The Vergecast - EV startup Rivian goes public / Judge orders Apple to allow external payment options / Microsoft announces Windows 11 SE

Episode Date: November 12, 2021

The Verge's Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, Alex Cranz, and Sean O'Kane discuss electric vehicle startup Rivian becoming a publicly traded company after executing one of the biggest initial public offerings in history. The crew also cover multiple stories about Apple from this week, Microsoft's Windows 11 SE release, and a new Surface Laptop for schools. Further reading: Rivian goes public in one of the biggest IPOs ever Rivian’s mega IPO is a good test of the meme stock craze Judge orders Apple to allow external payment options for App Store by December 9th, denying stay Apple must allow other forms of in-app purchase, rules judge in Epic v. Apple Apple backs off of breaking Face ID after DIY iPhone 13 screen replacements Tim Cook says he owns cryptocurrency Apple hires Tesla’s former Autopilot software director Johnson & Johnson’s CEO joins Apple’s board iPhone 13 Pro vs. Pixel 6 Pro: what 2,000 photos tell us Microsoft announces Windows 11 SE, a new Chrome OS competitor Microsoft’s new $249 Surface Laptop SE is its first true Chromebook competitor Microsoft partners with Meta to integrate Teams into its Facebook-like Workplace Microsoft fixes Windows 11 features failing due to an expired certificate  Updating The Verge’s background policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week on the Vergecast, Alex Cranz and Sean O'Kane joined the show. We talk about Rivian, the new electric car company that just had one of the hottest IPOs ever. We get into buttons and links, of course. Let me talk about some Microsoft News. It's coming up on the Vergecast now. 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.

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in your cloud with Enterprise Security built in. Go to Retool.com slash Verchcast. 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, and 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 Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds.

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We're very into it. Anyway, I'm Neil. I'm your friend. Dieter Bone is here. I am, actually, I am the host of a run of special Tuesday Vergecast that I hope you're listening to. We just did over an hour on USBC. And next week, we've got a really cool subject to talk about. Wild Deeter Absolute hype I'm so hyped now I was going to say that you know we've we've often used

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yeah that's USBC but now instead of teasing another one you're like a cool subject no it's a really cool subject is it refrigerators freezers our listeners understand what I'm getting at

even if you do. I believe you. Alex Cranz is here. I'm still trying to figure out what an NFT is. Who would send. And Sean O'Kane is here. I am telling Alex Cranz

to go to our website to read our very good NFT explainer. Oh, I'm the only one who hasn't read it in the whole world. That's definitely true. You and the Zoom owner desperately trying to.

I will tell you this. The incoming traffic to our NFT explainer, it is now like maybe the the sixth or fifth most popular article in Verged history, because so many people are confused about what NFTs are, they just are landing on that page every day. Just every day.

It's like every day it's one of our top stories. And we keep updating it because it keeps changing. But it's, it is very entertaining. And it's probably a signal that we need to do more coverage there. We just all have to stop laughing. Every time. Like it's hard. We're going to get there.

We're going to do it. I believe in it. We've actually got an NFT decoder episode coming up that I think, It's a cool subject. Huh? It's not the same. The joke is a really cool subject. Oh.

Oh my God. We're off to a rollicking start. A lot to talk about. There's some news from Apple and Epic that we need to get to. There's a bunch of Microsoft stuff going on. But Sean is here because there's a new car company, like a big deal car company. It's having a moment, and it's a good time just talk about what's going on in cars. The EV revolution is, like, in full early swing, I would say.

You might notice car company, CEOs keep coming on Decoder to convince me that, you know, they're going to be good at batteries. It's true. But Rivian just had its IPO. Rivian, if you haven't keeping track, is a new electric car company. They make what's the R1T is the pickup truck. The R1S is the SUV. They are now worth more than Ford and GM after this IPO.

They have not shipped one car. Sean, what is going on with Rivian? They've started shipping the first few pickup trucks. Where those exactly went? Did they go to employees? They have a couple out there, but yes, in appreciable quantities they haven't started shipping. Rivian is, you know, in many ways it's a new company, but it also really isn't. It was founded in 2009, the founders and, you know, like this super brainy guy who, you know, you think back to 2009, it was that first sort of big clean tech boom.

and he was looking at Tesla and wanted to do something similar. And they actually originally set out to make an electric sports car that was kind of similar in some ways to the Tesla Roadster. And, you know, as Tesla proved, that was an extremely hard thing to do, even in Tesla's case where it was basically borrowing the Lotus Elise to build off of. And so this founder, RJ Scouringe, eventually decided a couple years down the road to pivot it to something a little more focused, you know, a brand, an electric vehicle brand that was more about adventuring, outdoorsy people,

affluent people who are interested in those things, and at the very least, like to think that they're outdoorsy and has likened it in the past to wanting to become like the Patagonia of EV makers, and even to the point that they even have a Patagonia executive on their board. Can I just say, like, that's a good, it's all good. It's also just from a more abstract business sense, trucks and SUVs are the biggest market. Sure. Right. It's like remarkable that Tesla is a success selling sedans.

Biggest market and also make the most money for automakers. In the case of an EV startup, that's not necessarily going to be true right away, but what that gives you is, you know, the biggest cost is the battery. The higher you, the more money you charge right out the gate, the more you can absorb that cost of the battery and not just take a total bath on the cost of actually building these vehicles. So that's what really helps them there by going down that route of SEP and pickup truck. And they also, by doing that, they put themselves in this position to essentially get to this point now where they have become, you know, for all intents and purposes, the first company to ship an electric pickup truck. There are a lot of other ones in the works, and it will not be as much of a rarity in a couple years. But they are, you know, they beat Ford, which has the F-150 Lightning to market. They beat Lordstown Motors, which is a much smaller kind of struggling startup that's focused on building pickup trucks for fleets.

They beat them to the market. So they are going to be in this position where they can sort of make themselves become known as the electric pickup truck in the way that Tesla became the electric car company for a lot of people. And that's sort of what they want to do. So they're able to get to the IPO. You know, it's interesting, like their inflection point was they debut. at the 2018 LA Auto Show. And everybody saw these vehicles and were really wowed by them. They're a little polarizing, but for the most part, I think people were really interested

in how specifically they tailored it to like outdoorsy lifestyles, you know, all-wheel drive, all these sorts of cool little compartments and things where you can stow gear and everything. And so that got them a lot of buzz. And then a couple months later, Amazon led a $700 million investment round into them. And then a couple months later, Ford followed. with a $500 million investment round. And they had, you know, they were courting GM. There was a good Wall Street Journal piece the other day

about how close GM actually got to making that investment. And it was like, everybody should go read it. It's a really good scene about like R.J. Scouringe flying back with this Ford executive on his jet and like basically Ford stealing Rivian out from underneath GM, which is really funny. And from there, they've just taken off. There are 9,000 people around the world now.

They have offices all around the U.S. They've been building service and delivery centers. And on top of those two vehicles, they're also going to be building up to 100,000 electric delivery vans that they designed with Amazon. So the interesting thing about them is not just the products that they built that look really cool and we can talk about. But they will be a lot of people's probably first touch point for electric vehicles because we've all seen these Amazon vans circulating our neighborhoods every day. and there's a good chance that that might be the first time you actually notice an electric vehicle near you. The thing that really gets me about Rivian is, I mean, Sean, you've been reporting on like the electric car companies that, I mean, you're reporting on Tesla, but electric car companies that aren't Tesla trying to like make it. You mentioned Lordstown.

I'm going to bring up Faraday. For the past five years, it's like, oh, it's an electric car company? Yeah, sure. We'll believe it when you actually make something and ship it. And I feel like Rivian sort of went from that category. to holy crap they're doing it, they're actually shipping something and they're making something really compelling almost overnight. Like, how do they get over that ledge of, we are actually real, we actually have capital,

we're actually, you know, staffing factories and making trucks? I think one thing that actually hasn't gotten a lot of attention in the run-up to this IPO that I think played such an outsized role in their success so far is that, you know, it's easy to sort of scoff at the like Patagonia of Electric Vehicles kind of vibe. But what they did that was so smart that a lot of, pretty much arguably, all other electric vehicle startups haven't, is they picked a customer. They said, you know, they threw out the sports car idea. They said, let's get as like kind of narrow as possible an idea.

And they really like chiseled out a brand that like is more cohesive than anything else. Ferry Future, Byton, all these other companies that have struggled and or gone out of business or fallen by the wayside. they all wanted to be the next Tesla in the sense that they wanted to be a mass market electric vehicle, and that's a really hard thing to do if you're trying to be a product for everybody. And what Ruvian did that was so smart was realized halfway through that they wanted to make something specific. And if it didn't work out, the chances are it's not going to work out.

So why not take the risk on making something that could appeal to a more niche group of buyers, even though, again, we're talking trucks and SUVs. but they really built a cohesive brand around it, and I think that really helped. And then honestly, in the run-up to the IPO recently, one of the things that we learned when they filed their S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission is that they got a lot of help. Like, not only sort of, you know, obviously they're getting a lot of help from Amazon on building the delivery van and figuring out how that's going to work,

but Ford built the body and whites for them for all their prototypes. So basically everything that sits above, like, the electric vehicle platform that powers the car, Fawr's, Ford actually built all of that. Wow. So I think they had a lot of work done before they came out of stealth in 2018, which showed at the LA Auto Show. You know, they didn't show like cardboard cutouts that fell over. But, you know, at that point, they would have probably taken a little bit longer to get

to here if it hadn't been for the sort of, you know, big companies, one automotive, one tech, that came in and really sort of saw the potential there and partnered with them and started sort of pushing them forward. You and I obviously talk a lot about the car industry. Big companies are trying to do this, right? Like RAM is trying to ship an electric 1500 pickup truck. Chevy is announced an electric Silverado. Ford is presumably with the next few months shipping the lightning.

They're like saying it. It just took them forever to get on the board. Why do you think it took a startup with, obviously with help, but why do you think it took a startup to get there first? There's definitely at the very least one big technical. reason, which is when you're talking about making larger electric vehicles, you start to run into this problem where to get the kind of range that people want in order to consider buying them, you need a certain amount of batteries, the more batteries that you need to get that range to power

what are bigger, heavier vehicles. You are making them bigger and heavier, which means you start to get into this sort of like chicken and egg problem. And they actually have some, it's a little But if you look at how they build their battery pack, that whole part of the equation, they made like a really big advancement there in trying to figure out that problem, which I think has, I think, you know, isn't going to, and that's not the reason that like GMC's pickup trucks aren't going electric just yet. But it was a reason that people were hesitant to think about going further than a sedan for a while. So I think that's a part of it.

And then, you know, it is, you know, we hear this explanation a lot, but I think there's some validity to it, which is like there's just this idea of a large corporation like the automakers are. It's just harder for them to do something new and cut ties to certain baggage that they have. Like the Mustang Machi is a really good example. The only reason the Mustang Machi exists and that for, is like now actually sort of in the game is that the CEO at the time went to whoever, you know, the team that was working on what was essentially the next focus electric, like a small

electric vehicle that they were going to make and was like, we're going to get killed with this. No one's going to buy this thing, make something better, and that turned into the Mustang marquee and not only turned into something more interesting, but on a much quicker time stale. They turned that around in like two years, two and a half years for that debut in November 2019. So I think those are two of the big reasons why Rivian's here now. Also, money, money, a lot of money. They've raised $10 billion to date, and that's not counting the IPO. They've raised more than $10 billion.

When you said that they picked a customer and the customer was like people that wear Patagonia vests or whatever, isn't the customer that they pick Jeff Bezos? Well, he is definitely a customer because not only is Amazon buying vans, we've seen during Blue Origins launches, Rivian, Blue Origin branded Rivian pickup trucks and SUVs pull up to the launch sites and stuff, and they won't say,

they won't tell us, we keep bugging them, they won't tell us if they bought those vehicles or not, but I want to talk about the money aspect real quick, but then I actually want to talk about the cars. But the money aspect is interesting. You have covered a lot of EV companies that have raised a bunch of money in a bunch of strange ways.

And they, like, Faraday Future is like the prime example, especially for Sean. Wait, how did Faraday Future do it? I vaguely remember this disaster. I'll do this as quickly as possible, I promise. Faraday Future was founded by the guy who ran the Netflix of China and also LaEcho, which was like a mobile phone company. And TV company.

And TV company and at one point Android bike company. He had those successes in China, but the problem that he had over there was that he was that he would build something up, he would borrow a lot of money against it. And then when that thing started to fall apart, whatever he built up next, he would borrow money against that to pay off basically Ponzi scheme style moving money around to the point that he got chased out of China. He founded Faraday Future with a bunch of that money when things were starting to get really heated for the first time in China. So he put close to $2 billion of that money into Faraday Future. That was how they originally got founded. When they first ran into the

biggest cash crunch a couple years ago, they actually got bailed out by Evergrand, which is the massive Chinese real estate conglomerate that is currently facing a $300 billion debt load of its own and is maybe going to collapse unless the Chinese government saves it. And so they survived for a while off of that. They got in a fight with Evergrand that they settled at the end of 2018. Evergrand kind of walked away with a piece of the company, Faraday Feary Feudor just sort of stayed in stasis mode until at the end of last year, or because beginning of this year, they announced that they were going to do a SPAC merger. Oh, no. Of course. Yes. And this year, in July, they completed the SPAC merger,

and they are now a publicly traded company with... That sells no cars. That sells no cars, yes. Is there stock price like $8, $5? I don't know. It's not as high as Rivians, I can tell you that much. But here's my question. Just back out of all this, because we could probably do the whole hour on Faraday shenanigans. No one wants it. Trust me, I know. Trust me. Well, if you want it, it's all on the website. Sean has broken more news about Faraday future than anybody. But they raised all the money. They had the resources.

They had the big companies behind them. Faraday. They never shipped a car and it's a disaster, right? Yeah. Faraday. Yes. Faraday. Yes. Faraday had the money. They had the tech companies. They had everything. They were just bad. They had all the same puzzle pieces. They just never made a car. Yeah.

Like, what in the Rivian story made them actually get to this point? Is it they're just better executives? Less Ponzi schemes. Less Ponzi schemes, right? Because there's a lot of electric car companies are just a hope and a prayer, even though they have tons of money. Yeah. Well, I mean, one of the problems here is, like, tons of money is super relative. Because when you're talking about the automotive space, like, you need this amount of money that Rivian has raised to really actually get there.

Lucid Motors is another good example. They just started shipping their first luxury electric sedan. And it took them getting well over a billion dollars from. Saudi Arabia to be able to get to the point where they, that amount of money barely just got them to production, but then they also just went public in a SPAC merger that raised four more billion dollars. So the amount of money, even though Faraday had spent two billion, that's still like kind of not enough, especially at one point they wanted to build their own factory. That's definitely not enough. And if you look at Rivians filing so far as they've become a public

company, even they say they're going to spend another $8 billion in the next two years. So like, that's definitely part of this. They were just able to corral the right amount of capital from sources that were, you know, less problematic, I guess you could say. And so, and then, you know, I'm sure there's some sort of leadership part of this as well. You know, they definitely have poached from a lot of companies. They took a bunch of people from McClare and they took a bunch of people from, I mean, everybody kind of hops around at this point with all these different startups. But so I think they probably hired well, and it seems like RJ, R.J. Scringe seems like a very intelligent person, a very focused person. He doesn't seem to have the sort of parts of a personality that we've seen

from people like Elon Musk and even Faraday Futures Founder that, you know, work against that part that you need to be successful. Yeah, essentially, they've got a plant in what normal Illinois is where they're building the cars. They're going to do another one in Texas. Well, maybe. Maybe. They built a, They bought this factory in normal Illinois on the extreme cheap. It's a former Mitsubishi factory that had been empty for a little while. And it was one that Fair Day Future actually passed over in search of building their own in Nevada instead. And so there's a connection there, too. But it's just funny.

I know a lot of people in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Rivian is the hot job to get. Yeah. Like a bunch of people I know who used to work for Harley and like Miller Coors and like various sales and like they all want to go work for rivian and that is like you can't buy that yeah right to be the place where all the talent in an area wants to go i think it's just interesting to see this company it's been a slow road and they're about to start shipping at scale and like all the pieces have aligned for them in a way that everything else is wreckage basically it also feels like there's a little bit of like self-fulfilling prophecy in this one too like honestly i didn't know what rivian was

until they announced that they were maybe building a factory in my hometown in Texas. And I was like, oh, my God, I have to learn all about this now. I got to get in on this. But it was really interesting to do, like, the confidence of everybody I was reading about talking about this company. Like there wasn't, like, even with Tesla, we still get the, well, all right, when they ship the car to you. But with this company, it's like, yeah, cyber, even just the three, the model three.

But with this company, it's like, no, they're doing it. It's happening. It's coming. If Rivian can ship these cars and they don't have the panel guys. apps that newer model 3s have like your whole hand in there it like Tesla ships a lot of cars and people love them and I right like there are Tesla's in my family people like I've got Tesla evangelists who are related to me you don't have to tell me how great Tesla is trust me I can just it's at home it's already in my house but like the cars are just not well made like there's there's no getting

around it if Rivian can like surpass that and they're in the biggest category in the country lowest bar well but it's so low bar. Yeah, yeah, for new car. I mean, the Ford shipped the Mock-E, and they had to recall it, like, three times. And the last time they recall it was because, like, because the roof was getting unglued. Like, new cars are hard. Yeah. So let's say they shipped a car.

Let's talk about the actual car. The R1T is really interesting. Mitchell got to drive one. The inside of it is more Tesla-like than not, I would say. It's got the big screen, and they've built a custom software stack. Can we just talk about the headlights first? Yeah, I mean, it's definitely. If you haven't seen it, you should go look at a photo.

Pull over your car and take a look at a photo. Turn off your gas engine. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, a lot of electric vehicles, whereas 10 years ago, all of the hybrids and, like, early electrics were like, let's make a really funky body type and put blue accents on everything. You know, now a lot of electric vehicle startups are trying to signal that something's different about the car by going with continuous light bars in the front and then in the back. And Rivian sort of mixes that up a little bit by using these two like pill-shaped headlights that go perpendicular to the light bar. So it gives it, yeah, it gives it, I don't know what would you even call it.

It looks like a bug. It's definitely interesting. Like, it takes some getting used to. There are people out there who are trying to call them snake eyes to make it sound tough. No. No, it just looks very friendly. Like, it looks like it wants to give you a hug. Yeah.

And like, I think that probably works to what they're going for. Yeah. It's the blocker for me, but go look at it. Yeah. And then on the inside, right, one of the things about all these car companies is utterly fascinating to me is the inside of the car is at this point more important than the outside. And like the software experience of the car is, I would say, in disarray around the industry in general, but they've had to build their own stack from the ground up. And it's all of their own stuff. What does that look like? Yeah, I mean, it's still very Tesla style, you know, like you look at the interface. If you go look at Mitchell's piece or there are definitely a lot of good videos on YouTube from the press drives. Like the interface is very, it's very similar to what Tesla has done.

It's a very like clean looking, maybe almost a little too sort of overdone UI as far as like, you know, some features may be hidden. It's all touchscreen base. And so that's something that they, that and the software that actually manages the car is something that they made a lot of hires around earlier on. And I think that's probably the hope is that's going to pay off for them because like that is one of the things that can be really difficult once these cars get on the road. Everybody talks about wanting to have over the air updates and how that's transformative. You know, Tesla uses it to make its cars better. But there are a lot of things that can go wrong with that stuff too. And so they're really trying to go for, I think, what Tesla offers, which is this idea of, like, a living car, something that can sort of change and get better in a way that, like, the traditional automakers are kind of promising something similar.

But you're never going to get in as, like, fluid. Like, the traditional automakers are going to be, like, the Samsung phone that never gets the Android update faster than the Google phone, right? Like, whereas, like, this is, the Rivian is the Google. play edition of electric vehicle. Oh, my God. But it does need some software updates. It's like from watching a bunch of the videos, it seems like there's a little bit still of lag and buggyness. And they're really up front about it, too.

Like, Quinn Nelson was talking in his video about it, that he would go and talk to the engineers and be like, I don't know about this. And they'd be like, yeah, we don't like it either. Like, it was a tradeoff and we're working on it. Like, they were like refreshingly honest, but like they're not shipping a perfect software experience yet. I think, you know, one of the problems you run into with this stuff, too, is like, because software is something you can change, it's harder to agree upon what it should do, you know, whereas, like, you've got to lock in the body type and the frame and, like,

the mechanics of the car have to be set, and you can't really tinker with those. So I think that you probably run into a situation like that. Like, I've heard from someone recently at another EV startup that was just about to ship that is, like, running into a similar problem, but worse, in Rivian where like there are big disagreements about how even UI elements should work at a very late stage in the game that shouldn't be happening. And I think, you know, for all of the money that it's raised and all of the things that it's been able to accomplish so far, something Rivian's going to have to deal with is like, I said, it's got 9,000 people already.

It is a very big company now and trying to manage all that and keep all those people together and aim them sort of at the same like success. target that R.J. Scouringe was aiming them at a couple years ago when they were a much smaller team has got to be really hard. So I feel like that's probably one of those places where it shows up. And it's also like you're taking advantage of the fact that you can change it up until and even after you ship the car. So like, I don't know, I feel like, I feel like that's just going to keep happening with this stuff when we're talking about the software of the cars, which is kind of doesn't sound great. Yeah, I mean, the amount of bad car software that you can interact with is a

regular person. Like, just go to a car. Go to any car. If you're in your car right now, you're still pulled over. Just play with your software for a minute. And just think about how, would you accept this on your phone? I'm buying a car right now. And I seriously, like, looked at used cars. I was like, actually I need to go up a year because the UI changes. And I just can't deal with like that very old looking UI. Because the UI has always also look like at least 10 years older than anything on your phone. It's just like time warp. Well, no, so you watch any YouTube car review. and like no one wants to admit it.

So they're all like, and this screen has carplay and Android Auto. And they just like move on. And it's like, no, wait. Hold on. Show it. Like many other things happen on the screen. Tesla is pretty good at it. People love Tesla.

They're good at over-the-up updates. The other carmakers are now setting goals for themselves in terms of number of over-the-year updates they deliver in a year. It's like both Ford and GM and Stalantis, dear sweet Stalantis. they all talk about deliver like is though that that is the thing that people want yeah like I don't I don't know if they've ever talked to like a regular person like no one is like I love my phone because it gets so many updates a year that's my favorite because Tesla is delivering so many updates a year they think that's the thing they have to compete with so like if we just like screw with

your car multiple times a year you'll be happy is like kind of where their heads are at but all that is related to the fact that they have none of the systems to do it right so saying we want to 20 updates a year requires them to build a system such that they can even do it. And you just see how a corporation takes something like make the computer good and backs it into a metric that has no relationship to human beings. But you understand why. The question for me is like, Rivian has to do that. They have to fix a software in the car.

They have to ship the cars. Cars have to be good. They have to service cars. They have to charge the cars. They want to build a charging network. Yeah. Can we talk about that for just a minute before we move on to the rest of it? This is just a lot to put like the truck is like Mitchell really loved the truck.

And the feature of the drive tunnel in the middle where he like crawled into the space between the bed and the body. All that stuff is cool. Go watch the YouTube. They've done a good job giving them to YouTubers. Like they've done excellent marketing around this truck. But you just like kind of look at that universe of other stuff they have to do. And I, it's still a lot of question marks. What they have working for them in their favor in a weird way, because this.

sort of may sound like a problem, is that they are going to be so focused on this Amazon contract and building these Amazon delivery vehicles that they've said they've collected 55,000 something pre-orders for the pickup truck and the SUV combined, and they've said it's going to take them until the end of 2023 just to make those vehicles. Wow. So they, instead of being like, you know, jumping in, like Ford, for instance, actually made more. than the 50,000 Mustang Machis this year than they had planned, like only a couple thousand more, not like an insane amount more, but Rivian's looking at only doing that within the next two years. So they have a little bit of breathing room in that sense, that there isn't going to be 200,000

of their vehicles out there to get right. They can control what's out there a little better. But they also have to throw a ton of focus on the delivery vehicle side of things. And then also, yes, do these other efforts like build out a charging network, which they're trying to do. which, you know, if no one else is going to do it, and there's going to be part of this and the infrastructure bill, so, like, there is going to be more charging stations coming.

But, like, that's a tall task. That's even someone like EB-Go, which is, like, a company that's been around for a while, that's dedicated to making electric vehicle chargers, knows what it needs to do to build them. Even it's having trouble, and is well capitalized. It's having trouble hitting the targets that it's setting for how many it wants to build

because, like, the permitting process in this country, differs every different place that you go to build a charger and there's all this so like they they have created a lot of work for themselves and so so even with the the consumer products the two vehicles that they're ostensibly selling under their brand two people you know you got to hope that that they're going to be able to address those as products in like a totally whole sense while also managing all this other stuff and maintaining 9,000 employees. What is there over? overall charging strategy. Is it just... They're basically building out their own

kind of network like Tesla's supercharging network that will be proprietary at first, you know, maybe open up after that. They're also tapping into this idea of doing some more like destination chargers that are near trailheads and things like that. Yeah, they're like we're going to put all our chargers next to

like off-road trails so you're going to go and charge up out in the wilderness is their idea. Yeah. That's my plan. The idea that the founder told me back when I first interviewed him in 2018, the galaxy brain idea for the company was, and probably still is in some ways, but they, if you notice, they're not talking as much about autonomy as they used to. But the galaxy brain idea for Rivian was you go, you know, you drive with your Rivian to the put-in

spot, you drop your kayaks in the water, you go down the river, your Rivian automatically drives down to where you're getting out of the water and pass you out. Oh, that's cute. Yeah. I love that. I thought it was going to be like, then the Rivian lowers a wheel into the river and charges itself like an old-timey. It's a good idea. Because that would be, they should do that.

Yeah, you should have hit up their investor relations team. I've got a great waterwheel idea that you just have to hear. Let's zoom out, right? So Rivian, I think, is the first new electric car company. It's hit, it's at this moment, it's IPOed. It is starting to ship the cars. There is, I would say, just like a level of confidence. They're going to hit the first mark, which is like shipping a bunch of cars, being a real company, not a bunch of financial shenanigans in a 3D render, which is like what most eB startups have been for a while.

They're going to get there. But if you just zoom out, we are in this mode of electrification. Sean, you and I've talked to this. Like, Alex, maybe you feel this way too. I don't want to buy a car without a battery ever again. Same. And whether it's a hybrid or an EV, like I just feel like my next car should definitely have a battery in it. I mean, I live in New York City, so where there are no chargers that are, like, freely available.

So it's, like, just unreasonable here. Yeah, but you could get, like, a Prius. Like, there's, like, a number of ways to get, like, a hybrid. Yeah. So I'm just, like, there. I feel like a lot of people are there. But the actual number of cars you can buy to meet that demand outside of the ship shortage and all the other stuff that's going on, the actual number of cars that are available to

meet that demand is shockingly low, right? Like, every car company will show. you a concept car. Catalkaic, the lyric is coming. And you're like, can I buy it? And they're like, get on this waiting list. Yeah. Tesla's like, a cyber truck, this waiting list is even more of a spiritual idea. What is, why is there such a gap? Why? It's rare that consumer demand is so far ahead of where the industry is. And I can't quite, I can't quite figure it out. Is it the oil and gas companies? Is there a conspiracy? They're just running around handing out cash. I mean, they could. And what's made it even worse is, you mentioned the chip shortage.

It's like finding a new car right now is really hard because there are so few of them that the demand is just taking them right off the lot as soon as they arrive. And finding a used car, it means you're spending way more than you need to on a car that is not worth that much. So on top of all that, you know, people are turning even more to electric vehicle sales. Like electric vehicles are actually making up far more of the market right now, still single digit percentage points, but more than more. we thought they were going to this year based on like how they were growing before. So yeah, there's a, there's definitely a lack of it. It doesn't help that GM had to pull the Chevy Bolt off of, uh,

off of dealer lots because of the recall related to the battery fires that they experienced with that. Um, that's definitely, that's hurt them, especially because they just launched two new versions of it that were a little more capable, a little more modern. A little less ugly. Yeah,

a little less ugly. Um, but, you know, that, so that's not helped. And then, You know, the Mustang Maki's done really well, but we're just still in that weird sort of valley between the promises that were made.

The way I always think about it is like mid-2010s was when we started to see all these startups show up and say, we're going to be the next Tesla. Automakers are still not maybe taking it as seriously as they should. A couple years later, those first startups were starting to really fall apart, and the automakers were like, let's do it. And so we're just about to round that corner of how long it takes an automaker to put a vehicle on the road from when it was originally conceived. And the startups have reignited with all this new money that's coming to this space the last two years. And so they're actually kind of arriving at a similar point, which is why we have Rivian now, Lucid Motors shipping, and a couple other ones, you know, potentially shipping next year.

So it's like sort of an unfortunate series of events. I just can't imagine. If you back out to, I don't know, smartphones, right? There weren't just a lot of people walking around me, like, my next phone's going to have a touchscreen. And the industry was like next year. Yeah. It was the industry being like, touchscreens are here. And everyone's like, oh, that's a really good idea.

We got to catch up to it. And here, it just really feels to me like a lot of people. And maybe it's because I mostly hear from like Virchcast fans or whatever. But a lot of people are like, I want my next car to have a battery in it, whether it's a hybrid or full EV. Like, I feel this way about climate. I want my car to accelerate really fast, which is a lot of people really want their cars to accelerate really fast. But there's a lot of reasons you want a battery in your car. And, like, your choices are a number of compact crossovers, and that is it.

Well, I mean, you just described the U.S. auto industry, Nelai. Your choices are a number of compact crossovers in big-ass trucks and there's like two sedans. There's two sedans you can buy right now. That's it. Yeah, but it's nuts to me that like not every car is a hybrid, right? Like that feels like a miss from the auto industry that they could have gotten there. They, you know, most car companies are like at this point like taco belling their platforms, right? They have three engines and like they're just like mixing and matching the parts.

It feels like it's like the battery and the infrastructure is the hesitancy there, right? Like the batteries are still limited. They're the limited distance. And a lot of people live far away, especially you get to the rural folks and everything. They're further away. Like they need they need to be able to charge. quickly. The charging experience is still garbage. I thought about getting an electric car. And then I was like, okay, first I have to pay for whatever, a place to charge it here in the city, yikes. And then,

like, if I ever want to, you know, go back to Texas and visit family, I've added a lot more hours on my drive just to get my car there. And it's like, that's, that's no good. Like, that's, that's a really bad situation. It feels like, like the desire is there and everybody else is behind, like the industry is behind. Like, the car industry is behind. And then, like, those supporting industries, like, you know, mobile and Shell and all of these companies, they could be putting charging stations in there. And they're... It's funny, because you said mobile and I was going to go. I thought you meant mobile phones. Sorry.

And I was like, for example, no one is like, I want 5G. And the industry is like, you desperately need this. 4K TVs. Nobody wanted a 4K TV or a smart TV. Like, nobody, I didn't want a smart TV. Nobody wanted a smart TV. They're like, I want to figure that out myself. And the TV companies are like, no, you're smart. I'm just saying there's a lot of people listening to this show who are like, I did want more pixels. That's actually a thing that I wanted right back. Sorry, guys. Speaking of 5G, do you know who's going to come in and save this problem? Foxcon, baby.

Yeah, do you want to talk about Lordstown and Foxcon and what's going on there real quick? Yeah, as briefly as anyone will tolerate. Foxcon announced yesterday, they announced this in September, but they kind of like finalized it yesterday. they're buying a former General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio, which had famously shut down, you know, while Trump was in office and he got very mad about it. And then he actually really touted the sale of it a couple months later to this new startup, Lordstown Motors, which is an electric vehicle startup with no history. And they've been trying to make, get that factory ready to make a pickup truck over the last couple of years and have just run into a ton of problems

of their own and now Foxcon is buying that factory. Foxcon has spent the last year plus talking about how it wants to get into electric vehicles. It's made its own electric vehicle platform. It has bought up or partnered with a whole bunch of other companies, including, you know, startups like Fisker or big companies like Stalantis. And so now they have, you know, unless the deal doesn't close by it's supposed to close in April. And who knows with Foxconn, but Foxconn is going to have an automotive factory and electric vehicle factory in Ohio, where it will make the pickup truck for Lordstown Motors, it'll make some new vehicle that they haven't announced yet with Fisker and who knows what else. There's a lot of space there, six million square feet. So Foxxon loves a big empty

building. Yeah, I was just like you can't get enough of it. How long is the drive from Racine to Lordstown? No, this is actually, this is really funny, right? So they announced they were going to look for a factory and everyone thought, oh, they're going to use the one in Wisconsin that they built. To build cars for Fisker. Sure. And then Henrik Fisker was like, no. We're not going to do it. Straight up.

It was either Wisconsin or Mexico. And they're like, we're deciding. And they kept visiting the Wisconsin facility. And like, oh, these are those photos. What Fisker was actually doing was he was lobbying to change the rule in Wisconsin that says all cars have to be sold by a dealer. Right. Okay. Well, I'm just going to tell you, the Wisconsin GOP, which is, you know, the,

The group that put the Foxcon deal in place is captured by the Wisconsin auto dealers. So to save their own project, they had to go against one of their biggest constituencies. Yeah. I mean, it's just, it's like a hilarious. So they didn't change the law. So Fisker, like, walked and went to Ohio where they can sell a car strike. All, I mean, all of this is just like, like, it's hilarious. And we still don't know what's going on there.

I love the idea. It's really, it's really wonderful that Foxconn maybe had a total out there to, like, fill its empty buildings in Wisconsin with something and say like, hey, we're going to do this here now. We're going to make EVs. And instead, they've now wound up in the situation where they have two currently very empty, large sites in the United States. I mean, they built a building. Like, they built buildings.

That's, they built something. It's also funny that Fisker, like, blew up this chance to get really good press and, like, do this in Wisconsin because they insisted on selling the cars direct. Yeah. Like, I don't know. Tesla's building plants in Texas. people in Texas, when they buy a Tesla, they have to import, they have to go to another place. It's like hilarious.

And they're totally okay with it. They're like, yeah. And they're totally okay. Driving to Oklahoma, see y'all in an hour. I mean, that's just funny to me. I don't have any strong feelings on whether cars need to be sold through dealers or not, but I do think that the fact that people in Texas have to do a round trip out of state to get a car is hilarious. And the fact that Fisker blew up their own chance to rescue the Foxxon plan in Wisconsin over this rule is deeply hilarious. but what were we expecting?

When they announced, like, we might build cars in Wisconsin. I think Sean and Josh and I were like, no, you won. Yeah. Before we even knew the details. Can we just very briefly, we've gone way far afield, and we haven't talked about the kitchen and a tube that could fit inside the Rivian pickup truck. Like, is that a real thing?

Do you think, or is that just a really cool gimmick? Do they actually intend to sell any of those? Because if you don't know, the truck has this pass-through chamber, and you can buy like a camping kit that's got like a working sink and a grill that, like, slides out of your truck. That's what you meant by Kitchen and a Tube. I would buy that tube in a heartbeat. Add that to your email to their investor relations people, Milit.

That's great. I mean, here's my answer. They're charging $5,000 for it. So, yeah, they're going to try and sell it to people. Yeah, okay. Fair enough. Not every vehicle is going to come with it. But, yeah, if they can charge $5,000 for someone.

I mean, every vehicle. Like right now, the only versions, the only trim levels. sold are the most expensive trim levels. Yeah, I just priced one out. It's $83,000. Yeah. Yeah, the base price we should have said on both of these vehicles is like $67 grand, but you'll be waiting a while for that.

You'll be getting the $90,000. Sorry, Neil, there's a new trend instead of buying a pixel phone on the Vergecast, do you buy an electric vehicle on the Vergecast? Is that what's happening here? Do it. I can put $100 down in any number of cars that aren't shipping. It is absolutely the weirdest time to be, I mean, Alex knows she's actually buying it. I'm addicted to car shopping.

And it's just amazing how many cars don't currently exist. You can look at web pages for cars for days. Then you go to buy and it's like, no, no, no. You have to wait four months. And then we're not going to get the one you want in. We're going to get the one that's $20,000 more. Give us your money. You've got all those phone mounts.

You know, you need cars for all those phone amounts. I got to put them. I got to, yeah, it really you start small and you go big. I'm just going to start buying like 90s escalates. They're cheap. They're available. No one wants them. There's no, there's, all that used car demand is not pointed at 90s escalates.

Technically they have a battery in them, I guess. There was a, there was a brief ill-fated escalade hybrid. It is not a good car, but I'm at the point where I'm like, well, that has a battery. This seems fine. All right, Sean, thank you so much. We got to take a break. Thanks for coming on, man. Yeah, of course.

All right. We're going to take a break. We'll be right back. Support for this show. comes from Shopify. Starting something new isn't just hard. It can be really scary, too. So much work goes into this thing

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using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash track. Terms and conditions apply. Okay, we're back. It's kind of a lot of Apple stuff going on. Yeah, like just a smorgish board. And on the smorgish board

is just different apples. Should we start with buttons and links? I think we have to. Okay. So, Apple versus Epic, big court case. Epic loses on most of its charges of Apple being a monopoly and the iPhone being a monopoly in its own operating system. Okay. They win one very important concession from the judge.

The judge says Apple's anti-steering rules are bad, anti-competitive under California law, writes an order saying basically crossing out the anti-steering rule that Apple has. Right. So you strike this language. now apps in their metadata and in the applications themselves must allow buttons and links pointing to external payment systems. Right. This led to some discussion of what buttons and links mean. More importantly, it led to Apple saying, hold up, that's bad. We want to stay this order until we appeal the case and we can win again. Right. So they go to the judge and request to stay.

They had oral, and they filed their motion stuff. They had oral argument in front of the same judge. Judge said, no, I don't like this. Like if I grant you the stay, nothing will change. change for three to five years while you do these appeals that you're going to do. Right. We thought, okay, they had oral argument. She yelled at Apple a bunch, which was really interesting. Okay, it's going to take another week or two. Like 30 minutes later, she puts out the order saying, no, stay granted.

And she, like, dunks on Apple a lot. Yeah, right? The anti-steering provisions are one of the key provisions upon which Apple has been able to successfully charge super competitive commissions untethered to its intellectual property. Apple's commission rates to press royalties and suppress competition in the industry generally. She's like, no, I think you're anti-competitive. Yeah. Well, and one of the key points here was Apple's like, man, changing this rule is going to take years.

It's going to be so hard. And the judge is like, no, I gave you 90 days. You could figure it out. I'm not even going to give you a 10-day extension because I gave you 90 days and why didn't you get started by now? It's like, why didn't you get your homework done? You should have started it by now. It's not my fault. You waited until the last minute.

Apple also said it would cause significant engineering resources to comply with this rule, which no one knows what that means. Yeah. Okay. So she says no. She clarifies buttons and links. Yep. But then I pretty sure the order has a typo in it. So now we have to talk about something else.

But she does clarify buttons and links. She says, with respect to the alleged need for clarification because some developers do not understand the scope of the injunction. The developer agreement prohibits third party in-app purchasing systems other than Apple IAP, in-app purchases. The court did not enjoin that provision, didn't say other payment systems, but rather said you have to be able to communicate external alternatives and allow links to those external sites. I'm just going to tell you, I don't think she actually clarified anything because I don't know what happens if you have a button in an app that opens an in-app browser that already has your login info and building info in it, and that's how you buy Fortnite dances. Yeah. Is that an in-app purchase or is that a separate browser? Earlier in the ruling, the judge writes, consumers are quite used to linking from app to a web browser.

So it's like, we're in the weeds here. So the Kindle app, if it has a button that says buy book and it opens a browser, what are they going to do? They definitely still have to put the other button there, I think, the Apple button. Probably. They have to, right? The court doesn't say so, but I think Apple might say so. Yeah. And the court doesn't say, the court says Apple could demand it if it wanted to, I think.

Yeah. So I love the judge's like, I'm clarifying this and she doesn't clarify it, which is very important. So still, we're still in the world of buttons and links. Apple says they're going to appeal this again. It is every time you appeal it now, it's like getting diceier that it'll get stayed. But we'll see. It's happened before. But that's where we are with buttons and links is Apple has won a lot of this war.

This very important battle is still not won. And by December 9th, they have to allow developers to tell you places to buy things that are not apples and communicate the prices, which means the pricing pressure on the App Store is going to get really incredible. Yeah. And actually, the judge specifically talked about this. Apple maintains convenience by IP. If it can compete on pricing, developers may opt to capitalize on that convenience, including any reassure, I think she means reinsurance, that Apple provides customers.

It may provide safer, blah, blah, blah. But then here's the dunk. The fact remains it should be their choice. Consumer information, transparency, and consumer choice is in the interest of the public. Yeah. Love it. Yeah. Can we talk about this typo real quick?

we have to so she puts out the the she puts out the opinion denying this day and the line the you know the order says apps in their metadata comma buttons and links and i'm pretty sure there's a typo and so now the order actually reads apps in their meta buttons and i just like lost my mind like what is a meta button where did this come from i can't we have to stop using this word it's very bad but i'm pretty sure it's a typo and she was copying and pasting But we figured it out. Is Apple going to avoid doing what they're supposed to? Because they've redefined a meta button.

Yeah. I have really hopes. I mean, I don't hope so, but I hope so. Here's the thing, though. The word meta button appears twice in the ruling. Yeah. Yeah. It's real bad.

I will say that it's still not clear if you push a button and it opens a web view. We know what Apple's going to say, but we still don't know what it means to push a link to go to a website. in the context of the app store. Is it a meta button a button in the metaverse? I don't want, I can't, I can't be talking about the metaverse. See, the CEO of Disney this week did his earnings call and he was like Disney Plus is a metaverse. Yeah.

And we're like, is it? Is it now? I think it was Benedict Evans who said that we're in, in two years, where all this metaverse talk is going to sound like what the information superhighway sounded in like the late 2000s. Remember, like in the 90s, Bill Clinton was like, we're going to get on the information super highway right after there's a bridge to the future or something, something, something. and no one talks about the information super highway now because that's a ridiculous metaphor for the internet.

You know, it's a fun thing to say if you just like, if you really want to like push it, don't say information super highway. Just tell someone you were surfing the web. Just like, be like, what did you do last night? And you're like, I surf the web and people will look at you like you are crazy. Are we not supposed to say that one anymore? Do you talk, do you try it. Do it tonight.

I'm going to do it tonight. I'm going to the bar after this. One of my favorite activities is surfing the web. What were you doing this evening? Surfing the web. Waiting for you to get here. Surfing the web on my phone. Can I have feelings about surfing the web?

Because that means that people aren't clicking links between websites. Everyone's just going to Google. It's a sign of monopoly power that we can't surf anymore. Bring back the wave of information. This is the worst point break sequel of all time is being pitched right now. I'm just putting it out there. There's a bunch of other Apple stuff. Tim Cook gave an interview at the Deal Book conference this week with Andrew Osorkin.

He said he owned cryptocurrency. He didn't think that Apple would, like he personally is invested in cryptocurrency. He said it thought it was a good idea. He said Apple wasn't interested in it because it's so volatile. He doesn't think people buy Apple stock to get exposure to crypto volatility, which is just, you can just see where Tim Cook's head is at, right? Like he gave the deep answer on crypto volatility. And then Andrew Ross Starkner was like, what about the Metaverse?

He's like, no. No further comments from me. Done here. He did say that he thinks side loading is bad. the usual comments on that stuff. Can you explain this face ID right to repair situation? So when you replace a screen on an iPhone 13 and you put it onto another iPhone, there's a chip that makes face ID work and that stops working if you swap screens.

And there's no reason it should. There's no, the secure enclave and all that stuff isn't there. So I fix it did the tear down and they investigated that like if you like learn micro-soddering and you manage to get the chip off the board, you know, some way and move it to the other thing. It'll continue to work. But functionally, what it does is it takes a huge category of phone repairs and puts it in a place where independent repair shops just cannot do it. Because if face ID breaks, you're not going to get your screen replaced from the place that breaks your face ID. Just you're not going to do it.

And iOS was putting up various warnings about it. And it was clear that Apple, like, had some idea of what was going on here. And they gave us, you know, the information. They're like, actually, no, we're going to, we're going to fix that. You're going to be able to not have to micro-sodder a chip from one screen to the other screen in order to make your screen swap worker replace your screen. So they actually backed off a thing that improved your right to repair, which I don't believe happens without, you know, the current push for right to repair and the current rate

regulatory pressures that are being put on big tech. Didn't they do this with the touch ID too? Like the touch ID you had to switch things over. Otherwise, your touch ID would break. Yeah, it's very, very similar. So you'd think conceptually it's the same thing. But I'm pretty sure the chip didn't perform the exact same function. Well, also touch ID was not connected to the screen.

Right. But when you were replacing the front of it, if you replaced the front of it wrong, the touch ID would break. Yes. Because it would be like, oh, you have a new touch ID. We hate you. But yeah, like, but the part on the 13, like it's connected to the screen, face ID and the screen mark basically one piece. Okay.

Like some of that stuff. And so swapping that stuff out is really difficult because you got to get into microsoddering. And so you need to be able to just buy that part that has all that stuff on it and put it on when your screen breaks. Right. And only an Apple authorized dealer had the software jiggery-pokery to authorize face ID on that screen replacement. and they have now stepped back and it no longer will break face ID if you replace your screen that also has those face ID bits on it. Was this like a bug or was this intentional and oh, they got caught? That's an excellent question, Alex. What do you think?

Hmm. I sure have opinions on that subject. I think I think Deter is right. I think basically the right to repair. There are bills. There are people in Congress. It's all part of the antitrust stuff. Like this is going to. going to be one of those, any member of Congress can be like, and big tech won't even let you fix your phone anymore. Yeah. If you break the screen, like, why walk into that? Yeah. No, I think that there's a, there's an entire category of problems now for Apple where Tim Cook is like, you know what, I don't want to think about it. Like, make that go away where normally they'd be like, nope, we're going to, we're going to hold the line here. But I think right now, there's just a category of

things where Tim Cook's like, nope, that's not worth our time. We're going to hold the line on the definition of button, but this, this just let it happen. I think anything that's, anything that is easy for a politician to explain is not a battle worth fighting. It's like a very simple. Oh, I love it. You want to get deep in the weeds on buttons and links and whether or not IAP should be 30% or 15, like whatever. Like, no one in a town hall meeting can do, we've been trying to do it on the show for 10 years. It's very hard. You want to do blue bubbles. That's still like over the head of most people and people can feel it and they understand it.

Apple made it impossible for you to cheaply or pair your screen when you crack your phone. Like that's just gold. That's political gold. And like why why give them the gold? And you force them to do RCS. That's all I'm saying. Good luck. Okay.

More more quick Apple stuff. Two kind of interesting hires. One I think makes sense like conceptually. The other one is. So the CEO of Johnson Johnson is now joined Apple's board. It's great. Presumably because Apple just wants to do health stuff all the time and they think Johnson and Johnson will help them. Yeah.

Well, and they've been trying so long to get health right. Their efforts really need a booster. Oh. Very good. They've got one shot to get it right this time. Oh, my God. That's the Vergecast, everybody. It'll only work 60% of the time.

It's brutal, Alex. Wow. It is interesting how Apple. invests in health, right? And like they've run into a lot of problems with health. Okay. They're adding an executive into the board to bring some rigor to that. Well, and I think bring some rigor to their goals to like what are what is what are we

planning on doing besides Tim Cook saying health is going to be our most important contribution. Well, like specify the contribution a little bit more clearly. I think having this CEO in particular on the board helps them do that. So does this mean they're not going to, because for a while they're like maybe we'll do our own like internal clinics and hospitals and they realized that was bad. So now they're like pivoting maybe away from that. We'll see. So this brings me into the second hire, right?

So you add the CEO of the healthcare company to bring some rigor and some goals and some direction. Okay, that makes sense. They've also hired yet another Tesla executive, the director, the former director of autopilot to do question marks. Unrealistic things. Well, I mean, I don't know. The Apple car situation, I mean, and Sorkin did.

Ask Cook about this and there was just more when Tim Cook shuts down man it is like a robot turn it's like bo bo bo bo bo bo bo bo bo like he's like I'm not talking about that so they've added yet another car executive to do something they have spun this program up they have spun it down 500 times we still don't know what's happening but they continue to hire car executives specifically ex-Tesley executives yeah it's all for car play you guys think there's a car coming it's all car play The thing Sean talked about earlier about how like electric car people and like just people that are doing high-end car software are just bouncing around between the companies is very real. It is very real. What's interesting is you can break the software. There's two big chunks. There's the stuff on the screen in front of you, which is sort of uniformly bad.

Then there's the stuff that runs the car, which is not allowed to be bad. Right. Like at a deeply fundamental level and they operate on very different. We need to survive. Yeah. Yeah, if the body control module of your car fails, like bad things happen to you. And they're on wildly different development timelines. And then there's self-driving, which is supposed to connect a lot of these things, right?

You need to tell a map where you want to go. And then the car has to operate another wildly different development cycle and timeline. One of the most interesting things about Apple, in terms of the mystery, is we have no idea where they want to play. Right. Like for a while they were going to build their own car, which then they were going to build all of it. Then they were just going to build self-driving for other car makers or a user experience for other car makers. Still totally unclear what they want to do. Telling it's all car play.

The best music experience. It's coming. Spatial audio in the car. Oh, God. But what Sean was mentioning earlier, right? To succeed, you need to have a lot of money. Apple is kind of at a point where they have so much money that they can't be like, you know what we're going to do? we're going to, we're to make a TV, which is something I think they should do.

They're like, that doesn't cost enough money. It doesn't move the needle enough. Like, they could just buy Samsung. We now make TVs, and they're like, yeah, that was the pocket chain. They can spend enough money to make a car. And I think part of the reason they keep chasing after it is it's because it's one of the few places where they're one of the few companies that just has the cash balance to do it. Yeah. Yeah. And I think you can see that as an opportunity. You can also see it as like, man, you, you should decide what you want. Like the Apple mid-sized crossover is a deeply funny thing to consider. Cost $100,000. Can't repair it yourself. Yeah. With the windshield falls off, you have to call Apple. Okay. Lastly, Becca and Mario made a great video comparing the iPhone 13 Pro and the Pixel 6 Pro, the full frame from Becca. I'm not going to tell, like, it is a great video. It's super fun to watch. It is remarkable.

Markable where these cameras have landed. Yeah. And what they're good and bad at. I'm not going to tell you the results. You should go watch it. And particularly the Mario segment is very funny because Mario is hilarious. But go watch it. It's really good.

Back I had to take a lot of photos. Like literally the end card of this video is back of being like, I don't know if I can do this again. 2,000 photos, thousand each from each camera. We were talking about before. She doesn't have a dog. She doesn't have a cat. She doesn't have children. She doesn't have like naturally photogenic things around her.

And she went out and took 2,000 photos. That's like, that's incredible. Yeah, amazing. Okay, one more quick break. We'll be back. Let's wrap this thing up. We're right back. 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. That's where LinkedIn Hiring Pro comes in. It's built to be your hiring partner, helping you find the right candidates for. faster. That way you can hire with confidence without turning it into another full-time job. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting

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Start building at MongoDB.com slash build. We're back. Yeah. There's a bunch of Microsoft news. So, they have announced another version of Windows. Oh, God. It's another S version. It's Windows 11 SE.

And if we know anything about SE, it's that it's a very clearly defined thing, right? like the iPhone SE? I don't know. It is a special edition, I suppose, of Windows that's aimed really just at education. And so it's optimized for low-cost devices. It's not going to ship with the Microsoft Store, which is interesting. But they are going to allow third-party apps, including Zoom and Chrome, because you can't

get into schools without Zoom and Chrome because that's how they run schools. And yeah, so it's like, that's. That's interesting, but it's easy to dunk on Microsoft to keep trying to make lightweight versions of Windows. But they really do need to get into the education market, and this is another shot at it. So, fine. To me, the more interesting thing in some ways is alongside Windows 11 SE, they announced the $249 Surface laptop SE. With a garbage display. It could be pretty.

I we haven't seen it, so I don't want to say it's garbage, but Yeah, but when your resolution is 1366 by 768 in 2021, that's not pretty. That's a classic. That's like a mid-2000s eyebook. Yeah, that's just rough. It is wild that they can't. It's the opposite of pixel density. Microsoft, invest in displays, please.

Well, there are Chromebooks at this price range that are doing better on the display front. But in terms of making it, other than the display, in terms of making a low-cost device for schools, they're making it repairable. They're going to have parts. It's relatively easy to open up. So that's actually incredibly good news. Hopefully the thing is relatively durable. It's a bummer that they're using an Intel Celeron processor.

Bumber that's four gigabytes of RAM. That's like, that's the real. Yeah. So here's the thing. Can Windows 11 SE get lightweight enough where things can actually run well on this processor and this much RAM? Because you can get a Chromebook that can not be the worst at these specs. But more importantly, you can get a Chromebook with slightly better specs for not that much more money. And I don't know what Microsoft's goal here. Do they actually want to sell this thing in bulk to schools? Or is there hope that they can prove to the rest of the Windows market that they need to try harder at making Windows machines to compete with Chromebooks instead of just making Chromebooks. I feel like it's both, especially like when you look at this, because I used to have to cover like these really cheap laptops for a while. And once you get under $500, you're in garbage territory for Windows or you're in like Chromebooks. And even the Chromebooks start to get pretty, pretty dicey. But like there's just nothing in that space that's usable as far as Windows goes.

And it's always like, I think the recommendation was always like save your money. Like put yourself in debt before you buy one of these, which is not a good recommendation. And it's not realistic. And the idea that like they're going to tempt it is great. Like the surface go was nice and kind of forced everybody else to say, okay, we can think, we can be a little more thoughtful. We can actually do a nice display. So like it's nice that they're doing it and hopefully it forces people. But oof, that display is just.

that's just upsetting we've heard a lot about different companies trying to compete with Chromebooks like Apple keeps that's why they make a cheap iPad you know if you offered if you said you've got about

$250 or $300 to spend I would take an iPad over this Chromebook I think because the iPad has a much nicer display but then you'd have to spend a bunch of money on like keyboard cases and whatever

but the Chromebooks like centrality to the education market right now is like one of those things we don't talk about enough like every kid just gets like handed a Chromebook in school right now because there's just a handful of Google products they use to all talk to each other

and like do the work and that they somehow get hangouts running on those Chromebooks. Taylor Lawrence once had a great story about how kids were flirting in the comments of Google Docs. Just like very good. It's I they can keep trying to make the entry point, but they've got a once a school district is bought in, switching them over is really hard and like the schools are pretty bought into the Google stuff right now. Well, I mean, this is, this is why they were explicit that Windows 11 SE can run Chrome.

Like, they'll let you install it. It's, it's administered by the school. Like, it's run by, like, the IT department, like, what software is available? It's, there's no Windows store. But, like, is the strategy there that, like, your school gives you this instead of a Chromebook and you, like, accidentally

click on Teams, and you're like, ooh, you love this. Oh, wait. This is way better. Amazing. We'll see. Speaking of Teams. We actually, I think we're talking on this last week, how Microsoft has all the workplace stuff and Facebook has the hardware.

Well, here they are. Microsoft partners with meta to bring teams into Facebook's horizon workplace. Woo. It's the Metaverse. I rewatched the Microsoft Metaverse keynote. Yeah. And the moment when the guy clicks the button to send their legless bodies

into the lobby of an Accenture office, I was like, this isn't, like, at least the Matrix was cool. You know, like, at least when Keanu was like, woke up and he was in the battery facility and he was like, this is the real world, this sucks. Like, there were some people who were like, put me back in the battery. That's a plot point in the Matrix. It's like, get me back there. No one is like, get me back to an eccentric. Put me in cartoon land.

Zero people are like, I want to. to go to this Accenture office. But it's happening. You can see it coming together. And then lastly, this Windows expired certificate stories were always good. So I was like, I actually had a tweet. It's like, it actually makes me feel nice that like giant companies still have expired certificate like things that break their software. Because like, you know, I forget to go to the dentist. So like even everybody can forget things. But actually, if you just take a step back, it is really stupid that like this basic fundamental thing broke and that Microsoft wasn't on top of it because in Windows stuff.

Many companies have solved this problem of like remembering to make sure your certificates don't expire. All right. I want to end with just people ask me of this. I did not expect this to be a big deal. It turned into a huge deal. So we updated our background policy, which I'll explain in a second. And we didn't put it on the front page.

I just tweeted it. And it like blew up. And so some people ask, and you spend five minutes explaining what you mean. And I, it was just, this was a note for PR people and mostly other reports. reporters. So here's the thing that happens immediately all time. I talk to Dieter. Dieter talks to me. I'm a reporter. I get to write down what Dieter said and said that Dieter said it. That's called on the record. This is the standard how it should work all the time. Then if you watched any movie with newspaper people, and I love movies with newspaper people. They're super accurate. I could

watch the post all day. My old Michael Keaton movie, the paper, very good. Just go check it out. If you watch any of those movies, you watch any of the Watergate movies, you know people are off the record. That means you can't use what they say. And this is just like a fun thing you can do with your friends. You used to be like, off the record. I'm like, I don't know. But you just say it. And it means you can't use it. Right. Yeah. Then there's this gray area in the middle where I say, hey, Deeter, can I tell you something on background? Dieter's like, maybe. Define on background. Yeah. Yeah. And then I tell him something. And he can use the information. Deeter, I am Vine a R1T. And he can say, sources say, Nealai is buying an R1T, right?

Or I can say Neelai is buying a Rivian R1T, but I don't quote him. I just know it. Nealai gives me a long, complicated explanation of why. And then I can paraphrase that explanation and source it to Neelai. And so some companies, when they say on background, what they mean is that we don't want you to tell anybody that we're the ones that told you. Some companies do the right thing and say, yeah, we're on background, but you can tell people what we told you.

But the definitions are all over the place, and there's a potential confusion there that can gum up the works, let's say. Yeah. And I would say our responsibility is journalists and reporters is to not, is not for us to know things. It's to tell you what the companies are doing. Right. So when I just like magically know, I'll just keep picking on Rivian. If I just magically know what Rivian is doing, you have no idea why I know. this information. You have no idea where it came from. And if they have lied to me, I'm on the hook

for it. And they are not. Right. Which sucks. We're only picking on Rivian because they were earlier on the show. None of this has happened with Rivian. I'm trying to, what's the, what's the fake, um, fake contoso? Is that the fake company that Microsoft always uses? Yeah, contoso. Yeah. Fake Microsoft company. It doesn't matter. Any company you can think of. They all do it now. So a thing that has really happened with tech companies in particular is they tell everything to everyone on background. And they just tell you this is true. like all the time and you're like well who said it is it real is it it's you you're saying like now it's on background so we just reset our policy to back where it was like if you look at the

replies to my tweet about this there's like so many like grizzled old newspaper reporters who are like well those are those are always been the rules yeah and it's like great I understand that those are those are the rules in 1970 your local paper when you're like beaten down the doors of City Hall. Here in 2021, the boundaries have actually moved for tech companies and the companies that cover them. And we're just resetting the boundaries to, yes, where they were before, which is everything's on the record. And if you want to be on background, you have to ask us and we have to agree. Right. And I will tell you that, like, there's a bunch of stuff. There are a bunch of times when Google, actually, we had a story yesterday where Netflix, I don't know if you saw this,

Netflix is switching to AV1, is it's codec. Oh, how do we not spend the entire version? We should have. So, right. And so we were like, great, what devices are going to use AV1? And they sent us the list. The list is hilarious. It's just like, select 2020 8K TVs. And it's like, well, that's not a list of supported devices.

Select Amazon fire devices. Cool. Which ones? Anyway, so they sent us this list. We attributed the list to Netflix. Because all we need to do is tell people where the information is coming from. and now we've satisfied our responsibility. So we are happy to have this conversation

as long as at the end of it, we understand and can clearly communicate to our readers where the information that we're reporting is coming from. And that's all we want to do is say, here's the default. If you want to change the default, you have to ask us,

and we will have a conversation. Yeah, and by the way, ask us. Just ask us. It just was not expecting it to blow. I mean, it was a little salty. The post was a little salty because I'm a little salty. about it's yeah we've been thinking about this and how deeter deeter i've been talking about this for

maybe a year we've we've been talking about changing the policy for months and what finally after all of our 10 year stuff after this last cycle of reviews are reporters are like yeah when are you rolling out this policy you've been talking about like because i'm you know when when you don't have a policy to point to whenever anybody wants to push back like i end up on the phone right right they're like my editor will talk to you and so then i'm like but we have this policy we can't do it and we keep having a conversation. Now it's just like written down. Everybody can just like tap the sign.

You need to start like counting. See if it drops the number of calls you have to do, expect it on background. We'll see. But are the examples like, you know, the tech companies that email us their own website, like links to their own websites on background.

It's like guys, like what does this even mean? I've asked like, are we supposed to not source your own website now? It's wild like what people will just say on background in front of you'll ask a PR person, oh, did you see that movie last night? On background. Yes. I wasn't going to report that you saw a movie. It's unrelated to this laptop we're discussing. Thank you. Yeah. So anyway, that's just a little color. It's very inside baseball. All of it is pointed

at two things. One, we want to be transparent in how we work. So now there's an explanation of how we work and how we're thinking about it. Two, this problem is out of control. So we wanted to give cover to other reporters in newsrooms to say they use the same policy as us, which, for example, our ethics policy, right? Our ethics policy, we lifted from all things D. We lifted from Walt Mossberg and Keraswisher. It was a model they had printed. They were super loud about their ethics policy. When we were starting out and we were new, we were like, we're going to use that one. So we hope people, you know, now we're 10 years old. We hope people can look at our policy and build on it and use it and refer to it and have it be a little bit of a standard. And third, most importantly, we just want

our readers to know where the information comes from. That's it. We think that's an important part of our job. And I have, I have told many PR people, because people say to me or other reporters, well, you'll look really smart if you just know this. And I'm like, no, I already look so smart all the time. Like, I don't need your help. Like, I just want to tell them where I came from. The other thing I'll connect it all to is, and Deider and I know you have been thinking about this as much as I have, when people cheer for us because we say disclosure right like yeah that's our brand is being transparent like we believe in that like that's who we are we want you to know like here's where we're coming from here's what we believe here's how we do our work and so we're just always going to hold the line on

that and sometimes like this week we're going to do it a little more loudly than the not and we're a little more publicly than not but just trust me we're kind of always doing it's always in the background. So that's the explanation. If you have more questions, you know, we'll do our best to explain ourselves because we believe in transparency. All right. That's it. I think it's it. That is the show. We've gone over. We've gone over. Just a little. Just a little bit. Thank you for listening. Dieter's got the Tuesday episodes. Yeah. Still something cool is that really cool. Really cool subject. I see. All right. Yeah. What could it be? Decoder this week was a CEO of Anchor, which was actually, yeah, Anchor has a hundred

people who just think about Amazon marketplace all day long. It's 3% of the company. That's incredible. It's 3% of my brain too, but it's amazing that they hire so many. So Stephen Yang from Anchor next week. Next week, it's Brian Chesky, the CEO of Airbnb. That conversation was wild. That was, it's a rocking one. So that's Decoder, Tuesday episodes. You can tweet at us. I'm Matt Reckless. Deiders at Backlon. Alex is Alex H. Kranz. Sean is S.O.Kane one. Correct. That's it. That's for a cast. Rock and roll.