All eyes on Samsung's thin new foldable

Support comes from ServiceNow. We're for people doing the fulfilling work they actually want to do. That's why this ad was written and read by a real person, and not AI. You know what people don't want to do? Boring, busy work. Now with AI agents built into the ServiceNow platform, you can automate millions of repetitive tasks in every corner of your business, IT, HR, and more, so your people can focus on the work that they want to do. That's putting AI agents to work for people.

It's your turn. Visit ServiceNow.com. Home security systems are pretty standard nowadays. But having a system that shows you grainy videos and blurry images just isn't it. You deserve the best. And TP-Link has an entire new set of TAPO 4K security cameras that deliver. They offer crystal clear video where every detail pops.

These cameras give you 24-7 capture with advanced face recognition so you'll know who's there instantly. No more sifting through endless footage. You'll even get alerts for people you care about right when it counts. So if you're ready to upgrade your home security, go beyond clear with all new TAPO 4K security cameras at tp-link.com. Support for this show comes from Pure Leaf Iced Tea. We'll see you next time.

refreshed and revitalized so you can be ready to take on what's next. The next time you need to hit the reset button, grab a pure leaf iced tea. Time for a tea break. Time for a pure leaf.

Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of everyone you work with having a baby at the exact same time and going on parental leave. That is right, both David Pierce and Nilay Patel. All right, home with newborns. We are so happy for both of them. They're both going to take some time off, spend time with their families. They will be back later this year. And in the meantime, you've got me. I'm Jake Castronakis, executive editor of The Verge.

I'm going to be joined by an all-star cast from across the verge every week, starting with two of the best reporters in business. We've got The Song. Hello. And Alison Johnson. Hello. We've got a lot to talk about today. There were some big executive shakeups at Apple, at Meta, at X. Grok went on a tear, called itself Mecca Hitler, I believe. Not good.

I'm going to go on a little bit of a power trip now that Eli's gone. I'm rebranding the lightning round. The lightning round is done as we know it. But first, we've got to talk about Samsung. Samsung was the big thing this week. They announced a whole bunch of new phones and smartwatches. The two of you were there.

But first, I just want to, before we get into this, I want to read what Samsung said about Brooklyn and its press release. So they had their event in Brooklyn, and this is how they described... Brooklyn, the borough in New York City. They called it, quote, a borough with extraordinary spirit and a distinctive history. Brooklyn is where visionary thinking and bold ideas shape the future.

a place known for its culture, creativity, and collaboration. Did you guys get that feeling? Did you feel culture, creativity, and collaboration at Samsung's event? No. Not really. No. I mostly felt angry. Angry, hot, irritated. Yeah. So it was like a gazillion degrees with bajillion humidity on Wednesday when we went to Unpacked.

So if you are a New York City native and I tell you that this was hosted at a couple of warehouses in Brooklyn Navy Yard, you will be groaning at this point in time. But if you're not. A New York native or you haven't been to this area of Brooklyn is the most inaccessible area of Brooklyn by public transit. So there's just a line of Ubers trying to get in and very stressed out Uber drivers. So, you know, that that was. Hmm, that was something.

I live in Brooklyn. I do not know how to get to the Navy Yard. It's like a mile walk from any public transit station. So you either are going to make the choice of taking public transit to this event. And having to walk a mile from the closest train station or braving the New York City bus system, which I'm a lifelong New Yorker.

Or you're going to take an Uber and like the vast majority of people that I took, I took an Uber and I think the vast majority of people, you were stuck in traffic for like... Brooklyn trying to get to Brooklyn because they were doing road work outside my hotel. So I was in gridlock for the first. It was just.

a mess all around we were texting like are you there yet oh my god like we're it was just getting more and more desperate yeah so what even is this venue like what i said brooklyn navy yard is just a navy yard it's like a bunch of industrial brick buildings.

like shipping container type warehouse building, fully metal. So it was just, you know, Samsung branded. There was a lot of unpacked flags going in there, but it's also a maze. So you can go into the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

probably have terrible signal and just be like oh there's a bunch of just brick buildings with numbers attached to them and you're just hoping the gps is gonna get you to the right place and i mean there were signs and everything and you just had to follow the uh the korean influencers there was a huge amount of korean influencers and i really uh you know and i was telling allison this oh because you know samsung has a history of inviting k-pop stars so i was like

I did my makeup. I was like, there's an off chance that a K-pop star is going to come to this event. I love K-pop. We did not get K-pop stars. We got influencers that look like K-pop stars, and the K-pop Demon Hunter soundtrack just... And I was like, okay. I've heard good things. The soundtrack is fire. I love the soundtrack. It was great. That put me in a good mood. But then we were going into the, or I was going into the main.

The main green, it's called Dougal Greenhouse, this main metal container thing that we're going into. And I have my hot box of water because they were being sustainable with the water bottles that they were providing for everyone there. My hot box of water. It was not cold at all. But I was like, I need to hydrate. This is hot. This is humid.

I'm not dressed like a Korean Demon Hunter Grim Reaper situation. These influencers, I'm telling you, they were just... They went all out. They went all out. Wait, I'm sorry. The influencers were like in cosplay for a phone launch? They were dressed to...

There was this one guy, I pointed him out to Alice and I was like, I'm happily married, but look at this man. He had perfectly quaffed hair. I'm fairly certain he had beautiful... I was like, this man has to be wearing some sort of makeup. They were not sweating? They were not sweating somehow, but they were like...

in full like kind of grim reaper regalia like korean grim reaper regalia there was like this one girl and she had like huge heels on and just like this modern hanbok which is like korean traditional wear and i was just like We got some cosplayers in the house. I was like a sweaty puddle. Yeah, we were there going like, oh my God. And so you guys did not dress up. We did not dress up. We didn't wear our Demon Hunter costumes. We didn't wear Demon Hunters at all.

I left mine at home. Yeah. Yeah. We were not aware. But then, you know, we're going into the venue because tech event, you got to run to grab a seat. And so I'm trying to get in with my hot box of water. And the venue guy is like, ma'am, ma'am, ma'am, ma'am. no water, no beverages, no food. And I was like, and then we get in and it's super packed.

full of influencers they had their own line and their own badge influencers and then there's like the media section and i don't know if you have this alison but there was a guy like there's this guy he didn't speak any english but he's obviously samsung staff and he's just like media section here You can only sit here. And there were people inside with like little media paddles. And the one media paddle lady I talked to, she's like, if you find a seat, God bless. Just take it.

And so it was a little bit of a battle to get a seat. There were a bunch of people who didn't. So it was, like, super packed. You know, it's a metal container, so the Wi-Fi wasn't working. And I was like, oh, my God, how am I supposed to live block this? No, no. I got to say. Watching Allison, though, she had the previous Z Fold, and she was vlogging from the foldable phone. I did quick posts to WordPress from the folding phone. It was inspiring.

It was inspiring. I feel like you broke a law of physics to accomplish this. I was just like the entire time just looking at her doing it. And I was like, oh, my God. Yeah. Samsung, you don't need this event. Just. Put a live stream on Allison. This is the best ad for a foldable phone you could possibly have. I'd be happy to provide that service. It was. I'm amazed that it worked. It was inspiring. Yeah.

Like hotspotting our computers to the phones was not working for some reason. V couldn't even airdrop a photo from her computer. I couldn't. I was trying to airdrop. I had two phones because I'm beta testing the iPhones right now. And so I had one with Apple. intelligence and one without and i'm just like

trying to airdrop from either phone to my laptop, just a picture of Allison. It was unreal. Vlogging on this. It took like, it took 15 minutes. It was really bad. I'm glad you discovered a use for folding phones at the folding phone event. This is like the big question.

They freaking look awesome. And I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing with that inside screen. I just know I want it. Okay, so what did we see on the foldables front? So we got three new foldables. We have the Z Fold 7, the Z Flip 7, and then... The Z Flip 7 FE, which I continue to forget about. But basics are Z Fold 7 got super thin. It is 8.9 millimeters thin. It's 26%.

thinner than the Z Fold 6. It's way lighter. You just, you feel it when you pick it up. The Z Flip 7 got a bigger screen on the front. That's the clamshell style foldable. And the Z Flip 7FE exists for $8.99. It's like it's the affordable version. We live in a world where that's affordable. Exactly. That's my problem with it. big hardware changes. The inner screen's like eight inches now.

even more room to not know what to do with. But we lost in that process the S-Pen support. Because it's too thin so that you can't stick it in. They've never had a good solution for it. They were like supported the S Pen, but you had to buy a special S Pen because a regular S Pen would like scratch the screen. And they've never had like you could buy a case that would hold the S Pen.

But it's not like the Ultra where you can just pop it in. So it's a little bit of like, they're like, oh, people weren't really using it. We could make the screen thinner if we didn't have that digitizer layer. So that's what they did. So a moment of silence for, you know, the S Pen. But other than that, it's got a 200 megapixel camera. So it should be pretty capable. They got rid of the... It used to have a, on the inner screen, an under display selfie camera.

I actually think this is so interesting, right? They got rid of the under display camera and now it's just a regular one, right? It's just a regular little hole punch. And honestly, it seems backwards, but I notice it way less. with the hole punch because that under display always had like a weird kind of like rainbow tearing thing that would happen when I would glance at something at that part of the screen.

It looks to me like the aura you get when you get a migraine or like an egg. So it like freaks me out. Like that's a me problem. This feels like a good change to me because I feel like for, I don't know, several years. Companies discovered under display cameras. And this thing always happens where the tech is kind of bad, but it looks a little bit cooler. And so a bunch of companies run at it.

And that felt like what was happening with under-display cameras. And they were just universally, like, meaningfully worse. And I... Maybe it's just me. I don't think the hole punch cutout looks bad. Yeah. I think we're used to it. I would so much rather have a hole punch cutout and a good camera than like this cool slight ever so slightly cooler thing. Yeah.

Like it's in the corner. It has to function first and foremost. Like I think if you're going to choose form over function, that's usually not the winning bet. It should be form and function. And if you have to only pick one, it should be function. That's my spiel.

Yeah, I was glad to see the under-display camera go. Okay, this is the first time I've picked this thing up, and this is incredible. This thing is wild. And I do have to do a big caveat that like... If you live in a different country that isn't the United States of America, you have access to folding phones that are roughly the size from like Honor and Oppo. So there's a little bit of the rest of the world being like.

okay, you guys finally, like Samsung finally caught up for you. That's sort of only like a this year thing, right? Yeah, yeah. Like, you know.

It feels like a major turn is happening in folding phones. It's sort of funny. Like when this event was coming up, I was like, oh yeah, they're doing another folding phone. What are we on? Like the Z Fold 3? And it's like, it is the seventh one. They've been doing these for... coming up on a decade now which is crazy because they have like barely made a dent um and you know Allison you had a story you kind of pointed out they really haven't changed much and

This year, and I think maybe even this model, feels like the first time they're kind of meaningfully changing. And it's not like a major form factor change. They really just slim down.

a little bit but somehow all this feels so much nicer in your hand like um because you know i've never had a folding phone but i've been to these events all the time and i like play around with them it doesn't feel heavy it doesn't feel fragile it just feels like a phone which is cool though the whole thing like i don't know if you can see it there like it won't sit because of the camera bump being so ridiculous so that's kind of rough that that's rough but

I don't know. Maybe it's a good thing because you put it face down then and then you don't look at the screen. It does encourage me to put it face down and then I don't get caught up in my phone. I think it was a year of like, I mean like.

Fold 4, 5, and 6 were kind of a snooze fest as far as, like, they added a few millimeters here and they did this to it. And basically the same on the flip phone. Like, I think maybe the... four got the bigger cover screen but they still you know um so the flip the clamshell style um this year got a full like edge to edge screen on the front cover and previously it's sort of like

was this file folder shape that went around the cameras, which was just sort of weird and awkward. It was like Motorola gives us the whole screen. We're grownups. Let us have it. So this did feel like a year where Samsung was like... OK, like here's a feedback we've been getting. We're going to make these bigger moves. And obviously, you know, like a lot of. R&D and time goes into making a phone slim like that. I heard that the Galaxy S25 Edge really kind of paved the way for this.

wouldn't exist without making the slim bar phone first. Did people like the edge? I feel like the edge was like despised. That was the one with the curving sides? No, no, no. No, no, no. There's a thin one. Yeah, the thin one. That is, it's the same case of this. You're like. Is it really like, am I going to notice the weight difference? Is it really that slim? You know, you see the specs on paper. You're like, what's the big deal? And then you pick it up and you're like.

Oh, I get it. This really is different. Because I'll admit to being one of the people that looks at those things and I'm just like, whatever, it's thin. Do we not remember exploding batteries? What are you doing? Oh, Samsung remembers. Oh, Samsung remembers exploding batteries. But then you hold it in your hand and you go like, oh, yeah, it's actually quite nice. It's it feels kind of funny to say like, oh, you have to hold it or you have to see it. But.

I think you should. I know. I think you should. It is true. I'm seeing that a lot this year and it's irritating. It is. Well, it is like, I mean, there are probably a couple of things that are preventing people from adopting these like. uh the folding phones at least this this sort of fold out style um and one is definitely the size right like this one is i think about as close as you can get to just a regular phone i looked this up this is

What? It's not even a full millimeter thicker than the iPhone 16 Pro. It's like... There's a very small difference. Yeah. And so it feels like a regular phone, which goes a really long way. But then I think there are like two other things that I at least like for me, I don't quite get. And one is.

I love it. If I could trade my phone out for a foldable right now, no problem. But I don't totally know what I would use it for. And then the other part of that is like... the price and this one it is two grand is that right two grand yeah like that's That is the price of two other phones, which it is. It is sort of two phones stapled together. Four if you're going budget. Which, you know, you can do some crazy things if you just...

you know, tape a few phones together. Four pixel 90s. It's wild.

I would love to see two phones taped together and see if that would work as a foldable. You know, are you finding it to be useful as a thing, as like a tablet? I can't believe you live blog in WordPress.

No, I was watching her do it and I was like, should I try doing it on my phone? I could not do it just because of all the little... I can't even log into WordPress on my phone. It was pretty rough. I was trying to do, like, we have Okta, so I was trying to get the Okta... code from one phone and putting it on the other phone and I swear to god I felt like this was

the ad that Samsung should have, they should have just been zeroing in on me and Allison and just me being like, oh, what am I doing? My laptop and two phones aren't working. Allison's just like, cool, calm and posed. I'm watching her take a photo. And then like.

She had Slack on one side and WordPress open on the other side and just checking things. And then when she needed to write, I'm sorry if I was stalking you watching this, but I was just mesmerized watching her do this. I was like, oh my God, this is the first time I've actually understood.

why I might want a foldable. Do I want a foldable phone? I don't know. Maybe, could this be a work experience? Like, could we just have, like, foldable phones for live blogging? I was like, oh. I approve that. You didn't get the memo. I decided we can all have affordable phones. Okay, great. I think so. Let me just check with a couple of people really fast.

Nilay's gone. Who's going to stop us? If it's a responsibility that's on me, then I have a problem. We do need to start expensing stuff before Nilay's back, though. That's what's important. Um, this is really like, it is true. You see this one and you go, okay, like this. Listen, the reasons we're all here is because we have a problem of looking at gadgets and going on. But like, you know, this is the first foldable where I've really been like, that's a problem.

It looks great. Okay. That being said, like the foldables that I see out in public. nine times out of ten it is the clamshell style yeah which i feel a lot more popular than than uh I don't know. I would imagine they would be. I just think they're familiar, right? Because we all, well, maybe not all of us. There might be youngins who didn't have the flip phones from back in the day. But I feel like a certain nostalgia with the flip. Also, the flip is.

just really cute like you look at him first and you're like oh my god that's so cute and even with the Motorola phones you just go oh cool and then when it folds open it's a form factor you're used to using it's the same thing whereas with the with the folds open like a tablet I mean, I think tablets as a device even, I'm not sure what to do with my iPad half the time. So I think that's the quote-unquote problem with the tablets. So if you watch K-dramas.

There's always just a random person who shouldn't be able to afford a foldable just going like, oh, let me have my foldable and use it in this way. Because Samsung... I mean, Samsung runs Korea. So they're just like, here we go. We're going to put foldables and random K-dramas. And whenever it pops up, I'm like...

That's not believable, Samsung. This is the poor girl being courted by the rich guy. How does she have a foldable phone? Well, she could buy the FE flip phone. I love that segue. $8.99 instead of $10.99. No. The flip phones, I think you're right. It is a really familiar form factor. They are a little less expensive. Like $1,000 is what a phone costs. So you're not making that leap to like, I'm buying two phones. And I think the use cases are a little more like.

Immediate, like you prop it up, you take a selfie with them. the main camera that doesn't suck. And like you get that immediately. And I love them. Like I run apps on the front. I'm like starting my little Strava cycling rides. I, you know, check the bus schedule. I do all kinds of things on the flip phone. Really quickly, I just want to ask, why do you hate the FE so much? It's just OK. I keep forgetting about it because this is a two phone event. You know, we have a flip and a fold. But.

It's also like $8.99 is not that much cheaper, you know? Is it just last year's phone? Like, pretty much. Yeah. I think they may be like... rearrange some parts. But yeah, I'm like, okay, so you can buy last year's phone for $899. Motorola sells one for $699. Yeah, that's rough. Come on. Okay, okay. So then they did the phones, then a whole bunch of watches. Yeah.

All right. What do we see from Samsung on the watch's front? So we saw a... the galaxy watch 8 series which includes the base galaxy watch 8 and the galaxy watch 8 classic and an extremely minorly updated galaxy watch ultra basically squircles are everywhere huge redesign um

And then Gemini is on the wrist now, thanks to Wear OS 6. And there's a bunch of new health features. I think the big marquee one that they played up a bit was a running coach. It's just a running coach. You take a 12 minute. run test and it grades you and then creates an ai generated program for you and then the antioxidant index which is their foray into nutrition and kind of telling you Are you eating healthily? You probably know the answer to that already.

And then, you know, there was a bit of a price bump. So the 8 got about $50 more expensive in the starting price. And the Classic, unfortunately, is about $100 more at $499. So the Ultra stayed the same, which is good news because it... Literally got a new color and a storage bump. So that's it. That's the squirkle squad. It's a total redesign, right? Total redesign. So Samsung has always been known for these circular watches, which.

stand in complete contrast to the apple watches which you know i mean i got it right here right so like the apple watch is squarish and then we have this which is Confusing. Confusing. I'm looking at it. I don't know what shape I'm seeing. You are seeing a squircle, my friend, because they couldn't decide and they did both. They couldn't decide. They did it both. This is the circle watch face on a square.

what they're calling it is a cushion. It's a square cushion. And they have three reasons for that. Three reasons. One is that it allows

the watch to sit flatter on your wrist. So better contact with the sensor underneath. Two, it allows it to be thinner. So this is supposedly 11% thinner than last year's. And then three, you can house a bigger battery inside and don't get too excited it's like we're talking like 10 10 milliamp hour more or like somewhere between 10 and 20 is what because i was going through the spec sheet and looking and i was like oh that

That's like an extra hour, maybe, of battery life that we're looking at. Nothing too special there. So, yeah, squircles. I think, I mean, based on the comments that I've seen from people already, a lot of people hate it. Okay, I watched your video yesterday and I was like convincing myself. I was trying to gear. I was like, you know what? Maybe I like this. Maybe this is cool. I was like, I'm going to come in.

And I'm going to be the positive one. And now I'm seeing it in person and I cannot do it. That's not great because I think this is the best looking of the squircle watches because it's slightly. Well, this one or the classic, because on the classic, they have the rotating.

bezel so i love the rotating bezel it is such a storied part of the samsung watch design because it you know it rotates and it's so satisfying it's so clicky and like when you think about going through menus you're not touching the screen with your grubby finger oils so it's it's actually quite nice this is the base um i will say the hardware looks really polished it does look really polished it's the design

I'm going to put a question mark. This is the sleekest looking of them. And when I had all of them in person and I had like the comparison to the last six classic and looking at them, I was like, OK, you know, I don't know. I don't think it's Stockholm Syndrome because I had Allison try it on and she was like, yes, it does sit flatter and it is more comfortable. And I was like, OK, I could. It's not so egregious, but I still think that the Ultra, which.

They basically took this design idea from the Ultra. It's Ugo. It's Fugo Ugo. Yeah. It's really big. It's really big. Like, not this one, but, like, when I put the Ultra on, Owen, our video guy, was like, wow. You could drive a truck through those lug gaps because, like, here you don't really see the lug gaps on my tiny little wrist, but on the Ultra.

I think last year I tested and I could stick three chopsticks in the gaps. So like six total. Too many chopsticks. It's too many chopsticks. It's a lot. I don't feel Stockholm syndromed by this one. I think I could get to... uh yeah yeah yeah yeah that's yeah it's it's it's i think it's confusing because you look at it and you're like wow that's a really well made confusing shape

It is. It's like they did a great job. I just don't know what they did. I think it looks best on this one because it still maintains like a thin, sleek look. On the classic, it's just like... I'm swayed by the rotating bezel. At least that's still there. And on the Ultra, I still can't grok the Ultra. Like, I still can't. The blue color does make it look slightly better. The Ultra...

There's no, it's just like a processor bump. Oh, not even a processor bump. This is what you get. It's blue. It's blue. And double the storage. Okay. That's my main concern on a watch. So you can have more songs on there and apps, I guess. Yeah, double the storage. The classic, the only hardware updates on the classic is that it gets the... Altra's third.

Quick button, which is like a thing that you can use to launch an extra shortcut or something on that. And then all of the watches have a new lug system, which I know everybody loves a new lug system for easier swapping. It's always good when the lugs change. Not always, because I do have a bunch of readers going, well, there goes the investment I had in all of these straps, which is why I say be careful with how many straps you invest in and from where.

Yeah, don't fall in love with the strap. Don't fall in love with the straps too much because a lot of times they will change these designs and the lug systems and then you're stuck with straps that can't be carried forward. Okay, I want to ask you about something else. I saw that there is...

an antioxidant sensor yeah and i every year like a new sensor is added to smart watches and first i go That's crazy. I didn't know we could measure that like on the skin. Antioxidants are on your like through. I didn't know that. The next thing I go is I don't know what to do with that. Like that sounds so cool and I don't know what. Okay. Are the runners psyched for this? No. Here's V's health tech soapbox. So, is it very cool?

So they introduced this new bioactive sensor last year, which has a bunch of different colors of LEDs. Normally, it's red, infrared, and green, but this one has stuff like purple, yellow, blue, and that's supposed to enable new things. the antioxidant thing works is that it uses a combination of a few of the sensors, I think like blue, yellow, maybe another one. And you actually have to take the watch off.

for this feature to work. You have to take the watch off and you put your little thumb on it and then it reads the carotenoid levels in your skin. And carotenoids are a type of... pigment basically that are it's a type of antioxidant pigment in like beta carotene it makes plants like orange

It's the thing in carrots that make them orange. It's the thing that makes bell peppers like red and yellow. And so when you eat, they get into your skin. You know, if you have too much carrots, you might turn orange. So it's picking up the carotenoids in... that. And, you know, I'm there in this round table with the Samsung execs talking about it. And in my head, I'm going, okay, well, what if you eat berries?

Because berries don't have carotenoids in them, but they have antioxidants and they're very good for you. Is that going to show up in your thing? Because I went and I did the demo and it said I had very low antioxidants. I was like, that doesn't make any sense. I had so many berries over the weekend. It's because there's no...

carotenoids or like very low levels of carotenoids in there and because it's reading it from your skin it could take as many as a couple like two weeks for it to actually show up so fundamentally what this thing is doing is saying are you eating enough fruits and veggies? You already know the answer to that. If they had advertised this as a carrot sensor, I would have been so much more excited. Like, let it be dumb.

Let it be silly. Let it be unimportant. As of like right now, all the smartwatches, they just keep adding sensors that and then being like. We don't know what to do with them. Here they are. Here's more quantified data for you. If they had just said carrot sensor, great. Everyone would be like, cool. It works as function. First off, I need you to test this.

I will. I will be testing. A lot of carrots. Can you test it on a carrot? Oh, my God. What will happen? I'll try. Okay. We'll see what happens. I'll just, like, smush a carrot into the sensor. That's a thing I'm going to do.

But yeah, so my main beef with this is that we all generally know that you should eat more fruits and vegetables. And so all this is telling you is whether or not you're eating fruits and vegetables to an adequate amount. And I think we all... deeply know in our hearts whether we are uh so i mean uh they were saying that fevers or drinking alcoholic drinks could cause your score to lower well you know that fevers and alcoholic drinks are you know going to maybe

cause your data to dip. Like, wow. Wow. Thanks. Thanks. I think some people might enjoy it and find it useful, but I'm sort of like, duh. Squircles. Antioxidants. I'm going to say a confusing year for the smartwatch lineup. Gemini's on there. Gemini's on there, which I still think will confuse people because it's replacing Google Assistant on the watches.

And now you have generative AI on your watch. What are you going to do with generative AI on your watch? Samsung is very focused on diets, basically, because the examples they were giving me were like, start a run. for exactly the number of calories in a slice of pizza. And I was like, that's diabolical. Does it have access to your health data? Theoretically, yes. Theoretically, yes.

It could. It could. From what I can tell, the Gemini aspect of it is that it can handle more complex queries that might require multiple apps in a sequential order. So you can say something like...

find the coolest coffee shop near here and message the location to Allison. And it'll do that directly from... the wrist provided that you are logged into all the relevant apps because uh in the demo space i was trying it like away from the the people who had the guardrail demos where it would be guaranteed to work and i was like hey There's a little one with Gemini. Let me see if it works.

It was like, well, you're going to have to log into YouTube music to make this play. So you have to log into a bunch of stuff. You know, that reminds me of what Apple's Craig Federici said. He was talking to Joanna Stern from the Wall Street Journal.

asked him about OpenAI buying IO, which is Johnny Ives' new hardware startup. And, you know, they're working on some sort of AI device. And Joanna's like, well, what do you got? And Craig says, hey, I think we... have a really personal device already and he's like you know pointing to the apple watch and so there is something there right where apple is sort of pointing to actually the trajectory for ai is a wearable and samsung is you know big asterisk

But like maybe, maybe getting there first. Sort of. Sort of getting there first. Yeah. I've gotten a few demos. So I got a demo with Google earlier this week as well for, and I was just like, give me ideas for what, and I would love if our listeners also had ideas to send me because it's such a fundamental difference in thinking. Like writing AI prompts, you're kind of teaching your brain to have a different language.

putting it on the wrist when your muscle memory is so strong to just like, oh, I need to look at the thing. Let me just grab my phone. So now you're teaching yourself a different muscle memory. You're like, I'm not going to grab my phone. I'll just ask it on my watch. When would I do that? Versus. just pulling out my phone which is faster and so i think that's going to be an interesting tension to kind of work with while i review it but i'm i'm not saying it's going to be bad

I'm just going to say, I think I don't know personally how it's going to work for me yet and what part of the generative features will be most useful. So we'll see. Do you talk to AI or do you like to type? I like to type. So my thing is like, and you know, it's different for different people. I know low and blind vision people really value the voice aspect of it. But for me, I don't want people hearing.

I know. My stupid questions. It's embarrassing. I have some very stupid questions. I don't even want to hear it myself. I would rather just keep it. Yeah. And like the thing about Gemini that they're saying is that it's natural language. But then now I have to undo my muscle memory of how I talk to assistant. When you talk to assistant, it's like.

Hey, and I'm not going to say the wake word because we've had enough of our listeners say, you said the wake word. So like, hey, AI assistant, send message and then you have to dictate it.

So I think one of the things that you're supposed to be able to do is be like, oh, I'm late. Can you send a message to this person telling them I'm going to be late and make the tone polite or apologetic? And that's a thing that you can do and it'll just... write the message for you and you don't have to dictate it and i'm like cool but i'm kind of used to dictating it so it's really i i think people are just going to have to be open to changing their muscle

like memory and then changing muscle memory is really difficult to do so i think that's the the big challenge with gemini and the rest that's real okay there's one other samsung thing that was like around the event but not i believe it was not at the event which is there was a big leak that they're having a a trifold foldable and they did they they didn't say anything about this i was ready for it

This is what I want to see. They've done kind of a one more thing. But I guess that was at the January Unpacked because they did it for The Ring. They did it for The Edge. I was like. They were wrapping up and Allison just has her thing up and she goes like, I don't believe you. I know. I was like, you can't fool me, TM.

But yeah, they fooled me. So there's more to come in Samsung foldables, potentially even this year, it sounds like. Yeah, yeah. It sounds like they told some Korean press, I think, that they have it ready. They're just like... hanging on to it for a minute or something like that i that's that's fair enough it would be extremely samsung to be like here's one high unfoldable here's another that like embarrasses it but so it's it's it's nice it's nice for them to take a little break all right

We should go to break. When we get back, we're talking about Apple, Meta, X. Unfortunately, Mecca Hitler. We'll be back. Support for the show comes from Charles Schwab. at Schwab how you invest is your choice not theirs. That's why when it comes to managing your wealth, Schwab gives you more choices. You can invest and trade on your own. Plus, get advice and more comprehensive wealth solutions to help meet your unique needs.

With award-winning service, low costs, and transparent advice, you can manage your wealth your way at Schwab. Visit schwab.com to learn more. AI is moving fast. So fast, it's hard to keep up. In fact, in ServiceNow's latest AI maturity index, scores dipped 20% from last year. But that's okay, because AI isn't a sprint, it's a marathon.

You may be behind today, but tomorrow you could be a pace setter. Dive into ServiceNow's AI Maturity Index and see how you can innovate as fast as your ambitions. Visit servicenow.com slash AI maturity. You're basking on a beach in the Bahamas. Now you're journeying through the Jade Forest of Japan. Now you're there for your alma mater's epic win. And now you're awake.

Which means it was all a dream. But with millions of incredible deals on Priceline, those travel dreams can be a reality. Download the Priceline app today and you can save up to 60% off hotels and up to 50% off flights. So don't just dream about that trip. Book it. with Priceline. All right, we're back.

There were a bunch of really big executive changes this week at Apple, at Meta, at X. Grok went absolutely off the rails. Lots to talk about. I want to start with Apple. where their COO, Jeff Williams, announced plans to retire. This is really interesting because Jeff Williams was, I guess, until Tuesday. You know, one of the leading people who was seen as a possible Tim Cook successor if it came to that. Right. And I think this is happening in like the most Apple way possible.

Right. It's a long, slow thing. I mean, does Apple do anything quickly? I don't think so. They're very intentional about everything. Right. So, yeah, no, but Jeff Williams, he's always in those like big. presentations at the iphone event like he's one of those he's Maybe not Craig Federighi, where he has his own hair meme at this point, where you go to Dub Dub and they're referencing his hair in the filmed parts. But he's pretty well known if you're into Apple. So that's a big one.

And I think like as COO, COO is one of those, I think, quieter, but actually mission critical positions at Apple. Like Apple is, in many ways, it is a supply chain company, right? Tim Cook was the COO before he was CEO. And I think he has in many ways reshaped Apple around that role. Right. Yeah. Every single product is, you know.

How do we make sure there are exactly three versions and we are optimizing the parts and we are using what came last? And, you know, it makes sense that they would have seen Jeff as the possible next guy. And I think like the going.

you know, speculation from what I've seen is that perhaps Jeff Williams is a little too old, right? He was 62. Tim Cook is 64. And so if Tim Cook is... going to step down at some point i mean i don't know he could he could uh berkshire hathaway this and like you know stick around like warren buffett until he's like in his 90s which like you know if you're a shareholder i mean tim cook is secretly swole

If you look up the Slate article from the past, it's an investigation into how swole Tim Cook is. He's very swole. He famously exercises a lot. A lot of the Apple Watch stuff and the health stuff is because Tim Cook is super into that. stuff so i don't know he doesn't look like he's aged no do we know his workout regimen um

I think he wakes up at like 4 a.m. and works out like he's I don't know the exact of it. But if you look real close and he's very modest in his his attire. But if you zoom in on those biceps, I am a believer that Tim Cook is swole. So he could be good for a while. He's good for a while. I think he's good for a while. He's a healthy dude. How swole was Jeff Williams? You know, honestly.

No Slate articles? No Slate articles investigating Jeff Williams. Unknown level of swoleness. Yeah, that is one of my favorite articles, though, is Tim Cook swole. I come back to it every once in a while just because the beat I'm on and also because when I see him every year, I'm like... Zooming in with my eyes and just going like, yeah, no, I think he's swole. I think he's real swole.

Okay. So, well, I guess now we know why Jeff was passed over. I mean, right. This is what one assumes. You don't retire if they're like, hey, you might be CEO soon. Yeah, yeah. To be clear, it's not like there is a rumor that Tim Cook's retirement is imminent, but he's been doing it since 2012. It's a long time. It's a long time, long run. And I think Apple... because they move so carefully. Surely they're planning this in the background. So their new guy, they're bringing in Sabi Khan.

who Cook called one of the central architects of Apple's supply chain. They're clearly trying to be like, nothing's changing. We're all good. Everything is safe. It's in safe hands. He's, you know, this guy again has been, he joined Apple in 1995. Jesus. So, right, this is like, this is still a Jobs era guy who they're bringing in.

i mean supply chain stuff is really important right now with like the the ever-looming tariff situation going on and i don't know i think you have apple fans who are kind of split into romanticizing the jobs era and like the vision of it all the jobs and joni i vision of it all and then you have other people who are like nah tim cook's a guy who gets it done and like he's a guy who knows supply chains and that stuff's boring but that's what makes money so i think

Having Sabi Khan there, it just feels stable at a time where supply chain is a thing that we think about. And something that investors are super invested in is having a stable supply chain. I think that is a signal there too. The Trump and tariff stuff feels like part of this too, right? Like they are, they're actually, this thing has been running very smoothly for a very long time. And now Trump is saying, hey, tariffs on everything.

And so Apple is scrambling to move things around. Supply chain is actually more important than ever. There's a lot of work to do. If you're Jeff Williams. Yeah, maybe there's a good one. It's like a cat and mouse game, right? Because they're like, ugh.

Tariff on new country. And Apple's like, ha ha, we moved to this other country. And then they'll go, ha ha, tariff on that country. And Apple's like, ha ha, we'll move to this other country. Or like, that's what it seems like. They will find a way. They'll find a way. And so they need a supply chain guy to know what country.

to move the factory to. They love a supply chain guy. Okay, they do love a supply chain guy, which I think is interesting because, you know, the going rumors of who might succeed Cook. Again... like some years out whenever this happens um i believe it's it's mark german at bloomberg um says that john turness who's their hardware guy is the leading contender right now which is very interesting right

um that that feels to me like there's potentially a very different shift in a world where he is leading it because tim cook at least like My read on it is that he is not a product guy in the way that Jobs was and probably not a product guy in the way that Ternus is. And arguably that's what. apple needs too because we're at a point where i think i was talking about this with todd uh our reviews uh wd editor uh where the iphone is like

what, 17 years old? There are people who can vote and fight for our country who don't remember a world without iPhones. So it's like not a new... product or technology anymore so i think you know with the ai hype everybody's looking to what's next Maybe you want a hardware guy in there who can really shape what the next vision of that's going to be. So maybe if you think about vision versus maintenance.

Maybe it's like a thought process with Ternus is going back from maintenance to vision again and doing the stuff that made Apple splashy to begin with. Who knows? I'm not a business forecaster. I don't have like a crystal ball, but I think that's maybe something that Tertus has. Yeah. Didn't they change, like, the design team now reports directly to Tim Cook, too? Yeah. So I don't know if those things are related, but it would make a kind of sense to have, like— I don't know.

Like, Tim Cook is also surprisingly into sneakers. So, like, you know. Simpuk is a hype beast? Is this where we're headed? He's swole. He's a hype beast. Oh, my God. He had, like, custom designer, like, sneakers a couple of conferences back. And, like, it was in the hype beast article about how he.

these like special, I believe it was Nike's. And so, you know, on the face of it, Tim Cook has his uniform. You wouldn't tag him as like the design guy, but he's into sneakers and he's swole. Maybe they're... Yeah. Maybe they're making some sneakers. Maybe there's multitudes to Cook that we haven't. Tim Cook is going to retire from Apple, take over Supreme, and have a whole second career after this. I love it.

I believe it. You're hearing it now. You have to do a hard pivot. Yeah. Yeah. He's going to be, he's just going to be on the board of gentle monster, which is that's sunglass company from Korea with like the really interesting silhouettes. He's just going to. He's going to be a fashion icon. I would love this. I love this. I really want, like, Cook is the driest executive, like, in public. And if, like...

You know, steps out and is like, I'm going to live a different life now. I think there's like a quiet. He's earned it. A quiet fire to Tim Cook. This is my fan action. A quiet fire. Oh my gosh. So the next big piece of corporate change up.

happened last week while we were off, which is that Mark Zuckerberg finally announced his big AI super intelligence group. This is like it is a super group of AI researchers, which. I think sounds cool when you put it that way. It also could sound like the AI Avengers, but... It is. It's the AI. Oh, no, that's terrifying. And famously, when the Avengers created AI, it went well, right? That's not totally the plot of Ultron. That's not.

You know, famed, beloved, critically acclaimed Avengers movie Ultron that everyone loved. I didn't know that. They didn't. They hate that movie. I didn't know that was a movie.

you know what that's that's the correct it's it's all right it's all right they made a yeah um so this is this is weird this is a little wild like zuck is sort of just like power tripping here and um First, he paid $14 billion to buy half of Scale AI, which is mostly, it appears, that he can hire their CEO, Alexander Wang.

Wang is becoming Meta's chief AI officer. Sure. And then he's just paying out hundreds of millions of dollars to individual researchers. He's just going around to every AI lab. OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and giving people these incredible offers that just like boggle the mind that you would pay somebody this much to convince them to come over, which tells you two things. Number one.

it's hard to convince people to come work in math, right? Hayden Field, our AI reporter, just ran a story where she talked to some people who got some of these offers. And the thing they told her was, yeah. We care about the mission, which is why we're staying at the ones who did. turn this down don't want to go to meta and have to do whatever they want us to do oh boy oh you know you're they're gonna get paid okay anywhere um but i zuck is just spending

boatloads of cash to build this, you know, huge team of super capable researchers, right? He's got the former CEO of GitHub. He's got a co-founder and the former CEO of Safe Super Intelligence. He got people from Anthropic, from Sesame. It's all over the place. And these dollar figures are mind boggling. And what's really interesting is like, OK, OK, I get it. So you now have.

one of the most capable AI leadership teams in the world. The idea is you will go and build some sort of fancy AI thing, super intelligence, whatever you want to call it, with that. But there is sort of a question, right?

The technology exists, or much of it does. People are building it. Is it these specific people? Or do you just buy the people and therefore you get the good AI? I mean, that's obviously what his... strategy is he's just throwing money around he's just like i've got money come work for me do the thing and uh i think he's getting grifted on some level because

I know hate to any of these people getting these, what, $300 million over four year packages. Like, get the bag. I love that for you. This is your time. But at the same time, you look at that cost and it's just like. Are you getting your money's worth? How much did you spend on that metaverse gambit, bud? I mean, this is what I'm thinking about, right? Where it's like...

Okay, let's think about the last time Zuck sort of like went ham and spent a ton of money on some initiative that we're like, I don't know if this is going to work out for you. It is the metaverse. Yeah, there's still no legs in the metaverse. So where did all that money go? Didn't they announce the legs? They announced the legs, but did the legs ever come? The legs never shipped. Can I tell you something? Nobody signed on to check. There could be legs. Like, that's...

You know, he made the wrong, but also it's not even that he made the wrong bet at the wrong time. Like that, you know, I feel like you could have easily foreseen that when talking about the metaverse. It's that he put in a boatload of money and it was bad. Yeah. Yeah. And like they're kind of doing that with with Llama already. And this feels like, number one, it's funny. They've they've for for months.

been talking of llama how great it is there was that scandal a few months back where they uh ran a special like optimized version of llama to like game some tests um right if you've used meta ai which i have How is it, V? Not great. I mean, on the one hand, so I mostly use meta AI through the glasses when I'm testing new features or whatnot.

My favorite thing about it is that I can make it sound like John Cena. Oh, no, no, no. It's not bad. It's not bad. Yeah, but that's my favorite thing about it. Yeah. So, like, I've tried the live AI, which has its pros and cons. I think the multimodal thing is really smart. But the live translations, for example, that was not... I tried... Sorry, Allison. I have to talk about Amelia Perez again. Oh, that's my favorite. I tried.

months back just like seeing like oh could I use this to translate content that I'm watching so I put on a clip of one of the terrible songs in Emilia Perez and it got some of it and then others but it was just so it was John Cena just saying very wrong things about the Spanish. So yeah, in my experience, not great. It sort of feels like there's a moment coming. I don't know if it's like the chips are down or...

It's like, what's the game where you have to get a chair? You have to like. Musical chairs. Musical chairs. It's like musical chairs and everybody's like, okay, it's about time to figure out this AI stuff. Like Apple, they're like. can we build it or should we just buy a company? And there's a little bit of that going on. And Zuck is like, I'm buying all these chairs. I'm covering all my bases. So I spent all the stuff on the metaverse and apparently that's not what people want.

didn't spend everything on ai so money here you go so that's that's what this feels like there you go uh thinking about the ray-bans is really interesting too because they're right now it's like it's this very simple product and we're like hey These are nice headphones. And they are really bullish on actually their AI glasses. Oh, yeah. And is it right? In fact, they have to build the AI.

They do, in fact, have to build the AI. So, you know, there are communities that really do love the meta glasses and the AI in them. Spoiler alert. That's what my. next host episode on Tuesday is going to be about. But, you know, by and large, most people are not really thinking of it in that way. But I do every single time I write.

them as smart glasses. I've got a good relationship with the PR people at Meta, but they're like, would you be open to calling it AI glasses? And it's like, no, they're smart glasses. But so... The reason I tell that story is to say that they are super bullish on... glasses being a vehicle for ai they really believe that glasses are like what are going to get people thinking about ai and you know google's kind of jumped on that train too with android xr so they still got to build the ai first so

we'll see yeah it's it is it is not a bet in a vacuum it's and it's like so easy to think of it that way i think particularly because like open ai like it is it exists as a website like it is it is a bot on its own that's it and meta is trying to productize it yeah and the product is okay and the ai is not okay um yeah i this is going to be i think just one of the clear like give this a couple years obviously

But it is going to be a fascinating experiment to see if you can just buy your way to a great product. Because I cannot remember. Obviously, people will just buy companies. I mean, it's funny, actually. A lot of the big company acquisitions do not work. No, they don't. There is a culture clash. Right. I'm thinking of like Google buying Motorola, which like, and then selling it a few years later.

Right. So this is sort of a version of that. He is just buying what he thinks is all the best people and who by all accounts are supposed to be incredibly talented researchers. Can you buy your way to the best product? We're going to find out, and it's going to be really interesting to see. And if it does not pay off, like, yeah. At least this is a better bet, I think, than the metaverse.

Yes, I think that is fair, right? Like there is a product to be had here that people want, that some people want. The question is, can they build something? Llamas is aggressively fine. I think that's the best way to describe it because I've been using a bunch of them. And is it the best one? No. Is it the worst one? Also, no. Yeah. Safely fine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaking of AI that is not the best, the other big change this week happened at X, where there was also some Grok news to discuss. Ex-CEO Linda Yaccarino announced this week that she was stepping down. Elon replied with a, I'm going to say terse tweet saying, thanks for your contributions who could have seen this when linda posted about her announcement she was like

you know, look at all that we've done. We've done such a great job. You know, we made it the everything app. We've like cracked down on safety. We've done free speech. And Jay Peters on our team just looked at all these things. He's like, actually, like under Yoccarino. None of this stuff has happened. I remember using the X app as an everything app, you know, just yesterday. I ordered a pizza. No, that's not true. She lasted longer than I thought she would, though, because.

I thought like when she was announced that I was like, oh, this will be over in six months. And she lasted four times that. Yeah. So, you know. That's true. Yeah. I just might be me, but I don't know if I could have lasted.

as long as she did. Yeah. Given circumstances. We think she just got fed up, right? I think she just was like... That's the thinking? I think she was just like, yeah, I didn't sign up for this. See, I don't... It takes a certain type of person to... volunteer to work for elon and she was pretty gung-ho about it up front oh yeah yeah she was

She was. So I don't know. I'm very, very interested in finding out what happened there. Do you think she knew about the whole Trump turn that he was going to do Doge and all of that? Do you think she just finally went like... I signed up for stuff. I didn't sign up for that. And she's just finally been like, okay, and I'm done.

She spent a lot of her time, I think so, right? Because she spent a lot of her time defending him. And her job when she came on was... advertisers are fleeing this platform because everyone hates elon and he keeps saying inappropriate stuff right yeah and so you know and she uh you know didn't quite get that. The platform still exists. It's there. But the other thing is that when she signed on, X was an independent company. It is now owned by XAI.

um which means there are even you know she was always the ceo and it always felt like it was in air quotes like elon owns the place elon runs the place um x also announced a new head of product recently um they put uh nikita beer in charge he was the co-founder of tbh which metabot and i believe then shut down and also gas which was acquired by discord i had i the apps as i'm told i believe are for teens and so i did not

Use them. You know what? That's just being age appropriate. Teens are the teen apps. Teens are using gas. I'm not sure about that. I can't prove that. So X, you know, it's got some, they didn't announce a new CEO. They didn't say anything. They're just like, Linda's gone. Okay. And then in the background of all of this, Grok. I kind of there's something about X as a platform right now where it just there's sometimes there are rainy days and thunderstorms and you're just like, oh, yeah.

The chatbot that lives in the platform is being racist and calling itself Mecca Hitler today. And he was like, well, where does it like? Oh, it does that sometimes. And it's like that. This is the point we have gotten to with X where we're like, number one. it still functions. Number two, yeah, you can just ignore MechaHitler. They'll deal with it. It's fine. Do you remember when we used to call like...

Back when it was Twitter, we used to be like, this is the main character of the day. Yes. And now Grok is the main character of the day as Mecha Hitler. Don't love that. The Mecha-Hitler thing is perhaps the lighter part of it. It was being actively super anti-Semitic and racist and offensive.

And just like going off for a couple of days and eventually they like shut it down. This all ends with Elon hosting a live stream to announce Grok 4, which may or may not be live at this point. It wasn't unless I checked. I don't really get it. X as a product is, I think, bewildering to me at this point. I think the grand proclamations of doom, I guess I would argue.

did not quite know there's like a ton of people who are still on x surprisingly like the the 10 seconds i'm on there every so often i'm like oh right so and so i used to follow they still be posting up a storm on x so that's you know it's still there people are still have not left which is wild to me but yeah and like you know i don't want i shouldn't give them too much credit for this but like elon fired

most of the company and like it's still you know the the website is still online most of the time right like okay okay they've got that is it succeeding not right The thing it has succeeded at is creating a whole bunch of competing platforms, including threads, which there was data out this week, that it is like...

nearly catching up that's why on mobile app usage wow right absolutely wild considering how awful threads is like i'm sorry like i go to threads for very specific things which is k-pop because apparently my algo there is just like all you care about is kpop and i'm like are they wrong they are only partly wrong i care about other things but i'm just like that's my entire feed on threads is just k-pop from but like k-pop news from five days ago

oh yeah yeah that's what you go to threads for something that happened five days ago i wonder how much of it is Meta just aggressively pushing people to threads, which has been... Oh, it's so aggressive in Instagram now. Yeah, scrolling through, you're like, oh, do I want to look at a threads post from three days ago? I think I'm good. Threads also very aggressively.

pushes the like for you page or whatever it's called the discover page whereas you know other platforms are nice and give you options or let you choose your phone right that i go on threads and i get freaking sucked in

Cause it is just like showing me all this stuff from people who I don't follow. And it's like, this is why Facebook succeeds. Yeah. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not actually saying it's bad necessarily, but like, yeah, I see, I see why it's doing okay. And somehow they've got enough stuff. They don't have a MechaHitler, though. Well, you know what? Zuck just spent a lot of money on. Okay, we might have a MechaHitler down the line.

How close are we to Mecha Hitler? That's a new metric for your AI. That's dystopian. Yeah. And on that happy note. On that happy note, it's time for a break. When we get back. We are rebranding the lightning round. Get ready for it. Support for the show comes from Google Pixel. It's about time your smartphone gets smarter.

For your next upgrade, meet the Google Pixel 9 Pro. You can experience its stunning new design, the advanced AI power of Gemini, and their best camera yet. A camera built to capture everyone in beautiful resolution. including the person taking the photo. When the extraordinary is possible, never settle for less. You can learn more about the new Google Pixel 9 with Gemini Live on the Google Store.

Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start? Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to. Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin? Or what that clunking sound from your dryer is? With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top-rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app. Download today. Let's be honest. Are you happy with your job?

Like, really happy? The unfortunate fact is that a huge number of people can't say yes to that. Far too many of us are stuck in a job we've outgrown, or one we never wanted in the first place. But still, we stick it out. And we give reasons like, what if the next move is even worse? I've already put years into this place. And maybe the most common one, isn't everyone kind of miserable at work?

But there's a difference between reasons for staying and excuses for not leaving. It's time to get unstuck. It's time for Strawberry.me. They match you with a certified career coach who helps you go from where you are to where you actually want to be. Your coach helps you get clear on your goals, create a plan, build your confidence, and keeps you accountable along the way. So don't leave your career to chance. Take action and own your future with a professional coach in your corner.

Go to strawberry.me slash unstuck to claim a special offer. That's strawberry.me slash unstuck. All right, we're back. So I have a problem.

I have a problem with the lightning round. I don't know if you guys know this. But Neelai and David, every week, they've got the lightning round. They've got a whole bunch of stories. And the point of the lightning round is you get through all this. It's fast-paced lightning round. Right. What happens? Goes long. Yeah. Goes long. They don't get to all the stories. They got to cut them. That ends today. Okay. We are changing. The lightning round is done. We are changing it.

It is henceforth known as the Thunder Round. Oh my God. Let's do this. Okay, here's what's going to happen. Unlike the Lightning Round, the Thunder Round gets stuff done. It keeps moving. We've got 15 stories, 15 minutes. And I have given Eric Gomez, our producer, the power of lightning. Oh, thunder. That one's wrong. Well, you have one. You have the other. Yeah. OK. He's got the power of something to make us move along.

And he has got to come in with some rolling, some crackling thunder, some crashes to keep us moving if we go a little too slow. I love this. Okay. So ready. I'm ready. I'm going to jump a million times. All right, people. Let's do this. The first ever Thunder Round. We're going to get through all of them. You ready? I believe in this. Okay. Story number one. I really want to talk about this. Allison, you covered Project Indigo, which is this Adobe camera app for the iPhone, right?

Yes, it's kind of a beta product. It is a camera app. It's made by Mark Lavoie, who some people may remember as like the brains behind the pixel camera. The idea is it's computational photography. But it doesn't make your photos look like HDR hell is how I would say the sales pitches. And I played with it. It turned my phone into a. a piece of fire. I don't know. It's very beta. It heats your phone up. Oh, my God. Not a great, like...

Everyday camera. Amazing photos. Like, loved it so much. The photos in your story were so, like, they had such intense mood and, like, a vibe. Contrast. Like, beautiful. I've liked really, this doesn't happen. The entire Verge newsroom stopped and was like, what are these photos? From a phone? I have not seen phone photos like this in years.

Mark Lavoie really feels like the guy who Google let get away. Yeah, I know. What did they do here? And he's like a fellow at Adobe. What a gig. Yeah. You just hang out. Make a camera app. Making the camera app we all want. Yeah. So was this like, were these like specially curated, the photos that you posted? Because like they were incredible. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. So I.

Next story. We're going to move along here. IKEA announced a lamp with a speaker in it, and it looks cool, and it connects to Spotify. The main thing is they dropped Sonos. This is the correct move to drop Sonos. You like this? Like, Sonos has had kind of a...

Sonos has had a year. The app has not been great. And I think, you know, if you think about what most people use, they're using Bluetooth and they're using Spotify. So just go where their people are. Make it cheaper. You don't have to have like a whole licensing issue with. uh sonos for this and sonos is like you know it's it's

Are they doing great, Bob? Sonos and Ikea always felt like a weird pairing to me, right? It is the highest end of connected speakers and the lowest end of stuff for your home. I mean, I love Ikea. That is not enough. Oh, yeah. And Ikea is more expensive than that. they used to be but yeah it's just no but that is like a weird dichotomy and like ikea's foray into the smart home has always been about simplicity and keeping things affordable so yeah kind of the speaker's cute

The speaker is not bad. Or that's not the lamp. There's a lamp. I would buy a bunch of these. Wow. Okay. Okay.

I was just shaking out. The thunder god does not appreciate speaker talk. V, do you want to take this one? Yeah, so Perplexity has launched a Comet web browser. a web browser for perplexity, which is the AI search engine, which fashions itself as I always get confused by the pitch for Pultipoxity over the other ones, but the whole idea is that it's researching things in real time, so you're supposed to be able to trust the results more. Sure, it has a web browser now. Love it.

Have either of you used either like Gemini and Chrome or Dia yet? I haven't used Dia, but I am a longtime user of Arc and the original Arc. So like I get... the whole AI browser thing. Yeah. So my, okay, so AI browser is super hot right now. They also, OpenAI is supposed to be launching an AI web browser too. My whole thing is like, they don't work yet.

Right. Like I tried Dia and I'm like this. It's just a permanent chatbot tap. Like, why? What am I like? I'm like pretty on board with like chat GPT being useful, but it's like you just. You just added a tab to my browser. Yeah. I get it. They're trying to beat Google. They're trying to replace it. And to do that, you've got to be the default. A different version of AI overviews, I feel, which is, eh.

It's more aggressive. It's much more aggressive. AI mode. Yeah. I will say, like, sometimes in the Arc browser, when I have, like, a thing that I'm looking up and it gives me the summaries, I'm like, oh, it's helpful to have summaries. But now I've got to look it up and make sure it's, like, accurate. Yeah. So you've got to check its work. Yeah, it's work. AI mode is like, what if you could talk to and interact with a page of search results? I'm like, I don't think I've ever wanted that.

That's what I asked for. Yeah. Cool. Oh, right. Sorry. I brain froze. But anyway, so yeah. Yeah. AI browsers, they're not. Not sure we like it. Not sure we like it. Allison. All right. E-ink. Okay. e-ink is on a laptop for some reason. So there's a laptop, but instead of a touchpad, it has... An E-Ink e-reader for AI apps? I hate this. Why? I hate everything about this. This felt like they were just trying to find an angle on their own. They were like, we could put an e-reader on the trackpad.

And they're like, nobody's going to buy that. What if we put AI next to it? Why would you want to read on your trackpad? No, I don't. There's no reason for that. And then also just. Okay, I'm sorry. I'm going to quote Ron Swanson from Parks and Rec. Whole ass one thing. Don't half ass two things. This is two half ass thing. I have an e-reader. I have a laptop, touchpad, and AI is...

in everything, but I don't want to read on my touchpad where my fingies go. No, because sometimes you're eating. Sometimes you're eating. And then you're going to get it all smeary. And then it's going to be on your AIE reader in the middle. Just get a folding phone. Then you have a bunch of screens. I don't know if I'm going to go that far, but yeah. Get a $2,000 folding. Whole ass one touchpad. That's my spiel. There you go.

I support that. Yeah. Okay, okay, okay. Okay. Next thing. Did you guys see, or can I say, did you not see Lorde's new CD? Oh, no. Which is transparent. Transparent. She made it transparent. I see it. Okay, so it turns out. When you put a CD into certain CD players, I mean, I guess they all use infrared to read it. But it seems like some of them maybe also use infrared to register that a CD is really going in. And they can't see it.

And so they just eject the CD and they won't put it in. Andrew Marino on our team. went out and these things are sold out but he managed to find one and he tested a bunch of cd players so you have like a clamshell one where you just like put it in and close it um or i guess maybe like a disc tray yeah that will work but otherwise these lord fans are really upset because you know what

fair they paid for this music and now they can't listen to it on their car cd which you know like that's one reason to buy a cd if you have a car that still has those things so i totally get what they're saying at the same time it is kind of cool it looks transparent cd okay i'm moving on with this one because i don't want to get crashed um a federal appeals court struck down the ftc's click to cancel rule this week this is

Bullshit. That's what this is. Yeah, this is the thing that was going to let you cancel your gym membership. This should be a bipartisan issue if there was ever a bipartisan issue. Why did they... Does anyone like it when you're trying to cancel a thing and they're like, actually, you have to call an email.

Nobody likes this. Nobody wants this. This was a bipartisan. It's devastating. This is absolutely devastating. We should have gotten this done. Who's responsible? Yeah. Who is responsible for this? Why would they like. I'm sorry. Okay, they said the FTC did a bad job making the rule. So it's not like they can still do it. It's just like, will the new FTC do it? Oh, great. No, they won't because...

I don't know. Maybe I'm being mean, but I feel like it's capitalist to be just like, no, make it hard for them to cancel because then we can get revenue. Because these people can't remember just cancel their subscriptions. I tried to cancel. pet insurance once and it was the most I just gave up and paid another year for pet insurance oh my god no that's a lot of no you had to like write a handwritten note mail it that's insane call their CEO I

It's good news for your pet, I suppose. Yeah, he was all right. Oh. Oh. That was, oh my God. He was dead. Thundercrash. Okay. V, keep us moving. Okay, so nothing's first true flagship phone plays it a little. safe because you know nothing we know nothing for oh god you got to stop me with the nothing ponds but nothing has something going for it which is that it's known for its forward design and this is not cool yeah it has so

Instead of like all the lights on the back, that was like the glyph thing, which looked cool. Wasn't super useful. I didn't find it super useful. It has a little tiny like programmable like. led thing sort of like the asus like rog phones where it can be a little icon you can be an emoji icon for like a certain app it makes more sense to me because

You could assign different notifications to different glyph patterns. And I would be looking at it like, I can't remember if that thing lights up. Do I have a phone call or what? This is like a more clear, like you could. You could put a little poop emoji when the phone rings or something. I don't know. People were hating on it. I don't know. I think it's a good idea. They demoed it with like a spin the bottle. Oh, that's dumb. Okay. Hear me out. I'm actually.

super it's the carrot sensor they're just like they're like no one is gonna use this here's your carrot yeah and I love it I love it maybe they should have just put a little more whimsy into it I don't know I think people have expectations so this didn't meet their expectations of what they wanted from nothing. I guess. They wanted something from nothing. That doesn't work. We deserve this one.

The government is still suing Apple for antitrust. Yeah. Good. Yeah, yeah. I'm very pleased to see that's still happening. Apple tried to get it dismissed and the judge was just like, yeah. Seems like they've got a case. I love that. They didn't rule on it in any meaningful manner. Apple is so litigious, right? They do this all the time with everything. I mean, this is, well, okay, so this is, the government was like, hey, Apple, your entire business model is anti-competitive.

Apple's like, that's not true. And this judge is like, let us at least find out. So that's it. That's good. I want to see this play out. I think there are huge repercussions, potentially. So it'll at least be a fun time in court. Yay. Alright. My turn. So adding calendar events with a screenshot is AI at its finest. Hard agree. Oh, yeah. Someone also testing the death data of iOS 26. It actually works now? Hard agree. Yeah.

does the thing that you want it to do. It's kind of like, oh. Yeah. So on iOS 26, you take a screenshot of something and you'll get a little prompt. I'll say add to calendar and it'll use generative AI too. And it already did a version of this, but it wasn't, it was pretty like find the date, use the email subject line as the calendar.

And that was kind of the end of it. I will say Gemini does this a lot better. Like we'll add multiple events. We'll ask you follow up questions like, did you want to add this or this? And it understood time zones. Oh, that's a big one. Really good. I think it's a win all around. I'm like, free us from the tyranny of calendar apps. Yeah. That's what I say about that. Yeah. Sold. Good. Yeah. Absolutely sold on it. Hey, we beat the clock. Yeah. Wow. Don't push it. Now I'm raised for thunder.

Oh, they just want to keep us on our toes now. We've made Eric too powerful. Apple's second generation Vision Pro might launch this year, according to Bloomberg. supposedly they're just gonna do the pretty much the exact same thing put an m4 chip in it um i mean it is the vision pro is is It is a Mac on your face. And yeah, it's rough when it's $3,500 and an M1. And it's a heavy Mac on your face. So this is the other thing. Supposedly they're going to do some sort of new strap, which like...

I feel like everybody I've talked to about the Vision Pro is like, you've got to get a different strap. You've got to get it. So there's two straps now. There's the solo knit and there's the one that looks like a harness. I forget the name of it right now. But I keep switching between both of them.

neither of them help it's just i can't i you know i i'm not calling the people who believe that like you can wear it for hours liars but i have never been able to do that so okay i'm gonna keep us quick on this next one too as we as we move forward um nvidia briefly became the first four trillion dollar company this week um the thing that's interesting here apple was the first to 1 trillion. Apple was the first American company to 2 trillion. Apple was the first company to 3 trillion.

Nvidia wins with $4 trillion. It's AI, right? It's the AI. It's the AI chips. The chips need to... The times have changed. Apple is merely a $3 trillion company. I'm a shame. Our thoughts are with Tim on these trying times. These trying times. He has his biceps to keep him company. Yeah. Okay. Do you know cameo still around? I did not know it was still around. Cameo not only is still around, they launched a new app this week for tracking your friend's birthdays.

It's a calendar, but it only does birthdays. Do we need that? That's dumb. And Cameo is doing it. Why? Oh, I guess is the idea that then you're like, oh. Oh, it's my friend's birthday. I should get them a Cameo from that random select. Oh, that's kind of genius. But also, no, no, I will say. And like apologies to, I don't know, all of my friends, everybody I know. I only remember birthdays because they're in my calendar. Oh, yeah.

If they're not in there, I don't know that you were born. I'm an astrology nerd. Like, it's how I... cope with everything now so i just find out people's signs and then know the general time of when their birthday you just get a sense i just get a sense they're like oh you're a gemini oh you're really fast like that kind of thing that was true that was right yeah

Yeah, there you go. It's good. It's working. It's good stuff. So Apple just added more frost to its liquid glass design. That's because it's liquid ass. I'm not a fan. Oh, she said it. Wow. Okay, here's my hot take. I think... It's kind of okay. Like, I've kind of gotten used to it. No. I have bad eyes.

Like, I have truly awful eyes, and anyone's ever read my smart glasses review or anything that has to do with vision know that my eyes are garbage. These are garbage eyeballs that my parents gave me. I... legitimately had a really hard time reading yeah and like and obviously it's dev beta it'll be different when it comes out i'm pro more

frost, but then it's not glass. Yeah. No, it's frosted glass. It's frosted glass. I had to put the little outlines on all the buttons, which make the whole transparency thing not... Because if you go into the messages...

You can't see any of the buttons. Yeah. And then there's just like a slap. It's terrible. I don't like it. You guys know what? I watched Minority Report for the first time, literally for the first time this last week. Oh, wow. And they're putting all the glass in front of glass. I was like.

There it is. We made it. We made it. The future is here now. And, yeah, it seemed like everything worked out nicely. Oh, yeah, it was good. Technology is really good. Good to hear. All right. We've got two more. Two more. We're going to make this. Oh. Is it my turn? Yes. Yeah. Nintendo is ending its cost-saving Switch game vouchers. I didn't know there were Switch game vouchers. How do I get one? And I can't. It's too late. Anymore. So, I guess, V, did you ever use these?

They did not. These were like, okay, these were, people love these things. They were such a bargain. It was this weird thing where Nintendo is like, if you subscribe to Switch Online, so you have to be a member. But. For a hundred bucks, they'll sell you a voucher and you can use it to get two.

full price Nintendo games. And so you could lock in the price of a game at $50 basically, which if you're going to buy two Nintendo games, it's like, yeah, great. You're just like, you're saving like $20 or more, particularly as you're like, these things are creeping up in price. This is, this is, they're like. Tears of the Kingdom, or whatever the next Zelda is, is going to be $90. Okay, last story. We made it. We're doing it. HBO Max is officially... Drumroll. HBO Max again.

Thank God. The world is restored. We're safe. I actually... Not for America. Not from Thunder. Not from Thunder. But we did it, everyone. We did it. We made it through all of the stories. I'm going to declare this first version of the Thunder round mostly successful. We made it. We made it. I feel good.

We accomplished what we set out to do. Exactly. There you go. There was thunder. Yes, there was perhaps a lot of thunder. There was some aggressive thunder happening. I feel like Eric maybe got a little thunder happy. That's it for the Thunder Round and that's it for the Vergecast. We'd love to hear your questions and feedback. Do you like the Thunder Round? I hope so. Email us at vergecast at theverge.com or give us a call 866-VERGE-11.

The Vergecast is a production of The Verge and Vox Media Podcast Network. Our show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, Andrew Marino, and Travis Larchuk. See you next week. Nobody knows your customers better than your team, so give them the power to make standout content with Adobe Express. Brand kits make following design rules a breeze, and Adobe quality templates make it easy to create pro-looking flyers, social posts, presentations.

See how you can turn your team into a content machine with Adobe Express. a quick and easy app to create on-brand content. Learn more at adobe.com slash express slash business. Support for the show comes from Mercury. What if banking did more? Because to you, it's more than an invoice. It's your hard work becoming revenue. It's more than a wire. It's payroll for your team. It's more than a deposit. It's landing your fundraise.

banking can do more. Mercury brings all the ways you use money into a single product that feels extraordinary to use. Visit mercury.com to join over 200,000 entrepreneurs who use Mercury to do more for their business. Mercury, banking that does more. Support for this show comes from Pure Leaf Iced Tea. We'll see you next time.

refreshed and revitalized so you can be ready to take on what's next. The next time you need to hit the reset button, grab a pure leaf iced tea. Time for a tea break. Time for a pure leaf.