The Vergecast - 2025 year in review

Episode Date: December 9, 2025

Well, friends, it's been a year. And before we turn the page to 2026 and all the stories of 2025 begin to blur together, we decided to take stock of things. Nilay and David are joined by Wall Street Journal senior tech columnist Joanna Stern to debate the best products of the year, the biggest policy moves, the people who broke bad, the good AI things, the bad AI things, and much more. It's been a vibe-everything kind of year, and there's a lot to discuss. Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed.We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Virchcast, the flagship podcasts of year-end podcasts. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am actually kind of ahead of the game in my holiday shopping this year. I did a lot of stuff on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. I have at least ideas of what I want to buy for basically everybody in my life. And granted, it's already December, so I think in a lot of people's minds, that does not make me ahead of the game. But for me, someone who is very good at getting to, like, December 21st and then scrambling to find things that will two-day ship to me, this feels like a huge victory.

So I'm sitting here shopping. Everything is going well. And this just means that if I don't buy you a gift, it's not because I didn't think about it. It's just because I forgot about you entirely. Anyway, that's not what we're here to talk about on this episode of the Vergecast. Here we are going to do the first of our two annual year-end episodes. For this one, we're going to talk through some of the biggest stories of 20.

But we're going to do it a little differently, not just run down the big stories. We're going to try to identify some of the biggest moments, biggest trends, best, worst, everything. Joanna Stern and Eli Patel are going to be here to do this with me. This is one of my favorite things to do every year. So I think we're going to have a lot of fun. All that's coming up in just a second. But I did just remember that I have to add my parents to my gift list. This is maybe I'm not doing as well as I think I am.

Anyway, we'll see. This is the Vergecast. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog.

That's where Retool comes in. Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need. Prompts something like, Build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it. On your company's data in your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to retool.com slash Verchcast. We all need to retool how we build software.

All right. We're back. Joanna Stern is here. Hi, Joanna. Hello, David. From some deep space studio joining us for this one. Very glad you're here. Neil Epital also here.

What's up? However I'm looking at Joanna, it's like the colors are being crushed. So her hands are just floating in space. Like, you look like one of those, like, public access TV mimes. Yeah, that's what David said before. Yeah. I said I look like a whistleblower that was set up in a TV studio. It's very good.

Okay, so we have to- You look really good, David. We should talk about your set. Listen, it's very good. Is this the first time people are seeing it? This will be the second. Okay. By the time this actually airs, this will be the second time.

RIPT or Fisher Price basketball hoop. Do you guys ever, like, like, I think of my handiness level is like, I'm very competent at putting together. IKEA furniture and that's it. Like I will put together the hell out of like a billy bookcase, but anything beyond that, useless. And this was like right at the level of I had to adhere things to my wall level. And I did that. And I feel very good about it. There's some like subtle vigneting going on, which is very good. Thank you. I'm pretty proud of it. Anyway, about a year ago, the three of us sat down and looked over the year 2024 and made a bunch of predictions about

the year 2025. We, we had a bunch of questions that I asked the both of you about what was going to happen in 2025. Things like will Tim Cook still be the CEO of Apple? Will InVIDIA be the most valuable company in the world? Will opening I be making any money? I asked you both a bunch of questions. We all had answers. Do you want to know who won? We have a few that we need to litigate before we decide who actually won the what is going to happen in 2025 before we get into this year's game. But so far, that we all did in very different ways kind of the exact same,

which is very funny. So where we currently are is that I got 11 questions right, Neil, I got 11 questions right, and Joanna got 12 questions. Ah! Me dancing in space. I'm gonna lose this mime. Dancing in space.

We all, I would say, had a bunch of like really good correct calls. Like two in a row were OpenAI is a for-profit company, and we were all right that it was going to be. and Open AI is profitable was the next question, and we were all right that it was not going to be. And then we just each made a series of occasional mistakes. But that's okay. We're all out here doing our best.

But before we truly crown a winner, we have five that we need to like sit here and litigate for a minute to see what the correct answer is. So the first one, and these are all yes or no questions that we had to answer yes or no to, the first one that we have to decide is the government is breaking up one of the big tech companies. This was like before the meta case was being tried and decided, this was before the Google search case was being done. This is before the Google Ad Tech case was

really underway. My gut says the answer to this question for 2025 is no. The government is not breaking up one of the big tech companies. But I was less positive about this answer and figure I should just put it out for the three of us. Is it a yes or a no for this answer? Does it have to happen inside of 2025? Yes. Okay. Then the answer is. No, the Chrome case is being appealed. And so maybe that will go the other way. And then the Google AdTech case hasn't reached a decision yet. And maybe that will result in some sort of split of Google assets.

But that's not going to happen before the end of the year. So I'm saying it's a qualified no. Great, because I said no. And that would give me another point. That's a point for Joanna, which is very annoying. Nilai, you and I both said yes to that. Because what I thought was going to happen, if I rewinded to a year ago, I thought I was going to sit here and be like, well, Google had to sell Chrome.

So, of course, that counts as a meaningful breakup. And we would have maybe debated whether that counts as a breakup. But you're right. None of that happened. So that's a point for Joanna. I will say that we were correct in assessing that the government would win its cases. The government won its case against Google. Like, they found search to be a monopoly and Google's deals to put search in different places to be illegal.

And the remedy was nothing. Right. Like Judge Mehta was like, I don't know, this is hard, you guys. And that was the end of that. Yeah, he was just kind of like, well, AI. Right. There are some remedy. Like, people don't have to move things around.

I think the judge in the meta case basically was like, well, TikTok exists. And I think the government's response to that, even the Trump administration's response to that is, yeah, but they did the illegal stuff before TikTok existed. We have to, you can't just be like, that crime, don't worry about it anymore. So, like, there's some weird. that might change next year, but I think we should get half points. We were correct that the government went its cases. No, no, no, no. It was not, will the government win its cases? It's will the government break up one of the big tech companies, which unequivocally did not happen. But I feel like you can have some half points. That's so nice of you doing it. All right. The next one was the pixel 10 is by far the best and most successful Android phone. All three of us said no. What is there to litigate here?

Wait. Why didn't we say it's the best Android phone? That's not. That's part is true, but most successful means sales, and I think that's probably what all of us were reacting to. Well, this is the challenge, right? It's been a big hit for Google. It's done very well. All the numbers are pointing in the right direction for Google, but all the numbers pointing in the right direction for Google are like a hilarious rounding error next to the Galaxy line. Or anything else, Google does.

So maybe this question was just poorly written. Who wrote this? I don't know. Whoever that was, they're the worst. But yeah, I think we'll leave that. It doesn't say and or most successful. It says and most successful. Right. Yes.

So we are right. We're all right. Yeah. Okay. All right. Then we all get a point for that one, which is hooray for us. Question number three, Waymo is going to have its moment in 2025. I am sincerely torn on this one because I think you could argue that it had a series of small moments that maybe add up to like a thing. But did it happen this year? One of my predictions that we're going to get to is about Waymo, too. So I feel like for the mass appeal and chatter about Waymo, we didn't have a moment. But it had so many moments that add up to a moment for like the progression of the company and the momentum for it.

I don't know. It's a hard one. No, the answer is no. Okay, fine. The Waymo moment that I saw was like I saw a video yesterday of a Waymo driving through like literally like a police standoff. Yeah, I saw that too. But I mean, that's what, look, let's get to my predictions for next year. But I think that... Look, let me be right some more.

Let me be right. Waymo's going to have a moment next year. We're just going to have to debate what moment means. But let's get to that. Fine. Fine. I said yes and I am still winning. So fine.

All right. I think that's right. I think Waymo, like, Waymo made clearer and clearer that it is going to win this year without really having that, like, break through mainstream moment where like all of a sudden everyone is Waymos. That didn't happen this year, unless you're in San Francisco, in which case it actually kind of happened. This is why I'm torn. Anyway, all right, we're good. So that's a no. So that's a point for Neely and me and nothing for Joanna. So Neely, we're still losing.

But we're close. But only by one. We're back to, yeah, we're only down one. This is when we all agreed on. So it's fine. Who cares? But we have to litigate it. Do we get points or do we not get points? It's about the It doesn't matter because I'm looking at the next one and we all agreed on the next one too. There's no way to win and I don't care. Yeah, that is true. We have officially mathematically been eliminated from this game. But the two remaining that I genuinely went through and was like, I don't know the answers to these.

We had, Blue Sky is more relevant than Threads. And this was like, as we were doing this, this was a year ago. This was right after the election. Blue Sky was like ascendant. Threads was really boring. The algorithm, like, penalized everything that was interesting and exciting and newsy. And we were just like, Blue Sky is going to just eat the cultural relevance of threads alive. I don't feel like that has happened.

I kind of feel like Blue Sky has lost some juice this year. Well, I don't think it's like lost. I mean, it's still popular and probably still growing in some respects, but is it more relevant than Threads? Is threads even relevant? I just, it's like all end to the spectrums. Again, the question has written is Blue Sky is more relevant than threads, not Blue Sky is maximally relevant.

And I think the answer is it is definitely more relevant. Threads is huge. You think so? I don't think. I disagree. Yeah, it's like the local news test for social media, right? Like, and a blue sky post. So-and-so celebrity said X is like a thing that actually drives new cycles. No threads post ever breaks containment of threads. Every thread's post is just pure engagement farming.

That is true. Every thread's post is like, it's an unrelated video with a caption that's like, do you see it? You know, it's like all the comments. Like, I don't know what I'm supposed to say. That's all threads. That's the prototype threads post. I mean, I don't see the problem like that. That's what relevance looks like.

My only argument would be that because Instagram put threads in that carousel in the Instagram app, that actually all of a sudden, threads post matter way more than almost any other thing because they're in Instagram. Which is really just a statement on how powerful Instagram is. But I don't know. Joanna, you break the tie here, which is more relevant right now, Blue Skyer threads. neither that's can't do that you got to pick one i really don't have a i don't have a dog in this fight i don't like i don't know no which do you post on either one all these all this time later i do i do way more on threads than i do blue sky okay so there you go if joanna's there it's relevant

but nilai's a lot more on blue sky which i try to go to see what he's saying and others but i've got to too much i look i still spend a lot of time on x so i'm you know you both probably want to kick me all right well then you don't get a point for this no matter what. All right. And then last one that I think is pretty easy, but just wanted to bring up anyway, was we've had a huge society-sized AI scandal. We actually all said yes to this. And I think looking back, we were all wrong. I think we're right.

Yeah, there's been like a number of like mental health crises. I would say the mental health crisis. Yeah. The psychosis thing is the one that came to mind is like maybe that can. counts. I think it like, and that was from many angles. There's now the as, yeah, I mean, I think, I think that's what I would point to as well. Okay. All right. Well, then we all get a point for that. So congratulations to all of us. But especially, Joanna, congratulations to you. Thank you. What do I win again? If memory calls, if memory serves, I have to buy you some really expensive computer, but I'm going to, I don't remember. So who is? Who is to say? All right. Let's get on to this year's thing. So instead of doing all the questions again,

And we're going to do like yearbook superlatives. We have a bunch of them. I don't know how many of them we're going to get through. We're just going to fire through as many as we can and see what happens. And we each pick one. Yeah, we're each going to have one. And the only rule is no repeats. You can't, you can't pick the same thing for a bunch of categories.

Okay. Because that just rewards the popular kids. And we don't like that here. So the very first one on the list here is the most surprising success story of 2025. I picked this one first because this was actually the easiest one for me to figure out on my own. But Joanna, what did you have? I had Google Gemini coming ahead at the end of the year. Me too.

This feels like the right answer. Yeah. It just feels like, yeah, yeah. Truly, truly 12 months ago. We would not have sat here last year saying that. We just wouldn't have. And it's also like it's in product and mind share. And I think that's very impressive.

Yeah. And not only has Google like come ahead in a big way, it's come ahead in a big way that, all the other competitors in this space are now kind of terrified. That like, you know, OpenAI declares a code red because Chad GPT needs to catch up to Gemini. It's like not a thing a lot of people were predicting 12 months ago. All right. So Gemini is easy. This is good.

We all agree. On to the next one, the biggest failure of the year. This one is very vague on purpose. And I'm curious where your brains went. Eli, what do you think? Mine is very conceptual. I think the entire concept of agents has been a huge failure. That's mine too.

I had that too. I hate what you all say the same thing. I have another one, though, so let's hear. Are we going to keep talking about agents? No, I think it's the easy one, right? Like, it's, it's, this was the thing that, like, the biggest promise of the year from everybody was agents. And they're bad. Like, I have, I have yet to have a single agentic experience that I'm like, this is, this is good.

I've had a lot of AI experiences, especially for like low stakes things that I'm like, there's something cool and useful and valuable here. I have not once tasked an agent to do something and been like, well, that was a terrific experience. Right. It's like, I think we're at this point required by law to state that you are not a software developer. Like, if you don't mention that in software development, the thing works, like, people like leap out of bushes and yell at you that you don't understand. But the promise is that like Windows will use itself for you. Right. And we have reviewed that.

Actually, I'll just call that the biggest failure of the year. Microsoft doing commercials, it's like the computer you can talk to and then you talk to it. And it's like, I don't know. Like, that is a huge fail. Yeah. And it's just a, it's just a mismatch of hype in execution. Yeah. The other one I was going to be specific about was Alexa Plus.

Mm. Hmm. Was that a failure? I feel like Alexa Plus gets like a huge incomplete of the year. I don't even think we, we, I think it's just a full nothing from Alexa Plus this year. Like, it's, it's still, it's just not in front of that many people. It's not technically launched yet, even though if you buy new hardware, you get it. Like, it doesn't, I don't know.

I don't even know how to grade Alexa Plus at this point. Yeah, you can, it's an F. It's an F. Just listen to yourself. It's a zero because it didn't show up for school. It's a great fanfare that isn't out that they can't release to everyone that they won't talk about. I'm just putting in this a category of agents. I would actually put Gemini on Google Home.

this exact same category. Like, it just doesn't work. Okay, so then my biggest failure of the year I've listed was Siri. They made the promise last year, but they said it could have been coming out throughout this year, and they backtracked this year. Yeah, and they got rid of John Gianrea and hired a new person, and that's a full reset from what I understand. Yeah.

So I think that's a good biggest failure of the year. But all of that is in the category of these assistants will magically do stuff for you because of LLM technology. And unless you are specifically letting an agent do like unit testing and software development, that is not true. Yeah. And this year we saw all these web browsers, these agentic web browsers, and those are also super slow and clunky. And if you're using them, you have a lot of patience. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like if you really, really, really, really, really want to try, you can kind of make them do some things. And that's not it. folks, we didn't do it yet. We have not progressed past that you have an intern who sucks zone of AI in this specific way. And the intern is like very bad. The intern's drunk and didn't show to work.

Yeah, correct. So, and yeah, I think you get a zero if you don't even fill in any bubbles on the test. No, I think the intern is drunk. No, the intern is drunk and did show up to work and is so tired, it's slowly moving the mouse around for you. It's like, what am I doing? Yeah, like, it does show up. It is there. It's just like, eh.

Joanna, how did you experience me at my first job? How did you know what it was like? So, David, the question for you is, is the failure, is the biggest failure of your agents as a whole or are you picking a specific one? I think, I think for me it's, it's just agents as a whole. And I think, I mean agents really specifically, right? Not like, not the assistant stuff, not even the like, you're really mad about like Gemini and the smart home nilai.

And I think, I mean that less and more the idea of like, I'm going to say, I want pizza and a universe full of AI bots will go out and just deliver me the – This is – you laugh, but, like, this is the thing that we are being promised. And it is so – we're not one tiny bit closer to that actually working. And I think we can show – to your question, Eli, we can show that that has happened across products, across different, right? So Alexa Plus, talking about the agent capability there, they made a lot of promises in that keynote. It's going to be able to do that pizza delivery. and you just ask it, it orders through DoorDash or whatever it is.

And that's not really a thing. Any of the agentic stuff through the web browsers, again, in turn, that's drunk and fell asleep at their desk. So we see it across, whether it's Jabot GPD or Proplexity or Co-Pilot or Alexa Plus. I also just had serious, like, it never got to any of this because it couldn't do it, right? Like, it was probably. We need to move. But I think my question is really like there is, is it the bigger failure to take the shot and fail like Alexa Plus or any of the browsers or to fail so are you don't ship? And then you have to put your executives in front of Joanna and they just have to look sad.

I was just about to say there is what happened for Apple. There is something to the fact that I didn't even consider Siri because I have forgotten that Siri is a thing that exists that matters to anyone in the world. I think we can say my interview with them was the most surprising or. was the biggest success story of the year for Siri. It was certainly most attention to us. All right. I think we can leave that to the audience. But like somewhere in there,

it's one of the other two is the failure, right? Yeah, I think that's right. All right, startup of the year. Joanna, what do you have? I'm doing the 1X, the 1X Neo. Really? Uh-huh. Because I think, you didn't ask like best startup product of the year.

I did not. You just said best startup of the year. Correct. And I think that this company made a lot of buzz for good and bad about humanoid robots and is really showing us where the hype fails or is just hype at this point. And I think they are doing some really interesting and fun things focused on home robotics. Okay. I mean, again, we're just at like Joanna touts her viral videos in this portion of the show here.

We're about to get to who Joanna has a book coming out. There we go. Which you missed the last time we were on the verge cast. Oh, I listened. Don't you worry. I'm well aware of Joanna's book. Don't worry. I, okay, here's mine, which is, does Anthropic still count as a startup?

I honestly, I'm genuinely asking this. Yeah, it was open AI as startup. I know. I mean, open AI certainly was not the startup of the year, whether it's a startup or not. Oh, no. Anthropic is a great choice if we think Anthropic is still a startup. I know. It's like, Anthropic is like racing to go public is, going to have one of the biggest IPOs in history.

And like I, it may not count as a startup. But like if you had to pick a private company of the year, I think Anthropic had as good a year as anybody I can think of. It is like for it just sort of coasts on all of the good things about AI that people like and avoids all of the insanity that is swirling around like open AI and perplexity. I'll give you, I'll give you one in that same zone. And I actually, now that I've looked at a list, I feel comfortable with this one. I think Cursor is the startup. Yeah, that's a good one. Like, dominant in its field, over delivering on the promise it is making about what I can do for people.

I've heard from big companies that were on, like, co-pilot that switched to Cursor and the engineers are much happier. Yeah. And I would say, Anthropic is like, I don't know if it's a start. It's like a multi-billion dollar Amazon and Google funded frontier. Like, it's just a different thing. Curser is a product company. And I think their product really defined the entire market. That's a good one.

I think the other one I would say in that vein that I hear about a ton is Notion, which was also way out in front of a lot of business AI stuff where they're like, what if we can take all of your data and point these AI systems at it in order to like you can basically like build yourself work tools inside of your work tool. They were way ahead of that. That stuff is really working. It's going very well for them from what I understand. But I think I think cursor is a good.

one. Joanna, I think my only thing is I am just like constitutionally against the idea of humanoid robots coming into my house anytime soon. I just thought, look, visiting them and I followed their journey through the year, but it's like there's something very early app store type of development about some of these companies, right? All the hype, all the money, all the excitement when you go visit these companies. They've got all the like typical startup stuff. And when I visited their company, I just like felt that. I was like, okay, you know, you guys have way too much money to play around with. You're doing crazy stuff here. You think we want to have these teleoperated robots in our house.

And then, of course, yeah, the story kind of went viral and, like, got a lot of people talking about the hype. So I just think the impact of that was good. It was interesting. I buy that. I think, yeah, we don't all have to agree, but I like cursor as a pick here personally. I do, too. I think that's a good one. All right.

Next up, gadget of the year. Surprisingly not a thrilling list of gadgets to pick from this year, at least, from the stuff that I was looking through. I'm going to just say, I think it's the iPhone 17 Pro in orange. Really? I don't think it's the orange specifically, but I think that got the most attention. Honestly, in years, I have never had a better iPhone. Really? Yes.

That's so interesting. It's like the smallest stuff, and it's just, it's a, like, I finally went back to a pro after being on a max for so many years. Not so many years, like two or three years because of the battery life. And this is great now for battery life. Fair enough. And other than that, it's really no different than my 16. Yeah, I mean, but that's like not the gadget of the year. Yeah, I think it's like a.

It's not a super. Two seconds ago, you're like, here's this robot that's weird that I love. I'm not buying. I mean, I did put a pre-order down for that robot, but like that's my job. A gadget that has improved my life, I can't think of much else this year that I tested or got. I did test the Matic robot vacuum, which I love. That's been living with me for most of the year. That's a great robot.

Talk about that in the book. But like this, I'm just, just practical, practical purchase. I bought an iPhone. It was a great purchase. I'm happy with it. Nealai, tell me you have a less boring answer than that. There's no way. I don't know.

For someone who is like, I saw a guy manually control a robot to go to iPhone 17. There's something about you doing all this AI coverage, Joanna that has made you crave stability. Oh, yes. I say that. The best gadget is the one that isn't, like, isn't dangerous. It's not trying to kill me or sleep with me at any time. But I don't think we're underestimating how going from a giant phone to a smaller phone has just, like, been great for my life.

Yeah. I mean, look, you're, you're allowed to have your pants pockets. I don't drop it on my face when I'm sleeping. Like, you know. Okay, my answers, I mean, it's not out yet, but I kind of want to say the steam machine. Oh, here we go with the steam machine. Well, I just like, I, this is a bet. This episode is coming out on December 9th. And this is a bet that this thing is going to be out by December 31st.

Well, no, I don't know. Like, I don't think so. Okay. But if I had to like, I mean, maybe this is just recency bias. But if I had to like look at a thing and be like, well, that will change the market it's in. There's that one. There's other stuff like the, you know, I want to say the meta display glasses for some reason, just because it's like it's the first of its category, like self-contained display AR-ish glasses. The problem is that they're not very good. They're not good.

Yeah. I mean, like, I have tested those and been wearing them and I wear meta glasses honestly most of the year. But like that wasn't like incremental improvements from last year, man, not really. You just pick the iPhone 17 Pro. Right. But like that's the thing. Incremental improvement was they added a battery to it. But I now have a smaller phone.

I have an iPhone pro, not a Macs, that has better battery life. I hear what you're saying. The meta glasses didn't get the regular rayband glasses didn't get better. Like they're slightly better. But they're not like, I don't need to go out and buy them. It's like it's like an iPhone 16 to iPhone 17 jump. No, I don't mean the regular glasses. I mean the display glasses.

But that, I have been wearing the display glasses, and they're not great. They are not great. This is what I'm saying. This is why I'm torn by it very specifically. Yeah. Because I'm drawn, when you're at gadget of the year, I'm drawn to category changers. Yeah, I hear you. I think the steam machine will be a category changer.

I think the meta display glasses will be a category changer. I agree. Or something like them will be. So we should have two different categories. We should have category changer gadget of the year and we should have gadget of the year. No. No. Because I bought a slightly better iPhone is not a gadget of the year.

It just isn't. And I realize I'm saying this also. I had two. What do you think the most sold gadget of the year was? The iPhone. But like that means it almost shouldn't count. Like the category should be iPhone of the year. Every year it's just last year's iPhone but cheaper.

We should almost rule it out. Like of course. Like, it's the one that everyone has. It changed the most lives. I don't know. I tested so much stuff this year, and this is the one that I was, I just feel is. If you, like, if you were like gunned to your head, pick a phone to be gadget of the year, I would pick the pixel fold over the iPhone. Right.

Like, here's the thing that's the closest to the next version of phones. So we should have, then it should be boring ass gadget of the year. iPhone of the year. What a fun superlative. In high school, Joanna, I'm going to give you the most boring but fine. of the year, every year in high school. Honestly, I think that was. If you open my earbook, that's me.

You never really think about her, but she's great. You know what I mean? Unremarkable of the year. Yeah, yeah, that's when you open my yearbook. There's a picture of me under that. Yeah. All right, David, what's here? Everybody's like, oh, right, Joanna, I remember.

Mine, I had two. And I've given Joanna a lot of crap here, and both of mine actually, like, slightly fall into this category. One was the M4 Mac Mini, which I think is just like the best deal in the history of computers. It came out this spring. I have one. I love it to pieces.

It is just in terms of like, this is the first thing in a very long time that unseated, the MacBook Air is just like the default computer I tell people to buy. I also tell a lot of people to buy the M4 MacBook Air, which I also have and is also great. But that was the one that I love the way that you love the iPhone 17, Joanna. The other one I think is the Switch 2. And this is the one I'm actually. more prepared to defend.

Because this was the rare thing, I think, that was, it was hyped to death. It kind of had no chance to live up to what everybody thought it might be. Everybody's waiting for it to be wild. It turned out to just be like a much better version of this already, like, class leading category changing thing Nintendo did seven years ago. And it worked. Like, it sold huge. It has great games.

It is like coming into its own in a really great way, even months after coming out. Like, to me, it just, they just did the thing in a way that you don't often see sequels do. So to me, it was a... I like that. I think, yeah. And, you know, I asked before, like, what's the most best selling? I mean, they've, we don't have total figures, but they've sold a lot of those. Yeah, it's gone, it's gone very well from what we can tell.

And I also use mine all the time, much to my entire family's chagrin. But yeah, I think, Neelai, if steam machines, ship. I like steam machines as a thesis. I will just give you that. But A, we don't know what they cost. And that's a real big piece of the equation here. And the longer we go without knowing what they cost, the more I worry about what they're going to cost. And B, they're probably not going to ship this year. So it doesn't matter anyway. Yeah. So I'm stuck with these stupid bed of display glasses. Yep. I hate this answer. I pick the iPhone. Can I pick like matter light bulbs? Yes. You can. You can. The new IKEA light bulbs.

gadget to you this year. That's such a different category. Well, we're changing the category. We're going to get to that. I have a bonus thing at the end for all of us. We'll get to that. We're not going to get to that. We're not.

Real quick, let's take a break, and then we're going to come back. We're going to do more categories. Be right back. Support for the show comes from Framer. Framer is an enterprise-grade, no-code website builder, used by teams at companies like Perplexity and Muro to move faster. With real-time collaboration and a robust CMS, with everything you need, for great SEO, not to mention advanced analytics that include integrated A-B testing,

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Yes. Elon Musk, for instance, doesn't count because this happened before 2025. You can't, he heel turned before 2025. So he doesn't count. So they have to have done the heel. turn this year. Is it like so bad it's cool or just bad? Let me give you my example. So my my heel turn of 2025 was Mark Benioff just absolutely out of nowhere on a private jet demanding that Donald Trump send the National Guard to San Francisco. Just just completely unprompted goes fully wild to a reporter, makes everybody turn against him and then basically says like just kidding, that was bad call, never mind. And then tries to go back to being Mark Benioff. unbelievable heel, like just off the top rope heel turn for Mark Benioff.

And I really admire that as the wrong word, but I really appreciate how hard he went after that one. So that's mine for 2025. All right. Mine is to come. It's like a, it's a thing that they said that I suspect will cause absolute chaos. Okay. Mine is Neil Mullen, the CEO of YouTube, saying the future of YouTube is AI. Ooh.

I don't know what that means. I don't know that means. But I do know that if you ask Google VO or nanobanana to generate a picture of a tech reviewer, it generates Marquez-Brownly, which certainly suggests that Google is training its AI systems on YouTube. Not even like kind of Marquez Brownley. It's just Marquez. It's not even like a facsimile of Marquez Brownley. It's just Marquez. Yeah, he's like, hey, guys.

It just happens. Hey, guys. I just tested the iPhone 17 Pro. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. In orange. It's a gadget of the year, everybody. It's a gadget of the year.

Ridiculous. That's it. That's what I got. I just see that thing coming for the YouTube economy. It will be the heel turn. I think that's a good one. Joanna, what do you have? I don't really have anything.

No? No, because I feel like it's got to be something like really evil versus just like turns bad. And I don't feel like anything has been like super. I almost picked. I could pick like all kinds of other stuff. I almost picked that just that photo at the dais at the Trump inauguration. I know. I was thinking about that too. That photo is your heel turn right there. Yeah. I had that later though for talking more about like the policy moves of the year.

But I guess I could put that in here. Okay. All right. Well, we can come back to that. No, I think that is like an iconic image of tech image of the year. Yes. All right. Next one is the worst new buzzword of the year. Oh, we're all going to pick the same thing. I don't think so. What did you pick? I would pick agentic. Okay.

I had agentic first, but then I had a backup. What was your backup? So I exactly had a backup. It's vibe whatever. So vibe coding, vibe shopping, vibe Raiders, whatever you want to put in. No. Okay, so I had vibe coding too, Joanna. And I think like vibe as a whole is probably a better answer.

Yeah, because like right now everyone's talking about vibe shopping. Oh, God. Yeah. And so everyone's putting vibe before things that. Like, let's not. Let's stop. The problem is, like, I don't, this is also one of those things where it's like, we're trying to pretend that just because there's a large language model somewhere underneath that it's now a completely new thing that we're doing. And in fact, it's just like slightly new software. And like, let's just call shopping.

You know what I mean? It's like, yeah. I mean. Like, let's just move past it. It's just shopping. It's fine. This is how we shop on the internet now. Did we used to, like, I don't know, 25 years ago, did they call it?

it like e-shopping? They probably did. I think, yeah, cyber, cyber shopping. Cyber shopping. Cyber shopping. That's a different thing. Yeah, that's a different thing. I don't say cybering. That's not that's not it. That's still not the worst buzzword of the year. Cyber. Cyber. Cybering still in 2025, still the worst buzzword of the year.

The worst buzzword of every year. I'm going with Agentic. Yeah, it's good. I think these two are very good. The thing with Agentic is at least it describes what it is. Like I hate the trend, but at least Agentic is. But it's come to mean nothing because they say agentic is everything and it is nothing is actually agentic. If you even know what agentic means. Yeah. We're an agentic, you know, sales commerce platform. It's like what? That's nothing.

No, it's like a South by Southwest word. It is. What was it? Mobile, local, social that they always make fun of, made fun of in Silicon Valley on HBO. This, it feels like that. Also, for some reason, this is not related to the Vergecast. But the minute I started thinking about worst new buzzword, the phrase aura farming just came to mind. And I just want to say that out loud once because I don't like that either. All right. Next one is the best AI thing of 2025. You can define AI thing however you want, but it has to be the best one. Joanna, I want you to go first because you spent the year literally doing all of the AI things. I know. What was the best one of 2025? Well, there's like the stuff that like can show where I think we're going, but then there's

the stuff that, like, again, the practical use right now, I think I want to say AI search, right? Okay. Like, AI mode for Google is not, oh, here we go, Neely, what, just say it, say it. It's not good. Yes, it is. Yeah, I mean, it is getting a lot better. And also, for so much of the year, I just stopped using Google. And, like, now having AI intertwined with Google is a lot better.

So first half of the year, I just didn't use Google and I used chat GPT. And it was pretty frustrating in certain places, but in a lot of places, much better than regular search. And now having AI mode there is, I would say, I use Google a good amount still. But I'm still using chatubt far more than I ever thought I would for search stuff. I had this too. And I was surprised that this was my answer. but I have, frankly, resisted web search in AI tools because, like, as someone who relies on the web existing to have a job, I think they are problematic in huge ways. But also, it's like if I want to buy something on the internet, chat GPT is a vastly better way to figure out what thing I should buy than Google.

It just is really getting so angry at us and I just don't want to be on the podcast anymore. Who cares? Here's the best AI thing in the year. It's this weird soul cover of killing in the name by Rage Against the Machine. That's the best AI thing in the year, right here. The name. That's pretty good. What are you shopping?

This is weird robot magic. This is actually one of the bad. Send this to me? It's pretty good. Send this to me? The one, Mila, I have sent this to me. It's so weird. The one of these that always crosses my feet is there is this like AI pop punk band called

Skate Avenue. which is like a perfect AI pop punk band name. I'm going to look it out. It means nothing, but it also means everything. I have. And the number one thing that I love about it is I see these videos everywhere. Like it's like a very popular sound to use on TikTok. And in every single one, the very top comment is somebody going, Spotify, when?

I tried to. And then immediately somebody responds and goes, it's AI, bro. Like every single time. And it makes me laugh so hard. I have a lot of weird, conflicted, mostly negative feelings about AI slop. And then there's just like this. this one thing where it's like here are these covers that would have never existed but for Suno and they kind of rip and they're kind of and it's fine it's just fine and it's I think easily

the best AI development of the year yes it's everywhere like people send me that because we've talked about it on the not that song but just weird covers on the version like everyone has sent me that cover of right of killing the name of my Rajan's machine it's pretty good uh it's it's where i don't think they it's AI like it makes some mistakes yeah I I would have done the last chorus differently. It's all I'm saying. If you're out there robots, call me, you know? But usually the best thing of the ear is like it got more complicated to judge the output of the generative systems in a specific way. Whereas like, who cares? I don't agree with that big picture thesis. I do agree that there are occasionally good things, maybe. I,

whatever happens to the music industry happens to everything else five years later. That's like a long running trope at the verge and like I don't know about AI video like watching Mr. Rogers and Tupac is like funny and then it's like very depressing. What's happening in the music industry, it is it got there very fast. And like the label's all cave. They all sign deals with Suno. Like music is years at war with each other. And I'm saying best AI thing of the year is just that one song.

But is it. That's it. That's what I'm thinking. And I stand by it. But it is the signal. of everything to come, I think. So if the category was like leading indicator of the year, it's also that song. Suno.

Leading indicator of the year is Suno. That's probably right. Yeah. I still think our AI search is a good answer. I'm still going with WebSarch. I think for me it is the only thing that has settled into my like everyday use case. There's other stuff that I go kind of do on purpose just to like experiment or because I have a thing that I need. to do.

Same. But the only thing that has sort of wormed its way into, like, my just default day-to-day existence is web search in those tools. I mean, I straight up had Chatsubitit negotiate to buy my car for me. But you hated that. The dealers would send me their deals, and I would put it in Chatsyoteen. And we'd be like, say these things. And I'm like, all right, I said those things.

Did it work? I feel zero guilt about buying a car, right? So, like, I was like, whatever. There's robots talking to you, not me. And it totally works. I got a great deal on the car. That's pretty good. All right.

But I think it might have been because I was so confidently insistent that I needed to get a better deal because the robot was constantly telling me. Like, I don't know. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. I might have vibe dealed. You've, oh. You did vibe deal. You really did.

And I just. That sucks. Honestly, that term works. I don't like it at all. Oh, I hate it. It doesn't work, Joanna. Don't give me any ideas. I know.

It kind of works. You know it does. All right. All the way on the flip side. worst AI thing of 2025. I want to lump together like almost all the AI gadgets that I tested. I tested a lot of them and wore many of them throughout the year. I would say the friend was almost the worst of all of those just because the marketing and then the reality of that product was just like it is a paperweight.

It doesn't do anything. But I would just put all of those things there. I would agree with this, but I will actually. a little more conceptually, I would say whenever Sam Altman brought Johnny Ive to talk about. Was that this year? It's all been this year. My original pick for this was whatever Sam Altman and Johnny Ive are building together. It's not out yet.

You mean the San Francisco love scene? Yeah, yeah, the video where they're like walking through San Francisco and they shut down San Francisco. That video alone is a pretty good pick. And that image alone of them standing in the white, like the black and white, I mean, has become. Yeah. just the image of the year. They just did a talk recently where Johnny Ave was just describing

his ideas for products. And it said a bunch of Johnny I have stuff. Like, it has to feel inevitable. And like, what are shapes? And like Johnny I have stuff. And I think Casey posted like, this is what you would say if you had no idea what your product was.

Because he ended that whole speech with like, they're just ideas, you know? Thanks, Johnny. No, I've seen enough Open AI executives talking about this device now that it's something. It's something, things exist. Oh, yeah.

I do not know if they've settled on anything, but they all talk about it. Like, they're either super scared to say anything, which I think is like part of it, but also they have no idea what it really is. Like maybe it's been described to them in concept or they've seen it. But like, it's almost humorous when you realize like, do they know what they're talking about? I'm just saying they can't make anything that isn't a humane pin. I mean, I'm hoping they make something that is in a pin. The most you can accomplish is humane pin. Like, all these things are fundamentally humane pins.

Yes. But like the friend is a humane pin. The rabbit was a cheaper, dumber humane pin. The humane pin was a humane. Like, they're all the same. The humane pin sure was a human pin. It was the most humane. But like all of them are the same idea, which is, what if you didn't have a phone?

What if you didn't have a screen? What if the LLM was listening and like going off to do things for you? and you just had a companion. And like John, the way they talk about it, like in that video, Johnny Ab was like, they described the laptop as a legacy device, as the phone as a legacy device. And it's like, all right, what's next? And it's like the only thing you can get to is there's an LLM that's in a little thing

that's always with you that's listening. And it's like, oh, it's a humane pin. And I believe that they can make a beautiful humane pin. And there are already examples of that idea being so much better than the humane pin and so much better than the friend. Like, I actually think the B, the bracelet that always records that Amazon ended up purchasing is a step in that direction. It's not a beautiful device, but it worked far better than a humane pin or a friend. Sure.

I just, here's what I know. I know Sam Altman is addicted to tweeting. And he has to ship a consumer device that doesn't let him tweet, right? Like, because it won't have an application to do it or won't have a web browser. And like, eventually he'll be like, my phone's pretty good. You see it coming. It's, but easily the worst, like... You know what he's going to say?

The best gadget of the year is the iPhone 17 Pro. That's my thing is, like, the most vaporware AI thing that made everybody be like, the future is coming is, it's so obviously nonsensical, in my opinion. That's not bad. My answer was Sora, too, which has, like, kind of single-handedly made all of my social video feed. feeds unusable. And there are a bunch of other things out there, but I think SORS2 is kind of the leading candidate for a lot of this stuff that,

like, I've reached a point now where half of the stuff that I see on TikTok and Instagram either is or might be or everybody thinks is AI generated. And it's just, it just sucks. It's like for some reason my feed recently has been filled with dogs saving children from various things falling on top of them. The exploding packages when porch pirates come to take them away.

The talking babies, though, I don't think it is from Sora, but those are so good. Look, the Talking Babies, like, my Instagram algorithm knows I love it, and I have tons of them, and I've seen all of them, and I love them. I don't know. I don't actually think they're Sora made. Maybe not. They may be VO or something. I don't know.

Yeah, there's a bunch of them out there, and they're all getting very good, very quickly in the same sort of uncanny valleyish way. But it has really reached a point where, like, you can't just sit and scroll anymore because half of it's fake and the other half of it might be. And all the fake stuff is like, it's just not fun or interesting or cool and I wish people would stop doing it.

And then every conversation about every video is this AI generated. And it's just exhausting. Yeah. I don't like it. And I wish it would stop. And Neil, to your point about Neil Mohan, like, we're just going further down that road.

26 is going to get worse. He said it out loud. The future of YouTube is AI. And it's like, oh, boy. Because they think you'll watch anything. That's the pitch. Great. All right.

Next category, speaking of people like Neil Mohan, big tech CEO most likely to be a podcaster in 12 months. Okay, so I have some foundational questions about this one. Guest or host? Host. No one wants to be the host. Somebody who is a host. You don't want to be the host.

You know, you can't, like, think about, like, Satya or any of these guys being the host and being, like, I have questions. Like, no, no, there are the answers. Their job is to be the answers. Yeah, what's this supposed to be? But isn't this like a joke question? No, this is who, which of the big tech CEOs is going to lose their job and launch a podcast in 12 months? Oh, you're much more specific about that. Yeah, that was not how.

I read this. Not just like branded content podcaster. Either one. I'll take you the one. Like Mark Benioff has a podcast. Yeah, exactly. Charlie did a podcast for it. Like they're out.

Brad Smith did one at Microsoft. None of those are the CEO of a big tech company. We're doing a great job proving my point here. See, I had down Mustafa. They all want to be the guest. I had, see, I had down Mustafa Sullyman because he's on every podcast. That's not bad. And I just see him on every podcast.

So that's where I thought you were going with this was like most likely to be a podcaster because they are on every podcast and love. podcasts. Again, I'm just going to come back to the core problem with being a podcaster is being the host sucks. It does. All these guys want to be the guest. They want to receive the questions and then sound smart in response and be validated by the host. I say this as a person who sells the opportunity. I was going to say. Validated to CEOs on the regular. They don't want to ask the questions. So like unless they launch like a buddy podcast, there's a lot of these out there where you launch the podcast and you end up as the guest.

Yes. And you've got someone who's like the other host and it's whatever. It's the Tim Cook podcast. But then like Greg Jaws, we ask it. Like that could happen. But they don't want to. That is definitely not going to happen. This is why I'm asking my guest for a host.

Yeah. Okay. Let me just, these are all fair points. Let me just ask a different version of this question. If I'm giving you Tim Cook, Sundarpe Chai, Satya and Adela, Jensen Wong. Jensen. Who's the best, who would be most likely to be a great podcast host?

Jensen. You think it's Jensen? Absolutely, Jensen. Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I think they all could do it. I think all these people are great at talking and will. Tim Cook would be an awful podcast host. Like, just awful.

Imagine Cook trying to do the banter at the beginning of the show. That's what I mean. Give Tim Cook like an Auburn football podcast and it might go fine. I don't know. I just don't see it. I will say this out loud. I don't know if you've ever asked, Trana, but I've never even asked for Kukon Decoder.

It has just never come up. It's never even on the list. I'm like, I don't, there's nothing to learn here. I don't have a podcast to host, so I don't ask for such things. You've asked for interviews. Like, you've interviewed other Apple executives. Like, I think Craig has, like,

interesting things to say about garage door openers. But it never even occurs to me that I should ask Tim Koko question. I think Sotianadella might be an excellent podcaster. I think it's in there somewhere. I've seen him be good on the stand. at the Google search trial. We've seen him say spicy stuff recently on podcasts. Like there's a good take artist in there in Satya Nadella in a way that I don't know that I see it in some of the other CEOs.

So you're imagining kind of like a Stephen A Smith situation for Satcher where he just gets on solo on the mic and he's just going for it. Exactly. All right. I'll buy that one. Just a full hour of Satcha. Having interviewed Satcha, he does have it. right like we're like three years into i will make google dance and like they're still pissed about it like he can do it yeah he can throw the jabs when he needs to um all right this that whole

question was just designed for me to say sotia quit your job and start a podcast i'll listen be step exactly um okay next one uh the policy move of the year uh and this this can be from the perspective of the people making the policies or from the perspective of the people making the policies or from the perspective of the people on the end of the policies. This is, Neely, this is also your permission to have a lot of feelings about Brendan Carr, if you so decide. But you don't have to.

I wanted to make it so that you don't have to, but you can if you'd like to. The biggest one of the year in that context then is Brendan Carr going after Jimmy Kimmel, that launching an outcry, them having to back down Kimmel going back on the air in a total reset of like free speech norms in the country. Right?

Like Ted Cruz being like, I'm going to defend free speech against Brendan Carr is a weird outcome of all of that, which is a thing that is happening. Yeah, it's got to be that. I can't think of another policy move that had that much repercussion into the culture. Everything else is kind of on the edges. Like, I mean, out in tech, like obviously the Trump administration had massive policy moves left and right. But in kind of Vergecastland, it's got to be the Jimmy Kimmel situation. The only other one I was going to say is, I think, meta sort of fully dodging the monopoly allegations was a huge one. Just the way that that case came out, I think is going to end up having like a lot of ramifications in a lot of directions that all of a sudden there are a lot of people who are like, oh, big acquisitions are allowed again.

And meta gets to keep doing meta things. And like there was a world in which meta had to get rid of Instagram and that would have changed a lot of things. in a lot of ways. And this is like a gigantic victory for a company that I think has been very afraid of what might happen. But I really like Jimmy Kimmel on that one. I think just as a pure politicking decision, that is one a lot of people are going to remember for a really long time. Joanna, did you have anything else? I mean, I think just like if I, I know we're like kind of pointing here to very specific things, but I would say what we were talking about before, that image of every big tech CEO gathered around in the whatever room.

It was, I think that all is just like just so emblematic of kissing the ring, closing up to the administration, and then seeing repercussions, whether it's been data center bills or tariffs and all types of flexibility for these companies, I think is probably the, you know, the big policy move of the years of these people just kissing the ring and going to the way. If I actually have one image of that, it's Tim Cook presenting him with the. Oh, yeah, that's a great one too. I'm just about to say there's a perfect image if you want to describe everything that happened in politics this year with the tech industry. A 24-carat golden glass. It looks like a record that just says President Donald Trump. I mean, Tim Cook, he can never retire. This is all I'm saying.

He cannot retire until Trump is out of office. You cannot introduce him to a new guy at this stage in his life. one of the questions that we talked about last year was will Tim Cook still be the CEO of Apple. And after a year filled with a lot of people saying it might maybe, is he possibly retiring? Is the, what's the succession? Boy, is that man still in charge. And there's a, I think, a Bloomberg report saying that all those rumors are false. And it's because you cannot introduce Donald Trump to a new guy right now.

No. It's not, he's not in the business and you guys. That's not a thing. All right, we've got to take one more break. And then we're going to go back. We're going to do the last three categories. We're going to get out of here. We're right back. Support for the show comes from LinkedIn.

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Terms and conditions apply. All right, we're back. Three more categories to go. Two that I told you about and one that I forgot to tell you about. We're going to get to all of them right now. The first one is product announcement. we're most excited about for 2026. Nealai, if you'd like, I will allow you to use steam machines here because that is actually

Yeah, that's the lot. I'm just taking it. Okay. Either that thing is going to work. You're not like a gamer. Make the case for steam machines. I'm surprised that you in particular would think this is like a huge deal. 2026 is the year of Linux on the desktop, David.

And I think it's important to say that out loud. Okay. I think the... Can that be your answer? Forget the steam machine. The product announcement you're most successful. of Leverts 2026 is Linux on the desktop. It's time.

It's finally time since I was a young boy. I've been waiting to be the year of Linux on the desktop. I think the fact that Valve has invested so much in making Windows games run on Linux and on Arm, and then they're putting out actual hardware to do that thing will completely bottom out the consumer market for Windows PCs in a very specific kind of way. and it will make people rethink, like, why do I have PCs? Like, why am I running the overhead of Windows to play these games? Like, basically the growing part of the consumer Windows market outside of, you just have to have a 300-0 laptop, so here's some garbage you buy.

There's just something there that is going to make Microsoft in particular react to it, which I think is fascinating. And I think people are going to be generally excited about a game console again. Yeah. Because that hasn't been a thing. You mentioned the Switch 2, but like the console wars are about to get reset on top of it, which is, I think is fascinating. I buy it. That's a good answer. Joanna, what's yours? I think it's a foldable iPhone.

Like, I'm very interested to see, I mean, the reports do say the fall. Yeah. I'm just very interested to see how Apple approaches this, what they're going to do on software. Yeah, I think. Do you think it's going to flip or fold? Is it, is it a clamshell or is it a, is it a, is it a, is it a, to shutters? I want to say it would fold, like up, right?

No, sorry, that's flip. I do think, I don't know. I'm torn because I am like very, I come at it from the view of what software they currently have and how they would adapt it. And so I think if you fold and you go out, you're kind of really thinking like iPad territory and are we going to see some sort of flexibility there versus like if you just flip up, they don't have to do. do a ton of software reconstruction to make that happen.

I don't know. The rumor, the last rumor I read about Apple's attempts at this were all about how they would get rid of the screen crease. Right. And they would put, they would put some structure underneath the crease to even it out, which really implied fold, not flip. True. I mean, there is a crease in the flip phones, but it's a much bigger.

No, I meant that they would need the space in the bigger form factor to do the structure to get rid of the crease. Oh, I see. That's, yeah, that's fair. Right. So that implies they were putting something under there to create tension under the screen to get rid of the crease. Got it. Yeah. So that implies it's like an iPad mini that folds into the size of an iPhone, not an iPhone that folds into the size of an Apple Watch, which is what it should be, to be clear. That's what you want? That's what I want. I want a flip phone. I don't think people are like, what if my phone was bigger? I don't think that's like a feeling a lot of people have. No, we just spent half the podcast talking about how happy I am that don't have that big phone anymore.

Yeah. Okay. Mine is the touchscreen Mac, which again... Is that said to come next year? It is said to come next year. Mark Herman of Bloomberg and others have been reporting that this is actually a real thing that's in the pipeline and could launch as soon as next year. And I am excited about this thing, not necessarily because I want one. But so I can win this bet finally. Even though I do want one. But it's for exactly that reason, Joanna. It is because this will make sense. so many debates and so many fights and so many bets and so many questions actually come to a head in the world. I can't wait. What do we want from our computers? And that, I think, like, this thing, it just, it will be what it will be. And then we will know and we can stop talking about it.

Let's do it. I'm very excited about that. We have to go back to that podcast of many years ago where we all made our predictions about the year that this would happen. I need to find it. There's a long time ago. I will write it down and I will find it. Well, so put those ideas next to each other. You have an iPhone that unfolds into something that's like an iPad,

and you have a Mac that lets you touch it. The question is, like, what is left for the iPad? Like, weird. Are you going to allow iPad-style multitasking on your foldable iPhone? You certainly have to allow Mac-style multitasking on your touchable Mac. Yes, you do. Yes. So I, if we were, if there was a category here that was David's great call,

of the year. It's that liquid glass sucks, which I have been so, I took one look at liquid glass and I was like, this ain't it, friends. And everybody was like, just weird. And they know it sucks. And I was right. And I feel great about it. The thing that liquid glass like portends is this like incredible collapse of Apple's gadgets. That actually they're all sort of the same thing with the same ideas about how they're all supposed to work. That it is just like, it is screen in various shapes and sizes. Everything is screen and and you attach things to it as you would like to, but it's just screen. And that's what you're talking about, Neely. Like if all this stuff happens, there will be a bunch of things about the same size and shape that move in slightly different ways that Apple's going

to have to make a bunch of like really weird, complicated decisions about how they're supposed to work that are going to be very complicated to get right. And I like everything is screen. I like everything is screen. I like that as a slogan. That's not Apple. Apple needs to sell you an iPad, an iPhone, and a Mac on cadences every year. They're not going to sell you one thing that turns into other stuff. But like functionally that if we get a touchscreen Mac and an iPad and a foldable iPhone, all three of those things have a case to be essentially the same device.

Sure, yeah, but have you met these people? They want to sell you three devices. Yeah. It's the opposite of the Steve Jobs keynote. That's a marketing question, right? Well, yeah, but that's the product they're going to make. sure. They're going to put the walls up in the product to keep you from doing the thing. Yes, but what that's turning into is they're going to make them all slightly worse in the name of selling them all to you.

Yes, yes, exactly. You're going to unfold your iPhone and you're going to scroll to the right, and you're going to keep scrolling, and it's going to have to go to the last screen that says, you've gone too far. You have to buy an iPad now. Yeah. And they're going to ban you from attaching any kind of Bluetooth keyboard to that iPhone. You see what I'm saying? If you connect a mouse. I mean, this is like very cynical. I mean, they're not going to do. This is going to be terrible. Like, you know, I don't think that's. It's going to be an iPad where you can't, like, run to your app on it or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or it's going to unfold and you can't run iPad apps on it.

Look, I can't wait for this verge cast in 2026. It's going to be a multi-series verge cast of everything is screen. What is computer? If Apple launches a touchscreen Mac, I promise you that A, the three of us will do a verge cast about it. And, B, it will be four hours long. It will be 24 hours long. Like, yeah, it will just do a 24-hour live stream of just us. talking about it. Let's see how long we can do it. I like this. All right, next category,

the headphone jack memorial award for Thing That Died in 2025. It can be a feature, it can be a whole thing, it can be a company, whatever you want, a thing that died in 2025 that you're sad about. Can I merge this with a category that you have for if we won't get time for it? Sure. Okay, because David has most insidious insertion of ads into a previously ad-free product. on the list down here in the cutline. Travis, our producer, gets credit for that one. And I would just put the Memorial Award for the thing that died was ad-free products. Because as soon, like, I was at my sister's house for Thanksgiving, and boy, there are just ads on her Lexodus play.

They're just there. Just the weirdest Amazon ads you have ever seen in your entire life. All of the streaming services were like the ad supported tiers or growth tier, that's the one we're doing. it is just the ad the ad free internet experience has come to an end. Yes. My least favorite thing right now

is my two and a half year old really likes watching The Grinch, which is on Peacock. And every, we watch, you know, it's a 90 minute movie. There are 15 ad breaks. And every single time it comes on,

he goes, I don't like this part. And I have to explain to him what commercials are. And I'm not a fan. This is just, just, we're back to, there was like a generation that like everybody grew up with commercials, right?

It was like that was a general. Our parents all grew up with commercials. That's just like what it was. And then for a long time, nobody had commercials. We could avoid them. You could fast forward past them. You could skip them entirely. And now we are just fully back to commercials and everything.

Yeah. I don't like it. Neither does my toddler. I don't have an answer for this of something that like was phased out that I'm sad about. Mine is Skype. Oh, that's a good one. I forgot that there was absolutely no icon. Purely emotional.

I have not used Skype in probably a decade. But Skype died officially this year. And I was like weirdly sad about it. Skype was like cool and important and good in the history of the internet. And should have. I also think the like how Skype fumbled the pandemic story remains weird and wild and unknown. But but yeah, that was the one that I was looking back at like all the stuff that went away this year. And Skype was the only one that made me go like, oh, Skype.

What else went? Like, I just can't. Like, the humane pin going away is not a sad thing. The humane pin went away. I know you were sad about that, John. I was not sad. I still have mine sitting here and I'm like,

I have no idea what to do with it. The laser projector, it still projects. It doesn't project anything. But I can still, I can hold out my hand and not see what's on it. Yeah, exactly. It's just a sad face.

All right. Last category is the best thing that you personally spent your own money on this year. Oh, I have such an esoteric answer for. for this. This is allowed. What do you got? Um, we, we put a TV for Max in the basement and it's like an LG TV and you can just buy huge triplets and put them on the back and then you can just enable the feature in the LCD TV to make them the backlight. And it's just a thing that worked. Of the TV? Of the TV. Like it shines on the wall. You know, like you can do that ambitlight thing, but it's just built into the TV. It was like cheap and I just like put the strip lights on the TV and I was like, I'm buying this feature. and it looks cool and Max loves it and it just works. Like there's no subscription was involved in this. I just bought some strip lights and put them on the TV and it connected to the Hue app and we're off to the races and it's done.

And it was like one of those technology moments where I was like I bought something. The transaction was completed. No data is being sent away from my home. Like do you know what I mean? Yes. It was very good. That is. But easily one of the more delightful like, oh, this is just like.

I can just, like, yeah, that works. Like, it's done, you know? And, like, every time she turns on TV, she's happy. That's such a perfect smart home success story that you hardly ever hear where you're just like, I did a thing and then I set it up and now it works forever. Now I never have to think about this again. Yeah. Oh, I have more smart home stuff.

Actually, all of my best things I bought this year were like weird smart home gadgets. We bought smart shades for the baby's room and they just work. They're just matter smart shades that just work all the time. Were they new shades or they were like the ones that you put on? on the little attachments? We have both. So in Max's room, it's like they turn the chain

and they're really noisy, but they work. And then in the babies around, they're brand new, and they totally work. And they were cheap, and they just do the job they're meant to do.

And you can talk to, because they're a matter, you can talk to any of the things, and they just do the thing. And it's like, oh, this works. Like, this is an odd, you would not expect this to work.

Just I, Jen Tui was on the show a few weeks ago. and tried to sell me on smart shades. And I kind of waved her off and was like, that seems ridiculous. I can pull the shades down. And I have heard from so many people who were like, you don't understand.

Smart shades are incredible. Yeah. The thing where you can just make them go up and down is awesome. I'm like, I kind of get it. Particularly for baby room where you are constantly trying to make that room dark, a real thing. Yeah, those are the two that I would say, like,

oh, they just worked. And again, no subscription fees, no ecosystem lock. these are the things that I value now. Yeah. It's pretty good. My two are either the M4 Mac Mini, which I mentioned before, which is just a perfect regular human computer. Or I just bought this thing called the Yodo Player. I don't know if you guys know.

Oh, yeah, we have a Yodo Player. The Yoto Player is amazing. It's this little like music box for kids, basically. Oh, I've seen this. There's the Tony and there's the Yodo. And I said at one point in installer that I was going to buy a Tony. And I heard from, I'm not kidding, 50 people, easily 50 people who were like, don't buy that by the Yodo. It's better.

So I bought the Yodo. And it is maybe the most thoughtfully put together gadget I've used in years. It is like, it's this little thing. So it's a little music player. And it has some built in stuff like it can play radio stations and it has, it does sleep sounds. But its main thing is it has these like little. NFC cards that you stick in and it just starts playing whatever the card decides. But you can also use the NFC reader on your phone to scan them into a library on your phone

and you can play them that way. You can get cards. You can make cards. You can record cards. It's just like it is the most seamless gadget experience I can remember. Just wait till this thing falls off the Wi-Fi, dude. You just wait. I'm seven years deep into Yoto player. We never have had these, these Tonys or the, yeah, my kids were never into it. I guess it's actually the best thing is Max constantly falls asleep listening to a Yodo player and we, because it has a phone app, we can just turn off from our room. We're like, what is that?

Is that Rapunzel? I'll turn off on my phone. Maybe I'll try it. It's cute. It's good. I'm a fan. Yeah. So far, we like, we gave Arthur the Yoto and he like doesn't totally understand how it works.

yet, but he understands that he can stick the cards in and pull them out, and he likes that. It's all he needs to know. So that's, it's going great. Yep. Joanna, you have not picked yet. What's yours? Best thing you spent money on this year. It was the brother HL-L-246-0-D-W.

Boom. Is that actually the product name? Yep. Which you've memorized because you love it so much. Yep. I bought Nealai's favorite printer. I mean, you may have heard. The model number is so much farther ahead than me.

You may have heard I was writing a book this year, and I needed to print said book multiple times to copy edit and work on it. And I bought that printer and it is just the book printer. And I'm happy with it. Oh, I can do an honorable mention. We went home for Thanksgiving and my parents had a giant box of photos. And we bought the Epson Fast Photo scanner. Well, it's specifically the fast photo. Yeah, yeah.

And you just put in like a stack of 40 photos. I've tested it before. And it like, the scans aren't great, but the thing works. And then you just like dump them into Google Photos and you're done. Yeah. And it's really good. We have a weird shared family Google Photos account. And I'm like, oh, this thing works.

And it's like, it's printer software. Like, why is there a menu bar icon for the scanner to get out of my face? But it absolutely does the job. And I was like, oh, this is like another gadget where it didn't ask me for a subscription fee. This is my main criteria. It's like, did it ask me for a subscription fee? Neither did my brother printer. Yep.

And it did the job and it made my parents happy and that's all it matters. Joanna, how many pages do you think you've printed this year? Oh, thousands. I mean, like, yeah. And I liked, yeah. Yeah, I had to read, like, I had to read on paper. I had some people read, so I had to give it to them on paper. Lots of, lots of printing.

Do you have like an old-timey office now where it's just full of stacks? You're like a college professor from the 70s? It's just huge stacks of paper. everywhere. With markings on them. Because I don't want to throw them away. I'm like this poor paper. And I feel someone, I'm definitely going to get a listener telling me how wasteful it is that I printed these.

I understand listener and I hear you. And please don't email me. You should also know that Joanna lights them all on fire in an open field every time. I mean, I could use it as like, yeah, I could use it as. It's Joanna's landfill at gmail.com. You can email directly. Sponsor the show. All right. We have a bunch of other categories. Any other ones either of you want to get to before we get out of here?

Oh, I like to this one. Most memorable product keynote moment of the year. Hmm. I, the meta display keynote, the meta keynote where they were presenting and the Wi-Fi went out and none of their products worked was pretty great. Just, I've said this out loud several times already. Not a Wi-Fi problem. Your demo failed. Sorry. Not a Wi-Fi did not fail. They blamed the Wi-Fi. They supernumer blamed the Wi-Fi. No, they blamed the access point that was all of the, because when they said, hey, meta, they said they didos themselves. Yes, exactly.

Which I sort of believe. But, yeah, fundamentally stood on the stage and blamed the Wi-Fi. Definitely not the Wi-Fi. I mean, but there was actually a lot of memorable or cringe-worthy keynotes this year. There was the Jimmy Fallon Pixel. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That was tough. But I will say, like, we have seen a nice comeback this year of in-person keynotes.

We've had Amazon doing things in person. We've had meta doing things in person. And I think that's a nice trend. I do think for pure, like, cringe-inducing reasons alone, the meta one has to win. Oh, yeah. Because that was a truly brutal, like, 60 seconds to be part of, even sitting at my computer watching the live stream. Yeah. It was tough.

It was a tough beat out there. Yeah, that's my only one I would add. That's pretty good. All right, time for us to get out of here. Thank you both for doing this. This was very fun. We did not compete this time because, you know, next year we're going to compete again.

But I wanted us to all be nice to each other this year. But thank you both for doing this. This was super fun. And we're going to be back next time with some 2026 predictions. So until then, I'll see you all later. All right. That's it for the show. Thank you again to Joanna and Eli for being here.

And thank you, as always, for watching. and listening. If you have other superlatives, other things you think we should have added to those categories, other categories you think we should do next year, I want to hear all about it. Email us, Virgcast at the verge.com. Call the hotline 866, verse 1-1. Get at us. The year-end stuff is like an ever-changing idea, as you can tell, and eager to figure out even more stuff we can do going forward. So get at us with all of your questions about this and everything. Looking forward to hearing from you. Until then, the Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media podcast network.

Produced by River Branson, Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, and Travis Larchuk. We'll be back on Friday with a whole bunch more news because it's somehow the holiday season and the news just keeps newsin. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.