Snap Inc IPO, ARM processors in Macbooks, and Apple earnings

Vergecast episode 241! This week, Nilay and Dieter bring back Ross Miller and Megan Farokhmanesh to assist covering the news from this week. Snap Inc. filed for a $3 billion IPO, Apple is reportedly putting ARM chips in Macs, and Facebook is making a TV app. In between all that listen to Nilay’s take on fire logs, Dieter’s experience with a Zelda-themed escape room, and the wackiness of internet culture from Megan and Ross. Nilay and Dieter apologized for this episode to me personally — but really, we covered a lot and had a good time so I think they’re just being hard on themselves. Enjoy! 03:37 - Snap Inc IPO 08:41 - Facebook wants to build app for set-top boxes 16:21 - Duraflame 18:37 - Apple earnings 31:42 - MacBook Touch Bar barred from bar test takers this February 35:50 - ARM processors in MacBooks 40:07 - Why politics shows up on our site a lot lately 49:47 - Zelda escape the room 51:31 - We Are Your Friends 56:56 - Ross’ weekly segment “Gadgetorial? Counterpoint” 1:03:15 - Lightning round Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Save it for the show. Which, by the way, we could start whenever you want.

• 0:08Nilay Patel?

  Hey, welcome to Vergecast. We started it, just like that. So smooth.

• 0:12Speaker 02

  So smooth.

• 0:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, look, I'm a little... Yeah. We, it's here. Here's what's happening. It's a little something I like to call the Miller Gambit. I'm here, I'm Neil Appatell.

• 0:22Speaker 02

  I'm here, I'm Paul Miller.

• 0:23Nilay Patel?

  That's, see, that's Ross Miller.

• 0:25Speaker 03

  Oh, I get it.

• 0:26Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 0:27Nilay Patel?

  It's a real, it's very disorienting.

• 0:29Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 0:29Nilay Patel?

  But anyway, this is the Vergecast, flagship podcast, theverge.com. It's a show. It's a show about technology and culture. Any random fucking Miller can show up whenever they want. Megan's here, hey Megan.

• 0:42Speaker 00

  They are contractually... I was gonna make a joke.

• 0:45Speaker 02

  You got this, you got this.

• 0:46Nilay Patel?

  Dieter.

• 0:47Speaker 03

  We'll wait for you, go on, go on, Dieter.

• 0:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, anytime, ready. Just jump right in.

• 0:51Nilay Patel?

  And Dieter Bone is here.

• 0:53Speaker 00

  Hi, how's it going?

• 0:54Nilay Patel?

  Make a joke.

• 0:55Speaker 00

  I did, it's gone. Moment passed.

• 0:58Nilay Patel?

  You know, for years on this show, we were criticized for just incessant crosstalk. But I feel like that, that gave the old fans, it was like a callback, a little fan service. Dieter tells a joke that nobody could hear because of crosstalk.

• 1:09Speaker 00

  They're better off for it.

• 1:11Speaker 03

  I bet it was funny-ish.

• 1:13Nilay Patel?

  So, there's actually a lot going on. Another leak of the LGG6 happened this week. It just went up, breaking news on the site. I only bring this up to mention that the LGG6, lead sponsor of my vodka, Scissor Vodka. Yeah, cut through the night. This is where, as a Miller, you're, I think obligated to say the word snip snip.

• 1:31Speaker 00

  That was my joke.

• 1:34Speaker 03

  It is funny, that was funny.

• 1:36Speaker 02

  That was a real humdinger, Dieter.

• 1:37Nilay Patel?

  I'm just gonna be really honest with the audience. I wanna, I wanna say something, and we're gonna, the whole second section of the show in our rundown is...

• 1:46Speaker 00

  If you say the wrong thing, by the way, I'm only gonna reply in like, references to the last Packers playoff game, so.

• 1:54Nilay Patel?

  This is awful.

• 1:57Nilay Patel?

  It's an emotionally taxing time here in the, these United States of America. I have not ever, in my career as a journalist, encountered a time in which no story could survive. Like, no one is interested in anything except for Donald Trump. It is remarkable. The only thing that people have been interested in, besides Donald Trump, on the entire Verge, is my wife brutally destroying a curved TV, and by extension, me.

• 2:24Nilay Patel?

  That's it.

• 2:24Speaker 03

  It was a pretty good take down.

• 2:25Nilay Patel?

  It was great. I mean, you know, I love her. She's a great writer. Clearly, I purchased the wrong television. Let's go into that now, actually. Why? Why? Open with it? No. I can't. What I'm saying is- He covered this pretty, pretty in-depth on control also. It has been a hard week. We're gonna, there's a bunch of tech news to talk about, but I'm just letting the audience know, and I'm sure that you're right there with me, probably, that there has been just this unrelenting wave of Trump news. Whether you're pro-Trump, you're anti-Trump, I know you're feeling it. It's just, it never stops. The man picked a fight with fucking Australia yesterday. Yep. And like Donald Trump's nigger today. It's just really hard. So, we're gonna do our best.

• 3:10Nilay Patel?

  There's actually a bunch of tech-related Trump stuff to talk about. We'll do that second. Okay. But just, if you catch these weary tones, it's just, hear, just hear me out. Like, I promise, we're just doing our best.

• 3:24Speaker 03

  All drinking our Red Bull, we're trying.

• 3:26Nilay Patel?

  Literally, yeah, all three of us at this table are sucking down Red Bulls right now. And by the way, Paul is actually just sick. He's not here right now. Right. He's just ill. We wish him well. He'll be back next week. Sure. Anyhow, let's talk news. There's actually two pieces of semi-breaking news. Yes. You wanna start with Snapchat? Let's start with Snap. Snap! Snap, Snap Inc. Literally, as we are speaking, Snap Inc. filed for its IPO. Right. Uh, here's the number, and this is like much anticipated, they've been very secretive about it. The number that leaps out to me is that their IPO filing claims 158 million daily active users. Right. Which is, compared to Facebook, which in July of 2016, uh, Facebook revealed it has 1.71 billion

• 4:09Nilay Patel?

  monthly active users and over a billion mobile daily active users. So, Facebook is about to crack 2 billion monthly active users. Right. And it already had over a billion daily active users. Snap, which is like the hottest social network going, they're making a bunch of money, future TV, feeling so confident that they won't reveal information to potential investors ahead of the IPO. Like it's a, it's a very secretive process. Their filing only claims 158 million. Does it seem like Snap is bigger, smaller or bigger than your expectations?

• 4:44Speaker 02

  Uh, I can't remember how many active users Twitter has. I assumed it was more than Twitter at this point, but.

• 4:49Speaker 00

  I mean, Twitter always is always hovering around 300 million monthly active users.

• 4:52Speaker 02

  It's smaller than Twitter.

• 4:53Nilay Patel?

  So that's not, so daily is probably much smaller.

• 4:55Speaker 00

  But daily is.

• 4:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:57Speaker 03

  Okay. What I'll say about this is like, I have family members on most social media accounts, not on Snapchat.

• 5:02Nilay Patel?

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:03Speaker 03

  So that to me is the difference.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  How many family members are teens?

• 5:06Speaker 03

  That's my point though. Like my mom's on Snapchat. My mom is on like everything else though.

• 5:09Speaker 02

  Right. So I mean, like it's, is it generational divide then? I mean, like.

• 5:12Nilay Patel?

  Right. Instagram Stories, uh, I just looked this up. October 2016, Instagram Stories, this, just the Stories product, 100 million daily active users. So Snapchat is like not much bigger than Instagram's newest product.

• 5:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 5:25Nilay Patel?

  It's far smaller than Facebook. Probably Instagram is a, yeah, Instagram has 400 million daily active users. And this is that, that's, that's, that is 20 hours old, literally. So.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  Jeez.

• 5:35Speaker 00

  I mean, the way I would read this is like, pretty good time to IPO. You're still growing. You've got, uh, I think a respectable user base. They're making money off of it. I, I don't know. I, I think this number is about what I expected. It's not shockingly high or shockingly low. And it, I don't look at it and be like, oh my God, you're smaller than Facebook. Ha ha. I look at it as, hey, you're probably bigger than Twitter. And the Instagram Stories comparison is what's really interesting. That they just, Instagram made Snapchat, like the core Snapchat thing, a feature. And they just shamelessly stole it and it just totally worked.

• 6:10Nilay Patel?

  I love Instagram Stories. I never use Snapchat.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  Really?

• 6:13Speaker 03

  Really?

• 6:13Nilay Patel?

  Never. It just doesn't occur to me to use Snapchat. Like I did it, like I use Snapchat on Monday because people are like, there's pictures in the office. And I wasn't able to come to the new office on Monday.

• 6:22Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 6:23Nilay Patel?

  But I was driven to it. I didn't.

• 6:25Speaker 02

  I still haven't gotten into Instagram Stories because me too, like Instagram is still has this like air of permanence to it. So if I log into Instagram, I'm having a decent photo to put up. Snap is still to me is like, oh, just fuck it. I'll just, here's a cat.

• 6:35Speaker 03

  It's for garbage, right? Like I only send people like trash snaps. Whereas like Instagram.

• 6:39Nilay Patel?

  Did you say trash snaps?

• 6:40Speaker 03

  Trash snaps, yeah. Sometimes literally trash.

• 6:42Nilay Patel?

  Is literally, well, that's good. But I was gonna say trash snaps is a Tumblr waiting to happen. Does Tumblr still exist?

• 6:49Speaker 03

  Tumblr does exist. It's where the teens gather.

• 6:52Nilay Patel?

  Ah, so the teens are still like, where is the worst place on the internet?

• 6:56Speaker 03

  I think Tom

• 6:56Nilay Patel?

  That's Reddit.

• 6:57Speaker 03

  I think that's, yeah, I think that's Reddit. I got derailed. What, oh, Snapchat. No. So what I was saying is like, I don't use Instagram stories because like, I have a lot of coworkers that follow me. I can't control who can see my Instagram story, right?

• 7:08Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 7:09Speaker 03

  Um, but Snapchat, it's like, if I just want to send a weird thing, I can just send a weird thing. You know what I mean?

• 7:13Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 7:14Speaker 03

  It's not a deal.

• 7:15Nilay Patel?

  Hmm. And drawing cartoons on like cat snaps is so much easier on Snapchat? Yeah. I mean, look, I understand the appeal of Snapchat. I think I'm just old.

• 7:22Speaker 03

  I think you are too.

• 7:25Nilay Patel?

  That's basically it.

• 7:26Speaker 03

  Or like, I send a lot of just like,

• 7:28Nilay Patel?

  You didn't know what a trash snap was, so.

• 7:30Speaker 03

  Exactly, so.

• 7:31Nilay Patel?

  And Dieter was all over that. He was like, oh, yeah.

• 7:32Speaker 03

  It's like when you send like a drunk, it's like a 2am like, look, I found this like thing on the floor, but it's funny. I'm gonna draw a picture and make a joke like, or.

• 7:41Nilay Patel?

  Wait, let's just take that frame by frame. It's 2am.

• 7:46Nilay Patel?

  I'm drunk. I found this thing on the floor.

• 7:50Speaker 03

  Just use your imagination. It could be anything.

• 7:53Nilay Patel?

  Just any funny floor objects while you're hammered.

• 7:55Speaker 03

  I just, you're at a bar and you find a weird thing on the floor. I don't know.

• 7:59Nilay Patel?

  We do different things in bars.

• 8:00Speaker 03

  I go to some weird bars. No, I get it. Yeah. I also like, it just, it's stupid shit. Like I send like, okay, so right now TC Sodik and I have a snap streak of like 130 something days of just cat snaps.

• 8:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 8:13Speaker 03

  We just send each other snaps of our cats and that's literally it.

• 8:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. No, look, I understand and like, you know, their, their whole thing is like, it's not messaging. It's people are just talking. Right. Ross is snapping right now. This is great. And you have a hat now.

• 8:26Speaker 03

  What are you gonna draw on there though?

• 8:27Nilay Patel?

  I haven't decided. I just put hats on everybody.

• 8:28Speaker 03

  Did you get a snap of the floor?

• 8:29Nilay Patel?

  No, there's no good trash. I don't have good trash snaps here. Where sponsors pay good money to be near live Snapchat narration. By the way, that would be a great show. I would listen to that show. But anyway, the reason I bring this up, we obviously don't talk about IPO news a lot. Um, although we are going to talk about Apple's earnings in a second here, but the reason I bring it up is the other piece of news that came out this week uh, is Facebook wants to build an app for like set top boxes. They're talking about basically being where you go to watch things. Like they're gonna invest in high-end TV-like content. I'm making scare quotes as I say that. The next battle for what happens on your phone screen is what app shows you TV. Like, it's pretty clear that that's where all of these companies want to go right now.

• 9:14Nilay Patel?

  So, obviously, Google has YouTube. They're doing great. Obviously, Snapchat is gonna raise a ton of money in this IPO process because they have such control over what they show you and they can put ads in it in all kinds of different ways. Instagram went to the algorithmic feed. Now they can put more ads in. They have stories. They can put more ads in. Facebook, obviously, is the disgusting monster that is Facebook. And then Twitter is just garbage because they don't have this, like, algorithmic feed and they're like video product.

• 9:42Speaker 02

  They do have Thursday Night Football.

• 9:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and like, we did a show on Twitter, like, you know, like, but it's all the same strategy in different ways. The one thing Twitter can't do that all of these other ones can do is interrupt what you're doing with video.

• 9:55Speaker 02

  Right.

• 9:55Nilay Patel?

  Like, every other platform that is a feed of that kind can stop what you're doing and be like, now you're watching this video.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:03Nilay Patel?

  And many of them, you can click right by. Twitter has not made that move because their platform just isn't geared to that thing.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  Right. And Facebook doing set-top makes sense to me, right? Because, like, they're becoming a huge video platform. But, like, so much for so long was like, let's do quick two-minute videos to go through feeds.

• 10:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 10:20Speaker 02

  If they want the, like, quality content, they kind of lean back, I'll spend five, 10 minutes watching something. Like, that would fit. That would fit, like, that kind of hardware goal.

• 10:28Nilay Patel?

  I don't know that it makes that much sense. I mean, disclosure, my wife works for Oculus, which is a division of Facebook. Uh, but I use my YouTube, uh, I use my YouTube, uh, TV app all the time.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:38Nilay Patel?

  It's like, oh, I have 15 minutes. Uh, I don't want to watch a TV show. Or I have 20 minutes. I don't want to watch a sitcom. I'll watch some YouTube videos. But there's a whole system of, like, channels and shows and a whole bunch of stuff that grew up organically on YouTube the dot com, uh, that Facebook just, I don't think anybody uses it that way. They see it in their stream or they don't. Uh, and they need to get a whole lot of stuff lined up and made for me to actually want to watch it on TV. Otherwise, it's just gonna be...

• 11:15Speaker 00

  Like, you know, the first stuff that Twitter did on TV, like you'd have like a random ass, like Twitter stream snapped to the side of the show that you're watching. Like, nobody wants a Facebook stream on their TV. And so like, there's the, does Facebook really need to have a TV app? Are they really putting that much into it? Or is it just a thing to do because what the hell they can? But the, for me, the bigger question is the thing that Neel I said, which is, what's going to matter on the phone? Like, who is going to win the TV watching, you know, video watching experience on the phone? And I actually think that's like way more wide open. I think that you can look at Snapchat, Instagram, even Twitter, and I think there's a lot more like possibilities there and nobody's figured

• 12:00Speaker 00

  it out there yet. You know, there's Go90, right? Like, everybody's trying to do something and nobody's really gotten it right. Not even YouTube, honestly. Like YouTube's gotten a lot right, but I don't know, fundamentally, how often do you like open up the YouTube app on your phone and like go to town?

• 12:16Nilay Patel?

  Right. So here's the Zuckerberg quote, which is really interesting, actually. This is during an earnings call. I've said before that I see videos on Megatrend on the same order as mobile. That's why we're going to keep putting video first across our family of apps and make it easier for people to capture and share video in new ways. And then he suggested they're going to start paying premium content. Basically, he's saying the video tab on Facebook is going to become the primary thing that you do on Facebook, which is a huge weird shift for that company.

• 12:43Speaker 00

  I mean, the most important thing about that quote is he, he spoiled the next Transformers movie by revealing the name of the supervillain.

• 12:52Nilay Patel?

  Megatrend.

• 12:53Speaker 00

  Megatrend.

• 12:54Nilay Patel?

  I think we've made this joke before.

• 12:56Speaker 00

  Megatron's.

• 12:57Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 12:57Speaker 00

  Brother.

• 12:58Nilay Patel?

  His hype beast little brother.

• 13:01Speaker 00

  It's just Sam Shepard making robot noises.

• 13:04Nilay Patel?

  It's great. Everyone loves it. Just one or zero now.

• 13:07Speaker 00

  We need, we need, we need a robot voice just saying supreme.

• 13:13Nilay Patel?

  Oh, man. Anyway, look, I think you're right. I mean, the move here is everything was gonna turn into video on your phone, right?

• 13:20Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:21Nilay Patel?

  I think that-

• 13:21Speaker 00

  But I don't know that just video on your phone by itself quite gets you there. Like, Facebook has the stream plus video. Twitter has, you know, horrible news about Donald Trump plus video. Instagram has pretty pictures of food plus video. Snapchat has your friends' pictures of things on the floor of bars plus video.

• 13:43Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 13:43Speaker 00

  Trash snaps.

• 13:44Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I would say Snapchat is the one platform. Instagram Stories, to some extent, where it's, I see, there's more video that gets shared across it than just like pure snaps, right? Like, the language of that is short video clips, just as the language of stories is, Instagram Stories is short video clips.

• 14:01Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:02Nilay Patel?

  So like, at least, they're, it's not a plus video. They're at least on equal footing.

• 14:08Speaker 00

  Okay, that's fair, but I guess what I'm saying is, I don't think that anybody, I mean, I'm specifically looking at Go90 and YouTube here. Anybody that thinks that a pure video, mobile video platform is the answer to what do we want video and TV-style content on our phones to look like? I don't think that's right at all. I think that there's gotta be something else in addition to, "Oh, look, there's a bunch of video here."

• 14:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, the TV thing is the, like, we have talked a lot about the TV-ification of the internet, like, just as a general thing, and like, "Here's our man, here's DJT again, coming in," and like, you know, Trump is gonna, his FCC looks poised to undo net neutrality, and then the consumer experience of these apps is like TV-style, you turn them on and they start showing you things.

• 14:59Speaker 00

  Right.

• 15:00Nilay Patel?

  And like, you can just see those two forces collide, where it's like, T-Mobile decides Binge On, or whatever they're calling, is gonna include a bunch of free YouTube, but Snapchat, "Hey, you want your IPO to go well? Like, pay us some money."

• 15:14Speaker 00

  Right.

• 15:15Nilay Patel?

  Or, "We're gonna charge our users to use Snapchat."

• 15:17Speaker 00

  It's the premium cable tier.

• 15:18Nilay Patel?

  Or AT&T and Verizon, I'm sure, are already like, "Hey, Google, like, just pay us and YouTube can be free."

• 15:25Speaker 00

  Right.

• 15:25Nilay Patel?

  Right? And like, you can just see those things happening, where if the money is, and it really appears to be where the money's going, like, the money is in inserting ads inside of these like stories, or like, there needs to be a phrase for this. I almost said "force-fed video."

• 15:41Nilay Patel?

  Let's just go with it. Force fed video, where they're just like feeding you shit. And you can't stop. And that's where the ads go. Like, of cour- like, every carrier is gonna be like, "What if we fuck with you a little bit?"

• 15:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, if you pay us, we'll fuck you a little bit. I mean, I've never been in like, a major carrier revenue meeting, but I imagine the last one of their slides is always like, "New ways to fuck with them." And then like, the CEO's like, "Anyone got any ideas?" Like, of course. Like, if that's what Lowell McAdam does, that's what his deck is. He makes it in keynote. It's very pretty. And everyone's like, "Here it comes. I'm almost done." He's like, "New ways to fuck with the interns in the back."

• 16:21Nilay Patel?

  "Can I tell a story about fire logs?"

• 16:23Speaker 03

  What?

• 16:24Nilay Patel?

  No one's gonna stop you. Wow.

• 16:25Speaker 00

  You have to now.

• 16:28Nilay Patel?

  Have you ever bought a Duraflame?

• 16:29Speaker 03

  No.

• 16:30Speaker 00

  What?

• 16:30Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so I-

• 16:31Speaker 03

  Who has?

• 16:31Nilay Patel?

  Right, because I'm old. So-

• 16:33Speaker 00

  Everybody- no, you've never bought a Dur-

• 16:35Nilay Patel?

  Wait, what is a Duraflame?

• 16:36Speaker 03

  I don't even know what that is.

• 16:37Nilay Patel?

  I'm Googling it.

• 16:38Speaker 00

  Well, no, it's not that we're old, it's that we're from the Midwest.

• 16:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's true.

• 16:40Speaker 03

  I'm also from- I'm from Missouri and from the Midwest.

• 16:43Nilay Patel?

  I've been meaning to post- I've been trying to like, craft the right Instagram caption for this for some time. Oh, that thing. So Duraflame is like a compressed fire log.

• 16:51Speaker 03

  I'm literally looking this up right now.

• 16:52Nilay Patel?

  It's like, it's basically compressed sawdust wrapped in paper. You like, throw it in a fireplace, you know? Okay, yeah, yeah. The Duraflame marketing campaign, as near as I can tell, is like, variations on the phrase, "You're gonna fuck tonight." So like, the regular Duraflame, the box of six that you buy, on the side in huge letter, it just says, "Tonight's the night."

• 17:15Speaker 03

  I found the picture.

• 17:15Nilay Patel?

  Wait, what? It super says, "Tonight's the night" on it.

• 17:19Speaker 03

  It really does.

• 17:20Nilay Patel?

  And then there's like, an up model, the Duraflame Gold, and that one is like, two people sitting on a couch, and it just says, "Make tonight gold." Okay, so- And like, I just- I keep them, every time I buy one of these things- I literally think about the meeting that they had, like someone's like, what should our new, like, you know, like some VP of marketing is like, we're getting killed in the log market. You know, like whatever they say.

• 17:42Speaker 02

  It's like a Duraflam.

• 17:42Nilay Patel?

  And they're like, what, what differentiates us from our competitors? And like some interns like, we're for fucking. Like, they just like ran with it.

• 17:52Speaker 02

  I don't know, like some, like some marketers, like, oh, I thought this was a KY meeting. Well, we'll just use the same slide deck and see what happens.

• 17:58Nilay Patel?

  It's one gigantic conglomerate. Like, uh, uh, we blew it again.

• 18:04Nilay Patel?

  Duraflam, you get no marketing budget. Anyway, I just, it's just, I think about it. Probably more than any other human being has ever thought about it.

• 18:14Speaker 03

  I will say, I just found the natural Duraflam and it's just this lady.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  The natural Duraflam?

• 18:18Speaker 03

  It's just her by herself.

• 18:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, she gets no action. It's not the night for her.

• 18:25Nilay Patel?

  You didn't buy the right sawdust.

• 18:27Speaker 03

  For the single ladies of the world.

• 18:30Nilay Patel?

  The loneliest log. Okay. I'm sorry. Look, I'm trying. I'm trying to bring joy into this world. Uh, Dieter, do you want to talk about Apple earnings?

• 18:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:40Nilay Patel?

  By which I mean, have you memorized the following numbers?

• 18:43Speaker 00

  No.

• 18:43Nilay Patel?

  Apple posted a number of huge numbers, basically.

• 18:47Speaker 00

  The most important number is that they, they went, they swung back to growth on iPhone revenue.

• 18:55Speaker 00

  And so after, year after year, after year, after year, quarter after quarter, after quarter after quarter, making more money than the, you know, the year previous on iPhones. Last quarter, they had a dip. And now they're back up to making more of them year over year.

• 19:09Nilay Patel?

  Sorry, I have the numbers. They made 78.4 billion dollars in revenue. They sold 78 million iPhones. They have a profit of 17.8 billion dollars. These numbers are now in the order of like silly. Like they're meaningless.

• 19:22Speaker 00

  They've been a while, but like, it's crazy. They have, I forget how much, how many billions do they have in the bank and like cash and securities? It's.

• 19:29Speaker 02

  200 something?

• 19:30Nilay Patel?

  200 billion parked overseas.

• 19:32Speaker 00

  Right. Yeah. Well, like nine, something over 90% of all of their cash reserves right now are overseas. And that number is something like 200 something billion.

• 19:43Nilay Patel?

  Right. So there, you know, and then Mac sales are up-ish, iPad sales are down-ish.

• 19:50Speaker 00

  Right.

• 19:50Nilay Patel?

  Um, I think there's a big question.

• 19:52Speaker 00

  Other is down-ish, but apparently Apple Watch as a part of Other is doing really, really well.

• 20:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, right. Cause like Other is. Year over year, the iPad sales and revenue are down 20% and then services fastest growing was up 18%. So like, you know, it's a.

• 20:11Speaker 00

  And we can get into like all these things like iPad sales were down. That's like a want want thing, but there wasn't like a hot shit new iPad in the last quarter, uh, that made sense to push sales. Uh, so maybe don't freak out. And also in terms of raw units, it is in fact outselling the Mac. So don't freak out there either. But then again, you know, like you just, you run down like these like narratives, like what is the future of each of Apple's businesses? And it's all very interesting and I would love to do it and like we can do it right now. Um, but at the end of all of those small tails, uh, you just need to like step back and see that it's all very small potatoes compared to the goddamn iPhone.

• 20:54Nilay Patel?

  Which is two thirds of their business. So here's the thing about the iPhone. I'm going to call out our boy John Gruber directly on this podcast right now.

• 21:01Speaker 00

  Oh, boy.

• 21:01Nilay Patel?

  Why not? He can take it. Uh, Gruber obviously posted like, no one cares about the headphone jack. It's like a thing. He linked to my review. He's like, obviously no one cared. You can make that argument. But here is, and he did.

• 21:12Speaker 00

  Are you saying that if they had put a headphone jack in it, they would have sold even more iPhones?

• 21:15Nilay Patel?

  No, I'm not saying any one of those things. I'm saying the iPhone is such a dominant product that gets sold on two-year sale cycles on carrier plans that drive you to get a new phone every two years. That I think Apple is in an absolutely dominant position when it comes to making decisions about technology. Like the market is no longer deciding what phone, like what phone will be the most popular. And even if the market was doing a good job of that, um, the iPhone's best competitor, uh, did a bunch of exploding last year.

• 21:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:52Nilay Patel?

  So like the one thing in the market that you might buy other than the iPhone, uh, the Note 7, you might recall. Had a small problem with exploding.

• 22:03Speaker 02

  Just a little problem.

• 22:04Nilay Patel?

  So you can't.

• 22:05Speaker 02

  It's a little airplane, right?

• 22:06Nilay Patel?

  It's illegal to take one on a plane. Yeah, but if you put one in your fireplace, you're probably gonna fuck.

• 22:15Nilay Patel?

  It's just where you are with the Galaxy Note 7.

• 22:19Nilay Patel?

  That's so bad.

• 22:26Nilay Patel?

  I, that's like the, like, I don't think Apple's specific choices about the phone are like in a competitive dynamic in the market where people are like, I don't like that one decision. I'm gonna get an equivalent product that's marketed against that decision. I think they're just like, I'm on AT&T next and another phone came to my house and they're happy and they're like, do whatever they're told to do. And I think that's a really interesting position for Apple. You know, like, I think it's not a good decision to take the headphone jack out. I haven't bought one of these new phones, but I'm still paying AT&T on the next plan.

• 23:01Speaker 02

  Right.

• 23:02Nilay Patel?

  So I should get a new phone, but I can't because the phone I would get, again, explodes and they don't have the Pixel. By the way, I finally bought a Pixel. The Pixel was available, the Black Pixel XL unlocked, available from the Google Store for 25 minutes two days ago. Someone tweeted at me, I bought it.

• 23:21Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 23:22Nilay Patel?

  I tweeted that I'd bought it and then someone was like, it's already gone.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 23:26Nilay Patel?

  So they had five.

• 23:26Speaker 02

  What?

• 23:27Nilay Patel?

  Good job. Yeah, Google's doing great at their big push into hardware. So I'm just saying like, it's, it's cool, like, I'm happy for Apple. It's a good phone. People are excited about it. A bunch of people here have them. Great camera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, stupid dongles. But I, I look at these sales and I'm like, a bunch of things happened for Apple over the past couple of years that add up to everybody with an iPhone, at least in America, just gets a new iPhone. Like, it's, it's, it's literally an automatic cycle. Like, that is the plan you get from your carrier where it's like, at the end of two years, like, would you like a new phone? You've paid, it's part of your plan and everyone's like, yes.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  Right. And so like, that's why they have the S cycle. It's like, well, if you're off for a year, like, you get the, kinda like last year's, but a little bit better model.

• 24:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So I look at this number and Dieter, you're like, they ticked back into growth. It's not like substantial growth. It's like. A year ago, they sold like 76 million or something. And this year, they sold 78. Like, they're converting a substantial percentage of people on that two-year cycle, plus some other

• 24:27Speaker 00

  Right. Yeah, I mean, that's fair, but I do think that the idea that like Apple could, literally nothing they could do could screw up iPhone sales is like, not necessarily true. Like, they still have to continue to make a good product that people want. And maybe they get like, a year of grace or two, you know, until people realize that, oh, wait, this one's not as good. So I think that maybe overstates it a little bit. But I think you're right that, at least in, you know, the US market, it's, it's just like, the boulder is too big, rolling down the hill, right? And it's just gonna keep rolling. It's a

• 25:12Speaker 00

  bad metaphor. I'm very sorry. Somebody save me from trying to come back to this metaphor.

• 25:17Nilay Patel?

  No, I'm not gonna let you hang back.

• 25:19Speaker 00

  I mean, you definitely opened with an attack on me and my football team, so you can just hang out alone.

• 25:31Nilay Patel?

  I'm telling you guys, it's just a real chippy time in these United States. Okay, so that's much stuff. We should talk about Apple Watch real quick, because I have a similar theory with the watch. And I don't mean to like, just try to poke holes.

• 25:42Speaker 00

  Well, here, actually, I'll fight you.

• 25:44Nilay Patel?

  What was a great quarter for Apple. Like, a great, they did great. They made good products. People bought them. I hope people are happy. I just think there are, inside of the narrative, there are questions that remain to be answered about why they're so successful. And I don't think that the answer is just, the market has decided, right? Like, it was a weird year for phones, right? And like, I don't think the market is, is wide open. I think with the watch, Dieter, are you about to say something?

• 26:12Speaker 00

  I was about to defend the watch, but I'm gonna wait for you to attack it first.

• 26:15Nilay Patel?

  I'm not attacking the watch. I think Apple's put themselves-

• 26:18Speaker 00

  You're gonna throw, you know, the long bomb to attach it. And instead of it getting caught by the receiver-

• 26:25Nilay Patel?

  Oh, shit.

• 26:26Speaker 00

  -of your rhetoric, I'm going to bat it away, like your corners were unable to do-

• 26:32Nilay Patel?

  I understand.

• 26:32Speaker 00

  -at the last football game.

• 26:34Nilay Patel?

  I mean, you're just drowning. But it's cool.

• 26:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:39Nilay Patel?

  No, it's like, it's like my. Megan is disappointed with you.

• 26:42Speaker 03

  I'm gonna cry on to the table.

• 26:45Nilay Patel?

  Okay, well, here's my thing. And then I stick to them. I think Apple has put themselves in a position of absolute dominance when it comes to wearables. Because, yep, we have, we just, we've had them around. Dieter's, you've, you got it, you wear them more than anybody I know. Um, maybe Dan wears them more, but what, what are they good for? They're good for notifications. They're good for. A little bit of health and fitness. People, people like those two things about them. Mm hmm. Uh, so my wife, like, loves her Fitbit. Couldn't give a shit about notifications, but loves the step counting. So she has a Fitbit because it's better at step counting than the Apple Watch. I think more people are more interested in notifications and health tracking is a bonus. The Apple Watch is, just because it's Apple's platform, better at notifications than any other smartwatch can be paired to an iPhone. Absolutely true.

• 27:30Nilay Patel?

  You can reply to an iMessage in the Apple Watch. You can't do that on any other product. So of course, the Apple Watch sells better to iPhone owners. And iPhone owners, demographically, more wealthy, more eager to buy stuff, more happy to buy stuff from Apple. Right. They're gonna buy Apple Watches. It's like, it's brilliant. Like, I don't see anything bad about it. It's just, it's a statement of fact. Like, the market for things that are good at the things that you want a smartwatch to do for iPhone owners consists of one product. So people are gonna buy that one. I think as long as Apple maintains that, they're golden.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  Well, for, for a market that is still very small and who knows, like, if it's gonna actually grow much beyond that for any time.

• 28:10Nilay Patel?

  No, I mean, like, it's like, I mean, it's hard to tell, but like, it's, I would say most people would agree that it is a better product that is probably doing better than, like, the Apple TV.

• 28:21Speaker 02

  True, true.

• 28:21Nilay Patel?

  Right?

• 28:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:23Nilay Patel?

  Dieter, what were you gonna say?

• 28:24Speaker 00

  I was gonna give the Apple Watch a little bit more credit. Uh, if they had not done what they did with, um, WatchOS 3, uh, I don't think that, uh, they would have had such a good holiday quarter. I think that they really turned it around. They actually got the prices at, like, the right price point. Um, they simplified the thing, so it, like, worked better and. And they have a more coherent story about it. You look around, you know, the wearables world right now, you know, look at all the reporting that Lauren Good has done. Fitbit, you know, firing people, Jawbone freaking out, Pebble had to get snapped up. Uh, it's not a pretty picture out there. HTC, nope, we're not making Android Wear watches. Motorola, nope, we're not making Android Wear watches.

• 29:09Speaker 00

  Uh, Android Wear 2.0 itself, um, hella delayed. And so, Apple deserves credit for making a good product that people want to buy.

• 29:23Speaker 00

  And like you, you look out there at the options and I, I always get mad like, I would say, not very often because they know what, they now know what I'm going to do when I get invited on CNBC, which is tell them, shut up. Uh, Apple is not doomed. But comparing the Apple Watch to the expectations of the iPhone is just fundamentally unfair. Uh, I think Apple deeply screwed up the launch of the Apple Watch by raising expectations so high and making such lofty claims about the future of computing on your wrist. It was a dumb thing to do.

• 30:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 30:01Speaker 00

  Uh, and now they like, they stopped talking that way. They made the product decent. And if you've got an iPhone and you are, you know, like, oh yeah, I might want, might like some of that stuff. There's literally nothing else out there that's like even passably good at that combination of like a few smartwatch things and some fitness stuff. Everything else out there is just not good. I mean, Pebble was good, but they couldn't do the iMessage and now they're gone. We'll see.

• 30:28Nilay Patel?

  I feel like that should be printed on signs, like billboards on the highways of Silicon Valley. Couldn't do the iMessage, now they're done. Like, just don't, don't try, basically.

• 30:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:41Nilay Patel?

  Ross, do you, you had one.

• 30:43Speaker 02

  I did have, I don't know where it is though.

• 30:47Speaker 02

  It was, I wore it for like six months. Like I enjoyed it because I could tell the time. I can do that with an iWatch though. Right? Like, I think it's like, it was nice to have, I am definitely an early adopter person, but once I like dropped it somewhere, I didn't miss it. Right? Like it only did one or two things.

• 31:04Nilay Patel?

  Do you ever have one?

• 31:05Speaker 02

  No.

• 31:07Nilay Patel?

  It's not your thing.

• 31:08Speaker 03

  I don't, I don't do any kind of wearables. Um, I don't want any kind of notifications distracting me because I already am distracted enough by my phone.

• 31:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 31:16Speaker 02

  Right, like if anything comes up notification, I have to pull up my phone anyway to respond.

• 31:19Speaker 03

  I don't need more reasons to look at my phone.

• 31:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 31:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I feel like we've had this conversation in many forms on the show for like two years. It's like, either you're really interested in this or not. If you are, you should get an Apple Watch. It's like, and I agree with Dieter with WatchOS 3, it's a fine, it's like a fine toy.

• 31:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 31:35Nilay Patel?

  Like a kind of a nerd, play with it.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  And if I ever find my watch again, I might put it on. I don't know. Maybe.

• 31:40Nilay Patel?

  Um, two other things I want to talk about in Apple, and then I'm gonna read an ad. Uh, one, the touch bar.

• 31:48Nilay Patel?

  A bunch of, well, so I'm a lawyer, so it's like nerdy. It's like appeals to me. So when you're a lawyer and you're graduating from law school, you gotta take the bar exam. I am so old that I hand wrote my bar exam on little notebooks.

• 32:02Speaker 02

  Oh wow.

• 32:02Nilay Patel?

  It's a fact.

• 32:03Speaker 03

  Oh, I'm sorry.

• 32:04Nilay Patel?

  Were they blue books?

• 32:06Speaker 03

  I use those.

• 32:07Nilay Patel?

  Fucking PTSD, man. I drank that experience away so fast.

• 32:13Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. Um, they were books. I went into a hotel wall room in Chicago and took the bar exam.

• 32:18Speaker 02

  Scantrons too?

• 32:21Speaker 03

  Sorry.

• 32:22Nilay Patel?

  No, it, I don't know. Um, I honestly, like, I'm trying to remember taking the Illinois bar exam and I got nothing. It was, it's, and most lawyers that I know feel the same way. It's just like, that experience is gone.

• 32:36Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 32:36Nilay Patel?

  I was also quitting smoking during the, the bar exam preparation period.

• 32:40Speaker 02

  Oh dear God, why?

• 32:41Nilay Patel?

  Cause my, my theory was that if I could not smoke during that period of my life, I would never smoke again. And then 10 years later vaping was invented and fuck everyone.

• 32:54Nilay Patel?

  The Pax Jule should be illegal. I'm just putting it out there. Like, I don't know if Donald Trump listens to this. I don't know if he can regulate one product away, but just if he could send some agents to my house and remove this little nicotine stick, that would be great. Cause lord knows I can't do it on my own. Anyway, the touch bar. So now, like the kids, they take the bar exam on this software called Examsoft, which is terrible. My wife took it on Examsoft. Years ago, her computer broke like a week.

• 33:25Nilay Patel?

  Before the bar exam and Dieter gave me his old MacBook Air so Becky could take the bar exam.

• 33:31Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 33:32Speaker 03

  They don't provide a computer? That seems really bad.

• 33:33Nilay Patel?

  No, you bring in your laptop and you run the software called Examsoft on it.

• 33:36Speaker 02

  Why can't they just buy a bunch of Chromebooks and have them?

• 33:41Nilay Patel?

  I don't know, man.

• 33:42Speaker 03

  If you don't have a computer, what do you do?

• 33:43Speaker 02

  You're screwed.

• 33:44Speaker 03

  Steal somebody else's?

• 33:45Speaker 02

  Don't be a lawyer.

• 33:45Speaker 03

  Borrow Dieter's?

• 33:46Speaker 02

  I guess.

• 33:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think.

• 33:47Speaker 02

  Borrow Dieter's, yeah.

• 33:48Nilay Patel?

  If you're looking for a bar exam. It was like one of those moments where I was like, I was like, Dieter, I can't buy new MacBook Air. I know new ones are coming out. My fiance needs to take the bar exam.

• 33:59Speaker 02

  So, priorities. There's a world where like Becky just didn't have a computer for a bar exam because the MacBook Air was about to come out.

• 34:04Nilay Patel?

  No, it just wasn't that moment. I was like, I can't buy one. I'm looking on like Mac rumors. The tracker says I shouldn't buy one. She's gotta take the bar exam. Dieter gave me his old. It was fine. She used it for like years afterwards.

• 34:15Speaker 02

  Huh?

• 34:16Speaker 00

  Why didn't you just do a Patel special, go to Walmart and buy the prettiest one?

• 34:20Nilay Patel?

  I don't, I don't want to talk to you. It's like, why do we do this show together?

• 34:23Speaker 02

  It's, it's, it's got a, it's got a curved screen.

• 34:25Nilay Patel?

  Anyhow.

• 34:27Speaker 02

  I'm so mad.

• 34:28Nilay Patel?

  So Examsoft locks down your computer.

• 34:31Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 34:31Nilay Patel?

  It's a whole thing.

• 34:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 34:33Nilay Patel?

  So a bunch of bar organizations, state bars, had to issue instructions that to use a new MacBook Pro to take the bar exam, you have to shut down the touch bar. And we were like scrambling on trying to figure out why. It's because the touch bar shows you predictive text. So if you're really, if you're clever enough, you would enter all of the answers to the bar exam. You enter like full essays into the dictionary of your computer and then just like push one button.

• 35:00Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 35:01Nilay Patel?

  And then you would sit there fake typing for the next few hours.

• 35:04Speaker 02

  God, back in my day, we just like programmed T83 calculators. This is way smarter.

• 35:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:08Speaker 03

  We were just like right on the desk.

• 35:10Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:10Speaker 03

  It's not a good.

• 35:11Speaker 00

  Here's the thing, here's the thing, like you don't need a touch bar to like fill out your predictive text dictionary.

• 35:19Nilay Patel?

  Well, how would you?

• 35:19Speaker 00

  I'm just saying, if you're a student and you're taking an exam, maybe, you know, don't, don't do that.

• 35:24Speaker 03

  This is why you shouldn't have your own computer. This is why they should provide them. I should be on this board. I could help.

• 35:31Nilay Patel?

  Uh, if anyone from the Colorado Board of Bar Examiners is listening, Megan's looking for a gig.

• 35:35Speaker 03

  I have some good ideas.

• 35:38Nilay Patel?

  Her main idea is to buy shit box computers.

• 35:43Speaker 03

  Stop this problem right now.

• 35:45Nilay Patel?

  Used for like 12 hours a year.

• 35:47Speaker 00

  Okay. There's another Apple thing I want to talk about, but whatever. That was just. Yeah. So speaking of the touch bar, which runs on an ARM processor.

• 35:55Nilay Patel?

  Oh, that's the thing.

• 35:55Speaker 00

  Mark Gurman over at Bloomberg is reporting that Apple is thinking about putting, uh, yet more ARM processors into MacBooks. And it's not going to run, it's not going to be like they're get, they're dumping Intel and they're, it's only going to run on ARM. Uh, but it's going to like run certain functions, especially in sleep mode. So you can like continue to get, you know, email and calendar and whatever alerts so that they're there when you wake your computer up. So it, it will let the thing sleep in the same way that your phone sleeps and some of the apps will be able to communicate with that low power mode, which to me is fascinating. The question is, are they just going to do it? And then they'll put out, when they do it, their apps will support it.

• 36:38Speaker 00

  And then the next year they'll put out an API that says, hey, if you make a Mac app, you can, you know, do it the same way. It'll run on our Intel stuff. That'll be fine. But if you compile it with our special thing and do these special other things, your app can run off of the ARM processor and it will use less power. And then they wait till they have a critical mass of apps that support it. And then they just release the ARM based MacBook.

• 37:02Nilay Patel?

  I completely.

• 37:03Speaker 00

  It's a way longer timeline.

• 37:04Nilay Patel?

  But completely, I think that timeline is like two years long. I think they put out, yeah, I mean, I think you're, I think this is exactly right. They put out the, they put out the hybrid thing. They tell developers, if you, you know, do your app right and set the right flag, it'll run on ARM, it'll increase battery life. Consumers will want that.

• 37:22Speaker 00

  Right.

• 37:22Nilay Patel?

  Um, but obviously that thing won't be as powerful as Intel, but then they just have to wait on Moore's law. Right? And eventually it'll be powerful, it'll be as powerful as the MacBook, pretty soon.

• 37:33Speaker 00

  No, I mean, it'll be, I think it'll be, like, the iPad Pro is way more powerful than the MacBook I'm using right now.

• 37:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 37:39Speaker 00

  And they're both like the most recent generation. The question is like, do they want to cause a convulsion that the way, the way that they did with the Switch to Intel way back and like have, you know, Rosetta translate stuff? Or are they just gonna say, "These apps support, these MacBooks support the new kind of apps and these, the old ones don't." And so if you want to write to that, write to that. So that's question one. How big a change do they want to make? Question two is the question that sounds dumb, and I'm about to say it, and you're gonna tell me I sound dumb, but I'm gonna say it.

• 38:11Nilay Patel?

  You sound dumb.

• 38:11Speaker 00

  But here we go.

• 38:12Nilay Patel?

  Super dumb.

• 38:14Speaker 00

  You know what the biggest, most popular ARM-based computer platform on the planet is? iOS.

• 38:21Nilay Patel?

  You sound dumb.

• 38:22Speaker 00

  Could they, could they put iOS apps on the Mac?

• 38:25Nilay Patel?

  No, you sound dumb.

• 38:26Speaker 02

  This, this logic is-

• 38:27Speaker 00

  I know, it sounds dumb.

• 38:28Speaker 02

  This logic is like a boulder going down a hill.

• 38:30Nilay Patel?

  And you're like-

• 38:31Speaker 00

  Trying to catch a pass.

• 38:32Speaker 02

  You're Sisyphus.

• 38:33Nilay Patel?

  It's an athletic boulder.

• 38:36Nilay Patel?

  Deflecting a metaphor pass.

• 38:41Nilay Patel?

  Now, I get what you're saying. I just don't, I don't think they're gonna do iOS. I think they're gonna find a way to move macOS to ARM.

• 38:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:47Nilay Patel?

  It's, it's the right, it's the right move. I think this is really clever. This is how they do it. I think it's very, very, very clever. Okay, I need to read-

• 38:54Speaker 00

  It's way, yeah, sorry, that's it. It's way nicer than I expected it to be. I expected it to like, say, "We're doing this in a couple of years, get ready." And then everyone's like, "Ah." Instead, it's like, it's like, it's like a Trojan ARM processor.

• 39:06Nilay Patel?

  Do you know what you should expect me to say right now?

• 39:09Nilay Patel?

  Today's episode is brought to you by Crizal No-GLARE lenses. No one saw that coming, because you're not wearing Crizal No-GLARE lenses.

• 39:18Speaker 02

  Ooh, nice ad lib.

• 39:19Nilay Patel?

  I'm doing what I can for these people. If you're glasses, you know the fingerprint, smudges, scratches, and glares can be a constant obstruction to your vision and a huge distraction. Sometimes you end up focusing more on what's in your glasses than what's going around you. That's why you should wear Crizal No-GLARE lenses. They give you the clearest vision possible, offering resistance to glares, scratches, and smudges. No more blinding glares from the headlights of oncoming traffic while driving at night, Ross. No more fingerprint smudges from taking glasses on off or scratches from pleasing glasses on a shirt. And because Crizal No-GLARE lenses stay clear and reduce distracting glare, your friends and family can actually see your eyes, not just your glasses. Look better, feel better, and most importantly, be prepared for whatever comes your way with clear vision. Go to Crizal.com, that's C-R-I-Z-A-L dot com, and start living life in the clear.

• 39:57Nilay Patel?

  Did it. You did good. It was really good. Yeah. Real proud of you champ. B plus. What is going on on this? It's just, it's killing me. Alright, so, we gotta do it. I'm not gonna apologize for doing it, I'm just alerting the audience to doing it. The biggest story in tech this week is not really any of the stuff that we've talked about. It's the fact that it's, what are we at, 14 days in, 12 days in to the Trump administration? He's issued a flurry of executive orders. There's one in particular about immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries, companies. The tech industry as a whole has responded forcefully to this executive order.

• 40:42Nilay Patel?

  Literally as we are coming on to air here, Travis Kalanick, who was on Trump's Board of Economic Advisors, resigned from that board because he said, "People took it to mean that I endorsed his policies, but that's not, I just, my goal was to provide advice to the presidential administration, but I don't endorse his policies and I don't want people to be confused." So he resigned. Dieter, you were at protests, you were reporting on protests at SFO.

• 41:10Speaker 00

  Yeah. And also, just like a random pop-up protest at Google stage.

• 41:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Google employees walked out, they demanded to know. Sergey Brin was actually, you saw him at the protest at SFO. He said, "I'm a refugee," to some other reporters there.

• 41:23Speaker 00

  He wouldn't talk to me, it was really sad.

• 41:25Nilay Patel?

  Comcast.

• 41:25Speaker 00

  He was running away.

• 41:27Nilay Patel?

  Comcast employees are protesting Trump. Wow. Disclaimer, NBC invests in our company, but that is, I'm just saying, if fucking like Comcast is on there. Whatever.

• 41:43Nilay Patel?

  Jeff Bezos is out against it, Sachin Adella issued a statement. Sundar Pichai, actually Walt wrote a column, Sundar emailed Walt with another statement. Apple, Tim Cook said they don't support the policy. Reed Hastings said it's un-American, CEO of Netflix. Just down the line. Right.

• 42:02Nilay Patel?

  I'm like, Alexis Panian from Reddit said it's bad, it was like the most viral post on Reddit. My favorite, the CEO of Strava, the run-tracking app, tried to run the word "freedom."

• 42:14Speaker 03

  He did a pretty okay job.

• 42:16Nilay Patel?

  I will give credit to Gizmodo for a much better headline than ours. Their headline said Strava CEO, "Creenum for all." Because it just, it just doesn't look like the word freedom.

• 42:28Speaker 02

  Oh, that's all?

• 42:29Nilay Patel?

  No, I don't know what it's supposed to be. I think it's supposed to be for all.

• 42:33Speaker 02

  I was like, for are you?

• 42:34Nilay Patel?

  For, I think it's for all.

• 42:36Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 42:36Nilay Patel?

  But Creenum for you.

• 42:38Speaker 02

  Well, Creedom is like the slogan of the band Creed, of course.

• 42:41Nilay Patel?

  Creedom.

• 42:41Speaker 02

  Creedom. Give me Creedom, give me death.

• 42:47Nilay Patel?

  But anyway, I will say, unlike many other industries in America, the tech industry in particular is just out in front in protest of this. And like, whether you agree or disagree with the president, it is remarkable that this industry has decided that they, they, they don't agree with his stance on immigration.

• 43:08Speaker 02

  Right.

• 43:08Nilay Patel?

  And it is just absolutely the biggest story in tech. So, Dieter, you were at the, I kind of want, you were at the protest. What was your sense?

• 43:18Speaker 00

  So, the, the two protests I went to, I went to just, you know, document and cover. So, I tweeted out basically stuff from it pretty straight. The SFO protest was very long. It was nine hours the first day and I didn't go to the second day, but that was like four, five, six hours. Sergey Brin showed up. By the time I had like, found him in the crowd, he was already trying to leave. And so I'm like, hey, hey. I was like, do I take a picture or do I ask a question? I only have time for one. And so I asked a question and he said, he wouldn't talk to me and he left. But like, he wasn't there like chanting and yelling. The, the Google protest, they did it, it was employee organized. They did it on their main campus in Mountain View and also at their satellite office in San Francisco

• 44:02Speaker 00

  and apparently a bunch of other places. And it was, you know, like a, like a protest. There was people marching and they had signs and they chanted the, the familiar chants. But at the Google headquarters, it was more interesting because like, the CEO got up there and they like brought out a woman who like barely made it into the country and avoided the, the travel ban. And like Sergey Brin actually spoke to, to the crowd. So. And then the other, other tech companies that haven't had like walkout, although it's funny, every time we say that they walked out, the companies get mad because like they didn't walk out on their job. They went out to protest because walkout implies you're protesting against the thing you're walking out on. Anyway, what's remarkable to me is watching

• 44:47Speaker 00

  all of these companies line up against it and they're starting to send letters now and they're sending letters to their employees. When it's like they're spending capital that they maybe could have saved, like especially with Apple to like repatriate their money, right?

• 45:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 45:02Speaker 00

  And the, the big question now is, under Donald Trump, I think the rules of like, what effective political action from a company was, was pretty clear. And the stuff that these tech companies did would probably have been very effective at pushing their agenda forward. But now the question is, will a bunch of like, you know, strongly worded letters and statements from CEOs, you know, walkout style protests that are quasi sanctioned by the tech companies and, you know, a bunch of letters sent to Congress or to Donald Trump directly saying, don't do this. Will any of that, those like fairly, you know, mostly

• 45:46Speaker 00

  traditional, a little bit of non-traditional methods of like corporate political action actually have any real impact? And if not, and my hunch is like, probably not, what is the next step that all of these tech CEOs need to make? And I don't know.

• 46:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, I, I, I'm with you on the probably not. Although things have been changing, right? Like new guidelines have been issued. There's a little bit of change around the edge of the policy.

• 46:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:16Nilay Patel?

  But I mean, I think if Trump, Trump wants jobs to come to America, he needs these companies to participate. And so I think there's a real back and forth there. Megan, you're on like the culture side. What are you, what are you seeing?

• 46:27Speaker 03

  You see it a lot in like Hollywood where you see a lot of people speaking up. You see it in the communities and the way that people are fighting. Like, alright was just like banned on Reddit. Like there's just. I don't even know where to start. Like, there's just like so much shit going on. And like every time I log in on Twitter past like 5:00 PM, it's just like everything is on fire. It's everybody freaking out all the time.

• 46:46Speaker 02

  I think I saw someone who was like, three days in Trump is like six weeks.

• 46:49Nilay Patel?

  I actually commissioned an article from our science section about time dilation.

• 46:53Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. Oh, really? Good.

• 46:55Nilay Patel?

  Like, stress makes you feel like time takes longer.

• 46:58Speaker 02

  Right. It's like Trump years for us, like, it's already been like six years into his presidency.

• 47:01Nilay Patel?

  It's literally the evil flip side to time flies when you're having fun. Like, time lasts forever when you're under stress about nuclear war.

• 47:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, I can't believe it's only been like two weeks.

• 47:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but, I, look, it's a story. And like, I think there's been, I get a lot of email like, why are you covering so much politics? And I can't be like, well, we're gonna ignore the CEO of every tech company saying they don't like the president's policy. Like, that, even if you narrowly consider The Verge to be a tech site, which none of us do, it's just happening. Like, it dominates the news cycle. I said at the top of the show, it dominates the news cycle in a way that literally nothing else I've ever experienced has dominated the news cycle.

• 47:44Speaker 03

  The thing is, too, like, things that wouldn't usually be political are becoming political. So it's like this week Budweiser released that commercial for the Super Bowl, where it's about, you know, their founder having his, like, immigration story. And normally, that's just America because we welcome immigrants, or we did, until Trump signed the anti-immigration order. And so now it's a very political statement. It's them coming out against it when really they made this ad like months ago.

• 48:06Speaker 02

  Exactly. Biggest, biggest night for TV. They have a primetime spot to play with essentially somewhat of a pro-immigration commercial, and they were just doing it for fun. And like,

• 48:14Speaker 03

  But that's the thing.

• 48:15Speaker 02

  They weren't trying to come out and be like,

• 48:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's like not usually an issue. It's just like, everything is becoming political because we're so divided right now.

• 48:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 48:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. You know what doesn't divide us? Squarespace.

• 48:26Speaker 02

  It, well, it does divide between pages with their amazing tools.

• 48:30Nilay Patel?

  I don't even know if Squarespace wants to be associated with that.

• 48:34Nilay Patel?

  I just know that we're running out of time. Anyway, my, my point is, my point is only, I've gotten a lot of notes. I'm certain some listeners have wondered as they look at The Verge, like, why is it dominated by Trump coverage? I will tell you, and Dieter and I've had this conversation a lot, like, we are on the hunt for gadgets to put on Circuit Breaker. We are on the hunt for science stories that aren't about lost scientists stranded because their visas got revoked. They're, they're out there. We're looking for them. But there is, there is one focus of the entire tech industry right now, and that is, that is the presidential administration. And like, I, I've said it several times now. I've just

• 49:15Nilay Patel?

  never experienced anything that has just taken the oxygen out of every other story the way that Trump has taken the oxygen out of every other story, which is, he's probably very proud of, just based on what we know of him. But if you're wondering why, it's because the whole tech industry, the science community, as Megan said, like-

• 49:35Speaker 03

  The internet community.

• 49:36Nilay Patel?

  The internet community, the cultural community, the fucking transportation community, that's all of our sections. They're, everyone's just like paying attention to this, and this is all the news that they can generate. So-

• 49:47Speaker 00

  Here's a, here's a really, really good example of this. I went to the Zelda Escape the Room thing in San Francisco. And if you're gonna go to this thing, stop listening, I'm going to spoil the very ending of it. So it's great, you're in a room for an hour, you're trying to solve puzzles, and it's like teamwork, hooray. And at the end, it turns out, spoiler alert, the final puzzle is, you have to like shade in this piece of paper that you've had with you the entire time, and then it reveals that there was a Triforce there, and that's how you like win. It was in your heart all along. Right. But in order to see it, you have to like take the map of the world and like,

• 50:27Speaker 00

  and shade it in darkness. And then they played like the ending of Ocarina, and they like changed all the subtitles to like try to match the metaphor of shading the world in darkness. And they had this whole like five-minute video game-

• 50:43Nilay Patel?

  Zelda thing where like Princess Zelda is telling Link, in order to survive in the world, you have to understand the most evil man ever and embrace the darkness so that you can continue. We're just like sitting here watching it like, I just want to go play the Switch. What are you doing? It's sitting right there. There's happiness right on the other side of this curtain and you're making me watch this? What are you doing? Like everything, literally everything that everybody is doing on the internet today is being put through this Trump lens. And like, it's like basically inescapable. Yeah. I will say that I have chosen to escape it by watching absolutely terrible movies.

• 51:28Speaker 03

  I just sit in my bathtub for hours and don't look at the internet.

• 51:31Nilay Patel?

  Last night I watched We Are Your Friends, which is-

• 51:35Speaker 03

  With Zac Efron?

• 51:35Nilay Patel?

  With Zac Efron. It is, as I told Dieter this, it is the 1980s movie Cocktail with Tom Cruise, who has seen Cocktail?

• 51:44Speaker 03

  We've all seen that clearly.

• 51:45Nilay Patel?

  I mean- Wait, okay, you are fucking up if you haven't seen Cocktail. It's good. Straight up Cocktail is a great movie.

• 51:50Speaker 03

  Okay, okay.

• 51:50Nilay Patel?

  It's one of the, it's like, it's on the order of Roadhouse.

• 51:53Speaker 03

  How does it stack up to Demolition Man though?

• 51:55Nilay Patel?

  Cocktail is, it's so much better than- Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, do not- Demolition Man is like not a good movie. Hold on, hold on.

• 52:02Speaker 00

  Both Cocktail and Demolition Man feature shells.

• 52:06Nilay Patel?

  Yes. Dieter's speech bar. Dieter making the connection.

• 52:12Nilay Patel?

  And Boulders.

• 52:15Nilay Patel?

  Boulders again. That is like one of the worst clues to a trivia game ever. Like, what two movies have seashells? It like, if you came up with Cocktail and Demolition Man, like you should, you should be like institutionalized. Anyway.

• 52:30Nilay Patel?

  So Cocktail is great, just putting it out there. We Are Your Friends is basically a remake of Cocktail.

• 52:35Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 52:36Nilay Patel?

  But instead of hot shit 1980s bartenders- They're not good 2010 DJs.

• 52:44Speaker 02

  Wait.

• 52:45Speaker 03

  Can I also just say, so earlier you said DJ T and I was like, who's DJ? Is that like a cool? I was like, oh, you mean Trump? You made him sound cool for like a half a second.

• 52:53Nilay Patel?

  I like to assign Trump friendly nicknames because I feel like it humanizes him.

• 52:58Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 52:59Nilay Patel?

  Which is good.

• 53:00Speaker 03

  Is it?

• 53:02Nilay Patel?

  Well, it lets me engage with like intellectually like Donnie. I called, I called Obama Barry all the, I don't know. It's just a thing with me. We bring him down to my level.

• 53:11Speaker 03

  Barry.

• 53:12Speaker 02

  Barry?

• 53:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 53:13Speaker 03

  Backwards hat Barry.

• 53:14Speaker 02

  So Donnie?

• 53:16Nilay Patel?

  He sounds so friendly. Anyhow, this is what I'm doing and it's a horrible movie. Like it literally, I'm just gonna spoil. We are your friends. Just don't worry about it.

• 53:27Speaker 02

  Just skip ahead if you really don't want to be spoiled.

• 53:32Nilay Patel?

  Like literally the, the, the, he like, there's an old DJ and then Zac Efron's like the new hot DJ and the old DJ was like, gonna teach Zac Efron how to be a good DJ. It's a whole thing. It's bad. Emily Radikowski is like the old DJ's girlfriend.

• 53:47Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 53:48Nilay Patel?

  He's just like sleeps with the other dude's girlfriend and he's like, I'm sorry, my friend died, but I have a new song. And the old DJ is like, yeah, we're, we're, we're cool again. And then he like plays the song and it ends with like him getting the girl and it's like, you are just a fucking asshole.

• 54:06Nilay Patel?

  This isn't like Cocktail at all. I was promised Cocktail with DJ. No one learned a lesson. You just got everything you wanted. And then, uh, then you go on Medium and you write an angry scribe about millennials. This is how I'm spending my nights. It's bad.

• 54:20Speaker 02

  Sounds healthy.

• 54:21Nilay Patel?

  Um, but I encourage everyone to watch just terrible movies.

• 54:23Speaker 03

  Get it all out.

• 54:24Nilay Patel?

  This is all you can do.

• 54:25Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. I watched this. Okay. This is even bad. I watched SWAT Cats the other night.

• 54:30Nilay Patel?

  SWAT Cat?

• 54:31Speaker 02

  What?

• 54:31Speaker 03

  What is that?

• 54:31Speaker 02

  What? Wait, do you know what this is?

• 54:34Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 54:34Speaker 03

  Who really knows what this is?

• 54:35Speaker 02

  This is an old, old cartoon from the nineties.

• 54:37Nilay Patel?

  I should have just kept reading the Squarespace ad.

• 54:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're just, just move on from this.

• 54:42Nilay Patel?

  All right, we're gonna do this and then, and then Ross is gonna have a guy tutorial. Please tweet, Megan is at Megan underscore Nicollet, just tweet what terrible movies you've been watching at her and we'll compile a list.

• 54:51Speaker 03

  Ooh, please do.

• 54:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Last week it was like tweet comments about underpants at her.

• 54:56Speaker 03

  I got some sweaty shorts comments and a couple of Demolition Man comments, so.

• 55:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. We, I get to get a lot of requests for a straight Demolition Man episode.

• 55:05Speaker 02

  I mean, it is a great movie.

• 55:07Nilay Patel?

  It's not.

• 55:08Speaker 02

  It's a wonderful movie.

• 55:09Nilay Patel?

  It's not, but you should watch Cocktail.

• 55:11Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 55:12Nilay Patel?

  I don't wanna like-

• 55:12Speaker 03

  Everyone just send me your recommendations for things I should watch instead of Cocktail.

• 55:15Nilay Patel?

  But Cocktail is great.

• 55:17Speaker 03

  Just tip this off, Neil.

• 55:18Speaker 02

  It is, it is good. I mean, it's not Demolition Man, but-

• 55:20Nilay Patel?

  I don't feel like I'm doing great on this episode. I'd like to apologize to our audience for Megan.

• 55:25Speaker 03

  On behalf of me, okay.

• 55:30Nilay Patel?

  Look, today's episode of Varying Quality was brought to you by Squarespace. Whether you've finally started a business, changed careers, launched a creative project in the new year, which is now, just sign up for Squarespace, okay? It's widely used by all kinds of people and businesses, gives you the ability to create an online platform with which you can take your latest goals and turn them into reality, whether you need a landing page, a gallery, a blog, an online store, uh, it's all included with your Squarespace website. That's a lot of stuff. You get a unique, unique domain experience, fully transparent and well set up. You can add and arrange your content and features with the click of a mouse. There's nothing to install, patch or upgrade ever. If you do have questions, you can turn to Squarespace's award-winning 24/7 customer support for help, no matter how technical or trivial your problem may be. So, start your free trial today.

• 56:12Nilay Patel?

  It's Squarespace.com, which I'm sure you know, and I'm sure you know the offer code, which is VERGE. You get 10% off your first purchase, that's a VERGE, for 10% off your first purchase. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website.

• 56:26Speaker 02

  You just kept pointing at me, like, do I, am I prompted to do something here?

• 56:29Nilay Patel?

  Start a fucking Squarespace blog, man!

• 56:32Speaker 02

  We're working on it right now, this is great.

• 56:33Nilay Patel?

  I've sworn a lot. Like, is it obvious like how much stress this week has caused? Like, I literally was like, where is gadget news? Like, someone show me some gadgets. And it's like, all of Google's employees have walked out. No gadget news will be produced.

• 56:48Speaker 02

  Nope.

• 56:49Nilay Patel?

  It's not happening. It's the worst. Ross, are you gonna say something else?

• 56:54Speaker 02

  Oh, no, no, I'm just, you keep going. You do your thing.

• 56:56Nilay Patel?

  Well, speaking of gadget news, a Miller on the show is required to host a weekly segment, which is called?

• 57:04Speaker 02

  Gadgetorial?

• 57:05Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 57:07Nilay Patel?

  Actually, that's the first time it's been called the gadgetorial.

• 57:09Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 57:10Nilay Patel?

  So you're doing great.

• 57:11Speaker 02

  Great, cool. I'll call it Counterpoint today. It's Miller time.

• 57:14Nilay Patel?

  Sure, just keep going.

• 57:15Speaker 02

  So my understanding is-

• 57:16Nilay Patel?

  Like a real Squarespace marketing slogan.

• 57:20Speaker 02

  I'm just, it's my DuraFlame moment, guys. It's my time to shine. So my understanding is I get to pick a gadget this week, and everything I say, my opinion, is basically 100% fact going forward.

• 57:32Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 57:32Speaker 02

  Great, cool. So my gadget this week is the UN40K 6250 AF, also known as the Neely curved screen.

• 57:39Nilay Patel?

  Oh, god, you're picking-

• 57:41Speaker 02

  Whoa, man. No, I'm here to defend it. I am here to defend the curved TV, because Becky had all the right points, but she had the wrong perspective on this, right? It's a curved TV. Becky, obviously, Neely's wife, the new editor-in-chief of The Verge.

• 57:52Nilay Patel?

  She's great.

• 57:53Speaker 02

  She's great. She wrote this beautiful editorial, but, you know, I feel like she's wrong.

• 57:56Nilay Patel?

  It's a review.

• 57:57Speaker 02

  It's a great, it's a great view, look.

• 57:59Nilay Patel?

  Curved TV.

• 57:59Speaker 02

  So the problem is, her problem with a curved TV, she has a giant couch. Well, first off, it's not a problem here in New York for most people, and only one good spot on the couch to see the TV. I don't see a problem with that. Look, you bought the TV, you should get the best of you. Everyone else has to suffer, right? Like, that's perfect.

• 58:13Speaker 03

  I don't want to be your friend. Like, I never want to come watch movies at your place. That sounds like it sucks.

• 58:17Speaker 02

  But here, I'm also being helpful. Look, there's a lot of glare in the sunlight.

• 58:20Nilay Patel?

  You should watch Cocktail by yourself.

• 58:22Speaker 02

  Yes. If you want to watch Cocktail, you can have the prime spot, okay? And we'll all otherwise watch like the-

• 58:26Speaker 03

  Everyone else has to leave.

• 58:27Speaker 02

  Look, what's the other problem? Lots of glare in the sunlight. You know, whatever, the sun causes cancer.

• 58:33Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my god.

• 58:34Speaker 02

  You don't want, you don't want that.

• 58:35Speaker 03

  This is taking a-

• 58:36Speaker 02

  This is a great gadget. This is a great gadget for being by yourself alone in the dark forever.

• 58:40Nilay Patel?

  You guys, I just Googled wrong. I just tried to Google Cocktail, and I typed in cocktail.com.

• 58:47Nilay Patel?

  I'm doing terrible. Also, cocktail.com, legitimately the best website I've ever seen.

• 58:54Speaker 02

  Wait, okay, let's see this.

• 58:55Speaker 03

  Okay, everybody's Googling.

• 58:57Speaker 02

  Is it better than Space Jam?

• 58:58Nilay Patel?

  It's not great.

• 59:00Speaker 03

  What?

• 59:01Nilay Patel?

  It's coming soon.

• 59:03Speaker 03

  No.

• 59:05Speaker 02

  Wait, wait, wait, you can pick ingredients. I want...

• 59:07Speaker 03

  I want...

• 59:08Nilay Patel?

  It doesn't do anything.

• 59:10Speaker 02

  I want, I want brandy.

• 59:13Nilay Patel?

  Uh, there's a search box. Just go to, everyone, go to cocktail.com. Give them as much traffic as they've ever dreamed.

• 59:20Speaker 02

  Wait, I got, I got one. I got one.

• 59:22Speaker 03

  What did you get?

• 59:23Speaker 02

  I got a B and B.

• 59:24Speaker 03

  I got a Batilda.

• 59:25Speaker 02

  What is Matilda?

• 59:26Speaker 03

  A Batilda. God.

• 59:28Nilay Patel?

  This is great.

• 59:28Speaker 03

  It's Brazilian.

• 59:31Speaker 02

  You picked Khashoggi, didn't you?

• 59:32Nilay Patel?

  Can I, can I tell the story about this stupid TV? I told part of the story on Control of the Week, but I'll, I'll say it again. I bought the TV to watch it outside. It's, it's like the most bougie thing in the world to say. I had a bougie week last week. I'm having a bougie week again. We have a sun porch. I wanted to watch a football game. My team won that game, Dieter. I bought a TV to put it outside.

• 59:53Speaker 02

  That game.

• 59:54Nilay Patel?

  Right. So I wanted to only buy the cheapest TV I could get.

• 59:57Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 59:58Nilay Patel?

  That's why, and I was like, this one is fine, whatever, it's curved. It's fun. It'll be funny. We'll laugh at it.

• 1:00:03Speaker 02

  Have you read theverse.com in the last...

• 1:00:05Nilay Patel?

  I'm aware that I shouldn't have bought the TV. I knew it at the time.

• 1:00:08Speaker 03

  But you didn't take it back?

• 1:00:10Nilay Patel?

  No, because we, we put it outside.

• 1:00:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's like shoes. If once you, once you use it outside, it's like you're not allowed to return it.

• 1:00:17Speaker 03

  I don't think you guys are good at returning things. I think I am.

• 1:00:21Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I also, every year at CES, the Las Vegas Best Buy, there's a lot of suspicious returns at the end of the week.

• 1:00:29Nilay Patel?

  Uh, but, but whatever. It was just, it was there. It was take outside, we'll watch outside, put it away. Uh, next week comes, take outside, you watch again. The thing is, once you have a TV, you can't, you can't like get rid of it. So now we just have it and it's cold outside and we're not watching TV. We're watching TV in the living room.

• 1:00:44Speaker 03

  You could give it to some poor family who only has a spot on their couch for one human.

• 1:00:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:49Nilay Patel?

  You know what? Poor as love, curved TVs.

• 1:00:51Speaker 00

  Isn't a couch that only has a spot for one human called a chair?

• 1:01:01Nilay Patel?

  I'm just asking.

• 1:01:02Speaker 03

  How chairs were born.

• 1:01:04Nilay Patel?

  We just want a smaller couch. I mean, how small can we make a couch, Thompson?

• 1:01:12Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. We're gonna try, goddammit. I made a couch that fits too. I call it a love seat. Make it smaller. Presentations. You thought we couldn't do it, but there's one more thing. It's a chair. We call it chair. Make it smaller. Stools.

• 1:01:31Nilay Patel?

  All I'm saying is, I never intended it to be the main TV, and then once you have a TV, inevitably it becomes the main TV, because you can't just buy another TV.

• 1:01:38Speaker 03

  No, it's just a mark of your shame.

• 1:01:41Nilay Patel?

  She complained about it so much. Look, I was just gonna say this. I asked her to write it. Yes. I, so I commissioned it, I edited it, and I chose to publish it. She didn't just bully her way on the front page of the site. Like, the relationship is, I've gotten a lot of notes. They're like, "I'm worried about your relationship. You should take her out to dinner." What? I'm like, "No, it's fine. Like, we think this is hilarious." Did not expect her destruction of this TV to go viral, which it did.

• 1:02:08Speaker 03

  It did.

• 1:02:09Nilay Patel?

  I had to spend a nice, you know, hour or so talking to the good people at Samsung. Explaining why I reviewed their television. Oh my god. Contacting them first. She got invited to their next TV launch event party. Really? Like, we usually don't go to these parties, because there's no news. Is it a curved TV? No, it's just like, they're having like, they're like, you know, party for like, dealers and like, you know, the corrupt press to go to and like, drink free booze. And like, we usually don't go. But I'm gonna take Becky. They're like, "We'd love to have her." They're like, "She can have any TV she wants." I'm like, "That's great for her." But I can't. She has to spend the entire time at the party, learning what QLED is. Yeah. And then every other TV manufacturer has offered to let her review a TV.

• 1:02:54Speaker 03

  Amazing.

• 1:02:55Nilay Patel?

  Wow. Because I think they're very confident that their TVs are flat. They know, like, they know this TV is great. It's not, because it's not bullshit like the other one. So like, she, she's got a great, she can quit being a lawyer. And she can move right into evaluating whether or not TVs are curved.

• 1:03:15Nilay Patel?

  It's gonna be great. Dieter, I've got a bunch of stuff on this list. I'm just gonna read these headlines to you and you can-

• 1:03:22Speaker 00

  Lightning round.

• 1:03:22Nilay Patel?

  ...offer reactions to them. Yeah, it's a lightning round.

• 1:03:24Speaker 00

  Alright.

• 1:03:25Nilay Patel?

  Facebook, Zenimax lawsuit ends with $500 million verdict for Zenimax. Megan, Dieter, your wife works for Facebook, so you have to remain quiet.

• 1:03:32Speaker 03

  My immediate response is just, "Damn!", and that's it. That's all I have to say. That's a lot of money.

• 1:03:36Speaker 00

  I mean, that's-

• 1:03:37Nilay Patel?

  Not for Facebook.

• 1:03:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, but like-

• 1:03:39Nilay Patel?

  That's like one Mark Zuckerberg sneeze.

• 1:03:42Speaker 02

  Yes, but if you took that money and bought Oculus Rift headsets, that would triple the number of Oculus Rift headsets in the world.

• 1:03:46Nilay Patel?

  Facebook, Zuckerberg's like, "What's the smallest couch we have? Find the chair in it." His wife's like, "It's a chair!" "There's money in the chair!"

• 1:03:57Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it's a lot of mon- it's great for Zenimax. They can continue not making anything of value.

• 1:04:01Speaker 02

  No, no, wait. They make, like, it's Bethesda, too. Like, they make-

• 1:04:04Nilay Patel?

  They make- why is the parent company called Zenimax?

• 1:04:07Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:04:07Nilay Patel?

  Alright, well, they're fine.

• 1:04:08Speaker 03

  They're not good at naming things, clearly.

• 1:04:09Nilay Patel?

  Uh, okay. Uh, T-Mobile might not support RCS. This is a pure Dieter. This is just Dieter red meat.

• 1:04:17Speaker 00

  I mean, RCS has made huge, huge strides in the past year towards universal compatibility across carriers, and therefore, it is only a trash fire right now, instead of a full-on raging dumpster fire. Cool job.

• 1:04:32Nilay Patel?

  Razer bought Nextbit.

• 1:04:34Speaker 00

  Nope.

• 1:04:34Speaker 03

  Collected shrug.

• 1:04:35Speaker 00

  What is up with Razer? They bought THX, they bought Netflix, or Nextbit, like, I don't get it. Like, what do you, what's the plan here? Also, uh, the Nextbit phone was cool. Uh, it looked pretty. And, uh, the aesthetic of the Nextbit phone and the aesthetic of Razer are so wildly different, I have no idea what the plan is there.

• 1:04:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, one is like, very twee, and looks like it's made for people who like, like, journaling. And Razer's products look for, like, they're for murderers. And-

• 1:05:05Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:05:05Nilay Patel?

  That's not like a-

• 1:05:08Nilay Patel?

  You put those things together and you, I think you arrive pretty much at serial killers. Yeah. Like journaling murderers.

• 1:05:19Nilay Patel?

  The show is over. It's been, uh, here. We would like to thank the excellent people at Crizal, who I'm assuming have just never listened to the show, but they continue to sponsor us with their no glare lenses. So thanks to them. If you wear glasses, you know, about the smudges and the bullshit, Crizal doesn't have any of that. They give you the clearest vision possible by offering resistance to glares, scratches and smudges. So look better, feel better, and most importantly, be prepared for whatever comes your way with clear vision. Go to crizal.com, C-R-I-Z-A-L, and start living life in the clear. Crizal.com. Great. There's a million other ways to get ahold of us. You can follow at Verge on Twitter. You are at, we're Verge on Snapchat. We're at Verge on Instagram. We're on iTunes. You can listen to Control

• 1:06:00Nilay Patel?

  Alt Delete, which Walt is a, he's much more organized in his conversation with me than I allow this group to be. You should listen to Verge Extras this week. Lauren Grush, our excellent space reporter, interviewed her parents, who are both fucking rocket scientists, who worked on the Columbia Shuttle mission and like figuring out what went wrong. It's the anniversary of that disaster. So like, listen to that. All that's at theverge.com/podcast. There's also Too Embarrassed to Ask with Lauren Good, Recode Decode with Kara Swisher, Recode Media with Peter Kafka. All of that is on the Recode side. All of it's on iTunes. Go rate it, review it. You can also rate us directly on Twitter, which I know we all enjoy. I'm at Reckless. Ross is, oh no, Roscoe. Yep. Megan underscore Nicolet and at Backlon for, for Dieter. Just, just come talk to

• 1:06:45Nilay Patel?

  us. We apologize for this episode. That's the Vergecast.

• 1:06:49Speaker 03

  I don't. I'm proud of it.

• 1:06:50Nilay Patel?

  You don't. Defiantly. Also, next week, we'll be talking only about Cocktail and Demolition Man. Yes. Megan, you're coming back to just do 45 minutes on Cocktail.

• 1:06:59Speaker 03

  I'll be back. Just the website, though.

• 1:07:00Nilay Patel?

  What's your favorite Tom Cruise movie?

• 1:07:03Speaker 03

  I really like Edge of Tomorrow.

• 1:07:05Nilay Patel?

  Whoa. Wow. Wow, modern, modern. Well, cause you're like a gamer.

• 1:07:08Speaker 03

  A shocker. Um, you know, he did a really good movie called Legend, which is just like a Zelda movie. It's like a really old.

• 1:07:16Nilay Patel?

  You are like pulling up the deep cuts.

• 1:07:18Speaker 03

  Go recent, go very old. Yeah. It's like Tim Curry, who's like the devil, like literally like a devil. He has his crazy horns. I'm pretty sure Tom Cruise wears like a skirt, like a battle skirt.

• 1:07:31Speaker 03

  It's great.

• 1:07:32Speaker 02

  It's an awful movie.

• 1:07:34Speaker 03

  No, it's a great. How dare you?

• 1:07:36Nilay Patel?

  How have, how do you know about the wardrobe in that movie, but you haven't seen Cocktail? All right.

• 1:07:42Speaker 02

  Does Cocktail have unicorns?

• 1:07:44Nilay Patel?

  That's your.

• 1:07:44Speaker 02

  The answer is no.

• 1:07:45Nilay Patel?

  This is your assignment for the week. Staff and listeners of The Vergecast alike, watch Cocktail. It will calm you down. It's a picture of a vibrant, go-go 80s America.

• 1:07:58Speaker 02

  You can think of it as we are your friends, but it's a DJ. It's bartender.

• 1:08:02Speaker 03

  That's so interesting. I've never heard that before.

• 1:08:05Nilay Patel?

  That's it. That's The Vergecast. Cut through the night.

• 1:08:08Speaker 02

  Rock and roll. Snip, snip.

• 1:08:09Nilay Patel?

  Rock and roll. Just catch raises galore. Go watch Cocktail. Goodbye.