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- [00:01]
Nilay Patel
Support for the show comes from Ring. There's the peace of mind that comes from knowing your home is secured, and then there's the peace of mind knowing you've got what it takes to be a hosting hero. And a Ring video doorbell gives you both. Greet guests from anywhere and see what's happening at the front door in clear 4K video with wired doorbell pro shop cameras, doorbells and more right now@ring.com.
- [00:30]
David Pierce
Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Vox Media. Again every week for the plastic for the foreseeable future. I'm your friend David Pearce. Nilay Patel is here.
- [00:44]
Nilay Patel
What's up?
- [00:46]
David Pierce
If you haven't been watching this podcast on YouTube recently, I encourage you to watch it once only. For the just unbelievable studio glow up that Nilay continues to undergo.
- [00:56]
Nilay Patel
We added one light on the. On the advice of a video professional instead of me just yoloing it myself. And now. Now I look incredible.
- [01:02]
David Pierce
It's. It's literally like. It hurts my feelings how good you look on. And the people have been noticing, like, don't. Don't get it twisted. The people have been noticing.
- [01:09]
Nilay Patel
Every time someone says I look hot, I send it to Becky and she just says, don't get ahead of yourself.
- [01:15]
David Pierce
It's good. Everybody, we all need. We all need to have our things going for us. Um, we have a lot of stuff to talk about. There's a. There's a new Ferrari that I'm confident we're going to spend somewhere between two and three hours having feelings about.
- [01:26]
Nilay Patel
Speaking of things that think they're but aren't.
- [01:30]
David Pierce
Ne Patel the Ferrari Luche of the Verge cast. We're gonna get into that and why. That's the meanest thing I've ever said to you. In very short order, we got Brendan Carr to talk about. We got a lot of stuff to talk about. Also. Real quick, this is. This is the end of a Vergecast era. As of Monday, we become a daily show. And it's important to me that everybody knows that essentially nothing is going to change.
- [01:53]
Nilay Patel
It's so much of our news lately is like, nothing will change.
- [01:56]
David Pierce
Yeah, we remain the Vergecast. We have a really fun slate of stuff set up for next week. You will see, I promise, how much we are committed to this continuing to be the Vergecast, even as we do more of it and get to move faster and try new things. It's all going to be very exciting. But we remain the Verge cast. I've heard some people who are like, david, don't ruin the show. Which is also a fun fact. When I joined the Verge, Dieter Bone called me and said, david, don't ruin the show. And four years later, I think I've kind of ruined it. But it's, you know, we're doing our
- [02:27]
Nilay Patel
best, but in a fun way.
- [02:28]
David Pierce
Exactly. But let's get to the news. I think clearly the story of the week. You would have thought it was The Pope having 42,000 words of feelings about AI, but my guy got it just immediately. News bumped by the Ferrari Lucent.
- [02:45]
Nilay Patel
What is going on in Italy? He asked, what's wrong over there?
- [02:49]
David Pierce
Everyone has lost their minds in Italy is what's happening. So the Luce just to very briefly set the scene here is Ferrari's first ev. This is a company that a decade or so ago said it would never do electric cars that has kind of pooh poohed this whole idea for a very long time. Tapped Jony I've and his company love from to do a lot of the design work. This is a big deal for Ferrari. Right? I guess, like, let's actually just start there. I think. How important is the idea of Ferrari's first EV to the car world in general at this moment?
- [03:23]
Nilay Patel
Five years ago when this started, I think it was very important. In 2026, it is not important. Interesting is how I would describe this.
- [03:31]
David Pierce
Explain.
- [03:32]
Nilay Patel
So, you know, I'm not a Ferrari person. Lots of people have lots of feelings about Ferraris. I'm a car person and I know enough about Ferrari to know that Ferrari has increasingly become like, not just a luxury brand, but like a club for rich people to be in. So you can't buy a new Ferrari unless you already have a Ferrari. Like, that's just how it works. Like, it's becoming increasingly exclusive to own a Ferrari in ways that, like, some people really don't like. Like, Jay Leno is like an enormous car guy. He doesn't have any Ferraris because he thinks that exclusivity is weird and bad. There's just a. You can go watch videos of him talking about that at length. The reason all the crypto bros have Lamborghinis is because Ferrari won't sell them Ferraris. Like, no amount of money can buy you a Ferrari.
- [04:16]
David Pierce
Right?
- [04:17]
Nilay Patel
It will definitely get you a Lamborghini. And thus we have limos. So this company is just like, it's repositioned itself in like, very specific ways. People really like the cars. There's obviously Ferrari has a brand, it has an ethos, it has a look, which is very important. And so the idea that it needed an EV always struck me as odd because it's not like it's chasing market share. Sure. Right. It's not like, oh, we need an EV to compete with Tesla. It's like, no, to buy a Ferrari, you have to have a Ferrari. And there's a long waiting list of people with Ferraris. Ferraris also come with terms of service. So if you buy a new Ferrari, you're not allowed to resell it because you signed a terms of service and they will repossess the car. Like, it's just like, this is not a company that needs to chase market share.
- [04:58]
David Pierce
Right.
- [04:59]
Nilay Patel
So why do an ev? And the answer, you know, from Ferrari's point of view is like, to be on the cutting edge to build the thing that only Ferrari can build using the technology of today. And then you. You sort of add Johnny I've and Mark Newsom to the mix and you're like. All the announcements are like, this will be the pinnacle of what a car can be. And that's. I would say that's where the hype was.
- [05:18]
David Pierce
Okay. This also helps me understand the thing that the car actually is too, because they did all of this material. They filmed a bunch of things with Charles leclerc and Lewis Hamilton, who are the Ferrari Formula one drivers. Like, you could not have made more out of this release if you're a Ferrari. Right. Like, they clearly mean this to be a moment, I think, for the reasons you're describing. But also I think the overwhelming question coming out of this release has been, what on earth is this car? Like, what did Ferrari do here? And I think you would go into it thinking, okay, you could probably sit most people down and ask them what a Ferrari looks like and get an answer, right? Like, they have a specific shape, a specific vibe, a specific sort of emotional.
- [06:10]
Nilay Patel
David, what color is a Ferrari?
- [06:11]
David Pierce
Red. Like a Ferrari is a Ferrari.
- [06:13]
Nilay Patel
See what I mean?
- [06:13]
David Pierce
Yeah. Like, this is. I mean, I am not a car guy, and I could pick a Ferrari out of a lineup of a thousand cars. This car looks absolutely nothing like it.
- [06:23]
Nilay Patel
It's also blue.
- [06:24]
David Pierce
I suspect most people have seen some of these pictures before, but it looks like an EV way more than it looks like a Ferrari, if that makes sense.
- [06:34]
Nilay Patel
It looks like anything but a Ferrari.
- [06:37]
David Pierce
Yes. It's full of, like, smooth lines and everything is very, like, sort of space agey. And they're doing the thing where they're like, they want it all to feel like one piece. It's very. Johnny, I've unibody aluminum. Like, the guy who made a MacBook, made this car. And you can see it. Like, you really can see it.
- [06:55]
Nilay Patel
And everybody. I feel so bad for the influencers went on this trip, by the way. And so just, you know, here's just a little media gossip that David never wants you to do, but I think people like the inside baseball to. To go to the Luce Reveal, Ferrari had to fly you out. This is against our policy. So we, like, tore ourselves into pieces trying to figure out how to go on this trip in a way that would comply with our ethics policy. And all the answers, like, you will. We will just pay out of pocket for a trip to Italy to see a car which we could not justify, like, just as much as this car was. We couldn't do it. Everyone else who went went on a paid junket. And so all of the videos you can see, there's just pressure to, like, go along. And no one can just say the thing they're thinking, which is, what. What is this thing? And then all of that content goes on the Internet, and everyone's like, this thing sucks. And I feel. I mean, I. You know, I don't. I don't feel bad for Johnny. I've. But, like, this. The thing that he wanted out in the world is like, this is what the Apple car could have been. Right? You see, that was seeded to so much media. Like, so much of the framing of all the videos was, if you wanted to know what an Apple car could have been, like, the ultimate car. Like, this is it. And I have to say, the interior, which they announced first looks incredible.
- [08:08]
David Pierce
Yes, right?
- [08:09]
Nilay Patel
The switch gear and the handles on the screen to move it around and how the key works, and it changes color as you put it in the center console to start the car. The rear seat switchgear particularly, is, like, incredibly beautiful. And all of that is great. And you get outside the car and you're like, why does this Ferrari look like a Honda concept ev? Why does it look like anything but a Ferrari? And we're at the point in this cycle where, like, former Apple executives are texting me to be like, this is Johnny Hyena on his own supply. Because there's no love lost between that group of people, right? And it's like, yeah, if you leave him to his own devices and you get lost in the sauce, you. You end up with Ferrari making a Ferrari that everybody hates. If this thing TC wrote for us, TC Sonic wrote for us. If this was a Volkswagen, everyone would be losing their minds. This was the most beautiful car ever made. But it's a Ferrari, right? It has no sharp lines. It has some of the weirdest headlights I've ever seen, quite honestly. And like none of it screams Ferrari. It has five seats for some reason. Like why did you make a five seat sedan? It's a Ferrari. Like at most you're supposed to do Christian Bale and Batman and pile two models in the front seat and drive away like, sure, Ferrari.
- [09:17]
David Pierce
Yeah.
- [09:19]
Nilay Patel
It's just unclear what the purpose of this car is and who it's for. Except for Johnny, I've to be like, this is the car I could have made.
- [09:27]
David Pierce
Yeah, I think the. Is it Ferrari? Like what do we do with the Ferrari of it all? I think is a really interesting question but I think on the spectrum of would we all be freaking out if this is a Volkswagen? Not entirely sure I agree.
- [09:41]
Nilay Patel
Well if it was a $700,000 Volkswagen.
- [09:45]
David Pierce
But like let me, let me just show you some of the comparisons that people have been making. Like to your point about the. There is the car that it is inside and there is the car that it is outside. There's a great shout out to Pretend World on our website. Dom on our team pulled this out in our daily newsletter. Pretend World said what's crazy is that some of the exterior, exterior details are really stunning. The top down images are super cool. Some of the rear details are beautiful. Then it's suddenly a N Leaf. That's tough man.
- [10:14]
Nilay Patel
That's rough.
- [10:15]
David Pierce
But here like people put out pictures of the Luche vs the Honda Accord which I would say have a fair amount in common. And there is something to the similarity of the basic shape and vibe of this car. I cannot describe to you how much it looks like a slightly fancier Nissan Leaf, like right down to the sort of aqua blue color choice. It's just, it's a fancy Leaf and I think the Leaf has gotten way hotter. So like kudos to the Leaf for the glow up it has gone under. But like just, just the fact that this is immediately a car people see as other cars is such a weird Ferrari choice. Like some there, there is the, the Luche versus the Apple magic mouse. Boy are they the same shape.
- [11:03]
Nilay Patel
There's like all the Mark Newsom car designs. You know he's the other principal designer at Love from. It looks exactly like that. There's hon concepts that it looks like particularly at the rear. Looks like a lot of other cars. You know we talked for a long time about the Apple car, Johnny. I've worked on the Apple car for a decade. That project came to Nothing. And the challenge in my mind for I've was if you're going to make a car, you have to make the most popular category of car, which means you're making a midsize crossover, which means, Shawny, I've has to design a car that looks like a shoe. Every midsize crossover looks the same. Everyone's seen that one picture where it's like all the cars look the same. Like the Ford Mustang Mach E looks exactly like the Mazda CX5, looks exactly like the BMW X3. Like that's the shape of a car now, because that's the most popular category of cars. And yes, they're more or less expensive. And you just see that he got to Ferrari and he didn't embrace the fact that Ferraris don't have to look like anything except Ferraris. He tried to make a car and that means the car looks like all the other cars, even with some like, Ferrari attention to detail. But. And it's like you should have just made a Ferrari. I think the saddest outcome here is that people are using AI to redesign. Johnny, I've cars.
- [12:15]
David Pierce
It's tough, dude.
- [12:16]
Nilay Patel
And the AI is doing a better job. I don't want to feel that way. Do you want to feel that way?
- [12:22]
David Pierce
Nope. So. But the thing I think is most interesting about this, and like, it's worth saying that there have been people who like this car, I'm sure, but there are a lot of people steeped in the tradition of Ferrari who think this is a problem. Right. Like the idea that you look at this car and it is not a Ferrari has really bummed a lot of people out. Like there, there's this clip that's been going around. Let me just play this for you. It's from the former president of Ferrari, Luca di Montezemolo. And I'm going to play you the YouTube dubbed version of this audio, which is itself just a terrific piece of this whole thing. YouTube will now auto dub this video, which is in Italian, into English. So please understand this is not what this man sounds like. But I'm just, I'm just going to play you this clip.
- [13:10]
Nilay Patel
And he. The power of AI and he.
- [13:11]
David Pierce
He's asked about this car kind of just offhandedly. And. And I would just say you can tell pretty quickly is not thrilled with what this thing is.
- [13:21]
Nilay Patel
We risk destroying legends,
- [13:25]
David Pierce
but we can do it.
- [13:26]
Nilay Patel
I hope that at least the little horse is removed from that car.
- [13:29]
David Pierce
What should we do with China?
- [13:31]
Nilay Patel
What should we do with China? What should we do with China. This is definitely a car that at least the Chinese will not copy. They will not. That's brutal.
- [13:42]
David Pierce
So the audio is incredible. But there. There are three things that he says there. He says they risk destroying a legend. I've also seen it translated as myth that like this, this risks tearing down the whole thing. That is Ferrari thing number two. He says, I hope they at least take the prancing horse off that car, which is just a. Just a knife. And then at the very end there, he says, this is definitely a car that at least the Chinese won't copy.
- [14:08]
Nilay Patel
Like, I don't know if I believe that. I disagree with him there.
- [14:10]
David Pierce
But like, you. You couldn't say a series of meaner things about Ferrari than those three things in a row. Like, that is such a devastating take on what this car is that not only. He's not even worried about, like, is this a cool car that's fast and going to be fun and people are going to like, he's like, this is a threat to Ferrari. Like, yeah, damn.
- [14:28]
Nilay Patel
I mean, the stock price went down on the day.
- [14:30]
David Pierce
Yeah.
- [14:31]
Nilay Patel
Again, it's very funny because Ferrari does not try to sell as many cars as it can.
- [14:36]
David Pierce
Yeah.
- [14:37]
Nilay Patel
That's just not been the business it's been in forever. It has been in the. You have to be on a wait list and know a guy who knows a guy who is approved to sell you a Ferrari so that you can buy another Ferrari. Or if you want to buy the new hot Ferrari, you've got to buy four of our shit Ferraris that no one wants to buy for. Like. Like, that is just the way that market works. And it's just funny that they put out this car. I think they. They really wanted to be like, we got Johnny I've and Mark Newsom to make us a car. And it is an ultimate statement of what a car can be like. Only Ferrari can make a car like this. And then they made a Nissan Leaf, and I just don't know what to do without that. There's a lot. Like, if this was an apple car. Let me just ask you directly.
- [15:15]
David Pierce
Yeah.
- [15:15]
Nilay Patel
If this was an apple car, would you be like, this is hot?
- [15:20]
David Pierce
No, because I think. I think in general, my. My bias on this is I am deeply tired of this idea that everybody looks at EV and decides we have to completely change the look and feel and experience of being in a car because it's an electric car. And I think overwhelmingly what we're hearing, especially in the United States, is that people don't want that. That Actually, people like their cars and like the way it feels to be in a car and that. And that this idea that we literally have to reinvent every single piece of the experience because there's a battery in there now is just wrong. Like it's, it's just actively not what people want. And I think you. You look at other places around the world and I think the, the EV picture is a little rosier. Right. Like in China, EVs have been much more successful. That's in large part because they're super, super, super cheap and, and ultra subsidized for the Chinese. Right. And you look in places like Europe where they've been more successful. That's also because is vastly more EV friendly and pushing much harder away from combustion engines. I think in an interesting way, the US has become the market that is the most sort of live and let live.
- [16:28]
Nilay Patel
Right.
- [16:28]
David Pierce
Like it is. It is you. Everybody just has to compete on their merits. And by and large, people are saying they don't want EVs, and I think that's in part because they don't want cars that look and work like this. People don't want to drive spaceships. People like the way that combustion engines feel. They like the sound of their cars. Can I just play you one? Actually to this point, so I mentioned Lewis Hamilton and Charles leclerc are the Formula one drivers. They did. One of the jobs of being a Formula one driver is to be like a brand ambassador. That's a huge part of what these folks do. So they made a sort of loving introduction video where they drive the car, they talk about it. Even they cannot articulate why this car exists in the way that it does. Let me just play this clip for you. The design is very, very different to
- [17:14]
Nilay Patel
whatever we've seen from Ferrari in the past. But I think it's. It's very futuristic. It's very Ferrari. Like, to look towards the future and to innovate.
- [17:21]
David Pierce
In terms of the attention to detail, you can tell that's very Ferrari. Everything's soft and smooth. You know, like, the feeling is really nice.
- [17:28]
Nilay Patel
Yeah.
- [17:28]
David Pierce
Like, quality wise, I like the glass gear stick and the key as well. The key is very cool.
- [17:33]
Nilay Patel
The key is very cool.
- [17:34]
David Pierce
Yeah. They're talking like, if your introduction video is them agreeing on how cool the key is, you've missed something important about what it is. Sure. Like you said, there are a ton of details about this car that are very cool. No disagreement.
- [17:52]
Nilay Patel
But it's not a Ferrari.
- [17:53]
David Pierce
It's not a Ferrari.
- [17:54]
Nilay Patel
If you, if you were Only just listening to that audio. I encourage you to go watch that video. It's just on the main Ferrari social channel, which, by the way, all of their videos are getting roasted in the comments. What happened to cars? I feel bad, but, like, that video is just on the main Ferrari social channel. So you can watch, like, Lewis and Charl try to be excited about the car. Like, it's just all over their faces. And then they're in the car and, you know, they do, like, hot laps in the car. And it's very funny to see literal Formula one drivers have to pretend the car is shockingly fast because it's just like they're Formula one drivers. It's not as fast as their. Their day job.
- [18:32]
David Pierce
Right?
- [18:33]
Nilay Patel
It's not.
- [18:33]
David Pierce
It's. It's literally illegal for it to be as fast as their day jobs.
- [18:37]
Nilay Patel
I don't know, guys. Like, there's a lot of fast cars out there. Like, you can watch them drive around Monaco and much faster cars. Here's what I'll say. I actually disagree with you about the US EV thing, and I'll give you one tiny example. We have a Cadillac Vista. It's the three row Cadillac EV suv. It looks just like a Escalade, Like a baby Escalade. Everyone loves this car. Like, we got a great deal on it. It's sort of the end of the Biden administration where all the credits were flying and the dealers are trying to move all the cars because they thought the market was collapsed. Great. We pay as much for that car as we did our old Jeep because it was such a great deal at the time. Everyone loves this car. Like, we park it and people are like, what's that? And, like, I'm like, it's electric. And they're like, oh. And that's really not the point of the story. The point of the story is, but
- [19:16]
David Pierce
that is the point of the story, that it looks like an Escalade but it happens to have a battery. Is the. Is the correct.
- [19:21]
Nilay Patel
Everyone's into it because gas prices are out of control.
- [19:23]
David Pierce
Yes.
- [19:24]
Nilay Patel
Right. And so, like, everyone's like, oh, that's great. And now UZVs are really cheap. But the real turn is we're about a year into having this car, right? And Becky drove my gas car, which I never drive, which is, like, lives in the driveway in, like, case of emergency, like, start engine. And we. We needed to be in different places. For one of the rare occasions, we needed to be different places. And she drove my car and she came back and I was like, was It Fun, Jeff, fun. She's like, your car is basically a go kart after driving this giant suv. And I was like, did you go fast? She's like, I didn't go fast. And in fact, I hate driving gas cars now because I love driving the EV and I don't want to go back. And this is by and large what all the car executives will tell you, right? That once you like live the lifestyle and you never go to the gas station anymore and you drive the car and you feel the acceleration and the instant torque and the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you're not going to go back to a gas car. They just can't get enough people into the EVs. And so like the Rivian R2. The big argument for this car, which is on its way out Plug Wasim, who is the head of RBian software, was just on decoder. We were talking about the R2. It's on the new platform. His whole argument is like, once you have the mainstream car that looks like the SUV Americans want to buy, they will go into the car and then I will deliver them a software experience that's superior to the gas car because it's a little computer and it can run Rivian assistant with the power of AI. And. And just like every episode of Decoder we talked about power of AI.
- [20:42]
David Pierce
Yeah, I think two thirds of that is correct. And then you hit voice assistant powered user interface and the whole car explodes.
- [20:48]
Nilay Patel
It all falls apart. But I think what you have really identified is people love Teslas because the software in Teslas is great, right? The software experience of being in a Tesla, of having that all be one experience of over the air updates. This is why people love their Teslas. Most other carmakers like, it's electric and it has bad software and that's the experience most people are having and they don't want the other stuff.
- [21:11]
David Pierce
Maybe, maybe. But it's also it. It's electric, it has bad software. And isn't it cool how much it looks like a spaceship? It's like, no, yeah, people like Ferraris because Ferraris are hot, dude. Like this, this car is many things. It is not sexy. Like there is nothing sexy about the Ferrari Lucier Ferrari that like a fundamental fact of Ferrari is that it makes sexy cars, dude.
- [21:35]
Nilay Patel
Like, what was the last thing Jony I've made that was sexy?
- [21:40]
David Pierce
Terrific question. I will say I did have feelings when he grabbed the handle on the center console thing and turned it. That's hot, dude. There are so many little details about this car that are sexy, but it is not a sexy car.
- [21:55]
Nilay Patel
I would argue that the iPhone4 was the last like, oh, that's sexy. Child maybe object. But you know, you mean, you know how I feel about the iPhone 4, like Apple design for the past, I don't know, five years a decade has been totally sex free.
- [22:07]
David Pierce
Yes, yeah, for sure. But like, yeah. And I think the idea that this is Johnny I've high on his own supply, I actually think is maybe the Occam's razor explanation of why this car is the way that it is both good and bad. Because there are. I think he talked a lot. He did a long interview with Cleo abram on her YouTube channel as part of this and talked a lot about not wanting to give up on digital screens and that kind of interactive interface, but also not wanting to have everything be a touchscreen. And there are a lot of details in this car that are really cool mixes of analog and digital experiences. Right. Like the key is a good example. You put the key in, you push it down. And he got really excited about how the color of the key sort of moves over to the gear shift as a way of communicating. Like the car is now on. And there are little details like that all over the car that are genuinely very cool and interesting. And I think if you look at Ferrari as sort of a tip of the spear of car design and eventually this all trickles down into Camrys. I don't know if that's actually how it works, but there's something potentially exciting there. But the whole in this case is much less than the sum of all of those things. And I think that's what people are really responding to.
- [23:16]
Nilay Patel
Yeah, it needs to look like a Ferrari. Like, you know, the Johnny I've design aesthetic is. It's inevitable in the. You know, as I always say, the limitations become the defining feature of the product. And here it's like Ferraris aren't supposed to have limitations.
- [23:28]
David Pierce
Do you think it would have been more interesting in that respect if Jony I've had had to design a Camry that had to cost like a Camry as opposed to. Because in this case, this is the most expensive Ferrari ever. Like, this is truly no holds barred. Do whatever you want. And I think that there are clearly some ways in which he got it right and some ways in which he got it wrong. But I think if you were like, Johnny, you have to make a car that is $35,000 it. This might have been a vastly more interesting project.
- [23:54]
Nilay Patel
Oh, without question. Again, the limitations. Jony I've overcoming constraint. Limitation is the superpower.
- [24:00]
David Pierce
Yeah.
- [24:00]
Nilay Patel
And it is true of every product he's ever made that has been a hit. Right. The. The constraint and limitation of the first imac was the CRT display and he made that thing the star of the show. And that just goes on through all of the products that AirPods needed to have antennas in them. Now we have little stems. Like you just see him do it every time he makes the thing that makes the product design hard into the star of the show. And with Ferrari, usually the star of the show is the V12 engine, which you do not have in this case. So, like, what are you gonna do? Right. I think the constraint of a Toyota Camry would have been much more interesting. And that was the promise of the Apple car. You know what a more interestingly designed car is like. As we're speaking, pre orders for the Slate truck have opened up which is just basically like an EV battery and motor in a box. Yeah.
- [24:51]
David Pierce
It's like barely a car.
- [24:52]
Nilay Patel
Yeah. It's like $40,000. And you're like, this is a fascinating design object because it is so utilitarian and it is so designed for you to do whatever you want with. And you're like, oh, this is a much more interesting product because the way it is designed is to not have any opinions at all really. And it's funny just like put the two things next to each other and see how people react maybe probably to the price of the Slate truck, but also the idea that you can take off the roof and put on a different roof and make it whatever car you want. And that's a lot different vibe than this. Blue Bob Blob is the future of
- [25:28]
David Pierce
Ferrari and represents the absolute pinnacle of car design. Right. There is a self satisfaction that comes with Ferrari that I think also kind of rubbed people the wrong way on this one. That it's like by definition of the fact that it's Ferrari, we are correct. Right. There's.
- [25:43]
Nilay Patel
You have to think everyone at Ferrari knew.
- [25:45]
David Pierce
I wonder.
- [25:46]
Nilay Patel
Like, imagine the meetings where they're like rolling out the social plan. We're Lewis and Charl in and we're going to do a social video. And the social video producers, like, guys, I don't. I don't know we should do that. But in Italian like, oh, no.
- [25:57]
David Pierce
At some point they forgot to put the car designer in a room with Johnny until it was too late. And then they're like, oh, God, he thinks he made a car. It's. Honestly, it's very possible.
- [26:08]
Nilay Patel
Mamma Mia
- [26:11]
David Pierce
I'm curious to know, by the way what all of you think of this car. I think especially now that the news has died down a little bit, everybody's had time to like look at the pictures, digest it. If you love the Luce in particular, I want to Hear from you first cast of the verge.com866 verge11tellnick Nilai and I why we're wrong and why Jony I've is right. I I'm genuinely curious excited for Jony.
- [26:33]
Nilay Patel
I've to call like Steve from Detroit is to be like look, it was inevitable.
- [26:38]
David Pierce
All right, we should take a break and then we have a bunch of AI news to talk about. We'll be right back.
- [26:44]
Nilay Patel
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- [27:28]
David Pierce
All right, we're back. Neil, it's now time for us to talk about a thing we keep talking about, which is that most people seem to hate AI a whole and and that every time AI things happen, the overwhelming response is no, thank you. Yeah, please make it stop. One interesting bit of data. We talked a lot about Google I o last week, the, the all this new AI search stuff. Google is changing the search bar to make it an AI product in a very real way. DuckDuckGo, a search engine competitor that is sort of proudly not being overrun by AI. This is now a marketing thing. Like there's this browser, the, the Vivaldi that is all over all of my feeds now and its entire pitch is we are the non AI browser and it's working like it's bananas. But anyway, DuckDuckGo said that its own iOS app installs went up by 33% week over week in the US after this stuff came out. And there's just nothing to attribute that to except people are trying to run away from Google and that is going to be a very small number, up 33% to another very small number for DuckDuckGo because Google won this market a long time ago and continues to own it. But like the, the attrition there is real and people starting to look for something else is real. I think leaving Google is one of the hardest user behaviors on the Internet and people are starting to do it.
- [28:52]
Nilay Patel
So it's interesting to pull apart iOS installs and search behavior. Right. So if you open the Google app on your phone and it's just loaded with prompts to use Gemini products and don't you want to read tint your photos like bright blue? Because AI can let you do that now. Like, maybe you go and install DuckDuckGo, but Google search might not be affected. And also the amount of DuckDuckGo installs was small, as you're pointing out.
- [29:19]
David Pierce
Right.
- [29:20]
Nilay Patel
So I, I, I see it, I'm very careful not to overread, like what one number means in the context of how big Google search is.
- [29:28]
David Pierce
Yeah.
- [29:29]
Nilay Patel
That's not to say I don't think Google search is getting weirder and goofier and it's less predictable, which I think is really bad.
- [29:36]
David Pierce
Yeah.
- [29:37]
Nilay Patel
Like the, in the new intelligence search box can just lead you down infinite rabbit holes. Like, you know, the do you have this behavior where like you do a search and you kind of click one result and that leads you to another result and you kind of remember the pattern in your brain. And so you're like, I need to recreate that pattern to get back to where I was going. The new Google search does not let you do that.
- [29:57]
David Pierce
No. It is much more whole cloth every time.
- [30:00]
Nilay Patel
It's random every time. Now it can make you an app. Like there's something about that change where they want it to be so intelligent and talk to you and multimodal that you can't pattern match your way towards. Like, I used these keywords to get here in this path. I think they ought to change that. I do think that's like beyond just the AI of it all. Breaking that behavior is dangerous for Google because then you can go get that anywhere else.
- [30:24]
David Pierce
Yeah. The idea of when I search something, the same thing should probably happen every time.
- [30:29]
Nilay Patel
Yeah.
- [30:29]
David Pierce
Is such an interesting question because there's also a version of this, like a big thing that Google does. Right. Is make a lot of money when you do a bad job of searching because until now you've had to go back to the top and start over. And, and actually this has become a huge problem for Google over the years because it had a lot of incentives to not be a very good search engine because you would do more queries and everything at Google has always been about query growth. And one way to get you to do more queries is to not give you the correct answer the first time. But in this case, this idea of it feeling like a grab bag does just make the experience worse. Like, I no longer go to Google. Sort of confident in what's going to happen. Right. Even if the answer was we're going to have an AI overview for every single thing that you search and then a bunch of links on the right side. And then if you want to make more stuff. If that was just the sort of most common denominator Google experience, that would make sense. It's not. You just, you search and you just have no idea what's about personal context
- [31:30]
Nilay Patel
turned on in your Google.
- [31:31]
David Pierce
I do.
- [31:32]
Nilay Patel
So the thing I've discovered with that is because it's constantly remembering other things you've searched. And like reading your Gmail and doing all the personal context stuff, not only are the answers getting less predictable, they're getting more like, confidently wrong about me.
- [31:46]
David Pierce
Yeah.
- [31:47]
Nilay Patel
And so. Oh, have you noticed Google also pretends it lives where you live?
- [31:52]
David Pierce
Oh, that's interesting.
- [31:53]
Nilay Patel
No, so maybe this is just a silly example, but we, we swapped out our air conditioners for heat pumps. And so I'm like, you know, just googling what model? Like, how does it work? Should I use my ecobees with it? Like all this stuff. And by the end it's like, you know, where we live in Westchester county, like, this is a great model. And then like the third search is like, since you already bought those heat pumps, like, I didn't buy shit. Like, what are you talking about? You know, it's like, you're not my friend. Like, I just need to get down the path. And there were some parts of it that were really useful, like, spectacularly useful. Like, we have solar panels in the house now and we're going to switch to these heat pumps. You know, gas prices are really expensive. Like, but we sized the solar panels before we had the thing. Can you run the math for me? Like, am I going to save money because the air conditioning is more efficient? Blah, blah, like real dad stuff.
- [32:41]
David Pierce
Yeah.
- [32:41]
Nilay Patel
Like, no one in this house wants to talk to me about this at all, but Gemini does. You know, this is the promise of
- [32:46]
David Pierce
a. I'm not even sure that's true.
- [32:47]
Nilay Patel
But Gemini wants not. No. Gemini's like, you know, you and me, buddy, living in Westchester. And it like, did it. It like figured out the math for me and I checked it a bunch of different ways and it actually had gotten It. Right. And all this is really useful. But then the next time I ran a search, it was. It was just talking about this other interaction that I'd had.
- [33:03]
David Pierce
Right.
- [33:04]
Nilay Patel
And, like, that's the personal context. So it's like, even the other search, which in my mind is totally unrelated, is, like, infected with my own history. And none of that. You can see how it will get useful. Right. Sundar was just on decoder, and he's like, these things are going to come together. Like, the idea that you have the canvas where you make the apps and the AI mode in search where you get the answers. And then Gemini Spark, the agent platform. And so eventually you're going to say, I'm looking for this and it goes off and just buys it for you instead of showing you a search result. Or it books you the service appointment on your behalf, or it makes you the vacation planning app and you pick the places you want to go on what schedule, and then it goes and books them for you. This is all obviously going to come together, but the thing you're going to do is what you're describing is you're going to destabilize the actual experience. It will be more random every time.
- [33:50]
David Pierce
Yeah, well, and I think, again, you're describing what I think of as the this is the worst it will ever be fallacy, which is how everybody defends everything. Right? Like, isn't it wild that this is the worst this is ever going to be? Like, as if the march of progress was linear and inevitable and perfect forever and ever. But what. What Sundar Pichai told you cast another way is we are running beta tests on every Google user on the Internet. Until we figure out how to make this product actually good, we are going to subject you to the bad version of this in order to figure out how to make the good version of this. And that's what's happening. And I think that's what a lot of people are reacting to with these AI products is you're actually telling me this product isn't any good, but you're saying you have to use it so that we can make it good.
- [34:41]
Nilay Patel
Right?
- [34:42]
David Pierce
Like, because we can't unless we make you use it. So we are going to basically, you know, sit you down and tape your eyes open so that you have to use this product so that we get what we need in order to make it good. And nowhere in that trade is Google today is a good product.
- [34:59]
Nilay Patel
Did you see the clip where I showed Sundar the search results? They don't. They don't like it when I do this, and I love doing it, and I always do. Best Chromebook.
- [35:04]
David Pierce
This is best Chromebook, right?
- [35:05]
Nilay Patel
Yeah, yeah. It's just a useful search, right? Like, Google should know. Like, if you are the company that makes Chromebooks, you should know which one is the best one.
- [35:14]
David Pierce
Yes.
- [35:15]
Nilay Patel
Like, you know, in a lot of ways, you should not need the web to tell you which one is the best one. And it's just a really commercial query. Right. Like, the wirecutter built an entire business on the back of ranking for best Chromebook. Everybody wants to win that rank. We do it. Like, everybody does it. And there's. You can put shopping links in there. So just how you organize a page, a search results page for best Chromebook, like, to me, in my mind, just demonstrates a lot about the priorities of the product. And, you know, so I showed Sundar and he said this really interesting. He said, that page is more opinionated than it should be. Like, this AI result is more. Because it just told me an answer, which is not the same answer as Wirecutter, which is not the same answer as Tom's Guide. Like, I found that really interesting. Right. The Google answer is different than the other ones.
- [35:58]
David Pierce
It told you a Lenovo laptop, right?
- [36:00]
Nilay Patel
I did. It was like an expensive one, too.
- [36:01]
David Pierce
Yeah. It's also not the one it just tells me right now. Yeah.
- [36:05]
Nilay Patel
Weird, right? It says the Acer. Some. Some of the time.
- [36:07]
David Pierce
Yeah.
- [36:08]
Nilay Patel
Weird. It's. It's weird, right, that, like, Google is not even consistent knowing which one's the best Chromebook. This is not the important thing. I recognize that the. It's not a subjective answer. And you can make that page a billion different ways. But if you go watch the video of me interviewing Sundar, you see me hand him the phone, and he knows it's coming because I do it all the time, every time I talk to him, and he's like, great. Out of trillions of queries, we're going to look at this one. And then I ask him, is this good? And he's like, we actually have a very scientific way of measuring this to make sure it's good.
- [36:40]
David Pierce
It.
- [36:41]
Nilay Patel
And, like, we do it statistically. And I have just been thinking about that answer for a long time. Right. That Google has reduced quality to some set of metrics that are in response to how people behave when they encounter the thing. Right. Like, you show up in the search result, there's not a box that says, I think this sucks. There's just whatever you do next.
- [37:04]
David Pierce
Right?
- [37:04]
Nilay Patel
Right. You don't get to Shout into the microphone. Like, it's weird that all the answers are different. There's just whatever you do next. And somehow that's supposed to reveal, like, your emotional reaction to the design of this page, to how the page was constructed, to the idea that the AI overview confidently tells you a different answer. Depending on who you are, what part of the world you're in, or your own search history, there's no way for you to communicate that to Google. And so Google's measuring all this stuff, and they're saying no individual search results is, like, indicative of the whole product because there's trillions of search queries, and we have this scientific process for measuring quality. But then you look at any individual search result. I can't actually tell you if this is good or bad. Only in aggregate and only based on my next click do you have a sense of this is good or bad. And there's something about this AI world. It's what you're talking about. Like, it's bad until you tell us to make it's good. And then there's me being like, I don't know that you can measure this this way.
- [38:01]
David Pierce
Yeah.
- [38:02]
Nilay Patel
If at all. Like, is this good? Are we having good experiences with these tools is not measurable based on the next click of billions of people.
- [38:12]
David Pierce
No. Which is why you land on things like query growth. Based on the idea that if people do more Google searches, they must love Google, despite the fact that there's actually, like, a complete logical leap in there that suggests that maybe if you'd done it correctly, I would have gotten the answer the first time and I wouldn't have had to do more queries that, like, actually maybe success looks like me doing fewer queries. It looks like growth and ad revenue and. Right. So you pick all of these things to manage against, rather than, how do we make sure the pages are good? Because that, that involves some kind of, like, actual practical decision. And Google is very aggressive about what it doesn't want on its pages. Right. Like, and I think it's gotten increasingly vocal about the stuff it doesn't want on its pages. They're, they're, they're picking fights with SEO farms. Like, they, they've been fighting that fight loudly for years to varying degrees of success. But the idea of, like, what is this supposed to be? No one will ever tell you. And I, I don't know that they know the answer.
- [39:11]
Nilay Patel
Yeah.
- [39:12]
David Pierce
But if you think about it, like, again, cast this out even further. You and I both Google Best Chromebook. Right. The. The next step of this, according to Google, is that it will buy me that Chromebook or that it should be able to. Right? That I just say buy me the best Chromebook and it should appear at my door in two days. That is, that is everybody's idea of the future. If it's telling you and me different things, is that a success or a failure? And why is it telling us different things? And based on what criteria is it like, all of this stuff is such a mess.
- [39:45]
Nilay Patel
Let me answer that in the good way or in the bad way? The good way. The positive vision for you Google Best Chromebook and it determines a different answer for you and me. And then it goes off and buys you the one it told you that it was the best. There's a positive vision for that. Which is it? Google has enough context about you. It knows how you use the web, it knows what apps and services you use. It is in your Gmail. Like, it, it has a sense of like what kinds of web pages you go to. Are you in Canva all day or are you just reading documents? Like whatever thing that you're doing, it knows which Chromebook is best for you. Right. And that is actually a different answer than what Chromebook is best for me. Because I'm, I don't know, playing open WebGL games. I don't even know what that technology is anymore. It's not open WebGL because I'm playing browser based games all day.
- [40:33]
David Pierce
Sure.
- [40:34]
Nilay Patel
And editing video in like browser cap cut or whatever nonsense exists. Right. Like, and so I have a different answer. And I need longer battery life and a faster processor, whatever it is. And so when I Google best Chromebook is tailoring the answer to me, I think that breaks people's fundamental expectations of what should happen when you begin the research process to buy anything. Right. Like I ask you what the best Chromebook is and maybe you know me and you're like, I just tell everyone to get this for 200 more you can buy a MacBook Air like end of story. But actually if you know me a little bit more, maybe that's a different answer and that's a different conversation you have with a person. I think most people Google best Chromebook and they expect to find like four different people or four different websites, like doing the testing and saying why and they get to read it and make their own determination and that fills them with a sense of agency. And then like you're done. And I don't think this is just about Chromebooks. There's sort of this concept in marketing.
- [41:30]
David Pierce
Right.
- [41:30]
Nilay Patel
Now about like terminal products where everything is marketed as I did the research so you don't have to And I'm so I made the coffee maker. I made the last coffee maker you'll ever have to buy. And it's because like choice is overwhelming and everything is actually the same microwave from China. That's what this represents, like terminal marketing. Right? Like at the, we're at the end of the line and Google's just going to tell you which one to buy because there's only one choice anyway. And I, I, I think, you know, pendulums swing back and forth. Like maybe that's where we are now. It's not where we're going to be in the future. And Aim O doesn't have an answer to that other world where actually you do want a lot of choices. So you get to try on 50 different coats and see if that's the Chromebook that's best for you.
- [42:06]
David Pierce
Right. It's also important to say that even the first thing you described, even if that's exactly the future you want, not remotely close to being the case. Like this idea of you have perfect data about me so you can make correct purchasing decisions about me is it can't tell you with any confidence what kind of toilet paper you like. Forget any of the rest of this. Like none of that is close to coming to pass. And this is what I mean. Again, we're being served what everyone understands to be the bad version of this product because there's no way for them to build the good one otherwise. And no one has figured out how to ship just the good thing in the middle. Like there are vanishingly few small scope good AI products and there are infinite bad, hugely ambitious AI products.
- [42:53]
Nilay Patel
You don't think that YouTube translation of the Italian president has, did,
- [42:58]
David Pierce
listen, did it say a bunch of English words? It, it sure did. It's, it sure did. Speaking of YouTube, actually there's some, there's some interesting YouTube stuff happening right now too. And this is another thing we keep talking about is this endless back and forth between the platforms which are desperate to get more and more AI content onto them and users who are more and more interested in understanding what is and is not AI content and in many ways having it removed from their systems. YouTube this week took its AI labels that like this is made with AI in a, in some meaningful way out of. They were. It was buried like two settings deep. You had to go into like the, the provenance of the video in order to find out if it was AI and is now Pulling it up so that on the page either like as an overlay on YouTube shorts or actually under the player in main YouTube, it will have a little thing that says AI. I would argue that that's very good and correct and this is the right thing, but can I read you a quote from YouTube's announcement and I want you to try and make sense of where this line is.
- [44:03]
Nilay Patel
Yeah.
- [44:04]
David Pierce
So this is from YouTube's announcement. It says by moving these labels to the onto the main stage, viewers get the context they need at a glance. This is now the single label format for all photorealistic and meaningfully AI altered generated content on YouTube for content that is unrealistic, animated or slightly altered. Viewers can find this disclosure in the expanded description. Nilay, I would like you to explain to me where that line is, please.
- [44:25]
Nilay Patel
What is the photo? That's what it is.
- [44:28]
David Pierce
That's the question, right?
- [44:29]
Nilay Patel
Like. Yep.
- [44:31]
David Pierce
That you could drive a truck through the loopholes in that paragraph.
- [44:35]
Nilay Patel
Slightly altered is very good.
- [44:37]
David Pierce
What. What counts as unrealistic?
- [44:39]
Nilay Patel
So there are rules. I will say there are rules. You know, the big photo agencies have been dealing with this in the context of Photoshop for dozens of years. You know, there are lots of photography awards have rules about how much you're able to edit the photo. And you have to submit, you know, you have to testify that you didn't submit the photo. So like if you are a Getty photographer and you go to some event and you shoot a photo of some newsworthy thing, you're not allowed to use a lot of Photoshop on that. You're allowed to crop it, you're allowed to do some amount of just like brightness and contrast editing, but you basically have to leave that photo alone. Right? You're not, you're not allowed to do much. And these are Getty's rules forever. You can just go look at them online. These are also the rules for the Times. If you're like a photo nerd, you will notice New York Times photos have insane amounts of vignette on them because that is the only thing they allow.
- [45:26]
David Pierce
That's interesting. Is that really why?
- [45:27]
Nilay Patel
Yep, it's just like every New York Times photo is vignetted to hell and back because that's the one knob that they give the photo editors. And so they just turn it up because it's cool. Like, I think vignettes are cool. My personal photos are vignetted to hell and back because I think that's a cool look. But there are no other choices at the Times, really. So all the photos are vignetted, it's stylistic, it's cool. So here, maybe YouTube has some rules, right? What does it mean? What's the line between unrealistic or photorealistic? You can make hyper real photos. I can turn up the saturation in HDR on a normal photo of a sunset and make it look nothing like reality in two clicks. So I'm guessing YouTube has some rules. The challenge is if you're Getty, you're in a repeat game with a bunch of photographers you pay money to. And so everyone starts to understand the rules of the game and everyone has aligned incentives to play the game. It's the same for the times and its photographers, the same for art photo rules. Like it's all the same. If you're a YouTube, you do not have repeat relationships with people to whom you pay money. In fact, you pay almost no one any money. And so everyone has massive incentives to break the rules to make the video of the president doing something dumb and not have the label on it.
- [46:34]
David Pierce
Right.
- [46:35]
Nilay Patel
And this is where like YouTube has to auto label the stuff. And they're starting to roll that out. And I, you know, I remain ultra skeptical that any of these auto label or systems or auto metadata systems are going to work just based on the fact that YouTube already has content ID and people upload full movies to YouTube all day and all night.
- [46:52]
David Pierce
Yeah, yeah. None of this stuff works. And then I wonder, you know, this is going to launch a million conspiracy theories from people who are wondering if my thing gets labeled AI, what does it do to the ranking algorithm?
- [47:04]
Nilay Patel
And do people. Will people yell at me because I made AI stuff?
- [47:06]
David Pierce
Right, Right.
- [47:07]
Nilay Patel
Instagram rolled out AI labels ages ago and they took them away. They were auto detecting metadata from Photoshop that was AI generated. Even if it was just like Denoise or whatever, like generative fill which everyone uses. Yeah, it was detecting that and putting the AI label on the photos and people were screaming at the photographers and Instagram took it away because everyone hates AI. So YouTube is like cruising into it.
- [47:27]
David Pierce
Yeah, I mean, again, I'm just so fascinated by this idea. Between you have Neil Mohan running around saying that actually what we're going to do is put more and more AI tooling into the creator studio. Right. That it's. You can now make an AI background of your short with two clicks and you can, you can dub everything with AI and you can, you can do all sorts of things with AI, but we actually are going to have to put this, this what amounts to a warning label on that's how people are going to experience this is as a warning label that this thing was made with AI. And I increasingly don't know how a platform or a user of that platform is supposed to hold both of those ideas in their head that, like, what you're giving me is an infinite new canvas on which to make cool creative stuff that we all agree is so rad. And then you're going to put a, like, Surgeon General's warning on the video after I make it about how I made it with AI. Like, how do those two things continue to coexist? It just doesn't make sense to me.
- [48:25]
Nilay Patel
The real problem these companies are going to have, all of them are going to have it. Maybe you two will get there first, but I know Instagram and TikTok are gonna have this problem, is that they want the advertisers to make the ads with AI. And there's a.
- [48:39]
David Pierce
And then who cares about the label?
- [48:40]
Nilay Patel
Well, it's not who cares about the label, it's if you. If you're the person who says, I don't wanna see AI stuff, but they've gone and pushed all the advertisers to make infinite amounts of creative targeted specifically to people using AI, blah, blah, blah. All this stuff that they're talking about and you're like, I don't want AI stuff. They have to make a big decision about showing it to you anyway. And you can assume which decision they'll make, but they're going to piss off all the users who have said, I don't want the AI stuff. And they are pushing all the marketers to using AI tools to make more and more creative. Like, that's just where this industry is going. So at some point they're like, we can auto detect it, we'll label it, and then we'll give you the switch to not see it. But the economics of their businesses are headed in the other direction.
- [49:21]
David Pierce
Yeah, that's a good theory. All right. Do you want to talk about the Pope? Before we switch off of AI stuff, do you have any Pope thoughts?
- [49:29]
Nilay Patel
I know somebody who was at the encyclical and they came back cool. Yeah, it was my buddy Steve from Chicago. And they said the Pope was very fired up about it being Christendom's responsibility to make us more human. Which was interesting. I was like, what about the rest of us?
- [49:54]
David Pierce
Like, I'm good. I like humans.
- [49:58]
Nilay Patel
Cool. That is interesting. But I get it. He's the Pope. I said that to our team and everyone was like, buddy, he's The Pope?
- [50:03]
David Pierce
Yeah.
- [50:03]
Nilay Patel
Like, of course that's what he said. What else is he gonna say? But it was funny. It was a tech friend who was there, and that's what they said.
- [50:10]
David Pierce
Yeah. I think the document is fascinating, and I think it's actually been interesting to see the way that it's being red, because the idea that it essentially boils down to is humans matter. And we should continue to remember that humans matter even as AI continues to be a powerful technology. And the fact that A, that's kind of a controversial take in some circles and that B, most people figured out that that's the message, I think has been really fascinating.
- [50:37]
Nilay Patel
Right.
- [50:37]
David Pierce
Like, there is a fundamental. A humanity to the way a lot of people talk about AI and the way a lot of people talk about what it's going to do to people's jobs and to the. The way that our economy works and the way that we live our lives. Like, this fundamental disregard for the fact that people are people and that actually people matter. And if you don't take that as a foundational belief of the world that people matter, you wind up down a lot of really dark roads. And I think a lot of people in AI are running down those roads right now. And so it's really interesting to see the Pope be like, forget all this AGI nonsense. Like, stop worrying about any. Like, we have to agree that people matter, or else we're lost before we even start having this conversation. I think it was like 40. It was 42,000 words to say that I think was actually pretty interesting.
- [51:24]
Nilay Patel
And released alongside a co. Founder of Anthropic.
- [51:27]
David Pierce
Yeah. And then a day later, he got in the Ferrari Luce. There's a video of him sort of gently getting into the driver's seat. That just makes me laugh every single time I see it. I don't know why. It just kills me.
- [51:39]
Nilay Patel
Look, I'm not like a. You know, I'm not Pope pilled. Although Chicago Pope rules. And I'm still trying to buy the parking lot of the church behind my house. So if you're out there, I don't know who's out there, but if you're out there. But the idea that you need an external source of morality in a time of extreme amorality is like, that's what the Church is for. That's the role that Popes play. And he's leaning into. Strikes me as particularly odd that the world turns to the Pope. To figure out what to do about AI is just. Just like, I don't know what was the last Papal encyclical that you remember. Like, what are we doing?
- [52:17]
David Pierce
Listen, my dad was a pastor growing up.
- [52:19]
Nilay Patel
You don't want to, you don't want
- [52:19]
David Pierce
to go with me on encyclicals, buddy, I can do this all day.
- [52:22]
Nilay Patel
Fair enough. You know the guy who can slam me the parking lot behind me.
- [52:27]
David Pierce
One other data point that, that we should just mention before we get off on into the lightning round is this interview that Uber's president and COO, Andrew McDonald gave this week where he, he said a little bit the quiet part out loud. Right. We've talked a lot on the show about this, like, relentless run towards token maxing. And everybody has to use more in Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, being like, well, I, I don't trust any engineer who's not using $500,000 worth of tokens every year. And Andrew McDonald, the Uber COO, basically said, we are not seeing the connection between AI usage and actual productivity. And let me just read you a chunk of this quote. He says that link is not there yet. Right. I think maybe implicitly there is more that is getting shipped, but it's very hard to draw a line between one of those stats and, okay, now we're actually producing 25% more useful consumer features. I think over the coming quarters and years, maybe that will become clearer, but I think today it's hard. Even if some of the underlying metrics are trending in a really astronaut technical direction, what he's saying there is people are doing a lot of shit and none of it adds up to anything.
- [53:30]
Nilay Patel
Yeah, that's right. I, I think it's funny in the context of all the tech layoffs we're seeing where they're laying off product managers and designers and all the engineers are going to report to Jack Dorsey directly. Like, that's what the product managers and designers are for. Yeah, right.
- [53:45]
David Pierce
I mean, Brian Chesky is running around being like, everybody has to be a full stack engineer all by themselves.
- [53:48]
Nilay Patel
Yeah. It's funny because I, you know, I know Brian and like, his whole thing is you have to. He doesn't have product managers, he has product marketing managers, the same as Apple. And he's like the person who invents the new features has to be the person who brings it to market so that they know what people actually want. And like, you can quibble with whether or not Airbnb is successful in that, but like, I totally agree with that as a theory. Sure. Right. Like, this is obviously very successful for Apple. Apple doesn't have traditional PMs they have marketing managers. Like Greg Josiak is the product marketing manager of Apple. Like, that's how it works. And all these companies are like, we're getting rid of all of the people whose job it is to understand the users and design things that people know how to use. And engineers just ship stuff. And you're like, yeah, it didn't work.
- [54:32]
David Pierce
Yeah, surprise.
- [54:33]
Nilay Patel
Like, sure, we shipped zero useful features because we've refactored the code base that a bunch of senior engineers have been complaining about for 10 years. But that didn't do anything for anyone. I'm excited to see this is. You know, as the guy who hosts a podcast about org charts, we are on the cusp of some of the weirdest org charts in history. And I, I think that's neat in the sense that every. It's all been the same for a long time. Like, every company is kind of a copy of Google in, like, very real ways. But, boy, is it going to be chaos.
- [55:01]
David Pierce
Yes. Yes. And the idea that any one plus Claude code equals every skill imaginable at a company we are very quickly going to realize is not correct.
- [55:10]
Nilay Patel
Yeah.
- [55:11]
David Pierce
But, yeah, anyway, I just thought that was an interesting quote. There was a lot of talk about that quote. And it's just one data point, but I think. I think we're going to hear more stuff like that. That's like, what am. What am I spending all these tokens to actually accomplish and ship that benefits our company and our users?
- [55:26]
Nilay Patel
You know, the flip side of that is even Sam Altman is like, the real differentiation is taste.
- [55:30]
David Pierce
Yeah.
- [55:31]
Nilay Patel
Right. Which means, like, you have a vision of what a feature a good thing is, and then you make that and it's like, none of these companies, all these companies are firing the people with haste.
- [55:40]
David Pierce
Yeah. It's a. You are right that the org charts are about to get a lot flatter and a lot weirder. And then we're going to invent a whole new, like, you know, McKinsey is out there just being like, we have to invent a new paradigm and ship it to everybody. Like, what is the open office plan of the next phase of AI? I don't even. I don't even know. All right, we should take a break and then we're going to come back and do a lightning round. Be right back. This is advertiser content from Ring. It's the night of your big dinner party. Guests are arriving in two minutes, and there's still so much to do. The piccata still needs to come out of the Oven, you still need to make the lemon sauce. And don't forget the spritzes.
- [56:22]
Nilay Patel
Hey, I'm here.
- [56:24]
David Pierce
And of course, Angie is early. Come on in. I'm in the kitchen. Under any other circumstances, you might be feeling stress waiting for a knock that'll pull you away from your last minute preparation. But not with Ring. Hey, hey. Ring doesn't just help keep track of your packages.
- [56:44]
Nilay Patel
Yo, sis. Listen.
- [56:46]
David Pierce
Come on, it's freezing out here.
- [56:47]
Nilay Patel
Well, look at you.
- [56:48]
David Pierce
On time for once with wired Doorbell Pro. You can see what's happening at the front door in clear 4K video and greet guests from wherever you are.
- [57:00]
Nilay Patel
Hi, sweetie.
- [57:01]
David Pierce
Hi, Aunt Alma. Come on in. I hope you're hungry. With Ring, not only is your home protected, but you're guaranteed a smooth dinner party.
- [57:12]
Nilay Patel
How are you?
- [57:13]
David Pierce
Well, mostly.
- [57:14]
Nilay Patel
Is something burning? The sauce
- [57:20]
David Pierce
shop cameras, doorbells, and more right now@ring.com. All right, we're back. Hype desk is off this week, which means it is time, Nilai, once again, for America's favorite podcast within a podcast. I assume he's just around doing stuff. Brendan Carr is a dummy. In profund.
- [57:56]
Nilay Patel
Oh, my God.
- [58:10]
David Pierce
Ah, beautiful. And. And thematically appropriate.
- [58:14]
Nilay Patel
Why is everything so popey?
- [58:16]
David Pierce
It is so popey. Ugh.
- [58:18]
Nilay Patel
What is going on?
- [58:20]
David Pierce
I think Chicago Pope would approve of that. That theme comes from Scott Williams. Scott, thank you for sending me that.
- [58:26]
Nilay Patel
We have a translation. It translates to God, the machine of Brendan from the depths. My heart is grieving.
- [58:32]
David Pierce
And then I believe Brendan Carr sucks.
- [58:34]
Nilay Patel
Brendan Carr sucks. Very good. This is a little one. This is a tiny little Brendan Carr this week. And there's no way to say this other than our man Brendan saw fit to issue a full press release from the Federal Communications Commission about a hat. Okay, that's what happened.
- [58:55]
David Pierce
I saw a tweet about a hat. Is this a press release about a tweet about a hat?
- [58:58]
Nilay Patel
Yes. I'm just gonna read you the headline of the press release from the office of Chairman Brendan Carr. FCC Chairman Carr presents first Build America Hard hat. Also, for some reason, he's put Build America Hard hat in single quotes, which makes no sense to me.
- [59:11]
David Pierce
Wait, so the name of the hat is the Build America Hard hat? It's not the Build America Hard hat. It's the Build America Hard hat hat. Yes.
- [59:20]
Nilay Patel
Presumably Brendan. Brendan, like, use the AI to figure out your. Your quote, usage. I don't know what you're doing. Anyway, so Brendan loves to climb a tower. He loves to wear a hard hat. He loves to pretend he is a tower worker in Particular. And he loves the crews, you know, the crews out there laying fiber and doing stuff. He does not love the crews to go out in the world and lay fiber for rural Americans for cheaper prices and faster speeds. He just loves the cruise. But the cruise being brutally exploited by our nation's telecom monopolies is of no concern to him. He loves the cruise. It's a real disconnect here.
- [59:55]
David Pierce
I love the cruise. No follow up question.
- [59:57]
Nilay Patel
Yeah, exactly. Do I want you to be paid more or lay more fiber? Not at this time, but I love the cruise. So he's always out there climbing a tower, wearing a hat. And so he issued a press release. He decided that he would give out hard hats as awards, presumably to people who already have hard hats for work. This is a weird award to give if you just think about it. Like it's a ceremonial hard hat. Anyway, there's this guy, Philip Morrow. Hurricane Helene, which was devastating, destroyed connectivity and roads in his area. Philip and his crew waded into the broad river and hiked three miles from Chimney Rock to Bat Cave. And he pulled conduit through the river and restored conductivity to Chimney Rock. This is great. Very.
- [60:36]
David Pierce
That is kind of badass, Honestly, above and beyond. And dude in a kayak just. Just pulling coax like that kind of rules.
- [60:44]
Nilay Patel
And so to reward him, he has been presented the first Build America hard hat, which is obviously a story about Brendan Carr having a type of hat that he rewards to infrastructure workers instead of making sure they get paid living wages and have healthcare. But he got a hat. And in fact, the hat is really about Brendan and issuing a hat.
- [61:03]
David Pierce
Right.
- [61:04]
Nilay Patel
The press release is FCC Chairman Carr presents first Build America hard hat not heroic telecom worker restores connectivity to Chimney Rock and as a result is getting paid. You know what I mean?
- [61:15]
David Pierce
The press release is about the giving of the hat, not the heroic thing. The guy.
- [61:19]
Nilay Patel
Did you see what I'm saying?
- [61:20]
David Pierce
Oh, brother.
- [61:21]
Nilay Patel
Even the sub headline of the press release doesn't have the guy's name in it.
- [61:24]
David Pierce
Nope, it is still about Brendan visited
- [61:27]
Nilay Patel
Cruz, he visited the cruise. Opening a new cell tower to restore and expand Internet connectivity. It's like. No, it's about the guy who dragged the conduit through the river. That's what the press release should be about, is not you putting stickers on a hat. Anyway, he's a real dummy. He can't help but make it about himself. Certainly he should be working harder to get our heroic infrastructure workers paid more. And in not forcing every telecom company to cancel its diversity programs because you know who the infrastructure workers are. They're the people of America, broadly serving the people of America. Instead, we're handing out hats. Brendan, if you can defend any of these actions or you can explain how you intend to get our nation's heroic infrastructure workers paid more and have better benefits, including better healthcare, you're welcome to come on the show where I think you will lose straightforwardly. Anyway, that's been Brenda Carr's dummy, America's favorite podcast.
- [62:21]
David Pierce
Can I just say one more thing before we get off of this? Brendan, in addition to all this, posted a 90 second long video about what is happening. Never hands the man the hat. In no part of the video is anyone other than Brendan Holder.
- [62:34]
Nilay Patel
This hat. You know, there's only one hat. He's going to present the same hat to everybody.
- [62:39]
David Pierce
I really, very early on, I forget who it was, but somebody described the, the Trump administration as mostly just a very sophisticated merch operation. And I think that's not.
- [62:50]
Nilay Patel
It's a hype house. That's what we have been calling.
- [62:52]
David Pierce
It's a contest.
- [62:53]
Nilay Patel
Exactly right. They're, they're, they're running like the world's greatest SEO form.
- [62:57]
David Pierce
That's, it's just ridiculous. Okay, I have two lightning round items for you, beginning with, would you like to spend a bunch of money on Meta products for a bunch of features that you don't really care about? So I'm being slightly disingenuous, but I think this is fascinating. So Meta is, is starting to launch. This has now been widely reported and confirmed that Meta is getting ready to launch subscriptions for most of its products. You're going to be able to get Instagram Plus, Facebook plus and WhatsApp plus, which are in fact different products. But then there's also a full Meta one plus that rolls all this stuff up together. The idea seems to be sort of a freemium feature set in a bunch of cases. Like, you'll be able to change the messenger app icon if you subscribe. You'll be able to have your Facebook story last 48 hours instead of 24 hours. You'll be able to search for the particular viewers in your stories, which is a thing people wanted for a really long time. Right? Like thousands of people see your story. You want to be able to search to see if somebody saw it. This is a feature that is very controversial and now you can pay to have it. All of this is fine, right? Like, I think to some extent this is like normal behavior when you're not growing super fast. You make people pay for more features, it's fairly normal. This is what happens. It's not all that far off from like the Discord Nitro model where you sort of get the basics for free and then some neat add ons. The thing I think is most interesting is, and I think is, is frankly the real business here for meta is they're rolling out the same kinds of opportun to creators and businesses. So you can now get Meta one Essential, which gives you a meta verified badge. Like this is just straight out of the X playbook, right? Like we're going to make you pay for what you thought were normal features available to you. But then for $50 a month you can get Meta1 advanced which will among other things, make you show up higher in search results. You can now just straight up pay for visibility on meta platforms. This is just, this is just the most naked pay us to continue to exist on this platform play you could possibly imagine.
- [65:08]
Nilay Patel
This is just pure insertification, to borrow the phrase from Core doctor Right. They have distribution monopolies and now they're, you know, and I mean classic insertification. Most people hear that word and they just mean the thing's getting worse and I don't like using it. His Corey's specific definition, which he's talked about with you on the Vergecast before, is that first you squeeze the consumers and then you squeeze the businesses.
- [65:29]
David Pierce
Right.
- [65:30]
Nilay Patel
And now they're squeezing the businesses. They're like, oh, you still want customers? You got to pay us money to access your own customers. Like this is the heart and soul of intratification. I think these distribution monopolies will not last in this way. People rebel against them. The idea that everything on your feed is fake because it's paid there or it's put there by clip form, which is another episode of the show you just did with Mia like that is coming to its conclusion.
- [65:53]
David Pierce
Yeah, I mean did you read that New York Mag piece that went kind of mini viral a week ago or so?
- [65:57]
Nilay Patel
Yeah, everything. The feed is fake.
- [65:59]
David Pierce
Yeah. Like me as pieces. The clipping is, is very good. There's like this sort of increasingly mainstream idea that actually nothing in my feed is real. And I think people have been feeling that for a while and are starting to understand how bought and paid for your feed is to the point where I think it's it. People are gonna start to tune out. Like I, I use TikTok less and less because it has gotten to the point now where one out of two things on my feed is a, a TikTok shop thing.
- [66:30]
Nilay Patel
Yeah.
- [66:30]
David Pierce
For whatever reason, a lot of mine is candy. And I say, for whatever reason, I bought a bunch of candy on the TikTok shop. Like, I did this to myself.
- [66:36]
Nilay Patel
What are you doing, man?
- [66:38]
David Pierce
There was a time where you could buy Swedish candy on the TikTok shop for, like, pennies on the dollar. Unbelievable that those days are unfortunately over for me. But I like TikTok less now, and it is now blindingly obvious and becoming increasingly understood how these systems work. And so for me, it's like, if I'm meta, I'm looking at this as $50 a month. This isn't going to last forever. We're losing this thing anyway. We have to squeeze every dollar out of it we can on the way down. And so we're going to make people pay to reach their audience. Already. People believe this to be true. Right. Like, we hear this from creators and advertisers all the time, that they're now being told that to get the reach you used to be able to get organically, you now have to pay. That actually the only way to reach your whole audience is to boost your stuff to get in front of them. Because we control the knobs and we control the algorithms. This is just making that straightforward to pay for.
- [67:31]
Nilay Patel
Yeah. I mean, it's gonna work for a minute until it doesn't work. You know, like, Instagram already is hyper commercialized.
- [67:38]
David Pierce
Yeah.
- [67:38]
Nilay Patel
And they will be the first to tell you that all the sort of organic activity Instagram happens in dms.
- [67:43]
David Pierce
Yep.
- [67:44]
Nilay Patel
So, fine, right. You. You want to promote your TV show, and you want people to send clips of the TV show and DMs to one another. Fine. Like. But there's just something about this that everyone feels the pressure, everyone feels the screws tightening and they. That doesn't last forever.
- [68:01]
David Pierce
I think that's right. And especially there's one other feature that I. I didn't mention here, which is that now if you pay, you can see a quote, mini preview of stories. I'm not completely clear on what that means, but you can see them without showing up as a viewer. And there is something here that breaks a fundamental contract of Instagram. If I can now watch your story without you being able to know that I watched your story.
- [68:24]
Nilay Patel
Yep.
- [68:25]
David Pierce
And something changes. And it even says that posters will be notified that this feature exists and that when you post, people might be able to watch. You don't see it, but, like. Like, you've now destroyed an important part of why people liked stories.
- [68:39]
Nilay Patel
But, David, think of the Drake versus We're gonna get out of this.
- [68:44]
David Pierce
You're right. It's worth it. I would pay 2.99 just for that.
- [68:47]
Nilay Patel
They should charge whatever they want and Drake will pay that money.
- [68:52]
David Pierce
That's largely correct, by the way, if
- [68:54]
Nilay Patel
you don't understand that reference. What I'm trying to point out is that the song hotline bling is entirely about Drake using Instagram.
- [69:00]
David Pierce
Also Drake legendary DM slider.
- [69:02]
Nilay Patel
Do you see what I'm saying? Just think about what. Someone saw my story, but I don't know who it was. Think about what that's going to do that man's brain. Like, this is.
- [69:11]
David Pierce
From now on, you should assume that Drake has seen your story, is what Neil is saying. Anytime you post a story, you should assume Drake.
- [69:17]
Nilay Patel
David, I'm hot now, and I know Drake is coming for me. All right, what do you got? Oh, I have the nerdiest gadget. Compared to that, this is like. This is a nerd stuff. This is what you get on the Vergecast. You get culture and technology. That's the whole promise of the thing that we make.
- [69:37]
David Pierce
If this is Sony braviacore, we're ending the podcast.
- [69:39]
Nilay Patel
It is not Sony Braviacore, but it is Sony Bravia.
- [69:42]
David Pierce
Oh, God. Hey.
- [69:42]
Nilay Patel
Oh, okay. They do come with Sony Bravia Core, which is the highest bitrate stream you can get outside of a kaleidoscape, which review, I am told, is forthcoming. Anyway, Sony is. They've put out the Bravia 7 II and the Bravia 9 II, which are horrible names because they're not really twos. They're the first generation of Sony's new RGB LED backlighting, which is probably the future of every TV that isn't an oled.
- [70:14]
David Pierce
Really? Yes, explain.
- [70:17]
Nilay Patel
So if you think about just, like, TV technology, my thing theory is that if you pay attention to display technology, you can see the future. Because everything in our world is made of displays. And if you know how displays work, you can see what kind of products can be built, and then you can see the future. So we've had OLEDs forever. OLEDs are in our phones, or they're in every kind of device. And OLEDs, as I'm sure the Vergecast audience knows, all of the little dots make their own light. Like, all the pixels are their own little LEDs, and they make their own light. And that's why you get perfect blacks, because you can turn them all the way off. Every other kind of TV has had some kind of backlight system, right? So you got an LCD panel that makes the color and Then you've got, literally, in the case of the oldest TVs, you've got fluorescent lights back there, just shining light through the pixels and that's what you get. And so you don't get true blacks, you get grays. And then the next turn was LED backlights. So you got rid of the fluorescent tubes, you added LEDs. You can control the dimness of those a little bit better. You get slightly better blacks. Then you added local dimming LEDs. So you made a grid of LEDs behind this, the screen. And you could turn them on and off. Right? So you could get something like perfect blacks where the LEDs were turned off. Then you add like lots and lots of them and you get like thousands of zones of local dimming. And so you kind of. You're reapproximating OLED in one way. Finally. Now here at the end, we're getting RGB LED TVs where the backlights are have their own colors. So you're sending colored light through the colored panel to make even brighter, more vibrant colors. So you can outshine OLEDs. You can get way brighter than OLEDs and you get more vibrant colors. You can get more colors. You can get not quite the contrast. You can't quite true blacks, but you get this like rich, ultra saturated color because the backlight itself is RGB color.
- [71:57]
David Pierce
So instead of shining white light through a green pixel to make green, I'm shining green light through a green pixel to make better green.
- [72:05]
Nilay Patel
Yes, that's like more or less the case.
- [72:07]
David Pierce
Interesting.
- [72:08]
Nilay Patel
Okay, there's like problems with this. Like you get color crosstalk, you can get some noise. Sony says it solved all of it. But the idea is you just get the most vibrant color possible because you're sending colored light through the colored lcd.
- [72:19]
David Pierce
And if I understand this is cheaper because you still have a backlight, thus you don't need millions of individual lit pixels.
- [72:26]
Nilay Patel
So the problem right now is that they are not cheaper. So John Higgins, who is our TV reviewer, reviewed the first TCL one, which is really expensive. These Sonys, the 65 inch is 2600. You can get a 65 inch OLED on sale for 2,600. So they're still not much cheaper. They will obviously get cheaper over time in a way that OLEDs have just sort of remained around the same price, but you get bigger, brighter color. Like if you're a sports fan, this is the way to go. You just get brighter color in a way that OLED can't do. And that's great for Sports and great for action and all this stuff. There are reasons to see it in LCD TV, but these are the first ones. John gave them an 8. There are flaws with them because they're first generation. But this is Sony's bet on the future of TV display technology. And I'm paying a lot of attention to it because this potentially is how we do really bright, really vibrant displays across a number of applications where you can't put an OLED for all kinds of reasons or you want more brightness. And I think there's something here. I'm still an OLED person, you know, my A95L I still think is the best TV ever made, but you can just see how much brighter and more vibrant the TV is. And the way that John talks about it, he's like, oh, there's something here that will attract everyone. Because people are attracted to brightness. They're not attracted to like OLED black levels. They're just like, that's the brightest one. So Sony can make the brightest one. With Sony's picture processing. I don't know, I'm excited about it.
- [73:49]
David Pierce
If it can do the brightest one that is like approachably closer to having some of the OLED features. That's the idea that seems like a huge win.
- [73:58]
Nilay Patel
That's the idea is that you'll get some of the black levels because you have the massive local dimming in the background, but you'll get brighter colors and more vibrant colors.
- [74:07]
David Pierce
Okay, that's exciting.
- [74:08]
Nilay Patel
I'm telling you. It's, you know, you know me, I love a tv.
- [74:11]
David Pierce
I, my, what's this gonna mean for my frame tv?
- [74:16]
Nilay Patel
I have nothing but bad news about your frame tv, David.
- [74:18]
David Pierce
God. Yeah, I, my, my whole life is full of nothing but bad news about my frame tv. Except that it's not a Roku, which is pretty exciting right now. Have you seen this new. This is a total diversion. But have you seen the new Roku homepage that just came out?
- [74:32]
Nilay Patel
No, I'm not.
- [74:33]
David Pierce
So Roku's home screen used to just be a wall of apps, right? There would be the big ass ad on the right and then the left was just a grid of apps. Now they're splitting that so that at the top it's, it's content, right? It's supposed to be like movies and shows you want to watch and then they have a row of apps they think you might want to open and then more stuff and then you have to scroll down even further to actually get to the grid of apps. And this seems like a good idea. In theory, because you're like, oh yeah, sure, just take me to the show I want to watch. Don't make me go to the app and then to the show that I want to watch. This is a thing I've been advocating for for a very long time. There are two problems with this theory. One, Roku hates you and would just love to fill every single one of those spaces with advertising and is just utterly uninterested in making a good user experience for you. Thing number two is there is no version of this that is a perfect system. So like, this is the thing actually that annoys me the most about the frame TV is I open it up and it has that continue watching panel. But it's from like a random smattering of apps that I open sometimes. And so it's like, Netflix is not on there. HBO Max doesn't show up. But like, do you want to see the last thing you were watching on Peacock five months ago? Here it is. It's like this is, you've, you've one third solved this problem and by doing so actually made the user interface vastly more confusing. And Roku is like, I have a Roku TV here in the basement that I use occasionally and I, I, I got opted into the beta of it, I guess, and was immediately like, I am no longer interested in using this television.
- [76:03]
Nilay Patel
Every time Roku does a software update, something catastrophic happens, is my experience.
- [76:07]
David Pierce
And they add more ads. Like every time Roku does anything, it's to put more ads in front of you and they do not care about how you feel.
- [76:16]
Nilay Patel
They don't.
- [76:16]
David Pierce
I'm so sorry.
- [76:17]
Nilay Patel
I mean, that's more in shation too, like straight up.
- [76:20]
David Pierce
Yeah. All right, I have one more for you and then we should get out of here. This is just David's occasional everything is getting more expensive update. The prices are too damn high is the subtitle of this section of the podcast. Valve raised the price of the steam deck by $200.
- [76:37]
Nilay Patel
That's brutal.
- [76:38]
David Pierce
Valve, you know, cites all the things that everybody cites. It's, this is about the memory shortages and the chip shortages and all this stuff is more expensive and harder and more complicated to get than ever. All of that is true. But like the thing we have said a bunch of times on this show is it's all going to get worse before it gets better. And it just continues to get worse.
- [76:58]
Nilay Patel
Yeah, brutally bad.
- [76:59]
David Pierce
Everything everywhere is getting more expensive. And Sean Hollister wrote a really great piece pointing out, basically this marks the end of a certain kind of era. Of technology. He was talking about it with handheld consoles in particular, because there was this sort of beautiful moment where it was like, oh my gosh, we have an increasingly mature smartphone chipset that can do more and more. These things are very powerful. We're able to make what amount to full powered handheld gaming consoles for a few hundred dollars. And they were starting to be everywhere. Like companies you can't pronounce, that you've never heard of were making pretty capable handheld gaming machines. This was like a big future of Windows. If they could ever figure out how to make the software, like this was going to be a thing. And this has now been absolutely systematically priced out of being compelling at all.
- [77:48]
Nilay Patel
Yeah.
- [77:48]
David Pierce
And I think we're about to see a lot of those things happen. Right. Like there was a really great piece I read the other day about how cheap phones are a thing that don't exist anymore. You just can't buy a cheap smartphone. And that in huge parts of the world. That's hugely, hugely problematic because there are billions of people who rely on cheap phones and cheap Internet access to live their lives. And those phones aren't literally aren't being produced anymore because the financial side of it doesn't work for anybody. So there's like there are just bands of products that are just ceasing to exist because the, the, the price of it doesn't make any sense anymore.
- [78:24]
Nilay Patel
Yeah.
- [78:24]
David Pierce
And there is no sign that this is getting better anytime soon.
- [78:27]
Nilay Patel
I've been having a conversation with people who are like really into politics and they all want to talk to me about data centers or data centers, the big issue of the midterms and AI. And you know, I, I, I love to say the products aren't good enough and maybe the products be good enough. And then I'll change people's attitudes about data centers. Everyone wants to talk to me about this and that's fine. And maybe data centers will be the big issue in the midterm. People can't afford video game consoles is like right there. Right. You made it hard for people to play video games or be excited about buying new handhelds or upgrading their gaming PCs or whatever it is. It's going to be right there. It's like right there next to gas prices. And I think people forget how pervasive video games are and how pervasive cheap smartphone supply chain products are. Right. Like everything in your life is basically a smartphone. Like everything's an Android tablet. We had the CEO of Skydio on decoder Adam. Really cool. You know, they're Making like military drones and first responders. We got really into the weeds of like working with the government and the military and building technology. And at the end he let me fly one of their drones and I did one that was like totally remote. You know, it was in California. We were in New York. And I did it on this laptop and then I did one, their indoor drone, just on their controller. And their controller is legitimately a controller with just a Samsung phone in the middle and kiosk model mode. And this is like the cutting edge drone company. And he was like, yeah, it's just easier. We're going to make our own controller. It's basically an Android tablet, but right now we can just buy Samsung phones and put them in kiosk mode. And it was built in, it was seamlessly integrated, but it was just obviously an Android phone. Right. He booted it up and it said Android on it in that way. And he was laughing. He was like, basically everything's an Android tablet. You just have to have the patience to want to build your own. But if you're busy, you just go take one off the shelf. And that. That's the era that's coming to an end.
- [80:09]
David Pierce
Yes.
- [80:10]
Nilay Patel
Where it's like, oh, you can just take for granted that an Android tablet exists as a computer that can run whatever device that you're actually interested in making.
- [80:18]
David Pierce
Yeah. There is just none of that left. Can I just tell you how this has affected me personally this week?
- [80:22]
Nilay Patel
Yeah.
- [80:23]
David Pierce
007 first light came out. The new James Bond video game is by all accounts fabulous. Everybody loves it. I love a James Bond game. I will even play a shitty James Bond game. And I have played many. The only console I have right now that will play it is a Switch 2, which I bought before it got more expensive. So I legitimately was like, okay, this is a game I will play enough to be worth buying a PS5. So I will bite the bullet and go buy a PS5. Did you know the PS5 is $650 now? The hell did that happen?
- [80:52]
Nilay Patel
What are we doing?
- [80:53]
David Pierce
They've raised the price. I went back and found this out. They raised the price twice over the past year. Sales have plummeted as a result. I'm not spending $650 on a PlayStation 5. I now have to wait several months until this thing come to the Switch and it sucks and I hate it and I blame everybody. But also, if you, if you have First Light and I can come to your house and play it, please let me know.
- [81:16]
Nilay Patel
That's brutal. Did you look at used ones or are those going up too?
- [81:19]
David Pierce
They have gone up there. They're out there. And I've. I'm. That may be where I end up, but even the prices of those have gone way up. Like, it's not that much cheaper to buy a used one anymore.
- [81:27]
Nilay Patel
That's not what's supposed to happen to consoles over the course of their life cycle.
- [81:30]
David Pierce
No. The PS5 is like five years old. Many years old now. We should be done with this.
- [81:35]
Nilay Patel
That's crazy.
- [81:36]
David Pierce
Makes me sad. Yeah. Anyway, everything keeps getting more expensive, which is why my advice continues to be go buy the two expensive things now, because I really think it's only going to get worse.
- [81:46]
Nilay Patel
That's some real Jim Cramer advice to end the Vergecast.
- [81:49]
David Pierce
It's rough. Whatever the top of this is, it does not feel like we've hit it yet. Yeah. But also just, you know, don't buy things. It'll be fine. All right, we should get out of here. Two bits of business. One Monday is daily Vergecast begins. You're going to be around a bunch on the show, including obviously on every Friday episode. But you also have this other podcast, what's on Decoder next week.
- [82:14]
Nilay Patel
Decoder next Week is the CEO of the Recording Academy, Harvey Mason Jr. The guy who runs the Grammys. Boy, did we get into our feelings about AI and music.
- [82:23]
David Pierce
Oh, wow.
- [82:24]
Nilay Patel
Yeah. You're not supposed to be able to win a Grammy if you use AI, but AI is everywhere in music, so he's got a real, real puzzle to solve.
- [82:30]
David Pierce
Oh, that's fun. I like that. We're also gearing up for all of our WWDC coverage. That's in two weeks. We're like deep in developer conferences. And it's Computex next week. It's Build next week. We got a lot going on. It's going to be. It's going to be insane. The AI things just keep happening and the people keep hitting them. And we will be here talking about it. Remember, you can subscribe to the Verge for all of our ad Free podcasts. I will tell you, maybe more than any of our other shows, Daily Vergecast is going to be vastly better with no ads. We are, like working very hard to make sure that we make the best version of it, the ad Free show. And I think it will be worth subscribing for just for that reason alone. But you can also get all of our other shows ad free. If you have thoughts and feelings and want to get in touch with us about anything, you can always email us vergecastheverge.com or call the hotline 866-verge11 we also have more hotline space in a daily Vergecast world, which is a thing I'm very excited about. Until then, the vergecast is Verge Production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. This show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer and Travis Larchuk. We will see you on Monday. Nilay Rock and roll.