The Vergecast - We unfolded the iPhone Duo

Episode Date: September 11, 2026

Apple did the one more thing: This week it announced its much-anticipated folding phone. It also announced some surprising and controversial new AI features for Apple Watch, including "Live Rewind," which gives the user a text transcript of the last 15 seconds of real life. On today's Vergecast, Allison Johnson and Vee Song report back from California after having more hands-on time with Apple's new devices. Plus, Nilay Patel and David Imel take another swing at discussing Mac Minis and local LLMs with AI researcher CJ Trowbridge. Finally, Allison and Jake tackle some non-Apple stories in the truly rapid-fire thunder round. Further reading: iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max: Our first hands-on impressions The variable aperture isn’t the cool part of the iPhone 18 Pro’s camera Hands-on with the foldable iPhone Duo Hands-on with the new Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4 Apple Watch Series 12 has an always-on Siri that makes AI recaps of your day Read the Apple document explaining how new listening features still protect your privacy Mathematicians want proof OpenAI didn’t use their work OpenAI’s sly mathematical breakthrough sends a chill through academia Drama swirls around OpenAI’s legendary mathematical milestone The Trump phone just got a $250 price hike Six years later, Sony revisits its legendary XM4 headphones Hori’s electronic Ocarina of Time requires no musical talent. 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

You gotta try breakfast at you gotta try. And what better way than with a delicious pre-organic coffee? Starting with just $1 all day, every day now until December 31st. You gotta try breakfast at A&W. At participating A&W locations in Ontario. Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of devices with two or more displays. I'm Jake Kasternakas, executive.

editor at the verge, and we have a very big and very fun show today. We're talking all about Apple's event. We're going to go into the iPhone duo. We're going to talk about the Apple Watches. We've got a special segment with Nilai Patel and David Emel talking about running local LLMs on your Mac. And then the Thunder Round returns. But first, we're starting things off with Allison Johnson, who is here joining us from California where she has just been at Apple's event.

Allison, so glad you're here. Hello. We have so much to talk about, we're going to get to the duo, but to me, this is so much bigger than the duo, right? This is John Turner's first event as Apple CEO. And I think a thing that most people don't see is that they stop doing the live events. But before they air the video for everyone in person, Tim Cook has traditionally come out and said, good morning and all that and said a little thing. And John Turner did that this year.

And I'm curious how it felt seeing him and what that presentation was like. Because this was really his first, I think, public-ish appearance as Apple CEO. Yeah, it was, there was a lot of anticipation for it, I think. And we do that thing where, you know, the inside baseball is we kind of file into the Steve Jobs Theater. and we're way up in the nosebleeds, not that it's a big theater, but the execs are kind of milling around down by the stage. And it was so, I think it really hit me when we saw Tim Cook down there, kind of with, you know, jaws and everybody, wearing like a leisure jacket. I was like, looking super relaxed. It was like, oh, wow, this is, this really isn't his show anymore.

So Ternus came out. I thought he didn't say a whole lot. He was out there to kind of tee everything up and cue up the video that we were all going to sit and watch. But, you know, there was a lot of confidence and energy. And I think it's kind of a – he's setting a vibe, I think, for the Ternus era. First off, I love that there's a whole new visual style for the retirement. hired-ish Tim Cook. I'm looking forward to seeing what he busts out now that he's not CEO.

But yeah, it was interesting. So, Ternus, in the video, he also opened with some remarks kind of reflecting on the privilege of being Apple's CEO. It's very interesting. In the video, he did not, it doesn't say, I'm John Ternis, the new Apple CEO. He doesn't say, I'm the CEO now. They kind of just throw to him, and he's not labeled, and he just, just gives these remarks and he says,

I want to take a moment to express what an extraordinary privilege it is to represent the teams here at Apple. I'm just going to read a very brief and I think like slightly rough transcript, but he mentions that he's been there for 25 years and that he could never have imagined being up there as CEO. And there's a thing he says where, you know, I love the idea that the things we make people more productive and let them do things they never thought possible before.

And, you know, he gets almost in that sort of like Johnny, I've headspace of, you know, we imagine new things and make them real and put these new things into people's lives. And, you know, I think maybe they don't have that many opportunities to do that. And maybe it feels, this would feel tired if he said it every single year. But it does, it feels, you know, nice to hear from the new guy that he's taking that, I think, Apple creative spirit forward. Yeah. And there was a lot of emphasis on the phone and the technology as the, they called it the personal intelligent hub or something like that. And I think trying to like set the stage ahead of all the, you know, the specs and all the things we were there for,

to kind of remind everybody, you know, the Apple ethos, at least the one they, they project on stage at a keynote, is like, this is here for you. It's, you know, it's centered around you, and your needs and, you know, he got up and said it. So there's, that was, that was the tone, he said. You know, Apple has a funny way of like tiptoeing around things when they want to, but yeah, for him to come out and was like AI, you know, he wasn't talking about Apple intelligence only, was interesting. And I think it was, they, they understand the, the difficult position that they're in, you know, they want to push these AI features. The new series is like actually finally good.

All this stuff on the watch that V's going to have some existential feelings about later. So many feelings. Yeah. So I think maybe that it was kind of to get ahead of that and be like, we are going there. We're getting into the AI. We know it's messy right now. That's kind of how I read it was sort of like. you save a thing that everybody is kind of nervous about and then break the ice was

what he was open. I also thought they did this really interesting structure to the event this year within all of the products. And you noted this in the live blog. They started with the iPhone Pro, right? And they opened all software, right? And they did this with the watches too. The first half of the presentation, all software.

They barely tell you what's new about the. the hardware. And I can't remember them doing it to quite this extent before. Can you? No. And to be, I don't know what the time was. We were definitely less than like 10 minutes in. And it was like iPhone 18 Pro. Here it is. And we're like, oh, oh my God. That's usually, we have to wait till the very end for this usually. So it did feel like, whoa, we're off to the races. And then it was like, okay, we're seeing a bunch of stuff. We saw it. at Dub-dub, you can change series voice. Great, cool.

People probably didn't tune in to that who are maybe paying attention now. It was a little bit of whiplash for us. It makes sense that, you know, there's frankly not a ton to talk about hardware-wise, particularly on the pro, that they wanted to be like, and by the way, remember all this stuff that you're going to see for the first time. I know it's so painful for us because I'm like, tell me about the dual aperture camera. Sorry, variable aperture.

This is the thing. If they had gotten in early, I would have gotten this straight. Uh-huh. But instead they're, and I think this probably makes sense from them from a marketing perspective. They're focused on the experiences that their software can create, which is often Apple's advantage. Let's talk about the pro a little bit, because that's where the event started. Thoughts in the pro?

You excited? Well, I have complicated feelings about, I mean, it's just. a camera nerd, I'm excited for, you know, we have, for the first time, like, pro actual manual exposure controls in iPhone camera app, like, amazing. I'm here for it. We have the variable aperture on the main camera lens. I have questions and thoughts about that, but, you know, it's a cool camera feature. And then outside of that, it was, there was so little, you know, there's a little bit of,

I mean, obviously the A-20 Pro in both the phones and then some improvements to battery. It sounded like the Pro Max is getting a actually slightly bigger battery, maybe dependent on if you have an E-Sim model. So that's a real tangible benefit. So it was kind of like, well, that's sort of it, hardware-wise. Yeah, it feels like a very, and I think like very polished version of the 17 Pro. It looks great. I think the colors are delightful this year.

But you're right. There are these very advanced and nuanced camera features that I think are truly for professionals in like a serious way. And that's sort of it in terms of very high level hardware features that are going to get people excited. So the variable aperture, you can move from what's, it's around like F1.4 up to F4,

or down to F4, I should say, and that lets you let less light in and get more in focus, which is a genuine photography tool. But to me, that sounds a little dicey because if you're doing that on a sensor this small, my guess is you're going to run into some possible issues with noise. Yeah, exactly. That's where I'm a little puzzled.

So the lead that they buried is that the abjures actually bright, now. It's F1.48, I think, is the brightest stop. So that's cool. That lets in more light. That'll be a benefit in your low light photos. But then they have the ability now. You can stop it down, manually down to F4. And yeah, I'm a little perplexed. I can see that maybe like going to that very bright F1.4-8 was not going to be ideal in every situation if you are, you know, the depth of field is just that much narrower could cause problems if you're trying to take a picture or something like closer in low light and only the very top of the thing is in focus or you're taking pictures of multiple people. I don't know. So I think that's why they introduced this ability

to stop down and to extend the depth of field. But for the most part, most things are in focus when you're taking pictures with a phone. The sensor is tiny. The lens is tiny. So the aperture is tiny. If you're talking about it in terms of full frame equivalence, you're already at something like F7, when you start at that like F1.48. It introduces all kinds of wild things of, you know, we have the fake poca mode, the portrait mode that we've all been using for years. I use it a ton with my kid. It sort of fudges those F stops in terms of a full frame camera. So you go to F1.8, you get a beautiful, like, blurry background.

All of a sudden, you have a physical aperture on the camera lens. you go to F1.8, you're like, this is nothing like the portrait mode photo. Yeah. It's just, I could spiral about the aperture, but I won't do that right now. It is very fascinating because, again, it's like this is a thing that I carry around a camera all the time. And man, like half this stuff is like over my head. I'm not sure that the average person is going to be able to take advantage of this. There is an auto mode, but to me, the variable aperture makes the most sense when you pair it with all of the software stuff they're doing for the pro camera, which legitimately looks quite detailed and quite impressive, right? Like, they're letting you dial in white balance and shutter speed and things of that where obviously the aperture.

Again, that stuff is like really pro level. I think it takes a long time to use those controls on a phone. screen, but Apple's pretty serious about this stuff, right? They film all of their events on their phones. And I think there is a subset of people who are really going to make use of that. And perhaps, perhaps the variable aperture is for that group of people. I'm not sure how it's going to be useful day to day, but when you look at it as a suite of pro camera features, that sort of makes sense to me. So I think that's sort of the high level for the pro. Let's talk about it. the iPhone duo.

Mm-hmm. It starts at $1,99 for the 256-gigabyte model, gets up to $3,199 for the 2-terabyte model, which please, if you're somebody who's going to get a 2-terabyte model, email me and tell me what you're going to do with that storage. That is bananas. Yeah. So 5.4-inch outer display, 7.6-inch, inner display.

it's got two cameras on the back, one on the inside that's under the display, and one on the outside on the front. I think that's the high level. Allison, you actually got to see this in person. You've handled a bunch of foldables before. What are your impressions? It's really nice.

You know, I think when the rumors you started getting serious about Apple doing this wide format foldable, You know, we've started seeing them over the summer from different competitors. And the Z-fold 8 is obviously the big wide-fold thing. And you look at any of them, at least I did, just like the pictures and the renders. And you're like, that looks weird. Like that looks like just like a weird phone.

And then you go pick it up and you're like, no, actually, this feels very nice. It feels kind of natural. and I'm not bothered by this kind of unusual wider aspect cover screen, you know, opening it up. The iPhone Duo in particular has the mat display on the inside, which is super nice. It I think is just a good idea on the inside of a folding phone like this. It really cuts down on the glare, gives it more of like a. I am now using a tablet feel, you know, that was very pleasant. The crease is hard to see, though, you know, we were sort of seeing that devices that had been folded more times than the ones we were using in the hands-on area were showing a little bit more of a crease. But again, like, I'm not personally bothered by the crease on on any foldable. They've definitely gotten a lot better. but this one seems very acceptable, definitely to my eye.

It just seems like a nice polished device, like, so far. The hardware on Foldwolds as a category has gotten just so dramatically nicer over the past five or so, or however many years it's been at this point. You know, starting with the, like, this thing is fragile, and if I look at it wrong, it's going to break to, you know, I, I, I, I literally just today held a Z Fold 8, and it is a gorgeous piece of hardware. It feels really, really elegant, and I think you look at, I unfortunately haven't had a chance to hold the iPhone duo yet.

I've seen the photos, seen the videos. It looks fantastic. It looks like a really nice device. You've held the Z Fold 8. Are they similar? Because the Z Fold 8 seems quite polished, actually, for, I think we expect Apple to kind of come in and show everyone how it's done. and I actually think Samsung may have gotten there the same summer or perhaps earlier.

Yeah, it's a very similar experience. Z-fold eight, I think, is a bit thinner and lighter. And the duo, it is that weird experience of you're having such an out-of-body. You know, you watch the keynote. You have to run over to the devices. It was crazier than ever this year, which is not a surprise, I guess. But you finally get the thing in your hands and you have to sort of like come back to it, you know, after the initial, I've got to get the photos. I got to, you know, get some thoughts

together on this. It wasn't until like they're basically trying to kick us out. And I was like, let me hold the duo one more time. And just kind of like thinking about it and not in that, like, isolation. I was like, this, this is a little bit heavier. Like, this will be. a consideration for how people want to, it's just a different form factor. It's a different kind of distribution of the weight. I think one thing that I'm kind of stoked about is that it has mag safe and I can put the friggin pop socket on the back of it when I want a little like support with the form factor. So I'm excited there are magnets in the back of this wide foldable. That's a big one.

It is interesting. I think usually these differences in hardware are kind of marginal. And I think on the foldables, it's actually still a big deal. And you mentioned it. The iPhone duo is a touch heavier than the Z fold eight. It's a touch thicker than the Z fold eight. And I think at that size, these things do still matter. But the question is, do they matter as much as the experience of using it?

And I think a big part of the story on the Android side is that the software is not always there to make it a fantastic experience or to sell this. You got to see this. I was seen Apple's very, very polished, curated environment. How was the software? Did it feel like this is going to be something that is meaningfully better or different than using a standard iPhone or just using an iPad mini to you? This, I think, will be a little bit more of foldable on training wheels, which makes sense, I think, for the iPhone. You know, we've had eight years of Samsung foldables and inner screens and in Samsung's, you know, typical way. They're like, you can run four apps on this thing if you want.

And I think the target audience for that phone is like, great, that's what I want. I want to be able to do all my things and I'm okay with a little wonkiness. You know, sometimes I, you have to futz with it a little bit. The duo is going to let you run two apps as a maximum. You can have that floating like picture and picture video if you were watching a video also. But it seems like they've just taken a lot of care, particularly with the continuity of how it is when it's folded. versus how it is when you open it up. And it sounds like they really didn't want it to feel like two different experiences,

which is a very Apple approach to it all, I think. I think the more common approach for the Android devices has been like, you know, getting the hardware to the point where it is now, you know, elevating it and it's more sophisticated than was. and then sort of building on the software capabilities every year. But Apple coming out of the gate, you know, late to the foldable game, relatively speaking, they have to do that thing where it's like super polished and it's going to be very friendly to someone who's maybe just familiar with an iPad and doesn't want to be running for apps at once. They just kind of want it to work and play videos when they want videos.

and do FaceTime and something else when they wanted to do that. It seems like it will be that device, you know, pending, actually using it a lot. Software so often is where Apple has the advantage. And, you know, watching the videos, watching people's hands-ons, iOS looks, I think so polished for this experience,

it looks like they really did do a lot to make it look natural and fluid. I dare I say liquid glass looks good here. Right. I'm like, oh, maybe there's something. Like, I have it turned all the way down in the beta. And I look at it on the duo, and I'm like, oh, there's something here. But you're right.

Like, it is very interesting. You mentioned it's like a foldable on training wheels. And I'm so curious what the trajectory of this is going to be because if you look at the iPad, they're like, one app, one app, one app. And then they're like, one app, you can slide one over. Two apps, and you can slide one. And then now it's like, we have three different multitasking models. You can choose whichever you'd like.

And like, you know, this is V1 of an Apple foldable. I suspect it will get more complicated over time. But I don't necessarily know that it's a bad thing that Apple is being opinionated and being specific about how you should use the iPhone duo in V1, particularly as they're trying to get app developers on board. Apple made a big point about how they went back through all of their apps to optimize them for the duo's display. And they made a bunch of changes to iOS, right? The dock is perpetually on the right.

The settings and whatnot are in the top right corner, which I actually think looks really natural and great. Did you have a chance to play around with any of that? Just kind of picking it up and looking at the home screen, you're like, this is different. This is a little bit of a different experience. Yeah, having the little like toolbar are on the side of the screen. And you open it up and you're like, that's where you're like, oh, okay, this was designed to make this feel like just one experience and not like one phone over here and one phone over here. I think it sort of faded into the background pretty quickly for me, just kind of like doodling around on the device. I guess we'll see how people react to it. It's, you know, it's kind of the obvious thing, but it is a huge deal when Apple messes with the iPhone in any way. You know, this is their first new form factor for this device. And it's, you know, the pillar of their business. And so I think they recognize that and really like carried that thought all the way.

through like how should this be when it's closed? How should it be when it's open? What are the software changes that are going to make it feel better? Absolutely. And I think by virtue of this being Apple, they will probably sell quite a few of these. But it's also not necessarily a bad thing for them if this is not a total blockbuster because it does take time to get the app developers on board. It does take time to polish every corner that they might have overlooked in the operating system. And those are things that happen with time. And I think Apple is better at that than other companies at getting the developer ecosystem to come on board and to make sure that everything is eventually in place. All right, we've got a ton more to talk about.

We're going to take a break. When we're back, the song is going to join us. And we're talking all about the Apple Watches. Support for the show comes from Granola. You know the feeling. You leave a video call after nodding along and agreeing to tasks only to hang up and draw a total blank. Or how about this? You're in a meeting, head down furiously taking notes while everyone else talks, and then afterwards, you realize your notes are basically gibberish.

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What's up, everybody? It's Cam Hayward, Steelers captain, and host of Not Just Football. We just sat down with Aaron Rogers, four-time MVP, Super Bowl champion, future Hall of Famer for one of the most open and honest conversations we've ever had on the show. There was so much to get into, we had to split in the two parts. Part one is out right now, and trust me, you don't want to miss it. Aaron gives us his real story behind coming back for one final season. We also talk about how he was ready to retire once Mike T stepped down and how reuniting with McCarthy changed everything. We get into playing with Mike T for one more year.

this year squad, the old team narrative, who stood out this summer and what it's like to be in the quarterback. Aaron also opens up about what he still has left to accomplish this season and what it looks like when he hangs it up with it. And that's only part one. Part two drops this Thursday. That's when we go beyond football, the media, the conspiracy theories, what people still get wrong about Aaron Roger, his legacy, Super Bowl ring, the goat, the bait, and the overrated

and underrated where things really get off limits. One is out right now. Part 2 drops this Thursday, September 10th. Watch Notches Football with Cam Hayward on YouTube or listen to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. All right, we're back and V-Song is here to join us to talk about the new Apple Watches. V, glad you're here. I'm glad to be here. So there are two new watches, the Apple Watch Series 12, the Apple Watch Ultra 4. They were so similar over last year's models that

Apple just sort of bundled them when they announced the two of them. They were like, we've got these watches, here's the whole family, and now we're just going to tell you about software features, because that's most of us new here. So I kind of want to break it down because as far as I see it, there's sort of two big chunks of new features here. And one is a big hardware feature, but one that you're not necessarily going to see,

and that's the improved sensor array. And the second is AI and ambient listening, which is wild. Yes. There's a lot to unpack there. So let's start with the hardware, because I think that's more straightforward. So V, what's new here? There's the sensor array that touches your skin has been upgraded on both watches, correct? Yes.

So it's been a while since the sensor array has been upgraded at all. I would say, I think since the series six maybe is the last time, the sensor array changed. And there's been a lot of engineering done to be different. So basically the crystal is a bit larger, although the case footprint is the same, like we're not going up in size, and that's dinsure about our skin contact. The electrode for the EKG, it used to have like two spokes coming out of it. They're calling them petals, but like these two lines that would come out. And now it has 32, so more data in that way. And the arrangements of the LEDs which emit light and the photodiodes which receive light, because that's how the optical sensors work, have been kind of condensed.

The TLDR is that it's supposed to be a lot more accurate. We got a lot of questions about tattoos online and in our comments. And what I'm going to say is that it's going to depend on your tattoo and the placement of your tattoo because the fundamental underlying technology that it relies on light, how it reflects into your skin and reflects off of your skin, that has not changed.

So like the new sensor placement, depending on your tattoo and the darkness of your tattoo, that may help, it might not. So like the problem with this technology isn't like making light better. It's just like, that's just kind of the fundamental flaw

of that technology. and the rearranging of all of this stuff says that they can now flash the lights more frequently. So it will take more continuous heart rate measurements. So previously it used to be that when you were working out, yes, it would sample pretty frequently. But when you're just doing your day-to-day, it would be like once every five minutes or so, not very often. It's changed throughout the years because it wasn't, they were trying to preserve battery life. Because if it was flashing more often, you would have more. battery drain. Now they're going to be sampling once every five seconds, which is a 60 times

increase in frequency. And they're also now going to be sampling recovery, HRV, heart rate variation, which is the difference between heartbeats and is a proxy for how recovered you feel. That's something that a lot of other wearables like the aura ring or woup or Garmin, all these other devices have been measuring for a very long time. Apple has also been measuring heart rate variability for a while, but it's differentiating it as recovery. So this is enabling a new readiness feature, which, you know, again, the wearable nerds out there will be like everyone else has had a readiness feature for like five, six, seven forever ago. There's no new sensor, right? It's not like this unlocks some new thing that they can track, but because they have

more data, they actually are able to interpret it in new ways and get stuff like heart rate variability and this readiness scores. They went hard on heart rate variability. Is that a big deal? The thing about wearables that, like, I want our readers to understand is that a lot of those times it's not measuring anything super directly. Like, even your heart rate with the optical sensors, it's not measuring it directly. It's shining light into your skin, finding out the rhythm of your pulse based on how the light reflects back. And from that, an algorithm is estimating your heart rate. And we've gotten to a very high degree of accuracy with optical heart rate sensors compared to when wearable technology first came out. But heart rate variability, as a metric, it's a proxy

for your autonomic nervous system, which is kind of like a stress indicator, how recovered you are from certain things. And as wearables shifted towards sleep and recovery over the last several years, it's become a more prominent metric, especially among athletes. Okay, while we're talking about mysterious health metrics and uncertain science, some of this stuff sounded scary. They were like, we'll tell you your longevity. We'll tell you the age of your body. And I'm like, oh, God, like, can it actually tell that stuff?

Does that mean anything? Basically, these companies are all measuring different metrics, and they're weighting them in different ways in their proprietary algorithm to basically kind of give you an estimate as to whether your physiological age matches your chronological age. And the idea is you want to be younger or on par or younger. And if you are older, then maybe you want to change certain levers in your health so that you can be physiologically. younger than you're a chronola. I think it's a load of crock. Like, if you're using it in the way that I think it was originally intended to, like, see areas of your life that statistically, with the literature, we can say it gives you a better chance of living longer. Okay, sure. Like, you can be like, oh, maybe I'm not doing enough in terms of sleep. I should really change my sleeping habits so that it's

more regular. Or, oh, I'm really, like, kind of eating pizza and fried chicken all day. And maybe I should eat a vegetable every now and then. And that sense, it's fine. But you know, you kind of get into it, like I've talked to several readers, several people out in the wild who are just like my whoop age, I got obsessed with lowering my whoop age. And then, you know, I had one commenter who was just like, and then I got a blood test and found out I was really not doing so hot on that blood test. So it's like your health is holistic. But it's just very much like, guys, let's use common sense. eat nutritionally most of the time, exercise regularly, and try and sleep consistently. And your health age should be fine.

Like, you could get hit by a truck tomorrow, and it won't matter that your health age was like 10 years younger than your physiological life. This is the thing. Every single year I watch these Apple Watch presentations, and I'm like, oh, man, this is a major improvement over last year. And I've got to wear one of these things, or else I'm going to know nothing. won't be healthy. And then like three days later, I'm like, this is probably fine. Like, I probably don't need a little. Does this seem like a big level up to you? Does this seem like

it's going to change what the Apple Watch can do? Is it going to displace, you know, the whoop for whoop diehards? Or is this actually just like another iterative, okay, they're adding more expected health features kind of year? I think it's more towards the ladder with an Apple twist. Like, Apple doesn't really care about being the first to these health features. They care about executing it in a way that they think is scientifically valid and actionable. So last year they introduced a sleep score, right? Every other wearable is out of sleep score for like ages now. Like it's not new. And so like this health app redesign that's coming later in the year is very much kind of bringing it more in line with what we're seeing from other health tech companies. So in a sense,

it's catch up, but with an apple twist. So one thing I do give them credit for is that they do try and take a much more conservative approach so that, you know, you can just engage with it to your degree of comfort. You know, I'm looking at their longevity tab that was in the keynote. And it's less objectionable than some of the other ones that I've seen in this space, which are really just kind of pushing you to the frontier edge. it's a lot more like, hey, we're going to take the generalized approach. It's going to be a lot more holistic and top level, which I think for the average person is the right choice.

But, you know. Yes. You can see there's so much stuff in there now. So those are the health updates. To me, the more unexpected and more differentiated and wild update was what they did with AI. So Apple announced this thing called Audio Intelligence, which is just another AI acronym. And there are a bunch of sub-features in this, but the two that I think are most striking are called Live Rewind and Siri Recap. V, can you TLDR what these two are for me?

Yeah, so Live Rewind is if you're in a situation, you're like, oh, what did someone just say? you press the crown twice, and it, like, goes back 15 seconds in time and produces a transcript of what was said, so you can just check it on your wrist. And if you choose to save it, it will go into the Siri AI app. They, there's a new hardware chip that it's, it's recording nonstop to enable these features. Kind of. There's like, the way that it's described in, like, the privacy documents that it's come out, that's come out, because I feel like, Apple was very like, oh, people are going to have questions. So here is a white paper that was ready to go by the time the keynote had ended. There is something that they call a secure exclave on this

chip that the audio is processed through. Supposedly, Apple can't access it, you can't access it. There are no audio recordings saved. So the raw audio file gets sent to this exclave, beep boop-bop-a-i-p-i-processing happens. That's a scientific term, beep-boop-bop, AI processing. and then that audio file is immediately deleted. There is a visual cue that is recording, that you are recording something on the wrist when it pops up, as well as in the audio chime that also happens at the same time so that people around you are supposedly aware

that this feature has been enabled. And you have to manually enable it at all time. So at no point are you going to be able to be like, what did someone say 30 seconds ago? Like, you're not going to be able to pull up a transatlantic. script of that. It's just boops. You got 15 seconds. You got 15 seconds. So it's like the second someone says something and you're like, oh, didn't catch that. You have to activate it for this thing to come up. And who knows if it's going to be any good, right? Because it's a mic on an

Apple watch. It has to be kind of, this mic doesn't have like long range frequency. It's not like you're going to be able to point this thing at something someone said very far away. It's kind of more what's in your immediate vicinity. The social use case for this is very mysterious to me. Like I both intuitively understand it where I'm like, oh yeah. There are definitely times when I'm like, I could not get that word. But what is the use case for? And so I will press a button on my wrist, which will then announce that I missed what

you said and then read what you said instead of just asking you to say it again. I'm sure there are some accessibility use cases there. That feels very clear. And Apple did highlight that. For the day-to-day, for the millions and millions of people who have these, that feels very strange. And that's only one of them. So then there's Siri Recap, which I think takes us to a much grander level.

Basically, like, when it's on, you'll get a recap of the conversations that you have. So, like, it'll detect that that a conversation. it's not fully accurate to say it's always on recording because you can customize when this feature works. So you can customize it to be like only during work hours or never on during later hours. So like you have some customization there. It is opt in. So it's not turned on by default. So it wouldn't be accurate to say that every Apple Watch that's out there is suddenly listening to everyone.

That is not necessarily the case. But it has the ability, correct? You could set it to always listen. You could set it to always listen. And when it detects that a conversation is happening, it'll produce high-level meeting summaries that then appear in your Siri app and then auto-deletes after seven days.

So it's kind of like, you know, how you're on a Zoom or a Gemini or a Google Meet call and Gemini just like produces a summary of that meeting. Which I got to say, I love that. I like, those are really helpful. Like in certain contexts, I think there's going to be a lot of people

who find value in that particular thing. It's just, and this is a kind of a existential question that's been on my beat is there's, I know that I'm using it for a non-creepy method. People around me don't know the parameters that I've defined that this feature will work. They don't know how I've configured it. They don't even know whether I have a model that's compatible with this feature because it does require the secure Xclave on the chip. So it's not

coming to previous models. And so in the whole world of Apple Watch users, the vast majority of people who will not upgrade this particular year because they have perfectly fine and functional Apple Watches, they don't have this capability on their device, right? So it's only people who get the new ones. that have the potential to do that. And even then, it has to be opt-in. So there's just a lot of, like, calculation that's going on in my brain right now as to how this feature will work for most people.

But as I understand it, it's not a transcript. They strip attribution out. They don't differentiate speakers. So, like, us as journalists, you can't record a meeting and be like, oh, yeah, I'm going to go find quotes in there now. Like, you can't do that. Then it gets to this weirder place

where it's like, okay, so you get this. this generic summary of all the conversations you had throughout your day. And so I'm going to get a summary being like, you told somebody at length about GTA6. They didn't care. Like, what am I going to do with that? Like, I just, on one hand, I find this so wildly impressive from a technological standpoint. The fact that we're at a point where we can just leave a microphone running nonstop, we can use AI to make sense of it and summarize, like, that's very cool. whether that actually produces useful insights. Like, I don't know that we're there yet.

This feels like we're doing it because it's cool. It's very much a thing that I think is useful in a work context or in a planning context. Like if you're a parent and you have a lot of kids, you have to attend a lot of meetings for kids that have a lot of action items that come out of it. In these contexts, I think it can be useful. And we already have the kind of technology in like this particular context where you're a video conferencing and you're like, ah, what was the action item from this meeting that I need to do? Like in those contexts, I think that's what it's meant for. Like you attend a lecture and you want to know what the notes from that lecture are and the points that were salient.

But from our like day-to-day conversations where you're just talking with friends, do you really need like a bullet point of what, who said what and where or why? Like, not really. And also, again, like, no attribution is going to be given in these notes. So the way I understand it is, like, I say something. The meeting notes from the Siri Recap is never going to say V said this. There's no said in there. If there is a name that pops up, it'll be like Amanda did her homework. It's just so interesting that they're like, we're not going to make it too useful,

because then it would be really creepy. And so it's like, we don't want to go too far. But that is the risk here, right? Like, this is the summer that the meta-ray bands switched from being this, you know, kind of hot, up-and-coming product to being called purve glasses, like quite widely. And now Apple is like, oh, by the way,

you know the smartwatch we make, that millions of people buy every year, all of them now have the potential to record audio 24-7. I don't know how people are going to feel about that. Based online, not particularly happy about it, which is sort of like interesting

because in my comments, everyone has been like, meta-glasses, not well meta, makes them, I'll wait for Apple's version, which, you know, like, is sort of like a soft launch here with a device that is like already used by a lot of people,

trusted by a lot of people with a lot of sensitive information, right? Like smartwatches, I learned a lot about you in terms of your health and like a lot of data is collected from them. So in one sense, Apple is sort of testing that philosophy, I think, about AI wearables. And like, if we come out and have a very strong privacy first thing here, we have a secure exclave. We're not recording audio. Everything auto deletes. We're trying to keep in mind it's not only your privacy, but the privacy of bystanders around you. Like, it is one of the most thoughtful implementations of a privacy policy that I've seen in this class of device.

And at the same time, I'm like, how, I mean, obviously, they kind of want the press to communicate how it works and educate people. But I'm like, it's very difficult to have that stick in the public's mind. It's very hard to communicate this feature. Yes. Yeah.

And I think there's this important distinction between, can Apple keep your audio secure? I fully believe they can, right? I'm sure that this is quite well thought through. That's one side. The other side is, do people want to be recorded? And I think for Apple, this is like, this is an area that they're stepping into in a big way.

We're expecting them to release a pair of AirPods that have cameras on them next year that are going to probably do a very similar thing. And I think that's going to make people uncomfortable in a very new and unusual way. They're allegedly, you know, tinkering with an AI pin in their labs too, which is a thing that it's different when Humane does it and they sell a couple hundred of them versus when Apple does it

and this thing becomes a true mainstream product. I think this is actually going to make the Apple Watches one of the most interesting products of the year. So V, I'm very excited for you to test these and see whether this stuff even works at a basic level, I think there's going to be so much more to talk about here. I think it's also very telling

that these features don't launch until later this year. So like... That is interesting. Yep. Still more to work on. Some of the audio intelligence features are launching, but it's kind of like the lower stakes one, like, Shazam is going to work better.

Yay. Or like, audio, like it'll be able to tell the doorbell, right? Yay. Like... Okay. the pixel has had like a 24-7 Shazam feature for like a decade now, and it is like one of the single best features in the pixel.

If they had just said the Apple Watch now is 24-7 Shazam, maybe I think they would have sold so many new Apple Watches off that. They should have kept it simpler. It's still the underlying concept, right? It's the same underlying concept that it's always listening so it's always Shazam. It's just telling me whose song. That one I'm not stressing about. But you're right.

They've all been listening the whole time. All of our, I'm not going to say it. But you know that wake word? Like, your phone is listening to you right now. It's very weird. And there's a gradient. And Apple just took a large step forward. It just did a push.

Yeah. I have to say that I really feel like they are so aware of the conversation that's happening right now because of the documents. Those documents were ready to go. Right, they put it on like a white paper. Yeah. Before the keynote ended, they were like, and here's how it works in, here's how it's private,

and here's how it's secure. And it's sort of just like, oh, they're aware. And I think they're trying to do the thing that I've been asking META to do for two years, which is to lead and show how privacy can be done. Whether or not it's going to be effective in the court of public opinion is something that I'm going to be watching,

just because it's hot privacy summer. Hot surveillance summer with the flock cameras and all of this stuff. It's all related. And so this face is how I feel for the last 24 hours late. I think it's going to be so interesting to test these things and see what actually happens, but particularly to see how people respond once they're in the wild. V, thank you so much for joining us to break this stuff down. I'm sure we're going to have a lot more to discuss later this year.

All right. We've got more Apple to talk about, but not about this. this week's event. The other week, Apple announced some new Macs, and they went all out marketing powerhouses, which we thought was probably just some marketing bluster. And some listeners told us maybe it's not. So Neely Patel and David Amel called up an AI researcher to break down what's real and what's hype. So like a week ago, we did the Veritaschast and we were talking on the new Mac studios. And in the way that we are off, want to do, we dismissed Apple's marketing is out of hand.

these are the best computers for AI. I was like, that's silly. Invidia, because I'm Team Jensen, as everyone knows. And all these people told me I was wrong. Look at that. So I was like, okay, we got to get this right. I'm clearly missing something. The Vurchase audience doesn't often just tell us we're wrong for no reason.

Well, usually there's something there. So we called up CJ Trowbridge, who's an AI researcher. I've been following his TikTok for ages. He's really smart. And he is going to explain to us what's going on in the local AI. It is more surprising than you think. And whether or not Apple's claims what these Macs actually hold up. CJ Trowbridge, you're an AI researcher. You have one of my favorite TikTok accounts about AI, specifically local AI. Welcome to the Vergecast. It's nice to be here. Nice to meet you. I am a huge fan.

I'm very happy to have you here. So here's the May a couple. Last week, we were talking about the new Mac Mini and Mac Studio in Apple's very hypey press release about how they're the best computers for AI and I said something along the lines of, I bet Nvidia has something to say about that because probably Nvidia chips in a desktop PC are better. And then we got 10 million comments saying I was wrong, which I appreciate. A lot of them about unified memory, some of them about daisy chaining all these masks together on Thunderbolt. There's some reports that Open AI and Anthropic are actually buying these devices and the tens of

thousands. So I figured I should bring on someone who knows a lot about local AI and city out there to explain exactly how I got this wrong, and if Apple's claims are true. Tell me, is Apple correct here? Are they the best devices for local? What is the state of the art there? I think they're one of the only options for a specific use case that most people don't have alternatives for, especially for people who are trying to run large models at home. And you can see it in the price pressure around those particular skews versus the high-end consumer. Vindia's skews.

It's interesting because there are all these class action lawsuits against Apple for misrepresenting their AI capabilities. And I think that has fed into a lot of the speculation that their hardware is all bad at AI. And it's true for the phones. Their phones are not very good at running AI. But for these computers that specifically have hundreds of geeks of RAM, they can't.

Apple is now finally starting to market these Macs as the best Macs for AI that they have made. So I think my question here is like, they've had the Mac Mini for a while now, right? The M4s are the ones that went crazy for OpenClaw. Now they have M6. Why is the M6 tangibly better or is it? Because it seems like, okay,

because Apple is starting to actually market it as the best AI inference computer that they have. Yeah. So is it, it's not better? So like the inference happens using, typically its integer eight math or smaller, which there are a lot of structural issues that pop up around that.

And so like for one of them with Apple, they actually don't have the capability of doing integer rate math. So like they copy an integer rate number into the register and have to like convert it to 16, which is true for many GPUs as well. And they did that because it cuts the memory bandwidth and half so you can advertise twice as much, right?

Nvidia does the same thing. So a lot of these, I think like you like theoretically, you can say this is a single digit percentage improvement over the previous generation. And it's like, well, yeah, that's true. It is the best. It's better than the last one, but like 3% or whatever. So head to head with an Nvidia GPU,

what would you take? A new Mac studio or a PC with an Nvidia GPU? It depends what you want. Yeah. If you're trying to run a single model that's like less than 24 gigs, then something like an Artix 6,000 Pro is going to be a lot faster, like a lot faster.

But if you want to run something that's bigger than 24 gigs, it's not going to work at all. Right. Like, it's going to, it'll run in the system RAM at the speed of system RAM. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that's the big advantage that they have is like if they want to put a lot of RAM, you can put bigger models in the RAM, but it's not going to be fast.

Let me ask you just like a really dumb question. And this is like the root of this whole thing. Maybe I've just been poisoned by the hype. But, you know, a big part of the modern. AI moment is Invidia saying these GPUs are not just for graphics. They're for accelerated computing. This is like Jensen's speech. And it turns out AI really needs accelerated computing for a training and inference.

And we need to build, we need all the electrons in the world to achieve AGI because only Nvidia GPs can do it. And we're going to buy hugging face and all this other stuff. Like, right? And Vivida is on this tear because of the power of their GPUs. Right? That is the message they are sending. And, you know, again, maybe I, maybe I just bought the hype.

But I don't associate Apple with super powerful graphics. Is it just the memory architecture? Apple famously went to Unified Memory ages ago. They did it with the M-1s. Is it just that they got lucky in picking that memory architecture? I don't think it's even that. I think, like, for example, when you look at the secondary market for used enterprise inference cards,

even the ones from 10 years ago are hard to get. Because chips really haven't changed that much in the last decade, in terms of the capability at the tasks that they were already doing 10 years ago, the performance is like a single-digit improvement since then. There's new extensions, there's new shortcuts, there's new duct tape for really specific applications where you have like new kinds of tensor cores, stuff like that. But the actual like raw compute capacity is not super different with the 10 years ago cards versus today. And actually the inference cards, like a P40, for example, has more compute.

than any of the M-Series max chips, right? And these are 150 bucks. But there are cycles, and sometimes it's like you can't get them. I think the big difference there is that it gets you from not being able to do it at home to being able to do it at home. So it's true that there are better ways. There are more expensive ways you could get like an RTX-6,000 pro versus a Mac studio, and it's going to be a lot faster.

But it's much more limited in the, the RAM, right? So you can potentially get much, much larger models that will run on a Mac Studio with 500 gigs of RAM versus something like even the highest end RTC 6,000 pro that only has 96 gigs of RAM. So I don't think it matters as much to the memory architecture, although they do have higher memory bandwidth than many of the other chips are available. But the reality is that any CPU can do anything that any CPU can do, right? Or any GPU can do. GPs can do more things at once, they're faster with certain kinds of tasks like matrix multiplication. But if you look at like a, like a pixel two, right? A pixel two gets like five tokens per second on many of the new Quinn

models, right? That doesn't sound like a lot, but that's a quarter of a million tokens a day. So like how many old phones do you have in a drawer somewhere that you could be getting a quarter million tokens a day out of? You can run the newest AI models on like those never obsolete e-machines. Like it's a CPU, it's got storage, it's going to be really slow, but like, really any computer would work. So there was this article recently that came out that said, a 10-year-old X-on is all you need, right? Like a play on the original Transformers paper.

Because those old trashcan Mac pros are like a couple hundred bucks on eBay, and they have 128 gigs of RAM on some of them, and they have a Zion, and they have two GPUs. and they're like small GPUs, but it's big enough that you can put the parts of the model that need to go fast on there. So something like O-Lama or llama.cp, they'll do that automatically. They'll take the encoder, the decoder layers,

the KV cache, and stick that out in the GPUs, run everything else out of the system RAM. And suddenly, you can run these huge models or even from the hard drive, right? You don't even need the RAM to hold the model. Would you say that this frenzy to buy all these Mac Minis and Mac Studios is overblown? because I see so many AI influencers,

if that's what we're going to call them, daisy chaining all of these Mac studios together. They're buying $10,000 Mac studios, five of them put them together. You're saying, if the speed is not the most important thing in the world to you, you can ostensibly run these just while you're sleeping and they'll eventually on your Pixel 2.

Do you think that we don't really need these Mac studios and these Mac minis? It's all about how long you're willing to wait. Yeah, 100%. So especially the idea of like daisychaining, like doing like multi-system clusters to do inference is insane because it's going to run at the speed of your network, which is like slower than just running it off of an SSD. Like it doesn't. Apple wants you to use Thunderbolt, which is reasonably fast. Right.

That's a PCI level connection. Well, still, I mean, PCI is so much slower than RAM. Fair. Right. Like if you've got it, if you can put it in RAM, that's all you need, right? but at the same time, you can get superior results with these much smaller

and more efficient models that are distilled and focused on the particular task that you're trying to tackle. So I always say, like, don't try to cluster for inference. So if better means, can I solve the problem?

Can I do the task? You don't need the big models. You don't need to daisy chain multiple systems. You just need to figure out how many tokens a second do I need to reach my deadline or whatever. like how fast do I actually need this to go? And I think what I've found is that for most people,

it's really a question of their interaction with the model, is the speed that they're concerned with. Is there benefit to buying cutting edge hardware to run these models? Because that would be why you would buy a new Mac Studio. And we are seeing, I mean, there's a headline in the information. It's like how Apple accidentally won AI. Because to your point from the very beginning, the demand is actually very, very high for these cutting edge systems.

Is that being driven, anything or so just buys? Well, so like, the MBA answer is like VCs don't want to pay for KEPX, right? So like all these companies that are all these startups that are doing AI stuff are supposed

to be renting services instead of buying equipment. And so if you want to rent, you have to rent from any of these inference providers in the cloud. Versus, I think it's a different, a different perspective is people, especially at home,

people who are technical, maybe they're laid off, typically, like all kinds of different use cases where there is this feeling that they want to be able to run it themselves for whatever reason, right? Because you don't see, I think,

a lot of software startup doing that. I think it's more consumers doing that. And to some degree, people are buying it. But the difference with KAPEX versus OPEC there is that if you, you're doing, if you're renting in the cloud, you're renting something that's subsidized. So if you're, if you have like transaction economics where it's like, I want to buy a million

tokens as cheaply as possible and get them used like in the cloud, you're going to get a lower unit price from, from renting. But if you're someone who wants to be able to do it at home and you can afford a couple hundred watts of electricity every hour, the difference is huge. If you can pay 150 bucks and get a P40 card and have competitive performance with the cloud models just with the cost of electricity, that doesn't make sense for a company, but it makes sense for an individual because the unit economics are totally backwards for CAPEX versus OPEX considerations and the same kind of consideration for a person at home, where it's like, I don't really care about a little bit of electricity. I want 50 tokens a second at home,

without having to pay 20 bucks a month for it. And I think there's this like, particularly in the American cultural context, there's this like sovereignty thing. People want to have a garden. People want to do inference at home. Like it's the same kind of mindset. Like, why am I renting that from some sketchy person and it goes down when I need it? I could just do it at home. Americans want to do inference at home is like a political slogan that will completely scramble the data center debate in this election.

cycle. Like, we got to get, we got to get t-shirts printed. 100%. I've heard you talk about your thesis before. I know your other big prediction is that these frontier labs are just not sustainable, right? That it, all of this will come back and be run locally in different ways. Put a time on to that for people, because I know you've talked about that a lot. Well, maybe. Like, if they were serving the best models we have, the Chinese models, they could have favorable unit economics. And I think the question, when you look at, like, for example, there was this recent report from Dyrac about open router. And you, you'd see this like 60-40 swap of like people were using 60% of their tokens going to the US labs,

40% to open source models. And it swapped in the last like six months. And so now the vast majority of the market is for these open source models being served on open router by various inference providers at favorable unit economics, which is something the US labs are not capable of doing. So I think it's that same divergence between like we want to serve, you know, trillion parameter models and lose 40 times what we make versus like people who are actually getting serious about inference as a commodity business, the question becomes like, well, okay, is it easier for me to run Quinn models on open router and pay whatever it costs to do that? Or should I buy a trash can Mac and do it in my garage?

And I think that's sort of the tension that will continue to emerge because these frontier models are the open tiny models at this point, right? And it's only going to keep being true and getting more true. All right. We're going to have to have you back after I've built a trashcan AI rig in the garage. This has been amazing. Thank you so much for being on the show with us. Yeah, thank you.

Nice to meet you guys. Thanks, Nilai and David. We're going to take a break. When we're back, Allison is joining us again. It's time for the return of the Thunder Round. So like any good millennial, I have a love-hate relationship with Gen Z. It's the phenomenon rattling millennial. They just look at you.

They want something bigger themselves. Lifestyle is a priority. Motivation is being inspired. But regardless of how you feel about Gen Z, it's undeniable that they're changing national politics. Generation Z is increasingly showing less loyalty to traditional political parties. Many now more likely to identify as independent. So what is going on with the kids?

I think the biggest misconception about Gen Z's politics right now is that all of a sudden they're all socialist. That is just not the case. Yeah, yeah. They are embracing candidates who are offering new bold ideas in the absence of those ideas from establishment Democrats. This week on America, actually, Gen Z researcher Rachel Jambaza joins us to separate Gen Z fact versus fiction. It's not rocket science. And this is, you know, I keep saying like, young voters aren't that complicated after all.

It's pretty simple. Catch us every Saturday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. You've DM'd me at 2 a.m. asking if you should panic about your 401. You've paid an advisor $1,000 for one question. You've Googled, what is a rollover for the 10th time and still aren't sure? On this week's episode of Net Worth and Chill, I'm revealing my biggest secret. I finally built something to help address your finance woes. It's called Ask Dolly, short for Dollar, and it's about to become your newest financial companion.

Ask Dolly diagnoses your financial strengths and weaknesses, answers your toughest money questions, and makes economic news headlines actually relatable, and connects you to real human certified financial planners so anyone can make the right financial move regardless of their bank balance. No jargon, no judgment. No, you don't have enough assets for us. I'm breaking down exactly how Ask Dolly works and why I built her on this week's episode of Networth and Chill. You're not going to want to miss this. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube.com slash your rich BFF. Is the U.S. military facing a leadership crisis? It would be an obligation on the part of Secretary Hegsteth. and President Trump to say, look, here's why these officers didn't meet our standards.

And it can't be because they were politically aligned with somebody they didn't like. I'm John Feiner, and I'm Jake Sullivan, and we're the hosts of The Long Game, a weekly national security podcast. This week, Admiral Bill McRaven joins us to reflect on the 25th anniversary of 9-11 and what the firings and resignations of senior military leaders mean for the armed forces. Search for and follow The Long Game. wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're back, and Allison is back with us. But you know who's not here? Nilai and David.

And that means that I have unlimited power once again, which means, Allison, it is finally time for the return of the Thunder Round. Oh, my gosh. That is right. It's back. One night only, the Thunder Round returns. No one can stop us. This is also good because we have a time crunch.

needs to get to the airport. That's right. The Thunder round differs from the lightning round in this way. We go through stories quickly. There is a timer. And our producer, Eric Gomez, will strike us down with the power of thunder if we go too long. Let's do this. Okay, Allison, I have to tell you about the OpenAI math drama that happened this week.

Have you heard about this? I have not. This is bananas. Robert Hart has been covering it on Vervege.com. I encourage everyone to go read that. much more thorough than I'm going to be here. But there's this mathematics competition known as the Millennium Prize. In the year 2000, they picked a bunch of very difficult and complicated math problems

that they would award a million dollars to the person who solved them. And they're supposed to advance mathematics and encourage new discovery. So OpenAI, not thinking about Millennium Prize at all. And then on September 1st, so about a week ago, they hear some rumors that one of them might be solved or close to solved. And so they go, huh, let's see what we can do. And so they decide to throw like 10,000 AI agents at solving all of the Millennium Prize problems that are still open. And they get kind of close on one of them. And then they're like, let's throw the entire swarm at that problem.

and then they solved this problem. But in doing so, they scoop the mathematician who had made a major advancement here. So the mathematician had not solved the entire thing. He had solved a sub-problem of it. But now they're in a beef because the mathematician had used codex for part of his work.

And so he's like, yo, did you guys maybe train on my work in your system and they're like we can't rule that out oh my gosh it's really nasty it's really weird

I don't like this at all first of all the thought of a math problem you can't solve makes me feel queasy and I don't even want to look at it that's all of them for me directly yeah they're very simple math problems

that I need AI to help me with okay that's wild I'm so mad for that mathematician. Yeah, it's really weird. There are lots of, like, very messy ethical questions here. And I think, like, the math world is, I think, like, rightly kind of outraged right now. It's this weird thing where, on one hand, very cool and good that we can advance mathematics in roughly a week from a group of people who don't care that much. And we're just like, let's see if we can do this.

Like, that's cool and powerful. And on the other hand, the mathematics community is like, hey, normally we work together, right? Normally we share research and support each other. And yeah, that did not happen here. It's really why. Oh, we're going too long. All right. Allison, what have you got next?

Well, we're going to talk about the Trump phone. I'm so sorry to our colleague Dominic Preston, who probably thought he was done writing about the Trump phone. The Trump phone is $250 more expensive. It is a victim of Ramageddon. It was $4.99, which was the launch pricing. It felt kind of unexpectedly generous, I think, is how Dom describes it, because it comes with 512 gigs of storage and 12. gigs of RAM. Stuff doesn't grow on trees.

And sure enough, Trump Mobile had to, well, they raised the price. So it was $750 now. 754, what is effectively a, is it a two-year-old phone? Because it came out this summer, but it was supposed to come out a year before. So it's actually like at least a year old or more. And now it's $750 and it's already a bad for. phone? Yeah. Yeah. That's the gist of it. It's, he does know, so it's still running Android 15, which is a lot of money to pay for a phone running software that's two years old. But Dom was pleasantly

surprised that the phone got a security patch. Yeah, or it was moved forward from the February a 2026 security patch is now on the May 2026 security patch. Okay. Which is one more than we thought it would get. The horrifying thing about this is that raising the

price implies that people might still be buying this phone. That's not good. Oh, God. No. We must emphasize even as a joke, it should not be done.

It's not good. Please don't. Please don't. There are so many phones you can even in this economy. For $750, you can get a good phone. Does that mean like we, our apologies, we bought a few of these. We had to find out. Does that mean we can flip these? Do we flip these for more money? Or let's just pull out the Rams. I don't know. Okay. Allison, are you, are you an over-ear noise-canceling headphone fan? I feel neutral towards over your headphones. Oh, my God.

Okay, well, I think the legends in that space are the Sony WH-1000 X-Ms. It is that lineup. I think they really came in and I think kicked bows aside and I have to find that space. They're now up to the WH-1,000 XM-6s, but people loved the WH-1,000 XM-6s,

XM-Fours. And so Sony announced this week, they're going to bring them back. They're just like, people don't like the six that much. We'll bring out the fours. So they're bringing back the fours at a lower price point, which honestly just kind of rules.

Like, I'm like super into this like fan favorite gadget re-release. Yeah. I have a laundry list of digital cameras. I'd like companies to do that with. Let's bring back the Panasonic TM5. shout out to that one. No, I love it.

It's such a like, sorry, guys. We did screw up. Here's the one you liked. Please do that more tech companies. Yeah. I mean, this is like just a total win. It's like people like this. John Higgins, who reviews headphones and TVs for the Verge,

he's still like, yeah, no, I would tell people to get the XM4s over the XM6s. He's such an XM4 fan. Now, personally, I think. the design of the XM4. I don't like them as much as the XM6. But I think I'm the outlier here, clearly, by virtue of Sony bringing them back. So I'm going to take, I'm going to say this is a win. And I'm also going to take it out of this win that Eric has not struck me down yet.

I'm going to pass it back to you. Allison, close us out. What's our last story? Okay. Oh, right on cue. All right. We save the best for last. We are going to talk about the Occurational.

of time. So Aquarine of Time remake is coming for a switch to every elder millennial who was like socially awkward and spent a lot of time playing the Occurating of time instead of like going

outside, you know, not speaking from experience or anything. We're delighted. Thank you Nintendo. So we're going to have this feature of being able to like rather than just tap the buttons, you know, hum and play the songs that are integral to the

Ocarina of Time that I'm sure are ingrained somewhere in my brain matter. But so playing instruments is hard, it turns out. So if you are challenged by a manual ocarina, this company called Hori is going to have an electronic one that maybe defeats the purpose, but it's a little, A little is a physical object shaped like an ocarina. It takes double A batteries, I believe, and will cost $50. But you'll be able to... Almost as much as the game.

Yeah, when you put it like that. They're going to sell so many of these. I think this is utterly genius. There's something sweet about this. It's like, you remember playing the ocarina? on the, you know, playing it on the controller and you kind of knew it by memory. And then now we're making it like an analog experience. And then, but it's like, no, let's go back to the digital experience. But in a different weird way, I love it. I get that anxiety that's also like talking on

the phone in the presence of other people. Like, I don't really want to like interact vocally with a video game. So I fully wanted an obviously. Akkina back in the day, I think, like, probably for the best that I did not get one. Same. My impression is those things are not easy to play for the person who just wants it as a video game accessory. So I'm, like, so in on digital Okarina as an accessory. Yeah.

Convenience. Yes. I wonder where it ranks against a recorder. Did you do the recorder in school? No, naturally. Yeah. Yeah. Because that was a...

But you can't sell as many recorders as a... specific accessories to a game. They're too widely available. Awesome. All right, Allison, thank you so much for joining us, talking all about the iPhone, going through the Funder Round Revival, long-awaited thanks to the fans

who have demanded its return. That's it for this week's Vergecast. Remember to subscribe to The Verge for ad-free episodes of all of our podcasts, exclusive newsletters, and so much more. We love to hear from you. You can email us, vergecast at the verge.com,

or call the hotline. 866 Verge 1-1. The Vergecast is a production of The Verge and Vox Media Podcast Network. Today's show is produced by Josh Kahas, Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, and Travis Llorchuk. We'll see you next week.