idea, right?

• 6:55Nilay Patel?

  So the reason I just like tweeted a screenshot, I have my suspicions. The reason I just tweeted a screenshot is from Proton Mail account, which is like encrypted email. It's totally anonymous. I can't like, look at the headers or anything like that. There's a name here. The name is a Taiwanese name. Um, so, you know, like it says us, this language is a little stilted. You know, so I just like have my suspicions that it's somebody who's very irritated with me, who works at Foxconn. You know, like my tweets delete, you know, like I would never put this on the verge and say like Foxconn is mad at me.

• 7:25Speaker 04

  Right.

• 7:26Nilay Patel?

  Like I can't, I don't, I can't support it to that level.

• 7:29Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 7:29Nilay Patel?

  But I'm happy to like tweet it and say maybe Fox, which is my tweet, like I think maybe Foxconn is mad at me because this is hilarious. This is my, the second email I've received in the past week that suggests I should leave Foxconn alone. Uh, and the first one I, it was, that one was actually from a person I don't, I think they were just like a concerned citizen. So it's like, to me, first of all, the, the video that they sent that says we can explain AI AK 5G is a video that Foxconn made. It's a rendering. It's a concept video. They wanted to show like the people of Wisconsin about how great the factory would be. This video is nuts, right? It's, it, it looks like they're building an entire city from scratch.

• 8:10Nilay Patel?

  The main office is a sphere, like a, like a sphere in the middle of a lake, and the only way to get into it is to take a self-driving car around a track that goes into one tube, like, and then there's like a display plant behind it and there's like, there's like schools and like it, hospital zones, like it looks like a sci-fi movie. It is obviously not the thing they are building, which is one box in the middle of a field. Um, also like I just, if I worked in an office and the only way out was to run through a tube and to get into a self-driving car, I'd be like, I'm never, I'm not going to work like, what if there's a fire?

• 8:46Speaker 04

  Well, hang on, you're, you're in a sphere in the middle of the lake. You just break the sphere and jump in the lake if there's a fire. Yeah. Come on. What's the big deal?

• 8:53Nilay Patel?

  So like, go watch this video. It is, it is, it is indeed fanciful. And then like you get to this part where it's, it explains, and this part where it's like, as seen in our video below, this is where it explains AI K5G. It's, it is just a series of icons. Like, it's not an explanation. It's just like icons show up on screen and it says, like, new generation mobility. So instead of like telling the people of Wisconsin what this means, you're supposed to find this video on the Mount Pleasant YouTube channel, which has, at last I checked, nine subscriber.

• 9:27Speaker 05

  Whoa.

• 9:28Nilay Patel?

  You're supposed to get fanciful rendering to the end where these icons light up. And then you're supposed to be like, oh, it is true that AI means new generation of mobility. And that, because I haven't grasped that, I should leave them alone. Other thing about this video, I just want to point this out, is that the first time they published it, this is absolutely true, someone pointed out, I believe it was like a Wisconsin State Assemblyman, was like, hey, those images of a park are just stock footage of a park in England.

• 10:04Nilay Patel?

  Pulled it down and they just like the city of Mount Pleasant just like left it up, right? So like they're pointing this video that they had to like retract because it was fake. Anyway, I'm just leaving you with AI means new generation of mobility and self-driving cars, which is not what AI means.

• 10:20Speaker 05

  I mean, self-driving cars use AI. I'll give them that. Yeah. And 5G, like you could have pioneering medical solutions and a health cloud network. Those would involve 5G like, like, like a health cloud network would be health information in the, in the cloud. And you'd access it over 5G. Pioneering medical solutions might be doctor telepresence, right?

• 10:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 10:41Speaker 05

  What I don't understand is if you get an 8K Vizio, how does that improve smart safety and security?

• 10:50Speaker 05

  That's, that's what stumped me.

• 10:52Nilay Patel?

  Well, then you can see the robbers and crystal, crystal.

• 10:57Nilay Patel?

  And you, obviously you can hear them through multi-channel. So I don't know. I, I actually don't buy that 5G means pioneering, but like it, none of this means anything. First of all, they're supposed to build the display plant.

• 11:09Speaker 05

  Right. Stepping back just a little bit, I really wish we were building some real things, not buzzwords, but real things in the United States. That would be a really cool outcome. So far it does not look like that is the outcome of this situation, but I do really want that outcome.

• 11:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, it would be great if they were do, I mean, it seems like they're gonna do something, right? They're, they're digging up a lot of stuff. I just don't think they're building a fanciful sphere office and a self-driving car system. Like I, I just, I, I don't, right? And I, the upside down nature of the whole deal with Wisconsin, A, they were not ready for the scrutiny that would come with, like, right? That's, that's Louis Wu saying, we're in a fishbowl. Like they were not ready for, we're gonna sign the biggest government economic development deal in the history of the country, and then people are gonna pay attention to us. So on Foxconn's side, that is ridiculous, right? Like, of course they're gonna, people are gonna pay attention to that.

• 12:11Nilay Patel?

  It's like every, like the, the local papers are doing a good job. Bloomberg is covering it. The Wall Street Journal is covering it. We would cover it even if I wasn't from Wisconsin. The fact that I am is like, we're definitely gonna cover.

• 12:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 12:23Nilay Patel?

  But like, right? So that, like, of course, it's the biggest deal of its kind. And then the second part is like, they, they haven't lived up to it. So they, they signed a contract to build a generation 10.5 LCD plant, which would make like 65 and 75 inch TVs. They're absolutely not doing that. So they've already breached this contract. Now that, you know, the new governor has to like make good. They've spent billions of dollars in forward infrastructure investment. They've given them other kinds of tax credits that aren't tied to the job numbers. So, you know, like, everyone kind of needs this to work out. I just think they're ridiculous that instead of talking to everyone about what they're doing and making a plan and keeping to it, they're, they've absolutely stonewalled

• 13:04Nilay Patel?

  the press, like, virtually no one can talk to them. And then, clearly, someone is so angry about the scrutiny that I'm getting all caps emails, they leave us alone, about their nonsense buzzwords. And I, so Paul, it'd be great if they built stuff. I just think it's obvious, the amount of incentives layered into this deal, right? The enormous, biggest ever tax incentive package extended in America was still not enough to convince them to build the factory that they said they were gonna build. Right? They decided they would go the other way. And everyone should have seen that coming. Right? Like, everyone on both sides of this operation should have seen that coming. And I think, you know, like, Wisconsin Republicans are like, see, the deal's working. We don't pay them because they didn't do it. And it's like, guys, like, you don't say because the

• 13:49Nilay Patel?

  contract failed and we pulled the safety valve, that this is a good situation. Right? If you were, I don't know, think about sports, like, if you are an NFL GM, and you sign a player, and you know, he's gonna throw 50 touchdowns and get an X number of million dollars, and we're gonna win a championship, your goal is for the incentive to push the player to perform, not at the end of the season be like, well, we've lost most of our games, but I saved a bunch of money. Right? Like, that, that doesn't, that's not actually success. That's just like, the safety valve.

• 14:21Speaker 05

  Well, the counter, or the opposite perspective on this is, why would Foxconn get itself into a deal and buy buildings and buy property and pour some cement if it's not gonna do anything with it? Like, clearly Foxconn's gonna, is going to look, look for its own profit, so that might, if it decides that it got partly into this and decided it wouldn't be profitable, it might stop doing it. Right?

• 14:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean-

• 14:46Speaker 05

  But it's, it's, it's not buying buildings for no reason.

• 14:49Nilay Patel?

  Well, yeah, it's, it's building, they can't tell you what it's doing, because it's building a portal to the upside down, to some of the demogorgon.

• 14:58Speaker 05

  To Mount Pleasant, obviously.

• 15:00Nilay Patel?

  Smart safety and security through AK technology.

• 15:03Speaker 05

  Eight K is a reference to the demigorgon. Those are the occult phrases that you chant to summon the monster.

• 15:10Nilay Patel?

  It's, Paul, I'm with you. I think maybe some of the context there is, there's a trade war going on and they got to give Donald Trump a gold shovel and say this will be the eighth wonder of the world. And he is not a focused gentleman, right? Like, he had that moment. He thinks it's gonna be great. He's gonna keep saying whatever he wants to say about it. And the reality on the ground can be totally different. And that's a pretty good deal, right? They bought some land, they bought some buildings. They get some goodwill from the president who is in the middle of a trade war. And, you know, that's like a pretty good investment. They can wait it out to 2020 and see what happens. Right now, they've only been, they committed to 13,000 jobs and they're only gonna do 1500. Right? Like, the counter to your counter is, they're gonna do something. It is an order of magnitude smaller than the thing they said

• 15:53Nilay Patel?

  they were gonna do. That's a pretty big deal. Anyway, the point of this is, I got a deeply hilarious email that screams, leave us alone. It is the most forward communication from Foxconn we've received. And Jackson wrote a song, and Jackson's incredible. Can we just play a bit of that song?

• 16:09Speaker 03

  Five G means pioneering medical solutions and health cloud network.

• 16:18Speaker 05

  I think now that you've heard it again, you really get it, don't you?

• 16:22Nilay Patel?

  They should hire Jackson. People have been telling us that we should hire, but I think Foxconn, they should hire. He's, you know, out there in the heartlands, singing in bars, doing the college circuit, be great. All right. Thank you, Jackson. Please keep making us songs because they're great. If anybody else wants to make a song with the easiest mark in the world, so just give them to us and play them on the show. All right, there's actual hardware news. It's pretty exciting.

• 16:47Speaker 05

  It is fairly exciting. Nintendo is making a Switch Lite, L I T E. It is $200 instead of $300. The controllers are not removable, right? The joy cons, there's no more joy. And you can't plug it into a TV. It's significantly lighter. The screen is a little bit smaller. It's 5.5 inch instead of 6.2 inch. So, but it's the same resolution. It's supposed to have slightly better battery life and it's not clear. So simultaneously Nintendo is also like doing a like an invisible refresh of the regular switch. Lite it's, it's a small enough modification that they can file

• 17:29Speaker 05

  with the FCC. It's just like, hey, we just move some stuff around on side, but we promise you it works the same. So there might be like a new, a new chip inside of it that is somehow more efficient. And also, you know, like you're getting rid of all the complexity of the, the Joy-Con charging and stuff like that. So that might just save you the battery life right there. So that's, oh, and no kickstand.

• 17:53Speaker 04

  Well, is the kickstand really a loss? Let's be honest. The kickstand is not super useful on the current switch.

• 17:59Speaker 05

  Maybe they put a kickstand on and it just snapped off.

• 18:02Speaker 04

  Andrew Webster, like they got to look at it and got one of the, the stories on it. He says that, um, take one of the Joy-Cons off a current switch and you have a sense of about how wide the switch light is. So it's about that size.

• 18:15Speaker 05

  I didn't know it's that much narrower.

• 18:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:17Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 18:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's pretty small.

• 18:19Speaker 05

  Do you want this? Who's this? Is this for, for, for the children that you don't quite love enough to buy a $300 switch for?

• 18:27Speaker 04

  Yes. I mean, I want this because I'm a crazy person and I want everything Nintendo makes. And I also travel with the Switch a lot, uh, last, you know, year and a half. And, um, I've been trying to carry a smaller bag so that I'm less tempted to put more crap in it. And so having the big Switch like really filled that bag up. But I already have a Switch. So number one, to be silly for me to buy this, this isn't for me. Uh, number two, if I did buy it, I just know for a fact that I would be in for a lifetime of pain and suffering trying to get games from my main Switch onto my second Switch and making sure my save files were consistent across them.

• 19:09Speaker 05

  Do they have any cloud game save stuff?

• 19:13Speaker 04

  Sorta.

• 19:15Speaker 05

  Cause I was thinking, what I want is the opposite of this. I want the hundred dollar Switch that only plugs into a TV. It doesn't have anything, any built-in controller or something like that. But with, in theory, I'd have that and I'd have a switch light.

• 19:28Speaker 04

  And I, you know, instead of...

• 19:30Speaker 05

  Why don't you just buy a Switch?

• 19:34Speaker 05

  Okay, the switch is heavy. Um, and I think I had another reason. Oh, because if I buy a switch, it's $300 and then I'm gonna wanna get the Pro Controller for $60, right? So I'm paying $360 when, when with the $100 switch, um, well, we need another word. Well, switch box with the switch box.

• 19:58Speaker 05

  I'm paying $160 because I get the Pro Controller and the switch box, right? Because the switch box comes with, it's just, it's just a roke.

• 20:05Nilay Patel?

  But then you wanna buy a $200 switch. You've, you've quickly arrived at the exact same price point.

• 20:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, but now I have two switches.

• 20:14Nilay Patel?

  Got it, okay.

• 20:16Speaker 05

  Right?

• 20:17Nilay Patel?

  I see what you're saying.

• 20:17Speaker 05

  And I do not like the wireless. I've talked about, this is the smallest problem to have with a console, but I do not like the wireless connectivity of the Joy-Cons with the original switch.

• 20:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I, so I never take the Joy-Cons off my switch. I never plug it into a TV. I only, yeah, it just, I, I've, I've thought about it.

• 20:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 20:39Nilay Patel?

  And then by the time I've like, kinda like done thing, I'm already playing the game on the switch. I'm like, I'm not gonna like take it out of its like, because it lives in my backpack. I'm not gonna take it out of the backpack, take it out of the case, like unclip the Joy-Cons, put it in the thing. Like, I might as well start playing, right? Like, it's, it's a fun thing to play on. I know a lot of people plug it in TVs. I'm just saying, for me, it's like, I kinda wanna switch light. But what I am a little nervous about is like, it doesn't have motion controls, right? Like, yeah. And I do like the screen size of the switch. So like, I don't, it's not for me, like, I'm not gonna buy another one. I do think that inability for games, like particularly say games to go back and forth easily. I think Bowser told Andrew in his post that they're gonna work on it.

• 21:22Nilay Patel?

  Like they, it's obviously not a problem they had and now it's a problem they've created for themselves. So like, it makes sense they're gonna work on it. Um, but right now it is, it is quite difficult.

• 21:31Speaker 05

  Well.

• 21:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's also, it's confusing because they're, they're, they're hanging on to the 3DS. That's fine. That makes a bit of sense. But going forward, you know, if I'm a game developer, am I really gonna like work hard to come up with a cool innovative way to use the joycons?

• 21:50Nilay Patel?

  Maybe. I think it all depends on, I mean, I'm sure Nintendo is gonna tell its developers what the split is, right? But you wanna hit the total, the biggest market you can. So I imagine, you know, like, there's a lot of games that use it now. Nintendo's first-party games are usually pretty good at using all this stuff. That's what a lot of people like to buy. I can't imagine like Breath of the Wild 2 or whatever is not gonna, not gonna be pretty crazy with it. But yeah, the sort of like indie game renaissance we've seen on the Switch. Are those people gonna target the big market? I'm sure they are. I just think the hardware, it looks cool, right? It's like, I think Andrew said in his post, it's like, it's the refinement you expect of the second-gen product. It's a little bit smoothed out. It's a little bit tighter. It just has that, Paul, I think you say this

• 22:33Nilay Patel?

  about Apple all the time. It makes the old one look bad, right? It kinda has that vibe where it's like, oh, this is the way, this is the way I want it to be. I think that's really cool. And I think the price point is exactly right. Dan Seifert said it. It's the number that when they want something for Christmas, the parents are like, yep, you can have that. Right? It's like, yep, $199, that's exactly right. Like, everybody gets one of these for Christmas. That's perfect on Nintendo's part, especially because Switch sales were, were kinda slowing down, right?

• 22:57Speaker 05

  As they would at this cycle, part of the cycle.

• 22:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 23:00Speaker 05

  There's also rumors of something like a Switch Pro, right? Which I don't know what the Switch Pro needs to be.

• 23:05Nilay Patel?

  That's your Switch box. That's a $500 box with an AMD processor.

• 23:11Nilay Patel?

  It's gonna sit under your TV.

• 23:13Speaker 04

  It runs SteamOS.

• 23:15Nilay Patel?

  It's pretty clear that that Switch Pro is not coming this year at this point.

• 23:18Speaker 04

  Right.

• 23:19Nilay Patel?

  Especially if their, their hardware cycling the original Switch.

• 23:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:23Nilay Patel?

  So, I mean, I, look, I think the thing's really, really interesting. It was way more controversial than I expected it to be. I expected everyone to be like, this is great. It's cheaper. It's smaller. And then there's this like mass consternation over whether something called the Switch that doesn't switch into TV mode can be called. And Dieter, I know that you had some extremely deep feelings about that.

• 23:43Speaker 04

  I'm not gonna, that, just, look.

• 23:47Speaker 05

  We don't record a podcast where you can hold back your emotions about the weird things you studied in college.

• 23:55Speaker 04

  Nintendo created a thing and they gave it a name. That name was inspired by a thing that that thing did. It switched. But the name of the thing is the Nintendo Switch. And there's no like necessary connection between the word switch and the physical object, or even the thing that the physical object does. They could have called it the Nintendo, you know, change-o. And then we'd be angry about the word change-o, right?

• 24:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:25Speaker 04

  In the same way that there's like no like mystical connection between the word apple and an actual apple. There's no mystical mystical connection between the name switch and a physical switch, or the thing that the switch does. It's just a brand name. And what else would you have them do? Would you have them call it like the Nintendo 3DS Max Max? Because then people, people would be confused.

• 24:46Speaker 05

  Wait, hold on.

• 24:47Speaker 04

  They had to call it the switch.

• 24:49Speaker 05

  The Max Max.

• 24:50Speaker 04

  The double Max. Max IMAX.

• 24:52Nilay Patel?

  My poor daughter. You know, can I just say this before, while I'm very eager to hear your point? I just want to say this for the record, out loud. My daughter will outlive all of this bullshit. And that is very important to me. Okay, Paul, go ahead.

• 25:07Speaker 05

  I literally hadn't really considered seriously how much I would want a switchbox until this came out. Because I felt this liberated me. Because I thought, well, before, if I had thought up of a switchbox, I would have thought, well, it doesn't do, it's not a switch. Not that, and I agree, Dieter, not that words are binding, like a brand name is a binding contract on, like the Wii, I think was named after the, like a motion you're supposed to feel. But I played a lot of games on the Wii. Did not make me feel that great. Anyways, I feel like my life has really been expanded now that I know that I could have had a switchbox all along, even though it's called a switch.

• 25:51Nilay Patel?

  Okay, this is the counter to Dieter's argument. The word switch was confining your mind.

• 25:57Speaker 05

  Hmm, yeah.

• 25:58Nilay Patel?

  Right? And now Nintendo, they, they broke the, the barrier of what that word signified. And you're like, oh, my mind could have been expanded this whole time.

• 26:08Speaker 05

  Right, then maybe now I'll lose focus, right? I'll come up with all sorts of crazy ideas. Like, what about a switch for, for Excel?

• 26:19Speaker 05

  You know?

• 26:20Speaker 04

  The only thing that matters about a word is if people understand what you mean when you say it and how it relates in the network of other words.

• 26:27Speaker 05

  Right.

• 26:28Speaker 04

  Name one single person who is actually confused about what switch means when the switch light came out. Nobody was confused, therefore the word is effective and it means what it means. It means that thing, the switch light.

• 26:39Nilay Patel?

  No, it means that thing, but light. What if they called it the light switch? Does this?

• 26:46Nilay Patel?

  Does this cause a problem for you?

• 26:49Nilay Patel?

  Because I would suggest-

• 26:50Speaker 04

  So much better.

• 26:50Nilay Patel?

  The Nintendo light switch would maybe not accomplish what you're suggesting the name accomplishes.

• 27:00Speaker 04

  I think that would be so good. I'd be 100% for that. Look, if you're mad about them calling this thing the switch, you have to be mad that the Xbox isn't actually an X-shaped box.

• 27:12Nilay Patel?

  Hmm, but it was originally.

• 27:15Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 27:15Nilay Patel?

  It did.

• 27:16Speaker 04

  But now it's not anymore.

• 27:17Nilay Patel?

  It's true.

• 27:18Speaker 04

  All right.

• 27:18Speaker 05

  When Elijah Wood made the Xbox, he wanted it to always be an X.

• 27:25Nilay Patel?

  We're done.

• 27:27Nilay Patel?

  It's been another game console discussion on the first guest, anybody? The thing is great. It's coming out soon. We'll review it. The thing about not being able to, Paul, your switch box idea doesn't work until they build the software service to move games around the cloud, right? Which is hilariously the one place where Apple is better at video games than everyone else, right? Like, say what you will about Game Center, if you have an iOS device, it will sync save states across games pretty well.

• 27:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:55Nilay Patel?

  No one else does a good job of that, as far as I can tell. So one, one half point to Apple.

• 28:00Speaker 04

  But that's The problem is Nintendo is like way worse than everybody else. Nintendo builds its entire software stack as though you're gonna buy one console. It's gonna belong only to you for life and there will never be a problem with it. And you're never gonna switch consoles again.

• 28:16Speaker 05

  I bought a used Wii U for my little brother and it was it was the trial of my lifetime. Like to to hard reset it to to be like a brand fresh console. I feel like that was I forget why it was so difficult. I feel like it had like some some some stored state on it that I couldn't effectively erase because I couldn't log into their account. I don't know. It was it was bonkers.

• 28:41Speaker 04

  Paul, can I just clarify? The trial of your lifetime was factory resetting a Wii U?

• 28:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 28:47Speaker 04

  I have factory reset a Wii U myself to sell it and Paul's not wrong. Paul, I just want to say Paul is like our friend who quit the internet for one year.

• 28:57Speaker 04

  I'm just trying to imagine where's was that the second hardest trial of your life?

• 29:01Speaker 05

  It was a breeze.

• 29:03Speaker 04

  It was. It seems now in retrospect, it seems like we should all take a break. Speaking of taking a break, uh, we're gonna take a break. When we come back, we'll talk about some MacBooks.

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• 30:16Nilay Patel?

  All right, we're back. Dieter Bohn.

• 30:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:18Nilay Patel?

  There are new MacBooks.

• 30:20Speaker 04

  You have one. There are two new MacBooks.

• 30:22Nilay Patel?

  Which one do you have?

• 30:23Speaker 04

  I'm reviewing the MacBook Air, the new 2019 MacBook Air. Dan Seifert is reviewing the new 2019 MacBook Pro. And Tree Pro? Little Pro? We don't have a name for it. Here's what happened. Apple updated the Air. They added a True Tone display to it, and they dropped the price by a hundred bucks. And then they took the MacBook Escape, which was the MacBook Pro that had the actual button function row, and only two ports on the side, and they put the touchbar and the touchpad on it, and they updated the processor, and they left it with just two ports. And that, I don't remember the exact price there, but it's like 200 bucks more than the Air now. So, those are the two computers that are new.

• 31:08Speaker 04

  Alongside those things, the most important thing they did, in my opinion, is instead of updating the MacBook, a little itty-bitty MacBook, they just murdered it. They killed it. Brutally. Just destroyed it.

• 31:22Nilay Patel?

  So you, I think I saw you say this in Slack.

• 31:26Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 31:26Nilay Patel?

  You were like, "The killing the 12-inch MacBook is Apple walking back its entire five-year plan for these computers."

• 31:36Speaker 04

  I think so.

• 31:37Nilay Patel?

  Can you defend that?

• 31:39Speaker 04

  So, okay. It all stems from, the very first computer of this new generation of MacBooks was the MacBook. It was the first one with the keyboard, the new design, the new, you know, they like tiered the battery, and most of all, they just called it MacBook. They didn't call it MacBook Air, they didn't call it MacBook Ultra, whatever. They're like, "This is MacBook, and everything else is like MacBook Pro." And that was like, meant to be like, the default. And in the intervening years, the keyboards went sideways. Apple forgot that people like processor updates and like spec bug updates, and so just didn't bother making those.

• 32:20Speaker 04

  They very clearly like, didn't know what they wanted to do with this lineup. And you could tell they didn't know what to do, because their best-selling Mac was the one that was not part of this new generation. It was the MacBook Air, forever. And so they finally updated the MacBook Air and just made a, you know, either a slimmed-down MacBook Pro or a beefed-up MacBook MacBook. Take it. I think it's more of a slimmed down MacBook Pro. Called it the Air, threw it out into the world and everyone's like, oh yeah, that's, that's what we want. That's the, the thing we've been asking you for, for five years. And so of course they, they're killing the MacBook because they're like, oh, well, people just want this thing. And this vision of the future of what Macs are going to be.

• 33:02Speaker 04

  We need to like, turn that dial down a little bit, go back to the other kind of keyboard. And we'll do that stuff next year. In the meantime, uh, at least we've got like a normalized lineup.

• 33:12Nilay Patel?

  Uh, so I think that the main problem is that the, the Air brand name is too good. Like people love the MacBook Air. They love the name. They know what it is. It's the default computer. It's, it's the Joanna Stern for $200 more, you can get a MacBook Air, right? Like it, it is that computer. And so they, what they should have done was called that. Oh my God, Dieter, this entire show is about what words mean. I just realized.

• 33:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:39Nilay Patel?

  Sorry. The, the thing known as the MacBook Air should be the MacBook.

• 33:44Speaker 04

  Yes, it should.

• 33:45Nilay Patel?

  The little baby should be the MacBook Air, the ultra portable.

• 33:48Speaker 04

  That's correct.

• 33:49Nilay Patel?

  And then you have a MacBook Pro, but the

• 33:50Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 33:51Nilay Patel?

  The word air is too powerful. It creates, it, it constrains your mind. And so you can't think to yourself, I would like a mid-range modular Macintosh without a screen. It's an Apple will never make it. Like the mid-range tower will never happen.

• 34:08Speaker 04

  I mean, the Air brand is so strong, they had to bring it back to sell a parts bin version of the iPad. Call it the iPad Pro from last couple of years ago, call it the iPad Air. And they're like, oh yeah, no, if we put air on it, people will buy it. So here.

• 34:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:22Speaker 04

  Completely confused the iPad, like product lineup. There's like iPad, now there's iPad Air in the middle. And then there's iPad Pro and Pro 12 inch at the top. It's like, did you need that? Like, why is that there?

• 34:33Speaker 05

  There, there's an alternate history version of this, right?

• 34:36Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 34:37Speaker 05

  Because I had the very original MacBook Air. It was $1,800 and it was a piece of garbage.

• 34:43Speaker 04

  The one with the fold down ports and all the, all the stuff I had.

• 34:46Speaker 05

  Yeah. But there was two generations of that. The first generation of it had horrible thermal problems. Uh, this is not a new thing for Apple to have horrible thermal problems. And it, so it would throttle the CPU, but it had, it didn't have enough cores. So it would just hard freeze until it cooled down. Uh, that, so the Mac, first MacBook Air was awful. But the second MacBook Air was good enough. And I feel like with this MacBook, R I P. The MacBook, if it started out where it was not powerful enough to really do what you wanted to do with it.

• 35:24Speaker 05

  If a year later, a much better Intel chip had been on offer and made it much better in the same form factor. Do you guys think it would have become a popular and good thing that people wanted? Or was it just somehow weirdly too small?

• 35:43Nilay Patel?

  No, Ultra Portables are a thing. People love them, right? And you can price them higher than a normal computer and people will pay a premium for the size.

• 35:50Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 35:50Nilay Patel?

  So I think the performance-

• 35:53Speaker 05

  MacBook was just too expensive.

• 35:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it was too expensive.

• 35:55Speaker 05

  And the performance was bad.

• 35:56Nilay Patel?

  I mean, so I bought that original $1,800 Air for Becky when we were dating. She stayed with me. So I really overcame that. I bought her that, you know, the second or third iteration of that second gen MacBook Air design. She loved that computer. It was the only, like, she never wanted to upgrade. We wrote it to its death. And then I bought her a MacBook and she hates that MacBook. She has never not complained about that computer. It is the only Mac of its size, right? Until the new Air just recently came out. So now I might get her the new Air. But the size was the thing, right? The MacBook Air in its moment was actually a very small computer compared to the, compared to the rest of the industry.

• 36:41Nilay Patel?

  It was not priced with that ultra portable premium. But she could like fit it in her purse, like, she's like a big purse person. She could like throw it in a purse. So then I was like, I'm gonna buy you this MacBook. You can fit it and other things in the purse. Have you thought about that?

• 36:59Nilay Patel?

  And so like, all that is great. I think if they wanted to keep the MacBook around, they should do the thing that we've been kind of predicting they would do forever, which is put one of their ARM chips in it. Right? Because we see that on the iPad Pro is like vastly more powerful than the MacBook. I just don't, they're not ready to do it, right?

• 37:17Speaker 05

  What if, what if the ARM laptop, it revives this form factor, but it's called the iBook?

• 37:24Nilay Patel?

  Who see, see, that's like, that's very powerful. I'm super into that.

• 37:29Speaker 04

  But yeah, but here's the thing, like, why not just make a clamshell iPad Pro?

• 37:32Nilay Patel?

  Because the iPad is for touch and the Mac is for mice and they won't meet except for the fucking touchbar, which we should talk about.

• 37:40Speaker 04

  Okay, the touchbar is annoying. Mine freezes all the time. I don't think it's because I've like tried, I've tried a couple of utilities. Everyone tells me I should use better touch tool and I'm sorry, that shit is just too complicated. At least it was the last time I looked. I'll try it again. There's another one called POC that just takes your dock and puts it in the touchbar. That's kind of cool. But I have gotten 0% benefit. My life is 0% better because of the touchbar. And not having a real escape keys are a huge hassle.

• 38:08Nilay Patel?

  So it's funny. So there's not a MacBook Pro now with a hardware escape key, which, right? So all the pros of the touchbar, the Air does not, and there's no MacBook. So that's what you can get from Apple. You can get a MacBook Air with, you know, physical function and escape keys. Or you can get a MacBook Pro with a touchbar.

• 38:26Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 38:26Nilay Patel?

  It is funny that we just came out of WWDC where Apple made a big show of like, we love our developers, we're listening, here's this great Mac Pro, the whole thing. And what is the one thing developers complain about the most with MacBook Pros is they want a hardware escape key. And now you, now you cannot get a Mac laptop with, you know, suited for pros with hardware escape key.

• 38:46Speaker 04

  Right.

• 38:46Nilay Patel?

  I suspect this will change, right? We've heard the butterfly keyboard is going like, now that Johnny Ive is gone, right? The whole Apple ecosystem gets to just admit a bunch of things, right? We all get to admit that iOS 7 was a mess, like regardless of how dramatic it was at that time. And I assure you it was very dramatic.

• 39:06Speaker 04

  Very dramatic to say it was a mess at the time.

• 39:08Nilay Patel?

  Everyone gets to blame the butterfly keyboard on Johnny Ive. Like, that's just what we've decided to do as a, as a family, I guess. So the next keyboard will have scissor switches and be a little bit thicker because, you know, Johnny Ive, Lord of Thinness is gone. Like, maybe, maybe that's the case. I think Apple just screwed it up for three generations, right? And they, like, they were like, we can make this work. We've, we've gone all the way to like, we made it out of a new material, and we've covered it in rubber, like, whatever. So I find that whole, that whole re-evaluation to be very funny. But anyway, but he's gone. We hear there's new keyboards coming, but these keyboards are, they're still, they're

• 39:48Nilay Patel?

  generation butterfly, new material, rubber covers, like, we'll see if they're more reliable, but they're still, they're still missing the thing. There's still, there's still no escape key for the people who have most loudly complained about not having an escape key.

• 40:04Speaker 04

  Right. If you want to buy a Mac laptop right now, you are basically faced with a bunch of really difficult choices. If you're just like the average consumer, go out, spend $1,100, get the Air, and you're fine, right? The end. Cool. As long as you're happy with that storage. If you want something a little nicer, well, for $200 more, you can either like upgrade the Air a little bit, or you can get that entry-level MacBook Pro, which by the way, we need a better name for than entry-level MacBook Pro, like the two-port Pro. Two-port Pro, that's what we're gonna call it, the two-port Pro, which has a much, much better processor, it has a touch bar, but it also has a better screen that actually can get above, you know, 400 nits without like screaming, that actually is bright enough to see. Or, and if you're on

• 40:46Speaker 04

  the high end and you're a pro user, you can buy, you know, either one of the MacBook Pros right now, it's fine, but you know that everybody that's like plugged into like the Mac rumor mill has been assuming there's a 16-inch version of the MacBook Pro, basically a 15-inch version, bigger screen, you know, so it fits in that case, with the Scissor Switch keyboard coming. I don't think we should expect it this year, because they just refreshed a couple of MacBooks, so I think that's, they're done for the year as far as the Mac goes. But next year, it's gonna come. And like, the default advice, whenever anybody says wants to buy a computer, is if you need one right now, buy one right now. There's gonna be, there's always gonna be a better one next year. But like, it really seems like there's gonna be a lot of better ones next year.

• 41:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 41:27Speaker 04

  And so, when they start coming out with Scissor Switch MacBook Pros, how long are they gonna keep the MacBook Air on the Butterfly keyboard? Like, how long is there gonna be like, this weird decision matrix that you're gonna have to make of, well, do I want to spend more and get the good keyboard, or spend less and get the other thing? It's complicated.

• 41:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, I imagine if they're, if they're gonna do the big refresh of the Pro, that they'll just bring that keyboard everywhere, right?

• 41:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, but it's gonna take them, you know, at least a year.

• 41:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, yeah, I just, if it's a year out, then they're gonna do it to all of them. I think the big question is whether the 16 inch Pro will have an escape key. Whether, whether it will bring back some of the physical keys that pro users have been complaining about not having. Because literally, there's like one person I've ever met who's like, yeah, I love the touch bar. And I'm pretty sure he had a deal with Apple. So like, what do you want me to? Like, I don't know. I can't prove it, but you know, like, it's one person. I think about like, literally, like, you know, this MacBook I bought, Becky is like, it's dying. I gotta get a new one. There's no way. It doesn't matter what the other benefits of the MacBook Pro are versus the Air. If I put a touch bar in front of her, she'll be like, what is this shit? Right? And like, maybe that will be the end of it.

• 42:42Speaker 04

  There's also like, a bunch of like, givens that we bequeath unto Apple without thinking, a bunch of like, oh yeah, we're not gonna, we're not gonna argue about that because we know Macs can't do that. Like unlocking with your face. Like every Windows computer over a thousand dollars just has a version of Face ID that's relatively secure and you can just unlock it with your face. And like, that is not on any Mac. There is no, you know, roadmap of it coming to any Mac, even though they pioneered really good face unlocking on the phone. And it's just like, yep, okay. Like, really? We're not mad about that? It's very odd to me, like, the things that we'll just grant Apple. Like, the bezels are actually like, they're fine, they're not that big, but, you know,

• 43:26Speaker 04

  every other computer manufacturer, except for Microsoft, has figured out a way to basically get rid of them on laptops.

• 43:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 43:32Speaker 05

  Something I've been noticing, because I've been shopping for a laptop for a while, but I haven't really found anything I really like. But a lot of the Windows laptops are a lot lighter than Macs with the same specs. And, you know, they're not as rigid as a unibody aluminum laptop, but sometimes you're okay with that.

• 43:52Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I really, like, this is the moment where, like, is Johnny Ive the tyrant of thinness that everyone is making him out to be now? To excuse all the problems that Apple's had, or is this just Apple's strategy? Like, we're gonna find out. It's gonna take years to really find out, but that's what I mean. Like, the idea that all, every bad Apple product is like, because Johnny Ive is a person who loves thinness. It's just starting to take shape. You can feel it. And I'm like, no, this is, Apple made a bunch of these decisions for years. Like, the decision to kind of ignore the Mac for a little too long, was that wasn't just like, Sir Johnny Ive decided that was what was gonna, that was like, the whole company made that bet. And now we're just kind of at like,

• 44:36Nilay Patel?

  this place where everyone sees that we have to really rethink the Mac.

• 44:39Speaker 04

  There needs to be, like, innovation people actually really want, hardware innovation people really want, coming to the Mac. So we've got the Mac Pro. That's great. Like, you definitely did that. I'd like to see a little bit more of that on the laptop. The touchbar just, eh.

• 44:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 44:54Speaker 04

  There's too much cool stuff coming out of the other divisions of Apple, and it makes the Mac seem dowdy by comparison. Except for the Mac Pro, which nobody should buy, because it's, you know, it's teen grand.

• 45:03Nilay Patel?

  Look, if you have $14,000, I highly recommend the Mac Pro.

• 45:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:07Nilay Patel?

  Look, I think the MacBook Air is gonna sell like gangbusters, right? It's still the default laptop. It's a good computer. If you have an iPhone, you can get your iMessage on it. What more are you asking for? Like, it'll, it'll run a web browser, iMessage. Go forth, college students, it is back to school time. You can free beats. Like, that, I think that product is fine. I think it's this other end of the Apple ecosystem that is still coming into focus, is they, is Apple itself, like, rethinks what a Pro Mac should be, and re, like, recommits to that part of the market that I think everyone always knew, but Apple didn't quite understand, drives so much of everything else that they need to have happen. Like, you can't write an i, an i, oh, sorry. You can't write an

• 45:49Nilay Patel?

  iPhone app without a Mac, right? Like, until you solve that problem, you should make some really great Macs for those people, because you really need them to, like, be happy with you and stick around. I think we're, Apple's finally, like, understood that. Also, you need, like, a special FPGA video accelerator card, because why not? That's super important. All right. Speaking of Apple, they kind of put the, the cap on a pretty big security story this week. Uh, which is actually a number of, hey, we can turn your camera on without you knowing security problems this week. Dieter, you want to walk through what's going on with Zoom and some of the other stuff?

• 46:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, so a security researcher had disclosed to Zoom that there was this thing that he considered a major vulnerability, uh, 90 days ago, Zoom hasn't really fixed it, so he went public with it, um, which is how it works. And there was like a 24-hour period where people, like Zoom had its take and people were freaking out. Basically, the short version is, it would be possible if you visited a malicious webpage for that webpage to open up a Zoom meeting with you and have your camera on. Like, that's the, the TLDR is like someone could open the camera on your Mac. There are a million caveats built into this, so you have to have allowed the default to having your camera on be set to

• 47:05Speaker 04

  on and you didn't uncheck that box. Um, it has, somebody has to figure out how to code the thing into an iframe, um, you know, bada bada ba. So that's troubling. Anytime anything opens up your camera, that's like, that's like red alert. Same thing with microphones. But then, on top of that, it turns out that Safari recently, you know, set, changed the way that it handles URI handlers, you know, the things that open up other apps. So you have to like click, yes, I want to open up the other app every time, instead of just automatically doing it. Um, and Zoom was like, oh, man, there's an extra click here now. People are going to be confused and annoyed, and it's going to cost us, you know, the actuaries tell us it's going to cost us another, you know, $500,000 per whatever for our

• 47:47Speaker 04

  4 million customers. So, we need a way to solve this problem. And the way that we're going to solve this problem is we're going to put a web server on every Mac that has a port open that listens for, um, a call from us or from whomever, apparently, and then can open up automatically the Zoom software. And that works around this problem.

• 48:08Nilay Patel?

  Okay, well, a web server on your Mac is not great. Well, no, a web server on your Mac is great. Installing a web server without telling the user that you have installed a secret web server is not great. Right. And an insecure web server that is able to take commands from any website on its port is also super bad. So there's many bad things about this. If you are like, this is creepy as hell, and you uninstall Zoom, they just like forgot to build in the part that uninstalls the web server. No, no, no, they did that on purpose. If I forgot, I mean, they did it on purpose. Oh, right, okay. Because if you click a Zoom link, the web server's like, oh, you want to open a Zoom link, but you don't have Zoom. Here, let me just install that shit for you again, and then pop up a Zoom conference again. So I will say, in the abstract, all of this is very clever. Let's just give them credit.

• 48:53Nilay Patel?

  This is a set of, like, video conferencing is bad and hard, and most software sucks. Zoom is the most popular. We are Zoom clients, we use Zoom. I will personally say I don't understand all the hype, because it's still video conferencing software, y'all. It still has all the problems that video conferencing has, but people love it. They just IPO'd. Part of it is they, like, solve these little hiccup-y problems. Like, you get the link, you click it, you don't have to install the software, you don't have to, like, monkey around, it just, like, happens. Great. Yep. So on one aspect, it's very clever. On every other aspect, it is incredibly stupid, right? Super, super dumb and bad. And to me, the heart of it is, this is the trade-off.

• 49:36Nilay Patel?

  The trade-off of the open platform is a company like Zoom can say, hey, we have this problem that people have with video conferencing. How do we solve it? And they did the cheapest, fastest, dumbest way of solving it, which was installing a web server on your computer that can itself install other software without you knowing about it. That seems like a mistake. And can also, if all that is set up... You know, the right way can just light up your camera without you knowing.

• 50:03Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 50:03Nilay Patel?

  But the platform is open. Like, what is, like, I, you know, Apple has this, like, App Store antitrust lawsuit. Like, this is the defense, right? We have to control the platform because it prevents this, this kind of thing from happening to iOS customers. Now, does that mean iOS is perfectly secure? It does not, but does this problem not happen in iOS? It does not, because Apple will not let you install a random web server without, actually at all. But certainly not let you install background processes without its explicit approval.

• 50:34Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 50:34Nilay Patel?

  What is, what is interesting to me is Apple did push the update to kill the web server to Macs.

• 50:39Speaker 04

  So Zoom put on, Zoom was gonna, they were like, holding firm, like, there's nothing wrong with having a web server on your Mac. Chill out. And then 24 hours of people going, what? I'll be like, OK, no, we're, we're, we're issuing an emergency patch. It will uninstall the web server. We're not going to use it anymore. We're sorry. All that's great, except remember, if you have uninstalled Zoom at any point in the past, whenever, then the web server is still there. And even if Zoom issues an emergency update to their software, you're not going to get it because you don't have it installed anymore. So Apple had to go and, you know, pat silently patch all Macs to get rid of this thing, because there is no way that Zoom is able to reach all the, all the computers that have its silly web server installed on them.

• 51:23Nilay Patel?

  How do you feel about Apple reaching out and silently updating a bunch of Macs?

• 51:28Speaker 04

  They've been doing this for a while. They do it for emergency stuff all the time. There was, there was something pretty high pry. I don't remember what it was.

• 51:36Speaker 05

  This is what you do for security vulnerabilities, which is what this is. I feel like Zoom has discovered a zero day on computers. In a sense, like, it's a zero day that involve you. You do have to install some software, right? But then you have a, what feels to me like a Trojan on your computer running that is remote controllable by Zoom whenever you visit a random website. So really, remote controllable, I mean, not unlimited controls. But remote controllable by anybody who can figure this out. It's terrifying and awful and it's a security hole. Like this is not like I if you try to build a website, right?

• 52:21Speaker 05

  So you're just a regular web developer. And you you you you serve up on a local host, a local server, you serve up your website, right? And then you try to get resources from another domain. That's that's a cross origin resource. The web browsers are specifically designed to limit that sort of cross origin. Because that's how you would get like a like a script injection attack or something like that. Like a really rogue ad would try to mine Bitcoin on your computer or something like that. So this feels exactly like a security vulnerability. And instead of reporting it, Zoom used it to add functionality to their software. And now that we all know about it, Apple is patching it out. That's what it feels like to me.

• 53:05Nilay Patel?

  Okay, that I mean, I Paul, I would say that is I'm surprised that you have that particular view of it. Right? Only because like one, the platform is open. The Mac is structured such that you are able to just install any application on it. Right? The web server is just another application. So like

• 53:23Speaker 05

  Well, and that that works. I mean, a open software requires a higher vigilance by the user and by the community in general. So like, you know, like especially like super open platforms like like Debian Linux, for instance. Every package that's available from the command line pack. Because they have something that's like the App Store. It's like a package manager. And every package is audit, the code is audited, not just the like, oh, yeah, we trust these people to make good software. No, they look at the code because when you install packages in an open source ecosystem, you typically compile it yourself. So the Mac is is is sort of in between because you're trusting a lot of binaries to to do things.

• 54:09Speaker 05

  But I do think the Mac is doing a good job. What what I feel like should have happened here is it's not typical for a desktop application to spawn a second.

• 54:20Speaker 05

  Can't process that stays open, that leaves a port open forever. I feel like that's a permission. I do, I guess I do it a lot in development, like I start up local web servers all the time from the command line, but that's the sort of thing I feel like should at least require admin privileges to like, you should have to enter a password.

• 54:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 54:37Speaker 05

  To do that sort of thing, because you're opening a listening port on your computer.

• 54:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Yeah, I just think it's, I mean, like, we, we have been talking about open and closed platforms and, you know, there, there is this antitrust action around Apple. Like, we just talk, we talk about a lot. Here's a case where Apple's own open platform, something that you can do, like, it wasn't hard for them to do. It was not smart of them to do, but it wasn't, right? They didn't have to like jailbreak the Mac to do this. So you just do it, right?

• 55:07Speaker 05

  They're a little, they're being a little clever here, though.

• 55:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 55:11Speaker 05

  Yeah. Something about like the local host, like requesting image dimensions or something like that. Like, they're not just doing a straight web request to local host. I feel like they're doing something a little fancier than that.

• 55:23Nilay Patel?

  Okay. Well, I mean, but you, they could do it, right? Like, they didn't have to like,

• 55:26Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 55:27Nilay Patel?

  They didn't have to like find an actual vulnerability in the system.

• 55:30Speaker 05

  Right.

• 55:31Nilay Patel?

  Which is what you like to jailbreak the iOS. You have to like actually go through a vulnerability. And now Apple is saying, well, actually, we're still in control of this environment. So we're just going to flip the switch and remove this thing. That's like a pretty interesting hybrid approach. I think, Dieter, that they might have done it before. This is the first time I can think of where this like pretty widely used software is the subject of that type of control, right? And they're saying,

• 55:57Speaker 04

  They, they, I think they've pushed out bugs for like, oh, wait, there's like a, there's a zero day or there's like a vulnerability and something, something, but I don't, I don't, I can't remember an instance of them specifically targeting an app.

• 56:07Speaker 05

  SSL vulnerability or something like that.

• 56:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Yeah. So it's interesting. There's some other stuff that happened that, I mean, like, Apple had to shut off walkie talkie on the Apple Watch today. Because it could light up a FaceTime call without you knowing. And then there,

• 56:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:21Nilay Patel?

  Do you want to go through, by the way, I use the hell out of walkie talkies. I'm very upset about this. I might, I think I'm the only one.

• 56:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, I've tried to set up walkie talkie with my wife on and off for the past six months and we just like, are never in the same room at the same time to like, be like, all right, let's take 20 minutes and figure this out. And so we just never use it.

• 56:39Nilay Patel?

  It is not actually great to set up.

• 56:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:42Nilay Patel?

  I think, I think that's why, like, most people, well, also, it's hilarious because your wrist is talking to you. That might be a problem, but it actually takes a second for that request to go through. And that delay is enough for you to be like, whatever, I'm done with this. But Teeter, there's like a Google Home scandal. I don't know, was scandal or kerfuffle?

• 57:02Speaker 04

  Well, the kerfuffle is, man, okay. So turns out that more than just servers listen to some of the audio that goes into a Google Home. And Google contends that it, they have like, you know, point oh, something, something percent of stuff. They have translators listen to it, you know, real humans and something, something. Somebody leaked a bunch of this audio that they had been reviewing and it had some scary stuff. Somebody, some Dane got it and it got on TV and it caused a whole thing. And one, I can't speak yet to did Google actually, you know, break any privacy rules or do anything super nefarious here? Except two, yo, it just, you gotta be way more careful about telling people what the

• 57:47Speaker 04

  hell is going on with microphones and cameras. Right? If you've got humans listening to microphones, just tell us and make sure we're aware of it. Put it in a relatively visible pop up box. So once people freak out about it, the whole internet goes, oh yeah, there was that box. You missed it. Because those two things are red lines. Yeah. When Google accidentally put a, you know, forgot to tell everybody that they had a microphone in a Nest box, complete and total freak out. Right? When Google, again, had the Google Home Mini accidentally register touch and then record a whole bunch of like random, you know, voice snippets, complete freak out. We demand shutters on the cameras and all of our smart speakers, not because like they

• 58:30Speaker 04

  could, they can like move a switch that will electrically disconnect it. And it's just as good as putting a camera shutter over it, but we don't trust that. We need a cover. Anytime anything touches a camera or a microphone, every single tech company on the planet needs to have like a, they need to have a giant pool of people like, and they can just call them up and they can be like, we're doing this thing. And then that person, you know, for, they'll be good to do this, this job for about two weeks because after two weeks you get a nerd to it. But that person's job will be like, what? And if they hear that person saying what? Then they need to either change what they're doing, or fix their disclosures, or fix it. And after two weeks, you hear like, oh, we're doing this thing with a microphone. You get a nerd to it. And so that, then that person like gets paid and moves on and they get the next person in the pool.

• 59:15Speaker 04

  But every tech company should just have a giant line of regular human beings to call, that will call up and give them $500. And you say, we're gonna do this with a microphone. And if they go, what? Then you don't do it.

• 59:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So the thing, the thing I'm, I'm stuck on, it's like a philosophical thing. It's like, well, the first thing you brought up. Everyone knows that when you speak to a Google Home or an Alexa device, your voice, you know, gets sent to a cloud. And then the computer listens to you. And then it turns on your lights or sets a timer or whatever, right? Sometimes they like, don't do a good job. They flag it and they pass it to a human being to be like, what was this? And that seems to trip this huge psychological, like, what is it? I mean, you're still having Google do it. What is it about a person listening to an anonymous voice file? That like sets us off?

• 1:00:07Nilay Patel?

  Because I agree, they should absolutely, like, this is so dumb. This is, if, I think Google's stat was like 0.2% of requests get passed to the people, right?

• 1:00:16Speaker 04

  It's actually a huge amount.

• 1:00:18Nilay Patel?

  Right. And so that, first of all, they hide behind percentages constantly, right? Lite, Apple's like, only 1% of keyboards fail. You're like, that's a mil, it's a million, it's a million keyboards.

• 1:00:29Speaker 04

  So 0.2% is 2 out of 1,000, right?

• 1:00:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Okay. So even at the number, and they sell a lot of these things and assistance on, you know, every Android device. So like, potentially a huge number. Right? Whatever. So if Google's stat is that, if, if they're out there claiming it's just a small percentage point. It's not that, it's not that many. Calm down. Then why can't they say? Every time you pass this thing, why can't? You know, the assistants say back to you, I didn't quite catch that. Do you mind if I send that to a human reviewer? And you can say yes or no?

• 1:01:04Speaker 05

  That's what you're, well, that's what my laptop does. If, if a program crashes, it asks me, would you like to send a report?

• 1:01:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:13Speaker 05

  And, and, and if I was, uh, you know, doing something that I didn't want anybody to know about, that I don't, or if I'm just not feeling friendly that day and I don't want to help these assholes who made a bad program, then I say no. If I'm feeling really magnanimous, like I might even describe what I was doing and send off the bug report.

• 1:01:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:32Speaker 05

  But I have the choice, except for all the invisible telemetry that's happening anyways. But I believe I, I feel like I have a choice.

• 1:01:41Nilay Patel?

  There's a great, uh, how I work with Jatt Abenrad. You should find it. We'll stick it in the show notes or something. I'll, I'll find it. But Pro Tools crashes on him all the time and he's like, I spend hours a day just composing these like rants in the Pro Tool crash dialogue box. They're, they're wonderful. I'll find it. I'll give it to Andrew. Stick it in the show notes. It's, they're worth looking at because they're hilarious. But yeah, I mean, that's the thing, right? Like they're, they've reduced the friction. There's no user interface. Like if you have a, an Echo Show or a Google Home Hub, there is absolutely no excuse. Right? They can just put up the UI and say, we didn't get that. Click yes or no. If there's no, if there's no display, the thing has to talk to you, but there's still no excuse, right?

• 1:02:25Nilay Patel?

  Cause you know, I agree with you. This is like, this is the line.

• 1:02:28Speaker 04

  I know that onboarding on these devices is getting worse and worse, but sorry. Like you gotta put one more step in there that says, hey, if we detect, if we are unable to figure it out, do you mind if we send your audio to a human reviewer? And you can just globally say yes or no.

• 1:02:44Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 1:02:44Speaker 04

  And then everybody will say no.

• 1:02:45Nilay Patel?

  I absolutely disagree. It should not be global. It should be per instance.

• 1:02:49Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:02:49Nilay Patel?

  Absolutely per instance, because if it, if it is the one, you know, the, this report, you know, it was like people arguing, right? It was like, there's a bunch of stuff where it like accidentally triggers. And it's like, we didn't figure that out. We want to send it. You do not want that to be a global yes or no. Like that is the heart of all these problems.

• 1:03:08Speaker 04

  That's fair. It was a Belgian public broadcaster. By the way, I got that wrong earlier.

• 1:03:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:12Speaker 04

  Uh, focusing on people who speak Dutch and Flemish.

• 1:03:15Nilay Patel?

  I see. Paul, what were you gonna say?

• 1:03:17Speaker 05

  I think the thing to do is you run a nationally televised ad that says, okay, Google.

• 1:03:26Speaker 05

  And then you record everybody all at once and you spy on every, just think of how great of a way that would be to spy on like an entire nation. I guess it's not everybody has one, huh? Everybody dumb enough to use a Google device. You could spy on everybody. Cause I, I mean, that's the thing. I, I was so young and naive and stupid. And I thought back in the day when all these companies started wanting so much personal information in order to improve their products. One, I thought it would improve their products. And I don't really think, I think it's marginal, what the sort of improvements we get. I think they're really overstated by these companies of how much they benefit from this, the loop

• 1:04:08Speaker 05

  of spying. But two, I thought that if they get caught doing bad things with data or, or being non-careful, which is this scenario with data that they gather, that there would be such a backlash that they would be completely punished for it and therefore even less likely to do it in the future.

• 1:04:29Nilay Patel?

  What would that backlash look like, Paul? Would it, would it look like competition?

• 1:04:36Speaker 05

  I think that my big failure there was thinking that backlash is somehow effective. And what really we have is just outrage cycles that quickly cool off and people forget to still be mad.

• 1:04:47Nilay Patel?

  Because they have nowhere to go. Just as a reminder that, right? There's, Paul, I think what you're advocating for here is a national search engine.

• 1:04:55Speaker 05

  I want, I wanted, I wanted to be known at this very moment that I backed a open source, doesn't spy on you, home voice assistant called Mycroft, like three years ago, that's in like Kickstarter dev hell. Like they're still working on, and I still get updates and I still believe in the project, but um, yeah.

• 1:05:18Nilay Patel?

  Kickstarter. Okay. On that note, we're going to take a break. We'll be right back. We got some stuff to wrap up on.

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• 1:06:28Nilay Patel?

  All right, we're back. Paul Miller. Every week.

• 1:06:31Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 1:06:31Nilay Patel?

  There's a segment of unparalleled consistency, of deep repetition. It's almost, it has a harmonic rhythm as you overlap because of the deep parallels every week. What's it called?

• 1:06:44Speaker 05

  It's basically like meditating. It's called Admin Book Is Best Book.

• 1:06:51Nilay Patel?

  I don't know, man.

• 1:06:53Speaker 05

  So, so there was a, one of the, apparently the hottest posts on the verge. I don't get, I don't see the traffic numbers, but I'm a, 165 comments. This is a pretty big deal on the verge.com, a website. Vio announces tiny laptop with tons of ports.

• 1:07:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:11Speaker 05

  People love this stuff. So Vio is a company, is an independent company, used to be a brand owned by Sony, but not anymore. So remember that. Made a laptop that looks like, Vio is so good at moving very, very slowly with its design language. And so you get like these moments where it's like retro chic. And this is one of those moments. So this is the essay. X twelve, it's like a twelve point five inch laptop. And what's cool about it is just has a ton of ports and there's this top down photo and it's got VGA. It's got VGA. It's got ST, that's kind of some reason that's Japanese thing that they've really held on to VGA way longer than anybody else. It's got a bunch of like real USB ports.

• 1:07:55Speaker 05

  It's got, it's got one of those fold down Ethernet ports and stuff. But as cool and exciting as this laptop is, I mean, it seems like it's just for the Japanese market. So it can't be that exciting. But it's beautiful to see this many things plugged into a modern laptop. But there's a comment of the, that said that this reminded them of the admin book, which I had not seen. Have you guys seen the admin book? I have not. No, this is new to me. The admin book is this concept this guy came up with for a small notebook for a system administrator. And it is the most, it is a manifesto. It is a laptop that he's designed in like CAD.

• 1:08:39Speaker 05

  He's done the measurements. He's figured out the internal specs. He's figured out everything for this came out in like January. But it's a laptop for system administrators. It does everything. It is, it, it, it sounds like a ridiculous wish list, but he's so serious about it that you want to believe that it could happen. So it's got stuff like you can, it's got HDMI in, so it could be a monitor. You know, it's for people who are like showing up to like server boxes, plugging into them, like fixing things. It's got like exposed SATA ports. It's got a PCIe plug. It's got, it's kind of like a mount, you can mount on a tripod, you know? It's got, it's got like a real serial.

• 1:09:25Speaker 05

  It's, it's, it can emulate a keyboard. So you could plug it into a computer and then it's your keyboard and mouse and monitor. It could work as an external drive. Like remember when, and it just, it just made me realize like how many things laptops could do and they don't. And I think a big part of it, like nobody's probably ever going to make the admin book. But I do think a big part of it, and it kind of gets back to what we were talking about before. I feel like we could have a laptop that is an inch thick.

• 1:09:56Speaker 05

  That could be really cool. It doesn't have to be as heavy as old timey laptops, but it could be an inch thick and which the admin book is an inch thick and it could have, you know, it can have basically MacBook Pro style specs, but it could cool them very effectively with a lot more room. It's got room for more battery, but it doesn't have to be filled with battery. It can have all sorts of wonderful ports that we we miss like, you know, serial port sounds dumb. Like who use serial port? Well, anybody who programs microelectronics uses serial port. They typically have to have an external USB port and and you could probably make do most of the admin book by making some mega dongle.

• 1:10:35Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 1:10:36Speaker 05

  With USB C.

• 1:10:37Nilay Patel?

  Make a mega dongle.

• 1:10:39Speaker 05

  But I don't know. It's just, it's just really cool. It's it was, I was very inspired reading the admin book manifesto.

• 1:10:46Nilay Patel?

  I like how you went from a real product that's shipping in Japan to I was inspired by this manifesto and I, that's, that's what we've come to expect from your segment every week. I do, I do want to clarify one thing. There is literally no correlation between the number of comments on a post and the traffic it receives.

• 1:11:07Speaker 05

  Really?

• 1:11:07Nilay Patel?

  Historically, even in back in our Engadget days, literally like it is, it's just all over the place. You, it, I've, I've never understood it, but it is true.

• 1:11:18Speaker 05

  Is comment number more like a, a metric for controversy?

• 1:11:22Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it, we, the, I think our commenters, now I'm gonna lie with percentages. It's great. Commenters represent 0.1% of our total audience, which is still a huge number because we have a big audience. But like, if you think about that percentage, they can be very active on a post, but it doesn't translate into like overall traffic.

• 1:11:41Speaker 05

  Ah, so it's like if, if we write about a Windows phone.

• 1:11:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, right. Tons of comments.

• 1:11:47Speaker 05

  Appeals to, okay, I get it.

• 1:11:48Nilay Patel?

  But like, it won't turn into, but I think this, I think it did well because a laptop with a VGA port, like anybody who's like driving by the verge is like, wait, I gotta, I gotta look at that. So I think it did well, but it is true. This is a true fact. I don't, I don't think we'd mention that very often. So I want to point out. Okay. Some things to wrap up on. Dieter, you reviewed the Xperia 1 and we saw a picture of the Note 10. Uh, it looks like it doesn't have a headphone jack.

• 1:12:14Speaker 04

  No headphone jack. We also don't know what the power button is going to be. There's a lot of confusion about the power button situation. There doesn't seem to be one. Maybe it's the Bixby button is going to double as power button.

• 1:12:21Nilay Patel?

  I love the fact that if you screw up the Bixby button, you turn off the phone. It's like, it's such a deep reflection of where Bixby is. It's like a metaphor.

• 1:12:34Speaker 04

  Um, and then, yeah, the Sony Xperia 1 is a 6.5 inch, 21 by 9 phone that I love and nobody should buy. Because it's $950 and for $950, you definitely deserve a better camera.

• 1:12:49Speaker 05

  I just saw the, the, oh, wow.

• 1:12:51Nilay Patel?

  How does Sony make all the sensors, but they can't make a good camera?

• 1:12:55Speaker 04

  This is the first time I've used a Sony phone in basically ever where the camera wasn't like an embarrassment. It's pretty good, uh, but it's not good enough for $950.

• 1:13:05Speaker 05

  It's just a software thing though, right? They're using the best hardware, right?

• 1:13:08Speaker 04

  Happy to be.

• 1:13:10Speaker 05

  I, I just saw the, um, new Spider-Man movie, which I forgot that Sony is still on Spider-Man. And so, but it's this great, like, alt, alternate universe where people use Sony.

• 1:13:24Speaker 04

  The new Sony earbuds, by the way, do look dope. Yeah. It's cancelling earbuds, pretty expensive, big case, whatever. They look amazing. They sound amazing in according Chris Welch. He made a video. You should definitely watch it. Uh, the fact that they won't connect to more than one device at a time is what breaks my heart with them.

• 1:13:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, that's why you need that proprietary H1 chip. Welcome to the ecosystem. Actually, whenever, you know how Apple, like Max used to boot up with like the, like the big startup chime? They've changed it over the years, but it used to be like an orchestra. Now it should just say, welcome to the ecosystem. Tim Cook, if you're listening, now that Johnny I was out, you know, you need a new experience designer. Think about it.

• 1:14:02Speaker 04

  I have spent this entire Vergecast waiting to troll Neelai with the name of AT&T's new streaming service.

• 1:14:12Speaker 04

  HBO Max has nothing to do with Apple computers.

• 1:14:17Nilay Patel?

  I hate it. But it's porky. Here's what I've thought about with with Max. My daughter's name is Max, if you don't know.

• 1:14:25Nilay Patel?

  A, she's gonna outlive all of this, which to me is a victory.

• 1:14:30Nilay Patel?

  That's so that's good. She won't know about it. Like, there's a real chance she will never know that there was an iPhone XS Max. Right? Like, she just, it won't, it won't, it'll be a glitch. It'll be like, I don't know, walking up to a teen right now, and being like, Walkman. And they're like, what are you talking about? I am Walkin'. That's, you see what I did there?

• 1:14:49Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:14:51Nilay Patel?

  Anyhow. And then there is, like, these words become trendy. And so, like, Max is super trendy right now, and it means nothing in the context of HBO. Like, what don't you want from HBO? More, like, like, extra Walmart crap, right? And that's what they're doing with the service. It's gonna have, like, the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Friends. They're pulling Friends off of Netflix. All these other classic, like, Warner properties. It's deeply confusing why they're doing this HBO. The logo, go look at the logo. The logo is the worst logo in the history of the world.

• 1:15:31Speaker 04

  The HBO logo, and then the word Max with some gradients on it, because that's cool. But the X is just wide. It's just a really wide X.

• 1:15:38Nilay Patel?

  They're like, the word Max doesn't suggest more. What if the X was really wide? So you're like, yes.

• 1:15:45Speaker 04

  In theory, the negative space between the A and the X could look like a play button if you really wanted it to.

• 1:15:51Nilay Patel?

  No, no one was that thoughtful with this logo. You have now spent more time thinking about this logo than any person who worked on it or approved it. It's also gonna be like $18 a month.

• 1:16:01Speaker 04

  They're gonna need to fit that HBO Max logo into a round rec icon. And that's gonna be the most.

• 1:16:08Nilay Patel?

  So like, this is, this is the dark side of my calls for increased competition, right? Sometimes you get it.

• 1:16:19Nilay Patel?

  And then you're like, okay, like, yep, there's a lot of competition in streaming TV. And it looks like notable AT&T streaming service HBO Max and Quibi. And like, oh, like, oh, yeah, I wish it was all Netflix and Netflix had a monopoly.

• 1:16:40Nilay Patel?

  Whoops. Like, sometimes you get what you ask for.

• 1:16:44Speaker 05

  This would be a scenario for one of like Peter Thiel's good monopolies, which is kind of hard to. It's a short book, but you know, zero to one is about making monopolies that are good for the world.

• 1:16:58Speaker 04

  He forgets to mention the part where he like harvests the blood of the young and destroys media properties in that book.

• 1:17:03Nilay Patel?

  The trains run on time is sort of Peter Thiel's thesis in this book.

• 1:17:06Speaker 05

  Because in a scenario with perfect competition where you had a billion undifferentiated competitors, right? None of them would be would be profitable. So that that doesn't quite work. But there is something that seems very, at least annoying about how many different TV things there are right now.

• 1:17:25Nilay Patel?

  Well, I think the answer is some of them will shake. I mean, gone90.biz is available. You recently updated it.

• 1:17:32Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:17:33Nilay Patel?

  What's funny is that there is at once massive consolidation in video and intense competition. So it's kind of like a worst of both worlds situation where AT&T now owns Game of Thrones and Friends, which is just seems horrible. Like that's a that's a dystopian sentence.

• 1:17:50Speaker 04

  Crossover. Just wait for the crossover season.

• 1:17:53Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I mean, they're they're gonna do horrible things like they're gonna make zero rated Courtney Cox Friends spinoffs for mid-range Android phones. Like.

• 1:18:04Speaker 04

  Actually, that sounds great.

• 1:18:06Nilay Patel?

  It does it. It doesn't seem great. So like you see this like massive consolidation of like huge conglomerates owning these services and then trying to but it's gonna shake out. I think it will shake out very fast. Like these things aren't gonna, this moment isn't gonna persist for more than a year. And there's already, I mean, I think New York Mag ran a piece. It's like piracy's back, baby. Cause no one's gonna pay for all of it. And that's just gonna be a thing. So anyway, the point of this is my daughter will outlive HBO Max. I just want to say that very clearly. It's horrible. Last bit of news. Speaking of AT&T, we're gonna track this pretty lightly. I'm just gonna mention it quickly. It's something we're gonna pay attention to. I want to flag it for the listener. Robocalls are a huge problem in the United States.

• 1:18:51Nilay Patel?

  We had Jeffrey Starks on the Vergecast, FCC Commissioner Jeffrey Starks. He said it's the number one complaint the FCC gets. So the FCC recently passed a rule saying, okay, carriers are allowed to start blocking robocalls. They're allowed to start doing some stuff. There's some other FCC stuff happening, like they want them to implement this framework called Stir Shakin, which authenticates calls. So you can't get fraud. You can't like spoof numbers. That's coming online. But right now, the rule is, okay, we're allowing carriers to start blocking. Cause there was some question of whether blocking calls on the phone network would like violate FCC rules. But the FCC passed this thing. Immediately, the question was, you said they were allowed to do it. You didn't say they had to do it.

• 1:19:32Nilay Patel?

  And he definitely didn't say they had to do it for free, right? So now they're allowed to do it. But they don't have to do it for free, which is like, how do you, what people want? They just want it to stop. Like they don't want to like pick like. Okay, so that was our angle when they actually passed this rule. Like I wrote the post. I was like, it is unclear whether carriers are charged. The carriers didn't say much, which is a bad sign. And now we're finding out, okay, AT&T's rolling out its robocall prevention stuff. It is basically an extension of what it already has called Call Protect. I have Call Protect. Call Protect is in two tiers. There's a free tier, which lets you manually block numbers after you determine that they're bad. I do it all, I do it all the time. And it says spam alert, right?

• 1:20:18Nilay Patel?

  Or suspected fraud. Like that's what Call Protect does. You can pay them and it'll block those calls automatically. So now everybody's getting the free tier of Call Protect. You don't have to like download the app and sign up for it anymore. They're just rolling out the free tier in everyone. But if you want the actual thing, which is for your phone to stop ringing with bullshit, you gotta pay AT&T. I think that is, that is absolutely back. Like, that's not the outcome any consumer wanted, which is now we're going to tell you about this bad thing that's constantly happening to you. We're going to tell you it's spam, but if you want AT&T to push the block button for you, you gotta pay the money. I think, I think we're going to see way more action on that because that is some classic cell carrier, mobile carrier upcharge bullshit, right?

• 1:21:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:21:01Nilay Patel?

  That is, there was a very famous David Pogue article in the Times.

• 1:21:04Speaker 05

  I was just about to bring that up. That's exactly, yeah.

• 1:21:06Nilay Patel?

  Um, where if you push the wrong button on a Verizon phone and like lit up, like made the automatic call to like the Verizon service, it charged you and people push that button accidentally all the time and Verizon was just dinging them. It's the same exact motivating idea, which is there's a thing people want. It's really annoying. We can just scam money out of them because we'll tell them it'll stop because now we're allowed to do it. Bullshit. They should just turn, it should roll out for free to everyone. I mean, it's crazy. So we're going to track it. I don't want to overdo it. It's the news. That's the backstory. Starks, Commissioner Starks, has a, a pending order in front of the FCC saying it has to be free. You know, he's, you know, the, it's a Republican commissioner now under Pi, so probably not going to go anywhere, but it's, there's already some movement. But I think

• 1:21:50Nilay Patel?

  people should be aware that Pi thumping his chest that he did something at robo calls. All he did was give carriers permission to charge you to block them instead of actually solving the problem. Anyway, that's my, it's my final FCC rant.

• 1:22:04Speaker 05

  How, wait, what? I'm still a little confused because you could pay them already to block.

• 1:22:10Nilay Patel?

  You could, so yeah, right? So that Pi, again, he's like thumping his chest. He's saying, I, I gave the carriers permission to block these calls. So they're going to do it now. And kind of the unspoken thing was like, they're already doing it. What, do they really need permission? Yeah. But before, the, the way they were kind of getting around the uncertainty was call protect was free, but you had to go get it. I had to download the app. I had to sign up for it. I had to push okay. Now they're just rolling it out to everyone because they, they have this sort of like clarity in the, in the regulatory space. But to actually block it, you have to pay them, which again, is complete bullshit. So. Yeah, just ended an FCC. We kind of began on a Foxconn rant. We ended an FCC rant. We had some VGA. Classic Vergecast. We had some VGA ports in the middle.

• 1:22:55Nilay Patel?

  A classic, a classic Vergecast episode. Uh, we want to hear from you. You can tweet at us. Dieter, you're at Backlon. Paul's Future Paul. I'm at Reckless. If you're a Foxconn employee and you just want to express yourself to me, I'm available to you. By the way, I did reply to that email and say, who are you? I'd love to talk to you. And he didn't reply, or she didn't reply, whoever it was. Uh, and I said, if you don't reply, by the end of the day, I'm going to tweet this thing. So I just want to, I was, I would, I try to be fair. There, there was no replies. So, but if you want to, if you work at Foxconn, you do want to talk to me and Josh and I are available to you. Uh, you can listen to Why'd You Push That Button. Uh, that season is going great. This week is about Gmail auto replies. It is very, very funny. Uh, you should listen to it. Liz Lopato, our deputy editor is on

• 1:23:38Nilay Patel?

  that episode. She's hilarious. Uh, you can listen to Kara Swisher on Recode Decode. You can listen to Kara and Scott Galloway on Pivot. You can listen to Peter Kafka on Recode Media. They're all wonderful. We'll be back next week. We got some interviews. Got a big interview. I don't want to spoil it. Got a pretty good interview coming up. I think you're going to like it. That's on Tuesdays. We'll be back on Friday talking about the week in tech. We'll see you then. Rock and roll. Paul. Promo code.

• 1:24:55Speaker 09

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