Gadget season has arrived, and the consumer technology industry is converging on a single idea: AI assistants and agents are the future of computing. Companies including Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple are building devices that place those assistants front and center rather than treating them as a side feature. The result is a wave of new hardware whose actual strategy looks nearly identical from company to company.
Microsoft has introduced a high-end laptop and a powerful new take on its Surface line. Amazon is shipping a fancy Android tablet. Apple is diving headlong into the smart home. Each of those products reflects the same bet that an AI assistant, rather than a traditional operating system interface, should be the primary way users interact with a computer.
The Vergecast devoted an episode to this hardware, with hosts David Pierce and Nilay digging into whether any of the new devices has the right take on AI. David Pierce is editor-at-large and Vergecast co-host, with more than a decade of experience covering consumer tech and previous roles at Protocol, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired. The hosts also raised a more fundamental question: whether the premise that the AI should run the computer is even the right idea in the first place.
Among the products under discussion was Googlebooks, which the episode considered as a possible AI-centric future for laptops. Amazon's ambitions to be a maker of great hardware also came up, alongside Microsoft's Surface. The conversation covered the broader race to define what an AI-first computer looks like for American consumers.
The episode moved beyond hardware to other topics. The hosts discussed Brendan Carr is a Dummy, the Paramount and Warner acquisition and what it means for the streaming landscape, and the dream of an intelligent UI. The Vergecast also asked listeners to vote for it in the Signal Awards.
The episode was published on October 9, 2026, at 3:10 PM UTC. It carried the headline The AI is in the computer and ran under the Gadgets desk, with tags including Amazon, Gadgets, Microsoft, Podcasts, Tech, and Vergecast.
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