Pod Insights The Vergecast Twitter is a mess, Apple 'Far out' rumors, and this week in streaming About this episode The Verge's Nilay Patel, Alex Cranz, and David Pierce discuss this week in tech news.
Further reading:
Apple’s ‘Far out’ iPhone 14 event is happening September 7th
What to expect from Apple's iPhone 14 event
Next-day streaming of NBC shows like Law & Order and SNL jumps from Hulu to Peacock next month
YouTube TV update will reportedly let you watch four channels at once
HBO calls House of the Dragon its biggest premiere ever, with nearly 10 million US viewers
Twitter’s former security chief says company lied about bots and safety
Twitter whistleblower to testify in Congress over damning security revelations
Elon Musk vs Twitter: the weird number at the heart of the drama
The SEC asked Twitter to explain its user metrics after Elon Musk complained
Twitter CEO calls Mudge Zatko’s whistleblower report a ‘false narrative’
Twitter is a mess — but in the Elon Musk trial, it might not matter
Exclusive: Sonos’ next flagship speaker will play sound in nearly all directions
Ford hikes the price for the 2023 Mustang Mach-E by as much as $8,000
Peloton CEO thinks losing $1.2 billion is ‘substantial progress’
EV prices are going in the wrong direction
Starlink lowers monthly internet prices by 50 percent for some
Sony’s new DualSense Edge Wireless Controller takes on the Xbox Elite
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript 12,333 words · 8 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's Chief Investment Strategist, and Colin Martin, Head of Fixed Income Research and Strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting? And what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting, or wherever you get your podcasts.
0:45 Speaker 00 This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's Chief Investment Strategist, and Colin Martin, Head of Fixed Income Research and Strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting? And what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting, or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:40 Nilay Patel? Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of audience measurement. We get into DOWs, M DOWs, R DOWs, F DOWs. F DOWs, I think, is a real theme of this week. Hi, I'm your friend Neelai, the host of the ship. David Pierce is here.
1:55 David Pierce? Hi, I count as precisely one user. That's the only thing I know.
1:59 Nilay Patel? No one's ever monetized you in your life, David.
2:03 Nilay Patel? Alex Krantz is here.
2:04 Alex Cranz? I'm just feeling bad for David never being monetized.
2:07 Nilay Patel? Yeah. What is a daily user if you're not a monetizable daily user? Do you even have value?
2:12 Alex Cranz? Get out of here. We don't want you.
2:14 Nilay Patel? A lot going on this week. There's an Apple event that is officially announced now on the 7th. We've got to talk about that. Speaking of M Dow's Elon versus Twitter. Reached new heights of absurdity this week. There's a bunch of gadget news. Chris Welch has a big scoop on any Sono speaker we should talk about. EV prices are everywhere. The Peloton CEO is doing metaphors about ships. All in all, it's shaping up to be a perfect first cast.
2:35 Alex Cranz? Yes.
2:35 Nilay Patel? You know, when the CEOs are doing ship metaphors, you're in for a ride. Let's start though with Apple. Oh, there's streaming news. Alex put a bunch of streaming news in here.
2:44 Alex Cranz? I did.
2:44 Nilay Patel? I mean, this is just a chef's kiss of a rundown. I love it. Let's start with Apple, though. The event is called Far Out. We are assuming, based on long historical record. This is the iPhone 14 event. There is a lot of rumor speculation that feels very solid that we'll see a watch in the mix. What are we thinking here?
3:03 David Pierce? Maybe two or three even.
3:05 Nilay Patel? Three? What would be the three?
3:07 David Pierce? Oh, I guess it's just two. There's the new watch and then the gigantic new watch.
3:11 Alex Cranz? It's different sizes. That's why you're thinking three.
3:13 David Pierce? The Apple Watch Pro Max Ultra.
3:16 Nilay Patel? What is it? Wait, so there's an update to the watches that we know and love?
3:19 David Pierce? Yeah.
3:20 Alex Cranz? Right. So that's two watches because it's two different sizes.
3:23 Nilay Patel? Okay.
3:24 David Pierce? Yeah. So I was right. Three watches. Is it one watch or is it three watches?
3:27 Nilay Patel? No. Okay. So wait, wait, wait. Let me, let me just, this is my, my theory of the case here. The iPhone, every size of the iPhone is a different iPhone model.
3:35 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
3:36 Nilay Patel? Right. I mean, that's how they've done it. The iPhone Mini and the iPhone XR and the iPhone Pro. They're all different.
3:41 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
3:42 Nilay Patel? And they're primarily distinguished on screen size. So they're different models. The watch is not that. There is the Apple Watch 4 and then the Apple Watch SE or whatever. And they each come in two sizes.
3:53 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
3:53 Nilay Patel? Which is actually a very interesting split in Apple's lineup. It's more like the MacBook.
3:57 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
3:57 Nilay Patel? Than the iPad or whatever. So I think it's two watches, right? We're expecting a regular update to the Apple Watch. And then this like sports oriented.
4:06 Alex Cranz? Like the Garmin competitor, you can shoot it with a gun. Don't shoot it with a gun, please.
4:12 Nilay Patel? Some YouTuber right now is taking notes, being like, I got an idea for a video.
4:15 Alex Cranz? Just cocking the firearm, getting ready to go.
4:19 Nilay Patel? Yeah, yelling at their viewers like, get in the garage, find the guns. We've got to get ready for this Apple Watch to come out.
4:23 Alex Cranz? Find me bullets.
4:24 Nilay Patel? Oh, my God.
4:25 Alex Cranz? But yeah, so, so, yeah, there's going to be this other one and it's meant to go after the Garmin folks. It's meant to be for like rugged outdoor enthusiasts who all love their Garmins, passionately wear these ugly devices and hopefully the Apple device will be a little bit, I'm sorry to every Garmin user, but you know, your devices are ugly.
4:44 Nilay Patel? But they're ugly in a way that now has become a brand.
4:47 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
4:47 Nilay Patel? They're like crocs.
4:48 Alex Cranz? Yeah, like the, well, even the Apple Watch, the Apple Watch, we all kind of thought was maybe ugly. And then we're like, no, the Apple Watch is cool. So it's, it's very much like that.
4:57 David Pierce? Did we, did we get, I'm not sure we got to that point. I think it's just like, we just decided it's fine. It's just there. It's just like a, it's like you have a large glass rectangle on your wrist. Like, I don't know that anyone is going to look at it and be like, that is a beautiful object. But like, it's fine. It's good enough. And I feel like Garmin, it took a while to get there, but it now like, it has this connotation of like, yeah, I wear an ugly watch, but like, I'm faster than you.
5:21 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
5:21 David Pierce? I want to fight.
5:22 Nilay Patel? And every time I see a Garmin person, I'm like, that person can climb a mountain.
5:25 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
5:26 Nilay Patel? Yeah. Which is, may or may not be true. I haven't done any research to validate. I don't just walk up to people and be like, I've noticed your watch. What's your top speed?
5:35 Alex Cranz? I think every Garmin owner wants you to assume they've climbed a mountain, regardless of if they have.
5:41 Nilay Patel? Again, this is like, why you buy vehicles for off-roading that don't ever go off-road. Like, okay, fine. So we're expecting a big sports watch. Here's my question about that, because I think that is fundamentally more interesting than the iPhone at this point. Because it represents an entry into a new category for Apple, which is traditionally when Apple has the most new ideas. And then over time, they have to whittle those down to reality.
6:05 Alex Cranz? Right.
6:05 Nilay Patel? I submit to you the Apple Watch itself, which, as you will remember, was announced with enormous fanfare about the digital crown, which Tim Cook likened to the mouse and multi-touch in terms of input devices that would revolutionize the world. It's a wheel. It's a, it's, and I never use.
6:23 Alex Cranz? You don't feel revolutionized?
6:24 Nilay Patel? Well, I mean, literally, I feel revolutionized when I turn the dial. I mean, who hasn't turned the digital crown and thought to myself, this will revolutionize computing on the order of the mouse? Anyhow, the big watch is like a new product category for them. It can't just be more Apple Watch, right? They've got to do some new sensors. They've got to do some new activity proofing. They've got to add new sports to it. They've got to make the battery last a lot longer. That's the main thing I hear from Garmin.
6:55 David Pierce? Yeah.
6:55 Nilay Patel? The Garmin owners I know in my life say two things about the Apple Watch. One, it just looks too delicate, even if it's not too delicate for the things they do. Right? It's like waterproof, it's dustproof, whatever. They think it's too delicate and they've got their Garmins, which look like tanks. And then two, the battery life isn't good enough for camping or whatever it is you want to do with your Garmin. So those feel like the two things Apple has to solve from a hardware design standpoint. And on the software side, you've got to make it easier to use while you're running. Like all the things, like Garmin's interface.
7:23 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
7:23 Nilay Patel? Is like dead simple compared to an Apple Watch.
7:27 Alex Cranz? I mean, I don't know if they're going to do that. It's got a two inch display. Like, that's the rumor, right? That it's going to have a two inch display. It's going to be huge. I wonder if maybe they're not competing with Garmin as much as offering a really sturdy counterpoint to Garmin. Like, rather than saying, we're going to do everything Garmin does, but better. Maybe they're going to be like, we're going to do everything you want your Garmin to do, but totally differently. Isn't that cooler?
7:48 David Pierce? Yeah, I kind of think the move here is to make the Apple Watch do more stuff. And they're going to like, put a big screen on it, which is going to help with battery life, just because there's just more place to put batteries. So I think to some extent, like, that problem will solve itself with better chips and more space. But then on this big screen, like, if I'm Apple, I'm going way further down the road of like, how do we make this a totally self-sufficient device?
8:11 Nilay Patel? Oh, interesting.
8:12 David Pierce? You don't need your phone. You don't need anything else. Just like, take this thing and climb a mountain. Um, I don't know if that's where they're going, but that's what I would be doing with this. It's like, how do you appeal to like, the ultra-power users and the ultra-fitness people? It's like, give them this giant thing that does not need another device to be useful. That's what I would do.
8:29 Nilay Patel? Let me unearth some David Pierce history from your interregnum between stints at The Verge.
8:35 David Pierce? The dark days, we called us.
8:36 Nilay Patel? David, uh, for a long time was one of the most notable traders at theverge.com. And he left us to go to a, a technology-oriented print magazine. This is a true story. Uh, it's a great magazine. Uh, we all know it. We all love it. Uh, and while I refuse to name it like Voldemort. And while he was there, he wrote a big feature on the Apple Watch.
8:56 David Pierce? Yep.
8:56 Nilay Patel? Whose thesis was this thing is going to replace your phone.
9:01 David Pierce? No, no, no. That was not my thesis. That was, that was not my thesis. That was Apple's thesis. That was not some grand theory of the case. That was what Apple told me over and over and over on the record. Was that this device, this headline of that story was iPhone killer and Apple hated it. And I was like, do you know what the problem is with this headline? Is it's the story? It's what you said on the record. Like here are the quotes. I recorded.
9:27 Nilay Patel? I would point out that I, I didn't even get to the middle of my version of the story before David corrected me.
9:34 David Pierce? No, but this, sorry, keep going.
9:36 Nilay Patel? No, I, I think you might understand why I brought this up.
9:39 David Pierce? I have a feeling where you're going with this. Yeah.
9:42 Nilay Patel? Well, so Apple pushed back against the story after it came out.
9:45 David Pierce? Yes.
9:45 Nilay Patel? You should go read it. It's a good story. David's excellent writer, even though he worked for the enemy. Um, but I was back. We love him again. The story came out. It was great. There was pushback from Apple. This is not actually what we're doing. The two things are together for obvious reasons, right? Apple saying they're going to cannibalize the phone when the phone is their biggest source of revenue is not what they want. Apple thinking in its mind, oh, this thing will grow to be independent of the phone. And then its total market will be as big as the phone market. As opposed to just a percentage of people who have phones. Makes all the sense in the world.
10:17 David Pierce? That's right.
10:18 Nilay Patel? But they haven't done that. The watch got a little bit more independent in its app model. Like a little bit. The app stopped being remote controls of your phone apps. But that's kind of where it's, they added obviously cellular connectivity. But that's kind of where it stopped and it's been stopped there for a couple of years. So David, your thesis is now big screen, big battery can go a couple of days. They obviously still have cell connectivity. They're going to make the turn.
10:40 David Pierce? I mean, it seems like this is a moment you could do it, right? Like Apple has spent the last couple of years getting developers to move more of their stuff onto the watch. So it's already more self-sufficient than it once was. Like for the longest time, you couldn't like download Spotify things. For when you were away from your phone and on a run, which was just like absurd, right? But a lot of those problems have been solved.
11:02 Alex Cranz? That was like a Spotify thing too, right? Like it was, it was one of their deals, I think with Samsung. Where the agreement was you can't, you can only do downloads with us. You can't do it with any other companies.
11:13 David Pierce? Yeah. And, and there were like a million versions of that, right? Whereas like for me, it was podcasts. Like I listen to podcasts when I run and none of my podcast apps would download podcasts onto my watch. And it's just like, this is dumb. But anyway, so they've solved a bunch of those problems and the processor is getting better. And I think like, one thing that's really happened is a lot of people now have wireless headphones, which can in theory correct, connect directly to your watch and voice dictation is now very good. And I think like the biggest thing you have to solve, if you want this thing to be self sufficient is communication, right? Like that is the thing most people do most of the time on their phones. And so it's like, if you're ever going to start to push, now it feels like there's more of a case to actually start to do some of that stuff than there was.
11:53 Alex Cranz? But the problem is the wireless headphones aren't very good. Like they're, they're, they're good enough, right? They're good enough to listen to when you're like going on a run or walking your dog or whatever. I use my AirPods daily, but they still have a lot of pain points that you don't have with a phone, right? Like you, earlier today, I was trying to do an AirPod huddle with our how to's editor, Barbara, going great. And then we both had on wireless headphones and both of our wireless headphones decided to stop like connecting to our devices in the middle of the huddle.
12:25 Alex Cranz? And like, I was easy. I could put them away and just say, hey, I'm on speaker. Let me continue to make this case a deal while we talk. Great. If I'm on my watch, I have to be like, hold on, hold on. Like, do I go speaker on my watch? That works in the house. Doesn't it work in like, out in public? Like,
12:43 Nilay Patel? But no speaker works it out in public.
12:45 David Pierce? Yeah. Speaker's bad everywhere.
12:47 Alex Cranz? Right. But you take your phone and you can put it to your ear and then jam your other finger into your other ear.
12:52 David Pierce? For sure.
12:53 Alex Cranz? And be like, what's that?
12:54 Nilay Patel? I see.
12:54 Alex Cranz? Can't do that with a watch.
12:55 David Pierce? No, that's totally true.
12:57 Nilay Patel? By the way, just, just to put this out there for people, if you ever get a phone call you don't want to take, I'm not saying this ever happens to me. One thing you can say regardless of circumstance that no one can check is, hey, I'm on my watch. Can I call you back? And everyone immediately understands that they should hang up the phone.
13:14 David Pierce? It's pretty good.
13:15 Nilay Patel? And then it's just a matter of how badly do you want to burn that relationship? But hey, I'm on my watch. Can I call you back? Everyone's like, oh, yeah, no, please. Please don't do that.
13:26 Alex Cranz? This is explaining a lot of our conversations, Neela.
13:29 Nilay Patel? So I think my question is like, okay, so you add some download, right? You've got a big battery.
13:34 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
13:35 Nilay Patel? And the Apple stated reason for not allowing a lot of these things to happen is we're protecting the battery life.
13:40 David Pierce? Yes.
13:40 Nilay Patel? There are other quieter reason is we want to self preference the music app instead of Spotify. And Spotify tried to turn a weakness into a strength by saying, you can, we've signed a deal to let you download on Samsung. And it's like, you're just dancing, whatever. But that's come to an end, right? Like, the Spotify app is more full featured. You can do things on the watch now that make it feel like a true app platform.
14:03 David Pierce? Yeah.
14:03 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
14:04 Nilay Patel? So now you got a bigger battery. It can be even truer app platform. Do you want, when you're going off grid to run up the mountain, to have a fully featured Slack app on your watch? Because that is like, what did I replace this for?
14:16 Alex Cranz? I don't want to do that when I'm down on the ground.
14:20 Nilay Patel? Right. But what I'm saying is, you can put your phone away. Your watch is on your body. So it's like you're solve this problem of getting rid of your phone. And then you've created an entirely new class of notification management problems that are literally strapped to your body.
14:36 Alex Cranz? It's terrible.
14:37 David Pierce? Yeah, this is like, the fundamental problem of the watch, which is that the thing that it was originally pitched as is like, it frees you from your phone, actually sucks, because what I can do is leave my phone somewhere else. And that's good. And if I don't want to get notifications, I just don't look at my phone. A thing that buzzes my body is harder to ignore in that sense. And this is like, going to get even crazier when you start getting into like, AR glasses and all that stuff. But I think that is like, the fundamental unsolved problem of the watch is basically how to like, ratchet it up and down depending on what you want it to do. And you just can't.
15:11 Nilay Patel? That's what the digital crown is for.
15:13 Alex Cranz? No, it's the focus modes. It's all about the focus.
15:15 Nilay Patel? Oh, my God, if they add focus modes to the crown.
15:17 David Pierce? Oh, God, that's probably coming.
15:18 Alex Cranz? It's, it's happening.
15:19 Nilay Patel? Yeah, you turn, turn the volume up on life.
15:24 Nilay Patel? And you roll it back down.
15:25 David Pierce? Let me just throw an idea at both of you. Stage manager for the Apple Watch. And you scroll through the piles with the digital crown.
15:32 Nilay Patel? No, you know that thing, I do the thing where when I'm talking to someone, I want to like indicate that I'm paying attention. I flip my phone over on the table.
15:39 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
15:39 Nilay Patel? It's like, this is how much I'm paying attention to you. It's still here. It's not out of my sight.
15:45 David Pierce? Right, because that would be insane.
15:46 Nilay Patel? But it's upside down. And it's like you pick up your watch, you just like roll.
15:51 Alex Cranz? Making eye contact as you slowly roll the crown.
15:55 Nilay Patel? All right, so those are the watches. We, I'm very curious to see what happens with this bigger sport watch. I think there's a big opportunity there for Apple to reinvent a bunch of it. Right, because it's bigger displays, you do wackier things in software. And then this new use case of targeting Garmin means they have to capture those users by trying to appeal to them. So I'm excited about that. We should talk about the phones. It's, it's funny that I, like, they're gonna, what, they're gonna fix the cameras? Not fix, let me say again. It's funny that I'm like, they're gonna make the camera slightly better. They're gonna process her faster to no purpose.
16:30 Alex Cranz? People are trying to read into the invitations and assume that we're gonna get astrophotography.
16:35 Nilay Patel? Have the invitations meant anything in the past, like, five years?
16:39 Alex Cranz? No, but what if it does this time? Like, I think that's, I think that's the fear. No, everybody's like, no, we gotta say it's doing something. Because we want to be able to be like, I called it.
16:46 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
16:47 David Pierce? I don't know. We should do a retrospective on that. Actually, go back through the last, like, 20 invitations and try to figure out if they actually turned into anything. Because if not, it is a truly masterful, ongoing bit from Apple.
17:00 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
17:00 Alex Cranz? Liam, we have to cut this whole part. This is too good a story.
17:03 Nilay Patel? No, keep it. If you're out there and you want to write this, this incredibly tedious story, send us an email. We'll pay you to do it.
17:14 Nilay Patel? No, it's a great story. I just, it's a lot of invitations to look at and be like, hmm. Did this blob actually mean anything?
17:25 Nilay Patel? It's like, look at all the AR blobs once again.
17:28 David Pierce? But it does seem like the phones, there are two things I would say that seem potentially interesting. I don't know. I think the rumor is there's going to be either less notch or no notch and potentially just a smaller like hole punch for all the sensors and cameras and stuff, which I don't know, people are excited about. I literally, I have reached a point where I absolutely have no feelings about notches. And if they could make it bigger, and I would say, okay, and they could make it smaller, and I would say, okay, and then just move on with my life. The one I think is potentially very interesting is the always on display, which is another one where it's like, I've seen a lot of people start to do interesting stuff with lock screen widgets in iOS 16, which I think is going to be very cool. And that plus a
18:11 David Pierce? display that's always on, it's like, I think there could start to be some interesting stuff that like, what can your phone do when you're not even touching it is a pretty interesting idea. But that may end up being as much an iOS 16 thing as an iPhone 14 thing. So I don't know. But that's the thing I'm by far most curious about.
18:30 Nilay Patel? So always on screen plus the new widgets that they're doing in iOS 16, which include things like live updating sports scores. You kind of get a little like always on widget display. You can tie that to a Mac. That seems like fascinating to me. I'm assuming that's only coming to the Pro models.
18:47 Alex Cranz? How is the Pro going to be the one to buy this time?
18:50 Nilay Patel? I mean, I always buy the Pro because it always
18:52 David Pierce? I've never been a Pro person, but this is the year that seems like it's the Pro is going to be like demonstrably better, other than just like the one slightly better camera that it normally has.
19:01 Alex Cranz? I haven't updated my phone since I'm on, I'm still on the 11. So whatever's coming out, I'm going to be getting some variation of it.
19:08 Nilay Patel? The 11 had, I think, one of the wackiest iPhone cameras of all time.
19:12 Alex Cranz? It's not great.
19:13 Nilay Patel? Even taking some extremely Samsung photos this whole time. That was like, that was the first one that had smart HDR, right?
19:18 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
19:19 Nilay Patel? And they just, they were like, what if shadows didn't exist?
19:22 Alex Cranz? It just goes, my dog always looks so surprised. Like, he just doesn't have any like contour to his face in the photos.
19:29 Nilay Patel? Every time I look at photos from that year, I'm like, what was going on with this camera? It's time, Alex.
19:35 Alex Cranz? I'm so excited.
19:36 Nilay Patel? So we just run out. The rumors are always on display in the Pro. Forty-eight megapixel rear camera that'll obviously do pixel binning to get it down to 12 or whatever. Larger sensor to collect more light. Great. Notch situation, maybe a processor upgrade. That is like, if they actually significantly upgrade the camera in that way. Add the always on. Sure, it makes sense. Here's the one that I think is actually going to generate all the sales. You all know my theory about big, cheap screens. The regular iPhone 14 will come with a max version, a 6.7 inch display version. So it'll be cheaper, but have the big screen.
20:11 David Pierce? Cheap, big phone.
20:12 Nilay Patel? And it's like, oh, this is when they win. Right? Like, this is the one, this is gonna be the model. Like, we can all complain about phone sizes all we want. I think we have an Allison piece on the site today, like, as we speak.
20:23 Alex Cranz? Nobody buy it. Don't reinforce this bad idea.
20:26 Nilay Patel? Vote with their dollars, man, and they vote for big, cheap screens.
20:29 Alex Cranz? Don't do it!
20:29 Nilay Patel? They can walk into the store and be like, that 48-inch OLED TV looks beautiful. And this TCL Series 4 that has never even heard of the word "black" is huge. I'm going with grays. Let's do the grays. Like, every time.
20:45 David Pierce? The motion is so smooth.
20:49 Nilay Patel? Every time. Like, big, cheap screens always win. It is a law of the universe. And so to me, that is actually the, whatever. Like, you tell people the Pro has a better camera, but they look at bigger screen for less money, and they're gonna pick the bigger screen every time.
21:06 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
21:06 Nilay Patel? But like, that's what we're looking at, right? Like...
21:09 Alex Cranz? Oh, maybe some AirPods?
21:10 Nilay Patel? Oh, I've been on the iPhones. Yeah, yeah, I was gonna bring, come to the iPhones. But on the iPhones, it looks like that's what we're looking at. And then, yes, AirPods.
21:16 Alex Cranz? We're getting some new AirPods Pro, it sounds like. Maybe.
21:18 David Pierce? I think there's a decent chance AirPods Pro end up being, like, the thing people are the most excited about, about the new launches. Especially if they can add some of the, like, fitness stuff into it, and whatever sensors they're gonna put into it. It's like, they might add the fins that are in the Beats, which will make them fit in a lot more people's ears comfortably, like, that... That might be the kind of thing that everybody comes out being like, oh, those phones are cool. But like, oh, my God, I'm gonna buy the hell out of those AirPods. Like, I, this might, that might happen.
21:48 Alex Cranz? I, I love the current ones. Like, I'm on my second pair of them because at some point, all AirPods just stop, right? You all have this experience, they just stop working?
21:58 David Pierce? Oh, for me, the law is I will lose them on the 90th day that I own them. They will, they just poof out of existence.
22:05 Alex Cranz? I, see, I haven't lost them. I'm convinced there's some, like, cache and Bluetooth that doesn't get automatically cleared. So all Bluetooth headphones have, like, a limited lifespan because of this cache. I've been told this is probably not true. You just, but I, I, I'm convinced because, like, eighteen months in, it's like, okay, time to start looking for some new ones. So I'm very excited because I'm at, like, nineteen months right now.
22:30 David Pierce? Oh, no.
22:30 Alex Cranz? So this is, for me personally, huge news.
22:33 Nilay Patel? Your extremely made up cache theory is pushed to the limit.
22:37 Alex Cranz? Yes. Well, I gotta, I gotta make it. I could believe in me.
22:40 Nilay Patel? So these AirPods, you know, some fitness features because they might have motion sensors in them, some of this wingtip designed to hold your ears better. Here's the big one, there's hints that they'll support lossless audio.
22:54 Alex Cranz? Title, title, this is your moment.
22:56 Nilay Patel? Uh, well, Apple music has lossless now. To do that, you need to get beyond Bluetooth. And this is where Apple makes the turn and does proprietary wireless protocol for the AirPods.
23:08 Alex Cranz? If it doesn't suck, like, I'm, I'm, I, I tend to be totally against proprietary stuff. But Apple has made a much better Bluetooth radio than anybody else out there, right? Like, it just is hands down better at communicating with your device.
23:21 Nilay Patel? Because it is proprietary.
23:23 Alex Cranz? Yeah. And so if they want to go even more proprietary, and it means I don't have to be like, hold on, Barbara, let me smooth this huddle over to speakerphone, I'm in.
23:32 David Pierce? Yeah, and I feel like Apple has made very clear that it does not give one single crap about connecting your AirPods to your Android phone or your Windows computer. And I feel like Apple is going to be perfectly happy to be like, this thing will work with your Apple devices and nothing else, and you all can go screw yourselves.
23:53 Alex Cranz? Can you imagine if they cared?
23:54 Nilay Patel? They care a lot. They're like, Bluetooth is, we're serious about it, anybody's Bluetooth works. They have to pretend to care because European regulators wandering the capitals of Europe are like, huh, like, constantly because of interoperability.
24:10 Nilay Patel? I don't know where to end it. I think that's what they do.
24:14 Alex Cranz? I'm trying to think of how to say codec in French.
24:15 Nilay Patel? codec. It's like, it's great. Everyone loves saying it all the time. Um, that's what they talk about in France. It's cheese and interoperability between codecs.
24:24 Nilay Patel? Anyhow, um, they have to pretend, but they've also like insane lock in on the phone because of their headphones and no one else can compete in the headphone market against Apple because of the proprietary nature of AirPods. I'm going to tell the audience now that our producer Liam is insistent that we get through the show in an hour this week. He wants us to do it. And so he's put a timer on the screen that has now turned red, which signals that we have to wrap the iPhone preview segment up. Please address your complaints to Liam about the giant red timer. I think he would love to hear from you.
24:59 David Pierce? It's okay. We're gonna have plenty more time to talk about Apple, too.
25:02 Nilay Patel? Yes, we, we gotta go to the event. We're sending an army this time. It's like five of us are going. Uh, so we'll have much more on Apple to come when that event hits on the seven. All right. We're gonna take a break. Come back. We'll talk a little bit of streaming and a little bit Elon versus Twitter. We'll be right back.
25:22 Speaker 04 You're busy. We know that. So we'll keep this quick. Introducing Amex Corporate, now featuring the corporate cash back card. For one annual flat fee, get 1.5% cash back on eligible business purchases, plus intelligent expense management with the unmatched expertise and backing of American Express. Built to simplify, designed to scale. Get started at go.amex slash Amex Corporate. Terms and cap apply.
25:53 Speaker 00 Ask yourself, what are your best people spending their time on right now? Expense reports, receipt chasing, month end close that takes weeks. You become what you spend on, and that's not what you're building toward. Brex is the intelligent finance platform that eliminates that work before it starts. AI agents that handle the manual stuff automatically so your team can spend their time on what actually compounds. It's time to get Brex AF. Learn more at brex.com/af.
26:33 Nilay Patel? We're back. Got some Elon versus Twitter to talk about, but let's start with streaming. Stream wars are like back in full effect because of whatever is going on at HBO and whatever is going on in Netflix, which real quick, let's start with HBO. HBO plus Discovery, Discovery, Warner Media, whatever it's called. Again, the slogan is the stuff dreams are made of, which literally sounds like they found some dirt. I don't know what's going on. There's, there's gold in here. Like, I don't know.
27:01 David Pierce? It's like the corn kid on TikTok. Like, that's what he would come up with as his tagline.
27:05 Nilay Patel? I know the quote is in reference to a classic movie, but just imagine having to walk into that company every day and people are like, the stuff dreams are made of.
27:15 David Pierce? Tap the sign on the wall that says the stuff dreams are made of every morning.
27:18 Nilay Patel? And it's like, I'm an accountant. Like, what am I supposed to do here? Okay, but they're in a really strange spot, right? Tons of debt, firing people, more layoffs to come. They're one-
27:31 Alex Cranz? Their market cap is down.
27:33 Nilay Patel? Right. AT&T bought Warner Brothers at like something over a hundred dollars a share, like 109. And right now, the combined company is trading at 14. So weird times over at that company. They, I think they're gonna, there's a rumor today, I think in Puck, that the new streaming platform will be called HBO Discovery, which is not the right name.
27:55 Alex Cranz? It's HBO Disco is right there.
27:58 Nilay Patel? It's a super right, they could just call it Disco.
28:01 Alex Cranz? Just, yeah, Disco.
28:06 Nilay Patel? That's horrible. That's like, that's 100% the fake version of Disney Plus.
28:14 Nilay Patel? But they had, they had House of the Dragon this last week. It's here. Alex, it says here that it was their biggest ever premiere.
28:22 Alex Cranz? It was their biggest ever 10, 10 million people like tuned in to watch it in the United States. I think what's going to be really interesting is how many people tuned in for episode two. Like, most of the reaction was, yeah, that was some Game of Thrones I watched. And it wasn't like, super enthusiastic, but it also wasn't super like, this is horrible. So CBS made an entire business out of making that kind of content and like, being the most successful linear broadcast network in history. So it's certainly possible that everybody can be like, yeah, I'll keep watching this.
28:55 David Pierce? Yeah, I mean, if you can run Law and Order SVU, basically the same episode over and over for 25 years, like, why not Game of Thrones? And that appears to be where we are headed.
29:03 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
29:04 David Pierce? But I will say, like, did you guys see that video that was going around that somebody shot in New York where they were looking into the windows of an apartment building and you could see all the TVs changing at the same time because everybody was watching House of Dragons?
29:14 Nilay Patel? Do we verify that that video was from now and not from actual Game of Thrones?
29:18 David Pierce? No, it's possible. It's fake. I don't care. I hope it's real. And if it is real, it's like, it is definitely true that, like, the House of the Dragon, it's, it's up in, like, the Stranger Things territory of, like, they're like, a handful of shows that I feel like everyone I know pays attention to. And this kind of got there on the first day, which was pretty impressive.
29:36 Alex Cranz? It was pretty weird. Like, Charles, our entertainment critic, and I both got screeners for the new House of the Dragons. And we both watched it and we were like, yep, we've seen it all. And so we, we watched it. He wrote his review. It went up great. We completely forgot about it. And so, like, Sunday night, I was like, why, why is Twitter, like, kind of quiet? Just because everybody was watching House of Dragons. Like, I just forgot the rest of the world was, was tuning in.
30:02 Nilay Patel? See, that's what you want. Maybe that's HBO's entire promise, is we can quiet down Twitter for an hour a week.
30:08 Alex Cranz? Yeah, we will shut it down.
30:09 Nilay Patel? And that's their service to America and the world.
30:11 Alex Cranz? Twitter's like, no, stop. Don't do that.
30:17 Nilay Patel? The one thing about House of the Dragon, I'll say, whatever, it's a Game of Thrones show, it's fine. There is horrifying scenes, as you would expect, truly disgustingly horrifying
30:26 Alex Cranz? Horrifying wigs, the wigs, like-
30:28 Nilay Patel? Yeah, there's some wig issues, you know, there's a sad guy with a naked lady, like, everything you expect from Game of Thrones. Like, I've just described almost every episode of Game of Thrones.
30:36 Alex Cranz? You have.
30:37 Nilay Patel? The CGI budget is like, but the show is theoretically more expensive to make than Game of Thrones. That's what they've been saying.
30:44 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
30:45 Nilay Patel? But that opening flyover scene where the dragon goes around the tower, I was like, this is a cutscene from a PC game from 2012. I had exactly, literally, I would have put the year like two years later, but I had exactly the same reaction.
30:58 David Pierce? It's like, what am I looking at?
30:59 Nilay Patel? This was an Assassin's Creed cutscene that you just showed me.
31:02 Alex Cranz? But like, where did the money, see, I, I'm assuming the money went to the CGI, because like, it didn't go, like, the costuming is like, eh.
31:09 David Pierce? You gotta pay the dragons. Dragons are expensive.
31:11 Alex Cranz? Like, the wigs are bad. Like, this cast is not, like, I'm not seeing this cast just pulling in big numbers financially.
31:18 Nilay Patel? There was one time when they were walking up a staircase and there was like, you know, a chandelier burning with fire.
31:23 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
31:24 Nilay Patel? It's totally in the background. No one else noticed this. I rewatched it three times, because the fake smoke from the fire was that like, blocky, pixelated smoke, of like, fake smoke. And I was like, I know we can do, it's 2022, like, this looks like an M64.
31:41 David Pierce? Yeah.
31:42 Nilay Patel? I hope they do better. Although I will say, like, GPU shortage is a visual aesthetic is maybe coming around.
31:48 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
31:49 Nilay Patel? All right, David, you wanna talk, I have to surprise you with this YouTube TV story.
31:55 David Pierce? Yeah, so, okay, so there was this YouTube TV story, there was a report that YouTube TV is gonna let you watch four channels at a time, and it was a, like, a private thing that YouTube told a bunch of its partners. They had some new ideas about shorts and stuff, but this struck me as one of those things we, like, we put it on the site, I was like, oh, that's, that's neat. And then it was like, gigantically popular as a story. This is like, one of our most read stories this week, about like, a relatively small feature that is on YouTube TV, and I don't understand why it was so popular, but apparently you do.
32:23 Nilay Patel? I do, cuz I looked. College football Twitter ate this story for breakfast.
32:30 Nilay Patel? Like hundreds and hundreds of people were like, F yeah, YouTube TV. This is all I've ever wanted. And they definitely did it for sports fans.
32:39 David Pierce? Yeah.
32:40 Nilay Patel? But it's like this one, sometimes a story finds an audience in a way that you will never expect. And this one just landed on college football Twitter and everyone's like, we did it.
32:49 Alex Cranz? Is it like specific, like divisions? Is it just all college football Twitter?
32:55 Nilay Patel? I didn't look that deeply. I think the thing that's interesting here is college football is a sport. You have access to multiple games at once all the time on Saturdays.
33:06 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
33:06 Nilay Patel? Right? So like going from channel to channel to see different games is relatively easy. And then it's an easy jump to, I can see how this feature would help me watch more college football. Cannot do that with the NFL, right? It's very hard to get access to lots of games in the NFL. So Sunday Ticket, the Steam powered app that I use to watch Packers games, has some multi-screen features. The ESPN app has multi-screen features, but they don't actually have the content.
33:34 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
33:34 Nilay Patel? It's very rare that you're gonna watch, you're gonna open the ESPN app, watch whatever. They have Monday Night Football now. I think it all changed. They have Aikman on Monday Night Football now, right?
33:43 David Pierce? Yeah, that's right. They just paid him a crazy amount of money. Yeah.
33:46 Nilay Patel? And Joe Buck. So they, it's very rare they're gonna open Monday Night Football and then also be like, well, what else is on ESPN? And it's like curling.
33:53 David Pierce? Right.
33:53 Nilay Patel? Like, it just doesn't seem like that's the split screen experience you want. I will say the World Excel Championships are on ESPN2, which is something that you can, you can just go watch on television.
34:02 David Pierce? Excellent.
34:03 Nilay Patel? It is incomprehensible. It's like people being like, did you see that formula? He's had that in his back pocket the whole time. And it's like, did he?
34:11 Alex Cranz? That's a thing?
34:13 Nilay Patel? It's a real thing.
34:14 David Pierce? I felt the same way about watching it that I did about watching ballet, which is sitting there and being like, I'm confident this is very impressive. And I don't understand any of what's happening. Like, I'm sure this is good and hard. I just need another beer if I'm gonna keep watching. That's basically how I feel.
34:29 Nilay Patel? We should do a live react of you watching both ballet and the World Excel Championships.
34:33 David Pierce? And people have to guess which one I'm watching.
34:35 Nilay Patel? Yeah. And be like, what's the look on David's face? All right. So that's streaming. Let's talk about Twitter and Elon. A lot going on with Twitter and Elon this week.
34:45 Alex Cranz? Less Elon though, right? Mainly Twitter?
34:47 Nilay Patel? Well, there was a hearing on Discovery. Then there's a whistleblower. David, do you want to take us through it?
34:52 David Pierce? Sure. So, and to your point, Alex, the, one of the big open questions of the week was how much this was about Elon. Because basically the, the like very short version of what happened is Peter Zatko, who is better known in the hacker community as Mudge, this like long-term beloved white hat hacker who everybody believes in, who was briefly the head of security at Twitter, then turned whistleblower. And there was this big disclosure this week in which he basically said, Twitter as a company is like a total security disaster. Like too many people have access to too much stuff. A bunch of their stuff is not up to date. They're just not running correctly. He was like this whole thing. And then buried in there, he also said, I think in as many words, Twitter is lying to Elon Musk about its bots.
35:32 David Pierce? So that became a whole thing. But then sort of aside that, there's also this big open question about, like Twitter is a security nightmare, which has FTC implications because Twitter has basically promised to get its act together in the past. And it brought back all this stuff from two years ago when all these famous people's accounts on Twitter were hacked by what turned out to be like a couple of teenagers and then used Bitcoin scams to not make very much money. It was like the worst hack of all time, but they did it. And yeah, he basically was like, Twitter is a mess and I said so internally and they fired me for it. So I have no choice but to say it publicly. And then Elon Musk showed up and was like monetizable daily active users.
36:11 David Pierce? And now here we are.
36:12 Nilay Patel? Okay. So unpacking that a little bit, inside of Mudge's filing with the SEC, he did it through a law firm called whistleblower aid. So he gets formal whistleblower protections. Also means he's really not talking to that many people. Here's the filings. You can deduce from them what you will. That means the filings are a fun read.
36:29 David Pierce? They really are.
36:30 Nilay Patel? Everything. It's here are all of his feelings, including feelings like Twitter is a for-profit company. And it's like, yeah.
36:38 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
36:39 Nilay Patel? Nailed it.
36:41 Alex Cranz? Accurate.
36:42 Nilay Patel? So there's this part of the filings where Mudge talks about monetizable daily active users, which is the number Twitter reports in its earnings, because it's the number that counts. And all it's a made up number. No one else uses this metric. Twitter uses this metric because it only makes money on ads. So the number of users that it has that are potentially seeing ads is the number that is related to how much money it can make, which is what investors care about.
37:11 David Pierce? Right.
37:11 Nilay Patel? So that means if you use other Twitter clients, you're not a monetizable daily active user because Twitter ads aren't coming in through there. You're not getting any promoted tweets and all this stuff. It means that bots don't count because bots don't buy anything.
37:24 David Pierce? Bots don't log into Twitter.
37:26 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
37:27 Nilay Patel? And so you've just got this like mushy definition of what it monetizable daily active user is.
37:32 David Pierce? Right.
37:33 Nilay Patel? Twitter's claim is that 5% of its monetizable daily active users are bots. And that's the number it cares about.
37:42 Alex Cranz? Right.
37:43 Nilay Patel? Not 5% of all Twitter users. So there are probably many total, there are more things on Twitter and a huger percentage of those are bots. Is anybody who has interacted with Twitter can probably attest to.
37:56 David Pierce? It is weird because what it says is basically Twitter is saying, out of all of our users who aren't bots, less than 5% of them are bots, which is like, seems transparently accurate, right? But then Elon Musk is saying, well, other people use Twitter who are bots. And Twitter's like, yes, that's so like, everybody is just sort of talking past each other about different things. And Twitter is saying, well, A is true. And Elon Musk is saying, well, what about B? And Twitter's like, well, I don't know, A. And we just like.
38:26 Nilay Patel? And then Mudge is like the Kool-Aid Man, being like, all of you are liars and thieves and the bots are everywhere, right?
38:32 David Pierce? Pretty much.
38:33 Nilay Patel? And one of his lines is like, Twitter executives get bonuses for growing users and they don't get bonuses for reducing bots.
38:41 David Pierce? Right.
38:42 Nilay Patel? Which on the first cut seems like a totally reasonable thing to say. And then on the second cut, you're like, well, of course they get bonuses for growing the number of monetizable users.
38:53 David Pierce? Tell it works everywhere.
38:54 Nilay Patel? Cause that's what makes them the money.
38:56 David Pierce? Yeah.
38:56 Nilay Patel? And if they hold it at 5%, then they can have infinity bots as long as the number of money, the money number goes up. So Elon obviously sees it on this, he's making a lot of noise. I think fundamentally, the the Mudge whistleblower complaints like actually validates Twitter's version of events in terms of bots, not all the other stuff. Not all the, the government of India has installed agents inside of Twitter to spy on Indian Twitter users who might be dislike, that's very bad. Not the too many Twitter employees have password access to everyone's DMs. That seems very bad. By the way, Twitter for its part has said, oh, this is a false narrative and lacks context, which is what you say. I feel like they could have just searched on Twitter for what executives say when accusations
39:41 Nilay Patel? are made against our company and just copied and pasted it. And you say, this is a false narrative.
39:45 David Pierce? It's a really great way to to cast dispersions without actually refuting anything. Like false narrative doesn't mean anything and lacks important context means like we're trying as hard as we can. That's okay. That doesn't.
39:59 Nilay Patel? To be fair, that's what Twitter's saying.
40:00 David Pierce? Yeah.
40:01 Nilay Patel? And then Elon is seizing on this being like, everything I said is true. And then there was a discovery motion in the Delaware Chancery Court, our favorite court in America. By the way, there's an amazing Twitter account called Chancery Daily, which has just been a daily news account for the Chancery Court for years. And they're like, welcome to the Thunderdome. Like, cause it's a light speed hardcore court. And so like this, this Twitter account's absolutely worth a follow because they think the whole thing is so funny. So they have a hearing about discovery. Elon's lawyers request everything. They're like, we can't trust anything Twitter's ever said. We want all the data from the fire hose. Twitter says that's ridiculous. David, I believe the court said Elon was a big dummy.
40:42 David Pierce? Yeah, the court essentially sided with Twitter. There was this amazing line where they basically said, if we were to do what Musk and his lawyers are asking for. Twitter would have to produce trillions and trillions of pages of evidence and data points on, it was like every possible thing that 200 million users could have maybe done. And it was basically just like, this is lunacy. We're not doing this. So essentially what
41:06 Nilay Patel? The specific phrase, by the way, from the court, defendants' data requests are absurdly broad.
41:11 David Pierce? There you go.
41:12 Nilay Patel? It's good.
41:14 David Pierce? Yeah. So essentially where they landed is basically like they're going to give Elon Musk and his lawyers access to the process that Twitter runs in order to make these determinations, which seems to be, I think, probably what Twitter would have expected because Twitter has basically been, through this process, like, we do a magical process to figure out how many spam bots there are, but we don't keep any data and we're not going to tell you anything about it. But you should definitely trust us for real. It's totally fine. So like Twitter has definitely obfuscated in the course of trying to figure out how these numbers work, which I would remind everyone is like actually totally immaterial to what happened. And Elon Musk had a lot of time to do due diligence and waived it and we don't need to do that again. But
41:51 Nilay Patel? No, it's important. Explain that a little bit. That's actually
41:53 Alex Cranz? That's my favorite part of all of this.
41:54 Nilay Patel? He's doing a good job of convincing everyone that bots are important, but they are not.
41:58 David Pierce? No, the crux of this deal is that Elon Musk, who initially said that fixing the bot problem was one of the reasons he wanted to buy Twitter, agreed to buy Twitter and signed a binding agreement that had nothing to do with spam bots. There were no bot contingencies in the agreement Elon Musk signed to buy Twitter.
42:17 Alex Cranz? He waived like the right to even care about it.
42:19 David Pierce? Yes. So all of this is totally immaterial and seems to be Elon Musk basically trying to negotiate down the amount he's going to have to pay to walk away from this deal. Like I, that seems like by a wide margin, the most likely outcome here is that he will write a very big check and walk away. Who knows? Because it's Elon Musk. I always assume the most insane thing is going to happen. So I assume this will go to trial and he'll end up owning Twitter. Like, who knows? That is the most insane thing. But anyway, where this landed essentially is, what it seems like the judge is saying is Twitter needs to be more transparent about the process it runs. But Elon Musk cannot ask Twitter to basically give him everything that has ever happened to anyone in the history of Twitter, which I think is reasonable.
42:57 Nilay Patel? I would point out that most of Elon's wealth is in Tesla stock. And we didn't cover this because nothing new with us. Tesla had a three for one stock split like today. Which was announced ages ago, but
43:10 Alex Cranz? Well, and he just sold a bunch. He sold like billions and was like, it's, it's, it's for reasons. Don't worry about it, everybody.
43:17 Nilay Patel? It's my Twitter money.
43:18 Alex Cranz? It's my Twitter money.
43:19 Nilay Patel? Uh, so we'll see. I mean, there's just a lot tied up in Elon's finances in the market and all the stuff that is like, oh, it's like my CNBC brain, not my Vergecast brain. But I, David, I agree with you. The outcome here is he pays a lot of money to walk away. Like, I don't think he wants to own Twitter in the end.
43:34 David Pierce? No.
43:35 Nilay Patel? I think Twitter maybe has taken a hard look in the mirror and been like, we are a shit show. What if Elon?
43:42 Alex Cranz? Bias.
43:43 Nilay Patel? Uh, so we'll see. But Chancery Daily, like, literally, this account is having the most fun. It's my new favorite Twitter follow. Also, David and Addie and Liz write This Week in Elon, our pop-up Elon Musk newsletter, which has quickly become a must-read because there's so much Elon going on lately.
44:01 Alex Cranz? So much.
44:02 David Pierce? Yes.
44:03 Nilay Patel? I think today Starlink and T-Mobile have an event, right, where they're announcing some kind of partnership?
44:07 David Pierce? Mm-hmm. And Starlink also is randomly lowering the prices for some people. Like, I think Thomas Ricker got an email where Starlink was just like, your stuff's cheaper now. And he was like, neat.
44:16 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
44:17 David Pierce? And that was the end of that interaction.
44:18 Nilay Patel? I did not get that email from Starlink.
44:20 Alex Cranz? Aww.
44:22 David Pierce? Uh, but yeah, it just, the Elon Musk chaos is relentless and is never gonna go away. Addie's most recent version of This Week in Elon, which is about all of this monetizable daily active user nonsense, uh, is very good and clear and a good read. We'll put it in the show notes for sure.
44:39 Nilay Patel? All right. The clock is red again. Liam has turned his camera on. He's smiling, but it's that smiling that means he's, he's mad at you. You know the smile right before they eat ya? That smile. We gotta take a break. We'll be back with a little bit of lightning round. We'll be right back.
45:29 Speaker 04 If you're looking to hire, you need Indeed. With Indeed Sponsored Jobs, you can spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help your job get the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.
46:17 Nilay Patel? All right, we're back. It's lightning round time. Liam has started the clock. The best part about the clock, I have to say, is I don't know how long it's set for, so it just turns red.
46:26 Alex Cranz? It goes yellow first and then orange.
46:28 David Pierce? It's just... Whenever Liam gets bored, he just ticks it to red and says, "Shut up."
46:31 Nilay Patel? Three minutes of this is enough. We're done. Birchcast over. All right, lightning round. Alex, what you got?
46:38 Alex Cranz? Well, Chris Welch found, yesterday, I was in the office with Chris Welch, and he said, "Hey, Alex, check Slack, there's a scoop you need to edit." And I went, "Oh." And then I clicked it and I was like, "Hey, Chris, you wrote a scoop." That's what happened. So he got a scoop, a little scoop magnet, getting all the scoops. That's not a word, is it? Scoop magnet?
46:54 Nilay Patel? It can be now.
46:55 David Pierce? Chris Welch appears to just live inside of...
46:57 Nilay Patel? Hey, guys, we're on the clock, okay? Who knows when this is gonna turn red?
47:01 Alex Cranz? Sorry, Liam. Any minute, he's gonna turn it red as soon as I finish talking. New speaker? Basically, it sounds like Sonos is gonna be... Sonos is working on a new speaker. That's all the reporting that Chris Welch got. And it looks like it'll probably replace the Play 5, which is the, like, kind of its flagship speaker that hasn't been replaced in years. I think it's the only one that hasn't had, like, a big update. And it's gonna have a lot of speakers in it firing in a lot of directions. Instead of just like speakers firing one direction, as, as most of them do. This one's gonna fire like forward to the sides, up. So it'll also have some Atmos support.
47:42 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
47:43 Alex Cranz? And it looks like it's, there's gonna be a smaller one as well. More like the, the Sonos One that will do the same thing with the up firing speakers. So feels very Atmos intense and it's gonna be called, right now it's codenamed the Optimo 2.
47:58 Nilay Patel? Which really implies there's an Optimo One.
48:00 Alex Cranz? Yes.
48:01 David Pierce? It does.
48:01 Alex Cranz? We don't know what that is, unfortunately.
48:03 David Pierce? What I can't figure out about this speaker is where it goes. Cause it's like, if it's gonna do this sort of firing in all directions thing, it's like, it's very sort of home potty in that sense. And so it's like, maybe it's a, you know, you put it next to your TV and use it for music. Or is it like a semi soundbar thing and it does surround sound all by itself? Like what is this thing going to be?
48:23 Alex Cranz? I think it's supposed to do all of the things.
48:24 David Pierce? Okay.
48:25 Alex Cranz? Like what he was looking at, a lot of the, the stuff he's gotten suggests that this is gonna be one of the best sounding speakers they've made. Sonos is very good at making speakers that sound really, really good. And this one is something that you'll be able to put, you know, use it as that soundbar. Get three of them up front and you've, and a subwoofer and you've got 3.1 surround sound, right?
48:46 Nilay Patel? You'll have 3.1.2 surround sound.
48:49 Alex Cranz? Right. Cause you've got the, the Atmos upward firing speakers. So I think that's the plan here is, is most of the money that Sonos is making nowadays is in that home theater space. That's really where it's moved. It's moved away from speakers in every room of the house to TV. Let's do that better. And this could theoretically help that without having a big ugly soundbar.
49:11 Nilay Patel? Every now and again, I find myself reading our site like a reader and then I have these moments. So there's a line here. "The Verge has viewed early work and prognosis images of Optimo 2." And I was like, wait, that's me. I viewed those images.
49:23 Alex Cranz? You, you did that. You saw the images.
49:25 Nilay Patel? Chris and I looked at them together.
49:28 Nilay Patel? So the HomePod is like a really interesting like case, right? Cause it had all these, the big HomePod, not the little one. It had all these drivers in it and Apple was really intent on doing beam forming. It would measure the echoes in your room in real time. It would use the walls and like send some frequencies at the walls to create a like a faux surround sound and like.
49:49 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
49:50 Nilay Patel? They said a lot of things about the HomePod. In the end, it was just a nice sounding speaker.
49:54 David Pierce? It did sound good, though. It was a ridiculous product, but it sounded really good.
49:58 Nilay Patel? It, yeah, two of them sounded infinitely better than one, which I think was their miss.
50:03 David Pierce? Fair.
50:04 Nilay Patel? It was like, it was fine. It, my thing with the HomePod was always if you are the sort of person who has the capacity to listen to a HomePod in a Sonos 5 and whatever the else, like in a line, you'll put the HomePod in the top two. But if you are not doing that specific exercise, you cannot tell the difference between them.
50:25 David Pierce? Fair.
50:26 Nilay Patel? Right? Like expensive speakers of that class are all just kind of different and all kind of the same. This feels like not that to me because I think it is aimed at that big Atmos music market that is a differentiator for Sonos. Very few products do Atmos music. So we'll see. I don't think it's actually targeted at TV stuff.
50:46 Alex Cranz? You don't?
50:47 Nilay Patel? And then I think that might, yeah, they've got soundbars for that. And that's like their big, soundbar sales are down because TV sales are down and you buy a soundbar when you buy a new TV and rarely people upgrade their soundbar. The clock turned yellow, I'm freaking out.
50:59 Alex Cranz? Oh my God. Go, go, go, keep going, keep going.
51:02 Nilay Patel? I think this is a music speaker, like a high-end music speaker to do like Atmos audio, which I think is a, will be interesting for Sonos to try to convince Play5 customers to upgrade.
51:13 Alex Cranz? So now we're gonna have Led Zeppelin's descend from a wire above our head.
51:17 Nilay Patel? Jimmy Page just sneaking up behind you.
51:19 Alex Cranz? Not behind you.
51:20 Nilay Patel? It's all anybody's, it's all anybody's ever wanted. Uh, by the way, USBC line in potentially on this device, which is wacky. Uh, all right, I'll do, what's my lightning round? Oh, I gotta talk about Peloton. All right, let me just read you this quote. There will be no further discussion because the clock's yellow. This is the CEO, the new CEO of Peloton, Barry McCarthy. He's writing a letter to shareholders. This is how the letter ends. "In high school, I spent three months working on a cargo ship. After midnight on my second voyage, I was asleep when the alarm for the general quarters woke me. My reporting station was on the bridge." End sentence. Next sentence. "Fear is a great motivator."
52:10 Nilay Patel? A long story. The ship is leaning. The captain's trying to turn the ship around. We saved two men's lives that night. They've been lost at sea in the Mediterranean for several days. A fortunate, happy ending. Peloton is like that cargo ship. We've sounded the alarm. Everyone's at their station. We continue to add new inputs to evolve our go-to-market strategy to restore growth. When will the ship respond is the question. Our goal is fiscal year 23.
52:35 David Pierce? Does he think he just invented the idea of a big ship being hard to turn? And that that's a useful metaphor for business? Like, has he not? He just...
52:45 Alex Cranz? But he's been on a ship. How many of the guys have done this?
52:48 David Pierce? I've been on a big ship.
52:51 Nilay Patel? I just know that when big companies... Wait, what was the burning? Who is the burning platform Nokia guy? Hold on. Oh, my God, the clock's yellow.
52:59 Alex Cranz? Go, go, go.
53:00 David Pierce? Are you talking about Steven Elop?
53:02 Nilay Patel? Yes. Longtime Vergecast listeners will remember the last time we discussed ocean metaphors for companies. It was our boy Steven Elop, who left Microsoft, became the CEO of Nokia, and then sold Nokia to Microsoft in a move no one saw coming.
53:20 Alex Cranz? He steered the ship.
53:22 Nilay Patel? Kenny Elop again. But he sent a memo that was like, "Two people are standing on a burning oil platform in the middle of the frigid sea, and their choice is to be engulfed in flames or jump into the frozen ocean. And we Nokia are using Windows Phone." Which in this metaphor was the frozen ocean.
53:43 Nilay Patel? Big, big burning platform vibes from Barry McCarthy. Anyway, we'll see. Peloton's lost like a billion dollars this quarter and they're like, we're on track. Very good.
53:51 David Pierce? It's a real like, like trust the process move. Like there was this NBA team, the Philadelphia 76ers, who sucked so bad for like six years and they were like, trust us, we're going to be good eventually. And then they weren't is the spoiler alert at the end of that story.
54:06 Nilay Patel? Process there was they threw a lot of games to get draft picks and then blew the draft picks.
54:10 David Pierce? Correct.
54:11 Nilay Patel? Just.
54:12 David Pierce? Uh huh. Yeah. You have to do a good thing at the end of the process, which is what Peloton.
54:17 Nilay Patel? Fear is a great motivator.
54:20 David Pierce? Especially on a big shit.
54:21 Nilay Patel? You gotta read this. It's just like the hardest cut in the middle of this paragraph.
54:24 David Pierce? Terrific.
54:25 Nilay Patel? All right, David, what's yours?
54:26 David Pierce? Uh, mine is this news that came out just before we started recording that Ford is hiking the price for the 2023 Mustang Mach-E by as much as $8,000. And this is part of a bigger thing where there was a study that the average price of an electric vehicle has gone up like almost 50%. And this is bad for like a lot of you'd like climate change, we need more electric vehicles reasons, but it's particularly bad for me because I have to buy a car. And every single day, it feels like I just like watch more of my money disappear into the car buying process and I haven't even bought a car yet. It's not great.
55:00 Nilay Patel? Well, one, you gotta buy a car for the end of the year because the tax credit situation next year is going sideways. So I'm also like, I gotta do, I gotta go buy an EV.
55:10 David Pierce? Yeah.
55:10 Alex Cranz? Are you deaf doing EV, David?
55:12 David Pierce? I don't know. This is like an ongoing debate with my wife because we don't really, we don't have a driveway. So our like overnight charging infrastructure is less than ideal, but like two years from now, David is going to feel really stupid if I don't buy an EV. So I don't know. I'm, I'm torn.
55:27 Alex Cranz? That's why I leased because I was like, I really want EV, but I live in New York City and it's not great for that. So.
55:35 Nilay Patel? We're talking about Alex's lease.
55:36 Alex Cranz? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. So yeah, I got, I got gas and it's great. Bye.
55:38 Nilay Patel? Burning seconds on your lease deal.
55:40 Alex Cranz? Never mind. Keep going.
55:42 Nilay Patel? What kind of podcast for nerds is this? Wait, it's this podcast for nerds.
55:49 Nilay Patel? Well, so you gotta buy one because we got a great explainer from Andy. That's getting way more complicated, especially if the cars aren't made. Like fewer cars will qualify next year because some of them aren't made in the United States. Like the EV6, the BMWs. And then a few years from now, if the batteries aren't made in the United States, nothing will qualify. So there's like a race. I was at a car dealer today, this morning, actually, because I'm. I decided that I should not buy like a $10,000 beater BMW. And maybe buy something that might put my family in.
56:17 David Pierce? I really like imagining you every morning just swinging by and they like. They see you coming and they're like, Neil is here and you like know all the people at the dealership by name now.
56:27 Alex Cranz? They hear him coming.
56:28 Nilay Patel? Watching a car dealer go from thinking that I'm an easy mark to being like, oh my God, dude.
56:33 David Pierce? This guy.
56:34 Nilay Patel? The problem is they have no cars to sell. Just this week, Jeep, which has still not shipped the hybrid Grand Cherokee, sent everyone hats.
56:41 David Pierce? Did they announce it again?
56:42 Nilay Patel? They've announced it again. This week, they've sent everyone hats who had preordered. Somehow the clock went from red to blue, which is, I don't know what's going on.
56:50 David Pierce? It's even worse.
56:51 Nilay Patel? Liam, just script with a snap.
56:52 Alex Cranz? I hope it starts strobing.
56:55 Nilay Patel? But you gotta buy a car before the end of the year if you want the credit because the other, next year is going to go sideways. But there are no cars to buy. Also, Ford going up by $8,000 when they are now guaranteed to get more $7,500 tax credits. Every dealer is going to say that the price went up, but just cross it out. You're getting it right back. And I think that's fairly cynical on Ford's part.
57:15 David Pierce? Yes.
57:16 Nilay Patel? We'll see. But the problem is that you can't buy any of these cars. Like, what are we even complaining about?
57:20 David Pierce? There seems to be no better insight. Like it's, it's the chip shortage keeps going. The people are like, everybody bought too much stuff. It's like we're, this doesn't seem like it's going to get any better, like shortly.
57:31 Nilay Patel? The problem with EVs is not so much the chip shortage, it's battery shortage. Ford has no battery capacity.
57:36 David Pierce? Yeah.
57:37 Nilay Patel? That's the problem they need to solve. That's actually why the, the future tax credits are pegged to battery manufacturing in the United States. Because the government's like, we know you need battery capacity. You better put it here if you want these credits.
57:47 Alex Cranz? Yeah, the chip shortage has started to go away, right?
57:49 Nilay Patel? That's tough. I don't, I don't know the answer to that question.
57:51 Alex Cranz? Kind of.
57:52 Nilay Patel? I ask people, the CEO of ARM is going to be on Decoder soon. The podcast that we don't talk about on this show.
57:58 David Pierce? Never heard of it.
57:59 Nilay Patel? It took me the whole episode this time, Liam. Liam's about to turn the clock right again.
58:03 Alex Cranz? David, where did you work? What was the magazine you worked at that we're not allowed to name?
58:06 David Pierce? I don't know. Who can remember?
58:08 Nilay Patel? So long ago. Let's see, if anybody can sell me an electric car, please buy on me. Whatever it is, as long as I can plug it into something.
58:16 Alex Cranz? He'll bring you on the decoder. Sell him an electric car.
58:18 Nilay Patel? Go on the other show and sell me a car. We're a new whole episode where a car salesman just has to deal with me. It'll be maybe our best episode ever.
58:25 David Pierce? Sold. I love it.
58:26 Nilay Patel? Like, listening to the sound of a car salesman, or a salesperson. Listening to the sound of a car salesperson's voice when I ask exactly which version of adaptive cruise control a car has, is they're just like, I don't know, man. And then I say something like, can you take a picture of the cruise control stalk and send it to me? And they're like, what? Because that's the level where I'm happy.
58:48 David Pierce? And then you say things like, oh, well, when the Ford CEO was on Decoder, he told me, and they're like, what?
58:55 Nilay Patel? It's real bad. Anyway, that's our show. The clock is turning all kinds of colors now. Liam's gone from smiling to frowning.
59:02 Alex Cranz? It's gone.
59:03 Nilay Patel? He's back. It's a very cute frown. That's it. That's the show. You can tweet at us. David is at Pierce Alex is Alex H. Cranz. I'm at Reckless. You can go read that story. The iPhone killer, which David just had another emotional reaction to when I said it. You really were in a world of shit for like a month after that story.
59:22 David Pierce? Oh, it was, yeah. Yeah.
59:24 Nilay Patel? It was.
59:24 David Pierce? It helped to have quotes. I'll just tell you that.
59:27 Nilay Patel? On the record, quotes.
59:28 David Pierce? I didn't say it.
59:28 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
59:29 David Pierce? Kevin Lynch did.
59:29 Nilay Patel? Why are we, why do we hammer home about being on the record so much? Because it's not our fault.
59:33 David Pierce? Yep.
59:34 Nilay Patel? All right. That's it. There's a bunch of great stuff on The Verge. We'll have more coverage coming up of the upcoming Apple event. What's next week on the Wednesday episode, David?
59:44 David Pierce? We're off next Wednesday.
59:44 Nilay Patel? Okay, what was this week on the Wednesday episode, David?
59:46 David Pierce? This week, we spent the whole episode talking about the Stream Deck and buttons, because The Vergecast loves buttons.
59:52 Nilay Patel? Yes.
59:53 David Pierce? And it was a very fun episode. And even if you don't have a Stream Deck, you should listen to it, although there's like a 40% chance you'll end up buying a Stream Deck at the end of it.
1:00:00 Alex Cranz? Yes.
1:00:00 Nilay Patel? It's very true. Someone sent us a picture of a rack-mounted Stream Deck, and now that's all I want in the world.
1:00:05 David Pierce? Incredible.
1:00:05 Nilay Patel? Let's forget. All right, that's it. We did it, Liam.
1:00:13 Speaker 05 And that's a wrap for Vergecast this week. Thanks for listening. If you enjoy the show, subscribe in the podcast app of your choice, or tell a friend. You can send us feedback at [email protected] . This show is produced by me, Liam James, and our senior audio director, Andrew Marino. This episode was edited and mixed by Amanda Rose Smith. Our editorial director is Brooke Minter, and our executive producer is Eleanor Donovan. The Vergecast is a production of The Verge and Vox Media Podcast Network. And that's it. We'll see you next week.
1:00:46 Speaker 06 Support for the show comes from Engine. Running a small business means every dollar has to work hard. But if your team is still booking travel the old way, it's costing you more than you think. Engine is the fastest growing travel and spend platform in the country, built specifically for businesses like yours. Book a trip in as little as two and a half minutes. Earn up to 10% back on hotels. And in 2025, Engine customers save more than $300 million on travel with zero booking fees, no contracts, and no BS. More than 1,000 businesses join Engine every month. Join them and get $500 when your business signs up and starts traveling at engine.com/vox.
1:01:31 Speaker 07 Trying to locate news sources that reliably separate fact from fiction can seem like looking for a needle in a haystack. That's why The Guardian is launching Stateside with Kai Wright and Carter Sherman, a conversation with experts who slow down the news and wrestle with the questions we all have about what's actually happening in the world. Three times a week, hosts Kai and Carter utilize all the reporting resources The Guardian has to discuss the news, international affairs, climate, culture, sports, lifestyle, fashion, and wellness. And The Guardian is not billionaire owned, meaning they're free to report the whole picture without interference. Go to theguardian.com/stateside to learn more.
1:02:13 Speaker 07 And listen wherever you get your podcasts, or watch on YouTube. That's theguardian.com/stateside.
Previous The Elgato Stream Deck's endless buttons Next Land of the Giants: It's a WhatsApp world Page updated October 26, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
