IFA 2017, LG V30, and more smart speakers

The Vergecast returns to the New York studio this week. Dieter, Nilay, and Paul run through what was announced so far at IFA 2017, including the LG V30, Sony Xperia XZ1, and lots of smart speakers. Halfway through the show, Loren Grush makes a pit stop on her way to space to talk about episode 3 of her new video series Space Craft. 04:01 - LG’s V30 loses the gimmicks and gains a beautiful OLED screen 12:41 - Sony’s Xperia XZ1 and XZ1 Compact have refreshed designs and Android Oreo 21:10 - Lenovo made a weird $70 Alexa speaker that only works with its Android tablets 23:26 - Lenovo’s new Yoga 920 laptop has far-field microphones so you can shout at Cortana 24:56 - Google announces three third-party speakers with Assistant, plus LG appliance integration 34:07 - Space Craft episode three with Loren Grush 51:46 - In colossal screw up, Essential shared customers’ driver’s licenses over email 57:34 - Fitbit has a lot to prove with Ionic, its new smartwatch 1:08:56 - Paul’s weekly segment “Who will let me out of this yarn prison?” 1:11:03 - Sony's new wireless earbuds include noise-cancellation technology 1:12:36 - Apple’s iPhone 8 event is happening on September 12th Oh yeah, and Apple announced that its next event will be September 12th. So we announced we are doing a live Vergecast on September 13th in San Francisco! Join us! 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hey Vergecast fans. After you've gotten updated on the developments in tech this week, come join us at Worldly, Vox's foreign policy podcast. It's Jen Williams, Zach Beecham, and me, Yulchid Risen, with your weekly guide to making sense of the wider world, the big stories, the small ones, the depressing ones, the funny ones. You can find us in your favorite podcasting app. Come subscribe, rate, review, email us at [email protected]. We'd love to hear from you.

• 0:27Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of theverge.com. And then this is new. I'm gonna start saying this every week. A part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

• 0:39Speaker 02

  Which is vast.

• 0:40Nilay Patel?

  Which is huge.

• 0:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 0:41Nilay Patel?

  Vox is like the tugboat. Bring us in, into port. I like to think that we're the flagship podcast of the whole network. I don't know if, if that's how anyone else feels. Or if it's literally true. Yeah. You know, Ezra Klein showed, it's fine. There's no gadgets on it, I think, is the main problem.

• 1:00Speaker 02

  We're the flagship podcast, but that doesn't necessarily mean that there isn't somewhere else an army. Like, we're part of the Armada.

• 1:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:08Speaker 02

  But there might, there's, that's just, that's just sea power. The Vox Media Podcast Network also has air power and land power.

• 1:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. This ends with me sending a note to the CEO, being like, I am now an admiral. Podcast triad. Anyway, also very exciting, Dieter Bohn is in the studio with us this week.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25Nilay Patel?

  And Paul is here. And there's a ton of news because of IFA.

• 1:29Speaker 02

  IFA.

• 1:30Nilay Patel?

  2017. It stands for International Federation of Electronics.

• 1:38Nilay Patel?

  It's not, it's not what it stands for. We got a big crew up there. Vlad's there, Tom Warren's there, Becca, one of our video producers is there, Chris Welch is there. No, no.

• 1:47Speaker 02

  Not true. You just think he's there because he's so good at news.

• 1:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Chris Welch is in Germany in spirit.

• 1:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:53Nilay Patel?

  He's, he's alone in a room with a map of Germany.

• 1:57Speaker 02

  He's German in spirit. A lot of, a lot of, not buildings Roman. That's, that's a coming of age story.

• 2:04Nilay Patel?

  Is that how you say it? Buildings Roman?

• 2:07Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 2:07Nilay Patel?

  Buildings are Roman.

• 2:08Speaker 02

  There's also schadenfreude.

• 2:10Nilay Patel?

  Dieter's in the room and it's already very German in here.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  What's the spirit of the age word?

• 2:14Nilay Patel?

  Beechi. God, nailed it.

• 2:19Nilay Patel?

  Uh, we should go right into the news. Uh, first of all, we're gonna talk about the Apple stuff later in the show. The Apple event is confirmed for September 12th.

• 2:31Speaker 02

  Yup, zeitgeist.

• 2:33Nilay Patel?

  Zeitgeist, that's a good one.

• 2:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, a lot of zeitgeist at EFA this year. Uh, but the Apple event's confirmed for September 12th, which means we can announce that we are doing a live Vergecast on September 13th.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  Yup.

• 2:46Nilay Patel?

  Dieter, you've got all the details.

• 2:47Speaker 02

  I do. It is in San Francisco. Uh, you can buy tickets and, uh, later in the show, I will tell you what the link is to buy tickets. But if you're listening now, you know how to use the internet and Google, so you can search for it. Our venue is a very lovely place. It's the Robertson Auditorium at the Mission Bay Conference Center. Uh, and so we'll be doing it on September 13th. It'll be like an evening show. I don't know if I know the precise time off the top of my head, but get ready. And by the time you hear this, uh, we'll actually know what we're doing and we'll have a place for you to go and get tickets and you'll be able to come, uh, see the three of us do a podcast.

• 3:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that link will be in the post. We'll be tweeting a link, but the Vergecast Live, super exciting. We haven't done one of those.

• 3:28Speaker 02

  Not since South by Southwest.

• 3:29Nilay Patel?

  Oh yeah, we did it South by Southwest. But you didn't invite me. But this time Paul will be there. So way better. Way, way better.

• 3:36Speaker 02

  Way better. And we're gonna get a haircut.

• 3:38Nilay Patel?

  I'm just gonna say this, we're working on some guests. I'm not gonna tell you who they are or if it's gonna work out, or if it'll just be Casey. But we're working on some guests.

• 3:45Speaker 02

  We're gonna have, we're just, we're just gonna have the little new Sphero R2D2 robot just making R2D2 noises.

• 3:51Nilay Patel?

  That thing is very cute.

• 3:52Speaker 02

  It's super.

• 3:52Nilay Patel?

  They were playing it with that.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  It falls over and like makes the sad noise.

• 3:57Nilay Patel?

  But it doesn't get back up.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  You know.

• 4:00Nilay Patel?

  But let's get into EFA.

• 4:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:01Nilay Patel?

  So the big news at EFA, this is why I thought Chris Welch was there, is the LGV30.

• 4:06Speaker 02

  Yup.

• 4:07Nilay Patel?

  It is a phone.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Yup.

• 4:08Nilay Patel?

  It's a big one. It's a big phone. It looks beautiful. I think it looks beautiful.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  I've seen it in person. I think it, it, it looks like an LG phone, which means that it is beautiful, but it is not drop dead gorgeous in the way a Samsung phone is, right?

• 4:26Nilay Patel?

  But it has the fingerprint sensor in the right spot.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  Yes, it does.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  And it has a headphone jack with very high quality DAC.

• 4:34Nilay Patel?

  Four, four of them.

• 4:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:36Nilay Patel?

  They're all in on headphone jack.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 4:38Nilay Patel?

  This is the, this is the thing that I want. Here's what I'm, not the, not the headphone jack, whatever. The thing you want is for Apple to make the big change and then everyone to react to it, not by copying them, but by going off in other wild directions.

• 4:52Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 4:53Nilay Patel?

  So I think Vlad wrote the piece, like, this is the ultimate headphone jack phone.

• 4:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:57Nilay Patel?

  Four DAC, super high quality, random, banging Olafsson logo on the back of the phone.

• 5:02Speaker 03

  Somebody explain to me why four is better than just one good DAC?

• 5:06Nilay Patel?

  Because it's four.

• 5:07Speaker 03

  What does quad DAC mean?

• 5:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's got four of them.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:11Speaker 03

  But it's only got one jack.

• 5:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 5:13Speaker 03

  So the three is just cheering on.

• 5:16Nilay Patel?

  That's what you want. Uh, it's spec war. That's what it is.

• 5:20Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 5:20Nilay Patel?

  But I really do think there's two for, for both channels.

• 5:23Speaker 02

  Uh, the other thing, I mean, actually, well, there's two things to say beyond, I've got many things to say about the V30, actually. I have a lot of feelings. Um, you should definitely watch Chris, uh, the video that Chris Welch is in, that our team made and watch, read the post that, uh, that he wrote about it as a hands-on post. It's exciting for a lot of people because we're, even though Google says that they like make Pixel phones just completely on their own, we all kind of know it's still not that different from the Nexus program. And we're pretty sure that this phone is a pretty decent preview of what the Pixel XL is going to be like.

• 5:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 5:52Speaker 02

  So that's exciting. Um, the other thing that I think is personally interesting about this phone is it, LG is sticking with its, uh, camera, dual camera solution. So there's three ways now to do a dual camera. One is have a, a black and white and a color. Huawei and Essential do that. One is to have a regular and a telephoto, uh, which is, uh, I think like Samsung is doing that and Apple kinda, it's like the portrait mode thing. Um, and then the third way is to have a regular and a super wide angle. Um, and that's what LG does. And just like, you know, you want people to react to the iPhone by differentiating in some way. Um, I am happy that LG went with a super wide angle lens. I don't know that I'm gonna, would like that better than having, you know, fancy bouquet portrait mode. I don't know that that's what

• 6:37Speaker 02

  I actually want, but I just love that it exists and they're, they're continuing on it instead of just copying. They're saying, nope, this is, this is the thing you get with a high-end LG phone. You get a crazy wide angle camera and that's fun.

• 6:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:51Nilay Patel?

  And I, their little depth effects look neat.

• 6:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:54Nilay Patel?

  And they're all in on like 4K video filter effects and

• 6:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:57Nilay Patel?

  being able to record raw audio, like they're trying to make the highest-end camera.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, like this is the perfect concert phone.

• 7:04Nilay Patel?

  Quad DAC, looked it up.

• 7:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:07Nilay Patel?

  You used live Google on the, on the show here. Uh, parallel sub DACs.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 7:13Nilay Patel?

  They, they stack for decreased noise.

• 7:16Speaker 02

  So they stack the DACs.

• 7:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so DAC stack, uh, and it lowers the noise floor. There's also something called the time domain jitter eliminator.

• 7:25Speaker 02

  Oh, I've heard of that.

• 7:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I did a big, deep dive on

• 7:29Nilay Patel?

  I'm a TDGE.

• 7:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, time domain jitter eliminator. There's also, uh, analog volume control. So all the work is happening in the DAC, which I think is neat. But it's, it, that's going the other way.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's great. Good for them.

• 7:44Nilay Patel?

  Which I think is, is clever. It's like, that's how you differentiate in the market.

• 7:48Speaker 02

  There's a surprising lack of external DACs with the Lightning connector with any good, like, like, that, that aren't, you know, an old school, large DAC that is as big as your phone.

• 8:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 8:05Speaker 02

  Like, it, I would think by now that there should be like a dozen good ones and two great ones.

• 8:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  That are like the size of a pack of juicy fruit or smaller.

• 8:17Nilay Patel?

  See, I feel like

• 8:20Speaker 02

  Everybody's hopes and expectations for the dongle market have not materialized. There's still not a great multi-function USB-C dongle. The only one that I like have found that like fulfills my needs is a piece of garbage.

• 8:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 8:35Speaker 02

  And I keep, I look like once a week, like, all right, who's making the good one? And nobody's making the good one. Similarly, with the iPhone, like, there's no DAX. Like, there's not a, like, there's, there's like a crazy microphone you can get and like, we're starting to see some interesting cameras for the iPhone. Like, did you see that 360 cam that Sean O'Kane wrote about? It's a, it's a 360 cam. You can like plug it in via that lightning thing to record, like, you know, move your files over, but you can use it standalone. What's cool about it, though, is it does a thing that you want 360 cams to do, which is you just like hold it and take a picture.

• 9:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:11Speaker 02

  Right? But because it's 4K, you can then take that movie or that picture and then pan and scan your actual 1080p video out of the 360 video or out of the 360 shot. So if you want to, if I want to take a picture, uh, the cool thing that Sean O'Kane wrote about. If you want to, if you want to.

• 9:31Nilay Patel?

  More live Googling on the first cast.

• 9:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. You could take a video of a thing with a 360 cam, not to like get a 360 video, but to get a, a regular old 1080p video.

• 9:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:42Speaker 02

  That is, doesn't require you to like point the camera and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You just like hold this thing up and then later on you can like get a multi-shot, point the camera on, do something video just by editing it.

• 9:53Nilay Patel?

  You're turning the camera.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:55Speaker 02

  Which is really cool.

• 9:56Nilay Patel?

  And I think you can also pull stills out of it, which is neat.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:58Nilay Patel?

  It'll, it'll re warp the stills for you. I can't find this.

• 10:01Speaker 02

  So anyway, but my point is like, we're starting to see some like cool accessory things, but in general, the idea that, oh, don't worry, dongles will handle it, doesn't always work out as well as you hope.

• 10:12Nilay Patel?

  The Rico thing?

• 10:14Speaker 02

  Insta 361. That's what it's called.

• 10:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 10:16Speaker 02

  The Insta 360 Space One.

• 10:20Speaker 03

  Huh.

• 10:20Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 10:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 10:21Speaker 03

  What LG should do is create a dongle for the iPhone. It's like, enjoy the high-end audio experience of the V30 from your stupid iPhone that doesn't even have a headphone jack. Like, you know, for aspirational people, just like you can get like a hat with the Mercedes Benz logo.

• 10:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 10:40Speaker 03

  You know, you maybe can't afford a Mercedes Benz.

• 10:42Nilay Patel?

  You actually call it the DAC stack.

• 10:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Buy the DAC stack, $2.99 from LG. I don't know. I don't know that any accessory market has ever produced the number of things, except for USB. But every time Apple changed connectors.

• 10:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:58Nilay Patel?

  Like, the fire-wire accessory market did not develop.

• 11:02Speaker 03

  Well, you got hard drives.

• 11:03Nilay Patel?

  Even the Lightning accessory market has never truly developed. There's just a bunch of like docks.

• 11:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:07Nilay Patel?

  Speaker docks, charging cables that don't work.

• 11:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:11Nilay Patel?

  No DAC stacks.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  No DAC stacks. By the way, DAC stack sounds super like it's a thing you can buy at Taco Bell.

• 11:17Speaker 03

  Although, actually, you can get a great DAC for Lightning.

• 11:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah?

• 11:20Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 11:20Nilay Patel?

  Which one?

• 11:21Speaker 03

  Oh, wait, not Lightning. Thunderbolt, for Thunderbolt.

• 11:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, no, there's like the market for the pros.

• 11:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:27Nilay Patel?

  Right? But the consumer-level market is crazy stuff. You can plug into a phone. I think this is also going to be the problem with modular phones. No one really knows what those accessories should be.

• 11:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:38Nilay Patel?

  It happens to actually just be another 360 camera. But that's the only idea we have. But I think the V30 looks really cool. I like that it, LG's finally like taken the step up to compete.

• 11:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:53Nilay Patel?

  I think the G6 like wasn't quite as nice as the Samsung phones, like just really obviously not as nice.

• 11:58Speaker 02

  I don't think the V30 is quite as nice as the Samsung phones either, to be blunt. Like, everybody's very excited for the V30. It's, you know, the clearly like the biggest, you know, news at IFA, the most important phone there, by far. Sorry, Sony.

• 12:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 12:11Speaker 02

  It's a whole other thing. But I fundamentally will, I don't want to say it's a bias, but I have a hard time. Getting super jazzed by LG phones in general because I've been burned so many times by like, "All right, this is the one. LG did it." And then I use it and then I experience the software. And then I'm like, "Oh."

• 12:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And I think watching Welch's video, that was still the...

• 12:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 12:36Nilay Patel?

  It's still their software. But you can change the launcher, right? I mean, there's not much else there.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:41Speaker 03

  Well, that's an interesting segue to Sony. Are you guys ready to talk about Sony?

• 12:44Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 12:45Speaker 03

  Because Sony's going Oreo right away, but bezels...

• 12:50Speaker 02

  Everywhere.

• 12:51Speaker 03

  Everywhere.

• 12:52Speaker 02

  Bezel Town.

• 12:53Nilay Patel?

  It's like really obvious Sony doesn't own a display company. They're like, "We don't, we don't have one of these."

• 12:58Speaker 03

  I mean, seriously, what year was this picture taken of this phone?

• 13:03Speaker 02

  I mean, Sony...

• 13:04Speaker 03

  It looks like those old... Remember when they were trying to make those dedicated P and P?

• 13:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:08Speaker 03

  P and Ps that would run Android? It looks like one of those.

• 13:11Nilay Patel?

  They make those. They still make those. They still have a thousand dollar Walkman that runs Android 2.2.

• 13:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, Sony's big thing is they made, one of the phones they announced is like a human-sized, non-giganto phone that has the top-end specs, the Snapdragon 835 and everything else you want. But Sony started this design language and making these cool phones like two, three years ago. And they got a bunch of like hardcore fans saying, "Sony gets it. Sony makes phones designed for humans and they're beautiful and they're minimal and Sony's gonna do it. They're gonna turn it around." And Sony's like, "Yeah, thanks, fans." And then they did the exact same thing for the next three years and they never broke into the US and now it doesn't feel as innovative as it once did.

• 13:58Speaker 03

  The X1 exists, which is a truly minimal design.

• 14:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Yeah, but this picture of the XC1 Compact, you're right. It's like, this looks like a reference design from 2010.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, I'll give it 2013.

• 14:12Nilay Patel?

  Fine.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  Right? Maybe even 2014. But I, the thing with the Sony phone is I want to deeply and truly love it. But, and I do think it is, you know, a pretty beautiful design, but it's also like those bezels don't help. And they're, I don't have a ton of faith that they're going to execute, especially in the US market, to the point where like I can trust it as like a thing that I'll buy and like be supportive.

• 14:37Nilay Patel?

  Do you know what the most exciting thing Sony announced at Eiffel is? The MHC V90W. It's a five foot six...

• 14:44Speaker 02

  Dig it!

• 14:45Nilay Patel?

  Foot tall. Is that, did I steal it?

• 14:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:47Nilay Patel?

  Never mind.

• 14:50Nilay Patel?

  I was just segueing.

• 14:51Speaker 02

  What about the Sony HomePod?

• 14:55Nilay Patel?

  Well, I'm saying the most exciting thing that Sony announced is a five and a half foot speaker. With Chromecast, it has what, four tweeters, four mid-range, a huge woofer, all of the speakers light up. It is crazy looking. It has like a touch panel in the front. Here's what I really want to know. This is like the fourth one.

• 15:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:15Nilay Patel?

  Like they made one, it's sold enough for them to make another one. That one's sold enough to make a third one and now they're like, we made it even bigger. You can chain 10 of them together and you can control it with Google Assistant. Who is buying them?

• 15:32Speaker 02

  And will they be friends with you?

• 15:34Nilay Patel?

  Where can I go to experience your purchases? I would like to be there. I'll bring drinks. Also, there's a team at Sony in a conference room with like sales charts on the wall.

• 15:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:46Nilay Patel?

  They're like, we gotta top ourselves, right? Like there's a dip in the market here. I think if we had two more light up woofers, we'll be able to capture even more of this market. I just want to be in that room. So if you work at Sony, you know, somebody who works at Sony, who builds the crazy party speakers, let me know. I will bring drinks to them. I would like to write a profile of that team. Who, what?

• 16:12Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 16:13Nilay Patel?

  Block parties. It's super unclear, but they've sold enough of these, I repeat, to have a multiple generation.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  What if they're, what if they exist solely to go into like Sony trade show booths? And that's, that's how they sold them. Whenever Sony rolls up at a trade show, they put those speakers in it. And that turns out they didn't realize it, but that's the entire market.

• 16:33Nilay Patel?

  The trade shows, other people's trade show booths? Well, why do you need to chain 10 of them? Like someone had to receive that feature request.

• 16:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:42Nilay Patel?

  Execute it.

• 16:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:44Nilay Patel?

  Put it in the product, tell a marketing team, like put this in the press release. That's a lot of decisions.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:49Nilay Patel?

  I just want to be a part of it. I just want to be in that family that everyone else is worried about phones and AI assistants and whatever. And they're like, what if the speakers could be a thousand colors?

• 17:01Speaker 02

  They did worry about an AI assistant for it.

• 17:07Nilay Patel?

  There's no freedom. Uh, but we should talk about the home. So Sony made the big crazy speaker, which again, I tell you, people bought three generations of them previously. I mean, but they also made this weird, bad home pod. The LFS 50G. It looks. Sony, can I get a job just naming your things? Oh, man. It looks so much like a home pod. But they put the. They put a clock behind the fabric. Like an old school alarm clock. Yeah, which I love. Sony makes a lot of alarm clocks. They were the default good alarm clock for like 10 years. It's true. It's true. It's a real core competency. If this thing was sitting on the nightstand in my next hotel room, I would be happy. Hmm. That would be cool. It would also. Interesting metric.

• 17:47Nilay Patel?

  Inevitably, the second the, the hotel bought it and put it on the nightstand, your phone would have a different connector. Yeah. That's how you know. My hotel where I'm staying at this time in New York, across the street, no alarm clocks in the room. Yeah. That's great. Do they have lightning plugs in the tables? Ah, that's, that's like the power move. Like you don't need an alarm clock, but here's a selection of plugs. So this thing, actually the alarm clock thing is interesting. It's got gesture controls. On the top. I mean, it's a home pod. It's also splash proof. It's got gesture controls on the top. Splash proof. It's got a clock in the front. It's got microphones. It's got Google Assistant. 200 bucks. The goo, the, this is like the whole set of things that EFA, that's worth talking about is what happened with Alexa.

• 18:26Nilay Patel?

  And Google Assistant. So a bunch of, a bunch of, a bunch of speakers came out that like, there's a version for Alexa and there's a version for Google Assistant. And they're all like slightly different in like weird ways. Yeah. Um, and Amazon and Microsoft announced a deal, which is worth unpacking. Yeah. Alexa and Cortana are gonna work together. Cool. Yeah. This deal was made when Jeff Bezos went to a CEO summit at Microsoft and Sachin Dhilli was like, wouldn't it be cool if they worked together? And he was like, yeah, sure. Cool. That's great. Yeah. Another sort of party I'd just like to go to. Right. The Microsoft summit. I bet they have those Sony speakers there. And they're just like fucking crazy. Sacha's like, turn it up. I only hear nine.

• 19:15Nilay Patel?

  But the, the way that deal is working right now is super dumb.

• 19:21Speaker 02

  Yup.

• 19:22Nilay Patel?

  So.

• 19:23Speaker 02

  Say it. Just do it.

• 19:25Nilay Patel?

  You have to say, Alexa, ask Cortana to do something.

• 19:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:30Nilay Patel?

  Alexa's like, cool. And then it.

• 19:31Speaker 02

  That's my dream.

• 19:32Nilay Patel?

  Cortana, ask Alexa to do something.

• 19:34Speaker 02

  And then, yeah.

• 19:35Nilay Patel?

  That's so clunky. That's, that.

• 19:37Speaker 02

  I mean, it'll get better over time.

• 19:39Nilay Patel?

  Go farther.

• 19:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. Here's what I, did you see my anal, my, my insightful analysis of this deal? Alexa and Cortana teaming up to take on Google Assistant is like the Patriots and the Browns teaming up to take on the Packers.

• 19:52Nilay Patel?

  Ooh. That doesn't.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  Cortana's the Browns.

• 19:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I, I understand what you're saying. Alexa cheats.

• 20:04Nilay Patel?

  I understand. And the Google Assistant is pure and good.

• 20:07Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 20:08Nilay Patel?

  And the, the town owns the team.

• 20:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. By the way, in this analogy.

• 20:11Nilay Patel?

  I own two shares of the Google Assistant.

• 20:13Speaker 02

  This tweet and they said, oh, so that, that would mean that, that, that Bixby is the Vikings.

• 20:19Nilay Patel?

  Brutal.

• 20:20Speaker 02

  Damn.

• 20:21Nilay Patel?

  I think my way of reading this is they have to team up because they need more scale.

• 20:26Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 20:26Nilay Patel?

  And they just will never really truly be the default on the phones.

• 20:31Speaker 02

  Right.

• 20:31Nilay Patel?

  So how do you compete against Siri when you're, you're never going to be the default thing on the iPhone? You need scale. So it's a great deal for Microsoft because they're going to go on to that whole family of Alexa devices. Great deal for Amazon because they're going to start to address all the Windows devices. Lots of scale. But what's interesting is that there's a bunch of phones now that are just going to do Alexa that are Android phones that have both.

• 20:54Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 20:55Nilay Patel?

  So Motorola announced a phone that just does Alexa stuff. Um, there's a couple other weird ones. The Motorola one, I think the, the X4, the Moto X4.

• 21:04Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 21:05Nilay Patel?

  It's just Alexa. And then I think this is also really interesting. This is so weird. Lenovo has a bunch of crazy stuff. I think Lenovo has entered its it's sort of a crazy period.

• 21:15Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 21:16Nilay Patel?

  They were, they were like really big winners and now they're like, but we're still relevant. Here's crazy stuff. So they made a speaker that only plugs into its Android tablets.

• 21:22Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 21:23Nilay Patel?

  That runs Alexa.

• 21:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. I, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. New.

• 21:28Nilay Patel?

  It's 70?

• 21:28Speaker 02

  Super no.

• 21:29Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 21:30Speaker 02

  I, I, I use this thing. Um, the speaker is a speaker. It does nothing. You can't plug an aux into it. You can't talk to it. It, it does nothing until you plug on the side, like a wing, one of Lenovo's tablets into it. And then when you do that, the tablet says, oh, I'm plugged into a speaker now. And it turns into a Alexa with a display.

• 21:55Nilay Patel?

  Huh.

• 21:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:56Nilay Patel?

  That seems a lot clunkier than an echo show.

• 21:58Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 21:59Nilay Patel?

  But you can take, presumably take the tablet and run away.

• 22:01Speaker 02

  Tablet and do stuff with the tablet. Or if you want to have an echo show, you plug the tablet into the thing.

• 22:05Nilay Patel?

  Does it do echo show things when it has a tablet plugged in?

• 22:08Speaker 02

  I, I, it does do echo show things. I'm pretty sure. I didn't get to try it fully, but they, their press release says it has like visual responses for Alexa and it's a standard API. So I would be very shocked.

• 22:22Speaker 03

  There's a standard API for like all the, the way you display and control like visual Alexa stuff.

• 22:30Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 22:30Speaker 03

  Which is weird that we haven't seen more devices with that. I'm sure that we're going to see.

• 22:34Nilay Patel?

  I just like the idea that you're going to build a product for your huge market of Android tablets that you've sold.

• 22:40Speaker 02

  But like, if you think about this in the abstract.

• 22:44Nilay Patel?

  Which is the only way to think about it.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  It seems like a good idea.

• 22:47Nilay Patel?

  No one will ever see one or purchase one.

• 22:49Speaker 02

  You hold a tablet and you're like, man, I wish this thing had a louder speaker.

• 22:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 22:53Speaker 02

  Or you look at an echo show and you're like, man, I wish I could take this display and like go read some, you know, book on the couch.

• 22:59Nilay Patel?

  Right? I've never thought that.

• 23:00Speaker 02

  Maybe, maybe you think that. Uh, there's this whole LCD panel. It's stuck on my kitchen counter. Oh, how terrible is that?

• 23:08Nilay Patel?

  Dieter wants everything to be a phone.

• 23:10Speaker 02

  In theory, it makes sense to make this thing.

• 23:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 23:14Speaker 02

  In practice, it makes no sense at all.

• 23:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 23:17Speaker 03

  What if, what if you had a TV?

• 23:23Nilay Patel?

  You just gave up on this idea. Lenovo also made a Yoga laptop, the Yoga 920.

• 23:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:30Nilay Patel?

  That has Farfield microphones in it.

• 23:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:32Nilay Patel?

  For Cortana, which is very smart.

• 23:33Speaker 02

  I think that's gonna get to be pretty standard.

• 23:35Speaker 03

  You know what could have been a really good Cortana device? I was having this conversation today.

• 23:42Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 23:43Speaker 03

  Xbox.

• 23:45Speaker 02

  It is a Cortana device now, isn't it?

• 23:48Nilay Patel?

  I don't think you can like put the Kinect in there. I mean, it is, but it's not that.

• 23:51Speaker 03

  They totally killed the Kinect. Like what they, what they should have done is like, offered it with a microphone. Like, I'd really miss seeing Xbox play Netflix.

• 24:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 24:04Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that, everything that happened with the Xbox One, they're like, oh crap, we forgot games.

• 24:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:09Nilay Patel?

  And they just let it slide.

• 24:10Speaker 02

  My Xbox One S, by the way, totally dead.

• 24:12Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 24:12Speaker 02

  Won't boot.

• 24:13Nilay Patel?

  Oh.

• 24:13Speaker 02

  Very unhappy. I've tried the whole, I tried the hold reset button down trick.

• 24:17Speaker 03

  Does it have a cool color ring?

• 24:19Speaker 02

  No, it just, it just won't boot anymore. It's, I got it to display a screen that's like, ah, things seem broken. You should reset it, cause I hadn't turned it on in like two months. And it's like, okay, I hit the button and now it's just gone.

• 24:31Nilay Patel?

  I need to buy the new version of Madden and I don't know if I should stay with the Xbox. I'll switch to PS4 and I haven't bought it yet. Cause I really think I might do, I might go all the way. But it's hard. It's, it feels like leaving my family behind. Yeah. Except they've already all moved on to PlayStation. So there's no one there on Xbox.

• 24:54Nilay Patel?

  The Assistant news is out of control.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:56Nilay Patel?

  So Google also announced three third-party speakers with Assistant. I think the most interesting of them, we know nothing about, which is the Panasonic.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 25:05Nilay Patel?

  But the second most interesting.

• 25:06Speaker 02

  The Panasonic, the news might be out by now, let me see, but it wasn't, I didn't have the information when it came out.

• 25:11Nilay Patel?

  But the second most interesting is terribly named.

• 25:15Speaker 02

  Oh, the Panasonic GA10 is a crazy square obelisk of a speaker.

• 25:21Nilay Patel?

  So this is the new Panasonic Google Assistant speaker?

• 25:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. It is just a, it is just an obelisk.

• 25:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And then there, I think this one is interesting. Because it's cheap. It's $70. It's from Anker, which is the company that makes everybody's battery packs.

• 25:36Speaker 03

  And they also, Anker's making a cheap Alexa, right?

• 25:39Nilay Patel?

  Anker's making a cheap.

• 25:40Speaker 02

  Called the UFI.

• 25:42Nilay Patel?

  E U F Y. Bad names because there's the UFI, which is their little Echo Dot.

• 25:46Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 25:47Nilay Patel?

  And then Anker's Google Assistant speaker.

• 25:50Speaker 02

  Say it.

• 25:51Nilay Patel?

  It's called the Zolo Mojo.

• 25:55Nilay Patel?

  I don't, I don't know what is going on with that.

• 25:58Speaker 02

  I don't have high hopes with the Zolo Mojo. Because the UFI, the UFI didn't do, wasn't, isn't that great?

• 26:04Nilay Patel?

  It's the UFI genie, by the way.

• 26:05Speaker 02

  The UFI genie is not that great. So Zolo is their Google Assistant brand and UFI is their Alexa brand? Is that the story?

• 26:11Nilay Patel?

  You know, I hope not. It appears to be the story, but they're not, again, not great names coming out of EFA this year.

• 26:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:19Nilay Patel?

  A lot, a lot of letters and mistakes. But, so there's the new fancy Panasonic one.

• 26:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:25Nilay Patel?

  There's the Anker stuff. There's a third one. They have an announcement with LG to put Google Assistant in appliances.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  Well, you can, you can control LG appliances with the Google Assistant.

• 26:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  So you can say, hey, Google, are my jeans clean? And they will say, no, you haven't run the washing machine in three weeks, you disgusting monster, is how I assume that will go.

• 26:47Speaker 02

  Just based on personal experience.

• 26:48Nilay Patel?

  Why don't you remember me? That's all they say. And then on top of all, and then obviously there's the Sony HomePod clone with Assistant. So tons of new Alexa and Google Assistant speakers.

• 27:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:02Nilay Patel?

  Fairly clear the market will just be flooded with those devices.

• 27:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:06Nilay Patel?

  I think it's really interesting now that Amazon will have this massive range going from, I mean, they're just gonna start giving the Dot away for nothing.

• 27:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:17Nilay Patel?

  We're so close to it, but right now it's 40 bucks. Sometimes it goes down to 30. Um, all the way up to, you know, bigger, badder speakers.

• 27:25Speaker 02

  Have we seen any speakers out of IFA? I haven't seen any major ones that run both.

• 27:29Nilay Patel?

  No, nothing runs both. I think you gotta make that deal.

• 27:31Speaker 02

  Right. And all of this, all of these smart speakers are happening in the context of Sonos has an announcement coming in October that is gonna be a smart speaker. Like, finally, they're just doing the obvious thing.

• 27:45Nilay Patel?

  Picture of the top leaked to the, not leaked. They put it through FCC certification, so we got a picture of the top.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  And then they built that into the invites that they sent out to all the different tech publications. So each, each tech publication got a different invite that had a different mouth on it. By the way, mouths, not fun to look at after a minute. Yeah. But they, if you look in the corner, it had the little top, the, the dots of the, you know, the microphone and the volume controls or whatever.

• 28:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. My guess is that it's a Play Five, or Play One, with touch controls at the top instead of the buttons it has.

• 28:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:16Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that seems like the fastest.

• 28:17Speaker 02

  It has to have an assistant built in, right?

• 28:18Nilay Patel?

  I will say this about Sonos. Sonos traditionally extremely slow product cadence.

• 28:23Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 28:24Nilay Patel?

  Glacially slow.

• 28:26Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 28:27Nilay Patel?

  They got a new CEO.

• 28:28Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 28:29Nilay Patel?

  He said, "We gotta speed up the product cadence."

• 28:31Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 28:31Nilay Patel?

  They're rushing a voice.

• 28:32Speaker 02

  He sent a memo that said that they need to have a biased action.

• 28:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Uh, biased action then resulted in them pushing out a software update for the Play Bar, which made it broken.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  Super glad I'm not at home this week, by the way.

• 28:46Nilay Patel?

  No, the Play Bar, not the Play Bar, the, the one that goes on to the TV.

• 28:48Speaker 02

  Oh, the Play Base?

• 28:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 28:49Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 28:50Nilay Patel?

  Um, it's one of the two. Anyway, they pushed out a software update for one of their products that broke everything and everyone's mad. So, some trade-offs there in the Sonos world.

• 28:58Speaker 02

  Fair.

• 28:58Nilay Patel?

  I'm a Sonos fan. Really like my Sonos. Just don't push an update that breaks it. It was basically my... But, that's a lot of smart speaker stuff.

• 29:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:09Nilay Patel?

  And I think it's fascinating in the context of, there's an Apple event coming, we don't know if they're gonna talk about the HomePod more there, we presume that they will, and that product is gonna sit at the very top of the market.

• 29:19Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:20Nilay Patel?

  And, you know, Siri obviously is integrated across many Apple products, so there is an ecosystem there that's important. But this range that Amazon has now built, where you can get all kinds of stuff that runs Alexa, all kinds of smart speakers for every room of your house, and every shape, size, color, bad name, Google also moving there very quickly.

• 29:39Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 29:41Nilay Patel?

  It's, that's a weird spot to enter.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  It's, what's fascinating to me is how we went from, there's Alexa and there's the Echo, and then there's the Echo, and then there's the Echo, and maybe some other people are thinking about it, to, there's just a kajillion things and good luck figuring it out.

• 30:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and for all these-

• 30:01Speaker 02

  It feels like it happened overnight. I know, I know it took, you know, 18 months or whatever, but, man, I was, I was expecting some smart speakers at EFA, but like, that's the story of EFA.

• 30:12Nilay Patel?

  It was also fundamentally a story of CES, right? But not with as many speakers.

• 30:16Speaker 02

  Right, there were, there were only a handful of CES.

• 30:18Speaker 03

  That was like, we made a device that does a thing, oh, and it's also got Alexa.

• 30:22Nilay Patel?

  Right, or you can control all these new devices with Alexa, was really the, the story of CES, and now it's all this hardware, which makes me wonder, if you are Lenovo, or you are Motorola, or you are Sony, or whoever, you're the guy who invented the phrase Zolo Mojo,

• 30:39Nilay Patel?

  your endgame can't be market domination.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  Right.

• 30:42Nilay Patel?

  Right? You, you're only gonna get a piece of the market, and Amazon is gonna win, because they have all of the devices, or Google's gonna win because they have all the devices.

• 30:52Speaker 03

  And people buy speakers like, like you upgrade your TV because there's new specs out there, like, now you want 4K, now you want 3D, now you want this. If you buy a speaker, as long as it still makes noise, until you're ready to really go up in price or something.

• 31:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so I think that this is the thing, right? This is the, the feature inflection point. Lots of people have Bluetooth speakers. Okay, now you can get a speaker of this size, you can put it in your bathroom or whatever. There's a million price points, you can get whatever assistant you want, or you're using, it's gonna be part of that ecosystem. I think that's the rush, but none of this feels like a lasting market. Because after that big rush to buy things, some of these companies are gonna win, some of them are gonna lose, Amazon clearly is going to win and just keep making stuff. It's, I think to Amazon's benefit to have a huge ecosystem of Alexa devices. But, you know, the Lenovo stuff, they're putting it out there in the, I think in the hope

• 31:50Nilay Patel?

  that this is the thing that people want in this moment where they might be upgrading their Bluetooth speakers or whatever, but that it can't last.

• 31:57Speaker 03

  How, how long do you think until someone says, "Oh, that used to be a smart speaker, but now it's a dumb speaker because..."

• 32:06Speaker 03

  They never updated the software. It's not compatible with the newest API. Like, when does like, software rot?

• 32:13Speaker 02

  Right. That's a really good question.

• 32:15Speaker 03

  Ruin the, take its first victim.

• 32:17Speaker 02

  When are we gonna start talking about like, the Qualcomm Snapdragon of speakers? And like, you want the one that has a faster processor? This just makes me sad.

• 32:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, let's, is there anything else from IFA?

• 32:31Speaker 02

  Probably, but it's just like a ton of laptops that have the new Intel processors and just everything in the world. And that's mostly it.

• 32:39Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 32:40Speaker 03

  A lot of laptops.

• 32:41Nilay Patel?

  A lot of laptops. There's some neat gaming ones, but here's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna read an ad real quick, as usual, for the past couple of months of the show. I talked to Lauren Grush about her show Spacecraft in the next episode. So I'm gonna read an ad, we're gonna listen to Lauren for a while. That was actually a really fun interview. And we're gonna come back and talk about some other stuff.

• 33:01Nilay Patel?

  This episode of Vergecast brought to you by TransferWise. Do you ever need to send money internationally? Maybe you're an engineer who moved to the US, or a business owner paying suppliers in another country, or you're a freelancer getting paid by a client in a foreign country. You should use TransferWise, the cheaper, easier way to send money. Because when it comes to sending money, banks are stuck in the past. TransferWise is the future. It uses a peer-to-peer network that trims the fat off of international payments. You pay into a local account. TransferWise pays your recipient from an account in their countries. Currencies don't cross borders. Watch that matter to you? Because let's TransferWise do things your bank can't. Your bank might charge expensive fees, give you a poor exchange rate, often takes way too long to use. But you save time and money with TransferWise. TransferWise payments take seconds to set up. They charge one tiny fixed fee, and they give you an exchange rate that would make your cheap Uncle Larry proud.

• 33:46Nilay Patel?

  Uncle Larry's back, and he's proud of you. See how much you could save by going to transferwise.com, or you could download the app from the App Store or Google Play. Once again, that is transferwise.com. Transfer is in, I need to send money to another country. Wise is in, that Confucius guy was wise. TransferWise. Use it.

• 34:07Nilay Patel?

  Lauren.

• 34:08Speaker 04

  Neela.

• 34:08Nilay Patel?

  You're back.

• 34:09Speaker 04

  I am.

• 34:10Nilay Patel?

  You're from space.

• 34:11Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 34:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Well, obviously, you're in the middle of your show, "Spacecraft."

• 34:16Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 34:16Nilay Patel?

  We've been having you on the show for a few minutes every week. Let's talk about what's going on. This week, you exercised?

• 34:22Speaker 04

  Yes. It's all about pumping iron.

• 34:25Nilay Patel?

  Well, not really. It's like pumping syringes.

• 34:27Speaker 04

  Pumping vacuum.

• 34:28Nilay Patel?

  Pumping vacuum. Is that what astronauts say?

• 34:31Speaker 04

  I don't know if that's what they say. I hope they do.

• 34:33Nilay Patel?

  That's what we say now. But tell us about pumping vacuum.

• 34:35Speaker 04

  Right. So, we went to NASA's Johnson Space Center. I'm sure if people realize by now, we had like an epic day there.

• 34:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Was it all one day?

• 34:44Speaker 04

  Most of the stuff we... No, everything we did at Johnson Space Center was all in one day. Or, and then we went to the neutral buoyancy lab the morning before our flight the next day. But yeah, so we went there. We... This particular episode was at the countermeasures training facility. Fancy word for gym.

• 35:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It was... It's a gym.

• 35:01Speaker 04

  It's a gym.

• 35:02Nilay Patel?

  I will say this. So, I'm watching all these episodes before they cut out. And our early edits are really, really long. Because we don't put everything in, and then we're trying to trim back. And there were just a lot of shots of you walking into very nondescript buildings. Like, this building looks like a 1970s elementary school, from what I gather.

• 35:20Speaker 04

  That's my favorite part. So, whenever they depict NASA on... in movies, they always make it look so much cooler than it really is. Because it's like old 80s, 70s government buildings. Like, they're all beige, brown, and like, so nondescript, and they're rectangular. You know? Like, isn't there kind... At least, I mean, I have most experience with NASA-Johnson Space Center. So, like, that's what I know. But yeah, it's not like the prettiest of campuses. So, whenever they refer to it in movies, it's always like, "These orb... cool orbs that they work in," or like, I don't know, "some geometric shape." And it's like, no. It's like, it's a government... Remember, this is the government picture.

• 36:00Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, so you went to a gym inside of a middle school?

• 36:03Speaker 04

  Yes. Well, okay, so the special thing about this gym is that it's the same machines that you have on top, in the International Space Station that are specifically designed to give you a workout while in zero G, which is tough because the whole point of working out here on Earth is to work out against gravity with weights and, you know, to work your muscles and bones against that gravity. But in space, they gotta have, they have to like simulate that. So one way, we worked on the ARAD machine, which was the, I guess, it varies as you can use it for squats, you can use it for bench press. It's basically one long bar, but instead of having weights on the ends, it is connected to two canisters.

• 36:48Speaker 04

  And like I was saying earlier, they basically recreate a vacuum. So one, a good demonstration that the guy showed in the video is like if you put down a thumb over a syringe and you try to pull on it, you create a vacuum and that, that's tough. Like it's hard to pull against. It basically recreates that vacuum effect. So, and you can adjust it in certain ways and that will make it hard for you to pull the bar or push the bar, or whatever you want to do with it. And-

• 37:11Nilay Patel?

  And you can vary that?

• 37:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, you can vary that. You can bring in like a, a thing to lay on, I guess, even though, actually I'm not sure. Yeah, basically you would have some kind of thing to like strap you in and like pump, pump iron.

• 37:25Nilay Patel?

  Pump vacuum.

• 37:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, harnesses are a big, big part of working out in space because you gotta stay put.

• 37:33Nilay Patel?

  When you were on the show last week, you did squat lifts?

• 37:35Speaker 04

  Squat lifts. And it was, it got very hard, very quick. I don't remember how much, I'm doing air quotes, weight they put on it. But I just remember being like, okay, I'm done. After about three, four, or five of them.

• 37:47Nilay Patel?

  And the point of this, it's like two hours a day, six days a week?

• 37:51Speaker 04

  Two and a half hours a day, six days a week. And yeah, so what we were saying earlier is, okay, so you and me just sitting here or walking and standing, we're working out our muscles and bones because gravity is kind of pulling us down, but we are defying that whenever we gesticulate and whatnot. But in space, you don't have that. So your bones lose mineral density and your muscles can atrophy. So basically, in order to just be normal-

• 38:23Speaker 04

  They have to work out so much during the job. It's a big part of their daily routine.

• 38:27Nilay Patel?

  How do they, I mean, it seems like we don't talk about that a lot. It doesn't come out a ton.

• 38:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, you notice that. And it kind of bothers me because, and not, not to say that, you know, space isn't fun, but it always is depicted as like this vacation land that you go to where you just float around all the time.

• 38:44Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I literally, by accident. I didn't want this to happen, but it happened to me. I watched part of Passengers last night.

• 38:49Speaker 04

  Oh, God.

• 38:50Nilay Patel?

  It's just an awful movie. But it was on, you know, it's like, whatever. And it's a vacation.

• 38:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:56Nilay Patel?

  And I was literally, I just watched-

• 38:57Speaker 04

  But they have like simulated gravity.

• 38:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but it goes off all the time.

• 39:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:03Speaker 04

  Spoilers.

• 39:03Nilay Patel?

  It's always breaking. But like, that's, it occurred to me that like, it's a vacation, right?

• 39:09Speaker 04

  It does, they, I think it gets portrayed that way. And, and speaking of, I was, I did want to bring this up because we also talk about radiation in the video too. That was something like when Elon was talking about his deep space transport system that's take, gonna take hundreds of colonists to Mars or whatever. He like talked about how fun it was gonna be with all the pizza shops in it.

• 39:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 39:31Speaker 04

  I was like, you didn't talk about a gym. Like, these people have, and, and then I also brought up, when I, I remember asking him at the presentation, you know, what about deep space radiation? Because this is something that NASA studies intently. And he was like, I guess I don't think it's that gonna be that big of a deal.

• 39:49Nilay Patel?

  Oh, okay, Elon.

• 39:50Speaker 04

  And I'm like, I think NASA disagrees with you.

• 39:53Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I will note that you put out an entire episode of the show about space suits and then Elon put out a picture of his space suit.

• 39:58Speaker 04

  Yeah. He's definitely following our lead.

• 40:01Nilay Patel?

  He's watching you. So, the, the radiation's a big deal, but how do they program their time against that much like workout, like requirement?

• 40:10Speaker 04

  Um, I mean, I believe it's just like a scheduled day.

• 40:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 40:13Speaker 04

  Like any other. And, uh, yeah, I mean, I think they get up fairly early.

• 40:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 40:18Speaker 04

  They build in free time too. So it's not like they're just going nonstop all the time. But yeah, I mean, they basically have things kind of down to the hour planned out. But, um, it's interesting because, um, I was actually studying about this incident long ago. Before ISS, before Mir, they had a station called Skylab where they would go and do experiments, um, from time to time, back in the early days of the shuttle. And, uh, I remember that there's this thing called the Skylab Mutiny.

• 40:50Speaker 04

  It's not really a mutiny, it just gets that name. But essentially, what happened was the astronauts felt like they were being overworked. Like, everything was regimented to the minute. And they had no free time. So then, one day, like, the last day of their trip, or whatever, they just spent the day, like, hanging out.

• 41:12Speaker 04

  And so, basically, they called it a mutiny because they were going against protocol. But in reality, it was like an eye-opening experience for NASA, being like, okay, we can't make the... Like, people are people. Like, we need... You... Even in space, you get burnt out, you know? So, they have to... They do have free time worked into their days.

• 41:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. On a treadmill.

• 41:34Speaker 04

  Well, apart from the treadmill...

• 41:35Nilay Patel?

  Are they, like, watching Netflix on a treadmill like everybody else?

• 41:37Speaker 04

  No, but they do have movie nights. I... Actually, I remember one time, I think Scott Kelly was tweeting, or maybe it was somebody else, but he tweeted that they were watching Gravity. I was like, that seems like the worst movie to watch.

• 41:48Nilay Patel?

  I would not watch that movie in space.

• 41:49Speaker 04

  In space.

• 41:50Nilay Patel?

  Wait, so, you actually ran on a space treadmill, too?

• 41:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, so the space treadmill...

• 41:54Nilay Patel?

  Do they call it a space treadmill?

• 41:56Speaker 04

  No, no, probably not. But, the treadmill, yeah, so, I was talking about harnesses. Basically, um, yeah, you have to wear a harness. And that one was really... Maybe it was just the fact that we were on Earth, but it really, like, tore me apart. And, you know, I run fairly frequently, but it was like, just a couple of minutes on that treadmill really kind of took its toll. But I really think that had to do with the fact that I was in a harness.

• 42:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 42:20Speaker 04

  Um, but it's the only way to keep you from floating away and get that workout.

• 42:24Nilay Patel?

  I will say that harness did not look nearly as cool as I thought. Like, he was showing it to you, and he's like, "These are just three medical rubber bands."

• 42:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, they're just bungee cords connected to, like, a beige harness.

• 42:35Nilay Patel?

  He just, like, figured it out, but one day, like, "We need a harness." And he's like, "I've got these cords in the back of my Jeep."

• 42:40Speaker 04

  Right, right, right.

• 42:42Nilay Patel?

  Um, so, the biggest question we got, and I do want to talk about the radiation part, too, because it's important. But the biggest question I think I saw happen in our comments was people asking about sweat.

• 42:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:53Nilay Patel?

  And there's, like, this one incredibly gross shot. With the huge ball of sweat that just like sticks to the face.

• 42:59Speaker 04

  Right. Well, that was Chris Hadfield. He was actually demonstrating what it's like to cry.

• 43:02Nilay Patel?

  Oh, wow.

• 43:03Speaker 04

  But it was his tears were getting bigger and the, I love how water interacts in space because of surface tension, it does ball up like that. So you don't have all these droplets of water like you normally do here on Earth. And so, yeah, so, and speaking of gravity, we actually had a trivia question about this, like in gravity, they don't really depict it correctly because the tears float away from her face. But in passengers, they actually do depict it correctly. It would ball up on your face, like a big glob. And then, yeah, they talked about if you were to jerk your head.

• 43:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 43:38Speaker 04

  The ball would float away and it would get captured by the recycling system and it's used for tomorrow's coffee or water. And people really did not like to hear that.

• 43:49Nilay Patel?

  Because all the rest of the water that you might expel.

• 43:51Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, it's not just your sweat. Yeah.

• 43:53Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 43:53Speaker 04

  Every, it's a closed-loop system on the ISS. So what goes out then goes back in.

• 44:02Speaker 04

  But that's just, I mean, think about it. Everything we drink here on Earth has gone through some organism or another and been recycled and...

• 44:09Nilay Patel?

  I'm never swimming in the ocean again.

• 44:10Speaker 04

  Sorry, you're drinking pee all the time.

• 44:12Nilay Patel?

  It's all you can do. You have no choice. So you're running on the treadmill.

• 44:16Speaker 04

  Sorry.

• 44:17Nilay Patel?

  The sweat gloms up on your face.

• 44:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, well...

• 44:19Nilay Patel?

  And then you like whip your head around and it floats away.

• 44:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:22Nilay Patel?

  And you're like, "See you later, coffee." I mean, that's, that's it. That's basically it, right? So if you, we talk about what you learn on the show and how it might apply to Mars and the moon. I think every time, every one of these segments we've done. So if you go to Mars, there's way less gravity. You're gonna end up having to work out there too, right?

• 44:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, it would seem so. I mean, and that's also another thing. People don't really know how that's gonna affect the body. And that could be a real downer if it turns out that one-third of gravity is, you know, will we be okay on one-third gravity or not? We don't know, you know?

• 44:55Nilay Patel?

  There's like no particular way to test it.

• 44:57Speaker 04

  Right. And, you know, the longest, I mean, we've been doing this one, the last one-year mission with Scott Kelly was kind of designed to see how a human could do in space for that long. But, you know, it's gonna be a lot longer if you're going to Mars. So we don't know if one-third gravity is really okay for the human body or not. And, I mean, I'm assuming you would work out, but it's unclear what that will do to the, the human system.

• 45:24Nilay Patel?

  I feel like I'm just gonna stay here. I'm gonna drink my extremely well-filtered pee water on Earth.

• 45:29Speaker 04

  I just love, I love being a Debbie Downer when it comes to colonizing Mars. I feel like nobody talks about all the problems that you're gonna have. Like, another thing is these toxic salts that is in the soil, perchlorates. If you wanna grow anything in the soil, chances are, your food's gonna be toxic because the perchlorates are gonna get into your your food that you grow, so you're gonna have to filter the soil, which is a whole other process. There's like, all these different engineering challenges that Mars is going to pose, which I'm happy to overcome, but it's not gonna be the pizza haven that Elon makes it out to be. He really, I think he mentioned like, pizza shops two or three times during that presentation.

• 46:11Nilay Patel?

  He was just hungry. It was like, it was like an evening presentation.

• 46:15Speaker 04

  Uh, I can't remember. I mentally blocked that day out. It was terrible.

• 46:21Nilay Patel?

  Alright, let's talk, speaking of terrible things, let's talk about this radiation. So you also visited the lab where they try to figure out how to mitigate the effects of radiation.

• 46:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, that place was pretty cool because they have this particle accelerator that is very big, actually, compared to other particle accelerators. And just to clarify, you're basically taking ions and you're spinning them really fast where their electrons fly off. And that creates particles that are similar to the particles you'll experience in space. And then they shoot them at biological samples to see what the effects are. And they have this machine that can control how big the beam is, how fast they want it to go, you know, the direction they want it to go. And they can also shoot it through different materials to mitigate it or not. So, they've been learning a lot there, and basically what they were saying is, I mean,

• 47:09Speaker 04

  like we said in the video, NASA monitors their astronauts for lifetime exposure. So if you get to a certain point, then you probably can't fly anymore. That's usually when retirement comes. But when it comes to going to deep space, it's gonna be a lot different than going to the ISS because we are shielded by this magnetic field. So, yeah, you get more exposure when you're in space, but it's pretty, it's not bad. However, going to Mars is gonna be way different because we do not have that magnetic field anymore to shield people. So, they're trying to figure out better shielding to reduce it. It's probably not gonna totally get rid of it.

• 47:49Speaker 04

  But yeah, that's another big issue that NASA needs to work on before Mars can happen.

• 47:55Nilay Patel?

  How far along are they on that?

• 47:57Speaker 04

  That's a good question. I would say that right now, I feel like they're not that far along. They're more focused on doing the next steps of just before they can even go to Mars, which is building this like deep space gateway.

• 48:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 48:14Speaker 04

  And even then, that also comes after building the rocket that they need in the first place. So there's a lot of steps in the way, a lot of obstacles that still need to be overcome.

• 48:25Nilay Patel?

  Well, the good news is the pizza shops have already been designed.

• 48:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:28Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that's the first thing.

• 48:30Speaker 04

  I mean, that's like, that's essential for any trip is pizza.

• 48:34Nilay Patel?

  Obviously. So you've got sadly only one episode of spacecraft left in this season.

• 48:38Speaker 04

  But it's not sad because it's my favorite.

• 48:40Nilay Patel?

  I just watched the first cut. It is amazing. Tell us all about it.

• 48:44Speaker 04

  So we got to-

• 48:45Nilay Patel?

  Well, tease it out.

• 48:46Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 48:46Nilay Patel?

  Because we'll come back next week and then you tell us all about it.

• 48:48Speaker 04

  Well, let's just say I got to cross an item off my bucket list. That is kind of on everyone's bucket list. And that is we got to ride on the Bama Comet.

• 48:58Nilay Patel?

  So the zero G plane that does the big parabolas?

• 49:01Speaker 04

  Yes. So I did get to experience what zero gravity is like.

• 49:05Nilay Patel?

  I will say that I watched this and Lauren is very intense in zero gravity.

• 49:09Speaker 04

  Well, the thing, I've seen other videos where people go on this flight. And yeah, it's hard, I've noticed that it's hard for them to kind of articulate how they're feeling because they're just in this moment. So the whole time I was on the flight, I was challenging myself to be as talkative as possible. And I might have come off a little deranged. I'm not sure.

• 49:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, it's like very exciting. It seems really cool.

• 49:30Speaker 04

  It's exciting, but it's definitely a level of Lauren that doesn't normally come on our videos. So I'm really excited for everyone to see that.

• 49:38Nilay Patel?

  What's the, as people are watching that episode, which just comes out next week, Tuesday?

• 49:42Speaker 04

  Tuesday.

• 49:44Nilay Patel?

  What's the, what's the one thing they should be looking for or take away?

• 49:46Speaker 04

  Hmm, the takeaway, space seems like a lot of fun.

• 49:51Nilay Patel?

  It's just like radiation, pee drinking, but really good times.

• 49:56Speaker 04

  Well, okay, so this one is less informative. I mean, we tell you about how the plane works and, you know, the differences, you know, the different feelings versus like extra gravity versus no gravity. It's way more experiential for this one. And it's more of an experience of like how this particular flight is. And one of the cool things about the flight is we were on it with Scott Kelly, and he was telling us that it's way nicer to be in space because in the, in the flight, you're alternating between, you know, extra gravity and no gravity. And that process of going back and forth is what makes people throw up.

• 50:35Nilay Patel?

  Did you vomit on the vomit?

• 50:37Speaker 04

  You'll have to find out.

• 50:38Nilay Patel?

  All right, spacecraft, plug your show.

• 50:41Speaker 04

  It's spacecraft.

• 50:43Nilay Patel?

  That's your plug?

• 50:44Speaker 04

  I don't know what else to say.

• 50:46Nilay Patel?

  I have to say, we're, it's like, we're journalists and we're trying to do these shows and we're not good at the, the like plugging that you need to do.

• 50:52Speaker 04

  Okay, let me try.

• 50:53Nilay Patel?

  All right.

• 50:54Speaker 04

  Spacecraft takes you into what it takes.

• 50:58Nilay Patel?

  Spacecraft comes out on Tuesdays.

• 51:00Speaker 04

  It does.

• 51:01Nilay Patel?

  The full episodes are on YouTube. Go watch them there. They're great. And if you're on Facebook, you will see shorter condensed things that are really, really fun and I think are doing great. So I'm very excited that you did the show. You got one episode left and we will see you again next week.

• 51:13Speaker 04

  Yes. Hooray.

• 51:14Nilay Patel?

  Do you want to try the plug again?

• 51:16Speaker 04

  Spacecraft. It's like nothing else.

• 51:19Nilay Patel?

  Okay, we're done here. Thanks, Lauren. Lauren's great. That show's great. You should go watch Spacecraft. I'm so jealous, though. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Every time I watch that show. It's, it's difficult. The episode that's coming up is like, complete jealousy inducing with her in the zero G plane. What? Yeah. It's really, she has a good life, that Lauren Grush, because she's a space person. We gotta talk about this Essential situation.

• 51:48Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 51:49Nilay Patel?

  Dieter, you gotta go through it.

• 51:50Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 51:50Nilay Patel?

  Cause you're the one who called them out hardest.

• 51:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, so on, I'm gonna say Tuesday night, a bunch of people who had pre-ordered the Essential phone got an email that said, "Hey, we don't trust you. We need a picture of your driver's license to verify your address," and like an alternate email, alternate phone number. Which is a weird thing to ask for in this day and age in e-commerce, but it used to be a very common thing. It's like a way to like, deal with fraud. Like, "You know, I don't actually believe you are who you say you are," right? Send us a picture of your driver's license and then be like, "Okay, yes, you're a person." So, fine, a bunch of people got this thing and they replied. Said, "Okay, fine, here's my driver's license."

• 52:33Speaker 02

  But, what Essential did was, they sent out this email to, I dunno, a bunch of people. Something more than 70, probably something fewer than 200, we don't know the exact number, from this email address that they set up at Zendesk, which is a customer service portal that you can use. But that email address, they set it up as an email group. So, everybody who replied to that email was replying to everybody that got sent the original "We need your driver's license" email, which means that somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 people, according to Andy Rubin, sent pictures of their driver's license to each other.

• 53:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, now they're all friends. It's the sharing economy, right?

• 53:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's great.

• 53:15Nilay Patel?

  They're now all Uber drivers for Essential.

• 53:18Speaker 02

  So overnight, everybody basically reported that, "Yeah, it's a phishing scam, it's phishing." And I was like, "This is a weird way to go phishing," right? So, I, you know, got on the phone with some of the people who had received the email, and one of them just so happened to be a computer forensics expert, and he was the CTO of Paul Rand's presidential campaign.

• 53:41Nilay Patel?

  Oh my.

• 53:42Speaker 02

  Rand Paul, sorry.

• 53:43Nilay Patel?

  Paul Rand.

• 53:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, Paul Rand.

• 53:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, he's great.

• 53:46Speaker 02

  Part of the corporation.

• 53:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 53:49Speaker 02

  Uh, and he's like, yeah, no, this like I, you can look at the, the DKIDs and the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, these emails went to Essential. Uh, and yeah, and so, uh, did, talked to some other people, did a little, you know, a little more digging and, uh, said, yeah, Essential screwed this up. And then, uh, 12 hours later, I don't know, not until the evening of the second day, did, uh,

• 54:16Nilay Patel?

  They turned it off, though.

• 54:17Speaker 02

  They turned it off.

• 54:18Nilay Patel?

  Whatever was broken, they turned off.

• 54:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, they, they shut down the email so people couldn't share their driver's licenses with each other anymore. Which, you know, that's sad. Like, they're building a little community there.

• 54:26Nilay Patel?

  I love that you used the word "share."

• 54:30Speaker 02

  And so they copped to it and Ruben apologized. He said, "This is humiliating." Um, and they're giving everybody who was involved in this thing a free year of LifeLock, which is, you know, a Pro Protection Service thing. Um, so they did the right thing. I think it took them a little bit longer. Um, we could talk about the, um, quality and tone of Essential's apology. I have a couple of feelings about it, uh, but the bottom line is that, like, they copped to it, they apologized. Um, meanwhile, the other problem is, I think these phones are just now starting to arrive. So they said they were shipping last week, and that was technically true, but they were shipping from like Shenzhen. Uh, so there are not a ton of these out in people's hands anymore, or yet.

• 55:13Speaker 02

  Uh, and, uh, how many people are gonna buy them now?

• 55:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 55:20Speaker 02

  You know, uh,

• 55:21Nilay Patel?

  They can get one for free if you send everyone your driver's license, is what I was told.

• 55:24Speaker 02

  I did the review a while ago. I, not that long ago. I still think it's a very beautiful, good, fast phone. I think the camera is pretty bad. Uh, but like, the default consensus opinion amongst everybody else who's looked at it, Mark has just put up his reviews at the camera. Yeah, it's pretty slow, pretty bad.

• 55:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 55:42Speaker 02

  We'll see if they can continue to fix it with software. Um, but, either way, like, not setting yourself up for success with this phone, guys.

• 55:51Nilay Patel?

  Also, I think it's kinda crazy that the number is only 70?

• 55:54Speaker 02

  Well, but they didn't send it out to everybody who pre-ordered.

• 55:57Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 55:57Speaker 02

  They sent it out to people that, uh, for whatever reason, they felt like they needed to check for fraud in some way.

• 56:04Nilay Patel?

  Like the CTO of Rand Paul's presidential campaign?

• 56:07Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, there's that.

• 56:08Nilay Patel?

  Doc, we don't believe you. No one can be this committed to the free market.

• 56:11Speaker 02

  No, if it were Paul Rand's campaign, then you'd be fine.

• 56:14Nilay Patel?

  What's happening here? Who are you? Uh, yeah, it's something.

• 56:19Speaker 02

  It's something.

• 56:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 56:20Speaker 02

  I mean, is it the?

• 56:23Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 56:23Speaker 02

  I don't want to, go ahead.

• 56:24Speaker 03

  What is the best corporate apology?

• 56:28Nilay Patel?

  Man.

• 56:29Speaker 02

  I don't think that.

• 56:31Speaker 03

  There's a specter, there's you're, you're holding it wrong.

• 56:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 56:34Speaker 03

  One in.

• 56:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 56:35Speaker 03

  And then there's like.

• 56:37Speaker 02

  But it wasn't just.

• 56:38Speaker 03

  You're right. You're the CEO now, I guess.

• 56:43Nilay Patel?

  I think that, that. The issue here is that Andy Rubin is not a baby.

• 56:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 56:49Nilay Patel?

  He founded, he's founded a number of companies that have been very successful. He founded Android. He ran Android inside of Google. It, one would just hope that it was a little bit more buttoned up. At the same time, we pushed the wrong button in Zendesk and we screwed up like.

• 57:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:06Nilay Patel?

  I'm assuming Andy Rubin did not set up their Zendesk account.

• 57:09Speaker 02

  One hopes not.

• 57:11Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, he's not micromanaging that. So I get it, but not the best look out of the gate.

• 57:18Speaker 02

  Right.

• 57:19Nilay Patel?

  Also, maybe just hire somebody who knows how to use Zendesk is like the other.

• 57:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:22Nilay Patel?

  Like they were like, this is what we use, right? Everyone uses Zendesk. Just push some buttons here. Ready to go. Send us your driver's license.

• 57:28Speaker 02

  Yay.

• 57:29Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that's how I would do it.

• 57:32Nilay Patel?

  But that's why I'm not in charge of anything. Uh, let's talk about these watches. A bunch of watches.

• 57:36Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. A bunch of watches.

• 57:37Nilay Patel?

  Uh, the new Fitbit.

• 57:39Speaker 03

  The Fitbit Ironic.

• 57:41Nilay Patel?

  It looks bad. Uh, can I just say it looks bad?

• 57:43Speaker 03

  Decide.

• 57:43Nilay Patel?

  It looks bad.

• 57:44Speaker 03

  I can't, if, you know what? If I was a robot.

• 57:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 57:48Speaker 03

  Even part robot, like a cyborg, I think it would look great on me.

• 57:52Nilay Patel?

  Um, can I?

• 57:53Speaker 02

  Ironic is a description. It's not a noun. It's an adjective. It, you can't be an ionic.

• 57:58Speaker 03

  There are so many products. There are so many, we went through like two years where like every, it was like the Samsung Galaxy blessed or whatever.

• 58:09Nilay Patel?

  The Galaxy.

• 58:10Speaker 03

  Like, we went through years of Android phones.

• 58:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 58:13Speaker 03

  All adjectives.

• 58:15Nilay Patel?

  Uh, I mean, Hyundai makes a car called the Ironic with a Q at the end.

• 58:19Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 58:20Nilay Patel?

  So they're just out there. Um, can I, the one story I will say about this Fitbit watch. It was, I saw somebody else who'd gone to the event.

• 58:28Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 58:29Nilay Patel?

  Um, and she was wearing it.

• 58:33Nilay Patel?

  And she, she knew that like, our team had gone to the event, so she was talking to me about it. And she's like, here's the craziest thing about it. They wanted to keep this so secret, they gave me the watch to wear. But then they gave her like a wristband to wear over the watch to keep it secret. It was like a huge-

• 58:49Speaker 02

  Like a sweatband?

• 58:50Nilay Patel?

  Like a sweatband.

• 58:51Speaker 02

  Like you're going to play tennis?

• 58:52Nilay Patel?

  A device protector.

• 58:53Speaker 02

  In 1983?

• 58:54Nilay Patel?

  But what Fitbit had also done is it had printed the Fitbit logo on the wristband.

• 59:01Nilay Patel?

  It just defies the point of keeping it secret. Uh, the most interesting thing about this watch is that it runs their new operating system, right? Which is built by Pebble people.

• 59:13Speaker 02

  Right.

• 59:14Nilay Patel?

  But it has all the same problem. And they have a big sleep apnea thing. Lauren Good wrote a whole great story about their dreams to-

• 59:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, don't, don't, don't, when you see Fitbit and sleep apnea in the same sentence, don't think that this thing will detect sleep apnea. But they have more sensors on it that can read like oxygen levels in your blood a little bit more accurately. And they're hoping eventually that will lead them to help like identify if you might have it and you should go to the doctor. They're working towards that goal, but they are not claiming by any stretch of the imagination that they do that now.

• 59:50Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 59:50Speaker 02

  With this watch. But what they are saying is, we are collecting more data. Uh, and like, we are going to find more and more useful, interesting ways to work with that data. And so there are practical benefits to these extra sensors on this watch now. But if they're, if they get it right, they could have a very interesting technology in the future.

• 1:00:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:10Speaker 02

  That's the, that's the proper way to think about it.

• 1:00:12Nilay Patel?

  I think the way that I, and you should read that Lauren piece because it's great. But the way I keep seeing this, I think this is going to be true of the Apple Watch. If and when we see a new one next month. They're targeting more towards health too. And it seems like the, the pattern that's emerging is you find like a big problem that a lot of people might have. And then you develop technology that like helps you mitigate it or identify it or treat it or whatever. And I think the incentives of that are weird. Right? Like-

• 1:00:40Speaker 02

  Weird how?

• 1:00:43Nilay Patel?

  Because they, these are market-driven corporations, right? So like, sleep apnea, it would be great if Fitbit could detect it, but then their bias is going to be towards targeting all the people who have it or are worried about it. And that traditionally has led to not great outcomes with like unregulated medical devices or even like pharmaceutical advertising, right? Like, the incentive structures of that are going to start to get mapped onto these health devices.

• 1:01:09Speaker 03

  What's a, what's a bad result that this incentive could lead to? Like that they're, they've created a device that misdiagnoses stuff?

• 1:01:17Nilay Patel?

  It's, I don't want to like, go too far down the line. I just see it like hazy in the distance, but Fitbit being like, "Sleep apnea kills. You probably have it. Wear this watch. Buy this watch to fix it."

• 1:01:30Speaker 03

  Like, like, like hyping up or like fear mongering of the actual condition.

• 1:01:33Nilay Patel?

  Right. And that's like a very common sort of pharmaceutical advertising thing that happens.

• 1:01:38Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:01:39Nilay Patel?

  Um, they're, like, you know, they're not there yet, but you see that happening with the big wearables, like, Apple's really pushing around diabetes. Like, it's coming.

• 1:01:48Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:01:49Nilay Patel?

  It's fine. I think it's, it's cool in the sense that it's probably to everyone's benefit for big companies to think about treating these common problems. But the incentive structures, especially the companies that are losing, to find one, target it, make you think you have a problem, and then sell you the solution. Ooh, it, it just feels dicey to me. But, you know, we'll see what happens. Like, I don't think Fitbit, that's probably not their mindset now, but the incentives, you can see it on the healthcare side.

• 1:02:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It's weird. I think, I've, I talked to Liz Lopato, our science editor, about it a bunch.

• 1:02:21Speaker 03

  Maybe they should have a disclaimer, "Ask your doctor if this Fitbit watch looks good on you."

• 1:02:26Nilay Patel?

  It doesn't look good.

• 1:02:28Speaker 02

  Can I, can I also just point out that there's a smartwatch that was announced at CES. It ran Android Wear. So it was a thing you wear. It was called The Vapor.

• 1:02:39Nilay Patel?

  Sure was.

• 1:02:40Speaker 02

  And we all said, "Well, that's a stupid name. There's going to be a really obvious joke that people are going to make when that thing gets inevitably delayed and/or canceled." The Vapor Android Wear smartwatch has been delayed.

• 1:02:52Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 1:02:53Speaker 02

  FYI.

• 1:02:54Nilay Patel?

  I made the joke on Twitter. I admitted, I did it. Couldn't say no. Um, I don't...

• 1:03:01Nilay Patel?

  Like the Apple Watch is gonna win in a way that it's gonna win. Android Wear is owning this hot, like Fossil can't stop putting out Android Wear watches under its many, many brands. And then there's a bunch of Garmin stuff too, right?

• 1:03:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, so Garmin has, like, there's a Vivo Active and a Vivo Move and a Vivo Sport. Garmin stuff is, you know, it's obviously more pointed towards fitness, but they have been slowly but surely improving the smartwatch stuff and making it not just for like hardcore, get a GPS and go hike 10 miles or 20 miles or whatever people who actually exercise do. I don't know. It's terrifying and scary to me. And so they have an interesting lineup of stuff that goes from like hardcore hike 20 miles down to pretty basic smartwatch stuff, but a little bit more health focused. The one that I'm most excited about is the Vivo Move.

• 1:03:58Speaker 02

  Yes, the Vivo Move because it's a standard analog watch that has like a little bit of a display on the bottom of it, which is just enough. It's all you really want. And then the thing looks like a normal watch.

• 1:04:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:10Speaker 02

  I'll be very interested to see what Garmin could do if they just made a consumer smartwatch generally and not have quite as much fitness stuff in it. But even this Vivo Move is relatively cheap. It's through 300 bucks or 199 for the sport, 300 for the primo version. I think honestly Garmin is low key doing a better job at smartwatches than Google for sure and probably than Fitbit. I think Garmin is a sleeper good smartwatch right now. It's not a full smartwatch. It's not gonna do the full thing and notifications are still gonna be a pain, especially if you're on an iPhone and replying to iMessage and all that stuff. But people want smartwatches for health stuff.

• 1:04:52Speaker 02

  Garmin's pretty good at the health stuff and there's enough smartwatch stuff that you actually use it, but not so much that you're like, why is there a cloud of circles when I hit this button? And how do I, why, where's the dock now? How does blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? It just tells you the time tracks your health and that's it.

• 1:05:10Nilay Patel?

  Again, I was talking to Liz Lapata, our science editor, and she had played with an Apple Watch for a bit. And then she was like, wait, this is dumb. I'm about to go on a hike.

• 1:05:19Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:05:20Nilay Patel?

  And my crappy Garmin GPS watch will last three days.

• 1:05:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, so these Garmins last longer than those other watches, too.

• 1:05:25Nilay Patel?

  Because it's not a computer, but it is computery enough.

• 1:05:28Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:05:28Nilay Patel?

  I think that balance plus like a little bit of hardware differentiation is the thing that is

• 1:05:34Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:05:35Nilay Patel?

  to watch.

• 1:05:36Speaker 02

  The challenge here is Pebble had that advantage, but they weren't integrated into the platform and they didn't have a good enough health message. And so they eventually got bought.

• 1:05:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:46Speaker 02

  And so we look at these, you know, the Fitbit and the Garmin and we say, well, you're still not integrated into the platform. So as a like pure smartwatch play, it's going to be disappointing compared to an Apple Watch or Android Wear. But they don't, they aren't hanging their hat on a pure smartwatch play. They're hanging their hat on, we are Fitbit, we are Garmin, you trust us to do this health thing. And that might be enough.

• 1:06:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:14Speaker 02

  But I don't know.

• 1:06:15Nilay Patel?

  Well, I think the Pebble thing, you know, all these products are different and the Pebble was a little janky, but Pebble's bet was you want a computer on your wrist and we made a little cute computer for your wrist. Apple's bet is every, every feature is in here and in generation three, we will redesign the interface around what people actually wanted.

• 1:06:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:38Nilay Patel?

  And they're pushing more towards fitness, but it's still very much a computer.

• 1:06:43Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:06:43Nilay Patel?

  The rumors are the next one will have its own cell radio, it'll be even more independent from the phone. And then these other companies are saying they're fitness devices with a little bit of computer next to them.

• 1:06:52Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:06:53Nilay Patel?

  So there's a spectrum and it's very clear that pure computer just kind of fell by the wayside.

• 1:06:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:58Nilay Patel?

  Because no one actually wants a computer on their wrist because you can get a phone with a giant screen.

• 1:07:01Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:07:01Nilay Patel?

  Which is, I think, as the screens get bigger and in more compact bodies, that why do I need a watch piece of this conversation is going to become more and more interesting to me because I don't, Dieter's wearing one.

• 1:07:14Speaker 02

  I am.

• 1:07:15Nilay Patel?

  I see, I today, just like saw a bunch of people wearing AirPods, like commuted to work, very rarely see watches now.

• 1:07:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:22Nilay Patel?

  Like more people, I think, but you know, obviously I'm not like checking everyone's wrist, but I see like a lot of AirPods because they provide this like instant massive utility.

• 1:07:31Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:07:32Nilay Patel?

  Whereas I think people are still kind of struggling. Although yesterday, we hung out with a guy. I don't know if you noticed this. He was wearing a watch and a Fitbit on the same wrist.

• 1:07:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:43Nilay Patel?

  It was ballsy.

• 1:07:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:45Nilay Patel?

  It's a power move.

• 1:07:48Nilay Patel?

  Okay, I'm gonna read another ad. We should talk a little bit about iPhone. We should talk a little bit about the new YouTube stuff. No, we should wrap this thing up.

• 1:07:59Nilay Patel?

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• 1:08:42Nilay Patel?

  today. Use offer code VERGE, you get 10% off your first purchase. Again, that's offer code VERGE, V-E-R-G-E. Squarespace.com, offer code VERGE. Squarespace. This was an advertisement.

• 1:08:56Nilay Patel?

  Should we talk about a little Apple stuff?

• 1:08:58Speaker 02

  Every week.

• 1:08:59Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:09:00Speaker 02

  We never forget.

• 1:09:00Nilay Patel?

  Never forget.

• 1:09:01Speaker 02

  Ever.

• 1:09:03Nilay Patel?

  I gotta move.

• 1:09:05Speaker 03

  Well, at first, it was called, "Will you please come to my block party?"

• 1:09:11Speaker 03

  But you know what? This week, I'm changing the title.

• 1:09:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:14Speaker 03

  It's called, "Who Will Let Me Out of This Yarn Prison?"

• 1:09:22Nilay Patel?

  Every week, we do a segment called, "Who Will Let Me Out of This Yarn Prison?"

• 1:09:26Speaker 03

  So, there's this robot. Called Blossom.

• 1:09:29Speaker 02

  Oh, this thing is, ah.

• 1:09:31Speaker 03

  It's so creepy. You have, you'll have to, you'll have to check it out. Um, on, on the, uh, Ashley's write-up was, someone please save this robot.

• 1:09:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:41Speaker 03

  And it, it, they, they wanted to make it more natural. So it's kind of has analog movements.

• 1:09:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:47Speaker 03

  And it, it's like, it looks like a cat with a bag over its head and holes poked for the ears. And the bag is made out of yarn and it's kind of like vibing and bopping and stuff. But it just looks like it's struggling to get out.

• 1:09:59Speaker 02

  Do you remember those like dancing flowers that you could get? They, they're, they're, no, no, it's just me?

• 1:10:04Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:10:05Speaker 02

  Podcast listeners know what I'm talking about.

• 1:10:07Speaker 03

  Dancing.

• 1:10:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:09Nilay Patel?

  They're like kind of thing and they listen to music?

• 1:10:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:11Nilay Patel?

  So I don't think it's creepy because it looks like it's trying to get out.

• 1:10:14Speaker 03

  Oh, why?

• 1:10:14Speaker 02

  It's creepy because it should have a face, but it doesn't.

• 1:10:16Nilay Patel?

  It has no eyes.

• 1:10:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:18Nilay Patel?

  It had, but it has like kitty ears. Well, you could. So it looks like it's facing away from you and quietly dancing.

• 1:10:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:25Nilay Patel?

  And like, what the hell is going to happen? It never turns around. And it's like, it's going to turn around and kill you.

• 1:10:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, nobody is, has seen it turn around and lived to tell about it.

• 1:10:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:37Nilay Patel?

  Can it turn around? Uh, the CEO of that company, again, Ashley's write-up is amazing. The CEO of the company is like, well, if you want to add eyes, you can just sew eyes onto it. Which is not acceptable.

• 1:10:48Speaker 03

  No, I'd put little googly eyes on it, but I don't think it would actually, I think it would actually help.

• 1:10:52Speaker 02

  Jabra made some neck buds, the Elite 25E that has 18 hours of battery life. 22 hours of standby time.

• 1:11:00Speaker 03

  Neck bud, neck buds for life.

• 1:11:02Speaker 02

  22 days of standby time, excuse me.

• 1:11:03Nilay Patel?

  Uh, Sony also put out some truly wireless.

• 1:11:06Speaker 03

  True wireless.

• 1:11:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, their battery life on the truly went, truly, I'm, this, when I saw those Sonys, I, that's when I decided I am 100%. I've made my choice. Team neck bud.

• 1:11:15Speaker 03

  There we go.

• 1:11:16Speaker 02

  Because you, when you take them out, you don't have to like put them in a weird case and put them in your pocket. You just let them fall around your neck.

• 1:11:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:25Speaker 02

  And then you can hide them under your shirt if you don't want to look like a nerd because you do. I'm not saying that neck buds look good. They make, they look terrible, but they are slightly more convenient. And, uh, therefore I'm team neck bud.

• 1:11:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I almost lost an AirPod yesterday.

• 1:11:41Speaker 03

  Oh, man.

• 1:11:42Nilay Patel?

  Came real close.

• 1:11:43Speaker 03

  Wait, what happened? Give me the play by play.

• 1:11:47Nilay Patel?

  I came home, Dieter and I were out. Helen, our editorial director, came home, was thinking some thoughts.

• 1:11:53Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:11:54Nilay Patel?

  Some whiskey fueled thoughts.

• 1:11:55Speaker 02

  It's really good so far.

• 1:11:56Nilay Patel?

  Put in my AirPods and then like walked outside and then.

• 1:12:01Speaker 02

  The gust of wind.

• 1:12:03Nilay Patel?

  And I was like, oh shit, it's dark. Had drinks.

• 1:12:07Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 1:12:07Nilay Patel?

  I'm never gonna find this thing again. And then frantically searched for them and then found it under a leaf.

• 1:12:13Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:12:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, it wasn't like.

• 1:12:15Speaker 02

  And then the leaf.

• 1:12:16Nilay Patel?

  I wasn't like, oh, leafy.

• 1:12:18Speaker 02

  The leaf which had no eyes stood up and started dancing.

• 1:12:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:21Speaker 02

  Facing way.

• 1:12:22Nilay Patel?

  It was shaky. I'm gonna turn around. I was like, I ran back in the house.

• 1:12:26Speaker 02

  I'm so afraid.

• 1:12:26Nilay Patel?

  Used my AirPods to make a phone call. I called the police.

• 1:12:30Nilay Patel?

  There's a murderous leaf on the loose. I didn't, I didn't do any of that. But anyway, I came real close.

• 1:12:35Speaker 02

  Apple.

• 1:12:35Nilay Patel?

  Apple. Speaking of AirPods, here's my question. So they put out the invites, number 12.

• 1:12:40Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:12:40Nilay Patel?

  They're having it at the Steve Jobs Theater, which I think we all sort of suspected they would do.

• 1:12:43Speaker 02

  Yes, at Apple's new campus, Apple Park.

• 1:12:45Nilay Patel?

  Um, the invites line is, let's meet at our place.

• 1:12:48Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:12:48Nilay Patel?

  So no hints there, really.

• 1:12:50Speaker 02

  Not really.

• 1:12:50Nilay Patel?

  The Apple logo is, shapes and colors, very abstract. No hints.

• 1:12:55Speaker 02

  Not really any hints. There's three shapes and colors.

• 1:12:59Nilay Patel?

  To signify the three stools of Apple's business, or the three legs of the stool in one hobby.

• 1:13:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:05Nilay Patel?

  Uh, yeah, I mean, I think, do we not, it feels like that firmware leaked and we know everything there is to know, right? There's new phones. We've talked about the new phone rumors endlessly. There is, obviously they have to talk about the new Apple TV because that's been leaked and I think they're way overdue.

• 1:13:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:23Nilay Patel?

  Um, there was some stories that they're negotiating with studios to make 4K movies a little bit cheaper to buy. So right now they're about $29 on Vudu and wherever Google Play you can buy them. They're trying to get to 20.

• 1:13:34Speaker 02

  I'm curious if they're gonna, they're gonna have 4Ks, what the rental price will be. Because renting right now, I think an SD is like three or four bucks and then the HD is, you know, six, maybe seven. Paying 10 bucks to rent a movie, to me.

• 1:13:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. This is how I end up just buying them.

• 1:13:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:53Nilay Patel?

  Um, the windowing has gotten extremely aggressive in all these movies.

• 1:13:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's bonkers.

• 1:13:58Nilay Patel?

  Um, they now window. Vudu at least will window the 4K purchase.

• 1:14:03Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:14:04Nilay Patel?

  Buy it in SD and HDX and you have to wait a little bit to get the 4K.

• 1:14:08Speaker 02

  Huh.

• 1:14:09Nilay Patel?

  Um, if Apple can solve that particular problem, there's not just broad availability. That will be a huge win. Yeah, it seems like we kind of know.

• 1:14:17Speaker 03

  Do you guys think the iPhone 7 will, or the 7S will have wireless charging?

• 1:14:24Nilay Patel?

  Yes. Yeah, I think the big question is whether it has a home button. It's like Hyam is just like, it's definitely going to have a home button.

• 1:14:30Speaker 02

  But there was a, there was, uh, inside Rambo on Twitter had a, he found somewhere deep in some beta, an animation of a different way to bring up the cards by swiping up from the bottom, just like WebOS.

• 1:14:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:45Speaker 02

  And that animation looked like a iPhone 7S and it was very hard to tell if whether or not there was a home button there.

• 1:14:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so I think it's sort of a big open question, but like, were you expecting surprises? I'm not particularly expecting like a HomePod to come out.

• 1:14:58Speaker 02

  Uh, I.

• 1:14:59Nilay Patel?

  I think that's December.

• 1:15:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, I am expecting that the most interesting thing will be, for me personally, will be the, the new sort of gesture-based UI and the changes they make to iOS to get rid of the home button. I think it's going to be more interesting than just, uh, you know, the face unlock. We saw the, the thing where there was just like a little bar on the bottom. Getting rid of the home button and not just doing a straight virtual bar on the bottom like Android does, presents a wide array of very interesting UI challenges to make it intuitive and natural and useful. And I'm just going to say that in terms of doing the right thing with interesting hard UI problems,

• 1:15:44Speaker 02

  I don't have a ton of faith, uh, in Apple to get it right based on recent history of different things you do with the current home button and the way that notifications work.

• 1:15:54Nilay Patel?

  And like what they've done with Force Touch in particular. I am a little bit nervous that whatever they do to navigate iOS based on getting rid of the home button on the new iPhone could be troublingly weird.

• 1:16:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:13Nilay Patel?

  I'm a little bit nervous.

• 1:16:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:15Speaker 03

  I think Force Touch was the big misstep. Like trying to make that a thing. That was like a solution in search of a problem.

• 1:16:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:24Speaker 03

  That really confused a lot of.

• 1:16:26Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, but you see the narrative, right? They added Force Touch to the screen. Then they added the non-movable home button. And now they're going to take it away and they're hoping that over the course of the two years, you have learned to like click your screen. But.

• 1:16:44Speaker 03

  But I haven't. I haven't learned how to click my screen. I click the button at the bottom. And every time I click something in iOS, it's like, oh, oops, I meant to press and hold.

• 1:16:54Nilay Patel?

  I use, I preview web links all the time. I think it's great. When I use an Android phone, I'm like, hmm, I wish that was there.

• 1:17:03Speaker 03

  Really?

• 1:17:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. The one thing I wish I could do is you like you peek the web link. Like you push the URL and it pops open. I'm like, I just need to scroll this a little bit. Like, what's the end of this headline say?

• 1:17:15Speaker 02

  Have you tried like two fingering it?

• 1:17:17Nilay Patel?

  It doesn't work.

• 1:17:17Speaker 02

  No?

• 1:17:18Nilay Patel?

  It's so dumb. And then you end up holding it down harder and you open the webpage, you're like, well, I should have just clicked the web.

• 1:17:22Speaker 03

  You should have just clicked it as well as.

• 1:17:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Like all the time, like I just need to see the last word in the headline. Or it's like, there was a picture of such and such in this article and you click it and you're like, I just need to scroll to the picture. This is what AI should be used for. Previewing webpages. Uh, yeah, I mean, I'm excited for it.

• 1:17:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:44Nilay Patel?

  Big changes coming to the phone. I think this, the software stuff is really interesting. There's obviously going to be a ton of AR stuff happening. Google put out a big new AR core framework for its Android phones.

• 1:17:56Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:17:57Nilay Patel?

  Which kind of feels like the whole Tango project was a misdirect.

• 1:18:01Speaker 02

  Ah, well, I wouldn't, I wouldn't.

• 1:18:02Nilay Patel?

  Fail.

• 1:18:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was clear. Misdirect would imply that they intended to misdirect you.

• 1:18:08Speaker 02

  Yep, it just didn't get it right.

• 1:18:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, it just seems like it's gonna be a big event for them. They're gonna make a big deal out of it. And I think that the lack of, the lack of sort of a kins in this, probably a reaction to the fact that so much is leaked. But also, I think they're trying to, they're trying to keep it more secretive, so it gets bigger play.

• 1:18:26Speaker 02

  On a very personal note, which does not really apply to anybody but people that are actually going to the event, if Apple can't nail Wi-Fi reliability on their home turf, on their campus, I'm gonna see that as a bad sign.

• 1:18:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think they'll figure it out.

• 1:18:45Speaker 02

  I think they'll figure it out, too.

• 1:18:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:47Nilay Patel?

  It's not easy. This is like very inside baseball, but their previous on-campus theater, like notorious for not, like not having enough, like, power plugs.

• 1:18:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:57Nilay Patel?

  Like, all the stuff that journalists need, the stuff that we don't complain about, because who cares? Like, we should just figure out these problems, because we know we're gonna go do the coverage. But you hope.

• 1:19:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:07Nilay Patel?

  You hope they're like, hmm, Neelai is always sitting on the floor in the corner at the end of these events. Maybe we should add some power jacks to this room. Uh, we'll see. I'm very excited to go there. I haven't been to that campus. I'm excited to see this new theater. I don't know, I'm just, I'm just overall excited to go hang out. And then, the next day, you got a Live Vergecast.

• 1:19:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:27Nilay Patel?

  It's gonna be wild. September, looking good.

• 1:19:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. By the way, if you wanna go see the Live Vergecast?

• 1:19:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:34Speaker 02

  Go to bit.ly, bit.ly, slash vergecast SF, all one word.

• 1:19:44Nilay Patel?

  Bit.ly.

• 1:19:45Speaker 02

  Bit.ly slash vergecast SF.

• 1:19:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It's gonna be great. I really, if you're there, please come, first of all, because it'd be embarrassing if no one came. But second of all, I'm excited to see you. I think it's gonna be fun. There's gonna be some scissor vodka jokes, like, but like IRL.

• 1:20:03Speaker 03

  You're gonna bring back the oldies with the goodies?

• 1:20:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, in cups. Oh, you just say there's gonna be vodka to drink. Yeah, there's like legal issues. I can't actually call it scissor vodka. We're gonna figure it out. But we're gonna work on it. So there's like a bar situation. This is gonna be chill. So if you're in San Francisco, coming to the event, stay around the next day. Come to the Vergecast. We're working hard on some special guests. We'll see if we can make it happen. No promises yet. Okay, I think that's the show. I want you to go read, however, on the website. Ben Popper did a big feature on YouTube's new logo, which the logo is not very different, but I think the way YouTube is thinking about itself is really interesting. And Ben pulled that story out of the logo change. So you read that.

• 1:20:46Nilay Patel?

  And Casey did a big write-up on how good YouTube's feed has become because they pointed Google Brain, they're like AI machine learning stuff, at powering that feed. And the little things that YouTube does to show you stuff you might be interested in is so clever. You should just read it. I think YouTube has been better than ever recently. That's basically the genesis of Casey's story. He noticed that he was watching so much more YouTube than before. And it's because of Google Brain. Yeah, they really have me figured out. And it kind of annoys me sometimes. Well, here's the one little nugget that I thought was, it's like, it seems really obvious, which I think is always the sign of something really smart.

• 1:21:29Nilay Patel?

  It knows when you're on a phone and it recommends shorter videos when you're watching a phone. And if you're on a TV or a bigger screen, it recommends a longer video. And that's like the AI just figured out that it should start doing that. That's like, it sounds really obvious. That's the sort of thing where it's like one guy in a meeting was like, you should do this. And everyone's like, that sounds smart. But like, the robot just sorted it out. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, go read that stuff. I always want to call out cool stuff to read on the website, on this radio show. You know, it's homework. It's multimedia. We have a number of great CD-ROMs you can put in your computer. Also, rate and review us on iTunes. We're everywhere. We have a new show coming up from Ashley Carmen and Caitlin Tiffany that I'm super excited about. It's called Why Did You Push That Button?

• 1:22:14Nilay Patel?

  We're gonna be running some teasers about it very shortly in the show. I'm just ridiculously excited about it. We'll have more information, so just hyping that up. Keep it in your mind. And if you want to listen to more tech podcasts, there's a bunch of great ones from our friends at Recode. Lauren Good, who's great, who's on the show all the time, does Too Embarrassed to Ask with Kara Swisher, which is great. Peter Kafka does Recode Media, which is one of my very favorites. Kara Swisher does Recode Decode. All that's on iTunes. Go rate, review it, check it out. Keep listening. Our modda is growing. It's happening. We're going to media war. This metaphor is bad. That's it. And you can tweet at us. Paul's at FuturePaul, Dieter's at Backlawn, I'm at Reckless. We'd love to hear from you. That's it. Rock and roll.

• 1:22:57Speaker 02

  Paul, run with it.

• 1:22:59Nilay Patel?

  What?