Microsoft is in its AI PC era

30:31It's all very strange, and this is the kind of thing we just don't have a lot of history of dealing with. There's just not a lot of precedent for this kind of story. And in general, there are a lot of questions here about what we learned from that GPT-4O demo, and what OpenAI is really up to here, and where we're headed in the next few years of AI. And to talk through all of that stuff and more, I grabbed Kylie Robison, The Verge's new senior AI reporter. Kylie Robinson, welcome to The Verge Cast. Thank you for having me. This is what, day nine for you at The Verge as we're recording this? Precisely, yes.

31:03And you've already been in like 465 news cycles. That is 100 % correct. Maybe one more today, but yes, exactly. Has it been so far? How are your first nine days at The Verge? It is so fantastic. It's pure chaos. And I think a lot of people looking are like, why are you doing all this? Are they killing you? No, it's because it's so fun and I can't stop agreeing to write stuff. So it's been great. Yeah, you fit in very well in that respect. Mostly I want to talk about OpenAI. Yeah. There's a lot going on. But I think to me, like what's been interesting is there's been a ton of news the last two weeks.

31:37And the only thing I can think about is that OpenAI demo. Oh, my God. 27 minutes of just like super awkward OpenAI interactions. And I can't stop thinking about it. I don't know. So I'm mostly just curious. you've been covering OpenAI for a long time. You've been thinking about this company. You've been thinking about AI for a while. You're our senior AI reporter. What did you make of that event? There were all these rumors leading up to this about what OpenAI was going to do. They did it ahead of Google I.O., I have to assume deliberately. There were lots of rumors. None of those rumors turned out to be true.

32:08This was like this other thing. Like what, where was your head during that event? What were you thinking about? Well, I was really excited for it to be this huge, huge thing. They built it up so much. so you know the rumors were it's going to be a search engine that rivals perplexity in google it's going to be gpt5 so when we got gpt4 oh it's cool it is how natural this is it's very sci-fi but i i did my first tiktok for the verge and my takeaway was this is so flirty um do i do we need flirty ai i don't think so just like you know not to throw open ai completely under the us. I said the same about XAI's Grok.

32:46Do we need a sarcastic, snarky AI? I'm not sure. Let's get some other advancements first before it starts being mean and flirty. Some people in the TikTok comments did not agree. These Gen Zers were like, do not take away my AI girlfriend, please. The announcement, it was interesting. It's not a huge leap forward. I think they definitely wanted to get in front of IO. I did talk to the CTO, Mira Mirati, in a very short briefing after the launch. And I asked like, Hey, why today? And she's like, you're asking because of IO. And I'm like, well, of course. And she said, you know, we didn't even know IO was happening.

33:23I'm like, okay. Yeah, cool. I mean, that's just a lie. That's like not even. Okay, we're not taking the bait. All right, moving on. But yeah, so it was interesting. Obviously, I went to IO and I thought, you know, this stuff is really cool. It was a two hour long keynote, I was there in person. Pretty brutal. But yeah, GPT-4.0, it's cool. It has a long way to go. It kind of feels like the rumors in the AI reporting world is that they had something bigger that wasn't ready in time. So they're like, here's 4.0. Microsoft Build is coming up at the end of this month. So I'm kind of expecting something bigger for that.

34:01But yeah, it was an interesting demo. Flirty. Talk to me about the flirty thing, because I confess, this is the thing I can't stop thinking about right and like you pointed out in the middle of it like this is just her and i think sam altman even said like referenced her before mira marati was like no we're not doing a her thing which is like again obviously not true they're obviously doing a her thing i'm so torn on this and i'm curious how you're thinking about it on the one hand i totally understand why it makes sense for these things to like be fun to talk to right and i don't know flirty is the correct version of fun to talk to but again i think this this push towards like if you're going to spend all your time interacting with this thing it should be enjoyable to interact with and not just some like cold metal robot that you talk to i totally understand that i also think that is like a mess yeah and just is for open ai and for everybody else will cause as many problems as it solves maybe more and is going to make all of this really weird before the technology is nearly good enough to actually have any of this work like her is a fun example because like she doesn't get basic facts wrong all the time in her like importantly it's very good technology yes it's not just like flirty scarlett johansson but very dumb like that's not that's not what they're doing and i don't know i just cannot wrap my head around whether this like 11 year old movie about a voice assistant is the correct place for us to be going even though i kind of understand why we're going that way i don't know and i feel like everybody's had very visceral reactions to it so i'm curious what yours has been.

35:33You know, a lot of tech reporters have said, like, please, for the love of God, can these tech executives finish the movies, like, see how it ends? Right. Yeah, no, not convinced we need flirty AI before we have accurate AI. And something I noticed during Google IO is that when they were demoing their similar assistants, it was on video, it was not live, and versus OpenAI's demo was live. So you got to see all the flubs. And if the listeners have seen Nilay break the AI product. We'll put it in the show notes. It's very good if you haven't seen it. It's very good. I was sitting in the press lounge and they came back.

36:10They're like, Nilay broke it twice, which is what I expected. That's the goal. Yeah. Yes, exactly. So yeah, Flirty AI, as a tech reporter, it just makes me like, okay, can we do better than this? I don't want to completely drag them because it is cool that we're finally getting like a working Siri. I was just thinking before we started this episode, when I use Siri almost exclusively as a timer because it doesn't work for anything else. I do laundry and it's 50 minutes every time. And it always thinks 15 minutes, no matter how hard I try. That's how mostly useless it is. So I have to say 55. Yeah.

36:45So flirty AI, not super useful, feels purposeful. obviously. Mira said, you know, not the case. She said, someone else in the audience asked me that. I don't know. I don't know where they're getting that from. It's just sounds so natural. And I'm like, and then meanwhile, Altman is like her. Yeah, he just tweeted the word her, didn't he? Yes, he did. So and he said, I've been at I think it was a dream force or something at a conference. And he said her was his favorite movie. And all his tech reporters were like, noted. So yeah, I think they're trying to inch towards that reality. I don't know.

37:18I feel a bunch of different ways about it. What were you thinking when you saw it? I thought it was really impressive. And I just keep coming back to like the immediate reaction everybody had to chat GPT, which is like, I can't believe it's this good, which is both a compliment and an insult, right? Like, it's not very good, but it is genuinely impressive that it is as good as it is. And I feel like I've spent a lot of time reporting on AI in the last year and a half and trying to constantly calibrate that, that it's impressive that it's as good as it is. And it's also not very good. Like both of those things are true.

37:54And it is so hard to hold both of the idea, both of those ideas in your head at the same time. And this to me was like that too. Like I actually went back and watched, it's like a 26 minute video. Everybody should watch it. It's, it's weird and awkward and delightful, but it's actually like, it screws up a lot, like a lot. in the demo. And again, that's like, it's fine. This is new early technology. They're having fun. This is not, they didn't promise that it was perfect. They just sort of showed how it worked, but it screwed up a lot and nobody talked about it. Right. Everybody came to the end of that thing.

38:22And all over the internet, the immediate reaction was basically like open AI just destroyed all of the AI competitors forever. It is leaps and bounds ahead of everybody else. This is the only thing that there is forever and ever. And I just don't think that's true. Like it's cool. And it, it, It's a good demo. And the fact that it feels at all like a person and does convincing sounding like ums and laughs. And what was it? He showed the like iHeart GPT-40 and it was like, oh, that's so sweet. That is both impressive and nothing. Exactly. I think a really good example of that, too, it's like an open AI effect is with Sora.

39:05People are like, this has just put all of these text-to-video AI companies out of business. And people like to say they launched it, but neither of us can use it. It's still in demo mode. So, you know, people are like, wow, OpenAI destroyed everyone. It's, you know, this technology is not even out yet. And clearly it has a long way to go when you see it breaking in demos. So yes, it's very hard to hold both of those at the same time. And day nine at The Verge, I'm still figuring out how to balance that. It's tough. I'm curious. I think the Sora thing is actually an interesting example because OpenAI was perceived to have this big lead, right?

39:39Like it kicked off a lot of this stuff with ChatGPT. It has been the company we have talked about the most as we talk about AI. But now, like you said, we're in developer conference season. Google just announced, I would say, in a significantly more polished and less interesting way, a lot of the same stuff that OpenAI and ChatGPT have been doing for a while. Microsoft today, as you're hearing this, is presumably going to launch some of the same stuff, potentially with its own technology. Apple is likely to do some of the same stuff, potentially with OpenAI. And Thropic is out here doing stuff.

40:09There's just a million competitors now. So I feel like one thing I've been thinking about, and I'm curious how you're thinking about this as you try to sort of map out this space in your mind, like where is OpenAI in the AI world right now? Is it still winning the race, does it feel like? In the hype, perhaps. Fair, yeah. They get a lot of hype. Rightfully so. They do deliver a lot of mind-bending sci-fi kind of stuff. And that's part of why I joined this beat because, wow, I loved reading sci-fi books. This is all very weird and fun. I was speaking to someone at a major AI company who said that essentially everyone's just this year, you're just going to see them leapfrog over each other as they all go towards the same thing.

40:49You know, they're all sort of training models in the same way. They're all trying to deliver the same products. So it's hard to say, like, tomorrow things can change. This this beat, this technology moves so fast. I felt this way when Sora came out because I had just interviewed the CEO of Runway for a piece. What's Runway? Runway is a text-to-video startup, AI-generative startup. And they helped create everything everywhere all at once. So some of the AI tech was used in that. So they're a very cool company. And I thought when I saw their demo, this is sci-fi and cool. But then Sora came out and I was like, oh my God, this is crazy.

41:29And I sent it to the Runway CEO and he was like, welcome to our world. Things change so quickly every day. um so who how is ai in the race like where are they in the in the race there's still leaps and bounds ahead of maybe you know someone like amazon but things can change at any point and i think we're going to see that a lot this year yeah i do i've come to think that that is why it's so chaotic is because there is this sense that this is like a land grab moment and it's all happening so fast that you actually still kind of can catch up. Like I remember a year ago hearing stories from people that were like, oh, only a few companies are gonna be able to do this.

42:08Training the models is so expensive and so hard, it's not gonna work. And I think there's some truth to that, but also there is so much open space in this market right now. And there's so much money in it that it feels like we're probably at least a couple of years away from any of this feeling at all settled. And so if you're a company that is like, we wanna find a place to make a lot of money very quickly and we kind of think we can win because no one really has yet. Yeah. This is probably the place to do it for better and for worse. Definitely. I agree. So you mentioned all of these companies sort of working towards the same thing, like that the North Star is coming into view.

42:40What do you feel like that thing is that everybody has pointed towards? You know, as an avid Vergecast fan and listener, I've been hearing you talk about hardware in your ears. And I think it was Meta. A scoop came out from the information about Meta doing like headphones for AI. I was at a South by party and we were going around asking questions about technology and something I said that's way ahead of its time is hardware, like this AI hardware, which turned out to be true. That was a couple months before we saw the R1 and the Humane pin. Something that was really shocking to me as I joined this beat is how much these AI companies are investing in robotics and bringing this AI into a physical plane.

43:20because I thought that that's way off. We're not going to be there anytime soon, but they are seemingly investing quite hard into, like you have the Ray-Ban meta, the meta Ray-Bans. It looks like Sam Altman is doing something with Love From, which is Johnny Ives startup. So where is this headed? I think we're going to see more of those conversational AI assistants. We have what we saw at Google IO. I would kind of love this world where AI is doing everything for me because I have too many emails and too many notifications. But I'm also pretty torn on how they're using my data, obviously. But yeah, so I think we're going to see more advances in hardware.

44:00I'm so surprised to hear you say you think hardware is the thing. Like, it is music to my gadget-loving ears. But, like, I've been wondering at this moment, after Humane failed so badly and Rabbit failed so badly, and, like, those companies aren't dead and this stuff moves fast and, like, my Rabbit R1 updates, like, every other day at this point. And it's ridiculous. But that one particular version of that kind of thing is just clearly not going to work. Right. And I think it was very telling to me that that open AI demo, they're just sitting there talking into a phone. And I saw a bunch of people pointing that out that like, this is actually the way that we do this as we sit here and I hold my phone in my hand and I talk to it.

44:39And that is the interface for AI that we are doing right now. And I have a lot of theories about why that's not the case forever. But I did kind of wonder, like, are we are we going to put off this dream for five years in order to let some of that stuff get better? And then we'll worry about the hardware because phones are great and they'll get us where we need to go. But I have to say, I find it's very exciting to me that these companies are still buying into the idea that hardware is part of the equation, if maybe not the whole thing, at least not for now. See, this is where you know a lot about this, but I was surprised, obviously, that they're doing anything in hardware, that they still think that this is the case.

45:15Because the Humane Pin and the R1, as nifty as they seem to be, I kind of think they're just destined to be in drawers collecting dust and not really the next big thing. But I'm wondering if you have any tinfoil hat theories about it being an iPhone on stage. Because I thought, you know, for the listener, there's reports that OpenAI and Apple are going to do this deal where ChatGPT is integrated into the iPhone, which everyone's like, oh, my God, once again, Siri might work. That could be great. I do see the future just, I mean, who doesn't want to just carry their iPhone instead of multiple devices like you've mentioned?

45:51When I say hardware, just as you've said on the Vergecast, headphones, glasses, I think you said you're not into the glasses idea. I wear glasses. So it seems perfect to me. I think if you wear glasses, it is like a perfect, obvious place to go. For me, like I have the I have the meta Ray-Ban glasses. And my problem is, I don't know how long it takes. This is just going to be David complains about wearing glasses for a minute. But my problem is how long does it take to wear glasses before you stop noticing that you're wearing glasses? Because I have these. They have like they've clear lenses. They're transitions.

46:21They're actually really useful. I like having them on all day, but I never stop noticing that I'm wearing glasses and it drives me kind of nuts. And part of that is because they're heavy. But part of that, I think, is also just like it's going to be hard to convince people who don't wear glasses to wear glasses. Sure. But maybe I just need to wear them longer. Like, do I just need to put these on for three days and I'll get used to it? Well, it's taken me about 20 years of wearing glasses. To be fair. So I don't even notice them on my face. But well, the answer to that is if Meta makes this earbud push.

46:50I don't know if you read the article, but they're still working out some of the kinks reportedly. Well, because it was earbuds with cameras in them, right? Which is just the wildest idea. But they're like found out that if you have long hair, the cameras are going to be covered because obviously. And one of my favorite parts is that they're figuring out how to stop it from being too hot, which is, I think, something that was experienced with the Humane Pen is that people were like, this is getting really hot. So, you know, catching fire in your ears doesn't sound like a great product. I hope they work that out, especially for you since you can't wear glasses.

47:21Yeah. I'm bullish on the idea of headphones being the next thing. But again, it's partly just as a conduit to your phone, which I think works fine. But I want to go back to your point about the iPhone, because one of the things that OpenAI, I think this was Sam Altman who said it, that there's a new chat GPT app for the Mac. And there were a lot of people who I would say reasonably asked, where's the Windows app? Microsoft owns an enormous percentage of your company. You have been partners with them for forever. Like, what the hell? And I think it was Sam, right? Who just said sort of offhandedly, oh, Mac is just where our users are.

47:53And then there's an iPhone on stage. And it's like, how many conspiracy theories should I read into those two facts? You tell me. You know, okay, my tinfoil hat is that there's beef. I've been told that it's not necessarily true, not by anyone, just from co-workers, from Tom. Tom was like, I have opinions about this. But I just think that there's beef. I was covering OpenAI during the ouster, the meltdown. And I'm just imagining Satya during his Thanksgiving week like, damn it. Why do I have to deal with this? He's on Pivot. He's on CNBC. So I think what we're seeing with inflection, them bringing in inflection, it seems like there's sort of this potential Apple deal.

48:36It feels like there's this decoupling because both are realizing that they've relied so much on the other and that it's like a codependent relationship. They're like, maybe we should take some time apart is where I see this going, especially with the iPhone on stage, the Mac app. It feels like there's a lot of signs, but that's just my tinfoil hat for now. I do think it is generally true that companies do that kind of stuff on purpose, I think is a thing that I have learned over the years is that you want to just think, oh, they just like brought up their phone and did it. And it's like, no, even the stuff that looks like it's not thought through and rehearsed is usually pretty thought through and rehearsed and is not an accident.

49:13And exactly. There was a conversation about what phone they would use for that demo. I'm very confident about that fact. And I think I mean, to your point, like part of the reason I find this space so fascinating right now is it feels like that uncoupling your talking about is literally happening like right now in real time at insane speeds like yes between google io and wwdc which is essentially what like four weeks we are going to potentially like completely upend the economics of the ai industry it like insane like you think about what the google search deal has done for apple and all the regulatory stuff that that is causing the amount of money that changes hands and like if you put something like that into the iphone through open ai it blows up that whole industry in a crazy way.

49:55Or if they just like randomly pick Anthropic, which to me is the most chaotic answer and I would love for that to happen. Delicious, yes. Just go open source. Be like, we went with Meta. We did Llama. Like Apple Siri powered by Llama and just blow up the world. It'd be amazing. But it just feels like all of this was starting, not to settle, but to sort of be understandable. You kind of knew where everybody was and what they were working on. And now it feels like between all these relationships and I think especially with Apple, kind of all of the balls are up in the air again in a really interesting way.

50:26Yes. And something I've been thinking about a lot is sometimes these AI researchers are like, we're building GPT-5 and it's hard to predict what it's going to do. It's hard to predict what any of this is going to do. And that's strange as a reporter and just a human in this world. Like, we don't know how this is going to change our lives at any point. Do you think that's part of why they're leaning in on the like flirty personality side of it? Because if it's delightful, it doesn't matter. That having fun with it becomes the point and not the is it any good at tasks, which is what they want to get to eventually.

51:00I've heard this point before. And starting as an AI reporter, people told me not to anthropomorphize the technology because then it takes the blame off the company and they can blame the AI. So I'm so cognizant of that as I report. And then they come out with flirty AI and it's like, like, I'm confused because I think open AI also said at some points, you know, it's tech, it's not human. And we saw that with the Google guy who was like, this is real and it's human. And, you know, so, you know, to see all of that and then go, here's your flirty AI girlfriend like her. It feels strange. But yes, I do think it's an interesting critique to have.

51:45Like, look over here. This is fun. Don't pay attention to how it barely works, I think, is part of the point. Yeah, I agree. I will say, by the way, that the New York Times has cornered the horny AI beat. So we're going to have to find we have to find something else for you to do. I'm really sorry. You just you were too late to the game for the horny AI beat. It's just you can't have it. I was wondering if I could say this on the Verge cast. This is a huge day for Kevin Roos. I forgot to message him about it. he's going to have 10 more girlfriends by the time we finish this. Kevin Roos vindicated every day.

52:15Just gets better and better to be Kevin Roos. Kevin, we love you. Come on the Verge cast. One more thing before I let you go. You mentioned the brief Sam ouster. And the one other bit of OpenAI news last week was that Ilya Sutskiver, who was a big part of that story, is leaving OpenAI for good. What do you make of that story? What do you know about what's going on there? Oh, my God. That was about 4 p.m. while I was at Google I.O. And I was like, oh, my God, no more news, please. Yeah, that seemed to have caused other people to leave OpenAI as well. The sort of Ilya cult inside of OpenAI. I don't know.

52:52I think I'm really hoping we get some fun discovery, maybe from the XAI lawsuit against them to figure out what went down, not to be totally off course. But when the government is deciding to ban TikTok and everyone's like, where's the receipts? What happened? And similarly here, what is happening at OpenAI that caused all this drama and now Ilya is leaving and it all feels very strange. My thoughts are we need a lot more information. I think that is sort of owed as this changes people's lives and how they interact with technology. The meme is what what does Ilya know? Where is Ilya? I think we deserve some answers there.

53:32I don't think we're going to get them from OpenAI. We're going to get them from great AI reporters who dig into it. But it's strange. It's really strange. I mean, I would think the most simple way to read it is that that divide that everyone sort of ascribed the issues to, but then kind of waved off was the like doing AI for good versus doing AI for profit. The fact that not only did Ilya leave, but then a bunch of people, like you said, in the Ilya cult also left suggests to me that that divide or whatever the divide was still exists. And there was some reporting that said Ilya basically never came back to work after all of this.

54:11And so it definitely suggests to me that whatever happened last fall is not done happening. Like Sam won in whatever that looks like. But whatever is going on inside of that company seems to still be going on inside of that company. I agree. I think that Rift is still there. The reporting suggests that it was like EAC versus the D-cells, people who want this to move fast and people who want this to be a research lab that's for good. I think that Rift is still there. And I think that's something you're going to continue to see in this AI race. I think the people who want to make money are going to continue coming out on top as we see here, though.

54:48Yeah. I mean, as of right now, I think just thinking about Google I.O., it's like, why did they make any of these choices? And the answer is like, oh, because there's so much money in it right now, right this minute. There's so much money in it. And will there be forever? Who knows? But there is a lot right now and it is making everybody do truly wild stuff. Yes, exactly that. Fair enough. All right. Well, we're going to have to have you come back on when we get more stuff from Apple and Build and everything. So welcome to hell. And by hell, I mean the Vergecast. Kylie, thank you for being here.

55:18Thank you. All right. We got to take one more break and then we're going to talk iPads on the Vergecast hotline.

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59:06All right, we're back. Let's get to the hotline. As always, the number is 866-VERGE-11. The email is vergecast at theverge.com. Send us all of your questions. We've gotten a lot of iPad questions, and I think at some point here, we're going to stop answering iPad questions, but we try to do at least one on the show every week, and at some point, we'll stop talking about iPads. But this week, we have a question about iPads, and it comes from Clifton. Hi, this is Clifton from Tacoma, Washington. I was just listening to the Case for the iPad Pro podcast. And in your comparison to the iPad and the MacBook, I was wondering, do you think that the majority of that want for macOS on the iPad would go away if Apple just made a touchscreen MacBook?

59:48Also on the same token, do you think that if they made a two-in-one that the work case for pros on the iPad would go away and it would probably just go back as a media consumption device? I think it's similar to Apple thinking they know what customers want instead of actually doing what customers want. Thanks. I appreciate it. So there's like a big thinky thing at the end there that I kind of want to ignore for now. Uh, Neelai Patel is here. Hi, Neelai. Hey, we've like talked around this for two weeks and also like 10 years. So like, let's just talk about this. Like what, what do we want from Apple is I feel like basically the question being asked here.

1:00:23There's the iPad, there's the Mac book and somewhere in the middle, there is this idea of like a perfect device that would solve all of our problems. What is it? I think it's an iPad that doesn't have a totally restricted application model. Like that's the problem. The problem is not that it doesn't run macOS. What macOS represents to people is freedom. I can just use this thing like a computer and developers can show up and fill the gaps that Apple has left open. You cannot do that on an iPad. So it's just whatever Apple wants you to do. And if they would just let go, I think these things would evolve on very different trajectories and they just won't let go, which I guess comes back to what do we want Apple to do?

1:01:05Well, I think I largely agree. Like I got a bunch of crap on threads because I posted something to the effect of like, I agree that I don't want huge sweeping changes to the iPad, but it would be nice to be able to put windows where I want them to. And a bunch of people like, you can put windows wherever you want. And I'm looking at right now, I can see nine different apps on my Mac right now. I can see them all. And that is not how it works on the iPad. And there are like a million little things like that to me. But the evolution thing, I'm curious how you think about it. Because I think the case a lot of people would make is that if you just let both of these things kind of be everything, that eventually they would just crash into each other and the iPad and the Mac would essentially be the same thing.

1:01:43But you don't think that's the case? I don't. I think about a lot of iPad use cases that I see that I think are really interesting. I'm married to a lawyer. Some lawyers show up at meetings with iPads just to sign contracts and get through them. You don't need a Mac laptop for that. You don't even need the keyboard case for that. Right. Right. And also the fact, by the way, that it lies flat on a desk or table is actually really important. Like I was thinking about this just form factor wise, right? Like if you just put a touchscreen on the Mac, does it suddenly solve all of your iPad problems?

1:02:10And like, no, because drawing like that sucks. Signing things like that sucks. Like having a thing that just lies down like a piece of paper on a table does change things. I think you're right. I will note that you have to put a case on some of these iPads to actually lie flat. But you know, I agree with you. There's just a bunch of places where you want a computer in a tablet form factor that is where the interfaces natively touch. Great. Again, we get notes from people who are like interior designers and architects who are like, this thing is my computer. I walk around taking pictures with it and showing people things and drawing on it all day long.

1:02:43And I kill the battery in my iPad every day, which is admittedly not so hard to do. But there's just a world of use cases that way. And then there's a world of use cases for the laptop form factor. And I think the problem is Apple thinks the form factor is important and not the use cases. So they're like, we'll just make it a laptop. And now it's a laptop replacement. And I think most people are like, well, I use my laptop for all these things and it can't do those things. Right. And then I, this is just me imposing a belief on Apple. I think Apple wants computers to be easier than the market wants them to be.

1:03:19You know, like people, you give a kid a laptop, like just crazy stuff starts happening. Yeah. Right. Like they start to expand on a boundary of what you can even do with some of these applications. That's really cool. I've seen entire graphic design businesses that have existed by teenagers using the Instagram create mode in ways that no Instagram product manager ever thought that thing would be used. That's the beauty of computers. And to whatever extent that has not happened on the iPad, I think that's the tragedy. And I think it's because of the restrictions in the operating system. Yeah, I tend to agree.

1:03:54But I think something you said at the very beginning of this, I think is very striking, which is the assumption that the best version of this thing is closer to an iPad that does more stuff than it is to a Mac with a touchscreen, right? Because I think like, if you just to boil this question all the way down, it's like, does a Mac with a touchscreen solve all of our problems? And I think the answer is clearly no. And I'm not even sure it solves many of our problems. Like I actually I look at my Mac, and I'm like, I don't know how often I want a touchscreen on this thing. And I think to me, when I look at the iPad, the best version of that is so much more interesting than kind of the next version of a Mac, if that makes sense.

1:04:32I'm confident the criticism we will get, because you said that, is for a bunch of Windows people to use touchscreens on their Windows PCs all day long. And they're like, this is great. Sure. Actually being able to, I think Tom Warren has published a version of this piece. We've had this conversation for so long. I can't tell you if it was a decade ago or yesterday. Tom Warren published like touching the screen on a PC is pretty good. Because we've been talking about it for a long time. And it is pretty good. The people who use computers that way, they get used to it. They like it. To me, it's really just about the application model.

1:05:01And in particular on the Mac, because the web browsers are so good, and you can run different web browsing engines and Chrome and Safari and whatever else, there's a richness to the experience that you just get. You can just have a lot of the latest things on a Mac because all of the latest things tend to run in the web browser. All of the AI in the world is happening in web browsers, right? You cannot do that on an iPad. Like the web browser is still pretty much mobile Safari. They fake it in different ways. And it's just that. It's that, right? Apple has just restricted a bunch of stuff maybe to protect Apple's business model, maybe because they have an idealistic vision of what an iPad user should do or how they should work or how easy it should be or to keep you safe or secure.

1:05:42Whatever you want to believe about why this has happened, it has happened. And I think those are the limits that people keep bopping up against and saying, oh, just let this be a Mac. Because the Mac represents those limits going away. And I really do think you can see it on other kinds of tablets, that if you let that form factor evolve, it will head towards a different place. I think it would be really interesting if the solution to the input problem, especially with all the AI we have now, isn't just put a keyboard on it. like we we just haven't like tried yeah because we are like maybe that maybe everything will just you know how like everything evolves into be a crab it's like everything is evolving to be a laptop again and like i don't know maybe there's some other ways to do it well yeah and that's the thing i think like when people have asked me over the last few weeks like why are you so hung up on the idea that apple should or could or ought to make this thing more like a laptop i just find myself wanting to hold the thing up with the magic keyboard and be like because apple made it a laptop like the two accessories this company has invested in are a pencil which makes perfect sense and is extremely ipad-y and i actually think it's like ipad plus pencil is by far the most compelling case for an ipad in every way you can imagine or it's a laptop yeah like they just it just looks like a laptop it acts like a laptop but the gmail app is worse like that's just that's the difference and i'm sort of with you in that sense but like to the windows point right the surface rhymes with an iPad, I would say almost more than it rhymes with a Mac, right?

1:07:13Like it runs Windows and it can do all the stuff. But in terms of like the spirit of that device, it's so much an iPad. Yeah. And I think actually like Microsoft got that really right and just has not really solved a lot of the software stuff around Windows. Like the Surface isn't everything it could be because of Windows in the same way that iPad is like hamstrung by iPadOS, but in completely radically separate ways. Well, it's two companies reacting to the web in totally different ways. Microsoft just lost to the web. No one's developing hot shit Win32 applications for the Surface outside of games.

1:07:45Right. I just have to set those aside. But the hottest new applications in the world happen on the web. That is a thing. That's just true. The web has become the dominant place to deploy desktop applications. Great. Microsoft reacted to it by just letting go, by being like, you know what? We built Azure. Put your web applications on our cloud service and run OpenAI on our cloud service. and we'll make the money there and whatever. We'll just try to get you to use Edge. Yeah. And that is one reaction, a big company. Especially because they lost in mobile. They basically had no choice. Apple's response to it is like, no, no, that won't happen at all, sir.

1:08:20Right. And on our tablet, you will deploy applications for the iPad. You will use the App Store. And indeed, there are some cool iPad apps because of it. That's great. Like Procreate is an entire company that exists to develop iPad apps and use the iPad in the way that Apple wants people to use. That is great. That's a success story. But there's not a lot of great iPad apps. Like they squeezed the balloon and it didn't get a lot bigger. Like mostly the air went out. There's some balance in there, but you can see those are two reactions to the same problem. All I keep thinking as you say that is like, boy, it's ridiculous that Google never figured out how to make decent hardware out of this.

1:08:57That like this circling Google did around Chromebooks and Android tablets and all this stuff. Like nobody should be more incentivized to figure out how to do this well than Google. And it just didn't. And that makes me angry. And I just look at my Pixel book and I'm like, God, you could have been something. It could have been great. I mean, I famously bought my mother a Chromebook Pixel, the thousand dollar Chromebook several years ago. She still uses it because it was easier to use than a Windows PC or a Mac. Well, you open a Mac today. It has 50 different interface paradigms all happening at you at once.

1:09:25There's a launchpad and Mac apps and a web browser, and it's trying to get you to use Safari and all this other stuff. And you can run iPad apps, and it has an app store. But you can also – and it's like that's too much. Like actually just go to a bunch of web pages and use whatever you need to use there, and here's a really nice piece of hardware to do it. It's pretty good. and I think you look at kind of all the like the steam decks of the world that are running games and linux now and you're like oh you could build a kick-ass chromebook right now and is any is anyone gonna do it it's like I don't know like we we've come a long way from the ipad where I'm like you could build a kick-ass chromebook but that feels like one version of computing where the restraints are lifted and it does everything everyone wants and the simplicity that apple's chasing with the ipad is still there yeah I really do agree with and you said this on last friday I showed that a desktop web browser, like a true great desktop web browsing environment would immediately solve a lot of people's iPad problems.

1:10:20I think that's, I think that's really real. Yeah. Let us just run Chrome. Like, honestly, maybe it'll destroy the battery, light on fire. Chrome has a lot of problems, but if you just let me use an iPad, like a Chromebook, you know, like I would still buy the hardware. I would still pay for Apple's various services. I would still need iCloud storage. Like you'll make your money, Tim, but like, let me use the computer the way I want to. So maybe maybe part of the reason people want a touchscreen MacBook is that that seems like the more likely way to get closer to that perfect middle, because I think the iPad thing you're describing is like, what if we just blew up the whole way Apple thinks about itself?

1:10:55And that'd be cool, but seems less likely than there might be a touchscreen on a MacBook. and mark german has reported that apple is considering that again like it has seemed anathema to apple for a long time but i i would track that as probably a more likely sort of nudge towards the perfect all things for all people computer than let's upend the app model entirely well i think there's two ways of thinking about it one at some point you're just like it's an m4 and it's a keyboard and a screen they should be the same i mean i would assume by the way that they will be like i suspect we are going to get a mac with basically these exact same specs before very long.

1:11:32Yeah, the only difference between a Mac and iPad is that Mac doesn't have a random LiDAR sensor and a camera on the back. Sure. Yeah. Fine. But I think the other thing that is happening is in Europe, there's a bunch of regulations that say you have to let other web browsers on these devices with their own engines. And maybe someone just makes a great desktop web browser with the desktop Chrome engine. Maybe. And I think as we've already seen with emulators, it really recontextualizes what you can do when you get out of Apple's restrictions or those restrictions fade away and other people are allowed to use the hardware to their advantage so i think that's the ipad is in all the regulations now you know there's some back and forth on it but they think europeans are europeans and they're like no we're taking that too great so i just think there's something else that might happen there that could really change how we feel about ipads that's fair i i guess i just mean i don't see a world in which apple does that of its own volition like especially with the ipad apple seems so precious about the way that that thing works, that every teeny tiny thing it has done to open it up has felt extremely kicking and screaming against its will.

1:12:35Yeah, because it's the one that they control and it's the one that is a monopoly, I guess. Like it's hard to make the case. I guess the Europeans are regulating it for various reasons because they think it's a gatekeeper, but it's Apple's. Apple has long said this is our vision for the future of computing. It has not won in the market. It just hasn't. Like they sell a lot of iPads, they sell more tablets than anybody else, but people still use their laptops. Like I can look at our own usage in Google Analytics on our webpage and tell you no one's browsing our website on a tablet. Like it's just not happening.

1:13:07And so I think they feel protective of it because it's not under pressure. Like they are the market, but the market's really small. Yeah. And I think they have this sense of what it could be. And it is like beautiful and perfect and extremely Apple. Yeah. If only everyone would do what they want. Then we wouldn't need touchscreen MacBooks. It would all be fine. All right. We should go. So, Neelai, thank you as always. See ya. All right, that is it for the Vergecast today. Thanks to everybody who came on the show and thank you especially as always for listening. There's lots more on everything we talked about at theverge.com.

1:13:40Tons from the Surface event and all the new Microsoft things. All of our open AI coverage, everything about iPads, all of it. We'll put it in the show notes, but also read theverge.com. It is just a crazy newsy week. Microsoft Build is today. Developer conferences are everywhere. AI stuff is everywhere. There's just a ton going on. As always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings, or PC recommendations for me, you can always email us at vergecastattheverge.com or keep calling the hotline 866-VERGE-11. Like I said, I love hearing from you. We have a Slack room that just pumps in every voicemail and we get to listen to it.

1:14:12It's so much fun. It is my absolute favorite thing, both about maybe my job and definitely about being at Slack. If you've got ideas, thoughts, questions, keep it all coming. This show is produced by Andrew Marino, Liam James, and Will Poore. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Neil, I, Alex, and I will be back on Friday to talk more about Build, more about AI, and everything else going on in tech this week. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.

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