The Vergecast - Can a redesign save Apple's software?

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

It's a slowish news week ahead of some very busy news weeks, so of course Nilay and David start the show with a long discussion about party speakers. Eventually, they get into the news, beginning with some of the huge Apple redesigns planned for WWDC in June. For the first time in a long time, the stakes for Apple's software teams feel really high. After that, the hosts talk about Nilay's recent interview with Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and what the AI-ification of everything means for the future of the web. Finally, in the lightning round, it's time for another Brendan Carr is a Dummy, plus some talk about the Nintendo Switch 2, a bit of confusing tariff news, and more. Further reading: Graduation and prom season in full force, Alan sends a graduation procession with a party speaker on… her head? So so many softball and baseball games, Luis tips us to the Yankees Incredible at a dentist office from Oktawian Apple is reportedly going to rename all of its operating systems  Apple is ready to replace Game Center with a more Xbox-like gaming app  Get ready for Apple’s glassy operating systems overhaul. Nick Clegg says asking artists for use permission would ‘kill’ the AI industry The New York Times’ first generative AI deal is with Amazon The Browser Company explains why it stopped developing Arc The plan for nationwide fiber internet might be upended for Starlink FCC Commissioner Labels Trump Push to Chill Speech an ‘Administration-Wide Effort’ Carr's attack on Ergen looks gross Shut Down the Federal Communications Commission With the Switch, technology finally caught up to Nintendo  Nintendo’s bold new era is full of safe bets  The Nintendo Switch was an indie game haven, until it was overrun with slop  The Nintendo Switch 2 sure seems to work just fine with a USB mouse  There’s a Switch 2 unboxing video already. Email us at [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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This week on Explain It to Me, the chemicals lurking in your cosmetics. New episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome the Bert-Chast, the flagship podcast of the United States Party Speaker Industry. Only the U.S.? I don't know that there is a U.S. Party Speaker industry. It's a global marketplace, Eli. It's happening everywhere.

I don't know where they're manufactured. I don't know who designs them. I've been begging one of these companies to let me into the room with their designers where they plan the next year's party speaker lineup. Imagine that meeting. Someone's like, make it put more lights on it. And another person's like, no, we can't afford it. You've gone too far. I like to think of it as like a, there's like a price to lights to size continuum.

And they're just like sort of sliding the thing along the scale. And if you get too many lights, it's too expensive. But if you get too big, you can have more lights. And so it's there just, it's a lot of triangulation. But this is what product work is. That's what I'm saying. There's a spreadsheet. There's a model.

Someone's got a slider. McKinsey's in there, you know. Hi, my friend, Eli. That's David Pierce. Hello. It's just the two of us today. We're doing a concentrated dose of Neli and David because, you know, eventually we're both going to have children and leave. Right.

So you got to get it all while you can. Yeah. This is going to be 19 hours of just us yelling at each other about the internet. It's also a slow week, which actually usually means the show goes longer than ever. Yeah. I don't know why that is, but when we have nothing to talk about it, it's like a three-hour show. So buckle up. It's going to be wild.

A little housekeeping before we start. But we've got a survey going on. We just want feedback from the audience. It's voxmedia.com slash survey. Go take that. Let us know what you think and how we're doing. And then I should remind you that no one can tell us what to do, which is important. We don't do the ad reads.

We don't do brand sponsorships. I'm not out here trying to sell flavored water. Although I have been thinking about selling a vodka for a number of years. That might be the one exception to the rule. It's a long story. Some people know. But the reason that we're able to have total editorial independence and we don't talk to our sales team

and we don't do the brand sponsorships that everyone else has to do is because we get support from all of you. So right now, VIRG subscriptions are on sale. They're 40% off. We're kind of running them through developer season. So through the end of WWC, basically. You can go to the verge.com slash subscribe.

They're 40% off. It's like $35 for the year. Cheap. And you get to support our whole newsroom. And most importantly, what you are buying is our editorial independence. No one gets to tell us what's, you. It's very powerful. It's a very powerful tool in our arsenal. We've relied on it for a long time. And it's because you all have supported us. There's this thing we always say that like anyone can get traffic, but it's really hard to have an audience. You're the audience. That's you. Thank you. We appreciate you. Now give us your money. I'm still learning how to be a salesperson. Step one, editorial independence. Step two, Nilai gets less awkward asking you for money. Step three, everybody gets boats. That's the move here. That's what we're doing. It's not a yachts industry. We're going to come to. We're going to come to. We're going to come to. We're going to,

what's going on on the web, in the media, in the second segment. But I want to start, actually, because it's a slow week. I want to start with an actual party speaker update. We've been getting a lot of photos of party speakers from all of you. As you probably know,

I believe party speakers are undercover. They're a massive market. There, many, many companies have made giant Bluetooth speakers, like giant speakers that have LED lights around speakers around the speaker drivers. Some of them have handles. We've covered them that have literal

beer can holders. Sony made one with beer can holders. It's the rare industry, I think, that knows exactly what it is, which I have come to really appreciate. These are a huge success story. Yeah. And they're undercover because everyone wants to talk about Sam Altman riding a pony or whatever he did today. But like, the consumer electronics industry is doing something right because they've been making these and iterating on them for decades. And they are everywhere. Once you see them, you realize like, oh, this is as big as the iPhone. Okay, maybe not as big as the iPhone. But you understand what I'm saying.

Like, everyone has them. They're all over the place. Physically much larger than the iPhone. Physically much larger. But it's a cultural phenomenon. Yeah. They're just part of the fabric. They're just everywhere.

And no one talks about them. They're so entrenched that I think the great service that you in particular have done for people is you have opened their eyes to the party speakers that are everywhere. They're everywhere. Because, like, this has been my experience is that I have started. at noticing in places that a party speaker has no business being, there's almost always a party speaker. Like, wherever you are, you are within 100 yards of a party speaker. I really have come to believe that.

That's true. And they're just so, they're so ubiquitous that we just don't even notice them anymore. They're so big you can't see them. Exactly. It's crazy. So people have sent us lots of pictures of party speakers. We had pictures of party speakers literally next to FAA 18s being repaired, maybe the point of the entire Birchcast to date.

But we've got some new ones. And I got to say there's some wild stuff going on in the world. So here's our first one. It's from Allen. It's graduation season out there. We're getting a lot of photos of party speakers at proms. Yes. Getting ready at proms.

Prom. It makes sense. I understand. Teenagers want light up speakers while they're all dressed up. Anywhere there is like a school official and a stage, there is a party speaker. Yeah, and tons and tons and tons of commencement addresses being delivered through party speakers and the little karaoke mics. But here's this picture from Alan who sent it in. This is a graduation procession of some kind.

And I replied and said, is that on her head? And the answer is it's on her head. And so she's leading a graduation procession and she's carrying the party speaker on her head. No, no, no. But if you're watching this on video, Neel, I just put both hands up. this woman does not have both hands up. Yes, it's one huge bazooka party speaker. This woman is in like a light dress and a red hat and is carrying a party speaker on her head with one hand, which is so spectacularly physically impressive.

There's so much about this. I have questions about like the graduation parade is an incredible idea that every school should do. Yeah. There's a surprisingly large like police and ambulance presence for this, which I have questions about. But it's this woman in a flowy dress just like sauntering down the street, one-arm party speaker on the head. Like bazooka size party speaker. So this is incredible. This is among the best graduation photos we've gotten.

Keep them common because if you notice it graduations and proms, they're everywhere. I would go so far as to say our nation's high schools are powered entirely by party speakers at this point. It seems like it. We've gotten an infinite number of photos of baseball and softball. games. It's baseball and softball season for the kids. My daughter's playing softball. There's party speakers there. Lots and lots of that going on. Very cool market for party speakers. Very curious who gets playlist control. Dying to know how that works in the politics of playlist control for walk-on music at softball games. Do each of the teams have different party speakers

or if the coach is coordinated? I don't know. Is it like a Spotify jam situation where everybody's you see what I'm saying? Does Max have a walk-up song? Max is not yet have a walk-up song. And if she did, it would be one of the songs from Frozen, so I think, or Frozen 2, rather, that would be. Just like medals, you want to build a snowman and up comes max to bat. It's a lot. It's, or Taylor Swift. And so, but it would be Wildest Dreams, which is her favorite Taylor Swift song. And I don't know that that's a great softball rock.

I think the 10 minute all too well is, is the one and just stand in the batter box all 10 minutes. Really sick up the pitcher. Okay. Lots and lots and lots of party seekers at kids softball. but Luis sent us a tip that the Yankees put up an Instagram post you got to see this picture if you're in your car just like stop and pull over

and we'll put the click on the link in the show notes the Instagram post or watch the video on YouTube it's Jason Dominguez it's Jason with two S's and he is getting on a plane this is very important the caption of this carousel is airplane mode because they're obviously traveling to a game and he is carrying a massive white J-B party speaker onto this plane.

Like, it's the size of a carry-on suitcase. It looks hot as shit, by the way. Like, I was like, I should buy the speaker. It's the JBL Party Stage 320. It retails for $5.99. It's sometimes on sale for $5.49. It has not one, but two handles. There's one hand on the back with Jason.

In the photo, he's carrying it by the back handle. But he also has the pop-up handle that you can wheel it around with extended, which is a total flex. The true flex is that he has that and is still carrying it anyway. And not just carrying it anyway, onto a plane. Like other people are rolling their little away bags onto the plane. He's like, I've got a suitcase size speaker.

And the grin on his face is incredible. He knows what he's doing. Yeah, 100%. It's very good because it's in a carousel of other players like carrying their clothes onto the plane. And he's just like, whatever, I'm wearing clothes. I'm remembering my speaker. It's so good. I definitely thought about buying this one immediately.

The white looks pretty great. I'm not going to lie. Also, the politics of carrying a speaker of this size onto a plane. Does he give playlist access away? Can you use it on the plane? Do other Yankees players have their own party speakers? Is there like a hip-hop section of the plane, a country music section of the plane? You know what I'm saying?

Because we've gotten a lot of notes from people who are like, I am in a workplace where we're not allowed to wear headphones. A lot of machine shops, airplane technicians. all kinds of places where safety requires that you need open ears that you be able to hear. And so we've heard a lot of stories about competing party speakers. So are the Yankees in a similar situation on their plane. But I'm telling you, party speakers have infected the sport of baseball. They're everywhere in baseball. Yes.

They're part of the fabric now of baseball. So this picture is incredible. Jason, if you want to come on the show and talk about the JBL Stage 320, I don't know if you're sponsored. I was going to say my great hope for this is that JBL sponsors. Jason and they were like, oh, do you want our like sick new over your headphones to wear when you get on the plane so people take pictures of you? And he's like, no, no. I got other ideas. Give me the party speaker. What's the biggest one he got? Okay. So then you were talking about how you see him in everywhere in places you would not expect. And so speaking of giant JBL party

speakers, Octavian, I think that's how you pronounce it. So the W. Octavian sent us a picture of a dentist office with a massive JBL party speaker in what appears to be at like a reasonably small waiting room. But it's, it's huge. Like, it's for, it's like the PA for a small concert. Yeah. Look at this thing. If you walked in a dentist office, you saw this seem like, kick out the jams, brother. Let's go. It's incredible. Love it. This is what I mean. They're everywhere. People like, there's not even etiquette around them anymore. The dentist was like, screw it, light it up. What's weird about this one to me is like, there are smaller Bluetooth speakers out there that are very good.

Like, I tell a lot of people to buy, like, the UE Booms. There's a lot of those. And if all you're doing is pumping music into your waiting room, $99 will get you as much speaker as you need to do the job here. No. And they're like, no, I need a speaker the size of a third grader. We're going to rattle your teeth loose, man. Let's get this done.

This one is so big, it has feet so it can go horizontally and serve as a bench. It's very good. everywhere you look, man, they're everywhere. And I'm telling you, the etiquette is at the window, right? That normal people would not have thought to put a speaker of the size in a dentist office waiting room. It's true. This is innovation. All right.

And then the last one, my favorite one, our old producer Creighton, he worked on the Verge cast before. He worked on Decoder. Part of the Verge story for years and years. Creighton sends in, he texted me, actually, from Rome. He was in what appears to be like a soccer story. a football store. It's a room. And he's like,

there's a party speaker here. The owner told me he wanted one of the CD player because the audio quality is better. So it has a CD player on the top. The owner also told him Sony was the best branded party speaker, which is a hot take.

I think Sony was a progenitor of this space. But in many cases, JBL is doing better brand integrations. You can see it. And then Ion is fast approaching from the rear. I don't know what Ion is. Ion, the company we still don't understand. If you work at Ion, let me know. I don't.

I think you might be a little. like a ghost company. Anyway, this is an ancient Sony party speaker, CD player on the top. It's kicking out the jams in a store in Rome.

And the only reason I want to bring it up is because if you zoom in on the picture on the top here and you look for the megabase button, you can see that it has been pushed so many times that the letters are starting to wear off.

None of the other buttons have this problem, right? W party chain has not been pushed so many times. The word Soundfield has not. not been pushed so many times the letters. Megabase has been pushed so many times the letters are wearing off, which implies to me that whoever owns this party speaker has determined there is a time for megabase, and there is a time when you should not have megabase. Well, right, because you have to turn it both on and off. This is not a permanent state. You're turning it on

and off all the time. Yeah. And I would just like to know what times are megabase times and what times are definitively not megabase times. I think it's pretty easy. Because this button is not one you should push. You should push it once and be like the megabase is on. But if you go megabase all the time, is it megabase anymore? Do you know what I mean? Don't you like you need to live without in order to appreciate what you have.

Right. You can't have loud parts and have quiet parts. It's like a core conceit of verge storytelling. I'm with you. I'm just saying it's rare that you see a megabase button that has been pushed this many times. I'm dying to know. As you know, we're no longer in the megabase era. I think the megabase era really, that was the height of American, like, soft power around the world, the 80s and 90s, the megabase era.

We were doing it. I mean, that's when people look back fondly. That's when America was great. Then Sony moved on to Ultra Base, and I think things really started falling down a cliff. And now we're in the ULT Power Sound era and fully just off the rails. I couldn't even tell you what's going on. Bring it back, Sony. Executive Order 10012 Megabase shall return to American soil.

Megabase told you the truth about what it was. We need more of that. ULT power sound. Get out of here. All right. That's the party speaker update. Thank you to everyone who sent them in. Let me know what you think the times for Megabase are and R not.

I'm dying to know. Let me know what you think the etiquette of these speakers are. Because they're everywhere, man. And as always, I thank you all for thinking of me when you see a giant speaker in the wild. Like you have, I don't have like massive ambitions to fame, you know? It's not what motivates me. But when people see a giant stupid speaker, there's a flicker of recognition that these should tell me.

That's pretty good. I'll take it. I'll take it. I don't need much more than that. It's pretty good. All right, we should get to some actual tech news. For the people who are mad that we spend so much time on party speakers every so often, I'm sorry, but that's where you paste the money.

Get a party speaker and play it loudly next to whatever you're listening to the Vergecast on and you don't have to hear us talk about it. It's very good. Hit that megabase button, man. Let's live this life. All right. There's some actual techniques in the world. It feels like we're in the run-up to the run-up to WWDC.

A lot of weird vibes around Apple in this WWC, right? Google just came off I.O., which we'll talk about in a little bit. There's some reactions to Google's confidence and the products it might be building. Obviously, Open AI announced its deal with Johnny Ive and Love From. They're in a moment. and then Apple is, you know, they're going to have WWC. They will project confidence. They're good at it.

A lot of question marks around what Apple might be doing, what its fives are. I got a weird open letter from a group of Apple fans today demanding that the company do better at AI. And at the bottom of the open letter, it said this letter was generated by chat GPT. And I was like, well, this is, I'm throwing this out the window. So don't do this to me. But like, that's the level of weirdness. Yeah. Right?

Like open letters to Apple to reclaim. the mantle of innovation, that's some late 90s, early 2000 stuff. That's not, that's not been how anyone has felt about Apple for years now. And like, here we are. I do think you could argue this Apple is sort of at its weakest position perception wise in a very, very, very long time. Because, right, there's all the AI stuff. There's all of the regulatory stuff, which it just continues to lose in increasingly spectacular ways, while continuing also to alienate developers. Like, everything that I'm hearing about Apple and all these changes from developers, they understand that Apple is being, like, bullied into making these changes that are obviously good for developers

and users, and it is not making anybody feel better about Apple. Then there's also this thing that has gone around where Tim Cook has lost his influence with the Trump administration. And so this idea that he was like the all-powerful whisperer of the government who could get everything done and save tariffs and everything was going to be fine, that has waned. Like, there's this real sense that the sort of overall bloom is off the rose at Apple. And whether that's deserved or not, or whether that ultimately matters or not, we'll see. But it is fascinating how much that perception has changed. Like, all of the things that Apple could sort of cling to for a long time seem to be degrading all at once,

which I think means the stakes for this WWDC and then the iPhone launched in September are maybe as high or higher than any I can remember before. Like right after Steve's jobs died, there was that big transition where it was like, okay, what is Apple now and what is going to be kind of, how is this company going to project itself going forward? That's the last time I can remember coming into something like this,

being like, oh, it actually really matters what Apple does here and how it talks about itself. I have a slightly different view. I don't disagree about that moment, right? Apple needed to change its conception of itself. I think Tim Cook made the company a financial juggernaut on the back of its basically distribution monopoly of applications, right? Like in the smartphone era, the only way you could get an app to someone was through Apple Store or Google Store.

Yeah. And people are not going to like that I'm saying this, but the iOS. store had richer people using it and those people spent more money. Well, and also Google's store works the way it does in large part because of the way that Apple architected its store in the first place. Right. But like the Android app store, the Play Store, yes, there are some Android apps, like lots and lots of Android apps.

But all the new stuff, I mean, we got complaints about this year. All the new apps would start on iOS first. And it was because Apple had the wealthier customer base that spent more money and they were really good at pushing people being apps subscriptions. And so, like, Apple, I don't think that's diminished right now. Like, if people want to use chat, GBT, they're primarily doing it through an app on Apple's app store on their platforms. And if you want to subscribe, the easiest way to do it is to push the button in the app and Apple gets its money. And that might be at risk, but we'll, like, see what happens.

Like, Apple has ways to compete there that are within its controls. I think the big risk for Apple is all the stuff that's out of its control. can they solve the regulatory problems around the world? In Texas, they just passed an age verification law that says the smart fund makers have to verify the ages of their users and keep kids out of certain apps that are age-gated. Which reportedly Tim Cook personally tried to quash. Yep. And they have been like all over this in every state around the country. Like the top lobbyists in every state in every state capital, Apple has bought them all to try to crush these bills.

And they just lost one in Texas. that's, you know, is a flicker of diminishing, I don't know, but it's out of their control, right? Now they just have to do it. The big one is whether or not AI is a new user interface that creates a new generation of hardware that ends the smartphone application distribution monopoly. Like, that's the thing. That's the thing. That's the thing. And for years, Apple's strength has been like, well, we have the iPhone.

We'll just like add these features to the app. We'll just Sherlock the hell out of Open AI, and then they'll die. Like, that's what they do. And they haven't seemed to be able to do it, right? They announced Apple intelligence, and it went away, and it's delayed. From every indication we have, if they talk about it at WWC, it will not be the point. Right, right? We should not expect the big Siri at WWC or whatever.

So they've got some catching up to you there. And then it's, can Apple disrupt the iPhone with the next generation advice that has AI as a user interface, if that is indeed the user interface of the future. Right. I don't know the answers to these questions. Like, and that's weird. I think Apple has traditionally been like, we'll just wait for Apple to do it and it'd be great.

And you know that's been how it's playing out because Apple has announced every feature that Android has had for years, years after Android announced it had gotten credit for it. And I don't think they can do that this time. No. And that's, yeah, I think I agree with that. And I think there's also Apple has gotten away with so much

over the years because it makes the best stuff and appears to be the company that cares the most about making the best stuff. And that's, once you lose that, it's really hard to get it back. And I think, again, all of that is so tied up in like, what are they going to show us at WWDC? And is it, is it going to look like Apple is, you know, putting new coats of paint on old things while everybody is lapping it building the next thing? Or is there a, like, is Apple going to be able to make a compelling case that actually know this is still the thing. And I think it's like no one thinks we're getting rid of smartphones, right? Like Johnny Ive and Sam Altman made their weird video in San Francisco. Even they are like smartphones are going to continue to exist. But like,

is it, we're on how many years now of the iPhone being basically the exact same thing and everything else getting weirder and stranger? And like, I think you could make a pretty strong case that the device at Apple that has gotten the most improvement over the last several years, is the MacBook, which is a weird state of affairs for Apple. So it's just, we're at this moment of like, I think people are less impressed with Apple in every facet than they have been in a long time. And if you lose that,

suddenly all the other like kind of gross shenanigans you used to get away with because you made great stuff becomes a lot harder to get away with. So speaking of new coats of paint, the leaks we've gotten so far. We don't know what's going to happen. We don't know what's going to happen. Well, Apple's going to announce some software.

Apple's, we know what happens at WDC broadly, right? They rev all their operating systems every year, WWC to get developers ready for the next turn. Sometimes they, you know, surprise an ounce a Mac Pro. So we don't know, maybe they'll surprise all this. We don't know what's going to happen. But my sense is that this will be very software-focused. And my sense is that they're going to announce a bunch of new coats of paint

because we have a bunch of leaks already, one of which is that Apple is going to rename all its operating systems, and that will be part of the big news. Yeah. So the sort of stack of announcements here is that, A, Apple is going to rev basically every piece of software that it has in a meaningful way, which is not often the case. Most of the time, there's sort of like some get huge changes, some get medium changes,

and then they're just like, and TVOS exists and then move on. So, but this year there is, and we should say most of this reporting comes from Mark Berman at Bloomberg, who is usually right about this stuff. Not always, but usually. And so, yeah, the top line is basically huge changes to every single surface of operating system that Apple makes. Thing number two is the thing that all of those are going to have in common, it appears, is that they're going to be changed to look, A, more like each other and be more like

the Vision Pro, that there is this, like, layered sort of spacey, 3D interface thing that Apple is going deep on. I have feelings about that. But then thing number three is to do that, they're going to rename all of them to have numbering schemes that are the same. I was going to say numbering schemes that make sense, but they don't. They're just the same now.

And that's something. Well, no, they're tied to years, right? Like cars? Sure. So this year they're going to announce iOS 26. This year they're going to, yeah, they're going to announce, They're going to announce, presumably the iPhone 17 this year, right about as iOS 26 comes out.

And if you can explain to me how that makes sense, I really, really, really look forward to hearing it. Well, all right, give me a second. Because the OS is not tied to the phone. No, it's not. You got the old phone running the new US. That's what you want.

And it's this year's OS. You know it because it is named after the year to come. What I don't understand. But that makes sense. Wait, wait, I got it. I got it. Hit me. The wheels are turning over here.

It's because everyone gets in EOS in like September and October. So you're already on to the next year. But September and October or this year. But you don't want to get iOS 25 in like September, right? Because it'll come out in like mid to late September usually. That's when the iPhone hits. Do you actually, I've always wondered this. Do you know the car logic for this?

Like is there an official reason that cars do like next year model? It's just a straight arms race. What do you mean? So the cars did not initially have model years associated with them. This is like a big innovation in the 50s and 60s. And then it was an arms race. He wanted the newest model. So they started releasing the newer models earlier in the year.

And then everyone kind of like standardized. And then a bunch of stuff like the insurance industry and car values got tied to model years and perceived age. So everyone kind of landed in the same spot. But even right now there's an arms race. Like the new, the new Cadillac SUV, the Vista. the Vistick is it's out now. You can go buy one and it is at 2026.

That's so stupid. And that usually doesn't happen. It usually happens around the fall where they switch the model numbers over. It's May. It's closer to 2024 than 2026. But that's what they're, so the arms race persists. But usually cars,

they rev the model years towards the end of the year because no one wants to buy last year's model in December. Right. So in January and you save it by 2024, like nobody wants this. So, like, they've landed in the sweet spot, but then every now and again, a company like, GM will show up. You're like, screw it at 2026. And, like, that's, we're just going to have to deal with it. And that is just, like, pure psychology.

Like, all that is is just a trick to make you think it's the future when you're buying your car. 100%. And that's what we're doing here, too. But, okay, here's what I don't understand. So you, for forever, I don't know how long this lasted, but you had a MacBook that ran Snow Leopard. And you were very proud of the fact that it ran Snow Leopard. It wasn't Snow Leopard. It was, um.

Wasn't it Snow Leopard? Upard? No, Snow Uprad was 10.4. I ran Snowopard when I was in college. Oh, okay. It was like El Capitan or something. It was like one of those. Okay.

Mountain Lion. That's what it was. Okay, fair enough. But you were very proud of this one particular version of OS 10, whatever it was. And what I don't understand is Apple has continued this sort of delightful, sort of weed-infused, according to Craig Federi naming scheme for Mac OS, where they just named the operating system something. And what I don't understand is why they wouldn't just do that.

Just name it all something. It's a much more appelly way to do it. Like, TVOS 26 doesn't mean anything to anybody. But I don't think TVOS means anything to anyone. No. WatchOS means nothing to anyone. The only ones that mean anything to anyone are MacOS and iOS. So then why name it anything at all?

Because they need version numbers. I think all they're doing is arriving in the version numbers. The fact that we are having this conversation, first of all, I'm confident, is driving some people bananas because it's, it is of no consequence to anyone, and there's probably other tech you just talk about, but it is also the point.

Yeah. Right? Like, they don't, what they're not announcing is natural language Siri. Right. What they're going to announce is it looks different now,

which always gets a ton of attention, and we've revved all these operating system numbers, and then it is certain that we will write something about how the operating system numbers work. And I will just write like 10,000 words on why they should have stopped.

It's no leopard, and that was the greatest time the computers ever had in history. That's what I was thinking of. You love Snow Lebride. Snow Lebride was the greatest operas. You were running Mountain Lion, but you love Snow Lebris.

Yeah. And that was my attempt, just like, stop it. It didn't work. I got a new computer. But I do wonder, like, your point that these are just version numbers, I think,

I wonder if that's telling. Like, we were talking about this last week with all the Android stuff that Google has sort of hit a point where Android version numbers don't really matter. Not at all. It used to be sort of an event

release that the new version of Android would come out and it would have a dessert name and it would have a bunch of new features and they would do a whole thing about it. And now your phone just kind of periodically updates and you don't think that much about it. And I wonder if this is Apple moving towards the same thing where actually this annual rev

of all the operating systems, which you could argue for a long time has not made sense to hold feature six months just to put them in a release every May. Maybe this is the end of that way of thinking that Apple is like, okay, well, actually expecting us to have a wholesale new thing every year is not what we're after. And instead we just call it the year it shipped and it's a version number. And that's it. Yeah. Again, I think this is like of little consequence outside of the one. We get to like make some news. We get to harmonize all the numbers across all the things. Yeah. But I, what people want out of Apple right now is to be able to talk to Siri and have Siri do things. Right.

Like, and maybe you hate AI, you don't actually want this. But the broader ecosystem of like the market watchers and regular people who are using chat GPT every day are like, why isn't Siri chat GPT advanced voice mode? Why haven't these things just connected together in a real way? Like, I don't want to just use the action button. I think honestly you could level the same criticism of Google. Like Google Assistant is not Gemini. They're going to get there on some timeline, but it's still. weird that hasn't happened. It appears some people, including our friend Parker Oralani,

have gotten Alexa Plus. He's the only one I know. If you have it, let us know. We'd love to talk to you about it because not unless have it yet. But I think like these assistant interfaces, that that's what a lot of people believe the next turn to be. And Apple doesn't have a move there. So the version numbers are just like, that's what I mean by it, it's a code of pain. Well, and in that world, if that is, in fact, the interface of the future, version numbers sort of cease to mean anything altogether. I mean, I think back to like when, when Sam Altman said, and this is, I don't know, a year ago now, that he was like, we set up the GPT numbers all wrong, that now every time we release a new model, people

expect it to be like the leap from GPD3 to GPD4 and like blow their minds and it's going to be a whole new thing. And actually what it is is all this stuff just sort of consistently, incrementally gets better. And there's point in having, so they just like made the numbers not make any sense anymore. And like maybe if you're Apple launching Siri 2, Siri 3 and Siri 4 doesn't make any sense. And so you're just, they're just going to pull back on all of this. First day have to launch Siri. Well, yeah. But I mean, it makes me wonder, like if all of that comes true, is this one of the last WWDCs that feels this big? I don't know. I think they will always have to rev the, they have so many devices in the

world that I don't think they can do the constant phased approach right it's like it would almost be too taxing too many things would like kind of always be going wrong right do you know what drop all the bugs at once instead of like one a week all year yeah right like I think they can they can be prepared for something and like I think that cadence is really important to them I think it's part of apple's DNA to be like we have a roadmap we ship all the things on a road map we move on to the next part of the roadmap. And they've gotten better at some Delta updates. Like, they announce a bunch of features of WWC and things come out months later, almost till the next year. So they have started breaking things apart more. But I think they're organized around one big drop and one big announcement

cycle. And importantly, this is what developers are for, right? Like, you need all your developers to support your new features. So when the operating system arrives in September with the iPhone, the apps are ready for it. And that to me is the, like, the other big weakness in Apple's of weaknesses right now, that the developers are mad at the company. They're going to put out a new design language. This has been the rumor. It will look more like the Vision Pro interface, you know, sheets of glass. I keep calling it Arrowglass, which is the name of the design language in Windows Vista. But like it's got a lot of those moves, right? Like transparent glass and layers. And what's fascinating about this is it that design language is not where the rest of the industry is going

right now. And Apple traditionally leads, right? They take the bolder steps. They push everyone forward. A lot of people just copy whatever Apple does. And I don't think that's happening right now. No. I think there's a generation of designers who came up independently of the iPhone. Like the iPhone was just the thing that existed. And they have their own ideas. And you can kind of see it. Like, you know, the new Airbnb icons are like 3D dimensional. Johnny, I've helped with that. you see it. Opening eyes design language is different than Apple's.

Google just did material U Extreme or whatever it's called. I think expressive was the word, but it was basically extreme. There are a lot of ideas about software design in this new universe, and it's not a guarantee that Apple's ideas will win.

And it's certainly not a guarantee that their developers will exert the effort to redesign their apps to match Apple's design right now. Right. Yeah, I mean, in fact, I think actually Airbnb is an interesting example

because if you look at Airbnb's new design, it's not quite skeuomorphic, but it's very physical, right? And that's a huge trend in design right now is making everything feel sort of earthy and tactile. And like that's a lot of what he is even happening in the new Android stuff is it's designed to like move and bounce and morph and it's like everything wants to sort of feel alive and three-dimensional.

And Apple is just like pains of glass. and it's like, I'm sure it will be lovely. And there are a lot of really smart things about the Vision Pro, right? Like, the sort of big idea behind a lot of the design is that it's, instead of being a bunch of different screens, like a menu lives inside the button. And when you tap the button, the menu sort of appears out of it over top of what you're doing instead of launching you into a whole new experience. There's a bunch of that that actually like makes sense in terms of like helping people know where they are on their device. Sure. But it is a completely different way of thinking about.

what your technology means to you than this idea of like we want the physical world and the digital world to look and feel more like each other. And as we're like, especially as everybody is doing augmented reality and thinking about smart glasses, like it makes a lot of sense to me to start thinking about. Like how do I make the digital world blend into the physical world a little more? And Apple is like completely the other way. They're like spaceships. It's all spaceships. I you know the Vision Pro who knows

if they were going to talk with the Vision Pro also be very funny if they rub the Vision Pro operating system to 26 like two years in from 2 to 26

like Vision OS 26 like here we go a lot of a lot of spaces left on the on the feature chart between here and 26 you know if you view the Vision Pro

as a simulator and you're like, this is how we will overlay digital information on the real world. Paines of Glass kind of makes sense. But like, we're not, we're nowhere close to this. Right. Like, nowhere close. And I think it'd be, it's going to be interesting to see how

that maps to like an iPad, which is like not anywhere close to an augmented reality device. Like, it's like a big physical device you hold in your hand. Like, it is the most screen that can screen in your hand. And like, how is that going to play? So there's just like things here about, Apple's design language right now where I'm curious to see what the REV looks like. I'm curious to see how plays with their other ambitions.

But all of these other, like the digital world is getting more physical. It's like it's an interesting trend you kind of see everywhere, but it's a reflection of the fact that that is still happening on screens. Yes. And the Apple's new design language, at least as expressed in the Vision Pro, is like very much like it's happening in reality. And we're not there yet. Sort of, but it's kind of like, it's like what.

if there was an iPad floating in the air, not what if this thing were in the world? Like I kind of, I think Apple has pushed like halfway down that road, not all the way down that road. And then again, to your point, there is the question of like, is that what I want when I'm aware that I'm looking at a screen, right? Like, is that, does that construct make any sense on the screen that I'm holding in my hand? Yeah. You know what's going to happen. They're going to play a video of like a button and Craig Federee is like, what is this button? And everyone, the crowd's going to go wild. Yes. And the developer's going to make the button.

Anyway, that's WWC. Like, the leaks are coming. I think when David and I are both pointing out, it's like, Apple has stakes here in a way they have not really needed to address the stakes in a long time. And I don't think they can just paper over it and, like, muscle through it and be like, where Apple, like, take it or leave it. I think a lot of people are aware that there is another kind of application model being developed. And you might hate it.

I know we have listeners who hate AI, but I'm watching people. people every day build new applications using tools like N-A-N and cursor. We get the pitches. We see the investment. There's something meaningful happening there. And you can't just ignore it. So if Apple participates in that, that's one thing. If they don't, I think there's going to be a lot of pressure on the company to have an answer as to why. And right now the answer is because we were late. And I don't think that's great for them. Right. Well, and I think it's Apple's move always to pretend that nothing else exists and just live in its own universe

where it doesn't acknowledge other companies or other products or other ideas. And I think this time rather than projecting strength, that's going to look like weakness. We'll see. Because there is this perception that Apple is way behind and it's either going to have to acknowledge it or it's going to look like it's just got its head up its ass.

I'm dying to know. I honestly. I have too. It's going to be such an interesting. There's another week of weeks to come. we'll find out. But it feels like this, that's the framework in because they're the last of the developer conferences. And we kind of know what everyone else's moves are going to be.

All right, we should take a break. We'll come back. I want to actually pick up the thread from Google and its confidence when we come back because it's a really interesting contrast. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Framer. Framer is an enterprise-grade, no-code website builder used by teams at companies like Perplexity and Muro to move faster.

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Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash track. Terms and conditions apply. Support for the show comes from LinkedIn. If you're a small business owner, you know that every hire counts, but time and resources are limited. Finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates takes up valuable time you could be giving to your customers.

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that actually moves your hiring forward. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash track. Terms and conditions apply. All right, we're back to David. I want to talk about the Sundar interview that was on Decoder this week.

And then the web, what's going on to the web? Okay. I'm in. So first, I just want to address some persistent criticisms we get of Decoder by admitting something that is true. That's good. What is the Vergecast for, if not to talk about Decoder? It's true. That's all.

I've tried, and I know this has disappointed a lot of people over the years. I have done my best, and I have consistently failed to arrest the CEOs of major tech companies when they appear on Decoder. I there there's some segment of people that is visibly frustrated with me when every decoder interview does not end with an arrest in jail time. I'm doing my best. I have said you're under arrest at the end of many decoders. I do like the idea that every episode ends with like an animation of just bars coming down in front of their face. Dakota jail. Yeah.

Some people have come close. Some CEOs have certainly self-immolated on that show. in spectacular ways. And I'm saying this because I've interviewed Sundar a lot. He is very calm. He's very practiced. He is excellent at answering exactly the question he wants to answer exactly when he wants to answer it and not answering the question if he doesn't want to.

And so Decoder for me is always a dance. It's always a race against the clock. And there's just a part of it where I know I've hit the wall. Like it's just not going to happen and it's time to try a new wall. Let's see if I can get through a different wall. And in particular in conversations with Sundar, I think you can see me do that faster than ever just because I know him. And I know when I'm just wasting time. And I need to find a way to make that clearer, I think.

There's, I don't think it comes through that the way I experience an interview like that is as a clock. Like, I'm just running out of time. Like from the second the conversation starts, the thing that's happening in my head is that I'm running out of time. Yeah. It's a tricky balance. The balance between this is the question I want you to answer. and so I'm going to keep asking it versus at some point

we have to make the rest of this podcast is a hard balance to strike. Yeah, and there's always a lot of stuff to talk about. So like, sure. But I think the thing that people are really reacting to in that, and I felt it. I feel it this week, and there's a reason I want to talk about this,

is I asked Sundar, as I've asked for many years about Google's relationship to the web. And he keeps saying this thing. He said it now for many years, that Google is sending more traffic out to the web than ever, that they're committed to the web, they want the web to be healthy, they're the only company that cares about the web.

He always brings up competitors. Like, you know, Instagram doesn't allow links and captions. Like, I think this still bothers him that Google gets all of this pressure to make sure the web ecosystem is thriving. And, you know, many other platforms send no links out at all. Okay. Well, Google runs Chrome. Google runs search.

Like, that is their ecosystem. Their creator base, if you want to think about that way, is the web. And the same way that Instagram creators or TikTok creators are always, mad at Instagram or TikTok or YouTube, or YouTube, or YouTube website owners are always mad at Google. Like, that's just the nature of the relationship,

but the economics are different because it's an open ecosystem, not a closed one. Right, so TikTok creators are mad at TikTok. There's a natural connection there. Like, TikTok can just make changes and change the live of TikTok creators. There's an out for Google,

which is like, I don't know, do some other stuff. Like, why are you so addicted to Google search? Right. So you hear, to Indar Say, we're sending more traffic out to the web. And then within minutes, a site like Business Insider announces layoffs of 21% of its staff. They announced it just before we went on air. And the memo says, we need to get out of businesses that have traffic dependencies we cannot control. That we need to avoid these steep traffic drops we're seeing.

And what they are talking about is search traffic. Right. They're getting out of the commerce business where, you know, that you list the 10 best mattresses and collect affiliate revenue for clicks. Because that style of running a commerce business is search arbitrage. Right. People search for best mattress. They land on the business insider page.

They buy a mattress and business insider get some pennies. And if you can warm your way up the rankings, you can make more pennies. And then you can make pennies at scale and now you've made money. And we know lots of competitors that basically just do search arbitrage in this way. And the bottom has fallen out of all of those businesses. I mean, we do some search arbitrage. Like, we can just call that what it is. Everybody does some search arbitrage.

It's part of being a business on the internet. That is part of the job. Yeah, but we don't do it as ruthlessly as like the slop buying guys. Much to the screen of some of the people at Vox Media. It's true. There are people who love for us to do ruthlessly. Also, we run like a formal reviews program. Like, we do, it's true.

We make some pages for search and we see the demand and we try to get that audience. But if you're running one of those verticals that is purely search arbitrage, Right? The content farms to do it, their businesses are going away. And some of those content farms are attached to things like Business Insider, which does real journalism, right? And like, you see the bottom falling out there. And I, there's a real disconnect. And I think I felt it on this interview more than ever. We're saying we're committed to the web.

We're going to keep building on the web. We're going to keep sending traffic out on the web. And then all of the people building on the web are like, we're dying. And I don't think that disconnect is getting smaller. I think it is getting bigger and bigger and bigger by the day. And it, it, you know, I'm not going to, like, go all the way out there and say, like, the web is dying. Like, I think the web is a place where apps are developed, the best it's ever been. Every single day, there's, like, a hot new web app, basically, that is doing something that couldn't be done before.

Or an app like Figma is getting capabilities that ever had before. That's an incredible story of application development. Like, I keep saying it. Like as a giant interlinked, interconnected worldwide application platform, the web is a miracle. Like it's just, you would never be able to predict that something like that could exist. And it does. It's scale. And everyone just sort of like takes it for granted.

As a media platform, it's dying. And it's one of the reasons it's dying is because there's no way to get moved traffic around it. And Google is the last way to move it. And they, I would just say, I don't think they care. Like I really have come to the conclusion. that they know this is happening. They can obviously see it happening. And they've just,

they're over it. Like, I don't think they want the pressure. I don't think they care. There's also a bunch of lawsuits we should talk about. But we're just in a place where I think the web we knew is coming to a close. And another web that's primarily application based or platform based or whatever it is, is on the rise. And it might be masking the fact that an old web is maybe over. I think that's true. I mean, and I think I put this next to the work Google has been doing on its ranking stuff over the last couple of years, including a couple of pretty big ranking changes that like all at once tanked a bunch of publishers. And this is the thing we've covered a lot. The, the, you know, small like home goods reviews site that got absolutely destroyed by some sort of unknowable change in the algorithm that just downranked a bunch of new stuff. And Google's line, and I, at a very,

top level, I believe them that this is the goal, is the goal is to stop sending traffic to bad websites. Right. And so like, Google is actively trying to kill bad websites. Like, let's, let's not be unclear about that, right? Like, all the stuff you're describing all the content farming stuff, Google not only doesn't care if that goes away, it would like that to go away. Because again, like, Google understands as well as anybody that if, if all of that stuff gets worse on the web, Google search becomes less useful. And it all just, like falls apart, right? And this is, this is a thing we've seen happen. Search results get worse because websites are getting worse because they're trying to game Google. And it's this like horrible

death spiral of search arbitrage. Google is very happy to kill all of that stuff. Like I think all of the things where there's no more money in mattress reviews because they don't rank on Google anymore, I think inside of Google they are going to call that a resounding success. Feel about that however you want. But I don't think Google's stance on that is at all unclear. I think to me the question is like Google is in an unusually active position right now of trying to decide what a good and bad web page is. And Google has always, always, always, always, always gone way out of its way to say that it doesn't do that. And to say that actually we are not remotely interested in trying to decide what's good and bad on the internet. We're just sending traffic to where people want to go.

And then there was this big SEO leak a year ago that made very clear that Google puts its thumbs on on the scale in like innumerable ways to decide what it likes and what it doesn't. And now, Increasingly, it's like, okay, in order to take all the shitty stuff that has been created on the web to game the way the system worked, we're going to build a new system because it's better than that old system. And if all that stuff dies that was trying to game our old system, so be it. And then the question is, and no one will answer this, including Sundar, is what happens when you also kill the good websites? They won't, they won't say that. They will not answer that question. And there is this, like, big structural belief.

and I think it was Demisizabas that said this, that like, we're going to eventually have a web that is mostly for AI agents and may not even need like a front end for people to look at at all most of the time. But what about the good websites? It's just a question they won't answer.

And we're in such a, like, baby being thrown out with the bathwater situation where, like, in a sort of ruthless way, like, sure, let all the bad websites die. Let them all die. Whatever. There are a lot of good websites out there that will die as you kill the bad websites in order to make it easier for people to find what mattress to buy. And like Google, at least publicly, will not reckon with that. So I think one of the ways they are reckoning with it is by saying, well, the audience doesn't want this.

And I don't know how to contend with that, right? Their point is like, people are getting media from YouTube and TikTok and whatever else and the podcasts. And that's all fine. And that's where the audience is going. and like, if you want to run a website, great, get your own audience. Like, don't be relying on Google search to get your audience. And I mean, if anyone has listened to Vurchase for like the past five years, you know that I believe this in my bones.

Like the deepest level that being addicted to Google is like bad for the media industry. But the media industry is addicted to Google. And there's no like transition plan. It's like, oh, we're just going to kill you. Yeah. And they're fine with it. And I don't think the audience under understands what's happening to the information environment that they're in.

Like that, that to me is like the hardest part of this, that suddenly Google is full of summaries of things that might be garbage or the AI itself is hallucinating or the good sources of information are now at war with Google and you're not even getting them because they're in a fight. So another piece of, this is all just a swirl of what is going to happen to the web. The New York Times today, this morning before I started recording, announced they are they've inked a generative AI deal with Amazon. And it broadly tracks the deals

that like everyone has made with Open AI. Vox Media has a deal with Open ad. It's like this. Amazon's going to train on New York Times content. New York Times stuff will appear in Alexa and other Amazon services. It's a licensing deal. And a lot of media companies are setting

these deals because they want to set a market for what the license looks like. So again, Disclosure Vox Media has one of the deals with Open AI. I have no idea what the terms are. But, you know, Nick Thompson, the CEO of the Atlantic was on here, was on the coder. And he was like, we need to set a market. Like, some payments need to be made. So there are some numbers for the inevitable court cases to come to some conclusion about. And Amazon is a very useful, rich company to sign one of those deals with in that case. Right. So the New York Times can't sign a deal with opening eye because they're suing them in Microsoft for copyright infringement. It's in a fight with Google. The Times executives are on the board of the News Media Alliance. Disclosure are our executives are on the board of the News Media Alliance. They're furious. with Google, about all the changes to search and these traffic drops.

They're a part of the publisher ad tech lawsuits, all that stuff. So they're in a fight with Google. So who's left? Who has big pockets that can set you a rate for a fight? It's Amazon. Right. Which also, by the way, would like very much to make it more expensive for all the other companies to do this job, too.

Yeah. Amazon wins if they just set enormous rates for Google and opening I. Yeah. It's fine. But like, oh, this is a weird, because Amazon doesn't give a shit out the web. They want Alexa to summarize. Times articles for you every morning proactively or like whatever they think Alex is going to do. They're not out here like what's their browser called?

On fire device. Silk. They're not. Whatever. Like, you know what I mean? Like their thing is like they need the training data for their AI systems. They need to distribute it to their customers in new and interesting ways because they're not going to win as a web browser company.

Right. Which brings me to like the last little piece of the puzzle, which is the browser company, which David, you have talked about and profiled and covered at length. they stopped making their browser. Like they stopped making ARC because there's no win there for them. Right. They're in the middle of trying to figure out

what the next bet is. They have this new browser called Dia, which is very much like, so far, I got into the beta. I was not supposed to get into the beta, but I got it into the beta. And like, holy God,

is it just Chrome with a chatbot? And the thing that's happening is, do you know what's also becoming Chrome with the chatbot? is Chrome and also every other browser that exists. And so I think like for the browser company, the big bet was like, okay, if we can mix AI with browsing data with like a device that you spend a lot of time on, that can be very powerful.

Agreed. Great call browser company. It turns out everybody else had that idea too. And this is just what's coming. And then the flip side is like that stuff is being, that stuff is being eaten up by the chat GPP app and the Claude app and people using Siri badly and Gemini and all this stuff. And so there is this like, again, it's just what is a web page for anymore? And if I'm not in the business of showing you web pages, what am I building?

And I don't think anybody knows the answer to that. And I think it's certainly true that you can build a cool browser that a bunch of power users like me will like. I like Arc a lot. I use it all day every day. That doesn't appear to be the next thing. But no one knows quite what that thing is yet, because it might not be showing you web pages.

I don't think it is. That Demis Sosabas comment at I.O. About what kind of web do you build for agents first? It's the whole game. It's the whole game. Yeah. So whatever you think Google searched did to the web as a media platform, and it did a lot of things.

First, it created an entire economy for the web as a media platform, right? people search for things, they went to web pages, just like revolutionized the internet. Like it created the internet as we know it in like meaningful ways. Yeah. Then it created SEO, which was less good. Then it created the SEO industry and SEO slop and all this stuff. And it made a whole ecosystem that worked and didn't work in whatever ways it worked. And then even before AI showed up, Google started displaying more and more of the content natively.

Right. What time is the Super Bowl went from being a thing that people fought for? a thing that Google will just tell you. And zero-click searches, which is what they were called, were an increasing part of Google's product for just a long time. And the only searches that they would definitely send people to websites for were commercial searches, stuff where you bought stuff. And they were every, if you look at Google I.O. over the years, every demo has always

ended with a transaction. Because once you're doing commercial searches, you get to charge for advertising. And so you can buy yourself to the top of a commercial. search, the top result. You're the winner. You bought the AdWords auction for shoes. You get the shoes click. You bought some shoes. Everyone's happy in Google's ecosystem. And that has led to other weird outcomes, right? Where you search for the name of a product. You get the competitor first because they bought the ad for the name of the product. Weird outcome made Google really rich. That's the web we knew. And then you see what AI is doing to that web, right? We're just reading the entire web.

Maybe that's copyright infringent. Maybe it's not. And then we're just, just going to summarize it for you and give it to you, and businesses will die. Okay. We're going to run that whole cycle, that 20-year cycle in two minutes with web apps and agents. Yeah. It's going to run so fast because the first wave of agents were not programmatic, right? It was like, we're going to go click around on the website for you. And Google has these projects.

What's it, Mariner? Project Mariner is Google runs Chrome. for you in its data center and a robot clicks around on a website for you and does the work. And what Demis is saying is why are we doing this? Like this is stupid. We should use these new AI first protocols, which are basically just APIs but made for AI agents like MCP A2A. There's a whole alphabet soup of these new protocols that are really interesting. And then the agents are going to go to a website, which will just appear like a text prompt database.

So you'll collect information out of the database and bring them back to you. And once you have that web, okay, now you really do have the giant worldwide interlinked application platform. But you don't have websites. Right. You just have a bunch of smart databases talking to each other. Right. You're making me think of when I was talking to the Google search team ahead of I.O., Liz Reed, who runs the search team, basically made the argument to me that the Google search ecosystem that we know now was just a construct of the technology that we had. that basically all we had the technology to do was look for words in a place.

And it was something else had to put them in a place in an order that made sense. And all Google's technology was able to do was look for it. Right. It was somebody else's job to make it something human parsible. And now we have technology that can make this stuff human parsible, that maybe we don't need the middleman of somebody building a thing around it that I can look at. And I think that is like, I don't think, she meant it to seem like a, as huge a statement as she did. But to say like the, and I think

it reminds me of the thing you always say about Twitter, right, which is that like, uh, criticism of the current Twitter does not absolve past versions of the company from being terrible. Jack Dorsey was also bad, the Nilai Patel story. Right. Like, I think the argument I think Google is, is making, but doesn't quite want to say out loud, is that the way that we've done it for the last 25 years wasn't the right answer. It was just the one that Google came up with. And now they think they have a better one. And so they're like, well, we sort of reoriented around one thing.

And now we have a better thing. Why wouldn't reorient again? And I think in a vacuum, that's like a reasonable thing to say, right? Like, we built a better thing. We're going to do the thing. But then they're doing the thing that every tech company does, which is just utterly fail to think about the downstream effects of their decisions. Oh, I think they've thought about those effects.

You think? and I think they've come to the conclusion after getting beat up for three years at I.O. About AI and the downstream effects on the web and being in lawsuits, they're like, we don't care. Like, if we don't get here, someone else will get here first,

and it will be better to take the hits and survive than to try to play nice and lose. That's the Mark Zuckerberg story. Like, that's what happens. You get beat up enough times that you turn into the Joker, and that is, that's what Mark Zuckerberg did. And I think they're also,

Not for nothing. They're looking at the information environment they operate in. And you're like, well, YouTube is bigger than ever. The information is on YouTube. I mean, it is probably true that if all the websites went away, Google would be fun. And I think Google kind of knows that. I don't know. I think that is more of an open question than not.

Because all that's going to be left is slop. Like the last domino to fall here, like really the last domino is some scaled media company opting out of being ranked. Right? So the New York Times says to Google, look, we've just had enough. Stop. Stop crawling us. Stop ranking us. Stop serving our news.

And that no one has the leverage against Google yet. At some point, they will stop sending enough traffic that someone will make that call. And I don't think they've thought that through. Like, what happens when web stops being universally available to Google? Right. And who knows? Who knows? Who knows the answer to that question?

Even honestly, like, my immediate reaction to that was to say, that'll never happen because the New York Times needs Google a lot more than Google needs the New York Times. But like the pure perception hit that Google would take as a place that no longer sees the whole internet might change it. Like there's something would happen there. There's some fine grain controls that are like very political here. So like you can opt into Google search but not Google AI training. But there are documents from the various trials. It's you can see Google executives working through those options. And even creating those options. and saying, well, maybe one day we're going to get to, if you want to be searched,

if you want to be crawled for the search engine, you have to opt into AI training. Again, if things continue the way they're going, some big media company is going to say, we're out. Yeah. Take us out of this. I don't know when that's going to be, but like that's the trend line. And that's when I'm like, the web as a media platform is just under enormous amounts of pressure. It's hard to, it's hard to see the through line, but I,

I know when things are changing. You know, like, I can't see the finish line. I can't see what it looks like at the end. But I know we're at the beginning of a new phase without any question at all. Yes. Something massive is happening here as, yeah, Google is adding agents to Chrome. Like, that's just a thing that they're trying to do. More and more people are talking about using the web is basically a series of database.

Like, Sundar in that interview is like, what is the web but a series of databases? I also think, like, you said to him a thing you say a lot, which is that if we were starting the verge again, today you wouldn't start a website, you'd start a TikTok channel. And he sort of pushed back. But what he said was pretty much in his many words, he said, sure, you'd start a TikTok channel. But it's only like 2% more work to have a web presence. So you'd probably do that too. And it's like, even if that's true, that is such a, I don't think he realized to the extent to which he was telling on himself by saying that.

Yeah. And I just, I've been thinking about that ever since. Yeah. When we started the verge, 100% of our effort was the website. Right. Like, oh, but sure, you'll, you'll, like, you know, do a WordPress template and put it on the internet. Just, why not? No, I think his answer is much more like, it's 2% more work because you will prompt Gemini to read your TikTok channel and stand up a website.

Like, that's what he meant by 2% more work. And by the way, when I keep saying, there's no way we had started a website today. What I mean is that we started the verge in 2011 when cell phones still had 3-inch screens. like we we launched the verge as basically a desktop app those are the days like that's what the venture capital money was for it was just a very different time we would just never do that today like you would go address an audience in a different way and that's what every new media company is trying to do essentially I don't know I would just say go listen to that conversation again you'll hear more pushback than you think and a lot of it is kind of predicated around well it's it's it's fine if these things die, right? Because other things are growing, which makes sense. On the broadest scale, that is true. That's just life.

But you see there's no longer a defense of, like, the things are dying. It's, look at all the stuff that's growing. The one thing that could complicate this, and by the time you're listening to this, it will have probably happened, is that it's closing arguments in the Google search antitrust remedies phase on Friday, tomorrow. As you're listening to this, it already happened. that's the case where the government is asking for Google to be forced to sell Chrome. And I asked to know about this. I said, can you do all this stuff you want to do if you have to sell Chrome?

And he just didn't answer. And his final version of this, when I knew I'd hit the brick wall, he said, that's not even what we're looking at. And I was like, well, you should because it might happen to you. I mean, to be clear, like two things. A, that's clearly a lie. And B, he can't tell you anything because it's like ongoing litigation, right? Like that's a thing. A lawyer looks him in the eyes and says, hey, Sunar, you cannot say words about this or everyone goes to jail.

But like, that's, you're right that that is, that is the question. And I think whether this ends up being good for the web, though, is hard to know. It's clearly bad for Google. Whatever is going to happen is going to be bad for Google. But does this just give OpenAI new distribution for ChatGPT to do the same kind? of stuff? Or is there a version of this that actually accrues back to the idea that the web as a place full of web pages that people go to is a good and valuable idea? 100% TBD. Like genuinely unknown. And I think it's part of what everyone has tried to reckon

within this trial is like, what happens if we do this? There is a sense that like we're going to make it possible for a bunch of other companies to build search engines. But if you believe Google, the whole premise of a search engine is going away. And all anyone will do is take that search index and build AI products. And if that's what's happening, then we've solved one kind of Google problem,

but we've just sped up the killing of the web. So believe in Google there, you know, you have to believe them when they say, like, AI overviews are our most used product ever. And it's like, because you put them on all the pages. I know. No one's picking. Like, they're just doing what's in front

of them. I punched you in the face. You've been punched. You loved it. I don't know. We'll see. There's a lot here. The reason I wanted to add all these things up together is you can see the change. Like, you know, a year from now,

the New York Times will run a story about how the web change. I'll be like, yeah, I listened to the Vurchast. I caught that a year ago. Because this is the moment, right? Apple's weird weaknesses, Google's apparent strength, all kind of built around like where do the apps come from how do you use them how is the user interface just going to be a bunch of natural language are the you know google's vision is that you'll search for something it will build you an app on the fly and make a new interface to data for you which is

pretty cool like that's a cool way to think about interacting with the search engine yeah many things have to die for that to happen like the dinosaurs were cool mammals were cooler like sorry bro like it's over. Like, the asteroid's going to hate you. That's where I perceive that as clearly as I can now. Like, that's the change that's coming. Yeah. The application models are changing. And Apple's weakness is, are they ready for it? And Google's perceived strength is they're ahead of it. But Google has big questions to answer to. And the downstream effects are like pretty huge this time. Yeah. And if you're wondering, by the way, what is the best possible outcome here? The answer is the Fedaverse. Like, if you walk this back all the way to the beginning,

of you and I talking about all of this stuff. And like, how do we, how do we take the things that are good about this and make it the size of the web and part of the web? That's how you do it. Yeah. That's the stuff. Like, big interoperability, which we have to demand as consumers this time. Yeah. Like, I don't think the federal government is going to demand interoperability.

Although they are in court. You never know. Some settle make it happen. All right. We have to take a break. We're going to come back with lightning around, which I have been told. I don't know, but I have been told is sponsored. We'll be right back.

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Terms and conditions apply. Buzzwords like progressive and affordability are thrown around all the time in politics. But what do they actually mean? For me, being a progressive means at least two things. One, being willing to unite lots and lots of people, all of the folks that are getting screwed over against the powers that be. that are making your life worse. And then second, being progressive

is essentially a hopeful enterprise. That you think, I think, that the world can be much better, that we don't have to settle for crumbs or settle for the status quo. And is there a difference between what it means to the elected officials and what it means to the people?

So money is essentially the root of everything. I don't care if you're gay. I don't care if you have all that. That's like secondary, third. Like, that doesn't, that's not a priority. That's this week on America Actually. Let's dig it. All right, we're back.

Now, as you know, if you're listening to this show, David and I and the rest of the Virgin Newsroom, we don't do the ads. We refuse to the ads. We're precious about it. That's our editorial independence coming through, loud and clear. But the Lightning Round is sponsored this week. So someone has to say it.

So Eric, our producer, Eric's going to say it. Eric, go ahead. Hi. This week's Lightning Round is presented by Google Gemini. That was great, Eric. Really good job. Well done.

I'm really proud of you. There are going to be so many reactions to that based on what you're doing. Very good. Don't worry, though. Still full flavor. Because you can't tell us what to do. What's the flavor rating now? How do you feel?

I'm going to, I'll drink through this later. All right. It's fine. It's great. You two can sponsor the lighting, right? The problem is when you cover for not getting the sponsors by insisting that sponsors are bad. I did this to myself.

But anyway, it's still full flavor because you can't tell us what to do. The rich subscriptions are on sale. You see what I'm saying? I'm going to get better at this, David. All right, it's time. Speaking of people who would like to tell us what to do, it's time, once again, for America's favorite podcast within a podcast. A thing I can just say, because you can just say things in America in 2025.

Brendan Carr is a dummy. Nilai, according to the links I'm seeing here, kind of a busy week for our man, Brendan. Like busy in inconsequential ways. Oh, Brendan's favorite. You know what I mean? Like a lot of people had reactions to Brendan this week. Okay.

And, you know, Brendan continued to just like break stuff in the way that Brendan breaks stuff. But the chair of our nation's federal communications commission is sort of busy just breaking stuff. So we ran a big story this week about the Bede program. It's the Biden administration's broadband rollout. Lots of criticism of the Bede program, which is supposed to bring broadband. to many, many more people, especially in rural areas across the country. We have long talked about how rural Internet is like a disaster. And so Biden passes this big bill.

The Bid money is supposed to go out. We're supposed to get internet connections. Everyone's like, where's the money? We didn't connect one person. Ezra Klein has sold millions of copies of this book pointing out the Bid didn't. So make one an air connection. That's fine. That's a meaningful criticism in this program.

The Trump administration is basically shutting this program down on the cusp of it actually starting to do the things it wants to do. So West Davis, his last big piece for us as a reporter here at The Verge, is a deep look at Bede where it stands and what's happening to it. And what is fundamentally happening to it is that the money was starting to go out to build fiber connections across the country. And everyone showed up, including our boy Brendan and Howard Lutnik, the Commerce Secretary, looked at this and said, no, no, no, no, no, we want to give the money to Starlink,

to satellite Internet. Because when they say satellite Internet, they only mean one thing. They don't mean HughesNet. Yeah, you're not giving it to Kuiper. Like, what are we doing here? They mean Starlink. Yeah. So we have all this reporting, all these quotes.

West did a great job of this story, you know, basically saying they were very close to rolling out like full fiber connections to every single person in West Virginia. Like that's, that was the plan for the bead money. They were going to be able to do it with $150 million to spare and ahead of its deadline. and now it's going to shift a bunch of that investment to satellite. And that's fine. Maybe you love Starling,

but the reality is, and I will disclose, Comcast through its NBC, Universal Arm as an investor and parent company of box media, but they hate me, so that's fine. I'm not a friend of the ISPs here,

but I'm just going to point out that wired connections are generally superior to wireless ones. Especially when they've already been built and exists. Especially when there's already the infrastructure,

especially when the wired connections are so much faster than the satellite. connections and do not require line of sight, which Starlink still requires line of sight. So we're just in this place where this program, which there are many, many realistic criticisms of it, is now running into political expediency. And in particular, Brendan loves to talk about Starlink and satellite because he loves Elon Musk and he's captured moron. So that's one for Brendan.

$20 billion, by the way, is the number we've seen floating around that this is the beat is a 40, 2.6, I think, billion dollar program. And the reporting is that as much as 20 billion of that could just get thrown directly at Starlink to do something. And it's fine. West did a great job of this story. I encourage you to read it.

It'll be in the show notes. There are lots of people in the story who say, look, fiber is not practical for 100% of population. Of course, we were going to also do Starlink and satellite and other fixed wireless solutions for a lot of people. There's an administrator in the state of Nevada who says this is what we were going to do there. But the ratios are being flipped to favor-strothic. It's just like naked correction.

We're just going to put little ultra-wideband 5G things everywhere around America. It's going to solve all our problems. As 5G does. Speaking of 5G, you will recall, it was last week, a couple weeks ago, we had basically a moral dilemma because of Brendan, where we couldn't tell who the villain was in a particular Brendan's story. Didn't like that. So Brendan sent a letter to Dish Network saying, hey, you were supposed to build a nationwide 5G network

to compete with T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon. And you're supposed to do that because we allowed T-Mobile to buy Sprint and to preserve competition in America. We gave you BoostMobil and a bunch of spectrum and a bunch of money, and they're supposed to be a network, and there's no network. And I'm Brendan Carr, and I love being anger at stuff, and now I'm going to yell at you, Charlie Ergan, CEO of Dish Network.

And it's hard to tell who the villain in that story is. Like, truly hard. Like, you're making the right criticisms for the wrong, totally politically motivated reasons. That's Brendan Carr on a good day. Like, that's the best we can hope for him. Yes. So DISH Network has chosen to fight back. A bunch of partners of Echo Star, a bunch of its vendors are saying that DISH is actually building a network.

They say that they have seven million customers, the majority of whom are still basically roaming on AT&T and teamable. but their own network is serving 1.3 million people. I'll remind you that America has somewhere over 300 million people. So as a nationwide competitor to the bigs, not doing great. Even that number still seems too high to me. Like that 1.3 million is like... If you are one of the 1.3 million people in America who are getting native 5G service from DISH network.

Call me. Yeah. I don't believe you exist. Call me from your Echo Starphone. That's like a huge 90s satellite. And they're saying they gained 88,000 wireless subscribers in April. That means 88,000 people in April signed up for DISH Network's 5G service. You tell me who you are.

I am guessing they mean Boost Mobile, which is their own and operated prepaid service, right? Sure. Great. That's the state of play. Dish is fighting back by claiming it has 1.3 million 5G customers running on its network. and everyone else is effectively by AT&T and T-Mobile service that Dish is reselling under its own name. All that sucks.

Like that is not what was supposed to happen. By the way, a deal that Ajit Pye made that Brendan is. In Brenton, you know, he was part of that chain. And now he's trying to unwind it by yelling at Charlie Room. So I know what's going on there. I do know that Brendan, what does he want to do with the spectrum that he wants to reclaim from Dish? He wants to give it to Starlink.

Yep. Other satellite companies have also started asking for the spectrum. him. This is just dumb, naked corruption that started with a dumb, naked corrupt deal that Ajit Pai made that Brendan is carrying on. That's life. Last two little bits of Brendan, like I said, he's just like carrying on breaking stuff. Anna Gomez, who's the last Democratic commissioner on the FCC, they're supposed to, you know, have five, and it's supposed to be three, two, depending on whose party has the presidency. Right now, it's three one. So we're doing great. Um, uh, she's on tour.

She's doing this like First Amendment tour pointing out that Brendan is a threat to free speech. So she's like going to college campuses. We've talked about her before. I'm going to, we're going to try to get her on one of these shows. Do you think she's our competition in the Brendan Carr as a dummy podcast space? Like I hear she's going on tour and I'm like, maybe we need to go on our own tour. We should go on our own tour. We should combine forces.

Um, I mean, she's also a politician and I have a number of questions for why the FCC is totally ineffective in week that I could direct at her as well. as I've done to every FCC person that has ever appeared on our platform. All right, so we're going to go on a tour that exactly matches her tour and we're just going to be like one building away. Yep. It's going to be like,

you know, they all suck. Anyhow, she's on tour. The party speaker and microphones just yelling at Anna Gomez. We'll get a bigger party speaker. We'll get that JBL, man. That thing's hot. Anna is saying that it's an administration-wide effort to chill speech

and stifle dissenting voices. And she says, Brendan is leading a clear effort to quash dissent. She's basically picking the fight. She's like trying to get fired. She's even saying, I will probably get fired for doing this. And so far, Trump hasn't fired her. I don't think that he knows that she exists.

But it's coming. This is the next turn. She's going to make enough noise and get fired. And she's... I mean, you don't do this unless that's the outcome you're assuming is happening. Her quote, she says, I don't know why I am still in my job. And then she says, if I get fired, it isn't because I didn't do my job. it's because I insisted upon doing it.

I wish she means protecting free speech. So I feel every time you and I record the verge cast. That's very good. All of this has ended in maybe the most pretzel-like logic of all in the pages of the Wall Street Journal opinion section where they have attacked Brendan this week for being an authoritarian censorship machine. And their response, because of the Wall Street Journal, is that the entire FCC should be shut down and turned over to the

private market. Give it to Starlink. It's just like full horseshoe theory of politics. Like even the most libertarian opinion section that you can get in the Wall Street Journal is like, yeah, that dude sucks. Like he's misusing government power. Shut it all down. I do like the idea of a privatized FCC.

What could possibly go wrong? You know, it's not like the, there's not like there's scarce wireless spectrum and you want to protect things like the FAA from people's cell phone emissions. Like, whatever. Why would you ever want to do that? Yeah. But it's great. I love it.

I do love the fact that Brendan has united left and right in just pure hatred of his moronic censorship machine that he's building. He's a dummy. And it's rare that I'm like, you should read this Wall Street Journal opinion page. As always, I remind you, the only politics we can, we consistently express in the show are that free markets are pretty good. competition makes better products, and you should be a little bit less racist than Brendan Carr.

If you think that's wildly leftist, you are free to believe that, but that's what you get from us. And also, now I'm telling you, I agree with the Wall Street Journal subpoena pages. I'm telling you, man, strange bedfellows these days. It's weird times here in America. As ever, Brendan, you're welcome to come on the show

and defend any of this stuff. You can appear via Starlink, if you want. You, too, can be sponsored by your buddy, Elon. But I don't think we'll ever do it because I think you're a coward and a dummy. So if you want to prove me wrong, all of our platforms are available to you. I will say that David are both having children soon,

so the clock is ticking, my man. Yeah, you gotta get on here. Brendan, if you want to host the Vergecast this summer, get at us. We can talk about it. That door shockingly open. Dying to know what Brendan thinks. But you do have to do Brandon Carr as a dummy every week.

I love it. All right, we need a pallet cleanser. What do you got? It's almost switch time. Are you, are you, are you, Did you buy a Switch? I did not. Okay.

I play one video game Madden, and I'm at the point now where I've mastered last year's Madden just in time for the new one to come out. Oh, that's, I mean, that's the ideal Madden scenario. Yeah. I'm also waiting for Metal Gear, Solid, Snake Eater, Delta Force, or whatever, it's called to come out. Pins and needles for that one. But that's not Switch stuff.

Okay. No, but the Switch 2 is coming next week, June 5th, easily to me, the gadget of the year. Like, not knowing everything we know about. the rest of the year. I can't imagine what would have to happen for the Switch 2 to not be the most consequential piece of hardware that's coming out. We're learning a bunch of stuff about it already. As far as I can tell, Nintendo seems to have been pretty tight with like who's getting, it's not like there's been like a, you know, KC Nystatet hands on or like a bunch of like lifestyle influencers getting to use the thing. Like not that many people seem to have Switch 2s yet,

but stuff is starting to trickle out. Somebody, there was an unboxing video that's somebody did that got immediately yanked offline. We've been covering kind of the run-up to it a bunch. Jay Peters were really good story, basically being like the Switch 2 is the Wii U done correctly, which is both like a good point and kind of a sick burn on all of Nintendo's history. But I just think this is like, it's a really interesting gadget moment in that I think if the Switch 2 is everything we think it might be, I kind of think it's a big deal just as a piece of

hardware. Like if we have this thing that really makes portable gaming that is high end and long lasting and like the fact that the Mario Kart game is like an open world Mario Kart game that you can play anywhere demands a lot of the hardware. It demands a lot of the wireless. Like if this stuff works, I think we get to the point where like there's just a lot of things that suddenly start to feel possible in gadget design that I'm very excited about. Which is a lot to say about a slightly bigger switch, but it's really how I feel. Yeah, I mean, you're all way in on gatch of the year. Oh, hands down. Like, I, what else could, like, I, I, I have such a hard time imagining something be more important than the switch to. Like, if this thing sucks, it's going

to be devastating. But also, again, like, I think if, if Nintendo just takes all these ideas that it had about the sort of modularity and the portability and this idea that you can have a thing that connects to all of your screens and all of your devices all at once and actually makes that like another tick better in every respect, it's just going to be amazing. And there's so many ideas that if you just broaden it out slightly, starts to change like, oh, how do we think about our other gadgets? And like, what if Nintendo is doing all the like handoff stuff that Apple has never successfully done with its devices? Like, why can't I dock my iPhone into my television, Nilai? Why? Nintendo figured it out. Yeah, it's funny.

Apple, one of the other coats of paint rumors about Apple, so we're going to redo Game Center to make it more like Xbox Live. Oh, yeah, there's like a, it's a whole app. You can see the conversions here. Yeah. Look, I think it's possible to switch to is the device of the year. I think certainly it will be the gaming device of the year. It's the one that people are the most excited about.

Certainly the games look great from the coverage we've done and that our reporters have gotten it to try out. But cash in the year is a big one. I could, I mean, as somebody who covers gadgets, I hope I'm wrong. It's fun if I'm wrong. But I just think, I mean, this one's really interesting because the first switch when it came out was like cool and exciting, but it was a breath of the wild machine. Right. Like that's fundamentally what it was.

And this one is making much more of a hardware first play. Like there are lots of new games, but some of the new games are also going to play in the old switch. And there's nothing as sort of immediately earth shattering as there was with Breath of the Wild. And so I think the idea that this thing is going to have to sell itself as hardware, A, it seems to be a thing Nintendo knows, and B, is going to be super fascinating. And they're trying to do all this interesting ecosystem software. They're like, what if we, you know, sell you a third-party camera that connects to the thing?

I'm telling you, like, I have been wanting modular gadgets for as long as I have known you. And this is the closest thing to properly pulling that off if it pulls it off that I think we've ever seen. Yeah. All right. Maybe I'll buy one. I so here's my question for you is should I go stand in line at a game stop at midnight to try and buy this thing like am I just for the content do it for the gram yeah I think obviously I'm dying to know have you read any of this new Apple and China book by the way no there's long it's it's really interesting there's a lot of reporting in there but a lot of it is about how the Apple we know is more shaped by like Chinese resellers standing in line than that's a lot of it's a lot of it is about how the Apple we know is more shaped by like Chinese resellers standing in line than than anyone can possibly see. Oh, interesting.

And that's really the story of gadget lines now. Like, we've all but stopped covering them because it's basically a bunch of resellers standing in line. Yes. And it's like, it's not like a joyous community. It's kind of gross in a lot of ways. But I think you should go and be like, I'm here for joyous community.

And then just interview a bunch of resellers. See what happens. See what they're like. I like it. I like, so you're flipping the switch. How am I? All right. Well, I will report back next week.

But I think, I think I'm going to do it. I'm going to go to GameStop and see what. what kind of trouble I can get into. Yeah. All right, we should end with breaking news. The tariffs have been paused, David.

While we were talking, the tariffs are back on. The pause of the, the pause of the terrace was paused. Do you understand what I'm saying? We've unpaused. By the court of appeals has blocked the pausing of the tariffs. I don't care.

I'm afraid. That's what I'm saying. Elon Musk is out of the White House. By the way, Elon Musk, you know, it's clear that he got himself, no one likes him anymore.

So he's been off-boarded officially from Doge. He's on a whole interview circuit right now. Yeah. He spoke to Ars Technica with CBS News, I think, with The Washington Post. He's trying to make a big show of being back at Tesla. Tesla sales are tanking around the world. But, like, in ways that are, like, hard to cover. Like, in Europe, in one quarter, they're down.

Right. They've cratered in Quebec. It's like, you got to, whatever. There's a bunch of data that says a story in, like, weird, independent ways. And then they're supposed to launch the robo taxis, like, soon. Yeah, and he's been saying they're, like, out on the road doing stuff, right? Yeah, there's driverless cars in Austin. So if you're in Austin and you see a party speaker or a robo taxi, let me know.

If you see a party speaker and a robo taxi in one photo, we will send you Verge merch. I can't, I don't know what it'll be, but I will send you something. I will send you a party speaker. Yeah. But I think that just the one thing I've been thinking a lot about with the Musk stuff is, The thing he keeps saying in all these interviews is that he's like back to sleeping on factory floors and in conference rooms at Tesla. And it's like it's very much a show of I am back paying attention to my company designed especially to like, you know, appease investors who have been worried about Tesla being completely ignored by its CEO for a long time. I'm very curious to see how that helps Tesla's case versus again, like with, with, with,

these sales changes, this ongoing disastrous branding that the company has gone through because of Elon Musk that is like he is the company's greatest asset and worst problem. And that's been true for a long time. But for a long time, at least financially asset outweighed problem pretty aggressively. And it really feels like that has flipped. And I'm just curious to see if he can change that perception just by being back at Tesla more. But I don't, I don't see. see it. I don't either. I just don't see it. There's, there's nothing to be done in the factory for him. No. What's he like he's not, he's not, he can't invent a new car to fix it right now. Like, yeah. I think that's also increasingly clear to a lot of people, uh, is that the sleeping at the factory might have been a bit and maybe not part of my man's day to day job. Well, he's gotten more children and father. Um, anyhow, uh, the terrorists are are paused. You let me know. There's a lot of updates. If you're out in the world, you let me know. what the terrorists are doing. It's going to be a weird iPhone season.

iPhone prices are going to be crazy because of these things. All right. That's it. We covered, as always, we went long because it was a slow news week. This is what always happens to us. It was fun.

It was a good one. We'll back next week with much more WWDC preview. Lots of stuff. It's the Verge, everybody. It's going to be great. Pay us the money. You can't tell us what to do. That's it.

That's the Vergecast. That's right on. And that's it for the Vergecast this week. And hey, We'd love to hear from you. Give us a call at 866 Verge11. The Verge cast is a production of The Verge and the Vox Media Podcasts Network. Our show is produced by Will Por, Eric Gomez, and Brandon Kiefer.

And that's it. We'll see you next week.