The Vergecast - Amazon and Microsoft's AI parades

Episode Date: September 22, 2023

The Verge's Nilay Patel, Alex Cranz, and David Pierce discuss all the announcements from Amazon's fall product launch event and Microsoft's Surface and AI event. Further reading: Amazon’s fall 2023 product launch event: live news, announcements, and more Amazon is set to supercharge Alexa with generative AI  The Fire TV should be at the heart of Amazon's smart home  The new $269.99 Echo Frames look a whole lot more like glasses.  Alexa Eye Gaze offers a new way to control Alexa on a Fire tablet  In the new Echo Show 8, Alexa will be 40 percent faster.  Finally some hardware...for kids. YouTube is going all in on AI with background and video topic suggestions YouTube made a video editing app — just like TikTok  Microsoft Surface event: the 6 biggest announcements  Microsoft’s new Xbox controller borrows great ideas from Stadia, Steam, and Sony This is Microsoft’s new disc-less Xbox Series X design with a lift-to-wake controller Microsoft’s next Xbox, coming 2028, envisions hybrid computing Microsoft addresses the huge Xbox leaks: here’s Phil Spencer’s full memo Microsoft’s Phil Spencer says acquiring Nintendo would be ‘a career moment’  Microsoft announces the Surface Laptop Studio 2 with upgraded chips and ports A first look at Microsoft’s upgraded Surface Laptop Studio 2  Microsoft announces the new Surface Laptop Go 3 Hands-on with the Surface Laptop Go 3  The Surface Go 4 comes with a much-needed performance boost  Microsoft 365 Copilot launches in November Windows 11’s next big update arrives on September 26th with Copilot, RAR support, and more Microsoft announces Surface Hub 3 with portrait mode  The cable bundle of the future is officially here Google’s Bard chatbot can now find answers in your Gmail, Docs, Drive The Home Assistant Green is here to make the most powerful smart home platform more accessible 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

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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. What's up, y'all. I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WMBA 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. Hello and welcome the Vergecast. The flagship podcast of a scandal that's taking over the pole dancing, not the pole dancing community. The flagship podcast of Ed Shearin tearing the line dancing community apart. What? This is just random TikTok knowledge I have now. Oh, have you entered Shiver TikTok?

Yeah, yeah. Welcome. Wow. It just follows me around the internet now as people line dancing to shivers by Ed Shearin. And then the comments are like, like this isn't real line dancing. Like doing the electric slide and the little docey dough? The line dancing situation, it's the next big trend.

It's coming to a honky tonk new you. Shivers by Ed Shearin is David appears to know. Oh yeah. I've been deep in shiver dancing TikTok for a long time, as we call it. And it's deeply controversial. Because it's Ed Shearin. Because it's Ed Shearin. That's not what I want to listen to.

There are entire people who have built careers off of line dancing to shivers by Ed Shearin. No. And the commenters are like, this isn't country music. And their response to the commenters are, I post other songs, only Shivers gets views. I hate it. I don't like it. It's very good. It is easily my favorite low-stakes internet drama is why.

Like, do you know how there's a theory that like the Chinese government is manipulating TikTok to destabilize America? That's how they're doing it. The algorithm is like, you will dance to shivers. That's where we get our civil war. It's very good. Hello, I'm your friend, Eli. Alex Tran is here in the studio with me. I'm just really upset today.

It's all good. We're going to play shivers later. David Pierce is here. Hi, my theory about the shiver thing is that this is this generation's Cotton Eye Joe in that it's a song and a dance that don't make any sense in context and no one should ever do that involves like leg kicking. You got to slap the leg. But it has taken over the universe. This is, it's Cotton Eye Joe 2.0 and it's everywhere. Never mind.

I love this trench now with like that read. It's all good. Beautiful. There's no downside. I'm expecting a 10,000 word shivers feature. How Shivers is tearing country music apart. David and I are on it. The country music is going through quite a lot right now.

I'm saying Shivers is the C plot. It is. Because there's like, there's the guy who's like the alternative music version of country and he's taking on bro country. We have so much to get through in the show. Oh my God. Here at Shivers. Okay. There's a lot on the show today.

A lot. Amazon had a big event. They announced not as much stuff as a. they usually announce at their events, but a bunch of stuff. Big push in general of AI. Microsoft had an event. YouTube had an event. Microsoft had massive product leaks,

which were vastly more interesting than their event. Yes. There's other stuff going on. There's the Google antitrust case, just in the background of all of this, which has its own controversy embedded in it, and the next week is the code conference. So just quite a lot going on in virtual.

Like September is here. Yeah. We're no longer getting ready. first September. There's enough going on in Virgil world this week that the Wednesday show is all about the iPhone reviews because we need to just clear the decks for today's show. Yeah. Yeah.

All right, so let me give you the quick update on the Google trial. And it will be quick because it is deeply frustrating. No one knows what's going on in the Google trial. Including both sides. No, I think they might have an idea. So most federal court cases are locked down. This is true. If you look back over the past year or so, more and more of them are starting to open up, right?

They're allowing documents to be posted. There's some cases, audio is being streamed. Certainly reporters are in the courtroom. Just look at the Microsoft case, which has resulted in the Strait League, which we'll get to. But you know what happened in FTC versus Microsoft. We were able to cover for you. You know what happened in Epic versus Apple. We were able to just cover for you.

Do you know what's happening in Google versus the DOJ? Or the DOJ versus Google? You don't. Because reporters in the courtroom are not allowed to have devices, which means they have to take notes by hand. and Google, the judge, the DOJ are in some extremely annoying fight about public access to documents. So Google published a bunch of documents on this website about opening arguments, et cetera, da-da-da. The DOJ tried to do that. Google got mad at them.

All those documents have now come down off the DOJ's website, and there is some sort of argument happening amongst the two parties and the judge about whether the documents will come back. In particular, one document, which we don't know what it is, which is, quote, embarrassing to Google. I want that one. That's the what I want. One of Google's financial executives was testifying that was closed to reporters. So reporters taken notes by long hand weren't even allowed in the room. We believe that, as you're hearing this on Friday, that Apple executives will be in the courtroom. But no one has posted a schedule, so we don't know.

It's just bonkers. Yeah. And even the like semi-haphazard ways that information was being shared have all sort of disappeared. In part, I think, because of these behind-the-scenes machinations going on, but also because Judge Meta seemed to get so angry at these documents going up that now everything is going to get even more locked down for the foreseeable future. Like we're what, we're what two weeks into a 10-week trial? And other than those first couple of days, we basically don't know anything.

Somebody sent me a picture of a old school typewriter and was like, take this to the courtroom. They can't stop you. It's not an electronic. And I think that's the coolest flex of all time. But it is very weird. I get why Google in particular would very much like for it to be this way because it's not interested in losing this fight in the court of public opinion. I don't know for sure that they're the ones driving this, but I can certainly see why they would. But it's very strange that this is where we've landed in this process.

Addie Robertson is covering the case very closely, as closely as we can, who's been in the courtroom for us. I'm like, we should write this story that's like, Google's trying to hide. And she's like, that's not what's happening. It's the judge. Right. Right. Her opinion of this is the judge is like, I'm going to be in control of this. And I get it.

And you could make a case from sort of an outcome basis that not making the trial into the circus will allow the court to reach a good and fair outcome. And then we can like check their work in the end because all of its public. But there's also the fact that, like, one of the biggest companies in America is facing antitrust charges that may or may not result in it being broken up or the structure of its deals with Apple's chain. And we just don't know. Like, we do not know what's going on in that trial right now. I think that's absurd. But that is the state of the Google trial. That's the update, which is it's Schrodinger's trial.

Is there an antitrust trial? Who knows? Probably. Is Google? Who knows? So that's that. The other update I want to give everybody is the Code Conference is next week. I'm hosting it with Casey Newton and Julia Borson from CNBC.

It's going to be great. I've been speaking to some of the people to prepare who are going to appear on stage. So I'm very excited about Gettie's going to show off. I'm very excited about it with Microsoft when they show off. Adobe has some stuff. They've told us they're going to show off. I think it's all going to be really fun. Here's the news, though.

The UAW is on strike against three major American automakers. And Mary Barra, C.O.GM. dropped out today. She doesn't want to give any fodder to the negotiations, which I sort of understand. She took with her, like it's sort of understood. I just want to be clear. I can intellectually understand why she. I do not understand why she doesn't want to just say what she needs to say, but whatever.

She took with her, Mike Abbott, their new executive vice president of software, who is going to, because why does GM want to be at the co-conference? Yeah. Talk about EVs. Talk about the fact that they drop car play. And so I have said to our team, the only moment that matters at code is me asking Mary Bear, why she took CarPlay out of the escalade. We were like prepared for it. And now I cannot deliver that moment to you. Did you have like four versions of the question for her?

Oh yeah. You can't evade. You can't dodge it. I think it sucks, but the people love it, right? What are you going to do? It shivers. I brought an escalade out on stage. Here it is.

Explain. That's true. We have the CEO of Monarch Tractor, by the way, an EV tractor. And I was like, will you drive the tractor on stage? And he goes, it's very heavy. That was the end of that conversation. It's going to be cool. The Pulse Star 3 is going to be a code, which I think is going to be really cool.

Well, you'll see some of that. That is basically just released. I'm just excited about a bunch of stuff that's happening at code, but Mary Bear is leaving. That said, and we'll not reveal it at this moment, we are 99% sure that another CEO of an EV company will be there. Like a good one. Okay. I was like, Elon? No.

No, it's funny how you can interpret like a good one in many ways. Yeah. But a good one. Okay. Like one that you want to hear from. Okay. And then I got another idea that I'm working on, which I think will be cool. So that's the code update.

It's September 26 and 27th. We will have like wall-to-wall coverage on the verge. I'll be there with Casey and Julia. You can buy, do you go to voxmedia.com slash code? You can buy virtual tickets now or $7.5 if you want to like follow along. Otherwise, tons of coverage on the site. We'd, you know, pay attention to code. It's the thing I'm doing.

Okay. Let's talk about the news. Should we start with Amazon? Yeah, there was an Amazon event. David and I went. We hung out. Yeah. I took the train down.

That was the worst decision of my life. That was horrible. I took two trains. So there's like a lot of drama with these Amazon and Microsoft events. Yeah. Like meta-drama. Yeah. Oh, it's so fun.

It's my favorite part of this. Like, I think that was the big conversation of the week. Because the gadgets and there was a lot of cool gadgets and the gadgets are neat. We're going to talk about the gadgets. But the big thing was Panos Panet is he runs all the devices. and Windows at Microsoft, or he did because this week, sudden announcement he's leaving, which is wild because there's a Microsoft event this week. David Limp left Amazon a couple of months ago,

and Bloomberg reports Pano's Penae is going to be taking over his job, David Limp's job, at Amazon. So then the Amazon event happened on Wednesday. Microsoft event happens on Thursday. And meanwhile, we've got these two guys who have been running these departments, running these events, deciding what's going to be. be on stage, figuring out how these things work and operate are both like huge mixup, huge change up.

And it's just like you're sitting. I wish there was, I wish it was a true swap. Yeah. That's really what, it's like it would be perfect if Limp was going to Microsoft and Panos is going to this. But Limp is just out. Yeah. Limp's done.

He seems very happy. He seems chill to be, to be moving on with his life. So I like Dave Limp a lot. Yeah. We've talked to him a bunch. He's been on Decoder. He's a very smart guy. He has always said the right things to us.

I would say, looking at his 10-year-over-A-A-Avon devices, not a lot of heat there. Oh, that's not fair. His strategy was interesting. What do you mean? Because the strategy was about, we're going to see what sticks. We want to, like, we're new in this department. Wait, I want to hear why David says it's not fair.

The Echo has been a gigantic success. The Kindle has been a gigantic success. Wait, the Kindle has been a gigantic success. The Echo is not a gigantic success, and Alexa is not a gigantic. It does not make any money. Fair, sure. Those are two different questions. And you would not even say that people are.

are passionate about these products. Oh, Dave Limp would say that. Dave Limp said that to me, to my face, after the Amazon event, that people love their echoes. I mean, one of the questions I asked him, they had this whole run about generative AI and wanting their AIs to seem like human, right?

Like, that's their big thing. They wanted to say, ums, and Oz, and feel like a member of your family. And I feel like if we've learned one thing about AI over the last 12 months, it's that that's a bad, dangerous, problematic idea. So I asked him that. I was like, why should this thing just be a tool that I use when I need it?

Why should it be my friend? That seems scary. And he was like, that's how people do it. They say they love you to their echo and we're going to keep leaning into that. Like, there is real affinity for that stuff. Most people just like play timers and ask silly questions. But like, that thing is real. Amazon's problem is that it's not a hardware company, right?

Like, their whole thing has always been, we don't make money when you buy our product. We make money when you use our product. So, like, they don't make money on the Kindle. They make money when you buy books on the Kindle. The problem is they never found a way for you to buy anything through the Echo. But this is just what I mean. We are agreeing more than disagreeing. When I say there's not a lot of heat on these products, the Kindle is its own thing.

It's its own weird, closed ecosystem. They put out new Kindles every couple of years. Monstrously successful. And people just buy new ones. Yeah. Fine. And it is a cultural product in its way. Although I think the sort of cultural impact of print books continues and grows.

in its own way, which I think is fascinating. The echo people set timers with, and it's really useful, and little kids ask it to tell it jokes, and you can dress an echo dot up like a Mickey Man, like all that stuff, but it has just been that for the longest time. And maybe some of this generative AI stuff will change that, but they haven't grown it into a business. They haven't figured out to get people to do anything other than set timers and play music, at all.

The smart home stuff has kind of petered out, and we're all waiting. for matter to do whatever. They made some of those announcements. And then the hardware itself is like somewhat stagnated. Oh, yeah. Not even somewhat. It is fully stagnated. Even the new stuff they're launching is just like big plushy screens, just like the other big plushy screens.

With thread routers. Yeah, sure. Sure. They've updated the stuff. And again, I like Dave. And I think he has the right ideas. When you talk to him about smart home stuff in particular, he's like all in on the good standards and making sure the stuff works. He says all the right things, and he's honest, which is like the highest compliment I can give.

But I think that the fire, that's a good pun for Amazon devices, it just seems like they hit a dead end and they didn't know what to do next. And I think you bring in Panos Penet, who's all fire all the time, and he's going to go and like try some stuff and be bold about it, which I think is great. I think his tenure at surface in particular has been underappreciated. Oh, I agree. Like, he completely rebooted the idea of Windows laptops from his position at Microsoft. And we've talked about it a bunch on the show, but basically he walked into Best Buy and said, why are every Windows laptop here? Why is it under $1,000?

And we have just ceded the high end to Apple. Yeah. And then they invented a bunch of stuff. And importantly, I think this is totally undercover. They gave that technology away to the Windows OEMs. Yep. So I've walked around CES with Panos, and he's like, those are my hinges. and pointing at laptops.

Those are my hinges. Those are my key. Here's all the stuff we made that we just gave away. He pulled off the thing Google has been trying to do with pixel for years, which is like teach the ecosystem

how to make better stuff. Yeah. Like he did that to the Windows ecosystem. Yeah. If you have a Windows laptop, it is better because of Panos Panay. Like it just is. Yeah.

And I think that's really cool. Can I tell you my most galaxy brand take about all of this? I've been talking to people and asking around and I have no actual evidence for this, but I'm increasingly convinced that I'm right. Do you want to hear my theory? Yes. My theory is that Pano's Penae wants nothing more than to make a next generation smartphone.

He has been toying with this with the Surface Duo. He's been goofing around with this idea with a bunch of different Windows things over the years. He has like tried desperately to figure out what is the smartphoney thing that comes right after Candy Bar smartphones. Microsoft, I don't think, has any interest in making smartphones anymore. Or even supporting the one that it made. Yeah, it's over that. You know who desperately, desperately would love a reason to get back into the smartphone game is Amazon? Because the reason Alexa can't win is because it's not on your phone in a meaningful device-integrated, super-useful way. It is the single most important device you have, and it is the worst Alexa device. And if you gave Jeff Bezos and Andy Jassy all the money in the world, they would go back and make the fire phone better because it would have changed Amazon forever. And I think somebody came up to Panos and said, we are going to let you build.

the foldable phone of your dreams, and it's, we're going to kick ass with it. And that's why he's going to Amazon. This is your theory. This is my theory. I mean, it's a good theory. I like it. I know for sure the phone thing at Amazon is right. I am 100% sure that Amazon believes very strongly that if it wants to win, it should figure out how to make phones and that that is a way to do this. We saw them set the table for that at the Amazon event, because the Amazon event was about the show eight, which seems really nice. I wasn't enthusiastic about it. until I spent an hour with Jen and now I'm like, yeah, that's cool as hell.

Jen's good like that. She's very good at like that. And, you know, there was that and there was the hub and all of that. But most of that event was on Alexa and on how Alexa is different than Siri and Google Assistant and better. And I don't know if that's true

because we didn't get to actually play around with it a lot because all of the demos were had massive guardrails. Really? Yeah. I was like, I want to go break that. That's how you know. I know the generative AI is like about to say some crazy stuff. Yeah.

Yeah. It's like, we won't actually, because it'll be like, you want to bang? Yeah. I want to define some. I was like, how can I make it? What if we set a timer for five minutes to get it on, you know? Just playing the music. What about you would be seven minutes for night.

I have to stop. I just hear the guitar. I'm just saying, look, if you're listening and you're at Amazon, you're on the Alexa team. Make it horny. Hornie, bang. Rebooted. Microsoft on the front page in New York Times.

Just send one Alexa to Kevin Ruse. It could happen to you. But not one of the kid Alexis. No. Wait, so wait, why did you get you so excited about it? I think her enthusiasm for it as a hub because the poor woman is on a quest to find something that will actually work as a hub

where you don't have to say, yeah, that's the work, but because that's with all smart home hubs. Every single smart home hub, you're like, perfect. You will not need anything else except actually you're going to need this. Can I give you my tiny little example of this one now? So we have in your house. So Jen and I, there are lots of backshaneling. Oh, yeah.

And it's not great. Matter is not ready. Do not buy. Look, it's a bad time to buy a house for a lot of reasons. But if you're listening to the show, it's a bad time to buy a house because you're going to want to put smart stuff in it. And the standard is not ready. Yeah. Nope.

It is just not ready. So you are trapped into buying obsolete technology. It is the worst feeling in the world. Yeah. You're like, I'm going to go all in on a HomeKit, like whatever. Except here's what HomeKit can't do. You can't tell HomeKit where you live. What?

No. So you just can't. There's no direct interface. It doesn't understand. My house is here. It just detects it off your phone. And if you set up new routers with new Mac addresses, Apple TV doesn't have GPS in it. So it just decides where your house is going to be.

when you set it up as a home. It's like, I've never seen that Mac address before on this router. You probably live in your old house, right? It's just bonkers. And every, every smart home thing, like, it's just missing one thing. For example, HomeKit missing an address field. Minor detail. Minor detail.

A little one. You look at the Reddit threads of people who are like, HomeKit doesn't know where I live. It's like five years deep. And the workarounds are ridiculous. But it's true. Most things are matter or thread or is it. They're missing one piece of the puzzle. Right.

Matter itself just, you know, like when you're like building a new city and Sim City and you're like, I'll just finish that road at some other time. Matter. Yep. It's a good road. It's like a beautiful four blocks of a road. Yeah. Yeah.

And you're like, something good's going to happen. And you just stop. And that's like matter and doorbells. It's like, you're just an area of your town labeled that and you'll come back around to it later. Yeah. And it sounds like the show eight. is going to be a little bit more inclusive. It's going to have the stuff.

It'll work. And theoretically, if this generative AI works, then yeah, we're that one step closer to the Star Trek computer dream, which is kind of how I understand Amazon's dream. Yeah, I mean, that saves Limbstream. Like, he has talked to us about ambient computing quite a lot. Yeah.

But you weren't able actually to try out these generative AI features. Not really. I tried it with a fire TV, and I wasn't allowed to ask questions, which, oh. And it was just super, super guardrail. He clearly had like, okay, these are the ones I'm going to show you to showcase stuff, which is fine. I think that's very normal for these kind of situations. The internet's really crappy, as we saw when, like, Limp had struggles on stage because it seemed like the Alexa, like lost connection at one point. And he was just like, I'm just going to stand here awkwardly. See, this is why I prefer a live demo. to whatever Apple's doing. Oh, yeah. That's, like, even just hearing that, it's, like, makes this whole thing.

It was nice, but you have to remember, okay, well, you know, this is one of the most challenging networking environments you can have because you have 100 journalists, all with, like, cameras and laptops, uploading a ton of stuff all at once in one small room. You destroy the internet. Whatever.

If Taylor Swift can do it for the Ares tour, I don't care. 5G, baby. No, I will say the thing Dave Limp told me is that most of this stuff is not live yet, and finished. Like, even the folks who buy some of these products early on may not get the full generative AI piece of it. It's all back-end stuff, right?

Like, all the stuff is happening on Amazon's side of things. That's why a lot of this tech is coming to, like, the original Echo, which obviously doesn't have the hardware to, like, run LLMs locally. But it doesn't have to because all this stuff is happening in the cloud and just being ported back to you through Alexa. But it's going to be a pretty slow process for Amazon. on. Like, Alexa is basically this compilation of, like, thousands of different little things. We think of it as, like, one character, but it's actually just a million different pipes all kind of coming into the voice. And they're going to do it, as far as I understand, kind of bit by bit as it goes, before this all becomes sort of fully generative AI. And my understanding is that's going to take a little while. Yeah, it's going to come with the phone. It's going to come with the phone. There is this new eye gaze thing where you can just, like, look at the displays and control them with your eyes.

which is a little terrified. A little. Amazon seems much more comfortable with the idea of putting cameras and smart assistants devices. They had a drone that you could fly around your house for security. Like their concept of security

and stuff is way different. Yeah. What if Robocop was in your home? There's like three people in the world who are like, yes. Yeah. And the rest of it's like, mm-hmm.

And they're listening right now. Welcome. We appreciate you. We love you. But no, Amazon is very comfortable with the idea that these things should have cameras as well as microphones. I am hard stop at cameras.

Yeah. Just no thank you. You don't want a camera owned by someone else in your bedroom at all times. No, thank you. Shocked. But you know when you ask people, would you ever put a camera in your bathroom? They're like, no. And you know you carry like seven of them in your bathroom every time you put in your phone.

And there's like, yeah. And then they lie. And they're like, it's in my pocket the whole time. It's not. Yeah. I hide it. I wrap it in a little towel like a baby and put it away. But wait, Eli, the camera thing is really interesting because like I'm with you on the would not

put a camera in like my bedroom. That's been a non-starter for us for forever. We don't even have any cameras in the house. But like... You have seven of them in your pocket right now. I mean, I have seven that I have one right here. Like, you know what I mean. We don't have any like smart home camera things.

Yeah. But then there are questions like, okay, not a camera, but what about like a radar detector that knows when you're getting close and can change the interface so that you can use it? that's not the same, but it's not totally different either. It's like my device being aware of me all the way down to like my device can see precisely what facial expression I'm making. Somewhere on that spectrum is where I get uncomfortable and I don't know exactly where it is.

And like Amazon is doing this too. They have these really interesting ideas with things like the HubMax, the big new smart home controller about when you're far away, it should show you one thing, right? Like probably status information. It'll look like a thermostat show you. temperature or whatever. As you get closer, it can start to show you more information. And when you get right up to it, it should show you buttons because that's what you're going to do when you're standing right next to it. And to do that, they have to be able to do presence detection. It has to know

who you are and where you are. And full color camera for that, little much for my taste. But like, I still have not figured out where I go from, like, this is a useful way to do a useful thing to, like, that's a little much. I like that they're trying to figure it out. Because the echo itself, like the original one was already kind of invasive and people had to reconcile that, right? Like, I'm going to have an always on microphone in my house. That's way more than anybody had had before that. Well, and the lesson learned was people got used to that really fast, right? Like Amazon was like, oh, we can just do this because it's fine. And so Amazon is clearly like trying to find, okay, we have to do this presence detection. We have to do something because you cannot have

a super successful smart home without some sort of like surveillance. That's just, you need it. Yeah. And if you want the convenience, you're going to have to give that up. And so they're clearly trying to figure out, okay, where's most people's line? Dron that flies around your house, robot that drives around your house and gives you beer too much. Well, those are different. I would say those are different. The robot was useful. Yeah. The drone is terrifying.

Was the robot useful? Well, I'm saying, well, I mean, it could have been useful. It brings me beer. Right. I think if you can actually solve that it brings me beer problem, like a lot of people will sign. out for that at under $1,000. Yeah, that's fair. There's a drone that looks at stuff. A lot of people are like, yeah, I don't know, man, just rob the place.

Like, I can't be doing this? You're welcome to everything. Yeah. But I'm with you, David, that there's like some. Yeah, there's that point. It's fuzzy. Yeah. And it seems like Amazon is trying to find that point by throwing things, by doing like

the limp strategy, which is like, okay, well, we're just going to release, we can afford to release things. So we're going to release things and see where that. line is. I think this is the thing that we'll change on our panis-pinay the most. Yeah, I think he's going to have more focus. Right. Like, Amazon is like, we'll put a mic and speakers in it.

Alexa, light switch it, whatever. And the idea that the market would settle on an idea, I think it's just not come to fruition, especially because Alexa hasn't been worth it. Right. Like, man, again, I'm out here trying to buy a thermostat, man. Like, the EcoB I want is like, it has Alex in it. I'm like, but I don't want that. You can turn it off.

I never used it. But why is it even there? I don't want it. I don't know. I don't need a microphone of my thermostat, man. I'm trying to tell this to you. But then it has whatever. It's just like, but that was the idea.

We'll just like put it everywhere. I suspect Pannos will bring much more focus to that program. Yeah. There's a little bit of reporting in Reuters that like morale is low in that team. I think that's to be expected with any gigantic leadership change. But I also think the sort of leadership style is, about to go a dramatic change. And if you've been allowed to be like, here's what we're going to do, we're going to spend

tens of million dollars on a drone that flies around your house and then just put it out there and see what happened. Like, I suspect those days are going to come to an end. Yeah. I'm going to be sad about that. I think, Neely, the truest thing I think about your feeling about Dave Lim's tenure is that the last, like, big capital and new thing Amazon's hardware division launched was that first echo in 2014.

Yeah. No, the echo shows I think we're an important turn. That's fair. Okay, sure. I'll give you that. But even that, that's one and a half things in what amounts to a decade. And everything else has been sort of iterative splinters of the same idea. And I think one thing Panos Pena is very good at is being a fountain of big, new, wacky ideas. Yeah. Fire TV's in there. Actually, in general, read about this, and Amazon has weirdly sort of discounted the fire TV as the centerpiece of its smart home strategy. when it is probably by most measures the most used Amazon device in most people's lives. If you have a fire TV in your house, it is probably the Amazon thing you interact with the most. But it's a TV, so you get it to play whatever you want and usually move on with your life. And I think there's a gap there that I think is fascinating.

And they announced a new one, right? Yeah, they announced too. So they announced it's the new Fire TV 4K stick and it's going to be more powerful, it's going to be faster. It should have better Wi-Fi in it. And then there's going to be a new Fire TV Max, and that's going to have a whole, like, that's going to be more in competition with the Apple TV, which is great because Fire TVs have notoriously stayed far, far, far away from the premium end of things, which is really annoying if you want to experience it, but you don't want to look at garbage on your TV. And like, I paid for Dolby Vision. I want Dolby Vision. But, Alex, can I tell you the wildest thing about what you just described?

Your description is exactly right, and the difference between bottom and top is $10. It's $10. Buy the fancy one, people. Like, wait for our reviews. We'll probably review them. Please buy the max. There are many smarter people with Verge on this stuff than I am. But I'm here to tell you, if you are going to buy one of the new Fire TV sticks, spend the $10. Get the Dolby, get the better features, get the faster speeds. It will last you longer. It will make you happier. It's $10. I don't understand why this other one exists. Like, Amazon likes to do the thing where they're like, this one costs $5 and this one costs $50. And then I'm like, okay, these are real things.

And they discount the one really heavily on Prime Day and they'll just like give it to you anytime you put anything in your card. Like, whatever. That's all fine and good. This one is if you're going to have a $50 one that's fine and a $60 one that's very good, like what are we doing? I don't understand. Yeah. All right. Lastly, we have to talk about the Echo Frames.

Then we've got to take a break. We do. Why did they make glasses again? So, okay, I can answer this question because I asked Dave Limp this question. I literally pointed at them on the table in front of him in this conference room we were sitting and talking. And I was like, smart glasses? Are these a thing? And he goes, I don't know.

So what I can tell you is true is that like the last time Amazon had this run of like weird stuff they were going to launch, they did a ring. They did a whole bunch of other stuff all with the idea of like things. you have on you all the time that might connect to Alexa, right? Most of those things didn't find an audience. They're not here. It's not an accident that, like, the Echo Ring 2 does not exist. The frames, he said, caught on. They're not huge.

They're not earth-shatteringly popular. But he said he was like, we have found a bunch of kinds of people who really love this. Outdoorsy people who have always been the target market for this, right? Like, you want to be able to listen to music and talk to your device without having headphones blocking you from the world. that's useful. And like, Bose is working on this kind of stuff.

Meta's working on this kind of stuff. There's like this teeny, tiny little, but kind of growing smart glasses world that I think is sort of fascinating. But he basically was like, what we thought happened the last time was that they were severely limited by the fact that they didn't look very good.

That we thought there might be more people who were interested in relatively lightweight, relatively simple glasses that let you talk to Alexa and play music, period. So with this generation, we made them nicer looking. And they are, in fact, much nicer looking. They have a bunch of different styles. They have some different lenses.

They did a thing with Carrera that looked so bad when I put them on, but I'm sure we'll look cool on other people's phases. But they're like, I get the sense that they're like, okay, this is the good version of this product that some people seem to have caught onto already. Like, let's see if there really is a there-there-there on this one. So I'm fascinated to see how well this thing actually does. I can't wait to make you review these.

I'm down. I went back and looked at our old review, and all of the pictures are Dieter looking very serious, holding one of the stems of the glasses. It's so good. It's good. This is why I'm excited for it. I can't wait. Very serious. You're going to get the same outfit, too.

That's Amazon. There's lots of coverage on the site. If you're into the, there's an ERO Pro Max with Wi-Fi 7, 210 gig ports and 2.5 gig ports. It's huge. Do you need that? It's $1,700 for a three-pack. It's great. I love it.

You're going to buy it for sure. Like, you know, there's like, no, we have one gig internet service. Although we could get 8 gig optimum service. I just couldn't figure out what for. And now I'm like, oh, it's so I can buy this router. Yeah. It's a horrible way. It's a horrible way to spend $1,700 is switching to optimum.

No, thank you. No, thank you. But it's great. The Echo Hub, Max, go look on the site. It's all fun stuff to look at. But the real news here is that this is like the end of one. line of thinking. Yes. Which is just utterly fascinating to me.

Yeah. And it all happened on the same day. It's great. Okay, so we're going to take a break. We're going to come back and want to talk about Microsoft's event, which is on the other end of all this trial. We'll grab on. Support for this show comes from Shopify. Starting something new isn't just hard. It can be really scary, too.

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That's UPWRK.com. Upwork.com. Okay, we're back. Should we do the leaks first with Microsoft? Should we do the event first? Event. Yeah, let's do the event, and then we'll do the leaks because that's way more interesting, and the event will seem like a super bummer if we talk about the leaks first.

So Microsoft had a surface event today. Is that fair to call it a surface event? Well, not anymore because Panos is gone. So Panos was like tweeting about this a couple weeks ago. I'm excited to be in New York, do the thing, da-da, show off the new service. We've all seen these events. Yeah. One of them, he was like, I made the new surface.

I made it for you, Joanna Stern and like pointed at her. It was great. It's like an all-time great tech event moment. And she was like, me? And he's like, yes, you. It was great. He bailed on Monday. Just tweet, I'm out.

Yep. And then there was a scramble. And as you said, Bloomberg reporter was going to Amazon. No one's confirming anything. There's a lot of speculation. Whatever. So a Microsoft has to, like, do this event. And they scrambled up some people.

Nadella showed up. Yeah. And what'd they do? They said, it's all about AI now. So what happened at this event? They didn't announce the Surface Pro, but we weren't expecting that. They announced a new Surface Studio laptop. That looks cool.

But they didn't talk about the plinth. Remember the plent? Yeah. That was a big part of the last one. The flat part. The flat part. Plinth. It's a good word.

Yeah, it's a good word. More thing, you should pull over your car right now and make a list of five things you wish to to describe as a plinth. And then go to wherever you're going and just say it all the time. If Panos had been there, he would have said plent. Yeah. It would have been great. But they announced a new Surface laptop Go3.

So that's a nice little upgrade there. And they announced a new Surface Go for, and I love a Surface Go. That's one of my favorite devices in the world. But it's also one of the most disappointing devices in the world because it's so cute and it's so small. And then it's so expensive for what it is. It's also not meant for regular humans. This is like a business device for business people, right? Didn't they explicitly pitched it to frontline workers this year?

Yeah. So this year it is not going to be sold to us normal folks. you're going to have to go through your IT department or something like that. It is still going to be outrageously expensive at $550. It is still going to be outrageous. Yeah, but if you're provisioning UPS. No, but it's overpriced because it's got an Intel in 200. Brutal.

It's just like, y'all, did you try? Monica got to chest it out. She was not enthusiastic. It was still, she could see the slowness of it. She and Tom. I love that this is the device you've chosen to focus on so far, Kranz. The one device that people can't buy and the worst one by far, and you're like, let's talk about that for a while. That one's my favorite, because it's so cute and you're just like, oh, I want it.

Everyone loves a cute little tablet that sucks, all right? We've all done it. Who hasn't bought a cute little tablet that sucks? We've got four fire, like, fire pads. I've had a Nexus 7 for God's sake. Okay, that didn't suck. How dare you? I remember they're like, we wrapped it in leather like a motorcycle.

I was like, I love you. And I was like, hmm. Leather's nice All right, tell me about the actual laptop studio too. Does that have a good chip in it? This is always the crime With surface devices. So this was interesting

Because it sounds like the laptop two They actually put the real chip in it They put 13th gen Instead of 12th gen Which is like Microsoft's Hallmark They love to put last gen stuff in And they're like, don't you want to pay The exact same price?

No, no one wants to do that So it was really, really nice that they did that this time. I think the GPU is still an older generation. Of course. I mean, it's always, there's always something.

Oh, no, it's an RTX 4050 or an RTX 4060 GPU. So that's not too bad. And it's real pretty. The last one was really cool. Yeah. If I was going to get a Windows laptop,

I would get this one. Yeah, it's the coolest one. Is it really expensive? Do most people need it? Probably not. But is it really, really, really cool? It's a MacBook Pro, right? Like, this is...

With a plent. This is actually a thing that the Windows ecosystem doesn't have enough of. When you get to really powerful computers, way too many of them tend to either get really big and really heavy or super gamery. And both of those things are for valid reasons and there are real markets there. But I think one thing Microsoft correctly sussed out with this line was we need a thing that is very attractive. The size is about right for what it is and it's powerful and it does like nifty, surfacy things like the pull forward screen

that it has where it sort of comes off its hinge and you can like drape it over the keyboard. It's very cool. And if you're a person who uses a surface pen a lot, it's really useful. And it's like, that to me is I'm like, this is how you make the MacBook a touch device, Apple. Like, there it is. That's the answer. But I feel like I agree that this is not the one for most people, but like this is a good thing that should exist. And it's good that Microsoft finally got it right.

I have the first laptop studio here. It's my like go-to Windows machine. And I love it to bits. But anytime you try to do anything, like, intense on it, it just kind of falls apart. And it seems like Microsoft went after this one. It has more ports. It has better power. Like, it could be a win.

If they can get the battery life right, that's going to be the question. Do you think his pan house is walking at the door? He scratched out the previous generation processor. And I was like, put a good one in it. He just turned the 12 into a 13 and said goodbye. He would have put a surface fan. Peace. He was like, I got one more thing by the good one.

The most interesting thing about this event by far to me was that it took them 40 out of 60 minutes to even talk about hardware. Yeah. Like this was not a devices event in the way that we're used to. And the same was true of the Amazon event. Like both of these were events about AI, right? Like Microsoft spent the vast majority of this event talking about co-pilot and the idea that you're going to have this AI assistant that works in all of your apps and on your computer and on your phone and understands everything about you and can just sort of stitch your life together. in this helpful AI way. And part of it was like relaunching products

we've heard a bunch about already, which was odd. They like announced a new version of Windows, but only in sort of passing as they were talking about co-pilot. Like this was a co-pilot event in which they launched hardware on which you might do co-pilot things, which I think is fascinating because there was also this business insider story, I believe today, Thursday, as we're recording this, about why Panos left Microsoft.

And one of the answers was because he was frustrated that in this huge switch to AI, Microsoft was devaluing its hardware because it's building these things that work everywhere and who cares about having like a flagship device. It's very funny that he would then go to Amazon, which just spent a whole of them doing the exact same thing. But like clearly that's what Microsoft is doing, right? Like every big bet it's making is about AI.

Well, it's kind of interesting because this also all came on the same week that there was a whole bunch of leaks about Microsoft. And in those leaks, some of those leaks were about the strategy for Microsoft. And as soon as last year, they were all sitting there. Satya was saying, we have to have a unified strategy that pushes our hardware, that pushes our software, that does it all together. And for us, it's going to be hybrid cloud computing. And so it was this whole thing about game computing and how you were going to be able to do some of the processing on the computer and some of it in the cloud. And that was the whole thing.

And it seems like AI kind of like has pushed that to the side. and they're like, oh, we now have a new unified vision, and it's AI. And then Panos leaves, and now it's like, okay, but the hardware, what's happening with the hardware? Yeah, there's no, like I said, it would be better if they switch places. Yeah. But no one is in charge of hardware. I mean, we have a memo, and it's like some people, but they're shuffling new people into it. Dave Limp coming in to be the co-pilot guy actually makes a certain amount of sense, given what he's been up to at Amazon all these years.

Just drive your cars in different direction, guys. Wave. Just like, high five on the highway. Let's talk about this copilot stuff because there's quite a bit of it but like David said a lot of it's been announced already. Yeah.

So Windows copilot seems like a big idea like the computer will use your computer for you but it also seems fairly limited. I think it's a terrifying idea. I was talking with Tom about it before we came to record the Vergecast and we were both like yeah, copilot seems really cool

but how are you going to trust this AI that we don't know is finished with your spreadsheets for your Fortune 500 company. Yeah, you shouldn't do that. Don't do that. And so I really am kind of worried that their ambition to show that they are the kings of AI and they're hip and cool now and they beat Google is going to shoot them in the foot if they piss off all of.

I think it's important. Again, Google and I assure trial is going on. Yeah. The punching bag in this trial is big, at least in secret. Somewhere in secret, the United States government is just punching bang in the face. We don't know about it, but we know what's happening. we can detect that Bing is being punched in the face, but we can't actually see it.

Did you hear it? Just got punched. But what is true is that Microsoft launched all this stuff with Bing, they made all this noise, front page article in New York Times, and Bing has gained zero market share. Yep. At least as far as anyone can tell.

It hasn't gained zero, but it's gone from no one cares to no one cares. But now horny. Yeah. It's pretty weird in that room. than no one goes into. It's like that car on the subway, you know? Just don't go on that one.

Don't go in that one. But, like, that's the answer, right? It's like, the stuff isn't working, so Microsoft's putting it in more places and the hopes that it will work. But the turn that is really interesting for me is in Windows, where you're like, change my display resolution,

and it will just do it. Yeah. That's like a meaningful, the last digital assistant that attempted to do this was Bixby. But on Windows, where it is pretty Byzantine, I think that might actually make a big difference in how people use Windows.

I mean, Windows menus are garbage. And remember how for the longest time they all still had like Windows 7 UI, even though they're like, we have this new thing. And it's great, except for all of these really important menus you have to use if you're testing laptops every day, Alex Kranz. That was just for me. But yeah, I just get so nervous about how fast they're moving on AI at Microsoft. Like, I just spend a lot of time thinking about this.

seems like a bad idea. It seems like you're going way too fast, and this is going to bite you in the ass, because they haven't had the ability to test this as extensively as they'd like. And that's why we're seeing, like, that's why Amazon is going kind of slow here, even though Amazon did this big announcement and showed all this stuff, they're still going slow. And Microsoft is like full steam ahead on releasing this and bringing this stuff to market and putting this in everybody's hands. And it does need to be in hands, right? Like it needs to be tested. But is the best place to test it, the install base, for all of the companies that currently pay you lots of money to use your software.

I don't think that's the best. Well, you have to pay $30 a seat to use in an office. Yeah. So I think that pricing is a bit of a test. I also think it's a bit of a barrier. It will keep a lot of people out. The only person who should be using AI and Excel at your company is the person who is best to Excel, right, at this moment, to just let you know what it can and can do. And that's actually, that's a pretty good example, right?

And because I think what Microsoft would say, and I think did say at a panel they did after their event today, was basically like, don't trust this thing to do something you can't do yourself. Yes. Just trust it to help you. Right. And I think that is the right. Like having the Excel expert say, okay, here's this menial thing I do 100 times a day. Can the AI do it for me? It's actually a pretty useful and like instructive test.

But for me to just go in and be like, hey, co-pilot, we make money or what? It's like, that's a bad idea. We shouldn't do that. You should do that all the time. I'll pay $30 a seat for you to do that. How's the money, co-pilot? And I think we're in this place now where with so much AI, it's like if you want to do dumb stuff, it's going to go poorly for you.

And people will do dumb stuff, and it's going to go poorly for them. And I think there are really interesting questions to be asked about whether we should be protected from that as people. It's like it's the self-driving stuff, right? Like if you have a thing that's called a self-driving car, people are going to do, they're going to fall asleep and have sex in the backseat. And that is not what they should be doing, but they're going to do it. And so what's your responsibility is the one making that is a really interesting question. But I think at some point, if I'm Microsoft, you just have to like throw it out there and do your best. And I think the way they're pitching it is really interesting

because it's like it's not a tool for doing spectacular business calculations. It's like a way to play a Spotify playlist. It's like doing the things that are easy and tractable and you know how to do, but take 12 clicks. You can just do it with a command now. And that's the kind of stuff that this stuff is generally pretty good at. But then like I think Microsoft's been trying to do this with Bing all year or two is figure out how to put a set.

ceiling on that where it's like, okay, we want you to be able to do this stuff without doing all the dumb shit we know people are going to do as soon as they're allowed to. And I don't think anybody has figured out that answer yet. I don't think there is an answer to that. People don't like it when you say, oh, you have all of this access to technology. You only get this little bit. No one likes that. And it sucked. Yeah. You hate it. Yeah. Someone told me that LLMs are uniquely good at teaching you how to make chemical weapons because there's so much information about building chemical weapons on the wood that they've just learned it all.

And now we're at the point where you shouldn't let them do that. No. But now it's just built into the sidebar of windows. Now you just do it. Well, not yet. Not yet. It's coming September 26th. All right.

So that was this Microsoft event. Co-pilot everywhere, basically, a little bit of new hardware. Then there's the other Microsoft event. The big event. One that you weren't supposed to see, which is, and I want to be very clear about this because there is some narrative out there, the FTC leaked Microsoft documents. That is absolutely not what happened.

So FTC versus Microsoft happens. Lots and lots of documents are getting uploaded. We can see them all on the docket. The court clarifies Microsoft was asked to do some stuff, failed to redact these documents, just published them for everyone to see. So Microsoft just screwed up in a massive way here. I mean, I'm not complaining.

No one's complaining. But the leaks are out of control. There's a new Xbox series X. another new Xbox, new controller, Phil Spencer idly wanting to buy Nintendo. Where to begin? The controller? Yeah. Yes.

Yes, Alice. The controller is cool. Yes. Right? It's got the haptics like the PS5 controller, so it'll feel like more real when you do stuff. I don't know if all of our listeners have a PS5, buy one. It's a lot easier now. I can spend that $500.

But the haptics feel really cool in it. And this is supposed to have that. It's supposed to be kind of like stadia, where it's, It's got, like, those haptics also double as, like, volume. It's like if you're getting shot or at or something, you'll still feel it and hear it. That's just cool. Like, I don't know. It's just a neat controller.

It's going to have replaceable joysticks out of the box. Right now you have to spend, like, what, $250 for a Microsoft Elite controller or something from scuff or something? And you won't have to do that. It'll just be there. And if you want to replace the joysticks because you, like, dig in and kind of distort them because you play. too hard. I don't know anybody who does that. But if you do, you'll be able to replace it. That's neat. Yeah. It's a cool controller. And also, I think the vision behind it is super rad, which is basically like Microsoft is in this place now where they want you to be able to play

all of your games, all of the places, right? Like, it's cloud gaming is a huge part of this. There was a leak in here that Microsoft is planning to stream PC games through cloud gaming. And there's this line in the roadmap document that came out that, says controller becomes the hero. The new Xbox controller is the only thing you need to play on every device. And the idea is that the controller connects to Wi-Fi itself or to your console or over Bluetooth. And so it becomes the console in a super real way.

And all you need is a screen and a controller and suddenly you're up and running. It's a very like Stadia vision of the world. And I think that was the single smartest thing about Stadia that ever existed. And I think this idea of like the controller being the thing and you can play a anywhere as long as you have the controller is so cool, and I really hope it becomes real. I really, like, that's the thing that I really hope this AI stuff that Microsoft is focused on doesn't distract that much from the cloud gaming things that they're doing, because it's so cool. So in these leaks, over and over again, Microsoft is like the Xbox is our play for the consumer.

Yeah. They're not shy about it. Yeah. Phil Spencer is like, this is the thing that we do for the consumer. And like, Nadella is like, this is the thing we do for a consumer. and also it all runs on Azure, so just like keep that in mind. Yeah. That's where the money is, Phil.

Don't get too ahead of yourself. So that's a controller. Tell me about these consoles. Disfree. Like, that's a big deal, I guess, for the Xbox Series X because the original one had the disc player, separates it from a lot of the other stuff, including PlayStation.

Most people don't actually need or want the disc player. Like, it's great if you want to watch movies. I have a digital PS5 and just never comes up. Yeah. Most people just go, and more storage, which is crucial. I think it's going from one terabyte to two terabytes. Theoretically, obviously this is leaked. It could totally change before it comes to market, if it comes to market.

But yeah, and it sounds like there's another Microsoft Elite controller in the works, which I'm really curious to see how it's going to build on this leaked cloud gaming controller. Like, just seems cool as hell. It does. There's also apparently an Xbox that has been planned for, 2028. And we should say, by the way, that these are all older documents that may or may not exist in the current reality. A lot of stuff people were planning a couple of years ago when like Bitcoin was a billion dollars and money was free and everything was fantastic. Like,

the vibes are very different now and people have made very different plans. And we've seen some of the stuff already canceled. By the way, in the grand scheme of leaks, the best leak to get is the email about the leaks that leaks. Yes. So Phil Spencer emailed, the Xbox team, Tom got it. And Phil says the Xbox team, I know this is disappointing, even if many of the documents are over a year old,

and our plans have evolved. Right. But let me just say, so the one other Xbox that was... Now back to the real. Who cares? Whatever. Let's assume all of this is real, because I want most of it to be, because it seems very cool. There's this plan for a whole

new, it seems, generation of consoles in 2028 that is basically, I think they call it a hybrid gaming platform. Yeah, this was what we were talking about earlier in the show. They want to basically have it. So the really big processing, the really hard stuff happens in the cloud. And then we do some of the other stuff smaller locally.

And we've heard this talked about before. Sean's written about it. I definitely have said on this show it's stupid and we'll never happen. I guess I'm wrong. That's totally fine. And it's a really compelling idea if they can make it work. but it's going to require like a bunch. Like they talk about this in their roadmap and in the story that Sean wrote about this,

that it is really complex issue. There's a lot of like silicon stuff they have to do, a lot of processor stuff they have to figure out that will make it really, really tricky. But if it works, then you can have like the really expensive quality of a PC, like, you know, those $3,000 PC rigs that people do, 4K, gorgeous, everything turned to ultra. You could have that on an Xbox. which is currently totally incapable of that. And you could have it at that Xbox price.

And that would be very compelling for a lot of people. Or even further down, I mean, there's a line in one of those documents that says they want to sell something for under $99 as like a handheld device. And if anyone ever gets this right, it basically means anything with a screen becomes a powerful gaming system. And if you have more local power, it'll do more locally. and so you'll get a slightly better experience. If you have less power, it'll do more in the cloud. So you'll have a slightly worse experience, but still get functionally the same thing.

And if we get to the, like, holy God, is that a hard technical thing to do for so, so many reasons? But if we get there, that kicks ass. Like, that is the future of how we use computers that I would very much like to live in. I mean, it's essentially the, like, Kindleling of Xbox, where... You can play games on your Kindle. Where it's like, we got it.

Anything with the screen, bro. We're just trying to get you some hardware so that you can actually go do what we want you to do which is buy a lot of games, spend money in our marketplaces. That's always been the big get for Sony and for Microsoft. And moving into that cloud gaming

would really, like making cloud gaming actually succeed in this fashion would do that. Because, okay, I spend $100 and I get the exact same, like a very similar experience to my friend who spent $500 and built it all himself. Like just makes things a lot. more equitable.

So what's funny about all of this, there's all this happening. Microsoft's running ahead with these plans. Contextually, right now,

Apple's like, the phone is the best game console ever made. iPhone 15 Pro is best, right? And they're all local all the time. And Microsoft can never

put a cloud gaming service on the iPhone for like a billion different reasons. Through the web browser. Through the web browser. Fine. Go through Safari.

That's like one pressure on this. Yeah. Then the other pressure is that Nintendo exists. And Nintendo's relationship with the internet is shaky.

Nintendo knows the internet exists. It acknowledges Yeah. Yeah, I was about to say, it knows it exists. Does it want to use it? No. It took so long to get to cloud gaming. I think it was like last year, the year before that, before it was finally like, you can save things on the cloud and use it on your news. I'm just like, look at the

structure of the game industry right now. The structure of the games in the iPhone. Yeah. All Candy Crush, Free to plays, DLCs, the whole thing. Nintendo, biggest game of the century in Tears of the Kingdom, announces it will not have a DLC because it is complete. And just an incredible, like... Beautiful.

The flex that that is is so, so powerful. Like, what more do you want? It's like, we don't need to make more money off this guy. The last line was, like, keep exploring high rules. It's like, hell, yeah, Nintendo. It's like, you haven't about to have it. But it's like just incredible weird competitive pressures, right? Yeah.

That are nothing to do with this, like, hybrid future. trip computing idea. One, Apple's like, it's all local and you know, no thank you, sir. And Nintendo's like, what? Put his internet. Please continue exploring high world on our console that has like the processing power of like a mid-range HDC phone from 2011. Like whatever, you know. So then just I'm putting that context to tell you about this email from Phil Spencer where he's like, buying Nintendo would be a career moment. He says, I totally agree that Nintendo is, the, capital the prime asset for us in gaming, and today gaming is our most likely path to consumer relevance. I've had numerous conversations with what we think is LT. I've had numerous

conversations with the leadership team of Nintendo about tighter collaboration and feel like if any U.S. company would have a chance with Nintendo, we are probably in the best position. The unfortunate situation, or fortunate for Nintendo, he says in parentheses, is that they're sitting on a big pile of cash and they have a board of directors that until recently has not pushed for further increases of market growth or stock appreciation. The problem with Nintendo is that Nintendo's good. Yeah. They're like, Nintendo's a bunch of money, and the people who run it are like pretty happy

with it. It's like, okay. It's the most like ruthless capitalist VC funded thing I've ever heard in my life. They're like, how, you don't want my money? What do I do? Yeah. It's like, you're a board of references. So then he's like, this guy's been buying up share.

and hopefully he'll do it. And he's like, we've shown the full write-up on Nintendo and Valve, interestingly, to the Microsoft Board of Directors and they're fully supportive of SMI. But it's just like all this stuff, all this technology stuff,

just sort of falls down in the face of, well, the biggest platform on Earth and mobile they can't do the thing with. And then the best game platform is just like, whatever. I mean...

Like, focus on the games. That's why they've been pretty actively on Epic Siles. for every single one of these Google and Apple v. By the way, when I say the best gameplay, don't come from me. I'm quoting Phil Spencer saying Nintendo is the prime asset for us in gaming today. That's what the head of Xbox thinks about Nintendo.

Not me. I play Madden and I quit playing Zelda right when I got to Canon because I didn't want to grind for shit so I could beat him. Which apparently is extraordinarily common in this game. I think that's most people. Yeah. I only did it and like, it was like late at night one day and I went, okay, I'm just going to do it. Why not? Let's just go. I was like, look, I have a job. I don't, I'm not going to go look for fruit to kill this guy.

Like, whatever. You just know that I could, Gannon. And I shut down my switch and I walked away. Never touched it again. But I just think that's a weird position for the ex, especially because of a third place console. I don't necessarily think it's a weird position because I think they are really like they have a strategy to deal with that. Apple. And their strategy is to say Epic, fix it. And they've put a lot of effort into that, right? Like they've been on Epic's side for the majority of both of these trials saying, no, no, they're right because they need cloud gaming to appear on these platforms. And they've had their workaround now with streaming and stuff like that. And Apple's doing its whole gaming thing. But Apple's gaming thing, as much as it says it's where gaming happens, game developers have different feelings.

We're starting to get the emails from the iPhone gamers. Yeah. They're there. They're there. And you guys exist, and I love you. But, like, you're not like... Wow. Watch it.

You're different. We got to take a break. We're going to come back and talk about YouTube and do a little lightly run. Send all of your feelings about that to Nielai. No, thank you. Neelai Patel at theverse.com. Look, here's what I know. You can talk about Android gamers like because they don't exist.

You mentioned that it's silly that Apple thinks the word pro means mobile games. and the emails come. And I know you guys, you can use the controller and you can play it, and I think that's great. I want to use my phone for phone stuff. I don't want to use it for game stuff. That's why I've got a switch and 40,000 other consoles. Get with the program.

I just would like it on the record that everything Alex just said is wrong, and I do not agree with it, and I would not like to be associated with the emails that you're going to say. Come at me. You're all incorrect. I have a family. We're taking a break. Support for this show comes from, Whether you're selling online or out of a storefront, you already know the challenge. You're simply hoping for people to find your listing or waiting for them to walk in.

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Claude.a.ai slash vergecast. All right, we're back. Should we do this YouTube thing very quickly and then do a lightning round? Yeah, we can do it fast. Yeah. So YouTube at an event today made on YouTube, a bunch of influencers.

I told Charlie Puth was there. Mia who went told me that photos and videos were not allowed and then Charlie Puth came out and all decorum went to the woods and people were just like, I'm doing it, nah! He was like, what about a song that went like this? Dude you did the thing. Charlie Puth, it's great.

Nature's original creator. I've been trying to profile Charlie Puth for like four years. Charlie, if you're listening, get at me. Let's do this. Yeah, we're in for it. Our people will obey the no photos and videos rule. Or will they?

See, every pitch needs a little danger in it. All right. So they announce a bunch of AI stuff, big theme of all these events, AI stuff. So this is Google's turn, right, with YouTube. So Dream Screen, which lets you create a background for shorts, generative AI. They showed a much of silly stuff. Mia asked a bunch of questions about what the guardrails on that would be. For example, what if you ask it to generate a background for YouTube short that violates YouTube's policies?

I just thought of four. It's not hard. For example, what if you would, say, a Dukes of Hazard-themed background for YouTube? I went in a different direction, but yeah. Yeah. It's just like that's a, even that's just a challenging question for a million horrible reasons. So many. But so it goes.

So YouTube has to figure that out. They said it won't do any of that stuff, but we'll see. Yeah. So that's really interesting. David, you were quite taken with Dreamscreen. I think it's really interesting. I think this question of how. How do you give creators tools to use generative AI without giving them tools to make so much awful generated crap that it ruins your platform is like the question of the internet right now?

Yeah. And it's one we've talked about a lot. And I think YouTube is way behind on giving its creators native tools to make things. And this is a way to get into that. I just think is really interesting. And like starting with backgrounds is clever, but there's all. also a thing where the AI tools in the YouTube studio will start to generate topic ideas for creators that it says are personalized to the things that those creators are doing that already

work. So, like, I have a thousand things I hate about that, but I think it's fascinating. And we're in this place now. We're like, everybody is trying to, like, relentlessly game the algorithm to be successful on YouTube. And now the algorithm is just going to tell you what to do. Yes. This is the most incredible announcement of the entire thing. And it was buried, right? They did DreamScreen. They did the new editor on mobile, which is basically Capcut. It's called YouTube Create.

The only thing to say about that is it's bonkers that that didn't exist a decade ago. They had a thing. YouTube Capture, whatever was called. It was just really bad and it doesn't count, right? It is nuts, by the way. YouTube is the platform it is. And basically Final Cut Pro and Imovie and Adobe Premiere are the native creation tools for YouTube. Like, that's crazy.

It predates phones being like the primary. computing device for people. Yeah, but we've been doing this a while now. But sorry, Nilai, I derailed you. What were you about to say? So this thing, this automated AI insights thing, I am obsessed with it. It's hard. They buried it, right?

It's not like the big flashy consumer feature. But basically, if I'm getting it right, YouTube is going to look at a creator's analytics. They're going to say, here's what's working well for you. Then they're going to look at everyone else's analytics and say, hey, inside of your library of stuff, you should make more stuff like this. because it performs better for all the other people, which is, right, there's a universe in which creators could hire analytics people.

You can get there, right? And, like, big media companies have analytics people to do this stuff. But then there's just the robot telling people make this stuff to get views. Well, and, I mean, we've been through this in so many sort of specific instances, right? Like the Johnny Depp Amber Heard trial was one where all kinds of people just started doing that because it was obvious. That's how you get views. this robot is just going to tell everybody to make Mr. Beast videos.

Like that's just what it's going to be. We think. We don't know. Will it be mouth open or closed on the thumbnail? Unbelievable question. If Mr. Beast isn't getting a cut of this for being the one like training at the best with the best stuff, it's a little shame. But no, I think you're right.

And I think this question of whether YouTube can build a system that is like creative and personalized and helpful or if it's just going to tell people to do more of what's already working, everywhere on YouTube until everybody is doing the same thing with the same generative AI tools

and the same music library that looks the same unclear. It kind of feels like it's going to be that given our extensive history with every other push in social media based on algorithms. Time remains undefeated. Okay.

And people get older. It's true. These kids... I hate it, but true. Yeah. And people get bored. And so, you know, I am a firm believer the data can only tell you about the past. This is like what I believe in my heart.

If we followed our own analytics, we would only cover the iPhone. Yes. That's all we would do. It is the... We're not doing that. I know you're mad at me for saying it. The end of this virtual has gotten real spiky.

But I promise you, if I just did what people clicked on, we would write about the iPhone fine one in case 500 times a day and Elon Musk for the rest of our lives. And we don't do it because we're bored. We don't want to do it. There's a thing here that we do where we like decide what we're going to do.

But if you're fully analytics driven, you just, that's a narrowing, right? It's just the aperture of your interest just falls down and eventually you just make one thing. And I think most YouTubers are people and they have that like instinct where they like push against it. But then there's a lot of people who are there to just make money. Yeah, my big concern here is the people who want to make money tend to be really good at it. and they tend to dominate the algorithm. And then what we saw with Facebook, what we saw with even Google SEO,

is over and over and over again. The thing that rises to the top isn't the quality stuff. Yeah. It's the algorithm of garbage. Like David said at the very beginning, this is the thing that kills your platform. Like, the dream screen generative AI background

is not the thing that kills YouTube. The AI-powered analytics that flattens all of YouTube and that people just fighting for the same kind of attention, well, on the other end is like people as an audience. and if you only get one kind of thing from the platform, eventually the audience gets bored too. Yeah.

And I don't know that YouTube has contended with that cycle, or which I think is a fair approach for YouTube, they're just like, it'll be fine because there's enough people who want to be YouTubers. Well, and the optimistic take on this for YouTube would be that YouTube is not just one thing, right? Like you can be a guy who stands in front of your furnace and tells people how to use it and like make a career out of being a YouTuber. And to that person, if this tool is any good, it's going to suggest new ways to make videos about furnaces, right?

But it's like if we get to the point where every creator on YouTube is just being told to go live stream Taylor Swift's Erez tour because that's how you make money on YouTube at this moment in time, we're host. And it's a perfectly plausible reality that that's where we land. Do you think they start to change the surfacing, though, for like what you actually see? Like, will it be harder to find the guy who does the first?

Burgess videos. Well, no, because that's search. You know, and like, I don't know. I just think that this thing, like these recommendation algorithms, these, these metrics drive the dynamics of the platform more than anyone ever really wants to admit. And so here the platform is going to start interpreting the metrics for you. And that's like some crazy shit's about to happen. Like, it's exciting in one way.

It's also just like, I hope you're ready for it, you know? Yeah. All right, let's do a really fast lighting round. And then we got to get out of this too. Yeah, there's like 40 more tech events to go to. Yeah. We're busy. My lightning round is, I'm going to selfishly say, go read my blog I wrote about how the future of cable bundling is here, which is a David headline, by the way.

That's pretty good. Beautiful David headline. Oh, and it's so here. By the way, we are hearing rumors that the strikes might be over soon. We are. Yeah, they were saying as soon as today, but it is now, we're recording. It's about 4 p.m. We haven't heard anything.

We'll see. All right, David, what's yours? Mine is the Google Bard chatbot. can now integrate with your Gmail and docs and Google Drive and actually, like, go find information for you in your other apps. And you look at that and it's like, oh, scary privacy stuff. It's like, my guys, it's all Google. They all have it anyway.

Don't worry about it. And genuinely, I have found it's totally useless in some ways. But in the thing where you're like, I have an email about a thing. I don't really remember, but can you find that email for me? it is surprisingly good as a resource to just dig through all my crap and find that one thing I was looking for. So this is the time where I'm like, okay, this is like a digital assistant that we're actually making into something.

It's still barred, so it's still not very good. But this was like the first step forward I've seen for Bard where I'm like, all right, there's something here. All right. I've done enough big thinky thinks on this episode. My lighting around is that I'm sitting here holding an iPhone 15 pro in a fine loving case. and my initials are fully scratched into the back of this case.

I can see them. And it's not great. It's as bad as advertised, really? It's as bad as advertised. I mean, it's fine, but it's not great. I want to see you eat fried chicken and then pick it up. No, thank you. It's all I want.

All right. That's it's it's a Vergecast. It's September continues. Next week we're at the Code Conference. We'll have links. Lots of coverage. Lots of stuff continues to go down. Here in the craziest September of my career is a tech journalist.

That's it. We got to go. Rack and wrong. And that's a wrap for Vergecast this week. We'd love to hear from you. Shoot us an email at Vergecast at theverge.com. The Vergecast is a production of The Verge and the Box Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by me, Liam James, and our senior audio director, Andrew Marino.

Our editorial director is Brooke Minters. That's it. We'll see you next week.