The Vergecast - Valve made Microsoft's dream console

Episode Date: November 14, 2025

The console wars are back on. This week, Nilay Patel sits down with Jake Kastrenakes, Sean Hollister, and special guest Joanna Stern, senior columnist at The Wall Street Journal, to talk about Valve's return to the living room gaming race with the Steam Machine, Steam Controller, and Steam Frame VR headset. Then, Joanna discusses her time putting the Neo robot to the test and seeing whether it's capable of loading a dishwasher. Finally, it's time for the Lightning Round, where the crew is talking the YouTube/Disney spat, Apple's new mini apps, and letting Waymo speed down the highway. Further reading: Our first look at the Steam Machine, Valve’s ambitious new game console  Valve enters the console wars  Valve just built the Xbox that Microsoft is dreaming of  Valve’s new Steam Controller might be my dream controllerThe Steam Frame is a surprising new twist on VR  Steam Machines have returned: all the news about Valve’s new hardware universe  The Steam Frame has two speakers on each side of your face for vibration cancellation  Valve’s new VR streaming trick won’t just work with its own headset  How the Steam Frame compares to other VR headsets  Valve thinks Arm has ‘potential’ for SteamOS handhelds, laptops, and more  Valve is welcoming Android games into Steam  Valve has stopped manufacturing its Index VR headset Valve has no news about Steam Deck 2 — because it’s still waiting for the right chip  We tried Valve’s new VR headset, PC, and controller — ask us anything!  I Tried the First Humanoid Home Robot. It Got Weird Know Your Meme  1X Neo is a $20,000 home robot that will learn chores via teleoperation  Meet NEO, the AI-Driven Robot That’s Coming to Lend a Hand Around the House — for a Steep Price The Problem with this Humanoid Robot Samsung brings a generative AI-powered Bixby to its TVs  Gemini for TV is coming to Google TV Streamer starting today  Google says its confusing Gemini Home rollout is going just great  Google Photos lets iPhone users edit images by describing changes  Disney is losing over $4 million a day in revenue on the YouTube TV blackout Disney is “trying really hard” to get ESPN back on YouTube TV Peyton and Eli Manning Drop the Ball, Embarrass Themselves With Bob Iger Interview Apple made a $230 crossbody… sock  Steve Jobs introduces iPod socks in 2004 Mini apps Apple will take a mini commission from mini app developers ⁠Amazon is cracking down on illegal streaming on its Fire TV Stick ⁠ Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed.We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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This week on Explain It to Me, the chemicals lurking in your cosmetics. New episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, welcome the Burntcast, the flagship podcast of Microsoft not so quietly abandoning consumers. And of Joanna Stern being late. Hi, Joanna. They moved the train. The trains were moved by the square.

Yes. That must have been his first starter of business. He moved the B train. He made Joanna late to see her. Hi, I'm your friend, Eli. David Pierce is sick this week, unfortunately. Send him your best regards. Also, he has a favor to ask, if you have stories about Google Glass or the Nintendo Power Glove,

he's collecting them for version history. So write into Vergecast at the verge.com or call the hotline 866 Verge-1-1. That will make David feel better and also make Virgin History good. That's your favorite cast. Anyway, I'm Eli, that's Duran-Stern. Jay Castrancus is here.

Good to be here. I didn't even know there was a B-Train. This is a rough start for me, too. What? How long have you lived in New York City? It's a couple years. It's orange. There's a lot of those.

Yeah. There's like a M on that. Four or more. There's a D on that. I don't mess with that. It's the first letter of that block. It's the first letter. It's okay.

I'm ride that line sometimes. That's bad. Sean Hollister is here. How you know they moved it. I took the steam train to get here, and I'm going to take it on out, too. Yeah, it's like all of the Virch founders. We are all little babies, and now we're like, stressed out,

grizzled parents. And now we're raising the second generation of Verge editors and reviewers and writers. Okay, here is, I'm just going to open with this. Will our children be adults in a world where Microsoft Windows is a consumer operating system? Windows C.E. Windows C.E. Sean, you're here to talk about Windows C.E., right? Just like when I left The Verge, we were still talking about Windows C.E.

Can we do smart books today? Yeah, the Netbooks. The Netbook Queen is here. I'm saying we're going to talk about Steam a lot today, Valve and Steam and the Steam machine. We're going to talk about AI a bunch. We have a pretty wild quote from Satya Della that I want to dig into for a minute. I would just say, I think the theme of this week is that Microsoft is like, Screw the consumer market. We're out of here.

We're done. 10 years ago, I thought. But they used to make the Xbox and now they're like, what if we didn't? Like, I'm saying in when our children, our children are all like between, I don't know, two and seven, Sean, how old are your kids? My kids nine and five and I don't know.

I don't know. I know, I know, I have friends right now. They are gamers and they are revolting against Windows. They have uninstalled windows on their computers. They were putting Linux on it instead. It's time. Yeah, I'm just saying, I don't think our children are going to grow up

a world where like buying a consumer Windows laptop is a thing. We're raising a generation of gamers and they're all going to switch to Linux. They got to optimize this frame rates. I did say in a story meeting this morning that next year we're going to cover Linux a lot more on the verge and that might just be, that might just be like wish casting. I feel like we're missing a generation here, right? We've got Gen Z, which you, you know. How old are you? That's flattering and offensive.

Yeah. I'm 36. You have 10. Yeah. 15? No, no. But like, that age range, which we don't have reflected here, right? Or we have a, we have a large... The verge staff is big, and we have some Gen Zia is on our staff. It's true. I would... Every day to make you feel old and new ways. Like, how has Microsoft been in your life? Right?

Yeah. Do you have a relationship with Microsoft? Do you have any relationship with Microsoft? And what is that? Maybe it's Xbox. This is a great video for you to do with the Wall Street Journal. Like, what is Microsoft to these children? These children do not know about Microsoft. Other, right... Sean, they know about... about Xbox, right? Like, my kids know about Xbox. One of them does. I feel like they know what it is, but Microsoft keeps trying to dilute what it is. So nobody knows the answer to that question a year from now. Kids know Chromebooks. They know Macs. Yes, Windows is still the most popular desktop operating system. But I'm not sure kids are like, yeah, I know that Windows. I know that Microsoft company.

Again, our age ranges here on the show of our children are four months. My littlest one is four months. Sean, you got nine. A decade. There's a decade of ages, and I'm saying when those children are adults, will Microsoft Windows exist as a consumer operating system? I don't even know if she's going to use a mouse. Okay. So let's talk about the Steam machine, which prompted all this in my brain. Because, Sean, you went to Valve, you saw the new Steam machine, you have this line that you keep using, which I think is just the harshest thing you can say, but it's so true, which is Linux

runs Windows games better than Windows now. That's true across the handheld. It's for Steam. You should tell us by the Steam machine, but I just look at this thing, and I'm like, oh, Microsoft is like, we're an enterprise computing company. You can literally, we'll give you PC gaming. We're just going to let you have this valve. So tell us about the Steam machine, tell us what it is and the specs and everything, and let's talk about what it means. It's a six inch cube. It goes under your TV. It's barely bigger than a box of Kleenex, and yes, it plays Windows games on Linux and probably better than Windows would in the same form factor.

It's specs. I want to distill it and say that this is like PS5 Pro Spex because it's somewhere in that vicinity. It might be better than that. It might be a little bit under that. But the chips that they're using here are ones that we haven't really seen before. There's something that's kind of like a derivative

of a laptop chip in there, a low-end laptop chip in there, for the CPU. And then the GPU is something you'd find in a really beefy external graphics card that you'd plug into a notebook. Anyhow, you put it all together. it's somewhere around PS5 Pro. They won't tell us if it'll cost like a PS5 Pro,

but it's a console. Little Box with a wireless controller that'll hook up natively to it, low latency. You'll plug your HTML into it. You can also put a DisplayPort monitor on if you want to make it a PC, but under your TV, HDMI, it should have C, C, it should have HDR, VRR, all the three letters.

You're gonna get them here. And you'll install, you'll pick up that controller, and you'll install your Windows games on here through Steam and it should just work, like a SteamJEC just works, until you try to play a game that uses anti-cheat software, and then maybe it'll work. Why wouldn't it work if there's anti-cheat software?

There is anti-cheat software support in Steam OS. We've been able to play games on Steam Deck with that. You'll be able to play Steam's and Steam Machine with that. But a lot of the biggest publishers of the biggest multiplayer games in the world, like Fortnite, have decided that the kind of anti-cheet that's available to them on Linux is not good enough. They're worried about people. hacking and cheating, but they're also worried about people reverse engineering their anti-cheat software,

and then finding new ways to defeat it all the time, even on Windows. And so they basically say, hey, if we don't detect that you're running this exact set of Windows anti-cheat, we're not going to let you play our game on Linux. That's like curious to me, because I look at this thing and I, it's just so interesting. I love to cheat. I do love to cheat. So interesting. No, it's just like, I love to cheat. If I'm a PC game maker, I'm like, finally, someone has made an accessible piece of PC gaming hardware that you can just put under a TV and we're going to target that more than anything. Because to me, it feels like this thing is an instant hit. We don't know the price yet. We don't know the price yet.

That's a thing. Do you have a guess at that, like, range? Oh, gosh. So they, the best we could get out of them, they've tried to say, oh, it's, you know, it'll be affordable. It's, you know, it's competitive. The best we could actually get out of them was it should be priced. like a PC that you can build yourself from parts with the same performance. So I did all the digging, like, hey, could I build this?

I could build a PC with this performance, but nowhere near as small in light and compact and all that for maybe around 800 bucks. You could get something ready made, missing a couple of components for around 1,000. If you've got everything in there and somebody's like giving you a turnkey solution, this could be 1,200. Knowing Valve, I'm hoping it's the 800 rather than the 1,000 or the 1,000, but I don't really know. Do you think that would be competitive with the PS5 Pro?

If they can do it at 800 and say, this is just $50 more than the PS5 Pro, but it plays some games better, and it's also a PC, and you don't have to be locked into that PlayStation ecosystem. You can play your PlayStation games, and you can play your Xbox games, and you can play your PC games, because all the games are going into Steam these days,

then, yeah, I think that would be very competitive at 800. It just strikes me that Microsoft has been trying to make the Xbox this thing for 500 years. Bill Gates isn't trying to try to make the Xbox this thing for 500 years. Bill Gates is trying to try to, to put a PC in your living room since we, since we were children. Yeah. Right?

Like the dream of the consumer Windows device in your living room is the 90s. We talk about a shot all the time. Like he would show up at CS every year and say, I'm going to put a PC in your living room and where it can converge computing and entertainment. And he was absolutely right that that would happen. And he did nothing that was correct in executing that idea. And then Xbox was the one shining star. And now they're like, screw it AI is everything.

We're going to dismantle the Xbox division as far as anyone can tell. And Valve is just like, here we are. What if you can play PC games in your living room on PC hardware? And they're just going to take it. And it's baffling to me that Microsoft missed this many times. Valve has nothing to lose, right? Microsoft, they're still trying to protect Windows. They're still trying to protect all of these different businesses.

And so they're trying to build this thing on top of a, I don't know, a failing product, a bunch of failing products, and they're not changing any of them enough to make it work well enough. They're not changing any of them fast enough to make it work today. And so what you have is stuff like the, what is it, the Rog Ally X that Xbox handheld, which is just Windows. It's just Windows are inside a Game Boy. And it's like, that doesn't work. It doesn't work very well.

And Valve has been able to just say, screw it, we're going to Linux. We're going to customize this from the ground up. I've been very harsh to this thing. This one in particular, the affordable one of the Xbox Ally. very harsh to it. And I know that there is a Microsoft engineer or two, somewhere in that company that deserve a lot of credit for trying to take the needs to be everything

to everybody in the world operating system and trying to make it at least halfway palatable to gamers. I want to applaud those people, whoever they are. Please, please tip me, come into my inbox, Sean at the verge.com, I'm on Signal. Tell me more about this. But the totality of it is nothing like a console. It still feels like I am trying to shoehorn a console into this PC system, and it doesn't

run as well playing Windows games as Linux can, playing Windows games. The games designed for this don't work as well here because Valve has said, if you strip away all that shit you don't need and just want to play games, we can do that so much better, even if we're trying to convert these games to work on our system, which is just wild. Sean, can you run teams on that thing? This? Yeah. This is the problem.

It's got a copilot. It's got, you can do X. We don't do sponsors, but if you want to talk about Microsoft teams. I want to talk about how much I absolutely hate Microsoft. So definitely sponsored my team. But going back to your first question, and I'm just going to say this, we just have a disclaimer. like Joanna knows nothing about gaming and this entire area other than

the kids thing, right? Yeah, you have children and where they play video games, right? And I take back what kids have, what their view of Microsoft is, because there is a big group of kids that want to play Windows games and they maybe still buy and build a PC. Yeah, this is the consumer market for Windows,

is games, gaming PCs. Right. So here it seems like maybe Microsoft is kind of just like, we're going to open source that and figure it out whoever wins wins there. Like we don't need to be that hardware space. We have at Xbox, but like, we don't really know where that's going. They've announced, Sean, kind of what Joanna is saying. Like, the Xbox will become this like weird multi-platform branding on gaming PCs

and maybe someone will make handhelds. And none of that makes any sense. The thing that I'm saying is Valve shipping PC hardware. running a PC operating system that has been customized to run PC games is not winning strategy for Microsoft. They're not getting a piece of any of that anymore. Valve is just selling the hardware

and they're collecting the taxes in their store and Steam and then they can do whatever else they want to do on top of that, and Microsoft is gone. But to Jake's point, like, this is, they don't want, there's a lot of businesses and this is just, they don't care, right? Yeah. Like, they see this one and it's, it's, small. I mean, this is what's funny. Right? I mean, gaming isn't small, but

I don't know. I feel like, Sean, they lost one console generation and then they like lost their nerve. I feel like... They were on top of the world of the 360 and then the Xbox 1, they're like, we're going to do it. We're going to put a PC in your living room. That's how they launched 360. That didn't work. They had to like pivot back. Then they did okay with the Xbox 1. And then they got blown out of the water this generation by the PS5 and the switch. And now they're like, screw it. I want to furiously agree with both. you because on the one hand, yeah, they're kind of giving up on Xbox in a way. But I do agree with Joanna that I think it is because it is small, because the AI boom that we've seen,

the cloud boom that Microsoft has seen is just every company that I watch, all the chipmakers, you know, your Intel, your AMD, your Nvidia, all the big software companies, all of them have suddenly seen this small but valuable part of their business called gaming become this ridiculously tiny part of their business compared to everything else. A while ago it was Nvidia had a gaming business and a data center business. And now Nvidia has a data center business and you can't even see the part of the bar graph where the gaming business still lives, right? Right.

It was such a big deal to Nvidia. I was reading a lot of like history of Nvidia, this. Summer was writing his book, and it was such a huge deal to Invidia when they were in the first Xbox. Yeah. Like, that was, like, the thing. And now they're like, we're in an Xbox. Like, does someone here work here know that we're having, there's an Xbox person? Like, to Sean's point, like, there's this rapid growth.

But I had just the crazy idea when you were saying that all, Sean, like, Microsoft is struggling in a huge way to capture the consumer market in AI. This is their biggest problem right now, or one of their biggest consumer problems, if they even care about consumers, like we started the beginning of the show. Why not just, you know, co-pilot that shit? Oh. It's in there. Right?

There's co-pilot for gamers built into this Xbox. I know there is. Why people don't want to run Windows for their gaming PCs? Just like, you know, that's where it is. Like, you could make all your, you know, kids can be falling in love in the games with their, like, they're so, and they're going to have their personal assistant in the game. There's so much integration. They're super ready for you to fall in love with Cortana on your gaming PC.

Literally. This is the moment. And finally, you can fall in love with your personalized Cortana. Gammers as an audience. Today's game, I don't know about the kids, but today's audience of gamers, they really don't want AI. They're really not into it at all. Unless it's DLSS, in which case, they're like, maybe okay with it.

Right? Like, everything about AI is weird. If it's good, you love it, and then you're like, but I hate it, and I refuse to acknowledge that it's happening. Joanna, coming back to like, we were all little babies once, right? We started this site, and Microsoft was like, And Microsoft was like, here's what we're going to do. We're going to put full-blown windows on a phone or on a netbook or anywhere else. You covered.

On your airplane seatback. Anywhere they could put, like, literally the start menu and like the Windows app experience, they tried. Can you think of one time that was successful? The airplane seatback. Just like the back of it. No, even those are Linux now. I know even those are Linux now, but there was a point where those were Windows C or whatever they were. But those are CE.

Like, even Microsoft was like, we have to make a weird cut-down version of Windows. And now they're just like, here's a handheld. Here's an Nintendo Switch that runs Windows. And it's like, I don't, do you not know the one lesson that you learned a decade ago, which is you can't put full windows everywhere? The theory is this is what they're going to do the next Xbox, too. I mean, Tom has a piece on our site today, big editorial about how

this is kind of Microsoft plan for the next Xbox. They're going to make it more of a hybrid between PC gaming and Windows. viewed in that light, maybe this handheld, this half-baked handheld, they just shoved out with the try to do everything to everybody and just barely making it palatable for gamers. Maybe they just saw this as, let's shove that out there so we can get some feedback on it before they build the proper version for Xbox. The feedback, Joanna wrote all the feedback a decade ago.

I know. It ends with Sean reviewing the HP Slate 7. This is what I'm saying. Do you remember that? Do you remember that? Yes. It was the HP Slate 7. And I chased that, I chased that.

that I chased it so hard. And in fact, I have memories of trying to chase that thing down, trying to get to the executives, and they just didn't want me to have an exclusive or see that HP slate. I think you literally ran. Yeah, I literally would run, like, at conferences. For our newer audience, it is not used to where we came from,

the muck. Joanna used to break news of cut down laptops called netbooks and weird Windows tablets, and these would be like Earthshadowed. shattering scoops. It's hard to imagine this now, but she would chase the executives at trade shows to be like, show me your Windows tablet. And if we didn't get it, we would lose our minds. And if we did, and Joanna often did, we would celebrate as though we'd like broken open water gate.

Yeah. And then the audience would flood to us. And that is the, that is the grime from which the verge arose. And the point of all these reviews was that these products ran Windows. Right. And that was bad. And it was at a time. You will note the H.P. State 7 no longer exists, and neither does HP. Like, as a consumer company in that way. And we don't think any executives who worked on that exist. All right. We've talked a lot about it.

I do think it's interesting that we, I wanted to talk about the steam machine. And we just talked about how Microsoft sucks for like 20 minutes. Sean, tell me about the controller and tell me about this new VR headset. Because there's a lot of legitimately interesting ideas that Valve has brought to this market. that if you were not trying to do AI data center buildouts or build AGI or whatever, maybe you would spend some time thinking about how to make better game devices,

and Valve appears to have done that. The controller itself, it's simple what they did to fix the bulbous, ugly Steam controller that they originally tried to ship with Steam machines, which didn't work out a decade ago. All they did was they made it more like a game pad, but the software side of things, is that Steam OS, the Steam Deck, the Steam Machine,

now, the Steam Controller, have community controller profiles. So if you're like, I would like to play a game that isn't designed for a controller originally, somebody will have figured out how to map all of their buttons to the controller, they will have uploaded to the cloud, and when you start that game, it will download automatically a recommended profile for you, and suddenly you'll be playing the old Jedi Knight game from 2001 with proper controls on a game pad. They figured this out. This is something nobody else has done yet.

The controller itself also has touch pads on it, two of them, big, wonderful touch pads that you can use like mouse cursors, like trackballs in any game you like. There's a gyroscope in it, not just because we think we need a gyroscope for an occasional flick of your wrist, but so that you can move the cursor or the crosshair if you're playing a shooter game around incredibly precisely, just by swinging the controller a little bit, and you can fine tune that to the exact sensitivity you'd like and map it to new grip sense where you just, you put your fingers on this and it'll be like, oh, yeah, you want to do gyro, right? Take them off and you don't. You can map all of this stuff far more customizably than any other

controller that's ever been made, and it also feels like a comfortable normal controller, too. I mean, not to read too much into this. It sounds like you're in love with the controller. Yeah, it definitely does. Right. Is it that good? You used it, right? Yeah, yeah. I'm buying one of these, for sure, regardless of whether I'm doing a steam machine or not. Sean, you keep saying, like, this is a great controller. It's really normal. They, they, they I fixed the problem with the old, weird bulbous one. And I'm looking at this thing,

it looks like double the size of a normal controller and has these weird square touch nugs on it. I get it. You're like, it's like a little mouse you can use with your thumb. I get it. And I'm like, that's not gonna work. This is like when Sony used to make the TV remotes it would like fold open into a keyboard.

And I'm like, I need that. You loved that thing. I loved it so much. I visually see that thing and you loved it so much. If you pick this thing up without looking at it, it will feel like a controller and it will work like controller, and you won't have to think about it.

And if you pick it up and you're like, I wonder what these touch things are, and then you put your thumb on them and swipe around. I think you'll get that too. How much is the controller going to cost? I don't know any of this is going to cost. I'm going to guess 70, 60. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 is your wife and you love her.

Where is your love for the touchpad controller that you're talking about? I'm telling you I get it. You shouldn't answer that question. Wow, you thought too long, Sean. That's what Joanna is saying to you. I get it. TiVo made a controller that slid open into a keyboard. Wait, does that slide open?

No, I'm just saying it scratches the same. How does that work out for TiVo? It scratches the same itch for me that the giant TV remotes. But actually, I was going to go off on a touchpad tangent. If we could brand that, maybe we could get it sponsored. We don't do that here, John. I don't know what's going on at the Wall Street Journal. Every time I come back here, I think that we should come up with something like that.

Oh, remember my case? I'm on the case. Anyway, back to that one, another point. But I feel like touch pads are having a little bit of a resurgence. Like, I just, there was this new AI device, this AI wearable ring that has a touchpad built into it. Yeah. This thing has a touchpad built into it. My laptop has a touch pad built into it.

I know there's only so many ideas, but that's not a good one. Bring back the jog dial. I get it. I'm saying you and Jay Peters super excited about this controller. And if there's like one thing about the steam machine that I think is exciting, is that they were like, what if the controller was nuts? Because all the controllers have converged over time on the same dual shock idea.

And now Val was like, it's mice, two mice. There are more input devices on this controller than on, it's like double a normal controller. There's way too much going on in there. I can't handle it. So many. There's so many inputs, but it's there. So if anything ever doesn't work the way you expect with the regular controls because you're firing up

like an old PC game, it's just all they. for you right away. And you pick up the Xbox handheld, and you'll run into things where it's like... I love you. You keep waving this thing around doing the state. If you're not watching this... It's a jump scare every time.

If you're just listening to this, you're not watching on YouTube. Sean has not actually put down the ally. He's just held it derisively the entire time. And sort of like... It's fidget. Like, wielded it at us. Like, look at this. Garbage! Wait, but, Sean, is the touchpad...

I haven't totally seen the interface of this. I mean, I've seen in your phone. photos, but is it also because you actually have to like navigate some parts of this that are like finer touch points and you need a touchpad? You don't at all for any of the main console interface, any games that's designed for a controller, you never need to touch the touchpad at all. But there are instances where you might play an old game that was designed for PCs, mouse and keyboard, never for controller. Nobody's figured it out yet. This will let you do that with a cursor. Don't want to pull up your StarCraft or something like that.

You need your mouse cursor for an RTS game. It's there for you. And Windows, where you could actually, where you actually do need a pointing device some of the time to be like, I want to click the button that lets me play the game and gets through their stupid launcher, they don't have it on the ally. They don't have a touchpad at all. You got to poke the screen.

I want to talk about the Steamframe, which is the VR headset, and I want to try to put it on my Matrix of Wearable Bullshit. So first, tell us what the frame is. Okay, bear with me a sec. The Steam Frame is a headset. I'm not going to say it's a VR headset. It all certainly is a headset you can play VR games on, and there are two ways to do it there.

But there are also two ways to play your normal flat games as well. You put this thing on, and it is running Steam OS, like the Steam machine is, like the Steam Deck is, so it can also play Windows games. But it is playing them on an arm chip, and so it has to do its Just in Time Translation, all that kind of conversion. It's not going to play them as well as a Steam Deck. So you can play those local flat games. You can also play local VR games.

because it can run Android apps. So if you take the MetaQuest VR stuff and you put that on here, you can run those as well. And it can run PC VR games, as if you were plugged into the computer, except without the plug, because it's got a 6 gigahertz wireless dongle that you'll stick into a USB port on your PC, and you can play them with such low latency

and a fancy foviated streaming technique I'll talk to you about in a sec. Play with such low latency. It feels like you're doing it. with the cord plugged in. So very good wireless VR. And you can do the flat games through that streaming connection as well. So your PC stuff wirelessly,

as if you're plugged into it, your local standalone stuff playing on it, including Windows games on Arm, which is kind of unproven and wild that they're making that work. Four different kinds of games. So it sounds like they're cutting it both parts of what you think about

as the VR market, which who knows what the VR market really is, but what I think about it as, which is I have a Vision Pro and I would love a big screen. So what if we just did a big screen for PC gaming? And now you can play PC games, which Sean keeps referring to as flat games. I just want to call that out, flat games. That's the branding.

So you can plug into a PC and get a virtual huge screen for your PC games, which is like the thing that people like about the Vision Pro, big virtual display. And then maybe the Quest is a hit. So we'll do Android games. And then this weird middle thing, we'll see how well that works. None of that seems like it's going to sell a lot of headsets. I don't know who's buying these headsets. MetaQuest is the most popular VR headset on Steam.

So of the PC gamers who have these chunky PCs and Steam decks who are submitting Steam hardware surveys where they say, oh, yeah, Valve, I'll tell you what I'm running. After Valve does those surveys, what they see is, oh, a lot of people are buying meta quests, and they're hooking that up to their PCs so that they're that they can play their games on this wireless headset instead of the fancy corded headset that we charged $1,000 for three years ago. So maybe we should make that too

and we can eat Meta's lunch there and reclaim our audience, is what I think that is? Is there a robust market of, we're gonna say bumpy games, maybe? Like, forearm. Textured games. Textured games, yes. Like, right, is that arm games ecosystem there? The arm games ecosystem for,

VR consists pretty much of what is on the meta quest. So any developers that meta's funding or kind of succeeding do that, there are a lot of Android games on arm, obviously, and Apple games on Arm for phones. And theoretically, some developers can start praying those to Steam and put them on the headset and maybe any other future Steam OS devices that run on arm like a laptop or who knows if that will do a phone. So we have to do the Matrix, Neelize Matrix of Wearable Shit,

which is on the X-A. change the axes every time. And the x-axis is utility, and then the y-axis is fiddliness. So if you have low utility and high fiddliness, you're dead. So that's the Vision Pro. Low utility, very high fiddliness. External battery pack, $3,500. Glasses, regular glasses, like Jake's glasses. Very, very high utility. Skyrocketing, higher utility, low fiddliness, huge worldwide, I would say, like, global success. My favorite wearable. Right. And then the opposite is the Vision Pro. Very low. No utility, very high fiddliness.

Okay, that's the Matrix. Right, the Apple Watch is in like the sweet spot, the AirPods are in the sweet spot. Place, oh, and anything on your face gets like a negative 1,000 fiddliness. Right? You got to, so put the valve. You know I like the meta-glasses, but we won't talk. Put the Steam frame on the matrix. Fiddliness versus utility.

And face penalty. Where did you put the Quest 3 is the question, MetaQuest 3? Low utility, low fiddliness. So, and cheap. So, like, successful in its way. Yeah. This is approximately in the same exact place as a quest three because it's probably going to cost more, which is going to offset the fact that it will be far better at playing games for a bunch of people. If they can make it cost the same amount, it's going to be higher, a couple rungs higher.

My big question to, Sean, is we spent the beginning talking about why they are making hardware, right? why does Steam or Valve say they need to make the VR headset hardware? Is it because the MetaQuest platform cannot run these arm games? Everything that Valve makes, unfortunately, they will always say the same thing, which is we wanted to build this for ourselves, we wanted to play games like this, we wanted to let our audience of Steam gamers have an easier time doing this thing than they get elsewhere. And to some degree, that rings true. If I am trying to get my Steam games to run on my MetaQuast,

that's kind of shoehorned in there, and I would like a better way. But the reality is that if I want to spend some gaming time, I'm usually doing it on a flat screen, on a TV, on the Steam game. Five games. Not in my head. Well, I'm very excited about it. Also, by the way, looks almost like identical to a HoloLens. They just picked up some old the HoloLens.

It's from Microsoft. Right, from Microsoft. I was like, that's where I was like, this looks, I actually Googled, I was like, did Valve buy hollow lens assets? Did they buy patents from Microsoft? You're just like randomly Googling. I'm randomly Googling because I'm like, this thing looks like, I mean, I guess it looks more like the Quest Pro. It is more comfortable than any of the meta quests. And it's more comfortable like that out of the box.

They're not going to make you buy a battery back headstrap thing to balance out the weight. It comes with that right away. The cushions are really plush. and soft. It feels pretty good on my face as, you know, as well as anything strapped on the fun of your face can feel. Not as good as a touchpad on your face. That's what I'm saying. Face penalty. I'm very excited about all of this. I really think we're going to end up covering Linux a lot next year because people's hatred of Windows and Microsoft's fundamental abandonment of consumers

is so obvious that, like, Val was like, yeah, we'll make a VR headset too. Like, why not? Like, this is all just greenfield for us because you don't care about consumers anymore. One of the top comments on my story, goodness yes, I never need a reason. I need a reason to never return to Windows. We have some more Windows coverage coming next week that I'm very excited about. There's just a lot here. Sean, we're going to have to have you back. When is this stuff coming out?

Early 2026. Well, I know we're going to lose Sean, but I'm going to ask him one last question. Yeah. If you could ask Sacha Nadella right now, and I think we're going to talk a little bit more about AI in Nadella's recent comments about, gaming and Xbox, what would your biggest question be for him? Can you lay off all the upselling and just make a version of an operating system that only plays games? That's not a question.

But can you lay off? My answer is like, yes, we're going to lay off 10,000 more people in the gaming division tomorrow. Like, he would cut you off. Yeah. I would say my question would be like, do you know this is here? Remember when Activision was the biggest acquisition of Microsoft history? Do you remember that? I think that was the problem, right?

Like, they have all of these games publishers on the books, and they have nobody to sell games to because nobody's buying these Xboxes. I mean, the idea was that they would make good games. Well. Like, they spent 68 billion on Activision. All right. We got to let Sean go. Sean, please come back for the, why did Microsoft make the decisions it made? podcast sometime in the future.

I'll be happy to do it. All right. Thanks, buddy. Like I said, we founded The Verge and we're like, what's Microsoft doing with consumers? You're right now. We are 15 years later, and Sean has brought this full circle. Netbooks are back. We've got to take a break. We'll be right back to talk about Joanna coming full circle and having a butler.

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And that's because it's a platform built by developers for developers. MongoDB. It's a great freaking database. Start building at MongoDB.com slash build. All right, we're back. Thank you to Sean. It was good to have a little founders tree. It was.

I mean, Jake was like an employee number two. For intruding. No. No, this is like an OG crew on the show. I just lied my way in. And I just showed up. I'm like, I'm your intern. You guys were like, great, let's go.

And I'm sorry for calling you 15. You know what? It's all right. You're going to like it. It's flattering. Yeah. Yeah. It was the age when I started.

I'm just going to start telling everyone that Jake is Gen Z. Yeah. I mean, I think it's a good idea. Like when our ad team is like, we need some Gen Z insights. I talk to Jake. Guys, I used TikTok all day long. I don't written word, not for me. All right.

Gen Z also hates tech now. It's, you know, the backlash. Well, wait until they get a load of our next story. So, Drenna, subtly mention that she's writing a book. I did subtly mention that she's writing a book. You did. of this podcast. If your book wants to sponsor the podcast, I will plug.

You have to pay me directly. Yes. And I will disclose that Joanna is my friend, our co-founder, and has paid me under the table to promote her. It will not be a hundred. It will be right over this too. I will slide the check. What's the book called?

I am not a robot. Very good. Hold on to that. You made a video of this thing called the Neo Helper Robot, published on the Wall Street Journal. This was, like, in the course of, like, writing your book and, like, thinking about AI. Yeah. Somewhere in there. Yeah. Yeah. I just want to play the video, first of all. You've probably seen it. I just want to play like a clip of your video.

Let's play all eight minutes. Let's run. It's here. The first humanoid robot housekeeper. Just one little catch. There may be a human behind the curtain, pulling the robot strings. Everything I saw Neo-do was guided by a skilled pilot. I'm a remote operator in a different room in the building. That is until he handed me the controllers. I actually might throw up. I think my hand is...

I have no idea where I'm facing. It took Neo a little over a minute to fetch a water from the fridge 10 feet away. Thank you, Neo. Next challenge. Load three items in the dishwasher. You got this, you know, you got it. And that took five minutes.

So this is a robot... It's not easy. That's supposed to be AI, right? The dream is you have a robot butler and you just say, like, get me a beer, and it goes and gets you a beer. And right now, it's just, a guy that you're talking to who

ineffectively does what you want with a robot in a VR headset. Correct. Why is that happening? Well, yes. It is, I did not see it do anything autonomously. There's a part in the video where

the founder and CEO tells me that there will be some things that are autonomous and that it can do autonomous things, but it won't be very good at it. Even controlled, this robot is not good at at hacking the dishwasher. So you can imagine how bad it probably is

at doing that autonomously right now, okay? Right, when you have the guy in the VR headset. And he's doing it and controlling the robot, where the, it's, you will laugh out loud anytime you watch it. I have watched that scene 50 times. I mean, we edited that scene alone for 50 times because I wanted it to be perfect, right? The dishwasher moment is so beautiful and sad.

It's like just this long take of the robot slowly, slowly trying to stand up for like a full minute. And it doesn't quite get there. It's rough. And I like, look, I haven't gotten to like talk about it publicly. Like filming this was wild because I had two videographers there and I was literally yelling his name, David, David Halls, my great producer who came and filmed with me. And I was like, David, get on this side. Like, we have to capture the butt going down, you know?

And like, so this is, I'm describing this all just to say, like, that is the best it is right now and it's being operated by a human, right? Now, the founder says, like, oh, it might not have been that familiar with that dishwasher. To be fair, this was their dishwasher in their office where the robot lives. But, okay, let's just give some benefit. There's so many weird dishwashers out there. How could they have possibly known? But so, like, this is all to the point that I'm trying to make here is to get these. robots to be better at doing things autonomously, they need to be trained. And so the argument in all of

robotics right now, especially around humanoid robots, is we need more data to train these robots, just like we need more data to train all of these large language models or whatever models we're making. And the way that this company says they're going to do that is by putting these robots in your home, having a person at times come and remote operate the robot to collect the robot to collect data and that data is all going to feed in to the models that they're going to train the autonomous robots. And so we can all be a part of teaching the robots. Okay. The reason I wanted to talk about, sure, maybe that will happen. Maybe. I think you can also, how much does a robot cost? $20,000. I think you can also just hire someone to come to

your house and load the dishwasher on a regular basis for $20,000. Sure can. It just feels like a thing you can do. You can also get it for, there's like a $500 a month plan. You can a lease type of situation. And anyway, sure. What you want is to lease a robot operated by human. I'm obviously doing that option. So the reason I wanted to bring this up, and I want to talk about Microsoft,

I'm going to promise I'm bringing this all together, is the gap between AI hype and reality is starting to get ever wider. And watching the pickup of your video just really illustrated that to me. So here, let's run some clips. Here's some of the Hollywood-level pickup that this video got. The Wall Street Journal got to tell you.

test drive, Neo, and things did not go the best. Like when they told Neo to crack a nut. Crush it. It's a walnut. Flawless. For $20,000, you too can harness all the power of a gray naked man who is dumber than a squirrel. The robe of the future is just a creepy guy who's watching you do everything. Call me old-fashioned, but I'd rather just have a perverted human butler, all right?

Okay, so that's Hollywood. Very funny. And then there's, have you seen the social media pair? of your video? Where the humans are dressing up? Yes. Yeah, I love those. Run some, these are incredible.

You can now officially buy a robot slave to live in your home. Neo is the latest man-made horror beyond comprehension. But oh, look, it's wearing a sweater. Hey, Neo, can you make me some hot dogs? Wait, where are you going with my dog? I love dishbox, sir.

Hi, Neo. How's the morning going? Excellent. The end of humanity is right on schedule. This is, if you're listening, it's a woman in a gray onesie and she's wearing one of those LED masks. I bought that mask. I bought it for Halloween. Yeah, me too.

The gap between what this industry is saying and what it can deliver is, like, reaching literal comedy levels. I'm so happy someone's writing this book. You're not allowed to just plug your book for free. I am picking the book. The money on the table. All right. May 14th. The money, put the money on the table.

Get your robot to put the money on the table. But the gap is huge. It actually can't probably do that. It probably can't grasp a dollar. This is like very hard. Well, can I ask about the robot itself, right? Like the AI is one problem. Is robot hardware even remotely where it needs to be to, I don't know, stand up to grab things reliably?

That is one of the big things about this specific robot that they say this one of the biggest problems in robotics and putting them in their home in home. is safety. This company says this is the safest humanoid robot to put in your home. Like, full stop because of the way they have designed. Because there's a guy in the other. Because there's a human in the suit. No. Yeah. And you see that kind of in the video, right? Like, it's struggling in a number of situations to do things. But they say that they've designed some of it, especially the way the fingers move and the arms move to. to be more human-like. So the reason I brought that walnut

was actually to see, like, does it have superhuman strength? Right? And they said, no, actually, like, the hand strength is very similar to a human's strength. This is all designed in the reason or in the spirit that this should be safe

to put your kids and pets and loved ones around. Right, but there's, like, can you make a physical machine that can, like, load a dishwasher, like, has the mechanical dexterity to pick things up, Like, pick up a cup without breaking it is a common problem.

Pick up an egg, I think it's the most common one that I always hear about. Without breaking it, can it stand up after loading the dishwasher? Like, all that stuff. That's one huge set of robotics problems. Then there's the, can the AI drive the robot autonomously, which is yet another huge problem. And all of that is, I'm saying, swirling in the context of Sam Altman needs $90 trillion to build AI. Absolutely. And what I'm saying is I think the reaction to your video is like, oh, this is starting to break.

down. And the real issue here is the promise of the home, right? So you have both of those issues, right? This thing needs to do this autonomously, which is the hardest in the home, because the home is not a factory floor, and there are things that change constantly, not only in terms of what it has to pick up, like you're saying, like, once it's got to pick up this plastic cup, then it's going to pick up this mug, and then it's got to pick up, I don't know, a plate, right? And then you've got the chaos of the home, the fact that kids are everywhere, they move chairs, they move things in the refrigerator, things move, right? So that compounded with got to make this autonomous, got to make this safe, got to make this capable to do the things you want in the home. I want to spoil the book,

but I did a whole big testing this summer of laundry robots, right? And how incredibly hard that is because laundry is actually very simple for humans to fold a shirt because it lands one way and we're like, okay, yeah, that's the top, that's the bottom. But it's very hard. for robots to do that. And so you think about all of that sort of compound, and you're like, we need to get very far and it's not happening this year. And in your point, it's not happening

on timelines that we've been hearing from the biggest executives in this industry. So I want to play this clip of Satcha Nadella. He went on the Dworkish Patel podcast. Dworkish Patel is a great interviewer. He was joined by Dylan Patel, who is on semi-analysis, which if you're a chip, I would say Dylan is a chip fluencer.

If you're into chips, semi-analysis is like chip fluencer level. Like, he's very good. I want a term like that. That's cool. Great term. It's a good word, right? Yeah. Nadella is on a podcast with both of them, and they're asking him about the investments in the AI, building the data centers, how much it's costing, what's it going to do?

And they get to talking about, like, what the computers of the future will be. And there was just one back and forth where, you know, if someone had said that to me on decoder, the whole interview would have stopped. And I would have said, can we just talk about this for the rest of the hour? Can we just play this clip? I think the better mental model here is like, look, a human, just imagine that these models actually will be able to actually use a computer as well as a human. That's kind of what I'm saying. In fact, I kind of look at it and say our business, which today is an end user tools business,

will become essentially an infrastructure business in support of agents doing work. Okay. So imagine the model can use a computer as well as a human can. is the biggest claim in this entire industry. And Nadell is like, yes, that's kind of what I'm saying. Let me go farther. The future of Microsoft is we're just going to build applications infrastructure for agents to use. We're not even building software for people anymore.

We're building like the raw components of software for agents to use. And I'm listening to that. I'm like, okay, that is supporting some of the biggest investment in the world has ever seen into technology. that we think might change the world. And then I'm watching Stephen Colbert, like, giggle at this robot, not crack a walnut. I'm able to use OpenAI's Atlas browser. I'm like, I don't think the computers can use themselves yet. Well, let me pose this to you.

Can the kids use computers? We raised an entire generation that doesn't know what a folder is. I do love the escape of AI criticism by being like, you've been sucked too. It's like, yeah. Listen, that's true. I will grant you that. If this AI can open a folder and find a file in 20 minutes or less, it might have, you know, what, Gen Alpha beat?

We'll see. The iPad, we don't know about us. But I'm saying the entire, the bet, that is as clear, go back and listen to it. If you're in your car, just like hit the skip back. That is as clear of a explanation of why the bet. We're going to, the models, we're able to use a computer as well as a human can, and where actually the future of Microsoft's business is building software for agents to use,

not for people to use. The whole podcast is very good. Go listen to it. I like Dendella a lot. He's very clear. He's very sharp. But what I say, they're walking away from the consumer business. They're walking away from the human business.

The future of our business is infrastructure for agents. Infrastructure was a huge part of that. Like, that should be italicized and bolded there. Right. But what he means is not just like data centers. He means like, we will decompose Excel to a series of databases that agents can traverse because we don't need to build an interface for it. But isn't that what Nadella's biggest strategy has been over the last decade or more? Sure. And I think you can see all this walkback from Xbox and consumer and me saying, well, we have consumer Windows.

One of his answers is maybe we won't have Windows at all. Right. You're just going to tell your agent and maybe you will never even look at Excel. Because when you look at what he was done with Azure and class, and infrastructure to support where we are now. That's Microsoft's business. Yep. That's what Microsoft became.

So when I hear that, he's like, maybe, yes, we do make the applications better for the robots and for the agents. And maybe they've, you know what? I don't, I agree with you. I don't think actually an agent or human can figure out how to use Microsoft Word. Back to the book, which I had to put into Microsoft Word last week, which was a nightmare. I hear that. Right. But that's where I think he's going, where he's,

You're right. Like, doesn't actually matter if it's humans or consumers or whatever. So that's the bad. We will be the tech infrastructure. So I'm saying if he'd said that to me in a coder, we would have record scratch. Do you think the models can use computers as well as a human today? The answer, I think, is unequivocally no. There is not a model out there.

And we've seen lots of attempts at computer use. We've seen experiments from OpenAI from Anthropic. It's all pretty slow. It's all pretty brittle, actually. models even just traversing regular databases still pretty brittle. Like there's a universe of enterprise AI consultants. We're like, we'll do the data management for you to be ready for AI. Like if your bet is that the models will be better at using a computer than a human,

and that the next generation of computers will actually be like the infrastructural components of software for the agents to just go access. Okay, maybe, yeah, maybe you would spend all the money that Microsoft has spent. But again, I'm watching your video, and I'm like, boy, it seems like we're a long way away. Well, this is the bet on this robot, right? They know it's not there yet, but the hardware isn't there yet either. And so they got to get the money now, right? If you want to be first, you've got to get the money and have the thing while it's still

have broken. And you've got to be ready for when the AI is actually there, if it's actually there, which is not looking so good. And that seems to be what's going on here, right? So you just have a product that is broken up and down, doesn't have the hardware, doesn't have the software, and everyone's kind of just hoping that robotics will advance enough and AI will advance enough at the same time

that there's this collision. Suddenly, it's all amazing. And I... So I'm going to read you some more headlines. Samsung is going to bring a generative AI-powered Bixby to its TVs. Gem and I for TV is coming to the Google TV streamers. Google Photos will let iPhone users, edit images by just describing the changes. And then Google says it's confusing.

Gemini Home or that is going just great. I want to talk about that one for a second. Wait, what was the last one? Gemini for Home, where they're changing Google Assistant to Gemini. Google put out a blog post where they're like, this is going great. And then all of our readers were like, it's not actually. The reason I bring up the assistants here is my working hypothesis is that the smart home assistant is the consumer device, whether that is just a speaker or it's a robot that walks around. They're like, I'm at my house and I issue some commands and something happens in my home, that is a big product. That is a big product category. And we are

watching all of these companies just stumble, try to make it happen. And if you think about your house, it is a bunch of weird interlocking software components, right? Your TV runs one piece of software, your music might be another piece of software, another set of applications. My Lutron lights, don't talk to my hue light. Like, there's a lot here that AI should just solve. Like, look at all these databases. I can run around and change the states of them. and the lights will turn on off, and they haven't been able to do it. I asked Google photos, which has Gemini in it now, I was like, just show me pictures of Max when she was four months old,

where she kind of looks like Jack. This should be the easiest thing for an AI to do. Like, find photos from this date and show me the ones that are most like the ones from today. And it's, it just cannot do it. Did you get a picture of like a dog? No, it was just like, it was like Max is four months. months old last in like August of 2018. It's like, this isn't, I know when she, like, that's...

Yeah, I was playing around with that the other day. It just doesn't work on. Anything that can solve that problem of like when you just need this specific photo, we are still so far away. But this is the promise, right? You issue a natural language command to a database and then it understands what you're saying, and it returns some result. And whether that's my database of photos or the various states of appliances in my home,

or, you know, if you're such and Adele, you're looking at the databases operated by the Fortune 500 and saying, my agents will run amok in them, making your business more efficient. It's like, this is all, you're all describing the same stuff, and a lot of it just doesn't work.

Yeah. Well, and what's incredible, that Google Photos AI search interface, it's so bad that they had to slow down the rollout. The original search is still a fallback option because it is better. Standard search is better. I didn't know it was still there.

Yeah, I use that. I think that is what I have. It's great, Because it's normal. You type in a word and it finds the thing. We definitely have some listeners who have told us that their students don't know how to use Boolean search operators anymore. Like when you want to do and or between dates, like the most refined search you can do. They just have stopped using it entirely because they're used to natural language. My point is I see the robot. I see the people goofing on the robot.

And then I hear Nadella say all of this is supported because eventually the agents are just going to use a software for you. And we won't even make software. We will make the infrastructure of software, and that's the future of Microsoft. And I don't know if it's a bubble or not. And Sondon, Sondon is very smart. I've interviewed him a lot. You've interviewed him a lot. He is as sharp as it gets.

And I'm like, is there evidence that this technology can get from where it is today? Google Photos does not do a good job searching my photos. Every smart home assistant, co-pilot. I'll pick on Microsoft. Co-pilot on Windows. Doesn't pilot a whole lot. Is there evidence that you can get from here to there? Like, what is that evidence?

Well, honestly, the funny part that I was going to answer there is that the co is actually the part right now, which is what all of them are saying. I mean, he's mapping out real future here, but how many people have I told, have told me over the last few months, like, well, you don't just one shot something, right, and expect the best. You do two or three shots. You really work with this and you get the best results. That's exactly what they were even saying about the robot. I mean, Bornich, who's the CEO and founder, I interviewed him again next last week at our tech live conference. And he was basically saying, like, you're going to prompt your robot, you're going to work with it back and forth, and you're going to get it to do these things. And it's like, for how long, though?

Like, you know, like how long to your points? Like, is it just easier to hire a human? Or isn't it easier to have a human do the tasks that Nadella was saying, which is like, don't have the age. running the agents on the thing or using the computers. Like, the humans do that, and maybe they have some help. But, like, we're not necessarily getting to this place where this autonomous, beautiful vision is anywhere near. I just want to point out, I haven't even dunked on Vicksby once yet.

And, like, the idea that there'll be a weird L-O-N Bixby on Samsung TVs, in the context of a conversation where everyone hates the bloatware is very funny. I thought Bixby was dead. They were, they're bringing it back to put on the TV. I missed that story. Because Samsung TVs run Tysen. They don't run Android. Yeah.

So Bixby died in the context of Google Assistant because they made a deal to do Gemini. So Bixby only lives on TVs. You get Samsung L-O-M-M-Bixby. What about the Bali? That is still not shipped. The Samsung rolling robot. What happened to Bali? Did you do a story on Bali?

Every year we go to CS. They definitely said they were going to ship this thing. That thing just rolls around. I don't know. It's a projector. It doesn't do anything. He just rolls around projecting Paisal. What happened to Bali?

They keep showing it to people, and then you get to make, like, TikTok videos about it at CS. And then no one wants to buy a rolling projector. I've never made a... Listen, Samsung, if you're listening and you want me to test Bali and come to your home office kitchen... For your generative LLM Bixby. I'm happy to come and do that story. Samsung announced that Bali would be shipping this summer. Yes.

Because I was looking at it. I was researching it and I was like... It did not. It did not. I didn't reach out, but this is me reaching out, Samsung. No one wants a rolling projector. I don't know. The product itself is just a projector.

That's the only robot I want. It just goes around the house playing YouTube videos on the wall. That seems great. That's the thing that it does. Can you bring me a drink? No. No. No.

As I tested Astro, you know, Amazon's other or the other failed home robot, which was Amazon's Astro, what was that maybe two years ago? And its most successful feature was bringing me a drink. So in all of your AI reporting, because I know you've done a lot of it, have you seen the evidence that the technology can get from here to there, like the LLM-based AI technology can get from here to there? No, I've seen what you guys have seen. I mean, I think the big bet that we're hearing from the Anthropics and the open AIs and everyone,

and this is where the concern about the bubble right now, is that the large language model, the generative AI, will get us there. What we're starting to see evolve, and that's why I've been so interested in the robotic space and this world model space is that it's not just going to be that, right? We're going to need these other kinds of models that understand the world better.

And that's where a lot of my reporting ended up leading me is that not just, I mean, sure, a lot of this is still based on transformers and it's still part of the same architecture, but we have to go far deeper in the training. of these models to understand the world around us and not just understand images or video or text. But yet we are hearing from the Sam Altman's and the Anthropics and Dario's of the world

that, no, no, we really think that these large language models are going to get us there, right? And that's been the whole, you know, the constant Twitter fights between Gary Marcus and whoever it is of the day, like, this is where the fights are happening. And so I think that, like, people, think that we're going to get there one day.

They just are not sure which versions of the technology is how we're going to get there. But I think the thing that's confusing to me is, again, I think Nadella is very sharp. You wouldn't spend the money unless you know how you're going to get there. And the money is just being spent at such enormous rates. Well, we'll also keep hearing right now, like it's the app store idea, right? We need to put the technology out there for others to see how far we can get. Right. So, like, even in the case of the robot, like, they're using large language models.

They're building their own world models. And I think the hope is of these platform companies, the model companies, these other companies will help us figure this out. We're going to put the technology in those hands and we're going to have this next huge platform shift and it's going to happen from everyone in the ecosystem. That's how we're going to get there. And if you're Sacha, your biggest fear is missing out on another platform shift, right? I mean, this is the argument.

right? That if you're Google, you have search and YouTube and if this fails, whatever, you'll have a bunch of GPUs to run search and YouTube on. If you're meta, you'll have a bunch of GPUs to run probably Instagram at Target. Horizon Worlds. Like, Meta has like, they have these big businesses. Microsoft has a cloud business. It is interesting that they are walking away from the only consumer business that was truly relevant in. And if they, I'm just saying, it feels like this is pretty existential for Microsoft in an important way. But yeah, like you hear in, uh, Jensen Wong and NVIDIA and those in the Waymo's of the world and all of these places saying, look, we just need to continue to build out these models in these specific areas. Like this week, this week, Faye-Fei Lee, in her startup, released this new world model. And so there's all this experimentation happening at these other types of companies, or they're not other types of companies, but other views of how we get there, beyond generative AI or beyond large language models that are feeling optimistic. And I would say, like, Google, especially with DeepMind seems to be pretty far ahead on that. I think it's probably another thing that's, you know, at Microsoft's thought.

It's just the gap between what is being promised. Yeah. What is being delivered in how people feel about it is wider than I've ever seen in maybe anything you and I have ever covered. And I can't remember a technology where people are like, no, we hate this. But then, like, usage is really high. But then, like, the hype cycle is crazy. and like late-night comedians are making fun of the most bleeding edge tech that you can think of. There was a lot of money spent on netbooks back then.

I think, too, there's the same promises, right? At least for the consumers, like kind of going back to the consumers, and my book and my report, he's been very focused on, like, what does consumer life look like? How does our life look different? And I do think there's like similar promises that we had at the smartphone gate, you know, opening up the smartphone gates and app stores, all versions of our life are going to be better.

Things we can't even imagine. The Ubers, the food deliveries, all the things are like, this is the platform to do it. And to your point, like right now, we're not necessarily seeing that revolutionary change of any in any of those parts of our lives, right? Wait, here's my comparison. Is this in that framework,

is this more like the app store, or is this more like 5G? Oh, my God. Oh, God. Right, because the App Store came true. Many, many things changed. Like, the whole world bent itself around the smartphone. 5G, less so.

I just had a robotic surgery. No, I don't know. I mean, everyone is using 5G. But there was nothing that it changed. The one thing, no, the one thing that I will probably say, I will always give 5G credit for this. You can now watch a live stream of Serena Carpenter any night you want that she's performing.

Because 5,000 people in the stadium are all live streaming. And the network, the millimeter wave network in the stadiums can support it. That's it. That's the big 5G moment. Like, wait, we did a story of the AT&T about the Ares Tour, and they moved more data across the AT&T network at all those NFL stadiums during the Ares Tour because people are just live streaming trailer shift all night. Great.

That's it. It always comes back to stadiums for 5G. It's what it? Because they have network density and they can connect all the devices in a way that 4G could not. That's it. That's the one thing you got. That's it.

No robot surgery, no self-driving cars, which were absolutely promised with 5G, because they had zero latency connection to the data center. Still not the promise of the self-driving car. So, okay, is it the app store, which I've heard a lot, or is it 5G, which is all hype, nothing except livestream concerts? It's probably something in between there.

Cop out. Jake? This is why I need you to add to the app. going to like redefine this, but like the app store, I think was immensely huge when it launched and then became an entrenched thing that has done very little in the past decade, right? Can AI be explosive and important and change things for a short period of time? Yeah, probably. That feels like something.

But the app store changed what we could do with our phones, right? It changed how we navigated the world and how we got things and how we got places. Did the app store realize the first internet bubble? Right. The dot-com bubble was like, we'll move the economy to the web browser, and that didn't work because the form factor was wrong. The smartphone form factor is correct,

and the app store is like, we will move the entire economy to these five companies. Yeah, whether you like it or not, we're going to change things. It's going to be slightly better in some ways, slightly worse than others, and we're going to deal with the fallout for the next decade. Yeah.

That's AI. Yeah, that's AI. And I think that there are real places that it will make life better. but in this big sweeping thing that the machines are going to do everything for us and the models will be as good as using a computer as a human. That is, I heard that and I was like, this is the bet.

Is that the AGI test that they're been telling them? No, that's just, I think that's the- It doesn't matter if that's the AGO. I mean, I personally think the AGI test is stocking the dishwasher now, but like that's... I think if you cut AGI out of it entirely, We don't have Open AIs panel of religious experts and philosophers to declare that they've made digital God. Like, cut that all out.

Like, I don't know what that is. Microsoft thinks there will be a model that can use a computer as well as a human, such that they can start re-architecting the software for the model to use. Wow. At what point is that? Like, as explicitly as anyone has ever said it in my estimation. That's a lot. But it's also, it's so funny. At some point, that just you're, okay, so it's a system where a computer talks to,

to another computer and does a predefined set of things that it's optimized to do. That's, at what point does that stop being AI and just start being computers? Like that's just, right? Like, that is just how software works. He can call it whatever he wants. It's, you know, it's like thinking.

It is cool. Like, you don't need. I'm so excited for Excel to think for me. You know, it's like when you like, I don't know, like when we like try to operate box media and we're like, can you just do what I want? You know, like, some like corporate person here is like, no. What if the robot was saying no?

Oh, yeah, that sounds great. Perfect. This is, can I say this is why everybody's going to Linux? Linux would not have this problem. I'm curious, I know there's a lot of enterprise deployments of AI, which are successful. Not the McKinsey ones, but like, I know there are enterprise IT developers who have built working systems that are very efficient using AI. So I'm curious, if you're one of those folks, let us know.

Like, do you see how the success you've had there, translates to the big success that everyone is betting on. Because I'm dying to see the progression, right? And there are all these different bets on how you might build these models in these systems. But I don't think I've ever heard it as clearly. And it was like the same week Joanna was coming on, and we're like making the montage of the robot falling down.

And I was like, there's something here. No. And I also think that you're totally right. And it's exactly like, it is the backlash to. We had it in the longer cut of the interview, but Jensen Wong has been saying for now the last two years, everything's going to be robotic. Anything that moves is going to be robotic. Robotics are going to change the world.

Robots, robots. And then you see this and you're like, how? Yep. Right? How is that going to happen? And look, I wouldn't put robotics because you mapped out really well, how many things are challenging there on the same plane of what, probably Nadella is talking about, which is virtual agents and whatever, but it is all being lumped

together for the public. And it's very confusing. And we're hearing, I mean, again, premise of what I was trying to do this year is how many places can I have AI take over my life and let me see where we're really at with this? You want to plug the book one last time? I didn't. I didn't. I said reporting this year. I didn't say the book. Well done. I'm at her. Jada has a book coming out. She'll be back to promote the book. It'll be back to. in May. It's far away. So I will come back talking about something else between now and it. It won't be whether or not here about. We got to take a break. We're going to come back with a lightning round unsponsored for flavor. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from

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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.

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and what it means to the people? So money is essentially the root of everything. I don't care if you're gay. I don't care if you have all that. That's like secondary, third. Like, that doesn't, that's not a priority. That's this week on America Act. Let's begin.

This week on Networth and Chill, we're diving into another edition of Am I the Asshole, Finance Edition. And trust me, these money dilemmas will have you questioning everything. I'm breaking down real stories from real people who are navigating financial situations that range from mildly awkward to absolutely unhinged. And I'm giving you my unfiltered take on who's in the right and who needs a serious reality check. Because let's be real, when it comes to mixing relationships and finances, someone's always asking if they're the asshole. Learn how to set boundaries, protect your wealth, and avoid becoming the villain in your own financial story. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.com slash you are rich BFF. All right. We're back with the lightning round. Unsponsored, Stern. We don't do sponsors here at the verge.

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I sell refurbished lightning cords on my website, Joanna Stern.com. Which your agent can go fine anytime. So we got to start the lightning round. Joanna, it feels as though I made this promise that we're ungovernable, which is what David always says, which I can never pronounce. And Joanna is going to blow up the lightning up. But we start Joanna every week with America's favorite podcast within a podcast. Brendan Carr is a dummy where I update the audience on the machinations of America's worst FCC chairman, Brendan Carr.

This week is actually not Brendan himself, although he made some regrettable comments about his underwear choices in regards to South Park. We're going to set that aside. That's true. That's a real thing that happened. I'm sorry. Thank God that is not the item today. That is not the item today. That's not the item.

This week, because Brandon is such a threat to free speech in America, a thing that doesn't usually happen, happened. A group of Republicans and Democrats came together to say, cut it out. Stop doing the thing that is blatantly unconstitutional. So a huge group of Republican and Democratic FCC chairs and commissioners and staff lawyers issued a petition asking the government to get rid of the News distortion policy, which is what Brendan used to threaten ABC and Jimmy Kimmel. The letter is basically as blunt as it gets.

The First Amendment forbids the government from embarking on such a product. The application of the news distortion policy is constitutionally problematic. The vast scope and vague language of the policy casts an omnipresent shadow over broadcaster's freedom expression while leaving the policy open to partisan weaponization. This policy has been on the book forever. Huge groups of Democrats and Republicans did not come together to say, repeal it until Brendan Carr started deciding that he could just wield it

to get what he wanted out of broadcasters. This is bizarre. It's like these people traditionally do not like each other and vote against each other when they serve on the FCC together. I mean, it's not clear to me what Carr's big mission or objective is

in running the FCC beyond using this policy to... Or any other policy. Yeah, to put pressure on broadcasters or any other company that he has leverage over to shape their content. Right. So that list of signatories, Andrew Barrett, he was the Republican Commissioner appointed by George H.W. Bush, Rochelle Schong, also Republican appointed by Bill Clinton,

Tom Wheeler, appointed by Obama, Alfred Sykes, appointed by H.W. Bush, Dennis R. Patrick, appointed by Ronald Reagan. It's like a long list of people appointed by Democrats, Republicans, people who are themselves, Democrats or Republicans, and they are pointing out that Brendan Carr sucks at his job. And he's not doing anything you're supposed to do, which is protect expression. He is actually threatening free expression in America. We'll paste a link to the letter. You can read it. It's illegal letter.

But basically, they're like, you've abused this power so much that no one else has ever used. I think they point out it's only been used eight times in the history of the FCC until Brendan showed up. They're like, this is so dangerous that you should get rid of this because this guy is so unhinged. He's a problem. Anyway, that's been Brendan Carr's a dummy, this time supported by a wide variety of commissioners, both Democratic and Republican. Brendan, as always, you're welcome to come on the show. You're welcome to come on Decoder.

Try to explain your actions. You are not allowed to talk about your underwear. We're going to continue to ruin your Google results forever until they show up because I don't think you can defend yourself, man. That's, again, been Brennan Carr's study. Now, on to the lightning round. All right. Jake, what's your first one?

All right. Neal, are you a big fire TV guy? No, but I'm a fire TV guy in the sense that fire TV has lost containment is a noun and now just represents piracy in general. Well, I have some bad news for you. And I think everybody who owns a fire TV stick, which is that Amazon says it is going to crack down on illegal streaming on fire TVs. They put out a statement from an unnamed spokesperson recently. they're like piracy. It's bad. We don't like it.

They said, quote, will now block apps identified as providing access to pirated content, including those downloaded from outside our app store. And they say they're going to do this on existing devices and new devices.

And I don't know what this means for the future of Fire TV because my understanding is that people only buy them for piracy. That's what they buy them for. Every single time I hear somebody talk about a Fire TV stick. It is so that they can watch

some new piracy service that I have never in my life heard of. Yeah, they're all fly-by-night IPTV services. And Fire TV is a concept is just Android stick. Mm-hmm. Like Amazon's Fire platform is just Android, right? Just like forked Android? It was, and now there's a new one that is forked Linux,

but it doesn't, you know. You could side load Android apps on it, is the point. Yes. And Roku sticks don't have this problem because of that. Yeah, because Roku is a Linux platform that runs basically HTML5 apps. So you could do it, but there's, Like Android is an operating system.

Right. You can just make Android apps and sideload them onto a thing that already exists and runs Android. I think Amazon was fine with this until everybody started noticing it was happening. We're going to talk about YouTube TV and Disney in a minute, but like in a world where everything is getting harder to literally pay for or access, the push towards just steal it is higher than ever. And the fire stick, literally when people say fire stick, they do not mean the Amazon product. They mean cheap IPTV streamer and you got to pay a guy Bitcoin to get like a login. They're everywhere. But the people who were flagging this to Amazon, not, it seems like it's pretty well known,

but you think it was actually the streaming platforms. It was sports leagues streaming platform, the broadcasters, they're like, you're doing your stuff. Who are very important to Amazon to actually do the real. Right. Amazon has a literal NFL deal. The NFL is complaining that people aren't buying Sunday ticket because they're silent on the fire TV. And you control the operating system. You can say we will just check for these 10 IPTV apps,

which, by the way, are available freely in the Apple App Store because in Europe you can actually just buy IPTV logins. So there's a lot of back and forth here about like how much you control the store, who the store is for. It's a lot. What's remarkable about the Fire Six is it is not, these are not things that I think are being like purchased

by super tinkerers who know their way to, how to hack their way into it. This is like just it is everyone. It is everyone in the suburbs has a fire TV stick that they are watching some pirated stream on. Because somehow that is easier and I guess way more affordable as a way to get all the sports content that they want to watch. Oh, yeah. The Indian uncle market in New Jersey for weird IP TV boxes. Right.

Off the charts, man. Like there's, it's right. It's happening right under your nose, Joanna. It's probably happening in my house. Like, if you want to watch cricket, your choices are pay for 50 different streaming services or pay one guy in Edison some money. Specifically in Edison. I know Edison.

I was in Edison last week. It's very much Edison, New Jersey, is the hotbed of like IBTV streaming boxes. And all of my uncles in New Jersey, like have this thing. I think the fire TV market is about to collapse. Like this is, if they follow through on this, they've got nothing. Yeah. Everyone's just going to buy a Roku. Or they're going to buy one of these other weird.

Yeah, yeah. Like, putting Android on a cheap device you can plug into a TV is pretty inconsequential. The question is, will Amazon allow those to be sold on Amazon? And these are apps that you just get from the websites. Or can you get them in a Google Play Store? IPTV apps. I'm very, I think there's a lot to be written in the year to come because the carriage disputes and the fights between broadcasters and the prices are all going up.

Piracy is about to explode. It's a year of Linux and the year of piracy. Those are my two calls. Everything is... I'm already doing my 26 predictions. All right, Joanna, what's yours? I don't have as good of a wind-up as Jake, but I want to tell you about the $230 Apple jock strap.

That's so rude. It's called the iPhone Pocket. Sure. Is that really what they named? That is what it's named. Okay. And it is a little. limited edition collaboration with Japanese designer Issy Miyaki, and you can get this. It looks

like a sock, a long sock. I mean, we just could just, everyone on the internet has seen this. Any of your listeners has seen this thing. It's $150 for the short one, for the longer one, $230. Oh, because you got to pay for more fabric. I will point out Issymiaki, famously the designer who made all of C-Drobs turtlenecks. We've got some real fashion plates on the verge team who have told us this is not an absurd price for Issymiaki. It is, however, a sock on a hoop. Like, I don't know how else to describe it. Like, it's a long piece of fabric, like, hoop-shaped.

And I don't think the objection is the wearing of the phone. Is anyone seem to, like, because, yeah, like, the cross-body thing is a thing. They obviously did that for this iPhone release. It seems just to be, like, the reaction to the ridiculous-lookingness of... No, I think. Now is not the time to release $200 socks. Yeah, it's one thing. I understand, like, for an ECMI piece, $230 is very reasonable.

Okay. But it's not an Ysemiaki piece. It is an Apple product. Right. Right. And if you're going to sell this at an Apple store, a bunch of people are going to walk in and see a really long sock that costs $230. And you're like, oh.

It has no branding on it that says you have a fashion item. It's just another Apple. It's just another Apple accessory. I will point out this is not the first sock. Apple has ever made. Yes. That is absolutely true. And there's been a lot of great comparisons

to the iPod sock. So we have a clip of Steve Jobs introducing iPod Sox in 2004. It's actually, this is the second week in a row. We've run the Jobs product introduction. Just watch this one. I want to point something out about it. Just watch it first.

Today, we're introducing a revolutionary new product for your iPod. Sox. You know, There's all these companies that offer cases for your iPod. And, you know, sometimes we think they make more money on the cases than we make on the iPod. And so we thought we'd offer something too. And our design team came up with socks.

And they're really cool, actually. You can put your iPod in them. And they like that. They keep your iPod warm, on cold days. They protect it and they give you a little more personality. Those are $29. And he actually says in that clip, other people are making more money on the iPod cases

and we're making on the iPods. He's like totally honest about it. That is completely self-deprecating. Like Steve Jobs, the biggest ego in the world is like, yeah, it sucks. Like, why not? Like, these other guys are making money. We thought we'd have some fun.

Can you imagine any tech executive today doing any demo where he's like, I don't know, it sucks. Like, all these companies have utterly lost. or sense of humor, even in this context. I think that's like, I mean, I don't know. I think in this day and age where we're making fun of Apple for small things, it seems like they kind of just walked into this, right?

If they have been like, this is funny. Right. But they're like, this is a serious press release with like beautiful photos of models with this jockstrap thing. I was just thinking, I was just talking, yes. Joanna, do you know what a jockstrap? I do. My tweet.

went pretty good on it. It literally, here, look at this picture. Wait, I do. My tweet went pretty good. Like, look at my tweet on this. It's very similar. Well, the retweets have it. I don't know what to tell you on it. Look at this.

I mean. Okay, okay, okay. I see what you're saying. There's a bit of in that photo. Yeah. Like, look at the, you know, it's hard-making me look at it. It's worse when I look at it side by side. Yeah.

But please stop making me look at it. It was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw that. I don't know why. I'm just saying if they had done this with some humor, I agree. We made a very silly product. We made it with a famous designer, but it's like the, it's fun instead of it's so serious. Steve Jobs is able to be like, this is pretty funny.

And I actually think that Apple knows at this point that there's going to be this like world of people making fun of X, Y, and Z weird product that they do. I think they hate it. I think they know it, though. I will know, like the thing. They're like, yay, it did it. Like, went viral and these, but like, the Applecloth, like, did that. It was a whole thing. And it's like a joke now.

I'm just saying in the process of like Vision Pro launch and all that stuff. Right. When they showed me the eyes. And I was like, have you ever worn a headset with your eyes on and talk to someone else in a headset with their eyes on? And I'm like, yeah. And I was like, did you laugh? And they're like, we don't laugh at work. Yeah.

And I was like, I laugh at work all the time. Yeah, they know that. Like, what? Like, if you, we did that thing in the VisionBrow or you had the VisionBrow or the Eyes and I had the Vision Brow? Yeah. I would not stop laughing. Yes, it does seem that some made laugh. And that's the company that put out a $230 sock and forgot to laugh about it.

But they also, like, they play up in these keynotes now, a lot of humor around their executives. But it's never around their products. It's never around their products. They will never say a negative thing. It's at the expense of the executives. Is it? Yeah. Do you remember when Marquez Brownlee interviewed Tim Cook?

and did like the blind ranking, where he was like, I'm just gonna go through some products. And it's one of those things where obviously, you're gonna have to rate something last. And Tim Cook just refused. He refused to play ball. He would not put a number on anything. At some point, Marquez goes, all right,

the magic mouse to the lightning point on the bottom. And Tim Cook is like, we have one of the best design teams in the planet. And you're just like, dude, please, this is the audience. Like, have some, it's all right. You're not gonna upset anyone. I just say, I don't think any of these big talk companies have a sense of humor anymore.

And I think that's another part of the reason that people are kind of revolting against the products. Like, everything is way too serious. Everything, the stakes of everything are too high. Well, then they try, like the Jimmy Fallon situation with Google, right? Like, it wasn't funny. No. No, no. Right?

They were trying to have fun. But then it, like, it's like, paying a comedian and having fun are actually different things. I am agree. I agree. I just, I'm just like, I looked at this and I was like, you could have had so much fun with this. and instead what you got was a jockstrap treat, which apparently went megavai. Not really.

That's what I said is like, it did good. Don't show too good. All right. Let's look at it again. No, I don't want to. All right, my next one, coming back to streaming. Disney is losing over $4 million a day in revenue on the YouTube TV blackout. So ABC, ESPN, free form, not available on YouTube TV.

It's gone on for two weeks. They've missed two Monday night football games. I became more aware of IPTV than ever before when Packers Eagles was not. available on YouTube TV, which I pay through the nose for. I'm not going to say why I became aware of IPTV at that time. It's very bad. Bob Iger showed up on the Manning cast, the alternate broadcast with Peyton and Eli Manning, and everyone thought he was going to try to put pressure on YouTube TV.

And then they chickened out. They didn't do it. They didn't talk about it. They didn't talk about it. Sports Illustrated ran a headline that was like, Manning's chicken out, like, fail to do job. Like one reason you would have Bob Iger on during a Monday Night Football game is say this isn't available, and they didn't do it.

Weird. Sundar Patry and Bob Agar are now personally involved in these negotiations, according to some reporting. Sundar had to remember that YouTube TV exists. Yeah, I'm going to be honest. Like, is YouTube TV really that big of a- It is the biggest cable network in the country. It's the only one that's growing.

And so it's taking share from everything else. Like, no one is buying Comcast or Frontier or whatever, disclosure Comcast investor or company, but, What I'm saying here is they're losing shared cable TV. So take that for it, it's worth. And, you know, YouTube wants to be TV. So having YouTube TV, like, slide, they can kind of get everything at once. It's very big in the suburbs.

It's very big in the suburb. For those of us that don't have the box, the illegal boxes, legal buyer TV. I'm sorry, I got the sports illustrator. It's worse than I said. It's Peyton and Eli Manning, drop the ball, embarrassed themselves with Bob Eiger interview. because you had one point, which is to say something spicy about the negotiations, and they didn't do it. I don't know if that's how they see themselves, but that's the context of Bob Eiger is not allowed to show up, unless you can talk about the fact that ABC and ESPN are not on the biggest cable service in the country here.

Is YouTube TV not just the price of cable, right? Why is it so explosive? So you don't have to pay for cable, you don't have to deal with it. You have to pay for cable. You don't have to get a box. It is good. It runs on Apple TV. You just get it.

How do you watch TV? I don't. Yeah, I get that feeling. I'm quickly getting that feeling. Sorry. We're now at the point where it's earnings season. I don't really either. And I want to play this clip from Bob Eiger, because I think it will illustrate the point that you're making here.

Can we run the Bob Eager clip? This is from Disney's earnings. He's talking about YouTube TV. The deal that we have proposed is equal to or better than what other large distributors have already agreed to. So we're not trying to really break any new ground. Okay. So Bob Eiger is saying we have a deal on the table with DECD's saying. Google that is the same deal that everyone else gets.

And Google is saying no. It might even be said, or better. It might even be better than everyone else is getting and Google is saying no. I don't know. Here's my theory of the case. Google runs YouTube. What do we know about Google's attitude towards YouTube creators? Doesn't matter.

You can go. Good luck not being on YouTube. You, by all means, Mr. Beast, go to Twitch. Have fun. See if you get the revenue or the audience. Any creator, any individual creator, is meaningless to YouTube. And Google now has the scale to look Disney right in the eyes and say, Monday Night Football is just another show.

We don't actually need it. We're not going to pay the price that you are charging all of our competitors. We're going to pay substantially less than that. And they've been stuck here for two weeks. There might be momentum by the time you're listening to this. Maybe it will go through. Usually the deals go through right before the football game. right, historically in these carriage streets, right before the big event, we've had two Monday Night Football games, including one in which the Packers deeply embarrassed themselves and broke my heart.

But that was a big game that a lot of people wanted to watch. Deal didn't go through. Maybe we're going to go another week. But I'm telling you, the attitude here is the same attitude that Google has towards every YouTube creator, which is, yeah, you can go. Good luck. And I think they're saying the same thing to Disney. Yeah, you can go. YouTube TV will be just fine with that Monday Night Football, and that is a wild place to be.

Unless they cave, maybe they'll cave. But I suspect just listening to Bob Iger being like, it's the same deal I've run out Scots. And Google's like, no, we want a better one. It's a lot of power in this ecosystem. That sounds right. I feel like increasingly these deals are also about data. And I don't, I feel like there have been reports before that Google has asked

for a lot more information than other, you know, programmers. It'll be interesting to see what comes out at the end of this. Because I feel like usually the details leak about what they actually won in holding out. I remember when Apple was trying to get Sunday ticket what they wanted. The thing they wanted was rights in all formats to come. And the league was like, we can't lose out on VR streaming. And sure.

Can watch it in the steam. Yeah. All right, Jake, what's your next one? All right. Steam frame. Speaking of Apple, we got a big app store, big little, big little app store update, which is that mini apps are now legal. mini apps used to be

Apple is now going to allow I think officially allow mini apps in the app store or inside of other apps they're going to take a 15% cut of purchases inside those mini apps that are inside of other apps and this I think is in response to a lot of regulatory pressure the US's lawsuit

against Apple names Apple's I think in hospitable environment toward super apps which collect all these mini apps as one of the reasons that it's stifling competition. So I don't know precisely what made them change this, but apparently this change comes right after they locked in a deal with Tencent to allow them to make this happen with their apps. I don't know if this is going to revolutionize the App Store, but it feels like just one more outcome of every government on the planet being like, hey, Apple, like, let up.

So in China, Tencent has WeChat, which has multiple. multiple many apps for like riot hailing, food delivery, all that stuff, telegram, Discord, all of the stuff. Everybody wanted to build super apps for a while. Remember we heard about it? And Apple basically shut it down. I just don't know if like in the age of the AI economy, there's gonna be a huge rush to be like,

what if we put our app inside of WeChat in America? Yeah. Because then WeChat just gets to use your app for you. It seems like, good. I don't know. Like, Open AI is aspiring to be the everything app. And like, maybe this gives more flexibility to our apps. Oh, so you could put like a little app inside a chat chippy.

You already do that to some extent? Yeah, I think you can. That's why I thought this was a kind of thing already. It's in China. It's a huge thing. Here, Apple has prevented from happening. Right. Here, it's like Apple has their like mini apps within their own apps, right?

Like in the messages. Like you have to come to those. Yeah. No, that's a fit. This is very much like WeChat is its own platform, such that people switch. more freely between iOS and Android in places like China. Right. Because WeChat is the operating system they're actually using.

Which is why Apple doesn't want to allow them and it now is, which it's hard for me to imagine the Facebook app suddenly adding ride hailing and messaging and a million other things inside of it. And now Facebook is my operating system and I can go to whatever phone I want to. It feels like that ship has sailed. It feels like a bad experience in general. This seems like Apple saw a way to keep making money and get ahead of, you know, regular. and not lose their grip on the ecosystem, and that's what's happening here. But for everybody who's really excited about HTML5 mini-apps,

I have, you know, great news. Now is the time. Yeah. Now is the time to take all of your development energy away from AI. This is, H-TM-5. Can I say something? This is a little more 5G than App Store. Okay.

Rough. All right, Jan, do you have a second one? Close us out. Yes. Waymo is hitting the highway. They are going to start opening up rides. It doesn't seem to ever. Everyone in three cities, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix, where you previously could not ride on the highway.

Now they are opening up some rides on the highway to some people. Sure. I'm so confused. I mean, you can just buy a Model 3. Yeah, right. The whip however you want. I thought all the cars that have self-driving, you can just, like, buy. I thought highways were the easy part.

Yep. So then why are the robo taxis coming to them later? Because it's riskier. Because if you hit something on the highway, they will not possibly live. And this was Waymo's way of really easing in. After that cat incident. Bad timing with the cat incident. But that was a large part, I think, of their strategy is we have been so safe.

We have avoided fatalities. We have avoided so many, you know, so much bad press or bad incidents around Waymo. We've been so careful. And so they were really testing highway driving for a really long time. They had been testing in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix for a long time. This is just now finally we will allow some people. And the reason this is like an actual big deal when you are a Waymo user is you often will get in a car and it will take three, five times, whatever amount to get someplace because you can't get on the highway.

And it just has to take local roads. I was in San Francisco a few weeks ago, and it was like, okay, my Waymo, I'd love to take this as a Waymo, but it's 20 minutes longer than an Uber. Like, as a person as a supercruz and a GM car on the highway, I'm like, this rules. And I'm like, I would not let a robot go this fast. Like, I have to stop being super, they're very different technologies. But like, I'm like, every now and again, I'm like, this is, we're going too fast for this thing to be driving it. itself. But you're, it's like, you still have to do eyes on the road and all of that.

You have to take over? Yeah. It's a take over. Yeah. That's, it's just a very different level of autonomy. But there's something about going faster. Yeah. That's exactly why. Yeah. All right. My last one, I'm just pointing this out, there's a teaser for Toy Story 5. And the villain is it, is a tablet. It's like very good. Like the toys are getting swept away. I want to be there right away. When is it coming out? I'm not going to fall asleep in that movie. June 19, 2026. More than 30 years after the first toy story movie.

Oh, I can't wait. Wait, is the, it's the villain is... The villain is a tablet called lily pad. It's shaped like a frog. How careful do you think, like, they've been with not making sure that's an iPad? What is the conversations happening between... If these Google negotiations don't go,

well, that thing is going to run Android tomorrow. Yeah, the real question is, what's the timeline before they start selling the lily pad? Right. All the kids are going to want it. Totally. Well, all the kids are... No one is going to learn.

The kids already have. Yeah. You know, so that's... Please stop what he's already dead. All right, that's it. We're way over. We're wildly over. Joanna showed up late.

I never even like made fun of you for being David. I'm so sorry. I did my best. You did a good David. You were wondering. You weren't... I didn't even compare you to David and make you do a David impression.

Yeah. All right. That's it. That's the show. Thank you for listening. Sunday. I'm on Virgin History with David, who is a lot of The real David. He's alive.

Don't ask any questions. David is alive. David and Sarah Jong and I did a whole episode of version history in LimeWire. I will tell you that Sarah and I full existential copy of a lot of crash out. But that's what you come here for. Boy do we deliver in that episode. I'm excited for that. Tuesday on the birdcast, David has Corey Doctoro talking about

entertainment. We have ad-free feeds of all of these podcasts. if you subscribe to us, which also keeps us from being able to be told what to do, which is very important to me. And we're going to hear for you. You can email us at vergecast the verge.com. You can call us 866 Verge 1-1, the Verge of the Verge and the Boxingney podcast network. Today's show is Frusahierke-Larchuk and Andrew Marino. Do you want to say it? Rock and roll. There it is.