An Incorrect Oral History of Vaping

Following an immediate but brief foray into Nilay Patel’s dark memoir-in-progress, the Vergecast progresses nicely into a week chock full of news, led by Nilay, Dieter Bohn, and David Pierce. We have Google’s new Nexus lineup, Apple’s new iPads and iMac, a brave new email paradigm, and Twitter’s content problems. Then, for some reason, there was some mild debate about the nature of vaping, but you’ll have to listen to fully grasp that thread. 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.

• 0:07Nilay Patel?

  Zero, negative one, negative two.

• 0:11David Pierce?

  You're not good at this, Eli.

• 0:13Nilay Patel?

  I am terrible at starting this show. So if you don't know, John, our producer counts us in. And then the joke was that I kept counting.

• 0:21David Pierce?

  Ah.

• 0:22Nilay Patel?

  Because numbers are infinite in both directions.

• 0:24Speaker 02

  You're gonna make a great dad.

• 0:26Nilay Patel?

  No, that's not true. Dead baby, the Eli Patel story. That's, that's.

• 0:32David Pierce?

  Goodbye, everybody.

• 0:33Nilay Patel?

  It's a book I'm working on.

• 0:34Speaker 02

  Welcome to The Vergecast, where we go dark right away.

• 0:38Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast. I'm Eli Patel.

• 0:41Speaker 02

  I am Dieter Bone.

• 0:42David Pierce?

  I'm David Pierce. Can our new tagline just be, "It only gets better from here"?

• 0:46Nilay Patel?

  There are no other directions. Rock bottom, The Vergecast.

• 0:51David Pierce?

  It's not bad.

• 0:52Nilay Patel?

  So this is The Vergecast, where we talk about technology news and other news and good times and bad times. Most of us drink while we talk.

• 1:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02Nilay Patel?

  That's just happening. But other than that, it's actually been two weeks since we were on the air. Last week at this time, David and Dieter and I were all at the Apple event. And we had The Verge Live, which hopefully you listened to. But we're back now. We have the iPads from said Apple event. The Retina iMac is here. Our review of that is going up soon. We actually gave the Retina iMac to our video team to review, because they will use it more than we will.

• 1:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:31Nilay Patel?

  It runs Chrome, everybody.

• 1:32David Pierce?

  Google Docs, it's so fast.

• 1:34Nilay Patel?

  Whoa. It's the best. By the way, Chrome runs slow on the new iMac, because Chrome is slow.

• 1:40David Pierce?

  Because Chrome is awful.

• 1:42Speaker 02

  Safari, though.

• 1:43David Pierce?

  Oh, that's so fast.

• 1:44Speaker 02

  Wicked fast.

• 1:45David Pierce?

  It's the fastest.

• 1:46Speaker 02

  Except in Google Docs, where it's pretty bad.

• 1:47Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, so we have, you can't see it, if you're presumably listening to this like most people, but we have all the devices here. Our reviews have gone up. We have a Kindle Voyage. And Dieter actually stayed in California.

• 1:57Speaker 02

  I did.

• 1:58Nilay Patel?

  Through the early part of this week and went to Google.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  I did.

• 2:02Nilay Patel?

  To play with the Nexus 6, the Nexus 9, Android Lollipop, and then Inbox, which is sort of the new Gmail.

• 2:08Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:09Nilay Patel?

  So just a lot of stuff going on there.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  A ton of stuff.

• 2:11Nilay Patel?

  And then other stuff happened.

• 2:12Speaker 02

  Microsoft just announced earnings.

• 2:14David Pierce?

  Yeah, they're selling surfaces.

• 2:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Well, they mostly, I think they mostly sell them to themselves.

• 2:19David Pierce?

  That's entirely possible.

• 2:20Speaker 02

  They doubled the revenue. On surfaces.

• 2:23Nilay Patel?

  Twenty dollars.

• 2:24Speaker 02

  They almost made a billion dollars. Nine hundred and eight billion dollars on surfaces.

• 2:28Nilay Patel?

  Microsoft is really good at having billion dollar businesses.

• 2:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:31Nilay Patel?

  It's their main thing that they do. Um, no, we should talk about that.

• 2:33David Pierce?

  I mean, that's not the worst thing to be good at.

• 2:37Nilay Patel?

  No, it's just like that's, that's their mark. And then they're like, no, that's, we're done. Billion dollar business.

• 2:42David Pierce?

  Let's try something else.

• 2:43Nilay Patel?

  Let's start, let's try something else. Uh, actually, no, talking about the service, uh, is an interesting thing to do in the context of these iPad reviews. Um, which is where we should start.

• 2:52Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:53David Pierce?

  Sure.

• 2:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:53Nilay Patel?

  Um, so I've had skin out last week.

• 2:56David Pierce?

  Yep.

• 2:57Nilay Patel?

  Um.

• 2:58David Pierce?

  So speak, I mean, speaking of where we were a week ago, it's like where we were probably a week ago at this exact minute is sitting in a room being like, that was the weirdest Apple event we've ever been to.

• 3:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's four thirty. It, it had just started. No.

• 3:10David Pierce?

  It was one thirty. So we were like.

• 3:11Nilay Patel?

  It was over.

• 3:12David Pierce?

  Yeah. Were we, were we drinking? We might've been drinking.

• 3:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, we were done.

• 3:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:15Nilay Patel?

  Um, it was weird.

• 3:16David Pierce?

  The Chili's.

• 3:16Speaker 02

  Well, it was weird because they, we, we talked about this on the, the verge live verge cast, whatever it was like. They went for forty five minutes of recap. Typically you expect recap at, at this October event. That's what they always do it. But this time it just kept going.

• 3:33Nilay Patel?

  No, you expect recap at the September event.

• 3:36Speaker 02

  No, you expect it at the October event because they recap iPhone sales.

• 3:39Nilay Patel?

  Oh, no, that, that part. I, I thought usually what they do, so this has been a weird year for Apple because they've broken their usual pattern. So usually WWDC is previews of OS ten and iOS.

• 3:50David Pierce?

  Which it was again.

• 3:51Nilay Patel?

  Which it was, that's fine.

• 3:52David Pierce?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 3:53Nilay Patel?

  Cool. They showed off a bunch of neat stuff. And then the iPhone event is iOS eight recap plus one new feature for the iPhone.

• 4:00Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 4:00David Pierce?

  Right.

• 4:01Nilay Patel?

  And this year it was no recap whatsoever. Here's the iPhone. It's bigger. Here's our weird watch.

• 4:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:07David Pierce?

  Let's talk about it for hours.

• 4:08Nilay Patel?

  Forever, right? Uh, and they blasted all that stuff.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  Lots to talk about.

• 4:11Nilay Patel?

  They blasted through that stuff really fast. And then this time it was tons and tons of recap of iOS and OS ten Yosemite.

• 4:20Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 4:20Nilay Patel?

  Like massive amounts of recap. Uh, then here's some iPads. They do all of the same things.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no, that's not true. Here's an iPad. Oh, there's another one too, but we're not going to talk about it.

• 4:30Nilay Patel?

  Dieter's mad about that.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  And then.

• 4:32Nilay Patel?

  And then, and then here's a red iMac. They spent a lot of time on the red iMac. So it was just that amount of opening recap of things we already knew. Um, also it was the quiet period right before their earnings.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:42David Pierce?

  Right.

• 4:43Nilay Patel?

  So they were like, we've sold more iPhones than ever before. It was a lot, just so many iPhones. I mean, just more than you couldn't, I mean, think of the biggest number. A number that won't materially affect our stock price, and that's the number we. And they wouldn't, they just couldn't, I mean, they couldn't say it. It's not their fault, they just couldn't say it.

• 5:02David Pierce?

  Yeah, it came off kind of weird.

• 5:03Nilay Patel?

  It came off very, and then. Uh, when we were talking to them afterwards, I was like, cool, Amazon move.

• 5:08David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 5:08Nilay Patel?

  Right? Cause that's like the Amazon move. We sold so many Kindles.

• 5:15Nilay Patel?

  Cower before us, book publishers. It's like, yeah, but how many? They're like, don't you mind? So many, just read our books.

• 5:25Nilay Patel?

  Hashet, you're soon to be dead. That's how Jeff Bezos talks.

• 5:29David Pierce?

  That's not right. But like flowing hand movements.

• 5:32Nilay Patel?

  It was like, cool, Amazon move. And they, and all the Apple people just looked at me and like, yeah, it's earning, we can't say it, but it was a lot. And by the way, Amazon, you know, they, uh, they don't sell very many of anything, that's why they don't have their numbers. It was like a little sideburn, like, you know. Um, but no, so, so the iPads came out, it was a weird event, it was a very low key, they didn't have a lot to say about their stuff.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  Tell me, tell me this. If the September event had just been iPhones.

• 5:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 5:57Speaker 02

  Would you have been, and, and they had leaked or somehow like made everybody come to understand ahead of time that the iWatch was going to wait till October? And all we had to talk about in September were huge iPhones and, you know, all this.

• 6:11David Pierce?

  And iOS eight.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  And iOS eight. That would have been fine.

• 6:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 6:15Speaker 02

  Right?

• 6:15David Pierce?

  Yeah, I mean, it would have been normal. Like last year, they did the 5S, which was.

• 6:20Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 6:21David Pierce?

  They were like, hey, look.

• 6:21Nilay Patel?

  They can't wait on the iPhones, they needed to sell the iPhones.

• 6:24David Pierce?

  No, that's what I mean, like.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  They should have waited on the watch.

• 6:25David Pierce?

  They've built an iPhone event around a lot less than the iPhone six.

• 6:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 6:29David Pierce?

  And just talked about that and done fine with it, and nobody had any issue with it. And then, so to rush out with this, I think what they're doing is like trying to get out as far ahead of the watch as they can. And they were like, if we get this into developers' hands a month earlier, like, that's a victory.

• 6:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 6:45David Pierce?

  Like, that's the only thing. The only thing I can think of is they're in a race to make sure people know about this, A, so that people don't buy other watches, because they're going to get good really fast. But B, because they just need to give it to developers so they can figure out what the hell this thing is.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  I mean, hang on. Do you really think that Apple is at all worried about Android Wear?

• 7:04David Pierce?

  Yes.

• 7:05Speaker 02

  Really?

• 7:06David Pierce?

  Yes.

• 7:06Nilay Patel?

  I think they're worried that somebody else will capture the market before they do.

• 7:09David Pierce?

  I think Apple is really worried that this watch isn't going to be very good.

• 7:13Nilay Patel?

  I think I'm very worried about that.

• 7:14David Pierce?

  So am I, but like I've never, like the, the way that Apple is doing this, like the fact that Apple is putting Johnny Ive out in front of everybody to talk about the watch is a thing. Like Johnny Ive being on stage somewhere says something about Apple. And like Apple really is working really, really, really, really hard to make sure that you know how great this watch is. And it's like, it reeks of this kind of like insecurity almost.

• 7:35Nilay Patel?

  If you had told me in 2010, and this goes, goes into the iPad review, and we should talk about that. Um, but if you had told me in 2010, when the iHad came out, that four years later, people would be most excited about the iPhone and the iMac, I would not have believed you.

• 7:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:51David Pierce?

  Yeah, neither would Apple, I don't think.

• 7:52Nilay Patel?

  Right. And that's, that turn has been made where Apple's most exciting products are definitely its phones and definitely its Macs. If they had put out a retina 12 inch MacBook Air, it would have blown the iPad, the interesting iPad out of the water.

• 8:06David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 8:06Nilay Patel?

  We would, we would be talking about the 12 inch Air is like the ultimate laptop, blah, blah. We'd be doing all of that thing that we would do.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  We will be doing that next year.

• 8:13Nilay Patel?

  Um, but with the iPad, it's, um, and this is where she got the reviews, with the iPad, they just have not focused on it. It feels like the iPad completely lacks like a champion at Apple. Like nobody cares about this product and what it should be and where it should go in a like a big way. They care about the fact that it exists and they sell a bunch of them. And some developers do something and companies like IBM want to like take it and use it as their new enterprise solution.

• 8:40Speaker 02

  Right.

• 8:40Nilay Patel?

  But they are not interested in replacing laptops with it anymore. They're not interested in having this be a primary computing device for most people anymore.

• 8:49Speaker 02

  Interested in that in principle. They say that they're interested in it, but it hasn't happened because like the software hasn't advanced enough to support it. The other thing that's related is like, Apple had their earnings before the, right around the time these reviews came out and like, Tim Cook basically said, look, we thought the iPad was going to look like the iPhone in terms of sales trajectory. It turns out it looks more like the Mac. And, and so for that kind of product that has that kind of like growth curve. It's a different innovation cycle for them, apparently.

• 9:15David Pierce?

  Yeah, I mean, Apple-

• 9:16Speaker 02

  Which is a bummer, because I feel like they could juice it. They could, if they made it more productive.

• 9:21David Pierce?

  Yeah, I mean, what Apple needs to do is, is essentially just manage expectations with shareholders, right? Like, that's what that was, is them saying, like, "Hey, don't forget, we sold a lot of these." Like, they still do. Like, the fact that it's growing, that it's even decreasing in sales, they still sell a lot of them. It's a huge business. And then, but, so what Tim Cook is trying to say now is, like, "Don't expect this number to go up that much." Also, don't forget, it's really big. And so then, that's, that's what they're trying to get at now. It's like, people cheer the Mac when it goes up and when it goes down. They're like, "Oh, well, these things are cyclical. Something will come out and it'll go back up again." And like, that's how it works. And that's fine, and that's what's expected, but we've been waiting on the iPad to just keep going up. And like, everybody waits on this, like, "Holy crap, the big number," and it's just not, that's not gonna happen.

• 10:02Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. I think it hasn't happened, because Apple has put zero effort into anything but the hardware of the iPad. And if you look at the iPad, the original iPad and the new Air 2, it's like magic. Legitimately, that is magic, right?

• 10:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, let me grab this.

• 10:17Nilay Patel?

  Human beings are smart enough to have accomplished that goal, right? That's crazy. Like, that's-

• 10:24David Pierce?

  Huge mistake. It's so ugly.

• 10:27Nilay Patel?

  That's great. Like, this is a hard product to believe, right? This is, this is science fiction, you know, 20 years ago.

• 10:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, people, people, I've seen people say, "Oh, it's thinner. Who cares?" It, like, that legitimately matters to me. Like, it feels more magical. It feels like it's just a screen.

• 10:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's, it's cool. It's a cool thing. But then you turn it on, and it, they've let it become a giant iPhone.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 10:49Nilay Patel?

  And as much as they don't want to say it's a giant iPhone, it's a giant iPhone. That's how it works.

• 10:53Speaker 02

  We already have giant iPhones.

• 10:55Nilay Patel?

  Right, and so this is a lot of, in a world with giant iPhones, like, having a giant iPhone is not very useful.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  Right.

• 11:00Nilay Patel?

  And they just haven't done the things that you need to do to a tablet. And so like, I, I, we got them, I flew back to, yeah, it's a-

• 11:08David Pierce?

  Lovely, Dieter.

• 11:09Nilay Patel?

  You should put sushi on it. Dieter's holding it up on his fingertips, like a waiter.

• 11:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, like a classy waiter, like a classy, dramatic waiter. Um, sorry, I also have schnitzel on it.

• 11:24Nilay Patel?

  No, but if you, if you think about the way like people use iPads, it's as a computer that many people can like have.

• 11:30David Pierce?

  Right.

• 11:30Nilay Patel?

  You can like put it on a table and like play with this, you pick it up and Apple has just not paid attention to how people are really using these things. They're letting app developers do it, but because iOS is restricted and the App Store has all these rules, app developers can't go past what like Apple's operating system will allow them to do.

• 11:47Speaker 02

  Can I finish your point and then I'm, I'm gonna.

• 11:51Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, and then the other thing is that because they can't go that deep, so this thing is as powerful as a 2011 MacBook Air, right? It has three cores, right? Like it scores really high and like 2011 MacBook Air. But if you asked me which computer I would rather have, a new iPad Air two or a 2011 MacBook Air, I would definitely pick the MacBook Air. Because it is more flexible, like all of that power is more, I can use it. Like browsing the web is better on a 2011 MacBook Air than an iPad Air two.

• 12:20David Pierce?

  Yeah, which is kind of a damning thing to say about.

• 12:23Nilay Patel?

  A tablet.

• 12:23David Pierce?

  A tablet, yeah.

• 12:25Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 12:25David Pierce?

  But like the thing to me is that I, I just feel like the, the bet was almost wrong. Like I think what everybody thought was gonna happen on your tablet is it just happening on your phone.

• 12:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 12:35David Pierce?

  And that's like the, the fundamental, the reason it's growing so fast is because all of the tablet growth that we thought was gonna happen and all of the phone growth that we thought was gonna happen is all just phones. Like all of that, people aren't buying tablets and not phones, like they're just buying phones.

• 12:49Nilay Patel?

  Bigger and bigger phones.

• 12:50David Pierce?

  Right. And that's, that's also why they keep getting bigger. That's why the Nexus six is bigger, like the, the, I think we're going to see it get bigger before the trend stops. And like, it, that's, that's what's happening. And that to me is like, that's also why, A, I think the 9.7 inch iPad is the only one they care about. It's why the Nexus nine is nine inches instead of seven point or seven inches or whatever. Like the bet, it's like, it's over clearly. Big tablets are the only tablets as far as anybody is concerned.

• 13:16Speaker 02

  So like little tablets were cool for what? They got two years, basically?

• 13:20David Pierce?

  Yeah, they had a, they had a minute and then phones got big enough that they did 80% of what your tablet would do and 100%. Of all these other things and it just stopped mattering.

• 13:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and this is why like the, you know, the iPad mini is the new iPod touch.

• 13:34David Pierce?

  Right, right.

• 13:35Nilay Patel?

  Like, why would you buy an iPod touch at this moment when you can buy a $240 iPad mini?

• 13:39David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 13:39Nilay Patel?

  Cause the iPod touch has.

• 13:40Speaker 02

  Cause it's faster than the 240.

• 13:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that mini is a piece of.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  The other thing about your review that I was super important, you brought it up, is the, the sharing thing.

• 13:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 13:48Speaker 02

  That is how I want to use a big tablet. I want to look at this thing and hand it to somebody and the, the fact that Google is so far ahead of Apple on like multi-user on tablets and they've got this new feature in Lollipop, which will be, I'll be putting up a thing tomorrow. You can pin an app, so you go to the multitasking view and like you hit a big pin button and then it's just locked into that app.

• 14:08Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 14:09Speaker 02

  You don't have to like create a user for, yeah, it's amazing. You don't have to create a user for your kid. You can, you can make a guest user. Or you can, in your own space, you're like, find the game, open it up, hit the big green pin button and it's locked into that app.

• 14:22Nilay Patel?

  How do you get out?

• 14:23Speaker 02

  Uh, you like swipe up and enter your lock code and you're done.

• 14:26Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 14:27David Pierce?

  That's brilliant.

• 14:28Speaker 02

  It's super genius.

• 14:29David Pierce?

  Hey, you can use, like, literally you can be like, hey, you can use my phone and hand them the phone.

• 14:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 14:34David Pierce?

  That's, that's a big thing.

• 14:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:36David Pierce?

  That's really smart, actually.

• 14:37Speaker 02

  I, I really want, you know, to be able to use multiple apps on an iPad. I really want to be able to like have a shared iPad in the family and like have them all, like, give, like, give it to your kid. If you want to hand your iPad, like you said, if you want to hand your iPad to somebody, it's a choice between.

• 14:53Nilay Patel?

  Tying them with a lock code or turning off the passcode.

• 14:55Speaker 02

  Right.

• 14:55Nilay Patel?

  Which is insane.

• 14:56David Pierce?

  Every single person in this office knows the lock code on my phone and my tablet now. Because everybody who wants to use it, I'm like, I have to tell them the, I have to tell them the lock code. Every single one.

• 15:06Nilay Patel?

  I know what it is too.

• 15:08David Pierce?

  Just tell the people.

• 15:12Nilay Patel?

  It's a secret.

• 15:14Speaker 02

  But, I mean, I, I, I don't want to get too far down the Nexus line, but like you compare the Nexus 9 hardware to this, like, I'd give me this. You compare the app ecosystem, give me this. There's so much that's right here. I just wish they would finish it.

• 15:26Nilay Patel?

  Put Android on your iPad.

• 15:27Speaker 02

  No.

• 15:30Nilay Patel?

  It's, you've got to be able to do it. Someone, somewhere has figured that out.

• 15:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know if they figured it out for like the most recent locked up.

• 15:36Nilay Patel?

  But so, but then, then you get into the, the problem with the Android tablet, which is, those are all good ideas. This is interesting.

• 15:41Speaker 02

  Android apps.

• 15:42Nilay Patel?

  And, but here are a bunch of gigantic phone apps.

• 15:45David Pierce?

  Although I do, I mean, I do think we're getting to this point now where like this has been the tension forever, right? Like can Google figure out hardware before Apple figures out services? Uh, and like, Google seems like it's running a little bit faster right now. Like if the Nexus 6 is, if the Nexus 6 is as good as you make it sound.

• 16:00Speaker 02

  It's great.

• 16:01David Pierce?

  Uh, then like, that's a big deal for Google. Like if they've made, uh, like the camera was the only thing that sucked for a long time.

• 16:08Speaker 02

  It's basically in the classes of the, the 6 plus.

• 16:11Nilay Patel?

  The camera?

• 16:11Speaker 02

  Not the camera, the overall hardware. The camera is like a really good Motorola camera. It's better, it's like, it's like Moto X class. I mean, I only used it for a few minutes.

• 16:19David Pierce?

  Yeah, fair.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  It's not a Nexus camera, it's like a Motorola.

• 16:22David Pierce?

  Which is to say it's not a total piece of garbage.

• 16:26Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that's like, I'm, I keep saying it, but it's AirPlay, iMessage and the camera. And that's why I have.

• 16:33David Pierce?

  I would say I am more locked into iMessage than ever now that I can send text messages from my computer.

• 16:38Nilay Patel?

  Yep.

• 16:39David Pierce?

  Like that to me is, is reason enough to keep my iPhone.

• 16:42Nilay Patel?

  Right. And there you go.

• 16:44David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 16:45Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I, I carry two phones. I will almost certainly buy a Nexus 6 and then have two gigantic phones. That's gonna happen.

• 16:51Speaker 02

  That's why I got the smaller iPhone, so I could carry the gigantic Android phone.

• 16:55Nilay Patel?

  Nah. I mean, so before we, we should talk about Google a lot, but we should finish talking about Apple. Uh, so the iPad Mini 3, Dieter, you reviewed this. So, but, but actually let me address the score.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  I didn't review this so much as I like had feelings about it.

• 17:11Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that's how I reviewed the iPad too. Uh, so we gave this, the iPad Air 2 a really high score, we gave it a 9.3.

• 17:16David Pierce?

  We gave them both high scores.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  What did we give this? 8.5?

• 17:18David Pierce?

  8.5, yeah.

• 17:19Nilay Patel?

  Um, and so the reason we gave it a high score is super simple. It's the best one you can buy. Uh, and the hardware is remarkable and across the tiers of pricing, you get more for less money.

• 17:28David Pierce?

  Right.

• 17:29Nilay Patel?

  So the high end one is cheaper, the 128.

• 17:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:33Nilay Patel?

  With LTE is a hundred dollars, a hundred dollars cheaper than last year and it's faster, it has better processors. Like, you can't argue with that stuff. What you can argue with is, okay, you're the market leader, you have a commanding lead and now you're getting lazy. Like straight up, Apple is like, yeah, no one's caught up to us yet.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:49Nilay Patel?

  So we're just gonna wait and see where this goes. And the problem is, you can't wait and see where it goes because you're not enabling developers to take it anywhere. Right? It's just single-purpose apps. If you could, if developers could hack this, we could hack a Mac or hack a Windows PC and like enable multitasking.

• 18:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:05Nilay Patel?

  Or, I don't know, like add extensions to the operating system in a real way that isn't just like share buttons. Yeah, then, fine. Apple, like, leave it alone. Let the developers take it.

• 18:14Speaker 02

  Well, you get real extensions in Safari, kinda.

• 18:18Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it's-

• 18:18David Pierce?

  And photo editing.

• 18:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:20David Pierce?

  And that's about it.

• 18:20Nilay Patel?

  But like, when I had my first Mac, like I used the operate, like, Apple used to do this thing where they would like, look at interesting extensions to the operating system and then buy them and incorporate them in the operating system.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  Right, right, right.

• 18:30Nilay Patel?

  Right? And there's just no way for that to happen on the Mac. It's, I mean, and it is problematic for them because it's a great piece of hardware. It's probably the best tablet you can buy. It will do the most things. It has the most apps. It has a camera that is just under the passable level at this point. It's right there. It's like winking at you.

• 18:50David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 18:50Nilay Patel?

  Um, but, no. Um, okay. And then you reviewed the iPad Mini 3.

• 18:54Speaker 02

  Which is an iPad Mini 2 with Touch ID for a hundred dollars.

• 18:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and everyone, every review I read was like, just buy the other one.

• 19:00David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 19:01Nilay Patel?

  I've never read so many reviews that are like, buy the other one.

• 19:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's insane. When's the last time, I think Mark Gurman was talking about this on Twitter, like, when's the last time any Apple product has been, buy last year's instead?

• 19:10Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 19:11Speaker 02

  Ever?

• 19:13David Pierce?

  Yeah, I can't think of one.

• 19:14Nilay Patel?

  I'm trying to figure out why it exists.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  I'm super, I mean, so the, I, I tried to figure it out and I gave up on the answer, but Apple likes to do this thing where they give you the new one at the exact same price point. So it seems like Apple is fixated on price points more than anything else.

• 19:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 19:30Speaker 02

  And so they kept the price point because-

• 19:32Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 19:32Speaker 02

  The new one costs, and usually every year, that's a really good deal. Oh, man, I can spend the same amount of money and get this awesome new thing.

• 19:37Nilay Patel?

  Sure.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  This year, like, I don't know, like, not having Touch ID is a little frustrating on an iPad. Cause if you're used to using an iPhone, you pick it up, you're like, oh crap.

• 19:47David Pierce?

  Yeah, happens to me every time.

• 19:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. But is it a hundred dollars more frustrating?

• 19:50David Pierce?

  No, absolutely not.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  No, it's not.

• 19:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It bizarre. I mean, Apple's iPad lineup is now so confusing. There's the iPad mini, the iPad mini two, the iPad mini three, the iPad Air and the iPad Air two.

• 20:02Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 20:03Nilay Patel?

  Which one's better, the iPad mini three or the iPad Air two?

• 20:07Speaker 02

  iPad Air two.

• 20:08Nilay Patel?

  Well, yeah, but like, that makes no sense. Like you're just flat, like in a store, that makes no sense.

• 20:14David Pierce?

  Well, and they renamed the iPad mini with retina display to the iPad mini two.

• 20:18Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 20:18David Pierce?

  A year later, which is strange. It just like, I just don't get it. And this is a very un Apple-y thing to do. Uh, like SKUs are fine. Like they have the storage options and certain cell service and whatever.

• 20:31Speaker 02

  Are we gonna talk about 16 gigs SKUs and how that's absurd and offensive?

• 20:35Nilay Patel?

  No, but they sell those to like random like enterprise institutions and schools and stuff like. There are random places that run one app on an iPad.

• 20:45David Pierce?

  Right.

• 20:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:46Nilay Patel?

  And that's fine.

• 20:47David Pierce?

  Like the, the kiosk you mount somewhere doesn't need 32 gigs of storage.

• 20:50Nilay Patel?

  It needs 128.

• 20:53David Pierce?

  And LTE.

• 20:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, with the, we, yeah, the iPads we have that manage our meeting room calendars, like we should buy the cheapest one.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  Oh, actually.

• 21:00Nilay Patel?

  And oh, did we?

• 21:02Speaker 02

  I'm sure that, that Chris talked about this after I got off the, the Verge live show last week, but the, the SIM is really great.

• 21:08Nilay Patel?

  Oh, the Apple SIM. So it's not rolled out yet. So the, the arguably the coolest feature and God only knows how this will actually work. Is that Apple built a reprogrammable SIM where it works with most of the carriers except Verizon in the US and in England.

• 21:22Speaker 02

  And, and, yeah, in UK, I think it's, it's EE and somebody else.

• 21:26Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, it is, it is the thing that you want all cellular things to be, which is you can open a screen. You can look at the available networks and how much they cost for like a week and buy it for a week and then turn it off. And then switch carriers and buy it for another.

• 21:39David Pierce?

  Yeah, it's amazing.

• 21:40Speaker 02

  And it's, it's the exact same thing as Apple Pay. They're not the very first manufacturer, very first carrier to have reprogrammable SIMs, but they're the first important one.

• 21:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  It's gonna be a big deal.

• 21:49Nilay Patel?

  And Chris's whole theory is that. They'll come to the iPhone next year, but we'll see how that goes. I think, I think carriers will always demand locked phones.

• 21:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:56Nilay Patel?

  And if you buy an iPad from AT&T, it'll be locked.

• 21:58David Pierce?

  I was gonna say, I think that's still what's gonna happen. And the problem is, Apple doesn't sell unlocked iPhones. Nearly the same volume it sells unlocked iPads. Like, so it's, it's, most people buy iPhones through their, like, directly through their carrier.

• 22:12Speaker 02

  Right.

• 22:13David Pierce?

  Which is why you've had to wait, you know, 11 and a half years for your iPhone to show up.

• 22:17Nilay Patel?

  No, I bought, I bought my iPhone from AT&T. I signed up for Next, which is extraordinarily confusing.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  I did that too. Actually, I lucked out when I signed up for Next.

• 22:26David Pierce?

  You both just like lit money on fire. You both know that.

• 22:28Speaker 02

  No, no, no. Check it out.

• 22:28David Pierce?

  You're okay with this?

• 22:29Nilay Patel?

  I don't know that I did or not.

• 22:30Speaker 02

  I was, I don't know. I don't know how much it will cost. Here's the thing that happened to me.

• 22:35David Pierce?

  You guys, can I just have like a hundred bucks?

• 22:36Speaker 02

  I signed up for Next with the HTC One M8. I started making payments on that. Everything was fine. And then I finally gave up on AT&T New York. I'm switching to Verizon. So I went to cancel my contract. And I said, what's my cancellation fee? What's my ETF? You don't have one.

• 22:53Nilay Patel?

  Because of Next.

• 22:54Speaker 02

  I switched to Next and all I have to do is pay off my phone and I'm done. It like, it like, it voided out my ETF.

• 23:01David Pierce?

  Listen to what you just said.

• 23:01Speaker 02

  Well, I, I, I just.

• 23:02David Pierce?

  Instead of calling it an ETF, you're calling it a phone payment. Like, I don't get it.

• 23:06Nilay Patel?

  But it's, it's paying off the subsidy and the contract.

• 23:09David Pierce?

  Either way, give me $300 and you can be out of your contract.

• 23:12Speaker 02

  I'm just saying, man. The, the feeling that like I wasn't technically in a contract was great.

• 23:16David Pierce?

  Whatever makes you guys feel better.

• 23:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:17Nilay Patel?

  No, here's the thing. I went, I tried. Okay, so I don't, it was like, I don't want to use the AT&T website. That's a fact. That's a thing I know in my heart. So I like went to Apple to buy the phone. And, you know, I do all the rigmarole. Like, we have a family plan. Everybody in my family lives in a different state.

• 23:36David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 23:36Nilay Patel?

  So, everybody has to go to the AT&T website and change their billing address to order a phone to have it shipped to them. It's true. Little AT&T hack.

• 23:43David Pierce?

  So you can't go on like the same day?

• 23:45Nilay Patel?

  You can't ship it to a different.

• 23:47Speaker 02

  No, it has to ship to your billing address.

• 23:48Nilay Patel?

  It has to ship to your billing address. So if you're like me, and there's Wisconsin, Illinois, and New York, everybody is logging in to change it to their house. So that's bonkers. So.

• 23:59David Pierce?

  So if two of you are like at the store at the same time, you're just screwed.

• 24:02Nilay Patel?

  I have been in an AT&T, this is a true story. I've been in the AT&T store on 14th Street, uh, and 8th Avenue, New York. And I have tried to buy an iPhone and they've said, no, you can't because you're not from the same state billing address. And I said, give me a computer. I logged into the AT&T account. I changed the billing address and I was like, what now? And they sold me the phone.

• 24:30David Pierce?

  Wow.

• 24:30Nilay Patel?

  Uh, this is a true fact.

• 24:32Speaker 02

  Just what now or did you say what now?

• 24:34Nilay Patel?

  No, I actually, I didn't pay for anything. I shoplifted the phone and ran away very angrily. Took the computer too. Yeah, and then they called my dad and my dad came and picked me up.

• 24:45Nilay Patel?

  It was a weird time. All right, it's my early 30s. Uh, that makes no sense. Um, no, so anyway, so I went to Apple and I tried to do this and Apple definitely like popped up a warning that was like, you will kill whatever discounts you have on your mobile share plan. Also pick a new data plan. We suggest 300 megabytes. And I was like, I don't know what this is doing. Like this is chaos and if I keep going down this road, I will end up on the phone with AT&T, which is a waking nightmare. So I like stopped and went and used the AT&T website, which was equally confusing, but somehow just cajoled me into signing up for next.

• 25:21David Pierce?

  Got you good.

• 25:22Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it was, it was, buying an iPhone is so hard. It's so difficult. Like I was like, I want to buy an iPhone AT&T. I'm ready to have upgrades, I have a contract, I've been a customer for a decade. I've had the same phone number this whole time. And they're like, but what about this confusing new choice?

• 25:37David Pierce?

  No, see, mine was the best because I went into the Apple Store at Grand Central in New York. And I went up to the thing, I was like, hey, do you have, I wanted space gray, 64 gigs Verizon. It's like, do you have any of those? He goes, no.

• 25:51David Pierce?

  So I'm still, I don't move. I stand right where I am. I open up my phone, I buy one on the Apple Store app and I hold it up and I say, I bought one. And then he hands it to me and I leave.

• 26:03Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 26:04David Pierce?

  That's what happened. It was the most insane thing I've ever experienced.

• 26:07Nilay Patel?

  You bought one from the store?

• 26:08David Pierce?

  I bought, yeah, I bought one from that store.

• 26:10Speaker 02

  Oh, and they did in-store pickup?

• 26:12David Pierce?

  Did in-store pickup on the, like I bought one on the review unit six that I was holding in my hand.

• 26:19David Pierce?

  So I used an iPhone 6 to buy an iPhone 6. And then literally like it was, I didn't mean it to be mean, but it was super mean. I was just like, I bought it.

• 26:30David Pierce?

  Like sheepishly handed me a phone. Just like danced out of the store.

• 26:34Nilay Patel?

  Why don't you just go to a store? Then I have to figure out how to cancel this order I made at AT&T. I don't know, Space Gray 128 AT&T, just if it's out there.

• 26:42David Pierce?

  It's the way to go.

• 26:42Nilay Patel?

  Just float to me. Just cut, bring it to me.

• 26:45David Pierce?

  Bring it to me. Okay, can we talk about Google? I want to talk about email.

• 26:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 26:48David Pierce?

  Well, I've been using inbox obsessively for like 24 hours.

• 26:51Nilay Patel?

  Can we talk about the iMac for four seconds? It's pretty.

• 26:53David Pierce?

  It's over there.

• 26:54Nilay Patel?

  It seems a little slow.

• 26:55David Pierce?

  It's not slow.

• 26:56Nilay Patel?

  It's not slow? John told me it's slow.

• 26:58David Pierce?

  John thinks that things are slow that are not slow.

• 27:02Nilay Patel?

  Every, the first generation of every retina computer has been slow.

• 27:04David Pierce?

  No, but it's not, but what it's not is not, what it's not is like exceptionally fast. Right, like you don't get the sense that like, and we're using the crazy specked out iMac.

• 27:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, we have like a terabyte of flash.

• 27:15David Pierce?

  It's a monster, this thing. Like I was telling Dieter before, you like, you download a huge app. And then you, you know how you drag it to the applications folder? Like I keep dragging it and nothing happens. And then I drag it again and it's like, you already copied this gigantic file. I'm like, whoa.

• 27:30David Pierce?

  But like, it's, it's very fast. It does its job really well, but like, I, and I've, you know, I'm playing crazy games that, with the graphics all the way up and it works great. But like, all the power in this thing is very clearly required to make it run well. Like I worry a lot about the base model of this thing. Like the one that's $2,500 might feel like that.

• 27:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 27:50David Pierce?

  And that's what I worry about. Like I need to actually get my hands on one of those to figure out whether that's true or not.

• 27:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, I remember.

• 27:56David Pierce?

  I feel like I'm right at the ceiling of like, what feels great? And I'm using the crazy specked out one.

• 28:01Nilay Patel?

  Right. No, and that's what I'm saying, like the first generation, the first 13 inch retina MacBook Pro, the definitely the 15 inch, the first 15 inch Pro, they all kind of like struggled. And like, this one is beyond like, they had to build crazy custom parts. You can't use it in target display mode because DisplayPort won't drive that screen.

• 28:22David Pierce?

  Right. I mean, the screen is insane. Like, just full stop. It's an unbelievable screen.

• 28:27Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 28:28David Pierce?

  It's like, it's the best computer monitor I have ever used, and I've used a lot of computer monitors.

• 28:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. No, I mean, Apple, I mean, that's where they're putting their money, like, it's interesting that they've revved the Mac to a point where everyone's like, I want to buy a new Mac. But no one I know is like, I want to buy a new iPad.

• 28:41David Pierce?

  Yeah. I wonder, like, the, I wonder how much Apple has shortened the upgrade cycle of a Mac over time. Because like, I think for a long time, you got a Mac and then when it died, you bought a new one. And I get the sense, just, this is purely anecdotal, but like, I see people wanting to upgrade more frequently now. Because they're doing things that matter more.

• 29:00Nilay Patel?

  Interesting.

• 29:00David Pierce?

  Right? Like, and this is, it's possible that this is a total lie.

• 29:02Nilay Patel?

  Maybe it's conspiracy with Google to make Chrome suck slightly more every year, until you have to.

• 29:08David Pierce?

  You just have to get it.

• 29:10Nilay Patel?

  Dude, I asked, I was hoping that the Air would get upgraded, because Becky's MacBook Air is like, it's the one we bought from Dieter.

• 29:19David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 29:20Nilay Patel?

  When Dieter first moved to New York, or when we moved to New York, we bought Dieter's old MacBook Air. Because he was, I don't know why you were selling it, but we just bought it from you.

• 29:27David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 29:28Nilay Patel?

  And this thing is just like, the fan is on. It's just like, it's just a low level noise in our apartment is the fan of this MacBook. And I refuse until there's a retina Air to upgrade it.

• 29:40David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 29:40Nilay Patel?

  It's real sorts of tension in my life.

• 29:41David Pierce?

  Well, the, the running theory is that they're waiting for Broadwell, which has been super delayed from Intel, and I, like, that seems entirely logical to me.

• 29:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but just announce it. You know, just like, let me know it's coming.

• 29:52David Pierce?

  Yeah, but they don't do that with Macs, except the Mac Pro. Like, if it looks like Darth Vader, they, they announce it. But otherwise.

• 29:58Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna end up buying a MacBook Air, and, because that one's going to explode.

• 30:03David Pierce?

  Yeah. But like, I legitimately wonder if what they were, what they didn't do.

• 30:08Nilay Patel?

  It's faster than that Air, by the way.

• 30:10David Pierce?

  But like, I wonder if part of the empty space that we felt in that Apple keynote was that MacBook Air not being there. And it had been planned for for so long, they had set all this stuff up and then it disappeared. And like, I'm sure it was months ago that they figured out this wasn't gonna happen.

• 30:23Speaker 02

  That's possible, yeah.

• 30:23David Pierce?

  I wonder if that's that empty space. Because if they had been able to come out and say, "All of our Macs are retina now," like, that's a big deal.

• 30:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:30David Pierce?

  And that's a thing they get to really come out with.

• 30:32Speaker 02

  We've known that Broadwell's delayed for a long time, for like, two, three months at least.

• 30:35David Pierce?

  Yeah, but they, like, the actual time of the delay is forever unknown. And delay means different things to everyone else than it does to Apple.

• 30:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, fair, fair.

• 30:45Nilay Patel?

  Apple's like, "We built, we built you a factory," in town.

• 30:48David Pierce?

  Yeah, exactly. So I mean, that's like, that's just a conspiracy theory, but I, I wonder.

• 30:52Nilay Patel?

  By the way, speaking of the factory conspiracy theories, that makes no sense.

• 30:55Speaker 02

  GT Advanced?

• 30:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Do you remember the thing, like, that?

• 30:58Speaker 02

  They're giving up on Sapphire?

• 31:00Nilay Patel?

  Well, they're selling, this company that was building Sapphire to space for Apple, like, went into bankruptcy, they're selling all their furnaces, and the bankruptcy court was going to release, like, the contract or an affidavit from the COO of the company, detailing what the contracts look like and all their deals. And the judge, and Apple's like, "We gotta silence this, like, we shut it down, it's gotta stay a secret." And the judge was like, "I don't know why, it doesn't make any sense." And Apple immediately settled.

• 31:24David Pierce?

  Wow.

• 31:25Nilay Patel?

  "We're done."

• 31:26David Pierce?

  I mean, I feel like the, the only other way that story ends with is like, "And then he was found dead the next morning."

• 31:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. He then died.

• 31:34David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 31:35Nilay Patel?

  It's an old, old joke. All right, let's talk about Google. So you went to Google.

• 31:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:39Nilay Patel?

  I have to say the Nexus rollout, just weirdest rollout of any product I've ever seen.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  It is a bonkers weird rollout. They, they announced it with a blog post.

• 31:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 31:49Speaker 02

  All, like, Nexus 6, Nexus 9, and Lollipop.

• 31:53Nilay Patel?

  Yep, and the Nexus Player.

• 31:55Speaker 02

  And the Nexus Player.

• 31:55David Pierce?

  Which is like, a funny thing that nobody cares about.

• 31:58Speaker 02

  And then they let some media outlets include it, "Thank you, Google," to go, like, do a hands-on. And there's a lot that is new in Lollipop, like, a lot, that, like, isn't even out, really, that people just don't know. And rushed through that, and then they're gonna do, instead of an event, they're gonna do like, an open house thing, I guess?

• 32:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 32:17Speaker 02

  It's a weird rollout. Like, you've got legitimately good products.

• 32:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 32:23Speaker 02

  These are, like, the tablet, it's a little thicker than I'd like, but it's fast, it's good.

• 32:28Nilay Patel?

  It all feels like-

• 32:29Speaker 02

  And the Nexus 6 is, like, great. It's a huge Moto X.

• 32:35Speaker 02

  It's a huge Moto X and it's it's fast and Lollipop looks great on it.

• 32:40Nilay Patel?

  I like that the code name was Shamu.

• 32:42David Pierce?

  Yeah, I mean, they're perfect.

• 32:43Nilay Patel?

  They're very straightforward about what this thing is. It gets big and you'll love it.

• 32:49David Pierce?

  Like Shamu.

• 32:50Speaker 02

  Google could have done a keynote. They could have done a let us tell you what Lollipop is. Let us show you a big ass phone. And here's a tablet with an all new processor and.

• 33:01Nilay Patel?

  It's a K1, right?

• 33:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:02Nilay Patel?

  The Tegra.

• 33:03David Pierce?

  That's just isn't, that's never been Google's style, though. It's weird. Like, other than I O, like, Google just doesn't have big events.

• 33:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but it feels like.

• 33:13Speaker 02

  Little events. They did. They do like little like room events and Sundar gets up and talks about the Chromebook Pixel.

• 33:17David Pierce?

  Yeah, that's always Sundar being like, look at this trackpad.

• 33:22David Pierce?

  That's the whole thing.

• 33:24Nilay Patel?

  It feels like, it feels like a lot of companies are super reflexive against being compared to Apple and Apple events.

• 33:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:30Nilay Patel?

  So Microsoft for Windows 10.

• 33:33Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, that event.

• 33:34Nilay Patel?

  They basically like had like a very like, they invited people to like a living room, like watch television. Like, I mean, it was like that size.

• 33:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:41Nilay Patel?

  And they're very clear. Like, we don't want to make a big deal out of this. Like, there is the sense that you, that having a big event against a product.

• 33:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 33:49Nilay Patel?

  Sets expectations that you will like have people waiting in line to buy it later.

• 33:53Speaker 02

  Right. That's fair.

• 33:54Nilay Patel?

  But Google, I mean, I just don't know what they're doing. Like, there, okay, you can make it smaller, but like show up and tell people about all the stuff you made.

• 34:01Speaker 02

  Tell a story. There's a story to tell about this thing. Like, we heard the material design story at I O, but the the full story.

• 34:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:10Speaker 02

  Is like really good. The the the, my favorite thing, probably because it reminds me of WebOS, is the the multitasking thing is now called overview. And you can have multiple cards per app. So when you create a new email, it creates another card in the overview. So then you can switch between your draft and your inbox or your draft in the, you know, one of one of your Chrome windows.

• 34:33Nilay Patel?

  It's like window switching.

• 34:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. And there's like lots of little tweaks. There's, um, there's ambient light sensor. They, they do, they've created a new version of do not disturb that is called priority that lets you allow certain apps to notify you when you're in priority mode and other apps can't. And you can choose it granularly one by one. There's just lots of little tiny tweaks that add up together to like, this feels different. And I wish that I could, I can't wait to review them, basically, because just playing around with it. Android's always had this reputation of like, it can do more, like it feels more productive. And because we're Google Apps users, we definitely feel that way.

• 35:13Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 35:14Speaker 02

  Basically, take that, make it really colorful and bright and like a little bit like, you know, more animation and like more tactile in the design of it. And then increase the productivity of it. Right. That's, that's

• 35:26Nilay Patel?

  I mean, they're pushed, they're definitely pushing Android farther, right?

• 35:28Speaker 02

  And then put that on a big ass phone.

• 35:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:32Speaker 02

  Like, it's great.

• 35:34Nilay Patel?

  Is it, is it gonna run on the Nexus 5?

• 35:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:38Nilay Patel?

  So if you're, what you're saying is I should continue using my Nexus 5 and then glue like a, like a Canon G7 to the back of it.

• 35:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:46Nilay Patel?

  And then that should be my phone.

• 35:48Speaker 02

  I'm just waiting. I'm hoping that it saves my Nexus 7.

• 35:50Nilay Patel?

  Is that right? It's not gonna save my Nexus.

• 35:52Speaker 02

  My Nexus 7, which resets every 20 minutes.

• 35:53Nilay Patel?

  Nothing. No Nexus 7 has ever lasted for more than eight months.

• 35:58Speaker 02

  But it fits my back pocket.

• 35:59Nilay Patel?

  No, not, no one argued with me. No, I mean, you're not wrong. I mean, an Nexus, like literally the world's most disposable computer.

• 36:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:07Nilay Patel?

  Like, it costs nothing, right?

• 36:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:10Nilay Patel?

  $179 or $200 or whatever. Like, I bought this. Here it is. It's in my house.

• 36:14Speaker 02

  Have I ever complained?

• 36:15Nilay Patel?

  Eight months of joy. And then, and then something bad will happen to this.

• 36:18Speaker 02

  Have I ever complained publicly about AT&T and the Nexus 7?

• 36:21Nilay Patel?

  I mean, when do we not complain publicly?

• 36:22Speaker 02

  When you put an AT&T SIM card into the Nexus 7, it turns off the ability to tether.

• 36:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, of course.

• 36:30Speaker 02

  Like, they, they, it's great.

• 36:32Nilay Patel?

  Thanks, AT&T.

• 36:34Speaker 02

  Well, it's Google, Google made this, anyway. Google made the decision not to support AT&T.

• 36:37Nilay Patel?

  No, but this is it. So I like live a life, I have AT&T iPhone. That's like, that's a thing that just keeps happening.

• 36:43Speaker 02

  Come over to Verizon, man. It's great. It's like,

• 36:45Nilay Patel?

  I gotta drag the whole.

• 36:46Speaker 02

  It's like Darth Vader, but as Darth Vader, Darth Vader, but as suit as red.

• 36:50Nilay Patel?

  Darth Vader.

• 36:51Speaker 02

  No, it's like, no, you know, Verizon is

• 36:53Nilay Patel?

  This is Xiaomi Star Wars.

• 36:54Speaker 02

  It's the Imperial Guard and the Death Star. They were in the red, red coat.

• 36:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 36:58Speaker 02

  I forget what they're called.

• 37:01Speaker 02

  Anyway, Nexus 6.

• 37:02Nilay Patel?

  Nexus 6.

• 37:03Speaker 02

  It's, it feels, it feels like a big Moto X. The back is, it's not soft touch like a standard Nexus. It's like this hard eggshell plastic thing. It's good.

• 37:12Nilay Patel?

  Can you customize it?

• 37:13Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 37:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that'd be cool.

• 37:17Speaker 02

  Screen's fine.

• 37:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, it does indeed look like a gigantic Moto X.

• 37:21Speaker 02

  And it's exactly what it is. So it's thicker than, it's weird. It's thicker than a 6 Plus, but it has the exact same battery.

• 37:29Nilay Patel?

  My question is, where are they, where are they gonna sell these things?

• 37:31Speaker 02

  Everywhere.

• 37:32Nilay Patel?

  For $6.49.

• 37:33Speaker 02

  No, no, they're with the carriers.

• 37:34Nilay Patel?

  How much is one?

• 37:35Speaker 02

  All the carriers are signed on. That's, that's the whole point. Uh, Dan Seifert wrote a really good article about this, that, that this is a Nexus where the carriers are back on board.

• 37:43Nilay Patel?

  Right. Yeah, it's the stupid TikTok of Google loving and hating carriers.

• 37:47Speaker 02

  Right, right, right.

• 37:47Nilay Patel?

  But like, that to me, it makes it all the weirder that Google didn't have an event here. Like, if this is a play, like, if they're doing something here, they're really making a move towards this being a big deal. Why would you not talk about it?

• 37:59David Pierce?

  Verizon's selling this product.

• 38:00Speaker 02

  I'm 90% sure.

• 38:03Nilay Patel?

  I guarantee you the Verizon one comes out eight months late and is crippled.

• 38:06David Pierce?

  And it's actually just a Nexus 5.

• 38:08Nilay Patel?

  Here it is. Nah, it's bigger.

• 38:11David Pierce?

  Yeah, it is coming to Verizon.

• 38:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:13Nilay Patel?

  I guarantee.

• 38:13Speaker 02

  Now I gotta find out if I can get it in multiple colors.

• 38:15Nilay Patel?

  Are you, can you order it right now?

• 38:16Speaker 02

  Probably.

• 38:17Nilay Patel?

  I ordered the Nexus 5 on the Vergecast. I might as well order the Nexus 6.

• 38:20Speaker 02

  Well, but let's see, there's also the Nexus 9, which is really interesting.

• 38:23Nilay Patel?

  Talk about the Nexus 9 while I order this Nexus.

• 38:25Speaker 02

  The Nexus 9 is, uh, it's an HTC thing, and since it's made by HTC, it's a little bit thicker than you hope. Uh, but it's, 8.9 is a really good screen size.

• 38:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:36David Pierce?

  Yeah, it is.

• 38:36Speaker 02

  It's, it's 4x3.

• 38:38Nilay Patel?

  Yes, finally a 4x3 tablet.

• 38:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's more portable than a Air in terms of, like, fitting in your bag, even though it's thicker, but it's, it doesn't feel constrained like a 7-inch tablet. But the idea of buying a 7-inch tablet right now is insane to me.

• 38:51Nilay Patel?

  No, I think.

• 38:51David Pierce?

  Do I want midnight blue or cloud white?

• 38:54Nilay Patel?

  Oh, pre-orders available starting on 10/29.

• 38:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:58Nilay Patel?

  Come on, man. Here I, look, here I am.

• 39:01David Pierce?

  Here I am.

• 39:04David Pierce?

  It is weird that they would.

• 39:05Speaker 02

  You can preorder a Nexus 9 right now.

• 39:06David Pierce?

  Like, why prevent people from pre-ordering?

• 39:08Speaker 02

  The base model of the Nexus 9 is 16 gigs.

• 39:12Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 39:14Speaker 02

  The base model of the Nexus 9 is 16 gigs.

• 39:16Nilay Patel?

  No, 16 gig tablets, that's all you get.

• 39:20Speaker 02

  The big question is, will they get, well, will material design feel good on the big tablet? It did to me. Will they get developers to make apps that feel native to a tablet size? And will this K1 processor end up being a fluke? Because wasn't the first Nexus that had a, like a Tegra? And then it was like, oh, this is amazing. And then it turned out, nah, not really, not so much.

• 39:40Nilay Patel?

  The Nexus, the Nexus 1 had an OMAP 3.

• 39:44Speaker 02

  No, I meant the first Nexus tablet.

• 39:45Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 39:46Speaker 02

  The first Nexus 7, right?

• 39:47David Pierce?

  Right.

• 39:47Speaker 02

  So, yeah, I legitimately don't, I feel like I don't trust Nvidia to make a processor for me.

• 39:53David Pierce?

  The K1 is by basically every objective measure, like a monster of a processor.

• 39:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:57David Pierce?

  And, and I have, I've never read anything that says otherwise, so I have no reason not to believe it.

• 40:02Speaker 02

  It was fast.

• 40:03Nilay Patel?

  Motorola has a long history, a long and checkered history of using weird processors and then making slow phones and making slow devices.

• 40:10David Pierce?

  Yeah, but those were all from like TI. And they were like, hey, MediaTek, one of your best friends.

• 40:15Speaker 02

  The Nexus 6 is a standard Snapdragon 805.

• 40:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, because that's the phone and the phone has to be good.

• 40:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:24Nilay Patel?

  Is that what we're saying? Like, here we made another Android tablet, like, four people will buy it and the processor will be weird and the battery life will be low and maybe it'll get really hot and no one's gonna make apps for it. But our phone is really good.

• 40:36Nilay Patel?

  That's your whole story.

• 40:37Speaker 02

  What was, what was HTC's last tablet? The Jet, the, what was it called?

• 40:42Nilay Patel?

  The Bacon.

• 40:43David Pierce?

  Was it the Jetstream?

• 40:44Speaker 02

  The Jetstream, the one that cost all the dollars.

• 40:46David Pierce?

  Yeah, and just did nothing. Yeah, like the flyer is still the best tablet they ever made.

• 40:53David Pierce?

  10 minutes. Like, they might have died while we were on this.

• 40:55Speaker 02

  What about the re-camera?

• 40:58Nilay Patel?

  I want to, two years. Two years. That's my call.

• 41:03Speaker 02

  Two years?

• 41:03Nilay Patel?

  Two years.

• 41:04Speaker 02

  I'd buy that.

• 41:05Nilay Patel?

  Death watch. Fun.

• 41:07Speaker 02

  There it is.

• 41:07Nilay Patel?

  Mark it down.

• 41:08David Pierce?

  I think two years might be too long.

• 41:09Nilay Patel?

  Today.

• 41:10David Pierce?

  I think Lenovo buys HTC in the next, like, four months.

• 41:12Nilay Patel?

  Remind me in two years that HTC is dead.

• 41:19Speaker 03

  Here's your reminder for October 23rd, 2016 at 9 a.m.

• 41:23Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 41:24David Pierce?

  At 9 a.m.?

• 41:25Speaker 03

  Okay, I'll remind you.

• 41:26David Pierce?

  Got it.

• 41:30Speaker 02

  Uh, I don't know, what else you guys want to talk about?

• 41:32David Pierce?

  Let's talk about inbox.

• 41:32Nilay Patel?

  Let's talk about inbox, so material design. Uh, inbox, new app, we should talk about all the new almost.

• 41:37David Pierce?

  We all have it, right? Can we just make everyone super jealous?

• 41:39Nilay Patel?

  We all have it.

• 41:40David Pierce?

  Have you guys gotten?

• 41:40Nilay Patel?

  You are not getting invited.

• 41:42Speaker 02

  Yes, I have gotten, I do not have invites.

• 41:44David Pierce?

  I'm not kidding you when I say I've gotten 600 emails today asking for an invite.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  I'm super sorry that I'm not replying to you.

• 41:50David Pierce?

  And everyone's very polite about it, too. They're like, I know, this is such an intrusion on your email, but if you don't give me an invite, I'll murder your friend.

• 41:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, no, it's literally everyone. It's like, uh, it's like bullies from high school who found me on Facebook. Uh, like eight-year-old kids in India who are like, will you be my friend? Like, just the whole world, like entrepreneurs in Germany. It's like, just everyone is like, maybe you'll invite me to inbox. Anyway, uh, but it's material design, and I think it looks pretty awesome.

• 42:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, the only thing I don't like is that they, um, they use the, the color for the different bundles to indicate what section.

• 42:24Nilay Patel?

  Well, talk about what a bundle is. Go, go through the.

• 42:26Speaker 02

  Okay, so the idea is your inbox is a pain, and Google's been trying to fix it a bunch, and they've tried different things. And one of the things they recently tried is they made tabs for like your forums and your promotions, and those are terrible, and I hate them.

• 42:39Nilay Patel?

  I think they're great.

• 42:40Speaker 02

  I hate them. They're the worst.

• 42:41David Pierce?

  They don't work.

• 42:42Speaker 02

  Right.

• 42:43David Pierce?

  Is the problem. Like, I actually think it's a good idea, and I think bundles are a good idea, but they don't work.

• 42:47Speaker 02

  So what they did, what they've done is they've put everything in a single reverse chronological list. But if there's a bunch of emails that all fit into a category, like a bundle, like your flight information or whatever, they stack them all together, and then you can go in, get rid of the ones you want, keep the rest of them.

• 43:01David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 43:02Speaker 02

  They also do this thing where, uh, they display information from within the email in a card right there in the main inbox. So flight information, package tracking, I don't know, addresses, whatever.

• 43:13David Pierce?

  So like, I'm looking right now, I ha, I just got a, I got a pitch from a company that's talking about bikes. And they sent me a YouTube, a link to YouTube that's like in line in the email and attached an image. And both of those things are surfaced right on my inbox.

• 43:25Speaker 02

  They've, they made it really easy to dis- Stuff they've added the bill they've added reminders so you can like just toss a reminder in there it also shows up in Google now. They've made it really easy to like categorize stuff they've made it they've done a really good job or it'll do like heuristic so if you say. Call Neelai then the reminder will actually have Neelai's phone number right there in the list so I just tap it.

• 43:49Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that part is all cool like.

• 43:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:51Nilay Patel?

  The notion that email is like a never ending incoming stream of information and somebody else should process it for you.

• 43:58Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 43:58Nilay Patel?

  And make that information useful in a way that doesn't require you to think is maybe the smartest idea about email like ever it's very clear and offshoot of like Google now.

• 44:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, and they've also done a really good job of taking that concept but not making you feel like you're out of control because the idea of a computer figuring out my email for me. And like the way mailbox does it, for example, oh, by the way, inbox does all the mailbox stuff, so you can snooze it so it'll appear when you get to work or like four hours later or whatever. But mailbox does this auto categorization stuff where it auto hide stuff and that's.

• 44:27Nilay Patel?

  Terrifying.

• 44:28Speaker 02

  Like I'm still nervous about spam filters that I'm gonna lose stuff there.

• 44:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 44:32Speaker 02

  But this does all of that auto stuff without making you feel like you've lost control of it, you can still go in there and you don't miss anything.

• 44:41Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I it's it's very clever. It's a lot of very clever ideas for email. I think most of the other ideas I've seen about email apart from mailbox. And that's really the the most interesting other email client I've ever seen mailbox is like built on like IMAP hacks.

• 44:56Speaker 02

  Right.

• 44:56Nilay Patel?

  Right. It makes all kinds of janky folders all through your email. If you if you go back to it, it's like. Wow, I mailbox ruined everything.

• 45:05Nilay Patel?

  But most other email like, you know, every time Apple does a new iOS or they do a new OS 10, they spend like three minutes talking about like the weird mail app.

• 45:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:14Nilay Patel?

  It's like we added VIP folders and it's like, nobody wants those like like nobody. It's there's this game that we're playing where computer power users are like deep they're lost deep in the weeds of like workflows.

• 45:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 45:28Nilay Patel?

  And you can add like power user features that like make one tiny weird workflow better and then like. A thousand people are happy, but for most people of the email, it's like, I don't have a workflow, but here's this never ending flood of shit. And somebody else, please deal with it.

• 45:44David Pierce?

  Well, but that, that to me is not the like, they're on the wrong side of that conversation. But the wrong side of the conversation that everyone is on the wrong side of is like, everybody writes this think piece every day where it's like email is not the problem. We are right. Like the idea that we use email wrong and it's and that email should be like a mailbox. Where we keep letters to each other as opposed to like anything else. Like that's what all of these things are trying to get at is like, and that's what Sparrow was for a long time. It's like write letters. What this is, is Google saying, here's how you use email. It's a stream of shit that you have to do something with. Sometimes that's just make it go away. Sometimes that's take action. Sometimes that's response. Sometimes that's call Neli like, and what it's doing, it's always call Neli.

• 46:24Nilay Patel?

  Barnes and Noble is having a sale.

• 46:26Speaker 02

  The speech you're giving me right now is precisely the speech that the product managers gave me when they first introduced the product. It's like, we are, we love email. We aren't going to like fix it. We're going to, we're going to fix it by fixing it for you, not trying to change people's behavior. You're email, you're always going to get promo emails.

• 46:43David Pierce?

  Right.

• 46:44Speaker 02

  You're always going to get flight information sent to you. You're always going to get this crap showing up in your inbox. So let's make the inbox better.

• 46:49David Pierce?

  Right. And the idea is not like, it's not, we're not using email wrong. We're using email the way we use email. And this to me is really exciting because, because it's the first thing that actually sees the way that we use.

• 46:59Nilay Patel?

  I will ask you, my friend who loves standards.

• 47:03Speaker 02

  Oh, it's the worst.

• 47:06Nilay Patel?

  Because this, this, this is the end of like email as a standard, right? Where you can have it on a mail.

• 47:11Speaker 02

  It's plugged directly into Gmail. It's getting access that nobody else is getting. It's.

• 47:15Nilay Patel?

  There's a Gmail API coming, right?

• 47:17David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 47:18Speaker 02

  Well, it's supposed to support this stuff.

• 47:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. But they announced it. Anyway, but like, this is the end of email as like a standard service that you can sign up for and like plug shit into.

• 47:27Speaker 02

  But we had it. We had a beautiful hundred years where we were able to communicate with each other, not via corporations, not by like serfdom or paying somebody to do it, or we could pay the government, you know, the post office to do it. We had, and then we had the internet and there was a beautiful open time there. But that time is over. The only way to communicate with each other is by paying somebody else. It's going to cost me 20 bucks just to say hi to you tomorrow.

• 47:50Nilay Patel?

  Wait, how would you, if you lived in the 1800s?

• 47:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, you had the Pony Express.

• 47:56Nilay Patel?

  You had to pay the Pony Express.

• 47:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it was run by the government and that was like, that, that helped.

• 48:00Nilay Patel?

  Why did that help?

• 48:01Speaker 02

  Because it was.

• 48:02Nilay Patel?

  Ponies are, ponies are standardized.

• 48:04Speaker 02

  No, I'm saying we had.

• 48:05David Pierce?

  This is like wanting to pay for your phone, but not your carrier. Right. Western Union was a corporation.

• 48:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. Okay. We had a beautiful 50 years then.

• 48:12Nilay Patel?

  Where like standards of the internet like let you do whatever you want.

• 48:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, you wouldn't need to pay a corporate entity in order to communicate. We let that go. It's over now.

• 48:21Nilay Patel?

  Cause they made it better. This is legit, like my first email experience was on Pine.

• 48:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, mine too.

• 48:28Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like I paid a lot of money to go to that college.

• 48:31Speaker 02

  Pine was awesome.

• 48:32Nilay Patel?

  That's all I'm saying. Like I used to pay AOL before that. Then I paid, uh, whatever crappy Wisconsin air inc dot net.

• 48:41Speaker 02

  But then it. Yeah, but you could go to the library and get it.

• 48:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but like only because of more and more corporate involvement. I disagree with your premise.

• 48:49Speaker 02

  Well, you're wrong.

• 48:50Nilay Patel?

  When did you not have to pay with a corporation and pay to communicate with somebody at a distance?

• 48:53Speaker 02

  When you went to school.

• 48:57Speaker 02

  You know, you went to college or went to high school and got a free email address. Or when you, when you had like, okay, like how, how deep do you want to go? And you set up your own server with an email thing on it in your house and you plug it into the internet.

• 49:08Nilay Patel?

  Okay, fair. That's the one.

• 49:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:10Nilay Patel?

  You could do that. You can still do that.

• 49:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:13Nilay Patel?

  But the best experience is to like, give it to Gmail, like to Google.

• 49:17Speaker 02

  Right.

• 49:17Nilay Patel?

  And let Gmail like filter out your flight information and pop it up in Google.

• 49:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, and to just trust them completely. Because not only are they reading your email for ads now, they're reading your email to give you information, which is fine. It's fine. I'm not, I'm not going to go stallman on this thing, but

• 49:32Speaker 02

  at least accept that we had some like openness and inner communication between things. And we had a chance to like build an open ecosystem where there could be an email store. And then there could be a plethora of apps that were able to communicate it as first class citizens. And we don't live in that world anymore. It's just like Twitter. There was a time when Twitter was like a place where things went. And there was an open system for apps to talk to it. And we don't live in that world anymore.

• 49:55Nilay Patel?

  And that's.

• 49:56Speaker 02

  And maybe that world is better, but we should admit that like we had a chance to build it a different way and chose not to.

• 50:02Nilay Patel?

  I don't think, in the case of Twitter, that world is just clearly not better. Right, like, cause.

• 50:07Speaker 02

  Oh, well, which world is that better?

• 50:10Nilay Patel?

  The world, the one we live in now.

• 50:11Speaker 02

  I completely agree.

• 50:12Nilay Patel?

  Here's the thing with Twitter, Twitter.

• 50:14Speaker 02

  Twitter is a very pretty hate machine.

• 50:16Nilay Patel?

  Good. Good, that's a nice reference. It's 25th anniversary, 30th, something like that.

• 50:20Speaker 02

  That was, that was, yeah.

• 50:21Nilay Patel?

  Maybe, I'm gonna go, that's free. Uh, um, no. If you look at Twitter, like, there used to be, uh, like, a wide, like, a wide-ranging amount of innovation that happened, right? Because everyone was making Twitter apps, like, lots of people were innovating different things, or pushing the service in different ways. And it was like, it was a playground, right?

• 50:39David Pierce?

  What was Twitter was built on. That's like how app replies and hashtags became a thing, was like, they put out a small thing and then people build big things.

• 50:46Nilay Patel?

  But that wasn't happening in email.

• 50:48David Pierce?

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:48Nilay Patel?

  Right. Um, and I couldn't tell you why, but it certainly wasn't happening in email. What's, and so it's weird.

• 50:54Speaker 02

  It wasn't happening until a few years ago, when, like, Gmail apps started percolating up. It, it happened because there was a lack of a decent Gmail app on iOS. And a lack of a decent mobile email app that wasn't called BlackBerry. That's what, that's what it was.

• 51:05Nilay Patel?

  Right, but if you think about Twitter, like, this base of innovation, you think about Twitter, when Twitter closed their platform off, like, the innovation stopped, right? And Twitter has a lot of work to do, you know, to figure out all the, all the innovation needs to do around, like, harassment and abuse, and then making money, and then, like, watching YouTube Twitter.

• 51:19Speaker 02

  Think about, okay, actually, I gotta stop you.

• 51:21Nilay Patel?

  But as you watch email, as the email funnel closes,

• 51:25Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 51:26Nilay Patel?

  the innovation rate is actually increasing, because these companies are differentiating their core email experiences, as opposed to, like, their email apps that plug in a different provider.

• 51:34David Pierce?

  Sure. Well, so maybe it looks, it's more like messaging apps than Twitter, where you have this proliferation of things that are.

• 51:39Speaker 02

  Well, that's another place where, like, we, like, I'm not saying that the open interconnected world is always better. I'm just saying that, like, there's things that are valuable there that we're not gonna have.

• 51:47David Pierce?

  I also think it's always better. I mean, like, what if you could only, it's, it's text messaging versus messaging apps, right? Like, people use messaging apps, but everybody, if text messaging went away tomorrow, everybody would revolt. Right. Right, like, because that's how we connect to each other. And if you couldn't just make phone calls to other people, if that wasn't an identifier, and that's like, that's the thing to me, is, that's what's the, you know, the conspiracy theory logical conclusion of all this, is that eventually my Gmail address will not talk to your Outlook address.

• 52:16Nilay Patel?

  Right, right.

• 52:16David Pierce?

  And that's like, that's not inconceivable.

• 52:18Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, I mean.

• 52:19David Pierce?

  And when that happens, email dies, like, flat out, it dies.

• 52:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but I, there's too many.

• 52:23David Pierce?

  Email becomes a yammer. Like, it's a corporate communication tool, and that's when Slack kills email.

• 52:27Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 52:28Speaker 02

  But that will never happen.

• 52:29David Pierce?

  No, I mean, it won't, but that's, that's the danger, right? Like, what we're talking about is fundamentally that danger, that they stop being able to talk to each other.

• 52:36Speaker 02

  Right.

• 52:36Nilay Patel?

  No, the danger-

• 52:37Speaker 02

  But like, we, we build the messaging app world like that hellscape that you're describing with email.

• 52:41David Pierce?

  Right.

• 52:42Speaker 02

  We did, we decided to do it that way.

• 52:43David Pierce?

  Right, and it's-

• 52:44Nilay Patel?

  And there was- We decided, we just let people do whatever they want.

• 52:46David Pierce?

  Right.

• 52:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, there was a period where, like, Microsoft was in trouble for not communicating the way they were supposed to with AOL or whatever the deal was.

• 52:52Nilay Patel?

  No, AOL was in trouble for not opening it to-

• 52:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:56Nilay Patel?

  But like, that-

• 52:58Speaker 02

  Yet another story of AOL missing the boat.

• 53:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but like, AOL opened it up, and then what happened? Like-

• 53:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:04Nilay Patel?

  It's, I mean, it's just, I, I don't think that these apps are in any, like, email will persist because there's enough commercial incentive for every company that exists to want to be able to reach everybody, and everybody has an email address.

• 53:17Speaker 02

  Well, apparently not, according to Twitter.

• 53:20Nilay Patel?

  Huh? What?

• 53:22Speaker 02

  The digits, the new developer platform that-

• 53:24Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 53:24David Pierce?

  That was a solid segue.

• 53:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 53:26Nilay Patel?

  It was well done.

• 53:27David Pierce?

  This guy, I wish he had a noise.

• 53:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, um, I should, I should preface this by saying I am a long time friend with the, the main guy that presented the new Twitter thing, his name is Michael Ducker.

• 53:37Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 53:37David Pierce?

  Well, then you have to leave, because you're clearly biased.

• 53:39Nilay Patel?

  Gamergate.

• 53:42David Pierce?

  Can you start yelling Gamergate anytime you're mad at somebody?

• 53:45Speaker 02

  Actually, I'm gonna, I'm, imagine a world where-

• 53:49Nilay Patel?

  I'm so sorry.

• 53:50Speaker 02

  Twitter still had an open API, and the same thing that happens on, like, WordPress message boards, where, WordPress blogs, where you could sign up for a service that has a blacklist of horrible people, and you're like, those people don't get to comment on it.

• 54:03Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 54:04Speaker 02

  And I could have a Twitter app that I could just sign up for the blacklist, and then I wouldn't be, like, auto, those, all those people would be unblocked. That could, that would happen in an open ecosystem, which Twitter is not.

• 54:14Nilay Patel?

  Right, I mean, I, at some point, Twitter has, is having a developer conference this week, so you can't actually get them on the phone. But next week, I'm going to talk to Twitter and it like, it is, we're at the point where, speaking of gamer gate, Twitter has to start to be accountable for the fact that they have, they have let their platform become just

• 54:34Speaker 02

  A pretty hate machine.

• 54:35Nilay Patel?

  A hotbed of abuse, right? And even just stupid things, like, there are, part of the harassment is people making fake accounts and like impersonating other people, and Twitter won't verify their real accounts.

• 54:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:47Nilay Patel?

  Just won't do it. Who knows why? Because you don't work at the New York Times, or you don't work at

• 54:52Speaker 02

  The Verge.

• 54:52Nilay Patel?

  Right, or something, right? Like, it's ridiculous. You're a game developer, like, it's, there's like all this weird stuff happening around Twitter that they need to start being accountable for. But that's neither here nor there. Because that is the stuff where the platform provider needs to step up and be the central authority, and you can't get it from like

• 55:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, and, and to be clear, like, Twitter can't have it both ways. If they want to be like, "We're an open platform, we can't stop this," then, okay, let us stop it. But instead, "We're not an open platform, we're in charge, you have to use Twitter our way." Okay, fine.

• 55:23Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 55:24Speaker 02

  Then make it not terrible for people that are being abused.

• 55:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 55:27Speaker 02

  Those are your choices.

• 55:28David Pierce?

  Yeah, I mean, and it seems like it, it would be, like, the, the Twitter that has always existed is much more the former, right? Where it's like, "We're a platform, we're not responsible for how you use it, we built this thing, do whatever you want with it." But then they shut down the "do whatever you want with it" part.

• 55:42Speaker 02

  Right.

• 55:43David Pierce?

  So they're just like, they're turning a blind eye to something that they're not enabling anyone else to solve.

• 55:46Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 55:47David Pierce?

  And like, I actually don't think Twitter is responsible, but Twitter, or I don't think Twitter should be responsible for fixing hate speech on Twitter. I really don't, like, it's, it's not, it's the same as like YouTube sort of throwing its hands up to copyright takedown. It's like, it's, they, they built a thing that you put on what you want, and that's what it's made of. But what they need to do is give other people the tools to do it.

• 56:07Speaker 02

  Right. Well, they need to pick one or the other.

• 56:09David Pierce?

  The fact that they haven't is right. You can't, you can't have it both ways. You're right.

• 56:13Speaker 02

  And to be clear, Twitter might not have the ability to stop that, right? They might not, like, technically have the resources to fix it. And we can't be super pissed at them about that. It's a super hard problem to solve.

• 56:22Nilay Patel?

  Right. Oh, I disagree.

• 56:24Speaker 02

  You'd be kind of pissed.

• 56:25Nilay Patel?

  You know, YouTube comments what, two years ago, were the worst on the internet?

• 56:28David Pierce?

  They're the worst on the internet.

• 56:30Nilay Patel?

  No, I would, I would tell you that, that wide, wide open, wide open Twitter is worse than YouTube.

• 56:38Nilay Patel?

  Straight up. Wide open Twitter is way worse than YouTube comments.

• 56:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's fair.

• 56:42Nilay Patel?

  And YouTube has all kinds of tools now. Like YouTube knows, like where do most people watch video? They watch on YouTube, right? They need to like protect themselves and shield themselves from all the bullshit that happens on YouTube comments. And they're doing a better job. Their YouTube's biggest problem is that the biggest consumers of YouTube are like 13 year olds, right? Like, so they have like bad ideas.

• 57:03Speaker 02

  Well, yeah.

• 57:04Nilay Patel?

  And they typed them into the text box, right? Like, it's not that people are crazy or it's like literally that they're not sophisticated. Like the people who like leave YouTube comments for the most part are not like are not particularly sophisticated because the majority of them are very, very young. Twitter's biggest problem is that it's super easy to be horrible.

• 57:22Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah. Well, and also-

• 57:23Nilay Patel?

  Fire it off into the void and be horrible.

• 57:25Speaker 02

  It's super easy to be horrible and but this is a thing that I want to write. Maybe I will. I told David about it. It's not only it's a super easy to be horrible, it's super hard to ignore it.

• 57:34Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 57:35Speaker 02

  It's super hard to block it. It's super hard to just move past it. You know, if someone writes a horrible thing on a Nazi site, I just don't go to that Nazi site.

• 57:44Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 57:45Speaker 02

  But Twitter is there and the the moment when you see it and the moment when you process the horribleness that's coming in from you is so short because it's only 140 characters that you can't like, oh, something terrible is over there. I'm not going to do it. It's just it's there and it goes right into your brain.

• 58:00Nilay Patel?

  It it it's a very and this is Twitter's power, right? Twitter's strength is that it was designed for like a clique of like cool nerds at South by Southwest, like in 2007.

• 58:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 58:11Nilay Patel?

  And it's still built on that foundation. Like, everyone should talk to each other. The world will be better. The green revolution will take place. But the reality is they have to balance all that idealism against the fact that horrible people are using it. And that means giving people tools. And we did end up talking about Gamergate yet again.

• 58:26Speaker 02

  Whoopsies.

• 58:27Nilay Patel?

  Gamergate.

• 58:28Speaker 02

  Read Chris Grant's piece on Polygon. It's really good. And also Addie's piece today.

• 58:32Nilay Patel?

  Addie's piece today is really good. She's great. Addie and TCR are very fired up by Gamergate. We're just we're just we're just letting him run.

• 58:39Speaker 02

  The thing I keep thinking is-

• 58:40Nilay Patel?

  And Chris Grant at Polygon and Todd Vanderworth, actually, has been doing great stuff at Fox. Our company's cool.

• 58:48David Pierce?

  No big deal.

• 58:48Nilay Patel?

  Everyone's all fired up.

• 58:49Speaker 02

  Now, talk about the, what do we got left? Voyage, you want to talk about the Voyage?

• 58:52David Pierce?

  Wait, can we talk about Apple Pay real fast?

• 58:54Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 58:54David Pierce?

  Uh, so Apple Pay is out.

• 58:56Nilay Patel?

  It works. I used it.

• 58:57David Pierce?

  Did you? I still haven't used it.

• 58:58Nilay Patel?

  I used it.

• 58:59David Pierce?

  How was it? Tell me everything.

• 59:00Nilay Patel?

  It was super easy because the technology has existed for a hundred years.

• 59:07David Pierce?

  No, but you know what I think is really interesting?

• 59:08Speaker 02

  Wait, a hundred years? 20 Express?

• 59:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. No, I mean, like, it's out, it's been there, like, it's not, it's like, it's baked out, right? Like, I opened Apple Pay, I opened Passbook, I didn't even do the thing where I had to take a picture of my credit card. They're like, do you want to use the credit card you use for Apple stuff?

• 59:23David Pierce?

  Yeah, it was mine too.

• 59:24Nilay Patel?

  And I pushed a button and it showed up.

• 59:25Speaker 02

  That is a, that is one of the killer features.

• 59:28Nilay Patel?

  Do you think Dwayne Reed, we should ask, we should call Walgreens and Dwayne Reed, don't steal this story, I'll kill you. Copyright. Hashtag patent. Don't steal the story. We should call Walgreens and Dwayne Reed and see if they had a crazy sales spike in the first day of Apple Pay.

• 59:42Speaker 02

  They just sold all the licorice.

• 59:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, like, seriously, I was like, I'm gonna buy this Diet Coke, uh, this pack of Mentos, uh, and I don't know, like,

• 59:50David Pierce?

  All of us, Chris Webber, one of our reporters came back and he was like, I bought candy corn.

• 59:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 59:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:55David Pierce?

  He's like, I don't know why, but I bought candy corn.

• 59:57Nilay Patel?

  Garbage for the first day. Like, this is bad for me. Is this a vape? I'm gonna do some vaping today. By the way, I buy-

• 1:00:05David Pierce?

  It's pretty money when it's Apple.

• 1:00:05Nilay Patel?

  I buy vapes almost every time I go to a convenience store. This is just a thing that happens.

• 1:00:11Speaker 02

  Not CBS though. CBS doesn't sell them.

• 1:00:13David Pierce?

  Why?

• 1:00:15Nilay Patel?

  Cause I don't want to buy, like, what I have, what I have termed a diesel vape.

• 1:00:21Nilay Patel?

  So Dieter has a diesel vape, Kyle, who runs our studio, has, there are diesel vapes all through this room.

• 1:00:26David Pierce?

  There are diesel vapes all through this room.

• 1:00:27Nilay Patel?

  Like, what you don't know about the studio-

• 1:00:28Speaker 02

  Can you, back up, back up. Can you explain what you mean by diesel vape?

• 1:00:32Nilay Patel?

  So, okay, so here is, here is, as I understand it, the brief history of vaping.

• 1:00:38Speaker 02

  It actually goes back to the 40s.

• 1:00:41Nilay Patel?

  So in the 40s, people were crazy. No, a brief history of vaping. First, there were electronic cigarettes, which were designed to look like cigarettes. Those are the pens, right?

• 1:00:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:50Nilay Patel?

  Right? That's like a blue or an Enjoy. And that's basically like faking it, right? Like you're there.

• 1:00:56Speaker 02

  Oh, you're doing a brief history of like mass-produced, popular vaping.

• 1:01:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, not your weird, like, underground vape action.

• 1:01:03David Pierce?

  Dieter was vaping way before vaping was cool.

• 1:01:05Nilay Patel?

  All right, I'm saying, in the modern era, in the modern vape life, right?

• 1:01:11David Pierce?

  So like the last eight months?

• 1:01:12Nilay Patel?

  Yes. First, there were like the fake cigarettes that lit up with blue on the end.

• 1:01:16David Pierce?

  Wait, hold on. You gotta go, you gotta go one. Who was the tipping point? Like, what was there was, was it like Ashton Kutcher vapes this one time?

• 1:01:22Nilay Patel?

  No, it was those weird ads with the guy in the beach and he had the blues.

• 1:01:24Speaker 02

  No, it was, uh, it was Steven Dorff.

• 1:01:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Steven Dorff. It was Steven Dorff. He was walking around the beach and he's like, I can finally be whoever I want to be. And it's like, what you want to be is stupid. Right? Like, this is a stupid ad, but I appreciate your resolve. So, so that was the first gen of vapes. And then people are like, you know what? This is stupid. I'm not actually smoking. So I want something, I want like a, I want like a monster vape.

• 1:01:48David Pierce?

  I want to show off.

• 1:01:49Nilay Patel?

  So then there was like vape hacking began. And that was when diesel vapes appeared on the scene because vaporizers are mostly a cartridge of like the coil and fluid and then a battery, right?

• 1:01:59Speaker 02

  I just can't listen to this.

• 1:02:00Nilay Patel?

  Just, just, I mean, so like, basically what's happened in the world is the batteries are getting crazier and crazier. Like, battery innovation, you know where the next generation of batteries are gonna come from?

• 1:02:09Speaker 02

  Do you have any idea how many PR pitches you're going to get?

• 1:02:11Nilay Patel?

  Deeply addicted to nicotine. Or they're gonna invent the next generation of bat- you know, that's like the problem in the world.

• 1:02:18Speaker 02

  Those batteries need to get better.

• 1:02:19Nilay Patel?

  The batteries need to get better. It's because people are fucking lit on E-sticks all the time.

• 1:02:25Nilay Patel?

  Like, just non-stop. That's what's gonna happen.

• 1:02:28David Pierce?

  Someone who's like a brilliant MIT scientist is just like, my vape is dead and it just runs into the lab.

• 1:02:32Nilay Patel?

  He's like, I've got it. Put it in my veins. So now it's gonna, so now all these people, Dieter included, and most of the cyborgs in our studio all have gigantic batteries on their vapes.

• 1:02:43Speaker 02

  Mine's only like 650 million.

• 1:02:45Nilay Patel?

  But it's hu- it's like a, it's, it's, it's a large device.

• 1:02:48Speaker 02

  It's like a pen.

• 1:02:49Nilay Patel?

  You can get one at the vape store by my house. It looks like a grenade, has an LCD display and connects to your phone over Bluetooth.

• 1:02:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:57Nilay Patel?

  No. Anyway. So I'm not ready to do that.

• 1:03:02Speaker 02

  You just.

• 1:03:03Nilay Patel?

  But I like things that light up. And there was a time when I enjoyed nicotine. And so that combination is deadly. Just dead.

• 1:03:13David Pierce?

  Things that light up and nicotine.

• 1:03:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:16David Pierce?

  If it just smelled like whiskey.

• 1:03:18Nilay Patel?

  Like as a guy who like, you know, like we run a technology website. Like make technology more addictive.

• 1:03:25David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:26Nilay Patel?

  Like, yeah, okay.

• 1:03:27David Pierce?

  So you're saying is you're like two years away from a battery breakthrough.

• 1:03:29Nilay Patel?

  I over vape a lot. Like legitimately over vape is like a thing that I. Every, every, every, you know, every like Sunday morning I wake up and Becky's like, how are you? I'm like, well, I over vaped.

• 1:03:42David Pierce?

  That would be like if Sublime were still around.

• 1:03:44Nilay Patel?

  Are you sure you didn't? Are you sure you didn't over drink, Neil?

• 1:03:49Nilay Patel?

  Definitely over vape.

• 1:03:50David Pierce?

  That must be what it is.

• 1:03:52Nilay Patel?

  Diesel vapes. We should do a feature on diesel vapes.

• 1:03:56Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:03:56Nilay Patel?

  No. What? That's yours. Dieter, like Dieter's is crazy.

• 1:04:00Speaker 02

  This is a standard. This is a standard Joey battery and a.

• 1:04:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and then modular. All of the factories are like next to each other in China.

• 1:04:08David Pierce?

  Watching people, watching people clean their vape is my favorite.

• 1:04:11Speaker 02

  You guys, you know, I wrote this article in July, right?

• 1:04:14David Pierce?

  It's just the most loving, careful thing where they're like, I'll see somebody who's like angry and just like banging in their keyboard. And then they'll take their vape out and just sort of just very careful. I'm just like, oh no, I'm so sorry.

• 1:04:25Nilay Patel?

  No, I'm saying like we, this is like this room behind us. If you're watching the live stream, this room.

• 1:04:29Speaker 02

  You get a contact high. I mean, you just walk out there and you're.

• 1:04:32Nilay Patel?

  It's like, these people are cyborgs. Like the, the, the next step is like, we will drop lines of nicotine from the ceiling and just pump it in like the matrix constantly.

• 1:04:42Speaker 02

  As long as it doesn't actually give you cancer and the, you know, jury's still out of that.

• 1:04:45Nilay Patel?

  He's vaping right now. I see you.

• 1:04:47Speaker 02

  Look.

• 1:04:48Nilay Patel?

  I see you vaping. Yes. Everyone's vaping all the time.

• 1:04:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:53Nilay Patel?

  It's just like, it's like, and they light the room in blue. So like, it's a dull blue light and then like the lights, the screens and like the clicking sounds and then just like puffs of smoke.

• 1:05:02David Pierce?

  It's what I imagine like working at Microsoft in the eighties was like.

• 1:05:05Speaker 02

  Well, that's what I'm saying is we give out coffee. It's a drug to keep people awake. Nicotine is just the same thing. It used to be cool to smoke and work. You got your keyboard, you're banging away.

• 1:05:13Nilay Patel?

  It's just, and then soon we'll give out cocaine.

• 1:05:15David Pierce?

  Right. We're getting further away from it here. All right. Let's talk about the Kindle and then we can.

• 1:05:19Speaker 02

  Oh, Kindle Voyage.

• 1:05:21Nilay Patel?

  It's uh, it's great, but it's no, it's no e-vape.

• 1:05:25David Pierce?

  It's not a diesel vape.

• 1:05:26Speaker 02

  The first thing to know about the Kindle Voyage is.

• 1:05:28David Pierce?

  Can I be a new score system diesel vape or not diesel vape?

• 1:05:29Nilay Patel?

  Diesel vapes, man.

• 1:05:30Speaker 02

  Amazon is really bad at making cases.

• 1:05:33David Pierce?

  Amazon's horrible at making cases.

• 1:05:34Nilay Patel?

  No, the, the paper white case was good.

• 1:05:36Speaker 02

  This thing is so bad. What is happening here?

• 1:05:38David Pierce?

  All of the origami cases are nonsense and should be killed.

• 1:05:41Speaker 02

  This is the worst. Like who wants to prop their.

• 1:05:43Nilay Patel?

  And it doesn't stay there, right? It'll like pop off.

• 1:05:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, it's terrible.

• 1:05:46David Pierce?

  What's great is it'll work for like a day. Like it works long enough to get it like you on the thing. And then you're like, oh, this works. And then the next time you try it, it just doesn't work ever again.

• 1:05:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:55Speaker 02

  The second thing you need to know is if you've got disposable income, you should buy it.

• 1:06:00David Pierce?

  That's fair.

• 1:06:00Speaker 02

  Because it's amazing.

• 1:06:02Nilay Patel?

  Okay. So the Voyage's new paper white has a much higher resolution screen. It has a glass front.

• 1:06:06Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:06:06Nilay Patel?

  It has buttons that aren't buttons.

• 1:06:08Speaker 02

  There's squeezy, squeezy zones.

• 1:06:09David Pierce?

  I don't like the squeezy zones, but the thing.

• 1:06:11Speaker 02

  No, they should just be buttons.

• 1:06:13David Pierce?

  Getting, making the display flush.

• 1:06:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:15David Pierce?

  Matters so much more than I thought. Like I was editing Chris's review and he like went on and on about it. And I was like, is this actually that big a deal? And then he handed the thing to me and I was like, oh, okay.

• 1:06:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:23David Pierce?

  I get it.

• 1:06:24Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 1:06:24David Pierce?

  Yeah. Like just the way it feels to change pages now is so much more natural.

• 1:06:29Speaker 02

  I like the squeezy thing. It's fine. Like you just.

• 1:06:31Nilay Patel?

  Maybe I gotta take this thing out of the dumb case.

• 1:06:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. Take it out of the dumb case.

• 1:06:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Cause I have one.

• 1:06:37Speaker 02

  The screen, like the text looks great. It, the, the auto dimming thing, the auto brightness thing is cool.

• 1:06:43Nilay Patel?

  This is the platonic ideal of an e-reader.

• 1:06:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, except there's no color.

• 1:06:46Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 1:06:47Speaker 02

  Um, but it's, it's just too expensive.

• 1:06:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. How much is it?

• 1:06:50Speaker 02

  200 bucks.

• 1:06:51Nilay Patel?

  That's too much. And stuff.

• 1:06:53Speaker 02

  I mean, I bought one and it it immediately got taken by my fiance to London. And so I haven't touched it yet.

• 1:07:00Nilay Patel?

  But here's the thing. Well, there you go. But here's the thing. What's interesting about the Kindle is it is the one single purpose device that I buy every time.

• 1:07:09David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:09Nilay Patel?

  Every time a new one comes out, I just buy it, instinctively buy it.

• 1:07:12David Pierce?

  It just, the thing that kills me about the Kindle, and this is purely just me being annoyed, is that like, if they would put back the headphone jack and support the whisper thing for voice, I would pay whatever they asked me to pay.

• 1:07:24Nilay Patel?

  Why?

• 1:07:25David Pierce?

  Because for me, it's like

• 1:07:26Nilay Patel?

  Doesn't your phone do that?

• 1:07:27David Pierce?

  The actual value for me of being able to like, what I tend to do, right, is I have like a 12 minute walk to the subway. So I listen to a podcast and then I read the whole way on the subway.

• 1:07:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:37David Pierce?

  And then I walk here. And like, if I could just seamless, like, listen to the book, read the book, listen to the book. Like, that's what I want.

• 1:07:44Nilay Patel?

  Your brain can do that?

• 1:07:46David Pierce?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:07:47Nilay Patel?

  I definitely can't do that.

• 1:07:48David Pierce?

  No?

• 1:07:48Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 1:07:49David Pierce?

  You can't do the sync with the audiobook and the reading?

• 1:07:51Nilay Patel?

  No, no, no, no.

• 1:07:51David Pierce?

  Interesting. I love it. And like, every time I've done it, the HDX supports it and I use that a bunch and it's awesome. And like, it's my favorite thing that Amazon has, the ability to just like, completely change context with me where I can like, just if I'm listening to a book and then I have five minutes to sit down and I'm like, I want to read.

• 1:08:07Nilay Patel?

  Why wouldn't you just keep listening to the book on the subway?

• 1:08:09David Pierce?

  I would rather read. Like, just personally, I get more from a book when I read the words, but at the same time, like, listening, I don't lose that much listening to the book.

• 1:08:18Speaker 02

  If you're, if you don't, if you're listening to it on the subway, you might be forced or and you might accidentally have to make eye contact with somebody. And that can't happen.

• 1:08:25David Pierce?

  Good God, no. How, don't even.

• 1:08:28Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I'm definitely the guy who's like, just always, hey.

• 1:08:31David Pierce?

  So that's the thing. I don't know where else to look. This is why I read, because I don't know where else to look and I wind up awkwardly making eye contact to them.

• 1:08:38Nilay Patel?

  Have you ever, have you ever done a thing?

• 1:08:39David Pierce?

  You can only stare at the ad for, you're like, you just stare at the ad.

• 1:08:42Nilay Patel?

  No, no, you can just look at the home screen of your phone.

• 1:08:44Speaker 02

  But then sometimes the

• 1:08:46Nilay Patel?

  What's going on here? Man, I wish I had data.

• 1:08:48David Pierce?

  Hmm.

• 1:08:49Speaker 02

  Your phone is upside down, by the way, which is a perfect TV moment there.

• 1:08:53David Pierce?

  My move is the headphone's not plugged in to anything. I just like put the cord in my pocket and then just stand there and I'm like, I can't hear what you're saying.

• 1:09:00Nilay Patel?

  A lot of socially awkward people in this room right now.

• 1:09:01David Pierce?

  No, but it's like, it's the people asking for money and I'm just like,

• 1:09:04Nilay Patel?

  My movies.

• 1:09:04Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, no, it's just other humans.

• 1:09:06Nilay Patel?

  Mine is to vape as hard as I can.

• 1:09:08Speaker 02

  Not vape on the train.

• 1:09:10David Pierce?

  Over vaping on the subway.

• 1:09:11Nilay Patel?

  Train vapes.

• 1:09:12Speaker 02

  Train vape is the worst. Do you remember the elevator vape that we had to deal with like three years ago?

• 1:09:17Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 1:09:18Speaker 02

  There were, there were these, these people that were trying to do viral marketing for the vaping. And so like we got in an elevator to go to a bar and they were blowing vapes and like the bouncer's face. You were there?

• 1:09:29Nilay Patel?

  Elevator and a bar.

• 1:09:30Speaker 02

  That's all right.

• 1:09:31Nilay Patel?

  People. Nope, don't know.

• 1:09:32Speaker 02

  All right.

• 1:09:32Nilay Patel?

  I over vape a lot.

• 1:09:33Speaker 02

  You gotta vape.

• 1:09:35Nilay Patel?

  I, I try only vape on the weekends.

• 1:09:38David Pierce?

  Congratulations.

• 1:09:39Nilay Patel?

  Are we done?

• 1:09:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, we done. We got, we got a bunch of stuff to talk about.

• 1:09:42Nilay Patel?

  All right, all right. Okay, so here's the thing.

• 1:09:44Speaker 02

  We, we never do, we don't, we don't know how to do intros. We're never gonna figure it out, but we're gonna figure out outros.

• 1:09:49David Pierce?

  Counting negative numbers is a good way to start the show. That's a pretty.

• 1:09:51Nilay Patel?

  Five.

• 1:09:53David Pierce?

  Four.

• 1:09:54Speaker 02

  Number nine.

• 1:09:55Nilay Patel?

  Uh, okay, now here's my stuff. So we are back as a podcast. You may or may not know that. I hope you that you do because you're presumably listening to this podcast. Um, but we're back. People seem to like it. We're gonna keep doing it. Um, so we're on iTunes. We've refreshed all of our artwork. We're gonna actually, here's a sneak preview. Um, I think more podcasts from The Verge are upcoming.

• 1:10:15Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:10:16Nilay Patel?

  We're gonna see how that goes. But please go on iTunes, review us, rate us, do all the iTunes stuff that help us make podcasts more successful. Do that. Uh, you can tweet at us. We're The Verge, we're Verge on Twitter. On Facebook, we're Facebook dot com slash Verge. On Snapchat.

• 1:10:32Speaker 02

  The real Verge.

• 1:10:33Nilay Patel?

  Sam was late to Snapchat, but now a monster on Snapchat.

• 1:10:36Speaker 02

  We're also, we were also late on Elo, which is my fault. We're also the real version Elo. Whatever. Snapchat, follow us on Snapchat. You missed some sweet Nexus snaps.

• 1:10:44David Pierce?

  Can we just never talk about Elo ever again?

• 1:10:46Nilay Patel?

  Never again. So the real version Snapchat. And then I have actually very exciting news uh, across. So like I said, uh, this show is back. Uh, we're bringing back some other shows. I'm actually really excited about that part. But, uh, as while we were talking 44 minutes ago, the trailer for season two, teaser trailer for season two, Small Empires went up on the website. Small Empires is back. Alexis Ohanian is hosting it again. This year, he went all over the country. Uh, some of the stuff looks amazing. Uh, Top Shelf is coming back.

• 1:11:16David Pierce?

  True story.

• 1:11:16Nilay Patel?

  With KP Dose over here.

• 1:11:19David Pierce?

  I hate you.

• 1:11:19Nilay Patel?

  First episode is Diesel Vapes.

• 1:11:22David Pierce?

  It's actually every episode. It's just one Diesel vape per episode.

• 1:11:26Speaker 02

  Oh, John, our producer wants us to do it.

• 1:11:29Nilay Patel?

  Diesel Vapes, that's a thing. No, Top Shelf is back. It's happening. There are six shows that are coming back, and I can't remember all of them. This is my next. It's coming back. We took a month off because it's been crazy season, and now the device, everything's out, so we can come back at it. The Big Future Animated Series.

• 1:11:48David Pierce?

  Which is so cool. If you haven't watched the one today on Building a Better Brand, watch it. It's amazing.

• 1:11:54Nilay Patel?

  Russell Brandam is the editorial mastermind behind that. He's doing a terrific job of that. It's at four? There are more.

• 1:12:01David Pierce?

  There's just too many.

• 1:12:02Nilay Patel?

  There's definitely more.

• 1:12:03David Pierce?

  There's so many shows.

• 1:12:04Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, it doesn't matter. Small Pies is back, Top Shelf is back, This is My Next is back, Big Future is here. And we're gonna, into 2015, you will see us do more and more video, more and more podcasts, and I'll just put out there, we're gonna get way better at YouTube. That's a thing I want to do, and we have some big ideas about how to do that, so.

• 1:12:23David Pierce?

  Turns out YouTube is awesome. It's pretty great, except for all the horrible people.

• 1:12:27Speaker 02

  Comments.

• 1:12:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, except for the rest of it.

• 1:12:29David Pierce?

  Just never scroll down on YouTube under any circumstances.

• 1:12:31Nilay Patel?

  But we're gonna do some fun stuff there. I think that's a, that's a big opportunity for us, because that's where you, the people, are. Also, other places. Huh?

• 1:12:40Nilay Patel?

  It's our third birthday.

• 1:12:40Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 1:12:41David Pierce?

  Whoa.

• 1:12:43Nilay Patel?

  It's been, it's been too long. I'm done. I'm outta here.

• 1:12:49Speaker 02

  Tearing up a little bit.

• 1:12:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:50Speaker 02

  A little.

• 1:12:51Nilay Patel?

  And, uh, the, where, yes, you can also visit us at theverge.com.

• 1:12:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:57David Pierce?

  You can email us at [email protected].

• 1:12:59Nilay Patel?

  Who uses email?

• 1:13:00Speaker 02

  Actually, I don't know if you can.

• 1:13:01Nilay Patel?

  You can WhatsApp us at verge. Can you, can you do that?

• 1:13:04Speaker 02

  No, you can email us.

• 1:13:05Nilay Patel?

  Can you set up a WhatsApp account, dude?

• 1:13:07Speaker 02

  If you email us at [email protected], I, somebody gets it.

• 1:13:10Nilay Patel?

  Why don't we have WhatsApp? It's like the biggest social network. Oh, my God.

• 1:13:13David Pierce?

  You're definitely much better off just tweeting at us.

• 1:13:16Nilay Patel?

  You're much better off. No, we should have a WhatsApp.

• 1:13:18Speaker 02

  No, we just, we spent, we spent like, we spent like half the episode complaining about Twitter.

• 1:13:22Nilay Patel?

  We have 1.3 million Pinterest subscribers. If you're one of them, please tell us what you would like us to do with it. Uh, that's a fact. Um, and I'm sure, you know.

• 1:13:31Speaker 02

  But seriously, follow, like us on Facebook.

• 1:13:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, do that.

• 1:13:34Speaker 02

  That's like, that's the place where the people are happy and nice.

• 1:13:36Nilay Patel?

  Go to your favorite social network, and then find us, and then do the thing there that makes us the most money. Just do that. That will be cool. If you want to buy us a sticker on Facebook, that's cool. Can you do that still?

• 1:13:51David Pierce?

  Can you buy us a sticker?

• 1:13:52Nilay Patel?

  I don't know.

• 1:13:52David Pierce?

  What does that mean? Do you like buy a sticker and send it to us?

• 1:13:55Nilay Patel?

  Here's what Facebook has been.

• 1:13:55Speaker 02

  There's a new Facebook groups app.

• 1:13:57David Pierce?

  I will take all your Facebook stickers.

• 1:13:58Nilay Patel?

  Uh, rooms, which has the same exact icon as Slack.

• 1:14:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:02Nilay Patel?

  Cool job, Facebook.

• 1:14:03David Pierce?

  I think rooms is really stupid.

• 1:14:07David Pierce?

  I just want to be on record having said that, when three months from now, they're like, guys, just kidding. This is the worst. I'm gonna, I'm gonna play this again.

• 1:14:15Nilay Patel?

  They made rooms because Facebook runs its entire business in Facebook groups. They made it for themselves.

• 1:14:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:21David Pierce?

  Fine. Like, whatever. Facebook can have that. That's good for Facebook. But like, build, you know why message boards aren't great? Is because there's many better things than message boards.

• 1:14:32Nilay Patel?

  Fair. Message boards are awesome.

• 1:14:34David Pierce?

  I mean, they are for like a small subset of people who read Metafilter. And like, those people are great and that's fine. But like, there's no business in that.

• 1:14:42Nilay Patel?

  There is.

• 1:14:43David Pierce?

  And there's nothing, there's nothing interesting about that.

• 1:14:45Nilay Patel?

  We're super good.

• 1:14:46David Pierce?

  It also is just completely antithetical to everything that Facebook has ever said about anything, and that pisses me off.

• 1:14:53David Pierce?

  Facebook's whole thing is about, I just think it's stupid. Like, why Messenger is a thing that makes sense for Facebook?

• 1:14:59Nilay Patel?

  Here's what's happening to you, and I just want to put this out there.

• 1:15:01David Pierce?

  Go, hit me.

• 1:15:03Nilay Patel?

  You got a girlfriend.

• 1:15:04Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:15:05Nilay Patel?

  And now, and now Facebook is boring.

• 1:15:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:07Nilay Patel?

  Because it's no longer full of eligible girls for you today.

• 1:15:11David Pierce?

  It's still full of eligible girls. Let me just say, knowing full well that my girlfriend will never listen to this podcast.

• 1:15:19Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying, man. This is what, this is the Facebook cycle.

• 1:15:22David Pierce?

  No, I still use Facebook. I still use Facebook Messenger. I like, it's all great.

• 1:15:27Nilay Patel?

  Facebook Messenger is not great. I already talked about it.

• 1:15:29David Pierce?

  Some of the girls who went to my high school are still very attractive. But, uh, like, I just don't, I don't get why, this to me feels like Facebook hired, what's his name, Josh Miller, the branch guy?

• 1:15:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:39David Pierce?

  And he was like, I want to do this thing. And somebody at Face, nobody at Facebook cared enough to shoot him down. Like, straight up, that's what this feels like to me. And, and like, it might be, it might be a good app. There might be.

• 1:15:49Nilay Patel?

  Ellis had an exclusive, this was like a launch.

• 1:15:51David Pierce?

  No, and it's a great piece. Ellis's piece is really good. And like, I'm happy to just fundamentally disagree. And like, he makes a lot of good points for why it's valuable. But what I, I think the idea of having, first of all, the fact that the only way you can get into a room is a QR code?

• 1:16:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:04David Pierce?

  Is just dumb and broken.

• 1:16:05Nilay Patel?

  Wait, wait, wait.

• 1:16:08David Pierce?

  Yet you missed this? That's how you join rooms.

• 1:16:10Nilay Patel?

  Alright, we're done. Facebook rooms are stupid.

• 1:16:12David Pierce?

  You say, you tweet a QR code and somebody saves it to their camera roll and then opens the app and that's how you get into the room. You know who's gonna figure that out is just no one. All 17 people in the Verge room.

• 1:16:23Nilay Patel?

  No one. 17 people in the Verge room?

• 1:16:25David Pierce?

  Listen, congratulations to the 17 of you. I love you all very much.

• 1:16:27Nilay Patel?

  Can you send him a picture of a vape? Is that possible?

• 1:16:29David Pierce?

  Only a diesel one, though.

• 1:16:31Nilay Patel?

  I don't have a vape on me.

• 1:16:33Speaker 02

  Such a... Look, I'm such a vape noob.

• 1:16:37Nilay Patel?

  It's not... No, it's just...

• 1:16:38Speaker 02

  Amateur vape. Vapature.

• 1:16:40Nilay Patel?

  I'm a private vapor.

• 1:16:45David Pierce?

  I just wanna start singing "Hold Me Closer," "Private Vapor" right now. And I feel like that means we should go.

• 1:16:51Nilay Patel?

  That was our show. It ended strangely, I admit. But do social network stuff. Again, iTunes, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat. Hello, whatever, man.

• 1:17:02David Pierce?

  Please not hello.

• 1:17:03Nilay Patel?

  Get over yourself. That was the Vergecast. Thank you for listening. We'll be back next week.