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Jim Kramer is crying, but Apple is

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1:31

Hello, and welcome to VirTraCast. The

1:33

flagship podcast. I'm crying

1:35

on television. Who has

1:38

it? crowd on television. Every

1:40

time I go on television, I'm crying inside.

1:42

I have yet to cry on television. The next

1:44

time I get some like local news pitch I'm,

1:46

like, do you know who he needs to talk to? Is Alex Cranes?

1:48

Just softly weeping. He's, like,

1:50

shit. He's just fucking soaked

1:54

here.

1:55

Yeah. Lots to cry about this week. Lots to be

1:57

happy about. It's a cocktail of

1:59

emotions. I'm

2:00

a friend Eli. That's Alex Trans. Hello?

2:03

David Pierce is here. Hi. I'm always

2:05

in a cocktail of emotions. This is what

2:07

the vergecast is like that. Can we just rename

2:09

the vergecast? A cocktail of technology

2:11

emotions? Yeah.

2:12

I think that's what people expect for us.

2:14

Also, deep in his cups, Tom Warren is

2:16

here. Hello? I only cry when people

2:18

are mean to me on Twitter. Oh. Luckily,

2:20

that never happens. What time is

2:22

in England time? It is cool plus

2:24

nine. Yeah. You're hammered. Let's be honest.

2:27

A couple of teas passed in a time.

2:29

Here's what I know about British people. It's three PM.

2:31

They're drinking, especially lately. This

2:33

is my understanding of the statement we drink

2:35

if it's free AM. We're just in bed

2:38

drinking. like, I wake

2:40

up, open the paper, who's who's the

2:42

monarch, who's the prime minister indifferent today.

2:44

Sure. I'll throw a couple back. Let's see what

2:46

happens. You have to be careful. You have

2:48

to be nice to all of us. Now, all British people, because

2:50

you never know when one of us has to become a prime minister.

2:55

I saw that video of Richeson at

2:57

partying and I was like, this shouldn't

2:59

be a scandal. More world leaders

3:02

should be forced to rage on

3:04

video before they become world leaders. So they

3:07

are reminded that at any point

3:09

they can be taken down by their own actions.

3:11

It was a good it was a good video. It reminded me

3:13

of a thing that Casey Newton had said to me. For

3:15

years on it now, we are quickly approaching

3:17

the day when world leaders will have

3:19

just commonly have sexed in their in

3:21

in their teens. Oh, yeah. And, like, we're

3:23

just we're just coming to that moment.

3:25

He's like, that's the singularity. all politics

3:27

and culture. It's definitely coming. It's the default

3:30

expectation, not a scandal. What about Casey

3:32

unpack that in great detail? Instead,

3:34

what we're gonna talk about in the show is gadgets,

3:37

tech companies, products they make. The

3:39

things you use to sex to other people --

3:41

Yeah. -- devices for sex thing. Surface

3:44

Pro nine with the arm shift. Good for sexting

3:46

the earring. The vergecast. He

3:48

has blurs, so maybe That's

3:50

true. Alright. So we got Surface Pro

3:52

reviews. They hit. Tom, you read about

3:54

ten years of Surface. You talked to Peña,

3:57

Microsoft had earnings, Facebook

3:59

had earnings. Apple is gonna have earnings while

4:01

we record. You'll hear us live, react to

4:03

Apple either making billions of dollars or

4:05

slightly less billions of dollars depending on

4:07

how the economy went this quarter. Google

4:09

had earnings. There's lots of earnings, lots

4:11

of economic shakiness, meta

4:13

in a free fall. because they're spending a lot of

4:15

money in the metaverse. Then we got some gadgets.

4:17

And then here's the thing I wanna tell you. We're

4:19

recording this the day before Elon

4:22

closes the deal to buy Twitter. So we're

4:24

not gonna talk about that on this episode of

4:26

the merch cast. Tomorrow, when

4:28

he closes the deal, assuming

4:30

he does, which we all think he's gonna I was

4:32

just about to say that's a lot of confidence,

4:34

Nila. Like, given what we know so

4:36

far, with twenty four hours notice to

4:38

say you know what's gonna happen, it's like a truly,

4:41

truly bored clamped to make.

4:43

You've just gotta let it sink in. He he's

4:45

got toilet now. He's the the toilet chief

4:47

or whatever he calls himself. Assuming that

4:49

happens, we'll have another

4:51

episode tomorrow with Liz to

4:53

just unpack the Twitter situation.

4:56

The thing I wanna say about the sync, the

4:58

number of people who

5:00

will fully did not get the joke.

5:03

The dumbest joke in the world

5:06

of Elon tweeting I

5:08

just I'm gonna close Twitter, let that sink

5:10

in. In him walking in Twitter

5:12

headquarters with a sink, i. e. letting

5:14

the sink in, See what I'm

5:16

saying? It's the dumbest joke in the world. I

5:18

fully appreciate this joke.

5:19

He, like, doubled down on the dad

5:21

joke by also bringing one of his children

5:24

with him. just be like, if

5:26

you didn't know this was a dad joke,

5:28

there's my

5:28

kid. But it's like CNN's

5:31

like Elon Musk shows up at Twitter headquarters for

5:33

the sync. And it's like, yeah, he tweeted let that

5:35

sync in. And the joke is

5:37

he let the sync in. It's

5:39

not a complicated idea. The

5:42

word sync has two meanings. That's

5:46

the whole joke. And now it's in

5:48

and now it's in. And I'm

5:50

just like, It's like, you

5:52

guys, this is he's he's

5:54

just being a clown. Like, it's

5:56

pretty funny actually. Like,

5:58

he's a billionaire. He showed up in an office

6:00

with a sink. so that he could

6:02

tweet, let that sink in. And none

6:04

of you got it.

6:04

Where is the sink now though? It

6:06

was, like, dropped it on I got

6:10

It's just like it dropped it through the desk.

6:13

Alright. That's enough Twitter for this episode.

6:15

Like I said, when the deal closes, assuming

6:17

it closes tomorrow, We'll have another

6:19

whole episode with Liz. Emergency

6:22

episode. We'll put it in the feed. It'll be right there

6:24

for you if you want Twitter stuff.

6:26

But, you know, other things are happening in the world

6:28

and the deal hasn't even closed it. Who knows it's gonna

6:30

happen? Let's talk Microsoft. So,

6:32

Tom, you wrote a great piece about ten years

6:34

of surface has been ten

6:36

years. You and I have talked about this many times,

6:39

the surface line effectively

6:41

rescued the windows market Yeah. It's

6:43

one of the only examples I can think of of

6:45

the OS vendor making the hardware and

6:47

competition with its partners where everyone actually

6:49

became a success. And now we're in this mountain where

6:51

it's like they made some more surfaces, and

6:53

they're right back where they started with like an armed surface,

6:56

and it's just as crappy as it was ten years

6:58

ago. And it's like weirdly full circle. Yeah.

7:00

And it's it's at the point where it's where

7:02

does it go next? I think that's that's the big question.

7:04

because obviously, they had before the

7:06

pandemic. And I think this is the most important

7:08

bit. of the surface history is

7:10

that they were really pushing for this dual screen

7:13

-- Yeah. -- future. You know, they they they showed that

7:15

stuff super early, which is kind of unusual

7:17

for surface as well. And then, obviously, the

7:19

pandemic hit, and they, you know, they completely

7:21

just went the opposite way because everyone was wanting

7:23

to work from home. They they were focused

7:25

on laptops. So they kind of scrap that

7:27

idea, but it's like, does that come

7:29

back at some point? Like Who

7:31

knows? I don't know. Like, I I saw I visited the

7:33

the headquarters spoke to Panelspinae and

7:35

and the whole surface team. And we're in this

7:37

like room, which is like their road map room,

7:39

which is essentially a room

7:41

with windows, but they're all blanked out they

7:43

have, like, essentially, three sort

7:46

of rows of of tables where they'd have

7:48

products. So it's, like, the current the

7:50

next version and then the next version after

7:52

that. Now,

7:52

obviously, they didn't have those laid out when I went

7:54

in because, you know, they thought they'd they'd get rid

7:56

of those. But that's essentially what that room is

7:58

for. But I I thought it was kind of

7:59

interesting that the Neo was still in the room. when

8:02

I visited. So it's like, obviously,

8:04

they're they're showing off some of the history of some of those

8:06

devices and and all that stuff. But I

8:08

feel like that's that will come back at some point.

8:10

why did they stop? Like,

8:12

why did it go way? because

8:14

because all their partners were working on it too. I remember

8:16

Dell and Lenovo both, like, wanna see

8:18

this. Yeah. And they were, like, always kind

8:20

of, like, pull you into a room and show it

8:22

to you and be, like, cool. And then everybody's,

8:24

like, no, we don't do that anymore. Yeah.

8:26

I think it was partly because it just wasn't really

8:28

ready, the software. Mhmm. And then it

8:30

was, like, a

8:31

big demand for for windows

8:33

itself to be better. So then they

8:35

were like, okay. Let's just take the

8:37

stuff that we were doing, the simplification, all

8:40

the design work and let's roll this into

8:42

a new version. We know to try and capitalize

8:44

on that for our OEMs. And let's be

8:46

honest, look at some of the specifications for Windows

8:48

eleven. They they pushed it CPU

8:50

stuff up. So it's trying to be a bit of a

8:52

moment to have that old glory of

8:54

Windows where they would, you know, a cycle

8:56

of new hardware and and

8:58

that sort of moment. So I think there's there's so

9:00

many different factors into why why they

9:02

kind of pause there or cancel it, whatever

9:04

you wanna call it. Well, I think one of them also

9:06

is just there was this massive

9:09

leap in the number of people who

9:11

suddenly wanted and

9:12

needed very straightforward, very

9:15

functional PCs. And the idea of, like, sell

9:17

me something new and insane, like, goes out the window

9:19

when it's like, I have to go to school tomorrow.

9:21

Like, I need a thing that works.

9:24

And Microsoft does I think correctly,

9:26

also dealing with there's, like, a chip shortage and

9:28

the stuff it's harder to make, and there's supply chain issues. So

9:30

it seems it seems like Microsoft, like, a lot of

9:32

other companies was, like, okay. we we

9:34

make this lineup of very good products

9:36

and then this lineup of, like, bonkers

9:38

experimental. We think the

9:40

future, but definitely not ready products. And I

9:42

think, like, probably correctly made the

9:44

choice to, like, center back on some of

9:46

that stuff. But now the question

9:48

is, when do you get

9:50

back to it. because, like, Tom, you and I both have been

9:52

talking to the panelists about folding into old screen

9:54

devices for, like, a decade now. Like, that dude

9:56

is in on this idea. Like, I don't know

9:58

if he's right but he will he that

9:59

man will spend every time Microsoft

10:02

has trying to make dual

10:04

unfolding screens a thing if they let him do so.

10:06

Yeah. He he always pretty much comes

10:08

back to the idea of the device, like,

10:10

will mold to you, you know, like, the different

10:12

mode switching and that like, that's his that's his

10:14

big thing. And it's whenever the hardware is right

10:16

for that, I guess. but the piece that I

10:18

wrote was, like, they will see the history there.

10:20

But then the whether they can

10:22

really nail what's next or or whether, like, in

10:24

ten years, just to be still on the Surface

10:26

Pro, like, because it's kind of become their

10:28

sort of MacBook Air like

10:30

devices. Very similar to what it

10:32

started at. It's it's got a form

10:34

factor that's kind of, you know, everyone's familiar with

10:36

and they refine it every year, essentially.

10:38

So like this year's one isn't really that

10:40

different. The thing that's very different is that they've

10:42

got an Intel on arm chip that you could pick

10:44

between, which is I think that

10:46

whole arm stuff is still not is still

10:48

not there, you know. Like, it's still very early

10:50

on. And whether you wanna blame Microsoft for

10:52

that or Qualcomm or

10:54

developers or whatever or the whole the whole

10:56

lot. I think I think you probably blame

10:58

both. But if you do run windows on

11:00

an m one, on m two. It

11:02

runs quite well. So Wait.

11:05

How do you run windows on m two?

11:07

Some people have been able to to hack

11:09

it. and get it running. The problem with

11:11

the Qualcomm stuff is they just don't have the performance

11:14

like -- Yeah. -- even in the single

11:16

single Freddie performance is pretty bad.

11:18

They're like basically offering up i five

11:20

chips from, like, two, three years ago in

11:22

terms of performance. And then on the operating

11:24

system side, you don't quite have the app that

11:26

obviously they're all

11:28

laminated essentially. If you wanna run run

11:30

Chrome, although you could complain Google because they

11:32

don't let anyone who uses Chromium.

11:35

compile it from arm. So

11:37

there's another there's another aspect to that as well.

11:39

Obviously, Microsoft does because they've put in all the

11:41

work and and they they can go and do

11:43

that. But like Brave only just put out a preview build

11:45

because they went and put in all the work that

11:47

Google for some reason is

11:49

refusing to do. So there's there's a whole lot of

11:51

things that that going to making a fever

11:53

that I mean, Mike's just trying been trying to do this for a

11:55

decade now. Yeah. This is what I mean. If you

11:57

recall, the

11:58

Surface Lion launched with the

11:59

Surface and the Surface RT,

12:02

Yeah. And they have been trying to

12:04

make Windows on ARM a

12:06

viable competitor in

12:09

so many ways for

12:11

so long. And we

12:12

have it's ten years later, and they're like,

12:14

here's a surface with an arm shift in it.

12:16

And God bless them. They didn't put

12:18

Windows r t on it. like the most

12:20

ill fated version of Windows to ever

12:22

exist. So it's a start button. So it looks like

12:24

Windows theoretically seems like run whatever

12:26

app. But it's just as limited. It

12:28

feels like as Windows RT. Right? It can't run every

12:30

app. The apps that runs in emulation are slow, and

12:32

the underlying arm chip is slow. I

12:34

wouldn't say as limited as RT, but like because

12:36

it's basically just Windows eleven. The the

12:38

main problem is the non r maps

12:40

are slow. So you really do need developers

12:43

to add actually port those apps across.

12:45

And if you're using stuff like, you

12:47

know, Slack, all those sort of apps that

12:49

haven't been compiled in on, then you're gonna

12:51

notice it hugely. then if you about it

12:53

as just being a really expensive,

12:55

like, really expensive Chromebook, then

12:57

it's like if you start using most of the

12:59

stuff out, the actual browser out of Edge, which

13:01

which is on, then it's not so bad. And then

13:03

you get the battery life improvements, all that sort of stuff.

13:05

So you can see where the future is. It's

13:08

just they're not there. They yet at all because

13:10

they need those developers to really buy into

13:12

arm. And to be honest, there's not

13:14

enough OEMs that are really buying into it and and

13:16

putting these devices out. a

13:18

reasonable price.

13:18

But do they actually need those

13:21

developers? because that was one of the things it was really good about when

13:23

Apple did it is they have that emulator to

13:25

just -- Yeah. -- do it. to just

13:27

speed it up for these people because they're like, yeah,

13:29

we want everybody to do this. It'll

13:31

be way better if you do, but we're

13:33

just gonna do this other thing.

13:35

for

13:35

most of you because we can't. Yeah. I do

13:37

wonder what the performance would be

13:39

like on the windows emulator if

13:41

the chips are better. Yeah. If they were at the sort of

13:43

M1M2 level, I don't know. It's hard

13:46

to say it really. Yeah. Like, I I don't know

13:48

for sure. I think there's there's a mixture

13:50

of it. Right. That's

13:50

the thing I keep coming back to you too is, like, all of these

13:52

things, and I think you're right that there's a lot of blame to go

13:55

around. And Microsoft is clearly

13:57

doing more now to try and

13:59

get developers interested in building these

14:01

things. They're putting out nicer dev kits that

14:03

run arm. Like, there are good signs

14:05

and instructions them way too long to, like,

14:07

make any real moves in this way. But it it does

14:09

seem like Apple's move was like, oh,

14:11

your app is not perfectly optimized. Here

14:13

is Infinity processing power. We

14:15

will solve all of your problems with

14:17

just brute force. And,

14:19

like, reading your story and then reading Monica's

14:21

reviews of the Surface Pro nine and the Surface

14:23

laptop, like, all I could think the whole time

14:25

is like, if Microsoft is not deep

14:27

down the road of making its own chips to solve

14:29

some of this problem for itself, like, what

14:31

in the hell are they doing? But it did.

14:34

Like, that's the SQ three. It's a

14:36

four Com chip that Microsoft says

14:38

it helped design. It's

14:39

like a souped up Qualcomm

14:42

chip. Yeah.

14:42

All they do is they take the

14:44

chip with an extra core and

14:46

then they do some driver work with

14:48

Qualcomm and then that's it. go to

14:50

San Diego, and they say, can you make it faster? And

14:52

and Qualcomm says, no. And Microsoft says,

14:54

okay. And then they leave. Yeah.

14:56

But, like, who makes faster on chips?

14:58

Apple. Yeah.

14:59

And soon probably Microsoft.

15:01

Like, the the rumors of Microsoft building, partnerships

15:03

have been around for, like, the last couple of years

15:05

for for servers. and Surface.

15:07

So I think we'll be talking about

15:10

Surface devices in five years, and then we'd

15:12

let Jim invoined. They were so crappy,

15:14

like the Surface Pro nine. And

15:17

they'll all be on Microsoft chips. I mean, hopefully,

15:19

they would have actually nailed the actual chip

15:21

work there because I think

15:23

Microsoft has proven that relying on, like,

15:25

NVIDIA in the early days of TEGRA and

15:27

relying on Qualcomm has just not

15:29

really got them anywhere with windows and all, even though

15:31

they have done a lot of the operating system

15:33

work. How

15:33

would that work with their OEM partners though? Because if

15:35

they start making their own chips --

15:38

Yeah. -- that just makes it

15:40

really, really messy with those OEMs.

15:41

It does. Yeah. I mean, who

15:44

knows who they partner with to do it?

15:46

But I feel like it's the next phase of it though,

15:48

isn't it? Like, maybe they license

15:50

those chips out. A lot of the the stuff

15:52

that Surface does, like, they license the

15:54

pen technology out, but they don't actually charge

15:56

for it. Yeah. And then they share the

15:58

the whole you know, the kickstand design, all

15:59

that sort of stuff

16:00

with Intel and all the OEMs. So

16:02

they've all benefited from it in one way

16:04

or another. That's why basically every device looks like

16:06

a surface. because they've shared those designs.

16:08

I once took a very memorable

16:10

walk around CES with Penas.

16:12

We just looked at all the OEM PCs

16:14

and he was like, this is all the stuff.

16:16

Like, this is

16:17

why this is successful. Like, when I give them

16:19

credit I wanna give them a lot of credit. They

16:22

took a more abundant PC industry.

16:24

that could not compete above seven hundred

16:27

dollars and it

16:29

created one out of thin air with the

16:31

surface. Like, that's legitimately

16:33

exciting. And legitimately no

16:35

other OS vendor has ever

16:37

managed to compete with its licensees. And

16:39

the way they made it work is they just

16:41

gave they did the innovation, they spent the

16:43

money, I've been in the room with all the prototypes

16:45

and star like, we did

16:47

that story every year for, like, five years. Like,

16:49

we're we're gonna go to the surface styrofoam

16:51

room. then they gave it away. Right? They

16:53

did not keep the

16:54

engineering benefits to themselves.

16:57

They they accelerated the ecosystem.

16:59

by giving away the engineering, the

17:01

OEMs themselves were not doing or

17:03

could not afford to do. That's cool.

17:06

Like, there's real business

17:08

strategy and model innovation that went into

17:10

all of that. And now they're just at the

17:12

hard wall that they've been at

17:14

four years of they cannot go on

17:16

they cannot go beyond the form factor

17:18

of the surface into folding

17:20

screens, into thinner designs, into whatever

17:23

else. because you have to get away from Intel to do it and

17:25

arm and Windows are just

17:27

they just hate each other. It's like when

17:29

you're watching your favorite show and the writers are

17:32

like, alright. Now, these two characters are gonna get together. And you're like,

17:34

no. They they don't belong together.

17:36

That's Windows and Arm. I don't know how it's to

17:38

this horizon. Joey and Ray

17:40

That's what I was thinking, but I didn't wanna say it

17:42

out loud. I'll say

17:43

it out loud. It's

17:44

Joey and Rachel. I'm curious if there's

17:46

a world where Microsoft

17:49

makes its own arm chips, licenses

17:51

them out for some, you know,

17:53

nominal fee to to OEMs.

17:55

and Intel builds them. Yeah. That's a future

17:57

that, like, Intel will be super happy about.

17:59

That

17:59

seems like a gigantic win for

18:02

Microsoft too. Like, even if if it can, like,

18:04

kick off this next flywheel of, like,

18:06

that's how you compete with the iPad in a meaningful

18:08

way in terms of, like, battery life and connectivity. That's how

18:10

you compete with the new Max that's

18:12

like, that's how you win as an ecosystem

18:14

and as long as they keep caring about

18:16

windows as more than they care about making

18:18

money from surface, which continues to be the case as

18:20

far as I can that's just a

18:22

huge win. Like, III assume that's for Microsoft.

18:24

The intel part of it I hadn't thought about would be

18:26

sort of fascinating. And they'd make a lot of,

18:28

like, America first noise in a

18:31

way that would be really interesting.

18:33

That seems to me like where Microsoft ought to be

18:35

going, if they're not. No. We look, we had we

18:37

had Pat on the other show that I'm not allowed

18:39

to mention. We don't have another Nobody listened in the high.

18:41

There is no other podcast. I'll

18:44

happily put an AMD logo on the side

18:46

of a chip fab in Ohio. I'll

18:48

happily put another logo. Right? And, like, he

18:50

knows

18:50

that he's gonna make his foundry business

18:53

real, that he's

18:54

making five nanometer

18:57

arm chips eighteen angstrom arm

18:59

chips or whatever whatever. No. They're

19:01

trained well.

19:01

five nanometer. Lower than five nanometer. If

19:03

you

19:03

can make a lower if he's making them from

19:05

Microsoft and there's a Microsoft logo on an arm logo. He

19:07

doesn't care because he's he's just getting the

19:10

volume and the founder that he needs to, like,

19:12

save the business. Yeah. while they

19:14

desperately try to catch up on the on the

19:16

processor design side, all of that is

19:18

three years away. Like, they

19:19

just broke ground on this foundry. You know? Like,

19:21

they're not even close to right Yeah. But if if

19:23

they time it right, it could be the perfect

19:26

time for Intel with, like, the

19:28

geopolitical tensions, trying to compete with

19:30

TSMC, like, if

19:32

they get it at the right time,

19:34

you know, they should build for for anything

19:36

really. Do you

19:36

think that the surface line, you

19:38

know, the the new surface laptop, the

19:41

Pro nine, is just, like, an

19:43

evolutionary step where these, like, upgrade worthy

19:46

devices? Are they just there? Like, if you gotta

19:48

buy one, you buy one? Yeah. I don't think, like, the the shoes a

19:50

bit weird because it's ten years for,

19:52

oh, they're gonna do some crazy device, you know.

19:54

But they they kind of weren't thinking

19:56

in that way. from when I was talking to them. And

19:58

it wasn't really like a big fanfare for them. It

20:00

was like, you know, a point to sort of

20:03

reflect. But in terms of the actual devices,

20:06

Yeah. They're they're just they're very incremental. Right? The Surface

20:08

Studio two plus, the four

20:10

now, four thousand three hundred dollars or

20:12

45445

20:12

thousand five hundred if you get

20:14

the keyboard as well. mouse in the

20:16

sun. It's got a thirty sixty

20:18

in it. Yeah. It's got thirty sixty in it. I

20:20

live with Jen Chip. Wow. Wow.

20:23

Yeah. And we're on we're on thirteen

20:25

sharing at the not those mobile chips, but they're

20:27

about to drop.

20:29

The interesting part

20:31

about the whole of the surface

20:32

device this year is is the pronoun, but the the the arm

20:35

and the internships that we've just been talking about.

20:36

But they are very incremental. But I

20:39

think more interesting is that

20:41

these three devices a decade from when

20:43

they first started releasing the

20:45

the Surface RT tablet on on on

20:47

arm on in Nvidiategra back

20:49

in the day. It's come

20:52

it's come full circle because

20:54

Peanuts

20:54

actually told me that they originally

20:56

were planning to actually release

20:58

a PC, a laptop and a

21:01

tablet for for Windows eight for

21:03

Surface, which is something he hasn't really

21:05

talked about before. And he said those those

21:07

other two devices dropped off because they,

21:09

you know, they bit off more than they could choose, so they they

21:11

weren't quite ready to launch them. Well, also,

21:13

like, Michael Dell showed up and he was like,

21:15

I'll kill you. it's not a

21:17

desktop. Yeah. That's my whole business. They

21:19

wouldn't do a laptop for years.

21:21

Right? Well, yeah. But apparently, they were always

21:23

planning John Lenovo was, like, outside with

21:25

a knife. old John

21:27

Lenovo. It's

21:30

Michael Dell John Lenovo,

21:33

Steve HP, the OEMs famously

21:35

didn't know until I

21:37

think Balmer called them, like, a couple of days

21:39

before. So Oh, wow. So I feel like they were

21:41

probably still planning

21:43

to do the laptop early on, and

21:45

maybe there was a bit of OEM

21:46

pressure. So it probably pushed it out even

21:49

further than maybe they were expecting. But then

21:51

they were obviously Surface RT landed a

21:53

bit rough. Surface Pro

21:55

was, you know, the form factor was there, but it

21:57

wasn't quite until the Pro Free came

21:59

whenever he was like, okay,

21:59

this makes sense. That was really

22:02

got the the kickstand. Right? Yeah.

22:04

Yeah. The kickstand, they went free for

22:07

two at split ratio. biggest

22:09

display. It was a really thin and light. It

22:11

was it was like a a bunch of different

22:14

hardware things came together, and it kind of made

22:16

sense for everyone. So I think

22:18

probably after that device and they were like, okay,

22:20

we can go ahead and do the laptop now because they'll

22:22

probably focus on getting that Pro

22:24

free. Right? they had given away

22:26

enough hinge engineering to

22:28

be

22:28

like, alright. Can we do a regular laptop

22:31

now? They were like, yes. We've we've

22:33

taken enough hinges from you. I

22:34

was gonna say is while that the laptop has

22:36

been kind of like boring

22:38

its entire this entire time,

22:40

I

22:40

would But like in the best possible way,

22:42

I'm totally convinced that the Surface laptop

22:44

is the, like, most underrated

22:47

surface by a million miles because it's

22:49

just, like, They do cool stuff on the Surface

22:51

Studio and the Surface Pro three has like a great

22:53

form factor, but like if you just want a

22:55

laptop, the Surface laptop is

22:57

a great top. And it has been for

22:59

a while now. It was it was a can

23:01

of his it has its

23:02

fits and starts at first, but, like, the last couple have

23:04

been very good. And I feel like

23:06

it doesn't get nearly the shine. I guess, Alex, because I

23:08

think you're right. It's like they're not breaking any new

23:10

ground there. They're just like, would you like a good laptop?

23:13

We've made one of those. But do

23:15

you do you remember the early days though? Like,

23:17

putting fabric -- Oh, yeah. -- that

23:19

fabric. Right. Again, that's they did

23:21

that at knife point. John Lenovo

23:23

was, Here's what I want you to do. A poster of the laptop.

23:27

Alright? Make sure it stains. Really

23:30

nice. But, actually,

23:32

that reminds me of of an anecdote that I

23:34

didn't actually include in the story.

23:36

But, like, Ralph Groen,

23:38

who's, like, their how come

23:39

he's he's tactile, but he's he's basically windows

23:41

and devices. Does a lot of the

23:43

design work. He recounted, like,

23:45

that idea trying

23:47

to put the fabric on the laptop and

23:49

and how difficult it was because they thought, oh, we're

23:51

just gonna slap the Surface Pro keyboard on top

23:53

of the laptop and glue it and he'll

23:56

be fine, but it wasn't. And he

23:58

said that it greatly

24:00

reduced the repairability, which is why I fixed it,

24:02

gave it like a zero. when they first tore it

24:04

down. And he said that if they were gonna

24:06

make that trade off again, he probably wouldn't make

24:08

it. And that makes

24:09

sense. That was before

24:12

Microsoft went to repairability as

24:14

a virtue. I think right after that,

24:16

I think they they woke them up in

24:18

some way. because they started making a lot of

24:20

noise about it right after that

24:22

happened. Yeah. And

24:22

then last year, they partnered up with

24:25

IFix it to to do some like for

24:27

technicians and stuff to be able to repair surface

24:29

devices. And their schools have obviously creeped up as

24:31

well, especially on the laptop side. And then they

24:33

did the I can't remember the name of

24:36

it now. because the the laptop go -- Mhmm. --

24:38

because they have so many different names.

24:40

They're really cheap one. That's what I say.

24:42

And that thing is like super repairable

24:44

for technician. like you can pull the

24:46

display off and change the RAM

24:48

and everything is essentially repairable

24:50

on it. So that's I think that's a kind of

24:52

hint of where they might go with Surface

24:54

devices as well. But on on the arm side, the

24:56

stuff that they've done with, like, the new

24:58

all processing chip on there and the

25:00

AI stuff, I think that's kind of a hint of

25:02

where they really want to go.

25:04

They've how computing is

25:06

changing, especially, like,

25:07

you know, like, on Discord, on on

25:09

Zoom,

25:09

on Teams, it does like the background

25:12

removal, you know, if you dog barking and all that sort

25:14

of stuff. difference with what they're doing is they're

25:16

actually using this separate chip so that it

25:18

doesn't even use your CPU or GPU. So that's

25:20

that's kind of interesting if we're

25:22

gonna offload productivity tasks

25:24

and let's stuff to separate chip in the future. Kind

25:26

of like what's what Apple's doing. That's so

25:28

back to the future, man. I had a I

25:30

had a Mac in, like, the

25:32

nineties that had a separate DSP chip in

25:34

it for things like that. Like,

25:36

every shoulder's new again, like, all the time. By the way,

25:38

I the Mac I had the

25:40

shortest lived MAC in history. It was called the Centrus six sixty

25:43

AV. It was on sale for, like, sixty eight

25:45

days. Somehow,

25:46

but it

25:48

had DSP in it. That's what we call British Prime

25:51

Minister. That's one less

25:53

dress. It was it was

25:55

the macro head of lettuce.

25:57

somehow the lettuce was a much more reliable

25:59

school

25:59

computer. Microsoft also had earnings

26:02

this week. It seems like things

26:04

are fine for

26:06

Microsoft. ish? Yeah. I

26:08

mean, like, so their revenue was okay, their

26:10

profits weren't and everything else, but

26:12

I think it's more their outlook. that's

26:15

quite surprising. So Windows OEM

26:17

revenue dropped by like fifteen percent, which, you know,

26:19

PC sales have dropped by fifteen percent, so

26:21

it all kind of like lines up. But then they're

26:23

saying OEM revenue next quarter's gonna

26:25

drop the the high thirties.

26:27

Wow. And devices revenue, which includes

26:29

Surface and hoch hollins

26:32

and PC accessories now is gonna drop by

26:34

thirty percent. So, like, that's that's some

26:36

big heavy drops that they're

26:38

forecasting. And alongside that

26:40

Zoom growth has slowed down. So

26:42

they're getting hit sort of like three

26:44

times with some of the market stuff. So I

26:46

think next call is gonna be very difficult

26:49

for probably Metro and Amazon and every everyone

26:51

else is whose profits are hurting

26:53

at the moment. So They're they're it's their

26:55

forecast that really got they

26:57

stopped wobbling at the moment. So It seems like

26:59

cloud gaming though is

27:01

starting to tick up and win in in

27:03

a pretty interesting way. Like, it's

27:05

what was the number that, like, twenty million people

27:07

have tried it at some point, which is one of

27:09

those, like, meaningless numbers. It

27:12

seems big, but, like, what has used it? I

27:14

don't know. Yeah. But it does

27:16

seem like they're they're pretty optimistic about where this is headed. I

27:18

feel like. Yeah. Like, they shed ten

27:20

million early this year. and

27:22

that was just before they signed that deal with Epic Games to

27:24

bring Fortnite to Xbox cloud gaming. So

27:26

that's clearly made the the numbers double. Well, that's

27:28

right. Now you don't even have to pay for it. Right? You can just

27:31

do it. Yeah. Okay. Exactly. That's the

27:33

only game you can play for free. So I think

27:35

that's, like, their experiment to see what if

27:37

they let free to play titles on there,

27:40

how much revenue they're gonna generate from in game

27:42

purchases and stuff. BLA, it's

27:44

it's still really early though, cloud. And he was

27:46

he was kind of interested listening to Phil Spencer's

27:48

speaker, the Wall Street General Life

27:50

last night. He was talking about how getting

27:53

past fifteen percent of their exports content

27:55

and services revenue and that

27:57

how he thinks that's gonna remain obviously

27:59

the revenue will

27:59

grow overall. But you think

28:01

that it's going

28:02

to account for that ten percent to fifteen percent

28:06

So

28:06

and it sounds like Game Pass

28:08

is is kind of hitting some slowdown

28:10

in growth in in terms of the console side.

28:12

I think their long bet is that Apple

28:14

and Google will be both be forced to

28:16

make changes on mobile, and that's their their, like,

28:18

sort of, in in the future. But that's

28:20

a long that's a long big bet. And they're

28:22

spending billions of dollars on that. So

28:25

it's still the growth that they really need for for Game

28:27

Pass is isn't quite there yet. And I think there's

28:29

there's a report today for

28:31

Maxius where such

28:33

endeavor the benefits he gets for

28:35

his salary and all that sort of stuff. He gets

28:37

them based partly on, you know, gain

28:39

pass growth and they they were supposed to hit seventy

28:41

five percent and they hit twenty something

28:43

percent instead, so you can see that they were clearly

28:46

expecting a lot more growth in gameparcels

28:48

this year, and it wasn't quite

28:50

there. So it's just some interesting dynamics going

28:52

on with Game Pass and and they're then they're betting

28:54

on gaming. And it it's definitely a

28:56

clear case that it slowed down a little bit more than

28:58

they were expecting. it seems like,

29:00

to some extent, Microsoft's bet

29:03

there is, like, a bet on congress getting

29:05

something done and changing things because it seems very

29:07

unlikely to me that they're, like, Apple is

29:09

just going to suddenly change its mind and be like, never

29:11

mind, Microsoft. Welcome back to the App

29:13

Store. And betting on Congress to

29:15

get things done so that Sachin Adele can

29:17

make more money is that dangerous game to be

29:19

playing right now. Well, it's

29:20

not just Apple and Google that needs

29:22

to change. Like, it is also the

29:25

ISPs in the United States need to

29:27

actually deliver Internet that can

29:29

support this product. Like, part of me is

29:31

thinking that's one of the reasons that they did

29:33

Fortnite is that's got a huge

29:35

audience, a wide variety of people are

29:37

using that. It's just those people who can

29:39

afford an Xbox series x

29:41

and live in a house with like two hundred

29:43

megabits down. So they can test it and see how

29:45

it's running on these other things. And

29:47

probably not as great as they would like. Yeah.

29:49

They get

29:49

they probably get some some really good

29:51

day around that. They also feel

29:54

said last night, you know, the Keystone device there export

29:56

streaming console that appeared on his shelf

29:58

that he tweeted a couple of

29:59

weeks ago. He now says that that is not

30:02

coming for, like, a few years.

30:04

So you can tell that that that that cloud

30:06

stuff is still a little bit early and and then

30:08

they're not quite sure where they're gonna go over that. So

30:10

Yeah. They're they're wait. Hold on. There's like

30:13

a lot to unpack with this whole thing. First of all,

30:15

like betting on Congress is one

30:17

idea. Then to some

30:18

extent, you know, the They

30:20

did a bunch of stuff recently. Did they do all

30:22

the things? They did not do all the things.

30:24

Did they confirm

30:25

Gigi Stone to the FCC?

30:27

No. I don't know what they're doing. Got a whole

30:30

episode of the other podcast coming with that.

30:32

Have they passed the intrastructibles? They have not. Is

30:34

there whatever. I don't know what they're doing. Apple

30:36

we'll talk about this later, but Apple just this

30:38

week was like, guess how in charge we

30:40

are of the iPhone. Yeah.

30:43

the most in charge. Here's all these

30:45

new app store rules. Here's new ads

30:47

in the app store. Like, yeah, we're just in

30:49

charge of this product. and no

30:51

one stopped us yet. There was all this noise last

30:53

summer, and we don't

30:55

care. Here's here's the new master roles.

30:57

By the way, we're gonna the thirty percent

30:59

fee now extends even more things.

31:01

Like, Apple's the most in charge there. And

31:03

and unless Microsoft can figure how to get over

31:06

that wall, and deliver a game streaming

31:08

app on iOS, which they

31:10

have not done and we've heard about it

31:12

at various hearings and trials and whatnot

31:14

like they can't do it. The

31:15

other piece it's fascinating to me

31:18

is Microsoft was so

31:20

close

31:20

to announcing that GameStream

31:23

product. Phil Spencer was on

31:25

decoder and told me it was

31:27

coming. He said it

31:28

out loud. It's coming soon. Tom,

31:30

you and I both were, like, ready for

31:32

the announcement. Like, yeah. That was,

31:34

like, a last second switch. Yeah.

31:36

Like, we we just I heard

31:38

the rumbles. Like, we were like, alright. It's gonna happen. Like, we're at

31:40

it. And then, like, it went away. And now he's,

31:43

like, it's years away. We decided to

31:45

partner with Samsung. By the

31:47

way, Wall Street Journal took a lot of that

31:49

conference, props to Joanna. She got a good stuff out

31:51

of Phil Spencer. She got good stuff out of jobs and

31:53

credit figure ed. We'll talk about that stuff

31:55

too, but Dryans, a cofounder. Yeah. That's where it. That's just

31:57

the Virgin family. It's really what is the Wall

31:59

Street Journal Tech Live Conference, but an extension

32:01

of the first time. That's how I

32:03

feel about our own minute. We

32:05

reverse colonized Bloomberg. Let's

32:07

take it over. It's it's mine now.

32:09

So, like, it's just weird. Like, that whole

32:11

product was their future and the brick wall

32:14

still exists. and the idea that they're just gonna, like, put apps

32:16

on Samsung TVs is not gonna

32:18

grow that market. I'm, like,

32:20

pretty confused about all this because they

32:22

were, like, they were ripped raw and ready to

32:24

go, and now they are in neutral.

32:26

I

32:26

fundamentally do not think it's Apple or Google. That's

32:28

the whole back here. I I like,

32:31

Spencer has repeatedly talked about this. Microsoft

32:33

as a whole has talked about the

32:35

Internet is the barrier here. Like, Microsoft has

32:37

been doing these Internet reports for

32:39

years now. being like the FCC

32:41

is failing on this. Everybody is failing

32:43

on this. The Internet and it's bad in this

32:45

country. And they're financially

32:47

incentivized to do that both because of cloud gaming

32:49

and Azure. and, like, that's what's

32:51

holding them back. Like, I don't think it's a coincidence that

32:53

they open up cloud gaming to Fortnite. They get

32:55

a ton of new users. And

32:57

then they're like, whoa. Whoa. Let's hold back on

32:59

the next big cloud push

33:02

because they're seeing probably over and

33:04

over and over again that the Internet just can't

33:06

support it. as everyone who

33:08

tries cloud gaming seas

33:10

despite the mini stadia fans'

33:13

insistence on their Reddit to this

33:15

day.

33:15

I also think a lot of it, though, is that they went

33:17

pretty quick with Exports Cloud Gaming.

33:19

Like, they weren't intending to launch

33:21

it when they did. as far as I'm

33:23

aware. Google came out with it was the

33:25

Essentials Creek game in the in the browser. They had

33:27

that working in people in

33:30

press hands playing with it, might

33:32

sort of announce, like, the

33:33

day after that or two days

33:34

after it. We're doing ex cloud,

33:37

but we won't have public trials until a year

33:39

later. So they they I think Google really

33:41

spoke in many different

33:43

ways. And so they they pushed ahead

33:45

with this, but they made it an optional

33:47

thing. They put actual export consoles in

33:49

the cloud rather than, you know, PCs

33:51

or infrastructure like that.

33:53

And they're kind of held up

33:55

by that. way because

33:57

their streaming architecture isn't quite as good.

33:59

It's it's it's it never was

33:59

quite as good as stadia. Definitely not as good as

34:02

GeForce now. They're still at ten eighty

34:04

p, sixty frames a second, They

34:06

can't they can't do four k streaming at the moment. So

34:08

if you're gonna go to TVs and you're gonna

34:10

launch a streaming stick or a device or

34:12

whatever you wanna call it, that

34:14

4KI think. I think you do now. I think I think

34:16

there's an expectation for that. Even though it's

34:18

cloud, I think there's still an expectation. I

34:20

have a much much more sample read

34:22

of this. vastly

34:23

more so encouraged by this. Give it to us.

34:25

The game streaming market is unproven. Now I

34:28

noticed how the economics work. The

34:30

Xbox console market,

34:32

super proven, and they have the chips now,

34:34

and it's the holiday quarter, and they can just sell a lot of Xboxes.

34:36

And that is a that is

34:38

a safer economic bet in

34:41

the current climate with the rocky waters

34:43

ahead for Microsoft to just be like, you

34:45

know what? Pump the brakes in

34:47

your weird experiment. sell a lot of Xbox this

34:49

quarter. Gaming, quiz, quote unquote, recession proof, that's

34:52

what people always say. There's still all this

34:54

pent up demand because we weren't able to sell

34:56

them for the past

34:58

year and half. Just flood the market with Xbox's. People will buy

35:00

games. We know how that money works.

35:02

And I I have to imagine some

35:04

combination of

35:06

don't take the risk on the future, like, just extract the money from

35:08

the present for as long as we can. Well, especially with

35:11

I was gonna say with the economy,

35:12

with the fact that they're seeing these,

35:16

like, look. Our our outlook's not so great for the next couple of

35:18

quarters. Like yeah. And let's just

35:20

huddle up. Let's do what we know how to

35:22

do best. and make

35:24

make money consistently rather than

35:26

get really

35:27

big and experimental. Alright. So we're gonna get a break when

35:29

we come back. We're gonna talk about the

35:31

company doing exact opposite of that idea, which

35:33

is meta. We'll be

35:36

right back.

35:40

This episode is brought

35:42

to you by blazing trails, an original

35:44

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Their new six park series meet the customer, hones in on the

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the their support

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is sponsored by NPR. The podcast

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37:21

Alright.

37:23

We're back.

37:24

So let's talk about meta

37:26

real quick. There's a lot

37:28

going

37:28

on with this company. We started the

37:30

show

37:30

by saying it was FlexShit Podcast T.

37:33

V. What I'm referencing is Jim

37:35

Kramer, CNBC Anchor, who

37:37

told people a this last quarter or quarter before,

37:39

you should invest in meta, and then this quarter, the

37:41

stock has tanked. met his business, like, falling apart.

37:43

And they're throwing money at the Metiverse. And today, he

37:46

apologized to everyone for that this bed. He said he

37:48

trusted management

37:50

too much. It was pure hubris than the metaverse. And he it's

37:52

almost a rogue situation, which is an incredible

37:54

thing to say about meta,

37:56

which I will remind everybody

37:59

is fully controlled

38:00

by Mark Zuckerberg. He can just do whatever.

38:02

You can't fire him. He owns the whole

38:04

company. He has super voting share. Every

38:06

year, this is a true story. every

38:09

year the stockholders of Meta

38:11

who vote to somehow limit

38:13

Mark'sucker purpose power. But because he has

38:15

super voting shares, he just votes

38:17

no and wins. this happens every

38:20

year. It's crazy. So

38:22

I don't know. But that is in, like,

38:24

a really tough spot. they

38:27

had horrible earnings. The Apple

38:29

ad tracking transparency prompt ruin

38:32

their ability to track it. It hurt the

38:34

advertising market. They've tank there, they're losing

38:36

share to TikTok, and then they are just blowing money on

38:38

reality labs. Just ten

38:42

billion dollars gone against

38:44

the metaverse. And I would say effectively

38:46

no one's happy. You could say

38:48

that. I mean, the numbers are really insane. Like, I'm

38:50

just looking at these now. Like, just My

38:52

favorite part is so. Meta's Reality Labs division, which is the

38:54

one overseeing all the metaverse stuff, all the all

38:57

the artists formerly known as

39:00

oculus stuff. of the Quest stuff. The Quest Pro, it made

39:02

two eighty five million dollars in

39:04

revenue for the quarter, which was down

39:06

fifty percent.

39:08

which they're saying mostly is due

39:10

to lowering sales of the quest two, which

39:12

makes sense. It's relatively old. It just got

39:14

a big price hike. That division, which remember,

39:17

two hundred and eighty five million dollars in

39:19

revenue, lost three point seven

39:21

billion dollars this quarter and

39:23

nine point four billion for the year so

39:25

far. So this company is going to

39:28

spend what looks like thirteen or

39:30

fourteen billion dollars on

39:31

the metaverse this year. Meanwhile, it's

39:34

hemorrhaging

39:34

money because of Apple and some of

39:36

the ad tracking stuff. And

39:40

some of its like core revenue drivers like Facebook

39:42

are not the sort

39:45

of unstoppable juggernauts that they once

39:47

were. And so it's like It

39:49

just seems like all at once this week, everybody looked

39:51

at this and was like, hey,

39:53

Mark, no. We are

39:56

not interested in this company doing this

39:58

thing anymore. But David, you you gotta spend money to

39:59

make money. That's that's that's that's that's

40:02

what sucks out there saying. You have

40:04

to spend

40:05

all your money.

40:07

And you'll

40:07

make money. It's gonna be fine. Oh, while your lunch

40:09

is being stolen by TikTok. Exactly.

40:11

Right. So this is the thing. So they they

40:13

did report some of their user

40:16

numbers. So all of

40:16

these numbers are crazy. They all just have crazy

40:19

names. They just make people

40:21

on Facebook seem like robots.

40:23

Like Facebook doesn't know you as a person. It only

40:26

knows you're something called the daily active people.

40:28

Sure. It's

40:30

I refuse to be a daily active person. Never. How dare you? I

40:33

haven't been daily active since the pandemic. Yeah. I'm

40:35

more of a three times weekly

40:38

active person. So

40:40

daily active people up four percent monthly

40:43

active people. Right? Daily active

40:44

users. The difference between

40:47

a family daily active person and

40:49

a daily active user. Who knows? See, they're saying these numbers are up in

40:51

it, but they're up like two

40:53

percent, three percent. after

40:56

they were like turn on the

40:58

jets, compete with TikTok. Everything's

41:00

real now, and this is the

41:02

best they've been able to do. And

41:04

then here's the main piece of the puzzle.

41:06

They've delivered seventeen

41:08

percent more ad impressions year

41:12

over year But because the tracking isn't as

41:14

effective, because Apple refuses to let

41:15

them track like, when you

41:17

say tracking,

41:18

there's, like, lots of tracking. There's

41:20

whatever scary tracking or thinking of your head.

41:23

But very specifically, what Facebook has

41:25

long promised people is

41:27

we can show

41:28

people an ad on Facebook.

41:30

We can target their interest so precisely.

41:32

And then later on when

41:34

they buy something from you,

41:36

we can attribute it to that app because we can track people from the

41:38

app onto the web, onto wherever else they are,

41:40

all the stuff we can do. Apple's ad

41:43

tracking transparency broke those

41:46

links. So Facebook can't track you outside of its app anymore. It can't when you buy

41:48

something out of it, we can't attribute, hey, you saw this

41:50

ad a bunch of times, it's how you bought something out of

41:53

it. Just on iPhone stuff. Just on iPhones, but, you know,

41:55

there's like twelve people

41:56

who are using their little Chromebook. I'm being

41:58

like, I'm gonna see what what Doty is

42:01

doing today on Facebook.

42:02

The money the money is on the phone and the the the people who

42:04

spend money famously, there's a lot of data

42:06

about this. People who don't iPhone spend more

42:10

money. So ad impressions went up seventeen

42:12

percent year over year. The price

42:14

per ad, because Facebook can no

42:17

longer guarantee success, went down

42:20

eighteen percent year over year. So they're

42:22

delivering more ads that are cheaper. That

42:24

means their revenue went down

42:26

four percent. And that's like that's

42:29

a death spiral. Like, I don't know how else to describe that. The value of

42:31

the product they sell for money

42:33

is going lower even as they

42:35

deliver more of them. And

42:37

it's, like, whatever ads are free. Like, digital

42:40

advertising is zero. Like, there's

42:42

not someone in, like, the Facebook ads

42:44

factory, like, hammering

42:46

out bespoke It's software, but

42:48

you're making more of a thing

42:50

for tiny user increases that you're

42:52

selling for cheaper. Wow,

42:54

over here,

42:56

Mark

42:56

Zuckerberg is just the lighting cash on fire to give

42:59

people legs in the metaverse. Like, it's

43:01

just a bad situation, all

43:04

right? Well, and and I think going

43:06

on here for me is that it's

43:08

super,

43:09

super clear that

43:11

everybody's out on the Metiverse. Like, there there

43:13

was that moment where everybody was all in on the

43:15

Metiverse and there was like a Metiverse ETF and

43:17

all these companies went public and it was a whole

43:19

big thing and Now

43:21

what's very clear like this big meta investor,

43:24

altimeter capital, their CEO,

43:26

whose name currently escapes me.

43:29

Brad Gersner, wrote this whole thing basically being like, we

43:31

still think Facebook is a strong business and

43:33

Instagram is a strong business and WhatsApp is a strong

43:35

business. And we wish you'd stop paying

43:37

attention to this stupid thing where nobody has legs and

43:39

focus on the thing where you actually know how to make

43:41

money. And that was really fascinating to me because,

43:44

like, there's there's this one line of thinking like

43:46

you're saying

43:48

that, like, all of that stuff is sort of has peaked and is

43:50

now just going to be sort of slowly managed

43:52

to climb for a long time. And

43:54

thus, what meta needs to do is find

43:56

this next

43:58

thing. But that I thought was

43:59

really interesting that it's like, no,

43:59

there's still a good successful

44:02

company in here. You just won't pay attention to

44:04

it because you're so obsessed with this idea of the universe

44:06

because you'd rather

44:08

not talk content moderation anymore. And so you're you're

44:10

like running away from the company that works towards

44:12

one that increasingly people think

44:14

just doesn't. If that has really

44:16

flipped in people's minds, it's gonna be really hard

44:18

for meta to pull out of any of this. I

44:20

thought

44:20

it was interesting that Phil Spencer last night

44:22

called it the mayor of a a poorly

44:24

poorly coded or poorly created video games, some of that. Yeah. Yeah. When when Mark

44:27

saw us like they're teaming up with meta to --

44:29

Yeah. -- season. They were That's a likely

44:31

Yes. Bill Spencer. Mhmm.

44:34

Go nuts man. Please be it oldest. Right? Like, he's he's telling how it

44:36

is. Yeah. He's like, I make kick ass video

44:39

games. Do you make a good video game

44:41

chances are, we'll just buy your

44:44

shit. I'm Phil Spencer. And then he's like,

44:46

looking at these avatars in the

44:48

metaverse seems like, what are you doing? Where

44:50

are these polygon counts? Five?

44:53

Right. That's not series x. Like,

44:56

do it. There's like a whole

44:58

thing there that is like worth thinking about

45:00

because Microsoft his all but

45:02

abandoned hollins. Yeah. The gates

45:04

-- Yeah. -- pretty much. Right. And

45:06

they're like screw it. Medi can take all this

45:08

risk, and we'll

45:10

just deliver outlook to their headset when it's time.

45:12

Yeah. And I think that's, like, perfectly

45:14

smart for Microsoft in, like, the

45:16

current economic conditions

45:18

they're in. where Zuckerberg is like, we're sticking with it. Well,

45:20

he has a quote. The first part is, I

45:22

get that a lot of people might disagree with this

45:24

investment, but from what I

45:26

can tell, I

45:28

think this is going to be a very important thing. There's the confidence

45:31

you want. It's

45:33

like, what? I think. So

45:35

a backdrop of all this should

45:38

note, we have quest pro review units.

45:40

I have one, Alex. Heath has one, Eddie. Robertson

45:42

has one, the

45:44

embargo time in this review was

45:46

incredibly short. It's like four days,

45:48

whatever. So

45:48

people have them in there out in the

45:50

world I'm sure you've seen other reviews. We are

45:52

just taking our time. I think it is impossible to know

45:54

whether the meta versus going

45:56

to work or if Zuckerberg

45:59

from what he can tell, this

46:02

is gonna be an important thing without a thorough review of this

46:04

product. Like, this product is

46:08

the payoff right now. It's the state of the art -- Yeah. -- that

46:10

Meta can deliver against this

46:12

vision. So we were like, we're not gonna rush this

46:14

out in

46:16

four days. We've taken a couple of meetings in horizon worlds. We we're

46:18

doing the stuff. My here's my preview. I

46:20

think you all know that I was a big fan of the

46:22

quest two. I remain a big fan of the quest two.

46:25

The quest two is an excellent consumer product.

46:28

Okay. That underpromises and over

46:30

delivers. And so and

46:32

for a while there, it was cheap. So

46:34

you, like, bought this thing that you didn't feel like you were blowing a lot of

46:36

money on. You'd put it on. You're like,

46:38

this is cool. Gramma's in

46:42

the metaverse. she's freaking out. There's stuff to do in there. It's a

46:44

it's a game console. It's a cheap game console.

46:46

We can do a lot of things. And it like

46:48

I said, underpromises over delivers.

46:51

My preview of the quest pro is

46:53

this thing promises a

46:56

lot.

46:56

boy,

47:00

that's a lot of

47:03

promises at fifteen hundred

47:05

dollars. And

47:06

they also announced that they

47:08

were gonna like, they confirmed the quest three is

47:11

coming next holiday season. But

47:13

the quest three is more game

47:14

console. That's fine. I don't think that, like,

47:17

Well, that's gonna I

47:18

like, anybody who is, like, anybody who is, like,

47:20

maybe I'll get a Quest two this holiday. It's, like,

47:22

why why why am I gonna go spend more

47:24

money for the Quest two? With a Quest

47:27

three is next year.

47:28

Well, they've already

47:29

from these earnings, we can tell they have

47:31

people stop buying a question. They they raised the

47:33

price, and everyone was like, well, I'm done

47:35

with this idea. Because, again, it's a

47:37

toy. Like, I it

47:39

was competitively priced like the

47:41

Nintendo Switch. Right. Right?

47:42

And even -- Yeah. -- now it's it's

47:44

three ninety nine. It's competitively priced

47:47

with the PS five. Like, it's just

47:49

in a different zone and you

47:51

just get way more out of it. You get way

47:53

more out of its competitors. So I just don't

47:55

I don't think the fifteen hundred dollar quest pro,

47:57

which is marketed business use

47:59

cases. Right?

48:00

Like, it's like do

48:03

Zoom is a cartoon. It

48:04

has nothing to do with whether you're gonna, like, play games in it like the

48:06

quest two. It yeah. I just they're interested

48:08

in a weird spot. So we've got that review. We're working

48:11

on it. Adi is writing it.

48:14

Keith and I are just helping.

48:16

because the idea is that you're doing it together. The

48:18

point of this product is not to be alone.

48:20

It's to be together. So we're

48:22

We're trying to, like, hang out together in the metaverse.

48:24

Right. It's trying to

48:25

answer for, like, Slack and Zoom and everything.

48:27

It's just trying to be, like, the

48:29

office is done. fifteen

48:32

hundred dollars instead of the real office.

48:33

Go. Yeah. The the the one thing I will

48:36

say, without trying to give too much

48:37

way, the first time we all

48:39

met in Horizon, with

48:42

tracking was just

48:44

one of the funniest fifteen minutes of

48:46

my entire life because it was just us

48:49

making faces at each other as cartoons.

48:51

Like, I was like, I'm making a kissy face. Can

48:53

you see the kissy face? And Natalie is like, yes.

48:55

And then she's just waving her cartoon

48:58

hands around. and that was legitimately some of the

49:00

funnest, funniest moments

49:02

with a computer

49:03

I've ever had. Is

49:05

it an violation to make a face tracking

49:08

kissy face?

49:10

No. Fish

49:13

Face. I was wearing a

49:15

fish face. Many cops are on this. It was

49:17

a fish face. We gotta

49:20

take a we'll be back. Apple earnings are out. We gotta get into that. We'll be

49:22

right back.

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50:52

Okay.

50:52

We're back. Bunch of Apple News to talk about, macOS

50:55

thirteen Ventura

50:56

hit, iPad review, iPad

50:59

pro review, Apple confirm

51:01

the

51:01

iPhone's getting USB c. There's a

51:04

rumor of a sixteen inch iPad,

51:06

which is deeply hilarious.

51:08

But we should start with earnings. His earnings

51:10

literally hit while we

51:11

were doing the last segment. Right. Apple made

51:13

a bunch of money in a way that other tech

51:15

giants are not making a bunch of money right now,

51:17

Alex Wiseratt. Yeah. No.

51:18

So services are up or, like,

51:20

five percent. Tom's been helping me do the math off screen. You guys can't

51:23

hear him. Do it all. Yeah. I think the

51:25

big surprise here is that max are

51:27

up, what, twenty

51:30

percent. which is just

51:31

which is

51:32

just a big number. That's a new

51:34

MacBook Air. That's that

51:35

number. Yeah. It's just that that that

51:37

MacBook

51:37

Air Jump.

51:39

counter that to what just happened to Microsoft

51:41

and Microsoft's guidance. And it's like we we've

51:44

seen this, like, tank in the PC industry

51:46

over the last and Chromebooks have been

51:49

collapsing over the last few quarters.

51:51

And Apple is just like, here would you

51:53

like a very fingerprint heavy

51:56

MacBook Air and people

51:58

like, yes. Well, so they they won't tell us. We don't know that it's the

52:00

MacBook. It could be the Mac Studio.

52:02

Like, we don't know. He

52:04

only has to sell twelve of them and

52:06

it it that's all

52:08

your revenue. So these

52:10

these max sales are more than what Apple

52:12

for because they they forecast

52:14

nine point three billion. and it was actually

52:16

eleven point five billion. And they

52:18

forecast twenty point one

52:20

billion for services, and it was

52:22

actually nineteen point two billion.

52:24

So, like, their forecast seemed to be a little bit all over the place this

52:26

time, but the the max sales are are are

52:28

super surprising, especially in the light

52:30

of, like, fifteen

52:32

percent down PC market overall. At

52:34

the moment, the Mac is like, wow,

52:36

above. I think what we're

52:37

seeing here is

52:40

that Everybody went out and they rushed out and they bought a computer because everybody needed

52:42

a computer because of the pandemic. And now everybody's like,

52:44

wait, but I want a computer that just works.

52:48

and

52:48

so they're saying goodbye to back. Right. I

52:50

don't know. I think I I think

52:52

this was the first year that

52:55

a bunch of kids, like, physically went back to school, and

52:57

they already had their Chromebooks. But then they there was a new

52:59

MacBook Air, and it was available to buy for a

53:02

bunch of college kids. It went back to

53:04

like, there's

53:06

just a thing happening in the

53:08

market for laptops where -- Yep. -- people bought sort

53:10

of what they needed to get

53:12

by for work from home. but

53:15

then we're kinda just like back to the laptop market

53:17

as it was. So it's just normalizing down.

53:19

And whenever Apple releases a new mainstream

53:21

model, if sales go

53:24

up, except this quarter when they

53:26

released new iPhones. And everyone

53:28

was like, yes, iPhone sales

53:30

are up quarter over quarter. It's beneath

53:34

estimates, but there's just all this chatter that

53:37

people don't care. And that's

53:39

the weird part to me. because

53:41

all of that services I think the reason Apple bets

53:44

so heavily on services and then constantly forecast

53:46

services is because they're

53:48

just trying to squeeze more money out of

53:50

existing iPhone owners. because they

53:52

can't

53:52

they've sort of lost the ability to tell what

53:54

will be hits and what won't be hits. I'm

53:56

one of the suckers that bought an iPhone

53:59

Full Team Pro. and

54:00

I had a thirteen pro. And I was like, as soon as I

54:02

got it, I was like, why why did

54:04

I buy this? Yeah. Like, it's

54:07

just it's just like

54:09

it's it's not radically different. And I think

54:11

more people

54:12

are like me. I bought an eleven pro

54:14

when it came out years ago,

54:17

and I bought a fourteen pro this year. And I was like, oh, wow. This

54:19

is a big this is a big change for

54:21

me. But these these changes are

54:23

so incremental that most people are like, do I want

54:25

to spend the money on that?

54:27

don't wanna spend the money my ever increasing rent. Do I wanna

54:30

buy a

54:30

MacBook Air to replace this Chromebook

54:32

i Panic bought at Best Buy

54:34

in March twenty twenty? Like,

54:36

holden Where's my money gonna

54:37

I have finite money. Where does it go? When you

54:40

factor in the

54:40

fact that the pros are the only exciting

54:42

phones in the lineup, and like

54:44

even the the earnings seem to confirm that that the the fourteen and fourteen plus didn't

54:47

do anything for anybody, which I think was more

54:49

or less the correct response to the

54:51

fourteen and fourteen plus No.

54:54

The fourteen plus wasn't in there, man. Yeah. But there have been there

54:56

have been reports that the demand is not what

54:58

Apple hoped for. Like, I don't know. I

55:00

don't see a lot of fourteen pluses

55:02

floating around. I'll just say that. How

55:04

could you even tell? Like,

55:06

this is like, this is David's like walking

55:08

up to people, like, you've got a big

55:10

phone I see how many cameras you got on

55:12

the back of that thing? because I've I've been quite

55:14

using some data. He's been using his quest

55:16

pro to scan that, but I'm

55:18

not trying to find out. sign. Big cheap big

55:20

tube screens always works. I'm just holding on to

55:23

this in my heart. We'll see. I I believe in

55:25

you and I believe in big tube

55:27

screens. But I do think, like, it as the price

55:29

of these things gets more expensive,

55:31

like,

55:31

one one thing I have sort of

55:34

held onto for a long time is that Apple believes

55:36

its users are not at all

55:38

price sensitive and that it can raise the prices of

55:40

everything into

55:42

infinity. And that will always work and until now it has always worked.

55:44

But it does make me wonder like if the only

55:46

interesting phone is the eleven

55:48

hundred dollar one, are people

55:50

going to

55:52

wait? one extra year now to upgrade because now the good phone

55:54

is eleven hundred dollars. Yes. And

55:56

the thing that's interesting about it, by the

55:58

way, is the dynamic

55:59

island, which Tom,

56:02

I don't know. You feel about it, but I've had this thing now. I feel the same

56:04

way about it when I did the review, which is

56:06

in iOS sixteen dot

56:08

one came out this

56:10

week. with live activities, there's a bunch of apps, but but I

56:12

tell you what, it's one of those things that although it doesn't

56:14

feel like it's fully complete, I feel like if

56:16

I went back to an iPhone without it,

56:19

I'd miss

56:20

it. I like

56:21

it's one of the it's one of the things you get you you get used to and you you

56:23

sort of like, I love the time, I think. The time is great. I use

56:25

it for playback controls. I like that

56:27

a lot. The confirmation

56:29

a face

56:31

ID. It's just like so soothing and satisfying. I'm like,

56:34

oh, that's a nice feeling. I

56:36

just wanna point out. I'm

56:37

just gonna say this. Think

56:40

about how many, like, major technologies have

56:42

come out in the past five

56:45

years. We're at the

56:46

end of it, we're like, Boy,

56:49

that was really useful for timers.

56:51

Right? Like Alexa. All of Alexa. All

56:53

of Google Assistant.

56:56

all of Siri. Yeah. Not Siri. Siri sucks at timers. Siri does not

56:59

get credit for timers. Yeah. So

57:01

it's, like, so important. say,

57:05

like, I can't do two things at once. The

57:07

the entire dynamic guy was like, great

57:09

for timers. I'm gonna be happy to dynamic

57:11

on and once it tells me the hustle school. There you

57:13

go. Right. So the API for live

57:15

activities just hit, like, this week in sixteen dot one, you know,

57:18

the flighty app, which is the number one app they were

57:20

showing off. It has been released. It uses

57:22

the thing. there's

57:24

some really interesting cooking apps that are doing,

57:26

like, the recipe steps

57:28

on the lock

57:29

screen with the live activities

57:31

API. That's cool. The

57:33

best Reddit app has

57:35

a little puppy dog that

57:37

runs around the dynamic island.

57:39

It's

57:39

pointless, but it's very charming. And for

57:41

a while, it was destroying the bat three

57:43

life. It

57:43

was great. But none of this makes you buy a phone. It's like all I'm

57:45

saying. It's it's none of it is enough to

57:47

upgrade, and there's probably another

57:50

year of

57:52

iteration and innovation before it becomes a must have.

57:54

Whereas I think for a lot of people with the iPhone

57:56

eleven, big cheap screen,

57:58

the cheap screen that's the that's the thing that will make

58:00

them upgrade if they have the money to upgrade, which

58:02

is I think a lot of people are like, I don't

58:05

need to spend this money right now. My

58:07

phone works just fine. And so what

58:09

Apple's betting on is they can shove ads in

58:11

everyone's faces or squeeze more money

58:13

out of more companies

58:16

by adding fees to more things and increase their money

58:18

that way. And that's just like, yeah. Well,

58:20

I don't know, man. This is kinda like the

58:22

thing

58:22

that happened with Meta. where

58:25

these companies both have known this as coming. Meta knew that

58:27

it was gonna get absolutely bodied

58:30

when it tossed all of its

58:32

money into the better verse, and it was trying to

58:34

prep people for it, and it did a terrible job

58:36

clearly by evidence of Jim

58:38

Kramer crying

58:40

on television. But Apple

58:42

has known for a while now that that

58:44

upgrade cycle is getting longer

58:48

and longer. with its customers. People don't wanna do a one

58:50

year upgrade. They don't wanna do a two year

58:52

upgrade. They're good doing three years. They're

58:54

doing four years. They're doing

58:56

five years. and they're getting really really comfortable doing that because

58:58

these devices are no longer, like,

59:00

gadgets that are having

59:02

these huge amazing

59:04

technological advancements every year. They're pretty iterative.

59:06

It's I think it's the same thing we've

59:08

seen with laptops. It's the same thing we've

59:11

seen with TVs. And Honestly,

59:13

appliances. Yeah. Do you know what's

59:15

gonna make your upgrade next year? Say it.

59:17

That's

59:17

what I didn't say. The EU.

59:20

The EU. European

59:22

bureaucrats are gonna drive the greatest

59:24

iPhone upgrade cycle of all

59:26

time. They will. So

59:28

unless Apple

59:30

just makes like what they did in the US this time with the

59:32

eSIM stuff. Unless Apple does, you

59:34

know, a SIM train

59:36

Europe plus

59:38

ESBC and in Lightning in America. I don't know. Like, how

59:40

do you I hope they do that. So

59:42

let's explain what we're talking about.

59:45

notable verge trader, Joanna Stern, again, at the

59:47

Wall Street Journal Tech Live Conference,

59:49

had Greg Josiak, Craig Federico, and Sage.

59:51

Like, half an hour, you should watch it. Great interview. She's

59:53

a great job. She asked them straight up, what's she gonna

59:55

do about the EU? Her new rap

59:58

single.

59:58

You know she's gonna make a

59:59

video where she wraps about the EU now.

1:00:02

This is

1:00:04

your fault. You just spoke this into existence. So she said the EU is gonna

1:00:06

mandate USB C. What are you gonna do about

1:00:08

it? Jaws react. And actually, John

1:00:10

Gerber point

1:00:12

Craig Feggery looks at jobs and he starts laughing because he doesn't he's

1:00:14

the software guy. He hasn't answered that question. Josie,

1:00:16

I got to answer that question. So

1:00:20

Josie, I friend of the verge in front of the grandchild's

1:00:22

access. Obviously, we have to comply. We have

1:00:26

no choice. which

1:00:29

is incredible. He looks super pissed about it. He's so salty.

1:00:31

Jared asked when, and Josh says,

1:00:33

the Europeans are the ones dictating

1:00:35

timing for European customers. And

1:00:38

then she says, well, you do it. Every way he says, I'm not gonna talk

1:00:40

about future products, which is, of course, what he would say. So it's true. Apple

1:00:43

has to comply with all

1:00:46

local laws. but it's gonna happen. Like, they're saying it has to happen

1:00:48

and they're not happy about it. He gave some

1:00:50

examples of things they're not happy about.

1:00:52

He was like, our

1:00:54

solution was the power bricks would

1:00:56

have removable cords. Yeah.

1:00:58

It's just it's just so not the right

1:01:00

answer, but, like, that's he's, like, that's what we

1:01:02

wanted. He's, like, the government tried to manage all this

1:01:04

hearing aid stuff. and it was a

1:01:06

disaster and we finally just hit our way and we gave the

1:01:08

government what they wanted without these pesky

1:01:10

regulations. And these are all the arguments

1:01:12

that we've heard every time.

1:01:14

And it is also true I would point

1:01:16

out that

1:01:16

Apple invented USB

1:01:20

c. Everyone forgets about this. USB was

1:01:22

a standard effectively developed

1:01:24

and pushed by Apple because

1:01:26

they wanted a single port on that

1:01:29

first MacBook ages ago. And

1:01:31

now their argument is, what if we invent something that's

1:01:33

better than USB c? And it's like, well,

1:01:35

you could have put USB c on the phones

1:01:37

the whole time. and then you could have

1:01:39

invented a new thing. And then we could roll just new to that, but you won't. So we're just

1:01:41

like stuck with lightning. I

1:01:42

don't know. It was it was a

1:01:45

good exchange he's watching our view. Joanna

1:01:48

did a, like I said, a great

1:01:49

job pushing on it. But, Tom, I agree with

1:01:51

you. That's the thing that drives

1:01:53

the huge upgrade cycle

1:01:56

is this thing got way more convenient to

1:01:58

charge. Yeah. And

1:01:58

I I think

1:01:59

Apple's annoyed at the fact. I don't

1:02:02

think they're annoyed at that they have to do is

1:02:04

be six. That that was probably in the

1:02:06

plans at some point, but they're probably just annoyed

1:02:08

that they're getting dictated on

1:02:10

the timing of it. So because because they

1:02:12

probably could have gone another couple of years

1:02:14

with with lightning. But now now they're

1:02:16

like, we kind of probably have to do this

1:02:18

next year. because the legislation comes in for twenty twenty four. We

1:02:20

don't know exactly when it when it sort of

1:02:22

cuts in. But, yeah, like, they they they kind

1:02:24

of need to get something rolling

1:02:26

probably next year on on the

1:02:28

iPhone fifteen or whatever it'll

1:02:30

be. So I I don't think that

1:02:32

they're they're very happy that they had to do

1:02:34

it then. I mean, that's that's the thing. Like, it's it's not the fact that they're being

1:02:36

that they have to do USB C because they probably

1:02:38

were planning to do that. It's it's more being

1:02:41

forced to do their inconvenience.

1:02:44

Essentially. Yeah. I think if if you're,

1:02:46

like, reading apple tea leaves here, there

1:02:48

was a there was a moment where Jazviak

1:02:50

could have made a case about

1:02:52

connectors and what people want. And instead he picked to

1:02:54

fight about timing. Right? So, like, I I think you're

1:02:56

exactly right, Tom, that, like, this is this

1:02:59

is less about Apple not

1:03:01

wanting to do USB c, which is

1:03:03

like basically every other device Apple

1:03:05

makes charges via USB c now, which

1:03:07

is super irritating when I'm in the car

1:03:09

or on a plane. That's a whole different story. But,

1:03:12

yeah, Apple just does not like being told

1:03:14

when and how to do things. It it it

1:03:16

seems to be, like, in the in

1:03:18

the buy laws of going to work at Apple that if anybody tells you to do

1:03:20

something you have to be mad about it for two or three

1:03:22

years. Yeah. And and I could appreciate some of their

1:03:24

arguments where

1:03:26

it's like, you know, this not forget lightning was a good

1:03:28

connector for its its time. Like, they sold a

1:03:30

lot of the problems that obviously USB C

1:03:32

came along

1:03:34

to solve, like, reversible, a lot smaller, all that sort of

1:03:36

stuff. So if they haven't done that, if

1:03:38

they weren't free to do that, which is kind of like

1:03:41

what they're saying, you know, if there's there's regulation around this,

1:03:43

it's gonna prevent them from doing this in the

1:03:45

future. And even that's necessarily a a

1:03:48

hundred percent true, but I could see where

1:03:50

they wouldn't want governments to

1:03:52

step in and say, you have to have this on this

1:03:54

device, you know, for

1:03:56

five years or whatever. because

1:03:58

it does kind of hold that back if they do wanna do that. But

1:03:59

again, it's proprietary. The what

1:04:02

Apple's really mad about is that EU did this again

1:04:04

and they closed

1:04:06

the loophole. So the EU

1:04:08

mandated micro USB, but

1:04:10

then Apple just shipped a micro USB

1:04:12

to lightning adapter. It was like

1:04:14

this little thing they shipped in the box.

1:04:16

and that got them out of it because technically, you could use

1:04:19

all your micro USB accessories. And that's

1:04:21

the EU said, okay, we're

1:04:23

updating the USB C. every

1:04:25

other manufacturer is like, great. We were already there. Like, who could

1:04:28

shit? And the you also said you

1:04:30

can't ship your

1:04:31

stupid little adapter and

1:04:33

Apple curious. apples, like, have you seen how many

1:04:35

dongles we have? Like, our entire business is twenty

1:04:38

nine dollar dongles. I don't know.

1:04:40

The wearable three. He's

1:04:42

ready. Just just gonna pull on

1:04:44

it. So

1:04:46

I they closed the loophole. I

1:04:48

I just think fundamentally, I agree with you, David, they just hate being told

1:04:50

what to do, but they're so behind

1:04:52

on this. Like, they invented this

1:04:54

connector. It is their connector

1:04:58

they should they should age on this a long time ago. And b, the next thing they're

1:05:00

gonna do is take all the ports

1:05:02

off the phone, which is

1:05:04

I don't like, I really like

1:05:06

magsafe. I just bought yet another magsafe

1:05:08

charger from my car. I'm

1:05:10

like addicted to this thing. Every

1:05:12

time anyone makes it like five percent smaller, I'm like,

1:05:15

I'm there for you. But the idea that I'm gonna

1:05:17

get a really long MegSafe puck

1:05:20

to, like, use at my house is just ridiculous. that part of

1:05:22

it is absolutely not ready and cannot charge

1:05:24

fast enough. Wireless charging is, like, self driving

1:05:26

cars in that it's been, like, ninety

1:05:29

percent done for a really long time, and it's gonna be

1:05:31

fifty more years before it actually works the way

1:05:34

that it's supposed to. Well, it's also

1:05:36

like

1:05:36

wireless earbuds. Like,

1:05:38

the AirPods are great. They are not they

1:05:40

they don't compare to wired headphones.

1:05:42

I know you guys

1:05:42

talked about the new iPad review

1:05:46

on Wednesday. The thing that

1:05:48

kills me about it is they took the

1:05:50

headphone jack out of the thing. Like,

1:05:52

again, it's just like they don't even make

1:05:54

the product Like, if you don't even

1:05:56

assume it's greed, it's like, well

1:05:58

then

1:05:58

make kid headphones. Make

1:05:59

AirPods for kids that work

1:06:02

seamlessly instead of being like,

1:06:04

now your children will insecure

1:06:06

Bluetooth headphones that suck. because

1:06:08

that's what people

1:06:09

are gonna buy. They're gonna buy thirty

1:06:11

dollar Bluetooth headphones. So kids

1:06:14

suck. And it's like, well, just be greedy all the

1:06:16

way. But all the way greedy, Tim.

1:06:18

Just make up the kid headphones. You own beats.

1:06:20

What are they doing? Beets for

1:06:22

kids. I have to have at it.

1:06:24

What does doctor Dray think kids headphone

1:06:26

should look like? I'll buy

1:06:28

him as long as they pair

1:06:30

seamlessly. And I I think there's just

1:06:32

there's a little bit of I mean, they

1:06:33

look, they just made a lot of money.

1:06:35

They're selling everything all the time. But doesn't it

1:06:37

feel like they just, like, lost the plot? Just like

1:06:39

a tiny little bit. Yes. With the I'm

1:06:42

guessing because people, like, look at the

1:06:43

iPad lineup. They're like, I don't

1:06:46

know what the hell is going on

1:06:47

here. Can I have a

1:06:50

MacBook Air? and they leave the

1:06:51

store. Well, the iPad was also their first product where they

1:06:54

saw, oh, wait, we can't force people to buy

1:06:56

a new one

1:06:58

every year. like, that was the very

1:07:00

first one where everybody was like, I have one. I'm gonna

1:07:02

hold on

1:07:02

to it for a decade. I mean, I think Max

1:07:04

had been like that for a long time. Yeah.

1:07:06

That's

1:07:06

because they never upgraded the processors on the Mac. That's true. Well,

1:07:08

the Mac has recaptured the plot.

1:07:10

Is the funniest thing about all

1:07:12

of this to me? It's like,

1:07:14

the line is relatively straightforward. Though, like, Mac pros

1:07:16

existence continues to be weird, but I

1:07:18

think we'll eventually figure that one out. Like,

1:07:22

the products kick ass. Like, the the MacBook Air is like,

1:07:24

it's very easy for me now to tell people with

1:07:26

computers, but I just tell people to buy MacBook Airs,

1:07:28

which is true for a long time and then not true and now

1:07:30

it's true

1:07:32

again. And as Apple has really figured out how

1:07:34

to do this again, it's like surprise

1:07:36

surprise. It's growing really fast

1:07:38

and is massively successful again. But

1:07:41

then in every other line up, especially with the iPad,

1:07:43

they're just like, here's some things. It's just like we

1:07:45

we we had some parts So

1:07:48

we we, like, closed our eyes and threw them all at the wall and

1:07:50

whatever stuck together. We gave it a name

1:07:52

and now you can have it if you want.

1:07:55

for five hundred dollars more than you spent. And here's

1:07:57

a dongle. Yeah. And here's some dongles. So

1:07:59

how many

1:07:59

years are we gonna see like the

1:08:02

a fifteen? just recycled over and over again in these

1:08:04

things like those those those has well

1:08:06

chips were for a while there? I forever

1:08:08

apparently.

1:08:10

Yeah. and great news. It's more

1:08:12

expensive. Yeah. So the the other piece of

1:08:14

the puzzle, which we have not talked about a lot, and we don't have

1:08:17

to dwell on too much. Right. The Mac is doing

1:08:19

really well. It's Apple's most open platform in

1:08:22

its way. There's so I'm sure

1:08:24

people can quibble about

1:08:26

it, but the Mac is, like, usually run any app on it.

1:08:28

Right? It's, like, the most open platform you do anything

1:08:30

you want on it. The idea that Apple's there to

1:08:32

stand over your shoulder and just, like, take thirty cents

1:08:35

out every dollar you spend. So it doesn't exist on the Mac.

1:08:37

Right? Super exists on iOS and

1:08:39

iPad OS. Right? It's totally

1:08:41

closed platforms everyone knows about

1:08:43

the App Store. This week, with

1:08:46

iOS sixteen dot one, Apple updated its app developer guidelines,

1:08:51

apps Spotify had earnings this week too.

1:08:53

Basically, Spotify is on the war path. They're like, look, we thought we were gonna

1:08:55

do an audiobooks vertical. We

1:08:58

would sell audiobooks directly. And

1:09:00

Spotify We had lawyers

1:09:02

on the product team reading Apple's rules. As the product team developed this, we thought

1:09:04

we were in compliance with these

1:09:06

rules, Apple rejected our app like

1:09:10

three times, and then this week

1:09:12

they just pulled the feature. And

1:09:14

the thing that they pulled

1:09:15

was merely telling

1:09:18

people that

1:09:18

you could buy audiobooks somewhere else. Well,

1:09:20

they were

1:09:21

sending a link. They were sending an email

1:09:23

link. Right. So you push

1:09:24

the button and you're like, want this

1:09:26

audiobook and Spotify would send you an email with

1:09:28

a link to where you could buy it, which is

1:09:30

itself like a ludicrous solution to this problem. Like,

1:09:33

that the fact that that's what Spotify had

1:09:35

to do to comply with the rules is ridiculous. Yes. This

1:09:37

is this is like the lead story in a mini series called

1:09:39

when lawyers develop products.

1:09:42

Right? Like Great. But they had to

1:09:44

do it whatever. And so Apple boots them out of the

1:09:46

store. They say you can't do it. Then this

1:09:49

week, Apple says, if you have an

1:09:51

app where you can boost your social media

1:09:53

posts, that's an in app purchase.

1:09:55

We want a piece of that. Pay

1:09:57

up beyond thirty percent this is like a direct

1:09:59

target at meta

1:09:59

because people boost Instagram posts and Facebook posts.

1:10:02

You just like, do it right in the

1:10:04

app. Apple's like, this has always been

1:10:06

our role. They gave a quote to heath. He followed up and said,

1:10:08

why'd you have to clarify it then?

1:10:10

That was always the rule. No

1:10:12

response. Meta is, like,

1:10:14

they're directly taking a shot business. Like

1:10:16

Apple's building it somewhere to add business, and they're trying

1:10:18

to undercut ours by doing this. They already took we

1:10:22

have tracking hands Like, this is just a direct shot at meta. Like Apple wants

1:10:24

a nice meta. Which we saw

1:10:26

that

1:10:26

ad business grow this week and

1:10:28

then kind of, like, immediately be like,

1:10:31

oh, our bad. Our bad. because they

1:10:33

started saying, okay, now you can

1:10:35

advertise your app alongside other apps in the App Store. And

1:10:39

so there's like here's my app to stop gambling

1:10:42

addiction next to would you like to gamble a whole lot

1:10:44

advertising? It's like, oh, that's a bad

1:10:46

move apple. By the way, this is what

1:10:48

happens

1:10:48

you aren't

1:10:50

good at tracking. But if you don't

1:10:52

build the ad business with some

1:10:55

amount of tracking and sophistication, what

1:10:58

you do is you do blunt force

1:11:00

keyword targeting and so

1:11:02

people type in gambling. and

1:11:05

you get the gambling addiction recovery app and the gambling app. And it's like, this

1:11:07

is what make makes Internet advertising hard. Right?

1:11:10

You

1:11:10

you want these like fine grain

1:11:12

controls They're

1:11:15

required to know more about people. Whatever. Marco Arment was

1:11:17

tweeting about how basically the targeting

1:11:20

does work. And the idea

1:11:22

is that you can advertise your

1:11:24

app in three ways. You can do

1:11:26

similar categories, which is basically like show people who like things like

1:11:28

my app my

1:11:31

app. You can do all

1:11:33

all categories, which is all relevant app categories, which

1:11:35

is how you get the, like, gambling addiction

1:11:39

equals gambling mess. and then you can

1:11:41

do other categories, which is just like show some people my app. Like, I just this is not a

1:11:44

good system.

1:11:47

Like, it's it's This is suddenly you

1:11:49

understand why targeting advertising is like a useful and good thing that people

1:11:52

do to

1:11:55

make money. And it's like there's very good ways of

1:11:57

doing advertising. There's have people

1:11:59

curate it, and that's a

1:12:01

lovely, usually nice way of

1:12:03

advertising. And then there's invade

1:12:06

people's lives so much that you know what they want before they do and advertise

1:12:08

that. And Apple is

1:12:10

like, we're gonna do a

1:12:14

half ass middle road, which

1:12:16

is very unethical. Yeah. Apple was like

1:12:18

all of our playlists are made by humans,

1:12:20

but our ads we don't really now. We

1:12:22

just kinda make it up as we go along. But but they've

1:12:24

been gradually creeping towards this sort of

1:12:27

scenario for for a couple of years,

1:12:29

like -- Right. -- the ads that

1:12:31

they actually put into iOS that say, you know,

1:12:33

get Apple Arcade or get Apple Music. They they kind of

1:12:35

grosses ears. They're terrible. They also they also

1:12:37

have started allowing developers to

1:12:39

push their note locations as as

1:12:41

basically as marketing ads. Some of them you can't even disable. So like like Uber does it

1:12:44

a lot. Uber

1:12:47

Eats and Uber you have to dig

1:12:50

into the settings and disable their their crappy marketing notifications. Uber keeps telling me

1:12:52

that I

1:12:53

have two hundred and

1:12:55

fifty Taiwanese dollars credit

1:12:58

that I can use at one point.

1:13:00

I'm never gonna use it.

1:13:02

I will say the ads

1:13:04

in the settings screen they have somewhat

1:13:06

improved them and made them a little less crisp than I was sixteen. There's still a red bubble that says

1:13:09

too when you

1:13:12

open settings. but

1:13:14

it is it is now inside of a line that says services included with Instead

1:13:16

of just the straight up tout that's

1:13:18

like, you can play games on your iPhone.

1:13:23

four ninety nine. They're just

1:13:23

kind of undercutting their

1:13:24

own arguments over and over and over

1:13:27

again on advertising because they've been

1:13:29

going after meta for a

1:13:31

long time being like, We don't do

1:13:33

what they do. We're better. We don't track you. We

1:13:35

are honest and ethical. Ignore all

1:13:38

these kind of scummy borderline

1:13:41

unethical things we're doing to get you to, like,

1:13:43

buy Apple Arcade. That's different. That's us. We

1:13:45

just care. Yeah. I think

1:13:47

the App

1:13:48

Store there's,

1:13:50

like, a lot of fine arguments on,

1:13:52

like, the notification. Like, in the marketing, the services on the

1:13:54

platform then. Okay. Like, very fine Grain, very nuanced arguments.

1:13:59

we rolled out an ad platform in the App Store that

1:14:01

we totally control. Where your only point

1:14:03

of contact with your

1:14:06

customer is your app

1:14:08

page on

1:14:08

the App Store. And

1:14:09

now we're gonna sell parts of that page to other people to try to get them away

1:14:12

from your thing into

1:14:14

their thing. That's just rude.

1:14:18

Right. Like, it's just, like, straight up,

1:14:20

like, there are very few other

1:14:22

retailers who will just openly undercut

1:14:25

you to make a little bit more money, but Apple's now at the scale where that's

1:14:27

the choice they have to make. This is like meta.

1:14:27

It's like meta is like way out over

1:14:30

its keys. I'm not seeing Apple's anywhere close

1:14:32

to this. They're

1:14:35

just at the point of I'll put Google Search

1:14:37

in this category. There's just a handful

1:14:39

of these companies that

1:14:42

are so big have care about the user

1:14:45

experience. And I'm not saying that's everywhere with

1:14:47

Apple. I think

1:14:47

that's

1:14:49

true. Like, the Macs are really

1:14:51

good. in environment all the time. The phone

1:14:54

generally is very good in a

1:14:56

super competitive environment

1:14:59

all the time. But when Apple has to market

1:15:01

apps, there's nothing there. They can just be whatever kind of rude

1:15:04

goliath they want. When Google is

1:15:06

like, what should the search page look

1:15:08

like? Yeah.

1:15:10

It's whatever useless garbage Google wants

1:15:12

to put there. Right? If Facebook

1:15:14

is feeling it, like the

1:15:17

products got so big they took

1:15:19

them for granted. TikTok showed up

1:15:21

with a better user experience for

1:15:24

the stuff. everyone's like, yeah, she needs to

1:15:26

take that. It's like more fun than whatever garbage is happening on Facebook. And I that that is like,

1:15:28

you know, this is

1:15:31

the argument against antitrust. lazes.

1:15:33

Eventually, the giants will just collapse on their

1:15:35

own because their monopolies and people that screw this. The products are bad. But it's

1:15:40

also like you could just make them compete. You

1:15:42

could just do a little work to make them compete a little bit more. And Apple right

1:15:46

now with the App Store, I hope they see it. Like, is

1:15:48

they did another one.

1:15:50

Another one of their actual

1:15:52

rules updates was

1:15:55

they clarified this rule. that

1:15:57

NFTs are digital purchases, which, like, I don't whatever. But, like but

1:16:00

if you just, like, do the math on

1:16:02

that. Right? So let's say you're playing a

1:16:04

game, the

1:16:07

whole promise of an NFT is that you would, like, buy a

1:16:09

skin in the game. Right? You would buy a

1:16:11

skin

1:16:11

in Fortnite, not not iOS, but you

1:16:13

use Fortnite example. You're gonna buy a

1:16:16

Fortnite skin. and now you own it

1:16:18

and you can sell it. Right? This is the whole promise of the NFT marketplace. Is it

1:16:20

you would just like buy a digital item and then

1:16:22

you own it

1:16:22

and then you can like sell it. So

1:16:26

let's say you buy it from Fortnite. You buy

1:16:28

you buy a Fortnite stand from Epic

1:16:31

for ten dollars, and now

1:16:32

you own it, and you wanna

1:16:35

sell it on another marketplace. Well, you've automatically

1:16:37

lost thirty percent of the value of the thing, even if you

1:16:39

sell it for ten dollars back

1:16:42

to someone else. because Apple is now saying in

1:16:43

their rules, NFC sales or internet

1:16:46

purchases, you gotta give them thirty

1:16:49

percent. So that Apple's just like,

1:16:51

flatly just like effectively removed this from existing

1:16:53

on iOS. Well, what's crazy is,

1:16:56

like, the math

1:16:58

on that particular transaction

1:17:00

means Epic would have made seven

1:17:02

dollars. You would have lost three dollars, and Apple would have made six

1:17:07

dollars. in that transact like, that's Apple, it's insane. Like,

1:17:09

the the and all all

1:17:12

of the, like, you

1:17:14

know, web three NFT people,

1:17:16

I fall on Twitter and stuff

1:17:18

are, like, up in arms about this because they're like, obliterated

1:17:20

the

1:17:21

liquidity of this

1:17:23

market because now buying and selling

1:17:25

is now dangerous because you've just devalued everything by at least thirty

1:17:27

percent. It will definitely

1:17:30

not happen on the

1:17:32

phone. the very least, I've guaranteed

1:17:34

that whatever innovation happens in this area, assuming the innovation happens where it's good or useful,

1:17:40

whatever. Right. They've guaranteed it will not

1:17:42

occur on the phone. Yeah. Right? It's just like what happened there. The same way they've guaranteed that whatever innovation

1:17:44

happens in game streaming will

1:17:46

not happen on their phone. And

1:17:50

that's to me, these are the,

1:17:52

like, these are the ideas. Why do you

1:17:54

love them or hate them? These are ideas

1:17:56

that people are very excited about. I

1:17:58

was gonna say, I wanna know what, like, what Apple

1:18:00

and Google but especially

1:18:02

Apple knows about Congress if the

1:18:04

rest of us don't, that they can

1:18:06

be so confident this week with all of these deeply, deeply

1:18:08

unpopular rules that they were like scaling

1:18:10

back on last year when they thought

1:18:13

they were gonna get regulated into oblivion.

1:18:15

And now they're like, nope. We're firing both barrels. We're going balls to the

1:18:17

wall. It's just scoreboard.

1:18:18

Right? Like, it's you it's

1:18:22

what it is. Like, he walks in and it's like the the sort

1:18:24

of overarching assumption is that, like, Congress is gonna

1:18:26

be taken by the Republicans, which means there's

1:18:29

probably gonna be less energy focused

1:18:31

in this direction. Like, any like,

1:18:33

Tim Cook just walks in and he's like, what do you have to

1:18:35

show me from the last four years of energy around this? Like, let's just

1:18:40

keep pushing. I I feel like it's just the it's

1:18:42

like the pragmatic decision to make at some point. What do you guys think about TikTok getting games?

1:18:47

because that's that's apparently, that's gonna be announced next week. TikTok is,

1:18:49

like, edged into this space for a while

1:18:51

now, and I feel like

1:18:53

it's one of those things that TikTok is either

1:18:55

going to try to do so much stuff. It,

1:18:57

like, breaks the thing up that makes the app

1:19:00

fun. Yeah.

1:19:02

Or it's going to win in a big huge way. And I feel the same about Netflix

1:19:04

getting into gaming. It's like there's an adjacency

1:19:06

there that makes total sense to me and

1:19:08

there's also a thing that's like maybe

1:19:10

you fundamentally misunderstand why people are coming

1:19:13

to your app. And I don't know which one of those it is, and I think it's

1:19:15

gonna be fascinating to find out. But TikTok is like, it's another one

1:19:18

that it's like, oh, Remember

1:19:21

how you were gonna ban us over and over and

1:19:23

over and over every single day for, like, four years. Remember how we're still kicking all y'all's asses. Like,

1:19:26

come at me, bro,

1:19:29

Here comes games. That's like that's

1:19:31

how I imagine TikTok. TikTok's fascinating for the future of wherever there's mobile innovation

1:19:36

because obviously, Apple doesn't want rival app

1:19:38

stores, which is exactly why cloud streaming isn't there because they don't they

1:19:40

don't want those those stores of

1:19:42

installs because it it frames them, obviously.

1:19:45

But TikTok is like

1:19:47

a platform within itself. And it it it's

1:19:49

it's basically everyone's just using it. Like,

1:19:52

people use it to social

1:19:54

recipes, you know, like, he's kids aren't going to do good

1:19:56

research. They're staying within the wall guns of TikTok. You

1:19:58

know who can cut all that stuff off at

1:19:59

the knees? It's Apple.

1:20:02

Like TikTok's gonna do music. TikTok's gonna

1:20:04

do games and Apple anytime it feels like can just be like,

1:20:06

no, no. We'll take thirty percent of that. Thank you. So

1:20:10

at the code conference, Yeah. Tim Cook was on stage with Warren Powell Jobs

1:20:12

and Johnny Ivan. It was Carrie's last

1:20:15

code, and the vibe was not being mean

1:20:17

to take Tim Cook. Like, they were all there

1:20:19

to talk about sea jobs. but

1:20:21

I'm still me. Yeah. So I asked him, like, what do you think about TikTok? Like, a Chinese app to TikTok by the way is

1:20:24

burning cash. Like, this is not

1:20:26

a public company. We have no

1:20:28

idea How

1:20:31

much money ByteDance is spending to make TikTok the winner?

1:20:33

How much money the Chinese government is

1:20:35

spending to make TikTok

1:20:37

the winner? Like, there's an element of this whole competition

1:20:39

that's deeply impaired because we can't see

1:20:41

if

1:20:42

TikTok is profitable or if the Chinese

1:20:44

government just thinks it's a good investment. to

1:20:46

have every

1:20:47

American teen in their algorithm. Oh, how accurate

1:20:49

those view counts? Yeah. We just

1:20:51

kinda but whenever

1:20:53

it's popular, it's growing, there's all this noise about

1:20:55

ByteDance. So I asked him Cook, like, what do you think about

1:20:57

TikTok? And he was like, I'm not an expert on

1:21:00

TikTok. And

1:21:00

I have been thinking

1:21:02

about that answer ever since. Like,

1:21:05

I regret not immediately following up and saying, you have not

1:21:07

used the most popular app on you

1:21:09

have not used to as popular app on your python

1:21:12

your platform. because

1:21:12

it's wild to me that that was his answer, that he

1:21:14

was like, I don't know what's going on with this app. It seems

1:21:16

fine.

1:21:17

it seems fine because

1:21:19

it is closer to the everything app that,

1:21:21

like, Elon Musk wants to

1:21:23

build Twitter into. It does

1:21:25

have all these, like,

1:21:27

weird data concerns. I have heard this is completely

1:21:29

outsourced. Don't take this for real. But, like, yeah, I've definitely heard about TxTag

1:21:31

employees who put their funds in airplane

1:21:34

mode when they, like, leave the office.

1:21:36

Like, like, there's, like,

1:21:38

a thing with TikTok. Like, there's a weirdness about it. I can't source that out of that's real,

1:21:41

but it's

1:21:44

under scrutinized. and

1:21:46

Apple has the the power to scrutinize it and they, like, won't take it. That's weird.

1:21:49

Right? Meanwhile, they're

1:21:52

like meta. Let's

1:21:54

kill it. Yeah. Just destroy it. Well, I think they they are obligated to work with China.

1:21:56

And China has made it

1:21:58

very clear every

1:21:59

single time And

1:22:03

I've spoken with, like, experts on on on how

1:22:04

how China works on this

1:22:06

when I was doing a story about Huawei

1:22:09

before Huawei got botied by

1:22:12

the American government. And if you are

1:22:14

operating in China and your business is

1:22:16

based in China, and China wants

1:22:18

you to do something about your business, you do

1:22:20

it. It's not like let me think about it. It's

1:22:22

like you do it or you get fun being being away for

1:22:24

a couple of months until you you

1:22:26

come back and you

1:22:27

do it. like,

1:22:30

authoritarian regime. You just

1:22:33

you do what they say. And TikTok

1:22:35

existing there is a little, like,

1:22:37

unnerving. And Apple just being like, yeah, whatever is because

1:22:39

Apple needs China -- Yeah. -- desperately. Yeah. I mean,

1:22:41

and

1:22:41

this is every time

1:22:43

we do earnings, have

1:22:46

to go look at their exposure. Trying to have a lot of sales

1:22:48

rep here and trying to say, like, there's just

1:22:50

all this stuff throwing on Apple. But I again,

1:22:53

I would just put some of this iOS stuff, these

1:22:55

rule changes, these unhappy developers, the Google

1:22:57

search getting

1:22:57

sort of like increase do

1:23:00

you know why people use TikTok

1:23:02

search instead of Google search? because you get just faster results on a TikTok.

1:23:04

David, you did it for a while.

1:23:06

Right? Yeah. It's it's just more

1:23:08

fun. Like, it's I

1:23:11

which is which is half of

1:23:13

what searching is. Right? You're like, I don't. I'm not trying to figure out,

1:23:15

like But how many of the recipes

1:23:17

end in

1:23:19

an air

1:23:19

fry? higher. Oh, like, three quarters of them. And and the other

1:23:21

quarter is terrible recipes that other

1:23:23

people are telling you not to

1:23:25

make but making funny jokes about.

1:23:28

Like, it's it's just wins all the

1:23:30

way around. And it's like if I just wanna like watch some videos about a band, I like TikTok

1:23:32

is infinitely better

1:23:35

at that than Google. But still,

1:23:37

like Apple is in this place where it is so in charge of

1:23:39

how this stuff works on its own platform that I don't know.

1:23:41

It it and it is coming from

1:23:43

such a place of confidence. that

1:23:46

it kind of feels like Apple is just going

1:23:48

to keep tightening and tightening and tightening the

1:23:50

ropes until somebody makes it stop, and it

1:23:53

sure doesn't seem to think anybody's gonna make

1:23:55

it stop. Yeah. Or it's like we gotta squeeze as hard as

1:23:57

we can. So when someone makes a stop, we've collected

1:23:59

all the money we can. Yeah. It's it's probably both

1:24:01

of those. Right? Like, it's it's a win win for

1:24:03

Apple at the moment. Yeah.

1:24:05

Alright. We have gone way over. Also, I will just point this out as we've been

1:24:07

recording. Apparently,

1:24:08

Twitter sent

1:24:11

an email to staff sitting there's an

1:24:14

all staff meeting at seven thirty five PM tonight, West Coast. So all you East Coast were in

1:24:16

place. You're gonna find out

1:24:18

what's going on at eleven PM

1:24:20

tonight. We've got

1:24:22

an entire emergency episode of the VirTraas coming when that deal closes or doesn't close

1:24:28

We'll

1:24:29

do that tomorrow. We wanted to get this

1:24:31

one out. Thank you for listening. Tom, thank you for joining us. No worries. We forgotten to talk about

1:24:33

the e Ink display with a

1:24:35

sixty megapixel rear camera. That's

1:24:38

for next week. That's for next week. Yeah. This is why we have

1:24:40

two VirTraCast a week. We have plenty of time to talk

1:24:42

about it. Five

1:24:43

ninety nine. It's the Onyx books.

1:24:45

Don't get it. That's a bad idea. Amazing.

1:24:47

Josh Jezah, who many of you

1:24:49

will remember from our our

1:24:51

Foxconn coverage has a huge

1:24:53

feature this week. about the fight

1:24:55

in Puerto Rico to turn the

1:24:57

power back on. It is a

1:25:00

complicated adventure of a tale through the

1:25:02

bureaucracy with real stakes go read that. It's just excellent work

1:25:04

that's on the site. We'll be back

1:25:06

on Wednesday and then, yeah, I'm

1:25:09

like I'm like several first because of Yvonne. You can call

1:25:11

us. You can call the Virgil's hotline 866

1:25:14

or Virgil's eleven. That's 8668374311I

1:25:17

love this one also like the most one. You

1:25:19

can tweet it us David's at

1:25:21

Pierce Alex's Alex h Trans. I'm at reckless and Tom is at Tom Warren. That's it. That's the

1:25:24

roadshow's

1:25:27

raccoon. And

1:25:30

that's a wrap for BirchCast this week. We'd

1:25:32

love to hear from

1:25:34

you. Shoot us an email

1:25:37

at vergecast at the verge dot com. The vergecast is a production of the verge and the Box

1:25:39

Media network. The show is produced by me,

1:25:42

Liam James, and our senior audio director,

1:25:44

Andrew Marino.

1:25:47

Our editorial director is Brook mentors. That's

1:25:50

it. We'll see

1:25:51

you next week.

1:26:04

This episode was

1:26:06

brought to you by Brex. The corporate card

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and spend management software teams actually love.

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No one likes doing expenses. That's why Brex can

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help make life easy for those who are tired of doing

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an expense for

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things as small as a

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coffee to as large as a five

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star meal. Brex

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is an integrated solution of corporate cards and spend

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management software that drives

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one hundred percent compliance and

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zero receipt chasing in over one hundred

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countries, which means last time worrying

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about expense reports, and more time

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focusing on stuff that really matters.

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Learn more at brex

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dot

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com slash podcast.

1:26:45

At

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Ramova,

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suitcases aren't

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manufactured. Store