The Vergecast - Apple (grumpily) opens up the App Store

Episode Date: January 26, 2024

The Verge's Nilay Patel, David Pierce, and Alex Cranz discuss Apple allowing alternative browser engines in the EU, Netflix getting WWE, Pixel 9 leaks, and more. Further reading: Apple is bringing sideloading and alternate app stores to the iPhone Apple is allowing alternative browser engines in iOS 17.4 — but only in the EU Apple opens App Store to game streaming services Netflix is turning into cable TV  Netflix is going to take away its cheapest ad-free plan WWE Monday Night Raw is ditching cable for Netflix The Mac turns 40 — and keeps on moving Looking back on 40 years of Macintosh  The Pixel 9 leaks are already here Leaked pictures show a very blue Pixel 9.  The Vision Pro’s most important app is Safari, whether Apple likes it or not Vision Pro cover glass repairs will set you back $799 without AppleCare Plus Apple tells artists how much more money they can make with spatial audio Inside India’s race to cool 1.3 billion people in a warming world Nintendo goes after the Palworld Pokémon modder The Pokémon Company says it will ‘investigate’ Palworld This baby is covered in old flip phones and chips — and you cannot afford it Email us at [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Hello, and welcome to the Firstcast. The flagship podcast, the European Union. Yeah. Look, I couldn't get what I wanted by talking about it on this show. They earned it. I called my friends in Europe and said, use the power of the state.

Yeah. Boy, did they ever. They really did. This is the wonkiest way to begin a show about cell phones that has ever won't. We won in 1776 and we won again in 2024. We're taking over. Did we? Do you think, okay, let's begin.

There's a lot of news this week. Yes. Just an overwhelming amount of news. It starts, I think we have to begin with the Digital Markets Act in Europe, which is causing just an enormous amount of change to how the iPhone and iOS are going to work in Europe. David, walk us through it because it is bananas. Yeah, this is actually more bananas than I think a lot of people expected. and we were kind of expecting bananas.

So basically Apple today, Thursday, announced iOS 17.4, which is coming out in March. Apple doesn't normally, like, go way out of its way to make huge announcements about point updates, but there are essentially three big pieces of news in here, which are kind of one piece of news in three different directions. And the big thing here is that Apple is just opening up the app store in a really big way. So Apple is going to now allow alternate app store. which it calls alternative app marketplaces. And if you call them AppSource,

they will correct you and say app marketplaces. On the iPhone now, we can talk about how all of that works in a minute, but that's the first thing. The second thing is they're now allowing other browser engines to run on iOS. So Chrome and Firefox and all these things can actually run their full tech stack, which means they can run extensions. They can run all kinds of other stuff. That is, I think, a big deal.

and then the third and more immediate thing starting today is that the app store is now open to game streaming services, things like GamePass and Sony's PlayStation Plus and all that stuff. That has not been allowed very contentiously in the app store before Epic wants to be in the app store and can't be, can't get the Epic store on the iPhone. Starting now, those kinds of services are going to be available in the app store. All of this, almost all of it, is exclusive to the EU. This is where the digital market. protect is. This stuff is taking place there. And rather than do what we thought might happen, which is make a big global change the way that it did with USBC, the EU said it has to be USBC, and Apple could have made two phones, but elected to just switch everything to USBC. Apple is very clearly cleaving off this one part of the world and saying, this is how things are going to work in the EU. And in the rest of the world, it is more or less business as usual. The game streaming thing is the exception. That is global. Everything else extremely focused to the EU. And Apple has made very clear it is doing this against its will and with great, great rage and disdain

at the entirety of the process. Yes, they're very mad at Europe. Yeah. Like a Paris baguette just like pointed at their head. Tim Cook is never eating cheese again. It's never happening. But Neil, what I really want to know is like we've been talking about this forever and this just sort of like dropped.

Like is this what you would have guessed this would be coming into this? To some extent, the thing that really got. me these past few weeks is Apple also had to do the alternative payments thing and it has gone kicking and screaming and basically made that a non-issue. They like weasled their way out of you have to provide outside links to payment services, which they have to per court order in the United States. And they made that so expensive and so hard to do that it's never going to happen. And one would assume, and I really thought they would find some way to do that in Europe, too, with these rules. Then there was a picture of Tim Cook with Margaret Vestager, who is the competition head in Europe.

And I'm pretty sure, you know, they were meeting about this. And I feel more confident than ever that Apple made a bit of a horse trade because the EU also wanted them to open up I message. Right. And that's a weird one in the EU because everyone in EU uses like what's. app. They don't like, they don't use iMessage. So I'm pretty sure Apple got to keep iMessage closed. They said, we'll do RCS. It's about time anyway. And the EU said, okay, we're going to leave iMessage alone, but you've got to do the other stuff. And that is the thing. Like, I'm pretty sure that that is the trade that was worked out. Yeah. And so Apple is like to some extent going

farther than we expected with the browser engines, with the app stores, with game streaming. We should talk about game streaming being global. I think that's really interesting. But to some extent they're just making it, it's not quite as bad as the you have to allow links to external payment services in the U.S. Like, you can just put another app store on there. Those app stores have to be approved by Apple, the apps have to be notarized by it. And there's all this stuff. There's still hoops, but it's not going to not happen the way that external payment services

are going to not happen. And then the browser engine thing, I really think just the ability for Google to put the Chrome browser engine on the iPhone, will. make WebKit better because Apple will finally have to compete and it can be shown that Apple holds WebKit back in order to preference the App Store. And that alone, if that just happens, if it happens in one country in Europe, Luxembourg, Chrome can run on the iPhone in Luxembourg that will make WebKit better everywhere else, right?

Because the evidence will be available. And I think that's amazing. But I think there's a little bit of horse trading going on here where they protected IMS, which is the big lock-in and they were a little more. more open to everything else because they needed to protect eye message. To me, I actually think, and I'm going to like try to think this out here as I go, because this is just occurring to me as you're talking. So this might make no sense for a while, but go with me here.

I think the fact that they're treating game streaming as different from the alternative app store thing is really telling. Because in a certain way, they're functionally the same thing, right? It's an app full of other apps, right? Yeah. It's, that's what these game streaming things want. And that's what the alternative app stores want. And I think what Apple may have realized is that the game streaming thing,

people will go to the ends of the earth to do, right? Like, if I am a GamePass subscriber, I will do whatever is required to get GamePass. And that stuff is big enough and powerful enough that people will go through whatever hoops are required. So Apple is actually, in a certain way, smart to remove some of those hoops and just open it up. and to some extent admit defeat, right?

And it's like we, this is, this is just Apple saying, you know what, you wanted this, you can have it. And we don't know a ton about what the business terms of all of that are going to be. Apple has been weird about like it has to approve every individual game in the store before and that's been walkie. So there's a lot left to play out there. But I think Apple for that one is kind of just saying, you want it, you got it, you win.

On this one, I think it seems to me that there's a, there's a version. of this that says Apple is just trying to make it hard enough that not so that it won't happen because it will happen. You're right. There will be alternate app marketplaces on iOS very quickly. But I think they might be able to make it hard enough that almost no one cares. And the way they've set it up, like Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Epic, which makes Fortnite and all this stuff, called it malicious compliance, right?

And we've talked about that with a lot of what Apple has been doing. That's what the, you can link out from your app, but you still. have to pay us 27% even though you're not doing any of the stuff through Apple anymore. That is pure malicious compliance. And in this case, too, I think you can accuse Apple of trying to make it hard for developers to play this game. Like, if you want to do this, you have to make a different version of your app, essentially, that works in the EU versus the one that works in the rest of the world.

But Apple will only accept one version of your app. So you have to make an app that is two apps, one of which ones, in one place and one of which runs in the rest of the world. You have to go through this process as an app marketplace to get all of the apps in it notarized and your marketplace approved. If you are a developer, you have to either set up a bunch of other payment systems, work with all these different marketplaces, or you just say, you know what, screw it. We're not actually saving that much money and just say in the app store.

Yeah, except there are huge categories of apps that Apple won't allow, right? This is the thing that I think will be really interesting to you. And I'm not even sure some of these apps should exist, right? I mean, porn is the obvious one, right? Yeah, yeah. Watch all the porn you want. I'm just saying, like, I'm not sure deep fake porn generators should exist on the iPhone. I think that's a dangerous territory.

Apple would never allow that stuff in its store. You can see how an alternative marketplace, hoops aside, will certainly allow people to tap the vast processing power of whatever a series chip is in your phone to run some of the. these apps. Even just like apps that show you objectionable content, right? The kinds of things that Apple has not allowed before and is actually like a weapon Apple has wielded against platforms before. That is now going to be perfectly permissible to install on the iPhone through one of these alternate stores. Like as long as it, as long as the app itself is not like a security risk stealing your information, it's Apple's content rules do not apply. And that's got to make Apple feel so gross and icky and they don't like it so here's one and i don't know if reddit still falls in

this category tumbler certainly used to fall in this category where apple's content rules kept the app from showing all the content on the service right so the reason tumbler got rid of porn is because verizon bought it and apple said to its partner verizon it's a big important partner shut it down yeah and verizon said we sell the iPhone no and apple said shut it down and verizon caved like End of story, right? And then WordPress bought it, and they tried to have a fight, and they, like, found the same little exception as Reddit, which is, yeah, what if you don't? You know, like, that's basically how it works on Reddit. It's basically how it was going to work on Tumblr.

But all these things, all these hoops, we talk about all the time. Like, Apple makes developers jump through hoops. There are some categories of apps that just do not exist because of the hoops. And in Europe, yeah, it's not worth it for saving 3%. That's not even 3%. But when it's existential, I think a bunch of developers are going to jump through the hoops. And I think the first category of apps that have existential problems are the ones Apple forbids, which necessarily means Apple's going to win the first battle here by saying,

look at all the stuff you enabled. Like, look at all the porn. Like, that's what they're going to say. Look, you made a porn marketplace. So are you happy Europe? And Europe being Europe is going to be like, yeah, we are historically topless. We don't believe in that. Like, think about what we invented.

We're the French, right? And they're going to be fine with it. And I think that there's another turn here where there are categories that we can't even imagine that don't exist on the phone. There are categories of business models that we cannot imagine that don't exist on the phone. And we might see some of those develop in Europe because now they have actual access. to customers on their devices without having to ask Apple for permission. And I think game streaming is that category. It is the category of things where everybody can imagine it, everyone can envision it, and it does not exist.

And I do want to say, like, David, you kind of said, eh, it's not that big a deal. I do think having to get App Store permission for every single game that's going to be on these streaming services is pretty onerous. Like, that was something that NVIDIA and Microsoft and I think even Google were pretty against a couple of years ago. And I'm curious to see if their opinions have changed. We've reached out to them. We haven't heard back yet. But really, really curious there because before they were like, no, we don't want to ascend every. Like, Gears of War Five, we don't want you approving that.

We don't, like, why should we have to get your approval for it? Well, they need to say the console maker approvals for those games. Yeah, that's true. But I think there's certain things, there's certain types of games and stuff that might be more permissible in a console setting, like around gambling and that sort of thing that are less permissible on the Apple store. Oh, yeah. Oh, here's another whole category. You mentioned gambling. Yeah.

So gambling, right now not allowed. Any NFT apps, any crypto apps do not exist on the iPhone. So if you're in Europe, your ability to open an app store that's like gambling, pornography, cryptocurrency mining, time of your life. This is why Monaco exists from what I understand. They're going to get so rich. Like, the number of billionaires in Europe is about to spike through the roof. But all that stuff is like wild to think about, right?

And it's going to play to Apple's favor because the stuff that most people can immediately think of that is against Apple's rules is stuff that is morally questionable. Yeah. Right. Or at least arguably morally questionable. I think there's a flip side to that that is basically businesses that couldn't afford to be on the iPhone, which is like the rub has always been basically if you don't run a business at a 30% margin, you can't exist in a, you can't exist in a, you. useful way on the iPhone because Apple's going to take 30%.

So like audiobooks is when you hear a lot, right? Like it's very hard to make a thing that sells audiobooks in a good, useful way on the iPhone because you have to give Apple 30% and that business does not afford you 30% margin to give to Apple. And now if you want to be in an alternate app store using non-Apple payments, which in the EU you're going to be allowed to do, you suddenly owe Apple nothing. And that like your agreement with the marketplace, who knows what that'll be, whatever.

But that suddenly changes the kinds of business at the low end of what you can do on the iPhone because you don't have to give Apple 30% of everything that you do, which is pretty powerful. I could see a company like Amazon who already knows how to make an app store, just being like, all right, we're going to pull the Kindle app. Do they? Well, technically. In theory, they do. They've made something and it resembles an app store.

They could very easily be like, okay, we're going to get rid of the Kindle app on the Apple store. I look forward to Amazon executing a software platform at scale. It'll be great. They're going to put the silk browser in there. It's going to be sick. I think, I think, you know, Andy will believe it when we see it. But I look forward to your attempts, a large company. No, you know what I think is perfectly possible is that the Kindle app stays in the app store,

but also goes into a separate Amazon run marketplace like Alexer, talking about. And then Amazon can say, you know what, if you want the easy way, here it is. This is the way the Kindle has always been. But if you do this thing, just hook it up to your Amazon account and you have one-click purchasing for all of your Kindle books and audiobooks forever. And I, like, I hadn't really thought about that until you mentioned Kindle, but like, I would download a new marketplace for that. In order to be able to easily buy Kindle books on my phone, I would go through whatever hoops I had to. Amazon and Spotify will start their marketplace tomorrow, right? And so Spotify can sell you its, but I guess they're doing audiobooks too. That's

very competitive. They're not going to, yeah, unless they're maybe they won't do that together. Maybe like Waterstones or somebody is like, we're going to start the bookstore, the book app bookstore or something. Free idea for you. Well, look at the very least, I look forward to just an explosion of bad ideas. Yes. And gambling and porn. Yeah. It's going to be great. Neely is moving to Luxembourg is the other news on this podcast. Okay, so that's the app store side, which I think is like understandable. You can see, okay, we're going to open this up. We're going to bypass the App Store rules, maybe lower some fees or maybe not, depending on Apple. There's some complexity in there, but we'll let apps onto the phone that don't have to meet App Store rules.

You can just imagine all kinds of apps that are going to happen there. And some of them will and some of they won't and we'll let that develop. The browser side of it, to me, is actually the bigger deal. And I mentioned Luxembourg, but I really mean this. Like, there is no pressure on WebKit on the iPhone. Zero. Apple gets to do with that web browser exactly as it pleases, and it gets to impose whatever limitations on that browser it wants.

And that is just very meaningful for a lot of things. Yep. It means that the ability for apps to distribute on the web is effectively capped on mobile by whatever Apple wants, whatever boundary it wants for the App Store. So I'll just give everybody this example. I'm looking at my Mac. It is running zero native apps right now. It's running too.

It's running Mimstream and Notion Calendar, which are both native. Nice. But that's only because I'm a snob and I read installer. That's why. Everything else is a web app. Or it best a wrapper around a web app, right? It's some electron thing is happening to run Slack. Almost everything else in Mac is a web app.

We're running in Chrome. Almost every desktop application that you can think of that isn't like a game or, you know, a video editing software, gene splicing, whatever. you might need the actual power of this Mac to do. Anything else that's like a reader or a information management app or any of this stuff, almost all of it on the cloud, express to you through a web browser. Every AI service you can think of is happening on a data center expressed to you through a web browser.

There's no chat gbt app for the Mac. There's the web. And that is because the web is a great distribution platform on desktop computers because there's actual competition between browser makers and then everyone picks Chrome. Fine. Well, and because your brain. browser gets to do stuff, right? Like, your browser has access to system features and it can store a lot of stuff on the desktop and it can run stuff offline inside of a browser. Like, your browser has so

much access to the rest of the machine on your desktop, which gives it all these powers that phone browsers just do not have. And that is a deliberate choice that Apple in particular has made for a very long time. And they are so mad. Oh, they're so mad. Well, they're mad. Before I get to Matt, I just want to stay on Apple making that choice. Yes, it's a phone. Yes, it's battery constrained. Yes, the screen is small. My old Macs are vastly less powerful than my current iPhone.

Right? Like, when I do this show at home, I do it on a 2015 IMac. I promise you my iPhone is more powerful than that computer. Like vastly more powerful than that computer. That computer is so much more capable. If I had to have one computer forever, I would probably, between an, my current iPhone and that Mac, yeah, I'd probably pick the iPhone, just for a number of reasons. But it would be hard, right?

I'd be like, well, here's all the things I won't be able to do anymore. Right. And that is weird. That's not related to the power of the chip. No. It's related to the flexibility of the operating system. And in particular, the ability of the browser to do almost anything, right? It contains a vastly more powerful, much less encumbered app platform in the browser.

and WebKit stops. And so just having another browser engine on the phone to show everyone, here's what you could do if you had great browsers on this phone is the default. Apple cannot make a version of WebKit for Europe and a version of WebKit for everyone else that sucks. Right. Like they just can't do that. And I think that pressure is going to push WebKit, which will then in turn push the App Store, which will be good. Will that also mean in the EU, the annoying, like, download? the app instead of using the website thing will go away because you'll have all the people like using

Chrome and it won't necessarily flag as mobile. No, because there's a PM on some app growth team somewhere that's measured in app installs and that she will bribe whoever needs to put that cookie banner. But like that's actually, that's a perfect reason because like do you know why people want app installs is because when they have an app install, they get to put a thing on your home screen, they get to send you push notifications, they get more power over what happens on. on your device, they get to take things like your location and all this personal information about you. Like, that's stuff that Apple gave to app developers that it could have given to web apps and just didn't because Apple, it's all the same stuff, right?

Like Apple wants full control over every single thing that happens on its system and you cannot do that to the web. And I think if you believe the web is a good thing for that reason, this is a great thing. I think if you're Apple, you do this kicking and screaming, which is very clearly what I'm Apple is trying to do. Like, basically, when you're Apple and you're writing in your press releases that you're, like, big, mad about this, like, it's pretty, it's pretty brutal. It's very funny. But no, I agree. And I think the, the, this improvement in the web, which, to Apple's credit, Safari has gotten better in the last couple of years, I would say almost certainly

because of regulatory pressure. But Safari has gotten better. You can now install a progressive web app on your phone and it runs more or less like a native app. You know what's crazy? The web has supported that forever. Do you remember how many years you couldn't run background audio in Safari? If you left Safari, it would just stop playing whatever you're listening. Like that's just a choice. And I think you're right that if this goes well, that is one thing that will percolate back out is Apple is going to have to win that stuff. And this is like all of this is so tied together in my brain now because like I spent all this time at the Google, uh, antitrust trial where they talked a ton about this Apple deal. And it's like, oh, Apple makes a lot of money because of this deal from Google. Google is going to be less inclined to give Apple all that money if Safari stops working. So Apple has a real competitive reason to make Safari work, even in a world where it wants apps to work. So like this flywheel of can we make the web a little better? I think you're right is going to push Apple in good directions because it actually has found a way to make a lot of money off of the open web. So like kudos to Apple. But it's a good thing for us.

It found, it pointed a gun at Google and said, do you want this data? Google said, we, yes, please. The game streaming one, it's interesting. It's Apple for the first time admitting that the app store has segments and some are more lucrative than the others. Right. And so it said, okay, games are fine, they're different. We're going to treat them differently. We're going to go global because Microsoft will just kick our butt all over the globe.

If we only let this happen in Europe. because at every Xbox developer event, Microsoft would be like, well, you can do it in Europe. Call your senator, right? Like, they'll just do it. And if you will remember during the Apple versus Epic trial, Apple could not figure out how to differentiate between Roblox and the things you can build and develop and distribute in Roblox and everything else. Like literally could not distinguish between Roblox and Minecraft. Like at one point they were asked, is Roblox a game? and they're like, yes.

And they're like, but it has purchases in it. And they're like, yes. And they're like, okay, what about in-app purchases and not Roblox?

I'm like, that's a game too. And literally, I could not figure it out. And I think this is them for the first time just being like, okay, there are things called games.

And we're going to put them over here and control them differently. And that's a sign of maturity. But are they going to do that with Roblox? Like, is somebody going to go in a, the game where my godson is a prison warden, he's very proud of his prison. Because you can do that in Roblox right now.

It's so hard to tell. So let me just read you the thing that Apple says in its announcement. It says that each experience made available in an app on the app store will be required to adhere to all app store review guidelines. And its host app will need to maintain an age rating of the highest age rated content included in the app. So the first part, the second part of that, simple, straightforward, understood. If you have one, you know, NC17 game, NC17.

required to adhere to is like an opening you could drive a truck through. Like does that mean it's going to get reviewed? Does that mean Apple can just kick you off if it's bad? Does that mean just like handshake agreement don't do that? I have no idea. Yeah. And it seems very important because to your point, Alex, like the thing where everybody had to submit and create and have reviewed every single game on their service was like a non-starter.

And the way that Apple phrases it, leaves open everything from that to Apple doesn't care, just be cool. Yeah. One of the reasons it was a non-starter was the idea that you would be distributing multiple game binaries. Yeah. Which is dumb for a streaming service. Whereas this is like you'll have a streaming service wrapper. You'll click on a game in it and it will stream the game to you inside of that app,

which they were somewhat able to do on the web. Like they were creaking their way towards being able to do this on the web. Yeah. But if you're basically like Netflix, like Netflix has a catalog of titles in the thing and you push the button.

I think what Apple's saying is everything has to, I think this is like a three strikes to your act kind of situation. Like they don't review every song on Spotify. Right? But if Spotify is found

to break the absolute rules, that's a problem. Right? And like I don't, and Spotify is real testy about that. But they don't review every movie on Netflix. But Netflix,

I'm assuming if Netflix added a hardcore pornography section, like Apple would, like, get in the game, you know what I mean? So I think there's a little bit of back and forth there. Can you imagine if Netflix opens an alternative app marketplace in Europe that's just hardcore? Like, with ads in 420p, a 480p unless you pay. They're like, listen, we got to get that ARPU up somehow.

Like, let's go, everybody. For a while, the HBO Go app was the singular exception to the App Store rules. Oh. Because it just had the late night category. Oh, yeah. So it did have porn. It did. Well, very like VHS level pornography.

Porn of your 14. Yeah. Well. Port of your 12. No, I was going the other direction. You want that number to go up. We're looking for up. 18 is like the real.

That's the line. Yeah. But it was like a huge. And everyone knew it. It was just like unspoken. Well, Apple wants the HBO Go app here and HBO is like our whole catalogs here including that part of it Huh? Yeah Everyone's like why it's this here? Don't worry about it. No one would ever talk about it. It's gone now

The late night Skin and Max section of the Max app does not exist but that would that was the level of loophole that existed Yeah, now it's a free-for-all but I just gonna come back to game streaming I think that's gonna be the same deal right? You have a a catalog, we're going to spot-check the catalog. Once you get to Microsoft, and the entire Xbox library, there's just no way Apple's like,

we're enabling this globally. They're enabling because they think there's going to be a pot of gold at the end of that rainbow. They're going to find some way to charge money inside of that app. They want it to be successful on the iPhone. They also rolled out that thing. One of the payment structures, I think, in the EU now, is if you have over a million downloads,

you have to start paying like a monthly, like, 50 cent fee or something per download. Maybe it was per annual. Yeah, it's once a year. Once a year. And so like game streaming really takes off in the EU. That could get pricey. They claim that most people aren't going to have to pay that, though.

I think what they're anticipating is there's Xbox Cloud Gaming, and that's an app on your phone. And to get Xbox Cloud Gaming, you got to pay 40 bucks a month. I don't know, some number. 20 bucks a month. And the best way to get that. customer to convert is for them to sign up with an in-app purchase and a subscription. And so Apple's just going to take that money.

It's great. Here's a thing we want you to do. Apple looked at this and said, people are going to get this subscription one way or another. Why don't we make them do it on our phone? Why don't we take our 30%? Do you think there's just a line of people outside of Tim Cook's office that was like, just like ideas to collect 30%.

A hundred percent? You know, there's like the VIP line for the executives that he knows. So like, there's like people I know, problems I have to solve, ideas to take 30%. And just like one after another, they just have three different tickets. And they're, you know, his receptionist is like, now serving 56 and ideas for 30%. And someone just like shuffles in.

This is my time to shine. Eddie Q is just like tapping his foot. Just like waiting. Because that they want Apple to, and Google now, as we know from Google's own antitrust trial. Every button you push on your phone is an opportunity for them to make money. And if they don't make them money, they're mad. And I think that should bring us to how mad they are at the European Union. Because you mentioned the press release, and we haven't even read the we're mad lines in the press release.

Well, so Apple's big story has always been that only Apple can provide a protected, good, curated, successful experience for everybody that makes everyone happy and does it. steal all of your information and kill you and leave you in a ditch. Like those are the two options. It's Apple or ditch, right? Like, in Apple's world, that's what it is. There's never been any real evidence that that is the case, but here we are. So with the browser one, one of the things that happens with the browser now is the first time you open Safari after updating to iOS 17.4, you're going to get a choice screen,

which we know for sure Apple hates. Apple has testified under oath that it hates choice screens. And you're going to boot up Safari and it's going to say, what do you want to be your default browser? This is, again, only in the EU and you're going to be able to pick Safari

or a list of other browsers, I think, to be named later. And Apple says, this change is a result of the DMAs requirements and means that EU users will be confronted with a list of default browsers before they have the opportunity to understand the options available to them.

The screen also interrupts EU users' experience the first time they open Safari, intending to navigate to a web pitch. It's just this like passive-aggressive, like this is a bunch of bullshit. Look what you guys are making us do. This is stupid. I hate it. That's the vibe.

I love it. Here's what I will point out. One, that is true. And it's great to just go like, I'm not saying you should do this, go get an AI voice clone of your favorite Apple executive and have them read that copy. It's great. Don't do that. That's totally illegal and morally questionable.

But in the new EU app stores, totally available. with you. The thing that's funny about that is Apple is 100% correct in the context of choice screens as we've known them up until now. They've been putting choice screens on Android and Windows in the EU for one billion years. And you know what? People are still using Chrome. Yep. They use choice screens in app like MacOS right now. If you go and you open a new browser and you're like, I want to use this one. They're like, you sure? Like they still double check that stuff. So I don't. But every browser wants to be. They all, yeah, they all want that. And Apple's always like, hmm? Really? So it's one of those things where I was like this, okay, I get it. You guys are mad, but also choice is good. Well, no, but this is the thing.

So the argument is the EU has been like trying to get people on Windows and Android. Yeah. To not use Chrome or Google search for one billion years. Like you open it. It's like, what search engine would like to use? Your choices are Google and 500 choices. And everyone's like, I don't know, Google. Or you open up a thing and it's like, what browser do you want to use?

Your choices are Inner Explorer, Chrome or 5 billion other options. And they're like Chrome. And that's very interesting in this context because people are going to open up their iPhones. And it's going to say, do you want to use Safari or Chrome? The thing people in that you have been picking over and over and over again for one billion years. See, I don't think that's what's going to happen. I think it's going to be Safari, Firefox, Opera. arc,

Duck, Duck, Go probably has a browser. Yeah. And then like, when you scroll down past the top, there will be good. Like spelled wrong

and in a different font. The cutting edge of European politics is that these choice trains are legally required to be randomized. Oh. And everyone still picks Chrome.

I just want to be clear. People, they've tried. They're like, whatever was a random choice screen? What if the choice screen paid you $5 to not pick Chrome? And they're like, Chrome.

And so this is the first time you're going to get the experiment where the goal is to get people away from the default to the other default that the European Union has been trying to get people away from forever. And I am dying to know what happens. I hope somebody chooses Internet Explorer. I hope somebody go make that app right now. Just like an old school Internet Explorer. Yeah. But the old Mac version with like the Aqua blue bars and the tabs. I would pick that.

Absolutely. Same. Yeah. Yeah. Just old-ass browser should be one of the options. I.E.3 is going to be rocking and rolling on this thing. Wait, can I just read you one more saucy line from the press release? So this is the big, like, omnibus giant press release from Apple announcing all of the changes it begrudgingly made.

At the beginning of, or sorry, at the end of the first paragraph, it says, across every change, Apple is introducing new safeguards that reduce, but don't eliminate new risks the DMA poses to EU users. It's like the D.U, the DMA is trying to ruin your life. And Apple is doing its best to stop it. But we can't solve everything thanks to the EU. There's a real dichotomy here. Right, like Apple's pissed the EU is, those European regulators are telling us how to work our phone.

And then inside of that is buried because you're too stupid to figure it out yourself. Right? And it's like, I don't know, man. I have a Mac. I can do whatever I want on this Mac. Going pretty good, you know? Like the mitigations you put on the Mac working pretty well. Why can't my phone work this way?

And I think that moralizing, when we should talk about this in the context of like Vision Pro apps, or we have talked about in the context of Vision Pro apps, like Netflix and YouTube, just like not being there. Yeah. All those developers are pissed at up. They do not have the goodwill to make this argument. And people have had phones for a very, very long time. And they know that Apple's like more, like they understand how the phones work.

Like Apple's moralizing is kind of like false. on deaf ears. Weird. It's just a weird moment for Apple, which historically has gotten developers to do whatever it wants. That was actually one thing about this announcement

that surprised me was how little of an olive branch to developers it actually appeared to be. You would think at this moment with the Vision Pro coming out, and I think there's real momentum behind the idea of not playing Apple's developer games anymore.

I mean, Netflix has been kind of an education for a long time. Spotify and Epic have been mad for a long time. But like, YouTube and others saying, we're going to wait and see. And the line they all give is, uh, we don't know what this platform is going to be. I think Netflix co-CEO. Yeah, Greg Peters. Yeah. It was like, we'll see if like if it actually takes off. We might consider it. But we're not going to invest time and money into something that's not like guaranteed to be good. Right. Which is a perfectly valid excuse, but is also not what people say about Apple. Like, do you remember when the iPad came out?

and everyone on Earth fell over themselves trying to get on the iPad App Store. It's like that is the thing Apple is very good at and this is the opposite of that. And so I would have thought in this moment Apple would have said, what can we do that will, in reality or in appearance,

feel like kind of a love letter to developers in the same way that like every five years they release a new Mac Pro to remind people that they love people who have Mac Pros. And there just didn't seem to be any of that. Well, when you're an effective Monopoly, you don't have to do that. You don't have to play nice because they're still one of the biggest app stores. They're still one of the biggest platforms. They can just say, yeah, do it.

Netflix is still going to have to be on the iPhone. It's still going to have to be on the iPad because those are huge. So, like, this is definitely one of those moments where I feel like 10, 15 years from now, if there's some additional turns, we're going to look back on this moment and be like, oh, this is where Apple really started to like, its hubris started a show and it really started to have like kind of a decline. Yeah. But I don't know if that's actually going to happen. But I could certainly see talking about it in a podcast 15 years from now.

Well, I think what, that we should end it by figuring out like how do we measure success here. Like here's the thing I think we have a big team in Europe. And they are very quick to remind me that one, they get more holidays. They get health care. It's on top of that. And then, you know, they pay nothing for internet service. Like, you want to buy. broadband in Europe. You're not paying as much money as if you want to buy broadband in the United States. And it's faster.

But no air conditioning. What's that about? What are you guys doing over there? Well, climate change has arrived for the Europeans. We ran a great story several years ago about air conditioners in France. We'll dig it up and link it in the show notes. But like there are ways to measure like how European regulations raise or lower prices or lead to different outcomes. Some of them are worse than here. Like there are some. aspects of like European regulation that have led to less vibrant marketplaces. For sure. Like we have big tech companies. Europe does not. That's just true. Yeah. You can read all kinds of academic literature on why that has happened.

But it mostly is because you can just go start a Google in a garage here and then maybe take over a giant market. Right. You can just monopoly your way up to that position if you want here and we won't stop you. And in Europe, they just like don't, it doesn't happen that same way. labor unions sit on the boards of big European companies. That doesn't happen here. So you just end up, you can make lists of pros and cons.

But in this case, I think we don't know what success looks like. I don't know that the Europeans. They're just like, competition is good, which is great. I love it. I'm all about competition. But it's like, at the end of this, is it you need to download a different app store to get Spotify and Netflix in the Kindle app. And then there's a bunch of weird stuff in the Apple app store.

Like, is that success? Yeah, I think success is. Oh, I can just go buy a book or an audio book or a movie or whatever and just do it and just be done with it on the app I choose. I think that is a victory. And oh, I can just go have real Chrome on my iPhone. Agree there. So I think, yeah, I think we're going to pretty quickly see the victories. I think what's going to be interesting is all the economics afterwards.

And then we'll see the losses of like, oh, we just have like a whole really gross revenge porn app. just hanging out on a store and now we're going to be having to write a bunch of stories about this app store who refuses to take down the revenge porn app. You know, that's going to suck. That's going to happen. Don't do that. Don't do it, people, but when you do, I hate you. Just know that.

Yeah, I think figuring out, like, what does it look like if this worked? Like, what are the tangible improvements we want to have with our experiences with our phones? And, yeah, I just want to be able to buy stuff. I want the user experience of buying content to be simpler and easier and not feel like Apple's just taking a 30% cut from whatever creator. That's pretty good. I'll take that. On the flip side, if to do that, you do need to go download a separate app store for every kind of content app. That's like obviously worse.

Yeah. And I think Apple is leaning towards it's going to be chaos and you're going to want to be here anyway. And I think we're all leaning towards the pressure on Apple will be enough to change. change the actual app store and make it better. Because that's what competition does. I don't know where we're going to net out. I would just say, like, at this moment, regardless of how you think, you should just think about, like, what does success for this thing look like and how do you get there as opposed to it's definitely going to win or it's definitely going to be a disaster? Because, like I said, they've been putting choice screens on Windows and Android for years.

Like one decade of antitrust regulation in Europe around Google has resulted in no change. Like, none. No. I think it is going to be wild to put the Chrome icon on a choice screen and an iPhone and see if people still pick Safari. That's a really interesting test case here, right? Like the thing that I think is interesting here is we've been talking sort of in theory for a long time about whether people would just pick the app store, both developers and

users, because it's easier, right? Like, I think you can make a very compelling case that all of the stuff that it's going to entail to go to the website of a website of unconstitutional. an app marketplace, download it, go through the hoops to get it, installed, say yes on that scary screen that's like, you're downloading another app store, you might die, and then download the other apps, do all the stuff there, maintain those things. Like, that might be arduous enough that most people will continue to choose the app store, which is what Apple has said all along is the case.

And now we get to find out. Like, that's the thing I'm excited about. And the Chrome example is a perfect one because Google's whole defense in its antitrust case has been people use us because we're the best product. And we know because when people get to choose, even when they're bullied into choosing, they choose us. And that's a pretty good antitrust defense,

or at least it has seemed like one so far. And in this case, Apple is going to have to put up or shut up along the same lines. Like, we're about to find out how many people use Safari on purpose. And I think that's cool. Yeah. It's me. All right.

That's a great place to end it because I'm dying to the answer and we just won't know until. our European friends tell us. We've got to take a break where this show is already way over. 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.

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to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash track. Terms and conditions apply. All right. We're back. We still have a lot time. This show's going to go. It's five hours. Yeah. But there's like a lot of streaming news this week. Cranz, what's going on? Okay. So Netflix had their earnings. But before their earnings, they had a bunch of other stuff. So first of, Scott Stobb, who was the chairman for Netflix films, announced he was leaving. That was the day before. And Scott, is like not the only reason that Netflix has a really successful film slate,

but was a big reason that they were like the most nominated film studio for three years in a row. So him leaving, ooh, surprising. Then the morning before their earnings, they announced that WWE Monday Night Raw was going to be coming exclusively to Netflix. And not only Netflix in the United States, but worldwide, which is apparently very huge, according to Chris Welch, our resident like WWE superfan. Yeah. I had to go to him repeatedly this week being like, explain this wrestling thing to me. But so those are both like big things.

And then they announced at their, after during their earnings report, they announced that they were going to be getting rid of the 1199 basic plan, which they had already been like phasing out, I believe in the United States and a couple of other places. Now it's going away everywhere before like you couldn't even subscribe to. it, but if you would already subscribe, you were fine, now you're going to get bumped either to 699, which is the ad, which is the ad version, or you're going to get bumped to 1549, which is the ad free version. Oh my gosh. So it just got a lot more expensive, basically, to to go without ads on Netflix. I just like to say, it's the real just. I just like to say,

I, I theorized that that was going to happen on this podcast. Yeah. And oh my God, have I been right, that they're just going to price you to pieces if you want ad free and you want 4K and they're going to keep the ad-based one cheap and eventually they're just going to shove everybody down to that one. That's not entirely their plan, but that's a big part of the plan for them. They've got about 23, it sounds like they've got about 23 million monthly active users who are currently on advertising. They really, really like it.

All those people love it because they pay $699 and they get two screens and they can watch it. But now they're going to have to pay $15. 49 if they want those two screens and no ads. And then if they want four screens and 4K, they have to pay $22.99. And then for each additional user, so like if when Max goes to college, next week, $7.99 per user per month for those higher ones. Can I, I find it disgusting that they charge per user and per screen. Yeah, it's a lot. I'm really curious.

Like even the cable companies weren't like per screen. I mean, they kind of were. You had to get another box if you wanted another screen. Yeah, no, they were. Yeah, you had to get the box. And they'd be like, that box is $100. Yeah. Well, basic cable was not per screen.

I never. You could put, you could basic, you could splitter a basic cable subscription to 5,000 screens. I never lived in a region where I could do that. It was always I had to have the little box. Yeah. Nelai, you're definitely the kind of person who would have like pirou. TBS for your whole neighborhood growing up. Like that, that feels right.

I am 100% the kind of person who figured out I was steal cable in the dorm and met his wife that way. I'm just letting you know. I had a little coax crimper, the whole thing. It was a drum ceiling. I just looked in the ceiling. I'm like, there it is. Let's see what happens.

It was a real cable guy moment. Sorry. I was a cool cable guy. All right. But wait, Alex, you and I had basically the same exact reaction to this, which is just that Netflix is just a whole ass cable. company now. Yeah, yeah. So Netflix is effectively cable because Ted Sarandes, the CEO, Greg Peters, the other CEO, and the CFO, we're all like, well, yeah, we have all the secondary

programming, i.e., the suits, the young Sheldon, the stuff they're not making and they just buy a license for. And that makes them a lot of money. And with advertising, that makes them more money than the original programming where they're having to spend billions of their own dollars to make it. And even though original programming is the most of their top watch stuff, it's not all of their top watch stuff. And your business, it's cheaper to buy Young Sheldon and throw that up to your 200-something million. The 45th time CBS has sold Young Sheldon, they're selling it for cheap. Yeah.

And you can still watch Young Sheldon on Paramount Plus if you want. Because I do. I don't. I watch lots of things there, not Young Shelds. Can I just say Suits is a scourge upon the Republic? It's a danger to young people everywhere. I love suits. I'm so ashamed of how much I like that show.

Suits is the stupidest show in the entire world. Is this the lawyer you talking? Well, yeah, it's unwatchable if you were a lawyer. But my little niece is her first semester of college. She was in first finals in college. And she texted me and Becky and was like, should I be a lawyer? Because it's first finals and she's a STEM major. And I was like, are you just studying for your chem final?

And she's like, no, I was watching suits. And I thought if this doesn't go well. And we were both like, no! Do not be a lawyer because he wants suits. It's going to be like... It's not like that. If you take one thing from my entire career at the verge, it's that being a lawyer is not like being on suits. Unlike the West Wing, which is a perfect representation of what it's like to be in politics.

No, no, it's closer. Like, the people in politics would like their lives to be like the West Wing. Lawyers are not like, I wish it was more like suits. I will say, I've only watched, like, the first season of suits so far. And A, I love it very much. And B, no one ever does any lawyering in that whole show, I don't think. Well, because he can't be. Is that what the entire plot is that Megan Markle has to find cases for the guy.

What are you talking about? This shows horrible. I watched five episodes. I was like, never again. Did you, but like Gina Torres. I'm saying I'm going to cancel Netflix so they keep making Americans watch suits. But what's funny is that USA, which is part of Universal, which is own Peacock and I think was maybe an investor in us at some point. I don't remember.

No, I will, I have a better disclosure about suits. Okay. Go for it. Okay. Right. Soutes was on. I'm going to drink. Suits was on USA. Right? Yeah. It's owned by NBC Universal. NBC Universal is investor in Box Media, a parent company. Whatever. The real disclosure is that suits was the lead-in to Mr. Robot. And I hosted the Mr. Robot after show for many years. And I had to watch the tail end of every episode of suits waiting for Mr. Robot to start so we could have the Mr. Robot show. And then you see what I'm saying? This is a real problem. This is my antipathy towards suits.

That's fair. I would have that too. I just, it was fine. Yeah. Mr. Robot's great, though. And I don't know if you can still watch the after show. We taped it in the studio right over there. Emily Yoshita was my co-host one season.

It was great. Oh, that's awesome. Megan Farokman asked me my co-host's second season. Russell Brandon was there. I would leave it on while I was writing my recaps of Mr. It was a lot of fun. But Netflix. Back to Netflix.

Back to Netflix. Like I went through and Alex, you wrote a really good piece about this basically Netflix cable turn. And especially after the WWE thing. But it's kind of amazing. You make the list of like, okay, what is on cable? There's, you know, reality TV and all the sort of like nonsense background TV that people watch all day. Like Netflix actually has a ton of that. It doesn't talk a lot about it, but it has a ton of it.

It's deep in the dating show game now. it is like, it's pretty good at this game. You have the sort of endlessly rewatchable reruns of stuff. Netflix, that's the suits and kind of stuff you're talking about. And actually, Netflix is unusually good at making that stuff popular again. You have the prestige stuff. Netflix has lots of that. You have movie channels.

Netflix has lots of that. And then what's the last thing is sports. And sports is the one thing Netflix for so long was like, oh, we're probably like live in sports don't really feel like they're us. And now Netflix is just fully all in. on both live and sports. Yeah, and specifically wrestling, which is like extremely lucrative. I don't think it's probably, I have no idea, actually, if it's as lucrative as baseball or basketball.

But it makes a ton of money. And it does very, very well in the United States. And one of the things that the people at WWE were talking about was they were really excited because now they were going to be able to like spread it internationally a lot easier. Instead of having to make all these different deals and compete with local wrestling leagues and all of that stuff, they can just be like, no, anybody can just be able to. turn on Netflix in any country and they can just watch Roman Raines because that's like the big wrestling guy now.

Did Chris Welch teach you about Roman Raines this week? Yes. I love that. I was like, I love this for you. I was like, who's like the rock now of WWE and he's like Roman Raines? I was like, thank you. I actually feel like you would love wrestling. I like the idea of wrestling and I loved glow, but wrestling itself I haven't liked since I was

a kid. And then once I worked at a company that got bodied by professional wrestler. Oh, yeah. That reduced my life. That would do it. Not my life. That reduced my like of wrestling.

But it's cool. I like that they slap each other. They like slide across the ring. I like that they slap each other. Yeah. And then they like have big dramatic moments. I'm like, yeah. Yeah.

So you would like it. Yeah. In theory. In theory. But like it's shot like garbage. It looks so ugly. I don't know. I don't watch it.

My freshman year roommate in college had both a Stacey Keebler poster and a rock poster. Oh yeah. That was like my brother had had lots of like the rock. and then Stone Cold Steve Austin in his room. And I was like, what's up with all these posters of half-naked men all over your... Yeah, it was a real distinction between the Stacey Keebler and the... I was like... Stacey, I think, was wearing more clothes in the post.

The women started to appear on my brother's wall shortly after. Look, he was very happy with his fandom. By the way, both Chris Welch and Casey Newton, huge wrestling fans. Huge. And I have managed none of it. It just doesn't look like anything to me. But it is huge. And I think from what I understand, wrestling fans have had a hard time of it because there was a dedicated wrestling app that got merged in some other streamer that has been a disaster.

Yeah, a lot of it's been like on peacock. Yeah. And, you know, it's peacock. And I think they're very happy that Netflix might try. That's the read I get. What if Netflix does a good job is like people are excited about it? Yeah, and it sounds like Netflix is very interested in like doing a lot of the extra programming around it. The after shows and the let's do a whole.

let's explain to Alex and Neli and everybody else who Roman Raines is kind of documentaries. Maybe I'll watch one because who knows? Take suits off your service. I'll watch anything, Netflix. I'm just saying, do it for America. Yeah, I think Netflix is going to end up looking really smart here. It's like there's been rumors forever that every time TV rights come up, Netflix is supposedly going to bid. There was a big story about it for Formula One because Drive to Survive is so successful.

They're like, oh, maybe they'll just buy the right. rights, but then they did the weird thing where it was just like that golf tournament with a bunch of golfers and a bunch of F1 stars and that was their big first foray into live sports. It wasn't good, but I guess it did well. I don't know, but this is like, what was it, a $5 billion, like 10 year long deal or something? Like, this is serious. Yeah, it's $5 billion. It's 10 years.

After five years, they have the right to be like, never mind. And they get everything just fully packaged and sent to them. They're like, like, WWE has done kind of everything. It's very turnkey for Netflix, similar to a lot of their secondary licensing stuff. So it's like, on the one hand, I love original programming. I love thoughtful new original programming. On the other hand, we've talked a lot about how that was just going to stop when advertising became more popular. So it makes sense that Netflix kind of becomes USA Network or T&T.

Whatever network you were really fond of, Spike TV was the one I keep thinking about. Oh, boy. And that's just what it's going to be now. And it's like a good value proposition for most people. You spend $6.99 a month and you get cable effectively on demand. I see it slightly differently. And to me it feels like the risk for Netflix, as far as I can tell, is just that it's going to get out over its skis trying to do everything all at once. And like it's deep into gaming now.

It's doing live. by the way. It's doing all of these dating shows. Like Netflix for a while felt sort of understandable and focused in a way that I think worked for it. And it was doing a streaming service and only a streaming service in a time when lots of other companies were trying to do a streaming service and lots of other things. And it actually helped Netflix and hurt those companies.

And now Netflix is trying to sort of do too many things, it feels like. I think that's the strategy. for Netflix, though, because think about it. If you are right now, I believe, the second largest streaming service after Amazon Prime, which kind of has a big asterisk next to it. It's the largest. Yeah. Yeah. So Netflix is effectively the largest. And they're just under the impression. They're like, yeah, you'll probably, you might go get Max. You might go get Disney. You might go get Paramount, L.L. You might get Peacock, whatever. But you're going to get Netflix. And so we're going to, like, you're going to spend at least $6.99 a month with us. So just look, look at all the crap we can give you.

We can give you a bunch of stuff. They're the Microsoft Word of streaming services. Yeah. And so that's why I said they're like the T&T. They're just the basic cable. It's just all of basic cable now in one place. And the app is terrible. So you're constantly, anytime you open it on your iPad, you just get a bunch of games.

And you don't want to play those on your iPad on like Netflix app. But you're going to because they keep pushing that on you. And that's really annoying. But that rant goes into, I think Netflix next turn is they need to figure out their recommendation engine. It's really bad right now. They need to figure out their user interface. It's not great right now. They've got a lot of work to do to compete in that space.

Because eventually if all it does is repeatedly recommend suits to Neli, he is going to unsubscribe. And for a good reason. I'm going to do it right now. You show me suits one more time. By Microsoft, this is why I mentioned Microsoft Word. I know people at Microsoft would love to take stuff out of the toolbar. They can't. Because Microsoft Word is not focused.

It's not one thing. It is a million things to a million different people. And it now just has to be a million things. So if Netflix wants to be suits and live TV and wrestling and F1 docu-series and games, like, that's a lot of things. And like, it just has to be all the things to all the people all the time. Yep. I do think that, like, it's, I agree that it's becoming,

it's becoming more and more of what looks like a cable bundle. Mm-hmm. The part where they're doing the worst of cable pricing per screen, that's why people started to hate the cable companies. Yep. Fully why people started hate the cable companies. And like that's the danger. And they're just really hoping, because that per screen is only for the ad-free version.

So under that, it's two. That's it. And you get two screens. And if somebody else in your family is like, oh, I also want to watch because you have a big family, then you better go get another subscription. And that's the ad version. The ad-free version is the $7.99 a month. So I can see them being like, you don't want to deal with that?

It's a dollar cheaper. And you just have to sit through some ads. And I personally will hate that because I cut the cable in like 2007. I can't get rid of one streaming service. I keep suggesting, like, let's get rid of this one. And Becky's like, some comedy special I want to watch us on that one next month. And it's like, oh, that's. Criterion is so good.

You can't get rid of criteria. Okay, wait. That is actually a perfect segue into the other stream. streaming news this week that I thought was interesting, which is that Verizon made another one of it's like, we're bundling a bunch of streaming services together announcements. And then there was a story in the information where a bunch of Verizon people were talking about, like, we think that the value ad here is to be the management tool on top of all of your streaming services. And it's like, well, that's cable. And that sucks. Like, you know what I want is like a harder

company to get a hold of to deal with all of my stuff. But I think the next turn for all of this with these companies is like the rest of the ecosystem around this. Like we're going to start to get more and more apps that are like, we're just going to make it easier for you to search stuff. And we're going to get all these companies, Verizon's doing it, Amazon's doing it, Apple's doing it, that are like, just use us to subscribe to these streaming services. And I actually think a real value to provide is like we will just give you the button

you can tap to turn on your subscription or turn it off to a thing. And I think there's going to be real competition around that. Like, I just signed up for Paramount Plus so that I can watch three weeks of football. And God help me if I get to that fourth week and accidentally pay for another month of Paramount Plus. And there's going to be a crazy competition to give me a button that I can press to turn off Paramount Plus. I could have just shared my login with you. I don't want your login. Be careful.

I don't. It's going to be like, oh, do you want to watch Star Trek? If you do that, then Kevin Kossner comes to your ass and shoots you. Puts his hat back on walks out. That's why people have Paramount Plus to watch Yellowstone. The show where there's dad. Who murders people. A murdery dad.

There's a good son who died. Yeah. Who murdered people. He was also kind of murdery. A drunk daughter, murdery. Yeah. And then Call of Duty's son. And there's another son who's only like a half son.

All murdery though, yes. No, but the Call of Duty son is like the funniest part of that show. They're going to get one guy. I'm not saying. didn't like it. I'm just saying like every couple episodes, like, do some call of duty shit. He's like, all of his old army gear and he's like, let's miss him up. See you all later. I guess that you just does call the duty stuff. Montana. It's good. Look, I wish you well. Don't fuck with the dutons. We got to take a break. We'll be right back.

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Complex and unprecedented, the Spanish authorities are calling it. Passengers who'd been stuck aboard the Hanta or maybe Hanta virus-stricken Dutch cruise ship disembarked in the Canary Islands this weekend, prompting the highest stakes game of Where are they now since maybe COVID? Some of the evacuees, American and French, have since tested positive for the virus. And yet public health officials seem remarkably calm. We do have one individual who was taken to the biocontainment unit early, early this morning. And we assessed that individual.

They are doing well. Possibly because this is not the one to freak out over. Today, explain, drops every weekday afternoon. Buzzwords like progressive and affordability are thrown around off. the time in politics. But what do they actually mean? For me, being a progressive means at least two things. One, being willing to unite lots and lots of people, all of the folks that are getting screwed over against the powers that be that are making your life worse. And then second, being progressive is essentially a hopeful

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

Third. Like that doesn't, that's not a priority. That's this week on America Actually. Let's dig it. All right. We're back. Five hour of a podcast. It's happening.

We're going to do a quick lightning round. Okay. I will say we've had some listeners. offer to personally sponsor the Lightning Round, which is money that we will figure out how to accept. In the absence of these ignorant brands who won't pay us millions of dollars to have the Lightning Round sponsored by the refrigerator companies, individual of our chest listeners have offered us upwards of $45. And we're going to, we will find a way to take that money. However, this week is the 40th anniversary of the Macintosh. and listener Samar Sica, it is his 40th birthday.

And so he offered his sponsor. But because it's her birthday, we're giving you this one on the house. But only this one. Happy birthday. Yeah, the next time you march into your CMO's office, you get us that check. You hear me? That's your goal for your 41st birthday. Get us that check.

Happy birthday. they man thank you for listening thank you it is very funny that people have offered to individually sponsored the lightning round i love it and we probably will find a way to take that money just because it is hilarious i love you guys and we'll do something good with it all right lightning round the mac by the way did turn 40 david you had walt on the on the wednesday show yeah wallet mossberg uh who has i would say more stories about the history of apple and the mackintosh than any single other person on planet earth just came on and told us some stories about the mac it was super fun it was he's good hang he has been on the Vergecast in a long time.

And he told me he's personally very upset with you about it. We cut that out, but he said a lot of really mean things about you. So we're going to have to have him back soon. I listened to it. I was on a plane. I listened to it when I landed. And David, I'm very disappointed at you that you did not know what the Apple 2GS was. I owned an Apple 2GS.

It was a very weird computer. And it was Walt mentioned that he'd owned one. And you're like, I've never heard of it. And I was like screaming at my phone. I literally Googled it because I was like, is he saying the name wrong? Like I thought I pretty much knew most. No, he was right. I was wrong.

I've never felt what it's like to be a Vurchast listener more than I wasn't waiting for an Uber just like screaming at my phone. You don't know what that is? Yeah. And I won't. I refuse to learn. That's right. That's how I feel. All right.

Cranz, what's your lightning round? I got two, actually. So I'll go serious first. Okay. There's a baby that's covered in technology. This is the serious one. Is the baby okay? It's not a real baby.

Okay, good. Important note. There's a, they're doing fashion in France. And Scaparelli, the fashion house, was showing off there, all their new looks. And a woman comes out and she's wearing this gorgeous gown covered in like Intel fans from like 2000. Yes. Look at this. Dress.

It's sick. It looks so cool. And then someone else came out in an outfit called The Mother, which, you know, which appeared to be primarily like a white top and like a white, white bottom. And then they were holding a baby made out of old technology. Yeah. And it was just, it's a beautiful baby. You gotta, when you're not driving, take a moment, go look at the baby.

I love it. This is a pull over your car and Google this thing. Like whatever you're thinking in your mind right now, the reality is 50 times wilder than that. Both of these models are making catwalk face. Yeah. You know. But in the context of these outfits and that baby, totally recontextualized catwalk face. Like, just a what is going on here?

Sometimes you just got a baby made a tech. If you are listening to this and you could acquire one of these outfits and bring it to us, one of us will wear it on the verge cast, I promise. Roseberry said the toddler was a reference to the alien movies. Roseberry is the creative director for Scaperrelli. So Daniel Roseberry, he also said that now that the technology I grew up with is antiquated, that it's so antiquated that it's almost difficult to source a certain vintage fabrics and embellishment. So that's why you did it because he was basically like it's really hard to find old fans for Intel processors.

And Buddy, you just get a new set of friends. Yeah, I got a closet full of laptops that would say otherwise. Like, we got you. The verge listeners got you. Like, you need sourcing for this stuff. You can pay us instead of whoever you paid for all of this technology. Have you seen our gadget closet? 20 years, dress made entirely of USBA cables.

We got you. You want to talk about measuring success? All right, David. What's yours? Mine is that the pixel nine leaks are already starting to come. So presumably we're going to get a glimpse of the pixel nine in May or June, whenever Google I.O. is. and then the real thing in the fall.

But the leaks are already starting to come out because Google is just completely incapable of hiding a product, it appears. And it looks kind of nice. We'll put the links in the show notes, but they redid the camera bar on the back so that instead of being like a visor, it just looks like a camera bar on the back.

It's got... It's given some iPhone edges to it. Or at least I thought. It's got the sort of rounded rectangle thing going on for it. It looks nice. And mostly I just wanted to bring it up because I said, I think it was last week that after the Samsung announcement, I am bearish on the future of the pixel. And so a million people sent me this and were like, what about this?

New pixels coming. And to all of you, I want to say, this looks great. And I sincerely hope it is the greatest phone in the history of the universe. I also think it's possible that no one at Google knows it's being released. Yeah, which is why it's leaking out. There's like one person on the pixel team is like, let's show it to people. Yeah, it's just like, do I, what is this phone on my desk? It seems neat.

Should I, should I show somebody? Very good. What's yours? Well, I got two. Okay. But you had two. I do have two. So I'll go then you and.

Sounds good. And then, right? That's how we're going to do it. And I'll just be here. Yeah. Well, you started. You had Walt. Your lightning around was I did another Verch test that was better than this one.

Okay. Okay, so Apple is all in on spatial audio. Probably because of the Vision Pro, because it's all around you. Yeah. So they're going to start to pay artists 10% more for the spatial audio streams. Jimmy Page. Pennies per stream more if people stream the spatial one, which is designed to incentivize artists to both make the spatial mixes and then promote them on Apple's service as spatial mixes. I hate this.

I hate this so much. One, because I think the math doesn't actually kind of work out. So I was looking on random artists, sort of like job boards. A spatial mix, people are buying them for 500 bucks. You're like, fire off your files to some poor engineers, like never heard your music before. They will just generate a spatial mix. Most of that sounds bad. Yeah.

And I know that people are always arguing with me. Some of them sound good. I know some of them sound good. I'm a man who owned a super audio CD player that could play the Beatles and quadrophonic sound. All right, I understand. Is that also how you make your waif? No, that's what's driving us apart. Day by day.

I'm just telling you, I believe you. I've been playing with surround audio since the beginning. Yeah, if you do a good job, having more channels or more objects or however Atmos wants to work now, whatever, having more is better. Great. if you do it like crap it sounds worse which is why people are all like always get reverted to stereo like it's the easiest

thing it's the most addressable thing like there's more stereo devices on the market than anything and especially when you're like farting out at $500 pop like it's not going to sound good and most spatial mixes are that level

and Apple incentivizing it because they want their headset to go off is just ugh Ugh. It's bad. I'm just telling you it's bad. It's going to make more things sound bad than sound good. Which is worse?

That or when DVDs were really into pan and scam. That's kind of where we're at. Yeah. That's a good comparison, right? It's like, what if we just shove this into that box? You're like, no, that's gross. Stop it. Yeah.

Look, there are some, I know there are some good ones. But even on Apple's playlists, there are really bad spatial mixes. And it's because there just isn't the volume of people who care enough. It's not the volume of artists where, like, I'm going to sit down and make a spatial audio record. They're more like, I'm on tour forever because that's where the money is. I'm going to buy some loops and do a rap in my hotel room and hope that's a hit. Like, that's the reality of most artists right now. And I'm not saying that's good or bad.

Like, that's just where the music industry has forced most musicians into money, right? They make their money with sinks. They make their money, like ads. and movie sync, they make their money on selling their old catalogs to billionaires who then do more weird stuff with them. They make their money on tour. They do not make their money selling records. And so if you are like, now to make your record more complicated, then we'll pay you more money.

Like that's, ugh. No one's going to do that, yeah. It doesn't seem like they're doing it now. Maybe I'm going to be wrong. I just like, look at this. I'm like, are we going to make music sound shitty so a headset sells more? I mean, it's MP3 is all over. It's weird, man.

It's weird. All right. I know. Someone's going to send me some facial mix. George Harrison's creeping up behind you. Yeah, I've been there. All right. All right.

What's your other one? Have you all heard of Powell World? This is Pokemon with guns. Yeah, it's Pokemon with guns. Yeah. That's all it is. It's Pokemon with guns. I just love that.

Those are exactly the words in exactly the order I was going to say. This is like the unofficial tagline of Powell World now. I love it. It is so Pokemon with guns that there was a YouTube creator named Toasted Shoes who was like, look at this. I made it, Pokemon with Guns. I put in Pikachu and all in everybody. I modded all the little creatures that you can capture and made them Pokemon, and you can play as Ash.

And guess what got shut down real fast by Nintendo? Our boy, Toasted Shoes. It's unclear how he was modding it because it doesn't yet allow mods because it's still in like Alpha. release. It is blowing up the charts on Steam and people are loving to try it out. There's a lot of weirdness around it, but it is essentially, what if you had Pokemon and what if you had guns and also like had to do some survival stuff? And people are like... Just a dash of survival stuff. Just a little dash, just a little sprinkle. And apparently people are really, really into that right now. Yeah. Is Nintendo going to take down the main Pal world game? The mod, I understand,

because the mod was just like, what if I stole your characters? They're like, no. Yeah, that's like pretty Cut and dry. Yeah, he hadn't even released the mod. He'd just been like, I'm working on it and showed some videos. And Nintendo was in his inbox immediately like, you're not. You're going to stop that work right now. The Pokemon company says it is going to investigate Powell World because it feels like, oh, you do cute creatures that you can capture.

We do cute creatures you can capture. You use guns. We don't. And actually have a problem with you doing that. So it'll be a very interesting situation. But it's not actually the Pokemon. They just look a lot like the Pokemon. Yeah, they just, yeah, they're very similar.

Is it like, they're very cute. Freakachu? Yeah, no, they vibe like Pokemon in like a very real way. Like if you didn't know the difference and you just shoved these into a photo of a bunch of Pokemon, they would just fit. Yeah, yeah. So, so it's close enough that we're going to have a three-hour special episode of the Verge cast with Nilai explaining everyone loves copyright.

The copyright. of this situation because it's kind of weird. But yeah, Nintendo is not crazy about Pokemon with guns. It seems like they wouldn't be. It doesn't seem like they'd. That's not their thing. But the whole rest of the world seems to be. Didn't I read that it's like on pace to be the most popular game on Steam like ever?

Like there's a bunch of different metrics steam uses and one of them is most concurrent players. And for years now, player underground battlegrounds. It's called PubG. Like only nerds use the whole. whole name. I don't, I hate to be the one of it, you know. So, PubG was, was, was, is, has been the most played game concurrently and it seems like, excuse me, not Pokemon, Powell's. It's a Freudian slit. Could, could, could take that, that, that title and, and pretty quickly, too. So we'll see. But also, how long will people play it? Unclear. Everybody's

really into it this week. They may not be into it next week. Yeah. There may not be a game to play next week. Nintendo may have just shut that down. We'll see. Touches the nature of steam popularity, it feels like, right? Yeah, a lot of times. All right, I've got one last one. Right. Which is actually an old story that David already mentioned, but he forgot to mention the most important part.

So David did mention that Tim Sweeney had replied to the app store changes and Apple's responses to them. And it's true. Tim Sweeney did refer to them as malicious compliance. What David failed to mention was that he also called them a hot. garbage. Yes. And, quote, it will take more time to parse both the written and unwritten parts of this new horror show. It's very good. But can I, can I drop some breaking news on you? Fortnite just tweeted that it's coming back in the Epic Game Store. It says later this year, Fortnite will return in Europe on iOS through the Epic Game Store. Shout out DMA.

So it's like, yeah, Tim Sweeney hates it and is going to take advantage of it at every available turn. Bless Tim. It's good. You need more idealistic. Yeah. Fortnite makers. I will say we've seen at least two, just in the time we've been recording this podcast, at least two alternate app stores announcing that they're already beginning the process to becoming an app marketplace on iOS. How much porn?

unclear. Okay. I can tell you one of them is it's called the Alt Store and it started as this app Delta, which originally was an app called GBA for iOS, which is a way to play Game Boy ROMs on your iPhone, which is a thing Apple explicitly does not allow. And now in theory, under this rule, would be perfectly allowable to do through an app marketplace. So like that's coming.

That's one of the ones that announced they're already working on this. I'll finally have a reason for that. that controller that you can put on your iPhone. I never do it because I'm like, I only want to play ROMs and I don't want to do that on that. That I legally own the games, of course. You should always legally own games. I'm 100% certain that it's still not legal and that is just some folk wisdom, but the ROM market is not big enough for anyone to care.

Yeah. So please don't sue me for that. I supported you and your Pell Worlds. It's okay. Nintendo has bigger fish fry at the moment, so you're fine. Leave me alone. Oh my gosh. All right.

Well, I'm going to start a gambling story. from what I understand gambling is very lucrative so catch me in the gambling store Nilize porn crypto and gambling depot coming to iOS in 2024 I mean historically lucrative ideas who wants to talk

wouldn't I be good at I don't even gamble first of all this is true every year at CS I go to Vegas and whatever money other people are spending gambling I just use that money I spend the same money but I buy limousines. And I promise you, this is true. I've been doing it for years.

I can be doing it for this. Yeah. We had a limo this year. And everyone talks more about the limousine than they talk about gambling at the end. It's true. I drink Bud Light out of a champagne food. It's beautiful.

It's a wonderful moment. It was a good limo. Except when Andrew took over the ox and started playing some deeply weird shit in that car. That's it. That's a Verge cast. We'll be back next week. Tech news season is here.

We have just started the year off to the races. We'll back next week. Oh, wait. Also, wait, before we go, we, next week is when the Vision Pro comes out. And at some point, when it makes sense, we're going to do a whole Vergecast about the Vision Pro. And if you have questions about the Vision Pro, send them to us. Call the hotline 866, Verge11. Email us, Vergecast at the verge.com.

All of your Vision Pro questions, as soon as we can answer them, we will answer them. And we're going to do a whole Vergecast about it. It's going to be really fun. Looking at you with the eyes. Just staring at you with our undead eyes. That's it. That's Vurchast. Rock and roll.

And that's it for the Vyrgecast this week. Hey, we'd love to hear from you. Give us a call at 866 Verge 1-1. The Vorgecast is a production of the Verge and Vox Media Podcast Network. Our show is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James. That's it. We'll see you next week.