The case for banning cookie banners

27:50So I just kind of wanted to complicate that narrative a little of like, well, why should we listen to the EU? And I'm like, well, they'd say the same about us. Like, why are they, why should we be listening? Why should we, why do we have to listen to like everything that, you know, Apple just decides at its whim and to get just really quickly to that question of of Apple deciding that they were not going to play ball with other, they were going to make this change in their ad trackers. There is also another part of that that is, if you talk to other technology companies, devastated other people's advertising revenues and the ability to kind of, I mean, And is a story of monopoly power and a story of that we have too many large players in the ad space and just not enough diversity and who kind of controls the ad sale market.

28:47And so the fact that Apple could unilaterally decide to just completely disrupt this by just like a whim of policy change, more so than or in the same way to the same effect, maybe to greater effect than cookie banners did, is I think a great, if I have a part two, maybe like if I make this, like if this is like the Empire Strikes Back version of this article, Maybe I'll write in about Apple's decision to kind of change its ad tracking system. Because, yeah, it's a great point. I think that all of this is just kind of let's play all of these powers and forces against each other. But let's not forget who they should be operating for ideally, which is the end user and the citizen.

29:39And I think that that just gets forgotten all the time. And so we're at the that's that is like the biggest part of this piece, which is like it's just such a terrible experience for us. It doesn't do anything to protect us. And so this is like the worst of all worlds. You know, this doesn't serve us at all. Us being like the citizens and the people who are using this technology. Yeah, I agree.

30:02David Pierce:So you mentioned the EU has has sort of reopened the case here a bit on on cookie banners is rethinking. And what was the word simplifying? Is that what they were? Simplifying their their policy around data protection. Do you think there's a real chance of actual honest to God change here? Yeah, I do. The main thing is that I have heard that this is something that is on the table, that they are really thinking about this because it is unclear, especially with agentic AI, with kind of how AI is going to work through browsers and how it's going to be kind of like using data, that the idea of cookie banners becomes particularly non-viable.

30:50and is, you know, there's already a compressed need for like server space and everything. I talk a little bit about how there's a waste of energy. There's not a ton of great data on that, but it seems, frankly, like a little bit commonsensical to me that even if it's just like on the margins that constantly going having to ping back and forth like has to make some type of difference and kind of in type of energy costs and things like that, it certainly makes a difference in time costs for users. But in any event, like there's so there seems like there is some appetite for this. And so like I'm just kind of fingers crossed that this becomes something that that people take seriously.

31:28But yeah, I guess I kind of I wanted to I just I don't know. It would be fun to have a win in some capacity at this current juncture when it just feels like there isn't a lot to, and this just seemed like a small area that I could focus on or do something or kind of put an advocacy, some advocacy and wisdom into. Yeah, and so I kind of, I'm an optimistic person. I also never, by the way, ever am like a person who says we should burn it all down. So this is like, I'm not a crit. Like I'm the kind of like a person who very much is always trying to build something. But yeah, no, I think that basically that actually makes the call what I'm calling for even easier.

32:12Like we don't have to come up with a new solution. Like I think I make the case pretty well that we'd just be better with nothing. And so that's all you have to do.

32:20David Pierce:In fact, maybe we can't come up with a new solution until we burn this one down. Exactly. Exactly. My favorite thing about this is I think it is like it's it's so such a sort of complicated, fascinating regulatory moment. But also that idea has got to have damn near 100 % support among actual users of the Internet. Like if there are people out there who are like, God, I love cookie banners. I want to hear from you. I have so many questions for you. I don't think you exist. I've never met a person who has come to me and said, they're fine. I think the most that I've ever in presenting this idea, which I've presented for, you know, I've gone on rants about this for the last two years before I wrote this paper.

33:01because I'm, you know, I'm me. But there is like, and it takes a long time to write academic papers. But the main thing is that people mostly say, well, they're just not that bad. That's the main, that is the main takeaway that I get. Like, they just seem like a small cost. And my point is, is like, they're just not. They're actually not. It's, you know, it's, I don't know. Oh, it's kind of like when you have some type of something broken in your home. I don't know. Like you can't turn on the light switch and you're in your your bulb burned out in your overhead light. And so you have to walk all the way across the room in the dark and you always bump your shins on the coffee table on your way there.

33:44If you come home after dark, like to turn on the light on the other side of the room. And, you know, at some point you should just kind of get up on a ladder and change that stupid light bulb in the ceiling. but it's a little more effort and by the time you remember to do it like you're on to other things and so you just keep walking across the living room it's like well you just don't have to have bruised shins my dude you just don't have to do it like you your life could you know your life could be as simple as a light switch and so um I don't know that's kind of what I feel how I feel about about this kind of this problem and um yeah you don't have to have bruised shins

34:22David Pierce:is such a good rallying cry for the future of the internet. I like it very much. All right, Kate, thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you so much. All right, we got to take a break and then we're going to come back and we're going to talk about Ask Maps and AI for the real world. We'll be right back.

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37:56all right we're back the verge's senior reviewer allison johnson is here hi allison Hello. We are back with another edition of Ruining Allison's Life with Phones.

38:05Paul Miller:Yes. I'm very excited about this. My favorite. We've started something. Yeah. Yeah. It's real. No, you said this. You coined this phrase like a while ago, and it's gotten stuck in my head. I'm like, that's my whole job.

38:17David Pierce:I just ruined my life with phones. I mean, it's great. But every once in a while, it goes super well for you. Yeah. And that is what we're here to talk about. Yeah. I'm particularly curious about Ask Maps and Gemini and Google Maps and this whole thing, because a theory I have long held is that Google Maps is actually the perfect example of the trade we make with technology all the time. And I want to talk about it, but I think it is like particularly true in an AI world that if you want to talk about what we give up and what we get back, maybe the fairest trade in all of technology is mapping apps.

38:53David Pierce:But first, I just I want you to just describe what Ask Maps is. For anybody who doesn't know, this is a thing that if you haven't used Google Maps in a minute, open up the app. There is probably a little shimmery thing telling you to use Ask Maps. What is this feature?

39:07Paul Miller:So it's essentially just Gemini kind of chatbot inside of Google Maps. Yeah, you tap the little thing that says Ask Maps. You get the text box screen. And it's like, where do you want to go? Do you want to plan a date night or whatever? And you just kind of freestyle and you ask about the things around you. And it will go into, importantly, Google user reviews. And it can pull from a lot of those to answer your questions. It can also answer questions when I was planning a little excursion. Like, should I bring an umbrella? and it'll go check the weather. So it has some of those like all around Gemini capabilities, but it's more grounded and like more focused in the information in Google Maps.

39:59So how does this track with how you normally use Google Maps?

40:04David Pierce:Because I think there are lots of different kinds of Maps users. Did this sort of track with the way you already use the app?

40:12Paul Miller:Yeah, I think about this a lot. I'm like a recreational Google Maps user. which I recognize is unusual. There's a lot of, you know, Google Maps is designed to get you from point A to point B. And there's a lot of people who use it that way and probably are less interested in like having just a little chat with Google Maps. You're like, I have an address. I need to be at that address. Google Maps. Tell me how to do that. That is like that is one very specific use of Google Maps. Yeah. Ask Maps. You know, don't go there with this. Just continue using Google Maps as you would. I use it as kind of like, I want to check out, you know, the neighborhood where we're going to have dinner and see like, well, maybe there's like a cool playground we can stop at.

40:58Paul Miller:Or I'll see a recommendation somewhere else for a restaurant or a coffee shop. I'll go in and add it to one of my many lists that I have in Google Maps. So I just poke around in Maps sometimes. Sometimes I have no agenda. I'm just like, I don't know what's going to pop up in Google Maps today. Something weird inevitably comes up and I'm fascinated. I could spend hours in Google Maps.

41:25David Pierce:So the reason I ask is because I use it exactly the same way. And immediately the first time I read about Ask Maps, I was like, oh, this is for me. Because like what I find myself doing all the time, I think I've actually until now been using Google Maps sort of wrong. where like I will search for my honestly hand to God. My most common Google Maps search is probably the phrase breakfast sandwich. Because wherever I am, whatever I am doing, I am permanently on the lookout for like a pretty good bacon, egg and cheese sandwich. It is all I want every day in the whole world. And Google Maps has always been almost right for that, but never quite right for that.

42:06David Pierce:And it's it'll always be like, you know, reviews mention. X, Y, Z. Reviews mention breakfast sandwich, which is sort of helpful, but only if people are reviewing the words breakfast sandwich. And this is the sort of thing that actually, if you take AI and its ability to do this like summarization and sort of fuzzy search and actually pull a bunch of sources together, it can start to do things like actually help you understand what is good on the menu at the place that you're going to and whether this thing and this thing are both good. Like I want I want a place that has both a good breakfast sandwich and a pretty good cup of coffee.

42:38And that is a thing Google Maps is just structurally not set up to do. So the idea of, like you said, we have this huge corpus of place data, reviews. It's actually an incredibly useful amount of information. This seems sort of perfectly suited to everything that Gemini is actually good at. Yeah. And it sounds like you use Google Maps the same way, whereas this immediately becomes the kind of thing you're like, oh, I actually know a thousand questions I would like to ask this AI tool.

43:03Paul Miller:Yeah. And it is really good for those kind of like, I'm not just looking for coffee near me. There's one million coffee shops around me. I'm like, I have. Or you get the same 12 from everything you do, right? This is the problem that I constantly have is you search. I live in Alexandria, Virginia, and it's like top 10 coffee places in Alexandria, Virginia, and it's the same 10 every single place you look. And eventually all of these lists are useless. And I'm like, I've been to all 10 of these. Where else should I go? Yeah. It's like nothing is able to do that so far. Yes. Yeah, for us recreational maps users, it can put together concepts or extrapolate from something where I'm looking for a coffee shop where I can bring my laptop to work for the afternoon.

43:44Paul Miller:And it understands some of the criteria around that. And it doesn't just look for people mentioned in user reviews, you know, laptop. And it'll be like, there's a lot of space. It's very cozy. It's open till 4 p.m., you know, it's like it doesn't close at 2. So, yeah, kind of coming across those use cases is sort of blown my mind. And I'm yeah, I'm like, well, now I have a thousand more questions I need to ask. I love it. So you set up an experiment where you basically decided to let Gemini plan a lovely city day for you. Tell me about the planning process before we get into the day. What was the setup like?

44:29Paul Miller:So I just kind of gave it the assignment and I gave it a few criteria. I was like, I want to spend a day in the city. I want somewhere to get lunch. I'm going to be taking public transit. I want to take like a nice little walk somewhere and find a coffee shop where I can sit with my laptop and work for a few hours. And I need to be home by 4.30 p.m.

44:55David Pierce:I want to have a lovely city day and I'm also on a very tight schedule.

44:59Paul Miller:Yes, and I have extremely specific criteria for it. It would be the most intense thing to like tell your friend. Yeah, Google Maps. So, yeah, just kind of put it all together. The first suggestions it gave me were, I guess, maybe too good because I was like, oh, I've been there, you know. Like I know about that coffee shop. I was there a week ago. So I will say, by the way, this is one thing I've noticed about Gemini and the Asmaps feature in my own use so far. I wish it was paying more attention to where I've been before. Yeah.

45:35David Pierce:Because I've had the same experience a couple of times now where I'm like, oh, where should we go? Like, what's a good, I want tacos. Like, surprise me. Where should we go get tacos? And pretty consistently it has offered me places I've already been for tacos, which on the one hand is fine. but I've had to really push it to be like show me things you know for sure I don't know anything about and then there are a couple on the flip side where it's like I was like what one thing I put in just this morning to see is like find me a favorite place I haven't been in a while that I should go back to which is again information Google Maps has like yeah anyone who is wondering what Google Maps knows about you go find your location history on Google Maps the answer is everything it's frightening yeah and again and this is this is the the trade we make right it's like by having this you can now give all of this back to me in a way that is actually useful to me and i i wish there was one more turn of google's ability to know because then it was like it offered me a place i've never actually been but i have searched for in the past and i was like you've searched for this twice and you were there one time and i was like actually i wasn't i was somewhere else across the street and you should know that google uh but so that's the one little take of personalization that I don't I don't feel like is quite there.

46:45And it sounds like you had the same thing where it's like, I want to go on a fun, exciting, new exploratory day. And it's like, have you heard of the coffee shop down the street from your house? It's like, I have actually. Thank you.

46:54Paul Miller:Yeah. Yeah, I did have to push it a little bit. And I maybe I sort of thought like, fun, adventure, day out of the house is sort of implied, like, let's not go to my usual spots. But I did have to specify I was like, no, you know, these are good. I didn't I didn't want to, you know, be mean to Google Maps. I was like, good job. You're doing your best. Yeah, I recognize you're doing your best here. Let's like think a little differently about this. And it came up with a couple spots I'd never been to, you know, I'd sort of heard of. They weren't like hidden gems or anything like that. They were sort of like places people know about that I just hadn't gotten around to going.

47:37Paul Miller:That seems fine. I'm actually okay with that being kind of the criteria. Right. Yeah. So it charted me a little route, you know, and it gives you little shortcuts to access the transit directions along the way. It gives you a map so you can see generally like where what your route is going to look like.

47:57David Pierce:So it'll spit out like a full itinerary for you. I'm just realizing I have not done this ambitious a search. Yeah.

48:04Paul Miller:Oh, yeah. OK. I had trouble finding a way to like export that to something. It was like, oh, no, I can't do that for you. So I had to keep going into my history with the search and pull it up, which is sort of

48:16David Pierce:a pain. What a basic product miss from Google on that. It's like, gosh, if only you had a system that could show me several stops and navigate between them.

48:23Paul Miller:Yeah. The number of times I've asked Gemini, like, put this in a Google Doc. It's like, oh, no, no, I can't do that. What are those?

48:30David Pierce:I've never heard of that.

48:32Paul Miller:Yeah. Even when it can, I'm like, you have access to my whole life. Come on.

48:36David Pierce:Yeah, seriously.

48:37Paul Miller:Yeah. So it sent me to a taco shop up the streets. Well, a little ways up in the neighborhood to a big park. It's called Volunteer Park for my scenic walk. And then back down, like coming closer to home to my final stop at a coffee shop. and it had all of the like, you know, you'll have an hour and a half here, then you'll need to head for the bus stop. It's a couple blocks away and that, you know, the 350 bus should get you home by 430. So it was pretty complete that it was considering all of my very specific weird criteria.

49:22David Pierce:So how much time do you feel like this process saved you? Like, I think the question of, you know, find me a coffee shop I would not have found or I haven't been to before, but people are kind of out there. You can do that, right? Like, that's a piece of information that is not completely inaccessible to you. But I think it seems like there is something to the combination of it'll put a bunch of those things in there for you. And I think particularly in your situation, it seems like you were open to new things and you weren't like, find me the greatest experience I've ever had. It's just like, just build me a day.

49:54Let's go have fun. And then there's that actual sort of stitching together of all of it for you that seems like it might have genuinely turned a process that would take you a while into a process that happened pretty automatically. But do you feel like it actually saved you some time to do it this way?

50:09Paul Miller:I think it did. I mean, I got home on time and that's not I'm usually rushing. You know, I kind of am. I'm usually a little too optimistic about like, oh, you know, it usually takes like 40 minutes to get home on the bus. I can do it in 25. Yeah. Somehow, magically, I'm going to be able to do this faster. They say that's like a predictive personality trait. If you are optimistic about being able to do everything, then it's reasonably possible to do it. Yeah. You and I share that personality trait. It's a real problem. Are we sociopaths? I think so. It means you're a terrible person who is not considerate of other people's time.

50:44David Pierce:I think it's essentially the readout.

50:47Paul Miller:I've always suspected this. So there was something that helped me, I think, mentally to just have those numbers in front of me of like, OK, you really got you really should leave at 350. And I was like, OK, that's the time I need to leave. Sort of having that in front of me, I think, was more the benefit. it. I think it really did, you know, help a lot with connecting all the dots, like especially when I made it kind of a complicated day. But there was a value to, you know, you look at, I look at Google Maps. I'm like, I could go anywhere. How on earth do you pick a place to go? I could go to a beautiful park on the lake.

51:30Paul Miller:I could go have a totally different kind of experience over here. And then I tend to end up in like my safe zone where I'm like, well, I know this neighborhood pretty well. I'm just going to go there. Having a computer be like, hey, you're going to Tacos Chukis. And I'm like, sure. I wasn't really thinking about tacos. But yeah, the computer said. Sort of helped me just to like fill in the blank canvas that can feel overwhelming, I think. Yeah. And again, I think that's one of the things Google Maps has never been very good at. And I think I suspect a thing you as a parent of a young child do that I also do all the time is try desperately to find things going on around me at any given time.

52:15And that is something Google Maps is not great at, but neither is anybody else. Right. You're like, what fun things are happening around this weekend? And there's just not a good answer for that anywhere on the Internet. Google Maps is probably better at it, but that like the explore tab is not much. but I've had reasonable luck just being like what's what's cool and new and interesting happening and and ask map seems to just be able to find that more than some other things which I think is very cool but I do wonder and this comes back to the like how it feels to turn all of this over to the computer thing there that question of I am just allowing this thing to decide for me based on what it knows like google maps you know google take the wheel uh how did that feel like

53:00David Pierce:It's obviously it's one thing to do as an experiment, but like in your in your day to day life, is that a thing you'll feel comfortable doing?

53:05Paul Miller:I think to different degrees, like when I'm on my own, you know, left to my own devices, this is definitely a realm where I'm like, yeah, I could use a little help filling in the dots here. I want to do X, Y, and Z, where I see myself using it as more of finding these particular places or experiences if I'm looking for something to do with my family. In Seattle, we have a new extension for our light rail system that connects the east side of the city with Seattle proper for the first time. And it's awesome. It actually takes you over Lake Washington. It's the first light rail system to go over a floating bridge.

53:52Paul Miller:Who knew? But I was like, this is rad. Where can we go along this new part of the line? And it put together some suggestions like, you know, there's a playground in this neighborhood and there's actually like a viewing platform so you can see the trains go by. So that's kind of what I did with my kid on Saturday. I was like, look, bud, we're getting on the light rail and we're just going to like, he loves vehicles. Like this was a very easy sell. I didn't do the whole like, we're going to leave here by this time. You know, I was just kind of like, OK, here's a couple of places. God willing, we'll see how everybody's mood is.

54:35Paul Miller:But it was very successful. And I don't think I would have found exactly the same places, just kind of like scrolling around on Google Maps the way I want to. Yeah, I find with a lot of this stuff, and there's some of this going on on Yelp and other platforms too, that there's just a certain amount of filtering and button pressing you get used to doing on all of these platforms. That's like, okay, I search for restaurant and then I have to go and I click filters and I click outdoor seating and I click open now and I click. And there's just a bunch of stuff you have to do to sort of take this giant database of stuff and winnow it down to what you want.

55:09And the actual better thing is just like, I'm with my kid and we need a snack right now. Yep. Where do I go? and and what you actually need in so many of these cases is just an answer a successful answer is so much more important than like i'm going to spend 30 minutes finding the perfect place for us to go and i think for the most part that is certainly my life experience is like i i would like something

55:34David Pierce:pretty good as quickly as possible which ironically is the whole pitch of ai i know right reasonably good as quickly as possible is like the best case scenario story of AI. And I think in Google math case, it's actually perfectly suited to a lot of use cases. But I do wonder, and this is sort of the bigger picture thing I've been thinking about is there are obviously lots of questions about all of the data that these tools are collecting about you as you move around. There's all these questions about what's it doing with the content that people are creating? Like what, what does it mean that everybody's everything from like reviews to internet content is being sort of subsumed into this tool that really does not spend a lot of time sourcing its information.

56:16Like in my test so far, it is not interested in pointing you back to anything. It's just, here's a bunch of information, go about your day. Even the place information from a lot of these places is just being dumped into these AI systems. And this stuff is not unique to Google Maps. This is happening in Gemini and everything else elsewhere. But what do you make of the kind of AI in, AI out piece of Ask Maps here?

56:39Paul Miller:Yeah, I thought about this a lot because it sort of mirrors what I do, like reviewing phones in a way. You know, if you think about someone who reviews restaurants or, you know, is sort of a curator for maybe a website like Eater, which I read all the time. Not a plug for our Vox Media friends. Shout out to Eater. Shout out to Eater. I genuinely just am always on Seattle Eater. There's sort of that aspect where it's like, you know, in me, my job, I have the perspective of like, I get to use every phone. Like every phone that comes out in this country is for sale. I get to use it and I have that perspective and I can like share based on that.

57:28Paul Miller:I don't live with one single phone every day. And there are better sources of information if you're looking for like one particular thing about a phone, which is kind of the beautiful thing about, you know, there's maybe a Reddit community or a blog that is like focused on that specific thing. um so I kind of got to a place with uh with Ask Maps where I'm like maybe this is helping me fill in these gaps you know I'm still gonna read Eater um I'm still interested in a Seattle Times like restaurant review and that sort of informs my like overall understanding of you know the the scene in Seattle, then I have my my weird little specific requests and questions.

58:22Paul Miller:And that's usually answered by other people, you know, not professional restaurant reviewers. And I think there's all kinds of thorny things there with like, does one thing become too powerful and it puts other restaurant reviewers out of business? I don't I hope not. You know, I kind of landed And maybe I'm rationalizing, but I'm sort of at peace with it as far as my own use goes. That it really helps me fill in the gaps and fill in the like hyper specific stuff where I'm like, you know, an eater is not going to be able to answer. They don't have a list of the top 20 restaurants in Seattle for kids who are like super into vehicles.

59:11Paul Miller:They don't have to be vehicle themed. They can be near, you know, like the light rail. They just need a big parking lot. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Parking lot with some weird cars. We love it. And then on the flip side, nor is Google Maps going to be the place to be like, OK, who is doing really interesting, innovative stuff that I should go and like make a point of going to? Yes, exactly. Google Maps has never been good at that and has actually tried a bunch of times to be good at that and mostly failed. And so I think you're exactly right. Falling back to this, we are just going to solve this very simple day-to-day problem for you without trying to sort of be discovery-based and help kind of curate the best of anything.

59:52Like, Google doesn't really try that anymore, and I think it's probably the right decision. There are others who are better at that. But I think about this also in terms of maybe this is just my own moral quandary with Google Maps, but I am perpetually both using Google Maps for everything and sort of petrified how much Google Maps knows about me. And it feels like Ask Maps just extends that on both counts, right? Because now, if I essentially just allow Google Maps to follow me around everywhere, it's going to know more about me, give me better recommendations, have more history with me. It's the same thing we talk about with all of these like always on recording devices where there's real upside to having it track all of my conversations and what I'm doing and who I'm with and all this stuff.

1:00:38It's also just creepy as all hell when it works. And I think I struggle with this all the time with Google Maps just in general. Like I will navigate all the way home. But then when I get to like 10 minutes from my house, I close the app because something in me is just like I know that Google Maps knows where I live. But the idea of it knowing that I've arrived home freaks me out. And that's nonsense. Like to be clear, that doesn't make any sense. But it is how I feel.

1:01:06Paul Miller:Yeah. And then yet on the other side, whenever I'm using Google Maps and I'm on the highway and it pops up the thing that's like, you know, 10 people reported police here, police still there. And you can either press still there or not there. I make such a point of hitting that every time. Yeah. Because I'm like, this is and this goes back to what I'm saying about the trade earlier. It's like this is a staggeringly useful piece of technology. Right. To give me the real-time traffic information and to tell me where the cops are and to tell me the accident that's coming up and navigate me around it.

1:01:39We give it a vast amount of data about us and about everyone. But in return, we get this incredibly useful tool. And I think I'm very comfortable with that trade of what I get for giving you this information about me. but it does again it feels like ai just in general but especially with location stuff just makes that so much more acute i don't know is this is this a quandary for you in the same way that it is for me or am i just way too deep in my own head about this no i i definitely feel

1:02:08Paul Miller:it especially when you bring ai into the equation it's like i i have decades of history on google maps. It probably knows every address I've lived at in the past 20 years or whatever.

1:02:22David Pierce:Again, go to your location information. It will terrify you.

1:02:25Paul Miller:So horrifying. Didn't for a while, maybe it still does this and I just unsubscribe, but it would give you like an email digest every month. Like, here's where you went last month. I'm like, absolutely not. I'm good. People super want to be reminded of all of this information that we have about them. Take a little trip down memory lane. Don't love that. Yeah, there is a weird thing with AI, especially when it comes to like my family where I'm it knows my child's name. I've put my kids I've tagged my kid in Google Photos and you do that. You can even do that little game where it's like, is this your kid?

1:03:06Paul Miller:Is this a picture of your kid? And you you ask you say yes or no. AI knows his name. It is a totally different thing when I hear it repeated or like spoken out loud to me. If I'm like talking to Gemini and it's like, well, Lennox really loves cars. So you should. And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold up. Yeah. There is just something about like having it spoken back to you or it's like, hey, I know a ton about you. So maybe it is just we like that veil of like, you know, that the data is there, but you're not like presenting it, like putting it in my face quite so acutely. Yeah, it is. It is a strange user interface problem as much as anything.

1:03:51It's like how how much can you present to me that you know me before it starts to seem really creepy? I was thinking like I was thinking about this this morning. I went and got a breakfast sandwich and a coffee at a place that has good versions of both. That is right down the street from me. And part of me is like, well, wouldn't it be great if Google, when I dropped the kid off at daycare, was just like, hey, you're probably going there again, right? You want to navigate? Let's do this. Or like, hey, there's traffic. Or, hey, try this place. There are all these ways it could be useful and interesting and proactive.

1:04:22And I think almost every single one of them would feel really creepy. Yeah. I think seeing, you can tell even in the interface of Ask Maps, they're trying to figure out how much can we present about your history and about your preferences and about what we know before it starts feeling less like a search engine and more like Big Brother.

1:04:42Paul Miller:Yeah, I have those moments, too, where I'm like, I find myself getting annoyed with technology. I'm like, why didn't you suggest that? Like, you know what I'm doing. Why can't you just open up this app when I get to the bus stop? But yeah, have that moment of like, do I want that? Actually, that might be a little much. It's creepy.

1:05:03David Pierce:Yeah, agreed. But I feel like on balance, you've had a good experience with Ask Maps. Like you would tell people to push the glowy button and give it a whirl, right? I feel like I would too.

1:05:13Paul Miller:Oh, yeah. Yeah, I had, I think really did help me in my mental state of being like, oh, I go to my same places, you know, get me outside of this. And I had like, honestly, the best day. And it's maybe not hard when you're using most of your workday to go eat tacos and like wander around. Yeah, I went, it was pouring rain. It was not a great day to be wandering around Seattle, but I did it anyway. I went into the conservatory at Volunteer Park, where it kind of had me. it presented the option it was like you know it's going to be raining if you want to get out of the rain you could go into this conservatory um and it was beautiful and i had like such a lovely experience and i was like i i'm surrounded by plants and i'm happy i love them yeah so for that kind of thing it definitely helped in in kind of multiple ways of like just getting the suggestion where it's like, I'm aware of Volunteer Park and I'm aware of the conservatory.

1:06:21Paul Miller:It just wouldn't cross my mind to be like, you know what? It's a super rainy day. I think I will trek across town with a 20-minute walk between locations. But it ended up being really great. So I'm definitely gonna use it for that i'm definitely using it for my weird um show me all the the places in seattle that have a view of train tracks you know i can bring my kid um and i yeah i i have a lot of plans for it i guess i love that um all right we should take a break um but will you stick around we have another extremely alice encoded hotline question yes i love it it's it's it's even better than the last one.

1:07:07We're going to have a great time. We'll be right back.

1:07:38Nilay Patel:And participate in McDonald's while supplies last. Tomorrow morning is knocking. Stock your fridge now. How about a creamy mocha frappuccino drink? Or a sweet vanilla? Smooth caramel, maybe. Or a white chocolate mocha. Whichever you choose, delicious coffee awaits. Find Starbucks frappuccino drinks wherever you buy your groceries. For the last 10 years, everything in American politics has basically revolved around one man. And as a political journalist who came of age during Donald Trump's rise in 2016, I've had a front row seat. I am officially running for president of the United States. It's going to be only America first.

1:08:18Nilay Patel:America first. Thousands of supporters of President Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol building. But is it possible to talk about politics without talking about Donald Trump? That's the question I'm going to ask in our new show from Vox. The idea of like a post-Trump or not exactly Trump-focused show can exist because he's not really driving any agenda items. It really does feel like so reactive. You know, I think this Iran thing is also going to cause a big split in the GOP. So far, it doesn't among like people who say they're MAGA voters are still with Trump. But like for the first time, you see on a major issue open opposition from the start of this war.

1:08:55Nilay Patel:I'm Estet Herndon and welcome to America Actually.

1:09:04David Pierce:All right, we're back. Let's do a question from the VergeCast hotline. As always, the number is 866-VERGE-11. The email is vergecasttotheverge.com. Allison, we have another silly question about phones. Yes. We talked recently on the show about the idea of replacing your phone with a watch and something else. You made a very strong case that it was watch and foldable phone. Actually, a very compelling combination. We have a different idea in our inbox this time. Let me play this one for you. Hi, Stephen calling from Montreal, Quebec.

1:09:37Nilay Patel:I was just wondering, I was listening to your conversation about using the Apple Watch as a way to get rid of your phone. What if there was just a good e-ink phone? Could a good e-ink phone be the thing that would just slow things down enough that I'm not going to watch Reels or TikTok videos and get lost for hours? because it's going to make me actually read things. And if I'm actually done reading something, I'll actually put it down. Anyway, I just thought that maybe that would be a good solution. Is there ever going to be a good e-ink phone? Thanks.

1:10:13David Pierce:Okay, Allison, I lied. This is actually a me-coded question.

1:10:16Paul Miller:I see the crossover. Yeah, yeah.

1:10:18David Pierce:I brought you here to give you my TED Talk about e-ink smartphones.

1:10:21Paul Miller:Oh, no.

1:10:23David Pierce:But I do wonder, you and I have talked about this in the past. There are people doing the like e-ink on the back, normal screen on the front phone. There's you've seen I think you saw at MWC the latest version of the ones with like the e-ink mode. This is this is an idea that will not die and yet never seems to actually work. And I wonder if you can just try and decode what this that what what an e-ink smartphone might do that would be great for people and why so far it can't pull it off.

1:10:54Paul Miller:I sort of tried to do this myself when I did my little Apple Watches My Phone Adventure. I had a TCL phone. It's one of those that has the e-ink-ish mode. They call it like Next Paper or something. Yeah, Next Paper. There's a little slider on the side where you like go into Next Paper mode and it just makes the screen like monochrome. I had that just on Wi-Fi, no cell plan attached to it. So that's how I rationalized. I was like, okay, I don't really have a phone with me. I have my Apple Watch and I have this weird kind of e-ink phone. It was kind of a nice combination because in that e-ink mode, you get like crazy battery life.

1:11:43Paul Miller:Which, you know, is true of an e-ink, an actual e-ink phone. um the the weirdness about it um is that you do still if you're doing an apple watch you do still kind of need an iphone um and i found that you know the iphone that was attached to apple watch had to be at home on um on the network and then it relays all of your like slack notifications and whatever you want to the Apple Watch. So there's a little bit of chess of like, you have an iPhone, but you don't bring it. But in it, you set it somewhere safe and then you bring your weird little ink device with the Apple Watch. It did kind of work.

1:12:30Paul Miller:Like I got to the coffee shop and I was like, I'm gonna read an article or something that I bookmarked. And it was lovely. I put the thing away. When it's a mode on the phone, I think it gets a little like, yeah, you could just turn it off and scroll TikTok if you want. So I think that's where maybe people would be interested in like, give me the full pure ink device. But yeah, does this appeal to you as the foremost Books Palma? Yeah, I'm sitting here with my Books Palma 2 in front of me. This is not a bit.

1:13:03David Pierce:This is just here in front of me. To me, the thing is, an experiment I encourage anyone who wants a phone like this to do is just note every time you scroll on your phone because scrolling sucks on easy it just does like it's it's bad it's ugly it leaves artifacts it's just bad and uh even if you don't want to do social media and i think the thing where i can get the the new the books palma 2 pro uh has a full-on cellular capabilities you can use it as your phone if you want to it's it's let down by the screen. So like you shouldn't buy that one. But like the theory is getting close. And the idea that it will prevent you from using TikTok because TikTok is bad and it will prevent you from doing other things is all true.

1:13:49But like to our earlier conversations, the number of times you're going to need to do things like look at a restaurant website on your phone or pan through Google Maps or just any number of like little things that you do all day, every day, like scroll through Spotify. Those things are annoying. And it's one thing when you have it as a secondary device that is very deliberately like this is mostly for reading and occasionally when I need to do something else I can like that's very powerful right there's a reason I like this better than a Kindle because it is mostly for reading but it also has these other backup capabilities just in case you need them yeah I find that to be very powerful but for me it's like nine out of ten apps that I use on my phone suck on the Books Palma four of those apps I would love to not use and I'm happy they suck but the other five I need all day every day yeah and it just it's death by a thousand cuts for me it's like e-ink is just not it's not fast enough it's not sharp enough I just don't want to do phone things and there are a lot of phone things that are good and useful and valuable and you just have to do them on your phone like pictures camera experience

1:14:58David Pierce:on e-ink garbage yeah never gonna get any better so I don't know to me it's just like this there is to me there's just this fundamental mismatch of technology but like you bring up the next paper thing and there is something in that it's a switch you can throw idea that feels like maybe if there is a correct answer it's that i don't think it's one screen on the front and one screen on the back but it's like there's something to the maybe my phone can have two different modes and there is something to the friction of switching them that is powerful i don't know is anyone else other than tcl working on that i feel like i see a next paper concept like once every 12 months and no one else

1:15:35Paul Miller:seems interested in this idea i know yeah i i love them for it i the only and it's not e-ink but it reminded me of the the monochrome e-ink type thing um fair phone has that little mode you switch into which is more like yeah more like a focus mode where you're like i don't want access to everything I am doing this right now. Maybe it's my out and about and I have access to Google Maps and Spotify and what have you. And then, but yeah, having the little slider, the little switch where it's not, it's not just in software where I can just tap and be like, you know what? I am actually, give me access to everything.

1:16:19I spent so long trying to do screen time limits for apps and was like, oh, it's actually really easy to just hit the button and enter my passcode. Like this accomplishes nothing.

1:16:28Paul Miller:Right. Yeah. But yeah, that one added bit of friction might be something, especially if it is like a switch you have to throw. Like, have you used the brick at all, the little device people use to try and disconnect? No. You know what? Life as a phone reviewer is funny. Fair. I'm like, sure, yeah, I'd love to use my phone less. Kind of need to keep using the phone. But yeah, I am aware of these solutions. That's another one, though, that it's like it's one tick extra friction and winds up being released. Like I keep hearing from people all over the place where like the brick is the thing that worked for me.

1:17:07Because now if I want to use TikTok, I have to walk upstairs and my phone and it's there and I can do it. But just the fact that I have to stand up and go on brick, my phone makes me not use TikTok.

1:17:19David Pierce:And it's even, I think, maybe a switch on your phone is not quite that much friction, but even that might be enough. I have to reach over and flip a thing that says, I want to waste time now. Yes. And maybe if we can figure out how to do that, that's more useful than trying to totally ruin the user experience in the name of using your phone less.

1:17:40Paul Miller:Yeah. There's a combination there. Someone's just got to figure it out. Yeah. That said, if you make an e-ink phone, tell me about it because I will try it. 100%. I will throw my life into your e-ink phone. And then it won't be any good and I'll send it back and go back to my iPhone. This is what we do. Ruining your life with phones. This is what we do. What are you testing right now? Any weird phones in Allison's world these days? You want to know what was the weirdest little adventure? I used the iPhone Air for a little bit. And I think I like it. I think it's a modular phone. It's a modular phone.

1:18:18Paul Miller:And it's good for like two people. There's two people who should buy it. You and like Apple executives. Yeah, yeah. People who work at Apple and if you're a phone reviewer, who carries two phones? Yeah, that sounds about right. I mean, true. As a second phone, hell yeah. Right. You know what I mean? Like if you're going to spend all that money on a second phone, A, what is wrong with you? And B, you are my people. Welcome to the first cast. Yeah, go for it. All right, Allison, thank you as always for being here.

1:18:48David Pierce:Appreciate it.

1:18:48Paul Miller:Thank you.

1:18:49David Pierce:All right, that's it for the show. Thank you to Kate and Allison for being here. And thank you as always for watching and listening. If you have thoughts, questions, feedback, if you've had great or terrible experiences with either cookie banners or with Ask Maps, I want to hear all about them. 866-VERGE-11 is the hotline. vergecast at theverge.com is the email address. Send everything. If you found a really bad cookie banner, take a screenshot and send it to me. I don't know what we're going to do with it, but I want to name and shame the worst cookie banners, and I need your help. Also, one bit of housekeeping before we get out of here.

1:19:19David Pierce:So in two weeks, on April 21st, on Tuesday, we're going to do a whole episode about The Verge. We do this periodically, but we get lots of questions about how The Verge works and about how our business is going and about how we think about the future of media and about why Neelai is the way that he is. So every once in a while, we try to just do an episode and answer as many of your questions as possible. And we're going to do that in two weeks. So if you have questions, again, 866-VERGE11 is the hotline. Vergecast at theverge.com is the email address. Send them all in. We're going to answer as many of them as we can, all in one episode.

1:19:50David Pierce:It's going to be a really fun one. Until then, The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, and Travis Larchuk. Neelai and I will be back on Friday to talk about all of the news, open AI stuff going on. There's some wild stuff happening in politics and the world and the price of everything. We're going to talk about all of it. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.

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