**The Verge Cast: A Wild Ride**

I would say leave us alone and then they would try to explain to me what Foxcon's AI plus 8K plus 5G strategy was. Galaxy brain it was nothing by the way, foxcon has abandoned AI AKK plus 5G this is true, they've abandoned it if you go to the Foxon in Wisconsin website now which is literally I believe just Foxon wisconsin.com uh you can see they have a new strategy which is 3 plus 3 equals infinity. This is true, it's even worse how did they make it worse? It's 100% true that their new strategy is 3 plus 3 equals infinity and then there's a lengthy section of that website dedicated to how uh you can see the Dome that they built from the highway.

I keep calling it teu Epcot like it's a little baby baby, it was supposed to be the dot of an, they were going to spell foxcon fi foxcon industrial internet they were going to spell it in buildings and of letters. It's only three, they only got to the dot which is the Dome, uh they insisted for years, uh this is true that the Dome was a Data Center and I would have various conversations with like data center people to like would you ever make a data center in the shape of a dome do you think that would be and they would all be like no I don't I don't know we wouldn't. It turns out the Dome was just like a like a party center, yeah it was like where corrupt Wisconsin politicians would have drinks and take photos with the Dome.

The Dome remains that whole thing remains, I don't know what's going to happen there, there's some rumor the building servers Microsoft is now taking all of the industrialization that was built up the water the power to build an AI data center. All right but I want to end here with one of the best things that has ever happened on the show okay which is all those emails I got about leaving people alone, I would read them on the show and then people would make memes and songs.

One of my favorite songs which I thought about today as I watched Joe Biden dunk on Trump in his golden shovel, was like it would rule if Biden would just play this song. **Vergecast listener Jackson Hayes wrote for us about the factory Liam can we play the song Nei**, you didn't listen to me but that's okay because we're going to tell you what you already knew for months you didn't leave us alone, leave us alone.

**AK means smart safety it's security through AK technology I mean come on NE you should know this 5G means pioneering wait Medical Solutions the crap that supposed to mean on some health Cloud Network. Okay you didn't leave us alone, leave us alone catchy**, didn't leave us alone, leave us alone. Now I just want you to imagine okayy you win can't make that on an iPad uh well with the power of AI technology can so thank you to Jackson one of my all-time favorite forcast moments.

I hope for listening um I just want you to imagine Joe Biden announcing the Microsoft deal and then being like as a reminder acoustic guitar he just take a seat, that whole sequence just I just want to remind people that sequence of reporting was like mid pandemic this was the weirdest time in like reporting you could do. And we were reporting on this weird Factory that didn't exist.

**We were reporting on this weird Factory that didn't exist and I was getting these crazy emails just leave us alone just leave us alone**, that was awesome, leave us alone anyway it's it's a data center now there's a little Dome you can go look at the Dome. I have pictures of the dumb it's there on the website that's it I think that's it one thing we didn't talk about Tik Tok sued the government over the bill to quotequote ban Tik Tok.

**Uh we wanted to take some time with that so that will be next week's decoder uh Alex Heath and SAR Jong are going to join me. We're going to pull that whole complaint apart and see where the arguments are good and bad**, we just needed to take some time with it also there were iPads come on that's a vergecast everybody, uh that's it, that's **the verge**.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello and welcome to bcast the flagship podcast of manufacturing in southeastern Wisconsin we're going to go deep today on concrete on uh blue collar jobs bringing America back from wherever it was and then then we get a big Globe right a huge tiny Dome yeah oh Dome excuse me it's a dome what I'm talking about of course is foxcon in my hometown of verine Wisconsin the literal place where I grew up we're going to get to it it's really just a Victory lap for me personally because Foxon has not done anything else like actually quite notably the news is that someone else has done stuff on that site in Wisconsin Nei do you think you're the most famous resident of rine Wisconsin at this moment in time no the most famous people from rine Wisconsin is the the bad team in the movie A League of Their Own oh that's good that's really good easily the most famous reine yeah you're never topping that thing is that what's her name is it Lori Petty yeah Lori Petty she goes to the other team I don't remember her character's name I just know it's Laura's Lori Petty yeah she has to go she goes to the rine bells and then has to pitch against her sister Gina Davis that's correct and Jeff Bridges is already dead and the bus can't go slower than 55 miles an hour that's not in the movie at all that's a straight that is a straight reference to dress to kill by Eddie isard and if you get get it I love you and you are my people and you can just send me a note and I'll send you a t-shirt but you have to be able to tell me exactly what it is okay that's that whole thing the other most famous resident R Wisconsin is of course uh Sam Johnson of Johnson's Wax Fame who did some weird stuff in a plane over Central America and built a wax Fortune uh that started the high school I went to whose PBX system was connected to the SC Johnson company so you could pick up any phone in the school and dial four digits and get a jwx VP I don't know if I don't know why I know that information that was some deep rine law just was that who you would prank call in I got kicked out of that High School lot just flatly kicked out of that school lot anyway that's coming later in the show not the Johnson waack stuff the fox fun stuff that's much later in the show there is iPad news like a lot of iPad news to talk to but in a small way we'll get to it Cray's the streaming movie industry the television industry in a moment of I would say turmoil yeah they they realize they have to make money that's a problem so we're going to talk about that and then we got a lightning round uh just shock waves in the lightning round which is unsponsored again this week so if between now in the lightning round if you've got money to spend we have gotten some interest though I will say if you if you want to throw money at us uh let's start a bidding war because it's coming yeah and we'll do it live on the air that'll be the lightning rounds love it recursive lightning round sponsored by the people wait dude does that mean we get to do the bidding voice the you know you can go to classes for those I saw a Tik Tok anyway uh none of that is important by the way I'm your friend Nei Alex cray is here I'm your friend who really wants to be one of those guys Auctioneer the word for is auctioner the B guy is like no that's a Kid Rock song David Pierce is here hi to be here all right so this week the news is that apple had like a warm-up event for wwec I don't even know what else to call it it felt like a warm-up crack their Knuckles they're like here's some stuff we got to get this stuff out of the way uh they ran a 35 minute infomercial for new iPads at this point Apple loves the infomercial event but they had some watch parties David went to one in New York you got to sit down watch the infomercial spend some time with the new hardware but all of it even at the end of the event I just want to I feel like it's important to contextualize this event by noting that at the end of the iPad infomercial Tim Cook came back on the screen and said we will have much more to say about the future of our platforms at WWDC because the thing that needs to change on the iPad is iPad OS and they announced no changes to iPad OS at this event nope so it's just it just felt like here's part one of the story you watch follow for part two yeah you watched all of mission imposs dead reckoning can't wait till next year like that's basically how that felt yeah it was odd I think and and I went in thinking there must be something and we got to be fair little teeny tiny bits of software right there was new Final Cut and New Logic there's a new app called Final Cut camera that works so there's like tiny bits of things that you can do but the the overwhelming question for the iPad for like damn near a decade at this point has been what am I supposed to do with all of this power in this thing and we did not get a lot of I would say new compelling answers to those questions I would say in fact we got none and I want I want to come to that because you know we have to review these things and I think there's like a there's a question mark at the end of this review and the question mark is like what if they add a bunch of AI features in June right like who knows but let's actually talk about what they announced they basically refresh the entire lineup save the mini it's actually very funny if you go to apple.com right now and click on iPad all of the iPads have the word new under them and it feels like the the mini should have the word old under it the mini did at least get it was like in the last 20 words that Tim Cook said in the whole thing he said the words iPad Mini out loud which made me happy because that that at least is some acknowledgement that it exists and will continue to exist but it that was it that was the entirety of the love for the iPad Mini at this event and that made me sad refreshed it last year I'm trying to remember when I bought mine was it last year it was like two years ago it was 2022 sometime yeah oh wow okay and they make that product entirely as I understand it for Pilots to strap to their legs while they fly planes so whatever the mini aside dear sweet mini the base models refresh in so much as it a refresh is that they dropped the price to 349 which is important because that's probably where it should have been they got rid of the ninth gen which they were selling for $329 that's one with the lightning connector and the headphone jack no iPads Apple selling right now have a headphone jack which I think is nightmarish for parents I know I have a lot of dongle apologists in my mentions but if you have a small child and you are ever traveling with the child managing Bluetooth headphones for a child it's just like no fun like and charging a thing like it's just easier to have the analog connector please don't tell me about your USBC dongles I don't care man I don't care that you're in the pocket of big dongle just not my problem um anyhow they get that's the big refresh there and I think it's important they brought that price down then the iPad Air feels like a very subtle refresh David what they do there yeah it's it's I would say subtle refresh is basically right the big change is that now there's a bigger one there's now a 13-in version of the iPad Air uh it has an M2 Chip it comes in a couple of new colors but it is still very much an iPad Air right like this is I think the iPad that Apple wants most people to buy uh which is why it has the new colors it has the the magic keyboard it has the pencil it is kind of the sort of most mid of all of the iPads and that is very much what Apple wants it to be uh and yeah it's $5.99 for the 11 in $7.99 for the 13inch and they're very much doing like a MacBook Air MacBook Pro thing with these devices where you have the sort of slightly less powerful cheaper simpler computer in two sizes and then you have the more Pro thing with all the advanced specs for a lot more money still at the same two sizes but they've landed on this 11 and 13inch thing as like the way going forward but I just don't understand why anyone would buy the air when the regular iPad exists and is got like what it's got the same or it's got an A14 okay the iPad Air has an M2 does that really matter to 90% of people who are using an iPad no which is back to what you were saying Nei a minute ago Apple would like you to believe that it matters and apple would love to tell you stories about all the power of its new chips and why this stuff matters and we're going to get to the Pro in the minute which has an even newer chip and I spent a lot of time with apple Executives learning about the the wonders of the new chip uh if you're just like a person who does normal iPad things in the world I cannot in good conscience tell you a processor upgrade in your iPad is worth it yeah and so I think that is the question it's like I think Apple would very much like you to buy the air and I think Apple thinks the air is the correct one for the largest number of people but it still feels a little like tweener to me for a lot of things I found some differences between the air and the 10th gen iPad okay the hover function on the new Apple pencil will work on the air yeah it's a bunch of pencil stuff yeah it's like the the original the 10th gen iPad is a USBC doofus pencil yeah and it has the other Smart Keyboard or the magic keyboard mhm and that's it and it 100 knits brighter sure P3 instead of srgb hey that that matters to me yeah that that does like that and the fact that it has anti-reflective coating those two things do actually matter it's a slightly nicer product that uses slightly newer accessories but again by the time you're down this road of any of this stuff you're Way Beyond the the average I just need an iPad to look at while I sit on the couch user right like to me it's like if you're even thinking about buying a magic keyboard buy the air or higher period right like that's it's I think that's fairly simple I think a lot of people who want iPads don't want anything other than the pane of glass to hold in their hands and for most of those people I can't think of a single reason the air is going to be like meaningfully better for you in your life than the regular iPad yeah and I think this points to just the problem which is what is the use case for the iPad and now again the hardware suggests that it is an expansive list of use cases and to some extent it is right like some people I am sure produce music and logic exclusively on an iPad those people are causing themselves an enormous amount of pain but they're choosing to do it and that is their right as Americans sure fine right it's just here at the at the bottom of the range the step from the 10th gen to the air is very small Hardware wise right it is a nicer piece of Hardware it is a bigger screen you can get now an even bigger screen but it's a very mild refresh and basically they they have added the 13inch size F fine yeah but the capabilities of the product are exactly the same as they were yesterday or the day before yep it's where you it's the iPad Pro and now the pencil Pro we like now this the purpose of this event it felt like was to simplify this increasingly complicated lineup and you get to the iPad Pro and the pencil Pro and the fact that Apple now sells I think four different pencils and you're just like what is going on here the pencils are really bad like like the the chart of which pencil works with which product and has which feature like no if you have a chart that big for Apple product you've you've messed up yeah let's get into the well there's that let's talk about the philosophy of the iPad in a second the iPad Pro is a piece of Hardware appears to be very impressive David you've seen it tell us about it's so so good uh I we we go to a lot of these events right and you're like you're constantly being handed a thing that somebody has just spent a half hour tell you is new and most of the time you're just like this is this is a MacBook like a c it sure is and and the iPad is like the canonical example of that right like for years and years and years you pick up an iPad and you're like boy that sure is an iPad I picked up the iPad Pro at this event in New York and like out loud involuntarily just said holy like it is so thin and so light and so small especially on the 13in I I it was it's the biggest like Leap Forward in how impressive I find this Hardware in a really long time uh again we can debate forever the value of any of this Hardware but just the sheer like engineering feat to get this thing under a pound it's 5.1 mm thick uh by the way everybody says 5.1 mm thin now and I think we've complained about that that's nothing things are not you can't measure the thinness of something it's thickness and there's not much of it which is Steve started doing this with the I believe the second generation MacBook Air I hate it so much and everybody does this now and it drives me insane but that's neither here nor there 5.1 millimet but that's the 13 in yeah and and the 11 in I believe is is is 53 yeah uh but the point is the they're they're spectacular like truly as pieces of Hardware they are incredibly impressive to the point where you're holding the thing and like uh everybody who's made this joke Marquez brownley when he made a video had the Jerry rig everything guy just sort of peek out from the corner of the video like it feels like you could snap this thing in half uh whether or not you can I don't know if you can that feels like a problem uh but yeah just the the sheer Machinery inside of this thing is really really really impressive yeah and there's two pieces I think that are important to call out one is the new processor the M4 which is interesting just sort of from a processor technology standpoint Apple didn't put an M3 in this if you read Ben Thompson and strer he points out that the M3 is on a three nanometer process node from tsmc that was a technology dead end yeah and tsmc has all but admitted it and the M4 is on the one that is sustainable and has a future so the tsmc was like we made this weird dead end because we have customers who insist on being at the at the Leading Edge there's one customer that insists on being at the Leading Edge uh so they made so the M3 could be in whatever computers it was in and the M4 is the leap to the good good version of the 3 nmet node that has like a road mapap in front of it so you see apple is trying they're putting the stuff like the best stuff they got into this machine and then on top of that it has the tandem OLED people have been talking about stacked OLED displac for a very long time it's a really simple idea like it's like deceptively simple obviously it's taking a long time to pull off but if you run an OLED at the brightness you want to run an OLED it gets hot you risk burning so why don't we just take two OLED displays basically combine their power source and then we just run them each at half brightness on top of each other to like real Pimp My Ride Like thinking there it's very clever and then what you can do and David I'm very curious to this because I haven't seen I know you have if you run them both at top brightness you get a much brighter OLED display which is that I think is the promise and the thing that people have been trying to work on for a long time yeah it was tough to tell I mean these these Apple events are always bit really bizarrely in such a way that it's really hard to sort of get in the nitty-gritty pixels of a display but it it was noticeably brighter like I brought my uh 11in Pro from last generation with me and like just holding the two things side by side you can you can tell how much brighter the OLED is uh I think they said it's 1,600 nits at full brightness which is a lot I assume will just shred your battery to bits at full brightness uh cuz like you're running that many OLED pixels at full brightness like you're like I'm going to watch one episode of something and it's just going to shatter the battery well no but this is the this is the idea though is that you're you get more efficiency maybe at the top brightness where you're running effectively both panels all the way but the idea is that sort of at your everyday brightness you're running both panels like halfway right and that's also uh a big part of the reason that the M4 and the Tano that are happening simultaneously like the the overwhelming thing I heard talking to Folks at this event was that like we wouldn't do one of these without the other that that driving those two displays at that high resolution and that high refresh rate is is just a massive amount of computational work and uh doing those two things especially in a way that is like at all power efficient is just really hard and that a lot of what the M4 is is explicitly about driving the tandem OLED which I think is really interesting and I wonder what that says about like the next set of products that might have M4 inside what kind of MacBook do you make if you've got a big tandem OLED driver sitting on your chip right ex the big ass battery exactly it is just going to be one of those like 100 milliamp hour oh yeah aner batteries with screen that falls out it I would take that product if they made this twice as thick and got rid of the camera bump and was like the battery lasts for a week I would be happy yeah I I do agree with I mean there was a very funny thing where you know you you hold this thing and it's it's a remarkable piece of technology like they built the hell out of the hardware but then I'm like okay if this thing was a little thicker so that it didn't have a camera bump which is the thing a lot of people pointed out was this this could have been the the thickness of the camera bump and would have been about the same thickness as the last iPad which no one was complaining about the thickness of by the way and you'd get more battery you might get more power efficiency out of it you'd get better speakers just because there's room to move the audio around that like maybe this constant thrust toward thinness that Apple has been on for so long is not the right strategy and I largely agree with that but like godamn is it cool just to hold the thing when it's that thin this thing you are Johnny I pilled this thing is like IES Revenge It kind like here's what happens you pick up an iPhone 6 and it flops over but damn is it thin yeah yeah pretty much fine yeah uh and then there's new accessories right so there's the apple pencil Pro which adds the ability to do a barrel roll do a barrel roll uh you can also squeeze it love to love to squeeze a pencil when I think about totally natural user interfaces it's squeezing a pen yeah um wait can I just say two things about the pencil uh one The Squeeze is actually pretty nice they put they put a real like haptic engine into it so it feels it feels like a a Macbook trackpad now in the sense that you get a little bit of that response I don't know that it adds wildly to the experience of using it but it does feel nice to squeeze the thing the other thing is Apple is very excited about the developer possibilities for this there there are going to be apis that you can just give to any app and they're going to be able to do stuff with the squeeze and I just like casually threw out the example of like oh I can't wait to use my pencil to change the Spotify song and somebody just goes hm interesting idea and I was like no that was a joke that's a bad idea no one should do that so there's going to be some like deeply weird pencil gesture support stuff going on and they're they're going to be able to chain uh gestures on the pencil to shortcuts so all the shortcut nerds are really excited about this now it's going to get really weird and I'm very excited about it okay my prediction is that it does not get weird like I I love the idea of adaptive user interfaces and I have like talked about them with a lot of people over the years I actually just Dylan field the CEO of figmo was on stage with me at South by and he is like I love the idea of adaptive user interfaces we talk specifically about styluses and pencils and like what if as you were you know sketching a design in figma the sort of UI was around your stylus was adapting to what you were doing so you could just like move seamless like this is a dream this is a technologist dream the idea that a bunch of app developers are going to flock to the Broken app development model of the iPad and develop custom features for a pencil that is only available at the top end of the range I look David I'm I really want you to squeeze your way through a spot ify playlist I mean there's nothing I want more for you you're you're way overstating the amount of work that it's going to be to it's like it's like setting up a keyboard short cut to do this like it's not hard work to my man Netflix wouldn't put a video player on the Vision Pro yeah I mean fair but also uh I mean a you're right and B um I would like everyone to email your favorite shortcut to neith forge.com I love I love a shortcut I love them can't get enough of uh scripting my own applications to defeat the lack of cross interoperability on app's platforms it's my favorite good I just this is the sort of thing where Apple makes a big promise about everybody supporting a thing and then we wait yeah and so I would just challenge you on the scale of I don't know um dashboard widgets to the touch bar where do we think pencil squeezing support is going to land from like very bad to very bad is that is that where we're at right now uh no think about some Big Apple um UI idea that it had uh iPhone widgets sure on your lock screen live activities and then Dynamic Island support we've seen just a lot of support for that especially as it came to the mainstream phone very good okay so that's on the the plus side that's great and then there's the touch bar all the way over there the touch bar was awesome just nobody gave a okay excited for you to use Spotify with your touch bar okay I'm just saying that's the range where do you put squeezing the pencil closer to the touch bar I mean I think it's just true like it's not it's not a mainstream accessory I would actually like keyboard shortcuts on the iPad are are actually probably right in line with the same thing right it's the kind of thing that uh are relatively cheap to add and relatively straightforward for users to access once they have them but the attach rate of those accessories is not super high yep most apps don't really need it like what you're going to see is there's going to be this set of like apps that use the pencil that are going to use the hell out of the pencil and you're already all of the drawing apps and like I've just been talking to folks even the last couple of days like folks are psyched about the barrel roll stuff and just like the little creative abilities that you get just with the additional tiny features in here are like a big deal but they're a big deal for a tiny number of features to a tiny number of people that's great but I I don't see a world in which the pencil is ever bigger than that so I think the idea that like Spotify is going to care about it is not real if a pencil came free I would feel differently but it doesn't I do love the idea that you go to events where people are sort of professionally obligated to like be kind to you and just have horrible ideas and they're like good idea it's so fun it's so fun I just pitch stupid products to people for like several hours and and they go and then they keep giving me demos that's great so that's a pencil the one I'm really curious about is the keyboard because my favorite plain computer of all time was a 12-in Macbook which was super light and thin I tried to replace it with the previous 11-in iPad Pro which just turned out to like thick like was like a heavy weird it like wasn't as good as a laptop in many ways because of just the way it worked is the new keyboard case sort of better it's they announced it as being more like a Macbook than ever which I thought was really interesting the top half hasn't really changed which I think is is going to be its challenge it's still at least in the demos I got and and the time I was able to spend with it it's still a little wobbly especially when you touch it so it kind of Wiggles As you move it around uh the bottom especially on the pros is aluminum it's much more solid it's really smooth it actually like feels nice to rest your palm on kind of MacBook Air isly uh and the keys felt amazing I've spent like 10 minutes on it so I reserve the right to change my mind but it it was it was one of those keyboards you just put your hands down and instantly start typing on uh I also really love Apple's normal magic keyboard so everyone's mileage may vary on that but I think that's a great keyboard and this felt to my hands just like that which is kind of all you'd want for this I always thought the iPad Pros keyboard was a little like mushy and sort of thick it just it just felt like you had to sort of smash the keys all the time and then I spilled like half a Diet Coke on M so now you have to really smash the keys but this one at least in the bits that I've gotten felt fantastic like I instantly want it as just a little kitchen computer that I can just sit and like write emails while I wait for my coffee to brew like it felt great but I have a question which do you want more this or Microsoft Surface device because I like the whole time watching this the whole time talking about it talking even about the the stylus I was like this just feels kind of like Microsoft in 2017 or 2018 right like when when they and all the oems were really pushing like yeah look it's a touchscreen computer and I'm like yes now Apple has done a touchscreen computer right down to talking about the processor yeah which they didn't used to do with the iPad like this is just a computer yeah there was a this was a speeds and feeds event was fascinating on that front it really was super weird interesting so it's back then I think Windows was in a weirder spot so they announced the surface and they were like but then it's windows and windows is in a sideways sort of fashion come a long way yeah like I would say it's in a different spot right is that spot ahead it's more of a diagonal yeah yeah they just it's gone it's it's come a distance yeah the direction I think is a clear it's a good direction and I I only say that because you can argue about what the evolution of Windows yeah to contrast with the fact the I IP ad is in exactly the same place as it was yes I went back and I read my iPad Air review from 2013 which in a horrifying sequence of events I forgot that I had written you're like oh this guy's pretty good yeah I was like oh smart Snappy oh that's me there it is uh and it is exactly the same that iPad was running iPad OS 7 iOS 7 yeah in my review is like this thing is constantly fighting you they have not done enough with this software to take advantage of the larger screen and it's just like plaintive like why is Siri so weird on this like why is it why is it just a big iPhone I read my iPad Pro review from 2018 when it the first USBC one and I'm like why is this computer fighting me like why is file management on the iPad so confused yeah and all that stuff has gotten incrementally better yep they've added stage manager short shortcuts people I'm so proud of you for writing an alternative operating system in shortcuts on top of iPad OS that is an achieve I you know I that's cool as hell that's like I'm a computer nerd I'm happy you did computer nerd stuff but the the ultimate problem which is you have to fight the computer to get it to be a computer like remains as true for the iPad today as it did in 2013 when I was running iOS 7 yeah and th and I think my answer to you then given that question is like I'd rather take the weird sideways windows because at least at least it's going to do everything that I want it to do without some like putting on Armor and just going to war with your oper yeah just like running into like the brick wall of Apple's business model yeah right Apple's like we're going to distribute all the applications to the App Store we're going to take 30% of all those button like and that will and if we open that up on the iPad then we're terrified that we'll have to open it up on the iPhone we're already being brats about opening it up on the iPhone like no like we're it's going to be like this this is the future of computing and then you're like is it yeah it really doesn't it feels just like they made a hobbled surface device like a my to be clear my dream surface device in 2018 but a hobbled surface device right down to the fact that you have to choose the processor the storage like the markups are high to make it functional so the thing we don't know thing the thing we don't know is like what's going to happen in June that's true that's true when they rev iPad OS and that's why to me David I couldn't tell if while you were at the watch parties and they had one in New York and one in London like maybe The Vibes are different all around the world but for me sitting at home watching it in the Glorious Dolby Atmos of my own home Apple by the way did not stream this thing at any more than like eight megabits per second I'm just saying so it's was not in Sony braia cor yeah it was at 48 khz Atmos which was great but I mean come on where's the where's the resolution man you're going to show John turnis whipping around the BART holding an iPad I want I want the full anyway I was like man like I can't wait until next month when they finish this product yeah like exactly it just felt like okay you've you've announced this thing that we've already seen before we've already heard the pitch that this kind of computer is really good for creatives because that was the whole pitch right I was like look this is for creatives I was like yeah I heard that from Microsoft and HP and everybody else back in 2018 I know that now and you've heard that from Apple about the iPad yeah it's like okay show me and they're like yeah we did it no no but show me where it's actually good for creatives now where it's actually that useful computer all you've done is like crush a bunch of stuff with a hydraulic press wait I want to come to the crushing well we'll get to that yeah yeah I'm curious David if that came through with the whatever the me it was a it wasn't like a full event but I'm curious if it came through there I think it it was hard to tell at the event whether this was the end end of something or the beginning of something and one way to look at this event is that essentially Apple like finished the job of the iPad right they said this over and over and over again they're like this is the the magical pan of glass right like that's the thing they've been wanting to build for a really long time and like they they built a really nice one it has an outrageous amount of raw horsepower it's really light it's really thin the screen looks awesome like you could make the case that they have been sort of working toward this particular iPad since the beginning of the iPad and I think like they said over and over this is the biggest day in the iPad since the launch of the iPad which like objectively not true but if you want to look at it that way this is the end of that journey in a certain way like I genuinely don't know how much further you can push the actual details of the hardware here than what this is now until we get to like rollable displays and something else like this feels like an end point in a real way or the flip side is this is the thing that is going to to empower all of the things that Apple's going to launch in June and that was all the stuff that they were sort of intimating with the AI stuff and talking about the features and you know leaning on we're going to have more to say about the future of the platform in June I don't think this running Mac OS is the answer for the iPad and there a lot of people who are like the evidence is everywhere they're going to have Mac OS on the iPad like no they're not it's just not going to happen but if there is a next turn for what the iPad can be and do and like a fundamental shift in the use cas that's when this feels like the beginning of something right and now they're like we have a different kind of Hardware with a different set of accessories and a different performance envelope that can actually go do all of this new stuff and this is the story everybody has been telling us about AI for like damn near two years now and none of it's really been true so I'm not Ultra confident that apple is going to have like massively improved the state-of-the-art of AI and has solved all the features for everybody in June but this did it it felt very much like this is the vessel and we're going to fill it a month from now and if not this will feel like the end of an era of the iPad to me how does AI fix iPad OS wait wait I want to come to I think that's where I want to end okay sorry sorry I I definitely want to end there I just want to before we get to that because I think that's that's the right place to end for sure um and I think that's another hour of the show uh I just want to call out the biggest day of the iPad since the iPad off the top of my head I can think of three more important iPads than these that like move the needle the iPad 2 which was a like a shock announcement and the design direction of the iPad 2 was basically the iPad until Monday yep like that ninth gen iPad with the lightning connector like slightly different design like but it was it's an iPad 2 yeah y they just flattened it a little bit like right that but it's the same exact home button bezels the whole thing that's an iPad 2 in that iPad 2 launch Steve Jobs on a stage me like I did it again you saw the first gen iPad here's the second one and this this is always my test that made the local news yeah right if you if you want to break through on the mainstream you need ABC7 in Chicago to be like apple out it's a new iPad today you got to do it you got to get there uh the iPad 4 which was the retina display and lightning connector the iPad 3 had a retina display but um it was way too too early and it was thicker and the thing ran so hot uh the battery life was garbage the iPad 4 was the good one huge big deal everybody I know who had an iPad immediately upgraded to that iPad and then the original iPad Air where they changed it to the box your design and they like gave it the extra capabilities that was a big deal which is why I was reading my 2013 review where they they redid the form factor to make it that more Square yeah and a form factor change is always just a big deal like none of the ones you mentioned though were when they got rid of the button yeah because whatever you don't care about the button I I believe that was the original iPad Pro yeah the 2018 iPad Pro and that one I would say was not as big deal because that's when they added the keyboard and they like got real surfacy and I'm just using my local news test that thing was really expensive it tried it tried to make it a laptop and it I I did it work did it go on the local news I'm just saying off the top of my head well if you're just ranking the biggest iPads the things that made the iPad break through to the mainstream and like cause a fuss it's 100% the iPad 2 yes like easily the most be you're ranking the biggest moments for the iPad since the iPad the iPad 2 is at the top of that list yeah without question then I think it is the iPad 4 when all of the early adopters of the iPad upgraded cuz the hardware had a new capability in a retina screen that was worthwhile instead of the iPad 3 which again had a a screen but was also a tiny nuclear reactor MH uh and then the the iPad Air which was the big form factor shift that everybody upgraded to and also pass the local news test if apple has a new iPad it's was thinner than ever before like that thing I I do want to tell you that in fact the the event this week did pass the local news test you're watching ABC7 ABC7 did in fact cover it oh now it's covering the streaming bundle ABC7 in Chicago just going but but yeah they were just like apple unveils new iPad Pro with outrageously powerful AI powered chip all right I'm not going to tell you why I think about ABC7 News um it is what my mom watches okay but no I I'm I'm with you like local news when it hits local news so I'm genuinely surprised this hit they need something right it was a slow news week Forum I say that's my test and I that's to me is the God Bless the people at ABC7 News yeah I'm in Chicago for New Year's every year and they do a just a wild New Year's Eve thing so that's why it's always on my mind but it is true that's the one my uh my mom watches uh but I think about that test and it's like did this pass the test where a whole bunch of new people are going to pick an iPad are going to buy an iPad and I don't I don't think this Hardware is that thing no maybe at the top end of the scale a bunch of people are GNA get an iPad Pro because they want to do a barrel roll I I'm that person I I'm not a tandem OLED yeah I'm in let's spend the money I'm just that's the thing I'm thinking about and that's where I'm with with David where I'm like you got to you got to reset your expectations of what the thing is capable of yeah which I think brings me to the commercial and all this talk about AI Apple said a million times is the most powerful AI computer you can get because the M4 we've been doing the neural engine for years here's uh uh the the thing in logic where you can put in a song and it does the AI and it splits the stems into drums and guitars and vocals for you that's cool here's some final Cut Pro stuff that's cool by the way Final Cut camera on the iPhone they announced they just slid by that they announced Pro camera software right for the iPhone moved through it that rules like that's awesome um but you know the thing is very powerful and then they're like we're going to have more AI Fe you can see they're going to announce a ton of AI features at wwc and I think what is fascinating is maybe Apple's core constituency hates it and then this ad just like lit the fuse the ad was like unintentionally a flasho in what fells like some sort of new class Warfare yeah between like big tech and creatives and and we've been seeing it in Hollywood a lot right like like as apple and Amazon and everybody goes and and takes over streaming there everybody's got really strong feelings about it but to see it happen here to see like Hugh Grant be like this sucks you're destroying the world that was a really bad Hugh gr impression yeah sorry I he's famously British he's famously British I'm I'm I'm I'm not but the opposite of British the opposite uh so the the ad is a bunch of stuff like beautiful old creative stuff yeah it's like paint and phones there's a trumpet I believe in the beginning a metronome uh a sculpture that I thought was was like a sculpture and then it was Clay because it just smooshed all unsatisfyingly in the hydraulic press and it was like a really good commercial and it's the same thing they've done a billion times before where they're just like what if all of this stuff was in the palm of your hand and everybody's like f off yeah how dare you you and because I think it was the the that image of things being all crushed being destroyed like beautiful things being destroyed to make an iPad and everybody out there in the world is is really upset there's a lot of anxiety around AI in so many creative Industries so to have that happen I was like oo youall miss the mark on that one yeah can I just say I think the the like overarching point of the idea that Tech technology is like literally flattening creative culture good and fair and valid and worth fighting about the reaction to this commercial in particular is so stupid and I just wish everyone would get over it it's so funny like I will say there was a great uh I forget who did it I'm sorry I can't give them credit for it but there was somebody who literally just ran that commercial in reverse and was like this is actually much more compelling and sells the iPad much better that all of this stuff comes out of the iPad and I think that's very funny because it was a much more like of the thing uh but also like the idea that everyone is like apple has always loved creatives and now it's destroying trumpets is like come on everybody like it's nothing has changed apple is trying to tell you that there's lots of things that you can do in an iPad and the fact that it smooshed a trumpet to do so is probably fine the thing is it's probably fine things have changed for a lot of folks right like things have changed on the other side of it that was totally unrelated to Apple like it really was just Apple just like stepping in it without even knowing that we're stepping in it because out there in the world people are furious at technology in general and then Apple wh is like look we did a cool iPad and everybody's like you'll die I agree with that I think I think the the broader story here is real right and apple is out there talking about AI while everybody is rightly nervous about what AI is going to mean to their creative work all that stuff is totally fair and valid it just isn't about this commercial no that's what I mean I think the commercial is like dude in a month apple is going to AI features across its operating systems like huge sweeping AI features from the reports we've read they're going to add the we the AI photo editing to photos MH just imagine the what is a photo conversation we're going to be having in a month when that stuff is built in at the system level to the iPhone 4our vergecast it's never going to stop we're just going to start Verge casting right after the keynote ends and we're going straight on to the end of the year uh this is officially my two we notice Liams out but I mean like they want to add generative capabilities to the products directly and I think what they just learned is even a hint of breaking creative stuff is bad for them like I think the reaction add is like one don't destroy cool things that we like like I'm David it sounds like your disdain for trumpets is off the charts yeah some people think trumpets are cool right there's scab bands across the world that are like what are you doing T is like no to SCA destroy all trumpets there's you know there's like a retro arcade console like it's it's just like cool stuff stuff people like and they're like smash we're doing one of those Tik toks with the hydraulic Smashers and now here's an iPad this like sort of soulless corporate pane of glass right uh you take that anxiety just around this ad just around the imagery of that ad and you hand it you like point it at I itself in a month and it's like oh that's a powder keg actually yeah it is and and Apple has been I think the extent to which it has misread the room about how people think about Apple I think is what has been most telling about this because there was a time when Apple really did convince creative people that it was behind them right and it was it was making tools even as it was disrupting the music industry and changing the way a lot of this stuff worked people who made things used Apple products like overwhelmingly that was the case and there was the sense that like this company made good products in the right way and believed in Creative people and cared about this stuff and Steve Jobs was a Pixar investor like all this stuff and I think between the way that Apple's business model has been sort of aired out like dirty laundry over the last couple of years and the way we've come to understand what it does to developers and the way that all of this stuff is just in general getting subsumed inside of Technology like there's the bigger story what technology is doing to the world and to creative people that I think is interesting and important but there's also a thing that has happened where people don't look at Apple the way Apple thinks that they do anymore and I think to me that was the thing that was most interesting about this was a bunch of people who otherwise would have been like oh Apple's you know one of the good ones they actually care about this stuff it's a it's a huge tech company that actually like does the right things the right way that company does not get the benefit it out anymore yeah yeah and I don't know that that's coming back and I think it's going to really hurt it with AI in a really big way the thing that I have thought about the moment like specific phrase that I have been thinking about during this whole commercial cruffle which I agree is it's about something else yeah right but I have been thinking a lot about Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone 4 and he held it up and he was admiring his own product in the way that Steve Jobs was want to do and he said it's like a beautiful old Leica camera and he meant it right like he was like this is I loved that thing and I made a thing that is like it and this thing is actually meant to honor that thing right you could you just go watch it you go watch the iPhone 4 introduction it's funny because he like dunng his mode at the beginning I'm sorry Alex it's fine Alex wasn't there yet I wasn't there yet uh but it's like you know it's like a whole thing right it's Steve Jobs has to reann nowc the product that has been so thoroughly leaked that it has already been disassembled on the internet and he like does a great job but there's this moment that makes it work that like makes it click where he's like it is like a beautiful old like a camera and he's just talking about a piece of design that he loves that represents a way of doing things that he obviously respects and that's now here's his iPhone contrast that to by your mom and iPhone like that's that's the journey but yeah contrast that to buy your mom and iPhone contrast that to we're going to smash everything into new iPad yeah right it's like no now we're a bulldozer yeah we're not a participant in this thing right we're not gonna honor the past of creativity with blah blah blah BL we've commodified creativity we are a bunch of accountants who are going to take our 30% and that is bad like I whatever it is I'm sure someone is gonna write to me about Apple stock performance now like whatever you want to think about that that's great they're dominant people love them but they don't that benefit of the doubt where the company was led by an artist or someone who held himself out as an artist or a patron of the Arts or whatever is gone and I think this ad is actually a reflection of that right it's just it's an ad it's a very expensive ad but it's not born out of a love of those things because if you truly loved those things you would not smash them and like maybe that's just a metaphor maybe it's silly maybe it's just a misfire but a month from now they're going to launch a bunch of AI features that are trained on a bunch of creative work and they're going to have to answer a bunch of questions about whether or not they paid for that training data and whether artists are going to compensate it and whether if you type into Garage Band make me a beat in the style of whoever that person gets money and like are you ready for this because the reaction to this ad suggests that you are not yeah and I the same is true Google NE next week is Google IO where they're GNA announce a bunch of AI like it's just destined to happen like I I can confidently predict that Google is going to announce a bunch of AI stuff at Google iio we're going to talk about Gemini a lot they're going to put Gemini in your face and are they ready are they ready for that stuff this week uh open AI is uh the leak details of how they're going on to Publishers and the Publishers are like you already scraped the data this is a this is a head fake we we don't trust you and I I think this whole industry is kind of like on a Razor's Edge like they don't understand that the lack of trust around AI is going to come to all of their products including a relatively innocuous iPad ad yeah agreed 100% all right I'm very curious now to see what iOS 17 Breaks by the way David what is the evidence uh real quick before we break that that's gonna run Mac OS because that would be my dream I don't know there's just a lot of I think a lot of people who are like oh the magic keyboard exists and feels more like a Mac there's a bigger trackpad people just want it thus Mac OS I I challenge anyone to like try and think about how you would touch the things in your menu bar like it's just not a good idea we should have mac apps that work poking away over here this is great I I'm trying to I'm trying to scroll down so I get my menu bar no I as far as I can tell there is no actual evidence except this thing is stupendously powerful and when you put it in it kind of feels like a laptop yeah all right that's my dream if you're listening to me Tim I will trust you again if you put ma in it's a bad dream Tim don't listen turn off the podcast Tim is in our YouTube comments he's like first that's him every time all right we got to take a break we'll be right back and then Alex is going to tell us about streaming so buckle up we'll be right back all right we're back Alex uh I feel like every time we talk about streaming you say uncomfortably horny things about David zasloff it's true so I would like genius I would like you to just assure me that that is not going to happen today I can't make promises life all right well I tried I did my best to protect myself s and our extended listener you guys all love him too that's why you're listening don't worry I get it the good news is there's not a lot of direct zazo news there there isn't no they had they had their earnings uh Disney's had their earnings a lot of folks had their earnings this week and they're they're doing okay they're making money um and that's because they have things like ads and and they're running these companies like businesses that have to make money now rather than just like giving us all free content all the time which was super sick I will miss those years like crazy but uh the big stuff was like Disney Hulu and Max are all going to they're going to get a bundle at some point this summer not your child you know she walked up to the TV the other day and said why is there an icon that said max and I honestly I challenge you to explain that to a six-year-old in a way that makes any sense first of all Kudos SMX can read that rules great great job Max that's awesome yeah did you start explaining David's as love to her like I just challenge you to expl like try be like you're 6 years old you you cannot start with there once was a company called time War that's what I was hoping right like that you're just like there was a mistake that's a mistake this is how you write a children's book for Max just to explain that there was a mistake inside of that icon rests a 43 grayscale Batman movie and I just I'm sorry okay like the entire one one day I will tell you the story of the American economy and it will start with that icon but for now don't worry about it Max okay so this is where we get to zaz obviously zaz love runs Warner Brothers Discovery he's been looking for money he's been looking for growth and and what better way than to partner up with other companies who are also looking for growth and being like if we get together we can offer offer our stuff cheaper and also not have the FTC come after us constantly for having our own little like FS so they're going to bundle this up mhm and say is it is it going to be two different apps it three so I guess Hulu is already in Disney plus right Hulu is already in Disney plus that's why it's like that gross color now yeah they they're just like they smashed the blue and the green together so you you you sign up I read the press releases the press releases are like we'll release more details later yeah there there really isn't a lot of details it really is just like it's coming yeah and we don't know pricing we don't know when we just know what's happening so you're going to pay some money to someone yes they're going to figure it out Eli David's very good at this zaz love not Pierce and then you're going to I feel like if David Pierce was in charge with in charge of Warner brother's Discovery I was going to say I honestly believe like to my bones that I could run the streaming industry more successfully than any of these clowns oh you you 100% the user interface would work yeah I I just let David do it that's what I'm saying you're going to login to two apps you're GNA have two apps on your on your Roku still we don't know we don't know yeah we we genuinely don't know most of this stuff we know that it's it's coming we know that they're they're excited about it I would say by the way that there is virtually no chance of this being a combined app like just from what we've seen on the rights stuff alone like Disney the work they had to do to integrate the Hulu stuff with Disney plus and those are two companies owned by Disney yeah uh just the right stuff that wouldn't allow some things on Hulu to be in Disney plus so there are things that are in Hulu the app that are not in Hulu the tile and Disney Plus like imagine adding all of a whole another company to that I just don't see how that's possible like this is this is good they're going for unified login which is a good idea is like the most ambitious thing I think comes out of this but the entire idea of these rollups to begin with Disney buying Fox buying out the rest of Hulu from Comcast disclosure Comcast as a stake in our parent company VOX media and also people hated Comcast so much they rebranded their cable company to xinity that's a real story um B like me very much there's a disclosure uh and then zaz love just zazz in his way to merging Warner Brothers and Discovery right the idea there was always scale right yeah like the the specific pitch for Warner Brothers Discovery was we will have HBO for your appointment Sunday night viewing and then the rest of the time when you're like I don't know what are those Property Brothers doing you'll just like turn that on and watch Tik Tok in the background right like and they explicitly made this this is the idea like the bundle will be so big you'll subscribe subcribe to it it'll be great for you but bundles can get bigger and that's what like this has run out yeah yeah that basically they need other content right like it is unrealistic to expect people to only watch Netflix it is unrealistic to expect people to only watch Disney plus unless they're like under the age of five in which case it's super realistic but like did you see that St by one out of three one out of every three shows in Disney plus is a blue stream yeah wow is it just max % of all Disney plus streaming is BL that's insane oh my gosh it's like this company is extremely beholden to an Australian dog wow I don't want to talk about blue at this time David your kid isn't old enough to know but when when it comes time it will be it will be very sad for you as well but so the bundles get bigger yeah but why doesn't Netflix have this pressure because Netflix is huge like like Netflix is is bigger than kind of everybody else right they have that first mover Advantage so they can just be they're so far ahead of everybody else when it comes to subscribers and stuff that they can just keep doing that and they can keep asking for more money and also this is the Alex who put them higher on the go90 scale than some of the other people they've got hubris right like they they they still haven't worked partnered with Apple so so you don't really get that so uh that tight integration with like the Apple products that you get with with Disney plus and Max and all these other ones they don't partner with everybody else as often because they are the biggest and often times when you do that your hubris catches up with you eventually so like I think it's a kind of a mistake for Netflix to not try to do this but I'm not surprised by it because it's also the most like these are entertainment companies yeah Netflix is a technology company so you made a YouTube video this week you basically like the Cable Bundle is back and that's what's H that's what's happening here right you got Disney the Hulu assets they're going to put ESPN Plus in the Disney Plus app that's the yeah you're you're subsidizing all this stuff that you want that you don't necessarily want cuz I know you guys love sports but but you have to you are just will be here Furious that I'm going to have ESPN on my Disney plus well and we don't know what the pricing will be and then you get all the sort of Warner Brothers Assets Now too plus HBO depending on what the price is right like you could find it could end up being that the price is the exact same only the only difference is that it's just more convenient to log in well so we do have this quote from zaz I'm just so worried about zaddy there we go sorry I had to do it I'm so tired it's if I ever meet that man like I can't I just walk away I won't let you as somebody who's responsible for this Newsroom and your friend like no we can't go that way just can can you imagine having to work with somebody every day who's horny for David's that's what it's like here at The Verge all right uh here's the quote from from s it's like the New York Times is like dealing with Kevin Roose being like I banged 18 robots on AI and we had Al very different uh by the way you should read the Kevin R article where he did make friends with 18 different AI personalities and even from the jump he's like it's a little horny it's good anyway here's a quote from David zof uh there's a lot of irrationality in the market that's getting shaken out in terms of money spent ultimately I think the business will look very different in two to three years it will be much better for consumers lot of ideas in that question yeah I like basically they're just bringing TV back and and in a lot of ways TV is quite convenient people loved it for 50 60 years it it it worked and and then everybody was like we're tired of all the ads and everything else and that's why we got streaming to begin with and that's just what he's doing like I think he's very right in that there are a lot of bad ideas and they are being sh shaken out that's why everybody's going to advertising that's why everybody is bundling that's why everybody is subsidizing sports and and all of this other stuff but I don't know if it'll be better for consumers in three years I think the the one other thing that's worth mentioning here is uh it's it's very telling to me that what he says is in terms of the amount of money spent uh and I think if you want to talk about what's different about Netflix versus these other companies is Netflix can afford to exist whereas you have Disney which spent way too much money to acquire Fox you have Warner Brothers discovery which took on a massive quantity of debt in order to become the company that it is these companies literally cannot afford to exist in the way that they currently work whereas Netflix I think it was in 20121 2020 or 2021 announced basically like we're good we have enough money now that we don't have to take external financing and that puts you in such an unbelievable position of power to be able to just do whatever you want because you can afford your business business and what no one else has proven other than Netflix is that this is a business that you can afford or that has the margins to let you grow right like Netflix is actually maybe the easiest way to talk about this is the go90 scale of Doom streaming services so Netflix to me I know Alex I'm on the other side but I get it completely thinks Netflix will fail but uh by the way disclosure I produce a Netflix show it's called the future it's very good yeah likely story you support them huh they really did rebranded Xfinity because everyone hated the compest BR that is a true story I heard it again recently I put Netflix at zero by the way the go90 scale if you remember go90 it's Verizon's failed streaming service where they thought children would join quote gangs um no is it Cruz it was something they thought the kids would rotate their friends 90 degrees to watch YouTube and they had no idea why anyone was watching YouTube and it immediately F quibby before quibby it was a lot uh now to go 90 means to die this is ver Chast lore if you're unfamiliar so the go90 scale streaming services from zero to 90 you put them on a scale zero is alive 90 is dead Netflix in my mind is zero right now it is the one you don't quit No One turns off a Netflix right now it is 100% zero I would I would agree with you there I will say Alex said it was a 40 at South by Southwest it is a 40 in my heart and in the future zero right today cuz you think the Hubers makes them brittle I I understand the argument but I just don't I think Netflix is very good at programming its service exactly to make you never char they're like here's one more John melany special like coming man I'm it's just always they're always doing that thing yeah you're like ready to quit they got one more thing for you good they figured it out data HBO or now Max whatever the hell it's called like Max is 45 like it is they're gonna they hit 100 million subscribers globally but they're about to hike prices again because of what David is saying they cannot afford to run this business it's programming is all over the place right they have HBO's programming but HBO's in one of its sort of like consistent sort of like dry spells I'm sure there'll be more stuff coming back but that's the history of HBO it runs hot then it runs cold um there isn't some like consistent slate of programming yes there is those Property Brothers people love well there's that stuff but there isn't like the I mean that like we can't ignore it it's something that maybe we don't talk about like critically and you don't see people talking about it on uh threads and and social media and stuff but that is a big part of their business that's why zaslov could afford to buy Warner Brothers is because of how big that business is for him and I don't that's not going away anytime soon he's really that's the discovery business that's the discovery business that's now in Max sure okay I'm just saying 45 yeah because you're not running around trying to make a deal with Disney If You Think You're More Alive than dead yeah is just my belief well this is why the sports race is so intense right now because I think the the Property Brothers will keep people subscribed to you they're not going to win you vast tens of millions of new subscribers but I also want to be wary of saying that this deal is an indication that Disney and Max are struggling because I don't think like I think this is as much about dealing with the fact that these are highly vertically integrated companies and there's currently a government that doesn't like that and and it's really useful to be like no we're partnering together you think that in the absence of Lena Disney would buy Warner Brothers Discovery if if lenina con got sucked up by aliens tomorrow if Trump gets elected yeah and and they manag to sell ESPN so they can make all their money they would buy it in a heartbeat no chance no with what money I said I I had to that's why I put those clarifiers on there right like let's add your debt to our debt and we'll give you 50 bucks and then we'll all slowly die together wait actually David when you describe it like that that does sound like the media business that is that does in fact sound how these CEOs think let's lay off 10,000 people and have a bunch of debt somehow we will get Vats and uh is Zack Snyder available because we have a number of movies that should be recut as gr scale squares Hollywood is built on debt there they this way financing has worked in Hollywood from the beginning is is on debt nothing is ever made with like the cash they have in house yeah it's made with but they usually the Assumption has been that the properties will make money yeah a pro a problem that they are having uh anyway um they'll be fine okay so I'm putting Max at 45 I'm putting Disney at Disney Plus at 45 that's that's that's my go90 scale I I think these things are are wobbly in the middle right now no Disney Disney is massive and and like streaming is a big part of Disney's business streaming is not all of Disney's business of all of these companies it is super positioned because it's got a ton of very lucrative theme parks throughout I just want to point out that technically the max app has already gone 90 several times as it is rebranded from HBO to HBO Max every other month it goes 90 like it's go it keeps going away in some way well I think this all sort of revolves around Netflix in a funny way which is why Netflix is so powerful in all this because I think the case for Disney plus going away is that Disney decides that actually if we want our theme parks to succeed the best way for us to do that is to sell shows to Netflix and not put them on Disney plus which I think is a not crazy yeah conclusion to draw in a couple of years you're going to decide it is so expensive and so wasteful for us to run our own service what we actually need is for people to watch our stuff and the way to do that is to put it in movie theaters and put it on Netflix and I think it's possible that that is where this goes we come back to this at the end of the summer if and when we find out there whether or not there will be more blue episodes cu I honestly think depending on that answer Disney plus goes in one of two directions if if you just look at the scale of how much that business is currently dependent on Blue it it's not dependent on whatever horrible garbage Max watches otherwise uh there's a show about the the children of the villains it's bad all thec never seen anything worse in my entire life I've never watched it it's fine it's like very safe if you have a six-year-old girl you're like watch this garbage it's better than what's on YouTube kids um but I'm saying depending on how blue goes I I we should come back to that conversation okay we should take a break I will call out by the way that Sony is in the middle of discussions to BU Paramount oh I hope not because it's with Apollo Management right yeah that's just layoff City that's what's gonna happen yeah the all the headlines about Sony and Paramount should be like Sony discusses laying off Paramount's employees but they're still also in talks with sky dance which is owned by Larry Ellison's son from Oracle and that could still happen that's the one I'm mainly rooting for because I hate watching companies be bought up and broken apart you love CBS also I love I I'm is it really because I'm concerned about Star Trek yes there's a very good episode by the way of the Town podcast where they talk about this and basically land on if you want good content rout for the sky Dan deal if you want a bunch of Paramount shareholders to make money and then all of this to go away you should root for Sony and Apollo yeah I'm like slightly simplifying but not that much yeah it's that's that's act that's 100% correct if you want Star Trek root for sky dance if you don't care about Star Trek and Taylor sheridans ranches root for Apollo and Sony wait I that's a that's a bad mix of things to care about how do I get one but not the other uh okay we got to take a break we're going to come back with the lightning round which is actually has to be lightning because we are so over today but it's going to be really long we'll be right back with the BR Chast all right we're back it's the lightning round which really for me is what I have taken to calling the Victory lap round but let's begin with Alex friends yeah uh not a Victory lap is sad for for mine yeah no this is a bummer uh Microsoft is currently going through it Tom Warren had a really great piece up this week and Ash Parish our game reporter had a really cool follow piece on it they've been closing Studios they've been laying people off they they had All Hands uh after they they closed this one Studio that made this really popular game last year called high-fi rush if you haven't heard about it that's because you don't play video games enough um high-i Rush was like a big Indie darling and it was widely well received it did really really well for them and then they said they laid off every they like closed the studio they laid everybody off and and they were like yeah we need to make more games like that and it's like well maybe hm and so there's just a lot of chaos over there and and I think it's the same thing we're seeing you know we've talked a lot about creatives in this episode it's that same anxiety it's the the same issues that we're seeing with streaming where these people have spent a lot of money on Acquisitions and growing during the 0% interest rate days and they they grew a whole lot and yeah you can't grow in like infinite content has to have infinite people watching it and paying for it and we don't do that in this human life it is a remarkably similar trajectory like Microsoft saying okay we we think this is going to move from a you buy a thing model to a subscription model thus we need a lot of content oh God we need a lot of exclusive content to okay maybe actually there aren't as many people who want to pay for all of this especially given what it costs because all this stuff is expensive bail bail bail bail bail and then so you you go from like we have to grow to the size of the universe in order for this thing to work and then you say oh it's actually not possible for us to grow to the size of the universe in the same way that everybody thought they were going to get a billion subscribers to streaming services like no it turns out there is kind of a local maximum to that and uh people are finite unfortun and it turns out I think Microsoft is going to do the same thing now where it's like okay we if we build this unbelievable War chest of content and people and talent it will work and then all of a sudden every it's like oh that's not a plan that's nothing and it all just kind of collapses and it's really sad because it's happening at like unbelievable scale and Pace right now and it's also in an industry that I think was already unsustainable to begin with with Crunch and everything like that like this was an industry that's been creaking for a decade and and I it's it's having a massive moment and I it sucks for all the people involved but like it's happening yeah I just want to point out that Microsoft fought tooth and nail to BU Activision yeah and they were like this will grow our business this is the thing and really the question we should ask with all these deals how many people are you going to lay off how many is it it's always some wasn't it T-Mobile that said in buying Sprint that it thought the number of jobs were going to go up and everybody's like a sick and then they immediately let off thousand immediately yeah like that's not true that's never true and I it's just like it's the thing like you combine two companies there are going to be a lot there's going to be overlap it's it's going to happen I interview a lot of Executives you can just see the wheels turning boy I don't need double the back office staff like whatever you can just and they call it efficiencies but it's really layoffs and that's just like how it goes and then on top of it Microsoft was insistent that it needed to buy Activision because it was winning while Microsoft was losing and they bought Activision and they're like look at all these losers and it's like we we should start asking the questions ahead of how many people are you going to laugh off that's the only question right like that is the policy consequence of allowing these Murders At scale like really truly on the ground a bunch of people are going to lose drops how many is it and if they're not willing to answer that question I honestly think like we should no longer give any of these companies a benefit of the doubt yeah you don't get to just buy it yeah uh I would point out that AT&T buying Time Warner did allow Zack Snyder to employ a number of people to make a 4-3 grayscale Batman movie yeah um Nei do you get a cut of sales of this movie like what what what is happening we've officially tipped from like this is funny to like what's ne's angle here I just I just want to I want to hammer it home from people that the Trump Administration getting rid of net neutrality allowed AT&T to BU Time Warner and now there is a grayscale Batman movie and that is a direct line of events by the way uh n neutrality did pass they got rid of the weird rule that would have allowed for 5G fat fast LS we now live in a world of n child again it's great sorry Zach all right uh Victory lap one complete Victory lap two for me this is this is the whole lighting round just NE I was right about you I'm sorry um you will recall uh that epic games sued Apple for an interest interest violations long ago they mostly lost that case they did they mostly lost that case I would say they might have set the stage for the current doj case for other cases where they they made a bunch of arguments that are not being made Again by the government in different they got a ball rolling very much got a ball rolling the one thing they won in that case was uh the judge applying California law mhm because I think the judge was unwilling to rewrite United States Federal antitrust law but the judge interpreted California law to say apple could no longer prevent app developers from uh what's called steering so Apple has these things called anti- steering rules where you're not even allowed to mention that there's another website where you could buy stuff anti- steering rules struck down um I have the specific quote here um apple is permanently restrained and enjoyed from prohibiting developers from including their apps and their metadata buttons external links or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms in addition to the App Store that's the rule judge pass this Rule and Apple's response was to allow a app or a link rather right uh so the rule comes out and I wrote a piece back then 2021 saying Apple's about to end up in a fight over buttons and links like they're not allowed to prevent buttons and links from going to external purchasing me mechanisms when courts write two nouns they often mean for the nouns to mean different things so now you have buttons and you have links that they necessarily mean different things this is just legal interpretation 101 uh I would say the astr turf Brigade attacked me um some developers tried this they went in front of the court again the judge said I look stop it like we'll figure this out when we get there I I Apple has to issue its entitlements and do all this stuff and then everyone thought I was wrong this is true this is like a real sequence events that I'm very hot about the point of all this is epic went to the judge recently and said apple is only allowing One external link to a fixed web page and you not even allowed to say it's cheaper on the web page like all of the rules about what you're allowed to do to get around anti- steering are basically anti- steering it's such a punk you're basically allowed to say this is a website yep and it's it's the very beginning of the flow so if you have an app with other things you can buy in it you are not even allowed in that area of your app to put links to an external website where you can buy stuff it's beautiful you are allowed to have one link that link when you click on it if you're logged into the app can't even pass your login info to the website yeah I always think of the Kindle app is the easiest way to explain this because it's like the way it should work is you should be able to go into I mean the way it should work is you should be able to buy Kindle stuff from your but there should be a link on every book that says buy this on the web that is explicitly against the rules you can have one one Link in one place in the app that says books on web that's that's basically the entirety of what is allowed or or sign up on web but not for 30% cheaper or not it's cheaper on the web because Apple charges us a fee none of that's allowed do they get the preposition like is the preposition allowed the on I mean Apple's totally in control of this oh by the way if you click the link you get a warning screen that says you're leaving this app where Tim Cook will protect you with sword and shield just a buff Tim Cook picture this is all true so epic drags apple back into court where because the judge in 2121 said I will decide if Apple's in compliance with my injunction not Apple I'm going to decide so the judge so epic drags apple back to court there's a there's a hearing this week I just want to read you some things that were said in this hearing to Apple is they talk about buttons and links and this is to an Apple executive is it fair to say in today's day and age that everyone understands that www.url.com is an external weite on the worldwide web that's just a question like do you really think people are this stupid Apple Pete in society people make lots of purchases on the web all the time would you agree with that yes and they understand that Apple trusts its users at the web is separate and apart for different even on an iOS device right yeah do do people know that clicking on a link taking you out of an app takes you out of the app that's where apple is in buttons and links and then there's the judge who inter J in the middle of a conversation about button design because Apple has constricted the design of buttons I can't imagine a logical reason why Apple would demand that of competitor apps what's a logical competitive reason for not suggesting but demanding it other than to stifle competition I see no answer can you give me one buttons and links did they give them it took three years no no just blah blah blah security oh took three years but apple is now in this fight over the design of buttons and links in its apps because that injunction is actually a big deal and they have not actually provided a reason why they are constraining the design of buttons and links in their apps which by the way are different a button is supposed to just do something a link is takes you somewhere else right so these are different in terms of construction and I think apple and it's huis all the stuff we've talked about they've run into the judge saying no no I meant something when I issued this order and you can't give me reasons that are not just straight anti-competitive malicious compliance reasons I don't know how this is going to turn out it's just an evidential you're hearing right now maybe the judge is going to find Apple's not in compliance maybe this doj lawsuit's gonna break it all open I don't know maybe a bunch of Europeans are gonna her old cheese at Apple until stop it something's gonna happen but I'm just saying right now 3 years after the Epic case Apple's in a courtroom defending its own malicious compliance because it was inevitable that the buttons and links conversation would come back around and it's been interesting to watch these fights get more and more specific over time too and I think this is the thing that is actually going to affect real change right like we talked about this with the emulators the other week that as these things get Whitted down from these sort of big philosophical debates into like here is a thing about the experience that is broken and you can't explain to me why it's broken other than you believe you deserve all of the money that is actually the way that apple is being Pride open and it is happening like in these little tiny pieces much more quickly than it's going to happen in some Grand yeah you're not allowed to be like this anymore way so I think it's like the the death by a Thousand Cuts thing is like very much underway in a really fascinating way yeah and the stuff takes time like this doj lawsuit that's a decade oh easily it's it's a decade like you can decide whether it is good or bad you can have whatever feelings about the complaint you want a decade from now we will see the results of that cases on how the devices we use it took 3 years from the Epic case for us to be back in a courtroom saying actually your weird link entitlement idea might be anti-competitive and that still has to play out so I would just you need some patience here but I agree with you David it's like it's starting in a way that Apple can no longer defend I just spent a lot of this time on meta AI trying to make it show me images of a shredded Tim Cook protecting people from buttons and links and it wouldn't do it I went to www.url.com while we were sitting here and discovered that url.com is for sale so that's cool I just think if you have your Executives on the stand and the question is people in society make lots of purchases on the web all the time would you agree and the answer is yes like you're probably done for Nei in in in the spirit of kindness I would like to bequeath you my lightning round because you have another Victory lap I'd like you to take I do I do I do I'm very excited about this one make this one quick cuz again in this fix R nothing has happened so we'll end the show where we began in in southeast Wisconsin where I was a child were the cheese curds really squeaky they're good they're good they're good everywhere in Wisconsin they're particularly well madis I would say Madison is where I I enjoyed the cheese curd Lifestyle the most but President Biden was in rine this week he was announcing a Data Center built to be built by Microsoft I mean 2,000 construction jobs and then 2,000 permanent jobs to build this data center this is I would just say politically opportunistic at its finest yeah Microsoft had already purchased this land they were they had already announced the data center they' already done all the permitting all the stuff Joe Biden just showed up and was like look at the jobs I made great I'm super excited for like do politics I'm happy for you the point of this is that they are building this on the land that was supposed to be the foxcon site and Joe Biden's political opportunism is he's standing there and he's like literally I think he said something along the lines of trump didn't give you any jobs and I'm giving you actual jobs because it's the fox onsite where Trump waved a golden shovel around and promised an LCD Factory That was supposed putting 13,000 jobs to this region and we uh at The Verge someone famously always knew that was a lie uh reported on it quite a bit we won an award Josh has a won an award for his big feature on it that feature actually uh Chris Hayes read it on MSNBC last night like just straight up he was like Biden announced some things you might remember this as Foxon and then just read some of Josh's feature to the camera to explain what had happened there have rules uh congratulations to Josh he reported the hell of that story um the Victory lap I would like to take is to remind everyone and to initiate our our newest members of the audience uh during that period of time while we were doing all that reporting I received a number of hilariously threatening emails from Anonymous foxcon Executives telling us reminding us insisting that we leave them alone literally the emails would say leave us alone and then they would try to explain to me what foxc con's AI plus 8K plus 5G strategy was Galaxy brain it was nothing by the way foxcon has abandoned AI akk plus 5G this is true they've abandoned it if you go to the Foxon in Wisconsin website now which is literally I believe just Foxon wisconsin.com uh you can see they have a new strategy which is 3 plus 3 equals infinity this is true it's even worse how did they make it worse it's 100% true that their new strategy is 3 plus 3 equals infinity and then there's a lengthy section of that website dedicated to how uh you can see the Dome that they built from the highway I to tell you they built a little Dome it's like I keep calling it teu Epcot like it's a little baby baby it was supposed to be the dot of an they were going to spell foxcon fi foxcon industrial internet they were going to spell it in buildings and of letters it's only three they only got to the dot which is the Dome uh they insisted for years uh this is true that the Dome was a Data Center and I would have various conversations with like data center people to like would you ever make a data center in the shape of a dome do you think that would be and they would all be like no I don't I don't know we wouldn't it turns out the Dome was just like a like a party center yeah it was like where corrupt Wisconsin politicians would have drinks and take photos with the Dome with their Dome the Dome remains that whole thing remains I don't know what's going to happen there there's some rumor the building servers Microsoft is now taking all of the industrialization that was built up the water the power to build an AI data center all right but I want to end here with one of the best things that has ever happened on the show okay which is all those emails I got about leaving people alone I would read them on the show and then people would make memes and songs and one of my favorite songs which I thought about today as I watched Joe Biden dunk on Trump in his golden shovel I was like it would rule if Biden would just play this song that vergecast listener Jackson Hayes wrote for us about the factory Liam can we play the song Nei you didn't listen to me but that's okay because we're going to tell you what you already knew for months you didn't leave us alone leave us alone you didn't leave us alone leave us alone AI meant New Generation mobility and self-driving cars wait is that the story where we running Jeremy okay AK means smart safety it's security through AK technology I mean come on NE you should know this 5G means pioneering wait Medical Solutions the crap that supposed to mean on some health Cloud Network okay you didn't leave us alone leave us alone catchy didn't leave us alone leave us alone it was just a and 5G well I see how that was hard to believe you didn't leave us alone leave us alone you didn't leave us alone leave us alone now I just want you to imagine okayy you win can't make that on an iPad uh well with the power of AI technology can so thank you to Jackson one of my all-time favorite forcast moments I hope for listening um I just want you to imagine Joe Biden announcing the Microsoft deal and then being like as a reminder acoustic guitar he just take a seat that whole sequence just I just want to remind people that sequence of reporting was like mid pandemic this was the weirdest time in like reporting you could do and we were reporting on this weird Factory that didn't exist and I was getting these crazy emails just leave us alone just leave us alone that was awesome leave us alone anyway it's it's a data center now there's a little Dome you can go look at the Dome I have pictures of the dumb it's there on the website that's it I think that's it one thing we didn't talk about Tik Tok sued the government over the bill to quotequote ban Tik Tok uh we wanted to take some time with that so that will be next week's decoder uh Alex Heath and SAR Jong are going to join me we're going to pull that whole complaint apart and see where the arguments are good and bad we just needed to take some time with it also there were iPads come on that's a vergecast everybody uh that's it that's vergecast back and that's it for the verge this week hey we'd love to hear from you give us a call at 866 Verge one1 The Verge cast is a production of The Verge and VOX media podcast Network our show is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James that's it we'll see you next weekhello and welcome to bcast the flagship podcast of manufacturing in southeastern Wisconsin we're going to go deep today on concrete on uh blue collar jobs bringing America back from wherever it was and then then we get a big Globe right a huge tiny Dome yeah oh Dome excuse me it's a dome what I'm talking about of course is foxcon in my hometown of verine Wisconsin the literal place where I grew up we're going to get to it it's really just a Victory lap for me personally because Foxon has not done anything else like actually quite notably the news is that someone else has done stuff on that site in Wisconsin Nei do you think you're the most famous resident of rine Wisconsin at this moment in time no the most famous people from rine Wisconsin is the the bad team in the movie A League of Their Own oh that's good that's really good easily the most famous reine yeah you're never topping that thing is that what's her name is it Lori Petty yeah Lori Petty she goes to the other team I don't remember her character's name I just know it's Laura's Lori Petty yeah she has to go she goes to the rine bells and then has to pitch against her sister Gina Davis that's correct and Jeff Bridges is already dead and the bus can't go slower than 55 miles an hour that's not in the movie at all that's a straight that is a straight reference to dress to kill by Eddie isard and if you get get it I love you and you are my people and you can just send me a note and I'll send you a t-shirt but you have to be able to tell me exactly what it is okay that's that whole thing the other most famous resident R Wisconsin is of course uh Sam Johnson of Johnson's Wax Fame who did some weird stuff in a plane over Central America and built a wax Fortune uh that started the high school I went to whose PBX system was connected to the SC Johnson company so you could pick up any phone in the school and dial four digits and get a jwx VP I don't know if I don't know why I know that information that was some deep rine law just was that who you would prank call in I got kicked out of that High School lot just flatly kicked out of that school lot anyway that's coming later in the show not the Johnson waack stuff the fox fun stuff that's much later in the show there is iPad news like a lot of iPad news to talk to but in a small way we'll get to it Cray's the streaming movie industry the television industry in a moment of I would say turmoil yeah they they realize they have to make money that's a problem so we're going to talk about that and then we got a lightning round uh just shock waves in the lightning round which is unsponsored again this week so if between now in the lightning round if you've got money to spend we have gotten some interest though I will say if you if you want to throw money at us uh let's start a bidding war because it's coming yeah and we'll do it live on the air that'll be the lightning rounds love it recursive lightning round sponsored by the people wait dude does that mean we get to do the bidding voice the you know you can go to classes for those I saw a Tik Tok anyway uh none of that is important by the way I'm your friend Nei Alex cray is here I'm your friend who really wants to be one of those guys Auctioneer the word for is auctioner the B guy is like no that's a Kid Rock song David Pierce is here hi to be here all right so this week the news is that apple had like a warm-up event for wwec I don't even know what else to call it it felt like a warm-up crack their Knuckles they're like here's some stuff we got to get this stuff out of the way uh they ran a 35 minute infomercial for new iPads at this point Apple loves the infomercial event but they had some watch parties David went to one in New York you got to sit down watch the infomercial spend some time with the new hardware but all of it even at the end of the event I just want to I feel like it's important to contextualize this event by noting that at the end of the iPad infomercial Tim Cook came back on the screen and said we will have much more to say about the future of our platforms at WWDC because the thing that needs to change on the iPad is iPad OS and they announced no changes to iPad OS at this event nope so it's just it just felt like here's part one of the story you watch follow for part two yeah you watched all of mission imposs dead reckoning can't wait till next year like that's basically how that felt yeah it was odd I think and and I went in thinking there must be something and we got to be fair little teeny tiny bits of software right there was new Final Cut and New Logic there's a new app called Final Cut camera that works so there's like tiny bits of things that you can do but the the overwhelming question for the iPad for like damn near a decade at this point has been what am I supposed to do with all of this power in this thing and we did not get a lot of I would say new compelling answers to those questions I would say in fact we got none and I want I want to come to that because you know we have to review these things and I think there's like a there's a question mark at the end of this review and the question mark is like what if they add a bunch of AI features in June right like who knows but let's actually talk about what they announced they basically refresh the entire lineup save the mini it's actually very funny if you go to apple.com right now and click on iPad all of the iPads have the word new under them and it feels like the the mini should have the word old under it the mini did at least get it was like in the last 20 words that Tim Cook said in the whole thing he said the words iPad Mini out loud which made me happy because that that at least is some acknowledgement that it exists and will continue to exist but it that was it that was the entirety of the love for the iPad Mini at this event and that made me sad refreshed it last year I'm trying to remember when I bought mine was it last year it was like two years ago it was 2022 sometime yeah oh wow okay and they make that product entirely as I understand it for Pilots to strap to their legs while they fly planes so whatever the mini aside dear sweet mini the base models refresh in so much as it a refresh is that they dropped the price to 349 which is important because that's probably where it should have been they got rid of the ninth gen which they were selling for $329 that's one with the lightning connector and the headphone jack no iPads Apple selling right now have a headphone jack which I think is nightmarish for parents I know I have a lot of dongle apologists in my mentions but if you have a small child and you are ever traveling with the child managing Bluetooth headphones for a child it's just like no fun like and charging a thing like it's just easier to have the analog connector please don't tell me about your USBC dongles I don't care man I don't care that you're in the pocket of big dongle just not my problem um anyhow they get that's the big refresh there and I think it's important they brought that price down then the iPad Air feels like a very subtle refresh David what they do there yeah it's it's I would say subtle refresh is basically right the big change is that now there's a bigger one there's now a 13-in version of the iPad Air uh it has an M2 Chip it comes in a couple of new colors but it is still very much an iPad Air right like this is I think the iPad that Apple wants most people to buy uh which is why it has the new colors it has the the magic keyboard it has the pencil it is kind of the sort of most mid of all of the iPads and that is very much what Apple wants it to be uh and yeah it's $5.99 for the 11 in $7.99 for the 13inch and they're very much doing like a MacBook Air MacBook Pro thing with these devices where you have the sort of slightly less powerful cheaper simpler computer in two sizes and then you have the more Pro thing with all the advanced specs for a lot more money still at the same two sizes but they've landed on this 11 and 13inch thing as like the way going forward but I just don't understand why anyone would buy the air when the regular iPad exists and is got like what it's got the same or it's got an A14 okay the iPad Air has an M2 does that really matter to 90% of people who are using an iPad no which is back to what you were saying Nei a minute ago Apple would like you to believe that it matters and apple would love to tell you stories about all the power of its new chips and why this stuff matters and we're going to get to the Pro in the minute which has an even newer chip and I spent a lot of time with apple Executives learning about the the wonders of the new chip uh if you're just like a person who does normal iPad things in the world I cannot in good conscience tell you a processor upgrade in your iPad is worth it yeah and so I think that is the question it's like I think Apple would very much like you to buy the air and I think Apple thinks the air is the correct one for the largest number of people but it still feels a little like tweener to me for a lot of things I found some differences between the air and the 10th gen iPad okay the hover function on the new Apple pencil will work on the air yeah it's a bunch of pencil stuff yeah it's like the the original the 10th gen iPad is a USBC doofus pencil yeah and it has the other Smart Keyboard or the magic keyboard mhm and that's it and it 100 knits brighter sure P3 instead of srgb hey that that matters to me yeah that that does like that and the fact that it has anti-reflective coating those two things do actually matter it's a slightly nicer product that uses slightly newer accessories but again by the time you're down this road of any of this stuff you're Way Beyond the the average I just need an iPad to look at while I sit on the couch user right like to me it's like if you're even thinking about buying a magic keyboard buy the air or higher period right like that's it's I think that's fairly simple I think a lot of people who want iPads don't want anything other than the pane of glass to hold in their hands and for most of those people I can't think of a single reason the air is going to be like meaningfully better for you in your life than the regular iPad yeah and I think this points to just the problem which is what is the use case for the iPad and now again the hardware suggests that it is an expansive list of use cases and to some extent it is right like some people I am sure produce music and logic exclusively on an iPad those people are causing themselves an enormous amount of pain but they're choosing to do it and that is their right as Americans sure fine right it's just here at the at the bottom of the range the step from the 10th gen to the air is very small Hardware wise right it is a nicer piece of Hardware it is a bigger screen you can get now an even bigger screen but it's a very mild refresh and basically they they have added the 13inch size F fine yeah but the capabilities of the product are exactly the same as they were yesterday or the day before yep it's where you it's the iPad Pro and now the pencil Pro we like now this the purpose of this event it felt like was to simplify this increasingly complicated lineup and you get to the iPad Pro and the pencil Pro and the fact that Apple now sells I think four different pencils and you're just like what is going on here the pencils are really bad like like the the chart of which pencil works with which product and has which feature like no if you have a chart that big for Apple product you've you've messed up yeah let's get into the well there's that let's talk about the philosophy of the iPad in a second the iPad Pro is a piece of Hardware appears to be very impressive David you've seen it tell us about it's so so good uh I we we go to a lot of these events right and you're like you're constantly being handed a thing that somebody has just spent a half hour tell you is new and most of the time you're just like this is this is a MacBook like a c it sure is and and the iPad is like the canonical example of that right like for years and years and years you pick up an iPad and you're like boy that sure is an iPad I picked up the iPad Pro at this event in New York and like out loud involuntarily just said holy like it is so thin and so light and so small especially on the 13in I I it was it's the biggest like Leap Forward in how impressive I find this Hardware in a really long time uh again we can debate forever the value of any of this Hardware but just the sheer like engineering feat to get this thing under a pound it's 5.1 mm thick uh by the way everybody says 5.1 mm thin now and I think we've complained about that that's nothing things are not you can't measure the thinness of something it's thickness and there's not much of it which is Steve started doing this with the I believe the second generation MacBook Air I hate it so much and everybody does this now and it drives me insane but that's neither here nor there 5.1 millimet but that's the 13 in yeah and and the 11 in I believe is is is 53 yeah uh but the point is the they're they're spectacular like truly as pieces of Hardware they are incredibly impressive to the point where you're holding the thing and like uh everybody who's made this joke Marquez brownley when he made a video had the Jerry rig everything guy just sort of peek out from the corner of the video like it feels like you could snap this thing in half uh whether or not you can I don't know if you can that feels like a problem uh but yeah just the the sheer Machinery inside of this thing is really really really impressive yeah and there's two pieces I think that are important to call out one is the new processor the M4 which is interesting just sort of from a processor technology standpoint Apple didn't put an M3 in this if you read Ben Thompson and strer he points out that the M3 is on a three nanometer process node from tsmc that was a technology dead end yeah and tsmc has all but admitted it and the M4 is on the one that is sustainable and has a future so the tsmc was like we made this weird dead end because we have customers who insist on being at the at the Leading Edge there's one customer that insists on being at the Leading Edge uh so they made so the M3 could be in whatever computers it was in and the M4 is the leap to the good good version of the 3 nmet node that has like a road mapap in front of it so you see apple is trying they're putting the stuff like the best stuff they got into this machine and then on top of that it has the tandem OLED people have been talking about stacked OLED displac for a very long time it's a really simple idea like it's like deceptively simple obviously it's taking a long time to pull off but if you run an OLED at the brightness you want to run an OLED it gets hot you risk burning so why don't we just take two OLED displays basically combine their power source and then we just run them each at half brightness on top of each other to like real Pimp My Ride Like thinking there it's very clever and then what you can do and David I'm very curious to this because I haven't seen I know you have if you run them both at top brightness you get a much brighter OLED display which is that I think is the promise and the thing that people have been trying to work on for a long time yeah it was tough to tell I mean these these Apple events are always bit really bizarrely in such a way that it's really hard to sort of get in the nitty-gritty pixels of a display but it it was noticeably brighter like I brought my uh 11in Pro from last generation with me and like just holding the two things side by side you can you can tell how much brighter the OLED is uh I think they said it's 1,600 nits at full brightness which is a lot I assume will just shred your battery to bits at full brightness uh cuz like you're running that many OLED pixels at full brightness like you're like I'm going to watch one episode of something and it's just going to shatter the battery well no but this is the this is the idea though is that you're you get more efficiency maybe at the top brightness where you're running effectively both panels all the way but the idea is that sort of at your everyday brightness you're running both panels like halfway right and that's also uh a big part of the reason that the M4 and the Tano that are happening simultaneously like the the overwhelming thing I heard talking to Folks at this event was that like we wouldn't do one of these without the other that that driving those two displays at that high resolution and that high refresh rate is is just a massive amount of computational work and uh doing those two things especially in a way that is like at all power efficient is just really hard and that a lot of what the M4 is is explicitly about driving the tandem OLED which I think is really interesting and I wonder what that says about like the next set of products that might have M4 inside what kind of MacBook do you make if you've got a big tandem OLED driver sitting on your chip right ex the big ass battery exactly it is just going to be one of those like 100 milliamp hour oh yeah aner batteries with screen that falls out it I would take that product if they made this twice as thick and got rid of the camera bump and was like the battery lasts for a week I would be happy yeah I I do agree with I mean there was a very funny thing where you know you you hold this thing and it's it's a remarkable piece of technology like they built the hell out of the hardware but then I'm like okay if this thing was a little thicker so that it didn't have a camera bump which is the thing a lot of people pointed out was this this could have been the the thickness of the camera bump and would have been about the same thickness as the last iPad which no one was complaining about the thickness of by the way and you'd get more battery you might get more power efficiency out of it you'd get better speakers just because there's room to move the audio around that like maybe this constant thrust toward thinness that Apple has been on for so long is not the right strategy and I largely agree with that but like godamn is it cool just to hold the thing when it's that thin this thing you are Johnny I pilled this thing is like IES Revenge It kind like here's what happens you pick up an iPhone 6 and it flops over but damn is it thin yeah yeah pretty much fine yeah uh and then there's new accessories right so there's the apple pencil Pro which adds the ability to do a barrel roll do a barrel roll uh you can also squeeze it love to love to squeeze a pencil when I think about totally natural user interfaces it's squeezing a pen yeah um wait can I just say two things about the pencil uh one The Squeeze is actually pretty nice they put they put a real like haptic engine into it so it feels it feels like a a Macbook trackpad now in the sense that you get a little bit of that response I don't know that it adds wildly to the experience of using it but it does feel nice to squeeze the thing the other thing is Apple is very excited about the developer possibilities for this there there are going to be apis that you can just give to any app and they're going to be able to do stuff with the squeeze and I just like casually threw out the example of like oh I can't wait to use my pencil to change the Spotify song and somebody just goes hm interesting idea and I was like no that was a joke that's a bad idea no one should do that so there's going to be some like deeply weird pencil gesture support stuff going on and they're they're going to be able to chain uh gestures on the pencil to shortcuts so all the shortcut nerds are really excited about this now it's going to get really weird and I'm very excited about it okay my prediction is that it does not get weird like I I love the idea of adaptive user interfaces and I have like talked about them with a lot of people over the years I actually just Dylan field the CEO of figmo was on stage with me at South by and he is like I love the idea of adaptive user interfaces we talk specifically about styluses and pencils and like what if as you were you know sketching a design in figma the sort of UI was around your stylus was adapting to what you were doing so you could just like move seamless like this is a dream this is a technologist dream the idea that a bunch of app developers are going to flock to the Broken app development model of the iPad and develop custom features for a pencil that is only available at the top end of the range I look David I'm I really want you to squeeze your way through a spot ify playlist I mean there's nothing I want more for you you're you're way overstating the amount of work that it's going to be to it's like it's like setting up a keyboard short cut to do this like it's not hard work to my man Netflix wouldn't put a video player on the Vision Pro yeah I mean fair but also uh I mean a you're right and B um I would like everyone to email your favorite shortcut to neith forge.com I love I love a shortcut I love them can't get enough of uh scripting my own applications to defeat the lack of cross interoperability on app's platforms it's my favorite good I just this is the sort of thing where Apple makes a big promise about everybody supporting a thing and then we wait yeah and so I would just challenge you on the scale of I don't know um dashboard widgets to the touch bar where do we think pencil squeezing support is going to land from like very bad to very bad is that is that where we're at right now uh no think about some Big Apple um UI idea that it had uh iPhone widgets sure on your lock screen live activities and then Dynamic Island support we've seen just a lot of support for that especially as it came to the mainstream phone very good okay so that's on the the plus side that's great and then there's the touch bar all the way over there the touch bar was awesome just nobody gave a okay excited for you to use Spotify with your touch bar okay I'm just saying that's the range where do you put squeezing the pencil closer to the touch bar I mean I think it's just true like it's not it's not a mainstream accessory I would actually like keyboard shortcuts on the iPad are are actually probably right in line with the same thing right it's the kind of thing that uh are relatively cheap to add and relatively straightforward for users to access once they have them but the attach rate of those accessories is not super high yep most apps don't really need it like what you're going to see is there's going to be this set of like apps that use the pencil that are going to use the hell out of the pencil and you're already all of the drawing apps and like I've just been talking to folks even the last couple of days like folks are psyched about the barrel roll stuff and just like the little creative abilities that you get just with the additional tiny features in here are like a big deal but they're a big deal for a tiny number of features to a tiny number of people that's great but I I don't see a world in which the pencil is ever bigger than that so I think the idea that like Spotify is going to care about it is not real if a pencil came free I would feel differently but it doesn't I do love the idea that you go to events where people are sort of professionally obligated to like be kind to you and just have horrible ideas and they're like good idea it's so fun it's so fun I just pitch stupid products to people for like several hours and and they go and then they keep giving me demos that's great so that's a pencil the one I'm really curious about is the keyboard because my favorite plain computer of all time was a 12-in Macbook which was super light and thin I tried to replace it with the previous 11-in iPad Pro which just turned out to like thick like was like a heavy weird it like wasn't as good as a laptop in many ways because of just the way it worked is the new keyboard case sort of better it's they announced it as being more like a Macbook than ever which I thought was really interesting the top half hasn't really changed which I think is is going to be its challenge it's still at least in the demos I got and and the time I was able to spend with it it's still a little wobbly especially when you touch it so it kind of Wiggles As you move it around uh the bottom especially on the pros is aluminum it's much more solid it's really smooth it actually like feels nice to rest your palm on kind of MacBook Air isly uh and the keys felt amazing I've spent like 10 minutes on it so I reserve the right to change my mind but it it was it was one of those keyboards you just put your hands down and instantly start typing on uh I also really love Apple's normal magic keyboard so everyone's mileage may vary on that but I think that's a great keyboard and this felt to my hands just like that which is kind of all you'd want for this I always thought the iPad Pros keyboard was a little like mushy and sort of thick it just it just felt like you had to sort of smash the keys all the time and then I spilled like half a Diet Coke on M so now you have to really smash the keys but this one at least in the bits that I've gotten felt fantastic like I instantly want it as just a little kitchen computer that I can just sit and like write emails while I wait for my coffee to brew like it felt great but I have a question which do you want more this or Microsoft Surface device because I like the whole time watching this the whole time talking about it talking even about the the stylus I was like this just feels kind of like Microsoft in 2017 or 2018 right like when when they and all the oems were really pushing like yeah look it's a touchscreen computer and I'm like yes now Apple has done a touchscreen computer right down to talking about the processor yeah which they didn't used to do with the iPad like this is just a computer yeah there was a this was a speeds and feeds event was fascinating on that front it really was super weird interesting so it's back then I think Windows was in a weirder spot so they announced the surface and they were like but then it's windows and windows is in a sideways sort of fashion come a long way yeah like I would say it's in a different spot right is that spot ahead it's more of a diagonal yeah yeah they just it's gone it's it's come a distance yeah the direction I think is a clear it's a good direction and I I only say that because you can argue about what the evolution of Windows yeah to contrast with the fact the I IP ad is in exactly the same place as it was yes I went back and I read my iPad Air review from 2013 which in a horrifying sequence of events I forgot that I had written you're like oh this guy's pretty good yeah I was like oh smart Snappy oh that's me there it is uh and it is exactly the same that iPad was running iPad OS 7 iOS 7 yeah in my review is like this thing is constantly fighting you they have not done enough with this software to take advantage of the larger screen and it's just like plaintive like why is Siri so weird on this like why is it why is it just a big iPhone I read my iPad Pro review from 2018 when it the first USBC one and I'm like why is this computer fighting me like why is file management on the iPad so confused yeah and all that stuff has gotten incrementally better yep they've added stage manager short shortcuts people I'm so proud of you for writing an alternative operating system in shortcuts on top of iPad OS that is an achieve I you know I that's cool as hell that's like I'm a computer nerd I'm happy you did computer nerd stuff but the the ultimate problem which is you have to fight the computer to get it to be a computer like remains as true for the iPad today as it did in 2013 when I was running iOS 7 yeah and th and I think my answer to you then given that question is like I'd rather take the weird sideways windows because at least at least it's going to do everything that I want it to do without some like putting on Armor and just going to war with your oper yeah just like running into like the brick wall of Apple's business model yeah right Apple's like we're going to distribute all the applications to the App Store we're going to take 30% of all those button like and that will and if we open that up on the iPad then we're terrified that we'll have to open it up on the iPhone we're already being brats about opening it up on the iPhone like no like we're it's going to be like this this is the future of computing and then you're like is it yeah it really doesn't it feels just like they made a hobbled surface device like a my to be clear my dream surface device in 2018 but a hobbled surface device right down to the fact that you have to choose the processor the storage like the markups are high to make it functional so the thing we don't know thing the thing we don't know is like what's going to happen in June that's true that's true when they rev iPad OS and that's why to me David I couldn't tell if while you were at the watch parties and they had one in New York and one in London like maybe The Vibes are different all around the world but for me sitting at home watching it in the Glorious Dolby Atmos of my own home Apple by the way did not stream this thing at any more than like eight megabits per second I'm just saying so it's was not in Sony braia cor yeah it was at 48 khz Atmos which was great but I mean come on where's the where's the resolution man you're going to show John turnis whipping around the BART holding an iPad I want I want the full anyway I was like man like I can't wait until next month when they finish this product yeah like exactly it just felt like okay you've you've announced this thing that we've already seen before we've already heard the pitch that this kind of computer is really good for creatives because that was the whole pitch right I was like look this is for creatives I was like yeah I heard that from Microsoft and HP and everybody else back in 2018 I know that now and you've heard that from Apple about the iPad yeah it's like okay show me and they're like yeah we did it no no but show me where it's actually good for creatives now where it's actually that useful computer all you've done is like crush a bunch of stuff with a hydraulic press wait I want to come to the crushing well we'll get to that yeah yeah I'm curious David if that came through with the whatever the me it was a it wasn't like a full event but I'm curious if it came through there I think it it was hard to tell at the event whether this was the end end of something or the beginning of something and one way to look at this event is that essentially Apple like finished the job of the iPad right they said this over and over and over again they're like this is the the magical pan of glass right like that's the thing they've been wanting to build for a really long time and like they they built a really nice one it has an outrageous amount of raw horsepower it's really light it's really thin the screen looks awesome like you could make the case that they have been sort of working toward this particular iPad since the beginning of the iPad and I think like they said over and over this is the biggest day in the iPad since the launch of the iPad which like objectively not true but if you want to look at it that way this is the end of that journey in a certain way like I genuinely don't know how much further you can push the actual details of the hardware here than what this is now until we get to like rollable displays and something else like this feels like an end point in a real way or the flip side is this is the thing that is going to to empower all of the things that Apple's going to launch in June and that was all the stuff that they were sort of intimating with the AI stuff and talking about the features and you know leaning on we're going to have more to say about the future of the platform in June I don't think this running Mac OS is the answer for the iPad and there a lot of people who are like the evidence is everywhere they're going to have Mac OS on the iPad like no they're not it's just not going to happen but if there is a next turn for what the iPad can be and do and like a fundamental shift in the use cas that's when this feels like the beginning of something right and now they're like we have a different kind of Hardware with a different set of accessories and a different performance envelope that can actually go do all of this new stuff and this is the story everybody has been telling us about AI for like damn near two years now and none of it's really been true so I'm not Ultra confident that apple is going to have like massively improved the state-of-the-art of AI and has solved all the features for everybody in June but this did it it felt very much like this is the vessel and we're going to fill it a month from now and if not this will feel like the end of an era of the iPad to me how does AI fix iPad OS wait wait I want to come to I think that's where I want to end okay sorry sorry I I definitely want to end there I just want to before we get to that because I think that's that's the right place to end for sure um and I think that's another hour of the show uh I just want to call out the biggest day of the iPad since the iPad off the top of my head I can think of three more important iPads than these that like move the needle the iPad 2 which was a like a shock announcement and the design direction of the iPad 2 was basically the iPad until Monday yep like that ninth gen iPad with the lightning connector like slightly different design like but it was it's an iPad 2 yeah y they just flattened it a little bit like right that but it's the same exact home button bezels the whole thing that's an iPad 2 in that iPad 2 launch Steve Jobs on a stage me like I did it again you saw the first gen iPad here's the second one and this this is always my test that made the local news yeah right if you if you want to break through on the mainstream you need ABC7 in Chicago to be like apple out it's a new iPad today you got to do it you got to get there uh the iPad 4 which was the retina display and lightning connector the iPad 3 had a retina display but um it was way too too early and it was thicker and the thing ran so hot uh the battery life was garbage the iPad 4 was the good one huge big deal everybody I know who had an iPad immediately upgraded to that iPad and then the original iPad Air where they changed it to the box your design and they like gave it the extra capabilities that was a big deal which is why I was reading my 2013 review where they they redid the form factor to make it that more Square yeah and a form factor change is always just a big deal like none of the ones you mentioned though were when they got rid of the button yeah because whatever you don't care about the button I I believe that was the original iPad Pro yeah the 2018 iPad Pro and that one I would say was not as big deal because that's when they added the keyboard and they like got real surfacy and I'm just using my local news test that thing was really expensive it tried it tried to make it a laptop and it I I did it work did it go on the local news I'm just saying off the top of my head well if you're just ranking the biggest iPads the things that made the iPad break through to the mainstream and like cause a fuss it's 100% the iPad 2 yes like easily the most be you're ranking the biggest moments for the iPad since the iPad the iPad 2 is at the top of that list yeah without question then I think it is the iPad 4 when all of the early adopters of the iPad upgraded cuz the hardware had a new capability in a retina screen that was worthwhile instead of the iPad 3 which again had a a screen but was also a tiny nuclear reactor MH uh and then the the iPad Air which was the big form factor shift that everybody upgraded to and also pass the local news test if apple has a new iPad it's was thinner than ever before like that thing I I do want to tell you that in fact the the event this week did pass the local news test you're watching ABC7 ABC7 did in fact cover it oh now it's covering the streaming bundle ABC7 in Chicago just going but but yeah they were just like apple unveils new iPad Pro with outrageously powerful AI powered chip all right I'm not going to tell you why I think about ABC7 News um it is what my mom watches okay but no I I'm I'm with you like local news when it hits local news so I'm genuinely surprised this hit they need something right it was a slow news week Forum I say that's my test and I that's to me is the God Bless the people at ABC7 News yeah I'm in Chicago for New Year's every year and they do a just a wild New Year's Eve thing so that's why it's always on my mind but it is true that's the one my uh my mom watches uh but I think about that test and it's like did this pass the test where a whole bunch of new people are going to pick an iPad are going to buy an iPad and I don't I don't think this Hardware is that thing no maybe at the top end of the scale a bunch of people are GNA get an iPad Pro because they want to do a barrel roll I I'm that person I I'm not a tandem OLED yeah I'm in let's spend the money I'm just that's the thing I'm thinking about and that's where I'm with with David where I'm like you got to you got to reset your expectations of what the thing is capable of yeah which I think brings me to the commercial and all this talk about AI Apple said a million times is the most powerful AI computer you can get because the M4 we've been doing the neural engine for years here's uh uh the the thing in logic where you can put in a song and it does the AI and it splits the stems into drums and guitars and vocals for you that's cool here's some final Cut Pro stuff that's cool by the way Final Cut camera on the iPhone they announced they just slid by that they announced Pro camera software right for the iPhone moved through it that rules like that's awesome um but you know the thing is very powerful and then they're like we're going to have more AI Fe you can see they're going to announce a ton of AI features at wwc and I think what is fascinating is maybe Apple's core constituency hates it and then this ad just like lit the fuse the ad was like unintentionally a flasho in what fells like some sort of new class Warfare yeah between like big tech and creatives and and we've been seeing it in Hollywood a lot right like like as apple and Amazon and everybody goes and and takes over streaming there everybody's got really strong feelings about it but to see it happen here to see like Hugh Grant be like this sucks you're destroying the world that was a really bad Hugh gr impression yeah sorry I he's famously British he's famously British I'm I'm I'm I'm not but the opposite of British the opposite uh so the the ad is a bunch of stuff like beautiful old creative stuff yeah it's like paint and phones there's a trumpet I believe in the beginning a metronome uh a sculpture that I thought was was like a sculpture and then it was Clay because it just smooshed all unsatisfyingly in the hydraulic press and it was like a really good commercial and it's the same thing they've done a billion times before where they're just like what if all of this stuff was in the palm of your hand and everybody's like f off yeah how dare you you and because I think it was the the that image of things being all crushed being destroyed like beautiful things being destroyed to make an iPad and everybody out there in the world is is really upset there's a lot of anxiety around AI in so many creative Industries so to have that happen I was like oo youall miss the mark on that one yeah can I just say I think the the like overarching point of the idea that Tech technology is like literally flattening creative culture good and fair and valid and worth fighting about the reaction to this commercial in particular is so stupid and I just wish everyone would get over it it's so funny like I will say there was a great uh I forget who did it I'm sorry I can't give them credit for it but there was somebody who literally just ran that commercial in reverse and was like this is actually much more compelling and sells the iPad much better that all of this stuff comes out of the iPad and I think that's very funny because it was a much more like of the thing uh but also like the idea that everyone is like apple has always loved creatives and now it's destroying trumpets is like come on everybody like it's nothing has changed apple is trying to tell you that there's lots of things that you can do in an iPad and the fact that it smooshed a trumpet to do so is probably fine the thing is it's probably fine things have changed for a lot of folks right like things have changed on the other side of it that was totally unrelated to Apple like it really was just Apple just like stepping in it without even knowing that we're stepping in it because out there in the world people are furious at technology in general and then Apple wh is like look we did a cool iPad and everybody's like you'll die I agree with that I think I think the the broader story here is real right and apple is out there talking about AI while everybody is rightly nervous about what AI is going to mean to their creative work all that stuff is totally fair and valid it just isn't about this commercial no that's what I mean I think the commercial is like dude in a month apple is going to AI features across its operating systems like huge sweeping AI features from the reports we've read they're going to add the we the AI photo editing to photos MH just imagine the what is a photo conversation we're going to be having in a month when that stuff is built in at the system level to the iPhone 4our vergecast it's never going to stop we're just going to start Verge casting right after the keynote ends and we're going straight on to the end of the year uh this is officially my two we notice Liams out but I mean like they want to add generative capabilities to the products directly and I think what they just learned is even a hint of breaking creative stuff is bad for them like I think the reaction add is like one don't destroy cool things that we like like I'm David it sounds like your disdain for trumpets is off the charts yeah some people think trumpets are cool right there's scab bands across the world that are like what are you doing T is like no to SCA destroy all trumpets there's you know there's like a retro arcade console like it's it's just like cool stuff stuff people like and they're like smash we're doing one of those Tik toks with the hydraulic Smashers and now here's an iPad this like sort of soulless corporate pane of glass right uh you take that anxiety just around this ad just around the imagery of that ad and you hand it you like point it at I itself in a month and it's like oh that's a powder keg actually yeah it is and and Apple has been I think the extent to which it has misread the room about how people think about Apple I think is what has been most telling about this because there was a time when Apple really did convince creative people that it was behind them right and it was it was making tools even as it was disrupting the music industry and changing the way a lot of this stuff worked people who made things used Apple products like overwhelmingly that was the case and there was the sense that like this company made good products in the right way and believed in Creative people and cared about this stuff and Steve Jobs was a Pixar investor like all this stuff and I think between the way that Apple's business model has been sort of aired out like dirty laundry over the last couple of years and the way we've come to understand what it does to developers and the way that all of this stuff is just in general getting subsumed inside of Technology like there's the bigger story what technology is doing to the world and to creative people that I think is interesting and important but there's also a thing that has happened where people don't look at Apple the way Apple thinks that they do anymore and I think to me that was the thing that was most interesting about this was a bunch of people who otherwise would have been like oh Apple's you know one of the good ones they actually care about this stuff it's a it's a huge tech company that actually like does the right things the right way that company does not get the benefit it out anymore yeah yeah and I don't know that that's coming back and I think it's going to really hurt it with AI in a really big way the thing that I have thought about the moment like specific phrase that I have been thinking about during this whole commercial cruffle which I agree is it's about something else yeah right but I have been thinking a lot about Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone 4 and he held it up and he was admiring his own product in the way that Steve Jobs was want to do and he said it's like a beautiful old Leica camera and he meant it right like he was like this is I loved that thing and I made a thing that is like it and this thing is actually meant to honor that thing right you could you just go watch it you go watch the iPhone 4 introduction it's funny because he like dunng his mode at the beginning I'm sorry Alex it's fine Alex wasn't there yet I wasn't there yet uh but it's like you know it's like a whole thing right it's Steve Jobs has to reann nowc the product that has been so thoroughly leaked that it has already been disassembled on the internet and he like does a great job but there's this moment that makes it work that like makes it click where he's like it is like a beautiful old like a camera and he's just talking about a piece of design that he loves that represents a way of doing things that he obviously respects and that's now here's his iPhone contrast that to by your mom and iPhone like that's that's the journey but yeah contrast that to buy your mom and iPhone contrast that to we're going to smash everything into new iPad yeah right it's like no now we're a bulldozer yeah we're not a participant in this thing right we're not gonna honor the past of creativity with blah blah blah BL we've commodified creativity we are a bunch of accountants who are going to take our 30% and that is bad like I whatever it is I'm sure someone is gonna write to me about Apple stock performance now like whatever you want to think about that that's great they're dominant people love them but they don't that benefit of the doubt where the company was led by an artist or someone who held himself out as an artist or a patron of the Arts or whatever is gone and I think this ad is actually a reflection of that right it's just it's an ad it's a very expensive ad but it's not born out of a love of those things because if you truly loved those things you would not smash them and like maybe that's just a metaphor maybe it's silly maybe it's just a misfire but a month from now they're going to launch a bunch of AI features that are trained on a bunch of creative work and they're going to have to answer a bunch of questions about whether or not they paid for that training data and whether artists are going to compensate it and whether if you type into Garage Band make me a beat in the style of whoever that person gets money and like are you ready for this because the reaction to this ad suggests that you are not yeah and I the same is true Google NE next week is Google IO where they're GNA announce a bunch of AI like it's just destined to happen like I I can confidently predict that Google is going to announce a bunch of AI stuff at Google iio we're going to talk about Gemini a lot they're going to put Gemini in your face and are they ready are they ready for that stuff this week uh open AI is uh the leak details of how they're going on to Publishers and the Publishers are like you already scraped the data this is a this is a head fake we we don't trust you and I I think this whole industry is kind of like on a Razor's Edge like they don't understand that the lack of trust around AI is going to come to all of their products including a relatively innocuous iPad ad yeah agreed 100% all right I'm very curious now to see what iOS 17 Breaks by the way David what is the evidence uh real quick before we break that that's gonna run Mac OS because that would be my dream I don't know there's just a lot of I think a lot of people who are like oh the magic keyboard exists and feels more like a Mac there's a bigger trackpad people just want it thus Mac OS I I challenge anyone to like try and think about how you would touch the things in your menu bar like it's just not a good idea we should have mac apps that work poking away over here this is great I I'm trying to I'm trying to scroll down so I get my menu bar no I as far as I can tell there is no actual evidence except this thing is stupendously powerful and when you put it in it kind of feels like a laptop yeah all right that's my dream if you're listening to me Tim I will trust you again if you put ma in it's a bad dream Tim don't listen turn off the podcast Tim is in our YouTube comments he's like first that's him every time all right we got to take a break we'll be right back and then Alex is going to tell us about streaming so buckle up we'll be right back all right we're back Alex uh I feel like every time we talk about streaming you say uncomfortably horny things about David zasloff it's true so I would like genius I would like you to just assure me that that is not going to happen today I can't make promises life all right well I tried I did my best to protect myself s and our extended listener you guys all love him too that's why you're listening don't worry I get it the good news is there's not a lot of direct zazo news there there isn't no they had they had their earnings uh Disney's had their earnings a lot of folks had their earnings this week and they're they're doing okay they're making money um and that's because they have things like ads and and they're running these companies like businesses that have to make money now rather than just like giving us all free content all the time which was super sick I will miss those years like crazy but uh the big stuff was like Disney Hulu and Max are all going to they're going to get a bundle at some point this summer not your child you know she walked up to the TV the other day and said why is there an icon that said max and I honestly I challenge you to explain that to a six-year-old in a way that makes any sense first of all Kudos SMX can read that rules great great job Max that's awesome yeah did you start explaining David's as love to her like I just challenge you to expl like try be like you're 6 years old you you cannot start with there once was a company called time War that's what I was hoping right like that you're just like there was a mistake that's a mistake this is how you write a children's book for Max just to explain that there was a mistake inside of that icon rests a 43 grayscale Batman movie and I just I'm sorry okay like the entire one one day I will tell you the story of the American economy and it will start with that icon but for now don't worry about it Max okay so this is where we get to zaz obviously zaz love runs Warner Brothers Discovery he's been looking for money he's been looking for growth and and what better way than to partner up with other companies who are also looking for growth and being like if we get together we can offer offer our stuff cheaper and also not have the FTC come after us constantly for having our own little like FS so they're going to bundle this up mhm and say is it is it going to be two different apps it three so I guess Hulu is already in Disney plus right Hulu is already in Disney plus that's why it's like that gross color now yeah they they're just like they smashed the blue and the green together so you you you sign up I read the press releases the press releases are like we'll release more details later yeah there there really isn't a lot of details it really is just like it's coming yeah and we don't know pricing we don't know when we just know what's happening so you're going to pay some money to someone yes they're going to figure it out Eli David's very good at this zaz love not Pierce and then you're going to I feel like if David Pierce was in charge with in charge of Warner brother's Discovery I was going to say I honestly believe like to my bones that I could run the streaming industry more successfully than any of these clowns oh you you 100% the user interface would work yeah I I just let David do it that's what I'm saying you're going to login to two apps you're GNA have two apps on your on your Roku still we don't know we don't know yeah we we genuinely don't know most of this stuff we know that it's it's coming we know that they're they're excited about it I would say by the way that there is virtually no chance of this being a combined app like just from what we've seen on the rights stuff alone like Disney the work they had to do to integrate the Hulu stuff with Disney plus and those are two companies owned by Disney yeah uh just the right stuff that wouldn't allow some things on Hulu to be in Disney plus so there are things that are in Hulu the app that are not in Hulu the tile and Disney Plus like imagine adding all of a whole another company to that I just don't see how that's possible like this is this is good they're going for unified login which is a good idea is like the most ambitious thing I think comes out of this but the entire idea of these rollups to begin with Disney buying Fox buying out the rest of Hulu from Comcast disclosure Comcast as a stake in our parent company VOX media and also people hated Comcast so much they rebranded their cable company to xinity that's a real story um B like me very much there's a disclosure uh and then zaz love just zazz in his way to merging Warner Brothers and Discovery right the idea there was always scale right yeah like the the specific pitch for Warner Brothers Discovery was we will have HBO for your appointment Sunday night viewing and then the rest of the time when you're like I don't know what are those Property Brothers doing you'll just like turn that on and watch Tik Tok in the background right like and they explicitly made this this is the idea like the bundle will be so big you'll subscribe subcribe to it it'll be great for you but bundles can get bigger and that's what like this has run out yeah yeah that basically they need other content right like it is unrealistic to expect people to only watch Netflix it is unrealistic to expect people to only watch Disney plus unless they're like under the age of five in which case it's super realistic but like did you see that St by one out of three one out of every three shows in Disney plus is a blue stream yeah wow is it just max % of all Disney plus streaming is BL that's insane oh my gosh it's like this company is extremely beholden to an Australian dog wow I don't want to talk about blue at this time David your kid isn't old enough to know but when when it comes time it will be it will be very sad for you as well but so the bundles get bigger yeah but why doesn't Netflix have this pressure because Netflix is huge like like Netflix is is bigger than kind of everybody else right they have that first mover Advantage so they can just be they're so far ahead of everybody else when it comes to subscribers and stuff that they can just keep doing that and they can keep asking for more money and also this is the Alex who put them higher on the go90 scale than some of the other people they've got hubris right like they they they still haven't worked partnered with Apple so so you don't really get that so uh that tight integration with like the Apple products that you get with with Disney plus and Max and all these other ones they don't partner with everybody else as often because they are the biggest and often times when you do that your hubris catches up with you eventually so like I think it's a kind of a mistake for Netflix to not try to do this but I'm not surprised by it because it's also the most like these are entertainment companies yeah Netflix is a technology company so you made a YouTube video this week you basically like the Cable Bundle is back and that's what's H that's what's happening here right you got Disney the Hulu assets they're going to put ESPN Plus in the Disney Plus app that's the yeah you're you're subsidizing all this stuff that you want that you don't necessarily want cuz I know you guys love sports but but you have to you are just will be here Furious that I'm going to have ESPN on my Disney plus well and we don't know what the pricing will be and then you get all the sort of Warner Brothers Assets Now too plus HBO depending on what the price is right like you could find it could end up being that the price is the exact same only the only difference is that it's just more convenient to log in well so we do have this quote from zaz I'm just so worried about zaddy there we go sorry I had to do it I'm so tired it's if I ever meet that man like I can't I just walk away I won't let you as somebody who's responsible for this Newsroom and your friend like no we can't go that way just can can you imagine having to work with somebody every day who's horny for David's that's what it's like here at The Verge all right uh here's the quote from from s it's like the New York Times is like dealing with Kevin Roose being like I banged 18 robots on AI and we had Al very different uh by the way you should read the Kevin R article where he did make friends with 18 different AI personalities and even from the jump he's like it's a little horny it's good anyway here's a quote from David zof uh there's a lot of irrationality in the market that's getting shaken out in terms of money spent ultimately I think the business will look very different in two to three years it will be much better for consumers lot of ideas in that question yeah I like basically they're just bringing TV back and and in a lot of ways TV is quite convenient people loved it for 50 60 years it it it worked and and then everybody was like we're tired of all the ads and everything else and that's why we got streaming to begin with and that's just what he's doing like I think he's very right in that there are a lot of bad ideas and they are being sh shaken out that's why everybody's going to advertising that's why everybody is bundling that's why everybody is subsidizing sports and and all of this other stuff but I don't know if it'll be better for consumers in three years I think the the one other thing that's worth mentioning here is uh it's it's very telling to me that what he says is in terms of the amount of money spent uh and I think if you want to talk about what's different about Netflix versus these other companies is Netflix can afford to exist whereas you have Disney which spent way too much money to acquire Fox you have Warner Brothers discovery which took on a massive quantity of debt in order to become the company that it is these companies literally cannot afford to exist in the way that they currently work whereas Netflix I think it was in 20121 2020 or 2021 announced basically like we're good we have enough money now that we don't have to take external financing and that puts you in such an unbelievable position of power to be able to just do whatever you want because you can afford your business business and what no one else has proven other than Netflix is that this is a business that you can afford or that has the margins to let you grow right like Netflix is actually maybe the easiest way to talk about this is the go90 scale of Doom streaming services so Netflix to me I know Alex I'm on the other side but I get it completely thinks Netflix will fail but uh by the way disclosure I produce a Netflix show it's called the future it's very good yeah likely story you support them huh they really did rebranded Xfinity because everyone hated the compest BR that is a true story I heard it again recently I put Netflix at zero by the way the go90 scale if you remember go90 it's Verizon's failed streaming service where they thought children would join quote gangs um no is it Cruz it was something they thought the kids would rotate their friends 90 degrees to watch YouTube and they had no idea why anyone was watching YouTube and it immediately F quibby before quibby it was a lot uh now to go 90 means to die this is ver Chast lore if you're unfamiliar so the go90 scale streaming services from zero to 90 you put them on a scale zero is alive 90 is dead Netflix in my mind is zero right now it is the one you don't quit No One turns off a Netflix right now it is 100% zero I would I would agree with you there I will say Alex said it was a 40 at South by Southwest it is a 40 in my heart and in the future zero right today cuz you think the Hubers makes them brittle I I understand the argument but I just don't I think Netflix is very good at programming its service exactly to make you never char they're like here's one more John melany special like coming man I'm it's just always they're always doing that thing yeah you're like ready to quit they got one more thing for you good they figured it out data HBO or now Max whatever the hell it's called like Max is 45 like it is they're gonna they hit 100 million subscribers globally but they're about to hike prices again because of what David is saying they cannot afford to run this business it's programming is all over the place right they have HBO's programming but HBO's in one of its sort of like consistent sort of like dry spells I'm sure there'll be more stuff coming back but that's the history of HBO it runs hot then it runs cold um there isn't some like consistent slate of programming yes there is those Property Brothers people love well there's that stuff but there isn't like the I mean that like we can't ignore it it's something that maybe we don't talk about like critically and you don't see people talking about it on uh threads and and social media and stuff but that is a big part of their business that's why zaslov could afford to buy Warner Brothers is because of how big that business is for him and I don't that's not going away anytime soon he's really that's the discovery business that's the discovery business that's now in Max sure okay I'm just saying 45 yeah because you're not running around trying to make a deal with Disney If You Think You're More Alive than dead yeah is just my belief well this is why the sports race is so intense right now because I think the the Property Brothers will keep people subscribed to you they're not going to win you vast tens of millions of new subscribers but I also want to be wary of saying that this deal is an indication that Disney and Max are struggling because I don't think like I think this is as much about dealing with the fact that these are highly vertically integrated companies and there's currently a government that doesn't like that and and it's really useful to be like no we're partnering together you think that in the absence of Lena Disney would buy Warner Brothers Discovery if if lenina con got sucked up by aliens tomorrow if Trump gets elected yeah and and they manag to sell ESPN so they can make all their money they would buy it in a heartbeat no chance no with what money I said I I had to that's why I put those clarifiers on there right like let's add your debt to our debt and we'll give you 50 bucks and then we'll all slowly die together wait actually David when you describe it like that that does sound like the media business that is that does in fact sound how these CEOs think let's lay off 10,000 people and have a bunch of debt somehow we will get Vats and uh is Zack Snyder available because we have a number of movies that should be recut as gr scale squares Hollywood is built on debt there they this way financing has worked in Hollywood from the beginning is is on debt nothing is ever made with like the cash they have in house yeah it's made with but they usually the Assumption has been that the properties will make money yeah a pro a problem that they are having uh anyway um they'll be fine okay so I'm putting Max at 45 I'm putting Disney at Disney Plus at 45 that's that's that's my go90 scale I I think these things are are wobbly in the middle right now no Disney Disney is massive and and like streaming is a big part of Disney's business streaming is not all of Disney's business of all of these companies it is super positioned because it's got a ton of very lucrative theme parks throughout I just want to point out that technically the max app has already gone 90 several times as it is rebranded from HBO to HBO Max every other month it goes 90 like it's go it keeps going away in some way well I think this all sort of revolves around Netflix in a funny way which is why Netflix is so powerful in all this because I think the case for Disney plus going away is that Disney decides that actually if we want our theme parks to succeed the best way for us to do that is to sell shows to Netflix and not put them on Disney plus which I think is a not crazy yeah conclusion to draw in a couple of years you're going to decide it is so expensive and so wasteful for us to run our own service what we actually need is for people to watch our stuff and the way to do that is to put it in movie theaters and put it on Netflix and I think it's possible that that is where this goes we come back to this at the end of the summer if and when we find out there whether or not there will be more blue episodes cu I honestly think depending on that answer Disney plus goes in one of two directions if if you just look at the scale of how much that business is currently dependent on Blue it it's not dependent on whatever horrible garbage Max watches otherwise uh there's a show about the the children of the villains it's bad all thec never seen anything worse in my entire life I've never watched it it's fine it's like very safe if you have a six-year-old girl you're like watch this garbage it's better than what's on YouTube kids um but I'm saying depending on how blue goes I I we should come back to that conversation okay we should take a break I will call out by the way that Sony is in the middle of discussions to BU Paramount oh I hope not because it's with Apollo Management right yeah that's just layoff City that's what's gonna happen yeah the all the headlines about Sony and Paramount should be like Sony discusses laying off Paramount's employees but they're still also in talks with sky dance which is owned by Larry Ellison's son from Oracle and that could still happen that's the one I'm mainly rooting for because I hate watching companies be bought up and broken apart you love CBS also I love I I'm is it really because I'm concerned about Star Trek yes there's a very good episode by the way of the Town podcast where they talk about this and basically land on if you want good content rout for the sky Dan deal if you want a bunch of Paramount shareholders to make money and then all of this to go away you should root for Sony and Apollo yeah I'm like slightly simplifying but not that much yeah it's that's that's act that's 100% correct if you want Star Trek root for sky dance if you don't care about Star Trek and Taylor sheridans ranches root for Apollo and Sony wait I that's a that's a bad mix of things to care about how do I get one but not the other uh okay we got to take a break we're going to come back with the lightning round which is actually has to be lightning because we are so over today but it's going to be really long we'll be right back with the BR Chast all right we're back it's the lightning round which really for me is what I have taken to calling the Victory lap round but let's begin with Alex friends yeah uh not a Victory lap is sad for for mine yeah no this is a bummer uh Microsoft is currently going through it Tom Warren had a really great piece up this week and Ash Parish our game reporter had a really cool follow piece on it they've been closing Studios they've been laying people off they they had All Hands uh after they they closed this one Studio that made this really popular game last year called high-fi rush if you haven't heard about it that's because you don't play video games enough um high-i Rush was like a big Indie darling and it was widely well received it did really really well for them and then they said they laid off every they like closed the studio they laid everybody off and and they were like yeah we need to make more games like that and it's like well maybe hm and so there's just a lot of chaos over there and and I think it's the same thing we're seeing you know we've talked a lot about creatives in this episode it's that same anxiety it's the the same issues that we're seeing with streaming where these people have spent a lot of money on Acquisitions and growing during the 0% interest rate days and they they grew a whole lot and yeah you can't grow in like infinite content has to have infinite people watching it and paying for it and we don't do that in this human life it is a remarkably similar trajectory like Microsoft saying okay we we think this is going to move from a you buy a thing model to a subscription model thus we need a lot of content oh God we need a lot of exclusive content to okay maybe actually there aren't as many people who want to pay for all of this especially given what it costs because all this stuff is expensive bail bail bail bail bail and then so you you go from like we have to grow to the size of the universe in order for this thing to work and then you say oh it's actually not possible for us to grow to the size of the universe in the same way that everybody thought they were going to get a billion subscribers to streaming services like no it turns out there is kind of a local maximum to that and uh people are finite unfortun and it turns out I think Microsoft is going to do the same thing now where it's like okay we if we build this unbelievable War chest of content and people and talent it will work and then all of a sudden every it's like oh that's not a plan that's nothing and it all just kind of collapses and it's really sad because it's happening at like unbelievable scale and Pace right now and it's also in an industry that I think was already unsustainable to begin with with Crunch and everything like that like this was an industry that's been creaking for a decade and and I it's it's having a massive moment and I it sucks for all the people involved but like it's happening yeah I just want to point out that Microsoft fought tooth and nail to BU Activision yeah and they were like this will grow our business this is the thing and really the question we should ask with all these deals how many people are you going to lay off how many is it it's always some wasn't it T-Mobile that said in buying Sprint that it thought the number of jobs were going to go up and everybody's like a sick and then they immediately let off thousand immediately yeah like that's not true that's never true and I it's just like it's the thing like you combine two companies there are going to be a lot there's going to be overlap it's it's going to happen I interview a lot of Executives you can just see the wheels turning boy I don't need double the back office staff like whatever you can just and they call it efficiencies but it's really layoffs and that's just like how it goes and then on top of it Microsoft was insistent that it needed to buy Activision because it was winning while Microsoft was losing and they bought Activision and they're like look at all these losers and it's like we we should start asking the questions ahead of how many people are you going to laugh off that's the only question right like that is the policy consequence of allowing these Murders At scale like really truly on the ground a bunch of people are going to lose drops how many is it and if they're not willing to answer that question I honestly think like we should no longer give any of these companies a benefit of the doubt yeah you don't get to just buy it yeah uh I would point out that AT&T buying Time Warner did allow Zack Snyder to employ a number of people to make a 4-3 grayscale Batman movie yeah um Nei do you get a cut of sales of this movie like what what what is happening we've officially tipped from like this is funny to like what's ne's angle here I just I just want to I want to hammer it home from people that the Trump Administration getting rid of net neutrality allowed AT&T to BU Time Warner and now there is a grayscale Batman movie and that is a direct line of events by the way uh n neutrality did pass they got rid of the weird rule that would have allowed for 5G fat fast LS we now live in a world of n child again it's great sorry Zach all right uh Victory lap one complete Victory lap two for me this is this is the whole lighting round just NE I was right about you I'm sorry um you will recall uh that epic games sued Apple for an interest interest violations long ago they mostly lost that case they did they mostly lost that case I would say they might have set the stage for the current doj case for other cases where they they made a bunch of arguments that are not being made Again by the government in different they got a ball rolling very much got a ball rolling the one thing they won in that case was uh the judge applying California law mhm because I think the judge was unwilling to rewrite United States Federal antitrust law but the judge interpreted California law to say apple could no longer prevent app developers from uh what's called steering so Apple has these things called anti- steering rules where you're not even allowed to mention that there's another website where you could buy stuff anti- steering rules struck down um I have the specific quote here um apple is permanently restrained and enjoyed from prohibiting developers from including their apps and their metadata buttons external links or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms in addition to the App Store that's the rule judge pass this Rule and Apple's response was to allow a app or a link rather right uh so the rule comes out and I wrote a piece back then 2021 saying Apple's about to end up in a fight over buttons and links like they're not allowed to prevent buttons and links from going to external purchasing me mechanisms when courts write two nouns they often mean for the nouns to mean different things so now you have buttons and you have links that they necessarily mean different things this is just legal interpretation 101 uh I would say the astr turf Brigade attacked me um some developers tried this they went in front of the court again the judge said I look stop it like we'll figure this out when we get there I I Apple has to issue its entitlements and do all this stuff and then everyone thought I was wrong this is true this is like a real sequence events that I'm very hot about the point of all this is epic went to the judge recently and said apple is only allowing One external link to a fixed web page and you not even allowed to say it's cheaper on the web page like all of the rules about what you're allowed to do to get around anti- steering are basically anti- steering it's such a punk you're basically allowed to say this is a website yep and it's it's the very beginning of the flow so if you have an app with other things you can buy in it you are not even allowed in that area of your app to put links to an external website where you can buy stuff it's beautiful you are allowed to have one link that link when you click on it if you're logged into the app can't even pass your login info to the website yeah I always think of the Kindle app is the easiest way to explain this because it's like the way it should work is you should be able to go into I mean the way it should work is you should be able to buy Kindle stuff from your but there should be a link on every book that says buy this on the web that is explicitly against the rules you can have one one Link in one place in the app that says books on web that's that's basically the entirety of what is allowed or or sign up on web but not for 30% cheaper or not it's cheaper on the web because Apple charges us a fee none of that's allowed do they get the preposition like is the preposition allowed the on I mean Apple's totally in control of this oh by the way if you click the link you get a warning screen that says you're leaving this app where Tim Cook will protect you with sword and shield just a buff Tim Cook picture this is all true so epic drags apple back into court where because the judge in 2121 said I will decide if Apple's in compliance with my injunction not Apple I'm going to decide so the judge so epic drags apple back to court there's a there's a hearing this week I just want to read you some things that were said in this hearing to Apple is they talk about buttons and links and this is to an Apple executive is it fair to say in today's day and age that everyone understands that www.url.com is an external weite on the worldwide web that's just a question like do you really think people are this stupid Apple Pete in society people make lots of purchases on the web all the time would you agree with that yes and they understand that Apple trusts its users at the web is separate and apart for different even on an iOS device right yeah do do people know that clicking on a link taking you out of an app takes you out of the app that's where apple is in buttons and links and then there's the judge who inter J in the middle of a conversation about button design because Apple has constricted the design of buttons I can't imagine a logical reason why Apple would demand that of competitor apps what's a logical competitive reason for not suggesting but demanding it other than to stifle competition I see no answer can you give me one buttons and links did they give them it took three years no no just blah blah blah security oh took three years but apple is now in this fight over the design of buttons and links in its apps because that injunction is actually a big deal and they have not actually provided a reason why they are constraining the design of buttons and links in their apps which by the way are different a button is supposed to just do something a link is takes you somewhere else right so these are different in terms of construction and I think apple and it's huis all the stuff we've talked about they've run into the judge saying no no I meant something when I issued this order and you can't give me reasons that are not just straight anti-competitive malicious compliance reasons I don't know how this is going to turn out it's just an evidential you're hearing right now maybe the judge is going to find Apple's not in compliance maybe this doj lawsuit's gonna break it all open I don't know maybe a bunch of Europeans are gonna her old cheese at Apple until stop it something's gonna happen but I'm just saying right now 3 years after the Epic case Apple's in a courtroom defending its own malicious compliance because it was inevitable that the buttons and links conversation would come back around and it's been interesting to watch these fights get more and more specific over time too and I think this is the thing that is actually going to affect real change right like we talked about this with the emulators the other week that as these things get Whitted down from these sort of big philosophical debates into like here is a thing about the experience that is broken and you can't explain to me why it's broken other than you believe you deserve all of the money that is actually the way that apple is being Pride open and it is happening like in these little tiny pieces much more quickly than it's going to happen in some Grand yeah you're not allowed to be like this anymore way so I think it's like the the death by a Thousand Cuts thing is like very much underway in a really fascinating way yeah and the stuff takes time like this doj lawsuit that's a decade oh easily it's it's a decade like you can decide whether it is good or bad you can have whatever feelings about the complaint you want a decade from now we will see the results of that cases on how the devices we use it took 3 years from the Epic case for us to be back in a courtroom saying actually your weird link entitlement idea might be anti-competitive and that still has to play out so I would just you need some patience here but I agree with you David it's like it's starting in a way that Apple can no longer defend I just spent a lot of this time on meta AI trying to make it show me images of a shredded Tim Cook protecting people from buttons and links and it wouldn't do it I went to www.url.com while we were sitting here and discovered that url.com is for sale so that's cool I just think if you have your Executives on the stand and the question is people in society make lots of purchases on the web all the time would you agree and the answer is yes like you're probably done for Nei in in in the spirit of kindness I would like to bequeath you my lightning round because you have another Victory lap I'd like you to take I do I do I do I'm very excited about this one make this one quick cuz again in this fix R nothing has happened so we'll end the show where we began in in southeast Wisconsin where I was a child were the cheese curds really squeaky they're good they're good they're good everywhere in Wisconsin they're particularly well madis I would say Madison is where I I enjoyed the cheese curd Lifestyle the most but President Biden was in rine this week he was announcing a Data Center built to be built by Microsoft I mean 2,000 construction jobs and then 2,000 permanent jobs to build this data center this is I would just say politically opportunistic at its finest yeah Microsoft had already purchased this land they were they had already announced the data center they' already done all the permitting all the stuff Joe Biden just showed up and was like look at the jobs I made great I'm super excited for like do politics I'm happy for you the point of this is that they are building this on the land that was supposed to be the foxcon site and Joe Biden's political opportunism is he's standing there and he's like literally I think he said something along the lines of trump didn't give you any jobs and I'm giving you actual jobs because it's the fox onsite where Trump waved a golden shovel around and promised an LCD Factory That was supposed putting 13,000 jobs to this region and we uh at The Verge someone famously always knew that was a lie uh reported on it quite a bit we won an award Josh has a won an award for his big feature on it that feature actually uh Chris Hayes read it on MSNBC last night like just straight up he was like Biden announced some things you might remember this as Foxon and then just read some of Josh's feature to the camera to explain what had happened there have rules uh congratulations to Josh he reported the hell of that story um the Victory lap I would like to take is to remind everyone and to initiate our our newest members of the audience uh during that period of time while we were doing all that reporting I received a number of hilariously threatening emails from Anonymous foxcon Executives telling us reminding us insisting that we leave them alone literally the emails would say leave us alone and then they would try to explain to me what foxc con's AI plus 8K plus 5G strategy was Galaxy brain it was nothing by the way foxcon has abandoned AI akk plus 5G this is true they've abandoned it if you go to the Foxon in Wisconsin website now which is literally I believe just Foxon wisconsin.com uh you can see they have a new strategy which is 3 plus 3 equals infinity this is true it's even worse how did they make it worse it's 100% true that their new strategy is 3 plus 3 equals infinity and then there's a lengthy section of that website dedicated to how uh you can see the Dome that they built from the highway I to tell you they built a little Dome it's like I keep calling it teu Epcot like it's a little baby baby it was supposed to be the dot of an they were going to spell foxcon fi foxcon industrial internet they were going to spell it in buildings and of letters it's only three they only got to the dot which is the Dome uh they insisted for years uh this is true that the Dome was a Data Center and I would have various conversations with like data center people to like would you ever make a data center in the shape of a dome do you think that would be and they would all be like no I don't I don't know we wouldn't it turns out the Dome was just like a like a party center yeah it was like where corrupt Wisconsin politicians would have drinks and take photos with the Dome with their Dome the Dome remains that whole thing remains I don't know what's going to happen there there's some rumor the building servers Microsoft is now taking all of the industrialization that was built up the water the power to build an AI data center all right but I want to end here with one of the best things that has ever happened on the show okay which is all those emails I got about leaving people alone I would read them on the show and then people would make memes and songs and one of my favorite songs which I thought about today as I watched Joe Biden dunk on Trump in his golden shovel I was like it would rule if Biden would just play this song that vergecast listener Jackson Hayes wrote for us about the factory Liam can we play the song Nei you didn't listen to me but that's okay because we're going to tell you what you already knew for months you didn't leave us alone leave us alone you didn't leave us alone leave us alone AI meant New Generation mobility and self-driving cars wait is that the story where we running Jeremy okay AK means smart safety it's security through AK technology I mean come on NE you should know this 5G means pioneering wait Medical Solutions the crap that supposed to mean on some health Cloud Network okay you didn't leave us alone leave us alone catchy didn't leave us alone leave us alone it was just a and 5G well I see how that was hard to believe you didn't leave us alone leave us alone you didn't leave us alone leave us alone now I just want you to imagine okayy you win can't make that on an iPad uh well with the power of AI technology can so thank you to Jackson one of my all-time favorite forcast moments I hope for listening um I just want you to imagine Joe Biden announcing the Microsoft deal and then being like as a reminder acoustic guitar he just take a seat that whole sequence just I just want to remind people that sequence of reporting was like mid pandemic this was the weirdest time in like reporting you could do and we were reporting on this weird Factory that didn't exist and I was getting these crazy emails just leave us alone just leave us alone that was awesome leave us alone anyway it's it's a data center now there's a little Dome you can go look at the Dome I have pictures of the dumb it's there on the website that's it I think that's it one thing we didn't talk about Tik Tok sued the government over the bill to quotequote ban Tik Tok uh we wanted to take some time with that so that will be next week's decoder uh Alex Heath and SAR Jong are going to join me we're going to pull that whole complaint apart and see where the arguments are good and bad we just needed to take some time with it also there were iPads come on that's a vergecast everybody uh that's it that's vergecast back and that's it for the verge this week hey we'd love to hear from you give us a call at 866 Verge one1 The Verge cast is a production of The Verge and VOX media podcast Network our show is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James that's it we'll see you next week\n"