Apple might make a touchscreen Mac / Samsung S23 images leak

The Verge's Alex Cranz, Richard Lawler, and Dan Seifert discuss the numerous Apple rumors we heard about this week, a Samsung Unpacked preview, and the latest gadget news. Further reading: Apple might finally make a touchscreen Mac Apple is reportedly making an all-in-one cellular, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth chip iPhone 16 Pro models could feature under-display Face ID Apple's next custom hardware trick might be its own Micro LED screens Apple’s MicroLED dream: what it means for the Apple Watch and beyond $99 AirPods could ship as early as next year alongside next-gen AirPods Max Official Samsung Galaxy S23 images leak early Samsung confirms February 1st Unpacked, its first in-person event in three years Samsung’s Galaxy Buds 2 Pro can now record lifelike 3D audio HBO Max’s first price hike raises the monthly rate by $1 John Deere commits to letting farmers repair their own tractors (kind of) At CES one company was showing off...an E-Ink headset? The Pinecil is the best soldering iron for most people Six smart home finds from CES 2023 you may have missed 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's Chief Investment Strategist, and Colin Martin, Head of Fixed Income Research and Strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting? And what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's Chief Investment Strategist, and Colin Martin, Head of Fixed Income Research and Strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting? And what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:41Alex Cranz?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Fleetwood Mac's 1977 incredible album, Rumors. Because we're going to talk about rumors.

• 1:52Speaker 02

  Tusk is better.

• 1:54Alex Cranz?

  Wow. I've been told that we cannot actually play any songs from Rumors over this, otherwise Fleetwood Mac will come to The Vergecast studio and beat up Andrew. So, sorry, Andrew. We'll protect you. Please don't play any of their music, even though it's great. But joining me in the studio today, not in the studio, joining me today is Dan Seifert. Hello, Dan. Hello. And the incredible Richard Lawler. Hello, Richard.

• 2:19Speaker 03

  Hello. I would like everyone to know that I did not steal funds. And if you'd like to know more about that, you can subscribe to my Substack. There's a fee. Thank you.

• 2:27Alex Cranz?

  Thank you, Richard. As you know, Neelai is not here. He disappeared. I think he's somewhere upstate. Unclear where, unclear what's happening. I think he's okay. He's probably okay. Send him all your love and all of your pictures of Mariah Carey to keep him through these cold, long winter nights. But we've got a lot of things going on on The Vergecast today. We've got a ton of Apple rumors. We've got a ton of Samsung rumors. We have no Fleetwood Mac rumors, because again, we don't want Andrew to die. But we've just got, there's a whole bunch of things happening today. So we're gonna get right into it.

• 3:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 3:01Speaker 02

  And let's get started with the biggest rumor that we've all been waiting for. At least some of us have been waiting for, or someone has been waiting for, that Apple might finally make a touchscreen Mac.

• 3:11Alex Cranz?

  Yes, this is Dan's favorite thing. Dan, you were so excited about this. I've never seen someone glow with joy at a rumor before. Yeah, you, I like, I know this is like a legendary desire for all Vergecast listeners, for all people at The Verge to have a touch MacBook Pro, a touch Mac at all.

• 3:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. So this rumor is coming from Bloomberg.

• 3:35Alex Cranz?

  You said really enthusiastic.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, I mean, look, it'll be good. It'll be fine to have it. I think that there's like, let me just like, say what this rumor is. So Mark Gurman at Bloomberg has reported that in 2025, Apple will release its first touchscreen Mac, or at least that's what they're aiming for now, which is two years away at least. And it might use an OLED screen. But the big deal is, it would be a touchscreen, which would be first for the Mac. So the way that he's framed this rumor is that this is not iPad hardware running macOS. It is kind of framed as like, this is a MacBook style laptop with a touchscreen on it, which is, you know, very similar to countless Windows running devices that have

• 4:21Speaker 02

  been on the market for many years that have touchscreens and people like them and they enjoy them and stuff like that.

• 4:25Alex Cranz?

  For like a decade.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  But what it doesn't seem like it is. What's that?

• 4:27Alex Cranz?

  It's like a decade. We've had touchscreen Windows machines for over a decade.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  Yes, very long time. But a lot of those touchscreen devices and those Windows machines have been like convertibles. Either they like flip the screen around behind the keyboard, or you could do the surface style and rip the keyboard off, it becomes a tablet, stuff like that. This is like, at least how it's framed now in the reporting. I am not reading that. I am reading that this is a laptop with a touchscreen and a fixed hinge that extends to a certain opening degrees and then it's just always a laptop. You never turn this into a tablet. And so then the question becomes, well, what benefit does that bring? Right? And I think that if it pans out that way, it would just be like your main input devices are still the keyboard and the trackpad, which have been always, well, at least the trackpad's always been excellent on Macs.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  And the recent keyboards have been very good. And then the touchscreen is just there and you can like poke at it to like scroll a webpage or pinch zoom on something or tap a button or something like that, which is exactly how I use a touchscreen Windows laptop. And that'd be nice.

• 5:30Speaker 03

  And it's fine.

• 5:31Alex Cranz?

  So it's basically like, for those of us who have stupid fingers, because I have very stupid fingers and I'll use my iPad all the time. And then I'll go to my MacBook and then I'll be like, oh, I want to make Richard bigger on the screen and just reach out and touch Richard's face and nothing happens because it's just a normal computer. And I'm like, oh, yeah, that's not how those work. It's for me, right? Like it's for those of us who are just like, forget.

• 5:55Speaker 03

  Well, I think it's also for people who are much younger than us, who have had touchscreens surrounding them their whole lives, partially due to Apple's success with the iPhone with the iPad. They are used to being able to reach out and touch things.

• 6:07Speaker 02

  That is, or you know, they have Chromebooks that have touchscreens and that's what they're using in school. And so like, that's what, you know, they are, they are accustomed to. It is a very natural interaction, want to touch a screen. I can tell you from years of reviewing laptops, many of those Windows laptops that had touchscreens. And every time I would like review a laptop for a couple of weeks or whatever, and go back to using my work Mac, I would hit the stupid screen by reflex because it became so natural and normal to be able to like click an OK button or, you know, close a window by just tapping the screen. It's not the primary interaction model. It's just another convenient way to use the device in a natural way that makes sense.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  I think the people that like really kind of like are against this idea are the people who are of the mind that like my fingers never leave the home row. I know all the keyboard shortcuts and I have perfect typing form and I know how to navigate the whole OS without ever lifting my fingers off the keyboard. And like, that's great for you. You don't ever have to touch the screen if you don't want to. Like, I'm sure in macOS will still work.

• 7:10Speaker 03

  David Bacon is very proud of you.

• 7:11Alex Cranz?

  That's just Richard.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  Exactly the way. But like, the rest of the world doesn't work. Have you ever watched someone use a computer? Their hands are like all over the place and like, they, they got their hand down on the trackpad or they are like, you know, have poor typing form like myself, like, so it's, it's a natural way. It makes sense. The fact that they didn't do it for so long, I think is kind of like.

• 7:30Alex Cranz?

  I don't think it's silly, though.

• 7:31Speaker 03

  That they went with the touch bar at all, that that ever happened.

• 7:34Alex Cranz?

  The touch bar was incredible. Shut your dirty mouth. It was, it was wonderful. I loved it so much.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  I mean, if you still want it, you could still get it on a MacBook Pro 13-inch M2 if you love it that much.

• 7:46Alex Cranz?

  The other day, I was going and I have a stream deck at home and it has a button on it that I just press and it opens a quick post and I can readily pop off a quick post. And now instead I have to like, do more things. And I was like, man, I wish this MacBook Air had a touch bar with a quick post button on it and I could just go boop. Like, I miss, I, I dream about a touch bar that's, works perfectly. It never existed, but it could have.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 8:11Alex Cranz?

  In my heart.

• 8:13Speaker 03

  And that was what struck me, because I went, I went back and looked at Jake's review of the first MacBook that had a touch bar.

• 8:18Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 8:18Speaker 03

  And that was kind of what he said was that the idea was decent and that he could see where, where there were opportunities for it, but the software didn't exist. And now, years later, we know that the software never existed.

• 8:28Alex Cranz?

  It never existed.

• 8:30Speaker 03

  The use case, it just never really came about.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  It never, it never got the buy-in.

• 8:33Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, there was like three developers who were like, those three developers were working so hard and they're, we're doing so much cool stuff. And then you'd be like, wow, I can't do anything else but like mute, but I can mute real fast and it's great. And I don't have to think about it. I guess I could also do that with physical buttons.

• 8:48Speaker 02

  Changing the volume takes three taps, I believe it took, as opposed to just, you know, one. Yeah.

• 8:54Alex Cranz?

  Weird.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  The other, the other way to look at this, I think, is you could argue that Apple has already made a touchscreen laptop and it's called the iPad with the Magic Keyboard, or now even more so, the Magic Keyboard Folio. And I think the Magic Keyboard Folio is the more instructive use case here, the one that came out for the 10th gen iPad, because the Magic Keyboard for the iPad Pro kind of is designed to bring that screen forward to you. So it's closer to you so that when you do touch it, it's not like you're reaching as far. But the Magic Keyboard Folio is the opposite. Its design is like pretty far away for you to be reaching up and touching the screen, much like it is with a laptop. And the screen is like kind of a distance for you to touch. And so your primary interactions when you're using the Magic Keyboard Folio with the iPad is you're using the keyboard

• 9:39Speaker 02

  and the trackpad. And then occasionally you're tapping the screen to select a box or hit OK, or close a window, or scroll, or zoom, whatever it is convenient for you. But again, it's, it's like this extra interaction.

• 9:51Alex Cranz?

  So this is what I wanted to talk about. Cause like, okay, they say we're gonna do a touch, it's gonna be a MacBook, it's gonna look like an MacBook, it's gonna act like a MacBook, and it'll just have a touch thing on it. And like, you could go and do that for years now. You could go and like hack one, put a, there are these cool little like weird screen overlays you could do. Don't do it. They were terrible. But you could theoretically do it. Uh, it's like the worst experience in the world. But the problem is like iPad exists and iPad is built for touch and all the buttons are big for touch. Everything is intended for touch. The MacBook is not intended for touch. And I don't think anybody wants the buttons to suddenly get huge and all of those touch.

• 10:30Speaker 02

  Have you seen Control Center on recent macOS?

• 10:33Alex Cranz?

  I am looking at my little, my little, you know, the little dots that make your windows get big and small? Those are still small.

• 10:40Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 10:40Alex Cranz?

  But I would imagine on like, on, if it was a touch, I'd want them big so that I don't.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  And those are annoying to hit with a mouse. They should be.

• 10:47Alex Cranz?

  So you're a pro big button. You're.

• 10:50Speaker 02

  I mean, look, so this rumor is two years out, right? So that is two versions of macOS that they can tweak and adjust and continue to bring macOS closer to this touch experience. Like, where are we? I think if you look back like two macOS reviews ago, the story was about how they're making it more like an iPad with the Control Center updates and some other interaction things. This year, they brought Stage Manager, which is very obviously an iPad-first designed feature that you can also run on the Mac, but it works like it does on the iPad. And so like, you could see that these next steps are going to come. They'll figure out some way to do window management in a nice, more toucher-friendly way.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  But again, I don't know if touch is ever going to be the primary interaction.

• 11:36Alex Cranz?

  They still haven't figured out how to do Windows management on an iPad, though. Like, just last, like, two years ago, that they were like, we're doing Windows.

• 11:44Speaker 03

  On a Mac, in my opinion.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  But that's like, that's not because it's not touchable. It's because of the iPad's OS structure and the way that they are trying to reinvent everything.

• 11:55Alex Cranz?

  But if the people who are behind both.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  Everything as a touch-first experience. And this, in a laptop, the touch layer is not the first primary way of interacting with it. It is like a tertiary interaction level. And so like, you don't need everything to be touch-friendly. Like, on Windows, not everything is touch-friendly. Like, there's lots of little fiddly things on Windows that when you're using touchscreen on a Windows device, like, are still fiddly. Microsoft has changed it a little bit. They get the taskbar a little bigger. The buttons get a little bit larger when you switch into tablet mode and stuff like that. But there's still a lot of fiddly checkboxes. It's still Windows. And I don't think that really needs to change because it's not like this would be the primary interaction. It's just like, certain things you would want to touch, or you would reflexively touch.

• 12:39Speaker 02

  I think the thing that I always end up doing is, on the lock screen, when you log in, you type in your password and you want to click OK. And you want to touch the button to hit OK, which is already big.

• 12:48Alex Cranz?

  Just boop.

• 12:49Speaker 02

  Exactly. And so like, things like that is where you will touch.

• 12:52Speaker 03

  And that's what we've seen on Windows, like, those like, three buttons to manage the Windows. They're not a lot bigger than they used to be, but they've gotten more touch-friendly. They figured it out. If Microsoft can figure out how to make the UI touch-friendly between Windows 8 and Windows 11, and it mostly is now, mostly, most of the time.

• 13:09Alex Cranz?

  Mostly.

• 13:11Speaker 03

  I'm pretty sure Apple can do something there.

• 13:14Speaker 02

  The other point here is that you can run iPad apps on the Mac now. Like if you open the Home app on the Mac, it is essentially the iPad app running on the Mac with the same interaction, the same UI and the same interface. And that goes on for like a number of other apps. So like, it's not weird to run those. It'd actually be better to use those with touch because they were designed touch first. So a lot of the things are like, I would like to be able to touch this screen. But then if I'm using, I don't know, I'm looking at GarageBand in my web browser right now. I probably would not interact with those with touch primarily. I would use my mouse and keyboard like I always have.

• 13:49Alex Cranz?

  Oh, are we going to get to a point? They always say every time these rumors start flying and we start hearing about like the touchscreen MacBooks and the continued fusion of iPad OS and macOS, we start talking about walled gardens. How like if we had to do, there's, there's the Go 90 scale, which is all about streaming services, but I think there should be like a walled garden scale from like no wall to wall. That's a terrible scale, but that's what it is. How in danger do you think the unwalled garden of macOS is with a touch Mac? And that, that like iPad energy getting more infused into the Mac? Cause I'm a little nervous. I'm not going to lie.

• 14:29Speaker 02

  Um, I mean, I'm the optimist in me, which is a rare person who comes out. You don't see the optimism.

• 14:36Alex Cranz?

  Who is, this is not, this is not Dan.

• 14:38Speaker 02

  I don't, I don't think it like, again, I don't think, because I don't see them making touch the primary interaction level, which would mean that like you would design an app that runs in the app store so it can be installed on Mac, iOS and iPad all at the same time. It has to run through the app store to do that. Right?

• 14:56Alex Cranz?

  Right.

• 14:57Speaker 02

  That's if the touch is the first primary interaction level. But if you're still able to make Mac apps that use a keyboard and mouse and have all their keyboard shortcuts support and things like that, or keyboard and trackpad, what have you, as long as you're still able to do that and those are still able to run because it's still macOS, they didn't, don't change it that drastically, then like you'll still be able to download apps from websites and from, you know, stuff like that and run them. Already right now, that's kind of an annoying thing to do because you have to like jump through a bunch of checkboxes to get the thing to install.

• 15:26Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 15:27Speaker 02

  I don't see how adding touch changes that, especially if touch is not the primary interaction.

• 15:33Speaker 03

  I have one question for Dan that I want to ask you. Are we glossing over the OLED rumor? Like, how big of a change would it be to have OLED screens on MacBook Pros from the screens that we have now?

• 15:45Speaker 02

  Um, you know, it's kind of interesting. We're going to probably talk about the micro LED rumor later on in the show, but like

• 15:53Speaker 03

  Mini micro.

• 15:54Speaker 02

  Micro LED.

• 15:55Speaker 03

  Micro LED? Yes.

• 15:56Speaker 02

  Micro.

• 15:56Alex Cranz?

  No, we say, no, micro LED. We're not saying micro LED. Absolutely not, Richard, no. Do not, nobody normalize that. Everybody listening, you're not allowed to normalize that.

• 16:09Speaker 02

  Please normalize it. Tweet at, tweet at Alex. Recordings of you saying it. So there's like the, in the span of like, or the progression of display technology for computers, right? It's like LCD and then mini LED, which Apple's already at with the MacBook Pro 14 and 16, and then OLED and then micro LED. And OLED would have, you know, slightly better blacks than the current crop of mini LED. But I got to tell you, the mini LED screens on the 14 and the 16 MacBook Pro look phenomenal. Like, I don't know how much I would appreciate having OLED instead of them. Like, maybe it would be a little bit more efficient. Maybe it'd be using less power. I don't know.

• 16:51Speaker 02

  But they get way brighter than any OLED laptop I've ever seen. And they get way brighter than most OLED screens that we're familiar with. So like, if you go from mini LED to OLED, that's kind of like a small step in certain respects, but maybe a sidestep in others. And then when you get to micro LED, that is supposed to bring the, all the benefits of OLED and all the benefits of mini LED without the drawbacks of either of them. The drawbacks of OLED being the fact that it's organic and can have burn in and can degrade over time. And then mini LED being not quite as black blacks or high levels of contrast as OLED offers, but micro LED is able to offer that. So like, it's a stepping towards it.

• 17:32Alex Cranz?

  I feel like the OLED, you're like. If you're they're on they're on mini LED right now, right?

• 17:37Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 17:38Alex Cranz?

  And the plan is micro LED, but primarily for watches first, even though that's like the weirdest place to put it.

• 17:43Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, I mean, if we want to just jump to that report, I mean, like the other thing, there's been so many like Apple rumors this week. So the other thing from

• 17:49Alex Cranz?

  No, no, no, I want to talk about my thing first. I want to talk about my free thing first. Everybody get excited. These rumors are coming. I told you this is a rumors episode. We're all talking rumors. But I was just gonna say, like, it doesn't make sense to go to OLED if you're at mini LED, because the reason that OLED is so captivating on a TV is you don't get all that bloom that you get with edge lighting or that you get with mini LED. That's that makes it like you get a lot of bloom in a 55 inch TV. You don't get a lot of bloom very often in a high quality laptop display like you see in a Mac. So it doesn't make sense to go like OLED is such a minor upgrade.

• 18:25Speaker 02

  If you had a high quality OLED display and compared it side by side, though, you would notice, like, we can, we can see a difference between the mini LED in the Pro Display XDR, which was like the first mini LED kind of technology that Apple came out with. And then it went into the iPad Pro 12.9 and it got better in the iPad Pro 12.9. And then it went into the MacBook Pro 14 and 16, and it did get noticeably better when you put them side by side. There's less blooming because there are more mini LEDs in those laptops than there was on the iPad or the Pro Display XDR.

• 19:00Alex Cranz?

  Right.

• 19:01Speaker 02

  Maybe if you put the OLEDs next to a mini LED, you would see that kind of same step forward where it's like, okay, now, now that blooming I didn't notice before, oh, I see it now. And I don't see it on the OLED. My thought is that the OLED just won't get the same brightness. It just won't hit the same levels of brightness.

• 19:18Speaker 03

  Well, I think my question or my thought for about why they might do this, if we assume that all the rumors we've heard this week are true, every single thing is going to come true.

• 19:25Speaker 02

  Everything's gonna happen.

• 19:26Alex Cranz?

  Oh, sure.

• 19:28Speaker 03

  That some micro LED is coming from Apple that they're going to do OLED laptops. That the reason why you would have this design target for these 2025 MacBook Pros as OLED screens is because you don't think that the micro LED technology will be ready for a laptop by then.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  Right.

• 19:43Speaker 03

  And it may not be ready for several years, even after that. Even if they get it in the watch, it could take years to scale.

• 19:48Alex Cranz?

  But it sounds like it's going to be expensive.

• 19:50Speaker 02

  Right, right. So like, then the question is, do they stick with the mini LED for, until micro LED is ready? In a laptop size, or do they do this kind of like half step forward with an OLED before going the full step to micro

• 20:04Alex Cranz?

  I guess we did see a lot of OLEDs at CES this year. We saw a lot of OLED laptops.

• 20:08Speaker 02

  There's a ton of OLED laptops on the market. Like there's, Monica's reviewed a bunch of them. There's, they range in prices now. You can get OLED laptops running Windows for about a thousand dollars now, and they do look really good, but they don't hit nearly the brightness of the MacBook Pros. Like, they don't hit the regular everyday brightness, and they certainly don't hit the HDR brightness. So that's like what mini LED brings that OLED, as we've seen it so far, does not. So in two years, maybe OLED will have gotten to a point, it gets a little bit brighter every year, right? Like the TVs have gotten a little bit brighter every single year. Maybe they'll get a little bit brighter enough to get up to the point of where mini LED is at.

• 20:48Speaker 03

  The last thing that I wanted to get on, on this particular thing is that it's a turn from Apple. They've, like, we've said kind of at the beginning that they, they were not doing touchscreen laptops. They said they wouldn't do touchscreen laptops. Now if they would. But if you think about Apple, isn't it kind of, that's their thing is to say that they won't do something and then eventually later say that they did it and did it better than anyone else.

• 21:09Speaker 02

  I mean, that's, yeah, that's totally Apple's MO. I think what's interesting about the touchscreen, though, is that it's taken so long for them to make that turn. Like,

• 21:17Alex Cranz?

  10 years. 10 years or more.

• 21:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, even longer. It's probably closer to 15 years.

• 21:23Alex Cranz?

  Steve Jobs was saying absolutely not to touchscreen laptops when he was alive. And he passed away in what, 2011?

• 21:31Speaker 02

  2009 or 2010, when they launched the iPad, right?

• 21:34Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, he was saying, we'll never see this.

• 21:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, his argument was that like your arm gets tired and it's clumsy trying to use as touch. And like, that is true if touch is the only way that you interact with it. But guess what? You also have a keyboard and a trackpad in front of it. So like, that's why I'm saying like touch is like this third level of interaction. It's not your primary way of using it. But you, we did see Apple, you know, Steve Jobs also said that they would never do a stylus because it would be like, you know, filing down your fingers or something like that. And Lo and behold, the Apple pencil came out and the Apple pencil is really good and stuff like that. So like, yes, Apple's done this. Like, we will say it's bad or deny it until it happens. And then when we do it, it's the best thing ever. It's just what's interesting is how long the Mac has gone without a touchscreen and how they've done these kind of like half steps,

• 22:19Speaker 02

  like the touch bar that didn't really work or take off instead, instead of just doing the thing that everybody wanted was just put a touchscreen on it.

• 22:25Alex Cranz?

  All right. We got to talk about the micro. We've talked about the mini LEDs. We've talked about the OLEDs. I call them OLEDs. Yeah, that's right. We've talked about the touchscreens. We got to talk about the micro LEDs because those are only, the rumor is that's only for the watch, right, Dan? Walk me through it. Walk us through it.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. So here's another, another report from Mark Armman at Bloomberg, but this one is backed up by some other reporting that we, that Apple is working on micro LED screens, which you've been talking about for a few minutes. The report is that like the Apple is designing its own displays that it would then work with manufacturers to build as opposed to buying already designed displays off the shelf and integrating them in its products. And that it will start with making these micro LED screens for the Apple Watch, which is currently using OLED screens and has since launch. And so this would be like kind of the first major screen technology shift for the Apple Watch. And that is, it's also rumored around the timeline of 24 or 25. So we're a little bit ways out. And then, once it's

• 23:29Speaker 02

  in the Apple Watch, maybe it would be in a high end version, like whatever the version of the Ultra is at that year, it would show up in there. So it's a little bit lower yield or smaller number of devices out there. And then as Apple figures out the manufacturing and is able to bring the cost down, stuff like that, it would trickle down to the phones and then the tablets, and then eventually probably the laptops and the desktop displays. So it's, it's like their next level of display technology.

• 23:54Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  And I think as we've just discussed, we can find a really great argument for micro LED in a TV, in a desktop display, in a laptop display. But once you get down to a smaller handheld sized device, and once you get down to an Apple Watch especially, I, I'm, it's hard for me to see. What micro LED brings to that technology? Because if you look at the Ultra, the watch Ultra's screen right now, it's bright, it's 2000 nits, it's got incredible viewing angles, it's incredibly vibrant and color rich, and it looks like it's painted on the glass already. And all of those things are what Mark German is saying micro LED brings. And it's like, we already have that.

• 24:32Alex Cranz?

  That was what, so Chris Welch wrote this really, really great explainer about the micro LED watch. And the two things he was like, so here are the like, the big things it's supposed to do better. It's supposed to have better, like, I guess, power control because it's LEDs instead of OLEDs and they won't burn in, but they'll do basically the same kind of power control, but better somehow. And it'll look like it's painted on the screen. And I'm just, what does that mean?

• 24:58Speaker 03

  Well, one of the things I wonder is that maybe the, the impulses, A, if this is the screen size that they think they can make first. Also, something that I've heard people talk about with micro LED, and we've, we've heard it being talked about to go in virtual reality and augmented reality headsets, that kind of technology. If you can make the screen a different shape, if you can change maybe the bezel or something like that, if it gives them some advantages there, maybe that, that's a reason for them to put it in the watch initially.

• 25:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, there's, there's probably things that I'm not aware of or not thinking of that it does bring benefits. But at least as in the report that we have about it, in the article that Mark wrote on Bloomberg, he said, it does these things, better color reproduction, better brightness, and better viewing angles. And I'm like, none of those things are a problem on the watch Ultra. Like, nobody's complaining about any of those things.

• 25:47Alex Cranz?

  Dan, you've got an Apple Watch. Richard, do you also have an Apple Watch? No.

• 25:51Speaker 03

  I do not.

• 25:51Alex Cranz?

  I assume, yeah. What, what do you, do you have a smartwatch?

• 25:55Speaker 03

  I, I have a Fitbit somewhere.

• 25:56Alex Cranz?

  Are you, are you free?

• 25:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm untethered.

• 25:59Alex Cranz?

  You're free? Oh, my gosh. What's that like?

• 26:02Speaker 03

  I don't know how long I've been standing, or if, or if I ever did.

• 26:05Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, I don't think you, like, never. You just set them float with your computers all around you. Three laptops.

• 26:11Speaker 03

  Surrounded by screens.

• 26:12Alex Cranz?

  News feed on all three of them. Yeah. But I don't think I've ever looked at my Apple Watch and been like, man, that red just doesn't pop the way I wish it did with a micro LED screen. Like, I do that with my TV all the time, but not my watch.

• 26:27Speaker 02

  Here's a optimist's take. I'm full of them today.

• 26:33Alex Cranz?

  You're you're just pro Apple today.

• 26:37Speaker 02

  If you look at the Apple Watches user interface.

• 26:42Alex Cranz?

  Okay.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  The design of it is entirely in dark mode. It is designed to take advantage of an OLED screen. All the menus are black, all the backgrounds are black. Many of the watch faces have black backgrounds, so on and so forth. There's, I mean, Apple's been adding more colorful ones over the years. And yes, you can do a light watch face or whatever. But the interface that when you jump into menus and stuff like that is all black. And then all of that is stemming from power management on the first Apple Watches that came out. And they used OLED screens and OLED screens consume less power with black backgrounds because they turn on fewer pixels or whatever.

• 27:13Alex Cranz?

  Well, they're just not on, like those pixels are just off.

• 27:15Speaker 02

  If micro LED, they're just off, so they're not using as much power. Yeah.

• 27:18Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 27:19Speaker 02

  Or any power when they're off. If micro LED is able to allow Apple to have the same level of power consumption as the OLED and have more interface flexibility, maybe we'll see a revamp of the Apple Watches design, UI design, which we haven't seen in since, basically, since it came out.

• 27:36Alex Cranz?

  But how does that work?

• 27:37Speaker 02

  Maybe we'll see a refresh there because this technology allows them to do more flexibility with what the interface looks like and what is displayed on the screen without consuming more power. That could be a thing.

• 27:47Alex Cranz?

  But how does it make it more flexible? I just don't.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  Well, like you could have a white background instead of black.

• 27:52Alex Cranz?

  But you're still going to have the same power draw issues you'd have on an OLED. You just wouldn't have to worry about burn in.

• 27:57Speaker 02

  I mean, not necessarily.

• 28:00Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, because both micro LEDs and OLEDs, their whole, the whole idea is that if it's black, that means there's just nothing on. It's completely, those pixels are turned off. So like those power draw issues, I don't know. This is one of those things where, one, I'm like, the micro LED thing just doesn't make that much sense. It seems like a weird hill for, for the design wonks at Apple to die on to be like, yes, we're going to pivot so many resources towards a micro LED screen, the smallest we can make on our wrist, instead of these other places where there's genuine use case, especially us, no, hold on, hold on, especially. When e Ink exists and has even less power draw.

• 28:41Speaker 03

  Walked right into that.

• 28:42Alex Cranz?

  It's not like you're out here. Yeah, y'all were like, you thought you were getting away with it.

• 28:46Speaker 02

  Have you seen e Ink? I mean, come on, Alex.

• 28:48Alex Cranz?

  Gallery three is coming.

• 28:49Speaker 02

  Pebble used e Ink. Where's Pebble today?

• 28:51Speaker 03

  A legend.

• 28:52Alex Cranz?

  It wasn't e Ink's fault. Pebble's love.

• 28:54Speaker 02

  The pessimist take on this is that Apple is doing this transition and move to get away from having to rely on other companies as much. It can design its own screens and design its own things and design its own margins and et cetera, et cetera. And so it's not relying on LG display or Samsung display or Sharp or whoever's, you know, making and designing the screens. That is probably what's driving a lot of this, unless the technology, which we haven't seen, because admittedly, I've never seen a micro LED screen in person. They are only available on like $800,000 TVs that you only get to see if you go to CES and I didn't go to CES. So exactly.

• 29:31Alex Cranz?

  The wall, the Samsung wall is really cool.

• 29:33Speaker 03

  I've seen the Samsung wall.

• 29:35Speaker 02

  But like, we've never seen it on a phone sized device. We've never seen it on a watch sized device. We've never seen it on a laptop sized device. We don't, we don't really know how much better it could look in those use cases. So if, unless like, if it turns out that it's not that much different than OLED that we have or the mini LED that we have, then this reads to me more like a business move in that it allows Apple more control over its pipeline and more control over the profit margins and things like that. It's probably the reality is going to land somewhere in the middle, right? There's, it's going to bring some better technology, better user experience and better display technology to the devices that makes using them easier or better or more enjoyable, but it will also help Apple's business case.

• 30:16Speaker 03

  We can settle this easily. We can just call our good personal friend, Dane Cook. He's got one of the like three, the wall displays that have ever been installed. And we'll sit down and watch some stuff and figure out what is good for.

• 30:27Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 30:27Speaker 02

  Do we have, do we have to talk?

• 30:28Alex Cranz?

  Richard, I would watch you hang out with Dane Cook. What would you guys talk about? You're just on your phone the whole time. Just like, I don't want to talk to you or look at the wall. I'm just here because my boss has told me to come. All right, we're going to take a break and when we come back, we're going to talk more rumors, this time not Apple. We're going to talk about some Samsung rumors. Big event coming up. Stay tuned.

• 30:56Speaker 04

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• 32:16Alex Cranz?

  And we're back. Dan, I feel like you were on rumor patrol today. You are Fleetwood Mac. What's going on with Samsung? That was a big, that was a big claim. You've got a lot to live up to. You're Fleetwood Mac now.

• 32:26Speaker 02

  Not a rumor. This is actual, real news. They are having an event on February 1st. It is the first Samsung event of the year, and we're expecting to see the next generation of the Galaxy S line, which would be the S23. This is a little bit earlier than Samsung usually has an event. Typically, we see it later in February, closer to when MWC happens.

• 32:46Alex Cranz?

  Cause they do like Mobile World Congress.

• 32:48Speaker 02

  They usually try to beat MWC by like a week or two, but now they're beating it by like a whole month. And it feels like it's coming up really fast after CES for all of us that just kind of slogged through CES. But whatever, it's happening February 1st. And today, actually, we got rumors that of the first like images of the S23 that we've really seen in terms of renders have leaked. And you know, they look like phones.

• 33:15Alex Cranz?

  That sure is there a phone.

• 33:17Speaker 02

  The thing, the thing with the S23 launch is that like, this is not like the, the, the area that Samsung really like pushes boundaries, right? That happens with the folding phones later in the year. This is like the mainstream Galaxy phones that most people, at least here in the US, if you're buying an Android phone, you're probably buying a Galaxy S phone. And this is like when the.

• 33:37Alex Cranz?

  These look like iPhones.

• 33:38Speaker 02

  They look, well, they, I mean, they look like Galaxy S phones. They really haven't changed the design on these in a couple of years.

• 33:44Alex Cranz?

  These photos, now the camera modules.

• 33:47Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 33:47Alex Cranz?

  The camera modules look Samsung-y, but everything else about these look like iPhones.

• 33:51Speaker 02

  They've also eliminated the camera bump, which would be a change in that like it's slightly thinner now. It's not as wobbly when you put it on a table and things like that. But these are slab smartphones.

• 33:59Alex Cranz?

  That's still a bump.

• 34:00Speaker 02

  They're not like breaking the, the mold here with what this design looks like and stuff like that. You can expect it to have the latest Qualcomm chip inside of it. That's a pretty much a given. It will probably have upgraded cameras. It might have a slightly better, slightly brighter display. It's likely that there will be the S23, the S23 Plus, the S23 Ultra, just like the S22 models that preceded it. And so, you know, there will be the S23 Ultra would be the top of the line. That's probably going to have a stylus and the most cameras and latest technology and stuff like that. And then the other models will have some features stripped out or just smaller sized screens.

• 34:34Speaker 03

  Can we expect a Sprint exclusive Galaxy S23 Epic 2 5G with a hardware keyboard? Is that, is that likely?

• 34:41Speaker 02

  If Sprint still existed, I'm sure you could have.

• 34:46Alex Cranz?

  Where's going to be our army green one with like the plastic case so that you can check it out of your car and it'll survive? That's always my favorite, like variation on the S, the Galaxy S.

• 34:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, they haven't done like the active models in a couple of years, I don't think. Those were always like the ones that like were super chunky and rugged and could like take a beating, but it's been a while since I've seen one of those release. They should just do that with the regular line. Just make it more rugged.

• 35:10Alex Cranz?

  Give me some chunky phones.

• 35:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:12Alex Cranz?

  But like the thing that's really throwing me on looking at these renders is the wallpaper on these things just looks ripped straight from Apple a couple of years ago. When they first did the notch and they tried to hide the notch, you know, by doing like all the color but curved on one side, just barely missing the notch. All of these have the exact same wallpaper.

• 35:31Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. Yeah, I mean, I would say that's not a new move for Samsung. When they first launched phones with the hole punch camera, they did the same thing with their, their wallpapers. They they like hit it.

• 35:40Alex Cranz?

  Just like.

• 35:41Speaker 02

  With the way the wallpaper promo wallpaper worked.

• 35:43Alex Cranz?

  That's wild. Do you think is this one going to have a notch or is it going to be a hole punch?

• 35:47Speaker 02

  Oh, it's almost definitely a hole punch based on these rumors or based on these images.

• 35:50Alex Cranz?

  It is just the most iPhone looking Samsung device I've seen in a very long time. Like they usually don't ape Apple to this extent, and this looks real iPhone-y.

• 36:01Speaker 02

  Well, if you look at the S22 and the S21 before it, it kind of had some more distinctive, like, design traits around, especially particularly around the camera. Like you had that, like, metal housing that, like, bent into the metal frame of the phone and stuff like that. And that was kind of pretty distinctive design trait. And now it's like they seem to be removing that. They seem to be going with, it's hard to tell exactly, but maybe the sides are a little bit more square, which is giving you that iPhone is type of look to the modern iPhones and stuff like that. The back is very plain. It's just three, three holes. There's no like adornment to it and things like that.

• 36:37Alex Cranz?

  I want seven.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  I don't know. I mean, like, obviously, we have not seen these things in person. We are working off of like the very first kind of image leaks that we've seen so far. But yeah, I'm with you that like, these aren't super exciting.

• 36:49Speaker 03

  Perhaps they just don't care. You've got how many engineers devoted to making the Galaxy Fold's hinge work and the screen not crack.

• 36:57Alex Cranz?

  So just a guy being like, oh, yeah.

• 36:59Speaker 02

  I have a feeling they don't have that much time. So way more S23s or S.

• 37:04Speaker 03

  And also, everyone else's phones look like this too. So maybe you're not so worried about saying, oh, we're copying Apple. You say, look at a phone.

• 37:11Speaker 02

  It is what phones look like. For better or worse.

• 37:14Alex Cranz?

  Do you think this is going to be the year Samsung's just like, them's their phones? Here's your phones. Take them. All right. See you next year. Like, do you think they're going to put a lot of effort into this unpack?

• 37:22Speaker 02

  That's not Samsung's MO. Yes. Are you well, so the, oh, I didn't even mention, this is their first in-person unpacked event in like three years. I think they're going to go all out. I think that like the last

• 37:33Alex Cranz?

  Big Spee.

• 37:34Speaker 02

  I don't remember the last in-person unpacked event I went to myself, but up until the pandemic, they were like doing these like really tech-heavy presentations, like the

• 37:46Alex Cranz?

  Super elaborate.

• 37:47Speaker 02

  Oh, super elaborate. They had like stages with screens underneath the presenters and curved up behind them and all of like orchestral music and everything was like this big production and stuff like that. And I think they might be really excited to go do that again because they haven't been able to really do that because you don't really get that same impression through a virtual presentation.

• 38:05Alex Cranz?

  So we're going to get something besides these phones then, right? Because it's going to be really sad if they're like, look at this incredible stage and here's the phone. Richard said, we don't really care about it and he's correct. Enjoy. Like there's going to be other cool stuff they're going to have in it. Like there were some headphone rumors this week, right? Did I read that right?

• 38:23Speaker 02

  Uh, well, they've released a new feature for the existing Galaxy Buds 2 Pro, which just came out last August. So you can now record 3D audio with them. So that's kind of cool. Uh, I don't know. I haven't seen any rumors for headphones and I haven't seen any rumors for wearables. Samsung had a really big fall for wearables. They launched the Galaxy Watch 5, they will launch the Watch 5 Pro, and they've been pretty well received and pretty popular. So I'd be surprised if we see any wearables. It's not typically happened at this years or this time of year event. It's really they focus on the S line because the S line is their moneymaker.

• 38:57Alex Cranz?

  Okay. And no, no, no, the note's dead, right?

• 39:00Speaker 02

  No, the S22 essentially embodied the note last year and it's pretty reasonable to expect that the S23 Ultra will embody the note. It'll have the stylus and the more squared off design that works well with the stylus for writing on the screen.

• 39:16Alex Cranz?

  Well, it's coming February 1st. You guys get excited. We'll absolutely have, we'll probably see more rumors.

• 39:21Speaker 02

  Not far away.

• 39:21Alex Cranz?

  Before then, we'll, we'll have a big breakdown of it beforehand. It's going to be great. Richard, there's also, there was some news with HBO Max. There's a bunch of news this, this week, I feel like for HBO Max. The Minks, this was, this is something I personally was very excited about. Minks was the show that nobody watched. Look at your faces. You have, do you even know what Minks is?

• 39:40Speaker 02

  I watched Minks. I thought they canceled it.

• 39:42Alex Cranz?

  They did. They canceled it. HBO.

• 39:43Speaker 02

  I only heard of it when you said that they canceled it.

• 39:47Alex Cranz?

  You're like, oh, bummer. But so Minks was this show about like 70s feminist porno magazine. It was on HBO Max. It got canceled. Starz has now picked it up and is going to be airing the second season because they filmed a whole second season. And then HBO Max was like, no, we don't want to pay for it. Take it. We don't want it. And so it's going on Starz, which happens to be owned by Legendary, which also produced Minks. But it's like, it's good, it's kind of good news because we had so many weeks of stuff getting canceled and just disappearing and getting yanked from the service. So it's nice to know that some of this stuff is going to find a home. I hope. I really want to see what happens in that back half of the Nevers.

• 40:25Speaker 03

  And meanwhile, on HBO Max, where you're getting less than you used to get, you will now be paying more, at least on the ad pre-plan. It's getting $1 more expensive effective today. If you're a new subscriber, I think kicking in like next month, if you already subscribe. Just zero warning.

• 40:41Speaker 02

  How much more will I have to pay to mooch my father-in-law's cable account? That gives me access to HBO Max.

• 40:48Speaker 03

  Well, you've seen it with Netflix. It starts with with price hikes all the time. And then suddenly they're like, you know what? We're not so into password sharing.

• 40:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's gonna be a sad day.

• 40:58Speaker 03

  Like, so so I think you're gonna see kind of all the streamers go down the same path. And that's something that Emma Roth wrote about recently about why streaming all of these plans is getting more expensive. We know that Netflix has had price hikes every year.

• 41:11Alex Cranz?

  Right.

• 41:11Speaker 03

  Just about for several years now.

• 41:13Speaker 02

  Apple TV raised its price a month or two ago. Yep.

• 41:16Speaker 03

  The price of Disney Plus is going up. Now there's they're bringing in ad packages. HBO already had the the ad package so that you kind of had that option. But they started at 15 bucks essentially, two years ago, years ago now, we are almost three years ago. Wow. 2020.

• 41:32Alex Cranz?

  Woof.

• 41:34Speaker 03

  It has been a pandemic. But they had not raised the price, but they started high at that at that time. It was a it was a bit more expensive than than Netflix and everything else because because it was HBO. But now HBO Max is the primary HBO and I don't know. I'm not sure how people feel about this. I feel like if you were enjoying paying for HBO Max, you're not necessarily worried about it at a dollar more, but you might miss some of the content that they pulled. And I wonder how it's going to go when they blend together the HBO Max and Discovery apps.

• 42:04Alex Cranz?

  And this is just, this is just the ad free version of HBO Max.

• 42:10Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 42:10Alex Cranz?

  Which is, which was historically the same price as what you would pay to subscribe to HBO Max.

• 42:15Speaker 03

  Right.

• 42:16Alex Cranz?

  Through your cable network, but nobody has cable anymore, except for Dan's father-in-law. So.

• 42:23Speaker 02

  I hope he never cuts the cord.

• 42:24Speaker 03

  It's just me. I'm the only person who still has cable.

• 42:26Alex Cranz?

  Those people are still going to be paying $15 a month. The rest of us are going to be paying $16 a month.

• 42:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:33Alex Cranz?

  And so.

• 42:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, like to Rich's point, I don't think this is not the price hike that causes people to cancel.

• 42:40Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 42:40Speaker 02

  But it is just telling of like where this is going. So like then like in a couple of years, eventually it'll be another $2 price hike or whatever. They're going to get to that $20 price point where Netflix is already at for its 4K plan. And then you combine that with they are removing things, they're removing old shows, they are removing, canceling new shows and stuff like that. And now it's just like, I don't know. It ain't great.

• 43:04Alex Cranz?

  Well, I mean, you know, if, if, if, if, if my best friend, David Zaslove was here with us today, he would say, well, look, we, we added Fixer Upper. We added some other TLC shows that only my mom and my sister watch. I love you both, but you have trash taste in TV and film and you're not listening to this because you have trash taste. So you're not even listening to the best show on, on, on podcast networks ever. Rude. But like, like they, they have added stuff. They pulled a lot out. They pulled a lot out that we, that most of us considered kind of core HBO stuff, really high quality cartoons, really high quality TV shows. They pulled that Westworld, I think is probably the most notable example of a show that just got like, just gone. Like, oh, you didn't catch up on season four?

• 43:49Speaker 03

  I was shocked. Like, I knew that they had pulled it, but when I actually went to HBO Max and I searched for it and it wasn't there, I didn't even know how to feel.

• 43:57Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, you're just like.

• 43:58Speaker 03

  I mean, and I haven't watched since the first season. So it was more, it was a

• 44:03Speaker 02

  I think that was in the interest of public health to remove Westworld. And so nobody fell down that that rabbit hole of watching Westworld.

• 44:14Alex Cranz?

  Like, this is the only reason Neelai is, that's actually probably what Neelai is doing. He found some old copies of Westworld. Somebody, somebody sent him some. That's where he is right now, furiously watching that season four. He's the only one. It was just him. And David Zaslove, who then said, absolutely not. Kill it. Kick it off the network. But yeah, I'm like, I think Zaslove would say, we're adding a bunch of content. We're gonna be adding more with this, with this new product that they haven't, that may be called Max, just simply Max, which is a terrible name, a great name for a kid, terrible name for a streaming network. And my question is, are they gonna increase the price again? Are we gonna see Max roll out in six months and then have to pay even more money?

• 44:58Speaker 02

  No, I don't, I don't think they'll increase it in six months. When, when, when they roll out Max, they'll keep the price the same. And they will say.

• 45:04Speaker 03

  And that's why they raised it now. Like, that's, that's the reason.

• 45:06Speaker 02

  They raised it now. So, so they, they will be able to keep it the same. And then, a year later, whatever, then you'll, you'll get the price hike for that. And then they'll, it's just like a frog in boiling water. It's, they just keep little turning up the heat over time. And then you just keep paying it until you realize, like, wait a minute, Netflix isn't worth $20 a month, and you cancel it like I did.

• 45:29Alex Cranz?

  I mean, I still pay for all of them. I have no money for anything. Someone help me figure out how to budget. Can't pay my rent, but I can pay for HBO Max. But I won't pay for Max.

• 45:40Speaker 03

  I told you about cryptocurrency.

• 45:42Alex Cranz?

  Richard, Richard, no, I can't lose any more money to you, sir. I have to, I have to like, I have to have a retirement at some point. We live in your house. The, I guess the other kind of news for me that was really surprising this week was John Deere saying, we're gonna allow you to repair tractors, which is a big moment for right to repair advocates. I mean, nobody here has a tractor, to my knowledge. Unclear, Dan, you, do you have a tractor?

• 46:09Speaker 03

  No.

• 46:10Alex Cranz?

  Richard, Richard lost his tractor in the cryptocurrency.

• 46:15Speaker 03

  It was unfortunate. I took some losses on Ethereum. I mean, to be fair, these, these, we're talking about like

• 46:21Alex Cranz?

  Tractors.

• 46:21Speaker 03

  Commercial level tractors.

• 46:22Alex Cranz?

  No, no, no, we're talking about

• 46:23Speaker 03

  No, there's

• 46:24Alex Cranz?

  You gotta move that hay. You gotta, you gotta feed the cow.

• 46:27Speaker 03

  Not that far from where I live, they have a John Deere like facility where you can see these huge tractors and combines driving around on the streets all the time. It's, it's amazing, like seeing them in person is really awe inspiring. It's just like, I can't believe something is that big.

• 46:41Alex Cranz?

  They're fun to sit in.

• 46:42Speaker 03

  So isn't there a huge catch with this John Deere news though? Yes. It's been kind of a flashpoint over the last few years in the right to repair thing because farmers have a lot of kind of cultural cachet, political, economic importance, you know, to everything that we do. And they've been saying that we have a problem. The trucks, the tractors and all of this farm equipment is getting more technology based. They have to repair things on the farm. They're, they're not near some like, they can't go to the Apple store when, when their tractor breaks down.

• 47:12Alex Cranz?

  Right.

• 47:13Speaker 03

  If they want to fix a part, if they need to make, if they need to tweak something because it's not working for, for what they're doing. They want to be able to do it. They want to be able to get in there. Some, some of these people who are on farms have computer experience are, you know, kind of hacking them and doing their own thing, making them run Doom if they want to.

• 47:28Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 47:29Speaker 03

  And John Deere doesn't like that or hasn't liked that and, and it's pushed back. Uh, but now, yes, with, with this agreement, they sort of said that farmers should be able to repair their own tractors. But there are some loopholes that kind of allow them to get out of this deal if they want to. So, so it's not

• 47:46Alex Cranz?

  Cause it wasn't with the government.

• 47:47Speaker 03

  It's with

• 47:48Alex Cranz?

  This agreement isn't with the government. It's just with like a group of, it's like an organized group of very passionate farmers. Also, if you call those organized groups where they all collectively come together to make bargaining agreements and stuff, a union, don't. Doesn't go well. I did it one time. Do not recommend. But, but this was with the, what, the American?

• 48:09Speaker 03

  American Farm Bureau Federation.

• 48:12Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, the American Farm Bureau Federation, not a federal organization, just a group closely tied with the federal government, closely tied with farmers, technically an independent group as far as I know. And, and they just, they, the agreement was, yeah, we agree to let you do it up until a point. And also we reserve the right to rescind it at any point if any right to repair law at the state or federal level comes out that we don't like.

• 48:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:37Alex Cranz?

  So basically do it our way or else.

• 48:40Speaker 03

  They've turned this group into an ally for them and an enemy against people trying to pass these right to repair laws potentially.

• 48:47Speaker 02

  And you might remember New York just passed a right to repair law the end of this year, which is like pretty groundbreaking and, and, and was a new level for it. However, at the last minute, just before it went live, there was a huge change to it that, you know, it doesn't apply to farm equipment and it doesn't kind of apply to the things that people want from John.

• 49:06Alex Cranz?

  Phones.

• 49:07Speaker 02

  So, so that already is on the books, but I guess John Deere is happy with that one. And I guess if one came out where it did apply to their equipment, then they would say, all right, well, we're, we're out of this agreement now.

• 49:18Alex Cranz?

  It gives me, it gives me the wiggies.

• 49:19Speaker 02

  But I mean, if it's a law, they're forced to comply. So like, whatever.

• 49:22Alex Cranz?

  You're right.

• 49:23Speaker 02

  Like if, if a law comes out, they have to comply, right?

• 49:25Alex Cranz?

  But right now they basically are pitting, they're basically saying, okay, farmers, you can either put your weight behind this law and get your right to, your little fancy right to repair laws that you think will solve everything, passed, or you can join with us and we'll let you do most of what you want without having to worry about laws, without having to worry about going and talking, writing your congressman. That's so boring. Just work with us. Like it's a very seductive. Routine going on here, not a romantically seductive, just seductive.

• 49:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't, I don't trust them. No.

• 49:59Alex Cranz?

  Don't trust them. This always, always makes me think of like how 1930s, people were getting very, I'm going back in time, y'all, I'm sorry. 1930s, people were getting super upset about film. They felt there was, there was too much titillation in film. They felt too much was happening. So they said, we're going to start passing a bunch of censorship laws to censor how films and TV are being made, or TV didn't exist, how films are being made. And all of the, the film companies got together and said, no, we're going to figure our own thing out with absolutely no oversight from the government. Theoretically, good thing. That then created the Hays Code, which was made by like this guy who was like a preacher and had very strong feelings and a lot of them were really racist and sexist and homophobic. And then they made the MPAA, which has continued and perpetuated a lot of that racist and sexist and homophobic stuff.

• 50:44Alex Cranz?

  When like maybe just some little regulation of like, hey, if it's got certain titillating things going on, maybe reconsider having kids go and see that without permission from their parents.

• 50:55Speaker 02

  A similar thing happened with, with music too.

• 50:57Alex Cranz?

  I don't know, maybe, am I calling for more regulation? I feel like I'm calling for censorship regulation.

• 51:01Speaker 02

  Ever.

• 51:04Speaker 02

  It's the industry trying to come up with to a self-regulation to prevent government interference for sure, because government interference might do things that they don't agree or like. And sometimes it's been effective and sometimes it works. I don't know how effective parental advisory stickers were when I was a kid, because that just made me want to buy it more. But you know.

• 51:23Alex Cranz?

  Ooh, when you see that M on there, you're like, I need that.

• 51:26Speaker 02

  That's.

• 51:26Alex Cranz?

  Am I allowed to have it? I don't care. That's the one I want. I just murdered so many people. And now I have nightmares, but all right. We're going to take a break for a second.

• 51:36Speaker 02

  It got really dark.

• 51:37Alex Cranz?

  We're gonna, okay. I know, it got really dark. Somebody say something funny, quick. No, no funny. All right. Okay, I love those, those maturated games, but we should probably move on. So we're going to take a break and when we come back, we're going to try to have a lightning round, some really fun gadgets this week. Did I select all the gadgets this week? You be the judge.

• 51:55Speaker 02

  I, I wonder how you'll be able to tell.

• 51:59Alex Cranz?

  All right, we'll be back.

• 52:05Speaker 05

  Your heart can tell you a lot about your health. Apple Watch Series 12 measures your heart rate every five seconds with the most accurate heart rate sensing in wearable. So your vitals app, now with heart rate variability, can tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Hear the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. The features described are for wellness purposes only and not for medical use. iPhone 11 or later required. Based on Apple conducted study of heart rate accuracy, August 2026. Visit apple.com slash Apple Watch Series 12.

• 52:35Nilay Patel?

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

• 52:56Speaker 07

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

• 53:21Nilay Patel?

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

• 53:40Alex Cranz?

  And we're back. I think the thing I really want to talk about was somebody over last week sent me a video of a guy wearing glasses that had e-ink built into it, and I got so mad, I was furious. And then Sheena, today, saw the exact same video in her own, like, work throughout the day, and was like, I have to blog about this. With the exact same amount of fury I had, and it was a beautiful, beautiful moment. So thank you, Sheena, for that. But these things are called, hold on, this is from a startup called Soul Reader. It's a, they're claiming it's going to be about $350. They're working with Palmer Lucky, who made the, who founded Oculus and then went off to do a bunch of, like, He's like in satellites now or something, right?

• 54:23Alex Cranz?

  Like he's in, he's in government surveillance. Yeah, he's building like weapons and surveillance systems and stuff. But I guess he took a break from building weapons and surveillance systems to work with this company called Soul Reader on these $350 e-ink glasses. They're just a hands-free display, but instead of like a color display in there, it's e-ink, totally opaque e-ink.

• 54:46Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 54:47Alex Cranz?

  I don't understand why it exists, but I'm really like, like part of me is delighted by it because I want new uses of e-ink. But the other part of me is horrified by it because who needs this?

• 54:58Speaker 03

  Does this delight you as much as BMW's car that's covered in e-ink panels?

• 55:03Alex Cranz?

  No, because that's cool. I want a car that has color chaining panels on it. I want to like go through a tunnel and come out the other side and be like, ah, I'm a whole new person. It's red now. That's neat. This is like, I want to put some glasses on and I guess just hang out and, and read that way. I think there's probably definitely a use case for people who don't have as much mobility, but I'm still a little confused by their existence.

• 55:28Speaker 03

  As a person who spent an ungodly amount of money to buy an item in a video game that doesn't make me any better at the game and, and then bought a version of that in real life to represent the useless item in the game that is also useless in real life. I think the problem with this is that it's a little too useful. It's too close to being useful. Like, like you said, like there, there are kind of use cases for it, but still it's, it's glasses that you would put on to read something. And you'd pay $350 for that experience. And then the only thing you would be able to do is read something.

• 55:59Alex Cranz?

  Right.

• 56:00Speaker 03

  First of all, words are evil and bad and the written word shouldn't exist.

• 56:06Speaker 03

  Second. Rich, do you know what your job is, my dude?

• 56:11Speaker 03

  Do you know what we do here?

• 56:15Alex Cranz?

  What you do, Richard does something very different.

• 56:18Speaker 03

  The, with the way I do it.

• 56:22Speaker 02

  Just with such utter hate and distaste for each word that comes out of the keyboard.

• 56:26Speaker 03

  Every day.

• 56:27Alex Cranz?

  Just mercilessly killing all that copy.

• 56:31Speaker 03

  Regretfully, but I certainly wouldn't want just the written word to be my entire experience and interaction with the world. It just, I just can't do it. And I can see how it's useful. I think that's the problem is that it's too close to being something that's useful. If it were completely useless, I'd be into it.

• 56:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. Do you guys remember a few years ago, there was a trend of gadgets that were like visors that you put on that were like video screens and they had headphones attached to them? They were supposed to be like this, like personal theater experience. I think Dieter had reviewed one.

• 57:04Speaker 03

  They're still getting promoted on YouTube. Like, like people still see them.

• 57:09Speaker 02

  That's like what this is, except for reading.

• 57:11Alex Cranz?

  It's an Instagram commercial. Yes, you can read all of your spot.

• 57:14Speaker 02

  Never seen anyone outside of CES.

• 57:17Speaker 03

  See, was that last, see, was that last word that you said that I was into it until you said reading?

• 57:22Alex Cranz?

  If it did video, Richard might be into it, but otherwise, nope. All right, Richard, what's your, what's your gadget of the week? What's, what's, what's got you excited?

• 57:30Speaker 03

  Chris Person brought the Pine-Sil into everyone's life.

• 57:33Alex Cranz?

  He did. People got excited in, at the verge about this.

• 57:37Speaker 03

  I don't fully understand what it is. And, and again, that is the key to making it interesting. It's $25, it plugs into USB. I don't know what it does, but I want one. I need it right now.

• 57:56Speaker 02

  Rich read the first line of the article and then just stopped because word's bad. So he doesn't know what it does, but he got his 25 bucks.

• 58:06Alex Cranz?

  He's got four of them now.

• 58:08Speaker 03

  I'm just saying it's a better way to live.

• 58:10Alex Cranz?

  The Pine-Sil is a soldering iron and you can dial in the, the heat you want. And it doesn't, usually you have to like plug a soldering iron in and it's got a big gall cable and all this stuff. And it can be kind of annoying and awkward and it takes a while to heat up and you will burn the crap out of yourself repeatedly. And Chris guarantees you will burn yourself less with this. Chris doesn't know how bad I am at soldering.

• 58:33Speaker 02

  So yeah, this is powered by USB C, which is kind of like very convenient. You can run it off a wall war or you can run it off a USB C battery, according to Chris in the article. But the key thing here is this is like $25 and it heats up super quickly and then cools down really quickly. So maybe you'll burn yourself less with this one because it cools down so quickly and it's just not as like ganky and bulky as like the old school soldering irons that have not really changed in 50 years. That's $25 and it's translucent. I'm in. I'll pick two.

• 59:02Alex Cranz?

  People and it was wild was like, everybody in chat here at The Verge, when he dropped this thing, he was like, does anybody know what the pine sill is? Like, two people knew and were like, yes, I love it. And everybody else was like, no, I need it. Like, just reflexively. It was like, it was like the sharper image, sharper image catalog. You just open it and everybody's like, I want it right now. Like, so, and then a lot of readers, our readers seem to really, really like it, too. Apparently, it's better for the tips don't melt, like, don't get all messy and gross as often. So, very exciting. If you're in need of a soldering iron.

• 59:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's easy to replace the tips and stuff like that.

• 59:39Alex Cranz?

  This pine sill has a terrible name. It's also open source. I don't know what, like, he's explained it to me multiple times, what an open source soldering iron is, and I still don't understand, and I'm okay with it. I'm like Richard right now. No, actually.

• 59:52Speaker 02

  If you get the pine sill, you can go build your ploopy.

• 59:55Alex Cranz?

  I've got, I got to. Don't need to bring up the fact that my ploopy's been sitting in a Ziploc bag for six months. I was sanding.

• 1:00:02Speaker 02

  Well, you just need a pine sill and then you can build your ploopy.

• 1:00:06Alex Cranz?

  I know. I just need the pine sill to finish. Yeah, it's gonna be great. Okay, Dan, what's your gadget of the week? Is it this week? Or are you gonna be cheating and say something from CES?

• 1:00:14Speaker 02

  I'm gonna cheat and say something from CES.

• 1:00:17Alex Cranz?

  I knew it.

• 1:00:19Speaker 02

  The reason I'm saying this is because this was actually our like best like smart home gadget that we saw at CES and that article didn't come out until after last week's Virg cast episode. So this is the Akara presence sensor is like my gadget of the week. I'm super excited for this thing. And I know Jen is really excited about it. Basically, this is a device that can detect it uses millimeter wave technology, not like millimeter wave 5G, but like it it emits millimeter waves from it. And it can detect a person in a room or space really accurately and really down to like my new movement. So it knows that you're breathing. And what it can do then is you can say like, if I'm in this room, don't turn off the lights, which is like a problem

• 1:01:04Speaker 02

  with motion sensors and smart homes is that like when you have, it's really great for motion sensors to turn on lights when you're coming to a room. But then if you don't have your automation set up properly, or they don't detect motion, say you're reading a book, or you're watching a movie, or whatever it is, and you're not moving enough for the current ones to see you, they will turn the lights off after whatever time you set. So this solves that problem. So now I can like not have my lights turn off in the middle of the day in my office when I'm sitting there just typing at my computer, or you know, eating dinner in the dining room and things like that. So I'm really excited. This came out in China, a year or so ago. They've got a new version that's coming to the US. That's a little bit smaller, a little bit more compact and I'm pretty excited about it.

• 1:01:46Alex Cranz?

  Is it going to support Matter?

• 1:01:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. So the way that Akara supports Matter is through its hub. So

• 1:01:52Alex Cranz?

  Hubs.

• 1:01:52Speaker 02

  The hub is going to be updated and and then yeah, the the hub, I believe the M2 hub is going to be the first one that's going to get their software update to support Matter and then all the devices that connect to that hub, which use Zigbee, will be available to other Matter devices. I would say that like with Akara, Matter's not that big of a deal because a car itself already supports all of the major smart home platforms. You can integrate into HomeKit, it supports Google Assistant, it supports Amazons, it supports smart things out of the box. So maybe Matter will open that up to even other or future smart home platforms that we don't know about yet. But for now, at least, Matter's not going to change much for your car experience. But they're getting it. So good. Cool.

• 1:02:36Alex Cranz?

  Are you, would you be able to like use it? Because you said it can detect breathing. Would you be able to use it like pointed at somebody and be like, are they dead? Flash the lights in the house if they stop breathing.

• 1:02:47Speaker 02

  In theory.

• 1:02:48Alex Cranz?

  Like new sleep apnea detector.

• 1:02:51Speaker 02

  Like I, I, I've seen some testing. There's been some folks on YouTube who have purchased the Chinese version and like just imported it where they were and have tested it. And like the level that you can set it to like detect motion is so finite like, and you can set zones of like, okay, beyond 10 feet, don't ignore anything. And that like, it's like, there's almost like a virtual wall right at 10 feet where it just stops detecting.

• 1:03:17Alex Cranz?

  Oh, that's cool.

• 1:03:18Speaker 02

  Anything beyond that. And as soon as you break that barrier, it, it can detect you or seize motion, which is just wild. It's really cool.

• 1:03:24Alex Cranz?

  That's very, very cool. Okay. Nevermind. That sounds fun. That's, that's not cheating. I'm going to cheat though, again, and I'm going to add one more because there's an air conditioner Jen saw at CES that she did not mention in our excellent CES episode that went up this week. And it's an air conditioner with an LED screen on it. It's a mini split AC unit with a digital photo frame. 27 inches, made for by LG. It uses the Think Q app. It appears to just be one of the 27 inch ultra wide monitors slapped on the front.

• 1:04:01Speaker 02

  That's what it looks like.

• 1:04:02Alex Cranz?

  Of this air conditioner with like a big like garish frame. I've never been more delighted by something.

• 1:04:09Speaker 02

  I, I like what they're trying to do here.

• 1:04:11Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:11Speaker 02

  Like, because those mini split ACs are not attractive. And when you have them in your home to be effective, they basically have to be in almost every room.

• 1:04:20Alex Cranz?

  Right.

• 1:04:20Speaker 02

  So you've got a bunch of them and you've got a cut hole in the wall and install them and stuff like that. And they're not pretty to look at. So this is like an attempt to kind of mask it with technology and design. And like, they get a little way there. It's, it looks better than a non mini split, I think. And maybe it's supposed to be like, maybe someone isn't going to notice that there's an air conditioner up there behind it. I don't know.

• 1:04:41Alex Cranz?

  Just be like, why do you have this 27 inch digital picture frame with some water in it?

• 1:04:48Speaker 02

  Hot mounted high up on the wall. Like, yeah, why is it like all the way up there?

• 1:04:52Alex Cranz?

  Like up at the ceiling. Why is it pointed towards your fan? What's happening here? That's so good.

• 1:04:59Speaker 02

  Mini splits are very good for efficiency, though. So like, they do have lots of benefits.

• 1:05:03Alex Cranz?

  Mini splits are great. I just love like, so many ways they could have gone about it. They could have put some wood paneling on there. They could have put like, some, I don't know, some leaves or something about it. Instead, they're like, because everybody has just leaves randomly hanging in their home. Instead, they're like, we're going to put a picture frame on it, a 27 inch monitor, just slap it on there.

• 1:05:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, now they can sell you an art subscription.

• 1:05:26Alex Cranz?

  Oh, there we go.

• 1:05:27Speaker 02

  To display on the screen, so that it's got recurring revenue.

• 1:05:30Alex Cranz?

  There you go.

• 1:05:31Speaker 02

  You got to think about the business here, Alex.

• 1:05:33Alex Cranz?

  I have, I'm so sorry, I forgot. Yeah, there's no pricing on it. There's no release date, so if you are looking for a new mini split, and this sounds incredible to you, I'm sorry, you're probably going to have to wait a little while. This might not ever appear, but you could just do this with your current mini split. Just, just go buy a 27 inch monitor and deck tape it up there, right?

• 1:05:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, bolt of vase amount to it and.

• 1:05:57Alex Cranz?

  Guys, that is it for the Vergecast this week. We will be back next week, next Wednesday. We've got a great episode. Monica is coming on to talk about laptops and a lot of the stuff she saw at CES. Victoria Song is going to be there and talk about all sorts of weird FDA regulatory weird wonkiness that is happening, that kind of started to come out of CES. And then we'll be back for the regular Friday show next week. It's going to be super fun. And you can reach us all on Twitter, or if you want to hit up Richard, you can go buy some FTX coins from him. He's still selling some, he would love to sell them to you.

• 1:06:36Speaker 02

  Some rich coins. I got them all.

• 1:06:37Alex Cranz?

  Rich coins. You can also reach Richard on Twitter at RJCC. Dan is DCCFert. I am Alex H. Cranz.

• 1:06:47Speaker 02

  Can I just claw fry? If you can find me on Twitter, I don't really use Twitter anymore. You can, you can also find me on Mastodon. I'm going to be the rogue one using Mastodon. But if you go to my Twitter account.

• 1:06:56Alex Cranz?

  Wow.

• 1:06:57Speaker 02

  That Alex just mentioned, there's a link to my Mastodon, where I actually post.

• 1:07:01Alex Cranz?

  All right, so go to his Twitter account and then go to his Mastodon account and then buy some cryptocurrency from Richard. Nilay is so sorry he missed this week's episode. That's it, I'm not going to say rock and roll. Instead, Andrew, shut up.

• 1:07:15Speaker 02

  Siri is saying it for you.

• 1:07:16Alex Cranz?

  Instead, Andrew, play us some rumors. Hey Siri, play rumors by Fleetwood Mac. Oh, it didn't work.

• 1:07:23Speaker 02

  I'm shocked that Siri didn't work.

• 1:07:26Alex Cranz?

  All right, that's it. That's it. We'll see you next week.

• 1:07:30Speaker 02

  Rock and roll.

• 1:07:35Speaker 08

  And that's a wrap for Vergecast this week. Thanks for listening. If you enjoy the show, subscribe in the podcast app of your choice or tell a friend. You can send us feedback at [email protected]. This show is produced by me, Liam James, and our senior audio director, Andrew Moreno. This episode was edited and mixed by Amanda Rose Smith. Our editorial director is Brooke Minter, and our executive producer is Eleanor Donovan. The Vergecast is a production of The Verge and Box Media Podcast Network. And that's it. We'll see you next week.

• 1:08:08Nilay Patel?

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

• 1:08:30Speaker 07

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

• 1:08:54Nilay Patel?

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

• 1:09:10Speaker 09

  Support for this show comes from CoreWeave. Everywhere you look, AI is expanding what we thought was possible. And at the center of it all is CoreWeave. Medical research and diagnosis, education, complex visual effects for movies, science and technology breakthroughs. CoreWeave powers AI pioneers around the world with purpose-built tech, building what's never been built before. CoreWeave is the essential cloud for AI. Ready for anything? Ready for AI. To learn more about how CoreWeave powers the world's best AI, go to coreweave.com/readyforanything.