The real cost of the PS5 Pro | The Vergecast

Intro [Music] hello and welcome to rcast Flagship podcast of advanced R tracing the technology that everyone clamors for every day kids going to school screaming for advanced R Racing Taylor Swift get out of here it's Advanced R Racing she also wants it she does yeah loudly and proudly at the VMAs yep demanding that's all she talks about hi your friend Eli Alex CR is here in the studio we're together yes this is so exciting and we're not CGI even though the ray tracing looks like we are yeah look at those Reflections oh my God they're incredible AR no one can stop them David Pierce is here you know how Tom Cruz has like made his thing that he is the enemy of motion smoothing Taylor Swift should do this for R tracing Taylor if you're listening and I know that you are please make a thing where you come on at the beginning of every video game and you tell me how important it is to turn on R tracing this is this is your moment to do real good in the United States of America be like pick visual Fidelity over performance post about that with your cat T I will say wow I will say that in the in the comments of our YouTube there's a sort of raging mini conspiracy theory about whether David is actually in a living room or in front of a green screen and I'm NE we're never going to tell we're never going to tell we're also never going to tell you how long the show is supposed to be we're just gonna keep saying we're going over and David is Gonna Keep clipping a little bit not all the way I don't think I've ever seen David sit on that couch yeah no one's ever been back there yeah couch wa what uh but once we get raay tracing enabled on David you'll never be able to tell if he's scre so sick back there full volumetric static image of a living room we're going to send millions of dollars of dis so many like oh my God the Sun hits it the reflections if you're looking for more mediocre Star Wars shows just wait until we enable David's volumetric oh there we go now okay Liam this just changed everything instead of having my one maybe real maybe static background I get to have a new one every single podcast we're doing this I do I will say I have a uh I think like 8ot wide green screen underneath this couch over here you've given it away well I guess it's a second 8ot wide green screen right it's a the green screen behind the green screen uh but there the setup to make it work with my computer was so complicated that we just gave up uh which is why I don't have a more interesting background unfortunately well soon we'll get the full volume and John favro is going to direct you in a met Quest deal I'll wear the helmet that's how he directed The Lion King I'm into it I think it might have been a rift actually um I was like he he wore a headset yeah because he when they made the LI King it's like all it's all CGI so he directed it in a headset I don't know exactly why he was in the headset but there's a lot of photos of him in headset dirting King it's good okay there's actually news talk about including a legitimate R tracing segue to what is arguably the Apple's iPhone Launch news of the week which is the PS5 Pro not not the iPhone the iPhone I guess the iPhone happened this week if I'm being completely honest based on just the Vibes on the verge.com the PS5 Pro might be bigger news than the iPhone which I think says something about the iPhone this year but also says a lot about how a lot of people feel about the particulars of the PS5 Pro I just legitimately forgot that I was the iPhone in my mind we did a Verge cast the week ended I I took a flight home it was a red eye I took I was asleep I woke up in New York that's a new week everybody like start the Calendar right over uh but you're I think you're generally correct David like you know in the room it's it's like very hard for me to tell yeah because it's just an artificially hype environment but out here in the world even other reporters I've talked to interest is low yeah it's not great not only that but it was so like disappointing that I think the general Apple Vibes are bad because of it like a lot of people all over the Internet and some of them at this website that we work at called the verge.com who are generally people who like apple and think stuff that Apple does is cool are like turning on the company like to to the point where it's like is this an inflection point where Apple has lost the plot like that's a thing you see over and over and over now yeah it's wild I would say I saw John gber who who I saw at the event he John lives a Charmed lifestyle he came to the event with armed only with a pen and a notebook I love that incredible I mean I think he had a phone on him but he had no laptop um but he tweeted afterwards Apple misses Steve Jobs like everyone else or some variation of that sentence which is a lot that's a big one H mg seagler who is also a friend wrote an entire blog post about H needs an editor it has too many products and it can't say no uh and part of his thesis was uh they're too stuck to the way Steve Jobs would have done things and they need to change for they need to make more aggressive changes his example of course being the iPad just let it run Mac OS which is kind of like a hard diversion you know into like extreme nerdery but you see that that Vibe is out there right this this is a company that's no longer saying no it is it knows it's about to make more money from Services than the hardware so it's just making all the hardware without a point of view I don't know man I think the thing that's weirdest for me is they're going to ship the phones without the software it's sloppy feeling and it there's just something about that that they wouldn't have done that before yeah well they it was only a couple of years ago where they did that whole thing where they said we're going to slow down on all of our software because we are going too fast and we're getting too sloppy and then to see them just kind of do it again but even more aggressively is surprising yeah so we'll see and there's you know I think a big question that I have in general is whether any of the AI stuff comes to anything we're going to talk about some AI products later on the show there's some interesting ones that have come out some some stuff is happening that is legitimately interest raising whether it's going to make all of the money that the AI industry is currently spending who knows but Apple's in a rush to ship this stuff for what I don't know see but I agree with you David like I to my mind the PS5 Pro is it's generated more interest because it is a more considered product it has a stronger point of view and what's going to happen next whether you agree with that point of view or not yeah yeah you disagree but it it it just it's a it's a stronger statement of like whatever might whatever Sony thinks is next while Microsoft is making the opposite statement of like maybe we should shut this down right and like there's some turmoil happening in that industry and there's there's like winners and losers and it just seems at least on the smartphone side and we have covered smartphones since the day The Verge started like our we began this thing in 2011 because of smartphones and it feels like whatever wave that is has crested into like a steady state even though like just over there are some of the most interesting smartphones that have ever existed like the trifold yeah like the the honor trifold got more it was at the top of CNBC that's how I know things have like broken out of Gadget world is like when more mainstream Outlets cover things in weird ways yeah and so you looked at the top of the CNBC website on Apple day or the day after M and it was like the normal stuff like raid cut no yes who know like CNBC and then just in the middle of that was $2,800 triplefold smartphone and it was like that's the keyword like like a bunch of Finance Bros like hell yeah like I want to spend $3,000 on they watch the charts go up and down on the biggest phone they can and it's like that is more interesting to people than whatever is happening it wasn't Apple announces iPhone 16 right and there's something there it's a gimmick who knows right we'll see but there's just something something is up yeah we're going to you know we're going to carry on with the coverage ideally we will review the phones we'll have something to say about them like I said I'm still open to audience feedback on how to cover phones that are launching without the core software that they're supposed to we've gotten a lot of that feedback by the way and I think it's it it's interesting to me and I would say the the plurality of the folks who have reached out to us agree with me that you in particular are so hung up on this software that hasn't launched because I would say there is very little indication that anything in that software is going to like meaningfully change your life in any way like this is this is the the AI story right now is you have to tell people you have an AI strategy and what cool products are there that exist that are mattering to lots of people all the time the thing is you don't have to do that unless you're totally behold you get fired and your company goes out of business if you don't you have to you are so beholden to the stock market you're so beholden to your shareholder holders that you are not actually considering what is a good product and that that feels like what we're butting up against is people chasing the shareholders at the expense of the audience oh I agree I think it's the whole thing and actually shipping is all downside like yeah when when you put this stuff out in the world that's when all the bad stuff happens it's it's like like the Silicon Valley Line right like don't start making money because then people start asking why you're not making more money like don't start shipping AI because then everybody will ask why you're not shipping better AI like this Google has been through this 10 times over at this point like it just keeps shipping stuff and it's broken and people freak out and it's bad and it is just nuking its Core Business in the name of chasing AI stuff and people are starting to wonder why but if you don't tell investors that you have an AI strategy you won't have a job long enough to see any of it through so it's like if if I'm Apple I I think this is a total conspiracy theory that is not actually what's going on but like it is an it is not a stupid idea to slow roll this is as you can talk it up and don't ship it is like a pretty solid save your ass strategy it's totally out of character for them AI has been out of character for everybody like so many companies have not been themselves since chat gbt launched that's true I will say I've been playing with a pixel 9 Pro these past few days and uh every time you pick up that phone it's like do you want me to do something for you have you met Gemini here I am would you like to add yourself to this photo you're not in this photo put yourself in the photo yeah and you're like can you just turn off Bluetooth and it's it's like I can't so sorry it it is like a it is like a version of clippy from hell you know it's like do you want me to add some text to this email for some reason I could yeah huh yeah why not not uh it's fine it's just a very it's a weird time that said well we'll we'll pick up the Apple stuff later um one thing to note uh I hear what you're saying that it's weird that I'm focused on the software and shipping because I'm Mr review what's in the box one thing that did get announced uh just in the time between the EV and today uh the FDA actually did approve the hearing a features for the airpods 2 which I continue to believe will be the biggest like the most impactful announcement of this event yes so that that did happen we assume it will ship later this fall now because they have the clearance that's a big deal but that's it like I don't we're waiting on everything else um all right let's PS5 Pro announced actually talk about PS5 Pro what uh what is it Alex you know have you ever like looked at a computer and like what if this computer was a little cheaper yeah um it didn't do as much stuff it played video games really really well but it was also twice as much as another thing we have that plays video games really really well yeah and and and it just plays it a little better is this just like a GPU upgrade for the PS4 it basically is yeah it's a GPU upgrade you it's got a much bigger GPU um they are claiming much better Ray tracing and also their version of dlss which is an Nvidia thing that like upscales so much more intelligent AI but it's not actually D dlss it's not actually dlss because that's or AMD based Riff on right okay they're AMD based but not actually the AMD version this is the Sony version good uh of the same thing Ai upscaling and and those are kind of the three big deals out of it and and the other big part of it is that the price it's $700 the normal one's about $450 and so it's not quite twice but it's expensive yeah and it's uh it's also got um you know no disc drive and people are having a lot of feelings about the disc drive well you can get a accessory one right you can get an accessory one but it's kind of like remember when they took the disc drive out of the the the MacBook and everybody lost their mind it's the same thing it's like physical media I love physical media it feels like physical media has been like on an uptick and now it's like oh so I've just spend $700 for this and then another $80 for the disc drive what this feels like to me is as if Apple revved the Mac Pro and was like this thing is sick fastest ever everything is amazing you're going to love it it has one USBC Port yeah that's it enjoy like it doesn't make any sense to me that you would make your highest and most impressive looking thing which has a vend diagram of users that I would say overlaps fairly aggressively with the section of users who care about things like physical media and have having a collection of discs and cares about the the liner notes and all that stuff like those two people are the same person and so the idea that you're going to be like we're going to give you all the power in the world but no physical media is just so strange to me even if it were going to make this thing more expensive if it was $800 and had a disc drive I would understand it way more than I understand $700 a no dis trve but you can spend $780 and get the you yeah but I I think it's it's the fact that it's called the pro it is so much more expensive and then it doesn't have a disc drive so so that that's where people are getting concerned but at the same time as we talked about earlier this is this is where they're heading right like they've been heading this way for a long time they don't want you to have a t Drive they don't want you using the discs they they want you they certainly do not want used games to exist yeah they want you buying the thing on their store and then when it doesn't work going and buying the new upgrade on their store over and over and over again they're very happy with that and and most of the developers and stuff seem pretty fine with that it's just the the real hardcore fans but the hardcore fans so far are really excited about this thing wait I'm I like I like a this drive I like physical media I like owning software I think my prerequisites on this are you know my credit is there you talked about it a bit yeah you know I I I feel so let me just make the argument here yeah the PS5 in particular from inception has been all about wicked fast SD speeds yes so you were never playing the game off the optical disc you were always copying it to the SSD so the the dis is like a totem yes right it's you're always downloading the game you're holding it and you're like yeah I can do this theoretically you can play parts of the game off of the desk but for the most part it's it's downloading it on versus you're definitely you're definitely least copying a enormous trunks of the game from this and then you have to do your day Zero updates and all of that stuff so what I'm just like if you like I'm a person with a vinyl collection yeah and you you know it's like I like to put on a record and then like shake my fist at the man because they can't the internet has nothing to do with listening to music in that Cas I think the concern here is that now you can't like if you want to play a PS4 game or something if you want to play an older game you can't you know you have to pay extra for that if you want to watch a movie which like the PS5 has historically been a very good Blu-ray player you have to now pay extra for that and it's got that Pro moniker so you're like okay I see what you're saying this is like value for dollar yeah yeah it's just like it's it's just it's a squirly squirly space but like the PS5 Pro is really cool but I'm I'm like a graphics nerd so I'm like yeah this is sick but also I don't need to spend $700 on this thing I've got a PS5 with a disc drive it rules I the thing that actually gets me is right next to this they released astrobot which is like Game of the Year Contender I've been playing Astros playroom with Max we like going to we bought the controller which is adorable um we're going to play astrobot whenever she tires of Astro's playroom the think about a six-year-old is like yeah just keep playing this game yeah just the first five minutes over and over and over you're good actually we don't need to introduce new ideas or spend money um but like from what I can tell astrobot is the reason to buy a PS5 and it is not the reason to buy a PS5 Pro it just feels those things feel disconnected to me in a way that seems ridiculous yeah cuz the astrobot is focusing in kind of like that Nintendo play style of of Nintendo is about it doesn't care about the graphics as much it cares about how the game plays whereas PlayStation and Xbox have historically been like we care about how the game plays but also we want it to look [ __ ] sick yeah and and in this case they're like like we've got this one side where we have this astrobot and you can use the controller in all these really incredible ways feels like a switch it feels just new and dynamic and fun and then we got this like other thing yeah this thing so you can go play Gran Turismo what's the best what's the best argument for the PS5 Pro do you really like Spider-Man 2 I mean that's always been that's like the core argument for the PlayStation yeah the PlayStation 3 has literally had the Spider-Man font on it so it really is like like the the core argument is do you really like the last of us and SP and Spider-Man and and some of these other games that have actually implemented Ray tracing and do you really want it like you really really like that and if so go get this because it's going to look a little sharper it's going to look a little cleaner I think if you are playing on a con or if you're playing your console on a monitor it makes sense sure if you're playing it on a big TV in like a huge sunlet room don't do this like that's just a waste of money you will not be able to appreciate a single bit of this I I will say I think the the most compelling argument of this uh and I think uh is his name mark cery the the lead architect okay I can never remember if it's Matt or Mark it's like the same it's two different people in my head but anyway it's Mark uh said basically that the thing that they've seen is that everybody is forever making trade-offs between performance and Fidelity right so like do I want it to look good or do I want lots of frames and and that is that is like kind of the gaming performance trade-off and with the PS5 Pro you don't have to make that trade-off right like you can have very high settings at very high frame rates that's not a thing that most people will notice but it is the kind of thing that matters right like it's I I I see that as the same argument for like why the two of you spent six times as much money on your televisions as I did uh it's it's it's not for my eyes work David yeah then then why not spend $700 on this and I happily set it to Fidelity mode and I let it drop frames while I try to figure out the new kicking indicator Madden every year it's it's fine it's impossible think tier astrobot point I think the the thing that is odd to me about this launch is that there isn't one sort of great example right there's a bunch of games they've actually I think upgraded a lot of games there are a lot of things that will look slightly better but this is the sort of thing that I think works when you can come out with like a a sort of Next Generation looking game well I think that's increasingly hard to do we've seen this since like the PS3 of saying oh I think we're kind of hitting our limit on how we can make how good we can make these games look and the difference between a PS4 and a PS5 game I'm so sorry to a lot of people out there who are going to be really upset with me right now isn't actually that different like yeah I will notice it Nei will notice it a few a small group of fans are really going to notice those differences the majority of people are just going to be like yeah that's the game sometimes it's a little blurry sometimes it's not and and and the majority of people don't care about that and they're really trying to push this idea they they they said oh a lot more people are choosing the performance mode over the Fidelity mode we wanted to give them the give make them not have to choose that's why we did this how many people like I don't think it's the majority of people but that's fine right this isn't supposed to be for everybody yeah it's for professionals yeah but it's for profession who is the professional this is just for Ninja that's the only but it's not like there's any pro features here the pro feature is we put a bigger GPU in because we could fit a bigger GPU in and one of the criticisms of the original PS5 was that it was it and the Xbox were underpowered as soon as they arrived because they were based on current that current gen AMD technology and so it's like they've always been a little behind the times but the exchanges that the games just play and so now that PlayStation is putting all these options in and making you think about these things you're starting to think of it less like a console where it just you plug it in and go and you're starting to think of it more like a PC and I think that's a dangerous place for Sony to be historically the famous PC Pro success PC program over there they really know how to do it um but like like it works for Microsoft it makes sense for Microsoft Microsoft's doing the exact same thing both of these companies are pushing these things towards PCS they fundamentally are they're all the technology in them or PC technology they're based on amds technology Nintendo's over on the other side saying what if we just did cool [ __ ] what if we made good games yeah what do we just made good games and it's it's a weird place that that Sony's taking this and I don't know if so like makes sense for Xbox it doesn't make as much for Sony I will I will point out that uh the $80 disc drive is sold out on Amazon and Best Buy and Target this is the ven diagram like truthfully it also works for the PS5 slim so you know there's a lot of slim owners out there I'm sure this is what kills me the slim not having a disc drive I completely understand yes that makes perfect sense having it be cheaper and smaller and for people whose games are digital which is most people makes absolute perfect sense to me this just doesn't like and in this in this one tiny Lane you have a group of people who will put up with a bigger console who are likely to pay more for it who are willing to make all the sacrifices required to get the very best possible everything out of it right like the only reason to buy this is if you want like the 10 out of 10 experience yeah let me get in here with my hot take okay let's go Liam you all ready we're ready the problem with the PS5 Pro it's not that it's too expensive it's that it's not expensive enough they should have released a $9.99 version of this thing not a $700 it should actually be a PC that you can hook up to your TV and have the like lovely experience of just it always working for your game you just turn it on and start playing your game but with the graphics that people are buying their PC games for Sony knows that there are a lot of people out there that care about having the best possible version of their games and they'll play them on PC I think they've proven that they could sell a999 PS5 to the extreme end of the market the enthusiasts I like that you you've just pitched a home theater PC everything somebody at Microsoft is hearing this going oh God oh God oh God we're g to do it again they were just too soon they were just too soon they were too soon no I I to Liam's point I do think the idea of uh play PC games but don't have to deal with Windows would be compelling to a surprisingly large number of people which I think is also what Microsoft thinks and can't figure out what to do with it's it's trying it's trying like I mean I think the next Xbox not not the next didn't you just describe the steam deck yeah right I mean isn't that that like you're on a plane you can play PC games and doesn't run Windows the battery life is good but the the steam deck runs a runs a like smartphone chip on a tiny screen it's like a potato compared to the PS5 Graphics wise all right here here's my Poll for the vcast audience let's assume you own a A PS5 what would you rather spend money on a steam deck or a PS5 Pro you I'm very I I feel like just based on this conversation that's more of a choice than we are right no I I think that's the wrong question I I don't think this is like every year when people are like should you upgrade from the iPhone 15 to the 16 like the answer is no and no one is doing that the answer is if you have a PS4 or a PS4 Pro like to me interesting upgrade path is if you have a PS4 Pro and you've been sitting around waiting for the PS5 Pro to buy one is this the thing you were waiting for if you have a PS5 I I would I would bet the number of people who were like oh throw my PS5 in the trash I'm buying a PS5 Pro to get slightly better R tracing is like vanishingly small but I don't think that's who Sony is going for here but I also think the PS4 Pro people I was one of those people I had a PS4 Pro I really liked it I have one right here yeah it's great got a PS5 because it was new and I wanted to play all the new games if you're you're on a PS4 Pro you're now having to pay twice the amount like the PS5 the PS4 Pro wasn't this High a markup between it in the regular PS didn't it also come out like right after the PS4 no it took it it took a while yeah it was a couple years and it was a big upgrade because you were doing 4K you were doing like a lot of big stuff in it whereas this one is just like we've do you know what dlss is we made our own weird version of it yeah and like that's a lot harder to sell to the nor like the the normal folks I say because we're all big nerds here we love having look I watched these comparison videos I waited for digital Foundry to do its thing and I was still like yeah I'm good I'm horrible at Madden and I play astrobot the whole meme right now is people watching it and like pausing it and taking their glasses off and on trying to see where the differences are between the two the two versions cuz it it's really small and yeah it's noticeable but it's really small and most people don't care that much they just want to play the game I will issue my almost weekly reminder that you Cann evaluate the quality of anything on your smartphone screen yeah you just can't uh you can't look at stuff on a smartphone screen just like uh when people try to we do it all the time when we're like listen to these speakers and we like play We record them and then people watch them on YouTube on their smartphone speakers I don't know what's happening there that's nothing that's just like a handshake agreement through the internet that that like we're going to feel some Vibes yeah that's not right just believe us we're telling the truth that's how I feel about those REI videos I don't know I am very interested and what is happening in the broader gaming Market cuz it feels like that shakeup and that split is like really happening right like like we knew this PC moment was happening for consoles but this in particular like it was it was it was a moment with PS4 Pro cuz you were like okay now we are fracturing the console market and the way the console Market typically isn't fractured the whole point of the console Market is no fracture like everything is you go you buy this thing it does the games and now you're getting all these different SKS sort of like apple just using all these different SKS and like yeah okay you're going to meet more of the market here but you also lose why people like this product to begin with which is Simplicity I wonder if what we're seeing is just this like incredible bifurcation of the gaming industry where on the one hand you have the the handheld Revolution right which is like I think is going to eat the low-end consoles alive it's already happening right like if I just want to play astrobot the idea of me needing a gigantic box to do it I think is like that's ending very quickly uh then the flip side is the highend stuff is going to get higher end so it feels like we're going to end up in the place of like music streaming and vinyl and nothing in between right you're either going to have this sort of like beautiful bespoke setup with a lot of very specific things but it is going to be extremely high fidelity and wonderful or we're going to lean deep into convenience and streaming and everything is going to be lower quality but that's what people want well I think the the the the there's a third prong here that kind of affects it which is that they own so many of these Studios that they're that are making these games and these Studios aren't making games for anybody else right like astrobot you can't go play that on anything but a Sony device cuz Sony wants to keep you in their wheelhouse and that's o the FTC is going to have feelings if you get I think if you get if you're like look we're basically PCS we're doing all of this stuff also you can't play Last of Us on anything else people will start having feelings about that in a very real real way that I'm kind of curious about well I think Sony is allowed to have it first party Studios which has been whittling down it's when Microsoft bought Activision and said we're going to close off Call of Duty that you got all the Regulators I would point out that ever since Microsoft actually closed that Activision deal it has just been clown car city over there just banging into walls and falling off cliffs it's great um they announced just today that they're going to lay off 650 more Xbox employees this is just a wave of layoffs and strategy shifts all after they they fought too thin nailed to buy Activision because something yeah because they want to have everybody wants their little feedom and you have to go and buy the console to get into to play the games rather than just play them on a PC which they can all theoretically do because architecturally they're all the same well sure but I'm Sony at least has a first of all it's the winner of this generation yeah because it's got the good games you count the switch like it's which is one every generation that it's been anywhere near right and the new Switch we think is coming out that will probably win whatever generation it's a part of the Cycles don't quite line up but Sony has beaten Microsoft pretty soundly this generation I I hear what you're saying like the underlying software or the underlying Hardware architectures are similar like they're AMD chips but the PS5 is a it's an opinionated device yeah right it Sony has a lot of thoughts about the PlayStation and what it's for and what the game should work like and Mark cery has a lot of ideas about settings right like there's there's a vision there for better or worse and you cannot feel it and you can be mad about the dis drive but yeah Sony has confidence Microsoft has confidence I think Phil Spencer is a confident person they have a lot of ideas but actually they're it feels to me like they knew they were losing they wanted to make a big swing and they have just whiffed on a bunch of their big swings they whiffed on cloud gaming which was supposed to be the biggest swing of all they haven't pulled it off yet um this Activision deal you know they let Duty be the side show but it was really about Candy Crush and Phil has said this to us mobile gaming is the future no one has a foothold there we got a win there that was also kind of a weird side show of cloud gaming it and none of that I don't think anybody any consumer if you're a if you're a gamer please please use the feature on iOS where it makes your emails a little bit nicer but then email us I'm curious did did Microsoft buying Activision improve anything about buy but playing games for you like I don't see it yet and it's true the deal is pretty new yeah but you you see that what's happening over there is they are looking for a new strategy or a new vision and I I think you needed that before you made one of the biggest Acquisitions of all time but I think Sony's muddy you talk about it's got this big Clear Vision it's muddied that Vision because on the one point yeah you have astrobot you have The Last of Us Sony vs Microsoft: The Console War you have Spider-Man you have these games these first party games that look gorgeous are stunning play great on this thing have really kind of unique things focused on that controller and then you just have everything else and and Microsoft is kind of said we're going to be everything else we're going to own that space we're going to be the PCS we're going to bring you know kind of gaming PCs into the console space and Sony's now saying the same thing even though they've got this this lead they're saying yeah we're going to do the same thing we're going to muddy the waters here and and I think that's where The PS5 Pro's Vision and Market Strategy like the PS5 Pro doesn't have that Clear Vision you see in in their games oh I think it has one very clear Vision it costs more money costs so much money if you're right now if you're going to buy a console is there any and you already have a switch Yeah cuz that's what you should buy um uh if you're going to buy a console you're going to buy a PS5 yeah right is it they're the winner that's what most people have chosen unless you don't want to play those first- party games if you just want to play Call of Duty and stuff go get an Xbox most people are still going to buy PlayStations that there is like a default Choice it's the PlayStation yeah right so then you have a PlayStation and you can discount the regular one cuz you you have your economy of scale so you can go into the holiday and be like here's the cheap PlayStation like you're saying ser and then you can but there's some category of people that will just spend more money and you can sit there we had a CFO at Fox me a long time ago described his was waiting to catch the basketball he's like I'm just the money comes and I'm here to get it and I was like I don't think that's what a CFO does but it was a learning experience for me um he was great I think Sony is just like here's a more expensive one catch the money we're just here if you got some if you have $300 extra dollars I do we'll take it from you yeah that's true this is the game both of these companies have been playing for like this whole generation right and Microsoft's bet has been for years now Microsoft's Struggle with Xbox Identity that we are on the cusp of a giant shift in how this entire industry Works how we play the games where they are how they're architected the kinds of games that we play like Microsoft has been making this bet for a long time now I think Microsoft still thinks it's right and is running out of patience for it to actually happen Sony is just sitting around saying look at all this money flowing in and and then the question will be if you fast forward a few years is Microsoft going to be right before it gave up or is Sony just going to have so much money at the end of it that who cares but like Sony is basically betting that this shift is going to happen slowly and Microsoft is betting that it's going to happen fast okay I'm going to end by saying one thing that will make everybody mad yeah or that you will completely agree with I don't think there's a middle ground it's weird that Microsoft has tried to run away from the idea of the Xbox being a thing that just plays games really well for so long it's never wanted that right it's like the whole Xbox one side quest with where it had the IR blasters and HDMI P like what I don't people got so mad at me when I was like this is a disaster my ongoing theory about this is that every once in a while there's an executive meeting at Microsoft and somebody turns to Phil Spencer and goes like why are you here and so he has to like explain why Xbox is part Microsoft and eventually that morphed into like talking about Azure and then it was just toast right can we run this is what I mean like first okay we're going to do it we're going to take over the we're we're gonna have a Dish Network integration in the Xbox like they were all the way down the rabbit hole of that stuff and they walked it all back to games and then it was reasonably successful again and then the this generation they were starting with games and they're like well we lost to Sony we're going to stream the games from that will disrupt the whole market and that just has not panned out and it just seems like if they maybe some focus on the main thing would continue to be successful but that's back it up to the first thing and it's a it's a how do we be part of the windows strategy thing inside of Microsoft and then fast forward to this generation and it's a how do we be part of the cloud first strategy of Microsoft like I think there is a very compelling case to be made that the best and worst thing going for the Xbox team is that they work for Microsoft but you know I was going to say though I think part of the reason they've been doing all this flip-flopping is because their first party games haven't landed the same like they just don't land like like Sony's first party games move consoles people buy consoles for Sony's first party games I don't know Halo was good for a while Halo name another one Halo 2 you see like like and and Microsoft went on this whole buying spree they were like we're going to buy all of these companies and then they got they got told oh no okay you cannot make Call of Duty exclusive yeah not exclusive like like first party exclusives you know The Last of Us Spider-Man those are exclusive they come to the PC eventually and then you can sort of play it through Xbox I think through the cloud but you have to wait a while if you want to play The Last of Us which all the other gamers are playing and everybody's talking about you go get a PlayStation well but yeah and and I think that all like that that all sort of flows from the same circles right where it's like okay if if our job is to sell consoles how do you sell consoles you sell consoles with really good games but if our job is to like increase the market share of of our our cloud services arm of our company you just prioritize things very differently yeah I think Phil sensor would take deep issue with that characterization of Xbox but it's always a little more true than anybody wants to be by can I just read you the first paragraph of his note announcing these Phil Spencer's Memo layoffs for the P this is Phil Spencer his memo to Microsoft employees for the past year our goal has been to to minimize disruption while welcoming new teams and enabling to do their best work as part of aligning our postacquisition team structure and managing our business we've made the decision to eliminate approximately 650 rolls AC welcome you're fired yeah that's tough and then at the end of it he's like we've had some good days and we've had some bad days and this is a bad day it's like thanks Phil I mean there's no good way to write those notes no there's not I think mergers are bad that's all I'm saying I think generally they lead to chaos and disruption in actually smaller companies with less Focus um or less ambition and I I suspect that will be in the long run true of the activation deal are you saying Warner Brothers Discovery isn't a good company we got to go we got we got to take a all right yeah we're taking a break we'll we'll talk about whatever zaz is doing in a little bit later we'll be right back support for the vergecast comes from mmobile when you're trying to save money one of the best places to start is your monthly expenses and one thing a Google's Desktop Windowing on Android Tablets lot of us overpay for is our phone bills with mintmobile you can finally start saying when you switch to mmobile you can get 3 months of Premium wireless service for just 15 bucks a month all of M Mobile's plans come with high-speed 5G data and unlimited talk and text plus you don't need to worry about getting a new phone or phone number just take those with you over to your new mint plan to get this new customer offer and your new 3-month Unlimited Wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month go to mmo.it mobile.com slurge cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mint mobile.com slge $45 upfront payment required equivalent of $15 a month new customers on first 3month plan only speed slower above 40 GB on Unlimited Plan additional taxes fees and restrictions apply see mintmobile for details we're back and we have the most breaking news of all in the middle of our break literally in the middle of our break Google put up a Blog post announcing the developer preview of desktop window on Android tablets I know that the audience is as lit up by this as we are but I have to tell you this whole room got so distracted that we almost forgot to start the show again in the middle of the break just looking at this blog post it's a good blog post if you're a DEX head just know your Empire is falling crumbling Brick by Brick is Google ruthlessly Sherlocks your entire your entire operating system away from you uh so basically you pixel fold which feels like one of the hotter phones going right now David just got one yep it's sitting here in a FedEx box on my desk Liam has a pixel watch on right now and a pixel F because he bought a pixel fold and now he's in the ecosystem I'm seeing him people are excited about this phone and so Google which has Liam was trying to run the pixel fold on a desktop monitor the other day and it was the saddest thing I've ever seen it's adorable truly this like no literally no affordance for running with a keyboard and display like it just here's your pixel full like here's a mediocre Android tablet and it's still Square it still Square it was beautiful everything about it was great as you know Samsung has decks as vergecast listeners no Samsung has his thing called deck which is the desktop mode for its phones there's a lot of weird decks stuff going on literally different SKS of the same phone and the Samsung lineup run different versions of decks with different capabilities Samsung baby it is just not a thing you can depend on as someone who has desperately tried to live the deck Lifestyle the only person I know who ever pulled it off successfully is Dan sefor our former reviews editor who now works at Google because Google was like Dan can you explain what is going on in the Samsung devic so I was gonna ask so there there there's a there's a man named deer bone who also works at Google who also was a big believer in window freedom I would say uh and and then Dan America's number one Dex user yeah uh goes one and only Dex user list still number one man uh goes to Google does The Verge get credit for this feature yes this is us this is feel I think the and we don't actually we don't um I'm still you know we're all good friends we just learned to not talk about work anymore which is weird for people M that worked in media together especially uh we just don't I see we talk about anything else um so I don't know I I have no we have no inside info and I maintain that line because I like talking to Deer he's my friend so we just enforce this it's we had to like learn what to talk about that wasn't work and or gadgets very weird um so I don't know but I'm just taking credit for it yeah I'm with no literally no evidence and actually like uh an ideological resistance to knowing yeah and a deep knowledge of that not being how it works yes we're still taking credit still taking for absolutely we will send our armies into your house and introduce desktop window could not agree more I'm into it so okay here's what's actually going on it's just a developer preview right now they're showing it mostly on a pixel tablet I have to imagine that this is going to be what will happen on Pixel fold which very much acts like a tablet when you unfold it um you can just free form Windows you can just run Android like a desktop operating system you you pull a chrome window down and it opens a window with a nav bar and tabs navigation it should I think there's some weirdness here between what is a Chrome OS device and what is an like the Google weirdness here is very powerful like the the Chrome OS team just saw this and it's like what the hell or they're like aren't we on the same team who knows with Google um so there's some weirdness here about just the differences in between the apps like Chrome OS can run Android apps mhm weird that that came to nothing is most of so these ideas generally come to nothing um but the idea that Google is taking a bigger step forward in particular with the fold because I don't think Android tablets is a thing really matter if they free from window but part in particular with the fold and foldable Android devices that when you're close they act like Android phones and when they open they have free form windows that can be useful in a variety of like Computing situations that's a big deal like it feels like a big deal they have to actually chip it it like work but this is the thing that everybody wants you just carry your phone to work and you plug it in and it's a computer we're a little bit closer there I'm sorry I I'm just looking at the the desktop window thing they have and it feels like the person the sample they're using here the person is lying about going to Tahoe the T this is so Gemini can summarize it yeah the Tahoe debrief and then behind that you see they been Googling Tahoe interesting interesting they're like Gemini summarize this web page about Taho an email about my trip to Tahoe like Windows uh calling you out there a little bit it's good I will say yeah you're right that the they're like on a video call they're doing an email while they're searching for literally just the word Taho a little a little weird a little weird but these look I I don't know I I think these windows look nice they seem to move smoothly in the little gifs we're seeing it's such a rising tide lifts all boats thing too because the biggest challenge for Android apps on Chrome OS once they got past some of the like basic compatibility issues has been that Android apps look like butts when they're big right like overwhelmingly and this is a thing that that Apple has had really good luck with over the years and it has served Apple really well is making apps look good at different siid Google has struggled forever to get developers to care about anything other than the vertical size of a smartphone and one of the reasons people like to build apps for iOS before they build for even Android smartphones is because the screen sizes are different like it's so hard to build a good Android app because you essentially have to build a hundred of them that all look slightly different at slightly different orientations it's slightly different sizes so like the idea of there just being one software of one screen size is very appealing to people which is why a lot of people like to build iOS apps what Google has made an effort to do over the last few years it has not done it exceptionally well but it has done it relatively well is get people to build these more flexible apps that work at tablet size and they work at smartphone size and they work at the size of a laptop screen to run on Chrome OS and so every bit of it that gets better on one of those makes it better for all of them right so like the pixel fold being good this year should be very exciting to people who own Chromebooks because is going to make people who make Android apps make them better for the fold which will make them better on the Chromebook and every one of these pieces just gets better and better as time goes on which I think like and for this again I can't imagine there are that many pixel tablet users out there in the world but like this is just a step again in that direction Dan's just so happy somewhere I I do have one question does does Android design like do they not have responsive design where you just like okay you make it and in this in this context it's called adaptive okay so they they've been they and they pushing that for a long time but adaptive is not a checkbox right like it's not a thing that you say that make my app adaptive like that you have to build it to be all of those things and that's it takes work so they don't have like a tool set that'll be like Boop adaptive so they they do you'll see some apps and this is why like there are a lot of iOS apps that look the same on an iPad because you can basically just sort of like paint by numbers into a template and it'll do it at all the different sizes and some folks do that and that's fine but like if you want to build an app with different ideas about navigation or different animations or like like literally to load a page at all the different sizes an Android device can be is a challenge especially if you like care about how it looks and works uh and then you throw in all the different devices and all the different you know screen refresh rates and there's just so many variables but the the sheer raw like X byy size of the app has been the biggest hold up for Google forever because it's just it's a thing people have not invested in doing because Android tablets were not any good Android apps on Chromebooks didn't work and nobody cared about foldable phones and so like as each one of those gets better they all get better and that's very cool I I think I'm just kind of surprised cuz like in in web design we had this whole moment where everybody was like you know you can just download this little theme and it's a responsive theme and it's going to automatically resize it for anything you do and the fact that Google doesn't just have like here's here's the lazy way well no but some built that theme that's like that theme doesn't just exist well you if you listen carefully that's the sound of every web designer listening to the Show screaming you're welcome I like to Wordpress theme that just exists yeah I paid $40 for it on theme taking our site from uh desktop mobile we had an M do site for a minute um uh to responsive was uh nightmare just responsive design is really hard it's really hard it's gotten a lot easier because it has become so much more important but it is really hard well I think my question is why doesn't Google do that work actually can I tell you a fun fact about responsive design um I love a fun fact my fun fact about responsive design is that it was a VOX media designer Scott Kellum who invented some of the very first responsive design prototypes well that's awesome yeah and he was like he's like look at this thing he was like showing us stretchy web windows and I was like make our site do that and then the office lit into flam for a long time that's awesome yeah see that was live breaking gadget news on the BRC we still our hearts still a flame when there's Android winding yeah we're still we're still where we came from uh David I think you think the next story is very funny I do think the next story is very funny all right make the case buddy okay so there was a debate uh well let me let me back up so so there's an election happening in the United States actually let me back up so the found do we know where Trump stands and Android winding he doesn't like it which candidate do you think is more likely to use Dex in the office neither one of them's a lawyer she's using like Word Kamala Harris's Earrings Conspiracy Perfect Tim Walls oh that's a good one Tim is definitely on like a Galaxy Note just because he wanted the sty see he refused feel it yeah Tim has a foldable keyboard in his backpack at all times that feels exactly right to me JD Vance is like here's what I want to do I want to I want to nationalize ey message like that's where his brain is at by the way have I told you guys about how we discovered very recently that JD Vance has a house like right down the street for me and there's now a a secret service motor Cade that goes by my house like almost every day oh wow that's the whole story that's it that's all I wanted to tell you there's now a park that is like the size of this room that's fake behind me uh that is now closed because it's too close to JD Vance's house and that's how everyone in this neighborhood found out that JD Vance has a house here but he's never there he's walking in donut shops Across America confusing the population Apparently one of them might be in my neighborhood I'm going to have to start walking into donut shops every day just to see if I can find JD V anyway let's talk about the earrings there was a debate uh kamla Harris was wearing earrings and that became Tech news because there was a set of people on the internet who advanced a clearly not correct theory that the earrings she was wearing were actually headphones and uh I just I brought this up for two reasons one because it's not true uh and this is like a thing that people have tried to do for years the idea that I the candidate who does well in a debate is being fed answers in some way shape or form is like a long running conspiracy theory that's never proven true but B I think it's very funny that the earrings in particular that she's being accused of wearing uh there's some strong evidence that they don't actually exist this is like a Kickstarter company that doesn't really seem to have shipped like in fairness we have not covered this company closely so maybe there's more out there if you are an owner of Nova H1 headphones get at me I have a lot of questions I want to know everything audio earrings God you're right I apologize the H1 audio earrings uh they just aren't what she was wearing yeah they they look very different if every would have been funnier if everybody's like she's wearing beats but they're like she's wearing a k project the only similarity is they both have a pearl on them like their pearl earrings that's it the fact that the CEO is out there being like I can't confirm or deny that these are our fake earrings is like well one what are you doing the fact that the guy who can't ship his product is saying that yeah and also the battery life only lasts 2 and 1 half hours which means they probably would have died like mid debate if we're being if we're being realistic she's putting them on right before she goes out yeah just give them to me let's go she takes off her earrings mid debate puts them in a charging case takes him back out there was a very funny in the in gadget days um way back when when Obama was first elected there was all these reports that he wanted to keep his BlackBerry mhm I don't know if you remember this like frothing at the mouth W Obama get a Blackberry and then there was all this stuff about he would need like a secret Blackberry it was like Ultra lock down and he really wanted his BlackBerry and there was this company that made a phone called The secta Edge and the CEO of that I don't remember what they're called I don't know I I refuse to remember but the CEO of this company is is like military vendor guy and he's just like on all the TV channels being like the sect Edge is the most hardened milary grade blah blah blah and everyone's like Obama's getting a secta edge and like definitely not he ended up with like a black 38000 that was just like stripped of its apps and then later on he had an iPad it was like why did we spend so much time talking about the sector Edge I think Josh topalsky had a post in a gadget during those days where he was like it's not the Super Phone 9000 it's Blackberry like that was like the headline it's pretty good yeah I'm learning so much about they were not Tech technically smartphones the sex ha Edge which was made by General Dynamic yeah see I knew it was like he's like here's what we do it's cruise missiles and this weird feature of phone for the government that was like remember the Boeing black that Boeing was like we made a super secure smartphone like this is a whole it's it's a whole genre floating out there there are many stories during the Trump era that I spent much too much time focused on fo in particular but I don't know if you remember they would always describe him as having a super too in the White House oh yeah would watch like his supero and he kept referring to it as a super too and like you know America's political reporters are not be like what's a super like I get it but I was like what's a super too like I've had every to that's ever shipped which one is it is is there that company is now a patent licensing troll like which to is it dude and it was just a bog standard Huawei's Tri-Fold Direct TV box and one time they P someone published a photo of the super remote and it was a $4 like white Direct TV remote but somebody like painted a racing stripe on it like supero just like dude he's got Direct TV like I'm aware that it can record four channels at once but like so can everything honestly I think if Direct TV had rebranded a Super T it would probably have been more successful the one Trump has senior citizens of America you you can all have Direct TV together it's a remote but it like has the cover on it so you can only hit two buttons just to make sure it is very sad that everybody just assumed K har 's earrings were earbuds do you think Tim Wallace has ever backed a Kickstarter that's my last question for you 100% I mean JD Advance back to Kickstarter to overthrow the government of United States let's move on there you go I will cop to getting this wrong at the top of the show I said it was honor because honor has also been hinting at a trifold smartphone but it's actually the Huawei trifold smartphone uh it's $2,800 it looks sick again w we got like booted out of the country you will recall and almost went out of business because we wouldn't sell them chips there's like a whole thing that happened with they make their own operating system it start all over and now they're like three screens and everyone's kind of like what if what if we let Huawei back in the United States I I I want this the world's first dual folding triple screen so it's the mate XT it is Ultimate design please it's called the mate XT ultimate design they announced it on the same day as the iPhone which is very good um it's very expensive $2,800 there about depending on the conversion factor we on um that's 250 gigs of storage our story points out that's $300 more than a 16-inch MacBook Pro how many times can I fold up my 16-inch MacBook Pro Nei all of the videos all the assets all the content that W was released is just the thing unfolding and showing people looking at Future of Folding Phones presentations somebody got a hands on with it though somebody has a hands on yeah so Gizmo China got a Hands-On with it and and put in a couple of additional specs it's only a little thicker than in the Samsung Galaxy Z fold and it looks like like you can watch this video it's we'll put it in the show notes it looks sick the camera is huge yeah that is a big camera B the that's a big boy oh there oh more I'm looking now on YouTube there are more Chinese hands-ons with this thing that are starting to trickle out but they're all just the thing unfolding yeah that's the only content that exists is a very controlled demo of thing unfolding what else do you need to know that's that's that's the whole job oh here's I well does the operating system do anything when you turn it into a sheet of paper we need to see before and after we don't don't worry about the the the process so one of the things that I am very curious about in this next turn of phones uh we've been talking a lot about pixel fold it seems to be very popular amongst the gadget population whether it's going to move Google's market share at all it won't but if you're a particular kind of Gadget nerd that is the device everyone's like talking about it into lately which is interesting it feels like folding phones that bfold they've reached a point where now they're just maturing in iterative steps yeah right compared to where the Galaxy fold started which means Apple will have one next year maybe uh you pixel fold still you can still feel the same it's not perfect but it's it's right in a way you can see that little crease when you open it still um you can you can definitely feel with your finger uh but it's like it's hit that point and so now are we just at Okay add another one yeah do we think I mean like I like the Chinese fun market and the Indian fun Market are like full of these ideas like yeah do Bonkers Hardware stuff and see what happens uh markets around the world are generally more open to weirdness just because of the way our carriers are and Apple's iMessage domination there a whole a bunch of vcast stuff that means we don't get cool phones first uh oh no he's this one video has the guy actually folding it and you watch it all like realign itself yeah it looks cool I mean Huawei did have to build their own operating system because again we the amount of sanctions the United States government put on Huawei just changed the direction of that company that's fine um but it just seems like this is a a weird you look at this you look at how people are excited about it in a way that the first set of foldables didn't really capture but now maybe the technology is mature enough is I think there's like also there's a weird cultural element here too because we're seeing all of these things happening in other countries in the United States is so focused on the iPhone and the iPhone is so stuck in in in glass slab land and and like Google it's really nice that Google's coming in but huawei's been doing this for a while a lot of the xiaomi's been doing this a lot of these other country companies have been doing really really cool stuff with phones that just don't come to the United States in many ways it's it's less like they're doing weird stuff it's more like we're getting a little left behind yeah I mean again it's so hard to break into US smartphone market because of the essential duopoly of Apple and Samsung that the carriers have more or less enforced um so it goes I I've tal we've talked about this so many times but I'm just wondering from a hardware perspective do we think the regular folding phones have reached their sort of like yeah we're done with this we we don't need to figure out any Basics here now we're just I think a lot of people are are the folks are comfortable with that that little crease it it doesn't seem to bother people that much and they figured out the front of the phone right like like with the pixel Pro that was the thing everybody really likes about it is that they figured out the front so you can just use the phone as normal you never even have to open it up but then when you do want to like have a good time yeah you open it up and enjoy yourself D you have long take me out of this you have long insisted that uh it'll be the the the flip style yeah seeing a triple fold change your mind it should no um I think I think the triple fold is an interesting tablet replacement way more than it is an interesting phone replacement like I think phone that turns into Smartwatch is a way more compelling thing to most people than tablet that turns into phone uh and but to your point about the hardware like on one level we are getting there like this stuff is pretty good there's work left to do they need to get more rugged the cameras need to get better the screens need to continue to improve the whole thing needs to get thinner and lighter like these phones are big they're big and uh there there's just there's a lot of work left to do but in terms of like can you make a phone that kind of works open and closed like the the answer to that is yes right and I think we've we've landed on especially with this last generation Samsung has gotten closer to the right size OnePlus is getting closer to the right size Google is seemingly very close to the right size uh I think what you're seeing from a lot of these companies and Huawei and xiaomi and others have done this for years is like unbelievably cool really high-end Tech demos that like they don't think a lot of people are going to buy this phone uh but it it gets people excited it's like it's a branding exercise as much as it is like an actual phone to sell to humans I I disagree it's so cool looking it is 2,800 on it's 2,800 look about saides you the whole point is that it's cool looking yeah a 10year plan paying like $30 a month this would be great didn't you just complain about the PS5 Pros cost if it could fold like an accordion I would I'd take it all back if it was like big GPU but also folded like this yeah yeah you put the motion in I'm I'm sold no I I do think we're we're going to hit a point where people start doing even weirder stuff with this but also Al like there's a there's a thing that's coming that is a lot of new wacky experimenting in phone hardware and I'm very excited about it like it it got stagnant for so long and then a couple of people tried folding phones and it didn't really work and I think everybody decided maybe this isn't going to be the thing and now it feels like it might be the thing and I think like nothing is going to beat the candy bar phone anytime soon if ever but the like the the experiment is coming back and I think that's awesome yeah I mean the iPhone 16 Pro Max is all 6.9 in almost seven it's we're starting to strain the boundaries of how big a phone can be before it has to fall I want to accordion that immediately I've been you know the first thing I did in the hands on air just fold one that list of things you said about what what folding phones need to get better they need to be more durable the screens need to be better that's same the same list of qualities that you could have applied to the first iPhone oh for sure right and so it's just they're on the same path right that and that's what I mean like we figured out the the core technology and now we're just iteratively improving like around the edges to get them even better that feels like a moment I'm not sure where that moment is going to lead to the fact that we're like screw it two two screens fold out kind of feels like maybe they figured out how to get one screen to fold out and that now we're just seeing what else we can do put another fold in I'm just I'm dying for the three-c screen phone well I mean just just think about the difference in in how the screen looks and feels from the first Z fold to now right like just the sheer amount of like Material Science improvements that have been made to get to this point is crazy those things were like plastic and was it it was deer right who like accidentally peeled part of the screen off thinking it was a screen protector like that was not that long ago no no deer had a tiny amount of dust in his review unit that broke the screen and then somebody else peeled off the screen protector and Samsung delayed the launch of the first C that was not a long time ago and now four years ago yeah like that the the speed with which that stuff and that was always the gating Factor right like the question was not how do you build a good hinge it was can you make a screen that works like this and works means a lot of things but I think the answer to that is like yes and we're almost there and so I think you're right that like the path now is way more about software and it's way more about use cases and it's way more about details uh and again it's way Google's Confidence and Pixel Watch 3 Review more about do people actually want this which also is can you make this thing for $800 and not $1,800 and those are like those are big Hills to climb but they are I think like I don't know to just ruin the analogy they're like Hills you can see the top of where as I think not that many years ago like can we make this screen not fall apart was genuinely I think kind of up in the air and now you can just do a little accordion just boop boop you just walk up to any phone you see and fold it in half dude I'm telling you there's one shot in this video where it's open on it's open on two so it just looks like a normal foldable phone and then he just kind of reaches below and pulls up the third part and the the UI just gloriously expands yeah i' I've watched that like 25 times since we've been sitting here talking it's awesome it's sick it's coming I'm telling you it it got more attention from a certain audience on iPhone day than the iPhone yeah there's something to that all right I want to end by putting two Google stories together right next to each other because I think they're kind of really interesting when you put them right next to each other we've actually talked a lot about Google on this episode they they seem in one way to have a bunch of confidence and maybe that confidence is just like we have to put Gemini in front of you so here it is Google's Antitrust Issues and Internal Conflicts but we reviewed the pixel watch 3 this week V reviewed it she gave it an eight uh people like it like yeah people really like this watch it is a confident product um the Integrations across the sort of pixel and Google ecosystem are solid we've been talking a lot about the pixel 99's for all of their you know General issues with swerving reality into chaos because of their their just absolute nihilism about AI image editing like they're good phones that people like yeah um and the pixel watch 3 is a good watch that V really likes and I think people who buy into the ecosystem are going to like it there's something happening on that side of the house for Google where they've fallen into a Groove the hardware is good there's a thesis in the software even if the every time you pick up a pixel phone it's just like Gemini like there's still a thesis there's there's a point of view which I think is very strong they haven't had a point of view for quite a while um that's that side of house on the other side of the house uh well their search engine just got ruled to be a monopoly and they are on trial again right now for an I trust for their adtech stack and the you know there's trial it's Witnesses there's documents Lauren finer is in the courthouse covering it for us it's all very boring it's a bunch of suits talking about display ads in the web like if you want to go to sleep programmatic advertising is the thing to talk about um but what's fascinating is one in all the documents all Witnesses the way Google's business people talk about its business is ice cold oh yeah right there's no Google cuddle bugs there no at all uh it is literally how do we own this Market here's the value the value is there's a line one of the emails it's like the value here is that we own everything like that's that's the thing that makes this powerful we own every part of this stack and so that they're just saying it out loud and then you have the clients the actual people buying advertising being like Google's technology here is bad we're just stuck with it right and like the core adtech server that Google's been using to serve all the programmatic ads all over the web they're like this is bad like this is like 20-y old technology that we would like to get away from but we're stuck with it because there's nowhere to go and that is a weird dynamic for Google right on the one hand they with the AI stuff with Gemini maybe they got you know caught on their back foot but they it provided some amount of focus for the company it seems like and it's reflected in these pixel devices I I think you can see it like there's there's a reason for them to be the way they are yeah which is really interesting like I don't know I if not for chat gbt would the pixel 9 have been had this much Focus like I don't know the answer to that question like they weren't on this path all by themselves like it took this weird sort of diversion from open AI to to bring them here but they it worked and then on the other side of the house the money people are like this is a monopoly we don't like using this technology and it feels based on what happened in the search trial like the government knows how to beat Google this is the case I would remind everybody that Google tried to avoid in jury trial by just sending a check to the United States government for what it calculated to be the maximum amount of Damages yeah like on it Wells Fargo account they're just like here's some ions of dollars is this good we we'll put it in the show not there's a picture of the check you can look at the check Google s a check that's how Monopoly works right here you go literally how Monopoly works like they were so desperate for this not to be happening that they just wrote they just fronted the money for a settlement uh and so I just I would just jux toose those two things I think it's you see this company it kind of like at war with itself a little bit cuz the thing that is funding everything is at all of this risk and the future is like coming into Focus over here except that in so many ways so far all of Google's future stuff has just been ancillary to the other thing right like I think the the most damning critique you could make of everything Google has done in 25 years is that it actually doesn't care about anything but search and so everything gets subjugated to the needs of search like the people who build Chrome will tell you they could have built a better browser except that what they had to do was optimize for search queries which is a weird thing to have to optimize for in a web browser and so like and this is a story you hear over and over from Google is everything eventually loses at the hand of the search team and I I think you could make the case that the only team as powerful at Google as the people who make the search engine are the people who make the ads and like that that is who is now being thrown into this fight and the to your point like the the thing we say a lot on this show is that what happens at one trial has very little to do with what happens at the next trial and I think that's probably true in Google's case here too like all this stuff is still very up in the air but the thing we heard over and over in the last trial was Google's argument was Google is very good which is why we keep winning and it's very hard to argue that there are better products out there than Google and yet Google still lost because because the the argument came up over and over that actually what Google is doing is preventing that from happening right that like maybe the reason there isn't more competition for Google is because Google has not allowed it and and Amit meta the judge was very receptive to that argument uh this one in which the overwhelming thing seems to be actually this sucks and there's nothing anybody can do about it is like even the way Lauren was covering the first couple of days you get the sense that the people accusing Google of being monopolists are very confident coming into this and how how that means it'll go who knows but there there is a real sense of like the argument is extremely strong in this particular case and it's it's going to come down to Market definitions since it always does and it's going to get deeply wonky and I'm going to court at least once next week and I could not be more excited to listen to people yell at me about ad stacks for for weeks but but yeah it is like Google is is both kind of feeling itself and fighting for its life like all at the same time and it's it's very odd I feel like I I need to disclose here uh we we have ads on our website we have oh my God uh and uh Vox media's president of Revenue and growth Ryan Paulie is on the list of potential Witnesses in this trial uh I haven't talked to him about it um I don't know if he's going to get called he's just on the list cuz we run a we run a programmatic ad Network called concert theoretically competes with Google um that's not truly not our side of the house like it's all the way over there I love Ryan has great hair I will say that that's the one thing I know about he does have great hair agrees but like this thing where you say like you're anybody listening pull over in your car and think about the internet uh that's fine instruction to you do do you like the ads that you're seeing there's a million companies a million adtech companies that are like we can make better ads and all of them are like and then you run into the monster and you you give up yep most of those people flip the adtech companies or they try to bundle them up to create a new monster and they get rich and then they you know live a healthy life on LinkedIn complaining about the monster like like they're well practiced at this it's it's not like they're available to you um the reporting is easy to do it's just kind of what you're really trying to sell an audio even what I'm trying to Sal to you right now listening is like there's a reason ads on the internet are bad and it's because no one the market is not actually competitive for better ad experiences okay but which is worse ads now the ad experience now or like in the 1990s where it would be a popup of porn that would then infect your computer well so in the 1990s uh I was a teenage boy so you're like rules I was a teenage girl I was like early 2000s like this is great this is what I was here for the whole time can I just say one more thing on this before we we leave this subject one of the things uh I have been paying a lot of attention to and I'm I'm well aware that this is like a giant generalization but it has it has really jumped out to me in reading some of these court documents so far like a thing you hear a lot from people in and around the tech industry is that like if you if you want to believe that in the early days of the tech industry it was like a bunch of well-meaning hippies who just like wanted to make the world a better place and then that eventually got morphed and ruined they all blame the NBAs there like a bunch of people like graduated from Harvard Business School and came here because they thought that's where the money was and they changed the culture and they ruined everything and like boy does that ring true when you read some of these documents like to your point about these people being ice cold it's like these are the mbas these are the people who are like oh you want to build a cool product I I don't care that's not interesting to me we're just we're in charge of this money machine like make us money and like that is the thing that runs silicon now and it's just very hard because Google does such a good job of for the most part being like very cuddly like yeah I think there's a reason Google still has one of the worst logos in world history like it's cuddly and dumb and it still kind of looks like Marissa Meer drew it herself right and there's a there's a reason there was a slide on the YouTube off like they this is a company that its entire image was friendly and then you know in the background Eric Schmidt former chairman and former CE of Google just a few weeks ago was like here's what you here's what The Lightning Round: Trucks, Messaging Apps, and AI Innovations I would do if I was running an AI company I would steal everything and then have the lawyers figure out the copyright problem and it's like oh that's cuz that's that's what you did with YouTube right like fully what you did with YouTube even though vicom was dumb in that lawsuit uh and their own people were kept uploading videos to YouTube in the middle of the copyright lawsuit which is why they're lost um it's a true story uh but there's a ruthlessness inside of Google that I'm just seeing playing out right now and the thing I'm pointing out in particular is viewed a certain way it's products the pixel products in particular have never been better yeah like they're good this time like they have a point of view they have Clarity and then over here the things that have been reliable Google like ATMs are kind of in chaos because of the regulatory pressure and I'm just not sure how that plays out together it's what happens when you have the NBA run stuff no NB on the pixel team please that's how you stay out of court you stay away all right we got to take a break we'll be back with lightning round support for the vergecast comes from mint mobile these days unless you've decided to live completely off the grid in which case I don't know how you're listening to this show right now everybody needs a phone and yet between the unexpected fees and other nonsense phone companies throw at you it's easy to find yourself overpaying for the service well mint mobile is doing things differently when you switch to mmobile you can get 3 months of Premium wireless service for just 15 bucks a month all of mint's phone plans come with high-speed 5G data and unlimited talk and text plus you don't need to worry about getting a new phone or phone number just take those with you over to the new mint plan to get this new customer offer and your new 3-month Unlimited Wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month go to mintmobile.com slurge that's mintmobile.com slurge cut your wireless build to 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com /ge $45 upfront payment required equivalent of $15 a month new customers on first 3month plan only speed slower above 40 GB on Unlimited Plan additional taxes fees and restrictions apply see Min mobile for details all right we're back the lightning round I will say that there are now ads on the YouTube when you watch it on YouTube there are some ads those are not official sponsors of lightning round the lightning round is still available to be sponsored there were so many commenters on YouTube who were happy for us that we finally sponsored the lightning round I want to all of you rooting for us get done yeah give us money and then be happy how about that I do get emails and I I I try to take the money but I don't know how because it's not my job I can't be like I take stripe it's just not like a thing um all right letting around cray what you got you know how trucks are huge I this is actually kind of a sad one for you cuz I know you love a big truck every time I see a raptor now I'm like I my baby but sometimes trucks are too big they're not sometimes many times the trucks are too big if they come up to my shoulders I'm like 5'8 that's that's too tall uh the US is finally taking aim and they are proposing these new rules and they were going to use Crash Test Dummies but instead of for crashing it's for pedestrians because so we're going to run the car into people like dummies yeah yeah just a little poop and I I think that's really nice because a lot of the times now we've been seeing these really big trucks and then you see all of these YouTube videos and stuff of people in these really big trucks and and they can't see little kids in front of them and it's it's like somebody should check that out MH and apparently the government was like we should check that out and presumably the only way to to do that is to make the truck smaller I will never be able to describe to you why I just started imagining it's it's the Beatles Abbey Road cover but it's four Crash Test Dummies lined up like The Beetles and then just like a cyber truck just comes and just floors all four of them and they're like too big that's an AI prompt right there David y coming soon to a Runway generator near you just immediately what po into my head but there is a lot of optimism about these rules people seem to be really really excited about it it feels like it's it's a good first step so it's it's it's after all these years of just watching the trucks get huge it's nice to be like hey how about they don't get that tall so Nei you're the you're you're a truck guy does this like is this going to piss off all the truck people sorry I just typed the Beatles Abby Road cover but it's Crash Test Dummies and a groc the the AI generator that's so bad this is what you get when there's literally no I'll send it to you D when you there's literally no safety standards on your AI IM generator that's why I picked Croc because it it won't stop me their heads are cute you were ask yes I as a person who once owned a truck and still thinks of my truck fondly uh for example when I use grock to generate Crash Test Dummies as a Beatle sa Road cover I think about moving back into the woods and driving my truck again instead of living in society what I wonder is do people buy the giant trucks because they're the good trucks and people want good trucks so if they make the good trucks a little smaller it'll be fine or have we gotten to a point where like I need big truck and if I if can't have big truck big mad no I actually two things there's two data points that kind of refute the idea that people actually want the big cars some people want big cars one uh the Ford Maverick is a small truck that is just selling like Gang Busters okay it's a hit it's a hit product um and then two people are starting to import these Japanese K trucks I actually saw one at the Apple event driving down the road in front of Apple Park and it was it was like an attention magnet yeah and then there just these little trucks and the beds they're still like 5 and a half foot beds the beds are about the same size as a fulls siiz truck they're just small right so they're as useful but they're just small and I think you're seeing a bunch of interest in small cars again like the market wants them and then you look around and all the cars are so gigantic like I think pendulum just swing back forth there's like tax stuff where you like buy a car for your small business you can write off the full depreciation that has pushed like the dentists of America into buying giant SUVs um that I think that stuff is coming to an end or or changing in some way and so I just think like between the market the regulatory pressure and then just the reality of you get in a car that's so big you need cameras to drive it that's too much it's getting weird right like when the solution to we you can't see children is we put cameras all around the truck that can see the children for you you're just you're just in a weird spot so I I think I look at like I thoroughly enjoyed owning a raptor it was very fun but I lived near no one and every time I drove that thing into New York City I encourage if if you ever have the opportunity to drive uh Ford Raptor through the West Village at night during dinner time when everyone's eating outside uh listening to The Cure with open Windows um take it that was just a weird experience all the way around for everyone everyone was like what is happening right now um the car is just incompatible with the city it's incompatible with the suburb I live in now it's just too big which is why I got rid of it um and I just see a push particular like the rivan R3 that's a smallish car yeah yeah um the ionic 5 the H ionic 5 it's a it's actually big but they designed it to look like a small car like it's technically as small as it looks so I just think there's more interest in smaller stuff as opposed to just like fullon yuk have crawl into them I was in a friend got at one of the big RAM 3500s and I was like hold on do I have do you have like a step or something how do I get into this thing it just nightmarish I do miss my Raptor very much I'm just just saying it one more time I I think about it all the time the car ruled I go home start asking Becky if he can buy a big truck before for it's illegal to have a big truck no it's fine we have a very cranky Mustang inste it's a good time all right David what you got so mine is news that actually happened like right after the vergecast last week uh but I have been thinking about ever since which is that meta finally sort of showed off what WhatsApp and messenger are going to look like now that they're being forced to interoperate with other chat networks uh this is one of those things that has been sort of burbling forever we've known that this is going to happen because of some U regulation that basically says any sufficiently large messaging platform has to interoperate with other messaging systems uh but there's just a couple of screenshots that they showed off one they look great you're going to be able to either have separate or combined inboxes the way you can have like multiple email accounts in one email client like seems like obviously how this should work excited that it's going to work that way I always kind of thought they were going to do like you have an inbox and then the like Facebook side inbox thing that you have to like go way out of your way to do but they actually seem to make it a sort of first-party messaging system which is very cool uh and then also there's a screenshot that shows uh basically how you will set it up in each app and meta invented two messaging apps just for the sake of these screenshots one is called Spruce and one is called blurb and I just I have been I have been designing and product managing Spruce and blurb all week um and I have a lot of thoughts about them as messaging apps which one you think is better Spruce or blur Spruce is like busy it's like Spruce is is is kind of like where you go to to like LinkedIn Vibe blurb is like yo where it's just like it's just down to clown on blur BL blurbing baby yeah you just like yo you you want to blurb later like that has connotations you know what I mean well no in yo you could only yo yeah well okay you're right blurb is more than yo got it okay just be clear but you can you can yo in blur to be clear yo is a feature of blur and two superos equals one blurp it's important to understand that I I got it I have a I have an app on my phone called Bonk yeah yeah yeah is there casy Newton got really excited about Bonk for a minute Bonk was yo with Bonks Bonk was yo with Bonks Bonk was like Bonk was like realtime collaborative yo all right yeah but I I just think this is very cool and uh as as far as we can tell all of this is just coming to the EU uh again this fascinating Schism happening between the experience of technology in the United States and the EU and in many ways the EU is going to be much cooler and more open and more interesting but uh just the way this looks and the way this works has me like actually sort of excited about what messaging might look like so I thought that was cool yeah by the way the EU thing that you mentioned is uh I think is going to be part of my solution to how to review the the iPhones and talk about them because Apple intelligence isn't coming to Europe oh so we're just going to make like European iPhone content Continental iPhone content um and then we'll we'll make like Freedom loving American content bald eagles everywhere yeah where the iPhone is just constantly summarizing everything it's like text summarized America all right Nei what's yours mine is you know more more AI legitimately I think the most interesting AI product I've seen yet do tell so Google has this thing called notebook ml they've actually announced two different versions of this this core idea so Google has this idea they've settled on this idea they're going to take all of their AI stuff where they can take a bunch of data they have big context windows for their model they can understand a bunch of documents they have good voice synthesis they own YouTube Here's their idea we're going to take a bunch of documents we're going to turn them into a podcast with voices talking to each other and so they they have one for scientific papers which I believe we have access to but we haven't really tested very much so inside of notebook LM which is their AI powered Notes app that they announced last year David you my notes it was it was last year and it's like if it imagine a feature that should be in either Google keep or Google Docs but isn't and that's what notebook LM is but it's in blurb from what I understand it is you can blurb to notebook LM for sure yeah anyway so in this app you can give it a bunch of documents and it will just generate a podcast like Two Hosts talking about your documents and it is kind of remarkably convincing I'm sorry I've been reading a bunch about this and it's like I can sort of understand it but just hearing you say that sentence you you give it a bunch of documents and it can generate a podcast I just want to like throw myself out of a window it's like a and like people have been using it um it the podcast host used phrases like Messy as heck like use idioms it's just weird and it's like Google has had this idea twice now like you know that thing where creatures evolved to become crabs it's like Google's AI efforts evolve to make podcasts out of documents like simultaneously evolved twice inside of Google um I think it's utterly fascinating you can use it now in Notebook LM the weirdest one I've seen uh is Robert Stevens who is the founder of the Geeks Squad the actual Geek Squad in Best Buy the founder of The Geek Squad Robert Stevens uh appears to be a member of the Bennett Valley Community Association in s Sona County California apparently the Bennett Valley Community Association has been having a lot of fights about whether to allow weed to be grown on farms there like commercial cannabis growing and so he says he uploaded a bunch of docs and like meeting notes and PDFs into this tool and it just generated a podcast about this fight that for all the world sounds like a true crime podcast about whether or not they should grow weed in snow County uh can I just play you the beginning of it please yes please all right we to dive into another pile of documents always what do we have this time well today we're headed out west to Sonoma County California oh nice Wine Country ready for a vacation not so fast this isn't about a relaxing getaway it's actually about a pretty heated controversy brewing in Bennett Valley Bennett Valley okay I'm intrigued tell me more so it all centers around commercial cannabis cultivation seems like a lot of places have been grappling with this since legalization yeah right it's just like he didn't write that script Wine Country here's just a bunch of weird minutes from board meetings and it made a now is is it accurate did it hallucinate the the heated of this controversy I don't know did it that the AI needs a vacation yeah super did super duper did God there's a part in here where um it notes correctly if you listen to it for longer it notes correctly that um the board's lawyers told it that its first attempt to ban cannabis cultivation uh would not work so the board backed down and tried a new legal Avenue and it ISS the AI issues that as a criticism of the board which is f fting for a guy on the board to publish but like that's to me this is one of the most interesting uses of this Tech that I've seen no one is making podcasts about snow County weed controversy it doesn't seem like there are only four subscribers technically someone did make the podcast but right but no one no one listens I'm interested in generally can you make people more interested in the things that are happening in their Community right every day wherever you live there is some board or HOA or Town Council that is doing stuff yeah and there's a desert of local news throughout this country it's not being covered if you can turn it into Weird True Crime podcasts is that a is that actually useful service of AI I I I don't know the answer to that question but this is the most interesting thing that I've seen out of it yet yeah all the same problems are there is it going to hallucinate is it telling the truth can it be manipulated by the people who are making it to be favorable to one side or is it accountable are interesting to listen to is it feels like an important question Wine Country well so what I found I think the reason that the sparked such interest to me is not the wine country uh they actually were telling a story yeah no like as you go into it they're like here are the stakes here's the back and forth here's a thing that happened here's the next thing that happened this is legitimately like they they constantly do this tell a story thing where they're like you're just driving in your car and your kids sad in the back and you just have the AI tell it a story and that's always stupid yeah this is actually like an interesting use case of it right cuz there's there's things that actually happened again do I know if the AI I'm not deep in I'm not deep in Bennett Valley's weed controversy um not yet if I'm gonna be but it's just interesting that one like Google announced it this is again they come up with this idea twice down inside of Google uh and then two people are are actually using it right like this is someone who is on this board who is dealing with this controversy who's like I tried this out this is good enough to share right this is to me he thinks it's good enough to share I think other people are going to use this in other ways is this going to make good podcasts I don't know is this the most interesting sort of how do you get people to consider things in their like local community that they would not have otherwise considered attempt that I've seen in quite some time it sure is now do I think that this works for every case because notebook LM well you just do anything you can put any random assortment of documents in there um I'm very excited to put like any one of our legal decisions in there like the Google antitrust decision I want to make Google make a podcast of it right like I'm very do they are they going to do a better job than we do but there's just something about all of the llm stuff where all it's ever really doing is playing with language right we've enabled natural language input we've enabled computers to use language in ways they couldn't do before where it's actually this kind of thing that feels like the most interesting use case I don't know that this use case can support the hype or the investment but actually like we can make your local politics somewhat more digestible to you it's the first time I've ever been like all right there's there's something going on here that seems interesting that doesn't seem like massive copyright theft in the end of reality which is how I usually evaluate these things well the challenge there is can you have this use case without all that other stuff but but I I agree it is an interesting use case and I also like the the other news kind of of this ilk that came out this week was open AI released 01 its new like reasoning capable model it looks like an emoji first of all terrible name opening eye said to Kylie Robinson who wrote the story for us they were like oh we think our names are bad we try to reboot it like you you you did bad again sorry open AI 01 is nothing um but one of the things that it does is you ask at a question and because it's a quote unquote reasoning model it takes longer to answer because it's just doing more steps at a time but it will walk you through the steps that it's taking uh and and Kylie included this screenshot in which it's saying things like this is the the model reporting back as it's talking as it's thinking aloud I'm curious about defining variables to translate the problem into algebra and then a minute later I'm thinking through a new variable to measure time and establishing clear definitions for years in the past and like we're still down this road of making these things seem sort of human it's like when you you talk to Siri and it goes hm or um and it's like is this is this what we want it's the most irritating thing in the world I'm like you're fake like do I want the AI to pretend to be a person and I feel that same way listening to this podcast I'm like are you what are you what are you here for I want all of them to go and watch like a whole one of the Star Trek series because they they actually do interact with computer like the computer's not an irritating in it it's like hold on let me process says that tea Earl Gray hot yeah done the tea machine is lot like hm I'm thinking about which blend you might be I've always wanted to just communicate only in nouns and adjectives yeah very good um I will say just to you know the people are going to yell at me because I said something nice about AI I will say something doerer about AI which is uh meta has taken the AI labels off of Instagram or they're hiding them in a menu uh because none of that was ready none of it worked no one has any point of view and LOL nothing matters they just gave up we have just given up on this we're we're doing AI generated images of of Elon Musk and Taylor Swift having a cat baby that's a real picture that I saw this week why why the end there you go you said it all this is like the real the real plus and minus of a right now like oh maybe this will help people engage in local communities I will have to see this picture and there be no label on it because no one figured out how any of that works and maybe it never will that's it that's the Verge chest everybody yay fold your phone in half any phone doesn't have to actually be a fold one just get out there and start folding phones in half brute string rock and roll and that's it for the Verge cast this week hey we'd love to hear from you give us a call at 866 Verge one1 The Verge cast is a production of The Verge and VOX media podcast Network our show is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James that's it we'll see you next week