The Vergecast - Facebook debuts Ray-Ban smart glasses / Apple’s iPhone 13 event will take place on September 14th / Amazon announces its first-ever lineup of smart TVs

Episode Date: September 10, 2021

The Verge's Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, Alex Cranz, and Alex Heath discuss Facebook's newest endeavor into sunglasses with cameras on them, predictions for next week's Apple event, and of course some new gadgets announced this week. Further reading: Activists push to delay most high-profile climate summit since Paris agreement Microsoft gives up predicting when its US offices will fully reopen Facebook on your face Snapchat’s new AR features can identify the world around you Apple’s rumored AR/VR headset might rely on a nearby iPhone or Mac for processing  Whoop’s new fitness tracker is better thanks to a battery breakthrough Apple’s iPhone 13 event will take place on September 14th New Apple MagSafe charger spotted in FCC alongside four new phones Apple’s car chief is heading to Ford Apple Watch exec takes over secretive car project Apple delays controversial child protection features after privacy outcry Amazon announces its first-ever lineup of smart TVs Amazon announces Fire TV Stick 4K Max — and yes that’s really the name Amazon Luna is expanding to Fire tablets and Chromebooks, and retro games are on the way Twitter takes on Facebook Groups with invite-only Communities How Twitter’s communities could bring context back The Gmail app takes calls now, too, because Google wants it to do everything The Series One Desk 27 is a $2,000 Google Meet machine that doubles as a laptop monitor Microsoft Start is a personalized news feed designed for Windows 11, mobile, and more Theranos’ greatest invention was Elizabeth Holmes  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week on the Vergecast, Alex Kranz, and Virchini reporter, Alex Heath, join the show. We talk about Facebook's new smart glasses, preview the Apple event next week and get in to what Amazon, Google, Twitter, and more are doing. That'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. 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 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 report. 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. Dropping May 14th.

Tap in with us. Hello, and welcome to the Rochast, the flagship podcast, the world's largest triceratops skeleton. It's true. The world's largest triceratops skeleton is up for sale. Oh, I see. It's 1.2 million euros. And I'm telling you, it is a better investment than any NFT that you can be.

think of. A hundred percent. I'm Eli. I'm your friend. That's Deider Bone. I'm the ringtone in your email app. Very good. We got two Alexes today. Alex Kranz is here. I'm the good Alex. Throwing down. Sorry. All right. And the new Verge senior reporter Alex Heath is here. Welcome, Alex Eith. I'm the other Alex. You could have said better. You could have said evil. No, you got to leave it ambiguous. You got a good Alex to the other one. We'll find out. We have a lot to talk about today. Alex Heath has a headline, Facebook on your face. We just got to talk about what that means.

There's an Apple event next week we should preview. There's Amazon started making TV, all kinds of stuff going on. As always, I want to start with COVID. Just one little bit. Zoe and I talked about this on Decoder this week. Remember June when we all thought we were going back to offices and it was over and the Vaxes were rolling out? Yeah.

All the companies were making their go back to the office plans. I went to a bar. It's great. Yeah. I thought about going to the bar. I'm in the woods. I don't have a choice. But in my brain, I was in the bar. Anyway, that's over. Delta is here. It's still spiking. Microsoft has given up its return to office plan. Apple has given up its return to office plan. Work from home is here for a while to stay. And we're constantly talking about second order COVID effects.

The longer we stick with work from home, I think the more, A, our digital tools like Slack and whatnot are going to get more important and more central to how knowledge workers do work. But second all, we're going to see these companies radically rethink where their workforces are and how they're distributed. So that's the COVID bit today is Microsoft's given up, Google's giving up, Apple's given up. Lots of companies are giving up. And my prediction is the longer we stick with work from home, the more it becomes the default, which I think is fascinating. Actually, Logitech had released a little dock today, like a speakerphone work from home dock. It's very expensive. Yeah, but it's sick. It's so cool. It's like $300. But it's like, you know,

it's a USBC doc, it puts out enough power to run your laptop. It's got two monitor outputs at 4K 120, I think, which is like a big deal. I've got like a little del, and speaker phone with a hardware mute button. Yeah. Like the market is starting to recognize, like work from home is here and we should make products for it that are dedicated. Anyway, that's the update is always, it's the most important thing that's going on. It's still radically reshaping the world.

If you can get vaccinated, please just go do it so it can be over. We've got a party coming up in October. That's what my focus is on. to get vaccinated and come to the party. So I'm saying. All right. Let's talk about Facebook. Mr. Heath.

It's on your face. On your face. I had to do it. I mean, it's a good headline. A strong headline. But Facebook released some glasses this week in partnership with Rayban. They look like Rayban Wayfarers. There's another design that's not quite Wayfairers, but I think most people are focused on the classic

wayfarer design. I have read so much overthinking of these glasses. But let's start with what they are. What are these classes? Sure. So Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg previewed these about a year ago, actually, on the dot, saying that these were going to be their first stab at smart glasses, not AR glasses. They don't have displays in them.

They're essentially snap spectacles that look like Raybans. They have two cameras that can record video photos and another gimmick, I would say. It kind of feels like a gimmick. I'm actually curious that people will use it. There's Bluetooth audio in the frames where it sinks. from your phone and you can take calls, play podcasts, even play music, and hear them without headphones in. I will say, one, disclosure.

My wife works for Oculus Division of Facebook. I have no idea if she has any involvement with this project whatsoever. Probably not. I'm guessing not. But the fact that I don't know is a useful piece of information for everybody here, I think. I am hyped for, I bought these. I bought these despite the Facebook thing. I don't, I wish that they had nothing to do with Facebook.

I love that, like, Luxottica, who owns Ray Ban, like one monopolist shows another monopolist to partner with to release these, like just completely unnecessarily. But I bought them for the headphone thing specifically because I am an open ear headphone enthusiast and I wanted to see how they worked. Well, I can tell you they're loud. The sound is fairly full for what it is. It's not spatial in any sense. So you can definitely overhear something.

So if you're taking like a private call walking down the street and you're worried about people hearing you, you're not going to want to use that. Got it. But like the Luxottica exact guy interviewed for our story today gave an example of like he was in his car listening to Donda. He's wearing the glasses. He gets out of his car. Donda switches to his frames. Condi, following you everywhere. It's kind of dystopian.

Every time I hear one of those examples because we hear them all the time. Like you're listening to music in a car and you get out and it seamlessly switches to Alexa in your house. It's like, I rarely want that. Right. Why does it have two cameras? That is a good question that I should have probably asked more about. They're dual five megapixel cameras. They're not that fancy.

They are doing a bit of stitching, I think, to get you kind of a wider field of view. But, you know, spectacles have two cameras because they're doing some 3D effects in post-production, giving you kind of more of an AR-type experience. And these ray bands don't have that, at least in this initial version. I think there's probably some software updates they could do. could add some of that, but I thought it was actually interesting that there were no AR effects lenses to speak of shown to me as something I should try with these. And the companion app for these, which is called the Facebook View app, is a very bare bones camera roll app with very basic

federal editing and no lenses or anything like that, which are SNAP's AR effects. So this really is just more of a kind of hands-free GoPro type situation on your face. You say that, like, first of all, that makes sense, but the fact that you just like calmly said that is though that makes sense. It's a hands free gopher over your face. Like that to me is where the overthinking comes from, right? It doesn't have a display. It's not doing any AR on the lenses of the glasses. It doesn't appear to have a lot of computing in it, right?

It's just taking pictures and sending them to your phone or playing music from your phone on little speakers in your ear. It doesn't appear like there's like some huge battery breakthrough. It doesn't need a lot of battery power. Like all of the little. little bits and bobs of AR headset development that you would need for the AR glasses that we're all like this isn't any of that from what I can tell. No. And, you know, the way this was described to me is it's more of like a stepping stone product. I think Facebook wants to just see how people

receive these. Facebook's branding, by the way, is nowhere to be found on the glasses themselves. They're decidedly Raybans with Raybans logo in like three different places. And I think the most interesting part of this whole thing that I found out while doing the story is that this was RayBan's idea. They actually approached Facebook about this a little over two years ago. And these glasses were developed over about two years during COVID. So it gives you a sense of kind of why they're so bare bones, I think. This is a multi-year partnership. They're going to be doing multiple generations of these. Facebook has AR display glasses internally that they're prototyping. They're not ready for the Rayban treatment, but they will be in pick your date. And so, yeah, I think these are a dry run. It's just to kind of see, you know, are people comfortable with these? They're going to be in Rayban stores. You know, Luxottica owns lens crafters. They own sunglasses hut.

There's going to be a massive retail footprint for these things. You're just going to see them when you go in to get normal sunglasses or glasses. And they take prescription lenses. They take transitions. They work with your insurance. So it's definitely the most accessible pair of smart glasses that have hit the market so far. Were they inspired by, because you said they started working on this about two years ago. So were they were inspired by the Bose smart glasses?

Or spectacles? Or spectacles? Like, did they see those two are like, now smash them together? Yeah, spectacles, he who shall not be named. They wouldn't talk about spectacles directly. They named them Rayban stories. Right. They named them after a product that Facebook copied from Snapchat.

Right. So this is one of the last things I think Snap has actually done that Facebook hasn't copied until now. So congrats, Evan Spiegel, head of product for Facebook. But what I was told happened is that so in 2017, it was when Mark Zuckerberg stood in front of developers and for the first time and said, we want to make AR glasses. And he showed a graphic behind him that looked kind of like Raybans. And so the chief wearable officer of Luxottica, Rayban is watching this and going, huh. He's talking to me. Yeah.

And this guy has a wonder. His name's Rocco. I've got something to do. We put an Italian accent on it. And he's watching this. And he literally cold emails Mark Zuckerberg, like finds his email online, cold emails him and say, hey, you know, we're really interested in smart classes. You know, Luxottica talked to Google back in the day with glass. They were going to do a Rayban version of class that never happened.

He's like, you know, we really think smart classes are going to be a big part of our business in the future. We should collaborate on this. We need the tech. You need the design. And Mark was into it. He flew to Milan. He met with the founder of Luxottica, a guy named Leonardo. and that kicked it off.

And then a year or a half to two years later, here we have it now. I'm really impressed Mark Zuckerberg had Luxottica whitelisted in like his email rules. So he got that email. Like, great job. No, he, anybody that owns a monopoly, he'll take an email from. Oh, yeah, yeah. He's like, white list. Yeah.

I just, I'm stuck on chief wearable officer for a glass. By definition, everything they make is a wearable. This is true. Just carving out that lane for himself must have been very difficult. Yeah, I mean, it is kind of interesting. You've got like a social networking monopoly and the eyewear monopoly. You know, Luxottica owns like over 80% of the market. They own basically every glass is brand you can think of.

And now they're in a multi-year kind of high stakes, very collaborative relationship. And it is actually like Raybans doing the design. And Facebook is acting almost like an OEM. They're the tech supplier for these glasses. So Luxottica is paying Facebook as the supplier. So this isn't going to show up in like Facebook's next earnings report as like other revenue. They're getting, they're basically a service provider. So they're HTC.

Yeah. Only some people will maybe get that. But actually probably a lot of people on the show will get that. I'm curious. Like when you say they're a provider, who's doing the bring up of the hardware? Is it Facebook's hardware and camera team? Does Luxottica slash Rayban have a team that's making the hardware and it's Facebook's software? and they're just doing APIs?

My understanding is the look and feel of the glasses is all Rayban Luxottica. The cameras, the microphones, the actual tech is being done by Facebook. And the retail and the go-to-market and the sales are all done through Rayban. So it is a Ray-Ban product. I mean, the headline I had on the site was Facebook on your face because I like that. But it's a little actually belying what's actually happening here. Like Facebook's actually kind of sit playing second fiddle in this relationship. Okay.

So you've got the Rayban glasses. You buy them, you put them on your face. You go to use them. What's the flow? You just tap it. If you've used spectacles or seen those, I think they came out like a long time ago now. It's a similar thing. You just press the top of the glasses and you can record or take video.

There's a wake word. Hey, Facebook. Take a photo and video, which is like, you know, you're not probably going to get a second date if you say that. But that exists. If you have that on where it's listening for the wake word, it'll drain the battery a lot faster. so I don't really use it. And there's like a little shutter noise that happens when you do that. And then there's that tiny little white indicator light that I and actually a lot of

the privacy experts Facebook consulted on for this device think is not that prominent and should be more prominent. Because the original spectacles light, if you all remember, it was a ring that like moved and it was super bright. It was unmistakable. You could be standing across the street and you can see, oh, those are smart glasses. These really, you can't tell. I mean, I was standing in broad sunlight.

light. And our photographer when we were shooting for the story was like, you know, six to eight feet away. She's like, I can't even see that light. And you could easily sharp eat over or whatever. So I'm going to be curious to see how that works in the real world. Yeah. Katie, not a policy BuzzFeed taped over it and then asked Facebook about that. And I believe Facebook said the taping over it was a violation of the terms of service. Incredible. It's like, congrats to her for even thinking to ask. And then what a horrible answer. She's going to get kicked off the Facebook. What's the name of the app that she's allowed to use for it? The Vue app. It's just Vue.

Facebook View. Just Facebook View. And like, I can't overstate how basic this app is. It, like, there's no native uploading to Facebook services. It's just like share sheet extension, any app on your phone, send it, no watermark, nothing. So this thing just collects JPEG's over Bluetooth. Video and JPEX, correct. And you can like, fave them and edit them and then send them wherever you want. And I think over time they'll bake the apps in more.

I think they actually did that for speed. speed and getting it out the door because collaborating within Facebook is kind of, you know, complicated still. So yeah, that's the situation. And they cost $2.99. They start at $2.99. So they're actually fairly affordable. And they work with insurance. $2.99 is not that affordable. I think regular ray bands are about $200. So you're just basically paying. You're paying a lot for the brand is what I'm sort of gesture to. Yeah. The margin on these regular even regular ray bands the margin is insane yeah um how good are these how good is this one hundred dollar camera that's inserted into a two hundred dollar pair of rebands they're fine i mean

that's the thing like we have such super powerful amazing cameras in our phones and you know i could only see this working for hands-free situations like sports or you know zuck was on facebook posting like wave foiling with them on which they are not water resistant so he fell in the water that would be a problem. So yeah, I'm not really sure, actually. I think that's part of why they're releasing these is to see what people use them for because the quality is not that amazing.

I guess when you have the audio element, maybe people will use it for that. Facebook has aspirations to do kind of more fancy things with audio where you can pick things out, single noises out, assist with people who have hearing disabilities, or just kind of give you audio superpowers, which also is a whole other, you know, societal can of worms once that rolls out to the world.

Bose killed theirs because nobody wanted to do audio with quote unquote smart head or smart glasses. Right. Like I just keep being baffled by this whole rollout and everything about this because smart glasses, the privacy concern is such a major part of like what makes people reticent about these. What people hated about Google Glass, what people hated about the Snapchat ones. Like over and over again, they're like, hey, don't put things on your face that can just record me. And that's like not the killer feature for whatever. smart glasses actually come and are successful. Like, that's, it wasn't the last two times.

Why would it be this time? It's Rayban? I don't know. That's a good question. And then like, Rayban's like, I know. Who will we go to to work on these, these glasses? All of these huge monopolies that we know, like all are in this space. Let's go to the one that everybody has like the most privacy concerns about and say,

let's do a camera on your face together. I think we need to caveat everyone. I think if you're saying everyone and you're talking about the people who listen to this show and are on Twitter all day, then you're correct. I think the vast majority of, I think we in the media overplay the stigma that is associated with Facebook's brand. Facebook is incredibly data intensive. They do a ton of market research.

I don't think they would waste their money putting their brand on something if they thought it was just going to totally tank it. So I think normal people are going to walk into a lens crafters and they're going to see Rayban smart glasses without Facebook on them at all. And they're going to go, oh, that's kind of cool. And then they go, oh, there's a Facebook app. I have to use a Facebook account. Okay, I have Facebook, whatever.

There's no Facebook experience in the app. I mean, it's Facebook could not be playing a more backseat role in like the just general consumer touch point. Facebook is good at hardware. It's just like, I will give them credit. People like the portal products. They won't tell us how many they've sold that they were sold out in the pandemic. I don't know if that means they made five and sold all five.

It's low six figures. They sold a Bezos amount. Yeah. I think I've said on the show a thousand times. The Quest 2 is actually an incredible consumer product. It is complete. Quickly approaching 10 million units, most likely will hit very soon. Yeah.

So, like, Facebook is not bad at hardware. The thing that surrounds them is, oh, I got to use my Facebook account. Right. And that, like, I do hear that from audience. I do hear that from, I was like, we should get portals to my family. And they're like, Facebook, no, thank you. Right. Like, there is some reticence out there that is, it's hard to measure and hard to understand.

The privacy concern here, though, is not about you. It's weird. Like, this is a tool that helps you invade other people's privacy. Like, Facebook, like, almost has nothing to do with that interaction. I asked Facebook about this. And, you know, their point was this is actually more obvious than just recording someone with your phone because we have this, you either have to say, hey, Facebook, you have to physically do this. There's a shutter noise and then a light comes on, whereas, like, I can be kind of fake scrolling on my phone, you know, and potentially snag something.

So their argument is that, you know, phones are already doing this. I don't know if I buy that. At least, you see a person with your phone, like, you know, it's pointed at you. Maybe you might think that. Like, that's a ubiquitous situation now. glasses. We don't have the cultural understanding of whether glasses take a picture of you or not. Now there's lightning, a shutter noise. But I just keep coming back to, it is so easy to overthink this product. Like the number of like metaverse takes I've read about this product today already. And I'm like, it doesn't even have a display. Like it's a super cheap camera sensor and a pair of rate like fundamentally. It's spy glasses from the spy tech store that Facebook, it's. It's. It's. It's spy glasses from the spy tech store that Facebook. It's. It's. Like, there's not a lot going on here. Sharper image was making these 20 years ago.

Yeah. And we were all wanting to get them while we flew on Delta. Like, yeah, there's such a simple, I always kind of hate how, I think we heard it with Snapchat and we heard it also with Bose calling these products smart. Yes. Because they feel super stupid, like, or dumb. Excuse me. They just, they don't feel like smart products.

Like when I hear smart glasses, I think of like the sort of damage. or something like that, like something that's really giving me lots of data. And this is mainly like to have your phone. It's just like an output for your phone to create data, to consume data. Like, I don't know. I don't get it. Deere, give us the appeal as the only person here who bought them. Yeah, you're surrounded by suckers.

Why are you the biggest one of all? Well, I bought them because they're Bluetooth headphones. I just, I wanted, having a pair of Bluetooth headphones in your glass. systems is actually dope. They're like, you just always got easy access to a little, like music in your ears, not having to put in headphones and take them out. That's it. Like, if they did not have cameras on them, I might still have bought them.

Like, yeah. The fact that they have cameras was a reason to maybe not buy them. The fact that they're associated with Facebook was another reason to maybe not buy it. As far as the overthinking thing, yeah, I don't know, man. Like, this happened with AirPods. They're like, oh, the future is here. Computing is now in your earhole, right? And it's like, also they're just Bluetooth headphones.

So like, hold on just a minute before we get there. Alex is wearing them now. Do you feel like you're in the future? Are you in the metaverse now? I'm in the metaverse. I definitely am in the metaverse. No, I mean, like, I just can't overstate how, yeah, normal these are. Like, they're just the same weight as normal glasses.

I think that's the point. The point is to just, like, slowly introduce people to cameras on their glasses. And maybe if you buy Raybans, you'd be willing to pay an extra $100 for the novelty of this. And yeah, they're going to keep making them smarter over time. Whether that's a good thing or not, we're going to find out no matter what, I think. Yeah. I think the most important things about this to me are, one, you need to have your phone with you to use them. So the audio, yes. They actually have a fairly good amount of onboard storage for video and photo taking way better than the first versions of spectacles. But yes, for the audio, you need to be within Bluetooth

pairing distance. But you can't, even if you're out taking pictures, to get the pictures you need your phone. To get them off. Yes, exactly. Heavily dependent on your phone. Yes. That's going to be a movie. Oh, somebody on their phone and they got the thing and then you got to get the glasses.

They're like, oh, I got to find a phone to pair these with. Critical information. Finally. Got to get it off. Finally a good idea for a movie. Yes. That's the one. I've been watching all this dumb stuff that's coming out of these streaming services.

Hollywood call us. We got it. So there's that. But then there's like when I think about what you need to actually make the AR glasses or do the Metaverse stuff. The cameras need to be able to recognize what you're looking at. I don't think you can do any of that. Spectacles can't do any of that.

Snapchat did put out some AR features. Well, yes. So they released, air quotes, released spectacles earlier this year to creators and developers in an invite-only program that do have AR displays in them. They actually bought the AR display provider. We broke that story at the verge for half a billion dollars. So, yeah, Snap is actually ahead here. Now, they're not like being sold to the level of Rayban, right?

But yes, those are out in the wild. Some people have them. And they do have very basic object detection. There's a scan button. I did a big story on scan in the Snapchat app, which basically just kind of recognizes the world around you and is kind of trying to make AR more of a utility. These spectacles actually have scan in them,

and you can look at a tree, and it will suggest tree lenses in your display. So Snap is actually pretty well ahead here in terms of where we're going with, smart glasses. So that's the compute side of it, right? You need to be able to know what you're looking at. You need to do some computing to say something interesting about it, and they need to display

it somewhere. I haven't seen anybody make AR display technology that is good. Well, define good. Well, it's just all like the HoloLens or whatever. It's all just like LCDs in front of your face. You could also have lasers shot in your retina if you want to have, you know, like North and then, you know, the canceled Intel glasses that I tried. It shot, it was black and white, red.

Like, remember looking at, like, I don't know, OG Palm Pilots are like very, very old monitors that were like, you know, green. Yeah. You have that, if you want in your eyeball, you know. Yeah, the spectacles are full color. They're very, very limited field of view, though. And they're fairly grainy. Yeah. But they are still one of the best displays on the market.

And that gives you a sense of how far away we are. I mean, these are, like, laws of physics problems that these companies are trying to solve for is my understanding. in terms of not burning your face off with the compute needed to power displays that look good enough. So there's actually just like core physics problems that are still being worked through. I don't think we're going to see

consumer AR glasses that most people think are compelling for at least three years, at least. So then this is the other rumor this week. Apple, actually you broke when you were back of the information, you broke a story about Apple's VR headset. You had some design renderings of it. So there's lots of rumors about this ARVR stuff

that Apple's doing. But the rumor this week, which is kind of a funny rumor, because I think we all just assume this, is that that headset, whatever that product is, will require an iPhone or a Mac to do the actual compute. Shocked. Which makes all of the sense in the world. Like, Apple making a product that does not rely on the iPhone would be more surprising to me.

It's just the way we are. But that compute problem is enormous, right? And no one has come close to cracking it. No, and Apple has probably the best shot. because of how good their hardware as in the custom silicone they do. Facebook's way behind on silicone. And so, yeah, I'm not surprised by this. I do know that this headset, and we should differentiate this, this mixed reality headset.

It's kind of like a ski mask type looking thing that's coming as early as next year. That's different from the AR glasses. Apple has aspirations to do Rayban looking actual AR glasses. They actually are so like just not there. Who knows? when they'll come out. Like Apple keeps telling people internally like three to five years, three to five years. That's kind of like all these companies tell their employees internally that it's always

constantly moving dates. But this mixed reality headset, yeah, of course it's going to need the iPhone for some things, but it is, it's super powerful. I mean, it's going to be the most high-end luxury like headset like this that the market has seen. There are some that exist. There are like $10,000 that it's going to be kind of comparable to with like dual 8K displays, eye tracking, all these things.

but I'm not surprised that they need some offloading for compute on a device like that because it would just burn your face off. So there's heat. And then there's kind of the last piece of the puzzle. And this was actually very exciting news this week, literally embedded in very boring news. So we've spent a lot of time talking on the show. And on the site, battery technology. And we've kind of plateaued at lithium ion for a long time.

So there's a new company called CELA Nanotechnologies. They've been at it since 2011. and they shipped their first new technology, new battery technology this week. It's a silicon anode instead of graphite and lithium ion. 20% boost in energy density in this battery. And it is shipping, it's actually shipping in a product called the Whoop Fitness Tracker. Whoop, whoop. I mean, people like the Whoop.

You know, the original, the last whoop was like, stupid name. The last whoop. There's a movie, by the way. Yeah, there's another movie right there. The last whoop. We're just cranking them out. God, whoop stories by Rayban. But that last one, like Fitbit immediately kind of took what Woop had made big deal in their last one, which was like a fitness score, like telling people, oh, you should work out today or not because you're not ready.

It was a readiness score, I think. So like, whoop is his name aside. like it's always kind of like a little ahead of the curve and it's very niche area. And this is, yeah, it's kind of like cool. Whoop fans rise up. Woop. Yes. If you're in the whoop crew, tweet in Alex.

You're a hardcore whoop stand. Alex is ready for you. You don't exist. I think I'll be fine. But this just like in terms of like just the pieces of the puzzle, you need. It's a computer on your face. Like it's all the same bits. and bobs is your phone you need a bunch of cameras that are running all of the time to make an

an air headset you need a bunch of cameras that are running all the time you need microphones that are running all the time you need a display that is running all the time to make this thing valuable and then you need a battery that can do stuff like last so you need a better battery technology you need a display that won't burn your face off you need cameras that won't burn your face off and you need a chip that is can do all this processing all like 24 hours today while you wear any glasses. Well, you also, you actually need things that it does, that it actually does, not dreams of what it'll do someday. How long did it take for the Apple Watch, which has similar problems,

but easier solutions because they don't have to make a display in front of your eye and they can, it's on your wrist and not burning your head off? How long did it take the Apple Watch to justify the effort that it takes to wear an Apple Watch with the, with what it gives back to you? It took like two years, right? It's like four. Three. I would say three. It took years. For non-health stuff, does it still justify it? I'm not sure it does.

If you're not super into health stuff, I have no reason to wear one. Yeah, I mean, if you're a nerd like me, you can justify it without the health stuff by, like, you know, having easier access to notifications and not having to, I don't know, look at your phone for the weather. That's super important to me. It's a real power move in a meeting to be like, oh, hold on and look down at your watch and it's just like a slack from a coworker of a bad gift. Yeah.

Absolute power. This is just like a fantasy of what working in an office is like, you've completely forgotten. There's no idea. I'm going to do it. Alex all day is just like, hang on. Tap it on. Hold on. Hold on.

Hold on. I just got a slack. The number one use case for us is, you know, we're parents. We work on two different floors. So we use the walkie talkie all the time. It's great. I can actually see that being useful. Yeah.

It's very funny to receive the code brown walkie talkie from, anyway. It's like still to this day. It's been doing it for three and a half years. It's still hilarious every time. But like all those bits and pieces. I agree with you about the watch. Like the watch had to justify itself and it got to a place where it feels justified. People like it.

But more specifically, how long did it take before Apple could keep the display lit up all the time? Right? That was five generations of this watch. Yeah. That's just a lot. So when we, when I read the overthinking metaverse takes about these glasses, I'm like, well, they're just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, a camera on some glasses. All of the enabling technology is still years off.

And we haven't even seen glimpses of it. We will next year. You think next year? Next year with Apple's headset if they stick to their plan. But it's going to be so high-end. I mean, this thing's going to cost like probably $3,000 is the price they've been discussing internally. So it's definitely prosumer MacBook Pro. They're thinking of the glasses eventually as like the iPhone parallel while the headset is like the MacBook Pro parallel.

And yeah, I mean, they're going to be cheating a bit by doing mixed reality. So you're getting a video feed of the real world in front of you that they can then interspose with graphics. So you're not actually doing that display with sunlight needing to come in and the display fight against that. That's a huge technical undertaking. So they're actually kind of cheating. But it's going to show what's possible just with what we have today. And I think everyone when they see that, you know, I'm imagining like a dial on the side. They bought a VR headset company that had this dial that was doing.

mixed reality where you could literally like be looking at a computer screen and like turn it into a virtual one and back, you know, like that'll sell in a commercial like, you know, easy. So I imagine they're going to be showing that in that way and everybody's going to go, oh, oh, this is actual AR. This is like compelling AR. I just have to spend $3,000 and wear this like ski mask. Yeah. So it's going to be kind of like the windows mixed reality when we had that a couple of years ago and

that everybody forgot it existed. See, I already forgot that. What is that? Yeah, yeah. You're like, what is that? I think ACER, was it ACER or ASUS, was really into that one and made lots of headsets. That's for the Enterprise Metaverse. This is my favorite Microsoft packaging of their technology.

When do the glasses come out? Are they out? Can we buy the Facebook glasses now? Yeah. You can buy them online. Deeter, did you buy them on RayBan's website? I did, and they're shipping, I think, a couple of days. Yeah.

And then we're going to go pick them up at the Raybant store. All right. Well, if you're buying this, if you're buying these glasses, you know, tweet it, Dieter. and if you're buying the whoop, Alex awaits the whoop crew. The whoop crew. We've got to take a break. Actually, there's lots more Apple to talk about.

We'll take a break and come back and talk about that. Support for the show comes from Framer. Framer is an enterprise-grade, no-code website builder used by teams at companies like Perplexity and Muro to move faster. With real-time collaboration and a robust CMS, with everything you need for great SEO, not to mention advanced analytics that include integrated AB testing, your designers and marketers are empowered to build and maximize your dot com from day one.

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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 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 AI-powered interviews for initial screenings. Its updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain land.

language. Nearly 60% of hires find a candidate to interview within a week. With hiring pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. And instead of getting buried in resumes, you get a focus shortlist that actually moves your hiring forward. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash track. Terms and conditions apply. We're back. There's an Apple event next week. We got to talk about iPhone 13 rumors, all that stuff. But we were just talking about the Apple Watch. Let's start with Kevin Lynch, who is the executive in charge of the Apple Watch, who is now rumored to be taking over the car project. This week, Doug Field, who was the executive at Apple, who wasn't, we believe, to be in

charge of the car. He was a VP of special projects. Apple's obviously never confirmed any of this, but so many people have worked on this car project and left Apple that everyone knows there's a car project. I don't know. I also describe that. Like it's, we can't see it, but we can see it's like gravitational pull. It's exhaust. The metaphor is exhaust. We can see the garbage that comes out of it as it burns and burns. We can see where it should be. Anyway, Doug Field was in charge of it. That was a big poach from Tesla. He left Apple to go to Ford. And hilariously, both companies were like,

yep, that happened. Ford's stock went up, which is hilarious on the hiring of one executive. And Apple was like, yeah, Doug, wish him the best. And then now we're hearing from Mark Urban at Bloomberg that Kevin Lynch, who is the executive in charge of the Apple Watch, will not be in charge of the car. So, Godspeed Kevin Lynch. Yeah. I mean, that kind of makes sense because he has to like, with the Apple Watch, he had to convince people that this thing you really don't need ever in your life, as Alex mentioned, you need in your life. And now he's going to have to do that again, but like much more expensive.

We've obviously been hearing about this car forever. And I make this joke all the time. Car executives love Decoder, especially because there's no New York Auto Show. So I keep talking to car executives. You know, they, the car industry is not confused about its challenges. Right. Like just this week, Mercedes announced like 35 luxury EV SUVs.

And they're like, like a EVG wagon will be $150,000 all the way down to like an EVB class that will be a Mercedes so expensive but more affordable. Like they know they got to do it. Cadillac is doing the lyric, which will be in the sort of like $60,000 range, which is affordable for the luxury segment. Like they know that Tesla is a threat. They're coming for Tesla. They're also better at building cars than Tesla. Like I, I, to this day, I think Quinn Nelson, who, like, like, like, Like he just bought a Model Y on Twitter. All the fit and finish problems on the Model Y.

They're like, it's actually a lot. It just kept going and going. There's like gaps. Yeah, huge panel gaps. The interiors are still really bare bones. I think Tesla today put out a note to its staff that they had to go super hardcore to meet their Q3, Q4 targets, which is like an incredible note for manager. Like I just like, I can't imagine me like, Verge team. We must go super hardcore.

Like imagine sending this to you. Yeah. I know which choice. But all of that is like the car industry knows. They know they have this existential threat. New York State is going to pass a law that all cars by 2035 have to be electric. They're rising to the moment. Are they doing a great job?

No. Every car that I just mentioned is announced, but not shipping. There's a chip shortage. So there's a lot of vaporware. Just be clear. Well, the F1, the F150 came out. Nope. Nope.

The hype. There's still time for, them to make it the F-150 USBC instead of the lightning. That would be incredible. I'm going to call Jim Farley and let him know. But they know, like, you know, I don't know, the Mustang Maki is sold out everywhere, right? The Rivian, that's a new company, their pre-orders are off the charts. People really believe in that company.

So they know, like the car industry knows, and they are good at making cars and they are trying. I cannot figure out what Apple will bring to that equation or how. And I think that is like, that's just why this car project just has been reset over and over and over again. At one point, they were going to build software and services and try to sell that to carmakers. That didn't work. Which makes sense. At another point, we'd heard that they were trying to get Hyundai or Honda or Toyota or somebody to build the car for them.

And all of those companies are like, no, we make car. Like, why would we not be the brand in charge of that? Like, why would we foxcon ourselves? So that apparently hasn't gone anywhere. and now they're starting over yet again. Like, I just don't know what the, I don't know what the opportunity in the car industry is. Well, in theory, the Mac, the opportunity was Apple was better at software design, right?

The iPhone was they had an insight of how a smartphone could work better, and they were able to build it. And then Apple Watch, and basically everything else since then is they're just like more efficient and making really good hardware, good consumer electronics, than other companies. And software design, in theory, it's like an advantage, but I don't know,

I'm looking at some of the stuff lately and I'm not so sure. But those are the things. They have like an interface insight. They have some sort of like software design and they're just very, very good at making decent or excellent, like consumer electronics hardware.

And so the question is, are they leveraging one, two, or all three of those? things to a car and do they have a fourth thing that we don't know about? And I haven't seen a hint of the fourth thing, which means that they're like, they're kind of doing it because they have to because they're the biggest company on earth. And they just like, everyone's like, well, what else are we going to do? We got to do something. Yeah, they have to find a market to expand their market cap, right? It's like health care automotive, what's out there that's big enough

that they haven't hit. And also, I was thinking while Deeter was talking, like, isn't a self-driving car in about five years going to be the ultimate luxury consumer electronic. Yeah, but they're not going to exist in five years. Like self-driving cars, the kind that like everybody dreams of making these level four, level five cars. Like, Apple's not going to do that in the next five years. They're going to cost a lot of money and they're only going to work in certain places, but they're going to be able to be redesigned because they're self-driving.

They'll probably be some kind of AR thing in the dash in the, you know, and like Apple's already making that. I just keep thinking of the huge. hubris of this company. Like I remember when all this stuff came out about Johnny Ive and like his idea of the car was let's let's do it but not have a steering wheel at all. And like that's what I think of every time I think of these like Apple going into the space. Fundamentally, every company is looking at that future without a steering wheel. And then you're you're commuting in a world of screens. And if you're going to be looking at a screen, it might as well run iOS. Right. And only have Apple music. Yes. Yeah. It's just like, because there's so many different, like, building a, building a computer is a lot different than building a 30, 40, in Apple's case, probably $100,000 car. Like, that's not an easy thing to do.

That's a whole infrastructure. Like, Apple's success right now is all, yeah, we've talked about like the hardware and stuff, but the real success nowadays, the reason it's the most profitable company in the world is that supply chain. It's so good at supply chain. And it cannot leverage that to build a giant ass car. Like that's not where it's supply chain talents are, right? That's why there's all these leaks about them talking to Kia and Toyota.

I know for a fact, like internally, at least before this job change at the top that literally just happened, they were set on working with a partner at least five years out. And I mean, they have to outsource that. They've never made a car before. So like what Neal I was saying, they're going to try to foxcon some automobiles. motive maker. Yeah. And why would any autom, I mean, it was the same thing with like with Roku and TCL, right?

Like, it sounds like that's what they want to be doing. They want to do when Roku went and said, hey, we need to build TVs. We want to build them, do it in the United States. And they went and found TCL who had just built those big factories in Mexico and said, hey, let's work together. And it helped both of them. And now TCL is like, we're going to be doing some other software. Like, see you later, Roku.

Yeah. Well, actually, they're also, they're down low white labeling TVs for Amazon now. We should talk about that in a minute. Yeah, okay. But here, but the structure of that, Alex, is, like, very different. Like, T.C.L was a Chinese company that wanted an entry point into America. Roku gave them that entry point. Right. That's what I'm saying.

It's, like, there's no TCL in the car space right now. Right, because there's only, like, three car companies. Like, underneath this all, there's, like, name a car company, and I will tell you what percentage of that car company is actually owned by a much bigger car company. Aren't there some luxury kind of small European car makers that make just super like Magenta, magenta? Yeah, there's like a tiny bit of like hyper car companies. But if you think of any- Please find a supercar.

Couldn't Apple just say like here's like what your entire revenue is? Like we'll just double it for a year for like the next five years and just make the Apple car as well. And like we'll pay for all your expansion. What they did with Foxconn. I mean, Foxconn was built and, you know, scaled with Apple. Couldn't they just do that to one of these little luxury? automotive makers? I have a better idea.

They just need a factory and there's one sitting near Racine Wisconsin. Where they have threatened to build cars. This is true. That's a deep cut. It's not so deep.

No, I mean, like, Foxxon has this empty factory. They've talked about building cars with Fisker there. It's either there in Mexico. They were supposed to say in July, you will notice it's September. The Foxxon in Wisconsin

experiment continues. And now what Fisker is saying is they don't want to build their cars in a place where consumers cannot buy cars directly. So Wisconsin has those weird dealer laws where you have to buy a car from a dealer, like Tesla's always mad about this. So Fisker wants Wisconsin to change its car dealership laws in order to build the cars in a Foxcon factory there. And I think the Wisconsin government is rightfully like, maybe we don't want to do more for this empty box in Racine Wisconsin. Maybe you all should.

have figured out. So there's like a lot of back and forth there, but ultimately, Foxcon has ambitions to be a carmaker or a vendor of cars. They have not proven that they can do that, but they know. We interviewed the CEO Flex on Decoder. She was great. She's like, we've got to get good at cars. This is the next great consumer electronics business. They all know. These are rolling computers. But the thing that I just don't see, like to be successful in the car business in America, you have to make a crossover SUV and you have to make a pickup truck. Is Apple going to make a pickup truck? But yeah, but before the iPhone, you had to have a physical keyboard. I mean, like, these are like, I'm just saying like Apple could come out and say this is,

yeah, it calls a station wagon. They're like station wagons are back. Right. But like Apple could come out and say this is the most amazing luxury, self-driving, futuristic car you've ever seen. It only shows you Ted Lasso and, you know, you can just sit in the back. You can just sit in the and like airplay everything you want. And because people are going to be doing self-driving, which I guess we could agree will eventually happen, maybe not in five years. But all that time driving is unlocked to be passively consuming things like Apple services.

I mean, it makes sense if you're thinking like 10 years out, how we're all going to be in cars that Apple would want to own that experience, right? Otherwise, they get boxed out. Yeah. I mean, that's fair. I just keep thinking of like the 1990s on like 60 minutes and watching all of those every other week. there was a thing about like, you know, Ford is now doing a self-driving car and Dodge is going to be doing a flying car. And I think like the car space is much more complex.

And it's like Apple just kind of like trying to dip in by saying we're going to do this thing that like the biggest car companies in the world can't do. Well, that's very Apple. I buy that. Yeah, it is very Apple. That's true. That's true. But they also can't do a TV. Like how long have we been hearing about the Apple TV TV?

I mean, we could do an hour on why I think they should make TV, but we should take a break from the car. We'll see. I think the fact that they can't keep an executive or a plan in place indicates that they are struggling with all of the same problems that we have been talking about and that their plan is not solidified. That said, I love the idea of an Apple designed crossover SUV. I think that would be that it will just be hilarious fundamentally or a pickup truck. It cannot go over a single mountain. Okay, there's an event. Speaking of actual Apple products, there's an event next week.

Dieter walk us through it. So they announced it. It is Tuesday, the 14th. You know, we're getting into what we're expecting. I'm just going to say, you know that Apple wanted to do this in person. And the way that you know for sure is the teaser for this event was California streaming. And the song California Dreamin is about how you're in New York and it's getting cold and it kind of sucks and you wish you were someplace better like California. California. They just, they're mad that they can't have their event in person. And so they named their events, California streaming.

This is true, by the way. They wanted to have that event in person. Yeah. I get why they didn't, but I'm glad they wanted to go. I was excited back in the heady days of June. Ah, June. Anyway. Anyway, so iPhone 13s. The consensus seems to be that they're going to be 13s. The rumors seem pretty clear that we're looking at the pro. is going to have probably an LTPO-O-led display, which means that it can have a variable refresh rate, which means that it can finally have a high refresh rate. Finally, that we're assuming it's going to happen. We assume there's going to be better cameras. We assume there's going to be an A-15. And we're also hearing smaller notches at the top.

Yes. Great. Good. I will buy it for no notch. Well, no notch is coming out later. Okay, then I'm not buying it. Well, YouTuber John Processor is like, well, I got all the scoop on the Apple

Apple iPhone 14 for next year and then everybody lost their minds for a day. We can worry about that later. One year from now. Yeah. Tune back in a year from now. We'll talk about the iPhone 14. But Apple, there was an FCC league of the MagSafe charger, which is amazing. What is the last time Apple slipped and let something out through the FCC?

I mean, 10 years. It's incredible how sloppy that is for them. But the thing mentioned that it's compatible with four new phones, which means that we might actually get a mini. There was a worry that they might not do the mini again. But if there's four phones, you got to have the mini, the regular, the pro and the pro max. That's how they do it. What about a max max? They could double the max. It could be the max max. Instead of an iPad Mini, you go double max. Oh my God. There's only so much screen size slots left. Between those two things. Yeah, yeah. Well, iPad Mini is another thing that we're waiting on. We're waiting on new

AirPods. We're waiting on new MacBook Pros. I don't know. There's a bunch of just stuff sort of floating out there that we're waiting on refreshes on. And of course, the Apple Watch, which looks like it's going to have square sides. So they're going to pick from that menu of stuff. And my money is on iPhones, obviously. Apple Watch tends to go with iPhones and then pick one more thing, I guess. Airpots. Oh, AirPods. Yeah. So like the question is, are they going to throw an iPad in? Are they going to throw a MacBook in? I can't imagine they they'd throw a MacBook in. They need to make a big to-do about the M1X, right? Yeah. I'm going to go iPad. And it's big redesign for the MacBook, too.

Yeah, I think they'll do max October maybe. Yeah. Week after next. As soon as we're out of the event, we're going to get another invite. Oh, God. I mean, they just like drop new AirPods on a random Tuesday now. Isn't that like how the Apple rolls? They've done it before.

Remember they had that lead up last was two years ago now where like every day there was something and then they invite the event. They haven't done that in a while because these like infomercial events just have a higher product density. because they can just like clip along. Whereas in person they're like, they talk very slowly, they repeat themselves.

Someone has to get on stage. They have to walk off stage and they can't just have a cool drone transition. So we'll see. My bet is it's like the iOS show. Yeah. I say that inclusive of iPadOS and the Apple Watch. Like it's phones,

maybe some AirPods and the new watch, maybe an iPad. But that would be my call. The question for me is which stuff gets delayed because of various chip shortages. or part shortages. Because we've heard the watch will be delayed.

Yeah. Yeah. But it's kind of a huge deal to Apple's business if their phones are delayed. Well, they've done it before. I mean, their stuff was a little late last year because of COVID, wasn't it? I think they're doing okay. I mean, last I checked. Fair.

And I think they own a bunch of like TSM's output just outright. So. Yeah. But, you know, these are like the looming questions, especially at Apple scale. Like, even a little dip is a lot of money for that company. Like, I'm excited for these new phones. Did you do any deep reads of the invite? Oh, so the invite, the AR effect is you can, like, push your camera through the glowing Apple logo that floats there. And then you get this, like, night scene of a lake.

And so there's a rumor that they're going to finally do, like, astrophotography in the way that Pixel does. So if it sees stars, it'll convert to an astrophotography mode. whether or not that means there's other AR stuff specifically. That, I don't know. They've done AR stuff for their invites for a minute now, and everyone's like, oh, that means AR stuff is coming, and it really hasn't. But it's also been a minute since they've, like, I don't know, done a big, splashy AR demo, right?

I mean, they haven't had the stage to, like, put the table on and show the Lego battle or whatever they do. I don't know how they get that to come across in a stream. There's nothing more compelling than watching other people look at an iPad. Alex, will they wait on their? that one for like in person? That's what I was just about to say. I think they really want to do the headset in person. And I think they need to announce it at like WWDC and get developers on board before general release. So odds on WWDC being in person next year, 50, 50? Like if it's not,

I don't know what they do. It would be really hard to brief people and show people the product. Would they just hold another year? They probably might need to. anyway with like supply chain stuff. Yeah. They're definitely not in like mass manufacturing or anywhere close to that. There's like one guy at Apple now who's like, yes, hold it another year. Oh, there's several. Amazing.

So that's the event. We're looking forward to it. We're going to cover this stuff. I think we're expecting mostly a high focus on phones. You know, the jump from 12 to 13 and maybe five years ago, you would have the S cycle and you weren't expecting a lot. Yeah. The jump to the new number was meaningful in some way.

they're off that cycle. They don't do S. What was the last S? I guess was a 10 S, right? They just call it iPhone. Just say iPhone. New iPhone. Hello, there's a new iPhone.

Because some of us have to write reviews and like all sorts of blogs about it. We need a number. Yeah. I mean, back to the car industry. The Honda Accord is not like the Honda Accord 24S. Oh, is that the 24S? Oh, God. What if instead of a number, they're just packages,

like there's packages for cars, like the iPhone GTI. Ooh, that would actually be great. The iPhone touring series. Oh, my God, the touring iPhone. The iPhone LX. There's one that's blacked out and one that's festooned in Chrome. And you're like, oh, you have to do a bunch of Google research to figure out what the different packages mean and you can't actually tell which one is the high-end one or which one isn't.

Deere definitely just bought a car. that was just a pure frustration moment okay so we're not expecting i only say that to to underline we're expecting some incremental changes with the 13 not the big number jump that you might otherwise think like this feels like a pretty incremental like the iPhones 12 sold incredibly well yeah there's not a reason to take some huge set of risks with the 13 hopefully the new display new camera's cool but i feel like i say that every year about the iPhone. Well, to me, the big question is, is the Macs going to continue to have a better camera system than the regular pro? There is a rumor that the answer to that question is yes, which for me personally is a bummer, because I've been using the Macs because I want to have the best camera on to compare to other smartphones. And man, I'm just tired of the surfboard. It's so freaking big. I will say we, you know, the test for me is we have a toddler. She does not sit still for photos. I have all but stopped using the RX100 with the 12. That was not the case. the year before. But even like portrait, like we use portrait mode in a way that it's like two

years ago. I was like, ah, no one's ever to use this now. We're just like using it all the time. So they're hitting a limit. We've heard these rumors are at portrait mode video. There's some room left for the camera system, but they are hitting the plateau of the curve. Well, I just want to point out that all of the stuff we were discussing are portrait mode video, high refresh rate screen, always on display, lock screen. I forgot to mention that. This is stuff Samsung did before. And like Samsung didn't do it well, especially in portrait mode video. It's pretty garbage. So there's the story that, oh, Apple waits until they get it right, and then they do it

and they show how everybody else did it badly. And, like, sure, yes, I get that. But I don't buy that story, especially when it comes to the always-on display. Like, come on. What was the problem? Android phones have been doing this for literally years, many, many of them, and they've been fine. What's the deal? Why did it take so long?

I don't know. They were waiting for the air power charger. No, they've got a list of, like, stuff they can do. to make all the products different year after year. Oh, okay. And they just, like, hold it. And then they're like, well, time to roll out the LS edition. Yeah, like, list is getting pretty thin.

Let's black out the wheels. Last little bit of Apple stuff, they had the huge controversy around the photo scanning and the child production. All that stuff is indefinitely delayed, which seems like the right call. And they just said, like, take the coming months to talk to people and get feedback. It doesn't mean they're not going to ship it. Right. They announced that it was going to ship this year in iOS 15. Yep.

So if you just think about what that means, iOS 15 will ship in September that leaves October, November, and December. So they were talking about Q4. So the thing had a deadline. Now it does not. So we'll see various groups fight for the future, et cetera, are like, just never ship it. Just walk away from the city. I don't know that Apple's ever going to go that far, but that the pressure has worked in this case, which I think is interesting. And I think as Apple has these ambitions to take over things like health care, they're going to have to get way back.

at telling a lot of people what they're doing and getting buy-in before they start mucking around. I mean, there's a really interesting parallel to the way Google tried to do flock on Chrome. They said, here's a proposal of we got, we're going to kill cookies, we got to do it. Here's a proposal of how we think it'll work. And everyone was like, well, this is terrible, you suck, we hate you, we're not joining in. Apple is like, well, we got to somehow scan for, you know, CSAM. So this is what we're doing. And where Google's like, what do you think of our idea?

Apple was like, this is our idea, now we defend it. And in both of those cases, it kind of didn't work. But there's some zone in the middle where you're like, we have to do this thing. Here's our idea for this thing. And there's like some kind of feedback loop that doesn't just make you a target. And I don't know that Apple or Google know what that feedback loop looks like yet. Yeah. I think in this case of Apple had announced encrypted iClatch.

they would have offered people a benefit, like a really meaningful benefit, and they didn't. But who knows, for now it's delayed. When it comes back again, I'm sure there's going to be another round of this coverage. Okay, we're going to take a break. We've got to talk about the rest of hardware season that's coming,

and then a bunch of other stuff. We'll be right back. 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 Not flips that.

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And that's because it's a platform built by developers for developers. MongoDB, it's a great freaking database. Start building at MongoDB.com slash build. We are back. Alex, you want to run us through these Amazon TVs? By the way, Apple should have made TVs years ago. And the fact that Amazon is making TVs now, like they are so far behind Amazon. Apple did make a TV. They did. I remember this from my Apple blogging days like over a decade ago.

We should have introduced you with this. You were like an OG Apple blog blogger. Yeah, it's kind of embarrassing, actually. But yeah, they had one. I think it actually, it went through like some kind of early FCC review. It was like almost getting out and would have been great. Would have been great. Was it like the first version of the Apple TV back in those days? when it was like the Apple TV was just a straight computer? I don't even, I think we knew about the hardware at the time. I think this was when I was at Cult of Mac. We knew about the hardware.

We didn't know about the software, but we knew there was a TV. I have definitely heard from various other TV manufacturers that like Johnny Ive would like wander through gigantic LCD factories, like making demands of LCD companies. And everyone thought they were going to do it. Too many ports. They never did. But if this remote had no buttons. They just never did it.

And now you look at where Amazon has arrived. They've got a new fire TV stick. Yeah, they've got a new fire TV stick. They're doing a TV. And they didn't say who they're partnering with with that TV. But I definitely was watching Chris Welch line up TVs. The most Chris Welch of Chris Welch moments. Yeah.

He had like a TCL Series 6. and the new Fire TV. And he's like, well, it's the exact same layout on the side. And the images did seem to suggest that. But we don't know who they're actually working with. That one makes a lot of sense, just with everything that's been going on with TCL lately. So, yeah, that's going to have Amazon Fire built in. And it's a shockingly, like, a lot of people use it.

I never think of it. We always think of, like, Roku and Android and Apple. But a lot of people use the Fire. Fire TVOS. Yeah, a Bezos number. Use it. A Bezos number of people use this thing. Yeah, like at Google is like technically a number.

I think we should start, Bezos should just start being a number, a Bezos. But it's not a Bezos number. It's like, yeah, Bezos people use it. But they're cheap TVs. They're going to sell on Amazon. They're going to probably be out. I think they're out for Black Friday season. They're going to just sell like hotcakes as people are like, I need a cheap TV.

Oh, wow. This one is, because I think like a 43-inch fire TV four series is starting at like $369. Wow. That TV is going to look horrible. What is the deal with TCL? So they partner with Roku and they had big success there. And then Google rolls in as like, hey, what if you made Google TVs instead of Roku TVs? And TCL is like, oh, that's an interesting checkbook you got there, Google.

And then they're like, who else has a checkbook? And now they're making, they're like white labeling TVs for Amazon. and Roku's sort of, I don't know what's going on with them, but the fight for all these smart TV platforms to just like have someone make the TV for them is fascinating to me right now. Yeah, because they can't like, they don't want to make their own TVs for the most part. They just, they just want to slap it on something else and they're tired of doing all these big deals with like Sony or whoever. And, you know, LG and Samsung, I think are both very like, no, we're doing our Tysen and WebOS for life. You know what we need. Instead of everybody making sticks or, like, fighting to be on board,

there should be, like, a port that you can put your smart TV card into, like a cable card. And then it's standardized. And then... So what I want to... I just want to stop this right here. First of all, Alex, God bless you for treating this so sincerely. Dieter is just directly trolling me. Yes, there should be a horrible cable company middleware product that utterly fails to create competition.

That'd be great. Also, Samsung did this. they had the modular processing cards you could replace in the back of your TV. They released one of those updates of the like the little computer thing. And they're like, oh, no one gives a shit. They bought a $30 Roku. Yep. I mean, this is like, you mentioned Sony and LG.

Like these are proud companies that want to own the customer relationship. Right. Like I have a Sony Android TV. It's a beautiful OLED panel. It runs Android. And I still have a Chromecast plugged into it. because just by dint of having Sony involved, Android is crap on that TV. Like, there's just no getting around it.

Like, I might as well just, like, have the better device. Whereas I think TCL is like, we want market share. We will happily run your operating system and let you own the customer relationship. But we are going to make the TVs and sell them to everyone. And they are just crushing it on that front. When did they roll out the Roku TV? That was like five or six years ago. And TCL had like existed before.

that. They'd had a very small presence in the United States. They'd had a much larger presence overseas. But they just made really, really kind of garbage TVs. And then Roku said, hey, we want to get into this business. We want to start building TVs and really demanded an improvement on TCL's side. And TCL then took that and ran with it and was like, oh, wow, if we make better products, more people will buy them? This is crazy. Wild. Quality control works. What's interesting here is that maybe this day, we have recommended the TCL 6 series that runs Roku is like, kind of your go-to, dead ahead, buy this TV, you'll be happy, Dolby Vision, high refresh rate, the whole deal. The Roku software is good.

TCL did not, there are no like preloaded TCL apps or whatever, right? Like, my Sony TV has horrible preloaded apps. Like, I don't know why there's an app on that TV that would let me stream MP4s from my, like, laptop, but Sony was like, we're going to ship that app. It somehow got like a boxy. If we're going to get into complaining about TV software, I have a Tyson TV and I have many feelings, many of them. My LG WebOS TV has no fewer than three ways to stream shit from your phone to the TV.

Yeah. If you were wondering where Mirrorcast went. It's on the LGWWOWS. On Tyson currently, the setting is broken where if you turn on airplay, it thinks what you're trying to do is do two screens side by side. one-screen airplay, one-screen, you know, the broken input from cable that doesn't exist. So it just goes to this two-screen mode and you've got to, like, hit three extra buttons to get out of the two-screen mode, one of which is like, do you want to save this two-screen

mode forever so that it always does this? And obviously you do. Why did the TV still default to, like, the coax input? Oh, this was like a big deal for Vizio. They took out the coax input because they're like, no one uses it. Then they were not, yeah, they were not allowed to call their TV. TVs anymore. Like, that's just a sparkling monitor, sir.

And everyone got mad at them and they had to edit that. Their only TVs if they come from the TV region of France. So they added the people want coax inputs. I don't know. So I got to say one more thing with the same as on TV expansion. So they're doing their, they're like Amazon brand in ones. They have a partnership with Toshiba. They're going to do more of those.

And then they've resurrected Pioneers TV. division for extremely cheap TVs that we pioneer branded. Like they're just going to be the cheapest like budget 43, 50 inch TVs you can buy, which is extremely sad. Like I'm probably nobody remembers this. Pioneer kuroplasm TVs were the best TVs on the market for like five years. I still have one upstairs. It is so hot.

Like it's gigantic. Like the lights dim when you turn it on. but it's still like the best TV. You just roast marshmallows next to it. I know people who are like never going to get rid of their Corot. Do you leave it off and you only turn it on for like special occasions? Yeah, I'm like, what's the crispest 1080P content I can watch today? Time to boot up the Coro.

But anyway, the zombie pioneer brand returning made me and Chris Welch very sad because we were Curro stands. Do you want to talk about Luna, Deeter? I mean, Amazon's still trying to make its, you know, streaming game platform happen. and their solution to increasing its popularity is offering you 14 different ways to subscribe to it, all of which have different names and prices. I think if you like click like a white area on Amazon's website, you will be subscribed to Luna. I don't know. I mean, it's hard for me to work up a lot of emotion one way or the other about it simply because like, you know, they're doing better than Stadium maybe.

I feel like that's the whole plan here, right? They just don't care if we work a promotion. They're like, look, if you've got to fire TV and you really want to play an Ubisoft game and you haven't been able to get a PS5, sure, we can do it. It won't be a great experience, but you got it. Amazon knows that if it can turn something into a commodity, it can make money off of it and it can keep other companies from making money off of it. So it's just like, what if we also made game streaming a commodity that wasn't a differentiator for anybody?

It was just like a thing. And that's what I feel like the reason for Luna actually is. I do say I watch the subreddits for those two just because I'm fascinated. And the Luna subreddit has, I think, like 6,000 people on it. And the stadium one has like 30,000. And it's the same four guys, 30,000 guys, excuse me, in the airport with a beer on top of their laptop and their controller saying, wow, cloud gaming is here. It's interesting that new Fire TV stick has a low latency mode for Luna. Like, they're doing the things.

They're integrating the things. But once you have that many prices and ways to sign up, it really is just like, you're hoping you'd catch people. Like, no one's thinking, like, I should sign up for Luna and they search for it, and they look at all the choices and they make a decision. It's more like you're walking down the street and then you're acquired by the Amazon Luna team. It's like, nah, you pay this much money. And they've, like, optimized it for that capture.

It's literally the candy bars by the checkout. They're just like there. And you're like, oh, hey, look at that. Sure, why not? Yeah. Other stuff, Deidre, I know you're pressed about this. The Gmail app now takes phone calls, which honestly I'm pressed about too. I need fewer things to ring.

The thing about Gmail taking calls, I was like, but meat's already built it and I don't understand. And it's like, no, no, no. It will ring, ring, ring, ring, banana phone ring. Why? Which is. Why? Because Gmail is no longer an email app, is why. Gmail is now the Google communication app app. No. Gmail is their messaging strategy. Yes. It has chat. It has spaces, which is the new word for rooms, and it has meat. And so all of those other standalone apps are going to continue to exist for a while. Who knows how long, I would imagine not that long because this ringing feature is coming to Gmail before it actually comes to meet, which is amazing. Yeah, no, Gmail is now Outlook, where Microsoft made Outlook like email plus calendar plus like some contact stuff.

And like that was, that's their paradigm for what that app means. It's more than just email. That's what Google has done on Gmail, but for their like enterprise communication stuff. When do they do circles? Oh, man. Bring it back. It's still existing sort of somewhere. And they're also redesigning the website in the coming months for Gmail.

And so there'll be like tabs for all that stuff on the left and you'll have to go hunting for checkboxes if you want to turn them on. off again. And I mean, look, how long have we been like, Google, what is your strategy for messaging apps? Do you actually know what you're doing? Well, guess what? They do, and this is it. Or they don't. Tears like, be careful what you wish for. Gmail can ring now. That sounds like my worst nightmare is like trying to respond to a work email and someone calling me in my email. Yes. I feel like somebody needs to just script it. to just automatically call.

I get like nuclear angry when people send me fake calendar spam. And I've like managed to avoid most of it. Like just the idea that like someone can call my, I'm going to turn off. Will there be a phone number? It's not going to be like Google voice. No, it's like a Google Meet thing. So you can you can like ring somebody just like you could like call somebody on Skype,

you know? Okay, okay. You know, it's like think of it like a huddle, but more annoying. Like a slack huddle, but more annoying. Amazing. What is this monitor that they made? Oh, so in addition to that, they are letting third-party hardware companies to cosplay as Google and make hardware that looks like Google hardware, which sounds really mean. So the company that's making these two displays, one is like a giant jamboard thing and one is like a 27-inch monitor. It's called AvaCore. They look very Googly. They got like the soft, you know, white speaker fabric and whatever.

and they are ChromeOS devices that are just there to run Google Meet, but you can also use them as a monitor by plugging your laptop into it. So just like we were excited by this Logitech dock, this thing is like, oh, it's like the perfect work-from-home device. It actually has like good microphones and a good webcam and good speakers and it serves as a monitor and I can plug one cable into my laptop and all of a sudden it's like my laptop is charging and working with this thing. And it sounds really great except it's $2,000 because it's,

not meant for that. It's meant to like go sit in a meeting room or sit at like a, like a hotel desk, like, you know, the shared desks that are happening now in COVID land when people go back to the office. It's meant for that. But it looks cute. It does look cool. Couldn't they, they just made one? That was like $300. I mean, you know. Like take out the processor? I don't know. It has a, it has a TPU, a Google tensor processor. They need an entire custom AI chip to run meat on Chrome. Well, so you could say, hey, I'm figuring to add it and to do stuff. Well, it's also got an Intel Core I-5. Well, that's because it has to run ChromeOS.

It's not a full ChromeOS device, though. It's not an all-in-one. You can't boot up Chrome and do stuff on it. It's just they use ChromeOS to run their meat stations. So it's the world's biggest electron app. Well, kind of, yeah. I mean, you know what's going to happen, though? These are, like, probably going to get converted to fuchsia someday, and then that's

going to be a whole new cycle. It'll be very exciting. All I'm saying, Alex, is do you know what can routinely overwhelm an Intel Core I-5? Google Meat. Have you ever wanted to see an Intel Core I-5 get so hot you can see it from space? You should try Google Meet. Yep. I have one meet meeting a week and it's just like my entire computer, like lights on fire.

Well, like put a can of beans on top of it and then you've got like, you got lunch. Hang on. Chilly? I don't know. I'm hungry. I got to take this call. Oh, canabines. Alex, what's going on with Twitter?

What are they doing with these communities things? Twitter is going to start looking a little more like Reddit, or I guess you could say Facebook groups, depending on how people use these. But yeah, they rolled out this week a group messaging, tweeting, posting product called Communities. And it's invite only to start, but the idea is that you're not just going to be tweeting to your followers,

you're going to be tweeting to people who are part of the same communities. So they launched with a handful of communities. One was about dogs. The other is for sneakerheads. So you kind of get an idea for where they're going. But obviously, this has the potential to be used and abused in all kinds of horrific and also wonderful ways. So, yeah, an interesting evolution for Twitter. It's, you know, they've always had a problem where new people who come to Twitter, it's very difficult to try to figure out how to get a lot out of Twitter.

I mean, like, we probably all take it all for granted because we curate our timelines, but, you know, Twitter's not easy to figure out if you're new to the service. So if you can, if you can follow some topics and they can suggest some communities for you to join and then you feel like you have a little more context to Twitter, then maybe that's going to help them retain users, which they have historically not been very good at. The community thing is interesting. You tweet to, like, just a small group of people. Like, I don't know. It's NFL season. in like every NFL season, I irritate lots of people with football tweets.

I could see it. Like, all right, I'm just going to like organize it that way. But it's also still not your followers. It's like a different, it's a very different way of thinking about what Twitter is and how it should work and who you should reach there. It kind of feels very Tumblr. Tumblr.

I know we've all forgotten about Tumblr. But Tumblr was the same thing, whereas like you're just kind of like tumbling off into the sphere, but then you kind of, have found your little, the communities, right? God, I missed Tumblr. Yeah.

Still exists. Yeah. There's three of us on there. And there's going to be moderators, you know, that right now Twitter is approving moderators, but eventually, you know, you'll be able to become the moderator. We could have a Vergecast community for some reason, you know. We should actually have a Vergecast community. How do you get approved?

You have to apply online right now and Twitter is reaching out to people they think are good fit. I think they're going to open it up over time. but if their history of opening up verification is any indication of that, then it's going to be in like five years. Yeah, no, they'll open it up, they'll realize it's broken, they'll close it again, they'll tell us they're going to fix it. They'll open it up again. They'll close it. That's how it's going to work.

But, I mean, Twitter, they're doing interesting stuff with the product. I mean, in the last, like, year or so, and I know we had Cave on the head of product on Dakota talking about spaces, their clubhouse competitor. I can kind of start to see all these pieces working together, right? Like, I'm in a community. I have a space in there. right that's specific to that community maybe uh you know the super follow the paywall tweets there's an element of that in there where you could pay to have access to a community it's starting to get interesting twitter you know after kind of languishing and you know and what it has always

been for a long time is finally starting to reinvent itself which which is a good thing yeah you know it's actually the most interesting thing about this community's announcement besides the actual product is that Twitter is now putting out marketing material that is like trailers for features. So they've got this thing that's like, here's that works. And it's like testing now in Twitter. And then like yesterday they did what like edge to edge tweets or last week they did edge tweets. Yeah.

And they rolled out the same kind of like marketing collateral where they're like here's how it works. And it was like animated. And they're like now testing on Twitter edge to edge photos in your tweets. And it's like they never talked about this stuff that way. They weren't trying to hype cycle their own feature advancements. Now, like, that implies they have a plan. They know what's happening. They know what their roadmap is.

They're telling it to other people. Like, Twitter before, when they would, like, roll out features, like, half of Twitter be like, why did we do that? And now they're like, at least some people know. I think it's part of them having a plan. It's also their feet are being held to the fire a little more. They had a big analyst day earlier this year. and they're projecting big growth numbers.

The stock has been not doing well since the company went public. Jack almost got kicked out of the company. Jack Dorsey by an activist investor recently. So I think they got a little shook by that and they realized they need to actually ship stuff and evolve the product. And I think communities is a good step. I think, like I said, it could be kind of horrific. But I think it could also give, as our friend Casey Newton wrote,

you know, more context to Twitter for people who struggle to find that. And it is hard to to find that. Yeah. It's a, we'll see, you know, one of the, when you say it's terrific, it's like, what are you thinking about? You're thinking about, are people going to make white supremacy communities or anti-vax misinformation communities or like, whatever? One thing we've noticed about those places is that those folks want to hit a big audience. They're not in love with talking to themselves. Like, this is the story of Parlor and Gab and, whatever else. Like, they're mad on parlor that they're not on Twitter, right? And like, well, I think that dynamic, as we've talked about social networks and how they're moderated

and like where these communities, like, spring up, we haven't seen it play out on Twitter with this kind of gating. And I'm honestly curious if the incentives to gate that stuff are high versus trying to reach everyone the way that on Twitter right now, the goal is to reach it. Like, if Donald Trump is allowed back on Twitter, is he going to make the Trump community? and only tweet to Trump people, or does he want everyone? Right. Like, he wants everyone. Right.

What if there's a check multiple boxes to your followers and to your community? Yeah, and when you're in a community, only, you know, members can like and reply to things. But that doesn't mean that they can't necessarily that people who aren't in a community can't see something that was posted into a community. So. This is the dystopian future. Is they're going to, they're going to make the hashtags that, like, you know, get you, your tweet into a community instead of to all your followers,

not counting against a character limit, and then we're going to live in Instagram land where the bottom of every tweet is going to have 50 hashtags on it. Hell yeah. It's not hashtag gated, right? It's actually select. You select. And, you know, something Twitter called out that I think is actually probably,

it's one of the more compelling aspects of this, is they're going to go for location-based communities as well, which is like, hello next door, which just recently filed to go public, like, be scared. So, like, I'm, you know, my little pocket of L. could have a community. And I think that could be pretty compelling. And it also gives Twitter very valuable context to actually make money for once with ads that are actually targeted.

That's interesting. Yeah. Man, I do not want to know what my neighbors are tweeting about it. Like, the experience of living in New York City and using Twitter is very different from the experience of living anywhere else using Twitter. Like, the New York media, like, is Twitter in, like, a very real way. Like, there was entire Twitter drama the other day about the cops chasing down a graffiti artist in Greenpoint Brooklyn. And it's just like very, and they like overdid it. They brought in a helicopter.

And this guy had drawn like a Mario, uh, question mark box on the water tower, which is sick. The cops should have paid him, not arrested. But like, they over did it. But like my little slice of New York Twitter was all over this. And like, you leave anywhere else and you're like, oh, Twitter is still kind of run by like a New York mafia. Yeah. Is it or is that our echo chamber? And when we have communities, we will know that for sure. That, oh, no, actually, this is just people that are in this one. I mean, there are definitely, like, other communities on Twitter.

Like, I keep thinking back to the Tumblr stuff, but like, Tumblr died and you've seen all of those fandoms and stuff, you know, the K-pop fandoms and everything else. Moving to Twitter. And this is a big, like, this could be pretty big for them. Tumblr died so communities could live. Oh, my God. Yeah. They should just rename this product filter bubbles. Echo chambers, filter bubbles. Echo chambers should be good.

All right, Deeter, end us with this week in lock-in. This week in lock-in, if you remember Microsoft's MSN portal network thing, also exists. They're renaming it. It's now called Microsoft Start. Not the Start menu. It's Microsoft Start, which could maybe appear in different places in Windows 11. And also just if you happen to accidentally.

go to Microsoftstart.com. Don't know why you would, but you could. But it's their product for showing you like headlines and the weather and stock and whatever. That's what it's been boiled down to at this point. The reason that we're featuring Microsoft Start and this week in lock-in is just a reminder that in Windows 11, currently they are not respecting

your browser choices when you click on certain things, and it's taking you to edge, even though you might actually want to click that link about whatever, Justin Bieber and read it in Firefox or Chrome or something else. And it's unclear what the plan is for them to actually make Windows 11, respect your browser choices and open up just a little bit more. And my hunch is that they're not going to, especially for stuff like this, like Microsoft

Start. This has been this week in locking. That all sounds fine, horrible it turns. It's really funny about MSN, is that they've been. now rebranded it to start. Yeah. But MSNBC exists. Yeah.

Which was launched in partnership with Microsoft. Yeah. The Microsoft News Network. Yeah. And now they're just stuck with that branding. It means like Microsoft has nothing to do with it. Yeah. Just be careful what you wish for with your partnership with big tech companies.

Be careful with your branding. The Start network. How do we get a cable network? All right. Well, if you know, we wait long enough and they get cheaper. Yeah. Very excited to buy the Motorstein Network when it comes for sale.

Okay. That's it. We did all the things. Next week is an Apple event. That's on Tuesday. Decoder will be one day late because I don't want to drop a decoder on Apple event day.

It seems like it makes sense. But that's going to be a good one. It's an Olivia Rodrigo episode. Ooh. Well, it's a copyright episode. But I found a cool hook to finally do a copyright episode. So that's Decoder. And then obviously we'll have a full-on Apple

focused verge cast of the next week. You can tweet at us. Alex is Alex E. Heath. Alex is Alex H. Kranz. Dieter is Backelon. I'm at Reckless. We love hearing from you. Please, again, if you're a whoop fan, Kranz has died to hear from you. No, no, it's Alex E. Heath.

If you're a whoop fan, send it to Alex E. Heath, not Alex H. Kranz. Two other things I want to call out, in the background of all of this this week is the Theranos trial, Elizabeth Holmes, the blood testing device. Liz Lepato is there. Speaking of Twitter, you should be following on Twitter, because her trial tweets are amazing, as always,

and she's covering that trial starts to finish. So that is very exciting. Pay attention to that. And one more thing, last thing. Next week starts a special Vergecast mini-series on AI, hosted by Ashley Carman, which I think will be very, very exciting. So that's all coming up next week. But this week is over.

That's it. That's Vergecast. Rock and roll. Get a vaccine.