Welcome to the BirdCast, the flagship podcast of year-end podcasts. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am actually kind of ahead of the game in my holiday shopping this year. I did a lot of stuff on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. I have at least ideas of what I want to buy for basically everybody in my life. And granted, it's already December, so I think in a lot of people's minds that does not make me ahead of the game. But for me, someone who is very good at getting to December 21st and then scrambling to find things that will two-day ship to me, this feels like a huge victory. So I'm sitting here shopping.
Everything is going well. And this just means that if I don't buy you a gift, it's not because I didn't think about it. It's just because I forgot about you entirely. Anyway, that's not what we're here to talk about on this episode of the Verge Cast. Here, we are going to do the first of our two annual year-end episodes. For this one, we're going to talk through some of the biggest stories of 2025, but we're going to do it a little differently, not just, you know, run down the big stories. We're going to try to identify some of the biggest moments, biggest trends, best, worst, everything. Joanna Stern and Eli Patella are going to be here to do this with me.
This is one of my favorite things to do every year. So I think we're going to have a lot of fun. All that's coming up in just a second. But I did just remember that I have to add my parents to my gift list. This is maybe I'm not doing as well as I think I am. Anyway, we'll see. This is the Verge Cast. We'll be right back.
So far, you might actually think the phone call is coming from inside the house. Visit sonos.com and build your system. Sonos, love the sound, feel the system. All right, we're back. Joanna Stern is here. Hi, Joanna. Hello, David. From some deep space studio joining us for this one. Very glad you're here. Neal Patel, also here. What's up? However I'm looking at Joanna, it's like the colors are being crushed. Her hands are just floating in space. You look like one of those public access TV mimes. Yeah, that's what David said before. I look like a whistleblower that was set up in a TV studio. That's very good. You look really good, David. We should talk about your set. Listen, it's very good. Is this the first time people are seeing it? This will be the second.
by the time this actually airs. This will be the second time. RIP to your Fisher-Price basketball hoop. Do you guys ever, like, I think of my handiness level as, like, I'm very competent at putting together IKEA furniture, and that's it. Like, I will put together the hell out of, like, a billy bookcase. But anything beyond that, useless. And this was, like, right at the level of I had to adhere things to my wall level. And I did that. I feel very good about it. There's some, like, subtle vignetting going on, which is very good. Thank you. I'm pretty proud of it. Anyway, about a year ago, the three of us sat down and looked over the year 2024 and made a bunch of predictions about the year 2025. We had a bunch of...
questions that i asked the both of you about what was going to happen in 2025 things like uh will tim cook still be the ceo of apple will nvidia be the most valuable company in the world will opening eye be making any money uh i asked you both a bunch of questions we all had answers um do you want to know who won we have a few that we need to litigate before we decide who actually won the what is going to happen in 2025 before we get into this year's game but so far that we all did in very different ways kind of the exact same which is very funny like so where we currently are is that i got 11 questions right neil i got 11 questions right and joanna got 12 questions So me dancing in space. I'm going to lose this mime. Dancing in space. We all, I would say, had a bunch of like really good correct calls. Like two in a row were OpenAI is a for-profit company and we were all right that it was going to be. And OpenAI is profitable was the next question and we were all right that it was not going to be. And then we just each made a series of occasional mistakes. But that's okay. We're all out here doing our best. But before we truly crown the winner, we have five that we need to like sit here and litigate for a minute to see what the correct answer is. So the first one, and these are all yes or no questions that we had to answer yes or no to.
the first one that we have to decide is the government is breaking up one of the big tech companies. This was like before the meta case was being tried and decided. This was before the Google search case was being done. This is before the Google ad tech case was really underway. My gut says the answer to this question for 2025 is no, the government is not breaking up one of the big tech companies. But I was less positive about this answer and figured I should just put it out for the three of us. Is it a yes or a no for this answer? Does this have to happen inside of 2025? Yes. Okay, then the answer is no. The Chrome case is being appealed.
And so maybe that will go the other way. And then the Google ad tech case hasn't reached a decision yet. And maybe that will result in some sort of split of Google assets. But that's not going to happen before the end of the year. So I'm saying it's a qualified no. Great, because I said no. And that would give me another point. That's a point for Joanna, which is very annoying. You know, you and I both said yes to that, because what I thought was going to happen, if I rewind to a year ago, I thought I was going to sit here and be like, well, Google had to sell Chrome. So, of course, that counts. That's a meaningful breakup. And we would have maybe debated whether that counts as a breakup. But you're right. None of that happened. So that's a point for Joanna. I will say that we were correct in assessing that the government would win its cases.
The government won its case against Google. Like they found search to be a monopoly and Google's deals to put search in different places to be illegal. And the remedy was nothing. Like Judge Meta was like, I don't know, this is hard, you guys. And that was the end of that. Yeah, he was just kind of like, well, AI. Right, there's some remedy, like people don't have to move things around. I think the judge in the Meta case basically was like, well, TikTok exists. And I think the government's response to that, even the Trump administration's response to that is, yeah, but they did the illegal stuff before TikTok existed. You can't just be like, that crime, don't worry about it anymore. So there's some weirdness that might change next year, but I think...
I think we should get half points. We were correct with the government. No, no, no. It was not will the government win its cases. It's will the government break up one of the big tech companies, which unequivocally did not happen. But I feel like you can have some half points. All right. The next one was the Pixel 10 is by far the best and most successful Android phone. All three of us said no.
What is there to litigate here? Wait, why did we say it's the best? That part is true, but most successful means sales, and I think that's probably what all of us were reacting to. Well, this is the challenge, right? It's been a big hit for Google. It's done very well. All the numbers are pointing in the right direction for Google, but all the numbers pointing in the right direction for Google are like a hilarious rounding error next to the Galaxy line.
Or anything else Google does. So maybe this question was just poorly written. Who wrote this? I don't know. Whoever that was, they're the worst. But yeah, I think we'll leave that. It doesn't say and or most successful. It says and most successful. Yes. So we are right. We're all right. Yeah. Okay. All right. Then we all get a point for that one, which is hooray for us. Question number three, Waymo is going to have its moment in 2025. I am sincerely torn on this one because I think you could argue that it had a series of small moments that maybe add up to like a thing. But did it happen this year? One of my predictions that we're going to get to is about Waymo 2. And so...
I feel like for the mass appeal and chatter about Waymo, we didn't have a moment, but it had so many moments that add up to a moment for like the progression of the company and the momentum for it. I don't know. It's a hard one. No, the answer is no. Okay, fine. The Waymo moment that I saw was like, I saw a video yesterday of a Waymo driving through like literally like a police standoff. Yeah, I saw that too. But I mean, that's what, look, let's get to my predictions for next year. But I think that- Look, let me be right some more. Waymo's going to have a moment. Waymo's going to have a moment next year. We're just going to have to debate what moment means. But let's get to that. Fine, fine. I said yes, and I am still winning, so.
All right. I think that's right. I think Waymo made clearer and clearer that it is going to win this year without really having that breakthrough mainstream moment where all of a sudden everyone is in Waymos. That didn't happen this year. Unless you're in San Francisco, in which case it actually kind of happened. This is why I'm torn. Anyway, all right, we're good. So that's a no. So that's a point for Neelai and me and nothing for Joanna. So Neelai, we're still losing. But we're close. We're only by one. We're back to, yeah, we're only down one. This is one we all agreed on. So it's fine. Who cares? But we have to wait. Do we get points or do we not get points? It doesn't matter because I'm looking at the next one and we all agreed on the next one too. There's no way to win and I don't care. Yeah, that is true. We have officially mathematically been eliminated from this game. But the two remaining that I genuinely went through and was like, I don't know the answers to these. We had Blue Sky is more relevant than threads.
And this was like, as we were doing this, this was a year ago. This was right after the election. Blue Sky was like ascendant. Threads was really boring. The algorithm like penalized everything that was interesting and exciting and newsy. And we were just like, Blue Sky is going to just eat the cultural relevance of Threads alive. I don't feel like that has happened. I kind of feel like Blue Sky has lost some juice this year. Well, I don't think it's like lost. I mean, it's still popular and probably still growing in some respects. But is it more relevant than Threads? Is Threads even relevant? I just, it's like.
Right. All end to the spectrum. The question as written is Blue Sky is more relevant than Threads, not Blue Sky is maximally relevant. And I think the answer is it is definitely more relevant. Threads is huge. You think so? I don't think so. I disagree. It's like a local news test for social media, right? Like, Blue Sky post, so-and-so celebrity said X is like a thing that actually drives news cycles. No Threads post ever breaks containment of Threads. Every Threads post is just pure engagement farming. That is true. Every Threads post is like, it's an unrelated video with a caption that's like, do you see it? You know, it's like all the comments like, I don't know what I'm supposed to say. That's all Threads. That's the...
The prototype threads post. I mean, I don't see the problem with that. That's what relevance looks like. My only argument would be that because Instagram put threads in that carousel in the Instagram app, that actually all of a sudden threads post matter way more than almost any other thing because they're in Instagram. Which is really just a statement on how powerful Instagram is. But I don't know. Joanna, you break the tie here. Which is more relevant right now? Blue Skyred threads. Neither. Can't do that. You gotta pick one.
I really don't have a dog in this fight. I don't know. No? Do you post on either one all this time later? I do way more on threads than I do Blue Sky. Okay. So there you go. If Joanna's there, it's relevant. But Eli's a lot more on Blue Sky, which I try to go to see what he's saying in others. But I just said too much. Look, I still spend a lot of time on X, so you both probably want to kick me off. All right. Well, then you don't get a point for this no matter what. All right. And then last one that I think is pretty easy, but just wanted to bring up anyway, was we've had a huge society-sized AI scandal. We actually all said yes to this. And I think looking back, we were all wrong. I think we're right.
Yeah, there's been a number of like mental health crises. Yeah, I would say the mental health crisis. The psychosis thing is the one that came to mind is like maybe that counts. I think it like, and that was from many angles. There's now the, yeah, I mean, I think that's what I would point to as well.
Okay. All right. Well, then we all get a point for that. So congratulations to all of us, but especially Joanna, congratulations to you. Thank you. What do I win again? If memory serves, I have to buy you some really expensive computer, but I don't remember. An iMac? Who's to say? All right. Let's get on to this year's thing. So instead of doing all the questions again, we're going to do like yearbook superlatives. We have a bunch of them. I don't know how many of them we're going to get through. We're just going to fire through as many as we can and see what happens. And we each pick one. Yeah, we're each going to have one. And the only rule is no repeats. You can't pick the same thing for a bunch of categories. Okay. Because that just rewards the popular kids and we don't like that here.
So the very first one on the list here is the most surprising success story of 2025. I picked this one first because this was actually the easiest one for me to figure out on my own. But Joanna, what did you have? I had Google Gemini coming ahead at the end of the year. Me too.
It feels like the right answer. Yeah, it just feels like, yeah, yeah. Truly, truly 12 months ago. We would not have sat here last year saying that. We just wouldn't have. And it's also like, it's in product and mindshare. And I think that's very impressive. Yeah. And not only has Google like come ahead in a big way, it's come ahead in a big way that all the other competitors in this space are now kind of terrified that like, you know, OpenAI declares a code red because ChatGPT needs to catch up to Gemini. It's like not a thing a lot of people were predicting 12 months ago. All right. So Gemini is easy. This is good. We all agree. On to the next one. The biggest failure of the year. This one is very vague on purpose. And I'm curious where your brains went. Neal, what do you think?
Mine is very conceptual. I think the entire concept of agents has been a huge failure. That's mine too. I had that too. I have another one though, so let's hear.
It's, are we going to keep talking about agents? No, it's, I think it's, it's the easy one, right? Like it's, it's, this was the thing that like the biggest promise of the year from everybody was agents and they're bad. Like I have, I have yet to have a single agentic experience that I'm like, this is, this is good. I've had a lot of AI experiences, especially for like low stakes things that I'm like, there's something cool and useful and valuable here. I have not once tasked an agent to do something and been like, well, that was a terrific experience. It's like, I think we're at this point required by law to state that you are not a software developer. Like if you don't mention that in software development, the thing works, like people like leap out of bushes and yell at you that you don't understand. Like, but the promise is that like windows will use itself for you.
And we have reviewed that and it actually, I'll just call that the biggest failure of the year. Microsoft doing commercials, it's like the computer you can talk to and then you talk to it and it's like, I don't know. Like that is a huge fail. Yeah. And it's just a fail. It's just a mismatch of hype and execution. Yeah. The other one I was going to be specific about was Alexa Plus. Was that a failure? I feel like Alexa Plus gets like a huge incomplete of the year. I don't even think we, I think it's just a full nothing from Alexa Plus this year. Like it's still, it's just not in front of that many people. It's not technically launched yet, even though if you buy new hardware, you get it. Like it doesn't.
I don't know. I don't even know how to grade Alexa Plus at this point. Yeah, it's an F. It's an F. Just listen to yourself. Here's the thing they announced. It's a great fanfare that isn't out, that they can't release to everyone, that they won't talk about.
I'm just putting this in a category of agents. I would actually put Gemini on Google Home in this exact same category. Like, it just doesn't work. Okay, so then my biggest failure of the year I had listed was Siri. They made the promise last year, but they said it could have been coming out throughout this year, and they backtracked this year. Yeah, and they got rid of John G. Andrea and hired a new person, and that's a full reset from what I understand. Yeah. So I think that's a good biggest failure of the year. But all that is in the category of these assistants will magically do stuff for you because of LLM technology. And unless you are specifically...
letting an agent do like unit testing and software development. That is not true. Yeah. And this year we saw all these web browsers, these agentic web browsers, and those are also super slow and clunky. And if you're using them, you have a lot of patience. Yeah. Yeah. It's like if you really, really, really, really, really want to try, you can kind of make them do some things. And that's not, that's not it, folks. We didn't do it yet. We have not progressed past that you have an intern who sucks zone of AI in a specific way. And the intern is like very bad. The intern's drunk and didn't show up to work. Yeah, correct. So, and yeah, I think you get a zero if you don't even fill in.
any bubbles on the test. No, I think the intern is drunk. No, the intern is drunk and did show up to work and is so tired it's slowly moving the mouse around for you. It's like, what am I doing? Yeah, like it does show up. It is there. It's just like... Joanna, how did you experience me at my first job? How did you know what it was like? So, David, the question for you is, is the biggest failure agents as a whole or are you picking a specific one?
I think for me, it's just agents as a whole. And I mean agents really specifically, right? Not like, not the assistant stuff, not even the like, you're really mad about like Gemini and the smart home, Eli. And I think, I mean that less and more the idea of like, I'm going to say, I want pizza and a universe full of AI bots will go out and just deliver me. This is, you laugh, but like, this is the thing that we are being promised. And it is so, we're not one tiny bit closer to that actually working. And I think we can show, to your question, Eli, we can show that that has happened across products, across different, right? So Alexa Plus talking about the agent.
capability there. They made a lot of promises in that, you know, it's going to be able to do that pizza delivery and you just ask it and it orders through DoorDash or whatever it is. And that's not really a thing. Any of the agentic stuff through the web browsers, again, in turn, that's drunk and fell asleep at their desk. So we see it across, whether it's Java GPT or Perplexity or Copilot or Alexa Plus. I also just had serious, like, it never got to any of this because it couldn't do it, right? We need to move on. But I think my question is really, like, is it the bigger failure to take the shot and fail, like Alexa Plus?
or any of the browsers or they also are you don't ship and then you have to put your executives in front of Joanna and they just have to look sad. Which is what happened for Apple. There is something to the fact that I didn't even consider Siri because I had forgotten that Siri is a thing that exists that matters to anyone in the world. I think we can say my interview with them was the most surprising or was the biggest success story of the year for Siri. It was certainly the most attention I got. All right. I think we can leave that to the audience. But like somewhere in there it's one of the other two is the failure, right? Yeah. I think that's right. All right. Startup of the year. Joanna, what do you have? I'm doing the 1X. The 1X Neo.
Really? Uh-huh. Because I think, you didn't ask like best startup product of the year. I did not. You just said best startup of the year. Correct. And I think that this company made a lot of buzz, for good and bad, about humanoid robots and is really showing us where the hype fails or is just hype at this point. And I think they are doing some really interesting and fun things focused on home robotics. Okay.
I mean, again, we're just at like Joanna touts her viral videos in this portion of the show here. We're about to get to Joanna has a book coming out in 2016. There we go. Which you missed the last time we were on the Vergecast. Oh, I listened. Don't you worry. I'm well aware of Joanna's book. Don't worry. Okay, here's mine, which is does Anthropics still count as a startup?
Is OpenAI a startup? I mean, OpenAI certainly was not the start of the year, whether it's a startup or not. Oh, no, Anthropic is a great choice if we think Anthropic is still a startup. I know. Anthropic is like racing to go public is going to have one of the biggest IPOs in history. And it may not count as a startup, but if you had to pick a private company of the year, I think Anthropic had as good a year as anybody I can think of. It just sort of coasts on all of the good.
things about AI that people like and avoids all of the insanity that is swirling around open AI and perplexity. I'll give you one in that same zone. Actually, now that I've looked at a list, I feel comfortable with this one. I think Cursor is the startup. Cursor's a good one. Dominant in its field, over-delivering on the promise it is making about what AI can do for people. I've heard from big companies that were on co-pilot that switched to Cursor and the engineers are much happier. I would say Anthropic is like, I don't know if it's a start, it's like a multi-billion dollar Amazon and Google funded.
frontier like it's just a different thing cursor is a product company and i think their product really defined the entire market that's a good one i think the other one i would say in that vein that i hear about a ton is notion uh which was also way out in front of a lot of like business ai stuff where they're like what if we can take all of your data and point these ai systems at it in order to like you can basically like build yourself work tools inside of your work tool they were way ahead of that that stuff is really working it's going very well for them from what i understand uh but i think i think cursor is a good one joanna i think my only thing is i'm just like constitutionally against the idea of humanoid robots coming into my house anytime soon I just thought, look, visiting them and I followed their journey through the year, but it's like, there's something very.
early app store type of development about some of these companies, right? All the hype, all the money, all the excitement when you go visit these companies. They've got all the like typical startup stuff. And when I visited their company, I just like felt that. I was like, okay, you know, you guys have way too much money to play around with. You're doing crazy stuff here. You think we want to have these tele-operated robots in our house. And then of course, yeah, the story kind of went viral and like got a lot of people talking about the hype. So I just think the impact of that was good. It was interesting. I buy that. I think, yeah, we don't all have to agree, but I like Cursor as a pick here. I do too. I do too. All right, next up, gadget of the year.
It's surprisingly not a thrilling list of gadgets to pick from this year, at least from the stuff that I was looking through. I'm going to just say, I think it's the iPhone 17 Pro in orange. Really? I don't think it's the orange specifically, but I think that got the most attention. Honestly, in years, I have never had a better iPhone. Really? Yes. That's so interesting. It's like the smallest stuff. And it's just, it's like, I finally went back to a Pro after being on a Macs for so many years, not so many years, like two or three years because of the battery life. And this is great now for battery life. Fair enough. And other than that, it's really no different than my 16.
Yeah, I mean, but that's not the gadget of the year. No way. Two seconds ago, you were like, here's this robot that's weird that I love. I'm not buying. I mean, I did put a pre-work down for that robot, but that's my job. A gadget that has improved my life. I can't think of much else this year that I tested or got. I did test the Matic robot vacuum, which I love. That's been living with me for most of the year. That's a great robot. Talk about that in the book. But I'm just practical purchase. I bought an iPhone. It was a great purchase. I'm happy with it.
Neil, I tell me you have a less boring answer than that. There's no way. I don't know. For someone who is like, I saw a guy manually control a robot to go to iPhone 17. There's something about you doing all this AI coverage that has made you crave stability. Oh, yes. I say that. The best gadget is the one that isn't dangerous. It's not trying to kill me or sleep with me at any time. But I don't think they're underestimating how going from a giant phone to a smaller phone has just been great for my life. Yeah. I mean, look, you're allowed to have your opinions. I don't drop it on my face when I'm sleeping. Like, you know.
Okay, my answer is, I mean, it's not out yet, but I kind of want to say the Steam Machine. Oh, here we go with the Steam Machine. Wait, this is a bet. This episode is coming out on December 9th, and this is a bet that this thing is going to be out by December 31st? Well, no, I don't know. I don't think so. Okay. But if I had to, I mean, maybe this is just recency bias, but if I had to look at a thing and be like, well, that will change the market it's in.
There's that one. There's other stuff like the, you know, I want to say the meta display glasses for some reason, just because it's the first of its category, like self-contained display AR-ish glasses. The problem is they're not very good. They're not good. Yeah. I've tested those and been wearing them and I wear meta glasses, honestly, most of the year.
But like that wasn't incremental improvements from last year. Man, not really. You just picked the iPhone 17 Pro. Right. The incremental improvement was they added a battery to it. But I now have a smaller phone. I have an iPhone Pro, not a Max, that has better battery life. I hear what you're saying. And the regular Ray-Ban glasses didn't get better. Like they're slightly better, but they're not like, I don't need to go out and buy them. It's like an iPhone 16 to iPhone 17. No, I don't mean the regular glasses. I mean the display glasses. But I have been wearing the display glasses and they're not great.
They are not great. This is what I'm saying. This is why I'm torn by it very specifically because I'm drawn, when you're at Gadget of the Year, I'm drawn to category changers. Yeah, I hear you. I think the Steam Machine will be a category changer. I think the meta display glasses will be a category changer. I agree. Or something like them will be. So we should have two different categories. We should have category changer gadget of the year and we should have gadget of the year. No.
Because I bought a slightly better iPhone is not a gadget of the year. It just isn't. And I realize I'm saying this also. I had two. What do you think the most sold gadget of the year was? The iPhone. But like that means it almost shouldn't count. Like the category should be iPhone of the year. It's just last year's iPhone, but cheaper. We should almost rule it out. Like, of course, like it's the one that everyone has. It changed the most lives. I don't know. I've tested so much stuff this year. And this is the one that I just feel is. If you were like gun to your head, pick a phone to be gadget of the year. I would pick the Pixel Fold.
over the iPhone, right? Like here's the thing that's the closest to the next version of phones. So we should have, then it should be boring ass gadget of the year. iPhone of the year. What a fun superlative. In high school, Joanna, I'm going to give you the most boring but fine of the year, every year in high school. Honestly, I think that was. If you open my yearbook, that's me. You never really think about her, but she's great. You know what I mean? Unremarkable of the year. Yeah, yeah. That's when you open my yearbook, there's a picture of me under that. Yeah. All right, David, what's yours? Everybody's like, oh, right, Joanna, I remember. Mine, I had two. And I've given Joanna a lot of crap here and both of mine actually like slightly fall into this category.
One was the M4 Mac mini, which I think is just like the best deal in the history of computers. It came out this spring. I have one. I love it to pieces. It is just in terms of like, this is the first thing in a very long time that unseated the MacBook Air is just like the default computer I tell people to buy.
I also tell a lot of people to buy the M4 MacBook Air, which I also have and is also great. But that was the one that I love the way that you love the iPhone 17. The other one I think is the Switch, too. And this is the one I'm actually more prepared to defend because this was the rare thing, I think, that was it was hyped to death. It kind of had no chance to live up to what everybody thought it might be. Everybody's waiting for it to be wild. It turned out to just be like a much better version of this already like class leading category changing thing Nintendo did seven years ago.
and it worked like it sold huge it has great games it is like coming into its own in a really great way even months after coming out like to me it just they just did the thing in a way that you don't often see sequels do so to me it was like that i think yeah and you know i asked before like what's the most best-selling i mean they've we don't have total figures but they've sold a lot of those yeah it's gone it's gone very well from what we can tell um and i also use mine all the time much to my entire family's chagrin um But yeah, I think, Neil, I have steam machines ship. I like steam machines as a thesis. I will just give you that. But A, we don't know what they cost. And that's a real big piece of the equation here. And the longer we go without knowing what they cost, the more I worry about what they're going to cost. And B, they're probably not going to ship this year, so it doesn't matter anyway. Yeah. So I'm stuck with these stupid beta display glasses. I hate this answer. I picked the iPhone.
Can I pick like matter light bulbs? Yes. You can. You can pick what was the best gadget to you this year. That's such a different category. Well, we're changing the category. We're going to get to that. I have a bonus thing at the end for all of us. We'll get to that. We're not going to get to that. We're not. Real quick, let's take a break and then we're going to come back. We're going to do more categories. Be right back.
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All right, we're back. More categories, more superlatives for 2025. Let's just get to my favorite one to research all year, which was the heel turn of the year. Who broke bad in the best way in 2025? Eli, you go first. Wait, in the best way? In the most. Who broke the most bad in the most way? Do you have to be good first and then you go bad? Yes. Elon Musk, for instance, doesn't count because this happened before 2025. He heel turned before 2025, so he doesn't count.
So they have to have done the heel turn. And is it like so bad it's cool or just bad? Let me give you my example. So my heel turn of 2025 was Mark Benioff, just absolutely out of nowhere on a private jet demanding that Donald Trump send the National Guard to San Francisco. Just completely unprompted, goes fully wild to a reporter, makes everybody turn against him and then basically says like, just kidding, that was a bad call, never mind. And then tries to go back to being Mark Benioff. Unbelievable. Like just off the top rope heel turn for Mark Benioff. And I really admire that is the wrong word, but I really appreciate how hard he went after that one. So that's mine for 2025.
All right. Mine is to come. It's a thing that they said that I suspect will cause absolute chaos. Okay. Mine is Neil Moen, the CEO of YouTube, saying the future of YouTube is AI. Ooh.
I don't know what that means. I don't know what that means. But I do know that if you ask Google VO or Nano Banana to generate a picture of a tech reviewer, it generates Marques Brownlee, which certainly suggests that Google is training its AI systems on YouTube. Not even like kind of Marques Brownlee. It's not even like a facsimile of Marques Brownlee. It's just Marques. Yeah, he's like, hey guys. It just happens. Hey guys, I just tested the iPhone 17 Pro. Yeah, exactly. In orange. It's the gadget of the year, everybody. It's the gadget of the year. Ridiculous. That's it. That's what I got. I just see that thing coming for the YouTube economy. It will be the heel turn.
I think that's a good one. Joanna, what'd you have? I don't really have anything. No? No, because I feel like it's got to be something like really evil versus just like turns bad. And I don't feel like anything has been like super. I could pick like all kinds of other stuff. I almost picked that, just that photo at the dais at the Trump inauguration. I know, I was thinking about that too. That photo is your heel turn right there. Yeah, I had that later though for talking more about like the policy moves of the year, but I guess I could put that in here. Okay, all right. No, I think that is like an iconic image, a tech image of the year. Yes. All right, next one is the worst new buzzword of the year. Oh, we're all going to pick the same thing. I don't think so. What'd you pick?
I would pick agentic. Okay. I had agentic first, but then I had a backup. What was your backup? It's vibe whatever. So vibe coding, vibe shopping, vibe.
Raiders, whatever you want to put in, no. Okay, so I had Vibe coding too, Joanna. And I think like Vibe as a whole is probably a better answer. Yeah, because like right now everyone's talking about Vibe shopping. Oh God, yeah. And so it's just Vibe before things that like, let's not, let's stop. The problem is like, I don't, this is also one of those things where it's like, we're trying to pretend that just because there's a large language model somewhere underneath that it's now a completely new thing that we're doing. And in fact, it's just like slightly new software. And like, let's just call it shopping. You know what I mean? It's like. Yeah, I mean. Like, let's just move past it. It's just shopping. It's fine.
This is how we shop on the internet now. Did we used to, like, I don't know, 25 years ago, did they call it like e-shopping? They probably did, right? I think, yeah. Cyber, cyber shopping. Cyber shopping. Cyber shopping, yeah. That's a different thing. Yeah, that's a different thing. Okay, cybering. That's not it. That's still the worst buzzword of the year. Cybering still in 2025, still the worst buzzword. The worst buzzword of every year. I'm going with agentic. Yeah, it's good. I think these two are very good. The thing with agentic is at least it describes what it is. Like, I hate the trend, but at least agentic is descriptive. But it's come to mean nothing because they say agentic is everything and it is nothing is actually agentic.
If you even know what agentic means. We're an agentic, you know, sales commerce platform. It's like, what? It's like a South by Southwest word. It is. What was it? Mobile, local, social that they always make fun of, made fun of in Silicon Valley on HBO. It feels like that. Also, for some reason, this is not related to the Vergecast, but the minute I started thinking about worst new buzzword, the phrase oral farming just came to mind. And I just want to say that out loud once because I don't like that either. All right. Next one is the best AI thing of 2025. You can define AI thing however you want, but it has to be the best one.
Joanna, I want you to go first because you spent the year literally doing all of the AI things. I know. What was the best one in 2025? Well, there's like the stuff that like can show where I think we're going. But then there's the stuff that like, again, the practical use right now. I think I want to say AI search, right? Like AI mode for Google is not. Here we go, Eli. What? Just say it. Say it. It's not good.
Yes, it is. Yeah, I mean, it is getting a lot better. And also for so much of the year, I just stopped using Google. And like now having AI intertwined with Google is a lot better. So first half of the year, I just didn't use Google and I used ChatGPT. And it was pretty frustrating in certain places, but in a lot of places, much better than regular search. And now having AI mode there is, I would say.
I use Google a good amount still, but I'm still using ChatGPT far more than I ever thought I would for search stuff. I had this too. And I was surprised that this was my answer, but I have frankly resisted web search in AI tools because as someone who relies on the web existing to have a job, I think they are problematic in huge ways. But also it's like, if I want to buy something on the internet, ChatGPT is a vastly better way to figure out what thing I should buy than Google. It just is.
Eli's really getting so angry at us and I just don't want to be on the podcast anymore. Who cares? Here's the best AI thing of the year. It's this weird soul cover of Killing in the Name by Rage Against the Machine. That's the best AI thing of the year right here. That's pretty good. What are you chopping? This is weird robot magic. This is actually one of the best. Send this to me. It's pretty good. Send this to me. It's so weird. That's pretty good. The one of these that always crosses my feet is there is this like AI pop punk band called Skate Avenue, which is like a perfect AI pop punk band name. It means nothing, but it also means everything.
The number one thing that I love about it is I see these videos everywhere. It's like a very popular sound to use on TikTok. And in every single one, the very top comment is somebody going, Spotify, when? I tried it. And then immediately somebody responds and goes, it's AI, bro. Like every single time. It makes me laugh so hard. I have a lot of weird, conflicted, mostly negative feelings about AI slop. And then there's like this one thing where it's like, here are these covers that would have never existed but for Suno. And they kind of rip. And they're kind of, and it's fine. It's just fine. And it's, I think, easily the best AI of the year.
Yes. It's everywhere. Like, people send me that because we've talked about it on not that song, but just weird covers on the version. Like, everyone has sent me that cover of Killing the Name of a Rage Against a Machine. It's pretty good. I don't think they... It's AI. Like, it makes some mistakes. I would have done the last course differently. That's all I'm saying. If you're out there, robots, call me, you know? But usually the best thing of the year is, like, it got more complicated to judge the output of the generative systems in a specific way. Whereas, like, who cares? I don't agree with that big picture thesis. I do agree that there are occasionally good things made by AI.
whatever happens to the music industry happens to everything else five years later that's like a long-running trope at the verge and like i don't know about ai video like watching mr rogers and tupac is like funny and then it's like very depressing um the what's happening in the music industry it is it got there very fast and like the labels all cave they all sign deals with suno the music industry is a war with each other and i'm saying best ai thing of the year is just that one song but as it's that's it that's what i'm thinking and i stand by it um but it is the signal of everything to come i think so if the category was like leading indicator of the year it's also that song that's suno leading indicator of the year suno that's probably right Yeah, I think, I still think our AI search is a good answer. I'm still going with web search. I think for me, it is the only thing that has settled into my like everyday use case. There's other stuff that I go kind of do on purpose just to like experiment because I have a thing that I need to do. But the only thing that has sort of wormed its way into like my just default day-to-day existence is web search in those tools. I mean, I straight up had ChachiBT negotiate to buy my car for me.
The dealers would send me their deals and I would put it in chat with you and be like, say these things. And I'm like, all right, I said those things. Did it work? I feel zero guilt about buying a car, right? So like, I was like, whatever, this robot's talking to you, not me. And it totally works. I got a great deal in the car. That's pretty good. All right. But I think it might have been because I was so confidently insistent that I needed to get a better deal because the robot was constantly telling me. Like, I don't know. Do you know what I mean? I might have vibe dealed. You did vibe deal. You really did. And I just.
It sucks. Honestly, that term works. I don't like it at all. Oh, I hate it. It doesn't work, Joanna. Don't give me any ideas. I know. It kind of works. You know, it does. All right. All the way on the flip side. Worst AI thing of 2025. I want to lump together like almost all the AI gadgets that I tested. I tested a lot of them and wore many of them throughout the year. I would say the friend was almost the worst of all of those just because the marketing and then the reality of that product was just like it is a paperweight. It doesn't do anything. But I would just put all of those things there. I would agree with this, but I will actually.
a little more conceptually, I would say whenever Sam Altman brought Johnny Ive to talk about. Was that this year? It's all been this year. My original pick for this was whatever Sam Altman and Johnny Ive are building together. It's not out yet. You mean the San Francisco love scene? Yeah, the video where they're like walking through San Francisco and they shut down San Francisco. That video alone is a pretty good pick. And that image alone of them standing in the white, like the black and white, I mean, it's become just the image of the year.
They just did a talk recently where Johnny Ive was just describing his ideas for products and said a bunch of Johnny Ive stuff like, it has to feel inevitable. And like, what are shapes? And like, Johnny Ive stuff. And I think Casey posted like, this is what you would say if you had no idea what your product was. Because he ended that whole speech with like, they're just ideas, you know? Thanks, Johnny. No, I've seen enough OpenAI executives talking about this device now that it's something exists. It's something, things exist. But I do not know if they've said anything, but they all talk about it. Like they're either super scared to say anything, which I think is like part of it, but also they have no idea what it really is.
Like maybe it's been described to them in concept or they've seen it, but like it's almost humorous when you realize like, do they know what they're talking about? I'm just saying they can't make anything that isn't a humane pin. Like, I mean, I'm hoping they make something that isn't a pin. The most you can accomplish is humane pin. Like all these things are fundamentally humane pins. Yes. But like the friend is a humane pin. The rabbit was a cheaper.
dumber humane pin, the humane pin was a humane, like they're all the same. The humane pin sure was a humane pin. It was the most humane pin. But like all of them are the same idea, which is what if you didn't have a phone? What if you didn't have a screen? What if the LLM was listening and like going off to do things for you and you just had a companion? And like the way they talk about it, like in that video, Johnny, I was like, they described the laptop as a legacy device, as the phone as a legacy device. And it's like, all right, what's next? And it's like, the only thing you can get to is there's an LLM that's in a little thing that's always with you that's listening. It's like, oh, it's a humane pin. And I believe that they can make a beautiful humane pin.
And there are already examples of that idea being so much better than the humane pin and so much better than the friend. Like, I actually think the bee, the bracelet that always records that Amazon ended up purchasing, is a step in that direction. It's not a beautiful device, but it worked far better than a humane pin or a friend. Sure. I just, here's what I know. I know Sam Altman is addicted to tweeting and he has to ship a consumer device that doesn't let him tweet, right? Like, because it won't have an application to do it or won't have a web browser. And like, eventually he'll be like, my phone's pretty good. You see it coming. It's easily the worst, like... You know what he's going to say?
The best gadget of the year is the iPhone 17 Pro. That's my thing. It's like the most vaporware AI thing that made everybody be like, the future is coming. It's so obviously nonsensical, in my opinion. It's not bad. My answer was Sora 2, which has kind of single-handedly made all of my social video feeds unusable. And there are a bunch of other things out there. I think Sora 2 is kind of the leading candidate for a lot of this stuff. I've reached a point now where half of the stuff that I see on TikTok and Instagram...
either is or might be or everybody thinks is ai generated and it's just it just sucks it's like for some reason my feed recently has been filled with um dogs saving children from various things falling on top of them um the exploding packages when porch pirates come to take them away and talking babies though i don't think it is from so good look the talking babies like i my instagram algorithm knows i love it and i have tons of them and like i've seen all of them and i love them i don't know i don't actually think they're sora made Maybe not. It may be VO or something. I don't know. Yeah, there's a bunch of them out there and they're all getting very good very quickly in the same sort of uncanny valley-ish way. But it has really reached a point where you can't just sit and scroll anymore because half of it's fake and the other half of it might be. And all the fake stuff is like, it's just not fun or interesting or cool and I wish people would stop doing it. And then every conversation about every video is just this AI generated. And it's just exhausting.
I don't like it and I wish it would stop. And, Neal, to your point about Neil Mohan, we're just going further down that road. 2026 is going to get worse. He said it out loud. The future of YouTube is AI. And it's like, oh boy. Because they think you'll watch anything. That's the pitch. Great. All right. Next category, speaking of people like Neil Mohan, big tech CEO most likely to be a podcaster in 12 months. Okay, so I have some foundational questions about this one. Guest or host? Host. No one wants to be the host. Somebody who is a host. You don't want to be the host. Think about Satya or any of these guys being the host and being like,
I have questions. Like, no, no, they're the answers. Their job is to be the answers. Yeah, what's it supposed to be? Everyone wants to come host my shows and I'll just be the guest. Is this like a joke question? No, this is who, which of the big tech CEOs is going to lose their job and launch a podcast in 12 months? Oh, you're much more specific about that. Yeah, that was not how I read this. Not just like branded content podcaster. Either one. I'll take you to the one. Like Mark Benioff has a podcast. Yeah, exactly. She didn't probably did a podcast at Ford. Brad Smith did one at Microsoft. None of those are the CEO of a big tech company. We're doing a great job proving my point here. Because they all want to be the guest. See, I had to add Mustafa Suleiman because he's on every podcast. That's not bad.
And I just see him on every podcast. So that's where I thought you were going with this. It was like most likely to be a podcaster because they are on every podcast and love podcasts. Again, I'm just going to come back to the core problem with being a podcaster is being the host sucks. It does. All these guys want to be the guest. They want to receive the questions and then sound smart in response and be validated by the host. I say this as a person who sells the opportunity validated to CEOs on the regular. They don't want to ask the questions.
So like, unless they launch like a buddy podcast, there's a lot of these out there where you launch the podcast and you end up as the guest and you've got someone who's like the other host and it's whatever, it's the Tim Cook podcast. But then like Greg Jaws, we ask it, like that could happen. But they don't want it. That is definitely not going to happen. This is why I'm asking my guest for a host. Yeah. Okay. Let me, let me just, these are all fair points. Let me just ask a different version of this question. If I'm giving you Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Jensen Wong. Jensen. Who's the best, who would most likely to be a great podcast host? Jensen. You think it's Jensen? Absolutely, Jensen.
Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I think they often do it. I think all these people are great at talking and will... Tim Cook would be an awful podcast host. Like, just awful. Imagine Cook trying to do the banter at the beginning of the show. That's what I mean. Give Tim Cook like an Auburn football podcast and it might go fine. I don't know.
I will say this out loud. I don't know if you've ever asked, Joanna, but I've never even asked for Cook on Decoder. It's just never come up. It's never even on the list. There's nothing to learn here. I don't have a podcast to host, so I don't ask for such things. You've asked for interviews. You've interviewed other Apple executives. I think Craig has interesting things to say about garage door openers, but it never even occurs to me that I should ask Tim Cook a question. I think Satya Nadella might be an excellent podcaster. I think it's in there somewhere. I've seen him be good on the stand.
at the Google search trial. We've seen him say spicy stuff recently on podcasts. Like there's a good take artist in there in Satya Nadella in a way that I don't know that I see it in some of the other CEOs. So you're imagining kind of like a Stephen A. Smith situation for Satya where he just gets on solo on the mic and he's just going for it. Exactly. All right. I'll buy that one. Just a full hour of Satya. Having interviewed Satya, he does have it.
Right? Like, we're like three years into I Will Make Google Dance and like they're still pissed about it. Like, he can do it. Yeah, he can throw the jabs when he needs to. All right. That whole question was just designed for me to say, Satya, quit your job and start a podcast. I'll listen. Be Stephen A. Smith. Exactly.
Okay, next one, the policy move of the year. And this can be from the perspective of the people making the policies or from the perspective of the people on the end of the policies. This is, Nilay, this is also your permission to have a lot of feelings about Brendan Carr, if you so decide. But you don't have to. I wanted to make it so that you don't have to, but you can if you'd like to. The biggest one of the year in that context then is Brendan Carr going after Jimmy Kinnell, that launching an outcry, then having to back down, Kinnell going back on the air in a total reset of free speech norms in the country.
Right. Like Ted Cruz being like, I'm going to defend free speech against Brendan Carr is a weird outcome of all of that, which is a thing that is happening. Yeah, it's got to be that. I can't think of another policy move that had that much repercussion into the culture. Everything else is kind of on the edges. Like, I mean, out in tech, like obviously the Trump administration had massive policy moves left and right. But in kind of verge castling, it's got to be the Jimmy Kimmel situation. The only other one I was going to say is I think meta sort of fully dodging the monopoly allegations was it was a huge one. Just the way that that case came out.
I think is going to end up having like a lot of ramifications and a lot of directions that all of a sudden there are a lot of people who are like, oh, big acquisitions are allowed again. And Meta gets to keep doing Meta things. And like there was a world in which Meta had to get rid of Instagram and that would have changed a lot of things in a lot of ways. And this is like a gigantic victory for a company that I think has been very afraid of what might happen. But I really like Jimmy Kimmel on that one. I think it's just a pure.
politicking decision, that is one a lot of people are going to remember for a really long time. Joanna, did you have anything else? I mean, I think just like, I know we're like kind of pointing here to very specific things, but I would say what we were talking about before, that image of every big tech CEO gathered around in the whatever room it was. I think that all is just like, just so emblematic of kissing the ring, cozying up to the administration and then seeing repercussions, whether it's been data center builds or tariffs and all types of flexibility for these companies, I think is probably the, you know, the big policy move of the years of these people just. kissing him and going to the waves. If I actually have one image of that, it's Tim Cook presenting him with the... Oh, yeah. That's what I was just about to say. There's a perfect image if you want to describe everything that happened in politics this year with the tech industry. A 24-carat golden glass. It looks like a record that just says President Donald Trump.
I mean, Tim Cook, he can never retire. This is all I'm saying. He cannot retire until Trump is out of office. You cannot introduce him to a new guy at this stage in his life. One of the questions that we talked about last year was, will Tim Cook still be the CEO of Apple? And after a year filled with a lot of people saying, maybe, is he possibly retiring? What's the succession? Boy, is that man still in charge. And there's, I think, a Bloomberg report saying that all those rumors are false. And it's because you cannot introduce Donald Trump to a new guy right now. No. He's not a business in you guys. That's not a thing. All right, we've got to take one more break, and then we're going to go back. We're going to do the last three categories, and we're going to get out of here. We'll be right back.
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All right, we're back. Three more categories to go. Two that I told you about and one that I forgot to tell you about. So we're going to get to all of them right now. The first one is product announcement we're most excited about for 2026. Neil, if you'd like, I will allow you to use Steam Machines here because that is actually... Yeah, that's the one I'm just taking it. Okay. You're not like a gamer. Make the case for Steam Machines. I'm surprised that you in particular would think this is like a huge deal. 2026 is the year of Linux on the desktop, David. And I think it's important to say that loud.
I think the... Can that be your answer? Forget the Steve machine. The project that you're most excited about for 2026 is Linux. Linux on the desktop. It's time. It's finally time. Since I was a young boy, I've been waiting for the year of Linux on the desktop. I think the fact that Valve has invested so much in making Windows games run on Linux and on ARM, and then they're putting out actual hardware to do that thing will completely bottom out the consumer market for Windows PCs in a very specific kind of way.
And it will make people rethink, like, why do I have PCs? Like, why am I running the overhead of Windows to play these games? But basically the growing part of the consumer Windows market outside of you just have to have a 300 laptop, so here's some garbage you buy. There's just something there that is going to make Microsoft in particular react to it, which I think is fascinating. And I think people are going to be generally excited about a game console again. Yeah. Because that hasn't been a thing. You mentioned the Switch, too. But, like, the console wars are about to get reset on top of it, which I think is fascinating. I buy it. That's a good answer. Joanna, what's yours? I think it's a foldable iPhone.
Like I'm very interested to see. I mean, the reports do say the fall. Yeah. I'm just very interested to see how Apple approaches this, what they're going to do on software. Yeah, I think. Do you think it's going to flip or fold? Is it a clamshell or is it a shutters? I want to say it would fold like up. Right. No, sorry. That's flip. I do think. I don't know. I'm torn because I come at it from the view of what software they currently have and how they would adapt it.
And so I think if you fold and you go out, you're kind of really thinking like iPad territory. And are we going to see some sort of flexibility there versus like if you just flip up, they don't have to do a ton of software reconstruction to make that happen. I don't know. The last rumor I read about Apple's attempts at this were all about how they would get rid of the screen crease. Right. And they would put some structure underneath the crease to even it out, which really implied fold, not flip. True. I mean, there is a crease in the flip-ons, but it's a much bigger.
No, I meant that they would need the space and the bigger form factor to do the structure to get rid of the crease. Oh, I see. Yeah, that's fair. They were putting something under there to create tension under the screen to get rid of the crease. Got it. Yeah, so that implies it's like an iPad mini that folds into the size of an iPhone, not an iPhone that folds into the size of an Apple Watch, which is what it should be, to be clear. That's what you want. That's what I want. I want a flip phone. I don't think people are like, what if my phone was bigger? I don't think that's like a feeling a lot of people have. No, we just spent half the podcast talking about how happy I am that I don't have that big phone anymore. Yeah. Okay. Mine is the touchscreen Mac.
Is that said to come next year? It is said to come next year. Mark Erman of Bloomberg and others have been reporting that this is actually a real thing that's in the pipeline and could launch as soon as next year. And I am excited about this thing, not... necessarily because I want one. But so I can win this bet finally. Even though I do want one. But it's for exactly that reason, Joanna. It is because this will make so many debates and so many fights and so many bets and so many questions actually come to a head in the world about what do we want from our computers. And that, I think, like, this thing, it just, it will be what it will be and then we will know and we can stop talking about it. Let's do it. I'm very excited about that. We have to go back to that podcast of many years ago where we all made our predictions about the year that this would happen. I need to find it. It was a long time ago. I will write it down and I will find it. Well, so put those ideas next to each other.
You have an iPhone that unfolds into something that's like an iPad and you have a Mac that lets you touch it. The question is like, what is left for the iPad? Like, weird. Are you going to allow iPad-style multitasking on your foldable iPhone? You certainly have to allow Mac-style multitasking on your touchable Mac. Yes, you do.
So I, if we were, if there was a category here that was David's great call of the year, it's that liquid glass sucks, which I have been, I have been so, I took one look at liquid glass and I was like, this ain't it friends. And everybody was like, just weird. And I know it sucks. And I was right. And I feel great about it. The thing that liquid glass like portends is this like incredible collapse of Apple's gadgets that actually they're all sort of the same thing with the same ideas about how they're all supposed to work. That it is just like, it is screen in various shapes and sizes. Everything is screen and you attach things to it as you would like to, but it's just screen. And that's what you're talking about. Like if all this stuff happens, there will be a bunch of things about the same size.
and shape that move in slightly different ways that Apple's going to have to make a bunch of like really weird, complicated decisions about how they're supposed to work that are going to be very complicated to get right. I like everything in screen. I like that as a slogan. That's not Apple. Apple needs to sell you an iPad, an iPhone, and a Mac on cadences every year. They're not going to sell you one thing that turns into other stuff. But like functionally, if we get a touchscreen Mac and an iPad and a foldable iPhone, all three of those things have a case to be essentially the same device.
Sure, yeah, but have you met these people? They want to sell you three devices. It's the opposite of the Steve Jobs keynote. That's a marketing question, right? Well, yeah, but that's the product they're going to make. They're going to put the walls up in the product to keep you from doing the thing. Yes, but what that's turning into is they're going to make them all slightly worse in the name of selling them all to you. Yes, yes, exactly. You're going to unfold your iPhone and you're going to scroll to the right and you're going to keep scrolling and you're going to keep scrolling and it's going to be the last screen that says, you've gone too far, you have to buy an iPad now. And they're going to ban you from attaching any kind of Bluetooth keyboard to that iPhone. You see what I'm saying? I mean, they're not going to do that. This is going to be terrible. I don't think that's surreal. It's going to be an iPad where you can't run
Or it's going to unfold and you can't run iPad apps on it. Look, I can't wait for this Vergecast in 2026. It's going to be a multi-series Vergecast of everything is screened, what is computer. If Apple launches a touchscreen Mac, I promise you that A, the three of us will do a Vergecast about it, and B, it will be four hours long. It will be 24 hours long. Yeah, it will just do a 24-hour live stream of just us talking about it. Let's see how long we can do it. I like this. All right, next category, the headphone jack memorial award for thing that died in 2025. It can be a feature. It can be a whole thing. It can be a company, whatever you want.
thing that died in 2025 that you're sad about. Can I merge this with a category that you have for if we won't get time for it? Sure. Okay, because David has most insidious insertion of ads into a previously ad-free product on the list down here in the cut line. Travis, our producer, gets credit for that one. And I would just put the memorial word for thing that died was ad-free products.
Because as soon as, like I was at my sister's house for Thanksgiving and boy, are there just ads on her Alexa display. They're just there. Just the weirdest Amazon ads you've ever seen in your entire life. All of the streaming services were like the ad supported tiers or growth tier. That's the one we're doing. It is just the ad, the ad free internet experience has come to an end.
yes i my least favorite thing right now is uh my two and a half year old really likes watching the grinch which is on peacock and uh every we watch you know it's a 90 minute movie there are 15 ad breaks and every single time it comes on he goes i don't like this part and i have to explain to him what commercials are and i'm not a fan this is just we're back to there was like a generation that like everybody grew up with commercials right it was like that was a gen our parents all grew up with commercials that's just like what it was and then for a long time nobody had commercials we could we could avoid them you could fast forward past them you could skip them entirely and now we are just fully back to commercials and everything yeah i don't like it Neither does my toddler. I don't have an answer for this of something that like was phased out that I'm sad about. Mine is Skype.
Oh, that's a good one. I forgot that. Purely emotional. I have not used Skype in probably a decade, but Skype died officially this year and I was like weirdly sad about it. Skype was like cool and good in the history of the internet and should have. I also think that like how Skype fumbled the pandemic story remains weird and wild and unknown. But yeah, that was the one that I was looking back at like all the stuff that went away this year and Skype was the only one that made me go like, oh, Skype. What else went away? Like I just can't, like the humane pin going away is not a sad thing. I know you were sad about that. I was not sad.
I still have mine sitting here and I'm like, I have no idea what to do with it. The laser projector, it still projects. It doesn't project anything. But I can still, I can hold out my hand and see what's on it. Yeah, exactly. Just a sad face. All right. Last category is the best thing that you personally spent your own money on this year. Oh, I have such an esoteric answer for this. This is allowed. What do you got? We put a TV for Max in the basement and it's like an LG TV and you can just buy huge strip lights and put them on the back and then you can just enable the feature in the LCD TV to make them the backlight.
and it's just a thing that worked. Of the TV? Of the TV. Like, it shines on the wall. You know, like, you can do that Ambulite thing, but it's just built into the TV. It was, like, cheap, and I just, like, put the strip lights on the TV, and I was like, I'm buying this feature, and it, like, looks cool, and Max loves it, and it just works. Like, there's no subscription was involved in this. I just bought some strip lights and put them on the TV, and it, like, connected to the Hue app, and we're off to the races, and it's done. And it was, like, one of those technology moments where I was like, I bought something. The transaction was completed. No data is being sent away from my home. Like, do you know what I mean? Yes. It was very good. But easily one of the more delightful, like, oh, this is just, like, I can just...
Like, yeah, that works. Like, it's done, you know? And like every time she turns on TV, she's happy. That's such a perfect smart home success story that you hardly ever hear where you're just like, I did a thing and then I set it up and now it works forever. Now we never have to think about this again. Yeah. Oh, I have more smart home stuff. Actually, all of my best things I bought this year were like weird smart home gadgets. We bought smart shades for the baby's room and they just work. They're just matter smart shades that just work all the time. Were they new shades or they were like the ones that you put on the little attachments? We have both. So in Max's room, it's like they turn the chain and they're really noisy, but they work. And then the babies are in the brand new and they totally work.
And they were cheap and they just, they just do the job they're meant to do. And you can talk to, because they're matter, you can talk to any of the things and they just do the thing. And it's like, oh, this works. Like, this is an odd, you would not expect this to work. I, Jen Toohey was on the show a few weeks ago and tried to sell me on smart shades and I kind of waved her off and was like, that seems ridiculous. I can pull the shades down. And I have heard from so many people who were like, you don't understand. Smart shades are incredible. The thing where you can just make them go up and down is awesome. I'm like, I kind of get it. Particularly for baby room, where you are constantly trying to make that room dark, a real thing. Yeah, those are the two that I would say like, oh, they just worked.
And again, no subscription fees, no ecosystem walk-in. These are the things that I value now. Yeah, it's pretty good. My two are either the M4 Mac mini, which I mentioned before, which is just a perfect regular human computer. Or I just bought this thing called the Yodo player. I don't know if you guys know. Yeah, we have a Yodo player. The Yodo player is amazing. It's this little like music box for kids, basically. Oh, I've seen this. There's the Tony and there's the Yodo. And I said at one point in Installer that I was going to buy a Tony. And I heard from, I'm not kidding, 50 people.
easily 50 people who were like don't buy that buy the yodo it's better so i bought the yodo and it is maybe the most thoughtfully put together gadget i've used in years it is like it's this little thing so it's a little music player and it has some built-in stuff like it can play radio stations and it has it does sleep sounds but its main thing is it has these like little nfc cards that you stick in and it just starts playing whatever the card decides um but you can also use the NFC reader on your phone to scan them into a library on your phone and you can play them that way. You can get cards, you can make cards, you can record cards. It's just like, it is the most seamless gadget experience I can remember. Just wait till this thing falls off the Wi-Fi, dude. You just wait. I'm seven years deep into Yoda Player. We never have had these. These Tonys. Yeah, my kids were never into it. Actually, the best thing is Max constantly falls asleep listening to your Yoda Player and because it has a phone app, we just turn it off from our room. We're like, what is that? Is that Rapunzel? Maybe I'll try it. It's cute. It's good. I'm a fan.
Yeah, so far, we gave Arthur the Yodo, and he doesn't totally understand how it works yet, but he understands that he can stick the cards in and pull them out, and he likes that. That's all he needs to know. So that's going great. Joanna, you have not picked yet. What's yours? Best thing you spent money on this year? It was the Brother HLL2460DW. Boom. Is that actually the product name? Yep. Which you've memorized because you love it so much. Yep. I bought Eli's favorite printer.
The model number is so much farther ahead than me. You may have heard I was writing a book this year and I needed to print said book multiple times to copy edit and work on it. And I bought that printer and it is just the book printer. And I'm happy with it. Oh, I can do an honorable mention. We went home for Thanksgiving. My parents had a giant box of photos and we bought the Epson fast photo scanner. The photo scanner? Well, it's specifically the fast photo. Yeah, yeah. And you just put in like a stack of 40 photos. I've tested it before, yeah. And the scans aren't great.
But the thing works and you just like dump them into Google Photos and you're done. Yeah, it's really good. We have a weird shared family Google Photos account. And I'm like, oh, this thing works. And it's like, it's printer software. Like, why is there a menu bar icon for the scanner to get out of my face? But it absolutely does the job. And I was like, oh, this is like another gadget where it didn't ask me for a subscription fee. This is my main criteria. It's like, did it ask me for a subscription fee? Neither did my brother printer. Yep. And it did the job and it made my parents happy. And that's all that matters. Joanna, how many pages do you think you've printed this year? Oh, thousands. I mean, like, yeah. And I like, yeah. Yeah, I had to read. Like, I had to read on paper. I had some people read, so I had to give it to them on paper.
Lots of printing. Do you have like an old-timey office now where it's just full of stacks? You're like a college professor from the 70s. Just huge stacks of paper everywhere. With markings on them. Because I don't want to throw them away. I'm like, this poor paper. And I feel someone... I'm definitely going to get a listener telling me how wasteful it is that I printed these. I understand, listener. And I hear you. And please don't email me. You should also know that Joanna lights them all on fire in an open field every time. I mean, I could use it as like... Yeah, I could use it as... Joanna's landfill at gmail.com.
Sponsor the show. All right. We have a bunch of other categories. Any other ones either of you want to get to before we get out of here? Oh, I liked this one. Most memorable product keynote moment of the year. The meta display keynote, the meta keynote where they were presenting and the Wi-Fi went out and none of their products worked was pretty great.
Just, I've said this out loud several times already. Not a Wi-Fi problem. The demo failed. The Wi-Fi did not fail. They blamed the Wi-Fi. They super blamed the Wi-Fi. No, they blamed the access point that was all of, because when they said, hey, Meta, they said they DDoS themselves. Yes, exactly. Which I sort of believe. But yeah, fundamentally, stood on the stage and blamed the Wi-Fi. Definitely not the Wi-Fi. I mean, there was actually a lot of memorable or cringe-worthy keynotes this year. There was the Jimmy Fallon Pixel. Oh, yeah. That was tough. But I will say, like, we have seen a nice comeback this year of in-person keynotes.
We've had Amazon doing things in person. We've had Meta doing things in person. And I think that's a nice trend. I do think for pure like cringe-inducing reasons alone, the Meta one has to win. Oh, yeah. Because that was a truly brutal like 60 seconds to be part of, even sitting at my computer watching the live stream.
Yeah. It was tough. It was a tough beat out there. Yeah, that's the only one I would add. That's pretty good. All right. Time for us to get out of here. Thank you both for doing this. This was very fun. We did not compete this time because, you know, next year we're going to compete again. But I wanted us to all be nice to each other this year. But thank you both for doing this. This was super fun. And we're going to be back next time with some 2026 predictions. So until then, I'll see you all later. All right. That's it for the show. Thank you again to Joanna and Eli for being here. And thank you, as always, for watching and listening. If you have other superlatives, other things you think we should have added to those categories, other categories you think we should do next year, I want to hear all about it. Email us, vergecast at theverge.com. Call the hotline, 866-VERGE-11.
Get at us. The year-end stuff is like an ever-changing idea, as you can tell, and eager to figure out even more stuff we can do going forward. So get at us with all of your questions about this and everything. Looking forward to hearing from you. Until then, The Verge Cast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by River Branson, Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, and Travis Larchuk. We'll be back on Friday with a whole bunch more news because it's somehow the holiday season and the news just keeps newsin'. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.
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