Rabbit, Humane, and the iPad

26:26I think they're both. I think David is just trying to justify giving one a four and one a three. No, I get. I totally understand the three and the four. I was telling somebody at the office earlier today because I edited that review and I looked at that three and I was like, well, you know, the humane pin like promised a bunch of stuff and badly delivered. Rabbit promised a bunch of stuff. It didn't do nothing. Didn't do any of it. Yeah. Catch on fire or physically harm David. That's true. I feel like we got to recalibrate this. No, I think you could make a fair argument that they both should have been threes.

26:59There's no version of the argument that they both should have been fours, which is why I gave it a three. Like, there's no, I hemmed and hawed on the AI pin and this one was easier. And frankly, I think the simplest way to look at it is just price. And realistically, for what these things do, they're both too expensive. And I think what$200 means to somebody versus what$700 means to somebody, I don't know. If you're buying one of these things, you have disposable income anyway. I don't know. I am perfectly happy for everyone to yell at me about the score. I feel very good about this score. I feel fine about this score.

27:32What I'm getting at is the rabbit is like a toy. It's$199. You can have it. It's broken. I buy so much broken tech garbage all the time. Sure. But the idea of the human, that you're going to wear it, it's going to be in your body. This is the part where I just disagree with you. That's fine. I think that will just be a watch. Yes. If it's going to be anything else, it'll be the meta glasses. Like the little Star Trek communicator badge on my curve of wearable bullshit. It's like, boy, I better hope I'm wearing a shirt today. Star Trek exists in a world where there are no toilets. I'm also always wearing a shirt.

28:09I don't know why I picked that one. I'm not doing Baywatch, you know? Slow run, Neil. But it's like that thing. Like it is demanding in a particular way that you adjust your wardrobe around it. And I, there's just a part of me. It's like, that's the part that's destined to fail. Maybe. Right. As it goes here. Maybe. I think the answer is it's going to be lots of things. Like I think, I think a watch is going to work for lots of people. I think glasses will work for some people. They're not going to work for me as somebody who doesn't wear glasses or contacts. The idea of wearing a pair of glasses all day is just a non-starter for me.

28:43Like I'm not going to do it. All right. Mr. Fancy pants with the nice eyeballs. sorry y 'all the next time I see you I'm shining my iPhone flashlight I don't know if that's going to hurt you or anything this will feel good I appreciate that but no I think the answer can be lots of things and I think the breast pin communicator thing is also kind of weird my honest bet is that the first thing is going to be headphones I really sincerely believe that we're due for a giant explosion of AI stuff into your headphones and it's going to solve a lot of problems. Apple is taking notes as you say that. I said this on Tuesday's show, but my absolutely baseless unreported conspiracy theory is that the AirPods Max are going to be AI products and that's why it's been so long since they've been updated.

29:32Oh no, it's going to be the Pros. No, the Maxes are big. They can have a big battery. Yeah, but I don't know. I remember the first time I put in AirPod Pros and I just asked my phone to do something through the headphones and I was like, oh, this is magic. And if you can do that consistently and regularly. But I think also, if you pull that out further, what we were all really seeking is a voice assistant. Yeah. AI is the buzzword, but actually we're just all revisiting the voice assistant. And R1 does it horribly. Like, sassy. The R1 is so sassy. Every time I asked it something, it was like, hold on, let me think about it.

30:15And I'm like, well, I paid for you. I mean, I didn't. Parker did. But still. Wow. Chop, chop. I paid nightmare restaurant customer. I am absolutely. I paid for this. One of my favorites is when you ask it to do something it can't do, normally it'll say, like, I'm unable to do that. And then every once in a while, it will just say, I cannot set a timer. It's like, all right. Excuse me. Dang. Look, I like the idea that Apple's going to subsume this entire market. WWDC is coming up. I've heard now a drumbeat of AI, AI, AI. I've heard someone actually say to me, Tim Cook is putting a lot of pressure on himself to deliver AI at this WWDC.

30:54That's a real sentence I heard from someone. Who knows? You've got to make Siri good. Let's not kid ourselves. And I think that's going to be hard because the problem is, yes, large language models are very good at making these assistants and it's loquacious, but they don't make them smart. There's still the core problem of we don't know how to regularly interact with a voice assistant in a comfortable and normal way. Because you're still going to be like, hey, can you say it? And you do the voice, your Siri voice. What's your Siri voice, Neelay? Oh, I don't. You don't have one? I've remapped the action button on my phone to chat GPT, which is equally frustrating.

31:35But do you have to do a special voice, like an intonation to get it to respond to you properly? No, we do it to the Google Assistant in our house. What's your Google Assistant voice? Loud. Just loud. Just shouting across the house. Yeah, just like, I'm not going to do it because I'm going to let off everyone's. David, what's yours? Mine's very sort of monotone and careful. Yeah, you're talking to the robot like a robot. I'm always just like, Siri, please remind me tomorrow at 9 a.m. to take out the trash before the trash arrives. And then it says, and then it always is like, got it, added reminder.

32:18And I say, thanks. And it goes, I can't help you with that. Cool. That's pretty good. I just want to put a point on the Siri thing because I've spent a lot of time getting emails and posts from people being like, Apple's going to do this. Do you all know how long Apple has spent trying to make Siri good? And do you know how bad Siri is? It's real bad. And not only would Apple have to take the state of the art in AI and put it inside of Siri, it would have to make the state of the art in AI much, much, much, much better in order to do the things that we are asking for. Like, there is no extant proof in the universe right now that it is possible to build the kind of high-quality assistant we're looking for.

32:57Like, Siri will get better when they plug in a large language model. That just seems to be true. It won't be good just because Apple does that. Yeah. The thing that I've been knocking around in my head as I read these reviews of these devices, as I think about what's coming at this next set of developer conferences, Google I.O. is happening around the corner. Confident we're going to see a bunch of AI stuff from Google at Google I.O., right? Microsoft Build is coming out. We're going to see another round of AI stuff. There's a rumor out in the world that we're going to see GPT-5 soon. Who knows?

33:30We're going to see another version of this. what all of them have to show us is whether these things are getting intelligent. Because right now all they've shown us is they can fire out a bunch of language. Yeah. Loquacious, not intelligent. And like I know people who talk a lot. It's like I'm really good at being loquacious and not intelligent. Yeah. And I think that turn remains – we'll see. Well, it's just not there yet. Right. Sam Altman today was like I'll spend as much money as it takes to build AGI and it'll be worth it. It's like I can get on a horse and be like fly and throw money at the horse.

34:11There's no proof that this thing can do that thing. You haven't gotten there yet and you haven't even demonstrated that you're on the right pathway. I'm sorry I'm still seeing you riding a horse throwing money at its head. Fly! Fly goddamn you!

34:31I hate horses I had a girlfriend in high school with a horse and I realized I was very allergic to the horse didn't you ride into your wedding on a horse? I did did you just sort of make it ran money off of the horse while you rode into your wedding? I was just screaming fly god damn it

34:50if you're a horse person and you're listening to the birdcast first of all how? what Venn diagram led you to us? please let us know you can email us at alexgrance at theverge.com. But also, we love you. But also, yeah, I'm sorry that personally, it's the horse thing for me is a real problem. Anyway, we got to take a break. That's a good, as good a place to end it as any. We'll be right back with the money ground. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from Shopify. One of the most exciting parts of starting a business is when the sales start coming in. If your business is looking to start selling online, Shopify has everything you need to create your online store.

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36:52Keep your old phone or give it as a gift. Incredible. In fact, wrap up my old phone, too, for my Aunt Rosa. Forget that. Aunt Liz will be jealous. Sounds like my family drama. Oh, I got it. I'll give it to my abuela. I'll take reindeer paper with... Hey, where are you going? To T-Mobile! Thanks, Zoe! The holidays are better at T-Mobile. Get four iPhone 17s on us. No trade in needed when you switch. Plus four lines for just$25 a line. With 24 monthly bill credits and four eligible boardings on essentials. For well-qualified customers, auto pay plus taxes, fees, and$35 device connection chart. Credits end in balance due if you pay off earlier.

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38:34We're back with the money round. fly. When I was in college, there was a parking garage by my house, and it had a big sign that said Cash Lane. And my friends and I, we were like, we gotta make that cool somehow. We're in the Cash Lane. If you can figure it out, let me know. I don't know if that parking garage is still there, but it might have been torn down 20 years ago. Also, if you would like to generate an AI image of Neelai in the Cash Lane and send it my way, I would very much appreciate that. Please do it. And if you run a bank and you'd like to sponsor this, the cash lane round. That's cool.

39:12I feel like the banks aren't really promoting the idea of cash anymore. They're not fans. They don't use cash. If you run Cash App and you are Jack Dorsey, you should just come on the show. We have a number of questions for you, sir. All right, money round. There's kind of a lot of money floating around. Let's stay on the AI for one second. A bunch of sort of like search AI money move in. The one, Google's antitrust trial, which we have not talked a lot about because it has been very shrouded in secrecy. We have talked about that. Google has done a good job sort of shrouding its trial in secrecy.

39:51It is now barreling towards closing arguments in the search antitrust trial. Like today, right? Yeah. So we're covering that and a bunch of documents have been released because various news organizations have basically been filing motions with the court, being like, this is crazy. You've got to release the evidence in this case. So the New York Times and others have been filing motions to get evidence unsealed in this case. A bunch of other motions gone through. A bunch of documents sort of flooding out here at the end before closing arguments. The thing that I think is most important, we can talk about some other stuff, is that we now have the number for how much Google has paid Apple to be the default search placement on the iPhone.

40:29It is$20 billion in 2022. I'll be the default search engine on the iPhone. Which is crazy. That is a crazy amount of money. Like so much money. More money than either of the two companies we just talked about in the first round have. Or will ever make, probably. So the argument here is if you're running a search engine, if you have AI ideas, is you just need a lot of data. And Google gets a lot of data from iPhone searchers who are clicking on things, who are picking results. That helps them pick better results, obviously helps them serve a lot of ads. It's worth a lot of money. Do we think that Google is making money on the$20 billion it pays Apple?

41:16Yes, it's a rev share. This is the thing that a lot of people miss about all of this, is this is not just like a flat fee that Google pays to Apple. I don't know the exact details of it, But from a lot of what we got in the trial, Google is sharing revenue with iPhone using people with Apple. So if I'm searching on my iPhone, Apple is getting a percentage of that revenue from me every time I use Google. Google wouldn't do this if it wasn't profitable at this point. Google's market share is so large and so substantial. And a big part of the case that Google is making is Apple saying we picked it because it is the best search engine and not because there is some financial agreement.

42:02Separately, also, there is a very lucrative financial agreement. But this is a giant victory for both Apple and Google. And I think the idea that's out there that Apple kind of has Google over a barrel is just not true. So two things there. One, if it's a rev share, that means Apple's making a bunch of money on Google's ad tracking, which seems challenging for Apple to defend. Oh, yeah. At the same time that Apple is running around talking about how insecure Android is for precisely that same reason. Yeah. So Apple's just collecting a bunch of money on the revenue Google makes through Google search, which is entirely advertising based.

42:44Weird. Just weird. Fully weird to consider. second it is beneficial for google to keep any competitors away i mean that's the heart of this trial right is if apple picked bing whatever there would instantly be another search engine at scale and google cannot afford that so yeah sure it's it's making a deal that works for everybody and making some money but i suspect even if it was losing some money it would be worth it to keep another search engine from emerging. Oh yeah, Satya Nadella, remember last, whatever that was, last fall, it feels like ancient history now, got on the stand and said he would have done it for free just to get the queries coming from iPhone users because better queries would have meant better results, would have meant better ad placements, would have meant more expensive ads, would have meant more queries, and like on and on and on and on it goes.

43:37And basically offered this whole thing, you can keep all the money, Apple. we just want the searches and apple said no uh and that was a total non-starter for them and you're totally right like obviously it's a huge victory for google to get this uh and it's why at least according to testimony we've heard apple's share of that revenue has gone up over time but still like google google is not in the habit of losing 20 billion dollars to maintain its place as the dominant search engine that everybody uses. It just hasn't had to make that choice yet, and I don't think this is that choice. Yeah, Google just likes losing money in other weird ways.

44:19Right, Google likes to throw money at roller skating executives trying to build self-driving cars, not search ads. I was really surprised, though, by the part where they said that Apple's, or the 2020 payments that Google paid was 17.5 % of Apple's operating income. That seems like an awful lot. It's nuts. Am I like misunderstanding the numbers there? Do I not understand business? I mean, that essentially means a fifth of Apple's profit is coming from this deal because to Apple, it's pure profit. And Apple would tell you it's not that all the money that they put into making the iPhone terrific is what makes that comfortable.

44:59But that's like a bunch of mealy-mouthed nonsense. It is pure profit to Apple and it accounts for a huge amount of the money that that company makes. Yeah, and that's just wild. It's so much money. Like, Apple is that dependent on Google. I don't know if it's dependency. Yeah, I think that's where I'm like, do I understand business correctly? Well, it is in that if it went away, it would be a dependency. And maybe this trial will lead to some outcome in which it changes and the money changes in different ways. But I think what it actually speaks to is the phone market slowing down. Apple itself is looking for whatever next thing will exist.

45:41They just spent$10 billion on the car and shut it down. They spent half of that Google money trying to build a car. One year of Google money. Literally the equivalent of Apple getting on a horse and screaming fly. It just didn't work. Didn't work. You can't get in a midsize crossover and be like, don't have a steering wheel. Like you can't do it. What Apple is addicted to is monetizing every interaction you have on the phone. Right. And this is, has just led the company into more and more perilous waters because that means a bunch of people are now mad at Apple all the time, including a bunch of European regulators, including our department of justice, whatever it is.

46:20But the fact that Apple makes as much money as it does when people merely search for things in the web browser. It's insane. It's brutal. Yeah. Yeah, I think that was the really surprising part. Anytime you type in, you're helping Apple make a shit ton of money. Right. Maybe that's fine. Apple's free to run its business how it wants. But you can see that the chain reaction of Apple saying it's our phone and every single thing you do on our phone should generate revenue for us. As the backstop to the upgrade cycles are slowing, the phone market overall is contracting. All that stuff. they hedged it by saying, okay, everything on your phone is not being monetized.

47:05We're going to be aggressive with app developers. We're going to have this deal with Google. Everything. We're going to shut down ads with app tracking transparency, which is maybe a good thing, but then we're going to move the entire market of app install ads to the app store, and the app store is getting really weird. All of those things are just them monetizing the software on the phone or the experiences you have on the phone. I think this trial has shown us this is real. You know, like it's this is a real pressure Apple feels and they're collecting a bunch of money from Google for the thing most people do on the phone most of the time, which is like search for things in the web browser.

47:40And then on the flip side, more documents in the trial reveal Microsoft is like terrified of this. And they're looking at Google's investments in AI and what they can accomplish there. They freak out. And that's why they go invest in open AI. which you just see like Google's at the center of a lot of things happening in tech right now because they're just throwing money around. Google did have a good quarter this last quarter. They did well. It turns out people are still using Google search. But you can see the threat it's under, and you can see Google turning the revenue lever on Google search to have it make money instead of be good.

48:19More documents from the trial. We should – Ed Zitron wrote this up. The title was The Man Who Killed Google Search. And basically the thesis of that story, which we'll link to, is the revenue teams at Google came to search and said, we need to make more revenue on search. The search team was like, no, search is pure. And the search team lost. Yeah. And we've all felt it. We've all felt it. Very keenly. Well, I think one of the things that has come up a bunch in this trial that Ed also points out in his piece is that the question of what does good search look like is so mealy and hard to put your finger on that literally what you are like goaling your team against changes the way that you do business.

49:02So if you're Google and you say, okay, the thing that we are going to measure is number of search queries, the main thing we are going to do is make search queries go up. Like Sundar Pichai always talks about this when he was running Chrome, that the goal was the fastest web browser. And they built a bunch of things around that, but that was the goal. And so if you run towards the fastest web browser, you build a certain kind of web browser. If you run towards do the most searches, you're actually not incentivized to make the search engine great because it means people will actually search less because they found what they needed faster.

49:34But in a certain way, you also say, okay, if we get people to do more searches, it must mean people like Google because they're doing more searches. And both of those things are true, and yet they're completely mutually exclusive. And I think this is what in a lot of ways seems to have happened to Google is they got to the point where they were like, okay, we make money when people do searches. We need people to do more searches. And so they started spending money on deals like with Apple and Mozilla and others. They started changing the way that the pages work and the results were delivered in order to get people to do more searches.

50:06And that just sends you down a really ugly road. You make people do more searches, but it actually, you don't care about the experience as long as people are doing more searches. And that's just that that's what the thing that I think feels bad to people. It's the, what's Cory, Dr. O call it, and shitification. I hate that word, but it's a really good word. It's a good word. I wish he'd come up with a better term. It's a very useful construct, but it's an awful word. I love it. Have you ever tried to type it? I can't, I have never once typed it successfully on the first try. No, but by the time I get around to being like, I should type this, like 15 people have said it or typed it before I do.

50:43That's true. Because it's the default response to anything getting worse, whether it counts or not. Because specifically what Cory means is that most web platforms' products start by delivering a surplus of value to you because they're all losing money at the beginning. Then they take away that value from their advertisers, right? They squeeze advertisers for dollars. Then that lever is fully pulled. And then they look at you and they turn the knob away from you, right? And that's just the cycle of the subsidized web platform. Yeah, and that's what's Google stuff. Yeah, and you can just see it with Google search.

51:17Like, first they squeeze the advertisers And then that is not great. So now they're like, now it's you. You know, the Google product recommendations, the house fresh people, they're starting to get more expensive. So you search for a product on Google and they're starting to recommend you slightly more expensive products. That part, like, shocked me because they did a really good bar graph there. I was just really impressed with the bar graph. And everything was, like, red and orange and showing it was really expensive. And then the house freshness is at the very bottom. Bright green, smallest bar.

51:50We're always the cheapest. It's like, respect it. It turns out a fan blowing air through a filter is not necessarily an expensive product. We'll link to all of this stuff. But the point of this is Google's dominance of the ecosystem actually extends in every direction. It's pushing Microsoft to invest in OpenAI. One of the documents here is Satya Nadella forwarding an email from Kevin Scott, the head of AI, explaining that Google is getting better at stuff to the CFO of Microsoft. I mean, like, this is why I want to invest in OpenAI. Like, this is the reason. Here's my, as the CEO, justification to you as the CFO of spending$13 billion over the next few years to compete with Google because we see the opening and we're behind.

52:37And on the other side, you see Apple just, again, a huge percentage of their incoming revenue, which is pure profit basically because they're not doing anything. Like that's a danger zone for them. If this trial ends in some different thing happening, like Apple starts to go off course. Yeah. Which is crazy to think about. Well, I think the thing that strikes me there is like we've always talked. Everybody talks a lot about how clever Apple is and how good it is at making money and how good its products are and how its products have really driven it to this place where it's really good at making money.

53:12Does this kind of like prove that wrong? The fact that they were making so much money off essentially doing nothing. It's like hard to begrudge Apple for being like. Free money is free money. Like, you know, free money is nice. But it just feels to me like no one eats for free in Tim Cook's house. It does seem a little bit like the vibe of Apple has shifted from a bunch of geniuses around those blonde wood tables designing stuff to a handful of unbelievably good negotiators winning deals. And like that is the sort of mental picture that I have of Apple now. It's just like Eddie Q and Craig Federighi just like rolling into rooms being like, what's up, losers?

53:57I win. On a segue. Yeah. I would point out that this is the other antitrust trial. Yes. Right. That specific thing. How much power does Apple have? That's the DOJ case against Apple. We'll see. I don't know how that one's going to go. But that thing, the vibe you are describing, Eddie Q shows up to Hollywood, passes out in your boardroom, and you still have to give him a deal. Like, there's reporting that happened. I'm not just making that up. I don't know if that's true or not. But there's reporting that that's happened before. And you still have to make the deal. That's just Apple's power being expressed.

54:29Okay, so that's Apple. That's the money stuff. That's the Apple, Google, Microsoft money stuff. Other money stuff. Less fun. Less exciting. Peloton, which V just wrote a big profile of, which we're very prescient now. She's like, what's up with Peloton? The answer is the CEO is quitting, and they're laying off hundreds more people, which is weird. So the CEO, Barry McCarthy, joined Peloton. His whole thing was that he was like a Netflix guy. Yeah. And Peloton's a subscription service, so he's going to do a good job at the subscription service. He did not do that. Nope. He is laying off 15 % of the staff, which is about 400 people around the world.

55:10That's the fifth round of layoffs. Well, he's leaving. And by the way, last quarter, he said on the earnings call, we're done with layoffs and the ship is turning. He was wrong. Very wrong. Extremely wrong. And then he's leaving. He took over from the founder, who was a little more chaotic. He was supposed to be the adult. And now. It's two board members are now in charge, which is like, that's never a good sign when it's like, yeah, two board members are going to be in charge until we find a new CEO. Yeah. Ooh, that's rough. Yeah. That's who just got clipped. Yeah. Yikes. Um, so we'll see what happens about it.

55:51It's obviously very sticky. People love it. The instructors are famous. You should go read V's piece. It kind of lays out what's happening here. We'll relink it. It was from a few weeks ago. Again, she saw this future coming. Uh, by the way, Barry McCarthy has never responded to requests to be on decoder. And I suspect now he never will. I know why. I will say just two thoughts on that. One, I think reading the comments of that Peloton story was really interesting because the number of people who drew a direct line from the existence of Apple Fitness Plus to the demise of Peloton is really fascinating.

56:24I have no data on how successful Apple Fitness Plus is, but just purely anecdotally speaking, like in my life and the people I know, it's gone very well. Fitness Plus? Yeah, it's like it's out there. It's like a thing people know about. It's not that expensive. It's on your device. people who are like buying Apple watches are prone to like that kind of thing. Anyway, it gives you the classes. It just seems like Peloton maybe thought it had a moat that it didn't. I think. Yeah. And add that to the, they got very excited because everybody bought one during the pandemic and they said, Oh, maybe this will be our demand forever.

57:00Which was just an insane thing to decide at that particular moment in time. But it's just interesting that I think the question about Peloton has always been, And how do you take a thing that is by all accounts very good and people really like and botch it so spectacularly? And I think maybe I have underrated the extent to which it has been kind of eaten alive by some of the other products out there. Yeah, I mean, I think Connected Fitness is a thing. V has written about it. People want these products. Peloton is a gold standard brand, though. It is. People love Peloton. I feel like the people who are using Apple Fitness are not necessarily the same people who use Peloton.

57:38The people who use Apple Fitness are like me, where every three months I'm like, this is the time. I'm going to start working out all the time and become a total gym rat in my house. That's who's using Apple Fitness, right? It's people who are like, this is easy. I can just hop into this. Peloton is like, I'm going to spend thousands of dollars on this equipment. I'm going to have it in my home and I'm going to use it. And pay a subscription fee. Yeah, and pay a subscription fee. I think those are very kind of different audiences. That could be. Peloton is also stupidly expensive and has remained stupidly expensive for way too long.

58:09Yeah, it's like$45 a month for our subscription. Yeah, it's ridiculous. I could pay for 10 HBO Maxes. And I will. It's not even true. At this point, it's like one and a half HBO Maxes. Speaking of boards that should take a hard look at the CEO. I already know who you're talking about. Elon has gone, quote, absolutely hardcore with Tesla layoffs. He fired the entire supercharger team, including the people who are in charge of refurbishing and installing new superchargers, which seems very bad because everyone just signed up to use their connector. Well, you heard the rumor. The NACS connector. For why he did this.

58:47Why did he do this? So the rumor is that the head of the supercharger unit said, no, I pushed back on the number of layoffs that she was asked to do. And he was like, no, you're fired to everybody on your team to prove a point to the rest of the team. That was some of the reporting we saw this week. And the point is no one can do a good job as someone. Yeah, I like I think it was it sounds like the piece was mainly about how he was really just pushing himself out there. And he's like he's in charge and just reasserting his authority after being at Twitter all this time and coming back in and being like, do what I say.

59:25And if you don't want to do what I say, you're gone. And so is your team. Well, that's a long-running Elon Musk trend of wanting to be the shiny face on everything and demanding to sort of disappear for a long time and then come back and exert total control and then disappear for a long time again. That tracks with a lot of what we've heard about his management style over the years. Is there something I'm missing in the why Tesla would slow down its investment in superchargers? superchargers because everything i've understood about this company and i do not proclaim to be an expert in tesla would suggest that actually the supercharger network is one of the things it should be investing in the most right especially because now there's expanding demand for it right right like if you get rivian and ford and all these other companies like using it bmw like you can't name a company in north america that's not about to use nacs and sign a supercharger deal If they're all coming online, the demand for supercharging is going to go up.

1:00:23And they're going to pay you money to use it. Does Elon Musk just not want to be a gas station mogul? Is that just where we're landing? I think that's why this theory that he did it to exert his dominance, essentially, is so popular. Because it doesn't make sense. But then you'll hear the rumor about how Elon always wants to be in charge. And that theory makes a little sense. Andy and I did an entire episode on Tesla on Decoder this week. So just go listen to that. We can move off it. But we didn't talk about superchargers enough on that episode, I think. And this to me is like you take your greatest advantage and you're like, stop.

1:01:00Yeah. It's just bonkers. Yeah. It makes no logical sense. Like if you ask people, like, yes, people love the fact that the cars get over their updates and have fart mode and all this stuff. What is the real reason people buy a Tesla when they're in the EV market? Charging network. Yeah. and like you just literally no one's working out like one breaks right now it's unclear who will come and fix it yep weird just and they canceled a bunch as well too right yeah so i saw a tweet this morning i think that was like i wonder how many charging startups will trace their founding day to whatever it was april 30th of 2024 and like feels kind of feels kind of right somebody Somebody has to show up and solve this problem in order to make electric vehicles work.

1:01:45And it is increasingly unclear who that's going to be. I saw that tweet, too, and I was like, zero. This is an incredibly, enormously expensive business to be in. You've got to go buy real estate. You've got to buy a shitload of electricity. You've got to work with everything. Software problems, the stuff does break. The capital expenditure to do this is so high. There's a reason Electric Buy America is the big one. it's because Volkswagen had diesel gate and that was their make good. That's why Electrify America exists. I'm surprised like Shell and Exxon aren't just being like, yeah, all right, we'll do this.

1:02:20Like just diversifying into it. Somewhere the CEO of Wawa is like drawing up a pitch right now. Yeah, like Bucky's already has superchargers actually. Bucky's should win. I'm good with Bucky's just like owning electric charging infrastructure in the United States. I feel like I super know why Shell and Exxon aren't getting into EV charging games. Yeah, they don't want anyone to use... They're at my house right now keeping me from selling the Raptor. They're like, this gets eight miles to the gallon and you're going to have it forever. Yeah. I hope the CEO of Exxon's at my house right now. I have a number of questions for you too, sir.

1:02:54All right, let's take a break. We're going to wrap this whole thing up with a lightning round. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from 1Password. Think for just a moment about the Herculean tasks that your IT security department has to handle. There's keeping identities, devices, and applications safe. Then there's dealing with shadow IT, securely onboarding and offboarding employees. Oh, also there's meeting compliance goals. The point is, it's a lot. If you want to help lighten that load, you can try Trileka by 1Password. Trileka by 1Password provides a complete solution for SaaS access governance.

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1:04:56Ready to design, iterate, and publish all in one tool? Start creating for free at framer.com slash design and use code verge for a free month of Framer Pro. That's framer.com slash design and use promo code verge. Framer.com slash design. Promo code verge. Rules and restrictions may apply. Support for this show comes from Figma. Figma is the collaborative design platform where teams come together to turn ideas into the world's best digital apps, websites, and experiences. And now, there's a faster way to bring those ideas to life. Introducing Figma Make, an AI-powered prompt-to-code tool that helps you turn ideas into something real, fast.

1:05:45Figma Make is a different kind of vibe-coding tool. With just a few prompts, you can turn any idea into a code-backed prototype or app that anyone can explore, iterate on, and share. And it's all connected to Figma. So you can start from scratch or from your design file. Figma Make is made for designers, product managers, and builders who want to move fast and explore more ideas. Try it now and see how quickly you can make your ideas real with Figma Make. Just go to Figma.com slash Vergecast. That's F-I-G-M-A dot com slash Vergecast Okay, we're back I need to apologize to everyone At the top of the show I said we were going to talk about gaming coming to LinkedIn Which I know everyone's on the edge of their seat I forgot to put that in the money round Because that's where all LinkedIn discussion goes Per the bylaws of the United States Yeah Anyway, they're adding mobile games to LinkedIn.

1:06:46Did you see the guy, by the way, who posted the thing on LinkedIn, proposing and saying, here's what it taught me about B2B sales? Yes. He was proposing to his fiance, like on a beach. Yeah. And it was a picture of him proposing. And he says, here's what the experience taught me about B2B sales. I thought for the longest time that was a joke. I think it was actually real. And it has broken me in a way that I cannot describe, that that is a thing that someone did on the internet. Did you learn anything about B2B sales? No, or proposing. I came away with nothing. Yeah, you're a person who proposed.

1:07:22I did. I proposed. I did it on LinkedIn, actually. We were playing LinkedIn games together. I just said, let's get married. What I learned about that was I should know that the answer is yes before I do it. That was the big secret to B2B sales for me. and that your proposal should involve a lot of one sentence paragraphs that are like vaguely motivational yeah well as a person who introduced david to his wife i can tell you what i know on p2p sales which is be hammered on a boat and just shove david into a girl you're gonna have a baby someday that's a hundred percent what happened that is the story here's what i learned about b2b sales you need a lot of tequila that tracks that tracks uh also laura the bigger the boat the better yeah that's what i know about b2b sales absolutely i mean honestly both of those are probably good tactics that's right i was like yeah just in general those are good sales tactics uh anyway linkedin is a mobile games platform in an effort to make it stickier because the only idea people have on how to make things sticky and have you come back to them is casual mobile games.

1:08:37Consider this. LinkedIn doesn't need to be sticky. That's what I'm trying to get at. Like LinkedIn, buddies, you're doing fine. People need a job, they go on LinkedIn. They don't need a job, they don't use LinkedIn. It works. If you find yourself in life being like, oh, I got to get back on Pinpoint and like open link you know like re-evaluate throw your phone into the ocean what if it's actually really good what if it's like wordle you can only play each game once per day and after a daily session you'll get access to your metric so it is wordle it's wordle made a wordle can you imagine like there's all these people now who are like you know i wake up in the morning i do connections i do wordle it's like a huge success story for the times great job by them i think if i ever found myself at a coffee shop and somebody was like oh hold on i gotta do cross climb for the day i'd be Like, I'm going to go.

1:09:25Yeah. Like, I'm going to leave. Oh, you know too much about B2B sales. We're not going on four dates.

1:09:34It's like the ultimate red flag. Did we find out if the woman he proposed to said yes? I'm assuming she said yes. I don't know. Because if, like, the last thing he learned about B2B sales was, like, don't take no for an answer, that's not great. Ooh. Rough. It's rough. All right. So I promised you we talked about LinkedIn gaming, and we have in a matter of speaking. Yeah, you can do it if you want. All right. I was really stalling in the hopes that Jim Farley, CEO of Ford, would call in to sponsor the lightning round. He did not. Mostly because we published the show after we recorded, so he didn't know I was waiting for that.

1:10:11There's that. And I didn't text him. Yeah. Jim, quick question. This lightning round needs to be sponsored by Horse Girls. because of the incredible slander that we brought to them earlier in the show. I think we need to give them this one. They got it. It's all you girls. There was a second one in law school I think really cemented the situation for me. I wasn't a great person for many years. Then, after mastering B2B sales, I got married. There you go. All right, lightning round. This is important. This one's important. There is an Apple event next week. Yes. By all accounts, this is new iPads.

1:10:50David, you wrote a spicy headline this week. The last thing the iPad needs is a spec bump. Yeah, I... I'd say this is more than a spec bump. We're going to need OLED iPads. Spec bump. This is like my dream spec bump. Sure. You and Liam are both going to be psyched, and everyone else on Earth is going to say, what is OLED? I don't care. Leave me alone. No, I think... I mean, we've been asking this, what is the iPad for, and what is Apple trying to do with it? question for a while and i was on the they just need to make the ipad a touchscreen laptop train for a long time i'm i'm now off that train because the macbook air is that is that thing like it's not a touchscreen but it is it is a damn good laptop it is the laptop people who want laptops should buy problem solved the ipad needs to figure out the other thing that it wants to be yeah and what's interesting is it seems like and again i'm like a little bit kind of making a mountain out of a molehill here but the if you just look at the invite to the apple event it's called let loose and it is just it's just an apple pencil it's not like hiding that it's an apple pencil it just is an apple pencil and to me it's like okay if apple wants this to work the thing that it needs to focus on is accessories like sell take the idea of the ipad as just it's a screen and you can attach every other piece of the device that you want to it and take it off as you need it or don't.

1:12:14And Apple has gone like an inch down this road. They have two different keyboards for different kinds of people who want different kinds of keyboards. There's the pencil. Do you remember when they had the smart connector that no one ever used because Apple never opened it up to anybody? That was the thing. Apple is like this close to being a really interesting modular accessory system around this really great tablet. And it just, it needs to stop worrying about having more processing power because it already, it has had too much processing power for like six years. Like no one is using all of the power of their iPad, in part because they can't, because there's not enough powerful software to do it, but also because you're not giving people the literal physical tools they need to make the most out of this device.

1:12:59So I think as we go into this event, I'm like, whatever, I'm sure I'll end up buying an OLED iPad because that is like a sickness I have in my life. Because you love black levels. I do. Infinite contrast ratios. but like I just I don't know I feel like I'm we've all sort of gone blue in the face yelling like what is an iPad actually for uh somewhere Dieter bone is like shaking his fist uh at our podcast right now but I just like Apple's like right there and it's like just go go finish the thing make me some accessories build the iPad out so two things rumor is they're gonna put an m4 chip in these iPads, massive increase in processing power that the thing does not need.

1:13:45Second, they need to change the software. That's actually what it needs. The hardware ecosystem around it, whatever. Make accessory manufacturers make more stuff. To make any of that worthwhile, you need more software capabilities. And they can't do that because WWDC isn't until June. Right. You needed the next version of iOS. What can they show us besides an OLED screen? An M4 processor. Right, and a chip die diagram of the M4 being like, look at this neural engine. Read it and weep. Yeah, there's going to be a lot of unlabeled graphs. Yeah. There's going to be – there's a pencil, and it's going to have replaceable nubs.

1:14:27But like cooler replaceable nubs than the current pencil has. And there's an aluminum magic keyboard. that's also not software. The rumor from Mark Gurman at Bloomberg is that it will lean into being a laptop or the Pro will lean into being a laptop. I mean, I expect a full model refresh. The iPad model range right now is out of control. So they should end with an iPad that is cheap that makes sense for students, an iPad Air that is like the mainstream one, an iPad Pro that is expensive and has all the stuff. Sure, that's theoretically what they have now, but it's all very blurry. And then a pencil that works with everything, one assumes, and maybe some of these keyboard cases and whatever else that work with everything.

1:15:10I hope it still has a lightning port in the eraser. The base one? Yeah. I just hope that they just whiff it on a port. There's like one last lightning port. Yeah, you're just like, what? Oh, my God. I just think the future of the iPad Pro should be this is a modular Mac. and you should just let the iPad, the base model iPad be like, this runs Disney Plus. I just want to point out that you sort of like, you just literally hand waved away the iPad that everyone buys and uses. I think people buy the cheap one. That's what I'm saying. The iPad Pro is not the most important iPad by a million miles.

1:15:51Yeah, but again, I think the cheap one runs Disney Plus. Sure. I think that's what it's for. Here's the cheapest TV in your house. Fine. The iPad. No, there's a Westinghouse. You signed up for a bank account at Chase and they gave you a TV. Sure. But like that's portable, portable TV. But like, yeah, this is like, here's this content consumption device that occasionally lets you tap out an email. It's like that's the base model iPad. I don't. Fine. Like, let that thing be this weird appliance. I'm just saying for everything else to solve that problem of like, what is this for? actually should just be a Mac.

1:16:32They should just let you run Mac apps on it at this point. Why not? I do agree with that. I don't think it should be exclusively that, but I think that is one thing it ought to do. In the way that you can now run some iOS and iPad apps on your Mac, it should pull in both directions at this point. Yeah. I don't think Apple will ever let it go because then they will have made a touchscreen Mac by accident, and that really implicates a lot of things about everything they've ever said. But I just don't know why you wouldn't converge the iPad Pro and the cheapest MacBook Pro. Because one time years ago they said they will never do that.

1:17:11And now we'll really ruthlessly mock them when they do it. I mean Apple says they're not going to do things until they do it all the time. That's true. I do think if you look at your Mac and you think about what it would be like to use Mac OS as a touchscreen, it's a nightmare. like just think about the amount of time you spend in a menu bar and how it would feel on a 9.7 inch screen to try to poke at those little icons in the corner like bad times oh no no no it's it's a great time i'm i'm i'm checking out this this product right now from ianao i think that's how you say it ianao they do like game little handheld game consoles and they have one called the flip ds and it's got mic it's got microsoft built in yeah it's just a tiny ds shaped Windows machine.

1:17:57Oh, no. And the only way I can, like, turn it on, because hardware-wise, gorgeous. Don't worry. Reviews are coming. Software-wise, it's just Windows, and they didn't really do anything. So, and there's no keyboard. So you have to, like, you have to, like, I have to use my pinky. I can't use my regular finger. I have to use my pinky to, like, hit a button to turn on a keyboard. And then it's beautiful. It works every time. It takes 20 minutes. I love it. That's the Apple experience I'm looking for. That's what I want from Apple, too. Everyone should let me have tiny, tiny screens that I've used my pinky to work on.

1:18:34Yeah. And every time you push that button, Apple makes$20. Yeah. We all win. All right. Lighting around. Kranz, what you got? Okay. Do you guys remember when Razer made their mask? They made like three masks. Oh, sorry. Do you remember when they made the Zephyr? Yes. And it was kind of see-through? and it had the RGB. They actually, they appeared at our tenure. They did, and they refused to answer any questions about the medical backing of this device. Yeah, and shocker, they didn't have backing. This mask they said had like N95 grade filters and stuff. That was just a lie. Or it was not the truth.

1:19:19Maybe a lie is too hard. N95 grade is an amazing phrase. It's not N95. It's N95-ish. Yeah, and that's not anything. That's just not a thing. And so they are now being required to fork over$1.1 million in refunds to customers. And I think the real question here is who are the people who bought the Zephyr mask and are now getting their refund because you did that? Yeah, that means like thousands of people bought that thing. Wasn't it only like$100? It was more expensive than that. Oh, okay. Oh, no. It started at$100, yeah. So, but still, you bought it, and I haven't seen you wear it. I feel like if that many people bought it, I would have seen at least one on the street.

1:20:14The only one I ever saw was at our 10-year party. and it was the razor guy wearing it. Yeah, and Cameron and our health reporter at the time, Nicole Wetzman, who, by the way, joined The Verge before the pandemic and then was our health reporter during a global pandemic. Like right before the pandemic. It was not. I feel like every time I see Nicole for the rest of my life, I'm so sorry. Anyway, but Nicole was there and she was like, so is this certified? Is it actually? Like over and over again. And they're like, we'll get to it. It was a very weird moment at our party, I must say. It was super weird.

1:20:48When you think about the Verge party, you think about our health reporters being like, are you lying? That's what, and then there's tequila. Yeah. I mean, that was exactly the party. Weird product. Weird product. Weird moment in the global history. To be like, this RGB N95 is a fake. It had like speakers in it. It was a very odd product. It was see-through. That was the part that was. it really is a very specific artifact of a very specific time that thing yeah you will look at that thing and you will always know exactly when it came out and exactly who made it and exactly what happened to it like it tells a whole story all right i have a lightning round item here yeah it's about instagram algorithm updates and what it means and a tiktok band but then i'm just looking at this headline that says google is building a fart button into android and it is they're putting a soundboard into the phone app of Android.

1:21:46Yes. So you get what are called audio emoji so that you can just play them during phone calls. Oh, I shouldn't have that power. You get clapping, laughing, crying, which is a literal sad trombone, partying, drum sting, which is and then fart sound. this is and i i want to i want to not be hyperbolic here this is the worst idea i've ever heard from a technology company maybe ever in history it's like do you remember when google's last idea about the phone was like we'll have the robot make reservations for you they're like no no dude like you should be able to womp womp your friends in the middle of a phone call i i love that you can just be on a phone call and be like like that's great this is also very good what this reminds me of is like you know when apple rolled out the reactions thing in facetime and so everybody was do you would like do the an accidental thumbs up on camera and it would in some horrifically inappropriate moment do like fireworks explosions behind you or like a really happy thumbs up or whatever this is going to be that because i guarantee you google is going to put this button in a place that is too easy to find and people are going to be having like you know hard conversations with their boss or their family or whatever and all of a sudden and their face is gonna tap a button of their phone, and it's gonna go, wah, wah.

1:23:12Like, this is not a good idea. I love it. Like, the fact that we haven't had soundboards built into the default dialers. It's just, why weren't we doing that? Audio emojis. Just in case you wanted to make sure no one ever makes phone calls ever again, here's this. It's very good. I'm hoping they demo this on stage at I.O. Like, if they take a huge chunk of time at I.O. to be like, we've invented audio emojis. You can make fart sounds during phone calls Hyper realistic fart sounds This is what it's for Surprise and delight your customer This is why we make the technology Billions of dollars have gone into the mobile phone supply chain The software, the open source development of Android itself Billions of dollars Thousands of years of human effort cumulatively We built these networks 5G is a phenomenon And now you can just make fart sounds Yeah.

1:24:03You don't even have to use your mouth. Like innovation. Yeah. I love it. Can I tell yet one more story from my youth? Yeah. Is it a fart story? No. Well, it is in its way. Adjacent. Okay. I had a remote controlled speaker that made swear words and fart sounds. Yes. And I super hid one in the balcony of the room that we had our high school morning meeting from. And just ruined that meeting for weeks. That's good work. I mean, that's what you're supposed to do. I got suspended from high school a lot. Like all time record. But like, just for good cause. My dad was like, are you gonna go to school?

1:24:41And I was like, well, I'm getting good grades. He was like, fine. You're just like. That was the trade in my household. You got good grades. My dad was like, I'll talk to your principal again. Yeah. It was a small town. It was a private school. There was nowhere for me to go. All right. I think that's the first guest.

1:24:59Stay in school, kids. Love a fart button. Try hard. No, that's it. That's our test. Next week is going to be a huge week. We've got an Apple event. We're going to find out what's going to happen with the iPad. This Google trial closing arguments are today. We're going to hear a lot about what's happening very soon because that's a bench trial. A lot of tech news is coming. And then soon after that, I.O. starts and developer season is off to the races. So take a breath. Pull over in your car. Just think about what it means to be a large action model. It means nothing. It actually doesn't mean anything at this point in time.

1:25:35It's a three. I had to work so hard not to make a fart noise. That silence. See, that would have been perfect. Oh, my God. All right. That's it. That's Vertecast. And that's it for the Vergecast this week. Hey, we'd love to hear from you. Give us a call at 866-VERGE-11. The Vergecast is a production of the Verge and Vox Media Podcast Network. Our show is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James. That's it. We'll see you next week.

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