Twitter rebrands as X, and Samsung's Galaxy Flip 5 and Fold 5 event

23:40I can use it. Of course you can. Yeah. Like they can't stop. Unless you're holding yourself out as X the company, they're not going to be able to stop you. They can send you letters. My favorite letter that we ever got. Richard, I don't even remember this. We used to run a site called Engadget Mobile. It was pink. So Engadget was blue. Engadget Mobile was pink. What was Engadget HD, Richard? That was yours. A gray, I think. It was gray. And so it was hot pink. And T-Mobile, when they started using Magenta a lot, sent us a letter that was like, we own this shade of pink. And we're like, no, you don't, bro.

24:13Also, we're going to publish this letter. And then Ryan Block and Peter Rojas published the letter. And then they were like, oh, that was really stupid. Our lawyers will never do that again. And that was the end of it. And that's like how it goes. So we can all use the X anytime we want. The one, the Unicode X. There's not a situation in which you typing a letter implicates their trademark. Right. But if I like use it as part of my name on a whole bunch of different social media apps, like I start using, because you can use, you know, Unicode symbols and a lot of different ones. They all print it.

24:44And I start using that X. Could they eventually come after me being like, stop it? Like if you started using the Netflix N for your first name, for some reason that was in Unicode and you started using that all the time, wouldn't Netflix eventually be like, hey, stop? I don't know why the Netflix N would be in Unicode. It would just be the letter N. Hypothetical. Hypothetical. Not everyone takes their logos from Unicode because that seems deeply stupid. I guess you've now landed on the answer to your question. Yeah. The Unicode X is just X. You know how emojis are not standardized? They're just Unicode, and they're meant to represent something, like car.

25:25And then Samsung and Apple have different cars. Unicode just represents letters. Here's a character, and then your typeface on your computer, your font, is like, okay, that's an A. I'm going to represent this A. There's not a Unicode font. So this X that they're pulling from that's in Unicode, you can render it in any font you want. It just because of the way the lines work, it looks like a thing. But it's just a, you know, I mean, it's like literally a series of numbers that say to a computer, make this character. And then between that instruction and you is the computer saying, OK, in this font.

26:01OK, it just happens to look like the logo of this company that will presumably be trademarked at some point. Yeah, I think it will be very difficult for them. Like, especially if the design is, if they were just like the letter A, conceptually is our trademark. That's this X as it relates to Unicode, right? So like who the hell knows? It is remarkable, and I know we're going to get emails about this. People are going to say, like, we're spending so much time talking about this dumb thing. It's so dumb. And it's, one, I am a sucker for a trademark law conversation. So here we are. Welcome to our show.

26:39This is always happens to this is the dismantling of what was one of the most influential information networks that has ever existed. And so you have to talk about it because what Twitter meant, like what the word Twitter meant to make this about trademark law, what that word meant, what the word tweet meant to people conveyed so much meaning. This celebrity tweeted an apology. You already know the whole story. I don't even need to say a celebrity. I don't need to say what the apology was about. I don't need to tell you that it was a screenshot and notes app, right? Like the meaning was, the word was imbued with meaning that had emotional resonance throughout the culture that has been dismantled.

27:22And it is, it is worth discussing why that is happening and to what end. And I think the end is, is nonsensical, right? It's an audio video platform that will enable banking and put AI in your bones or whatever the hell it's going to do. But the thing itself was important if it gets there. But yeah, the people freaking out about trademark law is like – in Gadget, I wrote so many of these stories that I just had the middle part of it in a text expander. I was just like TML, and it would just spit out 150 words of trademark law explainer. Emma's going to ask for that tip. She's going to be like, you still got that boilerplate for me.

27:59I did it in Apple versus Samsung time. I wrote so many patent law stories that we're effectively just explainers about how patents work, which we won't do here. But we're just in that time when the idea of how to own an idea is very complicated because that's all the internet is. There's a bunch of people sort of ephemerally sending ideas around without any limits on scarcity. And that's like the AI copyright conversation is like a big deal. Here in trademark law, it's like people search the trademark database and they're like, meta already owns X. And it's like, okay, let's step back to figure out what trademarks are even for, right?

28:32And you just have to start at the start. And that brings us to now where we've got all of these things. He's sort of changed the name. He has mostly changed the name. It's changed on Android, but not on iOS as I'm speaking. Maybe by the time you hear this, it will have changed in the iOS app. Twitter has tried to push businesses into buying more ads so they can stay, or I'm sorry, X has tried to push businesses into buying more ads so they can stay verified. We had Esther Crawford, characters coming back from past seasons, suddenly pop up, talking about what it was like to work at Twitter until she was fired and sleeping on the floor and how Elon listens to whoever just happens to be around and takes random ideas.

29:05Is there anything else we haven't discussed? The one thing I want to point out is Threads rolled out its following feed this week. Great. It's cool. It immediately showcases how little volume there is on Threads. I follow a lot of people on Threads. Everyone's still posting on Twitter. So that hasn't happened yet. I think it won't happen until they roll out the web version, which both Zuckerberg and Adam Masseri have said they're going to do. And Masseri in response to Casey, Zuckerberg in response to Lauren Good. So Verge alumni network out there getting us what we need. But if you don't have the web version, it's very hard for true posters to keep up the pace.

29:37So I think that's coming. But you can't leave the app stuck in the following feed. It's not a sticky preference. It defaults you. If your app gets pushed out of memory or reboots in any way, or even it seems like just whenever it feels like it, it'll drop you back into the algorithmic feed, which is just a pure pain in the ass. And they should just make that setting sticky. And that's just respecting user preferences. Like, I don't feel like I'm being a diva about this. It's like, I set the preference. Leave it alone. Like, my car is not like I've moved the seat around to what I think will be more appropriate for you.

30:08It's like, just leave it. It seems very simple to me. It's a real clippy move. It's a real. It seems like what you want is the Nugget account. Here it is again. All right, we should take a break. That's been a lot of X talk. Again, if you're mad at us, I'm just telling you, Twitter was massively important. I'm very excited about the reset moment of the internet. If you listen to other episodes of the show, you know. I think there's a reset moment on the internet. I think search and AI, Sundar Pichai this week said the search generator of experience is the future of search. That's the clearest and most crisply he has said that.

30:41That's a big deal. We're in a moment of reset for the internet. Taking a second to talk about the thing that was before you go on to the next thing, I think it's fine. Also, you can just hit skip on your podcast player because right now we're going to talk about gadgets in a serious way with Allison Johnson because it was Samsung event this week. We'll be right back.

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33:00We're back. Allison Johnson has joined us. Hey, Allison. Hello. Big Samsung event this week. Lots of noise around the Samsung event. Samsung's finances are in disarray. They had earnings as well. Profits are down. There's some data I saw that said iPhone sales in South Korea are up, which is weird. Not great to lose on your home turf, but the phones look good, right? It's the Flip 5 and the Fold 5, the launch is unpacked. What's going on here? Yeah, I guess the big story is that they fold flat now. So, yeah, we got a new flip style and fold style phone. They finally figured out how to make the hinges fold totally flat.

33:38And the Flip 5 is really someone I'm most excited about. I think it's the more interesting kind of update of the two. It comes with a much bigger, like still small, but a lot bigger cover screen. And it's 3.6 inches now, which is just going to totally change what you can do with the phone as opposed to the really tiny screen on the flip four. So that's a big story, I think. Was it really that tiny, the previous one? It was tiny, yeah. Because one of the cool things is you can frame a selfie and use the rear-facing cameras and get a preview. I held up a postage stamp to the preview you get. It's the exact same size as a postage stamp.

34:21It's like so hard to see yourself. Okay, never mind. That is tiny. Yeah, yeah. Like the screen itself was bigger than a postage stamp. But like not even a good postage stamp. The little ones. Not even the like forever stamps. Like the old school ones with no barcode. Yeah, the Fold 5 is like an extremely minor update aside from the hinge thing, which is exciting. But that's even saying a lot. I mean, the hinge thing is exciting though, right? Like, this is a big deal because everybody was a couple of weeks ago, Pixel. We got that with a Pixel Fold and oh my God, it's so flat. And it's like, well, we're certainly going to get this.

35:00And we did. But Samsung's been doing this a lot longer. They've got a lot more other stuff that's polished in that way. Like, you haven't gotten a hold of it yet, right? I am awaiting my review units. No, they were supposed to be here yesterday and we're having conversations. I should get phones tomorrow. I'm anxiously awaiting. But you're pumped. You're kind of excited to check it out and see how this works when it's flat and made by someone who's been doing this a while. Yeah, yeah, that's the thing. I mean, like the Pixel Fold, I really like the form factor and really like that it folds flat.

35:37But when I was using it, I just kind of kept having these feelings like, oh, well, Samsung is like doing this a little better. There's more multitasking. There's just more customization. And you definitely just get the feeling like Samsung is way ahead in foldable. So when they do make that little upgrade, it's just kind of like putting a stamp on something that was already pretty good. Yeah. So it is exciting. Well, like a little boring. Samsung just isn't constrained by having to run Android. Like their ability to just mess with the software to support folding is just Google has to do it for everybody.

36:17Right. You can see Google's very careful. They're trying to make standards, make it universal so that anybody who makes a folding phone kind of gets it for free. That's their job, I think, is the OS vendor. They have to. Samsung's just like, I don't know, Bixie's going to make the app bigger. They just don't have to give a shit. And so I think they're able to experiment more or iterate faster. Just watching the little bit of the keynotes that I've been able to see, they're just able to take bigger risks with like, what does it mean for the screen to get bigger? So Samsung can force Instagram into making an app that fills up your whole screen and Google can't.

36:55Or they'll put the option to make it bigger or run to Instagram side by side, you know, like somewhere deep in the menu settings. They're happy to put something in the menu settings for you to do what you want. Why are you more excited about the Flip? I maybe just coming off of the Razer Plus, the Motorola Razer Plus, which has the really big cover screen. It was kind of a light bulb for me. It felt like, oh, I finally get what these Flip style phones can do. Just with being able to interact more with the front screen, you can write text on it, which you couldn't do before with the smaller cover screen.

37:32You can go into the settings and let it run full apps for you, which is like not generally recommended. But if you're a sicko like me, you could do that. And then that's where I was just having a lot of fun, like finding things like you can run Google Translate on it. And it's not a super experience, but I can like type in a word in Spanish and just get a translation without like doing a whole thing on my phone. So I'm excited to see what Samsung's take on this is. And I have a hunch that their software is going to be ahead of Motorola's here. But I don't know. I'm just excited to check them out side by side.

38:18Are you going to watch the Oppenheimer trailer on it? I guess so. I haven't watched it at all. See how big it is. I'll flip it open and watch Barbie after that. There you go. As Christopher Nolan intended. It's funny. So you're saying like it's a light bulb moment with the Motorola one and now the Samsung one. Isn't that just having a phone? Like the whole point of the flip phone factor to me was like, I will close this and my phone will go away. And now you're like, okay, they solved it by putting a giant screen on it. And I can use my phone without opening my phone. I have to be missing something.

38:58That's a fair point. But here's the thing. So I've been wearing a smartwatch, cutting edge technology here. And I'm just finding there's like a middle ground between stuff I can do on my smartwatch where I just like, I just want to see a text and like dismiss it. And then there's the things you want your full phone for. And then the cover screen is like in between these two things where I can't like Google translate a word on the smartwatch or I can talk to Siri and I don't know. I don't want to do that. So that's where I was finding it was really interesting and helpful. And I think more of those kind of use cases will emerge.

39:38It did have the effect of like, you don't get sucked into scrolling Instagram on your phone because it is just terrible. Like, you can tap on the Instagram notification and just mindlessly you'll start like looking through stuff. Then you realize like, this is awful. I either need to stop or open the phone. So that's where I was like, aha. Were you having moments of like, I am not going to open this phone. I will feel guilty if I open the phone. I did. Yeah. I mean, I had plenty of moments where I was like, yeah, I'm going to go for it. I'm going to just dive right into the Instagram feed. But how is Samsung software?

40:17It's switching you from that little screen to the big screen. Cause that's been like, these phones are effectively mid range phones, right? That it feels like the, The seamlessness of moving between modes has been held back by the sort of mid-range Qualcomm chips in them. Yeah, and Samsung's a little further ahead here, too. They have the 8 Gen 2 in this one, which has been very good in all the phones I've tested. Yeah, I think they're still figuring out what do people want when you close the phone? Do you want to keep running the app that you were running? Should it prompt you to open the app?

40:52But Motorola has a setting where you'll just get a little icon on the cover screen. When you're using an app on the big screen, you close it. It'll kind of be like tap this to keep running on the outer screen, which I thought was clever and pretty useful. And you can ignore it if you don't want to do that. So I think they're still figuring it out. And it's definitely different kind of, you know, app by app. So we'll see what Samsung thinks. And then the difference with the Fold 5 is that it really is just a phone on the front, right? And then you open it, and then you have a tablet. Is there any relationship between sort of like it's a phone and it goes down to a widget on the flip, and it's a phone and it opens to a tablet on the Fold?

41:40Those are two wildly different paradigms, but it seems like they share some conceptual behaviors. Yeah. I think they are really kind of splitting a little more now. Like the fold format feels like if you want phone plus rather than like a little bit less phone, then you want the tablet one. I mean, our good friend Dan Seifert will recommend a fold tablet style for you. That's how he watches Oppenheimer, actually. That's his favorite way to watch every movie. I guess. It haunts me that he does that. With Instagram running on the side. Yeah, I see the appeal and I appreciate it for stuff that I'm sitting on the couch using the phone closed and I'm like, oh, I need to do this thing that I would normally go get my laptop for.

42:34I need to make an Amazon fresh order and it's just obnoxious to do it on a small screen. Yeah, those moments where you're like, either I need to put this phone down and go get my laptop. That's when you fold it open and you're like, no, I can run two things on the same screen. I don't need to be like tabbing between apps. I can figure out where I'm going to have lunch and Google Maps and read the restaurant website. I get all that and I respect it and it's very cool. I'm excited about the flip. the flip also costs a lot less it's like a thousand bucks because i'm excited about those things but i'm not eighteen hundred dollars excited which is how much the like fold and the pixel fold costs yeah for eighteen hundred dollars i'll get off the couch and go look at my laptop i think that's enough money so i i think it's an interesting moment for the flip phones um just being at that 9.99 price point is like we're used to paying that much for phones or like having our carriers pay that much and paying them back with our contracts.

43:41So I think those are positioned a little better to take off. And I'm curious how the kind of like minimalist aspects of the phone are going to appeal to people. Or I don't know, maybe we all just do really want phone plus. Maybe we all want more phone all the time. Everyone just wants bigger screens. That's my theory. Although even in this case, you're like, you know what really unlocked these flip phones for me was when they added bigger screens to the front. It's true. All of tech is figuring out where you'd make the screen bigger to make people buy the next one. Is it the inside? No, this time it's the outside.

44:19Like that's the tech industry. Next time around the back, we'll have a screen and then I'm sold. Do they say anything about durability? I mean, this is what people are afraid of the most with these phones. Yeah, it's kind of a little more the same this year. The new hinge has a slightly different structure that's supposed to take impacts a little better. Personally, that's not the thing I'm worried about with a folding phone. I'm worried about like a speck of dust getting under the screen. But they have gotten better generation after generation. They say it's still rated to like 200 ,000 folds, which is like five years of use.

44:58And it's IPX8 rated, so they're both fully water submersible. But it's just a question mark. Four years down the line, how good is it at holding up? How's the hinge? Did you get a little bit of dust underneath and ruin everything? That's the question mark. Yeah, that IPX8, that X is not dust protected. Yeah. It's very obvious. We're not going to make that promise. It's just a nope. There's some other stuff that happened at Samsung. What else did they announce? You know what is dust rated? The new tablets. Oh, my God, Alex. Wasn't that the best segue you've ever heard? It's good. Yeah, sometimes you got to just do it like a truck.

45:44just rumble into the frame with a samsung tablet you know what's really dust rated ip68 baby yeah these new their s9s right that's that's the name of these they are outrageously expensive it sounds like and everybody else is releasing cheaper android tablets are you excited about them at all allison as like a person who uses android more than i ever will? No, I'm a terrible person to ask about tablets. I literally just bought like a three year old iPad for my toddler. And that's like the most I've thought about tablets in the past few years. I think that's like most people at this point, right?

46:29Like most people are kind of, we're happy to have them. We want them, but they're not something when people get enthusiastic about unless you're really concerned about dust rating and waterproofing on your new tablet in which case and these have oled screens like oled displays there's the tab s9 which is 11 inches the tab s9 plus which is 12.4 inches and the ultra which is 14.6 and at that point do you just buy a tv or you buy a laptop yeah i mean so this is the and google has made some like new investment in android tablets like they're talking about it again right they've got the pixel tablet obviously the the foldable phones particularly the fold and the pixel fold the point of those is you put them in a tablet mode so there's like a lot of action on the side of the house and you just look at these samsung tablets and you're like these are little laptops especially at the bigger sizes.

47:28They've got all those sort of iPad Pro surface like docks and adapters and keyboard and all the stuff is there. And then you're like, but I'm using not just Android, like Samsung S Pen Android. Maybe some people like it. Send us emails. If you're like a hardcore S Pen person and you trust your workflow to that, that just feels tenuous to me. Even though Samsung's been doing it for years, it's like, I'm going to get backed into a corner of Samsung's weird pen ideas. And then if they ever go away or Samsung pulls the rip port and changes it, I'll be unsettled. I don't like that. Going from the little tiny pen to a proper stylus with an iPad is going to blow those people's minds.

48:13I won't even... Part of the reason that I won't put my workflow on the iPad is every year, Apple's like, here's a new multitasking idea. And they just rip it out and replace it. Or they glue Stage Manager onto it. I'm like, I got work to do. I can't be on this journey with you. Call me when you settle down. It does feel like these Tab S9s, they've kind of settled into a lot of it. The changes here are pretty small. They seem to have figured it out. They seem comfortable with their price point, even though it's more than everybody else. But they've also been at this price point in this space for a lot longer, more consistently than other Android tablets.

48:52Yeah, I'm just putting at the call. If you are a hardcore Samsung tablet person and you saw this and you thought, one, I need to switch from an iPad to the S Pen ecosystem. Like, I want to hear for you in particular. I'm looking at you straight through the barrel of the camera right now. I want to know you. Right into their soul. Just please reach out. Or if you are an existing, like, S Pen person and you're like, oh, shit, I got to upgrade. I just want to hear from you. Like, what's it like? in your brain. Is it cool? Like, let me know. I'm just like dying to know. I think we're past that point even with the market leaders.

49:34Like, I don't think people are dying to upgrade from one surface to the next. I think their surfaces break or they get slow and then they just get the new one. Allison, I think that's your point about the iPad. Like, at this point, you cannot tell me what a new iPad can do that my existing iPad can't do. Yeah. It's going to run Cocoa Melon just fine. Exactly. And I get it, right? Like, with some of this Vision Pro stuff with Apple, like, there's a whole suite of, like, the iPad app ecosystem is the foundation of a bunch of things for Apple in a way that Apple's good at managing their ecosystem.

50:07And on the Google side, the Android proper, like, they are making this investment in tablets. Like, I think they see a slow step path that way. I'm just very curious, specifically Samsung tablets. Like if you're hardcore in a Samsung, like I just, that's what the verge is for. You got a pixel tablet. Get out. Don't email. How many members are in R slash Samsung tablets? Is that even a subreddit? Is there like forum drama in the R slash Samsung tablet subreddit? Like, I just want to know. All right. I can't transition this one as well as the last one, but I do. What's an IP68 rated? I don't know the IP68 rating on the new Galaxy Watch 6 series.

50:51Because there's more than one. There's not a Pro right now. There was a Pro last year. But there is a watch and there's a Classic. And the big thing, Victoria is oh so excited about it, is they've got rotating bezels. Yeah, bring them back. Yeah. Just the Classic, though. Just the Classic? Yeah. And which is the one that's$100 more? And it's bigger. It comes in like a 44 and a 47 millimeter, which I don't got the risk for that. My wrist can't support that. I got to go to the gym a lot more if I'm going to wear the watch that big. That's rough. But it seems cool. V, I know, she's just terrifically excited about it.

51:33And it sounds like other Samsung watch fans are excited because they can't have Apple watches. So this is what they have to get excited about. I mean, they're cool. They look cool. They're round. I love a rotating bezel. I think that's just like, it's so funny that I love it. I think the digital crown is so silly, but I'm like, rotating bezel. That's what sings to me. Because it's like, it reminds you of when you'd get that first watch with a rotating bezel as a kid and it had the click. And that click was, oh my God, that's a good click. The digital crown is annoying with fingernails, too. Like, I have to really get my fingernails on it.

52:10And you chip your finger. Like, if you have paint on your nails, it'll chip a little. And then you're like, why should I even manipulate this stupid crown? I'm going to go get my phone. Yeah. If it only had had a rotating bezel, like, get on this Apple. It could be square. It works. So the big new feature is not these new funny face watch faces that are extremely creepy. That's not it. That's also there. You know how, like, big things are unsettling? Like, things that are slightly too big are unsettling? That's these watch faces.

52:42It's just a little, ooh, I don't, hmm. Yeah, they're just, I'm like, I'm looking at this seven on this watch face. I'm like, I don't, too big. Too big. I don't want to look at it anymore. What if it's just a quick glance at your wrist? I mean, that'll keep you from like looking at your watch all the time. No, they've kept the hands at the same size. Actually telling the time on this face in particular is more difficult. The numbers are big and the hands are small. It's a very odd choice. It's going to be like this, checking your watch in meetings. It's going to be great. Famously, using hands to check the time is so intuitive that you can have big hands and no numbers.

53:17rarely do you see big numbers and no hands it's gonna be fine guys I think it's cool yeah some of them have mouths that I don't like they all yeah it's all about how you get attention in a Best Buy it's like you're walking down the aisle there's like a big Apple display that they co-brand there's whatever there's like all the carrier noise and it's like does that watch have a mouth it'll work it'll super work to get your attention All right, we got to end this. We've talked about watches with teeth for too long. We'll be right back with a lightning round.

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56:15we're back we're gonna do a quick lightning round and then i just want to read some of the responses we got to consumer product turf wars i will tell you we're going to talk about dewalt versus Milwaukee on the Vergecast today. It's going to be incredible. But we got some great responses, and I want to talk about them. But first, let's do a little lightning round. Kranz, you're up first. All right. OpenAI has been working on a system to detect AI-written content, and it's not going well. So they said, we're just going to stop doing that. The blog post, they put up a blog post silently. They didn't even tell anyone about it.

56:49They just updated the blog post where they had announced this tool. And they're like, we have discontinued the tool because the tool doesn't work very well. They're like, never mind. Nope, not doing it. And yeah, so that's a little disconcerting because there's obviously a lot of use cases for where it'd be nice to quickly check if something is written by AI, but it turns out that's a lot harder than getting in AI to write stuff. I feel like I am good at detecting when something is written by AI. Yes. A friend sent me, this is so horrible. A friend sent me an obituary for a friend of theirs who had passed.

57:24And it was very clearly written by AI. And it said things like, he worked in the Atlantic Ocean. And the guy apparently would have thought this was absolutely hysterical and would have found it very, very funny. But it's just like, somebody take a pass at that. Yeah. It's one of those things I feel like it comes from editing so many people so many times. You start to recognize people's phrases and their styles. It's sort of human-like in that way in that everyone has favorite phrases that they don't even know they have. And it has that. Yeah, particularly chat. Chat GPT has like tropes and constructs.

57:57It has a style. It's a boring robotic style. But it has a style. And like Richard said, if you are in the business of constantly editing other people's writing, you start to recognize style very quickly. like i think i could probably read the verge without bylines and get it 90 right who wrote what right like just on a day-to-day basis i can i can tell you when liz lopato has written something next week on the verge cast it's just me guessing of bylines i can i can probably pick david pierce out of a block a copy in two seconds flat like i've edited david for so long i know david so well i think a lot of our listeners can like read us into our writing and it's a note we get a So you just do a chat GPT now.

58:40It's just funny that OpenAI can't do it. They're like, we can't do this. The robot can't see itself. It's like a very funny outcome. It's very good. All right, Richard, what's your lightning round? This charging network announcement from seven automakers. We've got BMW, GM, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Benz, and Stellantis. They combined. They said they're going to build 30 ,000 charging locations by 2030. The first ones shouldn't be here until next year. But like some of them, they're planning to put along highways and kind of the high traffic spots are going to make sure that there are places where you can go get food and do other things while your car is charging and just kind of revamp the North American charging infrastructure.

59:20Are they using the Tesla, the NACS connector or are they doing CCS? They will. Well, at least right now, the plan is to have both the CCS, the combined charging system, like the older style that most cars have so far, and also the NACS standards that Tesla and most of these, at least some of these automakers and several other automakers have said they'll use kind of starting in 2025. Yeah. Well, I guess they have to support their existing cars. I guess they need CCS. It's just a weird time, like, for all of this infrastructure. like uh we were thinking about buying a new charger for our house and i was like which standard do i like to buy the one for the car i have now or the car i might get in it it's a very weird time real micro mini usb well like but like a mini usb cable like i'll just buy this cable it's like three dollars i'll do some e-waste to like move on with my life this is like i need to spend 500 dollars and it might only like it's only going to last this car you know very strange uh okay Allison, what's yours?

1:00:18Mine's a two-parter. So Wes wrote up some T-Mobile news, which is like cool, exciting T-Mobile news. They successfully, they have reached speeds of 3.3 gigabits per second with four carrier aggregation. And this is like in the wild, their actual working 5G network. They can do this because they have a standalone network that they bought from Sprint. Not from Sprint. They bought Sprint. that's true cool so like cool yay good job t-mobile the other news uh that she now wrote up earlier this week is that they are now charging people five dollars to pay their bills in the store so if you don't if you can't pay online or if you don't want to or whatever reason you have you go into a t-mobile store to pay them money for your phone service they're going to charge you extra money to do that so there's the dark side of t-mobile news do they explain why they're doing that they call it a payment support charge oh sure yeah uh it's innovation yeah it should be called a boomer support charge like this is just this is i say this my mom i think is a t-mobile customer and she definitely was like i'm going to the t-mobile store today and i was like you Go more than once a month.

1:01:42What's happening there? I go to the Verizon store more than the average person, and they're not that busy. I think they can handle a few boomers coming in to pay their bills. I don't know. All they need to do is add a credit for every single time they get hacked and leak your information. And then no one will get charged this for the next two or three years. They can just ease it in. It would be great. I wish we had any data on how many people are going in these stores to pay their bills. They're obviously trying to deter you from doing it. It must cost them more somehow. I guess. I think. I don't know.

1:02:15Maybe there's not that many. And they're like, you know what? This is an extra like$500 a month for us. Why not? They're there. But like, what are they doing? They're just loading your profile on a tablet that they're holding at the store and like punching in numbers. I don't know. Taking your card. Yeah. Or your cash. Yeah. I will never forget. This is not about T-Mobile. I'll take any chance to dunk on AT &T. I can get at this point. A long, long time ago, I was complaining about something with AT &T and an AT &T spokesperson called me. This is ages ago. I'm out of my own background policy. This was like, on background, they called me.

1:02:52I was like a little baby reporter and they dressed me down because they're like, you do not understand how complicated the AT &T billing system is. If you want to make any changes, it requires 60 ,000 people to work for a year to change the font on this website and propagate the billing system changes. And I was like, oh, that sounds right. And now I'm like, oh, they were just lying to me. They probably weren't. And I can tell you why. Because again, reaching into my own past, working at Comcast, I don't know if it's still like this, but within 10, 15 years ago, it essentially was still a DOS system that the billing system ran on.

1:03:30And then they came up with another system that was on top of that. But you're talking about a billing system that was written in Cobalt or something. So they cannot change anything. I think with T-Mobile, they don't want to have anyone spending time doing this in-store because they want them upselling you on phone. Yeah. Like, have you seen this case? Also, they're really trying to push people into auto pay because, like, those direct bank authorizations and those kind of auto payments, it's good for their bottom line. And also, it's cheaper than, like, authorizing a card, doing a check, or even handling cash or something like that.

1:03:59Yeah. So, they're just really trying to push auto pay. I just think all the T-Mobile employees actually have to be COBOL-like programmers, and that's why they're charging the extra, because it's to offset. It would be more secure if they were. That's the COBOL bonus that they're like, there's one wizard, and they owe him more money every year, and they're like, we've got to fund this COBOL bonus. Yep. Who knows? Allison, while I have you here and we're talking carriers, can I get a quick Gen5Sys update? Oh, yeah. We mentioned Sprint, so we've got to do it. So T-Mobile bought Sprint. We brought our nation's carriers down to three.

1:04:32We were supposed to invent a new carrier out of Dish Network. What's going on? Do we have a fourth carrier yet? We do not. We still have Project Genna5Sys, which is still kind of in beta. They say that they met their June FCC deadline, which was like 70 % of the population they needed to cover. the one in, I want to say 2020. Yeah, I think next year is like the big one, which would be, it's a certain amount of covering like a certain amount of the places where they hold spectrum licenses, which is trickier and more expensive, I guess. So the short answer is no. Something I did write up this week is that you can sign up for Boost Infinite through Amazon Prime now.

1:05:18So that's what we got. That's good. That's really the big three carriers quaking in their boots because you can sign up for Boost Infinite with Amazon Prime. All right. My lightning round, just a really quick one. Viren reviewed the DJI Mavic Air 3 this week. It's a new drone. And he actually sparked a really interesting conversation on YouTube, in our YouTube comments, about how drones have gotten kind of boring. Like the innovation cycle of drones has started to slow down. and we're kind of the same place with phones where we're just talking about pretty incremental camera upgrades every year and the actual part of like the camera can fly by itself is no longer interesting which is just a remarkable place to be a go check out that youtube it's like really good viran is very proud of the review it's a great review he flew the drone into a storm which you're not supposed to do the shots are beautiful uh but it's just a really great example of like the community that we have on our site and on our platforms just like talking about a thing altogether.

1:06:15Really great. Super into it. And that brings us to fighting. Yes! I got too excited. Sorry. So last week we were joking about the Cybertruck and whether or not people had strong opinions about windshield washer fluid. It turns out they do. Okay. Whatever. We're going to set that aside for like a full I can't even begin to evaluate that situation. Except to say you should not use plain water. I just can't. That's a thing? Yeah, a bunch of people emailed us, like, the only answer is plain water. And it's like, maybe if you live in the desert. I don't know, man. I live where it's cold. Mountain Dew.

1:06:53Coca-Cola. Coke heavy. Just spray that on your car. It's going to be great. And we asked all of you to send us what your favorite, like, verses are. So there's iOS versus Android. We said you can't do that. Too easy. Just pure engagement. Like, you walk out in the street and you say iOS versus Android. And, like, 100 people form a circle around you and start arguing. Mac versus Windows. It used to be the thing. I think it's declined. We're like, what are the other ones? So we got this one. I haven't evaluated it. But Rob tells us that VHS versus beta is still going. Yes. Wow. Which is incredible.

1:07:28I'm super into that. This one is pure Vergecast bait. Richard, I'm dying for your thoughts here. Chase tells us, I'm in a Discord for the AMC A-list subscribers. and the fight between IMAX and Dolby fans is so intense that they make you choose forum flair to show which side you're on. And then he says, the answer, of course, is IMAX. Of course there are fanboys. Of course there are stans. I've never actually been to a Dolby theater. Like I would have to drive like 30 miles out of my way to go to a Dolby theater. Will I do it? Yes, because I need to get into this battle. Andrew wrote to us, said apparently Bose versus Sony, noise canceling, just like forum wars left and right.

1:08:08How can you have an opinion on this? It's Sony. The noise is canceled. It's Sony. Okay, DeWalt versus Milwaukee. Power tools. We should do an entire episode on this. People really care about this. I follow a TikToker who's a Ryobi power fan, and it's just a gadget blog for Ryobi tools on TikTok. Like an old school gadget blog. If you're a longtime Brushcast listener, you know that the Tool Guide, G-U-Y-D, is one of my favorite blogs. It's still going. It is just old school and gadget for power tools. It is incredible. Chainsaw Journal, my favorite trade publication. It's good. It's good. I'm just telling you it's good.

1:08:49There are more. Ableton versus Freeloot Studio, apparently a hardcore battle. Did we get Canon versus Nikon? Canon versus Nikon, incredible. Cannot believe I forgot about it. although i will say canon i'm a nikon person so i'm going to say this it's it seems like they have figured it out in a way that nikon is not i feel like it's one of those the mac versus pc thing where it's like everybody's just you've picked your side by now right like are people's switching between canon nikon isn't it more mirrorless dsl i don't know yeah that's what i mean it's like on in the mirrorless world it's like sony and canon right like they're the winners in their pro space.

1:09:29And then they're sort of Nikon, and I'm just rooting for them. They are. You can do it, buddy. They're not rooting for themselves. They don't appear to be rooting for themselves at this point in time. But that's a great one. I think my favorite is Shimano versus SRAM to bite components. That's Dieter. I don't know if 100 % if that's Dieter that sent that to us, but that sounds like Dieter sent that to us. Yeah, Dieter is just a little ghost email. Richard, what's yours? Mechanical keyboards versus ones everyone else in the office tolerates. Especially as we're in these hybrid workplaces. Very good.

1:10:03Very heated debate. All right. We got a lot of these. Keep sending them to us. They're so good. These are good. As you know, Liam's dream is that we make entire episodes, like diving deep into these subcultures. I love getting these emails because it's really fun to hear people's explanations. I will say the best one we got this week was VergeCast versus Waveform. I think that's very obvious. It's Waveform. No, it's the VergeCast. Come on. We love them. That's great. Competition is the driving force of interest on the show. So I love these. These are really great. If you know why VHS versus beta is still going and you want to pitch crayons on writing 1500 words on it, by all means.

1:10:42I kind of know a little bit. I have a vague idea. There's still like a really there. Part of it's like archival purposes and stuff. And there's a whole subculture around VHS tapes still because so much stuff got released on VHS that didn't get released on any other platform. and Betabax actually has higher resolution. It's like higher fidelity. And so ripping and stuff like betas are superior to rip, generally speaking, than VHS. But the ripping technology for VHS is better. This is all Chris Person and I talk about in our DMs. I don't understand 70 % of our DMs. It's great. 1 ,500 words on the website.

1:11:19VHS versus beta is still going. I think it's important. This is why The Verge exists. I just I cannot be clear about what our purpose here is we write about the Samsung phones to pay the bills so we can write the VHS beta story like very clear what what what our like flow is I demand it I must know it's good stuff yeah all right send us more if you have if you can possibly explain the rain x thing to me it's just very good like this is what the internet's for lots more of these send them send them to us again Liam's dream is to do an entire episode on these. They're really fun to hear. It's really fun to hear your opinions on them.

1:11:59Just VergeCastoftheVerge.com. We love it. That's it. That's the show. I've got to get out of this hotel room. I've been in it for like 95 hours straight. There's lots of stuff on the site you should read. We wrote a look back at the iRiver MP3 player, which is like a true gadget nerd MP3 player. Great blast from the past. The Chromecast turned 10 years old. Sean Hollister wrote about the original Chromecast, referencing the review of the Chromecast that I wrote that I had completely forgotten about. He's like, did I say that? Incredible. We have a great piece on the indie game scene in Japan, which is really cool.

1:12:29And then our Google coverage. We're really covering Google Search a lot this year, really thinking about what it means for the Internet to be architected around Google Search and how that might change as AI rolls out. Our very own David Pierce wrote a story about Neva. It's a profile of Neva, the paid search engine that was meant to compete with Google. It's a bunch of ex-Googlers, and it couldn't do it. And that's a story from beginning to end, a startup to failure of a startup, really unpacking why Google is so dominant. and all the ways that it uses its dominance. Really great story, really fun profile to read.

1:12:59And just like I said, a marker of something that's changing. So just go read that story. Look at our Google coverage. If you have ideas on how we should cover Google and Google search in particular through this meta change, love to hear those too. Okay, Allison, thank you for putting up with us. Richard, thank you for filling in for David. That's it. That's VergeCast. Back and roll.

1:13:21And that's a wrap for VergeCast this week. We'd love to hear from you. shoot us an email at vergecast at theverge.com. The Verge Cast is a production of The Verge and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by me, Liam James, and our senior audio director, Andrew Marino. Our editorial director is Brooke Minters. That's it. We'll see you next week.