The Vergecast - The beginning and end of the iPad

Episode Date: May 10, 2024

The Verge's Nilay Patel, David Pierce, and Alex Cranz discuss Apple's iPad event, the evolution of the streaming business, updates on the Wisconsin Foxconn site, and much more tech news. Apple iPad event: all the news from Apple’s ‘Let Loose’ reveal  The 7 biggest announcements from Apple’s iPad event  Here's how the latest iPad Pro compares to the new iPad Air (and prior models)   Apple adds a 13-inch iPad Air to the mix The iPad Air is now heavier than the iPad Pro  Apple announces new iPad Pros with OLED displays and thinnest design ever  Apple announces its M4 chip Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro M4: bigger trackpad and a function row  Hands-on with the new iPad Pro: yeah, it's really thin  You can upgrade the iPad Pro’s processor now, too  The new Apple Pencil Pro is harder to lose and better to draw with Apple puts more ‘Pro’ in Final Cut and Logic Pro for the iPad  Apple quietly kills the old-school iPad and its headphone jack The new iPads are ditching physical SIM cards Goodbye to Apple’s Smart Keyboard Folio, the best iPad Pro accessory People sure are pressed about Apple’s crushing iPad commercial A Disney, Hulu, and Max streaming bundle is on the way The streaming business will look “very different” in the next couple of years. Max nears 100 million subscribers globally. Max price hike incoming. Disney’s streaming business gets closer to becoming profitable ESPN is coming to the Disney Plus app Sony is now in play to buy Paramount. The Office is getting a Peacock spinoff about local newspapers The new Sonos app is missing a lot of features, and people aren’t happy  Inside Microsoft’s Xbox turmoil Microsoft says it needs games like Hi-Fi Rush the day after killing its studio Epic v. Apple judge seems displeased over style restrictions on iOS buttons The new Sonos app is missing a lot of features, and people aren’t happy  President Joe Biden to announce AI data center at failed Foxconn site in Wisconsin TikTok sues the US government over ban The Google Pixel 8A is a midrange phone that might go the distance  Google’s Pixel Tablet relaunch at $399 makes its magnetic dock optional  Email us at [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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. Prompts 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 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 in Vergecast, the flagship podcast of manufacturing in southeastern Wisconsin. We're going to go deep today on concrete, on blue collar jobs, bringing America back from wherever it was.

Then we get a big globe, right? Huge tiny dome. Yeah, a dome, excuse me. It's a dome. What I'm talking about, of course, is Foxconn in my hometown of Racine, Wisconsin. The literal place, where I grew up. We're going to get to it. It's really just a victory lap for me personally

because Foxxon has not done anything else. Like actually quite notably the news is that someone else has done stuff on that site in Wisconsin. Nealai, do you think you're the most famous resident of Racine, Wisconsin at this moment in time? No, the most famous people from Racine, Wisconsin is the bad team in the movie A League of Their Own. Oh, that's good. That's Really good. Easily the most famous Racine Yeah, you're never top in that thing

is that what's her name? Is it Lori Petty? Yeah, Lori Petty. She goes to the other team. I don't remember her character's name. I just know it's Lori Petty. Yeah. She has to go, she goes to the Racine Bells and then has to pitch against her sister, Gina Davis.

That's correct. And Jeff Bridges is already dead and the bus can't go slower than 55 miles an hour. That's not in that movie. They're all the same. That is a straight reference to dress to kill by Eddie is. And if you get it, I love you and you are my people and you can just send me a note and I'll send you a t-shirt.

But you have to be able to tell me exactly what it is. Okay, that's that whole thing. The other most famous resident in University of Wisconsin is, of course, Sam Johnson of Johnson's wax fame, who did some weird stuff in a plane over Central America and built a wax fortune that started the high school I went to whose PBX system was connected to the SC Johnson Company so you could pick up any phone in the school and dial four digits and get a J-Wax VP. I don't know why I know that information. That was a deep recine lawyer.

Was that who you would prank call? I got kicked out of that high school lot. Just flatly kicked out of that school lot. Anyway, that's coming later in the show, not the Johnson Wax stuff, the Foxxon stuff. That's been much later in the show. There is iPad news, like a lot of iPad news to talk to you, but in a small way. We'll get to it. Cran's, the streaming movie industry, the television industry, in a moment of, I would say, turmoil. Yeah, they realize they have to make money.

That's a problem. So we're going to talk about that. And then we got a lightning round, just shockwaves in the lightning round, which is unsponsored again this week. So between now and the lightning round, if you've got money to spend. We have gotten some interest, though. I will say, if you want to throw money at us. let's start a bidding war because it's coming. Yeah, and we'll do it live on the air. That'll be the lightning round. Recursive lightning around sponsored by the people. Wait, do that mean we get to do the bidding voice?

The ab-da-da-ba-b-da-ba-b-b-d-b-d-b. You know you can go to classes for those? I saw a TikTok. Anyway, none of that is important. By the way, I'm your friend, Eli. Alex Cranz is here. I'm your friend who really wants to be one of those. Auctioneer.

The word you're looking for is auctioneer. The bob-da-ba-ba-a-da-a-d-d-thri. No, that's a kid rock song. David Pierce is here. Hi. Lovely to be here. All right. So this week, the news is that Apple had like a warm-up event for WWC.

I don't even know what else to call it. It felt like a warm-up. Like crack their knuckles. They're like, here's some stuff. We've got to get this stuff out of the way. They ran a 35-minute infomercial for new iPads. At this point, Apple loves the infomercial event. But they had some watch parties.

David went to one in New York. You got to sit down, watch the infomercial, spend some time with the new hardware. But all of it, even at the end of the event, I just want to, I feel like it's important to contextualize this event by noting that at the end of the iPad infomercial, Tim Cook came back on the screen and said, we will have much more to say about the future of our platforms at WWDC because the thing that needs to change on the iPad is iPad OS. and they announced no changes to iPad OS at this event. Nope. So it just felt like here's part one of the story. Follow for part two.

Yeah, you watched all of Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning. Can't wait till next year. Like that's basically how that felt. Yeah. It was odd, I think. And I went in thinking there must be something. And we got, to be fair, little teeny tiny bits of software, right? There was new final cut and new logic.

There's a new app. final cut camera that works. So there's like tiny bits of things that you can do. But the, the overwhelming question for the iPad for like damn near a decade at this point has been, what am I supposed to do with all of this power in this thing? And we did not get a lot of, I would say, new compelling answers to those questions. I would say, in fact, we got none. And I want to come to that because, you know, we have to review these things. And I think there's like a there's a question mark at the end of this review. And the question mark is like, what if they add a bunch of AI features in June, right?

Like, who knows? But let's actually talk about what they announced. They basically refresh the entire lineup, save the mini. It's actually very funny if you go to apple.com right now and click on iPad. All of the iPads have the word new under them. And it feels like the mini should have the word old under it. The mini did at least get, it was like in the last 20 words that Tim Cook said in the whole thing, he said the words iPad mini out loud, which made me happy because that that

at least is some acknowledgement that it exists and will continue to exist. But that was it. That was the entirety of the love for the iPad Mini at this event. And that made me sad. They just refreshed it last year? I'm trying to remember when I bought mine. Was it last year? It was like two years ago.

It was 2022 sometime. Yeah. Oh, wow. And they make that product entirely, as I understand it, for pilots to strap to their legs while they fly planes. So whatever. The mini aside, Dear Sweet Mini, the base models refresh. in so much as it a refresh, is that they dropped the price of the 349, which is important, because that's probably where it should have been.

They got rid of the 9th gen, which they were selling for 329. That's one of the lightning connector and the headphone jack. No iPads Apple is selling right now have a headphone jack, which I think is nightmarish for parents. I know I have a lot of dongle apologists in my mentions, but if you have a small child and you are ever traveling with the child, managing Bluetooth headphones for a child, it's just like no fun. And charging a thing, like, it's just easier to have the analog connector. Please don't tell me about your ESPC dongles. I don't care, man.

I don't care that you're in the pocket of big dongle, which is not my problem. Anyhow, that's the big refresh there. And I think it's important they brought that price down. Then the iPad Air feels like a very subtle refresh. David, what would they do there? Yeah, it's, I would say subtle refresh is basically right. The big change is that now there's a bigger one. There's now a 13-inch version of the iPad air.

It has an M2 chip. It comes in a couple of new colors, but it is still very much an iPad air, right? Like this is, I think, the iPad that Apple wants most people to buy, which is why it has the new colors. It has the magic keyboard. It has the pencil. It is kind of the sort of most mid of all of the iPads.

And that is very much what Apple wants it to be. And yeah, it's $5.99 for the 11 inch, $7.99 for the 13 inch. And they're very much doing like a MacBook Air MacBook Pro thing with these devices where you have the sort of slightly less powerful, cheaper, simpler computer in two sizes. And then you have the more pro thing with all the advanced specs for a lot more money, still at the same two sizes. But they've landed on this 11 and 13 inch thing as like the way going forward. But I just don't understand.

why anyone would buy the air when the regular iPad exists and has got like what it's got the same or it's got an A14. Okay. The iPad Air has an M2. Is that really matter to 90% of people who are using an iPad? No, which is back to what you were saying, Nelai, a minute ago, Apple would like you to believe that it matters. And Apple would love to tell you stories about all the power of its new chips and why this stuff matters. And we're going to get to the pro in the minute, which has an even newer chip, and I spent a lot of time with Apple executives

learning about the wonders of the new chip. If you're just like a person who does normal iPad things in the world, I cannot in good conscience tell you a processor upgrade and your iPad is worth it. Yeah.

And so I think that is the question. It's like, I think Apple would very much like you to buy the air. And I think Apple thinks the air is the correct one for the largest number of people. But it still feels a little

like tweener-ish to me for a lot of things. I found some differences between the air and the 10th-gen iPad. Okay. The hover function on the new Apple pencil will work on the air. Yeah, it's a bunch of pencil stuff.

Yeah, it's like... The original, the 10th-gen iPad is a USBC Dufus pencil. Yeah. And it has the other smart keyboard or the magic keyboard. and that's it. And it 100 nits brighter?

Sure. P3 instead of SRGB. Hey, that matters to me. Yeah, that does. Like that and the fact that it has anti-reflective coding, those two things do actually. It's a slightly nicer product that uses slightly newer accessories. But again, by the time you're down this road of any of this stuff,

you're way beyond the average I just need an iPad to look at while I sit on the couch user, right? Like, to me, it's like if you're even thinking about buying a magic keyboard, buy the error or higher, period. Right? Like, it's, I think that's fairly simple. I think a lot of people who want iPads don't want anything other than the pain of glass to hold in their hands. And for most of those people, I can't think of a single reason the air is going to be like meaningfully better for you in your life than the regular iPad. Yeah, and I think this points to just the problem, which is what is the use case for the iPad?

And now, again, the hardware suggests that it is an expansive list of use cases. And to some extent, it is, right? Like, some people, I am sure, produce music in logic exclusively in an iPad. Those people are causing themselves an enormous amount of pain, but they're choosing to do it and that is their right as Americans. Sure. Fine, right? It's just here at the bottom of the range, the step from the 10th gen to the air is, very small, hardware-wise.

It is a nicer piece of hardware. It is a bigger screen. You can get now an even bigger screen. But it's a very mild refresh. And basically, they have added the 13-inch size. Fine. Yeah. But the capabilities of the product are exactly the same as they were yesterday

or the day before. Yep. It's the iPad Pro and now the pencil pro. We're like, now this, the purpose of this event, it felt like was to simplify this increasingly complicated lineup. And you get to the iPad Pro and the pencil pro

and the fact that Apple now sells, I think, four different pencils. And you're just like, what is going on here? The pencils are really bad. Like the chart of which pencil works with which product and has which feature. Like, no, if you have a chart that big for Apple product, you've messed up.

Yeah. Let's get into the... Well, there's that. Let's talk about the philosophy of the iPad in a second. The iPad Pro is a piece of hardware, appears to be very impressive. David, you've seen it. Tell us. It's so, so good.

I, we go to a lot of these events, right? And you're like, you're constantly being handed a thing that somebody has just spent a half hour telling you as new. And most of the time, you're just like, this is a MacBook, like, I've seen it. It sure is. And the iPad is like the canonical example of that, right? Like, for years and years and years, you pick up an iPad and you're like,

boy, that sure is an iPad. I picked up the iPad Pro at this event in New York and like out loud involuntarily just said, holy shit. Like it is so thin and so light and so small, especially on the 13 inch. It was, it's the biggest like leap forward in how impressive I find this hardware in a really long time. Again, we can debate forever the value of any of this hardware, but just the sheer like engineering feat to get this thing under a pound.

it's 5.1 millimeters thick. By the way, everybody says 5.1 millimeters thin now, and I think we've complained about that. That's nothing. Things are not, you can't measure the thinness of something. It's thickness, and there's not much of it, which is... Steve Jobs started doing this with the,

I believe, the second generation MacBook Air. I hate it so much. And everybody does this now, and it drives me insane. But that's neither here nor there. It's 5.1 millimeters, but that's the 13-inch. Yeah, and the 11-inch, I believe, is 5-3. But the point is, they're spectacular. Like truly as pieces of hardware, they are incredibly impressive.

To the point where you're holding the thing and like everybody has made this joke, Marquez Brownlee, when he made a video, had the Jerry Rig Everything guy just sort of peek out from the corner of the video. Like, it feels like you could snap this thing in half. Whether or not you can, I don't know if you can. That feels like a problem. But yeah, just the sheer machinery inside of this thing is really, really, really impressive. Yeah, and there's two pieces I think that are important to call out. One is the new processor, the M4, which is interesting, just sort of from a processor technology standpoint.

Apple didn't put an M3 in this. If you read Ben Thompson and Stratory, he points out that the M3 is on a 3 nanometer process node from TSM that was a technology dead end. Yeah. And TSM has all but admitted it. And the M4 is on the one that is sustainable and has a future. So the TSM was like, we made this weird dead end because we have customers who insist on being at the leading edge. There's one customer that's been at the leading edge. So they made, so the M3 could be in whatever computers it was in, and the M4 is the leap to the good version of the 3 nanometer node that has like a roadmap in front of it.

So you see Apple is trying. They're putting the stuff, like the best stuff they got into this machine. And then on top of that, it has the tandem OLED. People have been talking about stacked OLED displays for a very long time. It's a really simple idea. It's like deceptively simple. Obviously it's taking a long time to pull off. But if you run an OLED at the brightness you want to run an OLED, it gets hot, you risk burning.

So why don't we just take two OLED displays, basically combine their power source, and then we just run them each at half brightness on top of each other. It's like real pip my ride. It's very clever. And then what you can do, and David, I'm very curious for this because I haven't seen it. I know you have. If you run them both at top brightness, you get a much brighter OLED display, which is that I think is the promise and the thing that people have been trying to work on for a long time. Yeah, it was tough to tell.

I mean, these Apple events are always lit really bizarrely in such a way that it's really hard to sort of get in the nitty-gritty pixels of a display. But it was noticeably brighter. Like I brought my 11-inch pro from last generation with me. just holding the two things side by side, you can tell how much brighter the OLED is. I think they said it's 1,600 nits at full brightness, which is a lot.

I assume we'll just shred your battery to bits at full brightness. Because you're running that many OLED pixels at full brightness. Like, you're like, I'm going to watch one episode of something and it's just going to shatter the battery. Well, no, but this is the idea, though, is that you get more efficiency, maybe at the top brightness, where you're running effectively both panels all the way.

but the idea is that sort of at your everyday brightness, you're running both panels like halfway. Right. And that's also a big part of the reason that the M4 and the Tandamo that are happening simultaneously. Like the overwhelming thing I heard talking to folks at this event was that like we couldn't do one of these without the other. That driving those two displays at that high resolution

and that high refresh rate is just a massive amount of computational work. and doing those two things, especially in a way that is at all power efficient, is just really hard, and that a lot of what the M4 is is explicitly about driving the tandem OLED, which I think is really interesting, and I wonder what that says about,

like, the next set of products that might have M4s inside. What kind of MacBook do you make if you've got a big tandem Oled driver sitting on your chip, right? The big-ass battery? Exactly. It is just going to be one of those, like,

100-m-amp-hour anger battery. with the screen that falls on it. I would take that product. If they made this twice as thick and got rid of the camera bump and it was like the battery lasts for a week, I would be happy. Yeah.

I do agree with that. I mean, there was a very funny thing where you hold this thing and it's a remarkable piece of technology like they built the hell out of the hardware. But then I'm like, okay, if this thing was a little thicker so that it didn't have a camera bump,

which is the thing a lot of people pointed out was this could have been the thickness of the camera bump and would have been about the same thickness as the last eye. pad, which no one was complaining about the thickness of, by the way. And you'd get more battery. You might get more power efficiency out of it.

You'd get better speakers just because there's room to move the audio around. That, like, maybe this constant thrust toward thinness that Apple has been on for so long is actually not the right strategy. And I largely agree with that, but, like, goddamn, is it cool just to hold the thing when it's that thin? This thing, you are a Johnny I've killed. This thing is like Ives revenge. He's like, here's right?

What happens. You pick up an iPhone 6 and it flops over, but damn, is it thin? Yeah, pretty much. Fine. Yeah. And then there's new accessories, right? So there's the Apple Pencil Pro, which adds the ability to do a barrel roll. Do a barrel roll.

You can also squeeze it. Love to squeeze a pencil. When I think about totally natural user interfaces, it's squeezing a pen. Yeah. Wait, can I just say two things about the pencil? Yeah. One, the squeeze is actually pretty nice. They put a real, like, haptic engine.

into it. So it feels like a MacBook trackpad now in the sense that you get a little bit of that response. I don't know that it adds wildly to the experience of using it, but it does feel nice to squeeze the thing. The other thing is Apple is very excited about the developer possibilities for this. There are going to be APIs that you can just give to any app and they're going to be able to do stuff with the squeeze. And I just like casually throughout the example of like, oh, I can't wait to use my pencil to change the Spotify song. And somebody just goes, hmm, interesting idea. And I was like, no, that was a joke.

That's a bad idea. No one should do that. So there's going to be some like deeply weird pencil gesture support stuff going on. And they're going to be able to chain gestures on the pencil to shortcuts. So all the shortcut nerds are really excited about this now. It's going to get really weird. And I'm very excited about it. Okay.

My prediction is that it does not get weird. I love the idea of adaptive user interfaces, and I have talked about them with a lot of people over the years. I actually just Dylan Field, the CEO of Figma, was on stage with me at Southby, and he's like, I love the idea of adaptive user interfaces. We talk specifically about stylists and pencils, and like what if, as you were sketching a design in Figma, the sort of UI was around your stylist was adapting to what you were doing,

so you can just move seamless. Like, this is a dream. This is a technologist dream. The idea that a bunch of app developers are going to flock to the broken app development model of the iPad and develop custom features for a pencil that is only available at the top end of the range, look, David, I really want you to squeeze your way

through a Spotify playlist. I mean, there's nothing I want more for you. You're way overstating the amount of work that it's going to be. It's like setting up a keyboard shortcut to do this. Like, it's not hard work to set it. My man, Netflix wouldn't put a video player on the Vision Pro. Yeah, I mean, fair, but also, I mean, A, you're right. And B, I would like everyone to email your favorite shortcut to nelai at the verge.com.

I love it. I love a shortcut. I love them. Can't get enough of scripting my own applications to defeat the lack of cross-operability on Apple's platforms. It's my favorite. Yeah, that's good stuff. I just, this is the sort of thing where Apple makes a big promise, about everybody's supporting a thing,

and then we wait. Yeah. And so I would just challenge you on the scale of, I don't know, dashboard widgets to the touchbar. Where do we think pencil squeezing support is gonna land? From like very bad to very bad?

Is that where we're at right now? No, I think about some big Apple UI idea that it had. iPhone widgets. Sure. On your lock screen. Live activities and the dynamic eye on. support. We've seen just a lot of support for that, especially as it came to the mainstream phone.

Very good. Okay, so that's on the plus side. That's great. And then there's the touch bar. All the way over there. The touch bar was awesome. Just nobody gave a shit. Okay. Excited for you to use Spotify with your touchbar. Okay. I'm just saying, that's the range. Where do you put squeezing the pencil? Closer to the touch bar. I mean, I think it's just true. It's not a mainstream accessory. I would actually, like, keyboard shortcuts on the iPad are actually probably right in line with the same thing, right? It's the kind of thing that are relatively cheap to add and relatively straightforward for users to access once they have them. But the attach rate of those accessories is not super high.

Yep. Most apps don't really need it. Like, what you're going to see is there's going to be this set of, like, apps that use the pencil that are going to use the hell out of the pencil. and you're already all of the drawing apps. And like I've just been talking to folks even in the last couple of days. Like folks are psyched about the barrel roll stuff and just like the little creative abilities

that you get just with the additional tiny features in here are like a big deal. But they're a big deal for a tiny number of features to a tiny number of people. And that's great. But I don't see a world in which the pencil is ever bigger than that. So I think the idea that like Spotify is going to care about it is not real.

If a pencil came free, I would feel differently. but it doesn't. I do love the idea that you go to events where people are sort of professionally obligated to, like, be kind to you and just have horrible ideas. And they're like, good idea. It's so fun.

It's so fun. I just pitch stupid products to people for, like, several hours, and they go, and then they keep giving me demos. That's great. So that's a pencil. What I'm really curious about is the keyboard, because my favorite plane computer of all time was a 12-inch MacBook,

which was super light and thin. I tried to replace it with the previous 11-inch iPad Pro, which just turned out to, like, thick. Like, it was just like a heavy, weird. It just, like, wasn't as good as a laptop in many ways because of just the way it worked. Is the new keyboard case sort of better? They announced it as being more like a MacBook than ever, which I thought was really interesting. The top half hasn't really changed, which I think is going to be its challenge. It's still, at least in the demos I got and the time I was able to spend with it, it's still a little wobbly.

especially when you touch it, so it kind of wiggles as you move it around. The bottom, especially on the pros, is aluminum. It's much more solid. It's really smooth. It actually, like, feels nice to rest your palm on kind of MacBook airishly. And the keys felt amazing. I've spent, like, 10 minutes on it, so I reserved the right to change my mind. But it was one of those keyboards you just put your hands down and instantly start typing on.

I also really love Apple's normal magic keyboard. So everyone's mileage may vary on that. I think that's a great keyboard. And this felt to my hands just like that, which is kind of all you'd want for this. I always thought the iPad Pro's keyboard was a little like mushy and sort of thick. It just felt like you had to sort of smash the keys all the time.

And then I spilled like half a Diet Coke online, so now you have to really smash the keys. But this one, at least in the bits that I've gotten, felt fantastic. Like I instantly want it as just a little, kitchen computer that I can just sit and, like, write emails while I wait for my coffee to brew. Like, it felt great. But I have a question. Which do you want more?

This or a Microsoft Surface? Device. Because, like, the whole time watching this, the whole time talking about it, talking even about the stylus, I was like, this just feels kind of like Microsoft in 2017 or 2018, right? Like, when they and all the OEMs were really pushing, like, yeah, look, it's a touchscreen computer. And I'm like, yes, now Apple has done a touchscreen computer right down to talking about the processor. Yeah.

Which they didn't use to do with the iPad. Like, this is just a computer. Yeah, this was a speeds and feeds event. It was fascinating on that front. It really was. Super weird. Interesting. So it's interesting.

Back then, I think Windows was in a weirder spot. So they announced the surface and they were like, but then it's Windows. Windows is in a sideways sort of fashion come a long way. Yeah. Like I would say it's in a different spot. Right. Is that spot ahead? It's more of a diagonal.

Yeah, yeah. You know, it's gone, it's come a distance. Yeah. The direction, I think, is a question of. I'm sure it's a good direction. And I only say that because you can argue about what the evolution of Windows. Yeah. To contrast with the fact that the iPad is an exact.

the same place as it was. Yes. I went back and I read my iPad air review from 2013, which in a horrifying sequence of events, I forgot that I had written. You're like, oh, this guy's pretty good. Yeah, it's like, oh, smart. Snap E's, oh, that's me. There it is.

And it is exactly the same. That iPad was running iPad OS 7, iOS 7. Yeah. In my review is like, this thing is constantly fighting you. They have not done enough with this software to take advantage of the. the larger screen. And it's just like plaintiff. Like, why is Siri so weird on this?

Like, why is it just a big iPhone? I read my iPad Pro review from 2018 when the first USBC one. And I'm like, why is this computer fighting me? Like, why is file management on the iPad so confused? Yeah. And all that stuff has gotten incrementally better. Yep, they've added stage manager. Shortcuts, people, I'm so proud of you for writing an alternative operating system in

shortcuts on top of iPad OS. That is an achievement. You know, that's cool as hell. That's like, I'm a computer nerd. I'm happy you did computer nerd stuff. But the ultimate problem, which is you have to fight the computer to get it to be a computer.

Like remains as true for the iPad today as it did in 2013 when I was running iOS 7. Yeah. And I think my answer to you then, given that question, is like, I'd rather take the weird sideways windows. because at least it's going to do everything that I want it to do without some like.

Like putting on armor and just going to war with your office. Yeah, just like running into like the brick wall of Apple's business model. Yeah. Right. Apple's like, we're going to distribute all the applications to the app store. We're going to take 30% of all those buttons. And that will, and if we open that up on the iPad, then we're terrified that we'll have to open it up on the iPhone. We're already being brats about opening it up on the iPhone.

Like, no, like, it's going to be like this. This is the future of computing. And then you're like, is it? Yeah, and it really doesn't. It feels just like they made a hobbled surface device. Like, to be clear, my dream surface device in 2018, but a hobbled surface device, right? Down to the fact that you have to choose the processor, the storage. Like, the markups are high to make it functional.

So the thing we don't know. The thing. The thing we don't know is like what's going to happen in June. That's true. That's true. Lenei Rev iPadOS. And that's what, to me, David, I couldn't tell if while you were at the watch parties. And they had one in New York and one in London.

Like maybe the vibes are different all around the world. But for me, sitting at home, watching it in the glorious, still-be-atmos of my own home. Apple, by the way, did not stream this thing at any more than like 8 megabits per second. So it was not in Sony Bravia core? Yeah. It was at 48-killerhertz. which is great. But I mean, come on.

Where's the resolution, man? You're going to show John Turnus whipping around the Bart holding an iPad? I want the full. Anyway, I was like, man, like I can't wait until next month when they finish this product. Yeah. Exactly. It just felt like, okay, you've announced this thing that we've already seen before. We've already heard the pitch that this kind of computer is really good for creatives.

Because that was the whole pitch, right? It was like, look, this is for creatives. And I was like, yeah, I heard that from Microsoft in HP and everybody else back in 2018. I know that now. And you've heard that from Apple about the iPad. Yeah. And like, okay, show me. And they're like, yeah, we did it.

No, no. But show me where it's actually good for creatives now, where it's actually that useful computer. All you've done is like crush a bunch of stuff with a hydraulic press. Wait, I want to come to the crushing. Well, we'll get to that. Yeah, yeah. That's another thing. I'm curious David if that came through at the whatever the, it was a while.

It wasn't like a full event, but I'm curious if it came through there. I think it was hard. was hard to tell at the event whether this was the end of something or the beginning of something. And one way to look at this event is that essentially Apple finished the job of the iPad, right? They said this over and over and over again. They're like, this is the magical pane of glass, right? That's the thing they've been wanting to build for a really long time. And like they built a really nice one.

It has an outrageous amount of raw horsepower. It's really light. It's really thin. The screen looks awesome. Like you could make the case that they have been. sort of working toward this particular iPad since the beginning of the iPad. And I think, like, they said over and over, this is the biggest day in the iPad since the launch of the iPad, which, like, objectively not true.

But if you want to look at it that way, this is the end of that journey in a certain way. Like, I genuinely don't know how much further you can push the actual details of the hardware here than what this is now, until we get to, like, rollable displays and something. It's like, this feels like an end point in a real way. or the flip side is this is the thing that is going to empower all of the things that Apple's going to launch in June. And that was all the stuff that they were sort of intimating with the AI stuff and talking about the features and, you know, leaning on we're going to have more to say about the future of the platform in June. I don't think this running macOS is the answer for the iPad. And there are a lot of people who are like, the evidence is everywhere.

They're going to have macOS on the iPad. Like, no, they're not. It's just not going to happen. but if there is a next turn for what the iPad can be and do and like a fundamental shift in the use case that's when this feels like the beginning of something right

and now they're like we have a different kind of hardware with a different set of accessories and a different performance envelope that can actually go do all of this new stuff and this is the story everybody has been telling us about AI for like damn near two years now and none of it's really been true

so I'm not ultra-confident that Apple is going to have like massively improved the state of the art of AI and has solved all the features for everybody in June. But this did, it felt very much like this is the vessel and we're going to fill it a month from now. And if not, this will feel like the end of an era of the iPad to me. How does AI fix iPad OS? Wait, I want to come to, I think, that's where I want to end. Okay. I'm sorry. I definitely want to end there. I just want to, before we get to that, because I think that's the right place to end for sure. And I think that's another hour of the show.

I just want to call out the biggest day of the iPad since the iPad. Off the top of my head, I can think of three more important iPads than these that like move the needle. The iPad 2, which was like a shock announcement. And the design direction of the iPad 2 was basically the iPad until Monday. Yep. like that ninth gen iPad with a lightning connector like slightly different design like but it was it's an iPad too yeah yeah they just flattened it a little bit like right that but it's the same exact home button

bezels the whole thing that's an iPad too and that iPad two launch Steve Jobs on a stage when like I did it again you saw the first gen iPad here's the second one and this this is always my test that shit made the local news yeah right if you if you want to break through in the mainstream you We need ABC 7 in Chicago to be like, I'll announce a new iPad today. You got to do it. You got to get there. The iPad 4, which was the retina display and lightning connector. The iPad 3 had a retina display, but it was way too early, and it was thicker, and the thing ran so hot.

The battery life was garbage. The iPad 4 was the good one. Huge, big deal. Everybody I know who had an iPad immediately upgraded to that iPad. And then the original iPad error, where they changed it to the boxier design, they gave it the extra capabilities, that was a big deal, which is why I was reading my 2013 review, where they redid the form factor to make it that more square. And a form factor change is always just a big deal.

Like none of the ones you mentioned, though, were when they got rid of the button. Yeah, because whatever. You don't care about the button. I believe that was the original iPad Pro. Yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right. And that one I would say was not a big deal because that's when they added the keyboard and they got real surfacey,

and I'm just using my local news test. That thing was really expensive. It tried to make it a laptop, and did it work? Did it go on the local news? I'm just saying off the top of my head, if you're just ranking the biggest iPads, the things that made the iPad break through to the mainstream and, like, cause a fuss,

it's 100% the iPad too. Yes. Like, easily the most beat, you're ranking the biggest moments the iPad since the iPad. The iPad 2 is at the top of that list. Yeah. Without question. Then I think it is the iPad 4 when all of the early adopters

the iPad upgraded because the hardware had a new capability in a retina screen that was worthwhile. Instead of the iPad 3, which again had a retina screen but was also a tiny nuclear reactor. And then the iPad error, which was the big form factor shift that everybody upgraded to. And also passed

the local news test of Apple was on your iPad. It's thinner than ever before. Like that thing. I do want to tell you that In fact, the event this week did pass the local news test. You're watching ABC7? ABC7 did in fact cover it. Oh, now it's covering the streaming bundle. ABC7 in Chicago.

Just going. But yeah, they were just like, Apple unveils new iPad Pro with outrageously powerful AI-powered chip. All right. I'm not going to tell you why I think about ABC7 news. It is what my mom watches. Okay. But no, I'm with you. Like local news when it hits local news.

So I'm genuinely surprised this hit. They need something. Yeah. There's a slow news week for them. I'll just say that's my test. And that's to me is the, God bless the people at ABC 7 News. I'm in Chicago for New Year's every year and they do just a wild New Year's Eve thing. So that's why it's always on my mind.

But it is true. That's the one my mom watches. But I think about that test. And it's like, did this pass the test where a whole bunch of new people are going to pick an iPad or going to buy an iPad. and I don't think this hardware is that thing. No. Maybe at the top end of the scale, a bunch of people are going to get an iPad Pro

because I want to do a barrel roll. I'm that person. I'm not a tandem OLED? Yeah, I'm in. Let's spend the money. I'm just, that's the thing I'm thinking about. And that's where I'm with David, where I'm like, you got to reset your expectations

of what the thing is capable of. Yeah. Which I think brings me to the commercial and all this talk about AI, Apple said a million times it's the most powerful AI computer you can get because of the M4. We've been doing the neural engine for years.

Here's the thing in logic where you can put in a song and it does the AI and it splits the stems and the drums and guitars and vocals for you. That's cool. Here's some Final Cut Pro stuff.

That's cool. By the way, Final Cut camera on the iPhone they announced they just slid by that they announced pro camera software for the iPhone. Just moved through it. That rules.

Like that's awesome. But, you know, the thing is very powerful. And then they're like, we're going to have more AI features. You can see they're going to announce a ton of AI features at WWC. And I think what is fascinating is maybe Apple's core constituency hates it. And then this ad just like lit the fuse. God. The ad was like unintentionally a flashpoint in what fells like some sort of new class warfare.

Yeah. Between like big tech and creatives. And we've been seeing it in Hollywood a lot, right? As Apple and Amazon and everybody goes and takes over streaming there, everybody's got really strong feelings about it. But to see it happen here, to see like Hugh Grant be like, this sucks, you're destroying the world. That was a really bad Hugh Grant impression.

Yeah. Sorry. He's famously British. He's famously British. I'm not. The opposite of British. The opposite. So the ad is a bunch of stuff, like beautiful old creative stuff.

Yeah, it's like paint and phones. There's a trumpet, I believe, at the beginning. A metronome A sculpture that I thought was like A sculpture and then it was clay Because it just smushed all unsatisfyingly In the hydraulic press And it was like a really good commercial

And it's the same thing they've done a billion times before Where they're just like What if all of this stuff was in the palm of your hand And everybody's like F off Yeah How dare you? And because I think it was that image

Of things being all crushed Being destroyed Like beautiful things being destroyed being destroyed to make an iPad. And everybody out there in the world is really upset. There's a lot of anxiety around AI in so many creative industries. So to have that happen, I was like, ooh, you'll miss the mark on that one. Yeah.

Can I just say, I think the overarching point of the idea that technology is like literally flattening creative culture, good and fair and valid and worth fighting about, the reaction to this commercial in particular is so stupid. and I just wish everyone would get over it. It's so funny. I will say there was a great, I forget who did it, and I'm sorry I can't give them credit for it, but there was somebody who literally just ran that commercial in reverse

and was like, this is actually much more compelling and sells the iPad much better that all of this stuff comes out of the iPad. And I think that's very funny, because it wasn't much more compelling and uplifting version of the thing. But also, like, the idea that everyone is like, Apple has always loved creatives, and now it's destroying trumpets is like,

come on everybody. Nothing has changed. Apple is trying to tell you that there's lots of things that you can do in an iPad and the fact that it smushed a trumpet to do so is probably fine. It's probably fine. Things have changed for a lot of folks, right? Like things have changed on the other side of it that was totally unrelated to Apple. Yeah.

It really was just Apple just like stepping in it without even knowing that we're stepping in it because out there in the world people are furious at technology in general. And then Apple was this like, look, we did a cool iPad. and everybody's like, you'll die. I agree with that. I think the broader story here is real, right? And Apple is out there talking about AI while everybody is rightly nervous

about what AI is going to mean to their creative work. All that stuff is totally fair and valid. It just isn't about this commercial. No, that's what I mean. I think the commercial is like, dude, in a month, Apple is going to announce AI features across its operating systems. Like huge sweeping AI features

from the reports we've read they're going to add the AI photo editing to photos. Just imagine the what is a photo conversation we're going to be having in a month when that stuff is built in at the system level to the iPhone. Four hour vergecast. It's never going to stop. We're just going to start verge casting

right after the keynote ends and we're going straight on to the end of the year. This is officially my two-week notice. Liam's out. But I mean, like, they want to add generative AI capabilities to the products directly. and I think what they just learned is even a hint

of breaking creative stuff is bad for them. I think the reaction of the ad is like, one, don't destroy cool things that we like? Like, I'm, David, it sounds like your disdain for trumpets is off the charts. Yeah.

Some people think trumpets are cool. Right, there's Scott bands across the world that are like, what are you doing? David's like, no to Scott. Destroy all trumpets. There's, you know, there's like a retro arcade concept. It's just like cool stuff, stuff people like, and they're like, smash.

We're doing one of those TikToks with the hydraulic smashers. And now here's an iPad, this like sort of soulless corporate pane of glass, right? You take that anxiety just around this ad, just around the imagery of that ad, and you hand it, you like point it at iOS itself in a month. And it's like, oh, that's a powder keg, actually. Yeah. It is. And Apple has been, I think, the extent to which it has misread the room about how people think about Apple, I think is what has been most telling about this. Because there was a time when Apple really did convince creative people that it was behind them, right?

And it was making tool, even as it was disrupting the music industry and changing the way a lot of this stuff worked, people who made things used Apple products. Like, overwhelmingly, that was the case. And there was the sense that, like, this company made good products. in the right way and believed in creative people and cared about this stuff. And Steve Jobs was a Pixar investor, like all this stuff. And I think between the way that Apple's business model has been sort of aired out like dirty laundry over the last couple of years and the way we've come to understand what it does to developers and the way that all of this stuff is just in general getting subsumed inside of technology, like there's the bigger story about what technology is doing

to the world and to creative people that I think is interesting and important. But there's also a thing that has happened where people don't look at Apple the way Apple thinks that they do anymore. And I think to me, that was the thing that was most interesting about this was a bunch of people who otherwise would have been like, oh, Apple's, you know, one of the good ones, they actually care about this stuff. It's a huge tech company that actually like does the right things the right way. That company does not get the benefit of doubt anymore. Yeah.

And I don't know that that's coming back. And I think it's going to really hurt it with AI in a really big way. The thing that I have thought about, the moment, like specific phrase that I have been thinking about during this whole commercial kerfuffle, which I agree is it's about something else. Yeah. Right. But I have been thinking a lot about Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone 4. And he held it up and he was admiring his own product in the way that Steve Jobs was want to do.

And he said, it's like a beautiful old like a camera. Hmm. And he meant it. Right. Like he was like, this is, I loved that thing and I made a thing that is like it. and this thing is actually meant to honor that thing. You just go watch it. You go watch the iPhone 4 introduction.

It's funny because he like dunks on this mode at the beginning. I'm sorry, Alex. It's fine. Alex wasn't there yet. I wasn't there yet. But it's like, you know, it's like a whole thing, right? Steve Jobs has to reannounce the product that has been so thoroughly leaked that it has already been disassembled on the internet.

And he like does a great job. He does. But there's this moment that makes it work that like makes it click. where he's like, it is like a beautiful, like a camera. And he's just talking about a piece of design that he loves that represents a way of doing things that he obviously respects. And that's now here's his iPhone. Contrast that to buy your mom an iPhone.

Like that's the journey. Contrast that to buy your mom and iPhone. Contrast that to we're going to smash everything in your iPad. Yeah. Right? It's like, oh, now we're a bulldozer. Yeah. We're not a participant in this thing.

Right? We're not going to honor the past of creativity with blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, we've commodified creativity. We're a bunch of accountants who are going to take our 30%. And that is bad. Like, whatever it is, I'm sure someone is going to write to me about Apple stock performance now. Like, whatever you want to think about that. That's great.

They're dominant. People love them. But they don't, that benefit of the doubt where the company was led by an artist or someone who held himself out as an artist or a patron of the arts or whatever is gone. And I think this ad is actually a reflection of that. It's just, it's an ad. It's a very expensive ad, but it's not born out of a love of those things because if you truly loved those things, you would not smash them. And like, maybe that's just a metaphor.

Maybe it's silly. Maybe it's just a misfire. But a month from now, they're going to launch a bunch of AI features that are trained on a bunch of creative work, and they're going to have to answer a bunch of questions about whether or not they paid for that training data and whether artists are going to compensate it. and whether if you type into garage band, make me a beat in the style of whoever, that person gets money. And like, are you ready for this? Because the reaction to this ad suggests that you are not.

Yeah. And the same is true of Google. Next week is Google I.O. Where they're going to announce a bunch of AI, like, it's just destined to happen. Like, I can confidently predict that Google is going to announce a bunch of AI stuff at Google I. We're going to talk about Gemini a lot.

They're going to put Gemini in your, face. And are they ready? Are they ready for that stuff? This week, Open AI is the leak details of how they're going out to publishers. And the publishers are like, you already scrape the data. This is a, this is a head fake. We don't trust you. And I think this whole industry is kind of like on a razor's edge. They don't understand that the lack of trust around AI is going to come to all of their products, including a relatively innocuous iPad ad. Yeah. Agreed. 100%. All right, I'm very curious now to see what I was 17 breaks in. By the way, David, what is the evidence real quick before we break that it's going to run Mac OS?

Because that would be my dream. I don't know. There's just a lot of, I think a lot of people who are like, oh, the magic keyboard exists and feels more like a Mac. There's a bigger track pad. People just want it. Thus, MacOS. I challenge anyone to like try and think about how you would touch the things in your menu bar. Like, it's just not a good idea.

We should have Mac apps that work. This rules. I just poking away over it. here. This is great. I'm trying to scroll down so I get my menu bar. No, as far as I can tell, there is no actual evidence except this thing is stupendously powerful. And when you put it in, it kind of feels like a laptop. Yeah.

All right. That's my dream. If you're listening to me, Tim, I will trust you again if you put MacLess in the ad. It's a bad dream. Tim, don't listen. Turn off the podcast. Tim is in our YouTube comments. He's like, first.

That's him every time. All right. We got to take a break. We'll be right back. And then Alex is going to tell us about. streaming. So buckle up. We'll be right back. 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. What if, given the right tools, I really put my all into this. One tool that can help grow your sprouting business to new heights is Shopify. Millions of businesses around the world rely on Shopify for e-commerce. They offer a host of helpful tools you can take advantage of, from payment. processing to analytics to website design. Their design studio includes hundreds of templates to help you create the exact website you've been envisioning for your business.

If you're wondering, what if I need help, then no worries, because you're never left to fend for yourself. Shopify's award-winning customer support is available 24-7. It's time to turn those what-ifs into a thriving business with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com. slash vergecast. Go to Shopify.com slash vergecast. That's Shopify.com slash vergecast.

Support for the show comes from LinkedIn. If you're a small business owner, you know that every hire counts, but time and resources are limited. Finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates takes up valuable time you could be giving to your customers.

That's where LinkedIn Hiring Pro comes in. It's built to be your hiring partner, helping you find the right candidates faster. That way you can hire with confidence without turning it into another full-time job. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings. Its updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language. Nearly 60% of hirers find a candidate to interview within a week. With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent.

And instead of getting buried in resumes, you get a focus shortlist that actually moves your hiring forward. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash track. Terms and conditions apply. Support for the show comes from LinkedIn. If you're a small business owner, you need to be a lot of business owner, you need to be a lot of know that every hire counts, but time and resources are limited. Finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates takes up valuable time you could be giving to your customers.

That's where LinkedIn HiringPro comes in. It's built to be your hiring partner, helping you find the right candidates faster. That way you can hire with confidence without turning it into another full-time job. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to short-listing candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings. Its updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language. Nearly 60% of hirers find a candidate to interview within a week. With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. And instead of getting buried in resumes, you get a focus shortlist that actually moves

your hiring forward. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash track. Terms and conditions apply. All right, we're back. Alex, I feel like every time we talk about streaming, you say uncomfortably horny things with David Zaslov. It's true.

So I would like, I would like you to just assure me that that is not going to happen today. I can't make promises. All right. Well, I tried. I did my best to protect myself in our extended listener family. You guys all love him too. That's why you're listening. Don't worry.

I get it. The good news is there's not a lot of direct Zazlov news. There isn't. No, they had their earnings. Disney's had their earnings. A lot of folks had their earnings this week. And they're doing okay. They're making money.

And that's because they have things like ads. And they're running these companies like businesses that have to make money now. rather than just like giving us all free content all the time, which was super sick. And I would miss those years, like crazy. But the big stuff was like Disney, Hulu, and Max are all going to, they're going to get a bundle at some point this summer. Not your child. You know, she walked up to the TV the other day and said, why is there an icon and said Max? And I, honestly, I challenge you to explain that to a six-year-old in a way that makes any sense.

First of all, kudos to Max can read. That rules. Great job, Max. That's awesome. Yeah. Did you start explaining David Zazlov to her? I just challenge you to explain, like, try. Be like, you're six years old. You cannot start with there once was a company called Time Warner. That's what I was hoping.

Right? Like that, you're just like, there was a mistake. That's a mistake. This is how you write a children's book for Max just to explain that. There was a mistake. Inside of that icon rests a 4-3 Grace Kill Batman movie. I just, I'm sorry, okay? Like, the entire, one day I will tell you the story of the American economy, and it will start with that icon. But for now, don't worry about it, Max. Okay, so this is where we get to Zazlov. Obviously, Zazov runs Warner Brothers Discovery.

He's been looking for money. Yeah. He's been looking for growth. And what better way than to partner up with other companies who are also looking for growth and being like, if we get together, we can offer our stuff cheaper and also not have the FTC come after us. constantly for having our own little, like, fiefdoms. So they're going to bundle this up and say, is it going to be two different apps? So I guess Hulu is already in Disney Plus. Right.

Hulu's already in Disney Plus. That's why it's like that gross color now. Yeah. They were just like they smashed the blue and the green together. So you sign up. I read the press releases. The press releases are like, we'll release more details later. Yeah, there really isn't a lot of details.

It really is just like it's coming. We don't know pricing. We don't know when. We just know it's happening. So you're going to pay some money to someone. Yes. They're going to figure it out, Eli. Like, David's very good at this.

Zazlov, not Pierce. And then you're going to, I feel like if David Pierce was in charge with, in charge of Warner Brothers Discovery. I was going to say, I honestly believe, like, to my bones, that I could run the streaming industry more successfully than any of these clowns. Oh, you 100%. The user interface would work. I just let David do it.

Yeah. That's what I'm saying. You're going to log in to two apps. You're going to have two apps on your, on your, Roku. Still, we don't know. We don't know. Yeah, we genuinely don't know most of this stuff. We know that it's coming. We know that they're excited about it.

I would say, by the way, that there is virtually no chance of this being a combined app. Like, just from what we've seen on the right stuff alone, like Disney, the work they had to do to integrate the Hulu stuff with Disney Plus, and those are two companies owned by Disney. Yeah. Just the right stuff that wouldn't allow some things on. Hulu to be in Disney Plus. So there are things that are in Hulu the app that are not in Hulu, the tile, and Disney Plus.

Like, imagine adding all of a whole other company to that. I just don't see how that's possible. Like, this is, this is good. They're going for unified login, which is a good idea is like the most ambitious thing, I think, comes out of this. Yeah. But the entire idea of these roll-ups to begin with, Disney buying Fox, buying out the rest of Hulu from Comcast, Disclosure, Comcast as a stake in our parent company, Vox Media.

and also people hated Comcast so much, they rebranded their cable company to Xfinity. That's a real story. They don't like me very much. There's a disclosure. And then Zazlov just zaz in his way to merging Warner Brothers and Discovery. The idea there was always scale, right?

Yeah. Like the specific pitch for Warner Brothers Discovery was we will have HBO for your appointment Sunday night viewing, and then the rest of the time, when you're like, I don't know, what does Property Brothers do? And you'll just turn that on

and watch TikTok in the background. And they explicitly made this, this is the idea. Like the bundle will be so big that you'll subscribe to it. It'll be great for you. But bundles can get bigger. And that's what, like this has run out. Yeah, yeah. Basically they need other content, right?

Like, it is unrealistic to expect people to only watch Netflix. It is unrealistic to expect people to only watch Disney Plus unless they're like under the age of five. In which case, it's super realistic. But like. Did you see that stop by the one out of three? one out of every three shows in Disney Plus is a Bluie stream. Yeah. Wow.

Is it just max? Wow. It's like 30% of all Disney Plus streaming is Bluie. That's insane. Yeah. Oh my gosh. It's like this company is extremely beholden to an Australian dog. Wow.

I don't want to talk about Bluey at this time. David, your kid isn't old enough to know, but when it comes time, it will be very sad for you as well. So the bundles get bigger. Yeah. But why doesn't Netflix have this pressure? Because Netflix is huge. Like Netflix is bigger than kind of everybody else, right? They have that first mover advantage so they can just be, they're so far ahead of everybody else when it comes to subscribers and stuff that they can just keep doing that.

And they can keep asking for more money. And also, this is the Alex who put them higher on the Go 90 scale than some of the other people. They've got hubris, right? Yeah. They still haven't worked partnered with Apple, so you don't really get that so tight integration with, like, the Apple. that you get with Disney Plus and Macs and all these other ones. They don't partner with everybody else as often because they are the biggest. And oftentimes when you do that, your hubris catches up with you eventually.

So I think it's kind of a mistake for Netflix to not try to do this, but I'm not surprised by it because it's also the most, like, these are entertainment companies. Yeah. Netflix is a technology company. So you made a YouTube video this week. You basically like, the cable bundle is back. And that's what's happening here, right? You got Disney, the Hulu assets. They're going to put ESPN Plus in the Disney Plus app.

That's the cable bundle. You're subsidizing all this stuff that you don't necessarily want because I know you guys love sports. But you have to, you are just like ESPN will be here. I'm furious that I'm going to have ESPN on my Disney Plus. And we don't know what the pricing will be. And then you get all the sort of Warner Brothers assets now too plus HBO. Depending on what the price is, right? It could end up being that the price is the exact same, the only the only, the only

differences that it's just more convenient to log in. Well, so we do have this quote from Zaz. I'm just so worried about... Zaddy. There we go. Sorry. I had to do it. I'm so tired. If I ever meet that man, like, I can't. I just walk away.

I won't let you. It's somebody who's responsible for this newsroom and your friend. No, we can't go that way. It's just... Can you imagine having to work with somebody every day who's horny for a day is that's what it's like here at the verge all right here's the quote from it's like the new york times is like dealing with kevin ruse being like i banged 18 robots on ai and we have alex very different uh by the way you should read the kevin ruse article where he did make friends with 18 it's very different AI personalities and even from the jump

he's like it's a little horny it's good anyway here's a quote from david zazlov uh there's a lot of in the market that's getting shaken out in terms of money spent. Ultimately, I think the business will look very different in two to three years. It will be much better for consumers. A lot of ideas in that question. Yeah, like, basically they're just bringing TV back. And in a lot of ways, TV is quite convenient. People loved it for 50, 60 years.

It worked. And then everybody was like, we're tired of all the ads and everything else. And that's why we got streaming to begin with. And that's just what he's doing. I think he's very right in that there are a lot of bad ideas and they are being shaken out. That's why everybody's going to advertising. That's why everybody is bungling.

That's why everybody is subsidizing sports and all of this other stuff. But I don't know if it'll be better for consumers than three years. I think the one other thing that's worth mentioning here is it's very telling to me that what he says is in terms of the amount of money spent. And I think if you want to talk about what's different about Netflix versus these other companies is Netflix can afford to exist. Whereas you have Disney, which spent way too much money to acquire Fox. You have Warner Brothers Discovery, which took on a massive quantity of debt in order to become the company that it is. These companies literally cannot afford to exist in the way that

they currently work. Whereas Netflix, I think it was in 2021, 2020 or 2020, announced basically like, we're good. We have enough money now that we don't have to take external financing. And that puts you in such an unbelievable position of power to be able to just do whatever you want because you can afford your business. And what no one else has proven other than Netflix is that this is a business that you can afford.

Or that has the margins to let you grow, right? Like Netflix is, actually, maybe the easiest way to talk about this is the Go-90 scale of Doom streaming services. So Netflix, to me, I know Alex... I'm on the other side, but I get it. Completely thinks Netflix will fail. But by the way, disclosure,

I produce a Netflix show. It's called The Future of it. very good. Yeah, likely story to support them, huh? They really did rebranded Exfinity because everyone hated

the Compast Friends. That is a true story. I heard it again recently. I put Netflix at zero. By the way, the Go-90 scale, if you remember Go-90, it's Verizon's failed streaming service where they thought

children would join, quote, gangs. No, it's a cruise. It was something. They thought the kids would rotate their friends 90 degrees to watch YouTube, and they had no idea

why anyone was watching YouTube, and it immediately failed. Quibby before Quibi. It was a lot. Now to Go-90 means to die. This is Virchast lore if you're unfamiliar. So the Go-90 scales during streaming services

from zero to 90, you put them on a scale. Zero is alive, 90 said. Netflix in my mind is zero. It is the one you don't quit. No one churns off a Netflix. Right now it is 100% zero. I would agree with you there. I will say Alex said it was a 40 at South by

Southwest. Yes. It is a 40 in my heart and in the future. It is zero right today. Because you think the hubris makes them brittle. I understand. I understand the argument, but I just don't, I think Netflix is very good at programming its service exactly to make you never turn. They're like, here's one more John Mullaney special. Bridgeting's coming, man.

They're just always, they're always doing that thing. You're like ready to quit and they got one more thing for you. Good. They figured it out. Data. HBO, or now Max, whatever the hell it's called. Like, max is 45. Like, it is, they're going to, they hit 100 million subscribers globally, but they're about to hike prices again because of what David is saying.

They cannot afford to run this business. Its programming is all over the place, right? They have HBO's programming, but HBO is in one of its sort of, like, consistent sort of, like, dry spells. I'm sure there will be more stuff coming back, but that's the history of HBO. It runs hot, then it runs cold. There isn't some consistent slate of programming. Yes, there is. Those property brothers, people love them.

Well, there's that stuff, but there isn't like the... I mean, we can't ignore it. It's something that maybe we don't talk about, like, critically, and you don't see people talking about it on threads and social media and stuff. But that is a big part of their business. That's why Zazlov could afford to buy Warner Brothers is because of how big that business is for him. And I don't... That's not going away anytime soon.

But that's the discovery business. That's a discovery business. That's now in Max. Sure. Okay. I'm just saying 45. Yeah, I know. Because you're not running around trying to make a deal with Disney if you think you're more alive than dead. Yeah. Isn't just my belief. Well, and this is why the sports race is so intense right now because I think the property brothers will keep people subscribe to you. They're not going to win you vast tens of millions of new subscribers. But I also want to be wary of saying that

this deal is an indication that Disney and Max are struggling. Because I don't think, like, I think this is as much about dealing with the fact that these are highly vertically integrated companies. And there's currently a government that doesn't like that. And it's really useful to be like, no, we're partnering together. You think that in the absence of Lena Con, Disney would buy Warner Brothers Discovery. If LenaCon got sucked up by aliens tomorrow. If Trump gets elected. Yeah.

And they managed to sell ESPN so they can make all their money. They would buy it in a heartbeat. No chance. No chance. With what money? That's why I put those clarifiers on there, right? Let's add your debt to our debt and we'll give you 50 bucks and then we'll all slowly die together. Actually, David, when you describe it like that, that does sound like the media business.

That does in fact sound how these CEOs think. Let's lay off 10,000 people and have a bunch of debt. Somehow we will get boats. And is Zach Snyder available because we have a number of movies? which be recut as gray scale squares. Hollywood is built on debt. This way financing has worked in Hollywood from the beginning is on debt.

Nothing is ever made with like the cash they have in house. It's made with the future. Usually the assumption has been that the properties will make money. Yeah. A problem that they are having. Anyway. They'll be fine. Okay. So I'm putting max at 45. I'm putting

Disney Plus at 45. That's my Go 90 scale. I I think these things are wobbly in the middle right now. No, Disney is massive. And, like, streaming is a big part of Disney's business. Streaming is not all of Disney's business. Of all of these companies, it is super positioned because it's got a ton of very lucrative

theme parks throughout. I just want to point out that technically the Max app has already gone 90 several times, as it is rebranded from HBO to HBO Max to Max. Every other month it goes 90. Like, it keeps going away in some way. Well, I think this all sort of revolves. around Netflix in a funny way, which is why Netflix is so powerful in all this, because I think the case for Disney Plus going away is that Disney decides that actually if we want our theme

parks to succeed, the best way for us to do that is to sell shows to Netflix and not put them on Disney Plus, which I think is a not crazy conclusion to draw in a couple of years. You're going to decide it is so expensive and so wasteful for us to run our own service. What we actually need is for people to watch our stuff. And the way to do that is to put it in movie theaters and put it on Netflix. And I think it's possible that that is where this goes. We come back to this at the end of the summer

if and when we find out whether or not there will be more Bluey episodes. It's all about Bluey. It's all about Bluey. Depending on that answer, Disney Plus goes in one or two directions. If you just look at the scale of how much that business is currently dependent on

bluey, it's not dependent on whatever horrible goal. garbage mass watches otherwise. I'm just trying about the children of the villains. It's bad. All this bad. I've never seen anything worse in my entire life. I've never watched it.

It's like very safe if you have a six-year-old girl. You're like, watch this garbage. It's better than what's on YouTube kids. But I'm saying, depending on how blue he goes, we should come back to that conversation. Okay, we should take a break. I will call out, by the way, that Sony is in the middle of discussions to buy Paramount. Oh, I hope not. Because it's with Apollo management, right?

Yeah, that's just layoff city. That's what's going to happen. All the headlines about Sony and Paramount should be like Sony discusses laying off Paramount employees. But they're still also in talks with Skydance, which is owned by Larry Ellison's son from Oracle. And that could still happen. That's the one I'm mainly rooting for because I hate watching companies be bought up and broken apart. You love CBS. Also, I love, is it really because I'm concerned about Star Trek?

Yes. There's a very good episode, by the way, of The Town Podcast. where they talk about this and basically land on if you want good content route for the sky dance deal if you want a bunch of paramount shareholders to make money and then all of this to go away you should root for

Sony and Apollo. I'm like slightly simplifying but not that much. Yeah. That's 100% correct. If you want Star Trek, root for Skydance. If you don't care about Star Trek and Taylor Sheridan's ranches, root for

Apollo and Sony. Wait, I don't, I don't, That's a bad mix of things to care about. How do we get one, but not the other? Okay, we got to take a break. We're going to come back with the lightning round, which actually has to be lightning because we are so over today. But it's going to be really long.

We'll be right back with our chest. Support for the show comes from Anthropic. Not every question has an easy answer. And the ones that are really worth asking usually come with a healthy mix of inspiration and backpedaling, aha moments and quiet meditation. When you're working through one of those problems, you want a partner to bounce ideas off of

and figure out where the deeper issue lies. That's where Claude can help. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you, whether you're debugging code at midnight or strategizing your next business move. Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter.

Plus, Claude's research capabilities go deeper than basic search. It can have comprehensive, reliable analysis with proper citations, turning hours of research into minutes. Ready to tackle bigger problems? Get started with Claude today at cloud.ai slash vergecast. That's cloud.aI slash vergecast and check out Claude Pro, which includes access to all the features mentioned in today's episode. Claude.AI slash vergecast. Complex and unprecedented, the Spanish authorities are calling it. Before the disembarko, asymptomatikas.

Passengers who'd been stuck aboard the Hanta or maybe Hanta virus-stricken Dutch cruise ship disembarked in the Canary Islands this weekend, prompting the highest stakes game of where are they now since maybe COVID. Some of the evacuees, American and French, have since tested positive for the virus. And yet public health officials seem remarkably calm. We do have one in the United States. individual who was taken to the biocontainment unit early, early this morning.

And we assessed that individual. They are doing well. Possibly because this is not the one to freak out over. Today, Explain drops every weekday afternoon. Buzzwords like progressive and affordability are thrown around all the time in politics. But what do they actually mean? For me, being a progressive means at least two things. one, being willing to unite lots and lots of people,

all of the folks that are getting screwed over against the powers that be that are making your life worse. And then second, being progressive is essentially a hopeful enterprise that you think, I think, that the world can be much better, that we don't have to settle for crumbs or settle for the status quo. And is there a difference between what it means to the elected officials and what it means to the people? So money is essentially the risk.

mood up everything. I don't care if you're gay. I don't care if you have all that. That's like secondary. Third. That doesn't, that doesn't, that's not a priority. That's this week on America actually. Let's begin. All right, we're back. It's the lightning round, which really for me is what I have taken to calling the victory lap round. But let's begin with Alex Trance. Yeah. Not a victory lap for, for mine. Yeah. No, this is a bummer. Microsoft is currently going through it. Tom Warren had a really great piece up this week. And Ash Parris, our game reporter, had a really cool follow piece on it. They've been closing studios.

They've been laying people off. They had to bake all hands after they closed this one studio that made this really popular game last year called Hi-Fi Rush. If you haven't heard about it, that's because you don't play video games enough. High-Fi Rush was like a big indie darling. And it was widely well received. It did really, really well for them. And then they said they laid off everybody.

They closed the studio. They laid everybody off. And they were like, yeah, we need to make more games. like that. And it's like, well, maybe, hmm. And so there's just a lot of chaos over there. And I think it's the same thing we're seeing. You know, we've talked a lot about creatives in this episode. It's that same anxiety. It's the same issues that we're seeing with streaming where these people have spent a lot of money on acquisitions and growing during the zero percent interest days. And they grew a whole lot. And you can't grow in, like infinite content has to have infinite people watching it. in paying for it. We don't do that in this human life. It is a remarkably similar trajectory. Like Microsoft saying, okay, we think this is going to move from a you buy a thing model

to a subscription model. Thus, we need a lot of content. Oh, God, we need a lot of exclusive content to, okay, maybe actually there aren't as many people who want to pay for all of this, especially given what it costs because all this stuff is expensive. Bale, bail, bail, bail, bail. And then so you go from like, we have to grow to the size of the universe in order for this thing to work. And then you realize, oh, it's actually not possible for us to grow to the size of the universe. In the same way that everybody thought they were going to get a billion subscribers to streaming services. Like, no, it turns out there

is kind of a local maximum to that. And people are finite. Yeah. And it turns out, I think Microsoft is going to do the same thing now where it's like, okay, if we build this unbelievable war chest of content and people and talent, it will work. And then all of a sudden, everybody's like, oh, that's not a plan, that's nothing, and it all just kind of collapses. And it's really sad because it's happening at like unbelievable scale and pace right now. And it's also in an industry that I think was already unsustainable to begin with, with crunch and everything like that. Like this was an industry that's been creaking for a decade. And it's having a massive moment. And it sucks for all the people involved. But like, it's happening. Yeah. I just would point out that

Microsoft thought tooth and nail to buy Activision. Yeah. And they were like, this will grow our business. This is the thing. And really the question we should ask with all of these deals, how many people are you going to lay off? How many is it? It's always some. Wasn't it T-Mobile that said in buying Sprint that it thought the number of jobs were going to go up?

And everybody was like, oh, sick. And then they immediately let off thousands of people. Immediately. Yeah. Like, that's not true. It's never true. And it's just like, it's the thing. Like you combine two companies.

There are going to be a lot. There's going to be overlap. it's going to happen. I interview a lot of executives. You can just see the wheels turning. Boy, I don't need double the back office staff. Like, whatever. You can just, and they call it efficiencies,

and it's really layoffs. That's just like how it goes. And then on top of it, Microsoft was insistent that it needed to buy Activision because it was winning while Microsoft was losing, and they bought Activision, and they're like, look at all these losers. And it's like, we should start asking the questions ahead.

How many people are going to layoff? That's the only question. Right? Like, that is the policy consequence of allowing these mergers at scale, like really, truly on the ground, a bunch of people are going to lose their jobs. How many is it? And if they're not willing to answer that question, I honestly think, like, we should no longer give any of these companies a benefit of the doubt. Yeah, you don't get to just buy it. Yeah.

I would point out that AT&T buying time Warner did allow Zach Snyder to employ a number of people to make a 4-3 gray scale Batman movie. Yeah. Nilai, do you get a cut of sales of this movie? Like, what is happening here? We've officially tipped from like, this is funny to like, what's Neely's angle here? I just want to, I want to hammer it home for people that the Trump administration getting rid of net neutrality allowed 18 to buy time Warner and now there is a gray scale Batman movie and that is a direct line of events.

By the way, net neutrality did pass. They got rid of the weird rule that would have allowed for 5G past lanes. We now live in a world of Netanytrial again. It's great. Sorry, Zach. All right. Victory lap one, complete. Victory lap two for me.

This is the whole lighting around. Just, I was right about you. I'm sorry. You will recall that Epic Games sued Apple for NCHRUS violations long ago. They mostly lost that case. They did. Mostly lost that case. I would say they might have set the stage for the current DOJ case for other cases.

They made a bunch of arguments. are now being made again by the government in different ways. They got a ball rolling. Very much got a ball rolling. The one thing they won in that case was the judge applying California law, because I think the judge was unwilling to rewrite United States federal antitrust law, but the judge interpreted California law to say Apple could no longer prevent app developers from what's called steering.

So Apple has these things called anti-steering rules where you're not even allowed to mention that there's another website where you could buy stuff. Anti-steering rules struck down. I have the specific quote here. Apple is permanently restrained and joined from prohibiting developers from including in their apps and their metadata, buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers

to purchasing mechanisms in addition to the App Store. That's the rule. Judge passed this rule. And Apple's response was to allow a app, or a link, rather. Right. So the rule comes out, and I wrote a piece back then, 2021 saying Apple is about to end up in a fight over buttons and links.

Like they're not allowed to prevent buttons and links from going to external purchasing mechanisms. When courts write two nouns, they often mean for the nouns to mean different things. So now you have buttons and you have links. They necessarily mean different things. This is just legal interpretation 101. I would say the AstroTurf Brigade attacked me. Some developers tried this. They went in front of the court again.

The judge said, look, stop it. We'll figure this out when we get there. Apple has to issue its entitlements and do all this stuff. And then everyone thought I was wrong. This is true. This is like a real sequence of events that I'm very hot about. The point of all this is, Epic went to the judge recently and said, Apple is only allowing one external link to a fixed web page.

And you are not even allowed to say it's cheaper on the webpage. like all of the rules about what you're allowed to do to get around anti-steering are basically anti-steering. You're basically allowed to say this is a website. Yep.

And it's at the very beginning of the flow. So if you have an app with other things you can buy in it, you are not even allowed in that area of your app to put links to an external website where you can buy stuff. It's beautiful. You are allowed to have one link.

That link when you click on it, if you're logged into the app, can't even pass your login info to the website. Yeah. I always think of the Kindle app is the easiest way to explain this because it's like, the way it should work

is you should be able to go into, I mean, the way it should work is you should be able to buy Kindle stuff from your, but there should be a link on every book that says, buy this on the web. That is explicitly against the rules. You can have one link in one place

in the app that says books on web. That's basically the entirety of what is allowed. Or sign up on web, but not for 30% cheaper or not, it's cheaper on the web because Apple charges us a fee. None of that's allowed. Do they get the preposition? Like, is the preposition allowed the on?

I mean, Apple's totally in control of this. Oh, by the way, if you click the link, you get a warning screen that says, you're leaving this app where Tim Cook will protect you with sword and shield. Just a buff Tim Cook picture. This is all true. So Epic drags Apple back into court because the judge in 21, 2010 said, I will decide if Apple's in compliance with my injunction. Not Apple.

I'm going to decide. So, Judge. So Epic drags Apple back to court. There's a hearing this week. I just want to read you some things that were said in this hearing to Apple as they talk about buttons and links. And this is to an Apple executive. Is it fair to say in today's day and age that everyone understands that www. URL.com is an external website on the worldwide web?

That's just a question. Do you really think people are this stupid Apple? Pete, in society, people make lots of purchases on the web all the time. Would you agree with that? Yes. And they understand that Apple trusts its users that the web is separate and apart for different, even on an iOS device, right? Yeah.

Do people know that clicking on a link, taking you out of an app takes you out of the app? That's where Apple is in buttons and links. And then there's the judge who interjects in the middle of a conversation about button design, because Apple has constricted the design of buttons. I can't imagine a logical reason why Apple would demand that of competitor apps. What's a logical competitive reason for not suggesting but demanding it other than to stifle competition? I see no answer. Can you give me one?

Buttons and links. Did they give them? It took three years. No, no. This is blah, blah, blah, security. It took three years. But Apple is now in this fight over the design of buttons and links in its apps because that injunction is actually a big deal. And they have not actually provided a reason.

why they are constraining the design of buttons and links in their apps, which, by the way, are different. A button is supposed to just do something. A link takes you somewhere else, right? So these are different in terms of construction. And I think Apple, and it's hubris, all the stuff we've talked about, they've run into the judge saying, no, no, I meant something when I issued this order.

And you can't give me reasons that are not just straight anti-competitive, malicious compliance reasons. I don't know how this is going to turn out. It's just an evidentiary you're hearing right now. Maybe the judge is going to find Apple's not in compliance. Maybe this DOJ lawsuit is going to break it all open. I don't know. Maybe a bunch of Europeans are going to hurl cheese at Apple until they stop it.

Something's going to happen. But I'm just saying that right now, three years after the epic case, Apple's in a courtroom defending its own malicious compliance because it was inevitable that the buttons and links conversation would come back around. And it's been interesting to watch these fights get more and more specific over time, too. And I think this is the thing that is actually going to be. going to affect real change, right? Like, we talked about this with the emulators, the other way, that as these things get whittled

down from these sort of big philosophical debates into, like, here is a thing about the experience that is broken, and you can't explain to me why it's broken other than you believe you deserve all of the money. That is actually the way that Apple is being pried open, and it is happening, like, in these little tiny pieces, much more quickly than it's going to happen in some grand, you're not allowed to be like this any more way. So I think it's like the death by a thousand cuts thing is like very much underway in a really fascinating way. Yeah, and the stuff takes time.

Like the DOJ lawsuit, that's a decade. Oh, easily. It's a decade. Like you can decide whether it is good or bad. You can have whatever feelings about the complaint you want. A decade from now, we will see the results of that case on the devices we use. It took three years from the epic case for us to be back in the courtroom saying, actually your weird link entitlement idea might be anti-competitive.

and that still has to play out. So I would just, you need some patience here, but I agree with you, David. It's like, it's starting in a way that Apple can no longer defend. I just spent a lot of this time on meta-AI, trying to make it show me images of a shredded Tim Cook, protecting people from buttons and links, and it wouldn't do it.

I went to www.UrL.com while we were sitting here and discovered that URL.com is for sale, so that's cool. I just think if you have your executives on the stand, and the question is, people in society make lots of purchases on the web all the time. Would you agree? And the answer is yes. You're probably done for. Eli, in the spirit of kindness,

I would like to bequeath you my lightning round because you have another victory lap I'd like you to take. I do, I do, I do. I'm very excited about this one. I'll make this one quick. Because again, in this fixture up, nothing has happened. So we'll end the show where we began. In Wisconsin. In southeast Wisconsin.

Where I was a child. Were the cheese curds really squeaky? They're good. They're good. They're good everywhere in Wisconsin there, particularly. Well, Madison. I would say Madison is where I enjoyed the cheese curd lifestyle the most. But President Biden was in Racine this week.

He was announcing a data center to be built by Microsoft. It's going to be at 2,000 construction jobs and then 2,000 permanent jobs to build this data center. This is, I would just say, politically opportunistic at its finest. Microsoft had already purchased this land. They had already announced the data center. They'd already done all the permitting, all the stuff. Joe Biden just showed up and was like, look at the jobs I made. Great.

I'm super excited for, like, do politics. I'm happy for you. The point of this is that they are building this on the land that was supposed to be the Foxcon site. And Joe Biden's political opportunism is he's standing there and he's like, literally, I think he said something along the lines of Trump didn't give you any jobs and I'm giving you actual jobs because it's the Foxcon site. where Trump waved a golden shovel around and promised an LCD factory that was just putting 13,000 jobs to this region.

And we, at The Verge, someone famously always knew that was a lie. Reported on it quite a bit. We won an award. Josh has won an award for his big feature on it. That feature actually Chris Hayes read it on MSNBC last night. Like just straight up, he was like, Biden announced some things. You might remember this as Foxxon and then just read some of Josh's feature to the camera to explain what had happened. There are rules.

Congratulations to Josh. He reported the Hell of that story. The victory lap I would like to take is to remind everyone and to initiate our newest members of the audience. During that period of time, while we were doing all that reporting, I received a number of hilariously threatening emails from anonymous Foxconn executives telling us, reminding us, insisting that we leave them alone. Literally, the emails would say leave us alone. And then they would try to explain to me what Foxcon's AI plus. 8K plus 5G strategy was. Galaxy brand strategy.

It was nothing. By the way, Foxcon has abandoned AI 8K plus 5G. This is true. They've abandoned it. If you go to the Voxon in Wisconsin website now, which is literally believe just Foxconn, Wisconsin.com. You can see they have a new strategy, which is 3 plus 3 equals infinity.

This is true. That's even worse. How did they make it worse? It's 100% true that their new strategy is 3 plus 3 equals infinity. And then there's a lengthy section of that website dedicated to, how you can see the dome that they built from the highway. They built a little dome. It's like, I keep calling it Timu Epcot.

Like, it's a little baby dome. It was supposed to be the dot of an eye. They were going to spell Foxcon, FII, Foxcon Industrial Internet. They were going to spell it in buildings. It's a lot of letters. Well, it's only three. They only got to the dot, which is the dome. They insisted for years, this is true, that the dome was

data center. And I would have various conversations with like data center people, do like, would you ever make a data center in the shape of a dome? Do you think that would be? And they would all be like, no, I don't know. We wouldn't. It turns out the dome was just like a party center. Yeah.

It was like where corrupt Wisconsin politicians would have drinks and take photos with the dome. With their dome. The dome remains. That whole thing remains. I don't know what's going to happen there. There's some room where the building servers. Microsoft is now taking all of the industrialization that was built. off the water, the power to build an AI data center.

But I want to end here with one of the best things that has ever happened on the show. Okay. Which is all those emails I got about leaving people alone. I would read them on the show. And then people would make memes and songs. Oh. In one of my favorite songs, which I thought about today is I watched Joe Biden dunk on Trump and his golden shovel.

I was like, it would rule if Biden would just play this song that Verge Castle listener Jackson Hayes wrote for us about the factory. Liam, can we play the song? Nilai, you didn't listen to me. But that's okay, because we're going to tell you what you already knew for months. You didn't leave us alone. Leave us alone. You didn't leave us alone.

Leave us alone. AI meant new generation. Mobility and self-driving cars. Wait, is that the story we were running, Jeremy? Okay. AK means smart safety and security through AK technology. I mean, come on, Neil. You should know this.

5G means pioneering. Wait, medical solutions? Crap, that's supposed to me. On some health cloud network. Okay. You didn't leave us alone. Leave us alone. It's catchy.

It's good. Didn't leave us alone. Leave us alone It was just A, I, A, K and 5G Well, I see how that was hard To believe You didn't leave us alone

It's a bot Leave us alone You didn't leave us alone Leave us alone Now I just want you to imagine Okay, you win Can't make that on an iPad with the power of AI technology.

So thank you to Jackson, one of my all-time favorite Furchast moments I hope are listening. I just want you to imagine Joe Biden announcing the Microsoft deal and then being like, as a reminder. Bussing out his acoustic guitar. He just take a seat. That whole sequence,

I just want to remind people that sequence of reporting was like mid-pandemic. This is the weirdest time in like reporting that you could do and we were reporting on this weird factory that didn't exist, and I was getting these crazy e-vails. Just leave us alone. Just leave us alone.

That was awesome. Leave us alone. Anyway, it's a data center now. There's a little dome. You can go look at the dome. I have pictures of the dome. It's there on the website. That's it.

I think that's it. One thing we didn't talk about, TikTok sued the government over the bill to quote-unquote ban. TikTok. We wanted to take some time with that. So that will be next week's decoder. Alex Heath and Sarah Jong are going to join me. We're going to pull that whole complaint.

apart and see where the arguments are good and bad. We just needed to take some time with it. Also, they were iPads. Come on. It's a Virgcast, everybody. That's it. That's a Vergecast. And that's it for the Vergecast this week.

Hey, we'd love to hear from you. Give us a call at 866 Verge 1-1. The Verge cast is a production of the Verge and Vox Media Podcast Network. Our show is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James. That's it. We'll see you next week.