Delta's 10-year journey to the top of the App Store
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Welcome to the verge cast the flagship podcast of enterprise certificate attacks. I'm my friend day with peers, and I am having a project day. I feel like being an adult is just like a long, unending list of maintenance tasks, always things to hang up and things to take down, and filters to change and seeks to clean and to clean your garbage disposal in your dishwasher. Currently, there's all kinds of stuff like that.

And rather than let IT hang over my head, i've discovered that what works for me is to just keep a long running list, and then once a month or so, whatever, i'm feeling particularly energetic and have some time, I try to just knock out as many of those things as I can, right? IT just feels Better. And most of those have to take like one to five minutes anyway, so I can get up to a whole bunch when i'm feeling energetic.

C, I have a show, I anna, watch or whatever, and then it's done. And then I had to think about IT for month. I'm sure there are a million things that are supposed to be on that list that I don't even know about.

I've made at this far. I don't want to know. I'm sure that will cause me pain and i'll deal with.

That is a comes, that's what being an adult. Anyway, we have an awesome show coming up free today. We're going to do two things. We're going to talk a bunch about the delta emulator because that little retrod game emulator has kind of taken over the APP store the last couple of weeks.

And IT turns out its story is both longer and weirder and more interesting and maybe more reflective of kind of the whole evolution of the tech industry. Then you think so we're going to talk to the person who made delta about the whole journey to get here and what that says about where we might be going next. After that, we're gona talk about AI because i've been testing A I gadgets, AI apps, AI platforms, A I everything for like a year and a half now.

And I found one news case for me that is perfect and it's awesome. And I want to tell you about IT and this probably we won't surprise you, but that does not involve talking into a microphone. We're also going to answer a verge cast hotline question about the rabbit r one.

We got us to do super fund show. All that is coming up in just a second. But first, I just noticed this like pile of laundry and socks behind me, and it's starting to stress me out.

So i'm going to go deal with that project number one off the list. This is the forecast. We will be right back.

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Welcome back. For all of the last two weeks, the most popular APP in the apple APP store has been a game emulator called delta. We've been talking a lot about data on this show over the last few weeks, both because it's a huge hit and because IT seems like maybe the start of a new era for the APP store, like in the history books of smart phone apps, there might be a before delta and an after delta for lots of reasons, but there's actually nothing even remotely new about dota. The story of this APP is actually a full decade along, and that starts with .

this guy i'm really tested. And the founder, alt store developer of delta rally.

has had, as you might expect, a pretty wild few weeks. In the midst of all, I asked him to come on the show and just tell me the whole delta story, why he wanted to build an emile, or in the first place, how the regulatory and technological world changed around him, and in general, how delta went from a big hack to a big hit. IT started, rightly, in high school, just kind of looking for something to do.

I was just back in high school. I think that was my junior year. And I just one day came across, just like the open source repo for a gel break game boy venter GPS phone. And I was like, oh, this is cool.

This is all the code I can promise down of this and tweet IT and then put IT on my own phone without I am a job break because I have never been to found jeopardy. It's just never really appeal to me. So I found this code base.

I hacked out IT away for a couple months. But on my phone, I put IT on a few of my friends phones. They liked IT.

And then I upload IT to get home and called IT gba fireweed, and then kind of left IT there for a bit. And then people found IT on github and started talking about IT. And so I was like, oh, there's interest in this kind of thing.

So you just made IT as as sort of a IT sounds like a mix of like a thing that you thought would be useful and just kind of a thing to do.

Yeah, I just want to poke up on my phone. That was, I found this. I like, oh, cool.

I can poke up on my phone now. And that's awesome. And that's really always thing at the time. And then I put on my friend's phones, and then we were playing just poke on ourselves.

And then just completely coincidently, there is a service that came out around the same time that let you connect like open source, get hub projects and sign IT with apple's enterprise certificate. Basically, there is a company that had interprets certificate, and you could just connect to get help account and then resign your apps like that. And I like, oh, cool, i'll connect this A G, B, A.

For I was. And then people can install outside the upstart. Maybe a few people will download.

And that's basically when I learned, oh, wait, there's a huge demand for this thing. interesting. I did that. And then like a week, people like posting videos about how to install IT. There are lots of redit posts.

And I was like a cut off guard because at this point I was still just a project I made for me and my friends, like in high school. And so then I was like, okay, there's demand for this thing. Let's take this seriously.

Let's like build like a real version of this out that's not like thrown together, not hacked. And so that's when I got my friend paul thorson on board. My also still in high school, and we were like, we're gonna a brand reversion of gba fio S G B A fio s two point o.

We're going to redesign from the ground up, just build up and make a really polish experience. And so we basically spent all of senior year working on that. And in like half a three teen, we released G B A R R S two point now.

And that's the version that most people know. That was a version that installed for my website. You set your date back like twenty four hours and you can stall IT because of a weird bug that allowed into Price certificates to work .

that way even if they required. Yeah it's a look just pauses for second and explain the enterprise certificate thing to me because I feel like part of the story here is like these adventures in figuring out how to install apps on phones. yes.

So yeah, so more, more complicated. So this was the easiest. Tg is just, yeah, as long as I found an enterprise certificate, I could just sign G, B, A, F, I S with IT and literally anyone could just stand up from a website on the phone.

Super simple. And the idea is basically, it's like that the certificate you would use if i'm like a company wanting my employees and no one else to have that APP.

right? The act same flow. And so it's just you're not supposed to do IT for this reason.

And so what apple Normally would do is they would just like revoke the certificate they make IT. This is no longer valid. And all apps that are signed with IT can no longer be installed.

And so the bug that I took advantage of was apparently at this time, like an I was seven, if you just set your date back on your phone by more than an hour, the checks for whether certificates valid or not just don't work. They just don't do IT sure you did try to sold gba and apple would have revoked a certificate, but because you set your date back, I S was fine installing IT. And so I was like a really weird bug that I could take advantage of because that apple couldn't do anything easily about IT.

They had to actually fix IOS to address that. They couldn't just be like, okay, no was about nine months later that they finally addressed IT. And then that was when I moved on basic from gba for I was as when I was like, I was eight point one, they killed the date trick.

There's nothing on my birthday when that actually happened and I was like, that's funny. But I see at that point I just gonna college and saw like, you know, i'm gonna move on from this whole thing. G B A I was is really cool. I wanted to go on to the next thing.

You know how many people were using G B A for I O S like at that sort of peak moment before I got to shut down?

Um a lot of people like more than ten million wow.

wow yeah that's like a zero were too bigger than I thought you were going to say.

yeah there was a stupid among people using cuba fireless, which is why I was so motivated to do this for this whole time was I just knew that there was a market for this kind of thing that everyone just can assume there wasn't. But no G V. I got ten, nine download outside the upstart. Like it's just people just really want to do this, like play old games.

yeah. okay. So you kind of your sort of forced to cut down that project a little bit there a moment where you're like, okay, i'm ready to go to war with apple.

Let's fight this to the death and figured how to get gba for IOS back or when IT, when the sort of which get shut down. You just can say, you know what, like you said, i'm going to college anyway, this is just a moment. Let me focus on other things.

This is basically that, yeah, I was like, you know, this is just a sign that I should move on to something else. This was really cool. I'm glad got to do this a lot experience, but may be i'll try to make an APP in the APP store next time that was what I was thinking like this is a lot of work should have an apods of the APP store.

yeah. So then that whole thought process lasts like a few months. And then I got bored and I needed a new up to work on. And so yet swift had also just been announced the previous year.

And I was like, oh, you know what? Let me just make another toy APP for myself to learn swift just for me and i'll make another emulator. It'll have more systems, but it's just for me like I got like you just like a fun thing. I want to work until learn swift. That was an entire motivation.

So you're just run the exact same playbook again. We even realize exactly I was like.

you know, i'm going to make fun. Yeah no, you think I arn .

that okay. So and that's where delta starts.

yes. And so that's the begin of delta. Was that okay? I'll call delta and just build for fun. And that is what I thought I was getting and went to wwdc. That year is my first time ever W D C years twenty fifteen OK.

So I go to W B C, talk to the upper view team like because I have like a lab there. And I basically to say, hey, i'm working on this amador APP. Is there any world that I could be approved in the APP store? And then they were like, actually, yeah, we allow that.

You just got to, like, comply with some weird things. Basically they said I had like submit a list of approved games to them whenever I submitted a version of delta that they could just make sure all the games that delta supports were safe like they just didn't want to have a an open pipeline like games and everything. And so like, okay, fine, that works for me.

Some diversion of delta to you and how to go what list of games that you can play in an every up update. I'll expand IT to include more games and IT seems like that would be something that I could do. And so I was really motivated and my cool, i'm going to get dealt in the outstart.

And so then I spent the next year like actually building IT for real. I was like, okay, this is now a real APP, no longer just for me. I like really wanted be polished.

I want to be good. I took a lot of my time. I got on my college scheduled to be working on IT. And then I went to the wrc next year, and I talk to the same person and I said, hey, i'm very submit. Can I submit and here's just like, so I talk to some people we can't allow amuses and that was just all I got I didn't get a why was just like that we can't allow that. I was just pissed off.

Do you think this person was wrong the first time they told you that would happen? Or do you think something happened in that year and they change their mind?

Honestly, I don't know. It's either once possible, my guesses as though that they thought that was okay and they talk to someone in the year and then. Maybe they have had discussions about IT and then they came away.

They say like it's not worth the risk because I think that's what it's spend the old time apple was like. It's not worth the risk to allow these emittance so much stuff that can open up. So I think they're like at one kid, whatever we don't need to allow, he's up in the APP .

store and we find and at that point, I mean, I confess I was late to the IOS emulation universe, but IT seemed it's a weird thing like gba for IOS was huge and then I kind of went away. And so I would assume we're back to like lots of pent up demand. People are very excited about IT.

So it's not like you're the first person in history to ask apple this question, i'm sure. But at that point, emulation was just kind of IT was sort of nowhere on the iphone. So I guess for them to say, no, we're going to continue to not allow IT is not totally out of character exactly like.

yeah, I wasn't surprised. I was just passed off like I was just like I wasted a year of my life working on this and because you told me, I could really think that was really disorderly. Elf.

yeah, that's are that's fair. So what are you at that moment you're faced again with the same decision of like, okay, do I just call this a successful project? I learned how to use swift to let me just move on with my life, or do I go the other way? I know the answer is speaking, but what? what?

What is that moment like? yeah. And this time I was just so kissed off. I was like, so this is not okay. I am gonna get this out there somehow is just like, really what I came to.

And at that time, I really don't know what I would be was like, I wanted to show apple that can't treat developers and like this was really just like I was like, you can't treat us like this. You can't tell us one thing and then change your mind the next year because real people are spending real time doing this kind of thing. So yeah, I just motivated, prove them wrong, like I say. And so I was like, i'll figure out away.

So then next project is figure out away like how how do you even start?

I just got Lucy apple just around that time made IT so that you can install apps from ex code for free with a free up like they just changed that rule of right around now that students could start developing and so I saw that and I was like, wait, you can install apps for free if you just have an apple I D.

There's something there like, I was like that all the technical thing I I could make something from that and so that was just like the beginning of all are like, okay, I got to do something with this free apple I D cy loading from x code thing that apple is just announced and then I was basically just like, took a few years to research that build IT up, find out what would be the most convenient flow, because he had a lot of obstacles. But that that he was apps installed all this way only could last seven days. You could only have three apps installed the time this method so kind, trying to come up with creative ways to make a lot of these restrictions, not as a knowing like the fact that all servers, the thing was the number one, that server just refresh your apps every week in the background. And when I thought of that, that when I was like, okay, I think there's something here we can at least work with that's good enough.

So when did the first version of all store like work? What was sort of the first version of IT that you had that you're like? Occ, this does the thing that I needed to do.

Um I think that was twenty eighteen is when I finally, like, had put together all the pieces into one flow wherever I had a program on a computer that could install all store to my phone and an all store could send out to that device or to my computer and reinstall IT. And then IT was early twenty nine as like, okay, this can work like just seeing IT actually working practice. IT was totally jank. E like the U I was horrible. But just like the fact I could press about IT on my phone and IT would do everything, senate, all server and install IT was just on the kind of magical.

So explaining to me why that worked in the sort of infrastructure of apple's universe. Like why did that system work?

Because so the way apple allows students to test out their apps is they have to have a mac and they have to be using x code and that to plug the phone into x code and then they have to install a APP from x code onto the phone like you can't just downed ad a file and do IT. It's all through x code and all through a computer. And so all server is basically replicating everything xcode does. You can have an that file, but IOS can't install that file on itself. You have to send IT to a computer, and then all server does the same stuff x code does behind the scenes to install IT back onto the phone, as if you're developer, testing out yourself.

got IT. okay? And you were able to basically build a thing that lets anyone kind of mimic that system for themselves. When I set IT up and I wouldn't IT was a lot of work, but IT wasn't no work.

Yeah, it's a lot. It's a bit. Yeah, especially on the mac. There is the male pluggin for a long time that was really is confusing to everyone.

And I was like, this is too nerdy to try to explain even the people why IT matters. But just, 呀， yeah, people got through IT. Well.

so in this is this is, I feel like the sort of ongoing story here is you're finding these increasingly complicated ways to do this and continuing discovered that there is so much demand for something like delta that people will jump through basically any hopes that you ask them to jump through in order to do this.

Yeah, the biggest thing I was surprised out with all stores, we need to get your apple ID hand password to like logging with your account and as like what we really are, just asking people to trust us and give us to apply a password. And I mean, where we do everything we can that we don't touch ourselves, we send a straight apple. But as like, oh, that's a big scary thing that you really aren't supposed to give your password at in people. And then no, people are still giving us a password because they don't care. And like this is cool but also makes me nervous for security as a whole that people are just doing is not think about IT.

oh, for sure. And that puts you in a really interesting position, I would think as as the developer this to say, okay, what is this thing like am I just building? This is sort of a fun side project for people who want to play poke on on their phones, which comes with, I think, one set of like security and privacy implications like to some extend.

Honestly, if you send your apple ID and password to just a dude, I don't think you have any reasonable expectations pricy like I think it's a good thing that you were taking care of people's privacy as best you could. But I think for me as the user, I deserve what i'm getting at that point, right? But then if if you're like a company that is that has a terms of service and is set up to make money in your liquor in this for the long hole, we're serious about IT.

I think that changes both the way you have to treat stuff in the way that I can expect you to treat stuff. yeah. And IT seems like as you are going, you were also trying to decide like how professionalized to do. I want this thing to be that is that fair? That's pretty.

Ir, because when the first version of all store that launched was literally just like a delta installation, the only up and I was delta could install delta. And I just know that was important. But even at that point, I knew I wanted all store too big, a bigger platform that was like, kind of what motivate is like.

I didn't want to build a whole other work around just to install the data. The fact I could do IT for all store and for other apps to made IT more appealing to me. I would like, fine, I can do the work and then a lots of other apps can take of IT.

And so IT was always the plan to expand beyond delta, but I just didn't know I really what that would look like until probably a year or so after we launch. And I started we started at having some third party apps wanting to be on the store. And then I got a sense of, okay, this is the type of apps people wanted install. This is what I got be dealing with. And yeah.

that's up a lot. see. So what was that like? I we're going to get into the kind of the history moved towards, do a little bit aspect of this in just sect. But I am curous in that moment the idea of like i'm going to get my third party APP store to be sort of you legitimate and applies ze was completely off the table like twenty and twenty and twenty and twenty. There was just no world in which that was going to happen. But you're like you're talking about, you know, other apps that want to do this kind of what are you starting to see what was kind of the like unifying thesis behind apps that wanted to be part of the thing you were doing?

I mean, at first, I was just any of that wasn't out of the APP store and also is still a big appeal date, just like for whatever reason that was rejected for whatever type of rule, they just could be APP store. And so then they would see all store and then they'd, oh, an alternative. There are a lot of emulators like, obviously.

So there plenty of those those stuff you can like like, like a eye torrent have like an APP, and you can invite that. I can see what apple one approval, but get like that. Uh, U, T, M, the virtual machine APP just running windows on your ipad.

Really cool. Not the map store. So IT was just like a bunch of different random project. Or another one I liked that is really cool. old. O, S, if you have heard of that one, it's it's like a high school or just recreated I O S four in swift.

I and so it's just like the hope you open the open at the home screen for me, I was for you can open all the apps and IT looks exactly like I did back in the day. It's really cool. And so just like A I found a little idea that not like that store.

So yeah, I bunch of stuff like that. So a launch dot store. And the first year was really great, but the first year was also a lot, and I was just been working on at the time.

And then I on was like, what am I doing here? Am I going to keep without store? Is this ever gonna a real thing? sure.

Just like move on something else. Now I was really going trying to figure out what I want to do. And then it's really that point.

I realized what I wanted was I saw basically that the us. Was investigating apple and that the e was investigating apple. Or on this time, like, you know what, I feel like there is gonna something that happens in the next few years.

I want to be ready for that, but I need help. And that's when I basically brought on my partner, shame girl l, who is my best friend, and i've lived through by ten years. And as OK, I need you with this, with me.

I need to do IT together. I need you do all the business stuff and zog's focus on the programing, and then we can make that happen. And at that point, we started like making the plans for what all sorry today, or at least at all, N E R P O K.

So you actually really were betting on the theory that eventually this was gonna a real thing that you could do, and not just sort of a series of ever moral laborat tax.

Yes, by that time I was convinced that what happened just, I didn't know win, but just at some point in the future.

that's fair. okay. So and this was like peak covet, if i'm if i'm doing my timing that here correctly, everything's weird. At this time, I really like, well, let's let's just go for IT.

Everything's weird. Everyone's valuable ate in their lives. My original plan was, I was a, hey, shame, let's move to new zealand gether.

Let's just escape everything. Let's build this in new zealand and new sean Edison. So we called to go for me, but that didn't worked out. There is too hard to get new zealand and turn COVID. Yeah understand that by so where that is now, which is the same thing, it's discuss yeah get.

okay. So you building this thing and was the idea we wanna build sort of a full APP store that was that is that as simple as that?

That was the pitch. Yeah, when they Carry board, that was the full pitch. Like we're gonna build a real APP store and show people what life could be like if there are other apps just like to be the example. And then whenever IT was official, be the official like being an official store.

And what was what we're developers saying? We're you like reaching out to folks being like you want to be part of this and what are they telling you?

honest? We didn't need be reaching out anyone. People were just reaching out to us like there are a lot of people who just have out as I just aren't getting in the APP store even if there are just so many apps that like we're getting like reaching out to us.

So like, oh, well, that was rejected. That was rejected. So we just people to reach out for us.

Yeah and were you having any contact with apple at this point of the other than, you know those two conversations? W there any inclined that apple is even sort of aware of your existence throughout this process?

We one point when the E U started investigating ff, me and shame sent hema e to the executive or apple faced saying, hey you, I think the e may be going too much. And do you like this to you? Hey, like we're here and we don't want like a crazy word of silos.

Do you want like on the same page here? And they didn't respond at all, but we were at the time just sticking. We don't want to crazy free for all.

And that's what IT seemed like. Maybe the e is gonna. We wanted a more restricted piloting world where the APP store was still the main APP store.

Why I really think that's what makes I was so good for like to the that people like IT is just so simple that you can get any APP that you trust through one store. I think that's really valuable. It's why like so many people I know personally use an iphone that aren't. And so I just always knew that there needed to be a way for silicotic to exist without taking over the outdoor or taking like so many apps away from IT.

okay. So you then are watching the regulation stuff happening. Are you like barely through all the you know D M, A White papers and trying to get the deep sense of was going like how into this were you as that regulation was happen once .

the dma was like an actual thing and they were talking about that, we were very much deep in IT, and then we were just like we gotto be ready for anything as little til apple announced what they are doing. We just for like are we're gonna a silou tool or we're going to be a be a full absa, are we're going to exist at all, like we just had no idea what was going to come next. We just knew that there be some wave installing s okay.

And so I guess with that idea, you can kind keep building delta and also for the way you had been without making too many kind of unchangeable decisions at that point.

Yes, we basically were working on like stuff that we knew would be true no matter what. Like we are building up like the U I for browsing apps. And like we are expanding like orbit, building the patron flows that people could connect their patrons install, that we just knew, no matter what, that would be good for this world. We didn't go into like the really technical stuff about like the actual installed in process, just basically at making the APP look as much like a store as that could be. Yeah, that make sense.

And at that point, how are you thinking about like the business of delta? You been working on this thing for an awful ly long time without making any money on IT. I'm assuming there were conversations about like how do we how do we all get rich from this thing that clearly lots of people want?

I people do give back me. But the thing that i've believed in, and what shame, like shame before he've enjoy all start, he was one that convinced me to make a patron for all this in the first place. He was like, hey, when you're working on delt outsor, just have a patch on the side to support yourself.

Because I see, I thought my ritual plan was to released out store and delta and then move on something else. And like, I just let IT exist and that people installed. But shame was one telling me, no, people want to support craters right now.

You should just have a patch on that people want to scribe to into support future development. And so I start, I launched all store of that, and I did really what like IT has paid for everything ever since I had launched start all store. We really believe that a really important thing that should exist because developers right now, you can't sell apps to page on in the APP store.

And it's just such a really good way, I think, for creators to build up like a relationship with their audience. And just people also don't mind spending a few bucks to a person, but they do mind spending a few bucks on an APP. Such is a very different relationship.

And so we are basically just trying to really promote the patria on idea. Our own income basically is just through the patron. We're still selling or having access to our beta for our patrons, and that worked out pretty well away monetizing delta honestly.

okay. yeah. I mean, even just the idea of thinking of an APP developer as a creator in the same way that you think about like a content creator as a creator is really interesting and is totally not how most people perceive IT, right?

And I think I think it's coming around a little bit like a personally, at least i've seen a lot more of the sort of boot strapped one person APP become a thing that people like in a way that I didn't and they like associate the APP with the person who makes yes, yes. But I think for most people it's also faceless, right? It's just an APP p that exists, I don't know by one person or ten thousand, and I don't care.

I am just mad. They're churching me money. And it's interesting to think that like maybe the business model is part of the problem there that because IT all just sits in the absence and IT is so divorced from personality and people that maybe that's the problem. So actually connecting a pati under that is, is a really interesting way of just changing the way people think about what like an APP is and how IT gets made.

Yeah exactly and not so yeah, i'm really excited for that. I another nice benefit is we can just have ARM apps be free and then people just get the beas. And but so that means there's no features that are locked behind paythans like forever.

It's just you can wait forever and you get IT for free or if you just want early access, you can donate. And I think that's more appealing to people to like when they are trying to support IT APP versus ah you've locked away a feature and now I can never use IT. And as I pay, it's like, yeah, that difference I think makes a huge deal.

Yeah no, I I totally great. So okay. So right before the dma drops and I guess what was IT like march of this year when apple put out its third party apps or plans.

there is a general okay.

So this year, I rate before that what was kind of the status of delta and all store IT sounds like it's growing. People are using IT. Like how were things things were good.

We had like at that point, four million users on all store like just existing and they got a this is going great. Things are going great. At delta, we had been prioritizing basically a new version of delta one point five to release alongside whatever apple announced.

And so we just like working on that. But then basically a by january would like, okay, everything's in a good spot where ago, we just need to know what how is happening. And so we were specially waiting around to see, like, okay, we can do this.

We had like the store had been finished by then, like all the U I was done. Delta was ready. Clip was ready.

So so you have this thing into like this exists. We made IT. It's good. We have absolutely no idea what we're about to do with that.

That is what a strange place to be. IT was very strong. IT was actually because everyday, like what do we do? Like we can't move forward and a lot of things. But so I was just a lot of planning.

strategizing, yeah makes that. So then end of january, apple drops like a million press releases and technical documents. That whole this is going to work. What what happens to you on that day? what?

Well, what that was an overwhelming day. Like, first, sure. And the first thing that we try to do is figure OK.

Can we exist at all in this new world? Cause the others, all these, like restrictions. We were trying to figure what the hell like turn of marketplaces and like. And so yes, we spend that whole day basis trying to to pass what apple announced. And then we basically like, okay, we think we can do this.

We think we can meet the criteria if we get very creative because yeah, the criteria is like a lot of things like you needed to have, like the standby letter, you we need to have a subsidy in the eu and just like a bunch of things that we just set down IT. Okay, we're going to make all this happen in a month based because because we like, okay, we have to on march seventh was like the dma compliance. Stay right.

Okay, let's set up a subsidy. Let's get the standard I figured out. Let's build everything because also they they announce all to build.

And so like let's build everything we need to do. And then for the next month was like extreme cunt time, like getting everything that shame, honest was incredible. He was calling so many countries to fight out where we could incorporate. We find incorporated in ireland because so we were nice subsidy in ireland, which is great. Ah he was on talking to banks ticket, someone to believe in two people who are trying to something crazy and they need this.

How heart is that process you're looks? So we build a game emulator and also other APP stores. I'm imagining a bunch of banks are just like this is a print call and hang up a lot IT.

Ah so maybe we just like wouldn't listen to us IT was true peer luck that we found one person. His name's logan. He is just like Morgan standing and he was just understood what we were doing and really wanted to go out of his way to help us.

And I honestly, if we had not met logan, I don't know if he would have got this off figured out, but he was like, okay, let's do this. I believe in you all. I can work with my bosses.

We can make IT happen. That was a big win. Kidding that one for sure.

yeah. I mean, I remember when the news came out thinking that there were, like you described, bunch of technical chAllenges. But they're always going to be a bunch of techno china. I feel like that you sort no going in there is going to be a bunch of weird work you have to do to get this thing to comply with what apple.

But the business chAllenges of just like the hopes you have to jump through as an organization seemed like they were designed to keep almost everybody out, uh, except for the the truest of true believer s and maybe just the most stubborn people building this thing. Yes, exactly. And and part of me wonders if if going back, if you wants apple just deeply underestimated, you're willing to you're willing this to pick this fight after so many years of .

picking this night, like I ve been nonsense before. Apple, I know when they end up going to the lab and everything they said. So we did not expect that you want to be this prepared, especially as a two person team.

They just did not expect us to be as prepared as they were, which feel good, did good, but the same time was like, well, then let us launch. I was like, cool. Okay, that's amazing. Let us launch.

We're ready. Was there any question for a team of two whether to invest all this time on something that at least for now and potentially forever, is only going to exist in the eu? Like there's a lot of people in the E.

U. But there's a lot of people not in the E U. also.

Yeah I mean, so two parts of that one I do think is going to come outside the E U. At some point. I think the question time.

So ah I expect to see within a few years it'll expand ups like our japan, united states eventually. So so we view this as like the beginning of a much longer process was expand. But and the other thing was like we had nothing to lose. This is literally all we're doing. All our income is working on out store delta like well, we might as well just go all the way with IT like what else like why not?

Yeah I mean, I think the long bet, I think is probably at say, fun again, it's a question of how long IT takes, but I do think you're probably right. IT also seems like you were in a position where even if IT didn't sort of immediately reach this time of people, you are going to get so much notice just because this is such a big thing and such a big change that, like all of us, an old sordidly appeared in so many headlines in like february in march of this year.

Which is like, yes, that was very, very surreal seeing that was.

yeah, I mean, it's so funny because like explaining all sort of people is like, okay, is this bizarre sort of convoluted experience so you have to set up a server and i'm seeing this in like mainstream news .

article is asked .

me what all stories is i'm not going to know how to answer that .

question for say, like, yeah I explained to my friends like you don't worry, it's just a tool install apps and is so okay.

So then we're almost to the present time, but I feel like we still have not gotten to the single wild at this part of this whole time. yeah. So you're building the sort of things are going well, you launch I think all on launched today, right? March seventh.

Was IT ready to go. We we were ready. We were already to go. And that was the begin of like this frustration.

So we were yet we were invited to a lab in cork for the apple to help us implement our backend and everything. So like a week long lab for us just to work with apple engineers to get everything working. So then and we flew out to quark, there's like the week before march fit.

So the end of the end of the worry, we flew out day one, I showed up. I said, okay, here's everything we're ready to go. Can we launch? And then they were like, uh, h, hold on. They expected you to show up and be like.

i'd like to build an APP store and instead you show up like, I have built an APP.

They I really think they expected everyone to shop with no code base, like to just start from scratch. How do and so we shop up and like, here's the entire product. That store page is everything of downy works.

And then they was like, oh wow yeah. Just very clear that they were not expecting that. And so IT basically was then, okay, so monday like trying to pressure them.

Can we launch tomorrow? Can we launched tomorrow? I let seventy one force come out tomorrow.

Can we be there? And then he just became clear at this whole process was gonna much longer than we expected for a lot of foreign reasons, like basically illegal, like giving them documents, having them review documents, stuff like that. So I was seventy before came out and me and chain were very bumped. We're like we were ready to launch on launch day. We were already to go and then was fine.

So how long did IT take before you actually got the thing up and running?

I think I was two months later, like he was April seventeen th. Like, yeah, so yeah, for march fifth to April seventeen th was just waiting someone than half. And so we did that. And then yeah, reception was immediately just phenomenal people just so excited. And but then we also immediately saw but we expected that delta was the main story, sure, that delta, the APP store was the big deal, but we have to figure what to do.

And we knew that would be the outcome if we released delt in the APP store, that delta would get like it's big moments to be everywhere and we just really like, no, that's fine. It's free marketing for all store. Everyone just knows about delta, then they talk about IT and then they get IT through all store in the eu.

So you just gloss past part of IT that like the the whole apple suddenly allows emulators in the APP store. Yeah you say that is if you expect that to happen, I don't think anybody expected that to have.

not at all. But the most yeah, unexpected thing that could have happened. And immediately a different reactions. At first, shame was more like what this changes everything now we can think through. And my first reaction was, wow, what validation that apple had to change the rules to allow emulous because they were threatened by us about to launch with an amy letter like that, to me was like, figurate, I like this is, yes, that means we're doing something right. That apple was like doing something I never that they do because that was the only way they could try to make the story, not the eu.

Now, how is the best apps outside the eu has doesn't have the cool steps, and I have a new apple I get, they just couldn't have that start, which also a White mr. s. Are allowed worldwide is my guess is the story just could not have been in the eu has Better apps than the rest of the world?

yeah. No, I think that's exactly. And IT is very hard to argue that this wasn't specifically about delta like I just can't the timing is to IT is all about dota.

We haven't had a direct confirmation. Rapper, but R, P, delta is being notified for like five weeks. They change. This rule is approved the next day. H, wow, it's almost like they were holding IT to figure out what they could do about IT.

Did you get any heads up that they were going to make this change? No.

nothing at all.

I would guess after that happened, you would have expected IT to be big is not like you did expect IT to be big. But I feel like it's been it's certainly been bigger than I expected. Like it's is bigger than I expected, but it's been nuts.

meant it's so validating like I really can't like because yeah, we're doing this because we just really believe that. People just want to play old intendo games or old old games. We just I think this is the thing people want to do.

And for so long everyone just says, no, that's only for the nerd is the only for like people you know what they are doing and I ve just been like, you just have to make IT accessible that's all at me, like all you got ta do. If it's successful, people will know how do and they will love IT. But we are seeing that is exactly the case. And so even more people than I thought are enjoy IT is the most real thing seeing IT not only in the upstart, but being the top APP in the APP store for like a long time.

Are you still in a run APP in the APP door? I mean.

I think last time I check the a sense we've launch, we've been number one and ah so surreal like the most like any time my life I ve never felt more like I actually am dream. I like I need like pinching myself like because IT was just too perfect. Like work on this out for ten years. And then day, one of the absorb the top, I was just incredible.

has IT changed what you think about how to do all of this? I mean, if you have charged two thousand, thousand and nine for delta, you would have made a crap ton of money by now. They have you are are you thinking about the business of all of this differently after it's Brown up the way that has?

Um I think we want this to be bigger than just like delta, and we want this to cause like actual change in like the emulation scene or in the game for just like we want to make this more accessible for everyone. And we want people to start talking about IT and to have real conversations about IT without just being like piracy.

And so a lot of what we doing is we thought delta, to make that change happen, we had to like I had to be free to be everyone had to have IT. And that I think just what we're focused on really is like as long as we're making, we're making enough to see ourselves. And so we're not in need of our money. But I just think for delta, have the biggest impact is just make IT as fully free and accessible to as many people as possible and let them just start reliving games.

Are you worried all about legal unification? I mean, there was obviously the user thing that happened can write before this. It's been it's been a weird moment in the emulation community. Has have you heard from any intended lawyers?

Yeah that came out as well also, like in new york e trying to launch this very interesting, very, very relevant to us. But i'm not going to say I am not nervous about things, but I am confident in what we're doing. I ve learned the law of what not to do over the past ten years, and I think that we are really trying to show how you can do something like this leg, like we're not use you.

We're not emitting a current generation console. We're not doing a lot of things that other to get trouble like there's no dear I am we going to deal with to like for the the games. So just the game files stripped from carriages.

So we want to do anything that like that. We're doing everything we can to do IT, right? And there was no world that I wouldn't have this. I guess this a Better way, like I wouldn't got this far and not released. Delta.

I do. No, I I think well, and I think that's part of why this moment of your story is so interesting because we're at the beginning of this weird new era of apps in the APP store. And I think a lot of stuffs changing and a lot is going to continue to change. But we're also, in funny way, kind of the end of your ten year journey like the this you finally finished the thing that .

is what IT feels like. It's really weird. But my wow IT actually happened like I got in the APP store. And yes, IT does feel like the cultivation about whole journey, which is very weird.

Does that make you feel like I finally got to do IT? And IT worked in IT was huge and IT was awesome. And now I can go do something else.

I honestly, the fact that, that is doing so well just motivated to me to just want to work on IT so much for right now because i've just been working on IT in isolation, assuming one day could like be a big deal that I don't know. Actually seeing everyone in play right now has made me really motivated to like really focus IT again. And also because so much of the past two years has been like a lot priority working on all store.

And now that we launched all store, we can just like have sometimes dots again, like there's just so many fun features I want to add but haven't had time to because we to get all store up and unity for the deadline. But so i'm looking forward of that. But I don't know if this is a ten year thing.

I don't know this is a like another ten year adventure to me. I think it's all work on delta for a bit. And I think I got to finish up with all stories like we still have some to do to prove IT out like you've got to get the third party up on there. We're going to build up the platform. And I think that to me, the next step is just making sure that all store is a real absolutely they are using and happy with and then maybe will be done.

And then then you will have resounding ly defeated apple, which very few people can say.

That's what. Yeah.

right? We got to take a break. And then I have to tell you about this weird obsession of developed in recently, we are back.

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Welcome back. I've spent most of the last month and really most of the last year talking about in testing A I gadgets. It's been a long time, maybe since the early VR days, but maybe even as far back as the early smartphone era since we've seen this many new things with this many new ideas, most of those ideas right now are very bad.

Will not bad necessarily. It's just that they don't work. So they're bad, you know. I mean, the humane iphone has some interesting theories about how you might use a device without a screen and without getting up distracted is just that none of those things work very well.

The rabbit r one just kind of puts an A I chatbot on a device that looks like a rearranged phone. And again, none of IT works very well so far, for me at least, there is only one thing about A I that really feels like IT works and actually makes my life Better. And that is voice notes, a good microphone, plus good transcription software, plus some useful models for summarizing and grabbing the most important bits of what I say, IT works, and it's awesome. I can feel like a doctor now running around talking nonsense into my tape quarter, like J, D. From season four scrubs.

This is meca forties. Moderately attractive.

Conditions improving. Did you just say I was moderately attractive? Excuse me, miss mca. Patient's complaints of hearing loss was clearly just to get attention, though I also, to be fair, have this experience a lot doing that, though I like toast, lay out on the winners .

in .

actual reality, by the way, doctors have used voice records forever. Talking is a lot faster than typing, and a transcript of a conversation can often give you a lot more information quickly and with context, then you'd get from just a britain thing. And a lot of doctors are now using A I to help summarize those transcripts and help them find key information later.

Because the problem with recording everything on a voice record is that is a lot of information, and IT takes a lot of time to pass through at all, listening to your own voice for hours at a time, just to find that one thing you said, not fun. The big thing that happened to make all of this stuff work recently is that OpenAI built a speech to text tool called whisper when OpenAI launched IT in twenty twenty two. IT said that the model could approaches human level robustness and accuracy on english speech recognition.

In its blog post announcing IT, IT used this audio as an example. This is the micro s. This one has ramage to tell for.

That's a guy named john macha junior, doing a commercial. By the way, he's actually in the guinness book of world records as the world's fastest talker. I've now listen to that ad approximately a million times, and I do think whisker gets one word wrong.

IT says r near the end. And I think mojada says, and but I can even tell for sure. And that's all whispers missed. That's how good this is openly.

I reportedly developed whisper as a way to transcribe millions of hours of youtube videos in order to get training data for its GPT models, which is strange, in somewhat nefarious way to have gotten to this point. But let's just leave that decide. Now we have this open source whisper model that works incredibly well and is being used all over the voice notes world.

The first gadgets I got to try all this out is called the plod note P L, A, U. D. It's a hundred and sixty dollar record about the size of a credit card, just a little thicker and a little heavy.

It's just a microphone basically that connects to an APP on your phone to store and process Oliver recordings. You just press the one button on the plot to start recording, and a little red light turns until let you is working. IT has one mode for just recording your voice and another that supposedly optimized for recording phone calls. IT actually comes with the case you can attach to the back of your phone for recording those calls. And it's surprisingly good at body notes .

that this call may be recorded for quality assurance.

If you have an emergency, please press one. Now.

if you would like to fill a prescription, press two.

As a reporter who has spent most of my career constantly trying to find ways to record phone calls, this is awesome. For years i've use this weird ragg e where I have a headphone splatter that goes into a pair of airports and also into a voice record. This is just way Better.

But you can also use IT to record sales calls and meetings and that sort of think. Plus, definitely imagine the note as a business tool. First and foremost, S, I have been using IT mostly for things like to do this, or when I wake up in the middle night with a fun idea and want to get IT down before I forget.

And I love, love using IT while I wander around my kitchen to see what needs to go on the grocery list. Okay, this is my grocery list for the week of may. First, I need bles potto es almost out of bread flower.

So if you get bread flower, I need more. Peppa, but the smoked pork, not the other stuff. So I record that.

And then a few seconds later, I open up the plot APP, which is very barry bones, but works basically fine. And that recording shows up. I open them up and I get three options, transcription, summary and mind map.

My map is useless. Let's not worry about mind map. I tap on transcription and IT asks what language the recording is in and what kind of note IT is.

Call, meeting, interview, task assignment, that kind of thing. I pick task assignment in english, and a few minutes later I get a full and very accurate transcription of my gradual that's kind of useful. But really what I want is for this to just make me a grocery list.

So I tap on summary. IT tells me at the top. The meeting outlined the necessary grocery items to be purchased for the upcoming week, ensuring a sufficient supply of food and essentials.

Which is true, I suppose, but totally unnecessary. And then IT gives me the list. All is a single action item is not what I was hoping for, but all of the stuff is here.

And the coolest part is, when I said I was good on peanut button and good on coffee and actually kept those things off of the list, which means IT actually in some way understood the difference between me saying something and me deliberately adding IT to the list. That's the stuff, right? The plot note is very cool, but it's expensive for just to record.

And you do also have to pay A D books year for the A I features that is a lot for a goy less tool. So instead I turned to the rabbit r one. A more full featured A I device that in general is pretty bad.

IT can do a lot of what IT promises, but I can record, transcribe and summarized audio. So I started Carrying this thing around just to see how that would do with to do lists and journal entries and all that stuff as well. This is me testing out the voice record.

Let's see what I have to do today. Need to finish my apple story and sent and expect to jake, he's going to get expect to me. I'd like to get that at least in the top today with the verge test to want to record something rabbit stores at all in an that called the rabbit hole, which is not a good APP in general, but for these purposes it's fine.

IT pulled out a very basic plain text list of stuff from my note, in addition to just giving me access to the recording itself. And IT got most of the stuff on that to do this that I said, but I did just completely ignore a couple of things. And since rabbit doesn't just make a transcript and let you see IT, I don't actually like this one quite as much.

At least IT is easy to download the audio and uploaded somewhere else, which is something. And the night is pretty. I need to right the container post for tomorrow, but I can do that tonight while and as a class, that's my day.

But in general, buying a whole device just to record audio is probably only for the most dedicated users of this stuff. The main advantage of a dedicated voice recorder is that the battery intends to last a lot longer. They tend to have Better mikes.

And also, because they're not an APP, you don't run the risk of weird with background apps shutting down or getting a phone call in the middle that screws everything up or just loud ping notifications constantly popping up in your recording. Not everyone needs a voice record all the time, but if you do, you'll probably appreciate being a dedicated device. But if you want to get most of the functionality of those services, but you rather just use your phone or boy, do I have good news for you.

There are suddenly a million apps out there that are making use of whisper and other models, especially from OpenAI to transcribed, summarize and make use of all of your audio. You can basically google and find a thousand options. But let me just tell you about two.

The first is called left notes. And IT works on mac and IOS. This one, I think, is the best voice notes APP i've tried period you open IT up and hate record, and IT shows this a morph messi blob that moves as you record, which is kind of delighted to look at.

Like most other apps, IT gives you both a full transcription of your audio and tries to make some sense of IT after you finished. But left goes further. Actually, IT tries to format and structure everything you said so that if you come out of a call, you want to write down some takeaway.

Okay, I just got off the call where we are planning Steve batch, the party IT sounds like the plan is to go to mural beach for IT, then turns that into a document with bullet points and numbers and heading ings. It's not always right, but it's usually actually a pretty good start like that voice note I just played turned into a clift note with A I itinerary, golf plans, uh, transportation section, a food and drink section and a note about renting golf clubs. It's written strAngely formally, but IT is really helpful.

There are, like I said, tons of apps that do this. And since they basically all use open A S models, there are roughly equivalent in terms of the actual quality of the transcript and information. But I just want to quickly mention one other APP I really like it's called the audio pen and it's a web APP, which means that works everywhere and it's super easy.

invest. You just record some model. My graduate for today, I need eggs. I need nut butter and good on coffee and guanta, and need red wine for this week. And I need coffee filters and need three balls of most. Once you do, IT gives you the same summaries and information as the rest.

But what I really like about audio en in particular, is that if you pay the ninety nine dollars a year for audio en prime, which gets you more transcriptions and storage and what not, you can also tell you how to format what IT creates. So if you want everything in bullets or paragraphs, or like iambic pentameter, you can do that. Here, for instance, is my grocery list in iambic pentameter, which I had a different A I from eleven labs read out out eggs and nut butters I require on coffee, tea, i'm satisfied.

Red wine for weekend filters. Two, three mella balls will do pepe oni for pizzas, taste more bread flower, not to waste broccoli Mandans combine and peaches sweet, these fruits divine. You probably don't want your groceries in iambic pentameter.

More likely you'll wants to tell IT to be formal for business stuff, or right, like an author you like, or something. But IT works pretty well, whatever you pick. And IT even goes another step tard, turning my rambling thoughts into something that feels finished and useful.

And not just like rambling thoughts. Another thing you can do an audio in is upload existing audio. So like if you have a meeting, you already recorded and now need to get something from or you want notes on a youtube video you liked, you can just dump the audio in and get info out.

I've heard a lot of people say recently that summarizing youtube videos is one of their core uses for ChatGPT and other AI models. And this is another way to get the same kind of thing. You could put this podcast in, and IT would probably give you some information.

Basically, all of these tools do cost money. If you want to use stuff like that, at least if you want to use them heavily. Whisper is an open source model that anyone can use.

You can actually download IT to your computer and run IT locally if you want to. But IT is really computationally intensive. And for all the summarizing stuff, these apps still are mostly using OpenAI A P. S. anyway.

Oh, one exception I should mention actually, if you have a google pixel phone, the built in pixel recorder is a terrific voice record and there's a new summarized button in there that also works really well. Apple's voice members APP doesn't do any of the transcription or summize ation stuff, but I wouldn't be shocked if that's coming soon. In the last few months, i've been using A I audio for lots of things, meeting notes to do lists, several transcripts of youtube videos that I want to refer back to.

But I actually like the best as a journal. I've never been good at keeping a journal over the years because I always involves taking the time and sitting down to do IT. And it's an activity and it's a whole thing.

But now I can just sit down in the morning and quickly brain dump everything i'm thinking about while I brush my teeth. Today is wednesday, may first. The first thing I have to do is finish up the apple story and my rabbit review.

I also have the book train ticket ticket in new york for tomorrow should be a relatively. And then at the end of the day, while i'm doing dishes, are getting ready for Better, just walking around. I can just ramble about what happened that day for a few minutes. Chicago, chicago huis vivo.

Today, we did a good job of, I think, not having the whole thing be a bar, also having IT not be too sort of polyana ish optimistic when I do that, I now get, instead of just an audio file, a really good transcripts that I can find again later, and a nice summary of the key points of everything I talk about. It's both incredibly low effort and surprisingly useful. Honestly, I hope day one, which is the journal APP i've been trying to force myself to use for like a decade, now adopts some of this stuff.

This feels like a good way to get things into a journal. Honestly, I think these apps and devices are kind of perfectly indicative of how A I works right now in general, for all the hype over image generation and a abilities to write emails for you or you replaced job entirely. The thing these models do best is take a bunch of information and try to simplify and summarize IT.

That's handy if you're trying to get the gist of a long legal document or you want to know what a podcast was about before you devote minutes of your that's why i'm so intriguing notion AI and all the other tools that aren't trying to understand all of the universal information. They're just focused on the soft that you care about and making sense of that. That is a really good use case of A I if you ask me.

And it's working pretty well for me because as you guess, I do love for embry into microphones, actually know I should stop to that for a minute. We're going to take a quick break and then we're going to come back and take a question for the first test line. 我不。

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right? We're back. Let's get to the high. As always, the number is eight, six, six, verge one one. And the email is verge cast at the verge shot com. We love your questions.

Please keep sending them, keep calling, and we try to answer at least one on the show every week. This week, we have a very timely question from dex. Tiguas is a next in Virginia. And I can go to sleep because I ve just been thinking, why is the rabbit not just a nap at two hundred dollars is like a very buggy e with bad looking plastic thing. And IT doesn't do anything that I feel like my phone can't do.

So why isn't IT just a paid subscription service? APP that I can install on my phone? Look out. But i've been thinking .

about this a lot. I have the rabbit r one in front of me. I have used IT a time I just reviewed its on the site we have a video you can watch me wondering.

Washington, D. C. Yelling questions at the rabbit one and everything game at this question a lot ever since, really using the human A I pen.

What are these devices actually for? Why are they devices? And I think I have a cynical answer, and I have a non cynical answer.

The non cynical answer is that I think there is room for something that isn't a smart phone in a funny way. We're actually going through the beginnings of an unbundling process in a lot of ways. I think there is a set of people who are realizing that they want multiple devices for multiple things.

The idea that I should just have a smart phone that does everything was never really true. I mean, think about that brief moment where we tried to use our smart phones as TV remotes. IT turns out that having button you can press without having to look down that is a good idea.

Something like the ray ban ma smart glasses, I think is really interesting. Or the snaps spectacles, les, they've been working on three years. The idea that actually a camera that's not in my pocket but is on my face is actually a good idea.

So I think there are some things that should have been shoved into the front right, like my phone as a music player, and not necessarily needing a dedicated music player makes a lot of sense. But I think there is room for some kind of A I device that isn't your phone. The ad that IT could be a little more accessible.

IT could be closer to your face and mouth and eyes and the sort of biometric stuff that actually can make A I really useful, my guesses, is that's probably something that looks more like a smart watch or a pair of gasses than IT is a sort of dedicated hand held device. But the reason I was so intrigued by humane, as I think the idea of a wearable that's like on your lapel kind of always within arms reach, is really interesting. That's also how I felt years ago about things like alexa and google assistant in the area that I can talk to technology without having to pull my phone out, look at the screen.

Unlike a thing, this idea of ambient computing that been floating around actually requires lot of different kinds of devices. I think this mart phone is going to keep being the main one for a long time. And I think any product that tries to several that and say, ditcher phone and use this other device is just gona fail because a people don't want to teach their phone and B, U shouldn't.

Phones are great and they're useful and they do lot of things. But we can attach stuff to find that does more things in more ways. And I think that can be very cool.

The A, I gadget remains to be seen. But there are all ways that could work, and there are all ways that could happen, and there are ways that IT might be exciting. That's the on cynical answer is I think there is something here.

The cynical answer is that they're just desperately trying to find a way to sell you something. We have gotten into a place in the smart phone market where there are two companies, apple and google, that are total gatekeepers for the entire industry, right? If you want to do something in the iphone, you have to play nice in the APP store.

You've to play by apple's rules. You have to give apple a cut. That is just how IT works. The same in the place there is like a little more openness in android.

But for all intense of purposes, if you want to be on android, you have to play by google's rules. That means there are certain kinds of things you just can't do. That means there are certain kinds of apps that you can make a real business out of because of the way that apple's rules work.

And so what you're left with is saying, okay, there are two companies that are just going to tax us every time we want to do anything. And I think we're kind of spent a decade watching companies that didn't win in mobile try to win in the next thing. And I think in a huge way, that was why then facebook now matter, bt, oculus all these years ago because I was saying, okay, we think that there is going to be a huge new V, R.

platform. And we cannot lose IT again to apple or google, because there are so much money in being apple and google. You get to do all kinds of things.

You get to insert yourself in the middle. You get to take the tax, you get to become a huge business. You said the default is just a massively powerful thing to be.

And so when there is the idea that, okay, V R is the next thing, you saw bunch of companies, S, V, R, when everybody thought A R was going to become, the thing that was where snap showed up was like, A A, we're going to build spectacles and we're going to take over. And you know, the hollow lens did IT and magically did IT. And there was this crazy rush to not just be the first great device, would be the first rate platform.

The same thing is happening right now in A I as I talked to both humane and rabbit and Frankly, a lot of other companies in the space. The idea is to start with hardware, right? You build a product to make people by the product, to make people like the product, and then you build a platform of IT humane s big idea is this thing called Cosmos that their Operating system, they're hoping basically to have an APP store for Cosmos that you'll be able to use the apps to plug in.

It'll work on lots of different devices like they are very much trying to build a software platform with the size and power of IOS r android rabbit has been a little less ambitious about how he talks about that, but when IT talks about the large action model, this thing that can actually go and use the apps you use for you, that's the same thing, right? Like there is a version of this that is kind of hacking, that is you teach the system how to do IT, but there's a much easier version that is just partnering with companies that exist and have existing products. And for rabbit, if IT can be that center point, the sort of place that you go to use the that's very powerful opening eyes is trying to do the same thing with the GPT store and custom GPT.

Google, I suspect, is going to start to push into that pretty hard. I think you're going to start to see apple have A I P that you can plug into. The idea is just if you can be the sort of hub for all the different features of A I, that is going to be hugely powerful.

We've seen in this first phase, a bunch of companies kind of try to do everything right. You build the one huge perfect model that solve our problems. Everybody uses for everything.

The end. I don't think that's the future. I think the future is actually interconnected galaxy of models and systems and tools that you use. And so the question then is who sits in the middle?

What is the platform that you use that translate all of that stuff for you and picks the rate agent depending on what you need. And I suspect all of these companies think that if they can be that platform, they can be off a lot of money off of being that platform. Hardware is part of the business.

I think actually a lot of these companies genuinely would like to make money from their hardware. Rabbit is our detail and Frankly, so as humane if there's actually any money in IT right now. But they do seem to both want to be her her companies.

But more than that, they want to be platforms and you cannot build a platform on top of I O S or android. They just one. And as they pushed in the ai, they're going to entrench that even further, right?

I think we're going to see a lot of a ice stuff at w to b dc. We're going to see a lot of a ice stuff at google. I O germany is already all of our android.

Those companies are not interested in letting other A I platforms in. And I think there's really interesting regulatory questions about whether they're going to be forced to like what if you picked your A I model the same way you picture default? Rather really interesting idea. These companies will not do that unless they've forced to do that. So we'll see.

But the way that these companies are thinking is that the only way in is to build a new thing that doesn't require a smart phone and start to slowly safe in you away from these two companies, google and apple, that have essentially owned our internet experience and have been between any company that wants to build something and you for fifteen years. That's a hard, hard, hard thing to upset, is why a lot of the anti trust stuff going on right now, especially in the U. S, is happening.

And if i'm a new company, that's the only the reason I would build hardware because building an APP is too hard. There's too much stuff in the way and you're probably just going to get eaten life by apple or google. So that's the cynical answer.

I hope for the non cynical answer. And in reality, I think it's a little bit of both like we are in a phase where there are interesting new ideas about hardware because they are interesting new as about how we interact technology. We're going to spend, I think, less time tapping on our phones over time and less time looking at screens just to do basic things.

So if that's the case, we are going to need new devices. But also anyone trying to compete in those spaces knows that the only real way to build a company of the size of google apple is to do IT outside of google apple. And that's what everybody is desperately trying to figure.

That said, all the AI stuff seen so much, I should pretty much just be an APP. I have yet to see the one that I am like. This is a new category of face, but i'm holding out hope.

I haven't tried all the glasses yet. I'm excited to see that is IT for the verge cast today. Thank you to everybody who came on the show, and thank you, as always, for listening.

There's lots more on everything we talked about my rabbit review, lots of our ta coverage, all kinds of stuff, a vote links, the shown notes. But as always, read the website. It's good website. We try hard to make a great.

If you have thoughts, ts, questions, feelings or other AI aggers you want to try out, you can always email us at verge, cast at the verge dot com, or just call the hotline eight, six, six, verge, one one we love hearing from you. Send us all your thoughts and questions and ideas for what we should do on the show. Feelings about everything is my favorite thing.

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Support for this episode comes from A W S. A W S, generate A A, I gives you the tools to power your business forward with the security and speed of the world's most experienced club. Hey, italian, from decoder with new life ital, we spent a lot of time talking about some of the most important people in taking business about what they're putting resources to and why they think it's so critical for the future. That's why we're doing the special series diving into summer, the most unique ways companies are spending money today.

For instance, what does that mean to start buying and using A I at work? How much is that costing companies? What products are they buying? And most importantly, what are they doing with IT? And of course, podcasts? Yes, the thing you listening to right now, well, it's increasingly being produced directly by companies like venture capital firms, investment funds and a new crop of creators who one day want to be investors themselves.

And what is actually going on with these acquisitions this year, especially in the A I space, why are so many big players in deciding not to acquire and instead license can hire away co founders? The answer, IT turns out, is a lot more complicated than that seems. You'll hear all that and more this month of decoder with libel presented by strike. You can listen to the coder whatever you get your podcast.