The Vergecast - Samsung announces Galaxy Z Flip 3, Z Fold 3, Watch 4 and Buds 2 / Apple’s controversial new child protection features, explained

Episode Date: August 13, 2021

The Verge's Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, Alex Cranz, and Chris Welch discuss what was announced at Samsung's August Unpacked event, including new foldables. Senior reporter Adi Robertson explains the important changes coming to Apple's Messages and iCloud. Further reading: COVID-19 misinformation is increasing amid US virus surge Kidney transplant patients will test a COVID-19 booster shot in new trial Here’s why Apple’s new child safety features are so controversial  Join us for On The Verge: our exciting 10-year birthday party in New York City Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 announced with much bigger, more useful cover display Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 announced with S Pen support and water resistance  How Samsung beefed up its new folding phones: metal, tape, and a dab of goo Forget the Note — Samsung’s foldables are coming for the Galaxy S as well Google is bringing Samsung to the Apple Watch fight The Galaxy Watch 4 injects Samsung’s capable hardware with Google software Samsung details new smartwatch chip ahead of Galaxy Watch 4 launch Samsung announces Galaxy Buds 2 with active noise cancellation Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 review: nailing the basics with style  Apple’s controversial new child protection features, explained Apple pushes back against child abuse scanning concerns in new FAQ Interview: Apple's head of Privacy details child abuse detection and Messages safety features Senators target Apple’s App Store exclusivity in new bill Senate approves $1 trillion infrastructure package as crypto worries loom Senate cryptocurrency tax reporting deal fails TCL announces new 6-series and 5-series TVs that come with Google TV instead of Roku Valve Steam Deck hands-on: the Nintendo Switch of PC gaming Apple’s 2021 iPhones will reportedly have a video portrait mode HP’s new Chromebase AiO has a screen that rotates from portrait to landscape DOJ letter tells Dish and T-Mobile to figure out CDMA customer migration, or else Dish says it will launch wireless 5G service in beta at the end of September The race to build Africa’s 5G networks is entangled in a U.S. push to cut Huawei’s dominance Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week on the Vergecast, Alex Cranz, Chris Welch, and Addy Robertson join the show to talk about Samsung's new folding phones, what is going on with Apple and privacy, and a few gadgets at the end. Coming up on the Vergecast 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 in your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to retool.com slash Verchcast. We all need to retool how we build software. What's up, y'all. I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for news. nearly 20 years covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds.

Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Hello and welcome to the Birchcast. The flagship podcast folding in half. That's it. That was Vergecast, everybody. Thank you. Rock and roll.

I'm Neil. I'm your friend. We've got a big show today. Deuter Bone is here. I am your dog cobbler. I see. Because Bixby is a dog that wears shoes. We're going to talk about Bixby today.

This implies that you fix not the dog, but the shoes. I just want to maybe not the right part of Bixby to fix, metaphorically. Alex Cranes is here. Hi, I am that film that you're not supposed to remove from a Samsung camera. Oh, Samsung phone. Sorry. We're all picking the wrong parts of the Samsung ecosystem we're focusing on. We're really nailing it.

Addie Robertson is going to join us. Talk about Apple a little bit. Chris Welch is here. Hello, everybody. To help us talk about all this Samsung news. So there is a lot of Samsung news. Z Flip 3 announced. Seafold 3 announced new watch, new galaxy buds.

Lots to talk about with Samsung and whether or not folding phones are indeed the future of our shared humanity. A lot of Apple privacy news, an infrastructure about lots to talk about today. I want to start at the start with COVID. I'm just going to tell you, just go get vaccinated. I can't keep saying it to you on the show. I can't. I can. I can and I will. It's our shared responsibility. But if you're hearing me say it, you should say it's somebody else. Because there's another surge of the virus. And lots of America and the world is, you know, on the map when they go from like green to yellow to red, red all over the place. It's bad. I think we all want to go back to school. We all want to go back to our offices in various ways. And we have stories on the site about it. But misinformation is increasing once again. or on vaccines. It's getting bad.

So please get vaccinated. You can read the stories about misinformation surging on social networks as the virus itself surges again. And then on top of that, if we don't nip this thing in the bud, it appears as though we will need booster shots. Cidney transplant patients are going to start testing COVID-19 booster shots in a trial because they're obviously immunocompromised. We just have a lot of virus coverage and vaccine coverage on our site again. broadly when we make these lists and I see that oh man a lot of virus coverage is back.

That's my indicator. You can look at your graphs. I'm looking at this graph. It's bad. So please be safe. Please wear a mask. Please get vaxed if you haven't already. Please help persuade other people

in your life to get faxed so we can finally bring this thing to an end. Okay. By the way, the other reason I wanted to come to an end is so that we can have our party in October, which we're planning and booking with abandon because I believe in you. but you could fail me.

It's going to be a good party. It's going to be a great party. I'm very excited about this party. I was late to the Vergecast because I was talking about who I want to bring to the party. Did you lock it in? We're working on it. All right. We have a lot of ideas.

It's going to be a great party if we can have it. How do we have it if everyone is responsible? Okay. Samsung event. It happened. It did. It was another live stream. I got to say, we chose not to live blog it because Samsung did the thing that Samsung does

where it gives everybody, you know, all the information. ahead of the embargo. And sometimes we still live blog it because we know that there's going to be a lot of attention. And we think that maybe Samsung didn't tell us everything. This time we didn't. I've tweeted it instead. And, man, I don't know that I have seen a flagship phone launch that had this small splash in a long time. Yeah, it really kind of like hit like a very small rock.

Like not a pebble, bigger than a pebble, but like very small splash. I think it's the leaks. It feels like Samsung more than like any other phone maker. gets hit by like extensive leaks year after year. We know like months in advance. Oh no. Google's just as bad. Well, they just tweet it out themselves at some point.

Well, Samsung is the competitor. Google gets hit by very low expectations and then muddled strategy and then not quite even living up to its own low expectations. Right. And maybe this year it'll be different because they said they're going to like do it. But like for the past several years, it's been we made a mid-range plastic phone. Here you go. The camera is really good, and hopefully Apple will compete with us.

Samsung is supposed to be the big competitor. Oh, yeah. They're the innovator. Don't forget that Samsung has announced this phone, that they would have folding phones at this event. I think no fewer than three times. Like, there was a letter from the president, T.M.R. There was a mention in some other thing. There was a mention on the earnings call.

They told people they could pre-order it before they announced the phones. basically this week's live stream was just like confirmation of stuff that everybody already knew. Here, this is way meta and away from these specific phones. Do you think because these events have just become hour long infomercials that the companies believe that they're actually TV shows and need to be marketed like events like TV shows? Oh my God. Right. Because like what you're kind of describing, you're like pull back. This is how you would market like White Lotus.

Yeah. Right? Like, it's like, there's going to be a show. Like, here's some interviews with some of the cast and like, here's the buildup. It's going live on August 12th. Yeah. The White Lotus. And like, and that's how you would do it or that's how you would market Black Widow. Like, you believe the thing is an event. So you like do all this stuff. Like, I'm surprised like Samsung executive haven't shown up and like for a cover story in the Hollywood reporter or whatever. Like the stuff. And then like they forgot that they're not actually shows. I'm listening to get on Jimmy Kimmel the week before the event. Like they're doing carpal karaoke. But they're not actually shows, and all anybody cares about is the phones. And the shows are actually really not that fun to watch. I mean, that musical. It feels like there's kind of that mistaken.

Yeah. There was a musical at the end, and they did take a tiny, tiny blip of a shot at Apple. They had a bunch of people in, like, Apple store T-shirts with lanyards, and then they ripped them off, and they were all wearing more interesting clothes. And they were like, oh, this is so much better. That's true. That was their Apple shot. I mean, I'll take it. We had this large project, which if Sean Hollister is listening, I'm watching you, buddy.

We're going to publish all these emails we got from the epic Apple case. I was reading a bunch of these old emails and there's a great Twitter account with other internal emails. One of them was like Samsung, when they had the big phones, they were doing the next big thing is here marketing. And Apple and Phil Schiller were totally freaked out that Samsung was winning the marketing paddle and to the point where Apple almost fired its ad agency and there's like a Schiller email that's like we're not getting what we need out of this ad agency because Samsung's ads are better.

This is like Samsung going back to their glory days. So just like dunging on Apple. The lines outside the Apple stores and all that stuff they would make fun of year after a year. Yeah, they would do all that. And like literally there are emails where Schiller's like, we're getting crushed. We got to fire the ad agency. And then they didn't. And Apple continues to sell more phones to anybody.

But like there's like an element of the expectations here. where maybe Samsung is playing the wrong game and being more secretive and more guarded would serve them better to create interest rather than trying to be transparent and create events. Well, the other problem here was Samsung in general, we should get to the phones,

is nobody knows what Samsung's flagship is anymore, right? If you look at just the specs on the flip and the fold, they're basically S-21 specs. So, like, the S-21 is the phone, the flagship phone, but they sell way more of the A-series. The note doesn't exist this year. No one knows what the folding phones are going to cost. And so what is the phone that Samsung thinks is the default one to get hyped over?

What's the answer to that? And I don't think Samsung knows. And I think they're basically splitting their interest. And it's the flip three, right? Is it the flip three? Well, is that your shot, Alex? The flip three. That's my shot.

That's my shot. Deeter? Yeah. I got to tell you, I'm very excited about the flip three. I know I shouldn't be, but I like it a lot. It's so cool looking. Everybody's stealing my thunder.

You know, the moment I saw the flip three, I was smitten. It just feels kind of special in that cream color, and the outer screen actually is functional now. What a thing. And it's $9.99. $1.000, which is probably the biggest deal of all. They could have really not done the $0.99. I want to save $0.99.

It's just good. It's like, you can definitely save the dollar. So several of you have seen it in some combination of flip and fold and watch. Chris, tell us about it. I mean, I watch your video. I'll just tell everybody that when the staff watched Chris's video of the flip three, the number of people were like, oh, crap, I'm going to. Like, Adi Robertson was like, I need to remind myself that I'm happy with my phone.

Because it is, it seems very compelling. Tell us about it. Yeah, it's got all the top specs you want. It's now got a 120-hertz screen. It's got the same cameras as last year, are pretty close to the S-21, good enough for your everyday whatever. And the hinge is better. The screen is 80% stronger, Samsung has told us.

So they made a lot of improvements, and it looks really nice. It looks sturdy, and they're really nice cases. There's this ring case, so you can just kind of carry it around. There's a one where you kind of slide your fingers through and just kind of like hold it on your hand. And so they've kind of come up with all sorts of ways to kind of stylize it and make it stand out even more than it does folded in half. So, yeah, it's a lot of fun. Yeah, I mean, the Samsung's stated goal is to make folding phones mainstream. They've got a huge lead on folding phones, and they want them to just be another option,

a mainstream, viable alternative to the other phones because if you do want a folding phone, you basically got nowhere else to go unless you, you know, are in China, right? Like, there's not a whole lot of other competition out there that they need to worry about. So if they can make folding phones a thing, they have a huge win on their hands. And so the flip is the best case. for that because they got it under $1,000. And so now compared to, say, an S-21, what are the compromises you're making in choosing the flip over an S-21? Like, list them. It might break. Bigger bulge in your pocket. And the bigger bulge in your pocket. And it's more expensive.

Well, there's, I mean, I think there's other compromises, right? Like, there's a crease in the screen. Yeah. Look, man, I've used, I've used creased phones for quite a while now. And what a statement. You were this close to calling me a whippersnapper. I just want you. Like, you were so close to it. But, I mean,

that's real, right? I think the durability thing and that when you unfold it, there's a little crease in the screen. Like, when you think about what will actually make folding phones mainstream, it is a perception that there are no compromises left.

Right. Dieter, you wrote that piece about how they've made it more dust-resistant, more waterproof, all that stuff. Like, they're solving these, like, key engineering challenges,

which are important, and I'm glad they're solving them. there's a part of I'm like, this is just a lot of hacks, right? Like you want the phone to fold, so you've created a new class of problems that you are then solving, but you could also just get an S-21 and you wouldn't have this problem and there wouldn't be a crease. And like that I think isn't that, that to me feels like the dynamic, even though the flipping is really cool.

I think that's right. I mean, it's also, um, Samsung just understood, I think that there's not going to be a paradigm shift in cameras or screens or like other traditional phone specs. So it needs to do something. to differentiate. It needs to do something to, like, Samsung's whole identity is putting stuff out before Apple does. That's who they are. That's what they want to do. So they have to, right? And you're right that they're solving problems that they created, but I don't know, I think they're solving them in relatively clever ways. I think that there's other stuff I wish they would do. I wish they would

figure out a way to have the phones fold completely flat, or at least the fold. It still has a little bit of a gap there. There's other stuff that they could improve on, but it's all interesting because it's all hardware stuff. It's all like material science and how do the gears fit and fit and finish, stuff that Samsung is traditionally good at. None of that stuff is a competition for more anymore on other phones, right? It's not a competition for who can make the best bezel, right? The best beveled edge, the best aluminum rail. Like, none of that stuff differentiates the way it used to. Chris, you've played around this thing. What do you think? It feels a lot better than the past couple have. I think the screens feel a lot better than last year because like last year they were kind of

tacky and grippy. This time they actually feel more like actual screens, which sounds kind of silly to say when you're used to using like an iPhone or like a galaxy has something else every day. But now they actually feel a lot better. They can't get nicked or scratched up as easier as last time. And so that's kind of a big difference that makes you feel like more confident and just comfortable that it will hold up over time. But like there's no way to tell like will these keep on breaking after six months of just standard usage. There are people. I've had these phones just break for no good reason. And so I think Samsung seems more confident than ever.

And I think Dieter can speak to this later that they have solved for like 95% of this stuff. But we'll see. Okay. I have a question. If this, I like in my head, I know there's all the different area of reality tests. But the one for me is like when you get home at the end of the day and you're like just throwing, taking, getting ready, being like relieved that you're no longer at work. Would you be able to throw your phone onto your bed? And it potentially bounce off the bed onto the ground.

And you would feel confident that it will still be functional. It's a very revealing question. I don't know anyone who does this. Also, you work at home. What is happening at the end of your workday? Got to give that phone a good toss at the end of the day. Yeah. No closing my laptop.

It's just chucking things across the room. So I bought in return to Galaxy Z-Fold 2 last year. And I dropped it and it hit the concrete. and the glass broke, but it broke in exactly the same way that any other phone would have broken. It did not shatter in a unique or different way. It just shattered in a standard phone way.

What's super weird about all these phones is everyone's like, okay, you got to make sure that if the screen doesn't form a crack, you got to get rid of the crease, you got to make sure that dust doesn't get in there because that's what made the first galaxy get canceled slash delayed. Everyone's like, fix that, fix that, fix that. And instead they're like, oh, we made it waterproof.

We fixed the other stuff, too. but we made it waterproof. And nobody was expecting waterproofing. But now that it's there, it's another reason for me to be like, oh, yeah, no, I actually feel better buying this phone in a weird way. It's like one little piece of, I don't know, delicacy that's gone now in theory. So before we go into that, because I think that leads us into the fold three, which I'll point out, the delicacy of which Dieter pointed out loudly enough that Samsung delayed

the launch. but before we get there, let's talk about one more thing on the flip, which is the big feature, the new screen on the front, right? So the fold is like you fold it and there you just, there's an Android phone on there. And I understand exactly how that works. I'm less clear on the flip. What is that little screen for? What does it do? How does it work? So it shows you like notifications. There are like widgets on there for music and your calendar and weather and timers and all sorts of stuff. And so it just feels like so much more useful than the first one, which is like this little tiny oval that like did nothing but show you the time basically. So they clearly learned from like the razor which got this right. This was one of the few things that the razor got right. But but yeah. So it shows like notifications. You can put like wallpapers on there. So is it a little tiny phone? No, it's not a full phone. Yeah. Okay. So it's like a little tiny widget phone. Yeah. Can you type on it? You cannot type on it. You can talk to Bixby on it to reply to messages however. I could. I could talk to Bixby.

always a choice lingering over this entire convoy feels like just enough where you can like take your phone out and like do things you need to and like sunification and like do something without having to open it all the way like it feels like there are situations that where you can actually pull your phone out

do something on that little small screen and then I'll just put your phone away so you're not quite always in that open phone fully zoned into it type mode do you get like all the notifications or just like the Samsung branded messaging app notifications. I think you get all of them.

I'm not quite sure how much you can act on from the small screen. You can definitely see all of them. It'll also let you sync the theme to the watch, if you want. So if you've got a cute watch face on the watch, you can get the same sort of, you know, look and feel on the outside screen.

I don't like how you guys are trying to convince me to buy this phone that I don't need. They're not, actually. They're just describing it to you. They're just describing it. It sounds like they're holding me down saying, buy this phone. I don't need it.

This is what I mean. Are everyone, you just like start talking about it and people are like, I kind of want this phone. Yeah. Like, you see a picture of it in that cool little ring case that Chris is talking like, oh yeah. I can imagine myself leaving my home. Spin that ring case on my finger while like waiting for the train, hopefully not flinging it into oblivion. Yeah, you go for a run like keep it in your hand with the ring. It seems super clever.

I mean, I will never do that. But yes, I could. The thing about this phone is instead of saying it's a folding phone or no, I don't know about the la, which is like, it's a folding phone. The end. Right. And I think this is, I don't know if Samsung's going to make the phones mainstream this year, but I firmly believe this is the year where a bunch of people are like, yep, folding phones are awesome. I have one. I love one.

I'm okay. Having spent the money way more than last year. And a bunch of people are like, no, you're, I still don't believe you. You're crazy. And there's going to be this split where people are going to get accused of being. Samsung like hype lords when really they just got a folding phone because why not? Well, so this we should talk about the fold. There's one question about the flip that I've always had.

And I think the screen kind of complicates the question is, is the point of the phone folding that you have a regular size phone that gets smaller and less distracting. And this is why I think the screen complicates a little bit because obviously having notifications is like the thing that is distracting. But at least you're not like, oh, I checked a text. Now I'll read Twitter for five hours, right? Like, can you put TikTok on that screen? Because that would really destroy my entire.

But, but like is the point of the folding to have a regular phone that gets smaller and less distracting and you can literally close it and be done? Or is the point to have a tablet that gets smaller and is your phone. And when you want to do other stuff, you get a tablet. And obviously, Samsung has both ideas in classic Samsung fashion. They're like, whichever one makes you pay us. Yeah. Great. But I want both.

But I think this is like a big, like eventually the people are going to pick one or the other, it seems like. That's, that's, that's, that's, Samsung's betting no. Samsung's betting that, like, there'll be, they'll be super nerds that want the tablet that turns into a phone. And then there'll be normals that just want the phone that folds if they want it to. So let's talk about the fold. And then, because I want to come back to that because Sean wrote a piece about how, like, speaking the S-21, like, these are just coming. The way that the galaxy note doesn't need to exist anymore. these are coming for the S-21.

But before we get there, let's talk about the fold itself. So they've done the durability stuff with the fold as well, yes? Yeah, that's right. They did all the durability stuff with the fold. Plus, they also added a couple of Wacom digitizers, and so it's compatible with a stylus, but not the styli that currently exist. You can't use a current S-Ped on it.

If you try to use a current S-Pet on it, there's no reason that the digitizer couldn't read it, but they don't want it to, because that stylus doesn't retract, you see, and it has a harder nib on the tip of it that you write with. And that could maybe potentially damage the screen, which is... Oh, boy. So what they've done is they've created a special version of the stylus

that has a retractable, softer, rounder nib. If you use the old stylus on it, it will pop up a warning saying this stylus doesn't work. When you say retractable, it was just like spring loaded? So if you push too hard, it's just spring loaded. Yeah. So if you push out it, it like goes into the body of the pen. I guarantee you I can still scratch the screen with that. Oh, for sure.

I tried. I was pushing down pretty hard at the hands-on event and I didn't leave like a single mark. Really? If you've seen the screens before, they had this, I don't know what the material was, this like squishy polymer, right? And now it just feels like a standard screen protector. So it feels way better. I don't have a, I don't have a stylus here, so I can't test that. But, you know, I'm looking at the phone right now.

It has a crease. I continue to not care about the crease. You know, 120 hertz on the outside, and the outside screen is nice and big. There is one thing that is new about the screen that I think we should discuss, and that is that the selfie camera inside the fold is four megapixels,

and the reason it's four megapixels is they have made it under the screen, and so it's an underscreen selfie camera. I'm going to say sort of, because I'm looking at this thing right now, and it looks like a screen door. Basically take, you know, you're like more pixel density enthusiasts, you know, take your standard screen pixel density and divide it by a thousand.

And it's got this moire, moray, moir, I don't know how to pronounce the word. M-O-I-Mare effect, where if you like move your head or the phone just a little bit, the screen over the selfie camera has that little effect on it. And it just draws your eye to it instantly. and you cannot unsee it's just constantly there. But those pixels are lit up. Well, they're lit up when the screen is lit up.

You got to buy a ZV1. Yeah. So you can't. Oh, I can see it. So Aditer is holding it up to his laptop camera. Yeah. And even on the low resolution laptop camera, you can pretty clearly see where the camera is.

The effect looks completely different in video that it does in person. And video is like distracting in like the opposite way, but still distracting. So yeah, huge mistake to put. But they should have just put a hole on it. Nobody would have complained. But when it's lit up, it's in the menu bar, right?

So it's basically just kind of like white all the time. Yeah, it's only when you've got a full screen app that happens to have white or some other color over there. Or if you're like using it in, you know, landscape mode because you're trying to get a tablet interface and then some text hits it. That looks terrible. Wait, so describe what it looks like. When you say lower pixel density, like if you like drag an image over it, is it just like blocky in that circle? Yeah. Like the circle is like I can almost count the pixels here.

It's like, I don't know, 30 pixels. Like 15 white and 15 black pixels. I'm like staring at them. It looks like a icon from a 1985 Mac. So the way I thought under display cameras would always work would be the way, you know, there of like those windows that black out. Yeah. I always thought it would be like that where like the pixels light up and then when you use the cameras,

the pixels turn transparent, and then the camera can work. This sounds like they just removed a number of pixels, and the camera's like looking past the rest of them. No, when you turn the camera on, the pixels go black, right? So it can see it. And then when you turn the camera off, it tries to cover it with screen. It's just that it's such a low-density screen, that it constantly looks like you're staring at a screen through a screen door.

Okay. I think this is maybe not the best conversation for radio. Yeah, yeah. Here's the thing. I just complained about the selfie camera for five minutes or whatever. Otherwise, the phone is great. Like, I mean, if you can spend $1,800 on this thing, they've done a slightly better job with the multitasking. The screen feels way better. It's just like a very nice, fine phone that is very, very Samsung-y in certain ways. Usually that means software. Yeah. And you know, like the software is slightly better. Samsung, we'll talk about this when it comes to the watch too. They never even talk about. Google or Android anymore. It's all about OneUI. Wait, how's the Microsoft Teams interface? Oh my God. I'm sure it's fine. I refuse to open it. It's not that different from the last version of OneUI. You really don't notice a whole lot of differences. What they've done is you can you can pin a dock to the right hand of the screen to make it easier to multitask. You can,

it's easier to sort of resize your multitasking windows and like move them around before you had to have this really rigid, like, one on the left and then two on the right in the exact square. Now you can resize stuff however you want. It's easier to, like, drag windows from one position to another. It's actually more flexible in some ways than the iPad interface, but they're really not that far apart anymore. The thing to know is that, you know, Samsung's quest to never have an end to the settings and options is going very well.

There's just there's just a lot. and trying to find stuff is getting even harder. There's a new labs feature that lets you make apps fit the screen that aren't designed to fit the screen. If you want to, there's just, there's a bunch, a bunch, a bunch of options that you're going to eventually like, be like, what is this or I need that? And it'll take you an afternoon of Googling to figure it out. But I don't know, man, computers are complicated, especially tablet computers. So one of the things that strikes me is like with the little screen on the front of, of the flip, they didn't really specify what apps would support it with widgets and that sort of thing.

With the fold, it's like, now you've got a tablet. Let's engage the Android tablet ecosystem. So they say they've got your favorite apps that'll work with it now. I forget the number. It might be like 50 or something. They've gotten optimized. I haven't run into any apps that are like critically broken. There are a few apps from like, man, you could have done just a little bit of work to make this look nice on a bigger screen.

I'm looking at you, Slack. You can't have a, like, a list of your channels on the left-hand side when you're in, like, you've got all the screen mail estate. Instagram, of course, is a nightmare on the tablet interface. You basically do the black bars because Instagram refuses to admit that screens have different aspect ratios. But otherwise, like, I haven't run any, like, real giant showstoppers. Yeah.

And then all the split screen stuff, mostly the same is kind of what I'm getting. Yeah, mostly the same, but it's a little bit more flexible. And, like, I'm reviewing this thing. We'll end up talking about the review a little bit next year. I've only been playing around with it for, I don't know, a day or so. So this is definitely not final opinions. But just in terms of impressions, it weighs slightly less than before. It's still a big double-thick phone, right?

It's a giant thing. It looks nicer. Just as you're waving it around, it looks nicer than before. Like all the reasons that Nelai, you use an iPhone 12 Pro Max instead of a regular iPhone, you just want the bigger screen. Like, this is that, but more. Yeah. I just I can't when we talk about the durability piece you wrote like the thing that I'm stuck on Samsung wants to make folding phones happen and they've picked sort of like this evolutionary pathway

Right. They've got the polymer screen and this is how it folds and They've got brushes and special oils on the gears because they got to make it waterproof and They made a special glue that hardens into like they're going down this road and I I think the question I'm asking myself is I really believe eventually all phones will fold. Like in terms of things you can sell to people, it folds in half is about as simple as it gets, right? Like, it's not some complicated camera, HDR system. It's not integration with your locking ecosystem, your prison of features. I don't know if you've noticed, but laptops have had a pretty stable form factor for quite a while. Yeah. It's just like, it seems very obvious that like there's value to making the screen bigger by

unfolding it, whether it's make it smaller so it fits in your pocket or turn it into one way or the other. The mechanism by which it folds, Samsung has like gone down this pathway. Motorola went down a different road, right, with a weird curling hinge. I just can't tell if

Samsung is just stubborn or if this is actually the right way to do it. Oh yeah, I have no idea. With the crease. And like, that's where I'm just like stuck. It feels like the crease is right. It feels like the crease is right. Yeah, I feel like, I feel like,

I feel like if you're going to like solve the problem and there's lots of super smart people trying to figure out how to get rid of the crease, that's going to happen. Like they're now ahead versus the people who are doing the giant hinge in the curve, right? Like they're just, it's more futuristic. It's cooler to have like a little crease than to have like something that is a huge bulge in your pocket. Yeah. I don't know. Like what about the duo though? Two screens.

You could have a front screen on there too. Yeah. That'd be pretty cool. Like, you can do that. There's a reason I can get one for probably the same price as the flip three right now. Like, like, it just seems like this is, I don't know, I just really, this is what I want all of my iPads, all of my Kindles, who will get there faster, by the way, because it's superior. All of them are going to, like, do it better if they have the, if, like, if we're getting as thin as possible, the bigger the gap, the worse. Like, no one is going to.

Well, I mean, someone bought the razor phone. But, like, no one's really going to buy something with a big gap like that. Yeah, I'm just getting to, like, Samsung is also the display manufacturer, right? So eventually they will figure out a bunch of stuff. And just by dint of being the company they are, other people will be able to buy it. That's just like, that's how Samsung works. And they're going to make so much money. Like, I think that's part of the play here, right?

Like, like, this is as much like a showcase for Samsung displays as it is for, Samsung phone makers. I can't tell if it's the software that needs to get all the way there first or the hardware or whether I just keep thinking, you know the fish that live at the bottom of the ocean and they've got the thing and they like, they live on sulfurous gases and they're like glow in the dark. Like the ones with a little like lamp thing. Those are, I think they're actually called lanternfish.

I should have definitely just known this. But like it's just like a different evolutionary pathway. And I can't decide if like Samsung is on that road. and eventually be like, dude, look at this fish. Like every time we perceive one of these phones. And then like someone else, like Apple shows up. And they, like Apple would never ship a phone with a crease, right? Right.

And they're going to wait until Samsung display solves this problem or someone else solves this problem. Could be LG. I think we've heard from Microsoft in the past that they really believe that folding glass is the thing, not all this polymer stuff. Right. There's another approach that like Corning isn't working on for years. And in the meantime, Apple's like figuring out how to force its app ecosystem to play nicely with whatever it's doing. And when they, do you mean? Yeah.

It's hard to tell which pathway you're on other than folding is good. Yeah. I think we're just like, you know, when there's the split. And before the split, things are kind of like muddy and wavy. We're just in that muddy space. Yeah. We're like one of those fish that are trying to walk out of the ocean. And then like six years from now, we're going to be like, man, that gap, who did?

that. That's dumb. Crease all the way. I mean, yeah, just think of the creases as an early pentile display and then eventually they figure it out and learn how to make it good. Yeah, that's true. I was so mad about those about six years ago, as it turns out. Okay, let's talk. Well, actually, I mentioned this thing about the S-21.

Sean has this piece up. I'm curious, Dieter and Chris, you've seen the phones. It does feel like the S-21 is, it's not selling well. The S-20 didn't sell well. It feels like its days are number. is Samsung heads in this direction more and more? I think so. I think there's still room for like the super ultra phone, obviously, the S-21 Ultra,

because it has those cameras that the other phones don't have quite, and you've got your 100 times space zoom, which somebody out there bought it for that. But I think in terms of like the plain old, like base level S-21, yeah, there's not really much compelling about it anymore to go for it, especially at the price when the flip is so close to it now. It seems like a no-brainer to go for the cool futuristic thing over the tired old slab of glass. Yeah, I mean, the other problem the S-S-21 has is it's getting attacked from the top. There's the ultras and then there's these folding phones.

But the A-series phones, like just look at a bunch of the reviews that Allison has done. They're really good. It's hard to make the case to justify buying an S-21 when there's like an A-71 sitting right there and you lose out on like camera quality. That's like the main thing that you're, like, the main thing that you're, lose out on for a, you know, actual day-to-day experience thing. It's in a weird zone. Then the F-E, which we haven't seen this year, there's been no F-21 FE, because I think

last year they realized there was maybe too good of a phone that leaves that seriously cut into the S-20. Yeah, the A-C is great. It's like those two lines, like the foldables on top, and you've got your A-series down below, and I guess that's why there's no more note. Well, but this is a problem for Android generally. Like, what's the standard bearer? Like, we talk about flagship.

The point of a flagship is to be the thing that, like, leads the way and it's the one everyone recognizes and Samsung's trying to make it folds. I don't think that they're being very successful right now. I don't think it's the S20 series anymore. Maybe. And I guess maybe Google's going to take a crack at it with the pixel. I keep talking about this weird relationship between Google and Samsung. Yeah.

And maybe this is like how in this, right into the watch. But like maybe this is the solution. They're like, sure, Google, you're 45 years late to this market we think is dying. Yeah. By all means, compete with the S-21. We're going to push the state of art forward with folding and dominate the low end. And, like, Google's like, yes, we are finally ready. Our time to shine right in the middle.

Mediocrity, yeah. I just, like, where's the tension? It feels like there should be a lot of tension in this relationship right now. And everyone's just, like, kind of happy. And it's like, oh, because Samsung's walking away from this zone Google finally wants to be in. Yeah. Oh, that could be. Yeah. That's interesting. We'll see. Well, that brings us to the watch. They announced, Samsung announced the new Galaxy Watch 4. It runs WareOS 3, not Tyson. Correct. But WareOS 3 is Tyson. I mean, it's not not Tyson. It's WareOS. It has the WareOS interface where you swipe up for apps and you swipe over for tiles and swipe down for settings. It runs WareOS apps. So Spotify is here. Google Maps is.

here, finally, a bunch of other stuff. A bunch of apps are going to get updated. So Samsung and Google threw some money at, I don't know, Spotify and Strava and whoever else to like make their apps good on WearOS instead of existing on WareOS, which is where some of them were before. So it's WareOS. However, this is Samsung's watch. Most of the watch faces are Samsung designed. And I'm just going to I'm just going to list off the apps that I see in order on the launcher here looking at it right now. You ready? I'm so excited. This is, this is, this would be very, very good radio.

Samsung phone, Samsung contact, Samsung Health, Samsung Messages, Samsung EEG, Google Maps, Google Play, Samsung Compass, Samsung Search, Samsung Weather, Bix B, Samsung Calendar, Samsung Pay, Samsung Timmer, Samsung Clock, Samsung Clock, Samsung Clock, Samsung Photos, Samsung World Clock, Samsung Buds, Samsung Music, Samsung Music Player, Samsung Camera, Samsung Alarm. Wait, you said clock, world clock, alarm, and alarm clock. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a lot. Outlook. And then Samsung Global Happy Time, I forget the name of this. Samsung Global Goals where you, like, somehow contribute to charity by giving Samsung data. It's very confusing. They should have named it Samsung Global Happy Time.

If you're listening to this, Steve Mixby. You can still do it. This is your time. And then finally, Samsung calculator. It uses Samsung pay. Wait, I have a number of questions about that list. first of all. So one of the main things I took away from that experience was that that list is not an alphabetical order.

Well, no. That's not how the launcher works. Do they all say Samsung? No, it's just icons. Okay, okay. Just check it. I was thinking it was like an actual list you were looking at. No, that would be amazing.

Samsung pay is what you're talking about. I use Samsung pay. I can't get it to work with Google Pay. It uses Bixby, and I cannot figure out, I don't think. it's possible to get Google Assistant on this thing. In fact, they said that this will have, you know, that's going to have Bixby at launch and maybe Google Assistant someday. Wow.

So, yeah, it's running Google's operating system, but it is Samsung's watch. Okay. This is what I mean by this relationship is really weird right now. Well, okay, so here's the thing. They've launched their new big smartwatch platform to, like, finally give a good smartwatch option to Android users. It's like the third time they've launched this platform. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And the Samsung watch will work with other Android devices. It won't work with the iPhone, by the way. That's new for WearOS. Not that anyone would ever want to. But yeah, Google's flashy new smartwatch operating system is basically Bixby and Samsung's stuff until we don't know. Like, fossil is going to introduce some stuff. Pixel Watch, the long fabled pixel watch that just never materializes. They're going to be making more Fitbit devices.

Like, Pixel Watch is a rumor land right now. I have no idea when it's getting released. I don't think it's going to be this year. Fossil is doing upgrades late next year. Tickwatch will be upgradeable sometime next year. Who else makes WearOS watches? Name one. LG got out of the game.

Motorola got out of the game. Michael Coors. It's fossil. Yeah. It's like Luxottica. Does Luxottica own fossil? I wouldn't be surprised. If you don't know, it looks out because it's a company that makes literally every

sunglass brand. So even if you think you are at cross-shopping, they're just getting your money. Monopoly's great. But here's my question. Like, that's fine. It's Samsung's watch. We presume Google is going to make a watch. We presume.

Well, I mean, they did buy. You know they're working at one. There's rumors. They're out there. Yeah, yeah. Is that, is that, like, real competition? Like, Samsung, they're making their own chip for this watch. Like there's a part of it

It's like okay fine They made a Bixby watch They're Samsung Of course they did Yeah It does all the health stuff Right there's a lot of health stuff Yeah yeah yeah

Because I feel like that's like For a long time There was like the fashion I'm using quotation marks here The fashion smart watches Like the Michael core The whole fossil series And Samsung

And then there was like Fitbit and Apple watch Doing all the stuff That people actually cared about Which is all the heart rate monitoring and stuff So this is like The first time Samsung's really

kind of in that space too? Yeah, it's not the first time, but it's like, it's definitely their biggest effort in quite a while. So, blood oxygen, body composition, so I know what my muscle mass is within a certain degree of accuracy, which is probably pretty low. EEG, I know that I have sinus rhythm, although sometimes it says I don't, even though I know that's not true. It also can do blood oxygen. It can do like sleep detection stuff.

So if you have the watch, you can plug the phone in and have its microphone active next to your bed and it can do snore detection. and like sync that up with your, you know, sleep patterns at the time, you know, on and on and on, step counting, fifth, blah, blah, blah. All that is interesting. All that requires a healthy level of trust in Samsung Health, whose terms of service are, you know, vague. And do you want to live in the Samsung Health world, right? And are you committed to it forever?

Because a lot of it is, like, doing it for a long time. A lot of the benefit of any of these health devices is you're going to wear it for five years or something. You can put on any heart rate detector and have it tell you that your heart is beating. I mean, I did put Google Fit on the watch, and it seems to be able to access some of the sensors and do Google Fit stuff. So you could, you know, when you get a Samsung phone and you want to desamsongify it and you like to save a lapse and hide apps and put Google apps and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You could do like a quarter of that on this watch. Do you think that will change once the presumed Google watch comes out and more of the stuff is available? Or is this just Samsung's watch?

I mean, this watch is just Samsung's watch. Who knows what the future holds? Let me tell you a story. Next year, Google's going to try really hard and compete on hardware. The Vergecast. So this leads me to the other piece. Right. The idea that you're going to buy a Samsung phone and a Samsung watch.

and now the sad prediction that we've been making for years is that you now have to buy the proprietary headphones that work best with your phone has really and truly arrived. I'm very upset about this, but so it goes. Chris, you've got the buds too, right? Yeah. So they cost $149. I think they're going to be like the new go-to pick if you're buying a Samsung phone. Like you just said, Eli. People with an iPhone buy AirPods.

People with Samsung phones buy buds. and I guess Jabbera and Sony and all these branches kind of live in the middle and try to pull people away. Oh, no. Who could have ever predicted that weird proprietary extensions to the Bluetooth stack would have led to a shrinking of the headphones market in a total act of competition? That's the Vergecast, rock and roll. But they're pretty good for what they are. They sound really close to the Buds Pro. Like, I'm not sure why you would opt for the Buds Pro.

There are some reasons like the Buds Pro. They've got better waterproofing. These are only IPX2, which is not great. Not great at all. Yeah. Don't go out in the rain with ease or... Don't go out in the rain? Don't go out in the rain or sweat like I do, especially.

Don't exist in a New York summer. But they're tiny though, right? They're super tiny. So for my ears, which are big, admittedly, they sit so flush. Like, if you look at me head on, you can't tell that they're in. Wow. Until you're outside in the rain in New York and they explode. You just collapsed to the ground, electrocuted.

Yeah, for listeners you don't know, like, summer New York is often like, it's sweaty and I'm sweaty and it's raining. Like, that combination of things is very common in this city. But yeah, they sound good. They sound pretty close to the boats. Pro. The ANC is decent for 149. It'll do the job on the subway, on a coffee shop or whatever else. So, yeah, like, once these go on sale or start to be, like, bundled with Samsung phones, it's going to be a no-brainer for a lot of people.

And they're good. The battery life is five hours with ANC on. 7.5 with it off. So I don't know who has to listen to earbuds for longer than that these days. But the Buds Plus did last longer. Those were 11 hours of battery life. So if you are that

person who listens to some kind of audio for 11 hours straight, then these are a setback. But otherwise... So here's the thing. I am that person. I want to be able to use it at the office all day and just leave them in, which means that I need them to work with other things that aren't Samsung devices.

And therefore, I want to turn off the A&C while it's not connected to a Samsung device. And you can't because it's proprietary. You can toggle between A&C and transparency, but I do not think you can just turn it on and off. That's at least how the Buds Pro worked for me. I'm assuming that these are the same sort of deal. That's true.

Yep. So you can add the option for off, but you need the Samsung app to do that. Mine actually came with the touch controls turned off until I had the app and turned them on in the app. So when I first got them out of the box, they did nothing when I tell. Amazing.

So I don't think that's the way it's supposed to be. I wish that I wish there was an audio version of Neely's face right now. I just told you so. I like, I can't. The next step of this, I swear, is various music services are going to only work with some kinds of headphones. Spatial audio. A spatial audio higher, like right now the loss of the stuff in Apple Music. barely works with Apple's own headphones, right?

Maybe beats. You can just see Apple's going to put out some headphones, and their lossless audio will work with it, and Spotify's lostless audio won't work with it. It is coming for you, and that will effectively be another kind of audio deal. I'm going to stop. Should we just all, like, go back to, like, the sure 835s or whatever, just $1,000 wired headphones? Yes, that's what we all need. Do you have those? Like, the In-earment?

They were great. Oh, yeah. I loved them. Like, I only recently, like maybe a year ago, switch to wireless. Do you have like the metal case? Yeah. Here's what we're going to do this pot. We're going to take a break.

We're going to come back. Alex and I are going to do a full hour on old school shore headphones. It's going to be amazing. Stay tuned. You're going to love it. You won't be able to hear what we're talking about at all because you're using your AirPods. I get it, right? This is the way the world works.

But I just promise you that as the headfirst. phones, we become more linked in proprietary ways to the phones. We used to like cover and review lots of different kinds of headphones. It was like some of our most popular coverage. And like all those companies are dying. I find it depressing. It's just like Jabra, who admittedly I just bought a pair of Jabras. Like they're on their way. They're currently lost in the mail. They're lost to the mail. Very excited when they show up. They're like doing the security scans at the Post office and they're like, what are the headphones?

Not from Apple? We don't understand this. It's funny that I wouldn't be complaining about any of this if they just called these the galaxy beans. Yes. I would have been fine with this whole space. You're just holding it hot. All right.

Dieter, Chris, anything else about Samsung we need to know? I mean, that's the long and the short of it. Chris actually brought up a really good point that if you want to buy the buds too, it might be worth waiting for a discount. Samsung phone prices always eventually get discounted. And I'll be very curious to see if that happens with this latest generation of folding phones. My suspicion is it might not, and that is another reason that Samsung is so interested in them. They still will.

Didn't the folds have gone down historically? It took a while, yeah. But towards the end of the life, they did. Not like right away like usual. Okay. Well, Chris, thank you very much. Always good to see you. Absolutely.

Thank you. We're going to take a break. We'll be right back with Addy. Let's talk about what is going on with Apple. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from Shopify. Starting something new isn't just hard. It can be really scary, too.

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That's upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's upw-w-rk.com. Upwork.com. Addie Robertson, welcome. Hi. So you have been assigned coverage of Apple's child abuse protection technology. suite. I don't know how else to describe. Their child safety initiatives. They announced it last week. There's a lot of controversy. They have done a lot of talking this week, although most of it

on background. So they've done one interview with Matt Penzerino and TechCrunch. But they've clarified a lot of things over time. So just explain people where we're at with it right now. So last week, Apple announced basically three changes that, like you said, they're like a child protection suite for the upcoming versions of mostly iOS and iPad OS, but also there's some stuff for Monterey and watch OS. But basically, first change is the pretty uncontroversial one, which is that if you search for child abuse-related queries in Siri or search, it's going to give you specific resources for that. And then there is a change to messages that is basically when you're using messages, it's going to scan, it's going to add an option for parents that will scan kids under 18s messages in coming and outgoing for basically it's calling in an explicit content filter or sexually explicit filter, but it's basically it sounds like it's nudity.

If it finds something that looks like nudity via image recognition, that it says, okay, hey, do you really want to view or send this? And then another option, if the child's under 13, is that if they do say they want to, then it sends a notification to their parents. So that's its own thing. And then the third part, which most of the attention has focused on, is that they're going to scan ICloud photos, specifically photos, for child sexual abuse material. and they're going to do this. It's a thing that lots and lots of cloud services do, but they're doing it in a particularly unusual way that's processed partly on your phone or tablet,

and that's causing a lot of controversy. Okay, so let's split these up. The first one, obviously, the serious stuff. The I-Messaged nudity detection, for better or worse, has generated its own separate controversy, and we need to be pretty clear about what it's doing, what the controversy is. So that one is it's just looking at photos.

Your device is looking at photos that you're going to send or receive an iMessage. If you're under 18, it will blur them and say, you're under view it. Under 13, right? No. If you're under 18, it'll just like, do you want to see it? So this makes it even more complicated. Yep, it's very complicated. If you are under 13, if you send or view the images after the flag, it'll tell your parents.

Your parents have to enable it. So there's just a lot of controversy here. because one, unlike the CSAM monitoring and ICloud photos, there's no known data set of bad stuff, right? The device is looking at new photos and trying to tell what they are and then blurring and then potentially notifying your parents if you're under 13.

So this is like a, and it's all happening locally. Like Apple isn't seeing your photos. I message remains end-end encrypted. But this is like in and of itself a big, big deal. It's not quite as big of a deal is the iCloud photos C-Sam scanning. It's just itself a big deal. And the more that we've gone into this,

the fact they announced these two things at once seems like Apple made a gigantic error in messaging how the things work. Because the controversy around the I-Message stuff is, boy, there's a lot of kids out there with bad family situations who are thinking about coming out of the closet, who are exploring their sexualities,

who are thinking about gender transition. And those parents now have an opportunity to get flagged or set the ages lower for their kids and get flagged for it. Like, it's a big problem, especially because the phone, there's no known database of illegal content involved. The phone is just looking at stuff. You're relying on like an Apple algorithm. Yep, that we don't understand how it works. It's trained on pornography. Right.

But we, like what you can describe things a lot of ways. Like, we don't know it's efficacy rate. We haven't seen inputs. in outputs. We don't know where its error rate will be. And the stuff around controls and surveillance is obviously, like, difficult for a variety. There's a lot of parents who are good parents, and they just don't want their kids sexting. And they have a healthy relationship, and this is good for them. There's a lot of parents who are bad parents, and this will, like, damage their children in other ways. And, like, Apple hasn't, like, engaged those conversations.

So that's one whole controversy. And if all they had announced was that, we would spend an hour we're talking about that. But because they announced this other thing, we spent all this time talking about that. And this messages situation has been like, it's second. It's like, we'll get to that in a minute. Right. Like, also something we should discuss. But I just want to point out, it's a real controversy. There are real harms. We have to, I think there's some reporting to be done around the flagging, around how easy it is to set ages and change ages in ICloud for your family. Like, there's a lot of complexity here that Apple hasn't really talked about in many ways, especially on the record. And they haven't documented.

And then it's like just general child welfare reporting that needs to interact with how the system actually works and what it's doing. And it's almost like, is it safe to characterize it almost as like Apple kind of building in nannyware? I don't want to call it stalkerware because I don't think that's, that feels a little too. strong, but it's like they've built in something that's existed before this. Yeah. And it's super easy to get around. Like the kids can just go download WhatsApp or Signal and they're fine. Snapchat exists in this world.

You know, like very, I don't know why 13 year olds on Signal, send in scoops. Yeah, it doesn't make like, like it's just this weird thing because it's like so easy to circumvent it seems like. But also like so invasive. Yeah. Right. And then the real issue, and I had Rihanna Pefricorn and Jen King from Stanford on Decoder this week. And they're like, the real issue is predation in IMessage. So like what you actually need are reporting tools in I message where like someone's being weird to me. And that gets flagged up to a moderator at Apple. And none of that exists at all. Right. There's just this thing. So I just want to bracket that. I think we Apple needs to talk about that more. We just haven't learned much more about it. And we kind of skimmed over it last week because we were all reacting to the big thing. And the big thing is. still the big thing. I just don't want to, I don't want anyone to think that we're just skimming over it. Like, it's a big deal. And I think there's a lot of complexity to it. It's just everyone's focuses on this other thing. Is that about right, Addy? That's just the sense that I've

gotten. Yeah. No, I think that's right. And there are definitely, there are places that are talking a bunch about it. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has gone really deep into the I-Message thing. But the CSAM scanning is what most of the focus has been on. Okay. So, hopefully we'll learn more about the messages thing. The big difference is the messages thing is like on-device ML trained on a pornography data set trying to detect imagery. The CSAM detection in I've cloud photos. There's a known database of illegal photos and Apple's trying to detect them as they get uploaded to ICloud. They've said much more about the system this week. Addy, what have we learned? Oh, boy. So we've learned that you can, first of all, the big thing is that Apple's clarified that if you turn off iCloud photos sync, then absolutely none of this system runs.

And that even though there's a lot of this that takes place sort of on your phone side, Apple finally said on the record that it's all going to just turn off. It doesn't run any matches. So that's sort of, that's kind of a key issue. Yeah, can we briefly just stay on that point in particular? The fact that it took forever to just get clarity on that specific issue is frustrating. I know Neely and Adi you were both engaging this very directly. It's also, how do we feel about the fact that this is tied to an iCloud toggle? I mean, obviously they don't want to put in a toggle that says like, you know, scan for abuse imagery, right?

They're not going to give you that. but it is, it's interesting that they tied it to that in some ways to me. I don't know, I don't know quite what to think about that. I mean, it makes sense if you think of this as being like, look, Google, Facebook, Twitter, a bunch of places, if you put a thing on the cloud, they're going to scan it. If you just think of this as Apple, which Apple, I think does, that they decided we're going to finally scan iCloud. Scanning iCloud is a thing that we've kind of been putting off.

And so we're going to do this, but we're going to kind of change things a little bit so the scanning's happening in a somewhat different place. That is, and a place that is, in some ways, provides privacy benefits. Like, I really think the way that Apple has framed this, I think that is genuinely the way they think about it. I agree. I think all credit to Apple, I think they had a great story to tell. And they completely blew it.

And they blew it by being evasive. They blew it by not speaking directly. And they blew it by not putting faces. two ideas. Right? They've just issued these like unsigned like they announced this thing

by putting up a web page that's like it might as well just be any other Apple support web page, right? And it's like this huge civil liberties conversation they've kicked off

but they announced it like they, I don't know, like they were helping you reset your Wi-Fi settings. They didn't understand the gravity of what they were doing. They only went to researchers

to validate their cryptography. And again, Jen and Rihanna were just like, effectively livid on decoder that like they had not engaged any civil society or civil liberties groups in rolling this out. And then they wouldn't answer the questions in a way that anybody could rely on the answers. And so, yes, I've been yelling on Twitter for a week. Like, this is on background. We don't actually know this. I know that they've been answering the questions directly.

They've tried to tell me the answers. And I've said, I don't want to know the answers unless they're on the record. Like, I'm not going to be the person people have to trust on this. I don't think the media, the tech press should be where the trust of the individual user has to lie. It has to be on Apple. So you can tell everyone, you can turn it off by turning off iCloud photos. But the source of that information has to be you. And ideally, someone in charge. And so, again, they finally put their head of privacy in front of Panzerino.

He did a good job. He asked the right questions and the right order. Got the answers. But all of that messaging model got away from what is fundamentally their good story to tell, which is we know we have a moral obligation to scan iCloud photos, the way that every other major service provider scans their services. We don't want to just do bulk scanning in the cloud. We want to explain ourselves. And we've developed a system where half of the scanning happens on your phone and half of it happens in the cloud. Neither side knows what's going on.

And if you cross a threshold, Apple people will review it before passing it on to the only designated authority in America that can, like, do stuff with it. That is, that's great. Like, fine, right? Like, what you're saying is we improved on bulk data scanning in the cloud in some privacy protective way. They're hubris and their absolute refusal to engage this stuff directly and in a way that holds them accountable for their tradeoffs is what is getting them in trouble. You can step one step back and say, yeah, but you're doing client-side scanning. And there's this database of illegal content and other bad governments, China, whoever, can add to your data. Okay.

But that is true of all scanning of all providers. So, like, I just, I just think they blew it. And I think they've been in a panic about having blown it for a week. Addie, I mean, I don't know, like, you've been the one doing misreporting here. where do you think that the changes might come and where do you think the sort of mistakes have been? I think I basically agree with you. And I think it feels like you can draw a really straight line from this and the fact that Apple has been touting as a privacy protection, the fact that it scans stuff on device. Like it's made a really big deal out of the fact that, say, Siri and like a lot of its machine learning stuff can process information on the device so third parties can't get their hands in it. And I feel like they expected this to be seen as a continued.

of that. And then they just didn't, they weren't willing to commit to trying to explain the details of like the nuance of what they were doing when people looked at this and said, yeah, no, this is client-side scanning. This is surveillance that happens on your phone at a point where, yes, you can turn it off if you turn off sync. But at that point, it's like, it's not something that Apple is technically prevented from doing. It's something Apple has decided that it's going to not do because it's going to voluntarily respect your privacy. Yeah. Dan, Deeter, this is the kind of the point you've made 500 times last week.

Yeah. Well, the thing that frustrated me, in addition, like I said last week, it's policy all the way down. It's always, you know, if you're worried about China giving them a database, Apple says they'll say no. Well, it's the thing that's been protecting your privacy this whole time was Apple saying no. So like fundamentally, some of that stuff hasn't changed.

There's just this very complicated layer of technology that, like, you know, you like buttresses your privacy in some ways while still being able to scan for these images. And like that's just, that story just got very complicated. But what's frustrating is a lot of the communications since it came out was we know there's a lot of misunderstanding out there. And so we want to like set it right. It's like, no, no, we there is. You're right.

There is some misunderstanding. But there's also like legitimate concerns from lots of people, not just me wanting you to explain how the technology works or whatever from lots of different issues across not just the scanning thing, but the entire, you know, three sets of new things they released. And engaging with the people that have genuine, legitimate things that ought to be discussed is, you know, that doesn't seem to be happening in the way that I hoped it would. And so they got called the screeching minority. Does Siri, like, I'm about to activate it.

I apologize when I have to tell it to shut up in a second. Does it report, like if I was, I don't know, murdering somebody or buying a bunch of drugs or something with it, would it report? me to Apple and then them report me to the cops. Like that's one of the things I think that's a little different about this is there's this active Apple is actively engaging. Just because this is already confusing enough, I want to make sure everyone knows that the new feature involving Siri is not going to report anything to the police if you enter queries

related to like CSAM. It just tells you this is unhealthy. You should get help here, so. Right. And by the way, when you ask Siri, where can you buy drugs? it asks you if you're looking for addiction treatment centers or drugstores. It's like very direct. Yeah.

But it's like it's not, but it's not reporting you. And here's one of the things that kind of like wakes me out a little about this is this is Apple like actively engaging in like policing. Like it's obviously the worst stuff that they're that they're policing here. Like yes, we do need more policing around that. But this is also like a private company actively engaging in policing people. It's just pretty common. Like most companies at this point, like most big companies tend to do that with things that aren't end-to-end encrypted. The difference for me is, and this is I think why everybody panicked about local detection, is once you send your photos to Google or you upload a bunch of stuff to Dropboxer OneDrive, you know you've like done some action that's like it's they've got it.

Right. And like, yep, they're going to scan it. And like honestly, some of these services even scan for like copyrighted material. Like if you're trying to run your Plex server off a Dropbox, they're going to find you. But that's like you know like you're entering. There's a transaction that's taking place. Right. Like you're saying, I'm going to use this service.

I'm sending the stuff over here. It's leaving my personal device and going to the cloud. The big companies all work with the cops with local detection. And I know there's like very deep nuance and like cryptographic hash matching. It's all. But Apple is moving part of that stack to your phone. And they're doing it maybe in a way that's really safe. And they're doing it in a way that maybe overall protects your privacy.

But once you've moved that stack to your phone, there's no going back. And I don't think they, like, spent enough time explaining to people justifying that move. And that's the panic. Right. Like Google, like yesterday announced a bunch more stuff to protect miners. They're like, Apple's in trouble. now we're like kids can submit their photos and tell us to not show them in Google image search anymore yeah that's just photo scanning like that's right like but there's like a transaction there

that you kind of understand here it's like well what if you can say when you turn off iCloud photos none of this runs anymore and i believe them but what happens when the chinese government says hey we actually want you to run this system in the background and all that stands between that occurring is not a transaction you're making to use a cloud service, but Tim Cook saying, no, I want to do that. Yeah, there's like a level of active consent that's been removed. Yeah, and it's weird that active consent is like tied up in like a transaction, but I think that's a fair consumer expectation now.

I don't think it's great that all these companies are like scanning willy-nilly in the cloud, but at least you kind of like get it, right? Like every teenager in America because of the nature of YouTube is aware that YouTube, like, does copyright strikes because all the YouTube. We're always talking about it. Right? Like, you get it. Like, you're going to give this stuff

to a platform and they're going to scan it. Maybe you don't know that when you send an email with a photo in it, every service from Apple on down has always scanned it. Right? But, like, because they don't want you to share it. Because they don't want to spread. But, like, if you're uploading all your photos for cloud service, like, you kind of know, here moving it to, like,

I'm telling you that is the line. That's the line that tripped everybody up. And there's good arguments to do it. They just didn't explain their arguments. Yeah. Can we play my favorite game with Addy? on, which is Deeter tries to play devil's advocate and gets the argument wrong and she tells him why he's dumb.

It's great. So I think Apple's belief is that by tying this to the ICloud toggle, which is like kind of where we started this whole thing, that they are participating in that same transaction, that by tying it to the toggle, that you know that by having that thing on, that you're doing the same thing you're doing as if you were sending it up to Google Photos or wherever else. but they created this entire system because fundamentally they don't want to just scan stuff in the cloud and they had to look at a tradeoff. How are we going to scan for this stuff, but not just scan stuff in the cloud?

Maybe they want to encrypt iCloud someday, whatever. And they're like, well, we either have to just scan everything and that creates a bunch of problems that we don't want to do or the only other option we can think of is the split system that has some stuff on the phone. Right. So like the two things that are happening here is they couldn't think of a better way to scan,

for this stuff under Apple's philosophy of how privacy should work. And then two, they believe that by tying it to the ICloud toggle, that users will implicitly understand that it's the same sort of transaction as if they were doing it to Google Photos or OneDrive or whatever. I mean, I don't think you necessarily are that wrong there. Like, I think that's, like, that part of the equation is like, that's reasonable. I think the issue is that there's just, like, there are other. like other factors there.

The first one being that if Apple end-to-end encrypts ICloud, that actually makes this a really different move. Like right now Apple is doing a thing that is pretty similar to, we could do this in iCloud, we're choosing not to because we think we've got a better system. If they end-to-end

encrypt I-Cloud, then suddenly what they have created is we've created an end-to-end encryption system with a really specific backdoor. And they, like one sort of theory around this, I have no idea how true it is. Apple has declined to comment on it is that they are planning to encryptychote photos or iCloud and that this is them preemptively finding a way to get around this so that they can still scan for CSAM, which, I mean, you could say like that's worth it. It's enough of a tradeoff, but it's also it's kind of breaking people's expectations of what end-to-end encryption is. Yeah. Well, I don't know about that.

So I think they've announced both things at once, right? They would have said, we've always wanted to do end-to-end encryption in iCloud. We've wanted to do it so badly, but the FBI three years ago told us not to, which is a thing that happened. But we're doing it, and now we've worked with the FBI, and there's one category of content that all of us in society can agree is so heinous that we're going to create this exception, and we're effectively scanning it upload to iCloud photos in this roundabout multi-layered way. And I think a lot of people would have said, oh, that's great, right?

Like, now you've encrypted my stuff. Now, like, I feel even more secure and private in the Apple ecosystem. And this genre of content is so heinous that I accept scanning my photos and upload for it against a known database run by Nicknick, which is the center of the entire trust ecosystem here. Except that that's not end-to-end encryption. It is, though, right? Because the data in transit and at rest is encrypted. You're only doing the scans locally and sending out hashes without ever transmitting the data itself, right? You're not actually at any point breaking the encryption or giving away the keys.

No, but you are transmitting the data itself. Because the way that this system works is that, yeah, it scans the photos locally and it generates these vouchers. The vouchers do at some point let them see the photos. Like that's part of the system that it's saying is a protection is that there's going to get, there's a human at the other end reviewing this stuff. So under the system, it is saying, look, yeah, this is almost entirely end-to-end encrypted, but there's this one system, and it's going to preemptively scan your photos, and it's going to take a copy of those photos. And 99.9% of the time, because most people are not sharing this horrible stuff,

there's not going to be anything that leaves your phone. But in this case, they are actually going to take data that you think is going to be encrypted, and they're going to send it to someone at Apple who can look at it. And you can say that it's like breaking end-to-end, for a good cause, but then that gets to the second problem, which is the mission creep, which is that once you have created an exception and end-to-end encryption, then it's just, it's not anymore. At that point, it's a policy thing. I think where you and I are disagreeing about a very, very fine line is like whether

it's technically breaking the end-to-end encryption or whether it's like philosophically breaking the end-to-end encryption, right? And I think the argument is that technically it is not, but it is creating an alternate pathway for photos to leave your phone and end up at the cops. Yes, I think that's probably reasonably fair. Because I don't think at any point in this Apple, like, hands over the keys to your ICloud. First of all, because ICloud is not encrypted. Right? So, like, they're not doing that yet.

But even if they do encrypt it, I don't think there's a step in which they're like, now all of your eye cloud is unlocked. Or we have a master key or whatever, whatever you would technically call breaking it. But philosophically, yep, there's an out. And that out is really big. Yes, and then out, there's nothing that technically limits it to being Nick Mac database stuff. Like that, like we've talked about a bunch here, it's that at that point you're kind of relying on Apple's largesse. I think the other thing that we have not really understood, and it is in a similar with the messages thing, we're just sort of trusting that Apple's image detection system, which is called neural hash, is any good.

Right? Like they're like a one in a trillion chance of a false map. hatch against this database. And like, I don't know, they got a billion phones. Those phones have thousands of pictures on them. You get to a trillion pretty fast. And that's if the system works exactly as they've described. And it's not broken or buggy or generates lots of, right?

And then Apple's got moderators and you might never know. But like, that's just another huge black box. Like, no one's tested neural hash to see if it works the way they say it does. And I'm not sure that you can. It is interesting to me that they are not using. photo DNA. I asked about it and didn't get a particularly great answer, except that they want to have the control to tweak it if they think something's wrong. What's photo DNA? Oh, photo DNA, that is a good question, is the system that most companies use. Microsoft made it. They started offering it for free

in 2015. It does basically the same kind of hash matching. It takes the, it will translate a photo into a hash. It'll compare it against a database that can be NICMEC or others. And if it's a match, then it sends it over for someone to look at. Yeah, there's a part of me it's like photo dna is whatever it uses and it was designed by Microsoft to run on Azure. You know, like it's it's designed to run in a data center at scale and probably Apple just doesn't want to run it on its phones with batteries all the time. Like another thing where Apple could just say out loud what it's thinking and we would know the answer, but we don't. Apple, why aren't using the industry standard for this? Words. Like words you can't even like really quote, right? Like all of this is just

problematic to me. So Addy, Apple's talked about this week. Do you think they're making any changes to this system? You think they're going to roll it out differently? Or are they just trying to communicate better? All indications are that they're just trying to communicate better. They do not seem in any way really in doubt about rolling this out. Yeah. Well, we'll see. It's coming. We're months away for the next iPhone and iOS versions. They need to talk. I'm just going to say this. They don't have to talk to me. They know that I want to I've asked them. They just need to put more Apple executives on the record explaining themselves.

I know they're all listening to this. Just I don't often give away free PR advice. I promise a lot of these problems go away once you start doing the work of communicating directly and on the record so people can trust you. Even if they disagree with you, they will trust you more. Especially since by all indications when you step back from the rough communication and it's a pretty good system. They're obviously concerned. but if you're going to have a photo scanning system,

all things being equal, this seems like a pretty good way to do it. Yeah. The joke I've been telling Dieter for a week now is like impressive, sophisticated new system with impacts on your civil liberties rolled out by the same people who told you the digital crown

was as important as the touchscreen. And it's like, you're just way ahead of yourselves. Like, back up. Like communicate more. Like don't believe you're having. own hype. It'll go better for you. Addie, one other piece of Apple News for it. We're going to talk about the infrastructure bill in a little bit, but it seems like that passed the Senate and everyone else remember there's work to do. There's a new bill that targets specifically the app stores

requiring payment systems from the vendors to be used. It was introduced. It's bipartisan. A lot of people have signed on to it. Explain what's going on there. Yeah. So it's a bill that we've seen kind of bills like this at the state level where if you have an app, store in this case and it has above a certain number of users, then it's going to, a bunch of things that people are mad about Apple doing our band, basically. Like you mentioned, you can't tie under it access to the app store or to the platform on using a specific in-app purchasing system that is run by the app store. It also sort of addresses stuff like anti-steering provisions where you can't communicate with

people about the fact that there's a cheaper option elsewhere. You can't privilege your apps in the App Store search above others. It's sort of the things that we have been complaining about and we have been citing other developers complaining about and they made them into a bill. Yeah. I would say the big one in here, we'll see if this makes it through as this bill lives or dies. A covered company that controls the operating system or configuration, which its App Store operates, shall allow users of that operating system to install third-party apps or app stores. So just straight up, this bill says you have Apple,

Google, whoever, would have to allow other app stores the iPhone. Love a good shell. Yeah. What's your read on whether, like I read the bill, but I can't remember this offhand. What's your read on whether it covers like the PlayStation? You'll love this.

Under the definition of App Store, the term App Store means a publicly available website, software application, or other electronic service that distributes apps from third-party developers to users of a computer, a mobile device, or any other general-purpose computing device. This is a...

What's a computer, everybody? Well, according to this bill, it's not a mobile device. Is the switch a mobile device? I don't know, man. You could... I mean, this is like a statutory construction nightmare puzzle.

right, a computer, a mobile device, or any other general purpose computing device, implying that computer or mobile device are one thing, and then you have a third broad thing. But then Congress, and its infinite wisdom, decided to separate the two. That must, if you were a judge, you would say something like, that must mean Congress intended for these to be separately evaluated. Because I think mobile devices are computers. Who knows, man? So are they going to like, somebody's going to have to say that the PS3, because you can install Linux on it, is a computer and you have to open the app store, but not the PS4 and the PS4.

I mean, that is the best outcome. But the Nintendo e-shop is toast. That's the person who wrote it was thinking forgetting that like all of these are computers. Yeah. They should have just said smartphones. And this would have all come to an end. Smartphones and tablets, maybe. I don't know.

But yeah, it's like, I read that. And I was like, well, I need to move. on emotionally to the rest of the bill. That said, it's just a bill. It's proposed by Blumenthal and Gloubuchar and Marshall Blackburn. There's a lot of sort of regulatory gamesmanship here, right? The threat of regulation might make them change. Obviously, the Epic lawsuit, Google Epic lawsuit.

I think you reported that's like that discovery is ongoing and it's revealed that Google was like, we'll just buy Epic to make the competition go away. I mean, Google says that this has been mischaracterized and we don't have the discovery to see what they actually said. But yes, Epic's claim is that they considered buying all are part of Epic. Yeah. So I think the amount of a noise in this conversation is like, you know, there'll be some bills, the bills might go to.

There's still the five antitrust bills that have to like do something. You know, like, I just think the pressure is on all these companies. And I do think it is notable that we've now talked about Apple two weeks in a row and mostly we've talked about policy stuff because I think they're feeling more of this heat than almost any other company right now. in really, really interesting ways. We're going to take a break. We're going to have back.

We're going to talk about a handful of gadgets, maybe some crypto legislation. Who knows? You'll find out when we come back from the Vodcast. Support for the show comes from LinkedIn. If you're a small business owner, you know that every hire counts, but time and resources are limited.

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And that's because it's a platform built by developers for developers. MongoDB, it's a great freaking database. Start building at MongoDB.com slash build. All right, we're back. Let's start with the infrastructure bill. The Senate has approved it. It's a $1 trillion infrastructure bill. It has a big broadband component.

but the real drama of this bill, drama that eventually went nowhere, was it basically says the Treasury Department can now start making tax rules around cryptocurrency. And there was like dueling amendments to change it. The crypto lobby went crazy. The Twitter threads were out of control. And then it kind of didn't get anywhere. But now this bill is sitting in the house and maybe it'll change again. I am not the person who's going to be able to really well explain.

the particularities of this because crypto is in general outside my area. But it's interesting to me that this is boiled down in part to a fight between over whether this is going to disincentivize changing the method that you basically prove someone is able to mint a thing in crypto, that people are worried that it's going to privilege proof of work, which is this very sort of energy intensive process over proof of stake, which is sort of generally newer and is potentially a little bit less maybe environmentally ruinous. Yeah, that was one of the fights. And the other fight is that the language is insanely broad.

And like, the language is kind of insanely broad in a way that, like, anyone mining for Bitcoin might have to start filing taxes. Anyone doing software development in Bitcoin might have to start filing tax. Like, I think one of the criticisms I read was this will tax it out of existence the United States and move all cryptocurrency offshore. And that doesn't appear to be anyone's goals, but I think there's a lot of gamesmanship on both sides. I know McKenna is basically chasing. This is like, there has not been a cryptocurrency lobby in the United States.

And now there's going to be one. They have like, they found each other. They realized like, oh, we could do stuff with this money other than buying Lamborghinis. We could spend it on lobbyists. And like, they just like blinked into existence overnight. It's a huge fight. I think, out of ear, you're right, like, it's fascinating how people have read the terms of the fight differently. I've seen a lot of the proof of work versus proof of stake conversation.

But in the end, the Senate just passed the original bill. Without, there's, like, lots of proposed amendments. And in the end, like, one senator, Richard Shelby, Republican from Alabama tried to, like, tack on some other amendment. And, like, the whole thing failed because of Senate procedural rules. Like, now it's in the house. I would just, if you're following crypto, you're following tech, like, yeah, I want to see all the billions of dollars for broadband funding to go through all the other infrastructure stuff. But the argument over cryptocurrency is what suddenly is like where this bill is going to live or die.

And I think that's like fundamentally fascinating. There's other stuff in the bill. We should talk about it. $65 billion towards U.S. broadband networks. Obviously, like, I wish that was going to municipal broadband networks to increase competition. It's not. I don't know what else to tell you. But it increases the

internet subsidy for low-income families. It expands the emergency broadband benefit. There's that stuff. There's $7.5 billion to build EV charging networks. That's good. So like there's a bunch of

verge stuff in it. I just think it's fascinating that cryptocurrency is now a lobby with political influence such that a bill like this might live or die based on crypto. Okay. Deere, let's talk about some gadgets.

So I think to me, the biggest story of the week is actually that TCL has announced that some of their new TVs are going to be using Google TV instead of Roku. TCL has been one of our favorite, like, budget TV options for a long time. And bailing on Roku going to Google TV, that's a big hit for Roku. And it's a big win for Google, which has been promising to make Android TV a thing since Android TV was 15 different versions and iterations and, you know, moods ago. and so I think that they're going to pick up a lot of market share with this thing. Well, it's actually wrote this story, and he spoke to some TCL people who said, TCL expects the TV operating system landscape will eventually consolidate down to Roku OS and Google TV. Wow.

So that's their bet. My Apple TV. I feel like Amazon probably has some thoughts. Yep. About this. Samsung also? Yeah, but like none of them have been in this like smart. TV on TV space, with the exception of Samsung, right?

And like LG WebOS. Everybody else has been like kind of, it's been Roku's game. Like the whole reason we know of TCL in the United States was because a couple of years ago, Roku was looking for a partner. And TCL was like, oh, we're moving to the United States. We just bought this big factory in like Mexico. Let's work together. And they kind of like raised each other's profile.

And now they're abandoning them in the United States. And, like, I think it kind of is like Roku deserves it because they haven't updated their UI since 2008. Yeah. Yeah. Also, I would just point out that Roku and Google hate each other. A lot. I don't remember they took YouTube TV off the Roku platform and then Google was like, well, you can't get rid of YouTube. Now YouTube TV is in YouTube.

It's still there. They hate each other. So good for TCL. I'm glad they're embracing the drama. You know who doesn't historically want Google to have any success in television? The cable companies. Yeah. Although now they're just like, whatever.

If you're a cable company executive and you think you've got a shot, like you're the only person qualified to be the CEO of Direc TV. Xfinity OS, Eli, it's coming. Coming back. Even the disclosure Comcast NBC Universal The Messervoir box meaning Even Comcast is like, yep, we sell

Access the Xfinity. They're trying to make Xfinity a brand like Roku because they know that they have to unbundle it from access itself. Will this work? I don't know. No. All right, do what else you got?

I think that HP's new all-in-one Chrome computer is hilarious because it's a screen attached to a fabric covered traffic cone. Beautiful. I love it. I love it so much. Bold. It's a cone-shaped base.

And then the monitor can like, you know, rotate a porch or a landscape. It's running Chrome for some reason. Wait, I love this. It's my favorite thing. Holy shit. I love this. Right?

You know what would be great is if Zoom on ChromeOS wasn't a piece of garbage. I would buy this just to run Zoom on it. Yeah. This is all I think about now is how can I make my days better? I love this thing. One more thing. 600 bucks. Let's go.

Sean Hollister got hands on with the Steam Deck. You should definitely watch that video, read a story on it. And I personally am excited because Google finally makes the right kind of two-factor security key that should have existed since the beginning that has both NFC and USBC. previously you just couldn't yeah because uh iPhone basically uh but now they make that thing and uh it should be good you don't have to resort to Bluetooth for two factor which is hard hard hard to secure and they're ending up end of lifing those things okay german has a bunch of apple rumors the biggest one is that the phones are going to be the same with better cameras wow smaller notches yeah small notches is good but i portrait mode and video

ProRes support. Mm-hmm. Okay. It doesn't fold. Apple News, it isn't deeply complicated policy news. This is very welcome. Hang on. ProRes support, I don't know, man.

I have a Ninja Otomus monitor, a Tomos 5 monitor that I can attach a whole damn SSD drive to to, you know, shoot video. And trying to shoot pro-res on that, the files are too big for my whole damn SSD card. The idea that you're going to shoot pro-res on an iPhone. you're going to have to buy like a gig or two gig iPhone. Like that that's just going to be a necessity. Or there's going to need to be fast external storage that can attach by a mag safe or something. Yeah. Or that or yep, it'll stream directly to the cloud through our nation's first in the world 5G networks.

He's very robust. Speaking of 5G networks, it's time to end the VGcast with me ranting about Dish Network. So if you need to go, it's fine. It's fine. If you need to O ran away. Oh, my God. Okay. DISH Network.

The policy position of the Trump administration when T-Mobile wanted to buy Sprint was that we shouldn't just have three carriers, we should have four. But they also were completely captured by corporate Stooges. So they allowed T-Mobile to buy Sprint and then said, Dish Network, you've got to build a new network. You with me? So far. So right now, what we have is three networks. and a promise from a satellite company that they're going to build another 5G network. That 5G network, as far as we know, is called Project Gen 5Sys, sis, with one of the S's is a 5.

Can't wait to upload my pro res to it. Dish says this will launch in beta at the end of September. They are banking heavily on a new kind of technology stack called O-RAN, open radio access network. In the meantime, T-Mobile, this is part of the government deal, was supposed to support DISH network. So DISH, like acquired boost from T-Mobile as part of this deal. T-Mobile is supposed to support those customers, allow DISH to be an NV&O so could get some new customers.

T-Mobile, unsurprisingly, didn't help. Because they were busy operating Sprint that they had just bought. So they, who could have seen this coming? So Dish signed a big deal with AT&T. to be its mb&O provider anyway, thus undoing the entire rationale for the deal. Can I just pause real quick? I'm so mad.

Right now, the future of DISH is a beta 5G network on technology and Eli is about to explain, which is new, and AT&T, and that's what's going to make a new carrier. Okay. That's, and that will provide sufficient competition

to AT&T and Verizon and T-Mobile. We'll see. Okay. The Department of Justice, sent a letter to Dish and T-Mobile this week saying, hey, we noticed that you've stopped working together and that T-Mobile is no longer supporting your old CDMA customers that was supposed to support on Sprint.

You got to figure this out, or else. They didn't really say what the or else would be. They're just, like, staring firmly in their direction. Another mean letter. Yeah, it's like, so someone in the government has woken up and realized a complicated deal that the previous administration brokered is, I would say, going poorly as to not at all. So maybe they'll start working together.

Then I just want to call this out. Michael Zelenko is our old features editor. He now works at a site called Rest of World, which is great. They're like a nonprofit. They report on tech in the rest of the world. And it's like, it's just really good. It's really well done. They've got a great story this week on Oren, Open Radio Access Network, and how it's

playing out in Africa, because Africa is like undercovered by cell network. I want to build 5G networks across the entire continent. If you want to build a 5G network, where do you go? You show up, and Huawei just sells you a bunch of stuff for cheap. Walle's Chinese. The United States government can't have a bunch of Chinese networks running everywhere. So they're flooding the zone in Africa saying, buyer-O-Ran networks.

The problem is they don't exist. The technology doesn't exist. It's unproven. So, like, all of Africa is, like, caught up in this, like, dispute between cheap Huawei stuff and, like, aid for the United States. Yeah, that works, but nobody wants them to have it. You should read the piece. We'll link it in the show notes, whatever. But O-Rand stands for Open Radio Access Network.

So the idea is, right now, if you're 18T, you're like sign up with a vendor. You sign up with Ericson or whoever, and they build your cell network for you, soup to nuts, the antennas, the routers, whatever, how they talk to each other. You open it, and now you can have multiple vendors doing competition. This all sounds great. None of it works yet. It's tremendous. It's like, and so DISH is like, we're going to build the O-R-R-N network. It'll be cheaper because they'll be all this competition and the prices will be lower.

But it doesn't exist. It's just like an incredible mess that like they could have just not, like, for example, Dish Network could have purchased Sprint. Who came up with O-Ran and is like convinced everyone to go ahead and just sell this buzzword? It's good. It's a good buzzword. It's just like hilarious because it's like, it's just like doesn't exist. Like I want to find this person and talk to.

them because they're a genius. They're just out there being like, yeah, I made this up. Let's do it. It's going to be great. I love it. It's just like you read this article and there's all these quotes that are like, one of the telecom providers in Africa is quoted here. Like, we think widespread adoption of O rent is likely years away. Like one of the firms making the O-Rent stuff is like funded by the CIA. Like it's just like hilarious. Tremendous. All this is tremendous. I'm very happy that we are just just what, a month away from Project Gena 5Sys, tearing up the United States broadband scene. Going to change the world.

Well, I hope you stop listening early. I could do this at the end of every Vurchase for months to come. Like every week, there's like another telecom trade story about Gena 5Sys. It needs its own walk-on music. It's bad. Okay. That's the Vergecast. I want to thank Chris for being on earlier.

You can tweet at him. He's at Chris Welch. Addy, thank you for being on. Addie is at Dextriarchy on Twitter. Alex is Alex H. Cranes. Deeder is Baclon. I'm at Reckless. We love hearing from you. We've got lots more to come. All of these stories are like endless. Dieter's got to review the phones next week. It's all happening. Decoder this week was supposed to be Brian Sleski, the CEO of RGOA. We scooted that. That's happening next week. I wanted to do an episode on the Apple stuff.

I once again preview that conversation by saying I asked him if 5G had helped self-driving cars. And I think listeners to our show will appreciate the answer. All right. That's it. That's for our chest. Rock and roll. Tell a friend to get the Vax. Wear a mask.