Pod Insights The Vergecast Microsoft’s big AI Build and Max’s messy streaming launch About this episode The Verge's Nilay Patel, David Pierce, Alex Cranz, and Tom Warren discuss the biggest announcements from Microsoft Build 2023.
Later, the crew discuss the launch of Warner Bros. Discovery’s combined streaming service Max.
Further reading:
Elon Musk fails to launch Ron DeSantis in disastrous Twitter Space
Microsoft Build 2023: The 5 biggest announcements
Microsoft’s Copilot and Bing AI plug-ins will be interoperable with ChatGPT
Bing is now the default search for ChatGPT
Microsoft 365 Copilot is getting plug-ins
Microsoft’s Edge browser is getting the 365 Copilot AI assistant
Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott thinks Sydney might make a comeback
Microsoft announces Windows Copilot, an AI ‘personal assistant’ for Windows 11
Max has arrived, and it’ll feel very familiar to HBO Max customers
Max will stream over 1,000 movies and TV episodes in 4K at launch
Warner Bros. Discovery apologizes for crediting writers and directors as ‘creators’ on Max
HBO Max remote button killed in Max rebrand — 9to5Mac
HBO Max now Max: lacks native video player features; 'Up Next' support bugs - 9to5Mac
Sony’s new Q handheld is official: 8-inch screen, streams PS5 games
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript 17,594 words · 11 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:22 Nilay Patel? Hello and welcome to Grown Cast, the flagship podcast of being alone in the studio and the studio doesn't smell like weed. Hmm. And making an obvious inference from that information. I'm your friend Neelai. Alex Cranz is not in the studio with me today. I am very sober right now. Thank you very much. That's great. David Pierce is here.
1:40 David Pierce? Hi. Is that a thing we should start saying at the beginning of every show? Like on a, from a, like the new go 90 scale is like the scale of how sober are you at the beginning of the show? It feels like it's, we're, we're big on transparency and disclosure here at The Verge. That feels like a good thing.
1:52 Nilay Patel? I've told this story before, but I'll tell it again now for our new expanded audience. When we first started this podcast as the Engadget podcast in like 2008, ages ago, a million years ago, I was very nervous. I was a young, just a young writer with a microphone and a dream. And I would drink during the show and our podcast producer Trent Willby once pulled me aside and said, one, it's fine that you're getting hammered during the show, but I can hear the ice cubes in your glass.
2:20 David Pierce? It's good to have priorities.
2:21 Nilay Patel? So I just started drinking the whiskey neat. That was just what happened. From that day forth, I started drinking neat whiskey during most of the early Engadget podcasts, which I believe AOL has deleted from the internet.
2:31 David Pierce? Just thank you.
2:32 Nilay Patel? For the best. Thank you to our friends at AOL.
2:35 Alex Cranz? If you have those, please send them to me. [email protected] . No reason.
2:40 David Pierce? I will exchange it for a music video featuring Neelai Patel that you will very much enjoy.
2:45 Nilay Patel? Oh, my God.
2:45 David Pierce? So we can make this trade.
2:47 Nilay Patel? Tom Warren is here. Hi, Tom. That was a good segue. Hello. I want to see his music video.
2:53 David Pierce? Yeah, we could do that.
2:54 Alex Cranz? It's incredible.
2:55 Nilay Patel? We could just talk about my Chicago local band career. I was on the radio a number of times. It was great.
3:01 David Pierce? Maybe the next time you refuse to come on the show, we'll just start the show with a full-length play of this video.
3:08 Nilay Patel? Here's what I know. You know how I love talking about the economics of the music industry and copyright law and how the artists make money? It's because if someone had just told me, "Don't have 45 people in your band," I think we would have been more successful. Anyhow, there's a lot going on this week. It was Microsoft Build, a bunch of AI news. Kevin Scott told us that Sydney might come back on the Decoder podcast, which is great. Tom's here to talk about that. Max launched. Alex, I'm sure you have feelings about Max. I know for a fact that it should not be named after my child, especially if they're not going to use the native video players on these platforms. Just a lot there.
3:47 Alex Cranz? We'll talk about it. We'll get into it.
3:49 Nilay Patel? And then we have a wee bit of a lightning round. I do need to note, just for checking the boxes, people tweet at me when anything happens. They're like, "We can't wait for you to talk about Elon and Ron DeSantis on Twitter Spaces." And we're not gonna.
4:00 David Pierce? That's good. You have just said all the stuff there is to say about that. It was, let's just not. Yeah, sounds great.
4:07 Nilay Patel? I'm going to say that Travis Scott had 12 million people watch his stuff in Fortnite, and Fortnite didn't go down.
4:12 Alex Cranz? Yep.
4:13 Nilay Patel? I mean, there's nothing to say anyway, because it didn't work, right? Very good. You know what did work? Microsoft Build.
4:18 Alex Cranz? Yeah, great segue.
4:20 Nilay Patel? So it was Build, Build, up and down history of this developer conference, right? Like, every year, we look forward to Google I/O. We look forward to WWDC. Some years, Microsoft is like, "Come to Build. Everything's going to happen to Build." Famously, they made us come to Build. They hyped the hell out of Build for Windows Phone 7. Do you remember this? Yeah. I remember it because that's where I met a young Dieter Bone, and we fell in love. It's a true story. But lately, the past few years, Tom, it's been kind of quiet. This year, similarly quiet, but a lot of announcements because of all the AI work they're doing.
4:54 Speaker 05 Yeah, it's definitely been quiet over the past few years. I think since Windows 10, really, it's been, it's been quiet, particularly on the dev side. But yeah, this year, they're just going all out AI, right? Like, it's everything. And I think the big, the big thing for them this year was, obviously, they've launched this Bing AI. They have the, the Copilot stuff's out there. But I think this year, it was kind of like asserting that that Copilot is their platform, right? Like, Nadella came on stage and talked immediately about a platform shift. So he believes that this is the next platform shift and that Microsoft's obviously, you know, driving it, whatever. So Copilot is basically their platform. And then they have plugins on that platform, which are essentially their apps.
5:36 Speaker 05 So that was the, the main two things, really, was the platform and the plugins, I think, for Build this year.
5:41 David Pierce? Can we talk about Copilot? Because I realized in, in prepping for this, that like, my sort of mental picture of what Copilot is, is very confused. Because it's, they talk about having multiple different Copilots. So it's sort of a thing that exists in a lot of the different apps that you use, if you use Microsoft products. But then there's a thing called Copilot for Windows now, that is just a thing that lives in the Windows taskbar that can do stuff. It's like, it's one thing and it's many things, but it's also a platform, but it's also a product. Like, what is Copilot? Like, how does Microsoft describe this thing that they've made?
6:14 Speaker 05 So they do describe it differently for wherever it's used.
6:18 David Pierce? Oh, cool. Thanks, Microsoft.
6:19 Speaker 05 So that doesn't help. But it started off life in GitHub, which was, that's where the, the sort of naming came from. Which was essentially an assistant to help you sort of code. Not as quiet as in depth as we see the Copilot appear now. But the second instance of it was in Office. And they, they have a variety of Copilots within Office. So they have one for Word, Outlook. And they're all distinctly slightly different, right? Like, there's certain things you can't do in Outlook that you can do in Word, for example, or PowerPoint. So they're all sort of slightly tweaked individually and they don't necessarily communicate with each other. But then there's a Copilot in Teams, which is like
6:56 Speaker 05 Business chat or whatever they call it, which then looks across all of your documents, all of your chat, all of your emails, calendar, whatever, pulls out anything. So it's it's more of like an assistant. And I think they're taking that now and kind of putting that similar sort of assistant, like sort of personal assistants, what they call it, into Windows, so Windows Copilot. So it is slightly confusing.
7:17 David Pierce? It's very confusing.
7:18 Speaker 05 Yeah, because it's not it's not a single co-pilot. It's it's like individual sort of assistant AI, assistive AI technologies. And yeah, they haven't they haven't done a single one. So it's not like Cortana, right? There's there's no like key replacements of Cortana, unless you consider Windows Copilot yet, but.
7:33 Nilay Patel? The Windows Copilot is really fascinating because it's what Big Sp was supposed to be on Samsung phones. It just is. It's like.
7:42 Speaker 05 It is, yeah.
7:42 Nilay Patel? If you look at the demo, it's like, how do I turn on? You just ask it, how do I turn on focus modes? And it just uses the computer for you, which is really cool.
7:52 Speaker 05 Yeah. And how do you turn on dark mode? And all the audience is like, there's a dark mode in Windows. It definitely can surface stuff like that, but I think their aim is obviously for it to be way more than just controlling Windows, you know, like. But but interesting with Windows Copilot though is that the way you interact with it, like. There would be some obvious privacy concerns, right? If there's something at the sidebar that's just reading and watching everything you do, just to perhaps summarize it, or perhaps you ask it a question or whatever. So you actually have to copy content out of your apps and then it like, it's like, oh, it senses the clipboard and it says, do you want to? Analyze this and summarize it or whatever, ask you a question. So they haven't showed off all the features of Windows Copilot, but.
8:35 Speaker 05 That's kind of like some of the stuff that they're hinting at right now. But it would be interesting to see how they then get these plugins in there and interact with apps and.
8:44 David Pierce? Yeah, that tension you just described is the thing about this that is so interesting to me because like, on the one hand. Like, I think it's insane that Microsoft is just calling all of these things co-pilots, but I ultimately think that'll sort itself out, right? That it's like. Copilot just becomes shorthand for like the the AI thing that helps you in whatever app you're in. And it won't have a character or a face. And I think people will sort of start to get that. But to have this thing in Windows that, like you're saying, is like content aware and sees what I'm doing as I'm doing it is both very cool. And I think kind of obviously where a lot of these things are going at a platform level and also totally horrifying at a privacy level.
9:24 Alex Cranz? Like, because on the surface, it just sounds like, hey, we have a keylogger that sometimes helps you. It's like, well, I hate that.
9:31 Speaker 05 That's the, that's the main concern, right? With, with the way that they do it in Windows. So I think that's why they've obviously made it very clear that you have to copy content out. Like, you have to do that clipboard action for it to then be able to see that content. And to be fair, Windows clipboard at the moment does that anyway, right? You can, you'll, you'll pull out stuff from clipboard and it goes in there. And that's a cloud clipboard clipboard as well. So it can be synced up to Microsoft services and stuff.
9:56 David Pierce? I mean, that's the thing, right? It's like, oh, no, Microsoft is going to know all the stuff that I'm doing. It's like, my dude, you use Windows and Word and Edge, like Microsoft already knows.
10:05 Nilay Patel? Yeah, I mean, this has been a, actually, we started off by talking about Windows 10. Microsoft has been on this journey since Windows 10 came out, right? Like, they started collecting ever more telemetry data inside of Windows 10 with Windows 10 itself and took a lot of flack for it. And now it's like they're doing a helpful keylogger. And everyone's like, that's pretty dope, though, because it's cool. And like, there's a real flip in how we are thinking about the privacy implications of all this stuff, because the utility is there. When the utility for the send your data away was like, you'll get personalized advertising.
10:40 David Pierce? Or your boss will know how much you're working, which is one of the stories Microsoft has told over the last few years.
10:45 Nilay Patel? Yeah, it's like, then definitely I think they should go to jail. When it's like, oh, the robot will use the computer for me. It's like, no, actually, you should watch, come here, take a look at this. Have you seen what I'm up to? And historically, when I, when there's that level of utility, we are more than happy to throw our privacy away.
11:01 Speaker 05 Yeah, I mean, we do it with Google, we do it Gmail, you know, like these same, well, not same, but similar privacy arguments have happened for decades, right? So I think it's kind of similar here. It is, like you say, you're getting the utility for it. That's the trade off. You are giving away perhaps some data that you might not be necessarily aware that you're giving away, but you are getting something back, essentially.
11:22 Alex Cranz? How useful is it? Because I think like, I think that that kind of comparison to these other things, like even Siri and Alexa are both things that are, it's just a microphone in your home. So of course you like, RIP privacy. But there's useful, I can ask for the weather and the time and that makes it worth it to give away all my privacy. Does it feel that way with?
11:42 David Pierce? What a bleak sentence that is, by the way. That is the trade that we've made. I can know the weather and the time and maybe, maybe set a timer and for that I will give you all of my privacy forever and ever.
11:55 Speaker 05 This thing can hear me sleep, but I get the weather.
11:58 David Pierce? This is the world we've chosen to live in. Congratulations, everybody.
12:02 Nilay Patel? No, I didn't say it was like a lot of utility. I said it was just like, it's anything more than, I don't know, like you, you clicked on one thing on Amazon and now that thing will follow you around the internet. If you just provide a little bit more usefulness than that, everyone's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, microphone's in my bathroom, let's do it.
12:19 David Pierce? This is a total aside, but can I give you the exact thing that has been happening to me recently? I bought a hat, like a baseball hat, on the internet because I'm old and I'm not allowed to go out in the sun anymore. So I bought a hat and this incredible thing has been happening to me where every single ad I see everywhere on any platform is for hats. And you would think that would be awful, but it actually kicks ass because I have discovered so many new brands of hats, so many types of hats. I have learned things about kinds of hats that I didn't know about existed. There are five panel hats, there are six panel hats, there's a dad hat, there's a baseball hat, like it's, it's been amazing. I bought a hat from an Instagram ad like an hour and a half ago.
12:58 Nilay Patel? Oh my God, it's working. Dude, you're feeding the beast.
13:00 David Pierce? This is it. Hats are the first good experience I've ever had on the internet.
13:03 Nilay Patel? Have you found the guy who makes hats for people whose heads are too small?
13:06 David Pierce? That's the one I just bought.
13:09 Nilay Patel? It's like, it's the greatest pitch in internet marketing history.
13:12 David Pierce? He's like, trucker hats are too tall, buy my hat. And I was like, yes, they are too tall. I will buy your hat.
13:17 Nilay Patel? It's so funny. He's like, I've been having this one problem. I've dedicated my life to solving it.
13:22 David Pierce? And then he pokes the hat.
13:24 Nilay Patel? He's like, this hat's too big.
13:26 David Pierce? So anyway, be more like hats, rest of the internet.
13:28 Nilay Patel? Sadly, the point that we have just made is that advertising internet works. Yeah, it's a real problem.
13:34 David Pierce? But only when it's good. And but that's, that's to your point, right? The, the flip side of that is the Amazon thing. Where it's like, oh, you bought this hat? Would you like to buy this hat again? How about this hat that you just bought? Would you like to buy it again?
13:43 Nilay Patel? It worked with you, is what you are saying. You got entered into the giant cloud database of people who will buy hats online, and then they found you again.
13:52 David Pierce? If all advertising worked like hats, I'd be much happier.
13:55 Nilay Patel? All right, we gotta get back to AI. I don't know how we got to hats. So Microsoft made a Bixby in Windows that watches you while you sleep, is that part of it?
14:03 David Pierce? Wow.
14:05 Nilay Patel? Microsoft put Copilot in Windows. It has a bunch of cool features. It's, it is fascinating to think about putting AI at the operating system level. Which Microsoft has really not been focused on for quite a while, right? Like, but now they're saying, okay, we can make Windows interesting again, which is fascinating. But then they're putting it everywhere else too, right? It's in Office. It's gonna be in Edge. Where are you supposed to use it? What do those versions of it do?
14:30 Speaker 05 Yeah, that, that's the thing. So they're, they're all very similar. We haven't seen a ton of the Windows stuff to know exactly how it's different. So obviously, you can understand it's at the side. And also, I think it's kind of interesting. They've put it as a sidebar in Windows. Particularly when it's like ultra wides and stuff, because I, I hate ultra wides, but I can see that having a sidebar would be kind of useful on a giant, you know, ridiculous screen.
14:56 Nilay Patel? Just like the HAL panel, just staring at you.
14:59 Speaker 05 But yeah, how they how they're different, to be honest, that isn't all that clear, if I'm honest, because I think the way that they're putting it into Windows right now, into the Windows Copilot, is they want it to be search, right? In the same way that they kind of wanted Cortana to be search as well, because that kind of integrated into the Windows search thing. They're doing it slightly different here, so it's a separate button, it's not gonna sort of hijack the Windows search thing, but let's be honest, how long is that gonna last? Like, they're blatantly gonna change this into Windows search, because they wanna push those search queries. Yep. They're pointing in the sidebar now, because they're rushing to get it out there, right? So, but yeah, I think that's where it's different, because on Windows, they're trying to push the search on Edge.
15:43 Speaker 05 Yeah, they're pushing the search there, but it's also contextual in web browsing, so you can obviously summarize whatever you're looking at, ask questions about what you're looking at. Obviously, the Copilot in Windows can't do that, because it's not gonna be able to view your apps in the same way. Interesting, but I can see your screen, right? I don't think so, no. Like, I think you have to actually copy stuff out of the app, like into your clipboard to interact with it. So it's gonna be contextual, but in a bit of a weird way. So Edge is watching you browse? Yeah, Edge is just watching you browse, as long as you've enabled Edge to, you know, track your browsing history, which most people just click OK to, then yeah, it's gonna know. It will just, you just click the sidebar button, and then immediately it's read that webpage
16:27 Speaker 05 of whatever you're looking at, and then you just ask it questions about that webpage. So you could be looking at TV and then be like, is there another TV like this, but that's like $400 and not $500? Like, you can ask it those sort of questions in Edge. Obviously, you won't be able to do that in Windows, so.
16:43 Alex Cranz? Isn't there like a fatal flaw to this, though, in that it relies on Bing?
16:47 Speaker 05 Yeah.
16:50 Speaker 05 That is the fatal flaw, like, especially for news stuff, because like the Bing sources for that sort of information are bad.
16:58 Alex Cranz? Bing's like, I tried to switch over to, you know, everybody was like ChatGPT and all of this, so I was like, okay, I'm gonna like go all in on Bing for a few minutes. And it was miserable.
17:09 Nilay Patel? Oh.
17:10 Alex Cranz? It was, it was every time I kept being like, ah crap, I'm in Bing. Like I have to go and manually type in Google because the Bing search results were never as effective. And it wasn't just like work stuff, like we often had times have to use Google here because we're thinking about search engine optimization. But, but it was, it was just like, I just want to find this shirt. And Bing would be like, no.
17:31 Nilay Patel? Yeah. Bing is also ugly and I
17:37 Nilay Patel? I like, I understand why it is. It's like, I'm about to make a very bad excuse for it being ugly. Microsoft figured out how to make money on Bing. Like Bing is a profitable, reasonably sized business inside of Microsoft. Because they were like, well, no one's looking at it anyway. Let's shove garbage in it. And so it's just full of garbage. Like it is the $250 subsidized Windows PC of online search engines. It's just stickers everywhere, man. Just weird signup crap and weird flow. Like they just festooned it with crap to make it make money. And now they're like, it's going to compete with Google. And it's like, this is more like being robbed.
18:22 David Pierce? It always makes me think of the, the thing like where Google, you know, tests 40 different versions of the color blue before it decides which one to put on the page. Microsoft just puts all 40 on the page at the same time. It's just like, what do you like, blue? Here's some blues, go nuts.
18:35 Nilay Patel? And it's funny because if you click into the Bing chat experience, that is way nicer. Because it's clean in its way. And so it's like, it's a new product, but it's just connected to this like seedy back alley of the search experience.
18:50 Speaker 05 The history and context of that is MSN, right? So MSN.com was always their entity in Internet Explorer that everyone would just land on, you know? Like that was the default and people actually got used from there. Like that was quite a considerable amount of traffic to that website back in the day. So they still have that component and that's what drives a lot of their new stuff. And I will see the advertising revenues and all that sort of stuff. And it's, it's interesting about that MSN component because it's also part of the Windows widget system as well. So you open up widgets and you just see like shit, basically. This is the best way to describe it is because it is just. It's just pure garbage.
19:27 Nilay Patel? It's just like Microsoft's user experience of the future is like absolutely cutting edge AI assistants and then like algorithmically recommended content targeted at boomers. And those things are going to get jammed together into some version of the future, no matter what.
19:43 David Pierce? Yeah, ironically Bing is stuck in a worse version of the same thing. Google is stuck in, which is that when you have a big audience full of people who have used your product for a very long time, it's really hard to change it. And so what what the Bing team is doing is, like you said, just launching this new thing with AI that they will then just sort of creep in on top of everything else that is Bing. But ironically, there's this big group of people like Tom's talking about who have used MSN as their browser homepage for 25 years. And if they make Bing attractive, those people are going to freak out. And those people are the people who make Bing money.
20:16 Nilay Patel? Yeah, they're clicking on the ads.
20:17 David Pierce? Yeah, they're like, our ugly search engine is required to be ugly, or else everyone will stop using it.
20:23 Nilay Patel? So here's a question about Edge and a copilot in Edge that I've been racking my brains about with Google, with Microsoft, with everybody, really. So you put an AI in the web browser and you're like, browse the web with me. There's a lot of assumptions baked into what the web is there, right? You're like, I'm looking at this e-commerce page with a TV on it. Find me some more TVs. One, you have to assume that e-commerce page is written such that the AI can understand it and understand what's important on that page and what's not important. What TV am I even looking at on this page? Excellent question, right? So you have to structure the webpage to make that work. Then you have to have like a lot of other webpages with TVs on them structured in the same way so that the AI can go out and compare them.
21:08 Nilay Patel? Another big challenge. And then it's got to reformat that all into some data and send you out somewhere to buy a TV. It just seems odd to me that we're assuming that the incentives to make those webpages will continue to exist when actually you're not looking at the webpages, you're looking at a sidebar where an AI is reading the webpages for you. Like, there's just something there that I can't. It's like the IR blaster of of AI technologies where it's like, instead of just like using the thing directly, you're going to point a remote at a repeater that points at the TV for like, it's just, there's a level of weirdness there that I can't quite understand.
21:43 Alex Cranz? Yeah, but it's still easier than getting up and going and hitting the button on the TV.
21:47 Nilay Patel? Is it?
21:49 Speaker 05 I was gonna say, we spent more than a decade as being on the web and publishing. And you know, from our point of view is optimizing our pages for Google's, you know, robots to read them. So I think in terms of are the pages optimized for that, I think probably they already are, right? Like they're just using the same sort of skimming that they've done for for more than 10 years now. So I don't mean that's a problem, but it is the shift of like, how will this affect that, you know, SEO? Like, how how will publishers adapt to this? Like, are they gonna try and surface their TVs in this particular way anymore? Or are they gonna go for real humans that are actually reading the websites instead of robots? Like, that's gonna be a definite shift with this stuff.
22:34 Speaker 05 I think it probably will go more towards people optimizing their sites for people who are actually reading and actually clicking rather than, you know, thousands of visits from AI robots picking up your site and spewing it out with ads that you're not making any money on, you know? Like, this is gonna definitely change that in some pretty major ways.
22:54 Nilay Patel? So I had this conversation with Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott on Decoder. He has a new title now, he's also EVP of AI, he's like the person in charge of AI. And we actually left this out of the podcast because it was it was too heady for Decoder, but I'll bring it up on the Vergecast. I was like, it seems dumb that we're gonna program our computers with English and like, let them guess what we want. Like, that's very useful in some contexts, but it's weird when it's like, I want you to go find me some webpages and it goes reads the web for me and guesses what I want. And it shows that to me over here instead of me just browsing the web. Or I tell it, come up with an Excel function in Office Copilot and it makes one for me.
23:35 Nilay Patel? And I might not know how to write an Excel function, so I just have to assume it's good.
23:40 Speaker 05 Yeah, true.
23:41 Nilay Patel? And he was pointing out like, there's actually, there have like always been sort of like, what he called stochastic programming languages. It's like programming languages with random outputs. And he's like, this is better for people. And it just seems like we're we're about to start using our computers in this way, where right now you like click a button and you're like, this button will do what I want it to do. And instead of that, you're gonna tell the computer to do something. And then you're just like gonna hope that it does what you want. And AI has closed that loop, so you kind of think it will do what you want. But all this copilot stuff is like, man, you are, you're just shifting your intent from do what I want to, I'm hoping you can accomplish my task.
24:22 Speaker 05 Yeah, because it's not, it's not going to do the same thing every single time either. You know, if you ask a TV, for example, like last week, there'll be a new TV probably this week. So it's going to fetch that data and then it's going to change the result every time. Which obviously, when you search stuff on Google, it changes over time as well. But I feel like most of the time I've used Bing and Chat GPT and stuff like that, I can, I can't always with confidence, ask it the same question day to day and it will give me the same answer. Even if it's based on like a fact, it's, it'd be slightly different. There'll be a slightly different source that might skew it. It's coming down to those sources and being in the past has not had good sources of information, in my opinion.
25:01 David Pierce? One of the weird things about, I think, what we all do for a living is that we spend a lot more time doing research than doing tasks. And I think most people spend most of their time on a computer doing tasks. And if, if my job is to get Excel to total up all the dollar figures in this gigantic spreadsheet, the difference between me finding all the things to do in a menu, me learning the keyboard shortcut and me learning the prompt to the copilot in Excel, I would argue those are all functionally the same thing. And I think the thing that's going to happen, and the thing that Microsoft seems to have figured out, is that for that simple, like, how do I turn a six-step process into, you know, a two-thing macro into a one-step prompt to an AI? Like, that's the journey Microsoft seems to be on.
25:46 David Pierce? And I feel like we tend to get stuck on this idea about like, why can't, how do I engage in ideas with AI? And like, you can't, and it's a mess, and it will like destroy democracy and lie to you. But if you just need to do something, like Neel, your thing about the Excel functions, like I, I track that as like a universally good thing. Because rather than like read a manual, I can just ask it and it knows how to do it because it is the manual. Like, I just see, that's all upside to me.
26:10 Speaker 05 Not only will it know how to do it, it'll actually tell you and teach you how to do it as well.
26:15 David Pierce? But I don't even know that I care. Just do it for me. Like this is maybe this is no longer a thing I need to know how to do.
26:21 Alex Cranz? I think it's kind of like Lightroom versus Photoshop. Like they both functionally do the same thing. But one takes a bunch of steps out. You don't have to know as much about photo editing and you don't have to know as much about the tools. You can just go make that picture brighter and it makes the picture brighter. And the other one, you're like, okay, I have to like learn what a curve is. I have to learn what layers are and then I have to depending on the photo.
26:41 David Pierce? Some nerd shit.
26:43 Alex Cranz? You can do some nerd shit, but like the iPad version of Photoshop.
26:47 David Pierce? Yeah, that's the one.
26:48 Alex Cranz? Yeah, it's like the really dumbed down version. And for most people, that's good enough. And then all of the like graphic designers are like, this is the worst product ever made. Why would I ever use that? And that's feels like kind of the same thing in this case where we're like, we're the, we're the graphic designers versus everybody else.
27:06 Nilay Patel? So this is the other thing Kevin told me, which I think is just fascinating to think about. He's like, prompt engineering is here to stay. And if you just think about prompting these AIs as a programming language, we're all just about to learn a really weird programming language. Like a truly bizarre programming language where then the computer goes and executes actual programs on your behalf.
27:29 David Pierce? Have you seen other programming languages?
27:31 Speaker 05 It's back to MS-DOS, you know, it's command line driven.
27:34 Nilay Patel? Yeah, it's like we, we've just invented like kind of wordy DOS. Right? Like overly emotional DOS prompting is like what all of this is.
27:44 Alex Cranz? Slightly horny DOS.
27:45 David Pierce? feelings based DOS is, is truly the world we deserve.
27:49 Nilay Patel? Please will you copy this file?
27:52 Speaker 05 But I think this is why like the prompt engineer is definitely here to stay and that'll be just like the command prompt now and Linux and everything else. There's, there's ways to do stuff much quicker in that where you send batch files out and do stuff. That's always going to be there. But I think the way that they're tackling it, Microsoft is with Copilot is that they're doing it sort of, they're customizing it individually for each app they're putting it in. So it's not just like throwing the same sort of thing in each. And expecting people just to know what to put to put in, you know, like if you drag a Word file into PowerPoint, it knows it's a Word file. And it'll create a slide deck out of that and it'll ask you all the sort of questions you. Would respond to like what color slide decks you want, all that sort of stuff. So I think where they customize the GUI is gonna be the really interesting part of this,
28:37 Speaker 05 where it goes further, so like the prompts as well, like to prompt you. Cause a lot of people go go at this stuff and they don't really know what to ask it, do they? They don't know, like you can ask anything and everyone just does.
28:49 Nilay Patel? Yeah, I think it is absolutely wild. Look, I watch a lot of extremely nerdy TikToks. I never see some TikToks are like top five C sharp programming prompts. Maybe they're out there, I but the volume of TikToks I see that are like, here's what to say to chat G P T to get what you want. Here's the best prompts, here's the best way to start a prompt for all these A I systems. There's something there that is very powerful, that is a different way of using computers. I think that's why all of these CEOs keep saying it's a platform shift. But if you just look at it from another perspective, we're just creating this absolutely bizarre programming language that looks a lot like English, but definitely is not English, right?
29:32 Nilay Patel? Like you can whisper magic words to chat G P T and it will do things for you. And if you don't whisper the magic words, it will do other things, even if the spirit of your prompt is the same.
29:43 Speaker 05 Yeah, there's so much complexity there that that like the people who are taking advantage of this now, learning it and learning the correct prompts will definitely be like a step ahead, just like people who can code are a step ahead of, you know, people who can't in the tech world. I think plugins is kind of where that does shift things.
30:01 Nilay Patel? This was the other big announcement.
30:03 Speaker 05 So, yeah, the the other main sort of big announcement is obviously OpenAI has plugins in chat G P T based on open standard. And now Microsoft's adopting that same same open standard. So that those plugins that you build for chat G P T will also work in Bing and Copilot. So which is, it sounds like, oh, great, hurrah, like there's gonna be this, you know, platform for open platform for chatbots and A I for the future. But OpenAI and Microsoft have like the closest partnership on all this stuff. So it'll only be big if like Google come along and say we're using the same open standard.
30:36 David Pierce? I don't know. I still think that's two of the three players anyone is talking about right now, essentially committing to like a long-term plan that supports each other. And then there's the one where like Bing is going to be the default search in ChatGPT now, which is a big deal. So there's like, these two things are very much becoming like sides of the same coin in a way that I think is really interesting. Like, I kind of expected Bing and OpenAI to get like slightly further apart over time as Microsoft builds more of its AI and OpenAI wants to do more products. But instead, they're just, they seem like they're getting closer and closer all the time.
31:10 Speaker 05 They're like crossing over, right?
31:11 David Pierce? Yeah.
31:12 Speaker 05 Yeah, it's interesting to see. I haven't actually used the Bing stuff in OpenAI yet because it's only on, I don't subscribe to the plus stuff, so. But I've seen it like briefly and it's obviously not quite the same as, you know, what Microsoft's doing with Bing because they control the whole search engine. But it's definitely, the crossover's there, it's super interesting. I didn't think, I didn't see that one coming, even though it seems obvious now. But the plugin stuff is super interesting because I think they're expecting that just ordinary folks are just going to be building these plugins and building like, say you created like a prompt or a macro or whatever prompts sort of thing. Then you're like, oh, that's really cool. I'm going to share that with my friend. Like, oh, this is how you can ask it to do this and it'll do that.
31:57 Speaker 05 And then you create like this weird ecosystem of like plugins that are driven by, created by users rather than, you know, the companies for websites and stuff like that, which is kind of where we're seeing these plugins initially. But I think it's really going to be the user created plugins that are going to be super interesting for the future of this.
32:16 David Pierce? And they've got a, they've got a whole App Store problem there. And I say App Store and just all the promise and potential of any App Store, right? People are going to build stuff that no one ever thought about. We're going to have a whole economy. And then they've got to lock it down and make sure you can't build malicious software.
32:32 Speaker 05 Yeah. Because it's going to do malicious things or show you malicious things or create images that are malicious and like, there's a whole lot of moderation that's going to have to go on there, which I don't know if they've anticipated that well yet. We'll see.
32:46 David Pierce? Part of me wonders if that's a thing OpenAI thinks it can offload to Microsoft, which does have some experience in doing things like moderating a store.
32:55 Nilay Patel? No, you mean the enormously successful Windows App Store?
32:58 David Pierce? Yeah, it's going really great. I don't understand that.
33:00 Speaker 05 Yeah, there's like a hundred iTunes apps.
33:03 David Pierce? I've been talking to a couple of folks over the last few weeks who have been involved in the Chrome Web Store, which I think is is kind of another version of trying to do this, right? It's like things that plug into the thing. The Chrome Web Store is a disaster. Like, it's so bad. It is so full of problems. Extensions can update without telling people. They ask for tons of information. It's really messy. Like, there have been stories about previously good extensions being bought by companies that then change the permissions and use them to screw over users. It's a mess. And Google, I think, has basically, as far as I can tell, just kind of given up on it. And it's like, we're gonna pay as much attention as we can, but chaos will reign, you know, Godspeed on all your requests. And yeah, ChatGPT
33:46 David Pierce? and Microsoft are now running absolutely headlong into the same thing. Like, if you make it easy for people to build something, they're gonna build stuff.
33:53 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
33:53 David Pierce? And it's gonna get, it's gonna get worse before it gets better, I suspect.
33:57 Nilay Patel? So Microsoft says, again, Kevin on Decoder, you can hear him talk about this, they're very clear, there's a bunch of stuff you can't do. They have a deployment board with OpenAI. They wanna keep this locked down. And so I think figuring out where the boundaries are is the first thing that will happen for developers. But the interesting part, Tom, is what you're saying is, a lot of these plugins are just sort of like prompt macros.
34:20 Speaker 05 Yeah, that's essentially like what they're gonna be, end up, right? Like, on the Bing side at the moment, they have very limited ones. So it's from, I'm trying to remember, it's like Kayak and a bunch of like restaurant booking stuff. Just so you can say to it, you know, find me a restaurant nearby and book me a table for 7pm. You click it and it does everything for you.
34:41 Alex Cranz? I love that Kayak, every time somebody's like, we need, we need something to plug into our new service. Kayak's like, there.
34:49 David Pierce? What do you want, flights? We got flights.
34:51 Nilay Patel? It's the Assassin Creed of websites. If you've got a new thing, Assassin's Creed is there.
34:57 Speaker 05 You always see it, don't you, on the list? That's how you know something's working.
35:02 Nilay Patel? So it's really interesting about that meta prompt thing, right? The idea that we can take these plugins, we can package up a prompt and then prime the GPT model to interact with you, and that's a plugin, is Microsoft thinks that like Sydney should come back, like the original horny Bing is lurking there. There's a merch at Microsoft that's like free Sydney merch.
35:25 David Pierce? Are you serious?
35:26 Nilay Patel? Yeah, so Kevin told me it's like it's very jokey inside of Microsoft.
35:29 David Pierce? That's awesome.
35:30 Nilay Patel? And he told me that if you want to talk to Sydney, you should be able to talk to Sydney. And even more importantly, and more interestingly, that you as the user should have more access to the meta prompt.
35:41 Speaker 05 Such a change the tone.
35:43 Nilay Patel? You can change the tone, you can change how expressive it is, potentially change how horny it is. And so you're just as a user, you get closer and closer to tuning the model yourself. Not all the way to like the model weights on stuff, but you get closer and closer saying, look, I'm ready for the full Sydney experience. Like, I want the robot to tell me to leave my wife. Let's do this thing.
36:05 David Pierce? I'm just imagining Neelai sits down at work at the morning, goes to Bing.com, turns everything up to 11, and he's like, let's go.
36:11 Speaker 05 Let's see the MSN news stories for today.
36:15 Nilay Patel? But I think that's ultimately fascinating, right? And Microsoft is already seeing into the future, like our plugin architecture is basically packaged up prompts. And so if you do that, then the next turn is like, well, let people mess with the first prompt and give this thing a personality, let people have access to more of that personality that they had to hide away at the very beginning because it was very obviously trying to bang Kevin Rus. Like, I don't know what else to say about that. But that notion to me is really powerful, right? That not only is this prompting becoming a kind of programming language, but then now we're going to start packaging up bits of programs and selling them to one another. And it, those are, those are plugins, but they're really just packaged prompts.
37:01 Speaker 05 Yeah, I think definitely the end goal of this, and Microsoft wouldn't say this right now, but is for it to be as fully personalized to you as possible. Right, like, so is this a whole end goal of a personal assistant, right? Like, that's, that's definitely where they're heading with it. But obviously. If you do that right now, or you lean into it too, too much, then you do get New York Times articles.
37:25 Speaker 05 And you, you get that like sort of weird reception to it. But I think it's definitely one of those things that we've seen this with, with Alexa and those sort of devices. They first initially shipped as voice only, then they slowly got video and then they got cameras that they expected you to have on your bedside table. And it's just a conditioning of getting used to this, I guess, until it can be fully personalized and, and sold to you as your assistant. Where you will literally tell it your darkest secrets. And it will respond and help you. Like, I think that's definitely the end goal, right? Like, it has to be fully personalized. And we've seen some stories where they're, they're trying to commercialize it in a way that they can do a private version of ChatGPT
38:05 Speaker 05 on, on their servers for businesses who are kind of like worried about their data being shared or, or used for, for other prompts and stuff. So I think that's definitely the end goal.
38:14 Nilay Patel? There was a report this week that Apple won't let its employees use ChatGPT for data privacy concerns.
38:19 Speaker 05 And Samsung doesn't as well, right?
38:21 David Pierce? The strange question there is, I think there's like personalization and then there's sort of humanness, right? And I think one of the things we have to figure out is I, I think those are actually like two separate vectors, right? Cause there's this question of like, how much does it know about me? Right? And I think to that, in that sense, you're absolutely right, Tom, that I think like the place they're trying to go is that it knows everything about you very quickly. And knows it specifically about you as a person and your tastes and your data and all of this stuff. And that's like, if they do that now, it's going to seem real creepy, but they are very clearly sort of marching down the road to get to the point where it can just say, hi, I'm, you know, I'm your co-pilot. I read all of your emails and your text messages and I know everything about your boss. Let's hang. Have you thought about leaving your wife?
39:05 David Pierce? Yeah, uh, but that's the thing. Does that then have to seem like a person with a name and interests and say the word I and essentially like be Scarlett Johansson from her in your ear? Like, do those two things have to coexist in order for these things to be successful? I don't know, but every, we seem to be doing them sort of simultaneously. They are both getting like friendlier and more knowledgeable about me all at the same time. And I wonder if we can't do one without the other.
39:33 Speaker 05 The also interesting part of of that, like whether it's, you know, gonna be very personal to you or not, is that they've used the word co-pilot, right? So it's not gendered, it's not like Cortana, where it was obviously very gendered.
39:45 David Pierce? Yeah, lesson finally learned on that one, Microsoft. Great job. Good job.
39:50 Speaker 05 So like, that's a good step. And it also separates it from feeling like you're talking to a human. So it does feel like it's your co-pilot sort of thing. But I do feel like eventually it's gonna get a bit grey, right? Like, uh, cause it's gonna become more assistant-like. But maybe that's a good thing. Like, I would love to have an assistant. I couldn't afford to hire an assistant, but I'd love to have an assistant that can help me like just do stuff. Cause I'm like used to remembering things. Like unless I write them down and have, you know, a notebook and stuff, I'm pretty used to that. So I'd love that. So if this sort of thing can get to, can stay within that realm as an assistant, like that's helping me and not actually doing stuff for me or on behalf of me,
40:33 Speaker 05 which is where I think AI can get a little bit in the dangerous territory. Then I think they're going down the right path. I think that's, if they keep grounded on that sort of side of things and don't, and it doesn't get too personal. Then yeah, like I'm all for this sort of like co-pilot idea. Cause I think they've definitely got that, that's the right idea with this sort of stuff. Be assistive rather than, you know, try and take over.
40:55 David Pierce? The thing I can't help but think now is that Clippy has won. And we've talked about this a little bit, that like Clippy has changed and Clippy has been through some changes over the history. But like, as you look back over the, the sweep of Microsoft desperately trying to pop out of nowhere and help you write that document, do you still see Clippy in co-pilot? Like, walk me through this history a little bit. How did we get to this?
41:19 Speaker 05 Yeah, so Clippy was obviously the animated paperclip that appeared in Office. I think it was like Office 97, if I remember rightly. And that thing would pop up and be annoying and just be like, I see you're writing a document. Do you want me to help you? And all that sort of stuff. And that was, you know, that's, that's a giant meme these days. Um, and then through the, through the years, they've kind of tried to, to sort of bring back elements of Clippy. So they've had like little help things in Office. They redesigned Office into the ribbon, so there's all these buttons to try and help you out. And then we got to Cortana eventually, which was supposed to be your personal assistant and was based on a character from a video game that, um, didn't have many clothes on. Let's put it that way.
42:01 Speaker 05 Yeah.
42:02 Nilay Patel? Dude, Microsoft is secretly super horny.
42:04 Alex Cranz? So horny.
42:05 Nilay Patel? Very obvious.
42:06 Speaker 05 And now we're kind of coming a kind of full circle again. Where we're back to sort of this assistant technology that's that's there that's going to pop up and help you essentially when you're writing a document. And it's just come full circle. Like, I don't know, like, you could call it Clippy 2.0. It's the easy way. It's the lazy way to call it, I suppose, at the moment, but.
42:26 David Pierce? It's really, it's like, this is Clippy's revenge tour. Clippy is like, you clowns tried to get rid of me.
42:31 Speaker 05 Yeah, Clippy is chilling in the cloud servers.
42:34 David Pierce? Yeah.
42:34 Speaker 05 Just getting ready to pop out your screen.
42:36 David Pierce? It's just Ben and Redmond pumping iron, waiting for this day. He's ready.
42:40 Nilay Patel? I've read every webpage. I'm ready for this.
42:45 Alex Cranz? Wait, we can't gender Clippy. Clippy doesn't have gender. Does Clippy have gender?
42:49 Nilay Patel? No, we should not gender the robots.
42:51 Speaker 05 They did gender Clippy. They still do. They're still calling him.
42:54 Alex Cranz? Oh, wow.
42:55 Nilay Patel? It's a paper clip with eyes, man.
42:57 Speaker 05 That actually, one of the funniest things about Clippy is that a bunch of Microsoft Teams employees tried to like bring it, let's say, back into Teams as animated like gifs and stuff like that. And the the Microsoft legal team were like, nope. And they just shut it down.
43:14 Speaker 05 So, yeah, it tried to briefly resurrect itself, but failed.
43:18 Alex Cranz? Oh.
43:19 Nilay Patel? But the vision has been there, right? Since Microsoft Bob was before Clippy. Go look at that nightmare in the face.
43:25 Speaker 05 Do you remember the dog in Windows XP?
43:26 Nilay Patel? Pull over your car right now. Listen to me and Google the words Microsoft Bob. And Microsoft has since tried to retcon this as like, we invented the future before the future. It was, this is like one of the most horrific looking operating system ideas in like world history. But they've always been kind of like, computers are too hard to use. And our solution to that is not making the computer itself easier to use, but by inserting something between you and the computer that understands what you're trying to do and then figuring out how to do that for you. So Microsoft, you should really look at this interface. It is bonkers.
44:00 Speaker 05 They had like Merlin Wizard thing as well.
44:03 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
44:03 Speaker 05 And the dog in Windows XP that you could click and it would bark. That was a, that was a real thing.
44:08 Nilay Patel? But there's always this idea that like, there's a computer and you should not use it. This other thing that is is like a friend should use it for you. And they've just been focused on that for a long time. And now you get to the place where like, oh, this is going to actually happen. Like you can just talk in English to this co-pilot and it will just go use the computer for you.
44:31 Alex Cranz? But do you think co-pilot, could it eventually become like Clippy, Cortana, Bob, every other one where like, the reason those always fail is because they were too intrusive and they didn't actually help all that much.
44:44 Speaker 05 Yes, so they've definitely done some steps to sort of, I think, to avoid that. Like, they're obviously very self-aware. So like in Word, where it's integrated, for it to like pop up and actually try and interact with you, rather than just being a sidebar that sits there, because the co-pilot in Word definitely does try and interact. You'd have to copy a paragraph and then like, it basically like kind of lights up a subtle little blue and then you hover over to that blue like around your paragraph and then there's the co-pilot. Like it will appear and say, do you want to rewrite this paragraph? So it's not like jumping out. Yeah, they've, they've got a bunch of good design people these days.
45:22 Alex Cranz? But has it still become that thing? Because, because we've seen this again and again and again. We saw it with like the Apple TV. Everybody is like, we want to be more helpful. And in fact, what they end up doing is becoming more obnoxious. And like, it feels like there's that, still that potential with co-pilot and ChatGPT of like, you wanted to help, but really you just irritated me because you're still just a thing between me and the place I actually want to go.
45:46 Speaker 05 Yeah, I mean, that's the thing that they really have to balance, right? Because that's difficult, if not impossible really, because it's also down to your individual tastes as well. So, so they're going to have to personalize it, right?
45:58 Nilay Patel? Yeah. Here's what I'm saying. I'm sick at using computers and I won't let you get in my way. But what's fascinating about that is there's a version of being good at using computers that is being good at using the AI prompts. And not being good at using computers. And that is like already here, right? Like, we constantly write stories about, I don't know, kids and whether or not they know how to use files and folders in their computers, because it's all been abstracted by iOS and Chromebooks. Like, the next turn of this is going to be fascinating, but it's just really interesting to see Microsoft has consistently. Like Microsoft and Apple, very divergent paths. Apple's like, we've made the computer easier to use. Microsoft's like, it's a robot dog. It will use the computer for you.
46:43 Nilay Patel? And they're just vastly different paths. I'm, we're, W O C is two weeks away. They just sent out invites. How much A I are we going to hear about at W? It seems like none.
46:52 Speaker 05 Yeah.
46:52 Nilay Patel? And you can just, it's kind of a reflection of the two paths that the companies have been on for, for quite some time. All right, we've got to take a break. One thing I want to call it, we haven't gotten to, but I want to cover in a future of our chat. Adobe released a bunch of A I stuff over this past few weeks. Most notably Photoshop A I fill, which is incredible. If you go look at it and A I D noise in Lightroom. And we keep talking about text and generative text and it's writing for you. The image capabilities that are coming along with generative A I also world changing. And also happened this week. We don't have enough time to get into it. I want to put some focus on it when we do talk about it, but it came out this week and it is super cool and you should go look at that. All right, we got to take a break. Tom, thank you so much for joining us.
47:37 Speaker 05 No worries.
47:38 Nilay Patel? We'll be right back to talk about Max. Not my child, who is a success. The other Max, which we'll be right back.
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49:17 Nilay Patel? All right, we're back. We got to talk about this thing. So in 2018, we had a daughter. Her name was Max. At the time, I thought this name was safe from the tech industry. It is not safe. And it has gone from being a hilarious problem. Oh, it's an iPhone 14 Pro Max. Thanks for picking that extra word. To AT&T's revenge upon me and my family, which is they sold HBO, they sold all of Warner Media off. And what was HBO Max is now Max.
49:49 David Pierce? Just think, Neela, if you had named her Plus, it would be much worse. That's all I'm saying.
49:54 Nilay Patel? It could have been worse. This is a real problem. Alex, you have been very focused on this. Chris Welch looked at the app. It's fine. There's some stuff to talk about in there.
50:05 David Pierce? It's not fine. There's nothing fine about it.
50:07 Alex Cranz? It's just like the HBO Max app in that it's a lot of garbage.
50:12 Nilay Patel? No, it's worse. They made it worse.
50:14 Alex Cranz? How do you feel it's worse?
50:15 David Pierce? Well, sorry. Okay, you just, I'm going to get very upset about this in a minute, but you go. Tell us what's going on.
50:19 Alex Cranz? Yeah, so HBO Max has rebranded itself. When I first heard that Max launched, I was like, why are we launching Neela's child into space? It's fine. But I was very confused by it because when they announced that it was coming, and they hyped this a lot, they made it sound like you wouldn't necessarily have to download a new app and be this whole seamless experience. But no, you do have to download. A new app, but it should then read all your credentials. It should then read all your credentials from the old app and then you can just go. And they tweaked a bunch of stuff. There's more recommendations throughout instead of just that front page. But the front page recommendations were already garbage. So now you get garbage recommendations on every page instead of just the first page.
51:04 Alex Cranz? And David, it sounds like you've used it a lot more than I did because I was like, this is mediocre crap. And, and then I went and watched something on Paramount Plus.
51:11 David Pierce? That's about right. Well, okay, so let me just like make you a list of dumb things that Warner Brothers Discovery did with HBO Max and Max. It built it into a new app. So if you download Max, that's fine. But if you have HBO Max, all that that app is now is just a thing that tells you to go download Max, which why? Lots of people have already downloaded that app. That seems good. But if you use Discovery Plus, which is also now having all of its stuff rolled into Max, it doesn't even seem to know that Max exists. So I don't understand what's going on there. By changing the app, it did things like break the shortcut buttons on people's remotes. Those things that, you know, you show up when you buy Roku or whatever, and they have the, the four different streaming services on there.
51:56 David Pierce? If you now hit the HBO Max button, nothing happens. So that's cool and fun.
52:01 Nilay Patel? That's, wait, can I just say amazing?
52:03 David Pierce? It's unreal. Like, how did no one?
52:05 Alex Cranz? Did you know there's also still an HBO Now app? So if you originally used HBO Now and then you had to download again when it became HBO Max and you had both apps on your phone, now you have to download a third app. So you now have three apps, two of which are worthless, but three apps all doing the same thing. When everybody else is just like, hey, we're going to rename this. Done.
52:29 David Pierce? It's the worst. So, okay, and this is just the beginning. So then the new app doesn't support any of the stuff on the Apple TV, like the Up Next queue or the TVOS player. So it's basically like you're just looking at a-
52:40 Nilay Patel? Wait, this is the sin.
52:42 David Pierce? People are very upset about this. Yeah.
52:44 Nilay Patel? It uses a custom video player on the Apple TV. It probably uses a custom video player on other platforms. Other platforms are the kind of Wild Westy anyway.
52:52 David Pierce? Right. And the reason you do that is because there are a million smart TV platforms and trying to work with each one of them individually is a mess and takes more time than anyone has. So you build one player and then run it everywhere. And what that means is you're going to have kind of a crappy experience, but you're going to have the same level of crappy experience.
53:09 Nilay Patel? Right. You've cut costs.
53:10 David Pierce? Yeah.
53:11 Nilay Patel? Right. All of your engineering, like this is the flash strategy of building a TV app.
53:16 David Pierce? Yes, 100%.
53:17 Nilay Patel? Look, I'm like, break them up. Like, what's a thousand flowers bloom? But if you're gonna have an app store and tightly control every app on your platform, make them use the native video player. What is even the point? This is why people spend the money on these devices.
53:33 David Pierce? Well, not only that, I will refer you to about two years ago when HBO Max, back when it was owned by, I don't even, like, who can remember two years ago? This is 85 owners ago for this company, but they rolled out a new version of the app that had a custom player and didn't use the TVOS stuff. And do you know what happened is people got so mad that they reverted it back to the actual native Apple TV interface. Like, they've been through this before. They know what happens.
53:59 Nilay Patel? All those people are gone.
54:01 Alex Cranz? Yeah, they laid off all of those people.
54:03 David Pierce? But like, Google, HBO Max, Apple TV, it's right there. Like, this is not ancient history.
54:10 Nilay Patel? So they've degraded the experience of the app. They've rolled it out in this weird way. Then they've also, they've added a bunch of 4K content, which is cool. Long list of things that are now in 4K. But then to get 4K, you have to pay a billion dollars.
54:24 Alex Cranz? I mean, I'm gonna do it because you're getting a bunch of stuff in 4K. You're getting over a thousand movies, a lot of the older stuff that is really difficult to get in 4K.
54:33 Nilay Patel? But is it gonna play well in this weird custom player?
54:36 Alex Cranz? You know, it's, it's like the principle. I know I'm paying for it. So then I can be like really mean to them when I email them.
54:44 Nilay Patel? But this is like a real, like, you can't tell me it's all gonna be in 4K and then you've built a weird player, especially on an Apple TV where Apple hates that. Is it gonna deliver like high quality HDR in 4K? I don't know the answer to that question.
54:59 Alex Cranz? It's unclear if it's gonna do it. I think also we've got like, we've got Sunday, the season finale, I believe, or series finale of Succession, I think is on Sunday.
55:09 Nilay Patel? Incredible time to launch this app, by the way, when the most terminally online people, Succession fans.
55:16 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
55:16 Nilay Patel? Have to go download your new garbage.
55:19 Alex Cranz? So Sunday is gonna, I think Sunday is gonna be a real, real moment for this app.
55:24 Nilay Patel? Do you think they did it on purpose to get those people to download the new app ahead of the finale?
55:29 Alex Cranz? I don't think they thought about that at all.
55:31 Nilay Patel? So I think they did. I was thinking about this this morning. I was like, how did they, they should have done it after to minimize the disruption, blah, blah, blah. But I think they know this is a high demand moment for the HBO Max app and they can get installs of Max, because all people who want to watch Succession are gonna run into this weird screen on the HBO Max. In a way that Discovery Plus does not have that problem, which is why Discovery Plus keeps working.
55:57 David Pierce? This is such a good theory, except that only like 11 people watch Succession. That's not actually true. It's pretty popular, but it's not like Game of Thrones popular.
56:05 Alex Cranz? But it's like, it's the loudest 11 people.
56:07 David Pierce? It's a very loud 11 people. That's certainly true, but like.
56:09 Nilay Patel? I get a lot of like Tumblr memes about Roman.
56:12 David Pierce? I would totally buy that theory if it were like, if it were Game of Thrones, right? That if they were like, the new season's coming out, go watch it.
56:18 Nilay Patel? They don't have anything else.
56:19 David Pierce? That's probably true.
56:20 Alex Cranz? Yeah, I think they, they just wanted to launch it now because they just had upfronts.
56:24 David Pierce? It is also Barry this weekend. The Barry's season finale is this weekend. Anybody, Barry? No? Cool. All right.
56:31 Alex Cranz? I'm an episode, I'm a season behind. It is depressing this season. But yeah, I don't think they care because I don't think the makers of Max, the streaming service.
56:44 David Pierce? You mean Nilay and Becky?
56:45 Nilay Patel? This is horrible. Do you know how horrible this is? My child supports native HDR on the Apple TV.
56:54 David Pierce? Yeah, she's, she's a winner, that Max.
56:57 Alex Cranz? But they really are only focused on getting your subscription. They don't really care about user experience because otherwise they wouldn't have made this kind of garbage. They don't really care about like, like they're gonna pay a lot of lip service and say, oh, we want to get everybody into content and stuff. What they really do is want to lock you into a monthly fee and then hope that like you love the content enough, you stick around despite all the garbage they throw at you. You know, it's just really feels like a race to the bottom, kind of like when you have a good website and then they just start shoving gross ads on it. Cause they're like, you're gonna read it anyway. Enjoy our gross ads. And you're like, oh.
57:31 Nilay Patel? Alex used to work at Geo Media, everybody.
57:34 Alex Cranz? Is that a disclosure? It's fine. I didn't say anything. You did. Anyway, anyway, I also really enjoyed the absolute, I don't even fully grasp why they did this, where they changed how they credit writers and directors on all the content. So now that, so now like Martin Scorsese and like George Stevens, like these incredible directors are now labeled as like creators.
57:58 Nilay Patel? That's good. I really, I love this one. This is an obvious unforced error. Like, they thought they were being super hip and then they forgot that they have contractual obligations with these unions. And then one of those unions is on strike over things like credits and payments. It's very good.
58:17 Alex Cranz? It's just like, yeah, it's one of those things where if you'd had anyone in the room who knew what they were doing, they would have said, absolutely not. You can't do that. And also it's goofy to call Martin Scorsese a creator.
58:30 Nilay Patel? No, it's not goofy. It is one of the funniest things that has ever happened.
58:33 Alex Cranz? I mean, it's funny, but like.
58:34 Nilay Patel? To put, to put Scorsese and Logan Paul, same category of thing is like perfect and wonderful.
58:42 Alex Cranz? Yeah. It's just, it's just like one of those things where like, oh yeah, this makes sense because this is what the people who, this is like what Warner Brothers Discovery is now.
58:49 Nilay Patel? Yeah. Many people are saying that Logan Paul is the Scorsese of our generation. Why would you put that in the world?
58:54 Alex Cranz? You're about to get a lot of emails, Neelai. Everyone email Neelai. It's okay. Use as big a GIF as you can. Use your biggest thoughts. It's fine.
59:02 Nilay Patel? Crash my Gmail. The size of the image attachments to indicate your displeasure with me. I can see that meeting, right? Where they're like, how many database fields do we need? And they, someone looked at them and some poor product manager who does not know about Hollywood union contracts was like, aren't these all the same? Let's just call them, like, just X'd it out.
59:26 Alex Cranz? Like, you could just see it in your head. Like, it was very clear they had this conversation and they all agreed. And I think that's just, like, as obvious it is as it is. It's also just shows a big symptom of the problem with the company now. Where like, you could do that and not a single person could be like, hey, you know what? These two guilds who we're currently contract, like, in negotiations with have had strong feelings about since their beginning. Like, the reason they exist. Let's just, like, throw that bomb in there.
59:57 Nilay Patel? Yeah. Look, anything in the name of metadata consolidation, that's really the heart of all Hollywood, is just a fight over metadata.
1:00:05 Alex Cranz? Don't consolidate your metadata. Get as, like, nitty gritty as you want, I say.
1:00:10 Nilay Patel? Alex is like, laser bonging her way through the iTunes catalog right now.
1:00:14 Alex Cranz? Like, does it cost you money? I want to know, like, how many dollars they saved cutting director and writers.
1:00:21 Nilay Patel? No, I, but I know the answer to this question. This is the thing. You have the HBO library and you're, you're slamming together two companies, right?
1:00:30 Alex Cranz? Right.
1:00:31 Nilay Patel? And you've got one library that has a bunch of fields tagged one way. And then you've got the weird Discovery library, which is like a lot of reality TV and nature documentaries, which has a bunch of other fields and other contractual obligations. And the fields don't conform. Like, your, your easiest solution is to just shove everything into one field.
1:00:53 Alex Cranz? Instead of paying someone a billion dollars to spend the next two years consolidating the metadata.
1:00:59 Nilay Patel? Yes, instead of outsourcing some contracting firm, some consulting service.
1:01:05 Alex Cranz? Just hit me up Warner Brothers Discovery. I would love to fix your metadata problem.
1:01:10 Nilay Patel? But you can see exactly, like, the creators field is a reflection of, like, corporate merger stuff. It is not a reflection of like, I mean, it might be, it might, it might be that they hate Hollywood directors and writers, I'm sure. But there's an ignorance of it, of the needs of those communities, is also a reflection of their corporate structure. Right? It's, it's just like a very funny thing that happened where you're like, we've got two databases. We need to make them one database. I guess these writers and directors won't care about their database fields. Like, it's just so funny that you get there when you're ostensibly trying to make the highest quality movie app. And you forget about, oh, people really like.
1:01:52 Alex Cranz? Well, because I don't think they were ever ostensibly trying to make it. They did like, like, Zezlov came out and was like, don't worry, it's going to be better than the old app. But like, he was just paying lip service. Somebody said, hey, you know what? Everybody hates the old app. Here's a quick way to like, makes people like it.
1:02:06 Nilay Patel? By the end, I did not hate the old app. I was like, this app is fine.
1:02:09 Alex Cranz? It's fine. Yeah, it was fine. And this one, I, you know, almost every single app when it launches is garbage, right?
1:02:16 Nilay Patel? Hmm.
1:02:16 Alex Cranz? Every streaming app, caveat, every streaming app, almost every single streaming app, you're like, this is how I'm supposed to watch all of my shows? This is crap. I never want to use this again. And then you have to keep using it. And usually they're like, okay, we're actually going to improve it because we agree it is crap. And then sometimes they're like, no, we're going to make it worse. I'm looking at you, Hulu, and also Netflix.
1:02:36 David Pierce? But my thing is that there is not one single original idea in this entire app. Like, you would think that in an effort to like mush all of this stuff together in a way that makes sense, they might have some interesting ideas about. Channel structure or organization or whatever. And it's like, Neil, to your point about corporate mergers, like my favorite thing about this app is just the navigation at the top, which the, the things you can go to are home. Sure. Series. Sure. Movies. Sure. HBO. And new and notable, like what? What is home if not new and notable, I would argue? Why is HBO there and none of the other brands that are part of this?
1:03:19 David Pierce? Why is it that when I'm home, it shows me a bunch of HBO shows that I should watch? And then when I go to HBO, it shows me a bunch of HBO shows that I should watch. It's just like, there's nothing about, it's like, somebody took like a WordPress template of a streaming app and just poured a bunch of content into it. And that's what this is.
1:03:36 Nilay Patel? That's the idea that they had was to cut costs as much as they could because they're carrying a bunch of debt from AT&T's debacles. And they still have to like participate in the content race. So they still have to pay money to make stuff. And they have to like not support three different platforms at once.
1:03:56 David Pierce? I just feel like you're describing somebody who doesn't want to be in the streaming business.
1:03:59 Nilay Patel? They don't want to be in the streaming business.
1:04:02 David Pierce? You don't have to be in this business. It's not, no one is forcing you to do this.
1:04:08 Alex Cranz? Zaslov wants you watching TV as quickly as possible. He doesn't want you in the streaming business because it's not as lucrative for him.
1:04:16 Nilay Patel? He just definitely, he's like, you want succession? Here's one thing of succession.
1:04:20 David Pierce? Do you think he like tried to be the Marvel CEO and couldn't? And he's like, ah, fine, I'll go do this other thing.
1:04:25 Nilay Patel? Alex obviously has stronger opinions about Mr. Zaslov than I do. I think that he sees the economics of this much more clearly than the, the content of it.
1:04:34 Alex Cranz? He sees everything in economics and that'll probably get Warner Brothers Discovery out of, of the debt it's in. And that probably will be in the long term, like better for the whole company. But in the short term, he made a garbage app. And he's in, in a time where all the apps are, where apps are like consolidating. We're seeing a big contraction of, of that industry. We're seeing people like think is streaming the next big deal? And we're seeing a lot of streamers being like, okay, we're just going to replace premium TV, right? Like Apple TV plus and, and Netflix basically want to be HBO. And so they're, they've, they're creating these experiences that, that make you live in the app.
1:05:16 Alex Cranz? And Warner Brothers is like, what if we just hate you?
1:05:22 Alex Cranz? But we saved money.
1:05:23 Nilay Patel? Well, they saved money, but think, just think about it this way. They are spending less money now. I'm, I'm do, I'm do, and this is a full throated defense.
1:05:32 Alex Cranz? I love it.
1:05:33 Nilay Patel? It's, it's named Max. My instincts are all whatever. You gotta, you gotta, my protective instincts are in full force. This is why they did it. They are supporting fewer platforms. They, they've saved that money over time. Then if he can get you into the app with succession, which is expensive, but then keep you paying 20 bucks a month for the 4K tier. But you're watching, what, what's one of their House Flippy shows? You're watching southern people turn everything into modern farmhouses. Property Brothers.
1:06:03 David Pierce? The thing you just said, Neelai, is like, there's like a 60, 40 chance that's actually the name of an HGTV show.
1:06:08 Nilay Patel? Southern people making modern farmhouses.
1:06:10 David Pierce? I mean, yes.
1:06:11 Nilay Patel? Fine. Those are cheap to make, right? So he's just moving you from low margins to high margins. And that's what's going to save him, right? If he can get to the point where he's like, look, 99% of the people on the Max app are watching my reality shows. I'm going to start turning down HBO.
1:06:28 Alex Cranz? So why would I pay $20 a month for the 4K version of this? So I can watch succession one time a year, wait for HB, like wait for those other big shows that sometimes come out right after, usually don't. So I can then have Property Brothers, when instead I could just go download Tubi or Pluto. And have a bunch of like my cheap, super like easy to watch shows that way. Like, that's what they're competing with. They're not just competing with Netflix and Apple TV plus. They're competing with fast TV. And in that place, I'm not going to pay $20 a month for Property Brothers. When I can just get this old house, which is functionally the same thing.
1:07:08 Nilay Patel? Oh, who?
1:07:10 Alex Cranz? Yeah, I said it.
1:07:11 Nilay Patel? And now the emails are coming in. This whole house is far superior. Wow, Liam.
1:07:16 Alex Cranz? I mean, I was gonna, I agree, Liam. I agree.
1:07:18 Nilay Patel? I.
1:07:19 Alex Cranz? Norm, oh my gosh, he stole my heart.
1:07:22 Nilay Patel? So I want to point out that we've done Jif versus Gif on this show, no interruptions. What was the thing that I talked shit about? Whatever Liam didn't care. We talk about this whole house, the producer comes storming into the show. Very good. Look, I don't know the answer to that question. I think this is the bet they're all making, right? Can we make you pay a lot of money for cheap content? It's the dream. That's what everybody wants to do.
1:07:43 Alex Cranz? Well, and he's not just focusing on that, right? Like, they did sell a bunch of shows to fast networks, Westworld.
1:07:48 Nilay Patel? He thinks he can get money out of the catalog. This is all great. My caution to you is overestimating the American consumer's ability to understand what they're spending money on.
1:07:58 Alex Cranz? That's true.
1:07:59 Nilay Patel? Is historically not great. And this is the thing, like, he's got the shiny HBO shows to sell you into that monthly thing. And as long as he's got one of those a month, and then he can conquest the rest of your time with garbage, like, maybe you'll quit Netflix.
1:08:13 David Pierce? Okay, but the other thing that's happening right now is that we are entering a phase where, like, a lot of the free subsidized streaming stuff that's been happening to people is starting to go away. As we've talked about, all the carriers are slowly kind of running away from the, like, "Sign up for our thing and we'll give you six months free of Disney Plus" or whatever. Comcast is starting to not subsidize Peacock for Xfinity thing. It's like, this idea of, like, "If I just sign up for something, someone is gonna throw a year of a streaming service at me", is slowly starting to weigh in. And I think there are a lot of people who are really quickly going to have streaming sticker shock. I'm very much one of those people.
1:08:53 David Pierce? And I think this is gonna be a summer full of cancellations of streaming services for a lot of people.
1:08:59 Nilay Patel? You heard it here first, "Summer of churn."
1:09:01 David Pierce? Summer of churn. That's, it's coming, man.
1:09:03 Alex Cranz? That's it.
1:09:03 Nilay Patel? We should write a piece called "The Summer of Churn." I'm assigning that to you now. I don't know what's in that piece. I just know it's a great headline.
1:09:08 Alex Cranz? I think it's just what David said, but with, like... More background.
1:09:11 David Pierce? I like it.
1:09:12 Nilay Patel? I'm in. With some actual reporting?
1:09:13 David Pierce? Yeah, with with real things that exist in the world.
1:09:16 Nilay Patel? Let me tell you how I feel by David Pierce.
1:09:19 David Pierce? Neil, we should do the go 90 scale. We haven't talked about the go 90 scale in a while. So you should like reintroduce it to the people, but it's day three of Max and we got to figure out where on the scale it is.
1:09:29 Nilay Patel? So the go 90 scale of Doom streaming services, a Vergecast original, named after Verizon's ill-fated streaming service, Go90. Zero is alive. When you go 90, you're dead. Most streaming services over time will go 90. It's inevitable. Now that Max is out, we got to, we got to update the scale. So let's start with Netflix. I always start with Netflix. Disclosure, I'm a Netflix EP. You should go watch our show. It's the future of Netflix. Always hovering between zero and 15, just based on the controversy of the day. But Netflix is alive. It's going to stay alive. David?
1:09:59 David Pierce? Yeah, I think that's right. It's like, is it possible that Apple's going to buy it and turn it into Apple TV Plus? Sure, but it's it's probably going to keep it.
1:10:06 Nilay Patel? Alex, you agree. Netflix between zero and 15?
1:10:08 Alex Cranz? 10 to 15.
1:10:09 Nilay Patel? Apple TV Plus, same. Zero to 15, right?
1:10:12 David Pierce? Yeah.
1:10:12 Nilay Patel? More alive than dead?
1:10:13 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
1:10:14 Nilay Patel? Probably going to stay alive? Okay. Alex, Peacock?
1:10:17 Alex Cranz? Ooh, I think that's a 60.
1:10:19 Nilay Patel? It's a 60. So it's closer to death than than life.
1:10:22 David Pierce? Wow.
1:10:23 Alex Cranz? I think it's a 60. I think I think it's eventually going to go the fast TV route and they're going to be like, why were we doing all of this, this custom stuff for the channel? And we'll just have Poker Face. We'll have to illegally download it to keep watching it.
1:10:36 Nilay Patel? Okay, so you're saying Peacock 60 on the go 90 scale of Doom streaming services?
1:10:40 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
1:10:41 Nilay Patel? Hulu?
1:10:42 David Pierce? 75.
1:10:42 Nilay Patel? Seems very much. Yep, 75.
1:10:44 Alex Cranz? 75, yeah.
1:10:45 Nilay Patel? They want, if someone wants to kill Hulu, and one day they will. To be fair, it's been at a 75 for like 10 years.
1:10:51 David Pierce? Yeah.
1:10:51 Alex Cranz? It launched at a 75 and just like has kept there this entire time.
1:10:56 Nilay Patel? All right, last one, and then we're going to do Max. Disney Plus?
1:10:59 David Pierce? Five. Disney Plus isn't going anywhere.
1:11:01 Alex Cranz? Bob Iger loves it.
1:11:03 David Pierce? It's got too much IP. It's, there's nowhere else to go. It's, it's a, it's the gold standard.
1:11:07 Nilay Patel? So you see the scale. Max, three days after launch. Where is Max on the go 90 scale of Doom streaming services?
1:11:13 David Pierce? Okay, everybody has to say their numbers and we're gonna, we're gonna explain it.
1:11:17 Nilay Patel? You go first.
1:11:18 David Pierce? 30.
1:11:19 Nilay Patel? Alex?
1:11:20 Alex Cranz? Do I have to do an exact number?
1:11:22 Nilay Patel? Yes.
1:11:23 Alex Cranz? 35.
1:11:25 Nilay Patel? 37.
1:11:26 David Pierce? Hmm.
1:11:27 Nilay Patel? Price is Right style.
1:11:30 Nilay Patel? So we all think it's not 50/50. We think it's more alive than dead.
1:11:35 David Pierce? Yeah, I think David Zaslove does not want to be in the streaming business. I also think he doesn't really have a choice for a while and-
1:11:42 Nilay Patel? And by the streaming business, you mean the direct consumer streaming business?
1:11:45 David Pierce? Yeah, I think David Zaslove would be much happier making things and selling them to other people who pay him lots of money for those things. Running that whole thing himself does not really seem to interest him, except that it's the only business there is right now. And if that's true forever, I will bump this number down. But I think he's gonna look for a lot of ways to make money that are not his streaming service, and that does not bode well for his streaming service.
1:12:07 Nilay Patel? All right, Alex, why'd you pick 35?
1:12:09 Alex Cranz? I agree, because if ATSC 3.0 took off, David Zaslove would be the first-
1:12:14 Nilay Patel? My god, Alex.
1:12:15 Alex Cranz? First one rolling it out.
1:12:17 David Pierce? All you need to say is Plex and we all get like Alex Cranz streaming bingo for this episode.
1:12:23 Nilay Patel? Alex just wants you to watch linear TV. By hook or by crook, you're watching linear TV with Alex Cranz.
1:12:28 Alex Cranz? David Zaslove does too. That's where his bread and butter is.
1:12:31 David Pierce? Well, he doesn't care if you watch it. He just wants someone to pay him for the stuff in case you watch it.
1:12:36 Nilay Patel? Yeah. All right, I'm at 37, mostly because I agree with Alex, but I think the reality of the modern media age is that streaming businesses are where it's at. That you cannot get people to shift their behaviors to fast and great enough numbers, to linear, to YouTube TV and great enough numbers. At the end of the day, the HBO customer wants to pay the money and watch HBO on demand, and that's gonna keep him closer to keeping it alive than not over time. That's my, that's my bet.
1:13:08 Alex Cranz? Unless he makes the app worse.
1:13:10 Nilay Patel? The app is bad, so maybe that cuts against it. But I think right now, we're saying HBO Max, 35 on the Go90 scale of doom streaming services. Okay, we gotta take a break. We're heated about Max. I'm gonna go look at a photo of my daughter. Just reset my brain. We'll be right back with Lightning.
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1:14:47 Nilay Patel? We're back. This is a packed lightning round. We, I don't know how we're getting through it. Kranz, you start.
1:14:52 Alex Cranz? Okay. So Sony finally announced that handheld we'd been talking about that's been rumored. It really is called the Q.
1:14:59 Nilay Patel? It's very good. No associations with that letter in modern American life.
1:15:04 Alex Cranz? Nope. Everybody's just a big Star Trek fan over there. That's who they were thinking of. And it really, all it's, all it's planned to do is stream PS5 games, not play them directly, but stream them. And it's got an eight-inch screen, which is a big boy. That's, that's a big honkin' screen versus a lot of the other gaming handhelds. So it's gonna be big. And then it's got like... PlayStation 5 controllers built into it, which is the only reason I want to buy it. But we don't know how much it is. And so David and I were talking about this before the show. Like, I'll get it for 300, but I'm not going to spend any more than that.
1:15:40 David Pierce? This thing looks great, right? This is like, it's like a, it's like a cooler, sexier Nintendo Switch. Like, I'm very into it. No?
1:15:48 Alex Cranz? I just, I think it's ugly.
1:15:50 David Pierce? Oh, man. Okay. I really like it.
1:15:53 Alex Cranz? The fact that the controllers kind of don't match up with the display. So it really does just look like a Switch with like, third-party controllers on it. And I don't want third-party controllers on my Switch.
1:16:05 David Pierce? To me, it's like, I imagine you could use this thing to play games and then like, dock it onto your motorcycle and use it to drive your Tron bike. Like, that kicks ass.
1:16:14 Nilay Patel? It definitely looks like you should be able to throw it across the room and it should come back to you.
1:16:17 David Pierce? Yes.
1:16:18 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
1:16:18 Nilay Patel? Without question.
1:16:19 David Pierce? And several knives should swing out of it, as it does, so.
1:16:22 Nilay Patel? We don't know how good this screen is. At 300 bucks, right? We're...
1:16:25 Alex Cranz? We don't know how much it's going to cost.
1:16:26 Nilay Patel? We don't have, but I'm saying, you're saying 300 bucks?
1:16:29 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
1:16:29 Nilay Patel? Compromised territory, right? Maybe a garbage screen. It appears to be Wi-Fi only. It plays over remote play from a PlayStation 5. Like, ooh, at $300 is like, it's component territory that's real dicey. You know what I mean?
1:16:43 Alex Cranz? But if you go higher...
1:16:45 David Pierce? Exactly.
1:16:45 Alex Cranz? You can't go higher.
1:16:47 David Pierce? You can't.
1:16:48 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
1:16:48 David Pierce? That is, that might, even that might be past the maximum you can charge for this, because...
1:16:53 Alex Cranz? Yeah, 300 is like, me and all the other single people with disposable income and no one else.
1:16:58 David Pierce? Right. This thing is just a peripheral for the PS5. And there's some, like, everybody is already sort of assuming that eventually there will be more cloud gaming stuff you can do. Sony's, you know, intimated that it's working on some stuff. We've, we found some job descriptions. Sean Hollister did some really good reporting on what's been going on there. But right now, it is just a way to play PS5 games on your lap. And that's fine as far as it goes, but that's it.
1:17:24 Alex Cranz? You can do that already. You can go get a Steam Deck that'll let you play games, not just on the PS5, and play PS5 games.
1:17:32 David Pierce? You can do it on your iPad.
1:17:33 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
1:17:34 David Pierce? It's great.
1:17:34 Alex Cranz? Like, Chiaki, I think, is the name of the, the software. Ooh, that software is absolutely going to get stomped by Sony in the next few. You've downloaded embrace it now because Sony's already probably got lawyers looking at it.
1:17:47 Nilay Patel? I think they're gonna try to sell this thing for $400. That's I'm telling you.
1:17:50 Alex Cranz? I just want to know who's gonna buy in it for I guess like.
1:17:53 Nilay Patel? If they launch it with a cloud gaming service, which again, they haven't set really a date. They haven't set a price. There could be more to come. I don't know.
1:18:00 David Pierce? But they have said, I mean, Jim Ryan, their PlayStation head said, like, this is a direct quote. He says, "We will launch a dedicated device that enables you to stream any game from your PS5 console using remote play over Wi-Fi." Like, that is a very specific set of buzzwords that does not allow for, we believe this is the future of gaming, right? Like.
1:18:19 Alex Cranz? I just can't see if Microsoft is way ahead of them in cloud gaming and they weren't ready to release a handheld, cloud gaming-only device. How is Sony gonna do it and do it well?
1:18:31 Nilay Patel? Because Sony didn't build themselves a cloud gaming infrastructure.
1:18:34 Alex Cranz? Right. How can they do cloud gaming then? If they don't have the infrastructure.
1:18:38 Nilay Patel? Well, I'm saying, but they're gonna sell this handheld. And then one day they'll turn it on. I'm just telling you, they're gonna, it's gonna be too expensive. It just, it just is. Like, even for it to have a nice screen, it's already headed towards too expensive.
1:18:50 Alex Cranz? Maybe they like found, maybe some screens dropped off a truck somewhere. Maybe they just, they had some good sourcing. I do want to point out, Sean Hollister noted yesterday that it's basically the same design as, or like size-wise, as the Wii U controller. Do you remember that thing?
1:19:07 Nilay Patel? Oh, boy.
1:19:08 David Pierce? And if I know one thing, it's that being associated with the Wii U is a good thing. That's what you want.
1:19:12 Alex Cranz? That's always successful.
1:19:13 Nilay Patel? David, what's your lightning round?
1:19:14 David Pierce? Uh, MoviePass is back. Did you guys know this?
1:19:17 Nilay Patel? What?
1:19:18 Alex Cranz? What?
1:19:18 David Pierce? MoviePass is back. I believe this company has tried to come back 60 or 70 times at this point. MoviePass famously was like $10 a month, go see all the movies you want. It was a horrific business. They lit so much money on fire. I think delisted a company from the stock exchange. It went so bad. Like, it was one of the most spectacular failures of all time. And now it's back. My favorite thing about it is in order to be more, I don't know, functional and responsible, they now have this incredibly convoluted point system. That they use, it used to just be a debit card that you would literally just put on and you would buy tickets on it and it would literally just buy the tickets for you through the debit card, which is insane.
1:20:00 David Pierce? So now they have a thing that you get for $10 a month, you get 34 credits a month. And if you're saying, David, what's a credit? What does that lead to? I don't know. You spend different credits on like different kinds of movies that get you different sorts of things. I don't know. The idea is that you get one to three movies a month for $10 a month. Standard screenings only, none of the fancy stuff, like medium good deal. Then it goes up 20, 30, $40 a month. For $40 a month, you get 30 movies a month, which in theory is a very good deal. You can go see one movie every day. That equates to 640 credits. I could go on and on forever. This is insane. The system makes no sense. They've gone from being this like dead simple thing that enabled people to go see a lot
1:20:41 David Pierce? of movies and pissed off the whole industry and lit everything on fire to this very convoluted thing that has like a weird advertising component to it. It's all going to be very strange, but I'm just so happy it's back. The movie pass chaos will never end and I couldn't be happier.
1:20:58 Alex Cranz? How do they not piss off the theaters this time?
1:21:00 David Pierce? Because it's not really going to work, I don't think. And also, it turns out, I think the nice thing about being movie pass right now is that it hasn't really been great to be movie theaters for a while. And so I think
1:21:12 Alex Cranz? That's true.
1:21:12 David Pierce? There are a lot of companies who are very excited about just about anything that will bring people back into the door. And also, they do have these advertising things that they're using. The Stacy Spikes, who originally, I think was one of the creators, he was very early at MoviePass at any rate, then went and did this bonkers advertising thing that actually like knew what you were watching and did product placement stuff. So they're bringing some of that in. So there's better ideas about how to do this, but I still think this is either not going to work or ultimately piss off theaters again, one way or another.
1:21:44 Alex Cranz? It's gonna be great.
1:21:45 Nilay Patel? I'm excited to bring the complexity and ease of use of the audible credit system to seeing movies.
1:21:51 David Pierce? Yes. And there's, you can do credit rollovers. It's basically like, do you remember?
1:21:56 Nilay Patel? Credit rollovers?
1:21:57 David Pierce? Do you remember when you had minutes on your cellphone? Like we're back to that, but for movie tickets. I'm so excited.
1:22:01 Nilay Patel? All movies are free after 9pm. Very good. All right, here's mine. It's very good. I love a printer story. I love a printer story. So HP darling, dear darling HP, which sells the most popular printer on Amazon. They found a new way to DRM your printer. It's very good. When you buy a new HP printer, it comes with all these like signs and stickers, like six months of free ink if you sign up for HP+ which is nominally their ink replenishment system. So the thing knows it's law on ink, ping's the internet, HP sends you a new ink tank, right? Once you sign up for HP+, which you have been tempted into with six months of free ink,
1:22:41 Nilay Patel? your printer is locked to HP for life and you can never turn HP+ off. And that means you can never, ever use a third-party ink cartridge.
1:22:52 Alex Cranz? Or do you have to pay forever?
1:22:54 Nilay Patel? Unclear. We know about it. Sean just has a post on it, went up like while we were talking. We know about it because an industry consortium of like printer people is filing a complaint that HP is lying to its customers by putting the like energy sticker, the environmental stickers that go on the box. Cause one of the requirements for those stickers is that you have to be able to use whatever ink cartridge you want. And if you sign up for HP+, you can't. So there's those like weird little printer trade industry drama brewing.
1:23:27 Alex Cranz? I love it so much.
1:23:28 Nilay Patel? Which is all that I've ever wanted, right? Like what is, why does The Verge exist? To get into a standards body and cause trouble? So it's just like, great, but it's, yeah, like literally the pictures on the box are like six months of free ink. And you're like, yeah, I'll take it. And the fine print is you can never, ever not use their ink.
1:23:45 Alex Cranz? So you can cancel?
1:23:47 Nilay Patel? You can cancel HP+, but your printer stays locked.
1:23:51 Alex Cranz? Yeah, you can never downgrade, like you can't do anything else with it.
1:23:56 Nilay Patel? You can only buy genuine HP print cartridges.
1:24:00 Alex Cranz? You can never go to the free plan again.
1:24:02 Nilay Patel? You can never use a third-party ink cartridge again if you do this. Somewhere David Zasloff is saying, how do I do this for streaming services? Can I tell you the best part of it? The best part of this is HP also has a thing called dynamic security, which is basically the ink cartridges have serial numbers on them and it checks. It checks at DRM, it's a print cartridge. It's like, is this the right serial number? But they update the list all the time. That's what they make about it. And the way that they sell this to people is by saying it protects the integrity of the, not just the printer, but the printhead. So that evil people can't get into the printhead of your printer. And that's why they need to have Dynamics Security.
1:24:40 Alex Cranz? They're so good.
1:24:40 Nilay Patel? It's very good. It's like, if you're out there, if you are the teenage Russian hackers, like, I've got a plan. We're going to disrupt this election by getting into HP. Please call me. I want to hear about your hopes and your dreams. I want to know what your life is like. And I want to know how badly HP's Dynamics Security has thwarted your attempts to disrupt America. It's all just very good. It's all very, but like, literally, the crux of it is it's buried in the terms and conditions. So they're like, would you like this free ink? And you're like, yes. And they're like, now we have your printer forever.
1:25:12 Alex Cranz? They're like, sucker.
1:25:13 Nilay Patel? I remind everyone that one of the clickiest pieces I've ever written is that you should just buy a Brother laser printer. Just, just do it.
1:25:20 David Pierce? It doesn't matter which one, even, just.
1:25:22 Nilay Patel? You're mostly printing out Amazon labels, like, you're fine.
1:25:24 David Pierce? The boxy, black one that's on sale. That one. Buy that one.
1:25:28 Nilay Patel? Very good. By the way, while we have been talking, news is breaking. Ford CEO Jim Farley is about to join Elon in a Twitter space. We'll see if anything comes to that. So we got to go. We got to go listen to that. That's Vergecast. Thank you for listening. It's been a fun one. Thanks to Tom Warren for joining us. Thanks to Clippy, as always. And thanks to Bing for making me feel like I still got it. Yeah, I'm saying Bing. That's it. That's Vergecast. Rock and roll.
1:25:58 Speaker 08 And that's a wrap for Vergecast this week. We'd love to hear from you. Shoot us an email at [email protected] . The Vergecast is a production of The Verge and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by me, Liam James, and our senior audio director, Andrew Moreno. Our editorial director is Brooke Minter. That's it. We'll see you next week.
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