Valve made Microsoft's dream console

24:53Because all the controllers have converged over time on the same DualShock idea. And now Valve is like, it's mice. Two mice. There are more input devices on this controller than on, it's like double a normal controller. There's way too much going on in there. I can't handle it. So many. There's so many inputs, but it's there, so if anything ever doesn't work the way you expect with the regular controls, because you're firing up like an old PC game, it's just all there for you right away. And you pick up the Xbox handheld, and you'll run into things where it's like... I love that you keep waving this thing around in the state.

25:28If you're not watching this... It's a jump scare every time. If you're just listening to this, you're not watching it on YouTube, Sean has not actually put down the ally. He's just held it derisively, the entire time and sort of like, like wielded it at us. Like, look at this garbage. Wait, but Sean, is the touchpad, I haven't totally seen the interface of this. I mean, I've seen in your photos, but is it also because you actually have to like navigate some parts of this that are like finer touch points and you need a touchpad? You don't at all for any of the main console interface, any games that's designed for a controller, you never need to touch the touchpad at all.

26:04But there are instances where you might play an old game that was designed for PCs, mouse and keyboard, never for controller. Nobody's figured it out yet. This will let you do that with a cursor. Don't want to pull up your StarCraft or something like that. You need your mouse cursor for an RTS game. It's there for you. And Windows, where you could actually, where you actually do need a pointing device some of the time to be like, I want to click the button that lets me play the game and gets through their stupid launcher. They don't have it on the ally. They don't have a touchpad at all. You gotta poke the screen.

26:34I want to talk about the Steamframe, which is the VR headset. and I want to try to put it on my matrix of wearable bullshit. So first, tell us what the frame is. Okay. Bear with me a sec. The Steam frame is a headset. I'm not going to say it's a VR headset. It certainly is a headset you can play VR games on, and there are two ways to do it there. But there are also two ways to play your normal flat games as well. You put this thing on, and it is running SteamOS, like the Steam machine is, like the Steam Deck is, so it can also play Windows games. But it is playing them on an ARM chip, and so it has to do its just-in-time translation, all that kind of conversion.

27:13It's not going to play them as well as a Steam Deck. So you can play those local flat games. You can also play local VR games because it can run Android apps. So if you take the MetaQuest VR stuff and you put that on here, you can run those as well. And it can run PC VR games as if you were plugged into the computer, except without the plug, because it's got a 6 gigahertz wireless dongle that you'll stick into a USB port on your PC, and you can play them with such low latency and a fancy foveated streaming technique I'll talk to you about in a sec. Play with such low latency, it feels like you're doing it with the cord plugged in.

27:52So very good wireless VR. And you can do the flat games through that streaming connection as well. So your PC stuff wirelessly, as if you're plugged into it, your local standalone stuff playing on it, including Windows games on ARM, which is kind of unproven and wild that they're making that work. Four different kinds of games. So it sounds like they're cutting it both parts of what you think about as the VR market, which who knows what the VR market really is, but what I think about it as, which is I have a Vision Pro and I would love a big screen. So what if we just did a big screen for PC gaming and now you can play PC games, which Sean keeps referring to as flat games, by the way.

28:30I just want to call that out. five games. That's the branding. So you can plug into a PC and get a virtual huge screen for your PC games, which is like the thing that people like about the Vision Pro. Big virtual display. And then maybe the Quest is a hit. So we'll do Android games and then this weird middle thing, we'll see how well that works. None of that seems like it's gonna sell a lot of headsets. I don't know who's buying these headsets. Meta Quest is the most popular VR headset on Steam. So of the PC gamers who have these chunky PCs and Steam decks who are submitting Steam hardware surveys where they say, oh yeah, Valve, I'll tell you what I'm running.

29:10After Valve does those surveys, what they see is, oh, a lot of people are buying MetaQuests, and they're hooking that up to their PCs so that they can play their games on this wireless headset instead of the fancy corded headset that we charged$1 ,000 for three years ago. So maybe we should make that too, and we can eat Meta's lunch there and reclaim our audience, is what I think that is. Is there a robust market of, we're going to say bumpy games, maybe? Like, for Arm? Textured games. Textured games, yes. Like, right, is that Arm games ecosystem there? The Arm games ecosystem for VR consists pretty much of what is on the MetaQuest.

29:51So any developers that Meta's funding or kind of seeding do that. But there are a lot of Android games on ARM, obviously, and Apple games on ARM for phones. And theoretically, some developers can start bringing those to Steam and put them on the headset and maybe any other future SteamOS devices that run on ARM, like a laptop or who knows if Valve will do a phone. So we have to do the matrix, Neelize matrix of wearable bullshit, which is on the X axis. I change the axes every time. And the X axis is utility, and then the Y axis is fiddliness. So if you have low utility and high fiddliness, you're dead.

30:28So that's the Vision Pro. Low utility, very high fiddliness. External battery pack,$3 ,500. Glasses, regular glasses like Jake's glasses. Very, very high utility. Skyrocketing higher utility, low fiddliness. Huge worldwide, I would say, like global success. My favorite wearable. Right, and then the opposite is the Vision Pro. Very low utility, very high fiddliness. Okay, that's the Matrix. Right, the Apple Watch isn't like the sweet spot, the AirPods are in the sweet spot. Place, oh, and anything on your face gets like a negative 1 ,000 fiddliness. Right? You just, you gotta, so put the valve...

31:03You know I like the meta glasses, but we won't talk. Put the Steam frame on the Matrix. Fiddliness versus utility. And face penalty. Where did you put the Quest 3, is the question? MetaQuest 3. Low utility, low fiddliness. So, and cheap. So like, successful in its way. Yeah. This is approximately in the same exact place as the Quest 3. Okay. Because it's probably going to cost more, which is going to offset the fact that it will be far better at playing games for a bunch of people. If they can make it cost the same amount, it's going to be higher. A couple rungs higher. My big question to Sean is, we spent the beginning talking about why they are making hardware, right?

31:46Why does Steam or Valve say they need to make the VR headset hardware. Is it because the MetaQuest platform cannot run these ARM games? Everything that Valve makes, unfortunately, they will always say the same thing, which is we wanted to build this for ourselves. We wanted to play games like this. We wanted to let our audience of Steam gamers have an easier time doing this thing than they get elsewhere. And to some degree, that rings true. If I am trying to get my Steam games to run on my MetaQuest, that's kind of shoehorned in there, and I would like a better way. But the reality is that if I want to spend some gaming time, I'm usually doing it on a flat screen, on a TV, on the Steam Deck.

32:32Five games. Not in my head. Well, I'm very excited about that. It also, by the way, looks almost identical to a HoloLens. They just picked up some old HoloLens pieces from Microsoft. Right, from Microsoft. I was like, that's where I was like, this looks, I actually Googled, I was like, did Valve buy HoloLens assets? Did they buy patents from Microsoft? You're just like randomly Googling. I'm randomly Googling because I'm like, this thing looks like, I mean, I guess it looks more like the Quest Pro. It is more comfortable than any of the MetaQuests. And it's more comfortable like that out of the box.

33:06They're not going to make you buy a battery back head strap thing to balance out the weight it comes with that right away. The cushions are really plush and soft. It feels pretty good on my face, as, you know, as well as anything strapped on the front of your face can feel. Not as good as a touchpad on your face. That's all I'm saying. Face penalty. Um, I'm very excited about all of this. I really think we're gonna end up covering Linux a lot next year, because people's hatred of Windows and Microsoft's fundamental abandonment of consumers, it's so obvious that, like, Valve is like, yeah, we'll make a VR headset, too.

33:41Like, why not? Like, this is all just greenfield for us because you don't care about consumers anymore. One of the top comments on my story, goodness, yes, I never need a reason. Goodness, yes, I need a reason to never return to Windows. We have some more Windows coverage coming next week that I'm very excited about. There's just a lot here. Sean, we're going to have to have you back. When is this stuff coming out? Early 2026. Well, I know we're going to lose Sean, but I'm going to ask him one last question. Yeah. If you could ask Satya Nadella right now, and I think we're going to talk a little bit about AI and Nadella's recent comments, about gaming and Xbox.

34:14What would your biggest question be for him? Can you lay off all the upselling and just make a version of an operating system that only plays games? It's so funny, because when you start with, can you lay off? My answer is like, yes. We're gonna lay off 10 ,000 more people in the gaming division tomorrow. Like, he would cut you off. Yeah. I would say, my question would be like, do you know this is here? remember when activision was the biggest acquisition in microsoft history do you remember that i i think that was the problem right like they have all of these games publishers on the books and they have nobody to sell games to because nobody's buying these xboxes i mean the idea was that they would make good games well like they spent 60 a 68 billion on activision all right we got to let sean go So, Sean, please come back for the Why Did Microsoft Make the Decisions It Made podcast sometime in the future.

35:14I'll be happy to do it. All right. Thanks, buddy. Like I said, we founded The Verge, and we're like, what's Microsoft doing with consumers? Here we are 15 years later, and Sean has brought this full circle. Netbooks are back. We got to take a break. We'll be right back to talk about Joanna coming full circle. And having a butler.

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39:56All right, we're back. Thank you to Sean. It was good to have like a little founder's tree. It was. I mean, Jake was like employee number two. for intruding. No. No, this is like an OG crew on the show. I just lied my way in. I just showed up and I'm like, I'm your intern. You guys were like, great, let's go clear some stuff out. And I'm sorry for calling you 15. You know what? It's all right. You're gonna like it. It's flattering. Yeah. It was the age when I started. I'm just gonna start telling everyone that Jake is Gen Z. Yeah. I mean, I think it's a good idea. Like when our ad team is like, we need some Gen Z insights.

40:27I'm like, talk to Jake. Guys, I used TikTok all day long. I don't, written word, not for me. All right. But they don't... Gen Z also hates tech now. It's, you know, the backlash. We'll wait until they get a load of our next story. So, uh, Joanna, subtly mentioned that she's writing a book. I did subtly. I put that in there, yeah. You did. You threw it in there. Sponsor of this podcast. If your book wants to sponsor the podcast, I will plug. You have to pay me directly. Yes! Uh, and I will disclose that Joanna is our, my friend, our co-founder, and has paid me under the table to promote her book.

40:57It will not be a hunder. It will be right over the table. I will slide the check. What's the book called? I am not a robot. Very good. Hold on to that. You made a video of this thing called the Neo Helper Robot, published in the Wall Street Journal. This was in the course of writing your book and thinking about AI. Yeah. Somewhere in there. Yeah. I just want to play the video, first of all. You've probably seen it, but I just want to play a clip of your video. Let's play all eight minutes. Let's run. It's here, the first humanoid robot housekeeper. Just one little catch. There may be a human behind the curtain.

41:32pulling the robot strings. Everything I saw Neo do was guided by a skilled pilot. I'm a remote operator in a different room in the building. That is until he handed me the controllers. I actually might throw up. I think my hand is... I have no idea where I'm facing. It took Neo a little over a minute to fetch a water from the fridge 10 feet away. Thank you, Neo. Next challenge, load three items in the dishwasher. You got this, Neo, you got it. And that took five minutes. So this is a robot that's supposed to be AI, right? You know, the dream is you have a robot butler, and you just say, like, get me a beer, and then it goes and gets you a beer.

42:10And right now, it's just a guy that you're talking to who ineffectively does what you want with a robot in a VR headset. Correct. Why? Why is that happening? Well, yes, it is. I did not see it do anything autonomously. Okay. There's a part in the video where the founder and CEO tells me that there will be some things that are autonomous and that it can do autonomous things, but it won't be very good at it. Even controlled, this robot is not good at hacking the dishwasher. So you can imagine how bad it probably is at doing that autonomously right now. Okay. Right. When you have the guy in the VR headset.

42:52And he's doing it and controlling the robot where the it's you will laugh out loud anytime you watch it. I have watched that scene 50 times. I mean, we edited that scene alone for 50 times because I wanted it to be perfect, right? The dishwasher moment is so beautiful and sad. It's like just this long take of the robot slowly, slowly trying to stand up for like a full minute. And it goes down. Doesn't quite get there. It's rough. Look, I haven't gotten to talk about it publicly. Like, filming this was wild. because I had two videographers there, and I was literally yelling his name, David. David Hall is my great producer who came and filmed with me, and I was like, David, get on this side.

43:38Like, we have to capture the butt going down, you know? And, like, so this is, I'm describing this all just to say, like, that is the best it is right now, and it's being operated by... A human. A human, right? Now, the founder says, like, oh, it might not have been that familiar with that dishwasher. to be fair this was their dishwasher in their office where the robot lives but okay let's just give some benefit there's so many weird dishwashers out there how could they have possibly known but so like this is all to to the point that i'm trying to make here is to get these robots to be better at doing things autonomously they need to be trained and so the argument in all of robotics right now especially around humanoid robots is we need more data to train these robots just like we need more data to train all of these large language models or whatever models we're making.

44:30And the way that this company says they're going to do that is by putting these robots in your home, having a person at times come and remote operate the robot to collect the data. And that data is all going to feed in to the models that they're going to train the autonomous robots. And so we can all be a part of teaching the robots. Okay. The reason I wanted to talk about... Sure, maybe that will happen. Maybe. I think you can also... How much does a robot cost? $20 ,000. I think you can also just hire someone to come to your house and load the dishwasher on a regular basis for$20 ,000. Sure can.

45:07It just feels like a thing you can do. You can also get it for... There's like a$500 a month plan, a lease type of situation. Anyway, we... Sure, what you want is to lease a robot operated by a human. doing that option. So the reason I wanted to bring this up, and I want to talk about Microsoft, I'm going to promise I'm going to bring this all together, is the gap between AI hype and reality is starting to get ever wider. And watching the pickup of your video just really illustrated that to me. So here, let's run some clips. Here's some of the Hollywood-level pickup that this video got. The Wall Street Journal got to test drive Neo, and things did not go the best.

45:45Like when they told Neo to crack a nut. Crush it. It's a walnut.

45:57Flawless. For$20 ,000, you too can harness all the power of a gray naked man who is dumber than a squirrel. The robot of the future is just a creepy guy who's watching you do everything. Call me old-fashioned, but I'd rather just have a perverted human butler, right? Okay, so that's Hollywood. Very funny. And then there's, have you seen the social media parodies of your video? Where the humans are dressing up? Yes. Yeah, I love those. Run some, these are incredible. You can now officially buy a robot sleeve to live in your home. Neo is the latest man-made horror beyond comprehension. But oh look, it's wearing a sweater.

46:33Hey Neo, can you make me some hot dogs? Wait, where are you going with my dog? I love dishwasher. Hi Neo, how's the morning going? Excellent, the end of humanity is right on schedule. This is, if you're listening, it's a woman in a gray onesie, and she's wearing one of those LED masks. I bought that mask. Yeah, I bought it for Halloween. Yeah, me too. The gap between what this industry is saying and what it can deliver is like reaching literal comedy levels. I'm so happy someone's writing this book. You're not allowed to just plug your book for free. I am plugging the book constantly till May.

47:16May 14th, everybody. Put the money on the table. Get your robot to put the money on the table. But the gap is huge, right? It actually can probably do that, but sure. It probably can't grasp a dollar. This is, like, very hard to grasp a dollar. Well, can I ask about the robot itself, right? Like, the AI is one problem. Is robot hardware even remotely where it needs to be to, I don't know, stand up to grab things reliably? That is one of the big things about this specific robot, that they say this... One of the biggest problems in robotics and putting them in homes is safety. This company says this is the safest humanoid robot to put in your home.

47:57Like, full stop because of the way they have designed it. Because there's a guy in the other end. Because there's a human in the suit. No. And... You see that kind of in the video, right? Like, it's... It's struggling in a number of situations to do things, But they say that they've designed some of it, especially the way the fingers move and the arms move, to be more human-like. So the reason I brought that walnut was actually to see, like, does it have superhuman strength, right? And they said, no, actually, like, the hand strength is very similar to a human's strength. This is all designed in the reason or in the spirit that this should be safe to put your kids and pets and loved ones around.

48:40Right, but there's, like, can you make a physical machine that can like load a dishwasher, like has the mechanical dexterity to pick things up, like pick up a cup without breaking it is like a common problem. Pick up an egg, I think is the most common one that I always hear about. Without breaking it, can it stand up after loading the dishwasher? Like all that stuff. That's one huge set of robotics problems. Then there's the, can the AI drive the robot autonomously, which is yet another huge problem. And all of that is, I'm saying swirling in the context of, Sam Altman needs$90 trillion to build AGI.

49:15Absolutely. And what I'm saying is I think the reaction to your video is like, oh, this is starting to break down. And the real issue here is the promise of the home, right? So you have both of those issues, right? This thing needs to do this autonomously, which is the hardest in the home because the home is not a factory floor. And there are things that change constantly, not only in terms of what it has to pick up. Like you're saying, like once it's got to pick up this plastic cup, then it's going to pick up this mug. and then it's got to pick up, I don't know, a plate, right? And then you've got the chaos of the home, the fact that kids are everywhere, they move chairs, they move things in the refrigerator, things move, right?

49:51So that compounded with, gotta make this autonomous, gotta make this safe, gotta make this capable to do the things you want in the home. I don't want to spoil the book, but I did a whole big testing this summer of laundry robots, right? And how incredibly hard that is because laundry is actually very simple for humans to fold a shirt because it lands one way, and we're like, okay, yeah, that's the top, that's the bottom. But it's very hard for robots to do that. And so you think about all of that sort of compound, and you're like, we need to get very far, and it's not happening this year. And in your point, it's not happening on timelines that we've been hearing from the biggest executives in this industry.

50:36So I want to play this clip of Satya Nadella. He went on the Dworkesh Patel podcast. Dworkesh Patel is a great interviewer. He was joined by Dylan Patel, who runs Semi-Analysis, which if you're a chip... I would say Dylan is a chipfluencer. If you're into chips, Semi-Analysis is like chipfluencer level. He's very good. I want a term like that. That's cool. Great term. It's a good word, right? Yeah. Nadella is on a podcast with both of them, and they're asking him about the investments in the AI, building the data centers, how much it's costing, what's it going to do. and they get to talking about like what the computers of the future will be.

51:11And there was this one back and forth where, you know, if someone had said that to me on Decoder, the whole interview would have stopped. And I would have said, can we just talk about this for the rest of the hour? Can we just play this clip? I think the better mental motive here is like, look, a human, just imagine that these models actually will be able to actually use a computer as well as a human. That's kind of what I'm saying. In fact, I kind of look at it and say, our business, which today is an end user tools business, will become essentially an infrastructure business in support of agents doing work.

51:42Okay. So imagine the model can use a computer as well as a human can, is the biggest claim in this entire industry. And Nadella is like, yes, that's kind of what I'm saying. Let me go farther. The future of Microsoft is we're just going to build applications, infrastructure for agents to use. We're not even building software for people anymore. We're building like the raw components of software for agents to use. And I'm listening to that. I'm like, okay, that, that is supporting some of the biggest investment in the, the world has ever seen into technology that we think might change the world.

52:20And then I'm watching Stephen Colbert, like giggle at this robot, not crack a I'm, I'm able to use OpenAI's Atlas browser. I'm like, I don't think the computers can use themselves yet. Well, let me pose this to you. Can the kids use computers? Right, we raised an entire generation that doesn't know what a folder is. I do love the escape of AI criticism by being like, humans suck too. It's like, yeah, that's true. I will grant you that. It just needs to be, if this AI can open a folder and find a file in 20 minutes or less. It might have, you know, what, Gen Alpha beat? We'll see. The iPad, we don't know about this.

53:00But I'm saying the entire, the bet, that is as clear, go back and listen to it. If you're in your car, just hit the skip back button. That is as clear of an explanation of why the bet. We're gonna, the models, we'll be able to use a computer as well as a human can, and we're actually, the future of Microsoft's business is building software for agents to use, not for people to use. The whole podcast is very good. Go listen to it. I like Nandela a lot. He's very clear. He's very sharp. But when I say they're walking away from the consumer business, they're walking away from the human business. The future of our business is infrastructure for agents.

53:39Infrastructure was a huge part of that. Like that should be italicized and bolded. Right, but what he means is not just like data centers. He means like we will decompose Excel to a series of databases that agents can traverse because we don't need to build an interface for it. But isn't that what Nadella's biggest strategy has been over the last decade or more? Sure. And I think you can see all this walkback from Xbox and consumer and me saying, well, we have consumer Windows. One of his answers is maybe we won't have Windows at all. Right? You're just going to tell your agent and maybe you will never even look at Excel.

54:13Because when you look at what he's done with Azure and cloud and infrastructure to support where we are now, That's Microsoft's business. That's what Microsoft became. So when I hear that, he's like, maybe, yes, we do make the applications better for the robots and for the agents, and maybe they've... You know what? I agree with you. I don't think actually an agent or a human can figure out how to use Microsoft Word. Back to the book, which I had to put into Microsoft Word last week, which was a nightmare. I'm sorry to hear that. Right. But that's where I think he's going. You're right. It doesn't actually matter if it's humans or consumers or whatever, we will be the tech infrastructure company.

54:53So I'm saying if he'd said that to me on Decoder, we would have record scratch. Do you think the models can use computers as well as a human today? The answer, I think, is unequivocally no. There is not a model out there, and we've seen lots of attempts at computer use. We've seen experiments from OpenAI, from Anthropic. It's all pretty slow. It's all pretty brittle, actually. Models even just traversing regular databases, still pretty brittle. Like there's a universe of enterprise AI consultants where like, we'll do the data management for you to be ready for AI. Like if your bet is that the models will be better at using a computer than a human and that the next generation of computers will actually be like the infrastructural components of software for the agents to just go access.

55:40Okay, maybe, yeah, maybe you would spend all the money that Microsoft is spending. But again, I'm watching your video and I'm like, boy it seems like we're a long way away well this this is the the bet on this robot right they know it's not there yet but the hardware isn't there yet either and so they got to get the money now right if you want to be first you got to get the money and have the thing while it's still half broken and you got to be ready for when the ai is actually there if it's actually there which is not looking so good and that seems to be what's going on here right so you just have a product that is broken up and down, doesn't have the hardware, doesn't have the software, and everyone's kind of just hoping that robotics will advance enough and AI will advance enough at the same time that there's this collision, suddenly it's all amazing.

56:26And I - So I'm going to read you some more headlines. Samsung is going to bring a generative AI-powered Bixby to its TVs. Gemini for TV is coming to the Google TV streamers. Google Photos will let iPhone users edit images by just describing the changes. and then Google says it's confusing Gemini Home rollout is going just great. And I want to talk about that one for a second. Wait, what was the last one? Gemini for Home, where they're changing Google Assistant to Gemini. Google put out a blog post where they're like, this is going great. And then all of our readers were like, it's not actually.

56:57The reason I bring up the assistants here is my working hypothesis is that the smart home assistant is the consumer device. Whether that is just a speaker or it's a robot that walks around. They're like, I'm in my house and I issue some commands and something happens in my home. That is a big product. That is a big product category. And we are watching all of these companies just stumble, try to make it happen. And if you think about your house, it is a bunch of weird interlocking software components, right? Your TV runs one piece of software, your music might be another piece of software, another set of applications.

57:32My Lutron lights don't talk to my Hue light. Like there's a lot here that AI should just solve. Like, look at all these databases. I can run around and change the states of them and the lights will turn on off. And they haven't been able to do it. I asked Google Photos, which has Gemini in it now. I was like, just show me pictures of Max when she was four months old, where she kind of looks like Jack. This should be the easiest thing for an AI to do. Like, find photos from this date and show me the ones that are most like the ones from today. And it just cannot do it. Did you get a picture of like a dog?

58:09No, it was just like, it was like Max is four months old and last in like August of 2018. It's like, this isn't, I know when she, like that's... Yeah, I was playing around with that the other day. It just doesn't work well. Anything that can solve that problem of like, when you just need this specific photo, we are still so far away. But this is the promise, right? You issue a natural language command to a database, and then it understands what you're saying, and it returns some result. And whether that's my database of photos or the various states of appliances in my home, or, you know, if you're Sasha Nadella, you're looking at the databases operated by the Fortune 500 and saying my agents will run amok in them, making your business more efficient.

58:49It's like this is all you're all describing the same stuff. And a lot of it just doesn't work. Well, and what's incredible, that Google Photos AI search interface, it's so bad that they had to slow down the rollout. The original search is still a fallback option because it is better. Standard search is better. I didn't know it was still there. I use that. I think that is what I have. It's great because it's normal. You type in a word and it finds the thing. We definitely have some listeners who have told us that their students don't know how to use Boolean search operators anymore. Like when you want to do and or between dates, like the most refined search you can do.

59:25They just have stopped using it entirely because they're used to natural language. My point is, I see the robot, I see the people goofing on the robot, and then I hear Nadella say, all of this is supported because eventually the agents are just going to use the software for you. And we won't even make software. We will make the infrastructure of software. And that's the future of Microsoft. And I don't know if it's a bubble or not. Nadella is very smart. I've interviewed him a lot. You've interviewed him a lot. He is as sharp as it gets. And I'm like, is there evidence that this technology can get from where it is today.

59:55Google Photos does not do a good job searching my photos. Every smart home assistant, co-pilot. I'll pick on Microsoft. co-pilot on Windows doesn't pilot a whole lot. Is there evidence that you can get from here to there? Like, what is that evidence? Well, honestly, the funny part that I was gonna answer there is that the co is actually the part right now, which is what all of them are saying. I mean, he's mapping out real future here, but how many people have told me over the last few months, like, well, you don't just one-shot something, right, and expect the best. You do two or three shots.

1:00:35You really work with this and you get the best results. That's exactly what they were even saying about the robot. I mean, Bernd Borneich, who's the CEO and founder, I interviewed him again next last week at our Tech Live conference. And he was basically saying, like, you're going to prompt your robot. You're going to work with it back and forth and you're going to get it to do these things. And it's like, for how long, though? Like, you know? Like, how long, to your point, like, is it just easier to hire a human? Or isn't it easier to have a human do the task that Nadella was saying, which is, like, don't have the agent running the agents on the thing or using the computers.

1:01:10Like, the humans do that, and maybe they have some help, but, like, we're not necessarily getting to this place where this autonomous, beautiful vision is anywhere near. I just want to point out, I haven't even dunked on Bixby once yet. And like the idea that there'll be a weird LLM Bixby on Samsung TVs, in the context of a conversation where everyone hates the bloatware, is very funny. I thought Bixby was dead. They're bringing it back to put on the TVs. I missed that story. Because Samsung TVs run Tizen, they don't run Android. Yeah. So Bixby died in the context of Google Assistant because they made a deal to do Gemini.

1:01:46So Bixby only lives on TVs. You get Samsung LLM Bixby. What about the Bollie? That is still not shipped. The Samsung rolling robot? What happened to Bali? Did you do a story in Bali? Every year we go to CS, we talk about the Samsung. They definitely said they were gonna ship this thing. That thing just rolls around. I don't know. It's a projector. It doesn't do anything. It just rolls around projecting. What happened to Bali? They keep showing it to people, and then you get to make TikTok videos about it at CS, and then no one wants to buy a rolling projector. I've never made one. I've never made a...

1:02:20When, listen, Samsung, if you're listening and you want me to test Bollie and come to your home office, kitchen, and see... For your generative LLM Bixby. For, I'm happy to come and do that story. Samsung announced that Bollie would be shipping this summer. Yes. Because I was looking at it. I was researching it and I was like... It did not. It did not. I didn't reach out, but this is me reaching out, Samsung. No one wants a rolling projector. I don't know. The product itself is just a projector. That's the only robot I want. It just goes around the house playing YouTube videos on the wall. That's all it does.

1:02:56That seems great. That's the thing that it does. Can it bring me a drink? No. No. As I tested Astro, you know, Amazon's other failed home robot, which was Amazon's Astro, what was that, maybe two years ago? And its most successful feature was bringing me a drink. So in all of your AI reporting, because I know you've done a lot of it, Have you seen the evidence that the technology can get from here to there, like the LLM-based AI technology can get from here to there? No, I've seen what you guys have seen. I mean, I think the big bet that we're hearing from the Anthropics and the Open AIs and everyone, and this is where the concern about the bubble right now, is that the large language model, the generative AI, will get us there.

1:03:41What we're starting to see evolve, and that's why I've been so interested in the robotics space and this world model space, is that it's not just going to be that, right? We're going to need these other kinds of models that understand the world better. And that's where a lot of my reporting ended up leading me is that not just, I mean, sure, a lot of this is still based on Transformers and it's still part of the same architecture, but we have to go far deeper in the training of these models to understand the world around us and not just understand images or video or text. But yet we are hearing from the Sam Altmans and the Anthropics and Dario's of the world that, no, no, we really think that these large language models are going to get us there.

1:04:23Right. And that's been the whole, you know, the constant Twitter fights between Gary Marcus and whoever it is of the day. Like these this is where the fights are happening. And so I think that like people think that we are going to get there one day. They just are not sure how the technology which versions of the technology is how we're going to get there. I think the thing that's confusing to me is, again, I think Nadella's very sharp. You wouldn't spend the money unless you know how you're going to get there. And the money is just being spent at such enormous rates. Well, we'll also keep hearing right now, like, it's the App Store idea, right?

1:04:58We need to put the technology out there for others to see how far we can get, right? So, like, even in the case of the robot, like, they're using large language models. They're building their own world models. And I think the hope is of these platform companies, the model companies, these other companies will help us figure this out. We're gonna put the technology in those hands, and we're gonna have this next huge platform shift, and it's gonna happen from everyone in the ecosystem. That's how we're gonna get there. And if you're Satya, your biggest fear is missing out on another platform shift, right?

1:05:32This is... I mean, this is the argument, right? That if you're Google, you have Search and YouTube, and if this fails, whatever, you'll have a bunch of GPUs to run Search and YouTube on. If you're Meta, you'll have a bunch of GPUs to run probably Instagram ad targeting. Horizon Worlds. Horizon Worlds. But like Meta has like, they have these big businesses. Microsoft has a cloud business. It is interesting that they are walking away from the only consumer business that it was truly relevant in. And if they, I'm just saying, it feels like this is pretty existential for Microsoft in an important way.

1:06:01But yeah, like you hear in Jensen Wang and NVIDIA and those in the Waymos of the world and all of these places saying, look, we just need to continue to build out these models in these specific areas. Like this week, Fei-Fei Li and her startup released this new world model. And so there's all this experimentation happening at these other types of companies or they're not other types of companies, but other views of how we get there beyond generative AI or beyond large language models that are feeling optimistic. And I would say like Google, especially with DeepMind, seems to be pretty far ahead on that.

1:06:37I think it's probably another thing that's, you know, at Microsoft's thought. I just, the gap between what is being promised, what is being delivered, and how people feel about it, is wider than I've ever seen in maybe anything you and I have ever covered. I can't remember a technology where people are like, no, we hate this. But then, like, usage is really high. But then, like, the hype cycle is crazy, and, like, late-night comedians are making fun of the most bleeding-edge tech that you can think of. There was a lot of money spent on netbooks back then. I feel like you're... I think, too, there's the same promises, right?

1:07:16At least for the consumers, like kind of going back to the consumers, my book and my reporting has been very focused on like, what does consumer life look like? How does our life look different? And I do think there's like similar promises that we had at the smartphone gate, you know, opening up the smartphone gates and app stores. all versions of our life are going to be better. Things we can't even imagine. The Ubers, the food deliveries, all the things are good. Like, this is the platform to do it. And to your point, like right now, we're not necessarily seeing that revolutionary change in any of those parts of our lives, right?

1:07:55Wait, here's my comparison. Is this, in that framework, is this more like the App Store or is this more like 5G? Oh, my God. Oh, God. Oh, God. Right, because the App Store came true. Many, many things changed. Like, the whole world bent itself around the smartphone. 5G, less so. I just had a robotic surgery. No, I don't. I mean, everyone is using 5G. But there was nothing that it changed. The one thing that I will provably say, I will always get 5G credit for this, you can now watch a livestream of Sabrina Carpenter any night you want that she's performing. Because 5 ,000 people in the stadium are all livestreaming.

1:08:35and the network, the millimeter wave network in the stadiums can support it. That's it. That's the big 5G moment. Like we did a story at AT &T about the Aeros tour and they moved more data across the AT &T network at all those NFL stadiums during the Aeros tour because people were just live streaming Taylor Swift all night. Great. That's it. It always comes back to stadiums for 5G. It's what it is because they have network density and they can connect all the devices in a way that 4G could not. That's it. That's the one thing you got. That's it. No robot surgery, no self-driving cars, which were absolutely promised with 5G, because they had zero latency connection to the data center.

1:09:14Still not the promise of the self-driving car. So, okay, is it the App Store, which I've heard a lot, or is it 5G, which was all hype, nothing except live stream concerts? It's probably something in between there. Cop out. Jake? This is why I need you to ask the App Store. I mean, I'm going to, like, redefine this, But like, the App Store, I think, was immensely huge when it launched and then became an entrenched thing that has done very little in the past decade, right? Can AI be explosive and important and change things for a short period of time? Yeah, probably. That feels like something. But the App Store changed what we could do with our phones, right?

1:09:54It changed how we navigated the world and how we got things and how we got places. The app store realized the first internet bubble, right? The dot-com bubble was like, we'll move the economy to the web browser. And that didn't work because the form factor was wrong. The smartphone form factor was correct. And the app store was like, we will move the entire economy to these five companies. Yeah, whether you like it or not, we're going to change things. It's going to be slightly better in some ways, slightly worse in others. And we're going to deal with the fallout for the next decade. Yeah, that's AI.

1:10:25Yeah, that's AI. And I think that there are real places it will make life better, but in this big sweeping thing that the machines are going to do everything for us, and... The models will be as good as using a computer as a human. That is... I heard that, and I was like, this is the bet. Is that the AGI test that they're... No, that's just... I think that's... It's just like... It doesn't matter if that's the AGI test. I mean, I personally think the AGI test is stocking the dishwasher now, but, like, that's... I think if you cut AGI out of it entirely. We don't have OpenAI's panel of religious experts and philosophers to declare that they've made digital gods.

1:11:05Cut that all out. I don't know what that is. Microsoft thinks there will be a model that can use a computer as well as a human such that they can start re-architecting the software for the model to use. That's the best. As explicitly as anyone has ever said it in my estimation. That's a lot. But it's also, it's so funny. At some point that just, you're, okay, so it's a system where a computer talks to another computer and does a predefined set of things that it's optimized to do. At what point does that stop being AI and just start being computers? Like that's just, right? Like that is just how software works.

1:11:38He can call it whatever he wants. It's, you know, it's like thinking. It is, cool. Like you don't need - I'm so excited for Excel to think for me. You know, it's like when you like, I don't know, like when we like try to operate Vox Media and we're like, can you just do what I want? You know, like some like corporate person in here is like, no. What if the robot was saying no? Oh, yeah. Sounds great. Perfect. This is, can I say, this is why everybody's going to Linux. Linux would not have this problem. I'm just saying, I don't think I've ever, I'm curious. I know there's a lot of enterprise deployments of AI, which are successful.

1:12:13Not the, like the McKinsey ones, but like, I know there are enterprise IT developers who have built working systems that are very efficient using AI. So I'm curious, if you're one of those folks, let us know. Like, do you see how the success you've had there translates to the big success that everyone is betting on? Because that, I'm dying to see the, like, the progression, right? And there are all these different bets on how you might build these models and these systems. But I don't think I've ever heard it as clearly. And it was like the same week Joanna was coming on and we're like making the montage of the robot falling down.

1:12:49And I was like, there's something here. No. And I also think that you're totally right. And it's exactly like, it is the backlash to, we had it in the longer cut of the interview, but Jensen Wong has been saying for now the last two years, everything's going to be robotic. Anything that moves is going to be robotic. Robotics are going to change the world. Robots, robots, robots. And then you see this and you're like, how? Yep. Right? How is that going to happen? And look, I wouldn't put robotics because we like you mapped out really well how many things are challenging there on the same plane of what probably Nadella is talking about, which is virtual agents and whatever.

1:13:31But it is all being lumped together for the public. And it's very confusing. And we're hearing, I mean, again, premise of what I was trying to do this year is, how many places can I have AI take over my life and let me see where we're really at with this? You want to plug the book one last time? I didn't. I didn't. I said reporting this year. I didn't say the book. Well done. Joanna has a book coming out. She'll be back to promote the book. It'll be back in May. It's far away. So I will come back talking about something else between now and now. It won't be what they're not here or about. We got to take a break.

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1:18:03All right, we're back with the lightning round. Unsponsored, Stern. We don't do sponsors here at The Verge. You can't buy us. You can't tell us what to do. No amount of money can give us instructions, even from our corporate bosses, which frustrates them to no end. But if you want to support us in our ability to be free of any constraints whatsoever, you can just subscribe to The Verge. That's what keeps us unsponsored for flavor. Or this is sponsored by my new company where I sell lightning cords. It's a big market ahead of you. People's dying iPhones. I sell refurbished lightning cords on my website, joannastern.com.

1:18:43Which your agent can go find anytime. So we got to start the lightning round. Joanna, it feels as though I made this promise that we're ungovernable, which is what David always says, which I can never pronounce. And Joanna's gonna blow up the lightning round. But we start, Joanna, every week with America's favorite podcast within a podcast, Brendan Carr is a Dummy, where I update the audience on the machinations of America's worst FCC chairman, Brendan Carr. This week is actually not Brendan himself, although he made some regrettable comments about his underwear choices in regards to South Park.

1:19:17We're going to set that aside. That's true. That's a real thing to happen. I'm sorry. Thank God that is not the item today. That's not the item. This week, because Brandon is such a threat to free speech in America, a thing that doesn't usually happen, happened. A group of Republicans and Democrats came together to say, cut it out. Stop doing the thing that is blatantly unconstitutional. So a huge group of Republican and Democratic FCC chairs and commissioners and staff lawyers issued a petition asking the government to get rid of the news distortion policy, which is what Brendan used to threaten ABC and Jimmy Kimmel.

1:19:59The letter is basically as blunt as it gets. The First Amendment forbids the government from embarking on such a product. The application of the news distortion policy is constitutionally problematic, the vast scope and vague language of the policy casts an omnipresent shadow over broadcasters' freedom of expression while leaving the policy open to partisan weaponization. This policy has been on the books forever. Huge groups of Democrats and Republicans did not come together to say repeal it until Brendan Carr started deciding that he could just wield it to get what he wanted out of broadcasters.

1:20:29This is bizarre. It's like these people traditionally do not like each other and vote against each other when they serve on the FCC together. I mean, it's not clear to me what Carr's big mission or objective is in running the FCC beyond using this policy to. Or any other policy. Yeah, to put pressure on broadcasters or any other company that he has leverage over to shape their content. So that list of signatories, Andrew Barrett, he was the Republican commissioner appointed by George H.W. Bush. Rochelle Chong, also Republican, appointed by Bill Clinton. Tom Wheeler, appointed by Obama. Alfred Sykes, appointed by H.W.

1:21:09Bush. Dennis R. Patrick, appointed by Ronald Reagan. It's like a long list of people appointed by Democrats, Republicans, people who are themselves Democrats or Republicans. And they are pointing out that Brendan Carr sucks at his job and is not doing anything you're supposed to do, which is protecting. expression, he is actually threatening free expression. America. Uh, we'll paste a link to the letter. You can read it. It's, it's a legal letter, but basically they're like, you've abused this power so much that no one else has ever used. I think they point out it's only been used eight times in the history of the FCC until Brendan showed up.

1:21:41They're like, this is so dangerous that you should get rid of this because this guy is so unhinged. He's a problem. Uh, anyway, that's been Brendan Carr is a dummy this time supported by a wide variety of commissioners, both democratic and Republican. Brendan, as always, you're welcome to come on the show. You're welcome to come on Decoder, try to explain your actions. You are not allowed to talk about your underwear. We're gonna continue to ruin your Google results forever until they show up, because I don't think you can defend yourself, man. That's, again, been Brendan Carr's study. Now, on to the lightning round.

1:22:12All right. Jake, what's your first one? All right. Neil, are you a big Fire TV guy? No, but I'm a Fire TV guy in the sense that Fire TV has lost containment is a noun and now just represents piracy in general. Well, I have some bad news for you and I think everybody who owns a Fire TV stick, which is that Amazon says it is going to crack down on illegal streaming on Fire TVs. They put out a statement from an unnamed spokesperson recently. They're like, piracy, it's bad. We don't like it. But they said, quote, will now block apps identified as providing access to pirated content, including those downloaded from outside our app store.

1:22:52And they say they're going to do this on existing devices and new devices. And I don't know what this means for the future of Fire TV, because my understanding is that people only buy them for piracy. That's what they buy them for. Every single time I hear somebody talk about a Fire TV stick, it is so that they can watch some new piracy service that I have never in my life heard of. Yeah, they're all fly-by-night IPTV services. And Fire TV as a concept is just Android stick. Like Amazon's Fire platform is just Android, right? Just like forked Android? It was, and now there's a new one that is forked Linux, but it doesn't, you know.

1:23:28You could sideload Android apps on it, is the point. Yes, yes. And Roku sticks don't have this problem because of that. Yeah, because Roku is a Linux platform that runs basically HTML5 apps. So you could do it, but there's, like Android is an operating system. You can just make Android apps and sideload them onto a thing that already exists and runs Android. I think Amazon was fine with this until everybody started noticing it was happening. We're gonna talk about YouTube TV and Disney in a minute, but like in a world where everything is getting harder to literally pay for or access, the push towards just steal it is higher than ever.

1:24:02And the Fire Stick, literally when people say Fire Stick, they do not mean the Amazon product. They mean cheap IPTV streamer and you gotta pay a guy a Bitcoin to get like a login. They're everywhere. But the people who were flagging this to Amazon, it seems like it's pretty well known, but you think it was actually the streaming platforms that are like... It was Sports League's streaming platform, the broadcasters. They're like, you're giving yourself... Who are very important to Amazon to actually do the real... Right. Amazon has a literal NFL deal. The NFL is complaining that people aren't buying Sunday ticket because they're sideline on the Fire TV.

1:24:36And you control the operating system. You can say, we will just check for these 10 IPTV apps. which by the way are available freely in the apple app store because in europe you can actually just buy iptv logins so there's a lot of back and forth here about like how much you control the store who the store is for it's a lot what's remarkable about the fire six is it is not these are not things that i think are being like purchased by super tinkerers who know their way to how to hack their way into it. This is like, just, it is everyone. It is everyone in the suburbs has a Fire TV stick that they are watching some pirated stream on.

1:25:16Because somehow that is easier, and I guess way more affordable, as a way to get all the sports content that they wanna watch. Oh, yeah, the Indian uncle market in New Jersey for weird IPTV boxes. Right? Off the charts, man. Like, there's, it's happening right under your nose, Joanna. It's probably happening in my house. Like, if you want to watch cricket, your choices are pay for 50 different streaming services or pay one guy in Edison some money. Specifically in Edison. It's very much Edison. I was in Edison last week. It's very much Edison, New Jersey is the hotbed of like IPTV streaming boxes.

1:25:53And all of my uncles in New Jersey have this thing. I think the Fire TV market is about to collapse. Like, this is, if they follow through on this, they've got nothing. Yeah. Everyone's just going to buy a Roku. Well, or they're going to buy one of these other weird Android devices. Yeah, yeah. Like, putting Android on a cheap device that you can plug into a TV is pretty inconsequential. The question is, will Amazon allow those to be sold on Amazon? And these are apps that you just get from the websites? Or can you get them in a Google Play store? Yeah, you can just download IPTV apps. Okay. I'm very...

1:26:25I think there's a lot to be written in the year to come, because the carriage disputes and the fights between broadcasters and the prices are all going up. Piracy's about to explode. It's the year of Linux and the year of piracy. Those are my two calls. Everything is... I'm already doing my 26 predictions. All right, Joanna, what's yours? I don't have as good of a... wind-up as Jake, but I want to tell you about the$230 Apple jockstrap. That's so rude. It's called the iPhone Pocket. Sure. Is that really what they named it? That is what it's named. Okay. And it is a limited edition collaboration with Japanese designer Issey Miyake.

1:27:07And you can get this. It looks like a sock, a long sock. We just could just... Everyone on the internet has seen this. Any of your listeners have seen this thing. It's$150 for the short one. For the longer one,$230. Oh, because you gotta pay for more fabric. I will point out Issey Miyake, famously the designer who made all of Seedrops turtlenecks. We've got some real fashion plates on the Verge team who told us this is not an absurd price for Issey Miyake. It is, however, a sock on a hoop. Like, I don't know how else to describe it. Like, it's a long piece of fabric, like hoop-shaped. And I don't think the objection is the wearing of the phone.

1:27:47Does anyone seem to— Because, yeah, like, the crossbody thing is a thing. They obviously did that for this iPhone release. It seems just to be like the reaction to the ridiculous lookingness of it. No, I think now is not the time to release$200 socks. Yeah, it's one thing. I understand like for an Issey Miyake piece,$230 is very reasonable. Okay, but it's not an Issey Miyake piece. It is an Apple product. Right. Right. And if you're going to sell this at an Apple store, a bunch of people are going to walk in and see a really long sock that costs$230. And you're like, oh. It has no branding on it that says you have a fashion item.

1:28:25It's just another Apple. It's just another Apple accessory. I will point out, this is not the first sock Apple has ever made. Yes. That is absolutely true. And there's been a lot of great comparisons to the iPod sock. So we have a clip of Steve Jobs introducing iPod socks in 2004. It's actually, this is the second week in a row we've run the Jobs product introduction. Just watch this one. I want to point something out about it. Just watch it first. Today, we're introducing a revolutionary new product for your iPod. Socks.

1:29:02You know,

1:29:08all of these, there's all these companies that offer cases for your iPod. And, you know, sometimes we think they make more money on the cases than we make on the iPod. And so we thought we'd offer something too. And our design team came up with socks. And they're really cool, actually. You can put your iPod in them. And they like that. They keep your iPod warm on cold days. They protect it. And they give you a little more personality. Those are$29. And he actually says in that clip, other people are making more money on the iPod cases than we're making on the iPods. He's totally honest about it.

1:29:48that is completely self-deprecating. Like Steve Jobs, the biggest ego in the world, is like, yeah, it sucks. Like, why not? Like, these other guys are making money. We thought we'd have some fun. Can you imagine any tech executive today doing any demo where he's like, I don't know, sucks. Like, all these companies have utterly lost their sense of humor, even in this context. I think that's like, I mean, I don't know. I think in this day and age where we're making fun of Apple for small things, it seems like they kind of just walked into this, right? Like, they just... Right, if they had been like, this is funny...

1:30:24Right. But they're like, this is a serious press release with, like, beautiful photos of models with this jockstrap thing. I was just thinking, I was just talking yesterday. Joanna, do you know what a jockstrap is? I do, my tweet went, like, pretty good on it. It literally... Here, look at this picture. Wait, I do? My tweet went pretty good? Like, look at my tweet on this. It's very similar. Well, the retweets have it. I don't know what to tell you. Look at this. I mean... Okay, okay, okay. I see what you're saying. There's a bit of more in that photo. Yeah. Like, look at the, you know, it's more...

1:30:58Stop making me look at it. It's worse when I look at it side by side. Yeah. Please stop making me look at it. It was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw that. I don't know why. I'm just saying, if they had done this with some humor... I agree. ...and like, we made a very silly product. We made it with a famous designer, but it's like the... It's fun instead of it's so serious. Steve Jobs is able to be like, this is pretty funny. And I actually think that Apple knows at this point that there's going to be this, like, world of people making fun of X, Y, and Z weird product that they do.

1:31:34I think they hate it. I think they know it, though. I will know, like, the thing... I'm not saying they're like, yay, it did it. Like, it went viral and there's... But, like, the Apple cloth, like, did that? It was a whole thing, and it's like a joke now. I'm just saying, in the process of, like, Vision Pro launch and all that stuff... Right. Right. ...when they showed me the eyes, and I was like, have you ever worn a headset with your eyes on and talked to someone else in a headset with their eyes on? And I'm like, yeah. And I was like, did you laugh? And they're like, we don't laugh at work.

1:32:01Yeah. And I was like, I laugh at work all the time. Yeah, they know that. Like, what? Like, if you... We did that thing in the Vision Pro, where you had the Vision Pro with the eyes and I had the Vision Pro with the eyes, I would not stop laughing. Yes, it does seem that some may lack sense of humor. And that's the company that put out the$230 sock and forgot to laugh about it. But they also, like, they play up in these keynotes now a lot of humor around their executives. But it's never around their products. It's never around their products. They will never say a negative thing. It's at the expense of the executives.

1:32:33Yeah. Do you remember when Marquez Brownlee interviewed Tim Cook and did, like, the blind ranking? Yeah. Where he was like, I'm just gonna go through some products. And it's one of those things where, obviously, you're gonna have to rate something last. And Tim Cook just refused to play ball. He would not put a number on anything. At some point, Marquez goes, all right, the magic mouse to the lightning point on the bottom. And Tim Cook is like, we have one of the best design teams on the planet. And you're just like, dude, please, this is the audience. Like, have some, it's all right. You're not gonna upset anyone.

1:33:03I just, I don't think any of these big-time companies have a sense of humor anymore. I think that's another part of the reason and then people are kind of revolting against the products. Like, everything is way too serious. The stakes of everything are too high. Well, then they try, like, the Jimmy Fallon situation with Google, right? Like, it wasn't funny. No. No, no. Right? They were trying to have fun, but then, like... Paying a comedian and having fun are actually different things. I am agreeing. I agree. I just... I'm just saying, I looked at this, and I was like, you could have had so much fun with this, and instead what you got was a jockstrap treat, which apparently went Megavie.

1:33:39Not really. That's what I said is like, it did good. Don't show it to me again. It didn't do great. Let's look at it again. No, I don't want to. All right, my next one, coming back to streaming. Disney is losing over$4 million a day in revenue on the YouTube TV blackout. So ABC, ESPN, free form, not available on YouTube TV. It's gone on for two weeks. They've missed two Monday Night Football games. I became more aware of IPTV than ever before when Packers-Eagles was not available on YouTube TV, which I pay through the nose for. I'm not gonna say why I became aware of IPTV at that time. It's very bad.

1:34:15Bob Iger showed up on the Manning cast, the alternate broadcast with Peyton and Eli Manning, and everyone thought he was gonna try to put pressure on YouTube TV, and then they chickened out. They didn't do it. They didn't even talk about it? They didn't talk about it. Sports Illustrated ran a headline that was like, Manning's chicken out. Like, fail to do job. Like, one reason you would have Bob Iger on during a Monday Night Football game is to say, this isn't available, and they didn't do it. Weird. Um, Sundar Pichai and Bob Iger are now personally involved in these negotiations, according to some reporting.

1:34:46Sundar had to remember that YouTube TV exists. Yeah, I'm gonna be on it. Like, is YouTube TV really that big of a - It is the biggest cable network in the country. It's the only one that's growing. And so it's taking share from everything else. Like, no one is buying Comcast or Frontier or whatever. Disclosure, Comcast, an investor company. but what I'm saying here is they're losing share in cable TV. So take that for its worth. And, you know, YouTube wants to be TV. So having YouTube TV, like, slide, they can kind of get everything at once. It's very big in the suburbs. It's very big in the suburbs.

1:35:22For those of us that don't have the box, the illegal boxes, the illegal buyer TV sticks. I'm sorry, I got the Sports Illustrator headlight. It's worse than I said. It's Peyton and Eli Manning dropped the ball, embarrassed themselves with Bob Iger interview. Because you had one point, which is to say something spicy about the negotiations, and they didn't do it. I don't know if that's how they see themselves, but that's the context of Bob Iger is not allowed to show up, unless you can talk about the fact that ABC and ESPN are not on the biggest cable service in the country. Is YouTube TV not just the price of cable?

1:35:53Right? Why is it so explosive? So you don't have to pay for cable. You don't have to deal with it. You don't have to pay for cable. You don't have to get a box. It is good. It runs on Apple TV. You just get it. How do you watch TV? I don't. Yeah, I get that feeling. I'm quickly getting that feeling. I'm sorry. We're now at the point where it's earnings season. I don't really either. And I want to play this clip from Bob Iger, because I think it will illustrate the point that you're making here. Can we run the Bob Iger clip? This is from Disney's Earnings. He's talking about YouTube TV. The deal that we have proposed is equal to or better than what other large distributors have already agreed to.

1:36:28So we're not trying to really break any new ground. Okay, so Bob Iger is saying We have a deal on the table with Google that is the same deal that everyone else gets. And Google is saying no. It might even be, he said, or better. It might even be better than everyone else is getting. And Google is saying no. I don't know. Here's my theory of the case. Google runs YouTube. What do we know about Google's attitude towards YouTube creators? Doesn't matter. You can go. Good luck not being on YouTube. You, by all means, Mr. Beast, go to Twitch. Have fun. See if you get the revenue or the audience. Any creator, any individual creator is meaningless to YouTube.

1:37:11And Google now has the scale to look Disney right in the eyes and say, Monday Night Football is just another show. We don't actually need it. We're not going to pay the price that you are charging all of our competitors. We're going to pay substantially less than that. And they've been stuck here for two weeks. there might be momentum by the time you're listening to this maybe it will go through usually the deals go through right before the football game right historically in these carriage disputes right before the big event we've had two Monday Night Football games including one in which the Packers deeply embarrassed themselves and broke my heart but that was a big game that a lot of people wanted to watch deal didn't go through maybe we're going to go another week but I'm telling you the attitude here is the same attitude that Google has towards every YouTube creator which is yeah you can go good luck and I think they're saying the same thing to Disney.

1:37:57Yeah, you can go. YouTube TV will be just fine with that Monday Night Football. And that is a wild place to be. Unless they cave. Maybe they'll cave. But I suspect just listening to Bob Iger being like, it's the same deal everyone else gets. And Google's like, no, we want a better one. It's a lot of power in this ecosystem. That sounds right. And I feel like increasingly these deals are also about data. And I feel like there have been reports before that Google has asked for a lot more information than other, you know, programmers. It'll be interesting to see what comes out at the end of this, because I feel like usually the details leak about what they actually won in holding out.

1:38:34I remember when Apple was trying to get Sunday ticket, what they wanted, the thing they wanted was rights in all formats to come, and the league was like, we can't lose out on VR streaming, and sure. Can watch it in the Steam. Yeah. All right, Jake, what's the next one? Whatever it's called. All right. Steam frame. Speaking of Apple, we got a big app store, big little, big little app store update, which is that mini apps are now legal. mini apps used to be Apple is now going to allow I think officially allow mini apps in the app store or inside of other apps they're going to take a 15 % cut of purchases inside those mini apps that are inside of other apps and this I think is in response to a lot of regulatory pressure the US's lawsuit against Apple names Apple's I think inhospitable environment toward super apps which collect all these mini apps as one of the reasons that it's stifling competition.

1:39:34So I don't know precisely what made them change this, but apparently this change comes right after they locked in a deal with Tencent to allow them to make this happen with their apps. I don't know if this is going to revolutionize the App Store, but it feels like just one more outcome of every government on the planet being like, hey, Apple, like, let up. So in China, Tencent has WeChat, which has multiple mini apps for like ride hailing, food delivery, all that stuff. Telegram, Discord, all of this stuff. Everybody wanted to build super apps for a while. Remember we heard about it and Apple basically shut it down.

1:40:11I just don't know if like in the age of the AI economy, there's going to be a huge rush to be like, what if we put our app inside of WeChat in America? Yeah. Because then WeChat just gets to use your app for you. It seems like. I don't know. like OpenAI is aspiring to be the everything app and like maybe this gives more flexibility to our apps oh so you could you could put like a little app inside a chat should be tea can you already do that to some extent yeah I think you can that's why I'm I thought this was a kind of thing already it's in China it's a huge thing here Apple has prevented it from happening right here it's like Apple has their like mini apps within their own apps right like in the messages like you have Yeah, none of that stuff hits.

1:40:56This is very much like WeChat is its own platform, such that people switch more freely between iOS and Android in places like China, because WeChat is the operating system they're actually using. Which is why Apple doesn't want to allow them, and it now is, which it's hard for me to imagine the Facebook app suddenly adding ride hailing and messaging and a million other things inside of it, and now Facebook is my operating system and I can go to whatever phone I want to. Feels like that ship has sailed. It feels like a bad experience in general. this seems like Apple saw a way to keep making money and get ahead of regulators and not lose their grip on the ecosystem, and that's what's happening here.

1:41:36But for everybody who's really excited about HTML5 mini-apps, I have great news this week. Now's the time. Yeah. Now's the time to take all of your development energy away from AI. This is... Not the HTML5 mini-apps. Can I say something? This is a little more 5G than App Store. Okay. Rough. All right, Joanna, do you have a second one? Close us out? Yes. waymo is hitting the highway they are going to start opening up rides it doesn't seem to everyone in it's in three cities san francisco los angeles and phoenix where you previously could not ride on the highway now they are opening up some rides on the highway to some people sure i'm so big deal i mean you can just buy a model three yeah the whip however you want i thought all the cars that you can just, like, buy.

1:42:23I thought highways were the easy part. Yep. So then why are the robo-taxis coming to them later? Because it's riskier. Because if you hit something on the highway... Ah. ...they will not possibly live. Mm. And this was Waymo's way of really easing in. After that cat incident. Bad timing with the cat incident. But that was a large part, I think, of their strategy is we have been so safe. We have avoided fatalities. We have avoided so many, you know, so much bad press or bad incidents around Waymo. We've been so careful. And so they were really testing highway driving for a really long time. They had been testing in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix for a long time.

1:43:15This is just now, finally, we will allow some people. And the reason this is an actual big deal when you are a Waymo user is you often will get in a car, and it will take three, five times whatever amount to get someplace because you can't get on the highway, and it just has to take local roads. I was in San Francisco a few weeks ago, and it was like, okay, my Waymo, I'd love to take this as a Waymo, but it's 20 minutes longer than an Uber. Like, as a person in a super cruise and a GM car on the highway, I'm like, this rules. And I'm like, I would not let a robot go this fast. Like, I have to stop being super—they're very different technologies.

1:43:51But, like, I'm like, every now and again, I'm like, this is—we're going too fast for this thing to be driving itself. But you're—it's, like, you still have to do eyes on the road and all of that. I have to take over. Yeah, you have to take over, yeah. It's just a very—it's a very different level of autonomy. But there's something about going faster. Yeah. That's exactly why. Yeah. All right, my last one, I'm just pointing this out. There's a teaser for Toy Story 5, and the villain is a tablet. It's like very good. Like the toys are getting struck away. When's it coming out? I want to be there right away.

1:44:23Sit down. When is it coming out? I'm not gonna fall asleep in that movie. June 19th, 2026. More than 30 years after the first Toy Story movie. Oh, I can't wait. The... Wait, it's the villain is... The villain is a tablet called Lilypad. It's shaped like a frog. How careful do you think, like, they've been with not making sure that's an iPad? What is the conversations happening between iPads and users? Well, if these Google negotiations don't go well, that thing is gonna run on Android tomorrow. Yeah, the real question is, what's the timeline before they start selling the lily pad? Right. Right.

1:44:55All the kids are gonna want it. Totally. Well, all the kids are gonna have it. No one is gonna learn. The kids already have. Yeah. It's like, please stop. Woody's already dead. All right, that's it. We're way over. We're wildly over. Joanna showed up late. I never even made fun of you for being David. I'm so sorry. I did my best. You did a good David. You were wondering. I didn't even compare you to David and make you do a David impression. Eh. All right. That's it. That's the show. Thank you for listening. Sunday, I'm on Virgin History with David, who is alive. The real David. He's alive. Don't ask any questions.

1:45:32David is alive. David and Sarah Jong and I did a whole episode of Virgin History and LimeWire. I will tell you that Sarah and I, full existential copyright crash out. If that's what you come here for, boy, do we deliver in that episode. I'm excited for that. Tuesday on The Vergecast, David has Corey Doctorow talking about intradification. We have ad-free feeds of all these podcasts if you subscribe to us, which also keeps us from being able to be told what to do, which is very important to me. And we want to hear from you. You can email us at vergecast.verge.com. You can call us, 866-VERGE11. The Verge production of The Verge and the Boxing Podcast Network.

1:46:08Today's show is for your set, Eric Gomez, Travis Larchuk, and Andrew Moreno. Do you want to say it? Rock and roll. There it is.

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