Google event, Oculus event, and Playstation VR

This week on Vergecast, Nilay, Paul, Dan, and Dieter cover two big events and announcements from the past few days. As you may have read on the site, Google announced a plethora of hardware devices on Tuesday. Then yesterday, Oculus announced a few new features for their VR platform. Will Nilay buy a Pixel on the show? Listen and find out. 01:42 - Google event, new products, and new competition 38:16 - Oculus event and VR 49:08 - Paul’s weekly segment “Having a Coke with you” 51:14 - Lightning round Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:04Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of verge.com.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Boom ba ba.

• 0:10Nilay Patel?

  Which is a multi-channel media brand.

• 0:13Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 0:14Nilay Patel?

  That serves up delicious slices of lifestyle content.

• 0:18Speaker 02

  Available now on Google Amp.

• 0:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 0:20Speaker 01

  I like to say that we engage audiences.

• 0:22Nilay Patel?

  We do, and we serve them advertising.

• 0:25Speaker 02

  We engage them, and then later we divorce them.

• 0:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Dieter.

• 0:28Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 0:29Nilay Patel?

  So here's what I want everyone to know, listening. Everyone listening to know. Dieter is on fire today.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:36Nilay Patel?

  I don't know what it is.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  A lot of sick burns.

• 0:37Nilay Patel?

  Like, he's just ripped me like 10 times already before we even started recording. But anyway, this is the Vergecast. I'm Neil Patel. Dieter Bohn is here.

• 0:44Speaker 02

  Hello, I'm very angry.

• 0:45Nilay Patel?

  Uh, Paul Miller is here.

• 0:46Speaker 01

  Hey.

• 0:47Nilay Patel?

  Paul's gotta get an Oculus piece up, so.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm trying.

• 0:50Nilay Patel?

  He's gonna be missing for a minute. And Dan Seifert's here.

• 0:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, you guys should talk about Google or something, and I'll.

• 0:54Nilay Patel?

  We should just work on Oculus. Just finish that Oculus. So it's been a super newsy week, like just an enormous amount of things going on. There was a big Google event earlier this week. Dieter was at that, and Dan and I argued about the Pixel phone, which we are going to continue doing on this show. And then today, like literally moments ago, Oculus.

• 1:14Speaker 02

  An eight-hour keynote.

• 1:15Nilay Patel?

  An eight-hour, extremely strange keynote, Oculus Connect. Mark Zuckerberg just wrapped it up. The first part of it was a lot of demos of how you would like live in VR, and the second part was like, what I want to say was droning technical babble for an hour. But just, they announced a bunch of new stuff. PlayStation VR reviews hit this week. Just an enormous amount of things, but we gotta start by talking about Scissor Vodka, a vodka brand that I made up. Cut to the night, Scissor Vodka. Anyway, uh, no, we gotta start with Google. Huge news. We'll go through all of the stuff, and Dieter, I want you to go through all the stuff in a second. But the thing that caught me about Google was at the end of the event, so if you read the Verge during an event, you know, there's a team on the ground that's like live blogging, taking photos, posting photos, and then the rest of our huge team

• 2:00Nilay Patel?

  sort of at home is like writing analysis, doing news, all this stuff. So whoever's on the ground always calls home at the end of that and traditionally says something like, "How'd it go? Was it awful?" Because you never, you have no idea.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  On the ground, it always feels awful. It always feels terrible.

• 2:16Nilay Patel?

  It always feels awful. So Dieter calls me at the end of the event, the end of the big Google Pixel event. And he goes, how'd it go? And I went, it went great. It felt huge, like tons of people reading. You know, the phones are great. Da da. He had Dieter had a big feature. And Dieter goes, oh, here it felt really small. And I think that is the most interesting thing about this event. So Dieter, you want to kind of get into that?

• 2:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, I mean, it was a relatively small venue. It wasn't like a giant, like theater, the way that Apple does. Google never really does that though, except for I O. And they just like started just putting people out on stage to start announcing products, just like one after another. There was a little bit of the, we're telling the story of Google and AI and what it means for us to make hardware. But really it just felt like, all right, and here's another person to talk another product we're making. So in the room, maybe it was because it had just been leaked all day, all night for the past three months. But when they got up to announce the phone, it was just like, yeah, we made a phone. Here it is. Let's start talking about this phone. It's cool, guys. And like Google Home, we'd already heard about. And so everything had leaked and there was like

• 3:22Speaker 02

  almost no bombast whatsoever. And that's like gratifying in a certain way, but like this is such a big moment for Google and such a like big, huge like promise that they're making that they're going to become a different company that makes hardware and has a direct relationship with you. And with Google's version of you, like that's an insane thing we should talk about. That it just felt really like they're really playing it low key. And I'm sure part of that is they're trying to not have massive expectations because, you know, it's their first phone, although we could argue about the definition of first. And we will. And we shall. And so they don't, they don't want people to think they're going to like, you know, take on the iPhone and pick up 20% market share in a year. Like, that's fair, but

• 4:07Speaker 02

  man, get a little swagger, Google.

• 4:10Nilay Patel?

  So let's talk about what they announced. Go through the list.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  All right. So the list is Pixel, Phone by Google, Pixel, Phone by Google. And the Pixel XL, Phone by Google.

• 4:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Those are the official names, by the way. Pixel, period.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  Like on like a book cover where the full title of the book is like. Stand the true story of one lawyer's journey.

• 4:33Nilay Patel?

  Look, everybody's gonna call it the Google phone.

• 4:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that's part, I mean, they put a Google on it. Anyway, so there's the Pixel.

• 4:39Nilay Patel?

  Pixel, Pixel XL.

• 4:41Speaker 02

  They, they run the assistant.

• 4:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  Which is another like product that you could kind of say was announced in a weird way. Cause we finally saw so like more details about how it works. Google Home, we got a price and release date for that and saw a non demo demo of it during the keynote.

• 5:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  There's a new Chromecast called Chromecast Ultra, which supports HDR and 4K. There's a new Wi-Fi router system, so you can buy a three pack. It's basically like an Eero. And there is, oh, the Daydream headset, which is like a tennis shoe on your face. That's, it's cool. We could talk about it.

• 5:22Nilay Patel?

  A tennis shoe that lets you stride confidently into a virtual reality.

• 5:26Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. So if you want to look at it, you know, in a really, what's the word, mean, snarky way? Paul, Paul's article that, what was your headline, Paul? It was really good.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  Google announced an iPhone, a Gear VR, an Echo and an Eero.

• 5:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, they did all those things, but like in every case, it's like the, like the response is kind of, yeah. So, I don't know, like the Pixel looks like an iPhone a little bit. The Google Wi-Fi follows the same models in Eero. I hope it works way better. I've had problems with, with the Eero. Google Home has an advantage because it like, it's Google and so it will be smarter than the Echo. At least that's the claim. It's also a little bit cheaper than a full Echo, although it's more expensive than a Dot, as Dan pointed out.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  Almost all of these things are cheaper.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  So it's just like Google saying, yo, we have a hardware ecosystem now. It's all tied to the promise that we're making you that you can trust Google. And Google knows way more about you than anybody else. And so now we're going to start giving that information back to you via these different surfaces that we offer.

• 6:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So Paul, you were gonna say, you were gonna respond to your, your critics.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  To the haters. I just wanted to say to the haters out there that when I, when I came up with this headline, I, I wrote two paragraphs about how I am not casting aspersions. I'm not saying this is a bad thing. This is not a, and like all, all of these products do seem like interesting, have like interesting differentiators, mostly on price with a lot of them. It's great. I just wanted to say the obvious thing that.

• 7:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  This is what Google did.

• 7:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It's like, so I think that goes back to Dieter's point about their, like, they don't know how to do this yet.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:10Nilay Patel?

  Google traditionally talks to the consumers at Google I/O, where they give everybody a free Nexus phone, or like a tablet that most people won't buy. I gotta say, I'm having a love affair with my Nexus 7 right now, because it's, it's a cheap tablet that like lies around the living room. It's great.

• 7:24Speaker 03

  I would, I would argue that at I/O, they're not talking to consumers. They're talking to developers. And that's why they had such trouble here, because they're not used to talking to consumers.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  Right. Trick, trickle down communication.

• 7:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, they, they basically rely on like the tech media to take, to take I/O and translate it into consumer stuff. But then they, their strategy of rolling out products has traditionally been like, 15% of you will get a slightly different link color on Google.com. And if you like it, maybe 30% of you get it too. And if you like it, everybody, it's like, that has been their strategy for so long, that coming out and making a case for these products, sort of eluded them. But I will say, regardless of the showmanship aspect, I think the case for the products is incredibly strong. Right? Like Samsung is just, it's literally destroying itself. Like, their brand is dying.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  Now that we're a couple of days out, right?

• 8:17Nilay Patel?

  Right. So we, Jordan Golson, one of our reporters, who's great, he, and he's gonna, he's definitely gonna text me, because I've mentioned him on the show like three shows in a row. He's like, I'm, I'm on a roll. That's really Jordan. But Jordan, so there was this news story that another Note 7 caught fire on a plane. Jordan actually tracked down the owner of the phone and discovered it was a replacement Note 7, which sends Samsung into not like another tailspin, but the worst possible situation.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, they were in a tailspin. Well, no, you know, we should, we should actually not make plane crash metaphors because the, the phone did combust on a plane and thank God like they had finished boarding.

• 8:57Nilay Patel?

  Can't kites go into tailspins? I don't know. Anyway, it doesn't matter. They were in a bad situation.

• 9:02Speaker 02

  Can we talk about the Disney cartoon?

• 9:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:06Nilay Patel?

  Dieter's on fire. Launchpad quack. No, I mean, so Samsung is in this like miserable position right now. I think the consumer perception of Samsung is that Samsung phones explode. If you're Google, you've already had this testy relationship with Samsung for so long.

• 9:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:22Nilay Patel?

  Samsung is the brand that puts another set of email clients and web browsers on Google's platform, adds water drop sounds to it, signed a deal with Facebook to do Oculus VR instead of waiting for Google to do Daydream. Like Samsung and Google, they, it's, it's a marriage of convenience, right? Samsung is the only Android vendor that makes any money that operates at scale and Google has had to deal with them.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  How happy is Google right now that Samsung has spent the last couple of years refusing to mention the fact that the Note and the S6, S7, the Galaxy line runs Android? They never use the phrase Android anymore and I bet Google is just, just pleased to punch about that.

• 10:00Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  Is that, is that credit to Samsung or, or is there nobody else that makes a good enough phone?

• 10:07Nilay Patel?

  It's credit to Samsung. I mean, there's, there's, I'm sure Dan has a lot of thoughts on this, but my, my basic read is that Samsung is, will do, bend over backward for the carriers the most. They have the biggest advertising budgets. They have the thinnest margins because they make their own chips so that, you know, they get to move money around their supply chain in different ways. And quite frankly, they will ship a different version of the phone to every carrier in slightly different ways.

• 10:33Speaker 02

  Yep, it's hustle.

• 10:34Nilay Patel?

  It's just a hustle.

• 10:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:36Nilay Patel?

  And the phones have gotten good.

• 10:36Speaker 03

  Totally right. Yeah, well, that's, I mean, like, that's the dichotomy, right? It's like for years their phones weren't that great and it was frustrating that they were so popular and so good. Now they actually have good products, you know, until this recent, you know, situation, but it is very much, like you said.

• 10:51Nilay Patel?

  Conflagration.

• 10:53Speaker 03

  I don't want to use any inflammatory terms.

• 10:57Nilay Patel?

  Oh man, we're burning up.

• 10:58Speaker 03

  So they bend over backwards for the carriers. They let the carriers run amok in terms of installing software and modifying software and stuff like that. Like you said, they go out of their way. And for the past couple of years, they've been trying to get out of from under Google's thumb. Just yesterday, they announced that they purchased Vive, which was the team that created Siri. So now they have a competitor to Assistant under their own roof because they're trying to get out from under Google's thumb. So it is this like love, hate, tenuous relationship between the two companies. Samsung's needed Google for Android and its app platform, really. And, and Google has needed Samsung to like actually get people to use Android phones and sell them. So I feel like in the past week, it's come to this crashing head because Google announced

• 11:43Speaker 03

  its own phone and Samsung has made more efforts to distance itself from Google and to make itself less reliable, reliant on Google. So it's fascinating.

• 11:52Nilay Patel?

  I'm going to say this. I think this is great. And I think, I do. I think the idea of Google taking control of, I think Kiroshi did an interview where he said, we're going to treat the Pixel team, you know, at arm's length, which they had done before with Motorola, which was run by Rick Osterloh, who now runs hardware. Womp womp. They're the platform and then the hardware team is going to take the platform and integrate Google services. Sure, we'll see how that works. But I think it's.

• 12:19Speaker 02

  Actually, let me, let me talk a little bit about that. Yeah. So, you know, I did this big feature and talked to Dave Burke and they've done stuff on the Pixel that is really hard to do if you don't have the OS super early and you get to like have that vertically integrated stack. So he claims that the touch response on the Pixel is under a high speed camera just as good as the iPhone. When I used it, it felt like standard Android to me, maybe a little bit better, actually. But like the inertia is still different between the two different phones. But you can't get like an Android phone to like pay attention to those little details is a thing that most Android manufacturers just are never going to bother doing and Google is. And the reason that's exciting is like, we get to compare apples

• 13:04Speaker 02

  to apples now. Like when you compare the Pixel to an iPhone, it's no longer, yeah, but you know, they didn't make the OS and so it's not their fault and they had to put their own skin on it and ba da ba da ba da ba. Now it's just like head to head, straight up. Are you as good?

• 13:18Nilay Patel?

  Done. Yeah. Like really interesting.

• 13:20Speaker 03

  And what's funny to me is that the, the companies that did care about those details like HTC, which if you talk to HTC, they will say that the, the 10 has a faster touch response than any other Android phone are now the contract manufacturer for Google.

• 13:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Is it possible to talk to HTC anymore? Because I feel like everything you would say would be drowned out by the sound of sad trombones.

• 13:43Speaker 02

  Ken, Flago from Dieter Bone.

• 13:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, HTC started out as a contract manufacturer.

• 13:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:50Nilay Patel?

  And they are the best ones. So they've tried, they tried to like come out with Android and be their own brand and they got crushed by Samsung. And now they're going back to be a contract. They're going home. It's fine. They're fine. I mean, not.

• 14:01Speaker 02

  They got, they got five.

• 14:02Nilay Patel?

  They got, they got five. So Dieter, you wrote a huge feature on why they're making hardware. You got to use the phones.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 14:09Nilay Patel?

  Give us, give us a sort of the short version. Like what, what's Google saying about this move? And like, how, how are the phones?

• 14:15Speaker 02

  So I guess I have a few points. One, what I say is that they need to get the assistant really, really good because someday, I think the search box is going to get supplanted by some other interface. It's going to get supplanted probably by an assistant. We had, you know, command line for a while and then we got the GUI and then we got touchscreens and then we had the search box and now we're going to get something else. And so they need to get that right or they're potentially like in serious trouble. We, we shouldn't assume that Google is unbeatable in the same way that we shouldn't have assumed that Microsoft was unbeatable in the late 90s. Like something else could come along. And so they need to get something ready. So if they're going to make that thing, they need it to be really, really good. And in order

• 14:59Speaker 02

  for them to do it, they have to do it themselves. They don't necessarily think they can trust their partners to not screw it up in the way that they always do until relatively recently. And the Nexus phone, while good, was still like, you know, they basically, like I said, everybody else did 90% and we did the last 10%. They wanted to do the whole 100%. The thing that's interesting is with every single one of these products, literally every single one that they are making, they have, are promising that the features and stuff they've created will make their way to their manufacturing partners. So like other partners can make Google Home speakers. Other partners are going to get the assistant. Other partners can use, make Daydream headsets and use the Daydream VR. Other partners can make Chromecast speakers

• 15:43Speaker 02

  and you know, hell, Chromecast TVs, you know? Blah, blah, blah, blah. It's just that like now the difference is Google makes the first version and then everybody else after Google like says, all right, we made it. We like it. This is it. Then they can start using the tech. And so it's, I was actually talking about this on Lawrence too embarrassed to ask podcast. Like if we had had this conversation five years ago, we would be freaking out because oh my God, what happens when a software maker starts competing in hardware with its own partners. I think in 2016, it kind of doesn't matter. Like Microsoft is doing with the Surface and Windows is fine.

• 16:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, Microsoft paved this road for Google to ride in. So.

• 16:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Well, I mean, when, when Microsoft does with Surface, there's all kinds of hand wringing, like no one has ever managed to compete with their vendors and you know, like, but Microsoft, but I will say Microsoft ambition with the Surface was not to beat everyone, right? I mean, they're not. That's, that's a tiny drop in the bucket of Microsoft's business.

• 16:47Speaker 02

  They do, they do own the high end though. So it may be that Google wants to stay at the high end in the way that the Surface devices stay at the high end.

• 16:55Nilay Patel?

  What Dan was saying was, it was to show the vendors what to do, right? Like here's, right. But Microsoft has never made an actual laptop, right? They make the Surface Book. They're like innovating with form factors, but they've never gone head to head with Dell where it counts. They've never gone.

• 17:09Speaker 02

  Neil Ippertel says Surface Book is not an actual laptop.

• 17:12Nilay Patel?

  It's not. It's like some funky weird other thing. It's.

• 17:15Speaker 03

  Twitter handle is at reckless.

• 17:17Nilay Patel?

  I like it. I'm not saying it's a, a bad product, but it's not, it's not a competitor to MacBook Air, right? Like, right. It's not a mainstream dead ahead laptop product. It's a very interesting like vision of what laptops could be. Great. But it's not, you know, the Dell Inspiron or whatever, you know, it's, it's not the bread and butter product where Google is going dead at the S7. If you are buying a phone, your choices now, your mainstream choices now are the iPhone, the S7 and the Pixel. And I think Samsung is doing a great job of taking the S7 out of that equation because everyone thinks their phones explode. Yeah.

• 17:56Speaker 03

  I would say that, yes, you are correct in terms of the mainstream phones, but the way that Google has been unable to get the, I just, okay, Googled my phone, sorry. The way that Google has been unable to get the Pixel into where people actually buy phones, makes that kind of like a null comparison because ninety percent of people buy phones from a carrier store.

• 18:24Nilay Patel?

  They're getting it into Verizon stores, they're getting it into a bunch of retail partners.

• 18:26Speaker 02

  Ah, this is where we're getting into with Dan.

• 18:28Nilay Patel?

  We don't know how broad it's gonna be yet.

• 18:28Speaker 03

  This is where we're gonna get into.

• 18:29Nilay Patel?

  We don't know how broad, yeah, like, the, you're like, don't impute the, like, we are not actually trying strategy that they applied to the Nexus to the Pixel.

• 18:38Speaker 03

  I don't think it's that lack of trying. I don't think it's for lack of trying.

• 18:40Speaker 02

  I don't think they tried with Nexus.

• 18:41Nilay Patel?

  No, they didn't try at all with the Nexus. They didn't try at all.

• 18:43Speaker 03

  No, no, they didn't try at all with the Nexus, but I, but the Nexus, but they did get it in Verizon. There was that whole debacle with the Galaxy Nexus years ago, but I think that this is, this is just further evidence of how difficult it is for anyone to break into the US carrier system. Huawei's been trying to do it for years. Other companies have been trying to do it for years.

• 19:03Nilay Patel?

  But Huawei isn't, Google, Google's just gonna run ads.

• 19:06Speaker 03

  But Google can't get it into an AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint store. So say they're in Verizon.

• 19:11Speaker 02

  Maybe they, maybe they could and they chose not to because Verizon gave them a big giant pile of money. Like, meh.

• 19:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 19:17Speaker 02

  Probably not Verizon's gonna start advertising this phone.

• 19:20Speaker 03

  But that does nothing to get the phone out into more people.

• 19:22Nilay Patel?

  Let me, let me weave a conspiracy theory for you. Are you ready?

• 19:26Speaker 03

  I'm listening.

• 19:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Rick Ostrow is head of hardware at Google, previously was at Motorola. Motorola's last big hit was a Verizon exclusive Android phone called the Droid. I just have to believe his instincts were to say, we're gonna do carrier exclusive, we're gonna get a shit ton of marketing from Verizon, and we're gonna go head to head against the iPhone, and Verizon knows how to run this playbook with me.

• 19:47Speaker 03

  And the last phone, the last carrier exclusive phone that was a success, you could argue it was when the iPhone was locked to AT&T or the Motorola Droid. That's how long it's been.

• 19:56Nilay Patel?

  But I mean, if, that's how you get a phone off the ground, right? You, you get, you get Verizon to be proud of it and to market it, to sell it at retail, to, to... To pay for ads, to put the Verizon bug after the Google Ads, right? Like you can create, I'm not saying it's gonna work. There's an enormous chance that will all fail, but it is a playbook that has worked.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  Google is committing to doing this for years. So if this thing doesn't sell like gangbusters, like they're gonna do it again and they're gonna keep pushing in all of these different retail channels.

• 20:27Nilay Patel?

  That's actually a question after you.

• 20:28Speaker 02

  One of the reasons this thing leaked so hard is Google didn't know how to yell at like, you know, Bell, Canada, whoever the hell leaked it. And you know, Verizon leaked it, like everybody leaked it. And like, there's a way to like, do a carrier partnership to, without having it leak. And the only way to do that is to like, have years of partnerships with the carrier to actually figure it out. And every other phone leaks because the carriers like leak stuff and like Google just hasn't had enough time to figure it out. I'm not saying they're going to win, but I am saying like, I'm excited to watch them finally try. And like, I'm not gonna prejudge that they're gonna fail.

• 21:02Nilay Patel?

  So Dieter, here's my question for you. You just said they're in it. And then we've been talking about Nexus and then we have 900 other things from Google to talk about.

• 21:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:11Nilay Patel?

  But I have literally bought every Nexus phone on this show and I will soon buy a Pixel on this show.

• 21:19Nilay Patel?

  What are you gonna do?

• 21:20Speaker 02

  You going blue? I hear, I hear blue is sold out.

• 21:23Nilay Patel?

  I'm definitely getting the black one. I'll do it in a second. But you said they're in it. I always perceived of Nexus as their kind of like reference design game. They never, it was always for enthusiasts. They barely ever sold any. It was always, it was always just like, when are you gonna get serious about this? And then they told you they're never, they're not gonna make another Nexus phone.

• 21:41Speaker 02

  They have no plans.

• 21:42Nilay Patel?

  Is this the big, is, so that's over. Is this different in tone and seriousness? Are they, with Nexus, it always felt like they could just stop doing it because they don't really give a shit. Is this the business?

• 21:53Speaker 02

  Have you ever gone into like a, so we're journalists, we're tech journalists. We go into like these like briefing rooms where there's like a bunch of like people that worked on the product or are associated with the product. And there's always the one guy in the room that is like definitely the suit, who like definitely is like stone cold. I'm going to market this thing and I am thinking about the margins and I'm thinking about like the regions and the carrier channels and making sure that inventory is managed and like that guy. That guy was in the room when I got the phone briefing and he has never been in the room when I got a briefing from Google before in my entire life.

• 22:30Nilay Patel?

  So they're in it, you think?

• 22:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:32Nilay Patel?

  All right, I'm buying this phone. Anyway, well, fine, fine, you've convinced me. The channel partnerships guy was in the room.

• 22:40Nilay Patel?

  It's on now.

• 22:44Speaker 02

  The funny thing is like, I think that in six months, if Google is successful at any of the stuff they announced today, the one that I'm most interested to see is Google Home. Like, more people are going to buy Google Home than buy this phone, I think. And that is like, if they can normalize more what Amazon has already started to normalize with the Echo, that's going to be very interesting.

• 23:09Nilay Patel?

  So here's my question, I have a million questions at home, but here's the big one. Amazon, I think, was successful with the Echo because they run amazon.com.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:17Nilay Patel?

  Right? So they could put it in front of a lot of people. They could get, you know, nerds like us to be excited about it by doing events and showing it off. And we'd be like, this is great. And then it was surprisingly easy to buy because every time you open up Amazon, it's like, here's an Echo. Like, push it. You could buy six Amazon dots right now just by accident, by breeding on amazon.com.

• 23:37Speaker 03

  Anecdotally, my wife knew about the new Echo Dot the day it was announced because she's on Amazon every single day. And normally she ignores all of this stuff that like I consume myself with. And she messages me and she's like, there's a new dot out? Don't buy it. And like, like, she knew about it the day it was announced, literally. And that that is like as, as close as it gets.

• 23:59Nilay Patel?

  My point is, Google runs google.com, and a lot of people go to that. They can market on there. But they're not, it's not a buying relationship right there. So how are they going to retail it? Because Amazon sure as hell isn't going to stock it. So they've got to go out to Best Buy. I mean, they, they've got a lot of work to do to put it out.

• 24:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm trying to find if we have a picture of the, the retail partners for Home. And I don't think I've got it. Yeah, we missed it. But the, it was, it was like, it's like going to be like Target, Best Buy and whatever. Like they'll, in Walmart, like they're getting it into stores. The only store they couldn't get it into is, you know, Amazon.

• 24:33Nilay Patel?

  By the way, the 128 gig black Pixel XL is sold out and I don't know what to do.

• 24:39Speaker 02

  Sold out, sold out or just delayed?

• 24:40Nilay Patel?

  I'm on the waitlist.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  I, I, I was a best.

• 24:45Speaker 02

  Buy it from Verizon. Eli, buy it from Verizon.

• 24:48Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 24:49Speaker 01

  Why don't you have the blue one?

• 24:51Nilay Patel?

  Come on, man.

• 24:52Speaker 03

  The blue one's gone, man.

• 24:53Nilay Patel?

  Blue one's out of stock.

• 24:54Speaker 03

  Blue one's out of stock entirely. And they didn't have the blue in 128, which is really annoying.

• 24:58Nilay Patel?

  I don't want a silver one.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  I was, I was at Best Buy.

• 25:02Nilay Patel?

  Oh, the 128 silver one's out of stock, too.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  Cause I like to buy things in person and I was buying like a $200 Vizio. And somebody in line there came up to the counter and said, I want a fire, like an Amazon Fire.

• 25:17Nilay Patel?

  Hmm.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  What does it do?

• 25:21Speaker 01

  So someone knew they wanted an Amazon product, but they weren't buying it at Amazon and they didn't know what it was for.

• 25:27Speaker 03

  I mean, that's, that's the kind of product brand recognition that Apple has that companies have lusted after for years. Where people buy it because they know the name of it and they don't even know how to.

• 25:36Nilay Patel?

  This is gonna sound bad, but I hear just a lot of older people talk about Amazon Fire Sticks.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:42Nilay Patel?

  It's like a constant, actually. Like they know it's there.

• 25:46Speaker 01

  Maybe there's something in like the AARP newsletter or something.

• 25:49Speaker 03

  It's very cheap, easy way to get Netflix on your TV.

• 25:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 25:53Speaker 03

  That's really what it comes down to.

• 25:54Nilay Patel?

  It's just a phenomenon. I don't even know how to quantify it or describe it. It's just, you know, when you, when, when you hear somebody else talking about technology, your ears perk up.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 26:04Nilay Patel?

  It's always, it happens to me in like restaurants and diners, like it's just two slightly older people being like, I heard about the same as on fire. And it's like, where?

• 26:15Speaker 03

  On Amazon.com. Right next to the Echo.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  Google has promoted some of its hardware products like on its front page before, right?

• 26:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 26:23Speaker 02

  They've done them with the Nexus.

• 26:24Nilay Patel?

  Last one they did.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  I think it was the Nexus.

• 26:26Speaker 03

  They did TV commercials for the last round of Nexus's Nexi and they've also put them on the homepage.

• 26:33Nilay Patel?

  So here's what I'll say about the, the now speaker. I think the assistant being smarter than Alexa is very interesting. And Google has wild ideas about that. I think they're gonna have some trust issues about Google putting a microphone in your home in a way that Amazon maybe didn't because they're not Google. So that'll be interesting. I don't think Facebook could make a connected speaker. No one wants a Facebook microphone in their home.

• 26:55Speaker 02

  Well, no, there's already one in your pocket with Instagram. It's listening to you all the time.

• 26:58Nilay Patel?

  It is. Dieter wants to go on vacation to the mountains. The mountains.

• 27:05Nilay Patel?

  But what I will say about Home, the thing that caught me about that demo was when they're like, it's also a Google-

• 27:12Speaker 02

  Demo? It was a-

• 27:14Nilay Patel?

  That well rehearsed video presentation that Rishi Chandra did.

• 27:17Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 27:18Nilay Patel?

  Was it, the Now Speaker is a Google Cast device. It can control other Google Cast devices, including the Chromecast and the Google Chromecast Audio. There, and there's an ecosystem of Cast speakers in this world. So, and they are multi-room audio. So, Google has this whole wireless audio/video ecosystem, ready to go. And I'm like, that's great. What the fuck happened to AirPlay? Like, how did Apple just blow it with AirPlay? Like, everyone else, Spotify Connect is better, Sonos is better, Google Cast is better and has this connected speaker. I'm sure Amazon will find a way to do this with the Echo product.

• 27:58Speaker 03

  They're already doing it with, Spotify Connect works with Echo.

• 28:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Yeah, but you can't do multi-speakers yet, right? You can't. Oh, you will be able to, with Sonos.

• 28:06Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, when they're, they parented with Sonos, that's right.

• 28:09Nilay Patel?

  So like-

• 28:10Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, the Google stuff does multi-room, multi-speaker, like, right away, right out of the box. What it doesn't do is all the skills. We gotta wait till later in the year for actions.

• 28:18Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 28:19Speaker 02

  Which is what Google calls them.

• 28:20Nilay Patel?

  But I think that's actually the most compelling part of the connected speaker product. Being able to walk into a room and say, turn on the game and have your TV light up and work, without having to turn the TV on or use-

• 28:33Speaker 03

  That's the dream, yeah.

• 28:35Nilay Patel?

  And they're just like, they're so close. It's, they just have to ship the things and they have to not be garbage. And it'll, the dream will be here. And it's funny because Apple has all of the component pieces and technologies.

• 28:46Speaker 02

  They should have had that.

• 28:47Nilay Patel?

  And they're the wireless future company, and they're just nowhere on this stuff.

• 28:51Speaker 03

  So, how much of that is, do we think is because of- Apple's very, what they would say, user centric or consumer centric privacy stance.

• 29:02Nilay Patel?

  I don't think the casting airplane audio stuff is because of that. I think-

• 29:05Speaker 03

  Sure, but like the always listening stuff, the fact that like Google does all of its processing in the cloud. So whenever you say something to it, it's going to process your command in the cloud and send it back down.

• 29:15Nilay Patel?

  By, by Google Wi-Fi.

• 29:16Speaker 03

  So I don't know if that's the answer, but like-

• 29:17Nilay Patel?

  But they have it with Siri, right? I mean, they just make a trigger word and they just put it in the speaker and they could call it a day. I, to me, I think the home is the most interesting product here. I think Amazon paved the way. And if Google actually delivers something that is connected to your like life in a way that Amazon products can't be because you don't have an Amazon email address, you don't have an Amazon calendar, you don't have da, da, da, da. Like, Google can start to do things with their voice assistant that Amazon can never do. And I think that's super cool.

• 29:46Speaker 03

  When, when Google announced the home back at I O, this was a big question and they kinda, sorta said maybe they're working on it now, but like, the big question for me is, uh, this is a product that sits in the middle of my home. Uh, I'm not the only one that's going to be using it. My wife would ideally be using it as well. She has a whole Google life of her own with her own Google account versus my Google account. Uh, the Google accounts are much more personal than an Amazon account. We're more likely to share an Amazon account than we are a Gmail account. Uh, so I'm very curious to see how well this is going to work in a how home with multiple Google accounts. When I say, what's my calendar like today? It's like, what's it gonna tell me? Is it gonna tell me the 47?

• 30:26Nilay Patel?

  It gets tied to one person's Gmail. Uh, their work, they've like internally, they've got things that can recognize your voice and be tied to multiple accounts. That's, that's where it's at. And I don't, I think they should have launched with it, but, uh, I don't know. Like it's, it's, but like the, the thing about it is like Chrome is bad at multiple Google accounts.

• 30:48Speaker 03

  Well, that's my kind of my point is in order to really make this something that works in a home, that's not just a single person's home, but like a home with either roommates or a family, it has to work with multiple users and multiple accounts.

• 31:01Nilay Patel?

  And that's why Google will be shipping a voice modulation chip alongside every Google home to send high-frequency radio waves when you speak. This episode of Vergecast is brought to you by Squarespace. Whether you need a landing page, beautiful gallery, a professional blog, or an online store, it's all included through Squarespace's website. Squarespace is easy. Creating your website with Squarespace is a simple intuitive process. You can add and arrange your content and features with the click of a mouse. You also get a free custom domain. Squarespace makes adding a domain to your website simple. If you sign up for a year, you'll receive a free custom domain for free for that year. You also get beautiful templates. Design a best-in-class online store of Squarespace's award-winning templates, customizable settings, and more, all without a single plugin. You also get seamless commerce tools. From nationally recognized brands to your favorite local shops, Squarespace is trusted by hundreds and thousands of shabby shop owners around the world, including all the

• 31:46Nilay Patel?

  tools you need to track inventory, process orders, and send custom emails in one intuitive interface. Squarespace Commerce allows you to understand every aspect of your business. Squarespace also offers 24/7 customer support. Every member of the customer care team is an experienced Squarespace user working in a Squarespace office. No matter how technical a problem or trivial seeming your question, one of their team is always online to assist you. So start your free trial today at Squarespace.com and enter offer code VERGE to get 10% off your first purchase. Squarespace: Set your website apart. So, last few Google things. The Wi-Fi thing, I feel really bad for Eero.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:20Nilay Patel?

  Like, they're just blown out of the water, right? But that's clearly the way all Wi-Fi should go, so they should have patented it. Like, every company is gonna build this Wi-Fi solution, because it's clearly the smartest one.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  And it's definitely something that I want a company that's really good at software to do, because you do, you need help from, from an app to set these up and place them, like...

• 32:39Nilay Patel?

  The Eero app is great.

• 32:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, the Eero app's setup is very good.

• 32:41Speaker 01

  But I'm saying, there is, there is a barrier to entry that I wouldn't expect. TP-Link is not my software go-to.

• 32:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Linksys is like...

• 32:50Speaker 03

  That's not the, the software challenge, I don't think, here. I think this, the, yeah, you're right, like, but once you set it up, like, to the end user, it's done. The software challenge is, when I'm moving around my house, how does my phone find the right access point to connect to and not get stuck at the one that's upstairs when I'm downstairs and vice versa? And Eero tries to manage that, it doesn't always work. Google says it's got some special sauce to help manage that. I have two questions about... Wi-Fi. One, why aren't Home and Wi-Fi the same product? And two, if Ira, if Wi-Fi works at all, like at all, executes at all and it works and it's fine at all, then Iro either needs to cut its prices way down or they're done.

• 33:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Well, why aren't Home and like you just like you answered your first question with your second question, like they're not the same product because they made both of them cheap. Like that's it. Like if they would have cost twice as much to put them together.

• 33:43Speaker 03

  Twice as much?

• 33:44Nilay Patel?

  I, I kind of, I know whether or not, right? If you buy a Google Home, you're not necessarily interested in like getting a new Wi-Fi router.

• 33:52Speaker 03

  No, but you do want it in every room. And the point is in order to have this wireless universe in your house, this awesome wireless connectivity where you're throwing things from your phone to a Chromecast to your home, you're doing it with your voice and stuff, you need a strong wireless network. That's the whole reason Google built Wi-Fi, right?

• 34:09Nilay Patel?

  I think that's like a second generation of this thing. First, they just got to get people to buy one Google Home.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  This would, I, I agree with Dan. This would be, I, I, I see why, yes, it would be more expensive and, and probably fewer people will buy it. But the ideal, perfect device has Iro and Echo combined.

• 34:29Nilay Patel?

  This first time, they just got to sell the first one. Right? And then, and then they put out the second one. You love it. You're like, also, if you buy Google Wi-Fi, it'll extend your Google Wi. And then you're like bought in your, but they gotta be at 129 and get them out the door. And you probably have a lot of.

• 34:44Speaker 02

  I can't buy the Google Wi-Fi because it's too ugly.

• 34:47Nilay Patel?

  It is, it is not attractive.

• 34:49Speaker 02

  Really? Echo is good looking, but you know.

• 34:53Speaker 03

  I mean, compared to like a Netgear router with spider legs.

• 34:58Nilay Patel?

  Those things are awesome. I will, I won't have you speak ill of them, Dan. And if the aliens ever come, they will go back to their homeland and keep us safe. Okay, let's talk about, so that's Google. Walt said this in his column, and we talked about it for a long time on his podcast yesterday. He thinks this is the biggest shift in Google ever. And he thinks it's going to ripple effects throughout the industry. I am like very happy for Apple to have a head up hardware, software-integrated competitor. And for them to push each other on things like privacy, for them to push each other, like Siri has a real competitor now in Google Assistant. There's a phone out there in the world that can do Siri stuff better than Siri.

• 35:35Speaker 02

  So I actually disagree with Walt.

• 35:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:39Speaker 02

  A little bit. I think he's probably right, and I want him to be right, but I think that Google has too long of a track record of saying, eh, forget about it with products. And there's like, there's no guarantee that just because they're launching hardware that they won't spring clean the hell out of this stuff next year.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  And, and, and what makes me unsettled, and maybe this doesn't bother most potential consumers, but like, which one is a hobby? Like, there's, there's five hardware products. Guess which one will be continued to be a core component of Google's business?

• 36:16Nilay Patel?

  Maybe I'm just putting too much into this, but like, Rick Oster used to run Motorola. I don't think he's there to just like, run a hobby.

• 36:21Speaker 01

  Well, no, I don't think anybody at Google ever like sets out to like, I hope this only ends up as a hobby and then gets killed five years from now.

• 36:29Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I think, I, I disagree. Like, I, I think the Google TV team at that time definitely knew they had a hobby.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  Are you kidding me? Eric Schmidt said that like, Google TV was gonna be in like...

• 36:41Nilay Patel?

  No, but the people who made it were like, Eric, shut up.

• 36:43Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 36:44Nilay Patel?

  Dude, Schmitty, rock it back, bro. Like, Schmitty, not ready.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  What number did he say? Just every TV?

• 36:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, he's like, every TV, and, and like, literally, you could, you could see that, like, cringing. They're like, we made this in our 20% time. It's not, it's definitely not ready for this. It is, I heard masters in H2I pasture. It's a hack. No.

• 37:07Speaker 03

  What's, was so ironic to me, and I, I wasn't the one that came up with this, I think I read it on a Medium post, is that...

• 37:14Nilay Patel?

  Worst admission.

• 37:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, worst admission.

• 37:16Nilay Patel?

  Also, you can get away with any bad idea by saying you read it first on a Medium.

• 37:20Speaker 03

  But it's just really funny that Google's most successful entry into the home was not Google TV, it's not Android TV, it's not the $3 billion purchase of Nest, it's the $35 Chromecast. That is the reason that all of this exists.

• 37:35Nilay Patel?

  Chromecast is great.

• 37:37Speaker 03

  Because of the $35 Chromecast that somehow Google got into like every retail store and people bought because it was so cheap and right in front of their face and worked.

• 37:45Speaker 01

  My Vizio is a Chromecast.

• 37:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  It's a screen.

• 37:48Nilay Patel?

  Oh, you have the same one as Dieter.

• 37:50Speaker 01

  With a screen.

• 37:51Nilay Patel?

  Do you have an M or a P?

• 37:52Speaker 01

  An E.

• 37:53Nilay Patel?

  Ooh. Dieter has a P series, right? You think it's not so great?

• 37:57Speaker 02

  I'm not super fond of it right now. The apps keep just not working.

• 38:03Nilay Patel?

  But you don't need apps.

• 38:04Speaker 01

  There's no apps. I turn it on and it's Chromecast.

• 38:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, the app that controls the TV to like turn the brightness down and whatever keeps crapping out.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  Oh, it's been fine for me.

• 38:16Nilay Patel?

  Let's end quickly. We got to talk about Oculus. Paul, you've been quiet this whole time. Did you finish your Everything You Need to Know post?

• 38:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:24Nilay Patel?

  Tell me about Oculus.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  I didn't do a great job.

• 38:26Nilay Patel?

  This is your time to shine.

• 38:27Speaker 01

  I feel like it was not really SEO optimized.

• 38:29Nilay Patel?

  No one's searching for this stuff anyway.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  Okay, so Oculus, Mark Zuckerberg came out and like he did like, I don't know, we just watched this Google event, right? You get the CEO guy comes out or woman to to set the stage and then you throw off to other people to do demos. But Mark was like, I'm gonna do demos and he puts a headset on himself and then starts doing a very well rehearsed scripted demo of this new social thing that Facebook is making. That was exciting.

• 39:04Nilay Patel?

  Can I just set that scene? Because there's like what you watched on the stream, which was like you're in the Oculus world. Mark's talking to like basically me's. They look like Nintendo me's. But thousands of people in real life were sitting in a theater in the dark, watching a man in a headset just sort of wave his hands around.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 39:24Nilay Patel?

  It's fucking amazing. Anyway, carry on.

• 39:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's just wearing a headset. But... On the stream, it looked like mixed reality at times, too. So yeah, they went through a bunch of interesting demos. The thing that was most exciting to me, I don't know if this stuck out to you guys, but Mark teleports to his home where a 360 camera is inside of his home. He could look around, but he's still with his two demo buddies. They look around his home to check on his dog. And then he video calls his wife to be part of this group. So now there's, and he has her on like this like pallet that he can like hold. And it's like, it was a really cool mixed experience because it was like a blend of a 360 camera,

• 40:09Speaker 01

  a VR headset, two other people remotely in VR, and then someone from a regular video call. And what really excited me about it is imagine if you do something really fun in VR. If you could FaceTime or not Facebook, whatever Facebook Messenger's video calls are called.

• 40:28Nilay Patel?

  Facebook Messenger video calls.

• 40:30Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 40:31Nilay Patel?

  Founded by Google.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  You could like show people, hey, look at this cool thing I'm doing in VR. I feel like that could be like a huge hook for VR because I would, you know, you're, the other person would just see it on their phone as a video call, but they'd be looking into this virtual world that you're rendering for them.

• 40:52Nilay Patel?

  So when they were making that video call, what does the person on the video call see? Do they like, is there a camera on that virtual pane?

• 40:59Speaker 01

  This was likely fake, but the way he demonstrated it, he was like, hey, say hi to my other buddies. So it's like he was showing Priscilla these other two people.

• 41:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 41:12Speaker 01

  I think their names were Michael and Laura, but I'm not sure.

• 41:14Nilay Patel?

  I think it was Lucy.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  Lucy, okay. So I don't know, that was cool and that would make sense also.

• 41:19Nilay Patel?

  And their big line was social will be the biggest use of VR, which is a very Facebook line.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  And it's funny because like everybody is like when Facebook bought Oculus.

• 41:28Nilay Patel?

  Do you believe that even a little bit? No, I believe that Palmer Lucky made an ass of himself by like funding a shitposting 4chan group and didn't show up so they couldn't talk about hardcore gaming.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  I missed some portions of the stream, but Paul Marley was not there.

• 41:43Nilay Patel?

  He was not there.

• 41:44Speaker 03

  Because he wasn't wearing shoes.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  He explicitly stayed away because he didn't want to be a distraction. Right. But like, but so the weird thing is, so Zuckerberg does that whole thing. Then he, then he announces that they're working on a standalone VR headset, which is probably the biggest news, which is, which is really cool. So it'll be something that's more powerful than like Gear VR, but less expensive than a PC and Oculus Rift. Uh, so that's really cool. But then Oculus people announced Oculus Avatars, which is completely different than whatever Zuckerberg demonstrated. So, which their cool like vaporwave weird like Zuckerberg was playing like hanging out with me's and it was all cutesy. And these were kind of like cool looking gradients and metal.

• 42:29Nilay Patel?

  It was very strange.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  But I, I, I do think the social is like really the best stuff in VR right now anyways. Like AltSpace, if you guys hung out with AltSpace, it's, it's really wonderful. And you can jump from experience to experience. So this is stuff that's the community is already building. And it makes sense for Oculus to make their own version. And it really makes sense for Facebook to make their own version because if they can pull in something like that video call, I think that would be like a really, really big thing for VR. The other, the actual news was Oculus Touch.

• 43:02Nilay Patel?

  Oh, and that touch, and that $200?

• 43:04Speaker 01

  Is gonna come out in December, which is, it really took them a long time to make this thing.

• 43:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  And.

• 43:10Nilay Patel?

  It's a circle with some buttons, as far as I can tell.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it looks really cool.

• 43:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 43:14Speaker 01

  Um, and it looks like it has very intuitive control stuff and you can give people thumbs ups.

• 43:19Nilay Patel?

  That's what you want, thumbs. I mean, I've been using Oculus Touch in demos for over a year, I feel like.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  They, yeah, I think they first announced it in like E3 2015.

• 43:28Nilay Patel?

  Right. Like they've been around. I don't know what's taking them so long to.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  They're like, they're weird like perfectionists. They're kind of like, I think they have some sort of like, I think Oculus has like the same, like kind of the valve mentality, like ship it when it's done, kind of from the games industry.

• 43:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  Which, I don't know, maybe it'll work out for them.

• 43:46Speaker 03

  They're clearly under no pressure to like turn, generate massive profits. They've got.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. A ton of their announcements were like, we spent $250 million on this content. We'll pay all your licensing fees for Unreal Engine up to this amount. We're gonna spend $50 million on this thing, you know? They're throwing a lot of money around still.

• 44:05Nilay Patel?

  So meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum, Addie posted her PSVR review. This week, she kinda likes it. Like, it's the thing I'm gonna buy. I'm not gonna buy a gaming PC on a Rift or Vive. I'm gonna buy a PlayStation Pro, I'm gonna buy a PSVR, I'm gonna swing around in the dark in my living room and I'm gonna put it away and never use it again.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  I have, I have a Verge reader and listener.

• 44:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  Who recognized me at Chick-fil-A. He's a Chick-fil-A employee.

• 44:32Nilay Patel?

  Is the guy called you Bob?

• 44:33Speaker 01

  No.

• 44:34Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  This guy knows me. We're buddies.

• 44:36Nilay Patel?

  You're Paul.

• 44:37Speaker 01

  So I asked him about if he was interested in Oculus stuff today. He's like, nah, I'm getting a PSVR.

• 44:42Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 44:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, so.

• 44:43Nilay Patel?

  There you go.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  Jason.

• 44:44Nilay Patel?

  Data set of one.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  Jason is my new research group.

• 44:49Nilay Patel?

  No, so Addy pointed out in her review.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  Great P-values out of Jason.

• 44:55Nilay Patel?

  No regression from the bitch, one.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. Hundred percent, hundred percent of people polled are getting PSVRs.

• 45:03Nilay Patel?

  One hundred percent of Chick-fil-A employees I polled are getting PSVRs.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  Love that guy.

• 45:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Jason, you're great, man. Come by. Paul will make you a sandwich.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true. Anytime. I have peanut butter and honey.

• 45:15Nilay Patel?

  No, Addy was pointing out that the PSVR is like a parts bin special, right? It's like the Move controllers from 2010, the iCamera that's been floating around forever.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  Jason doesn't like the Move controllers.

• 45:26Nilay Patel?

  The Move controllers have always been crazy. I will say this, though.

• 45:29Speaker 02

  We have Jason on the show.

• 45:31Nilay Patel?

  We should have Ja- No, because then we have to open the door to everybody.

• 45:33Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 45:34Nilay Patel?

  That's like a chain reaction you don't want to set off.

• 45:35Speaker 02

  No, only Chick-fil-A employees.

• 45:37Speaker 03

  We just sent Paul to Chick-fil-A and we did a five-minute bit with Jason.

• 45:40Nilay Patel?

  Facebook Live.

• 45:41Speaker 01

  Alright.

• 45:42Nilay Patel?

  Paul goes to Chick-fil-A.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  I'll get Jason involved in the website in some, some way.

• 45:47Speaker 03

  Also, buy me a sandwich.

• 45:49Speaker 01

  I'll get you a sandwich.

• 45:49Nilay Patel?

  Jan has ulterior motives. No, the Move controllers are super weird, except they photograph great. So all of our pictures of Addy, like, playing PSVR.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  All beautiful colors.

• 45:58Nilay Patel?

  They're amazing, but I think that's great.

• 46:00Speaker 01

  They don't have analog sticks, and they've never had analog sticks, and they still don't have analog sticks. No, this is the whole problem. This is the whole problem. If you make two things that move around, your analog sticks, what have you gotten yourself? You've gotten more work for the same analog sticks. You have to have analog sticks in addition to the motion. So the Vive controller has like touchpads that kinda work like analog sticks. And then the Oculus Touch have actual analog sticks.

• 46:29Nilay Patel?

  What if you're the analog stick? And you're just tilted?

• 46:32Speaker 01

  Well, plus, yeah.

• 46:34Nilay Patel?

  Think about it.

• 46:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:35Nilay Patel?

  I was, but I'm like, kinda into the fact that Sony just repurposed all this stuff and was like, it's for VR.

• 46:40Speaker 01

  I just think that Addie is the smartest person about VR in the world and I trust her implicitly. So don't listen to what I'm saying, but I felt like the PlayStation VR is kinda low resolution and it just doesn't feel nearly as next gen as the Vive and Oculus do.

• 46:55Nilay Patel?

  No, she kinda made that point, but I, I think in terms of just getting a system that can do it.

• 47:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:02Speaker 03

  It's, it's like half the investment. It's, I, I couldn't even like think, I wouldn't, if, if I was shopping between the two, it's like, I wouldn't even think that the PSVR would be at the same level in terms of like resolution and quality, because a PlayStation and the PSVR cost like the same as a Vive without the PC.

• 47:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, Oculus did announce a new minimum spec. They're doing this new thing, what do they call it? Space time manipulation.

• 47:30Nilay Patel?

  The whole end of this conference was just like crazy.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  Well, cause typically your PC basically needs to render these games at 90 frames per second to be Oculus spec. And they're saying now you can do it at 45 frames per second and we'll do the in-between frames, which used to only really work for just tilting.

• 47:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 47:48Speaker 01

  But now it works for actual movement. So they, they feel like they can do it.

• 47:52Nilay Patel?

  You feel like John Carmack was in the basement. He's like, I got it.

• 47:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm sure Carmack was definitely involved in this.

• 47:58Nilay Patel?

  Alright, I'm gonna read an ad.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  So, but no, it's a $500 minimum spec now for Oculus, which is cool.

• 48:05Nilay Patel?

  This episode of Vergecast brought to you by Graphic Stock. A subscription-based stock media company gives you unlimited access to over 300,000 premium photos, illustrations, vectors and design elements everyone can afford. You get great value with an unlimited download model. It has the largest unlimited library of graphics, photos, vectors and images available to the creative community. Most websites charge per download. It costs as much as $30 per image, which adds up pretty quickly. With Graphic Stock, you get unlimited downloads with your membership for an annual rate. There's no credits, no limits, no hidden charges. It's the same stuff you'd find on more expensive stock sites at a way cheaper price. And they're continuously adding new content to the library so it stays fresh. So you can get a seven day free trial. You can download 140 pieces of content. It's only $99 for an annual subscription after that, which is less than $10 a month. Check that math. Everything's 100% royalty free, even if a subscription is canceled.

• 48:50Nilay Patel?

  You get unrestricted usage rights for personal and commercial projects. You get to keep what you download and maintain those usage rights forever. So, exclusive to Vergecast listeners, sign up for your seven day free trial today at graphicsstock.com/vergecast. That's graphicsstock.com/vergecast.

• 49:08Nilay Patel?

  Paul, hit it.

• 49:09Speaker 01

  All right. Every week I do this segment that's called Having a Coke With You. And this week's Coke themed gadget is, um, it's this PC that is liquid cooled by Coca-Cola, but not actually, but it's a Coca-Cola themed gaming PC that was made by Main Gear. And it's, it's got like hashtag Coke eSports on it. Taste the Feeling, which I didn't even know, was that, is that a Coke brand?

• 49:39Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah. That's a Coke thing. Yeah, yeah.

• 49:41Speaker 01

  Taste the Feeling. Anyways, hashtag Coke eSports is also now a Coke thing.

• 49:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 49:46Speaker 01

  And, uh, but the coolest thing is at the top of this PC where, where the liquid, for the liquid cooling resides, it's in a Coke bottle.

• 49:55Nilay Patel?

  Whoa.

• 49:56Speaker 01

  And it looks like it's actually Coke, which would be, and if it was actually Coke, I'm sure that would be terrible.

• 50:02Nilay Patel?

  Well, Coke is cold. Isn't it sealed? It's not like it's raining Coca-Cola.

• 50:07Speaker 01

  What, how does it become, I feel like, I feel like I've had this conversation on the podcast where it's about how, when things evaporate, then they become sticky. No, I've just had that in the office.

• 50:19Nilay Patel?

  What is the difference?

• 50:21Speaker 01

  Well, like why Diet Coke doesn't, it's not sticky. Right.

• 50:25Nilay Patel?

  It's just sugar.

• 50:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:27Nilay Patel?

  I agree with you that Coca-Cola is probably not an ideal cooling fluid.

• 50:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:31Nilay Patel?

  I'm saying, you could probably still use it though. Why not?

• 50:35Speaker 02

  What happens if, what happens if you are eating Mentos while using this PC?

• 50:41Speaker 01

  Oh, man. Is it Diet Coke or regular Coke? That's when you know you're extreme. Oh, this is definitely.

• 50:47Nilay Patel?

  Diet Coke, gaming PC?

• 50:48Speaker 01

  This is definitely the original Coke in a glass bottle. And I don't want to like jump to conclusions, but I'm guessing it's sugar Coke, not, not that.

• 50:57Speaker 02

  Are we calling it, are we calling it Coke heavy?

• 50:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Coke heavy. Just like Bud Light and Bud Heavy. Yeah.

• 51:02Speaker 02

  Right.

• 51:02Nilay Patel?

  Coke heavy.

• 51:03Speaker 01

  Coke heavy?

• 51:03Nilay Patel?

  The real Coke. Coke heavy.

• 51:05Speaker 01

  I've never heard this before.

• 51:06Nilay Patel?

  Well, you know, they don't have Diet Coke in foreign countries. They have Coke Light.

• 51:09Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 51:10Nilay Patel?

  Here in America, it's Coke heavy. Full flavor, the real thing. Okay, I have two lightning round things. One is just me trolling Dieter. The Lenovo Fab 2 Pro, the first Google Tango phone, is shipping, Dieter. You gonna get one? You gonna buy one on the podcast? Buy a Fab 2 Pro.

• 51:28Speaker 01

  No.

• 51:29Nilay Patel?

  Come on. Is Tango, is all that stuff just over at Google? What's the situation?

• 51:35Speaker 02

  No, I think they're still working on it. I think it's gonna be a while. Like, the, you know, there are all those rumors about a standalone VR headset that just sort of like went poof away. But, you know, like, if they, like, Facebook is trying to take the top end stuff down, and maybe someday Vive will do the same. And then Google's trying to, like, start at the bottom, get up, and then PSVR is starting right in the middle. And if Google is gonna get Daydream and move it up, it needs some sort of positional tracking, because it doesn't have it right now. Actually, we never talked about using Daydream, which I did. Disclosure, my wife works for Oculus. Anyway, no, I'm not buying a Fab. Screw you.

• 52:13Speaker 01

  Wow. Wait, can you say one, one or two words about your time with Daydream?

• 52:19Speaker 02

  The Wand, Addie and I had radically different feelings about the Wand. She, like, didn't like it because it wasn't full positional, the way that Oculus Touch or Vive, or even PSVR are. I was impressed at how well it manages to trick you into thinking it's a real thing in space for certain purposes. So, like, the Harry Potter thing, it's like, it's like a wand. It's kind of like a Weemote, but it's, it's basically like, if it's going to represent a physical thing in VR, imagine, like, you're, always imagine that you're sitting down and your arm is, like, locked down to the elbow, and you're, like, moving from the elbow, or you're moving from your wrist. So, anything that doesn't need to, like, fly around in front of you, it can do, as long as it's like, you know, a thing that you would, like,

• 53:03Speaker 02

  move around. It's like, it can handle a gun, it can handle a fishing rod, it can handle a wand, but it can't be like, you know, your fist punching a person in the face. Which, nobody would want to do that anyway, because that's aggressive and mean.

• 53:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, who would want that?

• 53:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:16Speaker 01

  That sounds great.

• 53:17Speaker 02

  I'm into it.

• 53:18Speaker 01

  And the graphics-wise, is it just like Gear VR?

• 53:22Speaker 02

  It's been, I don't know, that's a, that's a tougher one. I would need more than like five minutes to really make a call on that. A lot of it depends on content. It seemed better to me, but I haven't done a ton of super intense stuff in Gear VR. The headset's way more comfortable, like way more comfortable.

• 53:37Speaker 01

  I think it's got a wider field of view too, if I remember right. Maybe I'm just making things up.

• 53:42Nilay Patel?

  I'm super buying a Pixel and getting a Daydream and then putting it next to my PSVR and then never using them again.

• 53:49Speaker 01

  Cause you'll just be talking to your Google, Google Home.

• 53:51Nilay Patel?

  Talking to my Google Home all day. I'm like, I'm ready, ready to go all in on the Google lifestyle. By the way, for the listeners at home.

• 53:56Speaker 02

  You gonna drop iMessage? You gonna drop iMessage?

• 53:58Nilay Patel?

  You did.

• 54:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I did.

• 54:02Nilay Patel?

  And I missed.

• 54:02Speaker 02

  By the way, Paul has his iPhone 7 here. Still just has the dongle hanging out the back.

• 54:06Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 54:07Speaker 02

  Come on.

• 54:08Nilay Patel?

  It's just sitting there.

• 54:10Speaker 01

  Convenient.

• 54:11Nilay Patel?

  It's ridiculous.

• 54:12Speaker 02

  How many podcasts are we gonna talk? Dan, we need you to weigh in on permanently attached dongle lifestyle.

• 54:17Speaker 03

  Oh, that's not a life I want to live.

• 54:20Nilay Patel?

  A really good friend of mine, he went into the store to buy an iPhone 6S because he was like, that seems annoying. He saw the black iPhone 7.

• 54:30Speaker 01

  Jet black?

• 54:31Nilay Patel?

  Uh, no, matte black. Said, well, that one's blacker and more expensive, so I want it. Bought an iPhone 7 and he was sitting on my couch and he pulled out his MacBook to make a conference call because he had to like do something for work.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  Yes, I know where this is going.

• 54:46Nilay Patel?

  And he took the headphones out of his...

• 54:50Nilay Patel?

  I just dinked him into the side of his... He goes, "Oh shit."

• 54:58Nilay Patel?

  And I was like, "I told you so, man."

• 55:02Speaker 01

  That's why I use the adapter.

• 55:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, Jay, Rosie who works for us, she like spent an entire subway ride watching a woman just like turn an iPhone 7 around in her hand over and over for like 20 minutes, trying to figure out where her headphones plugged in. She's like, huh?

• 55:21Speaker 02

  Just like, just kept on like looking around the phone, couldn't, like, it's gotta be here. Maybe I missed it the first time around. Let me look at the top again. No? It's always the last place you look, so I'm just gonna keep looking.

• 55:31Nilay Patel?

  Just gonna keep looking. But he literally, it was just such a confident little think. Just didn't work.

• 55:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but Paul's still, Paul's still living that Donald life. Anyway, that's our show. I want to give out one end of Vergecast plug to our friend Casey Newton, who published an incredible feature on the site today called Speak Memory. It's about a young man who died and his friends took all of his texts, his parents sent all the texts to, and they built an AI out of him. You just, you have to read it. I'm not going to do a justice by talking about it. It's incredible. We are, our editorial engineer Frank B. built an incredible presentation with photos of him. Just beautiful work all around for our feature team and from Casey and Frank. Go read it on the site. It is absolutely worth your time. It is very much like the best of what The Verge does in terms of talking

• 56:22Nilay Patel?

  about how these technologies impact the way we live and like think about each other and like process death, which is all insane. So go read that. There's also obviously a bunch of other stuff. Much of it not about death in the way that you would think, but all of it ultimately about death. On our Instagram, that's, I would love to see a deep reading of our Instagram account is like a treatise on death. It's mostly pictures of gadgets. Don't do it now.

• 56:46Speaker 01

  No, I got, I got it. I got it. We take pictures of things that don't decay to fend off the reality that we know we will decay.

• 56:57Nilay Patel?

  That's instagram.com/verge. Also hit us on Snapchat at Verge or Verge on Twitter. Paul is FuturePaul, Dieter's Backlon, Dan is DCSeefert, which I won't spell for you. Just think about it in your mind. You'll get it. I'm Reckless. Hit us up on Twitter. We love that. Go to iTunes. You can listen to What's Tech with Chris Plant on Tuesdays. Control Alt Delete. It's me and Walt. That's every Thursday. And on the Recode side, Lauren Good does Too Embarrassed to Ask. Dieter, you were on that show this week, right?

• 57:27Speaker 02

  I was, along with Ina Fried from Recode. Really good show. If you haven't heard Ina on a podcast for a while, I highly recommend it. It was really smart and obviously Lauren was smart, too.

• 57:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but way better than this garbage. Turn this off. Listen to that. Peter Kafka does Recode Media and Kara Swisher does Recode Decode. So tons of stuff to listen to for the tech-loving audience in the world. All of it made by Vox Media. Don't listen to any other media brand stuff. Just our stuff. Also Squarespace is great. I'm just babbling now. Anyway, that's the show. Thank you, everybody, for listening. Rock and roll.

• 57:58Speaker 01

  Paul.

• 57:58Nilay Patel?

  Paul.