Amazon Builds a Robot and Threatens Apple — With Wired's Lauren Goode

Wired senior writer Lauren Goode was on hand this week as Amazon introduced Astro, a home robot, and a Ring home-monitoring drone. Goode joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss her reaction to the products. And in the second half, stay tuned for a discussion of how Apple and Amazon are on a collision course even though they build products very differently. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  This episode is brought to you by Genesis. What does it actually take to put Agentic AI to work across an entire enterprise? I recently spoke with Genesis chairman and CEO Tony Bates about why orchestration is emerging as a competitive advantage in customer experience and what companies need to get right in the AI era. Then I sat down with Adam Mitchell, head of enterprise business solutions at Voya Financial, to go inside a large-scale Agentic CX transformation, including the business decisions, trade-offs, and lessons along the way. You can watch both conversations now on my YouTube channel today. It's never been more challenging to get frontier compute. How do you know where to look, who to trust, or how much to pay?

• 0:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Akash is an open cloud that provides easy access, flexibility, and peace of mind. That's how companies like Razer were able to cut their inference cost by 15 times. Visit akash.network/alex for a free consultation. That's akash.network/alex for a free consultation.

• 1:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hello and welcome to the Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. Well, Amazon has a robot. It's a really weird-looking thing, but knowing Amazon's track record, everyone's going to say it's terrible, and then they're going to sell thousands upon thousands of them, if not millions of them. That's my prediction, anyway. But let's actually speak to someone who knows what she's talking about on this subject. She's the senior writer at Wired and the co-host of the Gadget Lab podcast. Lauren, good. It's been a long time coming. Welcome to the show.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  It's been a long time, Alex. I've just been waiting for my invite to the Big Technology Podcast. I'm thrilled to finally be joining you.

• 1:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's great to have you here. You're really fresh out of this Amazon event, which is awesome, so we can sort of get into the details. So first of all, just the obvious question: why is Amazon building a robot?

• 2:07Speaker 01

  Well, Amazon has actually been building or acquiring robots for a very long time. It's just that they've been deploying these robots mostly in its warehouse network. Right? And so, robots are an important and increasingly important part of the way that Amazon sort of moves things around in its warehouses and distribution centers. I think the question you're asking, though, is why is Amazon getting into home robots? Because we saw a couple of autonomous devices revealed yesterday that suggest that Amazon just wants these things sort of, I don't know, rolling around or flying around your house without you actually triggering them to do so. And I think it just, like, the big picture is that it just ties into Amazon's overall

• 2:52Speaker 01

  desire to push further and deeper into your home because it wants to sell you on its services ultimately. The hardware game for Amazon has traditionally been either a low or even a no-margin business for Amazon. I mean, you can look back on Kindles, which it's been selling now for over a decade, and it's never really made a lot of money on Kindles, but it makes money on eBooks, of course, and people buying books from Amazon. And so, I tend to think of the software and the artificial intelligence in these hardware products as kind of the connective tissue or like the sales engine of what's actually, you know, driving revenues for Amazon in the hardware department.

• 3:28Speaker 02

  Totally. So, what does this robot look like? What does it do? What was your first impression when you saw it? Apparently, in the presentation, they talked about how it was like waiting at the door for them when they came home.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, Dave Limb, who is Amazon's longtime hardware chief, mentioned that in an interview that he did with Wired. A couple of outlets actually got pre-reefed on Astro, the robot. I did not, unfortunately. So, my first reaction when I saw it during the virtual event yesterday was, I think I tweeted, "Oh, wow, this robot."

• 4:01Speaker 01

  Incredibly eloquent.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  It is interesting because Bezos had, in the past, put on Instagram this video of a Roomba vacuum cleaner driving around his house with like an Echo device masking tape to the top.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  Oh, really? I must have missed that.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was a few years ago. And it's kind of what they did.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  Of all the Bezos headlines, I guess that one just something will fell under the radar.

• 4:28Speaker 02

  He's had a pretty boring life, I guess.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, uneventful. Yeah, I mean, I think there were a couple of reactions generally to it. The first was, okay, wow, this robot. The second was, it looks like a robot dog, even though Amazon is insistent that it is not really a robot dog and that the name is not coming from the name of the, what was it? The Jetsons dog was Astro.

• 4:52Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  And so they say it's not, it's not named after that dog. And then the third response was something along the lines of, hmm, it's like a robot vacuum cleaner that doesn't actually vacuum. What am I paying a thousand dollars for? Which is fair. So it's kind of like, the way I look at it is, it's this cobbling together. It's a thousand dollars. It is available by invite only.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  Your opening statement, it's interesting because I think you're right in that sometimes people tend to underestimate Amazon's hardware products. In fact, Amazon has said as much that they, like even with something like the Echo, they underforecast how well that would do. But in this case, I think they really are only going to sell a limited number of these robots because it's available by invitation only and they're not going to sell millions, maybe in the thousands, maybe more than hundreds is what I was told, but this is going to be a pretty, a pretty slow rollout. And I think the way to think about it is it's just this combination. It's like this, I don't know, amalgamation of Amazon technology is kind of put together. Like it, it has Farfield microphones, so you can summon Alexa on it.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  It, the tablet looks like a 10 inch Echo Show tablet. It, it integrates with Ring, so you can use it as a home security monitor. It also has cameras in it, so you can video chat on it directly. And then there's like the robotics part of it, which means it's using computer vision and artificial intelligence to kind of map the space around you. And then it has these wheels, you know, and five motors built inside of it so that it can kind of multidirectionally move around your house. And then, oh, by the way, just in case you wanted to do this, it can carry a payload on the back of, you know, something around five pounds or less, right? And then someone said, there's even like a cup holder.

• 6:36Speaker 02

  There's a cup holder, I saw that. Maybe they can bring a beer over to you. Yeah.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:39Speaker 02

  That's always been the dream with robots, right? It's everyone's best case scenario for a home robot is it gets a beer for you. But I guess the question is how, how does that beer get into the robot in the beginning?

• 6:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, doesn't the robot, after the robot does not have dexterity yet, cannot open the fridge for you. There's also this like periscope like thing, this rod that extends from the top of it and acts as a periscope camera. It is like, it's weird.

• 7:06Speaker 02

  What's that for?

• 7:07Speaker 01

  Video chatting, I guess. Maybe video chatting at a good angle, you know, coming from above. Video chatting when you're standing up. I'm actually not sure. Like I haven't, but I was here, used this in person. It just, it's a, yeah, it's interesting.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  But interesting is a nice vague word to talk about the way that you feel. How do you feel about this robot?

• 7:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. The way I feel about it is,

• 7:37Speaker 01

  the way I described it in Wired is that it's a robot without a cause. Because Amazon is putting this out there into the world as part of their day one program, which is, let's call it as a beta testing program. They're relying on customers, they're hoping that customers will opt in to sending back data about how they're using this thing. So that ultimately helps define the use case for it. Now, Amazon has had time to think about this. They have been building this robot for nearly four years, Dave Limb told me. And during that time, it's gone through a lot of different iterations. You know, they've had to change course in terms of which processors they're going to use to power it during that time because the chip industry moves pretty fast.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  They've had time to think about like what this is actually for. And yet yesterday, it still felt like a bit of a shrugy in terms of what it's actually for. Like, is it for elder care? Is it for surveilling your home? Is it for like treating it like a pet dog? Is it for using Alexa to, I don't know, control your lights and tell you dad jokes? It's, it's really unclear. And that to me feels like, like with all consumer technology products, I'm constantly evaluating that trade off that exists. I tend to try to think about them philosophically and think about the trade off that exists. Like what you're getting in exchange for how much data you are giving these machines?

• 9:00Speaker 01

  And in this case, the value proposition is just not there. Like, what are you going to get aside from saying, I have a cute thousand dollar robot in my house? In exchange for giving Amazon more and more data about how you're using its stuff? And that to me just seems like it's not. I I wouldn't put it in my home.

• 9:16Speaker 02

  Can we speculate a little bit like what what do you think some use cases could be? You could just get.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  Um, I don't think you should ask Katie Katie Metropolis from BuzzFeed.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  Okay, I knew that story was gonna come up. I'm not even gonna say the headline.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  All right, I'll say the headline. What what Katie Katie from BuzzFeed, um, who's an excellent reporter.

• 9:36Speaker 02

  Former colleague of mine, dear.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, former colleagues, excellent, excellent reporter and masterful troll. Um, said, uh, would you, would you have sex in front of Amazon Astro or something like that?

• 9:47Speaker 02

  Um. Yeah.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't, I mean, what would you use it for if you had it in your home?

• 9:52Speaker 02

  Well, not that.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  Uh, I I really don't know. Um, I mean, like, I I like the idea, like, maybe it could play music and follow me around. But I'm also like, uh, you know, um, being close to the tech community, I've come across a lot of people who have like a natural hesitancy to have any Amazon device in their home. I don't know. Do you have any?

• 10:19Speaker 01

  You know, I'm trying to think. Uh,

• 10:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  So what's funny is the home I'm living in right now.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  Oh, okay. Get into this.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:28Speaker 02

  Not your house.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  So it's not. So I'm renting from a friend and my next door neighbor happens to be Casey Newton. Um, some of you may know Casey Newton is friend of the pod and rents a great Substack called Platformer. Everybody subscribe. And, um, and so he lives next door and then I live in this other house. And we're both renting from a friend and that friend happens to be Kara Swisher. And some of you may know who she is.

• 10:50Speaker 02

  I was like, I don't know. Are you gonna show the identity?

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I mean, apparently she set up a pivot podcast recently. She like referred to me as her tenant.

• 10:57Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  And Scott Galloway was like, what?

• 10:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  Uh, so the so the news is out. Uh, I've also been podcasting from Kara Swisher's closet. Um, but, uh, yeah, well, cause like it it's just the better better sound, but, um.

• 11:10Speaker 02

  But that's not where you are now.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  No, that's not where I am now. I'm in a, yeah, I'm known and I'm in a.

• 11:15Speaker 02

  So does Kara's house have echoes?

• 11:17Speaker 01

  So she, so she

• 11:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  has a ring. Which I have never used, which is owned by Amazon, as our listeners know.

• 11:24Speaker 02

  Right, and that's the smart, the smart doorbell where you can like see people as they walk in and.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yep. So this is my fir-, my actual first, I think it's my first experience with a Ring. I know the company has loaned them to me before. How do they like it?

• 11:39Speaker 02

  And I guess they like it because, but I, if I had that when I was in high school, I would have been screwed.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  People who have been caught making in late night.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  Oh my god, yeah. What time do you get in? You know, always you subtract two hours.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:53Speaker 02

  Um, but you can't get past them with this thing.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  Now as you get older, no, I was gonna say now as you get older, it's the opposite. It's like, oh boy, I hope you know, Emma doesn't know, Amazon doesn't know, I'm going to bed at eight o'clock at night. Um, you know, it starts like, I don't know, like.

• 12:08Speaker 02

  Well, now they do know.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Starts marketing like orthopedic insults to me, um, which is probably already happening to be honest.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  Um, but yeah, and then I did have, um, you know, it's funny, I have this like little gadget museum here. Um, I was inspired by Walt Mossberg to start one. I just have all these like, these, you know, gadgets of, of lives past, um, on a shelf and one of them is the original Echo speaker. Uh, it's not in use right now though. I do have a Google, I can never get their naming right, the Google Home Nest Hub, Google Nest Hub now. I forgot, it's just like they, they've changed the name. Um, but I have that.

• 12:49Speaker 02

  They're branding.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  That I've been trying for a little while because it does some sleep tracking using radar, does not have a camera. I thought that was kind of interesting. And also some of it is on device processing, which is a big, a big buzzword now in, in the field of artificial intelligence. So I, so yeah, I try lots of these things, but um, Ring, of course, the Amazon brand Ring has been controversial because of its hundreds of partnerships that it has with the law enforcement community. And um, some of the devices, such as the one, uh, the one that we saw yesterday, the flying drone for inside your house. Are being excluded from those partnerships, meaning I believe.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  We haven't even covered this.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  We have to, I know, we gotta talk about the drone.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  Well, just, yeah, let's pause there. What is a flying drone that is inside your house?

• 13:35Speaker 01

  Yes. So this is also a part of Amazon's like invite only launches. And it was first announced last September, September 2020. And there was a pretty strong reaction to it because from, from privacy advocates, digital privacy advocates. Because it is a drone under the Ring brand, um, has, you know, plastic tipped propellers and has cameras on board. And, and kind of, you can either press a button to force it to fly around your home, or you can, um, sort of create these presets for conditions under which it should autonomously emerge from its dock and fly around your home. And, um, it's basically supposed to record any kind of activity that's happening inside your home.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  And, and the pitch for it was, why have multiple cameras, multiple Ring cameras in different windows or areas of your home? When you can just have one that goes to the area of activity, whether it's like an intruder or a raccoon. I guess those two things could be synonymous. And so it was like this weird pitch for what, for what this thing should do. And of course, all anyone saw was, oh my God, surveillance drone inside your home. And, uh, there were some concerns raised by digital privacy advocates as to whether or not there were microphones on board. Because if there were, then that could potentially be in violation of FCC wiretapping laws. And.

• 14:53Speaker 02

  Oh, hold on. Because don't the people buy the drone and put it in their house? So where, where's the, you know, they willingly do that. So they're surveilling themselves in some way.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  And it turns out that it actually does not have microphones. It only has cameras. So I actually, as far as we know, as far as Amazon says, does not have microphones. Um, so I got that wrong initially, as, as I think a lot of other people did. Um, but yeah, I mean, there is a point of, there is, there is the point of. And it's a good one. If you sign up for the Amazon day one additions, you know, beta invites and whatnot, early invites, and you opt to buy this thing for $250 and put it in your home, then you are opting into that. But then on the back end, of course, there's the way that Amazon either creates default settings for what's ultimately going to be shared. There's, you have to examine the options for opting out. Even if you opt out of certain things,

• 15:47Speaker 01

  are there instances where certain data could still be shared under, I don't know, instances of a crime or information being subpoenaed?

• 15:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  If they say that there's some, some of this, that some of the artificial intelligence is processing data, you know, whether in this case it's not voice data, it might be video data, if it's happening on device, how much of that actually is happening on device or locally on the piece of hardware? How much of it is going to Amazon's cloud? There are all kinds of questions that even if you as a consumer say, I'm going to buy this new tech thing, which we do all the time, millions of them, right? Like iPhones or whatever it is. There are still settings that have to be considered and there, and I think a lot of it also comes back to defaults, what the default option is for what is ultimately being shared with the tech company that's selling you the product.

• 16:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. And when stuff is in the cloud, sort of like, yeah, it's your device, but that company owns that data. You're, you're a customer, but you're a user and you're sort of governed by the rules of the company that's hosting that stuff.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  Right. Like, for example, if you're using an Alexa device, Amazon has over the years introduced new features that allows you to, every single day, if you want to go on, go into your settings and say, delete all of the voice recordings, all the queries that I gave to Alexa today. But there are exceptions. Like if you, if you connect your Alexa app to a third-party app where there's some kind of financial transaction that happens, which is you use it to call an Uber, order a pizza, that's not going to be erased because you're involving a third party and there's a financial transaction happening there. So there are all these little nuances. And I think in general, people just ask, you know, ask the question, they put their hands and ask the question, why do you need a drone flying around inside your home?

• 17:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, this is the one interesting thing about Amazon products. Um, is that they first, I remember how dumb the Echoes seemed to me at first. Now I have three of them in my house, all connected to each other.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  Which ones do you have?

• 17:40Speaker 02

  Pretty amazing. Just the old school Echoes. Uh, because you could play a song.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:46Speaker 02

  No screens. No, that's a little too much for me. But you could play a song and walk room from room and the, you know, it's all synced together. It's pretty nice, but um.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  Do you use your? You use your Lexos for anything other than summoning a playlist or something? Using music, I guess.

• 18:02Speaker 02

  Music, timers.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  Timers, okay.

• 18:05Speaker 02

  And alarm. Yeah, that's pretty much it. Sometimes I make, oh, and I listen to like AM, well, yeah, I listen to AM radio through it also, like I'll have it play the sports uh, talk radio show, so. And of course, um, yeah, weekly big technology podcast listener through the Echoes. Just blast on all three. You know, I recommend to anyone out there that to be, you know, doing the same. It's a truly great experience. And we'll broadcast through drones and robots and stuff.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:31Speaker 02

  To listen to the show?

• 18:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, where you just say, you know what, I'm gonna have to play Spotify Chill Mix number six today. I just, I'm gonna just put on some big technology.

• 18:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, you know, as you know, it's a struggle enough for me to keep my friends and so I wouldn't wanna make it even, even harder.

• 18:45Speaker 01

  Well, that's what happens when you keep moving away.

• 18:47Speaker 02

  That's true. That's true. Oh, well, anyway, we'll talk about it during the break. But um, I wanted to ask one question because um, I think this will kind of be a nice segue into our little, our next half, but our next segment, but I wanna ask one question about um, the reaction. You know, I think technology over time, and maybe this has always been, has been about A, what it does for you, but B, about how others react to it. Like the iPhone is obviously a status symbol. Um, the Apple Watch is a status symbol. Um, you know, people used to get like the coolest new gadgets so they could show them off to their friends as much as it would be to use them for themselves.

• 19:26Speaker 02

  I wonder what you think the reaction from people entering homes with the robot and the drone is gonna be. Is it gonna be like, oh, this is cool, or is it going to be, what are you doing?

• 19:39Speaker 01

  You know, that's a really good question because I don't know if you remember this, but probably two or three years ago at this point, there were people in tech, covering tech, you know, writing about tech, tech pundits, who were raising the question as to whether or not you should alert friends if they're entering your home and you happen to be using a Google Nest speaker or an Alexa device. Do you remember this?

• 20:04Speaker 02

  It was like a trigger warning for a smart speaker?

• 20:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, like just so you know, there's a-

• 20:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're being surveilled.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  Yes, you're being surveilled or potentially listened to. And then it was a good question to ask. It was an important question to ask, but then I think it kind of died down and-

• 20:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. Which side do you fall on?

• 20:22Speaker 01

  I have let people know that there is a Google Nest hub in my bedroom.

• 20:28Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  How do I say that delicately?

• 20:32Speaker 02

  I think you just did.

• 20:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. But, and I'm trying to think, I guess I've used, maybe I've used Sonos. You know, it's funny, I've used a Sonos speaker too that has Alexa built in and I, recently I was using that and I didn't, I didn't tell anyone who would like sit and watch a movie with me, like, by the way, this has Alexa built in. And I tend to think of myself as not a huge, sort of like, privacy warrior, but something that I'm very concerned about and think a lot about and think like Wired's coverage is incredibly important. And so I think at this point, like, you know, I have to say, most people would probably go

• 21:16Speaker 01

  into a friend's house and they'd say, "Look at my drone." And then maybe there would be a cascade of questions that come from it, but inevitably the person would be like, "Huh, isn't that crazy? That's cool." Or like, "Look at your cute robot dog."

• 21:27Speaker 02

  And then it just follows them into the room.

• 21:28Speaker 01

  Right? And then it's like, "Look at what my cute robot dog can do." I think you'll have the occasional outlier who says like, like, no way, get that thing out of my face, or I would never have that. Um, but I think for the most part, there's this um, sort of, I don't know, we be- we become a nerd over time, I think, to how many devices that have cameras and microphones are actually present in our lives.

• 21:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  And I think that's only, they're only going to proliferate even more.

• 22:01Speaker 02

  Right, and we carry one in our pocket at all times, so. So, where does this, this fit exactly in the Amazon uh, mix? Like, is it, seems like it's, I mean, maybe like the Echo, but is it part hardware, uh, it's part commerce, uh, maybe part some of its premium services like Amazon Music, or, I guess like, if this thing, thinking about the best case scenario for Amazon, what is that, what does that look like, and what business does that help the most?

• 22:30Speaker 01

  And this is for Astro.

• 22:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, ultimately, Amazon wants you to be tied into its services. So whether that's watching some kind of Amazon Prime Video, um, whether it's ordering something using voice control from the bot, and then having a display that shows you what you just ordered, or puts you into recurring order. Um, whether it's, it's somehow integrating with Whole Foods, you know, at some point, maybe the payload at some point gets bigger, and it's actually like carting your groceries around. Um, maybe there is a B two B opportunity for this, this kind of bot to roll around different stores or retail spaces. Um, I mean, I think ultimately, Amazon just wants to sell you stuff,

• 23:16Speaker 01

  and this is a better way to do that. It's also a way to get even more data about how people are just living in their households. Um, and Amazon's They're just, they're putting sensors in our homes. I don't know if you happen to see, uh, I did a story earlier this year about how I had installed an Amazon Smart Shelf in my linen closet.

• 23:35Speaker 02

  Oh, yes. Yeah.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  The cheapest thing. It's like twenty bucks. It has no design value. It's just a, it's just a black scale, a black plastic scale. And um, you can get a small, medium, or large. They're all twenty dollars. It cracked me up because I was like, there is no differentiation in price between, between these pieces of plastic. I put it in my linen closet. I programmed it to, to recognize when I had toilet paper sitting on the scale. I, the whole time I was just saying, this is so, this is so dystopian. This is so weird. I can't believe I'm doing this. And um, you know, I think I installed it like late twenty twenty, like December twenty twenty, and then the toilet paper started coming in, in January. And then every time I was very close to running out of toilet paper, it ordered more, more. And this

• 24:20Speaker 01

  giant box of cottonell toilet paper would show up at my door. And I never, I have not, I have yet to run out of toilet paper. Um, and so there was this, admittedly, this exchange where I didn't have any visibility into what Amazon was actually ordering for me because I wasn't, sometimes I would just miss the email and I wasn't price checking. But I exchanged that for an extreme convenience, which is here is a replenishable consumer good that I am just now getting over and over and over again. And I think like, that's a very small version of the Amazon dream. We're all just like not thinking about it and these things are just very present. And they're just constantly buying us stuff.

• 24:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, like while you were describing the robot ordering things, like I was thinking like maybe that periscope that you mentioned scans your refrigerator and then sends an order into Whole Foods at some point. But you know, and

• 25:09Speaker 01

  Totally see that happening.

• 25:10Speaker 02

  Thinking about that, thinking about the scale that you mentioned, like there is a level of convenience there, which is why people kind of like using Amazon stuff.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  100%. There's a crowd of people who are determined not to use Amazon products. I mean, good luck with that because of AWS, which supports a lot of the other applications that we use in our day to day. But there are some people who say, I don't want to buy from amazon.com and I don't want to use Amazon Prime. They're very, you know, specifically sort of calling out those verticals. And that's fine and fair, and I actually, I respect that very much.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  Like, if anything, maybe not putting the burden of, you know, need it now, two day shipping on all of the workers who are just working tirelessly and doing backbreaking work for Amazon. Like, I think that's better, and the more that we can all sort of check our consumers, the better. But then on the other hand, like you talk to, I don't know, you know, young parents, or new parents, I should say, who like just need diapers and they don't have a set of free hands or someone can't just go out and get them. And by the way, Amazon also happens to have the best deal at that moment. Like, they're just going to Amazon, they're getting the same day delivery, they need the thing.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  There are people who are, you know, they have mobility challenges or they're part of the accessibility community, they can't get around very easily. They need to order things to be delivered to them, right? Like, there are like use cases where Amazon's convenience is incredibly valuable. And then, and then there's just a lot of us who are lazy. That's why we just order stuff from Amazon.

• 26:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, pretty addicted.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I'm pretty sure, like, I think what we're saying is like a little bit of conjecture and some anecdotes, but like, I'm sure Amazon has very fine-grained data on exactly what we're describing as well.

• 27:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, it is interesting that you mentioned, over the course of this discussion, this day one program. So, let's go to break, and then after the break, I want to talk a little bit about the difference between how Amazon and Apple reveal products and, you know, how they think about products differently. If you're up for it, I think it's really interesting, and I know you've spent a lot of time watching Apple. So, why don't we do that right after the break here on Big Technology Podcast? We're hanging out with Lauren Good, and we'll be back right after this.

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• 29:35Speaker 02

  And we're back here for the second segment of the Big Technology Podcast. We have Lauren Good with us. She's a senior writer at Wired and the co-host of the great Gadget Lab Podcast. Lauren, welcome back.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  Thanks, Alex, and thanks for saying Gadget Lab is great.

• 29:51Speaker 02

  Yes, well, indeed it is. I'm a faithful listener. I wanted to ask you a little bit, and we don't have to go into too much depth about it, but it is kind of interesting to compare the product strategies of Amazon and Apple, where it seems like Amazon just kind of throws everything they can against the wall and hopes it sticks. And Apple is very intentional about what it releases. And I was thinking about this in particular when we talked a little bit about like, what's a status symbol versus like, what's like functional technology? And Apple seems to definitely be on the status symbol line, although its products work well, you know, speaking to you through MacBook. And Amazon is just like, let's just throw stuff out there like this robot and see what happens.

• 30:34Speaker 02

  So I'm curious, like, if you could describe some of the difference, both in terms of strategy and the way that they even present the products is very different, right, when they when they release them?

• 30:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is, this is a great point. And although sometimes I do believe, and I think I wrote this recently about the Tesla bot and the absurdity of the Tesla, the dancing Tesla bot, that it does seem like a lot of product demonstrations are just like thrown together with digital duct tape.

• 30:59Speaker 02

  Wait, wait, can you, let's pause. Can you talk about what this Tesla bot was? Because I thought that that was like an absolutely hilarious situation.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Elon Musk invited a robot that Tesla has been working on that is using its Tesla's custom AI chip, invited this robot on stage, and the robot sort of walked like very, you know, arthritic and stiff-armed, like up on stage, and then all of a sudden just bust out into dance. And it was so clear from the fluidity of this robot moving that it was actually a human being just trolling everyone. And then Elon said, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but said like, but don't worry, there really is a bot. And it's just like, we're just not ready to show off yet, but there, there will be like a Tesla bot. And I, and I, I thought it was hilarious too, because I was thinking, oh, wow, like the joke's on us, right? Like, we're so used to these, like, just like people salivating over like the product launch.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  And, and, and like, there's all this stuff going on behind the scenes to make it look all smooth and seamless. And in this case, there was just, you know, there's just like, here you go. Here's your, here's your dancing robot. That's not actually a robot. And oh, by the way, when we make the robot, it's going to replace you at your jobs. So.

• 32:05Speaker 02

  Sounds awesome.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yes, the future of the big technology and gadget lab podcasts are going to be assisted by robots.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  But yeah, back to your question about the differences in the launch events. I mean, there are pretty significant differences between Amazon and Apple. And I would even say between Google and, and Facebook and Microsoft too, throw them in the mix. But for the sake of Amazon and Apple, I think the way that they present their new hardware really underscores what their businesses are, because for a long time, I mean, Apple's services business is growing and has been growing fairly significantly over the past few years. But Apple makes its money off of hardware, selling us very expensive hardware. And I mean, the margins vary from product line to product line with Apple. And how we actually don't even get as like clear of a breakdown in terms of unit sales for different product lines.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  Um, because they stopped doing that, their earnings reports in recent years. But we know that Apple makes a significant, um, the, the majority of its revenue from selling hardware. Whereas Amazon, once again, is selling you on commerce and services. And so there, there is a little bit of that, throw everything at the wall and see what sticks approach that Amazon has. And a little bit, it's a little bit more experimental, uh, through its day one program. Because it really is, like, it's, it's testing AI, more or less, right? And it's using us as beta testers for its AI, where Apple has to get things right, um, pretty much right out the gate.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  And, um, and then hopefully, because you love the hardware and are willing to spend a thousand dollars or more on the hardware, you also get hooked into Apple's services. They also have very fundamentally, I don't say, I don't know if I'd say very different, but I, I think fundamentally, they have different approaches to, to how they handle user privacy as well.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  I mean, another remarkable thing, Apple doesn't always get it 100% right. And I mean, you might think of something like Antenna Gate from years ago.

• 34:11Speaker 02

  Or the HomePod.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  Or, yeah, the HomePod just like honestly didn't, didn't gain a lot of traction at all. It's not that, I don't think it's not, it's that it didn't work. It's just, it was a really expensive speaker that did very little. Or when you think about-

• 34:24Speaker 02

  It's a really great encapsulation of the HomePod.

• 34:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  It just didn't offer much.

• 34:30Speaker 02

  Too much.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  And it was, I think it was like three or $400. And then when you think about the trouble they had with their, their MacBooks, in particular the MacBook Pros in recent years and the keyboards. And I think there were some overheating issues one summer.

• 34:47Speaker 01

  They're, you know, they, they don't always get it right. And then last year, the iPhone launch date slipped a little bit. And then this year, the Apple Watch launch date has slipped. For the most part, though, like, Apple is an operations company. The way that they managed to deliver their hardware products at the same time, you know, every year, you pretty much know what to expect. And the fact that they've been able to do that consistently now for so many years is actually remarkable. Also, given all the supply chain challenges that we know that tech companies are facing right now, it's even more remarkable. Of course, companies like Amazon and Apple make things at scale, so that makes managing that a little bit easier.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  But I just don't know if there's any other company in hardware right now that has the same grasp on the supply chain that Apple does. And so that may be one of the reasons for the differences between Amazon's approach and Apple's approach as well.

• 35:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, Apple would never like throw out a robot and be like, maybe a hundred, a few hundred people will get it and we'll just sort of test it and see what happens. Do you think that gives, I am curious, I wonder, well, I'm gonna ask it. Do you think that gives Amazon some advantage over Apple in building products in the long run? Uh, maybe that's a ridiculous question, but I think it's worth putting out there. And then like in terms of the services stuff, like, there must be a little bit of competition in, in services between Apple and Amazon. I mean, they both have music and, you know, they both sell, you know, there's certain packages of, of stuff, so.

• 36:23Speaker 02

  You know, I wonder if you think that there might be some budding competition there as well.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  Oh, I think there absolutely is competition because I think what you're describing is they actually are quite aligned in some of their services, businesses. You know, Amazon's not in social. Apple isn't really in social, although I have long said that I think iMessage is their kind of secret social network.

• 36:52Speaker 01

  But they're both into, they're both into original content now, right? Amazon is making stuff through its Amazon Studios and it's, it's winning awards for it and markets it heavily on Prime. Apple has invested in the course of Apple TV Plus and its own originals and I think, I think Ted Lasso won some awards too, right? So they probably, they probably both have statues now. Yeah, that old Ted Lasso. They're both into games, although I do believe Amazon has the distinct advantage there because of Twitch, it owns Twitch.

• 37:25Speaker 01

  They are, I mean, they both want you using their cloud services one way or another. I think with Apple, some of that exchange is a little bit more explicit, right? Like sign up for our cloud service or our cloud bundle and get X, Y, Z. Whereas I think Amazon just has its obvious prowess and like running like the infrastructure of much of our consumer internet. And so, yeah, I think like if you just kind of take away the, you know, the cheap pieces of Amazon hardware versus the custom design, really sleek, full stack, Apple hardware. And you kind of, and you look at their, their services businesses, I think there's a lot more convergence happening there than there was in the past.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  They're also not, neither of them are really like into the like workplace category, the way that Google is, the way that Google and Microsoft have been battling it out.

• 38:18Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I think, I think you're, you're not wrong to like couple the two of them together and ask what the deal is there.

• 38:25Speaker 02

  Can I throw out another place that I just thought about that they're gonna compete in in a pretty big way?

• 38:29Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 38:30Speaker 02

  Advertising. Uh, because Apple is building out its own ad platform. Amazon has like a pretty serious ad platform of its own. A lot of people use Amazon on the web. I don't know, I'm curious what your take on this is, but I feel like the Amazon website plays a much bigger role in Amazon's wellbeing than let's say the face, the Facebook website does in its wellbeing. And so.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  Describe that a little bit more.

• 38:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, I think people who shop on Amazon like to use the desktop website, whereas people who use Facebook like to use the mobile app. I could be completely wrong about this. That at least describes my experience and, and the reason why I bring it up is because Apple's recent privacy changes uh were, which allow you to opt out uh really hit Facebook hard. And I think that Amazon has all this interesting purchase intent data that, and I, if, if I'm right about the website being more important to Amazon, um, then it won't really be hit as hard by Apple. So you could actually end up seeing a very interesting fight between Amazon and Apple on the ad front as well. Do you buy it?

• 39:37Speaker 01

  I, you know, I, you know a lot more about this than I do, having um, you've worked in ads and you've reported on ads. I don't really cover the advertising business. I mean, I remember, I think it was back in 2016 when Apple did a pretty big overhaul to its app store. And it first said that it was gonna allow search ads at the top of its app store. And that was a pretty, that was a pretty big shift at the time. And I believe its efforts around that have only increased. Um, but in terms of just like, I, I don't know if it's a direct comparison there in terms of what they're doing in mobile advertising to what Amazon does and essentially promoting its own brands or allowing others to promote their brands in, on the amazon.com website.

• 40:21Speaker 01

  And I don't know, I just, I don't know how, that's a good question as to how Apple's new rules, which actually were introduced in iOS 14, I believe, right? But they just started to take effect within the past few months. I don't know if, how that's actually going to affect Amazon's business, but it's a good, it's a good question.

• 40:38Speaker 02

  I think it will be a

• 40:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. Go ahead.

• 40:42Speaker 02

  I just think it will be a fascinating competition between those two companies. And Apple has like a few less arrows in its quiver to shoot at Amazon the way that it's been shooting at Facebook. And I also think it'll be this amazing match between the two with these two very different product philosophies. You know, and how they get their devices out in the world and then compete on the services front. It's going to be pretty interesting to watch, one of the bigger battles, I think, in the tech world that we'll see moving forward.

• 41:16Speaker 01

  Well, I'm going to be reading big technology to find out if that's the case.

• 41:20Speaker 02

  Okay. Well, I appreciate it. Thanks for the plug.

• 41:24Speaker 02

  Is there, is there, I guess like, let's wrap up with this. This was Amazon's first big launch after Andy Jassy has taken over. I, I know that this stuff has been in the pipeline. We talked a little bit about the Instagram post that Bezos did with his Roomba. But I'm curious if you have any sense about what the product direction is going to look like under Jassy. I mean, I guess the big question is, that people asked is, is Amazon still going to be inventive under him the way it was in, under Bezos? And this, of course, was definitely a Bezos idea. I mean, you can look at his Instagram and see. So I'm curious what you read is on Jassy.

• 42:07Speaker 02

  You know, whether, whether the company had any noticeable differences at this event under him than it did under Bezos and what we can expect moving forward.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  It's probably a safe bet to assume that the products we saw yesterday, we're taping this on Wednesday. This Amazon event happened on Tuesday. You know, from, from the Ring Always Home Cam, which is the drone, to like Ring, you know, new software alerts for Ring doorbells and cameras, the Blink video doorbell camera. I honestly can't keep track of all of them. The thermostat, all of these things have probably been in the pipeline now for about 18 to 24 months, I would think.

• 42:48Speaker 01

  And with something like Astro the robot, I think I may have said this earlier. It's been in the works for nearly four years. But I'm going to guess that most of, if not all of these products preceded Jassy taking over the helm of Amazon. And, you know, to be honest, I'm not sure.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  I think Amazon has deputized, you know, when it comes to its hardware. I think Dave Limb really is the person who is running the hardware business. And I think that a lot of what Amazon has come up with in recent years has not only been on its own, but through strategic acquisitions, whether it's been companies like Eero or Ring or Blink or others. And so I can't imagine, I don't know. I haven't been able to really like draw the thread yet and, and say like how Jassy is going to affect the hardware business. So you're asking me a good question because now I feel like I need to go report this, but like,

• 43:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:49Speaker 01

  But I don't, I can't imagine that the hardware strategy changes all that dramatically, at least in the near future.

• 43:55Speaker 02

  Right. I'll be interested to read your story if you end up publishing it. Okay. So let's just do a quick, you know, roundup here. So Astro the robot is going in your house?

• 44:08Speaker 01

  No Astro the robot for me. Thanks very much. I will say though, that I have, I signed up to get alerts when the drone is available.

• 44:16Speaker 02

  Are you getting the drone?

• 44:17Speaker 01

  I mean, I don't, I don't know. I mean, maybe I'm like actually on some blacklist where Amazon says like, they scour the list for reporter emails and then they say, no, we're not sending it to them. But I did put my email in to be alerted when I can order the drone because I just feel like I need to, I feel obligated to try it.

• 44:36Speaker 02

  Wow. Well, it's gonna, yeah, it'll definitely produce a lot of interesting reviews. Personally, no robot, no drone for me. I'm happy with my three Echoes. And that's gonna do it. All right. Lauren, good. Thank you for joining the Technology Podcast. First time, definitely won't be the last time. Lauren, senior writer at Wired, co-host of the great Gadget Lab Podcast. Go read her story. It's called "Amazon's Astro is a Robot, Without a Cost." Thank you, Lauren.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  Thanks, Alex. This is fun.

• 45:03Speaker 02

  Super fun. Thank you, Nick Guadney, for editing the audio. We're doing a day of turnarounds because we want to do something newsy today. So appreciate your hard work, mate. Thank you to Red Circle for hosting and selling the ads. And thank you to all of you, the listeners. We'll be back next week. If all goes according to plan, we're gonna have someone who built Facebook products for teens. I think you'll be interested to hear what he has to say. So stay tuned for that. Until next time, I hope you enjoy it, and we'll be with you next week.

• 46:16Speaker 03

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