The Vergecast - Galaxy S21 Ultra review / Apple redesign rumors / Paramount Plus and 2021's streaming services

Episode Date: January 22, 2021

The Verge's Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, Julia Alexander, and Chaim Gartenberg discuss the Verge review of Samsung's Galaxy S21 Ultra, the numerous rumors about Apple's future products, and ViacomCBS's new rebranded streaming service. Further reading: Amazon offers to help Biden administration with vaccinations CES showed off the COVID-19 mask gimmick arms race Joe Biden halts US withdrawal from World Health Organization Biden appoints Jessica Rosenworcel as acting FCC chair FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel on staying connected during a pandemic The US will rejoin the Paris climate agreement, but that was the easy part Joe Biden cancels Keystone XL permit President Biden to use Defense Production Act for masks, vaccines WhiteHouse.gov now has dark mode Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra review: The Real Deal Apple’s VR and AR headsets detailed in new report Apple is reportedly prototyping foldable iPhone screens Apple reportedly planning big iMac redesign and half-sized Mac Pro 2021 MacBook Pro will ditch the Touch Bar and bring back MagSafe, say reports Netflix had a record year in 2020, thanks in part to the pandemic Paramount Plus, ViacomCBS’s new rebranded version of CBS All Access, launches on March 4th Netflix had a record year in 2020, thanks in part to the pandemic A visit from the Zune squad Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today on the Vergecast, Hym Gartenberg and Julia Alexander, join us. We talk about the Samsung Galaxy S-21 Ultra Review, a whole bunch of Apple rumors, including a VR headset, and the state of streaming in 2021. That's come up now in the Vergecast. 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 reporter for nearly 20 years covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Remusayaking. That was Dieter's. That was Dieter's joke. That's mine. Yeah.

Dieter's here. Hi, Deeter's here. Hi, I'm, you're everybody's friend. Yeah. I'm the free dark mode option you get on your WordPress template. That's good. Everybody wants a dark mode option. We'll get to that minute.

We've got some guests today. I'm Gartnberg is here. Hello. Julia Alexander's here. Hi. There's a lot going on. Before we started recording, I said it is at once a very quiet week in our corner of the news ecosystem, but it is also a very dramatic and news-filled week.

So we're going to try to mash the things together. As always, I will start with a COVID update. if you're listening to this and you do not know that Joe Biden is the president, I'm very worried about your news consumption habits. Like straight up, just listen to me. I'm worried about you. I want you to know that. But Joe Biden's a president, which means the nation's COVID plans are changing very rapidly. I think as we're talking, he's signing yet more executive orders.

That's just what he's doing on his first two days. So he already has indicated that the United States will not withdraw from the world. organization. He assigned a mask mandate. You have to wear a mask in federal buildings and in federal properties. He's talking about expanding that mask mandate. He has moved quickly with a plan to deliver 100 million vaccination shots in his first 100 days. Because the vaccinations are in two doses, you can get lost in a spiral of the first shot and the second shot and how many people actually get vaccinated out of the, like, fully vaccinated out of those 100 million doses. But 100 million shots is the plan and then how it will be expressed in terms of people vaccinated

yet to be explored, but it is a big move. Also, CNN reported today that the Trump administration had really no plan for vaccine distribution, which, to be honest, I believe, now there is some plan. So just a lot of COVID-related movement immediately from Biden. He said that was his priority. Amazon came out. They sent a letter to him saying they would help with vaccine logistics, which if you're not being very charitable, you would say, well, why didn't they offer to help Donald Trump? It's a very obvious question. The answers have been reported out. They apparently offered in some soft way. They were rebuffed by the sort of chaos of the Trump administration. Also, I would note that Donald Trump hates Jeff Bezos deeply. I think that just

kind of went nowhere. But kind of a big move, it was a letter, you know, very forcefully saying we have all this capability will help you. I will tell everyone. I still believe this. It's still true. COVID is the biggest story in the world. It is still the driver of almost everything else that is happening in one way or the other. We're going to keep covering it. We're going to keep doing COVID updates at the top of the show. We're going to be just as hard on the new administration as we were on the previous one, although I expect the level of chaos will diminish. So it'll be good to be hard on like consistent policy decisions as opposed to, you know, TikTok ban by tweet. it's just very nice to think that that kind of thing would happen anymore.

But we're still going to cover. Our science team still doing a great job. Other Biden stuff, new president, lots of new people in the works. Jessica Rosen-Worsel, who has been on the virtual house before, one of the characters that we've covered very closely as we've been covering the FCC for years. She's the new acting FCC chair. There's a lot of rumors about who will become the officially appointed FCC chair. But for now, she's the acting FCC chair.

She's very focused on broadband access and the homework app on neutrality. We'll put a link. McKenna and I interviewed her over the summer, actually, in the show. So we'll put a link somewhere so you can listen to that. That's what interesting. Biden also said the United States will rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement. We've got some coverage on that and what that actually means. He canceled the Keystone Excel pipeline. He said he's going to use the Defense Production Act for masking vaccines. He's just doing a lot of stuff. He doesn't have a Congress behind me yet, but he's got a bunch of executive actions to put out. So we're going to cover all that stuff very closely, our policy team.

I will tell you they're very happy to not be in reactionary mode, right? There's a bunch of new people and new plans to cover, and they're not necessarily reacting to tweets. So lots of you there. Once again, my commitment is very tough on this administration, too. Lastly, Dieter, I think there's some website news here that I think is of critical importance. Yeah, everyone's very excited about whitehouse.gov. There's a request to go work for them if you want to. in the source code

if you remember that web pages let you look at the source code which is a thing and it has dark mode but everyone was very excited about the dark mode and like their fonts

and the new icon but immediately everyone pointed out that it has dark mode because it's just WordPress it's amazing yeah that's real good that's our headnotes those are the big stories

in the world I don't have I can't figure out how to segue them into the Galaxy S-21 Ultra review those are the big stories here's a big phone

there you go that's pretty good it's a Deter We talked about it a little bit last week, but you have the S-20-U-N-Ultra, you did your review this week. What's going on? Big fun. So when the round of hands-ons went up, a bunch of people were like, is this redemption? And I was like, no, there's no way.

Yeah, Samsung did it. Like, the phone is really good. They fixed all of the things except for what might arguably be the most important thing, which is what Samsung thinks software should be and do. But the hardware of the phone, I am very very, very hard pressed to knock it in any way, shape, or form. The only possible thing that's, like, worrisome about the hardware is the Phantom Black finish might be a little delicate, like, we managed to scratch ours.

Did we get an answer on this? Not yet. We asked, you know, I told them, it's scratched, what the heck? And I haven't seen that, you know, so it's one of those. So we'll see. Jerry Rig, everything, I'm sure we'll get one and tell us what the Moes score is on it. And then that will cause a whole other round of excitement. But the important stuff, if you don't get the Phantom Black one, is the screen's incredible.

It has the, what's it called, the L something something, OLED that lets it do dynamic refresh rate along with the Snapdragon 888 processor. So it can go from 10 to 120 dynamically. It's big, 6.8 inches. It has a little bit of curve on the sides. It has the same Samsung color tuning, but setting it to natural makes it fine. It's like it's the best screen. Yeah. It just is.

Now, looking at it right next to an iPhone 12 from Macs, you will detect a difference in color temperature, and especially on whites. I think Apple's a little bit cooler, and so it might be just a little bit more, you know, accurate in that way. But Apple doesn't have a high refresh rate, and the color temperature difference is, like, so subtle that I would argue it's a matter of preference rather than a matter of, like, full-on accuracy. Also, like, all of these phones have slightly different color temperature variations from literally phone to phone. The phone to phone. Like you, and if you had 10 iPhone 12s, they would have a slight amount of variation. It's like, that to me is always the one. People ask and I want to tell them an answer, and I'm like, this answer doesn't mean anything.

Yeah. Also, it does the 120 hertz at the full resolution this time, which is fantastic. It's 3,200 by 1440. I just turned it on and went with it. And it did not, I mean, it obviously affected battery life, but I didn't have a problem with battery life. There's a couple of reports that some people may not have had great battery life, but most people I'm seeing are like, yep, you'll get through a full day easy. I was getting through a day and a half easy with like heavy usage. I mean, it's a 5,000 mill amp hour battery.

Right. And the 888 is more, should be more power efficient than the 865. Obviously, you know, I'm not running the kind of voltage and amp tests I need to do. actually test that. But yeah, the thing lasts all day for sure and like into the second day, no problem. Clearly, Samsung is no longer slightly afraid of putting too big a battery in these phones. Yeah. But I mean, it's a huge phone. The note was huge. Yeah, okay. Compared to this. It's good to see them get their confidence back. Yeah, that's fair. So the screen, Samsung, notable for its extremely vibrant colors, very bright. Samsung, as far as I know, like lives in like

HDR 10 plus world and not Dolby Vision world. Does it support, like, can you watch Netflix and HDR on this thing? Is it just HGR 10? I think it's just HGR 10. I haven't gone and, like, stared at HDR and all the video apps. Video looks better on this phone than it does in other phones. They've increased the peak brightness in HDR to 1,500. Last year it was 1,200.

But, yeah, if you want to, if you want to throw down to me whether or not all the video apps have all the Dolby Vision lights, I will run up. of the ability to answer that pretty quick. I suspect they're running an H-R-T. It's just notable of all of the specs, right? Like, with this phone in particular, Samsung's like, name a spec. And you say anything.

Number of cameras. And they're like, we have the most of those. Right. Like, that's this phone. And then in this one little corner, there's like no information. Yeah. Well, there's two corners,

there's two specs that are not here. One is expandable storage via microSD. It's gone. And I think it's going to land I thought everyone's going to be like shrug. Everyone, like, I'm like, oh, I'm sad. And, like, there is the point that this thing will let you shoot 100 megapixel photos and take 8K video.

So maybe expandable storage isn't a terrible idea. But that's gone. And then the other thing that's gone that's notable is MST. And I forget what I'm at magnetic something, something. It's the thing that lets them use credit card readers when there's no NFC. And so that's out. So, I don't know. Like, both of those are the sort of thing that felt like it was going to happen eventually anyway.

And this was the time for them to do it. because alongside this new version and fixing the cameras, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They dropped the price, like, across the board. And they achieved those price drops in different ways on the different models of the S-21. I think on the Ultra, it was the card reader. It was MST.

It was, you know, they're reusing a lot of the stuff they did. They figured out last year, honestly. Screen is a hair smaller. Screen's a tiny bit smaller, yeah. It's 0.1 inches smaller. You could argue they did the thing that Apple didn't do, which was they took the AC adapter out of the box and also didn't charge you for it.

Whereas Apple took the ACA adapter out of the box and left the price basically the same. Yeah, but you have to pay because you have to pay for square sides. I know it's much, it costs $29 to square off the sides of the phone. Well, the reason I bring it up is, you know, we're going to talk about the cameras at length, but Apple does shoot Dolby Vision.

Its screen is good at that. It's very hard. Like, once you've got the Dolby Vision file on your iPhone, if it ever leaves your iPhone, like you don't have a Dolby Vision file. Like that's how it has played out. Yeah. Right.

It's like it's very difficult to share that thing. But it looks great on your phone. Yeah. Right. And it's like it's, it's Samsung isn't just competing with like that aspect of it with their big and beautiful screen. So basically I'm arguing with you saying it's the best screen,

not because of the screen itself, but because of this other capability that I've come to really enjoy it with photos and videos and videos on the I've had. Right. I would counter with high refresh rate is 10 times more important than, on Dolby Vision support in video. Like, it just is. It's great.

I'm with theater. It looks really good. One thing I'll note, as long as we're talking about looking at things on the screen, I looked at a bunch of the photos, especially the low-light photos, on the phone itself,

and I was like, oh my God, this is incredible. And then I went to go look at the comparison on my IMac, which has an LCD screen. I was like, these don't look as good.

And they asked Samsung about this. And they were like, yeah, we definitely, OLED is our primary thing that we tune for. That's what we aim to make our photos look good on when we, like, tune the camera and blah, blah, blah, blah. And you can see it in the shadows where on an LCD, it just, it shows a little bit more noise,

whereas an OLED, it can, it actually has better range in those darks. And so it's, I don't know if it's, I don't know if more forgiving is the right word, but it looks better on a OLED screen that it does on an LCD panel. Yeah, we kind of hear this from every phone maker, right? They know that the place you're going to look at the photos is on their screen. Because the screens are small and bright, they can get away with a lot of things that a larger screen is it's harder to do The OLED versus LCD thing is like This come it's in every review. This thing happens we take a bunch of photos and then we look at them on a neutral display

So like that's the best comparison And then those displays are always LCDs Yeah, like that's what computer monitors are. There are very few OLED computer monitors, I think Or none. I think there's actually no No, there's a TV yeah but like we we look at everything on like nice LCDs and that's like where the the like there's the one comparison the big objective comparison how sharp is the photo how much detail did it kill how much the noise reduction smooth everybody's faces into oblivion I think the thing you're talking

about is Samsung photos look incredible on Samsung displays yeah they just they always have that's actually never been the question right if you if you any almost any Samsung phone for the past five years, if you take a photo and then look at it on the phone, everyone has always like, that's the best photo. And it's because the display is so bright and so good. And then you take it off and something else happens. Looking at the photos you took in your review, I see the, I see the, like, the OLED is helping in the shadows thing. But what I really see is Samsung has met the iPhone's level of quality. And then their little decisions on the margin of where their processing is going to work.

Yeah. They have leaned into how good their screens are and the fact that everyone's going to look at their screens. And so the photos are like a little bit worse, but they know that they know their hardware is going to overcome their software, which is like the most Samsung thing in the world. The thing that I also wonder is between Samsung and Apple in particular, how much are they thinking about what Instagram is going to do to the photos when they, when the people just, that's where they put their photos, right?

When they get processed by Instagram, are they trying to, like, I don't know, tune their photos defensively so that it looks better on Instagram once it's up or not? It's just impossible to know. Instagram is a really interesting case, right? Because the Instagram camera itself is not the camera of the phone. Well, on the ultra, though, Samsung worked with Instagram to make sure that Instagram's camera would pull and support more of Samsung's native processing out of its camera app than on other Android phones. Because famously, stories on Instagram look like garbage if you shoot them with an Android phone. So, Samsung's trying to fix that. Yeah, but even, like, even I think now, the standard Instagram camera is the video camera.

Because they want you to, they want you to be able to hold the button down and shoot a video. Yeah. So when you open the camera on Instagram and just like take a snapshot, you're just grabbing a frame off the video camera. Yeah. And like, if you're defensively tuning your camera for Instagram, like the first thing you do would be like, hey, you're. camera isn't even using her camera. Like, it's not even, that's the video camera. We've asked this question in so many different ways of the phone companies.

Do you care about the platforms that people actually use? And I all kind of say yes. And I, just after all this time, don't you think the answers really no? Like, we constantly ask them if they care about YouTube when they ship video features. They're like, we're talking to YouTube. It's like, look at YouTube. I feel like it's the same with Instagram. And Instagram is, like, becoming like a DSLR zone anyway.

Yeah, for sure. It's, yeah, I feel bad posting photos on Instagram. Yeah, it's all the stories. Julie, when is the last time you posted to your grid on Instagram? On my birthday, I took a really great selfie, well, tipsy. And I decided to rein in my birthday with that. So, two weeks ago. Oh, there you go.

I just forget. And now I'm, like, promoting decoder on my grid. So my grid is just like a wall of yellow text, which I feel like if any Instagram, designers are looking at my grade. They're like, this is not what we made this for. Design. You mentioned the design. You're intrigued by it. I really like the design. Like the camera bump is the big change. And they just like glued it to the rail. And it just kind of flows out from the rail now. And it looks good in a way that camera bumps on bones haven't for like a very, very long time. And especially

compared to last year's, which is just really ugly. Do you remember on the iPhone, six S. Apple showed a photo of the phone on their website that was angled just so to hide the tiny little rail of a camera bump that they had added to it that year. And we like did all this freaking like geometry to check to see if it was angled in a way or if they had actually photoshopped it out. And, you know, that went away. But when camera bumps first started getting big, every time it would happen, we would all be like, oh, this is weird looking, but okay, I guess. And then we stopped doing that. But fundamentally, most camera bumps are weird-looking.

They look weird. And it wasn't until I was, like, looking at the Ultra when they actually tried to make it integrate into the body of the phone in a way that cohered a little bit more. That was like, oh, yeah, like, this actually looks good. And the stuff that I'd been, like, taking for granted was normal actually is still weird. The iPhone camera bump is weird-looking compared to this thing. Yeah. And, like, the Ultra is a little weird-looking. than the smaller ones just because it's so much, it's got so much stuff, but it still looks

good and like, like, the iPhone one doesn't. It's like, why is there a giant square on the back of my phone now? I really, I continue to believe the iPhone is designed to be put into a case. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. And then it kind of doesn't matter, right? Like, I think Apple knows it. They're like, we'll make it life easier on, on our somewhat mediocre case designers, and then the other case designers in the industry. Like, like, Apple's case team is, like, their cases are fine. They're not great, especially like all the MagSafe ones. But I like the Samsung, like the rail.

Apples leaned into their bump in one very sort of Johnny Ive isn't there anymore, but it feels very Johnny Ive to me. He's like, I'm going to take this ugly thing, and then you're going to love it. Yeah. It's so ugly that you're like, that Apple's done it again. It's the purest camera bump that has ever been bumped.

And Samsung's like, what if we try? And like, there are different approaches. I appreciate it. Let's talk about these cameras, too. There's five of, there's five holes but four cameras. No, there's five cameras and six holes. Oh my God. I don't think I'm a person with fear of holes, but every time I look at this picture, I'm like,

what if I was a person with a fear of holes? There's five holes on the back. So you have got the ultra-wide, you've got the 108 megapixel main, you've got the 3x telephoto and you have the 10x periscope telephoto and then the other hole is the laser auto focus. And there's a flash

over there too. And in the front, You have a 40 megapixel selfie camera that, I think because I had to like do the math on the megapixels, but it's like 6.5 megapixels on the front by default. But you can't take 40 if you want. So the camera system is five cameras, one on the front, four on the back. And the big question was, last year the original S20 Ultra was supposed to be Samsung's giant swing. We are now like in the fight with everybody else on having the best camera. and it just wasn't. It had focus issues.

It did super wacky things with color and face-smoving. Face-smoving did not get better with the Note 20 Ultra. They fixed the autofocus with a laser, which this S-21 Ultra continues, but they still oversmooth faces. I dubbed it the ham cam. And so what they did this year is they have a new version of their sensor. I think it's an ISOcell HM3 or something. It's the second generation of this 108.

megapixel sensor. They continue to use their laser for auto-focus for things that are nearby. And they say that they have updated the re-mosaicking process, so taking the binning the 108-migels down to 12. But when I asked exactly how, it's a little bit unclear, a lot of hand-waving. And I think maybe just as importantly as that is they've also taken advantage of the extra speed and I think image processing they can get out of the snap 888 to do. a better job of grabbing in multiple images or data from other lenses when you're using a different lens to make the image better. So they're just doing a slightly better job than before at combining a bunch of images into giving you your final image. I don't know if they're quite

up to the levels that Apple or Google are in that regard, but the hardware, because it has that larger sensor, has made up for a lot of the deficiencies that they had last year. The hardware plus fixing some of the tuning in the software. So I think this thing is on par with the iPhone 12 Pro Max in the majority of situations. And then once you start getting to the edge cases, it's like 6040 iPhone. So in the Pro Max review, I was like, I think all these cameras look the same now. Yeah. Maybe I was just like depressed at the state of the world and like review.

There's like a better than 50% chance. I was like, well, nothing matters. But, you know, I tried. I did my best. But they all are starting to look the same to me. me, right? The phantasmagoric Samsung look and the overly blown out or like highlight destroying look of the eye. Like they've all just kind of leveled back to you, photos should look like photos. Yeah. What do you mean by like the margins are on the edges? Like, where are they

different? So Samsung, because it likes to make things a little bit brighter, Apple's, Apple learned from Google and is allowing more contrast and more shadows to exist. I think it has more confidence in its ability to render dark things well, or Samsung is just brightening things up a little bit. And I don't know if that's a lack of confidence in dark things, or if it's just that they know that, you know, like you look at Marquez's photo challenge every year and the brighter photo always wins no matter what the actual quality is. I think Samsung really believes that, too. So it's always a little bit brighter, which in some situations is great. It actually like, oh, that worked out better. And in other situations, it's just like, yeah, you didn't need to do that.

If you just let it be a little bit darker, it would have looked better. So in those cases, I think that the iPhone can tend to win. I do think that they make slightly different choices in the dynamic range and their contrast of what they choose to let be bright or let be dark. And sometimes they're a toss-up. But yeah, like trying to systematize where exactly one wins and the other falls down, I would have to say that I think the iPhone is still doing slightly better in like night mode in low light. But that doesn't mean that Samsung's doing a bad job. I was having I'm doing a better job that it ever has before. But I think I slightly prefer the way that Apple handles things like neon and, you know, light shining in the lens or whatever.

They both have the dot effect, but Samsung's are a little bigger. Of course they are. Samsung's like, we read this iPhone review. I could complain about the dots in the video. We should have bigger dots. It's like you missed it. That wasn't what we said. I went out to try and get the dots to like get it in the video, but it was the day that there was a huge wind advisory in the Bay Area.

and the phone like blew out of my hand almost almost dropped it. So I was like, nope, I'm not not doing this. Going back. I almost got hit by a Christmas tree that was like flying down downtown Oakland like a dumbleweed. This is what I do to try and make good reviews. Did you like loudly yell

anything for the gram at that moment in time? It's the obvious move. Two Zoom lenses. Useful, not useful. Shockingly useful. I was full on ready to be like this is dumb. It's not dumb. It's not dumb, it's great.

The Ultra beats the iPhone every time on Zoom, up to basically every time, everything. Because you get optical at 3, and you get optical at 10, and then in between 3 and 10, it can combine data grabs from those different Zoom lenses or crop from the main sensor or whatever to give you something that's pretty sharp. And then once you go beyond, you're in like space zoom land,

and, you know, it's a mess at 100. At 30, if you have good light, you could maybe get something you'd be willing to post. But yeah, it turns out like an optical lens is better than digital digital zoom. And having two of them means that you can do more things in that range. You don't have to resort to cropping in on digital stuff as soon as you do the other way. Yeah. Dieter sent sent out like a Lightroom album and you click through it and clicking all the photos. and I got to like Dieter test Zoom ones part of the album and it like it's that meme of just like

getting progressively closer and closer to something yeah and by the time it's just like a smear of pixels that makes no sense it's like why would you ever use the 100 x like it was very funny I was like I'm living in a meme like I'm just getting closer and closer to this waterfall and it's getting less and less intelligible what it is yeah it's good and what else uh video is good. We like what they're doing with sharpness. We like what they're doing with a couple years ago Apple really touted its video ability

to adjust exposure on the fly without having to cut as it moved from like a bright to a dark spot by just panning through it. Samsung has figured that out. It's able to do that now pretty well. We need to go and we'll probably do something in the future like really actually like go in

on 8K and can you actually grab a good still and can you like do a full crop on 8K video. It's just like you get through the review, you're exhausted. You don't want to deal with the camera again, but, like, it's time to, like, actually talk about whether or not 8K is worth it on a phone like this. You can also do this director mode thing, which locks it at 1080, but it lets you switch between lenses on the fly. That's cute. It's fun. I have a question for the room. Okay, so because I've been plagued by this thought ever since

Apple commercials play every Sunday during football, showing, like, people making movies on their phones. Are the cameras being designed for normal consumers now, or is it, like, the ideas that everyone's making a movie on their phone. Because, like, I don't know how to use my camera other than portrait mode, which speaks to my narcissism. But, like, but I don't know how to, like, do anything with it. And every commercial in what you're saying about Samsung, it just feels like it's professionals. They're trying to do both. And often that means they don't do either well.

I think that Samsung is focused a little bit more on doing stuff for professionals. Like, their camera has pro modes for photo and video built into the camera app. It's actually, there's a million settings and buttons. You can get lost very, very fast. It has this thing where it can dynamically adjust your frame rate if you want it to so that it, like, it can, I don't know, do some stuff with frame rate. It's like, nobody wants everyone, like every pro wants to lock the frame rate. What are you doing? One thing about having all those pro options is it means that if your auto option isn't as good, you can just be, yeah, but the pros use the pro ones.

so it's fine. You know what I mean? So to me, the answer is they're trying to do both. Samsung leans a little bit more pro than Apple does in its camera app because Apple has a good third-party ecosystem of professional video apps on the iPhone. Android has a much smaller, we'll call it ecosystem of professional video apps on Android. So, yeah, I don't know. That doesn't answer the question.

But, like, it's aspirational, right? Like, you want to buy the thing that makes you believe you could shoot a video professionally, even though we all know that you're never going to. Wow. not you Julia like you no I never although I did text a friend and said if I threw my iPhone in the air and left it on record

would that be as good as a Chris Nolan movie because it couldn't be worse well you have to run it backwards and forwards at the same time and you have to cover the microphones and yell on the other side of the room and that's the dialogue I assume Chris Nolan would die before filming a movie with an iPhone no the next iPhone is going to shoot

iMac's needs to be like finally it's my time but that was the thing about the Apple commercials and reading your review with the Samstong stuff, it was just like, oh, this is super targeted to people who are making movies and how many people are making movies on their own stories? No, everyone's making movies. Yeah.

So my, every time Julia Zana, I feel like I tell her what's on my TikTok algorithm. So right now, it is people crashing Ford Rangers to a song called Fucking Ford Ranger, which is just a guy singing, it's not a real song. There's just a guy who has like a Ford Ranger song

to be made up. Yeah. Isn't that a real song? No. All songs are made up. It's all songs are a guy. But it's not like a produced song. Like, it's just a guy like clapping and talking about Ford Rangers.

If filming a video with your iPhone counts as a movie, then this guy recording an audio track for TikTok is a song. Heim is joining the creators team. Yeah. Wow. This got very tangentially expansive. We'll be back after this break with more on what is a song. Okay, so there's that. But then there's always.

people like showing off things you can do with a camera, right? Like the upside down slow motion through flowers is like a TikTok meme. And I would just like, it's not you're making a movie to put in theaters, but everyone is constantly shooting movies. And everyone is constantly like, there's some subset of the people who just shoot the little joke of themselves or like themselves dancing. And then some fraction of that people of some fraction of that group wants to do more.

And if the camera rewards them by having the capability, then they're going to use it. And I just see that feedback loop developing really fast. So I think it's much less about technically it shoots in Dolby Vision or technically it's 8K or variable frame rate video, which sounds completely bonkers and very Samsung. And much more about at some point, camera features become memes. Like that's how I'm thinking about it lately. The little video that's like, did you know you can do this? Adam Aseri was on Decoder this week and he was talking about Instagram threads, like their little messaging app and how threads was the number one app in the app store over Thanksgiving because it auto captions videos and bleeps out swear words.

So people are using threads to make video and then putting it on TikTok and the app itself became a meme. Like the feature became a meme. This is what Apple wanted with clips and I tried to help them, but no one likes it. But I love Clips. Every now again, Dieter Slack is like, there's Clips News that called me and like, because they didn't call anyone else. Clips will have its day. It's kind of like another way of saying what Deeter saying.

But like, I just, I think these features are all there if you want to use them because everyone shoots video now. Everyone is a video maker, which I think is cool. The very complex and advanced video editing tools that get used in TikTok are not the classic, like camera settings tool. tools, right? And so these phone companies will give you the classic camera settings tools because it's aspirational of like you could be a pro.

And what everybody actually uses are like the social interesting complex video editing tools that are built into TikTok. Samsung does have this thing called single take, which is like you just hold the shutter button down and it just records a video and then it tries to use AI to like pull out like funny GIFs and like the right still moment and whatever. You know, the, yeah. But they're trying. Shooting a Samsung single-take thing is, it is like the riskiest.

Yeah, because the photos come out terrible. Like, they're lower-quality photos. You're like, I would never use this when it's actually interesting. Yeah. It feels like you're giving, like, you know how the plot of the Terminator movies is like the machines are intelligent and they decide to wipe out humanity? Uh-huh. That's what using single-take feels like.

What? Like, you're just giving, you're just giving the weapon systems over to the machine. And what it's going to do is destroy your memories. Because, like, that's what it's designed to do. Like, you're like, oh, this is a good argument against AI. Like, yeah. There's going to be a TikTok trend in like two weeks when people get their S-21. It's like, look at what you can do.

Did you see in the midst of all the capital riots and the, you know, all those people were just on social media full out. There was a tweet that went around that one of the rioters Facebook had made an auto video about like our year together. Oh, no. It was just like him with his militia buddies. It's like, yeah, maybe we shouldn't let it. I do that all time.

Okay, we need to take a break. We'll come back and we're going to, really, we're going to get into what is a song. Support for this show comes from Shopify. Every thriving successful business has to start somewhere. A good place to start is a relatively simple question. What if, given the right tools, I really put my all into this. One tool that can help grow your sprouting business to new heights is Shopify.

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I was just having this argument with my partner because it was like, no, there's like a TikTok trend of like, what's your favorite song from a movie that's a fake song? And it's like, just because it's in a movie doesn't mean it's a fake song. The song exists. It's still a song. You and I are on the exact same TikTok. I love it because we'll send the TikToks to each other and it's on each other for your page. And I get angry about it too high because they're all real songs. They're just in movies. I'm with you. And that concludes our section of what is the song with I haven't. Julian. All right, there's a bunch of Apple rumors to talk about. So, German and there's other rumors as well about MacBook pros. Cool. Yep. Quo.

They're going to ditch the touch bar. They're going to have faster, faster M-series processors. They're going to bring back mag safe. And then there's this line, there's just a line which I cannot comprehend. You will need fewer dongles. Yeah.

Which is like, are they going to put USBA ports on? Is it one HTML port? Is it an SD card slot? please. Or will they just have fewer ports so that you can physically use fewer dongles? Like many ways to interpret that line. Or there'd just be more USBC and then there's more USBC accessories? I mean, one, I'm really excited to find out what they say about getting rid of the touchbar.

That'll be fun. The MagSafe, though, I don't know. I have my doubts. Remember there was that patent where there was like a MacBook charging an iPad, charging an iPhone, charging an Applewatch charging. AirPods or whatever it was, or the other way around. Maybe that's the, it'll have MagSafe as like a way to charge your phone. Yeah. But you won't actually get the proper MagSafe connector.

That's kind of like what seemed more likely to me. I don't want old MagSafe back. And this is going to be, I like USBC. I would really like Apple to not end this beautiful four-year run of using the same port as everyone else by switching back to a proprietary port. I mean, the answer is that they're going to modify the USBC spec to support magnetic charging connections. People have done that, though, and it's bad. The way you do that is you just have a dongle that you stick into your USBC port, and then it's like a breakaway magnet thing, and sometimes it comes out.

It's just not good. So my Windows laptop, it came with its own barrel charger, and that's what you need to use if you're actually going to game with it. But you can charge via USBC if you're not doing anything too intense, and it'll work, just slower. What if Apple brings back a MagSafe connector? It's a proprietary version of USBC, and then they don't let you charge

by the other USBC ports? I think Apple, with its MFI standards and money that it makes off every charger that it will sell, could do that. Like, this would not be the first time. I think the more interesting, I mean, we'll see, like, here's a bunch of mysteries, but I think they know the touchbar has not done

what they want it to do. they don't even really defend it when we ask about it. They're like, well, some people like it. Yeah. And it's not like they've done a bunch of touchpart innovation. The ports thing is interesting. I could see them adding an SD card slot to these machines. It is like, particularly on the high-end pro machines, it's something everybody wants.

Nikesafe, like, hit or miss. But I will say, depending on how these M-Series chips go, they were already, like, pushing the limits of what a power adapter. could deliver to the Intel chips and the existing 16-inch MacBook Pro because it's 97 watts that it needs. And there are actually not a lot of docs that can support the 16-inch MacBook Pro and drive other power.

So, like, they were already up against a pretty big limit of what USBC could do. Well, that'll change with USB-4, though, because USB-4 will have higher... Time! It'll have higher things. Is USB-4 a song? Sing a song about USB-4.

No. If you wait long enough, USBC will eventually get there. I know I've been saying this for half a decade now, but it is, we are just around the corner for real this time. Yeah, and they're going to rename it to like USB 3.1 Generation 4. Like, I know how this works. Anyhow, but like the new processors might need less power. Yeah, that's just like a thing because of the M-series chip. So I think there's a lot there, but what I say more broadly is they're going to change the design.

That's the other part of the rumor, that they're going to redesign the laptop entirely, which, if you will recall, the Intel transition, they redesign nothing until the updates were complete. But I think that they, as we found out with the MacBook Air Review and the Pro Review, they're so confident in these chips that they're not baby stepping through it. I mean, I think the baby stepping through it was that first wave. and like if that had gone badly then the next MacBook, the big 16 inch would look exactly the same and they'd keep going slowly but like it worked

so. Yeah, but I mean they also Neelan actually had this argument. I was like oh man they're not going big they're just starting with the air and he's like yeah the air is the best selling MacBook of all time they sell more of those than anything so keeping the same design is it's a weird

combination of safe and bold right like they would not need to instill some sense of confidence that people might get by sticking to the same design? Because nobody has confidence in the current design. Yeah. Oh, you mean the 16th Schmackwick Pro design? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But I also think they just like hit such a home run with the air that if like, right, what are the outstanding questions you're going to be? Does it have a fast GPU? Yeah. Is the battery life longer, even though the processor is so much more capable or should be so much more capable? We'll find out. But I think it's exciting that they're the rumors that'll change

design. That is also the same for the, iMac rumor that they're going to change the iMac kind of the same general rumors but this iMac design i'm looking at one right now is so long in the tooth that it is starting to confuse people like i have family members who uh have texted me you know we're all at home they're like i have this old i mac what can i use it for i'm like how old and they're like 2011 and i'm like that's pretty old that's 10 years old and they're like yeah we just want to set it up and you know use it to watch tv but the Wi-Fi is really slow. And I'm like, well, the Wi-Fi card is 10 years old and it isn't very fast. And they're like, well, it looks brand new. I'm like, because it looks the same. Like, if you have a 10-year-old car, you're not like, it doesn't go as fast as new cars. Like, because it looks the same, it's like literally starting to confuse people that the old ones are old and the new ones are meaningfully better because they completely look the same. So I'm excited they're going to change the Amack. And these bezels, I'm looking at them now are. I mean, this is the same as is the G5 from 2006, barring a change from plastic to aluminum.

This, I think, I think the iMac chin design is the oldest, like, hardware Apple has that it sells. That might be true, actually. I can't, I can't think of another, like, laptops they've updated every four or five years. The other desktops have been updated. Yeah. iPhone, iPod, like, they haven't used a core design like this for as long as they've used that Mac one. Maybe like the Bluetooth Magic keyboard. Yeah.

Yeah, but I think that came out with this stuff. But here's the question is really like competition, right? Like, as with all things. Like, name another all in one design that's pushing Apple to update the IMac. Whereas with laptops, like, there's like good, meaningful, they have to look cool. Well, there's the Surface Studio. Yeah, but that would require Apple thinking that there should be a touchscreen on a computer. Maybe that's how you sell the touch bar, though.

We got rid of the touch bar because the whole screen is a touch bar now. Oh, my God. It's coming. I like it. It's going to hit when USB 4 comes out. I'm really interested to see what they do with the Mac Pro, because the rumor is they're going to maybe do another Intel one, and they're going to keep the big design, but that they might do a half-size one that I think, the current quote, feature mostly aluminum exterior and could invoke nostalgia for the Power Mac G4 Cube, unquote. The Power Mac G4 Cube, I would point out, was a notorious failure. They sold none of them.

and Steve Jobs, his quote, when they shut it down, he laughed and said, we're putting it on ice. That was a real Apple press release. Power Mac G4Cube put on ice. And like Captain America is returning 50 years later to save the... God. Oh, and it's a cute. Maybe they'll do a Marvel tie-in.

They've got like a Disney... G4Cube never dies. I think there's one upstairs here. I think that's interesting. I think the question is like, what is the market for... They have a Mac Mini. So it'll be a Mac Mini with... slots? It's the M2 Mac Mini. If the Mac Mini is the same as the laptops, right? Then you have

the new higher powered laptops. So this is the desktop that goes with it, which sort of makes sense to me. Yeah, I buy it. We'll see. I'm excited. I'm excited to just have new Macs. Like, they're finally redesigning all these computers. I think it's super exciting. This next one, man, just a lot of Apple rumors this week. Yeah. This seems completely unsurprising to me. They're prototyping foldable iPhones. Yeah. I think they should. I kind of, I don't know. We'll see if they ever, that's one of those technologies where Apple will not be early. There's that and also just, look, I, I mentioned that the S-21 software has ads in it, Bixby's still bad, like Samsung is not great at a bunch of things on software, but you know what

they are good at? Recognizing that you have a big screen and you want to do lots of things on it. The S-21 is easier to hold in the iPhone 12 Pro Max, and you can have a split screen on it, and it works fine. It works pretty well, in fact. You can have like app pairs and you're like. little sidebar if you want to. It's all complicated to figure out, but like, once you kind of get it, you get it and you can do more stuff. Samson's attempt to get soft Android to work well on a folding

phone has been slightly less successful. So to me, it's not just will Apple wait until there's like a good screen that they think can fold that will work for this thing. It's can they get the software right? Because they haven't gotten the software right on the big iPhone 12 Pro Max yet, frankly. The only company that has like the, the company that has the best idea for what to do, it's, in this zone. It's actually Microsoft with the duo. They just like duffed the execution for many reasons. Apple could release

a folding phone tomorrow. I don't know if I believe that the UI metaphors from the iPad would translate well to that kind of thing. But no, there's like a threshold question here. Is it a razor style fold where it's a small thing that opens to regular phone size? Or

is it a galaxy fold tile fold where it's a phone that opens to a tablet? Apple only makes small phone once every five years. And then everyone's so excited and then Apple realizes that nobody bought them and then they put it on ice.

That was the iPhone SE that appears to be the story with the iPhone 12 Mini, which I have and I love, but I don't think it's selling, there's a rumor that's not selling well. I've heard that rumor at the 12 Mini. I thought the first SE sold really, really well.

The first SE was also really cheap. Yeah. The first SSE was a $400 phone when the next cheapest iPhone was like $8.50. Yeah. I think it's more likely they do the phone that makes it big rather than the flippy razor thing.

So looking at the Bloomberg rumor, I think it's small that goes big. Like German says it's, they're looking at a number, but the main one that he calls out is one that unfolds to be the size of a 12th Pro Max. Oh, interesting.

Okay. I think that's very far away. Just based on what we've seen from everyone else. Okay. Last big Apple rumor, another German scoop. As we know, Apple's deeply into AR, which to me completely feels like a gimmick. But their first product,

German says, 2022-ish time frame, a high-end VR headset that will be very expensive and not sell well, but is like the ecosystem kickoff moment for Apple. I don't know.

I'm like, do you buy this? I buy that Apple would be working on this. The idea of Apple releasing, you know, a bad product, which this sounds like, like super expensive, super early on,

doesn't feel like Apple. like at least traditionally Apple's general philosophy is come late and do it better, not come early and do it worse. Like traditionally, like they are late to things and then they're like, ah, but we have done this super like foldables. They're not going to be the first with the foldable, but if they do, there is at least, you know, the implicit thing, you know, that Apple took its time and figured out how to do it really well and let other people make the mistakes. Like a giant VR headset that Apple is worried is going to be so heavy that it's, you know, using fabric and, you know, has a fan. Doesn't sound like the kind of like, you know, revolutionary AR product or VR product. Also just like, what would you use an Apple VR headset for at this point? And maybe that's to figure it out.

So I just bought a Quest 2. I'm like super high on it. Deeter knows them super high on it. I'm being quiet through this whole thing because everybody knows. Hopefully by now that my disclosure is my wife. for the team that makes the Oculus Quest. So get out of here, Dieter. Bye.

Are you playing Beat Saber? Beat Saber's great. I'm playing a little bit of Beat Saber. We bought it because I read the Kevin Roost article in The Times about an app called Supernatural, which is a like a workout app, which is basically like beat saber, but faster. And it's super fun. I think VirtCast listeners know that my wife, Becky, does not care for my gadget habits. she loves the Quest 2, loves Supernatural, is like doing guided meditations in Morocco and VR upstairs all the time. This product exists. It's complete. It works. It has an app ecosystem

supernatural. The workout app is $19 a month. Like a lot of people pay for it. That's a lot in a relative sense. Like this is not a blockbuster product. But this is like an operating division of Facebook that has an app store. I read this Apple VR news and it's like, do they not know that the Quest 2 exists? come out a year from now with a gigantic heavy product that has a fan that costs vastly more than the competition yeah it's like 299 on sale the quest 2 it has to do something that the quest 2 doesn't because the quest 2 is like a fairly underpowered qualcom processor running android like it very much is a display technology showcase like they made a 90 hertz display that doesn't give you motion sickness

underneath that is basically a slow Android phone. I can see how Apple stuff could slot in. You know, you have the games ecosystem. You could get people to make good VR games that, you know, work on VR iOS. You could get, you know, Apple music and do like, you know, concerts and stuff. You could do Apple Fitness. You know, stuff kind of naturally fits, sort of, if you look at it. But it's just like Apple's VR efforts, through no lack of trying an AR efforts,

through no lack of trying. Like, they show them every year, you know, the iPad has the lighter sensor, the iPhone's the lighter sensor. There's practically always an AR VR-VR demo at all of Apple's, you know, keynotes for the last four or five years. But there's no killer app yet for this. And like a lot of the killer VR stuff is like gaming stuff on really high-powered gaming PCs, which if Apple is going to try and compete with, it's Apple.

They don't compete on high-end gaming stuff because no one makes games. games for them. Yeah, I just, I think this is more of an AR headset than a VR headset. That's like kind of what I'm getting at is we know what like a at scale good enough VR headset looks like. There is no reason for anyone to have to wait a year, especially at Apple's like capability set. You don't need, they don't need another year of development to basically take the guts of an iPhone, put it into a thing and say it has an app store and called a day. Right. Like that's what the quest is. you need to do something way more that demands. Like one of the German's lines is the processors inside are faster than the M1 processors

and the new Mac. Why? They have to be doing something with all that horsepower. I think they're making an AR headset that's a VR headset, right? Like they can't solve the core problem of overlaying information onto glasses and making that product small. So they're just making a giant product with a bunch of cameras and like having you move through the world with a giant VR headset on.

That was my next question of if all that is, if that is true, what is the logic? Like, what's the driving motivation? Like, wear something that's bigger and heavier that has a fan. You're going to be walking around in your grocery store with your fan hat wearing away. You're wearing this, you know, weird thing. But you look at the, you look at the fruit and it'll tell you, you know, that apples are in season. As you're walking around this giant super heavy fan equipped, you know, super. supercomputer on your face.

AR augmented reality has to, has to work in reality is the thing. And if it's this big, heavy, you know, ARVR headset, like you've missed that point. Plus,

if we're going to be wearing masks for a very long time and they have to figure out how to stop the fogging issue, if you're out and about and wearing a thing, there's just things to take into account.

I'm just looking, like, if you just add up all of the compromises that are being described, by the thing could never come out, right? Like, yeah,

it's a year out. So we don't, know, but if you just look at all the compromises that are being described against the already existing refined scaled product, they have to be chasing some capability set that is way farther away from the existing good product, right? So the Quest 2 is an existing good product. They have to be chasing something that requires a fan and a battery and a high price. And that just has to be like real-time video processing in AR. And I think they're just trying to like goose their own ecosystem.

Like, they can't wait until the glasses are ready, because that's like six hardware generations away. Yeah. So that was, that was my thought, though, is, is the only way this makes sense to me as an early product of the sort that Apple doesn't do is that this is one where you have to have the content first. Like, you can release an iPhone and have it just be a very good, you know, feature phone, which effectively the original iPhone was.

It was a good feature phone with a browser. And you can get the apps later, but VR is so content-based. You need stuff to do and stuff to see in VR and AR arguably also. Like, if there's no good fitness program, if there's no beat saber, then you just have a screen with nothing to watch on it. Like a VR headset at the end of the day is a better screen. It's not really a better device. It's not a new type of device. So you need to have this stuff to put on it, and maybe this is how Apple Goose is that.

Which is what they've been trying to do with their phone ecosystem this whole time. And so maybe they just need to turn the corner. We'll see. It's out there. We got another year of rumors. All right. I missed Deeter. So we're going to take a break and come back so Deeter can talk to us.

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a. I. slash verge cast. We're back. Julia, we've made you wait patiently, but it's your time for

streaming chaos. I didn't get to make my AR joke, which was really good, which was that Apple can take advantage of the sea shanty moment and release

Apple Ard. That's pretty good. Thank you, Deter. Disclosure, but it's pretty good. I need to disclose my wife for a podcast. I need to say, you disclose that I like that pirate joke. That's my disclosure. Oh, my God. All right.

Julia, it's like we're in another earnings moment. We're hearing from some of these companies. There's new streaming services just left and right. Give me it just give me the state of the state. Quick rundown. Netflix has passed 203 million subscribers globally, which is pretty impressive. And this year to celebrate because when they passed one million, Reed Hastings had a meal at Denny's, but he could not go to Denny's this year. He's the host CEO. So he had Denny sent to him at his house so we could celebrate 200 million subscribers. Do we do we know what Denny's meal he got? Did he get a Grand Slam or what? I can't remember. I know he tweeted it. But yeah, that was a fun moment. So they passed 200 million. They're pretty happy. They're going to be, they're going to basically be out of debt by the end of

the year. They're going to be cash flow positive, which was something people did not expect for them. So Netflix is in a very good place for any doubters out there. Paramount. Plus, is about to launch. Paramount Plus is your current CBS All Access. But when Viacom and CBS remerged in 2019, time is, I can't remember, 2019, CBS got all their good brands back. So now they're relaunching their streaming service as Paramount Plus because they think Paramount's going to play better with the teens. Can I, I, I'm sorry to stop the rundown, but what's plus about it? What does Plus mean? There's Apple TV Plus. There's Paramount Plus, but Paramount, like I know Paramount Studios, but Like, what is the plus?

The plus is going to be news, sports, and then Viacom brand. So you're going to get Nickelodeon, BET, MTV, Comedy Central, a few other things. But what that actually means is more confusing because Viacom, CBS's entire plan is to, like, license out a bunch of their stuff, which is why if you look at Netflix top 10 weekly kind of rankings from Nielsen, the U.S., I can go on a whole rant about Nielsen ratings. But it's the only thing we have to look at. So if you look at it, every single week, Viacom CBS dominates. Like, it's what people are watching over and over again. And so they keep licensing to Netflix.

It's a lucrative deal for them. They license South Park to Warner Media, which is why it's on HBO Max. They license out a bunch of their other stuff. So what you will actually get on Paramount Plus exclusively, I do not know. We know you'll get a football game that air on CBS. They'll be on Paramount Plus. News from CBS will be on Paramount Plus. I would imagine I will put it out there

That Top Gun 2 will be on Paramount Plus The same day it's in theaters Or Top Gun Maverick, whatever their new movie is called That's how they're gonna get me Like I've done such a good job of not signing up for CBS All Access It's like the only one that hasn't gotten me yet And I gotta watch this Top Gun movie But then you can go back and watch Picard

The Star Trek stuff? Yeah Discoveries I haven't watched any of it yet but you know McCart's fine. Discovery's doing pretty good. Laura Dex. Oh, man.

Discovery almost got us this weekend. We were just like, man, we need another, like, unicorn chaser show. We need, like, something, like, that's just very non-stressful. It's like, oh, what we need is, like, home renovation shows. That's what we need. And there's only one place to watch home renovation shows, and it's on Discovery Channel. Discovery channels. It's like, that's it.

You cannot anywhere else. It was like, one guy on YouTube fixing a farmhouse, and everything else belongs to them. Do you know what's so funny? I was, I think Discovery Plus will do well. I think Netflix thinks so as well because they listed them as a competitor pretty early. They're like they're listed in Netflix's official letter to shareholders as a competitor. And it took them a while to list other companies. Like it took them a while to list Fortnite and YouTube and but they have.

And now it's like Discovery is entering. Can I just point something out here? I am pretty certain Hime was referencing Star Trek Discovery. That was. Yeah, it was great. Like 100%. And just because it's any. We started talking about a streaming service with the same name.

Like, that's what happened to us. What's a difference between a word and a song is what I want to know? Literally any word. And you're like, oh, that's a streaming service. It's $17 a month. I was like, how did we get here? And I realized what happened. Anyway, you're like, continue.

No, that was great. It's also like when you watch your parents have two separate conversations, but they're like going, like they're having a total normal one, but they're talking about two different things. Wait, wasn't it interesting plus and math? Max. Why does it, why is HBO a Max and not a plus? Okay. So the thing is I've had many conversations with like, C.L.L. Executive's about this exact thing where I'm like, why do you have a plus? Because it ruins it for us, CEO, like SEO wise. It's like we have to figure out if we're

adding plus or a plus sign. The idea is that so plus is this brand plus more is the idea. So if you were like Disney Plus, it's Disney and then some. The HBO Max thing was just a bad branding decision, in my opinion, should have been HBO plus or something without a plus. They could have gone the NBC route and just named it Peacock. CBS should have named their new streaming service All Access. They should have just left it as All Access. Take out Viacom, take out CBS, take out Paramount. These brands don't mean anything. But they had to get away from CBS's brand. Yeah, but I think the main issue was CBS. It wasn't the All Access. Although All Access is also an entertainment show, news show. So then there's that whole issue when you're Googling. SCO,

comes into play. I see. Okay, so the plus implies that there's more. So it's like, there's like an unstated thing that comes after it. It also implies you're paying for it. I'm calling it. In 2022, they're all going to switch to like dot, dot, dot. It's going to be HBO ellipsis.

HBO ellipsis is actually a great name. That would be fine. Can they just all pick one and just all use it? Well, so here's my like larger question on this. Netflix is like a very good app. Great app. Like they clearly have hired. software developers and designers and product managers.

Importantly, they appear to have hired user testers. Most of the other apps are very bad. Like, just down the line, Peacock does not, doesn't support rewinding and fast forwarding on my Apple TV. I don't know if that's true for everybody. But in this house, we don't rewind Peacock. Can't do it. It just can't be done.

I've tried with every remote we own. It's a one of the fact that the peacock, the bird, is unable physically to walk backwards. So it's a metaphor. It's to recreate that classic TV experience before watch the office like they did back in the day. I've tried opening the remote app on my phone. We've switched it like just every way we can. I would like to fast forward 10 minutes and we just can't. It seems like somebody would have caught that.

Walt Mossberg is constantly tweeting that the peacock app crashes on his iPad. Yeah, it's the worst. Like he's like firing bug reports. into the ether. But I think I have to disclose that Peacock is made by NBC, which is known by Comcast, which is an investor in box media, which I promise you that they didn't pay me to trash Peacock on HBO Max, just a pure mess. Like, just the messiest app. It's so upsetting because it's the best streaming service, like in terms of content. It's like got the best TV shows and movies, and it just does not work as an app. And if you're streaming service doesn't work as an app,

then it's not a service. It's a problem. And they, they, but it's impossible to find things. And they made the big deal about, uh, Wonder Woman in 4K. And like, kind of didn't work. Like, you had to watch 10 to 15 minutes of Wonder Woman in like 360P. And then maybe it would like buffer up. Like, just a bad app experience. If it makes you feel better, Neelai, Wonder Woman 1984 just doesn't work in general as a film.

It's, I mean, it is one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Like, now she's a kitty. Like, what? It's so confusing. My sister and I had like all too long text chains about whether cheetahs or apex predators after that movie. Like that's what we're like, this is the problem we've decided to solve today. But it's like a bad app.

Yeah. Like I don't trust that Viacom is going to deliver a good software experience. I just don't. No, I don't trust either. I mean, the one app that I keep coming back to over and over again because it's owned by one of the wealthiest companies in the world is Amazon Prime Video is, By far, the worst experience I've ever had in my life with anything. Like, trying to do anything on Amazon Prime Video is terrible.

And I've, like, spoken to sources who are like, they just don't care. Like, Amazon Prime Video exists because if you buy food, and then you're like, I'm going to watch a thing. You're going to watch a thing. But it's, if you're, Netflix takes the idea, and they say this a lot in their kind of corporate speak whenever they talk about it. They like the fact that they're headquartered both in Los Angeles and Silicon Valley. Like, that's a whole thing for them where they're like, we think a lot. about our product and we think a lot about our content and how we can melm the two. Others don't,

like, Disney bought Bamtech and was like, we're done. We're just going to launch it on here, and it's a whole issue. Hulu has had issues for a while, and Disney's like seemingly not invested in Hulu very much. It's bizarre. And again, like, the people are going to stay on your app if things are being recommended to them and make sense to them, and they are having an easy time with it and they enjoy using. And if not, there's way, there's more than enough services for people go and find something else. Well, we just always talked about, right, there's, the cycle here feels like all of these companies were wholesalers to cable companies. Yeah. So the cable companies buy the content. They would own the interface. That is obviously blown up with cord cutting.

Now they're all making their own apps and effectively paying Roku to be on their box. But at some point, aren't they all going to realize like, oh, we suck at making this app? Like, this app is holding people back from paying for our content because they cannot fast forward. I think there will be two things that happen. One is that they realize it's a lot of the entertainment companies that are figuring out how to exist in a tech-oriented space are going to realize way harder than it looks. I'm going to give them a much bigger appreciation for other companies that do it well. And the other thing is that they're going to realize that the recurring revenue they're

bringing in through monthly subscriptions or the advertisement or the additional ad money, they're kind of getting through targeted ads is not what they expected it to be, and they can make way more money licensing their IP. And then that will lead to a few big players who will come in and grab it and be like, well, Netflix doesn't need to buy any more product stuff, so it's just going to keep buying IP. I mean, their co-CEO, Ted Serando said that this week. Disney can come in because they'll be fine. We'll come in and buy product stuff that makes it better for them. Same with, you know, Apple and Amazon can come in and be like, well, we just want this to run better. We can buy someone has the better technology.

you for it. You know, actually, Amazon Prime video works better on Amazon Fire TV than it does in any of the Amazon TV apps. Like, it's like on their native platform, it's actually just a little bit better, but you're right. Does it rewind, though? It might rewind, I don't know. I'm watching Orphan Black, and it took the app like a week to figure out that I wasn't on

season eight, that I was on season two. Every time I'd open, it would be like, spoilers, ah, move the thing. The reason I really want to talk to, Julia, is so after Paramount Plus is now launching, like, we're done for a minute. Right? Like no more new services. Like Roku's buying Quibi stuff. Like the stage has been set. Like we know who the players are now. Right? Like are we done? Yes and no. I think we're done with the, I think we're done with the major players. The people who are, I mean, if you're going to get into it now, you're way too late. Like we were saying, I mean, two years ago, we were saying Disney's late to it. Right. But like, and they were like they were kind of late and they came to it and they figured it out very well. Congrats to all them. But so I think in terms of are you going to see a major, a mayor. American conglomerate come out and be like we're launching a streaming service? No.

Are you going to see a bunch of consolidation over the next three to four years? 100%. And is that going to change products? Is that going to lead to total revamps? Is that going to lead to potentially getting rid of streaming services and launching them into something else? Yes. Like, I think that's what's going to happen way more.

And more importantly, I think in countries where they can't expand into, you'll hear more about, you know, Disney partnering, perhaps maybe, with a Chinese company to get some form of Disney Plus into China. And then that's kind of a whole new thing, which gets into interesting territories for me when I like to think about it. But yeah, in terms of like for a U.S.-based audience specifically, are you going to have to, are there other streaming services you're going to have to be like, got to pay attention to this?

Probably not. So we shouldn't expect anything to go 90 so much as we should expect things to be absorbed. I don't know what the, like, how did that? What is that on the Go 90 scale? I don't know, like, how that works. It's 90. It's 90. If you are no longer running your service and now you work for Apple, you've gone 90.

A lot of them are taking bets that their brand is, will resonate paramount. And like, yeah, you can say that teens really want a making of the Godfather movie series. Like, sure, but I bet you if you ask them if they want that. And, you know, or like young adults, people who have money to spend or are watching a lot of things consistently. If they want to watch that or in second season of Bridgeton or the Mandalorian, they're going to go elsewhere. But a lot of them are expecting that because they have a kind of brand that makes sense, they can launch these streaming services, whether they're ad supported or not. And they will see the recurring revenue that others are. And I just don't think that's true.

There will be three or four that are fine. My bet is personally is that all access, HBO Max, Disney, Netflix are fine. Amazon and Apple are in a different boat because they're they have streaming services, but they're not the main product. Like they're doing their own thing and they've got like a trillion dollars. So it doesn't matter. We can just keep spending. And then the other ones, I think you'll start seeing them figure out.

They'll go back to licensing stuff and they'll kind of be like, we're just going to sell our stuff off that makes us more money. Yeah. I feel we haven't talked about Apple's service, which isn't. really a service. It's just like it feels like some shows you can buy that show up on the Apple TV. They extended the free trial for like another six months again, which goes to show the confidence that happened. The Apple TV interface, it's what we use. It's what we have. Just one of the most upside down. Like it's getting it the core ideas they had for that box are getting farther and

farther away from reality. They need to figure that out. Um, especially if like us, you watch a lot TV on YouTube TV because the Apple TV does not, it does not want to acknowledge that YouTube TV exists. Yeah, just spend the 80 bucks or whatever it is and just buy a Chrome, Chromecast TV with Google TV. Just like, just try it. It's so good. It's the best one. And it's pink.

So you want me to impulsively buy a gadget. The remote has real buttons. And if the thing, if you hate it, then you've, then like, you still just have a good Chromecast that does 4K attached to your TV and you haven't lost. One of, you know, one of the, I'm an older, married man now. If you're going to mess with that TV interface, you're taking, you're taking the whole family dynamic into your hands. You've got to be very careful with this. It's so much better, though. The physical buttons are like what's sold it for me, honestly, because like so many times I've fallen

asleep on an Apple TV remote and then it's just in chaos. It's like, it's just so sensitive. But the bigger story, I think it's going to happen, which is super interesting, is now that the theatrical window is almost non-existent, right? So the limit the period. of exclusivity a movie had to play in theaters before it could end up anywhere. We're going to see a lot of changes happening with streaming services. Like, for example, I think, so Christopher Nolan is apparently very unhappy with WarnerMedia at Warner Brothers, and he's looking to leave and do his movie somewhere else, which is very big news. And if I was Apple and I had the money to finance his movies and kind of give him what he wants,

which is a bit of a theatrical play, and then be the exclusive digital home to Christopher Nolan movies. Like, that's not a bad bet if I'm Apple. And I think we're going to start to see a lot more of that type of stuff. You'll see Netflix kind of swing in and Netflix finally realize like, hey, if everyone's getting this shortened window deal, like we're more than happy to put movies in theaters like for three weeks. That's fine. And then now they are a big player in the theatrical space.

That's going to be a really interesting kind of change and shift. And we'll see more movies premiere simultaneously on streaming services, as they do in theaters, around the world. And it'll be fun. It'll be fun to see how people respond to that because theaters are not going to die, But I think now there's, there's no going back from this moment. It's like people want options. If Apple gets exclusivity to Nolan films, I just want to be in the room when the home pod engineers are forced to sit with him and tune the audio to his movies.

I want to sit in the room and they have the fight over whether he's going to have Atmos or not because Nolan famously won't use Atmos. But he won't use it because he's like, I need the sound mix to be perfect. And then you like listen to his movies and it's like, no one can understand anything. As Christopher Nolan intended. You can't tell if the dialogue is bad if you can't hear it. I think if you're Apple and your entire brand is we create things for artists to create, which every commercial reminds me that is what they're supposed to do. Like being the home of talent that require very expensive movies like Martin Scorsese,

like Chris for Nolan, who need a lot of money. At a time when studios are like, what Paramount, you know, Paramount's like, well, I don't know if I can afford to make a Nolan movie and then not have ROI guaranteed. Like, nope, it's why Disney's making a bunch of Marvel movies. It's like pretty sure we're guaranteed ROI. It's fine. You go to a place like a Netflix, an Apple or Amazon who are like, fine. We don't care. It's like we just want talent.

And I think that's going to be an interesting shift when things move away from Warner and Paramount and Sony to an extent. All I'm saying is that I watch Tenet with captions. Just putting that energy out in the world. But like when I sat down, I was like, okay, cinema experience, light up the home theater. Like, we're doing it. And then like five minutes in, I was like, boop. I don't know what they're saying. It was great.

All right, we've gone way too long. I just want to call out one story. It's called A Visit from the Zune Squad. Julie, I think that was your headline? No, I think that was Kevin's headline. Well, Luke Winky as a freelancer, wrote for us about the, extremely hardcore community of diehard Zune fans who still use and listen to their Zunes. If you're a VergeCast fan of the stories, it was made for you.

I'm very, very happy to keep the Zoon dream alive. And I will tell you that Joanna Stern is so mad at us that she's not in the Zune story. Oh no. Turns out, diehard Zune fan, Joanna Stern. She's like texting at Luke. She's like tweeting at Luke. Like, you didn't include this, this, and this in your Zune story. And he's like, I'm done now.

This is a one-time thing. The Zoom HD is great. And I'm still mad that someone robbed my Zoom collection in college. Well, if that person's out there. That's the personal essay follow we need on the verge. I want that story. Heim's coming for you. All right, we got to wrap this up.

You can tweet at us. We love hearing from you. Deeter is at Backlon. Heim is at Seagartenberg. Julia is at Loudmouth. Julia, I'm at Reckless. Tweet us. We want to hear from you.

Decoder this week was with Adam from Instagram. We got a good one coming up. Marquez Brownlee. Who? I didn't ask me about technology. I asked about the business of being a YouTuber.

So that's coming up on Decoder very soon. And that's it. We'll be back next week with more Virchcast. It's a whole, it's a new day in America, but we're also at home. So it very much feels like the same day in America, but it's a new day in America. That's it.

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