Engadget Podcast: The new iPad Mini is boring and that’s okay!

Devindra: [00:00:00]What’s up, Internet, and welcome back to the Engadget Podcast. I’m Senior Editor Devindra Hardawar. This week I’m joined by Deputy Editor Nathan Ingraham. Hey, Nate.

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Nate: Good morning, Devindra. How goes?

Devindra: Good morning. It goes well, and I want to talk about the thing you’ve been testing for a while. And also, podcast producer Ben Ellman is joining us.

Hey, Ben.

Ben: Hello, everybody.

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Don’t worry about it.

Devindra: I think one was like, welcome to the college sports podcast or something. And I guess

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Devindra: Unlocking all the high school fears. Yes. As always, folks, if you are enjoying the please be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes or your podcatcher of choice.

Leave us a review on iTunes. Drop us an email at podcast@engadget.Com. Nate, you’re here to talk about the new iPad mini, which you [00:01:00] reviewed this week. And I love your title because that’s basically what we think when we think iPad mini, like what a little boring tablet, you know, why is it still around?

Surely it still has some uses. So it did get a slight Hardaware refresh, not a major redesign. What are your thoughts on this thing?

Nate: Yeah, I think the headline’s funny. Sherilyn, liked it because she was like it’s kind of a dating trope of like you want the safe and boring person Not the like crazy exciting person, which not the exciting one yeah, and like it sounds negative, but It’s it’s only slightly negative in the sense that it’s a very mature piece of hardware at this point So like i’m not sure what else there is to innovate on in a In a small tablet form factor, my major like complaints was that I wish the screen was a little better but I also understand that we’re talking about you know, 499 device instead of a 899 device.

And interestingly enough, I saw today a rumor that. Someone who’s already one of the display guys has prognosed to getting about the next iPad mini having an OLED. But [00:02:00]chances are, we’re not going to see that for at least two years anyway. So, yeah, in the meantime, it’s got your basic Apple LCD that you’ll find on.

You know, any all, most of the other iPads and the you know, well, it’s very much the

Devindra: air screen, isn’t it? Yeah, it’s not the base level junk. Yeah,

Nate: correct. It’s laminated. It’s it has P3 color. It’s better than the screen on the entry level iPad, but obviously not nearly as good as the ones on the iPad pro definitely comparable to the air.

Just as much smaller. And like the, the thing that was fun about this is that, you know, You know, earlier in the year, I reviewed the new iPad Air and the new iPad Pro, both 13 inch models that Apple provided us. And those are the ones where you’re like, Oh do I want to use it as a laptop or as a tablet?

And, you know, should it have a more flexible operating system or is iPad OS okay? And with a small device like this, those questions kind of go away. They’re not really relevant. You know, I’m not using this to write a review. I did not write the review on the iPad. Instead, it’s just like a little companion device.

It’s [00:03:00] like using my phone, but better. So like I can do a little work on it, but I don’t want to do a ton.

Devindra: I can, it does sit in a weird space right now though. Right. Cause the phones are getting bigger, you know, like the, the pro the pro max is inching towards seven inches. This thing is an 8.3-inch screen.

So. I guess if you have a Pro Max, right, you probably would not be getting the iPad mini. Yeah, there’s no

Nate: real gulf there. That’s true. Although I’ll say that like the phone, and this is probably I don’t think something a lot of people are asking for but you know, iOS is still very much oriented around portrait usage.

Landscape always feels a little weird. You could probably say the same thing about the iPad mini though. Note that they left the camera on the top you know, portrait oriented edge instead of moving it to landscape like they did with all the other iPads. I think that makes sense in this case because You’re just going to hold it up like this and do a FaceTime probably like this.

You could do it like this too, but you know, it kind of, it’s, it’s not a change that I’m like, Oh, why didn’t they do this? So it’s just something to know. Gotcha.

Devindra: The, the main [00:04:00] thing this year is the new chip, right? The A17 Pro chip. So it’s ready for Apple intelligence, but that’s really it. Right. And a better base storage.

That’s like the main upgrades. Yeah.

Nate: Yeah. So not much considering it’s three years old. Obviously. At this point, you know, you wouldn’t have wanted to buy the old one with a chip that’s three years old because you know, hopefully you buy one of these and they last you four years or whatever or maybe even more so having you know, the a17 pro is solid.

I think they could have put in this year’s chip the a18 I don’t know why not. I mean sure saving a few bucks but that said for what? One wants to do with an iPad mini. I’m sure it will be perfectly fine. I realized that in, I feel like in the cons, I did say it doesn’t have an M series chip, like the like the iPad air it’s the smallest of cons.

It’s like something to be aware of, but I don’t think it will. Actually affect the way anyone uses this thing.

Ben: Nate, are you complaining about not paying 200 more dollars for an iPad mini because it doesn’t have a M series chip? I’m

Nate: not. If that’s the trade off we’re [00:05:00] talking about, if that’s a trade off, then I’m 100 percent

Devindra: fine with this.

That’s also why it has last year’s chip, too. I’m sure this is the tablet where Apple’s OK. What can we cut? What can we cut? Not a, not a screen beyond 60 Hertz, you know, no promotion for this thing. Not this year’s chip. We’ve got a huge stock of old chips. The case is no different, right? So they didn’t have to like design much.

This is a, it’s a very much like a minimal effort tablet where I think Apple even puts more effort into the base iPad because you really have to be creative there. to cut those corners and also deliver a bigger screen. This is okay, not many people are buying this, but some enough people are that we have to keep it around.

That’s what it kind of feels like. But speaking

Ben: of innovation, one person in the chat is saying, Wes Jackson said Can’t they innovate smaller bezels and better refresh rate? What’s going on there?

Nate: Yeah, I think the bezel will be the next thing to, they’ll have to improve that a little bit, maybe with the OLED model.

Although, you know, when you use a tablet, I just noticed like your hands always rest on the edge of it enough that I don’t mind that the screen doesn’t go fully [00:06:00] to the edge. It, it is starting to look a little chunky in that regard. Higher refresh rate is definitely something Apple needs to consider across more of its products.

Right now it’s only the pro lineup that gets that across, you know, phones, computers iPads.

Devindra: Yeah.

Nate: The only iPad with with 120 Hertz starts at a grand, which is bonkers.

Devindra: Yeah. So the same price you’re paying for a MacBook Air, which does not have a 60, which does not have a promotion screen. So there’s this degradation or delineation of how they’re dueling out that feature.

Can you, I can imagine a future in a couple of years, we’ve seen the rumors where Apple could have promotion or faster refresh rates on all of its, all of its devices, basically. Like it’s on pretty much every single Android device. There’s no Android device, even though there aren’t many Android tablets.

Nothing is going out with 60 Hertz screens. Yeah, 90 seems to be the

Nate: minimum they shoot for now. I will say that most of the time doesn’t really bother me on most devices. You know, it takes a minute and you’re like, okay, I’m used to this. I will say that because of the way I use the iPad mini, which was often [00:07:00] like reading, scrolling websites, you know, doing a lot of like vertical, You know, scrolling through websites, I felt I noticed the jerkiness more in that context.

Versus, you know, on like the iPad Pro, I’m not, maybe it’s a bigger screen, I’m not scrolling quite as much, I don’t know. And also I don’t, you know, hold it in my hands and read because it’s a giant slab. Whereas this thing otherwise is perfectly suited to a little reading device.

Devindra: Which phone

Nate: do you have Nate?

I currently have a 14 pro, which does have promotion. Yes. Yeah. So, so in your,

Devindra: in your daily life, you’re used to like when you’re scrolling social media or whatever, like the smooth scroll. And I do think that is, it’s one of those things. A lot of consumers may not realize like what is happening across a lot of devices, but it It’s better for your eyes.

It’s like leads to less headaches and eye strain. I would love to see it on more devices from Apple. So that’s kind of a shame. You wrote about the this one doesn’t have the jelly roll issue. Yeah. I don’t, the last gen. I don’t think so.

Nate: I will say, I can’t say that with a hundred percent certainty.

Cause I think to some degree [00:08:00]it is dependent on like some people are more sensitive to it than others. I haven’t noticed it I know that the verges review said it was quote very much still there doesn’t something like that. They said it’s there Most other reviewers said it seems better to me So I think it’s one of those things where you need to go check it out yourself and notice like okay Is this gonna bother me?

Or not to explain what that is. Yeah, I was

Ben: about to say, can you explain that to me? And also every Android tablet user?

Devindra: Well, I’m some and it’s not. It’s an LCD

Ben: thing.

Devindra: It’s an LCD thing, but it’s so what it is is when you’re in portrait mode and you scroll up and down like part of the screen, half the screen looks like it’s refreshing slower.

We’re moving a little slower than the other half. And that’s due to like how the panel is situated. If you’re in landscape mode, you don’t have that issue. It kind of scrolls a little better. So I would have loved to see Apple, do something to fix that. But again, it’s an iPad mini and they’re like, whatever, man, this has to be 500.

And we’re not going to engineer more to solve a problem. I [00:09:00] just picked it up

Nate: and I’m scrolling around with it in portrait. I don’t see it. And now I’m switching the landscape and I still don’t see it. I think I read somewhere that they, they posited that Apple made it, they reoriented the panel so that portrait would be smooth and landscape would be where you might see it.

But I don’t know. I don’t see it. Okay. I don’t think it’s an issue.

Devindra: We’ll have to see when the, when one of the like real teardown people get into these devices to see what the real situation is there. I imagine they could come up with some sort of software solution to, to maybe make it look a little less bad.

But anyway, it’s an iPad mini. It’s boring, but that’s okay. The other thing

Nate: to note that is new is that it supports the Apple Pencil Pro rather than the second generation Apple Pencil, which, believe it or not, was introduced all the way back in 2018 now makes me feel old. I am sadly a terrible artist.

I have no visual art skills. My handwriting is serial killer style, so I don’t get as much personal benefit out of it. But I’m glad that they didn’t. Keep the iPad mini stuck with an old accessory. [00:10:00] The pencil lineup was really kind of weird and confusing for a bit. And now they basically just have the 79 USBC model that doesn’t charge and pair magnetically.

You have to plug it in. And it has a few other you know, it’s missing pressure sensitivity and a few things. And then there’s the 130. Dollar Pencil Pro, which has a gyroscope and haptic feedback and you can squeeze it to pull up a, you know, your palette double tap to switch tools like it’s, it’s a pretty good device for sure.

If you’re somebody who’s gonna use it a lot and, and the combo of that and the super portable tiny sides of the mini. Makes you think it’d be a great little like sketchbook. Like you can just toss it in your bag and bring it to you everywhere. And if you like to draw or otherwise take notes on things, you could just go nuts with that.

Isn’t the stylus like almost as tall as it is? Yeah, it’s nearly a, when you tap it, when you attach to the side, it like takes up most of the iPad’s long edge. So it’s a little, you

Ben: can also see this. In the review, you have one picture of the iPad mini showing Bellatro [00:11:00] and the Apple Pencil is let’s say 80 percent as long as that thing?

I think more. I think it’s probably closer to 90. I mean,

Devindra: Looks like 90%. Yeah. It’s pretty much almost all the way there. It’s all pencil, baby.

Nate: So it’s a little awkward in that regard, but it, it didn’t really bother me. I would say that I was less likely to leave it attached when I was otherwise doing things.

So my hand wouldn’t like bump the pencil, I’ll just, you know, take it off and put it away. But it’s there if you need it to take it away as one little package. I, I still think that’s one of the nicest things Apple fixed generally speaking with the iPad once they’re like, Oh, we can just flatten the edge, stick this thing to the side.

It got so much more. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Devindra:Aesthetically pleasing so much easier. I feel like anybody doodling will probably just go for the air though. Right. Which is not that much more than does give you 11 inch air is

Nate: only a hundred bucks more. So, I think unless, again unless you really like the small form factor, then like the Air is still the one that I recommend for the vast majority of people.

Devindra: Or if you just get one, I’m sure Apple’s Hey if you want a nice portable one to take around the house, get both, get, get as many iPads as you want. Get

Nate: all of them. But [00:12:00] I say, I don’t think I know too many people who’ve bought more than one of these things at a time. So. I have them all in my house right now, which is just ridiculous.

I need to return some of them.

Devindra: But,

It’s just, I always, I always have piles of like old gadgets laying around, unfortunately. The thing about iPads though, is that they are, they’re kind of relentless, right? They, they kind of hold up pretty well. I’m still using, I bought a 2018. It was actually whatever six gen was, I think that was a 2017 release.

And we’re still using that in our house. My son uses as like a car video card. thing still works. It’s not super fast, but it still works. So it’s you could conceivably gain a pile of iPads in your house. And at some point have an air and be like, what if it were a little smaller? And then you have this option and spend another 500 for this guy.

Where does it what would you prefer Nate, in terms of what you want from an iPad?

Nate: Good question. Yeah. The one that I, you know, going back to having ones that last long time, the one that I personally last purchased was a 2020 iPad. Pro 11 inch. So I think that’s still like the best size for most [00:13:00]people.

For sure. It, I think that the mini is a little small for watching movies and that sort of thing. So again unless you’re somebody who’s Ooh, I really love the small device, get the air, it’s a hundred bucks more, the screen is much larger. It has a better chip. It can run the stage manager.

If you want to do more multitasking again, not that I think that the mini The screen’s too small for stage manager to make any sense. Even on the 11 inch, I mostly use most apps in full screen mode. Like I occasionally will do, you know, a little, a little rearranging of things with stage manager, but most of the time it just makes more sense to have everything run full screen.

And then I like that if you are somebody who’s Oh, I want a big device, I want a really larger drawing canvas, or I want to use it like a laptop more than, than, you know, I don’t, you can get the 13 inch air now, which is, is. You know, it’s not cheap. It’s 800, but it’s 500 cheaper than the iPad pro 13, I believe.

So, again, the pro really is just it’s incredible. Like the Hardaware they managed to pull off for that thing is it’s bonkers. It’s hard to [00:14:00] recommend to a normal human being, unless they’re like rich and they just want the nicest thing. That’s really

Devindra: it. Yeah. The air is the most sensible one, but it’s that darn screen.

I really, I just would love if I’m spending 600, 700 on a tablet. Give me the high refresh. So then it starts to be like, well, maybe just buy an older iPad pro. You know, maybe you don’t need the newest one because you’ll still get an M series chip. Speaking of the M series chip, I saw people talking about this.

I don’t, I don’t think it really makes a difference for this machine, right? For the iPad. You’re not doing M series work. So it kind of makes sense to stick with at least a cell chip. It could have been this year’s. Make sense. Like last year’s pro is still pretty fast.

Nate: It’s something that you can complain about if you want to find something to complain about.

But like in terms of actual like use case, I can’t imagine it’ll make any difference. Like I said, a stage manager is restricted to M series. But on an eight inch screen, it’s, you’re not going to want to have multiple windows going. I did a little benchmark, you know, I geek bench six and the numbers are quite comparable.

I think that the a 17 pro basically netted out as a [00:15:00] slightly better M one. Probably again, that’s like rough. I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but. You know, again, plenty of power for some, like I said, it’s a couch computer. I want to browse. I’m going to message. I want to play some, some games you know, get my Bellotro fix.

And the timing of this was great because Bellotro just hit Apple arcade not even a month ago, I think, and I got the mini and it’s just the perfect little device to play on it’s a little small on the phone, but it’s great on this thing.

Ben: M series chip into one of these things it would be like putting a Ferrari engine into one of those classic Beatles You know the Volkswagen Beatles.

I

Nate: mean we’ve that’s I remember when they put the m series into I think it was, they did it to the pro first, obviously that was the whole discussion was like, wow, this is, this is kind of crazy that they’re putting, you know, their laptop class chip into an iPad. You know, I think given the large and the larger screen and the display quality, right?

Pushing more pixels at a higher refresh rate. There’s probably some, some logic to that [00:16:00] there.

Ben: Also that’s going to be the main machine that a lot of artists. Okay. End up using so if you’re doing something that’s layers on layers on layers in photoshop or illustrator or something like that You might need that extra processing power.

Yeah, that’s a fair point

Nate: for sure again, I wish I could I wish I could push that sort of work workload to some sort of limit but I can, I can draw some stick figures in the notes app.

Devindra: This is me whenever I review anything with a stylist. Like it’s not, it’s not pretty. I know we shouldn’t,

Nate: I think we really need to find a good somebody on staff who has, so I think Valentina has some, some good visual chops.

Devindra: Who’s a good drawer. Who’s that drawer basically. That’s what we get to figure out who’s the best drawer. It could be Valentina. I think it is. And

Nate: she reviewed the last mini and she actually, she likes the mini. I’ll have to double check her and see exactly what draws her to it. But I think. She likes, likes that it’s small, basically, and that it’s easily totable.

That’s her main, her main concern.

Devindra: This thing is coming in time for Apple Intelligence to really [00:17:00]start to debut. Next week we know that iOS 18. 1 is going to be rolling out to the public. So that is like when some of the basic features will, will get there. We also saw yesterday, The iOS 18.

2 developer beta went live. So if you want to feel a little, you want to be a little risky, you want to try out some of the other stuff that has a Genmoji, visual intelligence, the chat, GPT, Siri features. And I played around a little with that. I don’t know if any of these things are going to be super compelling to Apple users.

I think the numbers we saw in terms of like iPhone sales is that Apple intelligence hasn’t really been pushing sales also because it’s not fully available yet. So, I guess we’ll see how that goes. How could it push

Nate: sales

Devindra: if it’s not a thing yet? This one I do want to point out I don’t, the iPad mini will not be able to do the visual intelligence at least demo on the on the developer beta.

Because I’m seeing from Sherlyn’s reporting that only the iPhone 16 and that newer chip is getting visual intelligence. So I do wonder if that feature will eventually come to the older machines on full release. I mean, I feel

Nate: I feel like since this one is [00:18:00] brand new, it’s got to support the whole.

The whole gamut of features that’s, I mean, I didn’t mention this as much, but this is probably why this refresh happened when it did is the mini did not, the old mini did not work with Apple intelligence. Now there’s one that does they really want every device that they’re selling, like the new current ones anyway, to have that.

So, you know, it makes you wonder what they’ll upgrade the base level iPad with, because currently they’re selling that when it does not work with Apple intelligence. And this, that it feels like a feature that they are not at all interested in restricting to quote pro level devices. They want that to work on everything.

Oh, yeah. So I would have to imagine. They want you to

Devindra: be fully dependent on the entire Apple intelligence ecosystem. So you have, you know, fewer reasons to leave basically. And you like it on your tablet. You’ll want it on your Mac. You’ll want it on all your devices in your phone and everything. So.

That kind of makes sense. All right, Nate, thank you so much for joining us on this. Any final thoughts on this iPad mini?

Ben: We have people in chat talking about a mini keyboard for this iPad. I was going to bring that up. I [00:19:00] mean, my, my fingers would just be like knocking into each other. And I’m not a huge guy.

Devindra: We, we used to talk about like the surface even before the surface Neo stuff, the courier device, that whole idea like involved, like maybe having a tiny keyboard I could see being a thing. You know, it could be kind of cool, but now you don’t, we’re not even going to be typing text anymore, guys, like that, the whole, the whole point about the push towards AI is that dictation is getting better.

Just speaking to your device is getting better. We just saw the thing was it open AI? Or one of the other groups showed off the thing where you could just talk to your computer and their AI tool will like, start doing the things you’re instructing it to on the computer. So that’s the dream, right?

The dream of the whole thing of like computer interfaces is going to be to the point where we could just ask it to do stuff. My childhood, I remember watching Ghost on the Shelf for the first time, and when that android that does the split finger, I’m typing a thousand words per minute because my fingers can split open.

Oh

Ben: yeah, yeah, that’s a very popular gif even now.

Devindra: [00:20:00] It’s so cool, but again, we may not need to do that. That may be an archaic way of input. Yeah, that’s one of those

Nate: looking to the future things that’s.

It’s like, how do I advance the thing I know it’s like a, it’s like a, a better buggy instead of a car, right?

Devindra: I’ll tell you guys like when it, are you using dictation or anything on these devices, Nate? Rarely. I don’t, I’m

Nate: not interested in talking to computers at this point. Yeah. I will say that I just confirmed on the new iPad mini that it does have the iOS 18.

2 beta with more more Apple Intelligence features. It says that Apple Intelligence is available on iPads with A17 Pro or M1 and later. Which includes the sky,

Devindra: the, I think the, the question is the visual intelligence feature specifically, maybe for this beta, it hasn’t been opened up to older devices. I think at least Sherwin called that out specifically.

So that’s, yeah, that’s that any final thoughts on this iPad, Nate? I would say it’s fine. [00:21:00] It’s it’s,

Nate: it’s good. It’s, it’s, it’s, you know, there’s good. They’re like making iPads that, you know, if you like an iPad, it’ll work for you. But I think for most people, I would say go pick up a. A bigger one, pick up the bigger air, see how you feel about it.

If you’ve never used one before anyway, because broadly speaking, I think more people will prefer the bigger screen that seems to be what life has taught us in the tech world. But if you like smaller devices, there is still this one.

Devindra: And there’s also the thing we always recommend when a new device comes out, look out for sales of the old device.

Cause I’ve already seen the older model of the iPad mini down to 300 at some places, and it’s if you don’t care about Apple intelligence, that is still a very good tablet that will last you a long time. It won’t be the fastest thing in the world, but it’ll be. It’ll get cheap. It’ll get cheaper.

Hopefully.

Ben: Just a couple of days ago. I was thinking, man, I really wish I had something to read this article in bed with because there you go. Too small. Laptop too

Devindra: big. Well, you also did this to yourself, Ben, because you have phone too small. You have the baby. [00:22:00] I

Ben: don’t have the iPhone Mini, but yes, I have an iPhone SE, so yes.

It might as well be the iPhone

Devindra: Mini type of deal. Yeah.

Ben: But the article I wanted to read had these big diagrams that went all the way across the page, so I don’t think that that would really be remedied by a bigger phone. I think you want a tablet.

Devindra: You, at some point you definitely want a tablet, but let me tell you, The pro max pro max life is, is like you, you go, you go widescreen on that.

And it’s I can watch videos in bed. I can watch I dive into like big PDFs when I need to. So that’s a whole thing. Anyway, Nate, where can we find you online these days? Yeah, I’m on threads at Nate Ingraham and likewise on Instagram. All right. We should see on blue sky. All the media people are on blue sky, as we’ll talk about later.

But yeah, just claim your username. I think I did. And I just haven’t logged in since then. All right. Thank you so much, Nate. Thank you.

Let’s move on [00:23:00] to some other news and some surprising things we saw this week including Netflix closing it’s AAA gaming studio. Which was the story. Netflix had a triple A game studio. They had something. It was known as team blue. You know, Netflix is known as a company that they started doing some games.

They started doing some mobile game stuff. They bought some mobile game studios. And if you look at Netflix on a mobile device, you can get redirected to games that you could play right on your device. And a couple of years ago, there was some news about them. Let me see here. It was two years ago.

Ben: I mean, they were poaching people, especially

Devindra: like known people.

Last year we reported that halo veteran Joseph Staten was joining that studio to make a game for Netflix. So like that was, that’s a big deal. So, and they were pulling other people from franchises like overwatch the former boss, the former person in charge of overall overwatch, overall Chaco sunny creative director of.

No, and God of War God of War art director, Raphael Grissetti. So like big franchise people that were [00:24:00]pulling, I think it was happening. First of all, in a lot of our reporting around this, we were like, this is not going to happen. Netflix is wildly over like underestimating how difficult it is to produce expensive games.

The development process, just you know, getting a game out there. Microsoft has learned this throughout this entire like Xbox generation. Did you have any thoughts on this, Ben?

Ben: The fact that I didn’t even know that Netflix had a AAA gaming studio probably says something about whether or not the average person would care, because I’m so often the surrogate for the average person on this podcast.

But also this reminds me so much of Stuff that has happened in tech in general. And then also in my little world of podcasts, where a very big multinational company says, Hey, that doesn’t look too hard. I think I can do that. And they spend a bunch of money hiring a bunch of people, and they think that they can just buy their way into a completely new like [00:25:00] sector of business.

It turns out it’s hard. They don’t know what to do. Quite what they’re doing. They don’t really want to listen to the people who know best. They just want step one, create AAA gaming studio. Step two, question mark, step three, profit.

Devindra: Netflix doesn’t even make a profit right now. Like a lot of these companies, it’s very little about profit and more about clout and like getting your name out there, or at least associating you.

Like you want people to associate, Oh, you open our app and we get you games. People are pointing out, like they have into the breach on Android and a whole bunch of other games, like into the breach. It’s fantastic. Everybody should play that. You could get it as part of your Netflix subscription. That’s kind of cool, but also kind of confusing when they started doing that.

So I’m, I’m not too surprised by any of this, but it does follow.

Ben: Yeah. And Jess has been talking for a while about how like games on Netflix are actually good. This is our games reporter, Jess Condit. But. Yeah, maybe not a AAA game, because that can routinely cost, what is it, hundreds of millions of dollars to produce?

It

Devindra: depends on how big, but [00:26:00] yeah, you could go hundreds of millions. Sony’s games, their big single player games cost a ton of money, so, and we also saw the report, what was the, the shooter, the shooter that was out for a week? Concord. When you do a game like that, they spent years developing that, reportedly hundreds of millions of dollars and then, you just, that’s it, if it doesn’t work.

That’s a big gamble that’s just completely wasted.

Ben: That is 400 million dollars. That is almost half a billy.

Devindra: And Netflix is used to wasting burning money to, to be successful. But also, this whole field for Microsoft I’ve been thinking about what the hell is going on with Microsoft and Xbox this generation?

And it’s just failure after failure. Really, they have never really recovered from the Botched launch of the Xbox one over a decade ago or about a decade ago. So that that’s just it. Like they can’t produce the games and Sony is producing games, but they’re having like even they have trouble, like even they have trouble.

They’re not always successful either. Yeah.

Ben: So how can you expect Netflix to just jump in and be successful? Not [00:27:00]surprising

Devindra: there at all. We also saw news that over 10, 500 artists signed an open letter protesting unlicensed AI training that included people like Tom York of Radiohead, Julianne Moore, Kevin Bacon.

A lot of artists, a lot of people from Saturday Night Live too, or at least Kate McKinnon from Saturday Night Live, Rosario Dawson. It’s, it’s, it’s. Kind of referring to a lot of the same things we’ve talked about before. In the letter, it says the unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works and must not be permitted.

So specifically, this is unlicensed use of artist performance or artist work. I think the door is open there for, yes, if you pay us, maybe, maybe we can come to some sort of deal. Have you, have you seen this Ben?

Ben: Yeah, I have a slightly spicy take about this. Just because you signed a petition doesn’t mean that it actually does very much.

So this is kind of like the celebrities all singing imagine at the beginning of pandemic lockdown, unless you can really [00:28:00] back it up. And actually, what they should have done was sign their name. And then underneath, they have, you know, their sharkiest lawyer from the law firm that represents them, that would actually carry a lot more weight than just Tom York.

Putting his name down on a list of people.

Devindra: I mean, it’s, it’s something it’s speech rather than action, but maybe it shows that the intent is there and that artists are not still sticking with this. So I think that specifically. Is it’s something, but it’s just not, it’s not going to change anything in the industry.

I also want to talk about this. We missed some of this news, but X was having a bunch of issues when it came to the block function, where they basically changed it so that if somebody blocks you or no, if you block somebody previously, that meant that they could not go visit your profile and see everything.

There have always been workarounds. You could always just open any incognito tab or whatever and go try to see it in private mode. So there have been ways to still access those tweets, but the ease of [00:29:00] doing it was not a thing before. A lot of people were speculating like, Oh, this is a lot of X’s changes really feel like they come from Elon Musk’s daily usage.

You know, I think the Daily Dot, which we’re looking at right here, had even speculated, does he just want to see his you know, his ex wife’s tweets because she blocked him? Is this Which ex wife are we talking about? There are many, but I can imagine you know, Elon also, I can imagine his usage of Twitter.

Is part of the reason they were like let’s hide the things we like let’s hide tweets. We like because Our there’s stuff in our histories that we just don’t want to go look at so

Ben: I mean He actively wants to be liking more tweets that are about dubious stuff I

Devindra: mean he was publicly liking tweets about like racist and anti semitic, tweets and white nationalists at one point

Ben: Yeah, i’ve always hated the block behavior on twitter though When people have an argument and then one person just no longer wants to participate in that argument, or there’s one person, [00:30:00] you know, that is really carrying it on and their interlocutor is just not responding and blocks them, that person will run all the way around the Metaphorical Twitter playing field being like they blocked me that means that I was so annoying to them that I must have been right So Elon making sure that you can’t block people is bad on its own But the behavior around the block function was already bad to begin with

Devindra: I agree I mean, the behavior wasn’t good.

I always liked muting people so that they would just like, are you into thin air? But sometimes if somebody is knowing enough, it’s yeah, sure. You’re blocked and then deal with it. Maybe you’ll have your own little celebration, but that’s just kind of how I’ve been going with it. But anyway, because of all this and because of these changes

Ben: Yeah, there’s bigger terms of service changes, though, because it also said we could just scrape anything you post on Twitter to be used for generative AI.

And that really messed with the artists, which is super important.

Devindra: That basically pushed a [00:31:00] lot of people, I believe, millions of people away from X in towards blue sky, which is a place I hang out, you know, pretty often. But it’s always been like a quiet little home front. It has, it, it lacks the dynamism and spiciness of Twitter.

Sometimes it gets a little weird too. So it not, not always fun ways, but that blue sky starting to feel more like Twitter because people I know from Twitter who were like delaying, making the jump are there and I’m just like recreating my old Twitter feed. So that’s kind of a, it’s kind of a good benefit, I guess.

Good job, Elon. Good job as always. A masterful gambit, sir. Every change you make is just driving people away. It’s amazing.

Ben: Twitter going against the artists and like making it no longer a hospitable place for artists to hang out and post their work and possibly get commissions. Furry artists, especially say that Twitter is fantastic for commissions.

That is one of the ways that you kill the culture of a website. Okay. Who’s going to be left on Twitter then?

Devindra: It’s just it’s going to be [00:32:00] Elon and like all the VCs who are now as maga pilled as he, he is. It seems like it’s just them talking to each other and their bots the bots talking to which is

Ben: I guess what they wanted to begin with.

Devindra: That’s what they wanted. It’s sort of like, I think Elon realized it’s sort of like when you realize, oh man, there’s maybe some stuff in my browser history. I don’t want other people to see. And rather than going to his browser settings and just deleting it for himself, he was like, swipe it for the entire site.

That’s, that’s the like history. That’s why I think the like history thing was happening. The AI tools or at least the AI training based on people’s data. That just seems like they’re desperate to make money. You know, they’re, he’s trying to do anything. Cause this is one of the worst investments.

In the, in the history of business, it seems like he is there. Yeah.

Ben: Speaking of making money and various investments, when you have a place like OpenAI throwing, you know, 100 million at the Wall Street Journal or something to use their like whole back catalog for training [00:33:00]AI, isn’t that a one time deal?

You’re just getting paid a hundred million dollars for that year. That is not an ongoing relationship, because how long does it take to scrape an entire website or an entire archive of a newspaper? It’s got to be very quick. So you’re making the balance look really bad. Good for the year 2024 for the possibility of really sinking your entire industry in the future.

Devindra: I’m sure they’re probably like we’ve not seen the full terms. These and these companies don’t typically reveal the full like extent to their business deals. Usually what we see is the big number. So I would imagine if I were the IP lawyers behind a lot of these companies today. Okay. Train our archive.

this is the payment we want, but also moving forward for new things, maybe it’s an ongoing fee at that point because now they need new data. Yeah,

Ben: like a, some kind of a royalty or something, but they might try to like work in something that is like, Oh, well, if we knew we were [00:34:00]using your data specifically in any like generated AI work, then yes, we’ll pay you a royalty.

But of course, they’d find a way to make sure that they didn’t You can never tell whether or not you’re using, you know, the general voice of the Wall Street Journal for generating an AI thing. So there would never be a royalty.

Devindra: Anyway, things are hopping on blue sky now. So if you miss the the glory of early Twitter I would recommend checking that out.

It’s a, it’s a fun time and good to see like some familiar faces over there. I am like trying to be more engaged there too. So add me an active Indra. Was it at dot blue sky dot social or whatever, but you can, you can search, you can find things. I want to talk about this Ben, because I saw this story and this headline just kind of broke my brain.

Intel sets Boeing made satellite explodes and breaks up in orbit. This is news that happened yesterday. And we have a report up by Steve Dent the U S space force, which is the thing that still exists is tracking around 20 pieces, just, just kind of, this is not technically a Boeing [00:35:00] satellite, but it is a Boeing made satellite for another company.

So. Yet another big miss for them.

Ben: Did a door happen to fly off of it or something? I don’t know.

Devindra: We don’t know. But clearly it’s a sign of their whole how they’re actually building things. The U. S. Space Force says it’s tracking around 20 pieces that have, quote, observed has observed no immediate threats, end quote, to other satellites so far.

The cause of the explosion isn’t known, but Yeah, this, this follows the Starliner issues. The failed test flights, all the problems with the, the seven 37s. I was on a seven 37 max recently. I noticed when I saw when I saw the like airplane thing the little guidebook of the model you’re on, I’m like, Oh, these are still running.

This is not, this is not a good sign. Apparently they fixed that. So these things are just kind of floating out there. That’s just, it’s just a thing that exists.

Ben: It’s good that we have some kind of organization tracking the pieces. I think that it could still be NASA. I’m also very curious what the fitness standards for the space force are.

They call [00:36:00] the air force, the chair force. So what would the space force be? Because I imagine most of their work. is being done in front of computers.

Devindra: Most definitely. I mean, that’s most of NASA’s work too, right? So I’ve seen enough shows about like NASA and the state of NASA in movies to have a sense.

I feel like Space Force is just like that, but they have a cooler name, you know, or maybe it’s not all nerds. Like astronauts are not all nerds. They’re like the best jocks in the, in the world end up being

Ben: astronauts. Remember that recently inducted astronaut who was both a Navy SEAL and a doctor.

Good God. Doctor SEAL. Doctor SEAL. Dr. Seale. You’ll always be safe with Dr. Seale. Solidus T in the chat says, Space farce.

Devindra: Probably. That’s a whole, that’s the whole thing. Actually kind of related to this because we were speaking about Mr. Ronald D. Moore.

Ben: I mean, make the connection a little bit better.

Ronald D. Moore, who started For All Mankind, who has

Devindra: since left that show, which is a show about alternate history. It’s an alternate history space race thing, which ends up. Kind of being more of a sci fi [00:37:00] show because of that. But also best known as the guy who rebooted Battlestar Galactica and you know, partially changed the face of television with that thing.

I love that show. I remember, I love his work in general. So the news is that he is now show running Amazon’s God of War series. Which is a property that is not exciting me very much, but okay. Sure. More Ronald D more shows for all mankind is fantastic. That was like one of the first great Apple TV plus shows.

It takes a little while to get going, but I’d recommend like giving it a couple episodes. He also did Outlander because he read for that book series one day. I was like, this could make a really compelling TV show. Outlander is not. It is sort of sci fi, because it’s like an out of time thing. I know people who love Outlander.

It’s fun. That’s just a fun thing that he did. And it’s very not like Battlestar Galactica at

Ben: all. While I was reading up for this, every time I saw For All Mankind, I was like, Oh yeah, that’s the thing Damien Chazelle did too, right? He worked on that? No, that is First Man. That’s also on Apple TV but it is very different.

Well,

Devindra: maybe they [00:38:00] have it. It wasn’t one of their movies. So I think that’s just one thing that they are, they happen to be streaming. That was some of the whole, like original moon landing story too, which is, that is a fantastic movie. And both that movie and the for all mankind also get into the dangers and the darkness behind doing something as crazy as space exploration too.

So anyway. Ronald D. Moore is doing God of War. I am, I’ve played the last God of War. I didn’t, or actually, no, I played the rebooted God of War. I never finished the very last game and it’s cool. I like the franchise. I like the use of mythology and I love mythology stories in general, but to make a show out of it, that just feels like we’re going back to the days of like Hercules and Xena.

It’s just, we’ve seen a lot of this before.

Ben: Yeah. Oh my god, wow, no, and that’s really perfect with Ronald D. Moore because he was working during that era with like, all of the Star Trek’s of the 80’s and 90’s. He’s the guy who famously killed Kirk, I believe,

Devindra: in the Star Trek movie,

Ben: yeah. But my question to you is you [00:39:00] talk with a lot more showrunners and general entertainment people.

On a big piece of IP like this God of War is one of Sony’s biggest things that they really don’t want people to screw up or really get too creative with, period. How much of this job is just going to be paint by numbers?

Devindra: It depends. Like it could end up like Uncharted, which is a movie that was in development for years and went through several different writers and directors and just ended up being like a boring pile of garbage.

Or it could end up being something like The Last of Us TV show, Which at times is pretty much a recreation of the game, but then veers off in places or fills in interesting planks. There’s probably room for them to do something with God of War. It’s just, I am like, I see that. I’m like, Ronald D. Moore, you could do something new and interesting rebooting or doing a God of War show, just.

Isn’t it, you know, we have so many of these things right now. It almost feels like it’s another thing for Amazon be like, Oh, we want to do a sort of semi fantasy action thing too. They are spending so much money on the Lord of the Rings [00:40:00] show. I could imagine trying to do this as well. And Sony surely would want to get it right.

I just wish it were more exciting. That’s just it. But it’s Ronald D. Morris. I will certainly check it out. That’s like my main takeaway from all that. All right. Let’s move on to what we’re working on real quick. I’m right now testing the HB Omnibook ultra. Which is, I believe the name of it, this is one of their newest laptops with the fast, new AMD chips.

So keep an eye out for that. I also need to do like a compilation of PCs and copilot plus PCs. Like copilot plus is the thing we’re talking about. The AI PCs with the faster MPs and whatnot. We want to do a roundup and collect some of the best ones and best options for people. So. If you have thoughts around that, or questions around Copilot Plus and AIPCs, drop me a note specifically, or just leave us an email at podcastsengadget.

com. Ben, anything? Yeah, what do you work on? Shout out.

Ben: So if you sent us an email months ago asking if folding at home is still relevant, I am working on that. I am Like, knee deep in learning about [00:41:00] protein folding and how AlphaFold by DeepMind by Google has really revolutionized the protein folding problem.

So I’m hoping to bring listeners something cool about that sometime in the next few weeks. So, Dev, what is your pick this week?

Devindra: What is my pick this week? Let me, let me pull up all our notes. By the way related to the whole protein folding thing, I used to run computer labs, you know, back in college, and we could just install whatever we want.

And I had the power to install en masse across hundreds of computers on campus. Oh, I want to do this. I want, when a screensaver happens, I used to do the Windows domain management stuff. And yeah, we put up, we put a protein folding. We occasionally did like the study at home stuff, but we ended up being like, it was a protein folding across hundreds of computers when everything, when nobody was there.

It’s a cool thing to see just idle, idle processing of our computers. Yeah. In terms of picks this week, I want to shout out the penguin, which is the offshoot series of the Matt Reeves, Batman movie, which I just didn’t really have time for up until now, but I’ve been binging [00:42:00] it. Over the last you know, over the last week.

And I just want to say it’s fantastic, like better than I expected it to be. I love Colin Farrell. I think Colin Farrell is great in everything. And specifically this role was a weird one for him because it’s essentially him asking Hollywood to make him, you know, to de beautify him, you know, to turn him into somebody who is, looks very different, does not look like beautiful Colin Farrell.

So I think he he is doing a fantastic job in this. I really liked him in the Batman, but also.

Ben: Oh my god, I’ve heard so many people say that she really knocks it out of the park in this series.

Devindra: I mean, listen, whenever she appears, and I’ve talked about her before in some things, but you may remember her from, you know, How I Met Your Mother.

She’s been, whenever she pops up in something, it’s always it’s fun. I’m trying to think, Mythic Quest, the show we’ve talked about, the Apple TV Plus show, she pops up in one episode. A single episode and it is not tied to the rest of the series at all, but she is just so great in it. And here she has talked about always wanting to [00:43:00]play a Batman villain her entire life.

And here she gets to play a Batman villain in a really fun way. So it is a character that has been referred to in Pat. Like it is a known character with a known villain name, but not the sort of like super villainy stuff. She’s just having fun. She’s doing really good. I think like she is really compelling and kind of interesting to watch.

So the show is good. It’s sort of what if what if Tony Soprano basically it’s like the Sopranos meets the Batman universe because it’s essentially the penguin being like, you know, a low level, a low level mobster who’s trying to build him way, build his way up in a crime family, but it’s also shot mostly in New York.

So it has like the grit of Tony Soprano driving around New Jersey or the opening of the Sopranos or something. So there’s a lot of that in there. I’m having a lot of fun with it. It’s pretty fantastic show, especially if you liked the last Batman movie, which was pretty good. Yeah. Anything from you, Ben?

Ben: Yeah. So, in 1998, after years [00:44:00] of trying to clean up its waterways, Singapore finally got otters again. They started just running around the area near the coast. And in about 2015 or 16, one of my favorite kids was born. college professors sadly left my alma mater and went to the Yale NUS, the National University of Singapore location.

And I was on TED. com just looking around at TED Talks because I hadn’t seen any TED Talks recently and I was like, Oh my God, Philip Johns did a TED Talk? And so yes, this is TEDx. This is not the main event. It’s a TEDx. That is the joke. This is a quality talk. And Philip is a evolutionary biologist and animal behaviorist.

He taught a really great class in animal behavior when I was in school. And I really think that you should check out this talk that he did. It’s about 14 minutes called Otters of Singapore, what [00:45:00]we can learn from urban wildlife.

Devindra: You could also do one about the dolphins of New York too, and the whales of New York, which Started appearing once again the East River once we cleaned it up.

So yeah.

Ben: Yeah, so it’s part a history of what Singapore did to bring biodiversity back, and it’s also part, you know, his appreciation For Singapore from having lived there for a while So, of course Singapore mentioned only when Sherlyn’s not on the show.

Devindra: Such a shame, such a shame I’m sure she’s she’s feeling the pang of this somewhere.

I also want to shout out real quick something else I saw is the the Shadow Strays, which is a new action movie on Netflix and I’ve I’m a big fan of the director, Timo Giagianto he has done a lot of great Indonesian action films. I think this is a pretty solid one. I did a full review over at the Filmcast, but it’s worth checking out if you like action movies and martial arts films.

If you like Tenchu, if you like the game Tenchu, he essentially made a modern Tenchu movie.

Ben: Thanks [00:46:00] 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 me, Ben Elman. You can find Devindra online at

Devindra: Devindra on Twitter, Blue Sky, Mastodon, all the usual places. And I podcast about movies and TV at the Filmcast at thefilmcast.com.

Ben: You can find me online at @heybellman, email us at podcast@engadget.com. Leave us a review on iTunes and subscribe on anything that gets podcasts. That includes Spotify. Thanks folks. We’re out.