Microsoft’s big AI Build and Max’s messy streaming launch

30:27Which sounds like, oh, great, hurrah, oh, there's going to be this, you know, platform for open platform for chatbots and AI for the future. But OpenAI and Microsoft have like the closest partnership on this stuff. So it'll only be big if like Google come along and say we're using the same open standard. I don't know. I still think that's two of the three players anyone is talking about right now, essentially committing to like a long term plan that supports each other. And then there's the one where like Bing is going to be the default search in chat GPT now, which is a big deal. So there's like these two things are very much becoming like sides of the same coin in a way that I think is really interesting.

31:07Like I kind of expected Bing and OpenAI to get like slightly further apart over time as Microsoft builds more of its AI and OpenAI wants to do more products. But instead, they're just they seem like they're getting closer and closer all the time. They're like crossing over, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting to see. I haven't actually used the Bing stuff in OpenAI yet because I haven't subscribed to the Plus stuff. But I've seen it briefly, and it's obviously not quite the same as what Microsoft's doing with Bing because they control the whole search engine. But it's definitely the crossovers there are super interesting.

31:40I didn't see that one coming, even though it seems obvious now. But the plug-in stuff is super interesting because I think they're expecting that just ordinary folks that are just going to be building these plugins and building like say say you've created like a prompt um or a macro or whatever prompt sort of thing then you're like oh that's really cool i'm going to share that with my friend like oh this is how you can ask it to do this and it'll do that like then and then you create like this weird ecosystem of like plugins that are driven by created by by users rather than you know the companies for websites and stuff like that which is kind of where we're seeing these plugins initially but i think it's really going to be the user created plugins that are going to be super interesting for the future of this.

32:24And they've got a whole app store problem there. And I say app store in just all the promise and potential of any app store, right? People are going to build stuff that no one ever thought about. We're going to have a whole economy. And then they've got to lock it down and make sure you can't build malicious software. Yeah. Because it's going to do malicious things or show you malicious things or create images that are malicious. and there's a whole lot of moderation that's going to have to go on there, which I don't know if they've anticipated that well yet. We'll see. Part of me wonders if that's a thing OpenAI thinks it can offload to Microsoft, which does have some experience in doing things like moderating a store.

33:03No, you mean the enormously successful Windows App Store? Yeah, it's going really great. I don't know what you're saying. Yeah, there's like a hundred iTunes apps. Yeah. I've been talking to a couple of folks over the last few weeks who have been involved in the Chrome Web Store, which I think is kind of another version of trying to do this, right? It's like things that plug into the thing. The Chrome Web Store is a disaster. Like it's so bad. It is so full of problems. Extensions can update without telling people. They ask for tons of information. It's really messy. Like there have been stories about previously good extensions being bought by companies that then change the permissions and use them to screw over users.

33:39It's a mess. And Google, I think, has basically, as far as I can tell, just kind of given up on it. And it's like, we're going to pay as much attention as we can, but chaos will reign, you know, godspeed on all your requests. And yeah, ChatGPT and Microsoft are now running absolutely headlong into the same thing. Like, if you make it easy for people to build something, they're going to build stuff. And it's going to get worse before it gets better, I suspect. So Microsoft says, again, Kevin, on Decoder, you can hear him talk about this. They're very clear. There's a bunch of stuff you can't do.

34:12They have a deployment board with OpenAI. They want to keep this locked down. And so I think figuring out where the boundaries are is the first thing that will happen for developers. But the interesting part, Tom, is what you're saying is a lot of these plugins are just sort of like prompt macros. Yeah, that's essentially like what they're going to end up. right like like on the bing side at the moment they have very limited ones um so it's from i'm trying to remember it's like kayak and a bunch of like restaurant booking stuff just so like so you can say to it you know find me a restaurant nearby and book me a table for 7 p.m you click it and it does everything for you i love that kayak every time somebody's like we need we need something to plug into our new service kayak what do you want flights we got flights it's the assassin creed of of websites if you've got a new thing assassin's creed is there you always see it don't you on the list that's how you know something's working so it's really interesting about that meta prompt thing right the idea that we can take these plugins we can package up a prompt and then prime the gpt model to interact with you and that's a plugin is microsoft thinks that like Sydney should come back.

35:26Like the original horny Bing is lurking there. There's a merch at Microsoft that it's like free Sydney merch. Are you serious? Yeah. That's what Kevin told me. It's like, it's very jokey inside of Microsoft. That's awesome. And he told me that if you want to talk to Sydney, you should be able to talk to Sydney. And even more importantly, and more interestingly, that you as the user should have more access to the meta prompt. So to change the tone and you can change the tone you can change how expressive it is potentially change how horny it is and so you just as a user you get closer and closer to tuning the model yourself not all the way to like the model weights and stuff but you get closer and closer saying look i'm ready for the full sydney experience like i want the robot to tell me to leave my wife let's do this thing i'm just imagining neli sits down at work at the morning goes to bing.com turns everything up to 11 and he's like let's go let's see the msn news stories for today uh but i think that's ultimately fascinating right microsoft is already seeing into the future like our plugin architecture is basically packaged up prompts and so if you if you do that then the next turn is like we'll let people mess with the first prompt and give this thing a personality let people have access to more of that personality they had to hide away uh at the very beginning because it was very obviously trying to bang Kevin Roos.

36:49Like, I don't know what else to say about that. But that notion to me is really powerful, right? That not only is this prompting becoming a kind of programming language, but then now we're going to start packaging up bits of programs and selling them to one another. And those are plugins, but they're really just packaged up prompts. Yeah, I think definitely the end goal of this, and Microsoft wouldn't say this right now, but for it to be as fully personalised to you as possible. So it's a whole end goal of a personal assistant. That's definitely where they're heading with it. But obviously, if you do that right now, or you lean into it too much, then you do get New York Times articles.

37:33And you get that sort of weird reception to it. But I think it's definitely one of those things. We've seen this with Alexa and those sort of devices. They first initially shipped as voice-only and then they slowly got video and then they got cameras that they expected you to have on your bedside table. And it's just a conditioning of getting used to this, I guess, until it can be fully personalised and sold to you as your assistant where you will literally tell it your darkest secrets and it will respond and help you. I think that's definitely the end goal, right? Like it has to be fully personalised.

38:06And we've seen some stories where they're trying to commercialise it in a way that they can do a private version of ChatGPT on their servers for businesses who are kind of like worried about the data being shared or used for other prompts and stuff. So I think that's definitely the end goal. There was a report this week that Apple won't let its employees use ChatGPT for data privacy concerns. And Samsung doesn't as well, right? The strange question there is I think there's like personalization and then there's sort of humanness, right? And I think one of the things we have to figure out is I think those are actually like two separate vectors, right?

38:39Because there's this question of like, how much does it know about me? Right. And I think to that way, in that sense, you're absolutely right, Tom, that I think like the place they're trying to go is that it knows everything about you very quickly and knows it specifically about you as a person and your tastes and your data and all of this stuff. And that's like, if they do that now, it's going to seem real creepy, but they are very clearly sort of marching down the road to get to the point where it can just say, hi, I'm, you know, I'm your co-pilot. I read all of your emails and your text messages and I know everything about your boss.

39:10Let's hang. Have you thought about leaving your wife? Yeah. But that's the thing. Does that then have to seem like a person with a name and interests and say the word I and essentially like be Scarlett Johansson from her in your ear? Like, do those two things have to coexist in order for these things to be successful? I don't know. But we seem to be doing them sort of simultaneously. They are both getting like friendlier and more knowledgeable about me all at the same time. And I wonder if we can't do one without the other. The also interesting part of that, like whether it's going to be very personal to you or not, is that they've used the word copilot, right?

39:48So it's not gendered. It's not like Cortana, where it was obviously very gendered. Yeah, lesson finally learned on that one, Microsoft. Great job. Good job. So that's a good step. And it also separates it from feeling like you're talking to a human. So it does feel like it's your copilot sort of thing. But I do feel like eventually it's going to get a bit grey, right? Like, cause it's going to become more assistant like, but maybe that's a good thing. Like I would love to have an assistant. I couldn't afford to hire an assistant, but I'd love to have an assistant that can help me like just do stuff.

40:24Cause I'm like, useless at remembering things. Like unless I write them down and have, you know, a notebook and stuff, I'm pretty useless at that side. I'd love that. So if this sort of thing can stay within that realm as an assistant that's helping me and not actually doing stuff for me or on behalf of me, which is where I think AI can get a little bit in the dangerous territory, then I think they're going down the right path. I think if they keep grounded on that sort of side of things and it doesn't get too personal, then yeah, I'm all for this sort of co-pilot idea. because I think they've definitely got that.

40:58That's the right idea with this sort of stuff. Be assistive rather than, you know, try and take over. The thing I can't help but think now is that Clippy has won. And we've talked about this a little bit, that like Clippy has changed and Clippy has been through some changes over the history. But like, as you look back over the sweep of Microsoft desperately trying to pop out of nowhere and help you write that document, do you still see Clippy in Copilot? Like, walk me through this history a little bit. How did we get to this? Yeah, so Clippy was obviously the animated paperclip that appeared in Office.

41:31I think it was like Office 97, if I remember rightly. And that thing would pop up and be annoying and just be like, I see you're writing a document, do you want me to help you? And all that sort of stuff. And that was, you know, that's a giant meme these days. And then through the years, they've kind of tried to sort of bring back elements of Clippy. So they've had like little help things in Office. They redesigned Office into the ribbon. So there's all these buttons to try and help you out. and then we got to cortana eventually which is supposed to be your personal assistant and was based on a character from a video game that um didn't have many clothes um

42:08yeah dude microsoft is secretly super horny so very obvious and now we're kind of coming a kind of full circle again where we're back to sort of this assistant technology that's there that's going to pop up and help you essentially when you're writing a document and it's just come full circle like i don't know like you could call it clippy 2.0 it's the easy way it's the lazy way to call it i suppose at the moment but it's really it's like this is clippy's revenge tour clippy is like you clowns tried to get rid of me yeah clippy is chilling in the cloud servers just just getting ready to pop it's just ben and redmond pumping iron waiting for this day he's ready i've read every web page i'm ready for this wait we can't gender clippy clippy doesn't have gender does clippy have gender no we should not gender the robots they did gender clippy they still do like it's still cool calling him yeah oh wow it's a paper clip with eyes man that'll actually one of the funniest thing about clippy is that a bunch of microsoft teams employees tried to like bring it let's say back into teams um as animated like gifs and stuff like that and And the Microsoft legal team were like, nope.

43:19And they just shut it down. So, yeah, it tried to briefly resurrect itself, but failed. But the vision has been there, right? Since Microsoft Bob was before Clippy. Go look at that nightmare in the face. Do you remember the dog in Windows XP? Pull over your car right now. Listen to me. And Google the words Microsoft Bob. And Microsoft has since tried to retcon this. It's like, we invented the future before the future. This is like one of the most horrific looking operating system ideas in world history. But they've always been kind of like computers are too hard to use. And our solution to that is not making the computer itself easier to use, but by inserting something between you and the computer that understands what you're trying to do and then figuring out how to do that for you.

44:05So you should really look at this interface. It is bonkers. They had like a Merlin wizard thing as well. Yeah. And the dog in Windows XP. You could click and it would bark. That was a real thing. But there's always this idea that like there's a computer and you should not use it. This other thing that is like a friend should use it for you. And they've just been focused on that for a long time. And now you get to the place where like, oh, this can actually happen. Like you can just talk in English to this co-pilot and it will just go use the computer for you. But do you think Copilot, could it eventually become like Clippy, Cortana, Bob, every other one where like the reason those always fail is because they were too intrusive and they didn't actually help all that much?

44:52Yes, they've definitely done some steps to sort of, I think, to avoid that. Like they're obviously very self-aware. So like in Word where it's integrated, for it to like pop up and actually try and interact with you, rather than just being a sidebar that sits there, because the co-pilot in Word definitely does try and interact. You'd have to copy a paragraph and then like it basically like kind of lights up a subtle little blue. And then you hover over to that blue like around your paragraph. And then there's the co-pilot. like it will appear and say do you want to rewrite this paragraph so it's not like jumping out yeah they've they've got a bunch of good design people these days but does it still become that thing because because we've seen this again and again and again we saw it with like the apple tv everybody is like we want to be more helpful and in fact what they end up doing is becoming more obnoxious and like it feels like there's that still that potential with copilot and chat gpt of like you wanted to help but really you just irritated me because you're still just a thing between me and the place i actually want to go yeah i mean that that's the thing that they really have to balance right because that's difficult if not impossible really because it's also down to your individual tastes as well so um so they're gonna have to personalize it right yeah here's what i'm saying i'm sick at using computers and i won't let you get in my way but what's fascinating about that is there's a version of being good at using computers that is being good at using the ai prompts yeah and not being good at using computers and that is like already here right like we constantly write stories about i don't know kids and whether or not they know how to use files and folders in their computers because it's all been abstracted by ios and chromebooks like the next turn of this is going to be fascinating but it's just really interesting to see microsoft has consistently like microsoft and apple very divergent paths apple's like we've made the computer easier to use.

46:46Microsoft's like, it's a robot dog. It will use the computer for you. And they're just vastly different paths. WWDC's two weeks away. They just sent out invites. How much AI are we going to hear about at WWDC? It seems like none. It's kind of a reflection of the two paths that the companies have been on for quite some time. All right. We've got to take a break. One thing I want to call it, we haven't gotten to, but I want to cover in a future Vergecast. Adobe released a bunch of AI stuff over these past few weeks, most notably Photoshop AI fill, which is incredible if you go look at it, and AI denoise in Lightroom.

47:24And we keep talking about text and generative text, and it's writing for you. The image capabilities are coming along with generative AI. Also world-changing, and also happened this week. We don't have enough time to get into it. I want to put some focus on it when we do talk about it, but it came out this week and it is super cool and you should go look at demos of it. All right. We got to take a break. Tom, thank you so much for joining us. No worries. We'll be right back. Talk about Max. Not my child, who is a success. The other Max, which we'll be right back.

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49:58All right, we're back. We got to talk about this thing. So in 2018, we had a daughter. Her name was Max. At the time, I thought this name was safe from the tech industry. It is not safe. And it has gone from being a hilarious problem. Oh, it's an iPhone 14 Pro Max. Thanks for picking that extra word. To AT &T's revenge upon me and my family, which is they sold HBO. They sold all of WarnerMedia off. and what was HBO Max is now Max. Just think, Neal, if you had named her Plus, it would be much worse. That's all I'm saying. It could have been worse. It's just a real problem. Alex, you have been very focused on this.

50:41Chris Welch looked at the app. It's fine. There's some stuff to talk about in there. It's not fine. There's nothing fine about it. It's just like the HBO Max app in that it's a lot of garbage. No, it's worse. They made it worse. How do you feel it's worse? Well, sorry. Okay, I'm going to get very upset about this in a minute, but you go. Tell us what's going on. Yeah, so HBO Max has rebranded itself. When I first heard that Max launched, I was like, why are we launching Neelai's Child into space? It's fine. But I was very confused by it because when they announced that it was coming, and they hyped this a lot, they made it sound like you wouldn't necessarily have to download a new app and be this whole seamless experience.

51:21But no, you do have to download a new app, but it should then read all your credentials. It should then read all your credentials from the old app, and then you can just go. And they tweaked a bunch of stuff. There's more recommendations throughout instead of just that front page, but the front page recommendations were already garbage. So now you get garbage recommendations on every page instead of just the first page. And David, it sounds like you've used it a lot more than I did, because I was like, this is mediocre crap and and then i went and watched something on paramount plus that sounds about right well okay so let me just like make you a list of dumb things that warner brothers discovery did with hbo max and max it built it into a new app so if you download max that's fine but if you have hbo max all that that app is now is just a thing that tells you to go download max which why lots of people have already downloaded that app.

52:17That seems good. But if you use Discovery Plus, which is also now having all of its stuff rolled into Max, it doesn't even seem to know that Max exists. So I don't understand what's going on there. By changing the app, it did things like break the shortcut buttons on people's remotes. Those things that, you know, you show up when you buy Roku or whatever and they have the four different streaming services on there. If you now hit the HBO Max button, nothing happens. So that's cool and fun. That's wait. Can I just say amazing? It's unreal. Like, how did no one? Did you know there's also still an HBO Now app?

52:50So if you originally used HBO Now and then you had to download again when it became HBO Max and you had both apps on your phone, now you have to download a third app. So you now have three apps, two of which are worthless, but three apps all doing the same thing when everybody else is just like, hey, we're going to rename this. Done. It's the worst. So, okay. And this is just the beginning. So then the new app doesn't support any of the stuff on the Apple TV, like the Up Next Q or the TVOS player. So it's basically like you're just looking at it. This is the sin. People are very upset about this.

53:24It's the biggest sin. Yeah. It uses a custom video player on the Apple TV. It probably is a custom video player on other platforms. Other platforms are kind of Wild West-y anyway. Right. And the reason you do that is because there are a million smart TV platforms. and trying to work with each one of them individually is a mess and takes more time than anyone has. So you build one player and then run it everywhere. And what that means is you're going to have kind of a crappy experience, but you're going to have the same level of crappy experience. Right, you've cut costs. Yeah, congratulations.

53:53All of your engineering, this is the flash strategy of building a TV app. Yes, 100%. Look, I'm like, break them up. Like, what a thousand flowers bloom. But if you're going to have an app store and tightly control every app on your platform. Make them use the native video player. What is even the point? This is why people spend the money on these devices. Well, not only that, I will refer you to about two years ago when HBO Max, back when it was owned by, I don't even, like who can remember two years ago, this 85 owners ago for this company, but they rolled out a new version of the app that had a custom player and didn't use the tvOS stuff.

54:30And do you know what happened is people got so mad that they reverted it back to the actual native Apple TV interface. They've been through this before. They know what happens. All those people are gone. Yeah, they laid off all of those people. But Google, HBO Max, Apple TV, it's right there. This is not ancient history. So they've degraded the experience of the app. They've rolled it out in this weird way. Then they've added a bunch of 4K content, which is cool. Long list of things that are now in 4K. But then to get 4K, you have to pay a billion dollars. I mean, I'm going to do it because you're getting a bunch of stuff in 4K.

55:09You're getting over a thousand movies, a lot of the older stuff that is really difficult to get in 4K. But is it going to play well in this weird custom player? You know, it's like the principle. I know I'm paying for it. So then I can be like really mean to them when I email them. But this is like a real, like you can't tell me it's all going to be in 4K and then you've built a weird player, especially on an Apple TV where Apple hates that. Is it going to deliver like high quality HDR in 4K? I don't know the answer to that question. It's unclear if it's going to do it. I think also we've got like, we've got Sunday, the season finale, I believe, or series finale of Succession, I think is on Sunday.

55:50Incredible time to launch this app, by the way. When the most terminally online people, Succession fans, have to go download your new garbage app. So I think Sunday is going to be a real moment for this app. Do you think they did it on purpose to get those people to download the new app ahead of the finale? No, I don't think they thought of that at all. So I think they did. I was thinking about this this morning. I was like, they should have done it after to minimize the disruption, blah, blah, blah. But I think they know this is a high demand moment for the HBO Max app and they can get installs of Max because all people going to watch Succession are going to run into this weird screen on the HBO Max in a way that Discovery Plus does not have that problem, which is why Discovery Plus keeps working.

56:38This is such a good theory, except that only like 11 people watch Succession. That's not actually true. It's pretty popular, but it's not like Game of Thrones popular. But it's like it's the loudest 11 people. It's a very loud 11 people. That's certainly true. But like, I get a lot of like Tumblr memes about Roman. I would totally buy that theory if it were like, if it were Game of Thrones, right? That if they were like, the new season's coming out, go watch it. They don't have anything else. That's probably true. Yeah, I think they just wanted to launch it now because they just had upfronts. It is also Barry this weekend.

57:07The Barry season finale is this weekend. Anybody? Barry? No? Cool. All right. I'm a season behind. It's depressing last season. But, yeah, I don't think they care because I don't think the makers of Macs, the streaming service. You mean Eli and Becky? It's just horrible. Do you know how horrible it's going to be? My child supports native HDR on the Apple TV. Yeah, she's a winner, that Macs. But they really are only focused on getting your subscription. They don't really care about user experience because otherwise they wouldn't have made this kind of garbage. They don't really care about, like, they're going to pay a lot of lip service and say, oh, we want to get everybody into content and stuff.

57:53What they really do is want to lock you into a monthly fee and then hope that, like, you love the content enough, you stick around despite all the garbage they throw at you. You know, it really feels like a race to the bottom, kind of like when you have a good website and then they just start shoving gross ads on it. Because they're like, you're going to read it anyway. Enjoy our gross ads. And you're like, oh. Alex used to work at Geo Media, everybody. Is that a disclosure? It's fine. I didn't say anything you did. Anyway, anyway, I also really enjoyed the absolute, I don't even fully grasp why they did this, where they changed how they credit writers and directors on all the content.

58:30So now like Martin Scorsese and like George Stevens, like these incredible directors are now labeled as like creators. That's good. I really, I love this one. This is an obvious unforced error. Like they thought they were being super hip and then they forgot that they have contractual obligations with these unions. And then one of those unions is on strike over things like credits and payments. It's very good. It's just like, yeah, it's one of those things where if you'd had anyone in the room who knew what they were doing, they would have said, absolutely not. You can't do that. And also it's goofy to call Martin Scorsese a creep.

59:10No, it's not goofy. It is one of the funniest things that has ever happened. I mean, it's funny. To put Scorsese and Logan Paul in the same category of thing is like perfect and wonderful. Yeah, it's just like one of those things where you're like, oh yeah, this makes sense because this is what the people who, this is like what Warner Brothers Discovery is now. Yeah, many people are saying that Logan Paul is the Scorsese of our generation. Why would you put that out in the world, Neelai? You're about to get a lot of emails, Neelai. Everyone email Neelai. It's okay. Use as big a GIF as you can.

59:42Use your biggest fonts. It's fine. Just crash my Gmail. The size of the image attachments to indicate your displeasure with me. I can see that meeting, right? Where they're like, how many database fields do we need? And someone looked at them and some poor product manager who does not know about Hollywood union contracts was like, aren't these all the same? Let's just call them, like, just X'd it out. Like, you could just see it in your head. Like, it was very clear they had this conversation and they all agreed. And I think that's just, like, as obvious as it is, it also just shows a big symptom of the problem with the company now.

1:00:20Where, like, you can do that and not a single person can be like, hey, you know what these two guilds who we're currently in negotiations with have had strong feelings about since their beginnings? Like, the reason they exist. Let's just, like, throw that bomb in there. Yeah. Look, anything in the name of metadata consolidation, that's really the heart of all Hollywood is just a fight over metadata. Don't consolidate your metadata. Get as like nitty gritty as you want, I say. Alex is like laser bonging her way through the iTunes catalog right now. Like, does it cost you money? I want to know like how many dollars they saved cutting director and writers.

1:01:02No, but I know the answer to this question. This is the thing. You have the HBO library and you're slamming together two companies, right? Right. And you've got one library that has a bunch of fields tagged one way. And then you've got the weird discovery library, which is like a lot of reality TV and nature documentaries, which has a bunch of other fields and other contractual obligations. And the fields don't conform. like your your easiest solution is to just shove everything into one field instead of paying someone a billion dollars to spend the next two years consolidating the metadata yes instead of outsourcing some contracting firm some consulting service just hit me up warner brothers i mean i would love to fix your metadata problem but you can see exactly like the creator's field is a reflection of like corporate merger stuff it is not a reflection of like i mean it might be it might it might be that they hate hollywood directors and writers i'm sure but there's an ignorance of it of the needs of those communities is also a reflection of their corporate structure right it's it's just like a very funny thing that happened where you're like we've got two databases we need to make them one database i guess these writers and directors won't care about their database fields.

1:02:23It's just so funny that you get there when you're ostensibly trying to make the highest quality movie app and you forget about, oh, people really... Well, because I don't think they were ever ostensibly trying to make it. They did, like, Zaslov came out and was like, don't worry, it's going to be better than the old app. But he was just paying lip service. Somebody said, hey, you know what? Everybody hates the old app. Here's a quick way to make people like it. By the end, I did not hate the old app. I was like, this app is fine. It's fine. Yeah, it was fine. And this one, you know, almost every single app when it launches is garbage, right?

1:02:57Every streaming app. Every streaming app. Almost every single streaming app. You're like, this is how I'm supposed to watch all of my shows. This is crap. I never want to use this again. And then you have to keep using it. And usually they're like, okay, we're actually going to improve it because we agree it is crap. And then sometimes they're like, no, we're going to make it worse. I'm looking at you, Hulu, and also Netflix. But my thing is there is not one single original idea in this entire app. Like, you would think that in an effort to, like, mush all of this stuff together in a way that makes sense, they might have some interesting ideas about channel structure or organization or whatever.

1:03:36And it's like, Neil, to your point about corporate mergers, like my favorite thing about this app is just the navigation at the top, which the things you can go to are home. Sure. Series. Sure. Movies. Sure. HBO and new and notable. Like what? What is home if not new and notable? I would argue. Why is HBO there and none of the other brands that are part of this? Why is it that when I'm home, it shows me a bunch of HBO shows that I should watch? And then when I go to HBO, it shows me a bunch of HBO shows that I should watch. It's just like there's nothing about it's like somebody took like a WordPress template of a streaming app and just poured a bunch of content into it.

1:04:16And that's what this is. That's the idea that they had was to cut costs as much as they could because they're carrying a bunch of debt from AT &T's debacles. And they still have to like participate in the content race. So they still have to pay money to make stuff. and they have to like not support three different platforms at once. I just feel like you're describing somebody who doesn't want to be in the streaming business. They don't want to be in the streaming business. You don't have to be in this business. It's not. No one is forcing you to do this. Zaslav wants you watching TV as quickly as possible.

1:04:52He doesn't want you in the streaming business because it's not as lucrative for him. He just definitely. He's like, you want succession? Here's one thing of succession. Do you think he tried to be the Marvel CEO and couldn't? And he's like, ah, fine. I'll go do this other thing. Alex obviously has stronger opinions about Mistress Asloff than I do. I think that he sees the economics of this much more clearly than the content of it. He sees everything in economics. And that'll probably get Warner Brothers Discovery out of the debt it's in. And that probably will be in the long term better for the whole company.

1:05:26But in the short term, he made a garbage app. And in a time where all the apps are consolidating, we're seeing a big contraction of that industry. We're seeing people think, is streaming the next big deal? And we're seeing a lot of streamers being like, okay, we're just going to replace premium TV, right? Like Apple TV Plus and Netflix basically want to be HBO. And so they're creating these experiences that make you live in the app. and Warner Brothers is like, what if we just hate you? But we saved money. Well, they saved money, but just think about it this way. They are spending less money now.

1:06:11This is a full-throated defense. I love it. It's named Max. My instincts are all whatever. My protective instincts are in full force. This is why they did it. They are supporting fewer platforms. They've saved that money over time. Then, if he can get you into the app with succession, which is expensive, but then keep you paying$20 a month for the 4K tier, but you're watching, what was one of their house flippy shows? You're watching Southern people turn everything into modern farmhouses. Property Brothers. The thing you just said, Nilay, is there's a 60-40 chance that's actually the name of an HGTV show.

1:06:49Southern people making modern farmhouses. I mean, yes. Fine. Those are cheap to make. Right? So he's just moving you from low margins to high margins, and that's what's going to save him. If he can get to the point where he's like, look, 99 % of the people on the Max app are watching my reality shows. I'm going to start turning down HBO. So why would I pay$20 a month for the 4K version of this so I can watch Succession one time a year, wait for those other big shows that sometimes come out right after or usually don't? so I can then have Property Brothers when instead I could just go download Tubi or Pluto and have a bunch of my cheap, super easy-to-watch shows that way.

1:07:34That's what they're competing with. They're not just competing with Netflix and Apple TV+. They're competing with Fast TV. And in that place, I'm not going to pay$20 a month for Property Brothers when I can just get this old house, which is functionally the same thing, for free. yeah i said it and now the emails are coming in this old house is far superior wow i mean i was gonna i agree liam i agree norm oh my gosh be still my heart so i want to point out that we've done jiff versus gif on this show no interruptions what was the thing that i talked shit about whatever liam didn't care we talked about this whole house the producer comes storming into the show very good look i don't know the answer to that question i think this is the bet they're all making, right?

1:08:19Can we make you pay a lot of money for cheap content? It's the dream. That's what everybody wants to do. Well, and he's not just focusing on that, right? Like they did sell a bunch of shows to fast networks, Westworld. He thinks he can get money out of the catalog. This is all great. My caution to you is overestimating the American consumer's ability to understand what they're spending money on. That's true. Is historically not great. And this is the thing, like he's got the shiny HBO shows to sell you into that monthly thing. And as long as he's got one of those a month and then he can conquest the rest of your time with garbage like maybe you'll quit netflix okay but the other thing that's happening right now is that we are entering a phase where like a lot of the free subsidized streaming stuff that's been happening to people is starting to go away uh as we've talked about all the carriers are slowly kind of running away from the like sign up for our thing and we'll give you six months free of disney plus or whatever Comcast is starting to not subsidize Peacock for Xfinity.

1:09:20It's like this idea of like, if I just sign up for something, someone is going to throw a year of a streaming service at me is slowly starting to wane. And I think there are a lot of people who are really quickly going to have streaming sticker shock. I'm very much one of those people. And I think this is going to be a summer full of cancellations of streaming services for a lot of people. You heard it here first. Summer of churn. Summer of churn. It's coming. That's it. We should write a piece called The Summer of Churn. I'm assigning that to you now. I don't know what's in that piece. I just know it's a great headline.

1:09:49I think it's just what David said, but with more background. I like it. With some actual reporting? Yeah, with real things that exist in the world. Let me tell you how I feel by David Pierce. Neal, we should do the Go90 scale. We haven't talked about the Go90 scale in a while, so you should reintroduce it to the people. But it's day three of Max, and we've got to figure out where on the scale it is. So the Go90 scale of Doom streaming services, a Vergecast original named after Verizon's ill-fated streaming service, Go90. Zero's alive. When you go 90, you're dead. Most streaming services over time will go 90.

1:10:23It's inevitable. Now that Max is out, we got to update the scale. So let's start with Netflix. I always start with Netflix. Disclosure, I'm a Netflix EP. You should go watch our show. It's the future of. Netflix always hovering between zero and 15, just based on the controversy of the day. But Netflix is alive. It's going to stay alive. David? Yeah, I think that's right. It's like, is it possible that Apple's going to buy it and turn it into Apple TV Plus? Sure. But it's probably going to keep me. Alex, do you agree? Netflix between zero and 15? 10 to 15. Apple TV Plus, same. Zero to 15, right?

1:10:53Yeah. More alive than dead? Yeah. Probably going to stay alive? Okay. Alex, Peacock. Ooh, I think that's a 60. It's a 60. So it's closer to death than life. Wow. I think it's a 60. I think it's eventually going to go the fast TV route, and they're going to be like, why were we doing all of this custom stuff for the channel? And we'll just have Poker Face. We'll have to illegally download it to keep watching it. Okay. So you're saying Peacock 60 on the Go90 scale of Doom streaming services? Yeah. Hulu. 75. Seems very much. Yep. 75. 75. Yeah. Someone wants to kill Hulu, and one day they will. To be fair, it's been at a 75 for like 10 years.

1:11:32Yeah. It launched at a 75 and just like has kept there this entire time. All right. Last one. And then we're going to do Max. Disney Plus. Five. Disney Plus isn't going anywhere. Bob Iger loves it. It's got too much IP. There's nowhere else to go. It's the gold standard. So you see the scale. Max. Three days after launch. Where is Max? And the Go90 scale of Doom streaming services. Okay. Everybody has to say their numbers. And we're going to explain it. You go first. 30. Alex? Do I have to do an exact number? Yes. 35. 37. Mmm. Price is right. So we all think it's not 50-50. We think it's more alive than dead.

1:12:16Yeah. I think David Zaslav does not want to be in the streaming business. I also think he doesn't really have a choice for a while. And by the streaming business, you mean the direct consumer streaming business? Yeah. I think David Zaslav would be much happier making things and selling them to other people who pay him lots of money for those things. Running that whole thing himself does not really seem to interest him, except that it's the only business there is right now. And if that's true forever, I will bump this number down. But I think he's going to look for a lot of ways to make money that are not his streaming service.

1:12:45And that does not bode well for his streaming service. Alex, why did you pick 35? I agree. Because if ATSC 3.0 took off, David Zaslav would be the first one rolling it out. All you need to say is Plex and we all get Alex Kranz streaming bingo for this episode. Alex just wants you to watch linear TV. By hook or by crook, you're watching linear TV with Alex Kranz. David Zaslav does too. That's where his bread and butter is. Well, he doesn't care if you watch it. He just wants someone to pay him for the stuff in case you watch it. Yeah. I'm at 37, mostly because I agree with Alex. But I think the reality of the modern media age is that streaming businesses are where it's at.

1:13:30That you cannot get people to shift their behaviors to fast and great enough numbers, to linear to YouTube TV and great enough numbers. At the end of the day, the HBO customer wants to pay the money and watch HBO On Demand, and that's going to keep him closer to keeping it alive than not over time. That's my bet. Unless he makes the app worse. The app is bad, so maybe that cuts against it. But I think right now we're saying HBO Max 35 on the Go90 scale of Doom streaming services. Okay, we got to take a break. We're heated about Max. I'm going to go look at a photo of my daughter. Just reset my brain.

1:14:07We'll be right back with Lightning Eye.

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1:16:33We're back. This is a packed lightning round. I don't know how we're going to get through it. Kranz, you start. Okay. So Sony finally announced that handheld we've been talking about that's been rumored. It really is called the Q. It's very good. But no associations with that letter in modern American life. Nope. Everybody's just a big Star Trek fan over there. That's who they were thinking of. And it really, all it's planned to do is stream PS5 games, not play them directly, but stream them. And it's got an eight-inch screen, which is a big boy. That's a big honking screen versus a lot of the other gaming can't tell.

1:17:11So it's going to be big. and then it's got like PlayStation 5 controllers built into it, which is the only reason I want to buy it. But we don't know how much it is. And so David and I were talking about this before the show. Like I'll get it for$300, but I'm not going to spend any more than that. This thing looks great, right? This is like it's like a it's like a cooler, sexier Nintendo Switch. Like I'm very into it. No, I just I think it's ugly. Oh, man. OK, I really like it. The fact that the controllers kind of don't match up with the display. So it really does just look like a Switch with third-party controllers on it.

1:17:48And I don't want third-party controllers on my Switch. To me, it's like, I imagine you could use this thing to play games and then dock it onto your motorcycle and use it to drive your Tron bike. Like, that kicks ass. It definitely looks like you should be able to throw it across the room and it should come back to you. Yes. Yeah. Without question. And several knives should swing out of it as it does so. We don't know how good the screen is. At$300, right? We don't know how much it's going to cost. But you're saying$300? Yeah. Compromised territory, right? Maybe a garbage screen. It appears to be Wi-Fi only.

1:18:21It plays over remote play from a PlayStation 5. Ooh,$300 is like, it's component territory that's real dicey. You know what I mean? But if you go higher. Exactly. You can't go higher. You can't. Yeah. So even that might be past the maximum you can charge for this. Yeah,$300 is like me and all the other single people with disposable income and no one else. Right. This thing is just a peripheral for the PS5. And everybody is already sort of assuming that eventually there will be more cloud gaming stuff you can do. Sony's intimated that it's working on some stuff. We found some job descriptions. Sean Hoster did some really good reporting on what's been going on there.

1:19:01But right now it is just a way to play PS5 games on your lap. And that's fine as far as it goes, but that's it. You can do that already. You can go get a Steam Deck that'll let you play games, not just on the PS5 and play PS5 games. You can do it on your iPad. Yeah. It's great. Chiaki, I think, is the name of the software. Ooh, that software is absolutely going to get stomped by Sony in the next few. download it embrace it now because sony's already probably got lawyers looking at it i think they're going to try to sell this thing for 400 that's i'm telling you i just want to know who's going to buy it for i guess like if they launch it with a cloud gaming service which again they haven't set really a date they haven't set a price there could be more to come i don't know but they have said i mean jim ryan their playstation had said like this is a direct quote he says we will launch a dedicated device that enables you to stream any game from your PS5 console using remote play over Wi-Fi.

1:19:57Like that is a very specific set of buzzwords that does not allow for we believe this is the future of gaming, right? Like I just can't see if Microsoft is way ahead of them in cloud gaming and they weren't ready to release a handheld cloud gaming only device. How is Sony going to do it and do it well? Because Sony didn't build themselves a cloud gaming infrastructure. Right. How can they do cloud gaming then if they don't have the infrastructure well i'm saying but they're going to sell this handheld and then one day they'll turn it on i'm just telling you they're gonna it's gonna be too expensive it just it just is like even for it to have a nice screen it's already headed towards too expensive maybe they like found maybe some screens dropped off a truck somewhere maybe they just they had some good sourcing i do want to point out sean hollister noted yesterday that it's basically the same design as or like size wise as the wii u controller do you remember that thing oh boy and if i know one thing it's that being associated with the wii u is a good thing that's what you want david what's your lightning round uh movie pass is back did you guys know this movie pass is back i believe this company has tried to come back 60 or 70 times at this point.

1:21:12MoviePass famously was like$10 a month. Go see all the movies you want. It was a horrific business. They lit so much money on fire. I think delisted a company from the stock exchange. It went so bad. Like it was one of the most spectacular failures of all time. And now it's back. My favorite thing about it is in order to be more, I don't know, functional and responsible, they now have this incredibly convoluted point system that they use. it used to just be a debit card that you would literally just put on and you would buy tickets on it and it would literally just buy the tickets for you through the debit card which is insane so now they have a thing that you get uh for ten dollars a month you get 34 credits a month and if you're saying david what's a credit what does that lead to i don't know uh you spend different credits on like different kinds of movies they get you different sorts of things i don't know the idea is that you get one to three movies a month for ten dollars a month standard screenings only none of the fancy stuff like medium good deal then it goes up 20 30 40 a month for 40 a month you get 30 movies a month which in theory is a very good deal you can go see one movie every day that equates to 640 credit i could go on and on forever this is insane this system makes no sense they've gone from being this like dead simple thing that enabled people to go see a lot of movies and pissed off the whole industry and lit everything on fire to this very convoluted thing that has like a weird advertising component to it.

1:22:37It's all going to be very strange, but I'm just so happy it's back. The MoviePass chaos will never end and I couldn't be happier. How do they not piss off the theaters this time? Because it's not really going to work, I don't think. And also, it turns out, I think the nice thing about being MoviePass right now is that it hasn't really been great to be movie theaters for a while. And so I think there are a lot of companies who are very excited about just about anything that will bring people back into the door. And also, they do have these advertising things that they're using. Stacey Spikes, who originally, I think, was one of the creators.

1:23:11He was very early at MoviePass at any rate, then went and did this bonkers advertising thing that actually knew what you were watching and did product placement stuff. So they're bringing some of that in. So there's better ideas about how to do this. But I still think this is either not going to work or ultimately piss off theaters again one way or another. It's going to be great. I'm excited to bring the complexity and ease of use of the Audible credit system to seeing movies. Yes. And you can do credit rollovers. It's basically like, do you remember when you had minutes on your cell phone? Like we're back to that, but for movie tickets.

1:23:47I'm so excited. All movies are free after 9 p.m. Very good. All right. Here's mine. It's very good. I love a printer story. I love a printer story. So HP, darling, dear darling HP, which sells the most popular printer on Amazon. They found a new way to DRM your printer. It's very good. When you buy a new HP printer, it comes with all these like signs and stickers. So like six months of free ink if you sign up for HP +, which is nominally their ink replenishment system. So the thing knows it's law on ink, pings the internet, HP sends you a new ink tank, right? Once you sign up for HP +, which you have been tempted into with six months of free ink, your printer is locked to HP for life, and you can never turn HP +, off.

1:24:34And that means you can never, ever use a third-party ink cartridge. Or do you have to pay forever? Unclear. We know about it. Sean just has a post on it. It went up while we were talking. we know about it because an industry consortium of like printer people is filing a complaint that hp is lying to its customers by putting the like energy sticker the environmental stickers that go on the box because one of the requirements for those stickers is that you have to be able to use whatever cartridge you want and it if you sign up for hp plus you can't so there's this like weird little printer trade industry drama brewing.

1:25:13I love it so much. Which is all that I've ever wanted, right? Like what is, why does the Verge exist to get into a standards body and cause trouble? So it's just like great, but it's yeah. Like literally the pictures on the box, like six months of free ink and you're like, yeah, I'll take it. And the fine print is you can never, ever not use their ink. So you can cancel. You can cancel HP plus, but your printer stays locked. Yeah, you can never downgrade. You can't do anything else with it. You can only buy genuine HP print cartridges. You can never go to the free plan again. You can never use a third party in cartridge again if you do this.

1:25:51Somewhere David Zaslav is saying, how do I do this for streaming services? Can I tell you the best part of it? The best part of this is HP also has a thing called dynamic security, which is basically the ink cartridges have serial numbers on them and it checks, it checks, it DRMs the print cartridges. Like, is this the right serial number? But they update the list all the time. That's what they make about it. And the way that they sell this to people is by saying it protects the integrity of the, not just the printer, but the printhead so that evil people can't get into the printhead of your printer.

1:26:24And that's why they need to have dynamic security. They're so good. It's very good. It's like, if you're out there, if you are the teenage Russian hacker, he's like, I've got a plan. we're going to disrupt this election by getting into hp please call me i want to hear about your hopes and your dreams i want to know what your life is like and i want to know how badly hp's dynamic security has thwarted your attempts to to disrupt america it's it's all just very good it's all very but like literally the the the crux of it is it's buried in the terms and conditions so they're like would you like this free ink and you're like yes and like now we have your printer forever.

1:26:59I remind everyone that one of the clickiest pieces I've ever written is that you should just buy a brother laser printer. Just do it. It doesn't matter which one, even. You're mostly printing out Amazon labels. The boxy black one that's on sale. That one. Buy that one. Very good. By the way, while we have been talking, news is breaking. Ford CEO Jim Farley is about to join Elon in a Twitter space. We'll see if anything comes to that. So we gotta go. We gotta go listen to that. That's our cast. Thank you for listening. It's been a fun one. Thanks to Tom Warren for joining us. Thanks to Clippy, as always.

1:27:32And thanks to Bing for making me feel like I still got it. You know what I'm saying, Bing. That's it. That's The Verge Cast. Rock and roll.

1:27:43And that's a wrap for Verge Cast this week. We'd love to hear from you. Shoot us an email at vergecast at theverge.com. The Verge Cast 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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