The Vergecast - Delta's 10-year journey to the top of the App Store

Episode Date: May 7, 2024

Today on the flagship podcast of enterprise certificate hacks:  03:22 - The Verge’s David Pierce chats with Riley Testut, founder of AltStore and developer of the game emulator app Delta, about how his app finally made it into Apple’s App Store.  The free Delta game emulator for iPhones is live on Apple’s App Store Third-party iPhone app store AltStore PAL is now live in Europe Delta is the game emulator your iPhone has been missing 46:17 - David walks us through his experimentation with the many software and hardware solutions for “AI voice notes.”  Cleft Notes is an AI voice notes app that really works 1:02:02 - David answers a question from the Vergecast Hotline about the Rabbit R1.  Rabbit R1 review: nothing to see here 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

Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Enterprise Certificate Hacks. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am having a project day. I feel like being an adult is just like a long, unending list of maintenance tasks. There's always things to hang up and things to take down and filters to change and sinks to clean. And did you know you're supposed to clean your garbage disposal and your dishwasher? Apparently, there's all kinds of stuff like that. And rather than let it hang over my head, I've discovered that would, works for me is to just keep a long running list. And then once a month or so, whenever I'm feeling

particularly energetic and have some time, I try to just knock out as many of those things as I can. Right. It just feels better. And most of those tasks take like one to five minutes anyway so I can get up, do a whole bunch when I'm feeling energetic or have a show I want to watch or whatever. And then it's done. And then I don't have to think about it for a month. I'm sure there are a million things that are supposed to be on that list that I don't even know about. But I've made it this far. I don't want to know. I'm sure it'll cause me pain and I'll deal with it as it comes. That's what being an adult is, right? Anyway, we have an awesome show coming up for you today.

We're going to do two things. We're going to talk a bunch about the Delta emulator because that little retro game emulator has kind of taken over the app store the last couple of weeks. And it turns out its story is both longer and weirder and more interesting and maybe more reflective of kind of the whole evolution of the tech industry than you think. So we're going to talk to the person who made Delta about the whole journey to get here and what it says about where we might be going next. After that, we're going to talk about AI because I've been testing AI gadgets, AI apps, AI platforms, AI, everything for like a year and a half now. And I've found one use case for me that is perfect.

And it's awesome. And I want to tell you about it. And this probably won't surprise you, but it does involve talking into a microphone. We're also going to answer a Vergecast hotline question about the Rabbit R1. We got lots to do. Super fun show. All that is coming up in just a second. But first, I just noticed this pile of laundry and socks behind me, and it's starting to stress me out.

So I'm going to go deal with that. Project number one, off the list. This is the Vergecast. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on

someone else's backlog. That's where Retool comes in. Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need. Prompt something like, build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data and your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to retool.com slash Vergecast. We all need to retool how we build software. What's up, y'all. I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, Anne Mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is Ann Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Welcome back. For all of the last two

weeks, the most popular app in the Apple App Store has been a game emulator called Delta. We've been talking a lot about Delta on this show over the last few weeks, both because it's a huge, hit and because it seems like maybe the start of a new era for the app store. Like in the history books of smartphone apps, there might be a before Delta and an after Delta for lots of reasons. But there's actually nothing even remotely new about Delta. The story of this app is actually a full decade long. And it starts with this guy. I'm Riley Testat and I'm the founder of Alt Store developer of Delta. Riley has had, as you might expect, a pretty wild few weeks. weeks. In the middle of it all, I asked him to come on the show and just tell me the whole Delta

story, why he wanted to build an emulator in the first place, how the regulatory and technological world changed around him, and in general, how Delta went from a big hack to a big hit. It starts with Riley in high school, just kind of looking for something to do. I was just back in high school. I think it was my junior year. And I just one day came across just like the open source repo for a jailbreak gameboy advanced simulator GPS phone. And I was like, oh, this is cool. This is all the code. I can probably just download this and tweak it and then put it on my own phone

without having to jailbreak because, yeah, I've never been a fan of jailbreaking. It's just never really appealed to me. So I found this code base. I hacked out of it away for a couple months, put it on my phone. I put it on a few of my friends' phones. They liked it. And then I upload it to GitHub and called it GBA. prior west and then kind of left it there for a bit. And then people found it on GitHub and started

talking about it. And so I was like, oh, there's interest in this kind of thing. So you just made it as sort of a, it sounds like a mix of like a thing that you thought would be useful and just kind of a thing to do. Yeah. I just wanted Pokemon on my phone. That was literally just, I found this. I was like, oh, cool. I can put Pokemon on my phone now. And that's awesome. And that's really always thinking at the time. And then I put out my friend's phones. And then we were playing just Pokemon ourselves. And then just completely coincidentally, there was this service that came out around the same time that lets you connect like open source GitHub projects and sign it with Apple's enterprise certificate, basically. There's a company that had enterprise certificate,

and you could just connect your GitHub account and then re-sign your apps like that. And so I was like, oh, cool, I'll connect this to GBA for iOS and then people can install it outside the app store. Maybe a few people will download it. And that's basically when I learned, oh, wait, there's a huge demand for this thing. Oh, interesting. I did that. And then within like a week, people were like posting videos about how to install it. There were lots of Reddit posts.

And I was like, honestly caught off guard. Because at this point, it was still just a project I made for me and my friends, like in high school. And so then I was like, okay, there's demand for this thing. Let's take this seriously. Let's like build like a real version of this app that's not like throwing together, not hacky. And so that's when I got my friend Paul Thorson on board, also still in high school. And we were like, we're going to do a brand new version of GBA for iOS 2.0. We're going to redesign it from the ground up, just build it and make a really polished experience.

And so we basically spent all of senior year working on that. And in like halfway through senior year, we released GBA for iOS 2.0. And that's the version that most people know. That was a version that you installed for my website. You set your date back like 24 hours. And you can install it because of the weird bug that allowed enterprise certificates to work that way, even if they're expired. Yeah, wait. So, really quick, just pause for a second and explain the Enterprise Certificate thing to me.

Because I feel like part of the story here is like Riley's adventures in figuring out how to install apps on phones. Yes, it's slowly getting more and more complicated. So this was the easiest hack. It's just, yeah. As long as I found an enterprise certificate, I could just sign GBA Firewess with it. And literally anyone could just download it from a website on the phone. Super simple. And the idea is basically it's like that's the certificate you would use if I'm like a company,

wanting my employees and no one else to have that app, right? Yeah, the exact same flow. And so it's just, you're not supposed to do it for this reason. And so what Apple normally would do is they would just, like, revoke the certificate. They'd make it, this is no longer valid. And all apps that are signed with it can no longer be installed. And so the bug that I took advantage of was apparently at this time, like an Iowa 7, if you just set your date back on your phone by more than an hour, the checks for whether

a certificate is valid or not, just don't work. They just don't do it. Sure. You did try to install GBA. And Apple would have revoked the certificate, but because you set your date back, iOS was fine installing it. And so it was just like a really weird bug that I could take advantage of because Apple couldn't do anything easily about it.

They had to actually fix iOS to address it. They couldn't just be like, okay, no, turn out certificate. It was about nine months later that they finally addressed it. And then that was when I moved on basically from GBA for iOS is when it was like iOS 8.1. They killed the date trick. It was literally on my birthday when it actually happened. And I was like, oh, that's funny. But honestly, at that point, I just gone to college.

And so I was like, you know what? I'm going to move on from this whole thing. GBA Firewas is really cool. I wanted to go on to the next thing. Do you know how many people were using GBA for iOS, like at that sort of peak moment before it got shut down? A lot of people. Like, more than 10 million. Wow.

Whoa. That's like a zero or two bigger than I thought you were going to say. Yeah. There was a stupid amount of people using GBA Firewrest, which is why I was so motivated to do this for this whole time was I just knew that there was a market for this kind of thing, that everyone just kind of assumed there wasn't. I'm like, no, GBA got 10 million downloads outside the app store. Like, it's just people just really want to do this, like play old games. Yeah. Okay.

So you kind of, you're sort of forced to shut down that project a little bit. Was there a moment where you're like, okay, I'm ready to go to war with Apple. Let's fight this to the death and figure out how to get done. GBA for iOS back? Or when the sort of exploit gets shut down, do you just kind of say, you know what? Like you said, I'm going to college anyway. This is just a moment. Let me focus on other things. It was basically that. Yeah, I was like, you know what? This is just a sign that I should move on to something else. This was really cool. I'm glad I got to do this, got a lot of experience, but maybe I'll try to make an app in the app store next time. That was what I was thinking.

I was like, this is a lot of work to have an app outside the app store. So then that whole thought process lasted like a few months. And then I got bored and I needed a new app to work on. And so, yeah, Swift had also just been announced, like, the previous year. And so I was like, oh, you know what? Let me just make another toy app for myself to learn Swift just for me. And, you know, I'll make another emulator. It'll have more systems, but it's just for me. Like, again, like, it's just like a fun thing I wanted to work on to learn Swift.

That was like my entire motivation. So you're just run the exact same playbook again without even realizing it. Exactly. I was like, you know, I'm just going to make for fun. Yeah, I know. You'd think I'd learn about some point. Okay. So, and that's where Delta starts.

Yes. And so that's the beginning of Delta. I was like, okay, I'll call it Delta and just build it for fun. And that is what I thought I was going to be working on. And then I went to WWDC that year. It was my first time ever at WWDC. What year is this at this point? 2015.

Okay. So I go to WBC and I talk to the app review team because they have like a lab there. And I basically just say, hey, I'm working on this emitter app. Is there any world that it could be approved in the app store? And then they were like, actually, yeah, we'll allow that. You just got to like comply with that. some weird things. Basically, they said I had to, like, submit a list of approved games to them whenever I submitted a version of Delta, so that they could just make sure all the games

that Delta supports were safe. Like, they just didn't want to have, like, an open pipeline of, like, games and everything. And so, like, okay, fine, that works for me. I'll submit a version of Delta to you, and I'll have, like, a white list of games that you can play. And then every app update, I'll expand it to include more games. And it seemed like that would be something I could do. And so I was really motivated. I'm like, cool, I'm going to get Delta in the app store. And so then I spent the next year, like, actually building it for real. I was like, okay, this is now a real app, no longer just for me. I really wanted to be polished.

I wanted to be good. I took a lot of my time. I got on my college scheduled to be working on it. And then I went to the WBC next year. And I talked to the same person. And I said, hey, I'm ready to submit. Can I submit it now? And he was just like, so I talked to some people, we can't allow emulators.

And that was just all I got. I didn't get a why. It was just like a, we can't allow that. I was just pissed off. Do you think this person was wrong the first time they told you it would happen? Or do you think something happened in that year and they changed their mind? Honestly, I don't know. It's either one's possible.

My guess is, though, that they thought it was okay and then they talked to someone in the year. And then maybe they've had discussions about it. And then they came away basically like, it's not worth the risk. Because I think that's what it's been this whole time. Apple's just like, it's not worth the risk to allow these emulators. There's so much stuff that could open up. So I think they're just like, eh, it's one kid, whatever. We don't need to allow his app in the app store. And it'll be fine. And at that point, I mean, I confess I was late to the iOS emulation universe. But it seems it's a weird thing. Like, GBA for iOS was huge. And then it kind of went away. And so I would assume we're back to like lots of pent up demand. People are very excited about it. So it's not like you're the first person in history. to ask Apple this question, I'm sure. But at that point, emulation was just kind of, it was sort of nowhere on the iPhone.

So I guess for them to say, no, we're going to continue to not allow it is not totally out of character. Exactly. Like, yeah, I wasn't surprised. I was just pissed off.

Like, I was just like, I wasted a year of my life working on this. And because you told me I could release it. That was really just all I was feeling. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair.

So what do you, at that moment, you're faced again with this same decision of like, okay, do I just call this a successful? project. I learned how to use Swift. Let me just move on with my life. Or do I go the other way? I know the answer. Historically speaking. But what is that? What do you, what is that moment like? Yeah. And this time I was just so pissed off. I was just like, you know, this is not okay. I am going to get

this out there somehow. It's just like really what I came to. And I did at that time, I really didn't know what it would be. But I was just like, I just wanted to show Apple that they can't treat developers kind like this. It was really just like, I was like, you can't treat us like this. You can't tell us one thing and then change your mind the next year because real people are spending real time doing this kind of thing. So I just motivated to just kind of prove them wrong. This is the best I could say. And so yeah, I was like, I'll figure out a way.

So then next project is figure out a way. Like how do you, how do you even start? I just got lucky, honestly. Apple had also just around that time made it so that you can install apps from Xcode for free with a free Apple ID. Like they just changed that rule of right around now so that students could start developing. And so I saw that and I was like, wait, you can install apps for free. If you just have an Apple ID, there's something there.

Like, I was like, that's all the technical thing I needed. I could make something from that. And so that was just like the beginning of Vault Store. I was like, okay, I got to do something with this free Apple ID sideloding from Xcode thing that Apple has just announced. And then I was basically just like took a few years to research that, build it up, find out what would be the most convenient flow. because, yeah, there are a lot of obstacles with that. It was apps installed this way only could last seven days.

You could only have three apps installed at a time, this method. So it was just like trying to come up with creative ways to make a lot of these restrictions not as annoying. Like the fact that Alt Server is a thing was the number one, that Alt Server could just refresh your apps every week in the background. And when I thought of that, that's when I was like, okay, I think there's something here we can at least work with. That's good enough. So when did the first version of Alt Store, like work. What was sort of the first version of it that you had that you're like, okay,

this does the thing that I need it to do? I think that was 2019 is when I finally like had put together all the pieces into one flow, whereas I had a program on my computer that could install Altstore onto my phone and then Altster could send apps to that device or to my computer and then reinstall it. And then it was early 2019, I was like, okay, this can work. Like just seeing it actually work in practice. It was totally janky. Like the UI was horrible, but just like the fact I could press a button on my phone and it would do everything, send it to Alt Server and install it was just honestly kind of magical. So explain to me why that worked in the sort of infrastructure of Apple's universe.

Like, why did that system work? Because so the way Apple allows students to test out their apps is they have to have a Mac and they have to be using Xcode and then to plug their phone into Xcode and then they have to install an app from Xcode onto the phone. Like you can't just download a file and do it. It's all through Xcode and all through a computer. And so Alt Server is basically replicating everything Xcode does. You can have an app file, but iOS can't install an app file on itself.

You have to send it to a computer. And then Alt Server does the same stuff Xcode does behind the scenes to install it back onto the phone, as if you're a developer testing out yourself. Got it. Okay. And you were able to basically build a thing that lets anyone kind of mimic that system for themselves. Yes. When I set it up, it was, I wouldn't say it was a lot of work, but it wasn't no work. Yeah, it's a lot. It's a bit. Yeah. Especially on the Mac, there's the mail plugin for a long time. That was just really. It's, yeah, it's confusing to everyone. And I was like, oh, this is too nerdy to try to explain even to people why it matters. But just, yeah. Yeah. People got through it.

Well, so, and this is, this is I feel like the, the sort of ongoing story here is you're finding these increasingly complicated ways to do this and continuing discover that, there is so much demand for something like Delta that people will jump through basically any hoops that you ask them to jump through in order to do this. Yeah, the biggest thing I was surprised about with alt stores, we need to get your Apple ID and password to, like, log in with your account. And I was like, wow, we really are just asking people to trust us and give us your Apple idea of password. And I mean, we do everything we can with it. We literally don't touch ourselves. We send it straight to Apple. But I was like, oh, that's a big scary thing that you really just aren't supposed to give your password around people.

And then, nope. People are still giving us their passwords. They don't care. I'm like, this is cool, but also it makes me nervous for security as a whole that people are just doing, just not thinking about it. Oh, for sure. And it puts you in a really interesting position, I would think, as the developer of this to say, okay, what is this thing? Like, am I just building this as sort of a fun side project for people who want to play Pokemon on their phones, which comes with, I think, one set of, like, security and privacy implications. Like, to some extent, honestly, if you send your Apple ID and password to just a dude, I don't think you have any reasonable expectation of privacy.

Like, I think it's a good thing that you were taking care of people's privacy as best you could. But I think for me as the user, I deserve what I'm getting at that point, right? But then if you're like a company that is, that has a terms of service and is set up to make money and you're like, we're in this for the long haul and we're serious about it, I think that changes both the way you have to treat stuff and the way that I can expect you to treat stuff. And it seems like as you were going through this, you were also trying to decide, like, how professionalized do I want this thing to be? Is that fair? That's pretty fair because when the first version of Altstore that launched was literally just like a Delta installer.

The only app in it was Delta. It could install Delta. And I just knew that was important. But even at that point, I knew I wanted Alt Store to be a bigger platform. That was like kind of what motivated is like, I didn't want to build a whole other workaround just to install Delta. The fact that I could do it for Alt Store and for other apps too made it more appealing to me. I was like, fine, I can do the work and then lots of other apps can take advantage of it. And so it was always the plan to expand beyond Delta, but I just didn't know really what that would look like until probably like a year or so after we launched.

And we started actually having some third-party apps wanting to be on the store. And then I got a sense of, okay, this is the type of apps people wanted install. This is what I got to be dealing with. And, yeah, that's helped a lot. So what was that? Like, we're going to get into the kind of history moved towards you a little bit aspect of this in just a second. But I am curious, in that moment, the idea of, like, I'm going to get my third-party app store to be sort of, you know, legitimate in Apple's eyes was completely off the table. Like, 2019, 2020, there was just no world in which that was going to happen.

But you're, like, you're talking about, you know, other apps that want to do this kind of stuff. What were you starting to see? What was kind of the, like, unifying thesis behind apps that wanted to be part of this thing you were doing? I mean, at first it was just any app that wasn't allowed in the App Store. And honestly, it is still a big appeal to date. Just like, for whatever reason that was rejected for whatever type of rule, they just could be an app store. And so then they'd see Alt Store.

And then they'd be like, oh, an alternative. There are a lot of emulators, like obviously. So there's plenty of those. There's stuff you can expect like I-Torrent, had like an app. And you can be like, yeah, I can see why Apple wouldn't approve it, but stuff like that. UTM, the virtual machine app. Just running Windows on your iPad, really cool. Not loud in the App Store.

So it was just like a bunch of different random project, or another one I liked that I think is really cool. Old OS, if you've heard of that one. No. It's like a high schooler just recreated iOS 4 in Swift UI. And so it's just like the whole experience. You open the app and it's the home screen from iOS 4. You can open all the apps and it looks exactly like it did back in the day. Oh, that's awesome.

And it's really cool. And so it's just like, oh, a fun little idea that's not allowed an app store. So, yeah, a bunch of stuff like that. So I launched Alt Store and the first year was really great, but the first year was also a lot. And it was just me working on at the time. And then I honestly was like, what am I doing here? Am I going to keep with Alt Store? Is this ever going to be a real thing?

Should I just like move on to something else now? I was really trying to figure out what I want to do. And then it was really at that point I realized what I wanted was I saw basically that the U.S. was investigating Apple and that the EU was investigating Apple around this time. And I was like, you know what? I feel like there is going to be something that happens in the next few years. I want to be ready for that, but I need help. And that's when I basically brought on my partner, Shane Gill, who is my best friend,

and I've lived with, like, 10 years. And I was like, hey, I need you with this with me. I need just do it together. I need you to do all the business stuff. And so I can just focus on the programming. And then we can make that happen. And at that point, we started like making the plans for what Alt Store is today, or at least an Altstore in the EU, Alt Store pal.

Okay. So you actually really were betting on the theory that eventually this was going to be a real thing that you could do and not just sort of a series of ever more elaborate hacks. Yes. By that time, I was convinced it would happen just, I didn't know when, but just at some point in the future. That's fair. Okay. So, and this was like peak COVID, if I'm doing my timing math here correctly. Everything's weird at this time.

And you're like, well, let's just go for it. Everything's weird. Everyone's reevaluate in their lives. My original plan was, I was like, hey, Shane, let's move to New Zealand together. Let's just escape everything. Let's build this in New Zealand. Because I'm a New Zealand citizen, so it would be cool to go home for me. But that didn't work out.

It was too hard to get New Zealand during COVID. Yeah. Understandably. So we're in Dallas now, which is the same thing. It's like this close. Yeah. It's face. Okay.

So you start building this thing. And was the idea we want to build sort of a full app store? Like, was that is it as simple as that? That was the pitch? Yeah. When Shane Cameron board, that was the full pitch. We're going to build a real app store and show people what life could be like if there are other apps.

Just like, just be the example. And then whenever it was official, be the official, like, be an official store. And what was what were developers saying? Were you, like, reaching out to folks being like, do you want to be part of this? And what were they telling you? Honestly, we didn't need to be reaching out to anyone. People were just reaching out to us. Like, there are a lot of people who just have app ideas that just aren't getting

in the app store. And even I'm like, wow, there are just so many apps that like we're getting like reaching out to us. I'm like, oh, wow, that was rejected. That was rejected. So we've just, yeah, people are just reaching out for us? Yeah. And were you having any contact with Apple at this point, other than, you know, those two

conversations at WDC? Was there any inclination that Apple was even sort of aware of your existence throughout this process? We did at one point when the EU started investigating stuff. Me and Shane sent an email to the executives of Apple basically saying, hey, y'all, I think the EU may be going too much. And do you, like, for just to reach out, hey, like, we're here and we don't want like a crazy world of side loading.

Do you want to like be on the same page here? And they didn't respond at all. But we were at the time just thinking, we don't want a crazy free for all. And that's what it seemed like maybe the EU is going to be. We wanted a more restricted side loading world where the app store was still the main app store. Why? I really think that's what makes iOS so good for like the disaster.

It is just so simple that you can get any app that you trust through one store. I think that's really valuable. It's why so many people I know personally use an iPhone that aren't techies. And so I just always knew that there needed to be a way for siloiting to exist without taking over the apps or taking like so many apps away from it. Okay. So you then are watching the regulation stuff happening. Are you like barreling through all the, you know, DMA white papers and trying to get the deep sense of what's going? Like how into this were you as that regulation was happening? Once the DMA was like an actual thing and they were talking about it, oh yeah, we were very much deep in it. And then we were just like, we got to be ready for anything.

Because literally until Apple announced what they were doing, we just were like, are we going to be a siloading tool? Are we going to be a full app store? Are we going to exist at all? Like, we just had no idea what was going to come next. We just knew that there would be some way of installing apps. Okay. And so I guess with that idea, you can kind of keep building Delta and Altstore the way you had been without making too many kind of unchangeable decisions at that point. Yes.

We basically were working on like stuff that we knew would be true no matter what. Like we were building up like the UI for browsing apps and like we were expanding like or building the Patreon flow so that people could connect their patrons and install that because we just knew no matter what that would be good for this world. We just didn't go into like the really technical stuff about like the actual installing process. It was just basically making the app look as much like a store as it could be. Yeah, that makes sense.

And at that point, how are you thinking about like the business of Delta? You've been working on this thing for an awfully long time without making any money on it. I'm assuming there were conversations about like, how do we all get rich from this thing that clearly lots of people want? People do keep asking me. But the thing that I've believed in and what Shane, like Shane before he even joined Altstore, he was the one that convinced me to make a Patreon for all this in the first place. He was like, hey, when you're working on Delta and Altstar, just have a Patreon on the side to support yourself. Because honestly, I thought my original plan was to release Alt Store in Delta and then move on to something else. and just let it exist and let people install it.

But Shane was the one telling me, no, people want to support creators right now. You should just have a Patreon that people want to subscribe to and just support future development. And so I launched Altstor with that, and it did really well. Like it has paid for everything ever since I launched Start Alt Store. We really believe that's a really important thing that should exist. Because developers right now, you can't sell apps through Patreon in the App Store. And it's just such a really good way, I think. for creators to build a relationship with their audience.

And just people also don't mind spending a few bucks to a person, but they do mind spending a few bucks on an app. Yep. So it's just like very different relationship. And so we're basically just trying to really promote the Patreon idea. Our own income basically is just through the Patreon. We're still selling or having access to our betas for our patrons. And that's worked out pretty well as a way of monetizing Delta, honestly.

Okay. Yeah. I mean, even just the idea of thinking of an app developer as a creator in the same way that you think about like a content creator as a creator is really interesting and is totally not how most people perceive it. And I think I think it's coming around a little bit like personally at least I've seen a lot more of the sort of bootstrapped one person app become a thing that people like in a way that I didn't and they like associate the app with the person who makes it.

Yes. Yeah. But I think for most people it's all so faceless, right? Like you just, it's just an app that exists. I don't know if it's made by one person. or 10,000, and I don't care. I'm just mad that they're charging me money. And it's interesting to think that like maybe the business model is part of the problem

there, that because it all just sits in the app store and it is so divorced from personality and people that maybe that's the problem. So actually connecting Patreon to that is a really interesting way of just changing the way people think about what like an app is and how it gets made. Yeah, exactly. And I'm so yeah, I'm really excited for that. And another nice benefit is we can just have our apps be free and then people just get the betas.

But so it means there's no features that are locked behind paywalls like forever. It's just a you can wait forever and get it for free or if you just want early access, you can donate. And I think that's more appealing to people to like when they're trying to support an app versus, oh, you've locked away a feature and now I can never use it unless I pay. It's like, yeah, that difference I think makes a huge deal. Yeah, no, I totally agree. So, okay, so right before the DMA drops and I guess what was it like March of

this year when Apple put out its third-party app store plans? It was in January. Okay. So this year, Apple, right before that, what was kind of the status of Delta and Alt Store? It sounds like it's growing. People are using it. Like, how were things?

Things were good. We had like at that point, like four million users on Alt Store, like just existing. I was like, oh, wow, this is going great. Things are going right at Delta. We had been prioritizing basically a new version of Delta. Delta, 1.5, to release alongside whatever Apple announced. And so we just, like, we're working on that. But then basically by January, we're just like, okay, everything's in a good spot.

We're ready to go. We just need to know what the hell is happening. And so we're just basically just waiting around to see, like, okay, we can do this. We have, like, the store had been finished by then, like, all the UI was done, Delta was ready, clip was ready. So you have this thing and you're like, this exists. We made it. It's good. We have absolutely no idea what we're about to do with it. Exactly. That is exactly where we were. What a strange place to be. It was very strange. It was because every day we're like, what do we do? Like we can't move forward in a lot of things. But so it was just a lot of planning

and strategizing. Yeah, that makes sense. So then end of January, Apple drops like a million press releases and technical documents about how all this is going to work. What happens to you on that day? What do you do? Wow. That was an overwhelming day, like, for sure. And the first thing that we try to do is figure out, okay, can we exist at all in this new world?

Because, yeah, there's all these, like, restrictions. And we're trying to figure out what the hell, like, an alternative marketplace is. And so, yes, we spend that whole day basically trying just to parse what Apple's announced. And then we basically are like, okay, we think we can do this. We think we can meet the criteria if we get very creative. Yeah, the criteria was like a lot of things. Like you needed to have like the standby letter. We need to have a subsidiary in the EU.

Right. And just like a bunch of things that we just sat down like, okay, we've got to make all this happen in a month. Basically, because we're like, okay, we have until March 7th was like the DMA compliance day. We're like, okay, let's set up a subsidiary. Let's get the standby figured out. Let's build everything.

Because also they announced all the stuff we had to build. And it's like, okay, let's build everything we need to do. and then for the next month was like extreme crunch time just like getting everything done Shane honestly was incredible he was calling so many countries to figure out where we could incorporate he we finally incorporated in Ireland so we have a nice subsidiary in Ireland which is great he was on talking to banks to get someone to believe in two people who are trying to do something crazy and they need this how hard was that process you're like so we build a game emulator and also other app stores I'm a

imagining a bunch of banks are just like, this is a prank call and hang up. A lot did. Yeah. So many people just like wouldn't listen to us. It was pure luck that we found one person. His name's Logan. He is just like Morgan Stanley and he was just understood what we were doing and really wanted to go out of his way to help us.

And I honestly think if we had not met Logan. I don't know if we would have got this all figured out. But he was like, okay, let's do this. I believe in y'all. I can work with my bosses. We can make it happen. That was a big win getting that one for sure. Yeah, I mean, I remember when the news came out thinking that there were, like you described, a bunch of technical challenges, but there were always going to be a bunch of technical challenges, right?

I feel like that you sort of know going in, there's going to be a bunch of weird work you have to do to get this thing to comply with what Apple wants. But the business challenges of just like the hoops you had to jump through as an organization seemed like they were designed to keep almost everybody out, except for the truest of true, true believers and maybe just the most stubborn people building this thing. Yes, exactly. And part of me wonders if going back a few months Apple just deeply underestimated your willingness to pick this fight after so many years of picking this fight. You're like, I've been through your nonsense before Apple. Oh, yeah, I know they were caught off guard.

They told us that. They like when we end up going to the lab and everything, they just said straight up, oh, we did not expect anyone to be this prepared, especially as a two-person team. just did not expect us to be as prepared as we were, which I had to feel good. Oh, it did feel good. I was like, cool. But at the same time, I was like, well, then let us launch. It was like, cool, okay, that's amazing. Let us launch. We're ready. Was there any question for a team of two whether to invest all this time on something that at least for now and potentially forever is only going to exist in the EU? Like, there's a lot of people in the EU, but there's a lot of

people not in the EU also. Yeah. I mean, so two parts. I'm like, one, I do think it's going to come outside the EU at some point. I think it's just a question of time. So I expect to see within a few years it'll expand out to like, I don't know, Japan, United States eventually. So we viewed this as like the beginning of a much longer process. Let's expand. But then the other thing was like, we had nothing to lose.

This is literally all we're doing. All our income is working on all store of Delta. We're like, well, we might as well just go all the way with it. Like, what else? Like, why not? Yeah, I mean, I think the long bet, I think, probably a safe one. Again, it's a question of how long it takes, but I do think you're probably right. It also seems like you were in a position where even if it didn't sort of immediately

reach a ton of people, you were going to get so much notice just because this is such a big thing and such a big change that like all of a sudden, Alt Store just appeared in so many headlines in like February and March of this year, which is like... Yes, that was very, very surreal seeing that all of a sudden. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's so funny because like explaining Altstore to people. It's like, okay, it is this bizarre sort of convoluted experience where you have to set up a server. And I'm seeing this in like mainstream news articles. I know. I'm like, oh my God. If my mom asked me what all stories, I'm not going to know how to answer that question for her. Same. Yeah, I explained to my friends, I'm like, eh, don't worry about it. It's just a tool to install apps. That's it. So, okay,

so then we're almost to the present time, but I feel like we still have not gotten to the single wildest part of this whole time. Yeah, that's accurate. So you're building the store. Things are going well. You launch, I think, on launch day, right? March 7th, was it ready to go? No. We were ready.

We were all ready to go. And that was the beginning of, like, this frustration. So we were, yeah, we were invited to a lab in Cork for Apple to, like, help us implement our backend and everything. So like a week-long lab for us just to work with Apple engineers to get everything working. So then we flew out to Cork. It was like the week before March 5th. So at the end of it, at the end of February.

We flew out. Day one, I showed up. I said, okay, here's everything. We're ready to go. Can we launch? And then they were like, oh, hold on. They expected you to show up and be like, I'd like to build an app store. And instead you show up and you're like, I have built an app store.

They literally think they expected everyone to show up with like no code base, like to just start from scratch on how to do this. And yeah, so we show up and we're like, here's the entire product. It has store pages. There's everything you could possibly need downloading works. And then they were just like, oh, wow. Yeah, just very clearly. they were not expecting that.

And so it basically was then, okay, so Monday, I was like trying to pressure them. Can we launch tomorrow? Can we launch tomorrow? iOS 17-14 is coming out tomorrow. Can we be there? And then it just became clear that this whole process was going to be much longer than we expected for a lot of foreign reasons. Like basically just legal, like giving them documents, having them review documents, stuff like that. So Iowa 70 before came out and me and Shane were very bummed because we're like, we were,

We were ready to launch on launch day. We were all ready to go. And then, ugh, so that was frustrating. So how long did it take before you actually got the thing up and running? Then I think it was two months later. Like, it was, yeah, it was April 17th. Like, yeah. So, yeah, from March 5th to April 17th was just waiting, so month and a half.

And so we did that. And then, yeah, the reception was immediately just phenomenal. People just so excited. And but then we also immediately saw, which we experienced. that Delta was the main story. Sure. That Delta in the App Store was the big deal. But we had to figure out what to do, and we knew that would be the outcome.

If we released Delta in the App Store, that Delta would get like its big moment to be everywhere. And we just were like, you know what, that's fine. It's free marketing for Alt Store. If everyone just knows about Delta and then they talk about it and then they get it through Alt Store in the EU. So you just glossed past part of it, though. Like the whole Apple suddenly allows emulators in the App Store. Yeah. You say that as if you expected that to happen.

I don't think anybody expected that to happen. Not at all. The most unexpected thing that could have happened. And me and Shane had different reactions at first. Shane was more like, this changes everything. Now we've got to think through. And my just reaction was, wow, what validation that Apple had to change the rules to allow emulators because they were threatened by us about to launch with an emulator?

Like that to me was like invigorating. I was like, this is yes, it means we're doing something right that Apple is literally like, doing something I never thought they'd do because it was the only way they could try to make the story not. The EU now has the best apps. Outside the EU doesn't have the coolest apps. And I just knew Apple, yeah, they just couldn't have that story. Which is also why amateurs are allowed worldwide, is my guess. The story just could not have been that the EU has better apps than the rest of the world.

Yeah. No, I think that's exactly right. And it is very hard to argue that this wasn't specifically about Delta. Like, I just can't, the timing, it's too. It is all about Delta. We haven't had a direct confirmation from Apple, but our app Delta was being notarized for like five weeks. They changed this rule.

It's approved the next day. Oh, wow. It's almost like they were holding it to figure out what they could do about it. Did you get any heads up that they were going to make this change? Nope. Nothing at all. Well, and I would guess after that happened, you would have expected it to be big. It sounds like you did expect it to be big.

But I feel like it's been, it's certainly been bigger than I expected. Like, it is bigger than I expected. It's been nuts, man. It's so validating. Like, I really can't, like, because, yeah, we're doing this because we just really believe that people just want to play old Nintendo games or old, all games. We just, I think it's just a thing people want to do. And for so long, everyone just says, no, that's only for the nerd.

It's only for, like, people who know what they're doing. And I've just been, like, you just have to make it accessible. That's all it, like, all you got to do. If it's accessible, people will know how to do it, and they will. love it. We're seeing that that is exactly the case. And yes, so even more people than I thought are enjoying it. It is the most surreal thing, seeing it, not only in the app store, but being the top app in the app store for like a long time. Are you still the number one app in the app store? I mean, I think last time I checked, but yeah, since we've launched, we've been number one. And yeah,

so surreal. Like the most, like any time my life, I've never felt more like, I actually am dreaming right now. Like, I need like pinching myself like, because it was just too perfect. Like, work on this app for 10 years. And then day one in the app store, it's the top. It was just incredible. Has it changed what you think about how to do all of this? I mean, if you had charged $2.99 for Delta, you would have made a crap ton of money by now. Like, have you, are you thinking about the business of all of this differently after it's blown up the way that it has?

I think we want this to be bigger than just like Delta. And we want this to cause, like, actual change in, like, the emulation. scene or in the gaming sphere, just like, we want to make this more accessible for everyone. We want people to start talking about it and have real conversations about it without just being like piracy, piracy. And so a lot of what we're doing is we thought Delta to make that change happen, we had to like, it had to be free. Everyone had to have it.

And that's, I think, just what we're focused on really is like, as long as we're making, we're making enough to support ourselves. And so we're not in need of more money. But I just think for Delta to have the biggest impact is just make it as fully free and accessible to as many people as possible and let them just start reliving games. Are you worried at all about legal ramifications? I mean, there was obviously the USU thing that happened kind of right before this. It's been a weird moment in the emulation community.

Have you heard from any Nintendo lawyers? Yeah, that came out as we're also like in Europe trying to launch this. I'm like, oh, interesting. Very, very relevant to us. But I'm not going to say, I'm not nervous about things, but I am confident in. in what we're doing. I've learned a lot of what not to do over the past 10 years. And I think that we are really trying to show how you can do something like this league.

Like we're not Yuzu. We're not emulating a current generation console. We're not doing a lot of things that other emulators get in trouble. Like there's no DRM we have to deal with for the game. So just the game files ripped from cartridges. So we don't have to do anything like that. We're doing everything we can to do it right. And there was no world that I wouldn't have done this.

I guess it's a better way. Like I wouldn't have got this far and not really. released Delta. I just had to. No, I think that, well, and I think that's part of why this moment of your story is so interesting because we're at the beginning of this weird new era of apps in the app store. And I think a lot of stuff is changing and a lot is going to continue to change. But we're also in a funny way, kind of at the end of your 10-year journey. Like this, you, you finally finished the thing. That is what it feels like. It's really weird. But I'm like, wow, it actually happened.

Like, it got in the app store. And yes, it does feel like the culmination of that whole journey, which is very weird. Does that make it feel like I finally got to do it and it worked and it was huge and it was awesome? And now I can go do something else. I honestly, the fact that Delta is doing so well is just motivated me to just want to work on it so much for right now. Because I've just been working on it in isolation, assuming one day it could like be a big deal that, I don't know, actually seeing everyone play it right now has made me really motivated. to like really focus on it again. And also because so much of the past two years has been like a lot of priority working on

Alt Store. And now that we launched Alt Store, we can just like have some time with Delta again. Like there's just so many fun features I want to add that. But I haven't had time to because we had to get Alt Store up and running for this deadline. But so I'm looking for a lot of that. But I don't know if this is a 10 year thing. I don't know if this is the beginning of like another 10 year adventure. To me, I think it's I'll work on Delta for a bit.

And I think I got to finish up what Alt Store is. Like we still have something to do to prove it out. Like, we've got to get the third-party apps on there. We've got to build up the platform. And I think that's, to me, the next step. It's just making sure the alt store is a real app store that people are using and happy with. And then maybe I'll be done. And then you will have resoundingly defeated Apple, which very few people can say.

Absolutely, yeah. All right, we've got to take a break. And then I have to tell you about this weird obsession I've developed in recent months. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from Shopify. Every thriving, successful business has to start somewhere. A good place to start is a relatively simple question. What if, given the right tools, I really put my all into this.

One tool that can help grow your sprouting business to new heights is Shopify. Millions of businesses around the world rely on Shopify for e-commerce. They offer a host of helpful tools you can take advantage of, from payment processing to analytics to website design. Their design studio includes hundreds of templates to help you create the exact website you've been envisioning for your business. If you're wondering, what if I need help, then no worries, because you're never left to fend for yourself.

Shopify's award-winning customer support is available 24-7. It's time to turn those what-ifs into a thriving business with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash vergecast. Go to Shopify.com slash vergecast. That's Shopify.com slash vergecast Support for the show comes from Upwork.

The days of doing it all, all by yourself, are over. There's no romance and burning out while you're trying to scale. Instead, you can check out Upwork. Upwork helps grow your business by giving you fast access

to specialize talent across more than 125 categories so you can fill skill gaps, launch projects faster, and scale without committing, to full-time headcount. And finding the right talent is easy. You can browse profiles, review past work,

and get help scoping the role so you can get started quickly. Seriously, you could connect with the right freelancer in just a few hours, especially when you sign up with Business Plus. Their AI-powered shortlisting pairs you with the top 1% of talent in under six hours. No endless searcher required.

You can visit upwork.com right now to post your job for free. That's Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's UP-W-R-K.com. Upwork.com. Support for this show comes from Whatnot. Whether you're selling online or out of a storefront, you already know the challenge. You're simply hoping for people to find your listing or waiting for them to walk in.

But What-Nop flips that. They say they're the live shopping marketplace where you can shop, sell, and connect around the things you love. On What Not, you go live and sell directly to people in real time. They see what you've got, ask questions, and buy. And they keep coming back. Whether it's beauty, collectibles, electronics, luxury fashion, and yes, even cookies, sellers are building real thriving businesses.

And for a limited time, What Not says they'll match your first $150 sold in the first month. You can visit whatnot.com slash sell to start selling. That's W-H-A-T-N-O-T dot com slash sell. What-N-O-T-com slash sell. Welcome back. I've spent most of the last month and really most of the last year talking about and testing AI gadgets. It's been a long time, maybe since the early VR days, but maybe even as far back as the early smartphone era, since we've seen this many new things with this many new ideas. Most of those

ideas right now are very bad. Well, not bad necessarily. It's just that they don't work, so they're bad. You know what I mean? The Humane AI PIN has some interesting theories about how you might use a device without a screen and without getting sucked in and distracted. It's just that none of those things work very well. The Rabbit R1 just kind of puts an AI chatbot on a device that looks like a rearranged phone. And again, none of it works very well. So far, for me at least, there is only one thing about AI that really feels like it works and actually makes my life better. And that is voice notes.

A good microphone plus good transcription software, plus some useful models for summarizing and grabbing the most important bits of what I say. It works and it's awesome. I kind of feel like a doctor now running around talking nonsense into my tape recorder, like JD from season four of Scrubs. Mrs. McCalla, 40s, moderately attractive, conditioned and proven. Did you just say I was moderately attractive? Excuse me, Mrs. McKellah.

Patients' complaint of hearing loss was clearly just to get attention. Though I also, to be fair, have this experience a lot doing that. I thought, I like toast. They aren't all winners. In actual reality, by the way, doctors have used voice recorders forever. Talking is a lot faster than typing, and a transcript of a conversation can often give you a lot more information quickly and with context than you'd get from just a written thing.

thing. And a lot of doctors are now using AI to help summarize those transcripts and help them find key information later because the problem with recording everything on a voice recorder is that it's a lot of information and it takes a lot of time to parse through it all. Listening to your own voice for hours at a time just to find that one thing you said, not fun. The big thing that happened to make all of this stuff work recently is that OpenAI built a speech to text tool called Whisper. When OpenAI launched it in 2022, it said that the model, quote, approaches human level robustness and accuracy on English speech recognition. In its blog post announcing it, it used this audio as an example.

This is the micro machine man presenting the most midget miniature motorcade of micro machine. That's a guy named John Moschita Jr. doing a commercial, by the way. He's actually in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's fastest talker. I've now listened to that ad approximately a million times, and I do think Whisper gets one word wrong. It says R near the end, and I think Moschita says and. But I can't even even tell for sure. And that's all Whisper missed. That's how good this is. OpenAI reportedly developed Whisper as a way to transcribe millions of hours of YouTube videos in order to get training data for its GPT models, which is a strange and somewhat nefarious way to have gotten

to this point. But let's just leave that aside. Now we have this open source Whisper model that works incredibly well and is being used all over the voice notes world. The first gadget I got to try all this out is called the Plaude Note, P-L-A-U-D. It's a 160,000. dollar recorder about the size of a credit card, just a little thicker and a little heavier. It's just a microphone, basically, that connects to an app on your phone to store and process all of your recordings. You just press the one button on the plot to start recording, and a little red light turns on to let you know it's working. It has one mode for just recording your voice, and another that's supposedly optimized for recording phone calls. It actually comes with a case

you can attach to the back of your phone for recording those calls, and it's surprisingly good at it. Already, note that this call may be recorded for quality assurance. If you have an emergency, please press one now. If you would like to fill a prescription, press 2. As a reporter who has spent most of my career constantly trying to find ways to record phone calls, this is awesome. For years, I've used this weird rig where I have a headphone splitter that goes into a pair of earpods and also into a voice recorder. This is just way better. But you can also use it to record sales calls and meetings and that sort of thing.

Plod definitely imagines the note as a business tool, first and foremost. I have been using it mostly for things like to-do lists, or when I wake up in the middle of the night with a fun idea and want to get it down before I forget. And I love, love using it while I wander around my kitchen to see what needs to go on the grocery list. Okay, this is my grocery list for the week of May 1st. I need bagels, potatoes, almost out of bread flour, so I should get bread flour. I need more paprika, but the smoked paprika, not the other stuff. So I record that, and then a few seconds later, I open up the Plaud app, which is very barebones, but works basically fine.

And that recording shows up. I open it up and I get three options, transcription, summary, and mind map. MindMap is useless. Let's not worry about MindMap. I tap on transcription, and it asks what language the recording is in and what kind of note it is. Call, meeting, interview, task assignment, that kind of thing. I pick task assignment in English, and a few minutes later, I get a full and very accurate transcription of my grocery list.

That's kind of useful, but really what I want is for this to just make me a grocery list. So I tap on summary. It tells me at the top, the meeting outlined the necessary grocery items to be purchased for the upcoming week, ensuring a sufficient supply of food and essentials, which is true, I suppose, but totally unnecessary. And then it gives me the list. All is a single action item. This is not what I was hoping for. But all the stuff is here.

And the coolest part is when I said I was good on peanut butter and good on coffee, it actually kept those things off of the list, which means it actually in some way understood the difference between me saying something and me deliberately adding it to the list. That's the stuff, right? The plug note is very cool, but it's expensive for just a voice recorder, and you do also have to pay 80 bucks a year for the AI features. That is a lot for a grocery list tool. So instead, I turned to the Rabbit R1.

a more full-featured AI device that in general is pretty bad. It can't do a lot of what it promises, but it can record, transcribe, and summarize audio. So I started carrying this thing around just to see how it would do with to-do lists and journal entries and all that stuff as well. This is me testing out the voice recorder. Let's see what I have to do today. I need to finish my Apple story.

I said edits back to Jake. He's going to get it back to me. I'd like to get that at least into top edit today. We've the verge cast it to... Once you record something, Rabbit stores it all in an app called the Rabbit Hole, which is not a good app in general, but for these purposes, it's fine. It pulled out a very basic plain text list of stuff from my note, in addition to just giving me access to the recording itself.

And it got most of the stuff on that to-do list that I said, but it did just completely ignore a couple of things. And since Rabbit doesn't just make a transcript and let you see it, I don't actually like this one quite as much. At least it is easy to download the audio and upload it. somewhere else, which is something. And the mic is pretty good. I need to write the container post for tomorrow, but I can do that tonight while in as a class. That's my day. But in general, buying a whole device just to record audio is probably only for the most dedicated users of this

stuff. The main advantage of a dedicated voice recorder is that the battery tends to last a lot longer. They tend to have better mics. And also, because they're not an app, you don't run the risk of weirdness with background apps shutting down or getting a phone call in the middle that's screws everything up, or just loud pinging notifications constantly popping up in your recording. Not everyone needs a voice recorder all the time, but if you do, you'll probably appreciate it being a dedicated device. But if you want to get most of the functionality of those devices, but you'd rather just use your phone, oh boy, do I have good news for you. There are suddenly a million apps out there that are making use of Whisper and other models, especially from OpenAI,

to transcribe, summarize, and make use of all of your audio. You can basically Google and find a thousand options, but let me just tell you about two. The first is called Cleft Notes, and it works on Mac and iOS. This one, I think, is the best voice notes app I've tried, period. You open it up and hit record, and it shows this amorphous, meshy blob that moves as you record, which is kind of delightful to look at. Like most other apps, it gives you both a full transcription of your audio and tries to make some sense of it after you finished. But Cleft goes further, actually. It tries to format and structure everything you said, so that if you come out of a call and you want to write down some takeaways. Okay, I just got off the call where we were planning Steve's bachelor party. It sounds like

the plan is to go to Myrtle Beach for three days. It then turns that into a document with bullet points and numbers and headings. It's not always right, but it's usually actually a pretty good start. Like that voice note I just played turned into a cleft note with an itinerary, golf plans, a transportation section, a food and drink section, and a note about renting golf clubs. It's written strangely formally, but it is really helpful. There are, like I said, tons of apps that do this. And since they basically all use OpenAI's models, they're all roughly equivalent in terms of the actual quality of the transcript and information. But I just want to quickly mention one other app I really like.

It's called Audio Pen. And it's a web app, which means it works everywhere. And it's super easy and fast. You just record some audio. My grocery list for today. I need eggs. I need nut butter. I'm good on coffee and good on tea.

I need red wine for this weekend. I need coffee filters. I need three balls of mozzarella for pizza. Once you do, it gives you the same summaries and information as the rest. But what I really like about AudioPen in particular is that if you pay the $99 a year for AudioPen Prime, which gets you more transcriptions and storage and whatnot, you can also tell it how to format what it creates. So if you want everything in bullets or paragraphs or like iambic pentameter, you can do that. Here, for instance, is my grocery list in iambic pentameter, which I had a different AI from 11 labs, read out. out loud.

Eggs and nut butter I require. On coffee, tea, I'm satisfied. Red wine for weekend. Filters, too. Three mozzarella balls will do. Pepperoni for pizza's taste. More bread flour, not to waste. Broccoli, mandarin's combine, and peach is sweet.

These fruits divine. You probably don't want your groceries in Iambic pentameter. More likely you'll want to tell it to be formal for business stuff or write like an author you like or something. But it works pretty well, whatever you pick. And it even goes another step toward turning my rambling thoughts into something that feels finished and useful and not just like rambling thoughts. Another thing you can do in audio pen is upload existing audio.

So like if you have a meeting you already recorded and now need to get something from or you want notes on a YouTube video you liked, you can just dump the audio in and get info out. I've heard a lot of people say recently that summarizing YouTube videos is one of their core uses for chat GPT and other AI models. And this is another way to get the same kind of thing. You could put this podcast in, and it would probably give you some information. Basically, all of these tools do cost money if you want to do stuff like that, at least if you want to use them heavily.

Whisper is an open source model that anyone can use. You can actually download it to your computer and run it locally if you want to. But it is really computationally intensive. And for all the summarization stuff, these apps still are mostly using open AI APIs anyway. Oh, one exception I should mention, actually. If you have a Google Pixel phone, the built-in pixel recorder is a terrific voice recorder, and there's a new Summaryl button in there that also works really well. Apple's Voice Memo's app doesn't do any of the transcription or summarization stuff,

but I wouldn't be shocked if that's coming soon. In the last few months, I've been using AI audio for lots of things. Meeting notes, to-do lists, searchable transcripts of YouTube videos that I want to refer back to, but I actually like it best as a journal. I've never been good at keeping a journal over the years because it always involves taking the time and sitting down to do it and it's an activity and it's a whole thing. But now I can just sit down in the morning and quickly brain dump everything I'm thinking about while I brush my teeth. Today is Wednesday, May 1st. The first thing I have to do is finish up the Apple Story and my rabbit review.

I also have to book train tickets to get to New York for tomorrow. should be a relatively chill And then at the end of the day, while I'm doing dishes or getting ready for bed or just walking around, I can just ramble about what happened that day for a few minutes.

I was in Chicago today for the Chicago Humanities Festival. It was a really fun day. We did a good job of, I think, not having the whole thing be a bummer, but also having it not be too sort of Pollyanna-ish, optimistic. When I do that, I now get,

instead of just an audio file, a really good transcript that I can find again later and a nice summary of the key points of everything I talk about. It's both incredibly low effort and surprisingly useful. Honestly, I hope day one, which is the journaling app I've been trying to force myself to use for like a decade now, adopts some of this stuff. This feels like a good way to get things into a journal. Honestly, I think these apps and devices are kind of perfectly indicative of how AI works right

now in general. For all the hype over image generation and AI's abilities to write emails for you, or replace your job entirely. The thing these models do best is take a bunch of information and try to simplify and summarize it. That's handy if you're trying to get the gist of a long legal document or you want to know what a podcast was about before you devote 90 minutes of your life to it. That's why I'm so intrigued by Notion AI and all the other tools that aren't trying to understand all of the universe's information. They're just focused on the stuff that you care about and making sense of that. That is a really good use case of AI, if you ask me.

And it's working pretty well for me. Because, as you guessed, I do love rambling into microphones. Actually, you know what? I should stop doing that for a minute. We're going to take a quick break, and then we're going to come back and take a question for the Burchcast hotline. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Anthropic.

Not every question has an easy answer. And the ones that are really worth asking usually come with a healthy mix of inspiration and backpedaling, aha moments, and quiet meditation. When you're working through one of those problems, you want a partner to bounce ideas off of and figure out where the deeper issue lies. That's where Claude can help.

Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you, whether you're debugging code at midnight or strategizing your next business move. Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter. Plus, Claude's research capabilities go deeper than basic search. It can have comprehensive, reliable analysis, with proper citations, turning hours of research into minutes. Ready to tackle bigger problems?

Get started with Claude today at cloud. com.A.I. slash vergecast. That's Claude.a.ai slash vergecast. And check out Claude Pro, which includes access to all the features mentioned in today's episode. Claude.a.ai. slash vergecast. 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 begin.

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

They are doing well. Possibly because this is not the one to freak out over. Today, Explain drops every weekday afternoon. All right. we're back. Let's get to the hotline. As always, the number is 866Vorge11, and the email is Vergecast at the verge.com.

We love your questions. Please keep sending them, keep calling, and we try to answer at least one on the show every week. This week, we have a very timely question from Dax. Hey, guys, it's Dax from Virginia, and I can't go to sleep because I've just been thinking, why is the rabbit not just an app? At $200, it's like a very buggy,

bad looking plastic thing, and it doesn't do anything that I feel like my phone can't do. So why isn't it just a paid subscription service app that I can install on my phone? We'd love to know your thoughts, but. I've been thinking about this a lot. I have the Rabbit R1 in front of me. I have used it a ton. I just reviewed it. It's on the site.

We have a video. You can watch me wandering Washington, D.C., yelling questions at the Rabbit R1. And I've been thinking about this question a lot ever since really using the Humane AI pin. What are these devices actually for? Why are they devices? And I think I have a cynical answer and I have a non-synical answer. The non-cynical answer is that I think there is room for something that isn't a smartphone.

In a funny way, we're actually going through the beginnings of an unbundling process in a lot of ways. I think there is a set of people who are realizing that they want multiple devices for multiple things. The idea that I should just have a smartphone that does everything was never really true. I mean, think about that brief moment where we tried to use our smartphones as TV remotes. It turns out that having buttons you can press without having to look down at is a good idea. Something like the Rayban meta-smart glasses, I think, is really interesting, or the snap spectacles that they've been working on for years. The idea that actually a camera that's not in my pocket, but is on my face, is actually a good idea.

So I think there are some things that should have been shoved into the phone, right? Like my phone as a music player and not necessarily needing a dedicated music player makes a lot of sense. But I think there is room for some kind of AI device that isn't your phone. The idea that it could be a little more accessible, it could be closer to your face and mouth and eyes and the sort of biometric stuff that actually can make AI really useful. My guess is that's probably something that looks more like a smartwatch or a pair of glasses than it is a sort of dedicated handheld device. But the reason I was so intrigued by Humane is I think the idea of a wearable that's like on your lapel kind of always within arms reach is really interesting. That's also how I felt years ago about things like Alexa and Google Assistant and the idea that, you know, I can talk to technology without having to pull my phone out, look at a screen, unlock a thing. This idea of ambient computing that's been floating around actually requires lots of different kinds of devices.

I think the smartphone is going to keep being the main one for a long time. And I think any product that tries to subvert that and say, ditch your phone and use this other device is just going to fail because A, people don't want to ditch their phone. And B, you shouldn't. Phones are great and they're useful and they do lots of things. But we can attach stuff to phones that does more things in more ways. And I think that's going to be very cool. The AI gadget remains to be seen.

But there are ways it could work and there are ways it could happen and there are ways that it might be exciting. That's the non-synical answer is I think there is something here. The cynical answer is that. they're just desperately trying to find a way to sell you something. We have gotten into a place in the smartphone market where there are two companies, Apple and Google, that are total gatekeepers for the entire industry, right? If you want to do something on the iPhone, you have to play nice in the app store. You have to play by Apple's rules. You have to give Apple a cut. That is just how it

works. Same in the Play Store. There's like a little more openness in Android. But for all intents and purposes, if you want to be on Android, you have to play by Google's rules. That means there are certain kinds of things you just can't do. That means there are certain kinds of apps that you can't make a real business out of because of the way that Apple's rules work. And so what you're left with is saying, okay, there are two companies that are just going to tax us every time we want to do anything. And I think we've kind of spent a decade watching companies that didn't win in mobile try to win in the next thing. And I think in a huge way, that was why then Facebook now, meta bought Oculus all those years ago because it was saying, okay, we think that there is going to be

a huge new VR platform and we cannot lose it again to Apple or Google because there's so much money in being Apple and Google. You get to do all kinds of things. You get to insert yourself in the middle. You get to take the tax. You get to become a huge ad business. You set the defaults. It's just a massively powerful thing to be. And so when there was the idea that, okay, VR is the next thing. You saw a bunch of companies chase VR. When everybody thought, AR was going to become the thing. That was where Snap showed up and was like, we're a camera company and we're going to build spectacles and we're going to take over. And, you know, the HoloLens did it and magically did it. And there was this crazy rush to not just be the first great

device, but be the first great platform. The same thing is happening right now in AI. As I talk to both Humane and Rabbit and, frankly, a lot of other companies in this space, the idea is to start with hardware, right? You build a product. You make people buy the product. You make people like the product. And then you build a platform out of it. Humane's big idea is this thing called Cosmos. That's their operating system. They're hoping basically to have an app store for Cosmos. You'll be able to use the APIs to plug in. It'll work on lots of different devices. They are very much trying to build a software platform with the size and power of iOS or Android. Rabbit has been a little less ambitious about how it talks about that. But when it talks about the large action model,

this thing that can actually go and use the apps you use for you, that's the same. That's the same thing, right? Like, there's a version of this that is kind of hacky that is you teach the system how to do it, but there's a much easier version that is just partnering with companies that exist and have existing products. And for Rabbit, if it can be that center point, the sort of place that you go to use the apps, that's very powerful. Open AI is trying to do the same thing with the GPT store and custom GPTs. Google, I suspect, is going to start to push into that pretty hard. I think you're going to start to see Apple have AI APIs that you can plug into. The idea is just if you can be the sort of hub for all the different features of AI,

that is going to be hugely powerful. We've seen in this first phase a bunch of companies kind of try to do everything, right? You build the one huge, perfect model. That solves all our problems. Everybody uses it for everything, the end. I don't think that's the future. I think the future is actually sort of an interconnected galaxy of models and systems and tools that you use. And so the question then is who sits in the middle? What is the platform that you use that translates all of that stuff for you and picks the right agent depending on what you need? And I suspect all of these companies think that if they can be that platform, they can make an awful lot of money off of being that platform. Hardware is part of the business.

I think actually a lot of these companies genuinely would like to make money from their hardware. Rabbit is hard to tell and frankly so is humane if there's actually any money in it right now. but they do seem to both want to be hardware companies, but more than that, they want to be platforms. And you cannot build a platform on top of iOS or Android. They just won. And as they push into AI, they're going to entrench that even further, right? I think we're going to see a lot of AI stuff at WWDC.

We're going to see a lot of AI stuff at Google I.O. Gemini is already all over Android. Those companies are not interested in letting other AI platforms in. And I think there's really interesting regulatory questions about whether they're going to be forced, two? Like, what if you picked your AI model the same way you picked your default browser? Really interesting idea. These companies will not do that unless they are forced to do that. So we'll see. But the way that these companies are thinking is that the only way in is to build a new thing that doesn't require your smartphone and start to slowly siphon you away from these two

companies, Google and Apple, that have essentially owned our internet experience and have been between any company that wants to build something and you for 15 years. That's a hard, hard, hard thing to upset. It's why a lot of the antitrust stuff going on right now, especially in the U.S. is happening. And if I'm a new company, that's the only reason I would build hardware. Because building an app is too hard. There's too much stuff in the way.

And you're probably just going to get eaten alive by Apple or Google. So that's the cynical answer. I hope for the non-synical answer. And in reality, I think it's a little bit of both. Like, we are in a phase where there are interesting new ideas about hardware because there are interesting new ideas about how we interact with technology. We're going to spend, I think, less time tapping on our phones over time and less time looking at screens just to do basic things.

So if that's the case, we are going to need new devices. But also, anyone trying to compete in those spaces knows that the only real way to build a company the size of Google or Apple is to do. do it outside of Google or Apple. And that's what everybody is desperately trying to figure out. That said, all the AI stuff we've seen so far should pretty much just be an app. I have yet to see the one that I am like, this is a new category of device. But I'm holding out hope.

I haven't tried all the glasses yet. I'm excited to see. All right. That is it for the Vergecast today. Thank you to everybody who came on the show. And thank you, as always, for listening. There's lots more on everything we talked about, my rabbit review, lots of our Delta coverage, all kinds of stuff on AI voice notes, lots more on the Verge

I'll put some links in the show notes, but as always, read the website. It's a good website. We try hard to make it great. If you've thoughts, questions, feelings, or other AI gadgets you want me to try out. You can always email us at vergecast at the verge.com or just call the hotline 866, verge 1-1. We love hearing from you. Send us all your thoughts and questions and ideas for what we should do on the show.

Feelings about everything. It's my favorite thing. We have a Slack room, by the way, where every single one of the hotline questions comes in as they are received, and I get to listen to them, and it's just so fun. I listen to every single one, I promise. Whether or not it makes it on the show, please know our whole team hears all of your calls. We read all of your emails. We love hearing from you.

This show is produced by Andrew Marino, Liam James, and Will Pore. The Vergecast is Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Nelai, Alex, and I will be back on Friday to talk about earnings, iPads, and a whole bunch more. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.