The Vergecast - Apple announces new iMacs, AirTags, and iPad Pro / Congress is diving into the App Store fight

Episode Date: April 23, 2021

Vergecast hosts Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn discuss all the product announcements from Apple's Spring Loaded event this week with Verge news editor Chaim Gartenberg. Verge politics reporter Makena Kelly details what happened at Wednesday's congressional hearing focusing on competition in Apple's App Store. Further reading: What we’re learning from the rare cases of COVID-19 in vaccinated people Alexa can now tell you where to find a COVID-19 vaccine Doctors are testing a prescription video game for COVID-19 ‘brain fog’ Wisconsin amends Foxconn’s contract to reflect radically smaller project Apple’s Spring Loaded event: the 8 biggest announcements Apple Podcasts launches in-app subscriptions Can Apple get you to pay for podcasts? Apple AirTag hands-on Apple’s AirTags don’t have a built-in keychain loop, and we have some thoughts Apple announces new Apple TV 4K Apple unveils an improved remote for its Apple TV Yes, older Apple TVs can also be calibrated with your iPhone Apple announces thinner iMac with M1 chip and bright colors New Touch ID Magic Keyboards work with all M1 Macs, not just the iMac Apple launches new iPad Pro with M1 processor How the M1-powered iPad Pro compares to other iPad models Any video conferencing app can use the iPad Pro’s fancy zoom and pan camera Big iPad, Mini LED: why Apple’s new iPad Pro display is better and brighter Put macOS on the iPad, you cowards Congress is diving into the App Store fight Lina Kahn on Amazon’s antitrust paradox Apple’s $64 billion-a-year app store isn’t catching the most egregious scams Sen. Tammy Duckworth on hate crimes, racism, and environmental justice Asian Activists are tracking the surge in hate crimes as police reporting falls short Inside the glass fibers connecting our wireless world Subscribe to The Hill Report newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week on the Vergecast, Haim Gartenberg, joins us to talk about Apple's big event, including M1 IMAX and an M1 iPad Pro. Kelly McKenna joins us talk about Apple's hearing in Congress about App Store issues. And, of course, we talk about USBC. Coming up on the Vergecast now. 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 I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is Ammom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us.

Hello, welcome to Vergecast, the flagship podcast of the M1 processor, which is actually a system on a ship. Please don't tweet at me. I'm Neal. I'm your friend. Dieter Rone is here. I have no jokes because I'm just thinking about the fact that the M1 processor can just go in anything now. Literally anything. Including the searchcast.

It's in my little Zoom handy recorder. It's a very powerful recorder. We have a PAC show. There was an Apple event this week. Heim Gartenberg is going to join us and go through all the things Apple announced. Apple was in front of Congress this week talking about the App Store. McKenna Kelly is going to join us. Talk about what happened at hearing what we learned, what happens next.

Just a lot going on. A lot of it focused on Apple. But I want to start where we always start, which is COVID. It's still the biggest story in the world. I looked it up this week. It's been six weeks since President Joe Biden promised a website where people could find a vaccine. And when's the deadline? The deadline is May 1.

Also, the website is already up. It's just a vaccine finder.org. You can just go to it today. So it's technically here, but it's supposed to launch in some spectacular fashion on May 1, which is deadline we're still holding them to. That said, every adult in America is not eligible for the vaccine. That was a big goal of the administration. That is true. if you haven't scheduled up your shots and you're eligible, go do it.

There's not, there shouldn't be a question here. Just go do it. Get a ton. I'm tired of this. Other vaccine news from our science test, which has been doing a great job of covering this. There are some now rare cases of people who have gotten the shots getting COVID-19. Those are called breakthrough infections. We are learning a lot about vaccine efficacy and COVID from those.

That's a great story. People who have COVID have, they feel foggy. As I've heard this from people who've had it. There's now a prescription video game in testing to work on that issue, which I think is, prescription video games are one of those things that we've covered for a long time. And like many things with COVID, it's this thing that's been simmering on the back burner that is like finding a use in the pandemic, which is interesting. And Alexa can now tell you where to find a vaccine, which is, of course, I mean, of course.

Yeah. You know what we haven't heard about in a long time is iOS and Android exposure tracking. Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's just kind of went nowhere, didn't it? It just kind of went nowhere. But if you can get a shot, please go get one. On May 1, I'm sure, I'm sure there'll be some spectacular. The entire web will explode in the celebration of a new website.

Remember why that that used to happen? We'll see. But if you can get a shot, please go get one. I want to call it one thing before we dive into Apple. This is personally important to me. Oh, I know what you're going to do. Wisconsin officially amended Foxcon's contract, because Foxcon officially admitted that it's not building an LCD factory.

It's not doing anything. It went from like $2 billion to like $85 million, right? Yeah. So the total, it depends on how you count. So the $4 billion was like the state incentives and the village of Mount Pleasant incentives. Right. Where the factory is. So the state incentives went from $2.85 billion to $80 million.

The number of employees went from $14,000 or $13,000. to 1400. And they still haven't announced what they're going to build. I will say there's a new piece of Foxcon jargon for us to know. Okay. So if you remember,

it went from AI8K plus 5G. Yes. Which we still don't know what that is. But now it's a 3 plus three corporate matrix strategy that will allow them to, yep. When Josh was writing the story, he's like, they just threw this out there. Like, we still don't know.

It's just like another, the 3 plus 3 corporate corporate vision. Apple only needed four quadrants for its product strategy. Why does Foxcon need 9? Or is it 6? Is it 3 plus 3 or 3 times 3? It's 3 plus 3. Okay. Got it. Which, by the way,

most people would write 6. I don't know, man. I think we might be done with it. Like, if it's come to its logical conclusion, which is everyone admitted they're not building an LCD factory. I'm going home next week. I'm going to visit my parents, which is like, in

striking distance of this dome. I am so excited to go take a picture of this dome. Please go to the dome. I can't wait. Honestly, my parents are great, but the dome is like really why I'm flying back to Wisconsin. All right. Let's take a quick break and then we're going to talk about all things Apple. 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 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

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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. We're back. Hi, I'm Gartenberg is here. Hey, hi, hi. Hello.

So, big Apple event. I'm, you made your debut on a Verge Apple Live blog. How was it for you? Very fun. Definitely, definitely the best way to watch an Apple event is by... Did you remember anything about the event after you were done life logging? It was mostly just like a blackout experience, just like words, words, and then, oh, there were things. I was told that I mentioned the bit about Apple finally talking about how much RAM is in the iPad, like two or three times because I was just so flabbergasted.

I just kept putting in the live block. A shocked fugue state. It has 16 gigabytes of RAM. Yeah, if you're listening and you have a... heard of side about this before. If you, very few people will ever have the experience of live blogging Apple event. If you do it, you realize when you're done, even though you have transcribed and reacted to virtually the entire event, at the end of it, you have no idea what happened.

And you have to go back and watch again, which is, uh, time. It's good, it's good to see that Deter and I are just getting older. Uh, anyway, lots, lots of stuff at this event. Surprises. They did a lot more than we anticipated. Did you do you want to, want to walk us through some of this? some of the stuff. So it kicked off with stuff that I think only one of, one of these three things had leaked. So one surprise was Tim Cook said that for the Apple card, they're going to do a thing

where partners that are on the card will get equal benefits to their credit rating, which is different from the way the rest of the credit card does it, and it's different from the way that the Apple card originally did it. And Apple kind of got in trouble with that. And there's also some family stuff with the Apple card. There's like a better family operation. for it if you want to give cards to your teenagers. So we didn't see that coming. And then it was a new version of Apple Podcasts with in-app podcast subscriptions, which I think we want to talk about quite a bit.

But just to get it out of the way before we do that, they also announced a purple iPhone. You can get the iPhone 12 or the iPhone 12 Mini in purple. It's purple. Yeah. I don't know what else to tell you. They announced a lot of things in like seven minutes. Yeah. That's all like just Tim Cook walking around Apple Park through like.

like the beautiful gardens that they've got there. Just like in his, I think it was black. Maybe it was a very dark blue t-shirt. Not a, you know, untucked button down, very casual, showing his guns. Yeah. Yeah, they're just like, yeah, here's some stuff. And we're like, what? Here's a new iPhone, just like casually.

Yeah. It was the fastest iPhone announcement in the history of iPhones. It was like 45 seconds. And there was a new iPhone. New color. But yeah. And either you have it. It appears to be beautiful.

It is beautiful. Yep. It's a very nice purple. Like, it really is. The Apple card thing is interesting because, you know, there was a lot of controversy around credit ratings and married people. David Hanmeyer Hansen, like, kicked off an entire wave of controversy because I believe his wife couldn't get a card and they're like married.

So Apple made it seem like this was their idea. But, like, very clearly they, like, rolled into this controversy from the initial launch of the card. I mean, this was always inevitable as soon as Apple started. started running a credit card company. What did they expect? I mean, it's just so funny. Apple makes a credit card. Gold and Sachs.

When I think about improving my credit rating, I think of Apple, honestly. Purple iPhones and my credit rating. One thing that is unclear and we are investigating is Apple doesn't actually publish your credit rating. Credit agencies do. Right. So the credit agencies have to be part of this scheme. And as far as I can tell they have so far said nothing.

So we are not a financial services website. Yet. It's like, I'm actually working on a deal with Goldman Sachs right now. Apple got into credit cards. Now we have to. That's just how it works. The verge card is coming. It's going to be very heavy because that is what people want.

Anyway, that's a credit card thing. But I'll just say, there's a little bit of a question mark on the back end of the credit card thing. Yeah. The podcast thing is a big, big deal. Ashley Carman ordered a great piece about that today with a lot of quotes from podcast industry executives, podcasters who have paid podcasts already. Yeah. This is one.

Later on in the show, we're going to talk to McKenna. about the hearing around the app store and fees, you know, Spotify as part of the hearing. This is one where the problem is so evident on its face with paid podcasts. Right. So they redesigned the podcast app. And now, indeed, if you are a podcaster, you want people to pay you for your podcast,

you can just sign up for that service now. It's $20 a year or something. $20 a year. And then Apple takes the 30% cut the first year and then they'll drop it to $15, the second year, just like all of their other. subscription things unless you have a secret cable backroom deal like sometimes happens. Yeah, so the Amazon podcast. We'll get the back room deal. But, okay, so 20 bucks a year, you got to upload into Apple. It's not based on RSS or anything. That's the thing. It only works

in Apple Podcast. There's no like secret RSS feed that you can like have a password for to use it in your preferred RSS app. And actually, it was really great that Ashley talked about this a bunch. It doesn't work on Android because it only works in Apple Podcasts. And that's fascinating because while Apple has got plenty good market share here in the U.S., it has got, like, worldwide, it's still Bubkis. It's still in the, you know, mid-80s or mid-15s compared to Android's mid-80s, right? Yeah. So that's, I mean, that's fascinating. It's one of the few Apple content services that is not cross-platform, Apple Music, cross-platform, Apple TV,

everywhere. Like, if a TV exists in the world, there's a team trying to get the Apple TV app on it. AirPlay 2 is on all those TVs. So you can see there will be pressure there. But when I say it's the problem that's on a space, okay, you know, you know, You can pay Apple to be a part of the service. You can put the thing there. You get the easy button already connected to your Apple account, credit card, all that stuff.

You have 30% to Apple. What if you want to target Spotify customers, right? And people are already paying Spotify for Spotify premium. And you want your paid podcast be marketed. Yep. And you want to push the button in Spotify. Instead of Apple. Instead of Apple.

Yeah. Guess who definitely still gets a 30% cut on your iPhone is Apple. Because Spotify has to pay Apple an in-app purchase fee on everything that happens in its app. Oh, inside its app. Right. Yeah, there's no way to sign up for it. So if Spotify wants to do paid podcasts like this, it still has to pay Apple. Yeah. Right. And that's like, what is Apple providing anyone in that scenario? Nothing. Right. It's just, it's literally a tax for just being on the phone. My big question is, will Spotify be allowed to tell

customers that if they want to sign up for the paid podcast, they can go to the website and do it. Because right now, they are not allowed to say if you want to sign up for the service, go to our website in the app. Apple doesn't allow you to admit that there's other ways to pay for things outside of the iPhone as part of the App Store rules. So will people be allowed to admit that there's other way to pay for podcasts outside of Apple podcasts? Well, it might be like a Kindle situation. Does that count as content or a subscription? Because there's different rules for content and subscriptions and deals. You can buy a Kindle book on like Amazon's website and read it on your phone. And Apple doesn't take a cut of that. I think the way that it's going to work is when you click to buy a Kindlebook, it cycles to the Amazon app and then it cycles to the web browser. It's just going to cycle between Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the web browser, then to Pocketcast and then back to Apple Podcasts, just over and over and over again until your phone explodes. That's what happens.

The other part of this, and again, this is all in Ashley's speech, which I highly recommend you read if you're interested in this. If you pay a podcaster in Apple Podcasts, they don't get your email address, they don't get your data. So all the things. things that like podcasters do with Patreon where they set up Discord servers or they have events or mailing lists. Like Apple isn't enabling any of that stuff that makes at least the current version of the paid podcast market go. Right. And we'll just see how it goes. On the other hand, there's a lot of iPhones in the world. Nearly a billion iOS find my devices turns out. Yeah. All I'm saying is we're going to launch a paid podcast and you can pay for it with your verge card, which is very heavy. It's just a solid chunk of steel. We're not going to do that.

Well, maybe well. You let me know if you want to see that. Anyway, it's just like the problem that the fact of Apple launching air tags and paid podcasts in a way that none of its competitors can do on their phone, literally the day before hearing about Apple being anti-competitive was nuts. The podcast thing is going to play out. We'll see how it goes. It's not launched it. But go read Ashley's piece because it's really interesting. That inevitably then leads to air tags.

Yeah, by the way, we're only seven minutes into the keynote at this point. And we're 30 minutes into the show. Yeah. But Airtag's is kind of the same deal, right? Yeah, so the big first announcement was Airtag's. And it's not quite a review because I only did, I didn't want to say I reviewed it when I had it for less than 24 hours. But I can have it for another week and I won't learn anything more than I think I already know, honestly. So if you want to think of it as a review, I welcome you to.

It works exactly the way you'd expect it to. It works very, very well. The little thing where you can use the U1 chip to locate it in space is cool. I can tell if it's above or below you in your house, if you've got a multi-store. house. We played a game of hide-and-seek where Viren went off into the city and with no phone. And so the only way that it would get detected is if an iPhone went by him. And then I had to go find him. And he went to a place where there was no pedestrian traffic. It was just cars going by. And so I found him in about 15, 20 minutes because like two cars with iPhones happened to go by

him at like 25 miles an hour. Which is pretty nice. It's like pretty good. So they're good. They're good little pox. So as watching your video, you called it the thing that I was wondering, which is, right, well, the thing this really leverages is that there's one billion iPhones in the world. Those billion iPhones are not running iOS 14.5. But you live in San Francisco where it is very likely that some people are running 14. Yeah. So is the Air Tags discovery, Find Mine network code already in versions of iOS 14? It's the exact same Find My code as the devices have been using.

It's literally no different than the Find Mine the iPhone. If you took an iPhone 12 and just took out all the screen and stuff, you'd have an air tag. I had to upgrade to 14-5 to make the pairing work, but it showed up to any iPhone that was on the Find My Network. So that was fine. The thing that's not in the video that is in the written piece, because, you know, when we shoot the video, we like, we take the thing out of the box. We got to take pictures of it. We want to have it to stay nice if we can because, you know, whatever. The thing gets scratched up just bang.

Just scratched and scuffed instantly. And everyone was like, who cares, whatever? And it's like, sure, I agree. I don't care. But also, Apple spent three years making this thing, and they made a choice to make a thing that has really soft plastic. They made a choice to make a thing that if you squeeze it, it can't, like, beep because the plastic is the speaker. Yeah, I mean, this is like every first-gen Apple product, like, scratches a little too easily. Yeah.

I think they really believe that, like, products look better when they're worn. And then everyone's like, no, they don't. The second-gen-one scratches less easily. I mean, Neil, they also sell $30 air tag cases. It is incredible that this thing does not have a, like, a key train hole in it or anything like that. Yeah, time, please, please hold forth on the hole with lack thereof. I am just still so furious about this. It is just the most basic entry-level feature.

Like, the commercial showing it off was a guy finding his keys. And there's just, like, no way to attach it to a key. Like, everyone has done, tile has done this, Samsung. Even, like, the random knockoff, like, tile computer. competitors that you can just find on Amazon, all of them have it. Like, it doesn't need to be like a whole robust thing. Just let me like loop a, loop a string there or something. It's just baffling to me.

Yeah. I'm sure we're going to see the like 12-pack no-name Amazon brand like holders for this thing very soon. Like Apple's counting on it, right? Yeah. You don't need an MFI license to make a thing with a circle. The one that Apple sells costs more than the air tag. It costs $35 for the keychain for the, Apple keychain loop for a $30 air tag.

Well, you gotta make up that. See, Apple's all about services and keychain loops are a service. Yeah. That's every, it's infrastructure, really. We're gonna have McKenna on to talk about tile, but we can't talk about air tags without noting that like, only Apple can make this product. Only Apple can leverage this network of phones in the world. Only Apple has access to the UWB chip. When you say it's like a very Apple product, like they've built a very nice product.

that lives entirely inside of its universe. And it does things that nobody else can do, and it doesn't work with Android. The only thing that works with Android is NFC. So that's like one other thing is this is not an anti-theft device because in order to disable it, you just like twist it and take the battery out

because there's a replaceable battery in it, right? So you'd have to, like, hide it somewhere. Plus, the thing is designed where if it's separated from you and then it starts moving to beep, specifically for helping people who have Android phones and not iPhones detect that someone's trying to track them by like hiding this thing in their backpack or whatever. And if you have an iPhone, it will pop an alert on your iPhone

saying, hey, there's like an air tag that is following you around. Does that, like, what's the story there? Tell me how that works. So I like, I like, I like, I like buy and stuff. I was like, I don't go anywhere. So I was like, what would I even put them on? So like my keys are one answer. They're often with me. I was like, I'll just like, I don't know. I'll put one in my car. Like, that'll be funny. I'll know where the car is. But like, if it gets too far away, away from me, it's just going to start beeping? Yes, unless you mark it as like part of your family, and then if it's near a phone that's in your family, then it won't. Then it knows it's cool and it doesn't need to like freak out and tell somebody that it's, that they're being tracked.

But if you lose something, does it just start beeping? If it's separated from you, the owner, and it's just sitting somewhere, it's just sits somewhere. But if it's separated from you from the owner for a while and then it starts moving, it beeps. Or it tell, and if it's separated from you for a while and it's in the same location as an iPhone for a while, it tells that iPhone owner, hey, there's an air tag on you. So this is designed very specifically to make itself known. And that's so that you can find stuff. It's not so that you can track thieves or whatever.

They really do not want this to be tracking people. And I think this is like when Apple does something, people pay more attention. Like tile does a bunch of stuff. We did not make a video about Samsung smart tags. I'm just going to tell you right now, we didn't even really consider it. They sent me one. I didn't even take a picture of it. Now that there's one that has the UWB, I actually do want to check that out a little bit.

But Samsung making smart tags for Samsung's ecosystem, at least here in the U.S., it's cool. It's a cool product, but it's not going to have a major impact on tech and culture. I'm sorry. But these things from Apple, with Apple and its marketing and how big a market share iPhone has in the U.S. And how many people are just like, oh, I have an iPhone, I should buy these. What the heck? It matters more in some ways. And so Apple had to do more to make sure that people didn't feel creeped out by it because protecting your privacy is this thing where Apple genuinely believes it's important, but it's also genuinely a very important part of their brand.

And if Apple lets that part of their brand get tarnished in any way, it's a huge problem for them. Samsung's tags, by the way, for the record, also have a similar feature where, like, if there's an unknown tag on you and it doesn't recognize it, it'll also let you know. I wonder if I'm going to collaborate so that the Samsung tags can alert the Apple phone and the Apple tags can alert Android phones, right? I mean, like, that silence you hear is me holding my breath for that to happen. All right. Please breathe. The product that does that, Neela, is called Tile. Yeah. And this is the thing, right?

Like, Tile doesn't have access to the harder the iPhone of this level. Now they're in a fight with Apple, so it seems very unlikely they'll get access. So the harder they're from this level. If they do participate in the Find My Network, like the Van Moof Bikes and the other things, the Cipelo, the adorably named product that is tile-like, they will just become a commodity. Like, they won't be able to monetize the rest of the service the way they want to. A lot here with air tags. But Apple is, like, really narrowly constraining what this product is and what it should do, right? They don't want you to use it. It's like, they don't want you to put one on your

kid or your pet. They're like, it's to find things. That's all it's for. It is not to, like, like, my idea of using it for a car. Like, I don't think they want me to do that. No, I don't, well, maybe. Um, it's not really good at a lot of. of real-time stuff, I think. I think that's part of it. Like, if you put it out a pet, like, an iPhone will pick it up here, and then five minutes later, it might pick it up over yonder. And so it's not like you can, like, turn on the, flip on the GPS and, like, go, like,

track it down in real time. It's sort of a, oh, popped up over here. Oh, it's over there. By the way, their answer to what, yeah, you should track your kids, by the way, is you should buy them an Apple Watch. Yep. This is very, very clear. Okay.

Speaking of things that are hard to find and find by mysteries, they released a new Apple TV with a new remote. Yay. They made a whole video about finding things in your couch. And then they did not put a UW UP UPy chip or find my support into this remote, which is deeply funny to me. But it is a new remote. Hyam, you want to talk about it? It's not bad looking. I haven't used it yet.

So I can't tell you if it's good per se. I can tell you that they got rid of the worst touchpad thing in the whole world. They have like a new iPod scrolling thing. there is still like sort of a little touch pad, but it's in the middle of like a physical Dpad now that you can use to just navigate around an operating system. It is high contrasts. You can actually tell which end is up. It just, it looks better in almost every way, not that there was anything worse that they could have done. I will also say that the, that there is someone who's going to make a fortune making like a remote holder that has like a little U1 slot on the back for an air pot, an air tag. Oh, God. Yes. Like, that's a free business idea. I will buy one.

So it also has a power button. Power button, which is, thank God, and a mute button. And my very, very, very favorite part is the Apple Remote currently has a menu button. And the menu button serves as basically go back, right? It takes you back to like an earlier menu. I don't know. It's just called menu. And it's now a back arrow.

So we now have an iOS powered device with a physical back button just like a classic Android phone. Look, all these ideas, they're just floating around in the ether. I love it. This remote to me is Apple's been the most stubborn about it for the longest time, right? They've put out several models of the Apple TV. They've stuck with it. And now they've just like caved to reality. I was, again, I haven't held it either. But like this is the most reasonable remote of any of the streamers.

Like the Google Chromecast remote, they didn't try very hard. It's a good remote, but it's too small. It's too light. Like that thing will just fly away. Like you're holding it. It's like, I'm tired of being held. And it will just leave your hand. and and fly away into ether because it weighs nothing.

Yeah. The Rooker remotes are ugly as hell. Yeah, but they have a headphone jack. And so I will love them even though they have stupid buttons for crackle. They look like Fisher Price toys. Also, Apple's not going to put a headphone jack on its remote because Apple doesn't sell headphones with 3.5 millimeter headphone jacks anymore. I mean, fair.

They want you use your AirPods. The fire TV remotes are bonkers. Like, this has a chance of going from last to first in the rankings. That's all I'm saying. Okay. And it's like the most cave to reality. it's like the only one that would be a more caved reality is when Apple moves the charging port off the mouse to the front of the mouse. They haven't done it yet.

They updated that mouse. They didn't do it yet. I will say the addition of power and mute. I'm not going to, I don't want you to over read it. I'm not overthinking it. This is like cord cutting one. And now you just have a game console and you have a streaming box connected to your TV and there's nothing else.

And they're just assuming that this is your single remote. And that's like, it's a moment. because for a long time the streaming box vendors, when we demand them, just put a volume button on this. Like, everyone has a cable box. Like, that remote is always sitting on your coffee table. We don't know overcomplicate our remotes.

And now this remote is very much, this should be your only remote for your TV. And Apple fashion, there's no way to change the input. So, like, you can use HTML CEC to turn it on and it will switch to an Apple TV. But if you're holding the Siri remote,

there's no way to switch to a different thing. No, you just put, you see it with your game console. Right. But, like, the Apple remote can switch you to a thing. It can control all the other things on your TV, volume and power, but you cannot leave Apple using the Apple remote.

Well, the Google remote is even worse. It's the same limitation, but it actually has an input button. Yeah. It can add an input button. I would, like, there's CEC and there's like idealistic CEC. You know, like that input button represents the hopes and dreams of a standard that does not meet those hopes and dreams in any way, shape, or form. So that's the remote.

We're going to get our, you can buy it for 60 bucks just on your own. It's not, it's coming, you can pre-order it on the 30th. That to me is hilarious because the Apple TV 4K is 179. And the remote costs more than an entire Chromecast with another remote. It costs more than almost any broker you'd want to buy. And it's just the remote. So you end up $250 deep into the Apple TV ecosystem just to get like a usable control service. God bless them.

I know so many people who have aren't. who are like, they're going to buy the remote. Like, I got text from friends who are like, I know you're ducking on this remote and how much it costs, but like I'm going to order three of them for my house. I will say the 180, if you buy the new one, it does come with the remote. Indicating again that the remote on its own for $60 is massively overpriced.

Anyhow, we should talk about the new TV. The big new feature is 60, it's high frame rate HDR, right? Yeah. Yeah. It has an A12. Yeah, and it does the calibration with your iPhone, which is very interesting. I'm very curiously how that works.

The old ones do it too. That was the whole like subtle thing hidden as support page. Is this like very cool tech demo we did? Which is really smart, but you don't need the new one for it. So let's talk about that separately because that is a very complicated situation. The new Apple TV updated processor, A12, and it supports what Apple calls high frame rate HDR, which is really just 60 hertz. H-TR.

Higher. Higher. Like the Apple TV already at this, like the one that you can buy today runs at 60 Hertz Dolby Vision. Like that's its preferred place to run.

But now it can play back video at that too. So it's higher. And then I point out every game console is like 120 H.T.R. And some of them can change those hertz to a different number if they want to. Yeah. Like on the fly.

So this does have H.DMI 2.1 but does not support variable refresh. So what you would want, what you, like the dream is that you run the interface at 60 or 120, so it's like super smooth. And then when you're watching a movie, which is shot at 24, you drop the refresh rate so you don't have to do any wonky frame mathematics to make it playwright. This does not do that. It's just going to run at 60. Correct. There is no answer to this question, except it's still like yay big.

And I don't know if you've seen the size of a PS5 to run it 120 hertz, demands a like a gravity well. situation of physical size. So maybe that's it, but it's a very minor spec bump to the Apple TV, no functionality update. Really, the major functionality update is this calibration, which is coming to the older one, too. It's a cool feature, though. I'm almost surprised it took this long

just because calibrating a TV is like such a nightmare for like most people. And this is just like, we won't calibrate the TV. We'll just calibrate the output on the device using these cameras that we know very well. Like, it's a smart move. It's a smart. I'm dying to try it out because calibrating the input of a thing to compensate for the output of another thing is like it's a hack. It's a hack that will probably work, right? I mean like Apple's not going to get it totally wrong. Like that's not their style. But it's very hacky. And things like motion smoothing, backlight, contrast. Like they can't adjust any of that. They can just do the colors. So they're going to get your colors right, but like your motion smoothing might still be on. All of this is to say they should just make a TV. Yeah, it's a stopgap, but it's, it's for, this is for like the person who's not going to go and buy like, you know, the 4K calibration disc and spend three hours in the menus, which I'm told they exist. I'm not one of them, but.

Who are you? I mean, but it's for most people. And I think what the settings most people need to change are not the color balance of their TV. Right. It's the motion handling. It's the backlight stuff. It's the thing that, you know, helps you get the contrast ratio you want. So we'll see. Again, I'm dying to try it out. I think it'll be fun, but do I think Apple should just make a TV? I do think Apple should just make a TV. I'm sorry, I admit it. And then it is necessary to point out that Apple continues to make and sell an Apple TV HD, which maxes out at 1080p and costs $150. But at least it's cheap, Neelai.

It's so expensive. Those A7 chips are real pricey still these days. From what I understand, they continue to make it because people just keep buying them. Who are these people? It's the MacBook Air of Apple TVs. It's so confusing. I want to know, I want to meet the person who is looking at this product and going, I am ready to spend $150 on an Apple TV, but not $180 on the one that is five and a half years newer. You've got old TVs.

You don't want all the tracking. I don't know. Maybe you just don't want to be in the Roku Eco. I don't know. But from what I understand, it is still on the shelves because people keep buying them at a rate that supports continuing to make it. And Apple is just, they're not going to not take the free money. They're like, Apple isn't bad business. Right.

They're like, oh, free money, we'll continue to collect some of it. Thank you very much. Well, I'm very excited to try this remote. I'm almost certainly going to buy one for my existing Apple TV 4K. The thing I should say about high, quote unquote, high frame rate HDR, not a lot of content. what you want you want sports it's 60 hertz in hdr that's like the dream and apple is like you know they've got a chicken and egg problem so they're putting out the hardware that can stream 60 hertz hr small compact none of the other streamers can do that maybe the game consoles can but they're game consoles and then they've got to seed the the broadcast side of it so like you will know the super bowl this year was not broadcast in 4k hDR they just like CBS was like that too much money they just didn't do it so we're like a long way away and the previous year, I think Fox did. So we're still a long way away from

there being the content to support this box, but I think Apple is saying, we're going to get the box in people's hands so the content side of it can come along for the ride. We'll see. I'm just excited to play it this remote. I cannot believe I'm going to buy this remote. Like, I went to the order page. You can't order it yet and I was like, uh, why am I here?

Anyhow. All right, we're going to take a break. We've got to talk about the IMAC. We've got to talk about the M1 revolution. Yeah. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Upwork. The days of doing it all, all by yourself, are over. There's no romance in burning out while you're trying to scale. Instead, you can check out Upwork. Upwork helps grow your business by giving you fast access to specialize talent across more than 125 categories so you can fill skill gaps, launch projects

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That's Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's UPWRK.com. Upwork.com. All right. So the Apple released two iPads. One is an iPad and the other one is a Mac. One comes in a case and one's on a stand. Yeah. One has a touchscreen. One doesn't. All right. Walk us through, Deeter. So, okay, first came the iMac. We were expecting a redesign super thin iMac and Apple delivered. And they delivered it in a bunch of really nice bright colors. They just threw the M1 chip in there, the system on ship, the whole thing that is already in the MacBooks and the Mac Mini. So it's not any more powerful or different.

So this, to me, is like, I don't want to call it entry level because it's very powerful and very good, and it actually is a revolution in laptops. But they didn't push it yet. That's not what this iMac is about. This iMac is about being relatively inexpensive, having very pretty colors, and looking very pretty, and being for, like, at a consumer level, they chose to make it 24. point something inches. So it's in between the 27 and the 21. You can get a touch ID magic keyboard. The keyboard itself has a touch ID and it goes through a secure tunnel in the Bluetooth channel,

yet another Apple extension of a wireless standard that works just with Apple stuff. But cool, it's cool. And yeah, I mean, I'm sure it's going to be very fast. I mean, the MacBook error is very fast. It has a couple of fans if you need them. The question, honestly, is, is the design polarizing? will people love it or will it get tired kind of fast and I hate to tell you this because I know that there's an article on CNN from somebody saying this thing

that's got terrible design and I hate it I don't like it I don't like the design of the new IMac I don't like it I love the colors but I don't like the chin they kept the chin they kept it very thin

and so rather than make a little bit thicker and put the components behind the screen they chose to keep the chin they chose to put a white bezel around the screen which is fascinating. It's one of those choices where a lot of people

be like, that sucks and then after a while it just becomes the way everybody does things. And I'm actually thinking about maybe buying a Samsung frame TV. And so it's ironic that I'm...

So I'm willing to give the white bezel the benefit of the doubt. I don't know the answer to this, but it looks like they kept the hinge really tight on there so that it won't work with a vase amount. It's actually lower...

No, you can buy a visa one. There's a vase version. Okay, thank God. And if you buy the visa version and change your mind, you call AppleCare and they'll ship you the Foot.

Okay, so that's great. I don't like the little foot, the little heel on the foot, but that's, I'm not going to gripe about that. Dieter, what, where'd you go wrong, man? They look so fun. The chin is unnecessary. Why with the chin? Why with the chin?

That's where the computer is. Why don't put the computer behind the screen? Because the chin is, is what makes it an IMAC at this point. If you look at this, if you looked at this and you didn't see the logo and you know what an IMA looks like, because Apple hasn't changed the design in like, I don't know, 15 years, you look at this and it still says iMac it doesn't say laptop screen it doesn't say generic laptop screen it doesn't say monitor it doesn't say dell or whatever there's no apple logo on it but you see the chin on this thing and it says that that's an iMac to you also that's where the

speakers are right like all of this could have gone behind the screen here's my here's my rebuttal to you which is not so much of a rebuttal as a statement of facts one they're going to sell so many of these oh yeah no i like here's the thing i'm not saying it's a bad computer I just am not deeply in love with the design, but you're right. They're going to sell a billion of these. I think maybe if you buy a yellow one, you will come to regret that decision over the public. Right? Like, yeah, callers come and go out of fashion.

It happened with the very first IMAX. If you're the person who bought a blue Dalmatian IMac, like, let me know how that sat with you a couple of years later. Like the one printed with flowers. Like, those were computers as fashion. Yeah. And Apple got completely away from it. and they went to very timeless but very staid designs. And I think the way I am thinking about it is like the classic two by two Steve Jobs grid,

which Apple is like far away from now. But right, you've got a desktop, you've got a portable, you've got a professional, and you've got a consumer. And this thing is like consumer desktop, the most consumer desktop that maybe any computer company has made in a long time. Like there are lots of windows on ones out there, but they're like cut down. They're cheap. right they're not like these very focused consumer yeah designed products this one is like the most

laser targeted consumer desktop that apple or any company has made it in like a very long time yeah it is an iPad on a stand right like it looks like that even their own like images in the keynote where they were comparing the design of the iMac to the new iPad pro it's like oh these are uh oh yeah you all talk turns out but i think that like the chin and the colors like that stuff people are going to go to stores and they're going to have spent a year working from home and they might spend the rest of their lives working from home and they want a bigger display and this thing is like it's 1,200 bucks or whatever, 1299. Yeah.

Like people are going to like, yeah, I do want a bright orange computer. Like that's so rad. And they're going to be very happy with how fast and performance it is because the M1, again, is great on the Mac. It's so good. I will say this. That CNN article you're mentioning was very bad. I don't think you're quite like, it was like old.

anti-apple blogging. Yeah, yeah. Like, it reminded me of, like, when, like, an iPod would come out and people would be like, well, the creative jukebox is much, like, you're just on another planet of weird, weirdness. I just think that I take your points about, okay, it's got a chin, it's weird and two-toneless. That stuff is going to fade away from people, and they're going to be like, this is the first fun computer that anyone has sold them, like, quite a long time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's totally true. It's too bad about the camera, question mark? I don't know, it's 1080 at least. There's that. But I feel like they could have maybe, they could have just tried a little bit harder there. Right. So here's, we should talk about all these things at once. There are multiple models, by the way, the IMAQ.

There's space model where there's the step-up model. There's like a whole, I'm glad you're here. There's a whole port situation with the IMAQ. There's just like unbelievably complicated. There's an Ethernet adapter on the power brick. That's cool. Is it cool? It's cool.

The power thing is a MagSafe just like clicks in. Right. So I'm looking at an IMAC right now. I've got an ancient IMac. The power supply is integrated, right? So you just plug in the standard power cord to the back and you're off to the races. This thing does not have an integrated power supply as an outward power supply. The color, the plug, that MagSafe plug is color coded to the IMA and hardwired into that brick.

So they have to make like a million bricks. Yeah, that's true. It's like crazy levels of complexity. I can't wait to trip over that. cord and knock out my iMac at a crucial moment of my workday no it's made it's going to magnet right out you're like oh my god save a magnets again yeah and then the computer's going to shut off it's the power supply it's not a laptop they should put a little battery in there i mean the thing is already a macbook error they should just throw a battery macbook battery in the back of it why not only some of them

only the up model has the ethernet plug in the power supply but you can buy that you can buy that separately and then the ports so there are two high and let's see if i can get this right the base model has two ports. They're USBC connectors, but they are Thunderbolt three ports that also support USB 4. That is correct. Okay. They sit there on their own. There's a headphone jack, which they moved it to the side, which is great. It's so much easier to hit. And I'm really excited to just have an SD card reader dongle hanging off the back of my IMAX for all time, because that's what's going to happen. And the up model has four USBC connectors, two of which are Thunderbolt three. USB 4 and the other two are USB 3. This is the part where I try and convince you that USBC is a technology that makes sense and is generally good. What? It's just increasingly harder to say that with the straight face on these podcasts with each passing month.

So it's four identical connectors, two of which have little lightning bolts above them and those are the special ones. And then the Ethernet connector is on the power plug if that's what you say desired. But only if you buy a bottle. I would compare this, by the way, to the M1 Mac Mini. which also has two USBC-shaped Thunderbolt USB-4 ports, but then, just as spice it up, has two USBA plugs. Oh, and you can get it with a faster Ethernet now, too, if you want. Anyway, I think this iMac is great.

I don't think, again, targeted right in that consumer sweet spot, right? I don't think they think those customers want an SD card slot. I think it's the same as a MacBook Air. Like, there isn't one of MacBook Air. We don't expect one to be there. when they make a pro version of this, which I would expect to have like a 30-inch display, if there's no ST card slot.

Like, then it's a mess. Yeah. Well, and maybe there's hope because we are expecting SD card slot on the MacBook Pro when they, because we hear that that's going to come with ports. Yep. So,

I don't know. I just think this thing is great. I cannot wait to get our hands on it. I cannot wait to, like, be told we're getting sent to silver one and not like the bright blue one. That would suck. So we'll see.

but I just think they're going to sell so many of these. I think it is also wild, so I keep talking about this as a consumer product, M1. All the consumer Macs have M1 chips except for the one MacBook Pro, which is like the most consumery MacBook Pro. iPad Pro, big surprise, now is an M1 chip. And a bunch of features that these things don't have. Yeah. So if you had asked me before the event, well, they put an M1 chip in the iPad Pro, I'd be like, no, Apple's whole thing is they make custom chips for the hardware and that they need the A-series chip for iOS because it does special iOS. graphical things that the M1 chip doesn't need or vice versa.

They're different chips. It turns out, nope, I'm dumb. That's wrong. They just like, it's the same thing. And, yeah, I'm sure it's great. I'm sure it's very fast. They've got numbers about it being much, much faster in terms of graphics and CPU performance compared to the last iPad Pro.

They're actually telling us how much RAM is inside these things for some reason. If you get the 1 and 2 terabyte model, that's when you get from 8 to 16 gigs of RAM. because, you know, that's the same thing with Android phones. When there's more storage, you need more RAM. And we'll talk about the screen on the big one, but just like, I don't know, everything gets an M1. They just, it's just like they made a bunch of them, and they're having an Oprah moment. And they just, it's the thing that they can just put in all of their consumer devices now, right? But the iPad Pro isn't a consumer device.

That's what I'm saying. They make consumer-level iPads with lightning ports and home buttons, and then they make the iPad Pro, which is supposed to be like the best thing they can make. Okay. And it tops out at the same process, like literally now the same processor is their like colorful consumer Macs. It's like a sliding scale. The best, the best iOS device has the entry level Mac processor.

There's the regular iOS stuff and then the iPads used to get a better iOS chip. And instead of getting the better iOS chip, they now get the worst Mac processor. And they've just... Worst is like too hardcore here. Like it's a... The less good because they'll be a better one. The rumors is like there's going to be an M2 or an M1X or something for like the beefy pro laptops and desktops. So it's pro enough to be on the low end of the laptop scale, but it's not on the high end of the computer scale yet.

Okay, here's my question. Will people hear that it has an M1 processor, the same processor as the Mac, and then think that it can run Mac apps? No. That won't happen? No. Maybe we would think that. and wander around in a fugue state of confusion. But we're the people who are, like, counting the ports.

Yeah. I think most people are going to be like, it's an iPad, and now it's, like, really fast. And the camera on the front can follow me around the room in any video conferencing app I use. Which makes up for not putting it where it should be. It's still on the side, but they added a bunch of tech to it. So they follow you around instead of just putting it where it should be. I mean, I think that's cool. They would have to redesign the whole chassis.

It's the same case. If you move the camera, you've got to redesign the whole, the whole thing. thing. Yeah. I think they went with the camera can pan and scan automatically to like, so they can tell us that it's fine, that it's not on the top. Right. Yeah. But I, you know, there's a question like, okay, you've got M1 max. And they're all got the same chip. They've all got cameras. You're talking about how all the cameras can use the image processing and the M1. And it's like, well, why can't the max do this camera thing? Why can't the max just have the good camera? Why can't they have the good camera? Why can't they put face ID on the max? Yeah. And

I think that's like less so can it run Mac apps and more, why are there now these synthetic differences between products? Right. By all means should just be enabled the same everywhere. Like at their core, these are the same device. Like if you strip away the screen and the speakers and the cases, like the new iPad Pro and the new IMac are the same computer. They just run different software and come in different shapes. But Hyme, what is a computer? Is it really the motherboard and the processor?

Or is it whether or not the screen has a capacitive layer that accepts touch input? Yeah. It's iPad OS is not a computer. What do you want me to tell you? They're literally begging me to talk about the ship of Theseus again, where if you take the parts out and replace them, is it the same thing? You're begging me to do it. I'm not going to.

It just did. You definitely just did. Well, here's what I would say. And I think this is starting to come into focus. You know, like what Apple will tell you is the whole computer market is growing. and the iPad and the Mac are growing at the top of the growth. Right. No one's confused.

Everyone's just buying everything. And if you have a Mac, it's likely that you have another iOS device in your life. Right. Like that's their argument and they're like making money hand over fist. It's not a wrong argument. I think the thing that is really happening is the decision to not put touch on the Mac is like starting to mean that you've got two different riffs on the same OS that is converging.

But the user interfaces are diverging. Right. So your M1 Mac can run an iPad app natively. Most developers are opting out of that. They don't like that idea. They are being pushed to use Catalyst, which like reuses your code with a different interface on it. And those are terrible too. Yeah. Real bad. But like that's where they're headed, right? They want the app developers to use the same basics set of frameworks and tools. Oh, that's what Apple is headed. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. It's not where developers are eager to go. It's like nobody likes Catalyst. But like, you know, Apple, when they talked about the IMac and the M1, they like did the laundry list of apps have been updated for M1. Yeah. And so now people are just on the train, including Slack, which famously is an electron app. So like there's a whole category of apps that are going to come along for the ride there. All this to me is like the only two screens left in my life that I can't touch are my TV and my Mac. And I think Apple's just like boxed in by that decision in a way that they're like kind of happy to be.

But look, to everyone else, like with a little bit of distance is like, why don't you just, why don't you just let me run? MacOS, like Monica wrote on the verge today. Like, just let me run MacOS on this iPad. Like, then you'll have a surface competitor and you're like off to the races. Yeah. And like there's a world where they could, you know, make like a button you switch and it turns it back into iOS mode and it goes to that home screen. Like they don't have to be mutually exclusive. You want to make the argument that like, you know, users who don't want a computer can can have this. Like Apple has something similar. It has that launch pad interface on the Mac where you do like the pinch and gesture and then you get the iPad iOS grid with your Mac apps.

Like, these don't need to be exclusive ideas. They just don't want to do it. I think if you make one computer that does both, you don't get to sell two computers. And I think that is on Apple's mind. Right now, iPad is a subset of the Mac because you can run iPad apps on the Mac. But what if that just got inverted? Like, you put a touchscreen on the Mac and then I'm going to want to like, you know what I mean? Like, just make them the same.

There was always the argument like Android and Chrome OS should merge and Google was always like, no, we're not doing that and finally that sort of fizzled out a little bit. That is still coming for Apple and it still sounds like a dumb idea to Apple and it sounds like a dumb idea to me when I really think about it.

But you know what else is dumb? I can't touch my MacBook screen. And the UI is designed to ask me to do it. The buttons look like buttons you should touch. Yeah. I mean I just we still have like an ongoing bet with Joanna and I don't remember the terms but I just know I'm going to lose. Because I think my part of that bet was the first time they radically redesigned one of the

laptops that I'd touch. And like here we are the radically redesigned IMac and they didn't do it. And I think I'm just going to end up paying the money. Last thing we got to talk about this iPad is, in fact, the display of the 12.9. So the smaller of the iPad pros, same screen technology, M1 chip, a spec bump. Bigger iPad, much bigger spec bump, M1 chip, new mini LED LCD LCD screen. can get up to 1,600 nits of peak brightness when you're running HDR mode. It's cool. I can't wait to see it.

So a traditional, I'm going to do it. A traditional LCD has LEDs and backlights. The iPad certainly does. iPad Pro displays. Chris Welch has gone through this many times. Kind of uneven. He's traded in a few iPad pros to get a better screen. 10,000 mini LEDs or so,

22,000-ish dimming zones. This gets you, lets you cut all of the light output from those dimming zones. When you're watching a movie, you get like really nice black blacks. We'll see like this has been hit or miss on televisions. Like local dimming is like one of those technologies that sounds great and sometimes can go sideways. I'm confident Apple did a good job here to be perfectly honest.

But we haven't seen it yet. So we don't know. But here's another thing. M1 chip powering a very nice display technology. Sounds like it'd be great on a laptop. Not on the other M1 computer. They just released. And the prices are pretty close.

Sounds like it would be great in a laptop. So very cool, you know, I think what are we suckers for if not erratic port schemes and connectivity issues and display technologies? But we haven't seen it yet. I do think it's interesting that only the bigger one got the mini LED screen. I mean, the price on the big one went up 100 bucks too. It did go up 100 bucks. Apple doesn't ever, they don't ever break out sales. We don't know which one is more popular, really.

I would guess that the big one is like the Halo one. It's the laptop replacement. I have a smaller one. So I'm just, this is the thing that would have made me upgrade, but I don't want the bigger one. So, alas. Anyhow, all this stuff is coming out. I will say Apple will not say if it's affected by the broader tech industry chip shortages, but this event was a little late.

All the pre-orders are opening at the end of April and the stuff is coming out in May. So we're a ways off from actually seeing any of it in person, which I'm dying to do. I will say that I got fooled by a tweet. John Morrison tweeted a picture of like AR. And it like definitely fooled me for like five. minutes. I was very jealous and I was like, ah, John. Well, well played, my friend. We'll see, but I'm excited to get our hands on all this and play with it. The last thing I want to call out before we take a break and go to McKenna is there was a big hack this week. Apple supplier

Quanta, ransomware attack. The hackers broke into Quanta, stole schematics, demanded $50 million or it would release the stuff. Quanta didn't pay. The schematics were leaked. Now they're demanding the money from Apple. I'm pretty confident. Apple's not going to pay either. They're going to pay the money. I'm like a private security force to like drop out of the sky. Like the Avengers. Apple's going to pay the Avengers. Yeah. Um, to find the hackers. I don't want to get too much into like media history, but you don't want to like you don't want to be the muscle for that like their thing is we'll expose you unless you pay us. And then the people they would like, if we run with it, we have done the exposing. So we become the muscle in the criminal enterprise. And like, you don't want to do that. So we. We.

are reporting on the hack, we are going to do our best to avoid reporting on the leaks themselves because that's ethically fraught. Whereas with a normal leak, like, Mark German reports this. We know he's a reporter and we know there's just not like an extortion scheme under his work. Right. We can talk about it for hours and hours, but I just, we know it's happening. That's our position. If you have questions, you can just tweet him and I'll answer them. But just say no, we are not unaware of the leaks. We've actually seen the documents. we're just being cautious. Like, the 2016 election was turned on a leak of hacked documents.

Like, this is a long story in the media. And we're just trying to be very careful. Okay, we're going to take a break. Haim, thank you so much. Pleasure as always. We're going to be right back with McKenna Kelly, talk about the hearings in Congress this week. Support for the show comes from LinkedIn.

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reliable analysis with proper citations, turning hours of research into minutes. Ready to tackle problems? Get started with Claude today at cloud.a.a. I slash vergecast. That's Claude.a.ai slash vergecast and check out Claude Pro, which includes access to all the features mentioned in today's episode. Claude.a.a. slash vergecast. All right, McKenna Kelly is here. Hey, McKenna. Hey, it's going to be back. Yeah. It's, uh, I feel like we only see you when there's hearings, but like the real sine wave here is the last time we saw you, the hearing was bad. But this time the hearing is good. Right. It was a really, it was a good time to do my take saying that they were bad.

And now we get a cool Senate wine with Claibhshar about the app store. And it was really substantive and good. It was like very bipartisan. Like everyone showed up prepared. Mm-hmm. Okay. When these hearings come up next time, what is the thing I should look for to know whether it's going to be good or six hours of yes, no questions that nobody answers?

If it's in the Senate. If it's in the Senate, great. Yeah, when it's, it's got to be somebody who, like, knows their sufferers just got done running for president, you know, running the hearing, which was Klobuchar and takes it very seriously. Like, the hearing yesterday was really good for the most part because there was, like, dramatically less members asking questions. There wasn't a lot of room for them to get a little too loopy with what they were asking, trying to force these crazy yes or no answers. Yeah. So I have a different answer, which is related to what you're saying. But here is a much more reductive answer.

You know it's going to be bad if Jack Dorsey is there. Right. Not because Jack Dorsey is bad. He looks very tired. But like his very presence drives any, any average member of Congress completely bad shit. And they're looking for the soundbite where they got Jack Dorsey to admit that big tech is censoring them. And then everything is like off the rails. Right.

No, I totally agree. This one was very much like, it's a bunch of companies running a business and they're talking about who makes the money and like the opportunity for a sound bite does not exist because the opportunity to yell at. Honestly, I feel like any average person who uses the internet given the opportunity to yell at Jack Dorsey would not be able to resist. So like I don't want to like overthink it, but like that's very much like you know it's going to go off the rails when Dorsey's there. Anyhow, so this one was a little bit more sedate like you're saying run by Klobuchar and her community. committee, everyone should have this weird format issue. What was the substance of it? Right. So basically what happened is Apple sent, you know, some counsel, Google sent some random counsel that isn't a CEO. And then we had representatives from Tile, Match Group, the company that

owns Tinder, you know, all the dating apps, and then also Spotify. So three big companies that have a lot to complain about when it comes to the app store fees. And it was really to get to get. to the heart of what can Congress do to ensure that, you know, companies get, you know, a fair shake in the app stores. And throughout the hearing, it, there was a lot revealed. It was like kind of remarkable how much, you know, folks said. And a thing that was really, um, interesting to me was that, that I think really put all of this into context was that for Match Group, you know, the Tinder company, they said that a fifth of like a lot of their spending is app store fees. Yeah. It was like $500 million or something.

And I think that really put into context, like, how much, you know, this affects, you know, businesses on the app store. Like, it has to be like their, like, top three just expenses for the entire company, right? Like, like salaries and then app store fees. Right. Well, so there, one of the things that I caught during that entire exchange was once you really drill down into where Apple will charge the money and where it won't, some of the boundaries get really fuzzy, right? So there was a long exchange about Uber, and they're like, well, Uber is a

physical product. And then Match Group is like, but we pay you a lot of money. And they're like, that's a digital product. And then like, Tinder is not a digital product. Like, right? You like push the button in Uber and the cab shows up at your house and you push the button in Tinder. And like, theoretically you're going to go somewhere and like a date comes to you. Like, I was just really watching how you were going to finish that sentence, Neil High. I could have gone sideways. The only time I've ever used Tinder is when our old video EP let me use his account for a day. And he was like, you can never touch this again. You've ruined my life.

Because I've been out of that game for a long time. But I just think that is, there's an inherent fuzziness here where Apple just decides it's going to make money. And if you really drill down into it, that fuzziness kind of like you realize it's just Apple decided. And I think they did a pretty good job of pushing on that. Right. I mean, it definitely got the Apple, you know, represent. and Kyle Andeer to really, he was a little bit shaky on that kind of stuff, trying to, it seemed like he was starting to equate, well, Tinder isn't an escorting app.

You know, there is no money exchanged in these kinds of things. And it made it really, really hard for them to even give a clear answer. If anything, I think the hearing just showed just really how dramatic, you know, the effects are on businesses like that. And it'll be interesting to see, you know, what comes out of this going forward for sure. Okay, can you talk a little bit about what Tile was like in the hearing? Because, you know, we just spent all this time talking about air tags, just got announced I've been playing around with them. And Tile surely cannot be happy that Apple has released a product that can do more stuff than Tiles allowed to do on the iPhone.

Right. Yeah, it was a day after Apple announced air tags. And Tile definitely put all that in their opening state. And the thing that really stuck out to me, it wasn't even just, it wasn't just like, oh, you know, it's a competing app. look at them copying us and all this stuff. But it was like, Apple has this technology that we do not have access to that makes this anti-competitive. For example, a big thing that popped up that I found really interesting from the Tile representative was ultra-wideband.

Tile can't use that on the iPhone. That is proprietary to Apple right now. And it makes it impossible to compete on a level playing field between the two companies. And that's really, I think that is, it's smart of Tile, the person. it. It is true. They don't have access to the chip. It's also one of those places where be careful what you wish for. Right. Right. Like demanding that every time Apple adds a hardware feature to the phone, everyone has to be able to use it, particularly for technology that allows apps to track you is like, how do you craft that legislation so it's correct? And I don't,

I didn't really hear like a great answer. I just heard a lot of complaints. The previous one, I think that Apple ran into this was with the NFC chip in the iPhone. phone. They've run into it with NFC because that, you know, they had it tied to their secure enclave in such a way and they wouldn't let any other app do it. And that was really dumb because like you can also just use NFC for links. So there was something weird there. You could argue, and I think I would, that maybe there's some stuff with like the W1. That's like not fully a hardware thing, but it's like a, they have a tendency to take some wireless technology, some radio and then extend it. But instead of extending and embracing and extinguishing, they're extending

and putting in a tunnel that only Apple can use. Yeah, they make it better for their own products. The Tile question for me, coming the day after the air tags, it was, I mean, it's just one of those where like the air tags are going to end up being a superior product because they have access to your phone all of the time in a way that Tile cannot. Apple is putting the support for air tags, and they're not shy about this on a billion iPhones. There's just a billion iPhones that are going to run that network so you can find stuff. there's no way tile could ever even get to a billion installations of its app, which is what it would need.

The thing is that I found really interesting, and this is the way that the tile brought up like pre-2019, pre-IOS 13, Find Mine, and how the relationship with Apple was a lot, you know, more genial and friendly, how even on like Apple's showcase days, they were showing Tile products. And then as soon as the Find My app was introduced, you know, the revamped in iOS 13, that friendly, relationship completely diminished. And that was something that other folks at the hearing also brought up with Spotify. They were like, oh, with the app store, they want all of us, you know, to help Apple out and like do all this, you know, developing and get all these cool apps on the iPhone. But as soon as, you know, Apple gets into the market, that friendship and that, you know,

relationship totally collapses. And that was another theme throughout the hearing as well. One of the, I think this is the executive from Match said that, you know, Apple stands towards them was you owe us all of your money. Like all of your success is because of our phone. Maybe this is too reductive. Tell me what you think of this. But I really think that Apple thinks of it as their phone. Even when you buy it and it's in your pocket, Apple still thinks of it is their phone. And every dollar that passes through that phone is like because of them in their work and their effort. And they think they should get a piece at every dollar. I am inclined to say that it's my phone and I should be able to do whatever I want with it. And that means that if I want to

install some crazy tracking service that will inevitably hack me or leak my information. Like, that's my risk. The right answer is somewhere in the middle. And I just, I don't know that Apple is ever going to change its mind about it being its phone. I think Congress is going to have to force Apple to change its mind. But in the hearing, I didn't, I didn't quite get a sense that Clobuchar or Mike Lee or anybody else had a sense of how to do it yet. Right. They're still kind on this fact-finding side of things. Right. I mean, so when it comes to these congressional hearings, they end up coming on the heels of some new legislation introduced. And it's to find, you know, broad support for that legislation to, you know, provide evidence

and examples for why that new legislation is necessary. And this was the first hearing that Klobuchar led on antitrust after she introduced this, like, sweeping antitrust package in February, which in it includes, you know, things that would help the FTC, DOJ, you know, law enforcement officials bring big cases against companies like Apple for things like what we're talking about now, which could be defined as, you know, exclusionary conduct. How does this connect to the hearings that we saw in the house, right? We represented Sicilini held a hearing. We also thought that hearing was very good. We've spoken to him and other people on that committee several times. How are these two tracks connected?

Right. So, I mean, Klobuchar has said it before. She is working with folks in the house. This really is a fact-finding, evidence-revealing situation to get other people on board. We've focused on in a lot of a reporting, the folks who are in these committee rooms, the lawmakers who are there. But those aren't the only people on the floor voting to pass this legislation, right? It's other folks and other committees who aren't doing all this investigative work who, you know, might be getting some money from the big tech companies to, you know, vote a certain way or support different things. So really what this is and working alongside together, I don't, I don't know and I don't think anybody knows what regulation is going to look like by the end of

the year, if anything will get approved in the next couple of years or anything like that. But at this point, it really is fact-finding and building broad coalitions to get, you know, to get to some consensus and pass something through. Connect that to the other thing that happened in Congress yesterday, which is Lena Con faced her first confirmation hearing to become part of the FTC. Lena Con for people who aren't familiar, I don't know, a very precocious lawyer who wrote a book called Amazon's Antitrust Paradox, ended up on Sicilini's committee doing a lot of that work in antitrust and is now nominated to the Federal Trade Commission. She is not shy about her view that the big tech companies have behaved irresponsibly. She is not shy that the Obama administration was lax in antitrust enforcement. That was happening concurrently with this antitrust hearing. Are those also connected or are they just sort of coincidentally all happening at the same time?

I think it's more of a coincidental thing. I think when it comes to looking at Lena Kahn's confirmation hearing, you need to keep in the back of your head that Biden has not appointed anyone to late the FTC yet. We have an acting chair at the FTC and an unfilled seat still, right? So it's nice to see Lena Kahn appointed. And I think progressives and anti-tech, anti-monopulous folks are very excited to see her there. But it's really hard to see, you know, what direction the FTC is going to go when it comes to law enforcement until we see that final person. What I can say, though, is that Lena Kahn had a much easier time in her confirmation hearing with Republicans than I think a lot of people expected. even though Republicans have come around, you know, to doing really big work on criticizing big tech and big tech's power, when it comes to getting down to the legislation and the authoring and the voting, it hasn't been that good.

But at this hearing, they seemed eager to support her and ask good questions. And at this point, unless something pops up, it'd be hard to see her not be approved and get confirmed, you know, as soon as she can find time on the floor. She just needs to make sure he doesn't tweet anything between now and the vote. Oh, yeah. She's on lockdown. I mean, she's been on the Vergecast. You can go back and we'll put a link there and go listen to our conversation with her. It's a lot harder to get her on the Vergecast right now.

So I think she's on lockdown until this is done. I mean, kind of put all this into like broader perspective, right? We've seen the big hearings, you know, in both houses of Congress. Like, we've seen the ones that go crazy because the social media companies are there. We've seen the ones that are more focused on markets. We've seen ones that are very narrowly tailored to how are big tech companies affecting the news industry. But there's just a lot of action. A lot more of it is bipartisan than anyone really expects, even when there is just like outrageous grandstanding.

But it hasn't coalesced into, here's what the government's going to do about the size and power of these tech companies. Even when it's like Apple, right, even when you can kind of see it, that there's something should be done here and no one is really disagreeing. I still don't know what it is. Is that ever going to come into focus? Or are we just in that stage? Right. So everyone, I think we had this moment last year, too, while we were waiting for, as we

were talking about the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee to release their big report on that 16-month investigation. I think that report, this is very wonky and silly, but they voted it. out of committee like last week, and it's going to go to the floor and be approved as a real House report. Now, this sounds kind of silly and ridiculous, but that's like a real thing that needs to happen in order for it to get that stamp of approval. This is what the House is found. I think the next step really is to see what happens when that committee releases some form of legislation. They have the evidence to back it up. They have an argument to be made, but what does

that look like legislatively? And we're still waiting to hear that from Sicilini and folks like that. And I think once that, once we have, we already have the Senate's perspective, that's Klobuchar's for the most part. We're looking to see where the House is going. And then we can probably find out the give and takes in those areas and figure out what kind of legislation might be able to move in both the House and Senate. Still some time left. Hopefully this comes sooner than later, but there's a lot of stuff happening now.

There's still COVID things happening. There's infrastructure coming up. But maybe, well, maybe we might hear more before the end of summer. I'm not sure. Well, you are keeping track of all of it in your new column and now newsletter called Hill Report, which people can find at the verge.com slash Hill Report. And I will tell you, I will tell the audience, I never want to say these things out loud until they have actually happened. But I am scheduled to talk to Senator Klobuchar tomorrow for next week's decoder.

You never, like, I hate saying it until it actually happens. But that's on the schedule. We think it's going to happen. And that's always just because of scheduling. But we have a lot more to come. McKenna is keeping track of it at the Hill Report, so go to the verge ofcom. Hill Report, it's coming. It's not going to not happen, right?

And I think there's a lot of tech executives I talk to are usually of the mind that Congress is like totally broken, totally dysfunctional, and they're going to make a lot of noise and nothing will happen. My bet, and McKenna, I'm curious for your thought here, my bet is that something is actually going to happen, just given the amount of energy and the sort of bipartisan nature of these questions, that it's definitely happening. Well, everything comes down from the top, right? And we have Biden in office now.

He has appointed Tim Wu, Birch person who's been on podcast before. The funny thing about this is like, these are people we've been talking to for years. And now they're like in charge and it's like, I don't know, guys, we're all kind of, we're not. So Biden's appointed, I know, Biden's appointed Tim Mu,

the guy who literally coined that neutrality, Lena Khan, who wrote the Amazon paradox, this is not something you say very often, but a viral law article about, you know, tech. And then we're also expecting to hear something about who's going to be leading the antitrust division at DOJ. And if that is someone who is a bit more progressive, if that is someone who tracks alongside Wu and Khan, I think it's fair to say that there's going to be a lot of momentum to get something done, at least in the next four years under Biden for sure. And on top of that, there is the epic lawsuit, which we're going to over cover that is going to trial very soon. There's like negotiations about what reporters are going to be allowed in the court room.

Like that's all happening, but that trial's scheduled to go off. And then there's like the state lawsuits against Google and Facebook. So there's just a lot of action here that feels a little like a perfect storm of it's definitely something will change. I don't know if it will be the right change. I don't know if tile is going to get everything that it wants. Right. Like something's going to happen. And it feels like we need to track it very carefully.

So again, I'm very happy you're here to help us do that. That's what I'm here to you. All right. Thanks to Hyme Gartenberg. Thanks to McKenna Kelly. There was just a lot to cover this week. Great talk to them. I want to call out a few stories on the verge.

I thought were great this week. We interviewed Senator Tammy Duckworth on hate crimes, racism, environmental justice. It's a great interview. You should go read it. We are finding ways to cover the rise of violence against Asian Americans in America. We've run a few stories. We have a great story on how the statistics aren't quite doing the job well. So individuals are using digital tools to do.

create new and better statistics. I think that's really important. And then there's a great becket video that I want to call out about just how fiber optics work. And she went to Bell Labs and actually got to play with some fiber. It's really cool. Check that out. It's on the YouTube channel. Once again, you can check out McKenness Hill Report at the verge.com slash Hill Report. This is going to be a year of a lot of regulatory action and mechanics covering it all right there. You can tweet at us. I'm at Reckless. Steeders at Backlon. Hi, I'm at C. Gartenberg. McKenna is at Kelly McKenna. Decoder this week. was the CEO of Vimeo, Anjali sued.

Next week, again, I'm pretty confident. We'll see if the schedule is sold up tomorrow. But next week, it's Senator Amy Klobuchar. That's it. Rock and roll. Get a vaccine.