The Vergecast - Iowa caucus app issues, Panos Panay takes over both Microsoft’s hardware and software, and Google reveals Q4 earnings

Episode Date: February 7, 2020

Stories discussed this week; Election tech was supposed to clean up the Iowa caucus … Iowa's caucus fracas shows we're still too ignorant about how … America is bad at voting (it isn’t just Iowa) US attorney general says tech and telecom industries should invest in Huawei competitors Donald Trump ‘apoplectic’ in call with Boris Johnson over Huawei US pushing tech and telecom industries to build 5G alternative to Huawei Microsoft’s Windows future is now tied to hardware Microsoft's Surface chief now leads Windows and hardware ... YouTube is a $15 billion-a-year business, Google reveals for … Creators finally know how much money YouTube makes, and ... Google now has a 'multibillion-dollar' hardware business Google opens its latest Google Glass AR headset for direct purchase The Super Bowl is streaming in 4K HDR for the first time ... Roku and Fox strike a last-minute deal to keep Super Bowl ... Apple might be releasing a new Apple TV soon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week on the Vergecast, we talk about the app issues in the Iowa caucus. We talk about whether or not the United States government should buy Nokia. That's a real thing. We get into Panos-Penna taking over both Windows hardware and software. A little bit about Google earnings. And then, I'm just to be honest with you, it gets wild when we talk about the Apple TV. That's coming up in the Vergecast now. Support for the show comes from Retool.

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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 Medal. 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, welcome to the Britishcast. The flagship podcast of the 5G revolution. Race. If we were good at sponsors, someone would buy that. But we're not. So, No one, and I would reject it anyway, because of integrity.

That's right. I'm your friend, Nelai. Paul Miller, you're in New York. Hello. How's it going? It's good to be here. You're like, you live here now. Some upset.

Literally packed it back and just move to New York again. Apparently, that's all it takes. Deeter Bone is here. I'm not in New York, though. That's true. Look, all it takes apparently is just a bag and a dream. It's so easy. Oh, yeah.

It's all takes. I'll tell my wife. That's the real problem. Anyway, it's a busy week. There's actually a lot going on this week. Paul, you just said to us that you think that you can explain Iowa, which is a broad generalization. Yes. I don't know if that's entirely possible.

But there was a caucus, a Democratic primary event. It went sideways. The way I would put this is it went from, oh, no, don't let it be the app to, oh boy, it's the app. To, actually, I don't know if it's the app anymore. Yeah. All right, go ahead. Problem, problem negative one, right, set the scene. Tried to do a poll, failed at doing the poll.

So we had no poll going into the primary, right? But that's unrelated. Problem zero. I would say this definitely starts the issues. They picked a company named Shadow Incorporated to make an app that the- This is the Iowa Democratic Party. Correct. Yes.

Yes. And apparently some other state Democrat parties had also were working, like Nevada announced that they were working with Shadow Incorporated, but now they have cut ties. So not just Iowa was doing this. But they picked this company to make an app. And so, you know, you go to the poll site. You caucus with people, whatever that. If that's a verb or noun, who knows. And then the local temporary leader type people would.

would report the results of the caucusing to the Central Democratic Party of Iowa through this app. So problem one with the app. It was hard to download the app because it wasn't on the app stores. Yes. And like I, you know, I've worked with my parents. Every time I try to help them on their phone, they don't even remember their Apple ID password, right? Yeah. So it's hard to get an app downloaded from a real app store.

But here they had to use like test fairies. So you'd have to download an app for beta testing. applications, then you'd have to download the app, the actual Iowa result app. And in some cases, like on Android, often when you use even those test things, there's like a scary warning thing that pops up saying, are you sure you want to do this, unsafe, you know, sources, blah, blah, blah. And apparently a lot of people had trouble getting the app. Then problem two, a lot of people had trouble logging into the app because there's a pen code,

a precinct number, and then a 2FA code or something like that. And they're all the same number of digits. So that was an issue as well. So even if all that worked out, the app was misformatting data when it would upload it. So but apparently the Shadow Incorporated says they fixed it, whatever. I don't, it's really hard to tell. Obviously, there's a lot of chaos around this. But they were having trouble actually uploading the correct data.

But after that, that's when I don't know what's going on anymore. Because the fallback is you just call in and say, here's the problem. And then you just report the results. Yeah. So that's where now you can just venture into all sorts of conspiracy theories. Because the fact that the app didn't work is one thing, but the fact that we still don't know the results in Iowa now. Yeah. When theoretically people could just call them in and tell them and they can be tallied.

There are two things. One piece of information broke today. NBC News reported that the phone number to call in was Googlerable. So it wound up on 4chan. and the 4chan boards decided to clog the line. Okay. So that was just created, it just created a delay. Then there were probably some even, I mean,

Fort Chan is already a malevolent force, but then there's like the actual malevolent disinformation forces also got hold of the number. So that's all bad. I think the bigger story here is you describe the app. The app is like, that's like the verge zone. Dieter, you wrote a column this week that I think just laid it out. Like we know how computers work. it's like we had the same conversation about like sonos and the speakers and the right in the software not

supported it's like are we still are we just going to just routinely be surprised that computers are computers like you because you see you see exactly what happened here you hire this company shadow ink and they say we've got this app the app is supposed to make it easier to do a pretty basic thing right type in the first set of numbers then they They realign themselves. Right. Because there's some calculation that happens. Right.

So you type in the first set of numbers who everybody in your little local caucus is going to support. And then you type in like after some candidates are deemed not viable, you type in the second set of numbers. It's realignment. And then you type in like the delegate. Like does that. This is what computers are for. To be clear, as far as I understand, everybody's reported that the apps did the math perfectly. Yeah, sure.

Right. Because the thing that's hard. is distributed systems. Right. So, like, you see exactly what happened here. Like, okay, we're going to do some math. Computers, great at math. So now we're going to make a bunch of promises

based on the idea that people will have access to the app and will do the math perfectly about how fast we'll be able to distribute the answers, how secure they'll be, blah, blah, blah. And they staff down their phone banks and they didn't build a backup system in case their ridiculous plan to distribute an app to 1,600 volunteers and test flight went sideways. Which, if you know anything, if you're like, I'm going to distribute my app via test flight,

the first thing you should think is this will go sideways. To be clear, it's not necessarily test flight. There's also test fairy involved. It was test fairy and Android and test flight on iOS. Yeah. How many hundreds of millions of dollars were spent in Iowa for this thing, this primary? Many, many tens of millions, right? From the campaigns and the advertising.

From the campaigns. And my Bloomberg just dropped $22 million in Iowa today just for fun. No, I don't know if that's true. That's just the sort of thing he does. How much would it have cost do you think to just buy, you know, 400 iPhone 6s and just preload the app on it and hand them out? Just drive them to every precinct to be like, this is your reporting phone. Yeah, we put it in like kiosk mode and just use this phone. Yeah, I mean, maybe.

The thing that I see, and again, Deter, this is like inherent in your column, if someone just described this to anyone, there's like five places. You're like, that will never work. It will just never work the way you want it to. The problem is when you hear us say test flight, it was installed by a test flight or test ferry, you, the Vergecast listener, are like, oh, that seems bad.

But it seems pretty clear that a bunch of people are like, you know what, they're the technology people, I'm sure they've got a handle on it. And they're the technology people, I'm sure they got a handle on it. that phrase or that thought had to have occurred at least a half a dozen times before the night of the primary, before the night of the caucus, right? There's the number of warning flags where somebody should have been like, eh, I don't know much about technology, but that seems bad, which is just massive. Yeah. So my whole point is there's, you know, there's a responsibility for regulation.

Do we want to live in a world where you have to, for, you know, if you want to make an app for election, it has to be approved. by the central government. Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. But I definitely want to live in a world where there's a basic fundamental level of tech literacy, where if someone says, hey, man, we're going to run the first election of the 2020 presidential campaign. And we hired this company and we paid him 60 grand to make an app and they're going to

distribute by a test fairy. And no one can see it first. Yeah, no one can see it first. And security through obscurity. And, you know, all of these things that as a person that is conversant with technology, you listening to the show probably know, like, wait a minute, this should stop, that more people need to be able to say, hang on. That's all.

I mean, this is to me that we keep training people to not know how their phones work, in particular their phones. Right? Like, neither Apple nor Google really wants you to know how your phone works. They want you to do everything through their app store, and they want to sell you that they've checked the apps and the cost of app developers being mad and whatever is all worth it because they're doing it for you. And all you got to do is like search for the thing you want in the store and download the app and everything will be fine. And you don't really need to know

how anything in the background is working. Particularly with phones, I think this is the case. It is increasingly the case with laptops. I think you had another column Deter this week where you're like, it was the same one where you're like Microsoft calls laptops the intelligent edge. Yes, that's so annoying. Like, that's, that's not right. There's an insane bug with Windows this week. Yes.

This week where Bing went down and local search in Windows 10 just displayed a plain gray box. Yep. Yeah. That's a, come on. Just to heighten everyone's fear and panic in this situation. So Motherboard got hold of the APK of the actual app and is distributing. as some sort of, you know, like, we need to look at what's going on here. And so I had some experts look at it in that one of these quotes is just amazing.

The code looks like someone Googled things like how to add authentication to React Native app and followed the instructions. Now, that might sound scary to somebody. Like, in my professional job, like my job is I dig with a shovel. I don't have to Google it every time I dig with a shovel. But most of technology is built by people who Googled it and followed the instructions. This is most of our technology. This is not a weird anomaly.

Like maybe that shows that this person is a bit of a beginner. But I don't know. That really struck me because it was such a true statement. Yeah, I don't think you should hire a beginner to write your election at. I mean, this is like it's not even a voting. What's truly bizarre about this is this is the best case scenario for let's drive. technology onto an election. Right.

In every one of these like little locations, there's someone in charge, there's a paper backup record. Right. And all they need to do is transmit the results from here to there. And to be clear, this is an election run by a private organization that is not the government. Right. So Iowa Democratic Party is having its caucus and this is its system. Right.

The government has some... This is not a vote for the president in the sense of a real election. This is a vote by an organization trying to determine who they will put forward for an election. Yeah, I mean, the state governments manage the primary process in their states. So the Iowa Democratic Party is allowed to do this. Right. But, like, yes, there's some government and it's still an election. Is it?

Yes. I mean, I know it's an election, but it's different than an election, too, right? Well, no. I mean, it's small groups of people in high school gyms in Iowa moving around in circles. But yes, it's an election. It's an election, but also it involves Red Rover. It's a middle school dance that determines the president. I don't know how to make this clear for you.

Right, but you're right. It's the Iowa Democratic Party is the one who is in charge, right? And they're making some decisions under some system that the Iowa state government is like put in the place. All of this is to say they shouldn't have hired a beginner. Even for this like best case scenario of all we really need you to do is write down how many people are in their groups the first time, say that these groups aren't going to make it, let them join new groups, and then write down how many groups are, how many people are in the groups a second time, then open this app, type in all the numbers, and walk away.

Like, it's not voting in that way. It's reporting. Then you say, okay, we can't even accomplish this. In the backup, which is just call us on the phone, we can't even manage that. We probably should never let anyone vote with their phone. is like the next step of this. And I think that's the one where it's just deeply connected to the dream is that it's election day and everyone picks up their phone and like checks a box for, checks a box for whoever they want to vote for. And they put their phone back down and then we all have results instantly.

And it's just abundantly clear we are not ready for that in any way, shape, or form. The thing that was rolling around in my head was results instantly. We have been trained to expect election results and expect information instantly. You Google something. The information is there. You can get it. So the amount of consternation of not knowing what the results were is part of the problem. It would have been okay if they just, yep, we're going to hold the election and we won't know the information for a couple of days.

We had a technical problem about it. It's not okay. But on the other hand, the level of freak out, especially from cable news that were like completely outraged. It was pretty clear that part of their outrage was the fact that they didn't have anything to talk about and they were mad. They're like personally angry about that. Yeah. We have learned two bad lessons from technology that are like multiplying upon each other. One, that the technologist got it.

Apps are like easy to make and like we don't want to have to look behind the curtain to see how they work. And two, we should be able to get any piece of information the second we think we might want it. And if we, if it's not available to us, we need someone to yell at for that. Like those two things together added up to. like this complete fiasco. Yeah.

Watching cable news on night was very entertaining. They were just like. They're so mad. And so they were so irresponsible. They jumped immediately to all sorts of not quite conspiracy theories, but like saying, well, people might say that there was a problem with something something. And it's just putting the idea in people's heads that maybe it was hacked when clearly everyone was saying it wasn't as a news organization, not the right move for an election. I mean, it definitely wasn't hacked because it didn't work. Like, what was there to hack here, really?

Okay, well, that's Iowa. Maybe one day we'll find out who won the caucus in Iowa. There's another policy story that I want to talk about. It is just so close to my heart. Yeah. Because it's so, it's so dumb. Yeah. But you might have heard there's a race to G's.

Yes. The fifth G is before us. We've got to get there fast. So, Huawei is a company from China. The UK government just voted to allow Huawei to sell infrastructure to telecom vendors there. Up to 35%. Yeah. There's a report in the Financial Times that Trump called Boris Johnson and yelled at him about this, which is incredible because it was a vote.

So even if Boris Johnson wanted it to be different, I'm not sure that he could do that. So Huawei's there. There's a notion that the Chinese government so thoroughly backs Huawei, that no way. can compete. So today, Bill Barr, the Attorney General of the United States, gave a speech, and he suggested that the United States government just buy Nokia or a controlling stake in Nokia or Erickson. Or both. I didn't see this controlling state. I thought it was just invest in them. No, it says controlling stake. And either we would, the government would do it directly, or they would provide incentives for private equity groups. I'm not even done yet. It's just

going to keep escalating with the dumbness. Or they would incentivize private equity groups to buy controlling stakes in Nokia or Erickson. And then there's this competing plan from the Trump White House, which is you're going to get all the vendors together and they're going to agree on like an open standard situation so that you could mix and match software and hardware more easily. And Bill Barr was like, no, that's dumb. It's unproven. It'll never work.

We just need to own it. So there's like literally an open, closed debate inside the government. And one answer is, what if America just buys Nokia, which I love. so much. Which sounds to me, you know what's wrong with Huawei? Is there too influenced by their government? Yeah. And so our solution from the Republicans is what if the cops by Nokia? Because Bill Barr is the head of law enforcement. Like, what if the cops just own Nokia? I mean, we have been asking the government to intervene and lay more fiber, you know. Isn't that what you want? And the end of the day, what did I really want? I wanted the cops by Nokia.

What I think is that the best part about this is like a large American company has, in our recent history, purchased Nokia. You didn't go well when Microsoft bought Nokia. They didn't buy the infrastructure part, right? No, they did buy the handset business. It's Stephen Elop, our boy. So you send Elop back in. Yeah. Yeah.

What's he doing? Get him in there. Stephen. Go back to Finland. So I've always had a trouble with the Huawei story is like, is this industry? special interests who want to be commissioned to build the infrastructure in the U.S. doing so good at lobbying. And this story, you know, doesn't clarify that at all.

I mean, it's everything that I've ever wanted from a tech policy story. Like, literally, the cops won't have by Nokia. Like, what do you want me to say? I can't get enough of it. But a little more seriously, like, there is this fear that small carriers in the United States who want to compete. They're going to see 5G as a moment to enter. They're obviously going to want to reduce costs. and Huawei will just sell them the cheapest stuff because it is heavily subsidized by the Chinese government.

The Chinese government will insist on a back door. Now, I have a back door to the U.S. networks. Game set match, right? Like, that's the fear. That's the nightmare scenario. The thing that we know for sure is that Huawei's stuff is available and typically cheaper and often seems to be the best. I mean, I think there's a big conversation on what it means to be the best in this context.

But yes, it is definitely available and cheaper. Right. And I do think that there are people that authentically have that fear, genuinely feel it, aren't just like, you know, pretending like they're afraid of security stuff because really they're just trying to make sure that they can, in a business sense, like, stick it to Huawei. So I think what is interesting here is that obviously Huawei makes 4G LTE equipment. And we have not heard this quite so loudly when it comes to the existing network build out. It's because we're about to build a next generation of networks. We'll move more things onto it, presumably, all the nonsense 5G stuff that we hear.

that Huawei will become a dominant provider of this networking gear, drive the other companies out of business, and then we live in a world of Chinese infrastructure, which is funded for slash has a backdoor for the Chinese government. Okay. All that said, I don't know that the answer is we should buy Nokia. Like, it's the jump from there to there that is like particularly bizarre to me because we have already said to our companies, American companies, we don't want to buy this equipment. We already have plans. Jeffrey Starks was on the Verge Pass last year. We talked about rip and replace plans. So the vendors have already bought Huawei equipment.

They will rip it out. They will replace other stuff. The government will subsidize that investment. I don't know if you've noticed this. Verizon's very quiet about it. They have a 5G network. They don't talk about it a lot. Verizon's like, we have 5G everywhere.

It's in your brain. Verizon. 18K is like R5G is better. T-Mobile's like R5G, while not yet available. will kill you and kill Verizon because ours are the like the networks in this country are already offering 5G and what equipment are they using right they're not using wawaway equipment they're using no yeah erics and uh seamens like they're they're they have found vendors so it's it's just this is such weird timing to say wawa is about to win when all of the marketing that any consumer

hears is here we're winning the race right uh the FCC today announced a plan to auction off 280 megahertz of spectrum in the C band. Like Verizon immediately put out a press release. It's like, yes, this will help us win the race to 5G. Like, we're doing stuff. It is not clear why at this time we need to make sure that Nokia wins. I like the angle. Wall Street Journal has a quote from Huawei's U.S. security lead, Andy Purdy,

who this is kind of a PR win for the basically U.S. government to say, Everybody sucks except for Huawei. We have to subsidize to be as good as Huawei. So his quote is, if the U.S. wants 5G hardware and software developed by a U.S. or European company, the government should encourage companies to begin negotiations with Huawei to license our 5G technology. That's great. That's great. Qualcomm exists.

I don't know if you have heard about Qualcomm. They're a small company based in the U.S. It owns most of the patents to 5G technology. Like, it is Cisco exists. What's Cisco doing? This, Cisco is my bet for the competent lobbyist in this situation. I mean, like, Cisco has bought every other networking vendor that has ever started America. If you would like to be rich, here's what you do.

You start a company that makes like five-port Ethernet switches and you just wait for Cisco to show up because they're like, we can't have that. We need to own all the 5-4 Ethernet switches in America. It's not lying. It's 100% true. And so it's just bizarre. The idea that, like, law enforcement officials, not the FCC, not anybody else, are like, we need to, the American government needs to somehow get private equity to buy a controlling stake in Nokia or do it directly is, like, everything that I've ever dreamed. I'm sorry that I sound like Alex Jones, but it's just like the law enforcement agency works with these companies to put back doors in our infrastructure. Yeah.

Yeah, there's like AT&T and Verizon buildings here that have no. windows, like, that loom ominously over New York, and it's like, yeah, that's where the FBI goes. So it's like, we can't accept this Huawei equipment that doesn't have backdoors. Well, no, I mean. That doesn't have our back doors. So that's like, it would, just to be clear, because they would require AT&T and Verizon to put in American law enforcement back doors, right? Like, AT&T would still operate its building where the NSA can go and, like, look at the network

traffic, which is not ideal, but it would still happen. The problem is presumably the Chinese spy agencies would have their own. Possibly also have access. And you don't want that. It's never that the cops aren't going to get it. The cops will always get the back. The cops will always get the back. Bill Barr.

Also, he put out a, this is totally unrelated, but he has a draft proposal with Lindsay Graham's name on it, that he, if you want Section 230 protection for your platform, you have to offer an encryption backdoor. Earnit. Yeah, it's called the Earnit Act. It is the most upside. First of all, it's like, do you know what you really want? You want to break eye message. Do you know what Apple doesn't run any publishing platform with user generated content? Like, Tim Cook is like, great, we will not earn it at this time.

Like, we don't need. No more podcast reviews. Yeah, sorry, we're going to go ahead and shut down ping. Are you, whatever? And Google is like, well, our messaging strategy hasn't really worked out. So we're just going to go ahead and not. Right. The only company that's matters to use Facebook.

And the Facebook right now is not encrypted. They've announced a plan to be encrypted, but they could just not do that. Right. The end. Or they could just give him back. Like Bill Barr, he wants to be, he has like a telecom background. So he thinks he's in it, you know. But it's just like the more he does stuff, his ideas are like the Earnit Act and then what if I buy Nokia?

Which, to be fair, is somebody who also thinks they know about telecom policy. I often think about what would happen if I buy Nokia. I'm very sympathetic to that idea. I just... Is there any definitive evidence that Huawei has built back doors into its 5G infrastructure?

Oh, if you ever spend any time with the Huawei people, will they ever tell you that there is no definitive evidence that such a thing exists? Yeah. They are happy at any time

to just... I mean, I'm surprised wasn't one Huawei PR person hasn't shown up now. No, we expect the Spanish Inquisition. I mean, their whole thing is, look, we've been selling networking equipment for years and years

and years to governments around the world who are suspicious of China they've all checked it. It's all checked. Everything's fine. Will we ever know if like the Swiss government found a Huawei backdoor and like we will never know? So I think that's like that's a problem inside of this entire entire story. I will say that I tweeted the Wall Street Journal article about the United States buying Nokia and a number of Finnish people have been like, just try it.

Thank you. I've never been happier about the angry Finns in my mentions. All right, let's take a break. I really hope the government plays Nokia. Support for the show comes from Framer. Framer is an enterprise-grade, no-code website builder, used by teams at companies like Perplexity and Muro to move faster. With real-time collaboration and a robust CMS,

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Upwork.com. So some actual news in consumer tech land. Tom Warren tweeted it, this Microsoft news this way. He just said it's Microsoft Reorg Day, which implies it happens in the frequency of like a patch Tuesday. Oh, for sure. At least annually, right? I mean, stuff happened. Oh, they've got the sign.

It's been X days since the last reorg. Yeah. So our boy, Panos Penae, now in charge of Windows, in addition to hardware. Do you want to walk us through it? He's in charge of Windows clients. Yes, I hate this term. Which pulls an intelligent edge. Do you want to try and explain the difference between Azure Windows and Windows client?

Windows client is a software that you run. on your computer. It's Windows. Windows is brand, Microsoft has decided that Windows is a good brand, and so therefore everything that they do in some way is Windows. No. Azure is their brand.

But Windows is still around, because Windows, like, technically, there was a minute where they're, like, Xbox runs Windows. And kind of. Yeah. And then HoloLens runs Windows. Well, sort of. And there's, like, all these different.

different versions of the shell that is, you know, also the client. And it gets very complicated very quickly. The point is the thing that you think of as Windows has now been moved under the auspices of Panos-Pen-A, who until now was doing all the hardware stuff. So he's making all the surfaces. And the, you know, the PR was like the whole thing that you expect everybody to say, which is we're going to tightly tie hardware and software together and it'll make the whole thing better, which is like, true.

the most part. It also, to me, shows that where is Dell going to go? Like, how, what kind of advantages could Microsoft give surface devices under this unified thing? Maybe you could think of something. It might be something small. It might be something big, who knows, but no matter what, whether they are completely neutral and give no advantages to surface hardware because of the hardware software integration,

give a nice little advantage or something huge, where's Dell going to go? Where's HP going to go? What are they going to do? an idea. Is it Linux? They should buy Nokia. Why not? So this is, there's only a few comparisons here, right?

And I've said this a lot. I've talked to Panos about this a lot over the years. Microsoft is the only tech company that has ever had a successful hardware business at the same time it licenses the operating system to its competitors. There is not another one. The closest is Google and Android, and they do not have a successful hardware business. Fair. Yep.

Right? Like the pixel is always sort of just like around the edges doesn't sell very well. Samsung is the winner and then everyone else gets to sort of play. What about Palm licensing, Palm OS? Fire. Dieter still has PTSD. I mean, it gave us the Sony Clia. Yeah.

That was nice. I had a Handera phone. Let me go ahead. The word I was using was successful. Does this company still exist? No. This product still exists. Did any of those?

executives look happy at the time. No. Right. I mean, that is like, that is the singular example of here's what seems like a good idea. Uh-huh. But it is actually a disaster that ruins the company. Right. We're going to make the hardware.

We're going to, they spun it out. It's called Palm Source. There's a whole thing. Access. Access Palm. They spun it back in. Yep. Leo Apotheker showed up and ruined everything.

That was much later, but yes. Right. So the only other comparison is good. And for the longest time, the way they handled it was basically the same. Right. So Google will tell you that the Pixel team and the Android team don't get to talk. Right. Do you truly believe this, but they will tell you this?

And they're like generally sincere bunch. But they're like the Pixel team licenses Android just like Samsung does. Yeah. They will also tell you that the reason that the Nexus existed before the pixel was we want to create like a Halo flagship device that tells the rest of the industry where to go, which is another thing that Microsoft has said many times with the surface. And in both cases, for a while, this was definitely true. The main real reason this thing existed was to convince the rest of the industry that it was possible to make something that wasn't a piece of crap. Yes.

They could make a nice thing, it turns out, and it would sell. Yeah. So the flip side was, for the longest time, Pannos, on our show would say we love our ecosystem. We, you know, the world needs Windows laptops. Our job was to push the hardware forward. I don't have special access to Windows. He said it to us a thousand times. And it is true that when they started Surface, you know, the story he is told is he would like go to the store, he would go to Best Buy, and there'd be no Windows laptop over $700. And Apple was just destroying them on the high end. So they wanted to make a laptop that competed at the high end, the premium stuff. None of the vendors wanted to do it because they didn't see the opportunity. They didn't want

to like sync the costs. Microsoft has all the money. They spent all the money. They spent all the money. they built the fancy hardware, and they let that propagate through the ecosystem. Right. So, like, hinge design, custom thermals, all that stuff. Like, Microsoft actually shares pretty freely with its ecosystem. Great. So Microsoft eats the upfront hardware development cost. They don't get special access to Windows, but they don't need to do the blotware, blah, blah, blah.

Turns out surface is actually successful, right? It's not just this, like, pie in the sky, pixel nexus thing. It's a very successful business line for Microsoft. They make great products. And now they're going to remove the barrier between the operating system. team and the hardware team. And that, that, I think there's more there than, you know, it's like how much do you that barrier exists?

Like, they say it. Is it important to say so partners believe you? Or is it like, it was never really there and we're just going to drop the fiction? I lean towards the latter. Yeah. But the fact that the Neo is coming, right, the Windows 10x folding thing. Yeah. If there was, if that fiction was actually instantiated in some sort of org chart, you know,

Joe Belfiori is over there and like he's got to set up a meeting to fix. figure out the thing with the software to do the other thing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that adds some time and friction, at least organizationally, to making sure that Windows 10x actually works on a dual screen device. Or, you know, another thing, like HoloLens or whatever, right? The Windows team is over there thinking about Windows and Windows client and, like, all, you know, Dell and HP and what are they going to do next and how they're going to make Bing happy and, you know, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And the hardware team is over here thinking about hardware. And then it turns out that, oh, wait, we need the software to do a thing to make our hardware work.

They need to, like, have a meeting. And now the meeting can just be in Panos' head. He'll have a team, of course. But they'll be able to turn the wheel faster on the new stuff they want to try. And they'll be able to get stuff done, especially for this very, very important launch of the duo, I think, a little bit more quickly. Do you think this has any impact on Microsoft, like, thinking? That the way to monetize Windows client is Office 365 and, I don't know, Skype credits and OneDrive. Yeah.

No, that's, I mean, Windows is basically free. I mean, you know, it's not hard to get a copy of Windows. And so they want to make all the money off of all those subscriptions, for sure. Well, I just, I feel like as someone who, let's say I, in the future, I'm going to buy a Dell laptop. I would feel better about that purchase, that Windows is something that Microsoft works on passionately. to make it work great on surface and also works well enough with its now competitors in the laptop space

to make sure that all the drivers work and stuff like that. Versus a Microsoft is like, hey, we made this free-to-play operating system with a bunch of upsell opportunities and we also, you know, we also put it on our hardware and we offer it for free to all the...

You know, I just feel like I would like Microsoft to be passionate about Windows and I haven't gotten that vibe in the past few years. I think that's fair. I mean, I just saw Nadella, and we put it up. He was like, look, there's a lot of Android and iOS phones in the world. We're going to address them. We're going to make an Android phone of our own. There's a lot of Windows devices and there's a lot of Macs. Like, we're out there. We're doing it. And then he was like pivoted to like Windows for IoT. Like that's how he's thinking. All of these things are endpoint for Microsoft Software and Services. And it'd be great if all those endpoints talk to Azure, which is where they make the money. quote Sometimes I say quote

Hey look Should I call Windows Azure Edge Unquote unquote So I was in a room With a bunch of very fancy journalists When he said that

And like You know It's like Ben Smith from BuzzFeed Andrew Osserickin from the Times And I'm the nerd Who was like what Type type type type

So just to bring this all the way back around I think the answer to Panos now runs hardware. He runs Windows client, which is Windows. And Dell is Microsoft clearly sees its future in delivering this kind of big service experience. Yeah. It is better for that business if the dels of the world are successful. Right. If there are more endpoints. And I think you see that from Nadella. Like it's just to him, it's a series of endpoints that he can put Microsoft services on. Other people's services are on that rely on Azure.

That's his version of the business. I think it's very compelling. He's pulled it off, right? Yeah, they're making tons of money. I'm making tons of money. Developers seem very happy with them. No one thinks of them is evil anymore. Like, they're a much happier, healthier company since Nadella has taken over.

Right? There's no confusion about what they are, what they're doing. There's no hand-wringing about the future of Windows as a business, right? Like, they're just making their move. They're just, it's going over there. So if you're Dell or your Lenovo or whatever, I think the answer is, oh, we still have an operating system to make hardware against, and we can come in just under the surface line, which is mostly what they do. They crib a lot of design. It's true. But then they do, on the high

end, they do different things. Like, there's no surface gaming PC, right? That's where all the action is right now in the PC market. That's where the growth is. It's gaming PCs, high-performance PCs. So they can win in those spaces. And then I don't think Microsoft really wants to sell like fleets of $500 laptops to UPS drivers. And that's like just a huge market for all these companies to still be in. And as long as Windows is still relatively good or its capabilities keep going forward,

I think it's good for those companies. And I think, again, I think Panos is a good executive. I think he understands that challenge. Again, we've talked about it with him so many times. If he's pushing Windows forward because he wants to make cool hardware for surface, I don't think he's going to like do the bad thing and hold it back from everybody else.

I think that is the enormous temptation for him. So we're going to have to, like, check. But if he wants to make folding Windows devices, in two years, everyone will have access to that capability in Windows. I think that's pretty good. And actually, just to wrap it up, that is a contrast to what Google is doing. They are holding back their very good pixel camera software algorithms from everybody else. Yeah. They could, you know, but that's special for the pixel.

And Android, everybody else gets Android with bad cameras. Yeah, I don't know. Like, I think there's a difference between, like, the OS level capability and, like, the software that enables your hardware, if that makes any sense. It's, like, the pixel camera is the reason you should buy the pixel. Right, exactly. But there's not that much software that enables a hardware on Surface quite yet. Not really. There's, like, basic, like, battery controller, turn the camera on stuff.

But the real question will be when Windows 10X comes out, will there be cool Windows stuff that is only available on the Surface Duo? Yeah. Or the Neo. Which one is which? The duo is the Android phone. I said it wrong. I said it wrong with the Harry Vergecast. Don't at me.

We'll see. I mean, it's, you know, Panos is making the surface duo too. That's his, that's his baby. So he's in charge of Windows and he's making an Android phone. Historically, those have not been the same groups of people.

But I guess we're going to find out. All right. We're taking a break. We come back. Speaking of Google, Google had earnings this week. We've got to talk about it. And there are rumors of an Apple TV.

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All right, Paul Miller. Live. I will say that we have not held the nation together with consistency. That was a disaster. The president said bullshit in the White House

today on camera. It's a real thing. And that's your fault. Let's keep it going. I'm not going to change the name, but that's what you want. The segment that I do every week

is called Revenge of the Glasshole. Oh, my God. Google. Glass is back. So I had completely forgotten about this. But remember, after Google got rid of Google Glass, then they were like, well, actually, we've made another Google Glass.

So there's Google Glass Enterprise Edition 2. And it's a few tweaks. It is pretty much like the original Google Glass. It's got USBC. And apparently it's been hot with some enterprises. And now they're just going to sell it directly. So you don't have to be part of like, you had to be sort of. sort of part of some special organization somehow to get your hands on Google Glass Enterprise Edition too.

And now you could just be a pleb and give Google $1,000 for one of the greatest flops in human history. And I just love it. I just love this little guy keeps on going. Poor Google Glass. I mean, I will never forget wearing Google Glass the Indy 500 and just a thousand drunk people. I'm like, can you see the clothes of that thing? It was just like, no. But that's what everyone wants.

If you're going to mount a camera to your face, that's the level of value that you need to receive from it to look this dumb. Well, I'm going to buy one. Good. No, you're not. Yeah, you are. Yeah, it's like I didn't buy a Pixel 3. Oh, yeah.

I skipped a generation of pixels. So I'm going to get into. Pixel 4A rumor is starting to ramp up, though. We got a code name now. It's coming. Headphone jack, I'm told. That's not a joke? That's not a goof?

I mean, it's the rumor. Wait 20 minutes the whole thing a week. We'll find out. All right, speaking in Google, earnings. Yeah. So earnings, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Nobody cares. Except Google finally started telling us how much it's very sufficient to make,

including and especially YouTube. It gave us three years of financial data. Last year, it made $15 billion. which is a lot. It's a significant portion of Google's overall revenue, something in the neighborhood of 10%, I think. And Google also said that they pay out the majority of that money for content acquisition. So some of that goes to creators. So at least $7.501 billion is going to that. I think they said it was like $8.5 or something. Anyway, yeah. And all of the new information that Google has provided has served as an, excellent way for everybody to reify their opinions about Google.

Yelp, very mad at Google. And they're saying, well, the only reason they raise those numbers is because their overall revenue was down. And so they were trying to, you know, hide the fact that they are doing scary things with the search page and blah, blah, blah, blah, they're evil. YouTube creators who rightfully are concerned about not getting paid enough and the adpocalypse or whatnot are very mad because, look, they're making all this money that we should get more than we're currently getting.

And just like on and on and on. The big question is why did Google release these numbers? And I think it's twofold. One, they're probably trying to like hold off having the SEC yell at them because until now when YouTube wouldn't release YouTube numbers, people are like, why not? And they'd be like, well, you know, Larry Page is too busy. And so he doesn't even know. It's like, well, that's, that was dumb. But now Sunder does charge everything.

And so he knows. Yeah. I mean, I think that's the real reason. I think you'd make a strong case that Larry Page just didn't go to work. Sure. But like somebody knew. Right. So the rule is if any material numbers reported to the CEO or whatever.

That's okay. So like you can make the strong case at Larry Page, like, was at one of his 16 flying car companies? Right. Because he has like a number of flying car companies. Yeah. More than any one person needs. I will grant that. Like, you might need one.

Everyone needs one. Once you hit three, you're getting a little excessive. So, like, he's distracted. He's like, is Google doing well? Everyone's like, yep, it's great. And he's not drilling into the... But Sundar definitely knows because he was a CEO of Google. So you're saying that I was not at all aware of this,

that the numbers that companies released are based on the numbers that have been reported to the CEO. That's at least part of the rule. I mean, there's like the SEC has a number of... Just think about the SEC's interest here. If you're investing as a person in the public markets, there's a certain amount of material information that you need to make decisions. So the SEC mandates material information to investors. So there's a lot of rules at play about what is material.

So, like, for example, you would think the number of iPhones sold would be material. Like, Tim Cook definitely knows that number. Like if I knew if it was going up or down, I might buy or sell Apple stock. But Apple decided, and they presumably the SEC now for several quarters, has not caused the problem. Like, we're going to tell you iPhone revenue, not iPhone sales numbers. So, like, there's some play in there, but like, as long as you're reporting enough to inform investors so the market is transparent, you're fine.

So here, I think the answer was, Alphabet is a big holding company. There's a Google number. A lot of investors would like to know the YouTube number. But, like, it's not even important for our C. It's not even important such that our CEO needs to know the number, so we don't have to tell you. I feel like YouTube is the most important thing that Google does. I don't think you're wrong. And I think this is to backtrack to the other reason of why you do this now, the notion that Google search will be the engine of profitability for this company is like it's under attack from all sides.

Right? It's like, first of all, have enough people gotten phones in their lives? right so like we can't monetize all those additional data points so like users have flattened out then it's like on mobile have we junk this up enough the answer is abundantly yes has paul switched over to duck duck go and then on desktop we made this change and everyone screamed and we did a whole verge cast and they had to change it back like is the ad load of a search page so like it's flattening it still makes a ton of money a ton of money and the but all the google's moves to make more money off of basic search ads this was just

where they make the vast majority of their money are being watched way more closely now than they ever have been by, you know, antitrust regulators. Yeah. Both in the U.S. and in Europe, especially. And so they can't grow much more because they've got everybody. They can't necessarily squeeze more

out of what they already have without people going, hey, what the hell, Google? So they need other lines of business to start picking up the slack. Yeah, and so that's why YouTube matters. It is the same story right now with Facebook and Instagram. I think Bloomberg reported that Instagram makes $20 million or $20 billion for Facebook.

And it's one that's more. I think that's part of the reason that leaked. We have a bigger number. And second, it's you just see that happening inside of these services. Like the core Facebook growth, user growth, money has leveled off. Instagram is picking up the Slack. I think Google is saying, look, YouTube is a big business and we haven't gotten all the way. Sunar said something really strange in the earnings call.

He's like, we're adding shopping buttons to YouTube. If you search for like Puma Sneakers review, you can buy the shoes right there. but like I haven't seen it a bunch of people have like that's not there yet so maybe he just like leaked a feature but they're doing more to like commercialize YouTube in that very direct way

and then you know it was like the 15th anniversary of Maps today and yeah Lauren Lauren Get It Wired our friend had a great interview of Sundar and he was just like we're reorganizing interface to doing more AI stuff and like also there's

going to more ads in it like they're starting to monetize all their surfaces which is you know like fun but It's like the ad moment for all of Google services are here in a very serious way. Yeah, the other things that sort of came out around here, they called their hardware business a, quote, multi-billion dollar business, but who knows how many multi that is,

all of everything in sort of Google's other category, which also includes like subscription services, like YouTube Music Premium and whatever, I guess was 17 billion, all of which tells me that Google doesn't make that much money on hardware. And it's probably not coming from pixel. It's probably coming from, you know, Chromecast and Nest. and whatever else. Maybe some of the pixel,

but it's a relatively small business. And then lastly, I don't know if this is on the earnings call, but Hiroshi Lockheimer tweeted that Lifetime, Google has paid out $80 billion to Android developers, which is almost exactly half of what Apple has paid out to iPhone developers.

The big caveat there is Apple's number includes payouts in China and Google doesn't. So I think regardless, the point is there is still more money, going out to developers on the iPhone than is going out to developers on Android.

Even if it's like close in China, I still think that that's true, which is wild because, again, I keep saying it until people remember, it's 85% of all phones on the planet is Android, and yet they still aren't pulling in as much money for developers as the iPhone is.

Is that a culture of people buy, like 85% of phones, are Android, but how much money is spent buying phones, Android phones? Because like if, you know, someone's buying a $200 Android phone versus an $800 iPhone. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And how much are they spending on apps and there's more free apps in Android? All of these storylines have been around for almost a decade. But what's interesting is Google's number basically confirms it. Yeah. Here's my hot take. It is almost certainly not true, but I'm going to say it and we can react to it.

Okay. Wrong. Mobile operating systems have not been good for software developers. Ooh. Okay. Name a software company, a pure play software company that exists because of a mobile operating system. Fantastic Al. That's like two people.

Yeah. Like name a company on the scale of an Adobe. Zinga. Okay. Although they had FarmVill on desktop, though. Yeah, that's definitely the game ones. Okay. Game ones.

Yeah. Pop cap or whatever. All the different podcast apps. Those are all like little businesses. These are all like one and two people shops. She's saying Adobe sized. Yeah, I'm saying like Microsoft was an apps vendor. Uh-huh.

And it had a big business selling applications for computers. Okay, I got one for you. Yeah. This is a controversial one. Slack. Hmm. Okay. That's pretty good.

That's what you got. Yeah. All right. Microsoft is supposed to destroy Slack. We'll see if that's true in another year. Okay. That's fine. But, I mean, your larger point, to me, it's not so much to the mobile OS, although it's partly that.

It's also the original sin of the app store of like, well, let's just price this stuff at 99 cents. Right. Yeah. That is what really cool. Let's call them apps and make them feel like toys and price them real cheap. And this will be the business. What about, like, Square and Venmo? Those are pretty big businesses.

But they don't sell software, right? they take a cut of transactions for buying other things. Isn't that being a software business? Sure. I just meant like when you bought Photoshop in 2003, Adobe wasn't looking over your shoulder every time you like paid your buddy for a movie to take two cents out of it. You just bought the software and moved on with your life. Like Square is like a credit card processing company.

It just happens to have a software interface. Well, Minecraft. Does that count? Minecraft was on desktop. It was on consoles. It's hard. Like, I'm sure someone's going to tweet at me, and I'm sure there's a thousand examples. But I come back.

Dieter, you said that you had your piece about software pricing in the App Store. Yep. That's where this idea came from. Our friend Ben Thompson is written about this over and over again. Like, the idea that these are platforms that you can build a big business on that isn't actually just a software shell for another more lucrative business is it hasn't been there yet. And I think this Google number is just another example of that. 85% of the phones in the world run Android, and no one has built a huge business in supplying

Android software, like client applications that isn't connected to some other business somewhere else. Or games. But even the game is like free to play games are not sort of like, you don't grow up as a young child being like, I will charge you to stop waiting. Like that's not, you know what I mean? Like it's fine that that's a business model that emerged, but it's not, I don't know. Anyway, that's a little bit of an aggression. Do you want to talk about television?

What do you want to say about television? Well, there's going to be any Apple TV, we're told. Well, it's about time. The last one came out in September 2017. Yeah, who cares? Yeah, I guess it's still the same. All we really want is a better remote control, right? It's all anybody wants is better remote control.

Well, what you in particular, Neil, I want, is support for more codex, which isn't necessarily a hardware problem. It's a will Apple play ball problem. We should probably talk about what it was like trying to watch 4K HDR and the Super How'd that go for you? So Amazon's a big company, right? Yeah. They're really good at delivering things the next day.

Yeah. And so on Friday, I think Fox and Roku announced that they weren't going to renew their deal. Yeah. So it wouldn't stream to Roku players. And on Saturday, announced it was going to be fine. And so in the meantime, I tried to order an Amazon fired stick. So I can watch the game in 4K. And Amazon, I think they sold out where they just couldn't deliver it to me in time.

So on Saturday came, I ordered. two different rocus from two different sellers because I didn't trust anybody. And one got there. And the other one is still not at my house. So it's fine. I mean, the Fox app worked fine. It streamed HDR10. It looked good. It took like 36 gigs of data, which is crazy for four hours of video. I'm not too crazy. It's right there with everything else. But like most 4K stuff you watch is like a movie, right? In like two hours. Like four hours of sustained 4K streaming is a lot. 500 megabytes of upstream data. What was that Roku say? Hig.

They continue to watch the Super Bowl. What on earth were they saying? What data was that thing generating? Half a gigabyte of data upstream. Your phone most likely as 128 or 256 gig of storage. That's like a significant hit under storage. Yeah. It was half a gig of data, right?

Yeah. So anyway, I don't know. We can ask, but it's a lot of ad-pings is what I'm told. But even then, it's like, that's a lot. A lot of ad pings. Don't you just need to tell them the Delta? They stopped watching the Super Bowl's useful information. They continue to watch the Super Bowl.

No buttons have been pressed. This should not take that much to it. The ad pings would be that Roku can tell that this ad is being shown. Roku's not putting its own ads in. So this was the heart of the dispute with Fox. And I think this is like goes back to this whole conversation on app stores. Roku makes no money selling hardware. Like Anthony Wood has been on the Veritas.

He's told us, make enough money selling hardware to support engineering efforts we must spy basically all of their money is in their ad ecosystem in content placements in their channel if you want to publish an app that is a monetized on the Roku store you have to go through the Roku partner payments platform blah blah and they get a cut and so you can imagine that Fox is like their deal is up the Super Bowl is coming they know people want to watch the Super Bowl and Roku and they're like we would like a different cut please we would like to take more money

And Roku said no, and they couldn't agree, and then they pulled the app. And Roku sent the email saying, sorry, Fox customers. You can't watch Super Bowl on any Roku because Fox is a bully. And Fox said, no, we just want more money for the thing that we make. And then something happened, they figured out. That is like a carriage dispute. That is what Turner does with Comcast or whatever. Except that usually it's different.

Right. Usually a cable company pays to run the channel. Here, the channel pays to be on Roku. which is a little bit backwards, but it's the same, the heart of the debate. Which is why if you have an Nvidia Shield and you just run Android apps. Android apps come through the Play Store.

That's just fine. But speaking of Nvidia, their new game streaming service doesn't have games from a bunch of publishers, even though in theory the idea is you just get your Steam library in the cloud because they need a separate license, which means that we not only have carriage disputes for cable,

we also have it for set-top boxes, and now we're going to have it for cloud gaming. So let me, but so Carriage's speeds on cable is like a really interesting thing. So if you run a cable, this is like a true story. In the old days. Yeah. Right? You would have like the cable menu, you'd have the channel lineup.

Where a channel got placed in the lineup is like a competitive concern. Oh, sure. You want to be channel 18 to channel 400. Right. And so like a big cable system buys a big network. Yeah. For example, Comcast. might buy NBC.

Comcast an investor in Box Media, by the way, a parent company. It's a serious disclosure. And they might have ended up buying like the golf channel or the tennis channel. And suddenly those channels spike in the guide. Yeah. And competing sports channels sue Comcast. This is a thing that happens all the time.

There's an entire system at the FCC of like managing these disputes. They can alternative court arbitration management anti-discrimination system. Yeah. Just for like where the cable channels go, how the cable companies, handle the chain like their providers. It's like a whole thing like a whole legal apparatus. And if that legal apparatus fails and they

can't come to a resolution Ajipai opens up his drawer where he's got his D&D dice. He just rolls a few of them and then that becomes your channel. It's like an interesting thing because like that was developed over years and years and years of like argument and conflict and whatever none of that exists

for the Rokus of the world or the apples of the world or these app stores. And so there is like a little bit of a drumbeat of like, hey, this is kind of a solved problem, right? Like, managing these disputes, like we understand what these disputes are. We understand how to evaluate who wins and who loses. We understand how to split the difference in terms of money. There's an entire, like, what if we just build a system like that for this stuff? It is, I think we're just at this place now where these problems are so dumb that it seems

silly that there isn't a system by which they can be managed. It's just fun. These are just TV problems now. You can't get the Fox Sports app on your Roku before the Super Bowl because they can't come to terms on unpayment or the Roku store promotes certain things above other things, even though they own channel. Like Apple's going to promote its content. Amazon, if you buy a fire TV, like I don't know if you heard about this, but Amazon makes TV shows, you guys. They're called Amazon. They're like, they're woo. I don't know if you know about that. Like, that's all the fire TV is like screaming at you. So, like, there's just a world in which there's a lot of competition there now.

I think it's pretty good. But there's a world in which, as it kind of coalesces, you see a bunch of the cable TV problems are just going to come along for the ride. I want to believe in gamers. They will put up with some quantity of bullshit. But they're not quite as bullshit tolerant in the sense that they can, they know better how to move platforms. And I think the outcry of, like, a lot of the exclusive stuff, like, because,

PC gaming has had like a lot of exclusives before now. Everything's been on Steam and then like a little bit has been on YouPlay and a little bit spawned on BattleNet. But now there's now with Epic games having its launcher and its whole store and trying to create some sort of bifurcated PC gaming market. I feel like the gamers are so mad at that that I actually think that maybe it won't become a hellscape. But who knows? The Epic Store is a really good one, right? Like, they announced an alternative app store. They have this other deal.

Like, the cuts that game stores take have just, like, dropped. Right? Like, Apple takes 30% from our developer, but in the games world, like, Epic takes less. Steam takes less. Like, those numbers are dropping just because there's a little bit of competition for developers. That's like a, yes, competition lowers prices. By the way, just to, it was the tennis channel that was mad at Comcast. They sued each other for years and years and years.

It finally ended in 2015. I'm just saying this is like a classic, if you're interested, this is like a classic case of Comcast. Bought something, and they put their channels in the free tiers, and they get the tennis channel. They had to pay extra, and it's like a whole, whole FCC thing. I know a lot about the FCC, you guys. Do you want somebody to code X for two minutes?

Oh, my God. Yes. How was your Super Bowl quality? It was great. It looked great. So, you know, an interesting problem for a lot. high-res video is that when you're watching a movie, it can just buffer.

They know what's coming. Yeah. They know what happens at the end of Ford versus Ferrari. I won't tell you, but Ford wins. It's just a fact. But they've got the whole file, right? So they can buffer. You can't really buffer the Super Bowl without interesting delay,

and they eventually just, that stream just got farther and farther behind. Wow. And like, so live streaming, I think, is still, if what people want is live 4K sports, like the bandwidth requirements are just going to get higher and higher, or you're going to just deal with a delay. Fox said it was up to a minute in some cases,

which is wild for the super rule. If you're like a betting type person and you're a minute behind, like, that's not great for you. I'm not a betting type person. I use that money to buy limousines in Las Vegas. That's a real fact. I know Twitch has a setting.

It's basically you can have high quality, high latency or lower quality, low latency, or you can be like a super high-end popular streamer, and I think you get high quality. You get everything? It's just a fact. Like, they have to encode everything on the fly and get it out. And like that technology. Well, I also wonder if that had something to do with how high your bit rate was.

The bit rate out came out to about 20. And like Netflix recommends 25. So it was in the right zone. But yeah, I mean, it worked. I'm like proud of them that it worked. It looked really cool. Like, it's going to be hard to go back to watching 720P broadcast sports. We never really talked about the Apple TV.

Here's what I think they need to do with the Apple. They need to change your remote. They need to not worry about Apple TV or Apple Arcade games running the 812 or A13. And they need to make it like a $50 stick. Yeah, they definitely need to make a stick. That's the real problem. It's like, what's 180 or something? Like, that's too much.

Yeah, it's way too much. It's entirely too expensive. And they have no self-convour. about the interface, which is like a weird zone for Apple to be in. Right? They've got the app tile interface and they've got the just what is happening here, Apple TV app interface. And they haven't yet decided which is the interface of the whole thing.

But that's not a hardware problem. That's just to change the software setting problem. And they just don't have the confidence to do it yet. Yeah. They need to make a much cheaper thing with a better interface and a better remote. So basically what I'm saying is they need to throw out the Apple TV and make something way simpler. And it is wild that they haven't made a stick.

And I know that Apple doesn't make cheap things, blah, blah, blah, blah. But like, the sticks are fine, y'all. Like, you can get 4KHDR out of a stick. It's fine. Well, so here's the confusing thing to me is we know that making the shows is not their business. They are not expecting to make back the budget of the morning show and for all mankind and C. And honestly, the servant. Like, those are very expensive shows.

They're not expecting to make that back based on $4.99 a month and or giving it away for a year if you just, like, breathe at an iPhone. They're expecting that you're going to open the app to watch those shows. In the app, you will see that you can watch some HBO shows, and then you will push the button to subscribe to HBO inside the app, and Apple will take 30% of that. Right. That's like they're – it's the same business model on Amazon as with a fire stick. So it's another cable box, right? It's just – it's the dream of the al-a-cart cable box. You open this thing.

You can subscribe the channels you want. You can quit them when you want, whatever. Okay, that all makes sense. But it's on everyone else's hardware, right? Like, the idea that you're going to buy a Roku and then you're going to subscribe to all your channels inside of this one app over here, instead of just doing it directly,

I think, is they haven't quite squared that circle. And they haven't made their own hardware so compelling that you'll buy it and then definitely use it that way. So I think that's the problem. Like, yep, they've got the app in all these places, and maybe you'll watch the morning show on your Roku or your Firestick or your Android TV. But you're not going to say, you know what, now that I've watched the morning show in this app, this is where I should also subscribe to HBO.

And I think that's, like, confused. Unless you, like, really, like, finish the thought of, oh, I want to have all of this stuff on my iPhone and iPad without having to think about it and having to install yet another app or whatever, that is what finishes the thought. But are people thinking on their Roku, I should make sure to use the Apple app to subscribe to HBO so that in my eyes. iPhone, I can use Apple TV to watch HBO. Like, that's a lot of steps in the chain for people to have to. And they are also, I don't know if they've done this yet, but they are building an ICloud SSO for TV. So if you download the HBO Go app, you can then sign into it using your Apple TV credentials.

So like, now you're just like all over the place. Now you're just like, what I wish to have is a billing relationship with Apple Inc. Like, I don't, I think about nerdy TV things all the time. I've never thought to myself, I need to consolidate my billing relationships. I suspect. Most Americans have gone on it. Look, I want them to make a TV. Just make me a TV.

How does that solve any of these problems? Then you'll have a TV. It's like a $2,000 television. Yeah, it would be great. It would be a lot cleaner than whatever they're doing now, which is just all over the place. I just don't think they know what they want to do with this product yet. I think it's still a hobby, and they just had, like, Jennifer Anderson is on the payroll now. Right.

Which, like, in terms of, like, your hobby, like, you've, like, advanced level hobbyist. Like, I love model trains. Also, I'm paying Oprah a lot of money. To say, too, true, true. What? I know, man. All right. This one's off the rails.

I love you all. I really hope Microsoft buys Nokia again. I just wanted to say it one more time. Double you up. Brock and roll. Paul. promo code.