Truth, lies, and the Trump Phone

29:46I think that could be really interesting. I don't think that's where we're headed because I think Apple and Samsung and the carriers remain way too powerful. But there is like a glimmer of a thing here that is like I can get access to wireless networking for a small amount of money and make it accessible in whatever way I want to other people that I think is like potentially a very powerful idea. Right now it's Ryan Reynolds and SmartLess and Donald Trump. Yeah. But we're starting to see other stuff. And I think like Klarna, the buy now pay later company launched an MVNO this week. And it's like weird again, but like, I don't know.

30:24You can just start to see stuff happening when it's not like my entire life on my phone is not mediated through Verizon anymore. Interesting stuff could start to happen. And it's just a very straightforward shift from the consumer perspective, because you if you're on Verizon, you kind of need to get your phone from Verizon nine times out of 10, or that makes it a lot easier. They make it very appealing for you to do that. When you're on an MVNO, it's a lot easier to just buy your phone from Amazon and put the SIM in or activate the eSIM or whatever it is. And I think that is a shift basically the UK market went through a few years ago.

30:55I know for me, that's when I moved from getting my phones on contract from one of the big networks. I then switched to an MVNO about a decade ago, and then was like, wait, I can just buy a Nexus phone on Amazon. And that's cheaper than doing it on the contract. And then I just put the SIM in and that works. And oh, wow, I've saved so much money by doing this. And I think that's basically the slow shift we've had. And then as soon as Amazon can be the big phone player, it completely changes who's putting phones on the market. I remember I bought my wife an unlocked Pixel 8 relatively recently. It was on this like giant sale at Best Buy.

31:27And I bought her one and she was like blown away that I could just take her SIM card out and put it in her new phone and it would work. Like this is going to sound insane to anyone who doesn't live in the United States, but we have been so convinced by these companies that this is like a tightly controlled thing that only a couple of companies can manage for us and that probably takes a professional to manage. No. And especially with eSIMS, like you were saying, Jake, all this stuff can just move around again now. Like there's so much potential here. I 100 % agree with her. Like even when I do this with my own phones, I'm like, are they gonna let me get away with it?

32:03Like it feels like open in a revolutionary way when it's actually just like, no, like this is just my data. This is my connectivity. This is my number. Of course, I should be able to move from here to here. And it is kind of a marvel that we're still able to do that. And, you know, eSIM does make it a little bit trickier, but in some ways, but it also makes it a lot more accessible in others because now you can just pop over to whatever network you feel like. yeah there is again i i suspect this ends closer to trump and smart list than it does to full democratization of wireless networks but like i gotta have something to hope for here you know what i mean uh all right dom we need to let you go here in a minute because it is late and you need to go but before we do what is the coolest phone you've seen recently that jake and i are never going to get to touch in the united states oh uh the vivo x200 ultra which i wrote about on the site the other day which uh i wish i had had a hand it's like in a cupboard just out of arm's reach um but it's uh it comes with this attachable camera lens a telephoto lens that you like clip onto the uh the main module um so you basically have this optional not quite but getting the dslr quality telephoto strapped onto your phone when you want it to be um which sound is one of those ideas that sounds stupid and sounds like it would be awful and you really do look very stupid using it it's very silly looking but then you take the photos and you're like ah it's worth it jake has been making fun of me for having this particular dream for like 10 years i okay i legitimately i read dom's story about this i went this looks insane and then i absolutely want this like it's incredible it's like i i love that they're doing this i have no idea why it doesn't make any sense but it's delightful the trump mobile t2 8003 is gonna have one of these and it's gonna change everything you guys just watch all right dom you need to go we need to take a break uh and then And we're going to come back and we got so much more stuff to talk about.

33:56Dom, thank you for being here. Thanks. Bye. We'll be right back. Let's be honest. Are you happy with your job? Like, really happy? The unfortunate fact is that a huge number of people can't say yes to that. Far too many of us are stuck in a job we've outgrown or one we never wanted in the first place. But still, we stick it out. And we give reasons like, what if the next move is even worse? I've already put years into this place. And maybe the most common one, isn't everyone kind of miserable at work? But there's a difference between reasons for staying and excuses for not leaving. It's time to get unstuck.

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36:54All right, we're back. Jake, it's just you and me. Let's do it. Can I make a potentially insane sounding argument to you that I don't actually think is that insane? You're going to think I'm crazy, but then at the end, you're going to think I'm not crazy. I just have to clarify for the audience, this is our daily work. This is just how it goes. This is true. Let's go. Let's do it. Jake edits most of my stories, and every once in a while I just appear, and I'm like, I said something absurd. Can you make sure it's not absurd as I'm hoping it might be? I would like to argue that this week is the end of television.

37:28Okay. In a bunch of ways, you can mark some studies and data that came out this week as the moment old school TV died. um i want to hear i want to hear your numbers i want to hear your argument um this is one of those things where uh if it you're not saying it died with one grand uh strike right this is still it's a long arc and you're saying we've crested and traditional tv is now its moment has passed i i it's more apocalyptic than that so what i what i actually think is happening so the way have come to understand this business is that for a long time tv made just earth shatteringly huge amounts of money right like that that's just true it was an unbelievable business for a really long time and then streaming came up and a lot of these companies made the bet that streaming is going to rise and cable is going to fall and by cable i mean cable and broadcast which is an important distinction that i i will make a couple of times here uh that that is going to fall but it is going to throw off so much money while it slowly dies because a lot of people who have cable are going to keep having cable and there's a lot of money in cable and it's a very sticky thing that like eventually everyone who has cable will die and the cable business will die with it but until then cable will be around it'll throw off lots of money so we're going to keep investing in cable that as we've talked about a bunch on this show has been slowly shifting faster and faster and faster right i think there was a sense that maybe this was like a multiple decade change into like Maybe it's a one decade change.

39:05And what we've learned is that this is it's a momentum business, right? Because so much of it is about where do you put ad dollars that in theory, everybody could just move it tomorrow. Because if all the ad money goes away, none of it works anymore. Because for a variety of reasons that we can get into. And so what I think there is a thing that happened this week, which is the Nielsen gauge. Nielsen is the company that has done TV ratings for forever. the gauge is the thing they've been doing since 2021 i believe to also try and measure streaming and basically everybody actually says it's an imperfect measurement but it is sort of directionally useful over time uh and what happened this most recent version of the gauge was that streaming was bigger than cable and broadcast tv for the first time ever uh this is like a hugely meaningful moment right so the number was that streaming accounted for 44 percent of viewership broadcasting cable accounted for 44.2 percent so 44.8 versus 44.2 if you were to say david where's the other 11 i don't have a good answer for you that's there's like an other category that i the tv is just off you're just where it's frame tvs you're just looking at the art yeah like yeah something like that um but anyway so that that's a big change and the momentum is just nuts can i just read you a bunch of numbers from yeah so uh YouTube main, which is sort of the industry term for like regular YouTube, not YouTube TV, not YouTube shorts, just YouTube, the proper YouTube app.

40:41Google, as always, very good at branding. YouTube main accounts for 12.5 % of all streaming, which is as big as Netflix and Disney Plus combined. It has been just dominant in this space for the last couple of years. It's up 120 % in four years. Well, we've talked about it, how YouTube's biggest platform is now the TV, which I like still feels bewildering to me. Like YouTube, my own YouTube usage has increased dramatically over the past like five years even, which is honestly on a personal level bad. It's not good. I should spend less time on YouTube. But like for me, it's still very much a laptop thing.

41:23But you look at the numbers and you look at where their product efforts are going and it is to the TV. And these numbers very much show you why. Yeah, I remember for years I would meet with people at YouTube and they would say the living room is our fastest growing screen. But it was for a long time. It was like it went from very small to still very small, but bigger. Right. And like fastest growing is a relative term. But then kind of in the last 18 months, it started to turn to like, no, this is actually our biggest platform. And now they're starting to redesign YouTube around the TV. Like we're seeing real TV first parts of YouTube in a way that I think is really fascinating.

41:59But I wrote a thing earlier this year for YouTube's 20th anniversary that was basically like YouTube is just winning the entertainment industry. And that is that continues to be true. But the fact that it was up 120 percent in the last four years just blew my mind. Like, think about how dominant YouTube was in 2021. And it has more than doubled in in as on television since then. Insane. Seems impossible. So that's just one in like regular streaming services. I think we think of YouTube as kind of its own thing, but in the realm of like traditional streaming services, Netflix has been in first place for four years running.

42:36It's up 27 % over the four years that the gauge has been running. And it accounts for like seven, I think seven and a half percent of streaming. So like huge. Netflix is like the winner of the streaming wars in like every meaningful way and is still getting its ass kicked by YouTube. But anyway, so Netflix growing like crazy, YouTube growing like crazy. in that same period of time, broadcast, according to Nielsen's gauge, has been down 21 % and cable has been down 39%. That is falling much faster than I would expect. Yes. And like, that's just absent the ad dollars problem, right? This is just people are shifting their behaviors.

43:16And I really expected this industry to sort of just like chug along pretty indefinitely. And those are some dramatic, devastating declines that are really going to imperil the ability to operate those businesses. And I think I mean, I suspect for a lot of our listeners and certainly for me, it's like, yeah, of course. Right. Like I have never had a cable subscription of my own. Right. Right. Because, you know, by the time I was out of college, right, like streaming was available. Why would I not just stream everything that I that I need on the rare occasions? Right. I went to I went to a bar to watch the finale of Breaking Bad.

44:00I think that was that was the like the one where I was like, OK, I do need cable for this. But that just like doesn't even that doesn't happen anymore. Right. Like that scenario doesn't come up where the thing you want to watch, you can't get access to at home like one way or another. You can find a way to stream it, even if you have to sign up for an entire service that you don't want, or even if you have to sign up for like a bundled cable streaming service for a month. But it's all it's all doable. And it's and it's like, you know, there is much to complain about in terms of, OK, we've just recreated the cable bundle in a million different ways.

44:38Sure. Great. It turns out that streaming did not exactly save us a ton of money. And it is, in fact, wildly complicated. But these things are all available. It's all possible. You have those options in front of you. And I think like that has actually accelerated pretty dramatically, probably just over the recent like five years, maybe during the time that we've seen that big decline. Right. I think a lot of these stragglers were the traditional broadcast networks. And now you're finally going to be able to get those major live events that traditionally you still would have had to have a cable subscription to get access to.

45:17Now that's all streaming. There's very little that you need to have cable for. You need to have cable if you just want to have that experience of being able to flip through the channels and not really worry about it too much. And this becomes like a self-fulfilling thing over time, right? I've been thinking a lot about sports rights, and I remember not that many years ago, all of the leagues made a point to stick with the broadcast networks because what they kept saying was, it's important to us that we have a product that is accessible to everybody. And in a few spots would leave money on the table in order to do so.

45:48It matters to the NFL that it is essentially accessible to everyone, even if that means not letting Amazon give you all of the money in the known universe to do so. But the thing that has changed, right, is that you can make an increasing case that actually if you want to reach everybody all at once, the move is to do it on Netflix. That like I think if you just took a poll of people that you know, more of them are likely to have Netflix than to have like a quick way to watch Fox. And that is a giant cultural shift that I think we're only starting to see the money follow. but that's the thing like when i see numbers like this it's like every everybody in this space watches the nielsen gauge like say what you want about the numbers it is it is the gold standard of how the advertisers in particular look at this stuff and they're going to look at this and they're going to say oh it moved not it's moving but like it moved we have this this thing that we have been thinking was going to eventually changed has now changed well it's funny we we were talking about uh uh warner brothers discovery uh splitting in half last week and one of the i mean part of it is because zazzle has done a disastrous job but uh another part of it is like they're splitting it into the thing that streams really well and the stuff that is cable tv and that's just their good luck right it does make a bunch of that stuff make sense and we should like comcast comcast by by the way, disclosure, an investor in Vox Media, giant fans of ours, did the same thing.

47:21They were like, okay, we're going to take the thing that's kind of working, which is Peacock, which is, by the way, womp womp, like at the very bottom, it's like the lowest one that the Nielsen Gage even ranks. There's like, it's Peacock and then it's Other. Like, you did it. They were popping champagne bottles when they made that list, okay? They're like, we have the logo on there now. That's all we need. But they did the same thing. They took the thing that works and then split off all of the cable companies. And it was like, those companies now are just being essentially put out to pasture.

47:54Like there is this sense that not that long ago, there was this belief that like, oh, we should keep ESPN because it funds the rest of Disney and it will for a long time. And that idea is just quickly going away everywhere. And this is what I mean by, I think like we're going to look at this This is the moment it died because like everybody has been waiting for this sort of moment of confirmation that the change has happened. And this is not young people stream more. This is not like cable nevers or this is this is people in America are streaming more than they are watching cable. And even Nielsen's thing, I think, was like these numbers are very close.

48:35So like it'll probably shift and, you know, sports will start and it'll jump up again. But they were like, the trend is unchanging and it very soon will be permanent that the streaming number is higher. And once that happens, it's going to get weirder and the money is going to move even faster. I do wonder if there is a floor, right? You still hear about like, somehow there's still some AOL dial-up customers. And they're just like, it works, I'm not changing. I'm sure there's a lot of people who just have cable and they're just never going to unsubscribe. I could see it like falling to a point and just staying there steadily for a while.

49:13But honestly, it sounds crazy. It really does sound crazy to be like, actually, TV is dead. It's done. But I think you might be right. Like this actually is a really momentous occasion. You have sold me on this. Did it? It does mean that I think we're going to probably continue to see some big changes in the streaming space too as everybody races to take advantage of that growth, right? Because this means there is more opportunity there now. It also means they just by necessity have to go over there. One of the big things that we haven't talked about yet that I'm curious how much it is contributing to this is the fast channels.

49:49Because that feels like a relatively new trend to me. And it seems like they are, you know, there are new ones launching every single week somehow. And that seemed to be very popular. So I'm really curious if that is contributing to this, if part of this is that people are going, oh, I can I can actually just watch stuff for free. Like there are maybe even fewer ads on these free streaming TV channels. Like what what am I doing with cable still? Like I'm paying a hundred dollars or more a month for this giant bundle of channels. I don't even know what's on half of them. and you know the fast channels feel like one of those things that's like if if you had started that you know at the origin of streaming services that business model wouldn't have made sense because the ad dollars wouldn't have been there but now that dollars are shifting there there's all kinds of new things you can do with streaming and so i think we are going to continue to see number one more of these things launch um but probably some new models pop up i mean we also already see this with like Netflix and basically every other premium streaming service shifting to this like actually just watch the ads approach.

51:00Totally. And I think that yeah, the fast channels are fascinating because they're just so easy in a way that I think we talked about this for years, right? That like the biggest problem with streaming services is it's a hell of a lot of work to figure out what you want to watch. And what I miss about cable is I could just turn on my TV and it was just showing me television. And I would just like leave it on a channel and it would play things like that. That sounds different now, but that's what it was. And it was great. But now like the Roku channel is the fifth most popular streaming service.

51:34Yeah. It's a Roku channel. Like insane. And the Roku channel is, is just, it's purely a fast channel. And the only reason it's popular is because it's there because lots and lots and lots of people have Rokus and the Roku channel just has a lot of free stuff just sitting there for you to watch. and Tubi is also on this list. Tubi, more popular than Peacock. Tough day for Peacock. But you're totally right. And these two things are starting to sit side by side, right? You have Netflix for the high-end premium stuff that I sort of go watch on purpose. And then you have Tubi and the Roku channel for just like, just show me something.

52:15I'm consistently surprised at how much good programming is available on the fast channels. the frequency with which I will look up where I can watch a movie or a TV show. And they're like, oh, it's available with ads on this free thing. And I'm like, oh, with ads. And then it's like not even that many ads. Like it's they are the best value in streaming. It is really incredible. No question. I do think it's a lot of ads. And I think the problem is we are being sort of re-desensitized. That may be true. That may be true. Do you remember when they first started showing ads on some of these streaming services again?

52:49and it would be like one 30 second ad, two times a show. And you'd be like, ah, I'm gonna watch an ad. How dare you? Yeah. And now we're back to like, there was news last week that Amazon doubled its ad inventory. And like, I'm not gonna notice. It's just, we're just back to having too many ads all the time. And so the one that kills me on the fast services, and I don't know if they fixed this because I either just stopped noticing it or they got better at it, but they are just trash at knowing when to insert ads. It's just like something in their system is just like every seven minutes, just do two ads no matter what is going on.

53:26And so it'll be in the middle of a person's sentence. That's not good. And it'll just be like, bye, Charmin, toilet paper. And then it'll go back to the person's sentence in the middle. And I'm just like, this is not a good user experience. I'm fine with the ads, but like, can we put them where they go? I've still, maybe I've just been lucky. I've still had the like, the other side of the experience where sometimes I'm like, I can't believe this ad's on this. thing and then they will show again it's like they'll show me 30 second spot at the beginning of something and then i just watch a two-hour movie and i'm like i think you guys messed up here like there you needed to make me pay for this um it is the greatest scam in television when they're like we're gonna show you three minutes of ads and then you get the whole movie ad free and i'm just like tight i'm gonna leave for three minutes yeah i'm like you guys what are we accomplishing here didn't know you had this in your catalog like you've you just forgot to sell ads against this.

54:14Yep. Yeah, I'm just like, I'm going to go make popcorn and then I'm going to come back and I'm going to watch an ad-free movie. You can play an ad on my television while I'm not here if you'd like. This is part of the thing. Like, it is true. You are not always getting the best program. Sometimes it's great, but sometimes it is, in fact, it's like that it is the C tier of movies that are on these things sometimes. But you know what? There are a lot of good, bad movies out there. You know what I mean? This is the thing, like Netflix, you look through Netflix sometimes and you're like, I've seen all of these.

54:42And I'm like, I need that weird tier of movies that you don't feel like paying for Netflix because not a lot of people are going to watch them. But I've seen it. I know what you've got. Yeah, I'm completely with you. I've watched Hot Frosty five times now. What's next? Okay, first of all, Hot Frosty is great. Justice for Hot Frosty. I said nothing to suggest otherwise. there are very few things in my life that i enjoy as much as that period between thanksgiving and like december 23rd where there's just an infinite supply of bad new christmas movies if you're ever like who are these four the answer is me i and watch them i am the reason they keep getting made and let me tell you not sad this is why streaming is winning because now there's more crappy stuff for me to watch it's great times okay wait on the tv is dying can i can i offer you one more quick study on i'm telling you this is like an interesting week for oh no tv's dead so there was there's this group at uh at oxford called the reuters institute for the study of journalism uh and every year they do a big report on sort of the state of journalism in the world um it's it's real bleak it's just what i'll say about that uh it's not great to be a journalist there's a lot of stuff going on the misinformation is everywhere but But there were a couple of interesting shifts, particularly in the United States, that I thought were very interesting and also very bad news for television.

56:16So let me just read you from this report. It says, the proportion accessing news via social media and video networks in the United States is sharply up at 54%. So 54 % of people are getting news via social media and video networks, video networks being like TikTok and stuff like that. That number is actually lower than I would have guessed, but is high. And I think probably the younger the audience, the higher that number is going to be. That number, 54%, overtook both TV news, which is 50%, and news websites slash apps, 48%, for the first time. So now, for the first time ever, social media and video networks are the dominant place by which people in the United States access their news.

57:00And again, the trends suggest that number is only going to get even further away. TV is down 22%. Online news sites are down 21%. Print is down 33%. There's only one number going up, and it's social media and social networks. And everything else, podcasts, interestingly, hanging in there, doing fairly well, and are more popular in the US than almost anywhere else as a news source. But again, TV news, dying. yeah i mean this this makes a lot of sense right like the the in the old days in the old days right but a couple days of in the old years ago no but like right it was a real thing like the evening news was on you had to have it on if you wanted to know it right that was also when they showed the weather if you wanted to know what the what right and these things become increasingly less essential um it's funny like you know i don't know at what point in time i would have been like like goodness like you're you're eschewing the great television news in favor of some right right like i know this is a commentary on quality but it is certainly you know um i the rise of i think like social video news like that kind of maybe spells out where some of this viewship is going, right?

58:24And a lot of it is super, super creator-based in a way that is very different from the sort of giant networks that were around for the last generation. The whole way people experience this stuff has just changed. Well, actually, I have so many questions, and I would love to know when somebody says, yes, I get most of my news from TikTok, what does that mean to them? Does that mean that they caught a 10-second snippet of a podcast where somebody goes, you know, they just passed the Genius Act and that's going to regulate stable coins. And then they just like swipe up. Like, is that is that the thing?

59:00Is it somebody? Can I tell you a fact that's going to really bum you out? Oh, no. Would you like to hear a list of some of the podcasts that people said they turn to for news? Yeah. Would you like to know the most popular? Is it us? No, it's the Joe Rogan experience. Which I think fairly neatly answers your question right like yeah we there is also this giant change in what people perceive to be news that is used to be like a a sort of put together a report of some kind and you would watch it at 6 p.m and that's what the news was and then the news was like i don't know stuff on twitter and new york times.com and now news is something else and i feel like i can't even exactly describe what it is but it is very clear that like if you think if you're sitting there being like, I get most of my news from the Joe Rogan experience.

59:49That is like a fundamentally different understanding of how to move through the world than I am like fully capable of reckoning. It's so interesting. It's like, I mean, I go into the New York Times in some ways feels like the same audience who like likes to play chess and like, like, don't get me wrong. Like that's me. Right. But it's like, like, yo, you could play Sellers of Catan. Like you could play Fortnite. Those would be more fun. I get all my news from Fortnite, Jake. Right. And it's like, like, you know, sure, you could go to The New York Times and and it will have great reporting and you'll get things in a timely manner and it will be accurate.

1:00:26Or you can hear a version of it. And I'm putting version in like very serious like air quotes there on Joe Rogan, like some amount of time later. And I think that that makes a lot of sense to me. Right. Like news just becomes entertainment. Right. You're not seeking out news. You are seeking out entertainment and you happen to find out things about what is happening as a result. The problem with it being entertainment is that it is not always accurate. Listen, this is like a podcast. We're chatting, but we also uphold the same rigorous standards as we do on The Verge's website. Every single thing we're saying, we are making sure is accurate.

1:01:07I have never been wrong on The Vergecast before, ever. listen our takes our takes no promises there but uh you know this makes a lot of sense right and i think like to to go back to your argument about tv it's like yeah people are looking for the more entertaining engaging experiences and tv uh in a lot of like number one it's it's it's old it's inconvenient it is also just like it is work in a way that uh flipping through tiktok is actually like pretty fun yeah no it just it makes me think of like do you remember that phase when facebook went from like a thing that young people did and then all of a sudden it felt like in in the span of a week everybody's parents joined facebook like do you remember that moment where all of a sudden everyone was on you could just assume other people had facebook that's kind of what it feels like we're going through right now with a lot of this stuff where it's like none of these trends are surprising like you're saying like this has been happening we've been talking about it but the speed at which it happened and then this sort of immediate flip to like just everybody's on tiktok now it's not like every your your parents are on tiktok now god i hope that's on tiktok now but like many people's parents are on tiktok now and that that thing has just happened.

1:02:30The shift is done. And it will keep growing, but whatever inflection point we have been looking for, it happened. It inflected. And I think now we're just going to have to... There's going to be so many downstream effects of all of that. Even the way that these giant news organizations that are used to vast amounts of money being thrown off by their cable news networks, that's going to change. They're going to start thinking differently about how these platforms work. That's already been happening, but it's only going to accelerate. Like all of this stuff is going to change. I mean, it's interesting.

1:03:03Like news was the flagship program on a lot of these big broadcast networks, right? Like this was the primetime show. It happens like around dinnertime or right after dinnertime. So you could all watch it together. So it was there when you got home from work. Well, and then the next generation was 24 hour cable news was like the killer app of cable news or cable. And you look at Netflix, how many news shows do they have? There's like John Mulaney's show is like the closest thing. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Like it is just so interesting that news is just not a programming category that, that people are bothering with.

1:03:38Yeah. Yeah. It's, I don't know what to make of any of this. And I think like you, like you said earlier, none of this is a statement of quality. There's a lot of trash on TV. There's a lot of bad news on TV, but it is like, it is different now and it happened more quickly I think than anybody expected it to and we're like

1:04:26it's all gonna get faster from here. winning and this one is losing we're gonna go on the winning team and it just that's how it spirals it's also really funny how much this like we this whole streaming thing started as a way to get away from ads and commercials and actually it's all just loop back around and the thing that is driving it is that the ad dollars are now in streaming everybody's rushing their access where it is um can't escape it no this is just what we do here okay wait a couple more streaming things and then we should take a break uh one i think we just need to take like a very brief victory lap uh because max or warner brothers discovery announced this week that uh when you go into the max app which is not yet called hbo max again but will be soon uh every time i open the app on my tv i'm like waiting for it to change and it's going to be such a joyful moment when it switches to hbo max i'm gonna laugh hysterically but anyway uh now they're they're doing ai video previews and they're actually going to be mining platform data to figure out which parts of a show or movie they should show you in the preview in order to make you more likely to watch it and this is an idea that we had on the verge we we invented this on the verge cast and no one can convince me otherwise i don't remember what it was but i'll find it i cannot wait until they start showing the twist at the climax of movies and people are just like what the heck you guys do you ever do the thing on YouTube where like it has the it has the little graph of how much people play it and you just skip right to the most replayed bit I only do that that like why would you click anywhere else of course it's just you go to the sixth sense you just I'm just like he was dead the whole time what I needed yeah like that of course is what like oh this sounds intriguing yeah the the AI is going to be both right and horribly horribly wrong um and then the other one is uh the the we're gonna talk a bunch about meta in the lightning round because there's really fascinating set of meta news this week but the the streaming thing that it did this week was uh basically rename and rebrand all of the video on all of meta's products uh particularly on facebook as reels okay so oh my god me and uh barbara krasnoff on our team tried to get to the bottom of this a few months ago.

1:06:44We were trying to figure out like the different video products and what happened. And Facebook had at least three different video products. And I want to be clear. They looked the same. They worked the same. They were accessible through the same apps. They were just in different places. And we emailed them. And I believe they were like, yeah, some of them will play content from the others and others won't play content from the others. And so there's sort of different silos, but they're not different silos. Jake, are you saying we deserve credit for this too? Did we do this? When you emailed Meta, somebody sent that to Mark and he was like, that's a good idea, Jake.

1:07:20I should do that. I'm not sure. I'm not sure what was ever happening over there. I don't know how they were operating this. It was the most confusing way to operate three video services, I guess. I don't know how this emerged. And so, yes, finally, here's the thing. It like on one level, Facebook says all video is now reels. It's like, oh, man. But on the other, it's like, like, actually, actually, this is like so much more sensible than what they were doing beforehand that I'm actually like, thank goodness. It's like, even if this means the real situation might be worse because it's going to be flooded with more stuff.

1:08:03It's like it was way too complicated beforehand. Oh, yeah. I think the most problematic outcome of this is I think it makes very clear that Facebook's future is just as a video player. Seriously, like I think Facebook is going to be, it's going to be groups, it's going to be marketplace, and it's going to be a video player. And I think the idea of Facebook as like the repository for all of the video created elsewhere on meta properties is their best idea about how to bring people back to Facebook. Will it work? I don't know. But I think that is pretty clearly where we're headed. And this gives them a way to just like pour everything back into Facebook.

1:08:47Because again, Facebook is very important to Mark Zuckerberg in a way that I don't think any of the other products are. and they will do everything they can to get people opening the Facebook app as often as possible. Just one other thought on this is I think it's very important to Facebook and to Meta at large to be competitive as a video platform. And I've written about this a bunch, but like anything you can do to juice view counts, you will do. And so for Meta, to take all of these disparate video platforms and just roll them into one is going to make all of the numbers look bigger and it's going to make it a much more compelling appearing creator platform.

1:09:27It's going to make it seem like reach is much bigger. And so like one of the things Mark Zuckerberg has been saying is he wants Facebook to be culturally relevant again. I think that might be impossible, but I think you can juice video numbers in such a way that will suggest cultural relevance. And that might be all you need if the goal is to just make a lot of money. This tracks me. I think I'm, maybe I'm underestimating them. I'm not convinced this will necessarily work in a, at least in a good quality way. But I think this actually loops all the way back to the YouTube TV stuff that we were talking about.

1:10:02Do you want to juice engagement? Do you want to juice time spent? Have people watch videos all day, right? YouTube, they change their algorithm to promote longer videos. Okay, great. Now the videos are longer. Now they're better on TV. Now people are watching more YouTube on TV. You should make your videos even longer because people are sitting back and watching them. It is just a cycle that keeps going. And now this leads to YouTube usage being super high. And part of this is not necessarily because people are just changing their watching habits. It's because there is just literally longer things that they can watch on YouTube in a way that there weren't five or ten years ago.

1:10:45yeah and so yeah like facebook you want more people using facebook for longer great playing more videos i mean that's that seems like the only idea anyone has in the tech industry right now is like do ai to it or more videos that's that those are the moves that's what we're doing here those are our new bird chess segments uh doing ai more videos i mean that's not bad that's where our growth is going to just go through the roof everybody's going to hate it but they're going to They're going to be stuck here with us. All right, we need to take one more break. Then we're going to come back to the lightning round.

1:11:16Be right back. Every great company's story is defined by moments when their founders make bold decisions. These are high-stakes moments that risk the business but can lead to greatness. I'm Rolov Boeta, managing partner of Sequoia Capital and the host of Crucible Moments. We're returning for a brand new season. Join us as leaders from Stripe, Zipline, Palo Alto Networks, Klarna, Supercell, and more. Share what it's actually like to navigate the make-or-break decisions. Crucible Moments is back on October 23rd. Until then, catch up on Seasons 1 and 2 wherever you find your podcasts.

1:12:03Avoiding 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. Teach me, Sildana. I couldn't possibly. At T-Mobile, get the new iPhone 17 Pro.

1:12:39On 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 T-Mobile.com slash switch. All right, we're back. It's time for the lightning round. Eric Gomez, we have a sponsor for the lightning round. that is correct this week's lightning round is presented by google gemini i feel like you get better at that every week i mean i'm trying this is going very this is great it's good practice also very cool verge shirt from eric uh this is not a tease of merch that we are bringing back but i would like to and maybe we'll try vintage all right so since nila is not here we're going to we're going to skip brendan carr as a dummy for a week we're going to give brendan two weeks to be a dummy.

1:13:35But there is one tiny bit of news that is related to our main man, Brendan, that we should just mention very briefly, which is that the Senate confirmed Olivia Trustee, who was Trump's pick to be the new commissioner of the FCC. The vote was, let's see, 53 to 45. And now this means there are three people on the FCC instead of two. And kind of just one, because Ana Gomez is just like running around telling everybody that Brendan Carr is a monster and waiting to get fired. Hooray. Great job, everybody. Good government. Yeah, this actually has a big impact, right? There is now a quorum again, right?

1:14:15Because before they fired too many people. And so there just weren't enough people for the FCC to actually officially legally get things done. Now there's three of them. Now they can. This is sort of, this is like a slightly weird process. FCC commissioners are usually nominated and confirmed in pairs. There's usually one Democrat and one Republican at the same time. Now, maybe you can make the argument that, okay, there already is Anna Gomez and there's an odd number. So maybe that's why I think some people are definitely a little worried about the fact that they only did a Republican this time.

1:14:53This is actually like very strange to me, but the Communications Act, which established FCC, it's a legal requirement that there can only be three people out of the five commissioners only three of them can be of the same party so that there is some limit to your ability to stack the commission that being said could the other two people be like the wig party and i don't think anybody's tested that yet so we'll find out um but yes now the fcc uh back at it yeah i mean can i just read you a quote from our story, which I feel like just perfectly, it says all the things that I would like to say much better than I would say them.

1:15:37So Lauren Feiner wrote a story for us about Olivia Trustee and the nomination process, the confirmation process, and she got a quote from a guy named Matt Wood, who is the VP of Policy and General Counsel of a nonpartisan group called Free Press Action. I'm just going to read you the whole quote, and then we're going to move on. He says, in normal times, there would be little reason to oppose the confirmation of a candidate as qualified as trustee, but these are not normal times. Trustee's confirmation gives Carr the majority he needs to radically reshape the media sector in Trump's image, including offering policy favors to large broadcasters in exchange for their unwavering loyalty to the president.

1:16:10I agree with every single word of that, and that seems to be what is going on. Let's move on. We'll come back to this. Yeah, we'll just end on that light note. I just, yeah. Brendan Carr remains a dummy. We'll get back to this next week. And now an empowered one. now a dummy with someone else who can sign the papers for him next up we got a little tiny nugget of maybe kind of news about Siri everybody is doing the developer beta stuff Liquid Glass is bad they're out there doing more interviews about iPadOS and we continue to hear spring 2026 for better siri i just i just want to put that out okay do you buy it no i thought there'd be some equivocation there um yeah i don't either right like spring 2026 that sounds like maybe an internal target um it just it also just seems very weird to me the idea that they would drop such a major feature so late in operating systems release cycle um i i think if if you were to say would i bet on fall 2026 with like the next round of software i would say more likely because it seems possible to me that there's going to have they will have had a lot of time to do the work they they are going to ship some of the features but not all of them like i think i think it's possible developers will have had another full year to do the app intent stuff that i think is going to make a lot of the stuff work like we talked about last week uh maybe maybe i would believe that but i i think you're right the idea that they would just like ship this thing in march as a like 0.4 update does not i don't know just doesn't pass the test for me i don't buy it neither do i one thing that i think is also um gonna be really tricky for apple going forward is a you know they have been breaking from this a little bit but traditionally they they release software once a year right and they have some small updates here and there And that has been breaking.

1:18:20That has been breaking a little bit where they'll do like, you know, a little bit of an update in the fall, maybe a little bit in the spring. But basically, it all comes once a year. And I think for the AI world in particular, which is moving so fast and which is seeing like some really material leaps from release to release where it's like something can go from like, oh, I can never do that. it's so broken to like oh it can like kind of do that um which to be clear is is meaningful uh in a in a couple months time like apple really puts itself at a pretty big like set aside that they have to just make siri work which apparently is a monumental task um right just being able to keep up with all the other uh you know ai players um they're putting themselves at a really big disadvantaged with the way that they make their products and ship so infrequently.

1:19:11So I look forward to seeing if they can meet this, you know, reported internal date. I suspect later in 2026 feels more likely to me just given how much they've been struggling so far. I was talking to somebody the other day about all of this and people have been throwing out the, you know, they should just kill the Siri brand thing for a while. And I just asked somebody, I was like, well, would, you know, you're a product person. Would you get rid of the Siri brand? And what would you rebrand it to? And they were like, dude, Spotlight. It's sitting right there. People like Spotlight. People know what it is.

1:19:47People understand how it works. It's not trying to do everything, but it is trying to do all the things that people actually want. Just call it Spotlight. Like, you don't even have to retire Siri. Just keep adding features to Spotlight. And I was like, oh my God, that's it. Like, I don't think that's going to happen, but I kind of think that is a brilliant idea that I wish I had had on my own. All right. Next up, some news that caused a surprising amount of both consternation and funny jokes on the Internet this week. WhatsApp is officially getting ads. Ads are coming to. Let's see if I remember this correctly.

1:20:24there are going to be ads in the status sort of story screens that I sincerely believe no one ever looks at. There are going to be promoted channels in the channels interface, which I think is actually growing pretty fast. From what I hear, channels have actually been a pretty big hit, especially globally. So notably, the place that ads are not is in your chats. But this feels to me like maybe not the beginning of the end of WhatsApp, but the beginning of a very different whatsapp well this is also right like the the founders famously never wanted ads in the app and like look like they had just watched fight club they were like kind of like on one and they're like ads are the death of humanity like it was like a little dramatic and like it's it's you know ads bring us a lot of free stuff it's all right um but it is true right i think they did like they did have a pretty singular point which is that like that a chat app is really intimate and personal these are all of your friends they're people you know and care about having ads inserted between that is actually pretty disruptive it's jarring it changes the experience in a material way and while meta has not yet you know gone and done that um you know it's starting it's happening they went hey we need to make some more money off whatsapp how are we going to juice it the obvious answer.

1:21:45It's ads. Right. Yeah. I mean, there was the business chat thing that I think has turned into some of a business for meta, but this is also like, clearly this is the thing that meta does best is ads at massive scale. And this is also the thing that meta is best equipped to do from an advertising perspective, which is advertised for businesses next to other businesses. Like that's, that's what Facebook ads are. Like this makes perfect sense to me from a meta business perspective like of course this is what you would do and it is probably the least intrusive thing they could have done in whatsapp but that's a really high bar right like it's all pretty intrusive and i think um there was an interesting thing that it had to note explicitly which is that it won't use your messages or your information to inform and and tune the ads and this is the like perception change that I think is so hard to do after the fact, which is come in and say, yes, of course, we've been reading all of your messages, but we're not going to do anything with them.

1:22:51And even though like, I actually I have no reason not to believe Meta's lines about encryption. There are a million conspiracy theories out there. But if there has been a proof that WhatsApp messages are not encrypted, I have not seen it. So I will assume that they are. but you don't that that perception goes away quickly this sense of like i am in an actually private place which already became harder for what's app to do when it was bought by meta a company that is not famous for being a good citizen of your privacy uh to then say there's ads here but we still don't we we're not looking we're just putting ads it's just a constant reminder of who is here with me in this place where i am supposed to be able to be by myself no that's so real like everybody thinks facebook is like tapping their microphone and it's it's like they just know everything else about you right they they don't need to read your right right right they don't have to they already they already know this stuff and and now it's going to be very like abundantly clear uh how much they know about you yeah yeah i think it's it's it's pushing in this very interesting like snapchatty kind of direction which is very funny because it just absolutely decimated Snapchat as a product, but they're trying to do some Snapchat stuff.

1:24:09But the last thing I want to say on this before we move on is just genuine kudos to Signal for immediately after this happened, screenshotting an announcement of it and saying, this was Meredith Whitaker, the president of Signal, who said, use Signal, we promise, no AI clutter, no surveillance ads, whatever the rest of the industry does. We lead, we don't follow, heart emoji. nailed it no like it is very funny how how much signals marketing is just written for itself and they just every time they're like oh look somebody did a bad thing we won't do that use signal that's their whole marketing message and it just keeps working and it's very funny and i enjoy it very much um all right couple more and then we should get out of here there was this interesting change while we're talking about ads uh to reddit this week that i found really fascinating.

1:25:01Did you track this at all? What do you mean by track this? Did you pay attention to what Reddit is doing at all? Reddit ads are not required to be interesting to you, but I'm happy to explain it to you if you'd like to. No, tell me. So Reddit basically forever trying to grow as a business and has realized that the best thing it has going for it is all of the posts and comments on Reddit. So Reddit announced two things for advertisers this week. One of them is that it will basically let you take all of the insights and all of the information from all of Reddit and use it to inform your ads, which is the sort of thing that is like true on lots of platforms, but is again, the kind of thing that Reddit went out of its way to be like, we are a user friendly and moderation friendly platform.

1:25:47When in like Facebook was like, screw you, we sell ads based on all your stuff. Reddit is just fully doing that. But the thing that I find even wilder is that now if you're an advertiser, you can have an ad on Reddit and then right underneath it, Reddit will dynamically AI-driven-y place positive Reddit posts about your product that you're trying to advertise. So they will just find people who said nice things about you on Reddit and just dump it right underneath your ad all over Reddit. That feels weird. It's interesting. When I saw the headline for this, part of this feels genius and part of this feels really not good.

1:26:26Like, it makes sense to me if, you know, you're Mercedes and somebody's like, check on my sick Mercedes. Great, like, go promote that. That seems cool. And like, you know, maybe that's a little weird if you're the guy who gets promoted. but just like streaming a bunch of random comments from out of context, that feels off. And I feel like users are going to feel betrayed because you do not believe that your comment is going to be used in that way, right? It is meant to be in a specific spot for a specific community. And I think once you start moving that around and particularly once you start putting dollars behind it that you, the user, are not seeing, that starts to get really uncomfortable really fast.

1:27:11So I understand why Reddit is doing this. There's like something I think very smart about, hey, there's people saying nice things about you and like having fun with your stuff. Like just promote that instead of putting a boring ad that nobody wants to read like that. But yeah, they have to be really careful. Like these, you know, community is everything for Reddit. And this is a thing that is disruptive of that in a very real way. yeah i would just encourage everybody to go look at the screenshot in jay's story which we'll put in the show notes it's a lucid air ad that just looks like a normal ad it has a picture of the the car it looks like a reddit ad uh and then right below it there's an ai summary that says redditors show excitement for lucid air's performance quality and innovation they also appreciate the company's service and delivery and then it has a side scrolling list of presumably positive posts about lucid this is i'm looking at this gif this is the worst possible version of this feature.

1:28:05Like, I just, I don't understand this at all. It feels so disingenuous and like not representative of what is actually great about Reddit. No, no, this doesn't make sense at all. Yeah. And this feels terrible if you're one of these users too. Like, it looks like you made an ad. Yeah. All right, two more things that make you get out of here. First thing, the Senate passed the Genius Bill, a terrific, terrific acronym to get to Genius. I'm very proud of this for everybody. And basically what it does is it establishes a regulatory framework for stable coins and crypto tokens, basically so that private companies can now launch digital coins pegged to the value of the US dollar.

1:28:45As far as I can tell, Jake, this is a huge win for crypto people, right? Everybody seems very excited that this is happening. Yeah, I think the idea is that it legitimizes stable coins. It also means that the US is not going to, you know, alternatively crack down on them, right? I think that's the bigger fear. and and this is saying nope go ahead go do your thing um i read through some of the bill and it does put some like i think you know useful requirements in place right it it requires that you actually back uh your crypto token with with uh you know real assets it requires that once a month you publish what those assets are so there is some transparency and there is some requirements here um i would say i this still feels like a you know product in need of a market uh to me um but yeah this is just a win for the crypto industry it is an allowance for them to make these tokens um theoretically it will make them less scammy theoretically yeah i i would encourage anyone who wants to know how this stuff works to read about tether which is a really fascinating stablecoin and probably the most successful one we've had so far uh has also had a just long running series of shenanigans around it and i think uh it's a good it's a good place to understand like how this works and where it can both go really well and get really weird um but yeah the the incursion of crypto people into the government continues apace and uh one of the interesting things about this was a lot of the democrat opposition to this bill has been about essentially like trump coin exists and now this makes donald trump just lets him regulate his own money now and that's a strange thing and so we will we will have to see how all that shakes out uh let's end on some better news uh which i am much more unabashedly excited about uh which is new Fediverse stuff for threads.

1:30:46And normally this is where Neelai and I just like gas each other up about how great the Fediverse is. My question for you, Jake, is are you excited about this at all? That's so funny. I was going to flip this back around because I'm the person who's, I'm a little more skeptical. I was going to ask you, it seems to me that some of the Fediverse momentum has maybe slowed down. And admittedly, this is a pretty big announcement because I think when Threads launched, I think it was at peak Fediverse hype. And they're like, we're going to be one in the same with the Fediverse. And then last year, they're like, there's some Fediverse if you want it.

1:31:23And now maybe there's finally a little bit more Fediverse. But it does feel like in some ways, it now feels like things are even more fragmented to me, right? Like nowadays, we're like, Blue Sky has a personality. You know what you get on Blue Sky. Threads is a personality. You know what you get on Threads. I don't know what's happening on Mastodon, but it is there. It very much has its own personality. Yeah. Very much so. I think like, honestly, this is, it is encouraging to me to see that Threads is still pushing forward on this because I could very easily have seen them just being like, hmm, and letting it drop.

1:32:01But I am curious from your perspective, somebody who is following the Fediverse stuff much more closely, how you feel about the momentum for the Fediverse right now? I'm torn. So the news we should say was essentially now there is a semi dedicated feed in the Threads app for Fediverse posts. And I say semi dedicated because it's a feed within the following feed. So if you want to get there, you have to open the app, go to your following feed. And then there's a little menu at the top that shows you Fediverse posts. And you tap that and you go to the Fediverse feed. so it's it's there and it is like front ish and center ish but it's not like full fediverse integration with the for you feed on threads but it is a meaningful integration of like now you can see fediverse posts inside of threads and that's that's a real thing um what i find more uh maybe not alarming but potentially worrisome is uh talking to peter coddle who's a software engineer at Meta working on a lot of this stuff and seems to be kind of the spokesperson for a lot of Meta's threads work and Fediverse work.

1:33:11Meta doesn't seem to know exactly what it wants to do here, which I think is really interesting. There's one vision of the Fediverse that is like perfectly interoperable, interconnected everything, right? Like I can post from one place to another place, you can like it and I'll see it and we can have a sort of cross platform conversation. And like, what if Facebook was the internet is like that way of thinking about it, right? And that is exciting, but also complicated. And then there's another version of the Fediverse that is basically like, there are just a million things in a bucket, right?

1:33:46Everything is content. And newsletters are a type of post and images are a type of post and videos are a type of post and podcasts are a type of post. And all those posts go into one giant database of posts. And then the cool thing about the Fediverse is you can build any kind of app you want to both create and consume those posts. That's a very different idea than the sort of completely interoperable social network, right? It's just an it's a like, content machine that is not run by one company. Both very cool, very different. And meta does not seem to know which of those it wants threads to be.

1:34:22So right now it's much more like the Fediverse feed in threads is basically like an RSS reader for Fediverse posts. And that's not nothing, but it's not a completely interoperable social network. And then on the flip side, they're starting to do some of this work where like, if I post and you like something in a Fediverse app, that comes back to threads, but that continues to be kind of messy and weird. And so I just, we're at this point now where somebody needs to decide what we're doing here. And I think I have thought for the last year, it would be threads that just by virtue of its size and by virtue of meta's importance to the internet, threads would dictate a lot of things.

1:35:03And from what I've heard from Fediverse people, the threads folks have actually been pretty good citizens of this. They have worked with the protocol. They have played by the rules they have been you know useful members of different systems and and uh actually part of meetings rather than just like coming in and dictating how all this is correct because platform's huge but at some point somebody has to just look at it and be like here's what this is for and i still don't see that and i worry even talking to them that they don't know what it is and until they until someone decides what it is it's going to keep kind of being nothing and and part of me is it like at this point now we're two and a half years into the sort of post twitter era and it doesn't feel like we've made progress and i'm sort of like what if we just had an answer like i don't even i don't even care what it is just pick one of the things and start doing it in a like powerful mainstream way and instead we're kind of like we're half answering a hundred different questions.

1:36:05No, I think that makes a lot of sense. And this is what I think is so strange about the current state of the Fediverse. In some ways, it feels like there are more Fediverse products and in some ways they feel more siloed to me, right? Somehow we've ended up in a universe where I can go on these different networks that accomplish the same thing that are all allegedly interoperable um but most of which are basically just the one network um and a you know i think with threads it's like just do it right like what like you have this technology you have a giant team just do it right um and i don't quite know why they haven't i think maybe this is because they haven't quite figured out how they want to interact with the fediverse what they want their Fediverse input to be.

1:36:59And, you know, this is the thing, right? It comes from a very big company that has its own interests. And there's a lot that they have at stake there. And so it makes sense that they're taking a slow approach. But I think that also just makes it so much more complicated for every other player in the space, because you just don't know what they're going to do when they're going to do it. And I think, you know, this this does feel meaningful to me feels really meaningful to me that they are continuing to build this that you actually will be able to get Fedverse stuff. And it's just one of the things where it's like, oh, it's in a sub menu.

1:37:30Right. It just feels like it's very hard for me to imagine Mark Zuckerberg, who is desperately committed to get people back on Facebook and integrate ads everywhere, also being super enthusiastic about the idea of more interoperability with other platforms. And I've hit this point now where like as far as I can tell, which is frankly not very far, to do the Fediverse inside of meta is like one of those things you're doing and kind of hoping Mark doesn't notice. And that's just never where you want to be with this kind of thing. And so I think, I sincerely hope I'm wrong and I sincerely hope there's a lot more coming.

1:38:09But this is one of those things that like, I'm psyched this is as far as it has gone, but it doesn't feel like enough to me yet. Yep. All right, one more, and then we're going to go. All right, and this one more is a thing we just published today. We should say we're recording this on Wednesday because it's Juneteenth on Thursday. And today, Antonio DiBenedetto posted his review of the Framework Laptop 12 device that I have been personally very excited about. And boy, is it exactly what I expected it to be. So this thing is like the Framework Laptop, it's$800. it's cool and pink and colorful and pastel-y it's very repairable and upgradable which is Framework's whole thing this was designed to be the like fun approachable version of what so far has been like a very nerdy brand of computers and it's like it's awesome but it's not very good all at the same time and that is like exactly what I assumed it would be and kind of a bummer honestly this is exactly what I expected And I think like what it needs to be right.

1:39:20Like if you haven't seen what the framework laptop 12 looks like, like please Google it. It is the most delightful looking laptop. It really is. These pastel like pinks and aquas. It is like one of the most fun pieces of tech that has come out in a long time. It's great. And I think if you would just replace this with like a normal beige boring thing, you'd be like, okay. But I think so much of this thing is the ethos, right? Like it is repairable. It is upgradable. And it is fun. And you know what? Is it a perfect laptop? Absolutely not. But I know, like, it couldn't have been. It was not going to be.

1:39:58But I think you can buy this thing and feel good about it. And I love that. Like, I love that they delivered on, I think, what they were promising here. And there were a lot of things that Framework didn't do well here that are actually pretty easy to do well, which I find sort of encouraging, right? Like, the webcam is pretty bad. and the speakers are extremely whatever and it needs more RAM and a better processor, right? Like A, the beauty of this thing is you can upgrade some of those things yourself over time. But B, those are things that a company like Framework can just go do better next time.

1:40:34So I think to me, I look at this and I'm like, okay, this is not the thing that I wanted it to be. The performance isn't amazing. The keyboard isn't amazing. There's just like a lot of sort of near misses, but they all feel correctable. And I think Antonio's takeaway was very much like, this is a great idea. This is a thing that should exist. This will appeal to lots of people. It just, A, we need framework to deliver on the upgrade path here and like make this thing last a long time, which the company has done a pretty good job of so far, but also like stay at this one, right? Like keep making adorable laptops and a couple of them from now, you'll have one that's awesome.

1:41:11Like, you know what this is making me think of actually is, do you remember the Google Pixelbook? That was the very thin like kind of white and gray laptop that Google made. I loved that thing to bits. That thing had some fans. One of my absolute favorite laptops of all time. And the only downside of it was it had a just big giant monster bezel and looked sort of cheap and ridiculous as a result. And I was just like, God, I can't wait for the second one of these when they have like another generation generation to rev this and fix it and then they never made another one because rick ostrolo hates me personally and this is the thing it's like you're you're you're on the right track you you've you've done the hard part go do the easy parts and then this thing is going to be awesome and that is like i really hope framework sticks to this because there's something very very cool here i'm excited i like framework has been like kind of on a roll putting out some cool hardware and yeah, if they can keep at this and like keep doing this on a regular basis, oh man, it's gonna be really fun.

1:42:15And I do feel like we've spent 10 years waiting for somebody to make like a fun, not overpowered, but not underpowered, just like solid across the board$800 laptop. We've waited, like Microsoft has tried it a bunch of times with various devices, hasn't gone really well. Dell keeps trying weird stuff that doesn't work. Like this is a thing that should exist. And it feels like framework is like closer to it than anybody who's been in a long time. And I would very much like it to work. I just want a pink laptop. Like I don't think I knew I wanted a pink laptop until I read Antonio's review. And I was like, this color scheme like really works for me.

1:42:52It really works. Yeah. All right. We have gone way over. Jake, it's been a delight to do this with you. This is good. I'm now like nearing the end of my time on the Vergecast before I go on parental leave. And I'm starting to have real like graduation sadness. it's like I'm never going to see my friends again this is terrible we're taking your keys away you're not going to be allowed back in the zoom I honestly think it's possible that I'm just never going to be allowed to do the Vergecast again everybody's going to realize it's much better once I'm gone and it's just going to be four hours of Brendan Carr as a dummy every week and that's just what we're doing here but as always thank you for doing this we'll have lots more next week more stuff on MVNOs there's some Tesla stuff potentially happening this weekend that we will cover in one way or another next week but until then keep it locked rock and roll

1:43:46and that's it for the Verge cast this week and hey we'd love to hear from you give us a call at 866 Verge 11 the Verge cast is a production of the Verge and the Vox Media Podcast Network our show is produced by Will Poore, Eric Gomez and Brandon Kiefer and that's it, we'll see you next week

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