The Vergecast - Samsung Unpacked 2021 / Zack Snyder's Justice League is in 4:3 aspect ratio / EVs, e-bikes, and batteries

Episode Date: March 19, 2021

Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn talk to Verge reporter Julia Alexander about the long-awaited release of "the Snyder cut" of the Justice League film on HBO Max and more updates in the world of streaming services. Verge senior reporter Andrew Hawkins joins the show to discuss the new electric vehicles that were announced this week, talking to Sen. Chuck Schumer about infrastructure, and the state of e-bikes in America. Further reading: People aren’t missing their second COVID-19 vaccine dose, CDC data says Some research has gotten a huge boost during the pandemic Biden promises May 1st vaccine eligibility for all adults and a federal vaccine website Disneyland will reopen on April 30th, for California residents only Tinder is giving away free mail-in COVID-19 tests Apple Maps now shows COVID-19 vaccination locations Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine website builds on a swine flu tool You will watch the Snyder Cut in 4:3 aspect ratio because HBO Max respects cinema Zack Snyder’s Justice League remains overshadowed by its social media campaign Netflix is trying to crack down on password sharing with new test HBO Max will debut its cheaper, ad-supported tier in June YouTube Shorts arrives in the US to take on TikTok, but the beta is still half-baked Chuck Schumer wants to replace every gas car in America with an electric vehicle E-bikes are expensive, but this congressman wants to make ... Canoo reveals a bubbly electric pickup truck Kia shows off first full images of new EV6 electric car Here are the biggest announcements from Volkswagen’s battery event Elon Musk crowns himself ‘Technoking’ of Tesla Foxconn says it might build EVs at empty Wisconsin site, or in Mexico Samsung’s midrange phones now feature fast refresh rate screens, stabilized cameras Samsung says it might skip the Galaxy Note this year Apple discontinues the HomePod, but the HomePod mini will live on New iPad Pros reportedly launching as soon as April, and the … Intel puts Apple’s ‘I’m a Mac’ guy into new ads praising PCs Biden to tap former Senator Bill Nelson as NASA chief Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Coming up on the Vergecast, Julia Alexander joins us to talk about the Snyder Cut and what's up with streaming. Andy Hawkins joins talk about all things cars, and then Dieter and I go through some gadgets, including what's going on with the HomePod. That's 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 and 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 Skylar Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds.

Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Hello and welcome to Broadcast, the flagship podcast of the Snyder Cut. This will be a four-hour podcast where we reintroduced some old characters, introduce some new characters, and really we're broadcasting. in 4-3 today. It's going to be great. I'm very excited about this episode of our podcast. I'm your friend, Neely. Dieter Bone is here. I am your 16 by 9 friend. I want to put out that Neely literally is broadcasting in 4x3 because he can't figure out its webcam settings. No, I can. I know the, so I have an RX100. It's plugged into my computer. And if I run it

in video mode, which outputs 16 by 9, it draws too much power. It draws more power than it can get over USB, so the battery will die. So I have to run it in 4.5. It'll draw. It draws more power than it can get over USB. So the battery will die. So I have to run it in photo mode, which outputs 4-3. That's incredible. Let me tell you, trying to explain that, because I go on CNBC all the time, and they're like, can you switch it to 16 by 9? I'm like, I have this problem with USB power draw, and there's like, whatever dude, we'll crop it. And it's like the end of that conversation every week. Julie Alexander's here. Hello, I'm here, and I'm also in 4-3. I think. I don't know. Well, you've got like a shelf next to you. So you've physically cropped off part of your frame.

This is great. Lots to talk about, as always, I want to give COVID update. Still the biggest story in the world, but lots of light at the end of this tunnel. And hopefully maybe not the only thing we talk about very soon. So on the vaccine front, the two vaccines that came out first, the United States of Pfizer vaccine and the Moderna vaccine both required two doses. There's a lot of worry about whether people would follow through and get that second dose. CDC says not happening. People are actually getting their second dose, which is great. Also the single shot, Johnson and Johnson, vaccine is out, lots of states are opening up, if you can get the vaccine, go get it. Just go do it, please. It'll make everything better. Nicole has a story about how research into things like MRI vaccines into long COVID. All that stuff has dramatically accelerated because of the pandemic. It's a very, it's a very bittersweet second order effect. Like, it's good that that stuff is happening. Also, I wish it had never happened. Yeah. But it is happening. There's a lot. It's a good story, a good list of things that have really accelerated. I'm going to say this last week on Friday, President Joe Biden promised a website where

by May 1 he wants all adults eligible for the vaccine in every state. He said there'd be a website where he could find that vaccine. It has been one week since he said it. The deadline is May 1, so we're kind of like in a negative count situation. Here's the big difference. The website kind of already exists. So there is vaccine finder.org that you can go to. Nicole interviewed the people who are building it.

It has existed. It was built for the swine flu. She has a great story. They're building it. They're expanding it for this May 1 date. So I'm obviously going to count. We will obviously hold people accountable to May 1. When you're starting from a website that already exists, like you can use it.

I went and found an appointment near me using this website. But it already exists, which is a real head start over 17. 17,000 Google engineers being very surprised one Friday a year ago. Anyway, you can just go look at it. Read that story. Nicole is tracking that very closely. We're obviously always very interested in websites. Other second order effects, Julia, you're going to love this.

You're going to Disney. It's a Disney story. Disneyland's going to open on April 30th for California residents only. What's up? Big Bob Chapec coming through, head of parks. He's like, that's his history. That's a big deal for them. Yeah.

It's a huge deal. They haven't been, they've never been closed for this long. They've taken like two days to close the park and they're like 100 years or whatever they've been open. Yeah. So that's very exciting. These next two are just really funny to me. Apple Maps using data from Vaccine Finder is now showing vaccination locations.

But then Tinder, who I'm assuming is just desperate for people to get out there again. Tinder is now just going to give away COVID tests. And like, I will encourage the audience to draw the line from why Tinder is giving out COVID tests to the end result of testing COVID negative in your Tinder profile. I think that is very funny. Like I said, lots of light at the end of the hotel. Please remain safe. Go get the vaccine if you can.

Wear a mask. It's not over yet, but after a year, I'm completely going insane in the woods. After a year, I can see the end. I think all of us can see the end. We just have to be vigilant and careful until the end. The actual end. Okay. Speaking of the end, Julie, we have some news to announce, which is that you'll be on the

Vergecast again, but this is your last. official Vergecast with us as a member of the Verge staff. Yeah, I'm very sad about it. But yeah, I'm very grateful. You guys kept me coming around and so I could ask questions about iPhone cameras. That's really why we're here. We really connect with our audience of Canadians with broke-ass cell phones. Yeah.

You'll make your news when you make your news, but it's a great having you on our team. Someone is going to have to tell me what's going on with Disney. I just think it's amazing that you waited until the Snyder cut. came out before telling us you were moving on. Like, you're like, that's the moment. Like, streaming is over now. There's nothing left to do. The minute that we see a movie come out in 4-3, I was like, that's it.

This is the last draw from me. I need to get out of the game. We're very proud of you, but tell me about this, because you've seen it now, we had this hilarious, the entire Verge staff, like, just hit pause. Like, 8.30 in the morning. The newsroom ground to a halt. And we all talked to this movie coming at in 4-3, which apparently a lot of people knew, but it is still just very surprised. So you've seen it.

Explain what it's going on with Snyder Cut. Yeah. I woke up to mass chaos about Snyder Cut and I was very excited because I thought we were like excited about talking about superheroes. And then in traditional version, it was a conversation about aspect ratios. Yeah. So the movie to preserve the like artistic integrity of the film, which was supposed to come out. Well, it was never supposed to come out, but is now come out in IMAX format, is being streamed in 4-3 as opposed to, like, traditional widescreen that we're used to. Oh, so it's 4-3 to be, because IMAX is 4-3.

No, IMAX is not 4-3. Okay. This was like, this was the thing that was going around. It's his artistic vision. That is what I remember. Let me just say what is happening. In traditional verge fashion, we've moved way on to the weeds. A lot of people woke up today.

And the first thing they decided to do on this March 18th was immediately settle in for four hours of the Snyder cut. Yeah. Right. That's, I mean, obviously, what else would you do on a Thursday? And like the first thing that happens is you get a bright blue gradient HBO Max, purpley blue gradient screen. Worst splash screen color for a smart TV platform ever, by the way. Oh, so bright. If you have Samsung LCD, this thing just like burned your retinas off.

It's like so bright. Neon blue. And it says to preserve. Zach Snyder's original vision, this movie is presented in 4-3. No further explanation, right? Like, just that, and then you sit and then back, and then, like, Justice League happens in a square on your rectangular TV. Okay, so, like, that screenshot is, like, deeply funny.

And he had hinted that this was happening, and reviewers, like, Julia had seen it, so people knew. But I think that all happened on, like, film Twitter. Yeah, and it's, like, superhero, like, Stan Twitter was aware of it. Yeah, but once you. break out the neon blue splash screen to the world on your gigantic splashy streaming service. People are like, wait, it's a square. And then that, the world's collided of like the Snyder fans being like, it's because

of IMAX. Yeah. Right. Which I would just point out, IMAX is not 4.3. IMAX is just another square, square-ish shape. I think it's really great that there's a group of people who think I would like to watch this movie so that it takes up my entire screen, because that is how I like to watch things. And then his fans who have argued for this movie for four years are like, no, it's fine.

I'll watch it this way because it's his vision and this is what we fought for. And it's like this beautiful moment of like, see, this is what happens when you ask for something. There are issues with it. It is very funny. So I'm going to go all the way down the rabbit hole. IMAX, the big classic IMAX. Yeah. You're in sixth grade and you go to the...

planetarium iMacs where the screens all above you and you're in the like the stadium seats is 1.43 to 1. It's a square but importantly it's a square that extends above your head. Right? It's like this it's it's square-ish. Four-three is 1.3 to 1.3 to 1. So even if you wanted to say it was shot for iMacs, I'm assuming between Zach Snyder, HBO and AT&T they could have gone with the correct aspect ratio. It's not just another square. A better solution. Honestly,

nine by 16 portrait mode Snyder Cut. That's what I want. See, that's it. Super tall Batman. Yeah. That would actually work without giving anything away

that would work well for this. A lot of it is like very powerful, powerful, like shots of like looking up at Batman or like down at Super Batman. So it would work. You get that, that CeroT.

that Samsung make that rotates. Yes. And so constantly throughout the movie. It would have been great for Quibi. This would have been the perfect Quibi thing. Do you remember when we were at CS, this is like a, see, it's like the history of Julia and Eli doing things. We're at CS, we meet Jeffrey Katz and we're talking about Quibi.

And we're like, have you seen the rotating TV? And he just looked at us with hate in his eyes and tried to convince us that Samsung had stolen the idea for Quibi. And it's like, I don't think that's what happened. I think they might have been looking at Instagram or TikTok. Fuck. Anyhow, so the movie's out. It's a school hair. The thing I will say about IMAX, it's great that he wanted to release it for IMAX, but he knew he was distributing it on HBO Max, right? Yeah. Which is a generally 16 by 9 service. It will never be screened in IMAX as near as I can tell. It's just like the boldest creative decision I've come across in a long. 4K Dolby Vision 43 is incredible. I'm so proud of him. You know what, let's never say never. I just, literally, before I hopped on this call, I just finished the movie.

I, like, watched it throughout the day. It took it all day, but I watched it. And I will say, I liked it because it's extremely over the top, and I enjoyed it. But I was like, I finished it and I was like, there's no way this ever comes out to IMAX, like, this is his final hurrah. And the first thing on Twitter is, like, all these people who I are very respected journalists being like, so obviously they're going to give him another movie. Like, they're going to release this in IMAX. And I was like, we can't even, I want to focus on getting to like Fast and Furious Nine, which is the movie that if we all wear our masks, we'll be able to go see theaters in two months before I've been think of this movie being an IMAX. I just need to say one more thing about the four three.

A lot of people are going to discover with this movie specifically that they thought it was cool for them to buy the cheap 4K TV and didn't realize that like local dimming. actually matters. And they're just, they're, the, the, the, the, the,

the, the, the, they're just gonna have, like, gray, and just two gray bars. Yeah. Well, hopefully local dimming. We'll see.

Yeah. Send us pictures of your TV showing the 4-3 center cut. Because, you know, Dolby Vision cranks up that backlight. Oh, yeah. Like, there's a lot going on here.

The TV manufacturers did not anticipate. Can I just say I've never felt more rewarded for my viewing choices than with this movie? because I watch everything. I've said this on this podcast. I watch everything on my MacBook Pro. I'm going to sell my TV because I never use it for anything. So everyone's complaining about 4 or 3,

and I was like, this is, this looks like how I watch everything. Did you have letter boxes? Did you have vertical boxes and pillar boxes? Because Dan was saying, that's so bad. It's so bad. I'm so excited to watch this movie tonight.

I'm like going to leave, I'm not going to abandon my family and be like, sorry, I got hour four of this thing going. By the third hour, it kind of fades into the background. You're just kind of like, I don't even know what I'm watching anymore, but I need to finish it. Julia, you wrote, speaking, they're going to give him another movie and Fast and Furious Nine. You said this to me today. Like, it's great this movie's coming out.

HBO really wants to sell a lot of subs against it, but it's not like their future. But this fan campaign feels like the future of something. Yeah. I mean, my argument is that I think a lot of people assume this movie is going to drive a ton of subscribers to HBO Max. And my argument is that while it will drive definitely a number of subscribers, the people who want this movie already signed up for HBO Max. Like, they're already DC fans who signed up to watch everything else.

And so I think they'll add an incremental number. And then I think what we'll see more importantly is a number of people cancel their HBO Max. Streaming services within a month, which is. what happened with Hamilton. Like, if you look at people who signed up for Disney Plus for Hamilton, and then the drop off two months later, it was huge. It was massive because there's nothing for them to watch that they're interested in. So I think the question for WarnerMedia is like, oh, like, do we do this to show people that we're listening to them and that we, you know, we want them, we want their loyalty, we want to be able to feel like we connect with our fans.

And if that is the case, then, like, that is a scary world where a corporation like AT&T is listening to people with Batman profile pictures on Twitter being like, please, of us this movie for four years. Like, that's a weird place for companies to be in. And everyone that I spoke to for a piece I wrote about kind of the fandom and the fan service that's going on with this, we're like, it's a slippery slope. And I hope that companies and studios don't do that. That would be very bad for cinema and for the world. Well, let me make the opposite argument. AT&T historically has listened to no one. Why shouldn't they listen to Batman? Just hear me out. If this is the thing that can get AT&T to do, like, we just have to get Snydercut fans deep into net neutrality.

You know, famously, former CEO of T-Mobile, John Ledger, liked to say that he was Batman and was a big Batman fan. So we could be in a world in which John Ledger is dictating the movie strategy for AT&T. We could live in a world where John Ledger becomes Batman. There's like nine of them at this point. He could just be Batman. Speaking of the net neutrality thing, 18T did some weird stuff this week. This is a story that you and I broke.

So when HBO Max launched, they gave us an exact. He's not on it anymore. They reorged like immediately after launching. So it's like whatever he was just doing his job as an executive. And now he runs something else at 18T. But we had an interview with Tony Gonzalez, who was part of the launch of HBO Max.

And we asked him very directly, hey, will the data be free in AT&T's network? And he hemmed and he hawed and then they confirmed it, like basically on the side. California passed its net neutrality rule after the Biden administration and went through all the courts like this and that. It's in effect. And so AT&T says, oh, we can't break up the internet for California only. And after this like long process of us pushing and hemming and hawing and then finally confirming it like under the table, they put out a blog post and told everyone, we're taking your HBO Max free data away that we didn't even say that you had because it's like obviously shady

and uncompetitive. But now we're taking the way. This is what net neutrality does to you. And there's been a little bit of an uproar around it. But it's also just like that's where Netflix lives. Like if you want to watch Netflix on your AT&D phone, you're using your data. I find it hard to get worked up about this, but it is a real thing that happened this week. And the only reason anyone even knew HBO Max was free data was because Julie and I asked this poor dude on the podcast and he looked terrified. Yeah, I mean, I'm in the same page as you. I don't get why people would be super worked up.

I mean, I guess if you're watching a ton of friends, I guess, and you're like, oh, man. On your phone on the go. On your phone on the go. Yeah, I guess it's like, that sucks for you person. Also, I have other concerns about you. But maybe, I mean, okay, is there like a mid-maxer's like, I'm only going to pay for, I'm just, I live the entire AT&T lifestyle, 18-to phone service. I'm going to have this streaming service, and I'm going to save a whole bunch of money by not subscribing to any other streaming services.

I'm just going to watch HBO Max. And since I don't have to pay for the data, I save that a little bit more money. Is that the argument here? So that is the argument. There are studies out in the world that say in countries where that kind of thing is allowed, the overall price of Internet access is more expensive. Yeah. The real thing you want to do is get rid of data caps. Right.

And the whole AT&T free data thing is particularly funny. because AT&T was just paying itself through the sponsored data program. Right. So the HBO Max division paid AT&T mobility or whatever it's called now for data so the consumers wouldn't have to pay for the data. But that is just like I could send you a Slack Deeter that's like I officially have paid you $5 and all that money just stayed inside of Fox Media. Like it doesn't matter.

Like it was just a net zero cost. If Netflix wanted the deal, they would have to pay real money out of Netflix into AT&T. no one, the only customers of AT&T sponsored data programs are other 18T divisions historically. The reason for that is an accounting scheme that raises the price for everybody else. Anyway, I have taken the Snyder Cut into net neutrality. This is what I'm saying. You've got to get Snyder Cut fans just amped about net neutrality. No, we got to get Snyder cut fans to start defending other random AT&T things now.

Like 5GE. 5GE is the 4x3 of... That's horrible. That's why Julia's leaving. I'm trying to get Snyder Cut fans. I am launching a campaign to declare John Stanky, who's the CEO of AT&T, as business world Chris Maloney. And I want to get that trending. That's real good.

All right. A handful of other streaming things. I know you've got to run, Julia. A handful of other streaming things. Talk about Netflix for the longest time really wide open with patchword sharing. Just anybody can log in any Netflix account. They're doing like a two-factor test, essentially for security. It kind of feels like they're just trying to cut down on that a little bit as the competition heats up.

The strange thing about this story, so yeah, basically the stories that Netflix is curbing password sharing, if you try to log into an account and it's like, oh, are you in this household? Yes, you can, like, they'll send you an email or text and you can put that in and then watch it. So their whole thing is like if you're not authorized to use it, then you won't be able to. and I guess if you have broken up with someone and you don't want to text them, you will not be able to use the account. But when I learned about this and I was talking to people at Netflix, I kept saying like, is this two-factor? Because this just sounds like two-factor.

And Netflix doesn't have it yet. And but they were like curbing password. Like I used that language. I was like, so it's curbing password stuff. And they're like, yep, that's part of it. And so it's, I mean, I think they're hitting a point where they're more than 203 million subscribers and they kind of realized a lot, they could have a lot. they could have a lot more if people are forced to sign up.

But it's funny because you could collect quotes from Reed Hastings, who's their co-CEO over the years where he's like, listen, like, if my wife and I are in different parts of the country, we want to be able to use a Netflix. So password sharing is just part of the deal. And now it's kind of like the company is realizing there are not an infinite amount of humans who will sign up for Netflix. And so they have to figure out how to continue growing at this point.

I do like that they put the barrier at like text your ex. Yeah. Like we've done, Andrew, we've did an entire episode of why'd you push that button about people using their ex-boyfriend's Netflix account for years. And then having to be like, oh, crap, he noticed. Yeah,

I went through a breakup and didn't really care. And then I realized that he kicked me off the Hulu. And I was like devastated. I was like, that was like the thing for me. It's all over. Yeah, take a moment. You like stared out the window.

So Zach Snyder. music played. I was like, it's another $12 a month. Martha. Speaking of HBO Max, you have long pointed out that their real strategy is putting ads into things. That feels like to have they solved their problem with the Rokus and the Amazon's of the world to make those deals work? Yeah, I mean, they're mostly everywhere.

Now they're launching their ad-supported platform or version, sorry, in June. We don't have a price yet. And the best part about that is that WarnerMedia CEO, Jason Kailer, announced a price would come in the coming months. And I was like, well, June isn't coming months. So I assume we'll have it before then. But yeah, the idea is that it will be cheaper. There will be ads, but ads will not run on HBO original programming. So no one will have to watch The Sopranos with ads in between it or at the end of it and beginning of it. Everything else will be the same with the exception of same day theatrical release. So if you're

on the Premier Plan, which is the current one, you'll be able to watch June the minutes on HBO Max and the minutes in theaters. If you're on the ad-supported plan, you will not have access to that. But otherwise, like, their whole thing, as Jason Kailar said at a recent Goldman Sachs conference, not everyone in the world is wealthy and $15 is steep when you compare to a lot of other streaming services, and especially when you consider that Disney has a bundle that's like not too much more expensive, you're getting a lot more. And Netflix is kind of like muscle memory where everyone hasn't, just the first thing you open. And so I think they are hoping that this is what really kickstarts their subscriber growth because they've had a slow start and now with the movie

roll out, they're seeing better performance, but they really need to, like, kick it into high gear. Wait, so at HBO originals, you won't even see ads before and after? No, so there's no ads, no ads on HBO originals. Yeah, I'm going to say, but it seems fair to be like, you're not paying for this, you're going to watch, for some reason you've chosen to watch Westworld again. You have to sit through an ad. Like, it's, I mean, that's good. I'm, like, praising them.

It never, it's hard for me. You can tell. It's hard for me to praise AT&T. I know. But that's a good decision. I feel like that comes from the HBO camp. I think that was their, I think they've made, I think the HBO camp has made a lot of, well, not sacrifices.

They were bought by a company. They had to just go along with it. But they've seen a lot of their, I think their culture really disappear. And I think their whole thing about, we don't have ads and we're prestigious entertainment. And that's our whole thing. If there were ads, if no anyone is out there listening has never seen a HBO show with ads, I highly recommend it. It is a wild experience.

I watched sex in the city with ads once, and it was crazy. And I think that was probably the HBO demand where it's like put ads on the platform, like put ads on Sesame Street or whatever you want to do it on, but like don't have Game of Thrones or, yeah, whatever they have coming up. Like, we don't want ads on this. I would love to see the pitch from the HBO Max sales team to put ads on the Game of Thrones. You thought YouTube was fucked up for your brand. Have you seen this show?

Chris Welch wrote about this last week. I saw you tweet about it. The sort of like ad product side of TV is getting wilder and wilder like auto play ads on pause screens. I think you had like a QR code show up. Is that the next transition that we're into? Like we're just going to festoon these interfaces with even more actual ads. I think there's two parts of the story. One is that as Roku and others, but really Roku become more dominant and as Roku really

buys more advertising. and becomes a place where it is going to control a lot of advertising, and it's going to be a place that streamers want to be on, and so they'll work with their advertising product. I think what you will see is more advertisers take advantage of, like, targeted, specifically targeted streaming ads that will play on pause screens, that will find ways that do not feel as disruptive as playing in the middle of an episode every eight minutes.

Instead, it's like you pause, and there's a thing that shows up with a QR code or you, like, Hulu has done this where you pause and an ad kind of shows up on the ad support, stuff in the past. I don't hate it. I know like Welch and I are on totally different sides of this. I'm someone who's like advertising. It's just an evil that like

we live with. I'm someone who like spends too much money on Instagram ads. Like I don't mind targeted advertising. I don't mind seeing it on a TV. I don't mind if it's paused. And I'd much rather that than like every 10 minutes there's a new. There's like four ads that are the same ad playing over and over again.

Yeah. Because it feels much less disruptive. I just feel from the advertiser side, you're like, oh man, I hope some people press pause today, see these ads. I mean, I pressed pause on the Snyder cut like 30 times. Yeah, we're going to say. That's true. Totally fair. All right, Julie, you joined us to cover YouTube,

and that grew into all the other stuff you cover. So we got to end with YouTube. Yeah. I mean, I'm going to go out with a bunch of really big YouTube stories, which is nice. Well, not big, but they're fun. They're fun reports. What is going on?

I mean, YouTube, I mean, YouTube right now. in this moment is experiencing what feels like two distinct trends. I think the biggest story this week right now is with one of their most prolific vloggers, this guy named David Dobrick, whose vlog crew has been accused of a lot of different sexual, like, harassment and sexual misconduct allegations from people over the years. I mean, and so I think there's a creator reckoning coming from that perspective, that end, that will keep an eye on. And I also think at the same time, because of the pandemic, the other trend that YouTube is seeing is people figuring out how to do more new interesting narrative storytelling.

And so I think we're seeing stories play out in Minecraft and in Fortnite and the way that YouTube creators and Twitch streamers have figured out how to turn this into not just let's plays and streaming, but like actual ongoing stories that have captivated millions of people. That is something that I know YouTube is looking into trying to figure out more of and how they can highlight that more and how they can kind of. of if that's the next evolution for trending videos in a very big part of their creator ecosystem, which is gaming. So I think there's two things. I think one, creators are about to have a new reckoning where they're going to realize that there's problems happening within the space that they need to learn how to self-police,

and YouTube is going to have to figure out how they deal with prolific vloggers getting into these kind of really bad situations. And on the other end, they're looking at a new wave of content coming up from very interesting creators who were not prolific two years ago and suddenly are they most prolific. And I think those are the two YouTube stories that are happening right now.

Are they feeling pressure from the TikToks of the... They're launching YouTube shorts, but I feel like it's the same as Instagram Reels. Like, they felt like they needed to have it, so they have it, but it's not TikTok. Like, are they feeling that pressure? Are they still the big dominant monopoly provider? I think they're feeling pressure from competitive ad stuff.

I think they want to tell people, and advertisers that people spend this much amount of time on the platform and engage with it, and they can buy stuff on. And I think TikTok is a, especially as TikTok gets into more e-commerce and figures that side out and does figure out more targeted ads situation, like that is going to be something that YouTube worries about. And at the same time, I think the problem is that every single app wants to be every single app. And I think YouTube wants to be shorts and YouTube wants to have stories and YouTube wants to have like a little community update section. And it's like you do one thing very well and you should just continue doing that one thing because when I open your app,

I'm opening it for one specific reason. Same with TikTok, like, I wouldn't want TikTok to do five-minute videos because it's like, that's not when I'm coming to your app for. I don't want Instagram to do reels because I'm not, I'm only coming your app for the grid and for stories. And I think as more apps try to be everything for everyone, it's just going to drive more people away. So I hope YouTube launches shorts and maybe it's a bit of a success for them, but I hope that they still focus primarily on longer form, you know, short form, but longer form videos compared to TikTok because that's where it shines. And as long as creators are still making the most ad money and monetization from their videos on YouTube, like they'll continue creating there,

which means people will continue going there and they'll be fine. Yeah. All right, I'm going to send you off with one last Julia block disclosure. We talked about them all. Wait, we didn't talk about peacocks. I sent them about peacock. Oh, the office is free for one week. There you go. Here it is. The ceremonial goodbye, Julia, disclosure block. NBC Universal, which owns Peacock, is a minority investor in box media, which is the parent company of The Verge. We are producing a Netflix show. Quibi existed for a time.

And all of us have a YouTube channel. There it is. I did it. We should have music. Andrew, put in some music here. Julia, it was amazing working with you. I'm so proud of you. We'll have you back on the show.

I love having our expats back. But it was great working with you. Good luck with everything in the future. Thank you. Thanks, guys. Support for this show comes from Shopify. Every thriving, successful business has to start somewhere. A good place to start is a relatively simple question.

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With Gramerly, you never will. Download Grammarly for free at Grammarly.com. That's Grammarly.com. We're back. Andy Hawkins. Welcome to the Vergecast. Hello. Andy, you're a senior transportation reporter there, and there's a lot of moving stuff news.

People are moving. People are moving. Let's start with the, there's cars, there's batteries. Deeter just announced that he's a Fred. What's a Fred? So it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, term in the cycling community for a poser, for, you know, someone that thinks they're a cool hot shit bicyclists or, you know, racer or whatever, but actually just has, like,

bought the stuff but doesn't know actually how to ride their bike. You know, and it's like, it's not a very inclusive term. It's, it's a gatekeeping type of term, but, like, I am proudly a Fred. I am proudly a person that doesn't know what the hell they're doing on their bike, but I like getting on my bike and it's okay. But there's like a, you know, there's a trend. Everyone is a Fred. Yeah.

You have to go through a Fred face. Yeah. You should write a book called Fred Face. Fresh Face. I take personal offense to this because my grandfather is literally a Fred. His name was Fred. He was an avid cyclist. Loved Mike.

I say take the turn back. Let's reclaim Fred. There's no way that we're getting through this segment with Andy without these two talking about e-bikes because it is just a little peek into the verge. It's all they talk about at work is e-bikes. There's an e-bike cabal, a renegate e-bike faction. it's something's going to happen. I feel the e-bike mutiny is upon us.

I have a 20-year plan to put the courage into a strictly e-bike-only publication. Well, let's start with the, there's news. There's e-bike news coming. There's some subsidies. Andy, the big news of the week in Transpo, you interviewed Chuck Schumer. I did. Talk to Chuck. Talk to Chuck about charging.

We chatted. Chuck and out. No. The Senate Majority Leader made a proposal. a couple of years back and it kind of like made news for one day and then went away and no one talked about it because there was Republicans in control of Congress. And I think there was an assumption that it wasn't going to go anywhere. But his proposal was basically, let's do a cash for clunkers style program for electric cars. We want people to trade in their gas polluting cars and get a huge

discount on an electric car. So this was his proposal. It was going to cost $454 billion. And then it kind of just went nowhere. So now that Dems are in control of Washington and they just passed this COVID relief bill and they're turning to infrastructure now, Chuck wants, he wants his electric vehicle proposal to be part of Biden's infrastructure package. So that is going, so he decided to call us up because we have the ear of the president. Obviously, the president is avid reader of the verge. The president's on the YouTube channel all the time, comments.

in every video. He's like, Iverge. The verge has very little malarkey, it turns out. We are a malarkey free zone. We are pro-fred and anti-malarkey. So, yeah, he wants it. He wants to put it back out there. So they decided to call me up and do a short interview to sort of get the proposal back in the discourse. We talked a little bit about that.

We talked about a couple of other things. But yeah, sort of the news aspect of it is they haven't quite settled on like how much money they want to give people back for trading in their gas cars for an electric one. But they do want it to be more generous than the current federal EV tax credit, which is $7,500. So I think that's pretty significant that they're looking at something that's even more generous than what's considered to be a pretty generous tax credit for EV purchases. And that credit phases out, right? Like, you buy Tesla right now.

You don't get that credit because they've sold too many cars. There's a cap that after a car company sells 200,000 vehicles, then it phases out. and then they eventually are not eligible for the tax credit anymore. So, yeah, Tesla's an eligible. GM also hit the cap there ineligible, but pretty much every other car company, since they're still in the early phases of rolling out their electric vehicles are still eligible for. So, okay, net net, making a car, even, especially an EV car, takes up a lot of carbon and does stuff to the environment. And like, so in theory, hanging on to a clunker, hanging onto a gas car,

for a while might not be worse for the environment than training it in and having it, I don't know, turn into scrap and then spending the carbon on a whole new car. But on the other hand, if more and more people end up getting electric cars, it like starts up a virtual cycle, creates pressure to create more charging network, blah, blah. So my sense is that there's like lots of nuance and debate to have here. But on the whole, it seems like it would be a really good way to, like, push everybody towards electric. Because every time we talk about, you know, when's everything going to be electric, there's all these dates that are thrown out there. And it's like, you know, five years in the future while I have self-driving cars.

And it's been that way for the past 30 years. I'm starting to feel like EVs were going to turn into that until literally this year when, like, every single company in the planet, like, is actually showing off real electric cars. Yeah, it's funny, too, because Chuck thinks that that's because of him. He was, he made like some, of course he does. He said something like I put up my proposal in 2019 and now they're all going all electric. I'm sure I had something to do with that. That's a good, good Schumer impression. Thank you.

I need to work on it. But it's, yeah, no, it's true. I think it's like this can't exist in a vacuum. This can't just be the one thing that the government does in order to incentivize people to make the switch because, yeah, you're right. It's a carbon intensive process to make cars. the mining of the materials that go into batteries is very intensely carbon heavy. And then you've got the electrical grid. An electric car is only as clean as the thing that it's plugged into.

And if, you know, 30% or 40% of our power comes from coal, it's not a very good alternative to just driving your, you know, your Ford F150 around. So I think that, you know, what he sees this is it's not just a discount for people who come in and trade in their cars. But there's also a component to it to incentivize the manufacturers to switch over to less carbon-intensive manufacturing. And then there's also an EV charging component to it that would increase the number of chargers that have been installed.

And the electrical grid stuff is like a whole other thing that they're going to have to deal with as part of this infrastructure package, I think. Yeah, I had the Mustang for a week. I was tweeting pictures of it and like lots of smart people were telling me, like, the real problem right now is the Venn diagram of EV-Colm. owners and single family home owners is like a circle. So I have this car. There's nowhere around here to charge it. And I was like, oh, this is fine. I'll just put in another dryer outlet in the garage and it'll charge overnight. And that's like great. And like it seemed very simple.

And all the like very smart transportation analysts are like, yeah, most people don't like live in houses where they're like, I'll just throw in a dryer outlet. Like that excludes anybody who lives in an apartment building. It includes anybody commutes beyond the range. It like there's just tons and tons of people that excludes. And so you can incentivize a mass turnover, right? You're going to give people a huge discount on a Tesla if they trade in their old car. A lot of people are going to go buy a Tesla and then they're going to run face first into the infrastructure problem. But I think it's better to have like even more electric car owners demanding the infrastructure. Like that chicken and egg problem doesn't get solved without the cars on the road. No one's going to, no one's

going to invest in the infrastructure to run an empty charging station? Yeah, I think the government just needs to be extremely generous with the money that they give out on this because, yeah, it needs to, you know, Schumer was talking about giving homeowners subsidies to install chargers in their home, but also to like large property owners, to commercial property owners, to gas station owners. So if we're talking about like, you know, every time you go to a shell station or a BP station and there's a level two fast charger that's there in addition to the gas pumps, then that's, you know, that's a big game changer for a lot of people because as it is today, the charging infrastructure, you encountered this, you live somewhere that's a little bit more remote. I live somewhere that's very dense in New Jersey. There's no, there's barely anything around here regardless, you know, and it's ridiculous for that.

You know, all the chargers right now are pretty much all in the state of California. And the rest of the country is just like, you know, kind of shit out of luck. Yeah. Well, Dieter's not. Dieter's, you should. Yeah, I mean, I can go to Disney World. I can. The other piece of the puzzle was talking to e-bikes, there's another proposal to make e-bikes,

way more affordable with tax credits. Walk us through that. Yeah, I love this idea. So this is, this guy, Earl Blunauer, is a congressman from Portland, Oregon. Total Fred. I know, total friend. And he put out a proposal to give people like a 30% tax credit on their e-bike purchases up to like $8,000, basically. So that's like a pretty huge range in terms of when you think about what e-bikes cost these days. They're anywhere between like $1,000 and like $10,000. So he's talking about giving people a pretty hefty tax credit, sort of similar to what we've got today with the federal EV tax credit that, you know, you make a purchase, you buy an e-bike. And the idea here is that e-bikes, they're not just like for recreation and for mountain biking and for fun.

They're like a legitimate car replacement. And if you can get people to sort of bake into their heads that, you know, I don't need to buy that second car. I can buy an e-bike instead and make a lot of sort of these short trips in my neighborhood in my community using that. And then, you know, I have a car to make road trips and whatnot. Then that's something that can be really transformative when it comes to carbon emissions, traffic congestion, road fatalities that we have, you know, tens of thousands of every year.

So this is a great idea. I asked, you know, I interviewed Blumauer about it. He put it out there. It's starting to get some traction. But, you know, it's Congress. It's Washington. Who the heck knows how, you know, what the end point of all of this is? But I still think it's a pretty great idea.

So I was tweeting about this and just like the instant response is, well, this is a stupid idea because winter. and there's like four responses to that. What is like, well, then don't ride it in the winter. It's still good for the other months out of the year. Two, we don't have to have a single way of transporting people around. Three, not to be actually guy, but like lots of people ride bikes in Finland. Like if the infrastructure is there, it's actually completely possible. And so, yeah, I guess for me, like there's enough upsides to e-bikes as like a mode of transportation.

that to just say no because of like some of the downsides doesn't make sense. There are definite downsides. It sucks to ride in the rain. It sucks to ride in the snow. It sucks when there's not enough good infrastructure. It is harder to haul a lot of stuff with a bike. Like all that stuff is true. But there are just as many problems with cars and with trains and whatever else.

We should have more options for people that like are better for getting around. You forgot for I live in California. this is what I'm saying. I will say this. It's raining today. I'm testing an e-bike from this company called Turn, T-E-R-N. It's a great cargo bike. It has room for both my kids on the back.

I put both of them on there. They gave me this really cool, like, rain canopy thing that fits over the rear rack of the bike to, like, to they're dry. I'm getting pelted with rain. My cars are at the whole thing, but they're completely dry. There are,

like, there are, like, companies that are thinking of this thing, like really creatively, like super like interesting accessories to go along with this. And yes, I agree. Like in Europe, they bike in all weather's in all conditions. And we are the ones that are like, you know, turning our nose up of this. Like that makes us look like really like a bunch of friends.

Once you slap a motor on a bike, you can do so many weird things with the shape of the bike. It doesn't have to look like the traditional bike that you're envisioning in your head. It can have a giant ass trailer on it, right? You could do all sorts of wacky stuff once you put an electric motor on it. Yeah, the form factor is very fungible, I would say. And there's, you got a ton of delivery companies that are creating, like, tiny little, like, miniature delivery trucks that are actually e-bikes in disguise. Like, UPS has got it, DHS. It's like, there's a lot of potential there.

Okay. We got to stop telling each other how smart we are about e-bikes and talk about some cars. This is what it's like every day. Welcome to the Verge Newsroom. Can we please talk about this canoe truck? Oh, please. Yes. I can't decide. I mean, I love it, but I can't decide if, like, America is going to love it because it is very cute.

It looks insane. You were talking about bike design. Car design right now is going through one of the weirdest and best periods in a long time. Because the same thing you're talking, once you put a battery in it, you can do whatever you want. Every EV is basically a giant skateboard, right? And you don't have to route the exhaust. You don't have to manage heat in the same. Like there are challenges.

It's a giant moving thing. And you have to solve a bunch of known problems. But you don't have an engine. You don't have a gas tank. Like all the stuff. You just have a skateboard. And then on top of that skateboard, you can do any wild ass idea

that you have ever had in your life about a car. This canoe pickup truck is like, they let a six year old draw it. It's a big truck. It is a truck. Yes. It's absolutely what it is. It's the round block and the square block.

I think I stepped on it the other day. It's great. I think that's great. I think the cyber truck is great. Like pickup truck design is about to go through a really weird moment. Right. There's going to be the electric F-150, which will look like an F-150 with different headlights. Then there's the cyber truck, which is just a rolling triangle.

That's what's happening there. And there's this canoe thing, which is a bubble. The Rivian truck is like kind of, like. Yeah. These are the most popular kinds of cars in America and they're about to go through a design revolution. It's super cool. The Hummer EV. Yeah, there's the Hummer.

You and Sean made a video about how many new cars are coming out. That video is really fun. I will say on the other end of the spectrum, traditional car designs, they don't, like, they don't know what to do. So like there's a Kia EV6. This car has, I would just say, one of the weirdest butts in automotive history. It just looks weird. It's fine. It's a bit like, yeah, it's kind of like raised up a little bit.

Like it's wearing like platform heels almost. Like BMW got into like a lot of controversy many years ago. What were they called? They had a designer named Chris Bangle. They called it the bangle butt. And then all the car manufacturers copied it and BNW dropped it. Like you can see what Kia is trying to do here. You know, they squint.

You're like, oh, they're trying to. And it's like, no, this didn't work. It looks like a hashback got confused. Yeah, it's a bit. It's got a bit of a fastback kind of proportions to it. But I don't know. I mean, like Kia is like one of those companies. that they make cars that people buy.

They're affordable. They are a mass market. And I think when you get a company like that going into electric, you know, full steam, that that's a net good, you know, in the end. But yeah, the thing still looks. It looks really weird. A little fun. And then on the other end, you have BMW, which already makes extremely weird looking cars right now

with gigantic, like the size of the BMW grill has gotten outlandishly insane. but they do that because their air intakes for their internal combustion engines. So they just revealed the I-4, which looks exactly like the 4 series. And they still have the gigantic BMW nostrils. They just put some stuff behind them. They're fans of classic Looney Tunes cartoons. They just love bugs. It would have been incredibly outside of like BMWs, like what they're willing to do.

If they had gone full Tesla Model 3 with just like the flat, you know, grill-less nose to the car. So I think, like, they're clearly not there yet. They have another concept that they released earlier this year, the I-X. That's going to be the one. I think that that's going to be probably most appealing to people because it's in a crossover SUV, and that's like a very popular form factor. But, yeah, it's not, you know, it's also got a very aggressive grill on the front as well.

So it's like, they can't go full, you know. I just imagine, like, they made the eye. three are they just like that that was a mistake we're never gonna try and do that again no they're going with big nostrils like I just imagine you know they're like sketching out the I4 and like you know the person who's in charge of like

brand identities in the room and he's like we gotta do the nostrils and then like there's probably one other designer being like we could stop it like this is the moment like you could break from the nostril thing like we could stop and like he just lost it like they lost the fight like no inflection point we'll see I'm very

curious in general because of all these new designs that are coming out to see if people even test like the model s the model three very standard familiar designs in the grand scheme of things maybe a little more aggressive than average but they look like cars the model x looks like a car has cool doors lots of pluses and minuses on the doors the cyber truck is just out way out in left field and i'm very curious to see as as the electric car movement comes, these new car makers show up, are people going to gravitate towards the familiar designs, which is always kind of the argument we heard from carmakers. Like, they got to look like cars. Or are they going to go super wild? Like, we, I just couldn't tell you. Well, Tesla's already had some success with like this teardrop shape in its, of its cars. That is not, I wouldn't say, is a common thing. Most, you know, if you lined up all of the sedans and all the SUVs and all the crossovers, you know, they're all going to look somewhat similar to each other, but Tesla still stands out a little bit in so far as it's got this kind of like weird bubbly

kind of shape to it. Not as much as the canoe, but yeah, but the cyber truck is completely in the opposite direction of that. It is a parallelogram on wheels. So yeah, and we're supposed to get another look at like some redesigns of the cyber truck later this year because they are anticipating going into production by the end of this year, potentially, although Elon Musk has said that is not, sorry, that's not how we refer to him anymore. You're right. His Majesty, Elon the first techno king of Tesla, I forgot. Thank you.

Ben to knee. That car, I mean, everything Tesla is delayed. Yes. I feel like the Cybersruck is going to be delayed. Can we, we should explain the Techno King situation. So it was a, I think this broke on Monday morning. was a great thing to wake up to Monday because I was already up really early because I was because Volkswagen was going to do this big like battery day presentation that was supposed to be very

similar to Tesla's battery day that they had last year. And Volkswagen did announce some really, really interesting things, but that of course got completely buried by Elon Musk filing, or Tesla actually filing in with the SEC, a name, a title change, which is that he was going to be techno king, one word, techno king, no space. and Tesla's chief financial officer, Zachary Kirkhorn, was going to have the new title of Master of Coin. But they're retaining their existing titles. Yeah. It's a joke.

The SEC loves it when Elon Musk jokes, is my understanding. Yeah. The best thing I love about this is watching legacy financial publications like the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times and all like Barron's and like all. like barons and like all these places having to cover this like very serious very seriously i just get like an endless kick out of like watching like that kind of stuff i've decided that techno king refers to the music not to technology i'm sure that's what elan thinks too yeah he produced a song this week and he was going to sell as an nfts so clearly his uh his you know he wants to be he has this whole other uh side of him that he wants to be a music producer clearly

We went almost an entire hour without saying NFT. Oh, shit. You didn't say fungible earlier, and I was like, oh, quick. But we've made it this far. You actually mentioned, let's go through Volkswagen's battery. Like, the batteries are the big deal here. Right, Tesla's really investing in battery tech. They're building more battery factories.

There's a big report they're going to help the Texas grid with a giant battery farm. What's going on with Volkswagen? Yeah, so Volkswagen just came out with its first mass market, long range, electric vehicle, the ID4. We reviewed that a couple weeks ago. I think it's a pretty great car. There's, you know, it's not, it's not as technologically impressive as a lot of EVs, but it's still highly functional. And they've got a whole other slate of EVs on the horizon, but they want to be, they want to be like this company that is a, you know, not just an electric, making just electric cars, but also they want to really get a hold of their supply chain.

And to do that, they really need to get more heavily involved in battery manufacturing because it's all about batteries. When it comes to EVs, the battery is the first and last thing that you need to be talking about. So they talked about how they will be reducing the cost of producing their batteries by up to 50% over the next few years. They're building multiple battery factories, gigafactories around the world. They're expanding their network of charging stations.

And they also talked about eventually transitioning to solid state technology, which has been sort of the holy grail of battery technology for a really long time. Yeah. I mean, I think Vokeswagon is always trying to buy Goodwill back after Dieselgate. Like it feels like that's still the frame that company is operating in, even if like maybe the world has forgotten because we just, everyone moves on so quickly now. But Vokeswagon is still like, here's what we're doing that's good. And that's like always their foot forward.

I really wonder who is going to like win the battery war because car companies don't make a lot of their own things generally. Like they have giant supplier networks, say huge supply chains. That stuff consolidates over time. Do you think Volkswagen is like positioned to actually do it? I think so. I mean, they're the number two auto manufacturer in the world based on sales. You know, if anyone has like the heft and the capital that you would need to actually do something like this, I think it's definitely them. I mean, we've seen what Tesla can accomplish with far less than what, you know, far less resources than what Volkswagen has. And they have supercharger stations around the world in Europe and China.

It's growing. I think if Tesla Volkswagen really put its like pen to paper and just really kind of like committed itself fully to this. And it sounds like they are. And like their stock kind of, their stock price kind of went crazy this week because of this announcement. And it's kind of gone down a little bit. But I think that they'll get both the recognition that they're,

looking for from their customers, but also that bump that they're clearly looking for from the markets, which have obviously sort of heaped most of their rewards on Tesla over the last year. So I think that there's definitely an opportunity for them to come in and kind of steal some of that thunder. Yeah, I mean, this feels like the classic disruption story. Like, Tesla was a small company. They didn't make gas engines. They were all focused on this and it was existential for them. Volkswagen's the big company. They make all the things.

And they're like, oh, we're going to do it too. And you just assume that they have the money and the resources and the people. But like, there's a reason Apple invented the iPhone and Microsoft didn't. You know, like, it has that feel to it. We'll see how it plays out. Like, I actually, the number of electric cars that have come out that have been good recently is like, there's enormous cause for optimism. And then you like push the buttons on their infotainment screens. and you're like, hmm, maybe there's less cost for optimism.

I'm really excited because I'm getting, as a loan, I'm getting a Polestar 2 this weekend. Oh, awesome. Because I'm the first car on the road that's got like a full, fully baked in native Android operating system. And I think it's really kind of like a bellwether. I think of what we're going to see to come where I think more and more car companies,

I could be totally wrong about this. But I think more and more car companies are going to be turning over their operating systems to Google and Apple because they just do it. it's just clear that that's what people want. They want their phone in their car. They don't want to deal with sync four and like all that BS. They just want, you know, a familiar experience. And I think like Volvo and their sub-brand pulsar, they recognized that and they were really quick to adopt that.

And I think, you know, whether the rest of the industry follows is going to be, you know, we'll see. I think Google's in a good position. The one thing that we are talking about a 10-year road to self-driving, right? Like, that's a long way away. But once the car can even, like, even closer, level three self-driving, right? Like, still a wheel, but it can kind of drive itself. That built-in navigation system has got to be a lot better than they are right now. Yeah.

Because you won't be able to just carplay Google Maps or whatever. You have to tell the car where to go. And I think that is just another inflection point for these companies to get way better at the in-car stuff, as opposed to just like the Mustang Machi is like here's an interface but like really it's a gigantic carplay screen that looks nuts and it's like they're just assuming that that's what you're going to do and that's the end of it and the second you want that car to drive itself you have to unplug your phone and actually use the screen we'll see I'm I think like Volvo switching to Android 4 to switching to Android I think they're realizing like oh we need a really good map and we know some people who make a really good map Would you like to build the rest of the operating system? Yeah, I think that that's definitely. And, you know, like Google obviously has Waymo, which is the leading autonomous vehicle company in the world.

And, you know, I think it's just like, it's clear that that's going to be sort of like, they're going to be sort of in the catbird seat in terms of like fielding these requests from these, from these companies. Like, they're going to be able to pick and choose who they want to do business with and who they don't. All right. Last one. And I just want to tell this story in the context of two of our reporters.

So Foxcon announced this week, it will decide what to do with the factory in Wisconsin by July. That's the whole announcement, really. But then they're like, it's either going to be EVs or something else. Which is like a pretty enormous range. And so, like, we see the story. We got to write the story. Sean, like, sees EVs. Sean O'Kane, our other senior transportation reporter, sees it.

He's like, okay, it's the EV story. Josh Treza, who's like, always on the Foxcon reporting. He's like, I'll help you out. They, like, come together. The story goes off. And then it's time we put a headline on it. And the fight between Foscon's full of shit and the word EV and the headline. These two just like, they're totally different views of what the story was.

It's very good. The idea is that Foxxon signed to do with what, Fisker to build EVs. They want to be an EV platform company. Again, it's just their skateboards, right? You can, like, be the best skateboard manufacturer. You're going to be in a good position. help a lot of people build cars. So Foxxon wants to do that. They have a plant in Mexico. I'm just going to put the money on Foxxon decides to build the EVs in Mexico. But they keep, I think they're

stringing along the Foxxon thing, the Wisconsin thing, because they got to do something. But it's either EVs or something else. Or something else. Something else is like a pretty, you know, it's like a relatively specific category of things, right? Something else. It's real good. But, you know, the only thing they've ever produced that factory is a handful of test things. they made some masks, which is good during the pandemic. They did some mask manufacturing. They announced a deal to make ventilators fell through. Before that, they announced a deal to make coffee robots for airports.

So if you go to, like, if you're, I think Austin has them. A bunch of airports have them. There are these coffee kiosks where you like push a button and you see the cup go through a conveyor belt and then like makes coffee and comes out. Yeah. These, by the way, automated coffee machines have existed for a long time. So they're robots. It's very funny to me. That deal fell through.

The market for airport coffee robots kind of went away. So they have literally manufactured nothing but masks in this facility. They've also manufactured hopes and dreams. It's true. And a lot of good journalism. And a lot of great journalism. And maybe one day, either EVs or something else. Yeah.

We'll see. All right, Andy. Hope springs eternal. It does. We'll have to have you back to you, man. This is great. We'll talk to you. Thanks, guys.

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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. Dieter, there's some gadget stuff going on. Samsung stuff, Apple stuff, what's up? Yeah, so Samsung held another unpacked event, and I get why.

I understand why they wanted to do it, because they announced the Galaxy A52, the A52 5G, and the A72. And as you may know, since I've been banging on about this since last year, the A-series phones are the ones that Samsung actually sells. They sell way more of them than they sell the S-series or the Note series or the Z-folding phones, obviously. So Allison wrote it up, and the news is basically. basically that a bunch of stuff that used to be reserved for like high end or mid-end is now in like solidly in the mid-range.

So 90 hertz refresh rate screens, IP67, and, you know, of course there's like 5G. You can get 120 hertz on some of these phones. The thing that I don't get, honestly, is if the cameras are like decent, why would you buy regular S-21, which already like is pushing down into like the mid-range, right, with the materials and the camera's basically the same as, last year. The daylight between, you know, A-52-5G or an A-72 and a Galaxy S-21, it's, like, very, very narrow. Well, I was saying about this. They said they might skip the Galaxy Note this year. That's the other thing, yeah. But they're pinning that on a chip shortage, which is interesting

because it's probably true. A chip shortage is very real. But they've been telegraphing about not wanting to make the note for a while now. Yeah. I'll make two comparisons. Because the note was, like, supposed to be the highest of the high end, right? Yeah. But here are my two comparisons. Okay. And I don't think they're running out of chips. I think they're running in a strategy. But here are my two comparisons. Apple ran into this problem with the MacBook and the MacBook Pro. It like didn't, it couldn't really differentiate them. Okay. Not the little MacBook. Like years and years ago. Oh, years ago. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Years ago. Like there was like the MacBook and then there was like a MacBook Pro. Yep. And like it was just weird. Like what is the real difference between these things?

Yep. And they kind of just got rid of it. They just got rid of it. They just got rid of it. the MacBook and there was an error and there was a pro and then they brought back the little MacBook and everything all went to hell basically and now they're kind of back right where they have an error and a pro and there's no thing called the MacBook because there's just no space there for a thing in between those things yeah yeah so that's one way you can look at it the other way I was thinking about it is virtue the luxury phone company the ultra luxury phone manufacturer That takes a phone and then super glues some Swarovsky crystals on it and calls it luxury, that company? Yeah, it wasn't like great luxury, but it was like, we'll take a phone and make it more luxurious.

Yeah. And we'll, like, create a price differential with exclusivity and materials and, I don't know, a butler comes to your house to unbox it. And that's what you're suggesting flagship phones are, is Swarovsky crystals? Well, I just, they haven't gone. Neither one of those ways is correct. Right. Like you can't buy a much nicer phone anymore. Right. Like it's really hard. You're kind of running out of that space. You get more, you get more camera lenses on the back. You might get some more RAM. But like most people don't need that stuff. So you got the MacBook problem. And on the other hand, like even the materials. Like it's, you can't buy a phone made of more premium materials. Like maybe like Apple's on the high end. It's one kind of stainless steel versus another. But like, yeah, you get like. whatever they're calling gorilla glass now instead of polycarbonate, but polycarbonate's not bad. Right.

It's actually funny that you talk about, like, what makes the flagship phone a flagship. In the context of the S-21, it's interesting because, like, well, they brought the S-21 down, but, like, I kind of know what you get out of a plus or an ultra compared to these phones. But the rumors coming up for these new one-plus phones, I mean, you know, they're going to be announcing them, I think, next week. There's the one-plus-nine and the nine-plus, and there's also, like, a one-plus-nine. are floating around. And One Plus traditionally does a, like, the last year, like, the regular old One Plus

8 was great. And so, like, what's a differentiation between the one plus nine and the nine pro going to be and is it going to be worth that money? This is why Samsung wants folding phones to happen, right? Because that's, like, a very clear, obvious, oh, you should pay more for this, right? The what you should pay more for. We've been talking about this for years, but, like, it's, I don't know, it's really real. And, like, it's really clear.

Man, I feel like I've said this, like, a dozen times in phone reviews over the the past couple of years. Like, when you buy the most expensive premium pro max, whatever one, which you're primarily paying for is, like, niceness. Yeah. I just, there's a part where it's like in every other part of the economy, when you pay more money, it's nicer in a way that you can see. But this is the thing. You pay more money, it's nicer in a way that you can see or feel or experience. In tech, historically, you pay more money, it does more stuff. That's the implicit an assumption to consumer tech. And that no longer applies. And so, like, making the shift from it does more stuff or it's, like, does stuff better to it's nicer. And the only way that you

can express that is either through fancy materials or, you know, some sort of spec that feels ephemerally better. I don't think companies have figured that out quite yet. Yeah. I mean, the other comparison I would make is the iPad Pro. Like, I have a two-generations-old iPad Pro a lot. We're expecting. And you want to come out. But last year they added the LiDAR sensor. And at no point, like, first time in a long time was like, oh, I need new gadget. I was like, this is the same only with a sensor that I will never use. I bought the new Nest Hub.

So Google put out a new Nest Hub with the display. It looks exactly the same. They're doing some more stuff with Soli. It's like sleep tracking with Soli, basically. That's very creepy. Here's a thing that can use radar to detect you breathing while you sleep. Yeah. Sure.

I just, I'm probably not going to turn that on. but what is it really they added a faster processor and they've added so much stuff to that platform that the ones I have in my house are like starting to get slow. Really? Yeah. Like you say you say I'm going to Google.

Yeah. So I'm trying not to trigger everybody's things. But you say the wake word and like you can see it like chug. Like it doesn't drop the little screen doesn't drop down instantly. It doesn't go into responsive mode. Yeah. So I stopped using my nest hub because I like I don't know

we've got the echoes in the kitchen and then in my bathroom, I've got the cheap little Lenovo clock. And I have to reboot it. Like, I have to unplug it, like, once a week. Because it's just like, you ask it to do something. It's like, okay, I'll do it. And then just nothing happens. It just stops.

And like, it thinks it's doing it because, like, I'll, like, tell it to play the news. They're like, all right, here's NPR. And then silence for two minutes. And then, like, two minutes later, it's like, and now here's your next news show. It's like, but you didn't play the thing. Yeah, I mean, I remember we reached in a show and we're like, why do these run like whatever Chromecast thing

and these ones run Android and I think that's like we finally found the answer. It's like Google cares about one platform and not the other. Yeah. But yeah, it's just funny. It's like they look exactly the same. The screens are the same. I'm willing to pay another hundred bucks for adequate performance after how I'm ever in years of having it.

Like that's fine. That's worth spending money on. But that's not what we're spending money on with phones anymore. But which phone do you own do you use? Well, I have a gigantic 12 bro. Yeah. And like, Would you have bought the, if they had sold that same one, but with like last year's processor and one less camera, but it's the same size screen, would you have bought the, the cheaper one? If they, well, the camera, this is hard because with Apple, it's the camera and the processor, like, right. Together.

On top of each other. Yeah, yeah. But assuming they could do it, which I don't think they can. But I would have bought last year's processor with this year's cameras. Right. Because that's the thing that I prioritize with the phone, right? Yeah. Is that, like, I still think it's too big after all this time.

Like, it's still just like a little too big. But did the screen size bump really do it for me? No, it's the cameras. Yeah. So, well, see, I just think it's like they've reached this point where like you're, it's either you go down the MacBook strategy path where you just sort of get rid of the middle and you have the really high end one and you have the consumer one. Mm-hmm.

And that's where the S-21 gets squeezed, right? Yeah, it's super squeezed right now. Or you go down the, the Virtue path. Yeah. Where it's like, now it's made of leather. And you're like, sure. Yeah, fine. Well, they started with the Note 20 last year.

The regular Note 20 was like kind of bad. Like, it was like a standard phone, but they like, they really cut down a bunch of stuff. And it was like, you should just get the Ultra. And so I was really curious if they're going to do this year because, especially now that you can get a stylus on the S-21. Anyway, we haven't talked about the home pod being discontinued. I just figured we'd lead the show with that and just have emotions about computational audio for. An hour and a half? It's funny.

The HomeCod got discontinued because we haven't talked about the HomePod on the show since the HomePod came out. Look, I was very impressed. Like, Apple, like, I went to the same event that all the other journalists went to. They showed me their rooms with all the padding and the anechoic chamber and the I got to talk to them about moving the sound around. Like, all very impressive. At the end of the day, Google is selling a $99 smart device that is. smarter and is also a kick-ass photo frame.

Yeah. Right. Amazon will just, like, throw an echo dot at you. Like, you just, like, walk by an Amazon warehouse or Whole Foods. There's an echo dot in your back pocket. The HomePod was just so expensive. Siri is underpowered. And, like, I don't think people care about sound quality.

Everyone knows. Like, people are about to spend four hours watching a four-three movie. I'm sorry. I think the HomePod Mini is doing a lot better. It's cheaper. People seem to really like it. It is the future of HomeKit. Yeah.

It's kind of like embedded in the HomePod mini. No, no, no. No, no. Stop. Stop. I'm not going to let you talk about thread. Not yet. I need to have my own emotions.

I never bought the HomePod. I've listened to it in rooms. The thing about the HomePod is Apple did this thing that it does every now and then where it rolls up and it says, we are going to do the thing that we did with the eye hole. with so many other categories where everybody else did it badly, we waited for our shot, and now we're doing it well. So, okay, sure. They said they did it with the Apple Watch.

It didn't. It took a while. They definitely did it with the iPad. If you consider tablets to have existed before the iPad, technically they did with Windows, whatever. Obviously, they did it with the phone. What market were they disrupting with the HomePod? Were they saying they were disrupting?

Was it the smart speaker market? Was it like Echoes and Google Homes? Was it Sonos and high-end audio? Was it, like, were they trying to do something with Ambien? computing. We've been talking about ambient computing since like Walt wrote his big column about it. And it seems like the only company that's like actually still trying it is Amazon. Everybody else is like sort of not putting their whole like effort into it. And Apple clearly wasn't going for that. So I think the problem with the HomePod is like they didn't know who they were disrupting.

They didn't know. They just like, oh yeah, people like nice things. We made a nice thing. Yeah, I think they saw the voice assistant in the home as a real threat to their ecosystem. particularly from Amazon. Right. Like I, we, we know, we have heard, we have been told Alexa is to Amazon as Windows is to Microsoft. Right. Right. That is their operating system.

They're going to build around it. They want that in your house. They want it in your car. They want it everywhere. Apple's like, we can't just let Amazon step over us and then figure it out. And then 20 years from now put out the Alexa phone and we're dead. Like you got to cut that off a little bit. And you have Siri and you've done nothing with it.

And your customers are saying, well, this from you. Yeah. And next to it, and this was the rumor that I'd always heard, you have a bunch of, like, audio engineers who are insistent they've made the next great version of audio and have been pushing you to release this thing forever. Yeah. So I think they just, like, mashed up the ideas, to your point, they didn't have, like,

a clear vision, but they thought where Apple will charge a premium, we'll get in people's houses. And I just, of all companies, Apple not realizing that people will pick convenience over sound quality is the funniest. because Apple was like, here's the iPod, 128KAC, that's what we're doing, 1,000 songs in your pocket. Also check out these headphones, they're bad.

And like, revolutionize the music industry. I think that's a miss. But I think the mini is like they're back on track. They're selling it. That's even their own press release thing or discontinuing their home pod, focused on the home pod mini. I think that smart home kit market for them

is a lot stronger. and if you know you want to listen to music you're either you're wearing your expensive AirPods max or you're you've got actual speakers on a soundbar and all this other stuff yeah also it took him forever to realize that there's more than one person in a house that it's not just a simple human's device um so okay home pod mini supports thread i'm still waiting for choip actually it's chip connected home over IP which is like actually basically home kit but everybody else is going to turn it into a standard and adopt it um there's like more smart home coming that I think is going to be a big deal.

Like, we're still waiting for sidewalk from Amazon to hit in a major way. Like, there's a bunch of smart home stuff that I feel is like just sitting under the surface waiting to happen. And I don't know, I'll be powered by Thread on the HomePod Mini. So thread is like a wireless network that sits next to Wi-Fi. It isn't Wi-Fi. Yeah. Right now, like, basically the only thread stuff that exists are like some nano-leaf lights in the HomePod Mini. Yeah.

Well, an Eero. But you could put like If you just like look at the Euro Reddit where people are trying to connect the Nanolee flights Like they haven't You can turn on the thread radio as in the Euro But yeah It's not there yet

Okay hopefully they get there soon Yeah Everybody who has a HomePod mini And these Nanley flights are like This is amazing It's so fast What? Right?

Because thread is just like alternative mesh network It's not competing with Wi-Fi packets And your Wi-Fi network Okay And so like you push the button on your phone. And like,

apparently it's just like, the main benefit is a really fast. The other benefit is that it's like, every thread device is a mesh node. Right. So the lights themselves become another thread node that is lightning fast. So you're like, don't have to put 50 Wi-Fi routers everywhere.

So what's really, like, I never, I guess I am sometimes annoyed that it, things take a while to turn on when I ask for the lights to turn on. But I'm always, I always just attribute it to like some random crap happened on my phone or like, I guess it wanted to talk to the cloud this time.

I don't know. But yeah, like, it actually is way slower, and now I'm going to be super annoyed every time I talked by digital assistant and asked the lights. The second you noticed, I was a long time. Thanks a lot. Or you have hubs. Or the other thing that, like, I have Lutron smart lights.

Yeah. I have a Lutron hub. And that's fast. So you push the button and that is fast because you talk to the hub and the hub controls the switches. But it turns out putting actual Wi-Fi chips in things, like they're small. Like they're small.

They don't have big process. Like all that stuff. And so thread makes it all faster. The big question is, uh, the other company that's like all in on thread is this other smart home company called Eve. They make a bunch of stuff. People really like Eve. You go to the Eve website and they're like the future of the smart home is the HomePod

mini. Hmm. Because it's the only thread border device you can buy that'll bridge Wi-Fi to thread right now. Right. Because Ira hasn't like gotten all the way there. Nice. Even though they're the first people to, ship thread. It's going to be like a crazy year of smart home stuff is thread chip, all the other

thread devices we even promised for five years finally come out. Yeah. I'm excited. I'm going to buy the Eve weather station. That's my big thing. Okay. I'm excited to not install any of the stuff in my apartment. That's what I'm excited about. Well, it's just a little box. You just like put it outside your house. A couple of things. iPad pros, Mark Urban says are coming in April. There's been like swirling stuff that Apple's going to do an event and then like the invite never lands and who knows. I mean also like desperate for either the new iMac or the new MacBook Pro. There's just a bunch of stuff that we're expecting from Apple ahead of WWDC, and we're just sort of like waiting.

I have a theory, a small bad theory. Okay. I think they might be waiting to have an event. Oh, interesting. It's just, it's a bad theory. It's not a great theory. I think if Abb wants to do something, they're going to do it. I think they have thoroughly enjoyed putting out infomercials for people.

But those events are events for a reason. Yeah. And like if you're going to do the new MacBook Pro, you know, like I don't know, we'll see. But it has been sliding. That ship shortage stuff is there. Yeah. My theory is like as it gets close as it slides and you get closer to actually having an event potentially. They built that theater for a reason.

Yeah. They also like they want to control the situations which people take their first pictures of their devices, right? They like that hands-on area. They built that for a reason too, right? instead of just like my living room, which is objectively awful. I think that they're putting it off because they saw these new Intel commercials with Justin Long and they're terrified. Hello, I'm a Justin. Just a real person doing a real comparison between Mac and PC.

Come on. If you haven't seen them, Intel put out a series of commercials with Justin Long, the I'm a Mac guy. And he says, I'm a, I'm just a just and I'm a human being. And then he goes and he goes into a living room and he like talks to a person on a, he looks at a PC. and he's like, oh wow, this has two screens. Oh, wow, this guy's playing video games. This is stuff you could never do on a Mac at the end. There's one, the keyboard in the front computer with the second screen.

They screwed up the after effects on it, and the second screen is hovering over his hands in like a split second. Anyway, so these are the commercials. I think these ads are mostly just Intel got itself dunked on. So like just objectively the ads didn't work the way they wanted to. Yeah. Let me make the case for the ads. Okay.

Intel is about to enter, they have a new CEO. Yep. They're about to enter this extremely weird middle period where either they're going to figure it out or not. Yep. Inside of that middle period, every time Apple puts out an M1 or an M-Series computer. Yep. The story about Intel being dead is everywhere. Yep.

Intel also has hundreds of OEM customers with their chips inside their computers. These are ads about real problems with Macs. So like, it is true. that you cannot touch the screen on a Mac. Yes. Many people have noticed this. It is true that you can't fold it over and make it a tablet. It is true that you can't use a stylus on it.

It is true that Apple really wants you to have, we talked about Fitness Plus with Ashley. Like Apple wants you to have an iPad and a phone and a Mac and like that is true. It is true that there are no games on a Mac. None of Intel's points were wrong. It is true that the design of a Mac has been static for years. and even with the new chips, they still look the same. Yep.

And maybe that will all change now, but all that stuff is true. So the things that Intel is saying are just true criticisms of the Mac. Yep. 100%. That's it. That's all I got.

It obviously did not work out. Yeah. The thing about every time Apple releases a new M-based Mac, it's going to be Intel's dead stories, is real. Like every single time I talk to, a company about a new laptop or like new Chromebooks or whatever. It's like, yeah, but are you weird with the M1?

Like, your battery life is like actually half of what the competition is. And it's going to be a long time before there's an answer. And like Intel's got to figure out what it's going to do with itself in that period. Yeah. And again, new CEO, he just started. Like, I think in a couple of weeks he's going to do his first big thing. Is the first big thing that screw it? We're giving up on trying to fab this stuff ourselves.

We're just going to have TSM make our stuff. Yeah. Well, see. That was a big shruggy for those not watching on Zoom call. He's got to do something. That's what I mean. They're about to enter this weird fallow period for the whole point of the new guys to change the strategy. And he just started.

So like what's the first thing to do is like just remind everybody that from a design and capability perspective, the Mac is like actually quite static. Yeah. Okay. Well, maybe that like Microsoft tries this every couple of years too. Like maybe it had very predictable results. But like I get it. I just don't, I think maybe they should have seen the predictable results. On the other hand, hiring Justin Long made everybody talk about Intel.

That's true. They bought themselves a whole, if you believe all press is good press, which I do not as a member of the press. They bought themselves a cycle. We'll see. I'm trying to get Pat Gelsinger on Decoder. We'll see how that goes. If you're listening, Pat, you know, show up. Yeah.

It's my challenge to you. No, we're working on it. It's a healthier conversation. Okay. Last thing, I just want to call out Lauren Grush, our excellent space. reporter's actually on book leave right now. So good luck to Lauren. She's working on it. Show you back soon. In the meantime, we have an interim space reporter named Joey Roulette, who is great. He got a big scoop today this morning scooped scoop to Biden appointee.

Senator Bill Nelson, former astronaut Bill Nelson, will be the Biden's pick to head NASA, which is a big deal. Anyway, congrats to Joey in the scoop. It's great. We have great space coverage. And Lauren will be back eventually. All right. We're way over time. We're going to wrap it up. Thanks to Julia. It was great having Julia on the verge team for a while. We'll let Julia tell you where she's going. But thanks to Julia, you can tweet at her. She's Ladmouth, Julia. Thanks to Andy, he's Andy Jayhawk on Twitter. You can tweet at us. I'm at Reckless Deidors at Backlon. Decoder on Tuesday is Kevin Ruse, the comments from New York Times. She just wrote a book about something called Robotic Process Automation. Literally the only person

who's ever wanted to talk to me about that. I've been trying to get someone to talk to me about it for like three years. It's a good book. That's coming up on two. We'll be back next Friday with more Vergecast. That's it. Rock and roll. Continue wearing a mask.