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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello, and welcome to The Verge Cast, the flagship podcast of ultra-wideband door locks. I'm your friend, David Pearce, and today on the show, we are answering your questions about the smart home. We get a lot of questions about the smart home. I would say that it is the single most popular thing on The Verge Cast hotline, 866-VERGE11, or send us an email, vergecastsattheverge.com.
So every once in a while, Jen Tuohy comes on the show and just answers as many of your questions as we can. We also have the new Google Home speaker in-house. We've been testing this new smart home device from Google, and we both have some thoughts about what this thing actually is. We're going to get to all of that in just a second. But first, here's everything else happening on The Verge today.
This is 90 Seconds on the Verge for Wednesday, June 24th, 2026. OpenAI just revealed its first AI chip, which is for some reason called Jalapeno. I don't know. It's specifically an inference chip, which means it's not for training huge models, but for interacting with them. OpenAI has been working with Broadcom on these chips, and if they're good, they're actually a huge deal.
NVIDIA became the world's most valuable company in large part by having the best AI chips around, and everyone else would love to control their own destiny a little more and stop needing NVIDIA so badly. Plus, OpenAI desperately needs to figure out a way to make AI usage cheaper and more energy efficient, all of which it says Jalapeno will do.
We'll see about all that when it launches later this year. Meanwhile, big day for price reveals. We finally know what Grand Theft Auto 6 will cost when it finally, actually, apparently, for real, seriously launches this November. It's gonna be 80 bucks for the standard version, which is unfortunately increasingly the price of high-end games, or 100 bucks for the ultimate version.
Pre-orders start tonight, and you get some cool added gear, and you might even get the game early if you pre-order. But you know what you apparently can't get at all? Is a disc with the game on it. Imagine, even the quote-unquote physical version of GTA 6 is just a box with a download code in it. Does that even count as a physical version? That's up to you.
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Chapter 2: What is the significance of Google's new smart speaker?
I say no, it absolutely does not. Meanwhile, the Slate truck, the extremely minimalist pickup truck with no paint or speakers or power windows, finally has a price tag. It's gonna start at $24,950. That makes it the cheapest pickup and the cheapest EV you'll find pretty much anywhere on the market right now.
People have been really interested in this thing, and I suspect the price tag is only gonna be good news. And finally, it's Amazon Prime Day, and we're tracking all the best deals everywhere. But here's my main recommendation. A lot of Apple gear is on sale right now, and you should jump on those deals.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said recently that prices are about to go up, so I would buy while the buying's good. You can read more about all of this at TheVerge.com. That is 90 Seconds on The Verge for Wednesday, June 24th.
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Let's get to some of your smart home questions. Joining me now, The Verge's Jen Tuohy. Hi, Jen.
Hi, David.
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Chapter 3: How does the new Google Home speaker compare to previous models?
Yeah. So I think it's an interesting space to watch. I mean, there's a lot of new smart thermostats that have come out recently that have one interesting area is Apple's new adaptive temperature feature, which basically takes what Both the Nest and the Ecobee made their name on that automatically adapting to your habits and use and makes it available to any thermostat that works with Apple Home.
So you have to adopt their API, their adaptive temperature system. system, but they can do everything like switch modes, detect occupancy, determine when you're coming and going, which is what these other thermostats all did. So we're sort of seeing a democratization, I suppose, of these smart features because both the Nest and the Ecobee
You can now buy a smart thermostat for, you know, $100, $150. And I think we'll start to see only a couple work with Apple right now, the adaptive features, but I think we'll start to see more of those, especially with smartphones. because it's all through matter. So we're starting to see, again, to get less expensive to get these smarter features.
And I like his point that we don't upgrade our thermostats very often.
So this is the other thing I was going to ask you about, which is, I think, what is a reasonable set of expectations to have for something like a smart thermostat that I plug into my wall, and ideally, I would like to have it there until I die, right? Like, No one has ever been excited about upgrading their thermostat. It's a thing you do when you have to do it.
And so I think on the one hand... I get excited. You do. This is why you're here, Jen. This is why we love you. But I think on the one hand, one of the cool things about having these things be more technologically advanced is that they can get new features. On the other hand, what if I hate those features?
And I think especially now people are reckoning with this with AI in a very real way of like, actually, I don't want you to stick... your weird AI nonsense into my thermostat.
Yeah.
But I'm sort of captive because literally the thing is in my wall. Yeah. How do you think through that trade-off right now?
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Chapter 4: Why should consumers trust Google with their smart home?
The only real reason to, I mean, Nest has told us with theirs, 10 years is basically what you can expect, right? Because they end of lifed their original Nest thermostat. I think it was almost 13 years. Although you can still use it. And this is a key part for any, we've talked about this before, but it's worth repeating, any smart appliance you buy in your home.
You want to make sure that the basic functions will continue even once you have disconnected it from the internet, because you need to disconnect it from the internet once it gets to the point where it's not getting software updates so it doesn't become part of a giant DDoS attack.
So you definitely, but as long as those devices can still work the way they were intended to as a basic function, which the Nests can, even though Nest is now discontinued sport, there is, you know, that's the trade-off. Look for that, and then local control.
To your main point about the AI, if you don't want some of these features that either your thermostat company or your smart home platform is pushing on you, or eventually maybe your energy platform, if you don't want those features, you need to look for a device that you're going to still be able to control locally.
And this is where Matter comes in because it will allow, once a platform takes away support, the device should still be able to work on your local network. Yeah. It's hard to know for sure, though, until we actually see this happen. This is all somewhat theoretical.
But yeah, that's what I would definitely advise, a device that can work locally, can also run locally if you still want some of the smart features, and then you can kind of take or leave, hopefully. if people are pushing AI features at you. Yeah, that makes sense.
All right, last question, which I'm including partly because it's a good question and partly because this is just a thing you and I can't stop talking about. So here, let me just play this question for you.
Hello, this is Rhys again. I'm at the one hour, 20 minute mark of the Verge cast on Friday, June 19th. And I found myself yelling at the screen because the sleeping giant in Smart Home is Ikea.
They have the most to gain from matter and they need to be the one dragging this along because they sell the cheap stuff that everyone's buying, but their smart home ecosystem in terms of their hub is awful. And so they need all of their stuff to work properly with Google, Alexa, et cetera, and aren't going to put the engineering resources into making that happen the way Hugh has.
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of Matter for smart home devices?
But it's not just about the fact that it's connected. It's about what it can do for you. And that's what I'm hoping to see more of. And I've been disappointed we haven't.
seen more of that to date and I think that's largely to do with the rollout of matter you know it's taken a while there have been some bumps in the road and I think I think I'm really keeping a close eye on whether we're going to really see
outside of the smart home adoption, because that's when it reaches that kind of critical mass and, you know, hopefully becomes a more of a mainstream solution for people, because today it's still niche. And the people that are really benefiting from Matter today are actually the semiconductors makers, like NXP, Nordic, SI Labs.
Well, there's the Matter story we were looking for, Jen.
Sorry.
The semiconductor companies.
They're the ones that are really benefiting at this stage because everyone's, you know, there's tri-radio chips. Everyone's got their thread and their Wi-Fi and their Bluetooth. But in many ways, that's good for the consumer, but just not for a while. Because once these new chips are in these devices, you'll be able to use any platform you like.
That's, like, ultimately going to be – I know it's the long game, though.
It's great for the consumer, but not for a while is the whole story of Matter. Someday it's going to be so dope. Matter. Like, it's great. I agree with all of that. And I also think that if IKEA can be the one to, like, prove the theory in a real way, it's why you and I spent a whole episode talking about the buttons, right? Like, just the idea of IKEA being like, hey, this thing costs $4.
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