Panos Panay, E3 2017, and iPad Pro 10.5-inch

Day two of The Vergecast this week! Yesterday, Nilay interviewed Brian Merchant, author of The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone. Today, we have another full episode with a lot going on. First off, E3 happened this week, and there’s a ton of news in the gaming world. Paul interviews culture reporter Megan Farokhmanesh (who is at the expo) live on tape to talk about what happened on the show floor, the press conferences, and the multitude of games that were shown. Next, Dieter and Nilay have a fun conversation with special guest Panos Panay from Microsoft to talk about Microsoft’s newest product, the Surface Laptop. And, of course, we have new reviews out this week! Along with the Surface Laptop, Nilay, Paul, and Dieter discuss the 10.5-inch iPad Pro and the future of these new kinds of computers. There’s a whole mess of stuff in between that, so listen through it all, and you’ll get it all. 05:37 - Xbox One X 13:47 - E3 2017 with Megan Farokhmanesh 34:44 - Panos Panay interview 1:00:57 - 10.5-inch iPad Pro and Surface Laptop reviews 1:17:44 - Paul’s weekly segment “I C Seed; so much seeing” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of theverge.com. Can I start by telling the boat thing, since we're talking about ships? Anyway, I'm Neelai Patel, Paul Miller is here.

• 0:15Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 0:16Nilay Patel?

  Dieter Bohn is here.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  And I'm just on the edge of my seat, because I want to know about the boat thing.

• 0:22Speaker 02

  Little inside baseball.

• 0:23Nilay Patel?

  Maybe you never will know about the boat thing.

• 0:25Speaker 02

  Working with Neelai Patel, it is literally impossible to go for four hours without him referencing boats, talking about boats, talking about boat politics, wishing he maybe had a jaunty sailor hat.

• 0:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 0:39Speaker 02

  Like, dude loves boats.

• 0:40Speaker 01

  Dude, Neelai, are you aware that there were two Boat Games at E3?

• 0:43Nilay Patel?

  Uh-oh.

• 0:44Speaker 01

  I can't keep them straight. But there are two Boat-related video games.

• 0:48Nilay Patel?

  All right, let me tell all the people that, first of all, this is The Vergecast.

• 0:52Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. Yes.

• 0:52Nilay Patel?

  It's where we talk about boats.

• 0:55Speaker 01

  The Flag Boat Podcast.

• 0:57Nilay Patel?

  The Flag Boat. Uh, it's gonna be a little bit of a different Vergecast this week.

• 1:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's the second Vergecast.

• 1:04Nilay Patel?

  It's the second Vergecast. I did a special edition with Brian Merchant, who wrote a book called The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone. It's already in the feed. If you're listening to this, I don't know how you didn't see that one. So, listen to that, it's great. We talk about a lot of things, including, a bunch of controversy was ginned up, some quotes from Tony Fadell about Phil Schiller and how the iPhone was made. So, it's really interesting. It is some deep, deep stuff about, literally, the secret research project inside of Apple, where they rigged up a projector over a Fingerworks touchpad that, like, literally a junior engineer had bought. It's crazy stuff. So, listen to that. Then, I'm very excited to say, Dieter and I hung out with Panos Panay from Microsoft

• 1:47Nilay Patel?

  this week, talked about all things Surface. So, we're gonna run that in the middle. And then, Megan is at E3, Megan Frochmanesh, and Paul talked to Megan about what is going on at E3. Because I don't know if you noticed, E3 blew up our site this week. I think, was it Tuesday? We published 100 stories on Tuesday.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:07Nilay Patel?

  Which is great, and it was all video game news, because Chris Plant, I don't even know this, loves video games. And he runs our culture section, so that's what they did on Tuesday. So just ton of news, tons of things going on, lots of segments, basically. And then Paul, of course, has a segment that he does every week. Yeah.

• 2:25Speaker 02

  And we're not gonna forget it this week.

• 2:26Nilay Patel?

  We super not gonna forget it. I'm not gonna do a bad job either. That's my promise to you. So let's get started. Let's just get into E3. Let's talk about boats. Yeah, I forgot to tell the boat story. The deepest controversy in New York City this summer is the ferry system. Boat supply. Boat supply. Boat demand has radically outstripped boat supply. People are literally waiting in line. Right. And I'm just saying, there was a story in the New York Times.

• 2:55Speaker 02

  Isn't waiting in line all anybody ever does in New York? Like, we invented a new, slightly different doughnut. We're gonna form a line that's a thousand miles long.

• 3:02Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna make this a Verge story, right here, right now. Boats are culture. Boats are culture. Everything's a technology story. The subways, our infrastructure in New York City is crumbling. Agreed upon. The mayor of New York City does not actually control the subway system. The state of New York does. Lost in political drama. But the mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, is like, you know what's great? Boats. I'm gonna start a new ferry service. Ordered a bunch of high-speed catamarans. This is true. That's what they're supposed to be. Only a few of them have been delivered. He had children in New York vote on what they should be called. Thus, the children have named the boats things like Lunchbox. This is a true story. So there's a boat floating up and down the East River with the word Lunchbox painted on the side.

• 3:48Nilay Patel?

  The boat captains trained in like a VR simulation room. That's on the Verge. Andy Hawkins went and like, did the boat VR thing. But the new boats are too small because the city did not anticipate that people would want to take cheap boat rides. Which, if they had just asked me, is a data point that I would have happily provided at any time. Like, honestly, if anybody wants to ask me at any time, "Do you think people like boat rides?", I will tell you the answer. Yeah. Literally at any time. See me on the street, just roll up, be like, "What are your thoughts on boats?", and I'll let you know. That's Mark of Research right there. Anyway. Ask Neil. But this is, this is technology. Our high-speed catamarans not doing the work.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  I didn't know there were catamarans.

• 4:32Nilay Patel?

  Catamarans? Anyway.

• 4:35Nilay Patel?

  Now, moving on to the virtual world.

• 4:40Speaker 02

  A number of boat simulators were launched. No, no, E3 happened.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:43Speaker 02

  Lot of news.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  I think so. I think it was jam packed.

• 4:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  And I talked to Megan about this. I mean, I feel like I don't play these games because I'm old.

• 4:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  But this is a vibrant industry.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  That is still like just embracing new technology, making crazy 4K stuff.

• 5:09Speaker 02

  Also, they're stabbing slightly fewer necks than in years past is my impression. Spider-Man isn't allowed to kill people. Like, it's slightly fewer, right?

• 5:19Nilay Patel?

  Addie was like, uh, I think she said eye stabs are the new neck stabs this year.

• 5:23Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 5:24Nilay Patel?

  They say they're just moving it up the face.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 5:27Nilay Patel?

  That was a real.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  But yeah, those aren't like the like, I feel like nobody's talking nearly as much about like the big new violent games. There's a lot of more interesting projects. But first we should talk about probably the biggest news of the show, which is the Xbox One X. Nailed it.

• 5:47Nilay Patel?

  Not a well named product. The Xbox One X.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  $4.99. This is the.

• 5:51Nilay Patel?

  A new console from Microsoft.

• 5:54Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 5:54Nilay Patel?

  Well, a new box, a new piece of hardware.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  Is it a new console? There you go.

• 5:58Nilay Patel?

  All right.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  Is it a new generation?

• 6:00Nilay Patel?

  Let's just do the basics and then we can do the philosophy.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's $4.99.

• 6:04Nilay Patel?

  That's the only thing you need to know.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  It's definitely a lot more powerful than the PlayStation 4 Pro.

• 6:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, we were, we were just talking before the show started that we always go to Paul for nerd things and maybe that's not fair, but I'm going to do it anyway. Paul, what's a terra flop and why does it matter that the Xbox has six of them?

• 6:25Speaker 01

  It's a trillion operations per second. Do you guys remember when the, the G4, Apple did a commercial for the G4? It was one of the first like personal computers that was a giga flop. And at that rated at a giga flop. And at that time, that was like super, it was like the definition of a supercomputer. And there were export controls on it. So Apple did like this ad where like we, this is so powerful, we can't even export it.

• 6:52Nilay Patel?

  Because it could be used to make weapons.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  Well, so now we're at terra flop. But the, the terra flops are specifically referring to. The GPUs typically.

• 7:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  See, I thought it was like a belly flop, but on land instead of water.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  That's where you're.

• 7:08Nilay Patel?

  That's what I call that price.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  A trillion floating point.

• 7:13Nilay Patel?

  Landed like a belly flop.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Trillion floating point operations per second.

• 7:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  Which is a lot. It's doing video game math. It's doing, it's rendering more pixels, more.

• 7:26Nilay Patel?

  But the main thing here is it can play a whole bunch of games, native 4K, 60 frames per second. The PS4 Pro.

• 7:33Speaker 02

  And by a whole bunch of games, you mean Forza, because like, there's not, like, everything else isn't, doesn't seem to be taking full advantage of the hardware that they've talked about.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  I mean, that's, that's the thing. Like, you know, we're already at a point where people watch 4K Netflix. But 4K Blu-ray exists.

• 7:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  But people just watch 4K Netflix if they have.

• 7:53Nilay Patel?

  I've thought a lot about buying a 4K Blu-ray player.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  And I feel like, I feel like.

• 7:57Nilay Patel?

  I've not purchased a 4K Blu-ray player.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  And you're.

• 8:00Nilay Patel?

  And I'm an idiot.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  Boats.

• 8:02Nilay Patel?

  Who doesn't?

• 8:04Speaker 02

  So do they make a marine capable 4K Blu-ray?

• 8:07Speaker 01

  So, I mean, I think it's undeniable that if you want the most beautiful boat game experience, Ubisoft like, did a spinoff of the Assassin's Creed game that had boats, and they just made pirate ships.

• 8:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  Multiplayer pirate ship shooting simulator, which is really exciting. If you want the most beautiful version of a lot of games, you're probably gonna wanna play them on Xbox One X. If you wanna play them with your friends, this generation, most people have chosen the PlayStation 4.

• 8:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  And so you are going to have a very nice visual experience with the PlayStation 4 Pro. Or, I think this is the bigger, almost the bigger story to me, you know, Microsoft just lowered the price of the Xbox One S, which plays 4K Blu-ray.

• 8:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  And it's $250 now. I just, I just think the 4K gaming, I think it's beautiful. I think it's noticeable and I definitely think you'll be able to tell a little bit of a difference between pro and X games side by side. But I don't think most people really are clamoring for it right now.

• 9:15Nilay Patel?

  I think we, we've wrote a lot about the price. It seems like a hundred dollars too much. There was a big argument in the Verge staff about this price, right?

• 9:23Speaker 02

  Uh, I am on team Micah Singleton.

• 9:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Micah Singleton was like, people pay this much money for all kinds of consumer tech all the time.

• 9:30Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 9:31Nilay Patel?

  If you, if this is the thing that you want and you pay for it, and certainly Microsoft.

• 9:35Speaker 02

  iPad Pro, which we'll talk about later, starts at 650 when there's a regular iPad that you can get for like 330. So like, people are just, people will spend the money. So I, the extra hundred bucks, like, it hurts because like teenagers are gonna have a harder time getting it and that's a problem. But, I don't know, man, like, Microsoft is already losing so badly to the PlayStation 4 and the PS4 Pro. And Sony's already refusing to like, do cross console, like, you know, multiplayer, uh, as much as like Microsoft and Nintendo seem to want to.

• 10:10Speaker 02

  I just think like, you know what? Go ahead and charge 500 bucks. It's not like you're gonna sell a gazillion of these anyway. You might as well sell them for a price that isn't like a giant loss.

• 10:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, I, I think this is, and again, like, I don't play a lot of games either, which is why we, we had the segment with Megan who actually has the expertise. But I think this is a deep reflection of the fact that the age of gamers is actually a lot higher than people perceive, right? Like, a lot of people who have good jobs in their 30s play video games now, which is not traditionally how we have perceived of the video game market. So there is a way to capture their extra dollars, which is kind of what it seems like Microsoft is doing. It's also what Nintendo was kind of doing with the Switch, right? Like, all of their marketing is aimed at like, I don't know, what you would call them, like upscale millennials, is that a phrase? I think those are just the people in my job.

• 11:03Speaker 02

  Upscale millennials. It's like, it's like young Gen Xers.

• 11:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I don't know. It's, it's, it's right. It's the people who are like past their first job. They're into their second job, their career is doing a thing, right? Like, there is a market for the game companies to capture, and they're aggressively trying to capture it.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I think that's slightly different than like the enthusiast. Because I think that the, the, the nice thing is that there is a relatively clear story here. It was very hard to pick between the, the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 specs wise. They were so, so close.

• 11:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  They're almost identical. Here, there's an obvious, if you want the most powerful home console in the world, there's one to pick.

• 11:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  And you can do that, and you could pay more money to do that.

• 11:46Nilay Patel?

  But, but, your friends won't be on the network.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:50Nilay Patel?

  You won't be able to buy the fun VR headset.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. Yeah.

• 11:53Nilay Patel?

  The PS, like Dieter was saying, the games aren't optimized for these things fully yet, at all.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 11:59Nilay Patel?

  As with every console ever.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 12:01Nilay Patel?

  You can get more and more out of them over time. Like, is an extra, what is it, 1.3 teraflops? Is that, they keep upgrading the consoles. Are you gonna, in another year, are they gonna put out the Xbox One X2?

• 12:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, the Xbox One X2.

• 12:17Nilay Patel?

  It's staring them in the face. They're like, we're just gonna pull out this gun called naming.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  Uh-huh.

• 12:22Nilay Patel?

  And we're just gonna, like, point it at our face and tell the world it's called the Xbox One X.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  Uh, so, I, I have no, I have no idea. I think that's the big thing. It's like, well, what about a next gen?

• 12:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, wait, so this is a philosophical thing. Is this a new console generation?

• 12:39Speaker 01

  I don't think so.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  So, Microsoft's whole claim is they're gonna, they're trying to do away with the very concept of console generations. I don't actually believe they're gonna pull that off.

• 12:49Nilay Patel?

  What I think, what I think is particularly interesting is that they're doing it in both directions.

• 12:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:54Nilay Patel?

  So they're putting out more and more powerful hardware every year, but then they're doing all, I mean, they have all the horsepower, so they can just emulate an Xbox.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 13:01Nilay Patel?

  Or they can just run the games, and they're doing it.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:04Nilay Patel?

  Right? They're gonna let you play. I think you can actually just set up an original Xbox with the new Xbox and cross-play games on them, which is wild. So they're, they're pushing in, in both directions of saying, there's just Xbox.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  Right. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. I haven't decided. I'll have to think more about it. Maybe Chris Plant will get back and we can like. We can get into it. So why don't we, why don't we transition to some actual gaming expertise? Real video game players. You talk to Megan. Lead us into it. Megan is at E3. She loves video games. She's been to a bunch of E3s. She understands what's going on. So I asked her, what is going on? Uh, let's take a listen. Megan.

• 13:48Speaker 03

  Hi.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  Hello. Thank you for joining me from.

• 13:52Speaker 03

  Live from E3.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  LA. You're still there?

• 13:55Speaker 03

  I am still, yes. It's extremely hot here, very sunny, lovely beaches.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  This is the last day of like a two month long conference?

• 14:04Speaker 03

  I feel like I've lived here at E3 specifically my entire life because it started so early this year.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  It started, was it Friday? Those press conferences or?

• 14:14Speaker 03

  Saturday. So normally, back in my day, uh, my first E3 things would kinda, sometimes there would be like events on Sunday, but then like Monday was like the big press conference day.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 14:23Speaker 03

  But, um, things have kind of been pushing back a little bit more every year. So this year EA did their big press conference on Saturday. And then, uh, it all kind of just rolled out from there.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  So, and how many E3s have you been to now?

• 14:36Speaker 03

  This is my fifth one.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Wow, okay.

• 14:39Speaker 03

  I know.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  So, here's my main thing. I feel like this has been a great year to watch E3 remotely because it's so good on Twitch now. Like every press conference understands that like Twitch is almost their primary platform, even though they are in LA doing a live stream from LA. I'm afraid that I'm becoming an old man and that I don't care about these video games because I'm old and irrelevant. And all I do is just play PC games like Factorio and I can't connect with, with this new generation. So I'm, I saw a lot of games that looked very interesting. I just couldn't visualize myself playing. So I wanna hear from you what is actually good and actually interesting and actually new versus stuff that just looks beautiful, but it's more of the same.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  So what stands out to you from the show?

• 15:27Speaker 03

  Good question. My favorite thing that I've seen so far, honestly, a lot of the demos I've seen, I haven't been able to play because it's stuff that still is in that stage of development or the actual show floor is such a mess that like I don't want to wait in line for three hours to play a demo. But I actually just a couple of hours ago saw the newest demo for Detroit Become Human, which is like the newest game from Quantum Dream, which I am super stoked about. They made Heavy Rain, they made Beyond Two Souls. I hated Heavy Rain, I loved Beyond Two Souls, but the game is just, I mean visually it is stunning, like it is a gorgeous game, but also it's just kind of taken these ideas that I think the studio has been working on for a long time. So you having choice, you pursuing these different storylines and dealing with the consequences of that in a way that I think some other developers try to do but don't

• 16:12Speaker 03

  always succeed at. This one just seems like a really nice evolution of that.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  Is the gameplay really similar?

• 16:18Speaker 03

  Yes and no.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  Like quick time events, kind of?

• 16:21Speaker 03

  There are not so much quick time events. So in the demo I saw, so basically the game is about you play as these three androids with kind of interchanging stories who are becoming self-aware and so they all have like different storylines. One escapes a factory after gaining consciousness, one is an android hunting down other androids, another one is basically starting like a revolution against humans. So the demo that we saw is for the new character Marcus, who is leading this revolution. So the way the, you know, the demo played out is essentially this mission where you're trying to bust into this store and free all these other androids. So to do this, you still, you first have to like wander around the area, collect information, you're analyzing stuff, you're going up to other androids and he has the ability to like essentially shake them out of their just robotness and bring them into consciousness,

• 17:06Speaker 03

  I guess? They weren't super clear on all that yet. But, so it's a lot of like planning out your move, but also reacting to things as they're happening. So at one point, like a bunch of cops show up and it's like, okay, like you have 10 seconds, like there's like a timer counting down to abandon your mission, to go hide or to maybe like fight. And everything you do contributes to like how the overall like mission goes and whether you fail, if things end violently and so on.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  So another story-driven game that I saw, The A Way Out from E3, it seems almost in this genre now. Like, I watched Beyond, I didn't have any desire to play Beyond Two Souls, but I watched at least half that game on Twitch, like, including the ending. It's just like a really compelling movie that you're watching with a crazed Twitch chatroom and a streamer.

• 17:54Speaker 03

  You're not wrong.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  But I really, I really want to play A Way Out because it has this interesting co-op thing. Did you, were you at the EAA press conference? Have you seen anything about this?

• 18:05Speaker 03

  I was, yeah. Yeah, this game is interesting to me because the guy who is pioneering it actually worked on one of my favorite games of, god, maybe it was 2015, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, and that was another co-op experience. So this guy's always kind of like been playing with the idea of playing on a couch with your friend, but playing video games together in a way that's different. So like with Brothers, you could either, if you wanted to do co-op, you could like share the same controller, or if you played by yourself, you had to control both brothers at the same time. But this one is interesting, A Way Out, is interesting because the game, you can only play it in split screen, so you have to play it with a friend, which I, it just seems kind of insane to me in like 2017, and it's like, we're bringing black split screen.

• 18:44Speaker 01

  You can't, you can't play it online?

• 18:46Speaker 03

  You, okay, you can play it online, I think. The way they said it in the conference, it was a little ambiguous, but the impression I got was that, yes, you can play it online.

• 18:54Speaker 01

  But they're doing a bunch of weird stuff with split screen, where even if they have two views on the same screen, they might even show a third view of another camera angle of another thing that's happening. They're really into the split screen.

• 19:06Speaker 03

  I'm really curious how this will play out, because they said they want you to be able to play on your couch with your friend, right? But it's two stories happening simultaneously, so like a cutscene can be happening for one character, and then you or your friend is the other character can be out doing stuff. So it just seems like a lot of information happening at once.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  Right, which is, that's exciting to me, because that's what, when I watch this show, I see so much that like, there's a new Assassin's Creed, there's a new Call of Duty, which, you know, every E3, you kind of expect that. And they're kind of more and bigger and better, and you really don't know if you're gonna really like them until you play them, because they always look beautiful on stage. But like, I like to see like, new ideas, and I feel like this was kind of a new idea, which was, was kind of exciting to me. Another kind of new idea was, was VR, making a real, actual flagship game in VR, Fallout. Is Fallout 4 gonna be the worst VR experience, or is this like, the VR experience? Do you have any ideas?

• 20:06Speaker 03

  I am actually the worst person in the world to ask about VR, because it makes me want to throw up, like, not on an emotional level, but like, I can play for like, five minutes, and then I'm just like, ooh, I gotta sit down, like, I've been in demos where like, PR has been like, hey, you look like you're about to pass out, and I'm like, I sure am. So, VR is not a thing that I am very heavily invested in.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  And Fallout doesn't even have like, look like it has those like, teleportation mechanics to, like, ease the, ease the burden.

• 20:36Speaker 03

  You know what, I actually don't really like the teleportation mechanics, I feel like that messes me up more. Yeah, I like feeling like, I like it, like, I like the vibe, for example, because you can actually move around, and that helps me like, experience things a lot better. When it comes to like, sitting down and having a stationary experience, just the jumping around thing really messes me up.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  Speaking of jumping around, I don't know, this is not scripted.

• 20:56Speaker 03

  It's a beautiful segue.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Mario Odyssey.

• 20:59Speaker 03

  I, oh my god.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  I, my, my greatest dream is this, this would be a rated M game, where you're dropped into a Grand Theft Auto world, and you run around and you jump on people, but then they really die. And it doesn't have to be the extra gory, but just that you really kill people when you jump on them as Mario, so you can really feel the moral weight of this decision. But instead, you just possess people with your hat.

• 21:23Speaker 03

  I think that's worse. I think that's way worse than killing somebody because think about it like if I zoomed into your body and took over your life.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  I'd be very offended.

• 21:31Speaker 03

  I, I, I mean, you should be. It's a terrible thing to do to somebody. I feel like it's better to murder someone than to take over their entire life and then go do things with their body that they don't want to do.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:41Speaker 03

  We've taken a dark turn.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  I've, I've had this conversation a lot with, with people with, uh, with the, with Star Wars Force Awakens. You know, is, is she the bad man now that she, you know, uses force to control stormtroopers to do what she wants, you know? She's taking over their agency, so.

• 21:59Speaker 03

  I mean, stormtroopers are kind of assholes though, unless, you know, except for John Boyega, the one shining example.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  The people of New Donk City are wearing suits, so maybe, you know, maybe they're the stormtroopers of the Mario.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  Have you, have you gotten to play it or watch, watch anybody play it?

• 22:17Speaker 03

  I have not gotten to play it myself. Um, I'm actually trying to sneak into Nintendo with later today to get hands on. Uh, so at E3 this year, Nintendo built New Donk City, which is the city in the game. Um, and it, it's kind of like a rebuff of like New York City, but it actually sort of feels like it in the way that when you enter New Donk City, you're just like shoulder to shoulder with so many people because E3 is so packed. But, um, it's awesome because like if you get to play the demo, they give you a pin and then you take the pin over to this cap store and they give you a visor that's like Mario's hat with the creepy eyes. Which to me is like such a strange transaction of like, take this pin, exchange it for hat. Good job. You played Mario.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  Now you're possessed by Mario.

• 23:00Speaker 03

  Now Mario, you have given your body to Mario.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  Uh, okay. So what, one other game, I, I want to hear anything else that stood out to you, but one other game that stood out to me was Anthem. And I'm trying to figure out why, because it basically looks like it's a Destiny game from BioWare. The, the people who made, um, Mass Effect. Is that it's like that team made a Destiny game. Where you play Destiny. But it had the thing I always wanted to do in Destiny. In Destiny, you're in like the town or whatever it's called. The Citadel? I don't know. And you go, you walk over to the edge. And you can't like, I want to jump off the edge of the Citadel and go into this world that I see out in front of me, which is like this sort of kind of shanty town.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  And in this Anthem game, you walk up to the edge and then you jump and then you're flying and you go anywhere in the world. To me, that's like so exciting and I have no idea how it actually plays or if it would be fun to me. But just that idea of being able to, that's a next gen idea to me to be able to step into a world, jump off the ledge and then fly anywhere in the world.

• 24:11Speaker 03

  So I think the thing I, because this game is still really early in development and we essentially saw a trailer, a really pretty trailer. But the fact that it is the Mass Effect team and not the Mass Effect Andromeda team, which I think is an important distinction to make. That alone makes me interested because like I love the original trilogy and Anthem is something they've been working on for a while and they have, it's long been rumored to be, like you said, like their answer to Destiny, which makes me not care quite as much.

• 24:42Speaker 03

  But I think their ambition here is fascinating. Like there was a report that went up on Kotaku where they were calling it Dylan because they want it to be the Bob Dylan of video games where the people just continue to talk about it for years after, which is so pretentious, but also I love it. It's just like.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  But that's kind of the part, that's the whole point of being Dylan is that you're really pretentious about it.

• 25:04Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I think it's, it's too early for me to be, because I still can't figure like how the game plays. I'm like, well, this sure is like, it looks nice. This is some nice CGI we're seeing. But in terms of like what it's actually going to be like and how similar it will be to Destiny, it's too hard for me to tell. But just like that team gets me excited because I love what they've worked on for.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's hard to tell if it'll be more RPG or less RPG than Destiny. But it definitely has classes that you can choose and customize and then things that you can collect in the world, like guns is something we saw.

• 25:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm really interested in the actual world they'll build because I think they have like a good history of making interesting aliens. I wonder if we will be able to fuck the aliens in Anthem because honestly, that's my own question.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  Wow. I got the Avatar vibe. I think that's what the blow blown away like I didn't love Avatar as a movie, but visually and viscerally. It's one of my favorite things I've ever seen and just man, jumping off the ledge. You fly down, you fly through canyons and you fly down into water and then you come up from water. Everybody should see the trailer for Anthem. It's very good. So what did I miss? What is cool? That I'm just, I'm just too old to understand.

• 26:19Speaker 03

  Oh gosh. You know, this A3 has been so strange because I feel like there weren't a ton of new game announcements. And if like personally, like I found Nintendo's 30 minute Nintendo Direct to be like the most exciting thing of the show for me because Nintendo's brand is essentially like, here's a bunch of weird shit. Now here's a bunch of cute shit. And like, that is very much how I would describe myself.

• 26:39Speaker 01

  Pokemon for Switch is pretty exciting.

• 26:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's insane that it's taken this long. And so we're finally going to get, you know, they call it like a core RPG franchise or RPG experience, which maybe just means like the handheld games on Switch, but I'm just so interested to see like what they do with it because I think there's so much untapped potential there. And I don't understand like why it's taken them so long to get around to it. But of course, the Switch itself is kind of like a handheld experience. It can be so.

• 27:05Speaker 01

  It seems like the perfect, perfect timing. It seems, yeah, it does seem weird to wait decades to do it. But, um, but now, now is definitely the time with the Switch. Although there's just nothing essentially portable. I've played most Pokemon just like emulated on my computer.

• 27:22Speaker 03

  I have to say, I have either purchased or gotten codes for every Pokemon game that has been released since I got into gaming. So the last like five or so years. And before that I was like buying all of them. Um, I've gotten to a point where I'll play them for like two hours and then just never come back to them. Because even though there have been so many improvements, they are kind of the same. So I'm really hoping that whatever they do with this Switch game is something vastly different from what we've.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  Like a next gen Pokemon.

• 27:49Speaker 03

  I'm so on board for that. I'm really stoked.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  So what's the vibe on the actual show floor now that's open?

• 27:58Speaker 03

  So yeah, so this E3 is actually the first year they've had it open to the public. They sold tickets. And it's insane how much of a difference it's made. I think, they said they sold like, what, like, another like fifteen hundred tickets, but that they've also cut down on press, so it's not like there would actually be that that same influx of people. But seriously, the first day walking around, like, you could barely get anywhere, and the lines are so deep. But also, it's just been interesting because it feels like a very influencer-heavy show. So like at EA's press conference, they had influencers on stage. It didn't always work out super great. There's a lot of like, almost like esports commentary happening. And then just walking around the show floor and a couple of events I've been at,

• 28:39Speaker 03

  it's insane how many people you see who just like have their phones out and are periscoping or doing the like, "What's up, guys? Like, I'm so-and-so from YouTube. Like, we're here live at E3." Like, it's been like that to some degree for the last couple of years, but I've never seen it like it is this year.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  So, I mean, for context, the line for whatever Nintendo has in any given E3 is typically all the way around the show floor. Like, it's like, like a mile long and they, you can wait in it all day and not get into the booth. Is that just worse now?

• 29:11Speaker 03

  Absolutely, yeah. It's been interesting because on the press site even, to be a little insider for a second, there's just a lot more stuff that's behind closed doors, but not only that, they're just like a lot like, they're being a lot more of a stickler about like spots because there is not as much time and it's harder to see things on the actual show floor. So, I've had a harder time seeing things in general if you don't have appointments and everything is kind of just more restricted than before.

• 29:33Speaker 01

  You can't just like roll up and get a demo?

• 29:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, basically. But it seems like even, I was looking at a couple threads on NeoGaff, which is like a gaming forum. People who are here like, they don't like the lines either, but it's just interesting because it seems like, especially this year, E3 is really positioning itself to move towards more of like, A PAX or a Comic Con where the show this year feels less and less like it's for press and more like it's for fans, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but also I don't think they've found the correct way to balance the sheer number of people that are here and how much stuff there is to see.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, from my outsider perspective, just watching it on Twitch has been pretty, it's been pretty easy to pick up on what's going on, to see everything. Like, you can see like a YouTube recap, you can watch the full press conference, like, live or right after, right after it happened. So it feels pretty accessible from the outside, which is a nice, a nice feeling. But yeah, I can understand that. It, it, it's tough when there are very few gameplay impressions. So everybody's just going off the same five minutes of footage they all saw in one press conference. It's, it's harder to know what is actually good.

• 30:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, and it's like you, you don't get many shots to like, if you have a chance to go play a demo and you're on the show floor and you are a fan, you're gonna be waiting probably hours for like a really good game. And it's like, well, is it worth it to spend two hours waiting in line for a 10-minute demo?

• 30:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I don't know. I don't know. I can't imagine. I hate lines.

• 31:04Speaker 03

  I think there, I would have waited a couple hours probably to play Breath of the Wild before it came out last year.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  I played, I waited maybe four hours to play the Wii U.

• 31:15Speaker 03

  Was it worth it?

• 31:16Speaker 01

  No, because I was like stoked on the Wii U and I thought it was the next generation of gaming. I was super wrong, so.

• 31:22Speaker 03

  Oh no. Well, this is such a sad story.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's why I don't go to E3 anymore. It's too many, too many bad hot takes.

• 31:30Speaker 03

  Just crushing, soul crushing.

• 31:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, because I'm old now. Well, when are we getting Skate 4, Megan?

• 31:39Speaker 01

  Promise me a date.

• 31:40Speaker 03

  Next year, 2018.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 31:43Speaker 03

  Skate 4. You heard it here first, on The Verge.com.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Megan. There's tons more information about video games on The Verge.com. You can also go to our sister site, Polygon.com, that Megan used to work for. There's just so much information and it's great to have information.

• 32:02Nilay Patel?

  Thank you.

• 32:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, of course.

• 32:04Nilay Patel?

  So that was great. I'm really, again, I've actually never been to an E3. Really? I feel like I don't have to go because I go to CES. That's your penance. That's as much pain as I have to. There are some people, I think Ross had been to like 12 in a row before this year or something. Yeah. But, like I said, this is a weird Vergecast with like lots of segments. So Dieter, you have been reviewing a bunch of, I don't want, we'll take off of the reviews after we get through the Panos interview, but

• 32:27Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 32:28Nilay Patel?

  Lead us into this. You've been reviewing a lot of these like future of computer devices. You've actually published a bunch of these reviews recently.

• 32:34Speaker 02

  I have. Uh, this is a big week because, um, basically three sort of future of computer devices. I need to come up with a better term than future of computers, like devices that are something other than like laptops.

• 32:48Nilay Patel?

  Tablets with dreams.

• 32:49Speaker 02

  Right. So there's, there's the iPad Pro, there's the new Surface Pro, which Dan reviewed, and then there's the Surface Laptop, which is obviously a laptop.

• 32:58Nilay Patel?

  Idea pads.

• 32:59Speaker 02

  Uh, but it runs Windows 10S. And so this week they're like now available to people. So the reviews went up. And so Panos, uh, came and he hung out with our staff, which was really great to get to know some of us. And then we recorded a brief Vergecast segment where, um, we asked him about, uh, carpeting and also, uh, what a laptop is. Cause deep down, I don't think anybody knows anymore.

• 33:23Nilay Patel?

  He also, you'll, you'll hear it, but he basically the entire time he was with our staff, he's like, I know you're going to ask me about phones. And finally someone said, well, tell us about phones. He goes, I'm not answering that question. And he set everybody up. So I'm going to actually read an ad, then we're going to run a segment. We'll be right back.

• 33:39Nilay Patel?

  This episode of the Vergecast is brought to you by Squarespace. Whatever your next big idea might be, count on Squarespace to help you create an eye catching online platform that brings it to life. Whether you need a portfolio to showcase your work, a store to sell your products and services, or a blog to share your ideas, Squarespace gives you everything you might need to look like an expert right from the start. You can even get a unique domain, which strengthens your brand and makes it easier for visitors to find you. Plus with Squarespace's award winning templates, creating a beautiful website is simple and intuitive. You can add and arrange your content features with the click of a mouse or the drag of a stylus or the tap of a screen. I don't know. But, you know, it's easy.

• 34:16Nilay Patel?

  Because it's Squarespace. Anyway, there's nothing to install, patch, or upgrade ever. But if you do have a question, Squarespace has award-winning 24/7 customer support that can help you with any problem, no matter how technical or trivial. It's like your very own IT department. So, make your next move. Start your free trial at Squarespace.com today. You enter offer code VERGE. You get 10% off that first purchase. That's offer code VERGE. V-E-R-G-E. Squarespace. Drag some stuff around. Like a ride on a boat.

• 34:44Nilay Patel?

  Hey, everybody. We're here with Ponos Panay from Microsoft. It's still Microsoft.

• 34:48Speaker 04

  It is still Microsoft, as of this morning. For sure. Yep.

• 34:52Nilay Patel?

  Some personalities. No, you just put out a bunch of hardware. Dieter just reviewed the Surface Laptop.

• 34:57Speaker 02

  And we are, there's also the new Surface Pro available soon, or right now?

• 35:02Nilay Patel?

  And you foolishly chosen to come onto this Vergecast.

• 35:05Speaker 04

  Without reading your reviews, which is the worst part. Like, I have no idea what Dieter wrote. I know Tom reviewed one as well, so I'm still trying to...

• 35:12Nilay Patel?

  I read Dieter's review. Dieter gave you a very flattering review of the Surface Laptop.

• 35:15Speaker 04

  I did. Right here, Dieter. Well done, man.

• 35:18Nilay Patel?

  And so I just want to start with the question. I think we have written in some collection of Verge people, the, "What is the best Windows Laptop? What is the canonical Windows Laptop story since our Engadget days?" Right? And it's always a question, and it feels like you have finally just delivered what appears to be the canonical Windows Laptop of 2017.

• 35:41Speaker 04

  Cool. Thanks.

• 35:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, we're done.

• 35:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, all right. So, that was it, right? Because I'm short on time, anyway. We should just...

• 35:48Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, I got a bunch of fan service questions about very specific Wrangler features as well. But I just want to start, I just want to start broad. Obviously, Microsoft, big company. You've got a lot of partners. You've got a lot of competitors who are also your partners. How do you think about this product exactly at this moment in time? Is it, was your goal to build the canonical Windows Laptop? Are you trying to blow Dell and HP out of the water? Where do you live?

• 36:08Speaker 04

  I think the... The thing we wanted to do was bring together the hardware, the software in a way where we took this classic form factor, that was kind of the word we used, it's classic, it can be so elegant, it's so everyday use, bring that same design and craftsmanship that we feel is part of who we are as a team, get it in this product, so now this hardware, software coming together with this, we'll say pride and craftsmanship in a classic form factor resulted in what is now the Surface Laptop, I'm pretty excited about it.

• 36:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, okay, so here's a granular fan service question.

• 36:44Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 36:44Nilay Patel?

  Oh, you got one.

• 36:45Speaker 02

  Well, so I've shown this laptop to, I don't know, you know, a dozen different Verge employees.

• 36:51Nilay Patel?

  It's the same question.

• 36:52Speaker 02

  Vox employees.

• 36:53Speaker 04

  Yeah. Do you get an emotional response when you show them?

• 36:56Speaker 02

  Yes, and the emotional response is specifically about the Alcantara fabric.

• 37:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:01Speaker 02

  To a person, they're like, "Oh, this is nice, I don't trust it." Like, and so you don't need to tell me it's gonna be fine, because I know that's what you want to tell me, that take care of it, it'll be fine.

• 37:10Speaker 04

  It might be what I believe as well, but that's okay.

• 37:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm sure you do, I do too, but was that, are you hoping for that emotional reaction?

• 37:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think you have to.

• 37:20Speaker 02

  If you hadn't put this fabric here, it would have been fine by me, and so I'm really curious why you needed it.

• 37:23Speaker 04

  It would have been, but I don't think you would get that same emotional and visceral response that you're getting if we did that. There's something about the tone and tone that comes from a fabric next to the keyset, next to the trackpad, next to the screen, next to the, if you will, the chassis of the product, the embodiment of it coming together, and we called it Tone and Tone, so when you opened it, you did have that emotional reaction, but to hold that same emotional response, that kind of visceral visual, like, wow, what, that's different, looks cool, but when you put your hands on it, feels great, that was critical, I think, to hold it, we wanted to hold that emotion in the product.

• 37:57Nilay Patel?

  But is it gonna last for five years? I think when you did the, you did the fabric on the Pro. And that to me, I think, elicits a different response because you're like, well, I spilled coffee on it. I stain this fabric. Well, I can take the key. I can just get another keyboard. You can't do that with this. And I think you're seeing a different response because people hold on to these things for three, four, five years.

• 38:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:17Nilay Patel?

  And they're definitely going to wear.

• 38:18Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. So we, we talk about it a lot as a team. I think that's what you're looking for. And I'll just talk to you about it. We spent a lot of time, um, the team spent a lot of time in Italy with the Alcantara team, just working on the fabrics, making sure they're durable, stain resistant. There is coating on it that it makes it stain resistant. There, it is durable at a level that is as durable as any metal out there in some ways. I mean, obviously it's not as hard or rough, but it is, um, from a, from a last perspective. And then we thought, look, it is fabric. That's what it is. And there's a way to clean it. And it's like any fabric that you know of in life. And, and it wears better than any fabric out there. It's in high-end sports cars right now. It's in there for a reason. It lasts for several years.

• 38:59Speaker 04

  I think we, we knew there was this conversation that would happen for sure. Our confidence in how durable the product is, is super high. And, uh, I'm not worried about three to five years. I think like any kind of precious object, if you will, anything that you love or care for, you have to care for this product like I think you have to care for any laptop you use. And if you like it, if you want it to wear and you want to push it, and not even to do with the fabric, but you can take the outside, the inside, any product you've ever used, it's going to wear and it's going to be like that awesome old pair of jeans that you love and it wore perfectly to who you are and that's your personality. Or you're going to keep it pristine. Those are, they both sit right there as options. But I think, and it's fundamental when you design a product like that, of course, you have to look at three to five years of use.

• 39:43Speaker 04

  That's every single one of our tests, every way we beat these things to with a, down to the pulp with reliability testing. Have you guys ever been?

• 39:50Nilay Patel?

  Do you have like a sweaty palm machine in your labs?

• 39:52Speaker 04

  We, we, we got crazier than that. We got every single lotion you can think of.

• 39:56Nilay Patel?

  Oh, man. Oh, yeah. It's really smart.

• 39:58Speaker 04

  We have sweat from many different people. Uh, it's, I'm, I'm a bit of a germaphobe. So for me, it's, it's hard to hang out in the reliability lab when they're testing these things. But they like from Vaseline to lipstick to, uh, lotions. And because you have to understand how durable this is, there isn't a material out there that we think, um, won't hit the product. And that's, by the way, that's both on the outside and the inside of the product. And that's true of every product we ship. It's not unique. It's not unique to this, but we have years of experience with fabrics now. And we've put a lot of energy into understanding them, learning about them. We found Alcantara, we understand it's, Alcantara itself is a premium brand.

• 40:38Speaker 04

  It sits in premium cars and it uses a very, has a very elegant tone to it. Of course, these are unique to Surface and they have a unique finish for the reliability aspect of the product, but all our energy into that history has gone into it and we feel pretty good.

• 40:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so let's talk about the, sort of the range of Surface stuff, right? You make a number of different products. They range from-

• 41:03Speaker 02

  You're really, you're really stretching to make a Surface pun right now, aren't you?

• 41:06Nilay Patel?

  I am. I'm trying not to. I'm doing my best. We have a guest.

• 41:11Speaker 04

  I like, I like that you think I'm a guest. I feel great about that. That's a good start. I'm a guest.

• 41:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, usually-

• 41:18Speaker 04

  Treat me like a guest, please.

• 41:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, anyway, so you've got a range. You've got the Surface Studio, right, which is a big, high-end desktop. You've got a number of tablet-first products, although you call some of them laptops now, which is, I think is fascinating. Then you have this very, kind of, classic laptop. As a consumer, how should you be looking at that, that line?

• 41:39Speaker 04

  I think you look at, there's three products that we're pretty proud of that when you walk into the store, I mean, we're proud of the Studio as well, but I'm gonna just put that aside for just a second. But when you walk into a store as a consumer, you're gonna see three products. And you're gonna see the most versatile laptop you could possibly use. And that's the Surface Pro. And I think that's the one-

• 41:57Nilay Patel?

  Is that a laptop and not a tablet?

• 41:58Speaker 04

  I really believe it.

• 41:59Nilay Patel?

  Cause for a minute, you were, you were saying it was a tablet that could place your laptop.

• 42:03Speaker 04

  That was for a minute. And I think-

• 42:05Nilay Patel?

  The minute is now over.

• 42:07Speaker 04

  I think it's, it is, you know, we see how people use it, we know what they use it for, we know it's the only device in their bag. There is no tablet, there's no laptop, it's the Pro. The new Pro brought so much to the table, so much performance, the battery life was real, the typing experience has elevated itself, the trackpad. And so we look at it, gosh, this really is a laptop, this is how people want to use it, it's how they are using it. It has, you know, it's powerful in its nature as a laptop and performs and competes against, you know, laptops in the market. What we thought was when you walk in, we can help even more with consumers, like, okay, I'm here to buy a laptop, great, there's three choices. You have the most versatile laptop. You have the Surface Book, which we put in the performance category, like this is

• 42:52Speaker 04

  the ultimate laptop. If you want the performance, if you're a creator, you want to reverse it, use the pen, push the GPU. That's what the Surface Book was for. And then we have the Surface Laptop, which was the canonical, if you will, as you put it, or the classic form factor. That is, this is the most beautiful elegant design in a laptop you will find. It's got that perfect balance of weight and thickness, and it's that thing you're going to take with you to class.

• 43:17Speaker 02

  What do you expect to be your most popular product?

• 43:18Speaker 04

  Gosh, you know, that's a hard question, man. We've been debating that ourselves. Yeah. You know, the Pro, the Pro is our heritage. That's where we, that's where we fundamentally started. So I believe that's kind of, our history will continue that way and that. But these other products, they're going to give it a run for its money for sure. And I think it's hard to pick, you know, if you had three children that were running a race with you, which one would you want to win? And then they were all your kids. It's kind of hard to answer that question. But I think Pro might have the lead there.

• 43:50Speaker 02

  I mean, the, the most interesting thing about the, the new Pros is that there's a, there's a Core i5 without a fan in it.

• 43:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:59Speaker 02

  And that, that seems really interesting to me. And because I, I think if it's still a tablet, which I, you still need to convince me that it's a laptop.

• 44:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:06Speaker 02

  But like tablets shouldn't have fans in my head.

• 44:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:09Speaker 02

  But Intel across the, across the board, but the Microsoft is talking a little bit, or has been about ARM. Like, do you just, I don't need you to tell me what your future products are, but if you want to, please.

• 44:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, I will today, but I appreciate you. Yeah. I don't want to lose your listeners either, but yeah, we probably won't tell you about future products.

• 44:29Nilay Patel?

  They're all gone now.

• 44:30Speaker 02

  Well, let me just cut the podcast.

• 44:33Nilay Patel?

  They're all gone.

• 44:34Speaker 04

  All right, I gotta go.

• 44:35Nilay Patel?

  I can follow on to that question, right? There's, you announced this thing with Windows 10s. You're giving away the free upgrade.

• 44:43Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 44:44Nilay Patel?

  Instantly, right? And then it'll cost some money after a while. But there's not a lot of activity, like, build just happened. There was not a lot of focus on building for Windows 10s at build. Then there were a bunch of announcements about Windows on ARM that would be able to also run x86 apps. And that was, announcement was made, and it seems to have been very quiet. So it looks like you can move to a world where you're shipping an ARM-based

• 45:13Nilay Patel?

  Product, whether it's a laptop or tablet with a great battery life, with easier integration of mobile broadband, because it's certainly easier to do that on ARM, and a sort of modern, if you will, riff on the operating system that has, you know, it's locked to an app store and has to run your browser. But that's certainly not where the product is now. To me, the fact that you're letting people immediately upgrade to Windows 10 Pro for free kind of signals that's where you're expecting the user to be.

• 45:42Speaker 04

  I don't, did you ask a question in that?

• 45:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 45:45Speaker 04

  I don't think you really did.

• 45:46Nilay Patel?

  It's a podcast.

• 45:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, let's riff, let's podcast. I think when we talk about, there were a lot of things you talked about there. I think the idea with Windows 10S is very, it's very simple.

• 45:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 45:57Speaker 04

  And it's, and it's, and it's easy, I mean, the easiest way to put it, just simple. When a user uses a product, a consumer uses a product, a person, how you, how you want to describe, somebody who opens it and gets into the product and falls in love with what they're doing, it's a question of, hey, what do you do? How do you do it? And it doesn't need to be complicated for the user at all, I don't think. And so I think Windows 10S starts to simplify things quite a bit, where you're in, we can guarantee you the performance, we guarantee you the battery life. It's very simple to use, it's, there's no conflict. And then I think that value prop is super strong for somebody who just gets in and wants to use the product. And, you know, there might be this initial instinct that's like, well, I don't know what it is, so I have to get into Switch and get to Pro quickly.

• 46:41Speaker 04

  That's fine. Our goal wasn't to hope people upgrade. Our goal wasn't to hope people stay. The goal was to give you the best value prop possible, where you're in it, you're more secure, you're getting great battery life, and it's giving you this incredible performance, use it, go for it. If there was something you needed that wasn't about Windows 10S or wasn't in the store, then our goal wasn't to say, well, too bad. And the goal was then, hey, Switch. It wasn't even upgrade, it was just Switch.

• 47:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 47:07Speaker 04

  And get into Pro, but understand that, hey, look, you know, you might download something that compromises your battery life, or changes the performance on your machine, or you're going to call in two months and be like, I don't know what's going on, but my machine is slowing down.

• 47:19Nilay Patel?

  Okay, I will, I will actually ask a question.

• 47:22Speaker 02

  The, the question that I was working my way up to, that we've like been circling around, is it seems like Microsoft lives at the premium end. You've got Intel Core, Core i chips, you've got price points that, you know, start at a thousand bucks, you know, or so. But like-

• 47:37Nilay Patel?

  Microsoft has been building a bunch of Windows stuff that like could potentially work at a much lower price point. Does Microsoft hardware always live at the high end? Or would you, do you think that there's a world in which you could like cross the price spectrum, you know, all the way down to like something less expensive?

• 47:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't think, I don't, we think about what's the best thing for the hardware and software and the experience coming to life. That's how I think about it. I think that could end up a lot of times and is our focus to be more premium and our products are premium. Won't really compromise fit and finish on these products. That's not something that's on our list. I don't think that's about silicon. I don't think it's about, the cost isn't about silicon. The cost isn't about performance, although it can be, but it is around fit and finish where we won't let up. And once you put a premium fit and finish throughout, throughout the product, that pride and craftsmanship that comes through, you definitely want the performance on a product like this as well. I'm not, I don't really, it doesn't matter to me what processor's in it right now. I love any processor we put into it because we put it in for the customer themselves. And price point is basically,

• 48:37Speaker 04

  it is, it can be a function of premium, but it's not necessarily that. But where we, where we act today, I don't see us moving all the way down the price point scale to see if we can cover every price point. We've got awesome partners. They're doing a great job. And I'm pretty proud of that. And so we do stay a little bit higher in.

• 48:53Nilay Patel?

  So, Dieter and I keep asking the same questions. It's just a thing that happens.

• 48:58Speaker 04

  Has this happened before?

• 48:59Nilay Patel?

  All the time. Are you gonna, are you gonna ask what USBC and steal my question? I'm definitely gonna ask what USBC. Okay, that's definitely where I was going.

• 49:05Speaker 04

  What would a podcast be without type C conversation?

• 49:09Nilay Patel?

  What would this podcast be without complaints? Later on, we're gonna talk about headphone jacks. It's gonna be great. That's all I'd ever do.

• 49:14Speaker 04

  Why don't we do that? Why haven't I removed the headphone jack yet?

• 49:17Nilay Patel?

  No, but let's talk, I wanted to ask about USBC and then I want to end on sort of a, just a broader, you know, the whole kind of landscape of computing is changing, right? The traditional mobile operating systems and laptop operating systems are colliding in interesting ways. But let's start with USBC. You didn't put it on this product. You've said you don't think it's ready. What was your, explain it in detail. What was your real thinking there?

• 49:41Speaker 04

  We look at this thing in and out. Like, Type-C USB-C is one of the foremost things that we think about, for sure. We're not confused of the future of Type-C and USB-C. I went to a conversation, even inside, internal to Microsoft, and like, "Why do you hate USB-C?" I'm like, "I don't hate, I don't hate USB-C." There are very few things in the world that I hate. What are some of those? Try and tell my kids, like, hate's not good. Name one thing you hate.

• 50:13Speaker 04

  I hate when I can't find my socks in the morning, I gotta be honest. That's hate? Yeah, really, it drives me nuts. Wow. Type-C, really, being with the team to see it and work all the way through is... There has been an expectation around that port that I say is unmet right now. The expectation's very high on everything it can do and what it should do and what it will do. And what we learn as we go through it is... And by the way, as a side note, we use our Surface Connector to charge these devices. We know it's one of our highest kind of user delighters. Just the magnetic, click it in and go and move. And that port actually is available to use Type-C.

• 50:57Speaker 04

  So it's not that Type-C can't be used on the device. We're providing an adapter this holiday that people can use and plug into and use Type-C for the product. So for all those out there like, "Well, what about the future?" Like, it's future-proofed, it's there. Type-C is available for you. But in the meantime, what we were most concerned about was what happens when you walk into that conference room and you plug, you look for Type-C, you have a Type-C, you try and plug it in and it doesn't project and you don't know why and you can't figure it out? Or I wanted to use power on my device and so I didn't bring my Surface charger with me because I already have another charger for my phone. And so I plugged that charger into the wall and I plugged it into my device and we went from this beautiful charge time of less than two hours to... Why did it take 14 hours to charge my device?

• 51:41Speaker 04

  Or why did I run out of battery while I was plugged in? What's wrong with you Surface? And the customer or the user doesn't quite understand what's happening. You might have a 3.5 watt charger with a 27.5 watt hour battery and physics there are challenged. And you're now in this place of trying to explain what's happening with that port, although there was a promise with it. Some of it has Thunderbolt, some Type-C has Thunderbolt, some Type-C doesn't have Thunderbolt. Some accessories work, some accessories don't work. Try and go and find an accessory now that you plug in without a dongle. It's pretty challenging. And so, we're looking at all these variables and then you just pause and ask like, what are you using Type-C for? That was the fundamental. Like if you think about your customer, you think of what people are using. Like just ask, what do you use it for?

• 52:24Speaker 04

  Like, Neelai, what do you use Type-C for right now?

• 52:27Nilay Patel?

  I'm avoiding it.

• 52:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm just wondering.

• 52:30Nilay Patel?

  I'm charging my phone.

• 52:31Speaker 04

  But I get a lot of tweets on this, like, what is wrong with you? Aren't you thinking? And I almost want to respond like, I'm sorry. Like what are you plugging into Type-C right now that isn't just awesome everywhere else? I believe the future, that promise when it gets standardized and Thunderbolt is consistent and the things you plug in are consistent, whether it's a hard drive that works or doesn't work, I think we'll be in a great future state. I think right now though, our promise to our customers is, even on this product, when you think about 10S, it's simple, it's easy to use. You open it, you get in, you work. Our promise is it has to stay that way, even with the accessories you're plugging in.

• 53:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 53:05Speaker 04

  And when you're walking into a conference room or you're a teacher and you want to teach and you want to plug in, you're likely going to find USB-A or display port at this point. So we gave you those ports that were so important. We know how much people use USB-A. We didn't want to take that away from them. That was critical. But then for Type-C, we look and say, well, will it be in our future products? When the time is right, of course, it'll support that matters. I'm not, I don't quote unquote hate it. I just, I don't. I think it's awesome. Just needs some consistency. And when that consistency is in play and our customers won't be confused and the people that use it, the main, you know, those mainstream customers that come in and they want this beautiful, elegant, seamless device, whether it's Pro or it's Laptop, they get in and everything they use works.

• 53:50Speaker 04

  That was critical to us. We learned this lesson. We learned this lesson with our early products. When things don't work, turns out people aren't happy.

• 53:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And I said, I know you got to run. I'm trying to ask the big thinky question. You've been covering the hell out of it actually, but you see every...

• 54:05Speaker 04

  By the way, I think you guys are great.

• 54:06Nilay Patel?

  Thank you.

• 54:07Speaker 04

  Both of you. Yeah, I think both of you are awesome and I appreciate it. I'm, I say that before I read your review.

• 54:15Speaker 04

  I haven't read Tom's review either on Pro, but once I read them both, I could change that and I'll send you a mail. But right now, I think you guys are pretty awesome.

• 54:21Nilay Patel?

  Hey.

• 54:21Speaker 04

  Forward thinkers for sure, and I'm grateful you had me.

• 54:24Nilay Patel?

  I'm really happy you're on. And it's really fun to have great, cool products to talk about instead of sort of endless iterations of the same thing. But every one of your competitors and Microsoft is pushing towards what appears to be the future of computing.

• 54:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 54:37Nilay Patel?

  Right? So Google, to varying amounts of success, is trying to bring Android to the Chromebook. Apple has a real fuzzy boundary between iOS and macOS. There's the new iPad Pro, which you tell me you haven't used, and then we tried to make you use one and you wouldn't do it.

• 54:52Nilay Patel?

  He was on the record at some, so I understand.

• 54:54Speaker 04

  That might be true, yeah. That might be true.

• 54:56Nilay Patel?

  Right, but that's.

• 54:57Speaker 04

  It's not like you forced me, though.

• 54:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, we just held it in the air and you slowly got to it.

• 55:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, I decided not to touch it.

• 55:02Nilay Patel?

  Right, and iOS 11 is kind of making that more laptop-y. You have now XS, you have a range of Surface products. Where do you see that boundary of the future of computing going? What's your biggest vision about that stuff?

• 55:16Speaker 04

  I think you can't.

• 55:19Speaker 04

  I think everything you've said was limited to a form factor.

• 55:22Nilay Patel?

  Oh, interesting.

• 55:23Speaker 04

  And I think with the combination of AI, machine learning, the VR world, HoloLens, the current form factors you see, I don't think, I don't think we're looking at it yet.

• 55:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 55:34Speaker 04

  And you can use an OS, and the platform that is Windows 10 is phenomenal, especially from it, the, its ability to scale through so many different form factors, if you will, or use cases, is crazy. It's awesome. So I think you look at the platform first, but I think what my response is, you, you ask questions that were based in form factor.

• 55:56Nilay Patel?

  Mm-hmm.

• 55:58Speaker 04

  I don't, I don't think we should, I don't think is if we were to put ourselves in the column of what does the future look like, I don't think, I don't think any of us are looking at the form factor right now yet. I don't believe that. I think form factors kind of can change the way people interact with things. And we've seen that. If you go look through time, you'll see it. As a new form factor evolves, how people use their products change dramatically. And that form factor only evolves when the technology underneath it does, from a software perspective, from an AI perspective. And if you see all the things that Satya talked about, talks about, you think, think about the things that Terry talks about. You look at Windows 10S and what that's doing. You can look at Chrome and Android, but you can look at Windows 10, you can look at what iOS is doing. These

• 56:40Speaker 04

  are all platforms evolving to a future at some point. And but fundamentally, Windows, I believe, has this lead that's thinking about not only the current and giving you the classic form factor like a laptop and being beautiful and elegant and seamless, but it also has this opportunity to create a new vision of products that's not here yet.

• 57:01Nilay Patel?

  And you're working on this?

• 57:03Speaker 04

  Well, I'm, yeah.

• 57:06Nilay Patel?

  He's not gonna ask the phone question, but he's definitely gonna ask the phone question.

• 57:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, don't ask me the damn phone question.

• 57:12Nilay Patel?

  Is one of those things a phone?

• 57:13Speaker 04

  Don't ask me the damn phone question.

• 57:14Nilay Patel?

  And that's our man.

• 57:15Speaker 04

  I'm pretty impressed you didn't ask it, but I appreciate that. I'm sure I'm gonna get a lot of tweets. By the way, send the tweets. I read them. I read them all. But I, or, or the Instagrams, whatever. Send me, like, I'm all good. I'd love to hear them, but I appreciate you didn't ask today.

• 57:26Nilay Patel?

  Well, I heard you. Just so the listener knows, before this, we met with a bunch of Verge reporters. They asked the phone question. And Panos confidently said, I'm not gonna answer that question. So we have a limited, I just had to hear it. Anyway.

• 57:36Speaker 04

  Spend your time at the right place.

• 57:38Nilay Patel?

  Do you think, like, pocketable rectangles, is that a form factor?

• 57:41Speaker 04

  I think this was an incredible podcast. I feel like we got to bond a little bit, which I didn't expect to happen. I like you more than I thought I would, which is super cool. Hopefully, I didn't upset you or anything.

• 57:53Nilay Patel?

  No, this is great. Thank you.

• 57:54Speaker 04

  That was great. Thanks so much. I love the, you guys are awesome.

• 57:56Nilay Patel?

  Thank you so much for coming. I really, really appreciate it.

• 57:59Speaker 01

  Here's my big takeaway. First off, I think you guys did a great job.

• 58:03Nilay Patel?

  Well, thank you.

• 58:04Speaker 02

  He's a very intense man.

• 58:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. And excited and happy. I think he was happy to be with you.

• 58:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 58:11Speaker 01

  Which is cool. I think there's a vibe you get, like, I just did a good thing. I made a good, some good stuff. I'm gonna tell you about. But this material stuff, I'm getting conflicting information. Because the first thing I thought was like, sweat stains.

• 58:28Speaker 01

  And then Tom Warren's review is like, watch out for sweat stains. And then Panos is like saying, don't even worry about it.

• 58:36Nilay Patel?

  He's like, I got a whole lap full of sweat. That's basically his answer. He's like, think about gross stuff. We have a room full of it.

• 58:44Speaker 02

  Like, we have like every lotion ever made by humankind. We applied it to this thing. It's like, oh, I don't want to be there for that.

• 58:51Nilay Patel?

  You know, I think, I really like talking to Panos. There's something that happens when we talk to the product people versus the marketing people. I've noticed this over and over and over again over the years. The product people love nerding out about the product. It's always a, just a great conversation because we are nerds and we ask some really nerdy questions. I think with the fabric, it is hard to ignore the fact that the second you open it up, everybody reacts to it. And I think that's, if you're Microsoft and you're trying to stand out in the store, you're trying to get people to not buy the Dell or the HP that they've bought out of just like impulse, instinct for years, you need to have that reaction. And I think the fabric gives them that reaction.

• 59:36Nilay Patel?

  I think the downside is it's

• 59:39Speaker 02

  The fabric gives them that reaction.

• 59:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's gonna wear differently than a bunch of aluminum. Now, that is, there are people we work with who have like weird sweat. And I've seen across Vox Media, there are MacBook Pros where like the aluminum is pitted and gross. This stuff gets just as dirty as anything else. So it's a normal thing that happens, but it's, might happen a lot worse for this fabric. We'll see. Maybe his claims will, he's like, it's gonna be fine.

• 1:00:12Speaker 01

  I want like a one-year check-in from someone who's used it every day and just see what it looks like.

• 1:00:17Nilay Patel?

  But those people are out there, right? They have Surface Pros with that keyboard cover and they aren't out screaming. I think the difference is you can, if that thing becomes gross, you just buy another one.

• 1:00:26Speaker 02

  Here's the real problem that he's gonna run into.

• 1:00:29Speaker 02

  If your Surface Laptop looks grimy and crappy, you're gonna put a post on it on Instagram or Twitter and like Reddit, BGR and be like, oh my God, it's the worst thing. If your Surface Laptop is fine a year from now, you're not gonna post a picture of it and no one's gonna write a story that, hey, guess what? It's fine. Like, the only thing that's going to get a reaction from anybody is it looking like garbage.

• 1:00:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:53Speaker 02

  And that's just what's gonna happen.

• 1:00:54Speaker 01

  So I guess you just gotta embrace the adventure.

• 1:00:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Yep. So Dieter, you reviewed the Surface Laptop.

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  I did.

• 1:01:02Nilay Patel?

  Tom with 10S, Windows 10S. Tom Warren reviewed it with Windows 10 Pro. You reviewed the iPad Pro. Tom reviewed the Surface Pro. We've just a lot of future of computing stuff. I have an iPad Pro reviewing it.

• 1:01:15Speaker 02

  Yep. Lauren has a 12.9 iPad Pro. Dan reviewed the Surface Pro and he did both the i5 and the i7 variants. Just a lot of, a lot of stuff.

• 1:01:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:24Speaker 02

  And you can go out and buy all of it right now.

• 1:01:26Nilay Patel?

  You, so you're, but I hung out with you while you were in the process of reviewing the iPad Pro. Uh, and you're like, this is my computer. Like the second this has iOS 11, I'm buying the hell out of this.

• 1:01:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:37Nilay Patel?

  Uh oh.

• 1:01:38Speaker 02

  Mostly. Like, the answer is, it, I, I, ah, there's a whole like debate about main computer that goes along with this. Um, but just because we just had panels, let me just get Surface Laptop out of the way. It is the MacBook Air that you've been asking for that actually has 2017 specs. Um, it just happens to run Windows. Uh, you will not want to use Windows 10S. And Microsoft's whole strategy of getting 10S apps into the App Store, Windows App Store is like, not gonna go as well as they hope. Because everyone is going to immediately upgrade to 10 Pro on this thing because it's free. If you are looking for a Windows laptop and you are willing to spend $1,300, uh, you will very much like

• 1:02:19Speaker 02

  the Surface Laptop, fabric and all. That is where I land on that thing. I'm very impressed with that computer. The iPad, here's the thing that I didn't really write this very elegantly in the review. But if you go to an Apple Store and there, there are two iPads sitting there. One is the iPad. The iPad. It's an iPad. It costs $330. It does iPad things. It has a beautiful screen. It's very thin and light and good. And there's really nothing to complain about with it. And then sitting right next to it is the iPad Pro, uh, which has a slightly bigger screen and like, more like specs than you could possibly imagine. It has the smart keyboard connector. It has a screen that is like, bonkers better on like five different levels,

• 1:03:01Speaker 02

  including the, the increased refresh rate and like, all the stuff. And it costs $650. So it's a $300 Delta. And if you're going to spend $650, I think you should spend $750 and get the larger storage. So it's a $400 Delta.

• 1:03:16Nilay Patel?

  Can I just say when you lay it out like that? That $300 Delta between the iPad and the iPad Pro might be the best value for dollar in computers right now.

• 1:03:28Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:03:28Nilay Patel?

  Like the, just the screen on the Pro, have you played with it yet?

• 1:03:33Speaker 01

  Nah, I just looked at it.

• 1:03:34Nilay Patel?

  Let me leave, I'll show you. It is the, promotion is not a joke.

• 1:03:39Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:03:39Nilay Patel?

  It is a real thing.

• 1:03:40Speaker 02

  It's not just a marketing term. It's a real, it makes, like you notice, it's not, everybody's making the comparison to the jump from a regular screen to a retina screen. It's not quite that. Like, it's not the sort of thing where once you use it, you're like, I'm never using anything else again. Everything else is garbage. This thing is perfect.

• 1:03:57Speaker 02

  But it does make sort of a, a really like subtle qualitative difference in your experience of using the device as like a quality device. And I, I have this whole riff that I didn't put into the review that the iPad Pro is basically a luxury product. But where like Virtu and I don't know Bentley and like other luxury brands, they make it luxury by putting nicer materials and diamonds and leather and all Contara fabric and all this crap on their things to make it luxury. Apple makes it luxury by literally making the technology way better than anybody asked for. Like the luxury is the screen and it is the like the scrolling and the promotion on the screen.

• 1:04:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I, I mean, I just, that screen, if you've listened to the show, you know, Paul is a pixel density enthusiast.

• 1:04:45Speaker 01

  And I've been transforming into a high refresh rate enthusiast.

• 1:04:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Paul only like reads high refresh rate monitor blogs now. It's really weird.

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  I've been offered a position.

• 1:05:01Nilay Patel?

  But it's like, that stuff is really important.

• 1:05:03Speaker 01

  So, so, so, uh, like the other day, Best Buy had a deal. You could get the 9.7 Pro for $450. And I looked around a bit, there's a bunch of 9.7 Pros for $400 reffered.

• 1:05:16Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  So, I mean, I want the 120 Hz.

• 1:05:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:21Speaker 01

  But if I save my dollars, I can afford a pencil.

• 1:05:26Nilay Patel?

  And a keyboard.

• 1:05:27Speaker 01

  And the keyboard.

• 1:05:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it gets shockingly expensive extremely fast.

• 1:05:32Speaker 02

  If you kid out what I think is like the right model to get. So if you're like, I, I feel like you should get the bigger storage, go from 64 to 256. I feel like you should get the keyboard, which is like, I think 160 bucks. And, eh, you know, maybe you don't need the pencil, but sure, get the pencil. It's a hundred bucks. Get Apple Care to protect the thing. That whole package altogether, all in is like $1,100, which is crazy. Right? It's, unless you make it your computer.

• 1:06:03Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:06:04Speaker 02

  And the big question is, can iOS 10 support that for most people? And, uh, I think that it's not appropriate to ask people to radically change what they do with their main computer in the way that iOS 10 demands. You can do it, but like, you end up living in like a, like, I don't know, different kind of computing world. And maybe that's the world we should live in, but, uh, I'm much more excited to see what iOS 11 does to the iPad computing environment with proper drag and drop, with a files app and, you know, all the rest.

• 1:06:37Speaker 01

  I feel like $1,100 is what you're willing to pay, like when you're buying your kid a laptop to go to college.

• 1:06:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think that's, so, you know, I asked Apple, what's the, like, what's the standard configuration here? Are you expecting people to buy all the things? And they were like, you know, we think people are going to buy what's right for them and we want to give people a choice. And it. Just I've been thinking about that over the past few days. It's weird because that's not how Apple usually thinks. Right? Like, they just give you the product and it's complete and they've made all the choices for you and that, you know, their entire strength is that they've generally made the right set of choices for you. This one is just, it's a lot of boxes. Like, when I got my review unit, just to put it all together, it was just like opening a lot of boxes and like getting rid of a lot of like stuff.

• 1:07:28Nilay Patel?

  It just didn't feel as complete as like a standard sort of Apple unboxing. And it just struck me, they should just sell a kit.

• 1:07:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:38Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, they should just sell the $1,100 iPad Pro kit and that'll be good enough. And then for the people who want to spend a little less money and they don't care about the pencil, like, whatever. But that moment for them where they have to convince you to buy all the stuff and it feels like an upsell is like a strange moment in the Apple universe.

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:57Nilay Patel?

  The last time I think that you had to make that many choices around Apple stuff was like before they had like wireless keyboard standard and you had to like pick between like wired or wireless keyboard. What copy of Adobe software is gonna come? It's like that configurator, but not for the core computing experience. But the thing is great. Like, oh, that's a very minor criticism.

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  I will say for this, what do we call them? Tablet dreams?

• 1:08:26Nilay Patel?

  Dream tabs.

• 1:08:27Speaker 01

  For these, for these, for these dream tabs, I'm starting to get pretty tempted. I have, I've managed, I put like a weird window manager on my laptop that involves some terminal stuff. And like, I'm pretty good at the terminal, but I went, I went too far. I delved too deep.

• 1:08:44Nilay Patel?

  Can you come back?

• 1:08:45Speaker 01

  I can't come back. My computer sucks. I literally, I can show you this. There's this, what, I keep a space that has this pop-up dialogue on it?

• 1:08:56Nilay Patel?

  What? Paul's computer looks completely insane. There's no menu bar. He's picked a desktop background that just looks like, like expose, so you can't even tell what's real. Icons everywhere.

• 1:09:09Speaker 01

  I can't, if I click deny on this dialogue box, it just pops up again. So I just keep, I keep it in its own space.

• 1:09:18Nilay Patel?

  Wait, really? Go to the main space.

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  But like

• 1:09:23Nilay Patel?

  What is this window manager?

• 1:09:25Speaker 01

  Um, there's, there's actually two.

• 1:09:28Nilay Patel?

  Wait, Paul is not kidding. There is a dialogue box on his computer that he cannot dismiss. So it's just a three finger swipe away at all times.

• 1:09:38Speaker 01

  So, but my, my actual work setup is because I hate, I hate having like blank areas around windows. Right. And so I like it on, on windows that does like the snap, the app like snap together. And I, I have, um, uh, what's, what should we call it? Um, better snap tool to help me do that. But better snap tool likes to do like half and half. So I was trying to get something that like, it was more like a, like a tiling window manager, like you, like people use like T-Max, like on, on a terminal. And it was, it was like a super hack of, of the Mac OS window manager. And it was a bad idea. But, um, the iOS 11's version of it is, is basically exactly how I use my computer.

• 1:10:22Speaker 01

  I have one space where I keep Slack and Twitter. Then I have one space where I keep a browser and a text editor.

• 1:10:29Speaker 01

  And then I have a space for like, for this dialogue box. And then I have a, a space for like Spotify or whatever. And a space for a feed reader.

• 1:10:39Speaker 01

  iPad like does it, does exactly how I use on my computer in a, looks like a slightly slicker way. And I just like, I'm just so tired of my computer just slowing down. I mean, even before this happened, it's just like, it's always slowing down. It's always something's happening with it. And it's like, I feel like I couldn't do Windows 10S because it doesn't, it doesn't even have Hearthstone on it. You know? But, uh, but like, I really like some of these apps that are coming out, um, for iOS 11. And they just, they just made the thing that I want iOS 11 to be. And I'm really, I really want to try it.

• 1:11:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I, the one thing that gets me is the Safari. Yeah. Well, it's a third window, but like often I have one Safari window open, an editor window for The Verge open and then like Slack. And you can't do that on iOS.

• 1:11:34Speaker 01

  You want those all in the same view?

• 1:11:35Speaker 02

  Well, no, you want two browser windows and a second app open. You can't do that.

• 1:11:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:40Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:11:41Speaker 02

  So you can like, you can kind of have three apps going, but two, you can't have three windows. So it's a weird logical split. It comes down to can you, do you want to like, adjust your like productivity setup to match that UI paradigm, that windowing paradigm that you've been talking about, Paul, like the spaces and the split screens and so on and so on. On my computer, I don't like doing that because I like having like windows actually layered on top of each other. So I can see like a little bit of the Slack window and a little bit of the TweetDeck window and a lot of the browser window. And like, is that just, am I just old? And I just like want my mouse with a scroll wheel? And I should just try and switch to the full on like iPad way of doing things?

• 1:12:27Speaker 02

  Or is there like genuine utility there that is worth like demanding out of these computers? And then the, but like, Paul, your, your story is like, well, maybe the answer is yes, but like, can you open that door without ending up with people having to put an undismissable dialogue box in another space, right? If the spectrum of computing goes from like single full screen app window.

• 1:12:53Nilay Patel?

  We should not design our entire UI paradigms around Paul's ability to fuck up window managers.

• 1:13:04Nilay Patel?

  That's a, but like.

• 1:13:07Speaker 02

  Like 10S, if you switch from Windows 10S to Windows 10 Pro and only download stuff from the Windows Store, you basically are running Windows 10S. It doesn't, it's not any different. 10S and 10 Pro are the same operating system.

• 1:13:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:13:21Speaker 02

  The thing that 10 Pro lets you do is fuck up your system by installing a bunch of like Adobe Creative Cloud stuff that slows it down in the background by installing a bunch of crazy window managers by blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, the question, I do the same thing in my Mac. I've got a bunch of crap on my Mac that I know is slowing it down. And if I were to start fresh, it would feel way faster and probably get better battery life. So we want that door open. We want to walk through it. But once you walk through that door, it's like you're in like the evil version of Narnia where everything is a wonderland, but you'll definitely, you know, get killed from a random app that you think is cool that you installed.

• 1:13:58Speaker 01

  How's that an evil version of Narnia? I don't know.

• 1:14:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I'm confused.

• 1:14:01Speaker 01

  I mean, I could get to it. Well, because Narnia is run by Aslan, who never, and we're not going here.

• 1:14:06Nilay Patel?

  We almost did, though. That was, that's the door you don't want to walk.

• 1:14:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:12Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I hate doing this because I hate metaphors in general, like particularly the PC market, car market metaphor.

• 1:14:19Speaker 01

  Car truck?

• 1:14:19Nilay Patel?

  Car.

• 1:14:20Speaker 01

  Car and truck.

• 1:14:20Nilay Patel?

  It's a boat. It's a car, that's a truck, that's a, uh, no. If you buy a car, you generally are not meant to screw with it.

• 1:14:29Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:14:29Nilay Patel?

  And most people don't, and it's fine, but you can if you want to. Right? And you can do, you can do superficial things, you can put body kits on your car, you can do crazy things, you can, you can buy a crate engine from Ford and put it in your Chevy if you are so inclined.

• 1:14:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. If, if you, if anybody ever meets Neelai and he has his car, just walk around the car and point out anything on the car that isn't perfectly black and he'll just lose his mind at you for two hours straight.

• 1:14:56Nilay Patel?

  There's two things left. It's the tailpipes. I have, I need a strategy. I've thought about it a lot. Anyway, but my point is like, that choice exists and I, we shouldn't get away from the world in which you are able to buy some things that offer you that choice. Right? Like.

• 1:15:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:14Nilay Patel?

  People can't invent new kinds of things if they don't have the, the, the freedom to actually invent it on the platforms. And I think the, the one question Apple has yet to answer with iOS at all is how do you write an iOS app on an iOS device?

• 1:15:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's.

• 1:15:29Nilay Patel?

  And you're just not going to be able to do it if the thing remains as locked down as it is. At least so far as I can tell.

• 1:15:34Speaker 01

  I mean, I feel like they could be really friggin' close.

• 1:15:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:39Speaker 01

  Because they've got playgrounds on iPad now, which is, they're using to like teach kids, but that's like running Swift code right there. Like, I mean, LVM like runs on ARM, it could compile to ARM, like the compiler.

• 1:15:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but like, then you, then you have like a local app distribution problem, right? It's got to run on the iPad. You've got to put it. Into memory, you've got to let it address the operating system. You not signing it through the store like that actually starts to create-

• 1:16:06Speaker 02

  Is it Apple smart enough to enable like a developer mode? Like people are like already talking about needing trying to jailbreak the next version of iOS 11 on the next iPhone. Because it looks like right now they're not going to allow drag and drop on an iPhone. And like that could actually be useful on an iPhone. And so people are like, well, I'm going to jailbreak. There was like, the whole reason the jailbreak ecosystem existed was to unlock a bunch of stuff that you know the OS could do. But that just isn't allowed. And some of those are like flags of things that are built into the OS. I'm wondering how long it is until Apple's like, all right, this is how we ship it. 95% of people are going to never, you know, tap the box. But for some people, they'll tap the box, we'll give them a bunch of warnings and then they will have, you know,

• 1:16:48Speaker 02

  a developer mode iOS device that you can, you know, do stuff on. I would do that. I would love that. It's a lot, it's more work for them, but I think it would, it would gain them, their hardest core fans would love them for it.

• 1:17:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I will see. It's just an interesting time, right? Like, we haven't been at this decision. We've seen this decision point coming for a long time. It feels like with XS, with iOS 11, it's arrived in a significant way. And I, that split between what do you want a laptop to be? Is, people are going to start making that choice for real in a way that iPads previous, previously, the choice has been, I'm going to radically rethink my relationship to computing. And now it's, I can do almost everything I want my laptop to do in a much simpler environment. And XS makes that even more clear.

• 1:17:39Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:17:40Nilay Patel?

  Anyhow, that's, I think we've now, wait, we forgot to do, Paul. Every week.

• 1:17:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:47Nilay Patel?

  There's a segment.

• 1:17:47Speaker 02

  We never forget.

• 1:17:48Nilay Patel?

  Never, ever forget. It's a segment that you do.

• 1:17:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's called I see seed, semi-colon, so much seeing.

• 1:17:58Nilay Patel?

  High concept segment.

• 1:18:01Speaker 01

  I'll get you with the spelling, Andrew.

• 1:18:02Nilay Patel?

  I.

• 1:18:03Speaker 01

  I, the letter C, I referring to myself.

• 1:18:06Nilay Patel?

  Okay, I.

• 1:18:07Speaker 01

  And then a company that's called C seed, right? The letter C and then seed as in the past tense of seeing.

• 1:18:17Nilay Patel?

  Or like a seed for much of plant grows?

• 1:18:21Nilay Patel?

  Not the past tense of seeing?

• 1:18:25Speaker 01

  Okay, they made a really big TV.

• 1:18:28Nilay Patel?

  CCDE is the name of the company.

• 1:18:30Speaker 01

  CCDE made a 262 inch 4K.

• 1:18:35Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 1:18:36Speaker 01

  LCD TV.

• 1:18:37Nilay Patel?

  That's a lot of, that's a lot of liquid crystals.

• 1:18:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, with apparently a 5001 contrast ratio. It's 19 feet wide, costs $539,000, which to be honest, doesn't sound very much for like the world's largest TV. Feel like you can charge whatever you want. It's pretty crazy. Also, there's a picture of Chad mom. My good friend Chad mom.

• 1:19:00Nilay Patel?

  Wait, how much did it cost again?

• 1:19:01Speaker 01

  $539,000.

• 1:19:05Nilay Patel?

  Oh, and like their marketing copy just assumes that you have a mansion, right?

• 1:19:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I would like that.

• 1:19:11Nilay Patel?

  This is where it goes in your mansion.

• 1:19:12Speaker 01

  I love, I love the idea that someone's selling a product that is a TV that I literally could not fit in any direction or angle in my apartment.

• 1:19:23Nilay Patel?

  So that's just the biggest TV ever.

• 1:19:25Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:19:26Nilay Patel?

  CCDE.

• 1:19:27Speaker 01

  CCDE.

• 1:19:28Nilay Patel?

  That's a, that's a great way to start a badly named company. Like now, now you have to know what CCDE is. You don't have a choice. But they didn't come out with like a, like a 40 inch TV and you're like, what's that terrible brand? They were like, here, here's just all of the panels we had.

• 1:19:45Nilay Patel?

  We started the company, we, we were like, should we make a lot of 40 inch TVs or just one TV?

• 1:19:52Speaker 01

  Well, how do you want to be remembered?

• 1:19:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Uh, when does it come out? Are we getting one?

• 1:19:57Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:19:58Nilay Patel?

  All right.

• 1:19:59Speaker 01

  Sorry. That's the limit of my knowledge about this very large television.

• 1:20:03Nilay Patel?

  Well, I want one and I will have it and it will go on my boat.

• 1:20:08Nilay Patel?

  That is our show. Uh, let us know if you like this segments thing. I had fun doing the interview yesterday. Dieter and I had fun interviewing Panos. As you know, we're down to one show. You should listen and watch the last episode of Control at Delete. That was super fun. Taped it live here in New York. Everybody, thank you so much. Like 300 people were there. They had to sign posters. It was, I was like, this is just a podcast, but we were signing stuff. College students were like, happy to see Walt. They're all inspired. One. I'm gonna tell the story. One kid was like, "I'm going to college, but I know a lot of famous people have dropped out of college." And Walt was like, "That's true." And he started naming, like, "Bill Gates, Steve Jobs." And he was just like, getting through the names. And the kid's

• 1:20:51Nilay Patel?

  dad was like, "What are you doing?" And Walt was like, "Those people are extraordinary. You should stay in college because you're not gonna, you can't line up a moment like those people." And the kid's dad was like, "Thank you, Walt."

• 1:21:04Nilay Patel?

  It was just great. "Thank you so much. But if you came, and if you didn't, please listen, watch." But like I said, we're down to this show. We're interested in doing more segments with this show. So if you liked the ones that we did today, let us know. We'll, we'll keep at it. We'll keep experimenting. We're also, Andrew Marino, our producer, is doing a bunch of experiments on an app called Anchor, which is like a podcasting app that doesn't have all, it doesn't require you to like, download a bunch of podcasts, just like a self-contained audio platform that I think is really interesting. Casey wrote about it. Because it's Anchor, and that's boat- adjacent. I love anything boat- adjacent. But we, it's anchor FM, anchor.fm/verge. Or you can

• 1:21:47Nilay Patel?

  get the app and subscribe to the verge. There's just been a bunch of weird stuff happening there, audio-wise, cool stories. Caitlin Tiffany, the great reporter on our culture team, is doing some stuff. Casey Newton's gonna start doing a bunch of stuff there. There's other people have ideas. So listen to that stuff, and let us know which of those things should become podcasts. It's like, basically, we're piloting new ideas on Anchor, because I think it's easier to get audio out through that app than having everybody subscribe to a whole new podcast full of whatever. So let us know there. There's also other stuff to listen to. Lauren Good, our terrific senior editor, hosts Too Embarrassed to Ask with Kara Swisher. On the Recode side, Kara Swisher hosts Recode Decode, and Peter Kafka hosts Recode Media. So don't worry, it's not like there's

• 1:22:29Nilay Patel?

  nothing to listen to. Listen to that stuff. Listen to us on Anchor. Let us know what you think, and we're gonna start rolling out some new podcasts in the future. And that's it. You can talk to us on Twitter. I'm at Reckless. Paul is at FuturePaul. Dieter's at Becklin. Oh, Megan's at Megan underscore Nicolet. Nicolet. Yeah. All right, that's it. Snip, snip. Rock. Paul.