Bring back the iBook, you cowards

26:06And Microsoft obviously sold itself out trying to win that battle to the point where there was a massive antitrust case and they were like essentially forced to lose. Inside of that, Netscape got all distracted. There was a great cover of Wired Magazine called the Firefox Revolt because Netscape got too bloated and Firefox was the winner for a minute. And then out of that came Chrome, right? That's a lot. Somewhere in there, Apple decided to do Safari as well. Sure. By the way, the deal that saved Apple in the 90s, that was Microsoft pumping money into Apple. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates made that deal.

26:41There's another very famous cover of Time Magazine that's a photo of Steve Jobs kneeling on a stage at rehearsal for Macworld. And it's just a quote that just says, thank you, Bill. Oh, wow. Crazy. This is crazy stuff. like this is mainstream news, right? That Apple and Microsoft are making a deal where Internet Explorer will be the default browser on the iMac and that's going to save Apple. But we knew the stakes of the browser battle back then. Like they were mainstream business and cultural stakes. You're in the grocery store and you see a picture of Steve Jobs on stage, black and white, and it says, thank you, Bill.

27:15Like that's the level of cultural consciousness the browser wars had back then. We're doing it again now. I mean, I think your piece, like it's a lot of people talking about what the browser represents, but it's the only app platform that you can deploy in a world where you think AI is this important because it doesn't mean you have to run into the iPhone. Right. Because you cannot make this product on the iPhone. You can only make it on desktop because there's not as many restrictions on desktop. Well, and it means it's a shortcut into every business deal you would otherwise make, right? Like the thing I've heard from a couple of browser makers.

27:51It's like what nobody understands is that once you log into your bank, your browser just has the cookie to your bank, which means your browser is just logged into your bank. Like I have now handed my browser access to my bank and the browser could go do stuff if it wanted to on my bank. This seems bad. Well, this is the thing. Like I think to some extent, this has really opened my eyes to like, we maybe should have all thought a lot harder about our browsers over the years. But also like this is, you get all of my browsing data, you get a representation and confirmation that I am me to every single app that I use.

28:27And you put an agent next to that that can theoretically go click around for me. Like there just is no other version of that setup that is that powerful. Well, so there is one version, we should talk about this, right? It's your smartphone. Your smartphone has that, it has biometric authentication. It can see your eyes. It can look at your fingerprints. It has not just cookies, but all kinds of other trackers and ways of knowing you are you. And both smartphone makers thus far have seemed reticent to take that step. Obviously, Google's way ahead because they own Gemini. And I think the way they're marketing the Pixel and other phones now is more AI forward.

29:07But it's not that you can just talk to your phone and it'll just go off and use your bank for you. They're not anywhere near there. Apple has made those promises with Siri. They got effectively nowhere. And now there's news this week that they're going to use Gemini for Apple intelligence. Yeah. That seems like, okay, well, the phone makers will figure this out, right? If this is the big existential threat to the big smartphone platforms and one of them owns, you know, depending on the rankings week by week, the best model, like they're just going to get there. And then Apple will just buy it from them the same way they bought search.

29:40Yeah, it's an interesting bet from Apple that that won't shift the power dynamic in a huge way, right? Because like that's Apple betting that the smartphone is still more important than the model. And at this moment, I think Apple's pretty clearly right about that, that like going and getting a very good. So the news that we've heard is that Apple is basically buying a custom version of Gemini, like a 1.2 trillion parameter model, really big Gemini model, but a sort of spun off one just for Apple. And they're apparently, I think it's all according to Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, going to pay a billion dollars a year for it, which is to say they're going to take a billion dollars less from Google every year in exchange for this thing.

30:24And for Apple, this is just a kind of an admission of failure that Apple couldn't do it itself. Like we've watched Apple try to figure out how to do this. And that is clearly not gone well. I would also point out Apple made a big deal about partnering with OpenAI when it announced Apple Intelligence. It made some whispers about Gemini at that same WWDC, but nothing came of it. Right. I never expected Apple to go train a foundation model. I think I did briefly. And again, that's the bet, right? It's like, where is the locus of power in your relationship with users? And Apple is kind of, as a company, happy to bet that the answer is hardware.

31:03And that as long as you are using our devices, A, you will play by our rules, and B, we are going to own all of the important parts of your user experience. The bet that all of these other companies are making, the bet of ChatGPT and the bet of Claude, is that actually what's going to matter is I'm going to have this relationship with this model, this character, this bot that is going to supersede all of that. And it won't matter what hardware I buy because I'm just going to want to hang out with ChatGPT everywhere all the time. And the thing I kept coming back to in this story about browsers, and Jake Kastronakis, who edited the story, kept pushing me to do even more of this, is be like, you have to remember that all of this is just essentially, at this point, propaganda from the AI companies, right?

31:44There's actually not evidence yet that that is going to become our primary way of doing anything. Lots of people use ChatGPT all the time for lots of things. It is not a more like primary device than your smartphone at this point. Chrome is still setting market share records. Like this change might happen. It has not happened yet. And like, again, like to go back to the thing about the first web browser wars was like, everybody was directionally correct, right? That like the thing that was changing was that a lot of things that we used to not do on the internet, we started doing on the internet.

32:19And like, there was a big question about like, are people going to be comfortable putting their banking information on the internet? And like, yeah, we were, it took a while, but we got there. And, and the ones who stuck through it, companies like Amazon benefited in gigantic ways by being at the front of that. And that's what all these companies are betting again, but just because it was right the first time doesn't at all guarantee it's going to happen again. I, the, the, what will people use ChatShift for? my dad's turning 80 it's a real thing that's happening uh my cousins are in charge of making the photo book for his his birthday party right we were having a big birthday party and my cousin texted me the other day and said hey can you brighten up this photo of your parents on a beach i asked chat gpt to do it whoa because the magic robot will just do stuff for you and I swear to God, and I, this is, I'm not going to show the pictures of my parents, but I swear to God, this is backed up by the photo that it generated.

33:16She followed up with, it made your mom Filipino. And it, it did. It, it, it just replaced my parents in the photo with just two different people. And then she said, in this one, I try to get your dad to smile. Cause he wasn't smiling. He's wearing a Packer shirt in like the mid two thousands. He's definitely not smiling. We weren't very good. this is like the Favre Rogers transition era in my, in my belief. Um, and it just a totally different guy, like a totally different guy wearing not even a green, like a different sweatshirt. Like it didn't even say green Bay. And it's like the robot will just confidently do stuff.

33:54Yeah. So people's expectations are that it can just do stuff and they're going to keep asking. It won't say no. So first of all, I want you all to know I had what can only be described as a full-on existential crisis at 2 p.m. on a Tuesday. My sister just literally when just went goes, are you okay?

34:15You would think they'd be used to this by now. Like a side channel, like are you okay? And all I wrote back was like, please don't do this. And then I edited the photos, I brightened up the faces, just using Lightroom in five seconds. It was fine. But like that's the expectation, right? It seems like it can do anything. It can do anything. And there's no, like, should we give the computer our banking information? That barrier is gone, right? The idea that people care about privacy on Facebook, like, we've been trying to make people care about privacy on Facebook for 20 years. They just don't. And so if the magic robot can do more stuff, I think there's just an inexorable pull towards letting it do stuff, even when it obviously cannot, right?

35:02even when it's like, that is super not my mom. But like, can you do it for me? Because I asked the robot to do it and I tried nothing else. It was like a real experience that you can have now with like friends and family who are addicted to chat GBT. And I think there's more power there than anyone expects. I think whether or not that power is like rightfully situated with Sam Altman is a question a lot of companies are asking themselves. Yes. Right? That's me saying, that's me pointing out that Apple made its Apple intelligence announcements with OpenAI, but it looks like it's going to go with Gemini.

35:42I think Apple thinks Google is a more reliable partner, even though they're competing on what the user interface of the future will be. Right. Even though the Pixel is more of a threat in an AI world to the iPhone than it's ever been before, I think Apple thinks Google is a more reliable partner because they have a long history of, like, you know, know, coopetition. OpenAI, who knows what they're going to do tomorrow? Like tomorrow, they're like, we took all of your IP and now you can generate any store of video on of Tim Cook. Like, whoops. Like, and I think all of that is yet to be shaken out, but I do think the idea that the AI will just sort of always deliver an answer is way more powerful to regular people than anyone is giving it credit for.

36:21Yes, I agree with that. I've been, I've been pulling a lot of people in this space recently on like a thing that I can't get over. And it's the thing we've talked about before, which is that like these tools are getting, these tools are really fun to use and talk to. And it is like the characters of them are super compelling to people, even though it sucks at most of the activities that you ask it to do, right? Like you're the, the, the person you're talking about, they, they tried to brighten up a photo. Like they probably had a nice time doing that, right? It's like, this is a, this is a failed experiment, but the like process of doing this with chat GPT, people like actually have a good time.

36:56And the thing I'm coming to realize is that that is way more of the game than I realized. Like I keep asking people like, okay, you've made a bot that people like to talk to, but can't do very much. How much runway does being fun to talk to actually get you? And over and over and over, people keep telling me you have like way more than you think. Yeah. It's, it's most of the thing. Like being fun to talk to is actually most of the game. And these things are fun to talk to. When Sam Altman had the big live stream after announcing the Microsoft deal and this stuff that sort of like questions from the audience were not about the business deals or about frontier capabilities.

37:32They were all like, when are you going to take the guardrails off and like really let me bang the robot? You know? Yeah. And it's like, oh, this is what people want. Like they want to, they want a buddy and who's like very capable of doing all the stuff. And then also trying to bang them on the front page of the New York times. Or tries to like convince you to do crimes against people. All right, we should get off this subject, but before we do, Eric Gomez, our producer, said just a truly wild thing to us right before we started recording. And Eric, I would like you to defend yourself. What is the thing that you just said offhand, out of nowhere?

38:05Welcome to the show, Eric, by the way. Hi, hello. Thank you for being here. Yeah, I regret my decision. Comet is my daily driver for web browsing. Like on purpose? On purpose. You downloaded Comet and you use it for all of your browsing. Yes. I fell down a rabbit hole. Follow me on this. There's a whole logic and there's a reason for my madness. So it starts with Xfinity, actually. So as a subscriber to Xfinity. This is great because now we have to disclose. This is not a place I thought we were going to go, but now we have to disclose. Disclosure. Comcast is a minority investor. But it's not good.

38:46Whatever the story is, I'm guaranteed it's not to end up with. If you started with Xfinity and ended with, I use an AI browser, nothing good happened. Go ahead. So I use Xfinity as my service provider because it's the only option we have here in Eastern Connecticut. Great. Because it's a monopoly. You see? Yes. Exactly. Wonderful. And so as a subscriber, you get all these different types of perks and discounts and stuff. And I remember around this time last year, they were giving a special deal where you get a whole year of Perplexity Pro for free. So I was like, hey, why not? So I signed up for it.

39:25And, you know, it gives you access to Perplexity Pro, which is like, you know, you get faster response times and access to all the latest AI models and deeper research and all the cool stuff that you get with these premium AI subscriptions. And so I just kept using it. I like Perplexity as a web browser, I mean, as a search engine, because it's like, it gives me most of the, you know, answers that I'm looking for, you know, or if not, it gives me like 80 % of the way there. And then, you know, Perplexity announces a web browser, and it was exclusive invite only to Perplexity Pro users. That's how they get you.

40:04Uh-huh. And I was like, huh, interesting. I already get the service for free, so let me try this out. and so i just kind of started using it i i moved off of arc arc was my daily driver previously but we as we all know the uh the the browser company is kind of moving on from from that and doing the deal browser now and uh as much as i love arc i know it's like slowly dying or dying to slow death and so i was like all right let me try this comet thing and um you know It's fine. It's good. It's fine. I will grant you it's fine. Try another cut of this question. So just try it again for like why you like Comet versus Chrome.

40:49So, all right. So let's say this. I was never a fan of Chrome. I was actually a Safari user for a long time. But then, you know, using, you know, working for The Verge, everything is all like... using Google Apps. And so, you know, I was kind of forced to use Chrome because it just makes everything easier. That is literally Google's plan. And so, you know, I know that Comet is just a Chromium browser. So I was like, well, this is mostly the same thing. Let me just move over to this thing. And it works mostly the same. And I don't really see that much of a difference between the two, except for like all the agentic AI stuff.

41:26And so I don't really use it for that. It's mostly for the response and the quickness and the faster access to stuff when it comes to using Perplexity as a service. Man, somewhere somebody on Perplexity's biz dev team just got a raise. Just right then, whoever made that deal with Xfinity. And I don't know if you guys have seen this, but when you go to a lot of publisher websites, the one that comes to mind for me is the Washington Post. But I know they've done this with a bunch of others. you you you hit the paywall but it offers you like if you download comet you can read this article uh perplexity is finding like fascinating ways to hack its way into getting you to use your browser to get access to things it's it's very clever um i don't know how well it's working it clearly worked on you eric but i don't know how well it's working like in the grand scheme of things but perplexity is like it is really after yeah how do we how do we hook you into using this thing because once you're in you'll you'll be in and you'll stay in maybe eric are you what would make you switch from perplexity to something else um i just wish the browser company would have just built the ai features into arc well here's the real question when you're when your perplexity pro subscription runs out are you going to pay for it uh so funny thing it auto build me the other day.

42:48So I was like, all right, well, I guess I'm using another year of this thing. That's how they get you, man. Another raise for the biz dev team. Someone learned something from Xfinity. I forgot to toggle that button, and now I got another charge. Tell the AI agent to auto-cancel before I see it. I should. Let's see if it... Ask it to that, see if it does come out next week, and let us know if Perplexity will auto-cancel itself. That's very good. I'll try. All right. In the meantime, Eric, thank you. We need to take a break, and then we're going to come back. We're going to talk about some Mac news that we're both very interested in.

43:18We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from LinkedIn. When you're a small business owner, your business is on your mind 24-7. So 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.

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44:37We've all had pivotal decision points in our lives that, whether we know it or not at the time, changed everything. This is especially true in business. Like, did you know that autonomous drone delivery company Zipline originally produced a robotic toy? Or that Bolt went from an Estonian transportation company to one of the largest rideshare and food delivery platforms in the world? That's what Crucible Moments is all about. Deep diving into make-or-break moments that set the course for some of the most important tech companies of our time. with interviews from some of the key players that made these companies a success.

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47:53Find 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. All right, we're back. So two fascinating bits of Apple news. One is David's victory lap of the week, which is that iOS 26.1 is out and it lets you basically undo liquid glass. I was right. and everyone who said liquid glass is good was wrong. So yay for me. Download it. Do the thing that makes it a little more opaque. Your life will get much better. The really interesting piece of news, and part of me can't figure out why I can't stop thinking about this, is there was a report this week, the latest in a long line of reports that suggests that Apple is working on a cheaper, I think substantially under$1 ,000 laptop powered by an iPhone chip.

48:51this is like a sort of mythical machine in recent apple history the like low-cost macbook oh in forever apple history the 500 mac is like it's the sun around which all other apple rumors orbit but it seems like at least there is a lot of smoke right now without it right it is it is the kind of thing that pops up every once in a while we hear about it every once in a while but it seems to be happening. And my question for you, Neal, is A, do you buy this rumor? And B, why on earth would Apple build a cheap laptop? So I do buy this rumor. Weirdly, Apple makes more products than ever, but not enough products.

49:33What? Do you know what I mean? No. Like, if you think back to the Steve Jobs days, like he was like, we make too many products, I'm getting rid of everything, we're going to do a grid, a two by two grid. Yeah. A laptop, a desktop, consumer and professional, and then he started putting products in the grid. So you had the PowerBook, the PowerMac, the iMac, and then the iBook. And we should talk about what the iBook was in a minute. Apple now, that's gone. Like that simplicity is gone, right? They make more SKUs of everything and all of it feels like a game where they're trying to get$500 for you to double your RAM or storage.

50:11Sure. And you're trying not to do that. and then at some point you're like i should just buy the next model up and so like they make i would say they make more products than ever before but like not enough products that actually clearly fit the markets they're in yeah i buy that they're perpetually trying to push you to the like second most expensive thing they sell yeah it's like uh like i just bought a mac studio and i started with a mac mini and i just sort of configured my way to like i'm gonna buy a base model mac studio and i feel great about it to be clear because i got the fancier computer but it was just like this exercise in none of this really makes sense like none of these products are like well defined for the thing they need to be and apple would totally disagree with you um i know they would because we talked to them about their products all the time and like this is for students and this is for illustrators and this is for the cool kid like whatever but like actually going to buy an apple product is more confusing than ever so i look at this i'm like oh this solves a problem for apple which is that if you show up with eight hundred dollars in your pocket and you're like i want a laptop all you can do right now is you can get like a discounted last year's laptop which is not what people want well and to that point though the they did the the deal with walmart to sell the like now years old m1 macbook air and by all accounts that's been a massive success right and so when i see a cheaper mac laptop with an iphone chip first of all the m1 is an iphone chip sure right they prototyped uh mac os on arm like on a series chips back in the day, right?

51:41So like the M1, it's different. I know it's different, but like the jump they took started with an iPhone chip. And now we're many, many more generations beyond the M1, which is still performing fine on computers or selling today. So you can see how they'd be like, oh, we could just take a more powerful iPhone chip that will outperform the M1 and like call it a day, right? Like we don't need to keep selling and supporting the M1 forever. We can actually just move the architecture to like more modern chips and more modern process. It's Apple. They love a supply chain tweak. You know, like you can see how they get there.

52:11But I think what they're actually trying to do is expand the market in a coherent way that isn't just cut down versions of products they sell. They're actually going to make a product that targets like students for real. The question is, why isn't that thing already the MacBook Air? Like, why do you need to do this instead of saying the MacBook Air is our general purpose consumer machine? And it starts now at$700. Why do you need to make another one? I feel like you have a theory about this. I do and I don't. I mean, I think it's been really interesting that like right now as we speak, there is maybe the best deal I've ever seen on the M4 MacBook Air, which is like a fabulous, still relatively brand new laptop.

52:54You can get it on Amazon for$749, which is like a preposterously good deal for a MacBook Air. So it's like, it's odd that that's happening, but it does seem like Apple as a company is driven by price points in a way that I don't think we've ever seen it be before. And in fact, the company has loudly proclaimed that it is not driven by price. They hate it when you point this out. Right, and they have always said, and will continue to always say out loud that they're like, no, we make the best products and they cost what they cost. And people pay for them because they want the best products. Increasingly, this is a company that is very happy to have something at every$50.

53:33And to me, what I'm trying to figure out about this one is which of two directions it goes. And one direction is Chromebooks, for lack of a better way of putting it, right? A, the education market, like you said, is huge. And for a long time, Apple was everywhere in the education market. I grew up with those sort of translucent Emacs in my classrooms. Those are the first computers I really used. That's gone now. All of that got eaten by Chromebooks and Chrome OS. And now if you're a student, you're not getting a Mac or an iPad, which I think Apple hoped you would. You get a Chromebook because they're cheap and they're easy to administer and schools buy tons of them.

54:14So either Apple is just going to try and go way down market and charge whatever,$5.99, so still be the premium one, but much cheaper. Do the thing in schools and for students, try to hook people early and sort of play the game it was playing at the turn of the century. or and this is the thing i hope but assume is not the case this is how apple like reinvents the idea of what the old 12 inch macbook can be because if the what you get when you do an iphone chip is you get things like easy uh adoption of a cellular modem and you get even better battery efficiency because you have to run the thing on a smaller device like just take that 12 inch macbook take out the horrible keyboard, put in a good keyboard, put in an iPhone chip and all of the stuff that comes on that system chip inside of the iPhone, just lift it out of the iPhone 17 and put it into a 12-inch MacBook, I would buy the hell out of that computer.

55:12You, I know, liked a 12-inch MacBook. I loved a 12-inch MacBook. More than was probably appropriate. That was my go-to airplane computer for years. Is this not like an incredibly exciting device idea to you? Maybe. This is so exciting to me. Can I just ask you the obvious question here? Okay. Didn't you just describe an iPad? So...

55:34the iPad is turning 10 on the Tuesday after people hear the iPad pro is turning the iPad pro Sure. What is the distinction here? Who's to say? So I think it could have been. But I think Apple made a bunch of decisions that has essentially precluded that being the case. You can't do a lot of the things you want to do on an iPad. It's just still true. There's more and more you can do on an iPad. An iPad's had tons of power. The iPad Pro is like an unbelievable computer. And if I could take that shell and run a Mac and run macOS on it, it would be great. But just for my own. Wait, let me ask you a different, let me ask you another question, Stephen Hart.

56:15What does macOS represent to you in your heart? Desktop class browser. Like fundamentally what I will tell you what I'm looking at. What you want is Chrome. What I'm looking at on my computer right now is one, two, three, four, five, six browser windows. You want Chrome and you want the ability to run electron apps because most of the native Mac apps that we use for productivity, at least in our workplace, are our electron apps. Yeah. Right. They're web apps and fancy wrappers. Sure. There's other apps on my computer that are right. But like Lightroom exists on the iPad. It's Chrome. You're saying desktop class.

56:48It's like amazing to me that Apple has just nerfed the iPad so hard after this whole conversation we had about browsers just a second ago. They don't see it because it's a threat to their app model and their taxes. Well, no, it's not. No. they don't see it gives Apple like not enough malicious credit. Like Apple sees it very clearly. And a thing that came up a couple of times in reporting this browser story that I wrote this week was people who make other browsers think it's very funny that people love Safari because Safari is like a deliberately neutered web browser because Apple wants you to use native apps.

57:22Like if Apple had made Safari as good as it could and you have to believe that there is enough engineering and design talent at Apple to make it an honest to God Chrome competitor and it was a powerful, like WebKit being another browser engine that is on par with Chromium would be a big deal. Like they just haven't kept up. And the only reason they haven't kept up is because they have no incentive whatsoever to keep up. I saw a fancy executive who used to work on Chrome a few weeks ago and his read of it was Apple has actually been pulling resources away from the Safari team over time. Yeah, not at all surprising.

57:55Like of course that's what you would do. It's the threat. It is the threat to their entire thing and like an agentic Siri that can use the apps on your phone is a different kind of threat, but they're way more willing to do that than to do an agentic Safari that uses the web because that breaks their model. Yeah, you don't get in-app purchases from them. I mean, it's that simple. But so like the other thing for me is like, and this is just purely a matter of personal preference. I would rather have a thing in the shape of a MacBook with a touchscreen than a thing in the shape of an iPad that runs Mac OS.

58:28Like if you just made me pick the shell of the thing, I like the MacBook better. And so that's the reason for me that it is like this idea is very powerful for me because I want all of the stuff that like the 13 inch iPad Pro can do with connectivity everywhere and super long battery life. And the touchscreen is great, but I want it to look like a MacBook. I just do. And I think most people do. I think there is a real, like we got laptops right a really long time ago and they continue to be the right thing for a huge number of purposes. Actually, I think laptops got right with the first iBook.

59:05Okay, so you know more about this. I have no iBook experience. So tell me about the iBook. Well, it's just an interesting thing about like we got laptops right. Like it's actually Apple that like really pushed laptops in the correct direction when they started doing consumer laptops. So that two by two grade was really important, right? We're going to have professional class machines and those first Powerbooks, like this is, I'm just dating myself. Like those first Powerbooks made a lot of design decisions that we still live with today. Like they pushed the keyboards back towards the display and did a palm rest.

59:33That was Apple design in the 90s. Like that is a decision Apple made and everyone just followed them. And there's a bunch of other stuff along the way. And yes, there's competition and yes, Windows laptops innovated on the idea of having functional keyboards, for example, which Apple took five years to fix. Do you remember when, I think it was Acer, it was either Acer or Asus decided what if we tried to flip the keyboard and the trackpad? Oh yeah, there's Paul Miller on the show who did keyboard in the front club for like three years. it's fine. Like people tried things, but like Apple made a bunch of decisions about the design of a laptop 30 years ago that were correct.

1:00:05And then when Steve Jobs came back to Apple, he made the grid, right? We're going to have consumer and professional products. And he filled in the consumer product with the iMac, basically rescued Apple with the iMac. And he said, we're going to fill in consumer notebook. We're going to get there. And that square on the grid at like launch events, he would just leave it open. He would show the grid and be like, we updated the PowerBook. We updated the PowerMac. Here's the iMac. Just wait for it. Oh, interesting. And then eventually he's like, we're going to do it. The iBook is coming out. And this is what I mean about having too many products and not enough products.

1:00:40You go back and you watch Steve Jobs introduce a product. He's like, this is the product. Here's who it's for. Here's why the other ones suck. And then here's the thing that's going to make everyone sit up and say, oh, Apple innovated. And hilariously, at the time of the first iBook, The ones that came in blue and orange and kind of look like toilet bowl lids because Johnny Ive's previous job was designing toilets. This is a true story. The colors are sick. The toilet bowl lid thing is real. The colors are sick. The design didn't hold up. But like everything about that machine is now reflected in modern machines.

1:01:13The thing that that iBook had that no other computer really had yet, like the thing Apple introduced with the first iBook was Wi-Fi, which is crazy to think about. like Wi-Fi did not exist. And Apple made a big bet on a standard that like AT &T Bell Labs, which has been spun out in another company called Lucent. They made a bet on 802.11b. It's like Vergecast standards lore. And they said, we're going to do Wi-Fi. We've partnered with Lucent. Here's the first airport base station. It was like a silver spaceship. And then to bring it home, Steve Jobs forced Phil Schiller to stand on a raised platform above the stage, start downloading a file, and then jump off the platform onto a mattress while continuing to download the file to prove there were no wires.

1:02:01So I went and found this because I had never seen this video. And I think there is a case to be made that this, not the like, you know, it's not three devices, it's one device, or not the pulling the MacBook Air out of the middle envelope. I think this should be the true legacy of bonkers Steve Jobs' interest. Let me just play you this one clip of Phil Schiller jumping onto a mattress. This is definitely one small step for a man and one giant leap for a wireless network. Okay. So let's count them down. Here we go. Three, two, one, jump. Ready? Three, two, one, jump. He actually jumps from like 15 feet jump.

1:02:48Give me a high five.

1:03:02i mean he lands on his back like that it was not graceful no i love phil i mean he's sold out for it in a way that only phil can sell out for it and there's another moment in that same intro where he, you know, Steve Jobs, like he has the laptop on a table, like, you know, like you always do, he's showing off the thing. And then at one point, he just sort of casually picks it up and starts to walk away with it. And you can hear the audience start to go, oh, like realize what's going on. And the cheering goes up. And then Steve Jobs takes a hula hoop and just passes it over. Yeah, because you had to prove that there was wireless networking.

1:03:36Right. Like the idea that this has no wires into it and is still working was like unfathomable. And I think in terms of like, how do we describe what is cool about this thing? 10 out of 10 on the iBook line. Truly. But that is the moment, right? I remember when that came out, like all of my friends who are off to college the next year bought iBooks. Right. And we, there was a lot of Neil I is going to fix your broken airport base station on your campus network that was not designed for 500 new wireless access points because wireless access points did not exist before this day. And the idea that college students would deploy them on the ethernet network at DePaul university was like not contemplated.

1:04:18It was weird. There's a lot going on there. Uh, but like everyone bought that computer for that reason, right? I can just have this anywhere in my, my dorm or my apartment or whatever. And then that became obviously wifi is just a thing now. The next version of the iBook, the white iBook for years was like the default laptop yes it was just the one you got it it set the standard it set the tone they refined that design forever until they moved on to the you know the more aluminum design of the macbook air but apple like apple sells that wedge-shaped macbook air sort of like despite itself it doesn't want to it tried to kill that product a lot yep right it tried to kill it with the 12 inch macbook including with the 12 inch macbook with the cheaper 13 inch macbook pro and consumers are like, no, we want this one.

1:05:05And they have been made to sell that product, even to this day, right? The M1 MacBook Air is the wedge-shaped MacBook Air, because it scratches some itch that that is what a laptop is with a lot of people. And I think their opportunity with this machine is to get back to just defining the product more coherently, as opposed to a series of price points. That's my hope. I suspect what it will actually be is just a replacement for the $600 M1 MacBook at Walmart. But my hope is they get back to that moment where they're like, oh, we're making a consumer product for consumers and we can actually announce it with some theatricality because we're proud of it.

1:05:45So that means colors for sure. You have to go back to doing colors, which I think Apple is doing anyway. So I wouldn't see it as outlandish, the idea that it would have that sort of iMac range of colors, the purple and the orange and whatever what what else goes into that for you like what does this device have to have to be that thing for you you probably go back to the wedge maybe i mean you could right with if you have a smaller chip and you have the cooling needs i think you have a big question about performance like how much performance you really need if you're still selling the m1 you have a pretty good sense of how much performance you actually need true and you can probably out outdo it but use the wedge shape had has always had cooling problems which is why I've always wanted to get away from it.

1:06:28I think you basically have to say, like, there's a set of things you can do on a Mac now with this computer that it's better than doing on your phone. And I don't know that Apple has made that case in a long time. But to me, this device almost feels like you have an iPhone and this laptop is like the accessory. Oh, interesting. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Like, in my mind, there are still things that I would just never do on a phone that I see other people just do on a phone like happily. Like I have to buy plane tickets on a web browser, on a laptop. Like, I don't know. I just can't. I can't bring myself to do it.

1:07:04I don't know why. I'm with you. I think there's like a class of people now that's phone first. Yep. And I think you have to sell them a laptop to do a bunch of other stuff. And Apple hasn't made that case affirmatively for its Macs in a long time. I know they sell a lot of Macs. I'm not right there. They're doing a good job there. But they haven't made the case for like why stuff is better on a Mac than a phone in forever. And this to me, like if it's cheap, it feels like, oh, you can make the connection much more tightly. And that should be the opportunity here. Not it's a MacBook Pro and now you're a pro.

1:07:38You know, like this is much more, hey, you want to get off your phone, right? Get off your phone is a big pull. Use a Mac. Like here's a$700 Mac that kicks ass to do a bunch of stuff better with the web and other tools. That feels correct. There's an end to this meeting that leads to deciding to run iPadOS on this thing. It would be a heartbreaker. And for anyone at Apple who is listening, I just want to urge you not to make that decision. If it's more like what you're saying, which is they're getting their asses kicked in education because Chromebooks are cheap. Like, you know, every teacher I know is like, yeah, they get destroyed.

1:08:12Yeah. Like, we're not going to give a bunch of, you know, fancy iPads to kids because they're going to just ruin them. We're going to give them$150 Acer Chromebooks. Right. Because they're going to get lit on fire and peed on. So their goal is to get back an education. It'd have to be cheap. But not having Chrome will actually lock them out of a big ecosystem or not having a browser because not everyone's shipping native apps for these devices. Right. Well, I think you're right that the converse of the Apple is losing an education case would be that a vast number of kids, particularly in the United States, are getting iPhones or Apple Watches or both as their first devices.

1:08:48That that is the entry point in a way that the home computer used to be one. And, and I think you're right that if, if it's like, okay, how do we teach you what you can do better on a device like this in a way that like properly manages the handoff between devices and lets you mirror your phone and like does some of the things that you can do, but in a sort of phone first way, that could be really cool. yeah i mean we'll see i or they're just gonna replace the$5 i1 right like or they just have to stop making that so they're gonna make this instead like but the opportunity the reason i brought up the first ibook launch the opportunity is to reset and say there's a reason for this to exist and we're like happy we like we spent all this time pointing at that box consumer notebook and then we filled it with a product that makes sense they're not a cheaper version of the old product.

1:09:41Right. I mean, that was like the Apple magic back in the day. I'm not saying the products aren't good now. I'm just saying it's a lot of price points and not a lot of too many products and not enough products. Yeah. No, I mean, yeah. Apple will sell you high-end laptops and higher-end laptops, and there is something else to do there. God, this thing was so pretty. It really was. The green. That's... Was it... Is that the... No, it was blue. Was that the blueberry color? Was that what Apple called it? I think so. It was blueberry and tangerine. First of all, it's green. Apple, just to be super clear about that.

1:10:13But also bring back that color and I will buy any laptop you make. I'm telling you, 12-inch MacBook, cool colors, cellular modem. Put it in my house right now. Let's go. All right, we should take one more break and then we're going to come back. We got a bunch of lightning round stuff to do, including a game that I'm going to make Neelai play that he knows nothing about. It's going to be great. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from Darktrace. Defenders and cybersecurity are always there when we need them, keeping the systems that run our daily lives safe from bad actors. At Darktrace, they think defenders everywhere deserve a bigger spotlight for keeping the lights on.

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1:12:02Give it as a gift. Incredible. In fact, wrap up my old phone, too, for my Aunt Rosa. Forget that. Aunt Liz will be jealous. Sounds like my family drama. Oh, I got it. I'll give it to my abuela. I'll take reindeer paper with, hey, where are you going? To T-Mobile. Thanks, Zoe. The holidays are better at T-Mobile. Get four iPhone 17s on us. No trade in needed when you switch. Plus four lines for just$25 a line. With 24 monthly bill credits and four eligible portings on essentials. for well-qualified customers. AutoPay plus taxes, fees, and$35 device connection chart. Credits end-in balance due if you pay off earlier.

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1:13:17What are you hoping for today in the founders? Scrappy, traction-oriented grinders and hustlers who will blow through every brick wall in this building to get to where they need to be. Welcome to The Pitch, Season 14, where startup founders raise millions and listeners can invest. On this season of the show, 10 VCs, 7 startups, with one shot to build the company of their dreams. Oh my God, we built the entirely wrong product. Two shots to build the company of their dreams. With that intro, let's go. Season 14 is available now wherever you listen to podcasts. so subscribe to the pitch so you don't miss it this season is presented by adobe all right we're back let's get into the lightning round there's a lot of news this week so we're just gonna like blast through as much of it as quickly as we can um neila you get to go first and and i is is it is it time it's time it's absolutely time i hate when it's time it's always it is time once again for america's favorite podcast within a podcast brendan car is a dummy He's such a dummy.

1:14:23Like that's the subtitle of America's favorite podcast is he's such a dummy. I'm sure I could read you the headline and you're like, that sounds dumb. Hit me. Brendan Carr is going to have the FCC vote to scrap the requirements that telecommunications firms do good cybersecurity. That's dumb. It's just dumb. and and lest i lest anyone who didn't listen to the show last week forget brandon cars the dummy last week was about brandon car saying that uh all of these broadband companies don't have to tell you what their things cost because it's too much work for them to do so yes but never not enough not too much work when they actually bill you of course right but telling you up front on earth requirements yeah this week i'm assuming it just really sounds like we're about to hear a very similar argument about doing good cybersecurity.

1:15:18Absolutely similar argument. He put out a blog post. It's called Halloween Treats. He's very cute, much like his predecessor, Ajit Pai. He thinks he's a lot cuter than he is. And he says, here's what we're going to vote on our next meeting. And he says, finally, we're going to vote on an order that puts us on a stronger cybersecurity footing following extensive engagement with the carriers. this item announces the steps they've already taken to strengthen their cybersecurity defenses. So we're going to reverse a ruling reached by the Biden administration that exceeded our authority and required them to do cybersecurity.

1:15:54So the previous order required them to do cybersecurity. They did it. And now we're going to say they don't have to anymore because we trust them. Because why wouldn't you trust our nation's telecommunications providers? When I think of trustworthiness, I think of wireless carriers in America. The theory is cybersecurity is finished. We have accomplished cybersecurity. We did it. It's over. Why keep trying? By the way, the previous order, just to just to like say it clearly, went into place because there was a huge wave of attacks on our nation's infrastructure. And the Biden administration was like, do better cybersecurity.

1:16:26And so they did. I don't know, man. It was like 15 minutes ago that that was where everybody was worried about China was like that. That's how they're getting. That's how China is going to get into our infrastructure. This is like the grand impassioned case that the government was making that we had to do good cybersecurity because the infrastructure was where it was all going. And now Brendan Carr's like, ah, whatever. We did it. It's fine. By the declaration from the Biden administration, if you want to get into the weeds of how dumb he is, right? Like Brendan exists in a state of existential legal crisis at all times because he wants to be a MAGA Republican, but he is instead just an old school conservative Republican who's cosplaying as someone the president likes.

1:17:02This is true. his argument is that the Biden administration used a 1994 law to say this law requires telecommunications carriers to secure their networks from unlawful access or interception of communications. And he says, this is an overreading of the statute, right? You, this is, you've taken too much authority. This is at the same time that the Trump administration is at the Supreme court being like, everything is emergency and we have the power to tariff anything we want because the world isn't a permanent emergency. And the Supreme court itself is like, that's not what that says at all. So you just have this fight in the Trump administration, embodied in the person, Brendan Carr, who wants power, but is still like a, like a Project 2025, like tear the government down guy, where they're in court saying, we read some magic words into a statute.

1:17:47We have all the power in the world. And then Brendan Carr is saying, well, if the Biden administration did that, then they haven't, we have no power at all. And there's just no, you cannot actually reconcile these arguments unless you're Brendan and all you're trying to do is give things away to telecom companies, which has always been the point of his existence. I do appreciate that somebody, it feels like once a week, some like SVP at a company has breakfast with Brendan Carr and is like, God, I'm so busy today. I got like, I got this meeting and this meeting and Brendan just takes notes. And he's like, okay, I'm going to take away all of your job responsibilities.

1:18:25You're just going to get to hang out. If you want to come all the way back around to, you have to tell them the prices. Brendan's declaration says the inflexible across the board cybersecurity requirements leaves carriers with a burdensome inchoate compliance standard that does little to secure our networks. Making them secure our networks does little to secure. It's very good. It's very good. The carriers into the like put upon victims of this is a is a bold strategy. Like I admire I admire Brendan for constantly being like these poor broadband companies. It's so hard to run a company that has a natural monopoly all over the place.

1:19:05The worst. Anyhow, there's no federal cybersecurity rule in Congress. There's no law that says it. There was just this rulemaking by the administration. And maybe you think that's inappropriate. You could. You can say the FCC should not have to do this stuff the way it does. But we have a dysfunctional Congress, so that's why agencies do stuff all the time. And Brendan, he can't decide whether the FCC has so much power that it can force individual comedians off of broadcast television or so little power that it can't make Verizon do cybersecurity. He's a dummy. That's what I got. Brendan, as always, you're welcome to show up on this show or Decoder or anywhere you want and fight me.

1:19:46But like verbally. Or physically. I mean, honestly, I'm not picky at this point. The doors are open. You pick. You want to get in Mark Zuckerberg's octagon and fight Eli? I'm more than willing to engage you, Brendan. I know your Google results are trash. They have been for years because of me. It's fine. Let's just do it. Come on the show. Listen, I was reading the news this week about how they're going to do a UFC fight on the White House lawn. I propose one of the openers, Patel versus Carr. But it's just us brandishing FCC regulations on each other. That's fine. Yeah, I'd be there. I love it.

1:20:18All right. actually your your point about individual comedians is a good segue to my first one which is uh there was this big interesting deadline piece this week about how youtube is making a concerted effort to make its talk shows into more of a thing on youtube like as we talked about last week youtube is really sort of stratifying in two directions like one is shorts fast ai generated everything is like as easy and low rent as possible. And then on the upside, it's like it wants to be a fancy TV service, right? Like YouTube TV exists, but also the YouTube main app on television is changing so that it looks more like there's, you know, shows with seasons and episodes and it is trying to appear higher end.

1:21:00And they're taking things like Hot Ones and Good Mythical Morning, which is like a long standing, super successful YouTube talk show and trying to like make these feel more sort of like mainstream talk shows in the way that like Jimmy Kimmel is a mainstream talk show and Stephen Colbert, like everybody's been assuming Stephen Colbert after he leaves CBS because his show got canceled is going to go like do a Conan O 'Brien and make a really successful podcast. I've got to assume somebody at YouTube is like, buddy, come do your show on YouTube. And I think if and when that happens, it'll be fascinating.

1:21:33But like it just, it's another piece of this puzzle to me that just all of these services are just running at each other as fast as they possibly can. You have Netflix making a big bet on video podcasts and starting to like they did like the John Mulaney live show. They're doing star search like Netflix is just sort of rerunning parts of the cable TV playbook while YouTube TV and YouTube are also running parts of the cable playbook. And we're just we're just going to end up with TV again. Like it's going to be the 90s again. I think it's crazy that as we're talking about this, YouTube and ABC are still in a fight.

1:22:10Yeah. Right. Like you just didn't, you just couldn't get Monday Night Football on YouTube TV this week. Yeah. And they were fine with it. Like they're just like, fine. We don't need that. Like we spend a lot of money on sports rights, but fine. Like you'll cave. Like that was basically the message they sent to ABC and Disney this week. And I see what you're saying with the rest of it, right? Like they're going to professionalize YouTube. Yeah. And like, that's weird for YouTube, right? They depend on this army of independent content creators. We've talked a lot about rates being squeezed. If Colbert starts a YouTube show, I think a good question is whether YouTube pays him for it.

1:22:46Right. In a way that they don't pay any other creators to be there. But I don't think he wants to do the YouTube brand deals that everyone else is doing to pay the bills. There's some weirdness there with the way that YouTube pays for YouTube TV and is in disputes with the big broadcasters about YouTube TV and how they want YouTube proper to be monetized that doesn't support some of these ideas, right? If you can't make the revenue to support Stephen Colbert doing a late night show the way that the broadcast networks could make the revenue to support a show, then you simply won't have late night shows of that caliber.

1:23:21You might have a lot of YouTube shows that look like it, but you won't have that thing, right? And that to me is like just the question is when does this all crash together and someone figures out like, there's a way to pay for this stuff because people want it and it's good and it's not all just garbage. or there's not going to be a way to pay for this stuff. And I think that's kind of what like Netflix is chasing after. Like, should we just do video podcasts? Like we don't have to pay for those. Like they're just getting made anyway. We'll just run them over here and they're pretty cheap to produce.

1:23:52Or do we need to do a full on John Mulaney stage set? Like, which one is it? And I don't think anybody actually knows yet. I don't think so either, but I do think, I mean, you also put all of this next to this big new push from both streaming services and YouTube towards like live appointment programming, because I think I think that's the only way you solve the ad problem you're describing. Like the all of the money from television increasingly has just pointed at sports because it's the only thing people will like reliably tune into at a particular time. And so if you're Netflix, you're like, OK, well, we're going to do the Jake Paul, Mike Tyson fight.

1:24:33And that worked gangbusters, right because people will show up for that at a time and in a place and if you can do the same with star search or wwe or whatever like there are not an infinite number of appointment viewing things you can create but if you can create a few of them you can start to like you just get to charge like an order of magnitude different prices for the thing and i think if i'm youtube it's like there's not that much more scale for youtube to go get and it the platform is more and more competitive all the time so like this idea that the the pie is going to get big enough to fund everybody over time i think is just not true so now it's like okay we have to go add zeros to some of these deals that we're signing with people or else we're not going to be able to pay stephen colbert what he needs to come do this and like in a weird way sirius is still happy to like write a check for a hundred million dollars in a way that like youtube just isn't they're getting less than less happy they're they're that business is in trouble i mean true but the deals are still out there right like Alex Cooper got this huge deal and like you can still make a lot of money all at once doing a podcast in a way that like doing a YouTube doesn't support and YouTube is going to have to change that yeah but seriously really interesting example I probably pay more attention to Sirius's business because it is the last example of controlling a distribution network that isn't the internet that really exists do you have Sirius I have Sirius in our car you've aged yourself so many times in this show.

1:26:03I'm really enjoying this. Neelai outing himself as like a 56-year-old man. Well, it's not, I mean, we bought a new car. He just comes with it, right? And then Becky just loves comedians and a bunch of them have Sirius shows, so now we have Sirius. But they own a satellite distribution network that is bundled with every new and used car sale in America. And the car makers get a cut of that revenue when you sign up for Sirius. This is this is the money right like you pay for sirius in your car the carmaker gets a little piece sirius gets a lot of it the carmakers have every incentive to put that radio in that car and upsell you in it the dealers get a piece of like everyone is just making money on satellite radio distribution that has nothing to do with the internet but like that's useless on your phone so then sirius had to make an app that runs on the internet and now they're like just they're like devaluing their thing that makes them all the money so they're trying to sign exclusive and it's like you can just see that's it's the last one it's the last non-internet distribution that is that valuable and like it's under all this pressure and they're trying to solve with exclusives obviously but it's just like a weird thing where like broadcast television isn't even that valuable like it's getting squeezed to the point where youtube tv is like we're just not gonna have monday night football we'll be fine we'll just be fine that's crazy that is crazy to me well and i think it's it's a true and be only true of youtube yeah like a true sign of youtube's power is that it can play that card and get away with it and i think it did it can it looked worse for disney than it did for youtube in that dispute i think our friend julie alexander now puck used to work for us um she's one of the smartest media analysts around she's like the future of this is just carriage disputes there just will be in a permanent ongoing carriage dispute forever because the market doesn't know what these rates are.

1:27:55And so pointing at the last deal does nothing for anyone. Every time there's a new one, it's like we're starting from zero because no one knows how much anyone should pay. So my big question, again, is does variable rates come to YouTube? Do some creators get more per view from YouTube than other creators? Because if you don't get there, you won't get all the creators you want. And I think Jimmy Kimmel is one of those creators. Stephen Colbert is one of those. like if you put them in the creator bucket, they should have the ability to negotiate for higher rates from YouTube itself. And I don't think YouTube wants to cross that bridge, but it's the thing they do on YouTube TV, right?

1:28:31With all these carriage districts, they're negotiating rates. At some point that comes to YouTube proper. I think so, yeah. And I mean, YouTube has been saying both to me and to others pretty loudly that like the next big step for YouTube is for a YouTuber to win an Emmy. And I think that is sort of a fascinating next turn that like there's a perception change that comes with that in the same way that like within YouTube, it was a really big deal when they got on the Nielsen chart because A, it showed how big YouTube was and B, it just puts their name next to a different set of things. It's not YouTube next to Twitter.

1:29:04It's YouTube next to Netflix. And that is like, that changes the way that YouTube goes into advertising negotiation. But you're right that the flip side also happens is that people come in and they're like, oh, well, I just left a meeting with Netflix. What's your deal? What are you going to give me? And thus far, YouTube has been like, Like you can go. Yeah, exactly. There's all, there's infinite more YouTube. But as you start to professionalize, right? And it's not just a bunch of amateur YouTubers or my day at the zoo videos. You start to professionalize like, oh, this actually becomes risky.

1:29:32Right. Especially as now Netflix is writing big checks for video podcasts. Like it's all, everybody's running at each other and no one knows where it's going to end up. Like where is anyone watching this podcast? YouTube paying variable rates. I mean, again, I keep saying the creator economy is going to implode. Like these pressures are coming very hard for individual creators whom, again, I have nothing but sympathy for. Like this is elephants dancing and your business is just getting crushed from all sides. Literally nothing but sympathy. But the point I keep making is YouTube forever has basically had a position.

1:30:07You can go. Go try. Ninja, you want to leave Twitch to go start Mixer with my – have fun. You're coming right back. That's been their attitude. and it's been Twitch's attitude. It's been everyone's attitude. This thing where we're going to professionalize, that it's going to, it will change the dynamics. And the first time YouTube pays a variable rate to some creator over another, A, it will change the nature of the platform forever and B, the upending of the culture of what it means for a YouTuber will just begin. And I will just keep saying this. Go talk to YouTubers. We talk to them all the time.

1:30:44YouTube itself does not pay enough money to be a successful YouTuber. Right. That to me is as indefensible as it gets. They are making billions upon billions of dollars, but the YouTubers themselves have to go make other business arrangements to survive. And some turn has to happen there where being a YouTuber is successful just because YouTube is sharing enough revenue with you. I don't know where that pressure comes from, but if that turn doesn't happen, then YouTube is kind of stuck at the plateau. Yep. All right, what's your next one? My next one's quick because the settlement is not approved and we'll dive into it deeply when the settlement is approved.

1:31:23But it feels like Android is going to change forever in a meaningful way because Epic and Google have agreed to settle their antitrust case. And Google will open Android up like formally and officially to third-party app stores and even distribute those app stores inside the Play Store. so epic had won its lawsuit against google claiming that it was doing antitrust violations with android and not allowing certain kinds of in-app payments not allowing uh people to go around the play store all this stuff that was and it was the same argument against apple but because google has to deal with third parties there was like oceans of evidence of contracts and dealings and negotiations importantly this one was also a jury trial which i continue to think like it just There was a smell test in this case that didn't exist in the Apple case.

1:32:15I think it's fascinating. So Epic basically won. And they won a pretty narrow ruling that applied to the United States. I don't know exactly the machinations that led Google to want to settle. But they've settled and they're not going to take the basics of that ruling and apply it worldwide. And so there will be, according to the settlement they've announced, it needs to be approved. They were going to take way less. They're going to take 9 % instead of the rates they were taking. And they will allow third-party app stores to be distributed inside the Play Store itself. This is a huge, like this, everything we've been talking about on the show so far changes when Google changes the Play Store in this way.

1:32:51The business models we've talked about that don't exist, they might begin to exist. I suspect some of this is because doing it in one market and not the other markets is like complicated and weird and causes all kinds of problems. I suspect there are security concerns about other app stores that Google would like to be in control of instead of losing control of. Like there's a lot of reasons you would say, screw it, we've lost in one market. We're going to settle in all the markets. The judge has to approve the settlement. We're going to try to report some of this stuff out. But it's like secretly the biggest news of the week, I think.

1:33:21Yeah, I think this is like so many of these things. This is one where like the devil will truly be in the details. And if Apple's own malicious compliance is any evidence, there will be a bunch of shenanigans on the other side of this. But like Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Epic, who is not known for sugarcoating his opinion about how things are going in this case, seems thrilled about what's happening here. And so it sort of makes you wonder if Google just decided to lose. Do you know what I mean? Like if it was just the worst possible case scenario, which the judge in this case has basically at every available opportunity pointed at Google and been like, I am going to tear your company to shreds.

1:34:05And so maybe they looked at this and they were like, OK, maybe the like the D minus bad is a better sort of devil, you know, than the possible F like outcome here. And Google, like the App Store revenue doesn't matter to Google in the way that it matters to Apple. Like it just doesn't. And so maybe Google also sees a way here to change some of the norms. I can galaxy brain my way through all of this, but it is certainly true that what it means to be an app developer to most of the phones in the world is going to change in some really interesting ways. Yeah. And I think if you're Google and you're like, well, we have Gemini on our phone.

1:34:43And now Gemini will have access to more apps and more business models. And that's how you can see why they're like, screw it. We came in second this last time in terms of app store revenue. We're not going to come in second the next time. Whereas Apple cannot make this deal. right and if you see gaming as the reason for every bit of app store policy which is like not a perfect but not a wrong way to look at app stores uh google might have a pretty like wanting to win at games is a pretty good move for google here like getting getting epic to play nice you start to open the door to a lot of interesting reasons for people to use android devices that stand to benefit Google in a much bigger way.

1:35:27Right, because Gemini is using all of your other apps for you. Right. So then you're only opening your phone to play games. Google needs you to use Android way more than it needs you to use the Play Store. And it has, I think, maybe it is willing to divorce those two things in order to keep people using Android. Yeah. Well, see, like I said, the settlement has to be approved. So that's why we didn't spend a lot of time on it today. Yeah. It's going to get approved. I think we should do some reporting to figure out the contours of this deal, how it will work. I'm confident Tim Sweeney will want to take yet one more victory lap.

1:35:57But when it happens, we're going to rest assured that we have a full episode of Virtress on it because it is as like earthquake in the mobile space as it gets, for sure. All right, my next one is very short, which is that I have huge news for you about the Trump phone, which is that it doesn't exist. But the thing that has changed in the last seven days is that there has been a slew of new ideas about why the trump phone doesn't exist like there was definitely a thing in september where where we just kind of all let the date come and go and then at the end of october like october 31st last friday there was an awful lot of well the trump phone was a lie wasn't it kind of coverage and and the the the the heat on well this was just a bunch of bullshit vaporware has really increased and i'm not saying we get credit for that but i will take credit for that Yeah, because we did it on Thursday of last week.

1:36:52We are, particularly in the show, very good at counting days that things don't happen. Yeah, we are. And we are now a month and a week overdue on the Trump phone with, I mean, not only does it not exist, there's not one bit of information about it. I have not seen anyone who has used Trump Mobile. I have not seen anyone who claims to have used one of these phones. I've not seen anyone who claims to know that they exist in the world. Like the proof of life on something like this is so easy that it's like it clearly there's nothing here. It's funny because it's just an MVNO. Right. Ryan Reynolds found it easier to start a mobile network than the Trump boys.

1:37:32Should we start Verge Mobile and see if we can get it off the ground faster than Trump Mobile? That's actually a great idea. I'm just saying like the SmartList podcast started an MVNO faster and easier. You can just do it. in the Trump family. And if you will remember, you know what I remember, so the launch of Trump Mobile, they paraded out a bunch of sort of like anonymous looking guys. And they're like, these are our mobile executives. They have long histories in the space. And like, they couldn't just white label T-Mobile, which everyone else is able to do with like a drop of a hat. Like literally SmartList launched an MVNO in this time.

1:38:05You can use the SmartList wireless network. I don't know why, but you can. it's just jason bateman calls you once a day he's like how you doing what that would actually be pretty good i would accept that um i'd be like do you remember your little known movie the switch i love that movie tell me everything about what it's like working with goldblum um it's a great movie it's horrifying plot-wise excellent in line delivery terms can't recommend it enough um do you remember when they did the dish network thing right and t-mobile sold dish network a bunch of spectrums so they could buy sprint nobody remembers this for us we counted the days that this wasn't real forever and now it's definitely not real because brandon cards dummy the point i'm making is the first version of that network launched with like a cockamini idea about crypto points for using your wireless network and that launched and we spent when we sent mitchell clark to go use it in las vegas and we could do it and there was like a subreddit about Project Gen5Sys and its weird crypto.

1:39:07Like, they did all of that. They layered on a crypto scam on top of a wireless network and launched that and we were able to go use it. And we still can't use Trump Mobile, which is just an MVNO, I believe, of AT &T and T-Mobile. It's insane. And if there is somewhere a Trump phone, like, tethered to a desk, I will fly to that desk just to look at it and use it. It doesn't exist. This phone is fake. The renders have not gotten better on the website. Like I, it's just, I am increasingly of the belief that this is never, ever, ever going to launch. And no, nobody will ever say anything about it.

1:39:45Not only is it going to be like massively late. I don't think it's ever going to be anything ever. Oh yeah. No, no chance. We're going to keep counting the days. Yeah. If there's one thing this show can do, it's count. It's what we're here for. Incrementally count the days that nothing happened. Poor Don Preston on our team has signed up to send PR emails into the void once a week asking where Trump Mobile is. And I'm going to get Allison Johnson to try to actually sign up for Trump Mobile, which I think you can do and review the service. We'll see how that goes. It's going to be fun. If you know anything, what is this?

1:40:16Yeah, indeed. If you have a T1 phone, I will buy it from you for literally any price. Again, not even a subreddit. You know it's bad when there's not even a subreddit. Like one person didn't start the Trump Mobile subreddit. This is what I'm saying. The proof of life is so simple. Take a picture of it. Pete Hegseth, like, take a selfie with a Trump phone. Problem solved. He will definitely not be wearing a shirt in that selfie. No, God no. I was going to say my last one was a party speaker update. Now I just want to talk about the movie The Switch, which features the most unhinged Jeff Goldblum performance of all time.

1:40:49You understand how high a bar that is, right? It is so out of control. He shows up and steals that movie at least six times. And at one point he says, that is ill-advised. and my friends and I have been saying that as ill-advised for like 10 years. It's very good. Oh, this is the like weird it's Jason Bateman Jennifer Aniston. You don't even want to say the plot out loud, man. It's a rom-com, supposedly. It's sort of, it's horrifying. Like the plot of this movie is horrifying. The Goldblum is choice. That's all I'm saying. Go watch that movie. That's my, the Wikipedia page is amazing. There's a lot going on with this movie.

1:41:23Anyway, if you're a Goldblum fan, you got, it's on your list tonight. That's all I'm saying. My last one is actually a party speaker update. Oh, good. It's been a minute. As by request from the YouTube comments, which were oddly aggressive about demanding a party speaker update. It has been too long. I agree. We've had a couple sent in. So on Blue Sky, I don't even know how to pronounce this. Canard Malad sent in a party speaker that I believe he found in a Costco in Canada. This is, right, we're coming full circle on the maturity of these devices. This is a party speaker that looks like an old school boombox.

1:41:56but importantly around the speakers are the party lights oh critically important uh it's called the retro glow boombox it's just a weird ion thing like this is how we know that we're at full maturity right we're now doing retro party speakers it's very very good wait this is great though because if i if i have one note on the party speaker world it's that we're giving too much of the design work to the party lights. It's just a lot of like black blobs with party lights. And I would like to see us try a little harder with our party speaker design. Well, no. Let me give you the next one. Fragile Practice on Blue Sky sent me one.

1:42:39It is just a black blob with party lights. But here's where we are in the maturity of the market. This is at Home Depot. I didn't even have a brand. The brand is T-Z-U-M-I. That's not a word. or is that an N? I don't even know. Whatever that brand is. It's just drop shipping letters. That's what that brand is. Alphabet Soup. It's called the Super Bass Jobsite Speaker. It's at Home Depot for$29.97. What? We've hit the singularity, man. We're through the looking glass. So you can get a party speaker for$30. Everyone should have like 10 of these. The Super Bass Jobsite? Jobsite, yep. Super Bass Jobsite.

1:43:15I love the idea that your construction site needs just a straight RGB light. situation. But yeah, it's a 10-hour battery. There's just a logo on here that just says LED. No reason why. It's great. I'm telling you, this is the most mature consumer electronics market that we've seen come from nothing to the most something totally uncovered. It's happening right in front of your eyes. All this AI stuff, right? Sam Altman's on CNBC talking nonsense. And you're like, no, this whole thing happened. Just like quietly under the radar. There were not party speakers. And now there are party speakers from every company at every price point in every store in America, on every street corner, at every no Kings protest, at every subway stop.

1:44:07They're everywhere. They just arrived. And like no one talks about them except the Vergecast. There's your AGI right there. But once you see them, you're like, oh, this thing just like under the radar. became a part of America's cultural fabric, nay, the world's cultural fabric. You're saying we've reached general party speaker? I'm saying that there are children being born today who will never know a world without party speakers. It would just be like a default assumption that if they need to broadcast both sound and multicolored light to a large audience, that is a capability they have. That was not true when I was a child.

1:44:45The one that got me recently was our two-and-a-half-year-old plays like little toddler soccer on Saturday mornings. And they have one there that they didn't even use. She literally like just put the speaker down to balance her bag of soccer balls against. And I was like, we've gone so far into party speakers that you just like instinctively took it out of your car. And we did. I'm just saying we didn't run out of demand. No. Right? Like GoPro reached a problem where there were just not enough X Games people. Right? Like, do you remember that moment? Oh, yeah. Like I would say 16, 18, somewhere in there where they were just like, we've run out of people to sell GoPros to.

1:45:23We didn't run out of people to sell party speakers to. There's yet more to come. I'm just saying, you think AGI is the thing. You think, you know, the Pope has to declare that Sam Altman found Jesus right under your nose. The greatest cultural revolution of our time. What if everybody has spent the last decade looking for the successor to the smartphone and it's just party speakers? You see what I'm saying? It's right. It's right. Put the AGI in the party speakers and maybe we're on to something. Next Alexa. Panos is like, all right, it's eight feet tall. Five million colors. Let's do it. Yeah.

1:45:59What if Alexa Plus was much louder? Did you like it better? Is that something? All right. What's your last? Okay. I have a game we're going to play. So we made a lot of fun of Apple TV on the show for just being horrible at naming things. and to be clear, there's now the Apple TV box, there's the Apple TV app and there's the Apple TV service. And by the, what I would call AI property of growth, this means that in five years, every single product Apple makes will be called Apple TV. Yes. This is just, if we're doing the linear thing, that's where we're headed. This week, the news was that the new name came with some new branding.

1:46:35There's a new look and most importantly, there's a new sound that plays when you first start a thing. All of these services have, they're called like Sonic logos. And they're, it's like that few seconds that plays right at the beginning with the logo to tell you what service you're watching. And all of them are too loud. I mean, agreed. I, my immediate reaction to this story was like, who cares? I don't even know what any of them are. Turns out I know what all of them are. Oh boy. And I have pulled a large number of them for you. And I'm going to play them for you. And you are going to have to guess which one is which.

1:47:06Okay. Are you ready for this game? Yeah. I have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten of them for you. We're going to do ten? We're going to do ten. Because you should be able to get all of them in one second each. The longest one of these is six seconds. You watch so much more TV than me. Okay, let's go. Let's go. Okay. We'll start easy. I just want to ease you in. I want to make you feel good. Let's just do this. That's HBO. Classic HBO. Next.

1:47:39Oh, it's like a spinny color thing. I know what it looks like. I just, what is it? That's HBO Max. That's HBO Max. And if you're saying, David, why is that different? I don't have a good answer for you. But here we are. Yeah. Next up. That's Netflix. They're very proud of that one. Do you think, is that one or is the HBO static the most iconic one right now? Netflix is way more iconic. I think so too. They've stopped using the static. It has faded from the... That's true. Like the Zoomers don't know. Okay, next up.

1:48:15No, I don't know what that is. What is that? Is that Crackle? That is Peacock, the brand of minority investor in Vox Media and Comcast. Well, it sucks. That's what I got. I know that as the thing that plays before every broad NBC comedy that I watch too many episodes of. That's the one I like here in my sleep. That's Peacock. Next up.

1:48:42Oh, man. It's like I'm having sense recollections of all these, but I couldn't tell you what they are. Can you play that again?

1:48:51No. Your hint is Max would get that very quickly. Max would get this. Is that Disney Plus? It is Disney Plus. Yeah. This is why I have a sense memory, because I'm hearing it all the time. Yeah, exactly. All right, next up.

1:49:09It's very relaxing. Is that sauna TV? You're close. It's the new Apple TV sound. That's the new Apple TV sound. That's unfair. Who knows? What do you think? Do you like it? It's nice. You want to hear it one more time? Yeah.

1:49:28Yeah, it's melancholy. It's very hard to imagine that sound going right into a cold open to a severance episode. No, it is. I'm saying there's like a bittersweetness. There's a melancholy. All the Apple TV stuff has like a bittersweet. Even Ted Lasso has a bittersweetness to it. Everybody has regrets in an Apple TV show. Yeah. Okay, that's fair. All right, we got a couple more.

1:49:56That's some CBS shit. That's Paramount+. It is Paramount+. Yeah, like whatever. Like good work. That's sort of like broad Americana, like bum, bum, bum. That's just Paramount+. 100 % yes. Well done. All right, I have two more for you. I think you're going to get them both. Yeah. Here we go.

1:50:18Oh, that's another one. It starts with a bright light and it focuses, but I have no idea what it is. That one's Hulu. Yep. Which for some reason, so we on this show did trivia with the Waveform folks at an Apple event like two years ago. And this was one of the questions was, what sound is that? And I got it wrong and it has pissed me off ever since. and so now I know what that is. All right, last but not least, see if you get this one.

1:50:48No? I want to say that's like a, I'm going to go with Crackle again. It's YouTube. That's YouTube. That is YouTube. That's the one that plays, that one's a little bit cheating because it plays when you open the app, not when you like play a video, but that's YouTube. Do you have the sound that Plex makes when you open it, which is just the sound of money returning to your pocket. It's the sound of the FBI picking up the phone.

1:51:15All right, that was, you did, you did, you did pretty, I am shocked you got Paramount Plus. Like that alone. By the way, I didn't get that one because I knew it was Paramount Plus. I got it because it is, it's so CBS. Like it's so over the top. Like just play it again.

1:51:36It's that, that last hit is like, that's just old people. I don't even know how to describe. No, it is. If I had said to you one of these was composed in 1957, you would have picked that one immediately. It's like without question. Yeah. All right. Well, I'm going to play the Apple TV one more time.

1:51:57Right? Like this weird little dissonant minor chord thing, right? Like that's like the trap influence on audio, like audio trademarks where CBS is like major chords. It's just very different. Yeah, that's about right. Also shouts to the podcast, 20 ,000 Hertz, which has done a bunch of episodes on a bunch of these things. They're very good. I'll link the show in the show notes, digging into like how all this stuff works. They did an episode on the Hulu one. I think that I particularly liked, which again, I should have gotten that right on the trivia and I will never leave it down. All right. that's it it's time for us to get out of here Neelai has like big shot stuff to go do I'm not super clear on what you're up to today but you have to go yeah glad hand and kiss babies and stuff so we're gonna get out of here vote Patel vote Patel 2020 all of them it's just I don't even know what you're running for but we'll vote for you before we get out of here Sunday another episode of Virgin History about the Fire Phone thank you to everybody who said nice things about the Zune episode by the way definitely one of the most chaotic ones we've done but we had a very good time making it was like one of the first We had no idea what we were doing.

1:53:00No, none. But we had a great time. That episode, it's been fun to hear from everybody who still has Zunes. So thank you to everybody. And a reminder, we're putting season two together now. And if you want to be on the show, send us questions or reminisce about either TiVo or the iPhone 4. We'd love to hear from you. Also, a reminder, subscribe to The Verge just in general, but also you can get ad-free podcasts. This show, Virgin History and Decoder, you can get all ad-free. we continue to hear awesome things from people about how much you like the ad-free podcasts we like them to download everything everywhere we've gotten questions from people who are like why do i have two feeds now the answer is so you can download more podcasts more times and we will be very grateful so thank you for that uh if you have questions about anything we're up to email vergecast of the verge.com call 866 verge 11 for the hotline jen 2 is on the show on tuesday again with me she's going to help me smarten up my smart house uh this is i think the second to last time I'm going to be in this room and then I'm going to move and it's going to feel very weird.

1:53:59So Jenna's going to help me make sense of my new place. The Verge Cast is a Verge production, part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, and Travis Larchuk. Andrew Marino is here with us this week helping. Thank you, Andrew. Nice to see you as always. We'll see you next week. Milai, take a stab.