The Vergecast - Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked August 2022 biggest announcements

Episode Date: August 12, 2022

The Verge's Nilay Patel, David Pierce, Alex Cranz, and Richard Lawler to discuss all the announcement from Samsung's Galaxy Unpacked event this past week. Further reading: HBO Max will be replaced next year by a new service combined with Discovery Plus Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked August 2022: the five biggest announcements The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 gets a little extra polish, but it’s still $999 The new Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 is a little better and still too expensive Here’s how the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 compares to last year’s Z Fold 3 Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked is a foldable party of one Samsung still hasn’t given us a good reason to buy a foldable phone  Samsung goes big on battery with the Galaxy Watch 5 series  Samsung’s Galaxy Buds 2 Pro: more comfortable design and hi-fi audio Google tries publicly shaming Apple into adopting RCS Disney Plus’ Premium streaming price is rising to $10.99 per month Disney Plus’ ad-supported plan will launch in December Disney Plus and Hulu are getting steep price hikes Gmail is now officially allowed to spam-proof politicians’ emails Ethereum’s big proof-of-stake blockchain switch could happen on September 15th Apple’s next iPhone might be more expensive AirPods cases with USB-C could be in the cards for 2023 Battery percentage finally returns to iOS 16 and it’s hideous Sonos has delayed the release of its next product — likely the Sub Mini LG Display’s 97-inch OLED panel vibrates to create ‘cinematic’ 5.1 sound Call 866-VERGE11 (866-837-4311) to ask The Verge about this week's Samsung announcements. We may answer them on Wednesday! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today on the Vergecast, the team breaks down the Galaxy Unpacked event, and we're sorry to inform you, Disney Plus not winning the streaming wars. Of course, we'll get into all the gadget news from this week. That's coming up right after this. 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. 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. Welcome to the Worldcast. The flagship podcast, the folding phones.

You wanted it, you got it. One hour. Phones that flip in half. Phones that open a backup again. Phones that turn into tablets. That's all we're... No, we're going to talk a lot of things. I'm your friend, Eli.

David Pierce is here. Hi, I'm just here to tell you that phones are cool that don't fold. My whole phone doesn't fold. Did you not? This is the flagship body is full. Alex Kranz is here. I'm your friend that loves to open the phone with just like one thumb. Just like doing...

Just boom. Pop. Flip. I'm trying to think of what the noise is. Because I haven't used a flip phone in so long. In 1999, I purchased a cell phone called the Sony Zuma CMC-200. It's the best phone ever made. Okay.

It was amazing. It was amazing. I bought a used one. I have one at my house, like a perfect condition one. Deerey's talking about it all the time. It had a stock to open. Like the mic flipped down from the body of the phone. Yes.

Never mind. This is a good phone. And so when it had the Sony jog dial. So it had like a multi-element LED display. I love it. The text. So you'd like scroll to a name. And then if you could get it exactly right, you could make the call by flipping the stock open.

Yes. And then when you were done, you'd be like, oh my gosh. And I practiced that move so many times. Like in the mirror? I got to look cool. I was like, scroll and flip, baby. And my friends in high school were like, one, why are you the weirdo with a cell phone? And two, stop saying scroll and flip.

But I have it again. It was the best one of the best phones ever made. And my all time top five cell phones, suddenly Zoom a CMZ 200. Just putting it out there, scroll and flip. I feel you. Richard Lawler is here, by the way. I do exist. And I have bad news about streaming.

It's true. So we have been remote for a million years. We're all together in the studio today, which is crazy. It's literally never happened. It's going to be the one. It's the first. The first time. We were just sternly told that we can't talk over each other because Andrew can't fix it in post like he can when we're all apart.

So this one's going to be nuts. But Richard is actually in town. I don't think he's been with us. in person since you started at the verge. Over a year now. That's crazy. But if you want to go all the way back to like Engadgett podcast days, Richard and I worked together at Engadgett.

I used to see you in person all the time. But it was at like CES at like three in the morning. I'm like, there's Richard. I need to lean over and touch the ground. Richard is here. But it's good to see you in person. We're all here. There's a lot going on.

I want to start with a little update. Okay. There's a Samsung event we got to talk about. There's folding phones. There's Disney is happening. It was a little gadget of lightning around, but we got to start with an update. Last week we talked about HBO Max, maybe dying, maybe live in. Who knows what's going to happen?

We said, when there's news, we'll have an emergency podcast. You may have noticed we had no such emergency podcast because the news was like just a devastating nothing. Yeah. It was devastating and they announced that they will eventually kill HBO Max. Right. Sometime next year. But for now, everything is cool. Yeah, it's all going to go on Discovery Plus's stack.

So if you hate the HBO Max app, good news. So does the CEO of Discovery. He also hates it. If you hate the HBO content, bad news, he also hates it. Yeah. It's so expensive. Yeah. It's so much cheaper to just like rebuild houses in Texas than to do other things.

Game of Thrones is way more expensive than that. They did have this slide where they talked about their franchises and they were like, Game of Thrones and Harry Potter and then the 90-day fiancé universe. This is a real thing they put on the slide. It was incredible. Yeah. Those were not good slides. There was like the male skewed males, apparently.

You guys love plots. You love scripts. Female skewed. We just love reality. That's not true, though. I got to send a note, but it was great. If nobody's getting married this episode, Alex's not interested. I'm out.

I turn the TV off, fling the remote. So what they've decided to do is they are going to merge HBO Max and Discovery Plus. They haven't decided what it's called. Yeah. They're going to have a new app that's like all the content from HBO Max on the technology of the Discovery Plus app. Is the Discovery Plus app good? Does anyone know? No, see, it might only be perceived as good because it never crashes, but that's because no one uses it.

That's like, I think that might be the mistake they're making. But they seem to like it. It's fine. Yeah, like it is definitely possible that there are just 12 people using it and so it's not a problem. But like the app is fine. It's not the trash heap that HBO Max is. So that's good. Well, we think that, right?

Because HBO Max, people actually use it. No, but the thing when you go to load HBO Max and it's like, oh, would you like to see some thumbnails for the shows you're watching come back in 30 to 40 minutes? Like, at least Discovery Plus doesn't do that. Right. No, I'm saying that's because no one uses it. Like if you— Maybe. If it has 50 more million users, everybody get everyone you know and everyone else you know to subscribe.

Pull over your bar and subscribe to Discovery Plus right now. Log in. The promo code is decoder. See if it works. Let us know. Could it actually hold up to a Game of Thrones premiere night ever? We don't know. They think it will.

So like I said, this news, as you can hear, was not worth an emergency podcast. Yes. But it is true that they are going to kill HBO Max the app and then relaunch it, maybe still called HBO Max on a new technology platform. And then that will also have the content of Discovery Plus. I think it's going to be HBO Doe. I mean, they do love the stupid name. Again, this is a company, and they decided that their new corporate tagline is, the stuff dreams are made of, which is the Discovery Plus app. Just call it 90-day fiancé, the streaming service.

We'll come back to streaming because we've got to talk about Disney, Disney, all kinds of stuff happening with Disney and Disney Plus. But let's start with the gadget news of the week. Big Samsung event unpacked 95 or whatever was called. It's a lost track. Unpacked August 22 is the actual name of it. That's 95's better. Yeah. Send a note.

So unpacked 1000. They announced a bunch of stuff, David. Yeah, so it was, this is like they do two unpackes every year. And the one is like, here are all the phones that regular people want to buy. So they're like, here's the Galaxy S. And here is when like the note is no longer a thing because that used to be their off time. But anyway, so the February event, I think it's February, is usually the one where they're like, here's the phones for regular people. And then this is like, here's the weird stuff we're building in Korea.

And that's essentially what this was. they announced the Z fold four, which is the phone that folds open. There's the Z flip four, which is the flip phone. Go on. I'm ready. It folds open? It folds open. They both fold open.

They do both fold open. One folds and one flips, technically. So there's the Z flip four, which is just a flip phone because the clamshell flip phones are coming back, as Neil said. You can scroll and flip. Scroll and flip, maybe. It's back. And then there's the Z fold four, which is the one that's like a big long candy bar

that opens up sideways into a tablet. And that's like when people talk about foldable phones, the Z-Fold is basically the one that everybody talks about. It's just like is the foldable phone that exists in the world. I don't know about that. I see more flips. Really? Because are so much cheaper.

They are a lot cheaper. So yeah, the Z-Fold for it, I think, is $1,700. And the Z-Flipp for is $1,000, which is like not a lot in the fancy smartphone world, but for like a foldable phone is kind of cheap, but it's like the same price as an iPhone. I don't think I've ever seen a Z flip in the wild. Do you see these?

Yeah. For Samson. I was at the doctor's office, the reception had a Z flip two or three. Unclear which one. And I was like, oh, my God, you got a Z flip. And she was like, I hate it. Instantly, no thought. Why?

And she's like, well, I have Timo. Well, there's not good service here. And I was like, well, that's not the phone. You hate the phone? You like the phone. And she's like, oh, also loses all my text messages. My daughter has an iPhone. She can't text me.

And like, we never really talked about the phone. We talked about the universe of feeling. that networks and messaging platforms have, which really is like what we always talk about. I was like, oh, you should come on the Vergecast. But it was like an immediate, like, I hate this phone. Like, I wish I had an iPhone on like Verizon. Yeah, I mean, somewhere someone at Samsung is like,

none of this is our fault. We're so sorry. Take it up with Google. It's like 1,000 percent, right. I was like, but do you like the flippy? She's like, yeah, it's fine, but I don't have any service and I can't text my daughter. Like at some point that stuff is way more important

than whether you have like a sky blue metallic. like folding phone, which is like, I would be like, that's all I want. Isn't that why, like, the iPhone does so much better? Right, because it has a proprietary messaging service. Yeah. Like, everybody's like, oh, it just works. We'll get to that. Sorry.

We'll get to that. It's coming out. I literally will get to that. The Deeter Bone Memorial RCS segment is coming on the Vergecast. So those are two phones. I will say that the Z Fold 4 is like still ridiculously expensive. Yes. It's like $1,800.

And it's a very iterative improvement. Yeah, it's like, it's in sort of a weird spot where it's like now, The Z Fold 4 basically is as good as Samsung's other phones, which sounds like a small thing to say, but it's actually kind of a big deal. Like it has good specs. It has like a slightly less good camera than like the S-22 Ultra, which is its, you know, the note replacement's super high end. 6.8 inch, it's a monster of a phone. But it's like roughly as good as the rest of Samsung's phones, which has not been true of the fold before. You used to have to make like weird sacrifices for, you know, durability.

And the camera was a lot less good. and they've like slowly but surely brought that stuff up. And now it's like it's funny that we're to the point where foldable phones are just like iterating every year. But this seems to be where we are. It's like, they're like, yep, we did it. It folds now. It doesn't break the first time you try to open it like it used to. So that's good.

But then, yeah, it's just weird. It's like before anybody even started really using these things in a mainstream way, we're already at like a mature foldable market. It's very strange. It's just Samsung though, right? Of one, yeah. It is, yeah. And that's because there's still like a little.

crease when you open it, right? Yeah, the crease doesn't really bother me. Is the film still there? Like, if you remove the film, does it still explode? No, you are not meant to remove the film. I know. I think they've landed on a treatment of the film that does not suggest it is removable. Right.

And that is the solve. It no longer looks like a screen protector in the way that it used to. Yeah. But the screen replacements are much cheaper now. It's like $29 if you have the Samsung plan. and used to really like whatever the Samsung Center warranty is.

So like they've entered into a territory where they're to David's point they're just normal phones. Yeah. And I think especially the flip four which is $1,000, it's got flagship specs,

it's got an S-22 camera in it, the right processor, a bigger battery. It's like, oh, that is kind of like Samsung's flagship phone. Yeah. That's the one I'd get

because you can put it in your pocket. You can put in your pocket. But the fold, the fold four, still exists is like the monster that will usher in a new paradigm of computing and I think actually all the attention belongs on the flip floor yes I totally agree I think the flip four is like what phones should be like I'm I want my current phone to say the way that it is but also be smaller and not be annoying when it's sitting on a desk I want to be able to close it that makes me very

happy yeah uh whereas the like I got in a bunch of trouble because I wrote this story yesterday about uh I just don't really think there is a point to the fold as a thing it's like you can have a big phone or you can have a slightly bigger phone that's also much thicker and way more expensive. Like, can I interest you in that? Like, no, I just, I, but then a bunch of people got really mad at me because they were like, no, it's a big screen. You don't understand. Big screens are magic. Yeah, but it's an Android tablet.

Yeah. If it was an iPad mini that you folded it at half, I would buy it in a heartbeat for less than $2,000. I would probably not buy it actually for $1,800. So it's kind of like, do you want an iPad mini that, folds to be the size of an iPhone, or do you want an iPhone that folds to be the size of an Apple Watch? I want both because they're different things. Fair. Wait, okay.

Walk me through the I want an iPhone that folds into an iPad use case. That's what Dan does with his. So Dan Sefer. Yeah, he's got a fold through. Yeah. And he just, like, sits there and he opens it up and then he watches, like, all of Halo on it. Because his wife is like, we are not watching that on the TV. You can watch that as you go to bed at night.

And that would be my use case. Like, I just want to be able to be like, have it in my purse. Do you know what else you can do that on is every other phone that exists? But big. Not really. It's the, so when you fold out the fold four, it's a, it's a 7.6 inch screen. Yeah. Which is like bigger than your phone for sure.

Yeah. But is it like life-changingly differently big from your phone? I'm going to. So I've got a bunch of purses. Liam, our producer is nodding vigorously at me right now. Liam, who I would remind you, bought a Z-fold and then instantly returned it. Twice. It's like not life-changingly enough.

Yeah, exactly. Like life-changing as many stages. But you can put it like, if you have the fold, you can fold it in half, and then you can put it in a smaller purse. Yeah. Then you could a regular tablet. But the reason you'd want it to be an iPad is because then you would get the world of iPad software. Right. And instead, what you get is the world.

world of Android tablet software. That's why I don't have one. Okay. Just like, okay, so then walk me through the, I have a regular sized phone that folds into half that size. Pockets. Pockets. A lot of us do not have pockets that like work.

I'm wearing some pants today and they work and it's great. You guys didn't have to hear me to talk about it because I bought these pants not yesterday. But anytime you get a pair of pants and you can put your phone in it, it's like a huge event. Like you text your friends and stuff. Oh, yeah. And so like having a phone. phone that you don't have to text your friends because you got new pants, game changer.

Okay. I mean, I buy all of it. It's just, to me, I have effectively stopped using my iPad because my phone is so big. Same. I'm like, there's not a lot that I want to jump up to iPad size on. And the last time I did it, I was like, all right, I'm going to, you know, there's a TikTok iPad app. So I was like, all right.

Like, I scroll your whistle. I'm going to put this on this iPad. And I was like, oh, TikTok compresses the video for phones. So this is an objectively worse experience. Oh, yeah. The video looks horrible. And I will still spend, I had to delete TikTok because I would just like open my iPad mini and just be like, whoop. Oh, so I didn't try it on a mini.

I tried on like a 9.7 inch iPad. Even worse. Even worse. Just like a garbage iPad we had lying around. And you have to like flip it to the right side. It's terrible. I hate it. Richard, you have spent today talking about the two laptops that you use and the 49-inch monitor that you sit in front of all day.

So I feel like you are a person who appreciates screen real estate. I love screen real estate. not necessarily on my mobile device. Okay. And I'm fine with it being small. What I would like in a foldable phone is number one. What if it gave me iPad-like battery life if I didn't have to charge it every day? Okay.

Into that. You hit that mark? You get that mark. Put them into the idea. Or better yet, if it folded two different ways and it had a keyboard and it was called the Motorola MPX. Yeah. And you would sell me one right now, I would give you all of the money I have for it. Or the Nokia communicator.

Yes. That I'm into. But what they're doing, the flip is interesting. I like being able to close my phone and hang up a call. That sounds good. Yeah. Also, the flip. When you close it, you open the camera, the selfie camera, because it's got that screen on the front back.

There's a screen next to the cameras. It has a name that I'm blanking on, but there's a screen on back. That becomes their selfie camera, and then you can preview on that screen. And I love the idea of a high-quality selfie camera. And the way it kind of carries it around its own stand that you can have it mounted, you can have it just sitting on the desk, like an L-shaped. sort of. I like that idea. Wasn't that like...

I don't know how good that is in practice, but the idea of it sounds good. Wasn't that the entire thrust of the presentation from Samsung? They were just like, you know what's cool? L-shape.

No, this is like every company that makes anything that can fold is like tent mode. Yeah? Where was the tent mode? Like all those like Intel 2 and ones

for the longest time. What you want is a tent. Because you're cooking? The future of computing is a tent shape. We need you to believe this and buy an Intel-based 2-1. I bought the XPS 2-1. It folded.

I used it in tent mode once. It was bad. It overheated. The battery life wasn't as good. It was a bad idea. Why did you use it an intent mode? I was in the kitchen. You're supposed to be able to use it that way.

You should be able to have a recipe up and you can scroll through it with the touchscreen. It's going to be great. It wasn't great. But now what if you had a smaller phone intent mode, huh? No, it's L mode. They don't do tent mode. So it's a little L mode. So you have to like get down there, squint out.

So it is true that Samsung is like the only mainstream provider for all the country. They've got the two. Like carriers discount the flip all the time. Like that's the, you can get discounts on the fold. But they are mainstream products. Like this is what they're launching. It's funny because Modo was really, remember they did that whole razor stuff with all the

the influencers and the thing? It didn't flop. And so this week at the same. same time, Motto has launched a new razor only in China. And we missed it. This is how, like, it launched and we didn't notice. They didn't tell us.

Yeah. They were like, like a few hours later, like, by the way, we launched a new razor in China. Does that, like, how many phones did they have to sell in the United States? You just be like, no, we're not even going to tell anybody. Six. By the way, the new razor has a flex view mode

so you can open the screen halfway and use it. Yes. This thing kind of just feels like it's a flip. So it has a bigger screen in the front, 2.7 inch cover screen. The flip is, that's the name of it, by the cover screen. Well, the flip is a 1.9 inch. Because it's bigger, it has like a full notification interface. It's got a widget on here that looks exactly like an iOS-wide.

But same sort of like 50-mixel camera with optical stabilization, 13-machael ultra-wide. It's like, it's another flagship phone. It just seems like, it seems like only, Samsung is like willing to make this bet and maybe not get market share because they've got market share all the way at the low end. And all the competition here is at the low end of the market now. Yes. Yeah.

It's just kind of depressing. There's just no upside to trying to pick the fight anywhere else. Like it's it's just everybody is set in what they have. And it's like part of the reason I think flip phones are interesting is it feels like most people who are not that interested in like reinventing their phone experience are not going to go for the. phone that folds into a tablet thing. But if it's like a phone that looks and feels like my phone, but I can close it and put it on my desk, like, that's a thing I think people will like intuitively understand and it doesn't blow up my life to use it. So I feel like if I was going to bet on either one of these to like actually make noise in the like world of phones kind of across all of the

different price points, that's the one I would bet on. Is a flip phone less breakable like when you throw it? Like if I threw my phone at something like, ah, I'm scared and threw my phone at something, it would shatter. But if I had a flip phone and it was closed and I threw it. I think in general, anything with more moving parts

is like more delicate. But the screen is now protected. It's true the screen is, but the hinge is now closed. Crap. Plain there having to use all that, all those crazy new materials to get the screen that folds.

Like, I wouldn't try it, is what I'm saying? Yeah. Like the, that's, I guess I can't get a flip phone because the urge to do that.

To try out throwing it. You need to buy one of those, but also a Nokia 3310 that you can just huck across the room anytime you need to. Exactly. It's a test. Yeah. This would be a great video.

These are basically only renders that motor released about this thing. But yeah, this one looks great. It's got like a real... This is the thing. Like, I get flipped phones. I want one. I can't have one. You certainly can't have this one.

But I want one. But this is the thing. Like, we should talk about this is the Dieter Bohn Memorial RCS segment. So Google this week, full on shaming blitz against Apple. Like, by name, campaign. It's time for Apple to fix texting. Four Dieter did his first, like, Google executive tweet. People were like, you work for Google now.

We love you, man. But, like, Google's, like, it's Apple's fault. Like, full on, this isn't like a carrier thing. We ain't got to push it. It's like Apple needs to support RCS to improve texting. Here's all the things that are broken in, it's not just green bubbles. But then there was another part where, like, also the green bubbles are hard to read. It's true.

It's true. But, ooh. fundamentally, that's not the problem. My theory has always been that foldables are because they're a different hardware form factor, they can command interest. Like I've probably said this on this show 100 times.

Things that look different, always get more interest than things that look the same with slightly different software. Just true. So like it looks really different, so it commands your attention, and then people get to the point where they're like, wait,

I can't text my daughter, wait, it doesn't work like my iPhone that I'm really comfortable with. Yep. Wait, I don't, there doesn't have airplay. Like whatever, bits and bobs the Apple ecosystem that you're aware of suddenly don't appear for you and you're like

it's too hard to use I'm just stuck with this iPhone this is why people don't switch because it's just not worth the effort anymore like the things are they're close enough but not exactly the same and it's just not worth the effort to switch yeah but do you think that if Apple wants to RCS like this is what I think the limit of my theory is being tested right that we've talked about iMessage lock in on the show a million times and we've talked about people like looking at new kinds of hardware form factors a million times if you give them a new hardware form factor and And Apple goes to RCS. Do people switch to Android in any meaningful way? Or is all the other stuff just pure lock-in? No, because you still need I-Message. Like, RCS isn't going to fix all the problems. It'll fix some of the problems. It'll fix some of the problems.

It'll fix group text. It'll fix picture messaging. It'll fix a lot of things. When somebody says, congratulations, and you suddenly get fireworks on your phone, it won't fix that. People will be so upset. I mean, Google can add a, I mean, that's just like recognizing one word. Like, I feel like there's enough AI inside of Google. be like, can you detect the word congratulations?

Well, like the tap back thing is the perfect example of that, right? Because it used to be, if you were on a group chat with anybody on Android and you would do the like tapback thing and hit love, it would be like, you know, so-and-so loved and then just quote your message and that was a horrible nightmare. Google just fixed that. Right. So there's like, that's the same kind of thing. They could, they could solve some of that stuff. But no, I cannot imagine the answer is yes to your question. Like, RCS does not change enough to really.

matter. Like, I think what RCS does is make Android better. It makes, like, being an Android owner in an iPhone world better. It doesn't make, it doesn't change anything about being an iPhone owner, which is, I think, why Apple doesn't really care. And it doesn't change enough to make a meaningful difference to people, I don't think. Right. Because of all the other stuff. Yeah. It's like, people stay on iPhones because they've paid for apps. They use, like, platform-specific things. They like Airplay. They like know where the browse. is, like how the notification shade works. It's like the thing, the muscle memory of using a phone is so intense. Yeah, they love the feeling of getting an Android feature two years later and then saying Apple invented it. People love that. Oh, it's so good. It's like 120 hertz screens.

Amazing. Tim Cook invented that. Games that actually were. Those are fun. Love those. You know what my current lock-in feature is? It's not true locking. People are going to quibble with me that I'm like saying lock-in.

It's a thing that I'm like, oh, I can't give this up. when you copy something on an iPhone and paste it on your Mac. Oh, it's amazing. It's like, oh, you should just hold me tight. I'm going to just open the garden walls and then bring the gate down and padlock them. I'm staying right here. You know what's weird about that, though, is that, at least in my experience, works perfectly. And it's amazing.

And every other thing that Apple does where they're like try to move stuff between your device is garbage. Right. Because it's just moving like text. But the thing where it's like I have a browser tab open and the little thing pops up on the Mac and it's like, would you like to open this? And I say, sure, and it's like, how about a different web page? Or it's like, I turn my headphones on. And it's like, do you want to connect to all of your devices except the one that's currently ringing? Yeah.

And it's like, but then the copy and paste thing is magical. The copy and paste thing works. I will say the, what do you want to answer your phone on intelligence? It's like rival Siri in terms of great idea, completely useless execution. Yes. It's like, what if everything in your house is ringing? And it's like, what if just my phone was ringing? But then you can't turn off because you have to turn off a little bit.

I can talk about this all day. We should finish Samsung, though, because there were a couple of other things than now. Speaking of headphones, there was the Galaxy Buds 2 Pro. People love the Galaxy Buds. They do. They're like a deeply underrated set of headphones, I think. And these are $230, which is, I think, $30 more expensive than they used to be. But by all accounts seem to be very good.

What's the Big Svee integration, like? Don't ask me that question. One person. Yeah, John Bixby. Bigsby appears, they made one for me. Bixby appears zero times in our story about the Alexie list. I think Bixby appears zero times in Samsung's presentation. Yes, Samsung studiously avoids the word Android every time, which I find very funny.

And I think this is true in all of these. Like, Apple says Siri less and less every time, and Samsung says Bixby less and less every time. Yeah. And Amazon just says Alexa more times every time you turn around. Are we moving away from where they all were like, we have to compete and show our stupid AI digital assistant is the best one? I think so. Are we finally past that point? Well, they all now treat them as like, like if you ask Apple, Siri is not like a voice assistant.

It's just like a generalized intelligence. And they're like, oh, this is what they say. They're like the thing when you pull down the notification shade and it recommends which apps you should open, they're like, that's Siri. And it's like, no, it's not. That's my phone. Like I don't care. We can cool about what it's named. but like Siri is the thing that searches the web when I ask for a timer.

Like that's what Siri is. Remembering which app I opened the most is not artificial intelligence. No, that's just a counter. There's nothing. But yeah, so, okay, so there were the buds, which I believe Chris Welch is reviewing, and I suspect will turn out to be very good because the Galaxy Boots have been very good for a while. And then there was the Galaxy Watch 5 and Watch 5 Pro, which are, I think, $280 and $450, B-Box respectively.

And the big thing here was more battery life. I actually think the Galaxy Watch is super fascinating because like, especially now that they've gone back to like working with Google and doing wear OS stuff, like the watch for by all accounts was like really good. Yeah. And people really liked it. And it was like the first thing that was like, okay, if you are an Android person and want something kind of like the Apple Watch, here is something kind of like the Apple Watch.

And the Five Pro just seemed, or the Five and the Five Pro seem to just like push that slightly forward. like more sensors, more health stuff because everybody's in on health stuff. The watch pro, I think, is enormous. It's enormous. It has like a touch bezel, right? Yeah. Yeah.

They both do. 45 millimeters. That's like, that's a big chunky, chunky watch. Yeah. I used to have, I used to have like a 42 millimeter my dad gave me and I would wear it to soccer practice in like sixth grade. And it just took my entire wrist up. It just looked like I was wearing a large bracelet, like a cuff bracelet. It was great.

You used a phone on your wrist, basically. I could stop bullets with that wrist watch. But yeah, and I think especially like this is coming and there's presumably going to be a new Apple watch soon. And the pixel watch is coming. And it's like this, this is like a cool moment where it kind of felt like everybody was giving up on smart watches except for Apple. And now it sort of feels like there's real stuff out here happening again, which is cool. Yeah. I will say that the 45 millimeter size is right.

I'm just looking at our photos of this on my wrist. It's just like a million. The one on Allison's wrist. Monstrously huge watch. You can put like multiple fingers. I think you could probably put her whole other hand between. That's just huge. Oh, Neely, I have great news for you.

V-Song, who wrote about the watches, writes, and I quote, After months of waiting, Samsung Galaxy Watch owners can finally use Google Assistant on their devices. Don't panic, Bixby lovers. Samsung promises all five of you that Bixby is still available on the Watch Five and Pro. Yes. Nelai and four others. It's a dog with shoes. I was just here to help you out.

Remember when their pitch was like, Bixby will just be able to. just do settings for you? Mm-hmm. And that was the idea that, like, our settings are so complicated that an AI dog will help you go through the settings. Bixby. Richard's just shaking his head over here. Don't you have an Android phone?

Do you have Bixby? I do not have Bixby. I have unfortunately never had a modern Samsung phone. The last Samsung phone, I think, was the Galaxy S2 Epic 4G. Oh, yeah. If I'm not getting the EPEC touch too. Yes. It was a wonderful phone.

But no, it did not have any AI or any dogs wearing shoes. Missing out. I think Samsung should have just taken our lead and branded Bixby as a helpful dog butler in shoes. And like straight gone clippy with it. And like every time you push the button like, it's Bixby. That would be branding. People would talk about that. They did.

I did. I made it up. And then we all talked about it. No, I'm thinking like clippy. Like like the wider realm would the realm? The realm? The realm. The realm of Samsung.

Yeah. People would talk about it. They'd be on TikTok all the time. Bixby Dog. Yeah. Be like a character. It'd be a meme. Get on this Samsung.

I've been telling them for years. Pay me like. I know that they are aware. It's your IP. Inside of Samsung, they are aware that I think it's a dog with shoes. And like, it's just like to turn the, what do you have to lose? Three people are using this thing and you're giving up to Google Assistant. Come on.

Just go full cartoon dog. People should not put me in trouble. of any tech companies. I think that should be very obvious. I disagree. I want the dog. Everyone wants the dog. It's very obvious.

When you own the Green Bay Packers, you can make it a dog. I own two shares the Green Bay Packers, good sir. And then we'll know what to do with our Pinterest page. We'll figure out our Pinterest page. All right, we should take a break. Before we do, one thing. So we're going to talk more about Samsung and foldables and gadgets and why the Internet is mad at me about big screens on next Wednesday. day's show. And if you have questions, call the Verge Hotline, which is 866666-837-4-3-1-1, which is 866-837-4-3-1-1.

But it's just Verge 1-1. Don't worry about it. And call us and ask us all your Samsung and foldable and phone questions, and we'll get to a bunch of them next week. Tell us your Bixby stories. Yes. Call us and be like, one time I couldn't figure out how to turn on a feature on my Samsung phone, and I asked Bixby to do it, and Bixby helped. I just want to hear one story like this. And if you have a drawing of a dog with shoes named Bigsby, oh yeah, please. Please send it.

Eli is reckless on Twitter. We all need to see it. We'll just do a whole run of them on our TikTok. It'll be great. All right, we're going to take a break. We're going to come back. We're going to tell us what's going on with Disney and the Stream Awards. We'll get back.

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R.J. Have many names. Rick Doc. Disney earrings this week. Good news, bad news. I was on CNBC today and they were like, stock is up, which means like good news. Yeah. I don't know why they let me talk about stocks and stuff.

It's great. But stock is up. Chaypec, you know, he's one of the bobs. Yeah. Old Bob. He looked as happy as he could, which is like a medium amount of happy. He got that theme park money now, man. Yeah.

So they're doing great. Subscribers are up. They have more subscribers on the Netflix. Disney 221 around the world, Netflix 220, Disclosure, The Verge made a Netflix show, which I'm the EP, Fox Media, make shows with all of these companies, Comcast as a minority investor in Fox Media, whatever.

Media. If you've listened to the show, you know that it doesn't work. The money has not dissuaded us. Disney's a weird place. They're raising prices with the subscribers are doing great. I got to call out, Bluey Season 3 just hit Disney Plus, which means if you have a child,

You're never unsubscribing. But it's a weird moment for them. The question of whether or not this is good news, I think, depends on whether or not you're a Disney investor or a Disney plus customer. If you're a Disney investor, great news. They have more customers. They have a plan to make more money. They have a plan to be profitable on streaming by 2024 maybe. These are all the things you love to hear.

If you are a Disney customer, I have bad news. You are the reason that they will be profitable by 2024 because they're raising prices on everything. They've discovered that people will pay. for, I don't know, Marvel movies for all of the Disney kids stuff. People love to watch the properties that they have. They will pay for it. Maybe they won't pay for Netflix if they keep raising the price, but they will keep playing for Disney every single time.

It's great news for Disney and they're taking advantage of it. Well, it's still cheaper than Netflix, too. And, like, I think a big part of this is they care about these bundles. These bundles are really actually good deals. Like, I looked at the bundles and I was like, oh, that's what I'm going to do. Because you can get the Disney bundle with Disney Plus. Hulu. Is that with ads or without? Both of them without ads. Okay. ESPN plus with ads. Sure. Sure. For 20 bucks. And that basically, who cares about ESPN plus? I'm sorry to you and my brother. PTI and me. And I guess, oh my God. Yeah, you're actually podcasting with three ESPN plus subscribers. Oh my God. So. Well, then this is a great deal for you guys. Because I'm over here being like, wow, I don't care about that. That means I'm getting both of these services I do use for $10. But that's the pitch is that they can tie together all of these things. They cover every. Everybody. Whoever you are, they have some stuff for you. And that bundle is going to be a pretty good deal. They've really recreated the parts of the cable bundle that people wanted at a cheaper price. And at the same price that Netflix premiere bundle or premiere just service. And if you're looking at that versus Netflix and you're looking at what you get and you're thinking I'm going to pick one, you're probably going to pick the Disney one.

If you were one of the people who's spending $20 a month on Netflix, I am one of them. I was going to say same. Same. But if you're one of those people who's like, ooh, do I want? this bundle or do I want Netflix and you chose Netflix. Please, I mean, don't call me, but like... Well, there's a number they can call. Yeah, call that number. 866, Vorge-1-1.

Just hit the number. There it is. Tell us why. I want to know what you're doing that. So here's what I say. The ESPN Plus thing is like it is valuable in very short windows. Right, because it's not really ESPN. However, the World Excel Championships were recently broadcast.

This is a true story. You can watch them on ESPN Plus. In football season, weird right stuff, NFL prime time, which is like the best NFL clip show that happens at the end of every day before the Sunday night game, or end of every Sunday night game. ESPN doesn't have the rights to broadcast it because NBC has the rights to all highlights on broadcast on Sundays, but they got the rights to stream highlights. So it's on ESPN Plus.

So that alone is worth it for that one chunk of time. Do you, like, what about the actual games? Right. What you're doing during the games on a Sunday snapping. You're in a dull roar of a football game. Or if you're a lion's fan crying. And then you wake up and you, while you're dinner, you watch front of time. Like, that's like a three-hour event.

If I call my dad at any point during a Cowboys game, he gets so mad. So I do it multiple times. And then like, oh, I'm sorry. I forgot the game was still on. Yeah. I know it's at least three hours. But like ESPN has just figured out how to, it's definitely three hours. If you call me at any point during a Packers game or Richard in a lion's game,

There's a lot of screaming. The giants are awful. You can call me. Okay. But like they have like very cleverly found their way through this like highlights rights problem and added value to the streaming product. Yeah. Even though it's only for like however many months of the year. And they're kind of doing that around the line with sports.

Right. They're kind of doing that down the line with sports where it's like they're adding value to the cable subscription. Right. But it's still like it's only valuable. I would never pay for that at sound. Right. It's something that comes in a bundle with Hulu and Disney Plus. This is the greatest value out of all times.

Yeah. Like this is, I think it's just a really good value. So everybody's complaining rightfully that they've raised prices. But also, they said when they launched the service, they were going to be raising prices. They were like, no, these prices won't last. And they didn't. They raised it like, what, two years later? They said almost explicitly that they were planning to lose money for the first few years.

And then when they have the plans to become profitable, that they would raise prices. And that's what they're doing. They raised the price on ESPN last month. They announced the Aispl and plus the price raise there on the standalone plan. And now the bundles are getting a little bit, a bit more expensive. They've also been talking about bringing about how you can get full ESPN on streaming. Yeah, more openly than ever. So clearly that comes someday.

Now, that's probably going to come with charging more money. But we're looking at it. I would say the only thing that surprised me about this was that Disney just kind of did it all at once. I feel like the thing we've seen with the streaming companies over the years is they all just like raise their prices a dollar at a time. I hope you don't notice. Like, Netflix basically raises its prices every three months. But Disney has experience. But Disney knows something about trying to do this that I think maybe Netflix is learning.

Like Disney has sold bundles. They have changed pricing so many times. They've got, they have an advertising business that actually works. Netflix, not yet. So they're not learning on the fly with these things. And they kind of know which buttons they can press in how hard. That's fair. And it does seem like, like we talk about the like who's the zero on the go 90 scale.

I think it's zero. I think it's Disney. Yeah. Like Marvel alone is like... No, yeah, but Marvel's real shaky lately. There's no guarantee that if they don't make better movies than they've been making. Like there's no guarantee that the next phases will be sticky. Yeah, I mean, right.

Marvel is like in a weird place because it is this big behemoth. It does still make a ton of money even though the films are getting worse and worse. Like, Shangji accepted that was a really good movie. watch it if you haven't. But it's still a huge franchise for them. And they've got Star Wars. And they have everything Disney's ever made. And they have everything Foxes ever made. So they've got what the Simpsons. They've got all of the princess movies. I'm so sorry. The Disney princess movies, whatever you want to call them. Like they've got all the Pixar stuff. Yeah. I mean, the library is unbeat. Yeah. They have like, they have all, most of the IP, right? Like Warner

Brothers is, is recognized that they have IP and they think it's 90 day fiance. That's weird. So the difference. It's really weird. The 90-day Fianza universe. It's real. Right up there with it. You're not in it.

So actually, I think the difference is that HBO still programs itself like a TV network, right? There's a new season of something really high end that comes out on a regular cadence. No, Disney's doing that too. Like Disney Plus. Disney's like we farted out another Star Wars thing. Do you want to live in? We started the show and you were talking about, what is that, the beast?

Yeah. On FX on Hulu? The bear. The bear. The beast. Yeah, but that's like FX on Hulu. Like, that's a TV network that went to Hulu. Like, Disney Plus, the app is not quite programmed.

Disney Plus is very much programming. Like, they're doing it. They specifically are moving shows around, so they have, like, a night that you're watching Disney Plus. So you're watching your Star Wars and your Marvel overlapped and you're just tucking in for the night. They're, like, that is very much part of their plan. And I think it's pulled from the Hulu, ABC, like, realm.

And I think they're doing it better than Hulu. HBO Max. I think I agree with that. But the other thing Disney has done really well is integrate that stuff with an app that shows you old things. Yes. And this has always been the problem that Amazon has had, where Amazon has this massive library of stuff that they just absolutely refuse to show you.

And instead, they're like, would you like to watch Jack Ryan? And you're like, no. And they're like, ah, well, we don't have anything else for you. The other day I finished watching something. I don't even remember. It wasn't Miss Marvel. But I finished watching something on Disney Plus. And it was like, do you want to watch Captain Marvel?

And I was like, you haven't seen it in a bit. Exactly. Play. Wow. Let's go. And like. And then everyone's while they'll just throw in. Be like, remember all those animated movies we made 40 years ago that you left?

You want to watch that? And I'm like, yeah, I do. Yeah. And whereas Netflix, I'm like, you finish watching stranger things. Do you want to watch anything remotely related to that? And I'm like, sure. And they're like, okay, instead we're going to show you another like cake wars episode. I'm like, no, that's, you've misunderstood.

You've missed something here. And Disney's like, I don't know. They've got a really strong app. They've got all of the IP, which is like, is that ethically morally right? Probably not. No. But they got it. They got the money. They got the, what, $50 billion or whatever they made from theme parks this year?

They're doing great. The fast pass, the Lightning Pass, I'm sorry? Bringing in tons of money in the theme parks. Turns out that charging people for convenience is a good business. Yeah. And their ad-supported plan is launching in December. So, again, I was on CMECTA. Bob Chaggo was being interviewed by Julie Borson.

She asked him, can you raise prices in theme parks? And he was like, yeah, we'll see. He was basically like, here's what we do. We see how much the consumer can tolerate and then, like, you know, we push it. He's like, we have no plans to at this moment. But like, we're always looking. And it's like, yeah, you're. Yeah, they figured out they can nickel and dime you.

And we'll all be like, yeah, okay. Yeah. I want to do the Guardians of the Galaxy right. I disagree with you about the $5,000. No, that's the Star Wars one. Oh, the big place. Yeah. And you get the lightsaber.

I'm going to buy one. Very excited. Two MacBooks. That's how you measure these experiences. Do I want two MacBooks or do I want to go to a spaceship? Macbooks. Then Richard would have four laptops. I'm going to, I think it's true.

I think they have the best app work. They built on VAMTuck. They had the best stack all the way along. Hulu is, now it's theirs. They're programming it with more compelling stuff. I'm just pushing back. I think Disney is so big and they're so addicted to their franchises that they are losing some.

of like making good stuff. I would. Oh, Star Wars is dying for that exactly. Like Star Wars is bad now. They're just like milking that thing. And then I think they're milking the MCU and like a. But they're doing good stuff on Hulu.

Like Hulu is where they still actually have people who know TV programming it. So that's why you got the bear. That's why you're getting what is it, little fires. The little fires everywhere. Yeah, little fires everywhere. Like you're getting really good stuff on Hulu. I watch it. I think probably it and HBO Max are my two most watch servers.

And it's because it's got stuff like FX where they've done really, really good programming, and they're putting it almost exclusively oftentimes on Hulu, and it's just like super watchable. Yeah. I'm sure, like, to which is point, you're an investor, this is great. It's all just money in Disney. From a Disney, like, brand perspective, Hulu app not as good as even the HBO Max app in some ways. Right. It's like a very confusing situation.

Remember their linear TV built in part of the Hulu app? Yeah. And how they decided that they didn't want to do a menu like everybody else does, where it looks like cable TV. And instead they're like, no, we're going to like decide what you should watch on on live TV. And you're like, no, that's stupid. No, they all do this. This is like catnip for product designers. So like, we're doing a live TV app.

And I'm like, let's reimagine. But they got yelled at so much that Hulu was like, sorry, we're working on it. We're going to do a really good app now. No, this is the hill. They all want to climb. Like, can you, this is Steve Jobs just gaslighting this entire industry. By saying on his meth bed, he cracked the user experience. TV without any further explanation.

And now everyone thinks they have to crack the user experience for TV. And the entire consumer base is like, we just want a grid. It's the spreadsheet. Just give us the spreadsheet. We want a spreadsheet and TV shows. What if he cracked it by just being like, I change the font? Yeah, that's what he meant. Have you heard of retina screens? Add more pixels.

Yeah, I think the danger for Disney is a real sticky right now because of the catalog. But if the shows and movies are bad over time, Yeah. I mean, yeah, but they have so much runway. I don't think people think of the Hulu shows is Disney shows.

That's what I meant by the brand thing. Totally. And Disney, at least in America, wants you to keep that separation, right? Like they very much said, we're not going to put Deadpool. We're not going to put all this, like, racist stuff on Disney Plus. We're going to keep that for Hulu because that's for adults. And Disney Plus is like general Sunday night, Magic Kingdom, whatever, that thing we all had to watch on Channel 8. Sorry, none of you are from Texas.

Remember Sunday nights? There was always like the Disney hour of content. Come on, y'all are old. You know this. There was like a Disney. There was always like special movies and stuff. There you go. But like they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, that's, Disney Plus is their family friendly

stuff. And they know as well as we all do, the little kids have trash taste for the most part. So like, they can pump that stuff out for a while. I think they are going to see diminishing returns. I think they are already like poisoning their own franchises over and over again because they're not, they're thinking about the money and not about the quality of the content. But everybody else is also kind of thinking the same thing. That's true. I buy that.

Yeah. Warner Brothers last week was even like, yeah, we don't care about the money. Like we want the money. We're going to put out stuff that'll make the money. Yeah. We'll see. Okay. Let's do the good 90s sale.

Yeah. So we think HBO Max after after we complimented HBO Max. Yeah. It is like... It's 90. Well, it's not yet. Yeah. It's like a preemptive 90 on the tech side.

It's a 60. So it's like, okay. Yeah. It's halfway with you in 45 and 90. Yeah. It seems right. Oh, that's so depressing. Yeah.

It's a bummer. It's not HBO Max's fault. Yeah. It's just, it's being, this is happening to HBO Max. This is why murder should be legal. Yeah. Disney Plus is zero. Yeah.

By the way, the Go 90 scale of Jim streaming services. Zero is alive. 90. Yeah. Hulu, I don't know. Hulu's higher because I think at some point, like, Hulu doesn't exist in a lot of other markets, right? It is pretty much an American market thing. Other markets, everything just is on Disney Plus. And in the United States, they're like, no, no, we must keep these two things separate. But I could definitely see them at some point be like, nah, smush them together. Yeah. Well, Hulu has like a long history of people trying to kill Hulu. Yeah. Like at any moment. It's immortal at this moment. It might be the last streaming service to go. Because it was one of the first, right? It's unkillable? It is.

Like so many people have tried to kill Hulu. Yes. I know. Like at any moment some Disney executive gets a promotion and they're like, finally. Disney tried to kill Hulu. They're like, we're going to buy you and destroy you. I guess we're going to use you because otherwise everybody's going to pirate our stuff. And then somebody at Hulu is just like, we've signed deals to have next day shows until 2068.

Like, what are you going to do about it? So Richard, you're making a call the Hulu is like a permanent zero, unkillable. It can never die. Wow. It's not even the drowned house. What does not live can never die? There you go. That's who.

Okay. All right. Netflix. 15. They still have 220 million subscribers. Yeah. They're still huge. I think we, the last time we did this, I think we landed like high single digits,

which feels about right. Yeah. All right. Any other streaming services put on the scale this week? Parano plus. Zero. You knew I was going to say it. Wow.

Greatest. Look. Farrell Plus is a zero all the way through the release of Top Gun Maverick. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And then it will be the most popular streaming service for a couple of weeks. And then we'll be like 90.

I think as long as Star Trek exists. Or as long as people who watch Star Trek exist. We're dying out, apparently. A friend of mine, she teaches college. And she's like, all right, who watches Star Trek? And it used to be like all the hands would raise. And she teaches like video game history. I was like, these are nerds, right?

And she's like, okay, everybody raise her hand if you watch Star Trek. All the hands raise. Nowadays, she's like, raise it. And there's like one person in the back of the room who's wearing like a Star Trek's her. She's like, you get an instant A plus. You pass. Everybody else fails. So like, it's slowly dying.

But like as long as there are all those fans and it's like kind of, it's not as big as Star Wars, but it's got a very active community. It's a zero. It's going to be interesting to watch Paramount Plus bleed that to death. Yes. In the same way that Disney Plus bought Star Wars and it was like, We're going to make eight Star Wars things a year until all of you work. And I'm going to let them do it.

Somewhere at the Paramount Plus office, there's an account with a spreadsheet. And they're looking at it right now. She's freaking out because the spreadsheet has like a row in it labeled data center costs. And there's another column labeled churn. And they're modeling out how many people are going to sign up for a seven-day free trial to stream Top Gun Maverick and then leave. Yep. and spike the data center costs and never pay them a dollar and they're just hoping they can enough of those people forget to cancel And I'm telling you she's like freaking out like she's like someone someone needs to look at my screen right now

She's like our payment processing systems are gonna go down zoom in random people being like can I share my screen I need to share this screen are they doing how is it gonna be 4k is it gonna be Dolby vision if they do not stream top gun maverick 720 p 4k H.m.m. Like I will drive over there and be like I'm taking the tapes. I'm starting my own streaming service. It's 90 all the way, but it's going to be glorious for a day. Top Gun. There's no way to be.

It's called Tom Cruise, the streaming service. Yeah, Tom Cruise is all about, like he wants you to turn off. Tom would never let this happen. He's probably, it's like in his contract, if you stream it, it can only be streamed at 4K with Dolby Atmos. And if you detect somebody has, is using headphones or watching on a mobile device, their device will explode. And he's figured out how to automatically change your. TV to turn off motion smoothing.

He's like, Tom Gads it. Yeah. There's going to be a long prelude before Top Gun Maverick runs on the stream. Oh, there probably is. I'm moving my hand right now. Does it look too smooth? I'm going to keep doing this for one hour. I'm going to read you the manual of every TV that exists.

He's like, skip to five minutes for Samsung, seven minutes for LG. I'm here with you. There will be a series of blinks in this video. And we'll adjust your TV. Just sit back and let it happen. Yeah, he's very serious for this. In the depths of the pandemic, by the way, I looked at how much it would cost to buy one of those only in Hollywood dedicated high-end streaming boxes. Yeah.

Because I was like, whatever, I'm never leaving this house again. It was like $15,000. I don't, I care a lot. I don't care this much. You could get such a nice, like, projector for that. Yeah. But you need content. Plug that roku in.

And then I almost fell down the Chris Welch hole of being like. I'm going to start buying Blu-rays. I did that. I do that. Oh, my God. It's me. It's me. It's me.

I get the Blu-rays. I rip them. Wow. Because that's legal, right? Like, I'm using it for my personal use only. Don't look at me. I quit being a lawyer. Hach you lawyer.

Quick, quick. No, no, no, no. It's probably, someone I know provides me with copies. And I put them on my platform. That's more illegal. I meet a guy in an alley. That's like, here's what I do. I buy pirated movies.

Now, you want to stick with, I buy the media, I own the movies, and I rip it. There we go. For archival purposes. That's my lawyer talking if anybody asks. As everyone does. Yeah, as one does, yeah. Yeah. I think if you were like, David, can you rip this DVD?

I have literally no idea what I would do. Yeah, what's your process for ripping a Blu-ray? You stick it in. To what? Okay, wait, Microsoft is bringing CD ripping back to Windows 11. Wait, really? Disc ripping is coming back.

Yeah, they're testing it in the beta now. It's a whole thing. Wait, it wasn't in Windows Media Player, but they are beta testing it again. In the beta versions in Windows 11, CD ripping. Are you supposed to just like wave the CD over your computer? I don't know where you will put the disc,

but if you have somewhere to put it, it will rip it for you. Again, like automatically? In the future, sure. Oh my God. But I don't think the feature, in the media player that exists in Windows 11, like the retail version right now?

Right, but in the beta version, if you haven't installed, you have a version that will rip a CD for you. I just don't know where you're going to get a CD drive. Sick. Or a CD. Do you think this is like, Nadella himself was like,

I have a number of CDs. My Blu-Rae collection is out of hand. This is back for me. Okay. First of all, that's incredible. Love that. The Plex community, freaking out. Walk me through your Blu-ray riffing process.

Okay. You can buy for like, $50 now. It's so cheap. You can just get a little player and you plug it in. A USBC Blu-ray player. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is it USBC? Yeah. Yeah. Well, no, mine's USB. Mine's USB-C ones now, too, because I had to walk my sister through buying one. Oh, okay, okay. Because she's also a player. She still listens to CDs. And I was like, I was like, you don't need a disc player. Like, she held onto her eyebook for years because she was like, I need a CD player. And I was like, your sister's my favorite person. No, she's the worst.

But, no, so you plug in your little cheap Blu-ray player. Sure. You put the disc in. You have to have, I can't remember the name of the app, but you have to have this one, because it's been like at least a year since I did this. You have this one app that like removes any... DRM. Yeah.

Any barriers. What year would you say this app was most recently updated? Any legal barriers that I put there to keep you from playing? It enables media freedom. Yeah, exactly. And then you just use handbrake. Like you rip it and then you put it into handbrake. So you're further compressing it with handbrake.

Yeah. So you're accomplishing very little for all the seconds. Because when I did uncompressed, it was great. And then I put it on my Plex server. And my Plex server was like, what are you doing to me? The Vidi-Shild started smoking. Just like on fire. It was like, I'm coming to you kill you right now.

Why not just play the Blu-Rays? Because I have to like stand up. This is why I have- This is why we have streaming. Dozens of Bluroy discs that I have never watched. And I only see them when I move and I have to pick them up and carry them. And I'm like, why do I have these? Yeah, but you keep buying them.

I need the best quality. For media freedom. For archival reasons. Yeah. What happens if you lose Internet? You go somewhere without Internet? I just want to point out that you described your process for this and you are recompressing the Blu-Rays. It's not as good, but it's still better than if I watched it on Netflix or any of the other places.

If you've ever tried to watch it. justified on Amazon Prime, then you know why you would do this. The video quality on the stream is just terrible. I feel like you're doing a lot of work that you could just buy it like on iTunes and download it to your computer and you've done the same thing. It's not quite as good a lot of times. All right. Well, Tom Cruise, if you're listening and you want to come on the show and lecture Alex about piracy and why that's hurting Hollywood, doors open. She would be on my side because I'm still getting the Blu-rays. Sometimes I watch them.

You think Tom Cruise would be on the side of you should buy $50 USBC Blu-ray drive. Yes. Remove the DRM and then recompress Top Gun Maverick. I got it this. If anyone knows Tom and I would vibe. It'd be fine. I'm excited for Tom to be on the show.

If anyone out there knows Tom, I'm sure he's listening. If anyone out there knows Tom, tell us what DRM removal tool you use and then we'll let you come on the podcast. Yeah. And if you'd like to come do a 30-9. minute PSA about how to turn off motion smithing on your TV ahead of watching Top Gun Maverick. We're here for that. One of my favorite parts just about modern life at this moment is like everyone is constantly

using computers. And every now and again, I like to imagine Tom Cruise, like confronting stage manager on his iPad. Like it's just like, none of that works together, you know? He's like, I got to send an email and like, oh, he's looking at the same weird Gmail interface as the rest of them. You think Tom Cruise sends emails? Oh, yeah. No.

Unhinged all caps. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely not. The font is enormous. He has somebody he tells. No, he shouts at someone. No, I'm with Neely. He shouts at Siri is what he does.

Tom Cruise is a voice dictation monster. So he uses mail app. Just play this game. It's incredibly fun. Imagine any Hollywood celebrity you can think of. Yeah. And be like, Kim Kardashian sometimes is like, these Google search results are,

full of ads, because everyone is having the same experiences all the time. Like, it's all the same. Kanye West is like, huh, I gotta get on Instagram. It's all videos now. They have assistants who do that. They have a Google assistant. No, Kanye's like out there being like, I don't have only fans. I have read it.

Like, I've heard him say those words. And it's all the same. We should just do an entire episode of Rochast where you imagine celebrities using one. All right, Liam wants me to wrap this up because I said, it'll make that. We've got to take a break. We're going to come back.

We have a little lightning around. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from Whatnot. Whether you're selling online or out of a storefront, you already know the challenge. You're simply hoping for people to find your listing or waiting for them to walk in.

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developers. MongoDB. It's a great freaking database. Start building at MongoDB.com slash build. All right. We're back. Lightning round. A lot of little news this week. I just mentioned Gmail, so I've got to mention this one. So politicians want to send you emails. You may have gotten these emails and you might have thought to yourself, wow, these emails are all written like scams. It turns out Google's filters have agreed with you for many years and politicians' emails have been filtered into your spam. And some politicians think Google is perpetrating a giant scheme to send some people to your inbox and some email and some to spam.

Shadow ban. Exactly. This is like a real thing that happens. So they yelled at Google enough. And so Google concocted a plan by which politicians could request to be exempted from Google's spam filters. And today, the federal election commission said, yep, that's fine. You can do your plan.

This is like one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. Like, what emails do I want the least? Any politician asking me for money. I still get asked by Wendy Davis for money and to vote in Texas. Still. I don't want those emails. Yeah. I marked them as spam on purpose.

Now they're going to get through. And it's like the worst political pressure campaign. I think if politicians should be able to request not to be spam, we as users should be able to request not to be emailed by them. Like if Gmail can control this that cleanly on one side, it should be able to give us a toggle that says, no, thank you, politicians, goodbye. And just remove it all from my email. All politicians.

I would push that button in a heartbeat. Yeah, 100%. The texts, like, if I could do that on my phone, like, oh, we know that this is somebody texting you to donate money to your local senator. Somehow I got on Nancy Pelosi's list as a person named Freddie. And I get a text message probably five times a week being like, Freddie, this is urgent. Give me $6. A real clever online harassment gamut is people try to sign me up for like all the things.

And now they're all filtered. And so they still try to do it. I'm like, no, no, no, you don't understand. This was five years ago. No, you don't understand. I was already signed up as Freddie for Nancy Pelosi's email. It's like you can't hurt me anymore. All right.

Richard, you're out about proof of stake this week. This is like a true lighting. We're just bouncing around. Ethereum for years has promised a switch from proof of work, which is a lot of energy to prove of sake, which is different method of mining and validating transactions in the network, especially more energy efficient. I forced Richard to listen to a hardcore Ethereum engineering conference call today. What did you learn?

I listened to an hour and a half of people talking about the blockchain and blocks and everything they, I don't even know what words they were using. None of them were in the Bible. I think what they ended up saying was that they've completed their last test merge of a network. and it mostly worked. There were a few glitches that they're still working out, but they think they're ready

to do it for real, to move the full network over to this proof of stake system that's going to use so much less energy. And they have basically a date. Haven't they been saying almost exactly that

for like three years? Five. Five years. Okay. For years and years and years. But now they have a date for the final, final, final, final merge.

When is it? The terminal date, the TTD is September 15th, or 16, depending on when the clock gets mine. Perfect. So maybe it'll happen, maybe it won't. I think everyone knows. I'm on record saying this will never happen.

Too complicated. Never going to do it. If it does happen, here's the wild part. That is horrible news for AMD and NVIDIA. Yes. Because the requirements for mining, validating will go down. A bunch of Ethereum miners will flood the market with used GPUs. The demand for GPUs will go down.

But then that's also like when A&D and NVIDia will have their new GPUs coming out. And then everyone will have to make a big decision. about whether you want to use a GPU that's been used for mining for years, which maybe you don't, because things been red hot for so long. But, like, already, like, the analysts, like, Morgan Stanley is, like, bad news coming for GPU vendors, for chipmakers because Ethereum is going to proof of stake. Didn't, like, Nvidia kind of, didn't Nvidia go out of its way to be like, stop using us? Did I make that up? They put in the flag. Yeah.

But people just ignore it. That accomplished nothing. I think it accomplished nothing. Yeah. Okay. Sorry, Nvidia. Sex for you. that in like a day.

They tried. So we'll see. But I would just say like that's, to me it's, there's the Ethereum story, which would be cool. And then like, I'm happy if anything uses less energy. But then like the main complaints about NFTs, of which Richard has many, right, the big one is like, this is a lot of power to use for Pokemon. We should cool it. And that thing goes away, which I think is interesting. Yeah, I mean, the switch to proof of sake.

has like everyone in the crypto community is like any problem you have, anything you don't like about crypto or Web 3, proof of stake fixes it. It's like this is like the magic bullet that will make all of this work and be viable. Well, if it weren't an environmental nightmare, the thing that would be left is that all of their applications are useless and do things that no one wants. But they would get rid of this one problem.

Yeah. Now it's environmentally friendly to have an app that no one uses or wants. Yes. It's perfect. Yeah. Beautiful. We'll see. We're going to keep tracking it.

I think I'm with Richard. Even money on. They push it in other six months. It has always been delayed. There's no way that it doesn't get delayed at least once. We will eat crow. We'll have Richard back on and he can announce that if he has switched to proof of stake. You're here with me.

Look at my eyes. You have to come back on and announce that switch. We will force him to buy an NFT on air. I don't think we can do that. I think what we will do is we'll force Richard to quit. I'm going to become a Web3 booster. I'm going to all the conferences. There we go.

I'm one of those guys. A bunch of Apple stuff. Rumors, rumors, rumors. Sounds like the next iPhone might be more expensive. Like 15%. But that number of the 15% is like all the iPhones together. So some iPhones could be way more expensive. Some could be like $5.

I bet they do a super expensive iPhone pro. Yeah. Like if you're looking at Samsung being like $1,800, you're like, yeah, we can charge anyway. What's in an $1,800 iPhone? It's pro, dude. It's huge. nine inch screen, but they call it an iPhone. It's just the iPad mini with more cameras on the bat.

They'll do like a riff on the A-series processor that makes it more like an M1. They're like add another camera lens. You can see how they could just get you to $1,800 phone. I just, I'm upset because I always try to justify why I need a pro, and I always do. And if they do that, I'll be like, that's stupid. That's too stupid. I can't do that. Yeah.

And that's a bummer for me personally because I like to be like, yeah, it's my pro. Well, so the rumor this year is that they're going to do. do a max size regular iPhone because everyone loves a big cheap screen. And so for the longest time, you ended up buying the pro because you just wanted the bigger screen. So you got to really scoot something over there to make it worth it. I would buy the pro because it had the smallest screen, too. Just the regular pro is always smaller than the others. I'm just going to put out there that revealed preferences say people say shit like that all the time.

Where's Allison? We've got to get Allison. My wife owns your phone. Liam, can you call Allison? Because it's slightly smaller phones. Say that over again. My wife owns the iPhone pro specifically for that reason. She needs a phone that is slightly smaller to fit her hands and bought it.

Thank you. Thank you. I was surprised, but it works better for it. If we're not getting Allison on the line, we can get your wife on the line to support me here. Everyone says they want a small fund. Some people buy small phones. Most people are like, they get into the store and what's the biggest, cheapest screen you have? Liam is holding up his phone.

It's small. It's a small phone. He will presumably return it in two weeks. I'm just doing the full John Cusack in the window right now with this phone above his head. It was very romantic. AirPods cases with USBC, not this year, but next it sounds like? Seems perfectly logical. If they move the iPhone to USBC, then they have to move the AirPods.

Yeah. That seems obvious. Even if they don't. I mean, it's like Apple has rapidly moved everything else to USBC, and there's no, like, giant accessories ecosystem for the AirPods. So that seems like a really easy switch for them. to make. Like the case they're going to make, the case they've made for not switching from lightning is like, we have a big ecosystem. People have chargers. People have stuff that they like to use. It's a total nonsense argument, but that's the argument that you cannot

make that argument about AirPods. Like, I have cool stuff I plug my AirPods case into is like not a thing that people say. So like it does seem like we are headed towards a world where the iPhone is also on USBC, but I don't necessarily see this as like a harbinger of that. This is just like a thing they're going to do. Is this related at all to the EU saying everybody's got to go USBC? I assume so. I mean, that's going to be part of where this all has to end up, right? Even if they go portless on the iPhone, which I don't think they would do. You would still want to move the AirPods to USBC because you would have no reason to ship lightning cables anymore.

Exactly. Well, you would if you kept the AirPods on it. No, they'd rather sell you really, really expensive USBC cables. That's true. $100. Speaking of Apple, one last thing, iOS 16 has added a battery percentage meter. It's a go. It's really weird.

So you can always get it. You can get it right now in Control Center. Yeah. But they took it away because it's a notch on the main screen. So now they've added it back. But the thing stays full all the time. It just has a number in it. Yeah.

So it'll say like in the photo we have in our story, it says 49, but the thing is all filled up. It literally makes it look like you have 49 batteries. Something's going on with Apple Design right now. It's deeply unsettling. Like hardware design on a real high. I know. Yes. Right?

Like, laptops are better than ever. M1 chips. M2 chips. They're like, Apple hardware engineering can do no wrong. And the software engineer is like, we're drunk. Piles. Piles of windows. Have you ever thought about 49 batteries on your phone?

I don't know what's going on there. But it's back, which is good. I was talking about Sonos ever so slightly. Bad quarter for them. Here's a fascinating part. They delayed their next product, which Kirchwell's beliefs, would be the sub-mini. They kind of make sense. Yeah.

Which Chris Welch has been leaking relentlessly for months. But this is really interesting. So Sonos's sales are all TV accessory sales. And TV sales are down, which means Sonos soundbar sales are down. So there's just a lot of thinking, like, maybe all the upgrades happened already. Like all the work from home pandemic upgrades happened. And these companies are all going to be hurting for the next couple of years because there's no more upgrade cycle for any of this stuff. I've been thinking a lot about what Adam Masseri said.

I think last week that like the assumption that all these companies made during the pandemic was it accelerated these trends, but we're never going back to the way that we were before. And actually what might be happening is we are currently in the midst of going back to the way that we were before. Or like even farther. Yeah. Which is super interesting to me. And I feel like is like this is the kind of thing. I think we're going to see a lot of places where it's like people either bought stuff that they're not going to upgrade for a long time or they're just going to go back to the way that they were when they were allowed to go outside again. And like the event. amount of time we spend using these things is going to go down that we're not people don't use

zoom as like a normal life behavior now we use Zoom because we have to and now that we don't have to people are going to stop yeah we saw that with like Netflix that was part of their earnings narrative is that like yeah everybody subscribed and now they don't subscribe because they can go outside and see people yeah yeah I feel like I think you're right that like the sonos thing is just like everybody who was going to buy one of these just did and now that you have one like you don't have anywhere to put anymore it's like the Amazon where you buy one thing and suddenly it shows you advertisements for only that product

every single time you go to Amazon. But I bought new speakers. I bought a racing wheel. I bought a keyboard. Gaming headsets, progressively better headphones. I have them all now. Yeah. Yeah. I, for like the next four years, I don't need to purchase any other things.

I know you, and you will. You will. I've done you for a long time. Well, I have one racing wheel and you can have two racing wheels. What am I expected to carry it from upstairs to downscans? It just doesn't mix it. I think that's actually a real hard part for Sonos, right? They're in this big patent lawsuit with Google.

Google just filed another version of the patent lawsuit for really dumb stuff. When you have multiple speakers in a room that you detect which one's closer to you, and that's when you light it through the way. That's Google's patent. They file in Sonos. They should all just sell these lawsuits. But Sonos is doing Google because they say Google try to crush them. They're on the store.

All this stuff. That's like one big distraction. And on the flip side of it, you've got maybe all the TV upgrades, happened in our, the biggest part of our business is selling upgrades under TVs, which are soundbars. Yep. So now you've got to, like, get more speakers and more rooms or figure out more service revenue on the speakers you have.

Sonos owners famously persnickety about being asked for additional money. It's, I think it's just a hard place. Or make better stuff. I think it's not even that. I think they need to make new stuff. Yeah. Like Sonos's thing has been to basically, they're like, we're going to make a soundbar, and then our next product is going to be a cheaper soundbar.

And then our product after that's going to be a more expensive soundbar. But if everybody who's going to have a sound bar already has a sound bar, you have to go invent a new market of things that people are going to do. They're also in a situation where the TV manufacturers. That's all I want to buy. Suddenly don't want to sell TVs anymore. They want to make money on the services and the commissions of streaming services and advertisements. And selling TVs is suddenly not the biggest part of their business. I mean, TVs have been dealing with this problem for a while, right?

Like they had this big, everybody went out and got moved to high deficit and then nobody wanted to move to 4K because it was stupid. And so they kept being like, what are reasons to get people to move to 4K? It was HDR. Yeah. And then that was kind of successful, but not totally successful. And so they're always, they've always been looking at like, we need a revenue stream besides just selling TVs because selling TVs is not enough to keep the TV lights on. You missed a turn there, which is they all try to convince us for a long time that 3D TV would drive an upgrades. We don't talk about that time.

Richard and I lived through that time together. It's a great way to watch NBA games. That is incorrect. What are you talking about? You can see the angle. Like the three-quarter angle of the court, so when people pass and when people shoot, it's very difficult to see games. Are you ever broadcast in 3-D? I watched all of them.

Are you the person now? It was a few. So now all these leagues who are like put on your Oculus quest and you can watch it like you're on the side. It's you. You're the one watching. Yes. The confidence. Like just the sureness of that.

Yeah. We'll hang out a virtual All-Star game next year. It'll be great. It's going to be sick. Yeah. I will never, this is my favorite CS story, and then we'll wrap this up because we're way over. Do you remember the CS where Sony had Taylor Swift perform? It was years ago.

And this was before Taylor Swift was like Taylor Swift. Yeah. It was early on. So I go in Vegas in the convention center. I sit down and they're like, Sony recording artist, Taylor Swift. And they gave us all glasses. And we were not meant to watch actual Taylor Swift. We were meant to watch 3D TVs, broadcast.

who was right there. And they're like, look at this incredible demonstration of Sony's end-to-end 3D broadcast capabilities. And I was like, I'm going to watch Taylor Swift. Like, she's right there. How was it? It was incredible. But like they were like blowing glitter everywhere, like the whole thing. And like literally they were like, please watch the TVs.

And I was like, no. Absolutely not. They should have had her behind like a curtain. and then slowly raised the curtain. You're like, oh, she's here all along. It was like one of the strangest periods in all of consumer technology when they were like, people are going to buy the shit out of 3D TVs. I had one.

I'm just trying to imagine the pitch where they're like Taylor Swift. So you're Taylor Swift, right? Taylor Swift. Do you want to come perform, but we're going to actively tell everyone to not watch while you perform? It was utterly. This was like the high point of Sony CS. Like, they never, after that, they're like, yeah, we've got a handful of new action cameras. Do you like PlayStation's?

There's one over there. That short-throw projector they show every year. They love the short-throw projector. It's the same one every time. They're like, is this a new one? No. But look, it's cool, isn't it? No.

It's been there for five years. They have that special room. Yeah. It's like dolled up like an ultra-minimalist living room and they're like, this projector is only eight inches from the wall. And it's like, I don't know who has room. like this. And it costs $100,000. I will never forget that.

It was just like one of the strangest moments. How much do you think she got paid for that? Enough so that they had no budget for anything for years to come. What do you think it's like when Taylor Swift sends emails? This is what I mean. She's on Tumblr. Like she occasionally is like, why haven't they ever updated the Tumblr in her face? Like she has to be.

She definitely has like a custom signature. Like she thought about that. With like a picture at the bottom. Oh, yeah. And like a really nice inspirational quote. Oh, no. I guess probably the inspirational quote. Taylor Swift, buying a new MacBook to check out Tumblr and being like, why is there

so much garbage in the dock? I'm never going to use numbers. Like, everyone has to have these experiences down. She's probably mad at Catalyst. She's like, my apps. They don't work like they're supposed to. Oh, my God. She's like, these electronic apps use so much rapper.

Everyone has these experiences. Just sitting there when her Chrome tags. James Liam really wants us to stop doing celebrities using computers I've never seen him wants to talk

about something less Well we're stealing from the episode We're going to do All about that's true One full William one full hour Of just us

Imagining celebrities Doing mundane shit With their computers People He's the wrap it up Do you think she put It in tent mode At any point?

I'm sorry He's just like Barack Obama And you're like Hey Google And Google's like I've set a timer for you Like these things

happen to everyone No. That's enough. The common denominator. One, yeah. It's universal. The common denominator is like shitty user experience. Like you can't escape it.

It doesn't matter how famous you are. All right. I think we're way over. I mean, there's other stuff. I mean, I want to talk about this 97-inch OLED from LG that they claim can produce 5.1 audio. Sure. By vibrating the screen. But I think we have to go see it in person to believe it's true.

I think we have to do a lot more than that. to believe it's true. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. That's like sound bars. I have a Sony screen and TV that does that thing. Yeah.

I mean, sound bars are always like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like the Sonos soundbar is great. It'll do 5.1. No, it's three speakers in front of you. It'll do three speakers in front of you. That's what it'll do. It's three. 3.0.

Don't lie. I mean, yeah. I want to believe it. I want to leave it true. All right. We're away over. Liam is incredibly mad at me. I've run out of celebrities whose names I can remember.

If you can think of a celebrity that uses technology, please email Liam directly. He wants to hear about it more than anyone in the entire world. Maggie Smith accidentally hitting the touch bar and activating theory. Sorry. Sorry, Liam. Also, if you do a good impression of a celebrity using technology, please call the Virch Hotline and do that impression for us. We will play it on the show. Dame Judy Dench accidentally engage in Control Center.

This is definitely happened. Like, 1,000% She's like, she just walks around With her flashlight on 24-7 She's like, oh my God, what are our focus notes? Like, it's real. All right, we're wrapping this up. It's all over.

We've gone way over. Richard, thanks for being here, man. He's real. He's a real person. I exist. You can find me on the internet at RJCC. I have mediocre apex legends, highlights clips to show you. There you go.

There it is. You can read Alex. She's Alex H. Kranz. David is at Pierce. I'm at Reckless. That's it. That's the Vergecast. And that's a wrap for Vergecast this week. We'd love to hear from you.

Shoot us an email at Vergecast at theverge.com. The Vergecast is a production of The Verge and the Box Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by me, Liam James, and our senior audio director, Andrew Marino. Our editorial director is Brooke Minters. That's it. We'll see you next week.