The Verge's Nilay Patel, David Pierce, and Alex Cranz discuss the announcements from Samsung's Galaxy Unpacked event, Redbox shutting down, and more tech news from this week.
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00:00:00Hello and welcome to our chest, the flagship podcast of saying they don't look like airpods
00:00:07at all.
00:00:09Not even a little bit.
00:00:10Nope, those aren't airpods.
00:00:13That's not what that they sure they look like airpods, but they don't stop it.
00:00:17Anyway, we're going to talk about samsung unpacked today.
00:00:19I'm your friend.
00:00:20Eli David Pierce is here.
00:00:21Hi.
00:00:22I feel like we just did talk about sense.
00:00:23Like you, you, you've ruined the whole thing already.
00:00:25That was so quick.
00:00:28Alex Kranz is here.
00:00:29I'm your friend who thinks they're not really airpods if they've got cool lights on them,
00:00:33right?
00:00:34Like that changes the game.
00:00:35Sure.
00:00:36In the same way that buying knockoff airpods on canal street changes the game.
00:00:39Alex, you're in Texas.
00:00:41Are you okay?
00:00:42I am totally okay.
00:00:44I am.
00:00:45I am far away from the hurricane.
00:00:46We didn't even get any rain here.
00:00:48Okay.
00:00:49Sucked.
00:00:50Sorry to everybody who doesn't have power.
00:00:51That's not good.
00:00:52That also sucks.
00:00:53Stay cool.
00:00:55If you can, if you can please, or you know, talk to your local elected officials.
00:01:03There's a lot to say there.
00:01:04My favorite story of the hurricane, if you can have a favorite story from a giant hurricane
00:01:08has caused a great deal of hard way to start a story is, uh, is the people like the Texas
00:01:14power utilities don't have apps.
00:01:17So people are using the Whataburger app to find what areas still have blackouts because
00:01:22the Whataburgers are offline rules.
00:01:24It's a life finds a way, you know what I'm saying?
00:01:28Life finds a way.
00:01:29All right.
00:01:30Well, hopefully we can be a little ray of sunshine in this time.
00:01:33If you are stuck down there, there's a lot of gadgets you talk about.
00:01:36Samsung did have unpacked a bunch of phones.
00:01:39Motorola has new flip phones, which Alison reviewed, uh, there's a bunch of streaming
00:01:42news.
00:01:43Uh, Alex today was once again, horny for David Zaslav and slack quite openly.
00:01:49That was a real thing that happens today.
00:01:51And we had a lightning round on sponsored as always.
00:01:56I'm trying to sell our soul here.
00:01:58People.
00:01:59Uh, we get a lot of increase.
00:02:00I will say this.
00:02:01We get a lot of inquiries at price points that are entirely too low for my soul.
00:02:06Just keep that in mind.
00:02:07We're a reasonable cost for your soul.
00:02:09We're trying to buy boats.
00:02:10All right.
00:02:11Not dinghies.
00:02:13That's the lighting.
00:02:14It's not dinghies.
00:02:15That's, that's going on a shirt.
00:02:16I don't know.
00:02:17I don't know what it's advertising, but we're putting that on.
00:02:19I can buy my own unicorn floaties for my daughter.
00:02:22I don't need your help.
00:02:25All right.
00:02:26Let's get into it.
00:02:27David, tell us about unpacked.
00:02:28It was like a big one.
00:02:29Yeah.
00:02:30I sort of, this is a very weird year.
00:02:32So Samsung, I think probably tries the hardest of any tech company to have cool events, which
00:02:40you guys say that's fair.
00:02:41Like Apple has the big ones, but they're increasingly like at Apple park in a theater.
00:02:46They make a video.
00:02:47We like kind of know how they're doing it.
00:02:49Samsung is like Samsung tries so hard, like so hard.
00:02:53So I can explain this.
00:02:54Cause we've been talking about this for a long time and it's gotten weirder in a weird
00:02:57way.
00:02:58Like the weirdness of it is getting weirder.
00:03:00It's self weird.
00:03:01Yeah.
00:03:02Okay.
00:03:03Do you know what I mean?
00:03:04Like the mechanism of weirdness is getting weirder.
00:03:05So Apple for the longest time had like massive cultural influence.
00:03:11Like Steve Jobs was like, I don't know.
00:03:12Here's Coldplay.
00:03:13They're going to tell you how good the iPod is.
00:03:14Yeah.
00:03:15Bono's on stage.
00:03:16So one year famously scrubbed from the internet, Kanye West closed out a WWDC by playing gold
00:03:23digger.
00:03:24Is that true?
00:03:25And let me tell you, that audience did not scream prenup dead silence.
00:03:33It is impossible to find this video that is removed.
00:03:36Apple just deleted it.
00:03:37Wow.
00:03:38But Kanye was like, hello.
00:03:39We want prenup.
00:03:40And it was just like, we do not, sir.
00:03:45And Apple play just goes, I'm under NDA so weird.
00:03:49The weekend has played at a WWDC a straight singing about cocaine at 10 30 in the morning.
00:03:56Weird.
00:03:57But Apple is able to do it.
00:03:58Like their brand has the cultural capacity for these moments.
00:04:04And now they don't, which is weird.
00:04:07Like they've gotten so corporate, they're making infomercials.
00:04:09They're like, I tried to use these AI tools and I couldn't like, you know, it's like,
00:04:13it's weird.
00:04:14It's a WWDC, but they still have the cachet.
00:04:17Samsung has been trying to buy it for years.
00:04:20So they're like, I don't know.
00:04:21Here's a Broadway play about how women can't use phones, which is a real thing.
00:04:24They did.
00:04:25Yep.
00:04:26That's a real story.
00:04:27Here's more famous people.
00:04:28Sidney Sweeney was at this event, which we should talk about.
00:04:31Very odd moment with Sidney Sweeney at this event.
00:04:33So they keep trying to buy celebrities and influencers to get to the level of cultural
00:04:38relevance that Apple has long had.
00:04:41But Apple doesn't actually, they're not that company anymore.
00:04:45They're just bigger.
00:04:46They're like a nation state.
00:04:47And I will say to Samsung's credit, I mean, speaking of nation states, Jesus, but to Samsung's
00:04:53credit, it is still very invested in doing these things live in a way that Apple has
00:04:58gone full.
00:05:00Let's all sit here and watch a video.
00:05:02Samsung is like trying to create spectacle in a way that I kind of appreciate.
00:05:06I appreciate it.
00:05:07But that's what I mean by the mechanism of the weirdness is getting weirder.
00:05:10That's been the disconnect is like Apple's the cool one and Samsung's trying to buy the
00:05:15coolness.
00:05:16And now it's like Apple doesn't even try to be cool.
00:05:19Like whatever.
00:05:20Which if I know one thing about being cool, that's how to actually be cool.
00:05:25They're just like over it.
00:05:26And Samsung is like, here's even more stuff, like more hype, more spectacle.
00:05:32Here's Sidney Sweeney.
00:05:33Here's Sidney Sweeney being forced to react to like a deepfake of herself.
00:05:40Truly bizarre.
00:05:41Let's come back to that.
00:05:42So, but this one was, they did it in Paris, which on the one hand makes a certain kind
00:05:46of sense because Paris is it's where the Olympics is happening in the summer.
00:05:49It's a big deal.
00:05:50All this stuff.
00:05:51On the other hand makes no sense because it's two weeks until the Olympics.
00:05:54It's not like it's the middle of the Olympics.
00:05:56Like it's this long break Olympics, like it's just weird that Samsung picked to do this,
00:06:02but whatever.
00:06:03They did it in Paris.
00:06:04Lots of people went, they seem to fly in a ton of like creators and influencers and people.
00:06:10Lots of folks in Paris.
00:06:11We didn't have anybody there, but lots of folks were there and had what seemed like
00:06:16a giant, like warehouse sized theater thing.
00:06:19It was like the Samsung event.
00:06:21And then like a, like a really dirty rave was like the vibe I got from this building.
00:06:27So Paris.
00:06:28Yeah, that's fair, touché.
00:06:31And it was, the reason I'm so hung up on the Apple comparison here is because Samsung basically
00:06:37got up and launched a bunch of Apple products, like, like in a very direct, real way launched
00:06:44a bunch of Apple products and they launched phones that I think are cool and interesting
00:06:47and we should talk about.
00:06:48And the Ring.
00:06:49But there are two in particular where you're like, Oh, thanks Apple.
00:06:53And it's just Samsung is like doing a weird thing where it is becoming less Samsung-y
00:07:01all the time.
00:07:02It's like doing Google AI plus Apple hardware and, and kind of pretending that that is Samsung.
00:07:08Uh, and I think that's bizarre.
00:07:10Isn't that what happens when you work on Saturdays, you just say, what if we take these two and
00:07:14smush them together?
00:07:15What if we cut our costs by just firing the design teams entirely?
00:07:19Yeah.
00:07:20I don't know.
00:07:21Let's just do the two Apple ones first because the other products are fundamentally more
00:07:24interesting.
00:07:25Right.
00:07:26So it's the Galaxy Buds and the Galaxy Buds Pro, which just fully look like AirPods and
00:07:30AirPods Pro.
00:07:31Right.
00:07:32And they're like little beans.
00:07:33Yeah.
00:07:34And they were kind of cool.
00:07:35Like, I wouldn't buy them, but they were kind of cool.
00:07:38And now they look like AirPod Pros, AirPods, just the stems.
00:07:43They got stems.
00:07:44They're a little bit more angular.
00:07:45Uh, they do have LEDs on them, which is, which has listeners now, I appreciate more than
00:07:50it.
00:07:51Almost any other thing you can add to a tech product.
00:07:52Yeah.
00:07:53You know what you want is LEDs right next to your ear canal where you'll see them all
00:07:55the time.
00:07:56It makes perfect sense.
00:07:57Where everyone else can't tune.
00:07:58Right.
00:08:00I think people should be like, that dude's listening to tunes.
00:08:03Only if it like pulses with their music.
00:08:07Yeah.
00:08:08You want like RGB lighting for your ears basically.
00:08:09Where's the party speaker effects for these headphones?
00:08:12So no one else can see them and you can't, no one else can hear what you're listening
00:08:15to and you can't see the lights.
00:08:17That's the place for party speaker LEDs.
00:08:19So you know, we're at this weird place in headphone ville where the best headphones to
00:08:26buy for your phone are often the one that the phone maker makes.
00:08:30Yes.
00:08:31Because they have all co-opted Bluetooth as a standard and built proprietary features
00:08:35for their own products.
00:08:36We didn't do this forever.
00:08:38They've all done it.
00:08:39Like whether or not you think that's good or bad.
00:08:40They have all done it.
00:08:41Apple has done it with the AirPods, uh, where they use Bluetooth, but then there's a bunch
00:08:44of proprietary features.
00:08:45Samsung has done it with the Galaxy Buds.
00:08:47Google has done it with the Pixel Buds.
00:08:48Just down the line.
00:08:50Everyone's approach to this is if you want the coolest stuff, you have to buy our proprietary
00:08:55earbuds.
00:08:56And if God help you, if you want to use the Galaxy Buds with an iPhone, they're just going
00:08:59to fall back to Bluetooth.
00:09:00Yeah.
00:09:01So if you're a Galaxy owner, like you have a Samsung phone, I think the question is whether
00:09:05you want to advertise it with the stuff in your ears.
00:09:09Well, I think it's slightly differently.
00:09:11I think if you're Samsung, there is a perfectly reasonable set of decisions you make to land
00:09:17on.
00:09:18We should just make AirPods, which is, uh, they, they cited the evidence and there is
00:09:22some evidence out there that that basic shape is actually more comfortable for more people.
00:09:28Uh, with the, the stem, it balances the weight.
00:09:31It also points a microphone towards your mouth instead of the microphone, just sort of pointing
00:09:35out to the side of your head, which a lot of these things do.
00:09:37Uh, but also I'm curious if you guys feel this way, but in, in my circle, at least there
00:09:44is AirPods and there is knockoff AirPods.
00:09:46And that is, that is the perception of wireless headphones.
00:09:49Everybody knows what AirPods are.
00:09:50And then all the other ones are like, Oh, those aren't AirPods.
00:09:53And I feel like if you're Samsung, you're like, okay, well we want something that integrates.
00:09:57And if it happens to add a glance, look like AirPods.
00:10:01And so people think they're AirPods.
00:10:02That's actually not the worst thing in the world.
00:10:04And I think like, maybe it is that simple.
00:10:06Yeah, no, I think we're saying the same thing in slightly different ways.
00:10:09Like, do you want your headphones to advertise that they're not from Apple?
00:10:13And that means you don't have an iPhone.
00:10:15I think a lot of companies have killed themselves trying to differentiate from Apple.
00:10:21We are not Apple turns out to be like a pretty bad branding exercise most of the time.
00:10:25I don't think Samsung's ever done that.
00:10:28They've always kind of been like, yeah, we're Apple, but for Android, like, Oh, you live
00:10:32in any other part of the world where Apple doesn't make sense or it's too expensive or
00:10:35whatever.
00:10:36No, Samsung waxes and wanes on the, we are not Apple.
00:10:39There have been times of maximum, we are not Apple from Samsung.
00:10:43And I think this is a low point.
00:10:46Like this is very much a low point in Samsung's like, are we totally differentiated?
00:10:50Like every, for years they had bigger phones and they were just like, they were making
00:10:54the ads that, you know, people stand in line for the iPhone and then someone would come
00:10:57by with like a surfboard sized Samsung phone.
00:11:02So the point that that marketing actually worked against Apple, it came up in various
00:11:06lawsuits that like Apple executives were saying like Samsung's branding was causing market
00:11:13share loss.
00:11:14Like very famous, like Phil Schiller was like screaming at Apple's ad agency because that
00:11:18was where, and it turned out it was just the screens were bigger and people love big, cheap
00:11:21screens.
00:11:22And then Apple was like, here's the iPhone six.
00:11:23And it just stopped.
00:11:24Yeah.
00:11:25I mean, and it's worth pointing out that all of this is incredibly cyclical, right?
00:11:29Like Apple spends most of its time building features into the iPhone that already exists
00:11:32on Android devices.
00:11:34Apple got bigger phones way after the whole Android universe did.
00:11:37Like everybody is just perpetually shoving towards each other at all times.
00:11:42It's just particularly jarring when you see it in something as simple a shape as these
00:11:49headphones, because it's not just like a slab of glass in the way that all phones are a
00:11:52slab of glass.
00:11:53There are a lot of shapes that headphones can be.
00:11:55And I don't know that there is necessarily like a perfect, correct way for headphones
00:12:00to be, but we've just decided that AirPods are the thing.
00:12:03And it's very clear that Samsung looked at it and said, AirPods are the thing.
00:12:06And the best, smartest thing we can do is just make AirPods.
00:12:09I'm just going to point out that the shapes of headphones, the designs of headphones,
00:12:13the sound quality of headphones, all much more varied and competitive when the headphone
00:12:17jack was still on phones.
00:12:20Just going to say it out loud.
00:12:21When there was an open interconnect that allowed for high quality audio to pass from your device
00:12:24to the headphones, the variability in the market, the variability in styles was real.
00:12:30It was big.
00:12:31Also, as someone for whom AirPods don't feel great in my ears, it's a real bummer that
00:12:35this is what we've decided.
00:12:36Yeah.
00:12:37Yeah.
00:12:39There's the two sides on the Galaxy Buds.
00:12:40There's the Pro, which are in-ears, and then there's the regular ones, which are more AirPod-y,
00:12:44which are like just shove it in.
00:12:46They just hang.
00:12:47They're just like in there.
00:12:48We've got to do the tests.
00:12:49We've got to try them out.
00:12:50I'm always curious to see if anybody's actually managed to make Bluetooth call audio sound
00:12:55good.
00:12:56Here in New York City, the number of people who use wired headphones all day long, it
00:13:00feels like it's just going up.
00:13:01I think people are just like over it, which is interesting, but that's New York.
00:13:05It's not everywhere.
00:13:06So we'll see.
00:13:07We're going to review the things.
00:13:09The first feature, yep, you just made an Apple product, is the Galaxy Watch Ultra.
00:13:13This I think is actually the worst offender of the group.
00:13:15It's so bad.
00:13:16Yeah.
00:13:17I mean, first of all, it's called the Ultra.
00:13:19They've added the icons, like the menu switcher, Dealey, the home screen is the Apple Watch
00:13:24home screen.
00:13:25They even launched it with an orange band.
00:13:28And a quick button.
00:13:29And a quick button, which is orange.
00:13:31The colors are the same.
00:13:32Weird.
00:13:33Just weird all around.
00:13:36Yeah, it's just like a full-on copy, right?
00:13:41I think it feels like the only really big difference is the squircle shape, which I
00:13:46absolutely hate that word and want it to die.
00:13:49Agreed.
00:13:50And the crown doesn't turn.
00:13:51And the crown doesn't turn.
00:13:52Well, it does, but it doesn't scroll.
00:13:54Yeah.
00:13:55Which, sure.
00:13:56The fact that it doesn't scroll, but it turns, is just like mind-boggling to me.
00:14:01Yeah, I just, I don't know.
00:14:02I'm so torn on this yet again, because I think on the one hand, what we've learned
00:14:07in the last couple of years is that Apple got the Watch Ultra really right in a lot
00:14:11of ways, right?
00:14:13It went super hard on this idea that this is a thing for people who are going to use
00:14:17it aggressively outdoors.
00:14:18So we're going to optimize for battery life.
00:14:19We're going to give you extra information about how you're doing.
00:14:23We're going to add some GPS-y stuff into it.
00:14:26We're going to make it more rugged for you to do more rugged things.
00:14:29And all of that has, I think, largely proven right, but has also just proven popular.
00:14:34Like, there are a lot of people, including a lot of people, who don't need all of that
00:14:40stuff.
00:14:41Here I am.
00:14:42Who wear Ultras.
00:14:43Right.
00:14:44And so I think if you're, part of me is like, it's a real sort of abdication of creative
00:14:49responsibility for Samsung to not find something more interesting to do.
00:14:52But also, it looked around and was like, oh no, Apple maybe just got this one right, and
00:14:58maybe we'll just go do that and build it into Samsung-y stuff.
00:15:01Because ultimately, that's what people are asking us for.
00:15:04Right?
00:15:05Like, the thing you hear all the time is like, where is the Apple Watch for Samsung?
00:15:09And it has like steadily moved towards that.
00:15:12And this just feels like they just went the whole way and were like, you know what?
00:15:15Screw it.
00:15:16The Apple Watch Ultra's pretty good.
00:15:18Let's do it.
00:15:19But I want to say one thing.
00:15:21There's one very important differentiator here.
00:15:23It is vastly uglier.
00:15:25Yeah, the squircle.
00:15:28It's not even a squircle.
00:15:29It's got a round face on a squircle body with the weird touch ring that they do.
00:15:36It's one too many bezels.
00:15:38It's a chunk.
00:15:39It's a chunk in a way that the Ultra's a chunk, but the Ultra feels like a singular idea.
00:15:45And this is just like, yeah, one too many bezels.
00:15:48It's like a case inside of a case inside of a case in a way that just feels tacky.
00:15:54I do sort of like some of the color combinations.
00:15:59Some of the pictures we've seen with some of the like really aggressive, like information
00:16:04dense watch faces, you look at them and it's like, okay, there's a certain amount of like,
00:16:10I could control a smart city from my watch with this.
00:16:13And like, could I be Batman with this watch on?
00:16:16Like potentially.
00:16:17But it is, I think, it feels, it's either over designed or under designed.
00:16:22And I genuinely can't tell which one it is.
00:16:24Does the screen feel like too much screen to y'all in a way that the, yeah, the Apple
00:16:30Ultra, I feel doesn't quite scream screen at me as much as this does, but I have neither.
00:16:36So I don't, I think the Ultra is too much screen.
00:16:38I think they're both too much screen.
00:16:40Like anytime I'm around somebody with an Ultra, both, dear God, you're right.
00:16:43Anytime I'm around somebody with an Apple watch Ultra, I'm like, I can just sit here
00:16:48and read your email.
00:16:49Like you get a text message.
00:16:50It's like, we both got that text message.
00:16:53It's a lot of screen.
00:16:55And this, this is, I think very clearly going to be the same thing, but people seem to be
00:16:59fine with that.
00:17:00Like, I guess that's just a thing we're getting comfortable with.
00:17:04There is some other Samsung stuff here in that, you know, Samsung is just a weird company
00:17:10with weird ideas and they like to be ahead of the curve.
00:17:13So they've added like new sensors for health stuff.
00:17:18And the best part is that the, they call it the bioactive sensor.
00:17:22And they're like, what if we just had more colors of LEDs to the sensor and measure more
00:17:26things?
00:17:27And the funniest one here is like, no one can quite do the blood sugar measurement,
00:17:33which everyone wants to do.
00:17:35Like Apple struggled with it.
00:17:36Samsung is obviously struggling with it, but like there's a lot of people out there who
00:17:39would love an ongoing blood sugar measurement.
00:17:41Yeah.
00:17:42For a variety of reasons.
00:17:43So they've just added something called the experimental advanced glycation end products
00:17:48index metric.
00:17:49Which is nothing to do.
00:17:50Hold on.
00:17:51One more time.
00:17:52One more time.
00:17:53The experimental advanced glycation end products index metric.
00:17:57It sounds like a like third rate stock exchange, but it's an index of everyone's blood sugar
00:18:06is what it is.
00:18:07It's like, I ate a cookie, the A-G-E-I went down.
00:18:14So it's not, it's not, it's not supposed to be that you were not supposed to read that.
00:18:19But Samsung says it looks at your diet and life cycle to reflect your overall biological
00:18:24aging process, which is worse than so much.
00:18:27It's like, who's the billionaire that's just slowly turning himself younger.
00:18:31Oh yeah.
00:18:32The vampire blood guy.
00:18:34Peter Thiel is like, I got to get this Samsung Galaxy one to Ultra.
00:18:37It's like, I need this immediately, but no one else does.
00:18:40This is the differentiation in this market.
00:18:42Like everyone figured out watches are either you want a big screen cause you'll have a
00:18:47big screen like me, or you want all these health and fitness features, or maybe you
00:18:51just want notifications and two factor codes.
00:18:55But at the high end, it's all health and fitness.
00:18:57Yep.
00:18:58Like that's what sells the extra watch features to people.
00:19:00There's a reason that new health specific features are not coming out at a high rate.
00:19:05Like one, the tech isn't quite there.
00:19:06Two, there's a bunch of regulatory hurdles.
00:19:08Three, they have to make sure they're actually safe and say what they say they're going to
00:19:11do.
00:19:12Great.
00:19:13That means you, you end up with like fake, like wellness health features, uh, like the
00:19:20advanced experimental, like the experimental advanced glycation and products result.
00:19:25And it's fine, but there's always the danger that people take that stuff way more seriously
00:19:30than they should.
00:19:31Just like 10,000, like people take 10,000 steps very seriously and like, that's just
00:19:35made up.
00:19:36Like people just made that up and like, here we are.
00:19:40And like, there's a piece of this puzzle where I think these watches are going to end
00:19:44up being more samey because the thing that ultimately differentiates them is kind of
00:19:47caught up in a lull of innovation and regulatory behavior and all that stuff.
00:19:53And famously like aggressive lawsuits against Apple from other companies.
00:19:58Uh, no, I think that's right.
00:19:59And there's the, what was it?
00:20:00Is it the health score?
00:20:01Is that what Samsung calls it?
00:20:03This, this like all in one tracking thing that they're doing with the watches to basically
00:20:08give you sort of an overall picture of your score, but like everybody's doing that right
00:20:12now.
00:20:13Right?
00:20:14Yeah.
00:20:15But I think it fits exactly what you're talking about.
00:20:16And Eli that it's, it's the sort of thing that as a, as a very casual data point is
00:20:21helpful, right?
00:20:22Where it's like, okay.
00:20:23Uh, like I was just looking at this weather app, it's called lazy weather.
00:20:25And its whole job is to tell you, is it going to be warmer or colder than yesterday?
00:20:30Right?
00:20:31Like based on the assumption that like, that's actually all you really need to know.
00:20:33And that is to that extent, a health score is useful, right?
00:20:38It's like, am I, am I, am I better or worse?
00:20:40Like how, how am I doing?
00:20:41And that's like, it gives you that answer, but all these things, as we get more of these
00:20:45sensors and more of this data, all you're actually doing is giving people tools they
00:20:50don't understand with which to do things that may or may not be helpful.
00:20:55And it feels like we are so deep down the road of like, here's some numbers without
00:20:59giving people real ability to like do things with them.
00:21:03Well, and this age index in particular feels like it is trying to ride on the, like ride
00:21:10the wave of continuous glucose monitors.
00:21:12It's trying to sound like, oh yeah, we kind of care about glucose monitors and diabetes
00:21:16and all of that.
00:21:17But also we can't legally do any of that because none of that actual technology exists in a
00:21:21safe way.
00:21:22So to be clear, Samson would not explain what the experimental advanced glycation end products
00:21:27index is.
00:21:28I was reading up on it all, like as soon as I saw that word, I've been very into continuous
00:21:32glucose monitors right now because I've got a diabetic in the family.
00:21:36And as soon as I saw that, I was like, what is that metric?
00:21:39That's not the one I talk with the doctors about.
00:21:42And just immediately was like, oh, this is, I don't want to say bullshit, but like close
00:21:48to it.
00:21:49Right.
00:21:50All Samsung will say, just to repeat this, all Samsung will say is that it looks at quote
00:21:55your diet and lifestyle to reflect your overall biological aging process.
00:22:01Sure.
00:22:03This is why I'm happy to announce a line of VirgCast supplements, which will bring your
00:22:06biological age lower.
00:22:08Why?
00:22:09If I only, if I had 10% more grift in my body, you wouldn't be out here hustling for lightning
00:22:17round sponsorships.
00:22:18By the way, we will not allow supplement companies to advertise the lightning round.
00:22:24I'm putting that out there unless the price tag is high enough.
00:22:27Unless they're like really good supplements.
00:22:29Unless they rule.
00:22:30Yeah.
00:22:31I think even the, one of the big things Samsung announced with these watches is that they
00:22:35have a FDA de novo clearance for sleep apnea stuff.
00:22:39And that's another really good example, right?
00:22:41Because what that doesn't mean is that this will tell you if you have sleep apnea.
00:22:45It's very hard to not understand it as that, but that is not what this is.
00:22:49What it means is this is a device that will give you data that is not harmful and potentially
00:22:56interesting and that you should take that data and take it to a medical professional
00:23:00who can help you make sense of it.
00:23:02And that is kind of indicative of like the best of most smartwatches.
00:23:06And this is true of Apple and Google and basically everybody in this space right now that they're
00:23:11all so careful to remind you constantly, like these are not medical devices.
00:23:16This is not medical advice.
00:23:17These things are just indicated as ways to give you information that might be helpful
00:23:21in a certain context.
00:23:23And you should take it to your healthcare provider and consult with them like over and
00:23:26over and over.
00:23:27That's the thing.
00:23:28But what it's actually doing is it's going to pop up a thing being like, you didn't sleep
00:23:30well.
00:23:31What do you think that's about?
00:23:32And it's like, are we, what problems are we really solving for people here?
00:23:35Um, so I come from a family of doctors and they all talk about, uh, you know, like there
00:23:41are laws in most States now that say you have to have access to your medical records right
00:23:45away.
00:23:46And a thing that is real is you go in for tests and then you get the result of your
00:23:50test before the doctor gets it.
00:23:52And then people don't wait.
00:23:55They start furiously Googling numbers and they call the doctors having already formed
00:24:01conclusions and the doctor's like, hold on, uh, you have no idea what you're talking about.
00:24:06Yeah.
00:24:07Apparently I didn't have kidney failure.
00:24:08I just needed to drink more water.
00:24:10Yeah.
00:24:11This is like a real thing that happens like all the time.
00:24:13Yeah.
00:24:14Um, and I think that's fascinating in this context, right?
00:24:16Where you were like, you're just putting on people's wrists for a couple hundred bucks.
00:24:19You know, like this is good at hikes.
00:24:21Also it will terrify you.
00:24:22Um, and I, I'm saying like the, the bleeding edge of these devices is health features and
00:24:28we're just kind of at a place now where they can't make the real claims.
00:24:31So they're just making up other ones.
00:24:34We'll see how it goes.
00:24:35In any case, it looks exactly like an Apple watch ultra, except uglier in like a real
00:24:39way.
00:24:40All right.
00:24:41So that's the two copies, right?
00:24:42Yeah.
00:24:43Yeah.
00:24:44Like the, you put in, you put the AirPods through chat, GPT, it's spit back AirPods with
00:24:47LEDs, like done and done, nailed it.
00:24:50Then there's the other stuff.
00:24:51We should talk about the ring because the ring is easily the most interesting product
00:24:54they have.
00:24:55Yes.
00:24:56And it is the one where a Apple has nothing, although we've heard about some attempts,
00:25:00some research projects at that company.
00:25:02But there are other, you know, the aura ring exists, but it seems like Samsung is, has
00:25:06a shot here.
00:25:07Yeah.
00:25:08I think it does because the aura ring is really like, it's kind of one size.
00:25:12Most of the other ring makers are kind of like, yeah, we do one size.
00:25:15You can get different sizes of the ring, but ultimately the battery, everything else is
00:25:19the same.
00:25:20Samsung is doing what most big tech companies do, which is like, we're going to have multiple
00:25:24sizes.
00:25:25So like the largest ones have a little bit more battery than the smaller ones because
00:25:28they can put more in it.
00:25:30And that's just cool and smart, but also it just sounds a lot like an aura ring with better
00:25:34integration for Samsung specifically in a way that's like exciting.
00:25:39And they have smaller ones that this is like, I think Victoria Song, our wearables writer
00:25:44said that this might be one of the like smallest available smart rings for people.
00:25:48It still looks gigantic on her hand.
00:25:50It does.
00:25:51But she has, she, she will be the first to tell you she has small hands and is not a
00:25:55super indicative.
00:25:56Also shout out to V who I believe wore four other rings to the hands on with the galaxy
00:26:02ring.
00:26:03Like that is just showing up like a straight up mafioso, like brass knuckles, but it's
00:26:09all smart rings.
00:26:10Like I, hell yeah.
00:26:11It's so good.
00:26:12I'm either going to a Samsung event or the Jersey shore.
00:26:14We're going to find out.
00:26:15I might buy the ring sizer because you can just buy Samsung's ring sizer for 10 bucks
00:26:21and you figure out what your ring size is, which is useful.
00:26:25And then you get a credit when you buy the ring.
00:26:26I think that's really smart.
00:26:27Like compared to the other, you have to wear this on your body fitment ideas we've seen
00:26:31like Apple making you go to the store.
00:26:35Yeah.
00:26:36Like this is actually very clever.
00:26:37It's obviously easier with a ring than a thing that you have to wear on your face and we're,
00:26:39you know, prescription lenses and all that with the vision pro.
00:26:41But I think it's very clever that as we kind of go into wearables world, fitting stuff
00:26:48to your body becomes an interesting challenge and it's not solved.
00:26:52So I thought that part is really cool, but the part where it's, it's the same product
00:26:57as everyone else, but it's more integrated in the system because Samsung owns the operating
00:27:00system.
00:27:01I can't, I don't know how I feel about that at all.
00:27:03Yeah.
00:27:04Well, one thing that is better about it is that it also has like an actual case instead
00:27:09of just a little dongle you have to periodically find and stick the ring on and the case looks
00:27:14interesting.
00:27:15Did you guys look at the case for it?
00:27:18The case is, is it gigantic?
00:27:20I can't tell if this case is gigantic or not.
00:27:23It feels like gigantic and also so much fake crystal.
00:27:26Yes.
00:27:27Yes.
00:27:28Yes.
00:27:29It's like a Claire's jewelry case.
00:27:30Yeah.
00:27:31I love it so much.
00:27:32I don't mean that as an insult.
00:27:33Like it, it just is what it is.
00:27:35And it is true that it's better that it is a case than what you get from aura and others,
00:27:41which is essentially just like a puck that sits on your desk, which is fine for what
00:27:45it is, but it's easy to lose and doesn't travel very well.
00:27:48And I think a case that is properly a case makes a lot of sense.
00:27:51And I think actually the thing I'm most excited about, about the galaxy ring is that Samsung
00:27:55seems to have gotten the ring wearing experience closer to right than just about anybody that
00:28:04we've seen.
00:28:05Like the thing is pretty light.
00:28:06It's pretty thin.
00:28:07It's, it's concave, which will make it a little easier to wear and like bang around on a desk
00:28:11and stuff.
00:28:12Then some of the other sort of convex ones that we've seen, uh, it's, it's, it comes
00:28:16in a bunch of different sizes.
00:28:17Like the battery life is long.
00:28:19It seems like no additional subscription, right?
00:28:22There are like little bits and pieces of what it's going to be like to own this that I think
00:28:26are going to be really important because we're still very much at a moment where like, unless
00:28:30you are a psycho who wants to track their sleep and no shade to those psychos, there's
00:28:34lots of them out there.
00:28:36Unless you are that person, there are not a lot of compelling reasons to wear a ring.
00:28:41So we have to figure out like what, what is this thing for?
00:28:45And the smart thing that Samsung did is be like, this is going to be a nice thing to
00:28:47wear before you really have a hundred reasons to use it.
00:28:51It's just a bunch of sensors, right?
00:28:52Yeah.
00:28:53Yeah.
00:28:54It does heart rate tracking.
00:28:55It does a skin temperature sensor.
00:28:57I've often wondered what my skin temperature is.
00:28:59Uh, and then it's had a bunch of sleep feature.
00:29:01Like the watch, we just had this whole conversation about like, they're adding more kinds of sensors
00:29:07to the watch ahead of their ability to actually tell you what they mean.
00:29:10It feels like, well, we also made a bunch of them smaller now we can just put them in
00:29:13a ring.
00:29:14Well, they're also better on a ring, right?
00:29:15Like the, having that stuff on your finger 24 hours a day is a vastly better data collection
00:29:21system than having it on your wrist sometimes, right?
00:29:23Like if you are the person who wants that data and cares about it and is going to take
00:29:28it to your medical professional, a ring is, is just a better venue for that in almost
00:29:32every way.
00:29:33Yeah.
00:29:34I want smart rings to work.
00:29:35Like I really, I really do.
00:29:37If you had a smart ring, would you give up on your watch?
00:29:39No.
00:29:40And the reason I don't have a smart ring frankly, is because every time I wear an aura, I wear
00:29:43an aura for three days and I'm like, what on earth is the point of me having this thing
00:29:47on?
00:29:48Because I'm not like at, at that, if you're like a nine or 10 out of 10 on a, like how
00:29:54much do I care about tracking my body sensors, a person, a ring is great.
00:30:00I'm not that.
00:30:01And so like having it tell me I got bad sleep when I wake up tired is like not interesting
00:30:06to me.
00:30:07So I ended up just putting the aura back in a drawer and the ring is still the galaxy
00:30:11ring is, is going to have that same problem.
00:30:13So this brings me to Neelai Patel's theory of wearable bullshit.
00:30:20So if you remember this, by the way, this theory still needs a better name I'm in the
00:30:23market for, but if you remember, it's important that it has Neelai's name in it though.
00:30:28It's mine.
00:30:35That's how you can, you can buy, I'll sell you naming rights to the theory of wearable
00:30:39bullshit.
00:30:40So this is the Samsung Exxon theory of wearable bullshit presented by Citibank.
00:30:46So the X axis, right, is a value.
00:30:52And then the Y is fiddliness, like how much you have to care about the thing or it's the
00:30:56other way around.
00:30:57It doesn't matter.
00:30:58Those are the two axes.
00:30:59Well, there's also a Z that you refuse to acknowledge, but that's okay.
00:31:02Many people have sent us many versions of this truck, right?
00:31:06And so my, my, my, the paradigm object on the chart of things you attach to your body
00:31:12is regular glasses, which are a little bit fiddly.
00:31:15You have to clean them.
00:31:16You got to care of them.
00:31:17You can't lose them, but they, if you need them provide you an immense amount of value.
00:31:21So you're like, I'm going to put these on my face all the time because they allow me
00:31:25to see, and then I will deal with having to clean them and owning a microfiber cloth and
00:31:30all the rest of the stuff that you're supposed to do with glasses.
00:31:32You just use your shirt.
00:31:33Right.
00:31:35Uh, somewhere on that list is like the original Apple watch, which was too fiddly, required
00:31:40a lot of care and didn't do well as a product.
00:31:44Then there's the current Apple watch, which actually has pretty good battery life, doesn't
00:31:47require a lot of care and has a lot of value for people like exceeded the, the, the line.
00:31:53Then there's a vision pro, which is very like anything that goes on your face, the fiddliness
00:31:57is off the charts and it can't deliver as much value.
00:32:00Yeah.
00:32:01Like face computers just can't deliver the value to make this worthwhile.
00:32:03You just keep going down and down the list.
00:32:05The ring has a problem in that it delivers no value to you.
00:32:08It is a totally passive computer that you have to fiddle with and put on your body and
00:32:14then all the value that's delivered is like at some later point you will look at some
00:32:19data that was collected.
00:32:20Well, and I think if you're, if you're the kind of person who has like a preexisting
00:32:25thing for which that is useful, great.
00:32:28Like if you are someone who knows you struggle with sleep and you're trying things and actually
00:32:31collecting that data on an ongoing basis helps you great.
00:32:35That makes total sense.
00:32:36A ring is going to be really useful.
00:32:37And the upside of a ring is that the fiddliness score is much, much lower.
00:32:41Like a thing that you wear on your index finger and take off once a week to charge while you
00:32:45shower super low on the fiddliness meter.
00:32:49But the problem is that even its potential to do more stuff is not that high.
00:32:54I don't think it's that low on the fiddliness meter.
00:32:56I wear a ring every day.
00:32:58Yeah.
00:32:59I never think, I pick it up when I leave the house.
00:33:01It serves an important function, uh, which is to remind ladies that I'm taking, um, uh,
00:33:09it's a symbol of my ongoing devotion to my divorce lawyer of a wife.
00:33:14Um, uh, and I, I just never think about it.
00:33:17I take it, I put it on, I take it off.
00:33:19I never think about charging it, whatever.
00:33:21It has an obviously important societal, emotional function that it does.
00:33:28It's like symbolic, but there's, it's zero fit.
00:33:31Like anything over zero is actually the standard.
00:33:34I think that is probably only some of our audience has that issue because a lot of their
00:33:40audience probably also enjoys to wear a little couple of different rings, replaced rings.
00:33:45Like I wear-
00:33:46But they're also zero.
00:33:47No, because you take like, I cannot tell you, it's jewelry, right?
00:33:50Like jewelry, you're, you're constantly, a lot of people are constantly fiddling with
00:33:53their jewelry.
00:33:54Do you think that Galaxy Watch is jewelry?
00:33:56It fundamentally is.
00:33:57It's not jewelry I want to personally wear.
00:34:00Well, but it doesn't have the function.
00:34:01No, it does.
00:34:02It's, it's a ring.
00:34:03It's showing, it's, it's putting that extra bling on your hand.
00:34:07And I think a lot of people do like to have that extra bling.
00:34:09The Aura ring has definitely attained like status symbol status over the years.
00:34:15Yeah.
00:34:16It's, it's got like a, it's got like a bling kind of quality to it.
00:34:19And I think the rings in a way, like the Apple Watch quickly became, went from fashion, we
00:34:24all laughed at it being fashion and immediately into-
00:34:27It failed as a fashion, famously failed as a fashion.
00:34:29Yeah, famously.
00:34:30We were all like, that's stupid.
00:34:31And we all just stopped treating it like fashion and it just became a watch on your wrist.
00:34:35The ring is still, I think both more capable of it.
00:34:39So if you're someone who doesn't want to have a giant watch on your wrist, and you do want
00:34:42those metrics, like, okay, you can put on the ring, the ring, and you can still wear
00:34:45your Breitling or your Rolex or whatever to show that off.
00:34:49And I think that's who this is for.
00:34:51That's the market.
00:34:52Yeah.
00:34:53I feel like people with $6,000 watches that, that they don't want to replace it.
00:34:57This is why Silicon Valley billionaires love the Aura Ring.
00:34:59This is my aspirational ring.
00:35:01I just figured this out.
00:35:02I guess when I say, is it jewelry?
00:35:04I agree with you that like, it's jewelry.
00:35:06Yeah.
00:35:07I meant, does it look like jewelry?
00:35:09The Aura Ring, actually, they tried very hard to make it look like jewelry.
00:35:12And one of the only reasons that I wouldn't just swap out my wedding ring for it is you
00:35:17can, I think you can only wear it on your index finger, right?
00:35:19Yeah.
00:35:20You're supposed to only wear it on your index.
00:35:21So it's like, it doesn't do the other thing, but there's a world in which you just infuse
00:35:25my existing jewelry with the tech and it looks good enough and that's fine.
00:35:28I just think that the Samsung one doesn't, doesn't wait.
00:35:32The Neil Patel theory of wearable bullshit does not have a fashion scale.
00:35:35That's the Z axis now.
00:35:37You've you've yeah, this is, this is about fiddliness.
00:35:39Do you know what's very fiddly is fashion, Neil?
00:35:46All right.
00:35:47Looking good.
00:35:48I can make this work, man.
00:35:49I need to think about this for like five more seconds and I'll come up with something.
00:35:55But no, but I, I really think the problem is the, the ceiling for what you can do with
00:36:01a ring right now seems really low because like even, even like the next thing you think
00:36:06of is like, Oh, maybe it'll vibrate for notifications.
00:36:09Do you know how insane it would feel to have your, the base of your index finger vibrate
00:36:14every time you get a text message?
00:36:16Like insane disaster.
00:36:17You'd go to your doctor and be like, I have all of this medical information and Samsung
00:36:24is doing a thing where they're like sort of gently pointing it.
00:36:28Like maybe this is a way to gesture control some stuff.
00:36:31Like they have a little bit of the like pinchy pinch stuff going on, but only if you have
00:36:35a Samsung phone, right?
00:36:36And so there's like, but even that is like probably, probably not.
00:36:41I just don't think that's the thing yet.
00:36:43What if, I mean, we're hearing a lot more about XR nowadays and, and if you just like
00:36:49mixed reality, that's just another word for mixed reality.
00:36:52And what if that's a, like the kind of their way of this is how we're going to control
00:36:56it in the future.
00:36:57I do think if, if you want to like galaxy brain take the galaxy ring, I think that's
00:37:01probably I, that's all I want to do.
00:37:03Also, I just realized if Samsung comes out with a headset and doesn't call it the galaxy
00:37:07brain, I'm going to be furious.
00:37:08It's entire AI service suite called galaxy brain.
00:37:13How do we have this idea?
00:37:15David Pierce's galaxy brain.
00:37:17You can have one.
00:37:18Yeah.
00:37:19God.
00:37:20Uh, all right.
00:37:21We're going to try out the ring.
00:37:22The, I think V is very excited to get it.
00:37:23We'll, we'll know much more about it soon.
00:37:24Uh, the last piece we should talk about are some phones.
00:37:27I just want to point out that we're almost 40 minutes into this segment just now talking
00:37:31about the phones, which actually tells you every single thing you need to know about
00:37:34these new phones.
00:37:35Yeah.
00:37:36They are more expensive.
00:37:37I am so disappointed in these new phones.
00:37:39Like of all the things, like I can understand why you would copy Apple in making certain
00:37:44things.
00:37:45I can understand why you go all in on AI even before there are a lot of really compelling
00:37:49use cases.
00:37:50But this thing where Samsung was so far ahead in foldable phones and flip phones and seems
00:37:55content to just like squander that in the name of making everything a smidge better
00:38:00and not doing anything new or interesting every year, it's really starting to bum me
00:38:03out.
00:38:04Well, do they have competition in this space?
00:38:06Like, is there anybody that's actually pushing?
00:38:08Well, so there are, we should talk about the Motorola razor plus, which Alison reviewed
00:38:12this week, which she loved.
00:38:15She just loved it.
00:38:16That thing is one very good camera away from maybe being the best Android phone.
00:38:20Yeah.
00:38:21It's got a weird processor.
00:38:23It's like who even can describe this snapdragon eight S three M or whatever it's called.
00:38:29Yeah.
00:38:30Wait, let me find it.
00:38:31What is it?
00:38:32Uh, it's the snapdragon eight S gen three, which is just a weird mid tier.
00:38:37Yeah.
00:38:38Uh, it's weird.
00:38:39It's, it's just a weird, it's one of those are like, well, this phone last two years
00:38:42or five.
00:38:43Like Alison called it like an entry flagship, which is like, sure.
00:38:47All right.
00:38:48Here we are.
00:38:49Um, anyway, it's talking about the Samsung ones first.
00:38:52Um, the flip six is the one that, you know, is sort of more interesting because I think
00:38:57that form factor is more interesting.
00:38:58Also, it's the thing that's changing the most.
00:39:01Like those are the phones that are changing the most because the cover screens are getting
00:39:05bigger and bigger.
00:39:06Um, but it's basically just like a little bit lighter and cost more money.
00:39:11Yeah.
00:39:12Also a little more rugged, which is meaningful, especially for the flip.
00:39:15Uh, they're, they're getting better at making that thing into like an actual phone that
00:39:19you can treat like an actual phone, a little bit more, a little, yeah, it doesn't even
00:39:24have dust resistance.
00:39:25Like, don't listen.
00:39:26You can, you can drop it in the toilet now.
00:39:29That's a victory.
00:39:30Yeah.
00:39:31It'll probably be fine.
00:39:33Uh, and then the fold six boy, I couldn't tell you.
00:39:38It's literally like one of the main features they talked about is that when it's flat,
00:39:43it's flatter.
00:39:44Like, what, what are we doing here?
00:39:47It's just, and again, I, I, part of me wonders like what are, are we several physics miracles
00:39:55away from there being a new thing you can do here because Samsung is making little bits
00:40:00of this better.
00:40:01The, the cover screen, it's, it's a little wider on the outside, which I actually appreciate.
00:40:05It feels less like a TV remote and more like a phone.
00:40:08Uh, it's just the same thing though.
00:40:11Like the, the, Samsung is not even really like coming up with really cool new ideas
00:40:15about how the software here could work, which at least Motorola is pushing really hard for.
00:40:20How do we make the outer screen useful and the inner screen useful and have them interplay
00:40:23with each other really well.
00:40:25Samsung feels like it is just not pushing that nearly as hard.
00:40:29And so it's like, what, what do you, what, what is the case for why I should buy these
00:40:33things?
00:40:34Samsung?
00:40:35I don't think they care.
00:40:36I mean, presumably they'd like me to buy their phones.
00:40:38I think they want us to buy the phones, but, but I think they are, Samsung often feels
00:40:42driven by, by external pressures.
00:40:44It often feels driven by the market and like it's decisions are based in the market and
00:40:48like, Oh, we do the folding phone cause nobody else is doing it.
00:40:50And we get there first and we get there before Apple and Apple just hasn't done it.
00:40:56Hasn't even talked about doing it.
00:40:57The rumors are scant, right?
00:40:59And so, and that's their primary competitor.
00:41:01Like we want to say Motorola or Pixel or whatever, let's be real.
00:41:05Their primary competitor is Apple.
00:41:07And if Apple's not doing anything in the space, then why should they invest in making the
00:41:12phone better when they can just rest on their laurels?
00:41:14Well, I think also we've, Alex, you mentioned Saturday, Samsung, their sales are down.
00:41:19They're trying to make more money.
00:41:20Saturday, Samsung, man.
00:41:23Their efforts are going to marketing and more dollars from the same product.
00:41:29Of course they're not putting tons of money into making, like changing things too much.
00:41:33At the same time, like they still employ the software engineers and designers, like make
00:41:39it more interesting is like a totally valid critique here.
00:41:42Like the phone opens, you can, you have a little phone that turns into a big phone.
00:41:47What happens then?
00:41:48Right.
00:41:49And that, that seems to be set aside.
00:41:50That does, I think, bring us to the Motorola phone where Motorola does seem to have a lot
00:41:54of ideas.
00:41:55What happens when you have a little phone that gets even smaller and you have a big
00:41:59cover screen and like their ideas about how apps even appear on that cover screen and
00:42:03how you might control them all pretty good.
00:42:06Yeah.
00:42:07Yeah.
00:42:08It's the idea of like, what if you only had to tap on your phone two times to accomplish
00:42:10something on the outside screen is like, I don't know if that is the framework, but that's
00:42:14kind of what it feels like.
00:42:15And there's just little bits and pieces where it's like, okay, this is a screen you're going
00:42:18to have sort of looking at you all the times.
00:42:21We're going to make it fun and cute and animated.
00:42:23And if you want to like do something, you're probably going to open up the phone.
00:42:26So in this case, what we need to do is just give you all the things that are like one
00:42:30or two taps and just put it right in front of you.
00:42:32So it's like, what's next on your calendar, get to AI, stop the music.
00:42:35Like, I love that.
00:42:37And this is like the thing about flip phones that I'm enthusiastic about is it is I, sometimes
00:42:41you should only have access to a tiny portion of your phone and that is how you do it on
00:42:47that outside screen.
00:42:48I think Motorola is getting this really right in a way I find very exciting.
00:42:51Also, it seems like there, when you unfold it, their screen is less creasy looking than
00:42:56the Samsung one.
00:42:57Yeah, it's only 1080 P and it's like 6.9 inches.
00:43:00So it's like super long and not that high res and that makes me face right now.
00:43:06You just really, yeah, I just, you love a garbage phone.
00:43:11You're single handedly driving all of the sales of the books.
00:43:14Yeah, that's, that's been a wild couple of weeks, but wait, one of the, one of the things
00:43:20that I've heard a bunch of people say about this Samsung launch, and I think this might
00:43:24be true for Motorola and stuff too, is that we're now in Samsung's case, six generations
00:43:29into the flip and fold universe.
00:43:32And anecdotally, at least, and based on, you know, talking to people and what we've seen,
00:43:37these are not winning in any meaningful way, right?
00:43:40Like they're not taking market share away from the Galaxy S lines and the iPhone and
00:43:47the other popular candy bar phones.
00:43:49And so you wonder if instead of Samsung and others looking at these phones saying, this
00:43:54is how we win, they're increasingly looking at them as just like kind of a sideshow and
00:44:01maybe, and, and if that is the case, of course you slow down and you put less interesting
00:44:07resources into doing it.
00:44:09Especially for Samsung, which has a gigantic business selling candy bar phones, like maybe,
00:44:14maybe we should be less interested in these because the world is less interested in these
00:44:19for Motorola, like they kind of have nothing to lose by swinging big for something new.
00:44:24And the razor is the best brand Motorola ever had.
00:44:26So like, I get why they're doing this that way, but for Samsung, like we've been waiting
00:44:32for this to become Samsung's thing for so long now.
00:44:36And I wonder if Samsung is increasingly convinced with every generation that maybe it's
00:44:41just not going to be.
00:44:42Is it just too expensive?
00:44:43Is that why it just hasn't become the thing?
00:44:46That's why I haven't gotten one is it's almost two thousand dollars.
00:44:48I think for foldable phones, very much so.
00:44:52I think the flip phones, you could like maybe have a debate about whether it is meaningfully
00:44:57more useful to have that.
00:44:58I would argue that it is, but I think you could debate that.
00:45:01But the like the fold problem is A, they're huge and B, they're twice the price.
00:45:07Like I just it's that is going to be so hard to come back from for any of these companies.
00:45:11But you get three times the screens for twice the price.
00:45:14You do. Yeah.
00:45:16I mean, the dollar ratio is off the charts.
00:45:19That's your Saturday Samsung pitch.
00:45:21Two extra price, three extra screens.
00:45:23They'll give you a TV with it.
00:45:24So you get that in Cupertino.
00:45:27That's true. You can also get a TV with it.
00:45:28All right. We have talked about everything for too long.
00:45:31We're way over already. We're only halfway through.
00:45:34I think that makes sense. We'll be back with more of our chest.
00:45:41All right, we're back.
00:45:44We have this next segment list is streaming lightning round, and I'm just looking for
00:45:47where Alex talks about David Zaslav's outfits, which is a real thing that occurred today.
00:45:53You know, we're not going to talk too much about him.
00:45:55He he's at the is it is it Sun Valley where he's at with all the other billionaires
00:45:59right now? He's just layered up.
00:46:01He's got a scarf, a vest, a shirt.
00:46:03Oh, my gosh. Like he had like a bandana at one point.
00:46:06I was like, sir, I love his sartorial choices.
00:46:10But but he expressed a lot of enthusiasm this week for for the big Paramount Sky
00:46:18Dance deal. And that's the big deal.
00:46:20So we should tell people what we haven't talked about Paramount Sky Dance because
00:46:24it's just been like a cloud.
00:46:26Whether you think that cloud is dark or light is up to you.
00:46:29But it has been a cloud that has not reached a resolution.
00:46:33So Paramount, which owns CBS, Alex's favorite broadcast network.
00:46:38I got a story for this.
00:46:39I got a way to tell explain this.
00:46:41All right. I'm just gonna let you drive.
00:46:43So once upon a time, there was a family and the dad went out and he put together a
00:46:49huge corporate conglomeration and they called it National Amusement, which is very
00:46:53good. Yeah, great.
00:46:55They're nationally amusing.
00:46:57And in there was CBS and this big storied century old studio, Paramount, all of that
00:47:03in there. And then on the other side, there was another family and they did something
00:47:07called Oracle. And Larry Ellison made a lot of money from that.
00:47:11And his kids got into films and they started producing.
00:47:15And his daughter made a lot of good movies and then made some bad ones.
00:47:18And his son made some really successful movies like Top Gun that the new Top Gun.
00:47:24Yeah, he was a baby when the last was he even alive when the last one came out?
00:47:28But he did that.
00:47:29We're not going to find out.
00:47:30We're not going to find out. Don't worry about it.
00:47:32This doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
00:47:34What matters is that there is the two families.
00:47:36And they said, you know what, we should really get together.
00:47:39And the tech family should buy the media conglomerates family's business and just
00:47:46make an even bigger business.
00:47:48And then there was a lot of winging about there was a lot of like whinging about
00:47:51that. There was a lot of, oh, should I do this?
00:47:52I don't know. Sherry Redstone, the current owner of Paramount, was really concerned.
00:47:56She didn't know how she wanted her.
00:47:58She didn't want her dad's legacy ruined.
00:48:00She wanted money.
00:48:02And that's the plot of succession, everybody.
00:48:04Yeah. Yeah.
00:48:05This is the plot of succession.
00:48:06That's what happened. And eventually David Ellison went to his dad and was like, Dad,
00:48:10you're a billionaire.
00:48:11Can I borrow a couple of billion, say six of your money and put it in, sweeten this
00:48:16pot? And Larry said, I got your son.
00:48:19And now his son owns one of the largest film studios in Hollywood.
00:48:24Well, it hasn't closed yet.
00:48:25So it hasn't closed yet.
00:48:26Yeah, that's true. It hasn't closed.
00:48:28He will potentially own it, provided the lawsuits that are already cooking up amongst
00:48:33the investors who are mad that they're not getting as much of this pot.
00:48:37Those those don't screw things up, provided there is Apollo or another investor
00:48:41doesn't come in and say, actually, I can provide even more money than Larry Ellison.
00:48:46I feel like that's probably not going to happen, seeing as Larry Ellison already put
00:48:49six billion in. I feel like this is probably David Ellison's company.
00:48:54And we've been seeing that all around Hollywood.
00:48:57We've been seeing that from a lot of the reporters, Variety, Matthew Bellany over at
00:49:01Puck. A lot of folks have been talking about this.
00:49:03Matthew Bellany had a really good interview with Ellison about this, where he was like,
00:49:06yeah, I'm going to do all this tech stuff.
00:49:09And that was really interesting about all of this is he's pitched this as like tech
00:49:12taking over. And I think we'd argue that tech already took over, given the success of
00:49:17Netflix and even smaller stuff like Apple.
00:49:19But this is really officially like tech has taken over Hollywood.
00:49:23And he's got big ambitions about using A.I.
00:49:26for workflows that that's as much as he said.
00:49:29I can just read you the quotes.
00:49:31Yeah, they're great.
00:49:32Quotes are wild.
00:49:35A slide deck for investors said A.I.
00:49:38would turbo charge content creation and drive efficiencies in streamlined operations.
00:49:43Terrifying. Ellison said the art will challenge the technology and the technology
00:49:48challenges the art, which.
00:49:52OK. And then and he also said, we believe that understanding the symbiotic relationship
00:49:57between art and technology is essential to be able to meet this moment.
00:50:00There are a lot of technology companies that are rapidly expanding into media.
00:50:03We believe it is essential for Paramount to be able to expand its technology prowess to be
00:50:07both a media and technology enterprise.
00:50:09Those are quotes that come up when you say chat GPT.
00:50:11Write me some quotes about like, do you remember the paper that was like, we found a
00:50:17huge increase in the word delve being used because of chat GPT.
00:50:21Like, that's what that sounds like to me.
00:50:23That's a bunch of nothing like that's that's what you say.
00:50:26There are two there are two things that are real.
00:50:28There are one thousand percent the things you would expect all of those words to
00:50:34mean. Ellison proposed upgrading the advertising technology to give marketers more
00:50:39information about what audiences they're reaching.
00:50:43So we're doing some data collection and algorithmic ads and that we are working to
00:50:47improve the algorithmic recommendation engines that Paramount Plus uses, hoping
00:50:51subscribers will spend more time on the streaming service and viewer.
00:50:54So we're doing engagement.
00:50:55Sure. I don't think those are actually the actual tech that they're going to be doing,
00:51:00like investing in.
00:51:01I think I think the advertising is everybody's investing in that right now.
00:51:04Peacock, if you talk to anybody at NBC right now, they will not hesitate to be like, have
00:51:08you heard about our our new ad tech platform?
00:51:10We're really all in on ad tech platforms for streaming.
00:51:14It's great. Can I just read you more words?
00:51:16Yes. I wish you wouldn't.
00:51:18Ellison also said Skydance will work in partnership with Oracle to create a cloud based
00:51:23animation studio.
00:51:24Skydance used the studio in the cloud to produce part of Spellbound, which is coming out
00:51:29later on Netflix. We intend to scale that business across all of our production
00:51:33workflows and animation.
00:51:34That's just we're going to buy a bunch of GPUs.
00:51:37Like, what are we talking about?
00:51:38It's also kind of worthless because the guy who runs Skydance animation right now is John
00:51:43Lasseter, who famously got punted from Pixar because he couldn't keep his hands to
00:51:48himself, allegedly.
00:51:49Yes. And that's who's running it.
00:51:51They have not had a lot of successes.
00:51:53Most of their other animated properties have not had hit that like John Lasseter used to
00:51:58have a golden hand.
00:51:59Right. Like he'd look at anything and it'd make a billion dollars.
00:52:02Nowadays, it's like we barely sold luck to Apple TV.
00:52:06We're making a deal to get this thing sold over at Netflix.
00:52:10That all felt like things he was saying to get Sherry Redstone feeling comfortable to do
00:52:16this deal because Sherry Redstone was holding up the deal in big ways.
00:52:21And right now, everybody in Hollywood has a lot of anxiety about tech companies and about
00:52:25tech infrastructure and how they can compete with stuff like Netflix, who has, like for
00:52:30what it's worth, the best algorithms when it comes to streaming and actually getting
00:52:34content in front of people's eyes.
00:52:36And it just felt like, let's alleviate this woman's anxieties by saying, hey, I a
00:52:41bunch. Sure.
00:52:42And giving her six million dollars.
00:52:46Yeah, that probably helped.
00:52:48Yeah. Anyway, I would just remind you, the listener, that these are the things that
00:52:53people say when they buy the studios.
00:52:56Famously, it's what he said about Warner Brothers, which, again, provided the world the
00:53:02four, three grayscale Justice League.
00:53:06Yeah, we don't know what this is going to look like.
00:53:08What movies will David Ellison remaster is square in grayscale.
00:53:14I think it's the only question.
00:53:15It's going to be a possible movie.
00:53:17It's going to be six hours long.
00:53:20Mission Impossible 2 is going to be black and white and square.
00:53:23And it's going to be nuts.
00:53:25Anyway, so this is like the big story in streaming.
00:53:27We haven't talked a lot about it because it hadn't happened.
00:53:30But now it's happened.
00:53:31And if the deal closes and as Alex said, all these lawsuits get resolved.
00:53:35I think we're looking at a bunch of tech money and tech ideas coming for the studio
00:53:41that famously owns Top Gun, coming for CBS, coming for famously on Star Trek, famously
00:53:47on Star Trek. It's going to be weird.
00:53:50There's there's a real weirdness coming for this zone because this is just a flood of
00:53:55new money, but also.
00:53:58Just the ideas that you would expect the money to have, but dressed up in ever larger
00:54:05ambitions. Yeah, that that is exactly it.
00:54:08I'm curious to see what they do.
00:54:09I'm curious to see if they unload any of these properties and what kind of like movies
00:54:14and shows we actually start seeing if Taylor Sheridan gets the boot.
00:54:18I have been, by the way, furiously Googling for what studio in the cloud means.
00:54:22And it it's just a thing they say.
00:54:24Yeah, it's called a data center.
00:54:26This is the thing. It's like everybody already does it.
00:54:28Anything. It's called working remote.
00:54:31This is a rich guy who couldn't build a cool studio buying a cool studio.
00:54:36Like if I had the money to do it, I would do it.
00:54:40Skydance is like cool, but not that cool.
00:54:42Paramount is cooler.
00:54:44The end. The closest I've come to understanding what student cloud means is it's a it's
00:54:50like a square in the deck that just says studio in the cloud and it's a Skydance animation
00:54:56is building a studio in the cloud.
00:54:57That's the first bullet.
00:54:59It's great. You turn on slack.
00:55:01The second bullet is transition from on prem to cloud based production and hosting
00:55:06infrastructure, which is fine.
00:55:08That's a thing.
00:55:09You know, dentist's office across America are switching from on prem to cloud based
00:55:13infrastructure, and it feels like Oracle is just going to get its six billion dollars
00:55:17back because it turns out they're building it with Oracle.
00:55:20Yeah. OK, but does it it's got to mean something.
00:55:26Listen, I were like minutes away from you reading the Salesforce website again, and I
00:55:30can't have that. We need to move on.
00:55:33All right, Alex, you got a lot left in this lightning round.
00:55:35Well, yeah, I mean, what else do we got?
00:55:36Well, so Redbox, we had this great story from from Yonko last week that was all about
00:55:42Friend of the Verge, about how Redbox was in dire straits and why it was in dire straits.
00:55:48And now it's shutting down its parent company, Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment.
00:55:53Yeah, that's that's the real name of the company.
00:55:55The second time in several weeks, the Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, it's
00:55:59come up. You'll recall that we looked at the Crackle website, which is owned by Chicken
00:56:03Soup for the Soul.
00:56:05We'll see for how long now for now.
00:56:08Yeah, they they got a new CEO last week and his job is literally to come in and fix
00:56:13companies that are in dire straits.
00:56:15And for Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, that means Redbox is toast.
00:56:19It had already been really bad.
00:56:20A lot of folks probably if you if you're listening to this and you tried to go rent
00:56:24out a Redbox in the last couple of months, you're going to be like, well, I'm going to
00:56:27go rent out a Redbox in the last couple of months, would struggle to get any anything.
00:56:33A lot of them have been shut down and now it's it's done.
00:56:36RIP Redbox.
00:56:37So what's happening to all the DVDs and the Redboxes today?
00:56:41You just go and you break the box open and you take it.
00:56:44So Alex is like, do looting.
00:56:46The problem is that all of the technicians who who manage those things have all been
00:56:52grounded because all of their cars are getting repossessed.
00:56:55Because that's brutal.
00:56:57They haven't been paying the bills for the cars that they rent.
00:57:00So like like Walgreens, 7-Eleven, everybody's just unplugging them.
00:57:06And I think you're just going to start seeing more of these unplugged and just
00:57:09sitting there. And I'm not saying you should loot them, but that's it.
00:57:14That's where that ends.
00:57:15You don't lose. No, but I'm not saying you should just don't don't do that.
00:57:21I can hear the footsteps of the lawyers coming down the hallway right now.
00:57:25Huh? Where is she?
00:57:27So do you think this is just straight up streaming killed Redbox?
00:57:30Is this that's where I'm at, because like when you read Yonko's piece, this all
00:57:35happened. The like the big turning point for Redbox was when in 2021, when
00:57:41everybody said we're going to stop releasing everything physically and putting
00:57:45it in theaters and we're just going to do it all.
00:57:47Wait, just streaming.
00:57:48What was the other thing going on in 2021?
00:57:50You know, but see, that's the thing.
00:57:54If they had if they had said like there's a lot of the people who are buying who
00:57:57are renting these were in places where they don't have streaming and they would
00:58:01also like to watch whatever King Kong and Godzilla are getting up to in 2021.
00:58:06And those just weren't coming out.
00:58:08So they couldn't rent anything.
00:58:09So nobody was renting from Redbox because none of the studios were releasing the
00:58:13stuff. Right.
00:58:14But I think I think you can make a extremely compelling argument that covid
00:58:19killed Redbox more so than you can make one that streaming.
00:58:23No, because how is covid going to do it?
00:58:25Everybody's at home anyway.
00:58:26These things are outside.
00:58:27We didn't go outside for two years.
00:58:29You still have to go to the grocery store where the Redbox is.
00:58:32There was a there was a Redbox at the CVS in the woods.
00:58:36People people gazed at it and then they thought, I don't have a DVD player.
00:58:43I mean, there is that.
00:58:44Well, and part of Redbox's thing was access for people who didn't have great
00:58:49access to streaming, either because it's expensive or because they lived in places
00:58:53without great connection or like there was a there was a real this is a
00:58:57complement to streaming or like a this is a thing you do when you can't do
00:59:01streaming, not this is a real competitor to streaming.
00:59:04And so, Alex, to your point, I think as fewer and fewer people didn't have
00:59:08streaming, it's probably true that Redbox didn't fill that need for as many
00:59:13people. But the problem for me is this is also just spectacular corporate
00:59:18mismanagement. This company took on a mountain of debt to buy a company it
00:59:22probably couldn't afford chicken soup for the soul.
00:59:25I think it was like three hundred and twenty five million dollars in debt to
00:59:27buy Redbox banking on.
00:59:29We're going to make a ton of money back one DVD at a time, made a bunch of weird
00:59:32decisions and it all fell apart.
00:59:33So part of me is like maybe streaming killed Redbox, but I don't think we ever
00:59:37actually got to see streaming kill Redbox because I think like chicken soup for
00:59:40the soul killed Redbox.
00:59:42Yeah, well, Redbox was like not doing great when when chicken soup for the soul
00:59:47bought it because it just it just on a SPAC, it just got in public via SPAC,
00:59:51which can we just sorry, there's there's like all of that.
00:59:57This company is called Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, right?
01:00:01Like you already know, like this started as a set of books for live, laugh, love
01:00:06moms. Right.
01:00:07And they're like, we're a media empire now.
01:00:09At no point we're funded.
01:00:11We should change our name like you already know that this is just a bunch of
01:00:15weird like zombie media, zombie ideas.
01:00:20Like, I'm glad you brought this up because this does violate my theory that you
01:00:23can't survive a bad name for your company.
01:00:26And Chicken Soup for the Soul is very much a bad name.
01:00:31Yeah, right. Sorry.
01:00:32Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment.
01:00:34When did this book come out?
01:00:35Sentence people say.
01:00:36The fact that I'm Googling Chicken Soup for the Soul as a book is going to be so
01:00:39bad for me.
01:00:40So this is technically spun.
01:00:41They spun off from the Chicken Soup for the Soul for the books because that's
01:00:45like the book.
01:00:45They don't even have the books yet.
01:00:47They spun that off.
01:00:48This is a whole other company.
01:00:51Yeah, this is the entertainment company.
01:00:52The books are Chicken Soup for the Soul LLC.
01:00:56All right, we gotta, I gotta end this.
01:00:58Also the worst website I've ever seen in my entire life.
01:01:02But it's just that you can't survive a bad name, especially when you're not even
01:01:05connected to the live, laugh, love books anymore.
01:01:09Yeah.
01:01:10You just out there buying companies for too much debt that are already been half
01:01:13killed by COVID and streaming and thinking this will work.
01:01:17And it didn't.
01:01:18Can I say that the book company has Chicken Soup for the Soul for kids?
01:01:24It's good.
01:01:24Okay.
01:01:24That's enough.
01:01:25Next lightning round item.
01:01:27If you start a company, don't call it Chicken Soup for the Soul.
01:01:30I think that is probably the lesson.
01:01:32And also if your entire company is distributing physical media, you, you,
01:01:36you should have plan B.
01:01:39Well, they did.
01:01:40They had a big, long plan for how to go digital with all of this.
01:01:44And Redbox has been trying to do a streaming service for like 10 plus years.
01:01:49Right.
01:01:49But then you're just, you're just, you're just Netflix.
01:01:52Yeah.
01:01:54I mean, that's what Paramount's trying to do.
01:01:55And we didn't yell at them for that.
01:01:56So.
01:01:57Well, I can't wait to see what Chicken Soup's plan to go into the cloud is.
01:02:02Chicken Soup in the cloud for the soul.
01:02:03Larry Ellison buys Redbox.
01:02:06Do you think we're good?
01:02:08As, as long as they get off-prem and I would point out that Redbox, one of the
01:02:13single most on-prem businesses of all time, Redbox in the cloud, so many
01:02:18prems, think about it.
01:02:19What if a Redbox put in the cloud?
01:02:21All right.
01:02:21What's next, Alex?
01:02:24Uh, the next is, I, I never pause when I'm watching TV.
01:02:28I learned because I don't get pause ads.
01:02:30Do you guys get those?
01:02:32When you're just watching a show and you're like, I gotta go to the bathroom.
01:02:34So you pause it on.
01:02:35Amazon prime is the one I noticed it on the most, but I think there are other
01:02:37streaming services.
01:02:40Sling TV is now doing it.
01:02:41That's the big news this week.
01:02:43Um, I was like, what is a pause ad?
01:02:45Oh, I'm watching TV.
01:02:47Wrong is what I learned from all of this, but basically pause ads happen when you
01:02:52pause something and then it just decides to display an ad while you're going to
01:02:56the bathroom.
01:02:58Exactly what you want.
01:02:59Sling TV is now doing it, but they also have a little thing at the bottom saying
01:03:03you can go turn this off, which prime and for free, you just go to the settings
01:03:08and turn it off, uh, which is different than what prime and Hulu are doing.
01:03:13So good on you.
01:03:14Sling like bad on you.
01:03:15Sling, but also good on you is more and more of these companies move into like
01:03:20ad tiers, right?
01:03:22Pay money, but still have ads, which is what they all are now.
01:03:24Um, the desire to get more money is going to result in more and more ads being
01:03:29more and more, but you can just see it coming.
01:03:30It's a tsunami of weird ideas.
01:03:32Uh, and they're just out of space.
01:03:35Like the goal, we get like a right rail of just ads.
01:03:38Dude, you can already get a free TV that is, uh, has a physical rail of ads.
01:03:46It's literally a thing.
01:03:47So I will say, I think pause ads are fine.
01:03:50Like in terms of finding ways to show giant ass ads on my TV in a way that is
01:03:56non-interruptive, this is the best one they've ever invented because it's like,
01:04:00if I'm pausing my TV, who cares?
01:04:04Like, what do I want to see on the TV?
01:04:06It's do I care if it's a frozen, like moving shot of someone's face or if
01:04:12it's like a Toyota ad, I don't care.
01:04:14I think it's like, fine.
01:04:16I'm getting up to leave the room anyway.
01:04:18Like that's why I paused the show.
01:04:20I think it's like when you're having like a phone call, right?
01:04:22Like somebody calls you and you're like, Oh, I need a pause.
01:04:24And then it's like, it's going to play a video.
01:04:28There's sound.
01:04:29I feel very differently.
01:04:30Yeah.
01:04:32Most of the Amazon ones at least are just like a static image that is just like
01:04:36you, you press pause a Mr.
01:04:37And Mrs.
01:04:38Smith and a thing pops up.
01:04:40That's just like Jeep and then just freezes for as long as you need it to.
01:04:45Uh, and I think that's fine.
01:04:46Do you know what I hate?
01:04:48I'm just going to complain about ads for a minute here and then we can move on.
01:04:50Is there's now a thing that happens on Hulu and probably some others, but I
01:04:55noticed that the most on Hulu where at the beginning of a show, it will ask you
01:04:58to choose your ad experience.
01:05:00It's like, which Charmin ad would you like to watch?
01:05:03Uh, and we've gotten to the point now where Anna, my wife will sit there and
01:05:06yell at the TV.
01:05:07I don't care.
01:05:08And I'm always like, Anna, that doesn't accomplish anything.
01:05:10And she's like, but I don't care.
01:05:13And it'll like linger there for 10 seconds.
01:05:14Then if you don't do anything, it'll just choose for you and then play the whole
01:05:18ad anyway.
01:05:19And I'm like, no, if you're going to make me watch ads, you pick, don't make me do
01:05:23the work to pick my own ads.
01:05:25I agree with that.
01:05:26Use your damn algorithms and show me the ads.
01:05:28Use AI to collect more data about you unless you generate more data, David.
01:05:32Apparently it costs money to go from on-prem to the cloud.
01:05:35Drives me nuts.
01:05:36But if I, if I could choose between like in, in like dynamic interstitial ads and
01:05:42pause ads, give me pause ads every time.
01:05:44The problem is it's both.
01:05:46And it's going to be a bunch of other stuff too.
01:05:47And they're, they're just going to send you that way.
01:05:50It's, it's coming.
01:05:51All right.
01:05:52One more.
01:05:53Oh, in the streaming lightning round.
01:05:56Do you want to talk about it?
01:05:57Well, actually, let me do it.
01:05:59I'll do it this way.
01:06:00Okay.
01:06:00Uh, all right.
01:06:01I want to call out one more that isn't technically streaming, but I think is
01:06:04really interesting for our lightning round of video over the internet, uh, which is
01:06:09Adam Missouri, who runs Instagram, uh, put out a video this week where he's like,
01:06:13I just want to make it clear.
01:06:14We're not, we're not going to do long form video, which is interesting
01:06:17for a number of reasons.
01:06:19Uh, one, he was like, the whole point of Instagram is to connect you to your
01:06:21friends.
01:06:22So when you like open a friend's video and then you're like in reels by accident,
01:06:26and then you're in reels for accident for two hours, he's like, that's great.
01:06:29That's what we want.
01:06:30Um, because you are more likely to share a short video with your friend and then
01:06:34they'll watch it and they'll end up in the wheat, the reels rabbit hole and they'll
01:06:38share some videos.
01:06:39And he's like, that's great.
01:06:40Long videos.
01:06:41You won't watch all the way through and you definitely won't share them.
01:06:44And they've apparently measured this and they know this and calls it a symbiotic
01:06:46relationship between connecting your friends and short videos, which is
01:06:50interesting on its face.
01:06:51The second thing that's interesting is that Instagram is super tried to do long
01:06:54form video and compete with YouTube before it was called IGTV.
01:06:57I went to the IGTV launch.
01:06:58It was one of the weirdest days of my entire life.
01:07:01And this was the previous administration of Instagram.
01:07:03This was not in the series Instagram.
01:07:04This is like the previous leaders of Instagram, but they tried, they were like,
01:07:07Oh, we'll just be YouTube now.
01:07:09And they utterly failed.
01:07:11And now they, they, you know, they were like, we'll be tick tock now.
01:07:14And they've succeeded.
01:07:15And tick tock is like, we'll be YouTube now.
01:07:18And I don't know how that's going, but it's interesting to see Instagram be
01:07:21like, huh?
01:07:22No.
01:07:23When in fact, all of these streamers have to compete with reels and YouTube
01:07:28and like YouTube is growing fast.
01:07:29It's on TVs actually.
01:07:31So it's interesting to see all of this other action happening.
01:07:35And then Mr.
01:07:35Area being like, no, we're going to, we're staying right here.
01:07:38Short form video.
01:07:39I think it's the right call.
01:07:42And I will say that I think you're describing that, that like symbiotic
01:07:44thing makes perfect sense to me.
01:07:46And anecdotally it feels true, right?
01:07:48That like the idea that I'm a going to sit here and watch one single 30
01:07:53minute video on Instagram, just send it to a friend, right?
01:07:57It just feels preposterous.
01:07:59Right.
01:07:59And I think like, I think all the time about like, when you talk to people
01:08:02about the, the act that you do on tick tock, it's scrolling, it's not viewing.
01:08:08Like the thing that you do on tick tock is flip channels.
01:08:10That is more important than what is actually on the screen that you're viewing.
01:08:14It's, it's the activity that is the thing, which is what's different from like TV
01:08:20or even YouTube, which is less of a scrolling thing, but YouTube is becoming
01:08:23more scrolly with shorts and stuff like that.
01:08:25Instagram is, has always been scrolly.
01:08:27And I think trying to undo that and be like, this is now a destination that
01:08:32you're going to spend a half hour at a time without touching your screen.
01:08:35I think it was just never going to happen.
01:08:36It's also like a much harder thing to sell ads against, which is, I think
01:08:40a reason it makes a lot of sense.
01:08:41It's really easy to sell ads that are a video between two other
01:08:44videos that you're scrolling on.
01:08:46And this, this just feels, this feels very obvious to me, except that these
01:08:51companies usually can't help themselves from all trying to be each other.
01:08:53So to hear Adam just kibosh it entirely was pretty interesting.
01:08:57It's also funny because it's the money like YouTube makes a lot of money and
01:09:02they're like, we're not going to make that money, which is super YouTube
01:09:04just has no competition.
01:09:06It is the place for long form video on the internet, which is weird.
01:09:11Well, it's a place for independent long form video, right?
01:09:14Like, like it is effectively the VHS tape of, of the modern era where it's
01:09:19just like, Hey, or cable access.
01:09:21It's just like, Hey, I need a platform.
01:09:23I don't want to go make a deal with David Ellison.
01:09:26This is what I do.
01:09:27I put it, I just put it on YouTube.
01:09:29Like functionally, that's what YouTube is becoming.
01:09:31And, and it's getting more and more like that, even though it's UI
01:09:35and stuff, isn't like that.
01:09:37And I think it makes sense.
01:09:38Well, but a really weird thing is that you can just like rent
01:09:41Paramount movies on YouTube.
01:09:42No one does it, but you can just be like, I'm going to rent mission
01:09:45impossible.
01:09:46Yeah.
01:09:47You can subscribe to streaming services through YouTube.
01:09:49Yeah.
01:09:49You can watch movies on cable access in the olden times too.
01:09:53Like, and I think Instagram to me is more like, now I'm going to go just
01:09:58completely switch up the analogy and, and say that Instagram is kind of like
01:10:02the drive through margarita bars.
01:10:05I don't know if you, they're in Texas and they rule.
01:10:07I was going to say that I got to move to Texas.
01:10:10Yeah.
01:10:10That's like, you see those in Louisiana and Texas.
01:10:12And it's like, yeah, you drive through, you get your, your beautiful treat.
01:10:15You drive home.
01:10:16You have, it's like, bam, bam, you're done.
01:10:18And it feels like long form video is like, what if we did fine dining at the
01:10:23drive through margarita bar?
01:10:26So it's like, what if you went to Sonic, but your meal was a hundred dollars?
01:10:30And it's like, that's not, that's not the plot of the bear.
01:10:32I just serve the sandwiches out the side window.
01:10:38Just isn't that the bear people love the bear Instagram.
01:10:44You could be the bear.
01:10:45All right.
01:10:46That is where we need to end this entire look.
01:10:50If you know the people who run chicken soup for the soul entertainment, bring
01:10:52them to us.
01:10:53I have a, I have a number of questions.
01:10:55What kind of zombies are they?
01:10:56All right.
01:10:56That's it.
01:10:56We got to take a break.
01:10:57We'll be back with the actual lightning round.
01:11:03Okay.
01:11:03We're back.
01:11:04We are way over.
01:11:05Just like bananas over.
01:11:07It's, you know, it's the summer.
01:11:09Every time we think we have nothing to talk about, we have a lot to talk about.
01:11:11That's how it goes.
01:11:12But we got to do this lightning round.
01:11:13Quick lightning.
01:11:15So you hear what I'm saying?
01:11:17Yeah.
01:11:17All right, David, what's yours?
01:11:19Okay.
01:11:20I have great news.
01:11:20My lightning round is several gadgets and an entire lineup of accessories.
01:11:24Does that, does that seem good?
01:11:25Are we excited?
01:11:27Uh, oh, and it's, it's two different companies involved.
01:11:31Well, it's a company inside of a company.
01:11:33Uh, so once upon a time there were smartphones.
01:11:36Uh, no.
01:11:37So CMF, which is the sub brand of nothing, uh, which is an insane sentence to say
01:11:43all that, uh, launched a bunch of stuff this week, uh, a new set of earbuds, a
01:11:49new smartwatch, and I would say by far most interestingly, a new phone, uh,
01:11:54called the CMF phone one.
01:11:56It's $199 Android phone.
01:11:59Uh, that basically lets you replace the back of the phone with a couple of
01:12:05different accessories and different colors, or add like a lanyard.
01:12:09What's the other one?
01:12:10A wallet you can put on.
01:12:11And I think there's one that's a kickstand that you can just stick
01:12:14on through an accessory port.
01:12:16Uh, by all accounts, it's kind of a like mid rangy Android phone, but it looks
01:12:21awesome.
01:12:22It's orange, it's 200 bucks.
01:12:23And this is for some reason, the Android phone I have been most excited
01:12:27about in a very long time.
01:12:29Like nothing is out there being like, we're going to make tech more fun again.
01:12:32This is the most interesting thing in that mold that I think nothing has ever
01:12:38done.
01:12:38And it's a $200 Android phone.
01:12:40And I'm very excited about it.
01:12:41Like it rules.
01:12:43Yeah.
01:12:43I just like, what if, what if we tried new things, right?
01:12:46Like I really spending all that time with the books, Palma has gotten me
01:12:50like obsessed with this idea that what if you took a phone and just tweaked two
01:12:54things about it?
01:12:54Like what this, if we, if we take this form factor, we're all obsessed with
01:12:57and just turned it a little, can you change that?
01:13:00And that one of those is like, what if the screen folded?
01:13:02One of them is like, what if it was the ink?
01:13:04And one of them, like I've been obsessed with modular phone ideas for forever.
01:13:07And I really continue to think there is something to like, what if you could
01:13:11make your phone several different things.
01:13:14Oh, overtime.
01:13:16And this is such a cool version of that.
01:13:18And they did a really like Ikea ish thing here where it has some like exposed
01:13:22screws and you can actually open up the back of your phone and see the inside of
01:13:26your phone.
01:13:27It's just, it just seems fun.
01:13:29And again, it's like, it's a, it's $200 like, yes, more of this, please.
01:13:33It's weird because what you want is what you would expect is that the phone parts
01:13:37of the phone 15 years into phones more would be a commodity by now, right?
01:13:45Like an Android phone should just be a commodity.
01:13:47And then the way it looks and works and feels in your hand, and it's, that just
01:13:50hasn't played out for, for a million reasons because of carriers, because of
01:13:53competition, because Google, whatever it is, uh, e-sims, like whatever you think
01:14:00has restricted this market from being competitive and modifying the Android
01:14:05part.
01:14:05It's happened with Android parts, like with the other parts of Android phones,
01:14:09like cameras that go into Android phones are now everywhere.
01:14:12The sensors are everywhere.
01:14:13Android runs everything.
01:14:14But like the phone thing that hasn't happened.
01:14:17You're totally right.
01:14:18Uh, at least the United States, we're going to have, we're going to have
01:14:21listeners in other countries, pretty good.
01:14:22Like India and China.
01:14:24We'll be like, no, this, this is pretty competitive out here.
01:14:26Um, but this is like one of those things where I was like, Oh, if only we had a
01:14:30little competition, we'd have way more ideas like this.
01:14:32Yep.
01:14:32Um, it is cool.
01:14:33I'm assuming that it is a very slow phone because it's $200.
01:14:38Yeah.
01:14:39But I, like, I saw a bunch of reactions from people that were like, they, people
01:14:43were, I got a bunch of people asking me, like, is this a good reading device?
01:14:46Cause it has a, it has an OLED screen.
01:14:48Uh, it has a, I think 5,000 milliamp battery, which should last a while.
01:14:52Uh, it'll run Android apps.
01:14:54And then I saw a bunch of people who were like, this is going to be a
01:14:56kick-ass gaming handheld.
01:14:58And to me, it's like, this is, this is the stuff, right?
01:15:00Like we don't, what if we didn't have one device that we demanded to do
01:15:03everything, but instead we could just buy these things that are $200 and
01:15:07actually just like sort of push them towards one use case or another.
01:15:12And instead it's like an overlapping Venn diagram of things that look like phones.
01:15:15And I think that's super fun.
01:15:17I like that more.
01:15:18I'm going to buy the hell out of this thing, but also the earbuds and the
01:15:22watch also both look pretty cool.
01:15:24And the earbuds in particular, uh, yeah, really great.
01:15:29Like total, I love a little pointless fidget spinner of a dial on a case.
01:15:33Like good job, CMF.
01:15:35And the ones last year, if I remember correctly, were better than we expected
01:15:40for something pretty cheap.
01:15:42I think these are like, these are yeah.
01:15:45$59 they're cheap.
01:15:47And for a pair of kind of AirPods Z looking things, uh, by all accounts,
01:15:52they've sounded pretty good in the past.
01:15:54So I'm, I'm pretty optimistic here.
01:15:55I'm very, I will say it was surprising to me that this week we got to kind
01:15:59of AirPod knockoffs and nothing was the one that didn't have LEDs in it.
01:16:07You're going to change AirPods.
01:16:08What's the first thing to do?
01:16:09You had LEDs.
01:16:10Yeah.
01:16:10All right.
01:16:10I'll do mine quick.
01:16:11And then Kranz.
01:16:12We should end with yours.
01:16:13Cause yours, you should end on outrage basically.
01:16:15Uh, so I'll just pick one.
01:16:17I had two, but I'll just pick one.
01:16:18You know, we're paying a lot of attention to AI and copyright.
01:16:21Like I think it's kind of a house of cards and there's lots and lots of lawsuits.
01:16:25Sarah Silverman is suing, uh, AI companies.
01:16:28There's the, the record labels are suing Suno and Udio, which are AI companies.
01:16:33The New York times is suing open AI on and on and on.
01:16:37The one that I thought was really interesting and kind of like a long shot
01:16:40was a bunch of developers sued over GitHub co-pilot because it can
01:16:45obviously spit out code.
01:16:46And this is like the main thing that people have been excited about with AI.
01:16:49Most of their claims got tossed out this week, except for the one that said
01:16:52they're violating the open source licenses, which is a really weird circle.
01:16:59Uh, so they were like, look, the GitHub co-pilot can just spit out code.
01:17:02They trained on a bunch of our code.
01:17:04They didn't have the copyright to that code.
01:17:06Uh, that code is copyrighted and that's copyright infringement.
01:17:10Like pretty straightforward.
01:17:11The judge is like, none of that makes any sense.
01:17:12This isn't what's really happening.
01:17:14Interesting precedent.
01:17:15And then they said, but it is true that there were software licenses for that
01:17:20code, open source software licenses.
01:17:22They didn't abide by them because the code they spit out, uh, should
01:17:25have the same licenses.
01:17:26That's how open source licenses work.
01:17:28So now we might have it weird open source legal battle over AI and not a
01:17:32copyright legal battle over AI, which is equally weird because all of those open
01:17:36source licenses absolutely depend on copyright law because that's what they
01:17:41are, their licenses to copyrighted work.
01:17:43So there's just this weird knot of weird, of like copyright law
01:17:47problems happening with this one case.
01:17:50And if you're a really optimistic AI person, you say, look, it was fair use.
01:17:54Yeah.
01:17:54Like all these claims got thrown out.
01:17:56If you're very negative, you say, well, that was just a weird one.
01:17:59And the, the big ones to come are still going to define how this
01:18:04whole industry survives or thrives.
01:18:06Does it feel like that's where all of this is headed that we're, we're starting
01:18:09with kind of a hundred different versions of the same fight and what we're going
01:18:13to end up with is like two of the most consequential ones, and then that will
01:18:17percolate out because it does feel like, I mean, we've talked a lot about a lot
01:18:21of these lawsuits and they're all different, but they're all also kind of
01:18:23the same and you wonder if we're going to get to a point where everybody decides
01:18:28like, okay, let's, let's figure out what we're actually fighting about and then
01:18:30fight about that instead of fighting about like a hundred variations of that
01:18:35thing.
01:18:36Well, this is America, Jack.
01:18:39Like, no, it's going to just be chaos.
01:18:41Like that's, that's the way our system is designed to work is like, there isn't
01:18:47yet a king of America.
01:18:49I mean, there is now.
01:18:50Yeah.
01:18:51Soon, soon there might be.
01:18:53Um, uh, but the, the notion that there's just some definitive answer or that
01:18:59everyone will quit their whining.
01:19:02So the New York times can get through, it's not going to happen.
01:19:04So what you're going to get is this like mishmash of precedents until Congress
01:19:08passes a law that unifies all these precedents into like a regulatory
01:19:11framework.
01:19:12Seems unlikely.
01:19:13Or there's a Supreme court case that, uh, I don't know, throws out 50 years of
01:19:18precedent for no reason.
01:19:19That's the, they love doing that.
01:19:21And you just have to like work through the process.
01:19:23But in the meantime, everyone's just going to take their shots.
01:19:26And I think one of the things that's interesting is like, there are so many
01:19:29shots and they're all kind of weird, right?
01:19:32They're all just like picking off at the edges.
01:19:34But again, I've been saying like only one has to like go through for the bottom to
01:19:38fall out and these companies have to pay.
01:19:40And the thing you're saying is they're all kind of the same case.
01:19:43It's all the same argument.
01:19:44You took our stuff without permission, whether or not you need that permission
01:19:47is like the thing that makes the internet go.
01:19:51In like the realist way.
01:19:53And so if you change the boundaries of what you need permission for, uh, to use
01:19:57or reuse or remix or sample or whatever, you kind of change the economy, the whole
01:20:02economy changes around it.
01:20:04Uh, which is why it's kind of wacky that it's just a bunch of shots.
01:20:07Like who knows?
01:20:09Yeah.
01:20:09But this one in particular is interesting because it's going to end up being an
01:20:11open source contract case.
01:20:14And we haven't had one of those in a very long time.
01:20:17Okay.
01:20:18That was mine.
01:20:18Alex, bring us home with some pure outrage.
01:20:21Yeah.
01:20:21Some pure outrage.
01:20:22So do you guys remember the, what is it?
01:20:25The unofficial Apple weblog?
01:20:28Yeah.
01:20:28To, uh, I used to work, I worked at Engadget and they were our sister site.
01:20:31Yeah.
01:20:32They were your sister site.
01:20:33To all, it was like old school.
01:20:34One of the original Apple blogs used to love reading it.
01:20:37One of my best friends used to work there.
01:20:40One of my best friends got very upset this weekend because, uh, Christina Warren
01:20:46former, former, she works at GitHub now and she was suddenly writing at Tua again.
01:20:52She herself wasn't, her byline was appearing at Tua, uh, just next to a bunch
01:20:58of like clearly AI written schlock.
01:21:00And, uh, she wasn't the only one.
01:21:02A lot of former reporters from Tua had their bylines appear on the
01:21:06site because earlier this year, it seems to have been acquired from Apollo.
01:21:11It left the Yahoo land for Apollo.
01:21:15And, and then Apollo seemed to have sold it to someone else.
01:21:18And that someone else who we still don't entirely know who they are or what they
01:21:21do, we're just filling up, filling up this empty blog with content and allegedly
01:21:28like the, the explanation that they had on their site was on the Tua site was,
01:21:32yeah, we, we don't have any of this content.
01:21:35So we're replicating it with AI.
01:21:36So we don't lose these important archives.
01:21:39That's not how archiving works.
01:21:42It's very good, by the way.
01:21:43It's a very good, like, what if I made some stuff up?
01:21:46Yeah.
01:21:47Just full stop.
01:21:48That's not how any of that works.
01:21:49Uh, people were very upset.
01:21:50Christina Warren was, was among them and she reached out and, and they, they
01:21:56promptly changed the name of her character and changed the headshot.
01:22:00So it was no longer her.
01:22:02And, uh, it's just a big bummer in the world.
01:22:05It's just a bummer that sites are getting picked up and just filled with AI garbage.
01:22:11Um, I think it is particularly a bummer for those of us who've worked at a lot of
01:22:14these smaller sites and stuff.
01:22:15Uh, who, who knows where my byline could appear next?
01:22:20I'm excited to find out.
01:22:22This is like Google did earlier this year, a thing Google normally doesn't do, which
01:22:28is come out and basically say aggressively and clearly that it was making changes to
01:22:35its search algorithms such that this is no longer a good idea, right?
01:22:39Because the reason you do this is you, you buy a domain that has real authority in the
01:22:44hopes that it will still rank in Google.
01:22:46You fill it with nonsense.
01:22:47That nonsense ranks well on Google.
01:22:49You sell a bunch of ads, you make some money.
01:22:51It does work.
01:22:52Like it is, it is a strategy.
01:22:54It's not necessarily a strategy for like half of media online, right?
01:22:59And it, and it, and it works.
01:23:01And Google has been saying aggressively that it is trying to prevent this from
01:23:05working.
01:23:06And yet it pretty clearly seems to continue to work.
01:23:09I just don't know when Google's going to be able to do that because this has been like
01:23:13the, the only difference here is the scale of crappy content.
01:23:17Like somebody would have done this without AI as well, right?
01:23:20They would have hired a bunch of people with no name and said, just write a bunch of
01:23:24content, put it on the site.
01:23:24We've seen that happen before.
01:23:26I think IBT was an example of that.
01:23:28And in this case, it happened to be at AI.
01:23:31It happened to be this early Apple blog full of like well-known tech bloggers.
01:23:36And that's just so terrible, terrible move to make in that case.
01:23:42Don't do that.
01:23:42You want to choose like better homes and gardens.
01:23:46No, they're still around.
01:23:47They're still around.
01:23:47Yeah.
01:23:48But you know, you want to choose something maybe not tech adjacent to do this with
01:23:52if you're going to be gross.
01:23:53It was a weird choice to do it on an Apple blog.
01:23:57I will, I will agree with that.
01:23:58But this is the thing like Mia Sato on our team wrote this great piece this week
01:24:02about the guy behind, I think the company is called Advan, I think is the name of
01:24:07the company, uh, which is the one that did a lot of the AI stuff that became a huge
01:24:12mess at Sports Illustrated.
01:24:13Like this, the internet is so quickly becoming this.
01:24:17And I've been thinking a lot about this, like after, uh, the MTV archives went away
01:24:21and the comedy central archives went away, like speaking of two websites that a lot
01:24:24of people know and trust and would believe if someone bought them and filled them
01:24:28with spam nonsense, like there's just going to be such a long run of this.
01:24:32And it's, it's going to get weirder before it gets normalized in whatever way it's
01:24:38going to look like.
01:24:39To be clear, I don't think Google can stop it.
01:24:41I, yeah, I don't think they can.
01:24:43I, it's not, and that's not because of antipathy towards Google.
01:24:46I think the problem is so hard.
01:24:49And then the internal philosophical reckoning for Google is even harder.
01:24:56So the problem is you have to say a bunch of AI generated sludge is bad.
01:25:01Yes.
01:25:02Right.
01:25:02We're going to not rank it.
01:25:04Sludge that you're charging people $20 a month per person to make.
01:25:07Right.
01:25:08So you're like, okay, you, you just, there are two wolves, you know, it's like, what
01:25:12are you going to do?
01:25:14Like, you have to say the output of your own models is bad at some point.
01:25:18Like that is the task ahead of the search team.
01:25:21And I don't know that they can reckon with it fully.
01:25:23Like, well, and let's be real.
01:25:25Like what are Google's AI overviews for web searches, if not more or less exactly
01:25:30the same thing?
01:25:31Yeah.
01:25:32We'll see.
01:25:33By the way, I've been, um, the overviews have been, uh, they're still, some of them
01:25:37are still very bad.
01:25:38They're also moving them around the pay.
01:25:40I don't know if you've noticed this.
01:25:40I have not.
01:25:41They've they're moving all over the page.
01:25:43Sometimes they're at the top.
01:25:44Sometimes they're in the middle.
01:25:45Sometimes they're at the bottom.
01:25:45Like they're still doing them, but they are, they haven't figured out where they
01:25:50go or when they should appear or how they should look.
01:25:53Uh, and then one of them, uh, David ML from, uh, MKBHD's team and way form and
01:25:59everything else.
01:26:00Uh, he said he posted that the answer to like, how do you check the film in your
01:26:05camera is getting like much worse.
01:26:07Oh no.
01:26:08So it was like, how do you see if there's film in some model of film camera and AI
01:26:12overview is just like, open it up in bright sunlight.
01:26:15Like it says in bright sunlight.
01:26:16Yeah.
01:26:18Uh, and he found it on some Reddit thread, but it's like crazy.
01:26:20It's like, what is going on?
01:26:23You wouldn't know afterwards if the film can't, if the camera is exposed.
01:26:28Uh, this is what happens when you're like the future of all intelligence is Reddit.
01:26:31It's like, is it?
01:26:32Yeah.
01:26:33Uh, all right.
01:26:34That's it.
01:26:34We've we're way over.
01:26:36We're way over.
01:26:38Look, they're all, everything's going to look like AirPods.
01:26:41And then the robots are going to tell you to do dumb shit to your cameras.
01:26:44That's the future.
01:26:45I'm excited for it here at the verge.
01:26:46We know we're going to write about, all right, that's it.
01:26:48That's our chest.
01:26:50Rock and roll.
01:26:53And that's it for the VergeCast this week.
01:26:55Hey, we'd love to hear from you.
01:26:57Give us a call at 866-VERGE-11.
01:26:59The VergeCast is a production of the Verge and Vox Media Podcast Network.
01:27:03Our show is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James.
01:27:06That's it.