It's been a quiet week of news, but we've been feverishly testing Microsoft's new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop Copilot+ AI PCs. In this episode, Devindra and Sam will answer your questions about Microsoft’s new hardware, and we'll deliver some of our first impressions. It turns out Microsoft may have finally gotten Windows on Arm support right! And some of the Copilot+ AI features are actually useful, surprisingly enough. But we'll have to wait a few months to test out the controversial Recall feature, which was pulled from the Copilot+ launch.

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Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcast, Engadget News!

Topics

• Dev and Sam’s first thoughts and an AMA on the Surface Pro and Surface Laptop Copilot+ AI PCs – 1:05

• News from Nintendo direct: The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, Mario, and finally, Metroid Prime 4 – 25:46

• Former OpenAI chief scientist launches Safe Superintelligence, inc – 35:02

• Wired report: AI search engine Perplexity is ignoring robots.txt guidelines – 37:36

• Listener question: What do you do with 8 gig fiber home internet? – 41:08

• Working on – 46:51

• Pop culture picks – 48:09

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Credits 

Hosts: Devindra Hardawar and Sam Rutherford
Producer: Ben Ellman
Music: Dale North and Terrence O'Brien

Transcript

Devindra: [00:00:00] What's up, Internet, and welcome back to the Engadget Podcast. I'm Senior Editor Devindra Hardawar. Joining me today is Senior Writer from Engadget, Sam Rutherford. Hey, Sam. Hey, how you doing? I'm doing okay because we finally have some Copilot Plus PCs. Sam has the Surface Laptop, I have the Surface Pro.

And we've just started testing these things. They came in late and we're just like trying to get Arubia as quickly as we can for both of us, but we've got some impressions here. We're going to be taking some questions from our live stream. So that's the first step, a special episode for us.

Cause it's a pretty light news week, but yeah, if you join us Thursday mornings, around 10 30 AM Eastern on our YouTube channel. You too can participate and ask us questions. See us show off some gadgets. We'll show off some stuff live from the Surface Pro. So if you're listening to this in audio form, go back and watch the video, cause you can actually see us test out some features and show off the hardware too.

As always folks, if you're enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to us in iTunes or your podcatcher of choice, leave us a review in iTunes. That's always super helpful and drop us [00:01:00]an email at podcast at engadget. com. Question for you, Sam, what was your first impression upon tearing open the Surface Laptop?

Sam: Right away I think it's good they didn't mess with the design. The design was never the issue for the Surfaces, they're, very beautifully crafted. And, opening up and this is going to sound like silly, but it's it functioned exactly like a windows 11 laptop is supposed to.

It just works. Yeah. Yeah. It just worked. And that was like, Hey, this is actually an improvement from, previous attempts at windows on arm right away. It seems like they, Microsoft has nailed all the important aspects. Battery life so far seems very good. Performance is very smooth.

I'm still wanting to test, how far you can push it, but what Qualcomm has been saying about the Snapdragon X elite chip. It seems a lot more believable. I have, a lot more faith in this new chip than previous, the 8cx versions of that. And yeah, it seems like maybe Microsoft and Qualcomm had really put it all together for, this new attempt at really [00:02:00] pushing Windows on ARM.

Devindra: I feel the same way, right? Like I just got done basically doing a quick review of the Surface Pro 10 for business, which is Was just a straight up chip upgrade over the Surface Pro 9 stuff. And I was reminded, I like the way the Surface Pro feels, but there's so many things that annoy me about it.

Like the kickstand and everything that's all still here on the new Surface Pro, but there are a few things that make this whole experience a lot better. First of all, you feel that this chipset, I have the Snapdragon X Elite in mind, is just fast. It feels like when I first started testing the M series MacBooks, like the MacBook Air and the first MacBook Pros that had it.

Everything is fast. Everything is zippy. It boots up quickly. It certainly wakes up from sleep almost instantly. Which is nice. Battery life looks really good. And I think mostly coming I feel so burned, Sam, having reviewed the Surface Pro 9 with 5G with that weird, like the 8CX chip. Or even the

Sam: Surface Pro X before that was supposed to be like a really big coming out.

And that thing did not deliver.

Devindra: The Surface Pro X, you should go back, check out Sherilyn's review of that thing. But that was like [00:03:00] Microsoft's big design push. Hey, we have thinner bezels. We have a thinner machine running on this ARM chip. But it was a disaster. Because for years, Microsoft has done a bad job of making Windows actually work well on ARM and the chips themselves weren't that fast to I did you ever play with the Surface RT, Sam?

The first Surface they ever launched? Yeah. That I remember after the launch event, like this seemed like a really cool idea, kickstand hybrid tablet laptop PC, but the Surface RT was a disaster because it ran a really limited version of Windows RT. And the app ecosystem

Sam: wasn't there.

There was no

Devindra: app ecosystem, right? It couldn't run any older apps. There was no emulation. There wasn't even emulation. I think when the surface pro X launched and then they eventually added that, but it wasn't very good. Like even with the the last pro nine, five G everything felt slow. Even running Chrome felt crummy.

Like you could feel the

Sam: system crawl. If you were doing something, it wasn't native to arm.

Devindra: It just felt like I'm using a bad, slow computer. And worst of all, for that computer, you also have to pay like an extra 300, 400 bucks to get it over the typical surface pro. So [00:04:00] good news, this surface pro works really well.

The Hardaware is still good. Like I'm still amazed what they can fit into the surface, the size of a surface case, because it's a full PC, it's, it feels more impressive to me than even what Apple can do with an iPad or something, because those are, I guess now it's the same because this is a mobile chip too.

But. Just Hardaware wise, it still feels more impressive to me. And the thing, I think what I noticed, Sam is like none of the AI features feel like the actual things I'm loving about this machine. It's more that it's fast. It's running all the apps I'm used to. I don't really have to deal with much incompatibility.

There is some though, like you noticed League does launch at all.

Sam: Yeah. One of the, I play, League of Legends with my wife pretty frequently. So that's one of the first things I tried installing. And it's really frustrating because you can go through, you can install League just fine.

It installs normally, even though it's definitely not an ARM native game. And then when you try to actually play, you [00:05:00] can't. And it's not because League itself doesn't run. It's because Riot's anti cheat system, Vanguard, needs kernel level support. So they asked you, hey, go restart your system so it can install the Riot anti cheat.

And. You restart it and then you can go play and it tells you to restart the thing because the anti cheat doesn't work. They

Devindra: can't touch this kernel

Sam: basically. And it's so frustrating because this is more of a like a sad situation for riot than Microsoft, because they, and they implemented the system within the last two or three months.

And so it's like they implemented the system. It doesn't support the new chip architecture. And so you have a system that has enough power to run it. It should run great, and even in emulation, it should be just fine, but because of Riot's anti cheat system, it doesn't work, and this is actually something that, a lot of games with anti cheat protocols are gonna suffer from more of your competitive games I think you mentioned Fortnite doesn't quite work right either?

Fortnite

Devindra: doesn't work at all Sam, there was a story yesterday [00:06:00]from the Wall Street Journal that Samsung put a warning up on its website about Copilot Plus PCs, that Fortnite won't even launch. But this was a known thing. Fortnite does not support ARM processors on Windows because you have to run it through the Epic launcher and it's also using anti cheat and it doesn't even try to launch.

It's just Hey, we don't support Windows on ARM. Sorry. So that's a big deal. Certainly for people who play those games, that stuff can be updated. Like those developers maybe Epic will. Play nice with this stuff eventually, but there were also reports that some Adobe apps also don't launch.

So there is still some of that, but I think at least from my typical workflow I was launching like most of the apps I use really it's only Evernote is the one that's emulated from X 86, everything else, like Spotify, Slack, and all those. Yep.

Sam: The big apps, even, Photoshop, Lightroom, those are supported.

All of your major stuff just seems to play pretty nicely, and even when it's not native, it still seems to run pretty fast.

Devindra: It feels pretty good. And I did try out some of the AI features as well. The big one, of course, recall [00:07:00] was recalled by Microsoft because of glaring security holes that everybody questioned them about.

And that's the reason why

Sam: we're playing catch up on the reviews is that they, they made some changes to recall. It's now only gonna be available if you're a windows insider I believe is what, at least initially. And so that's

Devindra: from now too. It's not even soon. Yeah.

Yeah. We have not had a chance to test recall. I did see the hands on stuff with it and it looked fine, but that security stuff. It's like what we were talking about with Apple's intelligence. All those announcements like Apple at least thought a little harder about privacy and actual concerns people would have that security professionals would have.

And Microsoft just like totally, they were just like empty brain over here, like with a lot of these potential issues. So I did try out the co create feature, which I'll demo on the live stream in a bit. Which where you can do a little doodle and then type some text and it'll make some images for you.

It's fine. Like it's the images aren't that great. Honestly, it's not as GPT. And I'm still left with the questions. What the hell do I do with this thing? It's not like [00:08:00] the Genmoji stuff that Apple is showing off where you're like, Oh, you can make a fun thing based on a friend's face and have a yeast for it.

It's just like a crummy AI picture. Okay, fine.

Sam: To me, it feels like more of a bonus. And there's all, there's some weird situations where there's a new feature called image creator. And it's available in paint, but if I go and look at it in paint, I'm looking at it right now. It doesn't work. It doesn't work for me.

It doesn't work. And then there's also like a counter, like you can only use so many prompts and I'm seeing that go down, but I'm pressing it and the results are weird. But the, it, the funny thing is that if you go into the photos app, there's also a tab for image creator and it works way better in the photos app than it doesn't paint, which is and it doesn't seem to be like there's a token limit for the version in photos.

And so it's all there's some weird just like incongruities where you have the same thing. It's got the same name, but they work differently depending on which app you're using it in. And that's a little weird.

Devindra: That's a clear, like a sign that this is all coming in hot. And then Microsoft was really working on this stuff very recently.

[00:09:00] And to Microsoft's credit, like there

Sam: is a big, like yellow preview tag on the button. Sure. So yes, it's very clear that this is still like a, work in progress.

Devindra: It's just, it's a weird thing to see on like shipping Hardaware. Like it's like the Gmail beta label, which was, and Google did that for a lot of its products.

Hey there may be issues, but we were testing out some new stuff here in Windows. It feels like a bit of a cop out, I guess if it worked better, I'd have less of a problem with it. The one I really liked, I don't know if you've tried live captions yet, Sam, but that is a really cool feature where once you enable it, your computer will just say, basically caption any video that's playing and in many cases translate.

Language to English. The translation stuff is okay. It's it reads like bad subtitles to me. Cause I was playing some anime videos and like comparing subtitles to the like incoming translation and it was really messy at times. It's not like a miracle product, but it is cool. It's really for people with hearing impairments.

I do think that'll be a really, and you can

Sam: often get just enough from those transcriptions or other translations [00:10:00]that you can at least understand what's going on. It's not going to be super elegant, you're getting the basics down, mostly correct.

Devindra: Yeah. So I'm working on my review of this thing.

I've tried Oh, I did one benchmark that I was able to run. I don't know if you saw the score, Sam. But can you pop over to our benchmark database? Just look at the score I put down for the, for PCMark10 on this thing. And tell me what you think about that.

Sam: If that's the case, that's double pretty much anything else that we've tested recently.

Or maybe not between 50 percent and double double the score.

Devindra: The score is 12, 615 points in PCMark10. The fastest PC I've seen this year, which was the framework Laptop 16, which ran a really hot rise chip was 8,129. So this Surface Pro got a higher PC Mark 10 score than any laptop we've seen this year and by a significant margin by over 50%.

That's wild. I did double check like Qualcomm's what they were expecting from when they initially announced the Snap drug and [00:11:00] next leap. Yeah. And that's that's pretty on target for what they were in. That's insane to have that come out of the super thin laptop tablet hybrid.

I'd love to see you glad that like

Sam: those numbers are living up to the claims because that was the big thing is like Qualcomm was talking a huge game about, Hey, we have these new Orion architecture, we bought a company a couple years ago to completely read change how we build laptop chips for arm.

And so it's really good to see, Hey, Qualcomm did it.

Devindra: They totally did. What was the name of the company that they bought? Was it it wasn't Nuvia. I think Nuvia. Nuvia sounds right. Yeah. I'm trying to look it up now, but yeah, that was a big deal for them because it felt like they were also really limited by what ARM was giving them.

And Nuvia, I believe also comes from some like Apple Silicon former Apple Silicon engineers. So like some of that ingenuity that went into the A series chips and the early M series chips is also. happening over here and you can feel it. It's one of those things where it's as [00:12:00] soon as you like, start this thing up and start poking around, like it just feels fast.

So this isn't just synthetic benchmarks, like being blown up. So I'm excited by this. Yeah. I

Sam: can't confirm it was Nuvia and that acquisition was finalized back in 2021. Hasn't been that long from, That acquisition to okay coming out with a retail product.

Devindra: So early impressions, very good, very fast, good benches.

Also I'll mention this quickly. I got the surface flex keyboard with this and that's the one where you can actually remove it from the surface pro and still like type wirelessly. And that does alleviate. Some of my problems with working with the surface pro in general, like it's I'm so tired of having the kickstand on my lap because I have dents on my legs from testing so many services and it's uncomfortable.

It doesn't. It's not a great typing experience, but putting the surface on a table and having the keyboard in my lap. I was doing that yesterday. It just felt like it felt comfortable. Life changing, and something you can do with tablets already. That's not exactly a new thing, but to have that capability, [00:13:00] like baked into the surface, that's nice.

I wish this keyboard were cheaper. I believe it's 350. So like it is the price of the base iPad. And that doesn't include the

Sam: pen. If you want the pen, you're looking at 450 ish.

Devindra: As always, this stuff is way too expensive for Microsoft and they should just put it together. Especially now, because there is no tablet mode in Windows 11.

I was trying to hook around to find it and they basically just gave up on that. It is really weird to sell a Surface as a tablet, not include a keyboard, and then be like it's a full PC, right? It's a PC tablet. Except even you don't support tablet software very much or very well anymore.

But anyway, my first impressions are good. Anything else you want to add about the Surface laptop, Sam?

Sam: No, I'm just, really excited to see how Microsoft can take it from there and how, the big issue is that like a lot of companies, weren't supporting ARM the way that it really needed to be, at least from a consumer side.

So I'm really interested to see how that Hey, we have the Hardaware. We have great devices. Now, how are developers going to respond to supporting arm on windows? Because [00:14:00]Microsoft doesn't really have that like iron clad thing that Apple does was like, Hey, we are changing architectures, you do this, or we're not going to support you.

And In some ways that makes, Apple had a much cleaner transition because they have that iron hand on the ecosystem. Whereas, Microsoft is a little bit, less pushy when it comes to, these big transitions.

Devindra: Yeah. We've talked about this before. Like Apple, Apple is such a, it's a tight ship that runs the software.

The Hardaware has a full chain and also now the processor is they go wherever they want to go and everybody has to follow them. Whereas Microsoft is okay, guys, are we gonna, what's, what do you got today? Arm? You got these chips and then what can we do to get you

Sam: on board?

Devindra: Yeah. And then okay, who's going to build machines for Oh, only surface, only our surface team are making chips or laptops with these systems.

Okay. Windows software side. Are you ready to support this? They shrug their shoulders. So like it is so many. So many things have to align for this to work really well on the PC side. And I think four years after Apple Silicon debuted, it seems like we're [00:15:00]there. I've also seen the reviews of the the Asus Copilot Plus PC that seemed to be pretty impressive.

I'm hoping to get like, yeah, one of us will get our hands on that soon. The Dell the XPS 13, I want to see like how this kind of transforms how that thing works. So good news so far, all signs point to this being a very good thing. I do feel bad for people who bought the first batch of AI PCs from Intel and from from AMD too.

I've talked to Microsoft people. They said some of these features may eventually trickle down to those systems, which has much slower MPUs, but we don't know yet. Like stuff is in flux. You will, everybody gets Windows Studio effects, which is the cool background features. You may get some acceleration on older AI PCs in Adobe apps or whatever.

So there is some benefit, but. If you held off on buying a PC, now is the time to jump in because the Copile Plus stuff seems very good. Maybe not for a high end production machine yet, but for a really great ultra portable that you can take anywhere, certainly something like the Surface Pro or Surface Laptop, it's a good [00:16:00] sign.

Let's take some questions from the audience. Hello, folks. Podcast producer Ben is here, and I'm sure you've been looking at questions, and what are people thinking about these devices?

Ben: Yeah, so hey, everybody. There are a few questions. One of the big ones from Simon B. is, how do you guys feel about the reward system with the Edge browser?

Devindra: Oh, I saw that question. I don't, I'm not into any of that stuff. I don't know. I've seen people get like some trinkets or something like Xbox has had some rewards things for a while. The micro being and the Microsoft accounts have had some reward things. It just feels like they are just bribing you to use these services.

I don't care about the rewards. Have you touched them at all, Sam?

Sam: Yeah, it's and Google does this too. There's like an Android rewards thing that I, would. And it's it's good if you have it's more of a discipline thing where it's do you have 30 seconds out of your day to go do these like very simple prompts?

And then you can get, some, imaginary points. And then maybe in a year or two, you have enough points is like buy an app or something.

Devindra: You get some free labor from kids basically in teenagers. Yeah.

Sam: If you have the drive to [00:17:00] do that every day, that's cool. It's just something that like, I don't think about it unless I like, open up bing and I get the little prompt and I'll go do it.

It takes 10 seconds. Usually but

Ben: it feels a bit like When I was in elementary school and saving the like little cut out things from the back of my chip bag It's the internet version of that chester cheeto hat or something

Devindra: I remember I would try to I cut out a serial barcode to get like a batman frisbee after the first batman You I forgot my frisbee.

I'm still sad about it to this day.

Sam: Now, one thing I do think is interesting is that both of the new Microsoft machines have fans, as far as I know, which kind of puts it in a different category in terms of a pure MacBook Air rival, which in some ways, like I kind of respect that because If you were just like doing basic stuff, MacBook air is great, we've heard reports about, Hey, you go outside and the sun's beating down on the laptop and the laptop has no way to cool itself and so it'll shut down because it's [00:18:00] overheating.

So I'm like, I don't mind the fan. Yeah. Yeah. In theory, like the idea of a completely fanless machine is great because it's silent and less moving parts to worry about, but I think it's like a general work machine. I think having that on there. It is good. So I'm, that's one thing I like to work outside.

Devindra: Yeah. Like I do use, I've used the MacBook airs all over, but certainly I think it was like last year when I went to WWDC and you're just, you're outside and the sun is on you and it just starts to get a little freaky having a little fan in there that can kick in is nice. I will tell you all I was installing like three games at once.

So like sucking down maybe. 500 gigabytes or no, three to 400 gigabytes of like data all at once. And yeah, the surface got toasty. Like the fan kicked in. It wasn't super loud, but it was like, I am working here. I'm working to get all this stuff in quickly. And it did load pretty quickly. But

Ben: remind me again, was this in the sun or a bit

Devindra: outside and a bit inside, but basically once I got inside and was like next to my router, like it was just like sucking in data.

The SSD was doing a lot of work, the wireless chipset was doing a lot of work, and I could [00:19:00] hear the fan. It wasn't, it was noticeable, but it wasn't like noisy or loud or anything. It was just like a pleasant hum. Any other questions we want to tackle?

Ben: So DudeNameCharlie said rewards for your data in relation to reward system for Edge browser Dom Larry said here in Australia, the flex keyboard and pen is 7.

99 AUD. Don't do it! Australia,

Sam: I'm

Ben: so sorry.

Sam: Australia gets screwed so badly on pricing. Australia

Ben: gets extremely screwed because everything needs to get there on a boat.

Devindra: That's unfortunately, plus you have giant bugs and crazy wild animals, so I'm sorry Australia. And roving bands of marauders I've seen.

At least from what the Mad Max movie said.

Ben: Then we have like Chirag Arora who says, can we run Ableton? What do you think? Can we do a quick Google to see? I'm not a music guy. So that is not something I thought of. Released a like Ableton on arm situation. Because I imagine that.

They've already done this for the M1 chips. And [00:20:00] so would it be that you got to rebuild for windows?

Devindra: Like it's a whole thing. Yeah, it is a whole thing.

Sam: While you're looking that up, Mark was asking he was having issues on could install certain game pass games. There is no game pass.

Devindra: Computers because if you launch the Xbox app, it just shows you cloud streaming. That's weird.

Sam: And for and so you've got to look at two things. It's like the game streaming works just fine. And then if you download games from like the window store it looks like Microsoft, from what I can tell is doing a better job of labeling which games are and are not supported.

Unfortunately a lot of them are not, you will go in and you will see some games that are, so that's one thing I want to dive into more and see what's the percentage of like games that like, hey, work fine or just be, just don't run at all.

Devindra: I was thinking they were just blocking entirely.

Cause when I launched the Xbox app, that's normally where I go to look at game pass releases, there's no game pass section at all on these systems. It's just cloud streaming. But if you go through the store, yeah, you should technically the general

Sam: Microsoft store. It's a, you get a little bit different [00:21:00]information.

Devindra: I did. So I installed steam and I got a couple of games going. I have not been able to play anything yet, but I did run 3d mark a couple of times and actually. I have the the stats on that too. And 3dMark, look, it's fine. It's better than the Intel XE stuff has been running 3dMark Wildlife Extreme.

I got a score of 6, 430, which was on par with the HP Spectre X360 16, a 16 inch computer, so it was faster than that one. Faster than a lot of the Intel Arc graphics we've seen this year. Certainly not as fast as Nvidia stuff. Impressive for a system of this size and this slim.

Ben: Yeah, Jonathan Anderson says, let me know when this silly game pass thing comes to Nintendo until then Zelda. We'll get to that, actually. And Simon B has another question, which is there a cloud streaming that's any good from Microsoft? Yeah,

Devindra: really? The Xbox cloud streaming, which I think some of the best cloud streaming, to be honest.

Sam: And so this almost makes you wonder is this part of Microsoft strategy? Because, Hey, [00:22:00] they've been pushing, cloud streaming for a long time. And, and the cloud streaming works just fine. And so maybe this is their solution to Hey, you want a game. If you pay us a little bit extra money, you can, you can play all your games in the cloud.

Devindra: I think, that's part of, that's been part of the pitch for a while, but I don't think cause there have been reports that the cloud network has also been like slow to launch and stuff for people. So maybe they're, they don't want it to get too popular, but yeah, like the ability to just sit down and play a game on any laptop, as long as you can log into a web browser is fantastic and is a good thing with a system like this where you don't want all that Hardaware.

Maybe inside your laptop. But you have good internet and you want to play some games. I could see that being a thing.

Ben: Yeah. Lord Buckethead asks, does Doom run? If you can stream it, then yes, of course Doom runs.

Devindra: Anything can run. If you stream it, anything is possible.

Ben: That's how this

Devindra: works.

Ben: You'll be able to play the new Doom.

What is the Middle Ages? Primeval Doom? The Dark Ages. What a

Devindra: good title. Quick thing on this surface. This is the first surface with an [00:23:00] OLED screen and the screen looks fantastic and the speakers are very good too. So I've been using this as I, I just want to do a little writing. I'm going to go to bed, like just lay down, bed, rest my back a little, but I can still like watch stuff.

The speakers are surprisingly good. So yeah, I think overall I'm feeling like good. The Hardaware

Sam: generally has been, top notch from what I can tell.

Devindra: I think that's it that we have for questions today, but you know what folks, I always want to answer this stuff. So you can drop us an email at podcast on gadget.

com. I'm in the middle of my review. Sam's still working on his, but we definitely want to answer your questions. Send us some and we can answer them in the next episode.

All right, let's move on from all this Surface stuff. There was a Nintendo Direct this week. Which I think came as a surprise. We didn't get much of a heads up that was happening. But a few things we want to call out. New Zelda. With starring Zelda, that's good. The Legend of Zelda Echoes of [00:24:00] Wisdom.

How do you feel about this Sam? Because I've been waiting for this game for a long time.

Sam: I'm incredibly excited. So it has the, it's similar art style that they used for the Link's Awakening remake. Which I absolutely adored. I think it looks incredible. Yeah. And then obviously starring Zelda where you're, she's the main protagonist.

Link gets disappeared right in the beginning. Yeah. And that's fine. It's I think everybody has been really interested in to see like the series of the franchise is legends of Zelda and it's been how many years until she gets to like really take center stage. Every non

Devindra: gamer, every parent has been like, Oh you're Zelda, right?

That little guy running around, that's Zelda, the legend of Zelda.

Sam: And then on top of that, like the idea, like she does, she doesn't use a sword. She has this new echoes ability where she can basically capture like the essence of like inanimate objects chairs beds, whatever, but also enemies really.

brings a really interesting twist on the traditional like Zelda game style. I do wish they gave her just like a regular weapon. I don't think it has to be a sword, but I want to just see [00:25:00]Zelda run around and bonk people on the head with a giant hammer or something.

Devindra: Maybe we'll get something like that.

It does have a weird sense.

Sam: We've only seen a little bit from like the teasers and the preview. So hopefully she has her wand that makes echoes. And then, she gets a little bit of melee melee action in there too.

Devindra: I'm I think a bad interpretation of this is it's almost like they're saying, Oh, girls can't use swords, right?

Of course a girl can use a sword. And that reminds me of comments from the shadow of Colossus creator who I love his games, but he did say something weird at some point. It was like, Oh yeah, girls can't go on adventures like that. That's why his games are typically about young boys trying to save people.

I don't. Yeah, that's bad faith. I'd say here. It's what's interesting is that it is a really interesting mechanic and we've also seen Zelda in some games be kick ass. She's been a kick ass warrior in some games. And I'm not sure if the

Sam: Lord lines up, but like I'm, if we're going to see if like we get an appearance from Sheik, which was like, remember, Zelda had, it transforms into Sheik and she was like a mysterious character.

She was a ninja basically.

Devindra: Yeah.

Sam: Yeah. And so I think, if they can incorporate that in some way, [00:26:00]that way Zelda gets some melee abilities on top of her magic stuff. I think that would be really cool, but I, we'll have to wait to see how the game plays out.

Devindra: Yeah. I'm glad it's not just melee cause then it would feel like a palette swap to just Oh, it's another character hopping around doing Zelda puzzles. This seems like a fundamental rethinking of how this universe can work in the same way that Breath of the Wild was and Tears of the Kingdom was.

Gotta love it. Gotta love the people developing series producer. Yeah.

Sam: I was gonna say, and someone who like, Link to the Past is one of my favorite games of all time. So I love that they're, still continuing on with the top down quote unquote 2D Zelda games.

Devindra: I love it too.

I would, I need the art though. I need the sprites. I need me some sprites. Like as much as I like this little like cutesy 3d art style, but it doesn't hit in the same way. When I scroll tick tock, I often see people playing like older Zelda games. I'm like, it just feels good. And we don't get a lot of that from Nintendo.

We do get it from other companies trying to be Zelda like. That's a thing. So this game looks cool. The other thing that was really interesting is they finally fully showed us Metroid Prime. It's called [00:27:00] Metroid Prime 4. It has been years since they first announced this thing. was 2017 when they first announced that they were working on it.

And in 2019 they also announced a complete do over, like they were stopping development of that version of Metro Prime four and starting it over. So now here we are, it's 2024 and this game is coming next year. They say for the switch, but it's okay, or whatever else Nten has next year, right? This is a lot of this is prep for software for next year or for their new system.

Sam: It's interesting how they're setting up for this is like the end of the switches like era and then whatever the switch to whatever, they call it, we'll see. I'm curious to see how, what kind of support these games get in terms of will they be fully supported?

Will they be launched titles for a new Nintendo system? They're gonna

Devindra: carry the store over like the switch has been so successful. They can't do another Oh, this is a weird one off store and all the stuff you bought may die in a couple years or something Like the switch is forever.

Sam: Yeah, and I actually think this is like this is something [00:28:00]that like nintendo has a really big opportunity with if you look at like With the switch, they switched they, moved over to an arm based chip.

And so I'm really curious to see like what the continuity will be for this next system. Will it also be arm? I really hope so. Because it's it has like really big implications on hey, is it easier to pour older games over to the new title? Does this, there's been rumors that the new device will support game cartridges from the switch and stuff like that.

And then on top of that bringing back a lot of the virtual, quote unquote, virtual console titles where, Hey, we're having classics on the store and they run on the switch and they run on the new machine too, so you get to carry over your library as well too. And I think that's a really big.

Thing that, they could capitalize on with whatever the replaces the switch.

Devindra: There's no reason to do an architecture change. Like I'm just like looking at this on a strategic level, like they've done so much work to build emulators for the switch itself. Like that stuff will directly carry over to another arm system.

There was also like, I don't, what else would they go with? There's really nothing like PC [00:29:00]Hardaware with an, yeah, if they go back to power

Sam: PC, people will just go quake in their seats, but yeah,

Devindra: it's not. So yeah I fully expect them to stick with like arm and looking at what arm is doing now, like maybe relying on some good stuff.

And also, yeah, probably working together with Nvidia again, because nobody else really used the Tegra chipset. I think the Zune HD had the Tegra, which I really liked. But. That it's just like dead Hardaware. I do think a lot of these games will just work across both systems.

Like you wouldn't want people buying new games this year and by next year, like they just won't work. Did anything else jump out at you from these announcements? Yeah.

Sam: I thought gonna get a new Mario and Luigi game. It's called brother ship, which I think is actually. Sounds a lot, sounds really fun, but also could be like some sort of hidden pun, because it was like in the teaser it showed that I'm like, traveling around the world, maybe on a boat, so hey, this is gonna be cool, like Mario and Luigi capped in a boat together, that could be fun.

The

Devindra: art style is like almost a little cel shaded too.

Sam: Yep. Looks a little different, yeah. I'm always a sucker for a new [00:30:00]Mario Party game. Cause you get one like every five years at most. And so there's going to be a new Mario Party game called Mario Party Jamboree. And it's sad because like I bought the last one and I played it like a bunch when it first came out and then like I had a kid and I had no one to play it with cause I didn't ever do anything that wasn't kid related.

Devindra: And also you don't have people over to play Mario Party games. Yes. And so we had a pandemic, that's the whole thing. So I'm excited

Sam: for Mario Party Jamboree, even though I may have aged out of it.

Devindra: Maybe you're aging back into it though Like I am my daughter is now five and she's starting she's like big on Minecraft and some games So yeah, this is a good entry point.

She also watches me play RPGs. So and then likes the games Yeah,

Sam: you were talking about sprites Give me right gonna be a dragon warrior 3 HD 2d remake and so I mean I love the way that thing looks because it does capture more of that like spite inspired graphical quality.

And as someone who's like always appreciated dragon warrior, but it has never dived into it the way that like, I played every final fantasy game. This seems like a [00:31:00] really good place to jump on because it's like chronologically it's the first of the, dragon warrior trilogy games.

So it'll be really interesting. It's modern graphic style, but, with a more of a classic turn based RPG feeling, which is always, right up my alley.

Devindra: This looks really cool. I do at least HD 2D gets us some sprites alongside 3D engine stuff. But then I'm like playing Hades 2, and it's just oh, look at this glorious artwork.

Look at this. There's still some 3D work in there, but it's just mostly, beautiful illustrations. I don't know anything else from the Sam.

Sam: No, that was about it You know, there's a ton of stuff there. There's a new Metal Slug game That was like a some sort of like a tactics tower defense game

Devindra: They is it tower defense or is it metal slug tactics because they announced that no So

Sam: they showed the tower defense game On the stream, but Metal Gear, there's a perfect segue because the Metal Slug game that I'm really interested is Tactics, which is supposed to come out sometime later this year too.

So we'll see which one, if I play both or whatever, but yeah.

Devindra: Awesome. Yeah, good direct from Nintendo. Also like coming [00:32:00]after we were just like dying from so much stuff from summer game fest. So good time to play some games, folks. Let us know what you're playing or what you're excited for.

Podcast and gadget. com. We had a couple news bits. I just want to mention briefly we had talked about Ilya Sutskever, the former chief scientist of open AI who left that company a couple of weeks ago. He has launched a new AI company called safe super intelligence, Inc, or SSI. That's all we know. He says he's working on, he's not working on like stuff, like open AI is he's going straight to super intelligence and he wants to build it safely.

It sounds like a lot of talk and not much details about this thing yet. Do you have any thoughts on the Sam? Because I have bad, I don't have great feelings when people talk about super intelligence.

Sam: Yeah. There's this whole section that like of the internet, that's like very wants to talk about artificial general intelligence as like a thing that will be here very soon.

And so the idea of Hey, someone's going to focus on the safety. And if you actually go, there's not a ton of details on it, but if you go to the safe superintelligence website, it's actually pretty funny because all I [00:33:00] do is our mission is to make safe superintelligence the name of the company is safe superintelligence SSI.

That's all we care about. That's all we want to work on. And so it's they are very focused on the, especially the safety part of AI. And so I appreciate that kind of directive, but like you said, there's, it's so early that it, there's really not much to talk about in terms of like actual deliverables just yet.

Devindra: I think even like John Carmack, like when he left meta and very loudly was like, I cannot work with like your weird corporate rules and stuff. He said he was going to go work on AGI. Like it is a thing smart people are focused on. I just feel like it feels like the time where the tech industry gets a little too religious about a thing that may never ultimately happen.

I've been reading about the singularity from Ray Kurzweil since the 90s and Michio Kaku was talking about it too. It's a thing they've imagined, like where our machines get super intelligent and then we won't be able to control them. I, I don't know if we'll actually get there and, I don't know if these companies actually building safety measures are going to be helpful at all.

[00:34:00] That's what OpenAI was supposed to be. That's why Elon Musk and Sam Altman and a lot of folks like put that company together as a non profit and they end up being just a thing, raising tons of money to make a lot of money selling AI. I feel like it's a lie they're telling themselves.

But yeah, I don't know. It's weird. We didn't, we were even talking about this. We didn't even cover the story in gadget because there's no detail here. It's, he's doing a thing called safe superintelligence and we don't know what that thing actually is. So to me, that is like a nothing burger, at least for something we'd write about.

Something I do want to talk about and shows like the immediate dangers of AI is perplexity. And wire just put up a piece called perplexity is a bullshit machine. If you've not heard of perplexity is like an AI search engine type of thing where you'd put in queries and it will just answer them.

The CEO calls it an answer engine, but what it really seems like What's happening is it's using different AI engines to basically answer your [00:35:00] questions, but also it's scraping. It is both scraping the internet and scraping websites and texts and then sending that to the AI engines and then sending a response to you and Forbes had reported that they were basically just like straight up copying.

Their reports. If you asked a question about an article, like it will just repeat the Forbes article at you with very little attribution or unclear attribution. So people have been mad at this company for a while. I think somebody, I don't know if it was Forbes, but they had said like perplexity is working on a licensing deal.

After they started stealing their stuff. And, they

Sam: have made some small changes to call out attribution a little bit better or make it more prominent or better yet cite their sources and link back to, where they're getting this info from. This all seems like a very much like a company that is, they did a thing without thinking about the consequences of the thing that they made.

And now they're trying to fix all the problems with the thing that they made. And it's I don't know, maybe you should have thought about that a little bit harder before you opened it up [00:36:00]to just users out there.

Devindra: It's like the thing tech companies do. Like people, you may not have noticed like what happened, like how Uber.

And how Lyft and a lot of these companies like rose to power. But a lot of it was just by a thing. Hey, we're going to deploy this thing, which is using tech. Oh, you have local laws about how people handle taxis or things like that, or share transportation. We're going to ignore those entirely. And just do our thing.

It's the mentality

Sam: of we're going to disrupt stuff by breaking things and fixing it later.

Devindra: Yeah. Or if you've been to a city recently and scores and scores of electric scooters, just littering the streets, it's because these companies have deployed the stuff and didn't think about where do you put it?

How do you keep it out of the way? Like, how do you actually maintain a decent public space, even though you're putting junk out there and these companies just didn't care. So it left it up to cities to do a lot of that stuff. So what Wired found. And this report is really interesting is that perplexity is straight up.

They have like secret Wired has already blocked perplexities like search crawlers, and then apparently this company has other secret [00:37:00] search crawlers that are out there that are ignoring the robots. txt file, which in a website tells the search engine, Hey, crawl me, or don't crawl me, or you don't have access to certain things.

This is just bypassing what. What publishers are actually saying these companies should have access to. So this company sucks. And this is to me the best example of just like AI hubris of just I can build this thing, look at all these tools, the web is right there. It's open. I can just grab this text and deliver something to you and raise a lot of money while doing it too.

I don't know how much of this seems like a legitimate business personally. Any thoughts, Sam, any thoughts beyond that?

Sam: No, you hit on the head. It's like they're priming themselves up to be the example of what not to do in terms of using AI responsibly. And so I guess we'll see how that fallout ends up.

Devindra: All right, let's move on to one listener question we got from Mark Dell, who's now watching our live stream. So thank you for being a loyal listener and watcher, Mark. But he said that recently he got Google Fiber at his apartment. He formerly had [00:38:00] 30 megabits up and down. He went all in on Google Fiber and got the 8 gigabit plan.

And just sucked it down, basically like having that full access, but he realized he's lucky to get 1. 4 gigs speeds over wifi, 2. 5 gigs over ethernet. That's the limit of most network cards. And now Google's also considering 20 gig fiber. He's wondering, is there any practical use for such fast internet for residents?

And you know what? No, not right now, but what's also great having more internet than, what to do with and being ready for whatever's happening 10 years from now. If you're streaming games, if you're doing stuff I have a gigabit up and down plan with AT& T fiber. It's incredible.

Like I was talking about getting a ton of steam games, like downloading three steam games at once. That stuff comes in a couple of minutes, like just. Sucks data down. Maybe Mark, you don't want to pay for the full eight gig plan. If you're not going to use it, do they have a four gig plan? Do they have a two gig plan or something?

Yeah, you need all the Hardaware to support it. And wifi seven is coming. It's going [00:39:00] to support faster Hardaware or faster speeds. Ethernet is always becoming a faster thing, but I think at best I see 2. 5 gigabit cards in most systems. I guess you could get 10. And yeah, there's some, you can

Sam: get 10 if you look for it.

And obviously it's a lot easier to like, if you have a desktop and you can get your own network card and all that, that the one thing that is like like an overlooked benefit is that, let's say you have eight, eight gig plan and you can only get 2. 5 gigs to a specific laptop or PC or whatever.

The one thing about having a huge. Bandwidth pipeline like that is that if you have a lot of people in your house, you can send multiple people can be sucking down 2. 5 gigs without impacting what other people are doing. And this is like one of the classic issues of if you have bad internet and someone who's watching Netflix and then someone else decides to watch, max or, they're downloading a game from steam.

Then you can start impacting what other people are doing. And they're, their stream is going to start buffering or shuddering or something like that. And so that's the nice thing about that. And that's part of the reason why I probably pay for more, [00:40:00]bandwidth than I need so that I just don't have to think about it.

I always know that I have way too many devices in my place and, I want to make sure that there's running smoothly connected to the internet, super fast all the time. And so it's nice to have that kind of Re bonus overhead is, one of the small fringe benefits.

Devindra: Especially for us, we occasionally have to upload tons of 4k video, so if I have to upload 50 to a hundred gigabytes of stuff, like I want that up quickly that was a real pain when I was traveling to WWDC and the Microsoft campus to get the stuff from the DJI Osmo pro up into the cloud.

It just took forever and I really killed my workflow a little bit. So you still need the internet sometimes. And if you can get that good internet internet, go for it. I see Mark Dell in the chat. He says he's already downgraded his Google fiber. He could do that in the app, so that's super useful.

And he got a 10 gig switch, so he has a decent backbone now too. This is great. This is great. And that's one of those things

Sam: you got to think about too. It's I have a new bandwidth and that's great. And if let's say you get your router from whatever ISP you're using or, you're getting your modem from whatever [00:41:00] ISP, then you have to like, make sure your router can handle all that.

And that's, where DaVinci was talking about Hey, Wi Fi seven is coming and more devices. And there are a handful of like smartphones on the market today that do support Wi Fi seven. But obviously you're not going to get Wi Fi 7 speeds if your router doesn't support it. And you got to think holistically about like how you upgrade the, the devices that you're using.

Devindra: What's funny is that I have the Surface Pro here. I think it has Wi Fi 6E and I noticed okay, I'm just gonna plug into ethernet to suck down these Steam games faster. I have gigabit. I think it's, no it's a gigabit, like ethernet connection over here. And I was still getting faster speeds over my wife.

The wifi was coming in faster, even though it's going through a repeater that's in my basement here. That's going, hitting the router, the wifi still came in faster. So we are at a weird place where yeah, you, if you want raw speed, sometimes wifi will be better. If you want like stable connections, like that's where you plug into ethernet.

So that's why I have on my desktop.

Sam: Yeah. If we, if you want to get into the really nitty gritty stuff, there's some interesting things that like net gear [00:42:00] and some of the other router makers are doing with wifi seven where they're doing like multiple channel aggregation. And so you can really pump up those speeds over wifi.

And it's For someone who remembers when wifi was just like very unreliable and spotty. It's Oh, this is so nice to not have to think about it. And a lot of these new wifi seven routers are really expensive, but Hey, when the prices come down, I think you just appreciate it from not having to like constantly babysit your wifi like that.

It's just, really nice to have.

Devindra: I remember when Wi Fi like barely supported a room Oh man, like I was the first person to put a Wi Fi router, like in my dorm room and I had to hide it from IT and all this stuff. Good stuff. Wi Fi is good. Anyway, if you have access to fiber folks, make that switch.

It may be a little more than what you're paying for cable in most cases, from what I've seen, it actually isn't, but the stability of the connection and the ability to not like actually share that connection with everybody in your neighborhood is super great. Like I. Yeah, fiber is just such a solid connection to the internet.

All right, let's move on to what we're working on. Hey, I'm [00:43:00] working on a review. Let's review the Surface Pro and I'm going to try to get some other Copilot Plus systems in soon. Sam, anything from you?

Sam: Yeah, obviously, working on the Surface laptop. But I have a review for the MSI Claw, which is MSI's attempt at making a gaming handheld, which, they went with an Intel chip instead of something from AMD.

And That makes a pretty big difference. Turns out who knew? Why would you do that? Why would you do that? Also at some point I'm trying to, squeeze in a review for the Keychron Q1 HE, which is sort of Keychron's attempt at making a Wooting clone. Cause it has the HE stands for Hall Effect switches.

You do get, full analog control and you get some of that like rapid trigger stuff that you see some on some gaming keyboards. I've been really enjoying it so far. I just got to find time to write it up.

Devindra: I just picked up one of those new fee keyboards. I think we've recommended the new fi or new fee.

Yeah, that was

Sam: the keyboard that I bought before this one. And it's really great. And they make some really good low profile keyboards. Which is actually my preference. Just 'cause, [00:44:00] years of typing on laptops. I prefer the, the more chit lower profile style keys. I'm

Devindra: using the low profile new V 96, I think.

And it just that, that's the one I got. Feels good? Yeah. Feels so good. Loving it. And yeah. Got any pop culture picks for us this week, Sam?

Sam: Yeah. I'm still watching star Wars, the acolyte. That's so good. I think we were talking about this in Slack the other day. It's I'm enjoying it a lot.

I just wish they hadn't done the evil twin trope. Just because it's I think that, that trope is played out. But yeah, aside from that, I've been enjoying it. And then I think the doctor who season finale is this weekend. And I, as someone who is definitely, I do not classify myself as a whovian.

That's, more of my wife's thing, the transition for this season, because now Disney's kind of running it. Yeah. The production quality is way up and things just look good, which is like old seasons of Dr. Who looks janky. The effects. Yeah it's rough. But the thing is that the show is like it's been very hit or miss.

I think like the first episode was good. And then the middle episodes were just like, They lost the whole idea. And then for the season finale, you finally [00:45:00] things, it seems like they're getting back to like core Dr. Who, which I enjoy more. But as someone who is not as invested into the franchise as some other people are I'm definitely not the target audience.

Devindra: That's why I'm like, I've never like fully gone into it. There's some stuff, the Matt Smith season, the first one, like that was good. But the writing and doctor who always seems like really hit or miss even when like they have a really talented person in charge. So and there was

Sam: there's two episodes.

I think the guy who plays the doctor had some commitment on another Film or something and so there's two episodes where the doctor is just not in doctor who and that's just a weird situation there are a lot of side characters.

Devindra: I guess I could see that happening. Yeah, shout out to Dr.

Who. I keep, that's one thing I keep like thinking I need to watch that because I do like the new doctor. I've seen him and it was sex education. Oh yeah, he's great. Yeah. Great show. That's on Netflix. And then it like evaporates from my mind because any, literally anything else in my life happens, I'm like, I forget about Dr.

Who. So glad you're digging it, Sam, even if it's messy. One thing I want to shout out is a show I think you will like, and a lot of people should be watching, Not Enough People are [00:46:00]watching Evil, which was a show on CBS by the Kings, people who did The Good Wife and The Good Fight. It is straight up X Files.

It's awesome. I watched the

Sam: first season of that. Yeah. And then there was like a long hiatus. It was either after season one or season two. And I keep meaning to go back to it. But yes that show is awesome.

Devindra: I'm shouting it down shouting it out now because season four is on Paramount plus, which I've been going through excellent stuff.

Like it's pretty much like when the X Files had hit its run and knew the characters and knew the tone and could be a little playful with things. The show is about a trio of people who are out to investigate miracles. Basically, but they're it's led by a priest played by name is escaping you right now, but he was Luke Cage,

Mike Coulter.

Yes. And there's also a tech guy who's a total like skeptic played by Asif Manvi. And a therapist who is just like looking at the human psychological side of things. It is X Files, but it's also these folks are a priest. Push basically working for the Catholic church to do this too, but it's not like a preachy religious show.

It's [00:47:00] using religious iconography to explore weird supernatural stuff. I think it has a lot of fun with that. The first three seasons are on Netflix now, so it used to be hard for people to see it. So if you wanted to see the show, if you've heard me talk about it before, check it out. Go to Netflix, just watch Evil.

If you liked The X Files, if you liked Buffy, if you liked a lot of those old shows where there was basically a mystery of the week there was a team of folks who would have to deal with those. It's funny. It's cool. It's super smart. I love the show. It's like one of the things I just sit down and love watching.

Sam: I'll also say Michael Emerson. He plays like Ben from Lost.

Devindra: Ben from Lost.

Sam: He is such a good bad guy. And I don't want to ruin the like reveal of like who his character really is. Yeah. But he is, he's he's so well cast and well equipped to play the role that he's doing in that is so I really think the performances in that show really make it just even if it is you're looking at a standard monster of the week episode.

Like you were, they're such, they do such a good job of like really getting you invested into it.

Devindra: They have a lot of fun. And yeah, poor Michael Emerson. I [00:48:00]remember during loss, he talked about being on the subway and nobody wanted to sit near him or stand next to him because they all saw him as this like evil man from TV.

So he's just a little typecast there, but now he's doing it again.

Sam: So I guess it worked out for him. It worked out for

Devindra: him. Like what Giancarlo Esposito ended up doing. He's just he's a villain everywhere, apparently, like doing the same thing everywhere. He hasn't worn it out like Giancarlo Esposito has.

So anyway, go watch Evil. It's on Netflix. The new season is on Paramount Plus. That's it for this week, folks. Our theme Is by Game Composer Dale North. Our outro music is by our former managing editor, Terence O'Brien. The podcast is produced by Ben Element. You can find me online at dra on Twitter, blue Sky Mastodon.

Also talk about movies and TV at the film cast@thefilmcast.com. Where can we find you, Sam? You can find me on Twitter slash x at Sam Rutherford. Email us@podcastinggat.com. Leave us review on iTunes and subscribe on anything that gets podcasts. That's it folks. We're [00:49:00]at.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/engadget-podcast-surface-pro-and-laptop-copilot-qa-113046302.html?src=rss

This week has felt like a month worth of news, now that we've wrapped up Apple's WWDC 2024 and Summer Game Fest in LA. In this episode, Cherlynn and Devindra discuss their final thoughts on Apple Intelligence and the company's upcoming software, and they chat about some of our coverage highlights from the pseudo-E3 Game Fest. Also, we dive into X making likes private (what is Elon hiding?!) and the news around Sony buying the Alamo Drafthouse theater chain.

---

Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcast, Engadget News!

Topics

• Our final thoughts on WWDC 2024 – 1:31

• Bloomberg Report: Apple isn't paying OpenAI a fee for ChatGPT, but will share profits – 12:18

• Summer Games Fest highlights: Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, LEGO Horizon Adventures, and an Assassin’s Creed finally set in Japan – 25:06

• X makes users’ likes private – 40:27

• ChromeOS will soon run on Android frameworks, enabling more AI on upcoming Chromebooks – 44:40

• Pop culture picks – 49:44

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Credits 

Hosts: Devindra Hardawar and Cherlynn Low
Producer: Ben Ellman
Music: Dale North and Terrence O'Brien

Transcript

Devindra: [00:00:00] What's up, Internet, and welcome back to the Engadget Podcast. I'm Senior Editor Devindra Hardawar.

Cherlynn: I'm Deputy Editor Cherlynn Low.

Devindra: We are back from Apple's WWDC, and we have thoughts. Plenty of thoughts. And I feel like, It's just one of those whirlwind things. Both Trillin and I got back in from California yesterday.

After recording this, I still feel like my body doesn't know, like, where I'm in, Trillin, or what time zone. I don't know how you feel.

Cherlynn: I went to the gym at 8 a. m. Eastern. That's my best way of getting back on the Eastern time zone. There you go.

Devindra: I like how you fit in the humble brag there. Yes, congrats on going to the gym for Lynn.

Fantastic. We're also going to be talking about Summer Game Fest, folks. We weren't there for that and I was trying to get Jess Condit on, but she's super busy still writing up stuff from that. So we have got a lot of coverage around that and there's some stories I want to highlight that Engadget has done.

Also some games that looks pretty cool. Also joining us this morning is podcast producer Ben Ellman, who I'm sure has thoughts on Apple and the game stuff. Good morning. I sure do. Good morning. And [00:01:00] as always, folks, if you're enjoying the show, please be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes or your podcast or of choice, leave us a review in iTunes.

Drop us an email at podcast@engadget.com. I'm not seeing enough of those emails. I would love to answer some reader questions. You can also typically join us Thursday mornings around 10 30 a. m. Eastern depending on the timing, really. It's just like about scheduling, but that's about the time you can carve out in your schedule for us.

Join us. You could see us on video. Sometimes we'll demo gadgets and We'll just have a great Q and a session too. So it's a fun time. Join us for that. I do want to point out if you're just listening to this episode, we did do a bonus episode at Apple's campus and it actually turned out pretty well because for Lynn and I were like right outside the, was it the Mac cafe or cafe Mac?

But we were outdoors surrounded by traffic and other noise, but it actually ended up sounding pretty good. I'd say. And that was like our overall thoughts on WWDC. Two days of going through meetings, going through the keynote and everything. In this episode, I want to take like a, just a step back and do you have any final thoughts for Lynn?

Cause I know you did a piece about the undersung features. That [00:02:00] you appreciated that were announced. Anything else you want to shout out?

Cherlynn: Yeah, when we did our recording I don't think I had taken my demo of the new satellite messaging features just yet. So I wasn't able to talk about it. Plus it was under embargo, it turns out.

This morning, my article on the details of how messaging via satellite will work is on engadget. com if you want to head on over, but yeah, there's a lot of like under the radar things. I got at some of them during our. Recorded episode earlier this week. Maps, for example, I don't know if I mentioned, but like maps had some really cool routes, like hikes built in now, and you can create a custom route and then you can share them.

So my whole thing is I'm going to create these custom, like scavenger hunt trails, or like, how do you get from the train station to my favorite restaurant in the fastest way in my mind and share them with my friends. Or share my goal is one day to share the preferred route with my Uber driver.

Don't take this tunnel, take that tunnel. So that was one of them. I really like a lot of the other features that I found out after the fact, like iOS 18 [00:03:00] actually has some math notes embedded into the notes app where you can write a little list of expenses from a group trip, for example, and then, put an equal sign to equate them, the name of venue was 50, 000 and then I don't know, food was 10, 000. And then you can tally it by saying venue plus food equal, and then take that divided by however many people you have. How big of a trip

Devindra: were you having where you have 50, 000? I know, right? I was, I went,

Cherlynn: it's a, it was a wedding trip.

This was like, I was also on Brian Tong's podcast after where I made this exact same sort of like example, but instead of saying trip, I said wedding. So I'm using the same numbers from wedding planning. Okay.

Devindra: Okay. Except for,

Cherlynn: I said it was a trip. Listen, I travel bougie, I just go on boats my life.

Devindra: Yeah, we do. We are well aware. But I feel like that's a feature that could be abused also to hey hey kids, follow this path to my murder den.

Cherlynn: Sure. Or something like that. I don't know. I don't know. Create custom paths to lure people into your ice cream van. But that's obviously then on the person to decide whether or not to follow it.

It's not like telling you where to live [00:04:00] your

Speaker 3: life.

Cherlynn: Buddy three Oh five love in the chat asked if texting via satellite will be a paid service after a year. So Apple has literally no outright answer for it's a really shrug

Devindra: emoji on all the satellite services for less

Cherlynn: shrug emoji and more like. Like not sure yet.

I feel like the sense I'm getting is that they're playing their cards close to their chest. The satellite service provider for their satellite services is global star. And if I had to guess, I look at what global star charges and maybe do some math around like the package or whatever but it's,

Devindra: it's Apple.

If they were to do that, it would be like discounted somehow. It'd be right. Exactly. That's what I meant.

Cherlynn: Do the math to make it not. It's as expensive in assuming you already have sort of a device. Again I'm extremely extrapolating here. I'm not like, I don't have any insider info here other than I know there's no plan.

Devindra: I think it's funny. It's been like two years since Apple announced like satellite features. First of all, it was like the emergency SOS feature, right? If you're stuck in the [00:05:00] middle of nowhere, maybe you could send a short text somewhere to tell people where you are. And now it's like straight up, like more messaging features.

Cherlynn: No. Emergency SOS via satellite was just for emergency responders. So you were only alLowd to text it would be like when you're trying to dial nine one one, but you don't have a signal at all. Then you would be redirected to a service center. So Apple had these like middle people that it was helping relay these emergency SOS messages to either.

It would figure out where your closest nine one one slash emergency services situation is and route you there with your satellite message. Or have you like have they handle it themselves? Maybe if they like be the dispatcher or they get in touch for you. And it was like, yeah, only text messages.

This time around, yeah. Messages via satellite is different, right? You're not limited to who you can message over satellite this time. You can send it to pretty much anyone in your iMessage. IMessages are end to end encrypted. If you send that, you're also alLowd to send SMS, the. The stipulation that Apple has put in place is that [00:06:00] for SMS, only the person that's off grid is able to initiate a message over satellite because they want to prevent, promotional business messages from clogging up the congestion, the light, the network, the satellite network.

That

Devindra: makes sense. Yeah.

Cherlynn: Yeah, it absolutely makes a lot of sense. And I think that the inclusion of SMS here is good. So I asked, I was like, why not RCS? And I think the idea, I think what I'm getting is that like RCS messages are like bigger in terms of size to like compress over satellite.

Even if it's just text. So I think there's just challenges and complications there, but still, Cool too. Is it

Devindra: straight up just text is it the messages app, but doing multimedia stuff too? No, so it's just

Cherlynn: text and then with emoji as well as emoji tap back reactions. By the way, before this dubbed up, I did not know that those reactions are called tap back.

So thank you very much WWDC for Informing me. Yeah. Those, how, like when you're in a message with your friends and you like gray tap their double tap their balloon, I remember

Devindra: when they announced it,

Cherlynn: react, I [00:07:00] didn't know the name was tap back. I thought tap back was something else.

Devindra: This is sad.

We can't take the Android out of Cherlynn because yeah, that was a thing people were talking about on the Apple side. It's just funny when they talk about

Cherlynn: on your phone.

Devindra: No. You could apply so many memes to Apple's approach to the satellite subscription, right? Initially it was like, ask me in two years, please?

I have not figured this out yet. And then last year, they were like we're going to extend it for one more year. So I don't have to think about this. It's it is the ultimate can I extend the deadline for my book report, please? Professor? Can I, it's very much, it's hilarious.

So now it's a whole, yeah.

Cherlynn: I think it's interesting because it lines up with their approach to all of their Apple intelligence things where they're not charging people a fee. I think there's an unspoken yet in there. And I think Apple wants to be able to see if there's a. Reason to charge people before it charges people, which is not a bad idea.

I think right now, satellite services on iPhone 14 and later haven't seemed, [00:08:00] enough to justify paying an additional monthly fee for it, even if it's a dollar a month, like I just don't know yet, but with messages via Silhouette, I can see they're building their way there,

Devindra: yeah, it's also once you start being like, Okay, we're gonna start nickel and diming you for this stuff.

And I do feel like Apple is one of those companies. It's like that. Is that actually better for the customer experience? Do we actually does that actually mean people won't use it? If somebody has to subscribe to it, and then they're in an actual emergency, and they are going to subscribe to it on the go.

Is that person like, yeah, they don't know how to deal with that potential PR disasters. And now it's just like

Cherlynn: optics are awful. If you're suddenly just optics are

Devindra: awful. So now it's okay free for everybody. I think this is related to something we were talking about Trillian where I really did not want Apple to do like a paid AI service and they announced Apple intelligence.

And again, folks go back to our bonus podcast. You can hear our main thoughts about all the major stuff, but they specifically did not do Apple intelligence pro. Or plus or anything. It's just Hey, it's doing a lot of stuff that's baked into your devices. Either the iPhone 15 pro [00:09:00] max or the pro or the newer devices coming up or, M series max as well.

But it's what's on device, some Apple stuff in the cloud, which they're doing some cool privacy stuff with, and very little bits of chat GPT, like chat GPT when necessary, but nowhere along this point, are they like, please pay us more for faster. That's not happening, right?

Cherlynn: It's not seeming like it's happening.

And I think that's a good thing. And I think also the integration with chat GPT at no cost is a good idea on Apple's part. I do want to point out that CF five 42 in the chat that say that if satellite text is not available. It's going to cost, they would rather pay per use instead of a monthly amount.

Because you'd rarely use it. And yeah, that seems like maybe it will be the approach. It seems smarter to offer people that at a nominal one time fee when needed for something, that's an emergency thing, right? Like you don't have to pay for every single use, but we'll charge you per text. That makes a little bit more sense.

Even if it's very 1990s,

Devindra: I think that's the other thing like, Oh, we're [00:10:00] back to paying per text now. That's, I know,

Cherlynn: I know. Yeah. But that helps to, reduce or relieve the congestion, potential congestion on those networks that are so precious.

Devindra: Gotcha. Now that we've had some time away from WWDC, Sherilyn, and our coverage and all the meetings and everything do you have any thoughts about what is next for Apple for the year ahead or with their new software or anything?

Cherlynn: I'm looking to iPhone event for Surprises, I do think again, I'm keeping an eye on the chat and there are some things that like, it feels, so we talked about this on the episode that we prerecorded, but maybe for our like main audience, I want to repeat and reiterate the main takeaway.

It is that as usual, it seems like with some of these features, Apple is copying or doing things that other people have done before, right? AI. The chat is talking about the icon tints, like the customizable homepage, the RCS with support. These are things that Android has done for a while. Android has had material you and like the tinting of the icons.

But I gotta say, we said this the last episode, and Apple seems to do it a little bit better. It's [00:11:00] really it's more sophisticated. They took their time to do something better and they're slow. And maybe the implementation isn't all the way there, but what they have delivered works the way they say it will, and they don't make promises.

They don't. Really? Typically, I think that's the thing.

Devindra: Yeah. One thing I want to point out, there was news yesterday that basically Bloomberg reported that Apple is not actually paying open AI for using and also open AI is not paying Apple. It seems like a weird agreement where.

Basically, OpenAI will get money down the line from like revenue sharing. I guess that's like the plan moving forward. But it is to me that really describes what we were talking about before, Cherlynn, where Apple has been like, okay, we have all this AI stuff and here carved in a little island. Is going to be our little AI model friends, right?

Right now, our friend is chat GPT, but if that friend breaks this relationship, if like they do something bad or we don't want to like deal with them anymore. Do you just cut out that [00:12:00] friend, X them out entirely, replace them with another, with Google Gemini or something. It seems very like plug and play, like what Apple can put in there.

They also mentioned that they are, they would consider Gemini. They have not. made any formal deals or other models that are very specific. So if you're a health worker, maybe there's a metal medical AI model that would be better suited for helping you rather than to have GPT or something. So that is interesting.

Cherlynn: It was nice of them. Nice. It was like smart of them to be like, Oh yeah, we're supporting the best one out there. Who's a pioneer in the field of this open AI. And I'm like, I don't know, I'd argue with Best. It is a pioneer, certainly. And I, we'll see, right? And they never mentioned They actually in the panel after WWDC keynote, by the way, that I just seen moderated panel Craig Federighi did mention that like Gemini or John Andrea might be the one that said this, but yeah Gemini might even be supported in future if it gets to that point.

He

Devindra: said that. Yeah.

Cherlynn: Yeah. Yeah. So interesting,

Devindra: it's interesting. Also, by the [00:13:00] way, I just want to talk about like how weird that whole situation was. So after the WWDC keynote, Apple invited press to come to this talk between Craig Federighi, their head of software engineering, and John Gianandrea Gianandrea their head of AI, right?

Oh, this is gonna be interesting. This is gonna be informative. Or informative, but it was also moderated by iJustine and no shade to her. I think she's great, but it did feel like this was just a scenario where Apple wrote these questions and Hey, person who is media well known, please ask these questions that we've asked and do not stray from any of this.

Cherlynn: It's one step above when Samsung does it's like their own company execs interviewing their other company executives situation where like you're paid literally by Samsung to interview Samsung people. In this case, I don't know if iJustine was paid, but it definitely feels yeah, you're a bit more.

Most

Devindra: definitely.

Cherlynn: But someone that was more controllable than, say, a member of the press,

Devindra: it's just, it is interesting when companies do that, but Ben, go ahead.

Ben: So I was gonna say that it was also a little bit like how Disney does all of its PR stuff. [00:14:00] Actually this is on my mind because I saw the four hour long, was it?

It's four hours, the Star Wars hotel video. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So now people are talking about, Oh Disney does PR weirdly because it's also like really on rails. You have to say like the actual trademark name for everything. So was this similar?

Devindra: To me, I actually had that in my mind too, Ben. To me, it did feel like that.

It was yes, because of course branded content right here, blah, blah, blah. Everything we just said at the keynote, like it definitely felt on rails. It didn't feel like a natural conversation where. I feel like if one of us were to do that chat, we'd be like, yeah, but who, where are you, what are you training these models on?

What's going on here? Give us the full skinny and everything. And

Ben: yeah, can you tell us a little bit more about private cloud compute? Because that sounds like you're talking out of both sides. They

Devindra: did end up saying more about that, but even then I would have liked to be more. But that is funny.

I wrote up like what Apple and what specifically. I think Craig Federighi laid out for the whole Apple, the [00:15:00] private cloud compute thing too, but the really interesting there too is like Apple for years has been saying like, Hey, our stuff is on device. It's more secure than Google where you're sending all your photos to the cloud for processing or whatever.

And now they have to rely on the cloud a little. So they're like, okay. But is it a secure cloud? Is it a private cloud? Yes. Private cloud compute. Apple did say a few things that were interesting about that, Ben, where the information being sent, first of all it's tidbits, the little bits of information that you're, if you're asking Siri about something, we'll go there fully anonymized, like the private relay stuff that is already on iPhones and Apple services.

So that's helpful. Also the servers don't store anything. Which I think I'm sure the FBI is looking at this and no Apple, please, we need logs. We need data to see how people access things. And none of that is going to be on the servers. They say Apple has historically, like there was that whole thing, right?

About them fighting against the FBI that wanted to unlock. I think it was a shooter's phone at one point, right?

Ben: Yes, I remember that. That was like 2015, 2016 or [00:16:00] something.

Devindra: And then the, I believe authorities got into the phone in another way, but Apple for its part was like trying hard to push back against that.

So yes, it's a bad name. It's also like very marketing heavy, but also I don't know. They say they've they've laid out like the software that the servers are also using for security audits. Devices will only be able to talk to those approved servers. So it's not like somebody can intercept your question or something.

And the audit thing is something nobody else is doing for cloud security right now, at least from what I've seen.

Ben: The way it made it seem like, Like in the keynote though, was that like everyone gets their own like place in the server,

Devindra: which is impossible. That's certainly not true. But it's like, when you talk about the cloud the cloud is an amorphous thing.

It could be 10 servers. It could be 20 servers. But the point is, it's like this thing that can grow as needs require. That stuff is, that's just how we've been living with the cloud so far. But I. I certainly feel better about private cloud compute than I did about Microsoft recall right where [00:17:00] researchers were immediately like, Oh, you're just going to capture everything we do on your computer on our computers.

Okay. You're not graying out. You're not blurring out passwords or authentication or anything. And then people realize yeah, these are just a plain text database sitting in your hard drive. The other accounts on your system can access those very Easy to see security holes. I at least think like Apple has anticipated some of those on the server side.

So that's something. Yeah. Any other thoughts for Lynn out of WWDC?

Cherlynn: I honestly feel like I could talk about dub forever. But I will say that some people in our chat seem to be like underwhelmed by it all. I think I don't know about underwhelming. I think more, I was intrigued by a lot of the little things that seem to be coming to iOS 18 and watchOS.

I can't wait to try some of these features out for myself and see how my like more mainstream average friends, average Joe friends feel about AI. Like I was in the gym this morning to repeat that. And I was asking everybody, everyone's like, how was California? Cause you know, I didn't come to the gym for a few days and I was like, oh yeah, I learned [00:18:00] about this, learned about that.

And I'm waiting to see how people feel about it. And I think. I don't think we'll know until iOS and all the other software updates really roll out later this year. So we'll see.

Devindra: It's, it's certainly not as exciting as last year was. Like I went to, I went last year because there was new hardware and a whole new platform and a whole new vision of computing for Apple.

And now this is Hey we're just like catching up a little bit on AI. But also I think this this stuff is far more important in the long run for Apple than just the launch of vision pro because Apple intelligence covers everything. It's going to cover all their devices. It's also like a kind of like a reframing of how Siri will work, of how a lot of the, their apps will work like notes and everything, getting certain AI driven features.

Like briefly they had mentioned, Oh, you can, you could record calls on a, on voice memos and also have those automatically transcribed. And for some people like us. That's amazing stuff. That's tremendously useful. Also another example of Apple maybe putting a few apps out of business, I think call recorder and some of the other ones, like they, they may have some trouble.

[00:19:00] Yeah.

Cherlynn: Yeah,

Ben: they're putting my favorite tiny app out of business with Mac OS Sequoia, which one I love magnet and now they're going to do windows tiling like innately on the straight out of Windows 10

Devindra: baby. Apple's got it in 2024. Amazing. Amazing. Anything else you want to shout out, Ben? Because I know you had a lot of thoughts, too, on Apple's side.

Ben: The biggest thing was that it seems like a hidden app folder is going to be a problem in a lot of people's relationships.

Devindra: I, it's not that hard to bury an app into something right now, but yeah, that's certainly, what a targeted way to hide your Tinder,

Ben: yeah, and the way that these companies are going to pitch it is the same way companies pitched private browsing when private browsing started to be a thing, which is if you want to look for gifts for your loved ones or something, and you don't want them to know about it.

Yeah, sure. Sure,

Devindra: buddy. Sure. I like the app lock controls, that stuff looks cool. I don't know for

Ben: Oh yeah, I was thinking specifically about [00:20:00] you giving your phone to one of your kids. And then making sure that they can only watch a video or play that one game inside an That's super

Devindra: helpful and also shows Apple's kind of evolving its platforms for the way we actually use our devices.

Because you still can't do multi users on an iPad or something, right? So you have to hand an iPad with all of your stuff on it to a kid. And that's not great. And I don't, they probably will never do multi user. They'll be like, buy another iPad. That's how you do multi user iPads, right? Buy your

Cherlynn: mom an iPad.

You can't.

Devindra: And that's how I have ended up with three or four iPads in my house, and I'm already contemplating another one just because the ones I bought was like, Oh, we could share this. We could all use this. Now my daughter took this one. My wife took this one. This is now the baby video iPad.

It's tough.

Cherlynn: To repeat what Michael Coley in the chat said, I am adequately whelmed. This is absolutely true. I am not overwhelmed or overwhelmed. I am. By WWDC 2024, I will say though that Craig Federighi's all like his jokes and like the stunts or [00:21:00] what do you call them?

Gags. Yeah. Those are, I thought it was funny. And then the locked and hidden apps are a thing I have to it was going to make me feel even more like suspicious as a person. It's just not, it's going to trigger my suspicious nature even more than usual. But I like how, Oh, I'll vary. Also like Craig Federighi's hair styling pro app on his phone that he wants to hide was just such a funny thing to do.

I thought it was hilarious.

Ben: Also, the helmet that he was wearing in the skydiving scene that was literally just his hair. Just his hair. I didn't even notice that. I love the outfits,

Devindra: the skydiving outfits were like, Those were great,

Cherlynn: the jumpsuit with

Devindra: Suits almost like astronaut suits, but with like the colors and it was beautiful.

Those things were fun

Ben: and it made so much sense that it was like a hark back to the like Apple two. Yes. Era Apple two. Like

Devindra: white plus the colorful Apple app. Yep. Yep. I almost feel like they. They threw some shade at Google, right? They're like, Oh this was not on the live stream, but Tim Cook and Craig Federighi did get up on the stage at Apple Park.

And we're like, Hey, we're not going to have any fun. There's not going to be any stunts. [00:22:00] It's just going to be an hour of us. Just like delivering. It was very

Cherlynn: sarcastic. It was very sarcastic, but also.

Devindra: Literally what he was describing is what Google did just an hour of no fun delivering AI facts and I don't this is very boring and I don't care about all this.

And also, I don't know if I can trust half of this. I will say ultimately, between all the copilot stuff Microsoft has done between everything we've seen from open AI and chat GPT and the Google Gemini stuff. I at the very least feel like, Hey, we could trust Apple intelligence a little more because it's more focused on, Hey, I will do this thing within this app to make your life better and not, I am an overall assistant to do everything for you.

And I don't know what you're going to do with these AI generated images, but here they are. It feels more purposeful. Maybe not as exciting as it did last year for a lot of people, but this is how we will be using AI just like how we're using it right now for like occasional transcriptions and things like that.

That is useful functional stuff that doesn't require stealing, I don't know, resources from artists and also killing the environment in [00:23:00] the way that generated images can. All right, let's move on to Summer Games Fest. And while Sherilyn and I were in California doing all the Apple stuff, prepping for WWDC, another whole contingent of Engadget was in LA prepping for Summer Game Fest and getting ready for demos and briefings and all sorts of stuff.

There is no E3 this year because E3 is dead. We've talked about that, but Summer Game Fest is now like the, I don't know, the sort of new E3, like the, cause it's multiple streams. It's the Game Fest stream. With Jeff Keighley, but also Microsoft does a thing. Sony did their thing a couple weeks ago.

We see all these like cute things. I'm going to highlight some coverage here. Have you seen Lego Horizons Adventures, Shalyn? Do you understand what I'm talking

Cherlynn: about? Have not seen that I have not seen many of the Lego movies actually very recently I saw the it's not

Devindra: a Lego movie thing it's a horizon game thing So let me let's explain to what goes on here Cherlynn popular games and franchises occasionally get Lego fied So there's Star Wars Lego.

There's Harry Potter Lego [00:24:00] Basically, there's Marvel Lego stuff, right? This is the latest version of that stuff. So horizon You know, the zero, the horizon series on PlayStation from PlayStation four and five is now Lego formed. And I think it looks pretty adorable. I don't know, Ben, have you played the games?

Because I feel like the horizon games look really cool, but are really annoying to play. They feel like sub tier. AAA gaming for me where I'm like, I understand why you look so good, but I really wish I liked playing you better. And this game just looks like more fun than the actual horizon games.

Ben: I'm going to be real with you. I think there's a lot of stuff that is like Sony exclusive. That feels like a simulation of a AAA game. I am playing Ghost of Tsushima right now, and it. is fun, it's beautiful, but it's also surprisingly repetitive. Like every open world game. Yeah, I really understand where you're coming from.

But the new Zelda open world games, [00:25:00] like Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild, didn't feel quite as repetitive as like Ghost of Tsushima did. Like Tsushima?

Devindra: Yeah, I think

Ben: the

Devindra: thing like the Zelda stuff feels more alive and immersive, right? Like things just you stumble upon into things.

You're not like led from plot point to plot point. And I think the thing about Horizon is just, I don't, it plays very badly. It's like slow paced. There's a lot of like bow and arrow action. Whereas at least with Ghost of Tsushima, like you get cool samurai action. It's really fast. Like the actual action is fast.

But anyway, I'm not a huge fan of the Horizon games. Playing them, but Lego Horizon Ventures looks really cool. But,

Ben: and the really important thing about this being a Lego fied version of a Sony title is that the Lego fied versions of things are often like some of the first video games that kids play, period.

So that is their introduction to, Batman, that is their introduction to Indiana Jones. That's their introduction to Harry Potter when parents, yeah, when parents [00:26:00] think that maybe the real thing might be a little bit too advanced for them. Or, the idea of someone, falling down dead is scarier than, just Lego bricks, like they're

Devindra: also funnier.

These games tend to be like very comedic, very tongue in cheek. The Star Wars stuff. Like actively makes fun of Star Wars at times, which I think is hilarious. I need to play through those. Like they've done pretty much all the Star Wars movies, right? I need to play through those with my daughter. So this

Ben: is a great idea to introduce kids to one of Sony's like big franchises.

Oh

Devindra: man, they should do Lego Lego Last of Us. Oh no! This is such an SNL skit idea. Lego Last of Us would be amazing.

Ben: Oh. Lego Last of Us Part 2, where they try to lego fy the cycle of violence. What is the nature of revenge? They talk about, yeah, exactly. That would be beautiful.

Devindra: Aaron Suporius, Edding Gadget, calls Lego Horizon Adventure maybe Sony's most important game of the year.

Recall that Sony said that they're not going to have any major Basically [00:27:00] like studio titles happening this year. So this is a pretty big one for them. Some other stuff Kunitsugami, Path of the Goddess from Capcom. Yeah, from Capcom looks really cool. And it's like an action fantasy plus strategy game.

Jessica Condit previewed it. She says it feels as luscious as it looks. This is a weird looking game because it's like, it looks like a little bit. Almost Ninja Gaiden Actioner, but also there's like strategy stuff happening at the same time. I have no idea what's going on here, but this thing is coming on July 19th, so that is sooner than most of the games showing off at Summer Games Fest

Ben: yeah.

Yeah, from the screenshot, it looked pretty good. Souls like a little bit. And then I watched a bit of the trailer and I was like, no, this is Bayonetta. But then also what like strategy, it seems like it might be interesting. And if you're interested in any of those genres, then maybe it's two great tastes that taste great together.

Devindra: For sure. We're going to give all these games a Cherlynn scale. So I think the the Lego horizon game, maybe eight out of [00:28:00] 10 on the Cherlynn scale. Okay. This game. I would say zero out of 10, but I've got one for you, Cherlynn. Marvel Rivals, which is a team shooter using all the Marvel characters. I could see you getting into that.

I could see that being a 7 out of 10 on

Speaker 3: the Sherlock scale. It

Devindra: is like Overwatch, except it's all the, like literally all the Marvel people. So Iron Man, Hulk, I don't know, is Hulk blasting rays? I don't know how this is happening. Yeah, Vision also X Men stuff happening at the scene, like within it, from what I can see.

Spider Man's in here, Venom's in here, all the Marvel stuff. In a team thing, I would say,

Cherlynn: what I would play, not a team shooter. I would play a Marvel dating sim. Let's put Iron Man with like vision. Let's make them make out,

Ben: there was, if Marvel were cowards, that would do incredibly well.

Cause I was about to say something about how like Marvel has really infrequently had. A real like blockbuster franchise. Spider Man, I think does some of [00:29:00] the best for them. But if they were brave enough to do a dating sim where you could ship the characters.

Devindra: They did. They did.

Showing you, I think you need to play Marvel's Midnight Suns, which was a sort of like RPG strategy. Is it romance? There are romances within it, there are relationships, so you spend, it is a game where you have to fight big bad guys, but also you spend most of the time at a dormitory, just hanging out with Blade.

And everybody and just hanging out, having conversations for me, that was always like my favorite part of X Men stuff too, of just people talking to each other. So everybody yeah, go check out Marvel Midnight. I want to,

Cherlynn: I want to correct your scale a little bit. I think I don't know about eight out of 10 for the Lego Horizons thing.

I see it being good for you. I see it needed to be like extremely repetitive. Like this dude, hang on. Dude named Charlie in the chat was like Papa's. Pasta Perry or something. Pastaria. I don't know. It's if you put a word like a cute character, like a papa and you give me food like pasta, that's nine out of 10 on my scale.

Devindra: The thing about the Lego games is that they're all very repetitive. [00:30:00] Like it's about collecting stuff and just like very low difficulty things. So anyway, Marvel rivals Matt Smith wrote this up and he calls it like, yeah the biggest threat to this is all the other rival team shooters, like overwatch.

This thing looks cool, but I do not understand how they're balancing the various powers here. So I guess we'll see Matt Smith also covered Assassin Creed Shadow Shadows, which is the one set in Japan. And this one looks really cool. There's going to be a female assassin. Also the legendary black assassin or black samurai Yasuke is featured in this one too.

This game looks bad as hell or like badass in the way that Ghost of Tsushima does. I think it looks really cool. The only thing is, it's Assassin's Creed, and I don't know if we can trust Ubisoft to be super original lately, at least with the Assassin's Creed games. Thoughts? Ben? Zhilin?

Ben: So I remember, years ago, I looked up an article just now, Ubisoft said, In 2014, that they would never do an Assassin's Creed game [00:31:00] set in feudal Japan, but now that Assassin's Creed is basically releasing games, what, every year?

Every two years? So it's become like a 2K franchise. We have Assassin's Creed 2K24, we're finally getting Assassin's Creed in Japan.

Devindra: That's it was the most obvious thing in the world. Come on, we, a lot of us grew up playing Ninja Gaiden and a lot of similar games. Just give us open world, give us cool swords.

That's what, it's, we're begging you, begging Ubisoft to do it.

Ben: And that's what people were thinking about. Early on, they were saying, okay what assassins do we really know about? Perhaps the ones in Japan?

Devindra: Anyway, that looks cool. That looks, and that's also going to be on Apple hardware too.

Apple made a point to point out to show that's going to be running on Macs and also like iPads and stuff too. So this is another example of Apple getting like AAA games. I believe they also got the last couple Assassin's Creed. Yeah. The recent one set in the Middle East was also on Apple devices.

So that's all cool stuff. We actually saw some hardware. [00:32:00] From all these announcements to Microsoft announced. That

Cherlynn: was cool.

Devindra: I don't know if it's cool. Cool to me to see

Cherlynn: like hardware out of a gaming show,

Devindra: it's confusing because what we ended up getting is There's a 1 terabyte all digital Xbox Series X, which is not selling very well right now, but At $450, that's confusing because the MSRP for the Series X is still $500, but everybody has that thing on sale below four 50.

So for the longest time, you could have gotten the Series X for 400, I think at times. Occasionally I saw it's three 50. With a just drive in everything. There's no like hardware tweak for this. They're not making this any faster. So that is really weird, especially as we're hearing about the like.

PlayStation 5 Pro coming out there is a 600 two terabyte special edition Xbox Series X, which is baffling to me because nobody, very few people are buying the Xbox Series X. So presenting an even more expensive one show in. I [00:33:00] don't understand the capitalists more

Cherlynn: expensive. I will say I saw the headline and that's really the extent of it.

I was like, Oh, and all digital series X. Cool. I guess the series S doesn't need to exist anymore. I don't know. And also am I getting this one? Because I don't like to collect discs. I don't, but then you're saying it's more expensive than the, the previous series X.

Devindra: It depends. Like it's more expensive than the like MSRP.

So this is all very confusing. And Aaron Saporas wrote up a great piece about this is a little disappointing because we also saw from the whole Xbox leak stuff, and you can't always take that information, like to be completely legit, but we 500, two terabyte, all digital. Xbox Series X that was codenamed Brooklyn with faster Wi Fi and a lot of stuff and a new controller that had like Motion sensing like doing more stuff like that The DualSense controller is doing now on PlayStation 5 that controller is nowhere to be seen and instead We have a more expensive Xbox Series X that people already were not [00:34:00] wanting from Microsoft.

So that is weird Microsoft did show off like a whole bunch of cool games at their thing. Like we finally saw perfect dark We saw a bit of the new fable It has also been years since those things were announced and those games also aren't coming until 2025, I believe. So again I don't know what a difference is going to make for Microsoft, but so confusing when I look at Microsoft's problems, I'm like just you want to sell subscriptions, man, just make your shit cheaper, get, let people buy your box, and then they will subscribe to your thing.

Nobody's going to buy 600 Xbox. Maybe the weird, like the people who have already bought Xbox series X's may buy another one. I don't know. It's just baffling to me. So just does Microsoft not want the market for Xbox seems soft. It's super soft. My thinking is like Microsoft just doesn't want to lose more money on it.

Cause they're already losing a ton of money in Xbox hardware. So if you Lowr the price, then you're taking a bite out of potential revenues, right? But if you raise the price, then at least like maybe you'll make that up for the loyal fans who are already supporting [00:35:00] you, who are rebuying second consoles.

I don't know. That just seemed baffling to me. Another tidbit micro the Xbox head, Phil Spencer said I think we should have a handheld. I wonder what that means. Are they going to debut something this holiday season? Is that the thing they're really going to want people to push to?

Rather than a box into your TV, maybe a handheld that can be docked like a Switch, or a Steam Deck or something? To me, that seems like a logical path forward for Microsoft, especially if you want to sell Game Pass subscriptions. Yeah. Would you buy an Xbox handheld, Trillian?

Cherlynn: Bye is a strong word.

I will play on one depending on the software, I think. But I don't know. I have an INAO that I borrowed from Sam, I believe. And it's full windows. And after a while, I just basically sitting. Collecting dust. So I don't know that I'm the type of person that will get like a steam deck or whatever.

The steam deck

Devindra: is so much bigger too. So yeah. Okay. Okay. I think we know where it stands.

Cherlynn: I hook it up to my [00:36:00] TV. I think maybe if the Xbox gaming handheld could be hooked up to the TV, like a lot of them can, then I would be more inclined to, yeah.

Devindra: There's no reason they couldn't and right now that's another good use of the Steam Deck because it's like a portable console that you can play handheld, but bring it on vacation, dock it to the TV if you want to, and do some like big living room gaming too.

I remember you liked Arcane, right? Srillin, the series?

Cherlynn: The TV, the show? The

Devindra: League of Legends show? Yes. So we saw a trailer for Season 2? That looks fantastic. It seems like that's going to be the only other season of Arcane, so that looks cool. At least from what we've seen so far, that show takes forever to produce because the animation is so complicated and so in depth.

But I'm looking forward to seeing that. Yeah, folks, let us know what you like from all the gaming announcements. Like I was so focused on Apple. I only saw occasional trailers here and there, but perfect dark look cool. I am playing a bit of I am your beast, which is the demo. That demo is up now on steam and that's from the folks who did that max pain clone recently, which looked, that was a cool game.

[00:37:00] I really enjoyed playing that. And I'm your beast is just cool and stylish and violent and all the fun ways. So podcasts and gadget. com, let us know what you enjoyed from summer game fest and all the announcements recently.

Let's move on to other news. How do you think what do you think Cherlynnn? Currently as of now, I think X is officially making likes mostly private for everybody. Do you think this will hide your shame or do you not care?

Cherlynn: I saw, we were having a chat in the late afternoons, like of the team, the afternoon shift.

And I know that Pranav was like quite upset. He cannot no longer stalk some of the people that he would look at their likes. I think this is helpful.

Speaker 3: Yeah,

Cherlynn: it was helpful. I think it helped you understand what people were like in a way that their tweets or their retweets weren't going to show. For me, I.

Personally don't care. Like I don't didn't care if people saw my likes or not. Like I'm not going around liking salacious or like things. [00:38:00] But yeah, my take on this move is it's obviously protecting the people that Elon Musk wants to protect and himself included, right? What is he liking? The thing that makes me Like pause is like, what if what's what if a social platform, like Instagram starts doing this to hiding your likes, because you used to be able to like stalk people way more easily on Instagram, let's be honest.

And then now it's a bit more like of hoop jumping. And I know that. So all my experience of the internet is through the lens of Reddit, right? And Reddit, there's one that I follow. That's I don't follow it, but it pops up on my homepage. It's the Travis, I'm sorry, the Taylor Swift. And Travis Kelsey sort of subreddit where they're like, look at all the people he follows and look at all their posts he liked.

And I'm like,

Devindra: wow.

Cherlynn: Like it's not

Devindra: crazy. Yeah.

Cherlynn: I don't think it's telling really, I don't know, but it does. It is some data that you're now. That are now being hidden from you. So it is is like free speech, but hide your [00:39:00] shame. I don't know.

Devindra: That's what it is. Like every time Elon is yeah, we believe in total free speech, but also I don't want people to see what I truly believe in.

And the dude has been out there saying I dunno, racist and misogynistic things, and honestly, anti Semitic things at points too. So it's dude has actively supported neo nazis on his feed I wonder what, I almost look, I think like he, he just learned that likes are totally public and that people can hit a button and see everything you've liked.

And then it's just like a line of like porn and weird random stuff and weird racist stuff that he got

Cherlynn: called out. Or caught doing something recently that but the thing is we've all noticed that he does these things stupid like replies and whatnot And so like why is he only realizing now I think someone That he cares about the opinion of told him

Devindra: It's cat turd or whoever like one of those people that that also are Big fans of the former president.

I don't know. It's a very silly thing. Also we saw on the news this week that [00:40:00] Elon Musk withdrew his breach of contract lawsuit against OpenAI on Tuesday. The move came a day before a California judge was supposed to hear OpenAI's request for dismissal for that whole thing. That was the one he thought, he said OpenAI had become like a closed source, de facto subsidiary of Microsoft and was basically using OpenAI to make a lot of money and to license its services.

And he just pulled back on that. I wonder if the revelation about the Apple deal not being fully a thing that is making a ton of revenue could be part of that. But the other He's just jealous,

Cherlynn: he's just jealous Grok isn't getting more.

Devindra: He's all about, he wants to crock. He wants everybody to crock.

There was another report yesterday. The open AI's actual revenue is reportedly booming with annualized revenue of 3. 4 billion. That is, that's a lot of money. Where is that money coming from? Cause it's not just like chat GPT pro subscriptions. Revenue, because Microsoft owns 49%. I don't quite know.

So there's a lot of like weird, shady stuff happening.

Cherlynn: The paid subscription version of chat GPT alone. I don't, yeah. I don't [00:41:00] know if that's enough. It can't be billions. Like it's

Devindra: 20 bucks a month. And also I don't know how many people are actually doing that. Anyway. What did you think of this Sherilyn?

The news that Chrome OS will soon be leaning on the same technology that powers Android. That kind of makes sense. Yeah. Yeah.

Cherlynn: I think it's interesting as to what it implies for the future of Chrome OS. I think we are, we've been waiting so long for this sort of like midway between Chrome and Android OS that could help Google better take on or better make better tablets or tablet software.

That's really all I could really think about. I don't know that it. Specifically

Devindra: right here, Google is saying you will be embracing portions of the Android stack, like the Android Linux kernel and Android frameworks as part of the foundation of Chrome OS. That's interesting, because before Chrome OS was like a Linux foundation plus Chrome, plus a lot of Chrome stuff, whereas Android was always like a Linux foundation, and now they're like Let's just smush the two together a little bit, right?

It

Cherlynn: feels as if it's building out the OS a bit more, like the Android kernel, the Android framework, that sort of stuff, like in the way it handles, maybe, [00:42:00] notifications or apps, maybe. And then like with Chrome running as a very like browser based sort of OS, like maybe it'll. Be on top of that Android framework even more.

Yeah, but here's the other thing too. Apparently this is going to take some time, but it will according to Google, enable more AI features on Chromebooks

Devindra: or at least enable. Yeah, it'll make it easier to develop because right now, if they want to do that, they'd have to build out the Chrome OS actual software base plus a separate stuff for Android.

And now Google can combine work a little more easily. So that makes sense.

Cherlynn: Yeah, and in the past Chrome OS has adopted quite a few Android features already yes, like I said, more Android app support, and then also the Android Bluetooth infrastructure was also baked into Chrome OS.

I can't tell you exactly when, but, somewhat recently. So yeah, it looks like definitely they want to put more AI in Chrome OS. I'm

Devindra: sure Google folks are looking at this and like, why are we managing two separate code bases for very similar products at times? Like ultimately Chrome OS could just end up being Android running like a full screen, [00:43:00] version of Chrome or something, or a slightly, I don't even know.

I don't even know why it should be a whole separate thing, except Chrome OS was a lot more secure than Android. So maybe this could open up security vulnerabilities. I don't know. We shall see final bit of news this week. And there's so much news this week. So we didn't get to have a chance to do everything, but I saw the news yesterday that Alamo draft house is being bought by Sony pitchers.

That is something

Cherlynn: I didn't know how to feel about this. Honestly I couldn't tell if it was a good thing net or not so great thing. We all love Alamo draft house, but yeah, it's huh.

Devindra: It's a whole thing. So in 2020, what was it? The Paramount decree ended. That was the thing that prevented movie studios from owning movie theaters, because that's how it used to be before the 1950s.

So like studios had direct control over cinemas and the experience of that meant they would like limit which movies could go where, or like really isolate things similar to how some games can only be on certain consoles, like how that all stuff is controlled. So this [00:44:00] is the first example we're seeing of that whole thing kind of Going away a little bit.

It's interesting because Alamo has been in trouble for a while. They declared bankruptcy a couple of years ago. I know their licensees have been shutting down in several states. Like people, people have been also talking about like bad labor practices and something from them.

This will financially help Alamo draft house. Help it survive longer as a brand. But I do wonder what this means. Like how will Sony picture integrations make their way into this chain? Will Sony like block things from other? That's what I was thinking. Other folks. There's nothing stopping them from doing that because the paramount decree is gone.

So that is weird. And I do wonder if we'll see more of that too, because before the whole like Reddit stock stuff happened, like AMC was tanking for a while. Regal was tanking and there was a thinking that in these companies, other companies, movie studios, and other companies may just start buying up theater change because these are big buildings that are already built with giant screens.

There's a lot you could [00:45:00] do with that infrastructure that isn't just Doing studio, studio movies and stuff too. So I guess we'll see. I'm just like really, I don't know, just really hesitant to celebrate this news at all. I know. Let's move on to what we're working on. Are you, is there, are you working on anything for Lynn?

Cause I'm dead right now.

Cherlynn: I am dead, but I have something like four edits on my plate today. So I got a. I got a power through and then and meetings and the work continues, even if you feel dead, sometimes

Devindra: the work continues. That's how it goes. We'll, we have devices that we'll be reviewing soon too.

So it'll, it just, it's an onslaught, like things just come at us folks. But yeah, when you get excited, we're going to reenergize after WWDC and get ready for all the new devices we're expecting any picks for us this week.

Cherlynn: I in the obviously I haven't been like. Doing any relaxing in the last few days, but today at last night, when I got home, I was like, finally, I am in my home.

I feel so good at home. I really like being in my apartment that I meet to order to feel good for me. [00:46:00] Finally sat back and turned on like my guilty pleasure. I saw on Netflix, perfect match season two is on. So I started watching perfect match. It is the trashiest stuff. The stuff that like, there's tLC and ABC and all of those quality, like quality, there's like reality TV. That's there's a standard, right? And then there's Netflix reality. And then there's Netflix reality in terms of perfect match where they basically pull people from their other reality shows, like the circle or love is blind or too hot to handle, and then they put them together in one space, I think it's in Tulum and then have them try to date each other.

And it is absolute trash and I am here for it. You know what I like? I like to watch people be bad or, go through these like struggles of like your self esteem and whatnot, and then psychologically tear them apart, but also compare them to people I know in real life, it is so somehow relaxing for me.

Devindra: It's like a brain massage for you. I get it. It's just it helps you chill out. That's [00:47:00] totally fine. I want to shout out. I've been reading or I guess listening to an audio book, which is how I can define reading at this point. Cause often my eyes are too tired to read cause I'm reading stuff all day.

But during our trip to WWDC and afterwards, I have been listening to the audio book for tomorrow and tomorrow. Have you heard of this, Cherlynn? No. This is a novel by Gabrielle Zevin. It's about two friends who bond over a love of video games and end up running a video game studio together.

But it's also, this novel about friendship and platonic love and romantic love and also finding a place for yourself in the world when you feel like the world is not meant for you to I think it's really fascinating and moving. It gets a little over the top at the end, but this is something people have been talking about recently because it is a, it is not like a tech centered book, but it is something that is well aware of like the culture of video games and what it means for us and how Things are built.

So I think you'd enjoy this one, Sherilyn. It's definitely going to become some sort of Netflix, I dunno, series or movie. I think a [00:48:00] movie is being planned. I know the rights were sold, but this thing is so like long and I wouldn't say quite epic, but it's about life. It's about a journey of life between friends.

And it would be really hard to contain this in like a 90 minute or two hour movie even. But anyway, I'm enjoying the audio book. I got that from Audible. But the book itself I'm sure would be a fun, easy, breezy read tomorrow and tomorrow. If you're listening to this show, I think you'd probably dig it.

So check it out. It's by Gabrielle Zeman.

Cherlynn: That's it for the episode this week, everyone. Thank you as always for listening. Our theme music is by game composer Dale North. Our outro music is by our former managing editor, Terrence O'Brien. The podcast is produced by Ben Elman. You can find DaVendra online at

Devindra: DaVendra on Twitter.

Wherever. Blue Sky, Mastodon, all over the place. And I talk about movies and TV at thefilmcast. com.

Cherlynn: If you want to send me some examples of mind numbing games or TV shows, like anesthetic for my brain send them to me on Twitter. I am at Cherlynn Lo over there. [00:49:00] Or on threads at Cherlynn Instagram, or just email CCHER at Engadget.

com. Email us your thoughts about the show at podcast at Engadget. com. Leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform and subscribe anywhere you get platforms, anywhere you get platforms.

Devindra: Yes. Thanks folks. We're out.

Cherlynn: Microsoft.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/engadget-podcast-the-fallout-from-apples-wwdc-2024-and-summer-game-fest-113057941.html?src=rss

This week has felt like a month worth of news, now that we've wrapped up Apple's WWDC 2024 and Summer Game Fest in LA. In this episode, Cherlynn and Devindra discuss their final thoughts on Apple Intelligence and the company's upcoming software, and they chat about some of our coverage highlights from the pseudo-E3 Game Fest. Also, we dive into X making likes private (what is Elon hiding?!) and the news around Sony buying the Alamo Drafthouse theater chain.

---

Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcast, Engadget News!

Topics

• Our final thoughts on WWDC 2024 – 1:31

• Bloomberg Report: Apple isn't paying OpenAI a fee for ChatGPT, but will share profits – 12:18

• Summer Games Fest highlights: Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, LEGO Horizon Adventures, and an Assassin’s Creed finally set in Japan – 25:06

• X makes users’ likes private – 40:27

• ChromeOS will soon run on Android frameworks, enabling more AI on upcoming Chromebooks – 44:40

• Pop culture picks – 49:44

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Credits 

Hosts: Devindra Hardawar and Cherlynn Low
Producer: Ben Ellman
Music: Dale North and Terrence O'Brien

Transcript

Devindra: [00:00:00] What's up, Internet, and welcome back to the Engadget Podcast. I'm Senior Editor Devindra Hardawar.

Cherlynn: I'm Deputy Editor Cherlynn Low.

Devindra: We are back from Apple's WWDC, and we have thoughts. Plenty of thoughts. And I feel like, It's just one of those whirlwind things. Both Trillin and I got back in from California yesterday.

After recording this, I still feel like my body doesn't know, like, where I'm in, Trillin, or what time zone. I don't know how you feel.

Cherlynn: I went to the gym at 8 a. m. Eastern. That's my best way of getting back on the Eastern time zone. There you go.

Devindra: I like how you fit in the humble brag there. Yes, congrats on going to the gym for Lynn.

Fantastic. We're also going to be talking about Summer Game Fest, folks. We weren't there for that and I was trying to get Jess Condit on, but she's super busy still writing up stuff from that. So we have got a lot of coverage around that and there's some stories I want to highlight that Engadget has done.

Also some games that looks pretty cool. Also joining us this morning is podcast producer Ben Ellman, who I'm sure has thoughts on Apple and the game stuff. Good morning. I sure do. Good morning. And [00:01:00] as always, folks, if you're enjoying the show, please be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes or your podcast or of choice, leave us a review in iTunes.

Drop us an email at podcast@engadget.com. I'm not seeing enough of those emails. I would love to answer some reader questions. You can also typically join us Thursday mornings around 10 30 a. m. Eastern depending on the timing, really. It's just like about scheduling, but that's about the time you can carve out in your schedule for us.

Join us. You could see us on video. Sometimes we'll demo gadgets and We'll just have a great Q and a session too. So it's a fun time. Join us for that. I do want to point out if you're just listening to this episode, we did do a bonus episode at Apple's campus and it actually turned out pretty well because for Lynn and I were like right outside the, was it the Mac cafe or cafe Mac?

But we were outdoors surrounded by traffic and other noise, but it actually ended up sounding pretty good. I'd say. And that was like our overall thoughts on WWDC. Two days of going through meetings, going through the keynote and everything. In this episode, I want to take like a, just a step back and do you have any final thoughts for Lynn?

Cause I know you did a piece about the undersung features. That [00:02:00] you appreciated that were announced. Anything else you want to shout out?

Cherlynn: Yeah, when we did our recording I don't think I had taken my demo of the new satellite messaging features just yet. So I wasn't able to talk about it. Plus it was under embargo, it turns out.

This morning, my article on the details of how messaging via satellite will work is on engadget. com if you want to head on over, but yeah, there's a lot of like under the radar things. I got at some of them during our. Recorded episode earlier this week. Maps, for example, I don't know if I mentioned, but like maps had some really cool routes, like hikes built in now, and you can create a custom route and then you can share them.

So my whole thing is I'm going to create these custom, like scavenger hunt trails, or like, how do you get from the train station to my favorite restaurant in the fastest way in my mind and share them with my friends. Or share my goal is one day to share the preferred route with my Uber driver.

Don't take this tunnel, take that tunnel. So that was one of them. I really like a lot of the other features that I found out after the fact, like iOS 18 [00:03:00] actually has some math notes embedded into the notes app where you can write a little list of expenses from a group trip, for example, and then, put an equal sign to equate them, the name of venue was 50, 000 and then I don't know, food was 10, 000. And then you can tally it by saying venue plus food equal, and then take that divided by however many people you have. How big of a trip

Devindra: were you having where you have 50, 000? I know, right? I was, I went,

Cherlynn: it's a, it was a wedding trip.

This was like, I was also on Brian Tong's podcast after where I made this exact same sort of like example, but instead of saying trip, I said wedding. So I'm using the same numbers from wedding planning. Okay.

Devindra: Okay. Except for,

Cherlynn: I said it was a trip. Listen, I travel bougie, I just go on boats my life.

Devindra: Yeah, we do. We are well aware. But I feel like that's a feature that could be abused also to hey hey kids, follow this path to my murder den.

Cherlynn: Sure. Or something like that. I don't know. I don't know. Create custom paths to lure people into your ice cream van. But that's obviously then on the person to decide whether or not to follow it.

It's not like telling you where to live [00:04:00] your

Speaker 3: life.

Cherlynn: Buddy three Oh five love in the chat asked if texting via satellite will be a paid service after a year. So Apple has literally no outright answer for it's a really shrug

Devindra: emoji on all the satellite services for less

Cherlynn: shrug emoji and more like. Like not sure yet.

I feel like the sense I'm getting is that they're playing their cards close to their chest. The satellite service provider for their satellite services is global star. And if I had to guess, I look at what global star charges and maybe do some math around like the package or whatever but it's,

Devindra: it's Apple.

If they were to do that, it would be like discounted somehow. It'd be right. Exactly. That's what I meant.

Cherlynn: Do the math to make it not. It's as expensive in assuming you already have sort of a device. Again I'm extremely extrapolating here. I'm not like, I don't have any insider info here other than I know there's no plan.

Devindra: I think it's funny. It's been like two years since Apple announced like satellite features. First of all, it was like the emergency SOS feature, right? If you're stuck in the [00:05:00] middle of nowhere, maybe you could send a short text somewhere to tell people where you are. And now it's like straight up, like more messaging features.

Cherlynn: No. Emergency SOS via satellite was just for emergency responders. So you were only alLowd to text it would be like when you're trying to dial nine one one, but you don't have a signal at all. Then you would be redirected to a service center. So Apple had these like middle people that it was helping relay these emergency SOS messages to either.

It would figure out where your closest nine one one slash emergency services situation is and route you there with your satellite message. Or have you like have they handle it themselves? Maybe if they like be the dispatcher or they get in touch for you. And it was like, yeah, only text messages.

This time around, yeah. Messages via satellite is different, right? You're not limited to who you can message over satellite this time. You can send it to pretty much anyone in your iMessage. IMessages are end to end encrypted. If you send that, you're also alLowd to send SMS, the. The stipulation that Apple has put in place is that [00:06:00] for SMS, only the person that's off grid is able to initiate a message over satellite because they want to prevent, promotional business messages from clogging up the congestion, the light, the network, the satellite network.

That

Devindra: makes sense. Yeah.

Cherlynn: Yeah, it absolutely makes a lot of sense. And I think that the inclusion of SMS here is good. So I asked, I was like, why not RCS? And I think the idea, I think what I'm getting is that like RCS messages are like bigger in terms of size to like compress over satellite.

Even if it's just text. So I think there's just challenges and complications there, but still, Cool too. Is it

Devindra: straight up just text is it the messages app, but doing multimedia stuff too? No, so it's just

Cherlynn: text and then with emoji as well as emoji tap back reactions. By the way, before this dubbed up, I did not know that those reactions are called tap back.

So thank you very much WWDC for Informing me. Yeah. Those, how, like when you're in a message with your friends and you like gray tap their double tap their balloon, I remember

Devindra: when they announced it,

Cherlynn: react, I [00:07:00] didn't know the name was tap back. I thought tap back was something else.

Devindra: This is sad.

We can't take the Android out of Cherlynn because yeah, that was a thing people were talking about on the Apple side. It's just funny when they talk about

Cherlynn: on your phone.

Devindra: No. You could apply so many memes to Apple's approach to the satellite subscription, right? Initially it was like, ask me in two years, please?

I have not figured this out yet. And then last year, they were like we're going to extend it for one more year. So I don't have to think about this. It's it is the ultimate can I extend the deadline for my book report, please? Professor? Can I, it's very much, it's hilarious.

So now it's a whole, yeah.

Cherlynn: I think it's interesting because it lines up with their approach to all of their Apple intelligence things where they're not charging people a fee. I think there's an unspoken yet in there. And I think Apple wants to be able to see if there's a. Reason to charge people before it charges people, which is not a bad idea.

I think right now, satellite services on iPhone 14 and later haven't seemed, [00:08:00] enough to justify paying an additional monthly fee for it, even if it's a dollar a month, like I just don't know yet, but with messages via Silhouette, I can see they're building their way there,

Devindra: yeah, it's also once you start being like, Okay, we're gonna start nickel and diming you for this stuff.

And I do feel like Apple is one of those companies. It's like that. Is that actually better for the customer experience? Do we actually does that actually mean people won't use it? If somebody has to subscribe to it, and then they're in an actual emergency, and they are going to subscribe to it on the go.

Is that person like, yeah, they don't know how to deal with that potential PR disasters. And now it's just like

Cherlynn: optics are awful. If you're suddenly just optics are

Devindra: awful. So now it's okay free for everybody. I think this is related to something we were talking about Trillian where I really did not want Apple to do like a paid AI service and they announced Apple intelligence.

And again, folks go back to our bonus podcast. You can hear our main thoughts about all the major stuff, but they specifically did not do Apple intelligence pro. Or plus or anything. It's just Hey, it's doing a lot of stuff that's baked into your devices. Either the iPhone 15 pro [00:09:00] max or the pro or the newer devices coming up or, M series max as well.

But it's what's on device, some Apple stuff in the cloud, which they're doing some cool privacy stuff with, and very little bits of chat GPT, like chat GPT when necessary, but nowhere along this point, are they like, please pay us more for faster. That's not happening, right?

Cherlynn: It's not seeming like it's happening.

And I think that's a good thing. And I think also the integration with chat GPT at no cost is a good idea on Apple's part. I do want to point out that CF five 42 in the chat that say that if satellite text is not available. It's going to cost, they would rather pay per use instead of a monthly amount.

Because you'd rarely use it. And yeah, that seems like maybe it will be the approach. It seems smarter to offer people that at a nominal one time fee when needed for something, that's an emergency thing, right? Like you don't have to pay for every single use, but we'll charge you per text. That makes a little bit more sense.

Even if it's very 1990s,

Devindra: I think that's the other thing like, Oh, we're [00:10:00] back to paying per text now. That's, I know,

Cherlynn: I know. Yeah. But that helps to, reduce or relieve the congestion, potential congestion on those networks that are so precious.

Devindra: Gotcha. Now that we've had some time away from WWDC, Sherilyn, and our coverage and all the meetings and everything do you have any thoughts about what is next for Apple for the year ahead or with their new software or anything?

Cherlynn: I'm looking to iPhone event for Surprises, I do think again, I'm keeping an eye on the chat and there are some things that like, it feels, so we talked about this on the episode that we prerecorded, but maybe for our like main audience, I want to repeat and reiterate the main takeaway.

It is that as usual, it seems like with some of these features, Apple is copying or doing things that other people have done before, right? AI. The chat is talking about the icon tints, like the customizable homepage, the RCS with support. These are things that Android has done for a while. Android has had material you and like the tinting of the icons.

But I gotta say, we said this the last episode, and Apple seems to do it a little bit better. It's [00:11:00] really it's more sophisticated. They took their time to do something better and they're slow. And maybe the implementation isn't all the way there, but what they have delivered works the way they say it will, and they don't make promises.

They don't. Really? Typically, I think that's the thing.

Devindra: Yeah. One thing I want to point out, there was news yesterday that basically Bloomberg reported that Apple is not actually paying open AI for using and also open AI is not paying Apple. It seems like a weird agreement where.

Basically, OpenAI will get money down the line from like revenue sharing. I guess that's like the plan moving forward. But it is to me that really describes what we were talking about before, Cherlynn, where Apple has been like, okay, we have all this AI stuff and here carved in a little island. Is going to be our little AI model friends, right?

Right now, our friend is chat GPT, but if that friend breaks this relationship, if like they do something bad or we don't want to like deal with them anymore. Do you just cut out that [00:12:00] friend, X them out entirely, replace them with another, with Google Gemini or something. It seems very like plug and play, like what Apple can put in there.

They also mentioned that they are, they would consider Gemini. They have not. made any formal deals or other models that are very specific. So if you're a health worker, maybe there's a metal medical AI model that would be better suited for helping you rather than to have GPT or something. So that is interesting.

Cherlynn: It was nice of them. Nice. It was like smart of them to be like, Oh yeah, we're supporting the best one out there. Who's a pioneer in the field of this open AI. And I'm like, I don't know, I'd argue with Best. It is a pioneer, certainly. And I, we'll see, right? And they never mentioned They actually in the panel after WWDC keynote, by the way, that I just seen moderated panel Craig Federighi did mention that like Gemini or John Andrea might be the one that said this, but yeah Gemini might even be supported in future if it gets to that point.

He

Devindra: said that. Yeah.

Cherlynn: Yeah. Yeah. So interesting,

Devindra: it's interesting. Also, by the [00:13:00] way, I just want to talk about like how weird that whole situation was. So after the WWDC keynote, Apple invited press to come to this talk between Craig Federighi, their head of software engineering, and John Gianandrea Gianandrea their head of AI, right?

Oh, this is gonna be interesting. This is gonna be informative. Or informative, but it was also moderated by iJustine and no shade to her. I think she's great, but it did feel like this was just a scenario where Apple wrote these questions and Hey, person who is media well known, please ask these questions that we've asked and do not stray from any of this.

Cherlynn: It's one step above when Samsung does it's like their own company execs interviewing their other company executives situation where like you're paid literally by Samsung to interview Samsung people. In this case, I don't know if iJustine was paid, but it definitely feels yeah, you're a bit more.

Most

Devindra: definitely.

Cherlynn: But someone that was more controllable than, say, a member of the press,

Devindra: it's just, it is interesting when companies do that, but Ben, go ahead.

Ben: So I was gonna say that it was also a little bit like how Disney does all of its PR stuff. [00:14:00] Actually this is on my mind because I saw the four hour long, was it?

It's four hours, the Star Wars hotel video. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So now people are talking about, Oh Disney does PR weirdly because it's also like really on rails. You have to say like the actual trademark name for everything. So was this similar?

Devindra: To me, I actually had that in my mind too, Ben. To me, it did feel like that.

It was yes, because of course branded content right here, blah, blah, blah. Everything we just said at the keynote, like it definitely felt on rails. It didn't feel like a natural conversation where. I feel like if one of us were to do that chat, we'd be like, yeah, but who, where are you, what are you training these models on?

What's going on here? Give us the full skinny and everything. And

Ben: yeah, can you tell us a little bit more about private cloud compute? Because that sounds like you're talking out of both sides. They

Devindra: did end up saying more about that, but even then I would have liked to be more. But that is funny.

I wrote up like what Apple and what specifically. I think Craig Federighi laid out for the whole Apple, the [00:15:00] private cloud compute thing too, but the really interesting there too is like Apple for years has been saying like, Hey, our stuff is on device. It's more secure than Google where you're sending all your photos to the cloud for processing or whatever.

And now they have to rely on the cloud a little. So they're like, okay. But is it a secure cloud? Is it a private cloud? Yes. Private cloud compute. Apple did say a few things that were interesting about that, Ben, where the information being sent, first of all it's tidbits, the little bits of information that you're, if you're asking Siri about something, we'll go there fully anonymized, like the private relay stuff that is already on iPhones and Apple services.

So that's helpful. Also the servers don't store anything. Which I think I'm sure the FBI is looking at this and no Apple, please, we need logs. We need data to see how people access things. And none of that is going to be on the servers. They say Apple has historically, like there was that whole thing, right?

About them fighting against the FBI that wanted to unlock. I think it was a shooter's phone at one point, right?

Ben: Yes, I remember that. That was like 2015, 2016 or [00:16:00] something.

Devindra: And then the, I believe authorities got into the phone in another way, but Apple for its part was like trying hard to push back against that.

So yes, it's a bad name. It's also like very marketing heavy, but also I don't know. They say they've they've laid out like the software that the servers are also using for security audits. Devices will only be able to talk to those approved servers. So it's not like somebody can intercept your question or something.

And the audit thing is something nobody else is doing for cloud security right now, at least from what I've seen.

Ben: The way it made it seem like, Like in the keynote though, was that like everyone gets their own like place in the server,

Devindra: which is impossible. That's certainly not true. But it's like, when you talk about the cloud the cloud is an amorphous thing.

It could be 10 servers. It could be 20 servers. But the point is, it's like this thing that can grow as needs require. That stuff is, that's just how we've been living with the cloud so far. But I. I certainly feel better about private cloud compute than I did about Microsoft recall right where [00:17:00] researchers were immediately like, Oh, you're just going to capture everything we do on your computer on our computers.

Okay. You're not graying out. You're not blurring out passwords or authentication or anything. And then people realize yeah, these are just a plain text database sitting in your hard drive. The other accounts on your system can access those very Easy to see security holes. I at least think like Apple has anticipated some of those on the server side.

So that's something. Yeah. Any other thoughts for Lynn out of WWDC?

Cherlynn: I honestly feel like I could talk about dub forever. But I will say that some people in our chat seem to be like underwhelmed by it all. I think I don't know about underwhelming. I think more, I was intrigued by a lot of the little things that seem to be coming to iOS 18 and watchOS.

I can't wait to try some of these features out for myself and see how my like more mainstream average friends, average Joe friends feel about AI. Like I was in the gym this morning to repeat that. And I was asking everybody, everyone's like, how was California? Cause you know, I didn't come to the gym for a few days and I was like, oh yeah, I learned [00:18:00] about this, learned about that.

And I'm waiting to see how people feel about it. And I think. I don't think we'll know until iOS and all the other software updates really roll out later this year. So we'll see.

Devindra: It's, it's certainly not as exciting as last year was. Like I went to, I went last year because there was new hardware and a whole new platform and a whole new vision of computing for Apple.

And now this is Hey we're just like catching up a little bit on AI. But also I think this this stuff is far more important in the long run for Apple than just the launch of vision pro because Apple intelligence covers everything. It's going to cover all their devices. It's also like a kind of like a reframing of how Siri will work, of how a lot of the, their apps will work like notes and everything, getting certain AI driven features.

Like briefly they had mentioned, Oh, you can, you could record calls on a, on voice memos and also have those automatically transcribed. And for some people like us. That's amazing stuff. That's tremendously useful. Also another example of Apple maybe putting a few apps out of business, I think call recorder and some of the other ones, like they, they may have some trouble.

[00:19:00] Yeah.

Cherlynn: Yeah,

Ben: they're putting my favorite tiny app out of business with Mac OS Sequoia, which one I love magnet and now they're going to do windows tiling like innately on the straight out of Windows 10

Devindra: baby. Apple's got it in 2024. Amazing. Amazing. Anything else you want to shout out, Ben? Because I know you had a lot of thoughts, too, on Apple's side.

Ben: The biggest thing was that it seems like a hidden app folder is going to be a problem in a lot of people's relationships.

Devindra: I, it's not that hard to bury an app into something right now, but yeah, that's certainly, what a targeted way to hide your Tinder,

Ben: yeah, and the way that these companies are going to pitch it is the same way companies pitched private browsing when private browsing started to be a thing, which is if you want to look for gifts for your loved ones or something, and you don't want them to know about it.

Yeah, sure. Sure,

Devindra: buddy. Sure. I like the app lock controls, that stuff looks cool. I don't know for

Ben: Oh yeah, I was thinking specifically about [00:20:00] you giving your phone to one of your kids. And then making sure that they can only watch a video or play that one game inside an That's super

Devindra: helpful and also shows Apple's kind of evolving its platforms for the way we actually use our devices.

Because you still can't do multi users on an iPad or something, right? So you have to hand an iPad with all of your stuff on it to a kid. And that's not great. And I don't, they probably will never do multi user. They'll be like, buy another iPad. That's how you do multi user iPads, right? Buy your

Cherlynn: mom an iPad.

You can't.

Devindra: And that's how I have ended up with three or four iPads in my house, and I'm already contemplating another one just because the ones I bought was like, Oh, we could share this. We could all use this. Now my daughter took this one. My wife took this one. This is now the baby video iPad.

It's tough.

Cherlynn: To repeat what Michael Coley in the chat said, I am adequately whelmed. This is absolutely true. I am not overwhelmed or overwhelmed. I am. By WWDC 2024, I will say though that Craig Federighi's all like his jokes and like the stunts or [00:21:00] what do you call them?

Gags. Yeah. Those are, I thought it was funny. And then the locked and hidden apps are a thing I have to it was going to make me feel even more like suspicious as a person. It's just not, it's going to trigger my suspicious nature even more than usual. But I like how, Oh, I'll vary. Also like Craig Federighi's hair styling pro app on his phone that he wants to hide was just such a funny thing to do.

I thought it was hilarious.

Ben: Also, the helmet that he was wearing in the skydiving scene that was literally just his hair. Just his hair. I didn't even notice that. I love the outfits,

Devindra: the skydiving outfits were like, Those were great,

Cherlynn: the jumpsuit with

Devindra: Suits almost like astronaut suits, but with like the colors and it was beautiful.

Those things were fun

Ben: and it made so much sense that it was like a hark back to the like Apple two. Yes. Era Apple two. Like

Devindra: white plus the colorful Apple app. Yep. Yep. I almost feel like they. They threw some shade at Google, right? They're like, Oh this was not on the live stream, but Tim Cook and Craig Federighi did get up on the stage at Apple Park.

And we're like, Hey, we're not going to have any fun. There's not going to be any stunts. [00:22:00] It's just going to be an hour of us. Just like delivering. It was very

Cherlynn: sarcastic. It was very sarcastic, but also.

Devindra: Literally what he was describing is what Google did just an hour of no fun delivering AI facts and I don't this is very boring and I don't care about all this.

And also, I don't know if I can trust half of this. I will say ultimately, between all the copilot stuff Microsoft has done between everything we've seen from open AI and chat GPT and the Google Gemini stuff. I at the very least feel like, Hey, we could trust Apple intelligence a little more because it's more focused on, Hey, I will do this thing within this app to make your life better and not, I am an overall assistant to do everything for you.

And I don't know what you're going to do with these AI generated images, but here they are. It feels more purposeful. Maybe not as exciting as it did last year for a lot of people, but this is how we will be using AI just like how we're using it right now for like occasional transcriptions and things like that.

That is useful functional stuff that doesn't require stealing, I don't know, resources from artists and also killing the environment in [00:23:00] the way that generated images can. All right, let's move on to Summer Games Fest. And while Sherilyn and I were in California doing all the Apple stuff, prepping for WWDC, another whole contingent of Engadget was in LA prepping for Summer Game Fest and getting ready for demos and briefings and all sorts of stuff.

There is no E3 this year because E3 is dead. We've talked about that, but Summer Game Fest is now like the, I don't know, the sort of new E3, like the, cause it's multiple streams. It's the Game Fest stream. With Jeff Keighley, but also Microsoft does a thing. Sony did their thing a couple weeks ago.

We see all these like cute things. I'm going to highlight some coverage here. Have you seen Lego Horizons Adventures, Shalyn? Do you understand what I'm talking

Cherlynn: about? Have not seen that I have not seen many of the Lego movies actually very recently I saw the it's not

Devindra: a Lego movie thing it's a horizon game thing So let me let's explain to what goes on here Cherlynn popular games and franchises occasionally get Lego fied So there's Star Wars Lego.

There's Harry Potter Lego [00:24:00] Basically, there's Marvel Lego stuff, right? This is the latest version of that stuff. So horizon You know, the zero, the horizon series on PlayStation from PlayStation four and five is now Lego formed. And I think it looks pretty adorable. I don't know, Ben, have you played the games?

Because I feel like the horizon games look really cool, but are really annoying to play. They feel like sub tier. AAA gaming for me where I'm like, I understand why you look so good, but I really wish I liked playing you better. And this game just looks like more fun than the actual horizon games.

Ben: I'm going to be real with you. I think there's a lot of stuff that is like Sony exclusive. That feels like a simulation of a AAA game. I am playing Ghost of Tsushima right now, and it. is fun, it's beautiful, but it's also surprisingly repetitive. Like every open world game. Yeah, I really understand where you're coming from.

But the new Zelda open world games, [00:25:00] like Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild, didn't feel quite as repetitive as like Ghost of Tsushima did. Like Tsushima?

Devindra: Yeah, I think

Ben: the

Devindra: thing like the Zelda stuff feels more alive and immersive, right? Like things just you stumble upon into things.

You're not like led from plot point to plot point. And I think the thing about Horizon is just, I don't, it plays very badly. It's like slow paced. There's a lot of like bow and arrow action. Whereas at least with Ghost of Tsushima, like you get cool samurai action. It's really fast. Like the actual action is fast.

But anyway, I'm not a huge fan of the Horizon games. Playing them, but Lego Horizon Ventures looks really cool. But,

Ben: and the really important thing about this being a Lego fied version of a Sony title is that the Lego fied versions of things are often like some of the first video games that kids play, period.

So that is their introduction to, Batman, that is their introduction to Indiana Jones. That's their introduction to Harry Potter when parents, yeah, when parents [00:26:00] think that maybe the real thing might be a little bit too advanced for them. Or, the idea of someone, falling down dead is scarier than, just Lego bricks, like they're

Devindra: also funnier.

These games tend to be like very comedic, very tongue in cheek. The Star Wars stuff. Like actively makes fun of Star Wars at times, which I think is hilarious. I need to play through those. Like they've done pretty much all the Star Wars movies, right? I need to play through those with my daughter. So this

Ben: is a great idea to introduce kids to one of Sony's like big franchises.

Oh

Devindra: man, they should do Lego Lego Last of Us. Oh no! This is such an SNL skit idea. Lego Last of Us would be amazing.

Ben: Oh. Lego Last of Us Part 2, where they try to lego fy the cycle of violence. What is the nature of revenge? They talk about, yeah, exactly. That would be beautiful.

Devindra: Aaron Suporius, Edding Gadget, calls Lego Horizon Adventure maybe Sony's most important game of the year.

Recall that Sony said that they're not going to have any major Basically [00:27:00] like studio titles happening this year. So this is a pretty big one for them. Some other stuff Kunitsugami, Path of the Goddess from Capcom. Yeah, from Capcom looks really cool. And it's like an action fantasy plus strategy game.

Jessica Condit previewed it. She says it feels as luscious as it looks. This is a weird looking game because it's like, it looks like a little bit. Almost Ninja Gaiden Actioner, but also there's like strategy stuff happening at the same time. I have no idea what's going on here, but this thing is coming on July 19th, so that is sooner than most of the games showing off at Summer Games Fest

Ben: yeah.

Yeah, from the screenshot, it looked pretty good. Souls like a little bit. And then I watched a bit of the trailer and I was like, no, this is Bayonetta. But then also what like strategy, it seems like it might be interesting. And if you're interested in any of those genres, then maybe it's two great tastes that taste great together.

Devindra: For sure. We're going to give all these games a Cherlynn scale. So I think the the Lego horizon game, maybe eight out of [00:28:00] 10 on the Cherlynn scale. Okay. This game. I would say zero out of 10, but I've got one for you, Cherlynn. Marvel Rivals, which is a team shooter using all the Marvel characters. I could see you getting into that.

I could see that being a 7 out of 10 on

Speaker 3: the Sherlock scale. It

Devindra: is like Overwatch, except it's all the, like literally all the Marvel people. So Iron Man, Hulk, I don't know, is Hulk blasting rays? I don't know how this is happening. Yeah, Vision also X Men stuff happening at the scene, like within it, from what I can see.

Spider Man's in here, Venom's in here, all the Marvel stuff. In a team thing, I would say,

Cherlynn: what I would play, not a team shooter. I would play a Marvel dating sim. Let's put Iron Man with like vision. Let's make them make out,

Ben: there was, if Marvel were cowards, that would do incredibly well.

Cause I was about to say something about how like Marvel has really infrequently had. A real like blockbuster franchise. Spider Man, I think does some of [00:29:00] the best for them. But if they were brave enough to do a dating sim where you could ship the characters.

Devindra: They did. They did.

Showing you, I think you need to play Marvel's Midnight Suns, which was a sort of like RPG strategy. Is it romance? There are romances within it, there are relationships, so you spend, it is a game where you have to fight big bad guys, but also you spend most of the time at a dormitory, just hanging out with Blade.

And everybody and just hanging out, having conversations for me, that was always like my favorite part of X Men stuff too, of just people talking to each other. So everybody yeah, go check out Marvel Midnight. I want to,

Cherlynn: I want to correct your scale a little bit. I think I don't know about eight out of 10 for the Lego Horizons thing.

I see it being good for you. I see it needed to be like extremely repetitive. Like this dude, hang on. Dude named Charlie in the chat was like Papa's. Pasta Perry or something. Pastaria. I don't know. It's if you put a word like a cute character, like a papa and you give me food like pasta, that's nine out of 10 on my scale.

Devindra: The thing about the Lego games is that they're all very repetitive. [00:30:00] Like it's about collecting stuff and just like very low difficulty things. So anyway, Marvel rivals Matt Smith wrote this up and he calls it like, yeah the biggest threat to this is all the other rival team shooters, like overwatch.

This thing looks cool, but I do not understand how they're balancing the various powers here. So I guess we'll see Matt Smith also covered Assassin Creed Shadow Shadows, which is the one set in Japan. And this one looks really cool. There's going to be a female assassin. Also the legendary black assassin or black samurai Yasuke is featured in this one too.

This game looks bad as hell or like badass in the way that Ghost of Tsushima does. I think it looks really cool. The only thing is, it's Assassin's Creed, and I don't know if we can trust Ubisoft to be super original lately, at least with the Assassin's Creed games. Thoughts? Ben? Zhilin?

Ben: So I remember, years ago, I looked up an article just now, Ubisoft said, In 2014, that they would never do an Assassin's Creed game [00:31:00] set in feudal Japan, but now that Assassin's Creed is basically releasing games, what, every year?

Every two years? So it's become like a 2K franchise. We have Assassin's Creed 2K24, we're finally getting Assassin's Creed in Japan.

Devindra: That's it was the most obvious thing in the world. Come on, we, a lot of us grew up playing Ninja Gaiden and a lot of similar games. Just give us open world, give us cool swords.

That's what, it's, we're begging you, begging Ubisoft to do it.

Ben: And that's what people were thinking about. Early on, they were saying, okay what assassins do we really know about? Perhaps the ones in Japan?

Devindra: Anyway, that looks cool. That looks, and that's also going to be on Apple hardware too.

Apple made a point to point out to show that's going to be running on Macs and also like iPads and stuff too. So this is another example of Apple getting like AAA games. I believe they also got the last couple Assassin's Creed. Yeah. The recent one set in the Middle East was also on Apple devices.

So that's all cool stuff. We actually saw some hardware. [00:32:00] From all these announcements to Microsoft announced. That

Cherlynn: was cool.

Devindra: I don't know if it's cool. Cool to me to see

Cherlynn: like hardware out of a gaming show,

Devindra: it's confusing because what we ended up getting is There's a 1 terabyte all digital Xbox Series X, which is not selling very well right now, but At $450, that's confusing because the MSRP for the Series X is still $500, but everybody has that thing on sale below four 50.

So for the longest time, you could have gotten the Series X for 400, I think at times. Occasionally I saw it's three 50. With a just drive in everything. There's no like hardware tweak for this. They're not making this any faster. So that is really weird, especially as we're hearing about the like.

PlayStation 5 Pro coming out there is a 600 two terabyte special edition Xbox Series X, which is baffling to me because nobody, very few people are buying the Xbox Series X. So presenting an even more expensive one show in. I [00:33:00] don't understand the capitalists more

Cherlynn: expensive. I will say I saw the headline and that's really the extent of it.

I was like, Oh, and all digital series X. Cool. I guess the series S doesn't need to exist anymore. I don't know. And also am I getting this one? Because I don't like to collect discs. I don't, but then you're saying it's more expensive than the, the previous series X.

Devindra: It depends. Like it's more expensive than the like MSRP.

So this is all very confusing. And Aaron Saporas wrote up a great piece about this is a little disappointing because we also saw from the whole Xbox leak stuff, and you can't always take that information, like to be completely legit, but we 500, two terabyte, all digital. Xbox Series X that was codenamed Brooklyn with faster Wi Fi and a lot of stuff and a new controller that had like Motion sensing like doing more stuff like that The DualSense controller is doing now on PlayStation 5 that controller is nowhere to be seen and instead We have a more expensive Xbox Series X that people already were not [00:34:00] wanting from Microsoft.

So that is weird Microsoft did show off like a whole bunch of cool games at their thing. Like we finally saw perfect dark We saw a bit of the new fable It has also been years since those things were announced and those games also aren't coming until 2025, I believe. So again I don't know what a difference is going to make for Microsoft, but so confusing when I look at Microsoft's problems, I'm like just you want to sell subscriptions, man, just make your shit cheaper, get, let people buy your box, and then they will subscribe to your thing.

Nobody's going to buy 600 Xbox. Maybe the weird, like the people who have already bought Xbox series X's may buy another one. I don't know. It's just baffling to me. So just does Microsoft not want the market for Xbox seems soft. It's super soft. My thinking is like Microsoft just doesn't want to lose more money on it.

Cause they're already losing a ton of money in Xbox hardware. So if you Lowr the price, then you're taking a bite out of potential revenues, right? But if you raise the price, then at least like maybe you'll make that up for the loyal fans who are already supporting [00:35:00] you, who are rebuying second consoles.

I don't know. That just seemed baffling to me. Another tidbit micro the Xbox head, Phil Spencer said I think we should have a handheld. I wonder what that means. Are they going to debut something this holiday season? Is that the thing they're really going to want people to push to?

Rather than a box into your TV, maybe a handheld that can be docked like a Switch, or a Steam Deck or something? To me, that seems like a logical path forward for Microsoft, especially if you want to sell Game Pass subscriptions. Yeah. Would you buy an Xbox handheld, Trillian?

Cherlynn: Bye is a strong word.

I will play on one depending on the software, I think. But I don't know. I have an INAO that I borrowed from Sam, I believe. And it's full windows. And after a while, I just basically sitting. Collecting dust. So I don't know that I'm the type of person that will get like a steam deck or whatever.

The steam deck

Devindra: is so much bigger too. So yeah. Okay. Okay. I think we know where it stands.

Cherlynn: I hook it up to my [00:36:00] TV. I think maybe if the Xbox gaming handheld could be hooked up to the TV, like a lot of them can, then I would be more inclined to, yeah.

Devindra: There's no reason they couldn't and right now that's another good use of the Steam Deck because it's like a portable console that you can play handheld, but bring it on vacation, dock it to the TV if you want to, and do some like big living room gaming too.

I remember you liked Arcane, right? Srillin, the series?

Cherlynn: The TV, the show? The

Devindra: League of Legends show? Yes. So we saw a trailer for Season 2? That looks fantastic. It seems like that's going to be the only other season of Arcane, so that looks cool. At least from what we've seen so far, that show takes forever to produce because the animation is so complicated and so in depth.

But I'm looking forward to seeing that. Yeah, folks, let us know what you like from all the gaming announcements. Like I was so focused on Apple. I only saw occasional trailers here and there, but perfect dark look cool. I am playing a bit of I am your beast, which is the demo. That demo is up now on steam and that's from the folks who did that max pain clone recently, which looked, that was a cool game.

[00:37:00] I really enjoyed playing that. And I'm your beast is just cool and stylish and violent and all the fun ways. So podcasts and gadget. com, let us know what you enjoyed from summer game fest and all the announcements recently.

Let's move on to other news. How do you think what do you think Cherlynnn? Currently as of now, I think X is officially making likes mostly private for everybody. Do you think this will hide your shame or do you not care?

Cherlynn: I saw, we were having a chat in the late afternoons, like of the team, the afternoon shift.

And I know that Pranav was like quite upset. He cannot no longer stalk some of the people that he would look at their likes. I think this is helpful.

Speaker 3: Yeah,

Cherlynn: it was helpful. I think it helped you understand what people were like in a way that their tweets or their retweets weren't going to show. For me, I.

Personally don't care. Like I don't didn't care if people saw my likes or not. Like I'm not going around liking salacious or like things. [00:38:00] But yeah, my take on this move is it's obviously protecting the people that Elon Musk wants to protect and himself included, right? What is he liking? The thing that makes me Like pause is like, what if what's what if a social platform, like Instagram starts doing this to hiding your likes, because you used to be able to like stalk people way more easily on Instagram, let's be honest.

And then now it's a bit more like of hoop jumping. And I know that. So all my experience of the internet is through the lens of Reddit, right? And Reddit, there's one that I follow. That's I don't follow it, but it pops up on my homepage. It's the Travis, I'm sorry, the Taylor Swift. And Travis Kelsey sort of subreddit where they're like, look at all the people he follows and look at all their posts he liked.

And I'm like,

Devindra: wow.

Cherlynn: Like it's not

Devindra: crazy. Yeah.

Cherlynn: I don't think it's telling really, I don't know, but it does. It is some data that you're now. That are now being hidden from you. So it is is like free speech, but hide your [00:39:00] shame. I don't know.

Devindra: That's what it is. Like every time Elon is yeah, we believe in total free speech, but also I don't want people to see what I truly believe in.

And the dude has been out there saying I dunno, racist and misogynistic things, and honestly, anti Semitic things at points too. So it's dude has actively supported neo nazis on his feed I wonder what, I almost look, I think like he, he just learned that likes are totally public and that people can hit a button and see everything you've liked.

And then it's just like a line of like porn and weird random stuff and weird racist stuff that he got

Cherlynn: called out. Or caught doing something recently that but the thing is we've all noticed that he does these things stupid like replies and whatnot And so like why is he only realizing now I think someone That he cares about the opinion of told him

Devindra: It's cat turd or whoever like one of those people that that also are Big fans of the former president.

I don't know. It's a very silly thing. Also we saw on the news this week that [00:40:00] Elon Musk withdrew his breach of contract lawsuit against OpenAI on Tuesday. The move came a day before a California judge was supposed to hear OpenAI's request for dismissal for that whole thing. That was the one he thought, he said OpenAI had become like a closed source, de facto subsidiary of Microsoft and was basically using OpenAI to make a lot of money and to license its services.

And he just pulled back on that. I wonder if the revelation about the Apple deal not being fully a thing that is making a ton of revenue could be part of that. But the other He's just jealous,

Cherlynn: he's just jealous Grok isn't getting more.

Devindra: He's all about, he wants to crock. He wants everybody to crock.

There was another report yesterday. The open AI's actual revenue is reportedly booming with annualized revenue of 3. 4 billion. That is, that's a lot of money. Where is that money coming from? Cause it's not just like chat GPT pro subscriptions. Revenue, because Microsoft owns 49%. I don't quite know.

So there's a lot of like weird, shady stuff happening.

Cherlynn: The paid subscription version of chat GPT alone. I don't, yeah. I don't [00:41:00] know if that's enough. It can't be billions. Like it's

Devindra: 20 bucks a month. And also I don't know how many people are actually doing that. Anyway. What did you think of this Sherilyn?

The news that Chrome OS will soon be leaning on the same technology that powers Android. That kind of makes sense. Yeah. Yeah.

Cherlynn: I think it's interesting as to what it implies for the future of Chrome OS. I think we are, we've been waiting so long for this sort of like midway between Chrome and Android OS that could help Google better take on or better make better tablets or tablet software.

That's really all I could really think about. I don't know that it. Specifically

Devindra: right here, Google is saying you will be embracing portions of the Android stack, like the Android Linux kernel and Android frameworks as part of the foundation of Chrome OS. That's interesting, because before Chrome OS was like a Linux foundation plus Chrome, plus a lot of Chrome stuff, whereas Android was always like a Linux foundation, and now they're like Let's just smush the two together a little bit, right?

It

Cherlynn: feels as if it's building out the OS a bit more, like the Android kernel, the Android framework, that sort of stuff, like in the way it handles, maybe, [00:42:00] notifications or apps, maybe. And then like with Chrome running as a very like browser based sort of OS, like maybe it'll. Be on top of that Android framework even more.

Yeah, but here's the other thing too. Apparently this is going to take some time, but it will according to Google, enable more AI features on Chromebooks

Devindra: or at least enable. Yeah, it'll make it easier to develop because right now, if they want to do that, they'd have to build out the Chrome OS actual software base plus a separate stuff for Android.

And now Google can combine work a little more easily. So that makes sense.

Cherlynn: Yeah, and in the past Chrome OS has adopted quite a few Android features already yes, like I said, more Android app support, and then also the Android Bluetooth infrastructure was also baked into Chrome OS.

I can't tell you exactly when, but, somewhat recently. So yeah, it looks like definitely they want to put more AI in Chrome OS. I'm

Devindra: sure Google folks are looking at this and like, why are we managing two separate code bases for very similar products at times? Like ultimately Chrome OS could just end up being Android running like a full screen, [00:43:00] version of Chrome or something, or a slightly, I don't even know.

I don't even know why it should be a whole separate thing, except Chrome OS was a lot more secure than Android. So maybe this could open up security vulnerabilities. I don't know. We shall see final bit of news this week. And there's so much news this week. So we didn't get to have a chance to do everything, but I saw the news yesterday that Alamo draft house is being bought by Sony pitchers.

That is something

Cherlynn: I didn't know how to feel about this. Honestly I couldn't tell if it was a good thing net or not so great thing. We all love Alamo draft house, but yeah, it's huh.

Devindra: It's a whole thing. So in 2020, what was it? The Paramount decree ended. That was the thing that prevented movie studios from owning movie theaters, because that's how it used to be before the 1950s.

So like studios had direct control over cinemas and the experience of that meant they would like limit which movies could go where, or like really isolate things similar to how some games can only be on certain consoles, like how that all stuff is controlled. So this [00:44:00] is the first example we're seeing of that whole thing kind of Going away a little bit.

It's interesting because Alamo has been in trouble for a while. They declared bankruptcy a couple of years ago. I know their licensees have been shutting down in several states. Like people, people have been also talking about like bad labor practices and something from them.

This will financially help Alamo draft house. Help it survive longer as a brand. But I do wonder what this means. Like how will Sony picture integrations make their way into this chain? Will Sony like block things from other? That's what I was thinking. Other folks. There's nothing stopping them from doing that because the paramount decree is gone.

So that is weird. And I do wonder if we'll see more of that too, because before the whole like Reddit stock stuff happened, like AMC was tanking for a while. Regal was tanking and there was a thinking that in these companies, other companies, movie studios, and other companies may just start buying up theater change because these are big buildings that are already built with giant screens.

There's a lot you could [00:45:00] do with that infrastructure that isn't just Doing studio, studio movies and stuff too. So I guess we'll see. I'm just like really, I don't know, just really hesitant to celebrate this news at all. I know. Let's move on to what we're working on. Are you, is there, are you working on anything for Lynn?

Cause I'm dead right now.

Cherlynn: I am dead, but I have something like four edits on my plate today. So I got a. I got a power through and then and meetings and the work continues, even if you feel dead, sometimes

Devindra: the work continues. That's how it goes. We'll, we have devices that we'll be reviewing soon too.

So it'll, it just, it's an onslaught, like things just come at us folks. But yeah, when you get excited, we're going to reenergize after WWDC and get ready for all the new devices we're expecting any picks for us this week.

Cherlynn: I in the obviously I haven't been like. Doing any relaxing in the last few days, but today at last night, when I got home, I was like, finally, I am in my home.

I feel so good at home. I really like being in my apartment that I meet to order to feel good for me. [00:46:00] Finally sat back and turned on like my guilty pleasure. I saw on Netflix, perfect match season two is on. So I started watching perfect match. It is the trashiest stuff. The stuff that like, there's tLC and ABC and all of those quality, like quality, there's like reality TV. That's there's a standard, right? And then there's Netflix reality. And then there's Netflix reality in terms of perfect match where they basically pull people from their other reality shows, like the circle or love is blind or too hot to handle, and then they put them together in one space, I think it's in Tulum and then have them try to date each other.

And it is absolute trash and I am here for it. You know what I like? I like to watch people be bad or, go through these like struggles of like your self esteem and whatnot, and then psychologically tear them apart, but also compare them to people I know in real life, it is so somehow relaxing for me.

Devindra: It's like a brain massage for you. I get it. It's just it helps you chill out. That's [00:47:00] totally fine. I want to shout out. I've been reading or I guess listening to an audio book, which is how I can define reading at this point. Cause often my eyes are too tired to read cause I'm reading stuff all day.

But during our trip to WWDC and afterwards, I have been listening to the audio book for tomorrow and tomorrow. Have you heard of this, Cherlynn? No. This is a novel by Gabrielle Zevin. It's about two friends who bond over a love of video games and end up running a video game studio together.

But it's also, this novel about friendship and platonic love and romantic love and also finding a place for yourself in the world when you feel like the world is not meant for you to I think it's really fascinating and moving. It gets a little over the top at the end, but this is something people have been talking about recently because it is a, it is not like a tech centered book, but it is something that is well aware of like the culture of video games and what it means for us and how Things are built.

So I think you'd enjoy this one, Sherilyn. It's definitely going to become some sort of Netflix, I dunno, series or movie. I think a [00:48:00] movie is being planned. I know the rights were sold, but this thing is so like long and I wouldn't say quite epic, but it's about life. It's about a journey of life between friends.

And it would be really hard to contain this in like a 90 minute or two hour movie even. But anyway, I'm enjoying the audio book. I got that from Audible. But the book itself I'm sure would be a fun, easy, breezy read tomorrow and tomorrow. If you're listening to this show, I think you'd probably dig it.

So check it out. It's by Gabrielle Zeman.

Cherlynn: That's it for the episode this week, everyone. Thank you as always for listening. Our theme music is by game composer Dale North. Our outro music is by our former managing editor, Terrence O'Brien. The podcast is produced by Ben Elman. You can find DaVendra online at

Devindra: DaVendra on Twitter.

Wherever. Blue Sky, Mastodon, all over the place. And I talk about movies and TV at thefilmcast. com.

Cherlynn: If you want to send me some examples of mind numbing games or TV shows, like anesthetic for my brain send them to me on Twitter. I am at Cherlynn Lo over there. [00:49:00] Or on threads at Cherlynn Instagram, or just email CCHER at Engadget.

com. Email us your thoughts about the show at podcast at Engadget. com. Leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform and subscribe anywhere you get platforms, anywhere you get platforms.

Devindra: Yes. Thanks folks. We're out.

Cherlynn: Microsoft.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/engadget-podcast-the-fallout-from-apples-wwdc-2024-and-summer-game-fest-113057941.html?src=rss