Elon Musk vs Sam Altman: The Legal Battle Over OpenAI Heats Up

Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of CEO group chats. I'm your friend, David Pierce, and here's a sentence I don't think I ever thought I would say again. I'm using the Rabbit R1. So, if you remember 2 years ago or so, this device was part of a huge run of these supposedly standalone AI devices, right? The humane pin was probably the biggest, most buzzy one, but this became like the darling of CES because its big idea was we're going to use AI to do things on your behalf. We're going to supplant the smartphone. This is going to be the future of everything. Um, it wasn't. All of these devices, including this one, were very bad and couldn't do anything, and we all

kind of left them behind. But in the two years since then, two things have happened that I think are really interesting. One, the world has kind of come around to what this device, the R1, is trying to be. Way back when, Rabbit was talking about this idea of a large action model, which is essentially just agentic AI, teaching AI systems to go do things on your behalf. The tech across the board for all of that is still fairly primitive, and for the most part, you want to do it on your smartphone anyway. But Rabbit's big idea about how AI might work was actually pretty preient and ahead of its time in that sense. The other thing is, genuinely, kudos to the Rabbit team. They just kept

working on this thing. They redesigned the interface. They built a bunch of new apps, but the one that has really made this thing useful for me again is the Magic Recorder. And basically all this thing does is record audio. There's a pretty good microphone on this thing actually. So, it's a decent recorder to like put on the table or carry around with you or whatever. And then it does some AI summarization and transcription and then sends you an email. And that's the sort of thing you can do on your phone. It's the sort of thing you could do on your laptop. There's a million different devices for it. And you really don't need a standalone device to do anything that the R1 does. But there's

something about this form factor and being able to walk around and hold it like I'm a oldtimey doctor dictating notes. I use it when I'm like walking around the kitchen to take notes on the stuff that I need to get at the grocery store and then it emails me a grocery list. And there's just lots of little things like this that I don't want a dedicated device for everything, but having it for certain types of things, especially a voice device. So I can use it to set timers. I can use it for simple reminders. Having this thing just sitting here on my desk that isn't my phone has actually been kind of great.

Kudos to Rabbit. More on this to come. I think there is an interesting story in what has happened to Rabbit over the last 2 years. So, we'll get back to that. But kudos to Rabbit. All right. Today on the show, we're going to do two things. First, we're going to talk to the Virgin Liz Lato about the OpenAI Elon Musk trial that's going on right now. You're hearing this episode probably on Tuesday. The trial started with jury selection on Monday. that Liz and I talked on Friday. There's a lot of stuff happening and a lot of moving parts right now, but it felt important to talk about this trial because there's big stuff happening. It involves huge

names in the tech industry and there are some really interesting things that might come out of it no matter who wins. So, we're going to get into that with Liz. Then Sean Hollister is going to come on and break down all of the news from last week's Framework event. Framework is this company that's been around for a few years trying to make more upgradable, more repairable laptops and in general has done a really good job and I think this year represents a bit of a turning point for what Framework is up to. So Sean's going to come on, we're going to get into it. We also have a hotline question about small laptops. So you know I'm excited about that. All of that is coming up in just a second. But first, um I'm going to go do

my grocery list. That was a real example. So time to take the rabbit out. See how it does. This is the first cast. We'll be right back. All right, we're back. Joining me now, the Verge is Liz Leato. Hi, Liz. Hey, David. How's it going? It's been a minute. I feel like there has just been like undercurrents of constant Liz related chaos and finally it has all sort of peaked up and and there is a moment where it's like, well, we have to call Liz and talk about the shenanigans because it's shenanigan time. Oh, well, you know, I mean, it's I think we've talked about like my cycles of Elon theory where we have like

periods of like peak Elon activity and then it sort of drops off and like he's Eloning again. Like this is some peak Elon activity. We have this idiotic trial and then after that there's an IPO. Like I wouldn't have put those two things together personally, but I'm not Elon Musk. It's it's so true in so many ways, Liz. So, I sort of want to start with like there's this big trial coming up, right? And you're you're going to be there covering this thing because I think it's it's going to be interesting. But my sense is I can't figure out whether this trial is going to be interesting between Elon Musk and OpenAI because it's interesting and important and instructive for the future of AI or if it's just going to be a mess of

shenanigans essentially, right? like is this actually a court case or is this just a show that it is somehow going to jury selection? What's your reaction? This is a [__] show. Okay, this is a [__] show for sure. Um, so there is sort of like this outside possibility. Um, I should note there's an outside possibility that OpenAI loses the case and has to discourage a bunch of money which that potentially does affect the entire AI ecosystem because, you know, um, Open AI is tied to virtually every other AI company. they've made deals with basically everyone. So if OpenAI has to discourage all this money, that's money they may not have to pay

let's say Oracle um you know on their obligations. So there that is a possibility but you know I many of the lawyers I spoke to for this story were like if I were taking this case on contingency I would not take it. Like if I were you know I if this were on contingency I would not get paid. like this is happening because Elon Musk has the money to pay someone to argue a losing case. And so I'm basically just expecting like mudslinging and gossip. And you know, if we if we get more chaos than that, like I'm I'm not going to say no to it. Sure. But, you know, like it's it's to me it's mostly like uh it's meant to embarrass and maybe humiliate Sam Alman. Um, and OpenAI's law layers are s sort of also notoriously nasty. Um, so we'll see.

Yeah. So, okay. I want to get into some of the mudslinging because we've already seen a lot of it. Uh, and you've covered a lot of it and I want to talk about kind of what we know and what we think we might learn, but give me like the flattest possible read of what this case is about. like no, take all the shenanigans about it, the most like generous downthe-middle read of what this case is actually supposed to be about. So, casting our minds back through the sands of time, um, OpenAI was originally a nonprofit and Elon Musk originally co-founded and funded it. People forget that, right? These are facts, right? These are not like stipulated things. Those are facts. We're good on this.

Everyone knows this. Yeah, we're all there. Those are stipulated things. In fact, sure. Right. That's all true. And then Elon Musk wants to be in charge of open AI and like he has these ideas about like maybe rolling it into Tesla. He wants to be the CEO and there's some hemming and hawing from Ilaskever and Greg Brockman. And like basically Musk is like I don't need any more of this. I'm leaving. Goodbye. um and he storms off and he had previously made this commitment I think for a hundred million dollars and I think he had only paid 30. So he kind of leaves OpenAI in the lurch and this matters because one of the approaches that Open AAI like famously took and has gotten us to where it is today is like the very

expensive approach of just buying as much compute as possible. Um that you know just throw compute at the problem and that'll fix AI. And so they have these like very expensive scientists. They need to buy very expensive compute and their big fun has just walked off and uh so they open this for-profit arm. Um they wind up making a deal with Microsoft and that is sort of the genesis of open AI as we know it today because the thought was that uh without a return on investment it was going to be much harder to get people to donate the amounts of money that they needed. Right. up to what? $1.4 trillion in compute. Now, it's a hard donation to ask for. I would say they're they're not wrong, right? And like to be clear, um when

Musk was still at the company, this was something he had also discussed with them. Like we've seen this in emails. So, it's not like this totally came out of nowhere. Um you know, it was something that they were kicking back and forth before like Musk took his ball and went home. Um so, you know, time goes by. Um and then we hit this sort of point where all of these AI companies are angling to go public. So Musk folds XAI his kind of um shitty I think is the word AI project that is uh creating nude images of people that are non-consensual on Twitter and it's got problems with like child porn. Um that's that's his thing. He folds it into SpaceX which is his functional company. Um, and now

SpaceX is about to go public. And then there's also been rumblings about anthropic and open AI going public. Um, and like trying to figure out how to make profits finally. Um, so this is sort of this moment where you can see the field starting to change. We're like at this point where they can't keep giving AI away for free anymore. And also like there just needs to be some sort like because it requires so much money, there just needs to be a huge cash infusion. And so that's what they're going to the public markets for. So, what do you think Elon Musk wants here? Obviously, there is a thing that happened where OpenAI went out and became one of the most valuable private companies in the world. Like you said, it is running towards an IPO

that's going to make a lot of people tremendously rich. Is Elon Musk just trying to get a piece of that? Is he just trying to use all of the resources available to him to try to crush a competitor? Like, what does he want out of this lawsuit, do you think? I think he just wants to punish OpenAI and Sam Alman. Okay. for wronging him essentially all those years ago. Yeah. I mean, he's just he's incredibly vindictive. Like that is just a thing that is known about Elon Musk. Yeah. And so, you know, um there are any of a number of ways this goes. Like arguably he has already won because we're going to trial at all.

Um like that is already like it's distracting, it's expensive, and like at this point in time, you know, Open AI should be really prepping for IPO and instead they have to deal with this distraction. Um, and then on top of that, you know, anything that comes out about Sam Alman that maybe discredits him means that, you know, there may be agitation for him to step down again. Um, and that again potentially really puts the company a drift. Um, so basically any sort of negative information that comes out in this trial about OpenAI or Sam Alman lets him kneecap a competitor. But just the trial, the fact of the trial itself is

enough. Um, again, because it is expensive and it is kind of a way of wasting time for these people who he's like I guess really angry at. And if you look at what he's asking for, he isn't just asking for money, which he's like been like, "Oh, uh, you should we should donate that all of that to the Open AI Foundation. You know, it's not for me. I'm only asking for money because otherwise they're not going to let me like run this case." And like I don't totally believe that, but whatever. Um, but the other like remedies he's asking for are ones that I was told he is unlikely to get, but he wants uh Sam Alman to step down and I think be banned from running companies for a while.

Oh boy. Okay. So, there is just a, you know, a real sort of vindictive streak. And like the other thing that's worth knowing is that like this is one of four lawsuits um that Musk has filed against OpenAI. Um, and it's also uh this guy loves filing lawsuits. He really does it that it's it's lawfare. It's because he has so much money and he knows that most of his opponents don't have as much money as he does and it's just a way of inflicting pain and that's all it is. So, you know, like the fact that like the lawyers on this case are not, you know, people who are knowledgeable about um, you know, laws around charities or uh, contract law. Um, you know, I think the lead lawyer for Musk is an IP lawyer. Um, which is definitely not the same thing.

Nope. That kind of tells you what you need to know. He's not hiring like the authorities in, you know, this kind of law. He's hiring whoever will take the case. So, I think that to me is one of the most interesting facts of all of this. And, and again, you pointed to like it's it's a win that this made it to trial. I think it's been easy to write this off as sort of Elon Musk legal nonsense until it actually goes to trial, right? Like you said, the man loves a lawsuit. He will sue anyone over anything real or perceived. Uh and he seems to just feel like, well, I'm paying these lawyers anyway. I might as well make them do something. Uh which sure, like, knock yourself out if you

like a lawsuit, go for it. What is your read on how surprising it is that this thing is actually, as it stands right now on Friday, April 24th, going to trial? You've been reporting on this and writing about this. Like, is it as surprising to everyone as it seems to me that anyone took this seriously enough that this is actually going to trial? I mean, again, if it were not Elon Musk, it wouldn't have gone. Okay. Um, he can just horsepower this thing through with resources.

Yeah, basically. Because like the questions that they're like that the jury is being asked to decide are questions of fact and so they're not really things that the judge can rule on. The judge rules on law. Right. So, you know, I would argue having looked at what evidence has already been released that this is a pretty clear-cut case and it's like open AI to lose. Um, now maybe there's going to be some like surprise legal maneuver that comes out and like we're all blown away, you know, uh, legal drama style, but that's that's that mostly doesn't happen, you know, like so the fact that it is, you know, a question of facts rather than a question of law is the reason we're in front of a jury. And

it's just because the facts are so strongly lined up against uh Musk that everybody's surprised that we're going forward because most lawyers would be like this is a waste of my time. Yeah. You have a great quote in a story you wrote that was basically like this ended up at trial because uh let me see if I can find this. It's from Sam Brunson who's at the Loyola University of Chicago who says it only ended up at trial because Elon Musk can pay his attorneys to argue a losing case. Like bleak. But here we are. Um, you mentioned all of the stuff that we've seen already. There's been a lot of information about this case that has

come to light in one way or another. Uh, in the run-up to it, what have we learned, do you think? What's kind of top of mind for you in terms of new things we've learned just because this case has come this far? Which again, I think is in particular Elon Musk's goal is just to get put a lot of damaging information about his opponents out there through legal filings. um to some extent it seems to be working already. What has happened so far? Well um my personal favorite which I'm just going to start with is from a legal filing. It's not going to make it into the case um because in the filing Musk's lawyers were arguing successfully as it turns out to get it um excluded. But

it's a line of questioning in his deposition from OpenAI's lawyers who are asking him does he know what Rhinoet is? Does he know what rhinoetamine is? Did he do rhino ketamine at Burning Man in 2017? Okay, like a series of very specific questions. It's it this is dirt, you know, and like they actually they can ask about Burning Man, by the way, because that is a period of time that is relevant to this case. So, we may hear some questions about Elon Musk's behavior at Burning Man. And if he answers them wrong, he does open himself up to then getting the questions about Rhino Cat. So, like I'm over here just like fingers crossed, baby. But, you know, I think that's sort of like emblematic of like, you

know, what we're getting here. Like some of the things that we're getting are details that I think are interesting to people in the tech industry like Ilia Sets Gabber being like, "Oh, we can't treat open-source AI as a sideeshow. Like, this is potentially something that it, you know, we need to take very seriously." Um, and you have moments of like discovering that Musk was like as he stomped off going to try to start recruiting people from open AI like poaching them. So there, you know, like there's like some of this like inside baseball that I think is going to be really interesting to people who work in the tech industry and obviously we'll be covering that. But for me like I'm here

for them like insulting Jeff Bezos casually like uh a bit of a tool is I think um what Musk called him. So this is actually one line of this case that I'm particularly interested in because when you have people as central to the tech industry as Sam Alman and Elon Musk in particular are you have people who are talking to everybody all the time. Discovery is designed to get lots of information. Um I think the you covered the SPF trial for us Sam Bankman Freed through all the crypto stuff and that was another case in which a lot of people caught a lot of stray in public. Yeah. Is this likely to be the same thing where just every name you can think of in tech is probably going to surface in some embarrassing text message or email?

Yes. I mean, they're already catching strays. Like Mark Zuckerberg's texts again have showed up in the docket. Um, wait, that was from the moderation thing. That was from this trial. That's this trial. Yeah. Oh, that's funny. That's great. Wait, explain what that was for people who didn't know. So about a year ago, Mark Zuckerberg went on the Joe Rogan podcast and lied his face off about how, you know, Facebook doesn't respond to government pressure. Um, and like they don't want to censor because of the government and the mean old bad Biden administration called them occasionally and asked them to take stuff down. How dare they?

This is also when he said Facebook needed more masculine energy, right? And I called them [__] made. Super cool times. So, for those of you who remember, uh, so, you know, it was like I called him a liar at the time. Um, and then this comes out and he's like, "Don't worry, Elon. We're going to make sure that nobody reveals the identities of your Doge boys." And it's like, man, I knew you were lying, but I didn't think that you were lying that brazenly. Like, I didn't think that you were just like, "I'm going to put some [__] that's incriminating in my texts." Like, that's incredible. after everything this guy has been through in court, he's like still putting incriminating nonsense in

his [__] texts. Okay. Um, so you know, like it's it's Zuckerberg's already caught strays. I'm sure there are more because he and Musk seem to be pals. Yeah. Sam Alman knows everybody. Like that is sort of famously one of the things about him that makes him, you know, unique in the Bay is that he is just like really connected in part because of his sort of previous time at Y Combinator. And so I imagine we're going to hear things about leadership at NVIDIA. Um I think we're probably going to hear things about you know OpenAI's assorted partners. Like obviously Microsoft's a part of the suit so we're going to hear from them. Um but

you know anybody that they might have partnered with or that they had explored partnerships with like that's also potentially something that comes into the case. And so that's everybody you know like that's a number of these like um companies like Cororeweave that are making deals with OpenAI for compute. Uh that is places like Amazon and Microsoft that are you know big companies that were thinking about investments. that is potentially anybody who is thinking about an investment in open AI. So I'm like all right which VCs are going to be catching strays here because like you know those are also people who potentially can be very embarrassed by stuff that comes out um just in the

course of like having this discussion of like what happened on this timeline. Yeah. And it also seems like we've tracked a bunch of really interesting moments in the history of OpenAI particularly Sam Alman getting fired. I mean, it's it's really interesting to me the timing of this next to that big New Yorker story about Sam Alman, which raises a lot of questions, I think, about his fitness to lead the company and a lot of questions about the information being shared around him and potentially by people like Elon Musk who want to take him down, the like dossas being created by oppo researchers. I mean, it's it's literally like in the way that Silicon Valley, the HBO show,

is way too real about the tech industry. Like, it's all these are all just succession plots. Every single one of them is just a succession plot about other companies. And it just feels like the risk right now for Sam Alman reputationally is so high that you can sort of see why Elon Musk like smells blood in the water, right? that it's like if I can just take him down, a I will win in my heart in a deeply like blackhearted way, but also I can in a very real way take down a competitor right before SpaceX goes public. Like part of me thinks that you're right and this is going to be easy and OpenAI is going to win the case pretty open and shut and just walk away and go about its

business. But it also does feel like Open AI is tenuous right now in a way that this could go sideways even if they win the case. I don't know. Am I overthinking this? No, I don't think you are. Although I will say I think that the New Yorker article came out when it did in part because of this case, right? Like you know my read of this and this is just like as a person who also does reporting is that when I got to the part about the dossier I was like oh someone sent Ron Ronan Pharaoh this dossier and he was like okay how much of this can I substantiate and the answer was like the most egregious claims were false. Um,

and like there's a point at which Alman actually thanks him for like looking into, you know, these allegations, um, where he's like, well, at least somebody like looked into it and said like that's not real. Um, it's really hard to prove a negative, but like if anybody's going to find, you know, misconduct, like Ronan Pharaoh is pretty good at it. Yeah. He was on Decoder and basically was like, I wouldn't I would never say never, but I have looked into it as hard as anyone has ever looked into it and I found nothing. I'm like, Yeah.

It's about all you can ask for at the moment. That's all you can ask for. So, you know, that is my understanding of the genesis of the story. Um, okay. Like I you would have to ask Ronan Pharaoh like to figure out if that's true. But just like thinking about how reporters work and at least how I work, like if somebody sent me a dossier like that, I'd be like, "Oo, that's juicy." And then I would try to substantiate it. Um, so, you know, that's my guess. And like when they didn't when he didn't turn up like the misconduct allegations that are in there, um I imagine in that process he started to turn up this stuff where it's like well Sam will say

anything to keep people happy. And like that is in and of itself pretty newsworthy. Like that is a thing that is a problem uh if you want someone to be trustworthy. like this the thing that I thought was really interesting was like this description of him as being simultaneously like peopleleasing and a sociopath which is like that's quite a combination. Yeah, it's tough. Again, I think so much of this and so much of the open AI story ultimately ends up being a referendum on Sam Oldman. Uh and I think in part that is probably exactly how Elon Musk and frankly Dario Amade at Anthropic and any

of OpenAI's competitors would like it, right? because he is the poster boy for all of this. And if you can knock him down, you can he'll kind of take open AI with him in a very real way. What I wonder is again why anyone would allow this to go this far. Like I keep there is such a real chance in my head that we're not going to run this segment because they're just going to settle and this is all going to go away. Part I Do you think that's a real possibility? No. I mean, like, no, I hope I'm wrong because I would rather not spend the next month in a courtroom. Sure. But again, like this is a probably a losing case for Musk. Like he is going forward with a losing case and refusing to settle.

This is punishment for Sam Alman. like he's not there's no like amount of money or like whatever I think that's going to be as good for Musk as like humiliating Sam Alman in public. I guess that's true. There's a normal world in which OpenAI like writes him a check for every penny he ever put into the company. Everybody shakes hands and moves on. You definitely don't get the sense that $30 million would solve this problem for Elon Musk. I don't think he knows what like that's what's in his couch cushions. You know what I mean? like this just doesn't that's not a sum of money that matters to him. Yeah. So, I think this is really just about feelings. And like I think the thing

that's interesting here and the thing that I am kind of watching for is like if you do significantly damage Sam Alman and Open AI, you potentially also damage all of AI because Open AI is basically in the center of this enormous web of deals um with virtually every important company that's in the space. And so if they, you know, are forced to disgorgge money, uh, that's a problem for their financial commitments. If they are forced to get rid of Sam Alman and they have chaos, again, that may trigger, you know, um, stuff in their contracts that may potentially like slow down their ability to, you know, come through on the things they're supposed to be doing. Uh, and may hinder their ability to fund raise because that is

really the thing that Sam Alman is best at. like he's not like a tech guy in the way that some of these other people are tech guys, you know, he's he's a finance guy primarily. Um, and so if you kick over open AI, to me, the question is, okay, what happens to the rest of the industry? Because SpaceX is about to go public. So, let's say we kick over Open AI and then there's like a panic in the AI sector. What does that mean for the SpaceX IPO? Like to me the funniest possible outcome is that Elon Musk wins a pirick victory, takes out Open AI and then absolutely shoots himself in the foot for his SpaceX IPO by doing it because the economy collapses.

Yeah. Sitting there. Yeah. So to that point actually what is the risk here for Elon Musk? Like I think I understand the downside for OpenAI even in a winning case in a other than losing a case which I think everybody probably including Elon Mus lawyers believes is the most likely outcome here. I is there a larger risk for Elon in the way that this case is going? Well, um it sort of depends on how much reputation you think Elon Musk has left to lose. And I say that because um one of the key witnesses for OpenAI is uh Siobhan Zillis who is the mother of four of Musk's children who was an OpenAI board

member and was for a long time sort of the liaison between OpenAI and Musk and we've seen some of her texts too right where she's like oh how close do you want me to be how friendly should I be do you want me to like you know get information for you And it's just like so this is somebody who's extremely close to Musk who has had her texts brought in to discovery and like I'm thinking about some of the stuff that we saw from Theronos that was like you know the humiliating texts between Sunny Bellani and Elizabeth Holmes like I love you my tiger or whatever that had no bearing whatsoever um on the case but that we all like got to read anyway. So depending on what's in those text

messages and it seems like there's some very real stuff about Elon Musk's business in there because like not only uh is this woman like you know the mother of his children she also is involved in a number of his companies like I believe she worked at uh Tesla and Neuralink. Um so you know who knows what's in there. Um so that's that's again like the you got to keep in mind there's this IPO that's about to happen. Um, and anything that comes out about, you know, X AI for instance is potentially an issue. Like, I'm like just sort of imagining like I don't have any evidence that this is true and maybe we won't get it. But let's imagine that like somewhere in the

texts she expresses reservations about um, you know, an AI model that goes on to be incorporated into XAI or autopilot a Tesla. Sure. that is something that is, you know, pretty important to a lot of people who are invested in those companies. Um, so th that's that to me is really the risk for Musk is that there is some damaging information in his sort of bank of information that he hasn't like fully prepared for or fully like thought about like how much he can hurt himself here. Like there can potentially be blowback.

Yeah. I think the question about what is everyone's tolerance for Elon Musk chaos who has already signed up for Elon Musk chaos fascinating to me and I wouldn't even begin to know how to handicap that right that like if you're in business with Elon Musk at this point even in a tangential way you know what that is and you understand the sort of weirdness and costs that come with that but at what point does that tip over. I have no idea. And if it feels like if we're ever going to find out, it might be very soon here. Yeah, I think that's right. And again, like this is why the timing is so interesting to me because one of the other things about this uh SpaceX IPO is that Musk has been very clear about wanting

to reserve some chunk of it for retail investors, which to me seems like, oh, you're going to dump on retail, that's horrible. But, you know, like the positive case of course is that well, this is potentially going to be one of the most important companies of our time, so we should let the little guys get in on it too. Fine. Um, but that those people are not maybe not already in business with Elon Musk. And so, like, if you are just thinking about this from an investment perspective, you're not bought in on his whole deal. You're not one of his fanboys. You're not an investor in Tesla. and you start to hear things from this trial, you might be like, "I don't know about this." Like, I don't think that's a good place for me to like

put my money or for me to put my funds money or for me to put some, you know, the retirement counseling managing. Yeah, it's going to be interesting. And I think it's it's this is very instructive because I feel like I can spend less of my time now wondering who's going to win the case and more just monitoring the chaos because it that is the point of this is the chaos, it seems. Yeah. And that is what we're gonna be doing, which is perfect for you because I feel like this is like this just has Liz written all over it. I'm excited for you. It's gonna be great. I was trying to explain to a friend like what I do and at one point he was just like, "Oh, you just write about the most cursed stories in technology." And

I was like, "Yeah, that's about right." And sometimes those cursed stories end up in courtrooms. And then it's and then and then you have to dress nicer to cover the cursed stories in technology. I'll be hanging out outside a courtroom in downtown Oakland waiting for this all to start kicking off. It's going to be a messy one. You've stood in some wild lines for courtrooms. I suspect this one's going to be high on the list. I We'll see. Um but yes, I am expecting mess. I am expecting chaos and I'm very curious about who's going to get burned here.

Yeah, indeed. All right. Thank you for helping with this. I feel good. You're going to be in the courtroom. You're going to be writing a ton. Uh, make sure you're following Liz to get all of this stuff and we'll we'll have to have you back when some truly wild stuff happens and we're just going to read texts to each other and then just sort of cackle about them on a podcast. I'm very excited. Sounds amazing. I look forward to our dramatic readings. Perfect. All right, we're going to take a break. We'll be back. Thanks, Liz.

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fascinating, and we should talk about the reasons for that. Oh, yeah. um kind of finally made the computer we've been waiting for Framework to make. Um so let's just start there. There's a bunch of announcements from Framework this week. Um super interesting stuff, but the Framework Laptop Pro was the star of the show. Tell me about this laptop. You were at the event, you saw it. Tell me about this laptop. I was excited just from this spec sheet because of jargon because of things like LP Cam 2 with two M's because that is a new form of computer memory which is wonderful and I'll tell you about that later but things like custom display 30 to 120 hertz variable refresh rate things like

core ultra 3 but when I got there the thing that actually impressed me was the thing I dismissed at First, it's that this has a chassis made of CNC machined aluminum, actually carved out of extruded blocks of metal instead of being like printed and stamped and those things that cheap laptops do. And that Framework, which does not make cheap laptops, was still kind of doing up till now because they wanted to put their money other places, right? Yeah. the wrap- on framework I feel like since the very beginning has been I love this company's ethos which is that everything should be upgradeable and repairable and you should be able to swap in parts and you should be able to buy a computer and use it for a very

long time but you were always making some sacrifices in service of that huge compromises I feel like they've gotten less huge over time in Framework's defense but I do think I think the chassis is actually maybe the biggest one like Framework has just never made a laptop that you pick up and you're God, this feels great. It's just never done that before. And so, I think to me, just like even reading your story, it was like the first impression you get is like, oh, they made a great one. Like the MacBook Pro, I think, is a reasonable standard of like really excellent high-end laptops. Is it that nice a piece of hardware?

It feels like it's in that category now. like you don't I don't want to go all the way to like if you take your you know M5 16inch MacBook Pro with all the stuff and it's the best laptop that Apple has ever made because of course every year they make the best laptop they've ever made yada I don't know if it is that perfect of a like feel which and even there Apple laptops I don't like how like the deck like pulls and carves into my wrists when I'm trying to type on it I don't love that. But when we whenever we've said, "Wow, a Windows manufacturer finally got it. This is up there with the MacBook." Framework is finally there, too. Framework is finally in that place where this chassis feels like it can go toe-to-toe with anything else out

there. And the touchpad may be better than the Windows laptops I've used. That's strong praise. And it's very preliminary. Like, how long did I play with this thing? not long enough to be like, I'm going to use this touchpad every day and love it. But my first impression was silky smooth, nice. The haptic click feels like a proper haptic click, whereas most Windows manufacturers like kind of tried to copy the thing Apple did and maybe didn't quite get all the way there. Like they put some serious thought and effort and money into this and yeah, we're we're on that trajectory now. Maybe it's there.

More testing to do. Yeah, that is very exciting though. And I want you to walk me through the specs a little bit because uh I confess I get slightly out of my depth in the weeds of the many Intel options available. Um but luckily you exist and you know this stuff better than I do. So, I think the thing that threw me was basically they're trying to say we've we've made a very high-erforming, highly functional, no compromises window lap Windows laptop that gets better battery life than the MacBook Pro. And I don't know a lot, but I know that doesn't exist in the Windows world. So, what is happening here? What is Framework doing that is trying to walk this balance.

I want to correct you. It's just finally now existing. We're in this place where there is one other laptop that comes to mind in particular. There is a Dell XPS 16 out now where they have a special screen from I think I want to say it's LG display that goes all the way down to one hertz and when you combine that with the Core Ultra 3 chip which is more efficient than most of the other Windows stuff we've been seeing for a while. AMD had some stuff that came close, but this is even better. When you combine these things together, that laptop was definitely beating all the MacBooks, was beating all the ARM stuff. When you combine that with a big battery

now, but this one, they're saying it'll do 20 hours of 4K Netflix, and they say that's a smidge more than the 14-inch MacBook Pro gets. 13.5 in laptop, 14in laptop, we're talking pretty comparable here. More battery life than that. when you go up to like a 16-inch MacBook Pro, you got a bigger battery. Anyhow, Core Ultra 3, you want me to go through the specs? The Core Ultra 3 in here is a very efficient chip as we've seen in that Dell, we've seen in some other machines. It can also be a very powerful chip with graphical potential when you got 12 of the XC3 graphics cores in there. I saw some Cyberpunk 2077 running at the event with some uh artificial upscaling and things like that, but it

looked good and smooth at over 60 fps on a machine that's very thin and light. This is, you know, 1.4 kg. Um, it's got this custom screen, the first custom screen from Framework. They've done semi-custom before. They've done off-the-shelf stuff, but generally Framework, they want everything to be modular, repairable. They want you, they want to know that they're going to be able to find screens in this form factor, this resolution years from now that you can put in these laptops. So, do a custom panel. That's a big deal. This one is 13.5 in. It's 32 aspect ratio. It's a tall 2.8K resolution. It is IPS, not OLED, but IPS is pretty good. And it has that variable refresh rate from 30 to 120 Hz. when their 13-inch laptops were stuck at 60 Hz

before, right? So, all of a sudden, things are going to feel smoother because everything feels smoother when you graduate beyond 60 Hz. It seems like so far we're we're in a place of like nothing sort of individually worldbeating, but also no red flags. Like nothing you've described to me is the thing where I'm like, "Oh, that's the we haven't hit that yet." Is that is that coming? Yeah, we'll get to one. We'll get to one of them for sure. to get this battery life. It's not just the Intel processor. The battery in it is 22% larger. They're at 74 watt hours now. And they've got this LP Cam 2 memory, which is the

compression mounted memory. Before you got like sockets. I stick it in the socket and I put it down and it snaps into place. And that is not the best and most efficient like electrical connection you can have. You want memory paired very closely to the CPU on the motherboard for best results. And so what Apple and some other companies do is they would say, "We're going to solder it on there. You can't replace it anymore, but we are on the motherboard." Now, you can be on the motherboard with LP Cam 2 memory by putting three screws in it and sticking it down very tightly to pads that are right on the board. And so this memory is fast, it's low power, it's efficient, and it's also efficient

because it's connected directly. On top of all of that, there's PCI 5.0 storage, which is like much faster than PCI 3.0. I know your storage was probably already fast enough, but if you want to go up to 14,000 megabytes per second, you can do that with an SSD now, and maybe it won't make your laptop overheat. It's a pretty cool laptop as far as we could tell. There are side firing speakers. We never loved the speakers on this. They were pointed a weird direction. Now they go out the sides. Do I know if they're any good? I don't because it was loud in there.

We'll see. Sure. And the most exciting thing is that all of the refinements and changes, including some I haven't talked about, can go back to all of the previous framework laptops if you buy these parts because all of them think about that can slot in. You can take you can't take all of them by themselves. Like if you want to put a new bigger battery in your original framework 13 from I don't know 2021, you can do that, but you have to also put the new bottom cover on so you have enough space for that battery. If you want to get the new touchpad, you also have to get the new keyboard and you put those on as a set. But all of it, you can take that old laptop, you can put the new motherboard, CPU and

memory, all the stuff. You can bring it along for the ride, which is wild. No company's ever done this. Yeah. I remember like I mean god this feels like decades ago at this point but talking in the early days of framework and it was like okay this company is saying the right things we've heard this before and what ruins these companies is permanently backwards compatibility. It is forever making a thing and then continuing to support that thing rather than say, "Oh, look, some new technology has come along. Let's make that work instead because it's objectively better. Screw all of the people who already bought our product." And then you have broken your original promise to your original customers and the whole thing starts to fall apart. I feel like they

break the promise without even trying honestly. Like maybe they tried it in R&D, but did any company ever come out with like we are actually going to let you swap the GPU or the CPU or something like this in perpetuity and just put the money into it and fail at doing it or did they just break the promise? I think this is about as long as anyone has successfully pulled this thing off which I think is very exciting. But there's also something else in that I think you talked to Narav Patel, their CEO, a little bit about, which is you and I have talked a lot of hardware companies and there's this really fascinating thing you go through as an early hardware company where you have no

leverage, you have no money and so you essentially call a bunch of factories in China and you take whatever parts they will give you and that's that's how you make your first product. you build a thing around the parts that are available to you and then the next time you get some scale, you get some brand recognition and then you can call those same people and you can make like some light customizations. You can tweak a thing here and there. You can maybe have them make it slightly differently. You can reserve the best one instead of getting the leftovers. And then if you keep iterating on that long enough and you get big enough and successful enough, you get to start dictating the

parts that you make, right? And that's that's when you become powerful. And it's also when you get to start making the things that you want to make. And it seems to me that this is framework hitting that point that now framework is in charge of its own destiny like all the way down to the metal in a way that it never has before. And it seems like Nurav kind of alluded to that with you. That's what Nurav said to me. I mean he said after 6 years doing this they get to decide what they're what they're making really. They have the relationships. Uh he said there is essentially no technology that's theoretically possible where we're not at a scale we can get it. That's what he said. And it's kind of a bold thing to say out loud.

Very bold. He's been very bold this cycle. He also said everybody, you know, nobody likes this Logitech keyboard. We'll get to that in a little bit. Um but to some degree it's true to some degree. Yes, they made a custom display here. They've never been able to do this much before. to some other degree though like they are working with specific companies that do still control their destiny. This wouldn't be possible without working closely with Intel not only on like the CPU but on the motherboard and the RAM putting all of that together in a package. He said you know they worked with Micron to secure access to the RAM

and some other memory companies because you have to have a supply of these new fangled cam 2 memory modules. It's not just a standard part. Lenovo has them too but uh you know now so does framework. I don't know for sure that they're not like, "Hey, Lenovo, can you send some of your other memory modules over here?" And I do know some companies, some very small companies that have kind of used like the leftover capacity at an Apple factory that's that's, you know, taking making metal shells for things. It could be that Framework is using some leftover capacity Apple doesn't need, but I don't know. They've been here six years. They like they're here to stay, right?

Yeah. Why do you think this company is kind of feeling itself? like our even just in the run-up to the event, it was like, "Okay, I wonder what they're going to have to say about brand prices and what they're going to have to say about supply and they're going to have to give the squirly. We don't know what this is going to cost and we don't know what it's going to be available. Here's a website. Sign up for more information." And instead, they kind of came out with bravado and confidence like this company seems to be firing on all cylinders in a way I did not really expect. What's your read on how it has

managed to find its way through the chaos we keep talking about on this show? Part of it is I mean part of its investment. They've had investment that's unlocked the ability to invest in these supply chains in these products that they did not have before. Part of it is that they have gained the respect and confidence having done this thing with laptop number one. We were like, h, well, is that are any of these parts going to be upgradeable than laptop number two, or is this a broken promise? With number two, we're like, this is better, but nobody's actually had a chance to replace laptop one yet. Let's see if they're going to do it in laptop 3. Laptop 3 comes out, we're like, okay, it's two generations.

They've done the thing nobody else has done. Then they did it again with a 16 in. Okay, this company is really on to the they know this and they are building an audience that trusts them and they're being very transparent with this audience about everything from RAM prices and you know how much it cost them to the suppliers they use for the components. They don't just say you know we've built this wonderful new you know Wi-Fi chip that's in this framework keyboard. They say we are using this particular component from this one of our suppliers that the nerds in the audience will know and recognize and say yeah you used a really good component. We are nerds too and we get it. Uh that is something that there's

been far too little of in this industry. And so that kind of um I don't want to say radical transparency but this transparency is a breath of fresh air. It makes this audience feel like they are being listened to, that they have a voice, that they are supporting a movement instead of just supporting a company. And so when they're playing to that audience like they were in that event at San Francisco, you know, they brought in fans, not just journalists, to cover that event, too. And I don't mean like influencers.

Like I did not see these fans roaming around with cameras for their YouTube channels like I see at Samsung. I saw like people who were like just walking around asking questions, trying gadgets, and occasionally coming up to me and saying, "Hey, are you Sean Hollister with the Verge? You want to talk about this?" That was fun. I don't get recognized very often. Those are the good days. I like those days. And that's also when you know you're like, "Oh, the this is nerdy people." When people know who I am, these are my people. Yeah.

Yes. So, okay. So, this all sounds very good. Uh you haven't tested the thing. We will eventually get one of these to review. What are you worried about? What do you look at or what have you seen that you're like, "This is a this is a yellow flag. I'm I'm marking this down to check later." Surprisingly few. I did skewer the idea that this is like a MacBook Pro to some degree in my story because although it has the build, we don't know the performance quite yet. And this screen that's on it, while it is a custom screen that has a lot of characteristics that I want, MacBook Pros are generally screens for creative professionals who need to work with accurate colors and things like that. And while they say all

these are color calibrated out of the box to a per unit level by the way, which is also amazing, uh they're talking about 100% of the sRGB color gamut, which is this small one, not Adobe RGB, not DCIP3. So if you want, if you're a creative professional working on your next film, you're probably not going to do it on this screen. You're probably going to plug in an external monitor to it that has the specs you need for that. Okay. Yeah. I think it was in your story that they said something to the effect of we think this is a computer for developers.

Yeah. Which I which strikes me as very smart in at this moment in time. It's like when Apple says creative, it means like people who use video editing suites for a living, right? Like you see the things in Apple's commercials and it's like people who make creative arts in some way or shape or form. And that's like I think that's who Apple wants you to think its customer is more than its actual customer base. But like that's that's what Apple means by creative. I think it's actually it's sort of instructive to hear them say this is for developers which also I think maybe helps explain one of the other fascinating things about it which is there is a died in the wool Linux version of this because Sean this is the year of Linux on the desktop. I

don't know if you've heard I it's news to me. No. Uh this is Framework's first laptop that can actually come pre-installed with Linux and it is the default. You could get DIY systems and they would be like, "Yeah, this works great with Linux. We've worked on the drivers. We make sure it's a great experience." But this one is like they'll ship you a box that works with Linux. Yeah, you will turn it on and it will be running iuntu Linux. It is certified with iuntu Linux and they have support for a whole lot of other distros too. So, you know that if you want to put your Basite on there and have this the 12XE core version be your

portable 13.5 inch gaming machine, you can do that with Basite. Not that you've thought about that at all and not that's your plan. Yeah, I might be dual booting BZ on my desktop soon, but haven't really mostly been putting it on handhelds for now. Um, but yeah, they say it's the MacBook Pro for Linux users. They say it's the ultimate developer laptop. even choices like the type of screen that they're using here. Like it is an IPS screen with uh a matte anti-reflective coating that is very matte. Like this is what I want for text clarity. It's not what I want for beautiful graphics, watching movies, things like that. I'm sure I can do all those things. I'm sure they'll be fine. But this is like, oh yeah, if I'm

gonna spend all day looking at text on a screen, this seems like a direction to go with that. Yeah, that's smart. I like I don't know how sort of big and sexy that audience is, but I think it's smart for a framework to try and talk to that group of people directly. Um, walk me through the price really fast and then I want to talk about the couch keyboard, but walk me through the price because even frankly, even in your story, you seem slightly confused about what this thing actually costs. Yeah. Uh it would have helped if they had told us more about price before the event during the event or after the event instead of just letting you go to your their website for all of that. I was a little busy at the event to go to the website. So I had to add

some of that later on after I got home. Fair. Uh but the base price is let's just say it's $14.99. $14.99 for a Core Ultra 5, what used to be known as an i5, 16 gig of memory, uh 512 GB of storage. You can get the DIY version of that for $1,200. But I will warn you, um, good thing about DIY is it's not really DIY with Framework. It's like all you have to do is add the storage, the memory on your OS, right? Plug a bunch of things in. Yeah. Easy. So save $300 that way. The bad thing about DIY is they don't actually give you all that much of a discount to do it that way because then you still need to add your memory, your storage, your OS, your, you know, expansion

cards. It ends up costing sometimes the same, sometimes a little less, sometimes a little more, but it's not generally enough of a savings if they're giving you what you want in the pre-built. It's only if you need to configure more things, you go DIY. Anyhow, so 14.99 there, but things go up quickly. They go up rather fast. you're looking at $2099, nearly $2,100 if you want to do the model that's going to have a nice processor with all of that extra internal graphics for doing gaming or other things that require graphics. Uh it's a huge difference in terms of graphics performance between the 5 and the X7. You also get double the CPU cores, double the RAM to 32 gig, double the storage to 1 TB. It's a lot

of things that you get at that level. So, it's like, oh yeah, is that justified because you get a lot of things? Maybe, but it's still $2,100, right? You're even looking at like pretty upgraded MacBook Pro at that point. Like, yeah, $14.99 I was going to be like, that's a nice price. And it probably for what it is it that is a pretty nice price. But if you like at the point you're starting to get really competitive, you're you're deep into MacBook Pro territory. Yeah. And to be fair to Framework, their laptops have always had this kind of value proposition where it's like you can buy the incumbent and you will get the same or maybe a good bit more, usually a good bit more on your spec

sheet at the price you'll pay for the framework. And so what they've had to say in the past is always, but then you don't have to buy a whole new laptop 2, three, four, five years down the road. you just buy a new motherboard CPU combination. Now, those can get pricey, too. If you want a new motherboard CPU, you're looking at $450 for the uh I think it's $450 for the Core Ultra 5 level, but you're looking at 800 for an X7. So, out of your, you know, your $2,100 laptop, 800 of that is motherboard CPU, not including the memory, right? So, yeah, it does add up fast. But I think it's interesting because it the strange thing for framework is the longer the company can keep keeping this promise, the better that deal starts to

look, right? Where it's like even now I have trouble sort of weighing how long this laptop will last you, but the more and more likely to last you longer than whatever you buy from somebody else, especially in the Windows world, right? And I think this has been one of the things people have been excited about uh with Whimwork for a while. It's just that Apple, I think, is kind of in a league of its own in terms of like building and supporting computers for a long time right now. The idea that I can get that in the Windows world and have real faith that this thing is going to last me 5, 6, 7, 8 years is pretty powerful. It is. And I also think from a marketing perspective,

it is actually wonderful for framework that they're going toe-to-toe with the MacBook Pro because Apple does not let you easily upgrade things even things like batteries and definitely does not let you upgrade storage or memory. They are infamous now. Yeah. Nobody solders RAM like Apple solders RAM. So this the framework, you know, with the Windows ones, they're like, "Oh yeah, value proposition, you know, a few years from now." With Apple, with this one, we're like, a few years from now, your MacBook is not going to get any faster. It's not going to have more memory. You'll never be able to fill more storage into it. You're going to have to get a different laptop. But with us, you can do all of those things and

you can do them super easily. Yeah. Okay. I've waited this long to ask you about the couch keyboard. And if I'm being completely honest, I'm I might be more excited about the couch keyboard than I am the Pro. I think the Pro is like a way more interesting, important device. It says a lot about the world. The couch keyboard, the Logitech K400, everybody's couch keyboard is a piece of junk. It's also $35. And I was actually very edified to know that everyone hates that thing as much as I do because it is it has a trackpad on the right side. It has clicky mouse buttons. It has a keyboard.

It sucks all the way across from left to right. It is junk, but it works. And it's $35. And Framework just like decided to build a better one just for funsies. I can count on one finger the number of times I have been in a call with a tech executive and he has said so we're we're building a thing to replace that thing that you hate that you own and I'm like you're right I have this thing and I own it and I hate it you're right everybody owns this and so we've had Verge commenters who've come in and be like actually no I don't hate this because the price is low we've had Verge comment $35 it's very hard compete with $35. Like I'm I agree with that.

It is. But Logitech like there should be it's one of these things. We had Ner off we had framework CR Patel on the Vergecast. What was it a year ago? I want to say almost exactly a year ago and he told us that his strike zone is finding mature product categories that are not being properly served. Right. We tried to talk him into doing a printer and so did his audience at this event. By the way, those fans, they were like, as soon as he said on stage like we are going to fix a product category, everybody was like, "Printer,

printer, printer." And he was like, "No, not that one yet. Not that one. Sorry to interrupt. Sorry." But this Yes. He says, "Everybody's got the same keyboard. Nobody likes that keyboard." And I was like, "Yep, that's the one." He didn't even say Logitech yet. And I was like, "Is it?" And he's like, "Yeah, yeah, it's that Logitech keyboard." It's really funny. But yeah, so this is the key, the Logitech keyboard, the one we've been talking about. It's the one you buy if you want to control your keyboard, your PC. If you want to control any kind of PC from your couch from across the room, your options are the Logitech keyboard that has a keyboard with a touchpad next to it built into the same little slab

for $35 or some keyboard from a company you've probably never heard of that switches its name every six months on Amazon. Yeah, there are a few others, but that's pretty much the bifurcation here. And so that keyboard has the Logitech keyboard has old school like very squishy, terrible membrane keys. Feels like junk to type on. It does have real buttons underneath the touchpad, but they also feel like junk. The touchpad is old school. This was designed in like 2011. I know. I can't believe how old that thing is. It's a great seller for them because nobody else was serving that market, right? And so they served it just not well. And so now this framework one, not only is it going to do the USBA dongle thing like Logitech, it's also going to

have four different Bluetooth pairings. And you can plug it in with a wired cable, so you can us nerds and developers, we can go into our BIOS and fix things, which you can't do with the wireless keyboard very easily. It's thinner, it's lighter, the typing feels better. I got like around 90 words per minute on my first try with it and I barely practiced. My normal typing speed, some vertters asked, is around 120. So yeah, that's slower, but again, this was my first time ever touching this. Yeah. To just stand there and type on it, that's not bad. And uh and so the hardware inside it is the framework laptop 12's keyboard and a touchpad that is a variant.

Okay. Which if memory serves is like fine as laptops keyboards go, it's fine. Antonio gave it a C on his report card. It's like it's not the best thing ever, but compared to that Logitech, I tell you. Well, that's the thing. And so I the thing I was thinking about is like what would I pay for this? And the idea that I can pair it to other devices also, so I can have it as like a, you know, backup keyboard to my laptop and I can have it as a backup keyboard to my desktop or just like have it as my only keyboard and it just sort of runs around with me for the things that I'm doing. or I can just throw it on the couch and have it be my couch keyboard. He's like,

I'm betting this thing is not $35. And I think I'm willing to pay more, but I don't think I'm willing to pay a lot more, which makes this challenging for Framework. It is. I worry that Framework will overestimate what this is worth to people because the audience is so underserved with a nice one and they're going to be like, "Oh, we're the nice one. We're we're the nice alternative to the Logitech, so we can charge, you know, 100." And no, you I will not buy it at 100. Uh I'm hoping. Yeah, like I think it's $69.99 I'd buy this. 50 maybe. 70 is starting to get to be 70 is where I'm like I could but I already have other things. Like not only do I have the Logitech, I do have some

folding keyboards from companies you've never heard of lying around. So for me personally 70 is a stretch but maybe yeah it's an interesting one. I also I just think it's a neat way of thinking for framework to say basically we're building this modular set of things and rather than just have them all connect to each other how can we sort of turn individual ones into other kinds of products. Um, and I don't know how far that idea goes, right? Like a keyboard is sort of uniquely well suited to do something like that, but to just be like, well, we made a good keyboard. Let's find other uses for good keyboards is a cool way of product thinking that I think we don't see out of a lot of laptop manufacturers.

Yeah. I'm eager to see cuz they're going to release the, you know, the CAD for the uh like how to hold this keyboard and other things and so we'll see people build it into fun things. Framework had a whole like gallery of here are things our fans built using our hardware. There was like a gaming handheld there that has Framework motherboard inside. All kinds of fun stuff like that. And so this keyboard will be added to that stable of you can build it into things. The other bit which I think you're going to love, I don't know if you saw it if you read my story cuz I didn't know a picture of it in there but it's in the video. They have built what I call the

anti-dongle. No, I missed this. And so, you know, there's this USBCA like wireless receiver that comes with any of these keyboards, right? So, what if you could stick that into one of Framework's little expansion cards? So, you stick that dongle into a bigger dongle. Bear with me. But then that slides perfectly flush into the side of your laptop or your framework desktop because they are designed to hold expansion cards. So, flush, no longer sticking out of your laptop or desktop. only works if you're a frame work uh owner of computer user, but still anti-dongle. I love it. Anti-dongle is pretty good, especially when it's sneakily actually two dongles. That's very good. So, it seems like framework like in general

again, I think we have rooted for this company because I think this idea is a good one and I want someone to make laptops like this and computers like this. Uh, and it feels like FRA Framework just continues to get the thing right. Like this all feels like good news coming from Framework. If you're somebody who likes PCs made the right way, this feels like a win of a week. It really does. It feels like this company coming into its own. Um, and I didn't think I would think that coming in. I thought like, okay, they're doing another 13-in. They've already done the 13 in and there's some really cool peripherals around the edges. We didn't even talk about like the eGPU stuff. That's delightfully nerdy. Uh but yes, but it's a lot. And uh and to see them

playing at this level now, uh I'm not I don't usually consider myself a fan of companies. I'm a fan of individual products cuz many companies, you know, their next product won't be anywhere as good as their last one and then I don't want to be rooting for it a product that wasn't welld designed. But Framework, it's hard not to be a fan when you love tech like we do. Yeah. I think like I again I'm I'm I'm root for framework because I like this idea and the thing that they're doing and we as always we reserve our we reserve the right to change our minds but also you and I have both spent a long time rooting for lots of people to do this thing and lots of people have done it poorly and it's very

exciting to see somebody continue to do it really well. It is um all right we need to take a break um but Sean do you have a few more minutes to stick around and do a hotline question with me? Sure. All right we're going to stick around. We'll be right back. See you in a sec. Support for the show comes from LinkedIn. If you're a small business owner, you know that every hire counts, but time and resources are limited. Finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates takes up valuable time you could be giving to your customers. That's where LinkedIn Hiring Pro comes in. It's built to be your hiring partner, helping you find the

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started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com/ttrack. All right, we're back. Let's do a question from the Vergecast hotline. As always, the number is 86611. The email is vers.com. We have so many good nerdy Sean questions, but I picked one for you that I have not prepared you for. Um, but it is about tiny laptops, so get ready. Here's the question. It comes from Kate. Kate says, "As a highly satisfied owner of a Surface GoTo purchased back in 2020, truly the most ironic year to have bought a highly portable computer. I think it's a real shame that this product category never

ended up taking off." Um, Kate describes the way that they use the thing for travel with the dedicated Bridge keyboard. Shout out Bridge, which made good keyboards. Um, liked the 1920 x 1280 IPS screen. uh and then basically winds up to um what happened to this category of PC and why hasn't this worked? And Sean, the reason I bring this to you is to go all the way back to the very beginning of the framework discussion. You said something to the effect of we can kind of do good performance and good battery life now. And that suggests to me that maybe what we can do is slightly less good performance and even better battery life, which is what

something like the Surface Go always needed, right? Like the Go's problem was it was an adorable little thing that just sucked. Like it was underpowered and didn't do the things you needed it to do in order to be a successful computer. But was it just too early? Are we coming back around to where something like the Surface Go could be what it was always meant to be? I absolutely 100% think so because we are on the verge of this explosion of ARM taking over computing. I think where in that moment back then uh everybody was like we're going to try to shrink down our powerful x86 processors very poorly to try and make

them fit smaller devices and we're going to try to like scale up our phone chips. Oh, a phone can be a computer, right? And then the apps don't run on it. We now have Snapdragon like Qualcomm Snapdragon laptops with amazing battery life. We have the MacBooks with their ARM silicon and amazing battery life. We have handhelds with that even with the powerful chips have gotten decent battery life in that's true less you know computing uh less like volume than you need in a Surface Go. The battery density is starting to get a little bit better. The framework uh device we were talking about has higher battery density than frameworks put in a laptop before like millatts per I can't remember that some

number. It was a cool number. I was going to say the number didn't mean anything to me anyway, but I believe you anyhow and we know that people are interested in what's going to happen when Steam and other vendors bring their Windows games to these machines. They've been building the groundwork for them to run there. There is so much demand and always has been for battery life that is finally coming around to being realized on ARM and on the chips that are now being you know uh pinsered by ARM at every corner that I think we could do this. Uh now how much performance do you need? How much battery life do you need? Are you willing to wait a few more years for them to figure it out or do you want them to take what they got right now and

try to like force it into this shape? So, just for folks who have not followed this as closely as some others, walk me through very briefly kind of the chip revolution that has happened cuz I think an easy place to have left off in the chip world is that Apple sort of leapt ahead of everybody with the M series chips. Intel was and is flagging. AMD is coming out to sort of eat Intel's lunch, but is particularly focused on like high-end high performance things. And Qualcomm is desperately trying to figure out how to make something other than smartphone processors and can't figure it out. Like not that long ago, that's where we were. And then it seems like kind of all at once, everybody figured it out all at the same time for sort of the same reason.

What explain that kind of like big bang moment that seems to have happened. That's exactly right. A lot of it to be frank uh was driven by this moment that Apple had where Apple was like we are going to ditch Intel. We're going to make our own silicon. Um it is built on ARM. It is built on the fabric that we've been putting you know into our phones. ARM generates the intellectual property. They don't actually build chips until well maybe if they have one very recently. Uh but sometime we're going to do a nine-hour Vergecast that is just me saying how does ARM work to you over and over again.

It's changing right now literally right now because they just that's their own dang chip. And I'm like but you don't do this. You told us for like 12 years that you don't do this and now you're doing this. So Apple brings out this M1, the M1, and it is um I have my wife works as a subcontract for Apple. So I don't report stories about Apple. I don't edit stories about Apple, but I do mention them on things like The Verge Cast. And since we're asking about history, um it comes out and it just upends our concept of what laptop performance and battery life could be overnight. And I think that's might literally be the headline we put on the story that Hin Gartenberg wrote for us. And it upends this whole

concept overnight because we expect that it's going to have this tremendous performance penalty or battery life penalty or something because it has to translate software that was designed to work on Intel Max into software that works on ARMAX. But they figure out that translation the same way that Valve and in its Linux community figure out how to translate Windows software to run on uh a handheld device with Linux, right? Like we're we're transporting software from one realm to another through this tunnel. But this time the tunnel is good. The tunnel is so good that performance actually turns out being to be better because the chip, you know,

has it doesn't require as much cooling. It's more efficient chip anyhow and without that performance penalty it's like look how far we can run and so they run very far and every other company needs to react to that and they need to react to that quickly they don't react to it as quickly as they want but they up their game and Intel just now is coming into its own AMD came into its own a little while ago uh it's it started having um better much better battery life than Intel and it also started having uh excellent mobile graphics so the integrated graphics in the laptop suddenly Those were great. And is it doesn't have as much battery life as Apple? Maybe not. But there Qualcomm, which had been trying to do

the phone thing forever and failed until Apple came along. Was like, "Okay, now we get it." They start bringing out finally some chips that'll do the Windows thing on ARM pretty well. There's still some catability issues, but they do it, too. And now Nvidia is about to do this as well. There's an N1 and N1X chip coming. The Nvidia ARM revolution is about to happen. and they're finally going to have their own processors in devices when the only thing I think that's been powered by an Nvidia CPU that anybody would know about is the Nintendo Switch. And so now they're going to do that there too. A lot of other things help happen along

the way that help. I mean, uh it really helps AMD for those integrated graphics that they got a uh the vote of approval from Sony and from Microsoft. they make it into the Xboxes for two generations running more if you count like the PS5 Pro and Xbox One X versus you know 1S and all that. Um all the incentives are aligned. Apple's shown this pathway. Everybody's following the pathway and it seems like it's it's all working great. All the chips are performing better then they have bigger leaps in not necessarily in performance but in battery life than ever and the performance is getting steadily better as well. Yeah, I am actually surprisingly hopeful for the idea that

we are one or two chip generations away from something like the Surface Go actually being like a completely plausible computer. Uh and that like you look at what the iPad has been for a decade, which is vastly overpowered hardware, desperately in search of like usable software for most work. Uh and so it's natural to be like, well, what if this thing could just run Windows and let's run all my Windows apps? And like we're it does feel like we're almost there. I feel like I have said that before and I feel like I've looked very stupid, but it feels like we're almost there. And I think our friend Kate might get what they want.

It could happen this year. I don't know what the form factors will be. Uh and of course everything that is happening in the world with RAM and tariffs and fuel prices and so on are kind of pointing people pointing companies away from let's bring out exciting consumer devices right now and instead focus on where they know the money is in AI in enterprise. So I don't want to say that I expect it to happen soon but with the trajectory that we've been on I wouldn't be surprised if it's sooner than we expect. All right, Kate, hold out hope. It could happen. Sean, thank you as always. Good to see you. Yeah, you bet.

All right, that's it for the show. Thank you to Liz and Sean for being here. And thank you as always for watching and listening. If you have thoughts, questions, feedback, if you have favorite things that you founded in discovery of the Elon Musk OpenAI trial and you want to share them with us, you can always call the hotline 86611. Send us an email vergecasterge.com. We absolutely love hearing from you. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. This show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kefir, Travis Larchuk, and Andrew Marino. We will be back on Friday with more news. We're doing version history this week, so go subscribe to that feed.

We're making some really fun episodes right now as we speak. But we'll be back on Friday with Neili talking through all of the news. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.