The Vergecast - Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888 processor for 2021 Android phones / Warner Bros. will release new 2021 movies simultaneously on HBO Max / FCC Chairman Ajit Pai will step down on January 20th

Episode Date: December 4, 2020

Verge reporter Julia Alexander joins Nilay and Dieter to discuss WarnerMedia's decision to release all of its new 2021 movies simultaneously on HBO Max. News editor Chaim Gartenberg explains Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 888 processor for upcoming Android phones in 2021. Stories from this week: Facebook will remove COVID-19 vaccine misinformation The people saving our lives should get vaccinated first, experts say Moderna to ask FDA for COVID-19 vaccine authorization Wonder Woman 1984 will be released on HBO Max the same day it’s in theaters for no extra cost  Warner Bros. will release all of its new 2021 movies simultaneously on HBO Max Discovery, home of Shark Week, HGTV, and Food Network, enters the streaming wars with Discovery Plus  FCC Chairman Ajit Pai will step down on January 20th Trump’s bias hawk FCC nominee is one step closer to confirmation Trump calls for last-minute 230 repeal as part of defense spending bill Comcast to impose home internet data cap of 1.2TB in more than a dozen US states next year Comcast to raise internet and TV prices nationwide next year Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 888 processor will power the Android flagships of 2021 Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 888 promises faster speeds, better cameras, and more powerful AI Samsung begins wider rollout of Android 11 and One UI 3.0 to latest phones Verizon’s Galaxy S20 models are the first to get Android 11 and One UI 3.0 Samsung rumored to discontinue Galaxy Note line, add stylus support to 2021 Galaxy S and Z Fold Leaked Galaxy Buds Pro image reveals new rounded design Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week on the Vergecast, Julia Alexander joins us to talk about HBO Max and Warner Brothers, releasing all of its 2021 movies simultaneously streaming and in theaters, a bunch of other streaming news. Haim Gartenberg joins us talk about Qualcomm's new chips. And of course, we talk a little bit about what's up at the FCC. That's coming up on the Vergecast. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together.

Not because they want to, but because building internal tools, means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog. That's where Retool comes in. Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need. Prompt something like, build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data and your cloud with Enterprise Security built in.

Go to Retool.com slash Vergecast. We all need to retool how we build software. What's up, y'all. I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star. Olympic gold medalist and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years, covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers,

and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Hello, and welcome to the Vergecast. It's a flagship podcast of extremely slow tech news weeks. That's what, see? Yeah. I'm lowering expectations.

That's my plan. I'm your friend, Eli. Dieter Bon is here. I'm the person that's lived across the hall from you for like four years, but you've never said hi, so now it's awkward. And so you just see each other in the hall and pretend like you know each other, but you don't. Julia Alexander is here. Oh, yeah, hi, yes. Haim Gartenberg is here.

Also high. Okay, so here's my story about the person in the hallway, Deeter. Are you ready? Okay. Yeah, yeah. So until recently, we lived in an apartment building in Williamsburg. This is a real thing. It's a real apartment building.

You can go look at it. And our next-door neighbor, I noticed when we first moved in, was a very tall and handsome Australian man. And he had like a big, beautiful family. And lots of tall, beautiful Australian people were always going in out of his apartment. And then eventually I realized, like, the New York Knicks are often in the hallway of this apartment building. And it turns out that he was international celebrity mega preacher Carl Lentz, who is now in the news. Like, the gossip about my old neighbor. Uh-huh.

I'm not going to go into why there's gossip, but he's like a celebrity who's having a celebrity crisis. And everyone just keeps texting it to me. And I'm like, no, he was just the guy in the hallway. Like he was just a person. Anyway, that's my story. Like I said, a slow-ish tech news week. We're cruising towards the holidays. I feel like everyone is just really ready for 2020 to be over.

With the exception of our nation's president, he's trying to prolong it as long as he can. Because it's over, right? You see what I'm saying? All right. Got to start where we always start, which is the pandemic. Still the biggest story in the world. This is the worst week of the pandemic. United States, 13 million cases, 264,000 deaths as of us recording this right now.

I know I've been joking for weeks about Trump saying thousands of Google engineers are working on a website. It is, I think, obvious to everyone that he's not going to do anything about the pandemic at this time, which is a tragedy. hopefully the incoming Biden administration picks up that work a lot faster. News on the vaccine front, Marybeth Griggs, our science editor and the science team have a newsletter called antivirus. We're very much tracking vaccine information. The Pfizer vaccine, MRRNA vaccine, approved in the UK, pressure on the FDA to approve it here. We'll see how it goes. Moderna, which is the other vaccine, asking FDA for emergency with authorization.

Marybeth is tracking that stuff. Subscribe to the newsletter if you want to keep up on the latest of that. In addition to, you know, the vaccine is very much a logistics problem. We've made them. We've tested them. We're going to roll them out. How we roll them out. They are complicated to distribute.

They need to be kept very cold. And who gets them first is a challenge. It's a logistics challenge. Nicole Wetzman wrote an article for us about how frontline healthcare workers should get vaccines first, according to experts, and how that conversation is going. So check that out. And then lastly, sort of the second order effects of the pandemic, we, often talk about Facebook moderation. There's going to be a lot of vaccine disinformation.

Facebook is already saying it's going to remove COVID-19 vaccine misinformation. So I think we're going to see another round of conversation just about how our social networks are reinforcing the truth and tamming down misinformation as the vaccine rolls out. And the information economy kind of goes sideways around it, which sadly I think we all expect. Okay. again, check out Anavirus. Thevergge.com slash antivirus. That's Marybeth's newsletter about vaccine treatment developments. It's great.

She's doing a great job. Okay. HBO Max. Huge news in the world of streaming today and then some other stuff happening today. But today, Warner Brothers announced that every movie it's releasing in 2021 will be day and date released on HBO Max and theaters in the United States. Yeah, for a period of one month. Walk me through this news exactly.

Because there are lots of caveats around it. Yeah, there's a whole lot happening. So basically what happened, Warner Brothers came out and said, we have the slate of movies, TBD. They could change, depending on the pandemic. And we plan to release them in the United States, both on HBO Max and in theaters the day they come out. They will be available on HBO Max for a period of one month,

and then they will go back into theaters. So you basically get a month to watch it, which they are also doing, I believe, with Wonder Woman, 1984. is the same kind of thing where they didn't tell us at the time. They just kind of told us it's not going to be on HBO Max after a month. And now, based on this news, it seems pretty likely that Wonder Woman in 1984 will also go back into theaters. So when it's on HBO Max, it's not in theaters. No, simultaneously both.

So the conversation about this that we, the reporting that really needs to happen is the deal that I imagine AMC Regal made with Warner Brothers, which is like, we're cool with you taking these big movies that would normally drive people to movie theaters and putting them on your service, we want some aspect of that, whatever you're doing over there, we want to figure out that business to make that more clear when Universal and AMC made a deal for a shorter theatrical window. AMC basically was like we're getting some form of that revenue back, even though it's not in our theaters. So these behind the door deals that are happening are going to come to light and we'll start

to understand a little bit more about how the process is going to work. But for now, what people need to know, like, if you're sitting there and you're like, I just want watch Wonder Woman, I want to watch June, how do I do it? You can either go to theaters in the United States the day it comes out if you want to and if they're open, please don't. If the cases are relaxing, but or you can sit at home, sign up for HBO Max, which they're currently offering a discounted deal on and watch it from the comfort of your own home. And then after the 30-day window, they'll still be in theaters. Yeah. And the internationally, it looks like it's only in theaters because obviously HBO Max is not available internationally.

And that is obviously also reflected of the fact that other countries have done a better job with managing the virus than we have. Right. I mean, Haim and I talk about this daily. I just DM daily about Tenet for Nolan. And the idea that what led to this, in my opinion, was two things happened. One, Tenet worked out pretty well internationally for Warner Brothers in a way that it did not domestically.

part of that is because up until the recent resurgence in cases, other countries were better at handling it. They're still better at handling it than our country. And so they realize we can release things internationally and people will go to theaters and it's a little bit easier to do it there. And domestically, where their number one concern is the growth of HBO Mags, which is increasingly difficult with a high price point and not that much new content outside of whatever HBO kind of has ready to go. This is a good way of bringing people into the service and hopefully keeping them. And then the second thing that led to it, in my opinion, was Mulan on Disney Plus. They kind of, them and Universal Patrol kind of really kick started, like, we can just do this. The theaters will work with us on it regardless, and we need to start releasing these movies and making money again.

So Shelly Taylor, who's the CEO of Alamo Draft House, the smaller movie theater chain, was just on Decoder this week. And one of the things she said was, it can't just be one movie at a time. The studios have to get their act together and put out a slate of movies such that people want to go to theaters and there's a bunch of stuff to watch. How do you think that affects this move affects the idea that the studios will come together and actually come back to slates in managing their weekends against each other? My favorite thing to do is look at data charts genuinely. I just sit at home and I look at charts that people send me. And a thing that is really hard to picture but is true is like, the top, you know, 10, 15 movies every year, and not even the top 10 movies make up 50 to 60% of the U.S.

box office. So that means, like, if Disney comes out and they're like, we have an Avengers, no one releases it. They're just like, cool. Like, you guys do you, and that's what people are going to go watch. On average in 2019, people saw less than four movies in the theater, and you can probably guess which ones they were. It would have been Avengers. It would have been Joker.

So there's a certain type of movie that we know does really well in theaters. And those movies that will continuously, that's where Universal is not ever going to pull Fast and Furious Nine, Marvel is never going to pull entirely an Avengers movie, Warner Brothers is never going to pull a Superman movie. But for the time being, there's a perfect opportunity for them under the, I use the word geese, but under this moment of what's happening in the world to kind of test this theory that they expected to play out in five to 10 years in the next 12 months, which is this beautiful moment of acceleration. And it's, will people stay at home and spend money and can we bring in revenue additionally this one? Can we use all the

pipes available to us? And will the theaters work with those on it? And now we're going to see that start to play out. They're going to simultaneously release for years to come, their biggest movies in theaters and on HBO Max. And it's just going to get to a point of which one you prefer. But what I think we need to have this conversation is that streaming is built on this idea that you have to have a consistent outpouring of big things to bring people in order for them to keep subscribing. And a easy way to do that is moving a bunch of your theatrical titles to your streaming service either as simultaneous releases or as exclusives. And I think we're going to hear, this is the beginning of it. We will start, we will hear way more about this exact line of thinking

next Thursday when Disney has its big streaming investor day. And it's kind of like we're going to probably do the same thing. So can we go back to this this 30 day window? It's like a reverse window to So it's hitting simultaneously theaters and the streaming service, and then it'll leave the streaming service but stay in theaters. And the way I normally think of a movie window is it hits theaters for a while, and then it goes away, and then you wait a while, and then it shows up on streaming or for rental. So why would the theaters want it after 30 days? It seems like the people that are hyped for it that really want to go see it in a theater

are going to try and do it in the first 30 days, is the thinking that there's just not going going to be that many movies, so we might as well have them after 30 days. just so we can have something because eventually people will come back and they'll want to see the thing in a theater. So they might as well let it be exclusive to us. Is there a second window where it comes back to the streaming service after that? I'm just trying to figure out what does AMC get out of having Wonder Woman 30 days after we've all watched it at home on HBO Max? Right. Well, AMC, which just sold like 20 million more of its stocks, is looking to survive.

And the thing about this deal specifically that like we really need to hammer home is that it's a simultaneous. is that it's a simultaneous release. So if you are in a place, I can't think getting off top of my head, but in the United States where a theater is open, and you want to go to a theater to watch Dune or Mortal Kombat or whatever's coming out, you can go do that. And AMC is glad to have you. At the same time, the story that I think is going to come out is they are getting some

form of a deal out of this. I don't know what it is. It could be that Warner Brothers comes in and they accept 50% revenue as opposed to 65%. revenue on whatever it is, and AMC can make it back that way. But I remember AMC's CEO, Adam Aaron, who has the greatest earnings calls every three months because he'll just go in, like, quote Winston Churchill. And he's like, it's a battle. We have to, we have to win. If we're going into it. He was basically like, we want to work with the studios. We get it. Like, we understand you guys need to get stuff out. We want to be alive in six months so we can

figure that out. I'm sure that they have a deal. It would be much different if Warner Bros. came on and said all of our movies in 2021 are going to be exclusively on HBO Max and AMC's not going to get anything. There would have been a roar. But the fact that AMC hasn't really come out and been like, this is terrible. The fact that they kind of stressed in their blog post, you know, from Jason Killer, who's a CEO of WarnerMedia and Sarnoff, who's the head of Warner brothers, were like, we're working with the theaters. There's deals in place for sure that makes sense for both of those parties. I fully believe that there are definitely deals because the last, what was the movie where studios are like, we might,

put it on the streaming service and all the theaters are like, how dare you? Troll's World Tour. Trolls World Tour. Completely blew up the world. And it's like, and now it's fine. I still don't get the 30-day window. I still don't get- Wait, Dieter, I don't think it's fine.

I think the virus has gotten worse. I think that, no. What I would think of is the Troll's World Tour moment, which historians will long note, is they were going to pull it and the argument was just delay it. because things will go back to normal and you won't destroy our businesses by flipping the switch and going to streaming. And that just didn't happen. I think Tenet is the example of Warner Brothers and Christopher Nolan really wanted that movie out. There was a dip. They said, here's our shot. Christopher Nolan was like, I shot it in IMAX. That's the thing I do. I'm Christopher Nolan.

I do IMAX. You got to see it on the screen. You put it out and no one in the United States went. And I think that proved to everyone we got to move. I think that and now it's worse. I think if you're Warner Brothers and you're saying, am I going to bet on vaccines? Am I going to bet on treatments? Am I going to bet right today as we sit here, it's worse than ever. And every day is worse. Well, there's the other story or aspect to this, which I know, Neil I will appreciate because it's AT&T focused, is like, this is a company with $160 billion of debt that are trying to convince shaky shareholders that spending $175 billion on two major entertainment or media properties, one of which is going to be complete. completely derailed by the end of 2021, 2021, which is pay TV, at a time when everything about

their business screams flee, they're now trying to prove that, no, Warner Media is a thing that's going to happen. We're going to make sure this works. And so what they're going to try to do extremely hard is accelerate that growth of HBO max. They're going to, to a point where it's like, no, see, it's working out. We figured it out. They have not.

They are still figuring that aspect. But more than any other company, I think AT&T is like. we need to make sure that we have to prove that this bet works, like that this is the thing that we were right from the very beginning. And John Stanky, who's the CEO of AT&T, has been hinting about this for months. He, in the last earnings call, I think his quote was like, we're not optimistic about theaters. We think it's really shaky still, and we are going to evaluate the holiday season, the closer that we get to it.

And as soon as we know, you'll know. And it's clearly that they knew that with rising cases, they were not going to, they had a better chance of forming a way to increase subscribers and generate recurring revenue, which is the fun word in Silicon Valley and entertainment these days, and then betting on big theatrical things that would bring people to theaters. So I want to ask you about that because you mentioned John Stanky, you mentioned Jason Kilar. These are the new guys, right? They brought in Kilar and his job, he was the ex-head of Hulu, his job as a head of Warner Media is to basically blow it up, right? he, I think his, the phrase he used was, we were a wholesaler in that they sold, they made content,

and they sold it to TV networks and theater chains, and they got them running that way, and now they're a retailer, they're selling it direct to consumers. And he's shifting the whole company around that. So if you're betting on HBO Max, you've got the slate of movies that is in whatever state of completion. Yeah, this is your time to say everyone should sign up for HBO Max. And hopefully you don't quit because next month we have another good movie you're going to watch. Yeah, I have three kind of predictions for AT&T Warner Media in the next kind of year, two or three years. One, they divest of half of Warner Media easily. I think they just, it doesn't make a lot of sense for them to be keeping on to as many

things as it holding on to. We're already seeing it. They're reportedly selling Crunchyroll for, I think, $2 billion is the report number $1 billion. Like, they're finding ways to get rid of stuff that doesn't bring them anything in. They will start releasing binge mode or binge model stuff for HBO shows, which will drive people insane, but it will drive people to HBO Max and get them off linear when they know pay TV is just going away.

Smart move. They're already kind of doing it. And it will just increase. And three, yeah, they will move a number of their kind of big titles to HBO Max and have the simultaneous thing because they need to keep that subscription thing going. I mean, the irony, right, is like everyone knows this. It's like it's almost, you know, boring. It's like new titles are lead to addition, content, comfort content.

libraries is what keeps retention. So they have the library. They have the best library out of any streaming service. It's phenomenal. They don't have the new titles. They have the higher price point. So the way to get out of that is to do what I think Disney's going to do too at Disney Plus is like every month you have a bigish movie that you're going to bring to the streaming service and you're going to find ways to keep people being okay with that $15 a month

spending, especially when Netflix inevitably hits $15 and people realize their content is fine, but it's not great. And that will be a fun moment to really see play out. But I think there'll be some big Warner Media changes with content and ownership. I think because they just have to, that debt load is just insane. All right. Well, Julia, you've had all the keywords. So it's time for the Julia block of disclosures.

Right. Comcast owns Universal. Comcast NBC Universal Division is a minority investor in Vox Media, our parent company. Two, we are producing a Netflix show. You mentioned Netflix. three. I don't think there's, AT&T hates me. I don't think there's a third one. Is there more? There's usually more. Well, we don't have to, we don't have to mention Quibi anymore, yeah, because they're now officially shut down. Rest in peace. So that there's, the block is a little smaller. So one thing I want to

just call out, to me, this was the biggest news of all. Wonder Woman 1984 is coming out on Christmas Day and Day, Day and Day with Theaters. And the day that was announced, I was actually disappointed. It's very excited for the movie. I'm very excited to know. everything about that Blue Monday remix in the trailer for Wonder Woman 1984. If anyone has a deep dive and where that came from, please let me know. We'll pay a premium to publish it. Just give me a call. But right now, HPMX is only in 1080P and doesn't support very many surround formats.

And then Patty Jenkins, the director of Wonder Woman 1984, tweeted, it will be the first movie in 4KHTR, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos. Have they said anything about these? Which is great. I'm very proud of her. I'm sure that she was like, what the hell? Like, you're making me put this on people's 32-inch TVs. Like, I want the good stuff, too.

So I'm glad they did it. It's been a long time coming. It's been, to me, the most irritating thing about HBO Max. Besides, well, they just readed the interface a little bit. So it's a little bit better now. But they were behind technically. Have they said anything about these new movies next year? I would expect they all come out in the highest quality possible.

This is going to be the biggest debate between you and I for the rest of times. Do you think HBO Max is not great? And it's like my number one streaming. It's like, anyways, yeah, they'll all be in 4K. HBO Max right now. I'll tell you, we watch it. We're watching the undoing. You know, and we went watching the flight attendant.

Good, good shows. You're correct. Their content is good. You start the show and it puts up the skip intro button and the button doesn't work. Yeah. Yeah. The glitchy stuff they have to. I know.

It's like, technically it's broken. They lie to you. I've watched the intro to the flight attendant five times. We have a great intro, though. We have, I think, I don't know. no one that's coming out, but I have kind of end of year rankings of the streaming services. And literally the con, every single con pile, it's like, the UI design could be better in our, like, great games editor Andrew Webster.

It's like, we just call it Julia hates you all. But, yeah, so to your point, everything will be in 4K, HDR. And to your point about kind of the tech side of things, the biggest, the biggest thing that's going to come out of this in the next week would be my bet, maybe two weeks, is. is that HBO Max will be on Roku. Like, Roku has had the upper hand for so long where they've been like, oh, we don't need it. No one's signing up for it.

I had a source at Roku once tell me that Disney gets the deals Disney gets because they're Disney. And it's very hard to be Disney if you're not. So Roku's had the upper hand. It is now extremely hard for them to say, no, we don't want HBO Max when every single big movie of 2021 from that studio is going to be on HBO Max. So this is them betting on that as well. Well, it's them saying us being on Roku is just as important as us being in theaters. Like, that's the decision they're making with this move.

Yeah, and that certainly is whenever we've had the story is the feedback we've gotten from people is it doesn't matter because it's on a Roku. And so obviously the leverage has changed and hopefully by Christmas Day, they've solved this problem because they're going to want Wonder Woman to hit everybody. Yeah, I got a Google TV, the new one, I think, the new Google TV. It's great. Got a kid it was pink. But it works. Everything's on it. It's beautiful.

That's my type contribution to this. Well, so I was going to, Haim, you and I have been DMing. You just, you just reeded your living room. I just readed my whole living room. And so what, what did you get? So I have the Vizio OLED and a Sonos arc, which are quite lovely. They go together really nicely. Sonos hasn't gotten here yet, but I'm confident it will work well because EARC is nice.

How many, how many EAR ports have you got there? I have just the one, but I only need one. You only need one? What about your H.DMI 2.1 port? Is it the same thing as the EARC? No, separate EARC, two HDMI 2.1, and one regular. So I have just enough for Sonos, two next-gen consoles, and then some sort of streaming box, which I haven't decided on yet. I will tell you this. We said we were going to do an HTML episode after the election is a joke. And Andrew Marino, our producer, has been putting together what he is referring to as the H.DMI Holiday Spectacular. I'm so excited. We'll see.

We're looking for someone from the H.DMI Foundation and talk to us. If you know that person, who I imagine is just fascinating, if we send them our way. But hi. So the reason I'm asking you is big upgrading your living room, right? High quality picture, high quality sound. When these movies hit theaters, are you going to say, yeah, my living room is better? Or are you going to say, I really want that theater experience? I'm staying in my living room because I'm not risking.

Look, I love Wonder Woman. I love, you know, Dune. I'm really excited for The Matrix 4. You can ask my fiance, I have been bothering her within the Heights trailers for months, but I am not risking my life to go and see any of these. I don't love any of these movies to the point where, like, it is worth risking the life and my life and life of what once. Also, it's a pretty good TV.

Yeah. And it's, I live in New York City. For one $1.15 movie ticket, I can pay for a month of HBO. though, everyone in my house and all of my friends can come over and we can, well, not yet, but one day, hopefully, everyone can come over and watch it. Like, that's a pretty good experience. The popcorn's cheaper. It's like, yeah, I'm not going to get like a theater full of people like bursting into

applause during like an Avengers thing when the cool thing happens. But like for the money for like 99% of movies. Like, I'm really confident that that TV is going to do the job. And like, the big question for me is like, How does Wonder Brothers put this genie back into the bottle? Like, once you get used to spending $15 a month and getting all these movies and you get to watch it from your couch and you're not spending, you know, $100 to take everyone out to go and see, you know, Wonder Woman in theater this holiday, it's like, how do you get that back? I don't know if Warner Brothers wants a genie back in the bottle. I don't think they do either.

And also, Hym, I will get on Zoom with you and yell during exciting scenes if you like because I'm also trying to rock wood of favor. And I've run out of favor with like our verge colleagues, Bijon and Meg. We should start a service where we watch the movies. It's Julia Plus. That's what we're going to call it. It's $15 a month. And Julia just yells at you on Zoom. No, we'll do a riff track.

We'll do a podcast for every movie where all it is is complete silence except during the good parts when we cheer. And then you can play the podcast while you watch the movie. And it'll be perfect. I'm sold. Verbs colleague Megan Frochich will no longer watch Marvel movies with me because she's like you quote them and you yell and then you cry. I got to say I'm fully with Megan on this one. It seems like the correct correct evaluation. Julia, so Heim brings up an interesting point.

So before you would go to a theater when the movie came out, all of you would pay $15 and then you would buy your own popcorn and soda. The movie would leave the theater. It would get syndicated. The studio would sell it to like. four different TV channels. They would sell it to HBO. Then they would put it on iTunes and you would buy it. Then they would put it on street.

Netflix would maybe buy it. Then they would finally at the end of its road sell it to TNT for pennies. And P&T and TNT would run ads again. And there was just a million opportunities to generate money from these movies as a movie, not as merchandising or theme parks or anything. You put it on a streaming service. You pay 15 bucks a month. It's just there.

And those other, all those other little. bites that the Apple seem to go away. How do these economics even work out? Yeah, I mean, that's the question. There's like the two full question that I haven't seen anyone really answer. And it's a question, it's like arguably one of the most important questions, which the two part of that is piracy, right? One, piracy is going to make a comeback because people can't afford to be paying for the stuff. And two, not piracy related, but password sharing related is like, I have, you know, four or five people on my HBO Max. It's like families and friends. One person, paying $15.

And it's an issue. It's an issue that I would imagine, you know, in my small non-exec brains, like, you could be making a lot more money off this if you stop password sharing. But they've, you know, they kind of seem to take their note from Netflix where Reed Hastings and Ted Seranos have been like, people are watching. It helps with word and mouth. Like, we're doing okay. But not everyone is Netflix.

Very few people are Netflix. Actually, no one is Netflix. And so that's an issue that they're going to run into. But the thing is. about what you're talking about is something Haim and I also talk about quite often, which is, for example, you cannot stream Harry Potter anywhere right now, which is an insane thing, because when two streaming services launched this year, they've prided themselves on carrying Harry Potter.

And now they're nowhere. To watch Harry Potter, you have to have NBC, but like TV. It's not on Peacock. It's not on HBO Max. And that's because of windowing. So they're still making those deals. Warner Media is still licensing out its stuff and then just bringing it back and hoping people will sign up for it again

when Harry Potter's back on its service. And on the other end of it, you have what Viacom CBS does, which is if you open up Netflix, oh, I meant to tweet this. If you open up Netflix, it is the top two rows of the most popular content are Viacom CBS shows. They're MTV shows, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central,

BET. It's like the most popular shows on Netflix. And Viacom knows that so they can charge quite a bit if they wanted to, be like, you want to carry our stuff? Cool, it's non-exclusive deal. So we're still going to have it on CBSL access, which is about become Paramount Plus. But we're going to give this to you,

and we're going to make a bunch of money that way. So the thing that they're going to do is just start selling to other streamers. You know, Disney needs stuff for Hulu. Netflix needs a ton of stuff. HBO Max, WarnerMedia is also purchasing things from Viacom. So they're all still licensing their content. It's just going to different streamers at different times. So this is going to be like a giant, like,

media streaming ecosystem or a boros where they're just selling each other the same movies over and over and over again and that's how they make money. So I think it already was but now it's harder to watch TV. That's what I'm getting out of this, right? Like it already was that thing. The thing, the most interesting thing to me,

I had an exact telling me this one. So they were like, windowing is suddenly something that if I go up for dinner, people ask me about. And there used to be a thing where nobody else had of the entertainment and media industry cared about windowing. It was like, okay, I watched this movie and then it's on DVD and then it ends up on HBO and like that I am aware of it because I can see it. But you didn't really notice if it left

HBO. You were kind of like, oh, it's gone now I guess I'll buy a DVD. Now because everyone is so, there's a list that go out every single month from a dozen publications that are like, here's what's coming to HBO Max, here's with Netflix, here's what's leaving. People are so much more invested in what they're paying every single month for and they want to know exactly what's on it. And I think to an extent, well, that was, well, that was applicable with TV, there were so many channels in the cable bundle that you were just like, I'll find something to watch, which is what Netflix does really well. Like there's like, there's always something on Netflix. You can just find it. But it's becoming much harder for them to just silently get rid of Harry Potter or whatever,

or the Batman movies, because people are like, hey, I signed up for this thing because you promoted that you have this. Now you no longer have it. And I want to know what's going on. And so it's very fun to hear like my non-media friends talk about windowing because it's like, This is a boring thing. Like, it's a very licensing deal. Well, this is also, like, when I say it's getting harder to watch TV, that to me is the evidence that it's getting harder, right? Because to figure out how to watch something, you have to figure out where it is.

And then if you have even the slightest bit of curiosity of why things appear and disappear and go away, you will discover that windowing exists. And it turns out most people have a lot of curiosity about why Harry Potter is no longer available, right? Like, people want to know why the things they were watching suddenly disappeared. And so I just look at this and I look at the fact that I've YouTube TV and it just got more expensive. And then they're in a fight with Sinclair so the tennis channel went away. And like, I'm just getting all these carriage dispute like emails. We talked about the fight between HBO Max and Roku. It feels like all we've done is move the entire mess of old TV onto newer devices with

slightly different business models. For a minute, one glorious minute, it seemed really easy to watch a bunch of stuff because it was all on Netflix. And now it is radically harder. Yeah. I mean, like my most anticipated email every week is Nielsen sends out their top 10 ratings for the streaming. For that they have every streamer in the U.S. and they break it down by minutes. And everyone was really excited when Disney Plus made it on finally with the Mandalorian. But it's usually just Netflix. And there was a period of time where you just opened Netflix and it had everything. And what it's kind of proven is that in that time, Friends has never appeared on that list, even though it's on HBO Max, and that was like, well, we have Friends. It's the most

popular show on Netflix. Therefore, it will do well here. And it's like, we're going to run into the exact same scenario when the office leaves Netflix the end of the month, and it's finally on Peacock. And it's like, no one, I shouldn't say no one. I would imagine very few people are rushing to sign up for Peacock or figuring out what Peacock is to watch the office. They'll either buy the DVD said or on iTunes, they'll download it or they will pirate it because why were they going to sign up for this other thing that they don't want that maybe isn't on the, the aggregator that they're using, like a Roku or an Amazon. It becomes so much more complicated that you end up just saying, like, I'll just find something similar on Netflix. And this is the argument

against a new streaming service that was announced called Discovery Plus, where Discovery, which is a huge, huge cable kind of collection of networks, it really is. It's very popular. They were like, we're going to launch a streaming service because we are very popular. And the biggest argument against it is like, but I can find a version of 98-date fiancé on Netflix. Like there is a version of it that someone is making. And so eventually you just get to the point where it's like, does your brand really matter enough to get people to sign up or will you just find filler content? So the thing here that's interesting is the result of everybody launching their own streaming service means that power is going to start going back to the aggregators. Google TV and Apple TV and Roku, everybody is going to eventually feel like they need to be

participate in search. That used to be thinking we're not going to be in your search, but now everyone's in the search. And now it's going to be, well, are you going to participate in their home screen? And increasingly, the companies that make the smart TVs are going to have the power to pick winners and losers on these streaming services. If Google TV and Discovery get in a fight, I'm never going to see, you know, Out and Brown on Food Network, something, something on the home screen there. They're just going to show me some other cooking show.

Like, yeah, fine, there it is. Or I'll just watch it on YouTube or whatever. Yeah, when they announced Discovery Plus, they were like, the press release was like, we're on connected TVs and it very specifically did not mention names. And then finally on an investor call after they were like, we're in conversations with Roku and Peacock, which is what Warner Media said. It was what NBC Universal said. And it was just like they have the power.

They're like, we are in, you know, 70 million homes or whatever. Like, we are the ones that are going to control what you're doing. And there's only two streamers that Roku and Amazon really. are like we need, and Apple and all them, are like, we really need you, and it's Netflix, because Netflix is the equivalent of TV guide at this point. You just have it. It works.

You like it. And Disney. And I think where you're going to start seeing with Disney next year, when they have a new Star Wars and Marvel thing every week, and it's the thing that everyone is talking about. It's like, well, that's what you need to generate. Everyone has their big franchises, but you got to find a way to get to a point where it's like,

if I'm Roku and I'm, or Amazon, I need to have you on because if I don't, people will go to Google or Apple and buy. those TV devices so that they can watch Hawkeye or whatever is coming out. You know, I just, we spend so much time talking about app stores and computers and who's in control. And then you just like look at the TV industry. And it's like, who are the, this is the most gatekeeper ecosystem that has ever existed. Deeter always talks about like the backroom deals keeping you away from your computer or forcing you and like everything in

Hollywood is a backroom deal. Because any. Anyone just made like an open TV device. Plex? That you can ship an app to and it Plex? No, you can't like run an app on Plex. Okay. Like the NVIDIA shield is still an Android TV or a Google whatever platform. Yeah, yeah.

The NVIDIA shield is still like an Android TV device with the Google App Store. And like Peacock is not going to let people side load weird code onto it. Right. Like even the most open devices that we can think of are still fully ensconced in. ecosystems that are totally controlled by executives making deals, not consumers running code. And I wonder if this is going to break in any way.

What needs to happen is all that gatekeep stuff needs to be boxed in and kept in one space. So you have an open platform, and then you have like a card, like a cable card that you plug in, and that's where all the lockdown stuff goes. And then you're free to do whatever you want

on your actual box. That's how I think this could work. The saddest situation. But like, even this discovery thing, I think Peter Kafka had, he had a tweet about it that just, you know, like this is the week that sales horse bought slack, right? And he was like, Netflix used to be Discovery's biggest customer. All those shows were the biggest hits on Netflix. Netflix realized they could just make their own shark documentaries. And now Discovery is like out in the cold with its own also ran streaming service. Like that is a remark. Like in a computer, we would say this third party accessory for your Mac was really good. And Apple just built it in the OS and like that company is dead now. I mean, like, related to my, uh, argue, uh, distaste with every single UI, every single streaming service ever, uh, the thing that a lot of these entertainment companies do because they're entertainment companies is they go, well, Netflix clearly liked

our content. People like our content. They will therefore sign up to watch our content. And I think these companies are deeply, and I speak about myself here as a consumer, deeply downplaying how lazy I am. Like, I, like, it is like, I don't want to sign up for that. I'm so lazy that the Google TV came with apps installed, and I was like, I don't know if I want to put my password in and go through all that.

Yes, I do that all the time. I was like, I don't know. It's fine. I have Hulu. It's good. But it's that thing where discovery, after Discovery kind of took a bunch of their shows off Netflix. Yeah, people were still seeking it out. And there was Netflix has never made anything that got to that level of like food network or

HGTV. And they do have their stars. But it's funny because what Discovery was promoting its service songs, like we have these stars, people will come watch these stars. And it's like, Twitter. switching YouTube went through that. Same issue. They were like, we'll go watch this person.

It's like, no, if they're on YouTube and someone leaves, they'll just find someone else sometimes. Like, they're just like, I'm here. This is where I want to be. It's where I know. I'm not going to go anywhere else to try to find something when there's so much more content that I can just dive into. And there are rare exceptions.

I really rare exceptions. Disney is, again, probably the biggest. Because it's like you can't find a Star Wars thing somewhere else. It's only on Disney. But Discovery is like, yeah, your big things, your 90-day fiance and Jada goes to like Italy or whatever. It's like, yeah, I can find that on Netflix and they're doing it at a speed that is like astronomically faster than anyone else.

All right. Well, I'm very excited for Wonder Woman on Christmas Day to watch in my house. You got to watch soul in your house. It's the thing we've always wanted, wanted to have happen. It's happening. What is soul? Soul is the new Pixar movie. It comes out on Christmas Day.

You have a child. You have to watch Soul. I don't, that baby does not. need any more characters to latch on to. We got the Paw Patrol. We're good. Is Sol going to be appropriate for a small child? Isn't the setup that like the guy dies? Like bang? It's a Pixar movie. It's going to be cute. It's going to make you sad. It's going to have like adorable brightly colored characters. Also I'm a little worried maxis sociopath. Like she loves the Lion King, but every time Mufasa dies, she throws her stuff lying over the couch and starts like cracking up.

I mean, Scar throwing Mufus off and going along with the king is I cheer every time. We have to take a break. We're going to take a break. That's what's happening. Here are some ads. Support for this show comes from Shopify. Starting something new isn't just hard. It can be really scary, too.

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In a world of generic AI, you don't have to sound like everyone else. With Gramerly, you never will. Download Grammarly for free at Grammarly.com. That's Grammarly.com. All right, we're back. Actually, this all ties together. One of the things that is really interesting about HBO Max is that it's part of AT&T, Julie and I interviewed Tony Gonsalves, who is an executive as part of the HBO Max launch,

and he told us that HBO Max is exempt from AT&T's data caps, which is a big deal, right? I mean, that is just part of the net neutrality conversation writ large. But if you have an AT&T phone and you go to stream Wonder Woman or you go to stream any of these other movies that are coming out on HBO Max, it will not hit your data cap. If you have Verizon phone, you open HBO Max, try to see one of these movies. it obviously will hit your data cap. Now, there's an out, which is that, you know, Netflix can go pay AT&T for sponsored data and it won't hit your data cap. I suspect Netflix will not do that.

And also, HVMX is owned by AT&T, so they're just paying themselves, which is my favorite kind of accounting. But it's a big deal, right? I mean, here's the moment where the pipes and the content are coming together. AT&T is a service provider. It's cutting its content service a favorable deal. The simplest way to express it is HVOMX does not hit your data cap. Netflix does.

So there's a cost difference now for AT&T customers in streaming each service. That is all in the context of net neutrality. And what we now know is that FCC chairman Ajit Pai is stepping down on January 20th, which is inauguration day. We expect Biden will propose a new person of the FCC. But the moves that are happening right now are that Trump is proposing a replacement for Pye. His name is Nathan Symington. he is the person who wrote the petition to overturn 2.30 at Trump's behest. So Pi, who was, for all of his many faults, was very focused on internet access, right? That's what our FCC under the

Trump administration has mostly done is deregulate ISPs because the thinking is with fewer regulations they will build more and better networks. I obviously have my disagreements with that, but the focus on how should we build networks and how do we incentivize the construction of networks. That's where the FCC has been. Symington comes in as Pye's replacement. The focus of the FCC, and McKenna Kelly, our great policy reporter, wrote a profile of Brennan Carr, the other Republican FCC commissioner. Their focus is on regulating social media and speech on social media.

So you've got Carr, who's already talking about it a lot. You should read McKenna's profile of him. It is very indicative of a lot of the thinking around a lot of the conservative thinking about how to regulate the internet. And then Symington, who literally wrote the petition to say the FCC should regulate Twitter and Facebook, it seems like he's going to get confirmed as PY's replacement. So that's a huge shift. That also means right now, at the end of the Trump administration, you'll end up with two Democrats and two Republicans, and the potential of a Republican Senate not confirming Biden's nomination as the chairman. So you'd have a deadlocked FCC that can't do

anything. I'm just putting this out there. I don't think there's like not any more analysis. It's just the current state of play. But as we think about next year, AT&T saying to its customers, you should stream our service, which has all of these movies, and it won't hit your data cap versus Netflix. That's going to be a real conversation. That neutrality has always been a slow boil, and it's just, it's going to be at a simmer next year. Like the temperature turned up one more tick. Well, and it's also like, the thing you mentioned about how we've been focusing on. on net neutrality and AT&T and who owns the pipes and who's paying who to get access to the pipes

and zero rating data and all of that. It's very, very focused on the networks, but it's moving to a different burner now. Now it's gonna be focused on social media networks and they'll be more focused on content instead of pipes, which normally the way we've been thinking about the SEC, we haven't been thinking about it in that way, but they have fine TV networks for the stuff

that they find lewd or vulgar. They can jump in in different places where we don't traditionally think of the SEC as jumping in. And so if there's a bigger push to like shift its focus over there, that'll be weird and interesting to watch. That's one way to put it. But there's also, like, we shouldn't forget

that they still have the remit over all the stuff that they just deregulated. And like, that doesn't mean AT&T is going to like, they got permission to do some shenanigans. They've done some. They're probably going to do some more. Yeah, I think there's a real question about the future of what the FCC focuses on. If they're deadlocked, if, you know, if Simington gets confirmed, he's going to be the next

character that we'd think about at the FCC. What kind of mug does he use? I believe the FCC is back to regular size mugs across the board. But the question of whether they spend all over time focused on Twitter and Facebook instead of making broadband better, faster, cheaper is a big deal. And I would say this, well, you know, one of our biggest stories the past week. Comcast is going to impose data caps of 1.2 terabytes on more than a dozen states over the next couple months, particularly northeastern states, they're very populous. So a lot more data caps are coming.

We've seen Comcast is also raising internet TV prices next year. We've seen other providers, charter spectrum. They've all been raising prices. So at the beginning of the pandemic, right, what do they do? They got rid of their data caps. They lowered their prices. They said, you know, if you have financial difficulties, you don't have to pay. And everyone said, this is great.

why don't you do this the whole time? Because they were also bragging on how well their networks were holding up. We're coming to a point where they're saying, actually, we're going to squeeze everybody a little bit more. And I think, you know, the argument on data caps is very deep. It's very technical. But at the end of the day, it does not cost them any more money to sell you any more service. Right. Like, it's just electrons.

Hi, my rudimentary understanding of electrons and you're the engineer here is that sending you one extra electron does not cost thousands more dollars than the previous electron. That is correct. Okay, just checking. On a deep technical level, yes. Well, but that's the story, right? The networks, they have shown this year that networks are very capable of absorbing the spike in demand. And now they're saying, to be fair, we have to bring the caps back and start charging more money. And I think that combined with some of this content pipe merging stuff that we're seeing, the net neutrality conversation is going to be very loud.

The FCC might be deadlocked. And two of the four commissioners might be focused on. how mad they are at Twitter for putting labels on things. It's going to be a ride. I will say this doesn't appear to be happening, but we have it on our list. Wednesday night, like midnight, Trump was tweeting, like, I'm not going to pass the National Defense Authorization Act that they pass every year unless it includes a repeal of Section 230.

And we all just, like, poor McKenna was like, ah, crap. She had to spend her day chasing it down. You know, Trump didn't win the election. And so his political power is reduced. But that's where at least one part of the Republican Party is at. which is we should just eliminate 230. It doesn't seem like that's going to happen. There's a bill that's passing through committee.

It doesn't have it in there. But I say this every week. I'll say it again. Repealing 230 is also Joe Biden's stated position. So there's just a lot of noise to come in how we think about, like as Deeter said, every part of the network, whether it's the pipes, whether it's the content on the pipes, or whether it's how the service is moderate user content. All of that is the heat's going to be up next year. Okay.

That was enough of a speech for me. We're going to take another break, and then I want Hyam to tell us all about these new Snapdragon processors. Support for the show comes from LinkedIn. If you're a small business owner, you know that every hire counts, but time and resources are limited.

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Get started by posting your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash track. Terms and conditions apply. 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.

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I'm Gartenberg. Snapdragon 888. It is new Snapdragon time. So we're jumping right ahead from 865 to 888. So you get that nice branding synergy. By the way, Charlene Lowe pointed out that if you think about it, this is actually the Snapdragon 0. because 888.

Oh my God, Dieter. Well, I should say. Sherelyn, you did a good job. I think Dieter, I'm mad at you for telling me that pun. Because you should, you need a pun filter. Okay. Okay. Continue on.

So in a lot of ways, this is kind of just a very standard Snapdragon update, you know, faster speeds, better cameras, more powerful AI. But there are a couple of interesting little bits here that kind of make this a little more interesting. So first off, we are five. finally back to an integrated 5G modem. Now, for the last like two years, the 865 and 855, you could get 5G, but you had to have a

separate modem in the phone. And then last year's was really weird. The main 865 chip didn't have a modem at all. Like if you just put an 865 in your phone, it could not connect to any cellular thing because Qualcomm wanted to make 5G mandatory, but not enough to put the modem in the phone. in the main chip. So every Android 5G phone from last year has a separate modem chip in it, which takes up more space and draws more power. So we're finally back to an integrated modem.

It's a new modem. It's the X60. It does a couple things better. It's also 5 nanometer modem, so it should be more power efficient. Some numbers that like Samsung, who's, you know, the one making the chips, says that the 5-9mm node is 20% better power efficiency. We have to actually see how that works out. Qualcomm is giving similar numbers.

But the net result is 5G is now actually really finally integrated into all Android flagships in the good way, where it is not necessarily going to cause as big of a hit to your battery life. And combined with the new node and then the other improvements and power efficiency across the CPU and GPU means that 5G should be even less of a concern for battery than it already is, even on millimeter wave, hopefully. And actually, before we get off the modem, we should point out of. out that one of the features in this modem that they're really excited about is carrier aggregation. Carrier aggregation. Yeah, so we should talk about that a little bit because in theory, depending on how it goes and what the networks do, this could be one of the ways that 5G goes from like, why is this slower than LTE to actually being pretty good?

And it's also maybe somewhat related to will Verizon specifically, but other carriers figure out a way to deal with not having all the spectrum they could possibly want to light up all their 5G networks. Yeah. So one of the big things here is that Qualcomm is starting to do sub 6 gigahertz carry aggregation, which means that the sub 6 gigahertz, those wider bands of 5G that have these slower speeds, are able to connect to more chunks of spectrum at the same time to have faster data per user.

It's a technique that we've actually seen a lot in recent years on the E-things when, you know, older ones that were only on LTE, so go back in generations of iPhones, a couple generations of Samsung phones. stuff started was already using this. This was, you know, AT&T's 5G, E stuff, all that. A lot of that was built in carry aggregation. So we're finally bringing some of those improvements more to 5G, which will be good. But again, this is a thing that's sort of the theme with a lot of Qualcomm stuff. Qualcomm is laying the groundwork here, and it's really up to the device manufacturers and the carriers to follow through. For example, the new Snapdragon 888 is in theory capable of download speeds up to 7.5 gigabits per second. You will never see that on any smartphone in 2020. You're just not. But it's nice to think that it might be possible. And also, when you raise that ceiling, it does help make speeds better,

even if you're not getting the maximum speed that was true on, you know, 3G, it's true on 4G, 4TLT, it'll be true on 5G. So that's part of it. The other thing is, you know, new updated CPU, new updated GPU. One of the interesting things here is that Qualcomm is using Arm had introduced earlier this year. it's new Cortex X1 core. Now, the way Qualcomm's chips, the big chips, the flag chip chips are typically set up is a 134 setup. So it has one really big main CPU, three also big but not as big, you know, power cores, and then four efficiency cores.

Now, usually the top four cores are all the same product. It's usually one of the, sorry, one of the cortex arm cores. This year, though, they're using, Arm introduced this earlier this year. it's the Arm Cortex X1, which it promises to provide up to 30% better peak performance efficiency than last year's big core. So it's got like an extra juiced core, which should help for performance. And they're also promising a, let me get the exact number, a 35% jump in GPU performance, which Qualcomm says is the biggest jump in GPU performance

is ever done. So they will be faster. The other two big areas, and this is traditional for Qualcomm, but there's a couple interesting things here in particular, are cameras and AI. So we'll start with cameras. Where the most interesting thing is that the new Spectra 850 ISP is now a triple ISP. So it can, in theory, capture three simultaneous still images or video streams at once. So like what you could do with this, if you have a phone with an ultra wide, a wide, and a telephoto

camera, with one press of the shutter, you could capture a still from all three of those lenses at, you know, those different perspectives, which is kind of cool. You can also capture three simultaneous 4K HDR video streams at the same time, which I don't know why you would need to do that. Oh, Apple was really high on this idea for iPhones, where you would shoot with all three lenses at the same time, and then you can switch between them in edit, in post. So you just like, you set up the camera, you shoot all three lenses, and then you can, like, change the scene without having to move the camera because you've got three lenses shooting the same scene at the same time. All right. Well, that's a good reason for it. I guess. Tell you what, if you are planning on using a smartphone to capture three simultaneous 4K HDR video streams, please message me on Twitter and send me your edited video and how this has improved your workflow. I would love to

hear more about this. I'm very excited for this. But sticking with the camera for just a second, actually, we should talk about the GP a little bit more too. But anyway, The thing that's interesting when you look at what they do, it's triple ISPs. They've got a new, like, specific night mode thing. They have got, you know, just like a bunch of stuff where you, like, just look back at, like, the flagship camera features of the past couple years. And Qualcomm is saying, everyone's been doing that stuff in their flagship phones. They've done it themselves. We're just building it into the chip now, which is kind of the regular cycle of how Qualcomm goes with Android phones.

So the thing that was, like, night site, night photography was like, oh my God. how'd you figure this out this is incredible, is now just going to be commodified, commoditized across any Android phone that wants it because it's just built into the chip. Yeah. So, I mean, and the big part of that is it's any Android phone that wants it. Qualcomm sets these up, but manufacturers have to support it. And that's not always the case.

Like the phones with a Snapdragon 888 can, for example, shoot 120 photos at 10 megapixels in one second. But your manufacturer needs to have a lens, that kind of resolution. and needs to, you know, build it into their phone and their software to offer that as a feature. You can shoot, you know, 10-bit color in H-EIF, but the manufacturers have to decide whether that is a feature they want to offer. But yeah, the fact that they're building it in on a native level is a thing that we've seen. It's a thing with, you know, previous ISP upgrades have allowed, you know, double cameras, which soon became, you know, standard or triple cameras.

And it's sort of a rising tide lifts all boats that when Qualcomm raises the floor here, it gives manufacturers more room to do more interesting things with the ceiling. Yeah. But I mean, the big open question here, especially maybe with the GPU, is Apple's chips, right? Yeah. This is really, really a big deal for, like, computers now because Qualcomm, they've worked with Microsoft, the SQ1, and the SQ2. They've got the 8CX, you know, they're going to keep working on that. When you compare Android phones to iPhones and therefore Qualcomm chips to the A14 line of chips,

say 15, whatever, bionics. You're like, yeah, okay, it seems like it's faster, but it doesn't matter because, like, it has different RAM properties on the iPhone than on Android. And the way that Android OS works, there's a whole lot of extra cruft in there. And so that's the reason the animations are slow. Like, you can't be that mad at the chip, blah, blah, blah, blah. But, like, I think that we're pretty, it's getting really clear that, I don't know if I'm saying Qualcomm is bad at making chips.

But it's more that making a chip that needs to work for, like, the entire Android ecosystem and needs to be a platform is, in fact, like, the cliche that Apple gets to control the whole vertical stack, and therefore they can, like, make something that's faster and better for their specific purpose. I think it's, like, becoming clearer. And so there's a bunch of numbers on this 888, and I'm really curious to see what it does. I'm really curious to see what it does for battery life in particular with these five nanometer processes, with the faster graphics and all that stuff. But the, like, the apples to Android's comparison, I think, is going to get a little.

a little bit sharper because people are going to be able to do it not just on phones, but also now on arm laptops. Yeah. I mean, look, in terms of raw power with, you know, the clock speeds and the percentage GPU improvement, I mean, we'll have to wait to get the device and people will benchmark them and all that. But, like, in terms of raw power, like, this GPU might be better on paper than the ones in Apple's stuff, but Apple does have that intrinsic advantage.

I mean, it's a thing that, like you said, was very clear. like Apple's instruction set for macOS is designed specifically to run on, you know, the M1. And that's an advantage that Apple just has intrinsically that it can do because it is doing all those things, which Qualcomm- But can I ask a really dumb question about that? I've heard that argument, and I was just on that talk show at John Gruber, and we talked about that a little bit as well. Snapchat and chips run on cell phones that run Android.

There isn't another operating system. there is barely even another use case. Well, they run on Windows too. Well, sure, but like the tiny, the tiniest sliver over there of Windows. Like, the biggest market is smartphones running Android, which is effectively run by one single company. I understand it's open source. So, yeah, I put that caveat in there. Is there some reason that the Android team hasn't called Qualcomm and said,

just make your chips better at running our code. Like, because on paper, in the abstract, this makes sense, right? Qualcomm is making a general purpose processor that needs to do a bunch of things. Android is just one client operating system that runs on their chips, and so you can't optimize it as type of as Apple. I think everyone says that, and it makes totally intuitive sense. And off we go. But here in reality, much to Dieter chagrin,

there isn't a competitor's smartphone operating system from a plucky upstart with great ideas about the web. There is not another category of devices that really run Snapchat and chips. It's just the thing. What is preventing them from coming to that level of optimization and alignment? I'm sure they do talk. There's no question that things... There's not even another smartphone chip vendor.

There's media tech. You have Samsung. Real vendor. There's Ex-Nos. They will not be using Exenos in the U.S. I do not think for their next flight shift. Yeah. There's Huawei as well.

But like here in the United States, there's but one vendor. Anyway, keep going. No, so I think they do talk, but like, Android needs to work on those other chips as well. And it's just, it's a difference between, well, maybe not in the pandemic times, it's a difference between having to walk down the hall to be like, hey, I have an idea, let's do this thing. And like, can you put this extra little instruction set in your chip? And setting up a meeting with 10 people and then having a negotiation over a video conference and then driving down to the campus or flying over there to, like, talk about it a little bit further.

Da-da-da-da-da. Like, being the same company just makes it a little bit more efficient, I think. Part of it is also Qualcomm isn't the one designing this stuff. It's Arm. So Google is, it's a game of telephone, right? Qualcomm is taking the cores that Arm is making and building its chip around those. And then Google is building its thing on top of, on top of Qualcomm. And there's a manufacturer intermediary.

Like, it's not as straightforward as, you know, Google just calls up Qualcomm is like, make our stuff work better. It's Google calls up Qualcomm. Qualcomm calls up Arm. Arm is like, we make cores for a lot of things. like it's just the raw the raw parts. So I think it's a little more involved than just a simple fix there. I said it was a dumb question. I said it from the start.

I think it's important to like bring it to reality from time to time and say actually the sort of abstract explanation in reality, it doesn't quite line up that way. And I wonder, and it was Qualcomm's they had their big summit this week. That's where the 888 was announced. And they just basically, and they have to do this, but they evince not even a whiff of anxiety about the M1, right? The context of them announcing a new chip is everyone just went insane over the M1 and the new Macs. We're saying it's an inflection point for computers writ large. Apple is way ahead on this curve.

Intel's in the corner crying. And Qualcomm's like, well, what else are you going to do? There's a new 888. And I feel like that's just an important series of questions for them to answer. Can they meet that performance? Are they just going to let Apple run away with it? And they'll be, sure, the dominant provider, there are more Android phones in the world than anything else.

But I'm sure Microsoft is like, hey, we can't let every Windows laptop in the world be slower at every price point compared to the Apple computer. Like that can't be the outcome Microsoft wants, and I think that's an important problem for Intel, and it is a growing problem for Qualcomm. Yeah, it's funny. So the phone versus laptop thing is interesting

because fundamentally, however fast the 880 it is, we're just assuming it won't be faster necessarily than iPhone, but it's always, like, the story has been the same. Like, if you look at the raw power in the chip, it is kind of irrelevant to the operation of a phone because it's Android and iOS, and they're like, they work different and they feel different, and blah, blah, blah, blah.

With laptops, it feels like you can make a more one-to-one comparison. But that story isn't quite right because there is Ex-NOS, and people do compare Qualcomm phones to Xenos phones directly. There are Huawei chips. In theory, Google's Whitechapel chip might come out this year on a pixel, and they might just do the thing instead of having a little chip off to the side that does something small, they actually produce the main chip themselves. Then we'll have another thing to directly compare against Qualcomm. So it feels like Qualcomm has been in this place where they're the dominant maker of chips for phones, especially in the U.S., and there's like nothing to directly compare them against for people's actual experience of what. matters from a chip on a device.

No one is directly comparing them on a mass scale. And so the question is, with M1 being directly compared to whatever arm windows laptops there are, if, in fact, Google does the Whitechapel chip, I don't think Samsung's going to make a big push in exonos this year.

But there is a chance that for the first time in a while, there's going to be, pardon the pun, apples to apples comparison for Qualcomm Snapchat and chips. Because we haven't really had that for a while at a scale that mattered anyway. Yeah. I mean, that's also part of it. They just haven't had to compete.

Like, you know, LG and Samsung are still buying Qualcomm chips. There's no other game in town to go to. So they don't really need to bow to anyone and, you know, make it work better on their end. It's, we're going to make what we make. And then, you know, work with what you have or go somewhere else. And it turns out there's not a lot of other places to go. As always, the theme of our show comes back to competition. It's like the top of our show was Julia.

being like the competition in TV services is nuts and it's bad. And the bottom of our show is there's very little competition in chips and it's bad. If you are an economist that can work out the ideal amount of competition, please let us know. As always, by the way, thank you to, I was going to say we're way over time and that reminded me to say, thank you to everyone who's been tweeting us Spotify charts. Deere and I have just been smiling at each other. The number of people who've listened to like 6,500 hours of the Vergecast over the past year. So that's been great.

That leads me to say we're way over time. I got so much stuff to say with Samsung next week. No, I want to do, you had a good point, which is Samsung released a lot of good phones this year, and they kind of got washed out. Remember the Galaxy S20, the last event before the pandemic? And how all year the Galaxy S20 and like all the variants of it have just been the quietly great 5G phones. And all of the 5G hype since then has been like for the other phones. And Samsung's just like, yep, still here, still good. They just put out 1UI 3.0 Android 11 for it.

It took them three months, which isn't great, but it's better. There's a rumor that they're going to drop the note line. I have many emotions about that, but we're over time. But stay tuned for more emotions about that at some point in the near future. I just think Samsung is, like, quietly making pretty good stuff. Not quietly, but they're making pretty good stuff and, like, not in the conversation I would, in a way that would have expected them to because it's no longer Apple versus Samsung. Oh, my God.

The new galaxy buds are coming, apparently. They're rumored, and they're going to have noise cancellation. They're going to be shaped like lozenges instead of beans, I guess. I'm not going to acknowledge this product until they call them the Galaxy Beans. Well, they're not bean-shaped anymore. These are bud shaped, so they can be buds again. They have had the best all-round earbuds that aren't AirPods for two years running, basically, with the Galaxy Buds. The Buds Plus are great.

They're still my go-to headphones. They're going to put an active noise cancellation in, but they're going to be good. They've got the beans, which are an interesting new kind of product. They've got a line of three to four different wireless earbuds that are, like, really solid. And I don't, like, no one, they're not a cultural thing anymore. So Samsung is making its best phones ever, but their cultural relevance has sort of disappeared. Or it's at least gone down.

I think that's really fascinating. Yeah. Maybe it's because they can't do the events. They got to bring back next year. They're going to bring back the Broadway plays. They got to, they got to bring back the splashy Super Bowl commercials. You know, I know we're doing like end of year roundups and they're mostly, they're largely entertainment focus. We should do an end of year

ranking everyone's weird pandemic infomercials. Ooh. Because there are a lot of weird pandemic infomercials. Dieter, that means like the most heartfelt pitch in the world. I just keep picturing you as the love actually dude with the like signs. He just like says on at least so many

things. I mean, they try. The Z-Fold 2 is really good. It's just it's too expensive. It's wildly expensive. Also, no one's going anywhere. Yeah. Like if you buy the flashy, flippy phone. Yeah.

And you're just like, can I get on a Zoom call with you? I got to show you my cell phone. Like, maybe you and I. That's like you and I are locked in on that. Yeah, yeah. Not as good of a sales from other people. I will promote something. We are working very hard in getting the president of Qualcomm to do a Vergecast interview

with me and Dieter. I'm going to need to take copious notes from a conversation with you before we do that. Hopefully that's coming next week. We're just trying to work out some timing. So I'm excited about that. You can tweet at us. Hym is C. Gartenberg. Julia is Loudmouth, Julia.

Dieter's Backlon. I'm at Reckless. We've put out a number of Twitter calls to action on this show, I believe. Everything from economists to struggling filmmakers, recording three streams of video at once. Just tweet us. We love hearing from you. Again, thank you to everybody who tweeted us. Decoder is out on Tuesday.

This week, we've got an interview with Substack CEO, Chris Best. I'm very excited by this episode. It was very interesting talk to him. That is, we're not running Decoder in the Vergecast feed anymore. So if you're interested, go subscribe to Decoder wherever you get your podcasts. And we'll be back next Friday with the chat show. That's it. Rock and roll.

Wear a mask.