The Vergecast - The future of Apple: our biggest questions and hottest takes

Episode Date: September 6, 2022

The Verge's David Pierce, Nilay Patel, and Alex Cranz each discuss the big open questions they have about the future of Apple, and the hottest takes about the company. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of planned obsolescence. I'm your friend David Pierce, and as you probably know, there's a big Apple event coming up really soon. We're expecting new iPhones, new Apple watches, probably new AirPods, bunch of new software, all kinds of stuff come in. And that means it is time for what I have come to consider my annual moral obligation, which is to go to the mall, go to the Apple store, and tell everybody who's shopping for phones not to buy a phone because there's a new one just about to come out. We are also going to be spending this show talking about Apple, but not so much. much the event. We didn't want to make a bunch of predictions that turn out to be totally wrong or

have feelings about things we don't even necessarily know are coming yet. So we're going to save that all for the Friday show. It's going to be a big one. On this show, we're going to talk more about Apple in general. It's the most valuable company on Earth. It makes some of the most influential products that anyone uses. And we want to get into where the company is right now. What changes for Apple now that it's so big and so popular? What are the next big products for Apple? Why is Apple so obsessed with making TVs. Why is Neely so obsessed with Apple being obsessed with making TVs? We're going to get into all of that. I gave Neely and Alex some homework, which was to come with big questions and just spicy, spicy takes. And we're going to dig into all of the things we want to

know about the future of Apple. But first, before we get to all of that, I need to go save this person who looks like they're about to buy an iPhone 12, which just honestly seems like a terrible idea. This is the Vergecast. We'll be right back. 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. Proms something like, build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data

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Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Welcome back. Okay, Apple questions, Apple hot takes. Let's do this. Eli, hello. Hey, buddy. Alex, hello.

Hi. Both of you had homework, which was to come with five big or small, but like open questions about Apple, things you think are interesting going forward that we're paying attention to and we're going to talk about them and see if we have answers for any of them. And then two, I think I called them overheated takes. And I should just say right off the top, I'm just ruthlessly stealing this from the ringer. On their fantasy football show, they have a thing called the take. purge, which is just a whole episode where the hosts just say the things that they don't actually believe, but feel deep in their bones anyway. So we're just going to, we're going to steal that from them and do some overheated takes that you don't really believe, but you kind of believe.

Alex, you started last. You did your homework while we were sitting here getting ready to record. So you get to go first. Yes. You get to present first because that's what the cool teacher does is try to terrorize you in front of everybody. All right. I really want to know why everybody won't shut up about an Apple car that I have yet to see. This was a little. on a mind too, which is why am I supposed to care that the Apple car is a thing? Like, I can't care about it. It's hard. Yeah. I mean, at this point, Apple could just follow on with every other car maker and just show us a 3D render of a car and be like, here's our car. They would just match what every other car maker is doing. Give us $100 on a pre-order. And two years from now, maybe we'll ship

a car. And like, maybe that's actually a great business model for Apple. I think a lot of people would give them $100 for a render. I will answer your question with my first question. How's that? Yes. I think this is the biggest open question for Apple. Okay. Can they find another market that's big enough to make a dent? And is that even the thing they should do? So the reason they are chasing cars and the reason they are chasing health and the reason they're chasing everything else they're doing is because they need something that will generate

enough money to be like 10% of the biggest company that has ever existed on earth. And the only way you can do that is if you eat a whole industry. I know the industry though. It shouldn't be cars. Is it TVs? It should be federal. government like systems like you know they got cobal and all that stuff that's that's basically dead nobody's running it apple could be that company apple could do that it's all going to be

swift UI the buttons won't make any sense it'll be great every couple years it'll change for no reason have you ever wanted to do an insurance claim in piles now you can no I mean like but that's that's their problem right like the answer to why are they doing a car is the car industry is big enough so that if you become a dominant player in cars you You can tell your investors, you can tell your employees, you can tell everybody who makes money on your stock. We have growth here that is meaningful. Yeah.

I mean, like every question I'm asking, by the way, David, this is my warning to you. All of my questions are just, will they make a TV expressed in slightly different ways? That's good because that's about half of mine, too. So it's going to be fine. But no, I think it's funny reading that up because I've been rereading the new, new thing, which is Michael Lewis's book from like the late 90s about Jim Clark, who founded Netscape. and it is like precisely where you're describing. It's like guy starts a computer company gets very big.

Guy goes, okay, well, what do I do next? I have to top that somehow. So he starts an internet company, which feels very big, makes him a lot of money, gets very excited. And then he's like, okay, well, what do I do next? I have to build something even bigger. And he goes, healthcare. And it's just like, that is the thing, right? It is like, it is this massive industry that seems like it's a mess.

And everyone who is like, well, if I can just take a slice of that, I can make a lot of money. And I seem smart, so I bet I can convince somebody that this is plausible. It's like there's only a handful of those. And I feel like cars is one of them and health is one of them. And so it makes sense that Apple just has to keep pointing at those things. How serious it is is hard to know. It seems very serious in a way that you can be very serious when you're the richest company on planet Earth. But I don't know how much I'm supposed to believe that there is ever going to be like a good car that people care about and drive that Apple makes.

I have no idea. Couldn't it be like Sony and they just like pivot to party speakers? As always, I renew my call that if you are on the Sony party speaker team and you've been in the meeting in which the third generation of party speakers has been greenlit, I'll give you the whole show. You'll get a week long of that verge cast episodes just to talk about that product. So Sony is like the classic example though. Yeah. We don't perceive Sony this way in this country, but Sony historically its balance sheet is it's a big insurance company in Japan that has. happens to make TVs and party speakers.

Right. And they pivoted that company to a much larger business because the consumer business was fading. And that's like, I don't think Apple should sell life insurance, which is something Sony sells in Japan. But you can see why they're moving in the same general direction, which are one of the next biggest industries. And we had Trip Mickle on the Vergecast several months ago. I was just flipping through his book again about Apple after Steve, which is excellent. And like, this is explicit in Apple's thought process, in Tim Cook's thought process, what is the next biggest market I can go after? Right.

Because we, in order to grow, we have to attack the big markets. That is what led to the car. It is what has led to a bunch of their health efforts, which, by the way, Alex, everyone also keeps talking about. Yeah. And has generated virtually nothing. And to some extent, it's why they went to watches instead of TVs. Well, and it's also why they went to entertainment, right? Like, it's why they went into that space, too.

And it's why they went to services. Yep. Yeah. They were just chasing revenue. And I don't mean, like, usually when we say that we mean that is, like, cynically as possible. Yeah. But in the case of Apple, like, they really had to go chase growth because they were already so big that trying to find another category as big as the iPhone was a less good option

than selling iPhone customers more things. But like, I guess this is not one of my five questions. This is a brand new, fresh question. Oh, boy. Why are they pursuing? these really known categories when they effectively invented some categories, right? Like Apple figured those out and did them really well. And in these other cases, Apple is going to like places where there's a really established competitors. Like, what is the disruption to be had? And Apple's

like, I know, we're going to disrupt cars. There feels like there's lower hanging fruit to go disrupt. Yeah, but they're all smaller. I think that's, even the TV industry is like too small. That's why Apple won't do it. Yeah. Right. And it's that doesn't turn over enough. people aren't shopping on their TVs enough. Like, they can't make the case that getting that screen in everyone's living room is more valuable than the screen they already have in everyone's living room, which is the phone. Right. So they might as well just put their software on other people's hardware and then do whatever

they're going to do there, right? There just aren't many industries that are bigger than the iPhone. And so, like, they are, you know, they are inventing, you know, AR glasses. We know they are. I've heard about them. They're going to start with mixed reality. They're trying to invent a big new category. I just think in the meantime, because that's going to take a long time.

In the meantime, right, they're trying to run some of the playbook that they've run, which is everybody hates the software in their car. What if Apple did it? Everybody hates their mobile phone when Apple, like they want Apple to replace their razor. Speaking of big industries that Apple should be playing more in, to my first question, which is when is Apple going to get like actually serious about winning at video games? Video games is a gigantic industry. Apple Arcade is like kind of working. And to me, it's like stop making fancy TV shows that win. awards but nobody cares about and like go buy some video games like make me a game console do a game streaming thing like give one whole shit about gaming and it seems like apple has like real moves to

make here i think there's a lot of problems though right microsoft and other companies have consolidated that industry a lot it's a lot smaller industry than it was and we talk about indie games and everything but indie games are a relatively small piece of that puzzle most people are like call a duty and all of that yeah and Microsoft is up there being like nope we'll take that we'll take that we'll take that. And also, they're watching Google. They've seen like Google went and was like, yeah, we're going to get serious about video games. And for most people, serious equates with consoles and doing these big immersive, you know, 20-hour experiences, not what Apple's really good at, which is mobile gaming. And I think they're the biggest in mobile gaming. They're the most successful. So if that serious is console gaming, that would be so bad for them. Well, I mean, there's still a lot of transactions that take place in consoles, right? Yeah. The future of all this, though, it has to be streaming. So if they're going to do something, I don't think they're going to ship AMD processors in a box that runs an operating system that is largely irrelevant to then playing a game. Apple's version of Game Pass feels like where it would have to go.

Isn't that arcade? It is, but that's for mobile games. I think David's question is like, why is it that this huge industry that's growing primarily based on microtransactions, right? Yeah. Fortnite is free and you buy stuff in Fortnite. like Apple and Epic are in a gigantic fight over the fees of buying things in Fortnite. But Epic happily pays the fees to Sony and Epic happily pays the fees to Microsoft. Why won't Apple get to that next turn and be like, now when you play games in your living room, aren't you paying us fees?

And I think the answer is they just can't see it. Like it's been three decades of this question, right? They deprecated OpenGL. Yeah. They went with metal. No one went to metal with them. They had their own wacky GPU ideas. is the industries, they hate

Nvidia. They just hate Nvidia. One time Nvidia made some GPUs that made MacBooks get hot and Apple is never and there was a recall and Apple's never forgiven that company and they're like, the video is dead to them. It's 100% what happened. And it's just like they're aversion to doing the foundational work to be good at games

in the current ecosystem of games has kept them away from forever. I don't think they're averse to let's build a data center and run games there and stream them to you. But even that data center, You need to fill it full of other people's GPUs. That data center probably needs to run open. Like, it needs to run direct X.

Like, whatever it is, the games run on, because none of Apple's foundational technologies can run the games. It comes down to that courting of those developers and those studios, right? And Apple has very little interest there. Like, they've worked with them. They got Capcom to do stuff. They've gotten these big studios that we all know to do some development, produce some games for arcade.

but they're a meme in the game development space. Everybody's like, oh, yeah, Apple. One day they'll do gaming. And I don't know how Apple could ever show that it's serious enough for them to believe it, especially after we saw Google be like, yeah, we're serious about gaming. And Stadia frequently becomes a punchline. So when I say, oh, no one mentions Stadia on this, a bunch of Stadia fans come into my Twitter to say that I clearly hate Stadia.

All four of them that exist. Yeah. All four of them are there saying, I hate Stadia. But, like, it's, you know, big tech has kind of shown that they want to be interested in this space because they know it's funny. Amazon's doing the same thing with Luna, right? And they're doing it really badly.

Everybody isn't participating. The few who are, like Ubisoft, one of the biggest game development studios, yeah, they'll do it. They'll be on everything. Sure, you can play Assassin's Creed on every device that was ever made. And notably, Ubisoft is an indie. Right. I mean, they need that widespread support. And most, like, the consolidation of the industry means that it's just really hard for Apple, even if it did decide to be serious about it. And Microsoft is just this elephant in the room.

Alex, I think to your point, like the 30 years of not doing this is a really interesting point that I had not thought of. Because it seems to me, like, what we were talking about streaming is like, this is the moment, right? Like, if you're ever going to say, we Apple are serious about, like, turning the Apple TV into a game console, which they've, like, hinted at before and never done in any real way, game streaming would be the moment to be like this technology. all exists, we have an unusual ability to make it all work. And one of my like throwaway overly hot takes was that if Apple and Epic weren't being sued, Apple would have just bought Epic by now, which I have no reason to believe that's true, but it's just like that is a neat solution to a lot of like things that Apple wants to be in the future. It is an interesting point. I wonder if anyone would take Apple seriously if they were like, we care about games now.

Everybody would be like, yeah, okay. They also did this big fight too, right? They did this fight with Microsoft in Stadia. all the other streamers where they were like, no, we don't want you on our service because we don't get a cut of it. And you bypass us entirely. We don't want that. And they were all like, yes, we are not going to give you a cut of a $60 game that somebody buys on our service. F off.

We're just going to run out of the browser. And I think Apple has to make a really compelling case for why these companies don't need to run off the browser anymore. And Apple isn't going to do that because Apple wants a cut of the money. And what is the cut that Microsoft and Google are willing to say, yeah, I'll pay that to get my stuff. on the Apple TV. Well, so I'll give you this example, though. Microsoft is going to ship Xbox GamePass, the streaming version. There's, like, a lot of bad names in Microsoft World.

So Xbox streaming, let's just call it that. Yeah. They have been hinting Phil Spencer, said it on Decoder. Like, they're going to put it on smart TVs. Yeah. It's coming. And so that's a deal you got to make with a smart TV vendor. You got to go to a Samsung and LG and Sony, whoever, and say, okay, we're going to start

transacting on your platform. Yeah. And, you know, there's some business relationship. there for sure. You could make that deal with an Apple. Microsoft could make that deal with an Apple and say, okay, we want to be in your box too and we want to stream games. And Apple could make that deal with Microsoft and say, okay, like, please don't take office away. We'll like let you onto our thing. Like there's a lot of leverage on both sides of that agreement, right? On both sides of that relationship. And what are the terms? Who knows? The hard part for Apple is Apple now runs effectively

a nation state on its phone where, you know, it makes effectively legal decisions. Yeah. And there's a lot of government regulators and lawsuits that look at those decisions. And Epic will say, why does Microsoft get this preferred treatment? And we don't. And Google will say it. And Amazon will say it. And once you do that, now you just like open the door to game streaming on your

platform and you don't get to see inside of the transactions. And I think Apple is just like kind of hamstrung to make a, what should be a no brainer deal with Microsoft to say Xbox game streaming now available on the iPhone. And that's kind of a no brainer deal for Microsoft, right? Like, but I think the larger context is than people on a podcast like this will show up and say, what is game streaming? And why, like, why doesn't it? Why, why can't I stream apps to the phone and transact inside of the apps? Like, what is, what is a game, but a type of application, right? And you just end up, Apple in particular right now, ends up having to defend these very fine gradations between the kinds of code that run on its platforms.

Makes sense. Okay, we should keep moving. Neely, we like only halfway did your question. So give us another one. What else is on your list? Well, this one just says, why won't you build a TV? Let's stay on this thread. I think Apple overreacts to external competitors, the iPhone, a lot.

Yes. They tow into things, and then they realize it's not a real threat, and then they back off and the product fails. and the thing I'm specifically thinking about is the home pod, right? They were early with Siri and then Amazon showed up with Alexa and Google showed up with assistant and Apple completely overreacts to it, right? They think Siri should do all the same things that those products should do. They rush out the home pod, which had been brewing in the background forever, and they, like, couldn't get it together.

Yeah. And they finally are like, all right, we're just going to let this team do it and they ship it. And then they're like, wait, these things are not actually eating the iPhone. It turns out an Amazon Alexa is not a viable replacement for the iPhone. even in your home. They're very useful and people like them. And Amazon has nowhere else to bet, so it's going to bet on it. I don't know what Google is doing with Assistant.

Neglecting it, I think, is the answer. It's around. It's around. But you just see Apple kind of like rushed itself into a corner and then forgot to iterate because the pressure didn't actually exist to compete. And I think this is just sort of a pattern with them. And so the one I would give you right now is we keep hearing about AR from literally Mark Zuckerberg on the show Rogan podcast.

and Apple seems like they're going to get to market with a super expensive mixed reality headset. Alex Heath has reported on it. And it just feels like, are they, is this also an overreaction? Yes. Is it they're so afraid of not being dominant in the end that they're going to make a move and then recognize the pressure isn't there and then like let it wither away, which I think is more or less what happened to tell about. I would also put the watch in that category as things that were kind of an overreaction to what Apple saw as the thing that might kill the iPhone.

Like there was that moment where it was like, okay, the future of this all is wearables, right? It's like biometric sensing, more accessible computers on your body. And that was the thing that was going to kill the iPhone, as we've discussed many times. Tablets, I think they did that to the Mac in some way, right? They went all in on tablets because they thought it was going to eat the Mac, and then it turns out the Mac was surprising resilient. And then they made the Mac good again, and people liked it. Like, it turns out if you just make it good, people will like it.

No, I mean, and I think the flip side of that is that the iPhone has been like astoundingly durable over time. Like a lot of things have shown up and nothing has even been any kind of real threat. If anything else, everything else that has happened has like entrenched the smartphone because it is now like the center of all of these universes that like you manage Alexa on your phone. Like that's how you do Alexa. You talk to it on the thing, but you do all the Alexa work on your phone. And Apple has always talked about this, right?

That like if you don't cannibalize your own stuff, somebody else will. But it does kind of feel like Apple is is like chasing. its own demise even when it's not there. It like sees boogeyman everywhere. If you don't cannibalize your own thing, somebody else will as a statement of confidence. Sure. We know what's next. We're going to make the thing that's so good that people won't buy the old thing anymore. And usually the times they have said that were Steve Jobs introducing a slightly smaller iPod. Just like historically, when Apple says that thing, it's right, they made a big thing and now they've made a small thing that's like 85% as good as the big.

thing. Like, that's the iPod to the iPod mini, that's the mini to the nano, you know, MacBook to MacBook Air, right? Like, there's a pattern to when they say that. But it's usually within the same category. They've rarely done it outside the category. Even the iPhone to the MacBook wasn't that thing in that moment, right? They were like, here's a phone. You have to plug it into your computer to set it up. It took a decade to get there. And so I just think lately Apple has been, it's been reactive to perceived threats instead of creating its own. I I mean, this is my other big question. Who will take over after Tim Cook?

Okay, wait, let's come back to that one. First, we're going to take a break. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Framer. Framer is an enterprise-grade, no-code website builder, used by teams at companies like Perplexity and Muro to move faster. With real-time collaboration and a robust CMS, with everything you need for great SEO,

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Do you have a theory on this, or is this just a genuinely open question? My theory is it is Chef Williams. We just focus on making products that we're excited about and let the chips fall where they may. Yeah, he seems to be like the leader in the clubhouse. Yeah. Yeah. It seems like the leader in the clubhouse.

Everyone really likes him. He's been becoming more and more prominent, which is a very, only Apple gets that kind of attention, right? You can measure the amount of minutes people get on stage. Right. That guy will be the new CEO. Like, no other company does that, or very few. But Jeff Williams is almost as old as Tim Cook.

That seems to be like the big reasoning, right, that everybody says he's not going to be the person is because we'd be just having the conversation in two years. Or five or whatever. I mean, they're not like elderly. There's no, like, 65-year-old. at Apple. It's not like a 1960s iron plant or whatever. Take your watch and leave. Yeah, exactly. Tim Cook can keep going. He's told Carissa in the past, he doesn't expect to be doing it for another 10 years. So there is some sort of looming event. Jeff Williams is a natural choice. But again, it's are you getting five years? Are you

getting 15 years? It will he be as successful, right? Like every leader changes the culture of the organization. That's just true. Again, Tripp's book is basically a book about how Tim Cook changed the culture of Apple to focus more on growing. Products are still good. But like, that's the whole book. Yeah, I think it is a remarkable open question because Tim Cook inherited the company from Steve Jobs, but whoever takes over the company next will inherit it from Tim Cook. What is the like overall sense of sort of what Jeff Williams thing is? Because right, like Steve Jobs was like the visionary. And then Tim Cook was like the ruthless executor, right? That was like, when he came in, that was like what everybody understood was like it is now Tim Cook's job. He is the operations king of the

universe. He's a supply chains guy. Yeah, he's just going to come and make this the tightest, most efficient company in the world, which by all accounts he has basically done. Is there a thing floating around about Jeff Williams in that sense? Like, does he have a vibe? No. Right? I think that's by design. Okay. I don't think there's any way you can describe the CEO of Apple as just a guy. That's not right. But I think Apple is a very secretive company. They show you who they want to show you. Even Tim Cook, he does not get on stage and be like, this next iPhone, I squeeze three cents of margin out of a tiny supplier in Asia you've never heard of. And to Apple at our scale, that represents $5 billion. Right.

Like, that's his thing. I think there's a real sense that Jeff Williams is that person. He still does that thing. They're apparently, by all accounts, like, similar in that way. And I think that it is true that Apple is not Apple without that operational excellence. Like, you cannot be the company that ships a billion iPhones every minute and then a new one every year, unless actually the core of the company is operations. Right. Yeah.

Supply chain management and logistics management. Like, they operated a scale that is incomprehensible to anyone else. So I think maybe you need, you just need a leader who respects that. And by all accounts, Jobs respected that element of Cook. But Jobs never ran a company as big as Apple. So now Tim Cook runs a company that's as big as Tim Cook made the company. Who are you going to find to do that? there might only be one natural choice, which is somebody who existed in that company already.

Yeah. Because, again, what are the other companies at this scale? And it's like, oh, you really do have to go find a defense contractor executive to manage something this complicated. And manage, by the way, your geopolitical relationship with China and sit down on Trump's right hand when Trump is like, I'm going to ban every import from China and get him to back all. Like, these are all things Tim Cook had to do. Right.

that have almost nothing to do with are the icons on the iPhone any good? Yeah. And partially, I think his skill is like letting that be to maybe his detriment because I don't know if you have seen some of Apple software design recently. The icons are bad. Yeah, so it's a little all for the place. I love a pile. Right.

But like they are still doing it at that scale, which is, I think, is the victory. Okay. So Alex, now it's your turn. What's next? What do you got? Ooh, this one's kind of adjacent to some of the stuff we've been talking about. But can Apple, like, do the whole, we love privacy, we care about, privacy, where your privacy warriors protecting you from everybody infiltrating you, and also do

the ad business. They're quietly growing. Maybe not quietly growing, but they're definitely growing in ad business. Yeah, it's like increasingly not quiet. It kind of reminds me of the whole Google, do you know evil, but also be the biggest ad business in the world. And eventually they had to decide. And they said, money.

Yeah, they said, oh, don't be evil is not a thing anymore for us. It's like, cool, Google. That's a good look. I kind of think no. And I think even just on like a public perception level, like I think we've seen that is possible to do good advertising in a more privacy preserving way, right? Like how well you can do that remains to be seen, but like there are ways to do ads that are not as sketchy feeling as the way that like Facebook and Google have done ads over time. But from a public perception standpoint,

I think it's very hard to be simultaneously the privacy company and shove more personalized ads into people's apps. I think people are just like awake to what that is now and what it feels like. and I think it's really hard. Even if you're doing both of those things genuinely, I don't think people will believe you anymore. Right. The evidence of your privacy being violated is you talk to someone and then an app shows you an ad for something that you just talked about, right?

And then it's like, oh, Instagram's listening to me. Whether on Instagram is listening to you're not, whether it actually just happens to be your two people in your 20s in the same place at the same time. And of course you're talking about spring break. Like maybe the answer is like everyone's a little bit more predictable than they think, right? Or maybe the answer is that Mark Zuckerberg has a microphone embedded in your body. Like, no one really knows. Right. But the answer is usually, like, you showed up on your friend's

Wi-Fi network. We assume the thing that your friend is searching for is the thing that you are searching for. And what a coincidence. They happen to talk to you about the thing that they were searching for. Right. Like that's usually how that goes. I think Apple, right, they're going to claim, they've defined tracking is taking data from the user and then using it somewhere else. There's no somewhere else for Apple. They, like, the definition of tracking does not apply to data that remains in the Apple ecosystem. Yeah. So they're like, we're not tracking you.

We're just keeping it all in house. And it never leaves here. But then the outcome is going to be personalized advertising, which the other process is the data goes everywhere. Right. I don't think they can do it unless they, and this is just, I think this will be hard for Apple. You can't, if you're like, we're the privacy company, your promise is we never use your data. Yeah. And you can keep that promise because the evidence of your data not being used.

is easy to see. It's proving a negative in some way, but like, there's no personalized average. Like, once you start using the data, now you have to like let an, you have to let some independent auditor in to prove it out. Like, here's where the data goes. Here's how Apple uses the data. Here's how the ads are generated. Like, we understand the system and it's as private as they say. Apple can make that claim, but unless you have a third party of some kind validating that it's true, you just end up back with personalized advertising. It feels creepy. Yeah, I was thinking about this with all in the context of all these like privacy companies who are now starting to say like we don't collect your data.

We don't want your data. We don't want to do anything with your data. Like we are taking all the steps we possibly can to avoid getting it in the first place. And that was like a thing that Apple could have started to pretty credibly say for a long time where they're like, we have no use for your data except to like help you with these small things in Siri. Right. So like if you want to opt into that great.

If not, no problem. The rest of it, we don't even want to know. Like we have no upside to allowing our stuff to listen to you 24 seven because we wouldn't want to know. And now there is an upside. Like, there's a reason Apple would do that. And even if it doesn't, it still, it just becomes much harder to prove that you're not doing it when you have a reason to be doing it. Yeah. And they were going to hire Antonio Garcia Martinez from Facebook to build an ads business. Like, it is not quiet what they're doing. I think they just have to prove that they don't need the giant weird third party data brokers to do it. And maybe they, you know, maybe they don't.

But that's not a claim you should just trust. That's a claim you should trust. when someone else goes in and investigates and tells you it's true. My next one, because I think it's my turn, is do we want a new idea for an iPhone? It's iPhone season. You know, everybody's like, this is the year. This is a tick year. We're going to get to redesign. New ideas.

Everything's going to be great. And part of me is like, maybe we need to start treating smartphones as like a fundamentally solved problem that like this is what they look like. It's fine. Changing it would actually be more hassle than it's worth. Stop having new ideas. Just make my battery last longer and keep making everything slightly better. And I'll be happy forever.

No, I think there's a lot to be done to the phone, right? I still have to put a case on mine, lest I drop it and shatter a $1,000 device and have to go get the glass on it replaced. Like, that's a problem. I shouldn't have to worry about that. I think it's like battery is obviously the biggest thing, but the destructability of these things is really, really bad. And given that people are holding autophones longer because they are no longer being as heavily subsidized and they're just like more useful and do all the stuff we need. I wanted to be. I wanted to be be able to like last all three years or four years that I use it. Yeah, I think the big challenge for phones is that they actually kind of do last a long time. So I might disagree with you, right? Like,

people hold on to phones for an awful long time. And the idea that that only happens because you need a case is like not the worst thing. I think people like putting cases on their phones. Like, if the big next turn in phones is you don't need a case and it'll still last three years, like, I don't know that we've accomplished. I think people will still put cases on those phones. It'll just be me. I'll just be like in the crowd cheering very loud. Tim's like, calm down. Yeah, I think there's a bunch of stuff around how we use phones that could change and be meaningfully better.

Like what? I still think typing on a phone kind of sucks. That's a good one. Right? Like, it's no fun. I don't want to do it. Whenever I have to type anything long, I start hunting for a real keyboard. It's just like that we haven't innovated there in a long time.

And maybe that's not flashy enough for Apple to be like, we've invented a way that makes typing on this phone superior or better. It's a revolutionary. input device. Right. But it's just like, I think there's a lot of the basics that we take for granted now where actually a little bit of improvement would go a long way. And maybe that's, it all just comes back to what you're saying, right? Maybe that's on the order of the camera's a little bit better and the battery less a little bit longer. But I think we have settled into most people know how to use a phone. Any radical change in how you use a phone will irritate more people than we'll be excited about it. So no more radical changes are coming. And that always just feels like, ugh, it's a lot. It's like that's one thing is important. I don't know, though. I've been thinking about this in the context of MacBooks and like laptops in general. Because if you rewind, I don't know, eight or nine years, there was this moment where everybody

is like, okay, laptops have basically looked and worked the same way for 40 years. Let's blow it all up. Let's change some things. It's time for new ideas about laptops. And we tried, I mean everything. What if your laptop detached? What if it looked different? What if it did a spinny thing?

What if it had three screens? Like, we tried all these ideas. And then what it turned out everybody wanted was just a better laptop. And so we've come back around to like, this is just what a laptop does. This is how it's supposed to work. It doesn't solve all of your problems, but it solves a lot of them. And we should just keep making this thing better in ways that are not different. And I'm like, maybe that is just where we've arrived with smartphones.

And maybe that says something about like the maturity of the market. But I feel like there's still this itch to like have a new idea about smartphones. And part of me is like maybe maybe that's not where we should be going with smartphones. Like maybe we've had the idea for smartphones. and let's just like keep making them better and then have different ideas about other stuff. Yeah, very few cars get sold with three wheels instead of four. You know, no one's like seven wheels. Like there's some basics that I think are locked.

But what about like we're seeing, you know, everybody's got, everybody loves OLED, a lot of OLED displays. That allows for that flexibility. So we're seeing both in watches and in laptops, let's play with things. Let's close it, flap it shut. Is that a whole new thing or is that just an iteration? That's fair. And I will give you, I actually think that like the more.

I talk to people about the Z Flip 4, the more I'm like, this is the future of phones. And I want a flip phone forever and ever. And like maybe that's big enough. That might count as like a genuine new idea about how phones should work, except that the thing where Samsung is like, put it on an L shape and take selfie videos, that is bad and not interesting and not a new idea about smartphones. But I think, I guess you're right that like on the display front, there is probably some interesting stuff left to do.

You know, my like general theory about the tech industry is that you can tell what's going to happen if you just know where displays are going. Yeah. Like if we hadn't invented LCDs, there wouldn't be phones. If you invent folding OLED, someone will come along and like put them to good use. And maybe that is a phone that turns into a tablet. Or maybe it's a phone that gets smaller. Or maybe it's something else entirely. We just haven't seen it yet. That's probably the next order of real change. Like obviously Samsung is four generations deep into it. Yeah. But it's still kind of iterative. We're all going to have that like sick fallout cuff. Dude, this is my dream. What's my brand? Cuffs. Let's do it.

Get some little spikes on it. Yes. I'm so down for this. Make me a spiky cuff with a rolling OLED around it. You guys can't see this. Neli just started throwing money at the screen as he's talking. All right. Let's keep going.

So we're not going to get to all five, but let's do one more each. Alex, you went first. So you get to go first. What's next on your list? So my final question, totally real. Apple TV, it's this big deal that Apple wants to bake. They want it to be a TV like service. streaming service. They want it to be a box. They want it to be an app on the box and the phone,

sometimes the MacBook. And it's all the same thing. Like, is it going to work? Is it successful? I think it's like, I watch the shows. Your question is just why Apple TV, question mark? Yeah. And my question is, why won't you just make me a TV? Right? Like, the game that Apple is playing is one where they kind of don't have leverage. If they put the screen, in your house and then Netflix wants to be on the screen, then Apple can be like, you have to be in our recommendation system. And it's just weird that they haven't made the connection to owning the hardware. It gives us control over the software. Or the other way to do that, which is the thing Alex and I have talked a ton about is building the best interface, which is like, people are desperate

for an app that it just has all the stuff I want to watch and shows me the things I had like to watch. Right, but Netflix has an out there, right? You make that app and you ship it to Android TVs and Netflix is like, we're not going to participate in your app. You want Netflix. Drive to Survive is in this other app that we control. If Apple has the hardware, they get to say, no. Like to be on TVOS on our TV, you have to participate in Universal Search. And enough people will buy those TVs that Netflix will have to feel the pain and do it. Oh, do you think that's true, though? Because we've seen Netflix play really hardball in the situation in the past. Netflix is not so much in a position to pay hardball right now.

Disclosure, we have made a Netflix show. Disclosure podcast is, that's true. The disclosure block is here. We make a lot of TV. Our company makes a lot of TV shows, a lot of companies. I'm just saying, Netflix isn't it, you know, this is the time to say if you want to be on our hardware, which people will buy. Unlike the car, right? If Apple makes a TV, it is a guarantee that people run out and buy that TV. They make a car, like, well, I just beg people, send us renders of what you think an Apple mid-sized crossover. The most popular kind of car in America. How does Apple make anything that doesn't look like every other bubble on the road today, right? It's the Homer Simpson car. Just that with an Apple logo? I'm like, done, sold. Right. But you can see how Apple would make a great TV that looks cool.

Studio display notwithstanding. Can you? Yeah. It would just, how do you make a TV that doesn't just look like a TV? I got it. I got it. So Apple historically has really, really good calibration on their TVs. I'm not saying this will be a selling point.

for 90% of people. But the other 10%, everybody listening to this podcast, will absolutely go out and buy this if you're like, this is like home theater,

technician dude, $500 an hour grade calibration out of the box. So, okay, a thing we have been talking about a bunch on this episode is that Apple is only interested in large markets

and people who want to buy the TV you just described is like 11 people. That's just a selling point. That's just a selling point. point. I think you would just say, we're doing an Apple TV. They got that with the back lights, get the micro LEDs. No, they would do an OLED. They would do an OLED, and you would probably be able to replace the Apple TV in the back. Like, it would come with the Apple TV in. You would just pull it out

and put a new one in when it's time to upgrade. That's the killer feature. Apple send me my money. I just want to point out that people have been making this prediction for like 20 years straight. I have probably done it. Gene Munster built a career on this prediction. This is like a real thing. is unlike the car, which, again, I just challenge you to be like, what Apple has to compete with is mid-sized crossovers. They have to make a Tesla model Y. That is the market. They have to make a Tesla Model Y. That is the market for cars. People like their mid-sized crossovers. They sell lots of them every day. That's hard. And software differentiation in cars is not the thing that sells cars. Yeah. TVs are different, right? If you, Apple said we're making a TV, people would

give their money to Apple tomorrow. Like, they just would. The same way that when Apple says it's making AirPods. People just like, buy the AirPods, and they assume it'll be good, and the software will work and all the stuff. They have the ability to ship a thing that is not at the top of the technology curve, but still be good. And like a 65-inch OLED display is now squarely in that sweet spot, right? Where you had just the standard LG OLED display with Apple's software, Apple's calibration runs the thing. And then you can say a lot of people bought these. Peacock, you want to like participate? We want to cut of all your ads. You want to do video. on demand, we want a piece of every transaction.

Like, that's what Roku does. That's Roku's business. So the argument against the TV right now is people don't buy them often enough, but the actual business for Roku, for the fire TV, for everybody, is a cut of the transactions, a service business, and that's what Apple's really good at now.

And so, that's, again, is it a question? Is it a take? Is it just a bald-faced demand, Tim Cook? Build me a TV. I have never hoped more that you're right, because I so violently disagree with the idea that Apple can make a differentiated television that like now I hope we get to prove it out like all the things you just described like Bluetooth headphones mostly suck

most cell phones are a pain in the ass most things are bad when Apple solves them right like Apple comes in and says we have made a thing that works better there is none of that with television that Apple has any track record or potential to solve like my TV is too large for me to carry around is like not a real problem that exists. My TV is ugly as like not a real problem that exists. My TV software sucks is real and Apple has precisely no track record of doing any better. There's a thing that sucks on TVs that everybody complains about the moment they buy, they upgrade their TV. Apple does suck at it though, but really good audio. Yeah. Yeah, granted. Like a thin TV that you can put on the wall and don't need a soundbar can't be done. Hasn't

been done. If Apple was like, we solved that. One, I'd be like, okay, sure. And two, that would actually be like a compelling thing for a broad, like that's a problem that people want solved with their TVs. Five home pods, the Apple TV strategy. We'll keep you five home pods for free. But you could see, like that's a, that's a hardware design challenge that Apple is up to the task of doing. Right.

Integrate speakers around the TV that do all the bouncy stuff. Like they love spatial audio. Apple wants nothing more than for the cast of Bridgeton to be sneaking up. behind you. It's true. They could do it. They have to actually do it. I think they get trapped in, we need a market that's big enough to be worth it.

So we're going to chase health care and cars instead of what is a thing people have in their house that could be substantially better that then turns into transactions over time that turn into a big market. Like Apple, of all companies right now, Apple could do the thing where they rescue theatrical, right, by saying you're actually going to go to a movie theater. You're going to buy the movie on iTunes for $100. and it's going to stream once on your beautiful TV. Apple has a cloud to do it, right? They're a studio. You have to invent this stuff that is risky and say it will turn into a market

instead of saying, here's a market you understand with a big number that has a T at the end of it, and we're going to go take that one with no track record. All right, Neelai, what's your next one? And this can't be about the TV. This actually relates to kind of our privacy conversation. It's more of what will they build, right? They're in this privacy conversation. We know they take a lot of money from Google every year to be the default search engine in the iPhone. We know their privacy stance puts them in conflict with that moment. We know there's an advertising business. Are they just going to build a search engine? It's the thing that they can take the most easily by saying goodbye to Google's money and making their own search

engine the default on the iPhone. They will instantly have massive share in search, which they can do all kinds of things with. Don't they kind of suck at algorithms? Like, I never think of Apple as a really powerful player in the algorithm space, given how often they who will not be named, they who will not be activated on my wrist every day and answers my questions poorly. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, Apple can be good at whatever it wants, the richest company in the world. They can be good at whatever they want. I think yes and no, I think, is the answer to your question because I think, like, Spotlight is pretty clearly what Apple perceives to be a search engine, right? Like, it searches the stuff on your computer, but also, like, it does,

it does web image search going forward. And that's like, you can search for images in Spotlight. Is that, it's like not quite a search engine, but it's like kind of a search engine. And I think what Apple seems like it's going to do is start to try to like abstract more stuff away. Like I don't know that building the sort of general informational Google search thing is all that interesting to Apple. But in the sense of like can Apple build an all in one travel product and like can Apple take shopping share away and start to like pull some of that stuff into its other products? I think absolutely. And it's like pretty clear that that's what Apple's going to do. So I think, like, is Apple going to buy, I don't know, some small search engine or, like, try to roll its own from scratch?

Maybe it certainly could, but my guess would be it tries to just, like, pull a search engine into, like, its component parts and then just, like, eat them one at a time. But at some point, you have to build web search. Maybe, but also, like, that's fairly commoditized, right? You just, like, buy the Bing search index, put your stuff on top of it. And, like, people searching, like, who was the 16th president of the United States? It's like, that's a solved problem, right? Like, you don't need to go reinvent the wheel to do that. Oh, I disagree. I think you have to. Really? Yeah. The reason everybody makes fun of Bing is because it doesn't always serve what you actually want. And Google has obviously gotten really far afield. It's a lot harder to find what you want on Google nowadays. It takes more work if you're not just looking for the most obvious questions on the planet. And even sometimes it takes a while. That's the problem that's happened is like Google is so invested in selling you stuff. Bing is so invested in not doing what I need it.

to do and giving me points and all sorts of other junk. Like, I need the thing that just takes me where I want to go. And I don't know if Apple is necessarily capable of doing it. Like, nobody's really good at it. Duck, duck go is pretty close, obviously. Google, if you, like, add a bunch of, like, little negative signs and say, don't include Pinterest, don't include weird forums for the 1990s. Like, very helpful.

But I don't know if Apple can do that. I just, yeah, I would love it. I would love a really strong. strong search engine, but search engines can't be like hand-coded. You can't just like have somebody pick it all and make that a super strong, powerful search engine. That's why Google is successful. They try to do it like Apple Music, like hand curate the internet for you every day. Jimmy Iveen will personally return your search results to you. And that was like a thing, but we can't do that. Like that's effectively what a lot of websites do,

right? Like that's what the Verge does. Like a lot of us are about that curation, but that curation at scale. Have we seen it done successfully? No. Yeah, but can Apple keep its privacy branding when they accept a ton of money from Google to give your search data to them? That's literally what, like, next to your physical location, all the things you search for is a pretty enormous corpus of information about you. And they basically sell it to Google for iPhone users, right? Even if you switch it to Bing, they're still selling it to Microsoft. Like, they're giving it away in some massive meaningful way. And you kind of know that you're searching Google. So like it's not as shady as, you know, making it out to be here. But it's still like, you're the privacy company and you're not

protecting this thing as hard as you could by building your own product that actually respects it more than Google does. I don't know. Like I think there's there's a point at which that decision around spotlight gets fraught because you have to, Apple has to give up the money. And the money is important for a lot of reasons. One, it's money. But two, it like, you know, Google wants that position. So they want to be in a place where Apple's good to them for all kinds of reasons. They want the YouTube app on your phone. But it also just cuts both ways. Like it's the to me, whenever we talk about Apple and privacy and the complexity of it, you take a bunch of money from Google and then slap Google around. It's like weird. Yes. Right? It's like the first counter argument. No, I agree. I think that's right.

And I think Apple has spent a long time hiding behind like people like Google search. So we're going to, it's fine. And I don't know how much longer that works. All right. We're going to take a break. And then we're going to come back and talk about all of our overheated, most spicy, not even sure we totally believe them, takes about Apple. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from LinkedIn. If you're a small business owner, you know that every hire counts. But time and resources are limited.

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There's a reason it's trusted by so many of the Fortune 500. And that's because it's a platform built by developers for developers. MongoDB, it's a great freaking database. Start building at MongoDB.com slash build. Okay, we're back. I'm just bursting with hot takes here. So let's move on and run through some of those quick before we go. I'm going to go first because it's my turn.

This actually, I think, jives with a lot of the stuff we've been talking about. But the first one I wrote down is Apple is too popular and it's killing Apple. Yeah. Back in the day when Apple was like this high-end, thing for people who appreciated beautiful hardware, Apple could sort of do whatever it wanted because it had this like built in group of people who cared about this stuff and were interested and played along. And now when you're in a world where everybody uses an iPhone and everybody uses an iPad and Macs are massively popular, you end up in this world where Apple can't get

rid of one of its multitasking options on a Mac because there's a small but statistically relevant people, number of people who use it. And so they have a million ways to do everything. and like macOS is turning into windows because as long as some people use something, Apple can't kill it. And Apple is too big and it's making Apple not able to do anything. It's not even Windows. The correct comparison is Microsoft Word. Like the Microsoft Word team will tell you this every day, if you ask them, that the reason the menu bar is cluttered is because every button is 10 million people that use it. Yep. You can't clean it up because some massive amount of the population that isn't you cares about it and you don't. And I think that is

I would actually put that Apple is too popular and it's killing them in a different way, which is they're so popular that they often don't feel real competition. So they just can do everything. And like their hardware teams still need the things to be more beautiful than the next thing on the shelf. And they care a lot. And you can see the hardware's gotten better. They've added the ports back, right? Like very simple things that everyone can see and they can feel the pressure. Their software teams are more insulated than ever. And I think you can see it in the software design. It doesn't matter if Apple software is. is 10% easier to use anymore. Like, what are you going to do, switch? And I think that attitude has permeated a lot of what they do. What are you going to do, switch is like definitely written in large letters on a wall somewhere in Apple. And they all just like tap it as they walk in every morning. Okay, Nealai, what's your first hottest take?

My overheated take. We should say, again, these are not things that we definitely for sure believe. They're just things that exist inside of our souls that we need to get out on microphones. I think actually Apple's, this is overheated. I don't know if I believe this at all. Apple's complacency in like software will be the thing that hurts them and leads to the end of Apple. It's maybe true, maybe not, but I think a lot of developers are angry at Apple. I think Apple, to recruit people, they have to buy into Apple's way of doing things, which means if you're young and you want to job at Apple, like, maybe you're not allowed to invent as much stuff as you would be somewhere else.

maybe the iPhone interface isn't up for grabs. And I think fundamentally, like, unless they get more aggressive, like all giant companies, like all one op, like, what's the best argument against antitrust action? It's a large company's inevitably fall apart of their own. Yep. Right. And I think Apple, like, I see the software. It's not just me.

So like, John Gruber will tell you Apple's software is, like, pretty messy lately. The hardware is beautiful. It's some of the best they've ever done. The software is, like, weirdly messy. My overheated take is it's the software that brings them down more than any of, any government regulator, anything else. It's not having the focus there. I buy that, honestly.

And I think I was talking to the folks at Dashlane, the password manager, about pass keys and this like passwordless future that we're all heading into. And I asked them about mobile. And they said in this very diplomatic way that, you know, desktop is one thing because the standards are much more open and on mobile. Apple and Google really control their ecosystems.

And Apple in particular is on very much this like annual cadence of software releases. and because of that, we're probably not going to get any of the tools we need to do some of this interesting stuff on mobile for at least a year because that's just what Apple does. They just don't release the new stuff for 12 months. And like it just got me thinking that this is the new equivalent of like Microsoft shipping windows in a box every five years, that it's like the world just moves faster than this now. And not only is Apple not necessarily known for its thrilling software anymore, it's just behind. And it's like a running joke that Android is way ahead. And eventually it doesn't seem crazy to me that that would catch up to Apple in a bigger way. Yeah.

I mean, that take is really overheated, right? That eventually Android will become so superior to Apple that people will have, what are you going to do, switch? But like, over the long term, does Apple's lack of discipline in its software design catch up to? I think absolutely yes. I like it. Alex, what do you got? My hot take is wireless is bad. Like Apple's kind of obsession with wireless is bad.

more wires. No, actually, I can back this up, Alex. I have a stat for you. Okay, hit me with it. You know how Apple's, like, they showed carplay at WWC, and that was a big hand, they were doing a car, and they're, and basically their response to every carmaker being like, no, right? Apple's response is people don't buy a car or that car play.

Yeah. That's what they're banking on. Turns out that since CarPlay went wireless, consumer happiness, consumer satisfaction with CarPlay has plummeted because it's not as consistent as plugging your phone in. Indication. It's as direct as it gets. It's a little slower, a little flakier. Sometimes it doesn't connect.

Sometimes, I don't know, it's a wireless carplay is a weird combo platter of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, right? Like, it pairs their phone over Bluetooth. It says, I can do wireless carplay. It switches the connection to Wi-Fi because it's got to mirror the screen, all the stuff, right? Turns out there's just a lot of wireless radios in the mix. And your phone acts weird when you do it. And people are like, I don't like this as much just plugging my phone in. Exactly.

Yeah, I think that's the point is like, you see it with that. you see with Bluetooth headphones, like Apple has the best ones, they still suck at least a fifth of the time. I wear them every day and at least once a week, something happens. So it's at least a seventh of the time. Sorry, it's getting wrong with my stats there. But there's that lack of consistency. And at this point, we have, like, wires are consistent in a lot of spaces. Wires will power your phone faster still. Wires will connect your phone to your car more consistently and your headphones. And it's just like, people care about that consistency. So maybe care about like that.

Yes. The most overheated take at the verge is that wired connections are faster and more reliable than wireless ones. Yes. If there's a hill we're going to die on, it's that fact. Yeah, I don't know that that's an overheated take. That's just true. No, people get mad at me all the time. Like when I did a Starlink review, it sounds like, a cable to your house is better.

People are in the pocket of comp gas. I was like, no, I'm just saying wired connections are fast and reliable. They're just good. We just forget the part where it's, you know, wired connections are faster and more reliable parentheses, and it turns out nobody really cares. Yeah, exactly. It's like, which is, it's just, this is where we live now. Okay, my second overheated take, and I, like, every day this becomes less overheated and more just how I feel, but I can't believe I'm starting to feel this way, which is that I think the Apple TV might be the best set top box on the market. Yes.

I have spent a long time, like a long time talking shit about the Apple TV because it was bad. and expensive and Apple should feel bad about itself. And then I bought two Roku TVs that over the course of the roughly 12 months that I have owned them seem to get slower and worse every single day. And then I turn on like my fire TVs, which seem to get slower and worse every single day. And then I open up the Apple TV, which is like too big and too expensive and the Siri remote is still stupid.

But like, boy, it's fast. And it just like it opens the apps when it's supposed to open the apps. And I'm like, I, I, huh. I just, I feel like a bad person that I'm like, I'm going to use the Apple TV now. But you feel like a bad person? I have talked so much shit about the Apple TV. Like, I cannot tell you. No, it's, it's like home theater makers or not home theater makers, but home theater

like designers and the guys who set them up and everything. They actually prefer the Apple TV. Like, that's the set top box that they go to because it does have like, it's really good at doing most of the outputs and it's fast. And it pairs with a bunch of their super expensive crap that none of us will be able to afford, but it's really neat, you know, fireplaces that come on and I'm sure, like, coordinate with whatever you're watching on House of Dragons that week. Yeah, it's a good box. I have got two. I've got one in my bedroom. I never turn the TV on in my bedroom. But if I do,

six months down the line, I don't have to be like, okay, I have to find all my logins again. Okay. I have to update the app so I can watch Netflix. Like, it just does it. The things are there. It works. And like, the worst thing in the world is if you're like, ooh, nobody's here at the house tonight. I'm going to like sit down in front of the TV. and eat this dinner and watch a show. And then you sit down and you turn on the TV and the set top box sucks. Like the things aren't loading.

And I don't have that issue with Apple as often. We very much tried to be a Carmcast with the Google TV family, like for a variety of reasons, like most of which is letting the kid just yell at the Google home to turn on the show is like really good. And the thing is just, they just promised an update to make it fast. And it's like, there's a part of me that believes the reason the Apple TV is successful is because it just gets to dress. on the operating system work that Apple does for its real computers, and no one else has to do

that work. So, like, yeah, Roku runs an OS. Are the world's best operating system engineers working at Roku to do memory management? Right. Well, and also all those companies are now on this, like, crazy downward spiral. Like, Roku's job is to basically figure out how to sell you a set top box for $1. Like, that seems to be Roku's job. They either want to put it in your television or just make it, like, a free thing that they

hand out at fares, right? Like, that's what, that's what Roku wants to be? And I'm just like, what if you made a good one? Like, that's, that's an idea. Like, what if, what if you made a set top box that was good? Amazon makes really high powered boxes, right? I mean, at every, at every price point from nothing to a couple, like, $150 bucks maybe. But have you ever used, like, it's ugly.

Like, Amazon does not put, it's really, like, I don't think there, there's one UI designer in all of Amazon. And they have to work on every single project. That's the only explanation for how bad across the board Amazon UIs are. They just redid it all. It's not like great. It's not it looks like everything else. But I do think fundamentally, Apple's scale gives them a huge advantage with the hardware of the TV box. Again, I think the software is pretty messy. But yeah, the thing's a little iPad. It gets all of the benefits of the iPad like engineering team. It gets all the benefits of the M1 engineering team. It gets all the benefits of the iPhone engineering team to just operate as a computer. So it's a really good computer. computer and it doesn't kill its own memory and require a restart every two days. Like, that's weird. That's just a weird thing my Google TV requires. Yep. Alex, what do you got? I think it is that the most important product, hardware product at Apple is the MacBook or like the, like the computer, not the phone. Oh, that's really overheated. Yeah, coming in hot. No, because we saw during the

pandemic that people actually do care about their computers, that we all have like, we're very quietly caring about our computers, and then we all had to go buy them. And I think, like, computers are still the core, the heart of things. Everybody's using phones, but Quibi thought that phones were going to be a great deal. How'd that go for you watching entertainment? People don't actually like watching movies on their phones if they don't have to. They would prefer a computer. They don't like having to type out their school book reports. I'm thinking of the kids here. Like, computers still do a good task, and they do it really, really well. And phones are really, really important.

They're critical. We all use them every day. But you go to your computer a lot. And that's their core business and from which everything else springs. I would quibble with the idea that it's their core business at this point. It should be their core business. There we go. I do think, I mean, one of my alternate overheated takes was going to be that Apple's silicon investment is actually going to be the legacy of Apple and might turn out to be the most important thing it ever spent its money on.

And I think that sort of jives at this point, too, right? is that, like, at least for a while longer, our computers are like a central device in our lives. And this doesn't apply to everybody and doesn't apply everywhere in the world. But, like, the centrality of the PC is as obvious as it ever was to a lot of people right now, I think. And I think in that sense, Apple, like, seems to have fashioned itself as a computer company again for the first time in a while, which I think is kind of exciting. And they're changing everybody else. Like, everybody's now chasing them to some degree. Intel, like, went from five.

It's wild to me that five years ago, Intel was so big, it could not fail. It, like, had this huge monopoly, like, what was it, 95, 99% of, of, like, computers and servers were them. And it's just collapsed because Apple and AMD came along. And Apple, in particular, is forcing everybody to rethink how they design these things and rethink how operating systems work. And that's awesome. And it's because of the MacBook. I'm bringing it all back. I here's how it's definitely overheated like Apple could shut down the Mac line and still be as big as Apple

listen you're not here for reality we're here for things we feel no but I agree that the feeling is important like a reason that I will not buy a Windows computer is because I can't text from it as reliably as I can from my MacBook and that's that's a really important feature to me because I spend actually more time now in my laptop than I do on my phone I don't even know that's true It just feels that way, right? Like, while we've been doing this, and I'm literally using my laptop, I've picked up my phone three times.

That's ridiculous. Glad to know we're keeping your attention. I thank you for being present on the podcast. I don't know what this TV take is. David's madding himself again. What's going on on Twitter? But I think fundamentally, like, it's where you're productive.

And I think Apple's argument for a long time is you will soon be productive on your iPad. You'll soon be as productive on your phone. And certainly people are productive on iPads and phones. But, like, most businesses, are run on Excel, and Excel happens on your laptop. And that's like that reality is not going anywhere for anyone. I like it. All right, Neela, you get to go last. Then we're going to get out of here. What's your last overheated take? Apple will not reach its final form until it builds a TV.

I feel like I should have seen that coming because I regret everything. Apple is not a successful company. It cannot be counted as a success until it builds a TV until it takes over the single device in our lives that is responsible for America's cultural hedgeball. the TV. All right, well, we're done. We had a good run. We made it this far. This may be the last episode ever of the Vergecast.

This turns into the, Neli spends an hour begging Apple to make a TV every week. They got to do it. What are we doing here, man? There's millions of people out there running Tyson in their living rooms. What are you doing? So you're saying Apple has like a moral obligation to do this. It's not just a business thing.

It's like, like what Tim Cook says about like saving lives. You want to be the privacy company? Do you know what the single most, like, intrusive, whackadoo privacy, like, destructing device in your home is? Your television. You're not wrong. An Apple TV with built-in ad blockers. I don't know about that. I think that might kill my model, my services model.

But, like, it knows everything you're watching. Most of the TVs have automatic content detection that can tell what games you're playing on your consoles. Like, the amount of data that your TV is. collect and send out to data brokers is out of control. So if they do have more obligations, it's sitting right there. There you go. You heard it here first. Apple will not be successful until they make a TV.

I feel like Apple's just going to ship you one. They're going to make one TV just to shut you up and then just. Yeah. It's an LG OLED with an Apple TV glued to the back. It's like, is this what you wanted? We turned the Wi-Fi off on this TV and put our existing product on it and solved your problem. All right. we need to go, but there's an Apple event coming really soon.

By the time you listen to this, it's possible it already happens. We're going to get a lot more information on all this. We're going to have a lot more to talk about on Friday with all of the announcements. Thank you both. This was really fun. Yeah, man. All right, that's it for the Vergecast today. Thank you so much for listening.

There is tons more coverage of everything that Apple is up to and the Apple event, and so much more, frankly, at theverge.com, and you can also follow all of us on Twitter. Alex is Alex H. Cranz. Neelai is reckless, and I'm Pierce. This show is produced by Andrew. Andrew Marino and Liam James. Norie Donovan is our executive producer, and Brooke Minters is our editorial director of audio. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

If you have thoughts, feedback, feelings, Apple hot takes, or you just want to make me feel better about liking the Apple TV again, you can always email Vergecast at theverge.com or call us on the Vergecast hotline at 866 Verge1-1. We're going to be doing some Apple stuff on the hotline soon, so get your calls in now. Alex Neelai and I will be back on Friday to talk about everything that happened at the event. All of our feelings, all of our reactions, everything. It's going to be a big one. See you then. Rock and roll.