Big tech antittrust hearing preview and the Xbox Games Showcase breakdown

Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn talk with Casey Newton and Makena Kelly about what to expect at the upcoming big tech antitrust hearings featuring Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sundar Pichai. Megan Farokhmanesh and Andrew Webster return to discuss the games announced at the Xbox Games Showcase this week. Stories from this week: New COVID testing strategy could speed up backlogged labs ‘COVID parties’ are a pandemic urban legend that won’t go away The tech antitrust hearing is shaping up to be one for the ages Antitrust investigations aren’t the biggest threat to Facebook’s future The big winner in Slack’s Microsoft fight could be Google Xbox Games Showcase: all the news from Microsoft’s July 2020 event Sony’s first vlogging camera almost nails it Latest iOS 14 beta offers more evidence of a 5.4-inch iPhone Alexa will soon be able to launch Android and iOS apps using voice commands Samsung promises new mobile and TV products at virtual September event Blurry Samsung Galaxy Fold 2 leak hints at camera upgrades and gold model Samsung’s Galaxy Note 20 Ultra may try to be the Xbox Phone This is what Samsung’s bean-shaped Galaxy Buds Live will look like in your ears The brain behind the Google Pixel camera is building a universal camera app for Adobe Windows 10X might not arrive until 2021 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?

  Hey everybody, it's Neelai. Just a quick note before the show begins. We recorded on Thursday, like we usually do, anticipating the antitrust hearing on Monday would go forth as scheduled. But late last night, we got word that because the legendary Congressman John Lewis would be lying in state in the Capitol on Monday, the hearing might be delayed a week or so, so members of Congress can go pay their respects, which is totally understandable. So just a big piece of information about the hearing. Wanted you to have it on with the show.

• 0:31Speaker 01

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• 1:00Speaker 02

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• 1:34Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to Verchast, the flagship podcast of our nation's government. Wouldn't that be wild if we were the flagship podcast of the United States government?

• 1:45Nilay Patel?

  I mean, at this point, we might as well be. I'm your friend Neelai, I'm here. Dieter Bone is here. I'm your acquaintance. Oh, a little standoffish today.

• 1:52Speaker 03

  First-name basis.

• 1:53Nilay Patel?

  We have a lot going on in the show today. As we speak, there is an Xbox Games preview. We're going to hand over the second segment of the show to Andrew Webster and Megan Frohman. She did a great job with the PS5 preview. So that'll be the second segment of the show. If you're listening, as you realize, the show came out a little late. We're giving them time to finish the event and they're recording that segment later. So that'll be coming up in the second segment. And then, right now, Casey Newton is here. Hello. How are you doing? Uh, I'm great. Nice to be here. Makena Kelly is here. Hey, McKenna.

• 2:23Speaker 04

  Hey, good to be back.

• 2:25Nilay Patel?

  There is a gigantic hearing coming up on Monday in the House Antitrust Subcommittee. All four CEOs of Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Apple are going to show up virtually, face their interrogators. No, I think it's going to be a congressional hearing. But that's happening on Monday, so we got to preview that. There's a bunch of other antitrust news and policy news to talk about. So we're going to talk about that with these two in a minute. But I want to start where we always start. My friends, it has been 19 weeks since Dr. Deborah Birx held up a flowchart next to Donald Trump, promising a nationwide testing scheme built by Google.

• 2:56Speaker 03

  I'm vaguely worried that you've got the number wrong. I don't think you do, but I think it'd be safer for you to just call it umpteen weeks.

• 3:02Nilay Patel?

  I think I'm undercounting. I think there's a chance it might be 20 weeks, but I'm saying it's 19. The number is bad, and the testing situation in this country is bad. That leads me into virus news, which I always want to talk about because it is our priority. There are new COVID-tested testing strategies that could actually speed up some of the backlog. We're covering that. Eddie Robertson wrote an incredible piece about an urban legend that has basically sprung up about COVID parties, and people keep talking about them, but no one can actually prove that they're happening. And then, just one kind of big thing, it's like the absence of coverage. The president has started doing daily virus briefings again. We actually chose not to, the first time he did them, we actually chose to not cover them directly.

• 3:44Nilay Patel?

  And I would say announcing the Google website and then there not being a Google website. Factored into this decision.

• 3:50Speaker 03

  We're just mad about that. And so we bailed out on the rest.

• 3:53Nilay Patel?

  They do not contain information. And we have a small science team that works very hard. We have a small policy team that works very hard. And being distracted by theater is not what they want to do. So Mary Beth Griggs, our science editor, made that call. I fully support and believe in that call. But that's just how we're thinking about it. But we do have some plans. I'm just like, I'm going to hint at this. We have some plans for some more organized and focused virus and vaccine coverage in particular that I'm hinting at in the way that I hinted things to make sure that they happen.

• 4:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:25Speaker 03

  Fortunately, this one isn't on me.

• 4:28Nilay Patel?

  Theater has been assigned to a story. But I think it's a good way. And I hope it'll focus our coverage for you, the audience, a little bit more. The other gigantic story of our time is obviously the movement for racial justice in this country. That continues to have effects inside of our coverage. So Snap, which makes Snapchat, is conducting an investigation after internal reports of discrimination. Facebook, this is actually a big deal. We had Rashad Robinson from Color of Change on the interview show. And he pointed out that he has many problems with Facebook. So Facebook, under pressure, is going to study whether its algorithms are racially biased. And then Ubisoft, which makes any number of video games, Megan Fruchmisch wrote a great piece exploring how the problems inside of Ubisoft that are coming out basically span more than a decade of issues. So just

• 5:13Nilay Patel?

  a lot of that news happening. We are very focused on it. I never want to set it aside. But again, I say it every week, our audience tells us they're here for tech news. So we're going to do that. But that's on the site. Go read it. It's all great. All right. I always make that shift, like, we're going to start talking about iPhone features. And the first thing we talk about is like hardcore policy news. But here we are. McKenna, there is a gigantic hearing on Monday. It is fraught. It is going to be complicated. They're all remote. How's it going to work?

• 5:44Speaker 04

  Right. How's it going to work? So at this point, what we're expecting is for Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Tim Apple, and Jeff Bezos. That just came out of my mouth. That's actually how I refer to him now.

• 5:59Speaker 04

  If we all remember, Tim Cook, Tim Apple, that was my scoop last year.

• 6:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:04Speaker 04

  So, Tim Cook, all these CEOs are going to be testifying before the antitrust subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, and they're doing it via Zoom.

• 6:11Speaker 03

  Wait, that was my question. They should, they should all do it via their own platform. So like, when Sutra comes on and does it via Google Meet, it should be a total cluster failure.

• 6:19Speaker 04

  Right.

• 6:19Speaker 03

  It should be via FaceTime, and it's limited to like, a number of people, and all the bubbles change sizes, and all it's an emoji, emoji. They should all be on their proprietary platforms.

• 6:27Speaker 04

  Right. So, I mean, I don't know.

• 6:29Speaker 03

  And it's like, shut up, Peter.

• 6:31Speaker 04

  Okay, cool. Um, no. Okay, so maybe I got ahead of myself. We don't know if it's Zoom exactly. It could be Cisco Webex, or whatever Congress is working on right now. But, so yeah, so they're going to testify before the committee. This has been coming for a year. We've been waiting for something like this, because the committee launched its investigation last June. So it's been a whole year of them looking for documents, interviewing experts and people like that. And it's all culminating into this giant hearing on Monday, where these lawmakers who have been engaged in this investigation for a very long time will be presenting this evidentiary record to the CEOs, and hoping to get those CEOs on the record responding to what they found.

• 7:14Speaker 03

  I mean, just structurally, this isn't a "we sell ads, Senator" moment. They seem prepared.

• 7:19Speaker 04

  Right. So, um, speaking to some aides yesterday, today, but for listeners, days ago, um, it sounds like they are really going to focus on what they have dug up. They said that they're laser-focused on competition problems. In hearings past, Republicans have gotten lost in the bias talk, have gotten lost in, um, things that are not competition-related. But it seems like the committee really wants to focus on that. And they're coming prepared with receipts, seems to be the plan here, and asking for the CEOs to respond directly to what they found, documents-wise.

• 7:59Speaker 03

  When you say "competition problems," we were sort of talking about this in Slack a couple of days ago. The through line here is that they operate marketplaces.

• 8:07Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 8:08Speaker 03

  Like, how does that play out for each of the companies?

• 8:10Speaker 04

  Right. So I think that's something that will be exciting to see on Monday for sure. So the thing is, is that when you look at these companies, Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, they all have different competition problems. You think the App Store for Apple, Amazon, it's Marketplace, Facebook, whatever acquisitions it's making or things like that. But from what I have heard, it seems like they've kind of identified some similarities in competition problems in that when it comes to all four of the companies. And I'm not hearing much more else about like what they found, but they will definitely like provide some kind of through line is what we're expecting on Monday. Whether or not that's to guide some kind of legislative move or helping regulators

• 8:52Speaker 04

  in some way, but that's kind of where it stands right now.

• 8:56Speaker 03

  I mean, this is my big question is, do we think that the idea of marketplaces and like Elizabeth Warren kind of went for this as well, is the right way to sort of tile these companies together under like the idea that they all have the same problem? Because there's like, you're all too big, but that's like not enough to work with. But Google's problem of, you know, taking over its own search results is not exactly the same thing as Apple's problem of taking a 30% cut is not exactly the same thing as Facebook owning every single way that people send, put text on the internet and talk to each other. So I'm wondering, do you really think that, well, these are marketplaces and so therefore they compete with each other in the same way that, I don't know, Target has its own

• 9:38Speaker 03

  in-house brand is like the metaphor, is the right move to sort of tile these things under one coherent rubric?

• 9:45Speaker 04

  For now, maybe just to get some, just getting like some movement on the table, you know? Do I think it's the most perfect way to go about it? Probably not. But Congress moves so slow and in order to get any message across to regulators and other lawmakers, you need to provide some kind of through line, something that ties all this together to. Launch like some kind of, you know what I mean? Reaction legislatively, however, it ends up being in the end.

• 10:13Nilay Patel?

  Can I say how much I hate the Target house brands analogy? I hate it. It's so bad and so reductive. Okay, so you walk into Target and you, first of all, when you walk into Target, you don't say out loud, I would like a T-shirt, which is what you say to Amazon. You go to Amazon and you type in the name of a product, right? Your interaction at Target is not that you walk into Target, announce that you want a T-shirt and literally have Massimo T-shirts thrown in your face. It's such a high rate that you are not aware of any other T-shirts.

• 10:44Speaker 03

  No, what happens if you go to Target is you go there to buy dish soap and you walk out with $300 worth of shit in your cart.

• 10:49Nilay Patel?

  But that's just because they're great retailers. They've just mastered the art of retail. Other brands like Procter and Gamble is like one of the biggest consumer products brand in the world. They negotiate heavily and win their negotiations to their favor with Target, with Walmart, with CVS, about where their products go, what the markup is, which products ends up on the shelves, which products are promoted. They often manufacture the house brands for those retailers. So then inside of those manufacturing contracts, they, that, this is why house brands have generic labels. Right? There's like all of this gamesmanship that suppliers and retailers have in a open marketplace. Amazon is like, man, it looks like that laptop stand is popular.

• 11:32Nilay Patel?

  We are now manufacturing our own laptop stand and putting it at the top of the search results. It is just a wild, like, I understand why it's a common metaphor. You can't whisper about antitrust on Twitter without like 5,000 people sea lining the house brands metaphor at you. But it is just so deeply reductive and removed from what is, in particular with Amazon, actually happening.

• 11:53Speaker 05

  Well, also, last year, their chief counsel went before Congress and said, we don't do that. And then reporting came out that they did do that. And they said, oh, that's bad. That's against our standards. We're gonna look into this. Somebody is gonna get in a lot of trouble about this.

• 12:13Speaker 04

  And then the same committee on Monday was reaching out, hey, can Jeff Bezos kind of correct the record here? And then it was like a month of like push and pull. And finally, Jeff Bezos doesn't even have to testify on his own on Monday about all of this.

• 12:26Nilay Patel?

  Really? Wait, actually, walk us through that. So, you know, when you hear hearing, like, we've covered so many of these, you would think all of them are in the room together. They're tense, the lights are on them, they have paper, but they can't talk to anyone. They're sweating unless there's Botox involved. Like, what's the actual mechanics? Like, Bezos gets a friend?

• 12:44Speaker 04

  This is gonna be so wild. So, first of all, just the fact that you're doing it over video, I can't imagine like the Slack or Google Hangout or whatever the heck is going on where like people are feeding them answers in some way, or doing whatever. Like, at this point, it's like, maybe they should screen share while they testify, to know that we're not like cheating on a test.

• 13:06Speaker 05

  You know what I would do? Just real quick, this is what I would do. If I got asked a really hard question in this hearing, I would, I would mute myself and then I would look like I was talking for like two minutes while someone told me the real answer. And then I would unmute, be like, oh, my God, I didn't know I was on mute. I'm so sorry.

• 13:23Speaker 04

  Could you imagine being like a tech billionaire CEO and it's like, hey, sorry, I only get 25 down. Like, I can't, I can't do this.

• 13:31Speaker 05

  A really good prop bet would be, how many times will someone say on Monday, you're on mute?

• 13:39Speaker 04

  Right.

• 13:40Nilay Patel?

  All right. So, can I keep going? So, they're all at home. We think they're gonna have a back channel open. Like, Congress has not mandated that they like run full screen video.

• 13:49Speaker 04

  Right. No. And it seems like so far, we're still waiting to hear kind of what the layout is. It's so frustrating to have this like big hearing on Monday and we're still like, are they testifying at the same time? What? You know, software are they using? All these things. So, this is still coming out. It's not entirely clear, but like what we do know is that most likely, they will all be testifying over whatever video conferencing tool we decide to use. We don't even know how long this could be. We don't know how many rounds of questions. This is all up to the chairman's discretion. So, if we go through like two rounds of questioning and the chairman wants to do two more rounds of questioning, that could happen. There's just a lot of things we aren't entirely sure of what's happening yet.

• 14:32Nilay Patel?

  But they are appearing one by one.

• 14:34Speaker 04

  Uh, that is also not clear to me how that's happening. It just seems like it could be like a total nightmare mess. Like the idea that you get all these people in the same room and then it's just like all four of them and like addressing different ones at different times. I mean, the Mark Zuckerberg hearing, like, how many years ago was that now? Was a mess and it was just him. You know, so it'll be, it'll be exciting to kind of see what happens, but also like frustrating. I mean, just last week, there was like, um, think tanks and advocacy groups that were like lobbying the committee to do like an hour of questioning for one person and then move to an hour of questioning. But right now it just seems like it's going to be one big panel.

• 15:17Nilay Patel?

  Wow. And you're saying Bezos gets to bring someone with him?

• 15:21Speaker 04

  I don't know. It'd be weird if it's like a shot of like Bezos and like somebody sitting next to him. But I, it's not right now. I don't.

• 15:29Speaker 05

  I think everyone should be allowed to bring a champion as in a Westerosi trial by combat.

• 15:34Speaker 04

  Right, yeah.

• 15:36Nilay Patel?

  I think my feeling is that they, the CEOs very strongly want to be on one by one. Right? They like, they want to break. So I think they're pushing for that. The, the behind the scenes politicking of this between the big companies and Congress has been, I mean, like, again, I said, it's taken a year.

• 15:53Speaker 03

  We don't need the hearing. The evidence here is that these companies are like, are so powerful that they basically get to tell the antitrust subcommittee of Congress how they will appear. Like, that seems weird, right? Like, at some point, it's just like, no, no, no, we're, we're, we're the bosses. You, you're just a CEO. Do what we say.

• 16:11Speaker 04

  Right. I mean, I think it's like important to note that no subpoenas have been issued in this investigation at all. They were considering subpoenaing Bezos because he was not going to talk. But from the people who I've spoken to, they haven't issued a single one. This is, this has not been compulsory. It's all voluntary. What that says about background politicking and. Their people talking to their people and all this stuff, it's not very clear if anything, you know, if anything substantial happened that way, but I don't know, it'll be, it'll be exciting to see how everything plays out.

• 16:47Nilay Patel?

  And speaking of politicking, my kind of, you're usually way better on the actual politics of things. This is a bipartisan committee. It seems like the committee itself is not that, like, it's not mired in controversy or arguing, but like, Congress is trying to, like, weasel its way into this thing that you can't see, but kind of, but she's rolling her eyes. What is going on there?

• 17:11Speaker 04

  Okay, so let's talk about it. So the House Judiciary Committee, you have a committee. Every committee exists. And then there's subcommittees that are smaller groups of certain lawmakers who specialize in certain topics. So the Judiciary Committee has the antitrust subcommittee. The big House Judiciary Committee, all of them, which is a lot more than what's on the small little panel we'll see on Monday, those people want to talk really badly about this. Jim Jordan, especially, Jim Jordan, who is known for drinking Mountain Dew first thing in the morning, I don't know if you guys knew that, it's like some kind of like-

• 17:48Nilay Patel?

  This is a good character fact.

• 17:50Speaker 03

  I mean, I did that when I was 19.

• 17:52Speaker 04

  Yeah. It's like his go-go juice. There's like, there's like some mix in it. But anyways, I've read, that's what he calls it. Anyway, so I'm just imagining like Jim Jordan hopped up on like Mountain Dew, like, I want to talk, I want to talk. So him and a lot of those Republicans who are traditionally a little bit more populist, maybe, that kind of in the Josh Hawley-ish field of Republicans who want to talk about bias all the time, those people exist on the broader committee. The only like Republican really that has been so outspoken on that, that is actually on the antitrust sub-panel on Monday, will be Matt Gaetz. So that's going to be like the class clown kind of character who I think

• 18:33Speaker 04

  we'll have to like, keep an eye out for on Monday. So, yeah, they, on, I think it was yesterday, Jim Jordan and a bunch of Republicans on the broader panel asked- Jack Dorsey from Twitter, you know, a large tech behemoth to testify. And when I asked Twitter, they're like, we're not commenting on this right now. So I don't think he's going to show up.

• 18:55Nilay Patel?

  Their line in that letter, I mean, it was like power in the marketplace of ideas, because Twitter has no power in any other marketplace.

• 19:03Speaker 04

  Right.

• 19:04Nilay Patel?

  That's what they came up with.

• 19:05Speaker 04

  It was so ridiculous.

• 19:06Nilay Patel?

  It was very good.

• 19:07Speaker 04

  All the heat is on Twitter right now, after everything that's happened with the president, having his tweets flagged and having little notices there. So that's what they want to talk about, right? But the people who are in charge of this hearing would have to do that, and they're not doing that. So Jack Dorsey, all that is not going to happen. I mean, at least it doesn't unless Matt Gaetz somehow gets like an hour on the microphone and gets to say whatever he wants, but I don't think that'll happen.

• 19:32Nilay Patel?

  Well, the reason I ask, I think it's important. We have been tracking this for a year. And like, it hasn't exploded into some partisan controversy, at least as far as we've seen it yet. And I think that's kind of a big deal. Like, you have the four CEOs, there's not, there might be a little grandstanding in nonsense, like, it's Congress, it seems inevitable. But the idea that it's going to get, fall totally sideways, they've managed to, it seems like they've managed to contain it.

• 19:56Speaker 04

  Right. And I think an important thing to note here, too, is that when it comes to this hearing, we've only had, they've had five hearings throughout this last year to kind of talk to experts and stuff, but it seems like a majority of the work was happening, you know, in the background, not publicly. And this is when that year of work, this year of research and getting documents and all this stuff, this is where it finally comes into play on Monday. All of this work, everything that we haven't seen, why it's been so quiet in the anti-trust sphere, that will all culminate on Monday, I think. And that's why this hearing is so important.

• 20:33Nilay Patel?

  So Casey, I want to talk to you about the, sort of, the companies involved. I want to start with Facebook. Everyone's always just the most angry at Facebook. What is their posture? Have you heard from them?

• 20:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, to the extent that this is gonna be a straight up antitrust hearing, it's gonna start where every antitrust argument starts, which is defining the market, right? Like, people like us, when we write about Facebook, observe that they have an effective duopoly in the digital advertising market. But you talk to Facebook, and they'll say, "Well, actually, you know, the advertising market is much bigger, and it also includes billboards and cable TV." And actually, cable TV is basically digital advertising now, right? And that you can sort of go down that rabbit hole with them forever, you know? And then when it comes to the acquisitions that they have made, and some of the anti-competitive actions that they have taken, like, you know, preventing

• 21:26Speaker 05

  Vine users from finding their Facebook friends on the app, which is a thing that they did. You know, on the acquisition side, Facebook will say, you know, "Look, we bought small networks that weren't that popular," and that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that, right? I think what you're gonna see them do is just come back over and over again to the fact that much of, many of the things that people are mad about them for are not actually illegal. And if you want to punish them, then you have to change the laws. And, you know, maybe Congress will hear their testimony and will act.

• 21:56Nilay Patel?

  I think a lot of focus is gonna be on those acquisitions. I think the question, you mentioned something to me the other day that I think is an idea from our friend Ben Thompson, that social networks should just not be allowed to buy other social networks. Is that something that, like, is that, is there purchase to that idea? Is that, like, are people grabbed on to that? Is that just you and I are, like, texting, and we think it sounds great?

• 22:18Speaker 05

  I think that among tech critics who have an idea for the technology industry that does not involve burning down all of the companies and sending all of their executives to jail, which are a lot of the people in my mentions whenever I tweet about these issues, that, yeah, that's like a really attractive option, right? A world in which Facebook had to compete against Instagram by building better products instead of just buying it, I think, is a better world, right? It's one where we probably use better tools. There's just a huge amount of benefits to consumers that come from that. So I would love to see something like that really, fully explored. And, you know, to the extent that we can, I think we're gonna keep flogging that idea.

• 23:02Nilay Patel?

  All right. So that's sort of the Facebook side. And really, their marketplace is digital advertising. However, that's defined. Is that, do you think that's the same for, like, Google?

• 23:11Speaker 05

  That is part of it for Google, but for Google, I think the bigger question and the one that they're already in a lot of trouble for in Europe is the way that they bias their own search results in favor of their own products, right? Like if you search for a video, even if it was originally posted on Vimeo or Dailymotion, you're probably going to see the rip on YouTube first. And when you talk to Google about this, they'll say, "Well, look, our independent panel of raiders found that they simply liked YouTube videos more." And so that's why they're there. And this argument is not proving particularly persuasive to regulators, I don't think.

• 23:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, Google also makes that same move of, "Well, if you want to define the ad market, we don't actually dominate anything because, you know, cable exists." They also have the problem of Android. They've been hit by the EU pretty hard. There's a browser ballot on Android in the EU now. They do a lot of bundling in a way that like, everybody understands how bundling like software works in an anti-competitive way after Microsoft. So that applied almost one-to-one to like the Android situation. Not exactly, but pretty close. And so the big, I think the big problem with Google is going to be not trying to like go at all of the ways that they're too big and all the ways that they like could be vulnerable to antitrust because there's just too many and like it would just turn

• 24:32Speaker 03

  into a like a vague cloud of badness. And they need to be really specific on it.

• 24:37Speaker 05

  And you know, I think something that we should keep in mind is that in addition to this hearing that is going on, the Department of Justice, the FTC, and state attorneys general are all mounting separate investigations of both Google and Facebook. And that will continue no matter what happens on Monday, right? The the potential outcome from Monday is maybe Congress decides they need to write some new laws about competition, which, you know, I think would be great if they did, if they were good laws. But separately from that, you have these, you know, really high-powered investigations that are ongoing. And we are told that at least one of those investigations into Google will arrive sometime this summer. So Google is actually the one who is in the most near-term trouble with all this stuff.

• 25:20Speaker 03

  That's actually Congressman Cicilline has been on our show twice now. And he, I think on both occasions reminded us like Congress has many powers, but breaking up companies is not one of them. So he might write some new competition laws. He might recommend a breakup to one of these agencies, but he can't actually do it. And I think

• 25:38Nilay Patel?

  I think just, I don't know, I was on CNBC today and they were like, is Congress gonna break them up? And I was like, hold, they can't, let's, let's talk about how the government works. And I think there's a lot of sort of pent up, this is a moment, you're gonna get the CEOs there. Let's Google. McKenna, you've been focused a lot on Amazon. I feel like I'm saving Apple for the end because everyone wants to yell about Apple, but let's talk about Amazon. You've been really focused on Amazon. This is Bezos' first appearance before Congress. What does that, what does that look like? What does that scrutiny look like? What does that danger look like?

• 26:06Speaker 04

  Right. So I mean, Bezos is a mega billionaire. It's really, it's crazy. But the thing with Amazon and what they got in the most trouble with most recently is what Casey brought up earlier. Small businesses and small third-party sellers on the platform are constantly talking about the data that Amazon has over them and their products and their ability to be like, there's that Wall Street Journal story that came out earlier this summer where it basically talked about how, I think it was like, car holders, like cup holders or some kind of seat holders or something. And there's a company that made them, sold really great, made a ton of profit, and then Amazon made a dupe, right? This is the traditional Amazon antitrust case story. So that came out earlier this year in the Wall Street Journal where

• 26:50Speaker 04

  they had spoken and some stuff had come out that employees were looking at that data actively. I think that'll be a main highlight because that's what triggered House Judiciary threatening to subpoena Bezos just a couple of months ago, right? So that, of course, also like algorithms and how they place their products on the marketplace, right? But I think when it comes down to it, the notes from Bezos traditionally, when it comes to competition, has always been, the customers love us. We give the customer what they want. The customer gets a great product. They get a great experience. And what makes that anti-competitive, right? This is a benefit to, this is, this is a benefit to the consumer, right? There is no consumer harm here if they love the experience and the product.

• 27:35Speaker 04

  So I think that's basically what we're gonna hear from Bezos on that. It's like, if they can optimize Amazon in a way, if they can make better products for cheaper prices or whatever, even though they don't want to say that, it's all about the user experience. It's all about how happy customers are. That's what I would bet the main kind of line coming from Bezos would be.

• 27:56Nilay Patel?

  I'm very interested to see what his general demeanor like you can you can predict what Sundar is going to do. We've talked to Sundar a lot. Sundar is just he's going to be very calm. He's very gentle. He's not going to be mad. Zuckerberg is just good at this now, right? He's just a pro. He's been trained. Tim Cook is Tim Cook like he has a very narrow range of tonalities to begin with. Like you have to be an expert Tim Cook watcher to triangulate like Bezos has a temper.

• 28:24Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I don't I'm not I'm going to be this guy. I've talked to Bezos in person a handful of times. He has this huge. He used to have this huge laugh and he was really personable and charismatic. He still is that and but he also has this thing in person where you feel like he's one of those people that just like is giving you the straight talk and you're like, oh, yeah, no, he's like really pragmatic and reasonable. And then you walk away and then like 20 minutes or you're like, wait a minute.

• 28:47Nilay Patel?

  I don't have my wallet anymore.

• 28:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:51Speaker 03

  I have no idea how much of that translates to a Zoom call or a Blue Jeans call or a Webex or whatever.

• 28:58Nilay Patel?

  It'd be amazing if they used Blue Jeans. Which was recently acquired by Verizon.

• 29:03Speaker 03

  I've also heard that Disney is bailing on Blue Jeans and they're going to Zoom internally.

• 29:08Speaker 05

  Oh, wow. Blue Jeans is awful. I just want to say Blue Jeans is awful.

• 29:12Nilay Patel?

  All right, let's talk about Apple. And I saved it for the last because Casey, I know you and I, Apple put out a study this week. They're both we declined to cover it. I know that Lauren at Wired declined to cover it. Casey, we're both just like openly insulted by this study and sort of Apple's beginning argument. What I don't know, Casey, I'm just I'm just giving you the floor here.

• 29:33Speaker 05

  So, um, you know, we wrote a lot recently about the developer base camp and their new email service, Hay, and how they could not get an app into the App Store unless they let people sign up through the App Store and pay through the App Store and then give a 30% cut of all of their revenue to old Tim Apple. And a lot of people were outraged by that. And it sort of brought fresh attention to the question of wait, why do why does anyone who's selling a digital good on the App Store have to give 30% of their revenue to to Tim Cook? And what came back was Apple decided to hire a bunch of economists to Google the

• 30:13Nilay Patel?

  Wait, say the name of the firm. The name of the firm is amazing.

• 30:16Speaker 05

  They have the best name. They're called the Analysis Group.

• 30:20Nilay Patel?

  No. It's very good.

• 30:22Speaker 05

  Not since the Washington Football Team have we heard a name that so perfectly encapsulates the activities of the organization as the analysis group.

• 30:36Speaker 05

  So they get the analysis group in to do what they do best. And they find a bunch of percentages from a bunch of app stores. And, you know, it turns out that largely in the aftermath of Apple declaring that it would take 30% of everything, a bunch of other people decided to take 30% of everything. And Apple presented this as evidence that, you know, it's, it's just a fair player in the market and this is just what companies do. And there are a lot of people who want to be free riders out there, but you know, Tim Cook isn't going to stand for it.

• 31:09Nilay Patel?

  Not that I want to take this study seriously on its merits, but did any of those other marketplaces that take a cut have an exclusive monopoly on providing services on a platform?

• 31:19Speaker 05

  Well, like, the only way to rent an Airbnb is to do it on Airbnb, right? So, you know, so to some extent, yes. I mean, I don't know. This stuff does get sort of complicated. I do think that there are a lot of cases in which Apple should be able to charge a percentage of revenue. I think what made the, the Basecamp case galling was they just wanted like to create a basically functional email app. And Apple said, no, like, we have to own your customer if you want to do that on our phone. And if you see Apple as just, you know, one company in a sea of smartphone makers, you could maybe understand that. But when you have a global duopoly, that argument just doesn't play anymore.

• 32:02Nilay Patel?

  The, I'm looking at this list. I've opened this study from the analysis group. First of all, I, I don't know if people know this. Is the analysis group made out of dentists and four out of five of them agree? There's like a lot of these firms out there. The analysis group is just hilariously named. If you go to their website, it's a lot of, "Analysis Group Expert Helps Pharmaceutical Firm Win Lawsuit." Because there is an entire industry of expert witnesses that if you're in a lawsuit, you can hire and then they will be your expert. This is like a real thing that happens and they'll be your expert and they will go off and crunch the data and come back so that at trial they can say, You're honored, like, my client is right. And then the other side hires another expert and they come back. And like, this is a thing that happens and you, whatever. It's like.

• 32:44Speaker 05

  And we're, we've considered hiring the counter analysis group just to rebut.

• 32:49Nilay Patel?

  Like, there's a part of me that's like, I should just start one of these expert witnesses for, I would make so much money. Like, how much money did Apple pay the analysis group to Google everyone's rates? Right? Like, that's what is happening here.

• 33:00Speaker 05

  I'm guessing it was quite a payday for the folks over at the analysis group.

• 33:04Nilay Patel?

  But you look at their list of competitors that they've, they've put up, right? And what you just quickly becomes obvious is that there's the Google Play Store, which has a similar rate. But you can sideload, you can actually install other app stores on Android phones.

• 33:19Speaker 03

  And you can pay however, you can, you could, app developers can use whatever payment method they want, except for games. Games are forced to use Google's payment system, but everybody else can do whatever the hell they want.

• 33:29Nilay Patel?

  Because games are full of the whales. That's why, let's be honest. Let's be honest about how all these companies make money. They are protecting a bunch of Candy Crush revenue. That's really what's, it's a heart of this. It is not as noble as anybody wants to make it seem. And then all the other ones are failures. Like, who cares that the Samsung Galaxy Store takes a 30% cut? Is it anyone? Like, who, does anyone even run the Samsung Galaxy Store? Like, it, it just like fundamentally doesn't matter. And then, you know, they have listed Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, which are closed platforms in different kinds of markets. The Amazon App Store is on here, but like, that is a side note for Fire to like, it's just a bunch of stuff that the Microsoft Store is on here. The award-winning, successful Microsoft Windows Store.

• 34:13Nilay Patel?

  It's like, none of this stuff actually operates at the scale or in the same way as the App Store. And I, as they were sort of presented, it's just like, this is your best argument. This is what you got.

• 34:24Speaker 05

  But here's, I think here's what's actually the best argument, is that you're right. None of those other stores matter, but right now the law doesn't recognize any differences between any of them, right? Like legally, they're all the same. And so if you're Apple, of course you're going to feel unfairly singled out, right? Like, you're looking at a law that says that all app stores can operate, you know, basically however they want to. But because Apple succeeded, now we're all mad at them. And, you know.

• 34:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, you can't have a separate rule for companies that are good at their job.

• 34:49Speaker 05

  Exactly. And so I do think this is a case where Congress should probably clarify legally if it doesn't want Apple to operate the way it's been operating. And I don't want Apple to continue operating the way it's been operating.

• 35:01Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I just, I'm outraged that the Kobo bookstore takes 30% for eBooks over $2.99, which is a finding of the analysis group. Like, this just feels like distraction in a way that doesn't hit at the heart of what's the, and in case you said, what's interesting about the hate controversy? It's a, it's a sidestep from it instead of addressing it directly. And it, to me, it feels like Apple's beginning its defense by pointing out the rates are the same. And it didn't, it didn't get any take up on it.

• 35:29Speaker 05

  It did not, uh, because for all the reasons we've just said, but there, there's a big thing that we've left out so far, which is that not only is Apple taking a 30% cut, but it is making competitive products and not charging itself the same cut. Right? So Spotify has famously pointed this out and gotten the European Union to investigate. You know, Spotify is in a really hard business where it has to pay most of its revenue, most of every dollar coming in the door goes to the record labels because they do not own the music. Right? And Apple has the same constraint, but Spotify is expected to give up a third in the first year. And then I think it drops to 15% the second year, um, of all of the revenue it's bringing in the door. So of course Spotify is at a huge disadvantage if it wants to operate a music service in this environment.

• 36:13Speaker 05

  So that's the place where I think Apple is going to be under even greater pressure than the kind we've been talking about already.

• 36:19Nilay Patel?

  McKenna, do you think that the people on the subcommittee are going to have the wherewithal and like the, the info at hand and the ability to push back on the first PR answer that on its face, sounds reasonable? When they go after Tim Apple and they're like, blah, blah, blah, blah. How dare you? And he's like, well, you know, the Kobo bookstore also charges 30%. Are they going to be able to respond and like push him or push Bezos or whoever?

• 36:45Speaker 04

  Right. I'm surprised I haven't said this yet. So this committee has received 1.3 million documents in this investigation. So my answer briefly, yes.

• 36:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 37:00Speaker 04

  And they have spent a year going through all these documents. I think they will have the proper receipts out. And I think that for the most part, it will be covered. I was speaking, somebody said in a call the other day, some senior aide on the committee was like, I think we have enough material here to avoid evasion from these people. So I would be, I'm a little optimistic, right? 1.3 million documents is a lot of documents.

• 37:28Nilay Patel?

  All right. We're going way long in this segment. I do want to talk about two other things. There's a little bit of like, extra antitrust action happening. It feels like Slack felt left out. So it filed, it filed a lawsuit, credit to Slack in the knife-iest way possible on Microsoft earnings day. Slack filed an action in Europe, saying that Microsoft was unfairly bundling teams. Casey, we, I feel like this is just one of those things that's floating around. Does this feel like the same kind of thing to you?

• 37:57Speaker 05

  I don't know. This is one where I don't have as developed a view. I think at a high level, yes, it does look very similar, right? Like Slack makes a paid product. It was growing really fast. Then Microsoft introduced a clone, but gave it away as part of an existing product, and so started to grow much faster and has really cut into Slack's growth. At the same time, the whole reason Microsoft has that model now is because Google looked at Microsoft Word and said, well, what if we just give that away for free as part of what is essentially a bundle with Gmail? And they didn't get in any trouble for that, right? So I think that that's kind of an interesting thing to think about. But, you

• 38:42Speaker 05

  know, again, go to the highest level. Microsoft's original antitrust case was about what they were bundling together in order to hurt the competition. And so, just as you could ask, well, isn't a browser an obvious unnecessary feature of any computer operating system? You could also ask, is it chat functionality an essential function of any workplace productivity software? So these questions like do wind up looking pretty similar.

• 39:11Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. I don't know. Like, I think Slack is just, they're working a hard road here. I think they went to Europe because... You know, the European antitrust kind of officials, they like doing stuff.

• 39:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:25Nilay Patel?

  You know, like they want to earn their paychecks. Ours like hearings for a year. You know, it's like, we're not like a swift antitrust country. I don't, I think bundling the, the browser into your operating system in the nineties to crush Netscape. It basically being super brazen about it, right? Like the facts of the situation matter. Microsoft was like, Netscape's a threat. We have to kill it. Right. And they, they sent like, Bill Gates is like emailing his team, being like, kill it. Is it dead?

• 39:52Nilay Patel?

  Like, those are the emails. Like that, it was not, they were not playing nice. They weren't like friend tweeting each other. And then like, they were just like emailing each other, we're, we're going to kill them. In this case, Microsoft Office 365 is a recurring subscription product. The promise is that you pay them money every month and it improves. And they've built this other thing. Stuart Butterfield was on the Vergecast last month and he's like, they're real competitors, Zoom, it's not us.

• 40:20Speaker 03

  So that Slack has got a real problem with that line because they, they keep saying they're not a real competitor. They're more a video conferencing competitor, but at the same time, come on, like you type text into a box and then lots of people see it. Right. And it may be that like, it's not so much that it's a direct competitor to Slack to like, if I'm a current Slack user, I'm going to switch to Teams because my company also happens to pay for Office. It's more like if my company already pays for Office, I'm not going to bother looking at Slack in the first place because I've already got Teams and I'm just going to stick with what I've got because it's good enough. So it's not about, it's, it's, it's about like competing for future customers that don't exist or haven't existed, like looked at your product yet. More so that it is a direct like head to head, we're on the same shelf and you pick between one or the other.

• 41:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And I, just like, that's the new model for software now is you pay a subscription fee and then stuff happens.

• 41:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:11Nilay Patel?

  Right. And like, I don't love that model. Like, I, I think it would be better if you, every year, the new version of Slack came out and the new version of Teams came out and people were making decisions, but we have moved to this recurring revenue model. Office 365 is like a good product. Like it works across everywhere.

• 41:28Speaker 03

  Right. But this gets to the heart of the problem. Office 365 is a good product used by. 1. something billion people or whatever. Should the rules be different for a big tech company when it comes to like improving your software and putting more, putting more features and more stuff into the bundle than for non-giant tech companies?

• 41:43Nilay Patel?

  And this is why I think it's way harder for Slack. I think the conversation we had about this, next week's hearing, the problems for all those companies, they're pretty clear cut. I feel like I can explain them, or you all can do a good job just explaining them to anyone. Here, what's the problem with Amazon? They see that anything is selling well and then they crush that company by making their own and delisting it. Like, easy, everybody gets it. We don't think Microsoft should be able to improve its products and add more features for the same price because Slack is cool and has a nice logo. Like, that is a way harder sell policy-wise.

• 42:16Speaker 03

  Also Slack has a terrible logo. What are you talking about?

• 42:18Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. Well, I was thinking of the original, right, the plaid hashtag. Well, look, Slack's logo is bad now, so they should be crushed into a book. It's really what I've arrived at. I just think it's way harder. But that is going on. We're covering it a lot. Tom wrote this piece that I would just like everyone to react to, which is the big winner in the Slack-Microsoft fight should be Google? Because Google's, no one's paying attention to it in the background. It's just shoving everything into Gmail. Like, it's, and like, everyone has G Suite. Like, so many companies have G, we have G Suite. So if meat and like Google, whatever their chat product is called and blah, blah, blah, all ends up in Gmail, like, why would you pay for any of this?

• 42:54Speaker 03

  Have you heard the good news about meat?

• 42:57Speaker 05

  Do you know you can add meat to anything from any piece of software in America now?

• 43:05Nilay Patel?

  It's just not working. Like, so much of this is dependent on Google executing, of all things, a messaging strategy. So I, I love the idea that Google could be the winner, but I, I don't know that, um, executing a messaging strategy is where it's gonna win. Last thing I want to talk to about with both of you in particular is TikTok. McKenna, it seems like the let's ban TikTok rhetoric is heating up even more.

• 43:30Speaker 04

  Right, so TikTok has a history in Congress now. Josh Hawley has basically been the main guy out to get TikTok. But, okay, so for like the past like year, year and a half, Josh Hawley has had some hearings. He's invited TikTok to testify. And then he's done these like wrestling style like hype reels on Twitter, where he just like shows like an empty TikTok chair. And it's like, where are they? And it's like, weird guitar music. I'll find it for you.

• 44:01Speaker 06

  Is our personal information being made less secure by big tech because of their partnerships with some of these questionable regimes?

• 44:10Speaker 04

  They exist. There's at least two of these. So this has happened. We've been waiting. All this kind of happened when Mike Pompeo like randomly one night on Fox News. It's like, yeah, we're thinking about banning TikTok. Like, and that's basically all he said. And then, of course, everyone's like, what is happening? So the government can't really do a lot to ban TikTok. Addy, our colleague here on the policy desk, did a wonderful story talking about all the ways that they could kind of get around banning them. But the one thing the government can do is ban other people in government from using TikTok on their devices. So this week, the House approved a Josh Hawley bill

• 44:52Speaker 04

  that would ban federal employees from using TikTok on their devices. And then just yesterday, earlier this week, it made it through the Senate committee. So all it needs now is a vote on the Senate floor to be approved and a signature. And TikTok is banned from federal devices.

• 45:07Speaker 03

  I mean, military TikTok is not a small community.

• 45:10Nilay Patel?

  No, it's huge.

• 45:11Speaker 04

  No, it's not. It's huge. It's huge.

• 45:14Nilay Patel?

  I watch a lot of fighter jets land on aircraft carriers on my TikTok. I have like a very bad dad TikTok algo.

• 45:20Speaker 04

  Your For You page is very different from mine.

• 45:22Nilay Patel?

  So federal employees banned from using it. Is there any further motion? Like? There are moves, right? You could like, you could say it's a Chinese company. We don't want them like, we did it to Huawei, right? But we, we basically banned companies from buying Huawei equipment. How would you, how would you do that with TikTok?

• 45:40Speaker 04

  We have this problem all the time with like, what regulator deals with tech? No one has any idea. Or they, they want a piece of it and then they fight over it and it's a nightmare. So that's part of the problem. We don't have a federal agency that really organizes around like tech regulation at all. So it's not like you can just go knocking on the FTC's door and be like, excuse me, Chairman Simons, please ban TikTok. You can't do that. So in the same way that the FCC in a jeep pie can be like, no money goes to Huawei. And then here's some money to dig it up and get it out of your system. Like, we don't have the infrastructure for that. And I think that's primarily like the biggest problem here. I mean, there's a couple of things that you could do with like foreign investment, CFIUS stuff. It's like all incredibly wonky.

• 46:23Speaker 04

  But it's incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to just ban an app. And that would have to do with like talking to Apple and Google and app stores and having, you know what I mean? Having to completely direct what, how they operate in some way.

• 46:38Speaker 03

  We just got done with a huge discussion about how Apple has monopoly on app distribution on the iPhone. Google does it on Android, but they might, may as well for most intents and purposes, especially here in the US. So if they can strong arm Apple and Google and just pulling them off the App Store, that like gets pretty close.

• 46:53Nilay Patel?

  I mean, they're like, Donald Trump is like one iPhone tariff threat away, right? I mean, but like, I don't know if anybody's gonna pull it off now. Casey, one thing that strikes me is even on my extremely lame dad TikTok, I see so many creators saying TikTok is getting banned. Follow me on Instagram.

• 47:09Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 47:10Nilay Patel?

  Like it's just, it's a trend all over the place. And obviously Trump and sort of the Republican side of the, the world are like TikTok is Chinese. We hate it. Trump is, I think particularly pissed because of the, the rally narrative around TikTok. That's what Russell was saying to us last week. TikTok also just delivers a lot of information to people and young voters in particular in an opaque algorithmic feed. Like that, it feels like your zone. Has this bubbled up beyond just a bunch of noise for you?

• 47:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, like, this is a Ben Thompson point, which is that China has been in an information war with the United States for 20 years, and Americans have just pretended it doesn't exist, right? Like, the point he makes over and over again is China started this fight. American social networks are not allowed to operate in China. And so the fact that an algorithmically based feed that is totally opaque, that is operating inside our borders, should raise at least some national security concerns, right? Like, the kind of threat you worry about is, you know, what if the Communist Party decides that it just wants to push a lot of pro-Trump propaganda in the run-up to the election? You know,

• 48:23Speaker 05

  it just because it would, it would sow some chaos and it would benefit them. Regardless of how likely you think that is to happen, the fact is that it could happen. And so, should the country have some sort of response to that? How should it think about that? And you can take different views on it, but I do think the thinking about what TikTok is and how it could be used has been unsophisticated, because as with every social product, when it first gets started, we all look at it and we think, oh, this is fun. This is a toy. Nothing bad could ever come from teenagers doing dances. And then, you know, fast forward to the 2016 election.

• 48:58Nilay Patel?

  Has no one ever watched Footloose? I mean, come on.

• 49:00Speaker 05

  Yeah. Look what happened once they allowed dancing in that town. A lot of people think that's a happy story. I don't. I think that that is a movie about how a town was ruined through dancing.

• 49:10Nilay Patel?

  Wow. Okay. It's been too long. Thank you both for coming on. Monday's gonna be a big day. We're gonna have a lot going. So look for coverage across all of the antitrust hearing stuff. And then Casey is starting an all-dancing TikTok feed, I believe.

• 49:25Speaker 05

  That's right. Follow me on TikTok.

• 49:28Nilay Patel?

  The first interface multimedia extension.

• 49:31Speaker 05

  Oh, I can't wait.

• 49:32Nilay Patel?

  It's a TikTok. All right. Thank you both. Talk to you later. We're gonna take a break. You're gonna hear next from Andrew and Megan talking about all the Xbox games news that happened this week. We'll be right back.

• 49:48Speaker 01

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• 50:48Speaker 08

  Hello, this is Megan Brokmes with The Verge, and I'm here today with Andrew Webster.

• 50:52Speaker 07

  Hey, how's it going?

• 50:53Speaker 08

  Oh, you know, just ready to talk about some Xbox. So Webster, you are the games editor here, and I am a games reporter here. And yesterday, we watched a conference from Microsoft about the Xbox Series X. So tell us a little bit about that.

• 51:07Speaker 07

  Yeah, it was kind of their first big showcase for games specifically. Some people really wanted them to talk about like price or release date. There was no mention of the much rumored cheaper Xbox that our colleague Tom has reported on quite a bit. It was just entirely focused on games that are coming to the Series X and other Xbox platforms, of which there are many.

• 51:30Speaker 08

  Okay, here's the thing. I actually really prefer that because for me, any reason to buy a console is going to be the games coming to it. So whenever they do events like this where they're just like, here's like 20 things that you'll want to buy, that's mostly for me. They're specifically making it for me. Thank you, Microsoft.

• 51:45Speaker 07

  Yeah, and they had a lot of specifically like their first party stuff, the Microsoft Studio stuff, they were showing off with Halo, obviously being the one kind of key component in that.

• 51:57Speaker 08

  Yeah, it definitely doesn't feel like a new console without a new Halo. Halo Infinite is pretty and it looks big. And can you tell that I'm not a Halo player? I don't know. Do you mess around with it much?

• 52:07Speaker 07

  I'm not super huge on it. And I mean, I think it looks like a Halo game. It sounds like they're doing some interesting stuff. They've said there's not going to be sequels, so it's some kind of service-y game that will keep being updated, but it's not really clear how that's going to work. But I mean, it looks like a big showcase Halo game. So there's that.

• 52:25Speaker 08

  We have confirmed it is a Halo game. So for me personally, one of the most exciting reveals didn't happen until the very end, and it was like a bare bones reveal, but there's going to be a new Fable, which we haven't gotten a new one since, I want to say 2010 was when three came out, because they've done a couple like offshoot weird little things, but nothing like a full game. So the new Fable is being made by Playground Games, which is kind of a weird option, because they work on the fourths of series. It's still really unclear like what exactly this new game will be. They're just calling it Fable right now, which is definitely not confusing at all.

• 52:57Speaker 07

  Yeah, my understanding is that Playground has actually been hiring a bunch of people who've worked on some more AAA-ish, open world games. So it seems like they've been staffing up for this, but even still, it's not a studio that's known for this kind of game, obviously. So it's hard to get much from knowing they're working on it in such kind of a brief tease like they showed.

• 53:17Speaker 08

  Yeah. I mean, the good news is there's also, of course, going to be a new Forts on its own. We also saw it about from Asidian. We've got a couple other interesting games. Was there anything that stuck out to you specifically?

• 53:26Speaker 07

  So the game that looked most interesting to me was actually revealed during the Jeff Keely's pre-show.

• 53:32Speaker 08

  Oh, we love Jeff. We're big fans of Jeff here.

• 53:34Speaker 07

  Of course. And it's from Eugene Aka, who's best known as the dude behind Sonic the Hedgehog, called, has a very strange name, Ballin' Wonderworld. And it just kind of looks like Square Enix gave him a bunch of money to make a wild Knights Into Dreams spiritual successor. So I'm very into that.

• 53:51Speaker 08

  I don't actually know what that means. What does that mean for people like me who've never played that?

• 53:56Speaker 07

  Super Mario Odyssey, but very, very strange.

• 54:00Speaker 08

  I appreciate your pronunciation of Mario. You have a very good spin on that.

• 54:03Speaker 07

  It's the Canadian accent.

• 54:05Speaker 08

  Other than that, another game that really stuck out to me that I'm personally excited about is Donut's Tell Me Why. So they of course did the Life is Strange series. And this one looks kind of along the same lines, but outside of that actual series. So it's going to be episodic. It's a little bit confusing because originally the devs said they were going to release all three at once. And then in the announcement yesterday, it said that, I can't remember exactly how they phrased it, but it made it seem like maybe just the first one was coming next month. But basically, it's about American teens, Alaskan teens, who are kind of struggling with their past. The big thing about this is that one of their main characters is trans and we'll delve heavily into his background and some of his, I guess, like emotional things growing up. So it's very interesting. With games like this, there's always quite a bit of opportunity for them to get this

• 54:50Speaker 08

  wrong. But so far, Donut has had an interesting approach. They put up an FAQ. They've been trying to, I think, handle this as well as they can. But I guess we'll see how it actually pans out.

• 54:59Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, I'm excited for anything they make, pretty much, so.

• 55:03Speaker 08

  Yeah, I really love that this French studio is so invested in telling American-based stories. They really want to capture that feeling that we have here.

• 55:12Speaker 07

  Yeah, if nothing else, I hope it gets more people to play Life is Strange 2, which I don't think enough people did.

• 55:17Speaker 08

  Oh, my God. Yeah, you're totally right. So another one is Remedy's new game that really stuck out to me. I'm curious what your thoughts are on that.

• 55:25Speaker 07

  Yeah, so I actually had the chance to kind of talk with some of the folks at Remedy before the showcase. And it's kind of a weird one. So it's called Crossfire X. And it's actually like this hugely popular Korean online shooter from this studio called Smilegate. And like five years ago, they came up to Remedy and were like, hey, do you want to make a single-player component to it? And that's what they're doing. So it seems kind of like a weird collaboration. But what I saw is really cool. It's like a military shooter, but has like the weird Remedy-ness that you'd expect. So it almost has like some Kojima vibes to it. So I'm very, very curious to check that out when it's finally ready to play, which is supposed to be some point this year, but not sure when.

• 56:07Speaker 08

  So one of the big things that stands out to me about Microsoft right now, especially versus someone like Sony, is how much they're pushing the Game Pass and how important it seems to be for their next-gen consoles. What do you think of us?

• 56:17Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, it's a pretty different strategy. What we saw from Sony a couple weeks ago, I have no sense of time, with the PS5 showcase was what you kind of expect, right? It's like, here are a bunch of big exclusive games. Here's Spider-Man, here's the new Horizon Zero Dawn, and that's why you buy a PS5. But I don't need to buy an Xbox Series X to play Halo. And even if I do, I don't need to buy Halo, I just buy a subscription to Game Pass. So for Microsoft, the hardware is definitely more of just like an avenue to get you to buy into their subscription.

• 56:52Speaker 08

  I do think it's really interesting, and it's smart, because it's appealing to different kinds of people who play games, right? For me personally, Sony's always been my preferred choice, because I am generally attracted more to like, the exclusive games the console has to offer. But this is the thing that would actually make me really interested in Microsoft. A lot of the games they showed today, eh, not a lot, but I'd say some of them are possibly not for me. I'm not a big shooter person, for example. Halo's not going to do much for me. But also, if it's easy to try, that makes it really easy for me to feel like I can actually jump in without having to invest in something super heavily, like an Xbox Series X.

• 57:22Speaker 07

  Yeah, I remember our colleague Sam wrote a while ago, when he reviewed the new Gears of War, that it was basically like the perfect Game Pass game, because like, probably wouldn't buy it, but like, you try it, and hey, it's cool. So I think there's a lot of stuff like that. And I think they've been doing a really good job of kind of building it out. Like, you can play most Final Fantasies through Game Pass. It's not on Game Pass, but they also just brought Dragon Quest to Xbox for the first time. So like, just kind of filling it out with Microsoft, you know, Things Beyond, Forza, and Halo, obviously a very good strategy, turning it to a more Netflix-y kind of service.

• 57:54Speaker 08

  Yeah, honestly, that's the thing that will make me super interested in this console. All right, that's it from us. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Megan Proponesh, and I report on games for The Verge.

• 58:02Speaker 07

  And I'm Andrew Webster.

• 58:09Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends. Like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an Ultra. Because it's not just a superior light beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser-Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 58:38Speaker 02

  College football is back. So Hilton called to me, the superstition concierge, to make your fan rituals a reality. Need a room to match your lucky number? We got you. Want to make sure our team doesn't wash your lucky jersey? Oh, that smells lucky. Hilton's unmatched hospitality can keep up with any superstition. Even a marching band wake-up call at 5:55 and 55 seconds. Hit it! When you need a team that will do whatever it takes on game day, it matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay.

• 59:10Nilay Patel?

  All right, thank you to Andrew and Megan. There's just like a lot of Xbox action going on.

• 59:15Speaker 03

  I would like to register my deep disagreement, discontent, vehement rejection of the new design of the brutes in Halo Infinite.

• 59:25Nilay Patel?

  That's not where I thought you were going.

• 59:28Speaker 03

  They look terrible.

• 59:29Nilay Patel?

  Chris Plant wrote a good piece at, this is about something else entirely, Plant wrote a good piece, former Verge culture editor, now editor-in-chief of Polygon, Chris Plant, wrote a great piece of Polygon about how Game Pass is sort of like the secret weapon for Microsoft, like resetting how people think about video games. You should go read it. It's the thing that caught my attention coming out of this the most. All right, Dieter, we got, there's some gadget news, man.

• 59:53Speaker 03

  This is a lot. It's grab bag time.

• 59:55Nilay Patel?

  You reviewed Sony's Vlogon camera.

• 59:57Speaker 03

  I love it. It is called the ZV1. They took an RX 100 and then they like took all the expensive parts out of it.

• 1:00:06Speaker 03

  So they brought it down to 800 bucks. It is great because you can get started with this thing and it's like a little bit of work to learn how to use it. But there, there's no ceiling on like learning more complicated stuff on it. Like you can't put an interchangeable lens on it. It fits in your pocket. That's cool. But you could learn how to be like a super advanced vlogger, videographer, person with this camera because it has all of the same features as Sony's $2,000 and $3,000 cameras.

• 1:00:33Nilay Patel?

  You've been in your review, you made a good point about the articulating screen. So I mean, I have an RX 100, I'm looking into it right now. As a photographer, I actually prefer that it just flips up.

• 1:00:44Speaker 03

  So that is wrong. You are wrong and that's bad. You want it off to the side because then there's less, it doesn't get in the way of any accessories you want to attach to the top of your camera. And also you want it to be fully articulating so that you can like put it off at an angle and hold the camera at weird angles or like set the camera on a tripod and then be able to look at it like down from beneath it or to the side or whatever.

• 1:01:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:08Speaker 03

  The problem with that screen is they, it doesn't work with polarized sunglasses.

• 1:01:13Nilay Patel?

  Because they cheaped out.

• 1:01:14Speaker 03

  What are you doing?

• 1:01:15Nilay Patel?

  Wait, so but can you do, because I, the thing I photograph the most is my child.

• 1:01:21Speaker 03

  And she's small and so it's low, right?

• 1:01:23Nilay Patel?

  It's low, so I just flip it up 90 degrees.

• 1:01:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, so you, this one, you have to flip it out to the side and then turn it 90 degrees, but you get, you get the same angle if you want it. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:32Nilay Patel?

  Okay. I might buy one of these things.

• 1:01:34Speaker 03

  I mean, I miss the EVF most, the most, because I use that a lot, because I did, took a lot of photos, but it's great. And I, I want you to buy one because your RX 100 is focus hunting and the focus on the ZV1, oh my God. I don't know if I can express how goddamn fast and accurate it is. It is nuts. Sony's Eye autofocus thing where it like grabs onto an eye, it's kind of gimmicky, but it's way better than face and it is so fast and so accurate and it works on animals. That's incredible. The problem is unless you know for sure, you're going to like break out into the really complicated stuff with that thing. At a basic level, first day out of the box. Using it as a first time vlogger, your iPhone is going to take better video.

• 1:02:19Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 1:02:19Speaker 03

  It really is. Like, you'll be better at it. You need to like, you need to get through that valley of like, learning how to do the slightly more advanced stuff to get slightly more advanced features. That's not a reason not to buy it, though, because like, it's useful to not have your phone be your camera, because you want your phone in your pocket and you want your camera to do other stuff. So, like, I don't think that's a reason not to get it. But I do think that there's, it's a weird thing, because like, if you really know what you want, you probably want interchangeable lenses, you want to spend some more money, blah, blah, blah, blah, or you just want to use your phone and you're fine with that. So there's this weird middle zone where it lands. And I live in that middle zone, and so I love it, but I don't pretend that everybody else does.

• 1:02:55Nilay Patel?

  I just like the idea that you're pushing me to buy an $800 webcam.

• 1:02:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, I think you should.

• 1:03:02Nilay Patel?

  Noted. There seems like a lot of Samsung rumors and hints ahead of an event in September.

• 1:03:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, so we've got the event in August, where we're expecting the Note 20 and whatever else, but then there's going to be another event in September. And the thing that's confusing with Samsung is we were expecting, like, here's all the stuff that's going to happen in August, and then they just went ahead and announced the Z Flip 5G ahead of time. And it turns out that, you know, like, 5G costs 70 bucks, because that's how much more it costs than the regular Z Flip, I guess. I don't know. I mean, I don't actually believe that, but I kind of believe it a little bit. So, there's also the Fold 2, and so is that going to be in August, or will they wait till September? Or they just announce it for whatever the hell they're going to do? So Samsung's just got a bunch more stuff than I kind of expected happening in the fall. Usually, it's like, Samsung does the Note, there's like, IFA in the world, and then we all like, take a breath and get ready for Apple, and then get ready for Google.

• 1:03:52Speaker 03

  But it seems like Samsung's got enough stuff that they want to do more and be more in the conversation through those other events. And I also personally think, I wrote this in the news, the processor newsletter a little while ago, actually a long while ago, that Samsung is looking for a new Halo device. Because the S20 isn't it, because it's like the every person device. Everybody buys the A51. So, what is it? It's not the Note, because the Note is basically just a S20 with a stylus. The Ultra was a whiff.

• 1:04:21Nilay Patel?

  Well, there's this rumor that the Ultra will have like Xbox tie-in. Like, that's a... That's a move.

• 1:04:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, but it's a move, but it I think it's gonna be the Xbox phone in the same way that the S20 is like the Office phone, right? Or the Note had Office integration, right? It had your phone built in. You're not gonna be able to do anything with Microsoft X-Cloud or whatever they end up calling it on the Note that you wouldn't be able to do on, I think, any other Android phone. Could be wrong. There might be some special optimizations, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I strongly suspect it will not be the reason to buy a Samsung phone. Because I continue to believe that the idea that there is such a thing as a gaming Android phone, there's a new, new, super high-end, I think it was a Rog phone that came out this week. I've got people now in my DMs, in my tweets, like, telling me, no, I'm a, I'm a pro gamer and I use Android as my primary platform. I will talk

• 1:05:09Speaker 03

  to you. I'm gonna reply to you. I see you. I'm eager for you to prove to me that you're real.

• 1:05:15Nilay Patel?

  What kind of catfishing scheme is this?

• 1:05:19Nilay Patel?

  But new TV stuff in September is the other rumor here?

• 1:05:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't know, man. It's like, what do you, what do you want out of a Samsung TV? Just like, explain QLED? Like, make the wall actually, like, accessible? Like, what do you want from them?

• 1:05:32Nilay Patel?

  Honestly, I'm not to run ties in.

• 1:05:36Speaker 03

  Sorry.

• 1:05:36Nilay Patel?

  I mean, like, it's like, what, I just won't buy one at this point. Like, I don't, we were in a, we have a room dedicated to the streaming wars, to Julia room, as I, as I think of it. It's really where Julia just, like, takes notes throughout the day. So she can, like, organize her coverage. It's great. But like, one of the things she was talking about today is, like, every interface is bad. Right? Like, every streaming app, every streaming platform, and like, I just think Samsung's interface, it's like, just the worst of them all. Like, it has the most ads, it pushes you towards the most things, and like, they sell the most TVs, so that's fine. But that's like, I don't know. Every time I think about Samsung's TV aspirations, the fact that their interface is the most disconnected from any of the content services that I might want to use.

• 1:06:21Speaker 03

  They all get super crusty over time, too. Like, even, even LG's, like, LG had the really nice reboot with WebOS, and they had Beanbird and whatever. But looking at it now, like, they've, they've thrown a bunch of IoT controls in it, and it's just, like, I don't, I, the fact that these TVs have such a long lifespan, like, you, you own it for five or 10 years, there's just no way that any of these companies have the, like, restraint to, to think that far ahead, and to think about what they want their UI to be and to be clean that far ahead. They just, will always give in to the money of throwing another crappy thing on it.

• 1:06:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and then you can always just, you can always just buy a $30 fire stick in like, some professional UI designers might help you out.

• 1:07:02Nilay Patel?

  That was my segue to next one. Alexa is going to be able to launch apps on Android and iOS, which seems like a huge.

• 1:07:08Speaker 03

  It's weird to me that it took them this long to get here. So what this is, is deep linking. So you can link to like, when you click on the notification on a tweet, it goes directly to the tweet. In theory, and right now it's broken on the iPhone because everything is terrible. But Alexa hasn't been able to just send you directly into like the third screen on an app or something because it didn't just support deep linking. So they, they turned that on. The question is, uh, who's asking for it and how much useful it get? Because right now, if you want to, you can like make an Android phone, sell an Android phone, or set up an Android phone where Alexa is your primary digital assistant instead of Google. You just do that, but nobody does. At best, it's like they're on the side next to it because Google forces all their OEMs to, you know, play ball.

• 1:07:53Speaker 03

  But if they are able to, I don't know, throw much money at developers or like increase the functionality and its interoperability with other apps, it could, in theory, maybe make it a viable competitor to at least a Google Assistant. You know, as far as Siri competing with Siri, I mean, one, you can't because Apple controls the platform. And two, does Siri need competition? I mean, I don't know. It's hard to duck on Siri. Actually, speaking of iOS being a closed platform, you know how you can use this Mac app on a server to like get iMessage on an Android phone? It like basically mirrors it. It's super insecure or whatever. Someone has made one of those for the Pebble smartwatch. It's amazing.

• 1:08:33Nilay Patel?

  That's great. Like the old school E Ink display Pebble?

• 1:08:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, you can finally get iMessage on a Pebble, you know, four years after they, they got bought.

• 1:08:40Nilay Patel?

  But you can send, you can always get them.

• 1:08:42Speaker 03

  But you can reply to them now.

• 1:08:43Nilay Patel?

  That's amazing. How long does typing or is it just quick replies?

• 1:08:47Speaker 03

  I have no idea.

• 1:08:48Nilay Patel?

  I gotta dig out my Pebble. Uh, speaking of the iPhone, iPhone rumor season is like slowly beginning. I have no idea if there's gonna be an iPhone in September. We assume.

• 1:08:58Speaker 03

  There's a rumor that it's gonna get pushed to October now.

• 1:09:00Nilay Patel?

  Right?

• 1:09:01Speaker 03

  Well, that the, the, the sales will get pushed to October.

• 1:09:04Nilay Patel?

  Right, but yeah, in our usual cadence of things around now.

• 1:09:10Nilay Patel?

  Like iPhone rumor, like September is not so far away, right? Our usual cadence would be, okay, rumors are starting to heat up. We don't, we just don't know. But the last beta of iOS 14 says it'll be a 5.4 inch iPhone.

• 1:09:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, so the deal is if in iOS, you can like scale. And so if you want to like double size, what it does is it grabs the scale from a smaller iPhone model and like puts it on your bigger screen or whatever. That that makes sense. And so there's a new scaling that seems to imply that there's a 5.4 inch size. Obviously, I always want there to be, you know, options for everybody. And I think that, you know, one of the nice things about Android is you can get whatever form factor you want. It's annoying that you can't do that on iOS. I know lots of people really wanted a smaller iPhone, especially when the new iPhone SE came out, I was like, ah, it's still big. I never believed Apple would do this. I find it weird that they're doing it now. If the, if in fact this rumor pans out. And that's all like, I'll be very curious to see if it happens.

• 1:10:06Speaker 03

  I'll also be very curious to see just flat out, how many models of iPhone is Apple going to have in the store come like, say, November? Like, because if there's a 5.4, then there's a regular iPhone, like XR 11, whatever, 11 style, like it's called 12. Then there's the Pro, then there's the Pro Max. And like, that's four? And then there's the SCE, so that's five.

• 1:10:29Nilay Patel?

  It's bad, yeah.

• 1:10:31Speaker 03

  Honest to God, if this thing happens, like, Apple has gone full Samsung. Like Samsung has a phone for every like slice of the market. And it seems like Apple is going in that direction.

• 1:10:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, it, the, it's 10 years later. Like, they need a full product. I was like saying, like Ford sells too many cars.

• 1:10:50Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:10:50Nilay Patel?

  Like, right? There's like a full mature market with lots of segments, they're going to fill them all. So they usually knock out, right? When this, the pattern with sort of the iPhone 10s of the world, right? Has been they knock out, they don't just bring them all down in price, they knock one out. So there's the iPhone 10 and the iPhone 8. And then they, when the XS came out, they weren't selling the iPhone 10 anymore, but they carried forward the 8 for a while. Now there's the 11, they knock, they didn't, they don't sell the XS anymore. They have the 10R, like, right? They're, they're shifting more, they're not doing their usual thing where they just sell the old one for the same, for less money.

• 1:11:27Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:11:28Nilay Patel?

  So the question is, which will they knock out? I bet they, the Pros go away. There are no more 11 Pros. Right, there's, there'll be a 12 Pro.

• 1:11:35Speaker 03

  There'll be a 12, yeah, okay, I see what you're saying. Yeah, that makes sense. Cause they knocked out the 10R, they might knock out the 11, nah, I don't know, man. See, this is, this is why it's complicated.

• 1:11:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think that like, that model, like, they'll, they'll be clear what the top end is, it'll be clear what the bottom end is, if it's this new, smaller size. Then it's like the SC, the 8, the 10R, like, what happens to all of those? I bet the 11s kind of fade away, and then there's a 12 and a 12.

• 1:12:01Speaker 03

  Hey, speaking of, speaking of Ford, sorry, like, I, I wish I had an answer for what I expect, but it's so confusing, and the fact that it's confusing is like, on Apple, and it's like, we're gonna have to recontextualize how we think about how Apple sells the iPhone. It used to be the iPhone was like singular, and then Android was like everything in a mess. And now it's, we don't, we're not gonna live in that world anymore, and I think that's fine. But I need to ask you what you think of this 1400 horsepower Mustang Mach-E.

• 1:12:24Nilay Patel?

  It's, I think it can only run for like, two hours or something.

• 1:12:27Speaker 03

  They like, had to bring the battery down.

• 1:12:29Nilay Patel?

  So they, the Mach-E is the electric Mustang SUV, I have a lot of feelings about that. It looks, I've seen it in person, it looks very nice. They made a, they just made a hot rod version, and so the thing about electric cars is like, it's pretty hard to hot rod them. Like, all you can do is really juice up the battery. Like, a regular engine is a very complicated system, and you can adjust every part of it.

• 1:12:49Speaker 03

  Well, their solution here is they just added more electric motors, it has seven.

• 1:12:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they added more motors, like, the motors are higher, and then they added really complicated batteries. I think their point is like, look, we still have these moves, and this car's really fast, and it's hot rod. The more interesting Ford is, obviously, the Bronco, which has nothing to do with technology. The Bronco's user interface is a new version of Sync, which looks really cool. Input at a piece, noting that in the tease for the new Sync system, there appears to be a complicated hybrid Bronco coming. At which point, it will be a tech story, and we can talk about the new Ford Bronco.

• 1:13:21Speaker 03

  That's all you, that's all you want.

• 1:13:22Nilay Patel?

  I've been trying to squeeze that angle in. Okay, last one, this is actually a big deal, I saved it for, last for a reason.

• 1:13:28Speaker 03

  Beans, beans.

• 1:13:29Nilay Patel?

  It's not the Galaxy Beans.

• 1:13:30Speaker 03

  Samsung Galaxy, okay, damn it, alright.

• 1:13:32Nilay Patel?

  It's not the Galaxy Beans, we talked a lot about the shakeup in Pixelworld. Mark Lavoie, who was in charge of the cameras left Google, that seemed a little bit, we actually talked about it with Sundar. Right, it seemed like, there was a little bit more drama inside that team than. We're hearing Mark Lavoie has landed at Adobe.

• 1:13:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:49Nilay Patel?

  To build a camera app that might work across every Android phone.

• 1:13:54Speaker 03

  Or maybe every phone, maybe it'll like, there is, there is the Photoshop camera app on the iPhone.

• 1:13:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:14:00Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I don't want to stake too much on Adobe executing with any speed. Just don't. But that's one of those moves where it's like, okay, if Adobe gets big into actual camera apps that work across everything. Like maybe all these arguments like change in some way.

• 1:14:17Speaker 03

  About which phone to get because the camera is good or not?

• 1:14:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, like, I mean, it all depends on how much access they get to the raw data. It depends how fast the processor is like, I mean, how much have we heard about Apple building image processing right into the chip into the pipeline, their ISP? Like, yes, many, many, many variables. At the same time, this is a guy who took off the shelf sensors for Google and made what at the time, the Pixel two, like exponential leap in camera quality that everyone else has to compete with. Like, that's pretty amazing.

• 1:14:46Speaker 03

  So what I am, I'm, I'm excited for the idea of like GCAM for all without weird hacking. Right? Like that fundamentally is what I'm most excited about. But if you stop and think about it, you know how like more and more phones will let you shoot in raw or some kind of computed raw or whatever? That's really useful for post-processing in Lightroom or Photoshop or whatever. Imagine a world where Lightroom and Photoshop have a deep understanding and a direct connection to the process of computational photography at the moment of image capture in the first place. So you, you know, you use the Photoshop camera app or whatever the Adobe camera app is, and it makes a bunch of choices and it stores a bunch of data and metadata about the image.

• 1:15:27Speaker 03

  But then that data and metadata becomes a thing that you can work with and manipulate, or just the app will have knowledge of inside Photoshop or Lightroom. So instead of just working with all of the decisions that were made when it like reduced it down to a JPEG or reduced it to a computed raw, and it just like got the static file out of the camera app and then Photoshop passages work with that. It could work with the full complement of inputs that the camera had soup to nuts. That is a very interesting world.

• 1:16:00Nilay Patel?

  So that's like, I mean, the basis of all of this is multiple exposure HDR, right? The camera takes multiple frames. So what if you could deliver a different HDR merge? Right? Like, that's a question that we know none of these phones have been able to answer. They don't. Apple certainly is never gonna let you do it. But even an app like Halide, which I love, they deliver a smart raw and they don't do the other thing. And certainly, even if they did deliver some sort of let you re-merge or tweak the merge, there's no app ecosystem to support that.

• 1:16:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:16:31Nilay Patel?

  So you're saying you can get all the way there?

• 1:16:32Speaker 03

  Maybe. I mean, we'll see. I mean, again, I never assume they'll be able to execute it anything. And they'll show you a preview in 2022 and it'll arrive in 2024, right? The flip side of this whole conversation is what the shit is going on with the Pixel?

• 1:16:47Nilay Patel?

  What? You probably know better than anybody what the shit's going on with the Pixel.

• 1:16:50Speaker 03

  I mean, we're waiting on the 4A. Who knows? We expected it in May. The latest rumors are, I think, nine to five, Google put together a really good, like, summary of what we think we know so far. And it's like, the 4A, and then there won't be a big 4A, and there will be a 5G version, and there'll be a Pixel. Like, it's like a mess, right? And like, the main thing to know is like, it looks pretty clear that the Pixel 5 is not going to attempt to take on the S20 and the iPhone 11 or iPhone 12 Pro head-on, that it's gonna go with a Snapdragon 765 processor, which is a little bit lower end. You can actually look at a

• 1:17:34Speaker 03

  review of that right now. Sam reviewed the LG Velvet. It's a little pokey, right? Now, assuming that there's some big reset happening because Rick Osterle realized that he should look at the phones before they get, you know, finalized, I'm fine with this because, like, go ahead and stop attack, stop being judged as though you're trying to release a flagship that doesn't measure up. Make a, make a mid-range phone that owns being a mid-range phone, or, you know, high mid-range or whatever. Go for that. That's great. Super cool. Do it. But man, it's like, how many times have we said, yeah, we're okay with Google releasing a Pixel that's like acceptable this year, but next year they really gotta pull it off, right? How many years are we gonna do that? I feel like I've been doing it for the past two years. And like, I think it's gonna happen again this year.

• 1:18:19Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I wonder, we just similar to that Apple question, like so many models, right? The market's so segmented. Is it where to like, Google isn't their product line is not nearly that mature, right? Like, they don't have a, they don't have a thing to sell to everybody. Breaking in at the high end seems great, but impossibly hard. And then competing with the like, the A51s of the world, or the iPhone SEs of the world, kind of seems even harder, because all of those come in family plan bundles, or carrier subsidy schemes, like, like, there's a kind of deal making to sell that phone that Google is not good at.

• 1:18:59Speaker 03

  Yep. No, that's like, the A51 does well because they have all those carrier partners, and because it has a big ass screen, or the A50 did. I'm assuming the A51 is doing quite well right now. And then, you know, the iPhone SE is just like, it's the, it's the inexpensive iPhone. People who want an iPhone, they want the cheap one. That's what they're gonna get. And so, you know, I don't know that Google's ever gonna figure out those deals. They certainly haven't to date. They've like, they had this thing with Verizon, and that like, didn't get them anywhere. Like, I don't know.

• 1:19:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I feel like the, it's funny, because, you know, the story, the story of Android is that Verizon picked Android instead of Palm. Yeah, that's why Android is successful.

• 1:19:34Speaker 03

  You just had to bring it up, didn't you?

• 1:19:36Nilay Patel?

  Well, it's there, but like, I just, I, every now and again, I just remember that before that happened, Verizon was like, we're gonna make the BlackBerry Storm happen.

• 1:19:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:19:45Nilay Patel?

  If it just didn't happen.

• 1:19:47Speaker 03

  Nope.

• 1:19:48Nilay Patel?

  And so, like, we often give Verizon credit for making Android appear in this way, but like, Verizon's stamp of approval is like, kind of hit or miss. All right, we've gone way too long. I wanted to half talk about Windows 10x, but it just feels like no one knows what's going on.

• 1:20:05Speaker 03

  Well, it's because it half exists.

• 1:20:07Nilay Patel?

  But it's a dual screen, so it's just Windows.

• 1:20:09Speaker 03

  No, but now it's, now it's single screen primarily. But, yeah, they cut out, anyway, it's coming to 2021, I guess, now.

• 1:20:16Nilay Patel?

  Do you think Microsoft's gonna put out the Surface Neo this year?

• 1:20:18Speaker 03

  They keep posting pictures of like, did you see this photo of Panos Fadé? Like, there was a tweet of him using it and had a case on it or whatever.

• 1:20:26Nilay Patel?

  I've been in a room with Sachin Adella where he is using it as his phone.

• 1:20:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, but this, this, this picture of like, Panos using the phone like last week was taken with the most garbage camera you've ever seen and we don't know what camera it was like, oh, God.

• 1:20:40Nilay Patel?

  Okay, Twitter strips metadata.

• 1:20:41Speaker 03

  Is that the duo? I don't know.

• 1:20:44Nilay Patel?

  That's not good. All right. Well, we'll see. I hope they put it out. I'm excited for some, some more form factor fun. We had a big, we had a run of like, what's the next form factor? And it's like, the iPhone SC came out and sold everything. It's like, I guess one screen. Yes, I guess we're doing one screen for a while. All right. We have gone way too long. Thank you to Casey and McKenna. Monday is the hearing. I mean, we're, we're basically covering it with the same strategy and coverage emphasis as any other tech event. So it'll be a big deal. So Monday's the hearing. Tune in for that. Thank you to Andrew and Megan. Dieter reminded me yesterday that the story of Gadget News for next year is the consoles. So we got a lot of that coming. It's like their business models are changing, their strategies are changing. There's a lot there. So thank you to those two. Thanks to Dieter. You're great.

• 1:21:27Speaker 03

  Oh, thanks. Thanks to you, Neelai.

• 1:21:29Nilay Patel?

  I'm here. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks to the listeners. Let's just thank everyone. I'm in a grateful mood. You can tweet at us. I'm at reckless. Dieter's at backlon. McKenna is Kelly McKenna. Casey is Casey Newton. Megan is Megan underscore Nicollet and Andrew is A underscore Webster. We have newsletters. Casey has the interface. Dieter has processor. Check that out. There's a new Becca video on the YouTube channel. That is great. You should always watch Becca video. And we'll be back with the interview episode on Tuesday. Our security focus continues. It's Andy Greenberg. He's the author of Sandworm: A New Era of Cyber War and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers. It's a book about the sandworm. It's amazing. It was a great conversation.

• 1:22:09Speaker 03

  It's great. I read it. I gave it to my dad for Father's Day. It's amazing.

• 1:22:12Nilay Patel?

  And Andy was a great interview. So we're back on Tuesday. Again, hearings on Monday. Lots going on. See you next week. Rock and roll.

• 1:22:18Speaker 03

  Wear a mask.