How the iPhone 15 could still surprise us

24:45I still see an alarming number of people with broken phone screens just out in the world. It's crazy. I just had to look to make sure mine was working right now. It is. Apple could make things more repairable. It did that with the iPhone 14, not the 14 Pro, but the 14 was designed to be more repairable. So maybe that extends across the line. That would be a step forward. It'd be a small step, but. Well, they just really kind of embraced California's repairability law a couple of weeks ago, right? Begrudgingly. Yeah. They are embracing USB-C, Alex. Yeah, exactly. Where they like kick you when you use it.

25:19Like you're just going to get kicked to the pants every time you plug USB-C into this thing. And every time you order one of those, the repair kits, somebody's going to come to your door and kick you in the pants and be like, you shouldn't be using this. And then charge you$600. Yeah. But it's one of those things where Apple being Apple, they could make a huge gap between them and the Samsungs and the Googles and whoever else is up to the world because they just can't control phone design and components the way that they can to potentially make something more repairable. As one last thing to note, what do you guys think of the rumors about the price?

25:50That the most expensive models would be maybe$100 more expensive than they used to be? It's stupid. It makes sense, but I hate it, so therefore it is stupid. I'm just walking you through my processing here. Does it really need to be more expensive? I feel like no. Is titanium really adding$100 to it? especially because the phone, like the difference between how much it costs to manufacture it and sell it is fairly large. It just feels like price creep. Well, it certainly is. I mean, Apple is nothing if not very good at preserving profit margins and providing or convincing people in perceived value.

26:31And when you say it's titanium and new materials and different, I don't think it's hard for them to jump$100 in perceived value. We've seen across the board technology getting more expensive over the past few years as inflation has gone up and as the supply chain issues and things like that. Samsung's tablet S9 tablet line this summer is$100 more across the board. And that is like kind of backwards from how we want to experience technology in that it gets cheaper over time. But it's just kind of like the world we're in. I will not be surprised for a second if they start at$10.99 now. And I also don't think it's going to impact their sales much because most people are buying these on payment plans over 24, 36 months, whatever it might be.

27:12It's a buck or two a month. They're not even going to notice it. So I don't think it's going to make much of it. It'll just make Apple more money. Well, and the Pro isn't their best-selling model, right? It's the regular iPhones. Well, yeah. The best-selling model, I believe, of last year's round was iPhone 14, but the 14 Pro was close behind it, and nobody bought the 14 plus. Yeah. The big cheap screens theory really took a hit last year. It wasn't cheap. That was the problem. It was$900. Like, I mean, you're, you're like looking at an iPhone 14 pro max at that point. Like if they did it for less than that, then yeah, I could have seen that argument, but it wasn't cheap.

27:46That was a problem. I guess that's, that's one of the things they could change here, right? Like the pricing schemes, because last year they did get really weird and it was a lot of confusion. and we immediately saw that reflected in what got purchased and what didn't. And this year, maybe if they raise those prices on the most expensive ones, maybe they drop the prices on the cheaper ones to make that Delta significant. Yeah, they could keep the 15 plus at that$900 price, but now it's$300 to go to the 15 Pro Max. And so that's like a much more significant gap. And so that might be the move there.

28:18And maybe people would more gravitate towards the 15 plus if they want a big screen. But no, we should demand they be cheaper. Rise up. They have a moral obligation. Have you considered the perspective of the Apple shareholder, Alex? They have a moral obligation. Won't somebody think about the profit margins? It really, it's such a cynical idea to think that instead of making one thing cheaper in order to make the price differences more obvious, they're just going to make the other thing more expensive. But that's also 100 % what's going to happen. That's rough. All right, let's see. So what else are we expecting?

28:51There's going to be, we think, a new Apple Watch, which by all accounts is going to be thoroughly unexciting, teeny tiny upgrades on the old Apple Watch. So I think what we're expecting of the new Apple Watch lineup is a similar design, whether that's a series model, series nine or the ultra. But they are rumored to have a finally a faster processor. Basically, the Apple Watch has used the same performing processor since I think the S6 or series six. And there's just been some small health sensors added to it. With this model, the rumors are saying that we'll actually get a faster performing processor, which will be the first time in a while that we've had that.

29:27Will that translate to better battery life? I have never once been like, my watch is slow. I think my watch is stupid and doesn't do much. And I wish Siri would talk to me less. But it does not feel slow. Maybe the widgets thing, as this stuff gets more useful, will make it feel slower as you use it more. I think if you have a recent model Apple Watch, yes. But if you had one of the, say, Series 4 earlier. Oh, for sure. Yeah, they got slow. The Series 3 got to be a dog. The Series 3 did get very slow. I agree with that. Yeah. And then I guess, what is it? Next year, Mark Gurman at Bloomberg was reporting that there's potentially a much bigger Apple Watch redesign coming.

30:04Yeah, with new manufacturing using 3D printing techniques and stuff like that. But it doesn't seem like that is slated for this year's model, if I read it correctly. But nothing on battery life. We haven't heard one way or the other improvements. I mean, Apple's claimed the same 18 hours of battery life on the series models for since like series one or two. So, I mean, if you want more battery life, they have the Ultra. That is their pitch for battery life. That will never fit on this hand. And then we think probably new AirPods too, right? Potentially like just to put a USB-C port on them. Yeah, it'll be interesting to how this is handled.

30:41Do we get all new AirPods or just a new case that they sell with basically the same AirPods with a new port? And then you can buy the case separately. They did that with the wireless charging way back when. I think it was the AirPods 2. They first launched without wireless charging. And then you could buy the case with wireless charging where you could buy it bundled together. So it'll be interesting to see if that happens. This is one area where the supply chain leaks have not shown anything. And so there's been no new designs of AirPods released or leaked or anything like that. So the idea being, if they put USB-C on it, they're solely to match the fact that the iPhone has USB-C.

31:19And so you use the same charging cable for both. Is that going to be the last of the Lightning stuff if they switch both of those over? Still some iPads, right? So the base model 9th gen iPad, which is the cheapest iPad you could buy, is still being sold new by Apple. That's got a Lightning. The Magic Keyboard for the Mac and the Magic Truck Pad for the Mac are still lightning. Wait, did we fix the flip upside down mouse? Is that finally out of commission? Oh, yeah. The Magic Mouse is still lightning. Still lightning? Yes. Well, here's hoping they fix all that all at once. That's going to be the big surprise.

31:52That's going to be the big splash. There's also rumors for the October event that Apple usually holds that we will see M3 Macs and a new iMac with an M3 processor. And I think that's when we'll see USB-C ports on the peripherals. The truly pettiest thing Apple could do if it really wants to get everybody into wireless charging is put USB-C ports on everything, but put them always in the most inconvenient place. Like in the same way that on the Magic Mouse that's on the bottom. In the middle of the track. Yeah. Put it on like the top left corner of the iPhone. They're like, oh, you want to plug it in?

32:23Knock yourself out. Great. Good luck. Congratulations. It's in the dynamic island.

32:33Yeah, I love this. This is my new favorite idea. Tim Cook, if you're listening, please charge the dynamic island. I love it. Oh, one more Apple thing, actually, that I'm curious what y 'all think about. So there was this announcement this week from Apple that the Vision Pro App Store for the headset, presumably coming next year, will include, by default, all iPhone and iPad apps that are compatible, which obviously has some, you know, what compatibility means is difficult, But it means by default, if developers don't turn it off, a huge number of iPhone and iPad apps are just going to be available for the Vision Pro on day one.

33:09Is this a good idea or a terrible idea? Great idea. Yeah. Because you're going to be able to go find that one fart app that has just survived this whole time and immediately be like, in the virtual space. That's incredible. Like$3 ,500 spent. Absolutely. I want a fart app. Just. I think it's a necessary move to give the people that are actually buying these for$3 ,500 something to do on their headsets other than the 5 to 10 apps that are ready to go at launch. I don't think it's going to be a great experience for the vast majority of apps. Everything that I've seen from developers playing with them and things like that, I have said, like, if you have an iPad app, it'll run, but you really should be redesigning it for this spatial interface.

33:55I mean, it's the same thing that happened with iPhone to iPad. And every time you accidentally open an iPhone app on your iPad, you're like, oh, Jesus. Instagram threads in the 2023rd year of our Lord. You're just really upset. And so that's what's going to happen for VR, for this headset, only it's going to be for the next three or four years. Yeah, it's going to take some time and then it'll taper off. And, you know, if the platform is a success and it gets the developer interest and the customer interest and all that, there will be more native, just like the iPad took a couple of years to get really great native iPad apps.

34:30Do you think the visual design... So, like, you know, when you open those iPad apps, oftentimes they feel like they're from 2008. They're from, like, the dawn of the iPhone. It's like nothing's changed, that skeuomorphic design and everything. Do you think the same thing is going to happen with this new headset, where you'll still be not only stuck because it's this giant blown-up app, but because the design is so different? The UI design is so different from whatever's coming. Yeah, I mean, I think that is a part of it, right? And that's part of the reason that all developers that I see posting on social about it are saying they need to redesign it.

35:05because the design language of, and David, maybe you can speak to this more because you've got firsthand experience with it, but the design language of Vision OS is very different than iOS and iPad OS. It's got a lot of transparency and layers and depth and things like that. And like iOS is notoriously flat. Yeah. I mean, if you, if you just like think about the structure of a normal iOS app, it's like, there's a bar at the bottom with some stuff. There's all your stuff in the middle up at the top. There's probably a menu button that opens things. And then like the settings live off to one side, right?

35:36That's kind of the like, standard structure of an iOS app. If that's the best we can do in augmented reality, like boy, did we blow it in the future. You know, the way you use it is by using your fingers and you look at the menu item that you want to click on, and then you click your fingers together. And that's how you do it. And if I have to sit there and be like, okay, look up, click on the thing that goes to settings, then move my head all the way over here. Look at the thing with my name on it. Click that. Look down a list. Click that. Like, no, that's bad. We have blown it. And then periodically having to make it big so you could actually find the button and just right.

36:12Exactly. Yeah. No, this is a mess. And I feel like this thing that Apple is trying to do where it basically seems increasingly like the iPad app is kind of the like atomic unit of it. And then iPad apps can move to Mac where they more or less work. iPad apps are increasingly in have everything in common with iPhone apps where things mostly work in both places, even though the screen sizes are different. And now they want to put iPad apps in particular on to the vision pro. And I just don't think that's going to keep working forever. Like you have this one rectangular screen and you should be able to put that on all of your rectangular screens.

36:53I'm just not sure that holds forever as much as Apple seems to want it to, But I do agree it's a decent stopgap and like a bunch of half functional apps are probably better than no apps at all at first. Like if you want to watch Netflix, like the iPad Netflix app will be more than sufficient to play Netflix in front of your face in the on the vision. It just won't be as cool because you won't be in a little weird virtual theater that's always empty and a little scary. That's actually a really good example, right? Because there is the version of it that it's just like it'll play in a window in front of you.

37:26but the cooler version of that is something much more ambitious and has weird theaters or you can like have it be the the like oculus quest thing where it's like you're in your home and it's playing on a tv in front of you and there's a crackling fire like there are big ideas to be had there but like i'd rather have a thing that plays netflix than nothing that plays netflix so i guess i have seen a bunch of developers who are not excited about this idea of it like even some who are like i'll eventually turn this on but the idea of it being on by default and people like discovering their apps for the first time through this thing that is thoroughly unoptimized and untested for their app, they're not fans.

38:03The same thing happened with the Apple Silicon Max, right? Like Apple had initially pitched, if I'm, I could be misremembering it, but I believe the plan was to have all of the iPhone and iPad apps just kind of work by default. And then they rolled it back because, and many, many developers have opted not to make their apps available on M1 Max or Apple Silicon Max because the experience really isn't great and they didn't design it for that. And there's a handful that do, but it's very few and far between. And I wouldn't be surprised if that same thing happens, that between the time of when we have this$3 ,500 Vision Pro and whenever we get a Vision Pro that people actually can buy or want to buy, that policy changes.

38:43And also, hopefully by then they'll have enough apps to kind of satisfy the people. But for the first initial buyers, having a huge app store full of apps that kind of don't work, but you have everything to choose from is fine before you get to the general public actually using this thing. It's a hell of a sales pitch for a$3 ,500 headset. All right. Just to bring this full circle, do we think we're going to hear anything about the Vision Pro next week? Yes. 100%. I think David's right that they've got something coming, But I think it's probably less about the phone itself and more about the grand new vision for the future of how we window our ways into the internet.

39:24And it's going to be some stuff. When Tim Cook tells us that we can hold up the iPhone to our face like heads up style and have a Vision Pro right now for$1 ,099, you're all going to buy one. Yeah, Google Cardboard was a very successful program. And it too costs$1 ,000. That's how much the Belkin headset will be. The thing I've been surprised by is how forthcoming Apple has been in letting developers talk about their experiences so far. There have been people out there talking about how they've been using it. And they haven't said a ton, but they're able to at least... I think those are very gated experience.

39:59Oh, for sure. Like Apple produced a PR blast a few weeks ago, right? That had some developers providing quotes and things like that. And that's all those developers can say about it. And those Apple PR... That is true. That's true. That's definitely true. But like, I just makes me think of like when the iPad came out, Apple literally chained it to people's tables. And we'll probably get something like that. But I would bet we're going to get like a really fun montage video of the developers playing with the Vision Pro. And that's about all we're going to get. All right, we need to take a break.

40:29Dan, can you stick around for a little while longer and talk about some more gadgets? Or do you have to go? Happy to join. Okay, good. All right. We're gonna take a quick break. Then we're gonna go back and talk about some other stuff. We'll be right back.

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41:53Support 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.

42:28Promoted 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. Based on LinkedIn data, 72 % of SMBs using LinkedIn say that it helps them find high quality candidates. Find out why more than two and a half 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.

43:07All right, we're back. Before we get to the bobs, which I have promised we are going to get to very soon, let's just run through some of the other gadgets that came out this week before we mercifully let Dan go. Does anybody have feelings about GoPro? Like, I mean this sincerely as a question. GoPro launched a new camera and promised other new cameras. And I find myself so just cold thinking about the existence of a new GoPro camera. It'll let you film for longer. It has a new vertical video thing. That's all fine. But I just like, does anyone care about GoPros? David, is this GoPro's problem or is this your problem?

43:45You're a few years older than you were the last time they brought out a brand new phone. Oh, no, it's GoPro's problem. You maybe are a little less, okay, maybe I am a little less sure that I'm going to be doing anything worth filming with a GoPro. Like, if you just made the list of things that you can do that are worth filming with a GoPro, like maybe six years ago I had some of those things on the list. Now it's none. Zero. It's never going to happen. I think that is the lesson of action cameras in general. When they first came out and first were being popular, everybody thought, oh, I could be life-logging or filming all these crazy adventures and things like that.

44:16And then they realize that, like, I don't really do anything all that interesting. And I don't really want to deal with all this footage. And I'm not a video filmmaker or whatever. And so what are we up to? Hero 12, the 12th GoPro. At this point, like, they are products for a specific type of filmmaker who is using them to either capture interesting angles or interesting activities or whatever. They're just not general consumer products. like they might have thought they would have been five to ten years ago. Well, I think that the phone made it hard for them to be a general consumer product because the phone camera got...

44:52Because for a while there, you'd be like, okay, well, I don't want to use my phone to film this because my phone's got a crummy camera on it, but the GoPro's got a much nicer camera, so it makes sense. And maybe one day I really will go skiing and be able to show everybody my videos. You won't, but you could rationalize that, right? And I think it was like 2018, 2019, where suddenly their sales just fell off a cliff because everybody was like, I have a GoPro and I'm not as active as you wish I was GoPro. And they really struggled. They had a lot of issues. It was around the same time they released their drone that just flopped because it was busted.

45:31Well, they'd gotten huge. You would go to the grocery store and they'd have an end cap for GoPro at every Walmart and Meijer and whatever. And I'm like, are there that many people living these action camera lifestyles? And it turned out there weren't. I think I really think GoPro thought it was like the point and shoot camera of the future. And what it seems to me is that like every year, the total addressable market of GoPro just gets a little tiny bit smaller because it doesn't have new ideas about how you can take photos and video. Like one of the things this time is it's easier to sync time codes if you're shooting with a bunch of GoPros simultaneously.

46:10And it's like that's for 12 people. That's that. That's the number of people who care about that. But then I guess I don't know. There's a guy in my neighborhood who rides like old Schwinn bike to the train station every morning. And he like has on he's like wearing business casual clothes and he has his messenger bag and he clips a GoPro to his messenger bag and just films his ride to the train station every morning. And every time I see this man, I just want to stop him and be like, why? Have you ever watched any of these videos? Is he using it as a dash cam? It's a dash cam in case he gets hit by a car.

46:42Oh, that's for security. Okay. Yeah, it's a dash cam. Basically, GoPros are for people who don't want to buy a dash cam because the dash cam market is super confusing and scary. I definitely don't know that from experience. or cyclists who need it. So in case the cop like gives them a ticket for riding in the bike lane, which happens far too often here in New York City. And then Viren, like one of our people on our video team who actually does use it for like cool stuff. He's always like, yeah, I'm snowboarding this weekend. And I'm like, how do you have the energy? The Thomas Ricker experience, as we call it.

47:17Yeah. Yeah, the Thomas Ricker experience. There's like those two. And then the folks who need it for a dash cam, that's the market. I mean, I think it is smart. If I was GoPro and I didn't really have an idea to reinvent this camera, or the idea is I tried in the past failed, 360 video or drones, whatever. I think it's smart to lean into building these higher end features for the niche that is still using the cameras and is still going to go out and buy them and will sync five GoPro angles together. I mean, it's worked for Sony. It's worked for kind of red. Like going more niche does work for cameras in particular.

47:55Makes sense because camera nerds be nerding. I think my real issue with GoPro is that we treat it kind of like a mainstream brand. And it very much is a mainstream brand. Like their brand recognition, I'm sure, is ridiculous. When in reality, like you said, Kranz, it is basically it's red. It is a specific device for a specific use case. And that's fine. And that's all well and good, but it is so not how GoPro wants you to think about it. The dissonance of that, I think, has just always kind of annoyed me. I think they've also struggled with that, right? They had a lot of leadership changes and stuff after the drone because they were also realizing, oh, wait, we're having this turn in our company and we're not going to be able to survive it if we don't fix everything.

48:40And so it feels like they have kind of leaned into we're here for the niche market. And I think a lot of us are just like, the news from us was written by Viren, who is part of that market, right? I think while our friends and family might still recognize GoPro, none of them have owned them in years, have any desire to own them in years. And GoPro is probably okay with that. Yeah, I think that's probably right. All right, well, that's enough about GoPro. That's all I want to talk about GoPro in the year 2023. A couple more things here. So Google did what we talked about last week and assumed it's going to happen, just full leak to the Pixel 8 Pro.

49:19Richard, what did we learn? What do we know about the Pixel 8 Pro? It continues to be a phone. They actually today posted, you've probably seen this by the time you're hearing this, they posted a couple of videos of it, of the Pixel 8 Pro and the Pixel 8, which notably the Pixel 8 should be quite a bit smaller than the Pixel 7 and Pixel 6. So if you like small phones, you have a good option. So you can actually see it now. We've got some comparisons there. They showed off the second watch, which looks a lot like the first watch. But it seems like that's what we're going to kind of get at the event.

49:48Google always leaking his stuff. We have had the hardware specs. We've heard stuff about the software. They haven't said too much really about what these things do, but we can see them. We can see the camera bar. It's still there. They've got lenses. It's not folding. It's nice to see Google making progress on the length of time between when it leaks its own product and its own event. like we're at one month to the event that's pretty good you know a couple years ago it was like they would announce their phone in may and not not launch it till october and they're like yeah we got that pixel 5 coming we showed it to you got to get ahead of that iphone hype train like pixel fans don't forget it's coming here it is the whole thing just wait a little longer richard i'm just seeing this video you're talking about now for the first time the pixel 8 looks small yeah it's like 6.1-ish inches is what we're talking about.

50:42So yeah, small phones are back. And we're calling 6.1 inches small now. Which we have agreed on this show. That is the perfect size for a smartphone. As Allison Johnson will say to anyone who asks, that is the correct size of smartphone. So good job, Google. Yeah, that's coming October 4th. I assume we will get 600 or 700 more leaks. Before we let you go, Dan, run me through the two Bluetooth speakers that came out this week. the Sonos Move 2, and the UE Epic Boom. Technically, one of them's not really a Bluetooth speaker, but sure. That's true. Fair enough. Two needlessly expensive wireless speakers, both of which I want to buy anyway.

51:20So here we are. So I'll roll that back a little bit. The Sonos Move 2 does support Bluetooth, but it's primarily a Wi-Fi speaker. It's an update to Sonos' first portable speaker. It's got a battery built into it. It's basically if you took the Sonos Aero 100 and stuck a battery on the bottom of it. The improvements over the Move 1 are stereo sound now because it's got multiple tweeters and double the battery life. It's also got a slightly different design on top with the way you adjust volume or skip tracks. And it comes in green. And if you read the site, you knew all of this a month ago because Chris Welch leaked all of it and had gotten a huge scoop on it.

51:59But now it's official. Now you can order it. It's$450, which means it's$50 more expensive than last time. Ah, so how it goes. The one weird quirk is it does not support Google Assistant for voice commands because Sonos and Google, as we know and have discussed probably many times, don't get along anymore. So voice control is only through Amazon's assistant and Sonos' own assistant, but you cannot use Google Assistant on it. I believe that's coming out later this month. So that's coming real soon. We'll have a review, all that fun stuff. And then the other thing is a solar-powered Bluetooth speaker that you, in theory, never have to charge from the company that brought us solar-powered over-ear headphones.

52:38It's the same kind of concept. John Porter reported on it from IFA out in Berlin. It's pretty neat because if I know anything about any Bluetooth speaker I've ever owned, they end in a drawer most of the time, and then they're always dead when I want to use it. Yeah. Yeah, it's the best part of them. This thing is not attractive. It looks like a coaster. It does. Yeah, I don't think it's going to be a banger speaker. It's small. But I will say, a solar-powered Bluetooth speaker is actually kind of a perfect idea because it's the sort of thing you use outside all the time. And so in the way that most solar gadgets are like, you have to go out of your way to put them in the sun, this one actually kind of tracks.

53:15I'm very into this. The one other speaker I would add, and this is just because I am permanently obsessed with this company is UE Ultimate Ears just came out with a new speaker called the Epic Boom. It's like 350 bucks. It's too expensive. It's big. UE has kind of like lost its mind with how large a Bluetooth speaker should be. But I continue to think they are the best series of speakers on the market for just like regular ass Bluetooth speakers. I have a Wonder Boom. I have a Boom. I have a Mega Boom. They're wonderful. And so I am sure I will end up buying this. I just love how each one has to one-up the name.

53:52They started with Boom, which is already a big, powerful name. And then they're like, whoa, where do we go from here? Ah, Mega Boom. Now we're at Epic Boom. I assume the next step is Ultra Boom. And then Apple sues them out of existence for using the Ultra name. Yeah, no, everyone should buy UE speakers. That's how I feel about all this. All right, we should move on. It's time to talk about streaming. Dan, you can stay or you can leave. And we will understand if it's time to go before Bob. I'm going to let you guys have fun. Thank you for having me. Thanks, buddy. All right. Dan is gone. It's time for Bob talk.

54:32Alex, just set the scene here a little bit. We have a banger of a CNBC story this week. We have a lot of Bobs to talk about. Catch us up here. So a couple of years ago, Bob Iger, then CEO of Disney, said, I'm going to leave. I'm retiring. I'm going to stay on as executive chairman, but otherwise I'm going to go. And I'm going to name this new guy, Bob Chappick, who's been running our parks and run like home video and seems to really know the company. He's going to be running things. Bob Chappick came in, immediately got like COVID happened. They had to shut down the parks, got into a huge fight with Ron DeSantis over whether or not people could say gay in Florida.

55:12Like, got in a fight with Scarlett Johansson about being paid appropriately for Black Widow because they moved that to have it released on Disney Plus at the same time as theaters. There's all of this stuff happened. Everybody's like, Chappick seems like kind of a clown. Why is he in charge? And then Bob Iger returned and said, hey, I'm here. Don't worry. I'm going to fix everything. And it seems like he really had. And it was like, wow, what was this huge error in judgment? Who made the decision to put Chappick in charge? And aren't we all glad Iger is back? And it feels like this, what we found out from the CNBC story was it was the same person that did both of those themes.

55:51Bob Iger. Good job, Bob. Yeah, I just want to focus on, like, when he left. That was right at the time that we were all kind of reckoning with the idea that, oh, COVID's a thing. This is happening. And, like, just at the very beginning of that, Bob Iger was like, I'm out. He's just like, was that meme of the kid just, like, turning into ghost? Like, just peace. And he was gone. Well, and I remember even at the time, the story was basically Bob Iger is this like legendarily successful CEO. His run at Disney is up there with anyone's run at any company ever. He bought Pixar. He bought Marvel. He bought Lucasfilm.

56:33Disney was booming. Everything was going really great. And he basically saw the writing on the wall that was COVID and just just peaced out. But then what seems like happened is our man never actually left and just continued to be like sneaky shadow CEO. Yeah, he sold the house and kept living in the attic. Yeah. He didn't even keep living in the attic. He kept living in the master bedroom. He was like, this is not your private bathroom. This is mine. But don't worry. You can have the run of the house. You've got everything. But you need to talk to me every day. And if you don't continue to kiss my ring, then I'm going to be really upset.

57:11and then eventually you're going to get kicked out. Like the story from Alex Sherman at CNBC is just incredible because it is full of, like Emma for us, rounded up all the petty moments in it because there are so many petty moments. And what it all boils down to is if you are ever in a position where the CEO of the company comes to you and says, I'm going to promote you to be CEO, but I am going to be sticking around as executive chairman and I'm not giving you my office, but it's totally okay. hey, you are in charge. Do not believe them. Run. Yeah. Run. Don't take that as a bad job to take. And that's what happened.

57:48He took this job. Iger was micromanaging. He was in things. Chappick was by no means like a saint in all of this. He definitely screwed up quite frequently. He didn't know how to handle talent. But we found out like the Scarlett Johansson thing, we all thought it was Chappick just blundering through because he doesn't know how to handle talent. And it turns out he thought Iger was going to do it. And Iger was like, no, no, no, I'm not going to tell him I'm not going to do it, but I'm also not going to do anything. And then be like, why did you fail, Bob? What happened? It was just a lot of moments like that, where he'd be like, I got you, I got you.

58:24And then leave Chapik out to dry. And you're like, oh, buddy, rough. Yeah, he really just kept showing up at every moment. There was like, anytime somebody was to sort of collect an award or like shake hands for doing a great job. Like there's Bob Iger in a pressed white shirt doing so. And anytime there was like actual running of the company to do, Iger was just nowhere to be found. No, I'm only here for the fun stuff. Yeah. He said, I'm the fun dad. And Chapik is the dad who tells you that you can't go to spring break this year because of COVID. Sorry. I mean, truly, some of this stuff is like straight out of succession.

59:03like the metaphor about not leaving the house is like barely a metaphor because one of the things in the story was that Iger kept his office with a private bathroom and made Chapik have a worse office so like the CEO's office was just Iger so that he could like shower in the mornings and he was like you don't want this you don't like like the story they're like yeah and he was like you don't need this office this don't worry but this is for handling talent you don't do that don't Yeah. And then Iger is like running around behind the scenes, like undermining Chappik to other executives. He didn't say his name at his goodbye party.

59:41It's like all this stuff would be so like petty and ridiculous if it wasn't like two of the most powerful people in entertainment just publicly beefing with each other inside of their own company. It's all so ridiculous. The part where he finally says, I'm leaving. I'm gone. I've given you the reins, Chapik. I'm going to go sit over here next to my friend Steven Spielberg. You're going to sit at the opposite end of the table. And I am not going to mention you once. when I like just the that's mean, man. That's like cold. I absolutely respect it. Bob Iger now terrifies me completely. But like, oh, that was good.

1:00:21Poor Bob. I feel poor Bob. You don't even know which Bob I'm talking about. No Bob looks good in this story. All the Bobs lose. What's funny is the same thing kind of happened. So when Michael Eisner, who was the CEO before Iger. And he originally came on and everybody was like, oh, wow, he's going to change the whole thing. He was brought in by these guys, these investors in the 80s. And everybody was like, wow, he's going to change Disney. And he did not change Disney. And then he was like, I'm going to name my own successor, who's going to happen to have the exact same first name as me. And I'm going to do exactly what Bob Iger would end up doing.

1:00:55And everybody at the time was like, you cannot do that. You're dumb. And we all hate you. Please leave Michael Eisner as quickly as possible. And Bob got away with it because Bob Iger is so much more charming. And everybody's like, he got us Marvel. He got us LucasArts. Like, do whichever you want, Bob. You want three more offices? We'll build them. That didn't happen in the story, but I assume that's happening somewhere right now. But now he's back. He just signed another contract to be Disney's CEO through 2026. He has claimed he will have his actual successor you know solved by then but i kind of feel like bob eiger is like in the middle of just ruining his own reputation like he truly went out like a plus ceo like mount rushmore of good entertainment business ceos bob eiger and i feel like now is just like speed running his own demise in a lot of ways he's pulling um what was there's the football player who just keeps going well i think the comparison is Jordan on the Wizards.

1:01:59And I think in a very specific way is that Jordan on the Wizards is not Jordan on the Bulls for a lot of reasons. But Jordan on the Wizards is still like 25 and 8 and still an all-star level player. And Bob Iger is still Bob Iger doing his things but it's just not like it was before. You're never going to go out on top with three-pointer at the end of the game to win the championship. It just does not happen again. Now you're the guy who's going to have to try and figure out a way to launch standalone ESPN and probably sell Disney's cable channels and dismantle the whole thing that you built. Congratulations.

1:02:33Yeah. Retire, Bob. Just let it go. Let somebody else pick your successor because that was the other wild part of this is that he didn't actually know Bob Chappick very well. There was other people that they thought were going to be the next CEO, including the guy who was running Disney Plus. And everybody's like, oh, yeah, it's going to be him. And so when he was announced, Bob Chapik, everybody's like, wait, the guy who runs parks, like that's who you're going with? And then even he was realizing, wait, who am I going with? Because he like had Bob, he was like, okay, we're going to fly down to this big meeting, shareholder meeting.

1:03:08You're going to talk to a bunch of execs and stuff. It's going to be great. You've never done it before. The only time you've ever attended this event was at the invitation of someone else and you sat in the audience. You're now going to run the entire thing. Why do you want to go to the back and study and read everything when you can just sit here and talk to me and I will explain to you how to do it all. And he got really upset because Chappick was like, I'm going to go study because Chappick is that kind of guy. And I think a lot of people would be in that situation. And Iger was like, but I am a font of wisdom.

1:03:38Why do you not listen to me? And then he, like after Chappick went back to study, was like walking around the plane being like, who is this guy? Like, doesn't he get it? And it's like, oh, you shouldn't be asking that question at this point in the game. He hired a nerd and then he was surprised that the nerd trusted the book instead of the person. Yeah. Could have told you that was going to happen, buddy. Yeah. It was one of those things where it just feels like Iger's ego caught up. What's interesting about this is this is a really consistent story in the world. Like the number of CEOs who have tried in various ways to detach and then have found themselves unable to go away.

1:04:23I mean, like, this is the story of Larry Page and Sergey Brin who, like, want to go away and just, like, be weird billionaires. But then every time anything happens, they're like, we have to start coming to the office again. And, like, Mark Zuckerberg was starting to detach from a lot of day-to-day running of meta and then came way back in. It's really given me, like, great respect for Jeff Bezos, who just was like, Andy Jassy's in charge. I'm going to go to music festivals. And it's just like, now he just goes to music festivals and has a yacht. Like he's doing it right. And everybody else should probably learn from Bezos.

1:04:54I hope Tim Cook, like, cause Tim Cook is coming up. We were, we're increasingly talking about who's going to be the next CEO of Apple. He's, he's starting to like make those noises. It's going to happen in the next few years. And he just needs to read the story like four times in a row to make sure this doesn't happen to him because it's a similar situation of this is one of the first CEOs coming into a company that has largely been managed by people who came up with the company. And that makes it really, really difficult. And so I'm just really, really curious to see how we see some of these tech CEO successions that are coming, that are on the horizon happen after this just disastrous Disney one.

1:05:36Totally. So is there a, do we have a leader in the clubhouse for who would be insane enough to be the next Disney CEO? Like part of me wants to say no one in their right mind would be Bob Iger's next successor. Like it's, it's just a suicide mission, but then like, whatever, Lindy Icarino took the job as CEO of Twitter. Like people will take jobs. There's always someone hungry enough. Like call me up. If somebody called me today and was like, do you want to be the next CEO of Disney? I'd be like, yeah, all right, let's go. You get to go to the parks for free, right? I'm in. Yeah, I was like, I get to go to the parks for free.

1:06:08Do I get screeners? Done. Cheapest CEO they ever hired. That's how you know you're qualified. Screeners and park passes. That's the corporate perks Kranz is here for. But that seems like that's how he picked Bob Chapik. He looked around and he found a guy. He was like, you know what? I think you're desperate enough that you will not be independent. You will just do what I want to do. And he was wrong. And that was what made him unhappy. That was the best part of it. It's like he really thought he was going to just get a yes man and not somebody who would actually go run the company in their image.

1:06:38And then the guy immediately went and was like, I'm going to turn. We're a tech company. We have an enormous streaming service. I'm turning us into a tech company. And everybody screamed and cried. Chappick, to his discredit, did also put his old friend in charge of all film and TV at the company. And the guy had zero experience in that space. So, like, he was by no means a saint. He was definitely screwing up his fair share of things without Iger's intervention one way or the other. But he was also just being like subtly knifed every time he did anything. Yeah. Like every time he like that was probably why he put that guy in charge is he felt he had no one to trust.

1:07:17He had no authority. He was like, I need some control. And so it just became this big power struggle. I need someone to sit with in the executive dining room. He needed friends at the Iger going away party who would talk to him. OK, because ScarJo wasn't going to. This is true. All right. We should just we should blow through some more streaming news here real fast. Can we just pour one out really fast for Quibi again, which appears to be yet again dead? Roku did some layoffs and is getting rid of a bunch of its streaming content, which in all likelihood means Quibi shows. I'm going to miss the Gold Arms show.

1:07:55Maybe some of them and not all of them. The Golden Arm probably had it for the chopping block. But there was a story by Variety today where they said that they had some sources or whatever who said that the shows that are getting chopped are the ones that weren't bringing in, that new subscribers weren't watching. So stuff like the Kevin Hart show might stick around or other stuff that actually brought in some new viewers. It's the long tail stuff that's definitely going. So yeah, Quibi dies a thousand deaths. Yeah, you can't fully kill Quibi because Quibi was never fully alive. You know what I mean?

1:08:27But you can kill it repeatedly. You can you can stab it over and over and over again. YouTube is doing some interesting stuff. The advertising stuff that YouTube is doing right now is interesting because it sounds like they just rediscovered TV. Yeah, wait, walk us through this because that was my read, too. It's like, oh, YouTube is just going to be a television channel. But like, explain what's going on. YouTube is now experimenting with a longer block of advertising in the middle of the video you watch rather than like, you know, 15 second ads half cutting up the video or one big ad at the beginning.

1:09:03And if you will recall, if you are a person who still watches TV or seen TV on TikTok, that ads happen in the middle and we have ad breaks. And that's when you go to the bathroom and get more water and see how fast you can run. And YouTube, I guess, is doing that. I love it. It just cracks me up that YouTube was like, we did a whole bunch of research and we looked at the data and apparently people like regular scheduled breaks for advertisements rather than chaotic random moments for advertisements. Who would have thought? Who would have thought? Except for everyone who has ever watched TV. The other thing that they announced basically on the same day was that they are simplifying ad controls for creators, a.k.a.

1:09:50they're taking away a bunch of the options that creators had for, like, placing where the ads would go on their videos, which does not seem to be the same thing as this, but seems very closely linked because it came at the exact same time and enables them to put the ads at regular intervals wherever they want and not let you, the person making the video, choose. So you're just going to have to get used to it. You're going to have to get used to that, like, 18-minute TV show. Oh, I know when the ad is coming up. I know when the plot point in my three-camera drama is coming up because the ad is about to come in.

1:10:19It's going to be right now. It's going to be like in a Mr. Beast video right before the big reveal. It's going to be, hold up. Do you take Nutria or whatever? Like, just right there. Just what? And it's going to be great. And I think, honestly, I think that's great. Like, it's super annoying when you're watching a show on YouTube or on a lot of the streaming services who are doing the exact same ad presentation that YouTube does, where it's just like suddenly in the middle, like somebody would be like, I don't love. Hey, guys, do you need this? And you're like, what the hell are you like? Pick your moments.

1:10:53And TV was really good at picking those moments, even for stuff that wasn't built for TV. They were still good at being like, OK, we're going to cut it. We're going to take it at the right ad break, right moment. And it's like, yeah, you should all be doing that. Like, just tell me where I need to put the ad break in my YouTube video when I upload it. I'll tell you where I want it. You put 40 minutes of ads in there. You make money. I make money. And the audience gets a nice bathroom break. When I press play, I know when I'm going to be able to get up and do something else for a second. Yeah. I think that's, like, for users, it's really good.

1:11:26You know, you still have to watch ads. That sucks. But, like, for the users, I think it's a much nicer experience. and I hope that the other streamers who are all experimenting with, like Netflix, come on, man, you got to get on this ad train and not just deliver them at the most random moments possible because it's miserable. But it's going to require work, and I think it's like that's something that they typically shy away from, right? Like they want to avoid that labor. That's why they're there and not on TV and film. And so that additional work, it's going to be interesting to see who does that and how they do it and how expensive it actually is.

1:12:00Yeah, I do wonder, like, we talk a lot about how these sort of platform incentives change the way that content gets made. I suspect this is going to do that to like, I think, Richard, what you were saying earlier is like, absolutely going to be correct, that now if there's one big mid roll ad, or one set of mid roll ads, what you as the creator have to do now is set it up so spectacularly well that I have no choice but to stick around through five minutes of ads. in order to get to the second half of the video. Because that's how you get paid. That's how YouTube gets paid. That's how you juice the algorithm.

1:12:37Like, the cliffhanger stuff we're going to start to see from people just to get you through the ad break is going to be so, so, so intense. And it really is. It's very, like, 1990s sitcom and action network TV show. Like, there's just going to be something bonkers that happens after eight minutes. and then like somebody's gonna be like you're his father and then it's gonna be like breaks i want that like soap opera literally like that's i think that's coming yes because it's it's gonna be so hard to get people through that but that's where all the money is gonna be is in that middle ad break whereas now there's the you know the the pre-roll stuff gets you some of the way and the mid-roll stuff happens at these dynamic places and so you can 15 seconds at a time it's a little easier to get people through, but it's like a five minute ad break or a two minute ad break, or even like a 90 second ad break in the middle of a YouTube video is just an invitation to stop watching that YouTube video.

1:13:36And so I think what folks try to do to get you through that is just going to be weird and fascinating. I think it's gonna be also interesting for those of us who like you sit in bed and you're watching YouTube, wind it down at night, even though you should not be doing that. That's a terrible way to wind down, but you're still doing it. And you're like, I got to go to like go grab some more water or something. I got to go. I need to go do a little errand right before I go to sleep. And now you'll be like, oh, ad break? Fling your iPad across the bed. Rush up and get your water. Do your brush. Brush your teeth.

1:14:05Get it all done. And then you're back and you can finish watching your video. That sounds great. And you find out who is the father, hopefully. Every YouTube channel just becomes about who is the father. It's just Maury Povich. It's just Maury Povich. And I think that's the other part of it is not only do they need to have kind of the cliffhanger, but they also have to have the part leading up. Like they have to have a video that you don't want to just skip through. Like you have to watch the first, you have to want to watch the first five minutes or however many until the break and then stick around.

1:14:34And that's just going to be kind of a very different construction. Yeah, I wonder if that like, that kind of style of YouTube videos now where it's constantly going, constantly pushing, because it has to get you through all those tiny little 15 second ad breaks, if that's going to soften. Because that pace is so frenetic And you're seeing like a whole generation of people coming up. And that's the pacing they're used to, to the point where they're like, people talk too slow and stuff like that. And I wonder if that's going to stop. If instead, like 40 years from now, we're going to be like, man, Generation Alpha talks so fast.

1:15:05What's up with that? Well, back in the day, they had 15 second ad breaks every two minutes. Yeah, and they're all watching videos at like 1.5x speed. So they just learn that that's how people talk. Yeah, and everybody else is going to be like normal. and these guys are going to be like, this is normal, right? We're fine. That's my generation alpha voice. That was really good. And they're all holding a screen, apparently, which I liked. Yeah, apparently. Well, because the headsets didn't take off. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Tim. Another part of what's changing is the way that these controls happen. And when you have these dynamically inserted ads, like the people who direct these videos, who are used to laying out the different pacing and where the things go, now they don't necessarily have as much control over where the ads pop up.

1:15:45So they're handing over control over to YouTube maybe depending on the length, maybe depending on what ads YouTube has sold. And they're going to have to edit and direct these videos and then hope that YouTube picks the right points, that everything works out properly. So they're going to do like the cliffhanger and then they might get the cliffhanger spoiled and then cut to ad break because it was like two seconds too long. And the algorithm was like, no, no, no, no. And it's got to go here. Oh, that's brutal. That's brutal. Never. That's that's going to make it rough. That's bad. YouTube, don't do that.

1:16:20Yeah, I feel like that's a big tweak. Like, just tell people where their ad breaks are going to go. Let them insert them. Or let people choose, right? You can build your own structure if you have three or four ads and you can choose where they go. As opposed to just saying, right in the middle, there's going to be a large ad break. Build your whole thing around that. So it's like you only have sort of one shape of thing you're allowed to make at that point. I do wonder if this is going to make people come up with lots of different new ways of making money. I think a lot of these folks have, I mean, everybody still does the like branded videos and they'll have the one chapter in their video.

1:16:53That's just where they talk about how cool their sponsor is. It's particularly big on tech. YouTube has been my experience, at least where they're like, this video is brought to you by Skillshare because it's always Skillshare. And then they go back to telling you about, you know, whatever weird stuff they brought on Timu this week. But maybe like this is how product placement comes in in an even bigger way. Maybe there are other kinds of like built in ad formats that people are going to start to use. It's going to be really interesting to see how this goes. Also, this continues to make me glad that I pay for YouTube premium because ads are a nightmare and YouTube ads are a particularly pernicious nightmare.

1:17:29I didn't know I paid for YouTube premium for years because I paid through it through the weirdest of things. Google Music. I was a Google Music subscriber. There are dozens of us. It's just me and Richard. Just hanging out, sharing the same two songs over and over again. We have comments now. I thought they closed Google Music. Or on YouTube Music. I couldn't stand the switch. So when it switched over to YouTube Music, I was like, I'm done. It's Google Music or nothing. And I cancelled it. And then I was like, where did all these ads come from on YouTube for a full week. I was like, something's going on with the algorithm.

1:18:05I'm seeing a lot more ads. Every time I open a YouTube video in the wrong window, I'm like, what? Advertisements? It's awful. When do they put these on YouTube? It's crazy. I swear YouTube premium gets like a dollar more expensive every two weeks, and I don't know what the number is when I'll stop paying it, but I'm still paying it now. I don't want you to find that number. Yeah, I don't either. Yeah, YouTube, please stop. I don't. I'm good. I pay you enough money. We're cool. All right, we gotta take one more break, and then we're gonna come back. We're gonna do a lightning round We're already long.

1:18:34We're going to come back. We're going to do lightning rounds. Then we'll get out of here. We'll be right back.

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1:21:12All right, we're back. You guys, we have to do this lightning run really fast because I have to go do daycare pickup. That's just a real thing. and if I'm late, they charge me money. It's very intense. We don't want that. No, so we're just going to blast through this and get out of here. Kranz, your lightning round choice happens to be a perfect transition from what we were just talking about. So you go first. Yes, favorite thing. I'm talking about Mr. Beast all the time now because my godsons are both really, really into him and I have very strong, conflicted feelings about that and spent a lot of time telling his mom, sending her like hit pieces about Mr.

1:21:40Beast, saying don't do it. But anyway, Mr. Beast has a new YouTube face because he started doing A-B testing for the thumbnails and found that more people finished the video when he closed his mouth in the thumbnail. And I guess that's how statistics work. That's how he is choosing - Yeah, like I was just going to say, is this science? This is one of those things where normally you would be like, that sounds like a bad reason to do that. That is probably not the actual factor. But notable here is Mr. Beast is really, really, really, really, really good at juicing the YouTube algorithm. them that is why he is like the most popular youtuber he knows how to make that thing tick so he is probably like he probably is onto something and we're probably going to see a lot less just wide mouth open on youtube and i for one am thrilled so wait so mr beast whatever you think about him great job i've definitely seen the inside of enough people's mouths in youtube thumbnails yeah you don't need the tonsils like just no i don't need it yeah because there is i I mean, everybody knows what you mean by YouTube face, right?

1:22:41Like I can close my eyes and see it. It's the person in that sort of like half smile, half scream face all the time. You'll see us on the Vergecast sometimes. Like when they do our thumbnails, you'll even see I'm doing it right now. You're going to see it if you watch it on YouTube. It's either that or the furrowed brow where you're kind of like, hmm, what is this? That's the other YouTube face. Yeah, they're great. So I hope we move slowly away from that. Maybe we don't need extreme distorted faces to sell a YouTube video. So that's my hope. I am forever fascinated by the art and science of YouTube thumbnails.

1:23:16Like in terms of things that directly correlate to how much money you make, YouTube thumbnails are about as direct as it gets on the internet. And the things people do to build good thumbnails and make them work is just bananas. And they're so horrifying. And you are right that like no one is better at solving this system than Mr. Beast. So I'm more inclined to believe him than most, I guess. And he seems very happy about it. He's so happy that he's going to have to brush his teeth more, but he's not going to have to show you his tonsils. Right. He's happy in like a closed mouth way, not an open mouth way.

1:23:49Yeah. It's like back row smile. Exactly. I'll go next. And then Richard, you can go. My lightning round thing. Do you guys remember the app Clubhouse? Yes. Did you know before this week that Clubhouse was still in business? Be honest. Yeah, because periodically I check on it just to be like, you're still around? Because I just want to know. I was like, it can't still be around. And so periodically, like three weeks ago, I was like, Clubhouse. Oh, yeah, it's still there. Just like, what are the crypto bros talking about today? Yeah, I'm on Clubhouse every day selling my NFTs. Never stopped. Never left.

1:24:20Never gave up on Clubhouse. Yeah. Richard's Clubhouse room is bumping, y 'all. It's just, oh, God. I have a whole music design for your Clubhouse room, Richard. We got big plans. It's going to be amazing. So anyway, so Clubhouse just did a huge pivot and redesign. completely changed the app instead of being the kind of public streaming audio room, I guess is how I would describe it. It was like, what if Twitch, but audio sort of. That feels right. And no games. Nothing to watch. And all it was is people yelling about their NFTs. And that was the best case scenario. Anyway, now Clubhouse is all in on voice messaging.

1:24:59And so they've built a bunch of tools where you can one-to-one or in groups, just send voice messages to your friends and i happen to think like in the abstract this is a very good idea uh i've been like banging the drum that voice messaging is a good idea for a long time and history is proving me right and i feel very vindicated about it but i kind of think it's too late for clubhouse i sort of hope i'm wrong because i think like the arc of that company would be fascinating if it figured it out and came back but i just think like kudos to clubhouse for being like, okay, we built an audio app that everybody was into for three days when they had to be inside and then instantly forgot about when they were allowed to go outdoors again.

1:25:39And we're going to find a new thing to do with it that actually feels kind of honest and on brand with what we want to be about. And the app is actually really nice. Again, I don't know anyone who uses it. None of my friends are there to listen to my voice messages. But it's like as just as a pure piece of like product design. It's really nice. They did a good job. It looks nice. I will say I don't like that you hit the record button and then as soon as you stop, it sends the message. No, no. No, no. Anyone who has ever edited this podcast can tell you that that's not how I roll. The redesigned app, I think, is perfect for a post-apocalyptic video game where you're experiencing the story through audio logs that people left and they were all chatting in Clubhouse, leaving messages for each other.

1:26:22Otherwise, I don't think I'm going to use a specific app for this. It's going to be a feature that Facebook or whoever is going to steal and it's going to be built into their apps just like they steal everything else. So congratulations, Clubhouse, but I don't think it's going to do it. Have you ever heard of the app Run Zombies? Yes. Yes. So I tried it once. Run Zombies was the most committed I have ever been to a fitness app because basically the idea is you're a runner who is trying to keep people alive and they're zombies. And when you run, it just like tells you an audio story and you hear messages from other people and you're running and then it says zombies and then you run faster.

1:26:55It sounds ridiculous, but like it actually kind of works. And Richard, it is precisely what you just described. Like Clubhouse is just what's happening in your brain in run zombies. Only hopefully less depressing. Run zombies was too depressing for me. I was like, I don't want to run anymore. Well, if you're not running from zombies, what's the... So you were just like, just let the zombies take me. I don't care anymore. Yeah, I was like, it's okay. There's what's left in the world. Why should I jog? Jogging's horrible. Death first. Death first. I actually, I feel that. All right, Richard, what's yours?

1:27:25A bunch of Chrome news this week. We're at like 15 years of Chrome. So really good timing for them to change some things. They said they're going to be changing up the look a little bit. So pretty soon, as always with Google, you never really know when things are going to hit. They're going to roll out to some people sooner, some people later. But we'll see some new - They're rounding the corners. Google's rounding all the corners now. The corners are getting bumped. They're going to be rounder. The color palettes will be kind of more like you've seen on Android. Like if you have seen Android in the last couple of years, you've seen what Chrome will look like.

1:27:56Yep. With this material. It looks nice. The material you stuff is nice. I'm into it. I like it. I think it'll be good across different devices. They also have said the privacy sandbox that's supposed to replace third party cookies has reached a milestone. It is now generally available. You've probably gotten the pop up. This is, hey, we're doing some privacy stuff. and then you clicked the button to make it go away and didn't think about it. If that creeps you out, some people have said they feel like it's spyware in the browser. Is it more private? Is it more control? Depends on who you ask. But we have some instructions on how to disable it if you want to opt out of it, the new targeted ad tracking.

1:28:29Barbara Krasinov has the instructions for you to go ahead and turn that off. That pop-up made a lot of people feel a lot of feelings. And it's a weird one, right? I'm genuinely torn on this because like I've reached a point with all kind of browser data of just total nihilism that it's like I'm in Chrome. Google already knows what I'm doing in Chrome. That's not complicated. And you know who else knows what I'm doing in my browser is the millions of data brokers who are just collecting and buying and selling data about everything I do in the browser anyway. And in a lot of ways, what Chrome is doing and what Google is doing with this privacy sandbox stuff is designed to combat some of that.

1:29:07And it combats it by saying no one is allowed to have this data except for Google, which is like not great. That's not the solution you would hope for. But is that better than other solutions? Like instead of everybody and Google, it's just Google. Like, yeah, it kind of is better. It is a solution. Yeah. So I don't know. I'm so torn. But it is very funny watching Google be like, this is a privacy preserving thing. and everybody's like, no, it's not. This is just letting you have data that you can give to advertisers, just like all the other data you have to give to advertisers. Just trust them.

1:29:37It's Google. They're not supposed to be evil. This won't come up in an antitrust lawsuit in five years about how they lied to you. 10 years. Or next week. Definitely not going to happen. None of that. But yeah, the new Chrome looks nice. Happy about that. That's enough Vergecast for one day. Go turn off all your privacy settings. Just let chaos reign. and let everybody have all your data. Don't even worry about it. What if there was a targeted ad that you really needed to see? Think about it. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah. That's why I have this little, like, Funkey S. I got this little Game Boy, because from a targeted ad.

1:30:12I was like, it was on TikTok. I was like, yeah, that looks stupid. That is somebody who successfully understands Alex Kranz. They understood me, and I went and I spent$50, and now I have a Game Boy SP that is the size of a thumbnail. And I don't know what I'm going to play on it, but I can play siphon filter if I really wanted to. It's amazing. All right. We are very long. We should get out of here. This is the beginning of lots of stuff. We have Apple next week. We're going to have a special Apple show with all the folks who are going to be there live next week. US versus Google starts next week.

1:30:42That's going to be fascinating. We have a bunch of DMA stuff in Europe that we didn't really talk about. We're going to get back to that in much deeper ways of the next couple of weeks. Microsoft is coming. Amazon is coming. Google is coming. Code Conference is coming. We have all kinds of stuff going on. Meta Connect is coming. Meta Connect is coming. We're going to learn about the Quest 3. There's an open AI developer event, ChatGPT. Yeah. That's not till November, Richard. I can't think about November yet. Richard! Richard! It's football season is starting. Sunday ticket is here, which I get to talk about now because it's on YouTube.

1:31:15So technology, that's great news. Tons going on. We're starting an AI series on Monday on the Vergecast. We're doing a bunch of really fun stuff about AI music and AI voices and virtual assistants. We got all kinds of really fun stuff coming up. It's going to be a very busy next few months on the Vergecast. It's all going to be awesome. Our whole crew, I think including Neelai, will be back next Friday. We will shame Neelai ruthlessly for not being here. We hope you help us do that. Until then, thank you both. Thank you all. This is the Vergecast. Rock and roll.

1:31:52And that's a wrap for VergeCast this week. We'd love to hear from you. Shoot us an email at vergecast at theverge.com. The VergeCast is a production of The Verge and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by me, Liam James, and our senior audio director, Andrew Marino. Our editorial director is Brooke Minters. That's it. We'll see you next week.

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