Comcast, Time Warner, Google Fi, and Apple Watch

It may sound as if this episode of The Vergecast were recorded from within the aisles a Party City, but no; it's just our enthusiastic celebration of our sesquicentennial episode. Join us as we combine all the classic ingredients of a successful birthday blowout: failed corporate mergers, MVNOs, smartwatch apps, and silly cardboard hats. Thanks for listening for 150 episodes! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

  This episode of The Vergecast is brought to you by Hi5. How many times have you had a meeting where you waste the first 15 minutes? It's usually because someone has had trouble joining the call, or you can't share your screen, or someone else can be heard, or they don't have the right PIN code, or you work at The Verge, because that's our lives.

• 0:16Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 0:16Nilay Patel?

  Nothing but problems. Well, the people at Hi5 want to give you back the first 15 minutes of every meeting. That's why they built easy-to-use video and web conferencing that you can actually love. Hi5 is seamlessly-integrated hardware and cloud software solution that lets people work however they want. You can enjoy productive meetings in HD video with multiple people. You can start an HD video meeting from your computer or mobile device. There's no remote to lose or struggle to understand how to use. And with a simple click on your computer or swipe on your phone, you can move video calls from your personal device to the conference room TV. Hi5 is only 1/20th the cost of traditional video providers. You can outfit a conference room for only $799. That's a one-time fee. There's no maintenance fees or monthly overhead. It's just yours to enjoy. So what team doesn't want to enjoy Hi5 at work? Take back the first 15 minutes of every meeting and get started today.

• 1:01Nilay Patel?

  Go to hi5.com/verge and request a free trial of Hi5. That's Hi5, H-I-G-H-F-I-V-E dot com. Go to hi5.com/theverge, request your free trial. Start your meetings with Hi5.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  That is the sound of literally everybody unsubscribing in their podcast app.

• 1:33Nilay Patel?

  It's just, fun fact about The Verge, today we discovered that you can blow out a kazoo.

• 1:39Nilay Patel?

  It's our birthday. It's the birthday.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  Introduce the show.

• 1:43Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast. This is the 150th episode of The Vergecast, The Vergecast Birthday Spectacular, which I would point out implies that we give birth to the show every week, as Sam has pointed out. But this is indeed our 150th episode. There's huge news going on in the world. Chris is wearing not one, but two birthday hats.

• 2:03Speaker 01

  Trying to. I'm working on it.

• 2:05Nilay Patel?

  I would describe that as a bust situation. But I'm here. I'm your host, Eli Patel. Next to me is...

• 2:11Speaker 01

  I am Dieter Bone. I am Chris Sigler.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  And I am Sam Sheffer.

• 2:15Nilay Patel?

  In the hype desk.

• 2:16Speaker 02

  And my ring is glowing.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  Show us the sign behind you there.

• 2:22Speaker 03

  It's pretty sweet.

• 2:22Nilay Patel?

  I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say I'm your host. It was like a moment. We're all your hosts.

• 2:25Speaker 03

  The sign behind Sam, by the way, for the podcast listeners, because this is an audio show, says 150 Verge casts.

• 2:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 2:32Speaker 03

  Big ups to Sarah for putting that together.

• 2:34Nilay Patel?

  Sarah made a sign for us. It's beautiful.

• 2:35Speaker 04

  I don't actually know how that's possible that it was made that quickly.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  Because you get letters, you could take letters and then you, you know, punch them together.

• 2:42Speaker 04

  I preferred it when I didn't know how it was done.

• 2:44Speaker 02

  Look, Ben, you ruined your childhood.

• 2:47Nilay Patel?

  Here's what I know about The Verge and the staff of The Verge. It's that everything in our lives that we think about and communicate with and like use to work together is like a high-precision like machine, requires teams of workers and factories and design. And the idea that something that looks like a consumer product, but is really just like sparkle letters that have been taped together, it's like blows our mind. You're like, a human made that.

• 3:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:15Nilay Patel?

  Custom, a one-off.

• 3:16Speaker 04

  I didn't know that still happened.

• 3:17Nilay Patel?

  Limited edition, one of one.

• 3:19Speaker 04

  Bespoke.

• 3:20Nilay Patel?

  Bespoke. Our bespoke sparkle sign. So anyway, this is The Verge Cast.

• 3:23Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 3:24Nilay Patel?

  Where we talk about The Verge and a bunch of stuff.

• 3:26Speaker 04

  Stuff.

• 3:27Nilay Patel?

  And Sam hype checks us.

• 3:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, we are.

• 3:29Nilay Patel?

  It's our birthday.

• 3:30Speaker 03

  We're slap happy.

• 3:31Nilay Patel?

  I'm happy because it's our birthday.

• 3:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:33Nilay Patel?

  I'm happy because I'm back. Last week I was on vacation. How'd it go last week?

• 3:36Speaker 03

  It was great. It was the best.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  I sat in that desk.

• 3:39Speaker 03

  It was the best Verge cast ever.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  Felt like a grown-up.

• 3:41Nilay Patel?

  Did we have a hype test last week? I didn't listen to the show because I was on vacation.

• 3:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:44Nilay Patel?

  Who was in the hype test?

• 3:45Speaker 03

  Well, Sam migrated.

• 3:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I migrated.

• 3:47Speaker 03

  It was an empty hype test. And we could not hype check. We were incapable of hype checking.

• 3:52Nilay Patel?

  And then you had to go back.

• 3:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, then I went back and all orders were stored.

• 3:54Speaker 04

  Are we older than America? 150? That's a old, dead number.

• 3:57Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 3:58Speaker 04

  Chris?

• 3:58Nilay Patel?

  America is...

• 3:59Speaker 04

  Chris, we're the year 2015 in America.

• 4:02Nilay Patel?

  America celebrated its bicentennial in like 1976.

• 4:05Speaker 04

  It was close.

• 4:05Speaker 02

  Seventy-six, yeah.

• 4:06Speaker 04

  Close.

• 4:07Nilay Patel?

  You said 74?

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Seventeen seventy-four, I thought it was.

• 4:10Nilay Patel?

  What happened in 1774?

• 4:11Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 4:12Nilay Patel?

  I lost my...

• 4:12Speaker 02

  Literally, every day of 1774, someone's like, I can't wait for fucking America to show up.

• 4:17Speaker 04

  This is not an American history podcast.

• 4:18Nilay Patel?

  Seventy-seven-five was like the ultimate hype year.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  Hype levels were very dangerous in 1775.

• 4:24Nilay Patel?

  George Washington kept on appearing in like British fashion magazines.

• 4:26Speaker 03

  I got my headband on.

• 4:27Nilay Patel?

  America's coming, just for a full year. They made a bunch of videos with British people. America's inevitable.

• 4:35Speaker 03

  My head is too big for this.

• 4:36Nilay Patel?

  And then 76.

• 4:37Speaker 02

  America's here. We've made it.

• 4:40Nilay Patel?

  What? Johnny, I don't know. What is your British accent right now? I'd just like to point out that a Johnny I video about America's design would be better. That's all I'm saying. Like, if you're like, we've made it of the finest materials. These mountains are the finest mountains in the world. Alright, I'll stop.

• 4:56Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 4:57Nilay Patel?

  What? That's how he talks.

• 4:59Speaker 04

  I'm just waiting for my chance to segue, but I don't think you want me to.

• 5:02Nilay Patel?

  What are we gonna segue to?

• 5:03Speaker 04

  We're gonna segue to, we're gonna segue to America and how the FCC is apparently deciding it's time to do its job. Again, that's the second time a year.

• 5:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, legit breaking news before the Vergecast started.

• 5:17Nilay Patel?

  Guys, I'm just gonna defer to you. I mean, obviously, I have many thoughts.

• 5:20Speaker 04

  Why don't you say what the news is?

• 5:22Nilay Patel?

  So the news is, um...

• 5:24Speaker 04

  I'm just like a Taskmaster today.

• 5:26Nilay Patel?

  Dude, run and run it.

• 5:28Speaker 04

  It's her birthday.

• 5:29Nilay Patel?

  So, yeah, dude.

• 5:30Speaker 04

  I do not like fun. This has been well established.

• 5:34Nilay Patel?

  No, it's big news, enormous news. Over the past week or so, there have been rumblings that the FCC will make... And the Department of Justice. And the Department of Justice, but particularly FCC, will make Comcast take its merger proposal to buy Time Warner Cable in front of a judge and like actually hold a hearing, which is basically then using procedure to shut it down. Take a long time, be very expensive, very complicated.

• 5:57Speaker 04

  They're like, "We're gonna make this not fun for you."

• 5:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And then today, basically Comcast has been leaking, "We're done with this. We're done trying to buy Time Warner Cable." Which is over a year since they announced the deal.

• 6:10Speaker 04

  Yeah. So the rumor is that it's gonna be official tomorrow. Comcast will announce it tomorrow. But I mean, just talk about echoes of 18 TT Mobile.

• 6:18Nilay Patel?

  Celebrate! Dance it in the streets!

• 6:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, look, I mean, the FCC is developing a pretty solid reputation for not liking mergers between communications giants, which I am okay with.

• 6:35Speaker 04

  There is still AT&T DirecTV on the docket.

• 6:37Nilay Patel?

  But that's gonna happen. That makes sense to me. I don't know why that one makes sense to me, but it makes sense.

• 6:42Speaker 03

  Can we go back in time and do the AOL Time Warner thing over again?

• 6:47Speaker 04

  Well, that, I mean, they just kind of mutually destroyed each other.

• 6:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's fair. Yeah. Maybe we wanted this merger to go through if that would have been the result.

• 6:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:55Speaker 03

  But so what's crazy is to me is how over the past week, these rumblings that like it was coming. I'm like, oh yeah, they're gonna go, okay, I'm sure they'll deal with it. I sort of didn't have the sense that them having to go to these meetings meant that like, oh, this is like really truly on the rocks.

• 7:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, they bailed a lot faster than AT&T did. AT&T kind of stuck it out for a while and finally they're like, all right, this is stupid. Never mind. But Comcast, like it was a game of chicken. They just immediately.

• 7:21Speaker 03

  Right. They blinked like right away.

• 7:23Nilay Patel?

  Well, I mean, but they, I think they've been blinking this whole time, right? Like, the way I've seen it. And this is the second huge setback for Comcast. I mean, although through, so there's net neutrality. So Comcast had two major things to accomplish this year, right? In terms of like their policy goals and their business goals. They wanted to avoid Title II reclassification with all of their heart and soul. They still do.

• 7:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, they still might depending on how the.

• 7:52Nilay Patel?

  Well, through their lobbying arm, they filed that lawsuit. They decisively lost that battle with the FCC. And they wanted to buy Time Warner and Time Warner Cable, I should say, to be more precise. And those things were just always mixed up.

• 8:07Speaker 03

  Right.

• 8:08Nilay Patel?

  And the one thing that they would always say about buying Time Warner was, hey, well, we've already agreed to all these net neutrality provisions. Until 2018. Yeah, but we already agreed to them until, because when we bought NBC, we agreed to play by these rules until 2018.

• 8:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:22Nilay Patel?

  If you let us buy Time Warner, Time Warner will fall under the rules too. And then one big net neutrality cable provider.

• 8:28Speaker 04

  For a couple of years.

• 8:29Nilay Patel?

  For a couple of years. So, but that argument was, that was, that was their play. That was their argument on both sides of the fence. It was, you don't have to do net neutrality regulation because we're already playing by the rules and we want to buy Time Warner. And then almost everybody will fall under the rules. And with Time Warner, it was, we won't be a huge terrible monopoly because we're going to play by these rules.

• 8:45Speaker 03

  Right.

• 8:46Nilay Patel?

  And all of that, it just in the course of what, two months has just completely fallen apart.

• 8:50Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 8:51Speaker 03

  So do you think that if they hadn't bought NBC, that this would have gone through?

• 8:57Nilay Patel?

  You know, I, did you read any of the Brian Williams stuff? This is like, it's sort of a... So, you know, Brian Williams, obviously...

• 9:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, you gotta make this connection for me.

• 9:05Nilay Patel?

  I'll make this connection. I think buying NBC for Comcast is one of those moves where it made so much sense on paper and in the end has just been a series of disasters.

• 9:15Speaker 04

  Right.

• 9:16Nilay Patel?

  So, the reason I bring up Brian Williams is there was a great article in Vanity Fair about sort of the fall of Brian Williams. There's another really long feature elsewhere that I read. I can't remember what it was. But there are two that sort of tracked, like, what happened there. And all of them, the Vanity Fair one in particular, opens with, "This is all Comcast's fault."

• 9:34Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 9:35Nilay Patel?

  NBC was fine. They, before Comcast showed up, they had like the number one evening show, the number one daytime show, the number one news broadcast, and now we're here. And they had like, let their anchor go and leave. Today is plummeting in the ratings. And it's all just Comcast not knowing how to run media, a media company.

• 9:50Speaker 04

  Right.

• 9:51Nilay Patel?

  And I think that has been such a big painful distraction. And then they tried to buy, and so like, you look at where Comcast is now, and it's just, by the way, full disclosure, Comcast Ventures owns a piece of Vox Media, which is a company that pays us all.

• 10:03Speaker 04

  That's true.

• 10:03Nilay Patel?

  But I think if you've been reading The Verge, you know that has very little effect on our coverage of Comcast. But there's a disclosure. But if you just look at what, like, Comcast, their job is to provide better, faster internet service and better, faster, or cooler television service to people.

• 10:21Speaker 04

  Right.

• 10:21Nilay Patel?

  And none of those things have been like, radically increasing because they've been trying to figure out NBC, and then they try to buy Time Warner.

• 10:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:29Nilay Patel?

  And it's just like, distractions abound for this company.

• 10:31Speaker 04

  We joke about...

• 10:31Nilay Patel?

  And none of those things have paid off.

• 10:33Speaker 04

  Right. We joke about X1 all the time. Like, Comcast has been advertising X1 for what, three years now? It basically doesn't exist. It's in a few markets.

• 10:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 10:41Speaker 04

  Yeah. I waited at least 18 months for it in Chicago, finally moved, and it still wasn't there.

• 10:45Nilay Patel?

  Did I ever tell you a story? I was talking to a TV executive. Is this a thing? And I, it, you don't, if you're listening to this, like...

• 10:53Nilay Patel?

  TV executives are often very boastful, but um, a lot of smart TVs do automatic content recognition. It's called ACR. So they listen. So if you think, just think, this is one of the things where they developed the world's coolest hack. So if you are a smart TV vendor, um, you have no idea what's coming through HDMI one.

• 11:12Speaker 03

  Right.

• 11:13Nilay Patel?

  But you don't know what's on the TV. You don't know what's on your screen.

• 11:15Speaker 03

  Right.

• 11:16Nilay Patel?

  And that's like terrible. And if you want to build stuff around it, you want to like put interactive scores next to watching the game or whatever, you have to figure out what the hell's on the screen. So they built ACR technology. It's like all over the place. Every time you go to a TV conference where you like, talk to somebody about the future of TV, ACR comes up because it's the solution.

• 11:34Speaker 03

  And is this basically the same thing that like Yahoo did for a while ago and a bunch of other apps do like, like where it just like listens to the show?

• 11:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's basically like super fancy Shazam, right? But it's like built in all this firmware. It's built in all these apps and whatever. It listens to the TV. If you're actually on the panel, you can look at what's on the TV.

• 11:49Speaker 03

  Right.

• 11:50Nilay Patel?

  And figure it out. So all these smart TV vendors have ACR. It's just a thing that they do. They're trying to figure out how to use it. There's licensing problems. They'll have it. And one of the things that they look at is what cable box people use, right? So they know, they know.

• 12:04Speaker 03

  From the UI?

• 12:04Nilay Patel?

  From the UI. They see the cable box UI.

• 12:06Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, right.

• 12:07Nilay Patel?

  And they say no, which is crazy. And then no one will give it to me. I beg for it all the time. But so they know what cable box people are using and they're like, X1 is laughable. Like it's, Comcast is this huge market and like they've put out in absolute numbers, like a pretty okay number of them, but compared to their total percentage, it's like nothing.

• 12:24Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 12:25Nilay Patel?

  And I, it's just one of those things where it's like, would you have been better off doing this other stuff? Like focusing on rolling out your platform, focusing on, you know, making a deal with Apple, who's desperate to make a television.

• 12:37Speaker 03

  Or just, you know, don't buy NBC and then buy Time Warner Cable instead.

• 12:42Nilay Patel?

  I don't think, I don't think they would have ever gotten to buy a Time Warner Cable.

• 12:44Speaker 03

  You don't think so?

• 12:45Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 12:45Speaker 03

  And I, I'm just saying like the, the freak out that, not the, well, it's freak out, like the, the.

• 12:51Nilay Patel?

  Just people being dubious about it was, I think, in part like the bad aftertaste of them buying NBC.

• 12:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:58Nilay Patel?

  And sort of like, well, not a lot of people want, nobody wanted them to do it. So I just, we just sort of accepted that it was happening and they'd like, got it through because not enough people were paying attention.

• 13:07Speaker 04

  Well, I still think that if you compare those two mergers on balance, then NBC one was far worse and more devastating. And I still think to this day that the federal, the federal government.

• 13:18Nilay Patel?

  Celebrate.

• 13:19Speaker 04

  The federal government got played in that whole arrangement.

• 13:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 13:23Speaker 04

  But, but yeah, I do think that they're very different kinds of deals. And, and I'm, I'm not sure that, that that ever would have gone through. But by the same token, I am surprised to see how hard the FCC has ultimately pushed against it. I didn't expect that. I didn't see that coming.

• 13:42Nilay Patel?

  The FCC has showed up.

• 13:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:44Nilay Patel?

  A lot. Like they won net neutrality and they're like, oh, we can do stuff.

• 13:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:47Nilay Patel?

  I gotta say, this hat situation is just extraordinarily. Chris is wearing not one, but two birthday hats.

• 13:52Speaker 04

  Don't forget the glow stick.

• 13:53Nilay Patel?

  And a glow stick. The glow stick is, I mean, like I'm wearing a glow stick too. Let's be honest.

• 13:56Speaker 04

  It's true.

• 13:57Nilay Patel?

  But the one birthday hat doesn't have elastic. It just has strings and the strings have just been daintily framing your face.

• 14:03Speaker 03

  The fact that the second birthday hat with one of the strings and the little puffy thing on it is also covered in glitter. And you are both idiots for even touching it, like getting anywhere near it.

• 14:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:14Nilay Patel?

  Oh, you, you have a glitter phobia?

• 14:16Speaker 03

  Just, I'd hate glitter being everywhere.

• 14:17Nilay Patel?

  I prefer to be gently dusted in glitter from time to time. Well, I'm like, you know, I'm a sparkly man.

• 14:22Speaker 04

  Some people pay money to be dusted in glitter. I don't know what that means.

• 14:25Nilay Patel?

  True.

• 14:27Nilay Patel?

  Fact.

• 14:29Nilay Patel?

  No, look, the Comcast thing, we could talk about it forever in, for zero, right? It's just amazing that for us at The Verge and for our readers, we did so much in net neutrality and Comcast was the enemy of the net neutrality battle.

• 14:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:44Nilay Patel?

  And I think everybody hates Comcast. Like that in Comcast, not as a company, but some people hate it as a company. But as a provider of a service that isn't very good.

• 14:54Speaker 04

  You asked Brian Roberts point blank, what is it like to wake up in the morning, knowing that you're the most hated company in America or something like that?

• 15:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. He was like, I don't want it. I don't want to do that. This is last, it's almost a year ago now. It was last May at the Code Conference.

• 15:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:07Nilay Patel?

  And he just didn't have, you know.

• 15:10Speaker 04

  Didn't have a good answer.

• 15:11Nilay Patel?

  His PR people still bring it up with me in Congress. It's like a year later.

• 15:14Speaker 02

  So what does this mean? Is this, this is a win for consumers, obviously, right? What does it mean for normals that don't read The Verge?

• 15:21Nilay Patel?

  You know, I hmm, that's a really good question. I think that's that was kind of Comcast's argument was like, well, you already hate Time Warner. Why wouldn't you just want to hate us too?

• 15:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:30Nilay Patel?

  Right?

• 15:31Speaker 04

  And there's not not a lot of market overlap, which is one of their arguments.

• 15:35Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 15:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it's a

• 15:37Speaker 03

  It means that Time Warner is gonna pull a T-Mobile and hire a crazy ass CEO like John like

• 15:42Nilay Patel?

  Charter's gonna buy them. They're gonna merge with a smaller.

• 15:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:45Nilay Patel?

  What you're gonna see is the Time Warner is like not a good business right now, right? Like it's a there's a reason that they're trying to sell themselves off. So Time Warner Cable will probably merge with another cable company of its size. A lot of people have thrown out like Charter, which is owned by I think Liberty Community. Like there's just all this stuff out there. There's these other mid-tier operators. And then you'll see another regional player, the size of a Comcast emerge, and that will be fascinating. Right? So instead of one basically nationwide monopoly, you'll have two sort of regional gigantic monopolies. And that that push and pull over like, so here's one of the problems. Yeah, Comcast owns everything. If they own the cable market in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, like that, that's where they were gonna go to.

• 16:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:30Nilay Patel?

  Right? It was like 34 of the nation's 35 largest markets or something crazy like that. If you're if you're then a company that isn't NBC, if you're ABC or whatever, and you want to put and you get into a broadcast dispute with Comcast, you're out. You've lost. You have no leverage.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  Right, because they have distribution control.

• 16:45Nilay Patel?

  Right. Distribute over the entire country.

• 16:47Speaker 02

  Okay. And they make the content too.

• 16:49Nilay Patel?

  And they have NBC and they are technically barred from like favoring NBC, but like, come on. You sure?

• 16:56Speaker 04

  I mean, NBC logo is now their logo, so.

• 16:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:00Nilay Patel?

  So, right, and like this happens, right? CBS fights with DirecTV and CBS goes off the air for a minute or by right, this happens consistently. Broadcasters and networks or broadcasters and cable networks are always fighting.

• 17:13Nilay Patel?

  So if they own the whole country, like now they have all the leverage.

• 17:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:16Nilay Patel?

  And so particularly in this moment, as cable subscriptions are dropping, where there had been a question about net neutrality, having two, two big players in the country is better than having one monopoly.

• 17:27Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I think that we can connect this to the, the, this great piece that Ben just wrote about how like the breaking of the cable bundle and all these TV services, like especially HBO, moving to internet only is happening way faster than we all expected it to. And like Comcast.

• 17:47Nilay Patel?

  It's never gonna happen.

• 17:49Speaker 03

  And I think that Comcast, if Comcast had managed to make this thing happen and they managed to buy a Time Warner, they probably would have been able to slow that down.

• 17:58Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 17:58Speaker 03

  Right. But like, not only is unbundling happening faster, but the FCC actually like found its legs or arm. I don't know. What's the metaphor? Found its.

• 18:09Speaker 04

  Limbs.

• 18:10Speaker 03

  Limbs.

• 18:11Nilay Patel?

  Swords.

• 18:11Speaker 03

  Swords.

• 18:12Nilay Patel?

  Handguns. The FCC found a handgun.

• 18:16Nilay Patel?

  The FCC was in its grandfather's basement.

• 18:19Speaker 04

  Tom Wheeler with an AR-15 with a war paint on.

• 18:23Speaker 02

  Someone's gonna photoshop that.

• 18:24Nilay Patel?

  The FCC watched Full Metal Jacket.

• 18:27Speaker 03

  But so the question is like, is this the, is this the end of like consumer friendly broad changes to like infrastructure policy?

• 18:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 18:37Speaker 03

  Or is this, is this the end? Or is like more crazy change coming?

• 18:42Speaker 02

  I think I'm telling you every week on the Vergecast, I say this, Apple is going to just flip all of the desks everywhere.

• 18:49Speaker 03

  No, I mean, like the, Apple doesn't want to be in the cable.

• 18:53Speaker 04

  I mean, you realize that these rumors have been going, when I started adding gadget in 2006, there were rumors that Apple was going to start a wireless service.

• 19:04Speaker 04

  What?

• 19:04Speaker 02

  I don't know what that was.

• 19:07Speaker 03

  But no, but they looked at it.

• 19:08Nilay Patel?

  But Apple, dude, Apple looked into it.

• 19:13Nilay Patel?

  Cut that Iverge siren.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  Man.

• 19:19Speaker 03

  Can we all, can we all pause for a moment and apologize to our podcast producers who are gonna have to deal with the levels on this audio?

• 19:26Speaker 04

  Their ears are bleeding right now.

• 19:28Nilay Patel?

  Can I, can I say this? Well, we're gonna talk about the watch later, but the Apple Watch died, so I'm not wearing a dead Moto 360.

• 19:35Speaker 03

  Oh, no.

• 19:35Nilay Patel?

  Showing a different dead watch.

• 19:36Speaker 03

  Why?

• 19:37Nilay Patel?

  I don't know, just put it on. It's pretty cool.

• 19:41Speaker 04

  I mean, it looks a little bit like your normal, was it a Nixon or something?

• 19:44Nilay Patel?

  I think that's why I grabbed it by accident.

• 19:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 19:46Speaker 03

  Oh, you grabbed it by accident?

• 19:47Nilay Patel?

  I, well, I don't, I mean, I, it's different.

• 19:49Speaker 03

  Didn't you once say that your, your, your Nixon watch doesn't have a battery in it anyway?

• 19:53Nilay Patel?

  That's what I like.

• 19:54Speaker 04

  That's your move.

• 19:54Nilay Patel?

  I like dark squares on my wrist, or dark shapes.

• 19:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:59Speaker 04

  Uh, I, I do wanna say one other thing about the FCC.

• 20:01Nilay Patel?

  Don't we all?

• 20:03Speaker 04

  So minion Clyburn, uh, the former, uh, interim, uh, chair person.

• 20:11Speaker 03

  Right, and still the best name ever to Gracie SEC.

• 20:13Speaker 04

  True. Uh, she was staying, uh, in an Upper West Side hotel last night.

• 20:18Speaker 03

  Uh, how do you know this?

• 20:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, where, what? I'm going somewhere with this.

• 20:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 20:23Speaker 04

  And.

• 20:24Nilay Patel?

  Let him go.

• 20:25Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 20:25Speaker 04

  And, um, there were police reports last night that, uh, that a coyote was seen running around Manhattan.

• 20:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 20:34Speaker 04

  And the, and the police couldn't catch this coyote.

• 20:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 20:36Speaker 04

  Well, so minion Clyburn tweeted this morning, uh, I've, I've like never seen a, a coyote in North Carolina, wherever she's from, uh, but I come to the Upper West Side of Manhattan and I, there's a coyote right outside my window.

• 20:47Nilay Patel?

  Whoa.

• 20:48Speaker 04

  So she saw the coy, the coyote of Manhattan.

• 20:50Nilay Patel?

  It's pronounced coyote?

• 20:52Speaker 04

  No coyote.

• 20:53Nilay Patel?

  It's wild.

• 20:54Speaker 04

  Depends on, I think it depends on what part of the country you're from.

• 20:56Nilay Patel?

  I think it depends on what, I'm from Texas. How much Friday Night Lights you've been watching.

• 21:01Speaker 02

  So then how would they pronounce zygote?

• 21:05Speaker 03

  Zygote, really?

• 21:06Nilay Patel?

  Sam, Sam, Sam, hype check whatever you just did.

• 21:10Speaker 02

  I thought it was pretty clever. Anyway, continue, continue. Zygote.

• 21:14Speaker 04

  Okay, let's move on.

• 21:15Nilay Patel?

  What is wrong with you?

• 21:16Speaker 03

  There's nowhere to go from.

• 21:18Nilay Patel?

  No, your kazoo privileges have been taken away.

• 21:21Speaker 02

  I have all of the kazooes.

• 21:22Nilay Patel?

  No, 10 minute kazoo break.

• 21:24Speaker 03

  So how come you got the best hat? Like you had a crown.

• 21:27Speaker 02

  Cause I'm his swag.

• 21:27Nilay Patel?

  Oh, he got the party pirate.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:29Speaker 04

  And he has the Mardi Gras beads too.

• 21:31Nilay Patel?

  I will say this, when Sarah was going to buy us all the party stuff, she asked me if I wanted party hats or pirate hats. And I said, whatever a party pirate would wear. And that's what she gave Sam.

• 21:41Speaker 03

  Perfect.

• 21:42Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that's party pirate.

• 21:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:45Nilay Patel?

  Admiral Ravetown. Admiral Ravetown. He looks good. All right.

• 21:51Speaker 02

  Admiral Ravetown.

• 21:53Nilay Patel?

  Play the, we gotta make some money. Ready?

• 21:58Nilay Patel?

  This episode of the Vergecast is brought to you by Lynda.com, the online learning platform with over 3,000 on-demand video courses to help you strengthen your business, technology, and creative skills. For a free 10-day trial, visit lynda.com/vergecast. That's L-Y-N-D-A.com/vergecast. Lynda.com is for problem solvers, for the curious, for people who want to make things happen like this man over here, Dieter Bone. Maybe you want to master Excel, Dieter.

• 22:20Speaker 03

  I do.

• 22:21Nilay Patel?

  Maybe you want to learn some negotiation tactics.

• 22:23Speaker 03

  I need them.

• 22:24Nilay Patel?

  You want to build a website?

• 22:26Speaker 03

  I would like to do that.

• 22:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Do you want to boost your Photoshop skills?

• 22:30Speaker 03

  They're pretty poor right now.

• 22:31Nilay Patel?

  Can do it at lynda.com. You can do it there. Some courses that are worth checking out. Sam, I've got some suggestions for you.

• 22:40Speaker 02

  Take off the hat.

• 22:41Nilay Patel?

  Excel 2001 for the Mac, managing and analyzing data. That's for you. Figure out some Snapchat graphs. I want you to do it. Building a note-taking app for iOS 8, Christopher.

• 22:54Speaker 04

  I'm on it.

• 22:55Nilay Patel?

  Learn how to build a complete iOS 8 app from scratch using the iOS 8 SDK and Xcode.

• 22:59Speaker 04

  I'll take that.

• 23:00Nilay Patel?

  And I, just so you know, will be programming the Internet of Things with iOS. I'll explore the Internet of Things. I will discover how to program, quote unquote, "things", such as wearable tech, appliance sensors, and programmable hardware. Then I will control all of you.

• 23:14Speaker 02

  You do you.

• 23:15Nilay Patel?

  With a Lynda.com membership, you can watch and learn from thousands of top experts who are passionate about teaching. You can stream thousands of video courses on demand. You can learn them on your own schedule. Courses are structured so you can watch them start to finish or consume them in bite-sized pieces. You can use course transcripts to follow along, search and answer, or just skip around in the video. Go crazy. Do you want to learn iOS 8 out of order? You can do it with lynda.com.

• 23:34Speaker 04

  I do.

• 23:35Nilay Patel?

  Take notes as you go, refer to them as later. Download tutorials to watch on the go. You can access everything on your iOS or Android device, where you are making a note-taking app. Just think about it.

• 23:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:44Nilay Patel?

  It's all happening all at the same time. You can create and share playlists, of course, as you want to watch, to customize your learning path. I will say this, nothing bothers me more than a non-c customized learning path. Your lynda.com membership will get you unlimited access to training on hundreds of topics for one flat rate. Whether you're looking to become an industry expert, you're passionate about a hobby, or you just want to learn something new, like Excel 2011. I want you to visit lynda.com/thevergecast and sign up for a free 10-day trial. That's lynda.com/vergecast.

• 24:14Speaker 04

  Can I share a quick anecdote?

• 24:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:17Speaker 02

  Is it about coyotes?

• 24:18Nilay Patel?

  Anecdote horn.

• 24:24Speaker 04

  So I was, I was sitting, I was sitting in my, in my lovely, my lovely home.

• 24:31Speaker 02

  I'd listen to you, Chris. Is this about the Apple Watch?

• 24:33Speaker 04

  No, no, it's not. I was sitting in my lovely home last evening, just minding my own business.

• 24:39Nilay Patel?

  And then Minion Clyburn showed up at the door. With a coyote.

• 24:43Speaker 04

  I looked outside my window and there was a coyote. And Minion Clyburn.

• 24:46Nilay Patel?

  Minion Clyburn riding a coyote. I don't know if you know this, every FCC commissioner gets a type of wild dog.

• 24:53Speaker 04

  No, it's, they're like, they're like.

• 24:54Nilay Patel?

  Tom Wheeler has a hyena.

• 24:56Speaker 04

  They're wizards and those coyotes are their familiars.

• 24:58Nilay Patel?

  No, I'm just saying.

• 24:59Speaker 04

  It's like instead of an owl, they have a coyote.

• 25:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Well, the problem is they have.

• 25:02Speaker 04

  Ajit Pai has a wolf.

• 25:06Nilay Patel?

  Pretty sure he's got a dingo. Is a dingo a type of dog?

• 25:10Speaker 04

  No, yeah, it's an Australian wild one.

• 25:13Nilay Patel?

  I get it, I get what you're saying. No, yeah. A dingo with the thing with the reference to the other thing. Yeah. Anyway, I just want to, once again, point out that Tom Wheeler has a hyena.

• 25:21Speaker 04

  He is a hyena kind of guy. Minding my, my own business at home and I get a Periscope notification.

• 25:28Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 25:29Speaker 04

  And I pull it up and Sam says, "Hey, guys, I'm going to check out this new potato restaurant."

• 25:36Speaker 04

  And he's on his skateboard and he's like, sorry bikers, sorry bikers, yo. And I'm like, I know what potato restaurant he's talking about.

• 25:42Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 25:43Speaker 04

  It's opening a block from my apartment.

• 25:44Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 25:45Speaker 04

  So I, I get in my shoes and I run.

• 25:48Nilay Patel?

  I get, wait, I get in my shoes?

• 25:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, I get in my shoes.

• 25:52Nilay Patel?

  Who else says I get in my shoes?

• 25:53Speaker 02

  I hopped on a coyote.

• 25:55Speaker 04

  When you have hype shoes like I do, you get in them.

• 25:57Speaker 03

  Wait, I thought that, I thought you were only allowed to refer to them as kicks.

• 26:00Nilay Patel?

  Wait, wait, wait, wait. I just saw, you get in your shoes?

• 26:03Speaker 04

  When you have hype shoes, you get in them, yes. I'm, I'm making this up as I go.

• 26:08Nilay Patel?

  I'm with you, I just, that's alright.

• 26:10Speaker 04

  I, I run, so I, I run in Sam's general direction, hoping that I can make a cameo in his periscope. Cause that's my dream. Every time Sam periscopes from somewhere in the city, I'm like, can I make it to his periscope before he stops?

• 26:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 26:22Speaker 04

  And this was the first time where the answer was realistically, yes. So I'm running toward him and just before I get to him, he stops periscoping.

• 26:29Speaker 02

  I stopped broadcasting. I was literally like, alright, but guys, bye. And I dropped my phone and up comes Chris. And I'm like, oh man, here we go.

• 26:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, so, so I started the periscope and, and then he described the potato medallions and the, uh...

• 26:40Nilay Patel?

  Wait, let's, okay, let's, I wanna, there's so many questions. Okay, here's my first question. How is this related to Google's Wi- new cell network?

• 26:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:48Nilay Patel?

  Second, second, this is a restaurant that's, that, that serves only potatoes?

• 26:53Speaker 02

  This is a restaurant that my brother and a few friends opened up after two years of planning. And this was like the week they're opening. So I was like, yeah, I'm gonna go.

• 26:59Nilay Patel?

  Do they have anything other than potatoes?

• 27:01Speaker 02

  They have, it is a potato-based place. You could get like mashed potatoes or tots or friend fries.

• 27:07Nilay Patel?

  You just definitely didn't answer my question. Is there anything except potatoes?

• 27:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, you could get like veggies on the meat and then you could get, or you could get veggies and meat and then toppings and then sauces.

• 27:16Speaker 04

  And he described the, the fries as beef and I asked him if he meant literally beef or figuratively beef?

• 27:21Nilay Patel?

  Well, yeah, chicken fries are a thing.

• 27:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, this is true.

• 27:25Nilay Patel?

  What's the name of the, plug your brother's restaurant, what's the name of the restaurant?

• 27:27Speaker 02

  Burlap Sack NYC. It's on, uh, 34th and 3rd.

• 27:31Speaker 04

  And if you see me...

• 27:32Nilay Patel?

  Is there an offer code?

• 27:33Speaker 02

  No, there's no offer code, but if you go, I mean, the food's good.

• 27:35Speaker 04

  If you go to burlapsacknyc slash bird.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  No, but it's good. It's cool.

• 27:42Nilay Patel?

  All right, all right, all right. Do they have good cell service there?

• 27:45Speaker 02

  Yes, I was, I was periscoping.

• 27:47Speaker 04

  I see where you're going with this.

• 27:48Nilay Patel?

  I tried. Sam just knocked me down.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  Sorry, sorry.

• 27:51Nilay Patel?

  What's the sound of a man being viciously knocked off a Segway? Cause that's what you just did to me. It's not that sound.

• 27:58Nilay Patel?

  When you get knocked off a Segway, it starts playing birthday horns.

• 28:01Speaker 04

  We're dangerously close to a Paul Blart Segway here, so we need to move away from that.

• 28:05Nilay Patel?

  All I'm saying is we're about to, we, here's, I think, the biggest news of the week.

• 28:09Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 28:10Nilay Patel?

  Potentially the biggest news of the month.

• 28:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:13Nilay Patel?

  Definitely not the biggest.

• 28:13Speaker 03

  Bigger than Comcast?

• 28:15Nilay Patel?

  Comcast is whatever. Comcast is like a balloon slowly deflating.

• 28:18Speaker 03

  That was right.

• 28:18Nilay Patel?

  Is that news?

• 28:19Speaker 03

  Doomed. It was doomed from the start.

• 28:21Nilay Patel?

  It was just, it was, you saw it coming. You know, it's like a, the, what's, are you periscoping now?

• 28:27Speaker 03

  No, I'm just showing off my brand new blue steel Nexus 6.

• 28:31Speaker 04

  Is slowly deflating, it's going.

• 28:34Nilay Patel?

  And that's the opposite noise. The opposite noise is, okay. No, I will say Google, it's Google Fi.

• 28:40Speaker 04

  Google Fi.

• 28:41Nilay Patel?

  Google Fi. I wish it was Google Fee.

• 28:42Speaker 04

  But Fi makes sense, cause Wi-Fi.

• 28:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I get it.

• 28:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, but there's people that pronounce it Wi-Fi.

• 28:47Speaker 04

  That's true. It is called Wi-Fi in Europe.

• 28:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:50Nilay Patel?

  No, it's not.

• 28:51Speaker 04

  Yes, it is.

• 28:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, you got done the Wi-Fi. Yeah, it's real.

• 28:54Nilay Patel?

  What was that?

• 28:54Speaker 02

  Some Israeli accent or something.

• 28:56Nilay Patel?

  It makes you look like a party pope. You're like, doing a bad Italian accent.

• 29:00Speaker 02

  I need the password for the Wi-Fi.

• 29:04Nilay Patel?

  All right, party pope shepherds.

• 29:05Speaker 03

  Google Fi.

• 29:08Speaker 03

  Is a MVNO, where you buy service directly from Google.

• 29:15Nilay Patel?

  What, dude?

• 29:18Nilay Patel?

  His Holiness, Pope Ecstasy V.

• 29:27Nilay Patel?

  All right, fine. John is not having it with us today.

• 29:31Speaker 03

  Trying to do the story.

• 29:32Nilay Patel?

  This is, you know what's going on.

• 29:33Speaker 03

  You can, you can, you can buy service for your phone, but only one phone directly from Google, only works on the Nexus 6. It runs on both T-Mobile and Sprint together, whatever is better or faster or cooler.

• 29:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, dynamically switching.

• 29:44Speaker 03

  Dynamically switches between them, and it also runs on Wi-Fi, of course, and that sounds like kind of boring, but. They will hook you up to a bunch of public wifi hotspots and then they will like they will the phone automatically like does a secure VPN through the hotspot so you can feel secure using wifi instead of LTE or whatever. 20 bucks a month, base cost for unlimited talk and text. And then it's 10 bucks a gig for data. And you can either buy a bunch of data per month and if you don't use it, they refund it back to you. Or you can say screw it and just you just pay 10 bucks a gig prorated as you use it. So that's what it costs if you go over what you're buying. If you just buy zero, that's just what it costs.

• 30:27Speaker 03

  So yeah, you're looking like 20 bucks a month plus taxes and fees plus 10 bucks per gig. Theoretically, and I mean more than theoretically, it's cheaper than everybody else. And it's more technically interesting because it should be able to switch between Sprint and T-Mobile. And while both networks on their own are pretty wah wah, together, maybe they're great. I mean, the T-Mobile fans are gonna be super mad at me for describing it as wah wah, but let's be clear. Like when T-Mobile's great, it's great. And when it's not, it's really not.

• 30:56Speaker 04

  Right.

• 30:57Speaker 03

  Right.

• 30:58Speaker 04

  But maybe that's where wifi kind of backfills you there.

• 31:00Speaker 03

  Or Sprint.

• 31:01Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 31:02Speaker 03

  So, but yeah, you gotta use it on a Nexus 6 and like you gotta ask for an invite.

• 31:07Nilay Patel?

  Did you just get one of those?

• 31:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, I bought it so that I could jump on the network.

• 31:11Nilay Patel?

  How do I buy one?

• 31:12Speaker 03

  Go to store.google.com. They moved all of their devices to that address.

• 31:16Nilay Patel?

  I couldn't figure this out yesterday. So here's the whole Sprint T-Mobile thing for me is like, it's gotta work.

• 31:23Speaker 03

  Right.

• 31:24Nilay Patel?

  Like, it's not actually clear to me that, so it sounds like Google's moving your phone number up to the cloud. Right?

• 31:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:31Nilay Patel?

  And then it's like-

• 31:32Speaker 04

  It's Google Voice on steroids in many ways.

• 31:34Nilay Patel?

  Right. And then it's connecting through whatever network it wants.

• 31:37Speaker 03

  Right.

• 31:38Nilay Patel?

  And what I don't understand was why this is so very technically different? Like, why they couldn't have done this with the Nexus phone on AT&T and wifi? Why they, like, I get the bridging, they needed to build a phone that could do all the bands to bridge Sprint and T-Mobile. But why can't they do this with Nexus phones on AT&T?

• 31:52Speaker 03

  They could. Well, I don't see why not, except they wanna have a MVNO.

• 31:58Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 31:59Speaker 03

  That's, and like in order to have an MVNO, you gotta sign an agreement.

• 32:03Nilay Patel?

  I'm really gonna spend $649 on this thing.

• 32:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, someone has to own the phone number.

• 32:07Nilay Patel?

  Do you see a color?

• 32:08Speaker 03

  So the, I got the blue one. I had the white one before. The, the blue one, like, the back is pretty cool. Nice slate.

• 32:13Speaker 04

  Are you ordering one live right now?

• 32:15Nilay Patel?

  I've, I've bought every Nexus on the Burgecast and I will continue to do so.

• 32:18Speaker 03

  The rail's like.

• 32:19Speaker 04

  Did you actually just buy it? You did it?

• 32:20Nilay Patel?

  I'm thinking about, I'm thinking, I can't decide whether I should have blew, this blue's kind of, I mean, it's nicer than the other color.

• 32:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's the thing. So what Chris Welch did, um, he bought a white one, I think, but then he put a custom black cover on the back. So it looked cool.

• 32:35Nilay Patel?

  Okay, the end.

• 32:36Speaker 04

  Wait, is that, is that different? There, there are two blue ones, right?

• 32:39Speaker 03

  No.

• 32:40Speaker 04

  Really?

• 32:41Speaker 03

  Maybe, maybe AT&T has a special one.

• 32:44Nilay Patel?

  Or Vines.

• 32:44Speaker 03

  Or Verizon, maybe.

• 32:46Speaker 04

  So.

• 32:46Nilay Patel?

  How do I change my?

• 32:47Speaker 04

  So I, I tested, I tested Republic Wireless, uh, last year.

• 32:51Speaker 03

  So let's talk about what that is.

• 32:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, so Republic, um, is kind of a proto-Google Fi, um, in that it is a small company started by some of the guys who.

• 33:01Speaker 03

  Just like Google, tiny company.

• 33:03Speaker 04

  Just like Google.

• 33:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:04Speaker 04

  Um, uh, actually, there's some of the guys involved with it, um, co-founded Grand Central, which is the product that eventually became Google Voice.

• 33:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:12Speaker 04

  So it's a pretty small.

• 33:13Speaker 03

  Which is central to Google Fi.

• 33:14Speaker 04

  Right, so it's pretty insular community here. But anyway, um, what Republic does is they sell phones that have been burned with custom firmware, um, that work on both Sprint and Wi-Fi. So it's similar to Google Fi, except minus T-Mobile.

• 33:29Speaker 03

  Right.

• 33:29Speaker 04

  And what I found, what surprised me about using it, it was a little janky in some ways that made it impractical for me personally as a daily driver. But, uh, what surprised me about it was how heavily I, I found that I ended up relying on Wi-Fi. Cause think about it, you're spending 95% of your time at home or at the office and the remainder of your time is spent in an area that probably hasn't, has a hotspot that you can get onto, especially in a place like New York City.

• 33:53Speaker 03

  Right.

• 33:53Speaker 04

  Um, so I, I think that Google Fi, I think what people are gonna find with Fi is that it is surprisingly, uh, possible to use this.

• 34:01Speaker 03

  Right.

• 34:02Nilay Patel?

  Cause I'm at home and then I'm at work and I just need to use it in the middle.

• 34:05Speaker 04

  Right.

• 34:05Nilay Patel?

  I think what people are also gonna find is it's print and T-Mobile's coverage maps are like pretty similar.

• 34:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:11Nilay Patel?

  Right, I mean, they both have the same priorities generally, which is cover the cities, cover the highways.

• 34:16Speaker 03

  Right.

• 34:16Nilay Patel?

  And so if you've, if you live in a big city, like, maybe this is gonna be awesome for you.

• 34:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:20Nilay Patel?

  But.

• 34:21Speaker 03

  I mean, we were talking about this a little bit yesterday, in all likelihood, Google would have preferred to work with at least one of 18 tier Verizon on this, but the big guys have far less incentive to be cooperative about a product like Google Fi than T-Mobile and Sprint.

• 34:33Nilay Patel?

  And Ben wrote a great piece, like, why NBO suddenly makes sense. Like, five years ago, starting NBO was like a kiss of death.

• 34:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:39Nilay Patel?

  Right, like ESPN had one.

• 34:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, Disney had one.

• 34:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's ridiculous. And they all failed. And now, what they're all about is because the phones have thankfully become more standardized, they're about segmenting customers. So you see, most of the NBOs are targeted at lower income people. There's a bunch that are like, targeted at like teens, you know, like.

• 34:58Speaker 03

  Right.

• 34:58Nilay Patel?

  There are segments of the market where.

• 34:59Speaker 03

  Or for expats from other countries, or like, there's like one for Chinese folks who live in the US.

• 35:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but that's all places where T-Mobile, it would be a huge distraction for them to like, go and like, build a pricing plan for this tiny little segment of the market. So they wholesale the spectrum and the access, and they say some other company, like, go maximize this thing for us. Which is an interesting idea. But then you see, like, Google's like, what if we try it like this? And T-Mobile is like, yeah, what if that is what makes us bigger and makes us more money?

• 35:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:26Nilay Patel?

  Um, the question I have is, like, this is necessarily small. By the way, my Google login is so confused that I can't buy an access on the air right now. That's, I don't wanna do anything more.

• 35:35Speaker 03

  You've gotta, you've gotta, like, open up a new Chrome window that is only tied to the actual Gmail address you wanna use. It's the worst.

• 35:42Nilay Patel?

  Same.

• 35:43Speaker 03

  With the store. Like, it's impossible to switch to store. Uh, I hate it. I can't stand it. So, speaking of Google logins and complications, you have to use an at gmail.com address to sign up for Fi. Can't use your custom domain, whatever, that's fine. Um, but two, it seems like from all, like, their how-tos and FAQs and everything else, that signing up for Google Fi is one of the same as getting a Google Voice number. Because they, they, like, it, they say, you can use it anywhere, and you can use it on your laptop, or on a tablet, or whatever, and like, it works with Hangouts really well. Like, it seems pretty obvious that, like, a Google Fi number is basically just, uh, a, uh, a Google Voice number. And that's like built into Hangouts so that works a little better, but like that integration isn't as good as it could be, I don't think.

• 36:27Speaker 03

  And you know, voice has a history of being like a huge pain from time to time. I mean, I still have mine. I would like, I switched back away from it because it was like too unreliable. I would love to use it again.

• 36:39Speaker 03

  You know, if Hangouts were better.

• 36:42Speaker 03

  But yeah, it looks like that's, that's just it. So like you, maybe there'll be another number that is like paired to your phone, but they're doing something magical on the backend with your Hangouts numbers to let it work apparently across T-Mobile and Sprint, maybe?

• 36:56Nilay Patel?

  I've checked Google Voice.

• 36:57Speaker 03

  Not really sure.

• 36:59Speaker 04

  I mean Google Fi.

• 37:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:00Nilay Patel?

  No, Google Voice. I mean, voice.

• 37:03Speaker 02

  It's so confusing, right? It's like, do normals know what Google Voice is? I'd give it a four.

• 37:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 37:10Speaker 03

  It had so much promise.

• 37:11Speaker 02

  I know.

• 37:11Nilay Patel?

  No, it's always been a mess.

• 37:12Speaker 02

  But okay.

• 37:13Nilay Patel?

  Google Voice has always been a mess.

• 37:13Speaker 02

  Is there a difference between Google Voice and then the calling inside gmail.com? Like, you know how you have the phone, you need to install that plugin?

• 37:22Nilay Patel?

  They're supposed to be the same.

• 37:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:23Speaker 02

  But they're not.

• 37:24Nilay Patel?

  Well, it depends on how much, how bought in you are to Google Voice.

• 37:27Speaker 03

  Right.

• 37:29Speaker 02

  And then Hangouts also, that's like a whole nother thing, too?

• 37:32Nilay Patel?

  You know, I would say this, this is particularly like, we saw, we see, we've seen it with Google and now we're seeing with Facebook, where they try to make everything the same. Where it's like, the ecosystem is so overpowering. It was like to use one Google service, you had to like use all 50.

• 37:47Speaker 04

  Google Plus and Photos is the most infamous example of that, I think.

• 37:50Nilay Patel?

  Right, Google Plus and Photos, but Google Plus is also there, it's, it's there with Hangouts. Like, we were talking on the show, like, I think a couple of weeks ago.

• 38:00Nilay Patel?

  Like, I really miss having a buddy list just sort of like on my screen.

• 38:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:03Nilay Patel?

  And like Hangouts just took that away from me.

• 38:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:06Nilay Patel?

  Like now it's like in my Gmail and like it's.

• 38:08Speaker 03

  So you can, you can do it in your Gmail, you can do it on a Chromebook really well.

• 38:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, no, you can, and I've got this like bad little plugin on my Mac.

• 38:15Speaker 03

  Oh, it's the worst on the Mac.

• 38:16Nilay Patel?

  It's garbage and it doesn't know what Google account I'm logged into.

• 38:19Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 38:19Nilay Patel?

  Like every single, here, Google, if you're listening to me, it is my birthday and I want this gift.

• 38:25Speaker 03

  Birchcast's birthday, it's not your birthday.

• 38:26Nilay Patel?

  Well, we're, aren't we all, it's Dieter's birthday.

• 38:29Speaker 03

  My birthday. I'm turning 82.

• 38:31Nilay Patel?

  Weird, weird number of episodes. But Google, listen to me now on this, the day of our birth. Every product you make should have an account selector in it that works. Yep, that's it. You should fire everyone until you find the one person that can do that for every one of your products.

• 38:49Speaker 03

  And they've been promising this since before the dawn of Google Plus.

• 38:52Nilay Patel?

  But they know that everyone has like 50 Gmail accounts.

• 38:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:55Nilay Patel?

  I've got one just for like hookah, hookah buying. I don't buy hookahs.

• 38:59Speaker 03

  Really?

• 39:00Speaker 04

  What?

• 39:02Nilay Patel?

  I was gonna make another joke, but then I had to back out of that joke.

• 39:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:05Nilay Patel?

  At the last minute.

• 39:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:06Nilay Patel?

  And I made a hookah joke and said, I have a vape account. Neil, I have a vape Gmail account.

• 39:10Speaker 03

  Diesel vape.

• 39:11Speaker 04

  Diesel vape.

• 39:11Nilay Patel?

  Diesel vape.

• 39:12Speaker 04

  That's what it is.

• 39:13Nilay Patel?

  Uh, no, but it's a huge problem. So like, everything in Google is like, just wrapped up in the same thing. And Google Voice, I think, suffered the most for it.

• 39:20Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, and this, this gets hooked into like Hangouts, video conferencing too. Like, it's like, just everything. You can never know what account you're logged into.

• 39:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 39:28Speaker 03

  You never like, you'll like click on a thing and be like, no, you don't have permission to go to this thing, but I do. Oh, I gotta switch accounts. Oh, blah. So I have on my computer, um, question mark, A U T H equals zero, A U T H equals one, A U T H equals two, because I'm logged into multiple Google accounts in Chrome. And if I want to actually go to a thing, I've got to paste URL and then paste the auth user thing to manually hack the URL to switch accounts.

• 39:54Nilay Patel?

  You guys know that I have an idea.

• 39:55Speaker 03

  This is the world that I have to live in because you suck at accounts, Google.

• 39:59Nilay Patel?

  Do you know, I have a-

• 39:59Speaker 03

  And can you imagine what it's like to be like, uh-

• 40:01Nilay Patel?

  To work at Google?

• 40:02Speaker 03

  No, to be a mortal. To be a mere mortal.

• 40:04Nilay Patel?

  We're all going to die.

• 40:05Speaker 03

  Not a god of URLs like me.

• 40:08Nilay Patel?

  And this is the day of our birth. I think we should consider our own finite mortality.

• 40:11Speaker 03

  Let's not.

• 40:12Nilay Patel?

  Um, look, one day, one day this is all over and we'll be pasty in auth strings to Google. You know, we wanted to have a show called Pro Tips with Dieter Bone.

• 40:20Speaker 03

  We still should.

• 40:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, we absolutely should.

• 40:21Nilay Patel?

  But the problem is like, it was like, Dieter, what tip would you give to the Snapchat users on Pro Tips by Dieter Bone? And he started just yelling URLs at the screen. Real funny.

• 40:28Speaker 04

  Actually, my idea was, I can't believe you're not using this app with Dieter Bone.

• 40:31Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. No, this tool. I can't believe you're not using this tool.

• 40:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:35Speaker 03

  What was the tool that I got really mad about? Oh, Simple Image. Simple Image is a, is a replacement-

• 40:40Nilay Patel?

  I'll fire it out now.

• 40:40Speaker 03

  On the Mac.

• 40:42Nilay Patel?

  Ooh, Dieter's on a Simple Image train again.

• 40:43Speaker 04

  God damn it.

• 40:48Speaker 03

  Look, I find stuff that makes computers better and I get excited about it.

• 40:52Nilay Patel?

  Wait, so you think it's saying what too?

• 40:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, what, what? Yeah. Yeah.

• 40:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Me too. The whole time.

• 40:58Speaker 03

  I'm pretty sure it's saying chew.

• 41:00Nilay Patel?

  John's gonna leave. I don't know where he is right now, but you can see in the control room, there's just steam rising from.

• 41:05Speaker 03

  When I blow the G12, I do it away from the mic.

• 41:08Nilay Patel?

  I've been, I've been, Teeter, I've been off mic blowing since you were.

• 41:15Nilay Patel?

  What? Alright, let's, Chris.

• 41:17Speaker 03

  Is there anything else to say about Fi? We gotta finish that.

• 41:19Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 41:20Speaker 03

  Oh, wait, wait, wait.

• 41:21Nilay Patel?

  It's only one phone. This is a problem. This is their problem. It's only one phone.

• 41:23Speaker 03

  Very important. Actually, I have two things to say. You go first. Well, I have a second thing to say. Okay. My second thing to say is this, plus they just announced, they like officially announced the Android Wear improvements.

• 41:36Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah, that's.

• 41:37Speaker 03

  Right? And it's only on the Urbane, which isn't coming to the US till later this year in the Google Store. They won't even say how much it costs. No, it has this month. This month, sorry, later this month, might as well like next 30 days, announce the price, guys, announce the date, come on. The beautiful watch.

• 41:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, why don't they do that? Cause, is there like a reason why they withhold that?

• 41:55Nilay Patel?

  You think the Urbane is great, right?

• 41:56Speaker 03

  I think it's beautiful.

• 41:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Crazy.

• 41:58Speaker 03

  Have you seen one in person? Yes, you showed it to me.

• 42:01Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 42:02Speaker 03

  I think you did.

• 42:03Nilay Patel?

  I did not. I showed you G Watch R and you're like, oh, look, it's. Alright, I'm gonna.

• 42:06Speaker 03

  No, but no, the thing I'm gonna say is like, Google I/O is coming up at the end of May. Like, what are they gonna talk about?

• 42:12Nilay Patel?

  Let's, let's hit pause.

• 42:13Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 42:13Nilay Patel?

  So we can read this next.

• 42:16Speaker 03

  We got, we got.

• 42:17Nilay Patel?

  Commercial message.

• 42:18Speaker 03

  Alright.

• 42:18Nilay Patel?

  And then I think we should do some watch talk and we should, we should bring this to an end.

• 42:21Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 42:25Nilay Patel?

  Today's episode of the Vergecast was also brought to you by Tripcase. Tripcase has helped brilliant people take over 30 million trips last year by collecting their flight, hotel, and other trip items into a single app on your phone or tablet. You also get free flight notifications if you're delayed or your gate changes, and their support for Android Wear and Pebble, so you'll always be up to date. To get started, just go to tripcase.com/vergecast to sign up. Teeter?

• 42:46Speaker 03

  I will.

• 42:47Nilay Patel?

  Teeter's just hat-tracking.

• 42:47Speaker 03

  I'm going, I'm going on a vacation, so I'm gonna use this.

• 42:49Nilay Patel?

  If you are still not convinced.

• 42:52Nilay Patel?

  Here is why TripCase is the place where trips live. There's Uber integration. They fill in your pickup and drop off locations based on your trip. They show you Uber rates right within the app, which is actually pretty cool. Free flight alerts. If things change, TripCase will automatically alert you to any changes. Like a flight delay, gate switch, emails, notifications on your phone, tablet, or smartwatch. You can share your trip. You can send your itinerary to coworkers, loved ones. I like to send my itinerary to Chris because he is both a coworker and a loved one. I send it to him twice. One for each category. One says, "I will return," and the other one just has a question mark. You can stop talking about whether your flight is delayed and start telling them about how much fun you're having because they're not with you. Remember this place.

• 43:37Nilay Patel?

  You can easily say the restaurant you found on your trip so you can remember the next time you're in town. There's also destination weather. You can figure out the weather of where you're going. And seat maps, which actually are my favorite feature because I am a seat snob on planes. Ditto. Because I take the same flights over and over again. Yeah. 19E on Delta going to San Francisco on the way back. Isn't E a middle seat? No, it's... Depends on the plane. It depends on the plane. But it's the one, there's like two seats. Yeah. And then there's the bulkhead door in front of you. So then there's, it's the seat with no seat in front of it, but the bulkhead door sticks out. Yep. I will say that sometimes the door is not sealed well, so it's like a freezing cold foot situation. But if you have to get out, boom, you're right there. Ready to go. I mean, last time I literally had to stuff a pillow in the, I mean, I had to like build

• 44:22Nilay Patel?

  an insulation system. Build a fort. A real pillow fort by my feet. Anyway, TripCase. Go to tripcase.com/firstcast, check it out today. You can just do all kinds of cool stuff on trips. We're very excited to have them as sponsors. TripCase. And we're back. All right, we should do some watch talking. Watch talk. I think there's a lot of watch stuff to say. Yeah. So can I, we should talk about the iOS or the Android Wear stuff. Yeah, that's fine. What they're gonna do with iOS. Well, it's just like every time Apple does anything with a watch, Google like throws out some more wear news. Right. Like, that's kind of the state Google's in. And it, we're at the point with the Apple Watch, I should have written this today, I didn't have time.

• 45:03Nilay Patel?

  We are at the point in the gadget cycle with the Apple Watch, which is both my favorite part, but as a guy who's had it for a couple of weeks now is like, I'm just, I'm like, I'm like pre sad for people.

• 45:17Nilay Patel?

  Because we're like the magical realism stage.

• 45:19Speaker 03

  Oh, right. Everybody has hopes and dreams and aspirations for what it's gonna do.

• 45:23Nilay Patel?

  They're just layering on what this thing is. And so like, you know, I was, I was in fact, flying home the other day and I noticed, and this is a thing that like, it doesn't happen, like I've had Android Wear watches and I have a Pebble and like,

• 45:36Nilay Patel?

  they don't try to do as much. They, they have a lot of these features, but they don't try to do as much, right? So with Apple, like, you know, like it just apps show up in the thing. It's like, oh, and now I've got Passbook and I can like, throw my boarding pass on my watch. This will be cool.

• 45:48Speaker 03

  Right.

• 45:49Nilay Patel?

  Right? And I can do, I can beep it this way. And I'm running and I realize I drag my bag with my left hand, which is where I wear my watch. So, okay, that's a, so I switched the backhand and then I'm like, I have to use the watch to open my boarding pass. So like, it's just easier to just pull up my phone and like on Passbook, it like shows up on the iPhone like right there.

• 46:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, on the lock screen, right?

• 46:10Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 46:12Nilay Patel?

  And there's like a million ways to solve this problem. But I tweeted because one of the things, and you, you, you guys might think this is the dumbest thing in the world, but for me, it has been like, the idea of having a computer on your wrist is really cool until you, until it, it just knocked home up for me every time that you have to use both of your hands to use the Apple.

• 46:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, right.

• 46:32Nilay Patel?

  It is like, in a way that didn't happen with my Pebble necessarily, in a way that.

• 46:38Speaker 03

  It's because it wasn't as ambitious, right?

• 46:41Nilay Patel?

  Well, the Pebble is just like a bunch of notifications.

• 46:42Speaker 03

  Right.

• 46:43Nilay Patel?

  And they, then they go.

• 46:44Speaker 03

  I mean, they've got the music controller and all the other stuff.

• 46:47Speaker 04

  But this is something that Android Wear is actually trying to solve with their new firmware.

• 46:50Nilay Patel?

  Right. And they're trying to do all this justice, but like also Android Wear in the, in iterations that I have been using it, doesn't do a whole lot.

• 46:57Speaker 03

  Right.

• 46:58Nilay Patel?

  Right? It like, it, Android Wear is like basically like a bunch of Google Now cards that like show up whenever.

• 47:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:02Nilay Patel?

  Right? There's none of this app stuff that's happening.

• 47:04Speaker 03

  I mean, it's there. They've got apps. They're, they're just up to now, up to this latest update that's not out yet. It's, they've been hard to get to and you had to install this app. It's kind of hacky to get to them really quickly and like.

• 47:14Nilay Patel?

  Right. It's not a focus of the product, right? With the Apple Watch, like the stories we're covering in the Apple Watch right now are all app launches. Like just every day, it's like, here's 15 more apps. Here's Trello. Here's Slack. Here's, uh, Zillow is my favorite one. So I tweet like, here's another thing with the Apple Watch, like you need two hands to open a boarding pass and like click it. And like, I got this flood of responses. Like one day you'll just tell Siri to do it. Or one day there'll be eye beacons in every airport in America. It's like, or you could just use one hand on your phone.

• 47:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:42Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, you're layering all of this expectation about where it's gonna go under the product is exists right now. So that's one. And then yesterday I tweeted, like, why would you want Zillow on your watch? So if you don't know, Zillow is a real estate pricing.

• 47:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's like, it's a house search app.

• 47:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 47:58Speaker 03

  So you can buy a house.

• 48:00Nilay Patel?

  And a lot of people are like, oh, you just glance at your wrist while you're driving and look at the price of the house around you, which, one.

• 48:05Speaker 03

  Bad idea.

• 48:05Nilay Patel?

  Don't do that. Don't be that person. Two, it doesn't know. It like, it doesn't know where you are. It doesn't know what house you're looking at.

• 48:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:13Nilay Patel?

  Like, just at a basic level, it just doesn't know what you're looking at. So you have to, and then it's like, the watch for real is slow. So like loading Zillow, I'm presuming that you're not the sort of person who loads Zillow on your phone like every 10 minutes. So Zillow falls out of your phone memory, because it's not running in the background. So to open up the watch means you have to launch Zillow on your phone.

• 48:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:35Nilay Patel?

  And then, so that takes a minute, and then it has to send data to the watch. And then it has to pull your location, which I'm telling you right now, the number one thing that is gonna kill people with the Apple Watch is how long it takes to figure out where you are.

• 48:49Speaker 03

  Right.

• 48:49Nilay Patel?

  Because everything you want it to do is kind of loca- is kind of location dependent.

• 48:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:53Nilay Patel?

  And it takes forever to figure out where you are. And it's just like, it's not gonna do that for you. Yet, five years from now, it will almost certainly do that.

• 49:01Speaker 03

  Nah, two, one, two, two.

• 49:03Nilay Patel?

  I'm saying, like, to make the bet of almost certainly.

• 49:06Speaker 03

  Right.

• 49:06Nilay Patel?

  A five. Five years from now, this thing will be golden.

• 49:09Speaker 03

  So, I mean, here's how I see this dynamic. You know, iPhone comes out and we're like, oh, wow, this thing is really nice, but we didn't know that it was gonna change society and humanity forever, right?

• 49:19Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 49:19Speaker 03

  Uh, and so now this thing is coming out, we're like, oh, it's pretty nice, but nobody, everybody's like, but what if it does the same thing? And nobody's, nobody can say for sure that it won't.

• 49:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 49:32Speaker 03

  But, I mean, like, it doesn't feel this, this revolution.

• 49:36Nilay Patel?

  I felt this during the review very keenly. And this is, take it for what it's, for what it's worth, we didn't give it the highest score in the world. We gave it a seven, and we agonized over that seven.

• 49:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:46Nilay Patel?

  Day and night. But there is the pressure of, um, the last two times people have bet against Apple, they've been totally wrong. Massively, completely wrong.

• 49:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:58Nilay Patel?

  Um, and that's the iPhone, and particularly iPad. And I think people were so wrong about the iPad. Like, so deep, like.

• 50:06Nilay Patel?

  You knew with the iPhone that all the people were like, ah, this is garbage. We're wrong. The first time you use an iPhone, you're like, okay, like, there's a ton of work to do here. But this fundamental interface idea is the right interface idea.

• 50:19Speaker 04

  But people weren't, oh, this is garbage with iPad. They were, I don't know what to do with this with iPad. And I'm still, I don't know what to do with this.

• 50:25Nilay Patel?

  No, I think that's smart, but I think they, there was a lot of this is folly. Nobody wants this crap. It's just a big iPhone.

• 50:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:31Nilay Patel?

  And like, that was all wrong, right? It's not folly. It's like.

• 50:36Speaker 03

  The iPad didn't become the iPhone. Like, to be clear, it's a, it's a smaller business. It's a different kind of business.

• 50:41Nilay Patel?

  But tablets in general, like, Apple created the market, like, it's not even just the iPad. People were like, tablets are garbage. And Apple's like wandering into a dead market. And now it's like, everyone makes a tablet. And we're, as a collective, like, industry and culture, figuring out where they go.

• 50:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:58Nilay Patel?

  And that's like, cool. And like, everyone was wrong. Like, you can go back and like, all the big iPad people, or all the big iPhone people. You can give them a Samsung Galaxy Tab and be like, you were super wrong.

• 51:09Speaker 04

  Right.

• 51:10Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, you can give them a Surface and be like, you were super wrong. And so there is that pressure against like, Apple has a trillion dollars in the bank. They're just gonna, and they own a chip company and they like, they can buy, Samsung, literally their biggest competitor, Samsung, has to make its own display company for Apple, right? Like, they have all of the leverage to make this real if they want to. And I'm sure that they will. But this, so, there is that sense of like, inevitability with the product, right? It's just, it's, they're gonna iterate and it's gonna go fast. And I, I expect this first watch to basically be like the first iPad. The first iPad was like, end of life immediately. They can't, they don't even support anymore. This iPad 2 is still sticking around.

• 51:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:51Nilay Patel?

  Right? And they, they, they put out the product they really wanted to make, sort of like a year later. I think that's just watch and it's like I just this moment in particular is the expectations people who love Apple have for what this thing will do are so out of whack with what it can actually do.

• 52:08Speaker 02

  I I want to say something here.

• 52:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 52:11Speaker 02

  I think, I mean, I, I, I want to bring this back to earth because we as humans are so not normal when it comes to talking about these things and the way they interact and the way we interact with them. I think the Apple Watch is gonna just be a utility that is like an iOS companion for most humans, like most moms and most like, you know, college kids are not thinking about this the way we are. I think they're gonna buy it and they're gonna expect to get text messages and tweets on their watch and that's it. Like talking about how like.

• 52:47Nilay Patel?

  No, they're expecting to use the health stuff like.

• 52:49Speaker 02

  Okay, and that works, right? Presumably the health stuff works. Uh, I, I just, I look at this as a Gen one Apple product that's meant to be a companion utility for like the mothership, which is your phone.

• 53:02Nilay Patel?

  No, I honestly, I think that's either it's that Johnny Ive interview yesterday where he's like, this isn't compete with regular watches. Like you shouldn't even think about it that way.

• 53:08Speaker 02

  Right.

• 53:09Nilay Patel?

  But what's happening and I, this is where the disconnect is coming. What's happening is, and this is like, you know, the, it, it's like the fashion piece of this. It's like right now, Apple is like giving this thing to like Beyonce and Karl Lagerfeld. And like, what's fascinating about that to me is none of them have the screen on, none of them, no one has ever photographed using the Apple Watch.

• 53:28Speaker 02

  Right.

• 53:29Nilay Patel?

  Karl Lagerfeld is still on a pairing screen.

• 53:31Speaker 02

  JJ Abrams.

• 53:31Speaker 04

  Karl Lagerfeld does not know how to use that watch, I promise.

• 53:34Nilay Patel?

  There's a great interview. It's, it's, it's from, it's from like five years ago, so it wasn't worth reposting, but Julia Rubin at Racks sent it to me after I tweeted about that Lagerfeld thing. She's like, this is a video where Karl Lagerfeld thinks he calls an iPad Facebook and says it's, he compares it to a sculpture. And he's like, literally, he's like, ah, Facebook is like a, a, a, it's like some sculpture. He's like, it's beautiful. It's beautiful to me. And I'm like, it's, you think it's an iPad? It's like, you're like so rich, he's wearing this like vampire collar.

• 54:04Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it's incredible. And then he's like, and then he keeps going. He's like, you know, I don't, I wouldn't buy any of this stuff, but people give them to me covered in white gold. It's like, it's amazing video. And he's like, of course I know how to use it. I mean, my assistants, I just tell them to use it. It's like, in your mind, you think knowing how to use an iPad is telling one of your assistants.

• 54:23Speaker 03

  He has a chauffeur to use technology for him.

• 54:26Nilay Patel?

  It's incredible. But like, that's the thing, like, fashion is like fleeting, like, it will come and go.

• 54:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:32Nilay Patel?

  And so like, right now, it's fashionable, but unless there's utility against it, where you have to have it with you all the time, it will just go away. It will stop being fashionable, like by its, the nature of fashion. And all of the, all of our fashion editors who like work at Ract, like we talked to them, they're like, yeah, it'll be cool. It'll be a status symbol for a minute. And then it will like, I mean, we, that's why we put them in the review video. Cause it's silly, like, I'm not going to sit around talking about, so we put fashion editors in it. And all of them are like, yeah, this will be, if it becomes a thing, fashion people will adopt it. And if it doesn't, it'll just go away. And I think Apple has to prove that utility piece of it. Because it's four, like $350, $400 for the sport model to put on your wrist and get text messages.

• 55:14Speaker 02

  Remember how much the first iPod was when it first came out?

• 55:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but the first iPod.

• 55:18Speaker 03

  First iPod offered a thing, like, if you wanted to live in that first iPod world, you were using like, the creative Rio.

• 55:26Speaker 02

  Zen or whatever, yeah.

• 55:28Nilay Patel?

  If you wanted to live in the first iPod world, you had a Mac with Firewire.

• 55:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:33Nilay Patel?

  Right? That literally, those are the requirements to use that first iPod.

• 55:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's pretty easy to live, it's pretty easy to live in Apple's world now, right? Cause a lot of people have iPhones.

• 55:41Nilay Patel?

  No, but I'm saying like comparing it, the launch strategy here to the first iPod, like the first iPod in market was like too super tiny. The potential market here is like anybody with an iPhone 5 or above.

• 55:52Speaker 03

  Right.

• 55:53Nilay Patel?

  And they're like putting, it's, it's like Beyonce's wearing the thing, right? Like, um, they're taking over fashion stores in Paris and Milan, London, Tokyo. That's where you have people.

• 56:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:05Nilay Patel?

  Um, it's just, I, this is that moment, like, I'm not knocking this moment. It's just the moment where people believe that it can do anything.

• 56:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're reaching peak hype right now. This is it. Like tomorrow, the world is gonna be a different place.

• 56:17Nilay Patel?

  So I've been trying, I've been trying to think about like what the other products were because I love this moment. It's occurred. So the Microsoft Courier was one where like it was just hopes and dreams.

• 56:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was all hopes and dreams.

• 56:27Nilay Patel?

  It was literally, it was literally a concept video that was hopes and dreams.

• 56:29Speaker 02

  I remember, I was in class when that happened.

• 56:31Nilay Patel?

  The Motorola Atrix HD, do you remember this thing?

• 56:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Miriam freaked out over that thing.

• 56:36Nilay Patel?

  So the Atrix HD, it was announced at CES.

• 56:37Speaker 03

  Was it the HD or just the Atrix?

• 56:38Speaker 02

  The regular Atrix.

• 56:39Speaker 04

  Atrix 4G.

• 56:40Nilay Patel?

  Atrix 4G. So Atrix 4G was like the first, it had the laptop dock. It ran a second operating system called Webtop.

• 56:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:49Speaker 04

  With Firefox on it.

• 56:51Nilay Patel?

  With Firefox.

• 56:52Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 56:53Speaker 04

  Didn't even have Chrome.

• 56:53Nilay Patel?

  Didn't have Chrome. Had Firefox. So it was like a Linux computer that ran Android on the side. You could put it in a laptop thing. You could plug it into a TV.

• 56:59Speaker 02

  Had a fingerprint sensor.

• 57:00Nilay Patel?

  Had a fingerprint sensor.

• 57:01Speaker 02

  Oh, wow, it did.

• 57:02Nilay Patel?

  This product, I remember that one is being like, Josh and I were both.

• 57:06Speaker 03

  Well, we did.

• 57:07Nilay Patel?

  We were just like, this is, I'm gonna throw out my laptop. I'm just gonna have this phone. I'm plugging it in different things. It was like a beautiful, and then you got it and you're like, oh.

• 57:14Speaker 03

  This is garbage.

• 57:16Nilay Patel?

  It was garbage.

• 57:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:17Nilay Patel?

  Uh, the Folio, the Palm Folio.

• 57:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, it didn't quite reach the levels.

• 57:22Nilay Patel?

  The Palm Pre.

• 57:23Speaker 03

  The Pre.

• 57:24Speaker 04

  The Pre, yeah.

• 57:24Nilay Patel?

  People were like, oh, you're a dream.

• 57:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, before it launched, that was nuts.

• 57:29Speaker 02

  You all right?

• 57:30Nilay Patel?

  What? No, I'm just saying, like, it's just, it's a unique moment.

• 57:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, me about the Pre is you about the Apple Watch in a week. We'll just.

• 57:37Speaker 04

  Oh, snap.

• 57:39Nilay Patel?

  Um, I'm just saying, it's a unique mo, like, I'm not suggesting that the, the bubble needs to burst. I'm like, I'm only saying, like, enjoy this one.

• 57:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:48Nilay Patel?

  Cause they don't come along very often.

• 57:50Speaker 03

  Right.

• 57:50Nilay Patel?

  And like, this is, this is the moment when literally people think it can do anything. When they think Siri is like tapping on the wrist and like whispering in your ear that like you're, you're near a house you should buy. Like. It's like, that's like, it's crazy.

• 58:03Speaker 02

  And glass. It's like when glass had that video with the dude swinging his kid around and it was like, oh.

• 58:08Speaker 03

  Nobody was ever this excited about glass.

• 58:10Speaker 04

  No, no, there was a moment, it was when Bilton first scooped it because you were like, holy crap, I'm gonna wear this magical eyewear.

• 58:19Speaker 02

  And it's gonna do everything.

• 58:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, okay.

• 58:21Nilay Patel?

  But even then, even then, even then, Google was like, this is, it's glass explorer. Like, it was, there was that moment of like, that first glass explorer video, almost killed Dieter's laptop with a glass of water. Yeah, I'll just buy the new MacBook.

• 58:35Speaker 04

  Oh, so now it's okay to kill my laptop instead?

• 58:38Nilay Patel?

  Well, I don't, I don't wave this hand around as much.

• 58:44Nilay Patel?

  I don't know why I think that's so funny.

• 58:46Speaker 03

  Happy birthday, Virgus Cast.

• 58:48Nilay Patel?

  No, I'm just saying, that first glass video, the one where like the guy was on like.

• 58:51Speaker 02

  It did really well on our website. It was hype.

• 58:54Nilay Patel?

  He met a friend.

• 58:54Speaker 03

  Oh, but they never showed the hardware, they just showed like the interface.

• 58:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 58:59Speaker 02

  That's the one I'm talking about.

• 59:00Nilay Patel?

  They like layered their hopes and dreams on it. And I just, all I'm saying is, if you love technology, like this is a moment to appreciate. But like, man, I like, I'm very curious to see what the next two weeks of like, reviews and like YouTube videos from like real users, like I'm dying to know.

• 59:18Speaker 02

  I'm waiting to hear from the normals. I really am. Because, again, we think of these products so differently than normals do.

• 59:24Speaker 04

  Well, you also need to, there's, there's one very important aspect of psychology, I think, that is going to trap people to some degree, which is that when you're spending 350 to a thousand dollars on this watch, you force yourself to think that you like it, whether you actually do or not.

• 59:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's true. That is very true.

• 59:42Speaker 04

  Because accepting into your heart the fact that you made a thousand dollar mistake or a 500 dollar mistake is a very, very tough pill to swallow. So I think.

• 59:50Nilay Patel?

  Or you just give the thing back.

• 59:52Speaker 02

  Can you return it?

• 59:53Nilay Patel?

  So you can return the regular ones, of course.

• 59:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, not the gold.

• 59:56Nilay Patel?

  The gold one, no, you can return the gold one too, inside of 14 days. They take a microscope to it.

• 1:00:00Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:00:00Nilay Patel?

  To make sure you haven't removed any gold.

• 1:00:01Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:00:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's 100% true.

• 1:00:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:04Nilay Patel?

  They take a microscope to it to make sure you haven't removed gold.

• 1:00:06Speaker 02

  So there are people at Apple that they had to train.

• 1:00:08Nilay Patel?

  I'm sure, yeah.

• 1:00:09Speaker 02

  Presumably like, okay, you're gonna be the gold watch inspector.

• 1:00:12Nilay Patel?

  You're the microscope guy.

• 1:00:12Speaker 04

  Well, this entire watch selling process has involved a lot of training at Apple.

• 1:00:16Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:00:17Speaker 04

  But, but I do want to mention one thing in particular with the gold model. I tweeted this the other day and I believe it's absolutely true. The model that Karl Lagerfeld and Beyonce and a few other folks have, I think exists. I think it's buyable. I don't think Apple wants to talk about it because it's $75,000 or something like that.

• 1:00:33Speaker 03

  It's got gold links, but otherwise it's the same edition gold watch casing.

• 1:00:38Speaker 04

  Exactly, exactly. But I think that if you're a multimillionaire and you, you know, talk to Apple and say, hey, I want to buy that, they'll be like, sure.

• 1:00:45Nilay Patel?

  I think they're giving, I think they're giving this first set away.

• 1:00:48Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:00:49Speaker 02

  Oh, of course, yeah, yeah, yeah. So like Pharrell and Drake and Beyonce and Katy Perry.

• 1:00:53Speaker 04

  None of those guys, I mean, Apple probably paid them, but like.

• 1:00:56Nilay Patel?

  You know, Drake's an Apple fan today, but tomorrow he's gonna be on Android.

• 1:00:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, no way.

• 1:01:00Nilay Patel?

  That's a Drake joke. Never mind.

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  That was way above my head.

• 1:01:04Nilay Patel?

  Really? Jake, never mind. I'm not telling more Jake jokes. Okay, that's the end of our show. Sam, engage.

• 1:01:10Speaker 02

  Snapchat. We've been. Just go right into it.

• 1:01:15Nilay Patel?

  We've killed Sam's.

• 1:01:16Speaker 03

  Snapchat.

• 1:01:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, you should follow us on Snapchat, because we post there every day and there's good stuff. Also, the New York Times had a really good snap story. I'm really proud of Farhad and Bill for doing that. You should follow us on Snapchat. We are TheRealVerge on Snapchat. And you should subscribe to our YouTube channel. We are youtube.com/theverge. And while you're at it, if you don't like us already on Facebook, you probably should, because we post all of our news there and videos and we do lots of giveaways on Facebook. So if you like free stuff, go to facebook.com/verge, click the like button, and then click every single article that comes into your newsfeed. Back to you, Neelai.

• 1:01:50Speaker 04

  All right, so.

• 1:01:52Nilay Patel?

  It was very like, "All right, Sam, thank you very much for that engagement session." All right, now that's our show. Please go on iTunes, give us five stars.

• 1:01:59Speaker 02

  That, yes.

• 1:02:00Nilay Patel?

  That's a thing we still want you to do. That's great. I would like you, this, this, go give us five stars and in the review, just tell us what your, your magical realism dream of the Apple Watch is. Cause I love them.

• 1:02:11Speaker 02

  Or, or Android Wear.

• 1:02:12Nilay Patel?

  Or Android, whatever, whatever, wherever your heart takes you, or the Pebble. Yeah. Just tell me, tell me your, your watch fantasy.

• 1:02:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, what, how, why do you want?

• 1:02:19Nilay Patel?

  Tell me your PG-13. Give us the five stars. PG-13 watch fantasy. And type some garbage in the box. But if you, if you want to do some stuff, that'd be great.

• 1:02:28Nilay Patel?

  Also check out our other show, What's Tech with Chris Plant. It's a great show, doing, doing awesome. This show's, this week's show is great. It's about singularity. That's all at iTunes.com slash The Verge. Sam is Sam Sheffer.

• 1:02:39Speaker 02

  On Twitter.

• 1:02:40Nilay Patel?

  Dieter is Backlon. I'm Reckless. Chris is Z-Power. Not a great Twitter lineup for us, but those are the ones. Follow us, please. Thanks to Hi5, Hi5.com slash Verge. Request a free trial. Thanks Tripcase. Tripcase.com slash Vergecast. Check it out today. And a special thank you to Lynda, the online learning platform with over 3,000 on-demand video courses to help you strengthen your business, technology, and creative skills. Free 10-day trial. Lynda.com slash Vergecast. That's L-Y-N-D-A dot com slash Vergecast. That is it. Vergecast 150 in the can.

• 1:03:11Nilay Patel?

  Let's drink. Let's party. Rock and roll.

• 1:03:13Speaker 02

  Bye.

• 1:03:13Nilay Patel?

  Paul.