Live from WWDC and E3

Another week on the road for Vergecast; we recorded from WWDC and we have (cross off your bingo square) special guests! All together in the same room again, Nilay and Dieter bring back the ever-wise Lauren Goode and Walt Mossberg, with first-time Vergecaster and co-anchor of CNBC's "Squawk Alley" Jon Fortt. Also, Paul Miller's weekly segment "Games are Gadgets Too" calls Casey Newton live from E3 to talk about the newest demos on the show floor. watchOS 01:58 macOS 17:39 tvOS 28:31 Paul’s Games are Gadgets Too: 43:43 iOS: 58:31 Final thoughts 01:27:50 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Dieter Dieter, Dieter Dieter, Dieter Dieter.

• 0:02Speaker 01

  What is that?

• 0:03Nilay Patel?

  It was your turn.

• 0:04Speaker 00

  That's your open music.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  I'm pretty sure the opening music is a Dieter, Dieter, Dieter.

• 0:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's what it sounded like last week.

• 0:11Nilay Patel?

  It did. That's what we did.

• 0:15Nilay Patel?

  All right. Hello and welcome to The Vergecast. Flagship podcast, theverge.com. I just like saying that. Uh, this episode of The Vergecast is brought to you by my fake vodka. Scissor vodka. Cut through the night. Also, someone please invest in my fake vodka company.

• 0:28Speaker 01

  FYI, Neelai still makes the, uh, the finger scissor pantomime every time he says scissor vodka.

• 0:35Nilay Patel?

  I do a lot of miming.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:36Nilay Patel?

  Something I've noticed about myself. Anyway, look, uh, it is WWDC. It is literally the day of WWDC. We're here in San Francisco, uh, in CNBC's beautiful, Recode, and CNBC's beautiful One Market offices. I'm staring out the window at the bay. It's gorgeous. I'm joined by what I would call an all-star panel of Vergecast guests. Dieter Bohn is here.

• 0:55Speaker 01

  Hello, hello.

• 0:56Nilay Patel?

  Walt Mossberg is here.

• 0:57Speaker 03

  Hello, hello, hello.

• 0:59Nilay Patel?

  Lauren Good is here.

• 1:00Speaker 00

  Hey, everybody.

• 1:01Nilay Patel?

  And CNBC's John Fort is here. Surprise. We weren't expecting John, were you?

• 1:06Speaker 03

  Ah, you never expect John.

• 1:11Nilay Patel?

  Well, John, uh, we've been hanging out a lot lately and I've been trying to get him on the show and he was a dub dub today. And so we made him stick around for hours to put him in the corner.

• 1:21Speaker 00

  Pretty sure he's been up since about 3 o'clock in the morning. Is that right?

• 1:23Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I could make this worse. I could tell, I could tell people John's on the hype desk, but I won't.

• 1:27Speaker 01

  I don't bruise easily either, so that's good.

• 1:29Nilay Patel?

  No, that's just, it wouldn't bruise you. You would just, you would just think it was dumb and ignore it. Anyhow, um, so today was WWDC. We're all there. Tons of announcements. One of the most fast-paced Apple events I've experienced in a long time. No hardware, all software.

• 1:44Speaker 00

  No one more thing.

• 1:45Nilay Patel?

  Nope. There was one more thing.

• 1:47Speaker 03

  There was?

• 1:47Speaker 01

  The one more thing was I forgot to run the video.

• 1:51Speaker 00

  The one more thing was Craig Federighi just saying, "Peace out, everybody," and riding off in an Apple car into the sunset.

• 1:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:57Speaker 00

  Never to be seen again.

• 1:58Nilay Patel?

  Generally, just a very fast-paced event, tons of announcements. I thought, from the jump, one of those interesting things was the way Tim Cook framed each of Apple's four platforms. So, obviously, you know, he's like, "iOS, completely changed the phone. macOS, redefine the personal computer." He, I would say, he sort of didn't have a great line about TVOS. He was like, "TVOS, the future of TV is apps." And then he completely reframed the Watch and said, "WatchOS, the greatest device for your health," which is a totally new reframing. And Lauren, hopefully by the time this podcast is out in the world, Lauren will have published a piece, I'm sure, actually sure of it.

• 2:36Speaker 00

  Groundbreaking.

• 2:36Nilay Patel?

  Groundbreaking piece, talking about how Apple's completely...

• 2:39Speaker 03

  But I just have to say that in Tim Cook's mind...

• 2:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 2:43Speaker 03

  And in the mind of Jeff Williams, the number-two guy there who headed up the Watch project, it was always a health thing and fitness thing.

• 2:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 2:50Speaker 03

  That's, but you're right, they never framed it quite as on the nose as they did today. But in their heads, that's what it was.

• 2:57Speaker 01

  You know, but, I agree, but they, this is the first time that they've basically said, "That's what it's about," instead of, "It could be a lot of things."

• 3:07Speaker 03

  No, no, no, I completely agree with you. I'm just saying, if you talk to them off a stage, off the record, that's basically what they've always thought it was, because that's really what the two of them care about.

• 3:20Speaker 00

  I thought one of the greatest ironies today was that Tim Cook talked about the four platforms that people are developing for now, five if you separate iPhone and iPad, but it's really iOS, Mac, TV, and Watch, as Neela said. But Watch is really the one, I think, that is still least reliant, or maybe least useful around third-party apps. And that was the one they talked about first. Really, people are using it for native apps, right? They're using it for iMessage, they're using it for the native health apps, because the third-party app experience has been so poor to date.

• 3:50Speaker 04

  It doesn't feel like a full platform to me. It still relies on macOS or on, mainly on iOS, to get what it needs to get going. I wore the Apple Watch for a while and eventually ditched it, because it, for whatever reason, can't read my heart rate accurately and consistently. Every once in a while, it just starts reading every other heartbeat.

• 4:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:10Speaker 04

  And when I'm, when I'm going at 150 beats per minute, I hate looking down and seeing 75. I'm like, "Curse you."

• 4:20Speaker 03

  Are you saying, let me just get this straight, are you saying it's reading other people's heartbeats?

• 4:24Speaker 04

  Maybe.

• 4:25Speaker 03

  Who are walking really slowly and...

• 4:28Speaker 04

  There's a slow lazy dude in between my...

• 4:31Speaker 00

  You know a lot of calm people in the news.

• 4:33Nilay Patel?

  It's me, that dude was me. Um, incredible. Uh, last week, you had a great, Lauren had a great feature about Apple redoing the App Store and how it works and subscriptions and trying to build a business around that.

• 4:47Speaker 03

  Which, by the way, they didn't mention at all.

• 4:49Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 4:50Speaker 03

  Other than to say there were 2 million apps.

• 4:52Nilay Patel?

  Right, but, but I think they did all that before because they wanted to focus on the platforms here and kind of the consumer news here. But what was really interesting is I still don't know how you build a business developing Watch apps. It's still a sidelight to whatever's happening on your phone.

• 5:05Speaker 00

  Right, it's still developers are saying, here's my cool app and maybe I should optimize this for Apple Watch, for the most part. I do talk to some health and fitness developers that are very specifically focused on wearables, um, because that's where the sensor set is and that's where it makes the most sense. But largely you're talking about developers who are saying, just like they say, should I optimize for iPad now? Should I optimize, should I optimize for TV now? And a lot of times it's still originating from just iOS and then building out from there. I think Apple wants to change that, I think that's obvious from the way they're sort of segmenting out these platforms right now, but I mean, yeah, I mean, Watch right now, people, when you talk to people about Watch who have it, they say, I really like being able to see my iMessages on my wrist. I talked to a lot of people in like service industries who say that because they're on their feet all day and they can't look at their phones.

• 5:48Speaker 03

  Or other notifications like Slack or whatever.

• 5:49Speaker 00

  Or healthcare, right, or, right, but even, I mean, some of the third-party notification experiences really aren't that great. Or they say they like health and fitness and that's pretty much all native. Um, the one thing that Jay Blonnik did say today, Dieter's playing with us...

• 6:01Speaker 03

  Dieter's...

• 6:02Speaker 00

  Dieter's sending us heartbeats right now.

• 6:03Nilay Patel?

  No, he's sending us those thirsty notifications.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  I'm sending a thirsty rando emoji to our producer who's mad at me for not speaking closely enough to the microphone.

• 6:10Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 6:11Speaker 03

  Uh-huh.

• 6:12Speaker 00

  Dieter, go ahead, speak closely to the microphone.

• 6:13Nilay Patel?

  That's both of you.

• 6:14Speaker 03

  But you know what, Lauren?

• 6:15Nilay Patel?

  We're gonna cut all this out, by the way.

• 6:16Speaker 03

  I think just to repeat what John said, or to back up what John said, and where I know you know, because you probably are closer to this than any of the rest of us, it is different than optimizing for the iPad. And the difference is that the iPad is an independent device. The question is only do I build a universal app which when it is downloaded to an iPad will look different than an iPhone, but not depend on the iPhone.

• 6:42Speaker 00

  Right.

• 6:42Speaker 03

  The iPhone can be completely turned off, and it works just perfectly fine on the iPad. The watch is not that yet.

• 6:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:48Speaker 03

  Having said that, I think it's really important to note that this company introduced this, what was Tim Cook's first big new category since the passing of Steve Jobs, the watch. It has, I guess they're the biggest seller of smart, of a very small market of smartwatches now, but it's not a big, it's not a success by any means. It hasn't moved any needle, sprapple. And today, what we saw, at least on the software front, we still haven't seen the new version of the hardware, is a complete, what I called, a rescue. They're rescuing this essentially failed, meh, product, which is not their standards.

• 7:30Speaker 00

  That's kind of strong words. No, I actually completely agree with you.

• 7:32Speaker 03

  Oh, that wasn't a strong, read the live blog. Read the Verge live blog today.

• 7:36Speaker 00

  I'm hoping that I have all these thoughts formulated by the time this podcast comes out, but I actually see what they showed today as an admission that Apple Watch 1.0 was like totally wrong.

• 7:47Speaker 03

  I completely agree with you.

• 7:48Speaker 00

  But at the same time, they're really underscoring their commitment to the thing.

• 7:52Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 7:53Speaker 00

  The fact that they completely revamped the software for it, there might be new hardware coming out in the coming months, and yet they said, you know what, we're just, we're gonna fix this one right now. We're gonna try to do that.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  What we know so far is that they've taken the connect button and taken it away from like, send heartbeats and drawings to your friends, and has it launch an app dock, which is like, kind of the apps themselves, but also like you can tap into the full thing.

• 8:17Speaker 00

  Glances are gone.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  But glances seem to be gone.

• 8:19Speaker 00

  They're totally gone.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  Who knows if there's still like, the weird app icon screen. This thing.

• 8:26Speaker 03

  I think that's gone.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  It's probably.

• 8:27Speaker 03

  You have to assume that's gone.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  It took me three months to understand all the 50 different ways you use to interact with WatchOS 1.0 and 2.0. We're what, a year and a half into this thing. We're coming up on WatchOS 3.0 and they're like, they're changing the whole UI paradigm again.

• 8:42Nilay Patel?

  They didn't use the digital crown once. Yeah, they didn't talk about the digital crown once, which was the centerpiece of their introduction.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:48Nilay Patel?

  Wait, so John, you don't think this is a rescue? Why is that?

• 8:51Speaker 04

  I don't think it's a rescue. A rescue? No, I think it kind of is a rescue, but I mean, Apple has argued that this thing for anybody else would be a success. And I guess maybe they have a point. Like, if you look at Amazon Echo, people say, "Amazon Echo is a success." Well, compared to what?

• 9:08Speaker 03

  It may not have sold any more than this Apple Watch.

• 9:10Speaker 04

  Exactly, exactly, but for Amazon.

• 9:11Speaker 03

  At a lower price.

• 9:13Speaker 04

  After that Amazon phone.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  Pretty much anything looks like a success after buying your phone.

• 9:20Nilay Patel?

  That's why you want to set a low bar. Anyway.

• 9:23Speaker 04

  But I mean, I would take my questions around the watch and all this stuff in an entirely different direction. We'll get to this later, maybe, but who's gonna pay for all this in terms of developer time? Right? Like, who's got developers to tweak things for Siri, to come out with the new Apple Watch app? By the way, we also want you to do iPad stuff. And I mean, Swift is gonna help, but they're also tweaking, as you guys reported, the business model around this entire ecosystem because, some would argue, there's some payment fatigue. Advertising isn't what it used to be. Maybe people, individuals are actually gonna start paying for this stuff now by subscription, not just once. Who knows if that'll work?

• 10:03Speaker 01

  So I think you're getting at what I think is like the secret biggest story of this keynote, which is that Apple is doubling down on apps. They're doubling down on their platforms. They're not talking about the cloud. They're talking about doing everything on device. And developers can talk to Siri now. We'll talk about that later. Developers can make stuff for Messenger now.

• 10:26Speaker 03

  And Maps.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  And Maps.

• 10:28Nilay Patel?

  There's no iMessage for Android, which was a big rumor coming in.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  But every single one of those things got put in terms of you can make apps for Siri. You can make apps for Messenger. You can make apps for.

• 10:39Speaker 00

  iMessage.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  iMessage, whatever.

• 10:42Speaker 00

  Facebook just said yes.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  Yes, you did.

• 10:45Nilay Patel?

  And they're called bots now.

• 10:46Speaker 00

  Right.

• 10:46Speaker 01

  But everybody else calls those things bots, or just like general like floaty, you know, cloud stuff, but with Apple.

• 10:54Speaker 03

  General floaty cloud stuff?

• 10:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Google is not good at naming.

• 10:57Speaker 03

  Wasn't that the name of a website you used to have?

• 10:59Speaker 01

  But Apple is saying.

• 11:01Nilay Patel?

  General floaty cloud stuff, central.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  They still believe in apps. And like, that to me is like a little surprising, because right now, like, the new subscription model notwithstanding, we'll see how that goes, there's not a ton of excitement about like, the app economy.

• 11:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, I couldn't help thinking when they did the traditional, uh, Apple slide with that traditional, you know, drop down and, and smoke rises from it effect that Steve Jobs.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:28Speaker 03

  Loved, and so they have kept it. Boom, comes down to number 2 million, there are now 2 million apps. I mean, there were 100 million, five, just like, it seemed like, four months ago, now there are 2 million. Uh, and I'm thinking, but every study shows that no one's downloading any apps.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:45Speaker 03

  So it's really, Dieter, I think you, I think you're absolutely right. However, I will just say, I was waiting for an Uber, for an interminable amount of time on the corner, and a bunch of developers came over to me and started chatting.

• 11:59Speaker 00

  Did they ask for a photo with you?

• 12:01Speaker 03

  I'm not commenting on that part.

• 12:02Speaker 00

  That happened a lot this morning.

• 12:04Nilay Patel?

  It's $5 per one.

• 12:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, you need to start charging a lot. There needs to be a lost by selfie app.

• 12:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Walmart accepts Apple Pay.

• 12:10Speaker 04

  You got a cardboard cutout and go around.

• 12:13Speaker 03

  Well, they're all around already. But here's the thing, I, so they said to me, well, what did you think? And I, and I didn't want to answer, I, so I said, well, what did you think? And they said, we're really psyched, these were, I don't know, five white males.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 12:27Speaker 03

  And, of course, and they said.

• 12:29Nilay Patel?

  The diverse developers are only in the videos.

• 12:31Speaker 03

  Five white males under the age of 26, basically.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  Wearing t-shirts?

• 12:37Speaker 03

  All of them from Australia or somewhere, and they said.

• 12:41Nilay Patel?

  How it's getting fun.

• 12:42Speaker 03

  And they said, "We're super excited about building apps for all those things Dieter just listed." So, the distortion field extends quite far.

• 12:55Nilay Patel?

  Well, so I would say this, and John actually talked to us for two seconds earlier. I don't think this stuff is designed to sell more phones, or more iPads, or more whatever. It's designed to get, for the consumer, more value out of the devices, at whatever rate they keep selling them, and for Apple to start getting more money out of each device. Because that is what Tim Cook has been talking about, right? Maybe we are at peak phone, or peak iPad, and we've got to start making more money inside of each of these places. So if you expand the surface area for apps, if you say, "There's an App Store," and now there's an iMessage App Store, and now there's a Watch App Store.

• 13:33Speaker 03

  Siri Apps.

• 13:34Nilay Patel?

  A Siri App Store.

• 13:35Speaker 04

  But now you have platforms on your platform, and bots, you're supposed to program for all, if you're eBay right now, it's like, "Wait a second, I'm supposed to program for Facebook Messenger, and iMessage, and Siri, and, you know, maybe Home? You know, if I want to be able to talk to some, you know, all these different things? There's no way that you can have the resources to place bets on all these things."

• 13:58Speaker 03

  So what I think will happen is, there will be a shakeout. There won't be one giant massive, like, those 2 million apps won't each have a version for each of these different sub-platforms, and we're going to see, over the next X years, also on Android, probably, a divergence into camps. There will be apps that seem to work, we already have a little of this with the iPad, if you think about it. If you go to the App Store on the iPad, you automatically are put into a category, if you look at the little text on the top that says "iPad only." And you can say, "Show me everything," and you'll see a bunch of blown-up phone apps that you probably don't want, but I think you're already going to see subsets.

• 14:42Speaker 03

  And Lauren's right, there are things that, I actually think it'll go beyond fitness, I don't know, can't tell you what exact categories, but what I saw today, in the watch, finally made me think, somebody is going to want to put certain things on the watch that wouldn't have worked before.

• 15:00Nilay Patel?

  I still have, so, I agree with Lauren, like, they've rebooted this thing, they've gotten rid of Glances. God only knows what the Digital Crown is for, but they've made it about apps. Right? You push the button, you get your app dock. The apps are instant now. God only knows what this is gonna do for battery life.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  Do you believe them, that they're instant?

• 15:17Nilay Patel?

  No. God, no, no, no, no.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 15:20Nilay Patel?

  I think they'll be instant on the next version of Watch that is presumably coming in September.

• 15:23Speaker 00

  With watchOS 2, I'll say, when watchOS 2 rolled out last fall, they did say that their performance times were supposed to be better because some of the app logic was being moved onto the device itself, rather than everything loading from the phone and all that, and yada, yada, yada. And in my experience, it has been a completely mixed bag. I wouldn't say that anything has gotten that much noticeably faster, and so I think that...

• 15:43Speaker 03

  So, we don't trust them.

• 15:45Nilay Patel?

  No, they put out the new OS and they released the new hardware later, right? I mean, that's the move.

• 15:49Speaker 03

  We will judge.

• 15:51Speaker 00

  We will, when we get to play with it, which may be soon.

• 15:53Nilay Patel?

  I feel like I'm being judged right now. There is a bell that rang in the distance. What the hell just happened there? Chimes of doom, as Mossberg speaks.

• 16:03Speaker 03

  No, that's the, that's the bell for the court of Judge John Ford. Judge John Ford.

• 16:11Nilay Patel?

  I don't know what happened there. So, that's the watch. And I think that this is the thing, they're retrying the watch, and it's not clear. I will say...

• 16:19Speaker 01

  Oh, scribble.

• 16:20Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah, you can scribble on it, you can draw on it, you can send letters.

• 16:22Speaker 00

  You can go to Android Wear now, too?

• 16:23Speaker 01

  You could, Android Wear, actually, you could do it first, but, I mean, this wouldn't be a Verge cast, as I pointed out, that you could actually do it first. Old PDAs.

• 16:35Nilay Patel?

  There is, actually, Palm has an unreleased watch that's been in Dieter's basement for five years.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  Imagine if they licensed graffiti.

• 16:45Speaker 03

  I have to come to Dieter's defense. Because even though Dieter and I did not know each other at the time...

• 16:51Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 16:52Speaker 03

  Dieter and I, you have sitting right at this table, the entire marketing department of Palm. And Handspring.

• 16:59Nilay Patel?

  That is very true.

• 17:00Speaker 03

  I mean, they used to, they used to, you would go to their booth at a trade show, and they would have glossy-printed reprints of my columns, and I probably, you're...

• 17:11Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 17:11Nilay Patel?

  They actually just had 8x10s of a young Dieter.

• 17:15Nilay Patel?

  It was very strange, actually.

• 17:16Speaker 03

  Dieter was working the booth.

• 17:20Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, not, we could just do 30 minutes on Palm right now if you want to. On Palm, yeah. I think their move is to say, to Walt's point, not everything that you want to build needs to be a full iPhone app. There's surface area, maybe eBay needs to be full iPhone app, but maybe they don't need to be a Siri app. But maybe there's another kind of thing that needs to be a Siri app. Which, I think we should transition very neatly into the big kind of macOS news, which was Siri hit the Mac.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  Yup.

• 17:46Nilay Patel?

  Um, what do you guys think?

• 17:48Speaker 01

  Uh, the more I think about it, the more worried I become. I'm sure it's gonna work fine, but the fact that Siri sits next to Spotlight, and they basically, as far as I could tell, did no integration work with them whatsoever. There's a bunch of continuity stuff that they've also done with Mac to connect it to iOS, and even the Apple Watch. Um, and I know that there's a new Apple File System that I need to like dig way into. Everybody's very excited about it.

• 18:14Speaker 03

  There's a new Apple File System?

• 18:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're gonna replace HFS Plus.

• 18:18Speaker 03

  Oh my god.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  But, like-

• 18:20Speaker 03

  That can only mean doom.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. When I saw those two icons next to each other, I was like, oh, so macOS is gonna be just like iTunes. They're gonna just like layer features on it, and not pay attention to how it all should be integrated into a single cohesive whole.

• 18:32Speaker 03

  Well, somebody on Twitter complained, and I think correctly, and I hadn't thought about it the whole session. Because as you said, Neela, they were just like, it was like a gatling gun of stuff. Um, there was no mention of Mail.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:46Speaker 03

  And Mail is something that really needs to be-

• 18:49Nilay Patel?

  Oh, really? Shit, the biggest news of the whole thing!

• 18:50Speaker 01

  Yes, single sheet threads.

• 18:52Nilay Patel?

  That's not it at all.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  Yes, it is. You can, you don't have to-

• 18:55Speaker 00

  Wait, I missed this. What is this?

• 18:56Nilay Patel?

  Opposite of that news.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  All your conversations are in a single scrollable pane now.

• 19:00Nilay Patel?

  Okay, that's cool. But, the biggest news-

• 19:02Speaker 01

  It was one of the things that flashed by.

• 19:04Nilay Patel?

  Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. The biggest news of the whole thing.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  What is it, Neela? What is it?

• 19:08Nilay Patel?

  You can delete the default apps from iOS. You can delete Mail, and Stocks, and Podcasts.

• 19:13Speaker 03

  The fact that that makes us so happy? The fact that that makes us so happy is a problem, right? Can you make other things the default?

• 19:22Speaker 01

  And if you can delete them, does that mean that they have gotten them unbundled from the Chorus far enough where if they wanted to, they could just update the damn things instead of waiting for the next OS update?

• 19:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, because they're in the App Store.

• 19:32Speaker 00

  Because they're rolling updates.

• 19:33Nilay Patel?

  Right. They're just in the App Store.

• 19:35Speaker 03

  Well, that's good news.

• 19:36Nilay Patel?

  And I think this actually...

• 19:37Speaker 00

  There's something you can't delete. Like, you can't delete the camera.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  We just rolled right on past macOS.

• 19:40Nilay Patel?

  And which is basically what Apple did. Apple's like, here's macOS. Here's a new version of Siri for macOS.

• 19:45Speaker 00

  They did that cut and paste stuff as well.

• 19:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they did the cut and paste. There's some new continuity stuff.

• 19:49Speaker 00

  Right.

• 19:50Speaker 04

  Siri, uh...

• 19:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, you did mention...

• 19:52Speaker 04

  You were talking about Siri. And, you know, watching this unfold, I thought, well, it would be great if they rolled out Siri more broadly once everybody felt a little better about Siri.

• 20:01Nilay Patel?

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:02Speaker 04

  And I was slightly annoyed that they're rolling out Siri more broadly before they fix search in Mail.

• 20:07Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 20:08Speaker 04

  Like, fix the...

• 20:09Nilay Patel?

  So you're a Mail user?

• 20:10Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, you have to be, right?

• 20:12Nilay Patel?

  Mmm.

• 20:13Speaker 04

  Okay, you don't have to be.

• 20:15Nilay Patel?

  John, we work at the Plucky Startup.

• 20:17Speaker 04

  Yes. You guys are clearly more highly evolved. Like, in my shop...

• 20:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I still have a couple of old email accounts that I use Mail for.

• 20:25Speaker 04

  If I want to get corporate mail, it's, you know, it works whitelisted in the Mail app. If I try to get it in Outlook, just in the corporate... It doesn't work so well, so I use multiple Mail apps and I have to go back to Mail eventually. And if I'm trying to search for something, my goodness.

• 20:40Speaker 00

  I am so with John. I still use Mail. This is specific to mobile and desktop. And just this past weekend, I had to actually... I was on my way somewhere, couldn't find the address because it wouldn't pull up in mobile, had to sit down, open my laptop, connect my laptop to Wi-Fi, find the paperless post invitation.

• 20:56Nilay Patel?

  That is the Apple nightmare scenario.

• 20:57Speaker 03

  Okay, so can I go further? That they haven't fixed search and other things in Mail. They haven't fixed the way their Mail client handles Gmail, which I have had hours of conversation with both companies about, and I come to believe it is largely Google's fault. Even on Android phones, you know, there are two email clients. They want their email system to work on... in a particular way. But the problem for Apple is that Gmail is the biggest email... Gmail service in the world by far, and it is their responsibility as the maker of devices and software to make it work with Gmail. And as far as I, did you learn something about that?

• 21:40Nilay Patel?

  No, but I want, this was, I think, the thing about the Mac section that really hit me. First of all, they renamed OS X to Mac OS.

• 21:46Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 21:47Speaker 03

  By the way, they told me at a meeting later.

• 21:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 21:50Speaker 03

  That within Apple, they have a large number of people who called it OS X, which drove them crazy.

• 21:55Nilay Patel?

  I always thought it was fun.

• 21:56Speaker 00

  I'm guilty of saying that by accident on occasion.

• 21:59Nilay Patel?

  So they renamed it Mac OS.

• 22:01Speaker 04

  They didn't give it a number, this version number.

• 22:03Nilay Patel?

  They didn't give it a number. Craig Federighi said something very strange, which if anybody knows the answer to, I would love to know.

• 22:08Speaker 00

  Why, it's obvious that it's Sierra?

• 22:09Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 22:10Speaker 00

  I've come up with something poetic.

• 22:11Nilay Patel?

  So, he was just like, obviously, you know, we have to give it a name, and it's clearly Sierra, and they just like moved on.

• 22:17Speaker 00

  Yes. I think it's because it's a metaphor for the PC market being in a drought, and Sierra is where the snow-capped mountains still are, and it's a source of water, and so...

• 22:32Nilay Patel?

  I think when you say the reason it's obvious is that it's a metaphor for drought, you're like, you're just very hard to differentiate.

• 22:38Speaker 03

  I'm sorry, I need a ruling on that from Judge John Ford.

• 22:40Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 22:41Speaker 00

  Thank you, thank you.

• 22:42Speaker 04

  I mean, because we all live in Northern California.

• 22:46Speaker 03

  That was a huge blunder from bottom of my heart. I should have remembered.

• 22:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 22:51Speaker 03

  That he's in the doghouse with Lauren, so he'll agree with the right name now.

• 22:53Speaker 00

  No, but I mean, Apple is so California. Every time Apple does a demo, they're like, "Look at, we're going to Tahoe City, and then we're going to her company offsite in Big Sur, and after that, we might stop in Tonoa."

• 23:02Nilay Patel?

  And then our beautiful children will make a movie of this adventure.

• 23:05Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  That's way better than mine. I was going for Sierra, the 1970s and 80s game developer that published the King's Quest series.

• 23:13Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 23:14Nilay Patel?

  There's a metaphor there, too. If anyone knows why it's obvious, though, please tweet.

• 23:17Speaker 00

  I'm sticking with my theory. Snow-capped Sierra Mountains.

• 23:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, but why was the mountain orange?

• 23:22Speaker 00

  Um, I don't know.

• 23:24Nilay Patel?

  Walt mumbled it a couple times next to me, he didn't like the desktop background. So, get it together, Apple. Anyway, let me make this point and we can move on from macOS. Everything they demoed in macOS locks that ecosystem down farther. So if you want to use the new Siri stuff and say, "Show me all the JPG images John emailed me," you have to use Mail in iOS 10 because it can't talk to anything else. If you want to use Apple Pay on the web, which is not a big announcement, have to use Safari. They're getting to a place

• 23:52Speaker 04

  And Safari on the Mac.

• 23:53Nilay Patel?

  Safari on the Mac.

• 23:54Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 23:55Nilay Patel?

  Which is, I mean, that's a choice. I don't use it, either does you.

• 23:58Speaker 03

  I use it. Sorry, I use it.

• 23:59Nilay Patel?

  But like, that's a choice. They're doing this thing where every new big feature requires some amount of ecosystem lock-in.

• 24:07Speaker 03

  I use it because I like battery life.

• 24:09Speaker 01

  Unless the Siri apps take off, and this is why it's so weird that they're called Siri apps. A Siri app is a thing that lives on the Siri platform, but if they just had like Siri APIs and stuff, then maybe it could talk to other apps that aren't Apple defaults. But nobody knows.

• 24:23Nilay Patel?

  So, it's just, that to me is, you know, iOS and macOS, they've been veering towards each other for a while. And it's interesting to me that as they unbundle the core apps from iOS, the ecosystem lock-in on the Mac seems to be getting a little bit tighter.

• 24:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, but here's something you've got to bear in mind. This could change. It may even, we may even see it in some very, in the next quarterly report. I don't, listeners, I have no idea. That was just me spitballing.

• 24:52Speaker 04

  Disclaimer, yes.

• 24:53Speaker 03

  But they've done very well with the Mac as it is. They don't have a lot of outside incentive to change, I mean, they have a lot of outside incentive to change certain things like Mail. Because when I talk about Mail, I don't just mean on iOS. I mean on the Mac itself. Search doesn't work very well there, maybe better than on iOS, but not as good as it used to be. Gmail doesn't work very well there either. But overall, they don't have a high incentive to change the OS on the Mac because, last time I looked, the Mac was a $26 billion business that is just a footnote when we

• 25:33Speaker 03

  talk about Apple. That would be like 130th in the Fortune 500 or something, and it is, if it were a separate business, and it is...

• 25:45Speaker 03

  It has outgrown the overall PC market. What do they like to say? Thirty quarters out of the last thirty-five or something, you know? Something like that. They don't have a high incentive. But they're slowing and Chromebooks are overtaking.

• 25:54Nilay Patel?

  I think of my Mac as the thing I use to open a web browser and then use the rest of the services I use.

• 26:01Speaker 03

  Yes, I understand, but that's the overall PC situation. And when you consider that, of all the PC companies, they're in pretty good shape. They feel pretty good about it.

• 26:10Speaker 04

  Apple's got a couple of different, the way I see it, ecosystem moves that they do and do well. One is this type of move where it's like, hey, this feature is really great for you if every single thing that you use, not just hardware-wise, but software too, is ours. And then this works for you. Otherwise, nah, we're not even thinking about that because of course you use everything Apple. I don't. Right? The other move that they have is when they open up and pull people into their ecosystem. They did it with iTunes when they made iTunes for Windows and made the iPod relevant for people outside the Mac ecosystem. They did it with retail when they started putting stores in places where people didn't tend to see Macs and iPods and their wares. Then they started pulling people in and they were able to tell the story, hey, we had so many customers

• 26:55Speaker 04

  who've never owned a Mac before. My concern is that with this move, with all of this stuff working together, but only if you're on only Apple stuff, it's too similar to what Microsoft was doing with Office and other stuff, where they were reserving it for their own platform. And they limited their growth that way. They waited too long to open up. I've been wrong before about Apple being too closed. Sometimes they succeed wildly with being closed, but in this case, I wonder, because I...

• 27:22Nilay Patel?

  Wait, but that was a winning, that was a winning strategy for Microsoft forever, until they got disrupted by the phone, right? I mean, Microsoft...

• 27:31Speaker 01

  Well, until they got disrupted by the web and the phone.

• 27:33Speaker 04

  By the web, yeah.

• 27:34Nilay Patel?

  Well...

• 27:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I...

• 27:35Nilay Patel?

  Stupid web.

• 27:36Speaker 03

  Well, I...

• 27:37Nilay Patel?

  I hope it dies.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  It's going to, don't worry.

• 27:39Nilay Patel?

  So, wait, wait. First, we're gonna take a quick break. Dieter's gonna read an ad.

• 27:43Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 27:44Nilay Patel?

  We're gonna come back, we're gonna talk about iOS, the big one, and then my personal favorite one, the big change to tvOS, which I think will revolutionize the world. But first, to the money, bone.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  In 1873, Golden, Colorado was home to miners searching for gold. And when the miners sat down for a well-deserved banquet, Mr. Coors brought a beer worthy of the occasion. A beer that came to be known as Coors. The banquet beer. Also, lawyers required me to say that Coors Brewing Company is in Golden, Colorado, and with great beer comes great responsibility. Which is a weird way to talk about that, but whatever.

• 28:31Nilay Patel?

  So we're back. What a wonderful advertising that was. That's the phrase I'm using from now on. So Apple blew through TVOS. It brought out Eddie Q. He's like, "We put out a TV, we believe that the future..." Lauren is doing the Eddie Q dance right now.

• 28:42Speaker 03

  The most detail-oriented guy in the company.

• 28:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, right. He's distracted. "Look, the Warriors are up 3-1. Any moment Steph Curry could shoot a 3-pointer and they could win the series." He came out and said, "We believe the future of TV is apps. We have so many apps, they're great. Here's a new..." Here's a quote from the CEO of Starz. "Here's a new Sling TV app. And the big news, very quickly, we're enabling single sign-on so you don't have to log in every app every time, every TV app." And then, audience goes nuts and he's like, "All right, that was a TV." And they moved right on. I think that that move is the beginning of Apple actually realizing their desire for the Apple TV to be a single... the single box you have under your TV to be effectively your cable box, and for them

• 29:28Nilay Patel?

  to disrupt the entrenched TV system in the United States. Walt is looking at me like I am crazy, but hear me out. Right now, in this industry, there's like a war going on. The FCC is saying you gotta open up the cable box. Comcast, other cable providers are saying, "No, that's stupid. The future of TV actually is apps. We're putting apps everywhere." The big thing blocking that from happening is you have to log into every network app on a TV, on a TV streaming box. Whatever, Roku, Apple TV, whatever it is. You have to sign-on, you have to enter a code, you have to do this and that. What Apple is going to do in the next version of TVOS is you buy it, you plug it in- Your internet, you say, "I'm a Verizon customer," whatever, you log it in. They will know what apps work with Verizon.

• 30:13Nilay Patel?

  They'll show them to you on the TV screen. Presumably, you'll be able to download them as a bundle of everything that works. And then Siri lets you search into all of them. You can say into Siri now with "Live Tune In," "Turn on CBS," and it'll flip on CBS for you. They've made a cable box. It's just gonna work like that. The only thing it's missing is a guide of live TV.

• 30:32Speaker 04

  That's kind of a major thing, though.

• 30:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:35Nilay Patel?

  That's like, that's like two seconds away.

• 30:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, but, but Eli.

• 30:38Nilay Patel?

  There's, they're like one phone call to Gemstar, whoever makes a guide, away from having that.

• 30:44Speaker 03

  They, first of all, they've already built a guide, I believe. This was all part of their, their plan, which they've had tremendous trouble with, to the point of, I think, putting it on the shelf for the moment of doing their own service. So I don't think the guide is the obstacle, but because they don't have it, it's not a cable box. It may be that they think of it as the one box, although, I have to say this, I'm sorry, there is a one box. Everyone ignores it.

• 31:13Nilay Patel?

  I have one.

• 31:14Speaker 03

  I have one, too.

• 31:15Nilay Patel?

  You've done an entire control with the lead up.

• 31:17Speaker 03

  It has all of cable, and it has the top five or six over-the-top services on it, and that's, and it's called TiVo, and it's there. And it was just bought, right?

• 31:27Speaker 00

  I thought you were gonna say the, I thought you were headed in the X1 direction.

• 31:31Speaker 03

  The X1 has no over-the-top on it.

• 31:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, it doesn't.

• 31:35Speaker 03

  Although it can. It was built to allow it, but it doesn't yet. Who makes that? John, Judge John.

• 31:40Speaker 04

  Some company.

• 31:42Speaker 00

  Disclaimer.

• 31:43Nilay Patel?

  You know we're in their, their building right now.

• 31:45Speaker 03

  We're in their building. They own 30% of our company. But we still make fun of them, just because we're friends, and that's what friends do.

• 31:54Nilay Patel?

  I think they're friends with me.

• 31:56Speaker 03

  But the single sign-on is a brilliant thing, whether or not it makes them the, the, the cable box. And that is, and, and, and it's so cool, because it, it, again, like other things, we haven't, we haven't talked about their privacy getting around plan, but...

• 32:17Speaker 03

  So you sign in once to your cable provider when you encounter the first app that requires that and they then create a token which has none of your personal information in it and they send it up to the cable provider or I think Neelai learned a little more, a lot more detail, there's a, there's a company that cable providers use, but it goes up there. They don't know who you are. They, they may know what they're streaming to you, but they don't know your details and certainly Apple doesn't know your details. So like, once again, poor Comey, he came to Apple and said, "I want to know everything about Neelai's

• 32:59Speaker 03

  TV watching." They go, "Well, here's the token. Good luck," you know, and, and that's, that's the basis for a single sign in.

• 33:07Nilay Patel?

  But I think the thing is, if you have, if you are a TV customer and that number is falling, but then Comcast says to you, "Hey, we're going to lower the rates for a TV because we are no longer going to lease you a box. Just go buy a $99 Apple TV and that will get the majority..."

• 33:25Speaker 03

  Not $99.

• 33:26Nilay Patel?

  It's $129 now.

• 33:27Speaker 03

  $169.

• 33:28Nilay Patel?

  $169. But the cheap one, there's still a little one.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that's not going to do all that.

• 33:31Speaker 03

  That's not going to do these things.

• 33:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, talk to it. Anyway, but whatever, my point is...

• 33:35Speaker 01

  Podcast listeners, I want you to know that I'm placing my hand over Neelai's heart.

• 33:39Nilay Patel?

  He's stopping me. He's racing.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  Because...

• 33:41Nilay Patel?

  I'm not wearing the Apple Watch.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  I, I have seen this thing that my hand is over, Neelai's heart, be broken.

• 33:47Nilay Patel?

  Over and over again.

• 33:48Speaker 01

  So many times by so many companies presenting such good plans for fixing TV. It's happened at least a half a dozen times where Neelai rests his back from things like, "These people have figured it out." And then he explains the plan and we all go, "Yeah, that plan could totally work." And then, within a year, the plan is in shambles.

• 34:07Speaker 04

  And this, this isn't fixing TV, right? I mean, I've been amazed at Apple's incrementalism in TV. It's like they, they don't want to, for some reason, it seems to me, they don't want to pay what it would cost to get all the content they would need to actually deliver their own sort of over-the-top streaming service. Maybe they feel like it would be too expensive, too similar to what's already out there. So they're doing these kind of partial...

• 34:30Speaker 03

  I don't think it's money. I think, I think in order to justify what they would have to pay. In other words, the media companies are saying to them... Oh, we'll be happy to treat you like Comcast. I'm sorry, Xfinity. Comcast, whatever the hell their name is. We'll be happy to treat you like Comcast. Pay us what Comcast pays us. And then the economics are, they have to offer those giant bundles because that's the only way to make the money back. So, that would just make... Why bother doing that? That's not revolutionizing anything. That's just becoming another cable provider.

• 35:02Speaker 00

  I think John is right in that it's... These are incremental moves. It's not like Apple is handling the billing for how you're paying for these specific cable apps or cable services.

• 35:13Speaker 03

  But all I'm saying is, they were willing to do something much more radical and they just haven't been able to get there.

• 35:17Speaker 04

  Right, on their terms. And I think they're talking about apps being the future of TV, but it's not even clear to me that apps are the future of apps.

• 35:25Speaker 03

  Right.

• 35:26Speaker 04

  Right? I mean, Ken, there are so many app developers who are saying, "I'm not sure there's a future business model-wise in this." There certainly is one for Apple and for Google because it's like they're sucking the oxygen out of the room to a large extent. I mean, you don't have to actually tap on the app icon and go into OpenTable nearly as often now because you can just either ask Siri or go into Apple Maps and...

• 35:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but OpenTable's business model is to take a spiff off the reservation, right? I mean, they don't need you to open the app.

• 35:54Speaker 04

  That's what it is now, but they might have had other ideas or plans that involved opening up their app, but now that's blown to the... Now they're a feature. They're not an app. They're not... They don't have a direct relationship with you. They're a feature inside of...

• 36:05Speaker 03

  Well, they try. I mean, I've used this through Siri or I might have used it through Alexa or Google or one of the others, or all of them. And what happens is, they just do what would happen if you opened their app, but they send it to you an email, whether you ask for it or not. All of a sudden, you get an email with like, "Here are some other restaurants you want to go to," and all the other crap they would have put in the app. "Please rate this restaurant."

• 36:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but the big question for the TV is, HBO builds HBO Go and CBS builds CBS Now and ESPN builds Watch ESPN. They spend all the money to build the apps, and then you get single sign-on, a guide, and Siri voice search, and you never open those apps again, right? They get... The content gets totally disintermediated.

• 36:49Speaker 03

  I don't know about you or how much you use your Apple TV. I use mine a lot. I almost never bother opening them. I just say.

• 36:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, watch Chef's Cable or something like that.

• 36:59Speaker 03

  Show me Masterpiece 3 or show me Game of Thrones.

• 37:01Speaker 00

  But the single sign-on thing to me is just, right now, when you are using a TV and you're having a traditional cable experience, you don't go to a channel and then are prompted to enter in something for that channel, right? So in a way, Apple is just kind of replicating the experience that we already have, but they have to do it at an app-by-app basis. And so this is their solution for that. And I know you're doing a lot of reporting on this, and I'm really looking forward to reading this and hearing more about it. But at the surface level, that's kind of what I see it as right now.

• 37:30Speaker 04

  That's true, but the relationship and the leverage is had at a level above the person who's actually watching the content, though. HBO has that relationship with the cable provider. I mean, they're really having a balanced, negotiated relationship. If this goes to the app economy, you think they're going to have that relationship with Apple, where they actually have leverage, or are they just another?

• 37:50Speaker 00

  They're not until they feel that they can make money off of it. That's what it comes down to.

• 37:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean...

• 37:56Speaker 03

  But they can make money off it. They can sell... I mean, I don't know what the numbers are, maybe you do, John, lately, but they have HBO Now, which does not require any of this authentication stuff. And what do they charge, 15 bucks?

• 38:11Speaker 00

  But aren't apps like HBO Now still seen as supplemental to the main cable experience?

• 38:17Speaker 03

  Ah, less and less and less.

• 38:19Speaker 00

  So it's an incremental thing, right? But until they can make the bulk of their money off of this sort of direct, over-the-top model...

• 38:26Speaker 03

  This is an old story, and you've heard it before, but it's true, and I think it's interesting. I just spent the weekend, as I do every five or six weeks, at my son and daughter-in-law's house, where my granddaughter lives, that's the most important thing, in Boston. They have a big TV. They just have a Roku. They don't have a cable subscription. I mean, it's so far down their list of priorities, it's not even there. My other son, who lives in Texas, does the same thing. And yet... They want, that he's totally up to date on Game of Thrones, he's totally up to date on everything, and he added up what he pays for all these services and he still saves about, I think he said 70 bucks a month.

• 39:10Nilay Patel?

  But I'm saying this is the move, right? These incremental steps are sort of classic Apple. They put out the device, they got the apps, the single sign-on is a big enabling step, in my opinion, and the next move is for Verizon, Charter, Comcast to say, you know what? We're lowering the price of the bundle because all we have to support now is your internet connection. We're still doing all the content.

• 39:31Speaker 03

  Put your hand back over his heart.

• 39:33Nilay Patel?

  Bundling, it's beating, I'm telling you. We're gonna do all of this and we're gonna sell you the Apple TV user, the Apple skinny bundle that has your four broadcast networks, HBO and ESPN.

• 39:43Speaker 03

  So you're saying that...

• 39:44Nilay Patel?

  And that will be way cheaper.

• 39:45Speaker 03

  Back to John's point.

• 39:46Nilay Patel?

  It will be the same price as if you buy them all individually.

• 39:48Speaker 03

  So you're saying, you agree with John that it's incremental, but it has an end goal, it's working, and it's basically a replacement, you know, they tried to do the big, bold thing. They tried, Peter Kafka, I think, documented every single twist and turn in it, of it. It didn't work through forces they couldn't control. So now you're saying they're doing this other thing and they're going around a different way, step by step by step to this goal.

• 40:15Nilay Patel?

  I think this, this thing is rolling and this single sign-on to me is it gathering a significant amount of momentum because everyone, for the first time in the TV industry, everyone agrees, this is the move we need. We're gonna move to it very quickly and it's, it will change the dynamic of the industry. And a big pressure on that is if they don't win this race, the FCC is gonna come in and say, you gotta blow it all up anyway. And they do not want that. They are desperate to not be regulated by the FCC in that way. So they can show Congress...

• 40:46Speaker 03

  So they have, they have two terrible choices.

• 40:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 40:49Speaker 03

  Tom Wheeler or Tim Cook?

• 40:50Nilay Patel?

  Yep. And they're gonna, they're definitely gonna pick Tim Cook.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  Man, you're definitely gonna have your heart broken.

• 40:55Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I know. Remember when the Xbox was in the safety?

• 40:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I know. New Xbox with the fucking IR box.

• 41:02Speaker 03

  But here, here's the good thing, Dieter. Neither, you nor I will be in New York when his heart gets broken.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 41:12Speaker 01

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• 42:42Speaker 01

  Warby Parker also distributes a pair of glasses to someone in need. So, okay, what do you do? You go to warbyparker.com/vergecast, and you can order your free home try-ons today. You can choose five different frames you'd like to try on. Once you do, you can mail the frames back, and you can choose your favorite pairs to have your prescription added, and then you can just order them and get them. Warby Parker makes the experience completely risk-free, and there's free shipping for basically everything. Again, visit warbyparker.com/vergecast to begin your free home try-on experience today. And again, when you do buy a pair of glasses, they will distribute another pair to somebody in need. Once again, I'm gonna just keep saying it. I can't stop saying it.

• 43:26Speaker 01

  It's warbyparker, W-A-R-B-Y-P-A-R-K-E-R, dot com/vergecast, and check it out.

• 43:35Nilay Patel?

  All right, I'm gonna do another transition. It's who knows to what it is. Something pre-recorded will happen now, and we're gonna come back and talk about the phone.

• 43:43Speaker 05

  Hi, I'm Paul, and I, every week, I like to do a little section called "Games Are Gadgets 2", and joining me this week is Casey Newton, straight from, like, literally live from the E3 show floor. Hi, Casey.

• 44:01Speaker 06

  Hello, Paul.

• 44:02Speaker 05

  How you doing?

• 44:03Speaker 06

  I'm doing fantastic. We are sort of in the home stretch here at E3, but we've definitely seen a lot of cool stuff.

• 44:10Speaker 05

  Are you staying hydrated?

• 44:11Speaker 06

  I am. Honestly, I have not had a drink of water in, like, four hours.

• 44:15Speaker 05

  Oh, man, please, please rectify that right after you're done talking to me.

• 44:19Speaker 06

  I will, I promise.

• 44:20Speaker 05

  Thank you. So, yeah, what are your highlights?

• 44:25Speaker 06

  Well, I think virtual reality made a big splash this year, at least in terms of how many different publishers were showing off new experiences. And, obviously, there's been a slow burn for the past few years, but now with the systems actually hitting retail, publishers are having to figure out how to make these commercially appealing games. And so, some of my favorite things at E3 this year have just been seeing what publishers are doing with VR to try to make it appealing to us.

• 45:02Speaker 05

  This is like the E3 of the AAA VR.

• 45:06Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, at the Sony demo, or the Sony press conference, when they said, "You're gonna get to see Batman in VR this year," that felt like a pretty huge moment to me. You know, like, so much of the VR up until now has been little, you know, silly one-off games. Obviously, the Batman: Arkham series, probably one of the most commercially successful the past five years, and the fact that Sony built an experience for that at the show this year, I think, shows you how seriously they're taking it.

• 45:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm stoked about Fallout.

• 45:39Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 45:40Speaker 05

  And Star Trek.

• 45:42Speaker 06

  Yeah. Well, I can I can definitely tell you about Star Trek.

• 45:46Speaker 05

  Yes, please.

• 45:48Speaker 06

  So, uh, Star Trek, uh, is a game, uh, the the official name of the game is Star Trek Bridge Command. Uh, Ubisoft is making it and it's supposed to come out, uh, later this year. It's a four-player cooperative game where you choose one of four roles on on the bridge of a, uh, of a starship. Um, there's a captain, uh, a tactician or a tactical person who does kind of the shooting. Uh, there's a helm person who does the steering, and then there's an engineer who does, uh, nerd things. And, uh, and in the demo, uh, that we played, four of us had to communicate constantly so that we could rescue a bunch of people from some, uh, space pods

• 46:33Speaker 06

  and then escape the galaxy before the Klingons blew us up. And it it was a really fast-paced game. It definitely was, uh, frenetic and scary as we were sort of trying to all, uh, coordinate while we were using all these brand-new virtual reality user interfaces. But ultimately, it was a lot of fun. You know, on the flip side, I will say that graphically, uh, none of the VR that I've seen is really stunning. I think there's just a kind of general muddiness, uh, to the the field of view on on every VR system that I've tried. The the way that Star Trek deals with this is by making it a bit more, um, cartoony. Uh, it's not, uh, meant to be sort of, uh, hyper-realistic.

• 47:18Speaker 06

  And so you can just kind of, uh, you know, lose yourself in the, uh, fun of piloting, uh, an enterprise-like starship, uh, for a few minutes.

• 47:27Speaker 05

  So you think think publishers are kind of ratcheting their system requirements for console VR?

• 47:33Speaker 06

  I think that is true. I will say that the other VR experience that I tried today was the Batman VR. And that was of much, much higher quality. I mean, I think it was a quality that was, that would be familiar to anyone who played the Arkham games on the console. The only difference was that the, the, the, the screen display on the PSVR, it's just a lower resolution than, than you would get on, you know, a 4K TV or something like that, or even a 1080p TV.

• 48:04Speaker 05

  So you played Batman on, on PlayStation VR. Did you play Star Trek on PlayStation VR as well?

• 48:11Speaker 06

  Uh, Star Trek was on Oculus.

• 48:13Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 48:14Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 48:15Speaker 05

  And then what do you think about Xbox? I mean, there's no Xbox VR headset, but they have weirdly announced an upcoming console that will support VR. What do you think about that?

• 48:28Speaker 06

  Um, it seems like a logical step for them to take, right? It would be, like, the crazier story would be Xbox saying, "We're not even gonna try VR."

• 48:38Speaker 05

  Right.

• 48:39Speaker 06

  And frankly, it, it might behoove them to wait and let this first generation kind of have another, you know, six or eight months out there in the public while we learn, you know, what works and what doesn't work for these kinds of games, you know? What one point that a lot of commentators have made is that most of these things that we're playing, you know, they might be called games, but there's not a lot that's game-like in them, right? A lot of them feel more like interactive experiences where you're, you know, pressing a button, or you're, you know, picking up an object and, and moving it across a desk or something. Um, you know, the, the number one problem that VR games still have is movement, right?

• 49:22Speaker 06

  Most of the things that we're playing require you to be stationary. And it's, it's sort of funny what these games go through to, to like, sort of explain the fact that you can't move, you know? Like, in Star Trek, it's that you're seated at a desk on, on a starship. In Batman, for the first part of it, while you're like calibrating your bat suit, it's because you have to like stand on the Circle with the bat on it as it descends down through Wayne Manor into the Batcave. So they kind of have to contrive these silly situations while you can't move around. I'm not saying that's something that Xbox is going to figure out in the next eight months, but hopefully by the time their VR headset lands, we'll have done some more thinking about the way we move in these VR games.

• 50:05Speaker 05

  I know in Fallout, you just teleport.

• 50:08Speaker 06

  Yeah, and that's exactly the way. So in the second part of the Batman demo, you're investigating a crime scene and they have these like super awkward move controller, like PlayStation move controller icons in the environment. And in order to move, you have to look at one of those icons and then press the trigger. And then Batman just teleports to that place.

• 50:29Speaker 05

  So it's like mist.

• 50:31Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 50:32Speaker 05

  You're not even choosing the exact spot on the floor you want to go to. You get to go to one specific little 360.

• 50:40Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's like VR has reinvented the point and click adventure.

• 50:43Speaker 05

  Right, Riven was like that. Riven had the 360 look, I think.

• 50:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, exactly.

• 50:49Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 50:51Speaker 06

  But that said, I want to say one nice thing about the Batman VR experience, which is that's sort of the first part that you play. You're in Wayne Manor, like sitting at a piano. And Alfred comes in and tells you that somebody is calling for help. He hands you a key. You sort of grab it from him using these move controllers. You turn the key on the piano and next thing you know, you're descending down into the Batcave. And after you calibrate your suit, you descend again down presumably toward the Batmobile, although you don't see it. But as you're making that descent, you have this 360 degree field of vision. You have these sort of really lush waterfalls inside the Batcave. There are bats flying everywhere around you.

• 51:35Speaker 06

  And just for a moment, you really do trick your brain into thinking, I'm standing in the Batcave, even though I'm in this sweaty box inside the LA Convention Center. And that is the magic and the promise of VR, right? It's just the feeling that you can be utterly transported. And so there's still a lot of work to go on the gaming front, but just in terms of its ability to take you somewhere else and make you feel like you're there. That is really exciting and I think that's what's driving forward so much of the interest in VR this year.

• 52:08Speaker 05

  So on like a... Gadget nerd end of things.

• 52:13Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 52:15Speaker 05

  There's the Xbox S.

• 52:18Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 52:19Speaker 05

  Slim down, which also has some more processing power. It's got 4K support.

• 52:26Speaker 06

  And it's got a beach body. That's the, to me, that's the important thing. It's been in the gym and it is ready for summer.

• 52:32Speaker 05

  I, it's just, man, it, I, I have a PlayStation 4 and Xbox One at, uh, like my primary hangout spot. And the PlayStation 4 is such dramatically better hardware.

• 52:44Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 52:46Speaker 05

  Um, so it just feels like Microsoft's just catching up. Um, but Sony is apparently working on a, a more advanced version of PlayStation 4 as well. Uh, what, are people like freaked out about this? Like, is this destroying the whole concept of a console? Do you have any thoughts on this?

• 53:02Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the people here could not be more excited, right? These are industry people. Anything that sells more consoles is gonna get them excited. And, and for people here who are essentially just video game fans who've like figured out some way to get a pass. Um, these are the kinds of people that would easily spend another $400 on a console anyway, right? It's like, what? Like a higher frame rate of here's $400, right? Like I'll preorder it. Um, so like if, if people are gonna be upset, it's not here. You know, I mean, as a long time console player myself, I have very mixed feelings about it. Because on one hand, like the glory of consoles is that you just buy it once and then you don't think about it for the next five years or so, right?

• 53:40Speaker 05

  Or unless it like dies because of like a red ring of death or something.

• 53:43Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, hopefully, but hopefully you'll get at least four or five years. And I, and I've had like really good luck with all my consoles. So there's something great about that. At the same time, uh, as you well know, Paul, we're in an era now where many of us are replacing our phones at least once a year. And we're happy to pay five or $600 or even more for that privilege. And so the idea is that our phones are, are iterating faster than games. When games typically have much higher requirements from the, the, the hardware, it does start to seem a little bit ridiculous. So I think it, it's inevitable that if consoles are gonna remain competitive, that they're going to need to iterate more quickly. I just think it is a very delicate dance because, you know, most people can't afford

• 54:25Speaker 06

  to spend four or $500 a year on a new console and I hope it doesn't get to that point. So it's, uh, it'll be interesting to see how it all plays out, but I, I mean, I have to say, I, I suspect this will be successful because, you know, the, the hardcore gamers are, are going to spend that extra money and I, and I think the masses will follow them, you know, in due time.

• 54:47Speaker 05

  I, I'm really excited about it. I, I do think it's gonna work out for some reason.

• 54:51Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 54:52Speaker 05

  Um, like, based on your dedication to gaming, whether you upgrade or not, you're still going to have the experiences that you prefer.

• 55:02Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 55:03Speaker 05

  But also, like, I'm, I'm like, I haven't managed to scrape together the $2,000 I need for the VR rig and the VR headset yet.

• 55:11Speaker 06

  Right.

• 55:12Speaker 05

  And so, maybe one of these consoles will come out before I, I've done that and then it's like, oh, well, here's a, a way cheaper entry into the world of VR. So I'm excited about it from that perspective.

• 55:25Speaker 06

  And I think, I mean, honestly, I think that the, the console experiences I've had on VR, I would say they're roughly on par with the sort of PC-driven VR experiences I've had and, and that's pretty exciting, too. I also think that just like, um, aesthetically, like, PSVR is the best looking. Like, yes, it's still a ridiculous mask that you're putting on your face, but it has these like weird blue lights and the rest of it's just this like kind of, um, you know, like, simple white. I don't, like, there's, there's something very appealing about it. Um, so I actually wouldn't be surprised if, um, if VR breaks through not on, on the PC but on the console.

• 55:59Speaker 05

  I've also heard it's like by far the most comfortable.

• 56:01Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's, it's, um, it's very light. Apparently they, they've like, they've balanced it so that there's a bit of a kind of counterbalance on the back of the, the headset, so it kind of sits a little bit more comfortably on your head. And then, yeah, there's a kind of a nice, uh, foam padding, uh, around it. So, um, you know, I, I don't, I wouldn't say there's an enormous difference in comfort between that and the Oculus, but if people are gonna take sneaky pics of you wear, of me wearing one of them, I would much rather they take sneaky pics of me wearing, uh, the PSVR.

• 56:32Speaker 05

  All right. All right, that's good to know. Um, any, anything else you'd like, like to add about your general feelings and emotions at being at the, the game trade show of the year?

• 56:45Speaker 06

  I tell you man, I just, I love it. Like, like this is one of the times where I feel lucky to do my job. I love video games. Um, I don't usually love trade shows, but every year, like I leave E3, like ready to go out and spend four or $500 on video games, like by the end of the year, you know? I really like, um, like third person action adventure games. So for me, this year was all about like playing the demo of the new Deus Ex game that's coming out, um, in August. Um, Dishonored 2, uh, like has some amazing mechanics. And so just like getting to, to spend some time in those worlds, like six months before the rest of the world is, is gonna get to, just like really felt like, uh, a true privilege. So if you love video games, I think you have a lot to be excited about in, in the next six months. And of

• 57:29Speaker 06

  course we'll be bringing, uh, all of that to you and more on theverge.com.

• 57:33Speaker 05

  That's a wonderful note to end on. I, I, I wanted to add that my gadget pick of the week is this Fallout Pip-Boy.

• 57:41Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 57:41Speaker 05

  When they first announced Fallout, they, they showed a case for your phone that could turn your phone to a Pip-Boy, but now they just made an actual gadget. I'm really proud of them. And I wanted to thank them, uh, Bethesda for doing that. Um, uh, yeah. Check out more E3 coverage at The Verge. We also have a sister site called Polygon. They also cover a lot of video games. So that's cool. And, uh, I'm guessing we're gonna talk a lot more about E3 on next week's Verge, cause I just didn't want to miss this opportunity to have somebody, you know, with all the, the, the energy. I can hear the show floor behind you. People are just so excited about, about waiting three hours to play Zelda right now. I, I know it.

• 58:21Speaker 06

  And they are. It's the last day of the show and that line is still a mile long.

• 58:25Speaker 05

  That's wonderful. Well, thank you, Casey.

• 58:28Speaker 06

  Thank you, Paul.

• 58:30Nilay Patel?

  Let's talk about the phone. Biggest news, obviously, the entire event. 10 big announcements. Tim Cook called it "the mother of all releases." They ended with a big note about the privacy on the iPhone, the way they're gonna do AI, the way they're gonna learn stuff. Differentiated privacy, I think.

• 58:48Speaker 03

  Differential.

• 58:48Nilay Patel?

  Differential privacy. Short-term, long-term memory was another key word. Lots of stuff to unpack. But, John, what do you think the biggest phone news was today?

• 58:58Speaker 04

  Differential privacy, though?

• 58:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, John.

• 59:01Speaker 04

  That's right up there with unapologetically.

• 59:02Speaker 03

  John, I promise you, you'll be using differential privacy within two weeks on the air.

• 59:09Speaker 04

  I mean, I love what they're...

• 59:10Nilay Patel?

  I love that John Fort, but every time he's on the air, he's talking about differential privacy.

• 59:14Speaker 00

  Citing some unknown academic. Still, like, that's not the guy's name.

• 59:18Speaker 03

  It's like our friend Carl has that series Binge. Yours will be differential privacy.

• 59:21Speaker 04

  Differential privacy.

• 59:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:23Speaker 04

  When you say differential, I think you're gonna say equations next, but then you surprise me and you say...

• 59:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, there may be equations in that. Nor.

• 59:29Nilay Patel?

  I'm confident in these equations.

• 59:30Speaker 00

  Maybe some algorithms.

• 59:31Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, John, go ahead.

• 59:32Speaker 04

  It's a relatable word. I love what they're doing with iOS in general. I think the iMessage stuff in particular is going to be... It's gonna have a good effect on getting... Keeping people in the ecosystem and getting people, especially teens, I imagine, and tweens, to all stay in the fold. I mean, some of the stuff that they're doing around the lock screen wasn't as interesting to me because I don't like so much information showing up on a lock screen where I don't know who might try to pick up my phone and look at it. So, I mean, a few different things. I know people have different settings on their lock screens, for instance, and that's gonna appeal to some people. But, I mean, interesting stuff.

• 1:00:13Speaker 04

  I'm an iPhone user, have been since almost the beginning, since I ditched my handspring trio. Yes, me too.

• 1:00:22Nilay Patel?

  Now, you wanna hear about Dieter's heart? Because it's still... It's going. It's elevated.

• 1:00:26Speaker 03

  You know how many trios I have?

• 1:00:28Nilay Patel?

  Is it fewer than Dieter?

• 1:00:31Speaker 03

  I don't know, but I know that Dieter.

• 1:00:33Nilay Patel?

  I don't have that many.

• 1:00:34Speaker 03

  Dieter like tweeted a picture of me that Recode ran of me holding a trio.

• 1:00:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:39Speaker 03

  Just to, just to tweet it.

• 1:00:42Nilay Patel?

  Every now and again, Dieter tweets an old Palm picture. Anyway, so.

• 1:00:46Speaker 03

  John, please continue.

• 1:00:46Nilay Patel?

  Here's what I saw about the phone, John.

• 1:00:48Speaker 03

  Well, I want to, so, so, bottom line, you thought it was a good bunch of improvements in iOS?

• 1:00:54Speaker 04

  I thought they were good improvements. I am scared of the next phone update in John. I didn't see specific things in this iOS update that I expect to lead to hardware changes. And so I'm still curious about that. Like, what exactly is all of this leading to in terms of what we're gonna see in the iPhone 7? You know, we know about the dual lens potential and all that, but I'm wary of this next phone update. I'm afraid they're actually going to take away the headphone.

• 1:01:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:26Speaker 04

  You know, that.

• 1:01:26Nilay Patel?

  I got a big, yeah.

• 1:01:27Speaker 03

  John, be afraid. Be very afraid.

• 1:01:30Speaker 04

  Because I use that for more than headphones now. I mean, microphones, there are other things you do with that thing, and if you start taking away ports on something so small.

• 1:01:38Speaker 03

  John, you don't understand. The digital port can be used for everything.

• 1:01:41Speaker 04

  I know it can, but there's only one.

• 1:01:43Speaker 03

  With the price of only a few adapters.

• 1:01:45Speaker 04

  I know, I know.

• 1:01:46Speaker 03

  Which will include a pass room. I mean.

• 1:01:47Speaker 04

  But give me two, because I might want to plug in a microphone and plug in a battery to that lightning port at the same time.

• 1:01:54Nilay Patel?

  I can tell you all about that. If you're in your car right now, I want you to imagine Walt Mossberg with a beautiful view of the bay behind him, threateningly brandishing a single-port MacBook Air in John's car.

• 1:02:05Speaker 03

  Just trying to, Sir John, just trying to remind him of the single port.

• 1:02:09Speaker 04

  It was rather sharp.

• 1:02:12Speaker 00

  You should never drive with one. That thing will impale you.

• 1:02:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, Lauren's slipping on the playing the.

• 1:02:18Speaker 00

  Oh yeah, where are the bells?

• 1:02:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, where's your, where's your like Zoo Crew soundboard, Lauren?

• 1:02:23Speaker 03

  Now I really want a sound effect for Control Alt+Le.

• 1:02:25Nilay Patel?

  We'll come up with some. Uh, here's what I, the thing I saw with the phone, they made a bunch of incremental improvements. They did a bunch of things where I literally wrote in the live log, "Finally," or I thought to myself, "This is what they should have done when they released the 6S." So they leaned very heavily into the faster Touch ID sensor. They came up with new lock screen, because they said, "We've noticed it's so fast, we never even see the lock screen anymore." So they revitalized the lock screen in a variety of ways. They moved Siri around, they made Siri obviously smarter, they put 3D Touch all over the place in really interesting ways. All stuff they should have done when they put out the phone with the faster fingerprint sensor and the 3D Touch, as far, I mean, that was a bunch of finally stuff.

• 1:03:10Speaker 03

  But at the time, they were selling 76 million iPhones a quarter, so it didn't seem so urgent.

• 1:03:17Nilay Patel?

  There, I don't think, no, I mean, like, even Apple Music, and I'll get you to agree with me on this one, Apple Music was a mess when they launched it. It still kinda seems...

• 1:03:24Speaker 03

  Oh, on record.

• 1:03:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm not sure, I mean, how did everybody else feel about the, I wasn't sure I was convinced that Apple Music is all fixed up now.

• 1:03:32Nilay Patel?

  No, I'm not convinced either, but what I'm saying is, it would have been better if the version of Apple Music they released from the get-go looked like this. Right? This is a real foundation.

• 1:03:42Speaker 03

  It's like what we said about the watch, or much earlier in this podcast, which is live.

• 1:03:47Nilay Patel?

  It's happening right now. Somewhere in time, something was said.

• 1:03:51Speaker 03

  It's what version one probably should have been, except we know even less about it. We're all gonna have to try it. But, yeah.

• 1:04:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they put out a revamp of Apple News, to which the crowd went, "Huh?", and then announced they have like 60 million users for Apple News.

• 1:04:08Speaker 03

  Well, now it doesn't look like it was built by monkeys on crack.

• 1:04:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Now, now it looks like the Wall Street Journal.

• 1:04:14Speaker 04

  It does push alerts, just like everyone else.

• 1:04:17Nilay Patel?

  It does push alerts, it does subscriptions.

• 1:04:19Speaker 03

  They've reinvented Zeit, which is fine, which I like, they've almost reinvented Flipboard, they're close.

• 1:04:24Nilay Patel?

  They should have just bought Flipboard.

• 1:04:25Speaker 03

  They should have.

• 1:04:26Nilay Patel?

  I mean, honestly...

• 1:04:27Speaker 03

  And by the way, the highest level of Apple, both under Jobs and Cook, were... And I think are still close to flipboard unless something has happened. So they.

• 1:04:37Nilay Patel?

  Well, it was one of the first grade iPad apps, right?

• 1:04:39Speaker 01

  The HomeKit stuff, the new Home.

• 1:04:41Nilay Patel?

  That's a big one. So the big ones are obviously, and they save these for last, right?

• 1:04:46Speaker 00

  iMessage.

• 1:04:46Nilay Patel?

  iMessage is a platform and then Home finally gets this dedicated app.

• 1:04:50Speaker 01

  Not only a dedicated app, but a dedicated spot on the core UI of the OS. So they shuffled some stuff around in iOS.

• 1:04:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you should go through that.

• 1:04:58Speaker 01

  They took, they took widgets out of the, the dropdown notification panel and they moved it over to the left of the home screen and the left of the lock screen, which means it got rid of that Siri predictive garbage that nobody uses. Control panel is now three panes. You swipe up, you get your main control panel. I'm sure you can't control, like do as much as you ought to with it, but whatever. You swipe that control panel over and you get your music controls and then you swipe it over again and you get all your HomeKit controls. Uh, so like they have made home automation like a thing that you can get to from anywhere in the operating system, which is a huge bat.

• 1:05:35Nilay Patel?

  I don't think it's a huge, I mean, it's, it should be a first level system service.

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, but nobody has home automation stuff to use in their, with their first level.

• 1:05:42Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I can't wait to.

• 1:05:43Speaker 04

  So strange about all this is it's so hard to find a comprehensive list of things that are currently available that are HomeKit compatible and really work. Well, I mean, Apple has this list and it's surprisingly short and it makes me wonder when you announced HomeKit to begin with, why wasn't Home at the center of it? And why didn't you have some device that, that catalyzed the whole market?

• 1:06:08Speaker 00

  Well, because they were requiring.

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  They finally admitted it today that the Apple TV is the thing you use.

• 1:06:13Speaker 00

  They were requiring, um, device makers, home, smart home device makers to have a specific hardware set in order to work with Apple HomeKit. It wasn't just a software thing. It wasn't just, oh, work with our software platform now. For security reasons, they required device makers to have a certain, um, a cer- I want to say it was a certain type of wireless chipsets.

• 1:06:30Speaker 03

  It was a chip.

• 1:06:31Speaker 00

  And, and so what happened was at the time that they announced HomeKit, you know, you look at some of the smart locks or smart cameras or, you know, smart thermostats or whatever, they were already out on the market. They weren't going to go back and retroactively. Add, you know, this chipset to their existing devices, they had to wait for the next product cycles in order for things to become HomeKit compatible. So it's been this kind of slow and this kind of painful rollout of things that actually work with HomeKit.

• 1:06:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, but don't show me that. I don't want to see you doing that. You do that behind the scenes so I don't have to see it.

• 1:06:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, it just wasn't already at once.

• 1:07:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, just tell me when it's done. You say, here's our couple of partners, here's Disney and their new lock.

• 1:07:05Speaker 03

  And they didn't do that even today. They didn't bring anybody. Despite the fact that they made it a central feature of iOS, there were no HomeKit people up.

• 1:07:12Speaker 04

  Right. I hear what you're saying about Apple TV, but it's called Apple TV, not Apple Home. It's an enabling thing. It's not like, hey, look, look at my Apple TV. It can open my door. Actually, it can't. It can sit there and wait for the device to show up that I'm going to be excited about, but it's not the device I'm excited about. It just sort of sits there.

• 1:07:28Speaker 00

  Right. Versus something like the Amazon Echo, which just required a software integration. Like, they went from having, you know, 300 skills, quote unquote, to 1,000 skills.

• 1:07:37Speaker 03

  But this is that darn.

• 1:07:39Speaker 00

  And some of those being smart home controls, because all the smart home makers had to do, the app makers would say, okay, sure, yeah, you can use Alexa to control the Philips Hue light bulbs now.

• 1:07:46Nilay Patel?

  But then, isn't Apple just going to put out a Siri box in September and call it a day?

• 1:07:51Speaker 00

  That's one of the rumors, right, that they're working on a rumor.

• 1:07:53Speaker 03

  There's a rumor, but nothing happened.

• 1:07:54Nilay Patel?

  No, I meant they'll do it in September.

• 1:07:56Speaker 03

  The problem here, or the non-problem, the wonderfulness, whatever you want to call it.

• 1:08:03Nilay Patel?

  The problem or the wonderfulness, it really depends on your point of view.

• 1:08:07Speaker 03

  Let me finish and you'll see, is that Apple actually cares about, and I think has decided to build a big part of its reputation on security and privacy. And these IoT things can be hacked. That's why they required a chipset. And that's why they're slower getting to, you know, nothing, I take nothing away from the Echo and Alexa and Amazon, you know, nothing away from Jeff Bezos. I just came off a pretty great interview with him a couple of weeks ago, but.

• 1:08:39Speaker 00

  Recode.net. Recode Replay. Listen to it free.

• 1:08:45Speaker 00

  You're welcome, Mossberg.

• 1:08:47Nilay Patel?

  Finally, a business model.

• 1:08:48Speaker 03

  And there it is.

• 1:08:49Nilay Patel?

  Bezos mentions on the Vergecast.

• 1:08:51Speaker 03

  But Lauren speaks. But the level of security that they're willing to settle for, which I'm sure is not nothing, I'm not accusing them of having no security, and the level of security that Google is willing to go for, which I'm sure is not nothing, is nowhere as high as the level Apple typically insists upon, and people can call it control or whatever they want, but security and privacy matter, and that's why you will be saying differential privacy. I mean, I wrote a piece that I don't think they were very happy about, wondering aloud whether they could compete in the next era, which is, I believe, is the AI era. We've

• 1:09:33Speaker 03

  talked about this on CNBC, watch it daily, Squawk Alley. Squawk Alley. Every morning.

• 1:09:39Nilay Patel?

  We get like 10 cents every time we do one of these, so just keep them rolling in, guys.

• 1:09:43Speaker 03

  John Fortin and I, and John Fortin and many other people, but here's the thing. So I wrote a piece saying, and actually our friend Joanna Stern wrote something similar, that because they are so fanatical about privacy, they won't be able to scoop up all the information that Google can scoop up from searches and from map things, and that Facebook can scoop up from the social graph, that won't let them become smarter and smarter about you and about people like you and whatever. And today, I think we saw something interesting, which is, they kind of came up with, loophole's the wrong word because it implies something sneaky.

• 1:10:23Speaker 04

  An explanation.

• 1:10:25Speaker 03

  Well, no, it's more than that. They kind of came up with a technique that I'm pretty sure nobody in the room had heard of. Yes, a technique. Called differential privacy, which I have yet to have time to study up on, but I did have time to talk to their chief privacy person afterward, who tried to explain it to me on a fourth grade level, and, which I'm not blaming him for, he's a very nice man, and I am at a fourth grade level when it comes to this, but... Basically, it's, he said it's been around a long time in analog things. And has to do with, they take all of the, like, let's take the case of what words, what

• 1:11:07Speaker 03

  new kind of interesting, contextually appropriate words should we be suggesting for you in our keyboard? How do we learn that as the language changes? Well, Google learns it, I presume, from knowing what people are searching for, from, you know, knowing what people are typing, going up to the cloud and they have the keys to decrypt it, which of course, Apple has famously taken away from itself. Facebook learns it by, because people are posting every second on Facebook. Apple, with this differential privacy, as best I understand it, they're, they're getting it off the local devices, they're hashing it up in some way that even they can't disassemble it.

• 1:11:49Speaker 03

  And when it gets to their servers in the cloud, they are still able to detect a kind, what they called a nuance, or a bias toward certain new terms and certain new things, that allows them to fill in that dictionary and keep it alive and keep it intelligent.

• 1:12:08Speaker 04

  Yeah. They should have called it toddler learning. Because if you've ever sent a toddler to school, or, you know, they come back and they're saying these, "Where did you hear that?" "I don't know." And that's essentially what Apple's doing.

• 1:12:20Speaker 03

  Well.

• 1:12:21Speaker 04

  It's learning, but it's not telling you where it learned that. It's just getting smarter.

• 1:12:26Nilay Patel?

  That's just fantastic.

• 1:12:28Speaker 03

  That may be at a sixth grade level. I like that. So, Tim, if you're listening, toddler learning. But the point is, it is kind of similar. It can't be, like, you can't unpack it and track it back to Lauren Good. You just, you just know. And it, and it's not just the words in the dictionary, it's other places, so.

• 1:12:47Nilay Patel?

  Well, they're doing it, they're making everything. Photos, recognition.

• 1:12:50Speaker 03

  So they're like having, they're imposing on themselves a couple of extra steps, which presumably, Google and Facebook don't have to do. I don't know how, but Amazon, because mostly, don't they mostly know what you are buying?

• 1:13:03Speaker 00

  Amazon knows everything.

• 1:13:05Speaker 03

  Okay. Thank you, Bob.

• 1:13:07Nilay Patel?

  Amazon has literally installed an array of Farfield microphones in my home.

• 1:13:10Speaker 03

  Well, I understand.

• 1:13:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, but the way they do it, it's not creepy, because they actually sent a butler to help you. And ask what you want and notice what you're wearing.

• 1:13:16Speaker 03

  The butler, butler works for KGB though, you don't know.

• 1:13:20Speaker 04

  Mr. Mossberg, should I find those boxers for you in another size?

• 1:13:24Speaker 04

  Yes, thank you.

• 1:13:26Speaker 04

  How did you know I'm wearing boxers?

• 1:13:27Speaker 03

  But here's the point. The point is, Apple has been, I mean, to me, again, maybe I'm on a fourth grade level. Dieter's right, they kept saying, we're focused on the local phone. But they admitted today that there are some things for which it's helpful to know what all the local phones are doing. And they claim to have figured out a way to do it through this thing called differential privacy.

• 1:13:48Speaker 04

  And it's simpler to what Steve Jobs told you years ago they were doing with Maps, right? When he talked about how they're getting smarter around traffic patterns, but not tracking exactly where an identifiable individual person is every moment of the day.

• 1:14:01Speaker 03

  That's right. And so, it does put a couple more steps in their path than their competitors might have, although we'll probably hear from their competitors that they're super private, you know.

• 1:14:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they're also differentiated.

• 1:14:16Speaker 03

  But anyway, that's, that was an interesting announcement today.

• 1:14:19Nilay Patel?

  So that was a big one. And then we gotta do, we're running out of time. We have to talk about, I think, the biggest announcement of all, which is iMessage, turning into a platform, having an App Store, new ways to draw in it. All of digital touch appears to have been subsumed into messages. So that was their, Walt's again staring at me like I'm a crazy person. They tried to launch with the watch, an entirely new messaging platform.

• 1:14:41Speaker 03

  Did it work, Neil?

• 1:14:42Nilay Patel?

  No, I'm just saying.

• 1:14:43Speaker 00

  No, because no one wants to draw things on this tiny, tiny, like, watches don't make very good input devices, but the phone actually makes a pretty good input device now that we're all used to it.

• 1:14:51Speaker 03

  Are you gonna start, like, texting me drawings?

• 1:14:54Speaker 00

  You just wait, Mossberg. You just wait.

• 1:14:57Nilay Patel?

  The stuff that is sort of table-stakesy with messaging apps now, but has a message. So there's sticker things, there's...

• 1:15:06Speaker 00

  Giant emojis.

• 1:15:07Nilay Patel?

  There's giant emojis.

• 1:15:08Speaker 00

  Or secret messages.

• 1:15:10Nilay Patel?

  There's secret messages.

• 1:15:11Speaker 00

  You can swipe to reveal.

• 1:15:12Nilay Patel?

  There's like likes, you know, it's like Facebook reactions, you can put a heart over something.

• 1:15:18Speaker 04

  Table stakes?

• 1:15:18Nilay Patel?

  What's that?

• 1:15:19Speaker 04

  Working on either the web or Android.

• 1:15:23Speaker 00

  Dieter's ringing the web bell.

• 1:15:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:24Speaker 04

  No, no, Android, just, just, you don't have to go on the web, that's fine, I know you hate the web, Apple, that's cool. Just put it on Android.

• 1:15:30Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 1:15:30Speaker 04

  Why not?

• 1:15:31Nilay Patel?

  Literally, literally before we walked in there, I put in a live blog, if they put iMessage on Android, I'm switching to a Nexus phone. That's why it's not Android.

• 1:15:36Speaker 03

  And that's why it's not on Android.

• 1:15:38Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:15:38Speaker 04

  I mean, really, though?

• 1:15:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, really, really, if they're not lying to me, offstage, when I talked to them afterward, their explanation was, we have a big base, it may not be as big as Facebook's, but it's actually closer to Facebook Messenger than you think, no numbers offered. And we're pretty happy with our base, and we still think it helps us sell our devices. And we don't, we don't see the gain from putting it on Android. Now, I'm sure they had an, I can't believe, since they are human beings, that they didn't have a, don't ring the bell, that they, they didn't have-

• 1:16:18Speaker 00

  I'm gonna close that tab.

• 1:16:19Speaker 03

  A debate about it, because it's a logical thing to think about. But, and I'm, my reciting this to you doesn't mean I necessarily agree with it, because I too said in the, in the blog, in the live blog, that I, and I think I said it on CNBC this morning, that, didn't I? I think I did, that-

• 1:16:37Speaker 04

  You said many brilliant things on CNBC this morning.

• 1:16:40Nilay Patel?

  This was long ago.

• 1:16:41Speaker 04

  All the most brilliant things I've heard you say outside of this podcast were on CNBC.

• 1:16:45Speaker 03

  I think at eight o'clock this morning on CNBC, I said, they should, or eight forty, that they, that I thought that it was possible they would put it on Android, or probable.

• 1:16:58Speaker 03

  But, to my surprise, they didn't, and when I asked why not, the, this is the answer. We, we have a big base, and we're still interested in using this all as a differentiator to keep people buying our products, our hardware products.

• 1:17:12Speaker 04

  But, I mean- Does everything need to be, I mean, Apple Music isn't a differentiator. They've got that on Android. Is that just because it was on Android already and they didn't want to pull it off?

• 1:17:22Speaker 03

  It is. That was a complicated part of the deal with Beats.

• 1:17:25Speaker 04

  That bums me out though.

• 1:17:26Speaker 03

  Which by the way is also why the app was so terrible at first, I think, made by a committee. As for iTunes, they, I raised that issue with the, in the discussion with the person I was talking to, and the answer was, um, oh, we had the iPod, and for the iPod to succeed, we, we needed a broader base. The implication being, we don't need that anymore now.

• 1:17:49Nilay Patel?

  But I think with Apple Music, the big difference is, you can't roll up to a Beyonce or a Taylor Swift and say, "Give us an exclusive," unless you can go to everybody. Right? And it's, maybe you can pay them more and only hit iPhone users, but I think those artists, they want, they want the model, the Apple Music model of the pricing, the per-stream pricing, the ability to go to iTunes and actually purchase the album, whatever. They want that everywhere.

• 1:18:13Speaker 00

  And you value, you-

• 1:18:14Nilay Patel?

  The only competitor they have that's wide is Spotify, and nobody likes a Spotify model.

• 1:18:17Speaker 00

  You also value these things differently. People pay for Apple Music, people pay for iTunes, right? These are just very, these are upfront costs that people have to pay to sort of participate in the service. Nobody pays for iMessage in that traditional sense. They pay for it when they buy Apple hardware, they pay for it when they're a part of iCloud, let's say, but it's a different value proposition for Apple.

• 1:18:36Speaker 04

  But imagine-

• 1:18:37Speaker 00

  And that value proposition is-

• 1:18:38Speaker 04

  Right. But it's a platform now. They're, they're telling app developers, "We want you to sell apps into iMessage, you can charge for those, we're gonna take a cut of that," I assume. So, they say there are services-

• 1:18:48Speaker 00

  Is that how that's working? They're actually gonna take a cut of things that are transactions through iMessage?

• 1:18:51Speaker 04

  I mean, I assume, I'm not just gonna leave that up.

• 1:18:53Speaker 00

  It's an app drawer. They made that distinction.

• 1:18:55Nilay Patel?

  No, there's an app store. There's an iMessage app store. You can develop apps for iMessage. I watched their little State of the Union thing. They like, develop, they made a sticker app.

• 1:19:06Speaker 03

  Please explain the State of the Union.

• 1:19:07Nilay Patel?

  The State of the Union, I'm sorry, is like the-

• 1:19:09Speaker 04

  It's when the President addresses Congress.

• 1:19:10Nilay Patel?

  It's the super nerdy, like, developer-focused thing where they talk about, uh, new ways that Xcode can understand-

• 1:19:16Speaker 03

  It's not when President Bartlet goes to Congress.

• 1:19:18Nilay Patel?

  Uh, aspect ratios, and everybody cheers.

• 1:19:20Speaker 04

  President Federico addresses a faithful- So the Mac OS developers sit on one side, and the iOS developers sit on another.

• 1:19:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:19:24Nilay Patel?

  And there's a TV OS developer- Sitting in the basement.

• 1:19:27Speaker 00

  But even that analogy, John, the app stores are only something you can get on Apple devices.

• 1:19:32Nilay Patel?

  No, but that's the thing. So if you, if Apple says, I message on, they didn't do this. I don't even want to talk about this. But if they put, if they put it on Android, then they can put an app store on Android and start collecting revenue out of it. Theoretically.

• 1:19:42Speaker 00

  But don't they lose control of some of the security?

• 1:19:45Speaker 03

  I can make a very cogent argument, joined by my friend Judge John Fort, that, uh,

• 1:19:51Speaker 04

  Guilty.

• 1:19:52Speaker 03

  That they should have, and by Dieter.

• 1:19:54Nilay Patel?

  Nicknames and sound effects.

• 1:19:55Speaker 03

  Which I think is a majority, actually, that around this table, that they should have put it on Android. Particularly, here's another reason. Google's weak in messaging.

• 1:20:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:20:04Speaker 03

  This might be a good moment to seize it.

• 1:20:06Nilay Patel?

  They're weak in terms of quality, but not in terms of number of messaging apps in which they best handle it.

• 1:20:13Speaker 03

  iMessage is actually a good, iMessage is a good, was a good messaging app yesterday. Today, it's a really good messaging app.

• 1:20:19Nilay Patel?

  I think we want it on Android.

• 1:20:21Speaker 04

  The day that ALO gets released, I flip on iMessage for Android and just sit back and laugh.

• 1:20:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Well, no, I mean, I think, look, we want it. I want it because I have 90 phones. I think the average iPhone user does not give a shit. And I think the average Android user maybe consistently thinks, well, if I get an iPhone, I get the blue bubbles. And now I'll get shiny backgrounds full of fireworks and new kinds of bubbles and whatever else it is.

• 1:20:44Speaker 03

  I mean, there are, the, the, the bet here is that it's a long game. And maybe the smartphone market is being reset at a lower level, but it's still a lot of smartphones a quarter. And they still make a lot of money off them. And it's worth it to do something that this highly improved iMessage, sorry, that will, uh, keep people buying iPhones and iPads and Macs.

• 1:21:11Speaker 04

  But what are they really in it for?

• 1:21:12Speaker 03

  That's basically the bet.

• 1:21:13Speaker 04

  Like, if, if they're in it to collect this data from people, if they want to hear our voices and see what we message about, why not get as broad a swath of people as possible and, you know, give them?

• 1:21:23Speaker 03

  Because they, because the answer is they think they have a huge base. They believe they have a huge enough base to do this differential privacy, you know, hashed up, whatever it is, thing and figure out what we're talking about.

• 1:21:36Speaker 04

  Facebook's is bigger though.

• 1:21:37Speaker 03

  It's bigger, but I mean, at some point, there's diminishing returns. Some point, you have enough, and they think they have enough. I'm just, I'm just telling you.

• 1:21:45Nilay Patel?

  And also, Apple's business is still selling phones, ringing revenue out of the phones. Facebook's business, they need that bigger base because they, they just got a small slice.

• 1:21:52Speaker 04

  They are not going to know what India's working class is talking about on messaging. You know, but by voice, if not written, because maybe the literacy, they're not going to know what those people are talking about because they are absolutely not going to use iMessage because.

• 1:22:06Speaker 03

  Given, given Tim Cook's focus, I have to assume that was part of this discussion, this imaginary discussion they had inside. Neil, like, can I say one more thing?

• 1:22:15Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 1:22:15Speaker 03

  Um, I was disappointed today, and this may not be something they do at a keynote. Maybe it's something we'll find out about when we finally get our hands on this thing, that they didn't talk about having done a lot more work to fix the core apps, which I think

• 1:22:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:31Speaker 03

  have fallen behind, uh.

• 1:22:33Nilay Patel?

  They're letting you delete them.

• 1:22:34Speaker 03

  And we talked about mail, but this goes for others as well.

• 1:22:37Nilay Patel?

  I was thinking about this, and maybe this is a thing. They're going to make the team that works on mail, if they put that thing in the store, they will now be able to track the number of people that download Apple Mail. Right? The team that works on the stocks app, they're going to be able to track downloads. Those teams now have to compete against Outlook, Gmail, Air Mail.

• 1:22:55Speaker 03

  Rather than saying, here's a new version that we've done, is to say, we're unleashing it into the world as if it was a, a third-party app.

• 1:23:03Nilay Patel?

  An Apple Mail team, if you're getting your ass kicked in the store by Air Mail or Gmail, like, you better win or go.

• 1:23:10Speaker 03

  If I appoint you the head of the Apple Mail team and you have to compete in the store, probably the first thing you're going to do is either make it work great with Gmail or make, pick search.

• 1:23:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, I, I think that is, their solution is not, we're going to do these monolithic releases. It's, we're unbundling the stuff, we're letting people delete it, you can download it if you need it. And if those teams don't win, we're going to get new teams. Because that's, that's the right solution, right? It's compete. So I want to ask Lauren one question, because you, you and I were talking about messaging as we were leaving. It's been, you know.

• 1:23:42Nilay Patel?

  Silicon Valley major company, month and a half is over. Every company has talked about intelligence. Every company has talked about messaging. Do you think Apple's conversations are, and message was their big highlight? I mean, that was the grand finale today. Do you think that they talked about that stuff at the same level as Google, Facebook?

• 1:24:00Speaker 00

  Well, they didn't talk about bots.

• 1:24:02Nilay Patel?

  They didn't talk about bots.

• 1:24:03Speaker 00

  Right? So it was the one word that they didn't, we didn't hear once throughout this developers conference that we've heard at almost every other, Facebook, Google, uh, who else? Microsoft, of course. Microsoft builds was a big one.

• 1:24:14Speaker 03

  Racist bots at Microsoft.

• 1:24:17Speaker 00

  No, but even bots in Skype.

• 1:24:18Speaker 03

  I mean, accidentally racist.

• 1:24:19Speaker 00

  The accidentally racist bots.

• 1:24:20Nilay Patel?

  Toddler learning racist bots.

• 1:24:23Speaker 00

  Where did you learn that word? Tay was a six-year-old toddler just learning terrible things. No, but Apple didn't talk about bots at all. And that's probably for one of two reasons or both reasons. The first is that Apple tends to not use jargony things with the exception, oh, sorry, there's my iMessage, speak of the devil, with the exception of differential privacy or whatever it is, right? But, but they, they tend to not use things that maybe would be over like the average, average consumers just don't care about. And so bots kind of fall into that category. Um, and the other thing is that the way that I think that they're allowing third-party apps to work within iMessage is very different from this idea of the transactional bots are going to be working in some other messaging apps. So there was that. And then what was the other question that you asked? You were going to say something about, oh, and then how it compares to, so I'll let Dieter

• 1:25:07Speaker 00

  talk about this because you wrote so many great pieces about messages around Google I/O, um, that one in particular, but, um, you know, Apple's iMessage experience still is really streamlined. When people think of Apple messaging, they think iMessage is the only app. They know about certain levels of security. They know what it can do. They know where they can get it. It's, you know, for better or worse, it's a very streamlined experience, whereas Google, you know, is saying like, here's this video app and here's this messaging app. And, um, Google Hangouts didn't really work out as well for us as we hoped. You can still use that, by the way. And, um, by the, you know, here's this app. And, and it just gets to be a little bit confusing and a little bit convoluted. And so I think relative to that, I don't know, at least in the US, I think iMessage is still, still the one I'm gonna use a lot.

• 1:25:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:51Speaker 00

  I can tell you that.

• 1:25:52Speaker 01

  I think you're exactly right to point out that they refuse to talk about bots and instead talk about apps, because for Apple, apps fits into Apple's like, powerbase of their platforms, right? And so, when you say like, bots aren't ready, they're really transactional, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, like, that's a, that's a fuzzy mess that Apple doesn't want to put into their user experience. But if they can like, take those things and say, hey, I know you've made a bot that'll talk to anybody, instead of doing that, make an app that'll talk to iMessage, that's a huge win for Apple. So I think that's exactly right. The, and I also think you're right that, like, yes, like, all of the other messaging options

• 1:26:32Speaker 01

  on Google are, are just not going to beat iMessage in the US, even if, like, people get, you know, annoyed that you can do slightly more things with bots on those other platforms. Like, iMessage will be cleaner, it won't have quite the huge, crazy, Wild West feature set of those other messaging apps, but I don't think Apple cares. And I don't think most consumers in the US are gonna care.

• 1:26:54Speaker 04

  It's the most likely to succeed, business model wise, right? Because, in terms of how Apple has monetized the App Store, the seamless way that you pay for things through Apple versus other ecosystems, if I'm a developer and I'm gonna develop, and I want to make money, and I'm gonna develop some kind of an add-on for messaging, I'm sure gonna try it on iMessage.

• 1:27:14Speaker 03

  Like Square, peer-to-peer cash.

• 1:27:15Speaker 04

  Absolutely, or even just cute stickers of, of cats playing with yarn and typing on keyboards.

• 1:27:19Speaker 03

  Somebody, some, I forgot which one, Ben Thompson, I don't want to, maybe I'm using the wrong name. One of the well-known analysts tweeted, "Remember, stickers is a big business."

• 1:27:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. As Apple said, you can do, you can be a sticker developer without even writing a line of code.

• 1:27:34Speaker 03

  I never knew it was a big business, but apparently it is.

• 1:27:36Speaker 01

  You open up Xcode, you make, you click "Make sticker project," you drag your images into where you want the stickers to be, you click "Publish" and you're done.

• 1:27:43Nilay Patel?

  Well, I'm leaving this.

• 1:27:47Nilay Patel?

  This garbage. I'm drawing stickers for the rest of my life on my iPad Pro. Uh, all right, let's wrap this up. Let me do, let's do final thoughts real fast. You get one sentence. John?

• 1:27:55Speaker 04

  Why do I have to go first? I'm the new guy.

• 1:27:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. That's why you gotta go first.

• 1:28:00Speaker 04

  Final thought, uh, looking forward to Apple expanding the ecosystem. Not sure they did that here, but as somebody who's already in it, I'm excited about what they announced.

• 1:28:08Nilay Patel?

  Lauren?

• 1:28:10Speaker 00

  Uh, I'm gonna broaden it out a bit. Final thought for today is that, given all of the other really crappy news that's been out there lately, um, I was pretty happy to be at WWDC today and I think it was overall, um, a fairly eventful keynote and in a good way.

• 1:28:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:24Speaker 03

  Uh, I think the most important thing is that, um, Apple is amping up its efforts in AI without violating privacy, at least as far as we know. And I think that was good.

• 1:28:36Nilay Patel?

  Dieter?

• 1:28:36Speaker 01

  Uh, you can, you can do split screen Safari windows on the iPad. I'm pretty excited about that.

• 1:28:42Nilay Patel?

  It was really a mix of like really high-minded stuff and like, we cleaned up this button that you've hated.

• 1:28:48Speaker 00

  We didn't talk about Swift, but that's another conversation. Swift playgrounds.

• 1:28:51Nilay Patel?

  We've been doing this for 90 minutes. Um, so mine is, and I, I actually think it's important. This is the first time in a long time that Apple, to me, has felt intentional and confident. And I think for the past year, they've just been firing half-baked ideas out in the world. And this time, they, they kinda know what they're doing.

• 1:29:08Speaker 07

  It's still a little half-baked.

• 1:29:10Nilay Patel?

  But it's the tech industry. Of course it is. All right, that was Verchast. Uh, John, do you wanna, do you wanna plug your show again? Do you have another thing you wanna plug? Anything you want, really.

• 1:29:19Speaker 00

  Would you have breakfast this morning?

• 1:29:21Nilay Patel?

  Whatever you're into.

• 1:29:22Speaker 04

  I really don't need to talk about Squawk Alley on CNBC at 11 a.m. Eastern, 8 Pacific, because just kinda mentioning product placement, I think this podcast is way above that sort of thing.

• 1:29:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. I know. Personally, I'm a little too embarrassed to ask for the opportunity to promote my podcast, which happens to be on.

• 1:29:44Nilay Patel?

  Take it away, Walter. Pick up that baton and run.

• 1:29:48Speaker 00

  Dieter just laughed. He laughed.

• 1:29:51Speaker 07

  I think he just went to watch Squawk Alley on Apple TV because you can watch past episodes.

• 1:29:57Speaker 03

  And let me just point out that anytime you want, you can hear Nilay and I anytime of the day or night on many different podcast, podcatcher apps.

• 1:30:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think we're on Stitcher now. You can just get it.

• 1:30:12Speaker 03

  Stitcher.

• 1:30:13Speaker 00

  Podcatcher would be a great name.

• 1:30:15Speaker 03

  We're everywhere.

• 1:30:16Nilay Patel?

  Smart connected sewing machines.

• 1:30:19Speaker 00

  That's great.

• 1:30:20Nilay Patel?

  Control alt delete preloaded. That's our market.

• 1:30:23Speaker 03

  Control, alt, delete. The completely unscripted podcast by Neila and me. Unlike this one.

• 1:30:31Nilay Patel?

  If you love scripted podcasts, The Vergecast is for you. But if you like crazy, Control Alt Delete is where you want to go.

• 1:30:37Speaker 07

  I just want to point out that unlike all the other busters at this table, I do not have a side hustle. You just follow me on The Vergecast.

• 1:30:44Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my side hustle is just irritating Walt for 30 minutes on Control Alt Delete. I don't do a lot. All right, that's it. There's also a bunch of other great podcasts. There is What's Tech with Chris Plant. There's Verge ESP with Emily Ashida and Liz Zapato. There's Recode Decode with Kara Swisher. And my favorite of them all, actually, Recode Media, Peter Kafka.

• 1:31:03Speaker 00

  And Recode Replay where you can hear all the Code Conference interviews.

• 1:31:06Nilay Patel?

  There doesn't have a host that I'm accidentally insulting by not mentioning. So Recode Replay is whatever. It's bots. It's bots. They don't have feelings. All right, that's it. There's so much. Social media the shit out of this. Let's just wrap this up. Ring the bell, Lauren. We're done here. So earlier you may have heard my sweet ad for Coors where I drop my voice down, but I don't know if I can keep that up. Instead, I'm just going to tell you that there's this town in Colorado called Golden. I've actually been there. It was founded during the gold rush and was home to miners who spent 12 hours a day in the frozen ground digging for gold. But that land was rich in another resource, the Rocky Mountain water that runs cold and clear.

• 1:31:52Speaker 01

  One man knew the value of that water. That was Mr. Coors. In 1873, he settled in Golden to brew the finest beer that the town had ever tasted. The miners are grateful because when they sat down for a well-deserved banquet, Mr. Coors brought a beer worthy of the occasion. And that beer came to be known as the banquet beer. Coors, the banquet beer. Remember what I said earlier that lawyers maybe say? Say it again. Coors Brewing Company, Golden, Colorado. With great beer comes great responsibility.