Pod Insights The Vergecast Asus’ ROG flow Z13 / Samsung’s Freestyle Projector / Apple's iPhone subscription service plan About this episode The Verge's Nilay Patel, Alex Cranz, and Dan Seifert discuss the tech headlines from this site this week — including Google's deal with Spotify over app fees, Nothing's first smartphone, and the struggle with TV projectors.
Google will test letting Android developers use their own billing systems, starting with Spotify
Nothing’s first smartphone is aimed at Apple, not OnePlus
OnePlus 10 Pro gets its global launch on March 31st
Dell’s XPS 15 and XPS 17 get 12th Gen chips
Intel looks on track to fix its core problems
Asus’ ROG flow Z13 is a Surface Pro that’s got game
Apple has resolved the outage affecting iMessage, Apple Music, the App Store, and other services
Apple’s Studio Display has 64GB of storage in addition to its iPhone 11-caliber processor
The Mac Studio’s removable SSD is reportedly blocked by Apple on a software level
Apple service centers can reportedly replace the Studio Display’s ‘built-in’ stands
How Microsoft built its smart Surface camera
iFixit teardown offers a detailed look inside the Mac Studio and Studio Display
Apple will reportedly sell the iPhone as a subscription service
Google won’t give old Pixels the best 5G, even though it admits it could
Eero’s new Wi-Fi 6E mesh router supports over gigabit speeds and costs under $500
Matter’s delays mean fewer new smart home products today
Google tidies up its smart home app
Apple TV app on Android TV no longer allows rentals, purchases, or subscriptions
YouTube is taking on over-the-air TV with nearly 4,000 free episodes of TV
Sonos might make your next TV streaming OS
Yes, Netflix just got even more expensive
HBO Max adds a shuffle button to help you find something to watch
Google won’t let you buy movies and TV shows from the Play app starting in May
Samsung’s Freestyle Projector doesn’t live up to it’s $900 price
Spider-Man: No Way Home’s VFX wizards couldn’t see the Doc Ock memes coming
How SiriusXM bought and bungled a beloved podcast network
Inside the fight to save video game history
How Robinhood’s Aparna Chennapragada is building the future of investing
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript 17,155 words · 8 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Nilay Patel? This week on The Vergecast, Alex Krantz and Dan Seifert join the show. We talk about Google letting Spotify use its own billing system, the new Nothing smartphone, a bunch of follow-ups to our Apple reviews, and a little bit of a TV lightning round. That's coming up on The Vergecast now.
0:16 Speaker 01 This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's chief investment strategist, and Colin Martin, head of fixed income research and strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting? And what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:01 Speaker 01 This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's chief investment strategist, and Colin Martin, head of fixed income research and strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting? And what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:49 Nilay Patel? Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of TVs on the ceiling. The thing I didn't know about, and now everyone seems to be talking about all the time for some reason.
1:59 Alex Cranz? It's good for your teeth.
2:00 Nilay Patel? It just came out of nowhere. Suddenly, everyone has a TV on the ceiling story.
2:05 Alex Cranz? Get your teeth cleaned, watch the TV on the ceiling. It's great.
2:08 Nilay Patel? It sounds like a 2010s rap, like rap rock band to me. Hi, we're TV on the ceiling. Okay. I'm your friend Eli. Alex Krantz is here.
2:16 Alex Cranz? I enjoy a TV on the ceiling.
2:19 Nilay Patel? Literally, again, the concept was nowhere.
2:22 Alex Cranz? And now it's just there.
2:23 Nilay Patel? We brought the word vaporware back, and now suddenly, this is our next cultural trend that we're gonna.
2:28 Alex Cranz? I, like, everybody's gonna be sleeping in bed and be like, why put the, why put the TV in front of the bed when I can put it on the ceiling?
2:35 Nilay Patel? Dan Seifert is here.
2:36 Speaker 03 I've got a motorized bed that lifts me up, so I don't need a TV on the ceiling.
2:40 Nilay Patel? Wow. That's bold.
2:43 Speaker 03 It's like a hospital bed.
2:45 Nilay Patel? Our ceiling is very high, so we would actually need to, like, create some sort of, like, monitor arm. You would have to, like, fold out of the wall and fold over us.
2:54 Speaker 03 You know what? We're very swiftly driving towards the scorpion chair.
2:58 Nilay Patel? Yeah, we finally found a use case for absurd motorized gamer chairs, and it's sleeping. It's gonna be great. As you may have noticed already, it was not a huge week of news here at the verge.com. A lot happened, and there's stuff to talk about. Google and Spotify have some backroom deal we should talk about. The Nothing smartphone, the marketing hype train continues. There's a bunch of laptops, there's Apple follow-ups from the reviews. There's a Matter delay for the hardcore smart home nerds, of which, on the show, you are Legion. There's stuff to talk about. I'm just saying, it's not like an action-packed.
3:36 Alex Cranz? There was no giant event.
3:38 Nilay Patel? There's no big event, the products are coming out, but we should start. Let's start. I think the big news of the week that we should just talk about right away, for two years now, three years, the app developer versus smartphone platform fees fight has been in full swing. We've had lawsuits. In the EU, they're about to pass the Digital Markets Act, which will, in some way, regulate how various platforms self-preference themselves and set prices. Actually, the executive director of the EU Competition Commission, Margrethe Vestager, was actually just on Decoder with Addy talking about this stuff. I mean, it's nuts. Like, this is the fight in the industry. Like, this is where all the money is. You might think the money's in Web 3, but that's pretend money.
4:24 Nilay Patel? The actual dollars and cents are flowing through your phones. And the fight is about who gets paid and what the cuts are. So probably everybody knows this, but if you're listening to this by now, right? The standard rate is 30%. So if you've got an app on either Apple or Android, and you've got a button that sells something to someone, 30% of that goes to the platforms. There are many cases in which that rate is lower, mostly to 15%. If you've been there a while, you're signing a recurring subscription. The platforms have various rules. But any, in any, like, broad sense, it's still 30% for most things. There have been lots of attempts to change this, like I said, lawsuits, regulations. There is this thing called the Coalition for App Fairness,
5:07 Nilay Patel? which is like Match Group and Spotify and Epic. But next to that, just like out of the blue, yesterday, Google and Spotify are like, yeah, we made a deal. So Google announced it's gonna start figuring out ways to let various developers use their own payment systems inside of apps, starting with Spotify. So when you go to sign up for pay for Spotify, you can either do it with the Google Play Store button, or you can do it with Spotify's billing system. Now, I think what everybody assumes is that using Spotify's billing system will be cheaper because it won't have to pay that 30% to Google.
5:41 Alex Cranz? Do, do people assume that? I assumed it would be the same price and Spotify would just be like, free 30% for me, Spotify.
5:49 Nilay Patel? Unclear.
5:50 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
5:51 Nilay Patel? Right? Like, that would just imply that Spotify just raises its rates and takes a higher cut. Like, then signing up on the web would be less expensive, signing up in the app. One button would send Google some money and one button would send Spotify some extra money. Right? And it's unclear how any of this will work.
6:07 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
6:08 Nilay Patel? And so after just, you know, a day of light reporting, not, you can read the blog posts. The blog posts are pretty clear. These two companies made a deal with each other. Google says over time it will make deals with other developers. It's figuring out how it will work. Then if you just like read the trades in our industry, there's lots of background chatter. Unnamed spokespeople are off doing their unnamed spokespeople thing, saying, we've already made the deal. The terms are fair to Spotify. Google is still gonna get paid.
6:41 Alex Cranz? Oh.
6:42 Nilay Patel? So when you pay the 30%, that both Apple and Google, right? Their justification is, well, we do your payment processing. We got to run the store. We got to invest in the engineers who build the platform. Like, you can't just have an app on a computer for free. What is this communism? No one's ever heard of such a thing. You got to pay us every time you do a transaction so we can support our operating system. No other model in computing has ever existed or shall exist again.
7:09 Alex Cranz? Never.
7:10 Nilay Patel? He typed furiously on his Windows PC, right?
7:12 Alex Cranz? Like, don't think about it.
7:15 Nilay Patel? So that's their argument is they got to get some money because that's how they fund giving the software away for free. You can feel morally outraged about that or not. So it sounds like what they're doing is they're saying, okay, you can do the payment processing and we'll lower our cut since we're no longer handling your payment processing, but we still want something to justify these other expenses.
7:36 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
7:37 Nilay Patel? And so Spotify was like, cool, good enough for us. Neither side will say what the new cut is. So we're guessing it's not 30. It would be stupid if it was 15, like the worst negotiation in history, right? Because 15 is like available in various ways from various.
7:55 Alex Cranz? I feel like there's probably like levels to it. I feel like they probably like got really into it. And so like, if a person has a certain number of songs, like already loaded into Spotify, they're gonna like charge more because they'll be like, well, that's a super user. You're super users. We get a bigger cut.
8:12 Nilay Patel? But they're already paying Spotify.
8:14 Alex Cranz? Yeah. But then Google's got to, look, Google's like, it will go into poverty if it doesn't get its cut. Like it has, it needs this.
8:22 Nilay Patel? I think one of the reasons Google can do this is because Google's cash cow is like not Android.
8:28 Alex Cranz? Yeah, it doesn't care, actually.
8:30 Nilay Patel? Right? It's like it's cash cow still search and people still search for things on their phones. And that like, no one's mad about that.
8:36 Alex Cranz? Aren't they still being sued by Epic?
8:39 Nilay Patel? Yes. This is like actually one of the weirdest things, right? Epic and Spotify were like really tightly aligned for a long time.
8:44 Alex Cranz? Right.
8:45 Nilay Patel? Then Spotify's head lawyer left Spotify and it's now the head lawyer for Disney. And Spotify was like, we're cutting the sweetheart deal.
8:53 Nilay Patel? Like Horacio has been on Decoder talking about this issue with me.
8:56 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's fascinating that Spotify just like broke away from the cafe group like you mentioned earlier, broke away from Epic and was just like, oh, we can make our own deal, then let's do that. It's also fascinating that Google chose to do this with Spotify as opposed to Netflix or any of the other services like that we talk about with these kinds of problems. Like, you know, I don't know, I can't remember on Android, did, can you sign up for a new Netflix subscription on Android? Because you can't in the iOS app, because Netflix doesn't want to give Apple the cut. So like, if Netflix were to make this deal, that was in terms to them, that means you could actually sign up for Netflix on your phone as opposed to going to the web app or whatever on your desktop computer.
9:33 Nilay Patel? But Netflix is allowed to send you to the web. I think the other thing that's true about Netflix is that they're out of people. Right? Like, right, every Netflix earnings report is like, well, we're out of people.
9:44 Speaker 03 Well, I guess we have to raise the rates again.
9:47 Nilay Patel? None more Netflix subscribers exist. Password sharing is out. We gotta get those people. That's who's left. We might start doing ads. Like, this is what they said their last earnings call, right?
9:57 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
9:57 Nilay Patel? They hinted at ads. They're gonna crack down on password sharing and they're like, there's gotta be some country left. We're gonna find that country.
10:05 Speaker 03 We've gotta pay Mike Myers per character. So, sorry, your bill is now $25 a month.
10:12 Alex Cranz? Adam Sandler gotta eat.
10:13 Nilay Patel? Whereas Spotify's model is still like the tat there, it's free, like with ads, and then they're, the whole game of freemium Spotify is they want to convert you into a paid subscriber, which changes the rate structure and all that. So they're still like desperately trying to convert people to pay. Whereas I think Netflix is like,
10:32 Nilay Patel? password sharing, I guess, like, we should cut that out? That's how we'll get more people? Like, so I think they're just in different positions. Also, Netflix historically has had the leverage to at least put in that line. It's like, go sign up on the web.
10:44 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
10:44 Nilay Patel? Whereas like Spotify, just like, I mean, they've released website after website, being like, one time we tried to say we had a website and Tim Cook came to our house and like, pulled the fuses out of the fuse box and ran away screaming.
10:58 Speaker 03 What are the odds that Spotify is going to go take this agreement that it hammered out with Google over to Apple and be like, see, you can do it too?
11:07 Alex Cranz? I mean, they're probably doing it as we speak, but I think the bigger thing is, what are the odds that Apple says, sure?
11:11 Speaker 03 Yes. Well, what is the odds that it works?
11:13 Nilay Patel? Right. So my impression of this is one, the Digital Services Act in the EU is happening in the cutting edge of politics and extraordinarily boring way. They're also distracted by a war. So like, how fast will this have any impact? But there is this huge package of regulations about how platforms can treat apps and services and things that don't self preference themselves, how they set rates. So that's happening. There's the thing in South Korea where they're going to have to be allowed to use different payment processors. There's a really weird one in the Netherlands where only dating apps get to use their own payment processors. And actually, a vestager on Decoder is like, Apple has chosen to not comply and they just pay 5 million euros a week in fines, like.
11:57 Alex Cranz? That's just cheaper for them.
11:59 Nilay Patel? It's just cheaper for them to pay the fine. Part of the Digital Services Act is raising those rates. So they actually hurt.
12:06 Alex Cranz? Yeah. I mean, that makes sense. Like, there needs to be actual financial incentive to make them comply with this stuff.
12:13 Nilay Patel? Yeah. Again, this thing has to pass and has to get enforced. But the whole point is, I mean, you should go listen to that episode. Addie did a great job with that interview. But that's happening. There's a thing in South Korea. There's the weird thing in the Netherlands. Like, you just see that there's still the Epic case, the Apple case, the Epic Apple case is on appeal, the Epic Google case is going to go up. There's another weird antitrust lawsuit. And like, the wheels have been turning for a long time. So if you're Spotify or Google, you can skip some little bit closer to the end and Spotify gives a little less money to Google and Google gets to say they're the good kids. Like, I think there's a reason for them to do this to you.
12:48 Alex Cranz? This is like the Microsoft play a little, where Microsoft was like, yeah, we believe that everybody else, 30% is bad. We would never do that. Get rid of app stores entirely. Definitely not because ours suck.
12:59 Speaker 03 Except on the Xbox.
13:00 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
13:03 Alex Cranz? So you're just trying to like do that Microsoft play, but I'm still kind of questioning why they only chose Spotify and why they didn't roll out with more partners because instead it feels like they're giving Spotify a sweetheart deal, which actually makes their argument worse.
13:22 Nilay Patel? So I do think part of this looks like a sweetheart deal for Spotify.
13:25 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
13:26 Nilay Patel? And I think they could get it and they have been so vocal that Google cutting that deal with them and Spotify gets to saying Google's a better partner than Apple, that's great for Google. I think there's like a technical reason and then a like a Google financial reason. The technical reason is Google still gets a cut.
13:45 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
13:45 Nilay Patel? Right? Like that much has been reported, although neither company will be on the record saying it.
13:50 Alex Cranz? 29%, 29%.
13:52 Nilay Patel? Whatever that number is, right? But the, I mean, this is why The Verge has this like strict background policy. The companies want it to be known that Google is getting a cut. They do not want to put anyone's name next to that information. Okay, that's weird.
14:08 Alex Cranz? Sure.
14:10 Nilay Patel? So Google's getting some cut. We don't know what it is. We don't know if it's been officially negotiated yet, what that number is. But to deliver that cut, Spotify has to do some technical work to account for someone signed up on Android using our billing system. We know what plan they've signed up for.
14:29 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
14:29 Nilay Patel? And then some money will flow to Google. And so before, when it was, there's a footnote in the Apple versus Epic decision that says Apple can still take a cut, maybe. And, you know, the universe of Apple pundits said that Apple's business was safe.
14:45 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
14:46 Nilay Patel? My response was, I don't think Apple wants to bet its business on a footnote, like, because that seems bad. A footnote in a decision that's being appealed. But, right, it's like, okay, you can try to bypass Apple, but then Apple will still want its cut. And how are you, are you just going to keep an Excel spreadsheet?
15:01 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
15:01 Nilay Patel? You're just going to write it down on paper like an old school? You're going to get the green visor and the lamp and you're gonna?
15:06 Alex Cranz? Just text Tim Cook and IOU.
15:09 Speaker 03 You just Venmo him.
15:11 Nilay Patel? Yeah, so it just seems obvious that Google has to build some hooks in Android and Spotify has to build some hooks into its app and you gotta just develop all of that to account for some lesser cut if you push a different button.
15:23 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
15:23 Nilay Patel? And then send the money.
15:24 Speaker 03 I mean, that's gotta be the reason why we're not seeing this right now, today. And they're saying it's gonna launch later this year, right? They gotta build all the parts.
15:31 Nilay Patel? That's the like reasonable explanation that assumes everyone's a good actor. You gotta like slowly build the thing.
15:37 Alex Cranz? Positivity.
15:37 Nilay Patel? I think the other explanation is like Google's cash cow is search. The revenue model for Android is search. Everyone knows people don't spend as much money on apps on Android as they do on the iPhone. And Google can accept a little less money from that because they still have search and make Apple look bad. And Apple's entire business that is growing is services. And if you can push the services number down for Apple, you have struck a fatal blow.
16:05 Alex Cranz? That feels more like what's really happening here.
16:09 Nilay Patel? I mean, I think it's probably both.
16:10 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
16:11 Nilay Patel? But you can see why Google was like, actually, we should just do this.
16:15 Alex Cranz? Like it's costing like $10.
16:17 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
16:18 Alex Cranz? Like it's, it's no big loss for them and they get to look good. Like that's a win for them. It's a huge.
16:22 Nilay Patel? Right. They get to go to regulators around the world and see, look, we, we are responsive to your concerns.
16:27 Alex Cranz? We're doing it. We're testing it out.
16:29 Nilay Patel? Don't write your broad laws about all of us.
16:32 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
16:33 Nilay Patel? Just write them, uh, just point them at the spaceship. By the way, at the same time, all this is happening, Apple took the buttons out of its Apple TV app on Android TV.
16:42 Alex Cranz? That's the best part.
16:43 Nilay Patel? Cause it doesn't wanna pay Google the 30%. They had a, they had a sweetheart deal that expired. So I had a Chromecast, although we've stopped using Chromecast is just the crashiest thing. Dan, are you still using your Chromecast?
16:54 Speaker 03 I'm not.
16:55 Nilay Patel? Yep. So we had, we had a Chromecast with Google TV, which was a great product for like six months. And then like all Google things, it just, someone forgot about it.
17:04 Speaker 03 Sad trombone.
17:05 Nilay Patel? Like they said, they were gonna roll out like a dynamic frame rates. So it would like drop to 24 when you're watching a movie. They just never did it.
17:11 Speaker 03 I don't know if it can do that.
17:13 Nilay Patel? It's, no, it cannot. They said it was going to.
17:17 Speaker 03 But I mean, like, I don't know if the hardware is capable of doing it.
17:20 Nilay Patel? Like of running at 24 frames instead of 60. It's fewer. It's fewer frames.
17:26 Nilay Patel? But anyway, so on Android TV, on that product, there is an Apple TV app. And it was actually one of the reasons I bought the Chromecast.
17:33 Alex Cranz? Right.
17:33 Nilay Patel? So much of our like purchased movies and stuff are were on Apple. So now the app is there, whatever, I get access to the whole library. I don't have to worry about movies anywhere, anything like that. And then I can keep buying them and that and they'll show up on that. But Apple and Google had negotiated like a sweetheart rate that expired. And Google's like, time for the real rate. And Apple responded, taking its buttons out.
17:57 Alex Cranz? We just won't sell.
17:58 Nilay Patel? Which is, can you imagine that meeting? Like, that's Eddie Q being like, yeah, okay, take the buttons out. We don't want to pay the money.
18:03 Speaker 03 Take the buttons out.
18:04 Nilay Patel? No irony detected here.
18:06 Speaker 03 But put in a line saying where you can buy them.
18:12 Speaker 03 Because we can do that, because Google will let us do that, even though we wouldn't let Google do it on our platform.
18:17 Alex Cranz? Did they all forget that movies anywhere exists? Like, there's a service.
18:23 Nilay Patel? It's only for some studios. I use it, it's great when it works.
18:26 Speaker 03 Yeah, but like, if you wanted to buy TV shows, it doesn't work for that.
18:30 Alex Cranz? That's true. That's true.
18:31 Nilay Patel? Who's buying TV shows?
18:33 Speaker 03 People buy seasons of The Office all the time and whatnot.
18:37 Alex Cranz? Dan buys TV shows.
18:39 Nilay Patel? I don't.
18:39 Alex Cranz? That's what we just learned.
18:41 Speaker 03 I really don't. I mean, I subscribe to all the services. Maybe I should just buy the TV shows, to be honest with you.
18:48 Nilay Patel? Yeah, you should buy the TV shows.
18:50 Alex Cranz? I did buy Cagney and Lacey a couple of months ago. It was on sale and I was like, sure, I'll support 1980s TV.
18:58 Nilay Patel? Have you ever trolled the depths of HBO Max? I mean, like, all right, it's it's one in the morning. I'm watching Head of the Class for some reason. This show didn't age well, but now I have access to it whenever I want.
19:10 Alex Cranz? I have not done that, but now I know what I'm doing tonight.
19:13 Nilay Patel? Oh, they just launched the randomized button. I'm like really hopeful that they didn't curate that randomized button. And it's just gonna like start dropping people in like old episodes like Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
19:22 Speaker 03 I'm pretty sure it's curated.
19:24 Nilay Patel? See, that's a mistake.
19:25 Speaker 03 You go into the show, like you go into Curb Your Enthusiasm and then click randomize. And it'll give you a random Curb episode.
19:33 Nilay Patel? No, I'm telling you, they gotta go pure wild and be like, the entire crazy catalog of HBO Max available to you.
19:39 Speaker 03 You could get Gone with the Wind, or you could get Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
19:43 Nilay Patel? I mean, HBO Max has. In many ways, the best catalog, right? Because it's like the most real movies.
19:49 Alex Cranz? It needs to feel like a UHF TV channel.
19:53 Nilay Patel? That's right.
19:54 Alex Cranz? 1993. Like, that's what it needs to feel like. Just chaos. I never know what I'm gonna get.
19:59 Nilay Patel? What we keep describing here is a interesting product development from the HBO Max team.
20:04 Alex Cranz? And that's not gonna happen.
20:06 Nilay Patel? Any development from the HBO Max.
20:09 Alex Cranz? They have to hire a developer. It's fine.
20:11 Nilay Patel? All I'm saying is, the buttons and links conversation continues to happen at massive velocity. It's the thing that is going to upend the smartphone industry. Whether it's by regulation, whether it's by pressure from the deals, like, Google gives enough companies these deals, they're gonna start de-prioritizing their iOS development.
20:30 Alex Cranz? So, so just to be clear, this is gonna upend the smartphone industry, not nothing. Did you like that segue?
20:37 Nilay Patel? So we should talk about nothing. Yeah, it was good. It was, I was trying to tee it up. The worst named company in tech, Nothing. Every headline we write about this company is deeply confusing to me. I know what's going on.
20:50 Alex Cranz? I feel like we're negging it every time we write about it.
20:52 Nilay Patel? So Carl Pei, who was, he did OnePlus, he has a new company called Nothing, again, very badly named. They're on their hype campaign. Dan, walk us through it.
21:03 Speaker 03 So Nothing, you might remember, a year or two ago, released a set of wireless earbuds. That is the only thing that they've released so far, but now this year, they are hyping up their forthcoming smartphone. They had a half hour long presentation this week to show off an Android app launcher. And also say how that is the future of their smartphone world, is that. John Porter's got a really great piece on the site. He actually spoke to Carl to get a little bit deeper on what their plans are. And
21:39 Speaker 03 I'm a little skeptical about all of this. I think, you know, it's kind of funny. And there was multiple people who were saying that the presentation itself gave a lot of essential phone vibes, which is kind of funny because nothing bought the branding rights to essential phone. So like they bought the rights and they bought the vibes, but the presentation had all of this like kind of bravado and swagger about how smartphones are boring now. Nothing's new. There's no innovation and we're going to fix it. But then they didn't announce a product. So later this year, I guess we'll see a phone. One would assume is an Android phone and it's apparently running their Android launcher.
22:14 Nilay Patel? It's very much an Android phone. There's a Google logo on the, on this launcher.
22:18 Speaker 03 Yes, it is an Android phone. Yes. The twist with the pitch this time is that they want to be a company that helps other companies design and develop products. And they also want to build an ecosystem that other companies would want to plug their products into to support things like, I don't know, easy headphone pairing and stuff like that. On the first point, I will say they've shipped one thing. So, and it also wasn't a great thing. So, you know, if you are a company that is trying to launch a product and you're looking for some help, they're not sure their track record really sells that pitch to you. And then the second point is they want to like build an Apple like ecosystem, but they are not
23:00 Speaker 03 Apple. And there's no reason for any company that is like establish at all to play along. So I, I'm very skeptical about a lot of these ideas in terms of like, will they happen? Or if they do happen, will they be in any sort of capacity of what we're being sold here?
23:16 Alex Cranz? My one counterpoint to the fact that like they want to build this ecosystem and nobody will sign on is Amazon had like next to no hardware business when it launched the Alexa, right? Like they didn't really have much.
23:28 Nilay Patel? No, no, no, no, no.
23:29 Speaker 03 Yeah.
23:30 Nilay Patel? They tried to launch a phone.
23:31 Alex Cranz? Well, they tried.
23:32 Nilay Patel? Actually, your comparison.
23:34 Alex Cranz? Next to none.
23:35 Nilay Patel? No, but they were like, we're going to compete with Apple. We made a phone that has a 3D display and that's failed so spectacularly. Their next product was like, what if it's the most not a phone we can make? No display. It's a, it's a Pringles can. And you have to keep it plugged into the wall.
23:55 Alex Cranz? But they still didn't have like, they were not successful at hardware and they weren't successful at those like partnerships.
24:02 Nilay Patel? They had the Kindle.
24:03 Alex Cranz? Yeah, but but like those partnerships, they didn't have those before and and the Alexa, I'm really glad I don't have one in my house right now. Like that that changed it. They they have a ton of partnerships. They have the most like, I think the most partners for the platform versus the other smart home platforms. So like, it's technically possible.
24:23 Speaker 03 Amazon is also consistently one of the largest and richest companies in the world. So it can, it literally has 10,000 engineers on Alexa. Like, it can literally throw orders of met, like, it can throw multiple nothings. At a problem until it's solved. Like, nothing is a startup. Like, they are a small company that has shipped one product that was kind of mediocre. Wasn't that great? And now they've got these like ideas and ambitions. And if you remember the essential comparison. Ignoring all the other, you know, uh, stuff surrounding that, but their product pitch was that they were going to ship a smart home controller. And an ecosystem of devices and things like that. And it never came to fruition. They they fizzled out and collapsed. Even though they had $300 million of funding to do it.
25:07 Nilay Patel? They fizzled out and collapsed because Andy Rubin was a bad guy and it it was came out in full force that he was a bad guy.
25:14 Speaker 03 But they were also not selling products. Like, they were not, nobody was buying an essential phone. Will anyone buy a nothing phone?
25:21 Alex Cranz? Will you buy nothing?
25:22 Nilay Patel? I mean, it's a, it's an excellent troll. I will say that this launcher that they've announced, just the like handful of screenshots. Are basically like a wallpaper.
25:34 Alex Cranz? Beautiful.
25:35 Nilay Patel? And a handful of widgets, like maybe three widgets. Everything else is like a bunch of Google icons that are circles instead of squiggles.
25:44 Speaker 03 If you spend 10 minutes browsing the Play Store, you can probably recreate this launcher on your existing Android phone right now.
25:50 Nilay Patel? Yeah. Well, here's the thing. I love Hustler. Carl's a hustler. We've talked to him before. OnePlus was a huge success, right? They they captured a a piece of people's imaginations.
26:03 Speaker 03 In a way, yeah, they were a success in marketing. They were not really a huge sales success in the markets that they tried to break into. Like, Google sells more Pixel phones than OnePlus sells phones in the US. Like, that kind of puts it into scale, like. In the past few years, I think it was 2019 that stat came out. That puts into scale of like, how many people are actually buying OnePlus? Well, OnePlus is really great at, and what frankly Carl P is really great at, is driving a lot of interest and a lot of hype and a lot of press coverage about the company and the product. But that doesn't necessarily translate into a huge sales success or a market shifting product. And if you look at like where OnePlus is now, it is basically just morphed into Oppo, which is one of its sister brands from its parent company.
26:46 Speaker 03 Like OnePlus was in a different position than nothing in that it was like owned by this giant Chinese conglomerate that could fund this idea for seven or eight years before they were like, you know what? This isn't working so hot. We've got these other phones, let's just make them all look the same. That's what people want, so we're gonna do that.
27:02 Nilay Patel? But I think a lot of the OnePlus marketing, at least in this country, was the carriers were sort of interested in a hedge against Apple and Samsung duopoly.
27:12 Speaker 03 Yeah, to an extent, yeah.
27:13 Nilay Patel? Right, so T-Mobile would like stock OnePlus phones.
27:16 Speaker 03 Then they ran into the big red Verizon wall of certification, which took them years to figure out with the resources of Oppo. Like, take those resources away and now try and get your phone certified on Verizon.
27:27 Nilay Patel? Now that they can just be on Dish Network.
27:32 Alex Cranz? Gen 5 sis.
27:33 Nilay Patel? Yeah, they can Gen 5 sis up on the O-Rans.
27:36 Alex Cranz? But what if the Nothing phone is like cool looking? Like, what if it's actually interesting looking?
27:42 Speaker 03 I mean, the Essential phone was cool looking.
27:43 Alex Cranz? Yeah, but no, it wasn't. It was like fine.
27:45 Speaker 03 Yeah, it was in 2017. It was titanium and ceramic and it was compact and had tiny little bezels around it. And it was slim and it had the worst camera on earth. And like, what, how, what is, what has changed? That's putting Nothing in a different position than where Essential was four years ago or five years ago.
28:03 Alex Cranz? Because it could be a transparent back and then I would get to see my battery.
28:09 Speaker 03 You could see your battery and your wireless charging coil.
28:12 Alex Cranz? Yes, I'd be like, yeah.
28:13 Nilay Patel? I just wanted to know, like, does Nothing have like a messaging app? Because if they can't get people off the blue bubbles, this phone is doomed.
28:19 Speaker 03 They do not. I mean, they've got, what Nothing has is a lot of pedigree. They've got people from teenage engineering working with them. They've hired people from Dyson working with them and they've, you know, hired some other like design focused brands, people from these brands that are supposedly going to like build these products that are like very design-y and having that aesthetic look that they're trying to sell. But ultimately. Smartphones, especially Android smartphones, are a commodity. Headphones, wireless headphones are a commodity. They are trying to differentiate these commodity markets with design. And it didn't really work that well with the first attempt. I, I think trying to do that with a smartphone is even harder. And I don't know, I'm just very skeptical about it.
29:04 Nilay Patel? Yeah, like I said, I love a hustler. I'm equally skeptical, especially because these screenshots are like, I feel like I could just get this wallpaper. And like, I could be 90% of the way to where this platform is.
29:16 Alex Cranz? I feel like if you just use a heel brush right now, you could make this wallpaper.
29:20 Speaker 03 Well, he did say in the interview with John that he's very excited about their sounds. So.
29:26 Nilay Patel? Yeah, the sound design of the phone is apparently very cool. We'll see, we'll see. We should talk about a handful of laptop things before we take a break. Intel is like shipping computer chips.
29:39 Alex Cranz? They're doing it.
29:40 Nilay Patel? They're doing it.
29:41 Alex Cranz? Yeah, they're finally shipping it. Hime had a fantastic piece this week that was just like, hey, guys, they did it. Cause they have like, they're shipping the products. And I think they've still got a long way to go. And I honestly don't think we're going to see Pat Gelsinger's influence in the hardware side of things for another couple of years. But they did it. They're doing better. They're not at Apple level.
30:03 Nilay Patel? Well, so these, the two, the Dell XPS 15 and the 17 have 12th gen chips in them. Right. We're just like proud of Intel for shipping the chips that go in the Dell products.
30:13 Speaker 03 I mean, well, so what we'll be proud of like is we just reviewed the XPS 15 recently. We reviewed the XPS 17 late last year. Those had, I believe 11th gen chips in them. And basically the takeaway from both of those reviews was these would be a lot better with AMD chips in them. So will the 12th gen version have that takeaway? That is like the open question, because what we saw with the prior models is they're hot. The battery life wasn't great. The fans were loud, things like that. There are all the like traditional PC laptop problems. The AMD has done a lot better for years. Apple obviously is doing great with the M1 series. That Intel hasn't really matched, so.
30:49 Speaker 03 We've seen 12 gen a few times before. We might have even reviewed a few laptops with 12 gen chips in them. Generally, the new generation of chips comes to gaming laptops first, which already have terrible battery life and loud fans and stuff like that. So when you see them in productivity laptops where they pitch longer battery life and quieter noise and better quality of life, then we can see whether they are competitive on that front. And we'll find out. I don't know. I've long felt like the XPS series could use some better options than Intel, but I think Dell and Intel are very close partners on that.
31:22 Alex Cranz? Dell has disagreed for many years. Yeah, I think it would have been if they'd gone with AMD this time around, that would have been a huge boost for AMD because Dell is very much like, we're gonna sit, we're gonna weather this storm with Intel, because ultimately, we think they're the winner in this race.
31:40 Speaker 03 I think Intel and Dell just also are closely partnered on the XPS series. They designed them together. So for them to stick AMD chips in it would probably violate some sort of contractual agreement and also be a giant slap in the face to their biggest partner.
31:54 Nilay Patel? Oh, but it's Dell. They can just spin up another name.
31:58 Alex Cranz? The Dell XPS AMD.
32:01 Speaker 03 APS.
32:04 Nilay Patel? Like Dell's been like, you know what's a word? Inspiron. Just hold on to that. You know what really lights them on fire at the high schools? Inspiron. I will say the two Intel things are really interesting. They're opening up their foundry business. So they're gonna make Qualcomm chips. And then this week, Nvidia said it would consider using Intel's foundry services, which is like wild.
32:25 Alex Cranz? I'll believe it when I see it.
32:29 Nilay Patel? But this is the thing, right? This is the game, right? The reason the other vendors have been ahead, especially Apple is right, they use TSMC.
32:37 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
32:37 Nilay Patel? TSMC invests heavily into effectively Moore's law, right? Effectively making the process smaller, the process node smaller. Intel's like not had all the scale. So they can make Intel chips and Qualcomm chips and Nvidia chips. They can pour the money into their foundry business. This is the big unlock. They have to do it.
32:55 Alex Cranz? I think there's also this idea that like, everybody wants to look like they're shying away from international foundries and from international makers and look like they're USA homegrown Ford tough kind of processors. And so
33:11 Nilay Patel? Ford tough processors.
33:12 Alex Cranz? Ford tough processors. Like a rock.
33:18 Alex Cranz? Whatever. They're all big trucks in America.
33:21 Nilay Patel? You're from Texas. I feel like you should know the difference between these.
33:24 Alex Cranz? I'm gonna get revoked my license. I'm sorry, Texas. But, you know, I think that is part of it, too, is is that there's there are these bills going through Congress. Everybody's looking for funding. Everybody wants the chip funding. And it looks really good to have all of the American chipmakers say, hey, yeah, we'll consider these this American foundry that's making a big splashy buzz right now.
33:46 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
33:46 Alex Cranz? We'll consider putting it there because then maybe you'll approve these bills and we'll all get a giant billion dollar package or whatever.
33:53 Nilay Patel? And the state of Ohio will become.
33:55 Alex Cranz? Yeah, Silicon.
33:56 Nilay Patel? Something else.
33:57 Alex Cranz? Sunbel, so, yeah.
33:59 Nilay Patel? No, Silicon. We'll see. I think it's like, Hyung Seok is great in that Gelsinger, the new CEO, appears to have just like reoriented Intel. They're not doing a bunch of dumb stuff, step by step. There was a big puffy Fasco profile of Gelsinger this week. You should you should read it. He's very proud of himself in that interview.
34:19 Nilay Patel? But it's like, it's interesting, right? He was brought in to turn it around. He did the thing. He said, we're gonna sell foundry services to other companies. He's arrived at a place where they're gonna build foundries and let other companies use them. And they're starting to ship competitive products, which is a big deal. Although I will say, right, the until they ship something competitive with the M1 stuff, it's gonna just like loom over them.
34:48 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's gonna loom over them in the sense that like, they're not gonna be seen as the innovator. Whereas like, Apple will be seen as the innovator, but like, really, Intel is competing with AMD at this point in terms of like, who it needs to beat to stay like, relevant in those markets. And so like, AMD's done a lot of the same things as Apple in terms of like, we've talked about this before in the show of like, technologies that they developed and and things like that to better their products. And and it's really had a great few years. So. Intel is coming in on almost its back foot to to try and compete there.
35:22 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
35:22 Speaker 03 And then, once it, once it's like AMD, then it can be like, okay, where are we going to be the innovator now? And like, what are we doing that is like completely different than other manufacturers or other companies that are making chips?
35:36 Alex Cranz? And I don't think it has to be scared of Apple at any point because they really don't compete. Like, Apple's making its chips on its computers that it sells.
35:44 Speaker 03 Apple ain't gonna start buying Intel chips. That's like, like, like, that, that customer ship has sailed, so.
35:49 Alex Cranz? And Intel's real business, like, we talk, we focus a lot on the consumer side of Intel, which makes sense because that's what we do. But Intel's main business isn't servers. And Apple's not showing an interest in competing in that space right now. And so as long as they don't, like, Intel's still kind of got the run of things. And that's not going to change anytime soon. So they've got plenty of, like, runway to continue to fix their screw ups. And Gelsinger is, seems to have put them on the right path and made some really smart, immediate changes that have shown, like, that have just lifted the profile of the whole company.
36:23 Nilay Patel? I will say that all of Apple's services went down twice this week.
36:26 Alex Cranz? So maybe they should be thinking about servers.
36:27 Nilay Patel? Yeah, they should be like, we should, we're gonna make our own server chips. Apple Services, by the way, hosted mostly an AWS and Azure. So when that stuff goes down, it's like, it's just interesting to think about that whole ecosystem.
36:40 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
36:41 Nilay Patel? Like, Apple Services went down, but Azure didn't go down. So Apple just, like, screwed up.
36:47 Speaker 03 It was the dreaded configuration change.
36:50 Nilay Patel? Apple Services went down to the point where, like, Apple stores were selling iPhones using pen and paper, which was just very funny. It was a great photo.
36:57 Alex Cranz? I feel like if I walked into an Apple store and saw him using pen and paper, I'd be like, you know what? I'm just gonna go to Best Buy.
37:05 Nilay Patel? Eric, don't you, don't they, don't the tablets have stylus, guys? Come on.
37:08 Alex Cranz? Yeah, like, come on, get with it.
37:10 Nilay Patel? Let's talk about this Rog Flo Z13 and let's take a break.
37:13 Speaker 03 Okay, so Cameron reviewed this as the Rog Flo Z13. It is a pretty fun product in that it is effectively a Surface Pro design jammed with like high end gaming components. It's got, you know, a core i9 processor, we're just talking about Intel there. It's a 12th gen core i9 for that matter. It's got a discrete GPU in it and you could play games on this thing that weighs two and a half pounds and has a detachable keyboard and not like the games that you play on an iPad, but AAA titles, actual PC gaming stuff. And then it has this dock that you can connect to the side that adds a much more powerful GPU and a whole bunch of ports. So you can have a docking station with it so that you can really have essentially
37:56 Speaker 03 a product that is as competitive with big, beefy, heavy gaming laptops in a portable form factor, provided you are willing to leave a lot of that power at home when you are on the go.
38:07 Alex Cranz? And spend so much money.
38:09 Speaker 03 And spend so much money. So like the, the tablet itself is $1,900 as reviewed. And then if you want the graphics plugin thing, the external graphics card is the technical name for it, you're looking at like $3,200 or something like that total. So it is extremely expensive for this privilege of having gaming like this on the go, but it's pretty cool that it can be done considering this is again, a 12 millimeter thick device that weighs two and a half pounds and you know, basically runs high end games.
38:39 Alex Cranz? I just, I hate that it's 2022 and we're still being like, oh, and if you really want game power, you can use a dock because every single dock is bad.
38:52 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, like you, if you want, if you want powerful gaming without a dock, you're, you're going to be, your, your computer will be for four and a half pounds and you know, a little bit thicker, like that is the trade off. And that's a real trade off you can make because you, for $1,900, you can get a Zephyr's G15 that has, you know, latest AMD processor in it and a powerful Nvidia GPU and game all you want. It's not quite as portable as a 12 inch tablet.
39:20 Alex Cranz? Yeah. You know what else is not portable? The giant GPU dock you need for like proper, you know, Alienware did this.
39:29 Nilay Patel? I'm just telling people they should go look at a picture of this because the thing on a desk with a dock like looming in the background or the eGPU looming in the background is very funny. And this connector is deeply hilarious.
39:43 Alex Cranz? It's huge.
39:44 Speaker 03 It's a big connector.
39:46 Nilay Patel? No, it looks like a ribbon connector from an Apple two. Like that's the size or like a parallel port.
39:51 Alex Cranz? It's like a scuzzy port.
39:54 Nilay Patel? It doesn't have thumb screws. Where are the thumb screws?
39:58 Speaker 03 It needs thumb screws. It does have the little pinchy latches.
40:02 Alex Cranz? Yeah. You know what else had those? The Alienware eGPU. You know what was terrible? That.
40:09 Nilay Patel? I'm just saying at $3,200, they couldn't do Thunderbolt.
40:12 Speaker 03 So, so the problem they can't do Thunderbolt, like there's a reason that they have this because we saw for a few years there Thunderbolt external GPUs, but Thunderbolt just doesn't have the bandwidth. Like the reason they developed this is built off of Thunderbolt. If you pull it out and look at the dock, there's a USB C port in there and then extra pins next to it that like enable the wider bandwidth.
40:33 Alex Cranz? Alienware did the same thing and, and like at the time you'd say, well, why are you doing this when Thunderbolt exists? And they say, well, no, because we're faster. We're just better. Thunderbolt can't do it quite as good as we can. And so Asus is making the exact same, like Asus is just doing the exact same thing Alienware did. And I'll be really surprised to see if it works better for Asus than it did for Alienware.
40:55 Speaker 03 Yeah, I will say that the difference between how Alienware approached, Alienware approached it by saying like, here's a gaming laptop. And if you want to upgrade your gaming laptop in the future to a newer GPU.
41:05 Alex Cranz? Well, they didn't just do it for him because they did it for like their 13 inch, like they did for their smaller ones too.
41:11 Speaker 03 Yeah, but it was still like a five pound gaming laptop with like, you know, this is like, if you want a portable computer on the go and then you come home and you want to do your serious gaming, you just plug it in. Now you've got your serious gaming rig, which is like a concept we've seen a bunch of times before. Asus itself did it last year with a laptop form factor. They're just kind of using this form factor as a Surface Pro this year. So it's a tablet, quote tablet. But like it's, it's always a compelling idea because it's always like this dream that we've been chasing for a long time of gaming on the go. I think what really throws a wrench in all of this is the Steam Deck. Because the Steam Deck is $400 and like.
41:48 Speaker 03 Also performs really, really well and is more portable. It doesn't require an external GPU.
41:53 Nilay Patel? When you say performs really, really well.
41:56 Alex Cranz? It plays video games sometimes.
41:57 Nilay Patel? So Sean was on, yeah, Sean was on to talk about the Steam Deck. I will just let everyone know, like every day we talked to Sean and Sean's like, ah, the Steam Deck had another issue, but I still love it. And like the love in his voice, it's like he's raising a baby. Like, he's like, ah, the Steam Deck fell down the stairs today. Still learning how to walk.
42:17 Nilay Patel? It's great. So I just don't think it throws a wrench into it. Like, it is 80% functional.
42:24 Speaker 03 The Steam Deck as it is, sure. And also you can't even buy it because if you buy one now, you're waiting another year. But it is the same market, right? It's the same person that would be interested in this is also interested in a Steam Deck. And like, which one would they go with if they were spending their money? A $3,200 system like this or a Steam Deck for $500 when you get the extra storage or whatever the cost is?
42:45 Alex Cranz? I will say, as somebody who almost bought a Surface earlier this year, and Monica actually talked me out of it. Because I really just wanted to sit on my couch and play like strategy games, which are not super GPU intensive. And I was like, yeah, that makes sense. And then I saw the Steam Deck and I was like, that makes more sense. I'm gonna do that. And this came out and I got a little bit of FOMO. And then I saw that eGPU and I got so irrationally angry that people are still trying to make eGPUs work. I want them to, but they're always bad.
43:14 Speaker 03 It is absolutely a compromise in many, many ways. And, and you can see that compromise just right there on the spec sheet. The GPU that's in the tablet itself is a 3050 Ti that runs at 40 watts. That is not a strong, super powerful GPU because it cannot be in that form factor. And the one that's in the enclosure is a 3080 that runs at, I don't know, 135 watts or something like that. It's, it's way more powerful.
43:37 Nilay Patel? 150.
43:38 Speaker 03 150 watts. So, you know, that's just like where they're at with this technology. And where it will probably be for the next few years at least.
43:46 Nilay Patel? All right. Well, go watch this video. It's very fun. Go look at this connector. We gotta take a break. We'll be right back.
43:56 Speaker 04 When it comes to your business, you want cards and tools you can trust. Amex Corporate helps put you in control. Set custom spend parameters to help fit your business needs and quickly issue unlimited corporate cash back cards, all backed by best-in-class fraud protection and the powerful backing of American Express. Get started at go.amex slash Amex Corporate. Terms apply.
44:23 Speaker 01 Ask yourself, what are your best people spending their time on right now? Expense reports, receipt chasing, month end close that takes weeks. You become what you spend on, and that's not what you're building toward. Brex is the intelligent finance platform that eliminates that work before it starts. AI agents that handle the manual stuff automatically so your team can spend their time on what actually compounds. It's time to get Brex AF. Learn more at brex.com/af.
45:00 Nilay Patel? We're back. We're like cruising our way to going over. I was like, nothing happened this week. And we spent 45 minutes talking about a phone that will not succeed and a laptop with an external GPU. That's the Vergecast, everyone. We give the people what they want. It's what it has been for a long time. It's just some Apple Notes. People are getting their Mac Studios and studio displays. The teardowns are happening. Can I just address the power cord thing for like one second? Yes, please. You have one second. Go. It is really easy to pull the power cord out of a studio display. I don't know what's wrong with people. I can do it with one hand.
45:32 Alex Cranz? Did you get like, was there like an alarm?
45:34 Nilay Patel? Do you know how I know you can remove the power cord from the studio display? When I got it delivered to my house and then I was going to the city to shoot the video, so I needed to put it back in the box. And without thinking, I just like reached around the studio display and pulled down the power cord, the way that you would with any other power cord, and it came right out. So I know that there's like all of this, ah, the power, I can do it with one hand. I can do it without even thinking about doing it. Yeah. That's it. I'm just saying, I don't know what people are doing out there. You should get those little grippy things, maybe like. Work on it.
46:06 Alex Cranz? What if everybody else's has been super glued in?
46:08 Nilay Patel? Yeah, I don't know.
46:12 Nilay Patel? The silliest controversy of all time.
46:14 Speaker 03 For what it's worth, Apple's spec sheet on it, it way buried in their like guide online to the studio display says the power cord is not removable. It is removable because we removed it and put it back and then removed it again.
46:26 Nilay Patel? We've removed it several times without even thinking about it.
46:29 Speaker 03 It's not like when Eli pulled it out, it was suddenly, oh, it's removable, but it's also now now broken. Like we put it back and it worked.
46:36 Nilay Patel? No, I have definitely removed things that are not meant to be.
46:40 Nilay Patel? This is not that situation. Okay, so that, uh, the studio was been tearing down by iFixit. It's an iPad in there. It's not 64 gigs of storage.
46:48 Speaker 03 It is an iPad short of a touchscreen, an active Wi-Fi chip, an active Bluetooth chip. But like, are those chips in there? I mean, it's a board from a phone.
46:59 Nilay Patel? Well, that does not have a touchscreen controller.
47:01 Speaker 03 It does have a touchscreen controller, sure. But could we turn on Wi-Fi and Bluetooth?
47:05 Nilay Patel? And then do what?
47:06 Speaker 03 You could AirPlay to it. Like that is what's stopping it from being an AirPlay destination. It doesn't have Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.
47:11 Nilay Patel? Fair enough, but I just think this product is just baffling. I've now watched every possible review of it. It, by the way, we should do the countdown. It has not been one week since Apple told me that the software update would come to fix this thing. They, not a word. Who knows, uh, if this webcam will ever be improved? I assume it will be because Apple traditionally, when they say such a thing, they do deliver. Unlike some of their competitors, someone, there are people who are tweeting at me like when I was like, we can never review based on the promise of software updates. Like random people started reminding me of promised software updates that never came. The most egregious, by the way, is Ring said HomeKit would come to its doorbell some three years ago.
47:53 Speaker 03 That's the most recent egregious one. The other, the, the famous Apple one is FaceTime is still not open sourced.
47:59 Nilay Patel? Yeah, well, they got, there was like a patent lawsuit, like I, whatever. That's true. By the way, there was a patent lawsuit with FaceTime. The Mac Studio has shipped to people. Someone opened it up. There is a flurry of excitement because the SSDs are just like regular old SSDs and it looks like you can remove them. But this is the definition of like, you're not supposed to remove this.
48:18 Alex Cranz? This is the most Apple of Apple things, right? Because there is storage in there. It exists. But the way they're, the storage controllers are handling the data. You cannot just pop any. SSD in there. It has to be the very specific, exact size Apple one because the storage controller is not actually happening on the SSD.
48:40 Speaker 03 The connectors are not standard for starters. So like you can't buy these off the shelf. But even if like, you know, there's been, we've covered a bunch of teardowns that ripped apart two Mac Studios and tried to swap the drives in between them and had trouble doing it because the way this was designed was not so that you could swap the drives, at least not at this stage, but so that Apple in manufacturing could be like, okay, this one's got a 512 and this one's got, you know, one terabyte and they can just like plug them in as they need to for, for manufacturing purposes. But the reason that you can't swap them is because all the, the drive itself is encoded by the on-chip security controller in the Mac Studio. So when you move it from one Mac Studio to another, it, it doesn't work. And maybe they'll open that up in the future, but really it is such a pain in the neck
49:25 Speaker 03 to get inside of a Mac Studio. You have to go through a, an unshielded power supply, which is always fun and dangerous to even get to these drives. So really it's, it's, it's very clearly not designed to be user replaceable.
49:37 Alex Cranz? I cannot wait to upgrade mine horribly in like six years.
49:42 Speaker 03 It's modular.
49:43 Alex Cranz? That's how long it's gonna happen.
49:44 Nilay Patel? It's a modular computer in that it is one module that you should never, never think about.
49:50 Alex Cranz? Don't do it. Don't do it.
49:51 Nilay Patel? More Studio Display. The Studio Display stands are silly, right? Like you can only order the one, you only keep the one that you order with, but apparently the service centers can replace the stands, which means theoretically someone else could, who knows?
50:04 Alex Cranz? I'm so excited.
50:05 Speaker 03 The amount of attention the Studio Display is receiving is so out of proportion to the number of people who will ever buy a Studio Display.
50:12 Alex Cranz? I think it's because it's such a baffling like product. Like it feels like it should have been such a like slam dunk for Apple and everything about it is like, oh no, you did the, you did the opposite of what anybody would want from this product. You put a whole iPad in there, but you didn't give it touchscreen. Like, what are you doing?
50:30 Speaker 03 I mean, it does seem like a lot of people want it. If you go to buy one now, there's like an eight to 10 week shipping delay on them.
50:36 Alex Cranz? It's because they made 12.
50:38 Nilay Patel? I think there's a little bit of gamesmanship around the Apple ship dates lately.
50:43 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
50:43 Nilay Patel? That's, that's total conspiracy theory, but every new Apple product is like, people go to order them. And then there's the whole cycle of the ship dates are slipping. And it's like, yeah, then you hear the earnings report, like we sold more Macs than ever. And I'm like, those ideas don't connect.
51:03 Nilay Patel? Like, on the one hand, no one can, appears to be able to buy one. And on the other hand, you're like, I've sold more than ever.
51:09 Alex Cranz? Everybody's getting them. They're fine.
51:11 Nilay Patel? We did an interview with Microsoft about its smart service camera, which is ridiculously expensive. But I only bring it up because Microsoft did the thing Apple was trying to do and actually appears to have done it. Where they took smartphone camera parts, put some AI around them, made them smarter, made a really good webcam. $800.
51:28 Speaker 03 You know what else did that for $300? The Opal C1.
51:32 Nilay Patel? So the Opal is really interesting because it's, that's a startup. We have them, we reviewed them to get the software features of the Opal is $4 a month.
51:40 Alex Cranz? I like, it's just such a like, good business. They're like, we got you. You want to spend $800? Do you want to, you want to buy this, this, this giant iPad that's not an iPad? Or $4 a month and you got us.
51:54 Nilay Patel? A hundred months later, they will have made $800. Like, I don't, that doesn't quite math out, but I feel like people are more resistant to those fees than if they just made the thing 600 bucks.
52:06 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
52:07 Nilay Patel? But every hardware startup means recurring revenue. We've covered that endlessly, but read the service camera thing because it's really interesting. I think this, the idea that computational photography is coming to more things, especially webcams is sort of undeniable. It's just funny that Apple, which is one of the two pioneers of this whole thing, just like duffed it.
52:26 Alex Cranz? Like bad.
52:27 Nilay Patel? And they have a whole iPad in there.
52:30 Alex Cranz? A whole one.
52:30 Nilay Patel? Yeah. Like, like the internals of an iPad you can go buy. So we'll see again, maybe this thing will come out. Maybe it's because they use that ultra wide camera and they're cropping it.
52:40 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
52:41 Nilay Patel? Which seems like a likely culprit now, after all this discussion. But Microsoft has done it. I imagine at some point, some division at Google will just like fart one of these out with no self-control.
52:54 Nilay Patel? Like the tech exists in so many places in the industry. It's like, why wouldn't you just do it? Google makes Google Meet. Why wouldn't they just make a Google Meet camera?
53:03 Alex Cranz? I've just got really, I just started thinking about all the different tiny, didn't Google made a tiny camera at one point, a tiny standalone camera?
53:09 Nilay Patel? The clips.
53:10 Speaker 03 Yes, it was terrible. It tried to use AI to determine when it should take photos. And guess what? AI is not good at knowing when it should take photos. And also it couldn't take good photos.
53:21 Nilay Patel? Right. They, the AI was pointed at the wrong problem of when do you want a photo? As opposed to should the photo look good?
53:30 Nilay Patel? They're like, put this camera in your home and it will record all the time and make smart decisions about when photos should happen.
53:37 Nilay Patel? Very confusing idea. Lastly, uh, German at Bloomberg rumor today, and it's like a rumor that everyone's taking credit for predicting, but it's the most obvious prediction in the world, that Apple is going to start doing the iPhone as a subscription.
53:49 Alex Cranz? Didn't they already kind of done that?
53:51 Speaker 03 So what they have is like the iPhone upgrade program, right? And so like you pay a monthly fee for that and then every year you can trade it for a new iPhone. What they don't have and what I would guess would be a part of this new thing is bundle that with any services. So what would make sense is you subscribe to this and you get an iPhone and you get Apple Music and you get Apple TV. Like if they combine the Apple one subscription in with an iPhone subscription, which it kind of makes sense.
54:17 Nilay Patel? If you back out how most people pay for an iPhone now, it's a subscription.
54:21 Speaker 03 Yes, either to their carrier or to Apple or whatever, uh, they're paying a monthly fee for it. So what, what, what is 0% financing if not a monthly subscription fee for your phone?
54:31 Nilay Patel? Right. So then Apple just trying to grow its subscription business. They got to make more Reese Witherspoon TV shows.
54:37 Alex Cranz? I need them. Very excited about the morning show, season three.
54:41 Nilay Patel? You bundle Apple one into this and you're like, for a hundred bucks a month, you get all the Apple services and we'll give you a new iPhone every year. It's like kind of a good deal. At the same time, it's like.
54:53 Alex Cranz? Or I could just own it.
54:54 Nilay Patel? It'll be a winner.
54:55 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
54:56 Nilay Patel? But I just, I like buying things and having them.
54:59 Alex Cranz? I mean, that's like the worst part about, I think I was telling Dan this, the, the Apple credit card, you get 0% down. And so nowadays I'm like, well, I mean, that's just like 50 bucks for 12 months. And then I'm, I've got the thing for free. Like I own it. That's great. It's just like limited subscriptions.
55:16 Nilay Patel? This is why millennials don't have houses, Alex.
55:18 Alex Cranz? Yeah, I know. I spend it all on iPads and Apple code. It's terrible.
55:25 Nilay Patel? Yeah, I mean, the whole industry is moving towards this, right? The OPPO C1 at $4 a month for a camera, Apple at $100 a month for your phone. Like, it's all the same. I just, I wonder if there's ever gonna be any pendulum swinging back.
55:38 Alex Cranz? 100%.
55:39 Speaker 03 I think if the costs of things keep going up, which it seems like they're going to, that's just gonna push people more towards financing the subscriptions. Like, what the phone financing programs allowed them to do was start selling $1,000 phones and not have people walk out of the store. Like, because it's now $45 a month for three years, or whatever the terms are, as opposed to $1,000 upfront. And I have a feeling that, like, these services and these features are just going to allow them to continue to raise the price of smartphones and pushing that envelope without people realizing that their phone is now $1,500.
56:13 Alex Cranz? And I think you're also gonna see just overall subscription fatigue, right? Like, everybody wanted to cut the cord because they wanted to escape these giant ballooning costs, and now they are right back having those giant ballooning costs. And like, I think we're like, a couple of Netflix price raises away from everybody saying, you know what, I'm done with subscriptions. I'm gonna go, I'm not gonna buy DVDs because nobody buys DVDs anymore. But like, maybe I'll just watch my TV.
56:38 Nilay Patel? This is Elon Musk tweeting the Plex logo. That's what you're describing. The richest man on earth being like Plex is what I'm doing. And that was BitTorrent, I'm sorry, the Plex people are gonna be really mad. He tweeted the BitTorrent logo.
56:50 Alex Cranz? A great, sir, I've used, I watch Plex every night. It's wonderful, with my legally acquired content.
56:56 Nilay Patel? You're legally acquired. What I've been watching is a bunch of open source, copyright free, training videos about Linux. I watch them every night on my Plex server.
57:05 Alex Cranz? Every night, every night, they're beautiful, very entertaining.
57:09 Nilay Patel? Public domain Linux training videos available on Plex.com.
57:14 Nilay Patel? By the way, speaking of the reasons phone prices have gone up, 5G is like the culprit, right? Both for the plans and the service. And now Google's like, yeah, we're not going to upgrade the Pixels to 5G sub six, which is just hilarious.
57:28 Speaker 03 It's baffling. Like, just to clarify, the the Pixels we're talking about are the Pixel 5, Pixel 5A, and the Pixel 4A 5G, which all support 6 gig or sub six 5G now. And in the case of the Pixel 5, it also supports millimeter wave. What Google is not doing is they are not adding the new C-band sub six, which is the good one if you're on Verizon and and AT&T.
57:53 Nilay Patel? If I could mail in my millimeter wave radios, I'd be like, take them.
57:57 Speaker 03 Wait, yes. So the thing is, the hardware is there, and they actually support C-band in other countries. They're just like, you know what? We don't need to do it on these in the US. So.
58:07 Alex Cranz? Is that because they've only sold four of them? Like?
58:10 Speaker 03 That that could be.
58:11 Alex Cranz? Like, how many people can be mad?
58:12 Speaker 03 Back when we reviewed the Pixel 5A, there was FCC certification that they had gotten approved for C-band support on there. And Google would not commit to telling us that it will submit and support C-band. And so in our review of the Pixel 5A that Allison wrote last year, she said, the hardware's there, the certification's there, Google will not commit to supporting it. And we got a lot of blowback there. Everyone's like, oh, the support's there, the certification's there. It's just because the C-band hasn't rolled out on the networks that they're going to definitely do it. And now it's just sweet vindication. Now that Google's like, no, we're not going to do it, which is like a bummer. We actually wanted to be wrong there and like, wanted them to support it. But yeah, and they also support C-band on the Pixel 6 and the 6 plus. So 6 Pro, excuse me.
58:55 Speaker 03 So it's a bummer. The hardware's there, the certification's there. It's just like a software switch. So.
59:00 Nilay Patel? I'm just saying, they might support C-band on the Pixel 6, but they don't support a phone that looks good. Because it's still the ugliest phone in the world. What's we should talk. It's so ugly.
59:12 Nilay Patel? I was just like, every time I look at mine, I'm like, why did you do this? Last thing in this section, Eero put out a new Wi-Fi 6e router, supports over 10k bit speeds. That's neat. Nothing supports Wi-Fi 6e, but that leads me into Thread.
59:28 Speaker 03 The Pixel 6 does.
59:29 Nilay Patel? Well, great. You know why? Because it's a giant unwieldy phone. They can put any radio they want in there. C-band, Thread, whatever. 6e, name it. Eero has long supported Thread. This has been their bet since the beginning. There are some Thread things out there, but what was supposed to tie it all together was Matter, which was supposed to hit in June. It's been delayed three months. And now the companies that are like, holy bet on Matter, are like, yeah, this will be fine.
59:57 Speaker 03 They seem to be really optimistic about it. Jen has a report that went up today. She spoke to NanoLeaf and spoke to Eve, who have both kind of been part of the Matter development since the beginning. They are both toe in the line of, you know, this is going to be great. It's great that it's still being delayed three months because it allows it to be better. And if it launched and it wasn't great and it failed, that would be a mess. And yes, that's true. But the problem is NanoLeaf in particular has not launched a new product in over a year. It's saying because it's been waiting for Matter support to come out. So they haven't been able to launch new products. And they revealed to Jen that the existing Thread products that they've already released will not be updated to Matter, which is a big bummer because Thread is kind of one of the core technologies,
1:00:42 Speaker 03 part of the Matter spec. A lot of people kind of assumed, just going back to our universal cardinal rule, never, never hope for something that doesn't exist yet. But many people assume that because the essentials, light bulbs and light strip-supported Thread, which allows them to talk to a HomePod Mini, that they would be updated to Matter. And they're not going to be. NanoLeaf says that they will be releasing new versions that support Matter. Did they give a reason why? So because of the changing Matter spec, apparently the bulbs do not have the hardware. They don't have the right chip in there to support.
1:01:12 Alex Cranz? This is why you should never be an early adopter. I say on my Mac Studio that I just bought.
1:01:18 Nilay Patel? I think the people who early adopted NanoLeafs are like pretty happy. They're not.
1:01:22 Speaker 03 I don't know. I early adopted some like three months ago. Like you could still buy them like they're they're just on the market.
1:01:27 Nilay Patel? Well, they're still lighting up your house.
1:01:29 Alex Cranz? Yeah, they do the job.
1:01:30 Speaker 03 Yeah, for a time to time.
1:01:31 Alex Cranz? But you're gonna have FOMO when Matter comes out.
1:01:33 Speaker 03 The usual, the usual smart home world. But then Eve is very interesting in that they are a company that only supports HomeKit and they've been waiting for Matter to open up support to the other platforms. So they can't actually like their products do not work with Amazon Alexa or Google Home and they are planning to use Matter as their connector to support those other ecosystems. So like until Matter launches, Eve is like keep it on, keep it on as a HomeKit vendor, but it's missing out on this giant part of the market of the other platforms. So it's kind of interesting how these, the shifting time scale of the Matter spec is impacting these companies that are planning to rely on it.
1:02:10 Nilay Patel? Yeah, we'll see if it comes out and then we'll see how the big platforms, the Amazons, the Googles and the Apples actually like enable the ecosystem because they're all, even in Jen's piece, they all still want to compete and differentiate. So it's still gonna be weird.
1:02:25 Speaker 03 Yep.
1:02:26 Nilay Patel? But we'll see. It's just this fall. I will say there were some pretty loud hints in that piece from, it was in NanoLeaf or was it from Eve? It was from one of their executives. It's like, well, Apple puts out new software in September.
1:02:36 Alex Cranz? Ah.
1:02:37 Nilay Patel? This fall? You know what I'm saying? Like, so we'll see. Last little smart home thing. The Google Home app is a disaster and it seems like Google's gonna change it.
1:02:46 Speaker 03 It's all getting a little better. They're getting sliders now for the lights as opposed to buttons.
1:02:51 Nilay Patel? Yeah, like, like all things, it, someone forgot that it existed and then someone remembered.
1:02:57 Alex Cranz? Oh, we should fix it.
1:02:59 Nilay Patel? Just trying to remove a device from the Google Home app is hilarious. It's like, do you want to disconnect every Belkin device in your house? It's like, no, I got rid of one plug.
1:03:08 Speaker 03 So I reviewed the Nest Wi-Fi.
1:03:10 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
1:03:10 Speaker 03 Three years ago or something. And before I sent it back to Google, I didn't do like the right dance mantra to like reset the node and now it's stuck in my Google Home app, not even like the main router, the secondary node part of it. I cannot remove from my Google Home app, no matter what I do. And I'm just like, I give up.
1:03:30 Nilay Patel? I've got, I've got an old Sonos like review unit, like I think it was the Beam, like the first Beam. My Google Home just fully believes it's in my house. There's no discussion and the only way to get rid of it is to completely disconnect my entire Sonos system and set it back up again. Whatever, man, you can believe there's a beam in this house for as long as you want. I don't care. I don't give a shit. Okay, we gotta take a break. When we come back, do a little TV lightning round. TV's on the ceiling. You can finally understand why we started the show that way. It's gonna happen. We'll be right back.
1:04:10 Speaker 05 Your heart can tell you a lot about your health. Apple Watch Series 12 measures your heart rate every five seconds with the most accurate heart rate sensing in wearable. So your vitals app, now with heart rate variability, can tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Hear the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. The features described are for wellness purposes only and not for medical use. iPhone 11 or later required. Based on Apple conducted study of heart rate accuracy, August 2026. Visit apple.com slash apple watch series 12.
1:04:41 Speaker 04 If you're looking to hire, you need Indeed. With Indeed sponsored jobs, you can spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help your job get the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.
1:05:26 Nilay Patel? We're back. Lots of little TV news. Should we just start with the freestyle? Explain this horrible joke?
1:05:32 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:05:33 Nilay Patel? All right.
1:05:33 Speaker 03 So the joke is very much an inside joke in that there is a startup-y dentist's service office in New York now and a bunch of our staff, yes, a bunch of our staff have been going to get their teeth cleaned and apparently they have TVs installed in the ceiling. So when you're lying there in the dentist's chair, you can watch TV and it's like right over there. They're not using a projector.
1:05:56 Alex Cranz? They give you little headphones, but they're not noise cancelling. So.
1:06:00 Nilay Patel? Wait, Alex has been to this office?
1:06:01 Alex Cranz? I've been there. I went there and then I told other people, I was like, this was good and they take our insurance. It was nice. But yeah, I went there and they're like, okay, you can watch whatever you want. I'm like, I don't, what do you watch when you're getting your teeth cleaned? Like, I don't, what's the appropriate thing to watch?
1:06:15 Speaker 03 My kids watch Frozen on the TV in their dentist's office.
1:06:18 Alex Cranz? But I didn't want to, so I watched the Anna Delvey show, but I couldn't actually hear anything because they gave me headphones that, that don't stay on when you're laying back and don't have noise cancelling. So you can't hear, like, this wasn't great. But just having a TV on above, like, it just looms over you. You lay back and there's just a TV on the ceiling and it was very baffling for, I feel like, a lot of people at The Verge for why you would have that on the ceiling.
1:06:44 Speaker 03 If you want that experience at home and you don't want to put a TV in the ceiling, the Samsung Freestyle projector is a thing they announced at CES, is this little, almost portable, but not really portable because it doesn't have a battery in it, projector that you can easily rotate and point up at the ceiling. So if you're lying in bed and Chris, who reviewed it, made this point in his piece, that he was lying in bed, not feeling great for a while, and he just threw the projector on his ceiling and was watching TV there in the middle of the night when he couldn't sleep. It's a very novel concept. You can actually do this with any projector by just tilting it up.
1:07:17 Nilay Patel? Right. This is what I'm saying.
1:07:19 Alex Cranz? But this is a cool projector.
1:07:20 Nilay Patel? We put out the Freestyle review and then people, not Verge staffers, not people in need of dental care, have been tweeting at me. It's awesome to put a projector on the ceiling. So I'm just saying, there's a latent, this is the silent majority in the United States of America. TV.
1:07:38 Speaker 03 The real projector market is people who want to put it on the ceiling. So the problem with the freestyle is that there's many problems. You should definitely read the review for all of them. I'm going to highlight the fact that its hinge uses plastic screws and a plastic mount, and you can't get it tight enough to actually stay without sagging after a while. So like, if, if you try to tighten the screws too far, Samsung actually warns you that you'll break them because they're plastic screws. So it says, don't over tighten the screws. But then if they're not tight enough, the, the projector just kind of sags halfway through your movie. Then you have to reset it.
1:08:15 Alex Cranz? Why, why are companies like, companies are telling us not to remove power cords? They're telling us not to tighten screws. Like, just, just let us do it.
1:08:21 Nilay Patel? I just, it's $900. Just ship the good screws.
1:08:27 Speaker 03 And the, the main problem with it, though, is it is not bright enough. The brightness rating is somewhere around like 250 ansilumens, which is very dim for a projector. Basically means you need to be in a perfectly black room. You, you can't have any ambient light, you can't really use it during the day unless you have it really close to your wall or close to your ceiling, I guess. And you have a small 30 inch screen out of it, which is kind of defeats the whole purpose of a projector, where you want to get a bigger screen image out of it. So, you know, they whiffed there and like other projectors in this price range of 900 to 1,200 dollars get much brighter. They can be used outdoors. You know, they can be used in normal lighting rooms.
1:09:05 Alex Cranz? I think the key thing is all of these projectors still kind of suck. Like.
1:09:10 Speaker 03 Well, I think the secret is all projectors suck. Like, like, projectors are a great idea that everyone thinks about. Like, oh, I hate having this, this, this TV on my wall.
1:09:20 Nilay Patel? You know, you're, you're like poking an angry bear here.
1:09:23 Speaker 03 But how much are they are they paying for their setup to get that? And like you it is like you have to get serious.
1:09:28 Alex Cranz? They're spending $30,000 for a laser projector. And then it's gonna be gorgeous. But like if you're spending like projectors are great, but you have to actually budget in a lot of money. You have to budget in a room where you can control the lighting and you have to budget in a a screen, like a reflective screen to do it. And most people are like, yeah, but can't I just have spend $900 and put it on the wall? And like Chris had this thing at the office the other day. I went in and looked at it and it's, don't, don't, don't do that.
1:09:58 Nilay Patel? Well, I think there's a there's a couple of things here. One, you know, iron law of the Vergecast, big cheap screens. Like a projector looks like the biggest, cheapest screen you can get, like inch for inch.
1:10:08 Alex Cranz? Oh, yeah.
1:10:09 Nilay Patel? The cheapest way to get a big screen. Some people love that. There's a interesting moment happening in that market, though, where smart projectors, especially smart portable projectors are like the Samsung Freestyle. There's like a validates what a bunch of companies have been doing for a long time. Anchor, Epson, others. So like Samsung entered the market at $900 with a mount that lets you like screw it into a light bulb socket.
1:10:31 Alex Cranz? Gonna tape it.
1:10:32 Nilay Patel? There's an element where like this is gonna be really cool. Then there's what I have begun to call Lumen Gate in the projector market.
1:10:38 Alex Cranz? Oh.
1:10:38 Nilay Patel? If anyone wants to write an outraged editorial about fake lumens, I will pay you for it. All these companies are using a weird lumens measurement that isn't lumens. So Samsung's like, this is like 600 lumens or something, but it's actually 250.
1:10:51 Speaker 03 Yeah, so there's ANSI measurement, ANSI, which is like the standard that that averages the brightness across the frame. And then so that gives you the actual brightness of what you can expect. And then there's the measurement that the fake measurement that Anil I alluded to that is like a small, tiny percentage of the screen gets, you know, to a certain brightness. And that's where, you know, the marketing numbers all end up with because it's bigger and brighter. But in reality, it's it's not that bright.
1:11:19 Nilay Patel? So anyway, so people are you can buy a non-smart projector that's pretty good. In that $800 to $1,000 range and you will have a great 4K picture. You could do it outside, it'll be bright, it'll do all the things. You'll just have to like plug a fire stick into it or something. Then there's this market, which is what if we put a shit box smartphone in this projector?
1:11:43 Speaker 03 What if we, you know, turn this Android smartphone into a projector?
1:11:46 Nilay Patel? Have you heard of the MediaTek processor? Because you have, right? It's all here. And so I have like two of them. I've got the little anchor nebula capsule.
1:11:54 Speaker 03 The soda can.
1:11:55 Nilay Patel? The soda can, which is like, you know, this is the thing that invented the market. It's a very fun.
1:12:00 Speaker 03 It's also like 300 or 400.
1:12:01 Nilay Patel? 300 or 400 bucks, right? It's fun. We, in the summers, we take it out by like our fire pit and just like it's a, you can barely see it in the daytime. And we hutch frozen by the fire. And then that just like led me all the way to, I want to watch football outside. And I just started like trade, you know, that thing like you start with a paper clip. You trade your way to a house. I just like kept on like buying and returning ever more expensive projectors. And I still wanted a smart one because I didn't want to mess with a fire stick. So I ended up at like 1,500 bucks. I think it was refurbished. I got it for like 1,200 bucks. I'm a big saver here. And it's like XG Mini, a brand I've never heard of, but it has Harman Kardon speakers. It's 4K, it's HDR and it works well. It's the most expensive.
1:12:46 Nilay Patel? And then Samsung's like right in the middle with this underpowered Tizen projector.
1:12:51 Speaker 03 So they're, but they're priced in the middle, but it performs like the soda can.
1:12:55 Nilay Patel? Performs like the anchor. Yeah.
1:12:57 Speaker 03 Yeah, I think if Samsung had prices at 400 or 500, like we could be like, okay, you give up a lot of compromises, but it's this neat little thing. Now like.
1:13:04 Alex Cranz? What would the hinges have been like if they'd priced it there? Like, what would they have been made out of?
1:13:10 Nilay Patel? No hinges, no, there'd be no light bulb adapter. The one thing Samsung has going for it is all of these smart projectors I've been talking about. They do have Google Play on them.
1:13:18 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
1:13:18 Nilay Patel? I think my, mine runs Android 10, which is like the highest you can get. Yes. A little behind. The Play Store is on there, most apps are on there. Netflix will not certify its app for these smart projectors.
1:13:30 Speaker 03 You gotta break out the, the fire stick and the Roku stick to get your Netflix on them.
1:13:34 Nilay Patel? No, no, they're smarter than that now. That's what you used to have to do. Now they have installed, they have an app that spoofs a side load of Netflix and you run the Netflix smartphone app. It is nuts. It's not great. It's super like it's.
1:13:51 Speaker 03 This is why my Netflix subscription keeps getting more expensive because Neelai's XG mini projector is is bootlegging Netflix apps.
1:14:00 Nilay Patel? Are the police gonna come to my house? I don't know what's happening, but Samsung got Netflix to certify the real app for this projector.
1:14:09 Speaker 03 Because it's the same software that they run on their TV. It's the same Tyson platform.
1:14:12 Nilay Patel? Right, but I'm running the same Android platform as my Sony TV that runs Android. It's just like XG mini didn't have the fucking juice to get Netflix.
1:14:21 Alex Cranz? You didn't spend the $500 Netflix surcharge that the freestyle.
1:14:26 Nilay Patel? That must be it. So I like, I love these things. They're fun to play with. I don't, I wouldn't be as dismissive of projectors.
1:14:33 Alex Cranz? I'm terrifically dismissive. I like, I want like, I want an actually good picture.
1:14:41 Speaker 03 So I, you know, I think it goes back to this idea of external GPUs and thin gaming devices. It's a great idea. Everyone loves the idea of not having a turned off TV hanging on their wall, taking up wall space all the time. But then the reality hits of what it takes to get a good projector and what it takes to get a good portable, thin gaming laptop experience.
1:15:01 Nilay Patel? Yeah. And then the reality hits of like, I'm definitely drinking a beer and watching football outside.
1:15:06 Alex Cranz? I think, I think my, my, my real frustration with it is as long as I've lived in New York, people always come up to me and say, hey, summer's coming. I have roof access. I want to watch movies on my roof. What's the best projector I can get for $500?
1:15:20 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
1:15:20 Alex Cranz? And I'm like, this doesn't exist. Stop it. Stop asking me this question.
1:15:24 Speaker 03 So the other weird thing about the Samsung freestyle is it doesn't have a battery. So like the anchor soda can, and even I think a lot of the XG me ones and stuff have batteries in them that will last long enough to get you through a movie. This one, you have to like either plug a 50 watt plus power brick into it or have a power outlet. So it's like, it's compact, but it's not really portable in that you have to bring power to it now.
1:15:47 Nilay Patel? I think that the most illuminating part of this conversation is I own this product and I've thought it's called XG mini for one full year. And I just learned it's, what is it? XG me?
1:15:57 Speaker 03 XG me.
1:15:58 Nilay Patel? Yeah, I own one. I gave them my money. I just like haven't paid very much attention.
1:16:04 Speaker 03 Well, you got the reffered one. So maybe the logo was scratched off or something.
1:16:07 Nilay Patel? Harmon Carden.
1:16:08 Speaker 03 That's the logo that I like really.
1:16:09 Alex Cranz? Is it really Harmon Carden or is it like Harmon Corden?
1:16:14 Nilay Patel? It's a side loaded Harman Kardon speaker system.
1:16:18 Speaker 03 Well, I could tell you the freestyle does not have AKG speakers, which Samsung actually owns Harman and AKG, which is hilarious.
1:16:24 Alex Cranz? Where's the Bixby speakers for it?
1:16:27 Nilay Patel? Couple more TV things, free TV shows with ads in them are like sweeping the industry.
1:16:32 Alex Cranz? Everybody's doing it.
1:16:33 Nilay Patel? Everyone's doing that. I mean, Julia Alexander, this was her thing before she left. She would always say like ad supported streaming is gonna happen to everyone. So Netflix has made its rumbles. YouTube is adding 4,000 episodes of free TV supported by advertising.
1:16:48 Alex Cranz? I hope it's just like heart to heart. I just want it to be like all these like shows nobody walked, like the shows you see on Ovation. That's what I want for this.
1:16:58 Nilay Patel? I'm just saying HBO Max needs to add a button that's like, what extremely obscure 80's sitcom do you want to watch? Cause they're all there. By the way, pump up the volume on HBO Max now. That's about half of my personality. If you should go watch that movie. It's all in there. And then here's a really interesting one we should end on. Sonos has a bunch of job listings up for a home theater OS.
1:17:21 Alex Cranz? Yes.
1:17:21 Nilay Patel? Here's my prediction. They're gonna make a TV.
1:17:23 Alex Cranz? Ooh, it's gonna be a bad TV.
1:17:25 Nilay Patel? I don't know.
1:17:26 Alex Cranz? I just.
1:17:26 Speaker 03 Would it be though? I mean, it's gonna be expensive because Sonos products tend to tilt towards more expensive. It could, you know, have a built in Sonos arc.
1:17:35 Alex Cranz? I see. I was thinking they were gonna go more like when Roku did all of its, its home theater kits slash speakers. Like that's, that's kind of where my, my brain went, reading this news.
1:17:48 Nilay Patel? Well, let me read the job listing. The job listing is head of partnerships, home theater. The head of partnerships for our next generation Sonos home theater OS will play a pivotal role in connecting users to content and services they love with Sonos quality experiences and come to expect. I'm telling you what they're trying to do. If you just think about what's Sonos right now, like their best selling products are the Beam and the Arc. And then like the ones, like the little ones. If you're stuck plugging in someone else's TV, you're hooped. That's not the future. And like, you've got to convince everybody to like buy a thing. If you actually sell the TV with the Sonos in it, then you can like, let people just stream music to those speakers.
1:18:22 Speaker 03 Sonos radio.
1:18:23 Nilay Patel? Right? And then you can, you can immediately have the ecosystem instead of letting Roku's.
1:18:28 Speaker 03 Free TV supported by ads.
1:18:30 Nilay Patel? But we gotta get all the apps. Like Sonos can't be side loading the Netflix phone app.
1:18:37 Nilay Patel? That's, that's just my prediction.
1:18:38 Alex Cranz? Yeah, they have to get like, I mean, I think the thing I'd be worried about there is Sonos is, is known for doing good work. Like it's, it's audio quality is actually really good. For this stuff, it has to get a really good TV panel. If it has like a garbage TV panel, like we will be just as mean to it as we were the Mac Studio Display.
1:18:58 Nilay Patel? Yeah, but a good TV panel.
1:18:59 Alex Cranz? Is actually kind of hard to do.
1:19:01 Speaker 03 It's commodity. LG Display will sell it to you.
1:19:03 Nilay Patel? Right. Like LG Display will sell you an OLED panel. They're any number, I mean, I will not be happy if they go with the high-end LCD, but like there's any number of really high-end local dimming LCDs that will do the trick.
1:19:14 Alex Cranz? They just go with a TCL panel. And I think that's my concern is that they will go with something like a TCL panel or, and just you'll have like a perfectly fine, I mean, actually that makes total sense. The more I think about it and talk about it. Yeah, they'll go with like a really cheap panel and be like, but it's Sonos branding and Sonos speakers.
1:19:33 Speaker 03 I don't know. This is the company that sells an $800 subwoofer.
1:19:37 Alex Cranz? And I own it. It's great.
1:19:38 Speaker 03 They're not afraid. Yeah. And it's good. They're not afraid to charge a high price for what they consider a premium product and premium experience. So I, I would see a $2,000 Sonos TV that's got a good panel in there and built-in speaker systems and stuff like that, that, you know, has the same image quality as a $1,200 LG, but you're paying that $800 markup for the Sonos.
1:20:00 Nilay Patel? Yeah, I just don't think they can make a box, right? There are only two ways this goes. If you're making a home theater thing and you've got partnerships and the, one of the jobless things here is UX lead, next generation home theater experience, and it requires eight years of experience successfully designing user interfaces for mobile and TV.
1:20:15 Speaker 03 What if they built it into the soundbar?
1:20:17 Alex Cranz? That's what I was saying, like the Roku.
1:20:19 Speaker 03 Like they, they skip the TV. Yeah.
1:20:21 Alex Cranz? Yeah, Roku did those soundbars. You just plug it in and you go. But again, I think the thing there is like, if you're buying Sonos, you probably can't afford and would already have like an Apple TV, which I think is still kind of the high watermark. It and Shield are kind of the high watermark for home theater.
1:20:39 Nilay Patel? Yeah, throw that Shield in there. You're like, I saw the fear in your eyes.
1:20:43 Alex Cranz? I gotta remember the Shield guys. I love you guys. I haven't turned mine on in four weeks.
1:20:48 Nilay Patel? We remember you.
1:20:49 Alex Cranz? You're wonderful. One day I will play you again.
1:20:52 Speaker 03 Yeah, I kind of agree. Like, the TV market is such a commodity. And like, you are competing against Samsung and LG and Sony and all these established brands. It would make sense to go into the soundbar.
1:21:05 Alex Cranz? I was, I was thinking about this last night, and I almost started a rant about it on Twitter. So, Apple, you know, has a very lovely product, and they have this coming up next feature in their, like, specific Apple TV thing. And it aggregates all of the stuff you watch in one spot. And you can say, oh, I want to watch this next, because I just finished watching.
1:21:23 Speaker 03 Except for Netflix.
1:21:24 Alex Cranz? Except for Netflix. And also, it doesn't let you choose what app to open it in. So every time I watch 911, it's like, do you want to open it in an app you're not signed up for? Or Spectrum, which is garbage? Or Hulu? And I'm like, I want to do Hulu. And they're like, no, no, no. Spectrum, we go. It's terrible, and I hate it. And Apple used to let you choose. I'll stop ranting about it later. Anyway, what if it's boxy?
1:21:47 Nilay Patel? That's a deep cut.
1:21:48 Speaker 03 That's something I have not heard in a long time.
1:21:52 Alex Cranz? What if, what if this is like, the one that, like, because they, their, Sonos is actually really good at making these partnerships, right? Like, it's good at getting this stuff onto its products. So what if it's like, oh, we'll do like, a cool aggregation product? I would buy that in a heartbeat.
1:22:06 Nilay Patel? Yeah, I just think they're gonna make a TV. I think they put it in the soundbar, or they put it anywhere else. Like, you can do that stuff, but you're still fighting someone else's interface.
1:22:15 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
1:22:15 Nilay Patel? You're still fighting someone else's processing. You make the TV, and you're like, this is a great Sonos TV. It's calibrated out of the box, doesn't look crazy. It's got this cool new interface.
1:22:25 Speaker 03 I mean, this is the same argument for Apple to make a TV.
1:22:27 Nilay Patel? I'm not saying I'm not repurposing the argument. I'm saying the job listings are right in front of me. And I would very much like someone to make a TV with not ridiculous software.
1:22:37 Alex Cranz? No one will ever do that.
1:22:39 Nilay Patel? It's, it would be great. So that's my prediction. It is probably likely that they will do like Roku and stick it in a thing, but even Roku started making TVs.
1:22:48 Alex Cranz? That's what that's the whole reason like TCL is successful in this company, country is because of Roku.
1:22:54 Nilay Patel? Yeah. Well, it's the reason TCL is successful, period.
1:22:56 Speaker 03 Yeah. I will say that Roku's business model is wildly different than Sonos's. So it'd be interesting how that would, you know, coalesce or mesh.
1:23:04 Alex Cranz? Do boxy. Come on, Sonos.
1:23:07 Nilay Patel? To boxy.
1:23:07 Alex Cranz? Do it for me.
1:23:09 Nilay Patel? Alex is like way brilliant. This is like early year one or two of the verge. Like we were deep on the boxy story.
1:23:14 Alex Cranz? Oh, my gosh.
1:23:15 Nilay Patel? Like Avra Ronan, I got down. I went to like the Suicide Girls were at a boxy party in the middle of New York. Like I was like, what's happening? And then they Samsung bought them. And I went to this like very sad coffee and they're like, Samsung doesn't understand us. And I was like, no one understands you. My like, I cut my teeth as a tech journalist, like writing about failed ideas in television.
1:23:35 Alex Cranz? Oh, it's so brutal. I'll never get over it. My boxy tattoo stings.
1:23:39 Nilay Patel? Your boxy tattoo? Oh, my God. And you won't give the shield the time of day. That's your.
1:23:46 Alex Cranz? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Oh, my, my, my mentions are going to be horrible after this.
1:23:50 Nilay Patel? That's true. If you are a Nvidia Shield fan and you think Alex should respect you,
1:23:56 Alex Cranz? and you just want to talk about boxy, tweet at me. I'll talk to you.
1:24:00 Nilay Patel? We should have another boxy meetup.
1:24:03 Nilay Patel? We should just be like an old school. Oh, man. Remember the boxy TV? I still have the remote.
1:24:08 Alex Cranz? It's a great device.
1:24:10 Nilay Patel? All of these memories are flooding back, which means it's time to end the show. We have, as always, we've gone over. You can tweet at us. Dan is DCC for Alex is Alex H. Krantz. I am at reckless. We're on spring break next week, so we're not going to have a show.
1:24:23 Alex Cranz? Ooh, party.
1:24:24 Nilay Patel? It's a real thing. Drink a beer on the beach. It's not going to be like actual spring break because we're going to have our children.
1:24:30 Speaker 03 It's what it's going to be is a projector playing Bluey on the side of the house.
1:24:35 Nilay Patel? I'm taking the capsule.
1:24:38 Nilay Patel? The bluey is going to be out of control. So we're off next week, then we'll be back. There's some stuff you should listen and read, though, all over the site. Got a great piece about the visual effects in Spider-Man: No Way Home. Ashley Carmen, her last piece on The Verge, even though she's at Bloomberg now, finally went through legal. It's how SiriusXM bought Earwolf and Stitcher and kind of bungled it all up. And then Ash has a great piece on video game preservation, which is excellent. I highly recommend it. With the chief product officer of Robin Hood, up on our channel, Pragata on Decoder. I'll just admit to everyone, I try to ask the questions about blockchain and climate, and it's never good enough. At some point, I'm just going to be like, are you personally reducing the emissions? Or will you quit blockchain? You have to commit to one another. I try.
1:25:22 Nilay Patel? We're going to keep asking the blockchain questions of the blockchain people because I think it's important to ask. I'm just not going to personally arrest them and put them in jail, which is what people appear to want me to do. Other than that, like I said, we're off next week, but then we'll be back. It's The Verge, y'all. That's the whole show. Rock and roll.
1:25:58 Speaker 06 Support for the show comes from Pipe Drive. Sales teams spend up to 50% of their time on admin work rather than selling, building relationships, and closing deals. Pipe Drive gives them that time back. It's the intelligent AI-powered sales CRM loved by growing sales teams. Pipe Drive just launched meeting intelligence built right into the CRM. Before your meeting, it pulls deal history and past conversations into one brief. During the call, it records and takes notes. After, it auto-drafts the CRM updates ready for you to review and approve. Head to pipedrive.com/fox to get started and get an exclusive 30 days free instead of the usual 14-day trial. No credit card or payment needed.
1:26:45 Speaker 07 Support for this show comes from Harvey AI. The future of law is agentic, not just tools that assist, but AI agents that navigate complex matters. That's why Harvey created agents that can do the work from end to end. They build a plan, pull from secure data sources, run subagents in parallel, and draft the work product ready for your review. So you delegate the work and on the judgment. Trusted by more than 60% of the AM Law 100 and leading Fortune 500 legal teams, Harvey is the AI operating system designed specifically for legal work. Harvey, AI tailored for law. Learn more at harvey.ai.
Previous We reviewed the Mac Studio, the Studio Display, the iPhone SE, and the iPad Air Next Steve Aoki on why he’s a ‘crypto believer’ Page updated October 25, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
