Switch 2: the good news and bad news

24:36Well, so that's kind of what I wonder is I look at the mouse controls and I can't decide if that's just a thing Nintendo occasionally does. And really all these gaming platforms do, which is they just sort of invent a weird thing that you can build into your game if you want to. And no one really does. And eventually they phase it out. It's like the Move controllers or the Kinect or whatever. Everybody has tried to come up with some new gimmick, and they're like, maybe this will be fun for your game. And there are a few games that really make use of it, but for the most part, they're just not part of the system at all.

25:06Or if this is a thing Nintendo is going to try to make an actual sort of first-class part of how people play Nintendo games. And as somebody who mostly sits here at my computer with my Switch plugged in into the dock with a full-on controller, that would be a real bummer for me. Yeah, I have a feeling that Nintendo is going to make this like their flagship like feature of this console in addition to like the chat and the video chat thing that was also announced. But whatever they have right now is not there to really demonstrate this is the vision that we have for this. like you've got drag and drive which is essentially a you know a paid tech demo for this for this function but that didn't really wow me or sell me on it but i i just not a faith but i have this inkling because nintendo at the end of the day they kind of really sometimes they really do know what they're doing in terms of like hardware and gimmicking and stuff like that because you know the wi-mo was you know we all complained about wacko physics but at the end of the day that was kind of fun not implemented all the time in the best ways but it was still fun and unique and innovative and I have a feeling this will be too.

26:17We just need to give them time to cook and figure out something that really makes it pop. I do worry about the just the ergonomics of it on that front. It's not good. Right. Because I think you're right that when when Nintendo is like when they're all in on something, they're right a lot. Right. Like it's usually when it's kind of weird is when Nintendo is just like, here's a thing kind of off to the side, do what you want with it. But when Nintendo is like, this is how we play games now. It's usually right. Right. Like the DS universe is like that's one version of that where they're like, this is how you do it.

26:46And it was it was pretty right. But just the sheer like what it feels like to even just looking at like pictures of people's hands trying to hold the Joy-Cons on it, it just doesn't look right. It's not. It's awkward. Your hand isn't meant to do that. The Joy-Con is too small. So your fingers kind of curl around the back and then you get like this claw hand situation versus something where you can just lay your hands out like completely flat like this on a mouse. It just does not feel good. So the idea is either they will figure out something that will make this work, or Nintendo's about to pump out a bunch of accessories that you can buy that actually makes the mouse make sense.

27:25Fair. Yeah, there's definitely a holster you could make for that thing that would make it a lot more workable. Yeah, like we're about to get those little, remember those little plastic diapers we used to wrap the Wiimotes in or whatever? We're about to get something like that for those Joy-Cons. 100%. Okay, I have two more things that I want to know if they're good news or bad news and then I'm going to let you go. First thing is, the Switch 2 is kind of obsessed with the GameCube. There's a GameCube controller for the Switch 2. There's a bunch of GameCube games coming. It's like, this is a real GameCube essence happening with this console.

28:00Is that good news or bad news? It's a little bit of both. The GameCube has not been adequately represented on the Nintendo Switch Online offerings. So that's good news. I mean, I know a lot of people are really excited about having Soul Calibur 2 with Link in it available to play again. But I personally, my pet tinfoil hat theory is that Nintendo got really tired of a bunch of people being like, where is the Wind Waker remaster? And I'm like, best I can do is just give you Wind Waker again and you're going to pay$80 for it. That's fair. Yeah, and I think the GameCube is always very funny to me because like in my own gaming experience, I really jumped straight from the N64 to the Wii.

28:43So the GameCube was just never quite in my world. But I sort of feel like everybody loves the GameCube in retrospect more than they actually like loved it when they owned it. Yes, I think that's correct. But it is also like the true old head gamers are the ones who seem to love the GameCube the most. Which is weird because that, well, it is old, but it's not old head, right? Like, oh, that's just so weird to say. Like, I think I was a teenager when the N64 came out. And you're right. Like, my mind completely glosses over the GameCube, and I went right from Nintendo 64 to the Wii. But some of those games are really fun.

29:22Like, we've got a new Kirby Air Ride game. Like, wasn't that a GameCube game? So, yeah, I guess that's where they are as, you know, they're going back in their history, and now it's time for the GameCube to come back. because they've already done the Nintendo and the Super Nintendo. They've got some Wii stuff, and now it's like, okay, yeah, we've got to go back and get the GameCube and bring that up to speed, too. Yeah, that's fair. I have heard a bunch of people who are very excited just to have F-Zero GX back, which, like, sure. Kudos. I'm happy for all of you. Okay, last one. This console is really into video chat, like game chat in particular, but specifically video chat.

30:02Good news or bad news? good news yeah yeah this is this is one of the things so you know that comic where it's like you know it's a hot guy knocking on a lady's like cubicle and she's like hey there and and the lady's like oh aren't you cute and then it's like a less attractive guy who's like hey there and she's like human resources this is the nintendo doing that is like the same thing between the connect and the video chat so like the connect is like human resources hello what but now that Nintendo's doing it is like, oh, okay, yeah, this is cool. I get it. They're so many years late, but they are executing on this so much better.

30:37It's just like, they can't keep getting away with it. And yet they are. It does these really cool things where you can put your body in a game, like in the Super Mario Party Jamboree TV expansion. It takes a picture of you and it puts you in the game and you can do all kinds of weird, cool things that look cool that families are just gonna love. Like, I can look at that and see, like, yep, families with young kids are gonna have a blast with this. And, you know, one of the things that we were talking about here at The Verge was like, oh, we can do meetings on this now. Like, let's hold, like, our weekly stand-up meeting and then switch to video chat.

31:12Like, and that's something that you could do. And honestly, it's a really cool idea, and I want to do that. Like, I think that would be great to, you know, I'm playing Zelda, whatever, and, you know, it's time to have a meeting with my boss, and I can just hit the button and be like, hey, you know, working on this review right now and you can see me playing in the background. I just think that's cool. I totally buy it. It's just cool when Nintendo does it. When everybody else does it, it's like, but when Nintendo does it, it's cool. I'm sorry. It's just the double standard. That's fair. And I'm with you on it, except I think the only part of it that makes me nervous is I think Nintendo is one of the last companies doing a really great job of building games to play by yourself.

31:53I feel like everyone else has gone to like, everything is a giant world. Everything is open. You're supposed to, everything is multiplayer all the time, no matter what. And then Nintendo is just like, do you want to play Mario Tennis by yourself for six hours? Like, here you go. Let's do that. And I worry, like, I think I'm probably overshooting my fear that video chat leads to the death of one player games. But that is the thing I worry about. I disagree because I think, if anything, this kind of shows Nintendo understands that the thing people do a lot nowadays is play with their friends. But some people don't want to do that, but they still want the experience of, you know, communing.

32:32And this is a way to play separately together. So, you know, your friend, one friend is playing Breath of the Wild. Another friend is playing some other game. you guys can play your two separate games but still like talk to each other in this interface and I think that's what Nintendo is doing and I think that's really smart. Yeah, I agree. And I like the idea that it is sort of social first and not just game first. Exactly. Which is not how anybody else does it which I agree is pretty cool. It almost like it sort of learned a lesson both from multiplayer games and from Discord all at the same time in a way that I kind of think is neat.

33:06I'm with you. I also want that camera. I just like for the... I'm with you in the sense that like I've put other cameras in my living room and they all creep me out and I don't want any of them. And then I see Nintendo's little camera on a stick and I'm like, well, that's adorable. I would put that next to my television. Did you see that they are having third party cameras and one of them looks like a piranha plant? What? Yeah. Really? Yeah, it's really cool. It's a third party one. It's in our Slack, but it looks really cool. And I'm like, I want that. That's such a good idea. I love that already.

33:36I want one that's Yoshi, but it's like Yoshi with his mouth open and the camera's just coming out. Oh, like an egg? That would be cute. That'd be good. All right. So you're going to buy one of these, right? You're going to get one for professional reasons, but as a gamer, is this it? Yeah. We're there? Yeah. As a gamer, I was already sold. I'm like, yeah. Mario Kart World is really cool. I've never had the desire to play a Mario Kart game. They're fun to play with friends, but that's like a party game. Like, you know, you're going to a party with a bunch of friends and you want to play video games like Mario Kart is one of those games.

34:09But playing Mario Kart World make me like, I actually want this. I want this for myself. I want to play this for myself. And then seeing all of these Switch 2 versions of Switch 1 games, I'm like, I want that too. Like, I want to experience these games the way that I should have experienced them when they were launched. So the calculus has already been decided for me. Yeah. I mean, I was the same way that like I was going to end up buying this thing no matter what. But I think the thing that's really exciting for me is I want this thing on day one way more than I wanted the Switch on day one, because this thing is going to feel huge on day one, which I think is like very much to Nintendo's credit.

34:45There was not that much to do on the Switch on day one. Yeah, that's how they get you. That's how they justify their$450 and$500 price is because they know we're going to be there no matter what, because it's Nintendo. and damn if they don't know how to sell a console with these new bells and whistles. It just works. It's a real problem. It's like watching the thing, I'm like, okay, you showed Mario Kart. You showed a 007 trailer that showed nothing but is a 007 game. And then you ended with Donkey Kong. I'm like, name your price. Like I am powerless at this point. I have nothing left. They're really good at that.

35:22Ash, thank you as always. Thank you for having me. All right, we got to take a break and then we're going to come back and we're going to talk about Microsoft. We'll be right back.

35:35Amazon has everything for everyone on your list. Like your teenage son, who won't give up the peach fuzz currently posing as a mustache on his upper lip. Get him an electric razor. Amazon has early holiday deals on gifts everyone wants, like the latest kitchen gadgets and toys, and some they don't even know they need, like that razor. Grab him a mirror, too, so he can see how pretty he is without that dirt on his lip.

36:26The New iPhone 17 Pro Check them out and see how much you could save versus the other big guys at cmobile.com slash switch. Support for this show comes from LinkedIn. When you're a small business owner, your business is on your mind 24-7. So when you're hiring, you need a partner that works just as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in. LinkedIn makes it easy to post your job for free, share it with your network, and get qualified candidates that you can manage all in one place. LinkedIn's new features can help you write job descriptions and then quickly get your job in front of the right people with deep candidate insights.

37:06Either post your job for free or pay to promote. Promoted jobs get three times more qualified applicants. At the end of the day, the most important thing to your small business is the quality of candidates. And with LinkedIn, you can feel confident that you're getting the best. Based on LinkedIn data, 72 % of SMBs using LinkedIn say that it helps them find high-quality candidates. Find out why more than two and a half million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash track. That's linkedin.com slash track to post your job for free.

37:43Terms and conditions apply.

37:47All right, we're back. Tom Warren's here. Hi, Tom. Hello there. You just made it home like very recently. Literally this morning. Okay, so I feel like this is a real, like, I cannot be held accountable for any of my words on this podcast kind of thing. Yeah, this is a jet-lagged podcast, so if I say something wrong, that's why. I'm excited about it. So you were there for the occasion of Microsoft's 50th anniversary. And I have some, like, big, heady Microsoft stuff I want to talk about. But first, just tell me about the event. This was like, I would say, a weirder, wilder anniversary party than anybody expected it to be.

38:21What was it like to be there? yeah I wasn't really sure what it was going to be like when I like agreed to go and stuff I was like they didn't really tell me much about it and then I was like so on the day I was thinking oh it's just gonna be like a party atmosphere and all that sort of stuff so it kind of kicked off with like Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleiman so he started talking about co-pilot and all the new features and all the stuff that we've covered and Satya Nadella Microsoft CEO came on stage as well sort of talking about the future and co-pilot and stuff. As that was going on, sort of, I'd say about 15 minutes in, we had our first protester.

38:59I hear you protest, thank you. Shame on you. You are a war profiteer. Stop using AI for genocide, Mustafa. Stop using AI for genocide in our region. You have blood on your hands. All of Microsoft has blood on its hands. How do you all delegate when Microsoft is killing children? which kind of like threw the whole vibe of the event off slightly. Because obviously, it was a Microsoft employee that was protesting, which is super unusual, right? Like usually you go to a tech event and there might be a protest about the company's policies or how their technology is used, etc. But it's not usually, you know, the company's employee that's doing it.

39:41So that was super strange. So yeah, that happened. and then we quickly moved on to like it was like a party atmosphere really and they brought out Brenda Song she was like hosting it okay and it was all this part of it wasn't streamed live so this was employee only essentially and the rest of the world's press that was in the audience um so yeah she sort of hosted it she brought up like Bill Gates individually um Steve Barmer individually and then obviously Satya. And then they all came on together, all three. So they were kind of getting questioned individually and then all together about the history of Microsoft and all that.

40:21And Steve Bournemouth obviously came on, did his usual developers, developers, developers. We were expecting that. He actually did the developers? Yeah, he actually screamed it out, yeah. Okay, this is something that I'm going to get in a lot of trouble with with my wife, who I see sitting there. But developers!

40:44He was like, he looked at his wife and the audience was like, I'm going to get in trouble with my wife. And then he just immediately did it. I kind of love Steve Ballmer for doing it. That was such a silly moment in the history of Microsoft that I kind of love him for just being like, this is my legacy now. I'll do it. I'm here for it. if you if you look at our video that we did of it um i think viran or whoever edited it put like the old balmer on the bottom as well and they couldn't look further apart like he looks really well now as well and he and he wasn't swaying you know buckets on stage when he did did it this time so that helped yeah it helps when you're you have all the money in the world but don't have to run a company anymore i feel like that that tends to be good for your health i think yeah he also made up a new chant which he was screaming which was 50 more 50 that's good which was uh it was just crazy that's really funny yeah and he was i think he was kind of like the highlight if i'm honest of the sort of party atmosphere um so brenda sort of interviewed them all individually and then cleo abram came on um from the explain series to interview all three of them together um and then they were probably probably about halfway through i guess that then another protester another employee protester appeared onto the side of the stage Well, I think you're all hypocrites.

42:03I'm a Microsoft worker.

42:09So was your was your sense of this whole thing that it was kind of a congratulations to us. We're so fantastic thing or like, you know, onward charge forward because it's a it's a weird thing to celebrate. 50 years as a company because on the one hand you're like well we did it we're old and we're we're on the downslope now but on the other hand it's like microsoft is like bigger and more powerful maybe than it has ever been uh true and in the middle of lots of change on lots of fronts so i'm like what was what's your sense of like the vibe they were going for in that sense yeah the vibe was definitely definitely party celebration vibe rather than like you know like the future stuff came into it quite a lot because CoPilot, you know, they kind of tied the CoPilot news to this event so it was kind of always linked but yeah, there was a lot of like looking back at the old stuff and Bill Gates when he first appeared, he came on and was like nerding out, like full on nerding out, recounting Pi, you know, like it was that sort of nerding out, yeah, and talk about Qubits, so it was yeah, it was kind of funny but yeah, and then they had like a game show thing where they had a few Microsoft employees come up and stuff.

43:26And one Microsoft employee won a slot on the front row of the party. They had to come over from some other building. Yeah, so it was a very game show vibe, for sure. I mean, I kind of get that. 50 is a big thing. And also, it helps that Microsoft remains Microsoft. And it's like, if you're like, I don't know, not to pick on IBM, but this party would be a lot more embarrassing if it was IBM. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, it's true. They're still somewhat relevant Microsoft in many markets, but whereas, yeah, IBM have gone for enterprise. But I think if they hadn't have done this sort of party vibe, then it would have been a bit weird.

44:01I don't know what they would have done otherwise, because it would have been like, you know, awkward Bill Gates coming on stage, Steve Ballmer making all the noise, and then Satya, who's quite reserved. So I don't know how they would have treated that dynamic without there being like a big host, you know, a big party. So I think that they kind of had to go this way, either way. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So I do, you mentioned the co-pilot thing, And I think it was really interesting to me that they tied these two things together, that they were like, Microsoft is turning 50. It's a huge moment.

44:30And also, we have some pretty big AI news. What do you make of that connection? Like, should I take this as like a statement of values at Microsoft right now that like this is the push to the next 50 is about AI and Copilot? Or am I just kind of overstating two things that happen to happen on the same day? No, I absolutely think so. They tied those together for a reason, right? And it was very much apparent that that was every time that Satya talked, it was, you know, about AI. And Bill Gates joked that, you know, Microsoft's had three CEOs and then the next CEO might be co-pilot, you know? So there was jokes and, like, ties to it all day, regardless of that sort of first 30 minutes or so focusing right on it.

45:12But it very much felt like, yeah, co-pilot is our future or AI is our future. Yeah, like that's our next 50 years for sure. That was definitely what they were getting at. That's really interesting. I mean, that's a big thing to say. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Microsoft is that all in on AI at this point. But like, that's a pretty meaningful statement of purpose to make at an event like this, where you don't have to, right? You can make it about Windows 95, but it seems like they went out of their way to be like, no, we are an AI company and that is where we are going. Yeah, definitely.

45:44and they even treated it like you know like when you go to a product launch like an Apple launch or even Microsoft stuff where they have a new Surface and you see it on stage and then you go hands on so they had that with Copilot, they had all these like pods set up with experiences with the new features that had just gone live like they had the Muse AI model which generates gameplay and stuff so you could check that out Copilot Vision Copilot Vision actually was an interesting one because that one is obviously OpenAI has done it, Apple's doing it, visual intelligence, all that sort of stuff. But it's interesting how Microsoft's doing it because it's like constantly rolling.

46:23So it knows, you don't have to like constantly hit a button or like really focus it at something very obvious for it to pick up. Like I had one example, there was a Game Boy in front of me and I was like, tell me how to power the Game Boy on. And it was like, I'll pop the batteries in the back and then you flick the switch at the top. So I flicked the switch at the top and it was like, oh, you've turned it on because it realized that the LED had lit up. Oh, wow. Or it just assumed I was doing that and just, you know, guessed. But that was an interesting one. I was like, OK, this is really does feel like it's watching what you're watching.

46:58Yeah, it was really interesting to see the copilot stuff is kind of just like a grab bag of all of everybody else's ideas about AI. And I don't mean that as like a denigration of any of this. Like everybody has the same ideas, right? so I think it's fine. But it was like they did the shopping stuff, they're doing some agentic stuff, they had the sort of multimodal vision stuff, it's just like Microsoft keeps doing this thing that like slightly drives me crazy where they're like actually Copilot is a million things and then they're like never mind Copilot is one thing and then they're like never mind it's a million things and this felt like another sort of bring all the Copilots back together and they're like this is we want to make sort of one holistic thing out of all of these many features inside of Copilot.

47:39yeah it always feels like they're like almost one step behind because they take the OpenAI models so OpenAI does their streams and you know wows everyone with their new features and then Microsoft sort of rolls them out like a couple of months later or something so this was very much that although it's always interesting how they roll them out because it does feel like they do them in a slightly better way and a better user experience which is not usually what Microsoft does so yeah so they are doing pretty good with how they're rolling it out But yeah, you're right. It's like taking the top features of what everyone else has got.

48:13Yeah. And then polishing them, essentially. Which is not, I mean, that is, to be fair, that's like, that's also Google strategy and Apple strategy. And it's just like, everyone's doing the same. Take the good ideas and roll them into your bigger products. It does kind of work. So you've spent a bunch of time over the last few weeks sort of reckoning with Microsoft at 50. And this is a company you've been covering for a really long time. and I'm curious like how where sort of Microsoft is in your head right now like do you have sort of a grand theory of five decades of Microsoft coming out of all of this retrospective and research?

48:46Yeah I think I wrote about like the reflection of the last 50 years and like what Microsoft's kind of stood for and where they are now and I think it is a matter of they were obviously born as micro-soft which is like microcomputers and software and I think we're still sort of in that era but it's just they're very focused on software now. They do have Surface and stuff but they seem to be kind of playing it safe with that stuff. And then you've got Xbox which obviously was a big, one of their hardware hits and that's kind of going in the software direction as well. And it's obviously going towards AI as well.

49:23And then you've obviously got the AI push as well which is driven partly by hardware advances and a lot by software at the moment as well. so I think it's keeping true to that software stuff where Microsoft is going to go I spoke to one of their he described himself as this mad scientist Stevie B that's what we call him and he basically broke it down in the sense of like Microsoft would traditionally write code once so say they shipped Word they'd write that piece of code and then someone would install it and maybe customize it however they want Now they have to write a piece of code for every person on the planet to use their software with AI.

50:05So they're kind of like, that's the way they're looking at it in this like agent push so that you'll have your own personal agent that knows you and that's built for you. So that's obviously a different, very much a different challenge to how they've built software before. So I think they're in the early phases of that. And even Stevie had like admitted, there's a bunch of AI concepts out there, even Microsoft's doing them, but no one's really kind of put them all together. And I think that's really where Microsoft's going to go for the next sort of 10 years is figuring out all those distant concepts, bringing them together, and then putting them in something that is a lot more coherent.

50:44Yeah, well, I think there's an interesting sort of parallel between that. And I actually think that's about as sort of clean a straight line as I've heard someone draw through Microsoft, that it is like fundamentally this is like a – it is a software company that actually sort of thinks about people in a very coherent way across time. But then like I look at – you know, we did the 50 best things Microsoft has ever made, and you ran down a bunch of kind of the weird ideas that it's had over time. And also this is a company that is just like fundamentally all over the place all the time. And they have tried so many things.

51:17Some of them have worked in huge ways. Some of them have not. And I think it was really interesting to read because I don't think about Microsoft as a sort of wacky experimental company in the way that like when Amazon launches 100 things running Alexa, nobody thinks that's weird, right? That sort of culturally makes sense inside of Amazon. And when Google is like, here's 17 new messaging apps, you're like, oh, Google. But I don't think Microsoft has quite that same reputation. And yet it has tried and failed at maybe more big things than almost anybody. And I think one of the things that you argued is that Microsoft's sort of core competency is that it actually moves and pivots really fast.

51:58And so it was so interesting to just see those two things against each other. It's like Microsoft kind of had one idea 50 years ago that it was even more right about than it realized. And it has carried it all the way through. And then around the edges, it's just like pure chaos. Yeah, it's tried to respond sometimes successfully. Like I'd say when they moved to the cloud, that was obviously very successful and it's kind of set them up for where they are now. And it's sometimes like spectacularly unsuccessfully like missing the mobile era, which probably cost them, I think, because the estimate is like 600 billion or something.

52:28So quite a lot of money. When you put it like that. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, but they've navigated throughout those like sort of eras. I break them down really by CEOs, to be honest, because you had the Bill Gates era, which was the PC on every desk, and Steve Ballmer, which was kind of like the cloud and launching Xbox and all that sort of stuff. And then you had Sati Nadella, which is very much the AI era now and sort of resetting their culture as well. But yeah, they've navigated interestingly throughout that because there's so many things they've done, like Kinect, like the Zune, like Barney toys.

53:04There's just so much that they've kind of experimented with. But I think my point when I wrote about some of that stuff is that even though some of those things are like blatant failures, like Kinect, like the HoloLens, is that they take parts of that technology and then they use it elsewhere. So it's like they are learning from those mistakes and then they'll be like, well, all the silicon work we've done on HoloLens is now our quantum work. Oh, interesting. The Kinect stuff, you know, like some of that early Kinect work went into Windows Hello, where you look at your laptop and it signs you in now.

53:35So there's all these sort of like through lines and even Cortana like helped them do the Surface Pro X and some of the Windows alarm stuff with Windows Phone. So there's, yeah, there's always failures, but then there's successes through those failures, which is also, I don't think it's very obvious when you look at the product, you think that was a massive flop. It's like, yes, it was, but it also, you know, went on something like Skype helped power Microsoft Teams. Like there's so many instances of it, you could make up another 50 less. Yeah, well, and I think that's, that actually speaks really well of Microsoft's culture.

54:08And I think Microsoft's culture has been, I would say, fairly correctly raked over the coals several times over the years. But that fact, because this is the thing we see a lot at other companies, something goes wrong, everybody leaves or gets fired and all the work that they did just sort of gets mothballed. They're like, well, this is a mistake. Moving on, we're going to go over this way now. And they sort of overcorrect in the wrong direction and try something else. and so that ability of Microsoft to actually say okay this thing didn't work but what did we do that might work somewhere else is actually a hard thing to do and it's impressive that Microsoft has done that so well so many times over the years Yeah it is and when I spoke to Stevie B for that story it was it was funny just going through the years of like because he's been instrumental to a lot of the stuff like the touch computing like even you know do you remember the first Surface table that they did oh yeah they had it at like ces and it was like pool table looking thing yeah yeah yeah and then they eventually had it in like a bunch of vegas uh restaurants and stuff it was yeah it was wild but he he was instrumental to all that sort of stuff and helping with connect and everything but when i spoke to him it was interesting because he went through all the sort of successes and the failures and how they experiment with hardware and software and then i and then i was like what was your favorite like pain and he's sitting in his office and he's like uh and he just reaches down and like clears like a path to the bottom of his shelf and there's all the painting cubes are sitting there he's like pulling them up going i like this one and this one led to whatever it was just like yeah it was just interesting seeing the sort of like because he's been there for so long um it's just interesting seeing the the various stuff that they have patented and how they've you know they've learned from those those failures yeah well it's also going back through that list of 50 things is like it keeps occurring to me that maybe no company in tech is better at missing by a little bit than microsoft like microsoft has been almost right so many times as looking it's like like clippy is just what we're doing now right like microsoft has been trying to do this thing in various iterations for forever and it was in the right place at totally the wrong time.

56:20Here's something that Stevie said. He said, everyone is right if you wait long enough. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, and there's a million of those. Like, what was the smartwatch that Microsoft was working on like way before? The spot stuff, yeah. Right idea, wrong time. And the tablets and the HoloLens and Cortana. It's like Microsoft is always just 10 degrees off. Yeah. And it fits every time. And then it occasionally hits it right, like with the Xbox and you see what happens and it hit it right with Azure and you see what happens. And it's just, its track record of almost hitting and just missing is like epic over its history.

56:59But I guess it's the same for anything though, isn't it? Right place at the right time is just such a common thing. Yeah, they've definitely had the right ideas, but yeah, the timing has definitely been not quite right. So look at HoloLens, that was like genuinely like wow moment when I tried that on. I was like, I couldn't believe it. and then 10 years later, and Meta's still trying to make that sort of experience of reality, right? So it's not easy. No, and there's so many of like, did you ever watch that General Magic documentary? No, I didn't. It's very good. I recommend it. I'll put the link in the show notes.

57:33But it was basically this group of people in like the early 90s who built a cell phone. And it had all of the ideas that smartphones would later have. They were just trying to build an iPhone, but they were trying to ship the thing 13 years before the iPhone and the world wasn't ready. The technology wasn't ready. And it was like, oh, everyone saw it. And it's just a matter of like being the one who makes the right thing at the right time. That is actually what hits. And it's not like some magical thing just happened. And I feel like there's so much of this in Microsoft's history that is like somebody sitting in the building was right.

58:08And they just, they just didn't, they were, they were too early or they were like, they missed one piece of the thing that wasn't quite right. They just were one turn away from having it right. And there's a fascinating Apple-like hardware story that almost happened inside of Microsoft. Like, almost. Yeah, it's like the ebb and flow of software and hardware, isn't it? You get those hardware advances, and that software that you were trying to build a decade ago then becomes suddenly very relevant, like Cortana and Clippy and stuff like that. that now is where you could do a personal assistant. It would actually make sense.

58:46Which, funny enough, that's exactly what they're doing again, which they kind of teased on stage at this 50th anniversary. Oh, really? Yeah, they're bringing characters to co-pilots. You have your individual, and it visually will look different. I feel like they can't get away with bringing Clippy back. I just think it would be, that's like a funny joke, but I don't think you can do that seriously. But I think they could bring Bob back, right? you could you could do bob again yeah well they did show clippy at the end of the montage of characters and i don't know if that means the paperclip is back or uh i don't know that would be the the true ultimate sign of confidence in ai is like we we're doing clippy again but we're we're doing it well this time like it's that's i feel like they do it just to get people to download code pilot because that's gonna like everyone will write the headline about that right I mean, I would use it.

59:38I would spend one whole day with new Clippy, for sure. I get it. You can now talk to Clippy. Right. I'd be down. I'm ready for it. So I'm really fascinated by this moment of like seeing the three different eras and the three different CEOs sort of sitting next to each other on stage. And like you described, there are three very different people who ran the company three very different ways, but it still kind of keeps being Microsoft. And obviously there's no indication that Satya Nadella is going anywhere anytime soon. No. he's relatively young. He's doing very well. Company's going fine. Like, I feel like that is that dude's job for a long time.

1:00:13But what is your sense of kind of the next turn for Microsoft? Is there some big shift coming or are we in the middle of it already because it's the AI story? Yeah, I think we're in the middle of it, if I'm honest. It's just the way they talk about it and the investments they're making is clear that that's their next big bet. And they do these big bets occasionally. They kind of go all in because, and I think we saw it with the augmented reality stuff and then HoloLens and stuff. They really went for that because they genuinely thought, you know, computing was going to go in that direction. Do you think, was that at the same level as this though?

1:00:48I was trying to think like what in their history feels as big a swing as AI does right now. And like cloud definitely was one. Cloud is the only one, isn't it? The whole Azure thing. And I was debating this with HoloLens and AR because they certainly made a lot of noise about it. but it didn't feel like the future of Microsoft was inside of HoloLens in the way that it does with AI to me. But I don't know, maybe you feel differently. They did like a big swing with Windows 8. That's true. They really tried to make it so that apps would go across phone and Xbox and that failed spectacularly, especially the design.

1:01:24But another one, this is the hottest take I will say on this entire podcast. I think history will be kind to Windows 8. I think Windows 8 had some good ideas. It did, yeah. It did have good ideas. It was just too much for the traditional power users of Windows. Yeah, I think if they had done Windows 11 and then 10 and then 8, it might have worked a lot better. Instead, they're just doing it in reverse. Yeah. But it definitely feels like AI is their next transformation. It was interesting just all three CEOs being on stage, like you were saying, and them trying to interact with each other. They were talking about the hits and misses and what they liked about each other, which Bill Gates was like, I like the fact that Steve Ballmer and Satya Ndell are good with people, which is funny.

1:02:18And Steve Ballmer was like, Satya's doing a great job because he's tripled my stock. That's real. Which is true. but they all they all kind of talked especially Beck Gates talked about AI and he's made some pretty big statements about AI replacing jobs and stuff which I don't think many technologists are kind of exactly agreeing on right now yeah I got the sense that AI is the next transformation and that's where they're putting everything, they're putting 80 billion dollars in right and they had like a town hall a few weeks ago where they talked to employees about it all and employees were kind of like challenging them on why are we investing so much money in this AI thing?

1:03:01And they were like, well, we have 300 billion of contracts that are lined up for the next few years. And a lot of those involve cloud and AI. So we're going to get our return, essentially, is what they're saying. That's really interesting. Yeah, and I think if you're Microsoft, the question for me always with Microsoft is how desperately is it going to try to be consumer relevant? Because I think, and we've talked about this a lot. There is this thing where it's like, I think if you think of Microsoft as like the leading B2B AI company, that feels totally plausible to me, right? That like it's gonna build the sort of enabling technology.

1:03:37It's gonna have the cloud infrastructure. Like that's where all the money is gonna be for the foreseeable future anyway. But if Microsoft is happy being like the Microsoft of AI, then you're fine. But Microsoft has never been able to turn off this thing where it is desperate to be like mainstream relevant to regular people outside of work in their day-to-day. And I feel so much of that tension in Copilot where Microsoft is like, we want you to use this at work and we know you will and we know how to do that because that is like Microsoft's core competency. But also when you go home, we want it to be your best friend and we want you to hang out with your family, like in Teams.

1:04:13Like I just, people will not use Teams in their day-to-day life. I just don't believe it. Absolutely not. I hope that I'm wrong. I guess if you do it with your family, I'd love to hear from you. And that's fine if you're Microsoft, but it just can't help itself in some ways. And I'm so curious to see where it lands. Yeah, it's interesting you mentioned that because that's another part of the vibe that we didn't really touch on. That was kind of the vibe of the event. It was very influencer, you know, that sort of vibe. They invited a bunch of people that I've never seen at a Microsoft event before.

1:04:44So, you know, doing like selfies of everything. And it was very much that. It did feel like that for the whole day. It felt like a party influencer vibe. And YouTubers, there's some folks there that have covered Microsoft a bunch, like iJustine and Austin Evans. And, you know, some of the big names. But there was just a bunch of influencers and, like, lifestyle influencers, you know. That's really interesting. It was an interesting, it felt like everything I've been seeing, kind of, where Microsoft are going, where they want people to focus on Copilot in an event. So it was definitely an interesting sort of sub-vibe to the things.

1:05:23You feel it with Copilot, where you mentioned they want it at work and at home. The Copilot at home is so different to the WorkOne. The WorkOne just doesn't have the same UI at all. So there's tension there, and I don't know how they're going to resolve that. Yeah, and I feel like I get the WorkOne. I can sort of see where that's going. It makes sense to me. And obviously, there is such a super high ceiling if you can build the consumer one. but the path to get there and even what that looks like is just vastly less clear to me but it is like the shiny object to everybody definitely even OpenAI which could just like happily sell subscriptions to developers forever and make all of its money it's like how do we make ChatGPT yell at you so that it's more fun to use like I don't know what I don't know what problem we're going to solve there but everybody is desperately trying to figure it out they're all trying to do it yeah and it's going to be interesting all right I'm going to let you go here but tell me about the 50th anniversary surface and then I'm going to let you go Oh, yeah.

1:06:17So they've done a 50th anniversary surface. It's not too crazy different. It's basically got a golden accent on the logo at the back. And then it's got the 1975 disco balls stuff on the palm rest. It's the old retro logo. So that's cool. But they're not selling it. So you'll have to win one. Or I think they're probably going to sell them to employees as well. so alright well if you have one and want to sell it to us I got 50 bucks with your name on it so send us an email and also we think are we we're getting surfaces this year hopefully right are we are we doing surfaces yeah okay build is what in six weeks yes I might be back out to Seattle again I think you might be we could be speaking like this again yeah alright well for now Tom thank you as always good to see you go get some sleep thank you alright right we got to take one more break and then we're going to get to a question from the verges hotline be right back every story you love every invention that moves you every idea you wish was yours all began as nothing just a blank page with a blinking cursor asking a simple question.

1:07:38What do you see? Great ideas start on Mac. Find out more on apple.com slash Mac. Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start? Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to. Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin or what that clunking sound from your dryer is? With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top-rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app. Download today. Morning, Zoe. Jeff Bridges, why are you still living above our garage? I want to be in a T-Mobile commercial like you.

1:08:18Teach me, Sildana. I couldn't possibly. At T-Mobile, get the new iPhone 17 Pro on them. It's designed to be the most powerful iPhone yet and has the ultimate pro camera system. Impressive. Let me try. At T-Mobile, you can save up to 20 % versus the other big guys. You heard them. T-Mobile is the best place to get the new iPhone 17 Pro on us with eligible trade-in in any condition. Check them out to see how much you can save versus the other big guys at tmobile.com slash switch.

1:08:47All right, we're back. Let's do a question from the Vergecast hotline. As always, the number is 866-VERGE11. The email is vergecast at theverge.com. Thank you, by the way, to everybody who reached out with thoughts about minimalist phones. Doing that exercise with Allison last week was so much fun, and you all had so many good, smart thoughts about it that I think I'm actually going to compile a bunch of them and throw them all at Allison again, and we're just going to have to rerun that whole thing in a couple of weeks. So stay tuned for that. For now, we have a question from our email from Katie.

1:09:15Let me read it to you. Katie writes, I'm sure I won't be the only person asking this question. True, by the way, we got this question a bunch of times. This is very much a thing on people's minds. The tariffs are projected to hit the car and tech industries the hardest. In thinking about preparing for this, I'm wondering if I should invest in a new phone now rather than waiting till mine reaches obsolescence, potentially in a time when phones become much more expensive. To give you an idea of the consumer I tend to be, I currently have a Pixel 6, which is working just fine. I'm not a person who is looking for the highest end product or who upgrades unless my phone ceases to function.

1:09:46I'm very conscious of the environmental impacts of the industries associated with the materials and phones. I just don't want to find myself in a bind in a year or two if things keep going the way it looks like they're going. Thanks. This is the question right now. And I think I will say two things. The two things that I should say right at the very top are that A, who knows if any of this is real, right? The Trump administration's tariff policy has been on and off and on and off and on and off, that if you were to ask me to bet whether these were going to stay in effect the way that they are forever, I would say I absolutely have no idea.

1:10:21I think what we've learned from the Trump administration, even just over the last several days, is that they're very serious about these. Donald Trump loves tariffs as a weapon. He also loves them as a negotiating tactic. And if this is just a way to force all of these companies and all of these leaders and all of these politicians to come see him and, you know, bend the knee and make a deal so that there's no more tariffs, maybe that's where this lands. It'll be really messy in the interim, but maybe fast forward three months from now, and most of this is back to the way that it was with just a lot of chaos in between.

1:10:55There's a lot of precedent for that arc in the Trump administration, but that is one possible outcome. Trump has also continued to say that he believes in tariffs. He has said it all along. He said it in his campaign. He has said it as president. He believes tariffs are good and that they work. And so I wouldn't rule out any possibility here. And so all we can do is, I think, operate with the facts on the ground right now. And the facts on the ground right now suggest that things are about to get a lot more expensive. And I think a bunch of folks on our team, particularly Allison Johnson on our team, who has been doing a lot of really great work reporting on phone tariffs in particular, the general consensus seems to be that the phones today are not likely to get vastly more expensive for a bunch of reasons, right?

1:11:40If you're Best Buy, you have a bunch of inventory. It's also just really hard to raise the price on an existing device. What is much more likely in many of these cases is that the next round of these phones is going to be more expensive. So we have the iPhone 17 coming in the fall. We have the Pixel 10 coming probably in the fall. We have new Samsung stuff coming this summer. There's just a round of new phones due in a few months. And I think there is a strong chance those phones will be substantially more expensive. So I think, frankly, if you're the person who is like happy to be a few generations behind, it doesn't strike me as totally wrongheaded to buy this year's phone on the bet that next year's phone, even if it's better, is also likely to be significantly more expensive.

1:12:26That goes against my normal buying advice, which is like buy the best device that you can and then keep it forever. However, if there is a chance that the next iPhone is going to be several hundred dollars more expensive, which again, I wouldn't bet on it, but I also wouldn't bet against it. I can see why you might look at a 16 and be like, okay, price to value. This might be the best phone we're going to get for a minute here. And that is a reason to do it. If you're on a pixel six, I think you're probably good for another year or two. If you're happy with your phone now, there's also ways you can upgrade.

1:12:56You can replace the battery. You can replace the screen by itself. Like you can make devices last longer. And that's my other piece of advice for anybody who's trying to think about how do I make sense of like my gadget options here? I would say, frankly, buy the stuff that you know you're going to need quickly, because I think it's possible we're going to run into supply constraints as companies scramble to figure this stuff out. it's possible that the the makeup of some of these devices is going to change as things like costs change and as supply chains change uh the the gadget you want may not be the same gadget for forever prices might go up so i think there there is a real impetus to say okay if i have a thing that works how do i make it work longer like i'll just give you an example i have these bose quiet comfort headphones and they're like they're fine but the the ear cups on them are just starting to wear right and so i've been sitting around being like okay okay, do I just upgrade?

1:13:52I think these are a bunch of years old now. They're still fine, but I would like a better pair of headphones. And so I'm like, okay, maybe these wearing out is a good excuse to just go out and upgrade anyway. Now my answer is I'm going to buy new ear cups and I'm just going to keep using these headphones for as long as I can. And that's just is what it's going to be. Headphones are expensive. They are potentially going to get more expensive. And I just, I'm going to choose not to worry about that and put off that purchase for as long as I can. So I think where I've landed personally, amidst all this chaos, all the advice I can give you is where I've landed, is the things I know I'm gonna need to do soon, I'm gonna do now.

1:14:30And anything I can put off, I am going to try and take steps to put off as long as possible. Because it does feel like wherever we're headed is gonna be messy, right? Like I'm gonna try and make as few 2025 purchases as I can and I'm gonna try and make them all right now. I don't know if that's the perfect strategy. I don't know if we're going to end up in like a, do you remember that early phase of the pandemic where people were like hoarding toilet paper? I don't know that a run on that kind of thing in the gadget world is the right thing, but I do know that it is a time of incredible uncertainty and it does feel like things could go sideways.

1:15:07So I would look at it and say, okay, do I think I'm going to need a new phone in the next six months? And if the answer is yes, I think just buy it now. There's not a great reason not to. anyway. The Pixel 9 is a great phone. There's a bunch of good stuff out there. I think there's a strong chance that whatever comes next is going to be a lot more expensive. I just go for it. I bought my wife a Pixel 8. She likes it a lot. Great price. No notes. Very happy to have solved that before we get out of here. Anyway, I would also love to know what you think about this, by the way. If you have thoughts or have made purchases or put off purchases or are thinking about how to manage this stuff, I'd love to hear from you.

1:15:40Vergecast to the Verge.com. 866-VERGE11 is the hotline. This is like a complicated question. And it's a very Vergey question. We like talking about what you should buy and when and for how much. And I think this is a wrinkle we have not dealt with many times in the course of being on the Verge is how is global politics going to change the price of your phone? It always does, but it does much more directly now than I think most of us have realized in the past. All right, that's it for the Vergecast today. Thank you to everybody who came on the show. And thank you, as always, for listening. As ever, if you have questions, thoughts, feelings, games that you can play forever, or purchases that you want to talk about, if you want us to help you figure out what to buy and when, frankly, that's what we're here for.

1:16:22So hit us up. Vergecast at theverge.com is the email. 866-VERGE11 is the hotline. We check them both. We love hearing from you. This show is produced by Will Poore, Eric Gomez, and Brandon Kiefer. Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Nelia and I will be back on Friday to talk about, I don't even know what, Brendan Carr, gadgets, more AI chaos, probably more tariffs, let's be honest with each other, and everything else. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.

1:16:55Rinse takes your laundry and hand delivers it to your door. Expertly cleaned and folded. So you could take the time once spent folding and sorting and waiting to finally pursue a whole new version of you. Like tea time you. or this tea time you or even this tea time you or even tea time, tea time, tea time you So update on Dave It's up to you. We'll take the laundry. Rinse. It's time to be great.