The Vergecast - All eyes on Samsung's thin new foldable

Episode Date: July 11, 2025

Summer phone season kicks off with Samsung’s latest launch. Jake, Vee, and Allison talk about Samsung’s new lineup of foldables, including the very thin new Z Fold 7 and Allison’s disdain for the Z Flip 7 FE. Vee has impressions of Samsung’s new Galaxy Watch 8 lineup and its squircle-y new redesign. Then, it’s time to talk Big Tech shakeups. Apple’s COO is leaving, Zuckerberg is buying himself an AI dream team, X’s CEO is out — and its chatbot Grok is on a rampage. Finally, big things are in store for the Lightning Round… which shall henceforth be known as the THUNDER ROUND. Lots to talk about, including Lorde’s CD problems, Apple’s Liquid Glass changes, and HBO Max finally becoming HBO Max again. Further reading: Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2025: Everything announced at the July event⁠ ⁠Galaxy Z Fold 7 hands-on: Samsung finally made the foldables we’ve been asking for⁠  ⁠Samsung cuts price of its foldables with the Z Flip 7 FE⁠ ⁠Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 series hands-on: squircle squad⁠ ⁠Samsung seems to have leaked its own trifold phone design⁠ ⁠Samsung says its trifold phone should launch ‘this year’⁠ ⁠Samsung snuck a trifold tease into (January) Unpacked⁠ ⁠One of Tim Cook’s possible successors is leaving Apple⁠ Sabih Khan⁠ Apple’s design team will report to Tim Cook⁠ A close look at who could succeed Tim Cook⁠  ⁠Mark Zuckerberg announces his AI ‘superintelligence’ super-group⁠ Meta is paying $14 billion to catch up in the AI race⁠ Meta’s ‘superintelligence’ hiring spree adds an AI leader from Apple⁠ Pay packages of up to $300 million over four years⁠ Meta is trying to win the AI race with money — but not everyone can be bought⁠  ⁠X CEO Linda Yaccarino is stepping down after two years⁠ X’s CEO is out after failing at basically everything she claimed she wanted⁠ Threads is catching up to X on mobile⁠ X has a new head of product⁠ Elon Musk’s xAI buys Elon Musk’s X for $33 billion on paper⁠ xAI updated Grok to be more ‘politically incorrect’⁠ Grok stops posting text after flood of antisemitism and Hitler praise⁠ ⁠“In other posts it referred to itself as “MechaHitler”.⁠ Musk makes grand promises about Grok 4 in the wake of a Nazi chatbot meltdown ⁠ ⁠Adobe’s new camera app is making me rethink phone photography⁠ ⁠Ikea’s latest speaker lamp ditches Sonos for Spotify and inexpensive Bluetooth⁠ Ikea ditches Zigbee for Thread going all in on Matter smart homes⁠ ⁠Perplexity launches Comet web browser⁠ OpenAI’s next big launch could be an AI web browser⁠ ⁠E Ink is turning the laptop touchpad into an e-reader for AI apps⁠ ⁠Lorde’s new CD is so transparent that stereos can’t even read it⁠ I tried playing Lorde’s new CD⁠ ⁠Appeals court strikes down ‘click-to-cancel’ rule⁠ ⁠Nothing’s ‘first true flagship’ phone plays it a little safe⁠ ⁠Adding calendar events with a screenshot is AI at its finest⁠ ⁠The government’s Apple antitrust lawsuit is still on⁠ ⁠Apple just added more frost to its Liquid Glass design⁠ ⁠Apple’s second-generation Vision Pro might launch this year⁠ ⁠Nvidia briefly became the first $4 trillion company on Wednesday⁠ ⁠The makers of Cameo just launched... a birthday-tracking app?⁠ ⁠Nintendo is ending its cost-saving Switch game vouchers⁠ ⁠HBO Max is officially HBO Max again Email us at [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up y'all? I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WNBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Do you ever wonder what's in your lotion? If you look at the back of the bottle, it could contain more than a dozen ingredients. And they may not all be regulated. The threshold is so high that only 11 cosmetic ingredients have been restricted by the FDA since 1938. This week, unexplained to me, the chemicals lurking in your cosmetics.

New episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. Will America recover its political decency after Trump leaves office? I think the bigger concern I have than Trump's staying power is, let's say he's cratering. He has had an effect on the civic mind that is not going to go away. I'm Preet Bharara, and this week, George Packer of the Atlantic joins me to discuss Trump's lasting effect on the American mind. The episode is out now. Search and follow. Stay tuned with Preet wherever you get your podcasts.

Hello, and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast, of everyone you work with having a baby at the exact same time. and going on parental leave. That is right. Both David Pierce and Nilai Patel are at home with newborns. We are so happy for both of them. They're both going to take some time off, spend time with their families. They will be back later this year. And in the meantime, you've got me.

I'm Jay Castranakis, executive editor of The Verge. I'm going to be joined by an all-star cast from across the verge every week, starting with two of the best reporters in business. We've got B-Song. Hello. And Alison Johnson. Hello. Oh, we've got a lot to talk about today.

There were some big executive shakeups at Apple, at Meta, at X. Grock went on a tear, called itself Mecca Hitler, I believe. Not good. I'm going to go on a little bit of a power trip now that Neil has gone. I'm rebranding the Lightning Round. The Lightning Round is done as we know it. But first, we've got to talk about Samsung. Samsung was the big thing this week.

Then has a whole bunch of new phones and smartwatches. the two of you were there. But first, I just want to, before we get into this, I want to read what Samsung said about Brooklyn and his press release. So they had their event in Brooklyn, and this is how they described Brooklyn, the borough in New York City. They called it, quote, a borough with extraordinary spirit and a distinctive history.

Brooklyn is where visionary thinking and bold ideas shape the future, a place known for its culture, creativity, and collaboration. Did you guys get that feeling? Did you feel cultural creativity and collaboration at Samsung's event? No. Not really. No. I mostly felt angry.

Angry, hot, irritated. Yeah. So it was like a gazillion degrees with bejillion humidity on Wednesday when we went to unpacked. So if you are a New York City native and I tell you that this was hosted at a couple of warehouses in Brooklyn. Navy yard, you will be groaning at this point in time. But if you're not a New York native or you haven't been to this area of Brooklyn is the most inaccessible area of Brooklyn by public transit. So there's just a line of Ubers trying to get in and very stressed out Uber drivers. So, you know, that was something.

I live in Brooklyn. I do not know how to get to the Navy Yard. It's like a high design. It's like a mile walk from any public transit station. So you either are going to make the choice of taking public transit to this event and having to walk a mile from the closest train station or braving the New York City bus system, which I'm a lifelong New Yorker and no. Or you're going to take an Uber and like the vast majority of people that I took the I took an Uber and I think the vast majority of P. You were stuck in, you were stuck in traffic for like. I was stuck in Brooklyn trying to get to Brooklyn because they were doing road work outside. my hotel. So I was in gridlock for the first, it was just

a mess all around. We were texting like, are you there yet? Oh my God. It was just getting more and more desperate. Yeah. So what even is this venue? Like what? I said, Brooklyn Navy Art is just a Navy yard. It's like a bunch of industrial brick buildings,

like shipping container type warehouse building, fully metal. So it was just, you know, Samsung branded. There was a lot of unpacked flags. going in there, but it's also a maze. So you can go into the Brooklyn Navy Yard probably have terrible signal and just be like, oh, there's a bunch of just brick buildings with numbers attached to them, and you're just hoping the GPS is going to get you to the right place. And I mean,

there were signs and everything, and you just had to follow the Korean influencers. There was a huge amount of Korean influencers, and I really, you know, and I was telling Alice in this, oh, because, you know, Samsung has a history of inviting K-pop stars. I was like, I did my makeup. I was like, there's an off chance that a K-pop star is going to come to this event. I love K-pop. We did not get K-pop stars. We got influencers that look like K-pop stars and the K-pop Demon Hunter soundtrack just blasting.

And I was like, okay. I mean, I've heard good things. The soundtrack is fire. I love the soundtrack. It was great. That put me in a good mood. But then we were going into the, or I was going into the main, the main, the main, It's called Duggle Greenhouse, this main wear metal container thing that we're going into.

And I have my hot box of water because they were being sustainable with the water bottles and they were providing for everyone there. My hot box of water was not cold at all, but I was like, I need to hydrate. This is hot. This is humid. I'm not dressed like a Korean demon hunter, grim reaper situation. These influencers, I'm telling you, they were just like. They went all out. They went all out.

Wait, I'm sorry. The influencers were like in cosplay for a phone line. They were dressed to the nines. There was this one guy. I pointed him out to Alice and I was like, I'm happily married, but look at this man. He had perfectly quaffed hair. I'm fairly certain he had beautiful. I was like, this man has to be wearing some sort of makeup.

They were not sweating. They were not sweating somehow. But they were like in full like kind of grim reaper regalia, like Korean grim reaper regalia. There was like this one girl and she had like huge heels on and just like this modern Hanbook, which is like Korean traditional wear and I was just like, we got some cosplayers in the house. I was like a sweaty puddle. Yeah, we were, we were there going like, oh my God. And so you guys did not dress up. We didn't wear our demon hunter costumes. We didn't wear dion hunters at all. I left mine at home. Yeah. Yeah. Like we were not aware. But then, you know, we're going into the venue because

tech event, you got to run to grab a seat. And so I'm trying to get in with my hot box of water. And the venue guys like, ma'am, ma'am, ma'am, ma'am. No water. No beverages. no food and I was like, but, and then we get in and it's super packed full of influencers. They had their own line and their own badge influencers, and then there was like the media section. And I don't know if you have this, Alison, but there was a guy, like, there's this guy he didn't speak any English, but he's obviously Samsung staff and he's just like media section here. You can only sit here. And there were people inside with like little media paddles.

And the one media paddle lady I talked to, she's like, if you find a seat, God bless, just take it. And so it was a little bit of a battle to get a seat. There were a bunch of people who didn't. So it was like super packed. You know, it's a metal container. So the Wi-Fi wasn't working. And I was like, oh, my God, how am I supposed to live block this? No.

I got to say, watching Allison, though, she had the previous Z-fold and she was blocking from the foldable phone. I did quick post to WordPress from the folding phone. It was inspiring. It was inspiring. I feel like you broke a law of physics. to accomplish this. I was just like the entire time just looking at her doing it. And I was like, oh my God.

Yeah. Samsung, you don't need this event. Just put a live stream on Allison. This is the best ad for a foldable phone you could possibly have. I'd be happy to provide that service. It was, I mean, that it worked. It was inspiring. Yeah.

Like hotspoting our computers to the phones was not working for some reason. V couldn't even eardrop a photo from her. I couldn't. trying to airdrop. I had two phones because I'm beta testing the iPhones right now. And so I had one with Apple intelligence and one without. And I'm just like trying to air drop from either phone to my laptop. Just a picture of Allison. It was unreal. It took like it took 15 minutes. It was really bad. I'm glad you discovered a use for folding phones at the folding phone event. This is like the big question. They like they friggin look awesome. And I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing with that inside screen. I just know I want. Okay. So what did we see on the fold of those front? So we got three new foldables. We have the Z Fold 7, the Z Flip 7, and then the Z Flip 7, F, E, which I continue to forget about. But basics are Z Fold 7 got super thin. It is 8.9 millimeters thin.

It's 26% thinner than the Z Fold 6. It's way lighter. You just feel it when you pick it up. The Z Flip 7 got a bigger screen on the front that. That's the clamshell style foldable. And the Z-Flip 7FE exists for $899. It's like it's the affordable version. We live in a world where that's affordable.

Exactly. That's my problem with it. So big hardware changes. The inner screen's like eight inches now. Even more room to not know what to do with. But we lost in that. process the S-Pen support. Which, I know.

So they can't like stick it in. They, well, they've never had a good solution for it. They were like, supported the S-Pin, but you had to buy a special S-Pen because a regular S-Pen would like scratch the screen. Oh, my God. And they've never had, like, you could buy a case that would hold the S-Pen, but it's not like the ultra where you can just pop it in. So it's a little bit of like, and they're like, oh, people weren't really using it. we could make the screen thinner if we didn't have that digitizer layer, so that's what they did. So a moment of silence for, you know, the S-Pen.

But other than that, it's got a 200 megapixel camera. So it should be pretty capable. They got rid of the – it used to have a – on the inner screen, an under-display selfie camera. Actually, I think this is so interesting, right? They got rid of the under display camera. Yeah. And now it's just a regular one, right? It's just a regular little hole punch.

And honestly, it seems backwards, but I notice it way less with the whole punch because that under display always had like a weird kind of like rainbow tearing thing that would happen when I would glance at something at that part of screen. And it looks to me like the aura you get when you get a migraine or like an egg. So it like freaks me out. Like, that's a me problem, but... This feels like a good change to me. Because I feel like for, I don't know, several years, companies discovered under display cameras. And this thing always happens where the tech is kind of bad, but it looks a little bit cooler.

And so a bunch of companies run at it. And that felt like what was happening with under display cameras. And they were just universally, like, meaningfully worse. Yeah. And maybe it's just me. I don't think the whole punch cut out looks bad. Yeah, I think we're used to it. I would so much rather have a whole punch cut out and a good camera than like this cool,

slight, ever so slightly cooler thing. Yeah. Like, it's in the corner. It's not going to cut. I mean, it has to function first and foremost. Like, I think if you're going to choose form over function, that's usually not the winning that. It should be form and function. And if you have to only pick one, it should be function.

Yeah. That's my, my spiel. Yeah. I was glad to see the under display camera go. Okay. This is the first time I've picked this thing up. And this is incredible. This thing is wild.

And I do have to do a big caveat that, like, if you live in a different country that isn't the United States of America, you have access to folding phones that are roughly the size from, like, Honor and Oppo. So there's a little bit of the rest of the world being like, okay, you guys finally like Samsung finally caught up for you. That's sort of only like a this year thing, right? Yeah, yeah. Like, you know, it feels like a major turn is happening in folding phones.

It's sort of funny. Like when this event was coming up, I was like, oh, yeah, they're doing another folding phone. What are we on? Like the Z-fold three? And it's like, it is the seventh one. They've been doing these for coming up on a decade now. Yeah.

Which is crazy because they have like barely made a dent. And, you know, Alison, you had a story. You kind of pointed out they really haven't changed much. And this year, and I think maybe even this model, feels like the first time they're kind of meaningfully changing. And it's not like a major form factor change. They really just slim down a little bit. But somehow, all it, this feels so different. It feels so much nicer in your hand.

Like, because, you know, I've never had a folding phone, but I've been to these events all the time and I, like, play around with them. It doesn't feel heavy. It doesn't feel fragile. It just feels like a phone, which is cool. though the whole thing, like I don't know if you can see it there, like it won't sit because of the camera bump being so ridiculous. So that's kind of, that's rough. But I don't know, maybe it's a good thing because you put it face down then and then you don't look at the screen. It does encourage me to put it face down and then I don't get, yeah, caught up in my phone.

I think it was a year of like, I mean like fold four, five and six were kind of a snooze fest as far as like they added a few millimeters here. and they did this to it. And basically the same on the flip phone. Like, I think maybe the four got the bigger cover screen, but they still, you know, so they flipped the clamshell style. This year got a full, like, edged-edged screen on the front cover. And previously it's sort of like, was this file folder shape that went around the cameras, which was just sort of weird and awkward.

It's like Motorola gives us the whole screen. We're grownups. Like, let us have it. So this did feel like a year where Samsung was like, okay, like here's a feedback we've been getting. We're going to make these bigger moves. And obviously, you know, like a lot of R&D and time goes into making a phone slim like that. I heard that the, you know, the edge, the Galaxy S25 Edge really kind of like paved

the way for this. Like it wouldn't exist. without making the slim bar phone first. Did people like the edge? I feel like the edge was like despised. That was one with the curving sides? No, no, no. No, no.

There's a thin one. Yeah, the thin one. Yeah. That is, it's the same case of this. You're like, is it really like, am I going to notice the weight difference? Is it really that slim? You know, you see the specs on paper. You're like, what's the big deal?

And then you pick it up and you're like, oh, I get it. It is very tactile because I'll admit to be one of the people that looks at those things. And I'm just like, whatever, it's thin. Do we not remember exploding batteries? What are you doing? Oh, Samsung remembers exploding batteries. But then you hold it in your hand, you can go like, oh, yeah. It's actually quite nice.

It is. It feels kind of funny to say, like, oh, you have to hold it or you have to see it. But I think you should. I know. I think you should. It is true. I'm saying that a lot this year. and it's irritating.

It is. Well, it is like, I mean, there are probably a couple of things that are preventing people from adopting these, like, the folding phones. At least this sort of fold out style. And one is definitely the size, right? Like, this one is, I think, about as close as you can get to just a regular phone. I look this up. This is what? it's not even a full millimeter thicker than the iPhone 16 Pro.

It's like there's a very small difference. And so it feels like a regular phone, which goes a really long way. But then I think there are like two other things that at least like for me I don't quite get. And one is I love it. If I could trade my phone out for a foldable right now, no problem. but like I don't I don't totally know what I would use it for. And then the other part of that is like the price and this one it is two grand. Is that right?

Two grand? Yeah. Like that's that's that is the price of two other phones. Yeah. Which it is sort of two phones taped together. Yeah. Four if you're going budget. Which you know, you can do some crazy things if you just, you know, tape a few phones together.

There you. Four pixel 90s. It's wild. Wow. I would love to see two phones taped. together and see if we work as out foldable. You know, that's good night. Are you finding it to be useful as a thing, as like a tablet?

I can't believe you live blog in WordPress. No, I was trying. I was like, I was watching her do it and I was like, should I try doing it on my phone? I could not do it just because of all the little. I can't even log into WordPress on my phone. It was pretty rough. I was trying to do like we have Octa. So I was trying to get the Octa code from one phone and putting it on the other

phone and I swear to God I felt like this was the ad that Samsung should have they should have just been zeroing in on me and Allison and just me being like oh what am I doing my laptop and two phones aren't working and Allison's just like cool common pose composed I'm watching her take a photo and then like she had slack on one side and WordPress open on the other side and just checking things and then like what she needed to write like I'm sorry if I was talking you watching this but I was just like mesmerized watching her do this. I was like, oh, my God, this is the first time I've actually understood why I might want a foldable. Do I want a foldable phone?

I don't know. Maybe, could this be a work expense? Like, we just have, like, foldable phones for live blocking? I was like, oh. I approved that. You didn't get the memo. I decided we can all have a photo phone. Okay, cool.

That's a page. Okay, great. I think so. I'll just, let me just check with a little people really fast. Neli's gone. Like, who's going to stop us? Now that I think about that. Oh, no.

If it's the responsibility it's on me, then I have a problem. We do need to to start expensing stuff before your eyes back, though. That's what's important. This is really, like, it is true. You see this one and you go, okay, like,

listen, the reasons we're all here is because we have a problem of looking at gadgets and going on. But, like, you know, this is the first foldable where I've really been like, that's a problem. Like,

It looks great. Okay, that being said, like, the foldables that I see out in public, nine times out of ten, it is the clamshell style. Yeah. Which I feel a lot more popular than, I don't know, I would imagine they would be. I just think they're familiar, right? Because we all, well, maybe not all of us. There might be youngens who didn't have the flip folks from back in the day. But I feel like a certain nostalgia with the flip.

Also, the flip is just really cute. Like, you look at it in person, you're like, oh, my God, that's so cute. And even with the motor old old old phones, you just go, oh, cool. And then when it folds open, it's a form factor you're used to using. It's the same thing. Whereas with the fold open, like a tablet. I mean, I think tablets as a device even, I'm not sure what to do with my iPad half the time. So I think that's the, I think that's the, the quote unquote problem with the tablets.

So if you watch K dramas, there's always just a random person who shouldn't be able to, like, afford a foldable just going like, oh, let me have my foldable and use it in this way. Because Samsung, I mean, Samsung runs Korea. So, like, they're just like, here we go. We're going to put foldables in random K dramas. And whenever it pops up, I'm like, that's not believable, Samsung. This is the poor girl being courted by the rich guy. How does she have a foldable phone?

Well, she could buy the F.E. Flip phone. I love that segue. 899 instead of 1099. No, the flip phones, I think you're right. It is a really familiar form factor. They are a little less expensive. Like, $1,000 is what a phone costs. So you're not making that leap to, like, I'm buying two phones. And I think the use cases are a little more, like, immediate. Like, you prop it up. You take a selfie with the main camera that doesn't suck. And, like, you get that immediately. And I love them. Like, I run apps on the front. I'm, like, starting my little. Strava cycling rides. I, you know, check the bus schedule. I do all kinds of things on the flip phone. Really quickly, I just want to ask, why do you hate the F.E. So much? It's just, okay, I keep forgetting about it because this is a two phone event, you know,

we have a flip and a fold. But it's also, like, $899 is not that much cheaper, you know? Yeah. Is it just last year's phone? Like, it's like pretty much. Yeah. I think they maybe like rearranged some parts. But yeah, I'm like, okay. So you can buy last year's phone for 899. Motor roller sells one for $6.99. Yeah, that's right. Come on.

Okay. Okay. So then they did the phones, then a whole bunch of watches. Yeah. All right. What do we see from Samsung on the watches front? So we saw the Galaxy Watch 8 series, which includes the base Galaxy Watch 8 and the Galaxy Watch 8 classic and an extremely minorly updated Galaxy Watch Ultra. Basically, squircles are everywhere, huge redesign.

And then Gemini is on the wrist now, thanks to Wear OS6. And there's a bunch of new health features. I think the big marquee one that they played up a bit was a running coach. It's just a running coach. You take a 12-minute run test and it grades you and then creates an AI-generated program for you. And then the antioxidant index, which is their foray into nutrition and kind of telling you, are you eating healthily? You probably know the answer to that already. And then, you know, there was a bit of a price bump.

So the 8 got about $50 more expensive in the starting price. And the classic, unfortunately, is about $100 more at $4.99. So the ultra stayed the same, which is good news because it literally got a new color and a storage bump. So that's it. That's the squircle squad. It's a total redesign, right? Total redesign. So Samsung has always been known for these circular watches,

which stand in complete contrast to the Apple. watches, which, you know, I mean, I got it right here, right? So, like, the Apple Watch is squarish. And then we have this, which is confusing. Confusing. This is what I would say. I'm looking at it. I don't know what shape I'm seeing. You are seeing a squircle, my friend, because the, they couldn't decide and they did both. They couldn't decide. They did it both. This is the circle watch face on a square, what they're calling it is a cushion. It's a square cushion. And they have three reasons for that. Three reasons. One is that it allows the watch to sit flatter on your wrist, so better contact with the sensor underneath.

Two, it allows it to be thinner, so this is supposedly 11% thinner than last years. And then three, you can house a slightly bigger battery inside and don't get too excited. It's like we're talking like 10, 10 millie amp hour more or like somewhere between 10 and 20 is what, because I was going through the spec sheet and looking and I was like, oh. That's like an extra hour maybe of battery life that we're looking at. Nothing too special there. So yeah, squircles. I think, I mean, based on the comments that I've seen from people already, a lot of people hate it. Okay.

I watched her video yesterday and I was like convincing myself. I was trying to gear. I was like, you know what? Maybe I like this is cool. I was like, I'm going to come in and I'm going to be the positive one. And now I'm seeing it in person and I cannot do it. It is not. That's not great because I think this is the best looking of the squircle watch.

No. Because it's slightly, well, this one or the classic, because on the classic, they have the rotating bezel. So I love the rotating bezel. It is such a storied part of the Samsung watch design because it rotates and it's so satisfying. It's so clicky. And like when you think about going through menus, you're not touching the screen with your grubby finger oils. So it's actually quite nice. This is the base.

I was like the hardware looks really polished. It does look really polished. It's the design. I'm going to put a question mark. This is the sleekest looking of them. And when I had all of them in person and I had like that comparison to the last six classic and looking at them, I was like, okay, you know, I don't know. I don't think it's Stockholm syndrome because I had Allison try it on and she was like, yes, it does sit flatter and it is more comfortable. And I was like, okay, it's not so egregious, but I still think that the ultra,

which they basically took this design idea from the Ultra. It's Ugo. It's Fogo Ogo, Ogo. Yeah. It's really big. It's really big. Like, not this one, but like when you, when I put the Ultra on Owen, our video guy, was like, wow, you could drive a truck through those lug gaps. Because like here, you don't really see the lug gaps on my tiny little wrist.

But on the ultra, I think last year I tested and I could stick three chopsticks in the gaps. So like six total. Too many chunks. It's too many challenges. It's a lot. I don't feel Stockholm syndromeed by this one. I think I could get to. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's, I think it's confusing because you look at it and you're like, wow, that's a really well-made confusing shape. It is. It's like they did a great job. I just don't know what they did. I think it looks best on this one because it's still. maintains like a thin, sleek look.

On the classic, it's just like, I'm swayed by the rotating bezel. At least that's still there. And on the ultra, I still can't grok the ultra. Like, I still can't. The blue color does make it look slightly better. But the ultra, there's no, it's just like a processor bump. Oh, not even a processor bump.

This is what you get. It's blue. It's blue. And double the storage. Okay. Okay. That's my main concern on a watch. Yes.

So you can have more songs on there and apps, I guess. Yeah, double the storage. The classic, the only hardware updates on the classic is that it gets the Ultras third quick button, which is like a thing that you can use to launch an extra shortcut or something on that. And then all of the watches have a new lug system, which I know everybody loves a new lug system for easier swapping. It's always good when the lugs change.

Not always because I do have a bunch of readers going, well, there goes the investment I had in all of these straps. And which is why I say, be careful with how many straps you invest in and from where. Yeah, don't fall in love with the strap. Don't fall in love with the straps too much because a lot of times they will change these designs and the lug systems and then you're stuck with straps that can't be carried forward. Okay, I want to ask you with something else. I saw that there is an antioxidant sensor. Yeah. And I, every year, like, a new sensor is added to smartwatches.

And first I go, that's crazy. I didn't know we could measure that, like, on the skin. Antoxidants are on your, like, through, I didn't know that. The next thing I go is, I don't know what to do with that. Like, that sounds so cool and I don't know what. Okay. So here's V's. Are the runners psyched for this?

No. Here's V's runner, not runner, but here's V's health tech soapbox. So is it very cool that, so they introduced this new bioactive sensor last year, which has a bunch of different colors of LEDs. Normally, it's red, infrared, and green, but this one has stuff like purple, yellow, blue, and that's supposed to enable, like, new things. So the way the antioxidant thing works is that it uses a combination of a few of the sensors, I think, like blue, yellow, maybe another one. And you actually have to take the watch off for this feature to work. Pass. You have to take the watch off and you put your little thumb on it. And then it reads the carotenoid levels in your skin.

And carotenoids are a type of pigment basically that are, it's a type of antioxidant pigment in like beta carotene. It makes plants like orange. It's the thing in carrots that make them orange. It's the thing that makes bell peppers like red and yellow. And so when you eat, they get into your skin. You know, if you have too much carrots, you might turn orange. So it's picking up them crotenoids in that. And, you know, I'm there in this roundtable with the Samsung execs talking about it.

And in my head, I'm going, okay, well, what if you eat berries? Because berries don't have carotenoids in them, but they have antioxidants and they're very good for you. Is that going to show up in your thing? because I went and I did the demo and it said I had very low antioxidants. I was like, that doesn't make any sense. I had so many berries over the weekend. It's because there's no cradenoids or like very low levels of cradenoids in there. And because it's reading it from your skin, it could take as many as a couple, like two weeks for it to actually show up.

So fundamentally what this thing is doing is saying, are you eating enough fruits and veggies? You already know the answer to that. If they had to advertise this as a carrot sensor, I would have been so much more excited. like let it be dumb, let it be silly, let it be unimportant. As of, like, right now, all the smart watch, they just keep adding sensors and then being like, we don't know what to do with them, here they are. Here's more quantified data for you. If they had just said carrot sensor, great. Like, everyone would be like, cool.

This, like, it works as functioned. We, we, first off, I need you to test this. I will. I will be testing. Can you test it on a carrot? Oh, my God. I will. What will happen?

I'll try. Okay. We'll see what happens. I'll just like smush a carrot into the sensor. That's a thing I'm going to do. But yeah, so my main beef with this is that we all generally know that you should eat more fruits and vegetables. And so all this is telling you is whether or not you're eating fruits and vegetables to an adequate amount. And I think we all deeply know in our hearts whether we are.

So, I mean, they were saying that fevers or drinking alcoholic drinks could cause your score to lower. Well, you know. Fevers and alcoholic drinks are, you know, going to maybe cause your data to dip. Like, wow, wow, thanks. Thanks. I think some people might enjoy it and find it useful, but I'm sort of like, duh. Squirrels, antioxidants. I'm going to say a confusing year for the smart watch planet. Genes.

Okay, they have Gemini. Gemini. Okay, they have Gemini. Which I still think will confuse people because it's replacing Google assistance. on the watches. And now you have generative AI on your watch. What are you going to do with generative AI on your watch? Samsung is very, like, focused on diets, basically.

Because the examples they were giving me were, like, start a run for exactly the number of calories and a slice of pizza. And I was like, that's diabolical. Why? Does it have access to your health data? Theoretically, yes. Yeah, this is the only way. It could. It could. Yeah, like, from what I can tell, the Gemini aspect of it is that it can handle more complex queries that might require multiple apps in a sequential order.

So you can say something like, find the coolest coffee shop near here and message the location to Allison. And it'll do that directly from the wrist, provided that you are logged in to all the relevant apps. Because in the demo space, I was trying it, like, away from. from the people who had the guardrail demos where it would be guaranteed to work. And I was like, hey, there's a little one with Gemini when I see if it works. And it was like, well, you're going to have to log into YouTube music

to make this playlist. I was like, oh, okay, so you have to log into a bunch of stuff. You know, that reminds me of what Apple's Craig Federici said. He was talking to Joanna Stern from Wall Street Journal. And she asked him about OpenAI buying I.O., which is Johnny Ives, new hardware startup. And, you know, they're working on. some sort of AI device, and Joanna's like, well, what do you got? And Craig says, hey, I think

we have a really personal device already. And he's like, you know, pointing to the Apple Watch. And so there is something there, right, where Apple is sort of pointing to, actually the trajectory for AI is a wearable. And Samsung is, you know, big asterisk, but like maybe, maybe getting there first. Sort of. Sort of. Sort of. Sort of getting there first. Yeah. I've gotten a few demos. So I got a demo with Google earlier this week as well for and I was just like give me ideas for what and I would love if our listeners also had ideas to send me because it's such a fundamental difference in thinking like writing AI prompts you're kind of teaching your brain to have a different language and putting it on the wrist when your muscle memory is so strong to just like oh I need to look at the thing let me just grab my phone

so now you're teaching yourself a different muscle memory you're like I'm not going to grab my phone I'll just ask it on my watch. When would I do that versus just pulling out my phone, which is faster? And so I think that's going to be an interesting tension to kind of work with while I review it. But I'm not saying it's going to be bad. I'm just going to say I think I don't know personally how it's going to work for me yet and what part of the generative features will be most useful. So we'll see.

Do you talk to AI or do you like to type? I like to type. So my thing is like, and you know, it's different for different people. I know low and blind vision people really value the voice aspect of it. But for me, I don't want people hearing my stupid questions. It's embarrassing. I have some very stupid questions. I don't even want to hear it myself.

I would rather just keep it quiet. Yeah. And like the thing about Gemini that they're saying is that it's natural language. But then now I have to undo my muscle memory of how I talk to assistant. Because when you talk to assistant, it's like, hey, and I'm not going to say the wake word, because we've had enough of our listeners say, you said the wake word. So like, hey, AI assistant, send message and then you have to dictate it. So, like, I think one of the things that you're supposed to be able to do is, like, be like, oh, I'm late. Can you send a message to this person telling them I'm going to be late and make the tone polite or apologetic?

And that's a thing that you can do, and it'll just write the message for you and you don't have to dictate it. And I'm like, cool, but I'm kind of used to dictating it. So it's really, I think people are just going to have to be open to changing their muscle-like memory. And then changing muscle memory is really difficult to do. So I think that's the big challenge with Gemini on the wrist. That's real. Okay, there's one other Samsung thing that was like around the event, but not, I believe it was not at the event, which is there was a big leak that they're having a trifold fold. foldable. And they didn't say anything about this? No. I was ready for it. She was. They've done. This is what I want to see. They've done kind of a one more thing. But I guess that was at the January unpack. They did it for the ring. They did it for the edge. I was like, poised. They were wrapping up. And Allison just has her thing up. And she goes like, I don't believe you is what she says. I know. I was like, you can't fool me, TM.

But yeah, they fooled me. There was no. So there's more to come in Samsung foldables, potentially even this year, it sounds like. Yeah, yeah. It sounds like they told some Korean press, I think, that they have it ready. They're just like hanging on to it for a minute or something like that. That's fair enough. It would be extremely Samsung to be like, here's one high on foldable.

Here's another that, like, embarrasses it. But so it's nice, it's nice for them to take a little bit. All right. We should go to break. When we get back, we're talking about Apple. meta X. Unfortunately, Mecca Hitler, we'll be back. Hey, I'm Matt Bouchel. Comedian, writer, and floating head you may or may not have seen on your 4U page. And I'm starting a brand new podcast. Wait, wait, don't swipe away. It's called,

That Sounds Like a Lot, as in that feeling when you check your phone in the morning, you read through headlines and you immediately think, oh, that sounds like a lot. I can't deal with all this. But guess what? I can deal with it. And I'm going to get into it every Friday. I'll break down whatever chaos is happening in the world. Then I'll sit down with a comedian. You can be progressive and not be like fucking annoying. Maybe an actor. They go, feminism has gone too far. You go, why?

Because the Sadie Hawkins dance happened? Maybe a filmmaker. Since leaving that show, I'm challenged to sparing. I just got to hang out and try to do stuff. You're the one with a charmed life. Could be a politician. Basically anyone who responds to my cold DMs. We're recording the whole thing in a beautiful studio, so yes, you can watch it on YouTube,

or you can listen wherever you get your podcast. This is not the place to get the news, but it is the place to feel a little better about it. That sounds like a lot, part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Buzzwords like progressive and affordability are thrown around all the time in politics. But what do they actually mean? For me, being a progressive means at least two things. One, being willing to unite lots and lots of people, all of the folks that are getting screwed over against the powers that be that are making your life worse.

And then second, being progressive is an essential. a hopeful enterprise, that you think, I think that the world can be much better, that we don't have to settle for crumbs or settle for the status quo. And is there a difference between what it means to the elected officials and what it means to the people? So money is essentially the root of everything. I don't care if you're gay. I don't care if you have all that.

That's like secondary. Third, like that doesn't, that's not a priority. That's this week on America Actually. Let's begin. Complex and unprecedented, the Spanish authorities. are calling it. Before the disembarko, asymptomatikas. Passengers who'd been stuck aboard the Hanta or maybe Hanta virus-stricken Dutch cruise ship

disembarked in the Canary Islands this weekend, prompting the highest stakes game of where are they now since maybe COVID? Some of the evacuees, American and French, have since tested positive for the virus. And yet public health officials seem remarkably calm. We do have one individual who was taken to the biocontainment unit early, early this morning. And we assessed that individual. they are doing well. Possibly because this is not the one to freak out over.

Today, Explain drops every weekday afternoon. All right, we're back. There were a bunch of really big executive changes this week at Apple, at Meta, at X. Grock went absolutely off the rails. Lots to talk about it. I want to start with Apple where their C-O-O-Jep Williams announced plans to retire. This is really interesting because Jeff Williams was, I guess, until Tuesday, you know, one of the leading people who was seen as a possible Tim Cook successor

if it came to that, right? And I think this is happening in like the most Apple way possible, right? It's a long, slow thing. I mean, does Apple do anything quickly? I don't think so. They're very intentional about everything, right? So yeah, no, but Jeff Williams, he's always in those, like, big presentations at the iPhone event. Like, he's one of those, he's maybe not Craig Federegi, where he has his own hair meme at this point, where you go to Dubdub and they're referencing his hair in the filmed parts. But he's, he's pretty well known if you're into Apple.

So that's a big one. And I think, like, as COO, COO is one of those, I think, quieter, but actually mission critical positions at Apple. Like, Apple is, in many ways, it is a supply chain company. Right. Like Tim Cook was the COO before he was CEO, and I think he is in many ways reshaped Apple around that role, right? Yeah. Every single product is, you know, how do we make sure there are exactly three versions that we are optimizing the parts and we are using what came last? And, you know, it makes sense that they would have seen Jeff as the possible next guy.

And I think like the going, you know, speculation from what I've seen is that perhaps Jeff Williams is a little too old, right? He was 62. Tim Cook is 64. And so if Tim Cook is going to step down at some point, I mean, I don't know. He could, he could Berkshire Hathaway this and like, you know, stick around like Warren Buffett until he's like in his 90s, which like, you know, if you're a shareholder. I mean, Tim Cook is secretly swole. Is he really? If you look up the Slate article from the past, it's like it's an investigation into how swole Tim Cook is.

He's very swole. He like famously exercises a lot. Oh, my God. A lot of the Apple Watch stuff and the health stuff is because Tim Cook is like super into that stuff. So I don't know. He doesn't look like he's aged. Do we know his workout regimen? I think he wakes up at like 4 a.m. and works out.

I don't know the exact of it. But if you look real close and he's very, he's very. He's very modest in his attire, but if you zoom in on those biceps, I am a believer that Tim Cook is swole. So he could be, he could be good for a while. He's good for, okay, he's sticking around. Yeah. He's a healthy dude. How swole was Jeff Williams?

You know, honestly. No slate articles. No slate articles investigating Jeff Williams. Unknown level of swalleness. Yeah, no, that is one of my favorite articles, though, is Tim Cook Swole. I come back to it every once in a while. just because the bead I'm on. And also because when I see him every year, I'm like zooming in with my eyes and just going like, yeah, no, I think I think he's swall.

Oh, he's real swall. Okay. So, well, I guess now I know why Jeff was passed over. I mean, right, this is what one assumes. If you don't retire if they're like, hey, you might be CEO soon. Yeah, yeah. To be clear, like, it's not like there is a rumor that Tim Cook's retirement is imminent. But, like, you know, he's been doing it since 2012.

It's a long time. Long run. And I think Apple, you know, because they move so carefully, surely they're they're planning this in the background. So their new guy, they're bringing in Sabi Khan, who Cook called one of the central architects of Apple's supply chain. Like they're clearly trying to be like, nothing's changing. We're all good. Everything is safe. It's in safe hands.

Right. He's, you know, this guy again has been, he's joined Apple in 1995. Jesus. So, right, this is like, this is a. still a jobs era guy who they're bringing in. I mean, supply chain stuff is really important right now with like the ever looming tariff situation going on. And I don't know.

I think you have Apple fans who are kind of split into romanticizing the jobs era and like the vision of it, the jobs and Joni I vision of it all. And then you have other people who are like, nah, Tim Cook's a guy who gets it done. And like he's a guy who knows supply chains and that stuff's boring, but that's what makes money. So I think having Saabee Khan there, it just feels stable at a time where supply chain is a thing that we think about. And something that investors are super invested in is having a stable supply chain. So I think that is a signal there, too.

The Trump and tariff stuff feels like part of this too, right? Like they are actually, this thing has been running very smoothly for a very long time. And now Trump is saying, hey, tariffs on everything. and so Apple is scrambling to move things around. Supply chain is actually more important than ever. There's a lot of work to do. If you're Jeff Williams, maybe there's a good time. Maybe it's good.

It's like a cat and mouse game, right? Because they're like, oh, tariff on new country. And Apple's like, ha, ha, we move to this other country. And then they'll go, aha, tariff on that country. And Apple's like, we'll move to this other country. Or like, that's what it seems like it's been happening. They'll find a way. And so they need a supply chain guy.

to know what country to move the factory to. They love a supply chain guy. They love a supply chain. Okay. They do love a supply chain guy, which I think is interesting because, you know, the going rumors of who might succeed cook. Again, like some years out whenever this happens, I believe it's Mark Germain at Bloomberg says that John Ternis, who is their hardware guy, is the leading contender right now, which is very interesting, right? that feels to me like there's potentially a very different shift in a world where he is leading it. Because Tim Cook, at least, like, my read on it is that he is not a product guy in the way that Jobs was and probably not a product guy in the way that Ternus is.

Yeah. And arguably, that's what Apple needs too, because we're at a point where I think I was talking about this with Todd, our reviews, a WD editor, where the iPhone is like, what, 17 years old? There are people who can vote and fight for our country who don't remember a world without iPhones. So it's like not a new product or technology anymore. So I think, you know, with the AI hype, everybody's looking to what's next. Maybe you want a hardware guy in there who can really shape what the next vision of that's going to be. So maybe if you think about vision versus maintenance, maybe it's like a thought process with Ternus is going back from maintenance to vision again and doing the stuff that made Apple splashy to begin with. Who knows? I'm not a business forecaster. I don't have like a crystal wall, but I think that's maybe something that Turtuce has. Yeah. And then didn't they change like the design team now reports directly to Tim Cook too? So I don't know if those things are related, but it would make it kind of sense to have like. I don't know. Like Tim Cook is also surprisingly into sneakers. So like, you know,

Tim Cook is a hype beast? Is this where we're going to. He's swole. He's a hype. Oh, my God. And he had like, designer like sneakers a couple of conferences back. And like it was in the hype beast article about how he had these like special. I believe it was Mike's.

And so, you know, on the face of it, Tim Cook kind of has his uniform. You wouldn't peg him as like the design guy. But he's into sneakers. And he's swole. Maybe they're. Yeah. Maybe they're making some sneakers. Maybe there's multitudes to cook that we haven't.

Tim Toku's going to retire from Apple, takeover Supreme. Yeah. And have a whole second career after this. I love it. I believe it. You're hearing it now. You have to do a hard pivot. Yeah.

Yeah. He's going to be, he's just going to be on the board of Gentle Monster, which is that 's sunglass company from Korea with like the really interesting silhouettes. He's just going to be a fashion icon. I would love this. I love this. I really want like, Coke is the driest. executive, like, in public.

And if, like, you know, steps out and it's like, I'm going to live a different life now. I thought there's like a quiet. He's earned it. A quiet fire to Tim Cook. This is my fan of shit. Quiet fire. My gosh. So the next big piece of corporate change up happened last week while we were off, which is that

Mark Zuckerberg finally announced his big AI super intelligence group. This is like it is a super group of AI research. which I want to maybe I think I think sounds cool when you put it that way does it it also could sound like the AI Avengers but it is is the AI he should oh no that's terrifying yeah and famously when the Avengers created AI it went well right oh there's that's not totally the plot of Ultron that's not hmm you know famed beloved critically acclaimed Avengers movie Ultron that everyone loved I didn't know that.

They didn't. They hate that movie. I didn't know that was a movie. You know what? That's the correct thing. It's all right. It's all right. They made a, yeah.

So this is weird. This is a little wild. Like, Zuck is sort of just like power tripping here. And first, he paid $14 billion to buy half of scale AI, which is mostly, it appears that he can hire their CEO, Alexander Wang. Wang is becoming Meta's chief AI officer. Sure. And then he's just paying out hundreds of millions of dollars to individual researchers. He's just going around to every AI lab, Open AI, Google, Anthropic, and giving people these incredible offers that just like boggle the mind that you would pay somebody this much to convince them to come over.

Which tells you two things. Number one, it's hard to convince me. people to come work at MEPA. Right? Yeah. Hayden Field, our AI reporter, just ran a story where she talked to some people who got some of these offers. And the thing they told her was, yeah, we care about the mission, which is why we're staying

at, you know, the ones who turn this down don't want to go to META and have to do whatever they want us to do. Oh, boy. You know, they're going to get paid okay anywhere. But I, Zuck is just. spending boatloads of cash to build this, you know, huge team of super capable researchers, right? He's got the former CEO of GitHub. He's got a co-founder and the former CEO of Safe Super Intelligence. He got people from Anthropic, from Sesame. It's all over the place.

And these dollar figures are mind-boggling. And what's really interesting is like, okay, okay, I get it. So you now have one of the most capable AI leadership teams in the world. world. The idea is you will go and build some sort of fancy AI thing, super intelligence, whatever you want to call it, with that. But there is sort of a question, right? Like, the technology exists, or much of it does. People are building it. Is it these specific people? Or, like, are they, do you just buy the people and therefore you get the good AI? I mean, that's obviously what his, his strategy is. He's just throwing money around. He's just like, I've got money come work from me do the thing.

And I think he's getting grifted on some level because I no hate to any of these people getting these what $300 million over four year packages. Like get the back. I love that for you. This is your time. But at the same time, you look at that cost and it's just like, are you getting your money's worth? How much did you spend on that Metaverse gambit, bud?

I mean, this is what I'm thinking about, right? where it's like, okay, let's think, let's think about the last time. Zuck sort of like went ham and spent a ton of money on some initiative that we're like, I don't know if this is going to work out for you. It is the metaverse. Yeah. There's still no legs in the metaverse. So where did all that money go?

Do they announce the legs? They announced the legs, but did the legs ever come? The legs never shipped. Can I tell you something? Nobody signed on to check. There could be legs. Like, that's, you know, he made the wrong. But also, it's not even.

that he made the wrong bed at the wrong time. Like that, that, you know, I feel like you could have easily foreseen that when talking about the Metaverse. It's that he put in a boatload of money and it was bad. Yeah. Yeah. And like, they're kind of doing that with, with Lama already. And this feels like, number one, it's funny.

They've, they've, for months, been talking off Lama how great it is. There was that scandal a few months back where they ran a special, like, optimized version of Lama to, like, game some tests. Right. If you've used meta-a-I... Which I have. How is it, V? Not great. I mean, on the one hand, so I mostly use meta-a-I through the glasses when I'm testing new features or whatnot.

My favorite thing about it is that I can make it sound like John Cena. Oh, no, it's not bad. Yeah, but that's my favorite thing about it. Yeah. So, like I've tried the live AI, which has its pros and cons. I think the multimodal thing is really smart. But the live translations, for example, that was not... I tried...

Sorry, Alison, I have to talk about Amelia Perez again. It's my favorite. I tried months back just seeing like, oh, could I use this to translate content that I'm watching. So I put on a clip of one of the terrible songs in Amelia Perez, and it got some of it. And then others bit, it was just so... It was John Cena just saying very... wrong things about the Spanish. So yeah, in my experience, not great. It sort of feels like there's a moment coming. I don't know if it's like the chips are down or it's like, what's the

game where you have to get a chair? You have to like musical chairs. It's like musical chairs and everybody's like, okay, it's about time to figure out this AI stuff. Like Apple, they're like, can we build it or should we just buy a company? And there's a little bit of. of that going on. And Zuck is like, I'm buying all these chairs. I'm covering all my bases. So I spent all the stuff on the Metaverse. And apparently that's not what people want.

So I didn't spend everything on AI. So money. Here you go. That's what this feels like. There you go. Thinking about the Raybans is really interesting too. Because they're right now, it's like, it's this very simple product. And we're like, hey, these are nice headphones.

And they are really bullish on actually they're AI glass. Oh, yeah. They... And is it right? Like, in fact, they have to build the AI. They do, in fact, have to build the AI. So, you know, there are communities that really do love the meta glasses and the AI in them. Spoiler alert, that's what my next host episode on Tuesday is going to be about.

But, you know, by and large, most people are not really thinking of it in that way. But I do... Every single time I write them as smart glasses, I've got to... good relationship with the PR people at Meta, but they're like, would you be open to calling it AI glasses? And it's like, no, they're smart glasses. But so to like, the reason I tell that story is to say that like they are super bullish on glasses being a vehicle for AI. They really believe that glasses are like what are going to get people thinking about AI. And you know, Google's kind of jumped on that train too with Android XR. So they still got to build the AI first. So yeah.

we'll see. Yeah. It's, it is, it is not a bet in a vacuum. And it's, and it's, like,

so easy to think of it that way. I think particularly because, like, open AI, like, it is, it exists as a website. Like,

it is, it is a bot on its own. That's it. And meta is trying to productize it. Yeah. And the product is okay. And the AI is not okay. Um, yeah,

I, this is going to be, I think, just one of the clear, like, give this a couple years, obviously, but it is going to be a fascinating experiment to see if you can just buy your way to a great product.

Because I cannot remember, obviously, people will just buy companies. I mean, it's funny. Actually, a lot of the big company acquisitions do not work. No, they are. There is a culture clash. Right. I'm thinking of like Google buying Motorola, which like, and then selling it a few years later. Right.

So this is sort of a version of that. He is just buying what he thinks is all the best people. And who, by all accounts, are supposed to be incredibly talented researchers. Can you buy your way to the best product? We're going to find out. And it's going to be really interesting to see. And if it does not pay off, like, yeah. At least this is a better bet, I think, than the Metaverse.

Yes. I think that is fair, right? Like, there is a product to be had here that people want that some people want. The question is, can they build something? think. Lama's is aggressively fine. I think that's the best way to describe because I've been using a bunch of them and is it the best one? No.

Is it the worst one? Also no. Yeah. It's safely fine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of AI that is not the best. Oh, God. Oh. The other big change this week

happened at X where there was also some Grock news to discuss. So ex-CEO Linda Yaccarino announced this week that she was stepping down. Elon replied with a, I'm going to say, terse tweet saying, thanks for your contributions. Who could have seen this? When Linda posted about her announcement, she was like, you know, look at all that we've done. We've done such a great job.

You know, we made it the Everything app. We've, like, cracked down on safety. We've done free speech. And Jay Peters on our team just looked at all these things. And it's like actually like under Yaccarino, none of this stuff has happened. Yeah. I remember using the X app as an everything app, you know, just yesterday. I ordered a pizza.

No, that's not true. She lasted longer than I thought she would, though, because I thought like when she was announced that I was like, oh, this will be over in six months. And she lasted four times that. Yeah. So, you know. That's true. Yeah.

I just might be me, but I don't know if I could have left. lasted as long as she did. Yeah. Given circumstances. We think she just got fed up, right? I think she just was like... That's the thinking? I think she was just like, yeah, I didn't sign up for this.

See, I don't... It takes a certain type of person to volunteer to work for Elon. And she was pretty gung-ho about it up front. Oh, yeah. Yeah, she was. She was. So I don't know. I'm very, very interested in finding out what happened there.

Do you think she knew about the whole, like, Trump turn that he was? was going to do doge and all of that. Do you think she just finally went like, I didn't sign up for, like, I signed up for stuff. I didn't sign up for that. And she's just finally been like, okay, and I'm done. It's, it's, I mean, she spent a lot of her time. I think so, right?

Because she spent a lot of her time defending him. And her job when she came on was advertisers are fleeing this platform because everyone hates Elon and he keeps saying inappropriate stuff. Right. Yeah. And so, you know, and she, you know, didn't quite get that. Like, there are some, the platform still exists. It's there.

But the other thing is that when she signed on, X was an independent company. It is now owned by XAI, which means there are even, you know, she was always a CEO, and it always felt like it was in air quotes. Like, Elon owns a place. Elon runs a place. X also announced a new head of product recently. They put Nikita Beer in charge. He was the co-founder of TBH, which MetaBot, and I believe then shut down.

And also gas, which was required by Discord. I have the apps, as I'm told, I believe are for teens. And so I did not use them. You know what? That's just being age-appropriate. The teens are the teen apps. Teens are using gas. I'm not sure about that.

I can't prove that. So X, yeah. know, it's got some, it's got some, they didn't announce a new CEO. They didn't, they didn't say anything. They're just like, Linda's gone. Okay. And then in the background of all of this, Grock, I kind of, there's something about X as a platform right now where it just, there's, sometimes there are rainy days and thunderstorms. And you're just like, oh, yeah, the chatbot that lives in the platform is being racist and calling itself Mecca Hitler today.

And you're like, well, we're just like, oh, it does that sometimes. And it's like, this is the point we have gotten to with X where we're like, number one, it's still, it still functions. Number two, yeah, you can just ignore Mechah Hitler. They'll deal with it. It's fine. Do you remember when we used to call, like, back when it was Twitter, we used to be like, this is the main character of the day. Yes. And now Grok is the main character of the day as Mechahitler.

But don't love that. I, the Mecha Hitler thing is, um, perhaps the more, uh, the lighter part of it. It was being like actively super anti-Semitic and racist and offensive. Um, and just like going off for a couple days and eventually they like shut it down. This all ends with Elon hosting a live stream between now it's Grock 4, which may or may not be live at this point. It wasn't unless I checked. It's, I don't. I don't really get it.

Like, X as a product is, I think, bewildering to me at this point. Like, I think the grand proclamations of doom, I guess I would argue, did not quite. No, there's like a ton of people who are still on X. Surprisingly, like the 10 seconds I'm on there every so often, I'm like, oh. Right. So-and-so I used to follow, they still be posting up a storm on X. So that's, you know, it's still there. People are still have not left, which is wild to me.

And like, you know, I don't want to, I shouldn't give them too much credit for this, but like Elon fired most of the company. And like it's still, you know, the website is still online most of the time, right? Like, okay, okay. They've got that. Is it succeeding? Not right. The thing it has succeeded at is creating a whole bunch of competing platforms,

including threads, which there was data out. this week that it is like nearly catching up on mobile app usage. Wow. Absolutely wild considering how awful threads is. Like I'm sorry. Like I go to threads for very specific things, which is K-pop, because apparently my Algo there is just like all you care about is K-pop. And I'm like, are they wrong?

They are only partly wrong. I care about other things. But I'm just like, that's my entire feed on threads is just K-pop from, but like K-pop news from five days ago. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's what you go to Threads for. That's what you go to Threads for.

Five days ago. I wonder how much of it is meta just aggressively pushing people to threads, which has been. Oh, it's so aggressive in Instagram now. Yeah, scrolling through and you're like, oh, do I want to look at a Threads post from three days ago? I think I'm good. Threads also very aggressively pushes the, like, for you page or whatever it's called the Discover page. Whereas, you know, other platforms are nice and give you options or let you, choose your following, right?

I go on threads and I get freaking sucked in because it is just like showing me all this stuff from people who I don't follow. And it's like, this is why Facebook succeeds. Yeah. I'm not actually saying it's bad necessarily. But like, yeah, I see why it's doing okay. And somehow they've got enough stuff. They don't have a Mecca Hitler, though.

I, well, you know what? Zuck just spent a lot of money on. Okay. Okay. We might have Mecca Hitler down the line. But, oh. How close are we to Mecca Hitler? That's a new metric for your AI.

That's dystopian. Yeah. And on that happy note. On that happy note, it's time for a break. When we get back, we are rebranding the lightning round. Get ready for it. This week on Net Worth and Chill, we're diving into another edition of Am I the Asshole, Finance Edition. And trust me, these money dilemmas will have you questioning everything.

I'm breaking down real stories from real people who are navigating financial situations that range from mildly awkward to absolutely unhinged, and I'm giving you my unfiltered take on who's in the right and who needs a serious reality check. Because let's be real, when it comes to mixing relationships and finances, someone's always asking if they're the asshole. Learn how to set boundaries, protect your wealth, and avoid becoming the villain in your own financial story. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.com slash you're rich BFF. All right, we're back. So I have a problem. I have a problem with the lightning round.

I don't know if you guys know this. But Neely and David, every week, they've got the lightning round. They've got a whole bunch of stories. And the point of the lightning round is you get through all this. It's fast-paced lightning round, right? What happens? Goes long. Yeah.

Goes long. They don't get to all the stories. They got to cut them. That ends today. Okay? The lightning round is done. We are changing it. It is henceforth.

known as the thunder round. Oh my God. Let's do this. Okay, here's what's going to happen. Unlike the lightning round, the thunder round gets stuff done. It keeps moving. We've got 15 stories, 15 minutes. And I have given Eric Gomez, our producer, the power of lightning.

Oh, thunder? That one's wrong. Well, you have one, you have the other. Yeah. Okay. He's got the power of. Something to make us move along. And he is going to come in with some rolling, some crackling thunder, some crashes to keep us moving if we go a little too slow.

I love this. I love this. So ready. I'm ready. I'm going to jump a million times. All right, people. Let's do this. The first ever thunder round, we're going to get through all of them.

You ready? I believe in us. Okay. Story number one. I really want to talk about this. Allison, you covered Project Indigo, which is this Adobe camera app for the iPhone, right? Yes, it's kind of a beta product. It is a camera app. It's made by Mark LaVoy, who some people may remember as like the brains behind the pixel camera. The idea is it's computational photography, but it doesn't make your photos look like HDR. Hell is how I would say the sales pitches. And I played with it. It turned my phone into a, a piece of fire.

I don't know. It's very beta. It heats your phone up. Oh, my God. Not a great, like, everyday camera. Amazing photos. Like, loved it so much. The photos in your story were so, like, they had such intense mood and, like, a vibe.

Contrast. Like, beautiful. I've, like, truly, this doesn't have a little bit. The entire Verge newsroom stopped and was like, what, what are these photos? Yeah. From a phone? Yeah. I have not seen phone photos like.

this in in years yeah it's mark levoy really feels like the guy who who google let get away like yeah i know what did they do here and he's like a fellow at adobe what a gig yeah you just hang out make a camera app making the camera app we all want yeah so was this like were these like specially curated the photos that you posted or because like they were incredible okay okay okay okay so i next door we're going to move along here ikea announced a lamp with a speaker in it, and it looks cool and it connects to Spotify. The main thing is they drop Sonos. This is the correct move to drop Sonos.

You like this? Sonos has had kind of a – Sonos has had a year. The app has not been great. And I think, you know, if you think about what most people use, they're using Bluetooth and they're using Spotify. So just go where their people are. Make it cheaper. You don't have to have like a whole licensing issue with Sonos for this.

And Sonos is like, you know, it's – Are they doing great, Rob? Sonos and IKEA always felt like a weird pairing to me, right? It is the highest end of connected speakers and the lowest end of stuff for your home. I mean, I love IKEA. That's not enough. And IKEA is more expensive than they used to be. But, yeah, it's just, no, but that is like a weird dichotomy.

And, like, IKEA's foray into the smart home has always been about simplicity and keeping things affordable. So kind of. The speaker's cute. The speaker is cute. Not bad? Or that's not the lamp. There's a lamp. I would buy a bunch of these.

Wow. I want some net backs. I was just shaking out. The Thunder God does not appreciate speaker talk. V, do you want to say this one? Yeah. So, Perplexity has launched a comet web browser. So a web browser for Perplexity, which is the AI search engine, which fashions itself as,

I always get confused by the pitch for Paltoxity over the other ones. But the whole idea is that, you know, It's researching things in real time, so you're supposed to be able to trust the results more. Sure, it has a web browser now. Love it. Have you used, have either, like, Gemini and Chrome or DIA yet? I haven't used DIA, but I'm a long-time user of ARC and the original ARC. So, like, I get the whole AI browser thing.

Yeah. So my, okay, so AI browsers is super hot right now. They also, Open AI is supposed to be launching an AI web browser too. My whole thing is like, they don't work. yet, right? Like, I tried Dia, and I'm like this, it's just a permanent chatbot tap. Like, why? What am I? Like, I'm like pretty on board with like chat GPT being useful, but it's like, you just, you just added a tab to my browser. Yeah. I get it. They're trying to, they're trying to beat Google. They're trying to replace it. And to do that, you've got to be the default. A different version of AI overviews, I feel, which is, eh. It's more aggressive. It's much more aggressive.

AI mode. Yeah. I will say like sometimes in the arc browser when I have like a thing that I'm looking up and it gives me the summaries. I'm like, oh, it's helpful to have summaries, but now I've got to look it up and make sure it's like. Yeah. So you got to check it's work. Yeah, it's work. AI mode is like, what if you could talk to and interact with a page of search results? I'm like, I don't think I've ever wanted that. No, no, that's what I asked for. Yeah. Cool. Okay. Okay. I brain froze. But anyway, so yeah. Yeah. AI browsers, they're not.

Not sure we like it. I'm not sure we like it. Allison, all right, E-ink. Okay, E-ink is on a laptop for some reason. So there's a laptop, but instead of a touchpad, it has an E-AIC, e-reader for AI apps. I hate this. Why? Why?

This felt like they were just trying to find an angle on their own. Like, they were like, we could put an e-reader on the track pad. Yeah. And they're like, nobody's going to buy that. What if we put AI next to it? I don't, I don't, why would you want to read on your track pad? No, I don't know. There's no reason for that.

And then also just, okay, I'm sorry. I'm going to quote Ron Swanson from Parks and Rec. Whole ass one thing. Don't half ass two things. This is two half ass thing. I have an e-reader. I have a laptop touchpad and AI is in everything. But I don't want to read on my touchpad where my fingies go.

No. Because sometimes you're eating. Sometimes you're eating. And then you're going to get it all smeary. And then it's going to be on your AIE reader in the middle. Just get a folding phone. I don't know if I'll go that far. I don't know if I'm going to go that far.

But yeah. Get a $2,000 folding. Whole ass one touchpad. That's my spiel. There you go. I support that. Okay. Okay.

Next thing. Did you guys see or can I say, did you not see Lord's new CD, which is transparent? It's transparent. And, okay, so it turns out when you put a CD into certain CD players, I mean, I guess they all use infrared to read it. But it seems like some of them maybe also use infrared to register that a CD is really going in. And they can't see it. And so they just eject the CD and they won't put it in.

Andrew Marino on our team went out and these things are sold out, but he managed to find one. And he tested it a bunch of CD players. So you have like a clamshell one where you just like put it in and close it. Or I guess maybe like a disc tray. Yeah, yeah. That will work. But otherwise these Lord fans are really upset because. You know what?

Fair. They paid for this music and now they can't listen to it on their car CD, which, you know, like that's one reason to buy a CD if you have a car that still has those things. So I totally get what they're saying. At the same time, it is kind of cool to have a transparent CD. Okay, I'm moving on with this one because I don't want to get crashed. a federal appeals court struck down the FTC's click to cancel rule this week. This is. Bullshit.

That's what this is. Yeah. This is the thing that was going to let you cancel your gym membership. This was, this should be a bipartisan issue if there was ever a bipartisan issue. Why did they? Does anyone like it when you're trying to cancel a thing? And they're like, actually, you have to call an email.

Nobody likes this. Nobody wants this. This was a bipartisan. It's devastating. This is absolutely devastating. We should have gotten this done. Who's responsible? Yeah, who is responsible for this?

Why would they like, I'm sorry. Like, even... Okay, they said the FTC did a bad job making the rule. So it's not like they can still do it. It's just like, will the new FTC do it? Oh, great. No, they won't because I don't know. Maybe I'm being mean, but I feel like it's capitalist to be just like, no, make it hard for them to cancel because then we can get revenue.

Because these people can't remember just. cancel their subscriptions? I tried to cancel pet insurance once, and it was the most... I just gave up and paid another year for pet insurance. Oh my God. No. That's a lot of... No. You had to, like, write a handwritten note, mail it. That's insane. Call their CEO. I... I'm... It's good news for your pet, I suppose. Yeah, he was all right. Oh. Oh. That was... Oh, that was... Oh, my God. He was dead. Thunder Crash. Okay. Vicki was moving. Okay. So, nothing's first true flagship phone plays it a little safe because, you know, nothing. We know nothing for, oh, God, you got to stop me with the nothing ponds, but nothing has something going for it, which is that it's

known for its forward design and this is not cool. Yeah, it has. So instead of like all the lights on the back that was like the glyph thing, which looked cool, wasn't super useful. I didn't find it super useful. It has a little tiny like programmable like LED thing. And, sort of like the Asus like Rogg phones where it can be a little icon, you can be an emoji icon for like a certain app. It makes more sense to me because you could assign different notifications to different glyph patterns. And I would be looking at it like I can't remember if that thing lights up. Do I have a phone call or what? This is like a more clear like you could put a little poop emoji when the phone rings or something.

I don't know. People were hating on it. I don't know. I think it's a good idea. They demoed it with like a spin the bottle thing. Oh, that's dumb. Okay. Hear me out.

I'm actually super infit. It's the carrot sensor. They're just like, no one is going to use this. Here's your carrot. Yeah. And I love it. I love it. Maybe they should just put a little more whimsy into it.

I don't know. I think people have expectations. So this didn't meet their expectations of what they wanted from nothing. I guess. They wanted something from nothing. That doesn't work. We deserve this one. The government is still suing Apple for antitrust.

Yeah. Good. Yeah. I'm very pleased to see that still happening. Apple, Apple tried to get it dismissed, and the judge was just like, yeah, seems like they've got a case. They didn't, you know, they didn't like rule on it in any meaningful manner. Apple is so litigious, right? Like, they do this all the time with everything.

I mean, this is, well, okay, so this is, the government was like, hey, Apple, like, your entire business models anti-competitive. And Apple's like, that's not true. And this judge is like, let us at least find out. Yeah. So that's, that's it. That's good. That's good. I want to see this play out.

I think, like, there are huge repercussions, potentially. So it'll be, it'll at least be a fun time in court. Yeah. Yeah. All right. My turn. So adding calendar events with a screenshot is AI at its finest. Hard agree.

Oh, yeah. Someone also testing the does beta of iOS 26. It actually works now? It does the thing that you want it to do. It's kind of like, oh. Yeah. So on iOS 26, you take a screenshot of something and you'll get a little prompt. I'll say add a calendar and it'll use generative AI too.

And it already did a version of this, but it wasn't, it was pretty like find the date. use the email subject line as the calendar thing, and that was kind of the end of it, I will say, Gemini does this a lot better. Like, we'll add multiple events. We'll ask you follow up questions. Like, did you want to add this or this? And it understood time zones. Oh, that's a big one. Really good. I think it's a win all around. I'm like, free us from the tyranny of calendar apps. Yeah. That's what I say about that. Yeah. Sold. Good. Yeah. Absolutely sold. on it. Hey, we beat the clock. Yeah. Wow. Don't push it.

Now I'm braced for thunder. Oh, they just want to keep us on our toes now. We've made Eric too powerful. Howell's second generation Vision Pro might launch this year, according to Bloomberg. Supposedly, they're just going to do the pretty much the exact same thing, put an M4 chip in it. I mean, the Vision Pro is just, it is a Mac on your face.

And yeah, it's rough. when it's $3,500 and an M1. And it's a heavy Mac on my face. So this is the other thing. Supposedly they're going to do some sort of new strap, which like I feel like everybody I've talked to about the Vision Pro is like you've got to get a different strap. You got to get a, like, so there's two straps straps now. There's the solo knit and there's the one that looks like a harness. I forget the name of it right now.

But I keep switching between both of them. Neither of them help. It's just I can't. I, you know, I'm not calling the people who believe that like you can. wear it for hours, liars, but I have never been able to do that. Okay, I'm going to keep us quick on this next one, too, as we move forward. Nvidia briefly became the first $4 trillion company this week. The thing that's interesting here, Apple was the first to $1 trillion.

Apple was the first American company to $2 trillion. Apple was the first company of $3 trillion. And Vida wins with $4 trillion. It's AI, right? It's the AI. The chips. The chips need to. The times have changed.

Apple is merely a $3 trillion company. Oh, I'm ashamed. So our thoughts are with Tim on these trying times. These trying times. He has his biceps to keep him company. Yeah. That's true. Okay.

Do you know Cameo still around? I did not know that's still around. Cameo, not only is still around, they launched a new app this week for tracking your friend's birthdays. It's a calendar, but it only does birthdays. Do we need that dumb? And Cameo is doing it. Why?

Why? Oh, I guess is the idea that. then you're like, oh, it's my friend's birthday. I should get them a cameo from that random select. Oh. Yeah. Okay, that's kind of genius, but also no. No.

I will say, and like apologies to, I don't know, all of my friends, everybody I know. I only remember birthdays because they're in my calendar. Oh, yeah. If they're not in there, I don't know that you were born. I'm an astrology nerd. Like, it's how I cope with everything now. So I just find out people's signs and then know the general time when their birthday is. You just get a sense.

I just get a sense. They're like, oh, you're a Gemini? Oh, you're pretty fast. Like, that kind of thing. That was true. That was right. Yeah. Yeah.

It's good. It's working. It's good stuff. So Apple just added more frost to its liquid glass design. That's because it's liquid ass. I'm not a fan. Oh, she said it. Wow.

Okay. Here's my hot take. I think it's kind of okay. Like, I've kind of gotten used to it. No. I have bad eyes. Like, I have truly awful eyes and anyone's ever read my smart glasses review or anything that has to do with vision know that my eyes are garbage. These are garbage eyeballs that my parents gave me.

I legitimately had a really hard time reading. Yeah. And obviously it's dev beta. It'll be different when it comes out. I'm pro more frost, but then it's not glass. Yeah. No, it's frosted glass. It's frosted glass.

I had to put the little outlines on all the buttons, which make the whole transparency thing not. Because if you go into the messages, you can't see any of the buttons. Yeah. And then you're just like a slap. It's terrible. I don't like it. You guys know what? I watched Minority Report for the first time, literally for the first time this last week.

Oh, wow. And they're putting all the glass in front of glass. I was like, there it is. We made it. We did it. The future is here now. Yeah, it seemed like everything worked out nicely in Minority. Oh, yeah, it was good.

Technology is really good. Good to hear. All right. Got two more. Two more. We're going to make this. Oh. Is it my turn?

Yes. Yeah. Nintendo is ending its cost-saving switch game vouchers. I didn't know there were switch game vouchers. How do I get one? And I can't. So, I guess, V, did you ever use these? They did not.

These were like, okay, these were, people love these things. They were such a bargain. It was this weird thing where Nintendo is like, if you subscribe to Switch online, so you have to be a member. But for $100, they'll sell you a voucher. And you can use it to get $2. two full-priced Nintendo games. And so you could lock in the price of a game at $50, basically. Which if you're going to buy two Nintendo games, it's like, yeah, great.

You're just like, you're saving like $20 or more, particularly as you're like, these things are creeping up in price. This is, they're like, Cheers of the Kingdom or whatever the next Zelda is, is going to be $90. Okay. Last story. We made it. We're doing it. We're doing it.

HBO Max is officially drumroll. HBO Max again. Thank God. The world is restored. We're safe. I actually... Not from Eric. Not from thunder.

Not from thunder. But we did it, everyone. We did it. We made it through 15 stories. All of the stories. I'm going to declare this first version of the Thunder round. Mostly successful. I think it was successful.

We made it. We set out. We accomplished what we set out to do. Exactly. There you go. There was thunder. There was, yes. There was perhaps a lot of,

There's some aggressive thunder happening. I feel like Eric maybe got a little thunder happy. That's it for the Thunder Round and that's it for the Vergecast. We'd love to hear your questions and feedback. Do you like the Thunder Round? I hope so. Email us at Vergecast at theverge.com or give us a call 866 Verge 11. The Vergecast is a production of the Verge and Vox Media Podcast Network.

Our show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, Andrew Marino, and Travis Larcuk. See you next week.