Welcome to the A16Z podcast. I'm Michael Copeland. Technology is a progression of new ideas and new

platforms gobbling up the one that came before. In the world of computers, we went from mainframes to

mini computers to PCs, and then came the mobile phone, which in the form of the smartphone has dwarfed

them all. But what does that to mobile? When you have

already gotten to everybody on earth, what comes along next that is 10x the size? A16Z's Benedict

Evans and Steven Sinovsky offer their thoughts on where technology is today and what comes after

the smartphone on this segment

of the A16Z podcast.

Stephen Benedict, welcome.

Hello.

Hello.

Let's talk about the reception of two devices that recently launched and what that says

about how technology works and how technology changes.

First, there was iPhone success.

And there was this sense, you know, poor Apple, everyone's so excited and expecting so much.

And then in the case of the success, there was this sort of sentiment, oh, the beauty's all on the inside.

Isn't that sort of boring?

And then on the flip side, Microsoft launched its

latest surface, and the tech community broadly kind of applauded it for moving technology forward,

like how great, look at the innovation, things are moving forward in a way that gets us all

excited. There's the magic. So looking at these

two devices, what does that say about where we are in technology and where we're headed?

...