The anniversary of Scissor Vodka, Nintendo Switch hands-on, and the secret behind the OP-1 processor

Hello! We’re still testing out our new studios so we thought we’d see how many people we can fit into the show. This week we’ve got Nilay, Paul, and Ashley in the podcast room, with Dieter and Chris Plante coming in over Skype. Everyone had so much to say so we gave you a few bonus minutes to listen to. Included are: Chris’ Nintendo Switch review, Dieter’s scoop about chips in Chromebooks, some MWC previews, and much, much more! 04:26 - Nintendo Switch hands-on 23:24 - Solving the mystery behind the OP1 processor in the Chromebook Plus 41:44 - MWC preview: LG G6 / Scissor vodka anniversary 47:44 - Verizon is planning 5G tests in 11 cities this year 55:49 - FCC news updated 1:06:15 - Lightning round — Snapchat Spectacles are now available online 1:08:22 - Meitu’s new T8 phone 1:16:37 - Amazon says Alexa’s speech is protected by the First Amendment 1:21:27 - Ashley’s weekly segment “Good Boy” 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.

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

  Paul, are you recording locally?

• 0:01Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely. I always record locally.

• 0:09Nilay Patel?

  Hello, and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of theverge.com. A multi-channel media experience about technology and culture and talking it off-angles into this microphone to irritate our audio engineer. That's a- I think we need a new tagline. Yeah. I think we should be, we should be the eighth, the eighth planet orbiting Trappist One. Ooh, Trappist One, I have to say, great name. Really? Great name for a solar system. Yeah, it sounds- Trap?

• 0:41Nilay Patel?

  I thought, well- No, they make, they make really good beer there.

• 0:43Speaker 01

  Should we go to the place called Trap? No, I don't know, guys.

• 0:49Nilay Patel?

  I thought, it sounds like a sci-fi novel. I thought it was great.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  It's fine.

• 0:52Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, this is, again, The Vergecast. I'm Neelai Patel. Paul Miller is here.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 0:57Nilay Patel?

  Dieter Bohn is here.

• 0:58Speaker 02

  Hey.

• 0:58Nilay Patel?

  Christopher Thomas Plant is joining The Vergecast today. Hey, Chris.

• 1:02Speaker 03

  That's my full name. You can steal my identity now.

• 1:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, get in there. We'll tell you his social security number at the end of the show, so stick around.

• 1:09Speaker 03

  Oh, my gosh. So many gamergaters are gonna be thrilled.

• 1:14Nilay Patel?

  Finally. And Ashley Carmen's here.

• 1:16Speaker 04

  Hello.

• 1:17Nilay Patel?

  How's it going?

• 1:18Speaker 04

  It's going great.

• 1:19Nilay Patel?

  It's like a party, party show today. It's a full boat. It's a full boat. The flagship, it's a full boat. Can I tell you that we moved into this new office and now I commute via boat? And I ride a boat twice a day now.

• 1:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's how you Brooklyn people do it.

• 1:32Nilay Patel?

  And I really, I really think about how successful I am every time I'm on that boat. It's not like a great, it's not my boat.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:40Nilay Patel?

  It's not even like a fancy boat. I just literally am like, I am once again on a boat.

• 1:47Speaker 04

  I'm happy for you.

• 1:48Nilay Patel?

  That's it.

• 1:48Speaker 04

  I'm very happy for you.

• 1:49Nilay Patel?

  There's not even a rest of it, there's not even more thoughts. It's just like peace. I'm just at peace for the 18 minutes in which I ride a boat to work. Anyway, there's tech news. Boats are technology, by the way. Some might say the first technology.

• 2:03Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 2:04Speaker 03

  You know what? I would guess not. I would guess that it would be the real, or literally anything else.

• 2:13Speaker 03

  Shadows, maybe.

• 2:14Nilay Patel?

  Boats, the first technology, my new, my new pop science book, will be going on sale at airports in a few months.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  If you lived on a sandy beach with, well, see, if you had trees, you'd be making fire already.

• 2:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  But you wouldn't make a wheel, because it's sandy beach.

• 2:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 2:31Speaker 03

  This is literally how fake news is made.

• 2:33Nilay Patel?

  Why roll when I can float?

• 2:36Nilay Patel?

  Said the first humans. Anyway, so Chris, I, you're, there's a lot going on this week in the news.

• 2:44Speaker 03

  Uh huh, I'm sorry, why roll when I can float is like definitely the best thing to say when you're high.

• 2:52Nilay Patel?

  And now the true secret of the Vergecast has been revealed. Uh, no, it's not true. Very sober show. I mean, Ashley is on her like third La Croix.

• 3:01Speaker 03

  I'm so buzzed.

• 3:03Nilay Patel?

  You're sparkling.

• 3:05Speaker 03

  Do you know they serve La Croix liqueur? Have you seen this? There's like spiked, um, carbonated water.

• 3:12Nilay Patel?

  Isn't that just La Croix with vodka in it?

• 3:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, like how do they sell that?

• 3:17Nilay Patel?

  I'm like, I, I think I know what you're doing. Speaking of vodkas. Hey. Uh, this show is brought to you by a joke that is now exactly one year old. We have a clip. Wait, we'll do it later.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  Ah. It's one year old, Neil, but it hasn't aged a day.

• 3:32Nilay Patel?

  No one's sick of this at all.

• 3:35Speaker 03

  Because it was never good.

• 3:37Nilay Patel?

  Scissor vodka. It's our vodka brand. There's a lot of news about, stay tuned. But anyway, Paul, cut through the night.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  Snip, snip.

• 3:47Nilay Patel?

  The joke keeps getting longer. Anyway, Chris.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  You know what I love about podcasting? There's no way for you to tell when people stop listening. So the people that have, we're like two minutes in, they're like, well, screw this episode and dropped. We like, we, they just aren't like a full listener. If you've hung on this long, you are a true Vergecast patriot. Thank you.

• 4:05Nilay Patel?

  Vox Media hired.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  It's a long tail.

• 4:07Nilay Patel?

  Vox Media hired a new like podcast EP, like to see pod, like make podcasting a real thing across the company. And I met with her yesterday. And she's like, I've been listening to the Vergecast. And my instinctive response was, I'm so sorry. And she's like, "No, it's a great show." I'm like, "I don't know, were you listening to the right one?" Anyway, we're gonna do news. Chris.

• 4:28Speaker 03

  What up?

• 4:28Nilay Patel?

  You played with the Switch, the Nintendo Switch.

• 4:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:31Nilay Patel?

  You've literally put your... I have to say this, I said this to you earlier today, I'll say it again to you now in front of all of our listeners. You know, the skies above us. Chris, you're fired. No, I thought, I thought you're, uh, and that's, that's how we do it here at The Verge. Welcome to The Vergecast. This will be your last day at Vox Media. Please clean your things out of your home office and go.

• 4:51Speaker 03

  Enjoy this complimentary scissor vodka.

• 4:54Nilay Patel?

  It doesn't exist. Uh, no, but you played the Switch. I thought your handsome post was actually beautifully written.

• 4:59Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 4:59Nilay Patel?

  Particularly because the tactility of the thing is important. And you just, I thought you described the tactility of it really well. You wanna, you, tell me about it.

• 5:08Speaker 03

  What can I say? The hand feel, it is pretty good. It's pretty good. Um, yeah, so what can I tell you? Is Nintendo made a very large screen. It's like if you took two Nestle Crunch Bars and you like laid one on top of the other. And you're like, now it's a video game console. Um, except for you can attach two controllers to each side. They're little wireless controllers, they're like itty bitty, um, WeMotes.

• 5:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 5:37Speaker 03

  You can, you can remove them and they work wirelessly. And it plays Zelda. And all of the little ways that things click on, they have this beautiful ASMR sound to them. Some of it is heightened, as in literally Nintendo added a sound effect that goes along with the tactile click of putting the controllers on. So you can hear it in the, in the trailer sport at the very end. There's this like, goes like, "Switch, I can't do it." Like, "Click." Like that, it sounds like that, pretty much exactly like that. "Click."

• 6:11Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 6:12Speaker 03

  Um, and you, yeah, no.

• 6:13Nilay Patel?

  It's just like a guy yelling the word "click."

• 6:15Speaker 03

  It's me. But, you know, no, that sounds like, oh, that's, that's, that wouldn't make sense. Except, so, I don't know if this break, I don't really care if this breaks embargo. There, there are these menus in the system. The system basically doesn't do anything right now. Like, it needs a patch. You can't go onto an e-shop to download your stuff. You can't download anything. You literally currently cannot format the micro SD card you will use as storage. It's like, mm, mm, mm, not gonna work. But, there are still like tiny menus. And when you load them, they're written like short letters? And they're signed by a woman named Amelia.

• 7:00Nilay Patel?

  Wait, what?

• 7:01Speaker 03

  That's real. I need to put this on the site. It's real. There is a fictional character named Amelia that Nintendo has created. And she is your guide by way of little notes she has left throughout the Nintendo Switch. But otherwise, it is the most like, it is the most boring and like, simple user interface Nintendo has ever designed.

• 7:27Nilay Patel?

  That's good. When they try to do things in software, it's always bad.

• 7:31Speaker 03

  No, so, well, here's the thing is, it's utterly boring, but it's still just as like poorly designed layout-wise. The layout, I mean, it's, there are like, what, like, gonna be four games for it at launch? I think like there are a few more.

• 7:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:46Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 7:47Nilay Patel?

  What was the one that you were saying you were excited about?

• 7:49Speaker 04

  So I heard from The Verge that there are two games that are particularly interesting to me. The first is you get to eat sandwiches with your friends, like fake sam- like virtual sandwiches? And then also you get to walk like a model or something like that?

• 8:04Speaker 03

  Those are, those are the same game.

• 8:07Speaker 04

  What? Very different games to me. Complete opposites, actually.

• 8:13Speaker 03

  And, uh...

• 8:14Nilay Patel?

  Strut to lunch, the breaking hot new Switch game.

• 8:18Speaker 03

  I, I, I will rumor, put this under, under maybe true, but the word is, that game is called One Two Switch, okay?

• 8:28Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 8:29Speaker 03

  And it's a collection of like, wacky mini-games.

• 8:32Nilay Patel?

  Oh yeah.

• 8:32Speaker 03

  The rumor, capital R, rumor, is that Nintendo just didn't send it out to, uh, video game sites, and sent it to like, USA Today. Because they were like, "We know for a fact, video game nerds are gonna just take the biggest shit all over this." "We have to send it to like, people like USA Today who haven't like, played a game since Pac-Man."

• 8:54Speaker 04

  That's like, literally why I like this. I don't play video games, and I'm like, "Oh my god, I can eat a virtual sandwich."

• 8:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's great.

• 9:00Speaker 03

  I think video game nerds would love that, like, they can like, cradle a crying baby is another game. They, they made a commercial for it, and it's a woman, try, like, you hear a baby crying and, and see her rocking it, and then it pulls back to reveal she's rocking a fake child on the Nintendo Switch screen.

• 9:17Nilay Patel?

  Are you rocking the tablet or the controller?

• 9:19Speaker 03

  The tablet, the whole thing, and then you have to set it down on the table, and then walk away.

• 9:24Nilay Patel?

  So when you're playing, when you're playing the sandwich game, do you eat the tablet?

• 9:27Speaker 03

  I, listen, to be honest with you...

• 9:29Nilay Patel?

  You eat the controller, you make little mouth noises.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  There's an IR sensor on one of the Joy-Cons, or maybe both of the Joy-Cons.

• 9:36Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 9:37Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 9:37Nilay Patel?

  It can detect biting.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  That's, I don't know, I saw it, and then Nintendo's official unboxing, they're talking about it detecting you when your mouth closed.

• 9:45Nilay Patel?

  Okay, I, I buy it. I mean, it's like, not actually a hard thing to detect. Have you really thought about it? Because if you're shooting an IR beam, you'd break.

• 9:52Speaker 03

  Have you ever thought about that something could detect your mouth? Yes. That's something I, I generally spend my lunch breaks on.

• 10:00Nilay Patel?

  I was waiting for, for...

• 10:04Nilay Patel?

  This is such a bad story. There's nothing to do with the switch. I was waiting, we were, my wife and I were waiting for friends to get off a train. We were like waiting to pick them up at a train station. And I watched the train roll in.

• 10:15Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:15Nilay Patel?

  And I'm sure the nerds who listen to the show will understand this reaction I had to train. I said, "Train wheels are so weird." And Becky looked at me and she goes, "Your brain works in a completely different way than mine." And she just like walked away. But that's how I feel about the IR blaster and the switch.

• 10:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, that makes sense.

• 10:35Nilay Patel?

  What you say to me, the IR blaster gonna, I'm like, "Oh yeah, I think I know how that works."

• 10:39Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm, yeah.

• 10:40Nilay Patel?

  Right, it's just detecting a distance and then you're cutting the...

• 10:43Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  Snip the plane.

• 10:46Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, so Chris, you've been playing with the switch. What is weird about train wheels?

• 10:50Speaker 03

  Okay, well, I can say that literally the only thing I can do with the, with the system is play Zelda.

• 10:56Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 10:56Speaker 03

  Um, and I can...

• 10:57Speaker 02

  So it's the perfect video game system?

• 10:59Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, oh, don't worry. A number of commenters have already made sure I understood that. And let me know that it was pointless for me to say anything other than it can play Zelda. And that was a grave offense on my part. Um, so, you know, I, I want them to know that I appreciate them and I hear them.

• 11:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 11:19Speaker 03

  Um, and I didn't mute them on Twitter. I listen to everything they have to say.

• 11:23Nilay Patel?

  There you go.

• 11:24Speaker 03

  Um, but yeah, that's what it does. It, right now, it plays Zelda. And it turns out, um, for I think a number of people, that will be okay. I think that will be enough. I think they will spend $300 for the system. And then, what, $60 for the game, and then $20 for the DLC. And I think they'll be pretty pleased as punch because being able to play a big, open world Zelda game wherever you want for, I mean, however long the battery lasts, which is not especially long. It does feel pretty great. And so far, it is a pretty good game.

• 12:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 12:01Speaker 03

  Especially if you like weird, really weird games that don't really tell you what to do. I spent a lot of time trying to kill a pig because I need to make a soup. Um, and, and that is my Zelda experience, which is not the traditional, uh, go get the boomerang and the bomb and kill the bad guys.

• 12:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, okay.

• 12:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:23Nilay Patel?

  But why isn't it ready? Like, I'm just looking at, I'm looking at the list of headlines from today. There's no virtual console at launch. The online purchase thing seems very confused. The battery pack situation seems messy. I mean, I think you and I have both linked to the Chris Grant piece about the Wii U and the Switch. And like, the Wii U was not ready at all. And they just didn't, like Nintendo is just bad at executing.

• 12:52Speaker 03

  Uh, so yes and no. Yeah, I mean, yes. Okay, I mean, basically, yes.

• 12:59Nilay Patel?

  Here's, here's my question about it not being ready. When they gave the software developers the deadline, why didn't they just tell them their deadline was last week instead of next week?

• 13:13Speaker 03

  Okay, fair question. Um, here, here's what I will say about it. Two, two, two things.

• 13:20Nilay Patel?

  Do you need to answer my question? It's an important question.

• 13:23Speaker 03

  No, I'm gonna, I'm gonna answer it, but they're kind of, they build on top of each other. One is this. I think, and we have to go way back in time to the launch of the Wii U. I think they wanted to get the Wii U out ahead of PlayStation 4 and Xbox One as much as possible. Um, because graphically, they weren't going to compete. And I think they, I think they thought that they had, uh, enough to go off of, uh, with their games library at the time, and they didn't. And then what, what that resulted in was they suddenly, um, didn't have games that people were interested in, but they needed to make people care.

• 14:01Speaker 03

  So they did this bat crazy thing where they essentially announced everything they were going to do for the console years ahead. Um, and it was terrible because it spoiled, I mean, I, I always want to know, uh, you know, game leaks, yada, yada, yada. But the result was that they kind of showed all their cards, and then it became this giant waiting game. And I think at that point, the system started to die. They didn't know if they were even gonna keep these games on this system. And then they ultimately decided, hey, we need to cut our losses and just move on to the next thing. And they started on the Switch, right? And they're like, okay, great, like, we're gonna, we're gonna really beat, uh,

• 14:44Speaker 03

  Microsoft and PlayStation to the punch, like before PlayStation 5 and Xbox. Two or whatever. And but then Microsoft and PlayStation were like, yo, what's up? We're just gonna release a new Microsoft and PlayStation thing every year or so from now on. And then Nintendo was like, oh, damn it, it's happening all over again. We need to rush this thing out because clearly that worked last time and do the exact same thing. So suddenly we have this scenario of like, yeah, it's out tomorrow. And Mario is gonna happen. Don't ask us when, but like roll that beautiful bean footage.

• 15:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 15:26Speaker 03

  New Doc City, everybody. And that I think is like the pickle that they're in is I think they just. I think they didn't know that they were gonna have to get this out the door so, so quickly. And that's why we have it shipping with a day one patch.

• 15:42Nilay Patel?

  What's happening the week after next that they needed to get it out ahead of?

• 15:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think I think what that means is like, you know how like literally today? We found out that they don't have a virtual console. I think they were literally deciding, okay, what is close enough to finish? And the week before, like, where can we put our resources and get this out the door? And then after that, we'll just have to add on things later. Like, I think the reason that it's it's literally this week is they probably had 10 things they wanted. And then today they were like, okay, which of these are shippable? And I think the system that we'll have on day one, again, this is a lot of speculation. So cushion, cushion.

• 16:29Speaker 03

  But I think the system will get day one is literally like, hey, this is just what we have right now. And we'll get back to you as soon as we have the rest.

• 16:38Nilay Patel?

  It just seems.

• 16:39Speaker 02

  So it's the it's the Google I/O version of console development.

• 16:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, isn't everybody else, isn't every, aren't you sick? I'm just sick of companies not releasing finished products. It's like this is where we've just landed in the universe where because we can ship software to everything. Over the air whenever we want. We're like, here's a piece of garbage.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  Well, what did the

• 17:00Nilay Patel?

  We wait for it.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  What did the Wii U have at launch? They had the zombie game and then they had the the mini, the collection of mini games, right?

• 17:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, in in the like Wii U had the advantage of Ubisoft support, which was kind of the reliable thing of the last generation. Like when everything launched, you could count on like Ubisoft just completely supporting it out the gate and having four or five.

• 17:28Speaker 03

  Okay, maybe like maybe one like interesting game and then like three. Okay. And then like two real bad games.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  But they didn't have a Zelda. For the Wii U and they didn't have a Mario or a Mario Kart at launch.

• 17:42Speaker 03

  They did have a Mario. They had a new Super Mario and it was like, not that great.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  Oh, one of those 2Ds?

• 17:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't, I don't mess.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  So, so I, I bought the Wii U and um, this is while I was off the internet. So I didn't have to even like think about this software update that everybody was complaining about. Um, I just bought it. It was like near Thanksgiving, I think, because like I immediately brought it to this party where a bunch of people are hanging out and we just played a bunch of games and it could, you could use your old like Wii controllers and like, I think that's, at least Nintendo typically offers some fun out of the box and I, I don't know, I, I haven't played this, what is it called? I always forget.

• 18:27Nilay Patel?

  One, two, switch.

• 18:29Speaker 03

  One, two.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  One, two.

• 18:30Nilay Patel?

  Switch it up.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 18:32Speaker 03

  Switch it up.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  I haven't played these mini games. Who knows?

• 18:34Nilay Patel?

  That sounds like an ad campaign for Tab.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  But I

• 18:36Nilay Patel?

  Sick of diet coke? Switch it up.

• 18:38Speaker 01

  I feel like Nintendo is less of a, like a platform company and more of like, hey, we could probably deliver you some fun. Let's, I think we're ready to deliver you a little bit of fun right now. There'll be more fun later.

• 18:51Speaker 03

  Here, here's my devil's advocate that actually builds on that and why they could be like totally okay and why this might not be like the Wii U. Is, look at the launch of the Nintendo 3DS. Which was, I don't know if you remember it, but, real bad. They shipped a piece of hardware that like, essentially the 3D did not quite work like you would hope. It made you feel gross. You had to look, keep your head like, right in a locked position. The screen wasn't very bright. There were no good games. Like, I think the big game was Steel Divers, where you were a... You know, Steel Divers. That popular Nintendo franchise about submarines. You go diving for steel. Yeah, of course. There's a cave with water in it, and you go diving down.

• 19:36Speaker 03

  Who can forget Steel Divers? You pour steel underwater. Thank you. Thank you for joining me on that little, that little dialogue. Um, but, so yeah, so it was, it was really, really bad. And then Nintendo basically did this mea culpa, where they were like, "Hey, you know what? That, that was like, really crummy of us. Here are, here's a pack of like, 15 or 16 free virtual console games. Um, and if you bought one, they're just there. Go download them. We're really, really sorry. Oh, and it turns out, we're finally gonna release the games you actually like. Um, so Animal Crossing, and Mario Kart, uh, and, uh, what is it? The, the RTS that just came out. Oh my gosh, why am I blanking on it? Fire Emblem.

• 20:21Speaker 03

  Fire Emblem, thank you. All, all those games finally came out, and, uh, and, great. The system's really fantastic, and, and now there's all this stuff where... The great twist here being, uh, Nintendo apparently just doesn't make Nintendo 3DSs anymore. So there are games for it, and you literally can't buy a new one. Like, they sell out instantly when they get these annual pre-orders, or semi-annual, or whatever. Um, but, they're, they're almost impossible to find otherwise. Uh, I guess because Nintendo has diverted its, um, manufacturing focus to the Switch. Yeah. Uh, the one that doesn't have games, so, yeah. I want this thing to be successful. Yeah, I think, I think it has a shot. I would just say, I think it will be a while before it like, finds itself.

• 21:07Speaker 03

  I don't think it's gonna have like, an identity problem, the way that Wii U did. Because, the inherent problem with the Wii was like, the core idea was terrible. What if, what if we gave you a, we, we ripped off the used screens on the back of old airliner receipts? And, we said you could only use it six feet, uh, from your TV. Like, how would that feel for you? And also, like, you can only have one. So like, we know it's terrible, but we also don't want you to have too much terrible.

• 21:41Speaker 03

  Like, they fixed that in the Switch. The core concept of like, hey, it's a console and it goes wherever you go and you can connect with friends over LAN. And we're so confident that you'll be like playing with other people that you can literally share system updates via local area connections, which is hilarious to me. I think like that, that is like really solid and you can build something on that. Unfortunately, they like laid the foundation and they're like, who's ready to buy a house? And a lot of people are like, does that house let Zelda in? And they're like, sure. And like, cool, yeah, where do I sign up?

• 22:21Nilay Patel?

  That's pretty much the Nintendo story. All right, the Switch. We're gonna, we're more, lots of Switch, right? GDC is coming.

• 22:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, we have way more.

• 22:29Nilay Patel?

  Like, all kinds of stuff happening.

• 22:31Speaker 03

  We're gonna see indie games for it, so like...

• 22:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's an interesting thing is they're supporting, or Unity and Unreal Engines are gonna be, which are used to make a lot of the tablet games that people play. So you could definitely see indies who are making a tablet game.

• 22:48Nilay Patel?

  Over/under, how many months until somebody puts Android on this thing for real? I mean, it might be zero months. It might run on Android right now.

• 22:56Speaker 01

  Do we still not know?

• 22:56Nilay Patel?

  We still don't know.

• 22:59Nilay Patel?

  Speaking of Android, hold on, I want, we gotta get off the Switch. We've been on it almost all the time. I mean, there's like half a show off, but whatever. I wanna do one thing and then I wanna read the ad and then I wanna talk about MWC. Wait, what's your over/under if it's not running Android?

• 23:09Speaker 01

  I don't know what over/under means.

• 23:11Nilay Patel?

  Is it?

• 23:12Speaker 01

  Is it like a ratio?

• 23:13Nilay Patel?

  Pick a number of months. It'll be under three months, over three months?

• 23:16Speaker 01

  Over six months.

• 23:17Nilay Patel?

  Over six months, okay. Because they gotta break it, presumably, if it's not running Android.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's a slightly non-standard chip and yeah.

• 23:24Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so speaking of slightly non-standard chips. Dieter, you had a scoop. There's all kinds of chip news. Yeah. I want Dieter, I want you to talk about the OP1. I want Paul to talk about Ryzen. I want Ashley to keep people hitting me like I'm crazy.

• 23:35Nilay Patel?

  What you been doing for some time?

• 23:36Speaker 03

  I'm here for it.

• 23:38Speaker 02

  The scoop, I actually buried at the very end because I like found it at like right before I hit publish, is Google is going to start to start a new marketing campaign, which is surely for Chromebooks or maybe a Chrome tablet, maybe a Pixel tablet that runs Chrome OS that they're probably going to make some kind of ad campaign for Chrome OS that its tagline is going to be bye bye laptop, hello app top. Yeah.

• 24:09Nilay Patel?

  I feel like we should shut it down right now. Like the verge had a great run and it's great and we just had a pretty new redesign. We got it, you know, it's I'm really proud of the company.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  Is that a laptop?

• 24:21Nilay Patel?

  That's an app top, Paul.

• 24:22Speaker 01

  No way.

• 24:22Speaker 03

  You idiot. Obviously an app top.

• 24:26Nilay Patel?

  Hello fellow kids.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  I remember when I was like 12 or 13, I probably told this story before, I had the longest running argument with my neighbor down the street of whether they should be called.

• 24:40Nilay Patel?

  Who thought that netbooks were stupid, right?

• 24:41Speaker 01

  No, it was notebooks versus power books.

• 24:45Nilay Patel?

  Oh my God.

• 24:46Speaker 03

  I really wanted you to say joke books.

• 24:50Nilay Patel?

  Can we start a label for joke books for bad laptops? I think that's a circuit breaker.

• 24:54Speaker 02

  That's not bad.

• 24:55Nilay Patel?

  Joke book of the week. Anyway, Dieter.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  How about app stop?

• 25:03Nilay Patel?

  If you want to know how things are named at the verge, it's like this, but worse. Anyway, Dieter, keep going.

• 25:08Speaker 02

  The whole thing started because I reviewed the Chromebook Plus, which is an ARM based Chrome OS laptop, Chromebook, and it was really good. And I was like, huh, I thought ARM chips were garbage and this thing is really good and fast and it benchmarks almost as well as an Intel chip. What's going on? What is this chip? This chip is called the OP1. What the shit is an OP1? Who makes it? So I Google OP processor and the website that comes up is whatisop.com. So you go to whatisop.com and it tells you the OP chip is designed for Chromebooks. I'm like, huh, but who makes it? The website doesn't tell you who made the website, doesn't tell you who made the chip,

• 25:50Speaker 02

  and is registered anonymously, so you can't tell where it came from.

• 25:54Nilay Patel?

  Hmm.

• 25:55Speaker 02

  Luckily, uh, there's this guy who Paul, uh, probably remembers named Charbackes.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  Yes, Charbackes.

• 26:02Speaker 02

  Charbackes. Charbackes runs a website called ARM Devices. And, uh, at CES earlier this year, he pointed out that, uh, the OP1 is actually a Rockchip processor. Uh, and Rockchip is like, they're like in the same league as like MediaTek, where it's like an ARM processor from a company that you've barely heard of. And if you see it on a spec sheet, you just assume that that thing is garbage, right? Like, if you see an Android tablet that has a Rockchip processor, you're like, oh, that's probably bad. I won't buy it.

• 26:34Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  Not that the chips are garbage, just that it means that they're not putting premium parts in it.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, right, exactly.

• 26:41Nilay Patel?

  And Rockchip chips used to be garbage. Not anymore, but once in a time.

• 26:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, turns out that OP is just a brand that Google made up, that anybody who's making a Chromebook can use if they meet Google's spec, to, instead of the name of the processor that you probably don't trust. That's the whole thing. It's a brand that Google made up.

• 27:06Nilay Patel?

  So why does this Rockchip run Chrome OS better than all of the other ARM devices?

• 27:12Speaker 02

  Oh, well, um, because it's optimized for Chrome OS. Uh, so the deal with like a system on a chip is there's, you can have multiple versions of like ARM processors. There's like big little configurations and little, little configurations and big, big configurations. So like, there's the heavy duty processor and the like, she'll do low power stuff processor. On top of that, there's like the memory bus and the cache and like all the crap that like goes around the thing that does the raw computation. And, uh, Google worked with Samsung and Rockchip to optimize all the stuff. Like, they said, Samsung, you could, if you spent $5 more on using this Wi-Fi chip

• 27:55Speaker 02

  instead of that Wi-Fi chip, it'll talk to the motherboard better and this'll work better. And like, they just, they just optimize all the parts, basically.

• 28:04Nilay Patel?

  So is that what gets you the OP thing? Or is it just, hey, Google?

• 28:07Speaker 02

  Well, no, no, actually neither of those things. It's so fricking weird. Google does like, like whenever, whenever there's a new Chromebook that comes out, you can like, go look at like, the Git Hubs and all the other like, open source development stuff and find the code name for the Chromebook. And there's Google employees working to optimize it. Google actually works with basically every Chromebook that comes out. It's not like Android where like, you can like, go and just launch the thing and not talk to Google at all. And I don't know yet if, if you have, there's like a higher level of collaboration, like a Nexus program, that means it gets to be OP or not.

• 28:49Speaker 02

  But I mean, I called up, I called up Google, I was like, what the hell? And they're like, talk to ARM. And ARM's like, no, no, talk to Google. And then I called Google, I was like, I'm talking to you now. And there's no money that trains hounds when something gets called OP. Google owns the trademark and by verifying that, that's how I found that. Bye bye laptop, hello app top thing. And Google is not the one who decides this is called OP. It's up to the manufacturer of the Chromebook and the chipmaker.

• 29:21Nilay Patel?

  Hmm. So yesterday you and I argued about whether or not this was Nexus.

• 29:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 29:26Nilay Patel?

  So here's, here's my read on this. This is why, this is why I make the parallel Nexus.

• 29:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:32Nilay Patel?

  The Nexus program was Google saying, we're going to design a phone. And then they would go to a manufacturer like HTC or LG or Huawei. And they would basically take a phone off the shelf and be like, make these design tweaks.

• 29:46Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 29:46Nilay Patel?

  And then they would do that. And, but they were never really meaningful design tweaks. It was like the, usually the exterior. And they would say, this is a Nexus phone, and they would run stock Android on it.

• 29:55Nilay Patel?

  What is different than this? That's the same thing. They're going to other manufacturers who make chips can come to Google and be like, "We made a Chromebook, we put a random Rock chip in it. It meets, you know, some minor spec requirements of yours." And Google's like, "Great, OP won."

• 30:11Speaker 02

  It's different for a few reasons. One, they did do a little bit more with the Nexus stuff and specifically like Nexus was in part, in some cases, designed to like prove that Android could run well on a certain processor architecture. Two, this isn't like, like the Nexus stuff was like associated with Google and OP is like sort of associated with Google, but not really because they anonymously registered the website. It's like the point of the OP brand is to not make you think, "Oh, that's a MediaTek chip that must suck." Like it's just there to make you feel better about buying an ARM device. And the level of collaboration, I don't think is that much higher than before.

• 30:56Speaker 02

  The one weird like thing to talk about with like the Nexus program, which is basically done, is Google's doing Nexus-like program stuff right now. So the, the two LG watches, I think the thing on the box had like designed with our friends at Google, which is hilarious. And actually, these two Chromebooks, the Plus and the Pro were like really like Google was very much involved in a Nexus-like way in the creation of the Samsung Chromebook Plus and Pro. The next, the, the big question is, the next time we see a laptop that says it has an OP processor, will Google have been that involved in it? Or will it just be there because, I don't know, Asus doesn't believe you like want to buy a Rock chip?

• 31:41Speaker 02

  Or will this whole thing just go away? Because if the point of OP is as a marketing device, they haven't done much marketing around it, except make one like kind of meh website.

• 31:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It's not like a great website. I really wish we had Square Space as a sponsor this week, but we don't.

• 31:57Nilay Patel?

  That would have been, that's a real Squarespace integration.

• 32:00Speaker 02

  But to me, the like, the larger thing here to pay attention to isn't like the, you know, incredibly nerdy mystery of like this, the name of this processor and the trademark. The thing that's important is we are going to start seeing ARM-based laptops and tablets. We've already got good ARM tablets, we've got the iPad, but we're going to start seeing ARM devices that run Windows and that run Chrome OS that are going to be like really good this year. The Chromebook Plus is basically there, except that Android apps, the software is still bad. But we might see like, there's going to be this race to like, make a cheap,

• 32:41Speaker 02

  you know, less expensive laptop that runs on an ARM processor instead of an Intel processor that's like, good enough for like, to be your main computer. And who's going to win that race? Windows said they're going to do it, and now Google's got a head start on everybody. And Apple's like, everyone's just assuming that they're working on it too, but like, we don't know what the plan is there for like, software work. But either way, Intel laptops are like, going to be facing an assault from ARM laptops. And that, I think, is really interesting, because ARM has a better reputation for battery life, and it, you know, it's cheaper. And connectivity, it's better at doing, you know, phone stuff.

• 33:24Speaker 02

  And we want our laptops to do more phone stuff. Like, talk to the modem, talk to the accelerometer, talk to the barometer, whatever the shit.

• 33:31Nilay Patel?

  I need a barometer on a laptop, immediately.

• 33:33Speaker 02

  Right?

• 33:34Nilay Patel?

  Well, I'm a sailor now. I live on a boat. Not knowing the relative air pressure is very important. So there's another piece of this. Paul, you were very excited about the AMD Ryzen. I want to just say this, I want to say it out loud.

• 33:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 33:47Nilay Patel?

  This is a terrible name for anything.

• 33:49Speaker 02

  It sounds like, it sounds like a rejected character from a Mortal Kombat sequel.

• 33:53Nilay Patel?

  I was going to say Street Fighter II. Like, they're like, what's better than Ryu?

• 33:56Speaker 02

  Ryzen.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  For me, there's two ways to think about it. You're rising up, or you're looking up into the horizon.

• 34:06Speaker 02

  No!

• 34:08Speaker 01

  Right? So it could go both ways. So here's the long and the short of it.

• 34:13Nilay Patel?

  That's the Vergecast, everybody. We'll see you next week.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  AMD is releasing.

• 34:18Speaker 02

  Can I, can I get an app top that runs Ryzen?

• 34:23Speaker 01

  Well, ChromaOS does work on Intel.

• 34:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  So, yeah.

• 34:31Nilay Patel?

  Okay. Tell us something about the rise.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  But it wouldn't be a laptop.

• 34:33Nilay Patel?

  AMD's been out of the game.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  Desktop processors.

• 34:36Nilay Patel?

  AMD has been out of the game for so long. What is going on here?

• 34:39Speaker 01

  They, they just did a good job.

• 34:42Nilay Patel?

  Except for the name.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  They, they've been really lagging behind.

• 34:47Nilay Patel?

  The Ryzen logo looks like it is a 1990's Las Vegas Japanese restaurant.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 34:53Speaker 04

  It's spelled with a Z.

• 34:54Nilay Patel?

  It's spelled with a YZ.

• 34:57Speaker 04

  Yes, Ryzen.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  Neil, I want you to focus on this. This is 200 meters.

• 35:03Nilay Patel?

  200 meters?

• 35:03Speaker 01

  Of wiring.

• 35:04Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 35:05Speaker 01

  This is power right here. So, so they're launching.

• 35:08Nilay Patel?

  I like to measure my chips' power by meters of wiring.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  They're launching their high-end desktop chips, right? They're launching their equivalent of Intel's i7 chips. And the, the big takeaway is that their top-end chip is $500. It's almost exactly as fast, maybe slightly faster. We don't have all like, we have AMD's benchmarks and some early benchmarks are coming out. And it seems like it's about, almost exactly as fast as Intel's top-end Core i7, which costs $1,000.

• 35:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:39Speaker 01

  So AMD came into a market that just kind of had stopped being like, who else? You, there's nobody else to go to get a top-end Core i7. You go get it from Intel. And AMD's like, hey, we'll give you that same power for half the price.

• 35:55Nilay Patel?

  What's the power usage?

• 35:57Speaker 01

  I think there's like, I think those are around like 95 watts.

• 36:01Nilay Patel?

  Okay. AMD just has this reputation for being really hot and power hungry, right?

• 36:05Speaker 01

  So, these are probably gonna be, so they're, they are doing slightly fewer instructions per clock cycle so that, so they, all these AMD chips have slightly higher gigahertz than the Intel equivalent while still getting the same amount of, of performance. But it, the, the price thing, and, and, you know, there's plenty of ways. I mean, 95 watts, there's plenty of ways to power that and cool that. And it's totally fine. And if you're this sort of enthusiast building a desktop like this, you've got plenty of headroom for a chip like this.

• 36:39Nilay Patel?

  You just want an excuse to water cool that PC.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  I, no.

• 36:40Nilay Patel?

  That's what I'm looking for. How can I make this a fish tank?

• 36:44Speaker 01

  Uh, I just, I don't think you'll have to, I mean, if you wanna overclock this, you totally, totally water cool it. I just, what's so exciting about this is, is this aggressive of competition, it means Intel's gonna have to up its game. And Intel obviously will come out with something that will be faster than this in the next like three to six months.

• 37:05Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I think the Intel has to up its game story is actually the story of Intel over the, what did it, what'd you say, two years now? Like, they've just not delivered for two years. But they don't have, they haven't had a competitor like, you know, this charming sushi restaurant of a processor. Um, you just gotta look at the logo. I'm not kidding.

• 37:28Speaker 02

  But I mean, it's not even, it's not even.

• 37:29Nilay Patel?

  And they haven't had it on ARM, right? The ARM performance and coming onto laptops hasn't been there. So they've been in stasis. They deliver, the last generation of chips, I don't think it was ever conclusively proven, but it really felt like it had problems.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 37:45Nilay Patel?

  And then KB Lake is basically that, that amount of performance with fewer problems.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:50Nilay Patel?

  So they've just been doing nothing. And now they've got a big desktop competitor in a world where people care about building gaming PCs and they're buying, they're building and buying PCs that care, that do this stuff.

• 38:02Speaker 01

  These also, these are also important for the server market.

• 38:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:06Speaker 01

  I mean, that's really where a lot of the money is. If this, for this kind of chip, this kind of architecture.

• 38:12Nilay Patel?

  Right. And then you look at where, where are laptop sales increasing? It's Chromebooks to schools and Google's like gonna throw an ARM chip in their Chromebooks and figure that out maybe. And it's like, Apple, the low end of Apple's line, if they switch it to ARM and they radically increase the battery life and the ARM processor is powerful enough to do a lot of things, like in, like all of Intel's growth suddenly looks like, man, I hope this Windows laptop renaissance goes as well as we all hope it does, cause it's pretty interesting right now. Which is a pretty weird thing to bet your business on.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:45Nilay Patel?

  It's just a moment.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  I'm just excited and I can maybe spend time next week being worried or concerned about Intel, but like right now, I'm just excited.

• 38:52Nilay Patel?

  You're excited for AMD. Here's something, will this chip work with the Nvidia GTX 1080?

• 38:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the thing is, is you have to have a motherboard that's compatible with the computer.

• 39:01Nilay Patel?

  Correct.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  So you can't swap this in to an Intel compatible motherboard. But any like graphics card, obviously.

• 39:08Nilay Patel?

  Okay, I'm just checking, because yeah, it's AMD, you never know.

• 39:10Speaker 01

  No, they wouldn't do you like that.

• 39:13Nilay Patel?

  Intel, AMD have not like historically wanted to play nice with each other.

• 39:17Speaker 01

  The other situation right now, we've, we've had is, is Microsoft had DirectX 12, Apple's making Metal. Like, these are the low-level graphics APIs. And then AMD was making one called Mandel, something like that. And AMD was like, hey, this low-level graphics API that we're making to be proprietary and competitive? We'll just give that to the OpenGL Association.

• 39:40Nilay Patel?

  Oh.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  And that's what Vulkan is.

• 39:42Nilay Patel?

  I love a standard.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  See?

• 39:43Nilay Patel?

  I love, I love a good standard. You got, I gotta be honest with you.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  Good guy AMD.

• 39:48Nilay Patel?

  No, that's really, that's great. I didn't realize that's where Vulkan came from.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 39:52Nilay Patel?

  Dieter, I feel like one day you and I are gonna be standing on the, the flaming wreckage of the world, still screaming about how open standards are good for everyone. Like, this nuclear holocaust is great, because everyone's participating equally.

• 40:08Nilay Patel?

  And we'll be looking at that through Crizal no-glare lenses.

• 40:13Nilay Patel?

  If you wear glasses.

• 40:14Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:15Nilay Patel?

  Then you know. Can I just say this before I read this ad? Literally the only negative notes about the Vergecast we've gotten lately, and we should be getting a lot more about many more things, but the only ones are people want me to read the Crizal ad better.

• 40:29Speaker 04

  What? People are criticizing your ad-reading skills?

• 40:32Nilay Patel?

  I guess people love Crizal. It's, I'm not saying I'm doing a good job. It's like, the criticism is warranted.

• 40:37Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 40:38Nilay Patel?

  Of all of the things that you could criticize about this show.

• 40:40Speaker 04

  The audience loves messaging.

• 40:42Nilay Patel?

  They love brand messaging. But look, it's because they hate fingerprint smudges, scratches, and glares that are a constant obstruction to their vision and a huge distraction. Sometimes you end up focusing more on what's on your glasses than what's going on around you. That's why the people love Crizal no-glare lenses. They give you the clearest vision possible, offering resistance to glare, scratches, and scratches. I just read that really badly. You can tweet at me, I'm at reckless, just let me know. That means no more blinding glares in the headlights of oncoming traffic all driving night, no more fingerprint smudges from taking your glasses on or off, no more scratches from cleaning your lenses on a shirt. And because Crizal no-glare lenses stay clear and reduce distracting glare, your friends and family can actually see your eyes, not just your glasses. Ashley.

• 41:21Speaker 04

  I do wear glasses.

• 41:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 41:22Speaker 04

  And they're always dirty.

• 41:23Nilay Patel?

  There you go. Nerd. Guess we know what we should do. Anyway, look better, feel better, and most importantly, be prepared for whatever comes your way with clear vision. Go to crizal.com, that's C-R-I-Z-A-L dot com. Start living life in the clear. I think I did okay. No more rudges.

• 41:44Nilay Patel?

  All right, so MWC is next week.

• 41:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:46Nilay Patel?

  Thing. There's a bunch of stuff happening at MWC. There's a bunch of telecom stuff that we should talk about, but the biggest thing happening at MWC is the LG G6 is going to come out. I'm going to tell the story behind the story. I want to get in the weeds. A year ago, LG released the G5. It's a fact. There was an episode of the show where we talked about it, and I said LG needs to get on this right now because the next one will be called the G6.

• 42:10Speaker 04

  Wait, okay, I'm not going to interrupt. I'll let you just keep going.

• 42:13Speaker 03

  Oh, we all know where it's going.

• 42:16Nilay Patel?

  There's a lot of tension in the air right now on the Vergecast. The marketing, LG's been doing this like slow dribs and drabs marketing thing this year with the G6. Here's a picture, it's a leak. They're pitching stories like the G6 will have a USB port. You know, it's like things that you know, like the screen. Would you like to do a story about our phone having a screen? But they have yet to do what I think is the most obvious thing, which is announce that Far East Movement will be playing in Barcelona.

• 42:45Nilay Patel?

  Far East Movement playing a concert in Barcelona where they will perform the song like a G6. So I asked Michael Singleton, who does a lot of work reporting on bands and music, hey, can you just email Far East Movement to see if they're booked? And the band wrote back instantly and said, lol, no, but that would be cool.

• 43:05Nilay Patel?

  So then I had Vlad email LG and be like, hey, have you guys booked this?

• 43:09Speaker 04

  Oh my god, you made Vlad do this?

• 43:11Nilay Patel?

  By the way, Vlad did not want to do this.

• 43:12Speaker 04

  I mean, I know. That's why I can't believe he made him do this.

• 43:15Nilay Patel?

  He was like, what's the story here? And I was like, well, they're missing the easiest marketing opportunity in the history of the world. And he's like, I don't understand.

• 43:21Speaker 03

  I like that you gave this assignment to literally the one thing you're doing, waiting with bated breath, like the G6, right? That's the story, right?

• 43:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So LG was like, no, but put us in touch at the band. That sounds like a good idea. So maybe it's still gonna happen. This is true, we might make this happen. But, this joke that we've been telling for a year, at the top of the show, came from this song, because I think the lyrics are wrong. Andrew, do you have the clip? Do you understand that when LG puts out the G6, we will listen to "Like a G6" in 2017, unironically? It's a massive corporation, like, just bumps that song at us. It's inescapable. Everyone just be warned. Today, know this. A year from now, we'll be on the show-

• 44:02Speaker 03

  I'm quitting next January.

• 44:04Nilay Patel?

  Listening to "Like a G6."

• 44:05Speaker 03

  Not allowing this.

• 44:06Nilay Patel?

  It will come for us.

• 44:08Speaker 03

  They will also have the Cisserp here.

• 44:10Nilay Patel?

  Wait.

• 44:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, quit looking for whatever song it is you're looking for.

• 44:16Speaker 02

  Oh, the worst.

• 44:21Nilay Patel?

  Can I tell you a story about that lyric?

• 44:22Speaker 02

  No.

• 44:23Speaker 04

  Yes, please.

• 44:28Nilay Patel?

  Okay, I'm just saying, if LG blows this opportunity, I don't know what they're doing. Like, they have a phone right now called the G5. They should already be stealthily playing this song, like, in clubs, in the background of, like, LGTV commercials. It should just, they should be setting the stage for "Like a G6" to come back huge.

• 44:50Speaker 04

  Seeding it to the right DJs.

• 44:51Speaker 03

  With no doubt.

• 44:52Speaker 04

  Just mix it in.

• 44:53Speaker 03

  Next year, they're gonna go with, like, the G5X.

• 44:58Speaker 03

  They will screw this up. Okay, here we go. The G6, in the song "Booty Bounce", was sampled in "Like a G6", came about when the song's producers, the cataracts, were looking for a rhyme for the line, "Sippin' scissor in my ride like 360",

• 45:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 45:16Speaker 03

  A reference itself to the 2000 song, "Sippin' on some syrup" by rap group 36 Mafia. They, wait, wait, wait. They settled on G6, meant to be a reference to the private airplane model Gulfstream 4, referred to as a G4. It had been name-checked in many songs, including Drake's 2009 Forever, as G4. A G6, they decided, was flyer than a G4.

• 45:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. That makes sense. There's a real spec race going on in the private jet industry.

• 45:48Speaker 03

  It's not even a real plane. They literally made it up.

• 45:52Nilay Patel?

  Well, there's a G650. Micah corrected me.

• 45:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, but that was, that's some retcon.

• 45:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 45:57Speaker 03

  Stuff right there.

• 45:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 45:58Speaker 03

  That's not like, it's not like, oh, sure, G650.

• 46:01Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying, we listened to that clip. That was literally one year ago, I believe, this week, today, on this show. Uh, you heard Nicola Fumo, you heard Emily Yoshida, Jay Kastrakis, who's still alive.

• 46:12Speaker 04

  He didn't quit.

• 46:12Nilay Patel?

  Nicola, Emily, they're doing great. We'll bring them back on the show someday. But they blew it.

• 46:18Speaker 03

  For that episode.

• 46:19Nilay Patel?

  But they, they blew it.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  They being LG.

• 46:22Nilay Patel?

  LG just blew it. There are so many opportunities and they blew it.

• 46:25Speaker 01

  But to Chris's, to Chris's point.

• 46:28Speaker 03

  It doesn't make sense anyway.

• 46:30Speaker 01

  I, I think.

• 46:31Nilay Patel?

  It was a number one song in the country.

• 46:34Speaker 01

  Well, now that there will be a literal G6, I think the Far East Movement needs to go back and re-record and pick a higher number. An attainable number.

• 46:44Nilay Patel?

  I just, I don't think Far East Movement's doing anything. I think they're, they're sitting around. They're like, remember 2010? We were the shit.

• 46:51Speaker 04

  I can't believe that was in 2010.

• 46:53Nilay Patel?

  2010, number one song in the country.

• 46:55Speaker 04

  2003.

• 46:56Nilay Patel?

  No, 2010. I was, we were all wee babes and we had no idea what was going on and we, and it just, it didn't happen. Now it's over.

• 47:05Speaker 02

  So basically what you're saying is, is Far East Movement is sitting around, making music. It's good, but it's not like great. But it's really not getting the attention that it deserves, even though it's like pretty good. Like you'd be happy if you were listening to it. But you're paying more attention to like other more popular stuff.

• 47:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 47:23Speaker 02

  So we've really come full circle because now Far East Movement truly is like a G6.

• 47:30Nilay Patel?

  Oh, God.

• 47:31Speaker 02

  Because this phone.

• 47:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, no, dude, it's not. It's just, it's like, I don't know if anybody follows Dieter's Twitter account. That was like listening to him compose a tweet in real time.

• 47:44Nilay Patel?

  All right. Anyway, there's other MWC stuff. There's a bunch of 5G things happening.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:49Nilay Patel?

  Which seem very confusing. And the only thing I'll say about them is Verizon is already testing 5G networks in 11 cities in America soon. It's not mobile 5G. It's designed to compete with wired internet access, which is cool. That's a cool idea. Uh, but they are doing some mobile 5G testing. AT&T is doing some mobile 5G testing. There are already modems announced. The standards body, which still to this day is called the 3GPP, so they should maybe figure that out. Cause they're a couple of numbers behind. Uh, they haven't released their draft standard. And if you look into it, I did some research last night, AT&T and Verizon are arguing about what the standard should be.

• 48:27Speaker 01

  Well, there, right now, there is no such thing as 5G.

• 48:29Nilay Patel?

  There's a logo.

• 48:31Speaker 01

  There's a logo.

• 48:32Nilay Patel?

  They've approved a logo.

• 48:33Speaker 01

  But you know.

• 48:34Nilay Patel?

  It looks very friendly.

• 48:35Speaker 01

  I could draw three, like, co-centric arcs.

• 48:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  And call it Wi-Fi. That doesn't mean I have a Wi-Fi standard.

• 48:43Nilay Patel?

  The 3GPP, again, couple, couple of numbers behind, haven't figured out a good name for them as a standard. They have approved a 5G logo in preparation for their forthcoming 5G standard.

• 48:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 48:58Nilay Patel?

  But what is going, and then there's going to be a bunch of news in Barcelona. About that, but there's a real possibility that what Verizon calls 5G is a different technical standard than what the rest of the world calls 5G or AT&T calls 5G or whatever.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  So the other thing, and I think the most concrete, real helpful news.

• 49:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  Is that there is, is gigabit LTE is, is coming.

• 49:26Nilay Patel?

  Also coming, yeah.

• 49:26Speaker 01

  And that's like a thing that chips will support and then hopefully networks like LTE networks, like LTE Advanced is going to kind of start moving towards gigabit.

• 49:36Nilay Patel?

  Who's going to be the first to call gigabit LTE 5G? Is it T-Mobile or AT&T? Absolutely T-Mobile. Are you kidding me? John Ledger's going to get on stage and like pull from a 40 and be like, fuck it, it's 5G. We're the un-carrier. And then he's like, throw the bottle and walk away.

• 49:51Speaker 01

  Actual 4G standard set by the 3GPP is, the, the 4G standard is gigabit.

• 50:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 50:02Speaker 01

  So what we are.

• 50:02Nilay Patel?

  That's the top end of the 4G standard.

• 50:04Speaker 01

  But we're just getting to that.

• 50:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's, that's the. You remember the original 4G thing?

• 50:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 50:12Nilay Patel?

  Was the top end of the 3G standard was fast enough to be, was as fast as the slow end of the LTE standard. So T-Mobile was like, screw it, we have a really fast 3G network. It's as fast as your slow LTE network. Our thing is called 4G. But that was the original debate. So now we're gonna get into a period where gigabit LTE will come out. They won't know how to brand it because they've already gone through LTE advanced and LTE ultra and whatever other dumb name Verizon has.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  Real 4G is supposed to have peak 1 gigabit speeds. The real standard is peak 1 gigabit. That doesn't mean-

• 50:52Nilay Patel?

  The standards are defined in bands of speeds.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, but nobody's been shipping peak 4-

• 50:59Nilay Patel?

  No, that's what I'm saying, but I'm saying the exact thing you're describing is what happened with 3G.

• 51:02Speaker 01

  I don't think we are in the 4G era as defined by these people.

• 51:07Nilay Patel?

  Well, I got bad news for you, Paul. They have decided it's called 5G. They put out a goddamn logo and they're going for it.

• 51:20Nilay Patel?

  Do you want me to send you to Spain so you can stand on street corners?

• 51:27Speaker 01

  I'm ready. Actually, this is a question for, I believe Neelai and Dieter will actually be responsible for making this very important decision at our publication.

• 51:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  When T-Mobile calls slightly faster LTE, 5G, within the next six months, what are we gonna do about it?

• 51:47Nilay Patel?

  We're gonna call them on it.

• 51:48Speaker 02

  We're just gonna say it's stupid.

• 51:49Speaker 01

  But at some point, we're gonna have to like, and then like, all the carriers will fairly soon start calling their service 5G.

• 51:56Nilay Patel?

  But I'm saying, we did this. We called it, remember we called it FOG?

• 51:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, but we kind of, that kind of ran out of steam. Like, I'm saying, let's not just repeat our actions of the past.

• 52:06Nilay Patel?

  We're gonna hold fast!

• 52:08Speaker 02

  What was AT&T's-

• 52:09Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna get on my boat with my barometer laptop and we will sail to the future of truth.

• 52:13Speaker 02

  Oh my god. At least AT&T, back when it, on the Edge network, it did 2.5G, right? They, when they had like, no, our Edge is really good, it's 2.5. Maybe they'll call it 4.5G.

• 52:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, there's a real chance they'll do that. I'm just saying, the mobile standards war, which we have thankfully not had for years because LTE just sort of took over, is coming back. Like it's just absolutely coming back and I think we'll find out.

• 52:39Speaker 02

  If only there was a division of the government that could force them to like create a wireless standard so that things would be compatible and there wouldn't be a format war.

• 52:48Nilay Patel?

  That will, no, that will happen.

• 52:49Speaker 02

  Like a federal commission for communications, something like that.

• 52:52Nilay Patel?

  Well, so that will happen in Europe, I'm sure. This isn't, this isn't a format war. It's a mobile standards war. People are generally agreed on the technology they're gonna use. No, that's what I'm saying. That's just not what they're gonna call. No, no, no, no, no, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, I'm sure the European carriers and AT&T will agree eventually on the technical standard that they use, whatever that ultimately is. Verizon is already off doing tests with their own standard and they are already in the middle of a pretty heated argument with AT&T that could split. So they will all call it, that, that, that's like, it's already happening. It's like Verizon's already doing tests, they're announcing modems, doing all this stuff. They have a huge network, so they have the ability to get Qualcomm and Sony Ericsson

• 53:37Nilay Patel?

  and all the other vendors to like make them stuff. There, there's just a chance they make a hard turn and say the Verizon network will be better than everyone else's network, we want to roll out the stuff faster. Our 5G is actually our own implementation of millimeter wave, blah, blah, blah. And AT&T, which generally follows the European standard, will follow the European standard. It's gonna be a mess. I'm very excited.

• 54:01Speaker 04

  This is stressing me out.

• 54:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, anyway. This is job security right here. But, dear.

• 54:06Speaker 04

  I'm so stressed.

• 54:07Nilay Patel?

  You just brought up the FCC. Even when I talked to Tom Wheeler about 5G standards, I think I interviewed him a year ago, I was like, are you gonna set a standard? And he was like, no, no, no, no, we would never do that, the market has winners and losers. And I was like, really? Like Sprint picked YMAX and now Sprint sucks and will always suck thus forevermore. And he was like, yeah, shit happens. So like, I, I don't think like, I don't think our FCC, no matter Democrat or Republican run, running it, wants to pick technical standards for the networks, right? They want to allocate spectrum efficiently and do all that stuff. But there, there was no interest even from Tom Wheeler in specifying a standard. There is much more interest in Europe, right? At the highest levels of the various European country governments in the EU.

• 54:50Speaker 02

  Which is, which is why everybody else on the planet uses GSM and we're the only, I mean, us and like pockets of Korea do CDMA, right?

• 54:58Nilay Patel?

  Right, it's Verizon and.

• 54:59Speaker 02

  Well, I guess China's got some CDMA.

• 55:01Nilay Patel?

  Right, and, and so that's the thing, like Verizon could build their. Whatever, I don't know the technical names of these standards are yet because they haven't been locked down, but there's a chance that 5G splits along that GSM CDMA access with Verizon and AT&T again. Which would suck.

• 55:19Speaker 02

  It would be terrible because then we're gonna have to deal with like, oh, you can use this phone on this carrier, but not that carrier, and who's gonna make the first phone that like, has modems for all of them?

• 55:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 55:28Speaker 02

  And we're gonna end up with like, remember the-

• 55:30Nilay Patel?

  Ashley literally looks stressed out.

• 55:32Speaker 04

  I'm literally really stressed right now. I keep seeing these articles on our site, oh my gosh.

• 55:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 55:38Speaker 02

  Well, what's the first LTE phone on Verizon that, it was like the HCC Thunderbolt or something? It was like, literally the size of a Mack truck.

• 55:46Nilay Patel?

  It was great.

• 55:47Speaker 02

  It was so big.

• 55:48Nilay Patel?

  I thought you were saying it's so big. Dieter, speaking of the FCC, there's a bunch of other FCC news. Our, our boy Ajit is just moving. He hate-faved, he hate-faved one of our stories.

• 55:58Speaker 04

  Oh my god, that was amazing.

• 55:59Nilay Patel?

  Which is great. But he just did his first big interview on CNBC. Jake wrote a great piece, kinda breaking down his answers. His answers come down to, we're gonna reduce taxes on ISPs. He calls them broadband opportunity zones, which he actually needs Congress to do. So he reduced taxes and make it easier for ISPs to like, leave fiber. And he's doing this thing, I actually need to write about this in some way. He's doing this thing that the telecom industry loves to do, which he's taking credit for the tech industry. Right, so I don't, that conflation to me is always really gross.

• 56:33Speaker 02

  Unpack this.

• 56:34Nilay Patel?

  So he has this line, he has this line in his interview where he's like, this is the most dynamic industry the world has ever known. Why would you wanna regulate it? That is not true of internet access. Internet access is not the most dynamic industry the world has ever known. It is one of the least dynamic competitive marketplaces in the, in, in America at least. What is the most dynamic industry is the stuff that's built on top of it. So, devices, gadgets, apps, services. That stuff is really super competitive because there's freedom of access to it. So that conflation, that's like when the CEO of AT&T is like, the iPhone's great and if you regulate us, the iPhone will go away. And it's like, that's not true. Like, no one likes you, they like iPhones, and if you would just get out of the way of their phones-

• 57:20Nilay Patel?

  We would be happier. And I, I, I think this is the move that you make when you want to deregulate telecoms, because no one likes their telecom provider. Like, no one likes their cable company, no one likes their wireless provider, no, like, you don't like, you don't like your wired internet provider. What you like is the stuff that lives in the layer above it. And I, I think that he's, he's doing this conflation, which

• 57:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:47Nilay Patel?

  just truly bothers me.

• 57:48Speaker 02

  Do you think being a big telecom, rich telecom executive makes it easier to hear things, to constantly hear Neil I tell you that no one likes you? Like, they're listening to this podcast, like, no one likes you.

• 57:59Nilay Patel?

  They have actual boats. I'm on the East River ferry, that dude's on a yacht. Like, it's a different game.

• 58:05Speaker 01

  When I was at MWC, like, a hundred years ago, Chris Segler

• 58:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 58:10Speaker 01

  and I interviewed the CEO of AT&T at the time.

• 58:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 58:15Speaker 01

  And the room we were in got double booked. And so our interview got cut short, but the people who needed the room were freaking out because they were gonna have a meeting in there really soon. And so they needed to set up the chairs. CEO of AT&T, who I forgot his name.

• 58:36Nilay Patel?

  Was it Randall Stevenson?

• 58:37Speaker 01

  No.

• 58:38Nilay Patel?

  So the previous CEO.

• 58:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:39Nilay Patel?

  Was it Ralph Delevigga?

• 58:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 58:41Nilay Patel?

  Yep.

• 58:42Speaker 01

  Helped, helped set up the chairs.

• 58:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 58:44Speaker 01

  He didn't have to do that.

• 58:45Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 58:46Speaker 01

  He's a good guy.

• 58:46Nilay Patel?

  He's a good guy. Randall Stevenson, uh, you know, uh, he has said a number of things about, like, wanting his company to be more diverse and inclusive and tolerant, like.

• 58:56Speaker 01

  Like, nobody would want to run a hated company.

• 58:58Nilay Patel?

  No, the CEO of Comcast, when I asked him, why do you run the most hated company in America? First, he looked at me like he was gonna shoot me. Then he looked at me like he was gonna pull his investment from Fox Media.

• 59:11Nilay Patel?

  And then he said, "I don't, we don't wake up every day wanting to run the most hated company in America." Their incentives are such that they inevitably run the most hated companies in America. They have not a lot of competition. So Spectrum in New York, which is, this is like a classic cable company move. Charter bought Time Warner Cable. They said, "Everyone hates Time Warner Cable." It's called Spectrum now. Uh, Spectrum's got sued by the Attorney General of New York for telling people they're getting faster than they, than they, they knew they could deliver. It wasn't like, you told them and you, you know, you messed up. It's you maliciously lied to the people of New York. So we're suing you for it. They don't have competition. They have no incentive to do anything except maximize their profits.

• 59:55Nilay Patel?

  So when you call it the most dynamic industry in America, there's only four national wireless carriers.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  Well, this is why I want-

• 1:00:02Nilay Patel?

  It's four.

• 1:00:03Speaker 01

  What I really want is wireless gigabit LTE-

• 1:00:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  -to compete with wired broadband.

• 1:00:10Nilay Patel?

  I, so I think that's pretty smart, right? If we can get there, but e- even if you get to there, then you're looking at wireless gigabit LTE or whatever. 5G standard happens and it's really fast, great. But the way they manage those networks means they're not peers to the wired networks. So you'll still end up with zero rating and throttling over a certain gigabit cap, a gateway cap. Like, you'll be making a different set of decisions and the wireless networks are way more expensive than the wired networks. So you're paying more money for a worse class of service and that's supposed to be competitive to wired.

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  Well, maybe it'll be faster.

• 1:00:45Nilay Patel?

  We should ask these questions to Ajit Pai, Chairman of the FCC, who will not come on the show no matter how much we tweet at him. But I encourage you to tweet him in any way. He's at Ajit Pai FCC.

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  So-

• 1:00:56Nilay Patel?

  If you tweet at him and ask him to come on the show, I'm sure if you're on Twitter, you know, Dieter and I will immediately retweet that tweet.

• 1:01:02Speaker 01

  You guys are so good at that.

• 1:01:03Nilay Patel?

  We are, we're not being kind to him, but he's a public servant. He runs the internet. Our business is based on the internet. I'm not at all shy about saying- His actions could threaten my livelihood because of the internet.

• 1:01:16Speaker 01

  You know what?

• 1:01:16Nilay Patel?

  And the thing that we all love, so I think you should answer some hard questions.

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  I'll be kind to her.

• 1:01:20Nilay Patel?

  I know you'll be kind to her.

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  I love this guy.

• 1:01:22Speaker 04

  Oh my gosh.

• 1:01:22Nilay Patel?

  I mean, he's like a big nerd.

• 1:01:23Speaker 01

  He's a big nerd and he says the things that I want. And to be honest, like, I think he's super stoked on unlicensed spectrum. I just love hearing the words.

• 1:01:33Nilay Patel?

  No, if they did LTE unlicensed.

• 1:01:35Speaker 01

  The innovation possible in the space of unlicensed spectrum.

• 1:01:38Nilay Patel?

  But no one disagrees about that.

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  Coming out of, oh my gosh, it's so exciting.

• 1:01:42Nilay Patel?

  No, that's great, and they just did LTE unlicensed. There's a whole thing, like, they're doing some things that are great.

• 1:01:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:47Nilay Patel?

  But when you say the industry that you regulate, the telecom access industry, is the most dynamic industry that the industry, the world has ever seen, you're not telling the truth. Because the thing that's built on that industry is the most dynamic industry the world has ever seen. So don't let that industry screw with the thing that the people like. And like, you gotta, you have to pull that apart. AT&T is not the tech industry, they're the telecom industry. They don't make anything good. What is one product AT&T has ever made?

• 1:02:19Speaker 01

  Okay, okay, okay.

• 1:02:20Nilay Patel?

  That you love the way that you love a tech product.

• 1:02:22Speaker 01

  Okay, this is, I feel like that's kind of me, like, the United States is a huge country and it has one of the fastest, best LTE rollouts of anywhere in the world. We're competing with Singapore and South Korea, like, we're up there with tiny Asian nations with some of the best LTE on the planet. It's really expensive, it's actually pretty good, it's not perfectly consistent, but we covered a huge geography.

• 1:02:49Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 1:02:49Speaker 01

  We did a good job.

• 1:02:50Nilay Patel?

  They did a good job.

• 1:02:51Speaker 01

  They did a good job. I didn't help them at all, they did a good job. I paid them a hundred something dollars a month and they did a good job.

• 1:02:58Nilay Patel?

  But they didn't do a good job because they were, how do I phrase this? They, the reason they did a good job is they saw the explosion of interest in mobile created by a company that they had actively tried to shut down in the past. So Steve Jobs went into Verizon and said, here's the iPhone, and they said, no, thank you. That's, that's not doing a great job, right? Because that happened, because there was open innovation on a platform, they realized, oh, mobile video and mobile data usage is going to explode. We should build networks, our primary business, that can capture that action. But had they been trundling along on their own, they wouldn't have even had that opportunity.

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  Not every-

• 1:03:41Nilay Patel?

  Because they wouldn't have put out devices that would have created that amount. Their return on investment in building 4G and LTE was created by other people. Other people created devices and services that made their network valuable.

• 1:03:55Speaker 01

  I mean, most of the-

• 1:03:56Nilay Patel?

  When they controlled their network, they did not put out devices and services that made 3G rollout in the United States worthwhile. But it's true, in Europe-

• 1:04:05Speaker 01

  You believe in your heart that-

• 1:04:06Nilay Patel?

  But in Europe-

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  Nothing but respond to the market.

• 1:04:09Nilay Patel?

  I think that they have responded to the market.

• 1:04:11Speaker 01

  But I feel like a company should respond to the market.

• 1:04:14Nilay Patel?

  Right, but they, what they want to do is extract more, more profit.

• 1:04:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:19Nilay Patel?

  Which is great. And so if you don't have true great competition, there's nothing to check that profit-seeking impulse. So in a super competitive market, there's all, there's, there's a natural check on your profit-seeking impulse that makes you act on the consumer interest so you capture more consumers. This is why Uber and Lyft are like in a war. And Lyft is like, hey, we're not run by assholes. Like, that's their competitive advantage. But I don't, you don't, there's only four of those carriers. And if you, if you're looking for wire, there's only usually one or two. And one of them is far inferior to the other. Well, all I'm saying is these are reasonable debates to have, and you should have, we should have them. I like having them with you. Like, I really do.

• 1:05:02Nilay Patel?

  But you can't say this slice of the industry is the most dynamic industry the world has ever seen. You can't use that to take credit for the other thing. And I think that's the move, that's the rhetorical move you make in order to avoid regulating companies that generally don't have a ton of competition. If the market was wildly competitive, let them run. I'd like, I don't think you should regulate Uber. I think they will not buy leather jackets for their female employees and people will delete the app and then everyone will use Lyft. Fine, Lyft won, they were more competitive on like a axis that people care about. Let it, let them burn themselves out and die, I don't care. But here, there's just not competition. You don't believe me.

• 1:05:46Speaker 01

  Ashley does. Ashley's nodding her head.

• 1:05:50Nilay Patel?

  I think Ashley's nodding her head about you for being full of ticks.

• 1:05:54Speaker 04

  I'm not even gonna wade into this. I'm just shocked you believe that there's competition.

• 1:05:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm sorry.

• 1:05:59Speaker 04

  That's like, whoa.

• 1:06:00Nilay Patel?

  What's your internet? Do you have Spectrum?

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  I don't know. My roommate pays for it.

• 1:06:05Nilay Patel?

  Paul's excused.

• 1:06:07Speaker 01

  We do have competition. My roommate and I both have our own wireless routers and we interfere with each other over unlimited spectrum.

• 1:06:16Nilay Patel?

  That's what you want. All right, Ashley, the entire lightning round belongs to you. You ready? I'm just gonna throw.

• 1:06:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, this is all my things.

• 1:06:23Nilay Patel?

  Okay. Snapchat Spectacles, now available online.

• 1:06:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, it makes sense.

• 1:06:28Nilay Patel?

  Oh, that's another one. Snapchat, in their IPO filings, said losing net neutrality could threaten our business. Like, the companies are worried about it. I think Spectacles are a huge fan. They won't go anywhere, by the way.

• 1:06:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't think anyone's gonna buy them. And that's the thing. But I'm gonna buy them eventually, when I, one day, do it.

• 1:06:45Nilay Patel?

  I keep seeing Sam Sheffer post selfies of himself wearing Spectacles, but I never see him post videos.

• 1:06:51Speaker 04

  Sam is really trying to make Spectacles.

• 1:06:52Nilay Patel?

  But he never posts videos from the Spectacles!

• 1:06:54Speaker 04

  Yeah. I'm only gonna get them because I'm, well, ideally, I'm going to Mexico next week. So I would have liked them for Mexico, because it's like home videos. Just easy. That's the only reason.

• 1:07:05Speaker 02

  I don't think Spectacles have to, like, change the world to be a success. They're like, a fun little project. The people that use them enjoy them. They'll be another version. It doesn't have to be a blockbuster. It doesn't like... I don't know. I always have this problem when people are like, "There'll never be another iPhone for Apple." So what? Like, one is enough. They can be successful with smaller things. I think the Spectacles are, like, they're fine. They proved that they could, like, make a camera on your face that didn't piss people off. That is an accomplishment worth praising. Yay, Spectacles. I'm done.

• 1:07:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, but Snapchat doesn't have any other products, and they're being publicly offered. So it's sort of like, okay, if Spectacles suck, literally, how are you gonna make money?

• 1:07:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, they have Snapchat.

• 1:07:52Speaker 04

  But Snapchat is unprofitable.

• 1:07:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And they owe more money to Google than they are, like, projected to collect. It's true. They run on Google's cloud.

• 1:08:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, Nilay made me watch their 30-minute video.

• 1:08:04Nilay Patel?

  You're a reporter.

• 1:08:06Speaker 04

  Well, I was hoping it would be good, but then it was all about ads.

• 1:08:08Nilay Patel?

  It wasn't like, Ashley, that's like, I want you to spend a delightful 30 minutes.

• 1:08:12Speaker 04

  Okay, well, all of it was about ads, and I learned a lot about ads, is what I'm trying to say here.

• 1:08:22Nilay Patel?

  All right. I'm really interested, lightning round. Me Too? You played with their phone. They make really beautiful phones.

• 1:08:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:08:29Nilay Patel?

  They're cool.

• 1:08:30Speaker 04

  So Me Too is that, people probably know it because it was the viral selfie app.

• 1:08:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:35Speaker 04

  That supposedly was spying on you. It wasn't, but yeah.

• 1:08:38Nilay Patel?

  So they delivered this phone to you. It doesn't work here, because it's a Chinese phone.

• 1:08:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, Chinese phone.

• 1:08:44Nilay Patel?

  But it has inbuilt selfie software?

• 1:08:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I'm super into this space, and I'm waiting for the iPhone to come with some, like, beautification settings.

• 1:08:53Nilay Patel?

  Interesting. That's, I have something to say, but go, keep going.

• 1:08:57Speaker 04

  So Me Too, and honestly Huawei does this as well, but Me Too obviously is known for its selfie apps. Well, also they have, like, makeup apps. That's kind of their bread and butter. They're publicly offered in China, by the way, and they're for billions of dollars. Like, this is a big deal company. So they have this selfie phone, and the whole shtick is that you can use it, take a photo of yourself, and it automatically beautifies you with AI. It can sense your skin tone, your lip color.

• 1:09:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:25Speaker 04

  And.

• 1:09:25Nilay Patel?

  And there's like, there's like a slider.

• 1:09:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's different levels.

• 1:09:28Nilay Patel?

  You should read Ashley's piece, because she has photos.

• 1:09:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:09:31Nilay Patel?

  And one of the photos, the max, the max setting photo of you looks insane.

• 1:09:35Speaker 04

  Well, so I was like, this is crazy. And literally, I put that article up, and a Ract reporter messaged me. I was like, girl, your skin looks amazing here. She didn't read the piece, of course. So she's like, oh, my God, your skin looks so good. What are you doing? And I was like, dude, this is fake.

• 1:09:56Speaker 04

  So apparently, it's a good trick.

• 1:09:58Nilay Patel?

  So this is like a weird break, because you're like, I can't wait for the app to do this. Walt and Lauren Good and I have taken a meeting with like, Apple camera engineers, where they have said, "We're never doing this." Right? If you want to do this, you can get an app on your phone that'll do it for you, but our unnamed Asian competitors are doing this, and they definitely met Samsung, because Samsung does this in like, a baby scale. They'll do it, but we think what people want is more true-to-life photos. So they've, in classic Apple fashion, they've made an idealistic, like, religious determination about what their phone will and not will not do. And it's weird, because it's somewhat clear that people like this a lot.

• 1:10:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, especially in Asia, which is critical to their profit now.

• 1:10:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so it's just interesting, that like, they're like, whatever, people will just use apps for this. And it's true, there are a lot of apps on the phone that do this.

• 1:10:48Speaker 04

  Totally, and Me Too has those apps. And that's what was interesting to me, too, is like, even with Snapchat, like, this really made me think about Snapchat's hardware products, because Snapchat is a camera app, right? Now they're a camera company, quote-unquote. Me Too was an app.

• 1:11:01Nilay Patel?

  Right. By the way, Snapchat's saying it's a camera company, it's like, you know they all died, right? Like, are you gonna make SLRs now? What's your plan?

• 1:11:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's why I'm really wondering what they're, like, how they're gonna interpret that phrase they're using, but it seems like you want to be at the ground level of the hardware, right? So wouldn't it make sense for Snapchat to maybe put their software directly into a camera? Like, a smartphone camera, like?

• 1:11:25Nilay Patel?

  You think Snapchat's gonna make a phone?

• 1:11:28Speaker 04

  I don't know. All I'm saying is, Me Too is similar.

• 1:11:32Nilay Patel?

  Do you think they gave, they came and gave that phone as part of like, a, "Hey, let's see if American consumers are into this when people write about it, and we'll launch it."

• 1:11:39Speaker 04

  Well, I called them up after their app went viral, just because I had never heard of them, and then I was like, "Holy crap, this is a really big-deal company." So I just wanted to talk to them. And then they offhand were like, "Oh yeah, we're also putting out another phone." I was like, "Oh, I had no idea you made phones." So they're like, "Go ahead, we can, you try it."

• 1:11:55Nilay Patel?

  Neat.

• 1:11:56Speaker 03

  Okay, this is a crazy theory. Tell me if I'm being dumb, but like... The early mobile phones, they're all like, super generic. They nailed the like, basics, uh, pretty early. Address book, you can make a phone call, you can play Snake. And then there was that period of just like, weird, wild, uh, evolutions of that idea. And, and then, uh, it died because smartphone came. And then, smartphones were like, all new and interesting every time they announced them. But now we're hitting, hitting the point where it's like, okay, we kinda know what a smartphone is. They're all kinda the same. Are we getting to a point where we could start just seeing really weird experimentation like, a Snapchat Android phone that is dedicated almost exclusively to beautiful selfies?

• 1:12:40Nilay Patel?

  I don't think, um, I'm curious what Dieter thinks in particular. I don't think we're at a place where phones are gonna get more specialized, right? Like, there's- That's a problem, yeah. The game is convergence, and I think, I think people are gonna get frustrated with Apple. I wrote a little bit this week about like, Apple's preventing innovation in some ways, like, you have, we're at the point with phones where to do more, you do need more hardware level access, and Apple's just not gonna give it to you in iOS, right? They're gonna give you Metal so you can make better games, but if you are Doppler Labs, and you made the Hear One earbuds, and you develop a competitor of W1 chip, you can't install a driver for your chip-

• 1:13:21Speaker 02

  Right, if you truly owned your phone, you could install Me Too's software to automatically filter every photo you take.

• 1:13:27Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 1:13:28Speaker 02

  But Apple's never gonna allow you into their camera app.

• 1:13:30Nilay Patel?

  So I think, I think it's less that Snapchat will make a phone. I think it's more that companies that make Android phones that are dominant will understand that that is a competitive advantage, but who the, who the hell knows? Uh, Dieter, what do you think?

• 1:13:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, the, I think that there, we'll see it like, a couple times a year. I mean, we have for a while now, but none of them have worked, right? Like, the G5 didn't work. Motorola-

• 1:14:00Nilay Patel?

  G6's marketing is a disaster.

• 1:14:03Speaker 02

  Moto's having a little bit better success with Moto Mods. But I think we're more likely to see experimentation there, but the market just isn't into it. Like, I don't know, man. It's not a Virg cast unless I mention Palms, so here goes.

• 1:14:17Nilay Patel?

  Here it is.

• 1:14:19Speaker 02

  Yes. I really kinda miss the Veer a little bit, or like, do you remember the, the Sony Android phone that was like, exactly the size of a bar of soap?

• 1:14:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:31Speaker 02

  And like it was like a horizontal slider and had a little keyboard underneath it. My, my wife just got an iPhone SE and it was like so small and cute and like there is part of me that wants just like a little phone, like a phone to like when I cross the border and I don't want, you know, ICE to see my shit that I like, just like have some basic apps on it, but it's really tiny.

• 1:14:53Speaker 01

  Well, what do you guys think?

• 1:14:54Speaker 02

  There's a bunch of stuff that I would like to see that, but I don't think the market is rewarding it yet. And like we'll see some experiments, but until one of them is like kind of a little bit of a surprise, we're not going to go back to the weird zone for a while because people are still fighting tooth and nail to be number three behind Apple and Samsung.

• 1:15:16Speaker 01

  What do you think about the Nokia 3310 revival rumor?

• 1:15:22Speaker 02

  You've got to be waiting for the flips. I know you're waiting for the flips.

• 1:15:26Speaker 04

  I'm always waiting for that.

• 1:15:29Speaker 01

  Wait, but Dieter, is that, is that what you want?

• 1:15:32Speaker 02

  Kinda, yeah. I mean, I, I want like a little bit more. I do want like a screen. I want to be able to like check my email in a pinch and, and, and maybe have like a cordy keyboard.

• 1:15:44Speaker 04

  Hmm. Yeah, that's the thing. I like the idea.

• 1:15:47Speaker 02

  On a tiny phone, you need a physical keyboard.

• 1:15:48Speaker 04

  I just like the idea of a phone as something I can swap out really easy. Like this is my nighttime phone and it's my flip phone.

• 1:15:55Nilay Patel?

  Right. So for example, if all the phones ran on one unified cell standard and you can just move, some like some sort of chip, like some sort of embedded chip that contain your customer details and you could just take it out and put it in other, open standards, Paul.

• 1:16:09Speaker 01

  Why don't we have software to find SIMs, Eli?

• 1:16:13Nilay Patel?

  Cause what do you do? Log into your phone like a chump?

• 1:16:15Speaker 01

  Who's, who's fault is the lack of software to find SIMs? Probably the carrier.

• 1:16:20Speaker 02

  All right.

• 1:16:22Nilay Patel?

  Uh, he's got you.

• 1:16:24Speaker 02

  It's super true.

• 1:16:27Nilay Patel?

  Maybe we should regulate the carriers.

• 1:16:29Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:16:32Nilay Patel?

  All right, last one, true lightning round. The show's gone way too long, but it's been a fun one. Uh, Ashley, you're on with this. There was, there was a case, December. There was a murder. The cops went into the suspect's house. And they got a warrant to search his Amazon Alexa history. And Amazon replied today. And they said, it's all protected by the First Amendment.

• 1:16:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:16:55Nilay Patel?

  Which is incredible.

• 1:16:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was actually interested to hear what you thought of, like, if you read the...

• 1:16:59Nilay Patel?

  I did. Russell and I are both reading it.

• 1:17:01Speaker 04

  It seems, like, I'm obviously not a lawyer, but to me, I was like, oh, this kind of makes a little sense. I mean, it was stretching it, but I was like...

• 1:17:08Nilay Patel?

  Uh, well, it's interesting.

• 1:17:09Speaker 02

  So what's the, what's the base of the argument?

• 1:17:11Speaker 04

  So they're saying that, like, both what you ask the Alexa to do is protected because you're seeking information. Eli, you can use your official jargon and...

• 1:17:22Nilay Patel?

  Sure. I mean, that's right, right? Like, what you request in terms of media is generally protected by the First Amendment, so...

• 1:17:28Speaker 04

  And then whatever Alexa replies to you is also protected because the algorithm that Amazon is using is, like, qualifies as an opinion. This all goes back to other cases, like with Google. Like, Google has a search engine. What they rank is technically like an opinion, which is protected. So that's what Amazon's...

• 1:17:49Nilay Patel?

  There's a lot more...

• 1:17:51Speaker 02

  That's really smart.

• 1:17:52Nilay Patel?

  It might be interesting to do a survey of this someday, but there's a lot of case law that Google has produced over the years about what is and isn't protected by the First Amendment in terms of what you search. What isn't, isn't fair use under the copyright law because they, they collect so much information. It's, it's probably un, like, not considered by most people that, like, Google is a company that developed its service was so, was charting such a new territory that everyone sued it all the time. And the thing that you think of Google right now is actually protected by this huge array of opinions that determine the boundaries of what Google can do and what it can't do and what the cops can do and can't do.

• 1:18:31Speaker 04

  That's what was so shocking, reading this, is they were pulling from so many cases. And it's like, wow, like, A, you guys are super well-versed.

• 1:18:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:38Speaker 04

  And B, just like, I cannot believe how many opinions have been written on these hyper-specific...

• 1:18:44Nilay Patel?

  So it's interesting, this, this is what I thought of as a lawyer. As you read it, most of the cases are pretty local, like, they're happening in circuits. They're not getting appealed up. They, like, stop. So the body of law isn't, like, universal across the country. So... Amazon in this case is like, they're pulling from an Oklahoma case and like a New York case and like, they're trying to add up all of this disparate regional law into one argument to present to Arkansas to make regional Arkansas law. And like, that's where I think it's gonna get, like, in a perfect world, you know, the legislature would like, fix it, or, you know, one of these things would get appealed up all the way and the Supreme Court would like, issue a rule because there's a split in circuits. But what was fascinating

• 1:19:27Nilay Patel?

  to me is, the bad local news read on this is, "Amazon argues Alexa has free speech", which is a great local news headline. But really what they're saying is, this is just a voice-controlled search engine, and every law, every, you know, opinion from the court that has thus far protected what happens with a search engine, should apply to the Alexa. And they've gotta make that argument, and that argument has to work. But what's different, I think, is that Amazon also has to prove that a microphone in your house that is theoretically recording or listening all the time, isn't of such a value to law enforcement. Like, there's a little bit of a difference. Like, the Google search engine open on your browser

• 1:20:11Nilay Patel?

  isn't of any value to a murder investigation, but seven far-field microphones might be.

• 1:20:17Speaker 04

  That was the other part of that motion they filed, was that, I guess you have to make a compelling enough case that you couldn't get this information elsewhere.

• 1:20:24Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 1:20:25Speaker 04

  So, Amazon said, "Well, if you could get into his Huawei Nexus phone is 6P, you could go to his Alexa app and see every single thing that he has said to the Echo, and what Amazon has said back. And they can't crack his phone."

• 1:20:40Nilay Patel?

  Yep.

• 1:20:41Speaker 04

  So, that's the whole Apple, like, it gets...

• 1:20:44Nilay Patel?

  But, and I was talking to Russell, like, can't they just, the guy, the defendant is like alive, he's in jail. They could just put his finger on the back of the phone, and Russell's like, "Well, that's Fifth Amendment, that's compelled speech, which the cops can't make you do." And I was like, "Well, just, like, just ask the judge, like, pick between the First Amendment and the Fifth." And Russell's like, "That's not, you can't, you don't get to pick. Like, they all count."

• 1:21:04Speaker 02

  If I had been, if I were Amazon's head lawyer, this is, this is what I would do. You ready?

• 1:21:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:11Speaker 02

  Here goes. In the eyes of, uh, US federal law, uh, corporations are people and Citizens United established that they have First Amendment's right to speech and Alexa is a person made by a corporation, therefore it's a corporate person, therefore it has free speech rights.

• 1:21:27Nilay Patel?

  Anyhow, that is our show. It ended on-

• 1:21:29Speaker 01

  Wait, wait, wait, Ashley didn't do the thing that she does every week.

• 1:21:31Nilay Patel?

  Oh, there's a segment!

• 1:21:32Speaker 01

  Every week.

• 1:21:32Nilay Patel?

  Ashley's here every week.

• 1:21:34Speaker 04

  For my gadget segment-

• 1:21:36Nilay Patel?

  Which is called-

• 1:21:37Speaker 04

  Good Boy.

• 1:21:42Speaker 04

  Now, plants.

• 1:21:44Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God. Alright.

• 1:21:46Speaker 04

  Um, okay, in the Japanese town of Ohi, they developed a drone named Yuki Maru. And Yuki Maru is a dog who wears a bowler hat and a little bandana and flies around the town being whimsical and looking cute and delighting people and showing you around the town of Ohi. And I highly recommend watching this short commercial film about Ohi and Yuki Maru.

• 1:22:17Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 1:22:18Speaker 01

  Is this a corporation's dog?

• 1:22:21Speaker 04

  This is the town of Ohi's dog.

• 1:22:22Speaker 02

  Is the town of Ohi a person?

• 1:22:27Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:22:28Speaker 01

  So, everybody banded together and bought a dog drone?

• 1:22:32Speaker 04

  I really-

• 1:22:32Speaker 01

  A dog? Is the speech of a town dog drone in Japan protected by the First Amendment?

• 1:22:39Speaker 03

  Wait, question. So, in Shibuya, there is the dog, there's a statue of the dog that waited outside for its owner, even after the owner died, but it went, it went there and waited every day.

• 1:22:51Speaker 01

  That was a good one.

• 1:22:52Speaker 03

  What if Maru's creator died and then the drone went waiting every day until it lost its charge? So, it made it about six hours.

• 1:23:03Speaker 01

  Well, it's a drone, so like 30 minutes?

• 1:23:05Speaker 03

  Stupid drone.

• 1:23:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, there is actually a whole backstory to this drone about a temple and a dog. I really didn't pick up on the cultural subtleties, but, um, yeah.

• 1:23:19Speaker 03

  Wait, is Maru the name of the dog that waited at the train station?

• 1:23:23Nilay Patel?

  Alright, we're gonna-

• 1:23:24Speaker 03

  Oh, my gosh, I'm sorry.

• 1:23:25Nilay Patel?

  Chris, go do some more reporting on this dog. Figure it out.

• 1:23:30Speaker 03

  And meet Maru, the smileiest dog in Japan. That can't be the same one.

• 1:23:34Nilay Patel?

  I think it is.

• 1:23:35Speaker 02

  I just need to point out that I let a Temple of the Dog joke just pass right by.

• 1:23:40Nilay Patel?

  I think it's definitely time to end this episode of the Vergecast. Goodbye. That's been it. I would say there's been ups and downs. There's been a lengthy segment where we just played an old Vergecast. That was great. There's been Triumph. There's been Extreme Disappointment and LG. You still have time. Just putting that out there. You know, there's been a flying dog. You can listen to other shows that we make that are vastly different than this. Walt and I do a show called Control at Delete. It's better in some ways. It's certainly more organized. Lauren Good makes an excellent show called Too Embarrassed to Ask.

• 1:24:19Nilay Patel?

  Kara Swisher does Recode Decode and Peter Kafka does Recode Media, which is one of my favorite things to listen to. So listen, it's all on iTunes. Go rate and review it. You can tweet at us. You know, just let's keep it clean, everyone. Ashley is Ashley R. Carmen. Paul is Future Paul. Dieter is at Backlon. Plant is at Plant. By the way, Plant, I don't know if my dad tweeted you worked today or not. I don't think it did. Does anyone know the answer to this? Twitter allegedly made a change where you don't need to put a period in front of someone's name when you at tweet them. Oh, wow. And so I didn't do it. I didn't put a period when I tweeted about Plant's Switch story and Plant was like, Dad tweet, you blew it. It was like they changed it. The tweet got very low engagement. So I don't know if that's true or not. Anyway, you can tweet at all of us. I'm at Reckless. I think I said that. I don't know.

• 1:25:05Nilay Patel?

  You can leave comments. You can email us. I'm thinking we should start doing viewer questions, opening a phone line. We've done that in the past. I'm thinking about it. Let me know if you want to do that. I'm also doing a new thing every day where I'm trying to do, I'm trying to write something every day. It's like a thing. So I'm trying to do this thing called show notes, which is basically how I prep for the show. I just like look at the site and like have thoughts. I don't know. It's like a thing. Read that and let me know if that's any good because I want to keep doing it. Is there anything else? Dieter, were we missing anything? Oh, uh, if you're buying glasses, put Crizal no-glare lenses in them. They're great. No spudges, scratches, anything else. Go to crizal.com, C-R-I-Z-L dot com. They're fantastic. No glares, lenses, Crizal.

• 1:25:51Nilay Patel?

  Thank you. That's a very fast. We'll be back next week. God only knows what will happen. It'll be MWC. We'll know everything about 5G next week. Paul will be on the street corner setting standards. That's it. Rock and roll. Paul. Paul. Go through the night. Bye.