Does X mark the spot of Twitter’s grave? Has Samsung unpacked good foldable phones? Vertical Hold Ep 439

Alex Kidman 

See, I have this wonderful anti inflationary measure when it comes to music streaming. It’s called buying CDs and ripping them to a home NAS because that’s 100% legal baby, you are so old. I am I am old, but it works and it does what I need it to do and then I don’t have to worry about music streaming services. Otherwise I just do what you know I think I’ve said this before on the show actually, I just cycled through services I have a month of Netflix here a month the Disney there and you get to see everything when you’ve got the time to see it. You get good value out of it and you don’t spend a fortune it’s a we’re just waiting

Adam Turner 

for Prince to launch that sprint streaming service just the print entire back catalogue and that’d be all you’d need.

Alex Kidman 

If prints launched it it would like fail to appear for three months then work beautifully for one month, then they’d pull the entire catalogue and launch a completely different thing the month after that’s the way the man work. But spoiler prints isn’t launching much of anything these days. Adam, you might want to look into why that is true that

Adam Turner 

So speaking of spoilers, we’re joined once again by the aid Sydney Morning Herald tech editor Tim Biggs. Tim, welcome back.

Tim Biggs 

Hi, guys. Thanks for having me.

Adam Turner 

So where does your streaming budget go these days and what would get the chop?

Tim Biggs 

Well in in terms of video streaming, I’m much the same as Alex I kind of just bounce around I always have Disney but I’ll a whole sort of move around between the others I just dropped in because I couldn’t handle the the streaming quality every time we watch something on it, I just tearing my hair out. But I’m on music, I stick with Spotify. And that’s just basically because I can’t be bothered, just stick with the tax. And we’ve got that like two person thing at the moment, which is going up by a couple of dollars which stings. But you know, I’m locked in now I gotta pay it.

Adam Turner 

And you got kids, right? So eventually ended up coughing and coughing up to the sixth person. So yeah, I’m

Tim Biggs 

resisting it at the moment. And it’s that thing where they mostly do their music by talking to Google. And it’ll just it’ll just do whatever it feels like most of the time. Sometimes it cuts off my music. Sometimes it starts controlling my wife’s music when she’s not even in the house. And it’s just sort of, you know, don’t understand it. Just have to say okay, no music for today. Everyone. Everyone’s doing weird stuff.

Adam Turner 

So Tim’s here to talk social media about that the artist formerly known as Twitter. But before we get excited about that, Alex wrote that line and he wrote all the other x puns as well. Let’s be honest, guilty. Samsung this week wanted everyone to get excited about new foldables wearables and tablets and its latest Galaxy Unpacked event in Seoul. So we caught up with gadget guy editor Chris Button to talk about all things Samsung.

Alex Kidman 

So this week saw yet another galaxy Unpacked event and like just about every other galaxy Unpacked event I can think of for the last five years, an awful lot of what Samsung was going to reveal at the show was leaked beforehand, but also shown off to a select group of journalists. I was one of them. And our guest at this time was another from gadget guy, it’s Chris Budden. Chris, welcome to the show.

Chris Button 

Thank you so much for having me. Absolute pleasure.

Alex Kidman 

You’re more than welcome. So the the big lad of phones that Samsung announced that galaxy unpacked was the Galaxy Zed fold five. What are your impressions of the new fold if it is indeed new?

Yeah, obviously, a lot of iterations over previous models nothing drastically different with the fold this year. But Samsung did say that there was a reduced crease. Albeit it’s still definitely noticeable. But when you look at it front on unfolded, it’s not really much of an issue. It’s only really when you’re putting it at an angle and deliberately looking for the crease that really pops pops out. But I did really enjoy the the multitasking features with it. In particular the ability to have two app windows open, drag and drop content from one into the other. As someone who does a lot of day to day messing around with images in one programme and text in another That would be something I could reasonably see as being part of my day to day workflow. So I really liked that. And I really love like with the flip five as well, that the fold five now sits nice and flush with the hinge. So it looks a lot neater when folded up, which I’m sure Alex, you would have experienced much the same with your hands on.

Alex Kidman 

Oh, yeah. So I mean, the engineering of this thing is interesting, because as you say, the hinge is a bit better. It’s a bit thinner off the top of my head, I think this was about two millimetres thinner, which doesn’t sound like much. And it’s a weird thing, because it felt to me like, Okay, if you were really ofay with the prior models, which I am, but a lot of people would not be, you might not really pick that two millimetre difference, but there is still engineering and that there is still some work in there. Probably the biggest physical change that actually hit me was not really to do with the fold itself. It’s to do with the new S Pen, they’ve got it got with it, or, as I like to call it the s stick. Because the for those who are not aware, you get a specific you can get it’s not in the box, an S Pen that Samsung’s particular stylus brand, but their stylus, basically. But you have to get a specific one for the fold devices because of that flexible screen. If you try and use an older S Pen from like an old note or whatever, then it won’t work, it’ll actually say, hey, this isn’t compatible, because you run the risk of scratching the screen. The previous solution to this was this case, I’ve got one of them for an older fold model, where the S Pen kind of slots in on the side. And it’s huge, bulky thing. The new S Pen is this incredibly flat thing that sits on the front of that case, it’s a much, much better solution.

Chris Button 

Yeah, certainly, it’s nice that almost in line with the huge sitting more flush, that they’ve also made sure that the accompanying stylus also sits flush with that, that really nice case, so that Samsung spoke a lot about pocket ability with its new folding phones. And it’s something that they’ve been going on about for a little while now. And you can see that really extends to what they’re doing with the fold. And also holistically with the S pen as well, the fact that it won’t stick out uncomfortably so that when you put it in your pocket, it’s going to get caught on the edge of your pocket and pop out or break or whatever. So it’s something they’ve clearly put a lot of thought and fit into the design there. So I agree that that is another big plus for what they’ve done with the fold file as or more specifically the the S Pen this time around for the ES four for the fold

Alex Kidman 

five, and it has kind of an odd, specific naming.

Adam Turner 

So going by naming conventions I’m taking this is the fifth version, fifth iteration of this, when we see previous things have come along like touchscreen smartphones and stuff, the first few you see a lot of changes, they’re sort of working out the kinks, figuring out what works, what doesn’t, and then it settles down and you just get these, like slight iterations. Chris, where do you think we are in that lifecycle? With defaults?

Yeah, it’s definitely you know, from one year to the next, it is very much that minor iterative stage. So I would say arguably, the bigger changes to the fold this year round. More internally in terms of brighter better display, it’s got their the Snapdragon eight, gen two for Galaxy processor as well. So they’re, they’re claiming that there’s, you know, more performance and bigger cooling chamber as well, which, which will help if you use it for a gaming device as well. So that shouldn’t get as hot in your hand. And hopefully the battery will last a bit longer as well. But I definitely think this year, there’s been a bigger jump with the flip five than there has been the fold five, especially on first glance.

Alex Kidman 

Yeah, I want to get into the flip in a second. But I’ve got to say, in a sense, I feel as though Samsung is somewhat resting on its laurels here because it can, especially locally in this larger phone form factor. So for those who are not particularly aware, the fold is their foldable, which starts out looking like a regular phone from the front and you unfold it, you open it like a book basically. And it becomes a little mini tablet and I’m I I’m a fold guy, I prefer the fold to the flip. And I’ve long said that and I I stand by that. But they don’t have any competition locally. The only real significant competition they’ve got, I would say is in the Chinese market and the Chinese specific market the likes of Huawei, and so on. And they had a bit of a tilt a few years ago with with their mate X and xs phones and so on, but not so much anymore. No one else is is competing with them now, are they Chris?

Yeah, because here in Australia, we don’t have the Google fold which was announced not that long ago. We don’t have oppose fold. We’ve got their flip phone here in Australia but we don’t Have their fold. So there’s certainly less urgency for Samsung to really go gung ho in terms of cranking out the innovations for its sort of book like foldable format, as opposed to the Flip Phone format, which, yeah, there’s clearly a lot more competition, especially locally here in Australia, where there’s much more, you know, there’s more brands participating in that market.

Adam Turner 

Why is it that the we’re getting more flips here? Are they just more flips? In general? Is it because they’re more popular? Or is it a supply chain thing where the folds are harder to make?

It’s interesting, Aleksey, I might get you to jog my memory here. But I remember in some of the briefings that we had around the the new technology, that Australia is a little bit of an anomaly in the worldwide market in terms of foldables. In terms of that the fold has outsold the flip so far in Australia. Am I remembering that correctly?

Alex Kidman 

I think that is the correct claim. Yes. But you’re right. I think the answer to this, though, is a lot simpler, Adam, and it’s to do with the fact that the fold is not exactly inexpensive. The the starting price on this thing is $2,599. For a phone, it’s the most expensive phone that Samsung has.

Adam Turner 

So it’s more expensive than the flip equivalent. Oh, considerably. Yes.

Alex Kidman 

Yeah. Okay, considerably. Yeah. And that’s, I think, where the competition comes from, because they, they figure they can shift more units, not that the flip phones, which I think we should shift to are exactly inexpensive. But Chris, what’s, what’s the big change here? Because there was one sigma, I would argue there was one big significant change between the flip five and the last year’s footfall.

Yes, certainly. And that’s in the form of the cover screen, which it’s immediately visible. When you see the phone that the cover screen is now off, took my head 3.4 inches up from I believe the flip fall was 1.9 inches or around that mark. And so along with what oppo and Motorola have done in recent months, making the cover screen bigger and bigger. And mind you that the flip five cover screen isn’t as big as the razor 40 Ultra. But it’s it’s pretty, pretty close with sort of like an angular cut out just around the camera and torch array. But yeah, so the big, big difference there with the flip five is that it’s got the larger cover screen, which enables more widgets, more customization gives you a larger camera preview when you’re using that main camera array. And arguably one of the biggest ones is if you’re replying to messages, or you want to respond to an email, you’ve got access to a full QWERTY keyboard, so you don’t have to rely on pre generated preset messages to quickly respond without opening the phone.

Adam Turner 

These, this idea of a secondary screen has been kicking around for a long time, obviously, you know, much smaller and a lower resolution. But have they actually found a good use for these things? Do you think that that the QWERTY keyboard for the for replies is is the use case that has been waiting for maybe?

I don’t think it’s the killer app. As such, I think it’s handy and very helpful if you just want to do a quick one sentence reply to someone. But if you want to type an essay in response, then you’re probably better off just opening the dang thing up and using the full screen keyboard. But I think I’ve I’ve been sceptical is probably too strong a word. But I’ve been a little bit weary of the flip phone format thinking, is this just a bit of a fad? Is this just a bit of a novelty because I’ve long loved the look of them because they look great, they look stylish and really sleek. But I’ve wondered what the use case is. And on a slight tangent, I’ve actually been testing out the Motorola Razor 40 recently for gadget guy, so not the ultra model with a larger screen. But the the sort of $999 model that has the the sort of the older I suppose classical cover screen if you want to look at sort of the history around the table on the flip phone let’s be honest here. Yeah, that’s a fair a fair way of looking at it. And having having used it for a week and a bit now. I can see the appeal much clearer now. And I think Samsung’s doing a reasonably good job of positioning who the flip five and by extension flip phones are for they’re for younger people who enjoy content creation enjoy taking selfies and taking a lot of photos, but more easily being able to use the main camera to do so the best camera to take selfies the best camera to set up as a pseudo tripod without needing any extra equipment to film reels film tiktoks take photos, that sort of thing. And I think that the Use case there is really, really helpful for people who are really into content creation. How big the content creation market is, you know, wanting to purchase a phone specifically for that. I don’t know, I’d have to look into whatever marketing data is available there. But the appeal is certainly there for that particular segment.

Alex Kidman 

You say, I mean, I want to clarify this, you say the best camera is the best camera that is on this phone, it’s good. See, the rear cameras, which come the front cameras, it’s always difficult folding phone, yes, are the ones that end up on that cover display. But this actually brings up a point that that annoys me with all foldables. Because everyone does this. These are the most expensive phones that you can buy. But they don’t have the best cameras that those companies make. If you want the best camera, that Samsung makes you buy an S 23 Ultra, which will actually cost you about the same as the flip five, in fact, and the poor old fold five actually has basically the same camera as it did last year, which kind of blows my mind in a in a in a value sense. But there was one of the things you mentioned Motorola and the razor 40. I’m doing that the razor 40 as well at the moment, but I’ve just done the razor for the Ultra. And people can look at my review of that. And the thing that captivated me with that in a way that no flip phone has before is that it will run full Android apps in that screen. In that cover screen at smaller I think it’s 3.6 inches on the on the razor and 3.6 to 3.4 is not that big, it’s not something you’d really notice between the two of them without being side by side. But while that doesn’t work for every app, because not every app likes being that small, it means you can do just about everything. Samsung is just doing widgets. It’s not doing apps at this point. I feel like that’s a misstep on their part when one of their competitors is already there. What’s your take, Chris?

Yeah, that’s really interesting. And it’s tricky for me to say without playing with the raise of 40 Ultra myself, because I haven’t used I haven’t used the ultra at all, let alone that the flip five have had in my hand and had little play with. But I in theory that that does absolutely sound like a missed opportunity to to have at least miniature versions of a full Android apps. But perhaps I’m just theorising here perhaps that’s an optimization thing and not wanting to, you know, have an instance of some you try and run a full android app. And it’s clearly a far worse experience than running it natively on a traditional screen. Perhaps that’s what Samsung’s trying to avoid there. But again, that’s that’s just my theorising, you know, without having used the razor Ultra in terms of being able to see how well it does those apps on the cover screen.

Alex Kidman 

Although to be fair and clear, it doesn’t always do them brilliantly. But weirdly, Samsung has some of this experience and some of this data, because it did it with the early fall, the only fold had those really tiny, thin little terrible screens, and the experience was not great. But it worked. It was there. Maybe they’ll added a software down the track. But I wouldn’t bet on that. And I certainly wouldn’t spend the money on that.

Adam Turner 

But this sort of comes down to that inconsistency in the Android store. And I think we’re talking about it a couple of weeks ago, when we talked about tablets, in the Apple ecosystem, Apple can just say, right, this is the way we’re doing it, you’ve got to make your your app scale for this, this and this. So if they brought out a foldable iPhone tomorrow, with a little screen on the front, they would make sure all the apps work with it properly. But they can’t really they can encourage it. But they can’t really enforce it on the Android store. Can they?

Yeah, yeah, I suppose historically speaking, and Apple will always be the first to tell you how well they they police for lack of a better word, the App Store in and making sure that it meets stringent standards, it works with whatever the sort of oldest iOS or OS, you know, they’ve got out at the moment that it’s compatible with that and it meets however many standards sets. Whereas I think, long for a long time now. We’ve always known that the Google Play Store and the Android sort of storefronts to be a bit of a Wild West in terms of quality and quality assurance, testing, security, all of that. So I wonder and perhaps, perhaps this is more work than manufacturers or companies would want to put in but with a producer gaming analogy, with games that operate on say like a portable device, like a steam deck or an RPG ally, where on the Steam Store, it will say steam deck verified, whether there’s something similar for you know, as the flip phone market expands whether on the Android store, there will be something that says optimised for cover screens or optimised for flip phone devices. But again, there’s there’s a fair bit of work that would need to go into that I imagine

Alex Kidman 

I get See other problem there as well. I mean, Google does have some guidelines for foldable phones and foldable apps and things like that. But I guess the the problem there and that the benefit in a way or the advantage that Apple has, is typically it’s talking about, like maybe six or seven different screen sizes at any one time that it’s got to support. Whereas Android is genuinely hundreds, if not 1000s of resolution differences, size differences. foldables all sorts of things to all sorts of people you you probably can’t please everyone. It wasn’t just phones, though at unpacked. Samsung’s also got a range of new wearables and the regular listeners will know that on a man who loves a smartwatch probably a little bit too much but it’s still not illegal to do so. Chris, what was your take on the new Galaxy watches?

Yes, so the the Galaxy watch six in the galaxy watch six classic. So from my understanding that the classic was not part of the the watch five range, so that’s a bit of a returning favourite that with the stainless steel finish. And they’ve gone for a slightly bigger display, slightly reduced bezels size, more brightness a little bit more battery. But Samsung did spend a lot of time emphasising that they’ve put a lot of time and effort into making sure that there’s this really seamless wellness and health experience between your watch and your phone. Or in fact the ability to access Samsung health without even opening the app on your phone or having your your phone open. So you’ll see in a lot of the promotional materials there. They’re going really big on sleep health, and the ability to be able to string multiple workouts together and just just be able to see data better at a glance, which for for me using a smartwatch, I’ve used an Apple Watch for a little while now particularly for you know, monitoring workouts. I I really like the UI of what the watch six, how it helps sort of operates with the sort of the Samsung wrapper of the Google where Oh, s sort of situation I’ve got so my first impressions are pretty positive of the watch SIX series.

Alex Kidman 

Yeah, I mean, I feel like you’ve buried the lead there. The thing that got me the most excited about this is that there is a watch six classic. And for those not in the know, the classic models are the ones that have a rotating bezel. So the entire bezel spins. And it’s a control mechanism, you can actually flick through screens, you can make selections with it. It is in my view, the single best thing that Samsung has ever done in a wearable, and I don’t for the life of me understand why they do this top thing where they go, Oh, no, this year, we’re not doing a classic. Next year, we’ll do a classic. Okay, people don’t change or shouldn’t change the smartwatches all that frequently. But I want the rotating bezel to be there all the time. It’s the single best reason to buy one of these in my view. Do you

Adam Turner 

want it because it’s like the concept of a traditional watch like the diving watches that would have the rotating bezel? Or do you want it because it actually makes it easier to interact with the watch as a smartwatch.

Alex Kidman 

So I’m not a diving watch kind of guy. And I’m sure you’re shocked by that revelation. No, it’s the ease of use. It’s the fact that it is again, my perspective. But I’ve tested a lot of smartwatches it is the best selection mechanism I’ve hit for this kind of thing. So if you’ve used an Apple Watch, you’ll be aware they’ve got their little digital crown aside that you can you can spin and that’s okay, that works that functions and a few other manufacturers have gone down that road. This is like that, but much much bigger, which means it’s just so much easier. If you’re on the go to just go right I’m just gonna put my palm over my watch and just spin it a little bit to you know, move through a screen or make a selection or whatever it is you’re contextually doing with it. And it works really really well it’s just a smart bit of you know, ergonomic engineering, I suppose, is the way I’ve put it

Yeah, that’s that’s one thing I’ll really be keen to go hands on with at some stage because at the the briefing before they made the announcements that the what six was the one thing I didn’t get to go hands on with but I do really like the sound of that rotating bezel because as you say the the digital crown on the Apple Watch is totally fine. But I do feel like there could be a better way of interfacing with a smartwatch for sure.

Alex Kidman 

The other big product that they announced in fact is very big and and was not quite as heavily leaked as everything else. And I know you spent a bit of time playing around with the Tab S nine family Chris, tell me about it.

Yeah, yes indeed. So your big upgrade to the tablet family for for Samsung with the S nine the s nine plus and the S nine Ultra. I think one of the things that people are most excited about is that it’s got the the let me get this right the dynamic amo lead times to 2x, whatever Samsung brands that as. So, you know, very very bold, bright, vibrant screens across all three devices. So it’s not just restricted to the Ultra. It’s, you know, regardless of which model you get, it’s got this really, really beautiful screen to view content on to use as a note taking device, or, as is quite handy to use Samsung’s Dex mode to connect it to an external display like a PC monitor, and display content on that larger display while still using all the the tablets, core features separately. So there’s a fair bit of flexibility in terms of a big use case that Samsung is pushing to position the Tab S nine as a potential laptop replacement, or substitute

Alex Kidman 

the iPad Pro strategy without the apple branding. In other words, pretty well, pretty well. Yeah. So I bring up the iPad Pro, because these are and Samsung, sorry, not Apple, Samsung does a lot of tablets. And it does a lot of much more affordable tablet. These are quite premium price. I mean, you’d actually want I would think, a work or a whole of life solution to come out of these things. Especially for that bigger tablet. Which off the top of my head, I think tips that scales at just under two grand.

Yeah, I think so. I think so. Because yeah, I think the the smallest one starts at about 1100 1200. And then yeah, the the smallest storage size of the Ultra is somewhere between 17 to 1900. So yeah, it’s a fair bit of coin for a tablet, that’s for sure.

Adam Turner 

That’s productivity to pricing, though, isn’t it? You keep it under 1000 bucks. And I know I’m not saying 1000 bucks isn’t a lot of money, but you keep it under 1000 bucks and you can talk about it as a consumer purchase. It’s for sitting on the couch is for peace find around with its maybe think is fine with but up at two grand, it’s you’ve got to be using it to make money to get things done. Yes.

You you’d certainly want to get more use out of it than just watching Netflix on otherwise, that’s that’s a lot of money to be paying for a Netflix consumption device where you could pay almost a similar amount and get a half decent TV. But the I think is interesting with the preorder situation at the moment, I did notice that with with the Tab S nine series, that with with pre orders, you do get the the two or $300 sort of book cover keyboard folio sort of thing with it. So I think that’s a reasonably good incentive for people who want to buy in early into the technology. And especially use it as a productivity machine that you are getting that keyboard accessory as well so that you can get full use out of it beyond using a digital keyboard on the screen, which is far less fun and reliable to use than an actual physical keyboard device. So yeah, it’s still so a lot of money to be paying, but it’s at least good that they seem to be considering that angle in terms of the way that they’re pushing this to market. So yeah, definitely want to be using this as something bit more than than just your entertainment. As you say, Adam, I can’t put it better myself piece falling around the couch. Really?

Alex Kidman 

That’s a big Yeah, what we’re speaking on the market, I guess it’s probably an easiest sell for Samsung in Australia. Because what they’re not cannibalising with this is any kind of laptop market. They’ve had little dilly, dally enters into laptops in Australia, but never a concerted push in that market. But they do actually have ultra portable laptops and things that could compete against this in other markets where they’re also selling the tablets. No, and I think it’s gonna be really interesting to see what they get out of that and whether or not consumers go for it. Yeah, for

sure. Because I think it was just as recent as the previous Galaxy unpacked where they revealed the the s 23 phones, that I think overseas, they did bring out their latest Ultra books or whatever they call them, which, of course, all the local information and, you know, sort of addendums from PR comes through and are not coming to Australia. Well, I suppose. You know, that’s that’s been the traditional, traditionally the case for a while. But as you say, it probably works out in favour for Samsung, the fact that they’re just pushing the tablets as opposed to trying to pit tablets versus laptops against one another, which I mean, it’s a very crowded market and both the tablet and laptop market and one that is struggling a bit at the moment in terms of reduced sales across the board. And as where Samsung did say that, look, we know the markets not great, but people still seem to be responding to To sort of, quote unquote, more premium products. So I suppose the proof will be in the pudding once the the Tab S nine series arrives next month.

Alex Kidman 

Well, it’ll be interesting to see how all of that rolls out. Thanks so much for joining us, Chris.

Thank you so much lovely to have a chat. And

Alex Kidman 

as we usually do around this time, when we’re saying goodbye to a guest, you get your opportunity to promote where you work and where you are on social media. Go. Yes. So

I’m the editor at gadget guy.com. That, are you doing a lot of consumer technology coverage? As far as social media, with how fragmented it is, at the moment, I don’t know what to promote, given on blue sky threads, whatever the hell Twitter is. If you search for Chris Button, or baby boy, that’s big. That will be why BHO why you’ll find me somewhere.

Alex Kidman 

We might have something to say about the fragmentation of social media real soon now. Thanks for your time, Chris. Thank you. Enjoying the show. That’s great. Don’t forget to subscribe, which you can do on every podcast platform you’ve ever heard of just search for vertical hold, or go to our website, vertical holdup Comdata you with a handy button to every single podcast platform.

Adam Turner 

So Tim, Elon Musk has long had this dream of creating this thing called x and it seems to be coming to life. You call him a parasite in the paper? Why?

Tim Biggs 

Well, I mean, to be clear, it’s not my opinion that he as a person is a parasite. It’s it’s more in the context of Twitter, you know, and in the context of, you know, for months now, we’ve been talking about what are these new changes that must meet every other week, there’s a big thing that people are up in arms about, it seems he’s just waking up and having his epiphanies and making everybody change it. And it’s sort of, you know, where are we going? Is Twitter going to be, I guess, rehabilitated? Is it going to be better? And you know, is he killing the service slowly? And it turns out that no, I don’t think he is, I think he is sort of using the service to create this this x app. I don’t think the question of, you know, what is Musk doing to make Twitter better is the right question. He is simply using what Twitter has i a few million users remaining, and, you know, the back end and all the tech to jumpstart the development of x by a few years. So that’s the context in which I think he could be seen as a parasite on Twitter, if Twitter is something that you enjoyed and you you like, and you would like to see return to its full strength, I think, maybe the time for that has passed, and we can look ahead at what it will become potentially in the future.

Alex Kidman 

But to backpedal for just a second. We can’t exactly after this week, and this was Elans, particular brainfuck this week, call it Twitter, because it’s now x or maybe 10, or whatever other sound he thinks it makes. He’s changed the brand, hasn’t he? It’s not the blue bird that we all knew. And those have been around for way too long, the fail whale, it’s x in a fairly kind of ugly and as others have pointed out, possibly already copyrighted.

Tim Biggs 

I mean, it’s, it’s a funny one, because you know, this is on brand for musk. I think, too, you know, a lot of people believe me have come to me over the last week in, in various forums unexpectedly in the middle of the night, to tell me how stupid I am. And that, you know, Mr. Musk has put forward you know, a plan for X for years. And it’s not surprising. And he’s he’s doing everything according to plan. But at the same time, you can’t avoid the fact that he just said one day Twitter’s now x, clearly nobody knew that that was going to happen. People were were running to try to get a I don’t even remember exactly what it’s called. But that exe that they use, that’s just a regular character in Unicode, to put that at the top of the website, and to try to take the word Twitter off the building and not have you know, the that’s that’s an amazing story in itself. For those that don’t know, have the police come basically and say, Hey, we’re not sure, apparently, because the original story was that they didn’t have the rights to to they didn’t have the permission to bring in their heavy machinery and shut down a street in San Francisco. But I think what it turned out to be was that they did get permission, but it wasn’t communicated properly to security or to the building owner or to anybody else. And so the police yet came in and shut it down because it er on for a while, but like this is it may be part of his plan. But it’s not the way that businesses usually function where they would have had meetings where this was, you know, communicated to other people. They would have had a plan of how to rebrand in a way that doesn’t look ridiculous, where my app store says Twitter all over it still says tweet all over. It’s still got bluebirds all over it, except for like a couple of spots where it’s got an ugly x now, it’s it’s really haphazard. But, you know, as I said, I don’t think making a functional Twitter is necessarily the game plan. It’s just about incrementally getting us to the place where he thinks x needs to be.

Adam Turner 

And he tried to pull this back in the Pay Pal days, didn’t he?

Tim Biggs 

Yeah, well, the I mean, it’s pretty well documented that he’s got a weird thing about x. And spelling sexy with a three I have noticed a number of times in the past has come up and all the Tesla models, you know, s 3x. Y make sexy with a three. And now one of the because he’s a 12 year old. One of the Twitter conference centres is now called sexy with a three ad No, but yeah, x in particular, is obsessed with so yes, back in the day, he had x.com and he tried to to make the Pay Pal service into x. I think that may have been what got him kicked out of PayPal. Originally.

Alex Kidman 

Pretty much pretty much he did well. Okay. I want to say he did and I think he did. I don’t have proof of this, but he did effectively make new Twitter CEO I guess she’s now the ex CEO. Which means when she

Adam Turner 

put on a resume, she fast,

Alex Kidman 

not quick twice the thought I’m gonna say Lydia Karina put out this amazing tweet was with just the most corporate gibberish, and I desperately want to read it out for everyone. So bear with me deep breath. This is what to do with with what x is apparently, when we can dive into what it might mean. X is the future state of unlimited interactivity, centred in audio video messaging, payments, slash banking, creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities, powered by AI X will connect us all in ways we’re just beginning to imagine. For years fans and critics alike have pushed Twitter to dream bigger to innovate faster, and to fulfil our great potential. There’s absolutely no limit to this transformation. X will be the platform that can deliver Well, everything has Lydia hurry note not heard of over promising Tim.

Tim Biggs 

I mean, from from that I get that she is an ad person and she has been given very little to work with. She she’s sort of she’s taken a few themes in there, such as people criticising Twitter constantly. And people not knowing what x is. And she’s tried to formulate something that sounds sounds like there’s been meetings and there’s been an understanding internally of what this is going to be but I don’t think that’s really there. And saying something has you know, unlimited potential or will read it’ll revolutionise communication or anything like that is is pretty meaningless.

Adam Turner 

When people ask for two things, and edit button and get rid of the Nazis, and we haven’t got either.

Tim Biggs 

I mean, people paying for Twitter blue have one of those things true. And it’s not good

Alex Kidman 

that they wanted Nazis for all. He’s also got, they’ve also had some big problems with this, though, because as almost everyone has pointed out, X whilst it’s a letter of the alphabet, and Sesame Street had its own fun with that this week, and when Sesame Street is dunking on you, you’re in real trouble. You don’t mess with Grover, that’s all I’ll say. But x as a trademark for the exactly the kind of services that they’re talking about there. It’s already held by a whole bunch of different companies, most notably Microsoft, and metta. And of course, as we detailed in the show a few weeks ago, Zuckerberg and mask, they don’t really see eye to eye except possibly in a cage match.

Tim Biggs 

Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of problems with naming your product X, I think, you know, part of the appeal of it maybe is, is that sort of, you know, that is so difficult and that it’s so you know, exclusive, only one person can have x, it’s like when you’re signing up for, you know, names for new social media platforms, and you want to get the one character to just be like, I was there, I did it first. But obviously, he didn’t do it first. And it’s gonna be difficult. I think it’s difficult from a branding perspective. It’s difficult from you know, if I’m going to Google the thing, or if I’m going to, you know, have any sort of presence that I can see it and say that’s definitely the Twitter thing, right. That’s not any of the other dozen things that have X in them. And yeah, if there is a potential for Zuckerberg or Microsoft to come in and put a stop to it, obviously they’re going to

Adam Turner 

the x it was in some countries actually got picked up by their porn filter. Just because they blocked anything with x in the domain name,

Tim Biggs 

possibly I don’t know if you

Alex Kidman 

liked this one I can answer Asia. Because at one point, so Moscow index.com, which then went to PayPal, and he did eventually buy it back off PayPal, because he’s, as you said to me, he’s been obsessed with it for a while. But it was hosting, shall we say, certain material at one point. And the Indonesian government picked up on this and went, Well, no, hang on. We’re not having that. So Twitter was blocked. As I understand the story is it’s emerging. It’s one of those things where again, they just wasn’t communication to say, hey, no, look, this is actually Twitter. Twitter is allowable in Indonesia. But it got automatically filtered. And absolutely, I mean, I’ve done radio this week, where people have said to me, Well, hang on. Doesn’t that all mean, it’s a bit pornographic? And it’s like, well, no more than it was already. But yes,

Tim Biggs 

yes, it is substantially pornographic. And having access to little, little favicon, a website icon, also, it just, it looks bad. It looks in the tabs.

Alex Kidman 

This, of course, the change over the x raises this this kind of big question. If it’s not Twitter, then we’re not tweeting any more. What is it that we’re doing on x? What do we call postings on x?

Tim Biggs 

Didn’t didn’t Musk say that? The the message is where x is now? I don’t know. I don’t know what how would you you would use that in a sentence. You can’t say i i sent an X i was axing really x doesn’t really work very well.

Adam Turner 

Might have been Z eating is eating at a vija. I’ll see you later. I mean,

Alex Kidman 

the two I’ve seen is that it’s either meant to be a kiss, you know, the kind of classical X at the end of the letter or whatever. Or depending on your viewpoint of the service that you’re now excreting it’s a good one.

Adam Turner 

It really feels like Brewster’s millions, except these pissing away billions. I don’t know what to do. Are you old enough to remember the movie Brewster’s millions?

Tim Biggs 

I mean, I’ve seen it. I don’t, I don’t have a memory of it. The basic cinemas

Adam Turner 

was that, oh, what’s the guy’s name that

Alex Kidman 

they wanted to pay Richard Richard way too much money to be in a very bland comedy. But

Adam Turner 

Richard Pryor inherited some money. But to inherit the full amount, he had to piss away $30 million in 30 days or something like that, without explaining to anybody what he was doing. So he’s doing the most insane things, making the worst possible decisions to get rid of this money. So I’m wondering how many trillions of dollars Elon is gonna get if he manages to piss away all the money in this certain timeframe? Because it’s crazy.

Tim Biggs 

I mean, look, it’s it’s a guilty pleasure of mine to go to Elon Musk’s profile on Twitter, and just look at the replies and and, and I think, you know, you can’t, none of us can really know what he’s like, personally, and he clearly has a lot of skills and a lot of intelligence in certain areas. But he’s also a is also a strange person, and I don’t think we can really predict how, how much money he is, you know, able to sink into something like this. If it if it means a lot to him personally, especially if he does have, you know, he’s said that x could be the control like half of the world’s finances eventually, and, and will be the most profitable company in the world. And that sounds completely ridiculous. But also, you know, there’s Stranger things have happened.

Alex Kidman 

But also, cyber truck.

Adam Turner 

Yes, he’s making stupid promises, like for the last five or six years, every year, he says on next year, we’ll get level five full autonomy from Tesla cars, and they’re still in about two. So he just keeps saying things with no accountability, perhaps whether or not he believes those things are actually going to happen. But I guess the bigger question is this everything app, it’s the opposite of the Seinfeld app, which would be the app about nothing. This is the app about everything. What does everything app look like?

Tim Biggs 

Well, I mean, in in China, for example, they have the WeChat app, which you know, sort of integrates with everything, you can do payments through it, you can do messaging through it. You can do shopping through it and I think that’s the kind of thing that he’s aiming for. I think the difficulty in America and you know, in the rest of the western world is that we already have lots of established you know, financial mechanisms. We have big banks that operate online we have things like Amazon you know, it’s it’s tough to imagine a situation where Elon Musk can create an Amazon competitor of his own and create a financial apparatus of his own. You know, short of buying you know, square and by In, you know, a bank and, and doing it that way, it’s it’s hard to imagine but eventually, you know, maybe it could be that sort of portal to the Internet, whether anyone wants that, you know, we’ve seen others try it by adding, you know, extra bits on to Facebook Messenger, for example, like, instead of going to a store, why don’t I just talk to the Nike bot in Facebook Messenger because it’s dumb, and I don’t want to do that. But, you know, eventually in the future, we could see something like that.

Alex Kidman 

But it also has, I mean, it’s not just you, right? He’s got to take on the banks, he’s got to take on the Amazons and all the rest of it, he’s also got to take on an absolute brick wall of regulation that already exists, especially in the finance space. And I mean, what he’s shown with Twitter already, he’s in Twitter’s in trouble in so many countries for not having good contact policies not having good protection policies or takedown policies for the fact that he basically fired everyone who did all of those functions when he took over. He’s not exactly showing that he can work well, with regulators, it’s, I can’t see this happening, I just I, I can see so many barriers to it ever being able to even start, let alone pick up the kind of mass quantity that you need for those kinds of apps to be really successful.

Tim Biggs 

Yeah, it’s similar to the self driving cars in that you can say that this could potentially happen, or we can do this technically, but then, you know, every regulator in the world is gonna say, actually, you can’t do that. It’s not in this country, we’re not going to allow it. And, you know, I guess from his perspective, he just has to hope that you know, he can wear them down or, or get around it somehow. But yeah, it’s it does seem like an extraordinary uphill battle.

Adam Turner 

He needs the buyer country, and then take over their country and change it into what he wants it to be. That’s the obvious answer. Yeah, stunned silence, because that’s the rest of his plans.

Alex Kidman 

What you can’t hear is the screaming noise in the back of my head, that is now going to be running for like 24 hours, at least Adam, thank you for that. I’m not going to sleep for like a week, people would

Tim Biggs 

live there. I’ve seen them. I’ve seen them in those in those replies.

Adam Turner 

That is scary. What is what I thought was really insane this week is because we’ve got all these other people chipping away at. I said a couple of weeks ago, the carcass of Twitter, and it seems more and more reasonable. Actually, every time I think about it, you’ve got threads, you’ve got others, tick tock has just come out and said it’s gonna allow text only posts of up to 1000 words. Is that insane? Like, I’m not a big tick tock user. But that’s not what tick talks about, is it?

Tim Biggs 

Yeah, it’s it’s getting a bit weird. It was, it was weird, even when threads came out. And sort of you’ve got Facebook, or you’ve got meta saying, you know, from now on, we’re gonna have an Instagram where you can write things as like, wow. You know, it seems breakthrough. It seems to have gone backwards in that way. But I mean, you know, we’re seeing more and more people be interested in, in newsletters, for example. I think maybe there is going to be a future for people consuming those things however they want. And, you know, maybe if you’re producing, you know, podcast content like this, in the future, you’ll have the option of, you know, you’ve got your AI, you can automatically transcribe it into text, put it on tick tock, and people can go through it, if that’s how they want to consume their content. That’s how they’ll consume it.

Adam Turner 

The way transcription will have to get better because of and it comes out as vertical hole every time. Very, very, very different.

Tim Biggs 

Locked in Tunisia.

Alex Kidman 

The the thing with the Twitter caucus, though, that might save a lot, and again, that screaming is happening in the back of my head, is that you’ve got all these things, you’ve got threads, and blue skies still invite only and mastodons there, but it’s a bit inscrutable if you don’t know what you’re doing. And they’re all they all exist. But no one seems to be getting that breakthrough moment, it looked like Fred threads was going to do it. But all the reporting suggests that they had a huge sign up, but they’ve now seen a massive tumble in actual engagement and people going right? This is actually what I do all day long. This is my doom scroller of choice. Is your Tim do you recognise odds that Twitter might just out live with them simply by dint of already been there in people’s minds?

Tim Biggs 

I mean, it’s definitely a huge advantage, right? If if you need to, you know, pick up and move to a new place. You can take all your stuff with you, but when you get there, the people that you’re used to seeing aren’t necessarily there. You know, you can you can go to threads, and you can say, Okay, I’ll follow all my Instagram people, but the people that you’ve been following it on Twitter for 10 years, you know, might not be there or they, they might be doing different stuff and it’s become fragmented as well. Wherever you’re leaving Twitter, you might be going to threads, but you might also be going to blue sky, you might be going somewhere else. So I think, you know, in the short term, it’s going to continue that way, right? Everybody’s gonna go out and make these profiles on the competitors, but they’re gonna stay at Twitter, and that’s going to be their primary Doom scrolling thing, and I think it might take a break through, like, you know, there’s sort of federated networks. So we keep hearing about where, you know, if there’s a handful of them, and they all work together, so that it doesn’t matter if a third of your Twitter people have gone to one and a third have gone to the other, you’ll be able to interact with them all. That’s, you know, a little bit in the future, but I think it’s gonna take something like that to really get people to not just sign up elsewhere but leave with it and not be there anymore.

Alex Kidman 

Well, that just about wraps up this week’s episode of vertical hold. Thanks to Tim for joining us this week. Thanks guys. And now I’d like to mix things up a bit because I always like to do this because it makes Adam panic and making Adam panic makes me smile. Tim, I’d usually ask you to three questions of doom I’m not going to do that. I’m simply going to give you the opportunity to promote your work however you’d like writing podcasts, newsletters, whatever you like for about 30 seconds as well as telling our listeners what they should have for lunch tomorrow.

Tim Biggs 

Perfect well, you should have a falafel and you should make it yourself don’t go to the shop and buy a falafel go and get some good falafel get some good Turkish bread and and do that and get some good sweet chilli sauce from for myself, you can find me on Twitter. Still they’re on X ray the X STS X tweets, whatever they call that I’m putting out. And there you’ll find links to my newsletter that I do at the SMH and the age which you should get comes out every week on a Friday. There’s also a newsletter I do on my own time with Alice Clark is called press any button. It’s about video games and other nerdy stuff that we like.

Alex Kidman 

You should definitely go into scribe to press any button. It is excellent and I highly recommend it. And I also heartily recommend that our listeners catch us up with us online. We’re also still on Twitter site x as vertical holder you can also catch us on the vertical held Facebook page on Instagram or online at verticalhold.com.au

Adam Turner 

And thanks everyone for dropping by don’t forget to drop us a line. Let us know what you think about Twitter turning into x let us know what you think about the new Samsung Gear and just let us know what you think about the podcast. Vertical hold is proudly brought to you by Uniden Australia

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