- I just realized I have no water, one second. - All right. - What can I say while Daniel's gone? That would be funny on the podcast. - He's wrong. - Okay. - Oh shit. - Hey, what? - Nothing. - What happened? - Nothing. - Let's go, let's roll. - Fuck. What did I do? Okay. (upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to the Android Police podcast. My name is Daniel Bader. - My name is Will Saddlebird. - So yeah, this week has been a busy one, especially for a summer week. The Galaxy Z Fold, Z Flip, Buds 3, 3 Pro, Watch Ultra's, they are now available. You can go to a store and buy them. You can read many reviews of these products on the internet. I have spent much of the week just like absorbing all of the vibes and I kinda wanna talk about a few of them. - We should do a Samsung vibe check. - I agree. - Yeah, I think that's a good idea. I have my, I have my Fold 6. I got that this week on Wednesday, recording this on Friday. So I have some thoughts on it. I declined to, okay, so bit of backstory. Samsung's pre-order deals were pretty good this year. They really wanted that like super cycle upgrade for old Fold users. So they increased trade-in values. They discounted all of their ecosystem products. So like if I had bought a Fold 6 during the pre-order period, which I ended up not doing, I would have gotten $1,000 Canadian for my Fold 4 and I would have gotten a Galaxy Watch Ultra for like $300. So I was like, oh, that's actually a deal. But I wanted to wait until people got their devices and started reviewing them. I wanted to wait until you got your phone and all of the wearables people got their Ultra's. And the vibes are not great, I think. They're semi okay, but I think people were pretty happy with the Fold and Flip, but also pretty much like agree that Samsung has checked out. And after using the Fold 6 for a couple of days, I'm pretty okay not upgrading from the Fold 4. The extra millimeter or two does make a difference, but not enough to really change the way that the phone works. I think for me, the main improvement so far would be the hinge. The Fold 5 had a better hinge than the 4. It didn't creak as much and it folded flat. The Fold 6 is like, as you said last week, just a piece of art, it's beautiful. It doesn't make a noise. - It's a nice piece of hardware, but like the point that I think you're about to make is that only gets you so far. - Exactly. I mean, the software experience is nigh identical, which is fine because the Fold 4 has been updated to one UI 6.1. It's only missing a couple of the AI things, but generally the Android 14 related improvements are there. It's all the same, the screen is the same, the battery size is basically like everything else, even the cameras for the love of God are the same from the 4 as they are in the 6. So I mean, they're not, right? They're not exactly the same, but like they're comparable. So I'm not feeling that hurt not having the new one, even though I do have the new one, but I'm only gonna have it for like a week. But then I was like, mmm, am I missing out on buying the watch Ultra or the Buds 3 Pro at a discount, right? Should I have gone? And then the answer to those two questions is like, no, I'm fine. So the watch Ultra is basically a watch seven. Everybody's just in agreement that it is a slightly chunkier, more robust watch seven. And that it is not at all functionality wise, comparable to the Apple watch Ultra, just like a bunch of wasted opportunities. So I'm okay with this decision. I don't know, what have your thoughts been reading the Ultra reviews? 'Cause that's the one that I thought was kind of up in the air. - Two years ago, right? I reviewed the Watch 5 Pro, which I would say was Samsung's like last attempt at doing this sort of rugged, more fitness focused, like outdoorsy focus, smartwatch, like we'll make it big, we'll make the battery last forever. And at that time, they were really targeting Garmin as a, I'll say inspiration. And now they are targeting Apple for inspiration. Reading the Ultra reviews, having not used a Watch 7 Ultra beyond having it on my wrist for 10 or 15 minutes during content capture, ahead of the launch, delivers a big sense of deja vu of like, yeah, this is like exactly what I went through two years ago, where it's like a nice piece of hardware. If maybe too big, and then you like use the software and you're like, yeah, this is kind of just what like, every Samsung Watch offers, except like bigger. And I'm not sure I'm getting much out of the additional cost compared to just buying a normal Watch 7, enjoying the fact that it is lighter and smaller on my wrist and going for a run. - Yeah, exactly. - It's like they learned nothing from the Watch 5 Pro, which had the same issues of the software is not here, is not like caught up to the hardware. It doesn't feel like I'm getting a noticeably more fitness or outdoors focused experience over just buying the cheaper smaller Watch. You get better battery life, but, and I remember saying this two years ago, it wasn't worth the like $150 or $200 markup then to get an extra day's worth of battery. And I would agree here for the extra $300 markup or whatever it is. I can't remember off the top of my head. It's, take a fraction of that and buy like a USB battery and an extra charger and just throw in your bag or something. Like if it's, if you're that concerned, like I really thought they would have, but I don't know why I would think that because like everything Samsung has put out over the last every years shows that they are not really learning lessons from both themselves and others beyond just kind of looking for inspiration. - Yeah, I think that's fair. I'll contrast the Ultra, which we talked about in last week's show alongside the Buds 3 and 3 Pro, in that we sort of looked at those as the examples where Samsung was copying Apple, right? And I think obviously the Ultra is a more complicated product. It is more expensive. There are both hardware and software considerations, but the Ultra fails where the Buds succeed in a lot of ways. And I also obviously have to caveat that the Buds 3 Pro have been temporarily recalled with, you know, a bunch of quality control issues around the ear tip. If you wanted to go see what is plaguing these Buds, go watch this is Tech Today's review 'cause he's had these for months and then he updated the review as he was editing it to kind of give an update on like what is going on more recently with Samsung. - I haven't had an issue with it, but if other people are having issues with it, it definitely needs to be dealt with. And so I'm glad that's being worked on. - But he notes that these are just overall better earbuds than the AirPods Pro 2. They may look kind of chintzy and the polygonal design doesn't really do anything except differentiate them in some small way. And like the light strip is kind of wasted. But the sounds better, the ANC is better. The transparency and microphone are as good and considerably improved over the Galaxy Buds 2 Pro. There is nine band EQing, custom EQing, that you can then save to the device that then gets transferred over to any other product, which is the first time Samsung's ever done this provided a full EQ. Apple famously as we've talked about on this show. - Third week in a row, I believe. Third week in a row where we've talked about the list of EQ options on iOS. - Right, and like all of these things, I think justify the change in shape. You know, it is what it is. It's an AirPod clone, but it also is just an objectively better product. And I think a lot of Samsung users are gonna enjoy the fact that you get like ultra clear calls because they have a specific codec that is only enabled when you connect it to a Samsung phone. It also supports ultra high quality audio with a Samsung phone. So there are like Samsung ecosystem specific benefits, which you get on the iPhone and the AirPods, but the sound quality, the dual driver, you know, that's all just a better experience. And I have the Buds 3, not the 3 Pro, and I've been wearing them for the last couple of days. And they're great. Like as Open Ear Buds, they're great. They have ANC that actually works, even though you don't have a passive seal. So the ANC is not as effective. They're super comfortable. The controls are consistent. All the complaints I had about the old Galaxy Buds are gone. And I would say like as a copy of another product, these are effective at 180 and $250. Whereas I think the Ultra is ineffective and has not proven itself, even at a discount to the Apple Watch Ultra, a proper competitor to that product. So it's interesting, right? I don't know, it's just, it's interesting. And I'm sure we will hear from people who have bought the Ultra who love it. And I'm not trying to take anything away from your enjoyment of it. I'm just saying that the move from the Apple Watch to the Apple Watch Ultra feels like a more significant jump and somewhat justifies the price jump over buying the Galaxy Watch Ultra over the Galaxy Watch 7, which is considerably cheaper, has the same sensors, the same software. And really, I don't actually think the Ultra looks better than the Watch 7. The 7 is classic, it's clean, it just works, right? I don't think you can say the same about the Watch Ultra's design. So. - Yeah, I have nothing to add to that, it's well said. - And then the Galaxy Ring. I think we talked about this a little bit last week, but there have been more takes on the Ring. - Yeah. - I don't know, this one continues to perplex me. There was a story out this week that Samsung needed to ramp up production because they've sold out of their first run, which you can take one way, right? Is that Samsung purposefully made fewer of these because they're expensive to make and they didn't know what the pre-order volume would be. So the story is that it's a massive success, but like, we don't actually know the number. - I thought I saw a million. Did I, did I just, it's possible I'd dreamt this. I was out sick yesterday. - I mean, a million is not a small number for a brand new hardware category. - Oh, sorry, they are aiming to make up to a million units is what I'm seeing. - Okay. - Now, so. - Yeah. - Yeah. I mean, that's still a lot of rings especially for a first gen product, which as you say, you know, it only works with Android. So like all iOS users out the door and then it works best with Samsung, although I don't think that will stop, you know, like a pixel owner from buying it necessarily. - Yeah. And I think like, I was making a joke in our Slack last week 'cause I went to our best Smart Rings post and every single like you get a little preview render of all of the products. - They're the same ring. - It looks, they look identical. Like every single Smart Ring looks the same because they're really hard to differentiate. I mean, a ring is a ring is a ring, right? But it is nice. I think that Samsung is a first mover here from like the big companies and that I don't think it's gonna put or like ultra human or Ring Kong out of business yet. I think we're still at the stage right now where high tides raise all boats and that's gonna happen with the Smart Ring category. I think this is gonna be putting more visibility on the category. It's gonna show Samsung as a mover here but URA is still like a much better product it seems from a tracking perspective and I'm sure that there is room for both. I'll be interested to see if other big companies jump on board this form factor. - Yeah, I was really caught surprised, I guess, in reading the Verge's review of the Galaxy Ring because it's a fairly positive review but there are like the tracking metrics seem so off, especially on runs. You know, it's a review by Victoria Song. She went for a two mile run and her watch ultra, her Galaxy watch ultra, I should say, recorded a 24 minute run for an 11 minute and 54 second pace versus the Galaxy Ring which reported a 30 minute run doing with auto tracking for 2.37 miles at a 15 minute pace which does to me sound like it started late and then also ended late. It probably tracked her movements for like, well, I guess six minutes, right? We know, we know. So for six minutes after and was not able to determine that when she had and had not stopped running but even more than that, the Galaxy Ring is trying to do this thing where it's using this like quote unquote AI powered energy score that you've seen from like whoop or basically every fitness tracker is trying to do these things now where it tells you how much energy you have during the day and it told her she got a lot of sleep after a long day of a run and it was like, oh, your score jumped up 16 points and then it told her that her sleep was compromised because she needed to stop drinking alcohol or eating late at night to which she said she doesn't drink and her last meal was at 645. So it doesn't seem to be particularly useful data. - Well, that's unfortunate 'cause that's kind of why you want to buy one of these things. - Right, it's a lifestyle thing, right? It's like not like, to me, the like, oh, it tracked her run poorly thing is like, okay, well, I almost wouldn't expect the ring to track a run as well as like a watch, especially if you're doing auto detection over starting the run. I can like basically understand that the reason to get the ring is to get those energy scores, is to track your sleep and know what's affecting you and what's not, to be a person who doesn't drink alcohol and then to have the ring be like, you know, you'd be getting better sleep if you stopped drinking alcohol is like, not just useless, but like, almost a little insulting, I don't know. That's pretty much it for Samsung, right? I mean, like, the only other thing is like, the Galaxy Z Flip 6, James kind of came to the same conclusion, right? I think we both ended up giving the phone 7.5 out of 10 and it's just that like, to circle back around the phones, it's difficult to recommend this definitively over other options, both like in North America and especially globally, but like even in North America, the Razer really complicates things. It's difficult to see why Samsung is charging $100 more, especially for the Flip 6, which is just like the most mild upgrade you will ever see for a foldable, right? Like we're already reaching this point where it's like, that's what it looked like last year. Samsung is brushing up against terms like lazy, which is not in James's review, but I know it was in Digital Trends's headline, because that's not what you want to see from the world's leading or certainly North America's leading Android manufacturer, especially when Apple continues to build momentum both here and abroad, right? I think it's like a bad time for any Android OEM to be lazy, but certainly the one that is quote-unquote leading the market. - Yeah, I don't know if I would ever say that a phone this complex is lazy. When you look at the scale that people are upgrading from, like I'm not even considering or I barely, and I'm in this business considering upgrading for my fold four to my fold six, most people are upgrading from a fold three maybe, or fold two, or they're going from a regular phone to a foldable for the first time. If this is the first foldable you've ever used, it is so much more mature and you can use this so much more confidently than you could have even two or three years ago. And I think those small iterative updates have led to this point, and I totally understand people, and I have the angel and devil side of it on my end as well, where I'm like, yes, I would love to have seen Samsung add better cameras or go with a different aspect ratio or all that, but those are, that's not this product, right? And I think the sooner people realize that Samsung has for better or worse, decided that the fold is a fold that looks like this, and the flip is a flip that looks like this, they will likely be that way for a while, and this is the best version of that product. I just don't think this is a great product anymore. It's a functional product. The second I opened my OnePlus Open again, after getting the fold six, I was like, oh, okay, I'm home. Oh, same, same. So I hadn't used the Open in a couple months, 'cause I've been jumping from a review unit to review unit, but it's of the foldables that were released last year, it's like the one that I've come back to again and again, and after I filed my fold six review, I did the same thing, and I was like, man, this just feels so much more right, like it feels so much more comfortable to use in pretty much every way, and I want to know what that company is doing with their second gen foldable, because to me, it's like, I still kind of think that the Open is ahead of the fold six, and I don't think Galaxy AI or a bump from the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 to the Gen 3 make enough of a difference for me to think otherwise. Now that said, Galaxy AI can generate a photo of a Pokemon Bong as we found out this week. - As we found out, famously. - So actually, maybe it is good. Maybe it is, and I encourage people, Jules will put it in the show notes to go read Taylor's piece on sketch to image. Boy, you can just make almost whatever you want with that thing, huh? - Yeah, no, that's definitely a reason to buy this phone if you haven't thought about it yet. I think that's a good transition opportunity. Let's talk about some of these Pixel leaks. So this is just relentless now. We've basically learned everything. We now have leaked display specs. We have more colors. We have the Galaxy Buds 2 Pro. We have an advertisement, like a literal ad that they will show on television that just shows us everything. So where do you want to start? - I think we start with the promo, probably. We talked about the hardware last week. I think we should start with this video. ♪ I can't stop looking at it ♪ - This is a full minute long or almost minute long leak to add that highlights the phone's hardware, which again, we kind of know a lot about and we can talk about what we learned this week in a minute. I think more interestingly, this highlights all of the software features, which is what the Pixel lineup has always kind of excelled at. So like the first half of the ad or so is like really pushing Gemini. And I do have this question that I want to pose to you later on about Gemini. Beyond that, we get a quick look at the Pixel screenshots thing. I can't even remember if we talked about what Pixel screenshots are, but it's basically what Microsoft was trying to do with Windows 11, except a little less creepy. It's like you have to take a screenshot for it to like store the screenshot so you can search through it. I want to know what you think about this add me feature. So basically the idea is it's probably this year's like marquee Pixel camera AI feature. And the idea is that instead of having to have one person in your friend group take the photo and they're not in it or hand your phone off to a stranger and hope that they know how to take a photo and don't run off with your phone or something. One of you takes the photo of the other. In this case, there's two, it's a group of three. They take the photo of the two and then they run back and you take a photo of the third person with the first photo outlined over the viewfinder so you know where the two are. So you stand in between them and then it just stitches the two photos together to make a complete group shot of the three of you. I think this is great. As someone who was like really down on best take last year and like the idea of editing like people's faces to like match the mood you want. I think this is exactly back to like solving a real problem. I mean, I like Maddie and I went out with a group of friends to a 4th of July carnival a few weeks ago and we ran into this exact issue where we had to like hand the phone off to someone to like get them to take photos of us. And like this would kind of solve the issue. And so I don't know, like I think this is great. - Okay, so I have a couple of hot takes on this. - Sure. - The first is this is the sad dad/Instagram husband feature. (laughing) - Are you trading from experience? - 100% of experience, okay? So there have been, I cannot even count hundreds of times where my family and I are on vacation or somewhere at a park even to summer casual and we are wrestling with the kids to get a shot. And it's always, Daniel take out your phone and get the shot. I am never in my family's photos ever anymore, ever. Like it just does not happen. I occasionally can get a selfie but the selfie is always with me looking massive because I have a huge noggin and I'm in front of everybody. So the selfie looks bad, right? I don't want to be in front. I want to be in the photo. I want to be framed. The fact that I can hopefully, I mean, this might not work, right? I think this is a best case scenario where you have a static object and then you can have like a friend who can frame you properly. But like-- - 100% - Even in a poor situation where like I'm just asking my wife, okay, I want to be in the photo, use the add me feature, tell me where to stand and just snap it quickly. Even if it doesn't look perfect, it's better than the second hot take which is this is going to completely ruin all of the Reddit people who have to like insert or remove folks from photos, right? Like how many times are like, oh Joe's not here today, he's sick but I want him in this group photo. Here's his photo, can somebody add him in Photoshop, right? Like obviously-- - I've done this. I, years ago, I, like we gave a group shot of like my main friend group to one of our friend's moms who like was our second mom through high school, right? And like there were two of our friend group who were not there the day we took the photo. Like it was not a planned thing of like, we're going to gift this photo. It was a photo of us all there. And then we were like, this is almost the photo we need. And so I took separate photos of them and then stitched them in Photoshop and it worked. I did a decent job. This would solve that issue though, you know what I mean? - It's a lot of work. It also, it remains to be seen if you can add somebody in after the fact. - Right. - So if I can go somewhere similar or even like be somewhere else and have Google just removing me from a white wall and insert me into this photo. - Right. - I don't think that's possible but who knows, maybe it is. - I hope so 'cause that's exactly what I did. I took photos of my friends in front of a white wall. - But I agree with you that this is a great kind of like - Yeah. - Pixel feature. - I get it, it makes total sense. - I'm like, I've been here and I see the problem you're solving and you know what, I'm on board, which is like not where I was a year ago with best take. And so like I just like, I just wanna be clear that I'm never hating on AI camera features up front or like forever. I really like the idea of this. I hope it works as well as it looks like it does in the ad. Like obviously I wanna use it for myself to see how that works and work not that far away from a review period. So like I'll know within a month, but yeah, I don't know. Like when I saw this, I was immediately like, this is great. - But I agree with you that best take is not proven to be as effective as I think we hoped it would be. I don't often get suggestions for best take photos that I actually think are better than the original one. Most of my photos are like super chaotic. So they're all not very good. And going back to the Pixel screenshots thing, this is just like leaning into the way that people use their phones. - I already do this. - I cannot tell you how many times I take a screenshot of something just to remember it. Like I will go to a website and I will highlight a section of an article just so that I can like when I'm flipping through my photos or screenshots, I will be like, oh yeah, right, that thing. - I have absolutely screenshotted like three different things on my phone in the last like probably the two days of like gotta remember this. Like I do it all the time and it's, you can kind of find them right now by either trying to think of specific words that were in the screenshot or just searching screenshots in Google photos. But like I think having Gemini there to help better parse the language you're going to use to try to find something is again, exactly what I think, I think it's exactly how people use their phone. And it's what I've been asking for from these companies that are trying to build AI features into their phones, which is I want you to tell me how AI is going to solve the way I already use my phone or make it better how I already use my phone, right? Like which I would say for the most part, we have not really seen. I mean, we just joked about sketched image. I love Taylor's Pokemon Bong story. I think it's so funny. It also, it solves no issues. It's just a party trick. It's fun for the first couple times you pull it out and show someone and then you're never going to use it again. And I don't think that's true but these sorts of features. - Yeah, I mean, I think Google tries to offer a whole bunch of like innovative self-sufficient features. - Yeah, it's not the right way to put it but the features that stand on their own and some of them work and some of them don't. I think you put this in the show notes but there was a feature announced last year during the Pixel 8 event, which is still not here. It's called Zoom Enhance. - I did, I wrote unrelated but remember Zoom Enhance LOL underneath the promo link. - And I absolutely remember it 'cause it was incredible. And Google said that it would be launching later that year and it is now July and we still haven't heard it of it. Like it's obvious why because they tried to do it in the cloud and it was either probably too slow or not good enough to release as a standalone product. But-- - Do you think we see it? - My guess is that it will come with a Pixel 9. It'll come with a Pixel 9, yeah. - Okay, yeah, I hope so. - Because they're in the promo, they're talking about this super Zoom-- - They have super resume for video now. - Super resume for video, right? So that, I think, is basically the same thing. - Yeah, but Zoom Enhance was for-- Wasn't it for photos you had already taken? Am I misremembering this now? I might be misremembering this now. - I thought it was for video. - Oh no, you're right, it is for pictures. - Yeah. - Okay, then nevermind. - I mean, but no, but it's a complicated thing. I think the issue is that if it's still not ready, they have to just not talk about it, because they can't be like, it's coming later to the Pixel 9 after they already tried to do that with the Pixel 8. It has to be their day one, or just show up in a feature drop. Like, they cannot talk about it in a way where people can be like, "Oh, here we go again." Like, so I don't know. I would like to ask them about it. I might try to ask them at the Pixel 9 event, especially if we don't hear about it. And you'll be there too. So we can both chase down. - I am sure they're gonna love the reps. - Yeah, just corner one, get answers. Okay, I do have one, I do have a question before we move on. So I said half of that ad is, wow, I almost spilled my water all over my laptop. I, half of that ad is like, this phone has Gemini. That's how they tease the Pixel 9 last week. We talked about that. Do people care if a phone has Gemini? Like, do normal people care? Is it worth devoting half an ad to? - No, they do not care. - All right, that's it, that's just the question. I wanted to make sure, 'cause that's my answer, but I wanted to, sometimes, Daniel, you keep me in check. And I like to use that to my own advantage to be like, my crazy-- - I did hear from people that have had a good experience with Gemini. I got a couple of very thoughtful emails about how AI/GEM and I has like, more organically been integrated into people's lives. But I would say, especially the fact that AI has commoditized so quickly, right? - Yeah. - Like, what does it mean for a phone to have AI, right? You can go to the Play Store right now and download the chat GPT app or the perplexity app or the Bing app. You can download the Gemini app on a non-pixel phone. The Galaxy Z Fold 6 launches with Gemini built in where you swipe in from the side to get a Gemini prompt, circle to search. You just hold down on the gesture bar, right? These are things integrated into the most popular Android phones in the world. So how is Google going to really say that it's differentiating the pixels with Gemini? I don't see it being a value add. The only thing that I'm actually seeing is that Google will give you a year of Gemini advanced with your pixel purchase. And whether or not that's interesting to you, I can't say, but like, they're certainly not doing that with the Samsung phone. - No, I think Google wants (laughs) I think they are trying to get people to use Gemini advanced. I think people are not signing up for Gemini advanced at $20 a month. I think it's more of a, we need to just get this into people's hands even if they are not paying for it until next year, assuming they don't cancel third. - Subscription. - Yeah, exactly. I mean, it gets their average monthly users stats up. It helps them get more data about how people are using Gemini advanced, right? Like to them, it's an investment. It's Google, they can afford it. But what we're seeing increasingly is that companies like Chatshi or OpenAI, perplexity, Microsoft even, are having a lot of trouble convincing people to pay extra even for bespoke AI features, right? Like Workspace or Office 365, Microsoft 365, right? Like these are aimed at companies, right? That you might charge $20 a seat for everybody who already subscribes to these products or you're gonna ask for $5 a month to kind of get them to the next level or whatever. But the idea that we should be paying for the extra compute or to pay to justify the extra compute on your end, I just don't think the value is there. And what we saw this week with OpenAI launching Search GPT in a very small beta is interesting because Chatshi is a chat bot that the company has tried to monetize by getting, you know, opening its most advanced LLM to you under a paywall. But I think the long term here is that you're gonna have sponsored responses in an AI powered search or that they're gonna justify providing this for free by partnering with companies that provide them data, like Reddit or publishers or, you know, forums or whatever. And then like you're gonna have this weird dynamic where you're gonna use these search results and a company may be able to get its results to the top of the search in a way that is somehow more organic because it's not a sponsorship. They have a deal with this data provider that they've then vetted and can promote as more authoritative. And because they're giving you one answer or one serious answer, you don't know, right? Like was this Vox or Atlantic link promoted to the top of your search because they have a deal with them? Or was it because they are the most authoritative answer for that query? And like the beauty of Google, I mean, there have been many accusations over the years that Google has like messed with the rankings of its search results by prioritizing or Yelp even sued the company for demoting its search results in favor of its own local results for Google Maps. And like that is played out for over a decade now, but like the monetization model around AI is just not clear to me. And it goes back to as companies add AI capabilities to mobile, what does it look like when your phone has Gemini? Nothing. It's the same as if it has Google Assistant. Nobody's ever thought that Google was trying to monetize Google Assistant, not directly anyway. But then we have another story this week around Amazon trying to monetize Alexa and coming out with a premium version of Alexa and how that's gonna work. Like I don't know about you, but the last subscription on Earth that I wanna have is a premium Alexa. Although if you wanna throw it in with my prime subscription, I'm not gonna say no. So I don't know, I mean, the whole thing is just weird. It's just like super weird. And I look at this promo video and I'm like, you're dedicating 15 of the 30 seconds of a promo to telling us that like, you can ask Gemini anything? Well, I can ask Gemini anything on my Pixel 8 or my Pixel 7 or my Pixel 6 or my CMF phone one because it's an app that I download on my phone. - Right. - And that's it. - Right. - I should mention basically while we were prepping this podcast, there was actually another Pixel 9 promo video leak for the regular Pixel 9 that does have a re-imagine with prompt for magic editor that basically lets you customize the sunset in the background, that's the demo they give. That seems to be more in line with what I'm talking about when I complain, or not really complain, but like struggle with stuff from like Galaxy AI where I'm like, yeah, this is more in the line of like, we can edit the photo with AI, so we did. Like, we made it a thing that you can do. I don't know how often it'll get used, but it's there. That's pretty much the only other thing in this. They seem to be changing the name of Pixel feature drops to just Pixel drops. That's the only other thing. - I kinda like that. - It's much harder. - They have to have some sort of like candy marketing tie in here. - Yes. - You know, like, just send, like, they should put a couple of like Pixel drops into your phone box. - Oh, yeah. - They could just be like... - It's hard to learn with, like, Jolly Rancher. - Yes, oh my God. Google, that's a free idea. I got more. - No, it's not. - Oh yeah, you're right, you get one, you get one. - Yeah, you get one for free. - When you have the higher risk for the rest. - So I'm looking at one of these leaks, and one of the leaks does say that you get a free year of Gemini advanced. - Yeah. - So, I mean, that's happening, like, for sure it's happening. - Yes. - So... - They're calling it Google One AI Premium Plan. - Good job on that, that really rolls off the tongue. - To be honest, like, we're pretty deep into the show. There's more Pixel leaks that we don't even have time to talk about. We've seen the inside of the Pixel 9 Pro Fold. It looks like the OnePlus Open. We were praising earlier. - I'm here for it. - I'm here for it too. - I actually like this phone a lot, and I'm very excited about using it. I am going to write maybe two, maybe even three Pixel Fold related features next week. I have a lot to talk about the Fold ahead of this launch, but my big takeaway is that I like this a lot. It, again, my God, just like, it looks so much like the Open. It's kind of funny. As long as it's significantly lighter than the first gen, and it's got a better interior display, this is a win. - Do we have dimension, or do we have a weight? - Don't believe we have leaks on the weight. I'm very curious about, yeah, how much less it weighs, but also is it thinner than the Fold or the Open? Like the Open is pretty thin. - It's, yeah. - Xiaomi and Honor have just like demolished the rest of the industry when it comes to thinness and foldables. - So I'm doing this off the top of my head. Believe the Pixel Fold was 12.1 millimeters. Believe the OnePlus Open was 11.7. That is not including camera bumps. I don't notice a big difference in thickness between the Pixel Fold and the OnePlus Open. As long as it doesn't get thicker, I think it's fine. I would love for it to be a little thinner, but I've currently switched back to the first gen Pixel Fold as of this morning. So like the issue with that phone is not that it's too thick. The issue is that it's way too heavy. So I would say that-- - I mean, same. - In a post, your issue is that you can't buy it. (laughs) They post-- - No, I'm talking, nevermind. - Oh, you're too heavy. I see what you're saying. - Yeah, me too, buddy. Me too. - I would say that the issue-- God, I totally lost my train of thought. The thing that the Pixel Fold needs to, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold needs to do is be under 240 grams. That's what the Open and the Z Fold 6 have hit. It needs to be 240 or less, which is a huge drop because I believe it's 282, 281, something like that for the first gen Pixel Fold. That's a big drop, but it can't be, it's gotta meet the competition at the least. And if it does, I think we're pretty much, I don't expect them to have the same amount of really, really good multitasking stuff that the Open has. I still think Open Canvas will trounce how Pixel does multitasking, but I think for the most part, the Pixel experience is so enjoyable for me to use that I would maybe suffer with worse multitasking just to have that clean build of Android that I enjoy. - Yeah. - And the camera would probably be better, although I like the Open's camera, but we'll see lots of questions about that. We've seen the colors, they're kind of boring, but the Pixel 9 gets brighter colors as usual. There's nothing really surprising. I guess the pink Pixel 9 looks very nice, but that's about it. What I actually, I didn't put in the show notes until we were halfway through recording this episode that I wanna talk about, is the other Pixel device that leaked this week, which is the Google TV streamer. Daniel? - Oh yeah. - I know, I know. It's so easy to forget about. - I'm mystified, but I'm also, I'm encouraged because everybody who's like, yeah, who needs another set-top box, just keep it a dongle, is also missing the point that the reason the dongle has failed is because it has no space for compute. - Yes. - Agreed. - Like, this one has to be powerful enough to compete with the other set-top boxes that are dominating the industry. And clearly, having it just be a small, passively-cooled, terribly low-powered dongle is not good enough. And as convenience as that may be, I don't know, a single Chromecast with Google TV user in my life anymore. Like, they don't exist. - Mine is in a drawer. Couldn't tell you what drawer, but it's in one of them. - They've even moved to their own televisions worse experience, or even better experience probably, but should be worse, but it's not. Or they have like an Apple TV or something, or Roku. - I hope this costs $100 at minimum. Like, I hope this is expensive for a set-top box. - It better be. - If they come out and they're like, check out the new Google TV streamer. It's $49.99. I'm going to go like, I don't think this is worth my time or money. - You fooled me once with the Chromecast with Google TV four years ago. Like, I bought it, it was good for six months, and then I spent 18 months factory resetting it every three months to get it back to good. And this thing needs to have like, not even that much storage space, just like 32 64 gigabytes of storage space. It needs like enough RAM that it's not force closing every app when I go to the home screen. It needs to not give me a bunch of errors all the time, or disconnect from my network. God, the Chromecast is so bad. Anyway, I hope this is good. The name is terrible. I do not understand the decision to call this Google TV streamer. No one calls Amazon Fire Sticks or Roku devices streamers. Streamers aren't like the apps, like Netflix. I don't know what they're doing here. They should have either just called this Google TV or Google TV box or like pixel TV. I don't even know if those are good, but they're better than this. - Maybe a Nest TV? Like, I don't know. - It looks like a Nest product. It's a smart home product, right? That's a smart home brand. I think honestly, Nest has more cache next to your television than anything Google, right? I mean, the last thing that was powered by Google in your television was... Oh, fuck, what's it called? - They're missing pictures. - The gaming thing, the game streaming service that-- - Stadia. - Oh, Stadia. - That was like, I don't know what you're doing. - I thought you were talking about hardware. Yes, okay, yes. - I mean, I was talking about the controller, which you would hit near your television. You're right, it's-- - No, no, no, you're right. - Yeah, I have the, I keep it on display in my office. I have a Stadia Premier box. It's opened, but nothing's been taken out of it. It's like, next to my Wii U. This is not a joke, it's my little failed tech display. - I love it. I still have two unopened Stadia controllers. - Yeah, they sent me so many. I think I had three total. I think I still have them. - Anyway, RIP. So, I can't believe I forgot the Stadia like the name of Stadia, like that's so embarrassing. - I was thinking Lumia for some reason. I was like, no, no, that's not it. It's close. Another dead product line, but not the same one. - I mean, and God, I didn't even add this either, but we saw a new Nest Thermostat leak this week. - Okay, I have thoughts on this because-- - Okay. - I have the weirdest history with Nest Thermostats in my house. I went from a Nest Learning Thermostat third gen. So like the current flagship, which was actually the oldest product. - Yeah. - Released in like 2017 or something, or earlier than that, like-- - 2015. - 2015. - Yeah. - And then I got the Nest E as a review unit. So I installed that and I had that on for a couple of years. And then when they released the Nest Thermostat, the cheapest one, I replaced the Nest E with the current Nest Thermostat, which is not learning base and it doesn't support any of the accessories. And I've just been too lazy to change it back. So I've had this Nest Thermostat on my wall for a couple of years and it does the job. It's completely fine. - Yeah. - I'm home all the time anyway. - Yes. But the fact that they're releasing a nicer learning thermostat fourth gen is like an instant buy for me. - Yeah. - 100%. - Yeah. - So I will throw money at this problem 'cause I genuinely think it looks excellent. Like they're getting rid of the bezels. They're probably gonna have solely support. It's gonna be slick. - Yeah. I'm excited for it. I still have, we never upgraded the thermostat in this house. So it's still whatever basic model that was installed when we moved in. And yeah, I guess I've been unknowingly waiting for this. - Nobody cares about the thermostat they use until it breaks down. - True, yeah. - But like Google's also pushing older products to the Google Home app. So this week, the Nest Hello or the formerly known as Nest Hello, the Nest Wired Doorbell first gen has been added to the public preview for the Google Home app. And I cannot tell you the consternation that I've gone through. I had three cameras in my house. Two of them were only available in the Nest app and then one of them was available in the Home app. And the Home app for many years was terrible. It did not support streaming or like any of the features, like the history features from the Nest app. But you can tell that the infrastructure of the Google Home app is now better than the Nest app. The Nest app is creaking along. It has been updated in years. It barely works. But I also have a Nest Protect smoke detector and I have a Nest Yale smart lock, both of which only work in the Nest app. So I still have like three, four products. So this week, my one remaining camera is now compatible with the public preview. And if you transfer it over, it means that you can no longer view the camera in the Nest app anymore. It's only available in the Google Home app. So I have this bifurcated existence where I have to open the Nest app for my thermostat, or sorry, the Google Home app for my thermostat and my two cameras. And then the other camera and all my legacy accessories are in the Nest app. And I'm like, Google is just not doing a great job here. This has been two, three years of purgatory. And this is a problem that only I experience, I realize. But I still think it's an important one. So that's my beef. And you're clearly very excited. You're like sleeping, you're writing an article. You're just like, I don't care what you're saying. - I'm here, I'm listening. I was maybe messaging. - You're smoking from your Pokemon bomb is what you're doing. - Listen, if we're gonna talk about smart home apps, I need to ask you a question. Hey Daniel, how's Sonos doing? - Fuck off. - No, but for real, we need to talk about how Sonos is doing. - Okay, so yesterday, as we're recording, so if you've been following Sonos for the last three months or so since the Sonos ACE was released, you'll know that in early May, the company released an update to its app, completely changing everything. It re-architected the app from scratch. In doing so, two very big things happened. One is that many, many features that were in the old S2 app disappeared. Local library support, timers, alarms, sleep support, like all the hardcore pro features were gone overnight. And there was no timeline for those things to come back. The second most egregious issue was that the app didn't work. It just straight up didn't work. - Yeah, it's a problem. - Thousands of people could not access their speakers, could not group speakers together, got errors when they tried to play. It was a nightmare. - Good thing no one replaced all of their speakers in their house with just Sonos ecosystem products, right? - Yeah, no, nobody that I know of at all. So it's one of those things, if you go on Reddit, you know how it tells you about posts and other subreddits that might interest you when they're like trending? Sonos was like at the top of public Reddit, you know, you can scroll to the right to get to like the home screen that's not for you, but it's like the trending section. People angry at Sonos, that was like the number one post every day for like a month, because everybody was so mad at Sonos and they would get like 2,000 comments. It took until yesterday, July 25th, for the company to make an official statement, apologizing for messing up so badly. - They had made other statements, is the problem. - Well, no, they said it's a courage. - They'd made statements that were not-- - Helpful. - They were not Miyacalpa's needed to be acknowledged. Like the CEO basically said, too bad, so sad, you're not the clients that we want. And then basically took until yesterday, so two and a half months later, for them to issue an apology. - Which they pushed out in the app, as Neelai Patel pointed out. - I actually haven't opened the app yet. I'd only read it on the website. They put this everywhere. I mean, the PR team has been working overtime, but even the blog post itself, okay, I wanna read you a little bit of this. This is from Patrick Spence, Sonos' soon-to-be former CEO. We know that too many of you have experienced significant problems with our new app, which rolled out on May 7th. It is July 25th, as this is published. And I wanna begin by personally apologizing for disappointing you. There isn't an employee at Sonos who isn't pained by having let you down. And I assure you that fixing the app for all of our customers and partners has been, and continues to be our number one priority. We developed the app to create a better user experience with the ability to drive more innovation in the future, such as the leaked $1,200 sound bar that is gonna replace the arc next year. And with the knowledge that it would get better over time, however, since launch, we have found a number of issues. Fixing these issues has delayed our prior plan to quickly incorporate missing features and functionality. Okay, so that is the most important part of this message, right? Not only did they know that the app that they were launching removed a lot of must-needed features, and they just decided to make, like they basically thought we're gonna release this as a V1, it's gonna be fine and stable and usable. And then every couple of weeks we're gonna release an update to backport a lot of the older features that were removed. Any company in history that has released a re-architect app knows that this is not the way to do it. You can see the shit out of this until you have no more bugs. I mean, like, obviously that's not possible, but that is clearly what happened here was that they had a hardware deadline to announce and release the Sonos Ace headphones that required this new app. And because of that, they released a half-finished V1 that was not only missing a bunch of features, but was completely unusable. - Real quick, real quick, can I ask you a question? And maybe this is better at the end, but we talked about the Sonos Ace headphones. We talked about how they're not particularly built into the ecosystem beyond the soundbar thing, which is not particularly worth the cost of entry. Why did they not just release this app while also keeping the old app around? And then be like, if you buy the headphones, you have to use this app. If you wanna use the headphone soundbar thing, you have to use this app. Otherwise, you can switch to the new app if you want to. You can stay in the old one if you want to. We're gonna be building out the new. Why did they not do that? It's not enough of a ecosystem bot, like play, I don't know. It just seems very obvious to me. - Well, I mean, think about it. If the V1 had removed a bunch of features that only a few thousand people use, but everybody else was perfectly able to use and was relatively happy, then I don't think this would have turned into the shitstorm. It would have blown over relatively quickly. Sonos would have probably reincorporated all of those features by now, and everybody would have just gone on with their lives. Because if you're launching a brand new product in a brand new category against Sony and Bose and Apple, you need a marketing feature to stand out. And that was the TV swap feature, right? And whether or not that's a feature that is like deserves to be on a billboard, it is the feature that needs to be on the billboard for Sonos and they could not have built that functionality into the old app, right? I get it from an engineering perspective. And like, it's just that then they should have delayed the release of the headphones. - And that too, yeah. - Because I think that there will be reporting in the future, probably from Chris Welch at the Verge, 'cause he seems to have an ear into every room at Sonos on like what the hell happened here? Because it will come out that people knew this was a problem and knew that it was gonna happen. And just they decided to go ahead with it anyway. It was hubris. It was straight up hubris. - Okay, yeah, no, that makes, that makes. You know what? I should have had that answer because again, I wasn't joking when they said that this update took courage two days after they broke it out. That was a real thing they did. - I mean, that worked out for Apple really well when they used that, when they talked about removing the headphones. - It kind of did, like Apple can get away with that stuff because on, okay, so they said that about the headphone jack. They were fucking right. I mean, they were wrong. I would love for every phone to still have a headphone jack on it because when I wanna use wired earbuds, it's annoying to have to go find a dongle. But like, they were right that people wouldn't care because the lack of wires on true wireless earbuds is enough of an upgrade to get people to move on. And that's not true when you're talking, you're not talking about like smartphone, just like a smartphone feature that can be fixed with a dongle. You're talking about diehard ecosystem fans that have sunk thousands of dollars into Sonos speakers, Sonos products, and you are taking features away from them that they have no work around on, breaking a bunch of other features, and then being like, we don't know when it'll get fixed. - I think this is less about, like it's less similar to, we have courage to remove the headphone jack and more about like the, you're holding it wrong. - Yes. - Rapple was so stubborn about that. And then basically had a tantrum and said to everybody that, okay fine, we'll give you these-- - Bumper cases. - Bumper cases for free. But never really acknowledged the problem and just sort of hoped that their annual release cycle would just wipe it away. And to some extent it did, right? But Sonos has two problems that Apple didn't have, right? One is that Sonos users are just as fiercely loyal as Apple users, but their turnover rate is much lower. So you have people that have spent tens of thousands of dollars with Sonos that are still using those products, right? You have people like, I went to a party this weekend for a friend's birthday, when they renovated their house, they included speakers in all of their ceilings, connected to a Sonos hub. And when the app came out, their ceiling speakers stopped working. What are you gonna do? Are you gonna put an echo in your bathroom because your ceiling speaker stops working, right? Like, these are people that have literally built their houses around this ecosystem. - Right. - And it stopped working properly. After years of working consistently over and over and over again. So-- - Well, and also these people serve as evangelists. - For some-- - Served as evangelists. Not even just joking. - Well, like, no, exactly. You burn these people and it's like, not only are they, look, like, I'm not, I'm not, but like, if you have the tens of thousands of dollars to sink into just your speakers on loan during a home renovation, the Sonos demographic, I don't wanna see wealthy, but like, they have the money to sink into these things, right? They probably have the money, maybe not right now, but eventually to be like, fuck off Sonos. Like, you burned me, you burned me for over, for almost three months. You were out here saying, I just had to deal with it. I'm the problem, not you. And not only am I not going to recommend Sonos to people anymore, and these are the people who, like, Sonos needs being out there, being like, Sonos changed my life so much. I built its speakers into my ceiling, but they're then gonna go, like, I'm moving to, I mean, I don't know if there's like, a competing ecosystem at the level of Sonos, but they're going to look for alternatives. They're gonna be like, no, I didn't buy the new Sonos sound bar. I spent $4,000 on a really nice alternative. I don't know the high end sound bar market well enough to name brands. - But that's the actual problem here, is Sonos doesn't have a lot of mainstream competition. - Right. - So people feel stuck, which is, I think exacerbated the problem, right? If there was an accessible competitor to Sonos, like there's Blue Sound and a couple of other companies, but like, they are way more expensive. Their ecosystem is not as robust. And in general, Sonos, I think, has just been the market leader for so long that they are basically the monopoly in the space. Not the monopoly, I shouldn't use that word. They're definitely not a monopoly, but they are the market leader. And I think it speaks to their dominance when a company like the Wirecutter has a best multi-room speaker set up article and said, we can no longer recommend Sonos because of the app kerfuffle in our guide. But instead of like, they didn't have many alternatives in their guide, it was like Sonos are bust. So they've like said, we are gonna have to completely re-architect this article because we don't have a clear alternative to Sonos to give you right now. Like, there are many other companies that do multi-room audio. Google and Amazon do multi-room audio, but they don't do high-fidelity multi-room audio at reasonable prices. - No, the Nest Audio is on this list as the budget pick, but that's not-- - Yeah, nobody's bought a Nest Audio in four years, let's be honest. - No, when they go on sale for dumb low prices during Black Friday, people buy them. That's it, it's just that time of year. No, I'm actually curious if that wire cutter decision, 'cause this was updated five days ago, played a role in this letter. I wonder if that was kind of a like, okay, the tide is actually turning like one of the Internet's most revered buyer's guides is being like, don't go buy Sonos, don't go buy anything, but don't go buy Sonos, I wonder if that played a part in them having to put out this letter. - I don't think so, I mean, it's probably contributed to-- - Yeah, not, a hundred percent of the reason, but maybe was the straw that broke the camel's back. - Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's basically what it comes down to is, it's like death by a thousand cuts, but-- - Exactly. - If you come out two months ago and been like, hey, we're hearing that the tide has turned against us, we are so sorry, we're gonna bring back the S2 app for those who want it, here you go, like even if they just released, submitted it to Apple as like Sonos Classic and then released the APK on the internet somewhere, you know? - They should. - Like that would have sufficed, I think, for people that wanted to go to that extent, I think it would have been okay. - Well, and that's kind of what I was trying to say when I'm like, why didn't they just keep it as a like, you know, Sonos parenthesis classic? And then be like, if you wanna use our new headphones or our new sound bar, you have to go use the new app, but otherwise we're keeping this here while we do our transition. And it just seems, in retrospect, right, hindsight is 2020, but that was one of the several routes they could have taken that would have not caused people to be like, I'm abandoning Sonos, which is a sentiment that is very easy to find on the internet right now. - I think they could, honestly, there were so many, there were so many things that they could have done that they, in the intervening two months to prevent it from getting to this level. The top post on our Sonos right now is the CEO can apologize to us by resigning. Like straight up, that is the top post on the subreddit. If that is not, it cannot get any clearer than this. - Yeah. - Like there is a wellspring of frustration towards this company, and I don't know, I mean, I'm sure the board of directors is looking at that exact course of action against Sonos, right? Like, let's look at the Sonos stock right now. It is over the last six months. They launched their new product on May the 5th. The stock rises to $17.88. And since then, it has dropped to $13.54. So it is down, it's not down like that much. It's not even at its 52-week low, but it is not going up. It's not on a good trajectory right now. So yeah, I don't know. We'll see. - Yeah. - All right, let's end on this. I went to a Google Play event this week. I was there Tuesday morning. I flew into New York on Monday. Had another flight delay because that's just my luck. - Of course you did. - But I want to talk about this. It's a very weird event, and I feel like I already told you my take on it in the pre-show when we were not recording, but it was a 20-minute keynote, I would say, from Sam Bright, who you've interviewed. - Yes, I'm so upset that I wasn't invited. I wanted to meet him in person. - I think, yeah, I actually, it's a good point. I don't know why you were not invited, and I was, but maybe I should have handed the-- - Oh, I'm joking. They don't need to invite me. - Remember that next time. No, no, no, I mean, you can cover it. But no, I was like, it was a very interesting event because it was a lot of small announcements and one kind of, not big announcement, but big push to try to get people to use apps more and to think about the Play Store in kind of a different light than I think they are now. They opened giving us a bunch of numbers about like X amount of, I think they're in here. Maybe not. Oh, here we go. So it was, most Android users only open the Play Store whenever they're looking to download a specific app, and then 60% of those apps go unused after they're downloaded on Android, which is kind of an astounding number, if you think about it. So they're rolling out a bunch of different new features. Like there's these AI-powered curated spaces that are only, the new one is only live in Japan right now, but it gathers a bunch of different apps into one space. There are new Play Pass and Play Points campaigns, I guess. Like they want people to sign up for these either subscription services or rewards programs. The big thing I think was collections, right? So it's this new widget that kind of opens up into this full screen interface that combines all of the apps on your phone of specific categories. So it's launching the seven categories into these spaces that you can browse with their partners, right? So they have to be partnered with Google on this, but then it will like you tap the watch category and it will be like, here's what Max is recommending or here's what you should check out on Max if you haven't already watched this. Here's what you should order from DoorDash, right? In the food category and so on and so forth. And on one hand, I think like some people might find this useful in terms of like, I've gathered all of your apps into one space. You can see everything that's going on with them without having to jump between every single app. On the other hand, it was a very big push to just consume more, watch this, eat this, buy this, and so on from our partners. And none of this is sponsored necessarily, but it did feel a little bit like, we want you to always be consuming content or consuming things, I guess like in terms of food or shopping apps. And it left me feeling a little bit disillusioned of like, that's not really, if anything I want to use my phone for that kind of stuff less, right? Like I think we've had a lot of conversations lately about like the light phone and how you can turn your phone into something that the little less distracting. And so for Google Play to come out and be like, we have this new tool that makes you use your phone more to watch more and listen to more. I understand that that's kind of that team's MO, right? Like they, of course they want you to use apps more. That's kind of the whole point of them existing. But I don't think I'm right or wrong on this. I just think that like it left me feeling a little, a little weirded out in terms of how much they really want this app to be a space for you to consume. I do think it will get better. They're eventually later this year launching more categories like health and fitness. I think that's less about consuming and more about being active travel and events. Same thing, less about consuming, more about going to things, right? Being in a real place. And you can make your own categories, right? So like I do think that's useful too. But I don't know. Like that was kind of where I left it. I don't know how closely you followed this if you kind of have the same idea about like how app categories work, how the Play Store works. But because you interviewed Sam Bright and have had lots of thoughts about the Play Store, I'm curious what you think, Daniel. I think Google has sort of, as has Apple, realized that the app stores are largely static products and they haven't really changed. People don't download new apps anymore. Whether or not developers can make money anymore, especially indie developers, that has sort of gone by the wayside. I think the incentive structures for app development have changed. As a result, people are spending far less money up front than they used to and more through subscriptions. And like, I just think Google is realizing that the Play Store is just another ad vector that it can leverage, right? It's another app that people can open to see ads powered by Google, right? It's got the Google app and Discover. It's got obviously search, which is like everywhere. It's got circle to search now and all that. But like, Google Maps is not thought of as a search engine, but it is. YouTube isn't really thought of as a search engine, but it kind of is. And now like, I think the Play Store is kind of a search engine that's not about apps anymore or not as much about apps anymore. The music collection is literally just leveraging Spotify's API to show you song ideas or album ideas. Shopping is like, it's gonna work with Best Buy and Walmart. Like, I don't necessarily wanna go into the Play Store to see a deal on Bose Ultra Comfort, quite comfort Ultra headphones. Like, I've got my spaces for that. I don't need to open the Play Store to see a new release for a song. But I think if Google knows that people open the Play Store just to browse and there's a lot of downtime on phones and this is as good a place as any to push partnerships. Google is looking for a way to make more money from the Play Store. That was evident when Sam spoke to me over a year ago or nearly a year ago. It was evident then and it's much more evident now that it's using AI to sort of suggest apps and bundles and shit like that. Like, I just think the App Store model is sort of broken. It's broken in the way that the internet is broken in that there is too much content and none of it is really exciting and it's all just diffuse, right? Like, you have so much choice, which means you have no choice at all. And I don't know about you, but like the way that I find app recommendations has not been through the App or Play Store in many years. It is through people that I follow on the internet that are like tuned in to other people. I follow on the internet, who I trust, who are then like, you have to try this indie app or something, right? Like, I haven't found anything really useful on the Play Store in years. And I don't know if this is gonna change it. It's also like, the collections thing is just reinforcing the market leaders, right? Who are they partnering with? They're partnering with Best Buy, Spotify, Pinterest, Nextdoor, like all the established players here. Kind of hilarious to open up the Watch tab, which has like every video service you've heard of and a bunch you haven't. And then there is one notable exception, Netflix, not there. So like, that Watch tab will not tell you about whatever is trending on Netflix or whatever, which is probably fine, 'cause you can probably figure that out. Netflix is so popular that you'll probably hear about it, but it's still funny to have this space where it's like, you're gonna find your next binge watch unless it's on Netflix, in which case, you're gonna have to use the Netflix app. - Also, the thing that I find really funny about this announcement is just how insane this current generation of users is. So there's this new feature called MultiPlay Titles. You can now have two Android games playing at the same time if you're running a compatible PC. - Yeah. - So they're touting it as like, you can be active in one and then passive in another, because you can have some sort of-- - Grinding resources in Clash of Clans, yes, that was their example. - That is the most insane thing I have ever heard. - It was more insane than you even think, because in the keynote, they described the Play Store and Android as the best place to play games, which I would say is objectively false. I'm not here being like, iOS is better. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying like, your PC is better. The PS5 is better, right? There are like real video games, like no offense to mobile titles, but like, I just think that's true. And then even beyond that, they were like the demo. So you can't see it in my photo, but like the demo that they had for this MultiPlay feature where they have like that Disney racing game and then behind it is Clash of Clans, I think, generating resources is that it's all powered off what was absolutely a $3,000 razor blade. Like at least, if not $3,500, like powered off, like you're just playing mobile games on it. And I'm like, I know this computer has the resources to play any video game right now that you want. It is just very funny to imagine someone coming home and being like, you know what I'm gonna play right now? - Clash of Clans, but I mean, millions of people absolutely are doing that. - But like on their phone, like as a time-waster. - I know people are on their computers all the time, like. - That's true. - I mean, the fact that like Apple releases every Apple arcade game on Apple TV and Mac at the same time, nobody even talks about that. I would love to know the stats of the number of people that play Android or iOS games on their respective platforms. - Whoa. - I would say very low, but the fact that Google continues to invest in this is interesting to me. - Yeah. - You know, it's interesting. Plus the fact that Microsoft announced this week that it's adding native Android file support to the File Explorer app. - Yeah. - Like all of this is just crazy to me. Like, I don't know, I'm tired, I wanna go drink coffee. We can, I think this idea of changing the play store is a good one. I think Sam has a lot of really good ideas and I respect the hustle. - Yeah. - I also just think that it reinforces the dominant players in a market that really doesn't need to reinforce any of these dominant players. - Exactly. - And I think it is, it is not a good look when you can tout the number of apps in your app ecosystem and then basically just show five to 10 of the top partners most of the time. Like your job as the VP and GM of Google Play is to showcase the smaller companies that are trying to eke out a living on your platform. That's what that's what I think. And I don't think this did anything to help that. - No, and that's a really good point. I mean, it's, it is one of those things where in exploring, 'cause I played with collections for 15 or 20 minutes in my demo and it, yeah, if you look through all of the photos I took of their demo Pixel 8 Pro running the app. And actually, you don't have to. You can, the widget's out, you can go use it. It's all the big players. You've heard of virtually every, you know, I joked about not knowing every streaming app on there, but it's what I mean is like, they've got like T&T now or whatever, right? Like it's, it's like apps you get with your cable subscription. Like I'm, I'm mostly joking. Like they're all known entities, which is, I don't know, like yeah, it's a good point. Like even beyond the content consumption part that bothers my brain a little bit. I think I'm mostly just being tired of being told to consume content, but like even beyond that, it's the same content. It's the same platforms you've already used. - Yeah. - Yep, yep, yep. - Do better. All right, we're gonna leave it on that. Will, I hope you have a good weekend. - Thanks, man. - I will not be here next week. - It was a hell of a show. - It was a hell of a show. So you're, you're on your own next week. - Okay. - I think you should ask your dad to guest. I think that would be fun. You could be like, my name is Daniel Saddleberg and then you can, you can do your normal thing. I think that would be incredible. Just an idea. You don't have to follow through with it. - Listen, it's an idea. I will, I'll, I'll, I'll ask around. I don't know if they'll- - Bring a microphone to the next time you see your dad and just like ask them to, ask him to record that so that we can use it in a future episode. That's all I ask. - Okay, understood. I'll talk to him. - Okay. Well, good luck, have fun. And I will, I will talk to you next week. - No, you won't, you won't. - I won't. I mean, I'll talk to you the week after. - Well, the week, oh no, sorry. We are, we are two, three weeks out from Pixel. So we've got- - We've got a while. - We've got a while. We've got one more, we'll record one more episode together before the Pixel event. And then I will bring my microphones to Mountain View and we will, we will get some drinks and record a very fun and person podcast. Perfect. Okay, until then, whoever's listening, thank you. Thanks for sticking with us. Send us your mobile games that you're playing right now. - Yeah. - I wanna hear. That's it, podcast@endriplease.com. We love you, bye-bye. - Bye. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - My name is Will Saddleberg. - Is it? - It is. (laughing) It's William, I guess. - Okay, that's fine. I'm Daniel Steven Bader, actually. - And this is true, I don't even know if you know this, William Daniel Saddleberg. So there we go. - I didn't know this. - Yeah. - I'm honored that your parents chose my name. - It's my dad's name. It's my dad's first name is Daniel. - Your dad should come on the podcast. - Oh, let him know he can come on. - Why? - No, I'm just like, let him know he can be a guest. Oh, he's in the end of it right now. He's at the cottage. He's in, he's at the cottage. - Oh, he's down the road for me. - Yes, the road being a couple highways. - That's just a small highway, it's fine. Well, Daniel Saddleberg is welcome anytime, but well, you'll suffice this week. Just a brought worst, an extra long brought worst worth of snow.
