The Vergecast - Microsoft's Surface event, Pixel 7 and Pixel Watch reviews, and Meta Connect 2022

Episode Date: October 14, 2022

The Verge's Nilay Patel, Alex Cranz, and David Pierce discuss the announcements at Meta Connect, the new products from Microsoft's Surface event, and reviews for Google's Pixel 7 and Pixel Watch. Meta Connect 2022: all the news on the Quest Pro The Meta Quest Pro is a cutting-edge headset looking for an audience  Meta figured out legs for its Horizon avatars What does Mark Zuckerberg think ‘open’ means? Mark Zuckerberg takes a shot at Apple’s closed ecosystem FTC files to block Meta from buying VR fitness studio Within Google Pixel Watch review: it’s a smarter Fitbit Google Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro review: better and better   Smartwatches, not phones, are where the action is at this year The biggest announcements from Microsoft’s Surface event  Microsoft Office will become Microsoft 365 in major brand overhaul Microsoft’s Surface Studio 2 Plus ships with an RTX 3060 for $4,299 Microsoft’s Surface Pro 9 is the latest major gadget to ditch the headphone jack The Surface Laptop 5 arrives with Thunderbolt 4 but no AMD options  Surface Pro 9 lets you pick between Intel or Arm 5G and new color options Microsoft partners with Meta to bring Teams, Office, Windows, and Xbox to VR Apple shows Windows some love with new Music, TV, and iCloud photos integration     AI-generated imagery is the new clip art as Microsoft adds DALL-E to its Office suite    New York’s weed laws mean marijuana is legal but the stores selling it aren’t yet Email us at [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we'd love to hear from you. We are conducting a short audience survey to help plan for our future and hear from you. To participate, head to vox.com/podsurvey, and thank you! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today on the Vergecast, their crew reacts to all the news from meta this week. We'll break down our reviews with the pixel hardware, and somehow Microsoft makes its way into literally everything this week. That's coming up right after this. 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. Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast. Studio kind of smelled like weed.

What are you guys doing in there? We weren't doing anything. What I said to David as we walked in was, I bet that Kara Swisher was in here with her new Vox Media Podcast Network show. On with Caris Wisher, presented by New York Magazine. Listen, when you leave the New York Times, you get to just go crazy. That's what happens. Y'all want me to plug the show? I'm going to mention that it smells like weed.

Go subscribe to On with Carus Wisher, wherever a podcast are served. Get that five-star review. Don't mention the weed thing to anyone that I report to. Yes, dear listener, there's no evidence to back up Neil's claim. Thanks, Liam. Opinions expressed on the Verchcast are not the opinions of Vox Media or Liam. We haven't even finish the intro. We've already done a disclaimer.

That's great. Hi, everybody. I'm your friend, Eli. David Pierce is here. Hi, I'm sitting right next to you. Yeah, we're. This is very exciting. We're together in New York City, which hasn't happened in quite some time.

No, and it smells like weed. I don't know if we've talked about that yet. I think that might just be New York City. It's very possible. There's a real chance. It's just a city wafting into the office. Alex Cran's also in New York City, but at her home. I am at my home, smoking weed, just furious.

in the middle of this podcast. So I can feel like I'm there in the office with you. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. That's good. She's got her Plex server. Do you use the Plex server to heat the weed?

Are you like a, is that a multi, multifunctional vape situation? Yeah. You know, it gets hot enough. Is it possible that like firing up the Plex server is like a euphemism for Alex smoking dude? And every time she talks about the Plex server, that's actually the happening. Yeah. It's actually a bomb.

It's great. That's good. No, you got to, you got to heat it. So you heat the crystals. It vaporizes the weed. It doesn't burn it. Plex, streamer of the future. All right, there's been quite a lot going on this week in tech news,

in addition to whatever happened in the studio earlier today, which was very chill. It's been a big week for everybody. It's been a big week for everybody. Everybody's having a great time. On with Caras Swisher, now part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Metacconnect was this week. You all did a whole episode about Metac connect. We should talk about it just a little bit.

The VR people have legs now. The new Quest Pro is out. Google reviews hit, so the Pick. pixel watch review, pixel 7, pixel 7 Pro. And then Microsoft just announced everything that it had. It just was like, is anybody at Microsoft have something to announce? Today is the day. And they did it, like all at once. So you got new Surface Studio 2 plus, Service Pro 9. It's 10 years of Surface, by the way. Crucial Microsoft Teams news. Crucial Teams news. They rebranded Office to Microsoft 365, which something. But Tom sat down with Panos Penet, talked about 10 years.

There's a Surface laptop. Just everything you can think of. Sacha just walked around Redmond saying, does anybody have anything to announce? And then Microsoft Teams came out. And they said, we have Microsoft Teams to announce. Somebody walked behind him and took notes. That second step is very important. Sacha walks around and says, what do you have to announce?

And then they tell him. And he says, how does Teams figure into this? And then they tell him and then they get to announce it. Microsoft announced so much stuff. They announced stuff at Facebook's event. Yeah. It just spilled over. They're like, this is our event, too.

So let's quickly start with Metacnect. We all did a whole episode on it already, so we don't have to overdo it. But Quest Pro 2 kind of looks incredible. It also kind of looks like an expensive boondoggle. I can't tell. Both of those things are true at the same time, right? Like it is, by all accounts, very impressive. The facial expression tracking seems to be pretty good.

The pass-through video seems to be pretty good. The overwhelming question is like, what is this for and who's going to buy it? And there were a bunch of people on Twitter who were like, how dare you not love the future? I can't wait to spend $1,500. on the Quest Pro. And then it's like, what are you going to do with it? And they're like, well, I'm going to have it.

Yeah. Yeah. That's how I almost pre-ordered one. I came so close to pre-ordering one yesterday. So you could just play like Supernatural and Beat Sabre, but in slightly higher resolution. But so there's that. So we use our quest too, like almost every day to do Supernatural. It's great.

Love it. Yeah. Almost nothing else happens in the Sierra Head Zone. So whatever. But then, you know, you look at the whiteboardy thing. they did so that controllers are really cool. They have the controllers now have their own sensors. So the controllers have their own sense of where they are in a room.

They do their own inside out tracking. And they have all these haptics. So Addie and Alex Heath, who both got to use the thing, we're like, it actually feels like you're pushing the controller against something when you write. And the bottoms, you can screw in little stylus tips. You got to love this. Virtual E-Inck drawing tablets. Come on.

Yeah. I mean, it brings me a lot of joy. Like, I think the Quest Pro is. Very, very cool. But I was thinking about this earlier this week. You know, we're coming up on the, what was it, the 30th anniversary of the Lisa? No, 40th. Yeah.

It's old. The Apple Lisa, which, like the Quest Pro, was super, super cool and did a lot of really cool stuff that hadn't really been done before. And like the Quest Pro was super, super expensive. And unlike the Quest Pro ended up being buried in like a landfill somewhere in Utah. Yeah. But I think, like, I just keep thinking about that and, like, how, how expensive this thing is and how cutting edge it is and how it's probably a little too cutting edge. It's probably not quite ready. Like, the audience doesn't quite exist for it.

But the Lisa was supposed to be, like, a real product for Apple, right? This was, like, Steve Jobs thing before the Mac and then back and forth. And then he cruelly abandoned the Lisa to do the Mac. That he had to, like, get kicked off to do the Mac. They were like, stop, stop messing with the Lisa. You suck at it. go do the Mac. And he just took all the best ideas

and was like, here's the Mac. And we all love the Mac. And we all love the Mac. Notably, the Mac also came from Apple. So like the Lisa is a disaster, but it's a disaster. It's sort of like almost think Apple

because they were betting too much on it. But then they refacted everything into the cheaper Mac and they did it, right? Zuck is not positioning the Quest Pro is the future of meta. He's like, I've taken yet another small step to my dream of permanently surveilling you in virtual reality.

And here's the most advanced headset. And he has given a version of the speech now several times. He gave it to Joe Rogan. He gave it to Alex Heath. I've heard him say this thing. He's coming at it from two directions. So one, they are coming at sort of AR or mixed reality from we're going to pack all the technology into the biggest headset we can design and build, but it'll have all the tech in it. Yeah. And that's the Quest Pro. And then we're going to make glasses that can actually fit your head and shove as much into that form factor. And over time, those things will converge. So, he's basically got like ray bands of a camera over here and he's got the quest pro over here that can actually do mixed reality and his plan is they'll meet in the middle. I don't know why he thinks that's the right approach. Like you should just sit, you know, like, so I kind of think it is. I mean, the reality is if you're, if you're doing it from one side, you're also doing the other side. You just don't ship it. Right. You just, that's the stuff that like lives in the labs that you make for a long time. And it's a, it's a big prototype. And then you make it a smaller prototype. And then eventually

you can ship it inside of the thing. But the other thing meta is trying to do is make all of the rest of this stuff happen. So like they need stuff to be out there for developers to play with. They need people to be like dreaming up cool new apps. They need all of this stuff to happen all at once. So if they're to sit there inside until they can fit all of this tech into Rayban glasses, they're going to be way too early because they won't have given anybody anything to do or anything to work with. So I kind of feel like. But why ship the Rayban glasses? That I think is a more fair question. But I, I, I, I think that's what I mean. It's like, I think the Rayban glasses make sense, though, because that was part of their attempt to normalize cameras on your face.

The surveillance. Yeah, like, right? That's the entire point of it is like, let's normalize cameras on your face, because if we want AR to work in the future, people have to be comfortable being constantly surveilled by everyone around them at all times. Yeah. And like, I mean, I do kind of think that that idea of everything meat in the middle makes sense. But also, why do I want to spend $1,500 to be a beta tester. If I'm a developer who's really excited about the future of VR, the Quest Pro makes sense. Are there enough of those developers to make the Quest Pro a success? No.

And that's why you sign up Microsoft to throw the HoloLens out the window and put Microsoft teams on the Quest Pro and then you sign up Accenture. Yeah. And you have the CEO of Accenture in Hologram at your event being like, we're going to do corporate training in the Metaverse using Quest. Like, they are making a full-on enterprise play with this product. But not because this is the thing that has driven me the most crazy about all of these announcements.

Everybody has come out and said, you know, Microsoft and Meta believe VR is the future of work. Like, no, they don't. They absolutely do not think that. Souchi Nadella even said to Ben Thompson that, like, this might be a thing that you own, but this is not going to be like your primary device. You'll also have a laptop. You'll also have a phone.

What this is is like a pretty naked attention. to make a thing that someone will pay for. Right? Like, Google made glass, and it failed. And so Google went, Google Glass Enterprise. And then they sold it to some people. And that's just like, that's a thing you do when you can't get consumers to buy your device.

You come up at this really narrow work thing and try to sell it that way. And it turns out that companies love to burn money on fancy cool new technology that gets them in press releases from companies like meta and Microsoft. And so this is like a stepping stone to get from here to there.

And I think anyone who is like, everybody thinks the first killer app for VR is work, no. It just isn't. And none of the company's building this think that. They just think this is a way for them to make some money while they continue to build deeply imperfect products into ones that actually work for people. So I will say that expensive technology happens in corporate America first is a real pattern. Yeah. PCs happen in corporate America. Max actually, they were so expensive.

They were $4,000 or $5,000 a piece. Graphic design shops are the thing that, like, blue. the Mac up with desktop publishing. This is like ancient history now. But it was an enterprise product. It was for graphic design. It works. My mom had...

I mean, even the BlackBerry. Yeah, the BlackBerry. I was saying my mom had one of those giant Motorola bag phones in a hospital gate phone. Yeah. Those are the best. So like there's, yeah, somewhere on the adoption curve, there's the business has a business need and I can solve it using this tool. It's just really unclear what beaming a Windows desktop into the Metaverse does for

you at work, which is. more or less what they have promised. And then there's this, you know, they, they did the more realistic avatars, which aren't yet coming to teams. Like, there's like all these bits and bobs that aren't yet connected. But you can see Microsoft was like, screw it. We don't want to pay for the Holoens. Also, we fired that guy. Alex Kittman. Alex Kittman is gone from Microsoft after a series of pretty devastating reports about his behavior. And they have this like, it just didn't work. It just didn't happen for them. And they can just divest themselves with that hardware investment, let meta take all of the pain and get to work building software experiences that potentially,

you know, they'll put on Apple's headset or whoever's headset once somebody wins. Which is more modern Microsoft anyway. Yeah. Like that basically tracks with who Microsoft wants to be as a company. And like they might make a Surface headset someday, but like there's no reason for Microsoft to really try super hard to be way ahead of the game here. They're much better off being on everybody else's stuff right now than trying to build it their own.

Yeah. Yeah. Which is funny because the flip side, the next day they're like, Surface. The computers that we make. Right. Fair. What were you saying, Alex? I was going to say, I am putting my inbox at risk for saying this.

But I do think Microsoft Teams is actually like sneakily a killer app for VR. Oh, boy. All right. Yeah. I mean, again, my inbox just PR just flooded it as soon as I said that. Just a hundred emails. Alex Cran's willing to accept future of work pitches. is.

Alex at the verge.net. I'm so sorry. How will you collaborate in the metaverse? AI predicts workplace collaboration. Alex. Dot crayons at the verge.com. Yeah. She's ready.

But I think there is a very small potential for VR to solve a lot of the problems we're seeing in remote work, right? Like remote work is, I think about this a lot because working at the verge, we're a fully remote company. We have a lot of people. And work has just changed and how we communicate with each other and how we can like just turn and talk to somebody has changed. And there is some desire to have that connectivity again.

And teams could, could do that if they nail it. But currently it's all super creepy and weird. And also, like, nobody wants to have a meeting with their boss and get fired by, like, a cartoon avatar that's just, like, a hellscape that we're all trying to avoid. Yes, that's bad. But if teams, like, figures out a way to be, like, a good VR app, then maybe that could be a thing. That, okay. I just, the logical leap that you just did in. this sentence, if teams can figure out how to be a good VR app, is just enormous.

I just want to just, here's a little, here's a little slice of life. They're not putting any resources towards HoloLens. They got, they can put it towards that now. And they love teams. No, no, let me just offer everybody a little slice of corporate life. So sometimes we're all talking. And I sense, boy, Slack makes everybody a jerk. It's happening again. It happens every day. Slack makes you a jerk. So you should stop doing that. You should talk to each other like adults with your voice. And so I say something like, let's get on a Slack call or let's hop on a Zoom or just call me.

And I can hear the devastating size from 200 miles away of people just being like, oh. And all I'm asking them to do is push one button in the app in which they are already pushing buttons and talk with their voice instead of their fingers. And people are like, oh, every day this happens. Every day. It doesn't matter what company you work in. It doesn't, like, The Virgin is a great culture.

People love each other. Oh, right? Like, I assume if you work at a place where people like each other left, it's even a more devastating sigh. Now imagine being like, all right, co-worker in Microsoft Teams. What I'd like to do is for you to put on your headset so you can look at me as a cartoon so we can more intimately connect on an emotional level. I just don't think that's going to go well.

I feel like there's a lot of things. have to do. Like there's at least three steps they have to clear. But, you know, it can happen. At least three. At least three seems fair. I cannot wait for you to get one of these headsets. I'm getting one of these headsets.

We are only meeting in VR from now on. I love it. I will say we got a note. I can't remember if it was out of your outs. You got a note from a reader. It was like, the thing I miss most in my life is a designer is whiteboards. Whiteboards are now have always been and always will be the future of collaboration. I am so excited about the virtual whiteboards.

And I was like, yeah, I am too. We trash talked virtual whiteboards a lot. And we were put soundly in our place by that DM. I think it was Adi who got that. Yeah. It was rough times. Okay, here's the last thing I want to talk about with Meta. It's what, you know, and we, again, whole episode with Addy with Chris Grant, I believe.

Go listen to that. But here's the thing I want to talk about on this is it legs. It's not like. None of us on a call have legs. Although the way that Meta has co-opted the legs from being a joke to like being like a joke. to like being like a joke they're in on is like you're not in on it yet, guys. I hate to tell this to you.

It's still a joke. The sentence that Mark Zuckerberg said out loud that legs are probably the most requested feature on our roadmap is just It's not true. It's not true. Like it's just the most requested feature on the road bat is like don't make me nauseous.

Better VR. It's like cool things. Okay, but wait, keep going. What did you want to talk about? Okay, so what I want to talk about is Zuck took this shot in the, the keynote at Apple. And again, you can tell he's got these like these speeches, these fragments of speeches that he's been rehearsing. So he did it in the keynote. He did it with Alex. I've heard him say

stuff like this stuff like this before. Or he's like, in the history of computing that I'm aware of, sometimes the open system wins and sometimes the closed system wins. And the only history of computing that he's talking about is mobile and PCs, which to be fair are the only errors of computing that we have all lived through. Sometimes I remember that Mark Zucker is about my age. It terrifies me. And what he means is, In PCs, quote, Open 1, Microsoft 1, and there are lots of PC vendors. And then in mobile, and this is wildly up for debate. He means a closed one because Apple is a closed ecosystem.

We don't apparently mention Android in this conversation. The world's most dominant operating system does not count in Zuck's interpretation of Open v. closed, right? Because we use iPhones in America. Yeah. Sure. But it's like Android is more popular. I don't know what he means by winning and losing. Whatever.

I just like, the Quest is an iPhone, right? Like, at best, it allows some side-loading. Well, technically, it's an Android phone. Well, it's right. It runs Android, and it allows side-loading. You put other stores on it. Yeah. But, like, the operating system is made by meta.

The hardware is made by meta. Most of the applications are made by companies that have been bought by meta. What are you talking about? Yeah. So, Adi wrote a great piece that was, like, what do you mean by Open? And what he basically means by Open is, like, many app developers participate in our platform. And I just, I'm curious what you too think about it. Because A, I don't even know that Open has lost in this generation of mobile, because Android exists and there are lots of,

there are lots of forks of Android out in the world running on phones. In China, for example, forked Android with no Google involved running all over the place. There are lots of hardware vendors. Samsung obviously dominates. And it's the most popular operating system in the world. And in the previous era, it's like, sure, there are lots of PC makers, but I mean, they called it Wintel and the government sued them for being a monopoly. Yeah, it's a bold strategy to hold up 90s era Microsoft as like your bastion of openness. Yeah, I just kind of don't get what the argument is. And like I said, he's been saying it in different forms around the same shape for a while now.

I think he's trying to like hope nobody notices that they, that Facebook, excuse me, meta still makes the hardware. Meta is still in control, regardless of the software, regardless of the development. developers, they're still in control. It's not like when Microsoft did its VR attempt, what, in 2017, 2018, and they're like, everybody can do headsets and everybody made that there was the ACER headset and the HP headset, and then we never talked about it again. Yeah. Like, that's not happening at Meta. Meta is making the headsets. That's it. And if they control, if you control the hardware and you control the primary app store, how can you call yourself an open ecosystem? I don't think it's, it's, it's, the primary app store is, I mean, like, Microsoft would love to control the primary app. store on Windows. Yeah. It's there. They can.

No one uses it. You know, like Apple would love to control the Mac app store. No one uses it. Like, it's, to me, it's, is the operating system and the hardware are they independent of each other? Then you can start to begin to claim that things are open, right? Anyone can come build some hardware that runs this software. You can compete as a great hardware vendor or you can, on the flip side, anybody

can build an operating system that runs on any piece of hardware, which is less likely. But, you know, I think in the Windows ecosystem, you can just run Linux. I think in so many ways listening to Mark Zuckerberg talk about a lot of this stuff is like you have to assume his entire brain is in like 2035 and is in a world where like the metaverse is everything he imagined

and I think he does genuinely imagine a like broad sort of standards based thing that works more like the open web than like the app store right? Because I think when he talks about open versus closed like very specifically where that has bit him is like Apple and I think the way ady phrased it which I really liked was basically the extent to which they dictate the rules of the platform.

And to the extent that there are lots of developers all over the world building stuff for Apple platforms, it's wildly open in that way. But Apple is like extremely in control of absolutely everything about the platform and can do whatever it wants to you for basically any reason at any time. And even if you don't run afoul of those rules, you know they exist and you know that they can come crashing down upon you at any time. So here's what he said specifically. I strongly believe that an open, interoperable metaverse built by many different developers

and companies is going to be better for everyone. Sure. I believe him when he says that. Yeah. But I don't believe that he's doing that. I would say there's nothing in his company's history that would lead me to believe he'll do that. But I think I believe him when he says that.

Sure. Like isn't he going around and buying up every single super successful VR company right now? And also Facebook exists. Like if you believe this stuff, Facebook would be different. Like yeah, an open ecosystem will do it, but he's not doing that.

He's aggressively against it. I'm just deeply confused. I think like, What he means is the only competition he sees on the horizon is Apple, which is also making a headset very much like the Quest Press. Right. We're anticipating that we'll see it next to Earth. Same price. The AR headset with cameras in the outside.

It'll do mixed reality with video passer. Alex Heath has reported on that at the information and at the verge many times. Great. So then he's going to have a competitor. And what Apple is going to sell to you is Apple. Apple, right? A tightly defined experience that other people can participate in on Apple's terms. Right.

So Zuck is obviously just trying to different. differentiate that. I'm just saying I don't, nothing about what he has today is actually differentiated from that. Agreed. And that's what I mean by you, like, you have to assume Mark lives in 2035. Because like, I really think when he looks at the metaverse, he sees a totally different thing than actually exists in the world. And it's like, it's like, it's like, it's why he talks about everything in these like crazy 10 year things. It's why when you say like, who are you going to sell this to? He's basically like, I don't give a shit. Yeah. He really is at this point, like, we just got to keep doing it, you know? Yeah. He's just like, I'm going to burn so. much money, and then it's going to be amazing. And I think he is already at the end of that road when he talks about some of this stuff. And like, but I agree. I mean, the quest as it exists is price is precisely the Apple model of how this stuff should work. It's an iPhone.

Bought all of the best developers. It's an iPhone with like a medium amount of side-budding. Yeah. Right. Like not even like a lot of stuff, like a medium amount of side-budding. Yeah. The thing that kills me, and I was thinking about this because, you know, this was like another pre-recorded keynote.

and we've done, we just had the Google event, which is in person, and the Apple event is like this hybrid where you like, David, I watched a video and like whatever. You know, it's like, it's kind of like fine with phones. I don't even think it's fine with phones to like, we see the stuff on video. I think you have to hold and perceive these objects. But like we've been reviewing a lot of phones lately

and we're like trying to tell people about 120 hertz variable refresh rate displays and no one can tell you what that looks like. Right. You can't even watch a video about it. It's even harder with this VR stuff. Like to have the experience of whatever the Quest Pro is compressed and then sent over the internet and displayed on somebody's like crappy uncalibrated 30 Hertz display. Like there's something about these, this generation of products that's coming up where people, the cynicism is amplified by how we perceive them. Right.

It's like the internet like looking at pictures, JPEGs on the web do not actually communicate anything about these products. Right. And like, that's like, I think, going to be a hardest turn for everyone. It's going to be a hardest turn. When you review it, it's going to be a hardest turn when you read about it. It's going to be a hardest turn. It's more and more companies launched the stuff because there's just nothing. Unless we're already wearing our VR headsets.

And watching the keynotes. Unless we're watching the brilliant pixelated 480P display of our Quest 2. I think it's 720p. With legs. With legs. Go find it in the video. We didn't like, whatever. There's a moment.

where they're saying they're in the Metaverse, right? It's like Zuck and it's like PM. And he's like, we've done legs. And they have hosted this in like a virtual, it looks like a basketball court. It was like really hard to understand what kind of thing they were in. Because it had bleachers.

Did you see the bleachers? I miss the bleachers. So they were like talking each other like in Horizon. And they were like, here's all the stuff we're doing. And there's like people sitting around and bleachers watching them. And they clearly, it's like who knows if they were live or if they were programmed, whatever, but the little avatars had the ability to throw confetti. They were all jumping and throwing the confetti.

And so, like, Mark is there. But they didn't have legs. They didn't have legs. So Mark, the CEO, the CEO, the CEO of META is like, look at my legs. And then everyone in the crowd is like throwing confetti and jumping. And their avatars are cut off. And then there's just like a black space and a bar underneath it. And the whole thing is just like vertically jumping like an old Atari game.

What if this is the metaverse business model? You get to pay for legs. And they keep throwing this confetti. And I was like, Everett just go watch this moment. It is truly one of the most bizarre tech keynote moments you have ever seen. Virtual Mark Zuckerberg trying out his new legs while an audience of cartoons just vertically moves up and down throwing confetti on him. Seems great. I was like, I'd like all my meetings to have that.

And like, you know, we're all remote. So like I literally was at home watching this at Zoom by myself. or watching this on the TV by myself. And I was like, is anybody else seeing this? No one. Like, you're just like, this is the loneliest I've ever felt. Again, you could have been in VR and slowly turned your cartoon. We're doing the next episode of the Vergecast in the Metaverse.

We didn't take a break. This was supposed to be a quick conversation about the Metaverse. Look at what happened to us. This is what the weed smell does to you. We've got to take a quick break. We'd come back. We'll talk about the pixel stuff. We're going to go back.

The report for this show comes from Shopify. Every thriving, successful business has to start somewhere. A good place to start is a relatively simple question. What if, given the right tools, I really put my all into this. One tool that can help grow your sprouting business to new heights is Shopify. Millions of businesses around the world rely on Shopify for e-commerce. They offer a host of helpful tools you can take advantage of, from payment processing to analytics to website design.

Their design studio includes hundreds of templates to help you create the exact website you've been envisioning for your business. If you're wondering, what if I need help, then no worries, because you're never left to fend for yourself. Shopify's award-winning customer support is available 24-7. It's time to turn those what-ifs into a thriving business with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash vergecast. Go to Shopify.com slash vergecast. That's Shopify.com slash vergecast. Support for the show comes from Upwork.

The days of doing it all, all by yourself, are over. There's no romance and burning out while you're trying to scale. Instead, you can check out Upwork. Upwork helps grow your business by giving you fast access to specialize talent across more than 125 categories, so you can fill skill gaps, launch projects faster, and scale without committing to full-time headcount. And finding the right talent is easy. You can browse profiles, review past work, and get help scoping the role so you can get started quickly.

Seriously, you could connect with the right freelancer in just a few hours, especially when you sign up with Business Plus. Their AI-powered shortlisting pairs you with the top 1% of talent in under six hours. No endless searcher required. You can visit upwork.com right now to post your job for free. That's upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's upw-w-r-k.com. Upwork.com. Okay, we're back.

It's review season. This is great. So we reviewed the Pixel Watch. We reviewed the Pixel 7 and the Pixel 7 Pro. What do you think? I, well, let's start with the watch because I think as our reviews confirmed, the watch is substantially more interesting. than the phones this year, just in terms of like new stuff happening.

My takeaway, V's review is really great and everyone should read it. But I was kind of unimpressed in a way that was a little bit of a bummer. Like Google's first ever smartwatch, they like, they made a nice thing, which I think was a big win. And by all accounts, it is a nice thing. It's a little small. The, the bezels are a little big, but my experience has been the same as V's where like in actual use, you don't really notice the bezel. They did a good job with the UI. The band thing is nifty, but it's like I wanted Google to like,

really get one piece of this right, right? And it was like, this is their first one. It was clearly not going to be. You mean right or like just nail it? Like crush it. Yeah. Like I think what Google really needed to do was like have one thing that it was like a plus job, Google. And I assumed that would be the health stuff because they have Fitbit.

Yeah. They like talk to big game about all the sensors they were putting into this. And it was like, okay, if this thing was a kick-ass fitness tracker and a pretty good everything else, that's like an awesome start from Google. They're going to be in this for real. Yeah. And instead it seems like Google. did pretty well on everything without nailing anything.

And that kind of left me cold. Yeah, they didn't push the envelope. It felt very pixel. It was very pixel. That's fair. But the pixel, you know, pushes the envelope, at least on photography every other year or so, right? Yeah, that's true. That's true.

And pixel drama aside, like the thing of the pixel is not designed to win, you know? It's like it's a hedge against Samsung and it's like a showcase for Google to be Googly. You know, every 30 days the pixel just kills one feature automatically. It just takes one thing away. It's horrible. If you want them to live, you have to start buying pixels. Exactly. But I see what you're saying about the watch.

Like they made an Apple watch for Android users, but like an Apple watch for Android users. Yeah. And like the Google Assistant thing is a big win. My overwhelming experience is that Google Assistant is better than Siri at absolutely everything. Yeah. I don't know if this has been your experience recently, but Siri is worse than ever for me all of a sudden.

Like, it's so bad. So stupid. It's crazy. And I get the thing where I'm just like, I do like a basic reminder and it does the thing where it's like one moment, still thinking. Yeah. I'm sorry. Please try again.

And I'm like, I'm on Wi-Fi, dude. Like, what's the problem here? But anyway, Google Assistant is way better than Siri at all of the things you would want to do on a smart watch. And that seemed to be V's experience too. Like the mic is pretty good. The speakers are pretty good. Outside of that, it just doesn't feel like Google nailed anything here.

Like the Fitbit stuff is good, but missing some of the best Fitbit things, like it doesn't have automatic workout detection. And at the very least, this thing should have been like the mega Fitbit. Yeah. Like it's more expensive. It's more impressive. It's clearly where Fitbit is headed is this device, which V wrote, I think she reviewed the Sense 2 and was basically like Google is going to eat this thing to death with devices called Pixel. Yeah. And I think that's right.

But in order to do that, this needed to be, if nothing else, like a truly, truly kick-ass Fitbit. And it gets almost there. And it does all the things it does pretty well. But there were just a bunch of little places it fell down. It like ended a couple of her workouts early. And it didn't do the workout detection. And just little things that it's like, they knew they had to get this right. Like Rick Osterloh told me, he was like, we know the thing we have to do if we want to get to this like magical wrist computer smart watch future.

We have to get fitness right. And that's why people will buy it today. And they'd like almost but not quite got there. The thing that got me in V's review, you know, about the pixel watch in general, is it doesn't know when you're washing your hands, which is not a useful feature of the Apple Watch at this point. Yeah. They rolled out hand washing detection when it was useful.

In early 2020, when everyone was still like afraid of their shopping. You know, people are like indexing their cardboard boxes. Do you guys still wash your hands obsessively, by the way? Because that is one. I do wash my hands. I'm not doing it for 20 seconds. Are you kidding me?

You're still singing a happy birthday twice? Like, what you do it? You sing the chorus of Mr. Brightside. That's what it is. The chorus of Mr. Brightside. David's still like David's like, I'm a sophomore in college and I'm going to sing.

It's perpetually 3 a.m. David has come home from the bar every time he washes his hand. I'm like, you know, I'm just like, I'm trying to be careful all this stuff, but like I'm like, you know what? Like a little bit of soap, we're good, right? Yeah.

But like at least the Apple Watch is like, you know, 75%. It's like, I think you're washing your hands. Yeah. Like, yeah. The Pixel Watch, you have to tell it that you're washing your hands. And I'm like, this guarantee you, that no one will ever use this feature.

Correct. And Google is like the most powerful AI company on planet Earth. And it hasn't figured out, is this watch on a wrist connected to hands that are being washed? And that to me is just like a miss. They didn't finish the feature all the way. Yeah. And that...

Well, how would they have known? Like, I don't want to give pics... I don't want to give Google any credit here because they're one of the largest, richest companies in the world. They should be able to do this and figure it out and nail it on the first try. But this is also like the first try.

And they're not, they're used to a lot of ways that humans interact with computers. But computer, risk computers is a totally new thing for them as evidenced by WareOS 1 and 2. Like, they've sucked at it for a long time and they've made no effort. Now they're like, okay, we've got to make our effort. Well, no, they've been chasing after this for like five or six years. This is why you buy Fitbit. Like the answer to your question is they screwed it up so they had to spend billions of dollars on Fitbit. Right.

And to be fair, it does. seem like the leap from what you get with Google Fit to what you get with Fitbit and thus the pixel watch is massive. So like in that sense, kudos that did the thing. But I mean, and I take your point, Alex, that like a year of people wearing these things will give Google a lot of data about when they're doing things like washing their hands that might turn out to be useful for V2 of this. But again, the handwashing thing to me is not important because no robot is going to tell me to wash my hands for 20 seconds. Like, again, I'm in and out of there. Like I believe the soap works, you know?

What I'm saying. You just like run your hand under it real fast. I'm like a little kid. I go in there, I turn on the water and make sure my wife heard it. I turn out the water. I'm out. You know, like, you should wash your hands correctly. No one shake your hands.

It's like how little kids do it. I don't care what they have. Siri, you can't force me to do anything. But they know this is the bar. That's what I mean. If you're going to have this feature and you know your competition is Apple, and it's not even just Apple, this is a thing. This is a thing where if it's good enough, people might leave the iPhone, right?

You make a risk computer that's so competitive. For the watch, not for the hand washing. Right. And so then you got to look at every feature of this thing and say, is it that much better than the only competition that's real? Because they're not trying to take market share away from Samsung. They're trying to build a compelling wearable that lots of people will wear because they think this is the future of ambient computing is to have a computer on your body. And then you take share away from Apple, all these things. and they're like, okay, ship the hand washing feature

that you have to tell it count to 20. So it's not even a handwashing feature, it's just a 20 second timer that you can enable with a tap, right? And it's like, that's obviously not good enough. Like it obviously isn't a complete idea. Like just don't like take it out actually. Don't ship halfway ideas.

Ship only the things that are so much better that people are like, maybe I should give up my iPhone because this thing looks so cool. And I don't think anybody's looking at this thing and thinking, that looks so cool I want to give up my iPhone. especially not in a world where the Apple Watch Ultra

exists. Yeah. Like, where's the disconnect coming at Google though? Because Rick Osterler was like, yes, this is the future. We're doing this. And then like, apparently the PM or whoever was in charge was like, we're doing what? Like, we're doing a nice Apple Watch knockoff. We're doing the Android version of an Apple Watch series for it. So like, why did it's like, why is it such?

It took a long time, right? I mean, this thing was basically the way to Yeah, it took a long time. At least. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it is an interesting. counterfactual to know like what would have happened if the Fitbit acquisition had gone through much quicker? Because at least the story Google has told me is basically like, we wanted to do this thing, we knew we couldn't do it properly until we got Fitbit, and then the Fitbit thing took forever. And I think Google correctly surmised that every day they didn't launch a smartwatch was a problem. So I think I definitely got the sense that this was like not a rush job, but like there was a,

there was a day circled on the calendar a long time ago that it was like, if we miss this, it's a problem. And that day was probably in like 2020. And now here we are. But I think, I mean, to me, it's like, the question of what is Google trying to do with this, I think is part of what's super interesting. Because on the one hand, it's, I think they are trying to take away from Samsung. I think Rick Osterlo's remit is to get market share in the phone space and the easiest way for them to do that is to steal share from Samsung. Like, I don't know that Sundarpe Chia is that worried about it, but like Rick Osterlo definitely is. Yeah. They also want to take away from the iPhone.

They also want to do the like big, big, broad, ambient computing vision, which means plugging into everything. everything else that Google does, and they want to make sure that they have a thing that will keep people who currently use Android phones from switching to an iPhone in order to get an Apple Watch. And so they're playing with all these things in the bar for each one of them is very different. And it just feels like trying to do that, trying to satisfy all of those things on your first try was just always going to be very hard. So for that reason, I'm sympathetic. The stuff I'm less sympathetic to is like not getting the Fitbit stuff right because they knew

they needed to and they got it fine, but not good enough. The battery life is the one that really kills me. Like if you want to come out and instantly have a move in the smart watch market, it's the battery. Like that's just it. And Fitbit has done good battery stuff over time. And if I'm Google, I would have stripped the thing way down. It basically been like, it's a Fitbit and it's Google Assistant. It does nothing else.

And it lasts for three days. Like, what's up? And I genuinely think that would have done something. And instead, it like barely lasts a day if you. Like V's takeaway was basically if you really, really baby it, it'll last a day. But that's if you don't use it very much and you don't have the always on display. I mean, that matches the first gen I, the first gen Apple Watch. Yeah, that was seven years ago.

Yeah. You don't get to do like, you don't get to play by 2015 rules in 2022, even if this is your first smart watch. What, like it is? Yeah, she lost like, what, 25% of her battery in an hour long run. Yeah. With just GPS on and that's, that's it. I mean, GPS does suck a lot of battery, but that should not be a thing in 2020. For a big Apple competitor, you shouldn't have to worry about losing a quarter of your battery.

just because you're making the awful choice to run. Yeah. Kudos to all people who run. Running is a disaster. I love you. But I like the, I think it was V who told me that, like, one of her theories is like the marathon test. Like, could I run a marathon with this and it wouldn't die?

And this would die. And it fails the marathon test. I don't know how fast V runs marathons, but I would not make it with this thing through a marathon. One of my favorite TikTok trends is the people who are trying to run a marathon at the pace of the world record that was just set, which is you have to basically run at 13 or 14 miles an hour. It's like a dead sprint.

Yeah. And they're like, the student did it for two hours. And people are like, 30 seconds and falling down. Like, the treadmill ramps all the way up and they fall down. It's great. That's my, that's my marathon test. Let's talk about Pixel 7, Pixel 7 Pro. They are very iterative.

I mean, they fix some things. It seems like they don't get as hot. The cameras are ever so slightly improved. The fingerprint seems to work better, which is a win. Allison said it was a beat faster in the review. I'll take it. So it's not slow, but it's a beat faster. And they added face unlock soon up to use.

I mean, I'm looking at a photo. I mean, obviously, what do I look at? I look at the photos. And I'm just blown away by how much Google was doing with these cameras now, especially the Zoom stuff they're doing, which is not as good as Samsung in some of our sample shots. But Samsung has a dedicated lens. This is like Google's adding the ultra-wide, the main camera, the Zoom,

and they're getting a really passable super zoom. But it still just scares me. Yes, she has Allison put a shot in here comparing the pixel Pro's 10x crop mode to the 10x dedicated zoom on the S-22 Ultra. And the S-22 Ultra, like you said, is definitely better. It's dedicated glass. And Allison even says in the review, like, there's only so much you can do by cropping pixels. Like, that just is true.

It looks so much better than I expected it to on the pixel 7. Like, it's really, really impressive. If this wasn't an image slider and you weren't directly comparing the two, you'd be like, oh, that's great. Yeah. It's a smidge dark, which actually makes sense given what it is. But it looks really good. And 10x, I mean, I'm used to like the 5X pictures coming out of phones looking borderline unusable. And this is like a perfectly functional photo.

It's really impressed. It does bring up fascinating philosophical question. It's like a photo you could send to your friends and family and not get judged. Totally. Yeah. But again, it's like they're merging three cameras into one, multiple frames. At some point, you're just holding your phone up to reality like an AI prompt and being like, tell me what you think the sign is like. I'm just like fascinating at this.

Like, Google has pushed so far beyond the what is a photo debate with particularly the Zoom stuff and some of the video stuff they're doing that. Yeah. I don't know. Like, we probably just need to call Google and they're like, give us the pixel team again. Let's smoke some weed in the studio and really get into it. Yeah. We should do that because it's not, you're right. They're way beyond like what kinds of nifty stuff can we do with your pixels.

And they've gone into, we're going to take all these pixels. We're going to feed them into our neural network. And it's going to spit out what it thinks. it's seeing. And it's like there, there is a black box step in there that even like, even pixel binning is like a little bit of black magic, but it's at least it is math with pixels. Yeah. This is like math with pixels, underpants, noam, step two, step three photo. Yeah. It's nuts. Right. You're taking multiple exposures off one camera. You're taking multiple exposures off another camera at a different focal length. And then you're producing a zoom image. Yet a third and it's like,

I don't know what's going on. Yeah. I don't know what's going on. It looks good though. It looks amazing, but I'm dying to have some more detail in how this works. Just because, you know, they say when companies claim they're going to do this kind of stuff, there's a part of me. When Mark Zuckerberg shows off, is ultra-realistic and extremely well-moisturized high-resolution avatar, that shit's a do-y. Yeah. You're like, that's great. This is a demo, like, whatever. And he tells you how complicated.

Google announces this stuff, and they say they're going to do all this stuff. When you see the photo, then that's when all the what is a photo. Like, they, we actually, they shipped the phone, Allison has it. We've taken a lot of pictures with it. Oh, it works. And there's a step in there where they are recreating whatever the image is that is just utterly fascinating to me. Well, and the photo and blutter feature is an even more like direct version of that. You're like, I took a photo and it's like, oh, here's a different photo.

I mean, it's literally the enhanced button, right? It's my favorite part of the review, honestly. The photo on Blur slider? Yeah. I just, I spent, I'm like, I just rolled down to look at it again. And I'm just like, wee. Look at this guy. He's so in focus.

His hair is so detailed. Blur. It's great. Yeah, but like the computer just made up the detail. Yeah. Like, and I think we, we've seen that sometimes with Adobe, too. David's zoomed way in on this thing. I'm watching, I'm watching him do the slider pixel by pixel.

There's just something about his eye that doesn't. look human. Yeah, because a computer made it up. Right. Yeah. That's the thing, right? It looks drawn. Like, A, it looks better.

Like, it clearly improves the photo in terms of, like, it looks more like what a photo should look like. But as I look at this, he looks less like a person in the processed photo. This is a shot of basically, I think it's Novak Djokovic from a bunch of years ago, right after he hit a tennis shot. And it's like a profile shot. And it's, it's blurry in the, like, person who is slightly moving, blurry. And then you go over.

And it's like, it looks a little like, if you just open like the photos app and just crank sharpness up to a thousand in that it kind of looks like it just drew edges around it but then there's like something in his eyes that it just it he looks less human afterwards yeah and it's a little creepy well like it gives him these highlights that just feel that again feel like that that oh the sharpening thing in Photoshop where he just like oh that's a little unpleasant he's got like highlights on his face there's like a guy in the background wearing a striped shirt and his shirt just gets gross looking when it goes to the computer is like your shirt's a little uglier than before now

this is how I perceive reality that guy his shirt sucks he sucks I know that's a lot look go read the reviews Allison Allison's segue is they're slightly better versions of last year's phone they're competitive with Apple and Samsung what more can you ask for and I think that ties well into a piece that Dan wrote today and it's like all the action this year's in the watches yep like Apple Watch ultra pixel watch Samsung's latest watches, even Garman's latest watches, far more interesting products than the iPhone 14 or the S-22 or whatever, like the pixel set. Like, they're all just like extremely iterative phone updates and the watches are where all the heat is. So there's just more to do in watches at this point.

Like more like work to be done. Phones are just phones. There's little rectangles of despair. Yeah. And it's like you can go in and slightly fix the things that are broken. And if you try to do new things, people freak out. Yeah. I will say, and I'm just pointing this out, to all the YouTube commentators are out there who are like, you would never, did I do this last week? Yeah, you did this last week. You can do it again if it will make you feel better. No, I don't remember what I did last week. I also did a version that's supposed to post on YouTube shorts, and Varen didn't post it, so I don't remember why I was too spicy.

I was like, don't do this. Oh, wait, speaking of things that have not changed about phones, I got an iPhone 14 Pro. Uh-oh. It has a dynamic island. Do you know how many times I have remembered to do something with the dynamic island? Zero times. That's a spoiler alert. The dynamic island instantly ceased to exist in my brain as soon as I got the phone.

I turned off the always on display because I hate it. It does not. It's awful. It's the word. It's the word. Implementation of that feature. And the dynamic island is like, fine. I don't notice it.

I do like the thing where there's like a little bit of a wave form and it shows the podcast that I'm listening to. But like as a place for interaction, I have gotten nothing out of it so far. So if you make a cool app that uses the dynamic. Island, please send it to me. Otherwise, I'm just sad at my island. You're waiting on live activities, man. I guess so. Like, there, it doesn't... It's going to be a game changer for you. It's not going to be. I don't have to tell you. It's a huge, huge moment in your life. Have you noticed that like, now that you've got it and you're using it, it's like, oh, it's still computer stuff. Like, sometimes it does, doesn't do what it's supposed to do. I like it. My thing that I've really

noticed is there's something about the phone stand on my desk that the sun hits it at the exact angle where you can see all the parts underneath. So it just doesn't look like I have a dynamic island. It's just like, here's some sensors. Enjoy. I'm like, it's fine. Richard Lawler, by the way, Virchcast superstar Richard Lawler. The audience clamoring to get this man back on the show, which maybe you will do.

We can't do it again. It was too much. The people aren't ready. The people aren't ready. He showed up. He dunked on crypto for 45 minutes. He left. That's it.

It's the full Richard experience. There's an Android version of dynamic island. And Richard is, he keeps posting. it on the site because we had quick post. And he keeps pointing out that's a better. It's very good. It's very good. Okay, we got to take a break.

We saw like 9,000 Microsoft announcements to get there. So we'll take a break. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from What Not. Whether you're selling online or out of a storefront, you already know the challenge. You're simply hoping for people to find your listing or waiting for them to walk in.

But What Not flips that. They say they're the live shopping marketplace where you can shop, sell, and connect around the things you love. On What Not, you go live and sell directly to people in real time. They see what you've got, ask questions, and buy. And they keep coming back. Whether it's beauty, collectibles, electronics, luxury fashion, and yes, even cookies,

sellers are building real thriving businesses. And for a limited time, What Not says they'll match your first $150 sold in the first month. You can visit whatnot.com slash sell to start selling. That's w-h-h-a-t-n-O-t-t-com slash sell. What-N-O-T-com slash sell. Support for the show comes from MongoDB. If you're tired of database limitations and architectures that break when you scale, it's time to think outside of rows and columns. Because let's be honest, you didn't get into tech to babysit a broken database. You got into it to actually build something. MongoDB lets you do that. It's flexible, developer first, acid compliant, enterprise ready, and built for the AI era. Say goodbye to bottlenecks

and legacy code. Start innovating with MongoDB. There's a reason it's trusted by so many of the Fortune 500. And that's because it's a platform built by developers. for developers. MongoDB. It's a great freaking database. Start building at MongoDB.com slash build. All right, we're back. I don't even know how to get through

the amount of Microsoft news there is. Alex, do you want to try? We start with teams. Start with teams. It would work our way. There's only one piece of important Microsoft News. Microsoft Office is being rebranded to Microsoft 365. Woo.

Which is just weird. I hate it. I hate it. I'm saying that because I know David hates it. Yeah, you go first. I'd like to hear your case so I can pick it apart piece by piece. I like it. Not necessarily like for me as a person, but I like it for Microsoft attempting to get away from the fact that they're known as the boring office company by being like, what if we just get rid of that word?

Because work is now 365 days a year. And so will we like in that way, I'm like, yes, this makes a lot of sense. This is what a great branding exercise. But that's as far as I get. I'm just like neat. It sounds like the store brand at the grocery store. That's what I have to offer you. It absolutely does.

It's Whole Foods. Yeah. I have two thoughts on this. One, 365 is a bad brand that no one is allowed to have because the Earth has it. Like our planet has a trademark on 365 as a brand. So no one else gets to have that. Also, do you know what everyone on Earth knows about? Microsoft Office.

It is like honestly on in the scheme of like brand recognition, there are probably not that many things that have more of it than Microsoft Office. So now this is not like Google trying to rebrand G Suite into Google workspace. And look how messy that's been. This is Microsoft taking like one of its oldest, most successful and best known products and giving it a stupid name for no reason. This like this just I can imagine the meeting here, which is my favorite part of this. It's a bunch of executives sitting in a meeting saying, okay, we have a lot of office users, but they're older and like the Gen Z doesn't vibe with office in the same way. And we want people to think of this as something new and cool.

And no one raised their hand and said, well, as long as they're called Word and Excel, we're not accomplishing anything. Yeah. But they, so then they decide, like, we need an edgy, cool new brand. It was called Microsoft 365. Yeah. No, it's good. Somebody skateboarded in with their backwards baseball cap. It was like 365 and skateboarded out. So we already had Office 365. Yeah, because everyone knows that. That went great.

Well, that's how you pay for it. 365 days in here. Yeah, the SaaS model of office is 365. It does seem like a huge miss. And I buy that they were like, the kids hate work. You get a bunch of cranky holds and you're like, these kids today don't want to work. You can't tell them to go back to the office.

Yeah. So we're going to call it like Microsoft kick ass. on time. Yeah, Microsoft work from home. That's what they did, though. Huh? That's what they did. They absolutely were like, oh, no, the kids don't like the office. The Gen Z, they're 12, and they hate the office because they're 12. But we are Microsoft and we are unavoidable.

It is one of the most baffling brand decisions all the time. One of the strongest brands in all of tech is Microsoft Office. Next, they're going to call Windows computer time, and it's not going to going to work. Yeah. Windows 24-7. Windows 24-70. So what they're allowed to do

because they got rid of this year's the art. Version 10. They got rid of the office brand name. They can roll more products into it. So office was tightly defined. The bundle was getting too big. Microsoft 365 is like anything. Like at some point they were like, Xbox,

now part of the Microsoft 365 family. It's coming. That's absolutely the reason they did it. Yeah. They were like, well, Microsoft designer isn't an office product. And somebody goes, well, we got to change that then.

Yeah. At some point, they're going to bring back the office branding just for the word Excel and PowerPoint. And one drive, one note, whatever it's called. It's just,

if you have a good brand that everybody knows that has been very successful for you for decades, don't change it. Yeah. There's my free business advice for you for the day.

Just change the logo. I've really bad about the logo. Trust me. You got to believe me. Coca-Cola. We're now, soda America. Like, it's nothing. It's nothing.

Fizzy, 365. Again, sounds like the store brand. Yeah. All right. So that's the big Microsoft news. That's it. That's the first customer. No.

They announced like 500 other things. I would drink Fizzy 365. I just want to. It's, that's, it'll be cheaper. That's carbonated soil. No, you'll get, you'll get Mr. or Dr. Fizzy. Mr. Fizzy 365. Pitbull's lesser known alter ego.

Mr. Fizzy 365. Please. Dr. Fizzy is my father. That's horrible. Oh my God. Pitbull's got a son. Philly 365. I can't wait for him to hit. But they did announce a lot of stuff.

They did announce. Or this week. I mean, they did and they didn't. They announced a lot of products, but did they announce much? Okay. So let's start with the thing that I'm always the most fascinating by, which is the Surface Studio 2, because I desperately want to surface studio. I love this product.

I love the hinge. I believe you mean the Surface Studio 2 plus. It's streaming service. It's very clear why they named it the Service Studio 2 Plus, because they changed virtually nothing, including the CPUs, stuck with 11th Gen Intel CPUs in there. But they added a laptop grade 3060 as a GPU, which is the knock on the server studio, is it always had a weak GPU. So they're like, do you want this GPU? It's from last year and we're running it at a laptop speeds. Fine.

It seems great. It's also $4,300, which is benest. Yeah. Yeah. I want one very badly. I've always wanted one. And one day they're going to make one. The hinge is cool. The hinge is cool. I just love the idea of like... Why don't they just make a monitor? The Office 365 monitor. Monitor 365 every day. I've got this dream. Again, most of my life is Zoom meetings. So I'll be in a Zoom meeting and it particularly tense. And I'll stand and I'll like roll the monitor down and then point down at people. And be like, we're making this decision. I don't have weird ideas about work. Did I mean, ever be like, suddenly, Neil, I'm towering above me. I've not moved.

But you could do that in VR, too. With your legs. Every part of this is just me being a more tyrannical boss at work. You remove everybody else's legs. You loom over. So that's a studio two plus. They added the 3060, which is a reason. good GPU for that device.

Yeah. To me, honestly, it's so expensive. That's the main problem. Like, I still think it's a cool thing. And the one they shipped two years ago is, like, relatively powerful. Like, it's weird that they didn't update it. But it's still probably a very good machine. It's just twice the price it should be.

Yeah. It's crazy. Then they did the Surface Pro 9, kind of a lot going on with the Service Pro 9. Yes. The CPU stuff there interests me a lot. Because they did Intel. They got rid of AMD. Or no, they never had AMD on the Surface.

Pro 9. Yeah, that was just the laptop. So it's kind of interesting to me because they did Intel, and then they've also just gotten rid of the Surface Pro X and put the arm chip into this. And that's very clearly like Apple's running circles around both Qualcomm and Microsoft for years, I mean, two years, but still, that's years. And now they're going to try to compete. They've been trying for years, but this could be good. This chip is a, it's a Microsoft Qualcomm Co-jam, right? Like, I don't actually know anything about this chip. Yeah. Yeah. So this is like the, Next in that generation, they did the Surface Pro 9 that had the last generation of this chip.

This is the new SQ3. It's going to have 5G support. This is the only way to get 5G on the Surface Pro 9. And it's like, it's interesting, but we haven't seen it yet. We haven't gotten to play with it. Tom played with it and he was like, well, it seems fast enough. It seems to do the stuff. And that's always been the complaint about the Surface Pro 9 is it's this really cool, super tiny, super thin device.

And it's awesome. But then you go and try to do anything besides. some little office 365ing and you're done. It's actually called Microsoft 365. Excuse me, Microsoft 365ing. Sorry. It's Dr. Fizzy to you, Alex. Well, I mean, so it's interesting that you can pick between Intel and arm.

You know, the surface line is kind of like an odd one because it caught totally blown up by the pandemic in a way that I don't, like Microsoft is still reckoning with. Like the last time we talked to Panos in depth, he was here in the office pre-pendemic. He had the surface was the Neo, the dual service. screen, the surface duo. Yeah. They were pushing in the surface, what was it, the service pro X, that was their arm device at the time. And they were pushing towards this dual screen future.

They were pushing towards arm. And then the pandemic hit and all of those plans evaporated. Like they just went away. So this is kind of like just a re, just a refocusing of what they're doing with surface in a real way. But like windows on arm. Like we're still tradeoff city. And now it's like what you get for that tradeoff is 5G and probably better battery life.

unclear what the performance will be. And then you're the other choice is Intel where you get all your apps, but it's still an Intel chip in this form factor, which means it's going to run hot and the battery. That would be well. Yeah. The thing for me, with the armed stuff has always been

that you're fighting a bunch of battles simultaneously. It's like there are performance questions, there are battery life questions. And I would argue continually most of all, it's an app compatibility thing, right? Like you buy these devices and they just don't run most things because Microsoft has not either done enough

or been able to get its developers to do enough. to be part of this. And Alex, you and I were talking about this earlier this week. Like, Microsoft is clearly committed to this. Like, it has these developer kids out there. It's made it easier. It's issuing all kinds of new stuff.

It seems to be mercifully done with the idea of trying to make a whole new windows just for Arm. And it's like, we just need to make actual Windows work. Yep. Yep. But I am suspicious of the idea that this is going to be the one. Like, I think Microsoft is right to keep trying on this because it has to. And it has to keep convincing developers to play along.

and convince them that it's the future and it's worth, you know, re-architecting their apps to make it work. I just, I have a hard time imagining that this is going to be the one that, like, magically makes Windows work well on Arm. Yeah. I hope that's true. But I think they still have to figure out, like, the secret sauce of the Mac of MacOS is that they, they now just emulate everything on Arm. They were like, okay, we know a lot of people are going to switch over, but also we're just going to do really, really, really good emulation. So it doesn't even matter. So you can play your games or whatever and go.

And Microsoft just hasn't done that. And I'm not really clear why they haven't. I mean, part of it is the chips, right? Like the Mac just has so much performance to spare that it can do a lot of that emulation pretty successfully in a way that, you know, these deeply subpar Qaqom chips just have not been able to hack so far. I would also say, Catalyst on the Mac is like all over the place in my experience. I've had some apps that work really well. And I've had some apps that suck. and I don't know if that's just my own experience,

but that's certainly what I've seen sometimes. But I think Microsoft, again, it's like back to that same thing, right? You kind of have to get all these things right simultaneously before it's going to really work. And it's a weird sort of chicken and egg problem where it's like, without the right chip, you're not going to get the apps to work. And without the apps, the chip isn't going to get you there because the apps don't matter. So it's like they have to pull a lot of things all together at the same time

and have not successfully done that so far. Yeah, I mean, I'll be real. I'm not super, super confident in the SQ3. Like Apple has a ton of resources behind it to make really, really good chips. And Microsoft just does not prove that out, as evidenced by the Studio 2 plus existing out in the world with super old chips in it. Like that kind of hardware stuff, there's some of that they just are failing on repeatedly. So I'm not like, I want to be excited about this. I want to be really enthusiastic.

I can't wait to try it out and see how fast it is. but, ooh, I'm not confident that they're going to nail it this time. I will say if they have gotten closer, then the thin and light, long battery life, reasonable performance, but it's Windows, it's a whole ass operating system that actually represents the competitive break with Apple that Microsoft's been chasing for. Oh, absolutely.

Right? Instead of like, here's everything you've ever wanted, but we're going to treat you like a baby versus, It's not quite everything you ever wanted, but we treat you like an adult who can get a virus on their computer. Like, those are your choices. And, like, Microsoft might have a product that can actually make that case in a way that no, Intel tablet has ever really made that case. Two things I want to ask, though. One, well, two things.

Related ideas. One, there's no headphone jack on this thing, which is just brutal for a tablet of this size. Yeah. Especially because the design is the same as last year, basically, in last year at iPhone jack. What are you doing? You can't just don't. Well, they have to make room for that. neural processing unit on the new Qualcomm chip, you know? You got to, you got to, sometimes

you have to sacrifice for stuff that may or may not actually make the product better. Okay. So that's one. Two, how well do you think this will take Tom Brady just absolutely ripping this thing down the field? Because it's going to, it's going to, it's the first thing that's going to happen. You know the NFL had to issue like a directive to the team as being like, stop destroying the tablets, please? I hope that's Tom Brady's true legacy. Do they all use the Surface Pro 8 or do they giving them like really old surface because they know they're just kind of fling them. I like to imagine they're like Surface RTs.

Yeah. And they just barely work. That's why they're fleeing them. Yeah. It's pretty good. Last piece of Microsoft hardware really is the Surface laptop five. This is basically another chip story. So last year, Microsoft hedged some bets, added some AMD into the mix,

AMD price performance, heat kind of better than Intel for the past couple generations. You could see why they went with it in the laptop. this year we're back to Intel 12th generation. Can I run a conspiracy theory by you? I'm curious if there's any chance that I'm right. So you just talked to Pat Kelsinger on the other podcast that we don't talk about. Yeah. It was actually very good.

It was a good episode of Decoder, unlike all the rest of them. That dude's a huge nerd. Oh my God. The acronyms. Good Lord. Okay. But anyway, one thing all of these announcements made me wonder is like, is Microsoft aware of the Intel roadmap and slowing its role to meet Intel at a point at which everyone is doing good things again.

And so at this point is like, why are we going to reinvent the wheel for continually crappy Intel chips when something real and good is coming in one, two, three years? And all we need to do is actually just match that and then we can run together. Why would anyone wait? Yeah. Like, Intel screwed it up so badly. Why would anybody trust Intel again? Because what other choice did they have? AMD.

But they chose not to do it. This is what I'm saying. So is that why they chose? Like, is that why you keep throwing your lot in? Because otherwise I'm with you, I agree. like you're nuts to not continue to pit Intel and AMD against each other unless there is a like moment in the future that you're betting on in a big way. I just can't see any other reason. I wouldn't be surprised if external pressures.

Like Monica and I were talking about this in the office earlier this week after the event. We were both like, she was super, super bummed that that AMD wasn't on this thing. We're like, well, why isn't it there? And sometimes in the laptop world, somebody says, hey, how about you just use our chips? in your devices. And I wouldn't be surprised if that was part of what happened here. But in like a,

I feel like you need to say that again in like a much scarier way. Yeah. Like, oh, nice computers you have there. Microsoft can just issue that threat right back to Intel. Yes, this is like, yeah.

It would be a shame if Windows didn't run on your chips, Pat. Well, I mean, I don't necessarily think like, also there's just money, money gets, people just give people money and are like, hey, I want to be exclusive here. Yeah. I don't know if that's,

legal or illegal. I'm hoping I'm not accusing two companies of breaking the law. Yeah, I mean, they're allowed to, you're allowed to spend some money. Yeah. You got a little cash. You know, walking around money. Yeah. It's just fascinating. Like, Microsoft's chip choices here are fascinating across the board. I agree everyone's waiting for Intel to take this turn. But it's also, Microsoft, the stack of things Microsoft has to accomplish the surface is just as complicated as Google's

pixel watch stack, right? They have to set the bar for all their OEMs. They have to keep both chipmakers happy and participating. They have to not overcompete with the Lenovo's and Dells of the world. They have to compete with Apple at $1,000 and above, which is where the Lenovo's and the Dells don't really compete anymore. On and on and on. And he kind of just like, the thing is inherently political.

Like the laptop, more than anything, the laptop is inherently political because the OEMs have basically stopped making Surface shaped things or they do, but they're like very enterprise focused. So like, and no, like, Lenovo is not out there with a Surface Studio 2 Plus.

Like that's just like the hinge engineers at Microsoft got they got one you know like Panos was like yeah that's fine This is the most complicated hinge in America You should ship it So I think the laptop is in It's where the politics really come to play most directly with this But we'll see I mean there's just like there's so much Microsoft stuff going on and it surface is 10 years Like we should say this service is a huge success It has accomplished every single thing Microsoft ever wanted it to accomplish

It really did reinvigorate Windows laptops. Panos has done an amazing job running this program in the face of all these politics. There are effectively no companies that have ever managed to be the OS vendor and the premium hardware vendor and make everything work. Like Google has not done it with the pixel. No, because Apple doesn't have OEMs. They're not a vendor of software in that way. Right. So like Google hasn't accomplished it with a pixel.

They're a successful OS vendor in Samsung is their primary. I'm interested in Blackberry and Cunix. Yeah, Blackberry failed. Palm famously failed. We've gone through that. We have a whole documentary about that that you can watch. It's called Springboard. It's very good.

Basically, no company has ever managed to pull this off, but Microsoft did it with the surface. Yeah. It's kind of remarkable they pulled it off for the past second. Like, people doubted them very much, and they thought the OEMs would run. And it kind of turns out there's nowhere to run, too. Like, it has never been the year of Linux on the desktop, sadly. So they were in a little bit of a stronger position. But I've talked to Panos, I've walked around CS with Panas Panis.

And he's been like, look, we invent hardware and we license it back out to the OEMs. And like, that's our hinge and that's our thing. And that's our design. And like, you can see them pushing the Windows hardware innovation ecosystem ahead because they knew that Apple would just kill them. And Dell and everybody else would focus on the high margin cheap computers for business and never sell the $1,000 consumer laptop. And so like, we're just going to do it. Huge success. very complicated politics that express themselves in things like the Qualcomm SQ3 and this weird

lack of arm or weird lack of AMD but pretty rad like you should watch the video with Tom and Panos because it's great yeah dope okay let's do a lightning round well the other windows thing we should talk about before we switch is this Apple partnership to some extent I guess with Windows where I think what is it you're going to get music and TV apps both on Windows and on the Xbox which is like it's one of those things that both seems insane to me that that's a thing that's happening and also like... Oh, and ICloud photos.

Oh, right, and ICloud photos. Everybody's favorite photos app that is a thing that I care about that definitely exists. It's the default. It's the default iPhone photo app. It's just there so that when I switch phones, it still works.

I don't care about it on any other platform. Anyway. But you get all your photos in your laptop. That's a big win. That is true. No, I'll give you that. I cloud photos is legit. Yeah, I think it was just,

it's one of those things that it's representative of the thing that Apple is desperately trying to do, which is like BA services business. And like speaking of, you know, the politics between companies, Apple and Microsoft are not like famous for being best friends. And so it says a lot about what Apple is trying to do that it's willing to put music and TV and photos into all of these different Windows products.

Like that is Steve Jobs would never in a million years have done that. And even five years ago, I don't think Tim Cook would have done that. Well, we put iTunes on Windows to some iPods. But that's like that's actually probably a good example, right? Because you get to a point where it's like, okay, this is our move. This is how we reach a lot of people. and that's clearly where music and TV are next.

Like a lot of people who have Windows want to watch Ted Lasso. And that's a way to get a lot of people to do so. And so it makes sense. It was just slightly surprising to me to see Apple and Windows be like, we make apps together. So my theory here is very cynical.

So game consoles are underappreciated as streaming devices. Tons and tons of people run streaming apps on their game consoles all the time. And so if you're Apple, you've got to get the Apple TV app on the game console just to compete. Yep.

Yeah. That's life. So they're like, we want to go on this game console. And Microsoft was like, ha-ha, we tightly control the economics of the Xbox. And it's not an open app store to get on this game console. You got to come through us. Interesting. And they were just like, Sasha and I just walked around campus and was like, what do you want?

We get one ship with Apple. They want Apple TV app on the Xbox. Like, who's got something that we want? And the team that runs the photos tab in a like Explorer. was like, can we just get the High Cloud Photos integration? Every other photo service supports this tab. Please.

Can you just get them to give us the API hooks? InSla, I was like, yeah, we could probably get that out of them. So that was the trade. They were like, we want fast-paring AirPods, and Tim Cook was like, no. I'll tell you, this is a straight up just tit for tat. You want to be on the Xbox? What are you going to do for me?

Yeah, that sounds right. And they landed at ICloud photos on Windows. And that's just how those Everybody. Listen, I'm happy for that. I want an I-Message client for Windows. Apple's like death first. Yeah.

That's when Craig Frederiki hangs up. He's like, here's a got for you. I got photos. Wait, I can't help myself. I have to ask, do you think that they tried to get the Xbox? I forget what it's called, but the service that has to run on Safari? Oh, dude, they started like a game streaming app on iOS. That's where I thought you were going.

Yeah. Yeah, and they ended up at ICloud photos. They're like, can we get the Apple TV app on the Xbox? And Microsoft was like, yeah, if you let us do cloud gaming on the iPhone. And Apple's like death first. Absolutely. Here's our counteroffer. ICloud photos, which you can already access in a web browser and any computer on planet Earth.

Fair. But now it's in the start menu. That's all that matters. It's a high stakes negotiation. They had teams in two separate conference rooms and there's one person and walk back and forth. It's potos for sure.

It's just like someone is going to write the inside the deal that brought ICloud photos to Windows. It's like, you know, it's like a 600 page novel with barbarians at the gate. Yeah. I like imagining it, right, it's more like a wheel you spin and it just landed

on ICloud photos. It's like dood, dude, dude, dude. Goes like right past Mac integration for Xbox goes right past. past all of the I-Message stuff, and it just lands on I-Cloud photos. And the one right next to it is bankrupt. Yeah, right.

Yeah. I-Glaught photos is like the five cents on the price is right wheel, and it's like, well, we see a good zero. It's not really bad news. The wheel spinning goes so great. All right. One last thing we should mention before you get out of here. Netflix, disclosure, we made a Netflix show.

Box Media makes Netflix shows. Comcast investor in Fox Media. Everyone here owns a television. Everyone here is a Netflix subscriber. There are you disclosures from the day. All right. What are we but pawns in the great game of capitalism? Netflix is having ads.

It's going to cost $6.99 a month. The ads, by the way, run by Microsoft. Microsoft's shown up in everyone's announcements this week. Seriously. Do you have something announced in tech? Microsoft will be there and they will rebrand off this. Teams is probably involved. It's called Netflix 365 now.

All the Netflix ads are just for teams. Well, no, that's how you do Group Watch now is through teams. Like all the Amazon ads on football are just for Amazon. Amazon. Last week, the ads were for Eero. And I was like, you guys, like, just let someone else buy some ads. Like, if you're watching football, Thursday Night Football, streaming on Amazon Prime, it seems likely you've got your Wi-Fi situation sorted out. So that's definitely the best case scenario for this Netflix thing, right? Is that it's, what is it, four, four to five minutes of ads per hour? If that four to five minutes is just trailers for other Netflix shows, like, I'm down. Count me in.

So let's do this. Yeah, $7 a month. Nielsen is going to start offering data. about Netflix audience for the ad business only, which is fascinating. But ad buyers want a standard source of data to know where their ads are hitting. So they're letting Nielsen into the ad side, but not the paid side. So Reed can still do fake numbers whenever he wants. It was the most watched show on Netflix.

Sure. That means something to somebody. Believe you. And then they're going to do less ads than competitors. When do you think they start standardizing the lengths of shows? like network TV does. Because right now they're all over the place. I don't know they're ever going to do that.

Because it's just like too much. End up seeing a lot of ads for like an hour and five minute show. You're like, okay, I guess I'm into my next set of ads. Yeah. Well, I think that's why you're doing four to five. They're giving themselves a little buffer. You know, Netflix's this whole thing is like you're going to watch the next one. Right.

So like they're, I don't think they're worried about whether their shows are 20 minutes or 22 minutes or 30 minutes or whatever. They're just like, what we'd like from you is four uninterrupted hours. Well, and I'm assuming, and correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think Netflix has said anything about like compensating content makers differently because of ads, right? Because that. Oh, heavens. That is a big argument right now in the unions. Oh, interesting.

The unions are all getting upset about this because right now when they sell the rights to these shows, they end up basically being like, you own it forever. And then it's like, wait, I only get $5 for the hours of blood, sweat and tears I put into this. I used to be able to live on my residuals with other shows. So that's actually like, I think we're going to be seeing a lot. lot of that in the next rounds of union negotiations across the industry because they get mad about it. And if that comes back, the gamesmanship on how long should my content be, then becomes really

interesting. Because even if Netflix doesn't standardize it, like, you see YouTubers who have, like, vastly changed the stuff that they make in order to maximize the ad load in the videos that you see. And like... But the YouTubers did that because YouTube told them to. YouTube was like 10 minutes. And YouTube is like, fine, 10 minutes.

But if Netflix says, you know, we're going to show. show you two ads over a 20-minute show or four ads over a 30-minute show. Like, I'll tell you confidently what's going to happen. But that only matters if the compensation changes. So I guess for now, it doesn't necessarily matter. I'm not an expert on TV deals, but those residuals are paid by licensing to other people who broadcast the shows. Netflix isn't doing that, right?

They're just adding ads. Yep. Yeah. And they're a little lowering the price. So I think how those deals get done. I think those deals are going to start changing. And we're already seeing that those discussions and those union channels and at networks of like, okay, we need to start changing how we're doing this because we're getting

screwed because there's infinite content and not infinite dollars and dollars there are going straight to the streamers and bypassing all the creatives. Yeah. It's funny because none of the streamers are making enough money. It's like at no point did we actually make this better, but the streaming wars are here. Just a pyramid scheme. Disney's at the top and everybody else is just like, I guess we're also here making stuff. We're not Disney.

Subscribe. It's coming. It's launching in November. the other plan, there was a big Bloomberg piece, Lucas Shaw had big Bloomberg piece on the future of Netflix today. So the ads are one part of the plan, the other one cracking down on password sharing. And they were like, not enough people are paying for Netflix. And these are the two things they're doing. Like the CFO of Netflix said to Lucas, here's the two things.

It's ads and it's password sharing. Yeah, haven't they said there's like 100 million users they think are getting Netflix through shared passwords? Yeah. And so they're trying to reframe it. They know it's hard. They've launched a bunch of trials in South America. and they're trying to reframe it as not cracking down on it, but wouldn't you like to pay for your ex-girlfriend?

What if you paid a little bit more money? Huh? That'd be nice. We'll just see how this goes. Yeah. Sorry, all my old roommates. I'm definitely going to start VPNing to wherever your house is. Just so it looks like I'm around.

The password change is just going to get more complicated. People are just going to VPN into one apartment. You can do it. Yeah. I'm excited for everybody to know it a VPN. is. That's going to be great. I feel like the kids all know what VPNs are because the VPN company is advertised so heavily on YouTube

and TikTok. That's fair. And podcasts. All right, we've gone over. It's been amazing to be in the studio with my friend David Pierce. It's amazing to just send digital weed to you, Alex. I'm so high right now. It's great. Alex is firing up the Plex server as we speak. Tons and tons of news. All the

coverage of Microsoft's of Google, meta. It's on the site. Check it out. Also tons of other stuff. Tons of little updates to the site experience. And everybody wants here about those. We've got another big set coming maybe in two weeks or now. We're going to redo the top of the site, the hero area. We got some big plans there. Also, we should just say if you do read

all the Microsoft stuff, send Tom Warren nice tweets about how much you love him because he did all of this while having COVID. Yeah. And did a great job. So tell Tom you love him. You can't tell on the video unless you know. Yeah, exactly. That's good. It's really good. But no, yeah, Tom came to America, had to go

back to the UK. All we're dealing with and put out just absolutely tremendous coverage. So, yeah, tweeted Tom, told me to do a good job. Don't mention the COVID thing. Just tell you to do a good job. Don't let him know we had to stop. Be cool. Be cool, be cool.

Be cool, man. Be cool. All right, that's it. That's a version of asking. You can tweet at us. I'm at Reckless, David's at Pierce. Alex is Alex H. Kranz. We'll be back on Wednesday.

We get the hotline coming this week. Yeah. 866, Verge 1-1. I will tell you this. I already answered the hotline question this week. Huge. It's pretty good. Game changer.

It's so deeply exactly the thing that you would expect someone asking on the hotline. I don't know. I'm not giving away. It's just perfectly in the week. I answer the question. And Andrew goes, I knew you'd know the answer that question. Very good. Okay, that's it.

That's our chat. And that's a wrap for Vergecast this week. Thanks for listening. If you enjoy the show, subscribe in the podcast app of your choice or tell a friend. You can send us feedback at vergecast at theverge.com. This show is produced by me, Liam James, and our senior audio director, Andrew Marino. This episode was edited and mixed by Amanda Rose Smith. Our editorial director is Brooke Minters, and our executive producer is Eleanor Donovan. The Verge cast is a production

of The Verge and Box Media Podcast Network. And that's it. We'll see you next week.