The Vergecast - iOS14 public beta is released, Google’s Pixel 3A is discontinued, and Samsung's event is coming soon

Episode Date: July 10, 2020

Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, and Dan Seifert discuss Apple's iOS14 public beta, the future of Google's phones, and what to expect at Samsung's next hardware event. Stories discussed this week: This isn���t a COVID-19 wave — it’s a tsunami Tracing the link between your phone and the next pandemic Doctors are better at treating COVID-19 patients now than they were in March After the pandemic, doctors want their new robot helpers to stay Facebook and Instagram will remind people to wear face masks White YouTube creators struggle to address past use of racist characters Everything that the big social networks banned this week, ranked Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Starbucks, Target, Unilever, Verizon: all the companies pulling ads from Facebook Facebook auditors call out Mark Zuckerberg for ‘vexing and heartbreaking decisions’ iOS 14’s public beta is rolling out today iOS and iPadOS 14 public beta preview: something for everybody Reddit says it’s fixing code in its iOS app that copied clipboard contents LinkedIn says it will stop repeatedly copying iOS clipboard Apple promises to support Thunderbolt on its new ARM Macs Intel’s Thunderbolt 4 standard looks to raise the bar for USB-C devices Google’s Pixel 3A is discontinued, but these retailers are still selling it Samsung reportedly won’t include chargers with some phones starting next year Samsung needs a splashy product for its splashy product launch Mysterious new Samsung wearable revealed in FCC filings Logitech is already giving up on its Alexa-powered Harmony remote control Google’s upcoming Nest speaker revealed in regulatory filing BMW is going all-in on in-car microtransactions A weakened version of the EARN IT Act advances out of committee Fading Light: the story of Magic Leap’s lost mixed reality magnum opus I built my own camera with a Raspberry Pi 4 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week on the Vergecast, Dan Sievert joins us. We talk about iOS 14. It's in public beta now. What's going on with Thunderbolt and new RMAX? Talk about the Pixel 3A. It's a good time coming up on the Vergecast now. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped spreadsheets,

Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog. That's where Retool comes in. Build custom internal tools. just by describing what you need. Prompt something like, build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data.

And Retool actually builds it on your company's data in your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to Retool.com slash Verchcast. We all need to retool how we build software. What's up, y'all. I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard,

host and 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 British Cast. The flagship podcast of the Vox Media Empire. That feels good.

Yeah, no one felt good. I'm your friend. Dieterbone is here. I'm your mate. Tansiefer just walked out. I had to close the door. I had to close the door. I had to make sure the office door is closed

so he could avoid a BBC situation here. I see. With the children. Yes. Truly America's workplace culture has been reshaved by children running in and out of frames on Zoom.

It's good. I think it's a very healthy pandemic outcome. I got put on blast today by famous sci-fi author John Scalzi for having cat hair on my shirt during a video. There was like three hairs, but apparently that was enough to merit a tweet from

John Scalzy about me. I like the name. notion that, you know, we're all revealing our true selves at home. Yeah. And some of the artifice over the workplace is gone. That said, the next time I go on CNBC, I'm pretty sure I'm going to put my hair in a ponytail. It's almost that long. And I'm, I'm about to turn the corner on letting the beer just go fully insane. Oh, yeah. That's great. Do it. Well, I'm in the, you know, he might as well just go for it. Anyhow. As always, there's a bunch of techniques talk about this week. iOS 14, the public beta is rolling out.

Deeters are using it. There's lots to talk about with that. iPadOS, all of Apple's 95 OS's. Got some news on the Apple Silicon Macs are coming. There's a much of sort of Android news talk about. There's a Samsung event happening. And there's a grab bag of gadget news. But before we get into all of that, as usual, I want to start.

But first of off, we took last week off for the 4th, happy 4th of July. I hope you didn't miss us too much. But so there's been a lot of sort of virus news, racial justice. news. Again, I've been saying this every week. Those are the two biggest stories of our time. You're going to, it's going to be 10 years from now. What you're going to remember from the summer of 2020, I promise you is not that the Reddit app was copying from the clipboard every couple of minutes. You're going to remember it was the pandemic and Black Lives matter, which appears to be the largest protest movement in American history. So I want to update on those stories real quick and we can get to the gadget stuff. Again, as I say every week, I know people come to us for a little bit of distance from those big stories. But we have a huge team. that is working on that stuff. Those stories are, I'm telling you that this is the most formative moment of most of our lives. So I want to point out that we're covering that stuff.

I want to shout out our team for that coverage. So on the virus, it is 17 weeks. I think it's 17. Sure. 17 weeks since Trump held up the, or well, since Dr. Burks held up the flowchart next to Trump, they were on days together saying that there would be a nationwide testing apparatus where you'd go to a website, you know, you know what I'm talking about. 5,000 Google engineers. we're going to make it pixel perfect. It got smaller? Four Google engineers. I think if four of them had been assigned to it, it might actually have been made by now.

Yeah, right. But obviously, you've been listening, you know that Dr. Berks held up the flowchart. Trump stood next to it. They promised this testing apparatus that does not exist. Some states have reasonable testing systems. Verily, which is the part of alphabet next to Google, has rolled that out in a much smaller scale than you think. But tests in this country are not happening. a coordinated nationwide way, and there's actually a delay in test results right now.

The testing system is backed up overall. That is sitting right next to enormous surge in cases, particularly in the sunbelt. All this is bad. This problem is not getting solved until there is a coordinated testing and tracing apparatus. It's just not here. That leads into some of our coverage. Meredith Griggs or Science Center wrote about how this isn't just a wave. It's a tsunami.

Actually, on that story in particular, go read it, because you might just think, oh, that's That's a cute headline. It must be a take. But the metaphor for how you think about what the rate of cases are actually matters in how we react to it as a society. Like if you don't think of it as a way, but you think of a tsunami, that, like, that metaphor leads to different reactions. And, like, it's actually really important. No, I think everybody should read it. I think that the discrepancy in just how bad it's getting in the ways to fix it and the way that we're talking about it, which is incredibly politicized, is very dangerous. So read that story.

On sort of the other side of it, Nicole Wetzman wrote about how doctors are getting better at treating COVID-19 patients, and they were at the beginning of the outbreak in March. There's a lot of, I think, conversation about how the overall spike in cases has not been followed by a corresponding increase in deaths. Deaths are lagging. They happen weeks after the spike in cases, so there's just a lot of wait and see there. But then there's also this other factor, which is, as the virus takes over the country in the world, We're learning more about it. We're getting better at treating it. So that's a really interesting story.

James Vincent wrote about how doctors are using more robotics in hospitals and in their practices. After the pandemic, the doctors think that the robotics are going to basically change medicine. That's a really interesting story. And then lastly, on sort of the platform side of the fence, Facebook and Instagram, we're going to start reminding people to wear masks. I now on this podcast, I'm going to remind you to wear a mask. There are many cool masks out there. Just buy one. Wear a bandana.

Just please do it for me. because I would like to travel again soon. It's just an idea that I have about going places. Or ever. Yeah, it'd be great. So all that coverage is there. Like I said, it's the biggest story of our time. The other big story of our time is the racial justice movement that's happening

in this country. We're actually going to talk to Rashad Robinson, who's the head of color of change, which is one of the groups organizing the Facebook boycott. As we're recording this, I'm going to talk to him tomorrow. By the time you're listening to him, I will likely have talked to him. The social media platforms are just under intense pressure. So Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Starbucks, Target, Unilever, Verizon, they've all pulled ads from Facebook. They've paused ads on other social media platforms.

Casey and Zilli are keeping track of all the policy changes and all the bans that are happening in platforms like Reddit and Facebook and Twitter, Snapchat. And then on the creator side of the fence, Julia Alexander wrote a great piece about how white YouTube creators are struggling to address their past use of very racist characters in their videos. That is just a reckoning that is playing out across every social media platform. form. And that is all the background context for a civil rights audit that was issued by Facebook this week. Did you read about it in the interface? So Casey's going to go into depth on it. But Facebook basically set up its own team to support a civil rights audit. It took two years. It came out. You can read it. It's out in public. They referred to some of Mark Zuckerberg's moderation decisions as a vexing and heartbreaking. And then what Casey pointed out to me as we were

talking about it today was it was an audit. It took. It took. two years, it was supported internally by a dedicated team at Facebook, had the support of Cheryl Sandberg, the CEO of Facebook, and they were only able to look at Facebook, the blue app. They did not have time or resources to also look at Instagram and WhatsApp, which is just one more little checkmark in the argument of, is this thing too big? If you have two years and all this dedicated support and you can only look at one corner of the empire, is that thing too big. So Casey's going to make that argument in the interface.

You should go read it. But those are the two biggest stories. I really just want to keep reminding people. Our team is laser focused on them. We are constantly covering him. We're constantly talking about it. But I know you come to us for a break and to talk about some tech news. So let's talk about some tech news.

Dieter. Now we will proceed with the section of the Vergecast, which is 45 minutes of me complaining about the clock app on iOS. I'm very ready for this. So iOS 14 is out. The public beta. The iOS 14 public beta is rolling out now. Dieter, you've had sort of the private beta.

Yeah, the developer beta. But that's on beta 2 at this moment. So the public beta 1 is probably about the equivalent of the developer beta 2 if you're paying attention to that stuff. And the only thing to note is that they have once again failed to take Deeter's feature suggestion into account. The inside baseball. Okay, so the thing here is, in order to change the time on an alarm in the clock app on iOS, you need to tap the edit button and then tap the time.

You can swipe to delete them, but you can't just tap them to open up the time to change the thing. They also got rid of the little dialy dial to change times and dates. That's interesting. You type them in on a pad like normal. Anyway, the inside story here is like two, three years ago, Neli and I were in a room with a bunch of Apple engineers for like, ask us anything on background.

Like, what do you want to know? We've had a long day of like learning about the new version of Mac and iOS and whatever. And what's left? What didn't we cover? What do you want to know? And I, like, popped off about this issue for a good 45 seconds, followed by utter silence from everybody in the room.

It's like, why is he so mad? Yeah. It was truly one of those, like, it was the end of a very long day. Yeah. And I think we had just been like, we hadn't eaten. But it's now that you did it, you're committed to it. Yeah, no, it's part of my being. Just so I understand this entirely.

So unlike everyone else, Deeter, everyone else that uses the clock app for alarms just has like endless alarms that they've set, probably using Siri. And it's just like it's just like endless like list of alarms. And they just make a new one every single time. You want to be able to use one of them and just change it by 10 minutes. Just tap on the time and change it. It's how it works on the Apple Watch, by the way. So it turns out though that you can just say Siri with the wake word before Siri and ask her to delete. all of your alarms, and then that, like, will do it.

So, like, the solution for this is to know the secret password that you say to the digital assistant. I have never opened the clock. Well, when the iPhone first came out, I think I opened the clock at once. But since Siri has come out, I have never opened that app. The only thing I use Siri for is setting alarms and timers. When I was editing Dieter's script for the video for this iOS 14 piece, I actually had to go open the clock app to figure out what he was talking about.

I was so mad about it. Anyway, so we should actually talk about the operating systems and not the clock app. I don't know. I think this is riveting radio. All the people trapped in their homes are like, yes, this is the break from the nonstop swell of depressing news I've been waiting for. Okay, so iOS and iPadOS. The way that I tried to break it down is each one of these platforms has like a big headline flagship feature. and then there's a few app features,

and then there's like a million other features. And the story I made up in my head, and I put this in the piece today, is like, I just imagine that after WWDC last year, Craig Federigi got in room. I was like, wow, that was exciting, everybody. What do you want us to do next year? And like, this one guy in the back,

it's like, can I finally finish this to ship this default apps thing that's been sitting on the shelf for three years? And Craig was like, you know what? Sure. And then there was just chaos as everybody demanded to be able to ship their app that's been sitting on the shell for the past three years. And that is iOS 14. So the default apps thing, it's big news that they buried in a slide in a corner of a slide. But no apps support it yet, right?

So you can't try it. You need the third party apps have to like be updated to support it. And so I haven't had a chance to try it yet. But what is the other stuff that feels grabbaggy to? There's other stuff like you can add captions to photos, which seems silly. but it's a big deal because it means you can search for stuff. Like you can search for that haircut picture that you need when you get to go to the barber again. They added picture and picture to the iPhone.

Finally, they cleaned up the search stuff on both iOS and iPadOS so that it is more universal and searches across everything. And also remembers that the web exists and you can like hit enter and search something on the web. I mean, there's mentions, there's new emoji, there's bike directions. There's new ways for like favorites. to show up in home controls in the control center out of the home app and then the home house is making other suggestions. There's web page translation Safari. There's a bunch of privacy stuff, which maybe is like a bigger thing, but it still like

feels a little grab baggy. Spatial audio for iPod, AirPods. Okay. Does it work? I don't know. I haven't tried it. That in particular I didn't get to. Game Center got updated.

Game Center still exists. I mean, it just goes on. and on like that. Like, they improved the shot to shot performance inside the camera app. So you have to wait less time for the photos to get saved. That's pretty cool. Yeah. The big change, like the big visual change is the new home screen and widgets.

Right. I feel like you have a lot of thoughts about widgets. So, like, it all bleeds into each other because it's not just that you can put widgets anywhere you want on the home screen. It's that it's an entirely brand new widgeting system that uses Swift UI and developers are going to have to remake their widgets to work with this new system. And this new system, by the way, also works on the iPad and MacOS. So they've remade their entire widgeting system to be cross-platform across all of their major

platforms, except I guess Apple Watch. Although, for all we know, this is based off Apple Watch tech because sometimes that's randomly the story with Apple stuff. So it's fine. It's interesting. You can like, they like, they don't take up a ton of battery. The question for me is like, you've done this thing that feels a little bit cross-platform, but there are like other things that feel like are going to be cross-platform real soon,

like iOS apps running natively on the Mac. At some point, people are going to start demanding, like clear connections and syncing between those things. And I don't know how long that's going to be. The thing about the widgets that gets me, because, right, they're written in Swift UI, which is like Apple's big carrot to get developers to use Swift UI.

Like most apps are not written in Swift or Swift UI. You have an iPhone app. You want to make a widget. Okay, you got to go get your feet wet. with this language. That makes sense. It's a good carrot. I'm just saying I love dashboard on MacLS. They took it out of Catalina. Dashboard widgets were written in JavaScript and HTML. So they took them out and they added widgets back into the operating system in Apple's own, like you see the move they did there. It's a real Apple move. If we're talking about web hostile moves,

oh boy. What do we do? You know exactly what you just did, Eli. You were setting a up that angle. So obviously. I mean, it's instinctive at this point. But go ahead, Deeter. Oh, man. So there's a, there's a new thing in Safari across all these platforms that gives you a privacy report, which is great. And Apple has this thing called intelligent tracking prevention. It tells you how many trackers were prevented, not blocked, but prevented. And I think we talked about this on the Verstcast before. Like, there's a number and you can't do anything with the number other than be unhappy about the number. There's also, I don't know if this is a web thing, but the apps now have to ask for permission to enable certain types of tracking, right?

Certain types of ad tracking when you, like, run the app or when, you know, the first time it tries to track you or whatever. And so everyone is just going to straight up say no to that. Why would anybody say, yeah, sure, go ahead and track me. That sounds great. And that pushes apps and pushes the app economy more towards paying, getting Apple, it's cut, it's 30% cut to get paid in a way. that is interesting, I think. That's a bit of a stretch, but, like, you can kind of see it. Apple definitely knows what the incentives are on the platform and tries to nudge developers

at a direction. You know, the direction that Apple's tried to nudge the ecosystem, if you look at it from, like, an ethical moral, like, they're taking an ethical moral stand as a company. It's like, yep, cool, more privacy. But their ethical moral stand also dovetails really nicely with the way that Apple makes services money. in the same way that Google's quote-unquote ethical moral stand about like let's slow down and not change the web too fast and like we got to not block cookies on Chrome right now because it'll break too many things just happens to dovetail with their business model. So there's a whole lot of like I believe you that you're taking an ethical stand, but I also recognize that your ethical stand makes your company more money.

Yeah, I mean, the web is Google's revenue model. I don't think we say it enough. Google is the only company that is monetized the web at scale. at scale. Sure. There's a little bit of Facebook and a little bit of Amazon, but like the web existing and operating just makes money for Google. The way most people like bounce around the web is through Google search and that sends them to a bunch of websites and Google has ads all over Google search and then sends it to a bunch of websites and then Google owns the ad serving platform. They own the ad auction platform. They like, does money. Money and web pages is made by Google.

And to be clear, the way that Google monetizes Android is the web, right? Like they have the service to stuff and the App Store stuff that Apple does. But Android exists as a free product and they give it away to everybody because then they dump Google Play Services on it and they know people can use crime. And like that was always. So every swipe that Apple can take at the web, I think can fairly also be interpreted as a swipe at Google. So here's another example. This is App Clips.

So Android actually has something like this called Instant Apps. I suspect it will be slightly more popular on the iPhone, although who knows. The idea is the apps are temporary. they're less than 10 mags, they're easy to install, and then they go away after 30 days. And it's for stuff like riding a scooter that you want to rent,

or it's some other like temporary, paying a parking meter, you know, buying a thing at a chicken restaurant because they don't want to use like Apple Pay and they make you use the app. Some small thing where you don't want to happen. What kind of chicken restaurants are you going to?

I don't know, man. Imagine it's got like an incredible menu. What chicken restaurant in America right now has an app? What non-chain? Oh, well, it's possible. I'm guessing Chick-fil-A has an app. Fine.

What non-chain... If you have a local family chicken restaurant and it's got a high-end app and they've got enough dedicated development resources to make an app clip, I want to talk to that restaurant. Yeah. You send them my way.

Continue. Okay. But there's a world in which everything that an app clip does could just be handled by a web app. If you think about it, app clips are like basically the equivalent of a brown tab, but in app form, right? But Apple explicitly says, no, we don't believe that the web and web pages and web apps

should be allowed to do things with the hardware of the phone. They should not be allowed to know that Bluetooth exists. They should, like, locations should be very, very carefully protected. They should not have access to, you know, the camera or to, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so there's just a bunch of stuff that can only be done by an app on Apple's platforms that in theory, if they wanted to put that effort into adding it, adding support for those sort of APIs into Safari in a secure way they could, they just fundamentally believe that that is going to break the web and it's impossible and it'll lead to chaos. Which, again, is another like, I see the principled stand you're taking, but I can't help but notice that principled stand leads to more apps on the app store that may or may not give Apple a 30% cut.

Yeah, you know, I'm really high on app clips. I would like it to be a wider spread thing. But, you know, in the before time, I would like walk around New York City and I would see City bikes. And I'd be like, man, one day I'm going to try those out. And then I would think to myself, I have to download City Bike's garbage app. I have to give it my credit card. Like, I'm never going to ride this bike. I'm just thinking of all the parking apps I have on my phone for that exact reason.

I go to one place and I need to pay for parking. And I had to download this random app and give them a credit card and all that. stuff and I used it like once a year. Yeah, but you can't take it off your phone because it's like, no. You know, it's like hoarding cables. Like, why do I still have like giant USBA printer cables in my house? Because what if I get a new printer and it doesn't come with the cable? It's in my mind.

But like, I don't know, taxis in New York or another thing. Like every... I've got so many taxi apps from my trips to New York. Curb, Arrow, something else. There's like five of them. And then they all... And this is just like... again, nostalgia for the before time.

Taxi drivers would always tell me like Apple Pay doesn't work when there be an Apple Pay logo on the thing because they were trying to get me to use the app. All that stuff should be app clips. All that stuff should be wave your phone and some exchange of code happens. And it's like here's the API to pay us. And we're going to put up in a custom interface. I totally buy that that's better than go to a website. But I mean, you could wave the phone and it could do the same thing through web technology.

And that would mean that the taxi. company or the chicken restaurant would just need to make a web app that would work on Android and iOS. With app clips and instant apps, they now need to develop two completely different apps for two completely different platforms in order to support their customers. But Google, what's Google's version of this? Instant apps. It's mostly used to like, like, scam people into installing some, you know, pay-to-play game.

Not to be mean, but I'm not seeing a ton of uptake on instant apps. Right. Instant apps is one of those, like, You can download half an app without installing it over the web and monkey around with it, and then you're done and move on. App clips is like you wave your phone and like one-third of the UI appears as a one-time-use app, right? No, well, I mean, but it still shows up in your app library with a little dotted line around it. It's a little mini version of the app.

They're actually the identical same thing. Apple just presented their version of it in a more compelling way because they're like, they got to put it next to the idea of a rentable electric scooter, which didn't really. it wasn't a thing when Google introduced instant apps. I was going to say, it's like the instant apps, if I remember correctly, it was pitched as a very similar thing. Like, you'd be at a restaurant and you want to, like, place an order. So, like, the instant app for the restaurant is instantly available.

You use it. You do your thing. You move on. In the real world, I don't think I've ever actually encountered an instant app since they've come out. We've got to find this chicken restaurant. It's the only way to solve this problem. Well, it's interesting that almost all these use cases are, I need to pay for something, which is theoretically also solved by the payment technology is built in all of

these phones. But all these sites want, all these companies would like to collect a little bit of user data from you, right? Yeah. And that, like, that tension, I think Apple has not resolved. But the thing that really gets me about it is, like, I don't know, 10 years ago, making fun of QR codes was like the thing to do. And now we're just like fully in a world, we're like, oh, QR codes are everywhere and we use them all the time and they're extremely handy. And Apple has now invented its own QR code. Its own custom QR code. Come on.

Of course they have. I get Matt, when I have to log into a TV app and they have, and they make me type the URL and send up presenting the QR code on a screen of my TV. I'm always like, why don't you use a QR code? I'm like, how far have I fallen? This is that I have, I have emotions about the lack of a QR code in the Paramount Networks app. Like, what happened to me in this life? Man, next up, you're going to be asking for.

hour blasters. I hate you. All right, what else is happening? I'm just moving on. I'm not even engaging that with you. Fair. All the cool home screen shit doesn't go on to the iPad.

Can someone explain that to me? Womp, womp. I think, you have this in your write-up that they didn't mess with the iPad windowing stuff. Yeah. Right?

They sort of left it alone. It's still not good. Right? And I think on the, I mean, it's the same as before, which is not good. So I feel very confident and saying it's still not good because it's the same. I think there's a larger rethink of iPad windowing home screen coming.

Oh, so that'll come when they add a touchscreen to the Mac. They'll also revamp the iPad. Is that what you're thinking? Yeah. So, for example, what if you put out an iPad that was effectively a laptop running macOS and it had widgets on it and ran iPad apps that seems like a train that is just starting to leave that station, right? Like, I think all of that is just, it's coming in a way that it's hard to discern right now, but why would you add widgets and new interactions to this home screen?

Yeah. When you might be changing in a bigger way. Like, that is the outstanding question for the iPad, right? Is what does this thing look like when our Macs that can run iPad apps are going to sit right next to it? Yeah. And I think they just sort of left it alone because that, that question is going to lead to another universe of questions. and it's better solved holistically than it in pieces. Yeah, I think that makes sense.

But, you know, like, it's interesting. Like, the Mac has a cut at this thing. They've got the app launcher, which nobody ever uses, but I sometimes do. And then the iPhone's got the app library. And then the iPad just doesn't get any sort of, like, catch-all place for all your apps go. It still just has, like, the classic home screen. And there are the new widgets, but they still live in that, like, permanent sidebar. You can't interspers them.

So I think you're right. They just, like, wanted to leave it alone because they're doing something else bigger later. I hope. Well, the iPhone is also, I mean, if you just think about the size of the markets, the iPhone is this massive market. More people have used it. More people are used to it. You can roll out this kind of change and say, okay, this is a big change in how you use your phone. The iPad to be used in this way, the iPad Pro is only two cycles in, right?

Of this particular windowing style, this particular, it's a, it's not a computer, it's a computer, whatever. Just watch one of Dieter's many processor videos. It's something. It's a type of computer. But it's only like two generations into this use case. Yeah. So I think it's harder to roll out change and then change it again when you don't have this mass of people who are like, this is how an iPad works.

And a whole bunch of people, probably like anybody with a child, mostly uses an iPad as like a YouTube kids consumption device. And adding more complexity that home screen is like even more sideways. Sure. But we're talking about putting a widget, somewhere else on a screen. It's not like a completely overhauled home screen here. And I don't understand why that isn't possible on the iPad. And as it is like you were saying with like, if you got kids using the iPad or whatever, the changes on the iPhone can be completely ignored in iOS 14.

You don't have to use widgets. You don't have to use the app library. You can install iOS 14 and still have your seven home screens full of apps and completely ignore those features. I mean, I think for the people that are using the iPad as a laptop and as a laptop and as a, computer and things like that, they would be happy to move a widget to a different spot and clean up their home screen into some semi terribly organized folders and what have you. But I don't know. Yeah, but like I think Apple is stuck with the, the iPad is comparatively feature poor, right, as a laptop replacement.

And I don't mean that as like, it's just like literally comparatively. Like if you get a Windows laptop, you can customize it in any way that you want. Right. Most, if you get a Mac laptop, basically any way that you want. An iPad is like not that thing. So if you add customization features to it and you know maybe in a year, we're going to blow all of this up, you're taking people that you're already asking, adapt your workflow to this other kind of computer and that all of that work and all that sort of like cognitive reorienting

the Dieter talks about it's required to use an iPad is not worth it. Right. And I think Apple is better at saying this adaptation, this effort will be worth. it for a long time. And I think that's why they're like, we're not going to give you a little bit more to this comparatively limited device. We're going to change a lot. And that just seems like why you would limit it. It seems like the, if you know an ARMAC that's running iPad apps is coming, something else has to happen to the iPad, right? And that something else might be way more worth it in terms of a change than like, now you can move a widget here. And then when we change it for real,

someone's going to get mad at us that their widget was moved yet again. Like, just whatever, screw it. It's like, it's Android notifications, right? They just, they don't want to deal with that. Yeah, and it's better to make people, I mean, Apple's strategy of this has always been very clever. It's better to make people demand something for a year and then like triumphantly present it to them. Yeah. Right?

And be like, you ask for it. It's widgets on the home screen. Introducing the iPad desktop. It'll be an even bigger deal if you make people wait for 10 years like they always. multi-user on the iPad, because I think that must be the plan. There's a full 10 years of us demanding it, and then they'll give it to us. You got another 10 to wait, my friend. Oh, my God.

Tell me about this compact UI. So you've been using it. And the thing that has struck me the most is like the Siri Compact UI, the phone notification stuff, like, they're making an effort to make this a more multitasking operating system. Picture and picture. Like, the idea that your phone can do two things at once is like, it is finally arrived as an idea on the iPhone.

Speaking of things they made you wait for. Dan, do you want to take this one? Because I might explode. I think you got it. It has arrived as an idea. You are correct. It is not arrived as a reality because it's like it's just a it might as well be full screen, but you can like see behind it.

It's basically just a transparency level. They just took it from like 90 to zero, right? you can't have it persist there on the screen and do other stuff. The picture and picture is the only one. The picture and picture does persist, and you can have two different active elements at once. But, like, for example, it's really interesting that Apple, even on their Macs models of the iPhone,

have resisted the temptation to offer split-screen apps. I'm sure that nobody actually uses it on Android, except for the four people they're going to tweet at me about it. How dare you? Which is fair. But it's interesting that they haven't. But I don't know what exactly I would want to have multiple things going on the screen beyond picture and picture. Like even the Google Assistant doesn't really let you do this, but you can't do a split screen if you want.

But there is a sort of sense that Siri should know it's happening on the screen and do stuff with it and vice versa. And like there's no interaction happening there. And I would love to see that. But I think for this first iteration, the main thing that they did was create a pretty blue bubble for Siri. I mean, there's a part of me that. that loves this. First of all, you have to imagine a lot of things for this to be great. Ceri has to be good. It has to be capable across multiple domains and apps. But imagine all the things. It's got 20 times more facts, Deli. It's so many more facts. But I love the idea that

you're using your phone and you ask a quick question and in parallel simultaneously with whatever you're doing, Siri like does a thing, right? Like that's a cool idea. And that's what this looks like in the screenshots. I think it's going to be very weird. for people to find out that it's not, and then it goes away. And, you know, like, we have the answer from Apple, which was, I think they said it to John Gruber on his podcast. Craig Federer, you said, like, we didn't want you to ask Siri something and then have to press a button to make it go away. Yeah.

Which is defensible, but I think it's one of those things that is absolutely defensible for a group of product managers. But, like, in the real world, people are going to be like, why doesn't this stay here? I accidentally made it go away. I think that, we'll see. We'll see how it goes. What is your experience with it like? It's just Siri, but nicer looking.

It's fine. It's whatever. This may be the same story as the iPad, but in reverse. They want to get there, but they just didn't want to do it the first year. They want to see how it goes, see how people react to it, and then they'll start. They didn't have time to finish the thing that they actually want to make, so they just made the first step of it. Yeah. And then just a few more things to talk about. There is this thing that is happening that is very entertaining to me, which is it turns out a lot of apps hit your clipboard a lot. So with every version of iOS, Apple's adding on more and more warning security features. Actually, I appreciate it. I think the camera and microphone indicators are going to be super interesting. They're great. It will absolutely not stop anyone from believing that Instagram is listening to you. It won't. But they're there. So I think that's really cool.

I actually do think the Safari tracking stuff is interesting. You know, awareness is the first step, all that sort of thing. But there's a new one where it tells you that an app hits your clipboard. The warning is like LinkedIn copied from YouTube, right? So like YouTube drops something on your clipboard and LinkedIn picked it up so you can see the flow of data. And it turns out, and many apps have a good reason to do it, but it turns out a lot of apps hit your clipboard all the time.

And so LinkedIn, Reddit, TikTok, like so many apps have popped up warnings for iOS 14 users because like every keystroke they check the clipboard. Yeah. And they've all had to walk back like security concerns. They've all said it's a bug. But it turns out they just got caught, which is. You think so? You think they just got caught, really?

I think they just got caught. I think like they got caught in the sense that there are legitimate reasons. So one of the reasons is you've got a link in your clipboard and they're checking to see if there's a link there so they can generate a preview. Yeah. So when you hit paste, there's a preview. That's a totally legitimate reason. There's a new way to do that that won't trigger the warning that's sandbox that Apple has built.

They just got to switch to that. I think a lot of app developers are just kind of curious, though. Like, they want to know how many times you're pasting links. Like, they're collecting that telemetry data in a way that wasn't necessarily clean before. When I say I got caught, what I really mean is I think Apple builds these warnings for a reason. They knew something bad. They knew something bad was happening, so they built the warning to show it. Because Apple collects a lot of telemetry data, too.

Right. For better or worse, they'll do it. And it might be anonymized wherever, but they absolutely collected telemetry data. And I think if you see like, man, a lot of apps hit that clipboard all the time. Like we're doing so many system calls for clipboard contents. You're kind of like, well, users should know. Yeah. Right.

And I think if I'm just a person opening the LinkedIn app, I have no expectation it will ever look at my clipboard until I hit paste. Right. And that's what I mean by they got caught. Like they were doing a thing. They might have great and reasonable intentions to do it. But you should really ask before you go into a. store of data where I've pasted something. For all you know, that's a password. For all you know, it's my social security number, like whatever. You should ask me for us. And I think this,

as Apple builds more and more of these warnings, you can read it as them being more and more paranoid or like we were saying before. Why didn't they just go all the way and like every time something asks for your clipboard, it pops up a okay cancel? Just put a wall up in front of it. Because I think there is this other way to do it. Yeah. It's interesting. And certainly like there's there are apps where it's macOS where you just hit paste and has already read the clipboard and like if you just hit paste and preview and you've got an image in your clipboard it'll just like make a thing for you yeah right and so like there's like there are good reasons for to give apps like pre-fetch access to your clipboard but you have to know why but they all got caught they're all

changing it yeah and then the other the other two kind of mysteries resolved i would say um apple announced and i think this is came next to thunderbolt four so intel sort of form normally announced Thunderbolt 4, which was sort of, as usual, laced in a bunch of USB standards. And then on top of that, Apple said, we're going to support Thunderbolt on our new Apple Silicon Arm max, which was a bit of a question mark at WWC, right? Yeah, I mean, Apple just straight up, like, they saw this Thunderbolt news hit, and they saw that everyone's like, what the hell is up with Thunderbolt an arm? Because, like, people just assume Thunderbolt is an Intel thing, therefore it won't work on non-intel things,

which is not necessarily true. So Apple's like, no, we're going to do it, which is really interesting because it also means that, you said this, they're going to be the first arm device to support Thunderbolt? It's likely they will. Like you said just now that it's not necessarily an Intel thing,

but in practice, it has been an Intel thing. So if you have a computer with an AMD processor, you're not seeing Thunderbolt support on it. If you have a computer with an arm processor, we've yet to see Thunderbolt support on any of those. So it's very likely that Apple will be the first maker to ship an armed computer with Thunderbolt support on it. I think it's great. I think it is very acknowledging of the fact that Apple has supported Thunderbolt 3 since 2015 or 16 or whatever it is.

And there's all these accessories and docs and stuff that it's like basically forced its users to buy and invest it into. And Thunderbolt docks cost $1,000. They're so expensive. You live by the Dongle Sword, you die by the Dongle Sword. So I can use my very expensive Thunderbolt dock that I'm using with my Mac mini right now because that has four Thunderbolt pulls on it. I can use it with an Arm Mac whenever I get one of those. So that's like nice.

That's great. Well, I mean, I would mean that was a joke. But like Apple has pushed everybody to buy Thunderbolt accessories. That has been their strategy for I.O. I would love to know how much Thunderbolt adoption has been pushed by Apple. Like, like it's because Apple basically forced it. Like other manufacturers all support Thunderbolt now, but they didn't in 2016 or 2015 when Apple really pushed the shift to it. So I would love to – I'm very curious enough.

If anyone knows that info, let me know. It's funny because Apple takes all the credit for pushing USB in the very beginning with the IMAC. And I think they would like to take credit for pushing USB. But it just isn't – it didn't happen the way they thought it was. Well, it's probably also just like a reasonable thing for Intel to sort of let go of, right? they still get to get some money from Apple for a license to the spec or controller chips or whatever they're going to use. Well, it's very interesting.

Actually, Intel says that they do not license Thunderbolt anymore. They ceased it for Thunderbolt 3 and they will not for Thunderbolt 4. They certify Thunderbolt, which apparently doesn't cost money, but it does cost more to have a product that actually passes certification. But they don't charge a license fee anymore. And they were very particular about it. They actually let us know. in an email

saying we don't charge that for certification anymore so yeah the dynamics between Apple and Intel here I think are just utterly fascinating right I mean just think about the number of stories where the Apple Intel relationship has gone

sideways or upside down in the past three years modems modems like that's the big one right they wanted Intel to be the modem supplier to compete with Qualcomm and break the Qualcomm monopoly Intel was unable to do it to the point where Apple was throttling Qualcomm

modems. I will never forget this because Qualcomm was just so unhappy about it. They filed a lawsuit against Apple. Intel failed. They sold their modem division to Apple and they just like exited the business. Like they could have been it. It could have been the thing for them.

Intel's obviously like PC chip roadmap, their processor roadmap just like hit the breaking point with Apple. Apple has walked away and made its own chips. Thunderbolt is this Intel thing that Apple's depended on, it seems like Intel is more or less being compelled to let Apple use it in a way that they usually tie to their processor. Like, just the dynamic between Apple and Intel is Apple saying over and over again, we're going to do it ourselves to the point where we'll buy, we'll acquire entire divisions from you. And just managing those people better will result in modems that can compete with the clock on.

Like, that is crazy. But it just keeps happening. So that's one mystery resolved. The other mystery, which I'm actually really surprised on, and I'll happily admit I got it wrong. We were talking about how the Apple TV can support 4K YouTube now. And Apple had this weird, mysterious line. It's like the latest YouTube videos. It turns out not only can the Apple TV do it, iOS devices can support 4KHDR and YouTube now.

And it's VP9. Wow. It's not the new codec. So I think the reason that Apple did not answer that question when we asked them over and over again is because I didn't want to admit. that they rolled. Like, they rolled. They just, they support Google's codec now. Like, straight up.

And so if you have iOS 14, you've got the YouTube app, you can make it, you can make it play 4K HDR. And I think that is not yet sure on Safari on Max, but I suspect with the next generation it will be. So mystery solved. I was utterly curious about this. I just assumed that AV1 had like succeeded because Netflix is using it. Google is actually using it on Android.

Yeah. For some videos. But it appears from everything that we can see that Apple actually just caved in the supporting VP9 because selling $170 TV streamer box to Camp Point 4K YouTube is stupid. Just that's a fact. Okay. We got to take a break. We come back.

We got some Android news talk about. Support for this show comes from Shopify. Starting something new isn't just hard. It can be really scary, too. So much work goes into this thing that you're not entirely sure will even work. But here's a better thing. thought. What if it did all work? What if your instincts were actually right all along? Shopify wants to help you get there. They're the commerce platform behind millions of businesses worldwide

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And then I will also say there's Google Android News and there's Samsung Android News. Oh, man. Let's start with sad. What is going on at the pixel theater? The 3A is, it's not end to life, 3A is like discontinued. Google's no longer selling it.

Once it's out of stock, it's out of stock. And the Pixel 4A is... M.I.A? Oh, wow. Wow. It's gone out. It's on a foray into the world.

Yeah. Don't, we expected it a long time ago. Like, a long time ago. And it just, nobody knows. There's just leak after leak about it. There was like nonstop stuff. It hits the FCC. It was reviewed on YouTube like three months ago.

Like as the st. So who knows? Like straight up, who knows? Do you think that they like the three in the three A, they had such criticism. We made a lot of fun of them because, you know, the story was Rick Austerlo was like, why is this bad or life so bad? Like do you think Sundar and Rick were like, hey, can we, can we see the phone that we're about to release? Because they didn't do it the last time.

Yeah. I mean, I think that just kind of speaks to, I mean, there's obviously been unique challenges this year for many supply chains. But I think the fact that Google had to, at some point, stopped making a 3A and they ran out of them. They sold out of them because they never released its successor. That was obviously, you know, very well into development and stuff like that. And they still haven't released it. It just kind of speaks to that Google is not good. at selling things.

Like, could you imagine, like, when I think back of, like, when Apple products have been delayed, the white iPhone 4 was delayed for, like, six months because they had production issues with the color coding and things like that. Imagine if you couldn't buy an iPhone because the prior one had run out and Apple hadn't figured out how to make the new one yet. Like, that's what happened here. You think they haven't figured out how to make a 4A? Maybe.

Maybe. Is it hard to make? I don't know. like Google hasn't made anything with the Qualcomm 730 before, which is a chip we're expecting on it. There was rumors that they were thinking about making two sizes and then they like balked and now there's like just going to be the one size. So maybe they had to like roll everything back. Maybe that was like the move that Rick came in is like, what are you doing? Actually paying attention to what a division was doing.

I don't know. There's any number of things, but like something happened. And I refuse to believe that the plan was to release this thing, whatever. they're going to release it, which we still don't know. Yeah. I think, honestly, the, and we talked about this just soon to our interview with him, which is almost two months ago now. But like the notion that they're going to keep trying and keep plugging away, like,

if I was Google, I would take this moment in time when there are launches and, like, the phone cycle is pretty predictable and we kind of know what's going to happen and say, we actually have to reset. We have to solve our huge problem, which is we don't make a, a flagship that competes and we have to do that and we should spend our resources and time doing that. I'm saying this as somebody who just hopes that that's what they're doing because I really do think that Google could come in and make a flagship phone and not charge $1,100 for it. Right? And it would still have the build quality and the features and the camera and all the stuff that we always talk about.

And that is such a compelling lane for them to be in versus we're going to live at $400 or wherever. they think the A series is going to be. And like a 4A coming out is it just kind of cements the narrative that they're also Rans. And I, why live in that zone now when you can't do any in-person marketing? You can't hold an event. People aren't going to stores.

They can't hold the thing. Like you can only sell online. Like you know exactly how that's going to turn out because that's exactly what's happened every other time. I don't know. The 3A was the best selling pixel phone. They sold 10 of them. Yeah, but they sold four of the three.

They sold more than twice as many as a three A. Like, it's still the best-selling pixel phone. Yeah, but like I'm saying they got to move the bar. They got to move the bar to we compete with Apple and Samsung. And I think they know it. And I think this. The other option, Eli, is they, they nope out of that fight altogether. And they compete with like one plus at the $800 price range.

That's who they're competing with that. The 800 price. Yes, definitely is one plus. If they could, they could nope out with the pixel five. They could nope out of like the like, the like, pristine, beautiful, glossy flagship 5G stuff. They could nope out of the $1,000 plus phone thing. How are you going to make a phone called the Pixel 5 and not have a 5G modem?

No, that has to happen. But there's two 5G modems, right? There's the 865 and there's the new version of the 865 or whatever. That's like, it's fine, but it's not great. And then there's like the lower 765 stuff that is like a little bit less expensive, but has the modem integrated in, which theoretically has maybe some battery advantages,

which I don't know if you've ever used a pixel, but Thing needs some battery help? Every time our... Chris Grant, he used to see the Editor-Nove Polygon is now sort of the SVP of the division that houses us. Every time I call him on the phone, he's got a pixel 3.

And every time I call him, he's like, this phone is so hot, the battery's about to explode. I'm on 1%. I'm like, dude, It's 2 p.m. and you're at home. Like, what is going on? He's like, this phone's a disaster.

Yeah. Yeah, no, I get it. But I think that's like the, that's what I mean. The opportunity is to redefine what a flagship means and to take the hit and to be at the price point of the one plus stuff. Yeah. But make a phone that's flashy and premium and that people want as a status symbol. Yeah.

And Google has never been able to do that. Not for a long time. And that's a tough, tough battle. I mean, like, if you look at a one plus. phone, it is flashy. It has the highest end components they can stuff in there. It doesn't have a recognizable name outside of like enthusiasts. But like if you're looking for like a flashy, pretty gorgeous, well made hardware, like one plus doing that at 800 bucks or 900 bucks or whatever it is now. Yeah. I think Google should take that McLaren's like deal away. They should just partner

with every firm that will like give them the brand name for free. Like Polaroids. McLaren, RCAA, just Porsche design. Like, just layer them on there. If we're going to do the car analogy thing, I think what Google thinks is Samsung stopped making the Camry and the S-20 has turned into like a Lexus. And One Plus only makes freaking like, you know, Subaru WRXs or whatever, right? And Google wants to make the Camry. The Camry is the A series though.

Yeah, Samsung absolutely makes the Camry. Yeah. But nobody is proud to drive a Camry. Like nobody's like... Lots of people are proud to drive Camry. And like it's a great car. It's very reliable. Are you excited to drive a Camry?

Camrys look like mean spaceships now. Yeah. I mean, that's true. They look like angry transformers coming to take your family home from school. Yeah. I'm here to defend the honor of the Tour of the Camer. I mean, it is like the most popular car in the world for a reason.

But I hear what you're saying like trying to like stratify it. I just think there's, The narrative around Google's phone ambitions is that they have failed. Yeah. Putting out the 4A does not change that narrative. It doesn't sell them any more phones. It doesn't give them any more leverage against Samsung. It doesn't create the sense that Android is ascendant.

Like all the things they have to do have to happen with a phone launch. And that phone launch has to be exclusive. If that Blockbuster information story about Rick Oswald is saying, you guys screwed up the battery on this thing. I disagree with your decision is true. Then there was some sort of come-to-Jesus moment where they canceled the tablets and blah, blah, blah, blah. And was that long enough to go that they could actually pivot in time to whenever they're going to launch the Pixel 5? Or are we like having a next year conversation right now?

I don't know. I mean, like this whole conversation is pure speculation. Like they could have just decided they didn't, they wanted to have an event and they're going to hold it off. They could have decided like, we're not ready to have people back in the office to complete the certification trials. Like a million things are true. The pandemic disrupted everything. But I think it's also just a good time for them to say, is this strategy working? Right.

And I just don't think you can honestly look at their current strategy. and say, this is a success, right? Even though the camera's great, even though we like the funds. Like, it's hard to look at it and be like, yep. Yep. I definitely think you should buy a pixel phone instead of a Samsung phone, which is a weird place for them to be. Yeah. Right?

Their whole goal is to be a competitor to Samsung and provide some leverage in the ecosystem. Well, their advantage right now is there's no, like, weird power things. Henry Police has a really good story about that today, yesterday when you're listening to this. And also, like, I don't know, Samsung's $1,200 phones have ads on them now? Like, so speaking of Samsung, their event is coming. It's August 5th. Yep. The invite is a splash of copper. Mm-hmm. It looks like we're just guessing it's the note. Yeah. That's what it is. There's a wearable that showed up at the FCC. And then this rumor that they're also going to drop the chargers. And the rumor was Apple was going to drop the chargers last week. Yeah, which everyone's real mad at me for saying that's good. I stand by that opinion. Absolutely good. I do not need another.

Apple tiny crap charger in my life. Yeah, but like, Samsung had just finally started to ship good chargers with its phones. It took a long time, but like, and same with Apple. Like, even the pro, the pro came with an 18 watt, the 11 pro came with an 18 watt charger. Like, they're finally putting good chargers in there now. And, you know, maybe they won't anymore. Yeah. Yeah, what else is rumored for this Samsung event?

The beans. Ear beans. Ear beans. The galaxy beans. Ear beans. Ear beans. Ear beans. Yeah, can't wait.

Deeter, I believe you said this before, but I fully agree. So I'm echoing it. There needs to be more fun in products. And Ear Beans sounds like a very fun product, especially if they actually ship them called Ear Beans. Do it. Yeah. I'm super down for Samsung Galaxy Beans my ears. Yeah.

So the other things I remember, like maybe a fold two already? Well, I guess it was a year since the last fold, right? That whole debacle was a year ago. Wow. Well, the whole blockhole was a year and a half ago. The re-release was a year ago. Yeah. Wow.

And then maybe a Z flip with 5G. That's been rumored a ton as well. That's a lot of stuff for like one event in the middle of August. Yeah, that'll be exciting. Then it's Samsung, so there might be other stuff too. Wash machines. There was, I think I just saw some rumors today. There's a tablet.

An S7 has started been rumoring around with the new 855 or excuse me, 865 plus chip that was just announced by Qualcomm. God bless Samsung making Android tablets like they're a thing. I love it. It's great. It's a lot of stuff, but also, like, Samsung events. We just came through this, like, event season where we watched all the big companies, like, try to adapt this world. Samsung events are, like, known for being over-the-top spectacles in person with, like, gigantic stages. And they love to pack the audience with Samsung fans. Yeah. Like, how are they going to do this? They're going to have a fake audience that's just going to be chanting ear, beans.

Ear, beans, ear, beans. They're sampling that right now, Deere, you should be careful. It'd be fascinating if, like, you know how some of the sports leagues have been, like, selling the ability to put a cardboard cut out of your face in the stands? So you can watch your sports team. What if Samsung did that for, like, people who are, like, super Samsung fans, and they get their face in the audience of their live stream? That would totally be worth it.

It could be, what is the Samsung emoji thing called? the Memoji knockoff. I've already forgotten what it's called. I use a Samsung phone every single day, and I forgot. It could be those on a cardboard cutout. Yeah. I mean, or they could like host the entire thing virtually, like the sports leagues are also doing. Like, this entire event happens in NBA 2K21. It's like an idea that I mean, this is the one that to me is the most fascinating. Like Apple pulled it off to a certain extent. There are aspects of it that is journalists we did not enjoy. But if it's, we, there are aspects of it that as journalists we did not enjoy. But if, think for most people just sort of consuming it, it was just fine. Yep. Right. They made a, they made an hour and a half long TV show about their 45 operating systems and people watched it and they had a great time doing it. And that's great. Microsoft's made a four hour TV show of developing software, which is very Microsoft. And it worked and people liked it. Like they figured it out on their timeframes. Samsung like makes bombastic spectacles out of product features. Yeah. And they, I don't know, like, I'm very curious for this one.

This is the only one where you can't quite predict how it might go. Especially because, like, that moment of, like, revealing the fold two, they can't get that hush over the audience and, like, create that somewhat fake sense of drama. Yeah, they can't have the drop, you know, the, do, you know, that you get in, you know, like, they can't do that. Well, you can, you can feel it in your galaxy beans. You've got the right headphones. You really, your whole, it's a whole body sensation.

So we'll see. I mean, like, it's funny. We just have this whole conversation on Google needing to, like, do fideship stuff, and you can create a moment, needing to create spectacle. Like, Samsung is just about to do it. Like, they're going to keep being the default Android provider at this scale with this amount of effort intensity spectacle. Samsung, I think, is in a more dangerous place than people,

that most people think, I think, because they're so dominant. Like, they've got the A-51, A-71. They've got the most best-selling Android. phone. The S-20 is the default. The note is often thought of as a flagship, but it's actually not anymore. It's the S-20. Like, Samsung doesn't have the Halo device that makes everyone think that Samsung as a brand is a hot-shed technology company. Well, that was supposed to be the fold, right? It was supposed to have been the fold, and now it's not. And so, like, the S-20 is great, but the S-20 Ultra kind of fell flat. It was the camera didn't do so hot. So the thing that

Samsung does to act as a foil to Apple is race ahead on certain kinds of technologies, do them first, and also it tries to race ahead of the rest of the Android world. Well, it's no longer racing that far ahead of the rest of the Android world except in a couple of areas. And they're like neck and neck with Apple and a lot of stuff. And so what will Samsung do to create that sense of like, we are the innovators here? You should like, you should have affinity for Samsung. This is why I'm sort of hoping that the full two is going to be here and that it's actually good. We'll see.

Because as much as, you know, I love the note and I love people that love styly, I don't think that because it has the same specs as the Galaxy S20 fundamentally, because they're on this weird off cycle or whatever. It's hard to generate like Samsung is a super innovative tech forward company that is ahead of everybody else with the note. It just is. Yeah. And then next to it, Apple's like, our phone has picture and picture now. Yeah. You've asked for them. Widgets are here. Right? And it's like, man. Well, like, Samsung gets no credit. Google can't figure out scrolling screenshots in Android 11. They, like, just announced it like, yeah, we can't get it done. And it also took until Android 11 to get native screen recording. Yeah. Samsung's been doing that for years. Samsung, like, one of the things

that iPad OS is you can, you can, like, highlight text and then copy as plain text and then paste it, like highlight your handwriting or whatever, and then copy as plain text. Samsung introduced that last year in the note. And Samsung notes. Like, it's been around. And like, does anybody remember?

I do, but I'm weird. There's, like, a hardcore, like, note forum right now that is, they're pasting in this audio. Yeah. And they're coming for you, buddy. Great. Like, note usersforum. dot net. Rise up. Wow. It's at Backlon. Let him know. You're around. Don't let him disrespect

you. I will only accept criticism in the form of puns on Twitter. All right. We got to take another break. And then we got a little grab bag of news. We're right back. Support for the show comes from LinkedIn. If you're a small business owner, you know that every hire counts. But time and resources are limited. Finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates takes up valuable time you could be giving to your customers. That's where LinkedIn Hiring Pro comes in. It's built to be your hiring partner, helping you find the right candidates faster. That way you can hire with confidence without turning it into another full-time job. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates

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We've been in that zone and we can do the rest of these things. their upcoming speaker code name Prince has hit the FCC and it looks like a little fabric covered chibata roll What does it do? Is it just a little guy? I saw it described as like half a home max Or the smart, you know, the smart speaker equivalent of like a Sonos 1 But it's very front facing, you know, it's not like a big square like or a circle like the home pod

So that's a fascinating choice But yeah, it's like better sound out of a Google Home Speakers, like I think the TLDR of it. It seems to replace the recently discontinued original Google Home Speaker, which was the air freshener thing from 2016 or whatever that was out forever. That finally got discontinued apparently like in the past month. I didn't know that. Is that really?

Yeah. Yeah. Apparently it's gone. And this thing, I'm looking at our coverage on it. It's on the verge.com. Definitely looks like a chabada roll. I think it is like, I think. it is like deceptively small in the pictures and I think in real life it's actually going to be bigger

and we actually the pictures that have leaked are are next to a ruler so you can see exactly how big it is and it's like 200 plus millimeters tall I don't know what that is in inches but it's it's bigger it's not like a nest mini replacement it is something bigger than that yeah and it's got okay I see it you know it's funny like we have home hubs here and now I never want to buy a smart speaker without a display again oh interesting uh well just because What do we use it for? We use it for timers. You know, it's really useful seeing the timer. The Echo show still doesn't show multiple timers at once, is my understanding. Is that true, Dan? I believe so. I haven't attempted to use a multiple timer in a long time.

Google speaker does, but my wife does not like saying the Google hot word. So she prefers to say Alexa. Sorry, I said that out loud. I have become so annoyed at like the way that the Sonos ones are bad at Alexa hot wording. that I just turned it off and bought an echo dot. So now we have an echo dot and a Google Home Hub sitting next to each other in my kitchen. And I'll use the Google one because I like seeing the timers displayed on it. And she uses the echo dot.

You can link the echo dot to the Sonos. So then when you speak to the echo dot, it plays out the Sonos. Yes, that is the next step. And then on the Sonos, you can turn on the Google awake word and then you can use both of them at the same time on the Sonos.

I actually don't know that you can do that. You can, actually. You can set the Sonos to be a Google Wake Word, and then you tell Alexa that the Sonos exists and you're fine. The problem here is I have my Sonos ones that surrounds for my living room, and for some reason that or just Sonos ones suck. They're so bad at recognizing Wake Words, and they're so slow at reacting if anything goes wrong that it's just not worth it.

Well, you know, the reason is when you issue the wake word to a Sonos device, lawyers from all three companies have to negotiate a cloud services, disagreement. It's actually, it's, it's, it's keeping a lot of first year associates in Floyd. I, I can't believe we have waited this long to, uh, troll Neely with the, uh, end of lifing of the, uh, Logitech Harmony Alexa powered remote control. Like, this is, this is a dark day for IR repeaters, Neely. I need to know what your feelings are.

My, it's, this is like a really weird moment in television. history. What started to think of it? Wow. The TV was invented. The way a cathode ray tube works. Yeah, exactly. You know, there's two ways. There's an aperture grill and there's a dot mask. Yeah. Trinitron was an aperture grill. Okay. Just think about where we are with TVs at this moment in time. Yeah. There is, there are more streaming services. There are bizarrely more streaming devices. There's more consoles. There's more stuff to watch, consume, and plug into your TV than ever before. Which is true.

There are fewer control solutions for TVs than ever before. Logitech is basically the market leader. They keep trying the stuff. And, you know, we actually should get that Logitex CEO, Brack and Darrell back on the show when he says. But the last time he was on our show, he was like, yeah, Harmony is fine. I bought, we bought OBS. Have you heard of Stream Labs?

That's the future. Like, Twitch is where we're going. So, like, it's just like Logitech, which. is the market leader in remote controls is like, yep, we're going to let that peter out. And they're, like, I was really high-end cavo. Like, they haven't issued an update in forever. They're still around. You know, like you see them sort of like responding to people on Twitter.

Like, they're around. They just haven't done anything. Yeah. There is not another. No one is trying to solve the problem of I have a PS4, soon to be a PS5, an Xbox, a Roku, an Apple TV, and whatever apps on my TV. I just need one remote control on my desk. Well, that's because H-DMICEC has solved that problem for everybody.

It just works. It's just bizarre. It's like an obvious market opportunity. And instead, it's like every couple days, Joanna Stern tweets about how our Apple TV remote is lost. There's a Wall Street Journal article about how millennials coming home to stay in their, like, boomer parents' houses are confounded because all the boomer parents have like 45 remotes. And they've all like muscle memory to their way. way into knowing how to change the channel and they can't explain it to anyone else. But that's an article in the Wall Street Journal.

Like every executive in Silicon Valley should be like, this is my startup. Like this problem is so bad the Wall Street Journal is writing about it. There's a market opportunity and it doesn't exist. It is confound. And I think part of the answer is like many people just buy the TCL Roku TV and they get their remote and they're done. Yeah. Many people just buy whatever.

But just one click next to that. you've got people with the five-year-old smart TV who have bought a streaming device and have a PlayStation and might have a soundbar. And those people are just in a world of absolute pain. My parents bought this thing called a mag. I don't know what this is. It's like this weird box that's an IPTV box and then like something that appears to be illegal happens and then Indian TV streams to their house. I was about I was about to ask like, I'm really not. short what all I know is my dad paid $200 to his friend and his thing showed up to pay us. Like you have to know somebody to buy one who will go go get it for you. It's very confusing.

But like, you know, IPTV services exist in many other countries. You can just like buy one of these boxes and like sign up for it. Okay. Great. They're trying to figure out like how to make it all works. So now they have another remote that needs to and that needs to interact with their like receiver and their like, it's just nuts. And like I like I can't go to their. house and just do it for them. Yeah. And so I'm like, okay, plug it into the receiver. And they're like, what remote do we use to turn everything on?

And I'm like, I don't know. I don't know the answer to that question. And that is an insane at this point in TV history when more people are watching more TV than ever across more devices. Yeah. Like for logic to be like, you know what? This reasonably good idea of having a Alexa powered remote control, we're just screw it. Like we're out.

So here's my question. Why isn't, you're going to hate me so much from what I'm about to say. You guys, you guys ready to just be pissed? Just if you're, if you are lucky enough to be in your car, pull over and just prepare to grip your steering wheel and anger, if you have a mouthguard, put it in so you don't create your teeth. Grab your teeth. Why isn't there an alliance? Why isn't there an industry consortium to standardize this shit? Why doesn't the Bluetooth alliance or like the Z wave alliance just roll in and be like all TVs and all set-top boxes work this way?

It's called IR Blasters. Like when we're talking about all of these remotes, like yes, some of them use Bluetooth to communicate, but they also all have IR Blasters on it. Amazon has put IR Blasters into its remotes that weren't there before. Have you ever looked at a manual of like IR codes? That's one of the reasons Logitech failed because it just, the database of how many IR codes they have to keep track of got so big

that it took down the entire server farm. They're like, we can't afford these 30. gig microSD cards for our IR database anymore. It's too much. Yeah, I don't know. Like, it's just, it's wild to me. And I, you know, we keep asking people about it. Like, it is just crazy to me that the solution the industry has landed on is this is too hard.

You will have six remotes. Yep. You can, you can pay to fix it. Like, Control 4 will come into your house. And you can write them like a four figure check for a universal remote in your living room. and it'll do all the stuff. That'll work for six months until you buy some new thing that you want to have next to her plugged into your TV.

And then you call your control four guy and he comes to your house and he hooks it up. Like I'm serious, that is their whole business model. Like that they can fix it. But like for like normal people who don't want to spend multiple thousands of dollars to fix the multiple report problem or multiple remote problem. Yeah. Like it's the harmony which they maybe aren't making any more of. They're discontinuing.

To be fair, this. this Alexa powered Harmony thing was terrible. Like, it was a bad product that shouldn't have shipped. But like... Just to catch you up, your Harmony remote is almost surely safe unless you bought this fancy Alexa Harmony Express. And if you did, you can get a full refund or you can just get a free Harmony Elite, which is a very, very nice remote control. Yes.

So, like, Logitech is doing well by its customers here. Yeah. No, but the Harmony Elite is like four years old. Are they ever going to update that is the question? Yeah. And at some point, they're probably going to stop making them. Well, I mean, they got a lock on the market. Yeah, but we said this.

And then you asked the CEO, what's up with it? And he's like, yeah. Let's be fair, that was a long time ago. That conversation I was in the office for, which is officially a long time ago, like a different lifetime ago. We'll try to get him back. We'll see what we get up to it. He won't, if I send the email, it's like, hey, do you want to talk about harmony road? So, he'll be like, no.

So let me see if I can lure him in to talk about Twitch streaming or something. Last two things. This is really interesting to me. BMW announced that they're basically going to do in-car microtransactions. So they're going to ship all the features in the car, and then you can pay to turn them on and off as services, which is like it's the nightmare, right? I mean, that's the nightmare.

Well, the question is, are you paying for the hardware in your car that isn't turned on when you buy the car or lease the car? It's a BMW. You absolutely are. Most BMWs are leased. So I think this makes sense for them. to say, okay, we can, we're not going to, like, make different models of the car with different wiring harnesses and stuff. We're just going to lease you a three series, and you can decide.

We'll just, like, light them up. And then when you come back and lease your new one, we'll take that three series back. We can configure it for the customer. Sure. No one wants their car to work that way. Yeah. Well, so this is like the inverse of the charger thing. I'm like, yes, get rid of the charger.

Take the price of the thing down 20 bucks and let us get a gift card to buy our own charger or buy Apple services or whatever. Great. But this is like, it's there and I have to pay more to use it. Something about it. I like, I want to believe that I could like work myself up into like a mental model where like this thing is acceptable and okay. But just at a gut level in the same way that people are like, how dare you not put a charger in the box? I am, how dare you put heated seats in my car and I've got to pay you a fee to use them. It's like the next step beyond what Tesla is doing, right?

So like Tesla will ship a car with X capacity battery. and only unlock X percent of that, right? And then you pay them five grand, and you can get the full capacity of the battery. Like, Tesla's done that for a number of years now. And that bothers me, too. Yeah, and I think what's worse about the BMW situation is that you have to pay a monthly subscription. You can't pay $300 and turn on those heated seats, and they'll just be on and work for the rest of it. No, you have to pay in perpetuity a monthly fee, and then, like, you stop paying that monthly fee,

and your heated seats stop working. That's great. So here's the list so far that is in Sean's story. Heated seats, automatic high beams, adaptive cruise control. Once upon a time, Android Auto and CarPlay were on this list. And everyone was so mad at them. It was $80 a year for CarPlay, which is just horrible. And then people are so bad at them, they turn it off.

Like, that list of features, I kind of get it. Okay, it's 90 degrees right now. I don't need, I don't even pay for these heated seats. You're basically buying a Camry. Do you got to stop bragging on the Camry? I'm not having it. And then you check the boxes until you get into a BMW. Why do you hate the Camry?

features that you expect with a luxury BMW. The Camry is the worker's car. It's the car of the- Oh, hey God. I own a civic. I think a civic is a little bit more. The podcast is fully off the rails. I think we're going to see this across more car companies.

I think Ford is interested in the F-150. It's cars as a service is, that's the story here. right we're going to start to ship more features and i i'm with you either like i i'm i'm i'm going to buy like a camry that's that's obviously what's happening here look i'm getting older i've got a kid it's 2007 escalade don't have to worry about it the heated seats are already broken that's horrible i got to go google for escalates now and in the last one this is just an update we've talked a lot about 230 in an encryption just for months, years now.

The Earnett Act, which basically forces companies to provide a backdoor to encryption if they want to 30 protection. Two completely directly related concepts that obviously should be put together. Makes no sense. That is out of committee.

So it went through the full committee process. It got weakened in committee. Like, it's not quite of a direct correlation. But it's up, it's up for a vote. Like, it's three votes away, right? Senate, House, President, well, President doesn't. Is it a vote? Okay.

Let's call it a vote. He's got to sign it or not sign it. I guess in many ways it's a vote. I'm a student of American history of politics. It's three steps away, right? House vote, Senate vote, president signing it away from being the law. You are going to hear a lot about it. We have a lot of coverage on it.

Our policy desk at a McKenna Russell has a new great job with it. There's nothing to say at this moment, except that through the committee process, it is getting weaker. that tie of breaking encryption to 2.30 is getting weaker, but it's still there. It's still not quite as clear. And I think Mozilla has already come out against it very strongly. I think you're going to see, as it moves forward, the debate about whether we're going to break encryption and do backdoors, it's just fully here. So I don't want to burn too much more time on it. We've, as usual, already gone long. But go check out that story and just keep an eye on it because it's, there's a lot of bills. I would call them the sort of like Josh Holly zone of bills. Josh Holly wakes up, takes a shower, has an idea.

Another bill has been produced about how Facebook much shut itself down. Like, that's fine. This one is through committee. It's like it's hit the stage where it's close in a way that the other ones aren't. So keep an eye on it because I suspect we're going to be hearing a lot about encryption in the weeks and months to come. All right. That's it. I want to call it two stories just real quick.

happy stories. One's bittersweet. Addie Robertson, you might know that Magic Leap, the mixed reality company, CEO left. They got a new CEO. They're pivoting to enterprise.

They're shutting a lot of stuff down. What a surprise. They were going to make, they had one last game to make called Fating Light. Addie Robertson has the inside story of that game, what it meant.

It's a great story. It's all about like how you might use AR mixed reality to tell a different kind of story. So check that out. And then I got to call out Becca Fartzace's new YouTube series, Full Frame, first episode came out on YouTube.

She built a camera with a Raspberry Pi 4. It's a delight. You just watch it. It'll just make you happy. It's so much fun. Okay. That's it. You can tweet at us.

Dieter's at Backlon. Dan's DCC. I'm at Reckless. We've got newsletters. Dieter's got processor. That's the verge.com slash newsletter. Casey's got the interface. The verge.com slash interface.

A little treat next week. I'll put out a special episode of why did you push that button? Ooh. Dating in the pandemic. Ashley and Caitlin and Andrew kind of made a renegade episode. Caitlin doesn't work at Box Media anymore. She works at the Atlantic. We'll just see.

We'll see how that goes. You made an episode with us. That's great. Super excited of that. That's coming next week. Like I said, interview episode is Rashad Robinson from Color of Change. We're talking about the Facebook boycott.

And we're back on Friday with the chat show. Lots's going on. That's it. Rock and roll. Wear a mask.