The Vergecast - Facebook's leaked audio, Microsoft's Surface event, and net neutrality's battle this week

Episode Date: October 4, 2019

Stories this week: Mark Zuckerberg leaked audioRead the full transcript of Mark Zuckerberg's leaked internal Facebook meetingsElizabeth Warren: companies like Facebook ‘repeatedly fumble their responsibility to protect our democracy’Microsoft is building a phone   again, it’s called the Surface DuoWindows 10X is Microsoft’s latest stab at a ‘Lite’ operating system, exclusively for dual-screensMicrosoft announces dual-screen Surface Neo, coming next holidayMicrosoft’s future is built on Google’s codeMicrosoft doesn’t think Windows is important anymoreA first look at Surface Duo, Microsoft’s foldable Android phoneMicrosoft Surface Neo first look: the future of Windows 10X is dual-screenInside Microsoft’s new custom Surface processors with AMD and QualcommMicrosoft announces Surface Pro 7 with long-awaited USB-C portThe Surface Pro X and Surface Laptop 3 are upgradable, but only a littleMicrosoft’s Surface Laptop 3 comes in two sizes and with two different processorsMicrosoft Surface Pro X and Surface Pro 7 hands-on: It’s ARM vs. IntelMicrosoft Surface Earbuds first listen: live transcribe your lifePolitical Operatives Are Faking Voter Outrage With Millions Of Made-Up Comments To Benefit The Rich and PowerfulThe FCC can repeal net neutrality, but it can’t block state laws, says court  iOS 13.1.1 now available with fixes for battery drain, third-party keyboard bug, and moreApple is fixing iOS 13’s bugs at a breakneck pace with another new update today Please take our survey here: theverge.com/survey Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week on a Vergecast, a pack show. Casey Newton is here to talk about his massive Facebook scoop. We get into all of the Microsoft news, and we go deep on net neutrality. It's Vergecast, come up 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.

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Casey Newton, you're here with us. How are you? I'm good. Hey, Eli. Dieter Bone. I also am lush. Oh, I'm A-lush. There it is. Both. Paul Miller's here. It's a big week. And there's a world in which this is like a, I don't know, six to seven-hour show just because of everything that's happened this week. There was a huge Microsoft event. iOS 13 Deep Fusion launched, unlaunched. There's a net neutrality ruling that we got to talk about. But I think for my money, the biggest news of the week came from our man Casey Newton. Aw. Who acquired, who found, I don't want to like, I don't want to get into your methods.

Two hours of audio of Mark Zuckerberg across meetings at Facebook talking candidly to his employees, but what's going on, how things are going? Casey, tell us about that. Yeah, so I obtained some audio of these meetings. They took place in July. They were broadly open to employees. And one of the main purposes for these meetings was to let employees ask questions. of Mark Zuckerberg. And so as you listen to the recordings, you sort of hear two things. One is, yes, you hear Mark Zuckerberg talk about the government's plans to regulate and maybe

break up Facebook and how they plan on crushing their competitor TikTok. But you also hear employee anxieties, which to me are the real kind of heartbeat of the piece. Right. We think of Facebook as this monolith, this giant world beating colossus. But inside the company, it feels very fraught, right? They're worried about the government. They're worried about their declining reputation. They're worried about the competition. And so that's kind of what I tried to illustrate as we wrote this piece. That's not necessarily how it was received in the world, which I know is something you've been now talking and writing about. The reception is much more like Facebook goes to war. But you're actually focused on these questions are evidence of Facebook being maybe

a little bit more tentative than you think. Yeah. And I mean, look, we weren't naive. We knew what the newsiest bit in here was. And it was Mark Zuckerberg saying that he was going to go to the mat to to fight the government if they tried to break up his company. And so there's a reason why when you go to the piece, that is the first snippet of audio that you hear. That said, it started a much bigger news cycle than I think any of us expected. Well, we've got the audio. It's a podcast, after all. Let's listen to it. Let's talk about it for a second. So here it is. Mark Zuckerberg was asked about breakups in general, and he very specifically mentions Elizabeth Warren, which I think is the thing that really keyed off the cycle.

Like legal challenge, and I would bet that we will win the legal challenge. So basically, it's government, I mean, that's not like the position that you want to be in when you're, you know, I mean, it's like we care about our country and like want to work with our government to do good things. But look, at the end of the day, if someone's going to try to threaten something that existential, until you go to the map and you fight. So can I, I don't think we've, even you and I have talked with this, Casey, that long pause where he cues up to say, does that still suck for us? There's a part of that, to me, that is like the most telling thing, right?

He doesn't quite know what he's going to say next. And he's like, I'm just going to admit that it sucks. Yeah. Right? And like, that, you've interviewed Zuckerberg. We've seen him interviewed by lots of people. he's not very candid. And that struck me as like the most candid moment

that we've ever heard from him. Yeah, he is sort of off the script at that point, or at least he's thinking of like whatever might be on his script, what is the next move? I mean, part of the value of hearing this recording is hearing Zuckerberg trying to work out in real time, at least what he's going to tell his employees about it. I mean, you know, maybe he's thinking it through for himself.

I imagine he already has, you know, pretty firmed up beliefs about these issues. But, you know, he does have to kind of communicate it to employees. And, you know, you can imagine he has employees there who, you know, I don't know, might be broadly supportive of more competition in the ecosystem, you know, let's say. But the Instagram employees are like, yeah. Brick, it's up. I mean, I think that's probably true.

You know, one of the really cool things that happens from a reporter's perspective is that the bigger these companies get, the more people they wind up hiring that kind of think the entire company is bullshit, right? and they will tell you that, you know? Like maybe they buy into some aspect of the mission, but they're not all in the way that they were when it was 300 people. So obviously he mentions Warren,

Elizabeth Warren, you know, fired back at Zuckerberg. It seemed like both sides got to sort of dine out on this moment. You know, what's really interesting is, to me, we've talked a lot specifically about Senator Josh Hawley, who is sort of also an anti-tech crusader. He's a very conservative politician. Zuckerberg just went to Holly's office. He was in D.C., he went into a closed-door meeting in Holly's office.

Holly comes out of that meeting and is like, yeah, I asked Mark Zuckerberg if he would break off Instagram and what's happened. He said no. And it's like he's getting it from both sides. But in this moment, it's like there's so much focus on Elizabeth Warren. But I wonder, are you seeing that response that this quote in particular got around Warren is indicative of Mark Zuckerberg has sort of like an Elizabeth Warren problem? Mark Zucker has an antitrust problem.

Well, I mean, the full quote is he says you have people like Elizabeth Warren, right? So he is saying right there, you know, it is not just her. He knows it is more people, including Republicans. That anecdote you told, by the way, my absolute favorite thing Josh Hawley has ever done, like say what you will about his other policies. But just the idea of him saying, you know what, why don't you just, you know, break apart the company? It was like literally the same question that I asked Boz and Adam Aseri on Stage at Code. June and like now now holly is like picking up the crusade so this is like very exciting for me personally

um but yeah no he has an antitrust problem um this issue has united republicans and democrats they have both found that there is great hay to be made it is red meat for both of their bases to come out and say big tech is too big it's too powerful and it needs to be reined in there are very few uh democrats or republicans i think who disagree with that admittedly nebulous idea so you just mentioned your interview at Code with Adam Masseri and Boz. It's funny because, you know, one of their answers to you saying, she'd break it up, I think Mosseri said, you know, there's so many people at Facebook working on election security, it's actually more people than work on Instagram total.

Yes. And it seems to be, it's a go-to line. I think Mosseri said it on the Today Show this week, too, right? Like, they've got a stat. They love that stat. I think it must suck for Instagram because they know that they will never hire more people until, like, the election security team gets bigger. Like they're holding on to this stat.

But Zuckerberg gives a very similar answer in these comments to employees. And it's specifically about Twitter. And so I want to run that audio too because this one is super interesting to me. And I think really gets at the core, I think, element of the debate, which is, do you need size to protect people? So let's run this audio and then we can talk about that. But they're, you know, I mean, they can't put it in the incident on safety. It's bigger than the whole revenue of their company. They literally cannot do it.

So, I mean, A, amazing dunk on Twitter. Hashtag wrecked. Right? Like, just an amazing dunk on Twitter. Suggests maybe Facebook gets too big, all on its own, right? Like, this cost center for us is bigger than all of your revenue. It's like, yeah, that means you're huge. But do you buy it that you need this scale to protect the platform?

You know, there's, have you seen that episode of The Simpsons where Prohibition returns to Springfield? And the great joke in it is Al. alcohol, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems. That is Facebook with size, right? Size is, size might be the cause of all of their problems, but it will also be the solution. And because it is one of the largest companies the world has ever seen, it will use that size to clean up any messes that, oh, by the way, were caused by its size. So I think it's a somewhat circular argument, and we're going to hear it forever. Well, I mean, what gets me is there is the notion that, okay, let's say you do break up Facebook and Instagram, WhatsApp. The first thing

Instagram has to do is spend a bunch of money building a trust and safety team, building a security team that they were previously sort of getting for free. So that just increases costs on both sides. That seems very obvious. That's like the first problem an independent Instagram or an independent WhatsApp would have. But it also seems like they could build a bunch of revenue centers that they're prevented from having now that might compete with Facebook. So there's Facebook dating that could be a revenue center for Facebook in the future. It seems very obvious that Instagram should build Instagram dating. It would be a much faster revenue center than, I don't know, whatever the old's are doing on Facebook dating.

There's a whole bunch of other stuff, right? Like, I think we've heard Instagram's video ambitions are sort of thwarted by Zuckerberg, not wanting to step too much on Facebook's video ambitions. So, like, there, I guess I just don't quite understand how you parse out what the costs are of breaking the companies and what the opportunity cost of keeping the companies together are. And I just feel like no one's really made that argument or made that cohesive. Yeah, also increasingly, companies are sharing information and best practices around this stuff, right? At, you know, industry councils, you know, they're already working together to remove, like,

child exploitation imagery and terrorism imagery, right? They're in these sort of industry councils. I think that there's an argument to be made that, like, there could be a really good just trust and safety company that comes along as a third-party provider, right? like that could be a tech business in its own right. And I think you can also imagine that maybe the cost will come down over time as we perfect some of the best practices for keeping the worst of this stuff off the platforms. So the idea, I mean, look, you're always going to need real people to do this job.

It's like very hard. We've written a lot about it this year. But this idea that only the largest companies will ever be able to have a safe platform, I just, I absolutely reject. It is such a convenient argument for them. And we have no data to suggest that. that it's true. Yeah, we had Alex Damos, who is the former chief security officer of Facebook, and he actually

made very much the same argument that eventually an economy of safety and security companies needs to exist. Yeah. Because that's the only way you can enable competitors. But here, it's very clear the argument is our scale is what will solve the problem. And I don't know that they make that argument a lot, and I feel like the next step of this conversation is rigorously assessing that argument. Like how true is it versus how much opportunity costs?

history missing. Yeah, here's a data, here's a data point for you. When Facebook was limited to colleges, people didn't use it to interfere with our elections. So by that fact, we could say, hmm, the smaller Facebook is, the safer it is. Right. Like, to me, that, you might think that's like a ridiculously glib argument, but to me, it is just as internally coherent as, you know, we can only solve our big problems if we're big. I'm fairly sure I tried to interfere in the 2008 election interest. Like, and it just rolled out to my school and I was like, I'm going to get in there, It didn't work. It's really my problem.

So, Casey, you've now sort of lived with this audio in the world. You've seen a bunch of reactions this week. Facebook, I think you and I have both been talking about. Facebook seems to be just owning it. Like, yep, that's how he talks. What happens next? What are you thinking about now that you've published a story? You've seen the reaction Zuckerberg plus and minus for his candidness and transparency in this audio.

How do you think this kind of shapes the conversation moving forward? I mean, there's a few different things. Like one is how does this affect the internal culture at Facebook? There's a lot of really, really mad people in there right now that this audio leaked is what I was told today. And you can probably imagine that that's true. I'm also being told that Facebook is ready to get Zuckerberg out there a little bit more, that he's like kind of been in a bunker for the past year, but they want him to talk to more people like maybe in Europe. So I think that he is going to be making more of this case directly.

But, you know, what else happens? I mean, I think that to some extent, this stuff is going to be on a treadmill until we know who wins the 2020 election. If Trump wins re-election, I think the odds of a breakup, you know, basically drop to zero for, you know, at least four years. So I think there's going to be a lot of just kind of commentary until then. You know, like Josh Hawley, if Trump wins re-election, becomes the Attorney General and just, like, goes for it. I mean, gosh, what a story that would be to cover. I mean, my goodness.

It's out there. I personally found this audio very refreshing. Did you guys listen to some of that, the ZuckPod? Remember when Mark Zuckerberg did a podcast? You're talking about, like, his serious conversations he's been having this year? Yeah. Is that still going? I don't know. He's done, I think, four or five of them, but not one in several months.

It was so frustrating to listen to because he clearly had a product in mind. He had a specific end goal, a future thing that he wanted to launch, and he just wanted these people's permission. That is what it felt like listening to here. And so it felt like he had no, he was not taking in any information or anybody's feelings. Where here in this thing, it seemed clear that he knew exactly how his employees are feeling. And probably the, you know, like, I'm sure in the Bay Area you say, oh, I work for Facebook and someone's like, oh, I'm so sorry for you or something like that, you know.

Like, he seemed like he really got that in a way that the podcast made him seem completely out of touch. Yeah, it's actually a conversation between him and his employees, whereas when he's being interviewed, like, you know, with somebody like us, it's always, like, him as ambassador of the company, you know, presenting the external view. And so, you know, that's like one more reason why I thought this audio was really revealing, you know, which I feel compelled to say because there were some people out there being like, there's nothing interesting about this, you know. We could have just guessed all of this. I was like, well, why didn't you? You know, it's a funny case I see it. I was just joking about the Attorney General thing. But just now, William Barr and like the country of Australia and some others are demanding

that Zuckerberg halt his plans to encrypt messaging across the three services. Yeah, it's a little weird, right? Because like, WhatsApp is already encrypted. And I message exists. So like what exactly is the issue here? Is that you want to maintain law enforcement access to Messenger and Instagram direct? I need to read more about what's being said. Yeah, I mean, this literally happened minutes before we started here.

But I mean, they announced it, everyone's immediate response was you're trying to tie your services together so they're hard to break up. And so you at least have some action. It's like, don't do that. Like stop that process until we take a look at it. And I think the idea that he needs to go and be more conversational in Europe is like, where is all the antitrust action happening right now? It's like in Europe. And so like he's going to go make friends over there by being a little bit more honest. Like it's probably not a bad strategy, but you see that pressure. Like is this thing too big, as you said, is, it's a winning argument

on the right and the left. No one's particularly happy with Facebook. And it's very, I thought it was very revealing. I think that the joke everyone has been making is this is the best interview that he's ever done. Right. By far, this is the best Mark Zuckerberg interview all time because he's just being honest. And if that's the lesson he takes from this, and it's actually a good thing. Yeah, I mean, something I'll say about the audio is,

like, he's funny in it, right? Like, he tells jokes. And somebody had told me earlier this year who knows him that he's, like, really funny in person. And honestly, like, I didn't quite know if I believed it because I've spent, you know, the past seven years watching him pretty closely

and, like, he doesn't do a lot of zingers, you know? And yet you kind of just hear him in, you know, there's this great joke in there where somebody's like, hey, are we going to do invasive brain surgery for ad targeting purposes, basically. And he's just like, oh, you know, great. I'd love to see the congressional hearings on that one. Which is like, that's like a funny thing. I would laugh, you know, if I was in the room with him.

So I would love to see a little bit more of that. You know, they're so interested in, like, humanizing him and making him the face of the company. It's like, well, show us the version of him that, like, laughs and smiles and, like, jokes around. Yeah, but at the same time, he, like, does a Facebook live in his backyard answering questions about grilling. And, like, he gets dunked on for six years straight. There's a balance there that I think is really hard for him. He can't be glib. People think Facebook is too evil for him to be glib, right? So that's a calibration that he's going to have to make.

Yes, that's very true. I will say that I picked up some good meat smoking tips from that. I did not. To be honest, I already knew everything. All right, Casey, thank you so much for joining us. You're going to have more scoops. Tell me about the interface. You know, this scoop sort of came about indirectly because I read a Daily News.

letter about platforms and democracy. It's called The Interface. Comes out Monday through Thursday. I do it with Zoe Schiffer, and you can find it at theverge.com slash interface. All right. Thank you so much, Casey. We're going to take an ad. We're going to talk about some Microsoft stuff. Here we go. 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. So whether you want to launch a new site, test a few landing pages,

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That's Grammarly.com. We're back. Hard shift. Mm-hmm. on a Facebook policy zone into what we're really here for. Folding two and one displays. That is what we're really here for. Are you kidding me? So Microsoft had a huge event.

Huge. I mean, is there any bigger news in like operating system world than Microsoft using Android? I'd say the biggest event since Elijah Wood announced the Xbox. Wow. That's bigger than the time they danced on stage for Windows 95? The amount of history that is powerful. into a surprise phone announcement from Microsoft than making their own phone running Android?

Like, I can't even begin to tell you how many, like, flashbacks I'm having to different versions of Windows mobile and then Windows Phone and Steve Balmer and Stephen Elop and Burning Platforms. Stephen Elop! Burning platforms! How do you think Stephen Elop feels today? I think he feels pretty bad.

How do you think the importance? Employees of Nokia feel today. It's a lot. Yeah. It's a lot. So Panos Panay, who is Microsoft's chief product officer, if you're listening to this, you're probably listening to it out of the feed. You can see right before it.

Tom Warren and I interviewed Panos for a little bit more than half an hour yesterday. I love talking to Panos. He is, you know, we were just talking about Zuckerberg on Facebook. Panos is just himself. Can I, because I'm not as in the trenches with you guys day in and day out. there was a subtext to that conversation where Panos wanted to kill Tom but be good friends with you. So can you please explain that to me. Yeah.

I think again, Tom is a really good reporter and often scoops Panos's announcements. Yeah. And that was not as subtle as you think it might have come across. It was very obvious in the room because he kept pointing at Tom being like, whatever it is that you do. but no they obviously like each other as well it was just that was he kept on doing that it was really it was very funny to me but we talked to panis for a while yesterday I hope you go listen to it like I said I love talking about he's just he's direct he doesn't shade it he just

tells you what he's thinking and I've if you've listening to interview episodes I've been interviewing a lot of politicians and they're not like that so this was like a refreshing just sort of conversation and so you know we asked like why Android and he was straight ahead. He's like, that's where the apps are. We need the apps. You want the apps. People want Android. Mobile applications aren't going away. This is what we're doing. I have many things to say about that, by the way. Like, go finish your spiel, but we have to come back to that answer because it is not as easy as he thinks.

Okay. So let me just run through the list of things. And then we can come back specifically to Service Duo in Android because that's the meat of it. So they announced new Surface laptops, 13 and 15. They seem very good. They've got a custom AMD processor in the 15. That's one of their first custom processors, Intel processor. And the other one, they announced Service Pro 7, which has a USBC port. And Giant Bezels. And Giant Bezels.

And Panos was like, I knew if I didn't do it, you would complain on the Vergecast. So love that. It's true. They announced the Service Pro X, which has a custom processor arm. Yeah. They made it with Qualcomm. It's the Surface SQ1 processor. It's a bad name for a processor.

It's not the most. It's, you know, it's not like the A15 bionic cheater or like whatever Apple's doing. Yeah. It's the SQ1. The Pano said they're running it basically at high wattages. He's like, this is a PC architecture part, but arms. That's really interesting. That is a big question mark situation, right?

Windows on Arm has existed. It's been out there. This is a new surface device running arm. There's an emulation layer for your sort of like classic Intel, X86 apps. We're going to have to see how it goes. Just to be clear, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, you know, the, the, Dual screen Neo runs Windows 10X, but the Surface X runs Windows 10. The Surface Pro X runs Windows 10 on Arm.

And the Neo, which will get to the second, is Intel 10X. Right. Yep. Got it. And then there's Surface Buds, which I just have never seen a company double down harder on the purpose of our cool headphones is PowerPoint than Microsoft is doubling down on PowerPoint PowerPoint being the KILAP for headphones, but that's what they're saying. And I think they look cool.

I've seen a lot of memes about these big pop sockets for your ears. Or Frankenstein's monster bolts, but in your ears. It is true that they are giant circles, but I prefer that to everything else. The best part about this is Will I Am is sad because he made giant circle headphones a couple years ago. Oh, no. This is Will I. My gadget was like, it was like falling apart at the seams or like light on, I mean, like, sorry Will I am. I'm sorry that your idea for circles got ripped off.

Literally every L.A.M. product that we've ever dealt with has been horrible. But, you know, circles. Who doesn't want to own the circle? All that stuff is shipping now. That's the current 2019 holiday lineup, right? Service laptops, Surface Pro 7, Surface ProX, Windows on Arm, lighter, thinner, always on LTE, the whole thing. So the most futuristic device in that lineup is the ProX, Windows on Arm. Then they announced the stuff that's coming next year, which is basically their foldable strategy. That is the Surface Neo, which Paul runs Intel folding screen, new version of Windows called Windows 10X that right now is designed for folding screens.

Deider, I suspect that like me, you could also talk about whether Windows 10X for one folding screen device is a good idea. That's a lot. Yeah. That's a lot. There's a new version of Windows that developers should use to make foldy screen stuff. Yeah. Okay. Then, big surprise, Surface Duo, a phone.

It's a phone. You can fold it all the way around so the screens are in the outside and just use it like a phone. Running Android, two displays. Right now there's a Snapdragon 855 in there. We all suspect that by the time this thing launches Holiday 2020, they'll go to the next generation of Snapdragons. But right now it's an 855. We have seen companies screw that up or they like, they announce it way ahead of time with a relatively older processor. We're like, oh, they'll fix that by the time it launches, and then they don't.

So I'm not 100% confident that this won't be running a Snap 855 in holiday 2020. More than a year from now. It's a back and forth because Panos told us on the show yesterday. The hardware is locked. This is a third generation. It's locked. We're announcing it early. Developers will have it in a couple months because we want them to build apps for the stool screen stuff.

And then sort of like whispers around the edges of the event were when it launched. So, like, we'll see. That's a real question. But we, Panos said on the show on the record yesterday, hardware's locked. This is what's going to. As in like the form factor, the design and everything. Yeah. I said, will the hardware change my next year? He said, no, this is it. Will the chip inside change? I think up in the air. It's beautiful. I said, I held one yesterday. I actually held Panhouses. If you listen to the show, you like hands it to me. And I can hear me almost like run away.

I was like, do it. So I held it. I like scrolled through Android on it, open the notification shade. Like I used the thing. It is. I love it. I love it. And I know it's not, it's got a big seam in the middle. Panhas was like, we're leaning into the seam. The interface does cool things with the seam. So like windows snap to it. It's like that's that part of it's neat, right? He's like the seam helps us structure windows on the interface. It structure displays. If you have a window that spans across it, the wind, even the content inside of the window, he showed me a calendar app. So even like calendar events and you like drag to create a calendar event, snap to the window. Like it's neat. I'm trying to think, as someone who has done some bad CSS in my time, what sort of CSS would accommodate that well?

I guess there's not, are there invisible pixels under the seam? Or is it really just two separate displays? No, it's just two different displays in a hinge. Android 10 specifically is designed for multi-screen devices. And when they announced it, I don't know, whenever they announced it back in March and it's Q and then I got an early look at it. And every time I went to talk to Google about Android 10, they were like, and it works better with multi-screen devices. And I was like, cool, you know the Galaxy Fold is a dumpster fire, right? And they're like, yeah, but it works with multi-screen devices.

It worked really hard. And I'm like, but why? Hey, there's that LG. Yeah, we'll get to that. But Google has worked not just with Samsung, but with Microsoft to build support for multisscreen into the logic of Android itself. And you can actually see a hint of that right now on the fold. where you can have a thing on the outside screen, open it up, and the whole app appears on the inside screen, just resized.

You can also see hints of this and all the work they did to make Android apps work better on Chrome, where you can resize them and they can have arbitrary window sizes without having to reload. All of that stuff works, like folds right into the Surface Duo, because apps are now aware that different screens exist and they should do different things depending on what screen they're on and what screen they're being sent to. And so it makes perfect sense that Microsoft has figured out how to have a calendar app,

you hit a thing on one screen, and then something within the same app happens on the other screen or another app knows to open on the other screen because they basically told Google, we want to make this, and Google said, cool, let's try and minimize fragmentation here,

use these tools to do it. And so it's a mix of like custom Microsoft stuff, but also stuff that's built into Android that other people might be able to take advantage of. Now that Axon, that DTE thing, talking about was a dual screen phone. It folded the other way. And, you know, it was like, it didn't, it wasn't aware of the gap. It wasn't aware of the hinge. And so everything was just like split across it in like kind of bad ways. And I think the hope is that the dual will avoid a lot of those

problems. So this is maybe a little weedsy, but, okay, I've got my email on one side and my calendar on the other side, right? Yep. Classic two app scenario. Now I want to send an email on the left side. And I click new email. Let's say it opens on the left side, right? But my calendar is still open on the right side. But now I turn it and I've got this big, wide keyboard, which looks pretty like a nice situation, right? Is that all going to work automatically?

Is it going to know which Apple that I want to be on the top and which one I want to become a keyboard? DPD. Does it remember that kind of stuff? Unclear. There are million things they could get wrong here. And Apple, by the way, I got a bunch of these things wrong on iPadOS. So I'll be interested to see if Microsoft doesn't. Yeah, I mean, given how much Panos likes to talk about flow

and putting people in their productivity flow and like flow just conceptually, I hope that they're thinking this stuff through. I mean, one of the justifications he gave us for why dual screen is important was like, we hooked people up to brain activity sensors and measured how much more brain activity is when there's two screens, which just is cool. Like, I don't want to take away from the fact that that's cool. It is very Microsoft, right? Like, why does Microsoft know this is good?

Because they generated a bunch of data that says it is. And then at the very end of it, it's like, this is like crazy sci-fi, right? Like, how many screens should you have? As many as the brain scans tell us you should have. And I wonder if, like, more is better. Like, you're going to get a four-screen device. You have four times brain activity. And that brain thing is very, I mean, like, I have different modes of productivity.

I have, like, my sitting with one big window open, concentrating on one thing. and then I have my dual window setup. And like, you know, like Deter, you were saying, I think, this last week, about the iPad operating system, their sort of mix of spatial and time kind of hurts you. So like if having multiple screens or multiple panes or multiple sections is inconsistent,

that is more work for your brain. Yeah. And I love the thing about we're using the two displays and we're going to structure it. Right. That implies there's like, there's spatial metaphors here, not chronology metaphors.

But having held the thing for, you know, the brief moments that we got to hold it and swipe through it. One, it's real. It works. It doesn't, it's not fake. It's not just like a lit up piece of paper. Yep. Which is like companies do that to us. The version of Android on it, it appears to be lightly designed.

So like the icons are square. The notification shade looks a bit different. They say they're working with Google closely. They would not answer our questions about, you know, as Google letting you do stuff in Panos was like, It's not a letting conversation. It's a partnering conversation, which is definitely some corporate executive talk. There's a lot to unpack there. He said, I looked at, he showed me on the screen.

Google searches the default on this side, but a bunch of Microsoft stuff is on the home screen of the interface on this side. Bing search is there, but Google apps get to be the default in some cases. You know what the default browser is? Edge. Yep. Right? Like, that's a big deal.

Although Edge runs on chromium, so. We got to talk about that, too. But you might notice that Google in the EU was just recently penalized and forced to unbundled Chrome in search from Android, because they were so rigorous about being the default. So there's clearly two huge companies negotiating a lot to make this device happen. You wonder how much Google is getting in return for giving up some default placements. I think one big thing, indeed this is in your piece, like Google just gets to win. Yeah, they just get to win. They get to say that, you know, there's iOS and there's Android, and those are the two mobile

operating systems that existed. Even Microsoft had to face that reality. But I suspect Google will get some other concessions from Microsoft along the line. I also think, and this is Deeter where I'm just very curious for your thoughts here, the notion that Microsoft is divorcing itself from operating systems and divorcing itself from being proprietary about what it ships is, it's a very important. reached an absolute apex, right? So you just mentioned Edge. They shifted the browser engine from Edge to Chromium, which is Google's engine. Their mobile operating system, we talked about

all the history here. Microsoft launched Windows phone. They bought Nokia to have a first-party, first-class hardware vendor for Windows phone. They paid developers a lot of money to make apps to get Windows phone the necessary table stakes sort of functionality that they needed to get it off the ground. All of that failed. Nokia is a shell of itself that is literally owned by another company now. Microsoft hasn't had a mobile phone strategy apart from preloading apps and Samsung phones for quite some time. And now they are back in the market with a new form factor, which is sort of historically when market shift, when like market share can shift in radical ways. And they're doing it on Android's operating system. That is, that's a lot.

And that's a lot of Google code sort of powering Microsoft products. And it just seems historic to me. I mean, the thing about Microsoft no long, Tom has a really good story up today about, like, Microsoft doesn't care about Windows anymore, which is like overstating it, but only a tiny bit. If you care about like the quality of an operating system, it's hard to know how to feel right now because all the action is on iOS and Android. Android, but they are having, like, their iterative year-of-year updates are getting smaller. And I think that if you look at the iterative year-over-year updates for Windows 10 or the Mac, they're smaller still. When was the last time you got, like, genuinely hyped about a Mac update?

I get more hyped about not updating my Mac. Yeah, right? Like, I'm not hyped about upgrading a Catalina. Yeah. Like, I feel like, based on my experience for iOS 13, I'm just going to wait. I'm just going to wait that one out. Yeah. And the last Windows 10 update was super buggy, too.

Yeah, like from May, they're still like holding it on certain devices, which is wild. So the idea that the action has moved away from the operating system to something else and that the power no longer resides in the OS, I think is going to accelerate. So Nadella is basically like, you know, the leverage that Microsoft gets out of Windows being dominant is like getting smaller over time. And so it doesn't matter that they're running Android on their mobile operating system because, They avoid the problem of not having the apps, and the amount of leverage that they would have gotten by owning the OS on that particular device, I don't know how much they actually think they're going to get. The only company that, like, has genuine leverage from owning the OS right now is basically Apple, right? You could maybe argue Google in the web with Chrome OS, but I think that Microsoft's just like, look, all of our, all the power comes in services and in apps and in subscriptions to apps. And so we're just going to do whatever it takes to make sure that you sign up for OneDrive and Office 365 or whatever they're calling it now.

And that's it's funny because you would think that Google has a ton of power because of Android. But it is true that in Europe, a big market, Android was forced to be unbundled. Yeah. So some of Google's leverage has actually gone away. Well, Google's always been too afraid to use that leverage in the first place. CF the messaging situation. Like they've just been there. They're afraid to use the leverage that they have because they don't want to get slapped with more antitrust.

And so they just don't. This is a huge tangent, but this thing happens. I didn't send this to you to do it. I needed to. But Samsung tweeted today, like a meme that's like two little stick figures. And one's like, I love new features on my phone. And the other one's like, I hate it when my text message bubbles are on color. And then under that tweet is just people arguing about RCS.

Oh, my God. And I was like, this is our fault. Like, I've just never seen, like, this is literally our fault. Like, we are the only people that created this problem. I think that there are certain things that should have, like, in the credits for the app, it should just credit the Vergecast. Anytime a device gets USBC, you're welcome. Anytime there's anything about RCS, you're welcome.

It's like, I know this is our fault. So, you know, you point about Apple's really interesting, too, because they are actually leveraging their OS, right? They're like, we're building services into this OS. I got a pop-up notification out of nowhere last night at midnight. It's like, have you tried Apple Maps? It's beautiful now. It's like, why does my OS have ads? Like, I don't want this.

But, like, Microsoft isn't making that move with Windows. They tried a little bit. Like, have you tried our browser? And, like, it didn't work. You could argue, in a sense, they are leveraging their OS in the sense that they have. They made Android into a dual-screen operating system and it has Edge as a browser. You could probably run Skype on that thing if you're, It's crazy.

Right, but those are its applications. Like Microsoft taking Google's OS, getting the Play Store, and then, like, turning it into the Microsoft OS is a remarkable move for Android as an operating system. Right. But it's just, I'm just saying there is this aspect of the layers. Like, you know, we've been talking about this. For a long time, Google's been trying to move away from the most important part of its operating system being the thing with the numerical release, right?

So Microsoft is running its own launcher, its own browser. Obviously, it's open source and it's also partnership, and obviously it's still mostly Google stuff. But there is this aspect where Microsoft has made this a little bit their own operating system. Yeah. For the things that are most surface level to the users. Surface, want-wam. The question is, will people treat it as like a crappy skin or will it feel like an integrated hole? I think Samsung has done a pretty good job with one UI of moving away from like this just feels like a slap of purple paint on

top of the OS to like something that actually feels like it has its own coherency and identity. It's still very Samsungy. There's still a bunch of like extra random stuff there and mix B. But I mean, Microsoft needs to figure that out for the surface. Moving away from operating system philosophy and whether or not it matters anymore. What show is this? Well, no. Hang on. I'm getting there. If all an OS is like a delivery vehicle for a browser and like either iOS or Android apps and like that's it.

fine. If we think that the Surface Duo is going to succeed or fail based on the quality of the applications and whether or not they are redesigned, rewritten, and thought through for a dual screen system, I would just like you to pause in your car, pull over, pull over, and just close your eyes and think about the history of Google trying to get Android developers to make good tablet apps. Yeah. I mean, it's a phone that turns into a tablet, right? And then it's like, I do think it's beautiful and like, that's fine. But like, yep, it's a phone that turns into a tablet. It's an Android tablet. Yeah. Like, if I said to you, Microsoft made an Android tablet, you would not immediately think, oh, what a surefire success. I think that's why it's out, it's announced a year early. Yeah. I fundamentally believe the thing that's going to happen is a couple months developers will get it and Microsoft will do everything in their power to say, hey, you have some huge audience that uses Windows apps, or you Android developer can now target a market of people that will spend a lot of money on a phone and we'll probably buy your apps so they work better. Hey, Eli, you remember when Microsoft tried to get everybody to make Windows phone apps?

Yeah, you saw like a loombering. Hey, Eli, hey, Eli, hey, hey, do you remember when Microsoft tried to get everybody to make Metro apps? I mean, Windows Store apps? I mean, Universal Windows Platform apps. Do you remember how well that went? U-WIP.

That's what I called UWP. That's different. I promise you it's different. Because look, please make me a Windows phone app was like, start from scratch. Yeah, but please make a universal app that'll work across all Windows devices

and will be good on battery life and will look modern and fresh. They like failed at that. We have two giant companies that have demonstrably, completely just shit the bed I'm getting developers to do what they wanted them to do to move their platforms forward. Android tablets and like modern Windows apps, non-WIN32 apps.

And that is what is going to determine the confluence of those two things is going to be what determines the success of the Surface duo. I'm just saying. You know, we don't often have like the moment on the Vergecast that can turn into like the audiogram tweet. That's it. Usually it's just like a bunch of rambling mess. So that's great. Thank you, Dieter. Like Panet is saying embrace that gap between the screens.

This is two phones side by side. You're running two phone apps side by side. And anything that's weirder than two phone apps side by side, sounds like it will be broken unless Microsoft does a lot of work. Okay, but let me put this, like, if they do the thing that they suggest they would do, which is we're going to bring X cloud to this device. Yeah. And you can stream games to it.

And they'll run and it and it'll basically turn into like the world's coolest Nintendo DS. Yeah. And you got the Xbox game at the top. And you got, like, all right. Like, I want it. Give it. I'll just buy it right now. Yep.

Same. Right. Like, that's awesome. Like, there's a chicken and egg problem here where there was never a great Android tablet. And there was, and the reason there never was a great Android tablet is because nobody bought them. And the reason that nobody bought them is because the apps weren't there. And, like, that cycle was bad.

If Microsoft can give you one or two killer apps for this thing. Great gaming experience, uh, powered by X-Cloud. So they don't have to worry about Android games. It's just like their X cloud service. I don't know, Excel people, like people like Excel, right? Like a huge dual screen Excel. I mean, they got PowerPoint earbuds now. Like, there's a whole thing.

The answer to the following question will determine the successor failure of this thing. Well, you already did that. I'm doing it again. Okay. Would you buy this instead of or in addition to your current phone? So I asked, Pan asked this directly. Yep. Is this a substitute for a phone?

And he said, for some people, it will be. Yeah. That's where he, that's, right, he's like, this is the next step. So some people buy it as a replacement. He's like, I'm using it as a replacement right now. This is my device. Other people are going to buy it is the other thing. Here, very explicitly, as I was like holding it using yesterday, I was like, oh, I know why I want this.

I know why I want this form factor because I am extremely intrigued by the idea of closing my phone and having the screen go away and setting it aside. Right. Like, I'm the person who in every meeting turns my phone upside down. and doesn't look at it because I'm trying not to. It's connected to my watch. So that's a, it doesn't work. But I love the idea of like stopping. Yeah.

Right? Like such a problem everybody has with their phones. Like they're just always there. You can see the notification and see a light up that screens in front of you. It's available. I love the idea that this will make me a little bit more mindful of like I'm using my phone now. Is it actually going to work? It works.

It works with the Galaxy Fold. I'm using it right now. I'm like working on the review. I'm spending more time with it than I usually do on a phone review because I want to like think through some things. Also, I want to just see if it breaks. If it breaks. But you, when you have the Galaxy Fold as your phone,

you use it less because when you use it, you have to use it. And when you're not using it, you're like, oh, this tiny screen sucks, right? Yeah. So then what if you had no screen? Okay, so that's the duo. Many, many, unanswered questions. We're going to do a lot of reporting. By the way, Deeter, you mentioned that Nadella

quote in, like, the moving way. That quote, we should just point out, came from our friend Lauren Good at Wired. She interviewed, Nadella. He said Windows is not the point anymore. It's all about apps and services across operating systems. He's been saying stuff like that for a while now, like maybe three or four years, but that's as explicitly as he's ever been like, whatever Windows. Yeah. Also, he mentioned that. I think we're going to see a lot of that shakeout. He also mentioned the Microsoft graph, which is like just a whole other tangent we could go down that I don't think we should,

but it's like, it's a little terrifying. Yeah, that's like, again, it's people on LinkedIn using PowerPoint with their surface buds, and it's just like a whole other culture that you just, you know, if you're wandering into like a subreddit that you haven't visited ever before, you're like, this is a whole different place. It's that. Yeah. But it's LinkedIn PowerPoint service buds. Yeah.

I can't wait for that subreddit to exist. If there's like a power user Microsoft Office subreddit, please let me know, because I cannot wait to see what they think of this. So we should talk about the Neo, because that's the other one. Yeah. And it, I think, has even bigger challenges than the duo. Really? I completely disagree.

Why do you think it has bigger challenges? Because at least if you're a developer right now, you kind of know where you need your apps to go, right? You need to be an iOS. If you want to pay Apple's taxes and eventually be Sherlocked out of existence, iOS is where you go. You need to be on Android. Maybe Microsoft will convince you to tweak your code

to make it better on the dual screen phone or you fall in over the Galaxy Fold. Like you're going to do that work. Windows apps just are not, they're not great, right? You pointed this out. Like, modern Windows apps have not made a splash. They've not, like, taken over the world. Like, we still live in sort of the old paradigm of Windows apps.

The Neo runs Windows 10X. It can run Windows apps. But to get the mileage out of the two displays, you got to, like, the app developers need to support it. And I don't know what will drive them to support it. I do think maybe, like, just having two displays and, like, I love that look where you, like, set it up in portrait and you fold the screen out and the keyboards in front of you have, like, two portrait displays.

Like, that's cool. Yeah. That's just a cool form factor, a cool move. I love the idea that, you know, like, the keyboard magnets onto the bottom screen. All that stuff is really neat. Wait, can you explain how do you do two portraits? So the Neo is two screens in a book. So you open it up, it's got the screens on the other side.

You can, like, flip it all the way around. The keyboard is magnetic. So you can, like, clip it onto the bottom display. You can do keyboard in the front, Paul. And then the top of this way is called the Wonder Bar. I'm aware of keyboard on the front. And I've been thinking a lot about it because there's no, it's not explicitly mentioned,

but it was implied in the keyboard and the front bylaws that you also have a touchpad, which now is apparently in the front if the keyboard is on top. But I was thinking, yeah, I would love to use this as two side-by-side vertical screens with the keyboard off the front.

Yep. So you just pull the keyboard off. You flip the thing 90 degrees. You set it up to portrait displays, keyboard on the ground. Unclear where the touchpad is in that scenario. All of these different things are called postures, which I love. Here's a question.

What's the lappability of the Surface Neo? It's a laptop. You just like do it on your lap, and you got the keyboard put down the line. It seems highly lappable, especially with the keyboard on it. Just lappability off the charts. By the way, Surface Neo colon massively lappable is definitely the advertising campaign. There's a very clear reason why we are not in that business. Can I ask the most obvious question?

Should this be running Android? So we asked Penes. that question. He's like, no, Android is good up to this size. Everything above that is Windows. Now, is that the politic question, like, answer? I'm sorry, is that the politic answer? Like, that's what he's got to say. We pushed him. He said, I can see my roadmap. He's like, very funny. It's like, it's not like I'm having visions. Like, I've seen the roadmap. Like, it's my roadmap. And he's like, we don't have anything in that zone. Now, is that true? Like, right? Like, I don't know. But the old.

only products I can see this competing with. And I love it. It's so exciting. And we haven't talked too much about it, but like obviously long history of courier leaks. And it's, you know, it's a real culmination of a device. But I try and I want to love it. But especially I'm glad that they embrace the idea of having a hardware keyboard combined with a two-screen device, because it's very important. Typing is is a passion of mine. So I see, I see this. I see this. as a Surface Go possible replacement? Or an iPad with keyboard replacement? I mean, look, Paul, like 1.3 millimeters of key travel.

I mean, they said that how many times? They're not going to screw up the keyboard like Apple did. They just won't. Yeah. When he was telling us that the laptops are repairable now, he had like, I mean, this is, you have to, you should go back and listen to just to catch the inflection in his voice. He's like, the laptops are repairable now.

You know, that's great for enterprise customers. And, yeah, if you want to change, like, your keyboard. So I want to go back to, you're saying that you think this thing is like a tougher road to ho. It's going to be hard to be successful. I think the reason that that struck me is something I disagree with is I think the metric for success, the level that it has to hit in order to be a successful product, is much lower. And they can have a much longer burn on this device.

It took the iPad a while to become, I mean, it had that huge rocket shit takeoff. and then it sort of like chilled out for a minute. I think that this thing, it doesn't have to live or die just on its own merits. It like is going to piggyback off of what's going on in standard Windows 10 and eventually vice versa. And so I think that they can have this thing be a niche device for people that want to live the courier dream and then have a keyboard in the front every now and then for at least a couple of years before like people really start asking, no, is this actually the future of Windows? is what all computers are supposed to look like. I think they get to position it as the cool, weird thing that we make that some people deeply love and eventually it'll get there is my sense.

I think that, look, I hate to overly compare this situation to Apple, but Apple has 15 OSs, right? Some absurd number of operating systems for all of its products. But, like, it has the Mac, it has the iPad, it has iOS for the phone. The iPad is, like, the thing we've been asking for. Like split this off making something, right? Like they finally did it. And then there's this constant question of that's just more phone.

What's the split between the laptop and the tablet? But it's all like Apple's OS. And people like, we talk about it. We talk about it in the show. Presumably our audience likes listening to it. But like out in the world, no one cares. Right? It's just a bunch of Apple stuff.

I think if Microsoft owned Android and they're like, this is our mobile operating system and this is our desktop operating system and there's a fuzzy boundary in between, maybe we wouldn't be having this conversation. right? Like, it's exactly the same as Apple. But here you have, we have our operating system, Microsoft, Windows, the thing that you think of when you think of us. And then over here on the product that is like the most important, the phone, we had to go somewhere else. And our CEO is saying Windows is not important. And so that has already created this rift of like, is Windows going away? Now, their answer is like obviously no. It's their first party platform. If you do ship OneDrive and Office and all these other things that you make, you want to have that in your back pocket. It is also still enormously lucrative. It supports a range of applications that no one else can even come close to. I don't know, like gaming PCs. What else are you going to do? It's Windows, right?

So I don't think it's going away. I just think it's, as the duo in particular comes out, the questions Microsoft faces around, what is the future of Windows are going to get louder and louder and louder and louder. Windows 10X and the Neo don't answer those questions. I think they actually created a new class of questions. And the Surface Pro 10 or X, sorry, also confuses

it for me because the Neo is Intel and then the Surface Pro 10 is this like, Microsoft's saying, hey, if we use Intel, it has to be real thick and look like garbage. But if we use Arm, it can be real thin and awesome. Yeah. By the way, it's ProX. Yeah, you said Pro 10.

It's Service Pro X. Very confusing. But then they put Intel in the Neo. Yeah, and I couldn't tell you why. Intel has been working on this dual screen thing for a long time. I went to their headquarters and looked at a bunch of prototypes of it last year, earlier this year, some time ago. So this has been like an Intel dream and an Intel passion project for a while. And I think that Microsoft is probably happy to have Windows 10x solve one problem at a time. It'll solve the make people make apps that understand two screens on Windows.

problem and then it will solve the arm Windows apps problem later. You know what I mean? Yeah. Let's just end this a little bit out. Do you think dual screen is the form factor shift that it seems like, I mean, how many companies are we talked about now betting on dual screen? Google, Intel, Microsoft, Samsung. Is that the right bet?

Like I kind of think, like, I get it. Like, people want a small screen that turns into a big screen. It seems very obvious that this is a thing that people will be happy about. But it seems like everyone's saying this is the next form factor evolution of phones. And so we're going to get there real early. We're going to start building it now. We're going to be ahead of that curve. We're talking about it.

Do you buy that bet? I don't know. Kind of. To me, like, as long as it fits in your pocket, yes. And that's why the surface duo is interesting because it's thin. It's maybe too wide for a pocket. But like it's thinner than the fold because the fold has to have that. you know, big curve to make sure the screen doesn't break.

As long as it fits in a pocket, I'm excited to try things that, like, are, you know, a small thing that unfolds into a big thing. But once it's no longer pocketable, then I think you're moving into a different class of device. And maybe we're going to move to a future where everybody, you know, has, you know, whatever they're calling them now instead of fanny pack strapped to them. And that's where our devices go. Like, that would be fine.

Fashion changes. But until then, if it doesn't fit in a pocket, then I think you're not quite there. There's basic ergonomics of human hands and the pants that we tend to wear. Maybe we shall switch to dresses and kilts so that it can have really big pockets. I'd be down for that as well. I really would. Dresses famously don't have pockets. It's actually a thing that are...

They famously didn't, but they used to, and then they had like little pockets that could, like, hang on the inside. And then they went away, and there was a whole thing that they shouldn't have gone away, but they did. Yeah. Sorry. No, I'm just saying, if that's the thing that gets dressed at pockets, I think, like, 50% of the world's population, should be very happy. Yeah, right. It's like folding phones, like, fix this problem. Like, take it. I carry a backpack so that I have enough room for a laptop. And I just can't, I wish, but I can't think of what I would be, that I'm, oh, I'm glad that I had this folding

dual screen device in my backpack instead of a laptop or in addition to a laptop. So I can't think of why, why? I just can't think, I wish, but I can't. Am I not, I, am. I, Am I not a forward-thinking, mobile, technologically adept professional? So my read on it is much dumber, which is just broadly, people are interested in things that look different. Yeah. Right? It's the simplest thing that you can understand. This looks like one thing.

That looks like another thing. And so it's really hard for Google to be like, our black rectangle is qualitatively better than this black rectangle because, you know, our swipes were different, but now they're the same. Right. Like, that's a very difficult argument to make, right? And we've, how many years have we gone through it? We just had a round of phone reviews where, you know, I can't stop dunking in the New York Times because they refuse to review the iPhone against Android, right? Like, you know, I turn on the flash and just use your old iPhone. That's the best phone for you. Like, that's because people are just like, yep, this is the thing I like. I can just buy the next one. You show people a new form fact. This is what

Apple used to do with the iPod all the time. One year it's skinny, the next year it's fat. One year it has the screen is long, and the next year the screen is short. Are you talking about the IPAT, the flailing iPad, iPod Nano years? Yeah, just like, this year the shuffle has no buttons. Now buttons.

Like every year they're just like constantly changing the physical design of the thing. It operated in exactly the same way, but they managed to drive press cycle after press cycle with colors and shapes, right? Because people just saw a different thing. I think you show people this phone unfolds into a bigger phone. It is a natural moment to reconsider. Well, I want that. And so like that it's, I think it's a dumb, it's like, it's not like the most sophisticated read on it. But I do think in terms of moments where people are like, do I want the one that looks like the thing I've had and I'm familiar with or do I want the one that looks new and different? It is, it is at least obviously that moment. Now, whether, you know, two years from now, Apple puts out a folding iPhone and then we're just back in the same place, like maybe. But if they can get their first, you know,

and it's a complete product. I think it's at least that moment of you see the ads, you see it unfold, and you're like, my phone doesn't do that, and I want a phone that does. And like sometimes maybe that's all it takes to shift the market. But then you find out that it runs Android, and your bubbles are green. It's all over for you. One cool outcome I would like is if the duo, the little folding phone, turns out to be just the world's greatest outlook machine.

And then I'd be vindicated because, like, yeah, I don't use Outlook, so I'm fine. I don't need it. But the Outlook people could be so happy that they have the world's greatest Outlook machine. You know, the thing is, like, we know, it's our audience. We know there's people who live entirely within the Microsoft operating system. Well, hit me up. Hit me up. Yeah.

Holiday 2020, let me know. You've discovered your true device. Yeah. I mean, look, I'm excited to see new stuff. Like, yeah. There's been a lull where it's just very clear, at least with foldables. It's not VR. It's not esoteric.

there's a next generation of hardware coming, and it's going to be cool. It's so exciting that it's kind of disappointing because at the same time, Microsoft put out probably the two best laptops on the planet. Oh, yeah. And they're totally overshadowed by some crazy, really interesting hardware,

but these laptops look great. I mean, them being even interested in upgradeability and maintainability, it's obviously interesting for enterprises, but it's a cool concept in general. They just look great. Their specs seem on point. The 15-inch looks wonderful.

I think that's a really good blend of specs. I wish it was Zen Tube, whatever. I feel like if these actually ship run well, aren't like super buggy or something weird happens, these seem like the best laptops on the market. Well, and on top of all that, like, you know, there's the Surface Pro X. There's this whole idea of Microsoft

has figured out that, oh, well, we can just take the part that the company makes and then make them customize it for us, and then it's like a custom processor for a Surface. They did it with both AMD and Qualcomm. That's wild and potentially very interesting and potentially a huge competitive advantage

for Microsoft compared to the rest of the PC industry. Which kind of changes the definition of surface because seemingly back of the day, the surface, like here's an example of how cool a Windows device could be. And this is like, here is a window device that only Microsoft could make. I've been talking to Panis about this for actually quite a long time, like, that surface

where you started, where you are. The original Surface mission was in Best Buy. There was no PCs over $500 because nobody would buy them. So there was like Apple at the high end and then like, you know, we talked about the big cheap ones. like 15 inch 500 dollar HPPC is a 15 inch DVD player yeah and he's like

we're never gonna we'll never survive if we can't we don't have hardware so like one of the early missions was just prove that like these things would sell but what you've seen I think this is where like it's great that Microsoft feels a competitive pressure and they have to deliver

they validated that market they created that market and now there's a great XPS 13 there's a great line of specter PCs PCs from HP. They're very, very competitive PCs in the world that are at the higher end of the market. So now Microsoft is like one notch up. And I suspect that they are not going to be very proprietary about their custom chips, especially with AMD and whatnot. I suspect that you will see some like part numbers change and then those very similar chips end up in other places. But Microsoft is the one

who's like, yep, we're going to architect this for Windows. We'll just do it. We'll just do the work with you up front. So I got to wrap up that story. I've been talking to pan us about it for a long time now, actually. But it's really interesting. They're the only company I can think of in D.DRA. I'm specifically thinking about Pong in BlackBerry. Only company I can think of ever that has managed to compete with its partners while owning the operating system and pull it off.

As far as I know, no one else has ever done. You're probably right. Yeah. If you can think of one, let me know. But as far as I know, Microsoft has pulled off what basically seemed impossible for years, and they've done just a terrific job. Okay, we're going to take a break. We're going to come back. I got to talk about this in that neutrality.

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Paul, every week. That's right. You do a segment about net neutrality. You know it. Let me tell you about how much I love the internet. No, it's called. It's called I've seen The Matrix. I'm not an idiot.

Okay. And I know we're trying to. to wrap up the surface stuff to talk about We can't. We're never going to stop. I'll read you through it real quick. Okay, Neo means one. Yeah. Spoilers, but that's what the Matrix is about. Duo, that's two.

Like the app, Duolingo means two lingoes, right? And then Trio is a phone made by Palm. Exactly. That is exactly where I'm going. Surface Trio is the next thing. You heard it here first. That's all I've got to say. It's a palm phone.

That's your segment for the week. Because I saw the street out. Yeah. Perfect. All right. So, it is true that we talk about net neutrality on the show all the time. I will try to give a very quick sum up of where we've been at and what's happening. So there was a president.

His name was Barack Obama. Remember him? Yeah. He was great. Miss him terribly. His FCC, categorized the Internet under Title II, broadband, both wireless and wired. under Title II of the telecommunications. So they're a common carrier.

It's net neutrality. Got to treat all the traffic the same. No blocking, no locking, no locking, no throttling. Everyone's very happy about this. Universally popular across party lines policy. This is a true fact. Does not poll based on everyone just likes this idea. Except for me.

Except for Paul. Just Paul. The polls are actually very weird. They're like, we don't understand this one result. Yeah, it's like Paul and Verizon employees don't like it. Everyone else is cool. But as I did it, everyone cheered. Yay, Internet.

President Trump gets selected. installs a guy named a Jeep Pi, chairman of the FCC, Pi rams through a shift, re-regulates broadband wired and wireless under Title I of the Telecommunications app, calling you an information service, which has a very specific legal definition, but it's an information service,

which means carriers can do whatever they want, right? Blocking, locking, throttling. For example, if you were AT&T, you might wish to buy Time Warner and then stream CNN and HBO, the doomed HBO Max, over your pipes free, right?

But make Fox News viewer paid data fees. That's what's going to happen. CNN will be free on AT&T and Fox News won't be. That seems problematic to me, but that's where we are. Immediate lawsuit filed, right? You can't do it.

You didn't have enough of a record. There was enough of commentary period. Agencies, federal agencies are not allowed to make arbitrary and capricious decisions. This makes no sense, blah, blah. We have been waiting every Tuesday and Friday, the entire tech policy world, like weights on pins and needles for the DC Circuit to drop the ruling in this case.

We covered it. It was the trial was very funny. There's a lot that happened here, but the ruling came out on Tuesday. It hit. Big news. Zuckerberg audio is like leaking at the same time. So like news sort of went undercover, undernoticed. BuzzFeed published a huge story today,

basically verifying that all, like millions of public comments at the FCC during the rulemaking change from Title II to Title I were fraudulent. Basically, like, shady lobbyist firms impersonated people, including lots and lots of dead people to leave comments supporting the rollback and net neutrality. So, like, just a shady process rushed. Ajit Pai wins by the skin of his teeth at the court. Okay. And I just want to, so I think this decision is, it's just one of the most upside down legal decisions I've ever read. Not because the legal reasoning is necessarily bad, although some of it is very confusing.

Literally the writing. At one point, it quotes Macbeth. Like, that's where the courts at with net neutrality. Yep. One of the concurrences starts with a quote from McBeth. I'll just read it to you. Also, are you going to define the word solacism to us? Because that was also in there, and I had to look it up.

And these, this is Judge Stephen Williams, wrote an opinion. It concurs in part, dissents in part. It literally begins like this. is a senior judge at the federal court of appeals for the D.C. Circuit wrote an opinion. It begins this way about net neutrality and be these juggling fiends no more believed that paltar with us in a double sense that keep the word of promise to our ear and break it to our hope. So says McBeth, finding that the witch's assurances were sheer artifice and that his life is collapsing around him. The enactors of the 2018 order, the net neutrality order, though surely no McIbeth's,

might nonetheless feel a certain kinship being told that they acted lawfully in rejecting the heavy hand of Title II for the Internet, but that each of the 50 states is free to impose just that. How drunk are these people? What is happening? Which side is that arguing for? What? It's both. Okay. So here's the ruling side.

I just want, like, I cannot stress enough how out of control legalistic net neutrality has become. Yeah. When the core of it, the fundamental root of it is, should you are? internet provider be able to block throttle and shape your traffic, right? That's it. That's the question. And we're at judges doing Macbeth. And I think, I think I finally have a sense of why. It's because they're bored. No, it's because literally it's gone back and forth so many times that it has now entered this world of like, how good is your technical legal argument, right? Not how much sense does this policy make? But how good is your lawyering? How much, how well have you

said the magic words to judges about deference to agencies in Congress instead of, does this policy make sense? It's like law sport. Yeah, it's, it's, it's just become a very, very, very technical, very legalistic. So it's fun for me to read because it's like sport, but it's totally divorced from the reality of the question, which again, widely popular. So here's what the court said. And I think this is actually really interesting because I think it points to something that it points to a very clear shape of how the future of net neutrality might unfold. The court said, look, we give agencies deference, right? You're the FCC or the EPA, whatever. You get deference from the court for your internal decisions. We don't try to step into your world. We're not trying to do

your job. There is a, there's a 2005 court case. It's called the Brand X decision, which is incredible, but there was an internet provider called Brand X. I got sued, blah, blah. The Brand X decision, the Supreme Court said broadband was an information service. Six to three, 2005. This is a long time ago. The most notable dissent in that decision, Antonin Scalia, who, and this is true, in a lengthy metaphor about pizzerias, said, you are all stupid, which is the thing that Scalia used to say in his opinions.

You are all stupid. The Internet's obviously a telecommunication service. I think that decision is wrongly decided, but it's Supreme Court precedent. So now the court is looking at we have to be deferential to the agency. and we're bound by Supreme Court precedent. So the agency, the FCC has said this is Title I. That's their decision to make. Under the Brand X precedent, we also find that it's an information service.

The court's already said this. The specific reason it's an information service and not a telecommunication service, a common carrier telecommunication service, telecommunication services just provide interconnection, right? So you operate a telecommunication service. It's a big network. It's you're just connecting different devices. The phone line is the example of this thing, right?

The common carrier phone line, you can plug in whatever you want, you can call whoever you want. The AT&T can't stop you from doing it. Information service are integrated. So think about AOL in like the early 2000s, right? You get a phone number from AOL. You call AOL server. You call AOL's modem. It pings their server.

You use AOL's service. So information services are allowed to use software and interconnects are only allowed to use wires. This is what you're saying. Basically. Okay. Yeah, that's actually a good way to put it. Is it? It's really not. I said it to troll you. No, because that is what the court said, my friend, because they decided that under the Brandex precedent from 2005, merely providing DNS servers and caching on your network is enough to move you out of telecommunications to information.

DNS and caching. Specifically DNS and caching. So what you're saying is there's no hardware without software. I'm saying, and even one of the concurrences says, this is a ridiculous position to take. DNS and caching are not that important. Anybody can go use a different DNS server than what their provider wants, and encrypted traffic does not flow through provider caching systems, most notably, HTTPS, right? Which is a lot of the internet right now.

Yeah. So you're not using the caching service if you're mostly using commercial websites. So you go to the verge, HTTP. It doesn't eat your provider cache, right? and you can just like use a different DNS. So these two services that your provider is giving you are somewhat optional. Yeah. Or maybe not even relevant.

Yeah. So like how on earth are we saying that this makes them an information service? Not, but sadly we're stuck because of Brand X. Yep. That's DNS and caching. That is why net neutrality is, that's why the decision was approved. The person agreeing that that's a silly thing said, yep, this is stupid, but I have to say that this is the law because Brand X made me, because of the-nex made me.

because of the precedent? Yes. When I say that this, the whole opinion is wild, that's Judge Patricia Millett, wrote a concurrence. She says the court's opinion is valid because of Brand X. She said, Brand X is designed to protect walled gardens. AOL is a walled garden. We talk about walled gardens all the time. All right, here's a court opinion about net neutrality.

Let me just read it to you. The commission's decision to cling to DNS and cashing is the acid test for its regulatory classification cannot bear very much reality. By the way, the words cannot bear very much reality are in quotes. Noted to T.S. Eliot, just putting that out there. Today, the typical broadband offering bears little resemblance to the brand X version. The walled garden has been raised and its fields sewn with salt. Oh my God. This is where we are with.

Wait, what is, can you please, I'm sorry, but please break that down for me. What is the walled garden? Who is the salt? Yeah. So the walled garden is AOL or CompuServe or Prodigy or whatever, right? Okay. Or an early 2000s broadband provider where you sign up and you'll, like go to their weird custom

home page and they provide you your email address and all those things. So there is a walled garden that's an information service that further you can go past it to the internet. Right. Right. So you go on a.o-l.com and then you've got an AOL connection, but you've got the AOL service and the internet's like out there in the back room. Now in this analogy, I've pillaged

the walled garden, tore it all down and I'm sewing it with salt so you can't grow back. Who am I? You're like the force of the market. Okay. You're like the Chrome browser, right? Like, you're Nobody uses their provider services that way anymore. So you buy a pipe and like what you want to is you want to get to Gmail.

You're not like living in the AOL universe. Or like at charter.net email address or something. Yeah. Like those are just optional services. So like the walled garden of AOL doesn't exist anymore is what you said. Right. Not only says Judge Millett, not only does the walled garden lay in ruin. But the roles of DNS and caching themselves have changed so dramatically since Brandex

was decided. And they have done so in ways that strongly favor classifying broadband as a telecommunication service as Justice Scalia had originally advocated. So what you're looking at is a concurrence. You're seeing this is the right decision, but we've made it because of precedent. We've not made it because it's the right decision. So the Supreme Court should look at this. Basically, she's saying, appeal this. Go up there, figure it out. Is appeal a possibility? I think it's very interesting for net neutrality advocates to go up against Justice Roberts and Justice Gorsuch and Kavanaugh and say, do you disagree with Antonin Scalia, lion of the conservative court?

That's a very interesting position. I don't know that they're going to do it. I think that's a risky bet. But this is the real opening. This is the thing that I think is really interesting. The court struck down the FCC's rule that said states can write their own net neutrality laws. And this is like a logic puzzle. So go with me on this.

So federal rules, preempt state rules, when an agency makes a rule. but the FCC got rid of all of its rules and then put in a rule that said the state can't make rules. So you're saying no rules, just right, net neutrality. Yeah. So the court basically said, look, you can't claim to preempt the state rules with your rules when you have no rules. So your dumb rule that the states can't do is gone.

It's like federalism. This is what I mean about extremely technical lawyering. This is what the framers would have wanted, I think. Sure, but like if you go up to just a regular person, you know, like, should 18T be able to charge you for Fox News and not CNN? They'd be like, I believe in conflict preempt. Like, what the hell are you doing? But that's where you are. So now states, California most famously has very stringent net neutrality rules, more stringent than the ones that were passed by the FCC.

New York has a set of net neutrality rules. Other states are passing them. The states are now going to impose net neutrality rules. And that is like the nightmare for ISPs. especially mobile ISPs. Because if you cross a state line with your phone, and depending on where you are, your internet traffic has to look different or rebuild differently.

You're like, it's a nightmare scenario. So, like, I don't know what's going to happen next, but the point of this is this decision is bonkers. I'm going to, like, try to put it on the website tomorrow and just point out some of the walled garden has been raised. Where are we? What's happening? It is deep, the argument, the legal argument now is like in lawyer town.

It's not in policy town. and what's best for consumers town. And the states now have an enormous amount of power to pass their own laws that might just end up being the laws of the nation because you might as well just pick the strictest one and go, which is very much what California does in all kinds of other ways. Yeah. So it's a lot. That was my net neutrality rant.

I'm done now. I don't have anything left in the tank. I don't have any more Macbeth quotes for you. So Dieter mentioned the word solacism earlier. That comes from a quote. This is a real vignette. So at one point, the court in its majority of opinion, which is unsigned, by the way, None of the judges would put their name on the opinion, but this is the opinion.

When I say it's like overly legalistic in like out of touch with reality, they're deciding whether mobile broadband is a private wireless service, which is an information service or a commercial wireless service with telecommunication service. And we've literally lawyered our way into a place where whether or not the devices can make phone calls to landline phones might be determinant, right? So, I mean, that's where we, again, totally disconnected from reality. And the argument is, well, you know, your tablet can get like a VoIP service on it that makes phone calls. So that would obviously make a commercial wireless service. So the judge, the anonymous judge writing this decision, concox a scenario, a play between two people. This is the decision. If someone tells a friend, I just got a great new tablet with mobile broadband, which is something everybody said.

It would hardly be a solacism for the friend. reply, great, does your service let me reach you from my landline? Another thing people say all of the time. A solacism, correct me from wrongdealer, it's like a false statement. That's what I means? It's like a wrong thing to say. It's like a misstatement. Yeah. A solacism. That's the word we're using. Of course, the new tablet owner might reply, not now, but it could if I set up a Google voice number. But that only shows the linguistic ambiguity. I've read that 50 times. Yeah.

I still kind of don't know what it says. It's saying that if someone says I got a great new talent with mobile broadband, you would actually be like a reasonable person to say, can I call you with my landline? Yeah. Maybe. Or maybe it means the opposite. Who can I tell? All I'm saying is this decision to me, what it shows is the net neutrality debate has moved into the world of lawyers

and far away from the world of consumers. And the answer is, we need some laws because that makes way more sense. And it seems like the states have a huge opening to write some laws, and they're already doing it. All right. iOS 13 is really buggy. I just want you all to know that. They've really just like 15 updates since it came out. All we have time to say. Yeah.

All right. That's it. That was a Vergecast. We did three shows this week. It's been a crazy week of Vergecast stuff. Let me know if that's too many. I'm that reckless. You can tweet at me.

That'd be great. You can tweet Deeter. He's at Backline. Paul's at Future Paul. Deeter's got a newsletter. That's right. What is it? Theverge.com slash newsletter.

Yeah. It's currently called command line. We put links in there. We sometimes put little essays and thoughts. There's a triangle in the subject line. If there's a big long story in it, you should subscribe. Yeah. Casey's got the interface.

Two newsletters of The Verge now. Think about it. Newsletter flagship armada. Which one of these is the flagship? Mine's bigger because I took over the last one. A clever move. We are also hiring for someone to help us with this show and other shows. So if you're a podcast producer, you're interested in stuff, hit us up.

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You can check out Pivot with Kara and Scott Callaway. That shows great. Check out Recode Media with Peter Kaufk. That's it. That was a Vergecast. The Wald Garden has been raised, and the fields have been sewn with salt. Rock and roll. Paul.