The Vergecast - Apple unveils credit card, streaming plans, and more

Episode Date: March 27, 2019

Apple's event this week introduced Apple TV Plus, Apple News Plus, Apple Card, Apple Arcade, and more channels on Apple TV. The Verge's Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, Chris Welch, and Paul Miller run through the event, their new services, and how it will compete with current products in the market.  Stories discussed this week: Apple Event 2019: TV plus shows, News, Oprah and biggest …Apple's TV efforts: an abridged history over the yearsApple News Plus: price, release date and how to sign upApple launches $9.99 Apple News PlusThe Apple Card is a perfect example of Apple's post-iPhone strategy …Apple announces Apple Card credit cardApple Card: Apple's thinnest and lightest status symbol everApple Arcade has game developers excited, but questions remain …Apple Arcade is a new game subscription for iOS, Mac, and Apple TV All the shows coming to Apple's TV streaming serviceApple's revamped TV app is coming to Roku and Fire TVMacbook Air (2019) reviewI rode with Nissan’s AR and 5G-powered virtual passengersNintendo plans two new Switch models for this year: WSJ  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week on the Vergecast, we go through all the news from Apple's big showtime events, the news service, the TV service, the game service, the service, the service, the service, the service service, and at the very end, we talk a little bit about the Nintendo Switch. That's Vergecast. Hello, and welcome to Vergecast, the flagship podcast of the Vox Media Network, which I'm going to just keep saying until someone makes me stop. I am your friend, Neelai. Dieter Bone is here. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Paul Miller is here. Hello. We got a special guest. Chris Welch is joining us.

How are you doing, Chris? Doing all right. Thank you. is the Virg's secret weapon for all things, streaming services, which is what we have to talk about. Yeah. Because Apple announced like a bunch of them.

They announced something. They announced something. It's very confusing. But, Deere, you were there. I was. I'm going to just going to make an admission. I chose not to go. I'm in Miami this week with Danny Deal, our reporter.

There's a music conference here presenting. So I didn't want to fly back and forth. So we sent Deeter and Nick, you were there. I'm going to just be very honest. I kind of feel okay that I didn't go. Wow. Wow. I just like, there's, you know that moment like right before it starts and I was like,

oh shit, I should have been there. And then by the end of it, I was like, yeah, I made the right choice. How does that make you feel when Neely says things like that? But Deeter lives there. Yeah. If it was in New York and Deeter didn't come, it would be different. Look, I'm the most easily ignored man in all the tech reporting, Paul. Anyway, so you and Nick were there.

We were there. I made a video about the experience of this event. You should watch it. I have a show called processor on YouTube. I'm going to plug it. real hard right now, because I think it's good video. It was weird. It was a weird, weird, weird event. And we all knew it would be something because Apple had announced all the hardware the

week before. But yeah, it was super strange. There was potentially, like, a rule that you weren't supposed to have telephoto lenses that everybody ignored. Like, Josh Gad, sitting in the audience for some reason, although he never got on stage. And then they just ran through the stuff that we all expected him to run through. and then this is going to be way out of order, but, and I don't want to just recapitulate the stuff I've already said,

because you can see it on the website and on YouTube. But when they started putting the celebrities on stage at the end, they did it by like making the entire theater black, and then somebody walked out on stage in darkness, and then they brought up the lights so you'd have this mode of, oh, my God, it's so-and-so. It started with, I think, Steven Spielberg, and you're like, oh, cool. Oh, that's right.

He did amazing stories. Okay, he's talking about how amazing stories are great. I want to see me a trailer right now. This is going to be amazing. And instead, he just talked about how great it would be if this show existed. And I was like, okay, fair, whatever. They'll do the next one. And then it was just that, like 15 times in a row.

And then they're like, we care what the customers buy? I was like, what? And there was no pricing for anything announced, except Apple News. But we'll get into that. Release dates are still pretty hazy. They're just like off in the distance in the fall. Just an odd event. Deere, your video is like, why did they do it?

Yeah. I don't know. I just don't know. That is a good question. I mean, why not wait until fall? Do they not want to share iPhone time with these services? Or like, now they're going to have to come back to all the stuff in the fall and talk about pricing and are these going to be two separate events?

The fall is going to be pretty weird. That's what it comes down to. God, are they going to do a whole other event to launch this stuff separate from the iPhone? because they don't want to crowd out the iPhone? Right. That would be crazy. If you will recall several weeks ago on the podcast, I said in regards to Apple TV that they should shit or get off the pot.

And so they shit. Wow. Actually, I have, man, I have so many thoughts about how the TV stuff goes. I don't even know where we should start. Let's start with Apple News because we can just get through it. Okay. Right? Apple News is an app that exists on your phone already.

you have an iPhone. They added a new thing called Apple News Plus where you can pay $10 a month and you get a bunch of paywalled stuff. The parameters of the paywall stuff are very confusing. So you can actually get the entire Wall Street Journal, but it's very hard. What do you mean it's very hard? Because in the early minutes after this event, it was like, all right, it's not the whole journal, it's some of the journal. Okay, well, it's some of the journal, but we don't know which parts. Okay, it's a whole journal, but only for a couple of days. Wait, no, it's, yeah, it's a whole journal, whatever. And, like, it just kept changing.

Okay, so, like, famously, the New York Times and The Washington Post did not sign up for this bundle, right? So if you're the Wall Street Journal, you're like, most of our subscribers are business people, expense accounts, rich people. We can go take that spot of, like, the national newspaper in this app because the Times and the Post aren't there. We'll, like, promote in the app our, like, politics and lifestyle and national news coverage. and we'll just not promote the business stuff that people pay for.

So that's the strategy. Okay. So it's the whole journal, but the stuff that you will see is the stuff they want you to see, and you have to go dig for the other stuff, and it's somewhat hard to dig. Great. Then there's magazine issues, and that is like literally issues. A weird phenomenon this week in media Twitter is people who work at magazines tweeting that you should just subscribe their magazine instead of buying Apple News Plus,

which is crazy. It applied to the news thing too. So our sister site, Vox Media, has a thing. They're going to be in it. TechCrunch has a section in there. And Josh Constantine, TechCrunch, published a very long editorial saying Apple News sucks. I'm really worried that my publication is in there. Yep.

It's like the editor of New Yorker.com was like, you should subscribe to the New Yorker because then you'll get all the stuff we published every day and not just like issues of the New Yorker, which is what you get. And then the issues are magazine issues. About half of them have been like reworked in the new Apple News format, which is not HTML. It's like a custom markup. And then the other half, I swear to God, are fancy PDFs. And the fancy PDFs are not DRM.

So if you use Apple News on a Mac, you can just get the PDFs out of the app, which I'm all in support of no DRM. It's just super funny. In terms of the, like if you're on an iPhone, the Apple News formatted, magazines look better, but if you're on an iPad, the Apple do's formatted magazines look worse. If you are on an iPad, the PDFs look better. But if you're on an iPhone, obviously, the PDFs are like, blah. And you don't know what you're going to get when you tap on a thing. Yeah.

So there's just like, it's messy. Will they fix it? Maybe. Right. In the way that Apple bought beats and the first version of Apple music was like warmed over beats and then they like slowly fixed it. They bought a company called texture. this is obviously warmed over texture.

Will they fix it? One hope so. But as a $10 a month service, it is so uneven that I'm not sure anybody should pay for it at this moment. And the economics on the news industry, which are extremely boring but extremely contentious,

are such that the people who work at the publications that are participating in this are kind of like, don't do it. So there's a lot of pressure there. It also just feels so old in the sense of like, like what media is now is sort of a multisensory experience where you have some niche YouTuber, you've got some podcasters who help explain the things. You've got like a few different large publications that you go to for news and then you also have some small publications that you go, you know, like that's how you. You'll have sent influencers because it is multi-sensory. A lot of scent influence.

You kind of have to build your own picture of reality from a lot of sources. And so going in like even the fact that, you know, it's just the Wall Street Journal as like that, I don't know, it just seems so weird and small and old to me. Yeah. I think there's a, there's a value. You know, Apple made a big point. They put it the side for all their things. Like it's human curated. They want you to be able to trust it because they're putting effort into making sure it's trustworthy.

They are not tracking you. They're not doing crazy targeted. ads. It's Apple News is fast when you're not downloading PDFs. Um, like there's some value, there's some great user experience value there. But the, the back end of it, which is, did you build super flipboard? Like, you definitely built super flipboard. Well, speaking of the user experience, I don't know where Walt landed on this, but Walt was running some great experiments the other day where he would tweet out a mysterious Apple News link and like, what happens when I do this? And so everybody would click on it and then tell them what happened.

And so I clicked on the first one and nothing happened. It was just this page and told you that Apple News exists, but have no way to find the actual permalink to the actual story. And then the next one, I got lucky and I did get forwarded to an actual news story. What if the lesson here is that Google AMP is good? Yeah. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that. Apple just has to be better than AMP.

What is their stance on being better than AMP, have they said anything? No. Yeah. I mean, just from what I know, the Apple News format, it is at once, like, easy to use, and it also easy to be used disastrously. It's weird. Like, a pitch to a website or a magazine, recode your entire thing out of HTML into our weird custom format,

so we can take a 50% cut of $10 a month that we'd calculate based on engagement. is like if Facebook suggested that, like the industry would burn down. Yeah, like we calculated based on engagement. Oh, and by the way, it's very hard to share these stories on Twitter in an era where the president is on Twitter all the time. Yeah.

Who knows? Is it better than like Facebook virality? Probably. That's a low bar. Is it better than chasing Twitter virality? Yes, that's a low bar. Is it actually better than, like, being a valuable search result in Google? I don't know.

Is it better than building loyalty to a publication in saying, like, come visit our website, come visit our news app. I'm obviously extremely biased, but, like, I would prefer not to be disaggregated by one of the largest companies in the world that we also cover. So, like, Apple has, like, big questions to answer. Like, if Apple has a privacy scandal, and that's the biggest news of the day, and the Wall Street Journal writes about it, are they going to promote that in Apple News? Like, I don't know the answer. And that's like, I think you will see that question as they start to do more and more of these cultural products.

That question's going to get bigger and bigger. So I think that's news. We can, like, set that aside. Teter, you want to do the card next? So the card was on Apple Day, on the day itself, by far. the biggest story of everything that Apple announced. More people cared about the card than TV. More people cared about the card than Apple News.

More people cared about the card than what I think was potentially like the best like put together section of the presentation, the Apple Arcade thing. The card was the thing. And the card seems like at first blush really good. And then on second blush like, nah, it's fine. So here's the deal. Apple partnered with Goldman Sachs and they are making a credit card. And they want you to use it inside.

Apple Pay. And if you use it inside Apple Pay, you get 2% cash back. You get 3% cash back if you use it on Apple products. So there you go. The interest rates somewhere between 13 and 24%, give or take, but they are doing a bunch of stuff that is pretty not necessarily completely unique, but pretty good for credit card stuff. So they won't hike your interest rate if you miss a payment. They won't charge you an annual fee. They won't charge you a late payment fee. They won't charge you international transaction fees. And then they're also doing some clever stuff like, I think Stripe did this first, but they will geotag your location when you buy something. So when you go to your credit card statement, instead of getting like a weird, abstract random code of letters and

trying to guess what it was, they can do a better job of guessing where you actually spent your money. They present you a chart saying if you pay this much, you're going to end up paying this much interest. And if you pay this much, you'll pay this much interest. And then most importantly, I think they are working to make sure that your purchasing information doesn't get shared. And it's a little potentially squishy about what Apple knows and doesn't know and is able to collect and what's only at local on the device and what Goldman Sachs also gets. But Golden Sachs has made a promise not to share that information either. So that's actually like, that's really good because, you know, Target can't find out that you're pregnant because you bought, you know, a thing. True, they can.

What are you talking about? Well, if you buy a bunch of stuff at Target, they know what you bought. Well, not if you use the Apple card because then they won't have shared the information back about who bought this thing. No, but if you buy a bunch of stuff at Target, then Target will just know. Yeah, but if I buy a bunch of stuff at Target and I pay cash, does Target no? No. So this is closer, maybe not all the way, but closer to the anonymity of cash as long as you trust Apple and Goldman Sachs to not reshare the information of what you purchased. Okay, I agree that the not resharing is an improvement.

I do not agree that retailers will not find ways to be scummy. Oh, of course. Yeah, that's like... They will figure it out. Yeah, a lot of that underlies all of this. Like, we didn't mention this for Apple News, but Apple is not sharing any reading or tracking information. Well, they're not sharing any tracking information to advertisers on Apple News.

It's unclear to be here, and later with Arcade, if they're going to be sharing, like, zero information with publications. Like, it's actually useful to know, like, if someone read this article or not that article, or they read halfway through this one and all the way through, the other one. Anyway, we haven't even talked about the best part or the most hilarious part of the card, which is they designed a physical card that is made out of titanium and has nothing on it except in etched apple logo and your name. So there's no, and you know, there's an RFAD chip hidden in there somewhere or so that you can do contactless payment. And then it does appear to have a

mag stripe on the back, which presumably includes the number, which they're like, it doesn't have a number on it, so it's safe. But it's like the mag stripe has the number, you guys. And like, They individually recreate the number and secure codes for online transactions. And there's a whole system for, like, getting a number if you want to buy something so it's not printed on the card and blah, blah, blah, blah. Wait, it doesn't have a number. When you swipe it, it generates a number that then gets authenticated. It's a virtual number. And then you have to authenticate your phone.

Is the MagSripe actually generating a virtual number electronically every time on the card? Or does it just have a number? It just has a number. that number is not actually associated to you, like, anywhere but inside of Apple. Okay. So you can, like, do all this crazy stuff with it. And then it obviously has, like, the EMV stuff. It's like two-factor authentication with a credit card?

Yeah, like, I think the goal is that you will look at your phone a lot. You will off to your phone when that card is used. Yeah. And you only get 1% cashback when you use a physical card instead of two when you use Apple Pay. Right. But I think that their assumption is that you will, like, use the chip more than the swipe, which is a very Apple assumption. Their assumption is also that you will never use the card

and you will make a sad face whenever you don't get to Apple pay with your watch and that will somehow shame retailers no accepting Apple pay, blah, blah, blah, blah. Also, on top of all this, the Apple, the cash comes back to you every day and in a thing that seems like the best, but also really does benefit Apple,

it goes to your Apple Pay cash card, and so that money sits in Apple's banks, a recurring interest until you use it to pay somebody else with Apple Pay, or to like pay down your balance or do whatever you do with it. It is, you know, it's like other cash cards as you get from other payment apps or it's like it's basically cash. You can do whatever you want with it.

But it just happens to be cash that is sitting in like Apple's vaults until you use it instead of like somewhere else. Can you spend the cash that's in the cash app on your credit with your credit card? One assumes. Wait, no, wait, no. You can't spend cash with your credit card. You can pay your credit card with the cash. Or you can use the cash to pay with Apple pay.

See, okay. But this highlights a very important thing. I don't have a credit card. And I've been very curious about credit cards. It's like the least surprising thing. And when I saw this announcement, it was like an irrational desire. Like, I was like, that's it. I'm switching on the next iPhone.

I got to get this credit card. I don't know what it is. Like something about the video and the, I just think there's an antagonistic relationship. that you typically have with any of these companies, and which I have had with credit card companies, and it just didn't feel good, and I just paid them all off and got rid of them. But this one just looks nice.

I feel like I could succeed at this credit card, you know? For once, this is the credit card that was designed for my middling ability to handle having a credit card. Yeah. I can't believe this is the thing that got you. I'm not. I'm not going to switch. I'm being strong, me like, I'm not switching.

This was the most popular thing on the site. I don't want Apple to run my life. It just looked real cool. So I think we should talk about why it was so popular, because I asked, people were telling me, the consensus on the card is that it is like a basically middle of the road card, right? Like there are better cards with better rewards out there. If you are like me and you, like, fly a lot, like, this card can't give you airline

miles. It can't get you into the Delta Lounge. It can't get you into the centur. Like, there are reasons to have all these other cards, right? Um, but Paul, to your point, people don't like their banks. Banking apps are bad. Like Apple saying we're not going to do fees. It's not the point. Blah, blah, blah. Sort of just like, also Goldman Sachs, like, just like throwing that out there on the side. I think people are like, okay, well, this company traditionally has cared about like my, my user experience as a person. These other companies, like, obviously don't. So, like, that's, I think that's the interest. And the card itself looks cool, and everybody likes a cool thing.

I mean, Vlad wrote that story about how it's now their thinnest, smallest status symbol, basically. I mean, you don't really get that from the Apple Pay version of it, which is kind of funny. But you need the actual physical card if you want to have that look. Yeah, and I think people like physical cards. There's, like, a reason when Chase put out the Sapphire Reserve, like, they literally ran out of aluminum. Like, the card was on back order for a while because so many people wanted the aluminum. I want to make it clear my level of hype beastness. I would leave the card at home.

Cards are an old-timey thing, and we don't need this anymore. Well, just like at every other episode of the show, you're like, Bitcoin is the future, and now you're like, I want this Goldman Sachs. It is. I use square. I have a square debit card, and it's a wonderful experience, and I'm having a great time, and I get cash back when I buy a coffee, and I use it to buy Bitcoin, and it's wonderful. and I'm a satisfied customer in when I saw this Apple credit card.

I was like, I could be in debt right now. It would be great. So I think a thing that is super weird about this card is that it does not. It makes sense from one perspective of Apple, which is they want to own like the stack of stuff that you use, right? So they have Apple Pay. It's a good experience to pay with Apple Pay. I like using it on my phone. I think it is every time I try to use it with my watch, like the clerk just stares at me like I'm a space alien.

But it's like fun. It's like a good experience. The next obvious thing to do is to disintermediate Chase or whatever, Bank of America and say, okay, now it's an Apple credit card. And we control the experience of like that money too. And then you make your own currency and it's an Apple currency. Yeah. Yeah. And then you can use it to buy stuff at, you know, the company store like pickaxes and shovels and, you know, dungaroos.

Dungaroos. Dungarees. Dungarees. I mean, it's full-on company town shit. Like at the end of this is like you're mining rare earth metals to put in the phone that you buy from the company store. I feel like this came up before, but I feel like several of these tech companies now, and very clearly Apple, their business model is, let's be like China, but with a twist. And Apple's twist is let's be like China, but we don't track you. Yeah.

Although they, if you sign up for news, the video service, the credit card, the game, like, they know so much about you already. Like, you're spending your time in their ecosystem. They don't have to track you. They're charging you for every minute that you spend winning in a screen. Who cares? Like, what is there left to track? We have a pretty good idea what he's up to. So that's the one view, right?

They're just sort of like integrating the rest of the text. stack. The other view is this is super weird. Like nothing about a credit card sits at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts, right? This is like Apple's conception of it. Nothing about fucking Goldman Sachs is like user friendly and safe, right? Like they're trying. They have the the Marcus thing. Like, sure. But it's literally Apple is like, we're a behemoth. Like this is the thing that makes them a behemoth. Yeah. This is a thing that makes them the corporation. is that they have a credit card with Goldman Sachs. And I think that is just, that's the thing where I was like,

why is everyone so interested in this? And I get it, it's a card, it's pretty, blah, blah. But it is so weird for this company that started as the upstart that had the pirate flag. Like, do you think the Apple Pay team has a pirate flag hanging from the wall? Like, I just don't. Like, do you think the Goldman Sachs team is like, we're at, like, they don't. I am far too mired in debt, too. I get this card.

But, I mean, it seems interesting. I'm not really part of the points in cashback culture that people seem to be super pumped about this. But I'm going to push back this idea that banking apps have gotten bad. I think they've gotten a lot better over the last couple of years. I have Citibank. I have Capital One. So if I have to freeze my card or do any kind of customer service, that's all pretty quick and pretty easy. So I'm not sure like Apple's customer service benefits come through here, but the app looks nice. It's got that cute little slider where you can see how much interest you're going to pay and things like that. So it is very transparent.

But still, I mean, they were saying some things on stage that just weren't true, like the low interest rates. I mean, that's just not accurate. And so, like, there are some parts of the stage show were a little bit deceiving, but there's a lot of excitement about it. And I guess my question is, like, why not bundle in some of their services with a card? Like, if you get her a card, now you'll get one terabyte of ICloud storage. Or does that feel too icky as far as, like, mixing product and a credit card? Did they say ICloud once? They did not.

No. No. Not a single time. Right. And I think this goes to like, how much will this all cost at the end? Because if you buy any one of these services, they should give you more icon storage. They should be like, fine. Well, we already talked about this, I think it was last week.

But if they do an Apple Prime play, right? I mean, it almost feels like they're teeing themselves up for it. Like, we didn't tell you the price because we didn't want to yet unveil our great thing where we bundled it all. And you get all of it for one low yearly fee. So that would be rational. That would be, you know, the thing you would assume any other company would do. I kind of think that maybe Apple won't do it. Maybe there's like, there's a sense in the company like, nope, we're not playing that game.

Like, well, we draw the line there. If somebody signs up for Apple News Plus and Apple Music, they're already paying more than Amazon Prime, right? Per year? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Amazon Prime is like $100 per year.

I think they just raised it to $120. Well, still, I mean, two $10 a month things is more than $120. Amazon's sell there is like you're going to buy more stuff from Amazon, whereas Apple doesn't run a store. I mean, they do, but like the store is full of like $1,000 bobbles. It's not full of like socks and laundry detergent, which, you know, like Amazon cap. Once you sign up for Prime, Amazon's captured you for everything else. So I think the model there's a little bit. Yeah, Amazon Prime is now $12.99 a month.

so it's $155. Okay, let's talk about games real quick, and then we have to dig in on TV. Dieter, tell me about the game thing. So it's called Apple Arcade. We don't know what it costs because they don't want to tell us prices on anything. But it's a subscription service. It's a special section in the Apple Store, and when you subscribe to Apple Arcade Plus, you get access to these games, and you can freely download them to your iPhone, your iPad,

your Apple TV, or your Mac, which is new and exciting. We think they're going to be exclusive. And I don't know if you're going to be able to buy the stuff outside of Apple Arcade. But they've got some big names, at least in iOS world. So developers behind Monument Valley, Florence, Alta's Adventure. They got Will Wright who made SimCity. Like that's a thing. Also Spore.

Also Spore. Man, actually, I talked to somebody who worked on Spore not too long ago, and she was a delight. Anyway, the games look good so far. I mean, we saw more of the games than we saw of the TV previews. And to me, depending on the price, it might be the easiest sort of subscription you can get of everything Apple announced because you can just opt out of the hunt for good games that you can trust that aren't scummy trying to get you to do in-app purchases every 30 seconds. There's a question mark about whether or not it will truly be good for developers because, one, they might be locked into the same. thing. Two, we don't know how much money they're actually going to make. Three, like, it feels nice to just buy something and own it. And this would not be that, you know. But the bottom line is, like,

the app ecosystem, the way that money is working in gaming on iOS and just in mobile in general, is so sort of fundamentally broken and skewed right now and just not working super well that any change is probably a good change. Wait, can I push back on that? How is it? How is it? How is it broken? In-app purchases, people don't actually pay for games. The price of games has dropped very low, and so it's hard to make a living and run a development studio based on your games.

Like, you can do it. There are successes, but it's not like the video game world for PC or console, right? Like, there's no reason it shouldn't be. Like, the phones are powerful enough, the tablets are powerful enough. But you can't, no one has turned into EA on the back of iPhone games. And like, why not? Isn't that kind of the, it's almost like a, like, if you're an indie and you make a small good game and you charge $10 for it.

Yeah. Yeah, you are not going to be as successful as bejewed. Right. Or Candy Crush or whatever. But you can make a living if you make a really good game that is really popular. It's, you know, it's like a proportion thing. Like, yeah, in-app purchased games is like a multi-billion dollar mega industry that is, is, is, I'm guessing in-app purchases on on games now probably dwarfs the film industry.

But but you could, I feel like people can still make games and they can sell them and they can succeed. And also, you know, you have a larger chance of that if you have a larger market. And so maybe people don't ever pay for anything on Android, but you can also, you know, put it on itch.io. You can have it be in the humble bundle. you can put your game on Steam if it's not an exclusive to this Apple arcade service. To be clear, I'm not saying like, oh yes,

this is going to save everything and everything is broken. But I think there's a bunch of stuff that's broken. It's worth trying something new, but there are open questions. How much will they get paid? Is Apple going to pay you by like how long people spend in your game? How will you get into this subscription?

How will you get into Apple arcade? You got to like get approved by Apple. Well, will that mean that like it's harder for the little guy to make good? will be making a successful game turn into do you have a good relationship with Apple's team? Like that's like not the right incentive, right? So there's there's potential problems that this could have down the line in the same way that the App Store itself started as a very simple concept but had these knock on effects that just radically changed economies. And like we don't know how big this is going to be yet because you know for all we know this will just turn into ping.

right yeah i just think that paul that my read on it um i'm just a great piece for us where you like broke out where the money comes from and apple services and it's like all in-app purchases and games those are the top grocers it's like big paid apps like tinder which is the highest grossing app in the app store according to app any which is crazy town and then it's like all in-app purchase games so like apple created this monster where like literally we're like is this gambling like it kind of feels like gambling. Like kids are addicted to gambling now. Like, huh. Like, okay, like they created this monster, but they just sliced 30% off the monster. So, like, that's a huge revenue line for them. And now they're going to, like, sell you the

cure, which is, like, for 12 bucks a month, you can opt out of this scuminess and then at purchases. Okay, that is the other thing. Apple is saying, hey, we see the sort of games that you enjoy playing. We have made a curated select. of possibly exclusive games that nobody's playing right now. You know, like, I'm happy that they are going for it. And, like, you know, that adventure game where you're driving RV through the desert, like, I've been following that game for, like, years. It's beautiful and, and it seems very innovative and interesting.

But, like, you know, how it seems like they're taking creative risk. It's like Netflix, you know. this is the Netflix of iOS games. And, you know, on Netflix, Netflix comes up with a lot of crap that I do not care to watch. And, you know, YouTube, I've talked about this 100 times, YouTube constantly spending my YouTube red money or whatever it's called these days on horrible shows that I definitely don't want to watch. Well, they stop doing that. They're getting out of the Hollywood game. It's like the day before Apple or the day of Apple.

They're like, yeah, we're done making, we're done trying to be, make professionally producing. shows. We're just going to focus on creators. They're like, Apple's got Aquaman. Like, he can never compete. So speaking of things that people don't play often, when's the last time you guys played a game on your Mac? Yeah. Whomp, womp? When's the last time you played a game on the Apple TV? Womp, womp. So does this fix those platforms? I mean, that's a valid question. Like, if you make a game for this, do you have to make a game for the Mac and the Apple TV by default? Like, do you have to be on all four? Or if you make a game for this, do you get the Mac for free because they're going to fix Marsapan at WWBC? And so that's why this is coming out.

in May or fall. Is this one May or fall? This one's fall. So they did announce that these games would be available on all the platforms on the TV, on the Mac, on the phone, on the iPad. And the only way that this works on the Mac is Marzapan, right? Like, there's no other way. Yeah. And like, I don't know, man. Like, you just look at the Marzapan news app and you're like, well, these games are doomed. Yeah. There's no way. Like, how do you solve that problem? How do you solve the problem a game that runs great on an A12 running in Marsapan on like a MacBook without a touch screen. Without a touchscreen.

Like, what is your plan? Most of these games are developed in Unity and Unreal and Unity on Unreal can target the Mac directly. They don't need Marzapan as like a go-between. Like, you know, Marsupan will be a thin wrapper around these games. Most of the code that runs these games is a game engine that is probably, written in C++. So that is designed by necessity to be extremely platform agnostic.

I mean, the only question with the Mac is do any Macs have GPUs that are as strong as an iPhone? Yeah. Yeah, I know the answer. It's no. It's like literally no. I have like the last 2015 Macbook Pro to GPU. It's like hot enough to fry an egg on and the fan runs all the time.

Yeah. Here's what I want. I just want a podcast where Nilai, you sit down with Epic's Tim Sweeney, and you say, Tim Sweeney, thanks for being on the show, Apple Arcade. And then you just stop. And then you just wait for the next 35 minutes while he goes off. Look, Tim is very accessible. He's on Twitter.

He, like, had an entire argument about game store fees in my mentions with, like, a squad of people. Very entertaining. Yeah. Tim, if you want to come on the show, we can talk about anytime you want. But it's fun. It's fun to talk to him on Twitter. Okay, we've got to take a break. I'm going to come back.

Chris, we're going to make you tell us about this TV thing. If you're in your car, pull over while we take this break, listen to the break, but then pull up Andrew Webster's excellent article about Apple Arcade, where he talks to a bunch of developers about their hopes and fears. It's well worth it, and everything good that I said was cribbed off of it. Okay, we're back. I mean, this is like the big one. I'm glad that we saved all the time for it.

Chris, what the hell is this TV plan? So we have three things that now share the Apple TV name, which is very, very straightforward. You've got the Apple TV set top box. And on that, you run the Apple TV app. And on top of that lives the Apple TV Plus streaming service. So, yeah, they've got a lot under one brand. So they started off with the new TV app, which is a bit more personalized.

And now they're doing this thing called TV channels, where you can pay for HBO, CBS, Stars, Showtime. And you can watch those shows inside the TV app without having a lot. hop over to HBO like you would now. And so that's very similar to Amazon's model with Prime Video channels. And so they're doing the same thing. I mean, those are really the only major partners they have. There's epics. But after that, it gets kind of random. So they put up a bunch of cable company logos, PlayStation View, Hulu, Live logos. How is that stuff integrated? So I talked to Hulu, and they said that you can't watch their stuff inside the TV app yet. I mean, there's a page on the Apple website that makes it sound very, very

very much like you can watch Hulu through the TV app, but, but yeah, Hulu told me directly that that's not the plan. So I think for that, for that and like some of the others, like Prime Video, those you're still going to have to bounce out to that app to watch the show. But those shows will be listed inside the TV app as they are now, but it's still going to be some friction and moving around. Yeah. So the interesting thing about channels, so I can't find the source now, but, like, people have said that Amazon actually makes, like, significant amount of money from people subscribing to channels inside Amazon Prime. But they make you bounce, but Apple doesn't make you bounce. But this is like this is potentially like the actual thing that matters in terms of

Apple making money off of of TV is if they can actually get people to use a TV app and they can actually get people to sign up for subscriptions. Like that's the thing. And this is what Peter Kafka was reporting. Like they're going to have their own shows and they're going to, you know, make a new version of the app and there's there's going to be all this stuff. But like fundamentally the like intervention that Apple is making in terms of its TV strategy is you can subscribe to stuff inside the TV app and we'll get a cut of that. Is that a fair assessment, do you think? I think so. It just seems like a very strange way to go about things.

I mean, when you get, when you sign up for Netflix or Hulu, you have all this comfort viewing of older shows and older series that you can always just fall back on if you don't want to watch their latest original. Whereas with Apple, it's just going to be you've got TV Plus, and as far as we know, that's only their own shows. And outside of that, you have to pay for HBO if you want that. So that might be $10, according to rumors, which is less than it costs. But, I mean, that's not a back catalog, really.

I guess that's enough for some folks, but I mean, there's a lot more to just fall back on if you have Netflix or Hulu or Prime Video. And this is very much not that strategy. I'm still like, I don't understand what's going on in this app. So there is right now an Apple TV app where it aggregates a bunch of shows from a bunch of services, including live TV providers like PlayStation View and Sling and whatnot, where you can enter your cable company password and authenticate a bunch of cable company apps. and then it'll just like bounce you around.

So that is still happening. Right. Right. And they put those logos on like you can authenticate to optimum and chart or like whatever. You cannot do Fios, which they announced two years ago, and they still have not delivered. But the idea that you have a cable subscription, this thing basically replaces your cable blocks, TV app, fine. That's still happening. Then there is like we can basically surface content out of Hulu and Amazon Prime video.

And you can see it and you click. on it, and it'll bounce you into that app, and you'll watch it there, which is very confusing. Right. And it still exists. And then there's this new thing where you directly buy HBO inside of this app. You never use HBO Now or HBO Go. And Apple hosts the stream, and so you watch it directly in the app. Right.

Exactly. They were saying it's going to be top tier quality for video and sound. So it's them hosting the streams, and so they're in charge of all that. So that's interesting. I mean, it's kind of curious about, like, what the branding is going to be like. But so that's three user flows inside of one app. I mean, Hym wrote a really great piece where he, like, unveiled the history or, like, reviewed the history of Apple trying to figure out TV and, like, all the different times, like, blah, blah, starting with, you know, Steve Jobs, saying, I've cracked it and then nothing happening. And the whole history seems to be like, next year, it's going to be great.

And then next year comes, like, well, we didn't get the deal. So here's what we got. Try it out. But next year, it'll be great. and then a year passes. I'm like, well, we didn't get the deal. So here's what we got. Try it out.

And we've been having this cycle for five, seven years. And this was supposed to be the moment that they broke the cycle. And I just don't think they did. I think it's yet another moment of, well, we couldn't get all the deals. So here's what we got. It feels like Apple throwing its hands up and saying, this is what we've got. This is who are partnering with. And this is what we're going to go with.

And maybe more people will sign on over time. But yeah. Yeah. And maybe it was too much to expect. But like, think about how different the, you know, the thing that you two are describing is from the clarifying moment of the iTunes store. Music is a mess. People are pirating.

Blah, blah, blah, blah. No one knows how to do any of this stuff. It's very confusing. It's getting really fragmented. But you know what we're doing? Songs cost a buck. Yeah. Have that.

That destroyed the music industry. Just to be clear. Well, there's that. It cratered me. Like, they've only just clawed themselves back from being disaggregated in that way. And, like, my point is, like, whatever happens to music industry repeats and every other. industry and like I think we're seeing that repetition and we're seeing that the TV industry has learned like we don't just want to sell individual shows we want you to subscribe to our bundle

and it's like Netflix isn't in this thing and Reed Hastings is famously like I want you to live in the Netflix app and when you're done watching one Netflix show we're going to suggest another one and you're going to spend all your time here HBO god only knows what's going to happen with HBO now that AT&T owns them and literally all their executives are like flooding out the door. I think it's called HBO E now. Yeah. Oh, God. Tell me. But HBO, like their whole strategy, like ATT bought them and they're like, we need to have more shows. Like, we need to like quadruple the number of shows so people

like spend time here. And Apple's just like, we're going to resell other people's bundle. And having three different, radically different user experiences inside of that app, one that's based on you having a standard cable subscription in authenticating like cable anywhere apps. And then another one that's like, you have an Amazon subscription, but we can just like surface the result

and bounce you out. And a third one that's like, you have spent 10 bucks on HBO here. Like all of that is insane. It's just, I don't know, it feels chaotic. And then you put that on like a Roku, right? Like they're gonna, like,

right? Anthony Wood was at the event. they announced are going to be on Roku. And it's like, do you bounce out from the TV app to the HBO app on Roku? On Roku? What happens if you are in the Apple TV app on Fire TV and you click on an Amazon show? But at least the Fire TV has like a real processor, a GPU, and a user interface. Like the Roku box is like a fucking command line.

Like I've talked to them about it on this show. Like Anthony Wood, why is your interface bad? And he's like, because people don't care. They just want to watch the thing. And they sell boxes for like 20 bucks. Right. Like what is Apple's service going to look like on a $20 rocusty? Yeah, I mean, this does not sound very friendly to the cord cutter folks out there.

I mean, if you pay, let's say $10, let's guess how much it'll cost for TV Plus and all of Apple shows, you get that. And then that's all you have. And so if you want HBO, 10 bucks more, showtime, 10 bucks more. And this just starts to get very, very, very expensive pretty quickly. I also, the list of platforms that Apple is committed to supporting with this extreme confusing app is insane. Right.

Right. So, they have to make a Tysan app for Samsung TVs. They have to make an Android app for Sony TVs. They have to make a WebOS app for LG TVs. They have to make a Roku app. They have to, Vizio runs some crazy HTML5 thing.

They have to do, like, who is the poor person at Apple, like, TV app. Exactly. So there are all those apps. All of these platforms. All those apps.

And there's no actual Android proper app for this thing, which is also pretty interesting. The actual platform that most people in the world have? Right. None of this makes sense. But they're doing it. It's happening. It's here. We're going to get it.

I suspect this is why they didn't release it. Like you get the feeling they need to have some like slow rollout to explain how it works and they're going to do all that stuff. And then all of that is next to, oh, you can. and pay some more money to Apple and Oprah will be there. Right? What is that? Do you have a clear sense of that service?

It sounds like they've got a lot of shows coming. I mean, they've got a lot of star power. It's hard to tell, like, what shows are actually ready. I think there was some report last week that several have actually, they're done, but they didn't really show us much in the way of trailers. There was just that really short, short montage of like 20 seconds worth of just random scenes. And that's all we got. got. So they've got big names. I mean, I'm sure the shows are going to be great, but it just

comes down to like when you get Netflix, you get great shows plus a ton of other stuff. And they're really breaking that up here. So, Chris, compared to all the other services that you cover, where does this one land? Like, how should people think about it? It depends how they price it. And if there's a bundle, I mean, right now if you look at Spotify, you pay for Spotify and you get Hulu for free, which is pretty wild. I mean, so if there's know, like, Apple Music and bundle for this. It just gets a lot more difficult to recommend to somebody to pay your 10 bucks for Apple music and your 10 bucks for Apple video and God knows what else. And plus, they didn't really show like how it actually works inside the TV app. They show like

one slide of it, just the shows there. But, I mean, people just want to sit down and have the app tell them what to watch. And like Apple didn't really go into like how it's going to go about that kind of thing. So there are a lot of unknowns. I think price is the biggest one and how they're going to piece all this together in a way that makes sense because right now, it's not making a lot of sense for a lot of folks. Yeah. I mean, I just keep thinking about the number of times I've talked to Apple about their TV products. And, like, basically the attitude is people love Apple, so they'll buy the Apple TV, of course,

and then we'll just have all the people, and people will have to sign the deals. And that just didn't happen. Like, it just absolutely has not happened. And so now they have to go out. It's amazing to me they haven't made a cheaper Apple TV. Yeah, there's that, too. Yeah. It's amazing to me they haven't just made a TV.

Like, just, if they just did that, enough people will just go, like, Paul's like, I'm going to buy this credit card because it's pretty. Like, imagine they made a TV. Like, people would buy that, and now they have this, like, long term. Like, the problem with making a TV is that you sell it once, right? And so when Apple is just going to make a TV and you're going to plug some cable box into it and maybe rent some TV shows, that TV would sit on your wall. I think the average, like, seven years in the industry.

Like, that's not a great market compared to, like, the iPhone where you're spending $1,000 or a T-Ears or whatever. Well, if your plan is to monetize services over the time, now you should definitely make a TV and, like, charge a subscription fee for the content. Like, that is, that's basically the cable company. To be clear, I'm not into this credit card because it's pretty. Like I said, I'd leave the titanium slab at home. But I like it that the choices that it makes on my behalf, right? and it's not antagonistic against any of my lifestyle. Like there's this, a lot of these services,

you're signing up and you are making a very strong commitment. Like Spotify versus Apple Music, like where are my playlists going to live? Who's going to scrobble my listening behavior? Oh my God. And then all of these different video streaming services are so antagonistic that we're, I mean, we as consumers have greatly benefited from the streaming wars.

And I think we will continue to benefit from the streaming wars in the sense that there are available some very great TV shows. There's like two or three per, you know, depending on your tastes, on each streaming service. And so if you spend $60 a month or more and you have a subscription to each of the big streaming services, you have the best T-Vs. that anybody in the history of the planet has ever had. And now Apple, if they can actually make good shows and you are willing to pay another $10 a month, now you'll have even more of the best TV that anybody's ever had.

But there does come a point where you can't actually subscribe to all of them, that at some point some of them will have to die. And it is clearly, it looks like the way it's being invested in, it's almost a winner-takes-all market. It seems like these companies see that this is a very large pie that can't naturally be split up into a bunch of things because ultimately people want to be able to watch all the TV. They don't want to just choose up front. I will only watch things that are created by one company. You know, people like, that's not how you watch movies.

You don't watch movies. You don't go to the theater. I only go to the theater if Warner Brothers produced it, you know. So I actually avoid the theater when it's in the, DC universe. Just run away from that theater. Well, there you go. You know what I mean?

Like, say with music, like, I don't choose my music based on which label produced it. And so I don't want that to be my streaming experience for the rest of my life. And so there's this antagonism. It makes sense that they have to fight each other tooth and nail because this is such in a valuable market. But I feel like it can't last forever because it's ultimately going to be off-putting to your customers. Yeah.

The comparison on the credit card is really interesting, right? Why are you interested in the credit card? Because it offers you a better user experience that feels like it cares about you more than competitor products that you don't like, right? Well, everybody hates the cable company. Apple's been staring at everybody hating the cable company for how long, and they didn't enter. And so there are a bunch of great alternatives to the cable company that exists now, that are proliferating, that are creating great TV. Netflix, famously this week, Reid Hastings, CEO of Netflix said, we're not a tech company.

We're an entertainment company now. Right? Like this, we just, the distribution is like solved. We make entertainment. We compete in that space. Literally, HBO is owned by AT&T. It's, you cannot be setting up that HBO is owned by AT&T. Again, Nilai, you have to refer to it as HBOE.

HBO 5GE exists. It's so bad. But that is a distribution play, right? AT&T wants to distribute the stuff. So Apple, how do they express that they care for you better? Well, all they really have is, like, a great user experience that you sit down and, like, shows you much of stuff you want to watch and, like, it's easier. And nothing about the current TV app is a great user experience. Nothing about this TV app that they've shown off seems like a great user experience.

That's not fair. It seems pretty okay. Yeah, it seems fine. It seems messier than ever to me. Like, I mean, I use a Roku, so. Yeah. But, like, here's just, like, but one example. If you just watch the video again, none of the shows have text titles below them.

all the titles are baked into the graphics of the show. So just like scanning the list of things is hard. Like that's just a weird decision. Yeah. And I honestly don't think like lots and lots of tiles of stuff is how anybody wants, like, that's not, I don't think that's a future of the TV. But that's like another, that's like Neely smokes weed, like just talks about the future of TV. There's so many questions. I mean, one of mine is like, where does the privacy line land here?

Because on stage I just watched today, they were saying, we will not share, we will not share your personal information with anyone. And so, I mean, what's personal data? I mean, where's that line? What's, I mean, what... So they told me at CES when they did AirPlay on Sony TVs and whatever else, like, they told me that the Samsung, the app on the Samsung TVs, Samsung would not be able to see what you watched on that app, and that the Airplay TVs, the, you know, whatever automated content recognition on those TVs, would not be able to see what you were airplayed?

So then what does Roku get out of, like, having the Apple TV app on its platform if there's no data to be pulled from it? I mean, Roku will take any app from anybody. Like, what does Roku get? They get another app. That's all Roku wants. Yeah, or they get some cash, right? Like, how does Roku make money?

They sell ads, basically. They do channel placements. Like, there's a whole market for all we know, the app on Roku is just Apple TV Plus. It's not this channel thing. It's not this other stuff. It's just where they're going to distribute Oprah. We don't actually know, right?

So, like, maybe it's just another movie store with, some Apple stuff in it and it's not this channel thing. We just don't know the answer. And again, there's just a try to imagine what Apple building a Roku app. Like, Johnny Ive approving the design of a Roku app is insane. I just want to, I mean, it's got a better remote. Pull over again. Pull over again and just close your eyes and imagine Johnny Ive holding a Roku remote.

This is how it should be done. Looking at the headphone jack, having feeling about the fact that there's a headphone jack on it. There's a crackle button on it. Hey guys, I came up with a completely different model. I'm going to revolutionize the TV industry. All right? You ready for it? Rent to own.

You take the entire iTunes library, right? You know, every once in a while and you can't find the actual thing you actually want to watch on a streaming service because they actually have very limited selection of the incredible archive of great films and television throughout history? you go to a service like Amazon or Apple

and you buy it or rent it and it's like $4 to rent and it's $12 to buy. All right? It seems ridiculous to pay $12 to own it and it seems ridiculous to pay $4 to rent it because then you could only watch it one time. But if you rented it and that counted as one check, right?

And if you rent the same thing three times, now you own it. Rent to own. Yeah. Think about it. More predatory practices. I will tell you, actually. I want to own things.

Movies Anywhere has me buying more movies than ever. I used to rent stuff and never bought stuff, but because movies anywhere exists and it's so good, it has me buying more because I know that I'll be able to use it on whatever device I happen to be on. I know it'll work in whatever service I happen to be using for the most part. And if the TV industry would just like look at that and think as hard about it as we imagine Johnny, I've thought about thinking about the Roku remote, I would pay more for TV stuff if I felt like I could own some of that stuff and it wouldn't go away when Netflix loses a deal. Yeah, right to own. Chris, did they say that iTunes movies and TVs, like they showed movie trailers in this ill-fated TV app, right? Yeah, so that's going to be the new home for your TVs and your TV shows.

So I assume there are going to be some changes coming to like the software on the Apple TV and we'll phase out the iTunes app that was there. Or, yeah, so that's where you're going to watch all your owned content and your rented content now as well. I cannot wait to try this app. But I don't know if that's just on the Apple TV device or is that also on your iPhone or who knows. Who knows? The story of Apple Showtime event. There are a lot of questions and there's a lot riding on the fall. All right.

We're going to take a break and we're going to come back. We're going to get through the rest of the stuff. We're going over here. Paul, every week, my dude, what happens? It's called Invisible to Visible, which, it's weird. A lot of people think I came up with the name for this segment that I do every week. It's actually a Nissan thing. I'm ripping off Nissan's incredible branding.

By the way, the abbreviation for Invisible to Visible is I-2V. And I-2V technology is when you're riding in a van and you're wearing an AR headset and then like a weird avatar appears in the empty seat in front of you and starts talking to you. But it's not a virtual avatar. It's an avatar that's controlled remotely by somebody wearing a V-a-5 headset. And Nissan has helpfully offered a really great diagram of Invisible to Visible or I2V. And you basically, what you need to do is pull over in your car and go to Theverge.com and search for Invisible to Visible and look at this diagram because it has the words, virtual world, metaverse, digital twin, cloud. In fact, the digital twin is inside the metaverse, and then it interfaces with the cloud, which is outside of the metaverse.

And then through 5G connects to a van. And then you can get nauseated watching talking to... Oh my gosh. It's so great. So I just watch the Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse movie while high and I can make a great product out of this. I love it. The world needs more of his 5G van. Yeah, 5G vans, Adam N, Metaverse, Digital Twin, Omnisensing Data.

I got to say Apple also changed the indicator on AT&T phones to say 5GE this week. Yeah. Which just fills me, like my phone says 5G. Yeah, what's it like having 5G now? I hate it. 5G is bad. Is that what you're saying? I literally look at my phone every time I'm in one of these.

I'm in Miami Beach right now. I have 5GE. And I'm just like, you people will do anything for me. It's like literally the reaction I have to my phone every time I see it. I almost am getting like 250 down, but I think like you got that before they changed the indicator because it's just LTE. It's the worst. Everybody send a screenshot of your 5G indicator to Tim Cook. The Tim Cook.

Wow. Tim Cook. But why did you do this? It seems like at least this time people aren't really falling for the scam of the fake thing in the corner. I mean, for our crowd at least. For your common AT&T customer, there might still be some confusion. but, I mean, there just seems to be a lot of pushback and anger over what is clearly just a trick, just a dirty, dirty trick. It's an obvious, an obvious stupid trick.

Also, AT&T owns HBO now. I just want to, I don't know if you got that from a previous conversation. It's literally crazy. Okay, Dieter, last week, we promised people that you would review the iPad air. Yeah, and thank you for that, by the way, because the number of reminders and questions I got out of where's your iPad air review coming was out of hand. I was very busy, but it is now reviewed. It's on the website. It's on the YouTube.

And, you know, it's an iPad. It's very good. It's almost a carbon copy of last year's iPad 10.5. And if you can get last year's iPad 10.5 Pro, you should because it has, like, speakers on both sides. And, you know, I think it's the same thing. So rather than, like, get too deep into, like, the review of the thing, because you can go read it. It's an iPad. You know what it is.

It's good. At the end of the review, I decided I know what air means when Alps. Apple calls a product Air now. And it's different than it was before. And I just want to hear what you guys think Air means to Apple and then run my theory by you. What do you think Air means? We did this last week.

We decided it was medium. Yeah, I don't think it's medium. Oh. Because the MacBook Air is not in the middle. It's at the bottom. Hmm. It just means sort of like the one you should get. Yeah, that's what I think.

I think air means this is the one that most people should get. Yeah. The Air means middle. Yeah. Well, but the MacBook isn't in the middle. That's the problem. It just means just get this one. Air means just get this one.

Famously, Goldilocks did pick the middle one. Yeah. But the metaphor doesn't work for the MacBook Air. I just keep coming back to it. Yeah. It's the one you should get. You know what everyone needs? Air.

So it seems like we were pretty high on the cheap iPad at one point. So is this, I mean, that good where you would steer people away from the entry-level iPad and towards this? I think that if you can afford the extra $170 and then the $160 for the keyboard, yes, I think you should. If you get the basic iPad, I think that you are still getting a remarkable deal. You are getting more technology per dollar, more quality per dollar, than you can get virtually anywhere else in tech.

I love the basic iPad. But if you just want to type, if you just want a little bit of a step up, the step up of 170 bucks from the basic iPad to the new iPad error is like noticeable and significant in a way that, you know, in other categories, a step up isn't necessarily worth it. And it just, it has the keyboard connector. And I know it's dumb to like care that much about a keyboard connector, but it's so much more convenient than a Bluetooth keyboard. So yeah, I think that if you can afford the extra 170 bucks, it's a pretty easy decision. The screen's better. You notice the difference in the screen. It's laminated. You know, you know, you

notice the slightly bigger size, not that much, but you notice it. It's totally worth it. In a way that, and the reason I'm so happy about the iPad era existing is the previous step up from the basic iPad to the iPad Pro was such a huge jump for a bunch of stuff you didn't need. This is a smaller jump for a bunch of stuff that you'll actually notice. This is a bit of a tangent, but if you had to choose between an iPad, the Apple's iPad keyboard, a Surface Go keyboard.

and any MacBook currently made by Apple, an evil company that hates typists, which would you go for? I would go for probably the Surface Go keyboard, although it's a little bit small, and they can get squeaky sometimes. But like, a Surface keyboard, either Pro or Go, then the iPad keyboard, and then the MacBook keyboard at the bottom. Actually, Joanna Stern just published a retrospective on the butterfly keyboard on the MacBooks where there are no R's or E's anywhere in it because those keys are broken on her thing. You can talk them on and off. Yeah. Nice.

All right. Last thing to talk about, and we got a break. Just one non-Apple thing. The Wall Street Journal says Nintendo plans two new switch models for this year. What? It's crazy to me. A high end and a low end. Yep.

The low end has integrated control. because... And no vibration, apparently. So here's the really fascinating thing, the writer, whose name I'm going to slaughter, but Takashi Mojizuki tweeted a couple of things. I think they're in the story, but one says they're different from the original and you'd be surprised. And that, quote, you would be wrong to think the enhanced version is similar to what Sony did

with the PS4 Pro. And the other is a just cheap alternative that looks very similar to some past-hand. handheld machines like the PSVita. So they're not just like bumping the specs on the high end one and they're not just making the smaller, the cheaper one just like cheaper and crappier, apparently. So they're going to do something interesting. And I'm, you know, I'm, I don't know, I'm a huge switch Stan. I'm very excited. Like at some point the battery on my switch is going to start running out. I'm going to want to replace it. It'll be nice to replace it with something nicer. Maybe someday I will be like all in on

Google Stadia. A bunch of people gave us feedback that we were super harsh on Google Stadia. Like I actually very hype for Google Stadia. I just am very cautious about the lag and the latency. Anyway, like if Google Stadia turns out to be real, then I would maybe still want to switch but I would just get the smaller one and travel with it.

You know? So anyway, I'm very excited about the switch. They don't really have to go too crazy, you know? I mean, for this fancy model, just put a nicer screen on there. Maybe OLED, that would be lovely. And some nicer speakers, and you're pretty much there. I don't own a switch, but every time I've used the switch, I've had some sort of Bluetooth issue. Like, I would really like that to be improved. I think it's just Bluetooth. That's what that is.

It's like, I think what you're saying is, I'd really like them to not use Bluetooth. But I have used a lot of wireless game controllers, and I've never had as many problems as I've had with JoyCon. How many of them are Bluetooth? Some of them. The PS4 is Bluetooth, right? I think it's like a weird technically Bluetooth Sony layer thing. I think Nintendo put some garbage antennas in its joycons. I think that's probably true as well. What am I most willing to blame?

Oh, Bluetooth. That's what I'm going to blame. I mean, I feel bad that I haven't ever got on a switch because it's such a great example in the tech industry if somebody just blazing their own path and they keep on going in their own path and it keeps on being great. It doesn't feel like the Switch, you know, the Switch is obviously not competing with the PS4 Pro or the Xbox 1X in any direct ways. And yet it seems to have way more hype around gaming on the Switch than those consoles have had in years. There's just more joy in it. And so there's more joy in the indie games.

It's just more joyful. Yeah, they just made VR a cardboard fun. I mean, it's wild. It should go read Dommy's piece. It's a lot of fun. That thing is amazing. So, yeah, it's mean, it's just joy. Yeah, like Nintendo saw that VR is a ridiculous thing.

My wife works for Oculus disclosure. And they're like, VR seems ridiculous. Let's make it as ridiculous as possible. Yes. Yeah. I'm excited. There are things to be happy about in this world. It's mostly the Switch.

Everything else will find out when it gets a price and a release date. How much will joy cost in the fall? That's the question. That's horrible. You could talk to us. I'm at Reckless Deiders at Backlon. Paul's the future Paul. Chris Welch.

At Chris Welch. Let us know what you think. Let us know if you're interested in these services. Let us know if you two are being sucked into big credit Goldman Sachs like Paul. I'd like to point out, I made a joke about it and then he defended it for five more minutes. We would love to hear reviews or tweeted us. I'm very curious what you think of these services. I'm very curious if you think Apple can just like capture that much more of your money in time.

You can also listen to other stuff. You can listen to Recode Media with Peter Kafka. We're actually going to have Peter on the interview episode next week. help me unpack some more of this TV stuff. That'll be really fun. You can listen to Recode, decode with Kara Swisher. You can listen to Pivot with Scott Galloway and Kara Swisher. You can listen to all the seasons of Watch for that button, which is spitting up again. That'll be very good. And you can look at the verge.com and you can watch processor with Deeterbone on YouTube. So so much. All that, by the way, I just want to point out, is free. We don't actually charge

you a monthly fee for that. But it won't be out until this fall. Yeah. But yeah, Deeter's price will be revealed later this fall. Yeah. That's it. We'll see you next week, Rock and Roll. Paul. Promote.