Facebook's leaked audio, Microsoft's Surface event, and net neutrality's battle this week

Stories this week: Mark Zuckerberg leaked audioRead the full transcript of Mark Zuckerberg's leaked internal Facebook meetingsElizabeth Warren: companies like Facebook ‘repeatedly fumble their responsibility to protect our democracy’Microsoft is building a phone again, it’s called the Surface DuoWindows 10X is Microsoft’s latest stab at a ‘Lite’ operating system, exclusively for dual-screensMicrosoft announces dual-screen Surface Neo, coming next holidayMicrosoft’s future is built on Google’s codeMicrosoft doesn’t think Windows is important anymoreA first look at Surface Duo, Microsoft’s foldable Android phoneMicrosoft Surface Neo first look: the future of Windows 10X is dual-screenInside Microsoft’s new custom Surface processors with AMD and QualcommMicrosoft announces Surface Pro 7 with long-awaited USB-C portThe Surface Pro X and Surface Laptop 3 are upgradable, but only a littleMicrosoft’s Surface Laptop 3 comes in two sizes and with two different processorsMicrosoft Surface Pro X and Surface Pro 7 hands-on: It’s ARM vs. IntelMicrosoft Surface Earbuds first listen: live transcribe your lifePolitical Operatives Are Faking Voter Outrage With Millions Of Made-Up Comments To Benefit The Rich and PowerfulThe FCC can repeal net neutrality, but it can’t block state laws, says court iOS 13.1.1 now available with fixes for battery drain, third-party keyboard bug, and moreApple is fixing iOS 13’s bugs at a breakneck pace with another new update today Please take our survey here: theverge.com/survey Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

  This week on the Vergecast, a packed show. Casey Newton is here to talk about his massive Facebook scoop. We get into all of the Microsoft news and we go deep on net neutrality. It's Vergecast, come on now.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  Real innovation is powered by real people. This is AMEX Corporate. Trusted experts, smarter technology, 24/7 dedicated support from day one to answer questions, help set up policies and approvals, and consult on spend capacity as your business needs evolve. Plus, on-demand resources help level up operations at every stage. That's the trusted service you've come to expect. Built to simplify, designed to scale. This is AMEX Corporate.

• 0:41Speaker 02

  Soft, cushy, plush, cozy. Soft, smooth, buttery, marshmallow-y, warm. Soft. Socks, underwear, tees, and more. Bombas. Everyday comfort worth obsessing over. Visit bombas.com/audio and use code AUDIO for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash AUDIO. One purchase equals one donated, always.

• 1:15Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of the Vox Media ecosystem, whose walls grow ever taller, but whose comfort and services grow ever more lush. That's good. I like that. Casey Newton, you're here with us. How are you?

• 1:30Speaker 03

  I'm good. Hey, Eli.

• 1:31Nilay Patel?

  Dieter Bohn? I also am lush. Oh, I'm a lush. There it is. Both. Paul Miller's here. Hello. We, this is a big week and there's a world in which this is like a, I don't know, six to seven hour show, just because of everything that's happened this week. There was a huge Microsoft event, iOS 13, deep fusion, launched, unlaunched. There's a net neutrality ruling that we got to talk about. But I think for my money, the biggest news of the week came from our man Casey Newton.

• 2:00Speaker 03

  Ah.

• 2:00Nilay Patel?

  Who acquired, who found, I don't want to like, I don't want to get into your methods. Two hours of audio of Mark Zuckerberg across meetings at Facebook. Talking candidly to his employees about what's going on, how things are going. Casey, tell us about that.

• 2:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I obtained some audio of these meetings. They took place in July. They were broadly open to employees. And one of the main purposes for these meetings was to let employees ask questions of Mark Zuckerberg. And so as you listen to the recordings, you sort of hear two things. One is, yes, you hear Mark Zuckerberg talk about the government's plans to regulate and maybe break up Facebook and how they plan on crushing their competitor TikTok. But you also hear employee anxieties, which to me are the real kind of heartbeat of the piece, right? We think of Facebook as this monolith, this giant world-beating colossus. But inside the company, it feels very fraught, right?

• 3:00Speaker 04

  They're worried about the government. They're worried about their declining reputation. They're worried about the competition. And so that's kind of what I tried to illustrate as we wrote this piece.

• 3:11Nilay Patel?

  That's not necessarily how it was received in the world, which I know is something you've been now talking and writing about. The reception is much more like, Facebook goes to war. But you're actually focused on, these questions are evidence of Facebook being maybe a little bit more tentative than you think.

• 3:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I mean, look, we weren't naive. We knew what the newsiest bit in here was, and it was Mark Zuckerberg saying that he was going to go to the mat to fight the government if they tried to break up his company. And so that there's a reason why when you go to the piece, that is the first snippet of audio that you hear. You know, that said, it started a much bigger news cycle than I think any of us expected.

• 3:49Nilay Patel?

  Well, we've got the audio. It's a podcast after all. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, let's, let's listen to it and then let's talk about it for a sec. So here it is. It's, Mark Zuckerberg was asked about breakups in general, and he very specifically mentions Elizabeth Warren, which I think is the thing that really keyed off the cycle.

• 4:04Speaker 05

  Like Elizabeth Warren, who thinks that the right answer is to break up the companies. You know, I mean, if she gets elected president, then I would, I would bet that we will have a legal challenge, and I would bet that we will win the legal challenge. So it's, so it's, so basically, it's a, and I'm...

• 4:23Speaker 05

  So, does that still suck for us? Yeah, I mean, I don't have to, you know, have a major lawsuit against our own government. I mean, that's not like the position that you want to be in when you're, you know, I mean, it's like, we, we care about our country and like, want to work with our government to do good things and, um, but, but look, at the end of the day, if someone's going to try to threaten something that existential, you go to the mat and you fight.

• 4:46Nilay Patel?

  So, can I, I, I don't think we've, even you and I have talked about this, Casey. That long pause.

• 4:51Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:52Nilay Patel?

  Where he, he queues up to say, "Does that still suck for us?" It, there's a part of that, to me, that is like, the most telling thing, right? He doesn't quite know what he's going to say next, and he's like,

• 5:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:02Nilay Patel?

  "I'm just going to admit that it sucks."

• 5:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:04Nilay Patel?

  Right? And like, that, you've interviewed Zuckerberg, we've seen him interviewed by lots of people. He's not very candid, and that struck me as like, the most candid moment that we've, we've ever heard from him.

• 5:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, he, he is sort of off the script at that point, or at least he's thinking of like, whatever might be on his script, what is the next move? Um, I mean, part of the value of hearing this recording is hearing Zuckerberg trying to work out in real time, at least what he's going to tell his employees about it. I mean, you know, maybe that he's thinking it through for himself. I imagine he already has, you know, pretty firmed up beliefs about, about these issues. Um, but, you know, he does have to kind of communicate it to employees, and, you know, you can imagine he has employees there who, you know, I don't know, might be broadly supportive of more competition in the ecosystem, you know, let's say.

• 5:52Nilay Patel?

  The Instagram employees were like, "Yeah, break it up."

• 5:56Speaker 04

  I mean, I think that's probably true. You know, one of the really cool things that happens from a reporter's perspective is that the bigger these companies get, the more people they wind up hiring that kind of think the entire company is bullshit, right? And like, and they will tell you that, you know, like, maybe they buy into some aspect of the mission, but like, they're not all in, in the way that they were when it was 300 people.

• 6:16Nilay Patel?

  So obviously, he mentions Warren, Elizabeth Warren fired back at Zuckerberg. It seemed like both sides got to sort of dine out on this moment. You know, what's really interesting is, to me, we've talked a lot specifically about Senator Josh Hawley, who is sort of also an anti-tech crusader. He's a very conservative politician. Zuckerberg just went to Hawley's office. Like, he was in DC, went into a closed-door meeting in Hawley's office. Hawley comes out of that meeting and is like, "Yeah, I asked Mark Zuckerberg if he would break off Instagram and WhatsApp, and he said no." And it's like, he's getting it from both sides. But in this moment, it's like, there's so much focus on Elizabeth Warren.

• 6:56Nilay Patel?

  But I wonder, are you seeing that response that this quote in particular got around Warren is indicative of Mark Zuckerberg has a sort of like an Elizabeth Warren problem, or Mark Zuckerberg has an antitrust problem?

• 7:08Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, the full quote is, he says, "You have people like Elizabeth Warren." Right? So he is saying right there, you know, "It is not just her." He knows it is more people, including Republicans. That anecdote you told, by the way, my absolute favorite thing Josh Hawley has ever done. Like, say what you will about his other policies, but just the idea of him saying, "You know what? Why don't you just, you know, break apart the company?" It was like literally the same question that I asked Boz and Adam Mosseri onstage at Code in June. And like, now Hawley is like picking up the crusade. So this is like very exciting for me personally. But yeah, no, he has an antitrust problem. This issue has united Republicans and Democrats. They have both found that there is great hay to be made.

• 7:50Speaker 04

  It is red meat for both of their bases to come out and say, "Big tech is too big, it's too powerful, and it needs to be reined in." There are very few Democrats or Republicans, I think, who disagree with that admittedly nebulous idea.

• 8:02Nilay Patel?

  So you just mentioned your interview at Code with Adam Mosseri and Boz. It's funny because... You know, one of their answers to you saying she should break it up, I think Mosseri said, you know, there's so many people at Facebook working on election security, it's actually more people than work on Instagram total.

• 8:18Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 8:19Nilay Patel?

  And it seems to be, it's a go to line. I think Mosseri said it on the Today Show this week too, right? Like, they've got a stat, they love that stat. I think it must suck for Instagram because they know that they will never hire more people until like the election security team gets bigger. Like, they're holding on to this stat. But Zuckerberg gives a very similar answer in these comments to employees, and it's specifically about Twitter. And so I want to run that audio too, because this one is super interesting to me, and I think really gets at the core, I think, element of the debate, which is, do you need size to protect people? So let's run this audio, and we can talk about that.

• 8:52Speaker 05

  That's why Twitter can't do as good of a job as we can. I mean, they face qualitatively the same types of issues, but they're, you know, I mean, they, they, they can't put in the investment. Our, our investment on safety is bigger than the whole revenue of their company. They literally cannot do it.

• 9:07Nilay Patel?

  So, I mean, a amazing dunk on Twitter. Hashtag wrecked. Right? Like, just an amazing dunk on Twitter. It suggests maybe Facebook is too big all on its own, right? Like, this cost center for us is bigger than all of your revenue. It's like, yeah, that means you're huge. But do you buy it that you need this scale to protect the platform?

• 9:29Speaker 04

  You know, there's, um, have you seen that episode of The Simpsons where prohibition returns to Springfield? And like, the great joke in it is alcohol, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems. That is Facebook with size, right? Size is, size might be the cause of all of their problems, but it will also be the solution. And because it is one of the largest companies the world has ever seen, it will use that size to clean up any messes that, oh, by the way, were caused by its size. So I think it's a somewhat circular argument, and we're gonna hear it forever.

• 9:58Nilay Patel?

  Well, I mean, what gets me is, there is the notion that, okay, let's say you do break up Facebook and Instagram, WhatsApp. The first thing Instagram has to do is spend a bunch of money, uh, building it like a trust and safety team, building a security team that they were previously sort of getting for free. So that just like increases costs on both sides. Like, I, it seems very obvious. It's like the first problem an independent Instagram or an independent WhatsApp would have. But it also seems like they could build a bunch of revenue centers that they're prevented from having now that might compete with Facebook. So there's Facebook Dating, that could be a revenue center for Facebook in the future. It seems very obvious that Instagram should build Instagram Dating, it would be a much faster revenue center than, I don't know, whatever the olds are doing at Facebook Dating. There's a whole bunch of other stuff,

• 10:42Nilay Patel?

  right? Like, I think we've heard Instagram's video ambitions are sort of thwarted by Zuckerberg not wanting to step too much on Facebook's video ambitions. So, like, I guess I just don't quite understand how you parse out what the costs are of breaking the companies and what the opportunity costs of keeping the companies together are. And I just feel like no one's really made that argument or made that cohesive.

• 11:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, also, increasingly, companies are sharing information and best practices around this stuff, right? At, you know, industry councils, you know, they're already working together to remove, like, child exploitation imagery and terrorism imagery, right? They're in these sort of industry councils. I think that there's an argument to be made that, like, there could be a really good just trust and safety company that comes along as a third-party provider, right? Like, that could be a tech business in its own right. And I think you could also imagine that maybe the costs will come down over time as we perfect some of the best practices for keeping the worst of the stuff off the platforms. So, the, I mean, look, you're always gonna need real people to do this job. It's, like, very

• 11:49Speaker 04

  hard. We've written a lot about it this year. But this idea that only the largest companies will ever be able to have a safe platform, I just, I absolutely reject. It is such a convenient argument for them, and we have no data to suggest that it's true.

• 12:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, we had Alex Daymos, who is the former Chief Security Officer of Facebook, and he actually made very much the same argument that eventually an economy of safety and security companies needs to exist.

• 12:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:14Nilay Patel?

  Because that's the only way you can enable competitors. But here, it's very clear the argument is our scale is what will solve the problem. And I don't know that they make that argument a lot. And I feel like the next step of this conversation is rigorously assessing that argument. Like, how true is it versus how much opportunity costs we're missing?

• 12:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, here's a data, here's a data point for you. When Facebook was limited to colleges, people didn't use it to interfere with our elections. So by that fact, we could say, hmm, the smaller Facebook is, the safer it is, right? Like, to me, that, you might think that's like a ridiculously glib argument. But to me, it is just as internally coherent as, you know, we can only solve our big problems if we're big.

• 12:54Nilay Patel?

  I'm fairly sure I tried to interfere in the 2000 election. Like, it just rolled out to my school, and I was like, I'm gonna get in there. Uh, it didn't work. It's really my problem. So Casey, you've now sort of lived with this audio in the world. You've seen a bunch of reactions this week. Um, Facebook, I think you and I have both been talking about, Facebook seems to be just owning it. Like, yep, that's how he talks. What do you, what happens next? Like, what are you thinking about now that you've published a story? You've seen the reactions Zuckerberg plus and minus for his candidness and transparency in this audio. How do you think this kind of shapes the conversation moving forward?

• 13:33Speaker 04

  I mean, there's a few different things. Like, one is, how does this affect the internal culture at Facebook? There's a lot of really, really mad people in there right now that this audio leaked, is what I was told today. Um, and, you know, you can probably imagine that that's true. Um, I'm also being told that Facebook is ready to get Zuckerberg out there a little bit more. That he's like, kind of been in a bunker for the past year, but they want him to talk to more people. Um, like, maybe in Europe. So I think that he is going to be making more of this case directly. But, you know, what else happens? I mean, I think that, to some extent, this stuff is going to be on a treadmill until we know who wins the 2020 election.

• 14:14Speaker 04

  Uh, if Trump wins reelection, I think the odds of a breakup, you know, basically drop to zero for, you know, at least four years. So, um, I think there's gonna be a lot of just kind of, uh, commentary until then.

• 14:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Josh Hawley, if Trump wins reelection, becomes the Attorney General and just like goes for it.

• 14:32Speaker 04

  Oh, I mean, gosh, what a story that would be to cover.

• 14:36Nilay Patel?

  I mean.

• 14:36Speaker 04

  My goodness.

• 14:37Nilay Patel?

  It's out there.

• 14:37Speaker 06

  I personally found this audio very refreshing. Did you guys listen to some of that, the, the Zuck pod? Remember when Mark Zuckerberg did a podcast?

• 14:45Speaker 04

  You, you're talking about like his, his serious conversations he's been having this year?

• 14:49Speaker 06

  Yeah. Is that still going?

• 14:50Speaker 04

  Yeah. He's done, I think, four or five of them, but not one in several months.

• 14:53Speaker 06

  It was so frustrating to listen to because he clearly had a product in mind. He had a specific end goal, a future thing that he wanted to launch. And he just wanted these people's permission. That is what it felt like listening to here. And so it felt like he had no, um, uh, he was not taking in any, any information or anybody's feelings. Where here in this thing, it seemed clear that he knew exactly how his employees are feeling. And probably the, you know, like, I'm sure in the Bay area, you say, oh, I work for Facebook. And someone's like, oh, I'm so sorry for you or something like that, you know? Like, he seemed like he really got that in a way that the podcast made him seem completely out of touch.

• 15:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's, it's actually a conversation between him and his employees. Whereas when he's being interviewed, like, you know, by somebody like us, it's always like him as ambassador of the company, you know, presenting the external view. Um, so, you know, that's like one more reason why I thought this audio was really, uh, revealing. You know, which I feel compelled to say because there were some people out there being like, there's nothing interesting about this, you know? We could have, we could have just guessed all of this. I was like, well, why didn't you?

• 16:00Nilay Patel?

  Uh, you know, it's a funny case here. We were, I was just joking about the Attorney General thing, but just now, William Barr and like this, the country of Australia and some others are demanding that Zuckerberg halt his plans to encrypt messaging across the three services.

• 16:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, which it's a little weird, right? Cause like WhatsApp is already encrypted and iMessage exists. So like, what exactly is the, is, is the issue here? Is that you, you want to maintain law enforcement access to, to Messenger and Instagram direct? I just, I, I need to like read more about what's being said.

• 16:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, this literally happened minutes before we, we started here, but I mean, the, they announced it. Everyone's immediate response was you're trying to tie your services together. So they're harder to break up. And so you at least have some action. Well, it's like, don't do that. Like, stop that process until we take a look at it. And I think the idea that he needs to go and be more conversational in Europe is like, where is all the antitrust action happening right now? It's like in Europe. And so like, he's gonna go make friends over there by being a little bit more honest? Like, it's probably not a bad strategy, but you see that pressure. Like, is this thing too big, as you said? Is, it's a winning argument on the right and the left. No one's particularly happy with Facebook. And it's very, I thought it was very revealing.

• 17:14Nilay Patel?

  I think that the joke everyone has been making is, this is the best interview he's ever done.

• 17:19Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm, right.

• 17:20Nilay Patel?

  By far, this is the best Mark Zuckerberg interview of all time, because he's just being honest. And if that's the lesson he takes from this, I think it's actually a good thing.

• 17:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, something I'll say about the audio is, like, he's funny in it, right? Like, he tells jokes. And somebody had told me earlier this year who knows him that he's like really funny in person. And honestly, like, I didn't quite know if I believed it, because I've spent, you know, the past seven years watching him pretty closely. And like, he doesn't do a lot of zingers, you know? And yet, you kind of just hear him in, you know, there's this great joke in there where somebody's like, hey, are we gonna do invasive brain surgery for ad targeting purposes, basically? And he's just like, oh, you know, great, I'd love to see the congressional hearings on that one. Uh, which is like, that's like a funny thing. I would laugh, you know, if I was in the room with him. Um, so I would love to see a little bit more of that. You know, they're so interested in like, humanizing him and making him the face of the company.

• 18:08Speaker 04

  It's like, well, show us the version of him that like laughs and smiles and like jokes around.

• 18:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but at the same time, he like, does a Facebook Live in his backyard, answering questions about grilling. And like, he gets dunked on for six years straight, right? Like, there's a balance there that I think is really, really hard for him.

• 18:25Speaker 04

  Uh, yes.

• 18:25Nilay Patel?

  Like, he can't be glib. Like, people think Facebook is too evil for him to be like glib, right? So, that's a calibration he's gonna have to make.

• 18:34Speaker 04

  Yes, that's very true.

• 18:35Nilay Patel?

  I will say that I picked up some good meat-smoking tips from that Facebook.

• 18:40Nilay Patel?

  I did not. I'll just be honest, I already knew everything. All right, Casey, thank you so much for joining us. You're gonna have more scoops. Tell them about the interface.

• 18:47Speaker 04

  You know, this scoop sort of came about indirectly, because I write a daily newsletter about platforms and democracy. It's called The Interface, comes out Monday through Thursday. I do it with Zoe Schiffer, and you can find it at theverge.com-interface.

• 19:02Nilay Patel?

  All right, thank you so much, Casey. We're gonna take an ad, we're gonna come back, we're gonna talk about some Microsoft stuff. Here we go.

• 19:10Speaker 07

  At T-Mobile, the new iPhone 18 Pro is here with a big leap in battery life, and you can get it for nothing upfront. With so many reasons to choose T-Mobile, you'll want to talk about it.

• 19:20Speaker 08

  I heard at T-Mobile, you can get iPhone 18 Pro for nothing upfront and get $1,000 off. Pass it on.

• 19:28Speaker 09

  Pay nothing today. No taxes, no fees, nothing down. Pass it on.

• 19:34Speaker 10

  Hey, Mickey, pass it on. iPhone 18 Pro has the most advanced iPhone camera ever. Pass it on.

• 19:41Speaker 11

  At T-Mobile, you can get iPhone 18 Pro for nothing upfront. Pass it on.

• 19:46Speaker 07

  At T-Mobile, get $1,000 off the amazing iPhone 18 Pro with no trade-in needed. The 36 monthly bill credits when you switch to T-Mobile on a qualifying plan. If you cancel an entire account before receiving all bill credits, credits stop and balance on required finance agreement is due. Example, $1199.99 iPhone 18 Pro 256GB. Bill credits end if you pay off the device early. Qualifying credit, new line, order and service. $85 more per month with autopay plus taxes and fees required. $35 device connection charge to itself. Visit tmobile.com.

• 20:11Speaker 12

  Your heart can tell you a lot about your health. Apple Watch Series 12 measures your heart rate every 5 seconds with the most accurate heart rate sensing in wearable. So your vitals app, now with heart rate variability, can tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Hear the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. The features described are for wellness purposes only and not for medical use. iPhone 11 or later required. Based on an Apple-conducted study of heart rate accuracy, August 2026. Visit apple.com slash apple watch series 12.

• 20:41Nilay Patel?

  We're back. Hard shift.

• 20:43Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:44Nilay Patel?

  On a Facebook policy zone into what we're really here for. Folding 2-in-1 displays. That is what we're really here for. Are you kidding me? Uh, so Microsoft had a huge event. Huge. I mean, is there any bigger news in like operating system world than Microsoft using Android?

• 21:02Speaker 06

  I'd say the biggest event since Elijah Wood announced the Xbox.

• 21:05Nilay Patel?

  Wow. That's, whew. Bigger than the time they danced on stage for Windows 95?

• 21:11Speaker 03

  The amount of history that is packed into a surprise phone announcement from Microsoft, uh, them making their own phone running Android, like, I can't even begin to tell you how many like flashbacks I'm having to.

• 21:30Speaker 03

  Different versions of Windows Mobile and then Windows Phone and Steve Ballmer and Stephen Elop and Burning Platforms.

• 21:37Nilay Patel?

  Burning Platforms. How do you think Stephen Elop feels today?

• 21:41Speaker 03

  He feels pretty bad.

• 21:43Nilay Patel?

  How do you think the employees of Nokia feel today? It's a lot.

• 21:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:49Nilay Patel?

  It's a lot. So Panos Panay, who is Microsoft's Chief Product Officer, if you're listening to this, you probably listening to it out of the feed, you can see right before it, we interviewed, Tom Warren and I interviewed Panos for a little bit more than half an hour yesterday. I love talking to Panos. He is, you know, we were just talking about Zuckerberg and Facebook. Panos is just himself.

• 22:09Speaker 06

  Can I, because I'm not as in the trenches with you guys, day in, day out. There was a subtext to that conversation where Panos wanted to kill Tom, but be good friends with you. So can you please explain that to me?

• 22:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think I can. Tom is a really good reporter and often scoops Panos's announcements.

• 22:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:30Nilay Patel?

  And that was not as subtle as you think it might have come across. It was very obvious in the room because he kept pointing at Tom, being like, whatever it is that you do. But no, they, they all, they obviously like each other as well. It was just that was, he kept on doing that. It was really, it was very funny to me. But we talked to Panos for a while yesterday. I hope you go listen to it. Like I said, I love talking to Panos. He's just, he's direct. He doesn't shade it. He just tells you what he's thinking. And I've, if you're listening to the interview episodes, I've been interviewing a lot of politicians and they're not like that. So this was like a refreshing, just sort of conversation. And so, you know, we asked, why Android? And he was straight ahead, he's like, that's where the apps are. We need the apps. You want the apps. People want Android. Mobile applications aren't going away.

• 23:15Nilay Patel?

  This is what we're doing.

• 23:16Speaker 03

  I have many things to say about that, by the way. Like go finish your spiel, but we have to come back to that answer because it is not as easy as he thinks.

• 23:25Nilay Patel?

  Okay. So let me just run through the list of things and then we can come back specifically to Surface Duo and Android because that's, that's the meat of it. So they announced new Surface laptops, 13 and 15. They seem very good. They've got a custom AMD processor in the 15. That's one of their first custom processors. Intel processor in the other one. They announced Surface Pro 7, which has a USB-C port.

• 23:46Speaker 03

  And giant bezels.

• 23:47Nilay Patel?

  And giant bezel. And Panos was like, I knew if I didn't do it, you would complain on the Vergecast. So love that.

• 23:55Nilay Patel?

  It's true. They announced the Surface Pro X, which has a custom processor ARM.

• 24:01Speaker 03

  Yup.

• 24:02Nilay Patel?

  They made it with Qualcomm. It's the Surface SQ1 processor.

• 24:06Speaker 03

  It's a bad name for a processor.

• 24:08Nilay Patel?

  It's not the most. It's, you know, it's not like the A15 Bionic cheater, like whatever Apple's doing.

• 24:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:14Nilay Patel?

  It's the SQ1. The panel said they're running it basically at high wattages. He's like, this is a PC architectural part, but ARM, so that's really interesting. That is a big question mark situation, right? Windows on ARM has existed. It's been out there. This is a new Surface device running ARM. There's an emulation layer for your sort of like classic Intel x86 apps. We're gonna have to see how it goes.

• 24:37Speaker 06

  Just to be clear, the dual screen Neo runs Windows 10x, but the Surface X runs Windows 10.

• 24:46Nilay Patel?

  The Surface Pro X runs Windows 10 on ARM.

• 24:49Speaker 03

  And the Neo, which we'll get to in a second, is Intel 10x.

• 24:53Speaker 06

  Right.

• 24:54Nilay Patel?

  Yep.

• 24:54Speaker 06

  Got it.

• 24:54Nilay Patel?

  And then there's Surface Buds, which I just have never seen a company double down harder on the purpose of our cool headphones is PowerPoint. Then Microsoft is doubling down on PowerPoint being the killer app for headphones, but that's what they're saying. I think they look cool. People, I've seen a lot of memes about these big pop sockets for your ears.

• 25:13Speaker 03

  Or Frankenstein's monster bolts, but in your ears.

• 25:16Nilay Patel?

  It is true that they are giant circles, but I prefer that to everything else.

• 25:20Speaker 03

  The best part about this is Will.i.am is sad because he made giant circle headphones a couple of years ago.

• 25:29Nilay Patel?

  Every Will.i.am gadget was like, it was like falling apart at the seams or like light on and then like, sorry, Will.i.am. I'm sorry that your idea for circles got ripped off. Every, literally every Will.i.am product we've ever dealt with has been, has been horrible. But yeah, circles. Who doesn't want to own the circle? All that stuff is shipping now.

• 25:48Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 25:49Nilay Patel?

  That's the, the current 2019 holiday lineup. Right? Surface laptops, Surface Pro 7, uh, Surface Pro X, Windows on ARM, lighter, thinner, always on LTE, the whole, the whole thing. So the most futuristic device in that lineup is the Pro X, Windows on ARM. Then they announced the stuff that's coming next year, which is basically their foldable strategy. That is the Surface Neo, which, Paul, runs Intel folding screen, new version of Windows called Windows 10X, that right now is designed for folding screens. Dieter, I suspect that, like me, you could also talk about whether Windows 10X for one folding screen device is a good idea. And, uh, that's a lot.

• 26:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:29Nilay Patel?

  That's a lot. There's a, there's a new version of Windows that developers should use to make foldy screen stuff.

• 26:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:35Nilay Patel?

  Okay. Then, big surprise, Surface Duo, a phone. It's a phone.

• 26:41Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:41Nilay Patel?

  You can, you can fold it all the way around so the screens are on the outside and just use it like a phone. Running Android, two displays. Right now, there's a Snapdragon 855 in there. We all suspect that by the time this thing launches, holiday 2020, they'll, they'll go to the next generation of Snapdragons. But right now, it's an 855.

• 26:58Speaker 03

  We have seen companies screw that up, where they like, they announce it way ahead of time with a relatively older processor. We're like, oh, they'll fix that by the time it launches, and then they don't. So I'm not 100% confident that this won't be running a Snap 855 in holiday 2020, more than a year from now.

• 27:14Nilay Patel?

  It's, it's a back and forth, because, uh, Panos told us on the show yesterday, the hardware is locked. This is the third generation. It's locked. We're announcing it early. Developers will have it in a couple of months, because we want them to build apps for the dual-screen stuff. And then, sort of like whispers around the edges of the event were when it launched. So like, we'll see. That's a real question.

• 27:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:34Nilay Patel?

  But we, Panos said on the show, on the record yesterday, hardware's locked. This is what's going on.

• 27:38Speaker 06

  As in like the form factor, the design and everything?

• 27:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I said, well, the hardware changed by next year, and he said, no, this isn't. Will the chip inside change? I think up in the air. It's beautiful. I said, I held one yesterday. I actually held Panhouse's. If you listen to the show, he like hands it to me and I, you can hear me almost like run away. I was like, duh. So I held it. I scrolled through Android on it, opened the notification shade, like I used the thing. It is, I love it. I love it. And I know it's not, it's got a big seam in the middle. Uh, Panhouse was like, we're leaning into the seam. The interface does cool things with the seam. So like windows snap to it. It's like, that's, that part of it's neat, right? He's like, the seam helps us structure windows on the interface. It structured displays.

• 28:21Nilay Patel?

  If you have a window that spans across it, the wind, even the content inside of the window, he showed me a calendar app. So even like calendar events and you like drag to create a calendar event, snap to the window. Like it's neat.

• 28:33Speaker 06

  I'm trying to think, as someone who has done some, some bad CSS in my time, what sort of CSS would accommodate that well? I guess there's not, are there invisible pixels under the seam? Or is it really just two separate displays?

• 28:48Nilay Patel?

  No, it's, it's just two different displays in a hinge.

• 28:51Speaker 03

  Android 10 specifically is designed for multi-screen devices. And when they announced it, but I don't know, whenever they announced it back in March and it's Q, and then I got an early look at it. And every time I went to talk to Google about Android 10, they were like, and it works better with multi-screen devices. And I was like, cool. You know, the Galaxy Fold is a dumpster fire, right? And they're like, yeah, but it works. The multi-screen devices work really hard. And I'm like, but why?

• 29:17Speaker 06

  Hey, there's that LG.

• 29:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, we'll, we'll get to that. But Google has worked not just with Samsung, but with Microsoft to build support for multi-screen into the logic of Android itself. And you can actually see a hint of that right now on the fold, uh, where you can have a thing on the outside screen, open it up, and the whole app appears on the inside screen just resized.

• 29:41Speaker 03

  You can also see hints of this in all the work they did to make Android apps work better on Chrome, where you can resize them and they can have arbitrary window sizes without having to reload. All of that stuff, uh, works, like folds right into folds, right? Right into the Surface Duo because you can, apps are now aware that different screens exist and they should do different things depending on what screen they're on and what screen they're being sent to. And so it makes perfect sense that it, Microsoft just figured out how to have a calendar app, you hit a thing on one screen and then something within the same app happens on the other screen. Or another app knows to open on the other screen because they basically told Google, we want to make this and Google said, cool.

• 30:19Speaker 03

  Let's, let's try and minimize fragmentation here. Use these tools to do it. And so it's a mix of like custom Microsoft stuff, but also stuff that's built into Android that other people might be able to take advantage of. Now that Axon, that ZTE thing you're talking about was a dual screen phone. It folded the other way. And, you know, it was like, it didn't, it wasn't aware of the, the gap. It wasn't aware of the hinge. And so everything was just like split across it in like kind of bad ways. And I think the hope is that the Duo will avoid a lot of those problems.

• 30:50Speaker 06

  So this is maybe a little weedy, but okay, I've got my email on one side and my calendar on the other side, right?

• 30:57Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 30:58Speaker 06

  Classic two app scenario.

• 30:59Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 31:00Speaker 06

  Now I want to send an email on the left side and I click new email. Let's say it opens on the left side, right? But my calendar is still open on the right side, but now I turn it and I've got this big wide keyboard, which looks pretty like a nice situation, right? Is that all going to work automatically? Is it going to know which app that I want to be on the top or which one I want to become a keyboard?

• 31:23Speaker 03

  TBD.

• 31:24Speaker 06

  Does it remember that kind of stuff?

• 31:25Speaker 03

  Unclear. There are a million things they could get wrong here. And Apple, by the way, got a bunch of these things wrong on iPadOS. So we'll, I'll be interested to see if Microsoft doesn't.

• 31:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, given how much Panos likes to talk about flow and putting people in their productivity flow and like flow, just conceptually. I hope that they're thinking this stuff through. I mean, one of the justifications he gave us for why dual screen is important was like, we hooked people up to brain activity sensors and measured how much more brain activity is when there's two screens, which just is cool. Like, I don't want to take away from the fact that's cool. It is very Microsoft, right? Like, why does Microsoft know this is good? Because they generated a bunch of data that says it is. And then at the very end of it, it's like, this is like crazy sci-fi, right? Like, how many screens should you have? As many as the brain scans tell us you should have.

• 32:15Nilay Patel?

  And I wonder if like more is better, like you're going to have a four screen device, you have four times brain activity.

• 32:19Speaker 06

  And that brain thing is very, I mean, I like, I have different modes of productivity. I have like my sitting with one big window open, concentrating on one thing. And then I have like my dual window setup and like, you know, like Dieter, you were saying, I think this last week about the iPad operating system, their sort of mix of spatial and time kind of hurts you. So like if, if having multiple screens or multiple panes or multiple sections is inconsistent, that is more work for your brain.

• 32:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And I love the thing about we're using the two displays and we're going to structure it, right? That, that implies there's like, there's spatial metaphors here, not chronology metaphors. But having held the thing for, you know, the brief moments we got to hold it and swipe through it, one, it's real, it works. It doesn't, it's not fake. It's not just like a lit up piece of paper.

• 33:08Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 33:09Nilay Patel?

  Which is like, companies do that to us. The version of Android on it, it appears to be lightly designed. So like the icons are square, the notification shade looks a bit different. There's, they say they're working with Google closely. They would not answer our questions about, you know, I was like, is Google letting you do stuff in Panos? It's like, it's not a letting conversation, it's a partnering conversation, which is definitely some corporate executive talk. There's a lot to unpack there.

• 33:36Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 33:37Nilay Patel?

  Right? He said, like, I looked at, he showed me on the screen, Google search is the default on this side, but a bunch of Microsoft stuff is on the home screen of the interface on this side.

• 33:45Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 33:46Nilay Patel?

  Bing search is there, but Google Apps gets to be the default in some cases. You know what the default browser is? Edge.

• 33:52Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 33:52Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, that's a big deal. Like, that's

• 33:55Speaker 06

  Although Edge runs on Chromium, so.

• 33:57Nilay Patel?

  We got to talk about that too. But you, you might notice that Google in the EU was just recently penalized and forced to unbundle Chrome in search from Android, right? Like, because they were so rigorous about being the default. So there's clearly two huge companies negotiating a lot to make this device happen. You wonder how much Google is getting in return for giving up, you know, some default placements. I think one big thing, and Dieter, this was in your piece, like, Google just gets to win.

• 34:28Nilay Patel?

  Like, they just get to win. They get to say that, you know, there's, there's iOS and there's Android. And those are the two mobile operating systems that exist. Even Microsoft's had to, had to face that reality. But I suspect Google will get some other concessions from Microsoft along the line. I also think, and this is Dieter where I'm just very curious for your thoughts here. The notion that Microsoft is divorcing itself from operating systems and divorcing itself from being proprietary about what it ships is it's reached it's reached an absolute apex, right? So you just mentioned Edge. They shifted the browser engine from Edge to Chromium, which is Google's engine. Their mobile operating system, they we talked about all the history here. Microsoft launched Windows Phone.

• 35:12Nilay Patel?

  They bought Nokia to have a heart of first-party, first-class hardware vendor for Windows Phone. They paid developers a lot of money to make apps to get Windows Phone the necessary table stakes sort of functionality that they needed to get it off the ground. All of that failed. Nokia is a shell of itself that is literally owned by another company now. Microsoft hasn't had a mobile phone strategy apart from preloading apps in Samsung phones for quite some time. And now they are back in the market with a new form factor, which is sort of historically when markets shift, when like market share can shift in radical ways. And they're doing it on Android's and Google's operating system. That is, that's a lot.

• 35:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:54Nilay Patel?

  And that's a lot of Google code sort of powering Microsoft products. And it just seems historic to me.

• 36:02Speaker 03

  I mean, the the thing about Microsoft no long Tom has a really good story up today about like Microsoft doesn't care about Windows anymore, which is like overstating it, but only a tiny bit. If you care about like the quality of an operating system, it's hard to know how to feel right now because all the action is on iOS and Android there. But they are having like their their iterative year-over-year updates are getting smaller. And I think that if you look at the iterative year-over-year updates for Windows 10 or the Mac, like they're they're smaller still. When was the last time you got like genuinely hyped about a Mac update?

• 36:39Nilay Patel?

  I get more hyped about not updating my Mac.

• 36:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, right?

• 36:42Nilay Patel?

  Like, I'm not hyped about upgrading Catalina.

• 36:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:45Nilay Patel?

  Like, I feel like based on my experience with iOS 13. I'm just gonna wait. I'm just gonna wait that one out.

• 36:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:50Nilay Patel?

  And the last Windows 10 update was super buggy, too.

• 36:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, like for me, they're still like holding it on certain devices, which is wild.

• 36:58Speaker 03

  So the idea that the action has moved away from the operating system to something else and that the power no longer resides in the OS, I think is going to accelerate. So the Dell is basically, you know, the leverage that Microsoft gets out of Windows being dominant is like getting smaller over time. And so it doesn't matter that they're running Android on their mobile operating system because they avoid the problem of not having the apps. And the amount of leverage that they would have gotten by owning the OS on that particular device, I don't know how much they actually think they're gonna get. The only company that like has genuine leverage from owning the OS right now is basically Apple, right? You could maybe argue Google and the

• 37:41Speaker 03

  web with Chrome OS, but I think that Microsoft's just like, look, all of our, all the power comes in services and in apps and in subscriptions to apps. And so we're just gonna do whatever it takes to make sure that you sign up for OneDrive and Office 365, or whatever they're calling it now. And that's it.

• 37:59Nilay Patel?

  It's funny because you would think that Google has a ton of power because of Android, but it is true that in Europe, a big market, Android was forced to be unbundled.

• 38:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:08Nilay Patel?

  Right? So like some of Google's leverage has actually gone away.

• 38:10Speaker 03

  Well, and Google's always been too afraid to use that leverage in the first place. CF, the messaging situation, like they, they, they've just been, they're afraid to use the leverage that they have because they don't want to get slapped with more antitrust. And so they just don't.

• 38:26Nilay Patel?

  See, this is a huge tangent, but this thing happens. I didn't send it to you, dude, or I needed to. But Samsung tweeted today, like a meme, it's like two little stick figures and one's like, I love new features on my phone, and the other one's like, I hate it when my, my text message bubbles are on color.

• 38:41Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 38:42Nilay Patel?

  And then under that tweet is just people arguing about RCS.

• 38:45Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 38:46Nilay Patel?

  And I was like, this is our fault. Like, I've just never seen, I'm like, this is literally our fault. Like, we are the only people that created this problem.

• 38:54Speaker 03

  I think that there, there are certain things that should have like a, like in the credits for the app, it should just credit the Vergecast. Anytime a device gets USB-C, thank, you're welcome.

• 39:04Speaker 06

  Anytime there's anything about RCS, you're welcome.

• 39:07Nilay Patel?

  It's like, I know, I know this is our fault. So, you know, you point out Apple's really interesting too, because they are actually leveraging their OS, right? They're like, we're building services into this OS. I got a pop-up notification out of nowhere last night at midnight. It's like, have you tried Apple Maps? It's beautiful now. It's like, why does my OS have ads? Like, I don't want this. But like, Microsoft isn't making that move with Windows. They tried a little bit, like, have you, have you tried our browser? And like, it didn't work.

• 39:32Speaker 06

  You could argue in a sense they are leveraging their OS in the sense that they have, they made Android into a dual-screen operating system and it has Edge as a browser. You could probably run Skype on that thing if you're, it's crazy.

• 39:48Nilay Patel?

  Right, but those are its applications. Like, Microsoft taking Google's OS, getting the Play Store and then like, turning it into the Microsoft OS, is a remarkable move for Android as an operating system.

• 39:59Speaker 06

  Right, but it's, I'm just saying there, there is this aspect of the layers, like, you know, we've been talking about this for a long time. Google's been trying to move away from the most important part of its operating system being the thing with the numerical release, right? So, Microsoft is running its own launcher, its own browser, you know. Obviously, it's open source and it's also partnership and obviously, it's still mostly Google's stuff. But there is this aspect where Microsoft has made this a little bit their own operating system.

• 40:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 40:28Speaker 06

  For the things that are most surface level to the users.

• 40:31Nilay Patel?

  Surface, wah-wah. The question, the question is, will they, will like, will people treat it as like a crappy skin? Or will it feel like an integrated whole? I think Samsung has done a pretty good job with one UI of moving away from like, this just feels like a slap of purple paint on top of the OS to like, something that actually feels like it has its own coherency and identity. It's still very Samsung-y. There's still a bunch of like, extra random stuff there and...

• 40:55Speaker 03

  Big speed, but I mean, Microsoft needs to figure that out for the Surface. Moving away from operating system philosophy and whether or not it matters anymore.

• 41:05Nilay Patel?

  What show is this?

• 41:06Speaker 03

  Well, no, hang on, I'm getting there. Even if all, if all in OS is like a delivery vehicle for a browser and like, and like either iOS or Android apps and like, that's it, fine. If we think that the Surface Duo is going to succeed or fail based on the quality of the applications and whether or not they are redesigned, rewritten and thought through for a dual screen system, I would just like you to pause in your car, pull over, pull over and just close your eyes and think about the history of Google trying to get Android developers to make good tablet apps.

• 41:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, it's a phone that turns into a tablet, right? And then it's like, and I do think it's beautiful and like, that's fine, but like, yep, it's a phone that turns into a tablet and Android, it's an Android tablet.

• 41:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:51Nilay Patel?

  Like, if I said to you, Microsoft made an Android tablet, you would not immediately think, oh, what a, what a surefire success. I think that's, I think that's why it's out, it's announced a year early.

• 42:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:02Nilay Patel?

  I fundamentally believe the thing that's going to happen is in a couple of months, developers will get it and Microsoft will do everything in their power to say, hey, you have some huge audience that uses Windows apps.

• 42:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:15Nilay Patel?

  Or you Android developer can now target a market of people that will spend a lot of money on a phone and will probably buy your apps so they work better.

• 42:22Speaker 03

  Hey, hey, Eli, you remember when, when Microsoft tried to get everybody to make Windows phone apps?

• 42:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's different.

• 42:28Speaker 03

  Hey, Eli, hey, Eli, hey, hey, Eli, do you remember when Microsoft tried to get everybody to make Metro apps, I mean, Windows Store apps, I mean, universal Windows platform apps? You remember, remember how well that went?

• 42:38Nilay Patel?

  UWIP, that's what I called the UWP. That's different.

• 42:44Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 42:45Nilay Patel?

  I promise you, because there, because look, please make me a Windows phone app was like, start from scratch.

• 42:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, but please make a universal app that'll work across all Windows devices and will be good on battery life and will look modern and fresh. They like failed at that. We have two, two giant companies that have demonstrably, completely just shit the bed on getting developers to do what they wanted them to do to move their platforms forward. Android tablets and like modern Windows apps, non-Win 32 apps. And that is what is going to determine the confluence of those two things is going to be what determines the success of the Surface Duo. I'm just saying.

• 43:27Nilay Patel?

  You know, we don't often have like the moment on the Verge chat that can turn into like the audiogram tweet. That's it. Usually it's just like a bunch of rambling mess. So that's great. Thank you, Dieter.

• 43:37Speaker 06

  Like Penney is saying, embrace that gap between the screens. This is two phones side by side. You're running two phone apps side by side and anything that's weirder than two phone apps side by side. Sounds like it will be broken unless Microsoft does a lot of work.

• 43:53Nilay Patel?

  Okay, but like let me put this like if they do the thing that they suggested they would do, which is we're going to bring X cloud to this device. Yeah. And you can stream games to it.

• 44:00Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 44:01Nilay Patel?

  And they'll run in it and it'll basically turn into like the world's coolest Nintendo DS.

• 44:04Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 44:05Nilay Patel?

  And you got the Xbox game at the top and you got like, all right, like I want it. Give it, I'll just buy it right now.

• 44:10Speaker 06

  Yep, same.

• 44:11Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, that's awesome. Like, there's a chicken and egg problem here where there was never a great Android tablet. And there was, and the reason there never was a great Android tablet is because nobody bought them. And the reason that nobody bought them is because the apps weren't there. And like that cycle was bad. If Microsoft can give you one or two killer apps for this thing, great gaming experience, powered by X cloud. So they don't have to worry about Android games. It's just like their X cloud service. I don't know. Excel people, like people like Excel, right? Like a big, like a huge dual screen Excel. I mean, they got PowerPoint earbuds now. Like, there's a whole thing.

• 44:46Speaker 03

  The answer to the following question will determine the success or failure of this thing.

• 44:50Nilay Patel?

  Oh, well, you already did that.

• 44:51Speaker 03

  I'm doing it again.

• 44:52Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 44:53Speaker 03

  Would you buy this instead of or in addition to your current phone?

• 44:57Nilay Patel?

  So I asked Panas this directly.

• 45:00Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 45:00Nilay Patel?

  Is this a substitute for a phone? And he said, for some people it will be.

• 45:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:04Nilay Patel?

  That's where he, that's right. He's like, this is the next step. So some people buy it as a replacement. He's like, I'm using it as a replacement right now. This is my device. Other people are going to buy it is the other thing. Here, very explicitly, as I was like, holding it, using it yesterday, I was like, oh, I know why I want this. I know why I want this form factor. Because I am extremely intrigued by the idea of closing my phone and having the screen go away and setting it aside. Right? Like, I'm the person who, in every meeting, turns my phone upside down and like, doesn't look at it because I'm trying not to. It's connected to my watch, so that's a... It doesn't work. But I love the idea of like, stopping.

• 45:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:41Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, such a problem everybody has with their phones, like, they're just always there. You can see it in a location, see a light up that screen's in front of you, it's available. I love the idea that this will make me a little bit more mindful of like, I'm using my phone now. Is it actually gonna work?

• 45:54Speaker 03

  It works. It works with the Galaxy Fold. I'm using it right now, I'm like, working on the review. Um, I'm spending more time with it than I usually do on a phone review because I want to like, think through some things. Also, I want to just see if it breaks.

• 46:05Nilay Patel?

  If it breaks.

• 46:07Speaker 03

  But, uh, you, when you have the Galaxy Fold as your phone, uh, you use it less. Because when you use it, you have to use it. And when you're not using it, you're like, oh, this tiny screen sucks, right?

• 46:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So then what if you had no screen? Okay, so that's the duo. Many, many unanswered questions, we're gonna do a lot of reporting. By the way, uh, Dieter, you mentioned that Nadella quote, um, in like, the moving way. That quote, we should just point out, came from our friend Lauren Good at Wired, she interviewed Nadella. He said, "Windows is not the point anymore, it's all about apps and services, operating systems." He's been saying stuff like that for a while now, like, maybe three or four years. But that's as explicitly as he's ever been like, whatever, Windows.

• 46:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:47Nilay Patel?

  So, I think we're gonna see a lot of that shakeout.

• 46:50Speaker 03

  He also mentioned the Microsoft Graph, which is like, just a whole other tangent we could go down that I don't think we should. But it's like, it's a little terrifying.

• 46:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's like, again, it's people on LinkedIn using PowerPoint with their Surface Buds and it's just like, it's like a whole other culture that you just... You know, if you're wandering to like, a subreddit that you haven't visited ever before, you're like, this is a whole different place. It's that.

• 47:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:12Nilay Patel?

  But it's LinkedIn PowerPoint Surface Buds.

• 47:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:15Nilay Patel?

  I can't wait for that subreddit to exist. If that's, if there's like a power user, Microsoft Office subreddit, please let me know. Cause I cannot wait to see what they think of this. So we should talk about the Neo. Because that's the other one.

• 47:26Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 47:27Nilay Patel?

  And it, I think has even bigger challenges than the Duo.

• 47:31Speaker 06

  Really? I completely disagree. Why do you think it has bigger challenges?

• 47:35Nilay Patel?

  Because at least, if you're a developer right now, you kind of know where you need your apps to go, right? You need to be in iOS. If you want to pay Apple's taxes, it'd eventually be Sherlock out of existence. iOS is where you go. You need to be on Android. Maybe Microsoft will convince you to tweak your code to make it better on, on the dual screen phone. Or you, you fall in love with a Galaxy Fold. Like you're going to do that work. Windows apps just are not, they're not great, right? Like you pointed this out, like modern Windows apps have not made a splash. They've not like taken over the world. Like we're, we still live in sort of the old paradigm of Windows apps. The Neo runs Windows 10x. It can run Windows apps. But to get the mileage out of the two displays, you gotta, like the app developers need to support it.

• 48:20Nilay Patel?

  And I don't know what will drive them to support it. I do think maybe like just having two displays and like, I love that look where you like set it up in portrait and you fold the screen out and the keyboard's in front of you and you have like two portrait displays. Like, that's cool.

• 48:32Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 48:32Nilay Patel?

  That's just a cool form factor, a cool move. I love the idea that you know, like the keyboard magnets onto the bottom screen. All that stuff is really neat.

• 48:39Speaker 06

  Wait, can you explain how do you do two portrait?

• 48:42Nilay Patel?

  So the Neo is two screens in a book. If you open it up, it's got the screens on the other side. You can like flip it all the way around. The keyboard is magnetic. So you can like clip it onto the bottom display. You can do keyboard in the front, Paul. And then the top of the display is called the Wonder Bar.

• 48:57Speaker 06

  I'm aware of keyboard on the front and I've been thinking a lot about it because there's no, it's not explicitly mentioned, but it was implied in the keyboard in the front bylaws that you're also have a touchpad. Which now is apparently in the front. If the, if the keyboard is on top. But I was thinking, yeah, I would love to use this as two side by side vertical screens with the keyboard off the front.

• 49:20Nilay Patel?

  Yep. So you just pull the keyboard off, you flip the thing 90 degrees, you set it up. Two portrait displays, keyboard on the ground. Unclear where the touchpad is in that scenario.

• 49:30Speaker 06

  All of these different things are called postures, which I love. Um, here's a question. What's the lappability of the Surface Neo?

• 49:37Nilay Patel?

  It's a laptop. You just like do it on your lap and you got the keyboard.

• 49:39Speaker 06

  It seems highly lappable, especially with the keyboard on it.

• 49:42Nilay Patel?

  Just lappability off the charts.

• 49:44Speaker 03

  By the way, Surface Neo colon massively lappable is definitely the advertising campaign.

• 49:51Nilay Patel?

  There's a very clear reason why we are not in that business.

• 49:55Speaker 06

  Can I ask the most obvious question? Should this be running Android?

• 50:00Nilay Patel?

  So we asked Penn a question. Um, he's like, no, Android is good up to this size. Everything above that is Windows. Now, is that the politic question like answer like? I'm sorry, is that the politic answer? Like, that's what he's gotta say. We pushed him. He said, I can see my roadmap. He was like, very funny. He's like, it's not like I'm having visions. Like I, I've seen the roadmap. Like it's my roadmap. Um, and he's like, we don't have any, we don't have anything in that zone. Now, is that true? Like, uh, right? Like, I don't know, but.

• 50:31Speaker 06

  The only products I can see this competing with, and I love it. It's so exciting and we haven't talked too much about it, but like obviously long history of courier leaks. And yeah, it's, it's, you know, it's, it's a real culmination of a device, but I try and I wanna love it. But especially I'm glad that they embraced the, the idea of having a hardware keyboard combined with a two screen device. Because it's very important. Uh, typing is, is, is a passion of mine.

• 51:00Speaker 06

  So I see, I see this as a Surface Go possible replacement.

• 51:04Nilay Patel?

  Yep.

• 51:04Speaker 06

  Or an, an iPad, iPad with keyboard replacement.

• 51:08Nilay Patel?

  I mean, look, Paul, like 1.3 millimeters key travel. I mean, they, they said that how many times? They're not gonna screw up the keyboard like Apple did. They just won't. Yeah. When he was telling us that the, uh, the laptops are repairable now, he had like, I mean, this is, you have to, you should go back and listen to just, just to catch the inflection of his voice. He's like, the laptops are repairable now, you know, that's great for enterprise customers. And yeah, if you wanna change like your keyboard.

• 51:34Speaker 03

  So I wanna go back to Neil, you saying that you think this thing is like a tougher road to hoe. It's, it's gonna be harder to be successful. I think the reason that that struck me is something I disagree with is I think the, the metric for success, the level that it has to hit in order to be a successful product is much lower and they can have a much longer burn on this device. It took the iPad a while to become, I mean, it had that huge rocket shit take off and then it sort of like chilled out for a minute. I think that this thing, it doesn't have to live or die just on its own merits. It like is gonna piggyback off of what's going on in standard Windows 10. And eventually vice versa. And so I think that they can have this thing be a niche device for people that want to live the courier dream and then have a keyboard in

• 52:19Speaker 03

  the front every now and then for at least a couple of years before like people really start asking, no, is this actually the future of Windows? Is this what all computers are supposed to look like? I think they get to, they get to position it as the cool weird thing that we make that some people deeply love and eventually it'll get there, is my sense.

• 52:38Nilay Patel?

  I think that, look, I hate to overly compare this situation to Apple, but Apple has 15 OSs, right? Some absurd number of operating systems for all of its products, but like it has the Mac, it has the iPad, it has iOS for the phone. The iPad is like the thing we've been asking for, like split this off, make it something, right? Like they finally did it. And then there's this constant question of that's just more our phone. What's the split between the laptop and the tablet? But it's all like Apple's OS. And people like, we talk about it, we talk about it on the show, presumably our audience likes listening to it, but like out in the world, no one cares, right? It's just a bunch of Apple stuff. I think if Microsoft owned Android and they're like, this is our mobile operating system, and this is our desktop operating system, and

• 53:23Nilay Patel?

  there's a fuzzy boundary in between, maybe we wouldn't be having this conversation, right? Like, it's exactly the same as Apple. But here you have, we have our operating system, Microsoft, Windows, the thing that you think of when you think of us. And then over here on the product that is like the most important, the phone, we had to go somewhere else. And our CEO is saying Windows is not important. And so that has already created this rift of like, is Windows going away? Now, their answer is like, obviously no. It's their first party platform. If you do ship OneDrive and Office and all these other things that you make, you want to have that in your back pocket. It is also enormous, still enormously lucrative. It supports a range of applications that no one else can even come close to.

• 54:07Nilay Patel?

  I don't know, like gaming PCs. What else are you gonna do? Like, it's Windows, right? So I don't think it's going away. I just think it's, as the Duo in particular comes out, the questions Microsoft faces around what is the future of Windows are gonna get louder and louder and louder. Windows 10x and the Neo don't answer those questions. I think they actually created a new class of questions.

• 54:28Speaker 06

  And the Surface Pro 10, or X, sorry, also confuses it for me because the Neo is Intel, and then the Surface Pro 10 is this like, Microsoft's saying, hey, if we use Intel, it has to be real thick and look like garbage, but if we use ARM, it can be real thin and awesome.

• 54:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. But it's Pro X. You said Pro 10, it's Surface Pro X. Very confusing.

• 54:55Speaker 06

  But then they put Intel in the Neo.

• 54:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and I couldn't tell you why.

• 54:59Speaker 03

  Intel has been working on this dual screen thing for a long time. I went to their headquarters and like, looked at a bunch of prototypes of it last year, earlier this year, some time ago. So this has been like an Intel dream and an Intel passion project for a while. And I think that Microsoft is probably happy to have Windows 10x solve one problem at a time. It'll solve the make people make apps that understand two screens on Windows problem, and then it will solve the ARM Windows apps problem later. You know what I mean?

• 55:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, let me, let's just end this a little bit out. Do you think dual screen is the form factor shift that it seems like, I mean, how many companies have we talked about now betting on dual screen? Google, Intel, Microsoft, Samsung? Is that the right bet? Like, I kind of think, like, I get it, like, people want a small screen that turns into a big screen. Like, it seems very obvious that this is a thing that people will be happy about. But it seems like everyone's saying, this is the next form factor evolution of phones. And so we're gonna get there real early. We're gonna, we're gonna start building it now. We're gonna be ahead of that curve. We're talking about it. Do you buy that bet?

• 56:09Speaker 03

  I don't know. Kind of. To me, like, as long as it fits in your pocket, yes. And that's why the Surface Duo is interesting, because it's, it's thin. It's maybe too wide for a pocket, but like, it's thinner than the fold, because the fold has to have that, you know, big curve to make sure the screen doesn't break. As long as it fits in a pocket, I'm excited to try things that like are, you know, a small thing that unfolds into a big thing. But once it's no longer pocketable, then I think you're moving into a different class of device. And maybe we're gonna move to a future where everybody, you know, has, you know, whatever they're calling them now, instead of fanny pack strapped to them, and that that's where our devices go. Like, that would be fine. Fashion changes. But until then, if it doesn't fit in a pocket, then I think you're, you're not quite there.

• 56:54Speaker 03

  Like, there's, there's basic ergonomics of human hands and human, like, the pants that we tend to wear. Maybe we'll, we shall switch to like dresses and kilts so that it can have really big pockets. I'd be down for that as well. I really would.

• 57:06Nilay Patel?

  Dresses famously don't have pockets. It's actually a thing that are-

• 57:09Speaker 03

  They famously didn't, but they used to, and then they had like little pockets that could like hang on the inside. And then they, they went away, and it was a whole thing that they shouldn't have gone away, but they did. Yeah. Sorry.

• 57:19Nilay Patel?

  No, I'm just saying, if that's the thing that gets dressed to have pockets, I think like 50% of the world's population would be very happy.

• 57:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, right.

• 57:25Nilay Patel?

  It's like folding phones, like, fix this problem. Like, yeah, I'll take it.

• 57:28Speaker 06

  I, I carry a backpack so that I have enough room for a laptop. And I just can't, I wish, but I can't think of what I would be, that I'm, oh, I'm glad that I had this folding dual-screen device in my backpack instead of a laptop. Or in addition to a laptop. So I can't think of why, why. I just can't think. I wish, but I can't. Am I not, am I not a forward-thinking, mobile, technologically adept professional?

• 57:59Nilay Patel?

  So my, my read on it is, is much dumber, which is just broadly, people are interested in things that look different. Right? It's the simplest thing that you can understand. This looks like one thing, that looks like another thing. And so it's really hard for Google to be like, our black rectangle is qualitatively better than this black rectangle.

• 58:23Nilay Patel?

  Because, you know, our swipes were different, but now they're the same. Right? Like, that's a very difficult argument to make, right? And we've, how many years have we gone through it? We just had a round of phone reviews where, you know, I can't stop dunking on the New York Times because they refuse to review the iPhone against Android, right? Like, and they're like, turn on the flash and just use your old iPhone. That's the best phone for you. Like, that's because people are just like, yep, this is the thing I like. I can just buy the next one. You show people a new form factor. That's what Apple used to do with the iPod all the time, right? One year it's skinny, the next year it's fat. One year it has, the screen is long, the next year the screen is short.

• 58:59Speaker 06

  Are you talking about the iPad, the flailing iPad, iPod Nano years?

• 59:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, just like, this year the shuffle has no buttons. Now buttons, like, every year they're just like constantly changing the physical design of the thing. It operated in exactly the same way, but they managed to drive press cycle after press cycle with colors and shapes, right? Because people just saw a different thing. I think you show people, this phone unfolds into a bigger phone. It is a natural moment to reconsider, well, I want that. And so like, that, it's, I think it's a dumb, it's like, it's not like the most sophisticated read on it, but I do think in terms of moments where people are like, do I want the one that looks like the thing I've had and am familiar with? Or do I want the one that looks new and different? It is, it is at least, obviously, that moment. Now, whether, you know, two years from now, Apple puts out a folding iPhone and then we're

• 59:49Nilay Patel?

  just back in the same place, like, maybe. But if they can get there first and it's a complete product, I think it's at least that moment of, you see the ads, you see it unfold, and you're like, my phone doesn't do that and I want a phone that does. And like, sometimes, maybe that's all it takes to shift the market. But then you find out that it runs Android and your bubbles are green. It's all over for you.

• 1:00:08Speaker 06

  One cool outcome I would like is if the Duo, the little folding phone, turns out to be just the world's greatest Outlook machine. And then I'd be vindicated because like, yeah, I don't use Outlook, so I'm fine, I don't need it, but the Outlook people could be so happy that they have the world's greatest Outlook machine.

• 1:00:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the thing is, like, we know, it's our audience. We know there's people who live entirely within a Microsoft operating system.

• 1:00:32Speaker 06

  Well, hit me up, hit me up.

• 1:00:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:33Speaker 06

  Holiday 2020, let me know. You've discovered your true, your true device.

• 1:00:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, look, I'm, I'm excited to see new stuff, like...

• 1:00:43Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:00:44Nilay Patel?

  There's been a lull where it's just very clear, at least with foldables. It's not VR. It's not esoteric. It's there's a next generation of hardware coming and it's it's gonna be cool.

• 1:00:54Speaker 06

  It's so exciting that it's kind of disappointing because at the same time, Microsoft put out probably the two best laptops on the planet.

• 1:01:03Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:01:03Speaker 06

  They're totally overshadowed by some crazy, really interesting hardware. But these laptops look great. I mean, the the in them being even interested in upgradability and maintainability. It's obviously interesting for enterprises, but it's it's it's a cool concept in general. They just look great. Their specs seem on point.

• 1:01:28Nilay Patel?

  Yep.

• 1:01:29Speaker 06

  The 15 inch looks wonderful. I think that's a really good blend of specs. I wish it was Zen 2, but whatever. I feel like, you know, if if these actually ship, run well, aren't like super buggy or something weird happens, these seem like the best best laptops on the market.

• 1:01:45Nilay Patel?

  Well, and on top of all that, like, you know, there's the Surface Pro X. There's this whole idea of Microsoft has figured out that, oh, well, we can just take the the part that the company makes and then make them customize it for us. And then it's like a custom processor for a Surface. They did it with both AMD and Qualcomm. That's wild and potentially very interesting and potentially a huge competitive advantage for Microsoft compared to the rest of the PC industry.

• 1:02:10Speaker 06

  Which kind of changes the definition of Surface because seem seemingly back of the day, Surface like here's an example of how cool a Windows device could be. And this, this is like, here is a Windows device that only Microsoft could make.

• 1:02:25Nilay Patel?

  I've been talking to to Panos about this for actually quite a long time, like that Surface, where you started, where you are. The original Surface mission was in Best Buy, there was no PCs over $500 because nobody would buy them. So there was like Apple at the high end and then like, you know, we talked about the big cheap ones, like 15 inch, $500 HP PCs.

• 1:02:47Speaker 06

  15 inch DVD player.

• 1:02:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And he's like, we're never gonna, we'll never survive if we can't, we don't have hardware. So like, one of the early missions was just prove. That like these things would sell. But what you've seen, I think this is where like it's great that Microsoft feels the competitive pressure and they have to deliver. They validated that market, they created that market. And now there's a great XPS 13. There is a great line of Spectra PCs from HP. Like they're very, very competitive PCs in the world that are at the higher end of the market. So now Microsoft is like one notch up. And I suspect that they are not going to be very proprietary about their custom chips, especially the AMD and whatnot. Like I suspect that you will see some like part numbers change and then those very similar

• 1:03:34Nilay Patel?

  chips end up in other places. But Microsoft is the one who's like, yep, we're going to architect this for Windows. Like we'll just do it, we'll just do the work with you upfront. So I gotta, I gotta wrap up that story. Like I've been, I've been talking to Penns about it for a long time now, actually. But it's really interesting. They're the only company I can think of in, Dieter, I'm specifically thinking about Palm and BlackBerry. Only company I can think of ever that has managed to compete with its partners while owning the operating system and pull it off. As far as I know, no one else has ever done it.

• 1:04:06Speaker 03

  Hmm, you're probably right.

• 1:04:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. If you can think of one, let me know. But as far as I know, Microsoft has pulled off what basically seemed impossible for years and they've done just a terrific job. Okay, we're gonna take a break, we're gonna come back. I gotta talk about this net neutrality rule. I have to, I'm sorry. But we're gonna take a break, we're gonna come back, we'll talk about it.

• 1:04:25Speaker 13

  Purchase new carpet from The Home Depot and get it installed for free right now. Shop the stylish choices and simple pricing of carpet from Home Decorator's Collection, Traffic Master, or Life Proof with Pet Proof technology. And see for yourself why nobody beats our prices. Enjoy new carpet with free installation right now at The Home Depot. Offer valid October 15th through November 1st, 2026. Exclusions apply. For licenses, see homedepot.com/license numbers.

• 1:04:57Speaker 14

  The action's on the court, and as the official beer sponsor of the NBA, Michelob Ultra is getting fans closer to the game with a chance to win courtside seats, merch, and more. Visit michelobultra.com/courtside to enter. Michelob Ultra Courtside, 26 to 27. No purchase necessary. Open to US residents 21+ Begins on October 1st, 2026 and ends on June 30th, 2027. Multiple entry periods. See official rules at michelobultra.com/courtside for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes, and details.

• 1:05:26Nilay Patel?

  We're back. Paul, every week, you do a segment about net neutrality.

• 1:05:32Speaker 06

  You know it. Let me tell you about how much I love the internet. No, it's called, it's called, "I've Seen The Matrix, I'm Not An Idiot."

• 1:05:41Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 1:05:42Speaker 06

  And I know we're trying to wrap up the surface stuff to talk about net neutrality.

• 1:05:46Nilay Patel?

  We're never gonna stop.

• 1:05:47Speaker 06

  I'll read you through it real quick. Okay, Neo means one, right? Spoilers, but that's what the Matrix is about. Duo, that's two, like the app Duolingo means two lingos, right?

• 1:06:02Nilay Patel?

  And then Trio is a phone made by Palm.

• 1:06:05Speaker 06

  Exactly. That is exactly where I'm going. Surface Trio is the next thing. You heard it here first. That's all I've got to say.

• 1:06:13Nilay Patel?

  It's a Palm phone. That's your segment for the week?

• 1:06:17Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:06:18Nilay Patel?

  Perfect. All right. So, it is true that we talk about net neutrality on the show all the time. I will try to give a very quick sum up of where we've been at and what's happening. So there was a president, his name was Barack Obama. Remember him?

• 1:06:34Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:06:35Nilay Patel?

  He was great. I miss him terribly. His FCC categorized the internet under Title II, broadband, both wireless and wired, under Title II of the telecommunications. That's their common carrier, it's net neutrality, gotta treat all the traffic the same. No blocking, no locking, no throttling. Everyone's very happy about this. Universally popular across party lines policy. This is a true fact. Does not poll based on, everyone just like, likes this idea. Except for me. Except for Paul. Just Paul. The polls are actually very weird. They're like, we don't understand this one result. Yeah, it's like Paul and Verizon employees don't like it. Everyone else is cool. But as I did it, everyone cheered, yay, internet. President Trump gets elected and solves a guy named Ajit Pai, Chairman of the FCC. Pai rams through a shift, re-regulates

• 1:07:19Nilay Patel?

  broadband, wired and wireless under Title I of the telecommunications app, calling it "information service," which has a very specific legal definition, but it's an information service, and which means carriers can do whatever they want, right? Blocking, locking, throttling. For example, if you were AT&T, you might wish to buy Time Warner and then stream CNN and HBO, the doomed HBO Max, over your pipes, uh, free, right? And, but make Fox News viewer pay data fees. That's what's gonna happen. CNN will be free on AT&T and Fox News won't be. That seems problematic to me, but that's where we are. Immediate lawsuit filed, right? You can't do it. You didn't have enough of a record. There wasn't enough of commentary, period. Agencies, federal agencies are not allowed to make arbitrary

• 1:08:02Nilay Patel?

  and capricious decisions. Uh, this makes no sense, blah, blah. We have been waiting. Every Tuesday and Friday, the entire tech policy world, like, waits on pins and needles for the DC Circuit to drop the ruling in this case. We covered it. It was, the trial was very funny. There's a lot that happened here, but the ruling came out on Tuesday. It hit. Big news. Zuckerberg audio is, like, leaking at the same time. So, like, news sort of went under-covered, under-noticed. BuzzFeed published a huge study today, or, BuzzFeed published a huge story today, basically verifying that all, like, millions of public comments at the FCC during the rulemaking change from Title II to Title I were fraudulent.

• 1:08:44Nilay Patel?

  Uh, basically, like, shady lobbyist firms impersonated people, including lots and lots of dead people to leave comments supporting the rollback in net neutrality. So, like, just a shady process rushed. Ajit Pai wins by the skin of his teeth at the court.

• 1:09:00Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:09:01Nilay Patel?

  And I, I just wanna, so I think this decision is, uh, it's, it's just one of the most upside down legal decisions I've ever read. Not because the legal reasoning is necessarily bad, although some of it is very confusing. Literally the writing. At one point, it quotes Macbeth. Like, that's where the court's at with net neutrality. Yep. One of the concurrences starts with a quote from Macbeth. I'll just read it to you.

• 1:09:23Speaker 03

  Also, are you gonna define the word solicism to us? Cause that was also in, in there and I had to look it up.

• 1:09:29Nilay Patel?

  And these judge, this is, uh, this is Judge Stephen Williams, wrote an opinion that concurs in part, descends in part. It literally begins like this. This is a senior judge at the Federal Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, wrote an opinion, it begins this way, "About net neutrality, and be these juggling fiends no more believed, that polter with us in a double sense, that keep the word of promise to our ear, and break it to our hope. So says Macbeth, finding that the witch's assurances were sheer artifice, and that his life is collapsing around him. The enactors of the 2018 order, the net neutrality order, though surely no Macbeths, might nonetheless feel a certain kinship, being told that they acted lawfully in rejecting the heavy hand of Title II for the internet, but that each of the

• 1:10:13Nilay Patel?

  50 states is free to impose just that." How drunk are these people? What is happening?

• 1:10:18Speaker 03

  Which side is that arguing for? That, what?

• 1:10:21Nilay Patel?

  It's both.

• 1:10:22Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:10:23Nilay Patel?

  So here's the rulings. I just want, like, I, I cannot stress enough how out of control legalistic net neutrality has become.

• 1:10:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:32Nilay Patel?

  When the, the core of it, the fundamental root of it is, should your internet provider be able to block throttle and shape your traffic? Right? That's it. That's the question. And we're at judges doing Macbeth. And I think, I, I think I finally have a sense of why. It's-

• 1:10:46Speaker 03

  Cause they're bored.

• 1:10:47Nilay Patel?

  They're bored. No, it's because, literally, it's gone back and forth so many times, that it has now entered this world of like, how good is your technical legal argument? Right? Not how much sense does this policy make, but how good is the, how good is your lawyering? How much, how, how well have you said the magic words to judges about deference to agencies in Congress? Instead of, does this policy make sense?

• 1:11:10Speaker 03

  It's like law, sport.

• 1:11:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's just become a very, very, very technical, very legalistic. So it's fun for me to read because it's like sport, but it's totally divorced from the reality of the question, which again widely popular. So here's what the court said, and I think this is actually really interesting because I think it points to something that, it points to a very clear shape of how the, the future of net neutrality might unfold. The court said, look, we give agencies deference, right? You're, you're the FT, you're the FCC or the EPA, whatever. You get deference from the court for your internal decisions. We don't try to step into your world. We're not, we're not trying to do your job. There is a, there's a 2005 court case. It's called the Brand X decision, which is incredible, but there was an internet provider

• 1:11:56Nilay Patel?

  called Brand X that got sued, blah, blah. The Brand X decision, the Supreme Court said broadband was an information service. Six to three, 2005. This is a long time ago. The most notable dissent in that decision, Antonin Scalia, who, and this is true, in a lengthy metaphor about pizzerias, said, you are all stupid, which is the thing that Scalia used to say in his opinions. You are all stupid. The internet's obviously a telecommunications service. I think that decision is wrongly decided, but it's Supreme Court precedent. So now the court is looking at, we have to be deferential to the agencies and we have, we're bound by Supreme Court precedent. So the agency, the FCC has said this is Title I, that's their decision to make. Under the Brand X precedent, we also find it's an information service.

• 1:12:41Nilay Patel?

  The court's already said this. The specific reason it's an information service and not a telecommunications service, a common carrier telecommunications service, telecommunications services just provide interconnection, right? So you operate a telecommunications service, it's a big network, it's, you're just connecting different devices. Like the phone line is the example of this thing, right? The common carrier phone line, you can plug in whatever you want, you can call whoever you want. The AT&T can't stop you from doing it. Information services are integrated. So think about AOL in like the early 2000s, right? You get a phone number from AOL, you call AOL server, you call AOL's modem, it pings their server, you use AOL's service.

• 1:13:19Speaker 03

  So information services are allowed to use software and interconnects are only allowed to use wires? Is this what you're saying?

• 1:13:24Nilay Patel?

  Basically.

• 1:13:25Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:13:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's actually a good way to put it.

• 1:13:28Speaker 03

  Is it? It's really not. I said it to troll you.

• 1:13:31Nilay Patel?

  No, because that is what the court said, my friend. Because they decided that under the Brand X precedent from 2005, merely providing DNS servers and caching on your network is enough to move you out of telecommunications to information.

• 1:13:50Speaker 03

  DNS and caching.

• 1:13:51Nilay Patel?

  Specifically DNS and caching.

• 1:13:54Speaker 03

  So what you're saying is there's no hardware without software.

• 1:13:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I'm saying, and even one of the concurrences says, this is a ridiculous position to take. DNS and caching are not that important. Anybody can go use a different DNS server than what their provider wants. And encrypted traffic does not flow through provider caching systems, most notably HTTPS, right? Which is a lot of the internet right now.

• 1:14:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:14:19Nilay Patel?

  So you're not using the caching service if you're mostly using commercial websites. You go to The Verge, HTTPS, doesn't hit your provider cache, right? And you can just like use a different DNS. So these two services that your provider is giving you are somewhat optional.

• 1:14:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:14:32Nilay Patel?

  Or maybe not even relevant.

• 1:14:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:14:34Nilay Patel?

  So like, how on earth are we saying that this makes them an information service? Not, but sadly, we're stuck because of Brand X. Yep, that's DNS and caching. That is why net neutrality is, that's why the decision was, was.

• 1:14:47Speaker 03

  The person agreeing that that's a silly thing said, yep, this is stupid, but I have to say that this is the law because Brand X made me? Because of the precedent?

• 1:14:56Nilay Patel?

  Yes. When I say that this, the whole opinion is wild. That's Judge Patricia Millet, wrote a concurrent. She says the court's opinion is valid because of Brand X. She said, "Brand X is designed to protect walled gardens." AOL's a walled garden. We talk about walled gardens all the time. All right, here's a court opinion about net neutrality. Let me just read it to you. "The commission's decision to cling to DNS and caching as the acid test for its regulatory classification cannot bear very much reality." By the way, the words "cannot bear very much reality" are in quotes and footnoted to T.S. Eliot. Just putting that out there. "Today, the typical broadband offering bears little resemblance to the Brand X version. The walled garden has been raised and its fields sown with salt."

• 1:15:37Speaker 03

  Oh my god.

• 1:15:39Nilay Patel?

  This is where we are with.

• 1:15:40Speaker 06

  Wait, what is, can you please, I'm sorry, please break that down for me. What is the walled garden? Who is the salt?

• 1:15:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so the walled garden is AOL or CompuServe or Prodigy or whatever, right?

• 1:15:52Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:15:52Nilay Patel?

  Or an early 2000s broadband provider where you sign up and you like go to their weird custom homepage and they provide you your email address and all those things. So there's a walled garden that's an information service that further you can go past it to the internet.

• 1:16:05Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:16:05Nilay Patel?

  Right? So you go on AOL.com and then you've got an AOL connection, but you've got the AOL service and the internet's like out there in the back.

• 1:16:11Speaker 06

  And now, in this analogy, I've pillaged the walled garden, tore it all down, and I'm sowing it with salt so you can't grow back. Who am I?

• 1:16:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you're like the force of the market.

• 1:16:22Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:16:22Nilay Patel?

  You're like the Chrome browser, right? Like, you're, you're, nobody uses their provider services that way anymore, right? So you buy a pipe and like what you want to is you want to get to Gmail, right? You're not, you're not like living in the AOL universe.

• 1:16:35Speaker 06

  Or like an at charter.net email address or something.

• 1:16:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, like those are just optional services. So like the walled garden of AOL doesn't exist anymore is what she said.

• 1:16:43Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:16:43Nilay Patel?

  Not only, says Judge Miller, not only does the walled garden lay in ruin, but the roles of DNS and caching themselves have changed so dramatically since BrandX was decided, and they have done so in ways that strongly favor classifying broadband as a telecommunications service as Justice Scalia had originally advocated. So what you're looking at is a concurrence. You're seeing, this is the right decision, but we've made it because of precedent. We've not made it because it's the right decision. So the Supreme Court should look at this. Basically, she's saying, appeal this, go up there, figure it out.

• 1:17:17Speaker 06

  Is appeal a possibility?

• 1:17:19Nilay Patel?

  I think it's very interesting for net neutrality advocates to go up against Justice Roberts and Justice Gorsuch and Kavanaugh and say, do you disagree with Antonin Scalia lying of the conservative court? That's a, that's a very interesting position. I don't know that they're gonna do it. I think they, that's a risky bet. But, this is the real opening. This is the thing that I think is really interesting. The court struck down the FCC's rule that said states couldn't write their own net neutrality laws. And this is like a very, this is a logic puzzle. So just like, go with me on this. So federal rules preempt state rules when an agency makes a rule.

• 1:17:53Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:17:54Nilay Patel?

  But the FCC got rid of all of its rules. And then put in a rule that said the state can't make rules. So you're saying no rules, just right net neutrality? Yeah. So the court basically said, look, you can't claim to preempt the state rules with your rules when you have no rules. So where your dumb rule that states can't do is gone. It's like federalism. This is what I mean about extremely technical lawyering. This is what the framers would have wanted, I think. Sure. But like, if you go up to such a regular person, like should AT&T be able to charge you for Fox News and not CNN? They'd be like, I believe in conflict preempt. Like, what the hell are you doing?

• 1:18:34Nilay Patel?

  But that's where we are. So now, states, California most famously, has very stringent net neutrality rules. More stringent than the ones that were passed by the FCC. New York has a set of net neutrality rules. Other states are passing them. The states are now going to impose net neutrality rules. And that is like, the nightmare for ISPs, especially mobile ISPs. Because if you cross a state line with your phone, and depending on where you are, your internet traffic has to look different, or rebuild differently. You're like, it's a nightmare scenario. So like, I don't know what's gonna happen next, but that, the point of this is, this decision is bonkers. I'm gonna like, try to put it on the website tomorrow and just point out some of the, the walled garden has been razed? Where are we? What's happening?

• 1:19:16Nilay Patel?

  It is deep, the argument, the legal argument now is like, in lawyer town. It's not in policy town. It's not in what's best for consumers town. And the states now have an enormous amount of power to pass their own laws, that might just end up being the laws of the nation, because you might as well just pick the strictest one and go. Which is very much what California does in all kinds of other ways. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's a lot. That was my net neutrality rant. I'm done now. I don't have anything left in the tank. I don't have any more Macbeth quotes for you. So Dieter mentioned the word sollicism earlier. That comes from a quote. This is a real vignette. So at one point, the court, in its majority opinion, which is unsigned, by the way, none of the judges would put their name on the opinion. But this is the opinion. When I say it's like, overly legalistic, in, in like, out of touch with reality,

• 1:20:01Nilay Patel?

  they're deciding whether, uh, mobile broadband is a private wireless service, which is an information service, or a commercial wireless service, or a telecommunications service. And they, and we've literally lawyered our place, our way into a place where, whether or not the devices can make phone calls to landline phones, might be determinate, right? So, I mean, that's where we, again, totally disconnected from reality. And the argument is, well, You know, your tablet can get like a VoIP service on it that makes phone calls. So that would obviously make a commercial wireless service. So the judge, the anonymous judge writing this decision concocts a scenario, a play between two people. If so, this is the decision. If someone tells a friend, "I just got a great new tablet with mobile broadband," which

• 1:20:45Nilay Patel?

  is something everybody says all the time, it would hardly be a solicism for the friend to reply, "Great. Does your service let me reach you from my landline?" Another thing people say all of the time. A solicism, uh, if, correct me if I'm wrong, Dieter, it's a, it's like a false statement? That's what it means? Like a wrong, it would, it would be, it's like a wrong thing to say.

• 1:21:08Speaker 03

  It's like a misstatement, yeah.

• 1:21:09Nilay Patel?

  A solicism, that's the word we're using. Of course, the new tablet owner might reply, "Not now, but it could if I set up a Google Voice number." But that only shows the linguistic ambiguity. I've read that 50 times.

• 1:21:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:21:26Nilay Patel?

  I still kind of don't know what it says.

• 1:21:28Speaker 03

  It's saying that if someone says, "I got a great new tablet with mobile broadband," you would actually be like a reasonable person to say, "Can I call you with my landline?"

• 1:21:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:38Speaker 03

  Maybe. Or maybe it means the opposite. Who can tell?

• 1:21:41Nilay Patel?

  All I'm saying is, this decision, to me, what it shows is, the net neutrality debate has moved into the world of lawyers and far away from the world of consumers. And the answer is, we need some laws because that makes way more sense. And it seems like the states have a huge opening to write some laws, and they're already doing it. All right. iOS 13 is really buggy. I just want you all to know that. There were at least like 15 updates since it came out.

• 1:22:05Speaker 03

  All we have time to say.

• 1:22:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. All right, that's it. That was Vergecast. We did three shows this week. It's been a, it's been a, it's been a crazy week of Vergecast stuff. Let me know if that's too many. I'm at Reckless, you can, you can tweet at me. That'd be great. You can tweet Dieter, he's at Backlon. Paul's at FuturePaul. Dieter's got a newsletter.

• 1:22:22Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 1:22:23Nilay Patel?

  What is it?

• 1:22:24Speaker 03

  Theverge.com/newsletter.

• 1:22:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:26Speaker 03

  It's currently called Command Line. We put links in there. We sometimes put little essays and thoughts. There's a triangle in the subject line if there's a big, long, long story in it. You should, you should subscribe.

• 1:22:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Casey's got the interface. Two newsletters of the Verge now. Think about it. Newsletter, flagship, Armada. Which one is the flagship?

• 1:22:42Speaker 03

  Uh, mine, mine, mine's bigger because I took over the last one.

• 1:22:46Nilay Patel?

  A clever move.

• 1:22:49Nilay Patel?

  We are also hiring for someone to help us with this show and other shows. So if you're a podcast producer, you're interested in stuff, hit us up. Theverge.com/podcastjob. We're also doing a survey. We want your feedback. We'd love your feedback. Go to theverge.com/survey. You can listen to other podcasts from the Vox Media Podcast Network. You can check out Recode Decode with Kara Swisher. You can check out Pivot with Kara and Scott Callaway. That show's great. Check out Recode Media with Peter Kafka. That's it. That was The Vergecast. The walled garden has been raised and the fields have been sown with salt. Rock and roll.

• 1:23:19Nilay Patel?

  Solicism. Paul.

• 1:23:39Speaker 15

  Fall savings are happening now at The Home Depot. Save up to $500 on select appliances. Plus, enjoy free delivery when you spend $998 or more. From prepping to cooking to cleaning up, Frigidaire has you covered. The custom Flex Temp drawer switches from fridge to freezer. With more than 15 cooking modes, including stone baked pizza mode, you can enjoy restaurant quality pizza in as little as two minutes. Then clean up with the Frigidaire dishwasher, featuring the industry's fastest normal wash cycle. Shop fall savings now at The Home Depot. Off the ballot through October 21st. U.S. only. See store online for details.

• 1:24:09Speaker 16

  Mr. Monopoly here. Miss me? Monopoly is back at McDonald's with millions of prizes. A 2027 Jeep Cherokee, a Carnival Cruise vacation, gift cards from DoorDash, and Best Buy. Puff and play in the McDonald's app. Get your bag.

• 1:24:27Speaker 07

  No purchase necessary. 50 U.S. and D.C. age 18 plus. See playatmcd.com for rules and playatmcd.com/amoe for info and playing without purchase by mail by November 2nd. Chess card game ends November 8th. Game ends November 22nd, 2026. See rules for prize details. Monopoly is a registered trademark of Hasbro.