Apple’s antitrust fight begins

27:01I think buy your mom an iPhone is going to do that. Not barbarians at the gate? No, that's like slightly too esoteric. I think it's like a cool line. We should I wrote that line down. We should read it. But that line came when they were talking about the super apps. And apparently an Apple exec was like, we can't let the super apps into the United States and onto our platforms. It would be like the barbarians. Yeah. So this is from the complaint. It says, as one Apple manager put it, allowing super apps to become the main gateway where people play games, book a car, make payments, et cetera, would, quote, let the barbarians in at the gate.

27:35Why? Because when a super app offers popular mini programs, iOS stickiness goes down. like lesson number one everybody don't send emails but anyway that's the first lesson just send emails to lauren.finer at theverge.com with all of your gadget recommendations only emails allowed but no i i think the messaging apps one i thought was both again like you're saying lauren the most sort of understandable to the most people but also maybe the most compelling if your argument is that apple is willfully making its products worse to make it harder to leave like we talked about beeper a ton on this show earlier this year right and the case so did the doj so did the doj yeah it was in the complaint like there were a few companies that were very clearly being talked about but didn't get named beeper was one of them there's a section about you know a company promising to make the uh security of the iphone better for everybody there was also uh one about like a company that canceled a smartwatch and it's just like obviously meta but anyway uh the the beeper story was essentially they went around all of apple's systems in order to make your green bubbles blue, even if you're on an Android phone.

28:42Apple said no, it was the whole thing. Everybody listening to the show, I'm sure, knows. But what Bieber kept saying is we are making text messaging more secure for iPhone users. Because now, instead of using SMS, which is awful technology, bad user experience, and fundamentally insecure, all of those things, undeniably true. Like if you've ever sent a video over SMS. It sucks and it should not be allowed. And that was the case they kept making. And Apple basically shut it off because they're like, well, we're Apple, we can. And so the DOJ is coming and saying, no, the fact that you are willingly and obviously making your product worse, not just for other people, but for your users is pretty strong proof that you are not just doing things with your customers in mind.

29:29Yeah. That if you were, what you would have given them is either access to more messaging tools and competition and let other apps like WhatsApp and whoever else access SMS, which is one of the things that this argues should be allowed. Or you have to actually give your customers the best product available to them. And they have, I mean, there's like this, the famous email from Tim Cook now shooting down the idea of putting iMessage on Android because his argument was that it would be worse for Apple than it would be good to, you know, have this. Again, like you just cannot make the argument that that is good for users.

30:03You just can't. So you come back from it and say this is purely monopoly maintenance, to use their term. I think this is going to end up being the one we talk about a lot in the course of this trial personally. Yeah, it's the most indefensible. Apple has never been able to adequately defend this. And they try all the time, right? And every single time, I don't think anyone believes them. I would struggle to think of someone who's like, yeah, Apple has totally got it right. I am totally fine with garbage green bubbles. And if I don't like it, I can go use WhatsApp. Well, the argument against it is that Apple doesn't have to, right?

30:38Like it's Apple's platform. Apple can do what it wants. And this is like what the DOJ is saying is they're like, no, actually, that's not how this works. And we're going to prove it in court. And I assume all of Apple's extremely well-paid lawyers are like, bring it on. Yeah. The people really winning in this case are the lawyers. A lot of billable hours coming their way. It's going to be great. All right, let's blow through these last two. And then we need to take a break because this is going to be a 19-hour long first guest. Alex, you want to explain the smartwatches one? That's the next one, Louis.

31:08Yeah, smartwatches. This one feels easy, actually. This one is very easy. In terms of what the problem is. Yeah, the problem is if you want to have a good smartwatch experience on iOS, you have to have an Apple Watch. There is nothing else. Nothing else competes. And if you want a good smartwatch experience on Android, you would probably want an Apple Watch because it is, in fact, the best smartwatch right now. And you can't do that either because it's going to be a garbage experience on Android. And it's just that. I thought you were about to say you'd found some way to hack an Apple Watch onto Android.

31:38And I was like, let's talk about that for a while. No, that's next episode. But, yeah, it is very straightforward. It's a crummy experience. And I would have loved if they'd also brought in Bluetooth headphones here because I got a lot of feelings. I mean, it did explicitly mention that Bluetooth is bad, which I very much appreciated. That was nice. Because it's like if you want to use a non-Apple smartwatch, you have to use Bluetooth. And it just sort of leaves unsaid that like, well, that's a real bummer. But I appreciated that. And it was, yeah, I mean, it was little things that they brought up like quick responses to messages, which came up like enough times in this complaint that I feel like someone at the DOJ has like a personal issue with not being able to send quick responses.

32:16Someone was using a Pixel watch. with their iPhone and they are pissed. Yeah, right? Like there's some like deputy AG somewhere who's like, I just want to send my text messages. What the hell, Apple? It's very strange. But yeah, I mean, that's essentially the crux of it, right? Lauren, that it's like, if you want a good Apple experience, you have to buy an Apple Watch, which again, once you bought an Apple Watch, brings you even further into the iPhone ecosystem. Right, yeah. It just goes back to Apple wanting you to just use Apple products and making it just disincentivizing you, like mixing and matching between Apple products and other products or just switching all together.

32:56Yeah, which is, I think, a very funny way of looking at exactly the same thing that Apple has always said, right? Like Apple on its face shouldn't disagree with any of this, right, like for Apple to say like, oh yeah, the Apple Watch is better if you also have an iPhone. Like Apple's been making commercials about that for decades. It's that's the whole pitch is that like we integrate the hardware, the software and the services so that it's better. Apple's like, yeah, that's the point. And now the DOJ is saying, you know, actually what you're doing is you're not making it better when those things are together.

33:29You're just making everything else worse. And again, this is where I come back to like, I'm not a lawyer, so don't take any of this seriously. But it seems to me that that is a much harder argument to pull and a string to pull on over the course of a trial. I mean it's just – it's a major philosophical difference and it sounds like – I mean, Lauren, correct me if I'm wrong, but this is going to be down to the judge to decide who's right because both are right. And in the cases of vertical integration, vertical integration always makes things much more smooth and seamless. It also makes things much more difficult if you want to change.

34:05And we can see that in the healthcare industry. We can see it in a lot of industries where they say, yeah, we vertically integrated everything. And repeatedly, they've been like, actually, you did too much. There's like there's some and we don't know what that line is, but it feels like the courts eventually find it. Is that right, Lauren? Yeah, that's basically right. I mean, I think the judge is going to have to weigh like, was there a legitimate business reason that Apple did these things? Or, you know, or like, is the effect of these things taken together because of its dominant position in the market?

34:41Is it too much? And, you know, does it fall into the category of becoming illegal monopolistic behavior? And that's kind of the key difference here between like 2000 when you could only use an iPod on an Apple device. That was because it was fine then because Apple didn't have a huge section of the market for laptops. It didn't have a huge section of any markets, really. And so it was like, OK, cool. You're making new things. You're innovating. And now the difference is that now Apple is huge. Is that right? That's exactly right. And that's why you see Apple saying that they don't think that the U.S.

35:21smartphone market is the relevant market. It's really the global smartphone market. And that's really like the go-to response in pretty much any monopoly lawsuit is to say like this is the wrong market. Look at this much bigger market where we're just like a speck on the map. Does Apple know that the United States Department of Justice is not like a global organization? Is that – no? I believe they're probably aware. Okay, cool. Just checking. In case you're not, Tim, I know you're listening. Just FYI. That's how that works. All right. One more and then we should take a break. Alex, you explain this one because you've been sitting at your desk just like muttering about banks all day.

35:56Yeah. So explain the digital wallets one. This one, Lauren, correct me if I'm wrong. This one was the most surprising one for me that it popped up here. And then the more I read about it, I was like, oh, someone at the banks was in the attorney general's ear. Do either of you ever spend any time thinking about your digital wallet? No. I feel like on the list of things I care about on my phone, I would rank digital wallets so low. Yeah. And I would Chase feel that way or some of the other large banks. I don't know. I think they feel differently. And that was like me reading between the lines on this part of the complaint.

36:33And the complaint is that digital wallets, you can really can't use any other digital wallet on Apple devices because of how the NFC chip works and how their APIs work. Nothing else works on it. So you have to partner with Apple. You have to pay their fees if you want to do transactions. You basically have to engage with them in the same way that you have to engage with the App Store. And crucially, you have to share data that you might not otherwise share. Both the consumer and the banks have to share data that they wouldn't normally share with Apple in order to make all of this work. Well, because Apple's sitting there in the middle.

37:06Right, right. And so the DOJ is basically saying Apple has inserted itself into this process and is refusing to allow anybody else to do that. And that is wrong. And like, I was like, oh, that's that's I never thought about that. But yeah, that's because I don't think about my digital wallet because I'm not Chase Bank. Right. So so and then I was like, yeah, that that actually makes sense. And it's probably not great. Well, and this is like – the only thing I can think is that every fintech company has been in the DOJ's ear over the last year talking to them about this because part of the point that they're making is that you don't think about your digital wallet because your digital wallet sucks because no one else is allowed to compete with Apple, right?

37:48That if you want to build some kind of payment product on the iPhone, you are required to integrate it with the Apple Wallet app. You can't use Tap to Pay. You're just hamstrung in all of these ways that actually go out of their way to promote Apple Wallet specifically. So if you wanted to do something like – and it actually mentioned digital car keys as a version of this that has been kind of under-innovated as a result because there's no good way to do it. And they specifically said they had a bunch of examples. They didn't name names, but they had a bunch of examples of where like app developers and banks and car companies just had to give up on developing certain applications and certain features because it wouldn't work with iOS.

38:24Because Apple wouldn't allow it to use the parts of the phone that it would need to make it all work. And like, ooh, that's not a great look for Apple. That's a really bad look. Yeah. Yeah. You just think of it. And this one feels like probably one of the biggest slam dunks, but also the least interesting one for 99.9 percent of people who don't work at Chase Bank. Yeah. This one has the fewest sort of sympathetic victims. It's like, oh, no, poor Goldman Sachs can't do what it wants on the iPhone. They try to make it about the consumer by saying, you know, you have to share this data. You have to share stuff that you wouldn't normally share.

39:04And that's also true and not great. And I loved just – I know we're going to take a break here in a second. But I did love there was this through line throughout the thing that was like, you know what? Everything Apple says about privacy and security is absolute bullshit. And every single time they are making the privacy and security worse by doing this. And that I'm not entirely sure of, right? Because the digital wallet, a big part of that is they've got the secure enclave on the device and they don't want anybody else interacting with that. And that, from a security standpoint, that makes sense.

39:36Like Apple's argument there makes sense. But at the same time, green bubbles. There's all these other places where they have made it less secure. Right. And I think this is part of what the DOJ is trying to do is that say even if individually these things are sort of gross but not illegal, put them all together and it adds up to something bigger. And they had a bunch of other ones. that there's like a list at the end of just like all the other crappy things Apple has ever done, which I thought was very funny. And it names, let's see, it names FaceTime, third-party iOS web browsers, eSIMs, cloud storage, iCloud, sales channels, and Siri, which is my favorite.

40:17They don't. That's basically like Siri sucks and it's Apple's fault and it's illegal. And I think it should be illegal for Siri to be as bad as it is. So I'm in full support of that. Lauren, before we let you go, you've been talking to folks all day. There was a DOJ briefing right after this went out. There was an Apple briefing right after this went out. What are the vibes like in the hours after this comes out? What are you hearing? Yeah, well, I haven't gotten a chance to catch up with too many people yet. But, you know, coming out of the briefing and, you know, just seeing what's out there right now, I think, you know, developers that have been complaining about this for a while are really excited.

40:56They're happy to see the U.S. finally take on Apple in this really big way. Is this big enough for those people? Like, are they are they I feel like a lot of times folks get mad and they yell and they want big action and then they get small action and they get frustrated. But the little bit that I've heard is folks saying, like, this is the big swing we've been waiting for. Is that what you're hearing, too? I think it's a pretty big case. You know, I think everyone is going to want to see like their their little piece of the complaint that they've had for years in this. But I think it's a pretty sweeping complaint.

41:29So I think that a lot of developers will be happy to see this and welcome it. I think, you know, the problem with cases like this and, you know, every antitrust case in the US is that it takes a long time to see them play out. So, you know, I think it's going to be maybe a little bit disappointing to people who have wanted to see action for a really long time to see that, But, you know, it's going to take a while. You know, the DOJ filed its first Google lawsuit back in 2020. It went to trial in 2023. So this is going to take a long time to resolve. Yeah. All right. Before we let you go here and we go take a break, I'm going to put the over under at 2030.

42:10Is this resolved before or after? Are we going over or are we under? Do we mean like past like exhausting the Supreme Court option and everything? The last pieces of paperwork have been filed. whatever that turns out to mean. 2030. I think over, but it might be close. Okay. Okay. That's good. So I've set the odds correctly. This is good. I feel good about it. All right. All right. We got to take a break. Lauren, thank you so much. We're going to come back and just talk more about this. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from LinkedIn. When you're a small business owner, your business is on your mind 24 seven.

42:51So when you're hiring, you need a partner that works just as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in. LinkedIn makes it easy to post your job for free, share it with your network, and get qualified candidates that you can manage all in one place. LinkedIn's new features can help you write job descriptions and then quickly get your job in front of the right people with deep candidate insights. Either post your job for free or pay to promote. Promoted jobs get three times more qualified applicants. At the end of the day, the most important thing to your small business is the quality of candidates.

43:27And with LinkedIn, you can feel confident that you're getting the best. Based on LinkedIn data, 72 % of SMBs using LinkedIn say that it helps them find high-quality candidates. Find out why more than 2.5 million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash track. That's linkedin.com slash track to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. Support for this show comes from LinkedIn. When you're a small business owner, your business is on your mind 24-7. So when you're hiring, you need a partner that works just as hard as you do.

44:06That hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in. LinkedIn makes it easy to post your job for free, share it with your network, and get qualified candidates that you can manage all in one place. LinkedIn's new features can help you write job descriptions and then quickly get your job in front of the right people with deep candidate insights. Either post your job for free or pay to promote. Promoted jobs get three times more qualified applicants. At the end of the day, the most important thing to your small business is the quality of candidates. And with LinkedIn, you can feel confident that you're getting the best.

44:41Based on LinkedIn data, 72 % of SMBs using LinkedIn say that it helps them find high-quality candidates. Find out why more than 2.5 million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash track. That's linkedin.com slash track to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. Support for this show comes from Zapier. When people talk about AI, they often talk about the future. How will AI affect the economy? What will AI's potential be in the future? Will AI be able to make popular art? But the more important question is, what can AI actually do for your business today?

45:24If you're looking for concrete implementation of AI for your business, you can try Zapier. Zapier says they can help you and your team actually reap the benefits of AI, not just talk about it. With Zapier's AI orchestration platform, you can bring the power of AI to your work. Connect top AI models like ChatGPT and Claude to the apps your team already uses, so you can add AI exactly where you need it. Whether that's automatically enriching leads, coaching your sales rep, resolving IT tickets, or more, you can do it all with Zapier. Zapier is for everyone, tech expert or not. No IT bottlenecks, no complexity.

46:00No AI hype, just results. Teams have already automated over 300 million AI tasks using Zapier. Join the 3.4 million companies already automating with Zapier and transform how you work with Zapier in AI. Get started for free by visiting zapier.com slash verge. That's Z-A-P-I-E-R dot com slash verge.

46:31All right, we're back. and we have a guest our good friend vacation neilai what up who is a whole other guy than normal neilai how you doing buddy i'm good i haven't been on vacation like this since 2019 and of course of course the doj sued apple for being a monopoly while i was in the air to mexico yeah there was no chance something was everything was just going to be chill for a week while you were gone just no chance i assume we're going to do like four or five emergency forecasts over the next eight days or so it's gonna be great yeah tim cook is gonna overthrow the government uh here's max max is just running hey matt don't say hi to the rogstaff issue yeah perfect that's that's that's the energy we're looking for for max so we just talked with lauren we went through kind of the the bones of the complaint we talked about like the five big sections of what's going on uh and honestly i'm just curious for for nilai vibes we have a lot of like legal thinking questions about how this case differs and is similar to some of the old cases we've seen especially the Microsoft one from 25 years ago.

47:32But I'm sure you read the complaint on the plane, like all cool vacation people. What do you make of it? Where's your head so far? So I interviewed Jonathan Cantor on Decoder a few weeks ago, and I asked him about this case, and he was very pagey about it. And my impression of this whole, Jonathan Cantor is the Assistant Attorney General for Antidrust Department of Justice. He was on station at the Polk Conference. my read on it is that they are explicitly trying to link apple to microsoft in the 90s right they're trying to say there was a big bad in the 90s it was microsoft microsoft tried to kill netscape and tried to kill java and we stopped them from doing that and that is what let a bunch of other innovative companies do all including apple including specifically including apple yeah Right.

48:20Microsoft tried to kill QuickTime on Windows. They basically nerfed it. Microsoft probably didn't want to let iTunes be a first class application on Windows. And letting them do that is what let the iPod tick off, right, when they finally ready to bring the iPod to Windows. So they're making that comparison very explicitly in the complaints. But then also, I think just from like a vibes perspective, the attitude of the DOJ is, okay, well, Microsoft itself was built on IBM compatibility, right? Like there was an IBM platform that allowed Microsoft to go on top of it and create Microsoft. we stopped Microsoft from being the big big bad that allowed Apple to be certain guests but it also created the opportunity for Google to exist because Google is a browser company the application layer moved from Wintel to the web because of the web and that allowed Google to exist and then they even go so far as to you know when you hear them make the argument they're like and then Amazon was built on top of Google which is yeah that's a theory sure but the idea that people were searching for products and they landed on amazon and amazon became the best retailer because they had the most selection their point is the natural evolution of technology is for one platform to provide a boost to the next one and for people to move sort of like higher and higher up levels of abstraction and what apple has done is they basically forbidden that from happening so if you think like they keep talking about super apps and the complaint um the comparison that they make i think they were going to make it more loudly um in the windows case they called it middleware which is a deeply funny word and i think they're going to try to use that word again it's still in this complaint a little bit but the idea is like uh java was middleware on windows so you don't have to write to windows you can write with java and you could deploy an app anywhere uh you don't have to write to windows you can write to the web and you can deploy anywhere flash is a type of middleware which that people are going to have a lot of feelings on.

50:19But Apple has basically forbidden all of these things from being actual competitors to running natively on their phone. So like web apps are not a good competitor for real apps on their phone. Even though they were intended to be in the beginning, if you remember, Steve Jobs, fucking sweet, sweet, sweet. Yeah. And I think people have a lot of feelings about that, like on both sides, right? And I think they went away from like web apps and middleware to super apps. And here's my hottest take. I think they're talking about super apps so much because they know Elon Musk wants X to be a super app.

50:50And so if they get Elon Musk to say Apple's a monopoly, like that's good for them. Is it? That's just like, that's two pina coladas, man. That's just me staring at the ocean and being like, why do we keep talking about super apps? It's to get Elon to tweet about it. I love the political theory that getting Elon on your side is the surest way to winning in the courts right now. It sure is. If we think maybe Trump might win, right? Fair. If you think Trump is trying to woo Elon and you think there might be a change of regime at the Department of Justice, you probably want this to appear to be really bipartisan.

51:25You probably want to say the richest man, the most innovative triangle car man in the world. I think it's a good idea because then he can make the super app that all innovative guys, Neuralink and Tunnel and robots want to do. I think that's a better argument politically than web apps could be as powerful as native apps, which is what I believe. But I don't – I'm not even – Like that's probably part of the reason that the digital wallet stuff is in here. It's because it is bipartisan. Like the banks want to get rid of that. They want to be able to put their own wallets on the phone. And now the DOJ is saying, yeah, we want you to do that too.

52:10Yeah. Also, just in case you're wondering, Elon Musk has tweeted twice today about the woke mind virus and zero times about Apple and the GOJ. So not great so far. Yeah. Look, the man does not love a government regulator. It's not his favorite. But I'm just saying, like, if you can use some vocabulary that is more popular over there in crazy town, you're better off than talking about middleware or whatever nonsense they were going to talk about before. i also think yeah there are i think apple's response to this is like fair they're like this is our business model we make products that work really well together i'm sorry if jamie diamond and elon musk are mad at us like we stand between you and the you know capricious avaricious banks look that's a pretty good argument i i don't yeah i'm not sitting here being like man i wish i could deal with my bank wonderfully i but i i do think there's like a political coalition that they're trying to make out of it.

53:07Yeah. Well, we were talking a little bit about this with Lauren in the last segment, but the fact that what Apple is being accused of is the same thing that Apple has always said that it does, which is build hardware, software, and services that work best together. And so the argument that the Apple Watch is the best way to use a smartwatch with an iPhone, like every single person at Apple Park is like, yep, that's right. And it's just a question. And I feel like this to me reminds me a little bit of like when I was at the Google antitrust trial and they were arguing about basically Google's bigness and why Google has so much market share.

53:42And Google was like, no, it's because we're very good and we make good products. And the government was like, well, no. and it just like that proving the opposite of that point seems very difficult to me in a way that like the doj set itself up with this really interesting narrative that kind of starts at the iphone isn't very good and ends at monopoly and i think you can sort of get there but it just seems to me that like legally speaking jump like proving the case from hoop to hoop there seems very complicated yeah i don't know that they start with the iphone isn't very good i think they're more or less like the iPhone's great and we have all of this evidence that Apple actually doesn't feel any competitive pressure on the iPhone.

54:29Right. But I think part of that is Apple saying the iPhone is not as good as it could be. That what they're saying is your experience would be better if there was more competitive, if there was more competition in this space. Right. So we don't have all the evidence. It sounds like there's just like oceans of Apple discovery, right? That exists. Yeah. It's going to be good. uh and but even in this complaint there's the marketing manager for the iphone saying we made the phone too good like the features are good enough already we didn't have to put more expense into the phone we made the phone too good we should especially if the features are going to be expensive i think the quote is like we could challenge expensive features going to the consumer phone right because like it would be good enough today what we did a while ago yeah Right.

55:13Like we're making things better for no reason. That's bad. Right. What you want is Apple saying Samsung is on our ass. Like Lenovo is on our ass. Whoever, like Motorola. Right. Yeah. And we should make the phone as good as possible to win market share. Otherwise, people will switch. And the argument that the DOJ is making, again, comes back to just like, where is the application layer? because the application layer moves up one level, the super apps or the web, instantly the iPhone gets disintermediated and they have to compete. And this is, by the way, exactly what happened through Windows. We just had Dylan Fiedel at South by Southwest with us talking about Figma.

55:53And he was like, the best way to deploy applications to desktop computers today is the web. Yep. Right? No one writes native Windows binaries unless you're writing games or you need some other very specific access to the hardware, which some people do. I'm not saying it's completely dead. But there's a reason that like Windows apps aren't the hotness. Desktop apps all, right? Like the reason Windows apps aren't the hotness, web apps all. And they all live in the cloud. And some of them have native access. Like Big Windows, a lot of cool stuff in WebAssembly. Yeah, I mean, Electron is like the new middleware, right?

56:25Like it is a thing that lets you run, write one app that runs lots and lots of places. And people can have a lot of feelings about Electron. and a lot of like, Electron destroys your computer and like they try to make it better. But all that means is in particular for Apple, when the application layer moved to the web, they were able to ship the iMac and take market share away from Windows. And that is, right? That created the opportunity for Apple to exist. And so if the DOJ is basically saying, look, Apple is restricting the natural evolution of technology and they're not letting the application layer move to the super app or the web or wherever, AI, wherever it might go.

57:04And that means the next generation of computers is not forming. And here's the evidence, which is Apple is artificially keeping the price of the phone high and they're not trying very hard. And here's some quotes in the complaint where they're explicitly not trying very hard. They got to prove all this. This is a complaint. But I see the argument because it is exactly the argument that allowed the iMac to exist. Well, and to that point, like Apple understands better than anybody the consequences of this because Apple exists because of those consequences, right? I think basically the Microsoft antitrust trial led to the success of the iPod is like a slightly wild take.

57:42I think that's going too far. I think it led to the success of the web, which allowed the iNexes. Yeah, I think that's a better argument. But the complaint says the iPod did it. Well, it's going – the complaints is the iPod because they wanted to connect QuickTime where they had all these quotes from Apple executives talking about QuickTime and how it was hindered on Windows. So like they had – they wanted to stay in theme and reuse Apple quotes to be like, yeah, suck it, Apple. Right. And all those people are like rich or gone. Yeah. It doesn't matter. But that thing, like I just – we've talked enough about – like in many ways, the complaint reads like a broadcast episode.

58:22It kind of does. It's like fascinating to me. It's like bringing bubbles and like NFC access. It's very wonky. Like I, you know, I, I did just spend an hour with Cantor on a stage. Like the dude is a nerd. We, he, I think he gets it in a way that, you know, I think it's, it's very tempting to say, like, I spent some time with him recently. I think he gets it. I think the point he's trying to make is. like over and over again what happens in technology is the application layer moves up one level of abstraction. I'll give you an example that's totally unrelated this is more but I'll give you one more example that's totally unrelated to this Jensen Wong from NVIDIA he just on stage said I don't think people are going to have to know how to code anymore because it will just tell the AI what to do and the AI will generate applications for them that's a huge step up in levels of abstraction it's massively inefficient to say I will no longer know how to program a computer I will tell a data center full of NVIDIA GPUs to write programs for another computer.

59:31Like, massively inefficient. But that's what everyone believes in. And I think if you believe that that is the arc of technology, then it's hard to look at the iPhone and say, well, where are the really interesting Electron-ish apps? Where are the really interesting super apps in this country? We have had our coverage of super apps are coming on the board for five years. Like ever since anybody woke up and saw WeChat in China and said, oh, look, the Chinese market, there's a lot of switching between phones. It's a more vibrant market over there in smartphones because this one app is actually the operating system.

1:00:10Why doesn't that kind of thing happen? It's not that Google doesn't want that to exist. It's not that Meta wouldn't do that tomorrow with Facebook. It's that Apple is basically for the king. I mean, that's functionally what Facebook has been trying to do for a decade now is build more and more of that stuff in. And ironically, on the web, for a long time, it worked really well. And then and this is we were talking about the super app thing and whether it's like a function of the way Apple works or just a genuine cultural difference. And this hadn't occurred to me until now, but I think maybe the best argument you could make for why it's just a cultural difference is that everybody hated when Facebook got really cluttered, like ran away from the app.

1:00:46and and facebook like pretty nakedly and loudly like tried to learn from wechat and just pull more and more of that in and it got messy and it got weird and it got complicated and then you know politics happened and people started to like flee facebook but still people use marketplace and groups and like facebook is in a very real way a super app it is the closest thing we have in the united states to a super app yeah but it's not close enough it's not no and it can't do it on mobile right it's not i do everything with that so i can switch to a samsung phone or whatever kind of other phone a pixel and basically recreate my experience and the point is if you could if you can switch your services or you can switch your application environment easily you'll be very likely to switch your hardware yeah and the there's a line in the complaint that another apple quote this is the one that led me to believe there's a mountain of evidence in this case um where it's an email from an unnamed apple executive who says if we let this cloud stuff happen anyone can just buy a 25 android and have a great experience he said bucks and spelled bucks with an x which i hate so much uh and i believe he said that that's the barbarians at the gate yeah yeah it's pretty good right and that's like apple like openly being afraid of Android in that way, not because it's better, but because it's cheaper and saying we have to make sure it's not a good experience over there.

1:02:12Not by making our phone great, but by making sure that application developers can't do things over there that can be here, or making sure that if they do things over here, it's costly. Like cloud gaming, right? I think that was the example there. If we allow cloud gaming, anyone can buy a cheap Android phone and have a great experience because they'll just be cloud gaming. That's bad. I can't stress enough how bad that is. Again, I'll come back to Figma just because we had Dylan on the phone recently. I know a lot of designers who have given up their MacBooks because they spend all day using Figma on a Chromebook.

1:02:45And then they allocate their dollars elsewhere. That's fascinating. It's just a fascinating turn of events that has happened in that market. It's crazy that nothing has gotten in between. going to find. Now, just for the sake of the argument, I will make all of Apple's arguments without having really read their responses, because again, I'm in a big soup game. They are what you think they are, I'll tell you that. They did a background briefing with a bunch of reporters and have put out a couple of statements and nothing in it will remotely surprise you. None of it. Yeah, I do love that the briefing was on background, by the way.

1:03:17We're mad, said no one. Cool. Anyhow, I'm guessing they're like, the security is really important these things are in pockets all the time um we crap uh integration of hardware software and services that no one else does like that's actually the business not this other stuff that is alarmingly close yeah sure right yeah but we've covered this company for a long time and then i'm wondering if they brought up battery life because that that's the one to me that's like uh our producer liam is just at my house and we were on a google meet with my 2015 iMac. And he was like, what's that noise? And I was like, that's the iMac.

1:03:56That's the fans from the iMac trying to run this web app right now. And he was like, I thought that was your furnace. It was your 2015 iMac. There are a lot of arguments, especially on a mobile phone, power constraints, ball device, blah, blah, blah, network constraint, where you want to be in tight control of what an application can do. I totally buy it. I don't think those arguments are wrong. I just think Apple probably, ever since Tim Cook said services revenue in a call five years ago, has been actively protecting the business as opposed to growing it. And I think there's a bunch of evidence to that effect.

1:04:38So Apple didn't mention battery life on super apps instead, all on background again. So we don't know who actually said any of this. Maybe it wasn't even Apple. Maybe it was orange. But they said that super apps exist already and that anything they do is for privacy and security reasons, which is the big theme. What two countries did they call up super apps existing in? China and India. Yep. WeChat and Tata. Right. so uh two countries that regulate the shit out of apple yep i just want to be blunt like china basically is like you're gonna give our user data to the state and china and apple's like cool uh china from uh john gruber i think reported this uh china is the one that said you're gonna do rcs and apple finally caved wow right for bad reasons right i think china wants apple to move to rcs so people will stop using an encrypted i-trap or i-method yeah that's bad but they're going to do it uh india also extraordinarily uh interested in regulating apple also uh i don't know if you saw the pictures of rihanna performing at a wedding in india lately uh lakesh ambani's son's wedding lakesh ambani owns reliance geo the largest carrier in india he's a major benefactor of the government and when the wireless carrier in india says we want to make sure people can switch easily apple gives up right and like that's a big thing my favorite fact about the indian smartphone market is there like 10 phone launches a week or some insane number like that because the dream are switching people are switching so hard all over the place because the application layer the network layer is actually to some extent on reliance like reliance via the network is actually the application layer there which is utterly fascinating so i would just point out like apple saying it super rapidly exists and not mentioning that in the two countries that regulates Apple the hardest in various ways.

1:06:30It's pretty funny. And again, it's, I don't know, it appears to be on background. So we don't even know. Someone whispered this. Yeah. In a meeting. And no one was allowed to ask that person, who knows? I fell asleep and I woke up and had these arguments in my head. And I knew it in my head, yeah. Yeah. Neil, why do you think they didn't talk about the web more in this complaint? The thing that surprised me the most was that all of the arguments that we've been talking about on the Vergecast for months now about what the open web could be. Like, I just imagine Dieter Bone reading this and like screaming about progressive web apps.

1:07:04And he's like, this solves all problems. The Palm Pre knew it. Everything would have been great. But the open web wasn't really a thing. Like they didn't talk about web browsers except sort of obliquely. There were not big discussions about what web apps could do to make these things better. Like why, what's your read on why that was not part of this complaint? One, I texted Dieter today and I said, I miss you. The United States government says web apps are important. He was just like, go on vacation. Stop this. He texted you back from messages.google.com, the web app. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, good call out there.

1:07:42Again, I think this is a political situation. I think that stuff is in there. I know for a fact the DOJ has been paying a lot of attention to Apple's compliance to the DMA in Europe. in their move to disallow web apps and then bring them back because the irregularity creeps out. By the way, that web app thing, I'm not a crypto person, but there was a huge freak out because there are crypto apps that are web apps that store the data locally. And Apple was going to wipe out people's wallets by disallowing web apps because they were just going to get rid of the functionality. Yeah, literally the local data on their phone that was stored there with their money would have just been gone.

1:08:26Insane. Which is, I mean, hilarious. I know the DOJ has been paying a lot of attention to everything there. I really think this comes down to who is the audience for this, for this complaint. I was talking to Sarah John about it. This complaint is a press release. It's fundamentally, it's written like a press release. It's a story. It begins with like Steve Jobs in Media Red, like doing a thing. You know, it's like, it's a story. It starts with a Kindle ad. Like truly, what a win for the Kindle today. The Kindle is the bastion of openness. Yeah, and I think telling people the web apps are going to do it on a phone.

1:09:05It's like people know what websites look like on a phone. We have the only good ones. The only good one. Yeah, that is fair. All the rest of them are trying to mug you in a dark alley. I think they had to move on and say like there's a next generation of products that's being held back. By the way, Elon Musk, proprietor of Triangle Cars, wants to build one right now, doesn't he? And I think that's a much better story. It's a story about the future, and it's a story about the past. But I think fundamentally, the recent history of technology suggests the web is actually the best application. Yeah.

1:09:40It distributes it reliably, and it has, in fact, taken over on desktop. Like in a real way, a lot of the native apps that you think you're using on a Mac or PC are in fact Electron. They're just wrappers around web apps. I've been covering browsers more in the last 12 months than I have in like the previous decade. Because again, the layer of applications is moving. And all these browsers are starting to realize like, oh, your operating system isn't actually the place that can do all the stuff for you online. It's your browser. So we're going to give you more cross-platform tools. we're going to rethink the way extensions work.

1:10:16Arc is one of a bunch of browsers doing a bunch of interesting stuff with AI. And so that's the same sort of layer of app abstraction that you're talking about. And it's making browsers, at least on desktops, really interesting and important again. It's all about Microsoft Edge. Well, and even again, Microsoft now is like, Edge is a crucially important thing to Microsoft in a way that like, remember the last time browsers were important to Microsoft? well that's for 2040 2040 Microsoft Edge is going to be a horrible monopoly just you wait that's a good take I appreciate that I mean this is just a circle of life right yeah the thing I would say is like a bunch of these middleware did turn out to be garbage like Java did not turn out to be an excellent application environment and Flash I think someone famously was a piece of crap But if you don't allow the things to take hold in the market, then you are going to be stuck with one vendor kind of controlling everything.

1:11:18And I wonder how much of a shotgun approach that's complaining. Again, it's everything. It's iMessage. It's applications. It's super apps. It's wallets. It's smartwatch. It's everything. And I wonder how much of this is like, let's put it out there so people grab onto and then follow up on that one. Yeah. How much of the case, when it finally goes, is just going to be spicy Apple quotes and then being like, look how spicy this is. Destroy them. Yeah. I think what we've learned from all of these recently is there's nothing more fun than putting a powerful executive on a stand and just reading their email to them.

1:11:57You read this email. They're not certain. They're like, I don't recall. That's pretty good. Like, I'll watch that. We have seen a lot of that. The thing I warn everybody is that my Microsoft case in the 90s took a decade, right? It was like three or four years in trial and three or four years of appeal. Then I got kicked back. Then there was a settlement. At one point, I have this very distinct memory of standing in the Target in Racine, Wisconsin. It's like a child, teenager, reading the Newsweek that was describing how Microsoft had been split up into something called AppsCo and OSCo. Yep. because they were going to split windows from the application business.

1:12:37I don't know why this happened in a target and we're seeing it. I mean, I know I was going to see Wisconsin once I grew up, but I don't know why this memory is specific to standing in a target reading Newsweek print, but it is. That's what I got for you. I can't remember anyone's name. I remember that. That's who I am. Yeah, there you go. And like it got all the way to the DOJ is going to break up Microsoft. It came all the way back down and that took 10 years. And so I think this is a decade, But this is a gravitational well that will last a decade. Like the entire industry is going to bend around this case for a decade.

1:13:09Yeah, we gave Lauren the over under of 2030. And for this to be like fully all the way done and dusted. And she sort of gently took the over. It sounds like you're like hard over on 2030. Yeah, I mean, unless. I think the only difference to me in my mind is the DMA exists in the EU now and Apple is making these changes anyway and so it's going to collect some data about how much money it can make in the meantime and what that would be like here and so there's a possibility that breaks this case and makes it go shorter but they're mad. This is a company that is idealistically, ideologically upset at the notion but we can't do whatever it wants and I get it.

1:13:55I don't like being told what to do. I don't know if anyone has ever noticed but I think in this case It's like, again, to some extent, this complaint reads like a Vergecast. It's like, why did it take so long for Apple to allow gamers to bring the app on their iPhone? Oh, because they want to perfect the app store. Right. It's as simple as that. Yeah. So one more thing, and then we should let you go because you have many more pina coladas to drink. So many. How do you feel like - I'm never coming home. That's good. Mexico Neelai is going to be a whole new addition to the Vergecast. I love this.

1:14:27uh talk to me about how you feel about this like as a as a lawyer who would have to argue this case because one of the things alex and i've been arguing about all day is my feeling is that one of the big things that happened in the microsoft case was that you had netscape which was this like one party that had been like viciously loudly wronged and it actually ended up not being the most important part of that case but it was like it was a very helpful victim that you could argue this is the bad thing that was done to someone and it crushed them. And maybe it's just too early to know the answer to this question, but my argument has been that there isn't a version of that in this complaint.

1:15:04Alex's response, which I think is fair, is that basically the victim in this is us, the people who use these devices. But if you were a lawyer standing up in front of people trying to argue this case, how does it feel to you from seeing the complaint in terms of just like handicapping your chances of being able to prove this in court? I wish I knew what evidence they were sitting on. What I would say is Natscape was a very convenient victim because it was the web. It represented the thing that people liked. Here's the exciting new thing. Like, why are you getting out of the internet? To use this.

1:15:43And Microsoft wants to crush it and own it. And that's a good story to tell. I think in this case, it's much more like, look at Apple looking at any threats to its business and sending emails saying we can't let that happen. Look at Apple saying we cannot allow people to buy cheaper things. We've talked a lot about theories of antitrust law on this show and Lena Kahn trying to change them from the consumer welfare standard to blah, all this stuff. and one thing that's really notable about this complaint is there's no esoteric new antitrust new brand using it's Apple kept prices high that's the argument by not allowing these new application models to take hold Apple gets to keep the pricey often high and I think that actually that's what I would focus on you don't need this the Gmail app runs everywhere why doesn't Xbox run everywhere well it's because apple won't let it like what are the number of things we can see in this industry that basically don't happen because apple won't let that happen on the iphone like burlap and blah blah blah there's a lot and i i think the funny thing is all those victims are also companies the doj is suing like like google is like writing that list but they're a villain meta is in that list they're a villain so i think it's going to be much more about painting apple as a villain rather than kind of find evicting.

1:17:13That's good. I like it. All right, Nealai, go have vacation. I will see you presumably like Monday morning when something else insane happens. The three of us will be back in here doing this. If I come back, just get ready for the tan. Get ready for this pale human being to be gone and placed by a happy, healthy, extremely, extremely hammered. We'd love it. Thanks, buddy. We'll see you All right, we got to take a break and then we're going to come back and Alex and I are going to do an actual lightning round for once. Because holy God, have we been talking a long time. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from 1Password.

1:17:53Think for just a moment about the Herculean tasks that your IT security department has to handle. There's keeping identities, devices and applications safe. Then there's dealing with shadow IT, securely onboarding and offboarding employees. Oh, also there's meeting compliance goals. The point is, it's a lot. If you want to help lighten that load, you can try Trileka by 1Password. Trileka by 1Password provides a complete solution for SaaS access governance, and it's just one of the ways that extended access management helps teams strengthen compliance and security. 1Password's award-winning password manager is trusted by millions of users in over 150 ,000 businesses from IBM to Slack.

1:18:35Plus, 1Password is ISO 27001 certified with regular third-party audits and the industry's largest bug bounty. Take the first step to better security for your team by securing credentials and protecting every application, even unmanaged shadow IT. Learn more at 1Password.com slash VergeCast. That's the number one password dot com slash VergeCast. Support for the show comes from Framer. Are you still jumping between a host of different tools just to update your website? Framer unifies design, CMS, and publishing on one canvas. No handoff, no hassle. Everything you need to design and publish in one place.

1:19:22Framer already built the fastest way to publish beautiful, production-ready websites, and it's now redefining how we design for the web. With the recent launch of Design Pages, a free canvas-based design tool, Framer is more than a site builder. It's a true all-in-one design platform from social assets to campaign visuals to vectors and icons all the way to a live site. Framer is where ideas go live start to finish. Ready to design, iterate, and publish all-in-one tool? Start creating for free at framer.com slash design and use code verge for a free month of Framer Pro. That's framer.com slash design and use promo code VERGE.

1:20:05Framer.com slash design. Promo code VERGE. Rules and restrictions may apply. Support for this show comes from Figma. Figma is the collaborative design platform where teams come together to turn ideas into the world's best digital apps, websites, and experiences. And now, there's a faster way to bring those ideas to life. Introducing Figma Make, an AI-powered prompt-to-code tool that helps you turn ideas into something real, fast. Figma Make is a different kind of vibe coding tool. With just a few prompts, you can turn any idea into a code-backed prototype or app that anyone can explore, iterate on, and share.

1:20:47And it's all connected to Figma, so you can start from scratch or from your design file. Figma Make is made for designers, product managers, and builders who want to move fast and explore more ideas. Try it now and see how quickly you can make your ideas real with Figma make. Just go to Figma.com slash Vergecast. That's F-I-G-M-A dot com slash Vergecast.

1:21:18All right, we're back. We're going to do an actual lightning round because Neelai's not here. So we can do this quickly as we like to do from time to time. Nilay, by the way, if you see him on the beach somewhere in Mexico, pour him a tequila shot. He'll like that very much. Yes. All right. Let's do – we're going to do two things each because there's been a lot of little news. So let's just bounce through some of it and then we'll get out of here. You go first. What do you got? All right. First up, YouTube is bringing their multi-view that they do for sports and stuff. They're bringing it to the iPad and iOS, which is very exciting.

1:21:49Oh, wait. Really? Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. I think one of the hot takes I've developed recently is that split screen is a thing that should exist in every app on every device for everything all the time. Like the more I use it on like the Samsung phones or the pixels where they're getting better at sort of letting you drag apps up and down. It's just great. And all the arguments are like, oh, the screen's too small. No, screw that. My phone's enormous. Let me look at two apps. Yeah. They aren't the only ones doing multi-view. The other Multiview news this week was from Peacock, which is going to be doing Multiview up to four streams for the Olympics.

1:22:22And then they are planning to have that stick around for sports, maybe even like scripted content. So you can watch below deck on like four streams at once if you wanted to, theoretically. And that's – I wouldn't want to. So there's this sports podcast I listen to. Shout out to the Bill Simmons podcast. And he always talks about being able to watch basketball on one screen and movies on another screen. And his argument is essentially if he like looks over at the movie and it's a good part, he'll flip the volume to that and just like watch it for a few minutes or if the game goes to commercials.

1:22:56And I used to think that was ridiculous. And now every single time he mentions it, I'm like, God, that sounds awesome. Like one thing hits commercials, you just flip to the other one. go back and forth. You're like, oh, well, I don't care about the next five minutes of this. I'm going to watch 10 minutes of The Godfather. Like, that rules. Yeah, the cool dads in the 90s, they just did that. They just had, like, picture in picture. And for some reason, computers were like, we can do that, but we're not gonna. Or the back button on a TV remote. A plus choice. Yeah, YouTube TV should have this, but they should have it for everything.

1:23:25Yeah. I should just be able to have four screens of whatever the hell I want to watch at any time. And Peacock, important, it's going to work on everywhere. everywhere so it's not just good it's going to work on the apps it's going to work in the smart tv like they're rolling it out across the board can i say i love that you're a peacock convert i i'm a oh we should disclose here now um nbc universal which is a division of comcast is a minority investor in vox media uh nilai will happily come home from mexico and tell you that he executive produced a show for netflix called the future of it's very good everybody should watch it uh alex loves peacock now apparently i have always loved peacock um you think netflix is gonna die which is weird um it's on a 40 that's probably good that's enough that's enough i didn't say 90 like it's gonna die eventually everything does it's beautiful um all right my first one is which one of these do i want to do first uh let's talk about beeper so we mentioned beeper a few minutes ago as one of the apps that has actually become like embroiled in this whole apple antitrust saga uh gave up on the idea of trying to replace iMessage which good idea uh someday you might be able to, but that's a very long time from now.

1:24:29And it's just back to building like a kick-ass cross-platform messaging app, which rules. They just rolled out a new app for Android in, I think it's in public beta now. It's really good. Is it? It's like the thing that they got back to, which I appreciate, is they're like, what if we just took Signal and WhatsApp and your Instagram DMs and LinkedIn and X, I think still works even though that API has been weird. I could be wrong. I'm not sure. I haven't used X in a long time, so don't believe anything I say about X. But basically all the messages you get and just sort of put them all into one organizable inbox that makes sense, which with or without SMS and iMessage, terrifically useful service.

1:25:07Yeah, I want that. And the app has always been like a little funky at times. Like it's sort of just built on a series of elaborate hacks. Yeah. But they're getting very good at it now. And the new app is really nice. So if you use Beeper and are on Android, it rules and it is the rare app that is way better on Android. than on iOS. So for all the Android using Verge staffers and Vergecast listeners, this is a victory for you. Don't worry. I'm going to wait until 2030. Maybe 2032, it sounds like. And I'll have this app too. There you go. Dude, the messaging app is about to get, or the messaging app world in general is about to get real weird.

1:25:42Yeah. WhatsApp is doing the thing where it's interoperating. The EU is forcing everybody to interoperate. It's going to get very strange, but I think in mostly really good ways. You're going to be able to just get all your messages all the places, which is how this should have worked forever. So the 2002 is going to come back. But instead of like Atium and whatever the Windows version of that was called, it started with a T. Trillion. Trillion. There was that. There was also Pigeon. Oh, yeah. Pigeon. Yeah. It's good. Inject all those apps back into my vans. Just right into your vans. All right.

1:26:11What's your second one? Okay. My second one is Allison wrote a really cute piece this week and it just felt appropriate. We talked so much about super apps. I kind of think Sago Mini is like a super app, but for babies. Now we're talking. Tell me so much more. Well, you know, she was like, she compared it to like Blippi, but not Blippi. She was just like, it gives a bunch of little games that kids can play. It's all in one place. They're all like good games for small children, for babies. Because she has a baby. Two years of babies, right? You said super apt for babies. And I started imagining like my 15 month old son running around being like, I got Good Night Moon in here.

1:26:53I got a bunch of trucks in here. Ah, sick. Honey and a Cheerios. Got that in here. It's like I can message my mom. Yeah, yeah. The rules. I'm into this. It's not quite there yet. I don't know if that's their – That's 2.0. Yeah. I don't know if that's actually their ambitions. New feature Cheerios. It's a lot of structured games. And it's for really small children instead of – because like if you go on YouTube, if you go to the app store and you try to find games for babies, you will have a time oh it's a mess yeah it's a total mess and i will say this is i'm glad you brought this up because we get a surprising amount of emails and calls to the hotline basically all asking variations of the same question which is just like what do i do with my kid on screens and devices and computers because we're like at this point where i when kids are like i don't know eight you have to start having like a really real series of complicated conversations about like what it means to use the internet younger than that it's just like i'm just gonna plant you in front of something and something's gonna happen but this question of like is youtube kids a safe place to be is increasingly kind of fraught because there's all kinds of weird stuff on youtube kids and like there's been this stuff recently with ai generated videos going in front of kids that is spooking a lot of people i think for totally good reasons so there's this sense of like what is the right call here and we're having all these complicated discussions about screen time and what it means to be put in front of these devices.

1:28:21And so for stuff like this that's just like cool, silly, low stakes, fun stuff, like there's so little of that in the world right now. Honestly, I wish I'd known about this before all of this, because when I saw my godson recently, I was like, I don't know what to do. And I pulled up one of those videos where the squirrel eats nuts that's supposed to distract cats. And I was like, does this work for a six-year-old? It doesn't. I bet it doesn't. I will say I found an hour-long video that's just people feeding red pandas. And you know who that super worked for is both me and my son. We sat like wrapped in front of that thing for an entire hour.

1:28:59You watch those animals eat and you're like, look at them go. Yeah. That's great. I want to do that. It was spectacular. It was so nice. I have no notes. My son's also very into trains right now. So we just watch a lot of videos. I just want to say there is a man on the internet who just makes hour-long videos of trans. Yeah. And it just cuts from train to train. And he travels the world and does all the trans. His name is Mike something. And I love him. You are my favorite. Let's be friends. I love a train guy. I love a train guy. And they all have like 10 million views, which is so funny. Yeah.

1:29:34It's great. All right. My second one is that I saw the humane pin this morning. This is the reason I'm in New York. What? So the Humane pin is coming out someday. We waited until now. Yeah, we have two to three more hours of just to do. Get ready. A, Humane put out a video yesterday, Wednesday, that I think was the single most useful piece of content Humane has ever published. Okay. It's like almost 20 minutes long, and they're basically just like, here is what the AI pin is, here's what it does, and here's how it works. Okay. Very helpful. And then I got to go see it this morning, and talked to Imran and Bethany, the co-founders of the company, spent like 90 minutes just like goofing around with the thing.

1:30:17I still have lots of questions. We're going to get to review it at some point. I'm very excited about it, but I actually got to like hold the thing in my hand and use it. And I will say I have said a lot of mean things about the AI pin on this podcast. It's a very cool piece of technology. Is it a good product that is worth the money? I don't know. It still feels like probably not, but like they made the thing. Like it works. I want to point out, I'm now a Peacock fan and you're now oh my god what have we become who are we like and Nelai hits for speech like this is where we are this is life now but no I'm actually very excited about it because we're in this phase now where we're gonna get the Humane AI pin and then I think sometime like in weeks not months later we're gonna get the Rabbit R1 and then there's also this company Brilliant Labs which makes the frame glasses and I was talking to their CEO yesterday they're about to ship in April and so we're getting this first run of like real honest to god ai gadgets yes and it's gonna be really interesting and we're like the big question is basically like are any of these better than a smartphone do i need this if i have a smartphone shouldn't these have just been smartphone apps like super fun interesting questions like what does a smartphone mean in my life is i think like a big question of 2024 for a lot of people uh it certainly has been for me so far and like i'm just very excited to try all of these gadgets and just playing with the pin it was like okay i have big questions about how this fits into my life and whether seven hundred dollars and a pretty expensive monthly subscription is a pretty steep price tag that this thing meets tbd but like how did it feel the thing works it feels really good does it just from like a pure like they made a gadget thing it just feels good it's got a charging case that feels like one of those sort of worry stones and has a really nice hinge like it's it's made by people who love hardware in a way that i very much appreciate did they make a good product i don't know but boy did they make a cool thing that i'm like the laser projector i am so spectacularly unconvinced by yeah but it's kind of fun to like do the thing and you like tip your hand forward to scroll down and it's like deeply silly but it was kind of fun i loved watching you do this just now that's literally what you do you hold it up and it's like kind of right at this level uh-huh and then if you want to scroll down you literally just tilt your hand towards you and if you want to scroll up you tilt your hand away like a segue and then you click to click yes it's a it's a hand segue it's a virtual segue for your palm yeah of course that's how they actually pitched it to everyone it's perfect but yeah i i suspect if if humane is right uh about when it's gonna ship that should happen very soon they've been saying like end of march it was supposed to be earlier in march they've been saying end of March, I think into April potentially.

1:33:04So like all of this is happening and we've been talking about these gadgets for months and we're actually going to get to like use them in the world. And I'm very excited about it. I am so excited for you. Yeah. It's going to be good stuff. I'm so excited. My goal is for my review of the AI pin to be longer than Neelai's 8 ,500 word review of the Vision Pro. I'm going to put a word count like maximum on me. Just close the Google Doc at 2 ,500 words. That feels right. Yeah. All right. We have gone on way too long. We've had a great time. As we all want to do. This has been very fun. Yeah, thank you for doing this.

1:33:33Thanks to Lauren for being here. Neelai for joining from the beach. We are also going to be talking so much about this. Like, I think it's going to be a weird case because it's going to ebb and flow pretty aggressively. Like, I think my guess would be that we're going to have a bunch more news in the next few days as reactions start to come in and we start to get more reporting on what people are thinking and where some of this evidence comes from and who are the other companies that are being kind of obliquely referred to in the complaint. big lull, like big lull. And then we're going to get discovery and, and like, it's going to pop off.

1:34:07When discovery happens for our listeners, that's when you get all the good gossip. It's going to be, it's going to be wild. And then someday between now and like 2064, this might actually go to trial. There'll be a trial, maybe a consent decree. I love a consent decree. I do actually. I love a consent decree. Who doesn't love a consent decree? We should have been the flagship podcast of consent decrees. No, it's performance phones. which is that's what they call the iPhone. They say the iPhone is a performance smartphone. It's not a regular smartphone. It's a cool smartphone. It's a cool smartphone.

1:34:39It's got race car stripes. All right. We got to get out of here. There's tons of good stuff on TheVerge.com. Our whole team has done an awesome job covering the antitrust stuff today. We have an amazing story stream with all the stuff from the presser and the complaint and all kinds of stuff. So keep it locked there. There's still lots more to come. We will be back next Tuesday, next Friday forever and ever. Yeah. It's gonna be good times. We'll see you then. That's the Vergecast. Rock and roll. Bye.

1:35:08And that's it for the Vergecast this week. Hey, we'd love to hear from you. Give us a call at 866-VERGE-11. The Vergecast is a production of the Verge and Vox Media Podcast Network. Our show is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James. That's it. We'll see you next week.

1:35:29Support for this show comes from Atlassian. Wish projects could manage themselves? With Jira AI-powered project management software, keeping things organized and on track is a snap. AI agents manage the busy work, handling details that let your team focus on the work that matters. Now, that's a team changer. Visit atlassian.com slash Jira to learn more. That's A-T-L-A-S-S-I-A-N.com slash J-I-R-A. Atlassian.com slash Jira.

1:36:05Support for this show comes from Volkswagen. As the U.S. gets ready to host soccer's biggest moment on a worldwide stage, Volkswagen is helping people discover new turfs and new ways to play the beautiful game right here in the U.S. From deaf and power wheelchair soccer to beach and futsal, Volkswagen is actively supporting all the communities and teams within the U.S. soccer ecosystem. They're supporting talent from across the U.S. soccer extended national teams and are focused on helping to give these less widely known forms of soccer a platform moving forward. From the pitch to the sand and everything in between, welcome to our turf.