Apple TV, universal remotes, and the joy of dropping phones

It was a good week to arguing about the state of television, with both Apple and Roku releasing new content delivery boxes. A trio of original Verge editors — Nilay Patel, Chris Ziegler, and Ross Miller — are joined by Helen Havlak in the Hype seat. In between heated debates about universal remotes and IR blasters, our Fab Four find time to talk about HTC's One A9 and — quite literally — toss around the new "drop-proof" Droid Turbo 2. Don't worry, you'll hear it. 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.

• 0:05Nilay Patel?

  Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Vergecast. We're recording this, as you may have noticed, on Thursday, October 29th. Wherever you are, it's whatever day it is. So that's great for you.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  That's always true.

• 0:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, infallible logic.

• 0:20Nilay Patel?

  Is it?

• 0:23Nilay Patel?

  I'm Neelai Patel. I'm joined today by a crew of, I think, Verge All-Stars, some Verge OGs. I got Chris Ziegler.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  Yo.

• 0:34Nilay Patel?

  The always excited Chris Ziegler. I got Ross Miller.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  Yo.

• 0:38Nilay Patel?

  And then I got Helen Havlak in the hype seat.

• 0:41Speaker 03

  Hey.

• 0:41Nilay Patel?

  What's up?

• 0:42Speaker 03

  Not too much, Neelai.

• 0:43Nilay Patel?

  I feel like I stole your entire team last week for the hype seat, so I had to bring you back in. But Helen's here. That's exciting. It was kind of a huge week.

• 0:52Speaker 02

  Surprisingly so. I don't know if we expected this much, like, these random news bits kind of happen.

• 0:57Nilay Patel?

  Oh, and if you're wondering where Dieter is, Dieter is, he's off, he's starting his own news site, where he's just gonna review old Palm Pilots.

• 1:05Speaker 01

  And the Priv.

• 1:08Nilay Patel?

  No, no, Dieter took a little break. He's on vacation in Amsterdam.

• 1:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's gone Dutch.

• 1:13Nilay Patel?

  He and Lisa are just paying for everything separately. They're like, that's the only thing they know about Amsterdam.

• 1:20Nilay Patel?

  But yeah, so Dieter's on vacation, he'll be back next week. I will say, just me personally, my life is a chaotic hellscape when Dieter's not around. I have no idea what's going on. There's no one, there's just no one to help me. No one to rescue me.

• 1:32Speaker 01

  Dieter is definitely a calming force in the office, and without him, you're right, everything goes downhill.

• 1:38Nilay Patel?

  Dieter's probably gonna listen to this, so I'm not gonna dox him too hard. That is true, but then sometimes when Dieter, like, needs to, like, let it all out, he just calls me, and he just yells at me for, like, five minutes, and he's like...

• 1:47Speaker 02

  Well, that's where that side of him is.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  Well, that's the whiskey.

• 1:50Nilay Patel?

  And he's like, "I'm done, moving on." I'm like, "Good talk, buddy."

• 1:53Speaker 02

  I have heard of angry Dieter once in my life, and it was about open source.

• 1:58Nilay Patel?

  Ask Dieter about web standards. It's great. It's the best. Uh, anyway, so we're here. Uh, huge week on the site. Uh, we muddled through it without, without our friend Dieter. Um, but we, I, we, just a ton of news. Um, we should start, I think, with the Apple TV, which, um, I reviewed yesterday, or I put it through review yesterday, Walt reviewed. We also had the Roku four review from Lauren earlier this week. Um, and then a couple of weeks ago, we did Fire TV two.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:23Nilay Patel?

  So just, it's that moment in media streaming, I think. Um, I, I think I've come to the decision that the tech industry, like, they pick one type of entertainment to disrupt and, like, go all in for a minute and they're like, ah, and they try another. So like, they didn't, first it was music in like the early 2000s. And like, alright. And then it's like, well, we screwed with you enough. Now we're gonna try TV for a while. And then like, alright, we screwed with you again. How about streaming music? And they did that for a while. And then those cycles are accelerating. So like, I think earlier this year, it was all about music. Like, all we talked about was Apple Music, streaming music, Spotify. And that's like, calm down a little bit.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:01Nilay Patel?

  Title had a concert.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  Title had a concert. Uh, then Spotify did its, uh, Discover Weekly thing and now nothing else matters.

• 3:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 3:08Speaker 01

  I mean, everybody I, I know who uses Spotify, uh, thinks that, thank you. Um, everybody I, I know who uses, uh, Discover or Spotify thinks that Discover Weekly is like the single most disruptive thing that has ever happened in streaming music, or music, period. It's just the best thing ever.

• 3:23Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 3:23Speaker 01

  Yes. Like, people wait for, like, people look forward to Monday now because they,

• 3:27Nilay Patel?

  Do they? I don't know about that.

• 3:30Speaker 02

  Never before has Monday been more exciting.

• 3:32Nilay Patel?

  I look forward to Monday just because Monday is the conclusion of my deep, dark Sunday blues.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  Oh, well, what are you talking about? The Packers are what, seven and oh?

• 3:41Nilay Patel?

  Six and oh.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  Six and oh.

• 3:42Nilay Patel?

  Soon to be seven and oh. No, that's fine.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  There's nothing to be said about it.

• 3:46Nilay Patel?

  No one else has like a Sunday come down? Becky and I talk about this like every Sunday. I'm like, what's wrong? And she's like, it's, I don't know. Tomorrow's coming. Like, it's like that level of darkness.

• 3:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's.

• 3:58Nilay Patel?

  So you're saying Discover Weekly is like.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, it sort of like reboots your week in a really happy way.

• 4:03Nilay Patel?

  What's your favorite Discover Weekly thing that you have discovered weekly?

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Uh, well, so I don't use Discover Weekly.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  I'm the only person still using Apple Music.

• 4:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  And I will until the day they shut it down.

• 4:17Nilay Patel?

  So here's a story about how pedantic and crazy Twitter is. They released those numbers. They were like, 605 million people are still using Apple Music.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:26Nilay Patel?

  And I was like, that A seems relatively low considering Apple's install base or marketing power also. So like tweeted, um, how many, and I don't think anybody I know is still using it. Like tweeted that how many people are using Apple Music? And like no fewer than like 50 random Twitter people were like, 6.5 million of us, bro.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 4:43Nilay Patel?

  That is a really boring army.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  That would be sick for me.

• 4:48Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I could just be like, why don't you try to share a song with me and then completely defeat your army as you all fumble through three dot.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  Hashtag Team Zane.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, we, we got Hot Long Bling first, though.

• 4:58Nilay Patel?

  He did.

• 4:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:00Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, um, so yes, anyway, so there's like the, the, the music moment, and I think now we're just in a TV moment.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, but the funny thing, we are, but every single new product that you mentioned, uh, that has hit the market in the past few weeks is so iterative, right?

• 5:16Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  Just like disgustingly iterative.

• 5:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  Uh, Apple would have you believe otherwise, right? But it's.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  I mean, maybe later on down the line, but yeah, what we, what we got with the new Apple TV right now is not a lot of apps and stuff. Like, it is just the sequel. Everything is a plus one on the number.

• 5:30Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, that's not a hundred percent true.

• 5:32Speaker 02

  Okay, well, talk about it.

• 5:33Nilay Patel?

  Like they.

• 5:35Nilay Patel?

  It's, it's true in the terms of like what it is right now, but the big move they made was they, the first Apple TV ran a weird version of OS 10. And then the, the black ones have always run a weird version of iOS, but they're not actually iOS. They can't, there's no App Store, there's none of this. So they actually, the plus one, if you want to call it that, is they made it a real OS with, they can support apps and the sandboxing and like. So that is a big change. Now, that change has no effect on using the thing.

• 6:06Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:07Nilay Patel?

  Except for Siri is there, but Siri is like way cut down. It would have been better if Siri was just full on Siri and you could do Siri stuff with it.

• 6:14Speaker 02

  Do we know why it's not? Like, why they took out like the humor or like the Apple Music stuff?

• 6:19Nilay Patel?

  I don't, it's kind of like they just assume you're gonna have your phone with you. And I, I think they just want the product to be focused, but it's just funny because it's not Siri. And the idea that it doesn't connect back to your phone, or doesn't connect to your iPad or whatever Siri is like, it's a little bit strange. And there's none of that, like, it doesn't really know about your phone. It's weird that it's running iOS and it's like connected to all these Apple services, but apart from being able to airplay your phone to it, it doesn't, it doesn't really care that you have an iPhone, which maybe, you know, maybe they want to sell it to people with Android phones. But you would think that there would be some sort of connection there.

• 6:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:53Nilay Patel?

  But that's a big change, like a really fundamental big change, like in the new remote, which is basically a bunch of iPhone control paradigms, right?

• 7:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:02Nilay Patel?

  Siri, touch, motion, like that's, that's all the control pieces of an iPhone, like in the remote. And then that thing runs iOS. So that's the big change. But then the actual experience of it is like, eh.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:16Nilay Patel?

  Right. It's a really good Roku.

• 7:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:18Nilay Patel?

  The first deck that we had a sub headline, my first sub headline was, "Apple makes a really good Roku." And I was like, "That's, that's a little mean."

• 7:24Speaker 01

  Like, but true.

• 7:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I got a text from David Pierce. He was like, "Why don't you just go with, "Apple makes a really good Roku."

• 7:32Nilay Patel?

  This, I don't, here's a little more inside baseball. Every time David publishes something, or I publish something, we text each other back and forth and call it crap. That's just, that's just. Yeah, I'm like, "That's real garbage." We edit each other, just basically just fuck with each other. That's as far as I can tell.

• 7:49Nilay Patel?

  He published that thing with the Surface Book and I like, I was like, "You should have started it in the middle and reorganized this whole thing."

• 7:54Speaker 01

  I mean, at this point, you should escalate to Twitter.

• 7:58Speaker 02

  We know it's there now. We know it exists. But so I'm really curious about the Apple TV apps because you've mentioned a few of them. I haven't gotten, I did preorder it, not sure why, but I just had the instinct to hit preorder and spend money.

• 8:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  What is out there right now? What is worth actually playing?

• 8:14Nilay Patel?

  So there's some game, it's really funny because all the apps are 100% gigantic iPhone apps. Like Periscope is like comedy zone. Like it's just a big iPhone app.

• 8:25Nilay Patel?

  But it turns out some of the iPhone games get really fun when you make them huge and you like control them for all, right? So there's this game, which you can get on your phone right now. It's called Does Not Commute and like you literally just draw cars and it's a puzzle game.

• 8:38Speaker 02

  Right. Like you have like 10, 20 cars, like make sure they don't crash that thing.

• 8:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's neat. So that's really fun on the TV. Jetpack Joyride is really fun.

• 8:46Nilay Patel?

  Crossy Road is bullshit. Like, and I don't understand.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 8:50Nilay Patel?

  Fuck a Crossy Road. You know what I'm saying?

• 8:53Speaker 01

  Are you just an anti-Frogger in general?

• 8:55Nilay Patel?

  No, it's just Crossy Road and Apple TV. It does the thing. It does the exact wrong thing with the touchpad. Right, where the touchpad is supposed to be like a one to one.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:06Nilay Patel?

  Like, it's like we already learned this with the Wii.

• 9:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:08Nilay Patel?

  Like, you don't want to do a swipe that's really an arrow key, because then you might as well just push an arrow key.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  So the funny thing-

• 9:14Nilay Patel?

  Crossy Road does exactly that.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  The funny thing about that is that it feels like Apple's going through this moment where they have all these new human-machine interface paradigms, and they don't have a unified way to give them to people. 3D Touch.

• 9:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Nobody knows what it means yet.

• 9:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  This remote for the new Apple TV, nobody really knows what it means yet or how to use it.

• 9:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they're not doing, they're not doing great on like the first-party app. Right, they're not, there's no Apple TV app that's like, this is the future. Like, this is going to set the conversation for all the, and that's true, I think, of 3D Touch.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:47Nilay Patel?

  Where it's like, this is the future of previewing links in the web browser, but that's not, that's not it.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:52Speaker 02

  Right.

• 9:53Nilay Patel?

  And then it's true on the Apple Watch, which I'm not wearing today.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  You're not Lagerfeld?

• 9:57Nilay Patel?

  I've got, I've got three dead ones upstairs.

• 10:01Nilay Patel?

  But it's true, like the digital crown and Force Touch and all the many, many ways to use the Apple Watch.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:06Nilay Patel?

  There's no great, they just have all these new paradigms, and they haven't, they haven't put one person in charge of like, build the killer app for this particular paradigm.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  Right, that demonstrates all the ways you're supposed to use these features.

• 10:19Nilay Patel?

  Right, and what they'll say to you, which is a fair, I don't know, a fair thing to say is, we want, we don't want to tell app developers. We want to see what the-

• 10:27Speaker 01

  They've been saying that since iPad One.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  I mean-

• 10:30Speaker 01

  And with, and sometimes it's a really fruitful conversation between Apple and developers. Sometimes it's, it's a garbage fire. And, and I think in some ways the Apple Watch has seen that so far.

• 10:42Nilay Patel?

  What's your favorite app on the thing?

• 10:44Speaker 01

  Time. It's the face. I'm not kidding. It's the face.

• 10:48Nilay Patel?

  How do you show your Galaxy Gear? Do you ever wear it?

• 10:51Speaker 03

  I haven't worn it in a couple of years. It's the original Galaxy Gear in rose gold.

• 10:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 10:57Speaker 03

  So it was really fun to wear when no one else had a smartwatch and you control people at bars.

• 11:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 11:02Speaker 03

  Since then, it's very big and not all that useful.

• 11:06Nilay Patel?

  Would you ever get another one?

• 11:08Speaker 03

  I would get a smart watch. I would probably get a Moto 360 if they made them in like smaller sizes for lady wrists. I could get behind that.

• 11:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's my problem too.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  So you think that the small 360 is still too big?

• 11:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, small 360 is bigger than the biggest watch. Like, and as a dainty wrist person myself, I need the small Apple Watch.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Fair.

• 11:27Nilay Patel?

  What's your favorite app on your Apple Watch?

• 11:29Speaker 02

  Uh, weather. It's, it's time and weather. That's all I really do it for.

• 11:33Nilay Patel?

  If people are listening to this live, will you tweet at me and tell me what your favorite Apple Watch app? But a native app, not like a whatever, you know, not one of these bullshit apps. A real, what's your favorite real native app? Just tweet at me, or just tweet anything you want at Ross. He's Oh No Roscoe.

• 11:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll respond. It, it, it won't make sense, but I'll do it.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  Tweet literally anything at Ross.

• 11:53Nilay Patel?

  Yesterday, Sam Shepard just tweeted, "Please respond."

• 11:57Nilay Patel?

  Like he was lost in dire need of human contact.

• 12:00Speaker 01

  I got a little more insight into that tweet. It turns out that tweet was actually a poll, which I didn't realize, because you can't see polls on anything except that.

• 12:08Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  But on TweetDeck, it looks like he's just the most thirsty human being alive.

• 12:13Speaker 02

  Oh my God. How many like cries of desperation have actually been polls in disguise?

• 12:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, today I tweeted burrito.

• 12:22Nilay Patel?

  Is that every cry of desperation?

• 12:23Speaker 02

  I guess it is. It's a multiple choice cry of desperation. We didn't realize that.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:27Nilay Patel?

  Um, anyhow, so there's the Apple TV. Like, if, my, my take was like, if you need an Apple TV, you should buy this one. Because it works.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  They're still offering the old one, right?

• 12:38Nilay Patel?

  They're still selling the old one. Um, I don't know, Helen, hype check the Apple TV.

• 12:43Speaker 03

  I think it's equally hype as the Roku. They all seem the same.

• 12:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they're all the same. They all have, they all did the same thing, right? They, they like put a bunch of apps, because they can't get the deals to make their own service.

• 12:53Speaker 02

  Right.

• 12:54Nilay Patel?

  So like, okay, whatever.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  And if Apple can't, no one can.

• 12:57Nilay Patel?

  Well, Apple doesn't want to spend the money, which is, I, I, like, does anybody else sit around and imagine what you do at Apple's money? If you just, if, if you were just minting money.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  Would you buy Beats? Would that be your first move?

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Because that's what they did.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 13:12Nilay Patel?

  You know, I'd like to hang out with Jimmy Ivey.

• 13:16Nilay Patel?

  Jimmy Ivey's like, hey, Tim.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  That's a great Jimmy Ivey.

• 13:22Speaker 02

  That's really good.

• 13:25Nilay Patel?

  That's really bad.

• 13:28Nilay Patel?

  But like, I don't know, like, don't you think that they could just spend the money to get the deals? And maybe that doesn't make any business sense, and it probably doesn't because they didn't do it. But I always just think like, what if I just demanded to make things better and spent money until they were? Which is not a, not a good way to run a business, again.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  But isn't that in many ways, Google's mantra?

• 13:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  Like, they're spending countless amounts of money on projects that don't have any obvious near-term profitability, right? Things like Calico. The Google car is years away.

• 14:00Nilay Patel?

  Wait, is Calico the one where they just don't want you to die?

• 14:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:05Speaker 02

  They're like, how, how much money does it cost to be immortal? Just keep, just keep crossing money that way.

• 14:10Nilay Patel?

  Like, alright, there's a scientist somewhere who's like, I, yeah.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Just keep giving me money.

• 14:15Speaker 02

  You're good.

• 14:16Nilay Patel?

  There's a guy in a coat, just like, I don't.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  Larry Page is like, how much is it going to cost for me to live forever? Scientist is like, I don't, billion dollars.

• 14:24Speaker 02

  He's like, oh, here, I thought it'd be more.

• 14:30Nilay Patel?

  It's terrible. Anyway, what, finish your thought about Google?

• 14:33Speaker 01

  That's all I had.

• 14:34Nilay Patel?

  That's it?

• 14:34Speaker 01

  That's it, yeah.

• 14:35Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, it's just like, like, Apple could presumably pay the money to like, start its own over-the-top cable streaming service. They could presumably not have to buy Beats to get a streaming service and do their own. I mean, but they, you know, they're, they're spending money in very targeted ways and making very, I think, conservative bets on the future of media. Which is, just seems strange to me. Like, this, it's funny because this thing is a cube, right? It's like, not a very interesting shape. But like, to me, the Apple TV is like, there's all these constraints and weird little things, and Apple just like, inflated the existing Apple TV to fill all of the available space, but they didn't actually move any of the walls.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  I mean, like, slow and conservative is Apple's style. It's like, it's why it's not 4K. It's why they wait so long on like, USB standards. It's why like, all these little like, things. It's either a proprietary move, or if it's a universal standard, let's give it five years and see like if people actually use it.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  Well, I think that also explains why they've been rumored to be doing this dance with Comcast for so long, right? You go back, what was it, five, six, seven years, Xbox 360 was doing the same thing. It was an IP-based cable box for some regional provider. So they could do that, right? And then they would accomplish their goal by sleeping with the enemy. But can they negotiate those deals themselves?

• 15:48Nilay Patel?

  All right, I've got some favorite Apple Watch recommendations from Twitter. Dark Sky, Swarm, Fantastical, from, uh, this is Germa. Anthony Dofrio says, his favorite watch app is Vimo Golf for stream tracking. Runner, runner up goes to Google Keep. You are crazy.

• 16:04Speaker 02

  What?

• 16:05Nilay Patel?

  You are using Google Keep on your watch, on your Apple Watch. You are so deep in the tech hole, like the... I, I mean, I appreciate it and I applaud you. Calendar, remote, stopwatch, uh, watch, it's watch faces all the way down.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:20Nilay Patel?

  People like using Google Hangouts on their watch, but he's using his ZenWatch. That was a troll. You just trolled me into talking about the ZenWatch.

• 16:27Nilay Patel?

  I hope it's fun working at Asus. Like, I don't know. I don't know what that's like, but it's a good time.

• 16:31Speaker 02

  Damn.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  Shots fired. The, the first ZenWatch was not garbage. The second one seems to be garbage, but the first one was all right.

• 16:40Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. It's funny because you start talking about TVs and we end up talking about watches, but it's the same, it's the same thing. Like, it, it's funny how much, how much discussion of the watch that cut out of the TV review. Because, you know, I reviewed the watch and I was like, this is a new platform for Apple, could do all kinds of things, but they didn't tell you what to do. And then I was like, here's another new platform from Apple that could do all kinds of things, but they didn't Yeah. Tell you what, it's like they just did all the same things everybody else.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  But, but there is no looming trillion-dollar business roadblock that's stopping the watch from doing what Apple wants it to do. There is.

• 17:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  With the Apple TV. That's the core difference.

• 17:14Nilay Patel?

  Right. It's the name is Brian Roberts and he's just standing there. He's standing there with a knife. Door of the Comcast building.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 17:22Nilay Patel?

  Well, but it's not even, it's Comcast, like Comcast is not even in the whole country. Right? Like it's Comcast and Time Warner and RCN and Charter and DirecTV.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  Well, I don't think, I don't, maybe you disagree. I don't think that it's the cable providers that are blocking Apple. It's content providers. I mean, again, Apple's been rumored to be talking to Comcast for a year about just rolling out a box.

• 17:43Nilay Patel?

  No, no, no. So I have, I have the info. I don't know if that's still true, but uh Walt on Control Alt Delete told me that he had heard from Steve Jobs and from Brian Roberts that Apple had been approached to make a cable box um for Comcast, that Steve Jobs wanted to do it. Um, and then Brian Roberts was like, of course, to authenticate your cable box, you have to use this cable card and this middleware from Cable Labs. And Jobs is like, fuck you. And that was like the end of the conversation. But he just wouldn't use their garbage middleware software to authenticate the box.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:14Nilay Patel?

  Um, which, fair. Honestly, like, if Comcast kept to me and said, I would like you to base your business on our software. I'd be like, no. I would rather just be a tiny list, like.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  By the way, that's the same conversation that Apple won with the iPhone with AT&T eight years ago and has never lost since, right? Like, they're still today, the only phone maker that they can just do whatever they want with, with firmware updates.

• 18:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Um, is this a good time to actually transition to talking about phones? Should I read, should I read an ad?

• 18:45Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, let's read an ad and then we'll go into phones.

• 18:49Nilay Patel?

  All right. I don't know. Is there anything else to say about the Apple TV? Open floor, 30 seconds. Helen, final thoughts. I don't know. That's a new hype test that I'm thinking.

• 18:57Speaker 03

  I mean, my TV is like your TV in the review in that it's imaginary.

• 19:03Nilay Patel?

  Wait, so you don't have a TV?

• 19:04Speaker 03

  I don't have a TV.

• 19:05Nilay Patel?

  What do you, what do you watch television things on?

• 19:07Speaker 03

  A laptop.

• 19:07Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 19:08Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:08Nilay Patel?

  You watch movies on your laptop?

• 19:09Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 19:10Nilay Patel?

  Wow. Um, do you have a TV?

• 19:12Speaker 02

  Uh, I have two TVs in the living room.

• 19:14Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  The Xbox one and the PlayStation one. I don't, don't judge me.

• 19:18Nilay Patel?

  I feel like I should just have you and Chow on the show to talk about what that's like.

• 19:21Speaker 02

  That's the incredibly embarrassing.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  You know, most TVs have multiple inputs, right?

• 19:25Speaker 02

  Yes, but you can't do it at the same time. So someone wants to play Halo and someone wants to play Uncharted. What are you gonna do?

• 19:29Nilay Patel?

  That's what I said. We should have Chow and Ross just talk about what it's like to be in an Xbox PlayStation couple.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  You remember when Sony made that TV where you could see two things at two different angles?

• 19:39Speaker 02

  I so wanted that. It was bad, though.

• 19:41Nilay Patel?

  That would have saved my relationship. Uh, well, I, so I, whatever. I'm not telling you about my TV. It's obviously very cool. I think you all saw it in the review. Chris, what do you have?

• 19:52Speaker 01

  Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna put Neilion Blaster. He actually has like a 25 year old plasma.

• 19:57Nilay Patel?

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 19:59Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 19:59Nilay Patel?

  Now I have a new plasma.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  What?

• 20:02Nilay Patel?

  So what? So the Kuro has moved to the bedroom.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:05Nilay Patel?

  And then I have a V, a new Panasonic VT60, which I will say looks beautiful. Does not look as good as my Kuro, but it's much larger, so.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  Hey.

• 20:13Nilay Patel?

  Um, the most garbage software, like everyone at Panasonic should look at this thing and just be ashamed of what they have wrought. Like you turn it on, it like, you have to, it shows you ads by default when you turn on, so you have to turn that off. Um, it has a camera to use a proprietary video conferencing.

• 20:33Nilay Patel?

  So you push it and a camera pops up, but it's just a release in a spring. So when the camera's popped up, that's it.

• 20:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:38Nilay Patel?

  You have to walk up to it and like tug it.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  If it had a motor inside to pull the camera down, I'd be more concerned.

• 20:45Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, it's a very nice looking TV, but uh, literally everybody at Panasonic should not be allowed to make software.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, so my TV buying decision was made primarily by what I could carry up my five flights of stairs by myself. So, uh, I limited myself to a 32 inch, uh, Samsung, um, which also shows me ads in real time while I'm watching shows. Like a Dunkin' Donuts commercial will, will come on and then I get this like full Dunkin' Donuts experience on my TV.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  And then it stays there for like three minutes. It's the worst thing ever.

• 21:17Speaker 02

  Wait, is every time you turn on the TV?

• 21:19Speaker 01

  No, it's, I'll be watching a show and a Dunkin' Donuts ad comes on and then I get an interactive Dunkin' Donuts experience.

• 21:25Nilay Patel?

  That's the future.

• 21:25Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 21:26Nilay Patel?

  That's, that's me saying the QVC app is the future.

• 21:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:29Nilay Patel?

  That's what it is. It's like, finally, it's an interactive TV. Helen just shaking her head at me. That's what, that's what every brand wants. They want you to like see the thing on the TV.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  You want to become immersed in the Dunkin' Donuts.

• 21:39Nilay Patel?

  Imagine if while you were watching the Super Bowl, you could just get Bud Light piped directly to you.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  Like a motorized straw just comes out of the TV.

• 21:48Nilay Patel?

  This is Panasonic's dream. There's some guy in the lab, like a string in a can of beer. Like, I'm gonna figure this out.

• 21:55Speaker 02

  It's a flat-screen gag.

• 21:56Nilay Patel?

  Why does he have a string?

• 21:59Nilay Patel?

  Someone just told me, Steve Spence, why is Slack your favorite Apple Watch app? Don't do that to yourself. I'm just calling on people directly on Twitter.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  And Trello, same thing.

• 22:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:07Nilay Patel?

  Slack and Trello on the Apple Watch are not acceptable. Like, fine. Citymapper, says Vincent Rubino.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's actually, I use the Citymapper app. It's good.

• 22:17Nilay Patel?

  And Celebrity Oxford Comma says Celebrity Oxford Comma is his favorite app, but...

• 22:20Speaker 01

  That's not an app.

• 22:24Nilay Patel?

  Look, whether you're designing, presenting, writing, or building, Dropbox makes it simple to work together on any file. I don't know if they have an Apple Watch app, but if you're using that on a watch, like, same problem as Slack. Anyway, what would you do with Dropbox and the Apple Watch? You would just...

• 22:36Speaker 01

  You'd look at...

• 22:37Nilay Patel?

  Confirm the existence of files?

• 22:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, look at lists of files.

• 22:41Nilay Patel?

  Oh, those files today. Thank God. Thank God I interrupted this conversation rudely. Over 400 million people around the world already use Dropbox. And now there's Dropbox just for your business. Dropbox Business helps you work the way you want. All the things you love about Dropbox, enterprise-grade security, administrative controls. You can help your team work together on any file type, on any device, presumably, uh, watches, simply and securely. There's customizable sharing controls, like expiration dates and passwords or shared links. And Dropbox for Business enables your entire team to work they want on any file from anywhere. And this line says, please add the what I like best about Dropbox.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  What do you like best about Dropbox, Neil?

• 23:17Nilay Patel?

  You know, I, it's comforting to me. It's just there. It surrounds you.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  You're enveloped by the Dropbox experience.

• 23:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I never think to myself, I can't access my Dropbox. Unless I'm out and about, just rocking my smartwatch. And then I think to myself, I wish I could confirm those files are there.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  Well, with the Apple Watch app that we don't know exists, you can.

• 23:36Nilay Patel?

  Over 100,000 businesses already use Dropbox for Business. Dropbox Business, it's all yours.

• 23:42Speaker 02

  Is there a promo code or?

• 23:47Nilay Patel?

  I just, I just read this stuff and try not to screw it up quite as badly as I always do.

• 23:53Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so let's talk about some phones. So

• 23:54Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 23:55Nilay Patel?

  Vlad review the HCA 9. Actually Helen, I'm gonna, this is your time to shine, because Helen is still using a Galaxy S5.

• 24:02Speaker 03

  That's true.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  No, it's an S2.

• 24:06Nilay Patel?

  Helen's gotta fascinate. It's real, it's real old.

• 24:09Speaker 01

  It is, it is older than Caitlyn.

• 24:11Speaker 02

  Wait, wait, is it, is it an unbranded S2? Because that would be a rare commodity.

• 24:15Speaker 03

  Uh, well, the S, the S2 was objectively like better than the S3.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  Wow, shots fired.

• 24:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, okay, tell me why.

• 24:23Speaker 03

  Uh, I, I have, I have this opinion that the even numbered Galaxy, uh, phones are always better.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  Wow, this is some Star Wars stuff going on right here.

• 24:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, the Galaxy S3 had really bad battery life. It just like, didn't feel good. It felt very plastic. Galaxy S4, a big upgrade.

• 24:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 24:41Speaker 03

  Galaxy S5, uh, it's been great. It also looks like someone chewed on the corner. Because I keep dropping it. Uh, so I'm looking forward to upgrading and sadly I will be getting, sorry Samsung, I will be getting a Nexus 5X.

• 24:56Nilay Patel?

  Are you really? That's what you're doing? Okay, because I'm gonna ask you if, because we did the A9, which is basically, Vlad called it the Android iPhone, which is true.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:04Nilay Patel?

  And then we have the Droid Turbo 2 here.

• 25:07Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 25:07Nilay Patel?

  Which

• 25:11Speaker 02

  It's so much fun to do.

• 25:13Nilay Patel?

  Which is shadowproof.

• 25:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:15Nilay Patel?

  With the Moto X Force, is that the international version was announced this morning?

• 25:20Speaker 01

  I don't know. I'm out of that world, man.

• 25:24Nilay Patel?

  Chris, tell me about the coolest Bugatti currently available.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  Uh, actually Bugatti does not currently make a car.

• 25:28Speaker 02

  Is it shadow?

• 25:29Speaker 01

  They have no models.

• 25:30Nilay Patel?

  Wow, what?

• 25:31Speaker 01

  Yep, because the Veyron is out of production and their next model is not released yet.

• 25:35Nilay Patel?

  Tell me about, um, uh, San Diego Chargers kicker Josh Lambeau.

• 25:41Speaker 02

  Wow, that was just like a long build up there.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  He, he got so excited about Josh Lambeau that he texted me about him. He saw him on the field.

• 25:51Speaker 02

  Oh my gosh.

• 25:52Nilay Patel?

  It's great. He missed a kick in the back escape. I was like, oh, Lambo missed again. Can't get anything right.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  It's not a sick Lambo.

• 25:59Speaker 02

  No.

• 26:00Nilay Patel?

  He was sick.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  He was a sick Lambo.

• 26:03Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, so Helen, you're, why, why the, why the Nexus?

• 26:06Speaker 03

  Uh, I like stock Android.

• 26:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 26:09Speaker 03

  Right now, I'm running like Apex on top of TouchWiz. It's not great.

• 26:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 26:14Speaker 03

  I'm looking forward to getting stock Android. I've never owned an iPhone.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  And you're not going to.

• 26:19Speaker 03

  And I, I don't really want one. I'm, I like, I don't know what to do without the back button and the menu key.

• 26:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 26:25Speaker 03

  It's just, and I'm, I'm really good at swipe. Swipe is my favorite thing.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, swipe is good.

• 26:29Speaker 03

  I am unable to type without swipe from what I hear. It's still somewhat buggy on the iPhone, although they take third-party keyboards. So, uh, I, I bought my first Android phone because I wanted swipe. And I thought it was a fun toy and that's been what's kept me on Android.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  But doesn't, doesn't stock Android, for several versions now, they've had their own version of swipe built into the stock keyboard, right?

• 26:49Speaker 03

  That's true, but I've been using swipe's keyboard. I may, I may revisit that, but I have been using the actual swipe keyboard.

• 26:56Speaker 02

  Wait, why five and not six? Why not do the big phone?

• 27:00Speaker 03

  Uh, it's really big. I feel like I can't use it with one hand. Um, it's really pretty, like it feels great. It's really beautiful. Uh, but I think the 5X is like a better size for my hand. I also like being able to put my phone in my back pocket, even though that means it's constantly falling on the ground, but.

• 27:16Nilay Patel?

  So you should get that. What's gonna happen by the end of this is I'm gonna convince you to get a Droid Turbo 2, uh, and then I'm just gonna whip this, this one over across the room.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Don't, don't you mean a?

• 27:26Nilay Patel?

  I wouldn't need this coming, literally before the show started, she said, please don't throw that phone in there.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  What, what carrier are you on?

• 27:33Speaker 03

  I'm on Verizon, so I can get the Droid.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 27:35Speaker 03

  Well, I was thinking about getting the Moto G because it has really long battery life and it's pretty indestructible. I guess the Droid Turbo 2 is pretty similar.

• 27:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, we should go through it. So Ross, you wanna take us through?

• 27:44Speaker 02

  Uh, I can't, Chris, can you pass it back to me?

• 27:47Speaker 01

  It's, it's under some crap that the phone is gone.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  Fine.

• 27:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  I mean, so. Right now, we have Jake reviewing it. So I sold Jake's phone for this, but essentially it is the Moto X only now.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  Wait, is that Jake's personal phone that you've been throwing around?

• 28:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:00Nilay Patel?

  No, it's the review unit.

• 28:01Speaker 02

  Well, it's Jake's personal review unit right now.

• 28:03Nilay Patel?

  Oh, Helen got the phone.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  Thanks. You don't have to gently put it down. Just throw it.

• 28:07Nilay Patel?

  There's nothing gentle about that phone. I will say that we've been tossing around just viciously now.

• 28:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:14Nilay Patel?

  The sides and back of the phone are totally scuffed.

• 28:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:17Nilay Patel?

  Screen, did you shatter it yet?

• 28:20Speaker 01

  No.

• 28:23Speaker 02

  No, so basically it's a more powerful Moto X. It's got a newer Snapdragon, but the big thing, of course, is that it's shatterproof. It's not stab-proof, apparently. I was told not to take a knife to this.

• 28:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 28:33Speaker 02

  But it is shatter and drop-proof.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  Is it fireproof? Can you light it on fire?

• 28:37Nilay Patel?

  No, it's shatterproof. So it's got like five layers of like glass and aluminum, right? But I will say that one of the things I like best about new phones is how tightly laminated the display is, the cover glass.

• 28:49Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 28:49Nilay Patel?

  And this is just a huge step backwards.

• 28:53Nilay Patel?

  It's like, I can never break this, but this screen is five inches away from my finger. You know, like.

• 28:57Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 28:57Nilay Patel?

  It is a very strange. And it's got like a weird, I'll let Jake do the review, but it's got a weird parallax. I'm just really picky about screens.

• 29:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're more cognizant of that screen here than you are in other things. Wow.

• 29:08Nilay Patel?

  So that's that one. And I just think it's funny that droids still exist. Am I crazy for thinking that it's funny? Like that Motorola can be co-opted into giving one of their best devices to Verizon every time and being like, this is, here's a droid.

• 29:23Speaker 01

  Well, I think Motorola is in that awkward position where they don't, I mean, they have so little brand leverage that like they just need to do whatever carriers tell them to do. And they have this enormous ongoing deal with Verizon. Verizon is so big that they probably don't even know or understand how to stop making droids.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  There's a contract somewhere that someone signed in 2009. It just keeps happening. And so Motorola keeps getting money for them.

• 29:47Nilay Patel?

  I mean, this one has like this awful Verizon checkmark on the front.

• 29:52Speaker 02

  But the old school one too.

• 29:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's not even the right logo.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 29:56Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it's so embarrassing. Get out of here. Get out of here, phone.

• 30:01Speaker 02

  Done with you.

• 30:02Nilay Patel?

  Huh?

• 30:03Speaker 02

  It's so stressful to do that. Every time I do it, I'm like, oh, my God, I'm gonna hear that sound. And this is the time it's gonna shatter.

• 30:07Nilay Patel?

  I'm actually, I've been wondering why more phones aren't waterproof. Shadowproof is like, I get it, but like, why aren't more phones waterproof? Like, they should be getting tougher now.

• 30:15Speaker 03

  You know what's waterproof?

• 30:16Nilay Patel?

  Galaxy S.

• 30:17Speaker 03

  My Galaxy S5.

• 30:18Nilay Patel?

  Is it?

• 30:18Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 30:19Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah, that was the one where they made the ads where it was just like people like holding them under sinks, right?

• 30:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:23Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 30:23Speaker 03

  We did some photo shoots in a pool.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  Of course you did.

• 30:31Nilay Patel?

  Man, I just, it's gonna be sad for me to not see you with that case on your iPhone. Like, it's like a real part of like the Helen experience is like the...

• 30:38Speaker 03

  The old Samsung gear.

• 30:39Nilay Patel?

  The old Samsung gear. I don't know, I'm just saying. And then you're gonna be a Nexus person, you're gonna be all high and mighty.

• 30:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:47Nilay Patel?

  You'll be walking around with your stock Android and mediocre camera.

• 30:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, Dieter will still make fun of me. Chris will still call out my Galaxy S2.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  Oh, you're saying well?

• 30:55Speaker 03

  Nothing will change.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 30:57Nilay Patel?

  Dieter has been changing phones so rapidly lately that for a while, I just couldn't text him.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  I've had that experience too, yeah.

• 31:04Nilay Patel?

  Like, I just couldn't.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  It's like, will it be a blue or a green bubble today?

• 31:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  Let's find out.

• 31:08Nilay Patel?

  No, literally for a while, it was like, my phone was just like, you know what? This guy? Too hard.

• 31:14Nilay Patel?

  Will not send.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  I get that with Dan too, actually.

• 31:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  Cause he, yeah, he keeps going back and forth too.

• 31:20Nilay Patel?

  I am. Alright, so then we should talk about the E9. So, that's the Droid Turbo 2. I mean, it's a Droid. I would be shocked. Actually, tweet at me about this. Would you even, would anybody out there consider buying a Droid Turbo 2?

• 31:32Nilay Patel?

  The shadowproof thing is great, but like, I think the last Droid people really liked that I encountered was the Max.

• 31:39Speaker 02

  Right, the battery life is great.

• 31:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. But now you can get that. Right, isn't that the Moto X something?

• 31:46Speaker 02

  I'm sure it's like the Moto X longevity or something like that. I have... I don't know offhand.

• 31:52Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it's fine. Chris just tweeted, no, I would not.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  He told people to tweet you.

• 31:58Speaker 02

  Thanks, Chris.

• 31:58Nilay Patel?

  Thanks, buddy. Literally, no one is responding to this question. Usually I say tweet at me and people just endlessly tweet at me.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  They don't know what to think.

• 32:04Nilay Patel?

  But I was like, tell me if you would buy a Droid Turbo 2. And everyone's like, I'm gonna withdraw that information.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  You know, the one thing that sucks about droids, the one thing, the one and only thing, is that they stopped with the Maxes. I thought that was like a really cool and innovative thing they did. Like, if you want to go ahead and take on the burden of a thicker phone, you can, if you want to, and you get the better battery life.

• 32:27Speaker 02

  And what we say thicker phone isn't like, it's still probably thinner than anything from three years ago.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  Right, right. Yeah, I wish, I don't know why the entire industry has coalesced around this notion that it is okay to have a phone that you're gonna stress about making it through a day with. Like, by eight, by 7 or 8 p.m., if you've been using your phone a lot through the day, with any phone on the market, basically, you're going to be stressing.

• 32:47Nilay Patel?

  Yep.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  And there's no reason for this. Make the phone a half-millimeter thicker and fix the problem.

• 32:52Speaker 02

  Well, the industry decided, let's say, we're just gonna make a bunch of ubiquitous USB batteries, start making them look a little prettier, and people will just pocket those as like the spare.

• 33:00Speaker 01

  For 60 bucks.

• 33:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, 60 bucks.

• 33:02Nilay Patel?

  Oh, there's a Droid Max 2 coming out.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  Oh, there is?

• 33:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. One person said they would buy the Droid Turbo 2.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  I would buy the Max.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:09Nilay Patel?

  All right. Well, tweet at me.

• 33:14Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so then we should talk about the A9.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  Yes, the iPhone.

• 33:17Nilay Patel?

  The iPhone. So, we, the A9 was here, we, so Vlad reviewed it, obviously, in London, but we had one here, too. It looks, and we, this, we should talk about this.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 33:27Nilay Patel?

  Yes, like, it's just the aluminum design first. Yes, they did ugly antenna lines first.

• 33:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, but...

• 33:36Nilay Patel?

  But this thing is an iPhone. It's like, it's like, they, like, the way to prove that you were the first innovator is to not copy the person who copied you the best.

• 33:44Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 33:45Nilay Patel?

  And it looks exactly like an iPhone clone, like... Exactly, except it's a little bit crappier in like in many ways.

• 33:54Speaker 02

  Right, some like the button placement seems a little like off, almost like a manufacturer's defect.

• 33:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, like every, all the ports are just like all over the place and the, the camera is like, it's in the middle, you know, like.

• 34:04Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm pretty convinced that HTC has been backed so far into your corner at this point that they're just, they're actively trolling. And, and I'm not even kidding, like, they're like, you know what? Screw you, Apple. We did aluminum first, we did antenna lines first. We're just gonna go ahead and make an iPhone. F it.

• 34:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  You know, and I, I have a sort of a perverted respect for that.

• 34:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  You know?

• 34:28Nilay Patel?

  Well, they, so the theory that I've heard, which, whatever, I don't know if it's, I honestly don't know if this or not, is that Apple and HTC signed that patent deal a long time ago? And so that there's no restriction on them just copying the iPhone?

• 34:41Speaker 02

  Huh.

• 34:42Nilay Patel?

  Because otherwise Apple just like, of course Apple would, it looks exactly like the iPhone.

• 34:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:46Nilay Patel?

  But if they have like a licensed Apple's design patents, they're just like, yeah.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  Well, they, they can.

• 34:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, we did.

• 34:51Speaker 01

  They can sue, but, but Apple also knows from experience at this point that what will end up happening is five-year-old phones get barred from sale. Which is what happened with Samsung.

• 35:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. No, you're never gonna be able to buy Galaxy Fascinate ever.

• 35:06Nilay Patel?

  The Fascinate's my favorite one. Like, of all of the phones that came out, like, the Verizon Fascinate was so obviously the one that was designed for Verizon to have an iPhone thing.

• 35:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. That was before they launched the iPhone.

• 35:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:20Nilay Patel?

  Um, that was the one. That was the one that was just like Samsung, you know what you're doing.

• 35:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:25Nilay Patel?

  But you know, you know what you did. Like the one, what was the one on AT&T?

• 35:30Speaker 01

  Uh, the Captivate?

• 35:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. The Captivate was like dope.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  Uh, oh, there was an Armani version of that phone.

• 35:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:38Speaker 02

  What?

• 35:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:39Nilay Patel?

  The Captivate was really cool.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 35:41Nilay Patel?

  Uh, it was like squared off, it looked really neat.

• 35:43Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:44Nilay Patel?

  And the, the Fascinate was like.

• 35:46Speaker 01

  Was an iPhone.

• 35:46Nilay Patel?

  What if, what if we made an iPhone?

• 35:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I remember all four carriers had different named versions of that same phone.

• 35:54Nilay Patel?

  What was your first phone, Helen? Your first smartphone, modern smartphone?

• 35:57Speaker 03

  It was the HTC Incredible 2.

• 35:58Nilay Patel?

  Ooh, that's a good one.

• 36:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was a good phone. And you know what? If HTC had stuck with removable, removable batteries.

• 36:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 36:06Speaker 03

  They may have tempted me away from the Nexus, but nothing has removable eh, I can't even say that word, removable batteries anymore. Which is tragic.

• 36:14Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  Wait, wait, uh, no, something.

• 36:16Speaker 03

  I always carry an extra battery. It's amazing.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  Something still has.

• 36:19Nilay Patel?

  We're loading on the show that Helen is the deepest phone nerd on us.

• 36:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:24Nilay Patel?

  Like, the deepest. Helen is behind the iVerge hashtag.

• 36:30Nilay Patel?

  Helen's the ringleader. She's our own personal gamer game.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 36:35Speaker 03

  Ouch. Oh, ouch.

• 36:37Nilay Patel?

  Sorry, well, it's on, it's on the sheet.

• 36:38Speaker 03

  I'm the front lines of like, dealing with iVerge, you know? Even my brother does nothing when he sees me except say iVerge every 10 minutes just to mess with me.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 36:51Nilay Patel?

  And I'm saying, what if, what if you, what if, what if that's you? What if you're a big boss? But.

• 36:58Speaker 01

  What if you're a big boss?

• 37:00Nilay Patel?

  It's just a Metal Gear reference. Don't worry about it.

• 37:04Nilay Patel?

  That's cool. I'm just saying, what if there's a shocking twist?

• 37:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:08Nilay Patel?

  And you are all of our YouTube subscribers.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  Wait, wait, there's only, there's only one way to solve this. Hype check iVerge.

• 37:14Nilay Patel?

  Ooh. Can she do it?

• 37:17Speaker 01

  Bust. No, wait, that's not you. Okay, whatever. We'll let it go.

• 37:21Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Sorry.

• 37:21Speaker 01

  We'll let it go.

• 37:22Nilay Patel?

  Brand pollution.

• 37:24Speaker 03

  Sorry, Sam.

• 37:25Nilay Patel?

  I was looking at YouTube comments on the, on the Apple TV review last night.

• 37:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:30Nilay Patel?

  Definitely like people are like, who's this guy? And one guy was like, he's the CEO of The Verge. And I was like, yeah. That's what I am.

• 37:36Speaker 01

  You're a big boss.

• 37:40Nilay Patel?

  That's it. I am the CEO of iVerge, as it turns out. Of course, that's what I am. All right, let me read one more. We should talk about Sepai. We should talk about some other stuff. Chris, is there more stuff to say about these fans?

• 37:53Nilay Patel?

  I feel like a lot of other stuff happened this week.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  I have nothing else to say about these phones. Can be real with you.

• 37:59Nilay Patel?

  We should talk about the Tokyo Motor Show a little bit, maybe? I feel like a lot of other things happened this week.

• 38:06Speaker 01

  It's been a week.

• 38:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:07Nilay Patel?

  It's like been a crazy week and there's just that I, when we have these crazy weeks, it's like I, my entire focus is like, I'm gonna think about gadgets because they'll keep me safe. Nothing can go wrong here. Um, let me read this thing and then we'll.

• 38:24Nilay Patel?

  That's this one. Oh, man. It's our friends.

• 38:28Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 38:29Nilay Patel?

  It's our friends in the cloud.

• 38:35Nilay Patel?

  Softlayer delivers a cloud build for integration.

• 38:40Nilay Patel?

  This is so wrong.

• 38:43Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna keep going. Your business, applications and computational workloads are unique. So you deserve cloud services that meet your specific needs.

• 38:53Nilay Patel?

  I can't, I honestly can't keep doing this because I don't know if I can say the words provisions dedicated servers in that voice and not lose it. Softlayer is one of the only cloud providers that provisions dedicated servers and virtual servers, otherwise known as the public cloud, from a single seamless platform. All this is on demand, all this is connected to the same open API, all this is connected to a global private network. This allows you to scale your workloads up and down quickly, that would have been really bad in the voice, and have ample space for your storage intensive tasks. Softlayer, as you well know, is an IBM company, duh. In fact, Softlayer uses, uh, IBM uses Softlayer as its cloud infrastructure foundation for everything in the IBM cloud. So even if you're not looking for infrastructure and honestly.

• 39:30Speaker 02

  Who isn't?

• 39:31Nilay Patel?

  Duh. I mean, as CEO of the Iverge, I can tell you that every day I think about my infrastructure needs. You can benefit from Softlayer when you use IBM stuff. So all the listeners have the opportunity to get $500 of cloud infrastructure by visiting softlayer.com/podcast. You can order bare metal servers, you can order virtual servers, you can get storage, networking, bizarrely candy apples, it's weird. And Softlayer has 24 data centers around the world. All of the servers and services are connected to Softlayer's unique network of networks. It separates public, private and management traffic. So all of those networks and all the traffic to and from your cloud infrastructure is more efficient. You can also automate and control your cloud infrastructure with a granular API or on the easy use Softlayer customer portal. You can also just walk outside, scream at the sky. It works.

• 40:15Speaker 01

  Old man yells at clouds.

• 40:16Nilay Patel?

  It's clouds!

• 40:19Nilay Patel?

  It's amazing. Why aren't you sinking? Separate my management traffic.

• 40:26Nilay Patel?

  It's really weird. A data center is across the country, actually. People are like, I gotta go fix the cloud.

• 40:32Nilay Patel?

  It's the worst joke.

• 40:37Nilay Patel?

  Just please, God, visit softlayer.com/podcast. I'm assuming, by the way, that many of you constantly are buying Softlayer stuff because they keep coming back. So, uh, thank you so much to softlayer.com/podcast for existing, for Softlayer for putting up with this, and for you for consistently buying $500 worth of server storage, network, and security on a cloud built for integration from Softlayer.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  Can we talk about clouds for a minute?

• 41:08Speaker 01

  The, uh, the runway blimp, I think, really captured our imagination.

• 41:12Speaker 02

  Oh, God, the loose blimp. Yes.

• 41:15Speaker 02

  It's been such a week.

• 41:16Nilay Patel?

  Did we cover the runway blimp?

• 41:17Speaker 02

  We did.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  We did. And there's this picture of it crashing in Pennsylvania. This just, it's this, it looks like a Led Zeppelin, like, album cover. Where it's like, there's, there's just this, like, it's at this weird angle and it's just coming, it's bearing down.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  And it looks terrifying. And it did actually, uh, all kidding aside, take out power for 20,000 people, so.

• 41:38Nilay Patel?

  That's not good.

• 41:39Speaker 01

  No, it's not.

• 41:40Nilay Patel?

  Okay, someone, so I was, I was busy with the video crew making the, uh, the Apple TV video. Tell me, just let's get into

• 41:47Speaker 01

  The blimp?

• 41:47Nilay Patel?

  The alert response of the blimp. So where did we first see the blimp? Do you know? I'm assuming it popped on social.

• 41:52Speaker 01

  It, I, I think, I think I saw, yeah, it was, uh, it was on Twitter. There was a fire department somewhere in Pennsylvania that said, if you see this blimp, call 911.

• 42:05Nilay Patel?

  I want a TikTok of like how the Verge newsroom responded to a runway blimp.

• 42:09Speaker 02

  Chris has a Twitter alert for all things blimp.

• 42:11Speaker 01

  Yes. Yes. And, and it was an APB for this blimp, call 911 if you see it. So, uh, so we did a little investigation and found out that it had come off its tether and was, had become a rogue airship.

• 42:26Nilay Patel?

  Is that like an official?

• 42:29Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 42:29Nilay Patel?

  That's like, that was the president's rejected Secret Service name?

• 42:32Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. When, when the president is aboard the plane, it's Air Force One when he thought it's, yeah.

• 42:39Speaker 01

  So.

• 42:39Nilay Patel?

  Wait, isn't, no, his Secret Service name is Renegade.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  Is it?

• 42:42Nilay Patel?

  So Obama's Secret Service name is Renegade.

• 42:44Speaker 01

  That's a good name.

• 42:45Nilay Patel?

  It's his chubby brother's name, Rogue Airship.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  That takes me back to in the last Republican debate when they were all asked to say what their their Secret Service name would be. And some like, some of the, I think it was Ben Carson didn't even understand the question. But anyway, so yeah, this this rogue airship was traversing the the northeast. And and then it came down and

• 43:14Nilay Patel?

  And the internet was done being captivated for the day.

• 43:17Speaker 02

  Did it come down by force? Or was it just

• 43:19Speaker 01

  No, I think it just naturally

• 43:20Speaker 02

  Just got tired?

• 43:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:22Speaker 03

  It had a really good Twitter account at Aberdeen Blimp.

• 43:25Nilay Patel?

  Oh, really?

• 43:26Speaker 02

  There were a lot of novelty Twitter accounts.

• 43:28Nilay Patel?

  Did they like shoot it down?

• 43:30Speaker 01

  No, I think it just came down. They wouldn't shoot it down in a way that would cause it to take take out 20,000 people's power. I don't think.

• 43:37Nilay Patel?

  Right. Hype check the blimp.

• 43:39Speaker 03

  Hype. Yeah, great.

• 43:42Nilay Patel?

  Hype check the blimp and the runaway goats.

• 43:44Speaker 01

  No, llamas.

• 43:45Nilay Patel?

  They're llamas, llamas, runaway llamas. No, no, no one cares about a goat that runs away.

• 43:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, llamas are cooler than goats.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. Them longer dicks.

• 43:56Nilay Patel?

  That's the virgin custom.

• 44:01Nilay Patel?

  All right. It's just, you know, it's weird to miss these things that captivate Twitter. It's we always say the internet, but it's really just Twitter.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:08Nilay Patel?

  Right. It's really just the the tiny number of people who use Twitter who are like, we're the internet.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  And it is a tiny number. Twitter's earnings this week, 60 million

• 44:15Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  monthly active

• 44:16Nilay Patel?

  And they're not growing at all.

• 44:17Speaker 02

  Kind of stagnant, yeah.

• 44:19Nilay Patel?

  It's funny because I was like, tweet at me if you use Twitter, but

• 44:21Speaker 02

  I mean, that's

• 44:23Nilay Patel?

  I don't know.

• 44:25Nilay Patel?

  I don't know how to solve that problem. Why do people use Twitter? Why do we? Why do you have Twitter open?

• 44:31Speaker 01

  Because that's where news breaks, right? I mean, our news team relies on Twitter to do its job.

• 44:38Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah, I think all I think all news gatherers have like made a social contract saying, we're just gonna put it on Twitter, let everyone know it's happening. But you don't really get like a lot of response other than that.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:48Speaker 02

  And, you know, being narcissist, it's like, oh, you're talking to me.

• 44:51Nilay Patel?

  Well, Twitter's one of the few, like, real time.

• 44:54Speaker 02

  Right. It's great during the debates. It's great during like baseball games and stuff.

• 44:59Nilay Patel?

  Well, to bring it all the way back to the Apple TV, one of the things I said was there's not a single app on the Apple TV that actually enhances watching TV as much as just having Twitter open on your phone.

• 45:08Speaker 02

  Right.

• 45:08Nilay Patel?

  And I think that's actually one of the biggest challenges because all the idea of convergence in the 90s and I've had like virtually every one of these boxes, right? I've had a web TV, I had, that's where the IR blaster, that's my deep genetic hatred of IR blasters came in.

• 45:26Nilay Patel?

  So we had a web TV, we had, oh god, we had the original TiVo at a Windows Media Center, which was just, just never worked ever. I had every Google TV, which was a stupid idea. Just down the line, I had a boxy box. Do you know what kind of drunk idiot you have to be to have a boxy box in your life?

• 45:45Speaker 02

  Both boxies, didn't you?

• 45:46Nilay Patel?

  Oh, the boxy box and the boxy, the boxy TV was such a bad product that I couldn't review it.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 45:52Nilay Patel?

  And I honestly didn't know how to begin the review of the product, like, it is a box.

• 46:01Nilay Patel?

  Boxy made it. It does nothing, like, there was nothing to evaluate.

• 46:06Speaker 02

  That sounds objective.

• 46:07Nilay Patel?

  It's just like, but you know, because they're like,

• 46:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:10Nilay Patel?

  Like, like, how would you review a car with no engine?

• 46:14Speaker 01

  Well, technically, any, any EV doesn't have an engine.

• 46:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, or like the Flintstone mobile.

• 46:20Nilay Patel?

  No, like, but like, if it was just a car, it was like the shell of a car and you got in it and other people whispered ideas to you about movement. Like, that was the boxy TV.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  I will say that, that the, the boxy box to this day still has the coolest industrial design of any

• 46:35Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 46:35Speaker 01

  device ever. It's like a sinking cube, which is what the company was.

• 46:43Nilay Patel?

  That was the one, I mean, like, I'm saying that the, the, the living room space is like, it's been such a disaster for so long, like, Logitech almost stopped existing.

• 46:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:54Nilay Patel?

  Because they made, they, the CEO of Logitech was like, you know what? We're finally gonna do it. We're gonna partner with Google and we're gonna put crap under your TV. Running some fork of Android.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:04Nilay Patel?

  And it almost destroyed the company.

• 47:07Speaker 01

  Within like six months, you could get Logitech's Google TV thing for like 10 bucks at Best Buy.

• 47:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and they went all out. I actually,

• 47:16Nilay Patel?

  Here's a little window in my personal life. I have been sternly instructed by my wife that this weekend is the weekend in which my office will be, like, all of the old gadgets will be removed, because it was just like out of control in there. And one of them, like, she like showed it, she's like, she's like, "What the fuck is this webcam for? A Google TV?" And she's like, "There's no value here." I don't think she knew it. She was just like holding it up. She's like, "What is this?" And I was like, looking at it. And I was like, "I can't even begin to explain to you why we have this product." But so all of them, like, over and over and over again, like, they're trying, they're, so like, in the 90s, when Microsoft, almost as always, Microsoft, they're like, "We're

• 47:58Nilay Patel?

  gonna put a PC on that TV," and they would fail. But none of them had to deal with the fact that you had a phone in your hand. And now that you've got a phone or a tablet or a laptop, almost certainly with you when you're watching television, it's even harder to see why you want something interactive on your TV.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  Well, so the closest thing to being what I want, and you're going to vehemently disagree with me on this, is Xbox Snap. Because the problem is that they never use it for anything useful. There's still, correct me if I'm wrong, Russ, I don't think there's a Twitter app for Xbox One that works with Snap. Like, there's Twitter integration that lets you upload video clips, but you're like game clips, but you, there is no timeline that you can snap to the side of the display.

• 48:40Speaker 02

  But that's also the biggest question. Why would you want to read on a big TV?

• 48:43Speaker 01

  Because then you have that second screen experience without having to hold the phone or the tablet, right? It's just that you see it, like, scroll by.

• 48:50Nilay Patel?

  But that's just, it's like, what if I was the idiot who controlled the cryon under television news? Like, I don't know. I would rather, like, look at my phone than put it down, like, watch TV.

• 49:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:02Nilay Patel?

  Like, what would you put over there?

• 49:04Speaker 01

  The, your Twitter timeline. So if you're watching the VMAs, you don't have to have to look at your phone and, you know, post your quip. You can, you can just say, "Xbox, post quip."

• 49:16Speaker 02

  And then Cortana auto-generated a quip based on your groans.

• 49:20Nilay Patel?

  No. Cortana, take two mildly relevant topics from the news, craft joke, mash them together, post to Twitter.

• 49:27Speaker 01

  Now, that's the future.

• 49:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. "Make me funny. Please, God, Alexa, make me funny." Oh, I haven't done this. I've been meaning to walk into my door and just say, "Alexa, help," and see what she says.

• 49:42Nilay Patel?

  She's always there. All she really can do is set timers and uh, play Wilco. That's pretty much what I ask her to do. It's remarkably useful.

• 49:49Speaker 01

  I uh, I have it integrated with my Hue system, so it can control my lights.

• 49:52Speaker 02

  Oh, that's great.

• 49:53Nilay Patel?

  Oh, we can get into this. So Chris uh, is dumb.

• 49:58Speaker 02

  We've gotten into that.

• 49:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, that's not new.

• 50:01Nilay Patel?

  No, and this is, and no, but I think it's safe to say, if you've been listening to the show, and you know our, our long, shared history, I love Chris. Love working with Chris. Chris is so wrong about the Harmony remote, that it, it, it's like threatening the fabric of our relationship. Cause he posted this review to our site that was like glowing review of the new har- they finally got it. Ah, it's great. Control the Hue lights.

• 50:24Speaker 01

  I never said they finally got it.

• 50:26Nilay Patel?

  Disco world at home, changing colors for this Harmony remote.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  I never once said they finally got it.

• 50:32Nilay Patel?

  So I did, I, I had this like weird, how do you pronounce it? Lifex? Lifex?

• 50:36Speaker 01

  What?

• 50:36Nilay Patel?

  I have a weird wifi light bulb that I never used.

• 50:38Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 50:39Nilay Patel?

  And I was like, so I bought the Harmony, cause I was like, I got this Harmony one, the battery's dying, the, the paint is rubbing off the front. I mean, the thing's like garbage. Uh, so I'm gonna buy the new one, cause Chris says it's good.

• 50:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:50Nilay Patel?

  I sent it back, like immediately sent it back. It is garbage.

• 50:54Speaker 01

  What are your specific complaints with it?

• 50:56Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 50:57Speaker 01

  Let's go through them.

• 50:57Nilay Patel?

  It is not a remote control. It is an attempt to hack everything in my home with a weird wifi hub and shitty software, in the form of a, like a black plastic box, that sometimes has some relationship to a remote control that is badly designed.

• 51:12Speaker 01

  But that box is your friend.

• 51:15Nilay Patel?

  My friend sucks at his job.

• 51:17Speaker 01

  No, no, no. So, so the, the box is very important. Um, the hub, the Harmony.

• 51:21Nilay Patel?

  The Harmony hub.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  This box is important for a couple of reasons. Um, one, it makes it so you don't need line of sight to any, any of your devices. So you wanna hide them behind a credenza, for for instance, which many of us do.

• 51:33Nilay Patel?

  Top of my list. God, I gotta get a credenza. One, acquire credenza. Two, hide everything behind it.

• 51:40Speaker 01

  Uh, not only does the hub itself emanate IR in every direction, uh, so it can control a lot of stuff without, without needing to get a signal from the, from the remote, you can do that. But it also has two ports for IR blasters in the back that you can string wherever you want.

• 51:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's the future.

• 51:55Speaker 02

  That's great.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  Uh, but on top of that, the Elite, as with the touch, or excuse me, the ultimate before it, also has an IR blaster on itself. So you don't have to blast through the hub.

• 52:10Nilay Patel?

  But you need, you can't not have the hub, right?

• 52:12Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 52:13Nilay Patel?

  And the hub, and the software associated with the hub, and the iPhone app, and the cloud backend, all of that is trash.

• 52:20Speaker 01

  You never have to touch the iPhone app, except to set it up, then you're done. You're done after that. You're done.

• 52:25Nilay Patel?

  The iPhone app is one of those apps, and I, uh, uh, this is it. This is a hard Verge editorial stance. If your iPhone app hasn't been updated for the iPhone 6, and it still has the gigantic menu bar.

• 52:37Speaker 01

  I'll give you that.

• 52:37Nilay Patel?

  Your company is stupid.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  I'll give you that.

• 52:39Nilay Patel?

  And you should be out of business.

• 52:40Speaker 01

  I will absolutely give you that. That is fair.

• 52:42Nilay Patel?

  It's a hard fact. It means you hate me.

• 52:46Speaker 01

  You hate your customers.

• 52:47Nilay Patel?

  You hate your, come on. Anyway, so, so I set it up.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:53Nilay Patel?

  And I like try to turn something on.

• 52:54Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:55Nilay Patel?

  And it like go, it screws up. And then I push the help button, which is what you're supposed, and then it's like re-flashing your remote from I, the Harmony Cloud. The last thing in the world a remote control should do is connect to the cloud to figure out how to turn my TV on. That is not, that is not acceptable.

• 53:16Speaker 01

  So a couple of things. I'm a logic, I'm a, I'm a hub veteran, because I had the,

• 53:20Nilay Patel?

  My hub veteran. Stockholm syndrome.

• 53:24Speaker 01

  I, I had the Harmony Ultimate beforehand, which uses basically the same hub.

• 53:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 53:28Speaker 01

  So that sync will happen, uh, occasionally at random, but it is not, uh, it doesn't happen every time you hit help. You just ran into a bad situation. You had a bad moment.

• 53:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and then I put it back in its box, and I sent that bad moment back to Amazon and received my $350 back.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  If you had spent.

• 53:44Nilay Patel?

  And then I had a great moment with my $350, where I considered it in my life.

• 53:51Speaker 01

  I, look, I, I think, first of all, I will admit with you that the harm, the, the, the remote situation in general.

• 53:59Nilay Patel?

  I'm not convinced by you.

• 54:01Speaker 01

  Hype check, hype check, Harmony Elite.

• 54:04Speaker 02

  Don't get her involved.

• 54:06Speaker 01

  Wait, no, I didn't even ask you. No, no, rewind, rewind, rewind. I didn't ask you.

• 54:13Speaker 02

  You can't take it back.

• 54:17Speaker 01

  Look, I will admit that the remote situation in general is desolate.

• 54:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's terrible. It's the only one you can buy.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  It's the only one you can buy. There's, there aren't that many good, there's things like

• 54:28Nilay Patel?

  You can also buy used Harmony Ones on Amazon eBay.

• 54:33Speaker 01

  I mean, the, the dock is too big. It's long. It's got a long dock.

• 54:40Nilay Patel?

  This one has like a cup.

• 54:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 54:42Nilay Patel?

  It's stupid.

• 54:43Speaker 01

  No, the cup doesn't take up space on your, the cup takes up no space.

• 54:47Nilay Patel?

  Helen is never coming back on this show again.

• 54:49Speaker 01

  There's no space required for the cup. Lots of space required for the long dock.

• 54:55Nilay Patel?

  And that.

• 55:00Nilay Patel?

  Stupid brought. Logitech, I'll come, I'll come to your house. Wherever you live. I will help you make a better remote.

• 55:07Speaker 01

  Logitech does not have a home.

• 55:09Nilay Patel?

  Clearly, because they make this garbage remote. There's no sense of how people live. Build a house, Logitech, I'll come to it.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  I will say that, that our, um, our, our review products manager, uh, William Savona, uh, good friend and coworker of ours, bought the Elite at my recommendation.

• 55:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 55:31Speaker 01

  The first one that he bought was defective, so he sent it back. Uh, he, uh, had it replaced. The second one was defective, so he sent it back. Uh, and he's currently waiting for his third one.

• 55:40Nilay Patel?

  Are you sure it doesn't work right? He just has good taste?

• 55:42Speaker 02

  But he keeps re-getting it.

• 55:44Speaker 01

  No, he says the hub doesn't work at all. So, I mean, actually.

• 55:48Nilay Patel?

  Which is also what I'm saying.

• 55:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, you might be right.

• 55:50Nilay Patel?

  I was, it's, I, I do find it interesting that Apple did not even try to make a universal remote. Like,

• 55:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:56Nilay Patel?

  There's nothing about the Apple TV remote that, um, that pre, like, it just assumes that you have other remotes.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 56:03Nilay Patel?

  Right. They have the volume keys on there because they know that you, if you're using the Apple TV, you probably want to change the volume.

• 56:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like if you, if all you had was a television and the Apple TV, it could be your only remote. If you never watch

• 56:15Nilay Patel?

  Anything else.

• 56:16Speaker 01

  Cable channels. Yeah.

• 56:16Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 56:18Speaker 01

  But otherwise, yeah.

• 56:19Nilay Patel?

  But it's funny because I actually got into a fight with Apple. Like, I was in the briefing and I was like, why doesn't it have a power button? Like, we don't need a power button. We'll just turn on your TV with HDMI CEC, which is a fine, although idealistic answer. And I was like, but. Most people don't have it and they're like, most people do. And I was like,

• 56:37Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 56:39Nilay Patel?

  Okay. So I get home, H M I C E C garbage standard, doesn't work well, doesn't work with my receiver and stuff. It got to the point where Apple was like sending me pages of my receivers instruction. So walk me through, so like whatever, like rebooted it, like reset it. It worked for a little bit. But fine. So you can get it all to work. But then what happens is it's a huge touchpad with a button. So it's super easy to click. And if you just accidentally click it while it's lying on your couch, A, everything will just turn on.

• 57:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:11Nilay Patel?

  Which is not a good thing. Or if you're watching something else, it'll switch you to the Apple TV. It's like a Trojan horse. It's like always lurking to be like, Apple TV?

• 57:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:19Nilay Patel?

  Uh, which is why you have a power button, because that allows you to choose to turn things on.

• 57:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:24Nilay Patel?

  I, I would, I suspect the next version of this thing has power button. It can't, it can't not. Too many people are gonna be annoyed by how this thing behaves with C E C. Because it just wants to, like, if you have it around, you will accidentally push one of its buttons.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  I welcome, I welcome Apple's involvement in the universal remote world. If they, if they put their mind to making universal remote.

• 57:43Nilay Patel?

  It's never gonna happen.

• 57:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, but the Apple TV remote with a power button and a couple extra buttons would be eighty percent of the way there.

• 57:50Nilay Patel?

  And then what about like a hub that can blast I R in every direction? And control your hue lights.

• 57:55Speaker 01

  That's a really good idea.

• 57:56Speaker 02

  No.

• 57:57Nilay Patel?

  All right. So that, oh my God, Helen's here. Helen's like, she can, she can engage. Usually it's like Nicola who's like, I don't know, look at The Verge and stuff.

• 58:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:06Nilay Patel?

  Engage.

• 58:07Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, so you can follow The Verge lots of places. Um, you can follow The Verge on Snapchat, The Real Verge. You can follow The Verge on Periscope at Verge, Twitter at Verge. Uh, you can follow us on YouTube at The Verge. Subscribe.

• 58:20Nilay Patel?

  Tell them about your, uh, your Instagram situation.

• 58:23Speaker 03

  Oh yeah. We just broke 200,000 followers on Instagram. We are about to pass some of our rivals on Instagram.

• 58:31Nilay Patel?

  Mashable.

• 58:32Speaker 03

  Mashable.

• 58:33Speaker 01

  Sam.

• 58:34Speaker 03

  We are, we are, we are only, we are only 4,000 followers behind Mashable right now. We're growing at about twice the rate. If you follow us on Instagram, @verge.

• 58:44Speaker 01

  Also unfollow Mashable.

• 58:45Speaker 03

  You will help me, you will help me in this quest.

• 58:49Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 58:49Nilay Patel?

  If any of you can find 4,000 people to immediately unfollow Mashable and follow The Verge, that would be choice.

• 58:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:55Speaker 01

  Actually, it would only have to be 2,000 technically.

• 58:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, but then, but actually, it's 2,001, because you really need to like, not tie. Sorry. We're like, this is like quantitative shots fired.

• 59:04Nilay Patel?

  So that was The Vergecast, and I'm saying, we've broken some phones, we've broken some hearts, we're gonna crush Mashable. Thank you so much for listening. Hit us up on iTunes, please rate us. Also, check out Verge SP with Emily and Liz, What's Tech with Chris Plant. This week, it's on Minecraft, which is fun. And Walt and I actually, the new episode of Control with Walt's lead is up, or should be up by the time you're listening to this. Walt and I actually talked about Apple TV for about 45 minutes, actually, we went really deep on it. So, all that's at iTunes.com/The Verge. Thank you so much for listening. I need to thank Braintree for sponsoring today's episode of The Vergecast. Braintree gives you a full stack payment

• 59:48Nilay Patel?

  solution, support for all payment types customers might want. You can start accepting Android Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal, BitCam, BitCam, Bitcoin, Venmo, cards, whatever's next, with a single integration across every platform you have. There's superior fraud protection, customer service, and fast payouts. So, check it out for yourself. Visit Braintreepayments.com/vergecast. Get some money in your pocket. That's it. Rock and roll.