The Vergecast - New iPads, Microsoft reorg, and Europe's new privacy rule

Episode Date: March 30, 2018

We’ve got a bunch of tech luminaries on The Vergecast this week to help us understand the week in tech news. Nilay, Dieter, and Paul welcome Lauren Goode back to the show for her last week at The Verge to discuss the new iPads that Apple released this past Tuesday. Lauren and Dieter went to Chicago for the event, so they share their experience and insight on the new products and their relationship with the education field. After that, the crew bring in senior reporter Russell Brandom to help us understand how Europe’s new privacy rule is reshaping the internet. And finally, senior editor Tom Warren returns to the show to share his expertise with Microsoft and break down Microsoft’s announcement of the reorganization of their company. There’s a whole lot more in between all of that — like Paul’s weekly segment “The little robot that could” — so listen to it all and you’ll get it all. 03:12 - The 5 biggest announcements from the Apple education event 32:18 - How Europe’s new privacy rule is reshaping the internet 51:17 - Paul’s weekly segment “The little robot that could” 53:12 - Microsoft is ready for a world beyond Windows If you enjoyed this podcast and want to hear more audio from The Verge, well you’re in luck. Season 2 of Why’d You Push That Button hosted by Kaitlyn Tiffany and Ashley Carman is here! This week’s episode is about Facebook event invites. You can subscribe anywhere, including on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play Music, and our RSS feed. And get caught up on season 1 if you missed out. Also! You can check out Lauren Goode’s podcast Too Embarrassed to Ask. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode of The Virchcast is brought to you by IBM. 16 million new collar jobs, which is a term that IBM has written here, new collar jobs will be created by 2024. To help fill them, IBM's new education model gives high school students, workplace experience, and associates degree. 90 P-Tech schools are already preparing graduates for tomorrow's STEM careers. Let's put Smart to Work. Find out how at IBM.com slash P-Tech. Hello, welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast, this in all podcast networks. This network, of course, being the box media podcast network. By the way, there's been no follow-up from our CEO, Jim Bankoff, or Ezra Klein,

to the fact that I said that this was the flagship podcast in South West Coast. Is he ghosted you? I heard about ghosted. Why did you push that button? It was a real thing. I think there's no follow-up because they accepted our dominance or because we are, it's so ridiculous that we would be the flagship that they don't even need to bother addressing it? I believe that they are preparing counter-assault.

Let's be a quest. Yeah. I think they're picking and choosing their battles. Yeah. Anyway, I'm here. I'm Neely. Paul is here. Hey, Nealai. There's Deeter.

Hello. And you heard Lauren good. Hey, Lauren. Hi. So I have some news for the Vergecast audience. Lauren, this is your, you'll probably be on the show again. But this is Lauren's last episode of the Verge cast as a member of the Verge staff because she is deserting us to go to Wired.

Lauren, does Wired have a podcast network? Wired. I don't know if you would call it a podcast network, but they do have a podcast. The gear team specifically, Michael Colori and Ariel Pardez. It's fun. And I look forward to being on that and maybe working with some other new projects too. So, but, you know, I am going to miss this. I'm going to miss the Vox Media podcast network of which I've been apart for a while and I'm going to miss the Vergecast. You know, when David Pierce left us to go to Wired, this is a true story. We dressed him up like a podcast. pirate. So this is a very gentle exit for you. Yeah, they had a different editor-in-chief at the time. Nick Thompson's new editor-Wired. He's really good.

Wires really good. We're very excited for Warren. But when David left, he was a different editor-in-chief, and he had just released a memo about their new office, exhorting the staff to keep it clean. And one of the lines he used was, this is not a pirate ship. And so he sent David to Wier dressed as a pirate. It only seemed appropriate. it. But anyway, Lauren, congratulations. We're very excited for your new gig, and we're very excited

for, you know, all of our competitiveness in the future. Thank you. And for you. I, too, am excited to become your mortal enemy as you put on the Twitters. Yeah. It is bittersweet leaving you guys, though. Thank you for the congratulations. I look for being trolled this entire podcast. That's going to be, it's not going to be great for you. Anyway, Lauren, one of the last things you did with us, this is a pack show, by the way. Lauren's here with us now. She's going to stay on the whole show. Russell Brandom is going to join us for the second segment to talk about privacy in Europe, which is like a huge deal,

especially with the Facebook thing. And then Tom Warren is going to join us for the third segment to talk about what has happening at Microsoft, which is a huge reorg today. But the news of the week, the big news, one of Lauren's last things that she did with us

and Dieter and Dan was you went to Big Apple event in Chicago, one of my fake hometowns. And you saw some new iPads. So Apple hosted an education-focused event in Chicago. So a lot of the tech press, including us, flew out there. Apple did not provide a live stream for this event, which I think was for a few reasons. One is that they

couldn't really control the venue because it was literally at a high school, Lane Tech High School. And so when you can't control the venue, you can't control the lighting and the streaming quality and all that stuff. But I also think it was part of a grander ploy to get the tech press to come out to Chicago for this event and be there in person. And as expected, we did see a newer iPad that is aimed at the education market, although consumers can get it too. And then other than that, it was a lot of, it was a pretty focused event.

Like, it wasn't, you know, sometimes we go to these things and there are four or five new products or pieces of software that we really, like, have to cover every piece of. And in this case, it really was just like, here's an iPad for education, and here's our new and slightly improved suite of education-focused apps and a couple new apps, too.

I mean, that's like, that was sort of, yeah. We can go into the weeds more about this, but that's the overview. There was new versions of I work. There was the new iPad. There was a new program to teach people to like build curriculum around creativity, teach people to use their apps to do stuff. And then it was like a lot of, by the way we do this, by the way we do that, by the way multi-user exists, by the way the classroom software exists, et cetera, et cetera. So when you say a new iPad, let's start with the new hardware product because the software stuff is arguably much more interesting, so we should spend more time on that.

But let's start with the new product. You said a new iPad for education. But that's not really it. They just put out an updated version of the iPad that exists, and now it has a faster processor and supports the Apple Pencil, which last week on this show, we were like, that's the minimum thing they could do. And we had all these wild ideas about other stuff they could do.

They had so many dreams. And they didn't do any of them. But like that's really all that new iPad is, right? It's got the faster processor, but it has the same screen. It has the same air gap. It doesn't have pro-motion. It doesn't have, I don't think it has true tone. It's the same price.

It has the same RAM, according to Serenity Caldwell over at Imore. So that means that it can't do three live apps at the same time on the screen. It can only handle two. And then if you do a slide over the other two, like freeze in the background a little bit. So yeah, it's just like, like it supports the Apple Pencil, and it also, oddly, supports a new crayon that Logitech, Logi, Logi. I don't even know. Logi.

It's got to be what their name is. Logite. Logite. Anyway, they make it. That's 50 bucks, but only students can buy it. So that, and that stuff is wild to me because, A, Apple didn't make it themselves. Yeah. Which is wacky.

And the keyboard case, which is, Logite is making a keyboard case like this for some time. But the keyboard case basically turns the iPad into a surface. It's got a kickstand. It flips down a keyboard. The keyboard detaches. Dieter, you're saying it contains its own, like, smart connector? Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I'd call it a smart connector. It has pogo pins, which a magnet, which does it.

And, like, the deal there is, actually, Neely, this will fascinate you. Part of the reason that it's important that Logitech makes this keyboard is that it has a physical connection. those polo pins connect to the lightning adapter, and therefore it is not a Bluetooth keyboard, and therefore it is more likely to pass muster as a device that can be used on standardized tests. Yeah, this is true. So this is like a fascinating thing that happens every year,

and the story goes around every year. Standardized tests, the SAT, LSAT, what have you. They ban, like surfaces are often banned from these things because people bring Bluetooth keyboards, iPads have been banned from them. But this does, the iPad itself does not have a smart connector. You put it into the case and the case attaches via lightning. And then the case has a little Pogo Pin connector and its own lightning connector. And yeah, and that's how it connects to the keyboard.

Yeah. That is the hackiest hack in the world, right? Like, it's super, right? It's also extra. It's extra money. It's $100 and then the Logi cran is 50. So once you start looking at, even with the student distance, or teacher discount where this ends up being $299,

once you start adding that on, those accessories, you're still pushing $450 or higher. Yeah. It's funny, we're talking more about these Logitech accessories than we are the device itself, which is amazing. But I just want to point out that the crayon, to me, is better designed than the Apple Pencil. Really?

It not only is it cheaper, but it doesn't roll off a table. It doesn't have a cap that you lose. It just has a little rubber grommet that covers it. and it doesn't have all the, doesn't support all the same things that, uh, the pencil supports in terms of pressure sensitivity, but it also,

it doesn't use Bluetooth. It uses some other mysterious way to communicate, but it has the exact same latency and it can also support angle. And so as like a thing that's elegantly designed for actual use by actual humans and not a thing that's designed to look pretty, it is a better designed object than the apple pencil. How long is it compared to the pencil? Because I find the pencil.

Oh, it's shorter. Yeah, it's shorter. Yeah. It's just flatter. Like a lot. A lot shorter? Yeah, like two-thirds, I guess. I don't know in front of us, but yeah.

I didn't put a pencil next to it. It also has an on-off button too. I forgot about it. Oh, yeah. But you know how the pencil from 53 was like flat-edged. Like it was not rounded like a yellow pencil, but I don't know, just made it nicer to grip. There's like a very nice grip to this Logitex. crayon.

That's great news. Crayon. How do you say Crayon? Do you say crayon or do you say crayon? Cran. Cran. Like cranberry? Crayon or crayon?

So the other thing that happened, I mean, they announced this other software, but then instead of like the standard hands-on area where everybody mobs, they had classrooms, literal labs set up where like people were showing off stuff. So I could talk to a woman from a textbook company that showed the AR that is like tied to their textbook. So like first graders can like put a baby elephant on the thing and learn what, where baby elephants sliver or whatever. But I didn't get to hang out there for super long, but you got to hang out and you saw Tim Cook, Lauren? I saw Tim Cook. I saw I'm coding some stuff on Swift on an iPad.

He was coding a Sphero ball. Okay. Like roll around this physical track. So after the event, we were shepherded into these areas that felt very much. One was like a lab, a school lab, and the other felt like a garage space transformed into this, I don't know, make stuff with music and draw like stuff for anatomy class. It was all. It was all. It was all. It was all. It was all. average normal high school. Yeah. I mean, we were literally walking down high school hallways, very long high school hallways, I might add.

And, you know, surrounded by like lockers. And there were like people, kids who had decorated their lockers with like wallpaper for someone's birthday and stuff like that. It was like really, I don't know, it was kind of fun. Wasn't it at Tuesday? Where were the children? Yeah. They're in spring break.

Spring break. Yeah. But there were a lot of students and teachers in the audience, not just from Lane Tech, but from other schools and other schools around the country. Apparently people had come in for, this. In fact, I was sitting next to two student journalists from a, from a neighboring high school. Did you inspire them? I mean, did I personally inspire them? Did you tell them the future was your new print magazine? By them. Yeah, I said, have you guys ever heard of print? And they said,

what is this thing you speak of? Is that like the thing that is in the bathroom on the toilet paper handle? And I'm like, no, it's, it's something you read. So, you know, but the good news is that I don't worry about them taking my jobs in the future because they literally don't know what print is. No, so they, now there were these two young women and they were, they were great and it was kind of funny. I said, what do you hear for? They said, we're here to cover the event. And I said, what are you covering it with? And they said, well, we only have our phones. So we're taking notes and we're using voice memos and stuff. And they did have a DSLR with them. And I was like, that's cool. And then they said, yeah, we didn't bring our laptops because Apple literally told us, they described

as a field trip. We thought we were going on a field trip. And I was like, oh, Apple secrecy of the opacity. It was just starting so young. Apple can't use the word event. They just won't do it. Right, right. So, yeah, it was fun sitting next to them. But, you know, there were, like, there were actual educators in the audience and people on stage were around to talk about this.

And we were in a school and we had a class schedule. So it was a little different from some of the other events we've been to where after, in a, you know, series of executives speak on stage. We're, like, shepherded. We, you know, we have the opportunity to see these things in private meeting rooms, right? Sometimes, like, that wasn't quite the same. this time. From going to these different classes, quote unquote, did you get the impression that this is Apple's beautiful vision for a super wealthy high school that likes to think outside the box and like,

you know, just, you know, like all the kids call the teachers by their first names and they're very, you know, advanced and different and typically private schools? Or are these things that could fit into and augment like a typical regular public school classroom? Well, I think the thing to remember, remember is that in some instances, there are a lot of instances where the school district has to pony up for these products in order to get them in classrooms. And there are other instances too where there's a lot of donating going on. And so I don't think Apple is really thinking about it that way in terms of like this is for wealthy kids, even though the price point that we heard may convince a lot of people of that fact. I think they're really looking at this like we just need to be

more classrooms. We need to be the thing that kids want to use. use, the thing that they tell their parents and their teachers they want to use, the thing that teachers find easy enough to use, that it's not onerous to try to learn a new technology as part of their professional development. And I think Apple, like, I was thinking about this a lot and how we joked before the event, like, maybe it's going to be called the E-pad, right? And, like, maybe it is going to be this very education-specific thing where it has a different name. It's called the E-pad. Hopefully it ships with some type of keyboard. Maybe the pencil is, like, magnetized, or there's a case for it so kids don't lose it because God knows that's going to happen.

Like maybe there's something about this that actually is going to make it different, and there wasn't. And then I was thinking about that, and I was like, why wouldn't they just ship something called the E-pad that had all this stuff? And it's because for all of the people who have existing iPads or schools that have existing iPads, then you're creating a differentiation between the two things, where like one sort of the education tool and one is, you know, really the education tool. And like at this point, they just need to be everywhere they can possibly be in education because they have lost so much ground to Google and Chromebooks. But that's, so I buy that argument. And I actually really want to talk about the piece you wrote, Lauren, specifically about Apple's, like, look at all the stuff you can do with an iPad that you can't do in a Chromebook

because that was their message. But just on the hardware piece, that's like a pretty limiting way to think about it. Then you would never put out an iPad, right? Like, if you're just trying to make up ground, why not go at it? Like, that's what I kept on thinking of. It's like, why? You'd have to know that no student, can just handle an iPad without a case, right?

Like, you just can't do that. And lots of people I follow on Twitter, lots of other journalists who have children, we're all saying that if you're going to give a kid an iPad, the first thing you have to do is put it in this massive rugged case. Like, step one. And I just, like, why don't you just make that product, right? That instead of making this beautiful iPad that is, you know, fairly delicate,

why not just make it more rugged? Why not make a product that is geared to education that is specialized for a particular kind of market? And then if people fall in love with their iPads when they graduate, they can buy a nice iPad. Like, I don't, that to me is, I don't know why they wouldn't make that choice. Or if they're just going to stick with the same iPad they've been going with, why they wouldn't lower the price further? Because if they're saving all, they've already done all the tooling, most of the parts are the same. If they're just trying to make up ground, why not lose the margin and just make up the ground? This is a really good question, and I actually want to ask Deeter this question because he was telling me, we were talking about the EMAC last week.

And what happened with the EMAC? I mean, that's basically what they did with that. Yeah, and then it lasted for one generation and then they let it go, right? And then just everybody started buying IMAX instead. It's funny. Like, I think Apple maybe believes that, one, I mean, the price is $2.99 for schools, but that's actually not really true. If, like, schools are buying a lot of these, they'll find some deal that'll bring the price down more. but they're still going to have to spend money on those cases for sure.

I don't know why they wouldn't make another skew. It's expensive. They do have to build these things at scale. And so building a whole other body for it as a whole other thing to support. Well, not a huge scale. Let's be honest. They don't have to build them at iPhone scale. They don't have to build them at iPad scale.

Right? And it's not like Apple doesn't have money. It's like Apple wants to win at the education market, but they aren't willing to think of why Google. Google doesn't just win because ChromeOS is a good operating system. It's because the computers are $150. Right. And the management thereof is really good.

Like Apple, I mean, this gets into Lawrence Peace a little bit, but like Apple really made the case that like there's a lot of stuff you can do in an iPad that you can't do in a web browser. But one thing you can do with Google stuff is like if I'm running a little independent charter school and I've got, you know, 200 students and I can't afford an IT budget, it's way cheaper and easier for me to like just let Google handle a bunch of that stuff. And like you can set up the classroom stuff. You can set up the G Suite, blah, blah, blah, blah.

With Apple, you need like JAMP or Cisco. You need a MDM, a mobile device management thing next to Apple's management software. And the load for like setting that up is in fact, I think, a little bit higher than it is on an iPad. Maybe the answer that we're just circling around and refusing to say is that it would offend Johnny I's sensibilities and he doesn't want to do it. Probably. All right. So, Lauren, let's talk about your piece because we've kind of walked right up to it. They made a very specific case for the iPad, which is basically you're a video editor now.

Like, what was your takeaway with that? Clips. Clips. Clips. Just debatable. You're above average. That said, I've not seen many other people using clips. And on stage, Apple was like, look, you can use clips to make videos in class and isn't this great.

But aside from that, they talked about AR kit. We saw at least three new apps that are utilizing A.R. kit, including one where you can dissect a frog in this AR app using pencil. So the idea is like, you don't have to, you know, I wrote in the live vlog like, save the frogs, right? You have to worry if you're that kid who's like definitely going to pass out in biology class from dissecting a frog. We saw other instances that people using Swift to program, you know, drones and Sphero Ball. I saw Tim Cook do this with Swift on an iPad. I saw like, what was the other stuff? They showed like some big, oh, garage band stuff.

We saw that as well. So there was this big emphasis on create. And for people who have followed Apple for the past 40 years. you kind of know that Apple already has this relationship with creative types and people who like to make movies and make music and things like that. But if you've been born in the past 20 years, like that history means nothing to you, right? You're a person who's just like, hey, I log into my $150 Chromebook at school and I go into the G Suite and get the notes that my teacher left. So what Apple's really trying to do is make this appeal to sort of this idea that multimedia is the way that kids are learning in classrooms now. and oh by the way we have an A10 fusion chip in this thing and oh by the way we have this you know this framework for AR and oh by the way this tablet has a high resolution camera so you can do that with this but you can't do it with a Chromebook and that was the whole subtext of the event yeah yeah it's funny or almost the text text text I mean I know so many teens who just want to be like Instagram influencers or vloggers when they grow up and those aren't the tools that those people use like no one is an eye

iPad and Instagram influencer. If you are one, please tweet at me. I'd like to write an article about you. Which is a fact. And if you are the super high-end vlogger who's making all of their stuff on an iPad, also let me know. That seems interesting to me. But that's like a, there's a big delta there between Apple saying you're going to learn

how to create here and do all this creative stuff on this platform, on this product. And what these kids are actually. consuming and how it's actually made. I would say art, a lot of drawing is done on tablets now, and a lot of music is done on iPad specifically. I mean, so there's something there. In a world where Android, Windows, and Chrome don't exist, what Apple announced today for students is the most amazing shit ever.

Yeah. I mean, I would have killed this product. But like, if you have a Chromebook, let's say you need to edit an image. Oh, yeah, then you're hooped. There is a slight amount of multimedia that is almost a bare minimum now. Yeah. You know, it's funny, my niece and nephew go to a fancy school in Chicago. In their school just gave them surfaces.

Oh. And like, part of the, part of, and I was like, wow, you must hate these children. No. So they love these surfaces. And the reason is because they are real computers. That's very true. And the school's reason that they communicated to like my sister and, My brother-in-law was we want them to be proficient with Excel.

We want them to be proficient with Microsoft Word. Like the actual tools that when they enter the workforce will be what they are presented with, which I think is really interesting because if you run your business on pages and numbers, let me know. I don't think we're going to write an article about you in that case. But I'm just sort of curious what that's like for you. I want to see a biopic of a kid who was like a numbers prodigy. He shows up to work his first day.

He's got to learn Excel, but, you know, he's got all these ideas popping around in his brain from his numbers life. He's using numbers. So also in the area of anecdotal evidence, my niece and nephew are, you know, four years apart, three and a half years apart. And my nephew uses a keyboard. Like, and he's in Google's suite of apps. And, like, I've seen him do his homework. And that's what he's using. And then my niece is just all about her iPad and like making Instagram videos.

So one of the analysts I spoke to, this guy who covers his name is, what is name? Trace Erden, he covers the education market. He made an interesting observation, which is for older kids, the keyboard still matters. And those types of, you know, collaboration apps and productivity apps matter when you get to a certain age. But for younger kids, the way that they're just consuming and learning and doing things right now is largely video-based. And so the question is whether or not generations who have just literally grown up with an iPad from the time they're tiny little babies, if that just is going to make more sense for them, then is the way they're going to learn and make stuff. Or if they're

eventually going to grow out of that and say, I need more, you know, I need Excel, not numbers. I need to be that math prodigy who uses like real, I don't know. I'm sad we're not having twins now because I would give one baby and iPad Oh, all A-B test. We're just going to have to give her one. What are we to do? I think that's a good point, Lord.

There's just this aspect of, or I don't know if this is the point you're making. Some people want to do different things. Yeah. Like expecting all your kids to, at a school to have the same method of expression or the same interests or the same way that they want to work is optimistic.

Paul, you're at a piece. today about the X-code cliff, which is what you're calling it. So I want you to talk about that, but let me just frame this in the terms of garage band, which is really interesting. So lots of professional musicians just use garage band. They make their demos in garage band. And then when you graduate from a garage band, there's a chance you will graduate to logic. And the way logic works is much more complicated than garage band.

But it maps. Like there's like a, you sort of understand what you're doing. that is really not true of like iMovie to premiere like the way iMovie works is deeply weird i like it's intuitive right like if you've never heard a video editing before in your life maybe you will understand it better but maybe the fundamental storytelling maybe maps but it's funny yeah no i agree with you though it's like a final cut pro and premiere comparable but iMovie is like yeah it's just some other wacky thing yeah and so So to me, I read Paul's piece today about Swift Playgrounds and Apple has a huge Learn to Code initiative.

It's centered kind of around Swift Playgrounds. And then there's a huge gap between that and like what you would actually do. By the way, I went to Apple's Learned a Code thing. And maybe I'm missing something. But there's just like links to download some e-books that they released in 2017. Also, I signed up to be a quote unquote teacher for their curriculum for how you teach kids using the I. iPad, all e-books. It's just a bunch of iBooks that Apple has written. Yeah.

Like, I don't know. That seems old-fashioned of a way to learn how to do things these days, but what do I know? Well, talking about the X-code cliff for me. Yeah. It's a pithy turn of phrase. I know. I'm really proud of it. That was mostly what I was proud of. The basic idea is that Apple has Swift Playgrounds, which is wonderful and beautiful, and it introduces new programming

concepts and lets you play around with them in a really intuitive and a very simple way. You don't have to do a lot of typing because basically there isn't a lot to, there isn't a ton of flexibility, especially in the early lessons. So basically there's like four different functions. And so they just pop up as suggested things to type. So you do these coding lessons, you learn Apple's Swift programming language and you like move a cool character around or you solve problems. and there's lots of great stuff. But my thing is that I listen to a lot of interviews with programmers, and the way they learned to program was typically something that was very difficult.

And if you learn easy programming, I'm not certain. I think it will introduce you to certain concepts, and maybe you'll have an easier time when you try hard, quote-unquote, real programming. But Xcode is obtuse and difficult. People who use it professionally hate it. It crashes all the time. Good luck configuring your app correctly to submit it to the app store. Oh, you need seven different icon resolutions for all the different Apple screen sizes.

And then also there's just the whole structure of an actual app. There's a lot of scaffolding and knowledge and design patterns that go into it. The way people recommend how to become an app developer is to go to iTunes You and download the Stanford course on iOS development. This guy's been doing it for a long time. And it's a ton of knowledge. And it's a college level course, and it's very difficult. And just Swift Playgrounds is that on-ramp to coding, but it does not seem like an on-ramp to actually building apps for Apple's ecosystem. Yeah.

And I think that in summary, it's an iPad. It's an iPad. Can I tell you my favorite story about garage band being used by professional musicians? Yes. Umbrella, the Rihanna song. Ooh. You know that super famous drumbeat? That is Vintage Loop O3 from Garage Band.

No way. Tricky, just slowed it down. That's a fact. He was just screwing out. I think he was probably using logic, but it's just a default loop in Garage Band. And that's like... That's pretty great. You can be a kid and you can just like make that.

A garage band is... You have to, like, be very talented and know Rihanna. But, like, well, that's what I think is interesting. Both with Garage Band, Apple's new music program, everyone can know Rihanna. Maybe that's why you should pursue the Instagram influence or angle on this. There is something with the garage band and Imovie, even if you aren't learning the pro tools, what's important in music? It's not, do you know how to use VAST? plugins. It's having...

It's knowing Rihanna. It's knowing Rihanna. It's definitely knowing... And having taste and musicality. Right. And same with film, with video editing, it's are you a storyteller? Do you understand the basics of editing? And so I think you can get

a way more mileage out of those as part of the learning process than with Swift Playgrounds, which is a sandbox. And you can't make anything that you can deliver to other people. So therefore, you're not challenged to finish something or make something good.

Yeah. It's a vintage. Can I make one more observation too? Yes. Which is that sometimes I think when it comes to Apple and Google, we tend to look, we tend to think about it like an either or thing. And this is actually not an either or thing. I mean, Apple does need to sort of, you know, get its footing back in the education market.

And Google has in a tremendous job over the past five years of really gaining a footholding classrooms. But like people can still use an iPad and use Google's apps on. it, right? And Google at the end of the day probably cares more about getting millions of kids using its apps than it does about selling cheap Chromebooks. And I've talked to teachers who have said, yeah, we have both in the classroom. There are Chromebooks, and then sometimes you see kids using the tablets or there are two tablets in the back of the room and the kids can like sign up and take turns to go use the iPads, you know. So I guess that's just a way of saying like, yes,

I think this was Apple's approach or Apple's attempt to like, you know, get people excited about Apple in the classroom, but the two can coexist in the classroom as well. Yeah. My cynical read on that is they had this iPad to put out and they realized that if they didn't have a really good hook for it, they couldn't right?

Because they had pencil support. So it's like enough. But that's like very cynical. I agree. I actually agree with you one. I think they are actually committed to this. They seem very sincere. The next day, Deeter and Lauren went to back to Lane Tech to see Caras

and Chris Hayes, interview Tim Cook in the gym. I won't spoil it, but there's some coverage of it on the site. You can watch that on MSNBC April 6th. But they're actually committed to it, right? Tim Cook, during that interview talked about education. Then he dunked on Mark Zuckerberg, which I thought was important. And Jeff Bezos, yeah. And Amazon.

But we'll talk about it in a second. Russell Brandom is going to join us. I'm going to read this ad, and then we'll have Russell here. This episode of Virtchast is brought to you by Mattress Firm. Here's one question for all of the I'm going to listen to a podcast to help me fall asleep people. You start going to fall asleep right now. If you answered yes, you're in luck because we have one tip for how you can zonk up more easily. That tip, as you might have surmised, is the purchase-in-new mattress.

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your sleeping could be monumentally improved with the purchase of a new mattress. And if you're still awake, uh, this is going to happen again now. All right, Russell Brandem is here. Who's excited to talk about data privacy regulation? Well, I'm going to try to frame it in the context of like tech giants battling it up. Oh yeah. So we were just talking about Lauren and Dieter went to see Karras Swisher and Chris Hayes interviewed Tim Cook in Chicago for their new show revolution. Here's April 6th, by the interview in MSMEC. And at one point they asked Tim Cook, what would you do if you were Mark Zuckerberg's position? And he answered very saltily, I would never be in that situation, which is incredible. Yeah. I mean, I actually, so I was arguing

with someone on Twitter, Noah Colvin actually was talking about how he was sort of envisioning a turn against Amazon the way there's been a turn against Facebook. And I was like, as you think of them, there are just very few companies that actually sort of live the startup dream where like a 22 year old is suddenly like running this massive world shaping thing. Like that actually doesn't happen. Like that's certainly not been Tim Cook's experience of the world. Like he was really like a corporate rate like he worked at compact yeah and like Bezos was a banker like these are all like very grown up people and so I don't know I mean this is like totally derailing but like genuinely Tim Cook would never be in that situation like really truly he would have like formed

a risk committee and been like we'll have a blue ribbon commission on and like done the boring corporate things that you do to diffuse that anyway so the reason I'm asking is Facebook is doing a bunch stuff now. Yeah. They roll out new privacy tools a couple days ago yesterday. You know, they're adopting this posture of A, feeling very like they're the victim. Like they were tricked by Cambridge Analytica. And then also being very apologetic and being like, here's all this stuff you can do.

They're rolling back some of the data sharing they're doing. And one of the sort of hotter takes out there is they're just being opportunistic because they have to do all this stuff anyway because of this massive use. European privacy law. It goes into effect in May called the General Data Privacy Regulation or Protection, Data Protection Regulation, the GDPR. If you have not been following some of the spicier ad tech executives on Twitter, you may have never heard of the phrase GDPR. When you say spicier, like how spicy are we talking about? I mean, there are some extremely spicy ad tech people on Twitter. It's actually hilarious to me. And they love attacking Facebook. But

It's out there. It's a big deal in Europe. And it is affecting companies in the United States. They're making some changes. Slack recently made some changes too. But Facebook is in this position where Tim Cook, in an interview with Kara, said it's past time. We need some well-crafted regulation about this stuff. Zuckerberg on CNN said, maybe it's time to regulate. We need some well-crafted regulation. And I see that. And it's all in the shadow of, well, there's this massive regulation about to hit you. Yeah, see, this is what's kind of weird to me about it, where, like, I think we've framed the conversation and, like, should tech be regulated? Which seems like an insane question to me, because, like, it matters what the rules are, right? Like, shouldn't we be

talking about what we want, like, what government controls would make sense here and what would, as opposed to just being like, there should be a law of some kind, like, concerning Facebook. Yeah. Like, I don't know. So, I mean, that whole bit is like, maybe we could be. regulated. Maybe law would be appropriate hypothetically. Like, I don't know. I mean, there is, by the way, this actual ad disclosure law, Klabutcher Warner, which Casey has written a ton about, that would regulate ad disclosure and Facebook is sort of quietly fighting tooth and nail against. And in today's sort of big talk about what they were doing about

the election, they definitely declined to endorse it. They sort of don't want to say that they think it's a bad idea, but they're really not saying it's a good idea. So they're interested in regulation in the abstract, but like certainly the regulations that are available in the U.S. Congress, they are not like thrilled about. What's that law called? Klobuchar Warner. I may be mispronouncing her name, but it's the honest ads. Clobuchar. Klobuchar. There you go. It's the honest. A girl. I mean, I got to correct you. There you go. And yeah, I mean, it's the honest ads act. It's basically just, you know, if you run a campaign ad, put it in the,

this Dropbox folder and then people can go to the Dropbox folder and look at all the campaign ads? I mean, it's going to be some ugly website, but I mean, this is also what journalists love, because then we can go and look at them and, you know, when a new one hits, sort of write articles about it. You know, it's funny because when Zuckerberg was interviewed by this sort of struggling print magazine called Wired, he actually mentioned the Honest Ads Act. Yeah. And it sounded, he sounded very positive about it. They're actually fighting against it. It's weird. Well, they sort of don't want to, I mean, again, like, I think there is a bit of a two-step.

Like, a lot of people were talking about, like, when he was on his interview tour, was he really being totally straightforward about the efforts of the company? And I think they're being, anyway, they're being purposefully hard to pin down on it. But, like, at this big

event they had, someone asked, so are you supporting this act? And they sort of said a lot of words that weren't yes or no. So that sounds like they're not supporting it. Okay, so that's the vagary of the United States. And that's, this is what I mean. There's all this vague stuff happening in this country. Yeah.

But Facebook is making real changes. Amazon is making real changes. Smaller companies like, well, I guess Slack is kind of a big company. But Slack is making real changes because they're being regulated in Europe in very specific ways. So explain to us what the GDPR does. Okay. So basically, it has to do with companies that are dealing with personal data. So we talk about it a lot in the context of ads.

Like that's when we're talking about Facebook and Google and even Slack. But like it's really anyone dealing with personal data of any kind. So I filled out the form to buy my Everlane shirt and now they know my name and my phone number and my IP address and like anyone dealing with user accounts. Where does that information go? What are your responsibilities when it's breach? What are your partner's responsibilities when it's breached? And so it sort of deals with that. The most tangible thing is that you have to be able to download it so you can sort of go to, you know, Facebook and say, I'm an EU citizen.

Give me all of the data that you have concerning me, Russell Brandem. And then they, you know, you filed a request and they go into their archives and they say, okay, here's the Russell Branden file. And so, I mean, this is something you can do not as an EU citizen now, but I think it is pretty clearly something that everyone is having to develop this feature because the GDPR asked for it. And I mean, and it's a good example where they say, look, if we're going to develop it for the EU, we might as well just develop it for everyone. Like, it's going to be too much of a pain to distinguish between EU people and U.S. people. And then also the... Wait, just to be clear, so Facebook has this now. Yeah, yeah.

You can do it. I did it. A lot of we were talking about, like, who found interesting stuff. But a lot of other sites just don't. Right? Google has taken out. Google has had takeout for a while, although takeout doesn't include, like, all of the things, all of your, like, advertising tax. like Russell's into Thundercats

so we're gonna send him a bunch of Thundercats ads like that's not really that's not Google is like we have this is information that you've given to Google as like a information store almost so it's a little different although you can see how something like this could be built into takeout

and Google actually has a lot of that information on a separate page where they're like look at your account settings um I mean yeah Google I'm just thinking of your average ecommerce oh yeah totally like you log in to Everlane there's not a button that's like download all of the data about what shirts you're targeting based on your interest tracking. Totally.

But now they have to do that in your. Yeah. Yeah. I just, I want to interrupt here for just a second and say that Russell's always been a mysterious person to me, but now that I know that he's into Everlane shirts and Thundercats, he's like an open book. I totally get Russell now. Nailed it.

So now you can target advertising. Yeah, exactly. They're going to scrape the transcript of this and say. Yeah. So that's one. What else they have to? So there's also the consent mechanism is a lot more serious. So they have to be much more explicit about what they're collecting, what they're using it for,

and they have to give you a chance to revoke the consent. So if you say, look, I don't want to, you know, I don't want my Android phone to track my location anymore. I revoke my consent to that. They need some plan about what to do, which is actually sort of a hard, and they can't penalize you for not doing that. which is sort of a hard question because a lot of these services are built on having that. So like if Uber doesn't know my location, how does it know where to send the car and how is it? Like, I mean, I can type it in, but are we sure that that's not it penalizing me for not sending my location? But also, how do you, like, they just don't have my location.

Like, how are they going to do the thing? So there's a lot of stuff like that. But, I mean, I think, and this is part of the punchline of the piece we had on the site this week was, I think the really weird thing is not just, the people collecting the data and sort of the services you know about, but all the other people that they end up sharing it with, which is a completely hidden part of the modern internet ecosystem, and it's like pretty gnarly under the hood. I mean, anyone who's sort of installed one of those cookie trackers and you see like 80 of them, if you go to kind of a sketchier site, sometimes you can see the number going up as it like reloads things. So it's like I'll

I'll put my computer on and I'll leave and it'll come back and it'll be like 200. Well, all of those sites now have to do the same thing where they say, okay, like, I'm, I need this data because I'm providing this service and that service is mandated under this contract with the provider. And then all of those contracts have to be rewritten. And they have to, they're really difficult issues. Like, okay, if you're sharing your data with someone and they're doing something with it and then they get breached, how much of it is on them and how much of it is on you?

And by the way, all the fines are going to be way higher. Yeah. These sound, by the way, like questions that we should be asking. They might be hard problems. Maybe we should have answered these questions. Like, maybe we should have answered these questions before we built all the stuff. So here we are. Let me try to map this onto Cambridge Analytica, which is in the news, right?

So Facebook has your data. Yeah. I think technically under the GDPR, they're known as a controller. Is that correct? There's all this terminology. Well, I am not a lawyer. Well, also the question of who's a controller. Google wants to be a co-controller with the ad,

which the ad tech people are really mad about. So the main one is, the main one is you're the control. You've got the data. Yeah, that's like Google, like I give my data to Gmail when I use Gmail. They're the controller of my data. That's the base of this pyramid.

Yeah. Well, it's more like the top of this. It's like the drummer in the band. Sure. Wow. And then the guitarist comes over and borrows his drumstick. This doesn't quite track. But Facebook is the main one.

You give them your data. Yeah. And then someone writes an app for Facebook. They collect a bunch of data off of Facebook users. Yeah. And then they mine the friend list for likes. So in the GDPR, you would have to be able to ask Facebook, hey, did that company take my data? And you'd have to ask that company, what data do you have on me?

Yeah. I mean, I suspect, and again, this is like a weird thing that Facebook is going to have. to deal with and who knows what solution they'll come up with but i suspect in that case you would really get more like i don't know this guy uh sort of anti liability stuff from facebook when you signed up to the app like they would flash you with some scary screen it's like hey we take no responsibility for anything this person does with the data you're sharing them this this and this they've agreed to use it for this purpose but also haven't agreed to do this this this and this, and like, if you want to revoke it, here's this special website for you to go to,

but now it's just between you and Cambridge Analytica? I mean, I don't know. The question of apps on platforms is, like, are maybe going to be unresolved throughout this whole thing. One of the things that Tim Cook talked about yesterday that Lauren wrote about in her piece that we actually talked about how much should we tease this out or not. We ended up, like, it's in there, but we didn't like try and explain it because we weren't fully sure what he was dog whistling was whenever Tim Cook guys, asked a question about regulation and privacy, he'd say, yeah, you know, I'm against regulation, but I think it's time. And then he at least twice went into this thing about how the thing that

truly scares him isn't a single company knowing something about you. It's a, it's a company having its information and then being able to connect it up with what another company knows, with what another company knows, and it's the connections between these different data sets that terrifies him. And this feels like it's vaguely related to this terror, because that is happening right now. Right? I mean, that's what Facebook revoked today. That's what Facebook turned off today. Yeah, but I'm wondering if it's related in some way to this question of like, who's the

controller, who actually ends up being responsible for it? Because it's not just which company has your data, because your data is actually lots of companies and it's the companies talking to each other that seems to be like the really difficult issue. Well, yeah. And so this idea that the profile of you becomes so incredibly detailed. It's aggregate, and then it's like they really know everything about you. Yeah, but I mean, I guess the interesting thing in the background of this to me is that like the friction that the GDPR is adding in this whole process is when companies partner with other companies, right?

Well, what if we just, what if everything, all the ads were just Facebook and Google? Like we could do that. It's kind of headed that way anyway. So problems. solved. You don't even need any contracts. It's all the same company. You shared it with Google. Google uses it. What's the big deal? And I think it also, I mean, if you're really worried about the mosaic, then there's no mosaic. It's just what Google has. Are you describing mosaic? The web browser that turned in Netscape. You mean the mosaic of data. Well, yeah. And in, this is a national security law thing where they'll be like, there's,

I can't explain what my probable cause was for searching this alleged terrorist's phone because it's really a mosaic unless you have all the data, then no individual, it's like a whole weird. Anyway, uh, all of this sounds like, there's a mosaic theory of data that they, anyway,

the point being, this is like, if you are the CEO of a large tech company, as Tim Cook happens to be, uh, this is in some ways like a nice answer for you to give, because the terrifying thing is all these scrappy little ad tech firms, who like really are,

in many cases, just criminals. A lot of their stuff doesn't work. It's really a complete mess. Like, I don't trust them. But also, and, like, there is, you can point at them and say, like, these are all people doing very scammy things. But if, okay, then we'll just let Google and Facebook do all the advertising on Apple products and, like, problem solved. Can I ask a point of clarification?

There's, because it sounds like this law makes it so they have to be very explicit when they want your data. You have to, like, give them explicit permission. But there's, especially for ads, there's a lot of data that's gathered based on my behavior. Like, I clicked here, I scroll down here, maybe I didn't scroll this far, you know? Yeah. There's a lot of knowledge that companies have on me that's just based on my behavior. It's not like I'm entering a form, like, what's your favorite color? Oh, yeah.

What's your favorite car brand? That'd be amazing if that's how advertising works. Well, no, I mean, you'll just get a pop-up that says while you're on this site, we're going to collect various. sort of ambient signals about your browsing behavior, you know, click to agree. And then that will be data that's held by whoever's running the site. Is that going to be. Stapped on top of the cookie disclaimer? This is exactly like the cookie disclaimer. And this is one of the other interesting things. So how often do you really see the cookie disclaimer? Because it's supposed to be,

it's another thing where it's really about EU citizens. Like U.S. people, they can just give us cookies. There's no law against it. We're completely out there. having random things installed in our computers. Right. The reason you see it is they're not sure if you're a U.S. citizen or an EU citizen, or they just don't really want to bother configuring their website in such a way that...

Now, they could be sure. Cookies. Well, right. But so if you go, if you're using a German VPN and you're off browsing the web, you'll see it a lot. And so there is, this is one of the other weird things where does this lead us to a place

where people are seeing meaningfully, people are like experiencing a meaningfully different internet, especially because data collection, you know, people don't just do this to be evil. Like they're sort of performing real services with this data. And so if there's some data that's much harder to get from the EU, then there are also going to be services that are maybe harder to get? And sort of are we seeing the unregulated and the regulated internet

start to split off in some more profound way? I think that's a good place to leave it. A terrifying vision of the future from Russell Brandon. Thank you, Russell. I am going to read one more ad, and then Tom Warren is going to join us, and we're talking about what happened at Microsoft. This episode of The Virgin Shave Club is brought to you by Dollar Shave Club,

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Paul every week you do a thing what's it called this week oh it's always called the same thing oh right

it's always called the same thing did you just call him Nikki yeah Nikki Nikki every week you do something It's called the little robot that could. It is about the most adorable.

It's a whole situation. So there's this robot that can move trailers up to like 9,000 pounds. But the robot looks like a tiny little, it's got like a couple of tank treads. The robot is smaller than the chassis of a push lawn more. But it can move 9,000 pounds of trailer? Yeah. And so here's the thing.

you're an old dad come on okay you're an old dad I'm not calling you an old dad I'm saying imagine you're an old dad you got your little remote control it's basically an RC car right yeah you're driving this little robot around

moving your glistening airstream trailer yeah you just everybody needs to watch this video what's it called what is this actually it's called trailer valet RVR okay RV robot.

Why is it cute? Because it's a tiny little thing that's moving a really big thing. And this, I don't know, do you, my dad owns a trailer. You know, he had to get a big truck to move it. I was always helping him park the trailer. Yeah. Like, you know. Now you get a little.

So watching this commercial, like I think about my father. I think about the bluegrass festival that they attend every year. And there's a whole group of retirees. All right. You're off the rails, Nikki. that ride with the airspace trailers and now robots involved

it's got a lot it's a lot of high points for me I'm there that was Paul segment thinking about the bluegrass festival the little robot that could all right Tom Warren is here

hello Tom how are you I'm good it's gonna have you back on the show yeah it's good to be on so Microsoft announced a huge reorg today it was covered

like the coverage is all over the place but we have one specific question for you okay Fire away. Which division does Skype fall under now? Well, this should be under the no division. We should be under the burn it.

Anything better than Janet's on the podcast. All right. Yes. I was going to say Microsoft reorgs every single time they redesign Skype. That's how you know. They're reorging. That's a good bellwether. Yeah.

All right. So Tom, tell us what is going on with Microsoft. Because this seems like a massive shift. Terry Meyer sending you ran Windows for 12. He's been at Microsoft for 20-something years, but ran Windows for the past few years is out. So what is going on? Yeah, so they're reorging, obviously. That's the big news.

Terry's off in a few months, I think. And they're basically splitting Windows, you could say two or even three ways. They're splitting the core part of Windows off to sort of the cloud and AI division. So that's like the core operating system, the very fundamentals of how they build Windows as an operating system. And then like the shell experiences. So the experiences that we care about, like the start menu and notification center and everything else that you sort of see in Windows on the desktop and stuff, that's going to be handled under a new division.

I would say new, but it's kind of like the same, except they just taken like the core engineering out of it. Yeah, exactly. The same without like the fundamentals. So here's like I've been trying to figure this out, Tom, And like my metaphor for this is there's Linux and then there's the Linux desktop, which like might be Ubuntu or Red Hat or some other like GUI on top of it. And so Microsoft is basically making a GUI team to make shells that can work on a tablet

or a laptop or whatever. And then there's like the core of Windows, which is, is, I don't even, is it still called Windows? Yeah, it's called, they call it like one core is like the overarching thing of it. internally. But I think the more, like, without going, getting into all that sort of like the nitty degree of windows is, it's more that they're sort of spreading windows out within the company rather than it being like, you know, a figurehead thing for the company. You can look at the organisation of it and pull that apart and see what they're doing and stuff, but I think ultimately it comes down to what Nadella's been trying to do since he obviously

took over from Bulma. He knows where the growth is. He knows where this company. He knows where this company's heading and that's you know that's the future where windows is no longer relevant and where it doesn't where people aren't using windows which i think is like is a shift but i think is that they're having a realization that windows is probably not going to matter in sort of 15 20 years for sure you think it's that extreme that they they really think that windows client consumer windows is going to go away so they need to focus solely on cloud and yeah i i think so I mean, it sounds extreme, but like when you look at what they've done, so when they first introduced Windows 10, I think Satya Nadella came on stage. It was that January event in like 2015, a few years ago.

He came on stage and he said that he wanted people to go from like choosing or like having to use Windows or choosing Windows to loving Windows. And I don't think they've necessarily achieved that goal in the last few years. I think Windows is more respected than it used to be. but I still don't think it's loved. I don't think it's like a necessary, like it's delightful to consumers or anything. It's a lot more polished than it's ever been. They've done a lot of good stuff,

but a lot of the sort of consumer-facing stuff that they've tried to get into, they've had to, like, pull back from or just never really quite, never really got a lot of traction. What does I say about who Microsoft sees as its biggest competition now? Obviously in the consumer market,

like we talk a lot about Apple versus Microsoft, but as they, I don't know, just sort of rest strategize or refocused around Azure and the cloud, does that mean that companies like Amazon and Google and other sort of enterprise or data storage companies are actually their biggest problem? Yeah, I think Amazon for sure is their biggest rival at the moment. And then shortly followed by Google, really. Just because Google's like across all of their different businesses rather than Amazon's kind

of more on this on the server, like on the cloud stuff, whereas Google really is attacking them on all fronts. So Google's undermining Windows with, you know, arguably better product in many respects, ChromeOS. For like consumers and students and stuff, it's just simple. Well, but also with Android, right? Like Android. And Android, yeah, on the phone side. More use than Windows now.

Yeah, yeah. But I think if you look back those three years without the competitive stuff, you look back those three years and what they've done over those three years, one of the bold goals was to make Windows be loved again. And it was also to get Windows 10 running on a billion devices. They step back from the billion devices thing, I don't know, about a year or a year or so ago. But like, if you think about their bold ambitions a few years ago, like, this is quite a step away from that now.

Splitting Windows up internally is like the first sort of signal to me, at least, that Nadella and Microsoft have really shifted towards this cloud and AI vision for the company. And that Windows is just like the old thing of Microsoft is not the future of Microsoft. People who need Windows, they're still going to get it. They're still going to be supported and all that sort of stuff. But I think they're going to try and shift more of that to cloud, more of that to subscription. It's funny because they also made Panis Penne, the chief product officer of all of the hardware products, which is quite a title. It seems like it was framed as like a step up.

And then they created a new experiences and devices division, right? So that's like sitting there too. And that was framed as like, we're going to focus on this. But you're saying all of the action for Microsoft is in this sort of enterprise business. And it's funny, I was reading Nadella's note. You should read it. It's like interesting. But it is the single most corporate thing I have ever read in my entire life.

It is opaque, corporate speak, like literally nothing I've read from a CEO in the past five years. So just to be clear, as far as I can tell, there's just two main divisions and almost everything falls under these. There's experiences and devices, and then there's cloud and AI. And about cloud and AI, Sautja writes, the purpose of this team is to drive platform coherence and compelling value across all layers of the tech stack, starting with the distributed computing fabric, cloud and edge, to AI infrastructure, run times, frameworks, tools, and higher level services around perception, knowledge, and cognition. I'd like to point out that this was sent to all full-time Microsoft retail store employees as well. It's like, how are you supposed to participate in this? That's like to me, you know, Nadella, I think he's doing obviously a great job running Microsoft. But he used to run Azure. It was very

clear when they selected him to the CEO that that experience would be what they would be leaning on. and that's why he's selected. I think he is when he wants to be an extraordinary plain spoken person. Like, I think he's a good CEO. He's obviously doing a good job running this company. But it's very clear that he was not interested in addressing

Microsoft customers with this note, right? Like, this is a very corporate document for a very corporate set of changes. And I map that to what you're saying, Tom, about Windows. And it's like, Microsoft is just kind of like, yeah, we're going to focus on this and we're going to put out, you know, when it's time for a new service to come out, Panos will be on stage and he's the person that you're

going to look at. Does that seem about right? Yeah, I guess so. Because they've put like the guy who's essentially replacing Terry. So here's another thing about this is that, so Terry was on the senior leadership team, so direct to sit down and talk to Nadella directly. So the guy that they're replacing him with his ex-office and he's not going to be on a senior leadership team. So that like shows that shows like the level of where Windows is at in the company, I think. Like, it's not, it's not the treasure anymore. That's, what was it Rajesh Shah? Yeah, Rajesh, yeah. And he's, he's, he's in charge of experiences and devices. That's surface, HoloLens, their first party apps, office, and Windows client. And Skype.

Skype is an experience. So that guy's not even, that guy's not even a top leader of the company. Yeah. What happens to Xbox and all of this? Yeah, so Xbox they're leaving alone. Just like everybody else. That's an experience and or a device. So the complicated bit of this is that Panos, you know where they say he's going to be, I've come in with his exact position is now the chief product. Chief product officer.

Yeah, that's the one. But I remember a few years ago he was made like, he's, stepped up into a bigger role that was leading like all the engineering and stuff on their premium hardware anyway. So that was like Surface, Xbox, Lumia, or whatever was left back then. The band, if you remember that, HoloLens, and just all that sort of stuff. So he's always kind of been doing this role. It's just got a different name to it now. So I don't really get like that. Do you think Microsoft wants a relationship with consumers? Is this, is Surface and Xbox and all that stuff important to that? Like, there are businesses that are growing,

are massive. They're growing pretty fast. And these other businesses are very small. And they're growing pretty slow. Like, do they want to be in the Surface game? Is that just it's nice? And, you know, people who get Windows and the Enterprise get surfaces? I think, I think Surface was a lot to do with this,

this trying to, you know, revive Windows, the windows that everyone loves sort of thing. And I think that's, like, helped for sure. The device stuff. I don't know, I don't know, like, it's a billion dollar business. for them. But it's not, even with the laptop when they announced that last year, everyone thought it was, you know, that was the thing that they needed to do. But it hasn't bumped the revenue. So it's not been like this wildly successful product. And I think Microsoft's approach to like Windows 10 of like the focusing on the creator stuff was kind of interesting. But then I don't know if they delivered it in a way that was meaningful to consumers, just to regular people. So yeah, I don't know. It's hard to say about the surface stuff. It's there as like a, this is how you should make a Windows laptop, you know, for the OEMs.

And I feel like that's kind of where it was always sort of positioned us. They've kind of like tried to make it into a bigger business, but it's kind of been held back by, you know, the sales aren't quite as strong as perhaps it should be. Yeah, it's just so funny. You know, we started this whole episode by talking about what Apple was doing with the iPad. And Lauren was talking about how so much of Apple's messaging around it is like, you can be a creator with this.

Microsoft tried to come. come for Apple, especially that period where the Mac Pro kind of fell. I mean, there still isn't a new Mac Pro. They've promised one, but there still isn't one. There's a Mack Pro. But Microsoft tried to come for that market, and you're saying it just kind of didn't come off.

Yeah, I mean, they did like 3D paint. They've done some good stuff, but it's for such niche audiences that it's like, it's not so broadly, I think the problem is that a lot of that creation and a lot of that creativity has just been bundled into

mobile apps now. It's just being made a lot easier for people to do the sort of stuff that was really difficult. Even like five years ago, like making videos and stuff, cute little videos you'd share on Facebook or whatever, that was a difficult thing. And it's just getting ever more, ever more simplified. And I think it comes down to also when you pick up a Windows machine, you're doing something very specific with it. Same with a Mac really these days as well. And it's like, I think, I always think over the last year, it's like, could I switch to Chrome or this? Could I switch, could I switch to an iPad and it's like what experiences I'm missing? And it's only, and those are getting gradually smaller and smaller.

And I can't think of like desktop apps that are like really key outside of businesses and the enterprise. And I think that's like the vast majority of Windows customers now is on that business side. Yeah. Just the kids. If Apple, for example, with the iPad Pro, if they put cursor support in it and they're going to do universal apps and stuff, you can see where it's heading. Yeah. Yeah. Dieter's whole thing.

This is Deeter's obsession is the future of these things. I got to say Paul has an iPad Pro here and the screen is really beautiful. I'm jealous of it every time I look at it. It's a nice screen. But you know what I go home to? A desktop PC that I built myself that I play video games on. So like, is

that just... Can't beat that, yeah. Is that just such a tiny market? Like, it's not like five people play video games. Like, almost everybody on Twitch is streaming from a PC. you know like they're playing it's a huge market of people

playing video games on the PC that Microsoft completely owns is that just too too small for them? I think that it's like that's still a big part of it. I think on the consumer side gaming is like one of the most the biggest part of

Windows usage on the consumer side but they've faltered on that a lot over the years as well like they've you have steam like you have a bunch of different clients for PC games and stuff. And Microsoft's not really unified friends system. It's like, it's a bit of a mess playing PC games, to be honest, if you want to connect to your friends. And they haven't really made that platform like, you know, really nurtured it or anything. So it's kind of like the games are just there because the dev tools are there and some of the users are there. It's like,

what happens when that hardware shifts? And we're starting to see that. So Tom, give me the one set and sentence summary. What should people expect from Microsoft? I think we're going to going to see obviously Windows updates and still a big focus on Windows over the next few years. But I think in the next 10 years, I'm not quite sure where the relevance of Microsoft's Windows, you know, operating system will be. Wow. Harsh. A harsh place to leave the Vercast.

Yeah, but it's the reality of the competitive environment. All right. It's true. Well, thank you so much, Tom, for explaining that to us because, quite frankly, I read that in a Della memo 5,000 times today. and I still, I got stopped at the fact that he capitalizes the word solution areas. Like, literally my brain refused to further engage with this. I am fairly certain that there are now five different divisions mostly dedicated to AI at Microsoft.

You know what I'll point out of this memo too? I'm just going to say it. There's a lot of names this memo. A lot of people in charge. There's 20 dudes, zero ladies. That's ridiculous. It's true. It's like wild. It's utterly ridiculous. I'm going to send a note to Frank Shaw at this moment Live on the Vergecast

You should And then I'll let you know if I get a response Before the end of this Well yeah, you have to get a response The end of this because I'm not going to let you publish that at Wired That's my intellectual property, Lauren Every you always said All right, that's it

We've gone a little bit too long Thank you so much Tom for joining us No worries Thank you to Russell for coming on Two dark segments at the end here No privacy and Windows is over But that's how it is And then Lauren's leaving us

And then Lauren's leaving us. I'm really going to see. This is awful. I don't, I can't. I have too many feelings so there's anything coherent on a podcast. Yeah. I'll do it. Lauren, it has been wonderful to work with you.

I don't know if everybody realized this. Lauren came to us as part of the recode acquisition. So Lauren and Walt came and joined the Verge. I think that's been like a really fun experience for all of us here. And it's been just really fun to have you on our staff. And now it's going to be amazingly fun to just troll you. and wired every day of my life for the rest of my life. That's going to be great.

But thank you so much. Lauren, I'm going to miss you too. Oh, thank you, Paul. But that's it, just the three of us. No one else. Just the three of you. No, I assume. I assume.

I owe a debt of gratitude to Dieter and Eli who brought me on board and gave me a lot of runway to do a lot of cool stuff here at the verge. And Paul, I owe you a debt of gratitude too just for being you, just for being Paul. You know what? I told Paul and I exchanged very nice messages last week. I'm not going to blow up his spot. But I said, Paul, I really appreciate the way you think. So stay true.

And you know what? Just do whatever hell you want. Don't listen to Deeter and Neilie. That's my best advice. That was Lauren's entire strategy. That's my best advice. Lauren's like, I have a show now. It's called Next Level.

I was like, great. Know thyself. You help me name that show. You're part of the process. That's true. But anyway, Lauren. It's been really fun. The Verge is an amazing, amazing publication.

I'll be listening to you guys. We'll be following you on the Twitter, and I will be generally cheering the success of the company even as I leave. It's true. And I'm sorry that in return, you'll get nothing, but no, it's not true. We have this huge class of expats, and I love watching everybody succeed. Do you know that Wired as a chef? In addition to, it's fine journalism.

It's definitely not a fucking pirate ship. That's all I got to say. Deli. Can we get a chef? We're out of here. That's it. That's the Verge Chass. We love you, Lauren.

Good luck on your travels. Love you guys. Bye, rock and roll. Paul. This episode of The Vergecast was brought to you by IBM. By the end of this podcast, nearly 10,000 new malware variants will have been launched, but now AI can help protect your data from threats wherever it lives with IBM security. Let's put Smart to work.

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