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This week on the Vergecast, Nilay is joined by Casey Newton, Chris Plante and Nicola Fumo (who is keeping Project Figure Head in full effect). The panel discusses the iPhone battery case and Nicola tries to put together the Google Pixel C. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:04Nilay Patel?

  Hello, welcome to The Vergecast. It is December 10th. For the live viewer, for the vast majority of you, it is most likely December 11th or some date thereafter. You know where people who read the back catalog of The Verge, who like, listen to the whole thing?

• 0:18Speaker 01

  Oh yeah.

• 0:18Nilay Patel?

  Like, I don't even, we're at 182, somebody asked me on Twitter, like, "Hey, where can I download Vergecast 69, because it's missing?" And I was like...

• 0:25Speaker 01

  The iMac will never work!

• 0:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so 110 weeks ago, I have no idea.

• 0:31Speaker 02

  But if you listen to them, you know, consecutively, it tells a powerful story.

• 0:35Nilay Patel?

  A struggle and change.

• 0:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. That's how I would listen to it, if I were just getting into The Verge.

• 0:40Nilay Patel?

  I mean, we had a long period at the beginning where these shows were like, three hours long. I can't even imagine.

• 0:45Speaker 01

  The first hours were this intro.

• 0:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. God damn it. Anyway, something very exciting is happening, and I want to introduce my friends here. You may have recognized their beautiful voices. So as you may know, I am, uh, I'm Neelai Patel.

• 1:00Speaker 02

  I'm Casey Newton.

• 1:01Nilay Patel?

  Your friend Casey Newton is here. And Chris Plant is here.

• 1:05Speaker 01

  Hey!

• 1:06Nilay Patel?

  Now, that is, I think, unprecedented on the show.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  Right, well-

• 1:10Speaker 01

  Have we never been in the same place at the same time? People thought we were the same person?

• 1:13Speaker 02

  Well, we've had a lot of bad blood between us, and we sort of had to clear the air before we had agreed to sit down at the same table.

• 1:18Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 1:19Speaker 02

  But we put that all behind us now.

• 1:20Nilay Patel?

  Chris and Casey, there's a reason they're in town, and that reason is that they are coming to my birthday party. I made them come.

• 1:27Speaker 01

  Oh no, he doesn't know yet.

• 1:28Nilay Patel?

  Oh god, are you not coming? I hate you. No, all of The Verge's editors, the section editors, are in town this week. We're all meeting for a couple days to talk, basically like, high-five about how cool 2015 was, and then plot out a scheme of world domination for 2016.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  Sounds good.

• 1:45Nilay Patel?

  And I have to tell you, Field and Stream Magazine, you are fucking going down! It's pretty awesome we just picked, so totally random.

• 1:51Speaker 02

  I would not want to be the editor-in-chief of a boy's life right now.

• 1:56Nilay Patel?

  Uh, anyway, so Chris is here, Casey's here. I'm very excited to have them here. If you are following our many social feeds, you may notice that Liz Zapata is also in town. Uh, Thomas Schurker's in town. Um, who else will be fine? Is that it?

• 2:07Speaker 01

  I think, yeah.

• 2:08Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, and then, as always, my friend.

• 2:13Speaker 03

  As newly always.

• 2:14Nilay Patel?

  As newly always. Uh, I, I think of, I think of you as, uh, the Virg's friend from a cooler, a cooler part of town.

• 2:22Speaker 03

  Nicola from O's here. From Ract.

• 2:24Nilay Patel?

  Ract. I, I, we just figured this out. Nicola's coming to CES with us.

• 2:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's true.

• 2:31Nilay Patel?

  This is gonna be crazy.

• 2:32Speaker 03

  Um, I'm so ready for it.

• 2:35Nilay Patel?

  It's gonna be, that's gonna be nuts. So.

• 2:37Speaker 03

  And I'm gonna be at your birthday.

• 2:39Nilay Patel?

  Are you?

• 2:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:40Nilay Patel?

  Well, you're better than Chris.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  Wow. I'm gone. I'm done, so. Have you already talked about how her sticker game is like so much better than ours?

• 2:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 2:49Speaker 03

  It's, I'm not gonna say.

• 2:52Nilay Patel?

  She's, he's talking about the laptop.

• 2:53Speaker 03

  I know. It's like really nicely coordinated.

• 2:56Nilay Patel?

  Well, she's got a Trapper Keeper that's next level. That'd be amazing. You have a Trapper Keeper that was covered in stickers.

• 3:01Speaker 03

  Trapper Keeper.

• 3:02Nilay Patel?

  Well, what else do you put stickers on? It's, uh, laptop lids.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  Your locker.

• 3:06Nilay Patel?

  Your locker. Do you put, do you have a sticker on your phone?

• 3:08Speaker 03

  No, I don't, but I could.

• 3:10Nilay Patel?

  I just think adults.

• 3:11Speaker 03

  They always peel off of your phone because you use it so much.

• 3:13Nilay Patel?

  I just think adults put stickers on one thing and it's laptop lids. Like, when you're an adult, that's the only place that you can put a sticker.

• 3:18Speaker 02

  Maybe a, maybe a bumper.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  A bumper sticker.

• 3:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Drink.

• 3:24Nilay Patel?

  Not like the huge inflatable things at bowling alleys. I often go to the local bowling alley and apply, apply Virg stickers to the bumpers. That's true. So bumpers and laptop lids. There's nowhere else.

• 3:35Speaker 03

  I have a friend that did an entire sticker door in her apartment.

• 3:38Nilay Patel?

  Ooh.

• 3:39Speaker 03

  It's pretty cool.

• 3:40Nilay Patel?

  Oh, uh, uh, bar bathrooms.

• 3:42Speaker 03

  Bar bathrooms, great place for stickers.

• 3:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 3:44Speaker 03

  I actually love people who get.

• 3:45Nilay Patel?

  This whole show, by the way, is just a list of places where as adults you can put stickers.

• 3:48Speaker 03

  Nicola's sticker talk.

• 3:51Speaker 03

  I have, I love when you see people, people are printing out their Snapchat QR codes and putting them around. Did I use QR codes right?

• 3:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you did.

• 3:59Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 4:00Nilay Patel?

  You did a great job with that.

• 4:01Speaker 03

  Uh, thanks. Yeah, no, I see those around and I'm like, that's great. I mean. Why not add that person?

• 4:08Nilay Patel?

  Uh, I don't know if QR codes, I don't even know if the overwhelming power of Snapchat thirst can make QR codes a thing.

• 4:16Speaker 03

  This is my 2016 plan.

• 4:18Nilay Patel?

  Have you ever used a QR code in your life?

• 4:19Speaker 03

  Oh my god, no. They're everywhere. I don't know. I don't know what happens.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  I have definitely added people on Snapchat by snapping their ghosts.

• 4:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, I've done that.

• 4:27Nilay Patel?

  But that's in Snapchat, right? You have to, that's like a...

• 4:31Speaker 02

  But there's something about the fact that it's a ghost that like makes you forget that you're scanning a QR code. It's like an ingenious bit of hiding like the nerdiness of it.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  Except for it being a giant QR code in the middle of the ghost.

• 4:42Speaker 03

  But it's funny and cute and you're a gif inside of it.

• 4:45Nilay Patel?

  That's true. I haven't done that yet. Maybe I should do that. Um, so we should talk about a few things.

• 4:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:50Nilay Patel?

  We, we've had a big week. Um, Star Wars is coming out next week. That's true.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  People are already in line, of course.

• 4:57Nilay Patel?

  Isn't it?

• 4:57Speaker 02

  Yes, in LA. Seventeenth.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  Never heard of it.

• 5:00Speaker 02

  A week from today.

• 5:01Nilay Patel?

  This is why we made you move to Austin.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 5:03Speaker 02

  A week from today, nobody will be watching The Vergecast because they will be seeing The Force of Wink.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  No, they won't because there won't be any tickets and they won't have them.

• 5:10Nilay Patel?

  I'm actually just gonna sit here narrating a leaked script. It's weird. I've already, I've already cast Dieter as Kylo Ren. He wasn't happy with it, but that's the part I had. Um, we had a big week. Uh, there's big stuff coming next week. A lot of stuff happened this week, and I want to say the weirdest thing that happened this week. And do you have it on your phone, Chris?

• 5:30Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 5:31Nilay Patel?

  Well, Apple released this like battery case.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  This?

• 5:37Nilay Patel?

  Rarely has a random bad accessory blown up our website in despair the way that this $99 piece blew up our website. It is not good.

• 5:48Speaker 01

  Can I tell you something? I'm gonna be real honest.

• 5:50Nilay Patel?

  So this is, wait, we'll just tell you what it is and then you can be real honest. Uh, so if you didn't see it in the world for some reason, if, if, if you didn't run away from Donald Trump coverage into the waiting arms of our battery case coverage,

• 6:04Nilay Patel?

  Apple released a $99 battery case for the iPhone 6, uh, and I guess 6S. Not this Plus, just the 6. It is the smallest battery case on the market. It's 18, uh, what? 1800, 1877 milliamp hours, I think is the right number. The Mophie G spec Air is like 2,500, so like doesn't even charge the battery all the way. And it has, uh, what Lauren Good referred to in her review as a bedunkabump. It's adorable. It's a good word. And it's just really weird.

• 6:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I mean, I tweeted that if you want to make your phone look like it's pregnant with an iPhone 4, like, this is the way to go.

• 6:40Nilay Patel?

  Or an iPod. The bump is, it is exactly the size of a 5th generation iPod.

• 6:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:45Nilay Patel?

  So like, if you imagine Apple's regular case, and then there's like, an iPod glued on the back, that's what it looks like. What were you gonna say, Chris?

• 6:52Speaker 01

  I, I thought I wanted it, maybe. Because I'm, I, this is before I even read anything about it. I was like, it kinda looks slim, I guess. And I was kinda like convincing myself that like, well, it doesn't look as bad as like, my dad's charger. You know, like, what a doofus for having his phone in a different charger. But then you handed it to me right now, and what's really, uh, it really does not feel good. Like...

• 7:21Nilay Patel?

  Well, that's how the silicon, you mean the bump?

• 7:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, no, but my, because you have the bump, right? So then, my hand, my fingers, my pinky goes in under the bump, which elicits, which, and then it's like, counterweighted. And then, every time I like, want to like, lift it to press the bottom, I feel like I'm going to like, drop it out of the top of my hand. Like, it feels designed like a bad seesaw. That I'm going to drop every time I want to use.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  There's this like, joke people-

• 7:46Speaker 01

  I need to take it out.

• 7:47Speaker 02

  People like, like, make fun of tech criticism because like, we have this like, stock line that we use in reviews where it's, "Oh, it feels really good in the hand." "What do you mean?" Well, now we actually have, like, we know what that means, because we have felt the, the Apple battery case. We know it feels terrible in the hand, and it's given us a new sort of frame of reference.

• 8:03Nilay Patel?

  Um, so, they released this thing. Nicola, have you seen this thing in person?

• 8:06Speaker 03

  I haven't seen it in person. I've seen pictures.

• 8:08Nilay Patel?

  Will you hand it to our friend? I'm always very curious to see what Nicola thinks of these objects. Um, so they put out this thing. The internet goes nuts. Uh, Lauren writes a review. She's like, "Why would you do this?" Um, it has a lightning adapter on the bottom, so you don't need a new cable. The LED is on the inside of the case, which is amazing.

• 8:27Speaker 02

  This is how I lost my mind. Like, because this is the detail that, that you just sort of never see Apple getting wrong, right? So there's an LED indicator that tells you, I believe, when it is charged, like-

• 8:36Nilay Patel?

  When it's charging.

• 8:37Speaker 02

  When it's charging, um, and maybe it turns green when it's fully charged, I think. So you have to remove the phone from the case-

• 8:44Nilay Patel?

  Well, you can see it on the phone.

• 8:45Speaker 02

  Okay. But still, why would you hide it? Why, like, why would you build an indicator that is hidden 90% of the time?

• 8:51Nilay Patel?

  Because you can see it on the phone.

• 8:52Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  But why, why even build it anyway, then?

• 8:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:55Nilay Patel?

  Because maybe sometimes you charge... Am I the only one who, like, kind of understands this?

• 8:58Speaker 02

  I literally don't. Please explain.

• 8:59Nilay Patel?

  So, okay, so most of the time, it'll have it on your phone.

• 9:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:02Nilay Patel?

  And you'll just plug it in, and the phone, on the screen of the phone, will tell you if it's, like, just as your phone currently does not have an indicator light.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 9:11Nilay Patel?

  You just, like, push the button, and you're like, "Oh, it's charging," and you, like, walk away and, like, live your life. Now, you'll push the button and it shows you the case and the phone is charging.

• 9:17Speaker 02

  Right.

• 9:17Nilay Patel?

  But if your phone's not in the case, the light is displayed to you.

• 9:20Speaker 01

  But why not have it on the outside anyway?

• 9:21Nilay Patel?

  Why? But, because you don't need it, because it's duplicative.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  Well, except that, uh, this way, you would be able to tell when your phone was fully charged without having to turn on the screen.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, that feels like an overthinking. That, that's one of those things that's like...

• 9:33Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah, so...

• 9:34Speaker 01

  We've got so much!

• 9:35Nilay Patel?

  This thing to me, uh, I just keep imagining Johnny Ive being like, "We've designed it so much, we didn't design it at all." And he's like, smokes a perfect bong. Like, he's like, and he's like on a perfect Swiss couch.

• 9:47Speaker 02

  I, I-

• 9:48Nilay Patel?

  And he's like, "What if, what if we designed nothing?"

• 9:51Speaker 02

  If I've ever wanted to see Johnny Ive in his white room, tell me why Apple did something. It was for this product. Like, give me, tell me a story, Johnny. Help me understand what this thing is.

• 10:02Nilay Patel?

  He's like, "Come here, Sally."

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Sally Ive.

• 10:06Nilay Patel?

  Sally Ive. Come here.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  She's actually just like, dust, that like blows in. And he's like, "Have you reinvented steel again? That was your first test, Sally."

• 10:19Nilay Patel?

  I think what I'm really learning here is none of us do a good Johnny. All right, Nico, what do you think of this thing?

• 10:24Speaker 03

  Okay, unpopular and career-smashing opinion. I don't hate it that much.

• 10:30Nilay Patel?

  No, I think it's fine. I think some people really like it.

• 10:32Speaker 03

  It doesn't, only because, okay, only because I can't think of how I would do this better.

• 10:38Nilay Patel?

  Have you ever seen a Mophie in your life?

• 10:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, but like, I mean, so that already exists, why would they make the same thing that exists?

• 10:44Nilay Patel?

  Also, Mophies are patented hell and back, which I wrote about, and...

• 10:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, so like, it wouldn't make any sense for them to like-

• 10:49Nilay Patel?

  Much cost-ination ensued.

• 10:51Speaker 03

  Imagine that Verge article.

• 10:53Nilay Patel?

  If they copied a Mophie. So, Tim Cook?

• 10:56Speaker 03

  Apple copies Mophie.

• 10:57Nilay Patel?

  Can I do, can I do a little media criticism?

• 10:59Speaker 02

  Let's do it.

• 11:01Nilay Patel?

  I've noticed our friends at Mashable often get defensive Apple quotes printed in Mashable. It seems to be a go-to move for them. That is all I will say. Anyway, so Tim Cook was in Mashable yesterday talking about the battery case. Like, just imagine you are the CEO of the richest company in the world and you release basically an existing product with like a battery glued to the back of it. And like, the internet blows up so badly that you are forced to like issue a quote about it on the same day that you're like promoting girls learning to code. Like, you have to take a break from like the day of code to say,

• 11:38Nilay Patel?

  "As you probably know from being a user of this, one of the real insights was, have you ever used other cases in trying to get them on?" That's the quote. "If you make this solid all the way across," said Cook, indicating the spots where Apple's case embedded battery stops and you just have the soft fluoromastumal casing. "In order to get it on, you'd find it very difficult to get it on and off." So the guys had a great insight to put in a bend without making it a smart case.

• 12:04Nilay Patel?

  I have no idea what those words mean. I've read this quote a thousand times and all I can say is, I think he's saying it's nicer because it's bendy.

• 12:13Speaker 03

  It's nicer because it's bendy.

• 12:14Nilay Patel?

  And that's it. That's easy.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  Is it easier to get on and off?

• 12:17Nilay Patel?

  It's... So I had this conversation with Walt and I had this conversation with Dieter.

• 12:23Nilay Patel?

  It's fine. It's just fine. And that's the thing. It's just fine.

• 12:27Speaker 03

  Which is...

• 12:27Speaker 02

  Much less than fine.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  Period.

• 12:31Speaker 02

  I think it's less than fine. And you know, and I mean, I'm sure some people might listen to this and be like, ah, these guys are just, you know, taking any opportunity to rag on Apple or whatever. But the thing is like, Apple makes like a lot of really nice cases, right? I mean, like, you know, the smart covers for the iPods are great.

• 12:43Nilay Patel?

  I use the leather case every day.

• 12:45Speaker 02

  The normal case that they use, like I have one on my phone, like it's fantastic and it's, you know, it's very simple. It's very elegant. Like there's no extraneous details, right? Like, so this thing comes out and like, it feels like, like neither like a bold statement nor an elegant solution. It's just sort of like halfway in the middle.

• 13:02Nilay Patel?

  Well, so isn't the elegant solution like making the iPhone a better battery life? Putting a bigger battery in the iPhone?

• 13:06Speaker 02

  Ding, ding, ding. And what are they doing instead? Making it, you know, like six microns thick in the next iteration of the iPhone, apparently.

• 13:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It's a piece of paper.

• 13:16Speaker 02

  It is.

• 13:17Nilay Patel?

  You just wrap it around your face. I'm making a phone call. Uh, no, I think that's like... Do you guys remember when the iPad 2 came out, like, the big, cool thing was the case? Because they were like, "We engineered the thing together. It's got magnets in it. You clip it on, now it's great." This is so obviously not engineered together. Like, it has all of the same problems as every other battery case. Like, it adds an inch of thickness to the bottom of the phone. You can't... If you have Beats headphones, the plug doesn't fit in the thing. Like, it has...

• 13:47Speaker 02

  Ahhh. Think about that, though. Like, these are the details that we rely on Apple to solve for us, right? Like, this is why we have so much goodwill toward Apple generally, is because they think of these things, and they design around them, and they make our lives simpler. This is not that thing.

• 14:00Nilay Patel?

  Right. And it's also, you can, um... Man, I'm in a particular moment of, like, Apple media criticism, because you can... This case, I think, drove the wedge into what publications are, like, totally buying it, and what publications like...

• 14:16Nilay Patel?

  So, any publication that describes it as "the audio porthole", uh, which is a hole for the sound from the speaker to come through. Yeah. They covered up the speaker, so they had to drill a hole in the bottom.

• 14:28Speaker 02

  Oh, boy.

• 14:28Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it's... But every other... That's the audio porthole. It's acoustically designed for maximum sound reflectivity. There's also a passively coupled antenna on the back, which is just an antenna.

• 14:41Nilay Patel?

  That is on the back. And it's like, passively coupled means it... So it touches the phone.

• 14:45Speaker 02

  I thought passively uncoupled is when you got dumped.

• 14:48Speaker 03

  Mmm. That's like Gwyneth Paltrow. I hear you over there.

• 14:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Goopin'. Are you guys Goop buddies?

• 14:54Speaker 02

  We're huge Goopers.

• 14:55Speaker 03

  That's probably the Venn diagram of us, one of the items inside of there.

• 14:59Nilay Patel?

  Do fashion people use battery cases?

• 15:01Speaker 03

  Oh, my god, yes.

• 15:02Nilay Patel?

  There's two groups of people in my life that I find... But it's so fashion people, I get it. Because they're always, like, in weird places, right?

• 15:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, because you're never some one place with a plug. Always running around.

• 15:14Nilay Patel?

  What do you see the most of?

• 15:15Speaker 01

  Mophie.

• 15:16Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  And like, you can understand why Apple would want to be in this market, right? Like, it seems like Mophie has a nice little racket for themselves, designing these cases.

• 15:25Nilay Patel?

  Mophie has its business, and Apple's like, what if you don't have your business anymore?

• 15:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So it's like, it totally makes sense. You just, it's exactly what you said. Like, if they had only engineered them together, this would have been such a beautiful thing.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  Do you think it's the month of December? Christmas is coming.

• 15:43Speaker 02

  I do think it's the month of December.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  They were like, we need to get this out. So at a certain point, when they would have maybe done all those checks, like, make sure Beats headphones work with an Apple product, they were like, yeah, we could do that, but like, we're already coming in hot. We're just gonna do this.

• 16:01Nilay Patel?

  Johnny, stop designing. He was like, I don't know.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  He's like, I never even started.

• 16:04Nilay Patel?

  He drew a rectangle, and he just drew question marks.

• 16:07Speaker 01

  And that's it.

• 16:08Nilay Patel?

  It's done.

• 16:09Speaker 02

  That is like the next step is for Apple to come out and admit that this was a Hack Week project, and it just got way out of hand. They're just like...

• 16:16Nilay Patel?

  Like, we don't know what happened. They started building it.

• 16:18Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. The supply chain just took over at some point.

• 16:21Nilay Patel?

  This supply chain is so efficient, it just, it can't not make products when Johnny designs them. They'd be like, sent the file, he emailed it to the wrong address, and they produced 10 million.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  Whatever we do, don't make this.

• 16:33Nilay Patel?

  The wrong Dropbox folder.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  This is the thing we don't want to do.

• 16:37Nilay Patel?

  He's like, oh shit, I started my Gmail. 10 million of them have been produced in Shenzhen.

• 16:42Speaker 02

  I have to tell you, Wacky Mixup still the best explanation for the Apple battery case record.

• 16:48Nilay Patel?

  So then we wrote, so we wrote this, and then we, we, Nick Stat did a great job of essentially taking a tweet that had gone viral yesterday with a picture of the battery case, a picture of the Apple pencil in artfully charging and plugged into the iPad, a picture of the new...

• 17:07Speaker 01

  The mouse.

• 17:08Nilay Patel?

  The mouse with the charges on the bottom. There's another one. There's like a handful of like, total design... flubs from Apple or just like really weird choices.

• 17:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:19Nilay Patel?

  Um, and it's like, what happened to Apple this year? And I just don't know the answer like the pencil is the only one that I think is like kind of defensible.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 17:30Nilay Patel?

  As it charges in 30 seconds and it lasts for like four hours or something. So like, that makes sense. Just like here are the available things that you can charge us with. Like you don't have to plug it in. You just plug it in, you wake, take a breath and it's fine. Everything else is like, why?

• 17:43Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 17:44Nilay Patel?

  Like, why build a mouse that you can't use while it's charging?

• 17:46Speaker 02

  It's like, you know, unlike so many other Apple products, they were the ones where you feel like at some point during the design process, a couple of people were like, yeah, I guess this is fine. I guess like, let's just move on, you know? Like it just, they didn't get to that like fit and finish stage.

• 18:01Nilay Patel?

  Well, you know, there's like a, there's a theory that like some Apple people hate, which is like,

• 18:07Nilay Patel?

  Steve Jobs is the editor, right? And so they were like, ideas, ideas he is. And he'd be like, my taste is supreme. And like, I make these decisions. And now I don't know who the editor is, presumably it's Johnny Ive, but like, he could just be working on the very, like, he's also in charge of the stores and the architecture of the new campus.

• 18:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:24Nilay Patel?

  Like his portfolio is big. Like, do you think he looked at this? Like?

• 18:29Speaker 02

  Johnny Ive is a fantastic editor, uh, but I think is, is open question whether he can just edit everything. You know, one of the things that struck me about this was I remember, remember the days, not all that long ago, when Apple would brag about how all of their products like fit on table. Do you remember this? Because they, they really only made like six basic things.

• 18:44Nilay Patel?

  Mm hmm.

• 18:45Speaker 02

  But now they're just kind of starting to pile stuff on top of them and, you know, they've always prided themselves on saying no to so many things. This really does seem like something where they could have said no to it, right? Like this is probably not a billion dollar business for them.

• 18:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 18:56Speaker 02

  Maybe it is like, like at the, at the outside. But they could have not done this and just focused on a lot of other things.

• 19:04Nilay Patel?

  Wait, so here's my, here's the, the really harsh question. And this is probably not true. So I'm looking dead in the camera and the listener in the car, I'm seeking directly into your ears. Probably not true. Do you think that they were just worried that their holiday was gonna be down so they put out something to goose their holiday revenue?

• 19:22Speaker 02

  I heard the best theory about it. You wanna hear what it is? The reason that they released it is because it's an accessory and it will go into the same line item on their financial reporting as the Apple Watch. So it will confuse people about how many Apple Watches are being sold. Like, it's a misdirection play because they could sell, you know, 100,000 units and it'll create a certain amount of revenue and people have no idea how many watches they sold. That was the most convincing insane theory that I heard.

• 19:48Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that is like cuckoo crazy insane. But it's fun. I will say Apple Watch down to $249 at Best Buy. They cut $100 off of it.

• 20:00Speaker 02

  We're six months away from them just like giving them away when you open a checking account.

• 20:05Nilay Patel?

  Well, rumors are that the new ones-

• 20:07Speaker 01

  Baseball stadium and they're like, "You sign up for a credit card, you get one of these."

• 20:10Speaker 02

  Or it's Apple Watch night at the Rockies game.

• 20:14Nilay Patel?

  Incredible. If like the Warriors are like, "Did you know that you can pay for everything here with an Apple Watch?" Well, now I do because you have one. Look under your seats.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  People don't even bother. That's a lot of work.

• 20:26Nilay Patel?

  Do you see Apple Watches in, uh...

• 20:29Speaker 02

  Austin, Texas.

• 20:29Nilay Patel?

  Wherever the hell it is that you live.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  Two of my friends in wherever the hell Texas, uh, bought Apple Watches. One works, uh, he's a GM at a restaurant and the other works also in publishing. Both of them returned them within five days and they were like hype. Like, I was like, "I don't know. I think you might wanna reconsider it." And they were like up that creek and, uh, and it ended up being shit creek. Yeah, I mean, I... Every person I ask, did I already tell you the one excuse I've been given to like why you should buy an Apple Watch? This is absurd. This is from a VC person in Austin. And he's like, "I don't really like them for me. I like them for my wife because then I know that she hears me whenever I call."

• 21:15Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so they're having some weird issues in their relationship.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  Yep, it was like, it was like, well, hi- his defense, because I was like, that, that sounds awful. And he was like, no, I think you could get them, I think like they'll sell for, for people who don't have phones on them. So like, my wife keeps her phone in her purse, and my kids don't carry their phones, they're in their backpacks. And if I strap an Apple Watch to them, and I text them, I know they see it.

• 21:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you can also implant a chip directly into your wife's body, you know where she is at all times.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  It was, uh, it wasn't the best lunch.

• 21:46Nilay Patel?

  Are, are you, do you still have any interest in this thing?

• 21:49Speaker 03

  Okay, I had lunch just now next to someone who had one, and I had the first tug of my heart where I was like, I want that thing. For the first time.

• 21:58Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 22:00Speaker 03

  He had the, it had the weather?

• 22:04Speaker 03

  And, I know, I know, and I like saw his little home screen with like all of the items that he selected to have on it. And I was like, oh yeah, it would be cool to know the weather when I'm getting ready, instead of like looking at my phone.

• 22:15Nilay Patel?

  I just scream at Alexa, you gotta get an Echo.

• 22:17Speaker 03

  I really want one of those. Do you know one of my favorite inside jokes with myself right now? I don't have one of these in my house. Maybe I already referenced this. Alexa, play Freako. One of my favorite future songs right now.

• 22:28Nilay Patel?

  Wait, you just yell it?

• 22:29Speaker 03

  That's a joke that I make with myself at home, yes.

• 22:35Nilay Patel?

  I'm setting up a Kickstarter to get you an Alexa, or get you an Echo. That's it, that's the whole Kickstarter. Is we buy $150 Echo for Nickelodeon?

• 22:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, please. I bet we could make that happen.

• 22:47Nilay Patel?

  What would you rather get for Christmas, uh, an Echo or an Apple Watch?

• 22:51Speaker 03

  Probably this Echo.

• 22:53Nilay Patel?

  Chris?

• 22:54Speaker 01

  I mean, I have an Echo and I like it a lot.

• 22:56Nilay Patel?

  Casey?

• 22:57Speaker 02

  What was the question?

• 22:58Speaker 01

  The Echo or Apple?

• 23:00Speaker 02

  Uh, Echo, but I suspect that I wouldn't use it very much.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  You'd be surprised.

• 23:04Speaker 03

  What else can you ask?

• 23:04Speaker 02

  I don't like voice interfaces.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  I, I like it for-

• 23:08Nilay Patel?

  You can get it to play that one future song.

• 23:09Speaker 03

  Okay, I hate on the commercial when it's like, he's like asking her a bunch of, to do a bunch of things, then he's like, play my road trip playlist. And it's like, why, you're in your kitchen, why do you want to listen to your road trip playlist? I hate that. Every time it plays, it makes me so angry.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  They're like, play future damage.

• 23:23Speaker 03

  The script does, not that he, not the object, the script does.

• 23:27Nilay Patel?

  Um, I, so when the Echo commercials on, my Echo starts doing all kinds of shit, which is hilarious.

• 23:32Speaker 03

  No, really?

• 23:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like when the Xbox Connect commercials would like turn off connects.

• 23:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  And it's like, ah, great.

• 23:37Nilay Patel?

  Uh, yeah, my Echo is like, it's like it's fucking possessed. It's like bad, like, hey Siri, somewhere in cars across America, Siri has lit up on like many people's phones. Hey Siri, tell the time. It's like, you can just troll people if like you, if you, if you speak into a microphone and you know your voice will go out over speakers. Hey Siri, tell me a joke. Then like somewhere in someone's car right now, fucking Siri's doing.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  You've just caused like 11 car accidents across America.

• 24:04Nilay Patel?

  No, I haven't. I've just made Siri tell people delightful jokes across America.

• 24:08Speaker 03

  I hate Siri.

• 24:09Speaker 01

  I am a robot.

• 24:10Nilay Patel?

  Keep your eyes on the road. Uh, no, so, um, you can tell it, obviously you can tell it to, for the weather. You, the music stuff is really weird because it only connects to Amazon's weird music service. So you have, you have to have Prime and then you're like, Amazon, play me some morning music. And it's like EDM hits from 2008. And it's like, that's all you got, huh?

• 24:31Speaker 03

  Oh, I don't want this anymore.

• 24:34Nilay Patel?

  It also works, it does work as a Bluetooth speaker, but yeah, it's like, then you have to fuck with your phone.

• 24:37Speaker 03

  I have that already, yeah.

• 24:38Nilay Patel?

  It's like no fun. Um, uh, you can ask for the news, which is fine. Um, you can.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  Measurements.

• 24:44Nilay Patel?

  You can ask for measurements. We set kitchen time. Like basically it has replaced Siri in my day to day. Like if I'm at home, the fact that you can just like yell for information, it'll just like do it for you, which is cool. No?

• 24:57Speaker 01

  And I, I mean, I like mine. I also like my thermostat.

• 25:00Nilay Patel?

  Um, and then Chris Ziegler, um, has like a house full of like Hue lights.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:05Nilay Patel?

  Um, including, I'm just gonna, I'm just getting into it for Chris. Throw a so another loss. Apparently he has like light strips under his bed. So he can just like yell scenes and like the lights in his house, including lights under his bed will like turn purple.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  Um, if I did that right now with my phone, it would change all the lights in our home.

• 25:21Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 25:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have an, uh, my Hue app does it. So I can change all the lights in my living room and really freak my wife out right now.

• 25:29Nilay Patel?

  This is like, uh, every day I just slowly turn the heat up in my parents' house.

• 25:32Speaker 03

  I feel like the theme of this episode is like how to mess with wives with technology.

• 25:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, that's.

• 25:36Speaker 03

  Which isn't 2016 goals like that.

• 25:39Nilay Patel?

  No, not, not, not in there. No. But my wife is screwed.

• 25:47Nilay Patel?

  Socks and underwear, Casey. Socks and underwear.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  They're back.

• 25:52Nilay Patel?

  They're fucking back. They were gone. 2015 was the year of no socks. 2016, socks and underwear, my friends. I used to be a boring stocking stuffer, but Mack Weldon, now it's a top-of-line gift. Mack Weldon holiday packs are not just a gift that every man needs. It's the gift that every man is excited to get. Because every man loves socks and underwear.

• 26:12Nilay Patel?

  Mack Weldon believes in smart design, premium fabrics, and simple shopping.

• 26:18Nilay Patel?

  You know, you just go online, you push a button, it sends you some underwear. All of their products are naturally antimicrobial, which means they eliminate odor, which means I'm reading an ad for non-stink underwear. But they want you to be comfortable as well. So if you don't like your first pair, you can keep it, and then you will get refunded if you don't like it. You don't even have to ask questions. They won't ask you questions.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  Please, keep it. Don't send it back.

• 26:39Nilay Patel?

  Just be like, "This didn't work for me."

• 26:43Nilay Patel?

  "I put it on my body, and then my body rejected it."

• 26:45Speaker 01

  Or let them know that you liked it.

• 26:46Nilay Patel?

  Or let them know you liked it.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  They love those calls.

• 26:48Nilay Patel?

  They still won't ask you any questions, though. They'll just, they'll just, whatever. Mack Weldon...

• 26:52Speaker 01

  Really nice to hear, sir.

• 26:53Nilay Patel?

  Look, anyhow, Mack Weldon's underwear, socks, and shirts, they look good. They perform well, which is an interesting thing to say about underwear. I've never thought about my underwear's performance. But if you buy this underwear, that is an option that you have in your life. It's good for going, uh, working out. You can go to work in it, and go on dates. You can throw it at your wife and say, "Hey, I harassed you with technology."

• 27:14Speaker 01

  You can put stickers on it?

• 27:15Nilay Patel?

  You can put stickers on your underwear.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  Do you want to know some socks trivia?

• 27:18Nilay Patel?

  Uh, yeah.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  Socks was the name of Bill Clinton's cat.

• 27:24Nilay Patel?

  You can go to mackweldon.com and get 20% off of these socks and underwear using our promo code, which, as you may have guessed, is VERGE.

• 27:36Nilay Patel?

  That was it. That was, uh, that was the underwear ad that I read today.

• 27:39Speaker 03

  And a presidential pet fact.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  Don't get those all the time.

• 27:44Nilay Patel?

  What is, uh, what is, Obama has two dogs. What are their names?

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Beau and other dog.

• 27:50Speaker 03

  The beef side of the dog.

• 27:56Nilay Patel?

  Alright, so we gotta talk about, there's another big thing to talk about. Nicola has it.

• 28:01Speaker 03

  I don't even know what this is. I was told not to touch it till now.

• 28:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, cuz I want you to play with it. So Dieter and Walt both reviewed the Google Pixel C. That is an Android tablet with an optional keyboard cover. And I would like you to figure out how to attach the keyboard cover without any instructions.

• 28:17Speaker 03

  Oh, this is-

• 28:18Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna point out that what I have not given you is the sheet of paper with a double-sided instructions for attaching the keyboard to that object. You have to talk out loud cuz it's a radio show, so describe what you're doing.

• 28:27Speaker 03

  I pulled two pieces of metal and screens away from each other. There's a slot. I feel that this one piece should go in this slot. So I'm pressing and it's not going. There's no way to slide it from the side. I wonder if something bends. No.

• 28:44Nilay Patel?

  This is great.

• 28:45Speaker 03

  Um...

• 28:46Nilay Patel?

  We should do this every week.

• 28:48Speaker 03

  Oh, no. Tried to turn it around.

• 28:53Nilay Patel?

  Okay, let me tell you that magnets are involved, but not in the orientation that you might expect.

• 28:59Speaker 03

  Okay, how else? Wait. Oh, it's flat on the ground. It's flat. Does it bend up?

• 29:06Nilay Patel?

  Try bending. See what happens. Is it bending? It's never gonna happen. So that is the Pixel C. I think that we've just described the essential experience of the Pixel C to you. So it's, here's, here's-

• 29:19Speaker 03

  I have the biggest phone now.

• 29:21Nilay Patel?

  Okay, now pull, pull it up. You got, you got it. Now pull the screen towards you. It's a hinge. You got it. You figured it out. Hey, what's that?

• 29:27Speaker 03

  That doesn't feel right. It's nice and little, though. What a great size.

• 29:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so that's Pixel C. Here's what happened. Google, they're bringing the Chrome team, the Chrome OS team and the Android team together. That is very political. We've talked about it on the show before. When they announced it, everyone thought they were just folding Chrome OS and Android, but they claimed that they're not. It's much weirder and more complicated. Uh, yeah. There's some deep weirdness in there. What they are claiming publicly is like, "Why do we need two sets of Bluetooth engineers? We'll just have one." And then at the end, it's gonna be like, "Why do we need two operating systems?" Like, it's clear where that slippery slope lies. Anyhow, so they did that. Oh, I just turned on somebody's echo. Alexa, set a timer for 30 minutes.

• 30:13Speaker 03

  Then play Free Code.

• 30:19Nilay Patel?

  Alexa, set a timer for 27 minutes.

• 30:24Speaker 02

  The worst idea you've ever had.

• 30:26Nilay Patel?

  This is so much fun.

• 30:30Speaker 03

  We all get our kicks.

• 30:31Nilay Patel?

  What? Yeah.

• 30:35Nilay Patel?

  Hey Siri, what's the weather in Milwaukee, Wisconsin?

• 30:39Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, so they brought the teams together. The Chromebook Pixel, which is a beautiful product that I love very much, actually.

• 30:46Nilay Patel?

  They, the team that built that, built that tablet that runs Android. So that's a weird mashup. Those teams were previously separate, now they're together. The Chromebook team is building hardware for Android. Google traditionally has never built its own Android hardware, except for the Nexus Q, which was garbage and they didn't release. So, there you go.

• 31:06Nilay Patel?

  But they didn't change Android at all to run on a tablet. So they built this like Surface Pro looking thing, this like iPad Pro looking thing, but literally none of the software was changed. So it's just a gigantic phone, basically. And like Android tablets, how long have Android tablets been around? It's like 2011 when the Motorola Zoom came out and they still suck. Do you have an Android tablet? Do you know any human being with an Android tablet?

• 31:27Speaker 02

  I mean, like, there was a point where the Nexus 7s did get into just like giveaway mode where you would just like walk into a bar and somebody would hand you one, at least in San Francisco. Told him buy an Apple Watch. Yeah, exactly. So I do have a Nexus 7 that I probably last turned on 18 months ago.

• 31:43Nilay Patel?

  I have two Nexus. I have the original one with like the weird leather back.

• 31:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:47Nilay Patel?

  Like it feels like racing gloves and it's like, okay, that's a choice that you made. And then I have the cooler new one, which David Pierce like gave like a 10 out of 10 when said it was the best tablet and we ran him out of town.

• 32:00Speaker 02

  Good riddance.

• 32:01Nilay Patel?

  We didn't do that to him. We ran him out of town. What do you think of that thing, Nicole?

• 32:05Speaker 03

  I'm still setting it up, but I don't want to. I just want to play with it.

• 32:09Nilay Patel?

  What are you setting up?

• 32:10Speaker 03

  It wants me to log into everything.

• 32:12Speaker 02

  And give you its social security.

• 32:14Speaker 03

  Not now. It actually said, "This can take a while." And it's proving true.

• 32:22Nilay Patel?

  People are...

• 32:24Speaker 02

  You're wreaking havoc.

• 32:25Nilay Patel?

  A lot of Alexas and a lot of Sirens have gone off.

• 32:28Speaker 03

  That's awesome.

• 32:32Nilay Patel?

  That's really funny.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  Imagine if you use your powers for good, Neelai.

• 32:35Nilay Patel?

  Hey Siri, remind me to donate to charity.

• 32:44Nilay Patel?

  Alexa, put donation to Red Cross on my shopping list.

• 32:50Nilay Patel?

  Fine, I'm sorry.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  You've really done it.

• 32:56Nilay Patel?

  This is the stupidest thing we've ever used this.

• 33:00Nilay Patel?

  What would you, what would you, what would you have the Alexas of the world do?

• 33:05Speaker 02

  You know, I think to the extent that they continue to open it up as a development platform, it gets way more interesting, right? If I can play Spotify using it, it's way more interesting to me right away, right?

• 33:15Nilay Patel?

  But Amazon is the most locked in.

• 33:17Speaker 02

  Well, I don't know. I mean, like what I'm hearing from them is that they're actually pretty excited about turning it into a real development platform. And they should because they have an opportunity to move much faster than Apple can, right? We, I mean, we've seen how fast Apple has opened up Siri, right? Which is like basically like, what, one new partner a year, it sort of feels like. So there's a lot more that they can do on that little speaker. And, and I think they should because like, that's all blue ocean for them right now.

• 33:41Nilay Patel?

  I've never seen, that is the first Amazon hardware product where they entered a market first with a very obvious riff on a product that everybody else has and they like have blown it away.

• 33:53Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 33:53Nilay Patel?

  Like it's, it's, I like it anyway. What would you, what would you do to the thing?

• 33:57Speaker 01

  I mean, Spotify is like, is, is the big thing. I, I, I feel like it's the service that everybody uses at this point for music. I mean, whatever. I'm sure there's a few title users out there and whoever figured out how to use Apple Music, I guess they use it.

• 34:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  But.

• 34:13Nilay Patel?

  The title users weeping in their like camera on exclusives.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, my $10,000 headsets will never work with Amazon Echo.

• 34:20Speaker 02

  Also like, um, and forgive me, but like they don't have like OpenTable integration, right? Or like, you know, Domino's integration? Cause if you could just like yell at your speaker like, hey, uh, get me a large pepperoni to my house.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  Like the, the on-demand pizza thing is always used as an example by tech people. Like, I think it was, I think Ziegler was trying to tell me that like, the killer app of Apple TV is Seamless. And I, and which I know I don't buy that at all because if you have people over, you're not going to stop everyone watching television and be like, oh, let's look at a menu for, for 15 minutes while people debate what they're going to order. Uh, but like the on demand pizza thing, I remember with like Windows 95, it was like, you can order, uh, uh, Domino's from your computer through your modem. And when you do it, it ejects the CD drive and you can put your Pepsi on it. Like it was, they were like that, that type of, it just feels like the thing that's always thrown around, but I don't know who actually uses it.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  I mean, the reason is because that the, the home delivery pizza market is insanely big. Like it's much more than $10 billion annually. People spent in America on getting pizza delivered to their houses.

• 35:25Nilay Patel?

  You're, it sounds like you're in the middle of VC pitch and you're about to tell me how you're going to disrupt home delivery.

• 35:29Speaker 02

  Neil, I'm about to change your life right now and here's why.

• 35:34Speaker 02

  No, I got nothing.

• 35:35Nilay Patel?

  Do you ever read that there's like a fake, it was like an old secret. Do you remember secret? The app that was around only just a year ago.

• 35:44Speaker 02

  They grow up so fast and then they die so fast.

• 35:46Nilay Patel?

  There's an obituary, right? There was like, my favorite secret ever was like, the cashew market in America is worth a billion dollars.

• 35:55Nilay Patel?

  But pistachios are like underserved. I have just raised $10 million to bring, it was like hilarious. Like that's the structure of every pitch is like the size of the, anyway.

• 36:04Speaker 02

  Well, that's all, I mean, VC is one of the best.

• 36:05Nilay Patel?

  Let's quit and start a pizza company. What would you name your pizza company?

• 36:10Speaker 03

  Fumo Pies.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  Perfect.

• 36:13Nilay Patel?

  Too fast.

• 36:13Speaker 02

  I mean, the best, the best app name for pizza was already taken. It's Push for Pizza. And the app was just a button that you pushed and pizza came to you.

• 36:21Nilay Patel?

  Let's talk about the Pixel C. You're right. You're right.

• 36:24Speaker 02

  Push for Pixels.

• 36:25Nilay Patel?

  Push for Pixels. So what, wait, now you've been playing with it. What do you think?

• 36:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, I dig this little thing. Okay. It turned off. Um, but we're coming back.

• 36:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 36:33Speaker 03

  We're on. I dig it. It's fun. It's cute. It's a great size.

• 36:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 36:37Speaker 03

  It's weird that the keyboard doesn't light up. I guess we can't get everything yet.

• 36:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 36:42Speaker 03

  That we want.

• 36:43Nilay Patel?

  I mean, so Dieter and Walt, like, both pretty much hated it.

• 36:45Speaker 03

  Really?

• 36:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, because the software is not optimized for that screen. It's just a gigantic phone. Which is like, Dieter's, if you read Dieter's review, Walt's review is like, great, it's like a Walt review, but Dieter's review is like, Dieter has been desperately trying to like, live in the future, and like, not have a laptop and have this like, touch keyboard hybrid experience.

• 37:03Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 37:04Nilay Patel?

  So he like, did a Surface for a while, and then he did, he tried the iPad Pro for a minute, and then he was all over that. And he's just like, we're, like, literally the first line of his review is like, we're botching it. Like, these are all botched products. Like, nobody really understands what to do with a touchscreen and a keyboard at the same time.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  Do you think after Windows 8, everybody's like, "Yeah, we're not gonna make those mistakes," and then came in like, "Ah, damn it."

• 37:29Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, it's just like, the, it's weird because Apple has its two big platforms. And Apple, actually, you know, we were talking about earlier, like, they've made so many big bets this year, that it kind of feels like everything's half-done. Like, Apple put out the Watch this year. They haven't like, really said a word about it. They put out WatchOS 2. Great, but nothing happened, right? They put out a TV product that runs a new OS called TVOS. They put out 3D Touch on the iPhone. They, the list goes on and on and on, and they're waiting for any of them to hit. And then like, "Oh, by the way, we added a pen and a keyboard to the app," like, and they're waiting for it to hit. Like, it's just this endless series of big, big bets from Apple. And it's like, but none of them really answer the question of like, "How does the iPad replace your laptop?"

• 38:14Nilay Patel?

  And then with Microsoft, it's the same thing. Like, Tom just reviewed the Dell XPS 13, and he's like, "You know, I don't need all this other stuff. I just want a great laptop, and here it is. I love it." And then there's this thing, and it's like, Google could build the next, the third platform. Like, they're the only company that can do it. Right? You've got Apple and its two big platforms, iOS and OS 10. You've got Microsoft and Windows, and they've got a different bet to spread it all across. And then you've got Google doing that thing. And it's like, but you didn't do any work. Like, you just like, put it on a different screen size and like, literally stuck a keyboard on the bottom with a cool hinge, and like, is the, this is the future. And it's like, no.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  A cool hinge that nobody knows how to instinctually use.

• 38:55Nilay Patel?

  But that's like- Those should've figured it out.

• 38:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, with some coaxing from literally experts.

• 39:03Speaker 03

  I don't think everyone at home is like, alright, where are those three guys?

• 39:06Nilay Patel?

  Well, it comes with a double-sided sheet of paper with like, I would say, very confusing pictograms.

• 39:14Speaker 03

  Man.

• 39:14Speaker 02

  Are there any other kind? Do you ever see a pictogram? Like, I know exactly what the heck I'm gonna do right now.

• 39:20Nilay Patel?

  You open up like the IKEA box, and you're like, oh, this is so easy to understand. These arrows and lines completely make a bookshelf.

• 39:26Speaker 02

  I don't even know why they bother including these pictures, it's so intuitive.

• 39:30Nilay Patel?

  What was the last piece of IKEA that you built?

• 39:32Speaker 02

  Um, I think it was like a futon in 2006.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh, I had a bookshelf in college, and it broke immediately, and then I decided to never do that to myself again.

• 39:44Nilay Patel?

  Um, we had a very, when I saw it in office, in this office, which is like a long time ago now, with like a blue couch from IKEA, and it was so, I don't, furniture in offices gets abused, and it was just like snapped in the middle. So now they're like shopping for new couches upstairs, and they keep showing me these like, various like West Elm CB2 like couch, like, we just need to buy a lot of couches. And I was like, they're all gonna break, they're not gonna last a minute. All we can have are these like orange sponge couches that literally cannot be destroyed, because I'm so worried that everything will break. It's bad, bad news.

• 40:19Nilay Patel?

  Did you know that with just a few lines of code, you can send text messages that include alerts, reminders, order updates, SMS marketing campaigns, and instructions for app downloads? It's true, Casey Newton. With Telecommunication System Inc.'s Cloud Messaging Center, developers, uh, includes all of us, uh, you can easily integrate text messaging into your mobile applications, backend, or website. As a company, TCS, I like to call it TCS, handles up to 670 billion messages per year. That's an average of 1.8 billion messages per day. Again, just a few lines of codes. Their CMC REST API, Casey, allows you to send messages for alerts, reminders, and order updates. You can also use it to send SMS marketing campaigns to drive app downloads

• 41:01Nilay Patel?

  or increase user engagement by just war texting everyone in your, in your email database. Don't do that. The REST API allows you to perform messaging functions such as sending, receiving, scheduling messages, securing delivery receipts, and creating groups and contacts. TCS offers intercarrier messaging across all US wireless carriers, because it's 2016, for god's sake. And the pricing is flexible, based on the quantity of messages you need, featuring pay-as-you-go monthly plans. So.

• 41:28Nilay Patel?

  I want you to consider what a next level URL is for a service like this. And I want you to know in your heart that it's cloudmessaging.guru. And I want you to go to cloudmessaging.guru.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  Go in right now.

• 41:42Nilay Patel?

  And sign up for the Cloud Messaging Center REST API. Even if you don't need a Cloud Messaging Center REST API, I want you to type in the words cloudmessaging.guru into your browser of choice, just to imagine a future in which .guru is a URL that exists. And then I want you to integrate a messaging solution into whatever the hell it is that you're doing. Alexa, remind me to go to cloudmessaging.guru. The end. A story by Neil... A demanding weird story by Neil Patel.

• 42:12Nilay Patel?

  All right, we've got 15 minutes left.

• 42:14Speaker 01

  Oh, we have a request to talk about Hamilton.

• 42:17Nilay Patel?

  I was gonna do lightning round, but we can talk about Hamilton.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  Oh, no, no.

• 42:20Nilay Patel?

  Lightning round, Hamilton.

• 42:23Speaker 01

  Hot or not, hot?

• 42:24Speaker 02

  Very hot.

• 42:26Nilay Patel?

  Have you seen it?

• 42:26Speaker 03

  What's this?

• 42:27Speaker 01

  Hamilton?

• 42:28Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 42:29Speaker 01

  Nicola. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

• 42:32Speaker 03

  What did I do wrong?

• 42:33Speaker 01

  It is... You're not gonna think it sounds good when I explain what it is.

• 42:37Nilay Patel?

  It sounds terrible. It sounds terrible.

• 42:39Speaker 01

  It is a rap musical about the life of Alexander Hamilton and the founding fathers.

• 42:47Speaker 03

  No, this sounds like everything for me. Why don't I know about this?

• 42:50Speaker 02

  I don't know. My first staff is obsessed with it.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  It is the hottest ticket in town, sold out basically indefinitely.

• 42:57Speaker 03

  Oh, it's live?

• 42:58Speaker 02

  For months, it's sold out.

• 42:59Speaker 01

  It's a Broadway show.

• 43:00Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 43:01Speaker 01

  Thousands of dollars.

• 43:03Speaker 03

  I was picturing more like something like Empire exclusively on... You know what I mean?

• 43:07Nilay Patel?

  No, it's just a line actually. Casey's going tonight.

• 43:10Speaker 01

  It is.

• 43:10Speaker 03

  Oh, cool, cool.

• 43:11Speaker 02

  That's why this is a very relevant subject, is I decided to spend one night of my time in New York doing something just for me, and that's going to see this show, which is going to win every Tony. They're gonna make up new Tonys, just have extra Tonys to award to Hamilton. But it's this really cool thing. It was written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who is the child of immigrants, and he was really drawn to the story because Alexander Hamilton... Hamilton himself was an immigrant and sort of used the power of writing to help found the nation. And he cast mostly actors of color, like in the roles of the founding fathers. And so the way he describes it, it's the story of America yesterday told by the story of America today. But he said it more eloquently.

• 43:56Speaker 02

  But anyway, it's dope as heck and I got into it because of our own Caitlin Tiffany, who tweeted many, many times about it, led me to the cast album. And I've been obsessed with it for a month, so.

• 44:07Nilay Patel?

  I gotta say Caitlin Tiffany, one of the best Twitter accounts at The Verge.

• 44:10Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Bar none.

• 44:12Nilay Patel?

  Also, Casey and Caitlin, I believe, only interact on Twitter.

• 44:16Speaker 02

  That is true.

• 44:16Nilay Patel?

  You know, she's upstairs. She's probably listening to this right now.

• 44:18Speaker 02

  I would love to say hi to Caitlin before I leave.

• 44:20Nilay Patel?

  I don't think that you should.

• 44:21Speaker 02

  Okay. Deals off Caitlin. Deals off.

• 44:24Nilay Patel?

  Okay, lighting round. GoPro is making a drone called the Karma, a drone by GoPro called the Karma.

• 44:30Speaker 01

  I mean, it seems like an effort to make it not sound like that thing that's going to watch you when you don't want to be watched.

• 44:36Speaker 02

  Terrible name. Gotta do it.

• 44:38Nilay Patel?

  I think the fact that GoPro, like DJI makes drones and now they have to make cameras because everyone's six GoPros on the drones. And now GoPro is like, they have to make drones. It's very interesting. CES has officially banned hoverboards.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  Oh, I would love to have a hoverboard there.

• 44:55Nilay Patel?

  I have this dream of a video in which someone on our staff, Casey Newton, is riding a hoverboard slowly down a long hallway and it's like a wide shot. And there's a cop on a Segway just like chasing Casey on the hoverboard.

• 45:07Speaker 02

  In slow motion.

• 45:08Nilay Patel?

  In slow motion.

• 45:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. I'll make that happen. Look, if that's what it takes to get me kicked out of CES, I'll do anything. I'm like Klinger on MASH.

• 45:16Nilay Patel?

  Did you just make a MASH reference?

• 45:18Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 45:19Speaker 02

  Listen, the millennials grew up with reruns of MASH. Believe me on this one.

• 45:23Nilay Patel?

  Alexa, add MASH to my prime viewing library.

• 45:27Speaker 01

  Order me a Toledo Mud Hens baseball cap.

• 45:30Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God. Yahoo spinning off Yahoo because the core business of Yahoo is worth nothing.

• 45:33Speaker 02

  I have to say.

• 45:34Nilay Patel?

  Can you walk us through this one?

• 45:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, a bit. It is a story about taxes, which is what makes it horrible. But so most of the value of Yahoo is in this large stake they own in Alibaba, so they wanted to. Spin that stake off into its own company. And then they ran into tax issues. They were going to take this huge tax hit. And so they had this responsibility to find a cheaper way to do it. And so now they're sort of doing the opposite where they're going to spin out the much cheaper core of Yahoo into its own company. But what's sad about it is that the story of Yahoo is now a story about financial engineering. Like, it's no longer a product story, right? It's no longer about the, like, people there who are trying to make cool things. It's just like, how will this asset be disposed? So in a lot of ways, this week felt like the end of Yahoo to me.

• 46:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so I worked for AOL for a long time, as you may know. And there were rumors always AOL and Yahoo would merge. And now Verizon, which just bought AOL to become some sort of Comcast-like media company. They're basically not even hiding it. They're like, yeah, you know, if you, uh, if you put that out there, we'll snap it up.

• 46:38Speaker 02

  Throw a couple bucks your way, take it off your hands.

• 46:40Nilay Patel?

  Hey, Marissa, can I call you Rissa? Does anybody call her Rissa?

• 46:44Speaker 02

  Literally no one does.

• 46:45Nilay Patel?

  Well, welcome to your new home.

• 46:47Speaker 02

  We should actually say congratulations to Erica because she gave birth to twins today. So congratulations to Marissa Meyer.

• 46:52Nilay Patel?

  Hey, very much congratulations. That's nice. Sorry about the Yahoo thing.

• 46:55Speaker 02

  That's a bummer.

• 46:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So Verizon's like out there, like, we're gonna just, if you, I mean, if, eat when served, you know?

• 47:03Speaker 02

  And when I think about the media that the teens are gonna love, that Verizon-Yaho tie-up could really, could really move the needle for us.

• 47:13Nilay Patel?

  Well, that's just funny that Yahoo, or Yahoo and AOL might finally merge because Verizon was just like, you know what? We just, we have the money. God only knows what else we're gonna do with it. Make good phones? Faster networks? No, no, no, no. Go 90. Sorry. Go 90 is just a terrible product. Okay. Do you have any Yahoo thoughts landing around? Yep. Mailbox is dead.

• 47:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, very sad. The client that I used on my phone, basically from the date it came out till a month before it shut down. Dropbox could not figure out a way to turn it into, you know, a moneymaker and gave up on it.

• 47:48Nilay Patel?

  That's terrible.

• 47:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:49Nilay Patel?

  Is there any future for these apps?

• 47:51Speaker 02

  Which kind of apps?

• 47:52Nilay Patel?

  I don't know.

• 47:53Speaker 02

  Just apps in general?

• 47:54Nilay Patel?

  I'll tell you. Productivity apps.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  Apps, we're gonna catch on?

• 47:58Speaker 02

  Here's a 2016 story for you. The app development is a terrible business for all but a very select number of companies. And I think a lot of the opportunity has already been snapped up, right? Like, if you're not in, you know, on-demand services, or messaging, or a couple of other categories, there's just like not a lot of ways to make money. Games is the other big one. There's not a lot of ways to make money, because most people don't download apps, and the people who do aren't paying for them. So good luck making a business out of that.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  Are we gonna have a return to like people inventing things?

• 48:30Speaker 02

  No, you're gonna see people continue to make stuff and give it away for free. That's just like the nature of the internet.

• 48:35Speaker 01

  No more like non-internet things, like a new light bulb, like something better than the light bulb. The toilet, but better.

• 48:41Speaker 02

  We will see a return to the land, and people will become farmers. We will return to an agrarian society of craftsmen and tradesmen, and women.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  And those who refuse, they must wander.

• 48:54Nilay Patel?

  Alright, hold on, I've got another one here. I've got another one here. I do. Oh, your Xbox story. Letting rain.

• 48:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 49:00Nilay Patel?

  Quan wrote a fucking killer-ass feature.

• 49:02Speaker 02

  I haven't even had the chance to read it yet.

• 49:05Nilay Patel?

  And it's all about how Microsoft's gonna try to revive the Xbox One.

• 49:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:09Nilay Patel?

  What's going on with that?

• 49:10Speaker 01

  I mean...

• 49:11Nilay Patel?

  You should read it, by the way.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  It's about that, but I think the real turn is about how they're going to use Windows a lot more, because turns out... No, I think this is actually a pretty bright idea. Because look at sales of video game consoles, right?

• 49:25Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 49:25Speaker 01

  PlayStation, or I think it was 3 sold... No, no, no, sorry. I wanted to make sure I get it all right. PS4 sold 120 million. PS3, a little over 80 million. And there has been a general sense of the video game console trending downwards. On top of that, like, as video game becomes something that you can just stream,

• 49:45Speaker 01

  why even bother spending a ton of money on this device? And it's also competing with things like your smartphone, right? So, there, the idea of a console market is...

• 49:55Speaker 01

  Messier than it's ever been. On the flip side, Windows 10, it's on what, 100 million?

• 50:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 50:01Speaker 01

  Computers right now, uh, already. They, they say they want it to be at a billion in three, four years. That's a hell of a lot more people. So I, I think it's kind of bright in that, like, I don't know if they'll ever catch up with Sony and the PlayStation 4, but if their real idea is, "Okay, let's keep humoring this idea that we're, we're console makers for one more generation, even though consoles may disappear after this one." We can kind of start redirecting people towards what the real future is, which is an app that delivers you all of your video games and streams them, or uses cloud computing, or just, you know, is the platform on which, uh,

• 50:42Speaker 01

  second and first-party software appears. So I, I, I think, this is me like analyzing my own piece at this point. This is not the specifically based off quotes that they've said, but, uh, I, I do get the sense that all of this interest that they have in Windows, bringing almost everything to Windows. When I, when I asked them about Halo, the new Halos coming to Windows, they wouldn't give me a flat no. Like, the fact that people are no longer, it used to be like, "No, of course we're not doing that. Xbox, Xbox, Xbox." And now it's like, "Well, uh, you know, we do things when it's the right time to do things," is, is basically the read of the situation there. Uh, and I, I think that is

• 51:23Speaker 01

  probably the healthiest play, is knowing when to kind of, it's not really cutting your losses. I think Xbox One is still going to be very important for them, but I think like recognizing, "Oh, wait, we have this giant platform already."

• 51:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 51:35Speaker 01

  Why would we not use that platform?

• 51:38Nilay Patel?

  Are they gonna let apps to offer just like, "Right, game."

• 51:41Speaker 01

  Well, so that's the whole, their big plan is, and I, I wanna see this

• 51:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 51:47Speaker 01

  actually done, but they describe developing for Windows 10 as this like literally turnkey for all Windows 10 platforms. Xbox One is a Windows 10 platform as of this fall. So they describe it like, "Oh, well, you'll develop for any of these, and it'll just work."

• 52:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but how, but that's not the-

• 52:07Speaker 01

  That's not real life.

• 52:08Nilay Patel?

  This is like the app thing. It's like, that's not actually the point. The point is discovery, payment, distribution.

• 52:12Speaker 01

  Sure, but I think, I think then the idea is like, if you already have the Xbox brand, and they already have an Xbox app on Windows, and they've already with that brought over your friends list, you can chat over that, and that's like, step one. They already have essentially the social media platform, right? They have, they have the part of it that keeps people locked in, the sticky part. And then, they're competing with something like Steam, which is where you buy your games, and they can say, "Well, you already have your friends here. We are much better at party chat, just providing that kind of overlay for your games." I'm sure there are people who will disagree with me on that, and say that Steam is flawless in every possible way. But, but I think they have like, a legit

• 52:55Speaker 01

  shot at, we were talking about this yesterday, Coke and Pepsi, of being the Pepsi to Steam's Coke on Windows, that it'll, in a, in a world of lots of terrible...

• 53:07Nilay Patel?

  And Steam still has never executed really on the Steambox concept.

• 53:10Speaker 01

  No. No, nor have they executed on Big Picture. They're, they're still not good.

• 53:16Nilay Patel?

  They were gonna make the first-party Steambox a Big Picture.

• 53:18Speaker 01

  And, and, and think about that, right? Like, if, if, if Xbox wants to bring Big Picture to Windows, it's just Xbox. Like, they can, they can do it tomorrow, if, if they want to. They already have that made. So I, I think, I think that is the, the future that we see is, I think Xbox One still exists. I think it definitely has its core audience, but I think we start seeing Xbox as a brand, not as a singular piece of hardware.

• 53:47Nilay Patel?

  Ooh, that's interesting.

• 53:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:49Nilay Patel?

  Hmm. I might still buy the Elite, though.

• 53:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, why not? It's still, it's still the easiest way to play video games. Video game consoles are...

• 53:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 53:58Speaker 01

  I, I, I have a PC and I love it. I had, uh, Griffin McElroy from Polygon over at my house last weekend, and we tried to play three games on PC and all three didn't work.

• 54:07Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 54:07Speaker 01

  So it's like, as much as I love PCs, I, I still have those dumb problems.

• 54:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and I've yet to see a, um, a really truly great Apple TV game.

• 54:17Speaker 01

  Oh, well, I mean, that doesn't, that can't exist. Well, I mean, it could if it's a very specific, small game, but it, the, the hard drive limit alone. I mean, you, there are iPhone games that you can't run on Apple TV just because.

• 54:30Nilay Patel?

  Well, they slice them and they move them, right? Like, it's a thing. Okay.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's a mess.

• 54:36Nilay Patel?

  And the Apple TV, Apple Internet TV, once again, cannot launch streaming service, can't get the deals they want, put it on hold for the 50th time.

• 54:45Speaker 02

  I mean, I think it's the right move, right? They've sort of talked that service up so much that when it launches, it better feel pretty amazing, right? Like, Tim Cook keeps calling this next generation Apple TV, the foundation for the future of television. And yet you find out it's just gonna be like a different bundle of channels that you pay 40 bucks a month for, like.

• 55:05Nilay Patel?

  I, I just, I read, I wrote this thing a long time ago, um, about the war for television, that's like three years ago now. And there, I just reread it because somebody, somebody tweeted at me, which is like wild to get your own work tweeted, you know, remember that you wrote a thing.

• 55:18Nilay Patel?

  But there's this line that I wrote that was like, the killer app for television is television. And like, every Apple TV app is basically just another complicated interface in front of you watching a video. Although I will say, I watched, I downloaded the CoStar app and like took three Chinese lessons. I am terrible at speaking Chinese, uh, and learning it by watching, uh, lady yell Chinese at you on your TV. Not an effective solution. I just don't know.

• 55:43Speaker 01

  I do think Apple, Apple needs to do something sooner rather than later, because I think what we're seeing happen around that is all the contract negotiation that they're doing is benefiting companies doing the exact same negotiations. So when PlayStation Vue happened, they were, I think, able to do that deal because PlayStation wasn't the only person talking to them. When Amazon got this Showtime deal going and Starz.

• 56:08Speaker 01

  Those deals don't happen because Amazon goes to those companies, it's like, hey, we'll do this. They happen because other companies are going and there's, there's an ecosystem for it. And if I were Apple, I'd be worried that like, great, I did the hard work. I sent, I sent the people out there to start, start this process. And along the way, either those companies, in the case of like Stars and Showtime, partnered with other people. Or in the case of HBO, figured like, wait, why would I mess with you? Like that, that's like, HBO, I feel like, has figured it out in a way that NFL hasn't yet. Where it's like, wait, like, what if I just take the money directly? And don't worry about any of your bullshit?

• 56:52Speaker 01

  And then I put my thing on everyone.

• 56:54Nilay Patel?

  The next big thing, and I doubt it'll happen, and Peter Kafka, Rico has been reporting it in a prime one happening either, is that the rights for the Thursday night NFL games are up for auction soon. And Apple has a bunch of money, they could certainly participate. But Verizon has already bought the mobile rights. So, Apple could buy the rights, but you wouldn't be able to watch NFL games unless you have Verizon. And that seems like distinctly not Apple. Okay, we have a couple of insights. Nicola, tell me what the biggest story in fashion was this week.

• 57:20Speaker 03

  Ah, on the spot?

• 57:22Nilay Patel?

  On the spot.

• 57:23Speaker 03

  I mean, okay.

• 57:26Speaker 03

  Now I'm like, well, now I'm like black, blacking out. Um, but I guess the biggest like event this week was the Victoria's Secret fashion show.

• 57:33Nilay Patel?

  I read that there, you did a great feature, Rack did a great feature on it.

• 57:36Speaker 03

  Yes, touched by an angel on Rack.com by Erica Adams.

• 57:39Nilay Patel?

  About how it's like the only mall brand that's still good and like makes money?

• 57:42Speaker 03

  Basically how like, they don't have any competition and it's kind of insane. Like, women, there is no one, there is no one competing with Victoria's Secret. There's no one like that. It's really crazy. If we're talking about marketplace voids.

• 57:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's wild.

• 58:01Speaker 03

  And bras, and underwear.

• 58:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, is it a, should I ask you questions if you give it back? Mack Weldon doesn't. That was the Vergecast for this week.

• 58:12Speaker 03

  Touched by an angel.

• 58:13Nilay Patel?

  Touched, come on. Kill me. Here's some stuff that you can do with your time right now. You can go onto twitter.com. Most people don't have Twitter, I've learned, they have Facebook instead. But you can go onto that website, you can sign up for an account. You can avoid the Moments tab, which will attack you, but then you can follow at Verge on Twitter. You can also follow all of us, Nicola is Nicola underscore Fumo. Chris Plant.

• 58:39Speaker 03

  Newly verified.

• 58:40Nilay Patel?

  Oh, hey.

• 58:41Speaker 03

  Hey.

• 58:41Nilay Patel?

  Checkmark day for Nicola. Hit that follow button. You can follow Chris Plant, who is at Plant, with an E. You follow me, I'm at Reckless. Casey, one of the finest Twitter feeds in all of the land.

• 58:53Speaker 02

  Nice of you to say.

• 58:54Nilay Patel?

  At Casey Newton. You can hit us up on Snapchat, we're Real Verge. Nicola, what's your Snapchat?

• 58:59Speaker 03

  Nicola Fumo, all together.

• 59:00Nilay Patel?

  Don't follow Casey, because it gets weird in there.

• 59:05Nilay Patel?

  Real, real true Casey, but just follow the Verge, you're good. And Instagram, we have beaten Mashable on Instagram, we now have a quarter million Instagram followers, which Helen Havlock, our engagement editor,

• 59:18Nilay Patel?

  literally is drinking the blood of her enemies right now on Instagram. Wired, you're next, you're going down. So please follow us on Instagram. You can just find us, just type it in. What else can you do? What else should you do? Oh, I know what you should do. You should listen to our other fucking podcasts. Chris Plant has a podcast.

• 59:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's really good.

• 59:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 59:36Speaker 01

  I don't want to brag, but...

• 59:38Speaker 02

  It's tremendous.

• 59:39Nilay Patel?

  I want to tell you a story about Chris Plant telling-

• 59:40Speaker 03

  Someone on the YouTube chat said earlier that, um...

• 59:48Nilay Patel?

  What happened to you over there?

• 59:49Speaker 03

  Lit. And it's a 17-year-old, so-

• 59:51Speaker 01

  It's lit!

• 59:52Nilay Patel?

  There you go.

• 59:54Speaker 03

  It's lit.

• 59:55Speaker 02

  It's the highest honor a team can bestow.

• 59:57Speaker 03

  17-year-old said it's lit, like-

• 59:59Speaker 01

  Unfortunately, it was actually a 42-year-old referring to the band.

• 1:00:04Nilay Patel?

  You're your own worst enemy.

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:00:09Nilay Patel?

  The car's in the front yard, Chris. Does everybody know all the lyrics to that song?

• 1:00:13Speaker 02

  Did you forget about the time?

• 1:00:15Nilay Patel?

  Ten and a-

• 1:00:17Speaker 01

  Oh, that 17-year-old just turned on me fast.

• 1:00:20Nilay Patel?

  Alexa, play "My Own Worst Enemy" by Lit.

• 1:00:26Nilay Patel?

  Alexa, never stop playing My Own Worst Enemy by-

• 1:00:29Speaker 02

  No matter what I say. No matter what I say after this. Never stop playing it.

• 1:00:35Speaker 03

  Wow, they were formed the same year I was born.

• 1:00:37Nilay Patel?

  Oh my-

• 1:00:38Speaker 02

  Oh god, pull the plug.

• 1:00:39Nilay Patel?

  Alexa, suicide me.

• 1:00:42Nilay Patel?

  Alexa-

• 1:00:42Speaker 02

  She ate the death protocol, Alexa.

• 1:00:44Speaker 03

  It took 11 years for My Own Worst Enemy to come out. I mean, that's what they say.

• 1:00:49Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I see. Okay, My Own Worst Enemy didn't come out the year you were born.

• 1:00:51Speaker 03

  No, no, no.

• 1:00:52Nilay Patel?

  I just assumed, I assumed Lit was formed, released My Own Worst Enemy, looked at each other and said, "Fuck it, we're done."

• 1:00:58Speaker 03

  No, they worked for 11 goddamn years.

• 1:01:00Nilay Patel?

  You were on the grind.

• 1:01:02Speaker 03

  They released that song.

• 1:01:04Speaker 03

  A Place in the Sun is the record, and they had that place for like, a year and then-

• 1:01:09Nilay Patel?

  What, did they put out, go ahead, keep reading the Lit Wikipedia to me.

• 1:01:13Speaker 02

  They had one other song.

• 1:01:15Speaker 03

  Other songs are called Miserable-

• 1:01:17Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:01:17Speaker 03

  Ziploc, Over My Head, Lipstick and Bruises.

• 1:01:21Nilay Patel?

  Alexa, play Lipstick and Bruises by Lit.

• 1:01:24Speaker 01

  Really torturous thing to do to people.

• 1:01:27Speaker 03

  Ah, and then it suggests you go to their MySpace.

• 1:01:31Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god, okay, we're done. Um, don't go to their MySpace.

• 1:01:35Speaker 03

  Flood their MySpace.

• 1:01:37Nilay Patel?

  Get in there.

• 1:01:38Speaker 03

  Flood Lit's MySpace.

• 1:01:39Nilay Patel?

  You can follow us, we're at Verge on Twitter and we're at Lit on MySpace. Also, in addition to the previously relevant Lit commentary, I'd like to thank Braintree for sponsoring today's episode of the Vergecast. Braintree gives you a full stack payment solution, support for all payment types your customers might want. You can start accepting Android Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal, Bitcoin, Venmo. I learned recently that Venmo owned by PayPal, so really the whole thing, cards, whatever's next. Look, you wanna pay for shit, just get Braintree in your app, people can pay you. Uh, you can take them all, in over 130 currencies, and as your company grows, Braintree will stay by your side from your first dollar to your billionth. All it takes is a couple lines of codes to get started, learn more, visit braintreepayments.com/vergecast.

• 1:02:19Speaker 01

  Bye!

• 1:02:22Nilay Patel?

  Chris has What's Tech, listen to What's Tech. I host a show with Walt Mossberg called Control Alt Delete. Listen to that, all of it's at iTunes.com/verge. Verge SP on hiatus until next year, so be back. And that's it, please continue granting us with your presence on our many channels. I don't know, I don't know, whatever, it's over. Tell your words.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  Bye!

• 1:02:43Nilay Patel?

  There you go.