The Vergecast - Android 13 arrives, Galaxy Watch 5 review, and Instagram gets competitive

Episode Date: August 19, 2022

The Verge's Nilay Patel, Alex Cranz, and David Pierce discuss the Android 13 update, the battle between the vertical video apps, and a bunch of gadget news. Further reading: Android 13 arrives for Pixel phones starting today How to get the Android 13 update on your Pixel right away Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 review: incremental innovation    Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 review: if it only had a better battery All the YouTube Shorts you repost to TikTok will now tell on you Instagram gets mean about sending video clips to TikTok The auto industry lost its spectrum fight with the FCC because V2V was always a fantasy Electric vehicle owners are fed up with broken EV chargers and janky software Yes, the new electric vehicle tax credits are really confusing, but we can help  The auto industry lost its spectrum fight with the FCC because V2V was always a fantasy The Dodge Charger EV’s fake exhaust sound is sure to divide muscle car fans Snap is giving up on its Pixy drone after just four months Timbaland and Swizz Beatz sold Verzuz to Triller — and now they say Triller didn’t pay Yes — monitors can in fact get weirder The Big Ten’s new deal makes sports streaming rights more confusing than ever Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today on the Vergecast, new Android phones, new Android software, the fight between social media apps, and of course, the gadget news from this week. That's coming up right after this. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog. That's where Retool comes in. Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need. Prompt something like, build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data.

And Retool actually builds it on your company's data in your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to Retool.com slash Verchcast. We all need to retool how we build software. 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 news. 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 to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast with incremental innovation and electron wrappers for web apps. Today, we're talking about JavaScript. We're not going to do that. I mean, most days we do in a roundabout way discuss. JavaScript, I think. But this is not the show for you, if you're a JavaScript enthusiast.

I will tell you that right now. I make no bones about it. Anyway, I'm your friend, Eli. Alex Cranes is here. I'm your friend who just loves Pearl. Very good. It's my favorite. Yeah.

It's great. You're just doing the command line. You're in there. David Pierce is here. Yeah, I'm definitely your friend who is going to, like, give you a long speech about low code and no code. And then try to convince you to optimize all of the apps in your life to the point where everything immediately breaks.

That's my job. My first email client was in a terminal, like a Unix terminal. It was pretty good. I missed those days. It was called Pine. I don't know if you remember this. I might be the one old. And every now I get like a hacker every time you checked your email?

Well, no, because it was at school, like in college, and they just had a bunch of Mac classics at the entryway of the dorm. And everyone stood in a line to log into their, like, shell account to check their email in Pine. because we didn't have computers yet. Typing the IM. Then I rode my steam engine uphill both ways to college. When you describe that, it sounds like in movies when they show like the line of people in prison waiting to make phone calls. Like that's basically what you just described. Yeah.

It was a different time. And at no point did we think that democracy would be imperiled by our command line email clients. And things have changed. It's fine. Simpler times. Here we are now. Coming to you live over the internet. See, it's a thing.

Everything's are improved. Democracy and peril. The Vergecast. You got to take the good with the bad. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Lots of talking about this week. Android 13 came out for pixel phones.

A lot of people refreshing eagerly. The brewing war between the vertical scrolling video apps is here. A bunch of EV news. Got a little bit of lightning around. Let's start with Android. We had Samsung reviews this week, too, the Z-Fold 4, the Watch 5. Shout out to V for an incredible fake out on the watch five video review.

If you haven't seen, I'm not going to ruin it for you. I was like preparing, like I was writing a DM to her being like this head is wrong. Why are you saying all of this with this head? You can't do this. And then I kept watching. I was like, oh, that's why. That's why they got it. It's fine.

Yeah. It's good. Go watch it. It's good. But let's start with it. David, Android 13. It feels like it's like an Android snow leopard. Like they're just getting a lot of stuff right.

Yeah, I think that's basically right. I mean, A, the funny thing about Android updates is. is always that it, Android updates come out and Google's like, Android 13 is here. 12 of you can download it. Yeah. Because it hardly, like, nobody owns pixels. Most people own Android phones that are on somewhere between like last and six versions of Android to go. But Android 13 is out for people who want it.

It's like, it is. It's a snow leopard thing. They're like, they're doing a bunch of little things. This is kind of where we are with smartphones, right? It's like, it's to give you some more control over like how it. it looks and what kind of access apps can have. And Android, I will say, to which credit is doing a really good job of starting to piece things together.

And they're like, you can tell your app what language you want it to run in, which photos it should have access to, how it should operate, all these, like, they're just giving people a lot of knobs to fiddle with, which I actually think, like, at this moment in smartphones is a really good idea. Yeah. We should describe what Snow Leopard means. Again, I'm an old head. Steam engine uphill both ways.

All of us were like, yeah, Snow leopard. Snowbird was the best version. of what at the time was called Mac OS10. And they just decided to not do new features for a year and just make it good. And then they immediately were like, and now we're back to weird features. But I didn't leave Snow Leopard for three years. I was like, I don't care what you're adding to this operating system. This one's perfect.

And every day that I use this computer, I was like, I miss Snow Leopard. But that's like we're in that moment for a lot of software. Um, hilariously, the developers of Madden described it this year's as a snow leopard release. Uh, and it just feels like Android is in that same place where they're adding things like spatial audio because they need to compete with Apple.

They're adding things like, uh, more personalization, maybe because they need to compete with Apple, but maybe because there's nothing left to do. Yeah, I will say the one thing I've been very exciting about Android 13 is like Google's big theme for the world right now is like putting all of its,

many pieces together, which we talked about a bunch in the show. And, like, they're trying to make all their apps and services make more sense together. And so there's this thing now where you can basically stream your messaging apps from your phone to your Chromebook, which I think A is an extremely good idea because, like, sitting here at my computer and typing on my phone all day to message people is a gigantic pain in the ass that I really am excited for it to go away. But also because it's like, it's just a good idea and that kind of thing where it's like, I should be able to type on my phone from my computer.

And that is like how all of this should work. and I like it very much. And it feels like that's like the start of something very cool. But otherwise all this stuff is like, yeah, these are good things that are not going to, like, blow your mind to pieces. Do you think it's like they just really wanted to hunker down and improve on like the stuff they have? Or was it the pandemic and the development cycles usually take a while and the pandemic kind of screwed up those development cycles or both? I think it's both. And like in a serious way.

I just, I remember Sundar saying to us on the show, at kind of the beginning of pandemic, he was like, we're well set up to all work from home and complete our roadmaps. What I'm worried about is the next set of ideas. Yeah. Which I think a lot of companies have run into in one way or the other, but I think they're obviously disrupted, and no company is really being loud about how much its plans were disrupted.

But I just also think contextually, if you just look at the state of Android right now, at the same time that Android 13 is arriving, we have the Galaxy Z-Fold 4 running Android 12, right? The new most complicated, fanciest Android smartphone is being released at the same time running the old version. Because that's just where Android is. And then they're running this gigantic campaign about RCS because they know that at least in the United States, getting people to leave I message and Switching Android is like too hard. So like what is the value of firing dozens of new features into Android at this moment when switching is really hard and your flagship phone provider is just going to run. Bixby all day long.

Like, I think they're just in a tough spot. Well, and I think that comparison is like, it just strikes me as it's behind all of this stuff right now, right? Like, on the one hand, the idea that, like, you can customize the app icons and stuff is like a thing people love on their iPhones that I think Google was very smart to pick up on and sort of keep moving forward. And they're like, we'll automatically change the color scheme of all your icons so that it'll work.

But there's also like the, when you ask somebody now, like the difference between iOS and Android, they're functionally the same. Android actually has more features most of the time, but iOS just feels better. Like, it just does. And I think now, like, Google is pushing really hard on this idea of, like, what if we make Android feel better? And there's all this little stuff that that entails. Like, I think we were talking on this show about the magical thing where you can copy text

from one device and paste it onto another with Apple. And, like, now Android does that. Or I guess soon it will do that if you have two devices that are updated, which you won't. But like, you get the idea. But I think like that kind of stuff is like, I think Google is absolutely right to say, let's not build insane new stuff that almost no one is going to use. Let's like make Android feel better. And I think that is like, that's how you get to where Apple is. And then if you can solve RCS, then you might actually be able to convince people to switch. Do you feel like we've had this conversation every year for the past five years? Because I feel like we

could just do a clip show about that and just rerun ourselves saying Google is focused. Do you remember Project Butter? This is a company that once announced an entire initiative called Project Butter that was designed to make Android smoother. Oh, it kind of worked. It worked for a number of reasons. One, I remembered that it was called Project Butter. Branding achieved.

Two, like, yes, Android improved. But it just feels like that's the gap. And I don't know that Google has meaningfully closed it on these phones. And then you've just got, well, what is the reality? of Android, in this country at least, it's all of the Android phones are sold by Samsung. So then someone else comes in and does whatever they want

with Android. Samsung phones are smooth in their way. It's not that they're not. They're just smooth in like Samsung's way, which is a lot of trying to redirect you into a Samsung lifestyle. Get that Bixby. Maybe you are not interested in any way, shape, or form.

Or it's like, sure, carriers can put apps on this phone. Like, there's a different experience to that that is just more, the business is in your face more with a Samsung Android phone, especially you buy it for one of the major carriers. Whereas Apple, to its credit, is just like, their business is in your face all the time, but like they manage to hide it better. I don't know. Apple is like, and there was some news about this this week that Apple is now preparing to put more ads in more of its apps and search results and stuff like that. And it's like,

they're kind of creeping towards each other, right? Like Google is getting a little cleaner and a little simple simpler. Samsung even has really pulled back over the last couple of years to the point where like, like I used to hate Samsung's UI choices. And my recommendation was always like run away from Samsung software as fast as you can, buy its hardware and do some weird stuff and install launchers. And now like Samsung software is good. And it's like, yeah, you're starting to see the business of Apple a little more as Android is starting to move. They're just moving towards each other in this really interesting, not necessarily great way all the time. also interesting that Apple's, like, hardware lineup is getting more fragmented, whereas, like,

Google's been dealing with fragmentation for a decade now. They know how to deal with it. And Apple's like, I've got to figure this out. I guess we've got to, like, slow down something. You want old software? We got old software. That's pretty generous on Google having figured out. I mean, they have in the sense of a disaggregated, like, play services from Android, and they are better at updates, and they've signed more aggressive deals to force the updates to happen. But really the solution to Android fragmentation is that Samsung won the market. Yeah. And so, like, it's not that fragmented. Right, but, like, they've had to deal with the challenge and, like, think about that challenge in a way that Apple really

hasn't had to, like, ever in its phone market, right? Like, Apple's never had to think about fragmentation. And now it's got, what, six different screens or something that it's got And then they're going to delay iPadOS or so we have heard. By the way, rumors that iPhone event or some event, we're assuming iPhone's usually in September, first part of September. It's going to be a home pod event. Yeah, September 7th, I think, is the date Mark Grerman reported. All home pods and Apple TVs, get excited.

I mean, I would go to that event with Bells on it. Literally like, I'm here. I'm the most plugged in person in this event. let's talk Apple TV the whole time. No one else is. Hit me, Craig. And it would just be me, like, alone in the field looking at the giant screen, being like, come on.

Did you make a TV? And then it's just Tim Cook coming on stage and be like, no. No. And then he leaves. Hi, Neal. I would go to that event. Like, it's time to change events. What if instead of holding product launches, they just get one person who wants something

really badly, and then the CEO of the company just denies that person what they want? It's really close to the mic. You get more coverage. Yeah. Tech company is disappointing one person at a time. That's our new event strategy. I think it'll go really well. Speaking of the Samsung phones, reviews are hitting.

So Allison reviewed the Z-fold four. V reviewed the Galaxy Watch 5. Let's start with the Z-fold four. Allison's like pretty into this phone. It's very expensive. But she's like, this is the most gadgety gadget you can get. And you won't be disappointed with it. the camera is improved. The Android tablet ecosystem is still whatever it is, but I think we were saying

this last week. Like they've just arrived at a, they've iterated their way to a workable folding phone. I think the camera thing is super exciting here, actually, because that has been, because if you're going to buy a fold, you kind of get into the fold knowing what you're getting into, right? Like, it's going to be a little more fragile. It's going to be a little bigger. So you're like, it's very hard to buy that phone and not sort of understand those tradeouts. But the idea that you're spending all this money and getting a worse phone than Samsung's other. or worse cameras rather than Samsung's other high-end phones sucks. But now, like, you kind of get the feeling that, like,

Samsung now has sort of done all that it can, right? And it's still a little big. It's still a little fragile. But, like, that just is where we are in, like, science and materials chemistry. Android app are still bad for big screens. You just can't get good tablet apps for most Android apps. Yeah.

But otherwise, Samsung's kind of, putting its best feet forward here, which I find super exciting. It's still $1,800. But it's like, it's a very good phone that also turns into a tablet. And that's like about all you can ask for right now. I like how thorough Allison was in this review. Like she tested the flex mode. She did it.

She put it in this stupid. She did it. Well, she heard us talking about tent mode on the show. She's like, all right, the people demand tent mode. The people. My boss is demand. Then I test it in flex mode. I don't think that's what happened.

That's not what happened. That's not what happened. She listens to the show. No, she's in it. I mean, again, the. Samsung has done a number of things with this phone that are legitimately the future of phones, right? Yeah. Folding or not, right?

Yep. The huge pixel bin sensor has been the future for a minute, but they've refined it to a place where it works really well. The under display camera is still a little weird, but it works really well. Like, you don't see it. Allison's description of it was very funny to me. She described it as the visual aura that you get right before you get a migraine headache, which is like not what you want to hear from yourself. camera. But as an underscreen camera is like it, she kind of landed on like it does the job, right? Like, it's fine. And there are also 40,000 other cameras on this thing that you can turn towards you in various ways. So it'll be fine. But yeah, I agree. That's the kind of thing that like give it a couple of years. And that's what all front facing cameras are going to look like. Yeah. And at Samsung is just historically good at throwing things at the wall and then slowly iterating them until Apple steals them and pretends they invented them. And like, you know, it's true.

And like, I just think this, this phone four versions in is, I keep saying this. I don't know. I don't even know if it's true anymore because the software and ecosystem lock-ins are so hard. But if you just want like a new gadget, I can't think of a better gadget at this point in time. And I've been saying things like phones are the worst gadgets for like five years, like go buy a new TV or upgrade your soundboard. Like that'll make you happy. And then we're looking at all of the sales from all those companies. And it's like, oh, everyone did that already.

All right, it's time to find a new category of gadgets. It's like, it's folding phones. Like, they're here at the right time. You think it's folding phones and not like the Steam Deck and those kind of like little game consoles? I mean, I know how you and Sean feel like this thing. We're Sean. Get him on the line, Liam. Can you pair Nintendo's Joycons to the Fold 4?

Because there it is. There's your magical gadget. And then like just get a 3D print a little case for it. Slot it in, make your own switch. Yeah. I think the Steam deck is. I actually have something I need to go do. Sorry.

Gotta go do this. Somebody get me a 3D printer. Well, I think the Steam deck is like a great category of gadget. I'm not disagree with it. I just think it's one of those gadgets where you can screw with it, but at some point you, the gadget, playing with the gadget element of it recedes because you just end up playing a video game. Right.

Yep. Which is great and fine and fair. But if you're in gadgets for the messing with the gadget element of it, I think the fold is a superior gadget. Does it make any sense? Yes. Yeah, I think that's probably right. I mean, I disagree.

It also just gives you more to do. But like at the end of the day with any game console, the point is to play video games. Right. That's true. Unless it's you and Sean. And the point is to like buy Steam Deck accessories and then augment the Steam Deck into a full laptop and then run the version of the Steam Deck. I want my Steam Deck to like run Piehole, like turn it into a little server. Just have it do all the things.

Like everything, like there's just so many weird things. I can do with it and just mess around with it. And I think it's probably the Linux of it that makes it like supreme gadget for me because I'm like, it's got Linux. I can just get into Linux. I can just get into the command line. And I can't do that with with this phone. But also I appreciate that I can take this phone on a plane and like mess with it as a gadget. And I could not do that with a steam deck. I would just play video games with a steam deck or I would accidentally break it. Those are my, those are my two. I would also point out that I think you could buy all three. skews of the steam deck for less than the fold four costs.

Fair enough. I mean, what is to catch it? I agree. Like, I think, and I wrote about this when they announced the Z-fold four, like, I think the thing no one has done is make, like, the case for why this thing needs to exist. And to some extent, this is, like, the, like, ongoing question about the iPad is, like, why do you need an iPad? And it's, like, once you have one, you, like, kind of get why it's useful.

But there's no, if you were like, I have a laptop and a phone. why should I buy an iPad? Like it's kind of a hard question to answer. And I think the same is true for this. It's like it's cool to have. Big screens are good. You can watch videos. Dan Sefer won't shut up about watching all of the Halo TV show

in bed on his fold. Like that's all great. But there's no, there's no reason I would like tell you to go out of your way and spend, you know, seven or eight hundred extra dollars to buy this phone. But if you do and it's a thing you want, it does feel like infinitely fun to play with in a way that most phones are not fun to play with right now. And this goes back to the Android thing, right? They're just like, they're tuning and tweaking and touching. And Samsung is out here just being like, we have some new ideas. We don't really know what they are,

but let's see what happens. Yeah. Kudos. I will say that after we talked to the Z flip last week, the number of people who hit us up to say that they see flips in the wild. Oh my God. It's very high. Our thesis is correct. I got on a train like three hours after we recorded. And the two people sitting closest to me. Both had Z flips. It blew my, it was like a sign from the universe that was like, David, people use these phones. All right, I hear you.

We're like, I've heard about this move called the scroll and flip, and I want you to take it very seriously. I taught everyone. Can I see your phone? We got a Z flip review yet to come. I think that is an important one. Let's try with a watch for a quick second. So watch five is out. Like I said, you got to just watch the video

because it's an incredible fake out from V. But it seems like the grand Samsung Google WearOS experiment is off to an extremely medium start? Yes. That seems accurate. Yeah. She didn't hate this watch. She didn't outright hate it, but it's still all the promise is not there.

They have not delivered on the big whiz-bang promises of this collaboration. Instead, they've done, like, nice things. There's just a bunch of, like, really basic stuff that it's like, Like I have made the case for years and continue to believe strongly that truly the only thing that matters is battery life. Yes. Like you can add all the stuff you want after you give me a battery that is going to last, ideally days, but at least the whole day without ever having to worry about it. And like the fact that Samsung is still not there is a real bummer and a big problem, I think. Yeah.

And also, I mean, the fact that they haven't really changed the design at all. Like, I think she said the only, only way you can tell the difference between these two is the strap colors. That's not great. Sure. The purple's nice. I like the purple is nice. It looks pretty. I saw it in the office the other day when we were there.

It looks very pretty. I missed the physical bezel. What are you going to do? But there's just this moment for the Android ecosystem where, like, everything is a two-thirds approach to where Apple is and is going. Like, we are expecting in September or October or whatever. these Apple events are. Like a huge next generation of smartwatches from Apple, right? The big outdoor watch, the competitor to the Garmin, the big update. Apple's chip lead is enabling better battery life now this size. If they put out a bigger watch, they can shove a bigger

battery in there. That lead just seems like it's getting bigger, not smaller. I think you're 100% right. I think that's right. But I do wonder like how much Google actually cares? I think they care a lot. Then why do they suck so much? I struggle to think if they really care they put better resources That's such a good question to ask Google About so many things Oh you care? Why do you suck?

This is seriously when Max throws a tantrum or like Max and you come down And she's like, I'm trying And it's very adorable And I appreciate it But it's like you actually have to do it Yeah, you got to do it That's a point

Oh Google's like a child But, you know, No, that's the big Google. No, that's the big Google trick. Yeah. Google named itself Google and it put a bunch of colors in its logo and we think that it's a kindergarten and it's actually like the most ruthless company that you can think of. But because it's called Google, everyone's like, oh, Google.

And it's like in the background. And we're knifing you. Like they know what they're doing. They know how they make their money. They write like search is a huge business for them. YouTube is a huge business for them. They are very good at running those businesses. It's here where they're not in control of their ecosystem that they struggle to find a compelling narrative or they struggle to do things like buy HTC and turn the pixel into a competitor to Samsung.

And I think I know they care. We know lots and lots of Google. We know one very well in particular. I know they care a lot. But it's I don't think they have the moves. I don't think they can directly produce the products. Like maybe they've got the pixel. They've announced that there's a pixel watch coming.

Maybe those things when they actually take control of their ecosystem will become these competitors. But here, where they sign this big deal with Samsung to wear OS on this watch, like their ability to execute like ends. And then Samsung has to take the ball and keep running. And Samsung is not a bad hardware company. We just talked about this phone. Like the fold is a good phone now.

I mean, I think Samsung is part of the problem here. It's just like for some reason in this category, no one. Yeah, I think Samsung is part of the problem because they historically spent years thinking, like, very much gendering their wearables and being like, fitness bands are for ladies, and smart watches are for boys, and isn't it quaint and cute? And so there's a lot of catch up there that they have to figure out. And there's a lot of like just their design philosophy has to catch up and actually consider Apple and not just chase like the ghost of Fitbit from six years ago. But it's also, the thing I would add to that is Google keeps making the mistake of having an unbelievably short attention span on all of this stuff. And like the thing like to your point about Apple Silicon, Nelai, like that is a long term project that is like really only coming to fruition for Apple now. And they've been investing in that forever. And the idea that Google is just going to decide every six months whether or not to care about making its own chips or smart watches or.

or to, like, it just can't make up its mind long enough to get good at this stuff. And so we're basically back at like the first and second versions of these things, even though it feels like they've tried them a million times before. So like my expectations for the pixel watch are super low because this is functionally like the first ever Google smartwatch, even though it isn't. But it's like you don't, at least from what I've seen in a lot of this product development, like you can't start, stop and then pick up where you left off. Like it actually doesn't work like that.

You end up effectively starting over every time. And so Google just keeps shooting itself in the foot here. Yeah. I mean, that's true. I think most clearly in tablets, right? Whereas Apple spent however long, just insisting that the iPad was the future of all computing. And then to slowly realize that people like their laptops and turn the iPad into an expensive laptop, sure. But they kept at it, right?

They were like, this is what we're doing. We've made this bet. We're going to keep going with it. It helps people bought a lot of iPads along the way. way, but Google made the same bet, made the same noise. I was there at CES when they announced Android honeycomb on the Motorola Zyboard, whatever it was called. Like, we lived through it all together as a family. And then they dropped it.

They're like, no one's buying these. No one cares. They could buy. And they let Motorola and Lenovo and Samsung keep putting out $200 Android tablets, mostly for people to use as other content consumption devices or for people to give to their kids. Right? Like that became that market. Like, here's a thing you can break.

And then they realized that foldables were going to be big, literally. And they got to be good tablets again. They've announced a new tablet project. And it's like, well, if you just kept your eye on the ball and made some incremental improvements, you'd be way farther ahead than where you are right now. And like, I don't know if that's quite as true with watches. But I do know that they keep, they've now bought big companies that are theoretically good at these products.

They bought HTC to make pixel phones. They bought Fitbit to make wear. and we just haven't seen the results. And maybe that's because HTC was not competitive, that was not competitive. I mean, because they don't care. Like, it's a huge company. This isn't their primary space. Like, as we said, it's YouTube.

It's ads. This is a- It's YouTube and search. Yeah. This is very much like a side project for them. And until it really shows returns and shows a reason for investment, it's never going to be an investment. But it ends up being that chicken and egg scenario because it's like, well, you never

invested it. So it can never be really successful. Well, yeah, but if it was successful, we'd invest in it. And it's like, all right. So we're just going to argue with each other and fart out another like. Sometimes I get a real window into your previous career at a different media company. Not going to say which one. Who's to say?

But no, I think that's right. And I think the other thing is, and we should stop talking about this here in a minute. But I think Google has also been a terrible steward of its ecosystem in this sense. Right. Like Google has never for one minute given any Android developer a reason to think, oh, I should really invest in my WearOS app because WareOS basically like ceases to exist once every two years and then comes back as if by magic three years later. And it's the same with large screens and like Apple just relentlessly told developers for like a decade. Tablet apps matter. Tablet apps matter. Tablet apps matter. And then they eventually all got on board. And now Apple has this amazing ecosystem of tablet apps that Google. has just never given people a reason to care about.

And so when it decides to care, it has to, like, scramble for six months to try and get everybody on board. And then a year later decides it doesn't care again. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I would say that I'm not sure that Apple made the... I'm not sure that Apple finished the turn

with the watch and apps, right? Like, that's fair. Yeah. In many ways, apps on the watch are still... It's better now. This is too reductive. I understand that I'm making it, sort of unfair.

reductive comment here. But in many ways, apps on the watch are still just remote controls of your phone. Yes. Or extensions of your phone in some other important way. There's a few that are great standalone watch experiences, but very few and they're very targeted. And on the iPad, it's, you know, some of them are great. Some of them are really, really great iPad apps.

But then you look at the disparity in the iPad line between the, you know, $329 iPad and the pro. And it's like, Some of those apps are designed for this market, and the iPad is a lot of content in some shop at the bottom. And just the fact that I can describe that, and a lot of people listening to this, understand what I'm talking about, is a victory for Apple, right? Even if what I'm describing is not a victory in the context of its own application ecosystem or where it got to with developers or replacing the Mac or all this other stuff, it's a victory that there's enough stuff that I can describe how it breaks down, whereas I don't know that I can describe to you a single wear-o-less app that is anything but or remote control of the phone. or even describe a single wearOS app. And I think that's like the problem with Google's like ecosystem. It's a problem honestly with the watch five.

Beyond its like battery life, it's that it's more of an imply. It's like a feature phone, a feature watch more than it is like a smart watch. That's an old debate, right? Like is this a true computing? What is a computer? Is this watch a computer or is it just a really, really fancy calculator watch? It's a feature phone on your wrist. There's someone out there right now freaking out of me that the first term.

iPhone was just a feature phone because it couldn't run an appellation of the ecosystem. And I want you to know that I love you. Aw. You're my people. Yeah, we all agree with that center. Sweet. All right, we should take a break. We've got to come back and talk about the war brewing between vertical video editors.

It's a real one. It's hot. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from Shopify. Every thriving, successful business has to start somewhere. A good place to start is a relatively simple question. What if? given the right tools, I've really put my all into this.

One tool that can help grow your sprouting business to new heights is Shopify. Millions of businesses around the world rely on Shopify for e-commerce. They offer a host of helpful tools you can take advantage of, from payment processing to analytics to website design. Their design studio includes hundreds of templates to help you create the exact website you've been envisioning for your business. If you're wondering, what if I need help? then no worries because you're never left to fend for yourself.

Shopify's award-winning customer support is available 24-7. It's time to turn those what-ifs into a thriving business with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash vergecast. Go to Shopify.com slash vergecast. That's Shopify.com slash vergecast. Support for the show comes from grammar. You don't need reminding that the world moves fast. But work today requires clear communication, and when every message counts, sounding rushed or generic can mean getting lost in the shuffle.

Gramerly gives you one place to think, write, and finish your work where you already write, while giving you access to agents that help you sound natural and engaging. No matter what kind of writing you're doing, Gramerly helps you get ideas done faster and move from draft to done with less friction. You can use Grammally's AI chat to brainstorm ideas, outline a solid draft, then refine it with context-aware suggestions that fit what you're working on. See why 90% of professionals say Grammarly has saved them time writing and editing their work. In a world of generic AI, you don't have to sound like everyone else. With Gramerly, you never will.

Download Grammarly for free at Grammarly.com. That's Grammarly.com. We're back. We've labeled this segment. TikTokstagram? It's beautiful. David, what does that mean in your mind? So we've come to this beautiful place where all the apps are the same. There is just only, there is one app and it is a, it is a full-screen vertical video on your phone. And where it comes from and what you do there and what it is is not important. It is, it's, your phone is just called app now. And you open it and it plays video for you

and you swipe vertically and that's all that happens. This is the world that we have somehow come to. App. I love app. It's just called app. App. Would you like to look at app for five hours? And I'm like, yes, I would. Thank you. Yeah.

And the app is like, where does the, where do the videos come from? I don't know. It's just any. Yeah. Anything like, like dances? I mean, I'm like, yeah, sure. I feel like all the sub apps really want you to know where the apps videos come from. Oh, it's so important to them.

It's very important. So we should point out, just a plug. Land of the Giants this week is Alexi talking about the future of Facebook and the discovery engine in the future of the news feed, which is basically Facebook turning Facebook into app. But they're calling it the discovery engine. It's a good plug. It's a good episode.

You should listen to it. So here's the thing about app. TikTok, specifically TikTok. If you just zoom back, what TikTok is is not so much the experience of viewing TikTok. So that's great. That's very important. It obviously is winning and everyone's scared of it and throwing their hands up and rebooting their apps as TikTok. Sure. That's the consumer side, right? That's the watching TikTok side.

The part of TikTok that I think is undercover, underdiscussed, underreported on is that it is a video editor that, like, large groups of college students have all learned to use, like, expert video editors. It, like, guides you into making kinds of content that very few video editors have ever guided anyone into making. Yeah. And, like, that piece of TikTok success is fascinating to me. Like the duets and responses, what are they called? The split screen one? The stitches.

So duets and stitches, like, they have developed a language of video communication on TikTok, and then there are TikTok editing challenges. Like, you see that TikTok is expressed to its users is as much about creation as it is about consumption. I think that is super cool. I totally agree. I just don't think TikTok invented that. Like I think I would say if you want to go back and find like a house style of vertical video like Snapchat is the answer.

Ooh, not the vine. I had to bring it up. Don't talk to me about fine. All my favorite TikTok accounts are just old vines and I love it very much. But that's a whole separate story. But I think like and this is part of what, and we should get into some of the news from this week. But I think the thing that you're getting at that's super interesting to me is that like we are now in this place where it is just vertical video and everybody's fighting about where it comes from and who sees it and all that stuff. But, like, the thing they're, I think, starting to realize is that, like, if we can build the best creation tools, that's actually one big, huge way to win.

And, like, Snapchat had the filters. And Instagram is starting to build really advanced stuff. And TikTok, like, I think you're right that TikTok has, like, developed this new, like, language of cinema in a really cool way. Yeah. And, yeah, and did it in a huge way, for sure. But, like, if you just step back, like, Apple had I movie. They had clips. dear sweet clips, which only Dieterbone ever loved.

I forgot about that. What Apple had was a creation tool that a lot of people liked. I mean, I was an I movie kid. Again, Steam Engine uphill both ways. That was me. I did it too. 8mm footage off a Sony camera on ILink. Remember when studying tried to rebrand Firewire's Ilink?

Let's do an hour on that. I will do a whole hour with you, Neely, on that. Very upsetting. Firewire 800. What happened? One hour of the Vergecast. Can I just tell you my Ed and Gadgett years ago when Apple finally killed Firewire? I made an entire video montage of Firewire ports set to Boys to Men.

And then this was before TikTok existed because this would have been like a perfect TikTok. So I had to go get AOL's custom video player and be like, I need to upload a video. And they're like, what's the content? I was like, I don't want to tell you. Did you edit it in Imovie? I don't want you to watch this. I did. It was great.

Anyway, that was the day AOL went out of business. They were like, you should leave and start your own website, Neiline. Anyhow, but Apple had all these creation tools. It never had a distribution platform. Yeah. Right. It was just not their thought that connecting creation and distribution would be important. YouTube famously is still the best, most lucrative, preferred video distribution platform for almost every internet creator.

It's got the best revenue. It's got the biggest community. Shorts is outperforming the main thing. Shorts, again, is app as expressed by YouTube. But it dropped the ball on the creation side almost completely. Like to be a high-end YouTuber, you have to give in to Adobe Premiere or Final Cut or make videos about why Final Cut is actually good, and then you get a million views. You just end up in a place where YouTube doesn't help you create anything.

They're starting to do that in shorts because app. It's weird that the biggest distribution platform never really cared about the creation element. I think what I'm saying TikTok is the winner is they married those two things in a gigantic way. Yeah. Totally. Snap and stories with filters did that sort of, but there was no virality associated with Snap. TikTok is like virality for days, plus this huge creation tool. But now you're seeing.

The right device, too, right? Like they put it on the right device. They didn't put it on your computer. They put it on your phone, which is what most younger people are using as a computer. Yeah. No, I think that's all right. It's just funny to me that there's been, There's been this historic split.

TikTok collapses the split. But now you've got Instagram, you've got YouTube shorts, you've got TikTok. They've all got these powerful creation tools in them. And they are trying to gatekeep the creation tools and lock them to their own distribution because that's where their money is. And historically, creation tools have not been wedded to or tied or limited to one distribution platform. Does it ever blow your mind to think about the fact that this is like,

the wireless carrier's not wanting to be dumb pipes. And this is why all the streaming services don't want to play with Universal Search because they all want you to hang out inside of their apps. Like every industry is the same. Some of the nouns change. But everybody is like,

everybody makes the same stuff. And then goes, oh, no, we're the same stuff. How do we make sure people don't think of us as the same as everybody else? And then does this. And this is where we are. And the answer is software restrictions. And it's like, everyone hates you.

So in watermarks. So just this week, YouTube shorts, the editor will now put a watermark if you export out of YouTube shorts and repost and want to take it somewhere else. How good you? Instagram. This is our own social team discovered this this week. Instagram has a really powerful green screen tool for real. So they were just using it.

And they would export the video and use it forever other stuff. And now Instagram just mutes that video. When you export it, it has no audio. Unless, this is my favorite part is unless you share it first on Reels. Yeah. which is fantastic. They're like, do whatever you want, just put it on reels first.

It's perfect. I mean, I just think that there's something here where the idea of creation tools being locked or tied or limited to distribution is new in the culture. Right?

It's meaningfully new because historically, again, the creation tools have never had distribution connected to them and the distribution platforms have never had creation tools connected to them.

And now it's like, What if we software lock you into this garden? When do you think they start charging? My suspicion is that people are going to react to this extremely negatively. You don't think they're going to just charge people, be like, oh, you want to unlock it? You want to export it wherever. For $2 a month to Instagram, you can do whatever you want with the video you make for us. I think it would have to be like $400 a month.

The lifetime value of the Instagram library getting bigger is bigger than any dollars that you could pay them as a consumer. But you just got to do the math, right? Like, Instagram is staring down the barrel of a $10 billion TikTok-shaped gun. Yeah. How are you going to make that up? You can't. It's not $2. And they all see each other as super zero sum, which I think is really interesting.

Like, the idea that these apps are not in a position of being able to like just sort of let a thousand flowers bloom and be like, you know, there's enough attention for everybody. People are on our app. They are like directly threatened by each other now, which I've been really. really interesting. And it is like, the only conclusion I can draw from that is that they have all begun to understand that these serve the same purpose for the same set of people and that ultimately only one of them is probably going to win and everybody kind of thinks it's going to be TikTok. So they are like desperately fighting against that pull away. Because if I'm YouTube, I don't know that I would necessarily feel like I'm existentially threatened by TikTok if I wanted

to go do a different thing. But now YouTube is like, no, we have to fight with TikTok. And They have to take every advantage they can away from TikTok, which I think is fascinating. So YouTube has the big advantage, which is it has the best revenue share program for all those platforms for actual creators to make money on platforms. No one makes money on TikTok as far as I can tell. I won't say the dreaded D word here, but there's another very good podcast where I was about to bring it up. Hank Green was so good on Decoder.

And he said a lot of stuff I thought was interesting. But Hank Green's like no one makes money in TikTok, but that's where the audience is. it's also easier and cheaper for me to get there. And, you know, his feeling is like, all of that adds up to his YouTube audience growing and his business doing well. But he also said, YouTube shorts is growing faster. And once YouTube flips on the money, which they already can do, they've already built the model.

So they don't have to go and explain it to the board of directors or model. Like, they already have it. I think they might win because people will obviously go where the money is. And that's great. But it's not going to solve the, like, long tail problem of TikTok, which is, there are lots of people on TikTok who are not there to make money. Yeah. Right.

And they're just having a good time with a cool video editor that happens to be connected to distribution platform that might make you go viral at any time and deliver you $100 from the creator's fund. And that's like a good enough incentive program compared to YouTube where everyone wants a career as a YouTuber. And that is a different game to play. I just kind of, I was going to say, I wonder why people, there is this big existential, like, crisis for a lot of these app makers because Facebook, meta, Google, Google, Google, they have like the ad game on lock. They know how to monetize this stuff and make money.

And TikTok, does TikTok? Is TikTok making money hand over fist? Like to bring up mine again, is it going to be another vibe? They're not sharing it back to creators. Right. And so like. No. So TikTok is a black box.

Is it owned by dance? We don't know how by dance is doing as a company. But all the reporting suggests that TikTok advertising is effective. They're collecting those ad dollars. And like the music industry, loves TikTok. And TikTok loves the music industry because if you have, if you are Beyonce's record label and publicist, you're like, these songs are going to go viral this week. And TikTok will all but certainly make that happen for you. And like, that's a, that's a revenue generation

program. So that's why they're scared. Right. Because they, the TikTok is the culture. Like for better or worse, if you're listening to this, you know, like, oh, TikTok. Like, TikTok drives a massive amount of the culture now. Yes. Because it's a ability. to generate virality. It's ability to generate trends. And the trends come and go in the blink of an eye. Rebecca Jennings at Vox has written about this very compellingly. Like, it's impossible to be a trends reporter anymore because all the trends are happening all the time and then they go away. Like, sea shanties do not say anything about the state of America. Right? But like for one week, sea shanties were very important to everyone because it just happened and then it went away.

That was a Rebecca piece. You should go read it. It's pretty good. But Instagram isn't that thing anymore. And it used to be. And I think they feel it going away. YouTube, I don't know if it was ever that thing because it was always everything. Yeah. Right. Like when we were covering YouTube stars and that period of YouTube when we could cover YouTube stars like they were aliens and we were explaining them to the world.

Like that felt like a thing we were actually doing. Like here's a whole culture you don't see over here on YouTube. Have you heard of Logan Paul? But now they're just like everywhere. You know, like they've transitioned into the. culture at large, and YouTube is still manufacturing some of those moments, but not nearly at the rate of TikTok. And I just think fundamentally, yes, it is a zero sunscreen. You only have so many minutes in the day. And if you want app, TikTok right now is best app. Yeah, I think that's true.

And I think what's going to be interesting for me to watch is like the upside of shorts for YouTube is that it can then, like I think the company closest to sort of being able to wrap all of this together is probably YouTube, right? It has the giant audience. Shorts seems to be taking off. It has the monetization strategy. It's like YouTube is sort of the end point. Like even people on TikTok make their TikTok money on YouTube.

Like that's where you go to make your money. So YouTube has already solved the hard part of this. What TikTok has not figured out is how to like build home bases for people who do this for a living. And really no one other than YouTube has ever figured this out. And so I think, I mean, Twitch has. Like, we see all these rumors about TikTok.

What's that? Twitch figured it out. Twitch figured it out. That's fair. Twitch is like a specific niche of the world, but has definitely figured it out. That's totally fair. But I think other than those two, like Facebook never really figured it out. Snapchat hasn't figured it out.

TikTok hasn't figured it out. And I think like you look at like TikTok music, which I think is going to be a thing that exists and has been rumored forever, but is them trying to build an end point. Right. Like you come to TikTok, you go to Linkin bio, and you. leave eventually to go make some money for somebody. And TikTok would like to pull more of that back in. And my sense is that's hard. But whether it's harder than getting people to spend three hours just scrolling through videos on your app is going to be like the big question for YouTube. I mean, I think it is hard because you're seeing like a lot of these, these fandoms for these

followers or these creators and just fandoms in general, you're seeing that that huge decentralization. Like they are, there aren't hubs for these people anymore. It is all just word of mouth and sharing. and all these back channels. So I think that's really, really difficult for TikTok, which is why I keep coming back to, like, is TikTok built to last? Like, yes, anybody can be really good at, like, creating the culture for a couple of years.

We've seen that again and again and again. Anybody can do. Glee was the culture. Glee did not last. Sorry. I'm sorry. I do not agree with you. The Glee was the culture.

It was unfortunately very much. It's true. I'm 1,000% on a podcast with you, like, musical theater kids, and I just need to tell you that you're wrong. about this situation. But there are these things that like, it's not true.

Regardless of if you agree with glee, there are these various things that are like, this is the center of culture. This is what we all care about. And especially for younger people, which is what most of TikTok's audiences, my dad excluded. He like watches it every night. He calls it like his show, his TikToks. And he's like, I get in bed and I watch my TikToks. It's like his stories.

It's his stories. It's great. But like for the most part, it is younger people. And they, they, they, do move around very quickly. And this is like, it is hard to lock people in right now, lock people to like a specific hub. And so I, I'm still not sold that TikTok is going to be this huge behemoth. I think it's doing very, very successful very right now. But like, I don't see where that long term game is beyond music partnerships. And even then we've heard like Lizzo doing great

traction on TikTok isn't necessarily translating to sales for. Lizzo. So like... Well, nothing translates to sales anymore. Yeah. And that's the other part. It's like where... Yeah, I just don't know how long this lasts for them before people get fed up with

TikTok. TikTok gets canceled by the teens. And then they all move on to what discord. YouTube. They just come back to YouTube and they're like, have you heard of this place? I disagree. I think TikTok, TikTok at its current rate is bound to succeed because it is, one, supported by the Chinese government, which really wants it to succeed.

And actually, its biggest existential threat is that the United States government is aware that the Chinese government supports TikTok and might one day just turn it off, which I will remind you that a previous president decided he was just going to do without a plan and almost sold it to Microsoft. Oracle, go buy this. Hey, you got some money? Yes. Do it.

Oracle is taking over the TikTok data centers. It's a weird deal over a TikTok land. That really is a wild, like, sliding doors moment. Like, just to totally derail this just for one quick second, like, imagining what this, like, August of 2022 would be like if Oracle or Microsoft owned TikTok and like the culture had changed around that for the last two years is like, like, we're going to do a 10th anniversary like science fiction in reverse. Like, what if Microsoft owned TikTok thing? And I'm, I'm already excited about it. I will remind you that such an Adele, I think it was the code. conference was like, that was some of the weirdest conversations I've ever had.

He was like, we had to be in it because like, how could we not try to buy TikTok? But he was like, it was weird. And then it went away. For the best. Weird. Yeah. I don't know. Like, I don't know if it was for the best.

Like, I'm not saying that the operation of that version of our government was ever stable or smooth. But sometimes, like, they, you know, broken clock twice a day. Like, they're like, TikTok is owned by the Chinese. We should take a harder line about it. Yeah, that might have been the correct. I think that is coming for TikTok much more than Gen Z deciding that what they like is reading long blog posts on Tumblr again, which would be amazing. I would love that. If that is the next move.

But I don't think that's likely. So here's what I wonder about this. Is like, does this mean that the next thing we're going to get is like a really powerful cross platform vertical video creation tool? that does all these things. Like, part of me thinks somewhere Evan Spiegel and the SNAP executive team are just like leaning back in their chairs being like, come make stuff with us.

We don't watermark. Let's hang out. But then I also wonder, like, is the next phase of this just that everything silos really aggressively? Is it that we all get less confused seeing YouTube watermarks in TikTok and TikTok watermarks in YouTube

and nobody actually cares and this isn't really a thing? Or is there a new thing that comes out of this? Well, the platforms are detecting the watermarks. Oh, that's true. That's the thing. So YouTube will detect the TikTok watermark and then downrank that video. I love it.

So there's just a, again, my thesis here is that creation and distribution have never been so tightly tied together. And that imposing the business limits of the distribution platform on the creation tool is bad. And that eventually the people who use the creation tools will be frustrated enough to enact some sort of penalty on the creation tool. those platforms. We'll see. But I don't think that the answer is snapping like for four bucks a month, you can use the snap video editor because they have to keep pace with the coolest tools in TikTok. And TikTok's greatest success is adding tools that people then use in like viral, recursive, conversant ways with one another. And that is, they have been better at creating that loop than any of these other platforms. So really the company that should be like licking its chops at this is like,

Vimeo and the other like active creation. I'm serious. Like if we if there is like a B2B video white label hosting service now. Yeah, it is now. That's fair. But so, okay, so that's the thing. Like who is it then? Then the thing that's going to happen is somebody is going to like sit above this.

And it's like you remember the thing when they, everybody built like the hoot suites of the world where it's like you can publish to all your social channels in an automated way. And it's not such a disaster to manage a hundred different things. Like that's got to be coming for vertical video now. Maybe. Maybe. Hoot Suite for App. If the Hoot Suite people are listening, you can just take that idea.

Please name it Hoot Suite for App. We'll know what happened and we won't be mad. I don't know. It's not like there's great upload APIs for these platforms. These are very restricted platforms in a way that Twitter, for all of its problems, has an API that other people. Yeah. when we post stories from our CMS, they just get tweeted automatically because Twitter has built that kind of integration.

So this next phase, this next phase just sucks for cross-platform creators then. Yes. Yeah, I think it's going to get harder and harder. That's what I'm saying. Everybody's got their little. I think eventually creators are going to say, this is stupid. We don't want to live in your walls because Adobe Premiere has never been gated like this. I movie is not gated like this.

Except that they're hard. be gated to distratured it out, guys. I figured it out. Synology is going to create a really good widget, and everybody's just going to buy a sonology and upload their videos, and you're going to, like, type in the IP address for the person's house and get your vertical videos. Oh, direct. Direct.

Just instead of going fully into the cloud, totally siloed, everybody's going to get fed up and be like, we all have our little sonology TikToks. It's a close video. It's going to be great. All right. Do you think Plex can fix this, Alex? Yes. They got this.

Okay, cool. Have you installed Plex? No. I need to. I thought, all right. Well, we're going to take a break. Alex is going to install Plex on her steam deck. We got some car stuff.

We got a lightning around. It's coming up. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from What Not. 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.

But What Not flips that. They say they're the live shopping marketplace where you can shop, sell, and connect around the things you love. On What Not, you go live and sell directly to people in real time. They see what you've got, ask questions, and buy. And they keep coming back. Whether it's beauty, collectibles, electronics, luxury fashion, and yes, even cookies, sellers are building real thriving businesses.

And for a limited time, What Not says they'll match your first $150 sold in the first month. You can visit Whatnot.com slash sell to start selling. That's W-H-A-T-N-O-T dot com slash sell. What-N-O-T-com slash sell. Support for the show comes from Anthropic. Not every question has an easy answer. And the ones that are really worth asking usually come with a healthy mix of inspiration and backpedaling, aha moments, and quiet meditation. When you're working through one of those problems, you want a partner to bounce ideas off of and figure out where the deeper issue lies.

That's where Claude can help. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you, whether you're debugging code at midnight, or strategizing your next business move. Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter. Plus, Claude's research capabilities go deeper than basic search. It can have comprehensive, reliable analysis with proper citations, turning hours of research into minutes.

Ready to tackle bigger problems? Get started with Claude today at cloud. com. That's cloud.a.ai slash vergecast. And check out Claude Pro, which includes access to all the features mentioned in today's episode. Claude.a.ai slash vergecast. Okay, we're back. A bunch of car news, but I'm not going to start with dead ahead car news.

I'm going to start with extremely wonky FCC news because you know how I love some extremely wonky FCC news. Okay, the car industry lost a court case this week that is like one of my favorite, just dumb conflicts in the world. Wait, like the whole car industry? Does the car industry have like a lawyer? Well, they have an industry group. Oh, okay. They got wrecked.

So, yes, they got wrecked. So in like the late 90s, like in 1999, the FCC set aside all the spectrum in a 5.9 gigahertz band for something called V to VE, vehicle to vehicle communications. And then they added V to I vehicle to infrastructure communications and then to make it all sound cool. They started calling it V to X. Yes. Which is very funny. Sure. So the FCC is like, car industry, make the car safer.

Make them all talk to each other. Make them talk to stoplights, right? Solve traffic jams. You won't hit each other. Here's a big chunk of spectrum, like good spectrum, for you to figure this out. I have been to like 5,000 CES demos of V to V to V. I stuff, right? And like car makers would be like, with this new technology, the cars can see through each other.

We can predict traffic. We can slow you down. We can see what's happening up on the road. We can make sure you hit all the stoplights perfectly on time. It's here. And then none of it ever ships. But it's just, this is like the right idea, right? Like is this just like, okay, because it always, I've, I've spent less time with car people at CES than you have.

But even in the, like, I spent a bunch of time with Qualcomm like four or five years ago. And all they talked about was V to V stuff. And it's like, okay, the idea that I don't just have to rely on my phone's or on my car's cameras to see everything that's going on, I can actually let my car talk to the other car and to the stoplight, and they can all understand what's going on that way. It seems like in a perfect world, that's how they should work, right? Yeah, but David, have you considered that these are the same people that make, like, in-car huds and in-car computer? Like, it's the same people that are like, we need a schumorphic version of the car so you can turn your lights off and on. Like, of course.

Yeah, you have to tap on the truck to change the climate in your car. track. Okay, so to be fair, like a tiny handful of extremely expensive luxury cars shipped with like VTV radios. The 2017 Mercedes-Benz E-class and S-class, Cadillac CTS in 2017. Okay. You're just talking to nothing. Yeah, just rolling around talking nothing. And then they started, I mean, all these names are great. And then, you know, 5G happened. So everyone's like, 5G will do it. And they started calling it. cellular v-X or cv2X. Oh my God.

Nothing resonates for the consumers like CV2X. Okay. So then 2017, Trump FCC, which was just a wrecking ball of ideas, got rid of a regulation that Obama's FCC had put in saying

all the cars needed VTV stuff. Right? How do you get over the hump of no cars having it? You just write the law saying all the cars need to have it. We all need to do it. Cars are going to stop crashing to each other. Not the Trump FCC, which is Didn't do it. To be fair, it had been 17 years. Right?

They set us on the spectrum in 1999. In 2017, nothing is shipping. So our boy, Ajit Pi, is like, screw it. I'm giving a bunch of this spectrum back to unlicensed usage, which is a big trend lately. So maybe we'll have 5.9 gigahertz Wi-Fi now. And you can still keep a little chunk of this for cellular V2X, CV2X. So the automakers industry groups are like, don't do this. We need it.

If Wi-Fi will interfere with our radios that don't exist. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation promised five million cars would have V to V for the next five years, but they wouldn't do it if the FCC gave the special way. Okay. So they filed the lawsuit. The lawsuit comes out and the judge is like, what are you talking about? No intelligent transportation systems have been developed. As of 2020, no commercially marketed vehicles used 5.9 gigahertz to provide vehicle safety features. And then he's like, your argument that you need all this spectrum for new technologies is not great,

noting the petitioners have directed us to no significant developments in the field of yet to arrive technologies. So good. This is a judge saying your shits of Aprilware. Yes. It makes me so happy. Yeah. The field of yet to arrive technologies is like the beginning of a book title about vaporware that I would very much read. It's so good. And it's like, this is such a good idea. You guys never shipped it. It was vapor for so long that eventually the United States government was like, we're going to dunk on you a little bit for a while. The vapor is very dated. Well, hopefully our Wi-Fi writers get better. And hopefully 5G actually does. It's like they drive robot surgeons to your house and self-driving cars. That's what Verizon's ad said.

Sure. So is V2V like dead now? Like what, what happens? No, because they're, they're supposed to put 5G radios in the cars.

Oh, so 5G will fix it. They still have a tiny little chunk of this spectrum reserve for that use, but they wanted it all and they just didn't use it for 20 years. So now it's coming back to unlicense usage for Wi-Fi, which I think is probably the right decision. Yeah,

but it's like use it or lose it pro. Yeah, 20 years seems like long enough to try to do something. Functional here. It is very good. Other car news, big study. EV owners don't like the broken chargers and bad charging software. Surprise.

More importantly, the Inflation Reduction Act was signed, big climate bill, lots of EV tax credit news and that bill. On the plus side, Tesla gets the credit again. They'd run out. They're only 200,000. So Tesla had run out ages ago. GM had run out, I think Ford was about to run out. They get it again.

if the cars are made in North America, if the batteries are made in North America after, I think, 2024. So that means like the Hyundai Ionic 5 does not get the credit anymore. It's a hard, it's confusing. Lots of freakouts in like various car forms about when you assign your contract because if you sign a contract,

if you have a written contract before the date of the thing, you still get the credit. If you don't, you don't. Andy Hawkins is a great explainer about it. We're just walking through it. The really important piece of the puzzle, though, is it's going to push battery manufacturing to the United States because carmakers need, the batteries made here to get the credits, which I think is important.

And the other important piece of puzzle, because of this written contract requirement, all these like vaporware car pre-orders might go away. Yes. Which I think is super fascinating. Like knock on, I don't think anybody was anticipating that this would be the knock-on effect. But if you need the contract before, like Lucid is shifting from pre-order reservations to written contracts now. Because they got to lock in the order to get people credit before the- Oh, man, they're going to get...

So if these companies that are, like, shifting so they can make sure they get the money, don't ship the cars in a timely fashion, can they get the hell suit out of them by the customers? I know. It depends on what these written contracts. Oh, my God, that's fine. I mean, not for the car makers, but, like, for me personally. I'm opposed to vaporware. Well, see, the game around the credits is like, it's in a real limbo space.

right now. Like the law has passed. No one really knows what it means. There's lots of attempts to figure out what it means how to get the credits. At the same time, Ford, right, $7,500 credit comes back for them because they're not going to hit the cap anymore. They just raise the price of the truck by $8,000. Cool. Cool. Never mind. I hate this. This is terrible. Yeah. So go read that explainer. If you are in the market for a car like me and you can't find a car to buy like me, it's good. It's very helpful. Andy definitely wrote the explainer because I was like, I don't want to do it. Thank you, Andy. And then last, we have to call this one out. Dodge, Deer Sweet Dodge, part of the FCA Salantis, worldwide conglomerate of car manufacturers. They put out their first EV concept. It's a charger EV. It has a fake exhaust sound. They were like, muscle car buyers want loud cars. So we just put speakers in this car that make it make loud sounds. And it's the best. It's the best loud sound. Andy Hawkins, when he wrote about it, said it sounds like a line getting neutered, and I think that is exactly right.

It's pretty good. It's very accurate. Something else. They're calling it a battery electric vehicle exhaust noise. Can you turn it off? I don't know. I think somebody, like, is testing it at 2 a.m. outside my window lately. I think I'm hearing it a lot.

The name is called the Frat-Zonic chambered exhaust. No. What? Which can reach 100. 226 decibels making it as loud as a Hellcat-powered Dodge. Am I wrong for thinking that an exhaust is not a thing that needs to exist on an electric vehicle? Am I crazy? It's just speakers.

I don't know what to tell you. It is not an exhaust. It is just a button marked mega-me-checking your car. Just somebody going as they drive down the road. Yep. But with a really good speaker. So instead of flipping up and hitting gnaz, you hit the speakers. And then also, if you've ever driven an EV, you know they don't have transmissions because they're just electric motors.

The cool part of driving an EV is like the instant torque at every part of whatever. Dodge decided muscle car buyers need a transmission. So they've added a transmission. I'm not sure how it works because it's like a confusing idea in an electric car. So we'll see how it works. But they've given it a name. and the name is lowercase E R lowercase E

And the name is lowercase E, capital letter R UPT or Erupt No, it's erupt What if it's just like a game? What do you Vin Diesel thinks? That's all I find myself wondering right now Is like did Vin Diesel get in the driver's seat to one of those and go, this feels right?

Like is that, is that I just want to know I hope it's in the next Fast and Furious movie and he's like, it could be louder. And part of the movie is them just trying to make it as loud as possible. Well, he gets really good at the gear shifting game. I'm just going to read you this last paragraph from the CNBC piece. Kinesis, he's the CEO of Dodge. Said some of the design elements and technologies are expected to impact the range of the vehicle,

but it's not something Dodge is worried about. And then, quote, I don't care, it's badass. It's a muscle car. That's right. That's what muscle car owners feel. Yeah. You got to hit the megabase button to go five miles on a charge. It's good.

I've been thinking that it's a real bummer that with electric vehicles, the world is going to get quieter. So I'm really glad Dodges out here trying to solve that problem for us. It's just a concept. No idea when it will ship. I do like the gear shifting thing. That's fun. Like I was just reading a story the other day from somebody about like how gear shifting

is going away. And it's not going to, like, it's going to be a lost art. And these, these EV owners, you'll be able to hear them coming. You'll be like, a deck idea. Alex, let me ask you straight up. Do you know how to ride a horse? Yes. You're from Texas.

Are you, uh, are you an equestrian of any time? I mean, I've ridden a horse. I one time I wrote it at Gallup. Yeah, I've ridden a horse too. Would you say you knew how to ride a horse? I feel like it's not hard. You just like get up there. But it's different.

That's a no from Alex. Once upon a time, someone was like, riding a horse is a lost art. that's just where we are like the American Unicycle Alliance was like these cars gonna replace unicycles The poor unicycle This also sounds like they're gonna just put a joystick

In the middle of the car that does nothing Yes That's the best part Make some rumbly noises every time you move up I hope it changes the audio It's gonna make a bunch of people really happy Erupt They're gonna erupt

Alright let's wrap this up with the lighting around Everyone's erupted It's horrible. Lots of stuff in line around. David, what you got? We're definitely getting an explicit tag on this podcast. The thing that jumped out to me the most was Snap giving up on the pixie drone after just four months. This thing feels like it just shipped 15 minutes ago because it basically just did. And it's kind of a sign of the times.

Like it's a tough economy. Everybody is sort of pulling back and finding ways to cut down on spending. and like, I don't think anyone thought the Pixie drone was going to be a huge revenue driver for SNAP anytime soon. But if it's indicative of what this next phase is going to look like where I think a lot of companies are going to pull back on anything that feels sort of extraneous as a person who likes gadgets and technology and new things, it just kind of makes me sad. And I think we're going to get a lot of companies investing in like a very small number of relatively uninteresting things and trying to figure out how to monetize all the stuff you already use and spending, less time in the very near future trying to invent new stuff. And I kind of think that's a bummer. I was never going to buy a pixie drone, but it's the kind of thing that like I like that it exists. And I like that Snap is the kind of company that makes this stuff. So it's just a bummer to see it give up so

fast. Yeah. I think the flip side of that is when the big companies look inward in that way, it just creates a lot of opportunity for other companies to make interesting things and not worry that, you know, we're going to make a camera drone and then like Facebook will make one and kill us. And so I'm hopeful that there's a little bit of that dynamic in the future where you see the smaller companies do interesting things because it's easier to differentiate when you know the big companies are focused on monetizing app. That's fair. I think that's right.

And I hope that is true. But I do think there is a decent chance we're headed into a weird time for hardware. Like supply chain stuff continues to be wonky. hardware is hard and expensive. There's like people are buying less and less of that stuff. So I'm going to be curious to see what the next like 12 to 24 months looks like in terms of interesting new hardware. Yeah. Okay.

Here's my lining around one. It's very good. This is a journalism story at its core, like a perfect journalism story. So there's this platform called Triller, which you probably don't know about. It's a TikTok clone run in America. They're doing okay. They like raised a bunch of money. They caught some audience.

the demilios are involved in some way. Do you guys remember when all the TikTok Trump stuff was happening? Yeah, and there was like, we're, like, TikTok's going to die. We're the new TikTok. Let's go. Yeah. And so they raised a bunch of money at that time. They spent some of that money on VersaS, which was a pandemic sensation run by Timbalin and Swiss

beats, who are megastar hip-hip. It's still good. I can't. I can't believe I. You don't need to. If you're listening to this and you're not a Timbalm's, Go educate yourselves. I mean, they, like, created the sound of, like, at least a decade and a half.

Yeah. So they paid, and they had sold VersaS. They had licensed it. Like, Apple Music was streaming VersaS. It was just them calling their famous musician friends together and, like, they would play their songs at each other and talk shit. And it was great. It was like a... It was great.

It was really fun to watch. So they sold it to VersaS. They sold... They sold... Yeah. They sold... us to Triller, and now they're suing Triller, because they say Triller owes them $28 million and never paid. To date, defendants, Triller have failed and refused to make any payment to Timberlin and

Swiss Beats for the past two sums, blah, blah, right? Great. Triller, this is the journalism story part. So that's very funny because, you know, upstart social platform with no real money, forgot to pay the superstar hip-up producers. Funny on that space. So we report on this, we get the lawsuit, right, we asked Triller for a statement. So, M.R. authors are on the new scene, asked Triller for saying it. They reply from an account that's just like press at triller.com. And it's like the statement is just on its face, like, not like hilarious. We do not wish to air our dirty laundry in the press, but we have paid Swiss and Tim millions in cash in stock.

No one has benefited much from Triller to date. Triller helped fuel versus us to new heights, which is just not true. It was already at the heights. Like Apple music is streaming the thing. It's already, it was already a global cultural phenomenon before Chiller showed up. And they said, and we made it, whatever. We hope it's just a misunderstanding. So then we have this background policy where we don't know, allow unnamed PR people.

So we email back. This has to be in the record. She gets an even longer statement, which is like, you can just read it. It's very long. It's like randomly capitalized the whole thing. We think it's a legal shakedown. They have not delivered any episodes of VersaS. We think their lawyers are overzealous.

whatever. It's just like, ah, it's the random capitals are really good. No sign, though. They still haven't signed it. It came from a different email address from at outlook.com. And at the bottom,

it just says Ryan. Triller co-founder is named Ryan Kavanaugh. So he just like, reply like, is this, is this you? And they just stopped responding. So we put up the story.

We're like, here's what happened. Like, here's the sourcing attribute to what you will. We're trying to transfer him about this. So then they responded yesterday with another version of the second statement, elevating the amount paid to 55 million.

So now they're claiming 55 million. Now they're saying this statement can be attributed to our CEO and chairman, Mahi De Silva, which they misspelled, which is just perfect. You know, when you're out having a good time and you see you need to respond to the email and you grab your phone and you have to push your drink aside and get it all spelled out, You'll have time to double check the name of your boss. I mean, it's just, it's like the whole time I was like, oh, this is why I have this policy. Like, we made all this noise about like having me on the record.

It's like, because at the end of the day, it's, it's just someone foiling and I don't know, it's good. Hopefully Tim and so always get paid. They're more important to our culture than Triller. That's my position. It's not a position of the verge.com, but I'm confident that if you pulled the staff of the verge.com and ask them, who is more important to the culture, Timbalin and Swiss beats or Triller, they will agree with me.

Yeah, it's pretty strange. I encourage someone to... What if they misunderstand it as Thriller? I think Thriller is more important to the culture than Triller. Name a Michael Jackson song that is less important to the culture than Triller and you cannot do it.

No, it's impossible. All right. Alex, what you got? So, Jess Weatherbed, who's one of our new newswriters, she's based out in the UK. She wrote about the absolute goofiest

set of monitors that are just like two monitors stacked on top of each other and they just close up. And somebody's just like, yep, these two very cheap crummy monitors because they're both like 1440p,

75 hertz refresh, 300 nits brightness. These are not super, super fancy nice monitors. But I think like the gimmick is that they're on a cool stand so you can close them at the end of the day and then slowly open them up. And they just crack me up.

I just keep looking at like there's a GIF in this story she wrote. And it just keeps the guys just so happy to like just quietly open those monitors and appreciate his monitors. But it's called Jiminose. There's two versions. There's Jiminose and there's the Jiminose X. Yes. That gives you 1440P. The Jiminose is just 1080p at 60 hertz, 250 nits brightness.

These are like the $100 monitors that you get when you buy. like a Dell desktop from 1998. It's those monitors and they've just like, I mean, I don't know if it's actually those monitors. Caviot. It may not be those specific monitors, but it's basically those monitors. Just like, and you just open it up.

And I just really appreciate Jess is out there writing about it. But they didn't even do anything to them. Yep. They just added a hinge to the back. Like they just put two of them together with a door hinge and that's it. You got to read the story and look at the gif of this dude. opening this monitor, it is incredible. I don't know how to describe this to you.

It's fantastic. It's stacked, as the, the video says. I mean, just he's got a, he's got a big, you know, top gun mustache. He's got long hair and he's just grinning and unfolding this monitor. It's very good. It's very good. Yeah. Nothing says it's time to go to work, like unfolding your monitor.

It's crowdfunded. I don't care what you say. It's crowdfunded. So you might be better off just go buy you to. I'm crowdfunding the whole thing. What's the goal? it $10? I'll give it to them. But it's incredible. I love it.

That's great. All right, David. Last one. I need you to explain to me what's going on in sports streaming because it sounds like we have to care about Peacock now. Disclosure, NBC Universal's investor in Fox Media. But I feel like I just said we have to pay attention to Peacock. Now you should understand the tenor of that relationship. Go ahead, David. We also made a show for Netflix, but that's not important to this particular discussion. Yes. My very good friend and co-founder works at Google. What more do you want for me? most of you should stop listening now because this explanation takes four and a half hours basically the big 10 which is a big sports college football property mostly yeah there's like

35 teams in the bit like half of college teams in america are somehow in the big 10 now uh but basically they signed this big new deal for their streaming rights is eight billion dollars of the next seven years. And these are the moments where basically all of these leagues and conferences and whoever get to decide what we want the future to look like. So like I personally care a lot about these because they decide a lot about what the near future of television is going to look like. And the Big Ten picked like a real sucky way to do it as far as I'm concerned for the future. They basically, they divvied games up between NBC, CBS, and Fox. Some of them will stream. Some of them won't. It's total chaos. What's going to be where. There's also the Big Ten network,

which will have some games. Peacock just randomly gets eight games that aren't going to be anywhere else. Like this is just not... Are they going to make an app? This is just not a good system. And it's like... Like an app to just... No, the Big Ten. Who? This is the problem. Who's going to make an app? There's... You'd need 12 apps. The Big Ten, so the Big Ten has the Big Ten network and that will have some games. You would think that if you got the Big Ten network and paid what it costs, that you would able to watch all the Big Ten games on the Big Ten network. You'd be wrong because this is the world that we live in.

And then it's like, we're just, we're just in this place where sports dictate how all of this stuff works because that's where all the money is. And the Big Ten, at least, is still making this gigantic bet that cable TV is going to keep mattering for a long time, which is very funny because the other thing that also happened today was there was a study released that said streaming, more people watched streaming TV than watched linear TV for the first time ever. So like this is a thing running against the actual trend of where the world is going, but there's still a lot of money in selling your stuff to NBC's broadcast channel.

It's coming. It's going to change everything. Streaming is streaming. You're looking down a barrel. It's almost over. I feel like the phrase you're looking down a barrel is less threatening than the actual cliche. What is the actual cliche?

No, it's not. What is it? It's the barrel of a gun. Yeah, you're looking. Like just a like someone looking at a barrel is not inherently. I was thinking, I was thinking of the gun when I said it. I just didn't want to, you know, I'm a economy of words. Oh, look, a barrel.

You're looking at a barrel. Well, they're not, they're not, they're not winning at broadcast television. If they're looking at a barrel, they're too busy. They're very busy. If you don't get your shit together, you'll be looking at a barrel. I mean, in a way it works. That's how I start all my threats down.

That's intense. I'm fine. All right. We'll come back next week. We'll do a full hour on Firewire 800. What happens next? It also looked at a barrel. An ATSC 3.0.

It did look at a barrel. You got all the way in the barrel. All right. That's it. That's the Vergecast. The Wednesday show this week. Really fun earbuds test. I will say we got an email about the earbuds test.

David, the email was titled J-Bird's Erasure, which was not an email about the band Erasher on J-Bird headphones. So you got to take care of that. Neal, can I tell you there's a reason for that? It's because I forgot that J-Birds exists as a company. J-Burts has not made a pair of headphones in like three years, but I used to love my J-birds and we will bring J-Birds back. Right with Firewire.

I'm ready. And broadcast television. That was really fun. David and I talked about the F-150 Lightning. What was the third thing? I should probably just scroll up and read it. We answered a bunch of people's questions about In green galaxy phones.

It was good stuff. I love taking the calls. What's the number to call us? In green bubbles. 866 Verge 1-1. It is absolutely my favorite thing about the Vergecast. Like, I love both of you, but it's way more fun talking to the people who call the hotline. So 866, Verge 1-1.

Call us, ask us to call your questions. A bunch of stories on the site. James Vincent has a big scoop about Crypto.com, laying off people, and then quietly laying off hundreds of more people. Justine, actually, a bunch of crypto stuff. Justine has a story about carbon offsets for crypto. Then we got a big feature, you can talk about how archive of our own turned in this fan fiction megacite.

It's great. I love it. So go check out the site. You can tweet at us. I'm at Reckless, David's at Pierce. Alex H. Cranz. That's it. That's Vergecast.

Back in all. 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.