The high stakes for AI Alexa | The Vergecast

It's time to review the highlights I'm joined by my co-anchor Snoop hey what up though Snoop number one has to be getting iPhone 16 with apple intelligence at T-Mobile yeah you should hustle down at T-Mobile like a dog chasing a squirrel chasing a nut number two at T-Mobile families can switch and save 20% on plans plus streaming services versus the other big guys what a deal y'all giving it away too fast T-Mobile slow down head to t-mobile.com and get iPhone 161 D you can save on wireless and streaming versus the other big guys it's tmobile.com

switch Apple intelligence requires iOS c.1 or lat [Music] hello and welcome to vcast the flagship podcast with being free with prime who knows maybe it's maybe it's $20 maybe it's crime is $15 and this comes for the ride that one feels slightly too plausible to me and I I Don't like it that we're free with prime we're free with prime like we might be I honestly don't know at the rate we're going what what is free with prime yeah just bundle Us in Jeff we support free markets here on the there's a lot to talk

about this week an awful lot to talk about I'm a NE David Pierce is here hello and I've got a guest in the studio David ml the co-host of the W for podcast is joining me today how's it going I just like I just want more human Beings physically present with me understandable and Pierce won't say yes to that idea we're we're legally not allowed to be you need to stay in your green screen basically no it's like you know how they like won't put the whole group on a plane like just in case something

like you and I can't be in the same room just in case we have to be several hundred miles away because isn't the right time in America for playing jokes To I was just on a flight and it landed and everybody burst into Applause and that is a you want you want a temp check on the country it's the amount of clapping when planes land is is going up I got a new plane story in slack every single time I arrived at the airport and I had to remind everyone I'm now at the airport so

going on all right A lot happened this week wait first Nei you have to tell us where you went on vacation because as always happens when You go on vacation um some singled digit but not insignificant percentage of the vergecast audience believes that you have quit your job and will never ever come back uh so can we just can we just tell the people about your vacation and that you have triumphantly returned no okay that's the answer is Nei back who knows I think it's you want to be at a place in your life where

people are like there's a secret ferious plot to defenestrate you every time you take a Break I I literally got an email last week that was well Nei seems like he's about to retire and then they just sort of went on with the rest of their question hold on uh I might be um you never know uh no we went to Turks and Kos it was a um it's like Max's winter break so we went to the beach and we sat on island and then everyone else on that island at that beach was also from

New York which is the whole state is on winter break so All of the children of New York were on this one small British Island it was great we caught a we we do for a [ __ ] shell we did the whole thing it was just a lot of like little kids going I'm walking here basically on the beach love basically Max made a bunch of friends it was Delight my phone service was bad which was important perfect this is a thing I look for in destinations now is is AT&T's roaming agreement not quite

as rock solid as it should be that's where We're going I used the satellite texting feature on the iPhone quite a bit in the last few months that's not great man well yeah it's it's great to not have the service it surprising that it works at all yeah but you know I it I'm probably Apple's like perfect boy for that because no one has ever used it except for me so have you seen the conspiracy theories they they launched the trial of letting T-Mobile iPhones connect to starlink so now there are Conspiracy theories online that

El is spying on you on your iPhone but yeah I don't I have Google fi you know so I'm just using the Baseline Apple free feature probably has nothing to do with Elon but that's very good um does it work well oh it well is it RCS is it SMS is it what's the story well it only works with imessage okay course which is very dumb extremely dumb uh but it works fine they wait so if you're like in an emergency and you need to text somebody With an Android phone it's like sorry you're a

green bubble you're going to die that's a great question I think in the emergency SOS like version of it it will send an SMS and it will ping off of that sat but there are much there are not that many satellites right that they are actually using because they just go over pretty quickly so you have to wait a few minutes every time like every 5 minutes it just goes over the hill and you have to wait another five minutes And then you can connect to it again yeah and then if you're in a car

even it has like a glass roof or something or if there is one single tree you cannot uh you cannot text via satellite so it it works and I did need to use it in a semi- emergency where someone at home was having a problem and it was really great for me so that's great hashtag notsponsored so yeah see spicy here in the that's very cool I just sign up for horrible roaming agreements and be like My phone isn't working and then i' stop thinking about the news for a week yeah roing room sound terrible

I've had Google F since like 2017 um and it is overpriced when you live in the United States but it is great when you have to think about nothing ever at all yeah in other countries but then Google periodically forgets that you exist for several years at a time that's true and you're like can I have new features Google and says No no you can have nothing and then they just Rebrand the name of the service and move on yeah don't give you any new features that seems right yeah uh lots to talk about this

week there was an Amazon Alexa event they announced Alexa plus we should talk about that uh panas pan literally in the middle of the event while he was announcing Alexa plus looked me in the eye and said hey how you doing it's one of the weirdest and funniest moments at any event I've ever Had in my entire life very good very panis um only me by the way that only happened once and it was to me he looked me dead in the eyes said hey how you doing and I was like hey and then he

went on he continued announcing Alexa plus go watch the video he you can see him do it did they put it up uh video there wasn't a live stream it was really painful for us when we were trying to cover this I didn't realize I just said go watch the video Because I just assume everything is available but I don't think oh no well and I think ponos at one point at the beginning of the event said like welcome to everybody watching from home and it was like well my guy you are used to Microsoft

yeah yeah we just Le read your live blog and then all right well I might be lying about Panos pan looking me dead in the eye in the middle of his presentation and saying hey how you doing but I promise you would happen There are like 20 people that can confirm that yeah um Apple announced a a very boring iPhone which we will talk about for a very boring amount of time a very appropriate amount of time but it'll be exciting that's what I meant to say I don't know about uh there's a sigma camera

that Dave and I need to yell about at length there's some framework stuff we got a lightning round Brenan Carr I'm back from vacation buddy I didn't forget about you it's it's pack Show let's start with Alexa uh it's what we expected I will tell you uh ponos is on decoder on Monday so I've talked to him at length about this and what I mean by what we expected is everybody saw chat GPT or llms in general and they thought boy this is how the these Voice Assistant should have worked this whole time and now

they announced a version Alexa that approximates that yeah well notably none of the assistants for the home have had It yet so it's actually a big deal that they're finally bringing it to something it is a big deal um I think the most important thing to note here is outside of phones Alexa has the biggest user base installed base of devices that have ai now which is just nothing else has gotten there yeah like Google has sort of rolled out some stuff to some bits and Bobs of phone apps yeah but like Google home devices

do not have Gemini true Apple homepods they have Siri which which it's not a thing yeah um there is the Humane pin uh dear sweet Humane pin Humane yeah HP stands for Humane pin by the way my my close personal friend my dead Humane pin uh ponis did not know that the Humane pin had been cancelled when I said I was like you got the big installed base and you know it's not like you were sweating the Humane pin he's like well they're part HP now and I was like no they're Not that was the

end of that um but like that the idea was that voice assistance would be this big platform shift we'd create a new generation of devices that would take over the phone that has absolutely not played out yeah but there's a lot of echo devices out there and so this is kind of a big deal like just from that standpoint I think it hasn't played out actually doesn't give these things quite enough credit uh people use Alexa a lot Lot like like a lot it's it's a running joke that people use it for you know music

and timers and their lights and largely true but like the the idea that people would interact with technology in a different and voice first way like happened it it came to pass it is a fully mainstream device and interaction method now and that's some combination of I think what Apple did with Siri early on and then Google assistant and Alexa but I think especially as you talk About like Standalone I talk to my house things like that happened it worked we can we can argue for days about how useful it is and I think the

answer is it's not that useful but like it it worked like Amazon did the thing and now the question is like can we take this behavior that we've trained people and point it at something yeah and I think that is the open question and that is what Alexa plus is trying to be it's like okay we've now taught you that it Is possible to talk to your technology now we have to you things to do with it and that was always going to be the hard part and Remains the hard part and I have 1,000

questions about what Amazon is trying to do here but like I I think it did come to pass in a real way and this is like the opportunity that Amazon has where're like there are a lot of people who are used to talking to their devices now we have to give them something to do with it yeah that's what I mean by it's I don't mean to diminish it by saying it's as expected what I mean to say is they put out commercials at the Super Bowl with celebrities in them talking to their alexas and

then people tried to do that and it didn't work because the classic and I I think at the event a bunch of Amazon Executives called it Alexa speak where you trained yourself to talk to the Alexa or the Google home or whatever it was in like robot voice yep and like Give it ordered commands because it's just a computer at the end of the day and it needs like structured commands and now it's like oh because there's an llm because there's some AI natural language input you can just talk to it and then also it

can figure out what you want talk back to you naturally and now you're in this conversation with this thing that can like maybe do stuff and so that's like the big idea of Alexa plus is like total reboot of Alexa with not one but like multiple AI models underneath it the hard part as I understand it was building the system that figures out what AI model to use when because you don't want to light up like all of anthropic to turn off your lights right so like that that was very much the hard part that's

what everyone is telling me is like they have all these different models they can use all these different ways they can do this stuff um and they they called Orchestration so you issue it a command and then it figures out how to do it and then they don't want to call them apps so they keep using this term experts so it's like the photos expert will show you your photos and it's like what it what and that is just an Amazon language it's like an actual term of Art in the AI Community like one of

the things they call this problem is the mixture of experts problem where it's like if we if we turn on the whole System every time you have to do anything that's way too much work no no that's the a this is what no no no no no that's the AI Community is using experts as a term of Art in that way Amazon is like when you ask it for photos the photos expert shows you photos agree and what they mean there is like there's an app it is absurd like don't get me wrong everyone is

using words however they want Amazon tried to make skills happen and that didn't work and now they're Trying to make expert happen I think they wanted to not use skills again yeah cuz that went so poorly so anyway it's the whole Al ironically skills is actually a better explanation of what Amazon is trying to do this time yeah last time it was just apps now it's actual skills they can just keep calling it that because no one knew they were called that before so it's fine they want to make this break but it's all This

is like very clever right you can just naturally speak to Alexa Panos gave a bunch of demos on stage other people from Amazon gave a bunch of demos on stage at this they were all live importantly he was only talking to Echo Show devices so the 8 10 15 21 are getting this first his point of view is that screens are important and you want a screen he wants to put a screen in your house and the big change for Amazon is Alexa used to Be on everything like you buy a smoke detector with Alexa

in everything I remember that event uh it was crazy and now they're like they're cutting down the product line there is going to be some new hardware eventually we are told um but they're cutting down the product line they want to put a screen in your house that's in the center of your living room or wherever your kitchen you talk to it it shows you stuff you you have a device and that is the Centerpiece of their strategy and then it is smart and it can do things everything from tell your kids a story to

I think this is really fascinating like um automatically create smart home routines for you so you're like around bedtime do bedtime stuff and it's like okay I'm going to D the lights and play some music and turn on your security system and'll just like come up with some ideas that will go right every time I have a lot of questions about how That's going to work uh and then it has some I don't want to say agentic because there's a lot of ways for this to work but it has some cap it has some ability

to do stuff out in the world so you can have it book in Uber for your friend which is a we can we can pull apart that demo piece by piece I it was very complicated hello to Rabbit um yeah exactly that was API so with Uber and door Dash and a handful of others they're just using the boring old apis Which is how most computers work interesting I thought the agentic stuff was going to be a big part of this and then the agentic stuff is they called for like a dishwasher repair right so

if if you like run some service like Thumbtack was the one they and you don't want to build a bunch of apis yeah you can just say to Amazon it's okay for Alexa to click around in our website and the agent can do that and then there's like a middle ground where you're like You can like suo the music service yeah creating songs out of nothing yeah where it's like it's still it's got to do some API stuff but it can still click around on the website weird like weird weird stuff um and a lot

of the demos of that capability I I were less believable in the moment yeah just like rabbit right I know that they're Partners but my question with any of the agentic stuff is what happens like are they actually just targeting certain Areas of the site or are they doing recognition of the buttons like rabbit always says it was recognition as soon as one of these websites changes their website everything breaks yep that happened before could see it happening again well so rabbit's pitch was it could go to any website yeah and really they had just

like hardcoded itself to like uber and spottify yeah um Amazon's pitch is a little different which is that people will come to Amazon right And they will say we would like our website to be part of your agentic system so presumably there's not like the incentives are aligned to make sure the agent can use the website consistently or like you maybe you'll build a special or website and yeah that's even less of a lift than building an API but you can still do it yeah I don't know but I do know that the straight up

book my friend in Uber at JFK made no sense yeah yeah like no Sense how do I know what pickups I'm to go to yeah I mean there are a hundred things about that demo that don't make any sense like and and the way I've come to think about all the agent EX well tell people what the demo is cu apparently there's no live stream I'll I'll get there but the the I think the way to think about the agentic stuff in general is like there's a set of things that are just like knobs that

some app can expose in an API and rather than try To fake your website you should just use their API and Amazon has the business deals to do that right so like if I don't have to use ticketmaster.com and I can just access the Ticketmaster database Victory right like that is that's still agentic and that's still good that is the correct answer in the middle there's the stuff that is like solvable internet problems right that it's like go to Bing and click on the first result is like a a thing chat GPT Does all the

time when you're an operator right that or like scan down this page for things with festar results these are like tractable problems for AI and then there's the thing that's just like ah we'll figure it out AI is smart it'll figure it out and we'll see what happens the problem with all of those is there are a billion edge cases to every single one right and let me see if I remember the demo correctly for Uber it was it started with booking a restaurant Reservation y successfully booked the restaurant reservation through open table which is

presumably just an API that Alexa has access to uh again fairly tractable problem right like there are times there is a restaurant I know how many people like it can click the drop downs for you in the API fine the next thing was my friend is coming from JFK can you book an Uber to pick them up and I guess bring them to the restaurant okay right there I just want to say Right there a fully insane thing to say to any any another human being to your friend who's landing at JFK I've booked you

in Uber why yes right yes you know who can anyone with a phone yeah I will say I have a a friend who is an an assistant for a hedge fund manager um and this is stuff that she does all the time and so I see an end case where way in the future the the idea of a lot of these AI platforms is Like what if we could take this job that people do and get rid of it yeah yeah and so in this universe it's sort of like just automate this job away right

but right but but I'm saying the command I need in Uber or I would like to have a car pick me up yeah your hedge fund manager friend yeah boss your hedge fund manager in this example the hedge fund manager just says out loud I need a car and then a person uses the Uber app yeah in this case they would just they would Still just tell their own AI yeah to book them a car yeah it's I that was a part that got like right there in that demo was like I'm gonna send my

friend a Car at JFK is in like in a very abstract sense makes a lot of sense and then keep going right well but there are but just that instinct was like very confusing to me also David to your point like in that system where I'm the assistant working with somebody odds are overwhelmingly good that we share an Uber account that Your picture is going to be there somewhere that you're an authorized user that it's going to pop up on your phone to tell you where to go so like these these systems exist that I

know what terminal you're at and have a way to tell people what terminal like right there's a there's a shared Universe of information that exists in that world that does not exist in my friend Molly is flying into JFK right right and so so but in all of this okay now I have a a Series of this super sounds like you're about to do a drug deal by the way every time you say my friend Molly is that was I forget who it was and I'm sorry but somebody in our slack was like this definitely

ends with just a bag of drugs being delivered to your restaurants this is starting to come into Focus but so it raises all these questions right like okay where at JFK JFK is an enormous airport with lots of Terminals and lots of different pickup Points at each of those terminals how is it going to figure that out how is it going to tell the Uber driver and then how is it going to communicate that information to Molly who is completely looped out of this whole set of information we need to normalize just doing really basic

tasks yourself this take click the button seconds in the demo it was like I've booked a car to pick up your friend Molly at JFK and at no point and then I think the next Command was like text Molly this information right like I I I'm assuming some of our listeners have never landed at JFK it is a huge sprawling ridiculous airport and its Uber pickup situation is among the wor worst I believe in the world yeah it's very bad yeah second to La yeah like La is like you're going to a different city to

get on super like have you have you thought about standing in a parking lot six miles away from the airport like That's like JFK is almost as bad I I just landed back at JFK and I had to get on a train to another terminal to walk up a flight of stairs to go to another weird parking lot and it no one is was happy about that the Uber driver was like I went to the first terminal and I was like the app is it's all bad yeah and the idea that Alexa collaps that to

JFK right Pano said all of the demos are real I'm I'm sure in some Universe it just picked the first result for JFK in The Uber app and it was like at the cargo terminal or something the way that that ends is there is an Uber circling JFK endlessly looking for your friend powering down the runways who I would point out does not have access to your Uber account because you don't share an Uber account with your friend Molly because why would you do that and so your friend Molly actually has no way to contact

this Uber driver so actually what you've done is you've invented a More complicated situation to solve than if you had just done it yourself and I just want to point out by the way this is the simplest case of the integration where everything happened with apis yeah right like uber has apis that are exposed to Amazon in this way the Open Table has API that are exposed to Amazon this way the next one where it was slightly more agentic was I to me is like where it all starts to fall apart right because the Uber

you can solve you you can solve it right you Molly can send you some Uber access code or give you access to her account it's also the kind of thing you're never going to do and in Thea in the real case where it's like book me and Uber to go to the airport perfectly solvable problem like that is that is a thing that will work yeah again normalize doing basic things yourself yeah no that's what I mean if Molly were just to get off and be like Alexa I'm I'm at Terminal 5 can you get

me an Uber to this restaurant like that is that is a thing that every step of the way is a solvable problem for AI yeah especially if you have access to Uber the problem the I'll talk about the agentic one because I'm more curious about how they will solve some of those problems the problem is that you know who would also love that deal is Lyft right and so you're saying book me an Uber and that means one thing but if You say book me a car now Amazon gets to pick what service or it

gets to and this is what they really don't want to have happen it gets to go look at both services and say the lift is $5 cheaper the Uber do you want me to book you the lift and like I do that on my phone right now and the apps can't stop me but there's nothing stopping Uber from saying Amazon we want to be exclusive here right and I I I always call this the door Dash problem like these service Riters get commodified in these interfaces and there's no incentive for them to participate unless Amazon

pays them money and then now we start making deals that prevent you from competing right like you can just see this it's really fascinating it's really interesting it's what everybody wants to have like a butler two booking cars for them left and right and then actually making it work requires a bunch of companies to basically take themselves Out of the wood and it's unclear right now as to why if you're like order me a sandwich and door Dash never gets to show you an ad or upsell you on fries or get you to sign up

for door Dash Plus or whatever they call it why would they pay part of it why would they do it right because all their margins are just crushed and now they're just a commodity provider of sandwiches y next to whoever else and like I don't I just don't know why they'll do it we'll see I don't know But if you if you then get to be the exclusive commodity provider of sandwiches that's a pretty good business for one company it's a pretty good business it's a great business for one company that has no growth potential

right yeah like like you will be forever is only as big as the sandwich Market inside of the Amazon Alexa app yep maybe that's all you aspire to and that's fine David send me I have goal the harder one was when they were like uh my dishwasher My stove is broken find me a repair person for my melee Appliance melee Appliance is by the way very expensive very expensive to fix so this is a perfect only Amazon Executives have this specific problem kind of demo and it went onto a website called Thumbtack which like has

a list of repair people just like Angie's List or any these other billion websites are like this and I'm sitting there watching that demo and it did it right it clicked around the Website it found a service provider with some reviews it said they're going to come at 8 in the morning at the end and I was like that's great because now you don't have to use those websites and then the reality of all of those websites is you go on there to find a plumber or a repair person for your dishwasher or whoever and

they don't give a [ __ ] about those websites and they have not actually handed their business over to thumb Tac and let thumb Tac run their schedule or their billing or their customer relationships they've just listed themselves there because they want to be in some SEO result for people searching for repair men and then you call and then they run their own business and it's like oh Amazon depends on that whole ecosystem actually working right and like there's nothing Alexa can do about the fact that it mostly doesn't work like if you go on

some of these websites like sometimes yes the house Painter comes and they actually let their those kinds of middlemen services run their business but for the most part they're like I don't want anything to do with this like I want you to pay me in cash under the table is like the end result it's specifically because all of those businesses have been chopped off at the knees by middleman after middleman after middleman after middleman and so I mean you're starting to see this with restaurants and stuff In the door Dash Universe where they're just like

no like I I will deliver my own food by paying a high teenager to drive it to your house because that is actually a business I can afford and so like all this stuff has been so centralized that it's actually broken for the businesses themselves and they're starting to run away from it but because it has been so centralized and this is the bet that Amazon and everybody else is making it's really Hard to decentralize it because now everybody is used to being on those platforms and so like if you're Uber Eats or door Dash

if you're a restaurant now you have to make the bet that people will go find my restaurant rather than just pick the next best thing on the platform and I think how that shakes out remains to be seen But like it's pretty clear which one of those things Alexa is betting on which is that platform convenience which you can make even more Convenient by abstracting it all the way to order me a pizza or find me a repair man will outweigh actually having successful businesses on the other side yeah and I I think this is

just like this is the problem like I should just write a piece called the door Dash problem like why would you want to run the pipes between you and the sandwich in a world where that is becoming the most the least differentiated part of the entire experience yeah right if you Run thumb Tac and I'm sorry if there's like a we have a bunch of listeners who work at thumb Tac I'm I'm proud of you uh you're doing a good job every day another Victory um but like what what about Thumbtack is making it better

on both sides of that equation that isn't going to just get completely erased by the fact that Alexa is just clicking on your website for you great like someone will figure that out and that's like so that's the hardest stuff that they Demoed it's not rolling out at first um they're going to roll that over time what is rolling out first on the Echo Show devic is is is like an even harder problem which is we're going to automate your smartphone and it's like oh like no part of this is easy is that a harder

problem so Panos told me and listen on Dakota on Monday he's like the Alexa smart home ecosystem was already so good that everything we demoed required no New code right Alexa plus could just like H push all the buttons and twist all the knobs any way it wanted to and make its own routines because that stuff has just been ready to go for so long so they yes I think they think it's good what I mean by it's harder is you buy this new device you plop it down in your kitchen and then now you

have a smart home that's the promise but the reality is you've got to add everything to your Alexa smart home system yes all those Cloud accounts have to sync every some stuff you're controlling and an app on your iPhone another thing you're right like you actually have to still do the setup to make the magic happen and nothing about the setup has gotten particularly easier here and you need to decide where you want to set it up on and and then you need to decide where your automations and routines live and if that's going to

be Amazon forever yeah Are they Amazon are they on Google home are they on the manufacturers website there's like five different places that you could potentially set up all of these devices David are you a smart home guy um minimally I live in a Brooklyn basement what do you have I pretty much completely put everything on homekit I guess I guess it's homekit because I have Eve stuff so but it is only Eve smart plugs and smart blinds uh I got them because of matter Famously does not really work which is cool uh but at

least it's all in the same thing but I also do have a singular Google home hub mini that I was dreaming of being able to tell to make my blinds go up and down famously still does not work this is the this is the like what a perfect smart home scenario where like okay I bought all the pieces yeah and each of the things does the things that are required for this puzzle to fit together and yet it doesn't for some Unknowable technical reason that will never ever get I set up a routine that automates

my blinds that's all that I really care about and then I have a widget on my phone that turns my lights on and off and I really don't care to make it more automated than that I think that's good and truthfully I think like a I think that is most people's smart home desire right like I want one thing to happen when I do another thing is I genuinely believe the extent of most People's smart home wishes and that's also a thing that something like Alexa plus is well positioned to do pretty well because what

what these routines and things have is a like massive user interface problem uh it's the same thing like a rail on Apple shortcuts all the time and it's like it's this massively powerful thing buried behind what amounts to like a scripting language and you need to go through a series of really complicated like if then Statements so to be able to just say to this system hey every time I turn off my alarm clock turn the lights on in the bathroom is like that's actually a thing that a system like an llm is well positioned

to understand what that means and then if Amazon has done a as good a job as Panos is saying which I think it reasonably probably has of understanding all of those end points it can actually put all of that together in a way that strikes me is like it would work and Then I'm just at a point where all I have to do is learn how to explain what I want rather than like program it in detail in the Alexa app but so that even that explain what I want that you know their examples were

come up with a bedtime routine and it was like Alexa just was like I don't know I'm G to play some music I'm gonna turn off these lights I'm G to dim these other lights call it a bedtime routine I really don't think That's a real use case this is one of the things that drives me the craziest about all of these things is it's like what like it's I I still have this picture on my desktop for some reason from for like years of this Apple event from years ago I think it was an

iPad launch where they had this picture they were showing like the lifestyle photos they always show and it was a it was a guy sitting in like the crook of two beams on the Brooklyn Bridge sketching On his iPad and I was just like no one does this like talk about your prod you didn't do that when you lived in New York I did it the once and they took my picture and they paid me for it and then I went home it was fine but it's just like all of these things is like I

I spend a lot of time wondering if part of the problem here is that no one actually understands what any regular human would ever want to do with these products because the idea that I'm going to come Home one day and be like Alexa make up a bed bedtime routine I'm so sorry to everybody who's hearing us say Alexa over and over by the way wait you never you never just ask a computer to make it nice when you're sleepy no yeah never and no one is going to and the idea that I'm going to

ask it to and then I'm going to live with what it creates for me for the rest of my life is just preposterous and so I hate this stuff now because it's like show me this Product as it's going to actually work for people instead of like a fake thing that seems vaguely impressive until you poke at it at all yeah it seems to me that most of these companies extrapolate this stuff to the furthest degree where they're like how can we reduce as much friction as possible between the user and doing what they want

to do and they just forget that people don't want to just give up complete control to these systems the famous book me a travel Itinerary and book my plane and book my nobody wants to do that and yet every company uses it as their example luckily uh Amazon did not actually have them book the itinerary they just made the itinerary which is better that is better I agree I like that but still that is like the extrapolated version of that right like nobody even in the home nobody wants you to bedtime routine I don't know

what it's going to be let's just find out if that's going to be the Case let me like test five of them out and then I will pick people don't actually want to just give up complete control to a system like this especially when it's completely random you don't know it's going to be totally well so I have many things to say okay I'm sorry I'm sorry to everyone uh one I think the hard part here is not the reduction of friction it's letting people know they can do this stuff at all and that I

think requires but does anyone want to Yes to some to some broad approximation just have stuff happen is a thing people want like when I get home turn on the lights is nice yeah that's just nice and I am convinced that like my family does not know how lights turn on or off anymore because many lights in our house just turn on or off throughout the day interesting um like we have um we have Hue Lights in our kitchen and they're in adaptive mode so they just go from cool in the morning to warm at

night MH I think this is the coolest [ __ ] in the world no that's great someday Max is going to go to college and like call you from her dorm room being like why is it dark so uh Jen tuille told us that her kids her teenage children don't know how to use house keys oh my God uh which is incredible ruining future Generations NE but so I got a text from Becky uh and she was like the light the kitchen is the wrong color and I was like this is Victory I'm getting Divorced

now but this is Victory the kitchen is the wrong color like the the lights are warm in the morning and she's like why is it so Orange in here and I was like I've won and I've also lost in like equal measure yep so it's true that people like like it when things just sort of like happen the right way at the right time and I think most people cannot express that in structured if then statements right like if I come home between these times turn on lights When garage opens is people do not speak

that way and going through every single little thing in your home and having to create an if that statement is just really tedious but you can say when I get home turn the lights on and Alexa figures out how to script that for you that I think is very the the jump is getting people to even understand that this is now a thing you can ask for and then delivering it in a way that is consistently good enough That they they tell their friends about it and then their friends buy an Alexa in a bunch

of smart lights and like I don't know about any of that right like the comparison that I have to that is like I keep talking I always talk about the local news test okay like what piece of technology will like break through on the local news and like the first iPhone was like look at this you can pinch to zoom and like that was all you needed and then they sold all the iPhones this One's like here's what you do you buy this weird screen it can talk to you like a person and tell you

stories also you need to change all of the light bulbs in your house and it's like well this is just what are we doing and to your point you know what that thing was the first time around with Alexa was music was you can have it play music just by asking for it was like that was that was the Breakthrough thing and I I think everybody has wanted the smart Home to be that next thing and it hasn't been but but so now the question is like if you've made it easier to the point where

you can just do this as quickly as asking for it like maybe it becomes that thing yeah and I do think there are an awful lot of people out there who have bought goie light strips or weird smart bulbs there's an awful lot of smart locks out there like some of this stuff is ready to go yeah and to be linked together in automations like this and I Like you know AI is good at coding and like really what we're talking about is like write a little script for me okay like there some of this

all clicks together but I'm still just at like you have to get people to even want it I also I cannot stop thinking about how important cameras are to all of this and how many feelings this is going to make people feel about cameras like one of the demos was uh being able to ask if somebody had walked the dog recently I Think and it'll actually like comb back through your security camera data to see oh no actually I know how that one works there's another demo that was scarier from the camera sense oh okay

me more you were there I wasn't there let me know someone has walked the dog recently is um that just Amazon owns a bunch of stuff including ring so if you have ring cameras today without any of this Alexa stuff it will detect pets it will detect people it will detect packages that's a Service that you have to get from ring as part of the Ring service but that's just a ring video search product that Alexa as an API can just call so that wasn't Alexa doing any of that that was just ring it was

just being expressed through the Echo Show still a little creepy how accessible you've made the archive of that recording but but sure fair enough what was the other demo it's the same accessible as it is in the Ring app Today sure right like if especially because they they already owned it yeah yeah no that's that's fair like like the problems with ring accessibility are like and then they send it to the cops like that's a different right there is that but like inside of your ring archive like it gets indexed and searchable the one you're

thinking about um I believe is when you see my daughter play this music and that one is very creepy to me oh that is creepy I don't Like that at all yep and that thing is like again so much of what we're describing works way better if you have cameras if you have lots of cameras that do lots of things really convincingly like the uh play music or turn on the lights when I get home thing like you can do that a bunch of ways but the actual cleanest and most reliable way to do that

to know that it's you coming home is cameras and uh this this this system in general a requires a vast Amount of data to really work and one of the things that Pano's talked about a bunch and that Amazon is making very clear is like it's going to ask and remember a lot of information about you you can forward emails you can send IM like Alexa would like to know every single thing that happens to you all the time always everywhere all the time and like on the one hand fine Google has that data anyway

just by virtue of like we are all alive but Amazon wants it too And it wants your camera data and the more data you give it the better this system will be and that that linear scale is going to be deeply fascinating to see people try to walk through it's just so funny because I can tell that you have not tried to set up any smart home automations do you know what the best way to know that your home is Amazon has no access to it it's when your [ __ ] phone connects to your

Wi-Fi network Amazon owns Euro so sure They do oh that's interesting but that's like too creepy it's like one step too creepy but like that is how a bunch of homekit automation no you're right that's a good point right so like um when you do if you've ever set up a homekit automation yeah right there's run this when no one's home or just I'm home or anyone is home and all it's looking for is whether various devices signed in iCloud or on your network you can do I think there's a little bit of Geo fencing

in there but it's it's the network connection that like tells it your home um and it's funny cuz the other day my wife and I were both not home and Max came home and none of the lights turned on because she doesn't have an iCloud she doesn't know how to turn the lights on so she no she turned on the lights but they were on I would say Max is just sitting in the dark I was like why are all the lights wrong is actually What I said she's like now I need an iPhone tag

yeah basically U but it's really interesting to think oh they they'll link ero into this and know like Network states of devices there's a lot they can do mhm M did was this compelling to you yeah in some ways I mean the fact that the echo were sort of the first ways that people interacted with any form of voice-based AI yeah I think was interesting to me because Amazon was so early to that and then They were so late to everything else MH and so this like dream of my mother can set up something and

come home and start talking to her smart speaker and it actually does things instead of me having to teach her uh voice lessons or like specific lessons on how to talk to the AI is a big thing the automations I if they work is going to be the giant question yeah I would love it if you could ask it to have an an Automation and then it just randomly it creates a Bunch that you can pick from yeah because I just I don't know I understand some people probably just want things to be made for

them and just be developed but having no no say in any of the development of these things and just letting it do things for you just feels very sketch almost as sketch as the pick up my friend from JFK you know what I mean I don't know if it will work this is the thing that's one reason that I think pushing really hard towards screen Devices is really smart for Amazon because it just lets it do that kind of stuff where it's going to be able to be like hey here's the thing I was going

to do make sure this is make sure we're cool like is this is this what you want is this your grocery order like do you want this or this like it's the kind of sort of quick back and forth did they show any of that yes did the grocery demo in particular one was like so far from what anyone would ever do but also The coolest one yeah so they were like go to Amazon Fresh I want to do this recipe here's ingest like I want to make these cookies and started filling it out and

then he was talking to it while he was like clicking quantities on the screen yeah and so he was adjusting one row of data while it was like adding this kind of milk and it was just like very cool like multimodal people going to do that I I don't I have no idea that's a big question gen twoy will and No one else yeah but that is the kind of interaction that if you can get it makes all of this stuff work better right because it's like the the first time you ask a question and

you get like a 600w long spoken answer you're like this is nothing I hate this that's the part that it needs to fix yeah but then it's and and this is the thing I I've always gotten a kick out of this in in like sci-fi and stuff like they always just gravitate towards let me show you right And then it's like put it put put it on screen and I look at it which is like better movie making than listening to something talk for minutes but it's also just better user experience it's like do you

want this or this and I don't have to show them or I don't have to read them to you I can show them to you right famously the Google home Minis that every carrier on the planet throws 15 of you at at Christmas every single time you ask it what's the weather or turn The light on it goes just so you know in the morning we can also do this just ask me what to every single time every time and I just want okay Bing you know that's it or just turn the light on what

if you didn't talk and then I knew it worked because the light was on what if you didn't talk yeah that's a visual cue I I think as long as you have some sort of cue which is like why the screen is important especially when you're having it do these tasks that you cannot see Because they're apis or because they're like agentic or whatever oh this is one of the coolest parts of the whole thing they call them lexicons I do like that uh so the little blue bar on the bottom of the screen turns

into like line animations P told me that he wants there to be like 200 but right now there's 33 because he's approving all of them individually okay um which is great I love it they're very cute uh and then Alexa just sort of picks whatever kind It wants like it turns into like a little line drawing of music notes or like a picture of if it thinks it's arguing with you it shows you a ping-pong paddle going back and forth uh cuz you're you know I don't want to argue with all this is great like

I hate that I really like that but I really like it was like easily the cutest part of the whole thing uh it and so they're they're trying to show these interactions Um look we got to get the stuff like I said but you're listen to this on what Friday or sometime after that on Tuesday P will be on the C you he even more about uh the new Alexa and how it works there's a bunch of questions about what models it's using when how they're managing all that cost anthropic is involved yeah um they're

a major investor in right yeah they're major investor in they built their own model called Nova which they're using does Anyone know anything about the Nova model rumor is that they were trying to build this for a long time and it was delayed remember and then they had anthropics swoop in to help and we should say we should take a break we've been talking about this for way too long but uh all evidence and Reporting so far suggests that Alexa plus is super late and sucks and so this thing is not shipping until at least

several weeks from now we've seen a few Demos that Amazon did as I wasn't at the event but everything I understand is it was all super on Rails so like I actually think the big picture ideas here from Amazon are both really ambitious and pretty close to right and if you made me BET right now I would say I bet it's not any good yeah yeah but I sincerely hope I'm wrong and we will see I'm very curious again to underline what David is saying all of the demos were canned yeah we were not allowed

to just Like freely talk to this thing so who knows and for months like I I would I would also remind you that this thing launched the first time 18 months ago and uh Dave limp we've had a whole regime change on this team since this thing launched the first time Amazon has been talking about this for a long time and for I mean a year the the reporting and everything we've been hearing has been that this thing is not very good and it has been massively delayed and I Think there is a there is

an argument to be made that Amazon is launching this now because it had to not because it's ready and uh I hope I'm wrong and I'm very curious to try this thing but like what is the primary pressure do you think like who who are they worried about coming after them CU Google's not doing anything a IC right now Google smart home is still Google Assistant which is the artist formerly known as you know and it's not really doing Anything I think everybody's still worried about CH you find yourself talking to Advanced voice mode instead

of Alexa yeah you're not switching back yeah and operator is out there Google is doing stuff like project Mariner is real operator is not out there operator is out there in the way that like a like a like a baby goat is out there just like stumbling over [ __ ] like it doesn't matter I used operator today you know what I today is Alexa yeah what did you Use it for I used it uh as a test to see if it could buy me something on Amazon and it could not baby goat B yes

it's good there's a toddler out in the world who's just falling over itself all the time um I think they're a little probably little worried about apple right that's the larger context to this is Apple's way of doing agentic stuff is going to be app intense with Siri on the phone it has perfect access to all those apps those Developers can get strong Armed into playing ball Apple's very good at that in particular Apple's going to do some iPad on a robot arm in her house right like that is true there's a lot there that

is going to be difficult can apple actually pull any of that off we don't know Siri is getting worse by the day somehow um I think they they just like needed to put the stake in the ground and say actually we put l like AI capabilities into Alexa in the way that everybody wanted us to Yeah and ponos has said this to us before Nei but I think I I suspect probably said it to you on coder too is like they see this as like a full-on platform shift oh yeah he he very much said

that in like the most intense Panos way there is a sense now that missing missing this would be like missing mobile 15 years ago right in the sense that it like it it crowned a generation of trillion dollar companies and killed everybody else and there there is right Or wrong real belief in the industry that this is that moment again and there is a sense that cannot afford to be late at all because a your investors will kill you for it and B you'll just miss the future and I think for for Amazon which is

deep down this hole of we have to make Alexa work like it's now or never and I think they feel that we haven't actually mentioned the most important part which is Alexa plus is $20 a month or it is free with Amazon Prime yeah which notably cost $15 a month it's free with prime like the $20 a month is such a fake price it drives me nuts like it is cheaper to get Prime and everything else yeah than like for $5 less you can get everything else on Prime which is obviously what Amazon wants and

and the sort of overlap of like Alexa owners and Prime customers is like 100% right so they're just what and this is where we started I use my echo to buy Exclusively from Walmart it's like an amazing um but they're basic they have the big they have the advantage yeah no one else has a distribution Advantage like Amazon has maybe Google but they're Google yeah I mean I think they're just they just want that recurring Revenue you know it's like they've got a 180 million users in the United States on Prime they've got 200 worldwide

200 million they just need to keep growing that number because it Accelerated very fast at first yeah it's starting to Peter off even though it's still one of the most popular servic in the world um I don't know who the user is that is like I don't have Prime but I want Alexa llm who is who are you I don't know who you are you know us let us know maybe the like really hardcore AI heads that just want to try everything but I also don't know why they wouldn't have Prime we'll find out I

guess eventually yeah but They if anyone can do it it's Amazon because they have scale if anyone can make the platform shift happen yeah because they already have the microphones in everybody's house yeah they' like and they own that whole platform tip to tail it was probably a way for them to say it's $20 because everyone else is $2 and in that way they're they're kind of saying we're just as good in every way but you can get it if you have Prime for cheaper Well I'm I'm excited to see just how chaotic it is

we'll see again and next week on deota Panos answers a bunch more questions in like classically intense Panos pway it was it was a fun conversation also we finally get to do the assistant like battles between all of the major assistants well once Siri is actually like out out so never I don't think Siri counts as a major assistant anymore that's rough yeah all right we got to take a break we're going To come back and we're going to keep ding on Siri we'll be right back it's time to review the highlights I'm joined by

my co- Anor Snoop hey what up do Snoop number one has to be getting iPhone 16 with apple intelligence at T-Mobile yeah you should hustle down at T-Mobile like a dog chasing a squirrel chasing a nut number two at T-Mobile families can switch and save 20% on plans plus streaming services versus the other big guys what a deal giving it Away too fast T-Mobile slow down ENT t-mobile.com and get iPhone 16 on them you can save on wireless and streaming versus the other big guys it's tmobile.com switch Apple intelligence requires iOS c.1 or later all

right we're back to Siri dunks the new podcast for the ver guess what I asked Siri to do today I couldn't do oh no that's the whole show it's just us listing things we ask Siri to do that it cannot do Would be the longest vergecast episode in history that used to be able to do and no longer do um I asked it how many days until something the other day and it as it was like do you want me to ask chat GPT it's rough and chat GPT famously is not good at math yeah

I was like this is the most powerful phone in History Nice um speaking of iPhones we should probably talk about the iPhone 16e at some point but actually I want to talk About the sigma BF this camera I just want to say it's very telling that the iPhone 16e is handily the second most interesting Gadget that came out this week uh which in part says something about I would say third I just think we're like legally obligated to feel like there was a new iPhone you're right it is it is at least third it might

be it might be fourth given some of the framework stuff but it's certainly not first and I think Sigma is clearly first My proposed headline for Allison's review was no one should care about this phone they didn't they didn't go with it she did go with it's fine and give it a seven which is the most seven headline in the history of headlines yep I still don't know who going to buy this thing so what what's going on here with the the camera or the phone oh well I still don't know who's going to buy

this thing actually applies to both let's start with the camera that is true let's start That is true let's start with the camera because it's is vastly more interesting than the iPhone and we can come back to the iPhone uh Sigma BF is it's just a beautiful camera right and it seems like no one should buy it yeah there's a new camera from Sigma uh it is a Japanese camera brand that has made famously extremely weird cameras they have done very weird things with sensors they made something called a fon sensor which has Uh different

pixels on the color filter array all on the same pixel you get better quality they did not do that with this camera because they got rid of it a while ago and everyone is sad about that Sigma stuff is generally pretty good right like it's a it's they're weird but they make good cameras right is my okay they are weird they are good they are part of the El Mount Alliance uh which Panasonic and Leica are also part of so that's nice weirdly enough you don't Really see them on the street almost ever uh mostly

because they're so weird and I think that people just go when you're going hiking in Utah you see a 100 million uh of the cheapest Canon camera and the cheapest Nikon camera sounds right Sigma always does weird stuff that's kind of their angle they released a camera this week called the BF does not stand for boyfriend uh or best friend it stands for beautiful foolishness really really really I love This so this is kind of like when someone says I know that this is stupid but and in that way it's very difficult to critique you

know what I mean it's like there are many things about this camera that I'm like uh uh but they're like we know that it's D here it is anyway and you have to respect that in a way right so this is a fullframe 24 megapixel camera they tried to remove as many buttons as physically possible it is machined out of a block of aluminum They can make nine per day so it's not a high yield which not that many people are going to buy it anyway so that's probably fine uh famously Fujifilm could only make

15, X100 sixes per week and that still was not enough U because they had over a million pre-s in China alone on the first day wow so this camera I I don't even know to say what it looks like it is just a small block of aluminum in a in a weird way uh it has a LCD screen on The back that does not tilt this is my this is actually my only complaint about this camera that it has no evf no that the screen doesn't tell oh okay well I don't I have a very

specific reason why but that I'm like I love you I'm buying this camera I'm mad that the screen doesn't tilt yeah it's a very very minor complaint in Te of things I don't think it's that minor yeah I think screens should tilt even though they break easier yeah uh it has no viewfinder that Is also horrible in my opinion I feel nothing about this especially for a $2,000 camera like the the the number of people who would can afford that camera want to buy that camera and uh have strong like visceral feelings about how far

away from your eye you should hold your camera like yeah it's just one group of people it's just that that makes it with with no articulating articulating viewfinder and no like evf or ovf you can only do this yep that's That's and this is why I think the screen should tell yeah that's it any other angle than right in front of you you know what I mean uh it has this knurled kind of uh jog wheel on the back that you're supposed to do most of the stuff through has a play button it has a

menu button for go into the menus the menu looks not great not great um yeah you see uh Seb from H was like looking at this interface is why I make camera apps Yeah yeah it's not great uh has an extra little screen that tells you like the apperture and things like that even though I just I hate when you hide the aperture behind a submenu it's horrible for cameras I don't know I think that the the biggest reason that people really like this camera is because it is super basic it is just a square

of aluminum with a couple little knurled Parts no let me tell you why people like this camera people like this camera cuz It is sexy as hell and I want it so bad yeah this is like this to me is like imagine like a cave painting of a camera where it's like you go back like 8,000 years and it's like oh someone in you know someone just drew a camera and this is the first camera that anyone ever imagined that's this camera and I love it for that yeah I will say the fact that it

doesn't have memory card slot yeah and it has a built an SSD it's like oh this thing has a has a shelf life oh Yeah you're either going to have to get it serviced which I'm not really sure how they're going to get inside of it when it's a solid block of aluminum without taking a lot of stuff off of it uh or you're just going to have to get a new one but hopefully it doesn't die before you know memory cards famously die a lot yeah but at least you can put a new memory

card in so here's my argument in favor of this except for the tilting screen which I agree is a huge Problem okay um I again because I mostly take pictures of a six-year-old who is uh notably down here right so I'm always shooting at like hip height which means I want to tilt the screen up yeah that's it that's like I I need to solve that problem this camera doesn't solve that problem it is sexy as hell and I do want it um I think it is like well beyond time for a cam camera manufacturer

to get rid of like camera controls as we know them like as a person who mostly Shoots an ancient Nikon d75 00 still the greatest Hands-On camera ever made um uh it's like fine and there's just a million buttons on it and I know what they all do and the reason I've never upgraded that camera is because I know where all those buttons are and I know what they all do right and that's it's cool like I like having that relationship with that camera and I've got most of them set so I never have to

touch them again I just know where they Are and the reality is if I could just set them and then set this one dial to mostly ever control shutter speed I'd be fine yeah right or like exposure compensation the only problem with that approach is you you want that camera but to be like the size and quality of like a Sony RX1 100 right like give me all of what you just described a basically designed to shoot in Auto super simple allinone piece more or less unbreakable thing that that is like a really fun Cool

point and shoot and I think it'd be Gang Busters I'd be all over that thing yeah you're kind of describing X100 and I'm in a few ways that's that's why people love them but this one to me I just like I just like the idea that sigma's like we have no history of Nikon F series slrs to honor that's like screw it we're just changing how the controls work have you seen the old Sigma cameras because they are much weirder than this yes they're really really weird like It's funny because Sigma started out as like

a like a lens brand and they're like screw it we can do whatever we want it would be a lot more compelling in that way you just describe Nei if the menu was better like here's a really usable thing unless you have to do anything have you guys driven the eqs the the new one the electric one yes youve us it's like being in a Korean nightclub on Wheels yeah I don't know how else to describe it but you've used The infotainment system right yeah it's like Windows 95 yeah it's no one has good ideas

about software design no and like the fact that most products are now are software means that we live in a like a world of crime yeah but yeah I I see what you're saying that yeah it's pretty and I just want it on my sh understand I I want to put a $2,000 knick-knack on my shelf also the fact that you it is removable lenses means that it will never actually be as small As it looks that's true but this is also like David I feel like we're we're in such an era where like the

camera is both a tool and an accessory right and this is like this is the X100 story right where like a lot of people who bought x100s bought them not to shoot with them but to be shot shooting with them like a like a yeah it's like it's a Creator camera because I want you to see me using it and I it's like a it's a fashion accessory as much as anything And I feel like this is Sigma just kind of acknowledging the same thing they're like yeah you'll take some pictures with this but it's

also going to look cool as hell and that's like 60% of the point I was thinking about that in a lot of ways because the M11 is over $99,000 for the body this is 2,000 so there you go think of the savings much more affordable looks very beautiful people will ask you what is that uh it shoots about two and a half hours of video if you want to do The highest quality video and then you have to offload it I do like this idea of offloading everything onto your computer from the USBC port and

not having to worry about an SD card at all because SD cards are sort of like I don't know Bluetooth standards or Wi-Fi standards where you got to read the little three or the nine on it and there's no five for some reason and you just have to decide what is the speed and the fact that you can just plug it Into USBC port and then into your computer very nice um but you know that comes with its tradeoffs it's not great that this conversation has inspired me to start searching for an X100 good luck

I mean they're very hard to find you can pay a $700 premium for one right now yeah yeah or you could get the five which is not that different but you know let's just wrap up the show I've got he busy all right let's talk about the iPhone briefly can I say one More thing yeah of course the LCD has a has a sub like a a sub bezel and I just want to acknowledge that none of the press photos show the it well it doesn't show it on but it shows it it shows the

sub bezel which is not something Apple would have done I just want to acknowledge that um I'm buying all the oh no it's bad you're right I just looked and it you're right how does that make you feel do you not want it anymore have you bought an RX100 Take pictures of your kid yet no this is the single greatest purchase you can make if you're parent yes one those like everyone's always happy with the photos no one's ever sad yeah the screen tilts yeah they're they're I would I would not say indestructible like they're

very destructible but like they're tough enough you know yeah uh you don't have to worry about interchangeable lenses yeah they're great but like they are in fact Destructible like you get some dust near that lens mechanism you don't have an RX 100 anymore it's it's all over um but they are I think all these cameras are ultimately to David's Point kind of competing with the concept of the AR accessory kind of well I just the RX 100 it solves the most problems in that zone yeah and it's it's very hard to solve the pro like

all the problems better than that camera yeah I also want to acknowledge that they made an RX1 a long Time ago which was full frame and they just never updated it yeah and it's been around for a long time and they could be dominating this space but they decide not to I loved that camera holy crap I loved the RX1 it was great it was fantastic and it hasn't been updated in like over five years so I don't really know what they're doing no Leica is like the only one right now that makes a fullframe

lens camera weird yeah and it cost $6,000 and no one can afford it see the sigma's cheap man what are we doing here you're getting one it's an impulse purchase we did call one in for a review so we did not go on the influencer trip to Japan that everyone else want on because we have this annoying ethics policy but we did ask for a review unit I think someone's getting it yeah well they can make nine a day so presumably we'll get it in 2034 we'll get one it'll be awesome someone on our team

is is Getting one and and then I'm gonna I'm gonna look at it with love in my eyes my you know like cartoons my eyes Hearts all right we should talk about this iph it's it's like amazing how much we want to avoid talking about the iPhone 16e yeah I know we have some vertast listeners who just totally tune out when we talk about cameras I was much happier talking about the camera than I'm going to be talking about the iPhone 16 never has a phone been so Thoroughly exactly what we expected it to be

oh that's I was going to say never has a phone been so literally exactly not it yeah it's funny because on social media usually the few days after a new iPhone comes out people are trying to justify the reasons why they want to upgrade I've not seen one thing about this from anybody saying why you should get this necessarily except for people that are insane and on the one hand look I like this phone is so clearly not meant for those people and that's fine that's fair enough right like it's just it's this is a

thing that apple think struggles with is that it operates at such scale and with so much attention that everything it launches is ostensibly geared towards everyone everywhere uh and this is just so not that right like I don't think anyone who is considering a pro phone will ever look twice at this Right like Nei your proposed headline no one should ever have to care about this I actually think is like very descriptive because this is for people who don't care about their phone this is like I I want I want to have a phone but

it's 5.99 if you're that person you should buy a used iPhone 15 or a new iPhone 15 oh I forgot used 15 Pro for like the same amount right and you'll get mag safe and you'll get way better cameras And like you you'll just make a Happ no apple intelligence Nei that's a plus I I cannot be bothered to what end yeah I think Apple really thought Apple intelligence was going to drive a a huge cycle and it was the Super Cycle this was the qu this was the thing last year do you remember this

they were talking about the super cycle of smartphone upgrades because of Apple intelligence yeah and oh boy is that not the thing well have you noticed that the Billboards have changed they used to be Hello Apple intelligence I don't see those anymore at all now it's all gen mooji Billboards because they know that's what people actually care about do they though it's all I care about do you so is this just a phone that can get gen Emoji is that this is your your cheapest gen Emoji access wa okay hold on I know longer care

about the 16 David I need to know everything about your gen mooji life oh God what Are your use cases for Gen mooji how long do you have H I'm frustrated by gen mooji and the same reason that I'm delighted by gen mooji okay in that it's just like they they tried to make gen mooji exactly like Emoji in every possible way and in that way it's very useful for regular people as long as they know where the button is which it's glowing so I hope that they know where it is but they look like

Apple emoji because They're trained on that Apple emoji character set and there just aren't emojis for everything like Unicode they add three or four a Year everyone has to vote on them that's great but when you want to make very specific things you know like stickers I think were one of the biggest uh upgrades to the iPhone in a very long time or at least to iMessage because when you can press and hold on something make a custom sticker everyone uses that people love it that is Cool J Emoji is like that but it's more

it's like it abstracts it away a little bit so that it's more usable with people that you do not have that specific relationship with what was the last gen Emoji you made we're doing this now oh gosh all right I'm gonna look right now I've never made a gen mooji maybe I should buy an iPhone 16 yeah like is this in your dayto day dude like you're just you're just out here gem mojing up a storm I some like do you Want to get dinner and you're like J Emoji make me a person eating spaghetti

you invoke a gen Moji you have to say JM Moji J mooji jji um I'm not sure if we can put this in the show uh but if you just say if you just gen emoji gun it will make you a gun um cool I just wanted to test that very strange so you're just sending cartoons of guns to oh uh laughing crying throwing up very good one oh this is your gen mooji These are gen mooji this is this is what I'm saying they mix stickers gen emoji and emoji in the same area of

the keyboard because they want people to think of them as the exact same thing I will say I like laughing crying throwing up as a gen Emoji that's pretty good it's quite good I I will send it to you because it is very good um I'm just gonna send you some guns just I in the middle of the night David ready I just wanted to test how many different types Of guns I would make and it's a lot you could do a pipe wait so oh this one is good this is the the pumpkin and

the devil Emoji mixed and I used them for Halloween it's very good I do like that you're just spamming David with like the worst Emoji this is fantastic that's very good uh so again to just bring this all the way around our thesis is it people will buy a $600 not good iPhone to send cartoons of guns no but but I have notied all of the Billboards have changed to gen Emoji Billboards and I think that they looked at Apple intelligence and before it was just so AB ract before it was just Hello Apple intelligence

iPhone 16 now it's gen mooji it that's their whole thing it is lasted longer than the than the Apple intelligence ads like there are more jimoji ads they've lasted a longer period of time it's funny because they they started All Those ads before you could get apple intelligence and then People got Apple intelligence and they stopped advertising it yeah and yeah I see I see what you're saying my experience with apple intelligence outside of gen mooji was that I took a script that I had in uh Apple notes and I did the rewrite feature intending

to revert back to the old script because you know I was just testing it and then it crashed Apple notes and then I could not revert it to my actual script and that was my only copy of the script um Woof and that was my mistake so I just I don't think people really care about can I the only true feeling I have about the 16e is that not having mag safe on it is Criminal it is like almost all of the phone mounts in my house all of the batteries that I use now like

it's all mag safe all the way down the line in the car I have one next to the mirror in my bathroom and I just like put the phone on the next to that in the morning have it played YouTube TV At me that's amazing it's like all of that is super fun and interesting and that is the only like really great accessory ecosystem that Apple's ever created yeah and they're just like the cheap phone the 00 phone can't have it why people are now going to go into the Apple store they're going to buy

an iPhone 16e they're going to go over and they're going to look at the magsafe charger because everyone wants that mag safe wireless charger that is $50 and the Apple employer is employees either going to say oh that doesn't work with your phone even though it's new or they're not going to know that and then they're going to be like I don't get this like I have to hold it against my phone and it charges at 7.5 Watts like how does this work it just seems like a hor like why would you take this out

yeah this is the the one completely perplexing thing about this phone is mag safe yeah yeah I I I actually think you Can make a pretty strong case for every other one of the trade-offs I think it it lands $100 too expensive uh like I really agree with Alison takeaway which is like the the idea of we need a cheaper iPhone and we're going to make some sacrifices to get there I think other than mag safe Apple got almost right uh there are like a couple of little things about it but whatever like it got

it mostly right but I agree that the mag safe thing just sucks and we we Talked a little bit about this last week and heard from a bunch of people who were like whatever just buy a magsafe case for your phone uh and would I bet that apple is going to sell you some of those sure but like that's not a solution to the problem they just get rid of Mag safe altogether and everything's ch2 and ch2 ready that sounds like apple yeah I don't know it's a phone let us know if you're if you're

the target market for this phone who but This is like the weirdest iPhone launch yeah I can remember like never has an iPhone come out with such a okay do you think if this thing were $450 we'd be having a totally different conversation about it yes if it was $350 well I think that's unreal that's like unrealistic for what phones cost right now like yeah I don't know if you've heard of that inflation Nei yeah and tariffs like is this the first tariff phone that's the other question I Read uh Ben Thompson makes the argument

that this is the first terone but we'll see I mean like Tim Cook is you know we're going to get to it in the next segment and it's prob of around Tim Cook is just throwing fake numbers Donald Trump to get out of the tariffs so smart move we'll see we'll see if they and also every realistically no one ever buys this phone like you go to your Verizon store and Verizon's like this one yeah and you just leave and that's The end of that did you did you watch marquez's review of it by the

way no that he has a skit at the beginning it's like 90 seconds long and there's he one of him plays the employee and one of them plays a customer and the customer's just asking I want a phone that does exactly this exactly this and the employee just gives him everything but the 16e because it just makes no sense and I just again yeah who is this I'll go watch it apologies it's like one Of the few I haven't watched but it's like I don't want to care about the 60 I just didn't give it

the time it's away in the door and then Apple can sell you more expensive things I do love the except for Max safe access this is my favorite my favorite on going like thesis about Apple is that they have some products that don't exist like they just have like this the 16e only exists on the website it's like the lobster or a diner like it's not There it's like they're not manufacturing it it's not real it's like the illusion of a phone to get you to buy a more expensive phone it's like no I think

they're manufacturing the phone we'll see all right we got to take a break uh we were supposed to talk about the framework laptop which looks really cool but David tells me that framework CEO and near off Patel is coming on the show next week yeah he's coming Sean and I are going to hang out with n actually Uh later this afternoon and we're going to have a lot to say but like if I'll put all the framework stuff in the show notes I think that company is fascinating the desktop looks really cool I'm especially excited

about the framework laptop 12 which is their like lower-end touchscreen flippy one that I think is going to be maybe the most kind of mainst streamy thing framework has made yet uh this company is very exciting and I think up to some really Cool stuff but yeah we're going to have lots more to talk about on that one on Tuesday Y Cool all right we're going to take a break we're going to come back with lightning we right back it's time to review the highlights I'm joined by my co-anchor Snoop hey what up though Snoop

number one as to be getting iPhone 16 with apple intelligence at T-Mobile yeah you should hustle down at T-Mobile like a dog Chasing a squirrel chasing a nut number two at T-Mobile families can switch and save 20% on plans plus streaming services versus the other big guys what a deal y'all giving it away too fast T-Mobile slow head to t-mobile.com and get iPhone 16 on them you can save on wireless and streaming versus the other big guys it's tmobile.com switch Apple intelligence requires ios. or later all right we're back lightning round unsponsored for Flavor the

people have started saying it to us so we're going to start saying it back to you it is marching up the charts of the most demanded merch in the history of The Verge is an unsponsored for flavor t-shirt it doesn't mean anything it doesn't mean anything but we're going to make it when people SP we you can't tell us what to do it's it's they defining principal here at the ver for some reason to me that that belongs on the bottom of a skateboard that just Says unsponsored for flavor that's that's where that goes you

could throw away the entire it's a long ethics policy on the website it's very complicated you could throw it out and you can replace it with you can't tell us what to do and that would pretty much get you there anyway if you'd like to sponsor the lightning round you can call summon in box media and pay them money and then we will still do this but today we're Unsponsored which means there's not even a hint of corporate control because you again to repeat myself you you can't tell us what to do unsponsored for flavor

okay David take it away okay so the the first thing here uh is that YouTube announced this week that more than a billion people now watch podcasts on YouTube which is a kind of a number we knew right like YouTube has been creeping up as the most Important podcast platform for some time uh you music exists but this is not YouTube music This is YouTube YouTube uh YouTube man as they call it which I forever think is very funny uh and basically YouTube is very proud of this fact they're like we we are we are

a massively important podcast platform uh I think there are several dozen issues with the fact that YouTube is this powerful a podcast platform in part because it's not a podcast platform like There's a non-zero chance you're watching this on YouTube right now YouTube is not a podcast app for a bunch of reasons you can't get background audio playback unless you have YouTube premium you can't sort out shows correctly the the audio versus video playback just sucks on YouTube and YouTube's answer to this is YouTube music but again no uh and so I just think we're

we're at this really interesting moment where YouTube is both Becoming the most popular podcast platform and is kind of changing what podcasts are and it has changed it so much to the point where now Spotify is racing to do video uh and it is because it's trying to catch up to YouTube in part because video is very popular in part because video is very sharable and in part because video is really discoverable in a way that audio is not and so everybody now is turning to video you didn't like the Tik Tock Spotify Thing for

music where you heard a clip of a song you've never heard before and decided you wanted to listen to the whole thing what could possibly go wrong uh no it's a terrible user interface and uh I I did this whole thing in the installer or the newsletter I write last week right basically was like tell me your music setup and the overwhelming piece of feedback from people was I use Spotify I hate Spotify which is like precisely how I feel about Spotify like Perfect no notes uh and it's because all of this stuff is trying

desperately to chase YouTube uh and YouTube meanwhile is just out here flexing it's like yeah if you want to be relevant on the internet you have to be on YouTube and that is increasingly true for people who make podcasts and I think like spotify's number I think was that it had 100 million podcast listeners uh and Spotify is like what everybody thinks is either the most important or second most Important podcast platform next to Apple podcast and YouTube is just out here crushing everybody it's nuts let me ask a foundational question what is a podcast

yeah I was gonna I was gonna ask that too because I are we just talking about YouTube videos that say they're podcasts well what is that then well I mean we have been making this show for a long time and it is true some people watch it on YouTube lots of People actually watch it on YouTube but I don't know like what is the difference between waveform and a regular Marquez video it's is it is it just the microphones editing the microphones but do you know who broke that distinction YouTube YouTube this is this is

the point right like what what what has happened and I think YouTube has actually done this to a lot of different forms of artart is YouTube has just collapsed everything into YouTube and Now everything looks like YouTube and works like YouTube and follows YouTube's particular like Trends and systems and Norms because it's YouTube because YouTube is the only platform that matters and thus everything has to be YouTube how do you categorize a late night show because that's a podcast in the way that a YouTube show is a podcast it's a podcast but it's also just

a bunch of YouTube Clips in a row yeah I mean no cable news has just been podcast For a long time yeah if you ever just like watch whatever Cable News Channel you want to watch but you just like watch CNBC or CNN or MSNBC or Fox News or whatever you're like oh this is just the most chaotic podcast in history very unstructured at all it's just happening all at once all the time a lot of them actually run podcasts that are just the full audio feed of the show ands I don't know if 60

Minutes still does it but they did for a long time and like it Works well 16 minutes makes sense yeah people can visualize things in their heads is that different from an audio book I don't know um so we I'm trying to remember the headline the The Narrative podcast or running into audio book story was a big story and then narrative pod podcast like serial like fell out of favor in like a real way because the I I hear you on YouTube and I'm I do love to criticize YouTube at basically any turn but like

really what you're seeing here Is platforms pushing everyone to lower the cost of content because they don't pay money and so like YouTube as if you're like a YouTuber the amount of money you get from YouTube from AdSense in the partner program is just going down over time the amount of views everybody's getting is just going down over time because there's so many more YouTubers right so everyone is just trying to make cheaper stuff and we've been making the show for a long time so I will just tell you like hanging around talking is a

very cheap way to make content like we try hard you know we got like Graphics there's frame TVs everywhere those weren't cheapap let me tell you uh Samsung is making a pretty penny off all the podcasters in this world with the frame TV Graphics that are everywhere but like that's what's happening is like we're just pushing the cost of content down so we YouTube was Able to take podcasts and say really we're GNA film your podcast and now we're just going to ingest hours more Vi video from every Creator who's doing podcasts they don't have

to be scripted they don't have to be structured we don't have to take cameras on location here here you go here's hours and hours of more video yeah what I don't know is whether that's actually taking share away from Apple podcasts I know why spotify's scared Right this was spotify's big bet and they're losing to YouTube in one very specific way right but I don't know if like the the Apple podcast listener who was always an audio listener is like screw it i'm G to watch this on YouTube instead yeah I don't know I I

have a lot of I mean we get a lot of in dotal information and feedback from people uh that I would say by and large what we've heard from people who are like watching and listening to this right now is that It is more sort of additive than cannibalizing like there are definitely people who have found the show on YouTube and only consume it on YouTube uh but we also get a lot of people who are like oh I listen to it while I'm on a walk and then it's like fun to watch Clips or

I watch the show later or I put it on the TV while I'm in the or like whatever so I think it's from what we've heard so far and what we've seen in our data they're not kind of killing each Other um but also uh right now if you're launching a new show I absolutely guarantee you're spending more of your time thinking about YouTube than you are thinking about Apple podcasts and that to me is the real shift over time I think that people there the shift towards passive consumption like needing just things to be

playing at all periods of time that they can check in on kind of passively and when they want to we have a lot of people that tell us oh I Do the dishes while I have waveform on the TV yeah and I look over every now and then and I think some form of like ingestion through their eyes while it's also being ingested through their ears every now and then is like what people want they just want things playing all the time there's a reason people leave their Apartments they go to the subway they realize

they don't have their headphones with them and they have a panic attack and people just need more Longer things yeah and the fact that the the audio medium of podcasts has companies that are like don't worry we made sure this is less than 10 minutes no one wants a less than 10 minutes is anyone asking for because you can just pick it back up like nobody is asking for that if anything people love the length of you know this show people wanted two hour vergecast David that's what I'm telling that's exactly we're very close to

delivering it here I've Never in this lightning round that has already gone 10 minutes on a single item no one's told me that they want a shorter one that's all I'm saying all right David we're changing your job you're just doing twitch streams 247 from now on justtin T is back baby from your green screen basement I'm leaning into that conspiracy theory this David's basement a SC I uh I have begun occasionally subtly moving things around in my background uh and if anyone would Like to tell me what those things are I welcome it all

right let me add up these next two lightning round items for you I forgot this was the lightning round we so apparently yeah that's what I was told Instagram reals may get its own app presumably to compete more directly with Tik Tok and then Tik Tok is upgrading its desktop website to compete with YouTube they say compete with YouTube what do you got uh first one yep makes sense I mean I Think people go to Instagram for reals at this point so I think all of this is based about the Tik Tok ban yeah I

think if because remember Tik Tok is technically banned in this country yeah like the law passed the Supreme Court upheld it and then Donald Trump was like no we're not doing that yeah and the app stores Apple and Google were like that's too much risk and then Pam Bondi the new attorney general sent them a letter which we have still not seen that made Them feel comfortable to put Tik Tok back so now we're in this weird period where this app that is banned they got a 75-day reprieve from the Trump administration of enforcement of

the law that's coming up in what April right David So in April this app might go away again or get sold to I don't know Don Jr limited whatever it's gonna happen like I don't know it's gonna happen yeah and if that what that moment whatever that Moment is will be a change and so if you're Instagram you have to be ready for it right so here's reals like not Instagram re like this D much more direct competitor Tik Tok and if you're Tik Tok I think you have to be like Well you Can't Ban

a website yeah realistically Instagram is just reals I think it's it's almost just like a rebranding thing and I wonder if it sticks around because Instagram has tested having dedicated apps for things That Instagram already does quite a few times and they've shut them down quite a few times remember igtv that was fun that was a period of time uh someone very senior at Instagram told me recently that igtv was exactly the right idea and the only thing that got wrong was the videos were too long oh that's interesting he's like we had Tik Tok

it was just long videos and what people wanted was short videos I mean that's kind of true they tried to do the like Hollywood thing and it's actually like no just let people film videos of themselves people want garbage all right just set up some microphones and start a podcast about gadgets and Brendan Carr and you're going to be fine famously why quibby worked for sure yeah dude I think I disagree with you saying that Instagram is just reals and I actually think my theory about why this is happening and I'm just going to throw

this at you both and I'm curious what You think is I so I watch these Adam maseri like uh AMA videos every week where they talk about he talks about like what's going on and that man cannot figure out what is the most important thing on Instagram right like there's stories which a lot of people watch and care very much about that they are forever like making more important in the product and then denigrating in the product there's the feed which is like a dying thing but is also like the central Pillar of Instagram so

they're trying to make the feed a thing again and they're like we we want to let it we want to let you post to your feed without it being such a big deal to post to your feed and I think Instagram has just producted it itself into total chaos and I think a knows that clearly the easiest thing to spin out and make its own is reals because then you have an app that opens to video that is playing with the volume on which is really important and is a Really important part of why Tik

Tok has been so successful you open it up and it is playing with the volume and that is not that you can't just turn that on on Instagram but you could if it's just an app called reals right and then it also says okay now we understand what Instagram is again because no one knows what Instagram is anymore you just post things places and hope that people see them which is not a recipe for success and so now everybody's like what Happened to my reach where do I post if I want to reach people and

this like this might actually help Instagram tell a story about itself that makes sense for the first time in a long time do you think they know what that will be if a reals app launches though because they famous meta famously just takes the best part of every app from their competitors and then puts it in Instagram specifically right so now you know they've got the Snapchat in Instagram Which is stories and they've got the reals and Instagram which is Tik Tok and then they've got the Instagram and Instagram which they have long forgotten about

right well but I think that goes back to your point about it reals is the most important part of Instagram like I think a I would bet that if this app still exists real will still be in Instagram and they'll still be in Facebook and then what meta gets to say is actually we have this video app but We also have this gigantic distribution across everywhere so it's like we have Tik Tok but we also have Tik Tok attached to Instagram it's like the fediverse but for one platform for one company yeah it's which is

which I would just point out is what we call a monopoly boosted Tik Tok videos everywhere you look on meta platforms yeah I'm telling you I I think it's just so that when people lose access to Tik Tok again meta can say download a new App it's just Tik Tok yeah no I think that's right I think there's probably some conniving clever motivation but then there's also a very dumb thing which is like are you mad push this button yeah and that solves a lot of problems yeah I totally agree I mean wasn't Instagram notes

supposed to be their Twitter competitor and they just like shut that down or they became threads became threads okay are you mad at Twitter download this app and it Worked for five minutes until they're like what if this algorithm was the worst yeah that was the end it out um okay we got to do it's a lightning rant so we're gonna move through politics very quickly David I'm assigning you to this job because I can't you know it's okay I'm just gonna I'm just gonna say a bunch of things in a row and you can

stop me whenever you feel like it does that sound good yeah Doge remains Insane uh the the big news of this past week was that uh Elon Musk a lot of federal employees got an email tell telling them to respond with five bullets about what they did and then Elon Musk posted on X that if they didn't respond to that email they would take that as resignation uh that's nothing and is nothing so a bunch of departments said don't answer this email a bunch of departments said answer this email everybody's up in arms about it

Nobody knows what to make of it uh musk and then Donald Trump continue to kind of say it's a real thing and people should do it but it it appears to be nothing except just more abject chaos uh Doge God only knows it is or who works there but the the new thing that happened this week uh was that Amy gleon who was formerly an employee at the US digital service was like named um scapegoated like I don't I don't know what word you want to Use in the executive order that creates Doge it says

there will be a doge administrator that no one knew who that person was right like judges were asking United States Attorneys General who is the administrator of Doge and they'd be like I don't know that at this time right because I think literally they didn't uh and and a lot of reporting from from us and wired and others suggest that even the people who worked there didn't know who they were Reporting to Elon Musk is in every meaningful way in charge um but he is not a government employee so that's not he's a special government

employee sure what is a photo David that's where we are knock yourself out you can have whatever you want uh he was in a cabinet members meeting like none of this is real anymore I don't know I think that the thing that makes all of this just break and not and weird and all the reporting kind of be weird is that all Of this assumes that there are processes and things that you can and cannot do when you're in certain positions and they are just saying none of that matters and we're going to do what

we want anyway yeah and in certain ways they're subverting these things and saying okay here's the administrator because you asked so many times but none of that matters for them they just do not care so it's important that the reporting is happening but also what do These facts mean right there's that paragraph and all of these stories that is like this breaks with long-standing norms and understanding of how these and it's yeah like every single other thing we've been here for no other president has had a full cabinet meeting where just some guy wearing a

shirt that reads tech support and wearing a baseball cap talked the most yeah that was Elon the cabinet meeting that's that's just so okay so then I say all of this uh which Led to I would say the funniest thing that happened this week uh which is in in the Housing and Urban Development Department somebody put on TVs all around the department uh an AI generated video of President Trump sucking on Elon musk's feet like I don't know how else to say it other than that uh and it became it became a whole thing it

got shared a bunch of places uh and it is it is it is hysterical if you have not watched it Don't uh but also I will put the link in the show uh actually the funniest part of this is it is an AI deep fake and so like blue sky had a Content moderation controversy about it because you're not supposed to share AI deep fakes but then it was a newsworthy video of a TV in a government agency being hacked so then they undid it and they're like we're very sorry we we we've rethought our

moderation decision here Just weird yeah but if there's anything that's going to get us to an anti-de fake law it's deep fakes this caliber that's true real weird Okay so that's like Doge and everyone's reporting on Doan like the times say has a whole list of all the people who work there it's long and extensive it's definitely a coup I just want to be as clear as I can be there's a weird coup happening in our government and it's by weird nerds okay we're gonna keep we're gonna Keep reporting on it then there's like the

regular Trump stuff that also happened this week which I find very funny because it it just rhymes with the Trump one so like Tim Cook had a meeting with with Donald Trump and promised him five 00 billion of us investment they put out a press release about it they said they're going to build a school in Michigan for manufacturing they're gonna do they're going to build servers for Apple Intelligence I guess they're all just going to do gen mooji all day long they're going to build those in Houston yeah those guns don't generate themselves right

so Trump is happy because he got you know I think whenever Tim Cook promises him American manufacturing he's like screw it they're making iPhones in Kansas like he doesn't know he's not paying attention in Trump one famously Tim Cook opened a factory that was already open and invited Trump To the grand opening of the already open Factory where they were GNA start making the Mac Pro that they had already been making at the factory Yeahs you can you can it's it's you can go look at it it's a very confusing situation I'm glad that Tim

Cook knows that he can do this at least Tim Cook is trapped on a treadmill of his own making yeah like he can never retire his job is to manage Donald Trump forever um anyway so they announced this $500 Bon investment which is great I I Want Apple to invest United States I think we should manufacture more things here all this is good great for the economy we should build manufacturing centers of excellence in Detroit all day long I have no quals with any of the things that they are doing the substantive things that they

are doing what I will point out is that uh the Wall Street Journal rert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal looked at the numbers and they're like these numbers Are fake I love that um so I'm just going to read you this paragraph in the Wall Street Journal uh Apple's 5 $ billion is mostly already on the books is the headline Apple spent about $1.1 trillion in the past four fiscal years on total operating expenses in capital expenditures Wall Street expects nearly 1.3 trillion in total spending over the next four years according to consensus estimates while Apple

doesn't break out expenses per Geography about 43% of its Revenue comes from America assuming the US constitutes the bulk of that number if spending is in line with Revenue then a rough figure of 40% of projected Global spending through 2028 equates to about $505 billion so if you just math out how Apple spends money there you go they used Apple intelligence to rewrite their expenses and show Donald Trump the expenses this is just the money they were going to spend they took an Excel spreadsheet or I guess a numbers spreadsheet and and said Apple intelligence

make this a press release and that's what it was you can argue with this right you can say apple almost certainly does not spend does not invest in line with where Revenue comes from right they do most ufacturing in China and other places overseas like you can see all the stuff but where you're the the the plan from Apple is always the same is they manage Trump in particular because they cannot Accept tariffs so they manage Trump in particular by by making him promises that they have already made to themselves and they just reann nowc

things and somehow Tim Cook has just made an art of this it is wild yeah I mean it's the show is the thing right and there's a there's a bunch of really fun details in all of it though like I think Apple's that they said was to hire 20,000 people over the next 4 years which is roughly in line with Apple's Ongoing hiring plans they hire about 5,000 people a year uh they were going to there was like a big thing they were going to spend a bunch of money with tsmc and Arizona uh Apple

is already the largest customer of tsmc in Arizona it's like all you have to do is look at it but you get to write the thing that's like thank you Donald Trump we spend $500 billion and like everybody wins right like is it is it ruthless and calculating and not really really true Yeah but it's it's I feel the same way about it that I do about the everybody uh sending a million dollars to go to the inauguration it's like I get it like it is obviously straightforwardly good business and also you should feel bad

about yourself yeah it's just weird because there's this big split between you know like classic Trump corruption you know like he's a real estate developer so you got to spend money on his party you know and it's like oh he's A club promoter you got to do some like Club promoting stuff like great you know like Trump won like we we lived it and this is substantially better than for example foxcon announcing an LCD Factory in Wisconsin that they never built right Apple announced some stuff it's already doing great that's right next to the Doge

corruption which is like weird secrets and like straightforwardly illegal and unconstitutional power grabs by Elon Musk that everyone's just like Huh that's new there's a good one of those this week in fact uh this FAA thing what's going on there so basically the there short version of it is it looks like the FAA uh which has been kind of infiltrated with SpaceX employees who have showed up to you know quote unquote fix the FAA uh may take a $2.4 billion contract that it had given to Verizon in order to do I don't know FAA things

I don't pretend to know what the FAA does But there was $2.4 billion that uh now they would like to give to starlink instead um and uh there's been a big Focus of a lot of very good reporting over the last couple of weeks about the very straightforward ways in which uh doge is going into departments that either regulate Elon musk's companies and destroying them or give money to Elon musk's companies and taking more money from them uh and this is just this is just that again and like this is Money that was G was

awarded to Verizon that is now being reconsidered and a bunch of people who work for SpaceX are now at FAA is saying oh actually this money should go to SpaceX and everybody's like isn't that corruption and it's like yes and no one and who cares so here's how Elon is justifying this which is a delight um so I don't know if you've been noticing this it's not been great for air travel United States lately so Elon has decided to Blame this not on firing a bunch of FAA employees which is a thing that he did

weird including the head of the FAA what if you traumatize everybody who works at the FAA and then you're like we made your internet connectivity a little bit better do you think that will fix it you know I run a podcast that's largely About Management that has never come up as an idea uh so he's traumatized this Workforce he's stressed them he's cut them they're they're mad and then he's blaming all the air traffic problems on a communication system that is quote breaking down very rapidly and also quote from Elon not backed up by the

FAA itself FAA assessment is singled digigit months to catastrophic failure putting air traveler safety at serious risk that's a big claim like you you got to back that one someone at the FAA should be like here's the report that Says we are nine months away from catastrophic air control failure that hasn't happened just putting that out there hasn't happened also you know who didn't make that system is Verizon right they haven't started yet this is the new system so it's unclear what he thinks is breaking he's saying he's providing Starling terminals at no cost to

taxpayer on an emergency basis to restore Air Traffic Control Connectivity no cost to taxpayer right well there's that but it's also like so wait is it just internet access because that's what starlink is yeah are is it are you saying that's the system that's just the internet yeah are you saying Verizon can't put some FiOS in at the airport what what are you like what are we talking about here like I know I have I have I have many problems with our nation's isps I I think most of them are bad I Think if any

ISP Co wants to come on the show I will look them in the eye and say I think you did a bad job you're charging people too much money great provisioning internet access at the airport is like actually not a problem that they I was gonna say I don't think I've ever said poor Verizon before yeah in this and I still you know but in this case it's like but he's taking a 2.4 billion dollar contract for himself there's just a lot of that going On right now and there's like there was some really fun

followup on uh the $400 million State Department uh planned to by cyber trucks that they originally tried to blame on the Biden Administration but it turns out when it was the Biden Administration it was $400,000 and then they made it $400 million on the Trump Administration then they canceled the whole thing it's like it's just it's just nakedly obvious what everyone is doing here and the question Is just is anyone going to stop them at this point and that to me feels like a very open question I think elon's drug use will stop it before

a person H that's my my current going theory that period of time could be any period of time my man's obviously like living hard right now yeah yeah I've seen him on many stages talking all right Nei it's time for America's favorite segment the podcast within a podcast we took a break last week and the people the people Demand it all right let's wrap it up it's time for Brandon Carr as a dummy a new segment here on America's favorite podcast about the FCC uh Brendan Carr is a dummy so let me just say I'm

just gonna say this sentence to you this week Brendan Carr the chairman of the FCC has decided the best use of his authority is an unelected censorship cop is to attack a country music festival that's not where I thought that sentence was Go that's what our man is doing this week I I want to be 100% clear this is a real thing that notable idiot Brendan Carr has decided to do this week so the the iHeart media runs the iHeart country festival and he sent a letter to Bob Pitman the CEO of iHeart saying hey

are you doing some Peola are you saying if people take cheaper rates to play the iHeart country Festival that you'll give them more airtime on iHeart radio stations in a vacuum this should be a Great story in 1954 in reality uh I don't know if anyone has heard of this company called Spotify which just does naked Payola all the time but because iHeart runs radio stations and Brendan has regulatory control over the airwaves he gets to make political hay with a certain constituency by saying attacking a country music festival to make sure there's no liberal

corruption in country Music uh no a problem that has played country music for years now just stupid like it's you IH heart's a monopoly like yeah dude there's weird corruption in iHeart media and clear iHeart used to be Clear Channel if you're like a 90s kid like me clear channel is like one of the most nakedly corrupt media Enterprises like in this country's history yeah dude they're they're doing some Peola at the Country Music Festival good job yeah good job Brendan he followed that up by the way he had a closed door meeting uh with

Republican members of Congress to talk about uh George Soros owning radio stations and what he can do about that I would just point out rert Murdoch also owns a bunch of radio stations and TV stations in this country he doesn't seem to be a problem it's definitely George Soros so we're just doing partisan censorship by Renning car none of this makes any Sense because none of it stands up to even the slightest bit of like intellectual scrutiny he just likes having the power of being an unelected censor and that brings us all the way to

the stupidest thing that he's doing uh which he's making these noises about reinterpreting section 230 to I know make it easier for him to put Mark Zuckerberg in jail or something right section 230 is a law that says the big companies are not liable for what The users post on their platforms so if I put something on Instagram you can't sue Mark Zuckerberg over what is on my Instagram account the whole internet relies on the slot the our comment section relies on the SL existing Reddit you name it next door but he's like we got

a reain in big Tech and I will reinterpret section 230 unelected deeply unstylish Brendan car will reinterpret this law which was written by the way by people who are Still still alive like Ron widen wrote section 230 he was on decoder two weeks ago you just ask him what he thinks it means but brandan Carr is going to just reinterpret it somehow he released this in a story in the New York Post that I swear to you is written like the worst LinkedIn poetry I've ever seen in my entire life like just one sentence long

paragraph in the story just says social media has replaced chat rooms end of sentence end of paragraph why uh it's Very confused we'll link to it just I want you to know this is some this is like the vogon Poetry of policy writing in the New York Post like it's so bad uh and the idea is that he will somehow reinterpret section 230 to make Facebook a publisher and then ever consum Facebook defamation this is absolutely not how that law is supposed to work this is the height of stupidity from Brennan Carr and I know

this because again the guy who wrote the law talks to Us all the time he was just on our shows like two weeks ago and this is not what he meant when he wrote the law I do feel like it's dangerous for you to say at any time that this is the height of Brendan Carr stupidity because like it's still early my dude we're only like six weeks into this that's true well look he's gonna take down a country music festival first there's one thing you want the FCC of this country doing it's attacking the

country music industry What are you doing anyway Brandon as always I know you listen I know your staff gives you readouts I I've known it for years buddy if you want to come on Dakota or come on this show you can tell us about your smart home setup I bet it sucks uh you're welcome too just not very smart Brendan you're welcome to come on the show and face an actual hostile interviewer uh who questions your use of the government's Power to shut down speech that you don't like because that's what you're doing every single

time and we're just not going to let you off the hook all right that was our uh weekly segment Brandon car is dummy we need theme music uh Brandon kefir on our team I will tell you has been quietly creating theme music for Brandon car as a dummy and uh there is a chance we are going to roll that out at some point in the very near future so get ready can you just imagine Waking up and being like huh I should control speech in this country what I will do with that power uh that

I've given myself for no reason is attack a country music festival yeah run by iHeart media that's the consequential stuff right there when I think of complete corrupt I heart go after Coachella first and then we'll talk you know what I mean David I'm going to read you this sentence and you got to tell me it's a Pallet cleanser for two-hour BR Chast okay automatic combines beeper and text.com messaging services what does that mean so this is two hours easily [Laughter] so we talked a lot on the show about beeper the messaging app that ran

a foul of Apple in some really interesting and complicated ways beeper eventually sold to automatic the company that owns wordpress.com uh they'll email me if I'm not that specific about which part of Wordpress automatic overseas uh automatic kind of a mess because Matt Mullen WG having a weird time on the internet right now uh they're in lawsuits but anyway uh they made this big bet on messaging they bought both beeper and this company text.com which is doing the same kind of thing that beeper was doing basically trying to like unify all of your messaging apps

into one messaging app uh Eric mikowski who was the head of beeper At least as I understood it was going to run this whole new thing the combination of the text.com team and the Bieber team at automatic Eric movi since left and is now doing Pebble again uh and so kishan bagaria who was running Tech . is now in charge of this whole team and they just put out betas of the First new apps which are essentially just reskinned tex.com apps into a thing that is now called beeper so beeper is the new name but

tex.com appears to be the actual Technology uh they redid an iPhone app but they're still at this like unified messaging everywhere thing uh I downloaded the betas they're as interesting and messy as ever uh but they appear to be still for real at this game uh I had a I wondered if after all of the Apple Kur fuffle if they would just spin out a different direction and try to do something else in messaging but uh automatic appears to be actually pushing Towards this huh that all made sense I think brenon Carr should arrest them

there you go I'm here to help also before we go I have some breaking news yeah oh Andy jasse the CEO of Amazon uh said this afternoon on Bloomberg television that Amazon is going to be releasing uh some new Alexa devices this fall and he said the sentence I think there's a sustainable business model which is always what you want to hear That's good that makes sense that tracks what basically what kanos was saying yeah so it's it's this is 2025 I think in two runs just became the year Alexa is either going to work

or collapse in a really fascinating way yeah it's definitely going to turn on all the lights in your house while booking you a ticket to Japan it's get out of here and then an Uber will show up and bring you to JFK yeah or drugs it's one or the other or drugs all right David thank you So much for being here that was incredible my man appreciate it we'll have you back soon Father David you're fine take it that was it that was the RO Chast rock and [Music] roll and that's it for the vergecast

this week and hey we'd love to hear from you give us a call at 866 Verge 111 the vergecast is a production of The Verge and the Box media podcast Network our show is produced by Will por Eric Gomez And Brandon kefir and that's it we'll see you next [Music] week it's time to review the highlights I'm joined by my co- Anor Snoop hey what up do Snoop number one as to be getting iPhone 16 with apple intelligence at T-Mobile yeah you should hustle down at T-Mobile like a dog chasing a squirrel chasing a nut

number two at T-Mobile families can switch and save 20% on plans plus streaming services versus the Other big guys what a deal y give it away too fast T-Mobile slow down enter t-mobile.com and get iPhone 16 on them yeah you can save on wireless and streaming versus the other big guys at tmobile.com switch Apple intelligence requires iOS c.1 or later