The Vergecast - Reviewing the Pixel 4, the calm before the streaming war, and a Foxconn Wisconsin update

Episode Date: October 25, 2019

Stories discussed this week: Foxconn finally admits its empty Wisconsin ‘innovation centers’ aren’t being developed Foxconn’s giant glass dome in Wisconsin is back, baby Google Pixel 4 and 4 XL review: more than the sum of its sensors Google to update Pixel 4 face unlock with eye detection ‘in the coming months` The Pixel 4 is more like an iPhone than any other Android phone Google promises another Pixel 4 software update, this time for the screen’s refresh rate Google’s older Pixels won’t get the Pixel 4’s dual exposure and Live HDR+ features Google’s Pixel 4 was $100 off on Amazon for a second time Microsoft Surface Pro 7 review: I wish this looked like a Surface Pro X Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 15-inch review: it’s a bigger Surface Laptop Apple TV app launches on Amazon Fire TV devices Comcast’s ‘free’ streaming box actually requires an additional $13 / month fee Disney CEO says Scorsese and Coppola can ‘bitch about movies’ if they want  Verizon is offering a free year of Disney+ to unlimited data and Fios customers There’s a new Banana Phone, and it can play ‘Bananaphone’ Twitch megastar Shroud is joining Ninja on Mixer as an exclusive streamer Caffeine hopes celebrities and entertainment can help it beat Twitch Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week on the Vergecast, a little bit of a Foxxon update. Google Pixel 4 reviews. We get into it with Dieter. We talk about the new Microsoft Surface hardware deep in the streaming wars with Julia Alexander. And what is going on with all the talent moving on the video game streaming services? That's the Vergecast coming up now. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows,

and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog. That's where Retool comes in. Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need. Prompt something like, build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data 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. Nilai, you didn't listen to me. But that's okay because we're going to tell you what you already knew for months. You didn't leave us alone. Leave us alone. Leave us alone.

You didn't leave us alone Leave us alone AI meant new generation Mobility and self-driving cars Wait, is that the story we were running, Jeremy? Okay AK means smart safety Security through AK technology

I mean, you should know this 5G means pioneering Wait, medical solutions The crap is that supposed to mean on some health cloud network. Okay. You didn't leave us alone, leave us alone. You didn't leave us alone, leave us alone.

It was just A, A, A, K, and 5G. Well, I see how that was hard to believe. You didn't leave us alone, leave us alone. You didn't leave us alone. Leave us alone. Okay, you win. Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Racine, Wisconsin. Oh my God. Hi, I'm your friend, Neely.

Deidrebound is here. Hi, how's it going? Paul Miller's here. Hello. Julia Alexander's here. Hey. Julia, you're going to talk to this. So it's streaming more soon.

Yeah. But I want to start with that song made by our friend Jackson Hayes. He's at Jackson H. Visuals on Twitter. He's like a budding YouTuber. You should go follow him, ring the bells, and audio. And audio. Double threat. To explain why in Earth we started with a Connor Overse song about Foxcon, you might know that we've been covering Foxxon a lot, just a lot.

They're building a factory in my hometown of Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin. The factory, Trump called it the eighth wonder of the world. He said it would be 20 million square feet. They're going to build huge LCD panels. We're down to one million square feet. I will tell you that LCD experts that we have talked to are like, we've looked at these plans and there's a yoga center, but we don't see where you'd build the foundations for the LCD fabrication. So yet to be determined what will actually get built there. But while they were doing this, while Foxxon was under all this criticism during the run up to the last election when Scott Walker, the Republican governor, Wisconsin, obviously running for reelection on the back of making the steel, Foxxon started buying buildings in Wisconsin and saying they were going to be innovation centers.

And so we, if you've been following this, you know that we sent Josh Jezza, our reporter, to Wisconsin. He drove around all the innovation centers around the state. He, like, looked in the windows, and he's like, these are literally empty buildings. Like, not even offices, just concrete, empty spaces. And we published some photos, and we got a long story, lots of interviews with people saying they bought the buildings, nothing's happening. So Foxxon has empty buildings, Wisconsin. Like, two days later, Foxxon held an event where they bought another building in Madison. Alan Young, who's sort of the Foxxon executive in Wisconsin,

said, the buildings are not empty. We will be issuing a statement or correction about the buildings are empty. In the meantime, we encourage you to not climb trees and investigate what we're doing. Which is wrong in two cases. One, we had photographs of the buildings that were empty. Well, technically there was a saw horse in one of the buildings. One of the buildings, and there was like a Dell, like rugged laptop in one. So you work getting done.

And two, Josh never climbed a tree. Just putting that out there. That was, he just looked in the window. Nilai, how many days ago was that? That was 1905 days ago, as of this recording. Okay, well, yesterday, Wisconsin Public Radio and the Wisconsin State Journal both on the same day filed reports saying the innovation centers have been put on hold, and Foxxon has not actually yet done any work regarding the buildings. And I'm just going to say, I don't think that they're ever going to issue a statement or correction about the empty buildings because I think the buildings are going to stay empty forever because they have no idea what they're doing in Wisconsin. Like literally none.

They went from 13,000 jobs to maybe 1,500 jobs. They went from building 75-inch TV panels, potentially at a Generation 10 facility, to promising a Generation 6 LCD Fab that is not actually in the plans of the factory that they have submitted. There is a yoga center, though, and they're building another factory next to it that's going to build coffee robots. I'm not kidding, coffee robots for airports and also alarm system controls, like, old school chunky wall panel alarm system controls for a company called Qualsys, which I've never heard of. But they definitely won't steal your personal information and sell it to the Chinese government. Which one is the glass dome attached to?

Yes. And they're also building a giant glass dome. This is all true. None of this is. They filed plans to build a data center and a network operation center. The network operation center in the shape of a giant glass dome. They filed those plans. On the same day, they canceled those plans.

Because this is what Foxcon does. So that was hilarious. And then a little bit later, they refiled the plans. And so we need to make some changes to the data center. The Giant Glass Dome will also house an auditorium. I don't know what they're doing there, man. You actually haven't explained the Jackson song yet. Right.

In the meantime, an angry Foxcon employee repeatedly emails me, screaming at me to leave them alone because everything will be fine and trying to explain what the AI 8K5G ecosystem is. which we've discussed at length on this show before. Another promise Foxxon has made to the good people of Wisconsin that I largely suspect no statement or correction will ever be forthcoming regarding. AI and 8K is how you win the race to 5G.

The buildings have been empty for 196 days. I believe the buildings will stay empty forever. It's just, I don't know what they're doing there, man. I do know that the traffic by my parents has is getting out of control. Well, they must be doing something. Why is there traffic if nothing's happening? I don't understand. Because the Wisconsin State Government is in service of this project is widening all the highways.

So I-94 is getting bigger. And then all the service roads around the Foxcon area are getting bigger. The Wisconsin government city, county state, also bought a lot of people's houses and moved their houses. Like eminent domain bought their houses and tore their houses down. And now those people are like, great, thank you for paying us. But there's no factory here. Like, why did we do that? Here's my favorite move that they're doing to hit their job number.

Making a Gen 6 LCD. Yeah. Well, if they produce even one like five-inch LCD panel at this thing, it will be like a victory at this point. Like the bar is very low. The thing that they're doing now, this is actually my favorite move. So they've got to hit the number to get the tax credits, even though the state's already paid them out.

And even though they're in a tax zone where those credits are actually just cash because they already don't pay taxes. Okay. So to get $4 billion in tax subsidies, you got to actually pay them cash. They've started a program called the Fox Hunt Earned and Learn program, or Phelp. No. Through Phelp, they're going to hire college students and then pay them to go to college. So the Foxcon employees were just in college.

But then when you graduate, something else will have. You're going to earn while you learn in the program. Got it. So that will get them to their number. but it's unclear like what else will happen because there's there's no factory. But you can earn and learn. Okay. Help.

All right. Thank you, Jackson. You're my hero. Thank you for participating in our ongoing Foxx Encover. Now day 197 of the building, buildings being empty. Deeter, it's pixel review week. It is. Still.

I feel like I reviewed it a thousand years ago. Did you earn while you learned? I did know. They don't pay us for the reviews. Do not start this. I'm just going to reveal something about the review process. Starting the review process, like editing, Dieter's outlining, and you said something to me that I just want to unpack. You said people are already so mad about this phone.

I'm just trying to come out of this alive. Yep. Don't know that I did. I believe I referred to the YouTube video as a downvote minefield. Yes. Because here's why it's a downboat minefield. I like the phone. I think it's pretty good.

Yeah. The battery life is atrocious. And, okay, atrocious is hard. The battery life in the small one is really bad. The battery life on the bigger one is acceptable, but not really acceptable by 2019 standards after we learned that you can make a phone slightly thicker and have the battery last all day,

which is something Apple did. I wish that Google had just done that. But beyond that, I'm not mad about the RAM. I'm not mad about the... There's a whole to-do about the screen refresh rate, which is a whole thing, and Google's real dumb. And I'm not super pleased about the face-unlock drama. All the gates are bad.

People were mad at it before they knew about the gates. People were mad at this phone for not being, I don't know, the second coming, for not having a wide angle. Like, Google did a bunch of stuff that wasn't great. Like, they did a bunch of stuff that does not put this thing at the top of the best Android phone list. I specifically said it was the best Android experience, not necessarily. the best Android phone.

And I was talking to Dan Seafurt, runs our reviews program. And he said, Dieter, you are literally the only person that understands or cares about the distinction between best Android experience

and best Android phone. I was like, I know, but I'm sticking with it. You went for it. You did it. That was the headline. Please, I mean, I'm trying not to be a dummy

or a downvoting hater, but what's the difference? Like, imagine you're, you've gone to a theme park and, like, there's two roller coasters. And one of them, you enjoy,

more. Like you have more fun going on like the one that's like less crazy, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, that ride, that, that's your favorite ride, you enjoy it more. It's a nicer overall cohesive experience. The tilta world. Yeah, sure. Okay. Like, you like it better. Uh, but there is the, the crazy loop-de-loop roller coaster that has a huge drop and, like, minute for minute has, like, more thrills, but it's rickety and the thing shakes when you ride on it. So one of those is objectively a better roller coaster because you do the loops, but the tilt of world is the better experience because it's not rickety and you're not afraid you're going to die. Okay. I mean, I'm going to accept this.

I'm curious about your experience at carnivals. Okay, we've got the metaphor. Now let's make that an Android phone thing. Link it up. A note 10 or a one plus seven pro or even a one plus seven T. You're going to get better specs. In some ways, it may, like, load web pages faster. You will get more camera lenses.

You will get pop-up lenses. You will get, I don't know, other brighter screens, blah. I always harp on this, a periscope inside of your phone with Wally. Yeah, sounds great. With the pixel, what you get is a phone that is just overall feels more cohesive and just nicer to use. And it just, I mean, Tom Warren wrote this article. It feels more like an iPhone. Yeah.

Like, Google tried to think through the entire experience top to bottom, and they did a much better job. The Android 10 makes way more sense here. I know what the gestures do now, and I get them. The camera acts like one single camera instead of a bunch of different lenses. The screen refresh rate when it's on is great. The face unlock, by the way, that is the main thing. Face unlock is better than a fingerprint sensor. I know a bunch of people wish that there had been a fingerprint sensor, and they think they like a fingerprint sensor better.

and I am not here to tell them that they're wrong because I wouldn't do that. You should own your own technology preferences. However, the face ID thing is just so much better. FaceLock is so much better than a fingerprint sensor. It just is. Let's start that. I want to go into why Samsung Huawei do their thing differently, but let's start with face-in-lock.

Of the two things about this phone that were the obvious misses. One is a battery life, which is an almost like disqualifying. miss for the little one. Like, it just doesn't get as good battery life as other phones. And at this point now, we, phone makers are actually competing on battery life, which makes me happy. Google is not competitive. So that's a big miss. But that's like a technical miss. Well, it's more than a technical miss. I do think that you can get through a day if you don't overuse it. But if you're buying the little one and you expect to, like, have a phone that you just like have on all the time and are using, like you're, you're in for hurt. Don't, don't do that. No, I just mean like they

They put in the wrong part. You know what I mean? Like, you know how to fix it. They pick the wrong part. They optimized it. Face unlock is like a way bigger miss because they shipped it without. So it'll unlock the phone with your eyes closed. Right.

And so that means they shipped it in a state that is broken. So help me. I think I know where I land on this and that I'm mostly with you. But I've seen some people be like, actually chill out. Like really this isn't that scary. Like the threat model of someone pointing the thing at your face with your eyes closed where you're like, ooh, my eyes are closed, ha ha, you can't unlock it that you get with like an iPhone.

Is that really that big of a difference? Yes. You think so? You think that there are millions of people all over the world whose phones are getting grabbed and then pointed at their face and they're like trying to duck and dodge around it and close their eyes to make sure that the face unlocked doesn't get ticked off. Well, can I, I'll do the small stakes one and then the big, the big one. Okay.

The small stakes one is like lots of people have like partners and roommates who would like to unlock their phones, right? Yeah. And that's either a little bit funny or... Not funny at all. Yeah, my wife used to be domestic violence attorney. Like, that was like a thing, right? Like, I need to get on this phone.

So that's like small, it's small in the sense that like it's a personal interaction that you either care about or you don't. I think you should care about it. I think that should be the default, even in that model. The bigger one is like the police really like unlocking phones, right? And so if you get to the point. I mean, there have been dozens and dozens of lawsuits that have, like, kicked all the way up to the, like, appeals court level about whether the police can compel you to turn over a passcode. Yep.

Right. You know, the iPhone, if you press the right sequence of buttons and the right combination, like, it will turn off face ID and you have to enter a pass code to get you back to that state. Yeah, you can do that on the pixel, too. If you long press the home button, there's a lockdown button that you can tap. So it's not like the grip of security, but it is, like, tap, tap. Yeah, the iPhone's like you really squeeze all the buttons and it freaks out for you. So if you are, I don't know, pulled over, if you are coming through customs and they can just take the phone on your hand and unlock it, then that's a big problem. Yeah.

Right. And so like I said, there's like the small scale one, which is like more interpersonal, does have some high stakes inside of it. But then the big one, which is the government has a distinct interest in unlocking phones. And Google has made that challenge much easier for them to overcome. So like I think that's just a problem. The other problem is Google didn't see it. It shipped with little caveats down in the corner. And, you know, like, if you read the fine print, you saw it.

And then people started going, what? And it took Google a few days to be like, oh, no, wait, we should tell everybody we're going to issue a software update. And we are actually going to fix this. So I didn't see how big a problem it was at first. And I think that, so that's the miss. Right. Like, we under spec the battery is like a, it's a dumb miss, but it's not like a we didn't think it through miss. The face unlock one is you architected a feature and you didn't, you didn't even like look at the documentation.

of your competitor's feature and how we already had this conversation on Apple's implementation. We went through it a lot about attention detection and eyes open and blah, there are memes. There are like TikToks where people chase each other around parks. There are comedy skits about

Face ID and Google didn't watch them. And so that to me is a much bigger miss. You want to know something funny? Yeah. Pixel 4 does have attention detection. You can hit a setting to have the screen stay on when you're looking at it. What are they doing? Do they just want it to be faster? Do they just Screw it up because that made it slightly faster.

And they didn't think anyone would notice. I don't know. So that of all the gates, that one to me is the most important one. And I wouldn't recommend this phone until they shipped that update. Interesting. Okay. But I mean, that's like a maybe you live a life. Like the without cops.

I don't know. Well, the other thing, I've been noticing this in like the Bitcoin community because it's all about securing this long password that is your, you know, your Bitcoin, basically. And so it's all about different methods of cybersecurity. And the mantra is that biometrics should not be passwords. You shouldn't, something that's based on your DNA or your fingerprint or the way you look is not something that you can ultimately have, you know, for certain that, you know, a cop puts your finger on the screen or the cop opens, hold your eyes open or something, you know,

or just waits until you're not paying attention. Like, if you're trying to secure something that is very valuable to you, that you, you you do not want accessible unless you absolutely consent to it being accessed, then you shouldn't be using biometrics to secure. It's really it's a convenience. It's not a password. Yeah, the argument that we've heard in particular in phone lock biometrics is this actually gets people to lock their phones. Yeah.

So people were using nothing. And so this is a huge step up from nothing. It's like really interesting to listen to people talk about privacy because like objectively privacy is important. But also up until very recently, my password on my phone was zero, zero. Julia. Was there at least like a lot of zeros? Was it like eight digits of zero? It was like the gif of Kanye going like zero zero zero zero.

It's still very fast. Apple actually refers to that as the Kanye code. Yeah, I had the same code as Kanye. Like when you're at events or briefings and you're like, what's the audio unlock? They're like Kanye code. Now it's no longer that people who try to steal my phone. It's all ones. Now it's a one, two, three, four.

Okay, so that's that stuff. The part I wanted to get to was like Samsung and Huawei, they don't control the software the way that Google does. Right. And so they are obviously competing on hardware. Like they're doing, like when you squeeze the balloon, that's where they go. Google has it all. And it's weird they didn't over-exend the hardware and they obviously emphasize the software polish. Or is it?

No, it's not weird at all. I think that Google doesn't, I don't know. What high-end hardware do they make? They make the pixel book from a couple years ago. And everything else is still kind of mid-range, right? Yeah. What's their premier? Holy crap, this is the nicest thing ever, hardware.

The Google Home Macs. I guess. I'm just putting it out there. That's it, I think. Yeah. Just institutionally, that's where they live. Now, the question is what's going to happen next year? Because next year, we are expecting a radical iPhone revision.

We're expecting more 5G phones. possibly from Apple, possibly from Google. And this will be, next year will be, I think, the year where Rick Osterlo, the head of hardware, is directly managing phone hardware at Google. Are you already at next year? This phone came out like last week. Everyone's already at next year for the iPhone. They're already at next year for the iPhone.

They're selling more iPhones 11 than anybody anticipated. Yeah. You can't already be at next. Like, the phone has already been discounted $100, like, twice. It's been out for two and a half days. Like, your curtain razor was it. it's about more than the camera. We haven't even talked to the camera yet,

but it's about more than the camera. And this is the year they have to do it. And we talked to Rick, and he's like, we're in all carriers, we're going to market the phone, they're running the ads. And we're already at,

well, next year. That's nuts. Well, I mean, it's nuts, but the phone is very good, other than the battery life, and they're going to, assuming they fix the face ID thing.

Yeah. I enjoy using this phone more than I enjoy using a note. Okay. And it's not just that I, like, prefer the, like, slightly cleaner Google experience.

It's like, the whole thing feels more cohesive than a note does or a Galaxy S10 or even a 1 plus. So the 1 plus gets a little bit closer. So they still can try to market the hell out of this thing. But I don't know. I just every time we ask about it and we're like, are you going to do it? Like I don't see them making the Super Bowl commercial with like the, you know, the darkness like Samsung did.

Like that's what sold the galaxy phones. That's why galaxy phones like they just they just blanketed the universe with advertising and really expensive high-end advertising. And I just don't think Google has it in them to do that. And given the reception of this phone, I think it would actually probably be a mistake. I mean, it's the reception of this phone with, like, true nerds, our people. Yeah. Pull over your car, feel great.

You're one of us. You write songs about Foxxon for us. You're one of us, right? Like, out in the world, like, it has a great camera. It's an Android phone. It's a little bit cheaper than the flagship Android phones. It's a pretty good sell. It works like an iPhone.

It works like an iPhone. That's not subtle. You can unlock it with your face and you can swipe around like an iPhone. That part is not subtle. Google could make the sale. I just think, I don't know. Actually, you've said this several times. Samsung sells a lot of phones because it advertises the phones.

Samsung will also just let any carrier do whatever it wants on their phones. If you want a slightly custom Galaxy S10, Samsung's like, we already actually made that for you. Bixby actually predicted your specific needs, 18 and. Now there are four email apps on our phone and one only uses your and one only uses the email app that AT&T wrote that just reads email to all AT&T employees as you send it. So like they will do that. Google, I think will not do that. I think that's the thing that's going to keep them out of carrier marketing deals. That's the thing that's going to keep the salespeople in carrier stores from earning commissions on Google phones.

There's a whole dirty world of stuff that Samsung is very, very good at. Yep. and that puts them at the top. And part of it is just like straight bribes to sell the phones. And part of it is marketing. And part of it's like really glossy marketing. I don't know if Google is ready for that. They certainly know about it.

Like Rick Osterlo is now stranger to that world. Yeah. The question is whether he wants to do it. I imagine they want to see if they can get away with not doing it. I also just want to point out, I mean, it's earning season. And like I'm sure that Google won't break out hardware. And people will be like, how much you make our hardware? They're like, blah, blah, that's fine.

Google won't tell how much money they make on YouTube. Nope. Even if they don't go all out, that doesn't necessarily mean it's a failure. You know, when we ask what's your metric of success? We always get the like, oh, it's customer satisfaction. And it's like, fuck you, bullshit. But it's also, yeah, okay. But on the other hand, like you don't actually need to sell these things.

So what are you making it for? Can I ask a bit of a meta question? Like, what does it matter to us that these are successful? Is it so that Google keeps on making them so that they keep, you know, skin in the game of Android being good and not just something that they shovel to random companies. Yeah, I mean, to me, it's the most important thing about the Pixel is the thing that was important about the Nexus line, which is Google needs to be good at making Android and make Android good on phones.

And you can't make a good phone operating system unless you have a phone. Like, you need to be able to test it on real hardware that's forward looking. I will say, like, I, as a Pixel 3 user, as Android 10, because he was in beta for very long time, so I feel like it was slowly being revealed to me, and I was being experimented on with all these gestures. But now that it's really landed, they've definitely improved my phone. Sadly, my one major problem remaining is the battery life. Paul, I have a slightly different answer to the question,

which is going to be unsurprising to everyone, which is I think the world needs more than two dominant phone makers. Yeah. And Google can pay for it. Google can wait it out to get in the game. I think it is pretty bad if everyone's choices are a clean Apple experience that is very locked down and controlled, or just the chaos carnival of the Samsung phone,

and there's literally no in-between choice. And I think what Google did with the pixel camera pushed everybody else way, way faster than what had gotten there before. Yeah, nobody would have gotten there without the pixel camera. Completely agree. So I think the part of the answer is I want this thing to succeed just because it guarantees that every other vendor has to try hard.

It sets a high watermark on certain and certain metrics. But to Deeter's point, it also makes Google have to try. And if Google just relaxes and Android is a dominant player in the ecosystem, it's the most popular operating system in the world, like we're just going to let it be Windows. Like that's horrible. So I think the fact that Google feels like it has to make a polished complete thing that is an expression of Google, which basically the pixel is,

that's actually pretty good, right? And it sits next to the iPhone. whether or not anyone's going to buy that this phone is more helpful than the iPhone. It's like Google's frame. Like, sure it is. I mean,

it's more helpful in the sense that the Google assistant is but one button away. But like, so is Siri. Unless you are, again, listening to this show and you know that this precise outer limits of Siri

compared to the precise outer limits of the assistant, I don't know. The phone's more helpful. Yeah, no, Google's way better than Siri. I don't know. I just don't want to tell you.

But like to set a timer and to like turn on a light. Okay. I've said a lot about the camera. I mean, everybody knows what I've said. I think that it's still bad in video. But, Neely, you've played with the camera. What do you think? I'm surprised at how much it's just sort of the iterative update to the camera. Yeah. The video thing is shocking to me. Like, Samsung uses the same 855. Mark LaVoy told us they're not they're using the processor to do their imaging stuff, not the, not the pixel visual core or whatever custom silicon they're doing. It's the processor that actually does all the work.

So you would think that if Samsung can do all the work on the processor, Google could do all the work on the processor. And it's just, they own YouTube. They are, they had a bunch of YouTubers at the thing. And all the YouTubers are like, 4K30, huh? Like, they just looked openly confused. So that's just a bizarre miss to me. I don't get it at all.

I love that they know that they have a look in that camera and they hit that look. And I personally really, really like that look. They actually turned it down this year, they told us, and I think I can see it. I definitely see it. What's weird is that the look is going to come to the other cameras in the range. So, like, the pixel 3 is going to start to look like the pixel 4, which is really interesting to think about it as a camera. Like, when you buy it an icon, you don't expect that a software update will just change the way the camera looks after a while.

But it's going to happen here because it's computational photography and that sort of stuff can happen. Yeah, just so it's clear, like the look is coming, but most of the features aren't or a lot of the features aren't. So one of my favorite features is the dual exposure sliders. So there's one that's for brightness, overall brightness, and then there's one just specifically for shadows, and then you get a live preview of it. That's what the neural core does, apparently. And that being able to get the blacks exactly where you want them actually is great.

Yeah. I mean, I think that's really cool. Their camera is a, I mean, I say camera in terms of like the app and then the photos of, like that experience of, I'm going to make a photo and then here's a photo. and then here's a photo, is better than the iPhone. But it just is.

It gives you more controls. It, like, it treats you with respect that you're not a total dummy, right? Like, I appreciate that. That's, like, a big argument, right? Do you want to clutter up the viewfinder

with a bunch of controls, or do you just want to look at a big preview of what you're going to get? And Apple's way better at providing you with live previews. They do a live portrait mode. They've already done the live HDR stuff. And just take a picture,

not worry about it. Right? Like, vastly different philosophies here. But here again, Google is in the middle because Samsung and Huawei, they will give you, you know, control settings for days that are either right there in the main camera app or just like a half swipe away if you like blink at it. All of a sudden, you've got ISO controls, right?

Yeah. And so Google does, you know, in fact, fall a little bit in the middle. But Samsung and Huawei, like, they give you all these controls and they produce like arguably worst photos. Yeah. Like you can't, all those controls don't get you to a photo that's as good as the iPhone. The thing that I think that I've landed on after all of this, and DeepFusion still isn't out, so I can't even be totally definitive. I think Apple solved all their iPhone problems with raw horsepower, right?

They just put in a better sensor. It's a way less noisy sensor. They're doing way less noise reduction. They have a slightly faster telephoto lens so they can go to higher shutter speeds. It is just a sharper camera. And then they're doing all whatever SmartHCR stuff they're doing. And then, you know, sweater mode will hit whenever it hits the next few weeks. It's already in beta.

And then maybe the computational photography stuff will be the big upgrade. Right now, it's just smart HDR. It's doing the same stuff it was doing before. I think they solved that problem with the sensor. Google is using, they told us, an off-the-shelf sensor. The photos are just less sharp. They're in many cases more aesthetically pleasing out of the box. And you can, like, you have to tweak an iPhone to get there.

But the thing that illustrates this difference is the photos are less sharp except in low light with moving objects or if your hand is moving. In those cases, because Apple just brute forced it and they do longer exposures and they don't do as much math, they have more blur in low light because longer exposures create more blur at the end. But Google just does more math and so they can get sharper photos in those situations because they just take more and shorter frames. And so in bright light, the iPhone 11 can be sharper because it's just a better lens basically, right? It's a better system there. And so they can just do that work directly and not have to compute it, whereas Google does have to compute it so you can see it in the detail

in bright light. Yeah, I think, I don't know if I totally agree with that. I think they were getting it before and they were doing all the same math. And then they were just, they had to do noise reduction. And it just destroyed, it was just destroying their pictures. When you say they, you're referring to Apple. Okay. So I went back and looked. Like, one of the things I feel most valued about, like having reviewed phones for years, is I said the 10S camera wasn't great and everyone yelled at me. And then you go back and look at like the Reddit threads and Apple support forums. And there's like dozens and dozens of messages are like, why are my photo so noisy?

Why is this noise reduction destroying my photos? And it's like, yeah, that's the thing. So I think the sensor is just less noisy. I don't know if the math is different. But sweater mode is coming. Yeah. And that might change how they do it. Everything could be different.

Or not. Hard to see. It really looms over us like a ghost in the night. I want people to think of cameras for people like me. Okay. I need to do a rapid video really quickly to get some mean potential on TikTok, which means I needed to be stabilized. I need to zoom in really quickly and I need it to look decent.

You should buy an iPhone. I mean, I have an iPhone 7, I think, and I like it. That's an iPhone 8. I have an iPhone and it does its job decently. But I want a better camera to get that TikTok clout. Yeah, so you should buy an iPhone 11. Okay. There we...

It's just a very easy answer. And I think that's what Apple is really done with the video stuff, right? Like, the world communicates in video, and like, there you go. It's a better video camera. And Google just missed that one. Are we going to continue arguing about photos forever? We are. Are we having a live Vergecast next week in San Francisco with Isaac Reynolds, the product

manager of the Google Pixel camera, and Rock. Bobby Stein, the head of product for Instagram, together on stage. We talk about how the platform affects the camera and the camera flex. We are doing that next week in San Francisco. It's a good. It's a good. It's already sold out. But you should go to our website and get in the waiting list and say it's one person drops out.

I think in this conversation, part of why this phone is so controversial is crystallized that my mind. Let me express it to you. Google built a cool radar and they put it in a phone. Yeah. Could have spit more money on a camera. Or a bigger battery. Yeah.

Yeah, we haven't even talked about solely, which no one seems to care about. It makes the phone slightly nicer in ways that you will never notice, and the gesture thing you might use every now and then maybe to change songs. But that's not a real feature. Have you gotten any false positive? Like, accidental song skips because you were gesturing during a conversation while also listening to music. I have gotten a couple where I was like reaching for a coffee cup and it was on the other side of the phone. Wow. That's all I want to hear.

All right. Let's talk about the last gate. Hertz gate. Hertz gate. The hurts are gated. So it has a high refresh rate screen, but it dynamically ratches it down to save battery life depending on what's happening. And the thing that we didn't realize is it ratchets at refresh rate down in situations that we wouldn't have thought of like when the screen brightness is low or when the more accurately, I think, is when ambient light is low.

Because if it's dark out, they just figure, I don't know, you won't notice the screen refresh rate. I don't know. I actually don't understand this at all. I don't understand this decision at all. It's very confusing. But you can see it. So, like, everyone said, oh, if you drop below 75%, then the refresh rate goes down. And so I did that and didn't.

I was confused. And then I covered the ambient light sensor and dropped out to 60 immediately. So I was like, oh, that's odd. Ask Google. Google says, we've already been working on this. We're going to put out another software update in the coming week. instead of the coming months, that will allow 90 Hertz to stay in more situations. I don't know.

It does explain why it took so long for us to shoot B-roll for the video review because we kept on having to adjust our camera settings because the screen kept changing. We couldn't figure out why because we didn't want banding. You know, you get that on refresh rate. This is a thing where I have a hard time getting super mad about it. It is annoying, and I wish that it were just a little bit clear when you're at 90 and when you're not, because, you know, it just would be nice to know what you're getting. But I chalked this up to, like, I don't know, Google being Keystone Cops, not Google being, like,

conspiracy theory zone. Like, they're not, it's just like, they didn't think, think it through all the way. But the promise of this phone is that they've thought through the hardware and software together in perfect synchronicity. Yeah, and they did. Like, it feels more so than, like, Samsung. Like, it's a low bar you're comparing it to, right? But there's another high bar.

There's another high bar. Yeah, they don't quite hit that bar. Except that Android is, like, better at so many things on iOS. Like, notifications are still a thousand times better on Android than it is an iOS. Samsung just has, like, an always-on screen control. It's like, what refresh rate would you like? Talk to Bixby. Yeah.

Here's what I don't understand about that specific problem. Bright screen suck up battery. Mm-hmm. High refresh rates suck up battery. Mm-hmm. Shouldn't it be exactly the other way around? If the concern is battery life, that when the screen's really bright, They're like, it's blinding you, so persistence of vision will make it appear as though it's going fast.

So we're going to ratchet it down to save the brightness. But if the screen is really bright, they can probably assume that you're like looking at it. Whereas if you ratchet the screen brightness down, they're like, ah, they don't care how this looks. They're trying to save battery life. They've ratcheted the screen brightness down. Yeah. I'm not defending this. I'm just trying to figure out what the thing is.

But if the goal is to save battery life, why would you be like, you know, when the one thing that needs battery is active, we definitely want the other thing that eats battery and be active. But they know if you crank the screen brightness up that you're looking at it. They don't know what I'm thinking. Okay. Get out of here, Google. You haven't tracked me that well. By the way, I do want to say this about the software because we mentioned it twice. Google has some problem.

They promise us some updates. It seems a little chaotic. That actually at this moment in time is just par for the course of our industry. It's like not even worth noting. Apple put out the iPhone 11 and then they were like, iOS 131 is coming. And they release like 15 updates along the way to 13.1. And they're going to release the actual software feature of the camera is still in beta and is not out yet. Yeah.

Samsung released a phone whose fingerprint sensor could be thwarted by any fingerprint. And they promised a software update for it. So we're just at a point where these phones are definitely coming out way ahead of their software being finished. What if everybody just took a year off? They'd be great. Yeah. Well, can't they just do like what gaming does? Like gaming, I mean not the crunch aspect, but like the,

they delay a lot and it's just because now it's become so common to just say we need to polish so we're taking another four months. I mean it sucks, but it's like, yeah. Yeah. Or like console cycles. Like this is your phone for 10 years. Yeah. Yeah.

But so with video games, they know that their fans are just going to buy them whenever it comes out. But with phones, they need to have it in time for hardware. The reason that fall is so crazy is because they need everything ready for holiday season. But what if we break the bounds of our calendar? Yes. I'm just saying the calendar has been imposed upon us. It is a system that's thousands of years old. It doesn't even make any sense.

What if we just start buying everything in late summer? Sure. I mean, that's what Amazon's doing with Prime Day, right? Oh, man. That's how they get you. Jeff was head of you. All right, we've got to take a break. We'll come back and curse Jeff Bezos a little more in a second.

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Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash track. Terms and conditions apply. Deere, some other reviews this week of note. Yeah. The Surface Pro 7, which Tom reviewed. The Surface laptop 3, 15 inch, specifically a 15 inch, which Dan, reviewed.

Yes. Walk us through it. The Surface Pro 7 is like, yep, you made another surface. You updated the processor and you put USBC on it finally. Thanks. But what they didn't do was update the industrial design, reduce the screen bezels, or do anything else. They just kept on putting it out there.

Like the Surface Pro 7 is very much like, well, the factory stopped making the old one. Now we're making the new one. Enterprise companies, please continue to buy this thing. It continues to be like the default two and one. and it has gone from like pretty inspiring to like pretty expected and starting to feel a little bit doughty. Tom said that he wished that it looked like a Surface ProX, which is the fancy arm one with all the fancy stuff. And he's not wrong. Yeah.

To me, if you want to keep talking about the Service Pro 7 for the next half an hour, like we do it with the pixel we can, but there's literally nothing else to say about it. They didn't change screen resolution. They didn't change any. It's just it's another Surface Pro 7. Deeter Bone Surface Pro 7 podcast challenge. Go. At least they put USBC on it. Let's talk about USBC.

And specifically USBC PD powered delivery. And whether or not you can get Lightning 3 on it. Okay, but the 15-inch surface laptop 3 is actually interesting just in the fact that it exists. It's fascinating. It doesn't seem like it needs to exist. If you asked somebody, all right, there's an expensive 15-inch laptop, what is it for? They'd be like, oh, it's for like pro users and it's for people that want to edit video. And no.

No, that's not what the Surface Pro Surface, Surface, Surface, Laptop. laptop, three, 15 inch, is, it's just a big surface laptop. If you want a surface laptop that has all the nice Microsoft things and the option to have Alcantara fabric and, you know, like you can trust it and there's not extra crap around it. There's just like a little bit of crap around it because Microsoft still screwing that up. You just want a 15 inch screen. You can just go get that. And so what's fascinating to me is for a long time, the conventional wisdom was 15 inch Windows laptops sell really well because people just want big screens. And so they just, there's always a, a giant pile at Best Buy of kind of crappy laptops that run Windows, but they have 15-inch screens

and so people buy them. I've seen these laptops in the homes of friends and family, or rather friends and their parents of friends and family. And they all have hilariously low-rest screens, so everything's big on them. Yes. 15-inch, 1024 by 768. Let's go. Yeah.

So I think the surface version of that, the surface laptop version of that is, what if we just made that but nice? and then people who want to spend the extra money to get the nice version of that will just be able to buy it. Yeah. That's why I think it exists. I think that's right. I mean, we've talked about, I think we've talked about this a lot lately. It's kind of a new thing that we've noticed, but like the big cheap screen is an under remarked product category across everything that we cover.

Like, you want a $700, 75-inch TV that effectively cannot produce black. It will only produce gray. Yep, the walls upon walls of them at your local store because people just want that thing. And like 15 inch lap, you want an iPhone 11 that's a big screen that's a little lower resolution. Here you go, it's cheaper than last year. It's a big cheap screen and that's what people want.

And I think this is, yep, just a little tick nicer of a big cheap screen is not a bad place for Microsoft to play. Well, this is the theme with Google stuff too. People are very unhappy with the Pixel 4 pricing, but you're just paying for the nicer thing. In fact, by the time this is out, I will have published the review of the Pixelbook Go, which is a slightly nicer. It's a Chromebook that is $100 more than the raft of $500 Chromebooks that you can buy. And it's just like a nicer object.

But otherwise, it's the same thing. You're just paying a little bit more for it to not have a microSD card expansion slot. But why is it a 16 by 9 screen? That's the thing that kills me about that. It's very infuriating. People must not care. I don't know. A bunch of the other Chromebooks in the space are.

are 16 by 9. There's a factory that makes Chromebooks, and that it's like GM. There's like one factory that makes all the cars, and then like Pontiac and Chevy and whatever, just customized a little bit. That's what Chromebooks are right now. Is that factory in Racine-Wisconsin? I thought you were going to say there's a factory that makes 16x9 screens. I was like, I know where that factory is not located.

Does that factory make this pixel book? I don't know. I don't think so because it doesn't have the microSD or the USBA and all the other pixel books do. Or all the other Chromebooks do, excuse me. Anyway, the point is, the pixel looks fine, it's boring, don't buy one by the AIS. Anyway, the point is, Microsoft and Google are both just making hardware that on a spec level or a price level or just at like head-to-head competitive level are worse in some ways. But they're nicer objects and they have the logo on them from the company you trust and so they just charge a little bit more. Yeah, and it's fair.

Yeah. I feel like a nice but relatively cheap 15 inch laptop is actually a very rare thing right now. Yeah, and I think Microsoft saw that sort of market hole. There's like there's the $400 15 inch and then there's the $1,500 or really closer to $2,000 pro 15 inch. But this was a hole, I think. And I'm really, I'm glad that they went for it. Yeah. I mean, I have like, I think most people have, Deeter was talking about it, like the army of like various aunties who have horrible.

15-inch Windows computers and the problems they have with those computers make no sense to me like I got the call one day and it was like I picked up my key my picked up my computer and like the keyboard fell out and I was like I don't just like throw the whole thing

away like I don't know man like I can't troubleshoot that for you like yeah it's made of it's a basically hollow plastic shell at this point and like a tiny little motherboard in the center like just get rid just throw it away see what happens when you light it on fire? That'll be a good YouTube video. One last surface

laptop thing to bring up, I fix it tore down the surface laptop three, the 13 inch. And Microsoft told the truth. They did make it way easy to repair. They haven't taken it as far as they should. It's still out of five. And they still say that you should only allow a technician to replace the SSD, which did we all become like static monsters in the past five years? Did you know, something I need to tell you about Earth in 2019? Everyone changed their components all of the time on laptops five to ten years ago, but now you're supposed to have a technician do it? Come on. Anyway, good on Microsoft for improving repairability. They have further to go, though. You know, we were talking about it. I really think it's because they

sell so many to Enterprise. Yeah. Like, you cannot, like, I see Surface Pro Units, like, in Enterprise applications, like, all the time. They're just, like, floating around. Yeah. I think they want to get those laptops in the same spaces, and you cannot do that unless you can actually. If they're made of glue, you can't sell them to a fleet that needs to repair them. So I think there's another pressure beyond just we all like Kyle and I fix it and we think that he has good ideas about the future of computer. Like that's all true. I just don't think that was like enough pressure to make Microsoft re-architect the laptop.

Fair. All right. Julia. I don't have a Microsoft service take. I'm sorry. That's not, well, I mean, I wish, if you do, feel free to chime in. Microsoft Word is dope. That's my take.

It really is. Underrated application. No, I wanted you on specifically because we're in the lull, the calm before the storm. It's so exciting. Apple TV Plus is coming out. Yeah. Disney Plus is coming out. Yep.

These CEOs are at conferences talking. They're calling out Martin Scorsese. Yeah, Bob Iger's like, my boy. Who gives a shit about your opinion is like basically what Bob Eiger said about Scorsese. The parties for the shows are happening. Yep. The Apple TV app. is now out. It's out on Roku and Amazon Firestuff.

Verizon is offering a bundle of Disney Plus, which is in that neutrality nightmare. I told you. It's all happening. What's going on? Yeah, I mean, it's exciting. So, yeah, Apple TV Plus is gearing up to launch. Actually, if you go into iTunes, because I did that, because it's 2019, I went into iTunes, and there's a bunch of ads for Apple TV Plus, which is exciting. Basically, just please grab this. This is Apple's attempt to erase its past, right? This is Apple being like, remember when we did Planet of the apps. No, you don't. Because we don't want you to remember it. Gwyneth Paltrow doesn't remember it, so it's fine. Remember we did Carpo karaoke? Guerneth Paltrow, memory hold being

in Spider-Man. What does she remember? This is the power of being Gwyneth Paltrow, though. It's an interesting time because Apple is coming out first in this kind of six-month launch window we have for about five or six services. And in many ways, this feels like the beginning of Apple wanting to fellow Jeff Bezos and create a prime bundle, right? This is what works. expecting Apple TV Plus will be to Apple what Amazon Prime Video is to Amazon. And eventually you'll just be trapped in the Apple ecosystem and then you won't get out of it. And so there are... Eventually.

I mean, because eventually we'll get a bundle. Let me tell you what it's like on the inside, Julia. People who aren't Nilai, like eventually you're going to have Apple Music and Apple News and Apple Arcade and... You'll never hear anything about China ever again. And then you'll buy iCloud storage. And you'll just be in this world. And so that's kind of like the exciting thing for Apple. They've got a lot of money, more money than anyone else in this space,

so they can just give a shit ton of money to people. They gave Reese Wetherspoon and Jennifer Aniston in a million dollars an episode for a show that's not out yet and gave them $250 million to make a version of the newsroom, which is insane. It's called The Morning Show. That's their big launch. That's The Show. It's like all their effort is around The Morning Show.

Yeah, it's based on kind of based on Brian Stelter at CNN, his book about The Morning Show Wars. And so, but with a Me Too kind of hinge on it. And so, yeah, I mean, they're launching. It's kind of exciting. Disney is like the big one in terms of disrupting. Disney is the one that every investor is looking at because they have the potential to not necessarily destroy Netflix. Like no one is going to destroy Netflix. But Disney has the potential to grow up to 120 million subscribers in like five years.

They have the potential to be very disruptive and change the theatrical going experience for a lot of people, change how money is flowing between consumers when they go to theaters or whether. buying, uh, subscribing to different things. So it's like a weird time and, uh, but an exciting time. Martin Scoress, he said it's probably the most exciting time in Hollywood since he's been in it. That's a lot. Yeah. He's been around for a long time. He's been around. He's been around, he's been around Hollywood during like the good days. So all of this is happening. Yeah. This week, Netflix, like had an earnings call. Yeah. And they, uh, are they doomed? They don't think so. So the thing is about Netflix. Good. Yeah. That'd be amazing. Every day it's like, ah, you were going to call in it.

Could you imagine? Sorry, guys. I'm moving on. Which Reed would probably have a very funny comment. But Reed Hastings came out and said, like, for the first time, it was basically like we have competition. We know that we are basically telling our investors to prepare for a little bit of turbulence, like pilots tell you when you fly through a cloud or whatever.

But we're going to come out the other side like most flights do. And we're going to be fine. is basically how Reed Hastings feels, which is true. I mean, they've got a huge start on things. They're in countries like India and South America, which is a huge market that's untapped. So, yeah, they're going to be totally fine. But they are also taking on $2 billion more in debt. So that brings their debt up to about $14 billion.

They've never been profitable. They're just trying to compete, essentially. And what they're trying to compete with more than anything else is not Disney. They're trying to compete budget-wise with Amazon and Apple. And that's two, it's two different things, right? If you think of Amazon and Apple as like a service industry, right? So they've got hardware. Apple's got hardware that they make a lot of money on.

Amazon's got a huge retail service to make a lot of money on. They can just spend money on video and it doesn't matter to them. It's like, hey, if you're here, we have this thing for you. All Netflix has is it subscribers. Like, that is it. And so they can only say, you know, their head of content, Ted Sarandos basically said this where he's like, we can't keep buying shows for $500 million. dollars. Like this is not something we can, which they did with Seinfeld, this is not something we can

continue to do. A company like Apple can go, okay, yeah, but we can. And so they'll just do it. And so that's something that Netflix has to kind of figure out how they're going to compete against. The one thing they have going for them is that Apple wants family-friendly television and Netflix is basically like, we don't care, we'll take anything and we'll produce anything. And so they have that relationship with creators. They have that going for them. They know they've produced tits. But give Apple a few years. I mean, Apple is working with Oprah and

possibly working with the Obama's who knows, based on paparazzi photos. No, the Obama's have a Netflix deal. They just went out to dinner. They have a Netflix deal now. By the way, the photo is Tim Cook and Robert Teniro and Barack Obama were at dinner together in New York. They have a Netflix deal

now, who knows? I would have just watched. If Netflix you just put that on I would just like, here's eight bucks a month. Like I don't, just give me this an hour a month of that conversation. They just do a podcast. Yeah. It's just Robert and you're being, what the fuck?

And then like Tim Cook being like, I don't swear. The thing is they have deals now. Everything is going to change in the coming years, which is why it's really exciting. But Apple is poised. But Apple's not buying this library stuff. So Seinfeld. Yeah. Right?

Like Netflix buys older shows, like famously friends gets battered around for millions of dollars. They're buying Seinfeld because they're losing friends to AT&T, which is my just a a nightmare sentence that we're going to be forced to say a lot. Apple isn't buying that. They're paying for new stuff. Apple isn't buying it yet. I mean, Apple is trying to buy exclusivity, right? So they reportedly offered J.J. Abrams, $500 million to just work with them specifically. And JJ is a guy who's like, I want to make more Star Wars movies. I want to do 9,000 things. I want to make probably another Star Trek. I don't want to work with just Apple. I will work with you on something, but I want to do that. And so he turned that down and reportedly

took a $250 million deal with Warner Media, AT&T, to do stuff with them because he's been with HBO for so long, which made a lot of sense. But that's the type of thing Apple's doing. They're coming out and going, we will give you money, we want to work exclusively with us. They've renewed all their shows. None of them have premiered yet. You do that for certain shows in Hollywood. You do that for the Walking Dead and the Big Bang Theory. We were like, people will tune in. It's fine. Don't worry, just keep it going. Apple is renewing shows that no one is heard about and they're like it doesn't matter like we have the money we'll just we'll just do it um disney's doing the same thing disney's already going out there and be like yeah it's fine we'll renew it um it just makes

sense we need content and so for netflix they're kind of stuck in this boat where they're like well we have a lot of shows that we can continue renewing but we're burning we're burning our content budget really fast we're trying to do too much right now in my opinion um they're trying to do movies and like buy theaters and and figure out exactly who they are and so what we're seeing happen is them trying to figure out where they can advance in a space. And they know that they can't compete with Apple's budget. They know they can't compete with Disney's catalog. So now they're just kind of going.

Wait, wait, wait. Disney's catalog, like they announced all those movies and like out of the vault. And it's like, wait, this catalog is maybe not as good as everyone has been fearing. It's like, oh, Disney went through a very creatively fallow period for about 20 years. You have to remember that. For one year, I believe in the 70s, Disney was run by an NFL player. Because they were just like, what? Wait.

I can't remember his name, but he was like... Yeah, he obviously didn't make a mark. Yeah, it was for one year. Either in the NFL or as the CEO of Disney. I mean, so the thing about Disney, right, is that Disney had a large period where no one knew what they were doing. They're making movies about dogs and, like, chimpanzees. And it was like, I don't know, we'll just make movies. Then in 1989, the Lillomermie comes out, Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, who's now doing Quibi take over.

And they're kind of, they lead this charge, right? And that, like, runs up to 1984 when Cassidy. Thatsenberg is then fired. And so things kind of change around then. And then the Disney people know today is really the Bob Iger era, which is 2004-2005. The lot of the things that people want to subscribe to Disney Plus for are not going to be there. So Marvel is a great example, right? You're not going to get most Marvel movies because of rights problems. Disney does not own the rights to a lot of Marvel movies in terms of streaming. So they have to figure out how they're going to bring this over to their streaming service, which means it's going to take about a year

before you really start seeing things appear on the service. But that said, Disney has a lot of things going for. They have new original series. They have all the Star Wars. They have all a Pixar. They have all their Disney animated stuff. And if you're a parent, $6.99 a month means that you don't worry about them being on YouTube and seeing some stuff they don't want to see.

It's got most things that will keep your kids entertained. And the thing about bad 1960, 1970 Disney movies is like we don't like them because we're adults and we have taste. But like kids do not have taste. Kids are stupid. Kids will just watch whatever. A talking monkey is like hilarious to like a five-year-old and me. And so it's like they will watch it. Disney has no problem.

The fact that they're also doing a year with Verizon for free is like, I mean, investors alone are like, oh, they're going to do way more, they're going to do way better than we thought they were going to do. Can I just tell you the story of Ronald William Miller, the CEO of Disney? There it is. He played for the Los Angeles Rams. and he got knocked unconscious in a game and Walt Disney

I'm just reading it he said I don't want to be the father to your children you're going to die how about you come work at Disney and then he became the CEO of Disney this was his company for a minute it was like a weird company that's incredible

that's what happens you marrying the Disney family Walt personally is like don't die out there how about you run this animation studio instead but anyway so this is to me the problem with Netflix back to this library argument

Netflix has paid for a lot of stuff over the past few years. They have let their creators have free reign. They're very famous, very, like, creator-friendly, artist-friendly. Yeah. They just have a lot of very slow-moving shows. Yeah. Right? There's not a lot of – they don't have a lot of hits, actually.

No. They have Stranger Things. They have House of Cards. Hyperdrive. Hyperdrive is great. Hyperdrive is a favorite show. Hyperdrives like my favorite show. They have like Chef's Table.

But Chef's Table is very much alike. watch this chef, she will not slowly cut. Right. So Netflix doesn't have any prestigious shows, right? So this is the HBO thing. This is like HBO is very selective with what they buy. Or has been, under AT&T, that will change.

Where HBO... So, wait, because that's like, AT&T, they've got money. Yeah. Enormous amount of debt. Norse amount of debt. But they also, like, they got money. They also have investors who are like, why don't you sell off your entertainment property? It's like, the AT&T had an executive level is like the problem

with their streaming. half the team is into it, half the team's not, and every HBO executive's out the door. Yeah. So, I mean, like, that's a whole other situation. But what HBO has an Netflix citizen is prestige, right? You can turn on HBO now, and it's like a lot of Emmy award-winning stuff. Apple wants to do the same thing. Apple's buying certain programs that will get them to the Emmys, right?

The morning show, they want to be an Emmy-nominated thing. Arguably, probably same with C. It's not going to happen, but, you know, these are such shows. The Jason MMO is blind in the future. Yeah. That's what they're trying to do. It's what Amazon does. I mean, look at the recent Emmys. Besides HBO, the only other company people were talking about was Amazon, which was like a weird thing. Amazon owned the Emmys this year. And so for a while, like, I got a text for my mom.

Like, this is why I think about when I write stories for the verge about streaming is my mom texted and she was like, TV got really confusing. And I was like, yeah. And she was like, how do I watch TV? And I said, well, do you have Amazon? And she was like, I just want to watch these shows. So I suggested piracy. I was like, listen, you can probably watch this somehow. But then she eventually got Amazon, and all she does is watch Amazon Prime stuff. And she's, like, also buying toilet paper. She's like, did you know you can buy toilet paper on Amazon? I was like, yeah.

This is fantastic. But that's my, and that's this person. Like, these are the people that Apple wants to get to where it's like, hey, like, my dad, for example, owns everything Apple. He's 72 walks around with AirPods everywhere. Beautiful. Yeah, he's amazing. And he was the guy, he's like, I'm going to get Apple TV Plus because I already have music and I already have news. And I'm just going to watch TV on my iPad.

And, like, those, like, that's what Apple's going for. They're like, hey, we're going to do good shows that you're paying attention to that you'll care about. So you get my mom who's like, I want to watch it. I watch the Emmys. How do I do this? And my dad, who's like the biggest Apple stand and is like, oh, it's already here. So I'm just going to buy it. So you were talking about Netflix all that has as subscribers.

Netflix has to convince you to pay some money a month. Yeah. That's all they can do. Yeah. Or they convince Team Mobile to give it to you for free. Yeah. But that's like, to make a bundle like that, got to go out into the world.

Yeah. And then someone else has to subsidize it. Apple is giving away Apple TV Plus. Basically free. For free. Yeah. To iPhone owners for one year. One year.

Yeah. And five of their friends via family sharing. Yeah. Although Apple's family sharing is not the same as just like simple password sharing. Like you have to like commit. You're like now you're part of my ICloud storage. Like that's, I don't know. So you stay away from there.

But Apple gets to bundle it into the phone. So everyone's going to get it free for a year if they upgrade to a phone. Yeah. That's an instant. They're going to juice their numbers. After that year, how will they get you to convert? They will try to sell you another phone. Yeah.

They will sell you another iPad. Like, at some point, they're just going to give it away for some... Or they'll have a bundle, and they'll just be in the ecosystem. Right. Or they'll have a bundle. It's weird that they didn't announce it yet. It feels like they will. Yeah, there was a report about how the music labels were like, I don't know about that.

Yeah. Which sort of makes sense. Which sort of makes sense. Amazon obviously has the world's most famous bundle in Prime. Yep. great bundles. Disney Plus, like I said, Verizon's going to give it away. If you have unlimited data on Verizon or you have Fios, you get Disney Plus. I have Fios. That's great.

Hey, look at that. So they're just giving it away. They're making that deal. Disney also has theme parks. Yeah, and you're going to get bundles. If you want to spend what you're spending on Netflix with Disney, you can get Hulu, ad-supported Hulu and ESPN Plus are free, too. They're just throwing it all in. But Disney gets a subsidizer with their other huge businesses. Oh, yeah. Right. So even if they don't have streaming rights to Marvel movies and Disney Plus right now, like they still make Marvel movies, Marvel movies have a ton of money forever and ever,

never. And they're also being incredibly smart, which is Kevin Feige, who's the archetype of, or the architect, rather, of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He's now working with Disney Plus specifically to do Marvel TV shows, and in order, the Marvel TV shows now interact directly with the Marvel movies, and so it's like, hey, you're watching the show, if you go watch Doctor Strange, there's a thing in Dr. Strange that

happens in the show in Wanda Vision that you have to watch. And so they kind of did this with Agents of Shield, but those are bad shows, So nobody watched it and it stopped. But under like this one thing, like, there's a chance that it's like, oh, I have to get Disney Plus because I am a Marvel stand. Like that's what I am. And it's like, well, if I want to know what's happening in Doctor Strange, I have to watch this show.

Or you can just read the Wikipedia entry for the movie. This is what Jake, editor at the verge, says to me every morning and it breaks my heart. I'll be like, Jake, I have it. Every morning, he's like, I can just read the Wikipedia for Dr. Strange. He's like, come in with a theory about Iron Man. And I'm like, I don't, I don't care. Is your theory that you've changed your mind and Iron Man 2 is bad? No, Iron Man 2 is great.

No, I come in every day with new theories based on my brain. This is what working at the verge is. Like, everyone wants a tour, and I feel like we could just do a podcast of Julia's screaming at Iron Man 2, and it would just like being in the office. So AT&T has like a wireless service. Right. And they have the rest of the Warner Media Empire. Right.

So they can just subsidize whatever they're doing too. The 100% do that, yeah. So that just leaves Netflix. Netflix, I don't know, a year ago was the big dog. Everyone was scared of it. Everyone thought they were like a super bundle. Now that it seems very precarious. Yeah.

So Netflix has, the biggest thing Netflix has that they need to figure, this is what they need to basically build upon. And this will be 2020 for them. They need to see if they can do it, which is they have to stop caring about the United States. And to an extent they have. They're kind of like, I don't care about this as a market anymore. Their only market they care about is international because it's a place that A&T is not going

to Comcast, which has. has their own streaming service coming out, Peacock with NBC Universal. Amazing name. Yeah. I feel like it's important now to disclose. Oh, right. Comcast is an investor in Vox Media, the parent company of the verge. They don't like us very much because they named their service peacock and we told people that they named their service peacock.

Yeah, that's a horrible name. It's a terrible name. It's a terrible name. It's even a bad logo. They don't even use the bird. It's just the line of dots. It's fine. Wait, it's not even the bird?

It's a line of dots. Just a, it makes me so upset. Carry on. So these two services are not going international. Let's throw in Quibi because I love Jeffrey Katzenberg. Quibi's probably not going international. Quibi's probably not going many places. So what we have is Netflix and Disney in terms of international play.

Disney's going to take some time before they're in certain markets. And they also are doing the smart thing, which is they're doing the Disney thing, which is instead of trying to launch in a company like India, they're just buying Indian streaming services. And they're like, great, great, you're now part of us. And we're just going to do this. They're probably going to be the first major streaming service to launch in China because they have a really good relationship of China. It's why Bob Eiger when asked if you would comment on China said, nope, that's a really bad business decision for us.

Wow. Yep. So I mean like, so they have, Disney poses the greatest threat to Netflix in that regard, but it's going to take some time. If Netflix can figure out a way to become a dominant force in India and it is not right now or dominant force in South America, Netflix is going to be fine because those are paying subscribers. coming in at a cheaper subscription rate.

They're designing specifically for mobile in India because more people watch Netflix on their phones than anywhere else in India. And so, like, Netflix, this is the only thing they care about. Like, they're, like, produce shows for America. But they're like, no, no, no, no, like, it's fine. It's also why if you open up Netflix, you see a lot of international shows on your homepage.

Because it's like, yep, that's what we have to do. They also are on top of the quota game that know other services. Like, if to operate in Europe, you have to have 30% of that content on your service. Netflix has that. 40% European content. Yeah, like, you have to have that.

Netflix is partnered with major studios around the world. So, like, that's why investors, they're worried because publications like The Verge, Ohio Reporter, write stories that are like, Netflix should be worried. Then the investors go, ooh. Now, we're worried. But realistically, Netflix is so far ahead that it's fine. I think, like, the conversation that really needs to happen with streaming services is that the United States is so oversaturated entertainment-wise already that the idea of four or five

services launching within six months of each other, vying for people to spend money. The theory is that it's just going to push people back towards cable because it's like, it racks up so quickly. Or a bundle. Some sort of aggregate. Yeah, skinny bundles. And so, like, that's the thing that we're going to see play out, which is how do people figure out what they subscribe to? Because that doesn't include sports, right?

Doesn't include music. I guess what Disney does because you can get Spotify with Hulu. It all comes back to Disney. But, yeah. So let me ask you. But are these, like, winter take all markets? Like, I don't know. iOS and Android are.

You're someone like win or take all. Like you get one and that's what you got. Yeah. And you're not going to have both unless you're me and Dieter. Yeah. Which is a fact. Or probably most people listening to this. But you can have Disney Plus and Netflix and you're still way ahead of a cable bundle.

Yeah. So I did the math the other day for myself because I'm trying to be better with spending. And I think with all the streaming services that I have, my most expensive being NBA League Pass, which is $20 a month for my team. I'm spending $90 month on streaming services. That includes music and that includes new subscription. And so it's not terrible. It's still cheaper than just cable for TV and movies alone. But I am single serving.

It's just me. And I use my parents Netflix because I'm a millennial. Versus like, you know, my parents have cable, but my parents, like, we've got my niece goes over and so they want to have like kids stuff and like my brother was living at home. when he wanted certain sports packages. And so they are never going to give up the cable package because for them it just gets more expensive at that point, right? Because they're like, okay, if we're adding on all these different things and it gets more complicated.

I don't think so. But that is happening, right? Like cord cutting is real. The cable companies know it. That's why all these people are moving to streaming. So you see that pressure. I just wonder, like, with so many particularly software companies that we cover, they are all, like, winner take all.

Right. And that's why, like, Facebook, my Instagram is bad. Right. Because they were once competitors, but now they're the same company in Facebook. Well, this is the Disney situation, right? And Disney buys everything. Yeah. But the Netflix is doomed conversation or like, here's all this competition for Netflix.

It doesn't seem like Netflix is just going to disappear or lose. No. It might not just be the only winner. Yeah. I mean, I think I tweeted this once. It's like the idea that it's a streaming war is like a weird term because war specifies like a winner-luser situation. it's one of those streaming arms race, right? It's kind of like who gets the most ammo at a certain time

and then controls more of a market and all that kind of fun stuff. Yeah, most people are going to have multiple services. The other thing that was streaming specifically, which is what people like, is most people can just cancel whenever they want. Right. Right?

You cancel HBO after Game of Thrones, and then you go back, well, I guess there's no more Game of Thrones. You go back for like Watchmen or whatever. Whereas cable makes that very difficult. Exactly. Trying to get out of a cable package, like trying to get out of a gym membership. It's like, you've like signed your life away.

Like, I don't know how you've done it. But it's super easy. The one thing about Netflix, I spoke to an analyst, and he was like, Netflix feels like the one channel, like when you open TV guide in 1999. And it was like, oh, this is a channel that it opens up to. Like, that's Netflix. It's just background for so many people that it's like, oh, and I'm already plugged in. I can have four people on this plan.

It's not a big deal. I don't think there's a winner-luser situation here. I think what we'll see 1,000% is companies like, my bet. I could be wrong, but my bet is Warner and AT&T and Comcast, realizing that it's really hard to run a streaming service, like just technologically-wise, like product-wise, it's difficult. Maintaining those rights is difficult, and I think they'll just go back to licensing their content because they own very important, very expensive content. And instead of trying to buy it back for themselves on a streaming platform that might not work, because look at CBS All Access, which is another one where everyone forgets about. But, like, they can just sell that to Netflix. And Netflix is very happy to be like, yeah, if there's less competition and we have to spend more,

but we have the exclusive home of, yeah, friends, the office and all this stuff, they'll just do that. And I think we'll see more of that happen. My prediction is that the AT&T. Where's a Go-90 on it? It's like the Go-90 scale of gym streaming services. AT&T is just like, it just lives at 75. Like the president of HBO quit today to go be the CEO of Luminary, a podcast startup that has approximately two users. Yeah.

Like, if you're quitting HBO, if someone's like you can be the president of HBO, and I'd be like, yes. Like before the sentence even finished, I'd be like, that's like, yep, want that on my right. And then it's like, wait, I need to leave here for a podcasting startup that no one uses. Yeah, I mean, you can look at the last six months of AT&T and HBO specifically and be like, John Stanky, who heads up WarnerMedia at AT&T being like people at HBO who didn't agree with our vision, well, they could just leave. and then everyone in HBO left. And it was like, I'm glad you're trying to sell your product on October 29th to investors,

which is when that happens. We'll get a price point. We don't even have a price point for it yet. Yeah. And there are many reports with them arguing on how much it cost. Minimum, it's 15. It's the most expensive then at that point. Well, I mean, it's going to get bundled in with your mid-range Android phone.

If you're looking for a reason to buy like an LG-E-6 on AT&T, it's like free HBO Max. Like that's how they're going to move those phones. Last question of this segment. Yeah. How do you, you said product that perked me up. Do you think these apps are actually going to make a difference to people? Because we actually haven't seen any of these apps. We've only talked about the shows.

But like the product experience of Netflix is very good. They've innovated, right? They did the Black Mirror thing with the Choosier and Adventure. It doesn't seem like, like Apple's app is fine. Apple's app is actually weird on other platforms. so it doesn't support surround sound and like Roku and Amazon or Atmos It doesn't support Dolby Vision on any of it

Like it's at its best on the Apple TV 4K And it is definitely a little like less good on other platforms Which makes sense because you can't imagine people at Apple Who are like assigned to write the fire TV app Or like stoked Does it like break your heart a little if I say that I watch all of my TV Like all of it on like Safari like in my computer That's fine

That's how I watch everything That's probably the best screen that you got Yeah, that's a whole other issue I have with this MacBook, but it's fine. But that's like a question I have is not only you have to ship shows, they have to ship apps. The apps have to work. I have a very good answer for you. One that got me in trouble with Disney today. My thing, go look at the app store, look up ESPN, and just look at the latest reviews of ESPN, which is the streaming service based on BAM technology, which is what Disney bought for Disney Plus.

So it's the same same platform. Not great. It's every review is one star and it's like this is a terrible app. It's nothing. So I pay for ESPN Plus. It's terrible.

It's $4 a month or something with whatever deal I got. I pay for it for one show. I watch one show a week on it. It's NFL Prime Time, which I was like, if you're an NFL fan, great show to watch.

It is a mess. Yeah. It is just a messy app. Yeah. And Disney Plus is launching on the same. So from what I understand, from sources from the company, they've allocated way more attention to Disney Plus because Bob Iger are specifically looking over it. But it's still, yeah, we'll see. I think that's

actually an undercover, everyone's taking for granted. I agree. That you can build a streaming service and put an app and have the app be good. And it's like, have you looked at apps? Well, that's Netflix's this whole thing. Netflix is like, they basically were like, we run 400 to 500 800-A-B tests all the, like a year. And it's, and that's just, like, that's our most important thing because their recommendation algorithm is the most important thing that Netflix that they use. But that's just part of their day. Like, their tech department is like the quintessential part of the Netflix experience. They've said that a lot.

And it's like, yeah, it's great. Put on Netflix and it's fun. It's like a thing to do. Hulu still kind of sucks to use. No offense to Hulu. HBO now is like basic at its core. So we'll see what HBO Max looks like. But Netflix is good.

Netflix is like fun to use whether or not Disney is like that. I mean, I tried a version of it. I wrote about it for the version. and what I used was fine, but it was a beta, and it was in controlled setting. It was at D23, which is at Disney's conference. So we'll see what's like in the wild. I do know, like, their executive, Michael Paul, who runs streaming services, told me that they're super concerned about day one, like, crashes.

So, like, I mean, we'll see. We'll see how it goes. All right, we got to take a break. I want to talk to you about what's going on on the other side of streaming, which is all the people getting paid to leave Twitch, but we got to take a break. We're right back. Support for this show comes from.

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Uh-huh. Every week, you hold America together. in these times of strife. There's a segment that just consistently called, Our best banana phone yet. And it's amazing if all of America was listening to his podcast. They're like, I don't know what's going on in this impeachment situation, but that banana phone's coming.

It's a message of optimism. Okay, okay. So there was a banana phone, right? But it was like, you know, it was like a, I don't know, it was Indiegogo Kickstarter. It was bad. It was a banana phone, and that's hilarious, and that's great, is a Bluetooth headset for your real phone that it looks like a banana. And it worked.

It just was really bad. But it was so successful that it merited a sequel that it proves the talk time on your banana phone. It works as a really bad Bluetooth speaker now. Anyways, I'm just letting you know. Yeah, so first banana phone, Indie Go-Go in 2017. And now here we are, 2019, with all the strife, all. All the challenges that we've faced as people and as a country, and we're getting a new banana phone. I'm excited for it.

We should do a whole show on banana phones next week. I'm ready for it. All right, Julia. Now to segue from the banana phone. Let's talk about the banana phone that is professional video game streaming. There's a lot of action here. Oh, man. It's been crazy.

Big platforms coming for Twitch stars, throwing down the cash, trying to, launch with celebrities. It's amazing. What's going on? Yeah, so there's a lot happening. It was funny today, Bejohn, who is our Twitch reporter, DMU, and was like, we cover the same things in a lot of ways. And I was like, yeah, like streaming. He's like, no, like Disney. I was like, oh yeah, that makes sense because he just put up this very good interview with the co-founders of a service called Caffeine. Caffeine is really interesting. It's kind of like a take on Twitch, but meets like Mystery Science Theater 3,000. It's kind of like they want everyone to stream. together and have the social experience, but you can use like shows and movies on top of games.

And the reason why it's exciting is that Disney is backing it to an extent Fox is an investor. So it's like an exciting moment where these major companies are getting involved and trying to basically find their way into the world that Amazon and Microsoft currently own, right? And I guess YouTube. But because they like they have a streaming thing. But yeah, so like caffeine is a really important moment. Offset from Migos, I think he's. still with me goes. He joined and he was

like super into it. So like that's part of, that's one thing that's happening where you've got more streaming services launching with backings from major companies. And on the other side of things we have what are basically just talent fights which is something that's very common in sports, very common in traditional entertainment,

new to streaming. So today a popular streamer who goes by shroud, he's one of Twitch's biggest guys. He joined Ninja in joining Mixer exclusively. That's Microsoft's own streaming service. And that's two big losses for Amazon's owned Twitch. And so those are kind of, what we're seeing happening is a lot of attention and a lot of money

being paid to personality-based streaming, which is something I wouldn't have said two years ago. So let me, I say these deals, it's cool. Competition, that's my thing. I love it. Which one does AT&T own again? But there's a very clear corollary to me, and I don't know if it's correct or not. We saw Instagram come in and spend a lot of money trying to get YouTubers, use IGTV.

IGTV. went approximately nowhere. Yeah. Is this the same deal? Arguably no. So I know very little about Instagram the way it works. So I talk a lot to Ashley Carmen, who's our very good reporter, about this a lot. And the question I always have for Ashley is like she'll bring me something about an influencer.

And I go, does Instagram have ad revenue the way that YouTube and Twitch have added revenue, which is like you watch, you subscribe? Like there's something there. And she's like, no, it's still sponsorship. Like influencers. Yeah, it's influencer deals. Right. They make deals. Mixer, and I believe, if I remember quickly from Bejohn's Caffeine Post,

mixer, caffeine, YouTube, Twitch, are all have decent ad breakdowns, right? Ad revenue breakdowns. So no matter what you do, you're going to earn some kind of money. And I think that's what keeps them apart. I think that's what keeps people going is like, if I stream for six hours and people watch, then I get some form of ad revenue from this. And it kind of keeps me going. The difference we're seeing now, and this is where I think Instagram comes into play,

I'm sure Instagram did this with YouTubers and influencers, is now we're seeing companies like Microsoft reportedly give people big personalities like seven, eight-figure deals. Yeah, just cash up front. Just cash up front and come over and stream. You don't have to worry about burnout, which is a huge thing on Twitch, arguably bigger on Twitch than it is on YouTube. You don't have to worry about the toxic space that Twitches in a lot of ways.

Like Twitch right now is a huge racism problem. I mean, they always do, but right now it's really rampant. And so companies like Mixer going, yeah, there's like less. viewers, so you're probably not going to have as many on Twitch. It's not as big. But we'll give you eight figures. You come over. You stream however much you want. Take vacation. It's a nice package. In IGTV, they were paying popular creators who are popular at creating Instagram content to create a new type of content. Right. They pick straight up YouTubers to jump. Well, but even then, it's a new format, you know. But did they pay for exclusivity? I mean,

they did a lot of things. They did a lot of things. Yeah. Okay. Right. But. I just feel like, like, so like for me, I've watched a lot of Shroud because, like, I never got super into Ninja. It's fun to watch. But if you want to go on Twitch and watch probably the best first person shooter player that is a full-time streamer, that's Shroud. So it's like, you know, sometimes you're in the mood for like a real niche speed run of like a Zelda randomizer or something like that. But sometimes you want to just watch the best planet that's available on a live stream, a best first person shooter player. that's Trout, and he's just there all the time. And now he's not there.

Now he's on a different place. So, like, Ninja had no draw for me to go over to Mixer. But I would definitely go over to Mixer just to check in on Trowd, you know, get seven headshots in two minutes, you know. Well, this is the question that's popped up on Twitter, which I think has been the question between, you know, YouTube and Twitch did this for a long time. YouTube and Twitter and Twitter traded, like, exclusivity things. And people always went back to YouTube because it was just a bigger audience and the ad breakdown was better. And it was VOD. So that's a little bit easier for a lot of people.

Yeah, Casey and I sat when he would ages ago he was on and he was like, YouTube had better watch out because Twitch is coming. And that moment came and then he went on Twitch and then two months later he was a longer on Twitch. We talked about it. It's a different beast. It's a whole different beast. But we see that happen a lot with them. The conversation that happened there that's happening now is do you follow the platform or do you follow the personality? Right.

And I know for me, I'm a personality based person. I will just go to where my, like I follow about 30 to 40 YouTubers regularly. and if they were all like going to Mixer, I don't know why they would do that, but I'd be like, sure, I will spend all my time on Mixer. That's where I'm going to go. It didn't work out well for YouTube and Twitch then. Everyone kind of went back to their platforms

where they felt very comfortable and where they found their audience. But Mixer and Twitch are more similar than Twitch and YouTube. Yeah. So it's interesting to see how that plays out. The thing is, my opinion on it, my opinion, is that YouTube is the real winner in this situation.

Because Mixer and Amazon, so Microsoft and Amazon are going to be spending a lot of money to get them to be exclusively streaming on their platforms. And then YouTube doesn't have to spend any money, but all their VOD clips end up on YouTube. And so YouTube goes, great. Well, people are going to come here and spend time watching the clips because they don't want to watch eight hours of a thing.

We'll throw our top ads on it because you're family-friendly, really. So we'll throw Nike and whatever ads on it. And YouTube just makes bank. And it's like, great. Like YouTube is very happy to be like, yes, fight with each other. And then they shall come to us. I mean, you laughed. YouTube's in this mix too with live streaming,

but they're not really. Not really. I mean, they have a live streaming thing, but it's like a dumpster fire. It's like the live streams they recommend are like really bad live streams. The gaming live streams themselves are not like situated

in a way that is discover friendly for a lot of creators. They kind of took like the Facebook watch approach to live streaming and I don't understand it. I'm like, I don't know why you would mess with a platform that works really well, like what you have going for you. Oh, because you're big and all you can think about it. It's getting bigger.

It's very obvious what happens here. One of the things, it's so frustrated with YouTube, Twitch right out of the gate was like, okay, chat. What else is like chat? Oh, IRC. IRC is chat. We've moderated, people have moderated IRC chats for centuries. We will bring those best practices. They didn't necessarily scale to like a 20,000 viewer thing.

They definitely don't scale to, you know, 100,000 viewers simultaneously. But they do scale for a traditional channel on Twitch. YouTube's like, what's moderation? It's terrible. I mean, I think you look at the amount of politicians right now who are like launching Twitch channels. And I guess one of those being Donald Trump. But like you look at all these people who are launching Twitch channels and it's like they're not launching YouTube live streams for their rallies like where they're on Twitch. Like they'll just live stream their rallies and then they'll have teams members from their teams kind of in chat like keeping things somewhat moderated and talking to people.

And no one's on YouTube. and YouTube is out here like vying for them to be there like they're like hey come to our platform like we're popular too but no one's going and it's because anytime you open up a live stream of a YouTube video for the most part it is just terrible it's just like the chat is terrible

what people are saying is terrible I always get recommended QAnon things I don't watch any Q&ON thing and I'm like I don't know why this is being recommended to me but yeah so I mean it's it's they're kind of non in this conversation aside from the VOD, which is where they're happy to be. I think the idea that there's now a lot of competition in this zone

and you're seeing talent deals is going to tell us a lot about how stickies platforms actually are. Yeah, and it's, I just think it's fun to think about kids who are like four, five, six, seven, eight now growing up can actually be like, I want to play video games for living in their parents who are like youngerish or like, yeah, I'll look at Ninja versus like if I was like to my parents, I would like to play Pokemon all day, every day and get paid for it. I would get like slap. And you're like, what are you talking about? Well, you know, we had the CEO of Logitech on the show two weeks ago. And, like, if you just listen to him, all of their moves are, okay, we sell a microphone, we sell a webcam, we bought stream labs, we sell all the gaming peripheral.

Like, he's like, this is a market. Like, people want to do this. We're going to build the entire stack for you outside of your actual PC to do this task. I think it's like, that's just, you can see that business is growing. Well, it's interesting, right? I mean, in terms of, like, you think about how fast Twitch is growing, how, to an extent, fast mixers growing, and then YouTube bring YouTube, every time someone brings up traditional competition with entertainment and subscription-based streaming, read Hastings at Netflix is always like, our competition is YouTube and Facebook and Facebook. Like, that is what we have to compete with. I think that's aspirational.

I think there's basically saying, like, no, about that. Like, that implies that, like, all of your time in the day is sucked up by, like, YouTube, Facebook, and Netflix. And he's like, I got to get more of YouTube time. And it's like, no, I think there are other people who maybe are going to take that slice of the pie read. But it's nice that he's thinking that way. I enjoy the ambition. It's also nice that, like, it's funny because Netflix is like, we want to be YouTube. And every YouTuber I know who's like of a decent popularity is like, how do I get a Netflix deal?

And I was like, you guys should talk. Like, you guys want each other's things. That's beautiful. I think it's safe to say we're proud of everyone. Okay. That's the Vergecast. Thank you for listening. I'm going to start ending the show like that every week.

All of you. Burnouts and success stories alike. We're proud of you. Giant billionaire CEOs and dude in the car. John Hughes would be so proud of you. We're all together. It's all one family that's locked in Apple's ecosystem. Please share your icon storage with me.

That's the Vergecast. We're back on Tuesday. Paul, this one's just for you. I interviewed Amber Balday, who is a blockchain. expert talking about the future of the blockchain. That's coming up on Tuesday. Thursday, we're taping our live show in San Francisco. Isaac Reynolds, he's a product manager of the pixel camera, and Robbie Stein, who's the director of product for Instagram. I've been dying to have this conversation for a long time. So Ashley and Dieter and I're going to be on stage with them.

You can go to our website. You can try to get tickets. You can get on the wait list. Hopefully we're going to open up some more. We're sold out right now. But that's coming out the next day. I think that's going to be just a great conversation. I was just on Vox Media's newest podcast Reset with Ariel DeHem Ross, talking about China, actually. That came out. Go subscribe to Reset. It's a great show. Ariel is a former Verge Reporter. She's one of the best Verge reporters ever come through the building, and now she's back in the family with Reset. So go check that out. You can subscribe to Dieter's newsletter command line at the verge.com slash newsletter.

You might have noticed that Deeter isn't here. I'm going to tell you what happened. Dieter had to leave the show. He stopped us in the middle of taping and said, there's breaking RCS news and I'm the only one who can handle it and ran away. That's a real thing that happened with Deeter. You can tweet at him. He's at BackLon.

I'm not making that up. He tried to make it sound like it was a big imposition then you can tell. He was so happy. He's so stupid. Anyway, Deeter is currently writing Breaking RCS story. He was one like glasses pull away

from entering Superman mode. He's like, I'm the only one. So please read and share Deer's RCS story. He's at Backlestone. I know he would appreciate hearing from you. Julia, what's your Twitter? At Loudmouth, Julia.

Paul? Future Paul. On that reckless, you can tweet at us. We'll see you next week. That's the Vergecast, rock and roll. Paul.