The Vergecast - Apple might make a touchscreen Mac / Samsung S23 images leak

Episode Date: January 13, 2023

The Verge's Alex Cranz, Richard Lawler, and Dan Seifert discuss the numerous Apple rumors we heard about this week, a Samsung Unpacked preview, and the latest gadget news. Further reading: Apple might finally make a touchscreen Mac Apple is reportedly making an all-in-one cellular, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth chip iPhone 16 Pro models could feature under-display Face ID  Apple's next custom hardware trick might be its own Micro LED screens  Apple’s MicroLED dream: what it means for the Apple Watch and beyond $99 AirPods could ship as early as next year alongside next-gen AirPods Max Official Samsung Galaxy S23 images leak early  Samsung confirms February 1st Unpacked, its first in-person event in three years  Samsung’s Galaxy Buds 2 Pro can now record lifelike 3D audio HBO Max’s first price hike raises the monthly rate by $1  John Deere commits to letting farmers repair their own tractors (kind of)  At CES one company was showing off...an E-Ink headset?  The Pinecil is the best soldering iron for most people Six smart home finds from CES 2023 you may have missed  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Because we're going to talk about rumors. Tusk is better. Wow. I've been told that we cannot actually play any songs from rumors over this. Otherwise, Fleetwood Mac will come to the Vergecast studio and beat up Andrew. So sorry, Andrew. We'll protect you. Please don't play any other music, even though it's great.

But joining me in the studio today, not in the studio, joining me today is Dan Seifert. Hello, Dan. Hello. And the incredible Richard Lawler. Hello, Richard. Hello, I would like everyone to know that I did not steal funds. And if you'd like to know more about that, you can subscribe to my substack.

There's a feature. Thank you. Thank you, Richard. As you know, Nilai is not here. He disappeared. I think he's somewhere upstate, unclear where, unclear what's happening. I think he's okay. He's probably okay.

send him all your love and all of your pictures of Mariah Carey to keep him through these cold long winter nights. But we've got a lot of things going on on the Vergecast today. We've got a ton of Apple rumors. We've got a ton of Samsung rumors. We have no Fleetwood Mac rumors because, again, we don't want Andrew to die. But we've just got, there's a whole bunch of things happening today. So we're going to get right into it. Yeah, let's do it.

And let's get started with the biggest rumor that we've all been waiting for. At least some of us have been waiting for. Or someone has been waiting for. that Apple might find to make a touchscreen Mac. Yes. This is Dan's favorite thing. Dan, you were so excited about this.

I've never seen someone glow with joy at a rumor before. Yeah, you, I know that this is like a legendary desire for all Vergecast listeners, for all people at the Verge to have a touch MacBook pro. A touch Mac at all.

Yeah. So there's rumors coming from Bloomberg. You said really enthusiastic. Yeah. You know, I mean, look, it'll be good. It'll be fine to have it. I think that there's like, let me just like say what this rumor is. So Mark German at Bloomberg has reported that in 2025, Apple will release its first

touchscreen Mac, or at least that's what they're aiming for now, which is two years away, at least. And it might use an OLED screen, but the big deal is it would be a touchscreen, which would be first for the Mac. So the way that he's framed this rumor is that this is not iPad hardware. running macOS. It is kind of framed as like this is a MacBook style laptop with a touchscreen on it, which is, you know, very similar to countless Windows running devices that have been on the

market for many years that have touchscreens and people like them and they enjoy them and stuff like that. For like a decade. But what it doesn't seem like it is. What's that? It's like a decade. We've had touchscreen Windows machines for over a decade. Yes.

Very long time. But a lot of those touchscreen devices and those Windows machines have been like convertible. Either they like flip the screen around behind the keyboard or you could do the surface style and rip the keyboard off becomes a tablet, stuff like that. This is like at least how it's framed now in the reporting. I am not reading that. I am reading that this is a laptop with a touchscreen and a fixed hinge that extends to a certain opening degrees and then it's just always a laptop. You never turn this into a tablet. And so then the question becomes, well, what benefit does that bring?

Right. And I think that if it pans out that way, it would just be like your main input device. are still the keyboard and the track pad, which have been always, well, at least the trackpad's always been excellent on Macs. And the recent keyboards have been very good. And then the touchscreen is just there and you can like poke at it to like scroll a webpage or pinch zoom on something or tap a button or something like that, which is exactly how I use a touchscreen Windows laptop. And that'd be nice. And it's fine. So it's basically like for those of us who have stupid fingers, because I have very stupid fingers

and I'll use my iPad all the time and then I'll go to my MacBook and then I'll be like, oh, I want to make Richard bigger on the screen and just reach out and touch Richard's face and nothing happens because it's just a normal computer and I'm like, oh yeah, that's not how those work. It's for me, right?

It's for those of us who are just like forget. I think it's also for people who are much younger than us who have had touchscreen surrounding them their whole lives partially due to Apple's success with the iPhone with the iPad. had they are used to being able to reach out and touch things. Or, you know, they have Chromebooks that have touchscreens and that's what they're using in school. And so, like, that's what, you know, they are accustomed to it.

It is a very natural interaction to want to touch a screen. I can tell you from years of reviewing laptops, many of those Windows laptops that had touch screens, and every time I would, like, review a laptop for a couple of weeks or whatever and go back to using my work Mac, I would hit the stupid screen by reflex because it became so natural and normal to be able to click an okay button or, you know, close a window by just tapping the screen. It's not the primary interaction model. It's just another convenient way to use the device in a natural way that makes sense. I think the people that like really kind of like are against this idea are the people who are of

the mind that like my fingers never leave the home row. I know all the keyboard shortcuts and I have perfect typing form and I know how to navigate the whole OS without ever lifting my fingers off the keyboard. And, like, that's great for you. You don't ever have to touch the screen if you don't want to. Like, I'm sure MacOS will still work. Davis Bacon is very proud of you. That's just Richard.

Exactly the way. But, like, the rest of the world doesn't work. Have you ever watched someone use a computer? Their hands are, like, all over the place. And, like, they got their hand down on the track pad or they are, like, you know, have poor typing for them, like myself. Like, so it's a natural way. It makes sense.

The fact that they didn't do it for so long, I think is kind of like silly. I don't think it's silly, though. That they went with the touch bar at all. That that ever happened. The touchbar was incredible. Shut your dirty mouth. It was wonderful. I loved it so much.

I mean, if you still want it, you could still get it on a MacBook Pro 13-inch M2 if you love it that much. The other day, I was going and I have a stream deck at home, and it has a button on it that I just press, and it opens a quick post, and I can really pop off a quick post. And now instead, I have to, like, do more things. And I was like, man, I wish this MacBook Air had a touch bar with a quick post button on it. And I could just go, boop. Like, I miss, I dream about a touchbar that works perfectly. It never existed, but it could have. Okay.

My heart. And that was what struck me, because I went back and looked at Jake's review of the first MacBook that had a touch bar. Yeah. And that was kind of what he said was that the idea was decent and that he could see where there were opportunities for it, but the software didn't exist. And now years later, we know that the software never existed. It never existed.

It just never really came about. It never got the buy-in. Yeah, there was like three developers who were like, those three developers were working so hard and they're doing so much cool stuff. And then you'd be like, wow, I can't do anything else but like mute. But I can mute real fast and it's great and I don't have to think about it. I guess I could also do that with physical buttons.

And changing the volume takes three taps, I believe it took, as opposed to just, you know, one. Yeah. The other way to look at this, I think, is you could argue that Apple has already made a touchscreen laptop and it's called the iPad with the Magic Keyboard, or now even more so, the Magic Keyboard Folio. And I think the Magic Keyboard Folio

is the more instructive use case here, the one that came out for the 10th Gen iPad, because the Magic keyboard for the iPad Pro kind of is designed to bring that screen forward to you, so it's closer to you so that when you do touch it, it's not like you're reaching as far. But the Magic Keyboard Folio is the opposite. Its design is like pretty far away

for you to be reaching up and touching the screen, much like it is with a laptop. and the screen is like kind of a distance for you to touch. And so your primary interactions when you're using the magic keyboard folio with the iPad is you're using the keyboard and the trackpad. And then occasionally you're tapping the screen to select a box or hit okay or close a window or scroll or zoom, whatever it is convenient for you. But again, it's like this extra interaction.

So this is what I wanted to talk about. Because like, okay, they say we're going to do a touch. It's going to be a MacBook. It's going to look like an MacBook. It's going to act like a MacBook. and it'll just have a touch thing on it. And you could go and do that for years now. You could go and hack one and put a,

there are these cool little weird screen overlays you could do. Don't do it. They were terrible. But you could theoretically do it. It's like the worst experience in the world. But the problem is like iPad exists and iPad is built for touch and all the buttons are big for touch. Everything is intended for touch.

The MacBook is not intended for touch. And I don't think anybody wants the buttons to suddenly get huge. and all of those touch. Have you seen Control Center on recent MacOS? I am looking at my little, my little, you know the little dots that make your windows get big and small? Those are still small. But I would imagine on like, if it's a touch,

I'd want them big so that I don't. And those are annoying to hit with a mouse. They should be big. So you're a pro big button. I mean, look, so this is, this rumor is two years out, right? So that is two versions of MacOS that they can tweak and adjust and continue to bring MacOS closer to this touch experience. Like, we're already, we've seen, I think if you look back like two MacOS reviews ago,

the story was about how they're making it more like an iPad with the control center updates and some other interaction things. This year they brought Stage Manager, which is very obviously an iPad first designed feature that you can also run on the Mac, but it works like it does on the iPad. And so like you could see that these next steps are going to come. They'll figure out some way to do when. management in a nice more toucher-friendly way. But again, I don't know if touch is ever going to be the primary interaction.

They still haven't figured out how to do Windows management on an iPad, though. Like, just last, like, two years ago that they were like, we're doing Windows. Or on a Mac in my opinion. Right. But that's like, that's not because it's not touchable. It's because of the iPad's OS structure and the way that they are trying to reinvent everything. But if the people who are behind both. as a touch-first experience.

And this, in a laptop, the touch layer is not the first primary way of interacting with it. It is like a tertiary interaction level. And so, like, you don't need everything to be touch-friendly. Like on Windows, not everything is touch-friendly. Like, there's lots of little fiddly things on Windows that when you're using touch-screen on a Windows device, like, are still fiddly. Microsoft has changed it a little bit. They get the task bar a little bigger.

The buttons get a little bit larger when you switch into tablet mode and stuff like that. But there's still a lot of fiddly checkboxes. It's still Windows. And I don't think that really needs to change because it's not like this would be the primary interaction. It's just like certain things you would want to touch or you would reflexively touch. I think the thing that I always end up doing is on the lock screen when you log in, you type in your password and you want to click OK. And you want to touch the button to hit OK, which is already big. It's so satisfying. Just boop. Exactly. And so like things like that is where you will touch. And that's what we've seen on windows, like those like three buttons to manage the windows. They're not a

lot bigger than they used to be, but they've gotten more touch-friendly. They figured it out. If Microsoft can figure out how to make the UI touch-friendly between Windows 8 and Windows 11, and it mostly is now, mostly most of the time. Mostly. I'm pretty sure Apple can do something there. The other point here is that you can run iPad apps on the Mac now. Like if you open the home app on the Mac, it is essentially the iPad app running on the Mac with the same interaction, the same UI, and the same interface.

And that goes on for like a number of other apps. So like it's not weird to run those. It'd actually be better to use those with touch because they were designed touch first. So a lot of the things are like I would like to be able to touch this screen. But then if I'm using, I don't know, I'm looking at garage band in my web browser right now, I probably would not interact with those with touch primarily. I would use my mouse and keyboard like I always have. Oh.

Are we going to get to a point? They always say every time these rumors start flying and we start hearing about like the touch screen, Macbooks and the continued fusion of iPad OS and MacOS, we start talking about walled gardens. How, like, if we had to do, there's the Go 90 scale, which is all about streaming services, but I think there should be like a walled garden scale from like no wall to wall. That's a terrible scale. But that's what it is. How in danger do you think the unwalled garden of MacOS is with a touch Mac?

And that like iPad energy getting more infused into the Mac. Because I'm a little nervous. I'm not going to lie. I mean, the optimist in me, which is a rare person who comes out, you don't see the optimist. Who is this is not, this is not Dan. I don't think, like, again, I don't think, because I don't see them making touch the primary interaction level, which would mean that like you would design an app that runs in the app store so it can be installed on Mac, iOS, and iPad, all at the same time. It has to run through the app store to do that, right?

Right. That's if the touch is the first primary interaction level. But if you're still able to make Mac apps that use a keyboard and mouse and have all their keyboard shortcuts support and things like that or keyboard and trackpad, what have you, as long as you're still able to do that and those are still able to run because it's still MacOS, they don't change it that drastically, then you'll still be able to download apps from websites and from, you know, stuff like that and run them.

Already right now, that's kind of an annoying thing to do because you have to like jump through a bunch of checkboxes to get the thing to install. but I don't see how adding touch changes that, especially if touch is not the primary interaction. I have one question for Dan that I want to ask you, are we glossing over the OLED rumor? How big of a change would it be to have OLED screens on MacBook Pros from the screens that we have now?

You know, it's kind of interesting. We're going to probably talk about the micro LED rumor later on in the show. But like, many micro- Microled, micro- Yes. Micro lead? No, we say, no, micro LED. We're not saying microled. Absolutely not. Richard, no. Do not, nobody normalize that. Everybody listening to you're not allowed to normalize that. Please normalize it. Tweet at Alex. Recordings of you saying it. So there's like the in the span of like or the progression of display technology for computers, right?

It's like LCD and then mini LED, which Apple is already at with the MacBook Pro 14 and 16, and then OLED and then micro LED. And OLED would have, you know, slightly better blacks than the current crop of mini LED. But I got to tell you, the mini LED screens on the 14 and the 16 MacBook Pro look phenomenal. Like I don't know how much I would appreciate having OLED instead of them. Like maybe it would be a little bit more efficient. Maybe it would be using less power. I don't know.

But they get way brighter than any OLED laptop I've ever seen. And they get way brighter than most OLED screens that we're familiar with. So like if you go from mini LED to OLED, that's kind of like a small step in certain respects, but maybe a side step in others. And then when you get to micro LED, that is supposed to bring all the benefits of OLED and all the benefits of mini LED without the drawbacks of either of the drawbacks of OLED being the fact that it's organic and can have burn in and can degrade over time. and then mini LED being not quite as black blacks or high levels of contrast as OLED offers,

but micro LED is able to offer that. So like it's a stepping towards it. I feel like the OLED, like, if you're on, they're on mini LED right now, right? Yes. And the plan is micro LED, but primarily for watches first, even though that's like the weirdest place to put it. Well, yeah, I mean, if we want to just jump to that report, I mean, like the other thing, there's been so many like Apple rumors this week. So the other thing from Mr. Gurley.

I want to talk about my thing first. I want to talk about my free thing first. Everybody, get excited. These rumors are coming. I told you this is a rumors episode. We're all talking rumors. But I was just going to say, like, it doesn't make sense to go to OLED if you're at mini LED because the reason that OLED is so captivating on a TV is you don't get all that

bloom that you get with edge lighting or that you get with mini LED. That makes it. Like you get a lot of bloom in a 55 inch TV. You don't get a lot of bloom very often. in a high-quality laptop display like you see in a Mac. So it didn't make sense to go like, OLED is such a minor upgrade? If you had a high-quality OLED display and compared it side-by-side, though, you would notice. Like, we can see a difference between the mini-l-D in the Pro Display XCR, which was like the first

mini-L-D kind of technology that Apple came out with. And then it went into the iPad Pro 12.9. And it got better in the iPad Pro 12.9. And then it went into the MacBook Pro. Pro 14 and 16, and it did get noticeably better when you put them side by side. There's less blooming because there are more mini LEDs in those laptops than there was on the iPad or the Pro Display XDR. Right.

Maybe if you put the OLED next to a mini LED, you would see that kind of same step forward where it's like, okay, now that blooming I didn't notice before, oh, I see it now, and I don't see it on the OLED. My thought is that the OLED just won't get the same brightness. It just won't hit the same levels of brightness. Well, I think my question or my thought about why they might do this, if we assume that all the rumors we've heard this week are true. Every single thing is going to come true. Everything's going to happen.

L.L.L.A., sure. That some micro-LED is coming from Apple, that they're going to do OLED laptops, that the reason why you would have this design target for these 20-25 MacBook Pros as OLED screens is because you don't think that the micro-L-ED technology will be ready for a laptop by then. Right. And it may not be ready for several years, even after that. even if they get it in the watch, it could take years to scale. But it sounds like it's going to be expensive. Right, right. So, like, then the question is, do they stick with the mini LED for until micro LED is ready in a laptop size?

Or do they do this kind of, like, half step forward with an OLED before going the full step to microlil? I guess we did see a lot of OLEDs at CES this year. We saw a lot of OLED laptops. There's a ton of OLED laptops on the market. Like, there's, Monica's reviewed a bunch of them. They range in prices now. you can get OLED laptops running windows for about $1,000 now. And they do look really good.

But they don't hit nearly the brightness of the MacBook pros. Like they don't hit the regular everyday brightness. And they certainly don't hit the HDR brightness. So that's like what mini LED brings that OLED, as we've seen it so far, does not. So in two years, maybe OLED will have gotten to a point. It gets a little bit brighter every year, right? Like the TVs have gotten a little bit brighter every single year. Maybe they'll get a little bit brighter enough to, to,

to get up to the point of where mini LED is at. The last thing that I wanted to get on this particular thing is that it's a turn from Apple. They've, like we've said kind of at the beginning, that they were not doing touchscreen laptops. They said they wouldn't do touchscreen laptops. Now if they would. But if you think about Apple, isn't it kind of, that's their thing, is to say that they won't do something and then eventually later say that they did it and did it better than anyone else. I mean, that's, yeah, that's totally Apple's MO.

I think what's interesting about the touchscreen, though, is that it's taken so long for them to make that turn. Like... Ten years. Ten years or more. Even longer. Yeah. Even longer.

It's probably closer to 15 years. Steve Jobs was saying absolutely not to touch screen laptops when he was alive. And he passed away in, what, 2011? In 2009 or 2010 when they launched the iPad, right? Yeah. He said, we'll never see this. Yeah. His argument was that like your arm gets tired and it's clumsy trying to use this touch.

And like that is true. If touch is the only way that you interact with, it. But guess what? You also have a keyboard and a track pad in front of it. So, like, that's why I'm saying, like, touch is like this third level of interaction. It's not your primary way of using it. But we did see Apple, you know, Steve Jobs also said that they would never do a stylist because it would be like, you know, filing down your fingers or something like that. And lo and behold, the Apple Pencil came out and the Apple Pencil is really good and stuff like that. So, like, yes, Apple's done this. Like, we will say it's bad or deny it until it happens.

And then when we do it, it's the best thing ever. It's just what's interesting is how long the Mac has gone without a touch screen and how they've done these kind of like half steps like the touchbar that didn't really work or take off instead instead of just doing the thing that everybody wanted was just put a touchscreen on it. All right. We've got to talk about the micro. We've talked about the many LEDs. We've talked about the O LEDs. I called them O LEDs. Yeah, that's right. We've talked about the touch screens. We've got to talk about the micro LEDs because those are only, the rumor is that's only for the watch, right, Dan? Walk me through it. All cost threat.

Yeah. So here's another report from Mark Urban at Bloomberg. But this one is backed up by some other reporting that we, that Apple is working on micro LED screens, which you've been talking about for a few minutes. The report is that like the Apple is designing its own displays that it would then work with manufacturers to build as opposed to buying already designed displays off the shelf and integrating them in its products. And that it will start with making these micro LED screens for the Apple Watch, which is currently using OLED screens and has since launch. And so this would be like kind of the first major screen technology shift for the Apple Watch.

And that is, it's also rumored around the timeline of 24 or 25. So we're a little bit ways out. And then once it's in the Apple Watch, maybe it would be in a high-end version, like whatever the version of the Ultra is at that year, it would show up in there. So it's a little bit lower yield or smaller number of devices out there. And then as Apple figures out the manufacturing and is able to bring the cost down, stuff like that, it would trickled out to the phones and then the tablets, and then eventually probably the laptops and the desktop displays.

So it's like their next level of display technology. And I think as we've just discussed, we can find a really great argument for micro LED in a TV, in a desktop display, in a laptop display. But once you get down to a smaller handheld-sized device, and once you get down to an Apple Watch especially, it's hard for me to see what micro LED brings to that. that technology. Because if you look at the Ultra, the watch Ultra's screen right now, it's bright, it's 2,000 nits,

it's got incredible viewing angles, it's incredibly vibrant and color rich, and it looks like it's painted on the glass already. And all of those things are what Mark Herman is saying micro LED brings, and it's like, we already have that. That was what, so Chris Welch wrote this really, really great explainer

about the micro LED watch. And the two things he was like, so here are the big things that's supposed to do better. It's supposed to have better, like, I guess power control, because it's LEDs instead of OLEDs and they won't burn in, but they'll do basically the same kind of power control, but better somehow. And it'll look like it's painted on the screen.

And I'm just, what does that mean? Well, one of the things I wonder is that maybe the impulses, if this is the screen size that they think they can make first. Also, something that I've heard people talk about with micro-L-D, and we've heard it being talked about to go in virtual reality and augmented reality, headsets, that kind of technology. If you can make the screen a different shape, if you can change maybe the bezel or something like that,

if it gives them some advantages there, maybe that's a reason for them to put it in the watch initially. There's probably things that I'm not aware of or not thinking of that it does bring benefits, but at least as in the report that we have about it, in the article that Mark wrote in Bloomberg, he said it does these things, better color reproduction,

better brightness, and better viewing angles. And I'm like, none of those things are a problem on the watch ultra. Like, nobody's complaining about any of those things. Dan, you've got an Apple watch. Richard, do you also have an Apple watch? No. I do not. I assume.

Yeah. What do you, do you have a smart watch? I have a Fitbit somewhere. Are you free? Yeah, I'm untethered. You're free. Oh my gosh. What's that light?

I don't know how long I've been standing or if I ever did. Yeah. I don't think you, like never. You just set and float with your computers all around you. Yes. Surrounded by screens. News feed on all three of them. Yeah.

But I don't think I've ever looked at my Apple watch and been like, man, that red just doesn't pop the way I wish it did with a micro LED screen. Like I do that with my TV all the time, but not my watch. Here's a optimist take. I'm full of them today. You are just pro Apple today. So if you look at the Apple watches. user interface.

Okay. The design of it is entirely in dark mode. It is designed to take advantage of an OLED screen. All the menus are black. All the backgrounds are black. Many of the watch faces have black backgrounds, so on and so forth. I mean, Apple's been adding more colorful ones over the years, and yes, you can do a light watch face or whatever.

But the interface, that when you jump into menus and stuff like that is all black. And that all of that is stemming from power management on the first Apple watches that came out, and they used OLED screens, and OLED screens consume less power with black backgrounds because they turn on fewer pixels or whatever. Well, they're just not on. Like, those pixels are just off. If micro LED, they're just off. So they're not using as much power.

Yeah. Yeah. Or any power when they're off. If micro LED is able to allow Apple to have the same level of power consumption as the OLED and have more interface flexibility, maybe we'll see a revamp of the Apple Watch's design, a UI design, which we haven't seen in since, basically since it came out. But how does that work? Maybe we'll see a refresh there because this takes.

allows them to do more flexibility with what the interface looks like and what is displayed on the screen without consuming more power. That could be a thing. But how does it make it more flexible? I just don't. Well, like, you could have a white background instead of black. But you're still going to have the same power draw issues you'd have on an OLED. You just wouldn't have to worry about burn in. I mean, not necessarily.

Yeah, because both micro LEDs and OLEDs, the whole idea is that if it's black, that means there's just nothing on. Right. It's completely, those pixels are turned off. So, like, those power draw issues. I don't know. This is one of those things where, one, I'm like, the micro-l-D thing just doesn't make that much sense. It seems like a weird hill for the design wonks at Apple to die on to be like, yes, we're going to pivot so many resources towards a micro-l-D screen, the smallest we can make on our wrist instead of these other places where there's genuine use case, especially, now hold on, especially when e-ink exists and has even less power. draw.

It's not like you're out here. Y'all were like, you thought you were getting away with it. Have you seen E. Inc? I mean, come on, Alex. Gallery 3 is coming. You know what Pebble used E. Inc. Where's Pebble today? A legend. It wasn't E. Inc.'s fault. Pebble's loved. The pessimist take on this is that Apple is doing this transition and move to get away from

having to rely on other companies as much. It can design its own screens and design its own things and design its own margins and etc. And so it's not relying on LG display or Samsung display or Sharp or whoever's making in designing the screens. That is probably what's driving a lot of this. Unless the technology, which we haven't seen, because admittedly, I've never seen a micro LED screen in person. They are only available on like $800,000 TVs that you only get to see if you go to CES and I didn't go to CES. So exactly. The wall. The Samsung wall is really cool. I've seen the Samsung wall. It looks fine. But like we've never seen it on a phone size device. We've never seen

on a watch size device. We've never seen it on a laptop size device. We don't really know how much better it could look in those use cases. So unless like if it turns out that it's not that much different than OLED that we have or the mini LED that we have, then this reads to me more like a business move in that it allows Apple more control over its pipeline and more control over the profit margins and things like that. It's probably the reality is going to land somewhere in the middle, right? It's going to bring some better technology, better user experience and better display technology to the devices that makes using them easier or better or more enjoyable, but it will also help Apple's business case.

We can settle this easily. We can just call our good personal friend, Dane Cook. He's got one of the like three the wall displays that have ever been installed. And we'll sit down and watch some stuff and figure out what is good for. Yeah. Do we have to talk to- Richard, I would watch you hang out with Dane Cook. What would you guys talk about?

You're just on your phone the whole time. Just like, I don't want to talk to you or look at the wall. I'm just here because my boss has told me to come up. All right, we're going to take a break. And when we come back, we're going to talk more rumors. This time, not Apple. We're going to talk about some Samsung rumors. Big event coming up.

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What's going on with Samsung? That was a big claim. You've got a lot to live up to. Your Fleetwood Mac now. Not a rumor. This is actual real news. They are having an event on February 1st. It is the first Samsung event of the year.

And we're expecting to see the next generation of the Galaxy S-line, which would be the S-23. This is a little bit earlier than Samsung usually has an event. Typically, we see it later in February, closer to when MWC happened. Because they do like Mobile World Congress. Yeah, they usually try to beat MWC by like a week or two. And now they're beating it by like a whole month. And it feels like it's coming up really fast after CES for all of us that just kind of slogged through CES. But whatever.

It's happening February 1st. And today, actually, we got rumors that of the first, like, images of the S-23 that we've really seen in terms of renders have leaked. And, you know, they look like phones. What can I say? That sure is there a phone. The thing with the S-23 launch is that, like, this is not like, the area that Samsung really pushes boundaries, right? That happens with the folding phones later in the year.

This is like the mainstream galaxy phones that most people, at least here in the U.S., if you're buying an Android phone, you're probably buying a GalaxyS phone. And this is like when the... These look like iPhones. They look, well, I mean, they look like GalaxyS phones. They really haven't changed their design on these in a couple of years. These photos, the camera modules. Yes.

The camera modules look Samsung-y. But everything else about these. We've also eliminated the camera bump, which would be a change in that, like, it's slightly thinner now. It's not as wobbly when you put it on a table and things like that. But these are slab smartphones. That's still a bump. They're not like breaking the mold here with what this design looks like and stuff like that.

You can expect it to have the latest Qualcomm chip inside of it. That's pretty much a given. It will probably have upgraded cameras. It might have a slightly better, slightly brighter display. It's likely that there will be the S23, the S23 plus, the S23 Ultra, just like the S-22 models that preceded it. And so, you know, there will be the S-23 Ultra would be the top of the line that's probably going to have a stylus and the most cameras and the latest technology and stuff like that. And then the other models will have some features stripped out or just smaller-sized

screens. Can we expect a Sprint exclusive Galaxy S-23 Epic 2-5G with a hardware keyboard? Is that likely? If Sprint still existed, I'm sure you could have. Where's going to be our Army Green one with like the plastic case so that you can check out of your car and it will survive. That's always my favorite, like, variation on the S, the Galaxy S series. Yeah, they haven't done like the active models in a couple of years, I don't think. Those were always like the ones that, like, were super chunky and rugged and could like take a beating, but it's been a while since I've seen one of those release. They should just do that with the regular line. Just make it more rugged. Give me some chunky phones.

Yeah. But the thing that's really throwing me on looking at these renders is the wallpaper on these things just looks ripped straight from Apple a couple of years ago. When they first did the notch and they tried to hide the notch, you know, by doing like all the color but curved on one side, just barely missing the notch, all of these have the exact same wallpaper. Yeah, I mean, I would say that's not a new move for Samsung. When they first launched phones with the whole punch camera, they did the same thing with their wallpapers. They like hit it just like with the way the wallpaper promo wallpaper worked. That's wild. Do you think it is, is this one going to have a notch or is it going to be a hole punch. Oh, it's almost definitely a whole punch based on these rumors,

or based on these images. It's just the most iPhone-looking Samsung device I've seen in a very long time. Like, they usually don't ape Apple to this extent. And this looks real iPhone-y. Well, if you look at the S-22 and the S-21 before it, it kind of had some more distinctive design traits around, especially particularly around the camera. Like, you had that like metal housing that like bent into the metal frame of the phone and stuff like that. And that was kind of pretty distinctive design trait. And now it's like they seem to be removing that. They seem to be going with, it's hard to tell exactly,

but maybe the sides are a little bit more square, which is giving you that iPhone as type of look to the modern iPhones and stuff like that. The back is very plain. It's just three holes. There's no like adornment to it and things like that. I want seven. I don't know. I mean, like obviously we have not seen these things in person.

We are working off of like the very first kind of image leaks that we've seen so far. But yeah, I'm with you that, like, these aren't super exciting. Perhaps they just don't care anymore. Look, you've got how many engineers devoted to making the Galaxy Folds hinge work in the screen not crackets? Just the guy being like, oh, yes. I have a feeling they don't have that much time. Because they saw way more S23s or S1. And also, everyone else's phones look like this too.

So maybe you're not so worried about saying, oh, we're copying Apple. You say, look at a phone. It is what phones look less. For better or worse. Do you think this is going to be the year? Samsung's just like. Like, them's their phones. Here's your phones.

Take them. All right. See you next year. Like, do you think they're going to put a lot of effort into the sunpack? That's not Samsung. No. Yes. Oh, I didn't even mention.

This is their first in-person unpacked event in like three years. I think they're going to go all out. I think they're like the last big speed. I don't remember the last in-person unpacked event I went to myself. But up until the pandemic, they were like doing these like really tech-heavy presentation. Like the super elaborate. Oh, super elaborate. They had like stages with screens underneath the presenters and curved up behind them and all of like orchestral music and everything was like this big production and stuff like that.

And I think they might be really excited to go do that again because they haven't been able to really do that because you don't really get that same impression through a virtual presentation. So we're going to get something besides these phones then, right? Because it's going to be really sad if they're like, look at this incredible stage. And here's the phone. Richard said we don't really care about it and he's correct. Enjoy. There's got to be other cool stuff they're going to have at it. There was some headphone rumors this week, right?

Did I read that right? Well, they released a new feature for the existing Galaxy Buds 2 Pro, which just came out last August. So you can now record 3D audio with them. So that's kind of cool. I don't know. I haven't seen any rumors for headphones, and I haven't seen any rumors for wearables.

Samsung had a really big fall for wearables. They launched the Galaxy Watch. five, they will launch the watch five pro, and they've been pretty well received and pretty popular. So I'd be surprised if we see any wearables that's not typically happen at this time of year event. It's really, they focus on

the S line because the S line is their moneymaker. Okay. And no, no, no, the note's dead, right? No, the S-22 essentially embodied the note last year, and it's pretty reasonable to expect that the S-23 Ultra will embody the note. It'll

have the stylus and the more squared off design that works well with the stylus for running on the screen. Well, it's coming February 1st. You guys get excited. We'll absolutely have,

we'll probably see more rumors. Not far away. Before then, we'll have a big breakdown of it beforehand. It's going to be great. Richard, there's also, there was some news with HBO Max.

There's a bunch of news this week, I feel like, for HBO Max. The Minx, this was something I personally was very excited about. Minks was the show that nobody watched.

Look at your faces. Do you even know what Minks? I watched Minks. I thought they canceled it. They did. They canceled it. HBO... I only heard of it when you said that they canceled it.

You're like, oh, bummer. So, Minks was the show about, like, 70s feminist porno magazine. It was on HBO Max. It got canceled. Stars has now picked it up and is going to be airing the second season because they filmed a whole second season. And then HBO Max was like, no, we don't want to pay for it. Take it. We don't want it.

And so it's going on Stars, which happens to be owned by Legendary, which also produced Minks. but it's like it's good it's kind of good news because we had so many weeks of stuff getting canceled and just disappearing and getting yanked from the service so it's nice to know that some of this stuff is going to find a home I hope I really want to see what happens in that back half of the nevers and meanwhile on HBO max where you're getting less than you used to get you will now be paying more at least on the ad free plan it's getting $1 more expensive effective today if you're a new subscriber I think kicking in like next month if you already subscribed How much more will I have to pay to mooch my father-in-law's cable account that gives me access to HBO Max? Well, you've seen it with Netflix. It starts with price hikes all the time.

And then suddenly they're like, you know what, we're not so into password sharing. Yeah, it's going to be a sad day. So I think you're going to see kind of all the streamers go down the same path. And that's something that Emma Roth wrote about recently why streaming all of these plans is getting more expensive. We know that Netflix has had price hikes every year.

Right. Just about for several years now. Apple TV raised its price a month or two ago. Yep. The price of Disney Plus is going up. Now they're bringing in ad packages. HBO already had the ad package so that you kind of had that option. But they started at $15, essentially, two years ago.

Years ago now, we are almost three years ago. Wow. 2020. Woof. It has been a pandemic. But they had not raised the price. started high at that time. It was a bit more expensive than Netflix and everything else because it was HBO.

But now HBO Max is the primary HBO. And I don't know. I'm not sure how people feel about this. I feel like if you were enjoying paying for HBO Max, you're not necessarily worried about it at a dollar more. But you might miss some of the content that they pulled. And I wonder how it's going to go when they blend together the HBO Max and Discovery apps. And this is just this is just the ad. free version of HBO Max.

Which is, which was historically the same price as what you would pay to subscribe to HBO Max through your cable network, but nobody has cable anymore except for Dan's father-in-law. I hope he never cuts the cord. It's just me. I'm the only person

who still has cable. Those people are still going to be paying $15 a month. The rest of us are going to be paying $16 a month. Yeah. And so everybody going to get cable. That's the trick. This is not. the price hike that causes people to cancel. Yeah.

But it is just telling of like where this is going. So like then like in a couple of years, it eventually will be another $2 price hike or whatever. They're going to get to that $20 price point where Netflix is already at for its 4K plan. And then you combine that with they are removing things. They're removing old shows. They are removing canceling new shows and stuff like that. And now it's just like, I don't know, it ain't great. I mean, you know, if if my best friend.

and David Zazlov was here with us today. He would say, well, look, we added fixer-upper. We added some other TLC shows that only my mom and my sister watch. I love you both, but you have trash taste and TV and film, and you're not listening to this because you have trash taste. So you're not even listening to the best show on podcast networks ever. Rude. But, like, they have added stuff.

They've pulled a lot out. They pulled a lot out that most of us considered kind of core HBO stuff, really high quality cartoons, really high quality TV shows. They pulled that Westworld, I think is probably the most notable example of a show that just got like, just gone.

Like, oh, you didn't catch up on season four? I was shocked. Like, I knew that they had pulled it, but when I actually went to HBO Max and I searched for it and it wasn't there, I didn't even know how to feel. Yeah, you're just like... I mean, honestly, though.

And I haven't watched since the first season, so it was a vestige. I mean, I think that was in the interest of, public health to remove Westworld. So nobody fell down that rabbit hole of watching Westworld. Like, this is the only reason Nelai is. That's actually probably what Nelai is doing.

He found some old copies of Westworld. Somebody sent him some. That's where he is right now, furiously watching that season four. He's the only one. It was just him. And David Zazlov, who then said, absolutely not kill it, kick it off the network. But, yeah, I'm like, I think Zazlov would say we're adding a bunch of content. we're going to be adding more with this new product that they haven't,

that may be called Max, just simply Max, which is a terrible name, great name for a kid, terrible name for a streaming network. And my question is, are they going to increase the price again? Are we going to see Max roll out in six months and then have to pay even more money? No, I don't think they'll increase in in six months. When they roll out Max, they'll keep the price the same. And they will say, and that's why they raise, it now. Like, that's the reason for it. Yeah, they raise it now. So, so they, they will be able to keep it the same. And then a year later, or whatever, then you'll get the price hike for that. And then it's just like a frog in boiling water. It's, they just keep little turning up the heat over time. And then you just keep paying it until you realize, like, wait a minute, Netflix isn't worth $20 a month. And you cancel it like I did.

I mean, I still pay for all of them. I have no money for anything. Someone helped me figure out how to buy. budget. Can't pay my rent, but I can pay for HBO Max. But I won't pay for Max. I told you about cryptocurrency. Richard, Richard, no. I can't lose any more money to you, sir. I have to, I have to have a retirement at some point. We live in your house. I guess the other kind of news for me that was really surprising this week was John Deere saying, we're going to allow you to repair tractors, which is a big moment for right to repair advocates. I mean, nobody here has a tractor to my knowledge. Unclear. Dan, do you have a tractor?

No. Richard lost his tractor in the cryptocurrency. It was unfortunate. I took some losses on Ethereum. I mean, to be fair, these, these, we're talking about like, tractors. Commercial level tractors. No, no, no.

We're talking about, stuff like that. No, there's, you got to move that hay. You got to, you got to feed the cows. Not that far from where I live. They have a John Deere, like, facility where you can see these huge tractors and combines driving around on the streets. all the time. It's, it's amazing. Like, seeing them in person is really all inspiring. It's just like, I can't believe something is that big. They're fun to sit in. So isn't there a huge catch

with this John Deere News, though? Yes. It's been kind of a flashpoint over the last few years in the right to repair thing because farmers have a lot of kind of cultural cachet, political, economic importance, you know, to everything that we do. And they've been saying that we have a problem. The trucks, the tractors and all of this farm equipment is getting more technology based. They have to repair things on the farm. They're not near some like, they can't go to the Apple store when their tractor breaks down. Right. If they want to fix a part, if they need to make, if they need to tweak something because it's not working for what they're doing, they want to be able to do it. They want to be able to get in there. Some of these people who are on farms have computer experience are, you know, kind of hacking them and doing their own thing, making them run doom if they want to. Yeah. And John Deere doesn't like that. or hasn't like that and it's pushed back. But now, yes, with this agreement, they sort of said that farmers should be able to repair their own tractors. But there are some loopholes that kind of allow them to get out of this deal if they want to. So it's not.

Because it wasn't with the government. It's with this agreement isn't with the government. It's just with like a group of, it's like an organized group of very passionate farmers. Also, if you call those organized groups where they all collectively come together to make bargaining agreements and stuff, a union. don't. Doesn't go well. I did it one time. Do not recommend. But this was with the, what, the American. American Farm Bureau Federation. Yeah, the American Farm Bureau of Federation, not a federal organization, just a group closely tied with the federal government, closely tied with farmers, technically an independent group, as far as I know. And they just, the agreement was, yeah, we agree to let you do it up into a point. And also, we reserve a the right to rescind it at any point if any right to repair law at the state or federal level comes out that we don't like. Yeah. So basically, do it our way or else. They've turned this group

into an ally for them and an enemy against people trying to pass these right to repair laws, potentially. And you might remember New York just passed a right to repair law the end of this year, which is like pretty groundbreaking and was a new level for it. However, at the last minute, just before it went live, there was a huge change to it. that, you know, it doesn't apply to farm equipment and it doesn't kind of apply to the things that people want from John... Phones. So that already is on the books, but I guess John Deere's happy with that one.

And I guess if one came out where it did apply to their equipment, then they would say, all right, well, we're out of this agreement now. It gives me the wiggies. But I mean, if it's a law, they're forced to comply. So like, whatever. Right. Like, if a law comes out, they have to comply, right? But right now they basically are pitting, they're basically saying, okay, farmers,

You can either put your weight behind this law and get your little fancy right to repair laws that you think will solve everything past, or you can join with us and we'll let you do most of what you want without having to worry about laws, without having to worry about going and writing your congressman. That's so boring. Just work with us. Like it's a very seductive routine going on here. Not a romantically seductive. Just seductive. I don't trust them. No.

Don't trust them. always makes me think of like how 1930s people were getting very, I'm going back in time, y'all, I'm sorry. 1930s people were getting super upset about film. They felt there was too much titillation in film. They felt too much was happening. So they said, we're going to start passing a bunch of censorship laws to censor how films and TV are being made.

Or TV didn't exist. How films are being made. And all of the film companies got together and said, no, we're going to figure our own thing out with absolutely no oversight from the government. Theoretically, good thing. That then created the Hayes Code. which was made by like this guy who was like a preacher and had very strong feelings. And a lot of them were really racist and sexist and homophobic.

And then they made the MPAA, which has continued and perpetuated a lot of that racist and sexist, homophobic stuff when like maybe just some little regulation of like, hey, if it's got certain titillating things going on, maybe reconsider having kids go and see that without permission from their parents. Similar thing happened with music too. I don't know. Maybe am I calling for more regulation? I feel like I'm calling for censorship and regulation.

Ever politically. It's the industry trying to come up with to a self-regulation to prevent government interference, for sure, because government interference might do things that they don't agree or like. And sometimes it's been effective and sometimes it works. I don't know how effective parental advisory stickers were when I was a kid because that just made me want to buy it more. But, you know. When you see that M on there, you're like, I need that. Am I allowed to have it?

I don't care. That's the one I want. I just murdered so many people. Now I have nightmares. But all right. We're going to take a break for a second. It got really dark. I know it got really dark.

Somebody said something funny, quick. No, no funny. All right. Okay, I love those mature rated games, but we should probably move on. So we're going to take a break. And when we come back, we're going to have a lightning round. Some really fun gadgets this week. Did I select all the gadgets this week?

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was somebody over last week sent me a video of a guy wearing glasses that had e-ink built into it and I got so mad, I was furious. And then Sheena today saw the exact same video in her own work throughout the day and was like, I have to blog about this. The exact same amount of fury I had

and it was a beautiful, beautiful moment. So thank you, Sheena for that. But these things are called, hold on, this is from a startup called Soul Reader. They're claiming it's going to be about $350. They're working with Palmer Lucky who made the, who founded Oculus and then went off to do a bunch of like, he's like in satellites now or something, right? Like he's in government surveillance. Yeah, he's building like weapons and surveillance systems and stuff.

But I guess he took a break from building weapons and surveillance systems to work with this company called Soul Reader on these $350. E-ink glasses. They're just a hands-free display, but instead of like a color display in there, it's E-ink. Totally opaque E-ink. Okay.

I don't understand why it exists, but I'm really like, part of me is delighted by it because I want new uses of E-ink, but the other part of me is horrified by it because who needs this? Does this delight you as much as BMW's car that's covered in E-ink panels?

No, because that's cool. I want a car that has. color chaining panels on it. I want to go through a tunnel and come out the other side and be like, ah, I'm a whole new person. It's red now. That's neat. This is like, I want to put some glasses on and I guess just hang out and read that way.

I think there's probably definitely a use case for people who don't have as much mobility, but I'm still a little confused by their existence. As a person who spent an ungodly amount of money to buy an item in a video game that doesn't make me any better at the game and then bought a version of that in real life, to represent the useless item in the game that is also useless in real life. I think the problem with this is that it's a little too useful. It's too close to being useful. Like you said, there are kind of use cases for it, but still, it's glasses that you

would put on to read something, and you'd pay $350 for that experience. And then the only thing you would be able to do is read something. Right. First of all, words are evil and bad, and the written words shouldn't exist. Second. Rich, Rich, do you know what your job is? My dude.

Do you know what we do here? Look. What you do, Richard does something very different. The way I do it. Just with such utter hate and distaste for each word that comes out of the keyboard. Every day. Just mercilessly killing all that copy.

Regretfully. But I certainly wouldn't want just the written word. to be my entire experience and interaction with the world. It just, I just can't do it. And I can see how it's useful. I think that's the problem is that it's too close to being something that's useful. If it were completely useless, I'd be into it. Yeah.

Do you guys remember a few years ago there was a trend of gadgets that were like visors that you put on that were like video screens and they had headphones attached them? Yes. And it was supposed to be like this like personal theater experience. I think Dieter had reviewed one. They're still getting promoted on YouTube. Like people still see them. That's like what this is, except for reading.

It's an Instagram commercial. You can read all of your spot. I have never seen anyone outside of CES. See, it was that last word that you said. I was into it until you said reading. If it did video, Richard might be into it. But otherwise, nope. All right, Richard, what's your gadget of the week?

What's got you excited? Chris Person brought the pine seal into everyone's life. He did. People got excited. at the verge about this. I don't fully understand what it is. And again, that is the key to making it interesting. It's $25.

It plugs into USB. I don't know what it does, but I want one. I need it right now. Richard read the first line of the article and they just stopped because words bad. So he doesn't know what it does, but it got his $25. He's got four of them now. I'm just saying it's a better way to live. So the pine cell is a soldering iron.

and you can dial in the heat you want. And it doesn't, usually you have to like plug a soldering iron in and it's got a big gul cable and all this stuff. And it can be kind of annoying and awkward. And it takes a while to heat up. And you will burn the crap out of yourself repeatedly. And Chris guarantees you will burn yourself less with this. Chris doesn't know how bad I am at soldering.

So, yeah, this is powered by USBC, which is kind of like very convenient. You can run it off a wall war or you can run it off a USBC battery, according to Chris in the article. But the key thing here is this is like $25 and it heats up super quickly and then cools down really quickly. So maybe you'll burn yourself less with this one because it cools down so quickly. And it's just not as like ganky and bulky as like the old school soldering irons that have not really changed in 50 years. It's $25 and it's translucent. I'm in.

I'll pick two. People and it was wild was like everybody in chat here at the verge when he dropped this thing. He was like, does anybody know what the pine cell is? Like two people knew. And we're like, yes, I love it. And everybody else was like, no, I need it. Like, just reflexively. It was like, it was like the sharper image catalog.

You just opened it. And everybody's like, I want it right now. Like so, and then a lot of readers, our readers seem to really, really like it too. Apparently, it's better for the tips. Don't melt. Like, don't get all messy and gross as often. So very exciting. If you're in need of a soldering iron.

Yeah, and it's easy to replace the tips and stuff like that. This pine cell has a terrible name. And it's also open source. I don't know what an... He's explained it to me multiple times what an open source soldering iron is and I still don't understand and I'm okay with it.

I'm like Richard right now. No, actually... If you get the pine sill, you can go build your plupy. I've got to. You don't need to bring up the fact that my plupie's been sitting in a Ziplock bag for six months.

I was sanding. You just need a pine sill and then you can build your ploopy. I know. I just need the pine sill to finish. Yeah, it's going to be great. Okay, Dan, what's your gadget of the week? Is it this week?

you're going to be cheating and say something from CES? I'm going to cheat and say something from CES. I knew. But the reason I'm saying this is because this was actually our best, like, smart home gadget that we saw at CES. And that article didn't come out until after last week's Vurchast episode. So this is the Akara presence sensor is like my gadget of the week. I'm super excited for this thing.

And I know Jen is really excited about it. Basically, this is a device that can detect. It uses millimeter wave technology, not like millimeter wave 5G, but it emits millimeter waves from it. And it can detect a person in a room or space really accurately and really down to like minute movement. So it knows that you're breathing. And what it can do then is you can say like, if I'm in this room, don't turn off

the lights, which is like a problem with motion sensors and smart homes is that like when you have, it's really great for motion scissors to turn on lights when you're coming to a room. But then if you don't have your automation set up properly or they don't detect motion, say you're reading a book or you're watching a movie or whatever it is and you're not moving enough for the current ones to see you, they will turn the lights off after whatever time you set. So this solves that problem. So now I can not have my lights turn off in the middle of the day in my office when I'm

sitting there just typing at my computer or, you know, eating dinner in the dining room and things like that. So I'm really excited with this came out in China. a year or so ago. They've got a new version that's coming to the U.S. that's a little bit smaller, a little bit more compact

and I'm pretty excited about it. Is it going to support Matter? Yeah. So the way that Akara supports Matter is through its hubs. So hubs. The hub is going to be updated. And then, yeah,

the hub, I believe the M2 hub is going to be the first one that's going to get their software update to support Matter. And then all the devices that connect to that hub, which use Zigby, will be available. to other Matter devices.

I would say that like with Akara, matters not that big of a deal because Akara itself already supports all of the major smart home platforms. You can integrate into HomeKit. It supports Google Assistant. It supports Amazon's. It supports smart things out of the box.

So maybe Matter will open that up to even other or future smart home platforms that we don't know about yet. But for now, at least, matters not going to change much for your car experience. But they're getting it. So good.

Cool. Would you be? able to, like, use it, because you said it can detect breathing, would you be able to use it and, like, pointed it at somebody and be like, are they dead? Flash the lights in the house if they stop breathing. In theory? Like, new sleep

apnea detector. Like, I've seen some testing. There's been some folks on YouTube who have purchased the Chinese version and, like, just imported it where they were and have tested it. And, like, the level that you can set it to, like, detect motion is so

finite. Like, and you can set zones of like, okay, beyond 10 feet, don't ignore anything. And that like, it's like there's almost like a virtual wall right at 10 feet where it just stops detecting. Oh, that's cool. Anything beyond that. And as soon as you break that barrier, uh, it can detect you or seize motion, which is just wild. It's really cool. That's very, very cool. Okay, never mind. That sounds fun. That's, that's not cheating. I'm going to cheat, though, again, and I'm going to add one more because there's an air conditioner, Jen saw at CES, that she did not. mention in our excellent CES episode that went up this week. And it's an air conditioner with an

LED screen on it. It's a mini split AC unit with a digital photo frame. 27 inches. Made for it by LG. It uses the Think Q app. It appears to just be one of the 27 inch ultra wide monitors slapped on the front. That's what it looks like. of this air conditioner in like a big, like, garish frame. I've never been more delighted by something. I like what they're trying to do here. Yeah. Like because those mini split ACs are not attractive.

And when you have them in your home to be effective, they basically have to be in almost every room. Right. So you've got a bunch of them and you've got to cut hole in the wall and install them and stuff like that. And they're not pretty to look at. So this is like an attempt to kind of mask it with technology and design. and like they get a little way there.

It looks better than a non-mini split, I think. And maybe it's supposed to be like, maybe someone isn't going to notice that there's an air conditioner up there behind it. I don't know. They'll just be like, why do you have this 27-inch digital picture frame with some water in it on your walls?

Mounted high up on the wall. Like, yeah, why is it like all the way up there? Like up at the ceiling. Why is it pointed towards your fan? What's happening here? It's so good. Mini splits are very good for efficiency, though. So, like, they do have lots of benefits.

MiniSports are great. Design is not one of them. I just love, like, so many ways they could have gone about, they could put some wood paneling on there. They could have put, like, some, I don't know, some leaves or something about it. And said they were like, because everybody has just leaves randomly hanging in their home.

Instead, they're like, we're going to put a picture frame on it. A 27-inch monitor, just slap it on there. Yeah, well, now they can sell you an art subscription. Oh, there we go. To display on the screen. so that it's got recurring revenue. There you go. You got to think about the business here, Alex.

I'm so sorry, I forgot. Yeah, there's no pricing on it. There's no release date. So if you were looking for a new mini split and this sounds incredible to you, I'm sorry. You're probably going to have to wait a little while. This might not ever appear.

But you could just do this with your current mini split. Just go buy a 27-inch monitor and deck tape it up there, right? Yeah, you know, bolt a vase amount to it. And guys, that is it for the verge cast this week. We will be back next week. Next Wednesday, we've got a great episode. Monica is coming on to talk about laptops and a lot of the stuff she saw at CES. Victoria Song is going to be there and talk about all sorts of weird FDA regulatory, weird wonkiness that is happening that kind of started to come out of CES.

And then we'll be back for the regular Friday show next week. It's going to be super fun. And you can reach us all on Twitter or if you want to hit up Richard, you can go buy some FTX coins from him. He's still selling some. He would love to sell them to you. Some rich coins.

I got them. Some rich coins. You can also reach Richard on Twitter at RJCC. Dan is D.C. I am Alex H. Kranz. Can I just claw fry? If you can find me on Twitter, I don't really use Twitter anymore.

You can also find me on Mastodon. I'm going to be the Rogue One using Masadon. But if you go to my Twitter account that Alex just mentioned, there's a link to my Massadon where I actually post. All right. So go to his Twitter account and then go to his Macedon account and then buy some cryptocurrency from Richard.

Eli is so sorry he missed this week's episode. That's it. I'm not going to say rock and roll. Instead, Andrew, shut up, Siri. Sirius saying it for you. Instead, Andrew, play us some rumors. Hey, Siri, play rumors by Fleetwood Mac. Oh, it didn't work. I'm shocked that Siri didn't work.

All right, that's it. That's it. We'll see you next week. Rock and roll. And that's a wrap for Vergecast this week. Thanks for listening. If you enjoy the show, subscribe in the podcast app of your choice, or tell a friend. You can send us feedback at Vergecast at theverge.com. This show is produced by me, Liam James, and our senior audio director, Andrew Marino.

This episode was edited and mixed by Amanda Rose Smith. Our editorial director is Brooke Minters, and our executive producer is Eleanor Donovan. The Vergecast is a production of The Verge and Box Media Podcast Network. And that's it. We'll see you next week.