325: Chinese spy chips, Microsoft announcements, and Pixel 3 preview

This week on The Vergecast, Nilay, Dieter, and Paul bring in experts to report on the top stories on the site this week. Reporter and host of Why’d You Push That Button Ashley Carman stops by the studio to explain the Bloomberg report detailing “Chinese spy chips” that may have been planted on servers from companies like Apple and Amazon. After that bizarre piece of news, senior editor Dan Seifert comes on the show to talk about the Microsoft hardware event he attended this week and the new products that were announced. We’ve also got a Google hardware event coming up next week, so they run through the leaks and rumors of gadgets that we might see. Check back next week for our full event coverage on this show. There’s a whole lot more in between all of that — including our favorite reoccurring segments from Liz Lopatto and Paul Miller — so listen to it all, and you’ll get it all. 01:45 - What we still don’t know about the Facebook breach 2:48 - Chinese spy chips would be a ‘god-mode’ hack, experts say with Ashley Carman 29:18 - This week in Elon Musk with Liz Lopatto 33:37 - Microsoft Surface event 2018: the 5 biggest announcements with Dan Seifert 1:10:03 - Paul’s weekly segment “Type like nobody’s watching” 1:13:58 - New Google Pixel 3: the 8 most credible leaks 1:16:36 - LG V40 Review: one phone, five cameras 1:19:28 - iPhone XS: Why It’s A Whole New Camera – Halide Also, in case you missed it, Nilay talked to Meredith Rose from Public Knowledge about the Music Modernization Act. You can listen to that along with this episode right in the Vergecast feed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

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• 0:36Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of theverge.com and the Vox Media Podcast Network. VMPN. That's what the suits want me to say. You let me know if that's what you, the listener, want me to say. Vimpin'. Anyway, I'm your friend Eli. Paul Miller is here. Hello. We're joined by Ashley Carmen.

• 0:55Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 0:56Nilay Patel?

  Ashley, host of Why'd You Push That Button?

• 0:58Speaker 01

  The very one.

• 0:59Nilay Patel?

  It's coming.

• 0:59Speaker 01

  That's me. Is coming.

• 1:01Nilay Patel?

  October 17th.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:02Nilay Patel?

  Ooh, we have a date. That's great.

• 1:04Speaker 01

  We'll have our trailer next week.

• 1:06Nilay Patel?

  It's all happening. And Dieter, you heard his voice. How you doing, Dieter?

• 1:09Speaker 02

  I'm doing really well. I'm very excited that we are in the, I think, the back half of hardware silly season, I hope. We'll see. But meanwhile, there's like other huger news, other than, you know, random new devices getting released. A lot of stuff going on.

• 1:22Nilay Patel?

  A lot of stuff going on. So, a very busy week in the technology world. There was a big Microsoft event. We're gonna have Dan Seifert on in a little bit, talk about all the stuff that happened there. There's a Google event next week. Google has already kindly just leaked everything to us, so that'll be great. We're gonna talk about what's happening next week a little bit. That'll be fun. But we gotta start with kinda two blockbuster stories that have broken over the past few days. One is a big Facebook breach. Facebook says 50 million accounts could have been compromised. This is through a hack in a feature where Facebook suggested that you make a video to say happy birthday to your friends, and then you could view your profile as them, and then your user auth token got lifted.

• 2:07Nilay Patel?

  It could be used to log into other apps. It's a real hazy sequence of events in there. But basically, if you ever said happy birthday to anyone on Facebook, your identity has been stolen, as far as I can tell. Yes, that's exactly correct. That's not it at all. But 50 million accounts so far have been compromised. We won't go into detail. The way Facebook dealt with it is it logged everybody out. So if Facebook has logged you out, you gotta log back in, reset your auth token. There has not been much more reported on that story in the past few days. In fact, our headline is "What We Still Don't Know About The Facebook Data Breach." Usually with these things, they metastasize over time, so we're still looking for that. So that's one huge story. The second big story broke this morning, Thursday, as we record.

• 2:52Nilay Patel?

  Bloomberg's cover is a tiny little chip, a picture of a chip on a finger on the cover of Bloomberg Businessweek this week. Their story alleges that Chinese spies broke into the supply chain of a server company called Super Micro in China.

• 3:08Speaker 01

  Well, that they probably worked for the server company.

• 3:10Nilay Patel?

  Right. Well, they were spies.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  They didn't like break in at night and were like, "Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, plant the chips."

• 3:16Nilay Patel?

  I shall you explain this.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  No, you explain it.

• 3:18Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, the point is, servers were compromised. Well, the reason Ashley's here is because Ashley, before she became Senior Button Reporter at The Verge... She was a spy. She was a Chinese spy.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  I was a Chinese spy.

• 3:31Nilay Patel?

  No, Ashley used to be a security reporter. She wrote a follow for us in this piece, but, so I want her to explain it all to me. But basically, the allegation is, servers made by a company called Super Micro were compromised at the assembly stage. It was discovered by Amazon. Those servers were used by a bunch of companies, including Apple. And here's the thing, the companies are strenuously denying that this happened. So Ashley, tell us, tell us the better, the more accurate version of the story.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  I mean, that's about right. Like essentially Bloomberg publishes a piece that just says that the Chinese government is working with this company called Super Micro that is like a huge motherboard creator that work with all these parts and like is essential to the supply chain everywhere to install a microchip on the motherboard that's not supposed to be there that can essentially give attackers and the Chinese government in this case crazy access to companies' networks, like all sorts of access. So they're claiming that Apple has them. Amazon had them, and then a big US bank that we don't know the name of had them. The government might have had like this microchip. And this is really bad.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  This is like doomsday scenario because like the supply chain is reliant on China.

• 4:42Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  If we can't go to China for parts anymore, um, we have a problem.

• 4:48Nilay Patel?

  There's no more phones.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  There's, yeah, like, sorry, guys, no more iPhones.

• 4:52Nilay Patel?

  Right, so the chip, the reason I was saying the picture on the cover of Bloomberg is a really small. So itty bitty chip.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:58Nilay Patel?

  Um, and it says it's, it looks like another part. And the Chinese, the way the government spies got the chip on the board is they went to the plant middle managers and said, hey, let us alter these products that are being made. Or we'll shut you down with lengthy inspections, which is...

• 5:15Speaker 01

  The threat of lengthy inspections.

• 5:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, this is like a third world corruption standard tactic, right? Like, the government will inspect you, but really, we're just shutting you down.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:25Nilay Patel?

  What gets me is that there's this huge gap between Bloomberg saying, we have six sources in the government and national security. We started reporting this under the Obama administration, and now we've confirmed with the Trump administration. They're just straight up saying, here's what happened. And then Apple and Amazon are straight up saying, this did not happen.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, point by point have issued statements. Like Bloomberg has a separate piece on its website about this that is just statements to Bloomberg about how wrong they are. But like, what's interesting to me is that, so I've been talking to Russell about this, everyone knows Russell. We've been talking about how if these companies admitted to, let's just say, if they said straight up, like, these microchips are on our servers, like, that has huge implications beyond just this one incident. Like, that could mean... Again, they'd have to drastically alter their supply chain. It would mean profit loss because if you start doing things in the US, you have to pay people more and then profits are already like very slim with hardware. So like, admitting this actually means a lot more than just like, "Okay, this incident happened, like, let's move past it."

• 6:35Speaker 01

  It has implications beyond that.

• 6:37Nilay Patel?

  I'm with you on that. I just want to make sure we read these denials for the audience. So here's Amazon. "It's untrue that AWS knew about a supply chain compromise, an issue with malicious chips or hardware modifications when acquiring Elemental," which is...

• 6:51Speaker 01

  It's just like a whole nother.

• 6:52Nilay Patel?

  It's a whole other thing. "It's also untrue that AWS knew about servers containing malicious chips or modifications in data centers based in China, or that AWS worked with the FBI to investigate or provide data about malicious hardware. We've re-reviewed our records relating to the Elemental acquisition for any issues related to Super Micro, including re-examining third-party security audit that we conducted in 2015. We found no evidence to support claims of malicious chips or hardware." I mean, this is, they're like, "This didn't happen."

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Like, that is like, goes completely against what Bloomberg reported.

• 7:21Nilay Patel?

  And then Apple just sounds insulted. Like, Apple's statement is like, "How dare you, sir." So here's Apple. "Over the course of the past year, Bloomberg has contacted us multiple times with claims, sometimes vague and sometimes elaborate, of an alleged security incident at Apple. Each time, we have conducted rigorous internal investigations based on inquiries, and each time, we have found absolutely no evidence to support any of them. We have repeatedly and consistently offered factual responses on the record, refuting virtually every aspect of Bloomberg's story relating to Apple. On this, we can be very clear. Apple has never found malicious chips, hardware manipulations, or vulnerabilities purposely planted in any server. Apple never had any contact with the FBI or any other agency about such an incident. We are not aware of any investigation by the FBI,

• 8:05Nilay Patel?

  nor are our contacts in law enforcement." So that's the two big companies. Super Micro is already out there. They're the companies sort of at the center of this. They also have a denial. Those are furious denials.

• 8:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:18Nilay Patel?

  They're not, "We're investigating."

• 8:20Speaker 02

  I mean, clearly, they've known this story is coming for a while and they've been like, building, they've been like, sitting there getting angry over time. Yeah, I mean, one possible explanation is that I think these statements get rid of is like, the PR people are deliberately kept out of the loop because of the rushing nesting dolls of like, opsec security, blah, blah, blah. I don't think that's true. I don't think it's true that they're flat out lying. There's an idea out in the world that they are told by the government for national security purposes that they have to lie something, something, but that seems pretty conspiratorial to me. So yeah, like, trying to square my inherent trust in what I read in like, the Bloomberg report and their like, characterization of

• 9:05Speaker 02

  their reporting, with the just vehement denials from especially Amazon and Apple, I do not know how to do that yet. There, that, that is a circle, and I don't know how to square it.

• 9:15Nilay Patel?

  So Ash, what's your, your read? Right, there's, I don't think the government's gonna tell Apple and Amazon to deny this. And any, it really feels much more like the Trump administration would love, this is like,

• 9:26Speaker 01

  This is, we need the take, Trump was right.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, China's bad, China's screwing us. Here, more tariffs, we're shutting it down, move all this manufacturing in the United States. Is that your read?

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Well, I do want to just point out, so, I didn't actually realize this, a coup, a year, two years ago at this point, or a year ago, the information published a piece about Apple severing its relationship with Super Micro after finding like, malicious firmware on the servers. So like, this story's been brewing for a minute, and it's interesting that it's come out now. But, I have, I just think, I, I mean, Apple, this would be huge, if Apple was like, yeah, we had bad chips on our servers, like, Apple's whole thing is privacy, and like, being the one secure company in this world you can trust, I can see why they'd want to deny this report, like, for sure. And also the implication that, like, again, if this happened, Trump has that case right there to be like, alright, so

• 10:19Speaker 01

  why are we not, why are the iPhones not built here? Why are the parts not here? Why this? You know, it's like, giving ammo to this issue that's already hot.

• 10:28Nilay Patel?

  I don't, I don't think the Trump administration is like, particularly worried about triangulating the difference between the Bloomberg report and They're just gonna take the Bloomberg report and be like, it's happening.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  True, but why give them more, I guess?

• 10:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Paul, do you have any sense of how this actually works?

• 10:45Speaker 03

  Physically?

• 10:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, like the the sort of technical claim at the heart of this story is fuzzier than you would think.

• 10:51Speaker 03

  Well, as far as encryption, if you're encrypting data locally on your device, then even if it goes through or stored on remote servers, it's not transparent to those servers. So they could obviously, depending on how sophisticated this chip is, they could somehow see some quantity of activity. They could possibly log activity of a server or or anything that's done in the clear would be possible to sniff. But even then, I mean, this is very small chip. I really wonder how much it's actually capable of.

• 11:26Nilay Patel?

  So the the reporting I read-

• 11:27Speaker 03

  So the key is to encrypt everything locally and never trust anybody ever.

• 11:32Nilay Patel?

  I feel like Paul's gonna, he's turning us into a crypto show whether we want to be one or not.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  It was either Bloomberg or someone I talked to that was saying that essentially, when it's on the hardware level, like encryption doesn't matter. Like, this chip can say, don't check for a password, don't check for encryption, and it won't.

• 11:50Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  Like that, it just bypasses all security measures because it's on the hardware level.

• 11:55Nilay Patel?

  So what it's claimed to be able to do, again, this is Bloomberg's reporting. The companies have completely denied that it even exists, let alone has these capabilities. What Bloomberg claims can do is it injects code into the operating system that then the operating system will start talking to another computer, right? But I don't know how that, like, let's just pull it, let's be skeptical of Bloomberg for a second. To pull that off, you have to have the designs of the motherboard that Super Micro is building for Amazon or Apple or Elemental, which is this company Amazon acquired. You have to know which ones they're going to buy. So you have to have like the purchase order from Apple that says, we want this motherboard. Super Micro, I think, has like 600 designs that you can further customize.

• 12:39Nilay Patel?

  So you have to know exactly what they're ordering. Then you have to like find the right plant manager to compromise with your threat of inspections. You have to make sure they're not going to tell their boss or whatever. They're not going to tell Apple. Then you have to like design the part that will do the thing with Apple's code or Amazon's code that you think will lead to the right result. Then you have to modify the design of the board such that Apple doesn't see it. And then you have to actually manufacture the board and ship it to Apple such that Apple or Amazon don't figure it out.

• 13:07Speaker 02

  There's a world in which it's not that targeted. So if this part turns out to be pretty cheap, and presumably, you know, there's 100 different server designs, but they don't all like, they're not all completely unique. And so if you get in early enough and be like, all right, the, the basic way that the, you know, BIOS works for the talking to this processor is this on all of these things. Early on, we can make this thing, you know, dirt cheap, and we're just going to throw it into everything. And, and then like later on, if we determine that our, you know, giant pile of tiny little sliver sized chips are out in the universe, and we know that, or we suspect that some of them are being used by Apple, we turn those ones on remotely or do whatever we do there. You

• 13:51Speaker 02

  know, like, all these servers are out in the world. They just, they're everywhere because they're dirt cheap. And then eventually, one of them, they all start like phoning home every now and then. And then you're like, oh, wait, this one phoned home from an Apple server farm. And then you, you like, start communicating with that one. Like, that's the, that's the thing that seems more likely to me, given the way that they've described the tech. But again, I'm in this crazy position where like, the denials are so like strenuous and straightforward. And Apple's even like, we're not under any confidentiality agreement. Like, we're just saying what we're saying. That there, there has to be another turn here to like, actually explain what's going on.

• 14:25Speaker 03

  Another possible way for this to work was if you just, I mean, think about Spectre and Meltdown, right? That's just vulnerabilities and how the chip actually works. And you still need very specialized knowledge to attack it. But if this chip only adds a slight vulnerability to a system, and then you can kind of choose when you want to go after it. And then you hack in based on a vulnerability that you created with this tiny little chip.

• 14:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:50Speaker 03

  But yeah, I still, I have no way to read this, this whole denial situation. This doesn't make

• 14:58Speaker 02

  I mean, they're just, this is, I would say, you know, we, we're going to have this week in Elon coming up from Liz. And like, Liz and I spend a lot of time talking about how you communicate to investors lately, because that is the only Elon story that exists.

• 15:11Nilay Patel?

  These denials are such that if they're lying, this is material to their shareholders. Right? Right. These are lawsuit denials. These are, if you are lying, your shareholders are going to sue your company for lying about a massive material problem to your business. This is, did your CEO approve this statement? Did he know it was a lie? Level denial. Right? It's, there's no hedge, there's no loophole. They've clarified, you know, like, they're not being shy. Which to me suggests, they only got it wrong. But Bloomberg is a really good outlet with great reporters who tend not to get things wrong. So that's like a, that's a big space. Ashley, you described this as like the worst case scenario.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:52Nilay Patel?

  And so I want to lean on your sort of security reporter background. Why is this the worst case scenario?

• 15:56Speaker 01

  So I've talked to a few different security experts for this follow-up piece that we're writing, but you can have a ton of software, security, like encryption, whatnot. But again, if you're on the hardware level, like, everything you do does not matter. And it's very hard to detect. So like, we mentioned how they can ping back to servers, whatever. Those aren't registered as like a ma- you know, it's not like a ton of traffic or data being sent out. Like, it literally would be like a little blip. A little weird, but nothing for like cause for concern, you know, red alarms, whatever. It's more just like, oh, that was okay. Like, huh. But then maybe eventually if you saw it in the aggregate or something like that, you'd be like, oh, something weird is going on here. But you're probably not going to see that.

• 16:40Nilay Patel?

  The way you're describing it is literally the like Hollywood movie, bad cop TV show equivalent of somebody hacks into the security camera feed and the security guard sees the blip and like taps their screen. And it's like, I don't know.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. That's kind of how it's been described to me. And what's interesting is like, Intel, I guess, has its management engine that's on their chips. But you can't even see that without a microscope. So like, think about how tiny those chips are. Like, even if you were going to physically inspect every aspect of a motherboard, you might not see these chips. Like, okay, so you can't really tell what's happening on like the network layer. You can't tell physically if you were going to inspect every last bit of it. It's very difficult to see. Maybe like bug bounty, for example, is a solution sometimes for vulnerabilities. But in this case, most hackers don't have access to super micros.

• 17:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  Like specifically targeted motherboards. So like there, you can't really rely on the hacking community unless they like took a vested interest in this. So like there's, there's no way to really play this as like, oh, we can detect this easily. Everyone I've talked to is like, yeah, this is a problem that like, there's no safety measures. There's no way to figure this out.

• 17:51Nilay Patel?

  They've been, they've been ringing the alarm about this forever.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:54Nilay Patel?

  And now it's happening or not happening. I mean, the, the gulf, again, the gulf between the report and the denials is so vast that it's hard to just say with any certainty what is going on.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  Right. It's, yeah. Like, who knows?

• 18:09Nilay Patel?

  And by the way, to Bloomberg's credit, and again, Bloomberg is a great outlet with terrific reporters, they just printed all these denials in their piece. They are that confident. Right? Like, there's the piece, and as Ashley mentioned earlier, there's a link in the middle of that piece that's just like, read the full denials. You just like click it and there's Apple saying Bloomberg is wrong. So they're, they're, they're feeling very confident in their reporting as well. So what happens next?

• 18:33Speaker 01

  Well, I feel like we gotta figure out what's true here.

• 18:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  Like until something moves in that direction, I don't know what more can be done, unless Trump all of a sudden is like, starts pointing to this and then starts moving in like, like regulation front.

• 18:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. That's Supreme Court distraction, just a small distraction right now, right? But I mean, this is like, this is ammunition for him.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  Right. I mean, he could go there. Again, who knows? Who knows? This could happen. I really don't know anymore.

• 19:00Speaker 03

  It's hard for the US, given the fact that the NSA has done exactly this.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, like the US has done, there were some Snowden docs around like hardware tampering, so.

• 19:12Nilay Patel?

  I think famously HP just cooperated, just went ahead and cooperated with the NSA at one point. There's a building, like a Verizon building here. That just appears to be where the NSA was.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  Sick.

• 19:25Nilay Patel?

  Russell's talked about that one before. Sick. It's great. There's like a windowless Verizon building and then like the people go in there and they put on their headphones and listen to your phone calls.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 19:33Nilay Patel?

  At least that, that's what I learned from Mr. Robot. I don't know about you guys.

• 19:39Nilay Patel?

  Really, but the, the real question is, like you said, how do we find out what's true? So who is, who's gonna be the truth finder here? Is it Congress calls him up again and says, come and testify and tell me if this is true? Do they get sued? Is there a researcher who's like, give me your motherboards and I'm gonna check them out for you?

• 19:57Speaker 01

  I could see some researchers getting in on this for sure.

• 20:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I could see that. The government, again, just like, who knows?

• 20:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  Like, maybe someone will be like, yeah, let's, let's fight with Apple today.

• 20:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Let's summons them or something, but like.

• 20:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  I think I really.

• 20:16Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I think, if only you could see Ashley's face.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  I'm so tired, Neil.

• 20:21Nilay Patel?

  The look on Ashley's face is the look that is, that I feel in my heart, which is even if you get Apple's chief of iCloud security in front of a congressional panel.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:32Nilay Patel?

  Are they going to ask even remotely the right question?

• 20:36Speaker 01

  How do I get Siri to work?

• 20:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, exactly. Like, look, I've got, I don't, I just, it keeps saying I need more iCloud storage. Does the Chinese do that? Like, I don't, can you help me, sir? And then there's some grandstanding and then, you know, then there's like a Cory Booker moment, which is always a delight. And then, and then they go home.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  We want Ted Lieu on this one.

• 20:55Nilay Patel?

  So, look, this is a huge story. It's not going away. Again, the, the delta between the, the two things, it is just incomprehensible, like, if you are, have been doing journalism for some time.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  I know, because I'm like, I trust Bloomberg. Michael Riley's amazing. He's published some great stories. But then I'm like, damn, Amazon and Apple are like, really saying this didn't happen?

• 21:16Nilay Patel?

  Lawsuits denials. And I will say, Super Micros, Super Micros denials, like, less. While we would cooperate with any government investigation, we are not aware of any investigation regarding this topic, nor have we been contacted by any government agency in this regard. We are not aware of any customer dropping Super Micro as a supplier for this type of issue.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  This goes back to that information report.

• 21:36Nilay Patel?

  They've all been, they've been dropped. By the way, if you look at the Super Micro stock chart today, it's just like a vertical line down. Bloomberg actually tweeted the stock chart and then they replied to their own tweet and said, here's our story.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 21:50Nilay Patel?

  Which is a tough burn.

• 21:51Speaker 03

  You could also parse Apple's statement a little bit like, Apple has never found malicious chips, hardware manipulations or vulnerabilities purposely planted at any server. That doesn't mean nobody's found those chips.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  That's true. That's true.

• 22:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but then they say, we have found absolutely no evidence to support any of these allegations.

• 22:09Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 22:09Nilay Patel?

  So, I don't think this is a parseable state. Like, I love parsing a corporate statement and like lawyering out and being like, I got you. But I don't, there's nothing to parse here. And if they are playing that kind of game, then they're still, I think, being misleading enough by playing that game in this situation to trigger a massive wave of shareholder losses.

• 22:32Speaker 03

  But I would say the emphasis of both of their statements is they're denying knowledge. Obviously, nobody can deny perfectly that no server in their whole warehouses is compromised. Because who has the time?

• 22:51Nilay Patel?

  You gotta get out there with a microscope and an oscilloscope, some probably some glasses, other scopes. So, what's your next story? You've mentioned a couple of times. What's the next thing you're working on here?

• 23:03Speaker 01

  Well, so this follower writing the headline right now is that the supply chain hacking is too big of a problem to solve, which goes back to the idea that just like, is the solution to just not get parts from China?

• 23:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  Like, that's not going to happen.

• 23:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  So, even if this story is completely true, okay, well, stop using Super Micro. Cool. Let's go to the next Chinese factory. Like, what is the solution here? There isn't one. It's really hard to detect hardware manipulation. Like, every security researcher I've talked to is like, yeah, good luck. Just assume your hardware is compromised.

• 23:35Nilay Patel?

  That's a lot.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  Like, literally, that's what they've been telling me.

• 23:38Nilay Patel?

  Do they sound, what's the tone when they say this? Do they sound defeated? Or are they like?

• 23:43Speaker 03

  Are they drunk?

• 23:44Speaker 01

  They...

• 23:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Are they?

• 23:46Speaker 01

  One person offered that maybe the US and China, and I would assume she also meant to say Russia too, should like get in a room and sit down and have a really frank conversation.

• 23:55Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  And I was like, okay, that could happen.

• 23:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 24:00Nilay Patel?

  She knows the countries aren't people.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  She just wants them all to get together and be in harmony.

• 24:04Nilay Patel?

  Like their trade representatives or security researchers.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  She just says everyone should get together, chat it out, set some ground rules.

• 24:12Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so like, like, rules of engagement.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, like no hardware tampering.

• 24:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but China is the only one that makes the hardware.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  Sure, but, you know, gotta talk to China.

• 24:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, okay, so that's one. So she just wants to go to a meeting.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  Someone else recommended the blockchain.

• 24:30Nilay Patel?

  Paul, there you go, buddy. Did you talk to Paul?

• 24:34Speaker 01

  He really was going hard on the blockchain.

• 24:35Speaker 03

  The only, you don't need a blockchain to secure this, but you need a hardware device that you have more trust in. So you, you like, trust the manufacturer. You do have to trust somebody at some point to make some object that can encrypt your data with a key that you, only you know. Once you encrypt the data with a key that only you know, it is actually truly safe. And that is, as far as I know, the only provably safe thing. Sending plain text over Google servers is a bad idea, no matter what. And I think Apple has done a fairly good job that if its iPhones aren't compromised, I believe that most customer data should be relatively safe.

• 25:19Nilay Patel?

  Right. I saw some tweets of this effect floating around today. Okay, so you've got, let's have a meeting, you've got blockchain.

• 25:28Nilay Patel?

  Is there a third option? A meeting about blockchain? BlockCon? ChainConf?

• 25:33Speaker 01

  ChainConf. No, that's about, that's as far as we've gotten.

• 25:38Nilay Patel?

  So this is, either we're decentralizing everything and we're crypto kids for life. Give me that Lambo. Or where this is a state.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  A diplomacy problem.

• 25:48Nilay Patel?

  Like a state-level diplomacy problem.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:50Nilay Patel?

  That's wild.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  That's like where I've gotten with this so far.

• 25:53Nilay Patel?

  That's incredible.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  But again, it's like, we need to figure out if this is true. It's so hard to do this reporting when everyone's, everyone's hedging now. It's kind of like, well, I don't necessarily believe it.

• 26:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  Like, one person was telling me he didn't believe this story because he's like, it's just cheaper to find a person to go work at Apple. Like, he's like, I could just go hire a guy on the street to go try to get a job at Apple. He's like, why would you spend all this money and corrupt this entire supply chain? Which is also like, physical evidence.

• 26:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  If they catch your mole in Apple, they'll fire the mole. And you're not, like, done.

• 26:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  Like, okay. What about it?

• 26:28Speaker 03

  Or buy a zero day on the black market.

• 26:30Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  Sure. This guy didn't buy it.

• 26:33Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  For that reason, but I was like, okay, well. I was like, well, if you implant a chip, the chip can't change its mind.

• 26:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the chip isn't gonna get like drunk and leave an iPhone. Um, but it's cheaper. Yeah, but maybe the Chinese, like, Chinese spy agencies are like, price conscious. They're like, they're looking at like, the menu and they're like, mm. Uh, you know, I'm gonna go with the chicken.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  Server level today.

• 26:55Nilay Patel?

  They're like, let's splurge. I will, uh, let's go, let's go for the factory tonight.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I hope that's how it works.

• 27:02Nilay Patel?

  It's been a hard week.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  In the spy movies.

• 27:05Nilay Patel?

  All right, Ashley, well, thank you so much.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 27:07Nilay Patel?

  I don't know if that's gonna be the headline that Ashley publishes.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 27:10Nilay Patel?

  Well, I just, I can't promise you, it will be, I promise you right now on this show.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  I thought you were gonna just give me a better headline.

• 27:16Nilay Patel?

  Oh, we're all doomed? That's what it sounds like. It's easier to hire a guy.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  I thought it was just headline shade.

• 27:22Nilay Patel?

  Oh, no, I was just, I was just saying, read Ashley's story.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 27:25Nilay Patel?

  But I can't, I can't promise you that you're gonna Google exactly that.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  Oh, okay, okay.

• 27:29Nilay Patel?

  Or can I? I don't know. Anyway, thank you so much, Ashley, for being on. Read her story, read our follows, we'll be all over this. We're gonna-

• 27:35Speaker 01

  Listen to the podcast.

• 27:35Nilay Patel?

  Plug it, plug it right now. What's your first episode?

• 27:37Speaker 01

  Well, I think our first episode, so, why'd you push that button? October 17th. First episode will probably be, why did you delete your tweets?

• 27:46Nilay Patel?

  Woo!

• 27:47Speaker 01

  Very controversial.

• 27:48Nilay Patel?

  Real big.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 27:49Nilay Patel?

  I did it.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  You did it?

• 27:50Nilay Patel?

  Did you do it?

• 27:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you're in it.

• 27:52Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 27:53Nilay Patel?

  All right, and the trailer is next week?

• 27:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 27:55Nilay Patel?

  I'm super excited about this.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  On Wednesdays.

• 27:57Nilay Patel?

  On Wednesdays?

• 27:58Speaker 01

  Yes, because you guys took our Tuesday slot.

• 28:02Nilay Patel?

  I'm sorry.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  I like the interviews, though, they're good.

• 28:05Nilay Patel?

  Thanks, Stash! My shade's coming right back at me.

• 28:09Speaker 01

  That's not, that wasn't shade, that was legit. That was legit.

• 28:13Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, why'd you push that button? Season three, it's new Wednesday, date and time.

• 28:19Speaker 03

  Can't wait.

• 28:19Nilay Patel?

  Coming at you, trailer drops next week. First episode, uh, October 17th. Thank you so much, Ashley.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  Thanks, bye, y'all.

• 28:25Nilay Patel?

  All right, we are gonna listen to an ad. We're gonna have This Week in Elon with Liz Lopato. And then Dan Seifert's gonna tell us all about Microsoft. Check it out.

• 28:34Nilay Patel?

  This episode of Vergecast is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Have you ever tried to solve a future problem instead of a current one with your technology? That's definitely not smart. But you know what is smart? Using ZipRecruiter to hire for your business. ZipRecruiter doesn't depend on candidates finding you, it finds them for you. Their powerful technology scans thousands of resumes to identify people with the right skills, education, experience for your job, and actively invites them to apply, so you get qualified candidates fast. Then ZipRecruiter spotlights the top candidates for your job, so you never miss out on a great match. That's why ZipRecruiter is rated number one by employers in the United States, based on the TrustPilot rating of hiring sites with over 1,000 reviews. Now, Vergecast listeners can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/verge. That's ziprecruiter.com/verge. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire.

• 29:19Speaker 04

  Ladies and gentlemen, my fellow dirtbags and everybody else, welcome to This Week in Elon. I'm your host, Elizabeth Lapato, deputy editor at The Verge. So Thursday, the SEC filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk for security fraud, and Saturday, Musk settled. Now, as this was going on, it became clear that the SEC had offered to settle with Musk before they filed. And as a result of him refusing the settlement, the fines went up, and so did the period of being banned from being an officer, or sorry, a chairman of the board. Now, this leaves us with disarray. I'm going to just talk about some of the less important stuff here, because that's kind of how I roll. First of all, part of the SEC's case came from Elon Musk's tweets, and part of the

• 30:04Speaker 04

  settlement involved, basically, having somebody oversee Elon Musk's communications. You could say that the person screaming "log off" at Elon Musk's house is the SEC. So, the question then becomes like, how would you do this? And ordinarily, there's like a whole apparatus around a CEO that does the communication for the CEO, and the CEO just doesn't really have to think about it or say anything in public at all if they don't feel like it. But that doesn't really seem to be Elon Musk's MO. So there are a couple of ways this could be done. One is just to, like, literally hire somebody to, like, run his Twitter account for him. Another way is to have him submit his would-be communications to somebody on the board. The problem with that is that it relies on Musk's judgment to do it, and like, if you're

• 30:47Speaker 04

  feeling like sending a fuego tweet when you're like a little drunk, maybe you aren't like exercising your best judgment right at that moment. I'm not saying I've done it, I'm just saying it's a possibility. All I know is that the best possible outcome for Tesla probably is for Elon Musk to stop tweeting entirely, but I don't see that happening. So I guess we're going to see what happens next, because it's also not super clear what happens if Tesla doesn't put these structures in around Musk. But I do want to talk a little bit about the fact that Elon Musk is going to be stepping down as chairman of Tesla's board, because I live for this drama. Okay, so I think James Murdoch may have announced his campaign for chairman of Tesla in the New York Times, because there is a story that like sort of

• 31:29Speaker 04

  talks about what the board has been up to and says that Elon Musk threatened to leave the company if he was forced to take the settlement. But there's this interesting thing where there's like a paragraph about how the, you know, people have been talking about James Murdoch as a possible chairman. They floated his name. And then there is the sentence, "But Murdoch hasn't volunteered for the post, nor has he discussed it with any other director." So exactly one person is a reliable source for that sentence without any like to the sources' knowledge qualifications, and that person is James Murdoch. So it looks like James Murdoch, although he has not volunteered for the post or discussed it with any other director, has in fact discussed it with the New York Times. So it seems like he's interested, I would say. I'm very curious to see what happens next, because there are a couple of other folks on the board that might be angling to be

• 32:13Speaker 04

  chair. But obviously, my hope for this whole thing is that it is a public and messy fight that I get to watch it all. The other, other weird thing that's going on, don't get me wrong, it's been a weird week, is that somebody appears to be smearing SpaceX. So there's these anti-SpaceX op-eds that have been showing up in space towns like Houston, and they appear to be placed by a PR firm called Law Media Group. Now, this is all reporting by Ars Technica, by the way. You should, you should definitely check it out, because it's a really interesting story. And the thing about this PR firm, Law Media Group, is that Boeing is one of their clients, and even more curiously, Boeing has no comment on the matter. Now, here's the thing. If somebody accused me of smearing a competitor, using a shadowy law firm and

• 32:57Speaker 04

  plausible deniability, and I hadn't done it, I feel like your answer is like, what is wrong with you? No, absolutely not. I am like, are you kidding me right now? This is ridiculous. This is absurd. I am insulted. But that's not the route that Boeing chose. So I guess we'll see what happens with that. But yeah, it's been a, it's been a messy news week here in Elon land, and I hope it has been less messy for you all. Incidentally, if you enjoy this update, I do have a newsletter. It's also called This Week in Elon. You can sign up at theverge.com and you will get my extraordinarily good color commentary on all of this mess. That's This Week in Elon. I'm Elizabeth Lopato. I'll see you next week.

• 33:37Nilay Patel?

  Dan.

• 33:38Speaker 05

  Hi.

• 33:38Nilay Patel?

  Welcome.

• 33:39Speaker 05

  Glad to be here again.

• 33:41Nilay Patel?

  I will say your segment of the show is, I would say, less fraught than Ashley's.

• 33:46Speaker 02

  Oh, we'll make it fraught.

• 33:49Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. There's some, there's some things to be fraught about here.

• 33:52Nilay Patel?

  Okay, Microsoft had an event.

• 33:54Speaker 05

  Microsoft did have an event, along with every other company under the face of the sun.

• 33:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 33:58Speaker 05

  They had an event this fall.

• 33:59Nilay Patel?

  It was in New York.

• 34:00Speaker 05

  This week.

• 34:00Nilay Patel?

  You were there.

• 34:01Speaker 05

  Yep, I was there.

• 34:01Nilay Patel?

  Tom Warren was there.

• 34:02Speaker 05

  Apparently Bradley Cooper was also there.

• 34:04Nilay Patel?

  I've been, this Bradley Cooper thing is, he keeps bubbling up.

• 34:07Speaker 05

  And I didn't see him. So, I can't, I cannot confirm.

• 34:11Speaker 02

  You probably did see him, but you blocked it from your memory because he was too handsome for your brain to comprehend.

• 34:17Nilay Patel?

  Wait, was he, was it handsome Bradley or like Star is Born grizzled Bradley?

• 34:21Speaker 05

  I cannot confirm that Bradley Cooper was there because I'm receiving this all second hand because I did not see Bradley Cooper. So here's the thing with, it's a funny thing with Microsoft.

• 34:29Nilay Patel?

  Microsoft gets Bradley Cooper. I just want to point out that Apple had Jon Hamm. So like, I don't know, who wins in that fight?

• 34:36Speaker 05

  Here's the thing with Microsoft events. I get into this like product zone mode where I only care about finding the product as fast as possible and getting our coverage done, like doing my job, basically. This happened to me at the Surface Pro 4 event where I literally blew off the CEO of Microsoft to get my hands on the Pro 4. And there's a photo of me and, but I think it was in a USA Today at the time, standing there playing with a Pro 4 and Satya Intel is like right over my shoulder trying to look at it. And I'm like, no.

• 35:13Speaker 05

  I have this newspaper clip saved somewhere in my house. So that's so I'm not surprised that I did not see Bradley Cooper at the Microsoft event. Apparently he was there.

• 35:22Nilay Patel?

  You want focus. All right. So you didn't see Bradley Cooper?

• 35:25Speaker 05

  No, I did see a lot of products though.

• 35:26Nilay Patel?

  There you go.

• 35:27Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 35:28Nilay Patel?

  What'd you see?

• 35:29Speaker 05

  Microsoft announced a ton of stuff. So they announced the new Surface Pro 6, the Surface Laptop 2, an update to the Surface Studio, which is the first time that's been updated in like two years, and a pair of headphones, which like kind of came out of nowhere.

• 35:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:44Speaker 05

  Which is kind of crazy. So just to recap the news, the Pro 6 and the Laptop 2 are basically spec updates. So they updated them with the newer processors and more battery life. Feature wise, they are exactly the same as the prior models, except they now come in this really dope looking matte black, which is pretty awesome. And they still don't have a USB-C port, which I'm sure is the fraughtness that Dieter wants to get into, which I totally agree with.

• 36:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 36:09Speaker 05

  And then the Surface Studio has been updated with also basically the same design, and it's still like the most gorgeous computer ever made. It's really stunning to look at, but they made the screen better. So it's brighter now. It's got an upgraded processor, and it has an actual like current or newer video card in there. So it's a lot more powerful than it was when it first launched, which was always kind of the biggest complaint with the Studio was that it's this gorgeous, beautiful, expensive computer that has kind of old guts and underpowered processors and graphics cards. So now it's way more up to speed and way more exciting as a product.

• 36:45Nilay Patel?

  What GPU does it have?

• 36:47Speaker 05

  So you can get it with the so here's the thing. The Studio does not run desktop components. It runs laptop parts. So it has a seventh gen, so it's already starting an old processor, but it has a seventh gen Intel processor. It's a Core i7 quad core chip that would have been found in like a Surface Book. A couple of years ago. And then you can get the Nvidia 1060 graphics card or the Nvidia 1070, both of which are the mobile versions of those graphics cards. The new graphics cards that we just reviewed, the RTX 2080 and the 2080 Ti, those do not have mobile versions yet. So these are like kind of the prior generation.

• 37:26Nilay Patel?

  So it's kind of the same deal as last time.

• 37:29Speaker 05

  It's a little bit of the same deal, except like last time they were like, they launched it with like two generations old hardware. Now they're just one generation old. So it's a step forward.

• 37:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I like that the Surface, if you just don't know, if you just live a year behind.

• 37:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 37:42Nilay Patel?

  Surface Studio is like, this is the greatest ever.

• 37:43Speaker 05

  I mean, that's kind of, you know, you could say that about a lot of Microsoft products. They are the most gorgeous computers with like outdated components for whatever reason.

• 37:54Speaker 03

  The Surface Studio, I don't know why I never made this connection. This is like the, remember the 20th anniversary Mac?

• 38:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:01Speaker 03

  It's just like this perfectly beautiful computer. And it's like, it never looked practical in any way.

• 38:07Speaker 05

  But it's basically overkill for.

• 38:10Speaker 03

  I can't think of any reason that I would want a Surface Studio for use, but it is very, very beautiful.

• 38:16Nilay Patel?

  I had done nothing but imagined myself using the Surface Studio.

• 38:19Speaker 05

  It is definitely overkill for blogging. Like, like I want one to blog on and it is way more than I'll ever need to blog on.

• 38:26Nilay Patel?

  No, I have a vision where I raise my standing desk to a standing position and I fold this thing down. So it's like horizontal in front of me. And then I, I just, I'm just swiping.

• 38:37Speaker 05

  Yeah. You swipe in, you're dialing, you're.

• 38:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I've got a dial. I'm like, turn the traffic up on this story. And then this Trello card, I'm just like flinging it.

• 38:47Speaker 05

  You take the pen and you circle all these problems with someone's article and you're like, ah, fix this.

• 38:52Nilay Patel?

  John Stephen is a reporter, sits right in front of me. I'm just flinging that Trello card. It's like flying across the room. His computer is like beep beep beep. He's been assigned a story. I think about it all the time. All right. That's the Surface Studio.

• 39:05Speaker 05

  To be fair, the Surface Studio is really appealing if you are a digital artist. I'm very excited to get our hands on the new one and put Dami Lee in front of it and see what kind of art she can make with it, because she's a phenomenal digital artist. So it's a pretty cool computer, and obviously, it looks amazing. The new screen, like, the screen on the old Surface Studio was pretty stunning in person, the new one's even more. Like, it's just, like, turned up, and it's great. But like, the mainstream products, the Pro 6 and the Laptop 2, they are, you know, they're recycling these designs, which, there wasn't a ton of problem things with these designs, but for the Pro, this has been the same design for like, four years now that Microsoft is writing. And it definitely could maybe use a refresh, and

• 39:49Speaker 05

  they're not doing it this year. And they still don't have USB-C.

• 39:52Nilay Patel?

  What do you think, well, so is that, there's like, the port.

• 39:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 39:55Nilay Patel?

  We'll just set, we'll just, we'll just let Dieter do that in a minute.

• 39:58Speaker 02

  You just let me know when I can start going about this, okay? I've just been sitting here.

• 40:02Nilay Patel?

  I know. But what about the Pro needs to be redesigned in the year?

• 40:07Speaker 05

  Uh, I, you know, the trend with laptops and tablets across the board is thinner bezels, so you can get a bigger screen in a smaller-sized computer. The Pro's bezels are definitely on the larger side at this point. They could be thinner, that could enable Microsoft to maybe put a 13-inch screen in it when it's only 12 and 1/2 now, or maybe make it just even smaller. Like, when we reviewed the Surface Go earlier this year, our biggest complaint were those big fatty bezels around the screen that just make the thing look dated. And the Surface Pro basically has the same problem. There are some really interesting things that we saw from HP this week as well, in two-in-one design, that kind of like, takes what Microsoft does with the Surface and improves upon it. And I think they can, like, rethink how this hinge and kickstand kind of work in new ways if they really wanted to.

• 40:52Nilay Patel?

  Are you saying that you think Microsoft should make a computer, well, they won't do leather, because HP did it, they should, they should make it out of, like, leather?

• 40:59Speaker 05

  Alcantara. Make the whole thing out of Alcantara, right? That said, the matte-black finish on the Surface Pro 6 is, or, Surface Pro 6.

• 41:10Speaker 05

  Is sick. Like, it is really nice. Like, the problem with matte black computers in general, and the Surface Laptop 2 actually has this issue, is because they're aluminum and they're anodized aluminum, your fingerprints get all over them really quickly. Like, if you've ever used a Razer Laptop, that comes in those really cool blacks, as soon as you touch it, it gets disgusting. But the Pro 6 is made out of magnesium, and it like repels your fingerprints way better, so you can actually carry this thing around without it getting all gross looking. And it looks crazy cool in person. And they put a quad-core processor in it, which is cool. One thing that I missed was that there was no announcement of any LTE versions, which the Surface Pro LTE, the prior generation, was like my favorite computer of the past year because of its built-in LTE, and Microsoft did not announce that for the Pro 6.

• 41:55Speaker 05

  So I don't know if it's coming. They wouldn't confirm anything to me. It's kind of frustrating. It just seems like they ignored it.

• 42:00Speaker 02

  And then I mean, I'm surprised they made it for the last generation, if I'm being totally honest. The problem is, nobody buys that. Like, you and like 30 other people buy that computer.

• 42:10Speaker 05

  Nobody buys it because nobody, there's none available. Like, when you think of like, consumer-focused, like laptops that are interesting for a consumer, or computers that are interesting for a consumer, that have LTE built-in, I can think of the Surface Pro, and then if you want to get crazy and call an iPad Pro a computer, and that's it.

• 42:28Speaker 02

  Wow, you're really coming right at Dieter. It's like a warm-up lamp before we do the ports.

• 42:33Speaker 05

  But like, otherwise, you're looking at like Lenovo ThinkPads, and those are like, very business-y, they're more expensive, they're not like in a store that you can go in and play with and touch and use, etc. The LTE in those things is not as good as the LTE that's in the Pro, or in your phone, or anything like that. So like, it's a chicken and egg problem, for sure, but...

• 42:52Speaker 02

  I just don't think any consumer, or even corporation, really wants to buy a laptop with a service plan.

• 42:59Speaker 05

  It depends on your needs. My take on it has always been, and as someone that's constantly traveling and constantly using a computer outside of areas with Wi-Fi, if you are only tethering or only planning to use your phone to hotspot once or twice a month, then don't buy a computer with built-in LTE. Use your phone hotspot. But if you need to use it more than a couple of times a week, then built-in LTE is so much easier to use, and it's worth the 10 bucks or 20 bucks a month service that you'll pay for it, because you turn on your computer, it's connected. It has a stronger signal than your phone gets, because it's a bigger antenna. It doesn't drain your phone's battery when you're using it. Like, there's so many like... Pros to using this if you are someone that needs to use it and it needs to use it more than once or twice a month.

• 43:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, when I, when I go to like live events with Dan and I'm like bouncing between the company's crappy wifi tethering to my phone tethering to my other phone, seeing if there's somebody else's wifi that I could like hijack. I'm just like constantly going, ah, I'm off, I'm online, I'm offline, I'm online, I'm offline, ah. And Dan's just like, oh yeah, the wifi went down. I didn't even notice.

• 44:07Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 44:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. Alright, my main service.

• 44:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, so anyways, back to products that were announced, not LTE products that were not. And then the laptop too, it's the same laptop hardware. They did improve the keyboard, so it's a little quieter to type on. I think the last laptop keyboard was great, so I didn't really have any complaints with it, but this one's a little bit quieter to type on. And it also comes in matte black. It's aluminum, so you show fingerprints a little more than the Surface Pro. But again, they have mini display ports and no USB-C.

• 44:37Speaker 02

  Alright, let's talk about USB-C and then we can talk about the headphones. Dieter? Because the headphones have USB-C.

• 44:45Speaker 03

  He's ready. Let him go. Let him go.

• 44:48Speaker 02

  Microsoft last year, I called them and I was like, where the hell are the USB-C ports? Like, look, consumers aren't ready. They, Microsoft firmly believes that consumers, when they see a USB-C port, are going to take their phone's charger and plug it in with its, you know, little dinky 5 watt, 10 watt, whatever phone charger and think it's going to charge our laptop. They firmly believe that people won't understand how that works, which I think is not true. But they also just, you know, they have said in the past, we don't think the ecosystem is ready. A bunch of the hubs and stuff are ready. But you know what? Like, okay, so also, I'm very mad. I get their, like, their love for the Surface Connector port. It is in many ways as a charging port superior to USB-C, primarily because it's a mag, magnetic thing and it can like pop out and that's just really nice

• 45:31Speaker 02

  and convenient. But look, I want a show of hands. This is a podcast, so just say it out loud.

• 45:38Nilay Patel?

  Pull over in your car. Please pull over in your car.

• 45:40Speaker 02

  Pull over in your car and just, just look into your heart. Just close your eyes. You're, you're pulled over now. Your eyes are closed. You're breathing in, you're breathing out. And now I want you to think about how much you love, how deeply committed you are to the mini display port.

• 46:02Speaker 02

  Who needs a mini display? Who, like, you're, you're gonna be using a dongle anyway.

• 46:09Speaker 05

  Exactly! Nobody has ever used a mini display port without using a dongle, like.

• 46:16Speaker 02

  And, and they put USB-C on the Surface Go.

• 46:19Nilay Patel?

  I have. Technically, it is a very long dongle.

• 46:22Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 46:24Nilay Patel?

  But it's, I have a cable that's a mini display port to display port, which I would, again, point out is technically,

• 46:31Speaker 02

  That's a dongle.

• 46:31Nilay Patel?

  legally, just a very long dongle.

• 46:35Speaker 02

  So, they saved a bunch of money. They saved a bunch of, like, we didn't have to redesign anything and put the USB-C thing in there or whatever. But fundamentally, like, Microsoft is participating in holding USB-C from getting to the place where Microsoft feels okay using USB-C. And the problem is, they're using it on two other laptops, like. Right. It's insane.

• 46:56Nilay Patel?

  And it's on the studio, right?

• 46:58Speaker 05

  Uh, honestly, I can't remember.

• 47:00Speaker 02

  It does, I think, I think the studio does have it, but it's not, it's like there, but it's not, like, it's not used for power, obviously.

• 47:06Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 47:07Nilay Patel?

  Well, so I think this is the, the most...

• 47:10Speaker 02

  Oh, I'm not even close to done, but keep going.

• 47:12Nilay Patel?

  Wait, wait, no, but I'm gonna say, okay, I'm gonna let you keep going, but the, there's no reason that you have to power your, your USB-C laptop with USB-C, right?

• 47:21Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 47:21Nilay Patel?

  I would prefer if the touchbar MacBooks had a MagSafe port for power, and then maybe also you use USB. I like the Surface connector. By the way, Dieter, you can get the Surface connector dongle for USB-C, of course.

• 47:34Speaker 02

  That thing is an abomination!

• 47:36Speaker 05

  It is. I use it, and it's an abomination.

• 47:40Nilay Patel?

  Alright, Dieter, continue, continue, by all means.

• 47:43Speaker 02

  I don't, now I'm mad about the Surface, the USB dongle that Microsoft made. It's, it's, it's, it's just huge. But fundamentally, they should have just, they should have swapped out the display port for this thing. They're holding back the entire USB-C ecosystem. Uh, everybody else has got at least one thing. Apple's gone all in, maybe too far, maybe not. They could have just put it on there. And I just don't, I like... There's like, there's no justification for it, other than like, they didn't want to spend the money to redesign the internals of their computers. And I also, conspiratorially, speaking of that abomination of a dongle, I think Microsoft might not just know how to make stuff with USB-C very well. They might not, they just might not be good at it.

• 48:25Nilay Patel?

  I don't think anyone is. To be very clear.

• 48:28Speaker 05

  They did it on the Surface Go, they did it on the Surface Book 2. It works exactly like we're asking them to do it on the Surface Pro, or the Surface Laptop. They still have the Surface Connector for the main charging port, but if you're traveling and your phone uses USB-C and you only want to carry one charger with you when you're traveling, you can charge a Surface Go with the same USB-C cable that you charge your phone with.

• 48:49Nilay Patel?

  But that's a new product.

• 48:51Speaker 05

  But the Surface Book 2 came out like, a year ago?

• 48:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 48:54Speaker 05

  At this point, almost? Like, Surface Book 2 was the first Surface product that had a USB-C port. It's not its main charging port, it's not its main I/O, I guess, because they've got USB-A ports as well, and there's other ways to connect to it, but it's there, so you can use it if you want to. And like, that's really all we're asking for. We're not asking for Microsoft to remove the USB-A port, at all. We are asking to get rid of the mini display port, because that's kind of like, what year is it? But, and we're not asking to get rid of the Surface Connector. Like, all of the USB-A port and the Surface Connector can stay, just put a USB-C port in place of the mini display port. You gotta use a dongle anyways, the USB-C port can at least use for charging and video, if you have the right setup there. So like, ah, I'm with Dieter.

• 49:37Nilay Patel?

  We, Vlad is at the Paris Auto Show this week, and he's reporting on cars, and all these new cars have USB-C ports in them. Which is amazing, like, I love it. Like, the new Jeep Wrangler has a USB-C port in it. And it's funny to me that I think most people will end up buying a USB-C to lightning cable for their iPhone, because of their car, and not because Apple just put it in the box. Which is completely backwards of how it should be, first of all. And then you gotta, then, but then I think of like, poor Panos. He's like, everyone will be confused. And it's like, you see the person with like-

• 50:09Speaker 05

  You know what's confusing, Panos?

• 50:10Nilay Patel?

  His Surface Pro 6, and he's like, plugging it into his Jeep Wrangler, and he's like, "This isn't charging."

• 50:14Speaker 05

  You know what's confusing, Panos? Half your product line has USB-C and half does not. That's what's confusing.

• 50:19Nilay Patel?

  We gotta get, Panos was on the Veritas like, last year. We should get him back.

• 50:23Speaker 03

  Just to be clear, it's not like these are dying products for Microsoft, right? Like, a company who's like, "You know what? We don't make enough money on this product to invest in refreshing the internals."

• 50:35Speaker 05

  I mean, Panos will, like, so Tom and I, who were there, we sat down with Panos, and there's a number of articles on the site from, you know, Tom's reporting, and did some excellent, got some scoops out of that. But, like, we, we asked him this USB-C question, "Why not the Surface Pro 6?" And he will talk endlessly about how much work they did re-engineering the internals to add the newer processor, add more power, add more battery life, and do all these things, without making the external chassis any thicker, or changing the design at all. Like, like, there, there is a ton of work in making all of that happen. I don't know why they just didn't also make USB-C happen in that same process.

• 51:12Nilay Patel?

  So this is what I was saying to Dieter. I think it's actually harder to do USB-C well than, than anyone is letting on. So like, I wanna buy, like, a USB-C anchor power brick with, like, five USB-C PD ports? You just cannot buy that product, as far as I'm concerned.

• 51:28Speaker 05

  No, they come with like, one USB-C PD port, and then four USBAs.

• 51:32Nilay Patel?

  But so, there's, there has to be some reason that you can't shove, like, a PD port wherever you want.

• 51:37Speaker 05

  I agree, but at the same time, the Surface Go has one, so Microsoft has done it before.

• 51:43Nilay Patel?

  Maybe that guy left. Maybe he turned out to be compromised by the Chinese, and he got fired. You don't know.

• 51:53Speaker 03

  Okay, wait, so.

• 51:54Speaker 05

  You know what else Microsoft just put a USB C port on its new headphones?

• 51:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:58Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah. We should talk about those headphones, for sure.

• 52:01Speaker 03

  When you open up the box of Microsoft's new headphones, what cable is inside?

• 52:07Speaker 05

  It comes with two cables. It comes with a USB C to USB A to charge it. And it comes with a 3.5 millimeter to 3.5 millimeter to use as a wire.

• 52:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's for the airplane.

• 52:19Speaker 05

  For the airplane, basically, yeah.

• 52:21Nilay Patel?

  That's what you call the airplane cable? That's why I'm gonna watch this weird Delta censored version of this movie tonight. The headphones seem crazy to me.

• 52:30Speaker 05

  The headphones are interesting. For one, they were a surprise. I don't think anybody really ever expected Microsoft to make its first Surface wearable product. And for that product to be headphones, but I think they make a compelling case for like, why they fit into the Surface ecosystem. They're designed very much for people who work in an open office, creative types of people who might be moving around and like, wanting to block out noise. For starters, they are noise cancelling headphones. They're wireless Bluetooth headphones. They are very similar to things like the Beats Studios, or Bang & Olufsen's headphones, or Sony has the WH1000 MX something, something that are really excellent Bose noise cancelling QC35s, excuse me.

• 53:15Speaker 05

  So they're all kind of like playing in that field. They're 350 bucks, they're priced around the same, they've got similar sized drivers, similar sized ear cups. But what is unique about them is all those other ones that I mentioned either let you turn off the noise cancelling with just like a binary switch. So it's either on or off. Or some of them don't even let you turn it off at all. Sennheiser doesn't let you turn it off, Beats doesn't let you turn it off. The Surface headphones give you 13 different levels of noise cancellation. And you can turn the ring on the side of the ear cup to adjust it. So if you want to like, completely block out your surroundings, you turn it all the way up. If you want to like hear your colleague talking to you, or like hear the subway or some traffic or whatever, you can turn it down and it will actually amplify outside noises

• 53:56Speaker 05

  if you get far enough along the dial, which is a super clever thing that I think is actually useful for a lot of, lot of things. If you, you know, are on an airplane, you want to hear an announcement, you can like rotate the dial real quickly. It's pretty cool.

• 54:09Nilay Patel?

  When you rotate the dial to turn up the outside, does it also turn down whatever you're listening to? Or do you need to like do a thing where like you twist one, one head, one ear, one way, one ear the other way? So you could like hear what's going on and then twist them back? Just like, wish I could show the podcast listeners what I'm doing here?

• 54:25Speaker 05

  It adjusts the noise cancellation level. So you, there's a point somewhere along the curve where it's zero. So it's not cancelling any noise and it's not amplifying any outside noise. And you can turn the dial so that it starts to cancel the outside noise. And you can turn the dial so it starts to amplify the outside noise in the other direction. So if you want to bring that mix into your ears, because, because they're over ear headphones, they naturally block out a lot of outside noise already because they're covering over your ears.

• 54:52Nilay Patel?

  So I have the Sony headphones, the MX1000s that let you put your hand over it and they do the same. And I have tried this on an airplane when there's an announcement. I'm like, this is, and then I just take the headphones off.

• 55:06Speaker 05

  Yes. Yeah. The move is to just move the one ear cup, right?

• 55:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It's very simple to solve this problem. It really feels like we're over engineering a solution to moving my headphones.

• 55:15Speaker 05

  Probably. This is also the company that makes the Surface Studio. So like, over engineering is their, their brand.

• 55:19Nilay Patel?

  Why do they make these headphones? They tell you?

• 55:21Speaker 05

  So again, the, the reasoning that they said, and I asked them, I was like, you are entering a very competitive space. There's a lot of headphones, a lot of established players in this area, especially in this price point. And they said that they feel like there was a need for people who are working in open offices or, you know, those kind of like noisy environments to be able to switch between a silent experience and an experience where they can hear the outside noise. So if their colleague comes up and walks in them. I don't know why they don't feel like pulling the ear cup off of one ear is sufficient. They do have a feature where if you take the headphones off your head and put them around your neck, then music automatically pauses and then you put them back on, it'll automatically start up again.

• 56:05Speaker 05

  I've seen that before on like Plantronics headphones. So it's not entirely a new feature. Maybe that conflicts.

• 56:10Nilay Patel?

  Is this like a Cortana Trojan horse?

• 56:13Speaker 05

  It could be a little bit.

• 56:14Nilay Patel?

  Do they really get headphones or a little bit, are they cheaper than everybody else?

• 56:16Speaker 05

  No, they're about the same price.

• 56:18Nilay Patel?

  Alright, well so much for Trojan horse theory.

• 56:20Speaker 05

  I mean, like, they do have Cortana built in.

• 56:23Speaker 03

  I like this idea of mixing the noise cancellation though, because it can be kind of uncanny, but it's at 100%, right? And so you can maybe get a bit of vibe for your, uh, your office or also, also I, it's weird. I know that Microsoft's obviously, you know, targeting this at, at young creative professionals, but I, I am noticing that the next generation just uses Discord all the time. Like, there are a lot of people that are always like basically a mute button away from a voice conversation with somebody. So it also makes sense. It, it's like, it feels like headphones with a microphone are becoming sort of a key part of using a Windows computer.

• 57:06Speaker 05

  Sure. They are also very proud of the microphones on these. They have a total of eight, so there's four noise cancelling microphones and then four beam forming microphones, which are designed to pick up your voice when you're on a call or in a Discord chat or something like that, uh, which they claim is twice as many as competitors.

• 57:21Nilay Patel?

  If, did, if you plug this thing into your computer over the USB port, will it become a USB audio device?

• 57:27Speaker 05

  It will not. I asked if there did audio out over USB C and they do not. They are only used for charging. The, uh, the USB C port is only used for charging. Uh, and if you want to audio out, you have to use 3.5 mil.

• 57:39Nilay Patel?

  You know, it's interesting to me is that, as Paul's saying, voice chat on the computer is important and Microsoft has made this great hardware with all these microphones and the beam forming, and then someone should just hire someone to work at Skype. Because if that was, if, because no one works there anymore.

• 57:55Speaker 03

  Maybe the guy that put USB C in the Surface Go is now working at Skype.

• 58:01Nilay Patel?

  It'd be great if Microsoft's voice chat product Skype had any employees or any further development.

• 58:10Speaker 02

  I want to ask you all, like, the, there were like, Tom, Tom actually had a really great tweet about this. There were like 30 articles that came out, like, right after the Microsoft event that said, "Microsoft is the new Apple." App, Apple, Apple. Microsoft's the new Apple.

• 58:23Nilay Patel?

  Let those Midwestern roots shine, buddy.

• 58:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, they have a, you know, the, the case is basically that they have a, a coherent product lineup that, uh, makes sense for different product segments and there's nothing in it that like, other than complaining about USPC, really drives as much consternation as, say, the, the MacBook Pros have amongst its user base and the, you know, the MacBook Air is just still exists for some reason. What do you make of that, Dan? Especially you, like, having held the products. Does it, does it, does it feel coherent? Does it feel Apple-y in some way to you?

• 58:55Speaker 05

  I, I, I think there's a couple of aspects to that. One, Microsoft is coming from, like, almost an underdog status where it's, it's, it's coming from below. Like, no, it has had less expectations for a long time. The original Surface product lines were not that great. They were kind of panned. They lost a ton of money on them. So it's been kind of on this upswing for the past half decade or whatever. So it's got that benefit from them, whereas Apple is like all the way at the top. So like, any slight mistake is going to bring Apple down. Um, and, you know, the Apple MacBook Pros have had plenty of mistakes to complain about. Uh, I think that there are, like you said, fewer, like, deal-breaking issues with them. Uh, and I think that the products that they're making are just, in general, more exciting than the products in these categories that Apple has released.

• 59:40Speaker 05

  Apple's MacBook line, the laptop line, uh, and even the desktop line has like not been super exciting for a long time. It's, it's, it's very much a lot of the same types of things. The, the latest MacBook Draws a straight line back to the first, you know, um, power book. There hasn't been a whole lot of change in what these computers mean or do, whereas Microsoft is innovating on all these different

• 1:00:05Speaker 05

  designs and applications and way that you can use your computer and how it fits into your life. And they've really done a good job at telling that narrative and telling that story like, uh, Dieter, in your recent processor episode, how important a story is to go with products. Microsoft has been telling a really good story for its Surface line, at least for the past couple of years, especially with products like the Surface Studio, the Surface Laptop, the Surface Pro, things like that, that in, in how these can like, integrate into your fun, hip, creative ways of life and, and make your life better and make yourself more creative. And, and that has a lot to do with it. And, but at, at the end of the day, the products are, are good. They work well, they're exciting, they're different, they're unique, they're new. Like, there's a lot of like freshness with this that you don't get from Apple's traditional Mac line at this point.

• 1:00:49Nilay Patel?

  True, yes, the traditional Mac line.

• 1:00:51Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:00:52Nilay Patel?

  They're like, it's got a touch bar. It's, I mean, they're, they're doing stuff, but here's, I have a different read on that. It's great, and these products are cool. I think Microsoft has like revitalized Windows, revitalized the ecosystem with them. They don't sell a lot of them.

• 1:01:08Speaker 05

  They do not, uh, certainly not in, compared to like HP and Dell, which moves the majority of PCs.

• 1:01:14Nilay Patel?

  So here, here's my read on it. I was talking to Microsoft folks too. PC sales, if you look at them, and it really depends on whether you count the iPad Pro or the iPad as a PC. But if you look at them, they were dropping, dropping, dropping, and they've stabilized to up. Right?

• 1:01:27Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:01:27Nilay Patel?

  It, it depends on, it really depends on what you call a PC. But no matter what, what you put in definition, they, they've stopped dropping and they're stable at the top. And Microsoft actually, I think, gets credit for that. Because the HPs, the Dells, the Asus of the world, they were not gonna spend the money upfront to compete with Apple. Right? They were not gonna build the integrated products, they were not gonna do the design work, they were not gonna do the, the marketing work. They were not gonna hire the hip kids to be in the ads, just twisting that Surface style. They were not gonna make a, a trackpad that can compete with Apple. They, they had not done it for a long time. There, as their sales were dropping, there was no incentive to, to, to gamble in like,

• 1:02:12Nilay Patel?

  On the R and D and get there. So what Microsoft did was they scared all of that partner world and said, we're going to pay the money upfront. We're going to make our own hardware. We're going to revi- we're going to re-architect Windows. Like, Windows 10 will be our thing. It's different now. It's not Windows 8. We fired that guy.

• 1:02:32Speaker 05

  Which, for the record, launched with a Surface product.

• 1:02:34Nilay Patel?

  Fair. But they, they said, we're going to make our own hardware. And then I think what they get no credit for is all of the R and D work that they did, hinges, designs, thermals, whatever, they have actually given away to that ecosystem of partners.

• 1:02:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:02:49Nilay Patel?

  Because Microsoft's business is selling the Windows license.

• 1:02:51Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:02:52Nilay Patel?

  At least in that, in that part of the business.

• 1:02:53Speaker 05

  Well, so, so that's actually-

• 1:02:54Nilay Patel?

  So if HP makes a better laptop using a Microsoft hardware design, they still get to buy that, they still, they still get that sale of a Windows license.

• 1:03:01Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:03:02Nilay Patel?

  And that is the thing that I think has saved, this is the high end of Windows laptops. It's way more interesting than ever before.

• 1:03:09Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:03:10Nilay Patel?

  Way more competitive with Apple than ever before. In many cases, ahead of Apple. And Microsoft gets this like, this little corner of that high end, but HP and Dell also get a chunk of it. And that's, I think, what stabilized their sales. I don't think, people think of Surface as that thing. They think of it as their competitor to Apple. But really, it's the thing that enables the Windows ecosystem as a whole to be super competitive at the high end and then trickle down to the low end.

• 1:03:37Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:03:37Nilay Patel?

  But I don't think, Microsoft never talks about that.

• 1:03:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, you're right. And if you look around at the field of PC worlds, there are Surface Pro clones all over the place that use almost the exact same design as the Surface Pro. I think the Surface Pro is probably the best executed one out of all of them. But you're right. They're, they're, Microsoft made it possible to charge a premium price for a premium Windows PC. And that allowed HP and Dell to use some of those designs and R and D benefits from Microsoft and charge a premium price for their products as well. And come out with things like HP's leather computer that we saw earlier this week.

• 1:04:14Nilay Patel?

  That was like a rejected Panos design. He's like, I don't know, guys, we covered this one in leather. It, it was just, I was drunk at the time. And HP was like, yep, that's our, that's our new signature.

• 1:04:26Speaker 05

  But you're right in that like making hardware and selling hardware is never going to be business, uh, Microsoft's business model. Microsoft's business model is services and it's software and whether it's selling that software and services to OEMs like HP and Dell or whether that's selling Office 365 to businesses and consumers or whether it's the new thing that they announced as well, uh, a monthly plan where you pay for the hardware and you pay for Office 365 in one single bundle that you pay like a subscription fee for Microsoft products, basically. That's their business model. So like anything that drives that business model is good for Microsoft. Anything that doesn't drive that business model will fall away and they're probably going to lose interest there.

• 1:05:07Nilay Patel?

  You know, I was at same, um, you know, there's, we should switch and talk about Google, but, um, you know, there's the rumors that new Chromebooks will dual boot to Windows. Uh, in the course of the same conversation, I was like, do you guys care about that? And I'm like, we've never heard about this, but if they're buying a Windows license, that's great. And like, I, I don't think people give Microsoft enough credit for understanding what their real business is. I mean, Dieter, how many companies, I'm thinking most notably of Palm, have tried to license their operating system and then build a hardware business that competes with their licensees? It like never works. Google right now with Android, I don't think they think of the Pixel phones as like driving the high end of the Android market. I think they're trying to make a phone that competes with Apple. Right? Like

• 1:05:51Nilay Patel?

  Microsoft is actually doing something different by creating all of this space and incentivizing their partners to, to make better products or doing the R and D and the research for those partners. And then a whole thing is competitive in a way that I don't think anyone else has ever managed to pull off.

• 1:06:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. I, you could make the case that Google is trying to do something similar with, um, Chromebooks and the Pixel book. Uh, they've been much more hands-on with a lot of Chromebook designs than they have been with Android stuff. So last year there was the Samsung Chromebook. Plus, and there was that OP1 processor, which ended up not going anywhere, which is strange, but whatever. Then there was the Pixelbook. And then, you know, we've got rumors about next week. So in that area, they might be doing something a little bit similar. But yeah, like historically, if you make stuff and license your software, it doesn't go well for you. But it's always hard to know like how much of that is that that business model is fundamentally flawed? And how much of it is if you're in a position like a lot of those companies,

• 1:06:53Speaker 02

  when they get in that position are just sort of flailing in the first place? Like Palm specifically, like they changed their business model 13 times. So I do think what Microsoft is doing is relatively unique. I also, without saying too much, think that Intel might be doing, has a related strategy in terms of teaching people how to make better computers.

• 1:07:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. All right. Well, you talked about Google. We should do that. So here's what's gonna happen. You, the listener, are gonna listen to this advertising segment from Ericsson 5G, which is sponsoring the Vergecast this week. Then we're gonna come back and talk about Google. All right, listen to this.

• 1:07:35Nilay Patel?

  And now the 5G meditation minute.

• 1:07:43Speaker 06

  Welcome.

• 1:07:45Speaker 06

  Just relax your body. Breathe. Repeat your mantra and feel the calm wash over you. 5G is here. 5G is here. And it's going to change the way we live.

• 1:08:04Speaker 06

  This next generation of wireless technology will revolutionize how we send and receive data. And Ericsson is one of the companies building the infrastructure we'll need. Push away the bad reception and overcrowded networks. 5G uses multiple antenna to boost capacity. So in large crowds of people, like at a packed concert, you can still connect and share selfies instantly.

• 1:08:34Speaker 06

  Embrace the cloud.

• 1:08:37Speaker 06

  With minuscule latency and edge computing, 5G makes even remote files behave as if they were on your device. And you will have so much more to be thankful for. Augmented reality, 8K streaming, AI assisted services, smart cities, and the ever growing internet of things. Your future is empowered by 5G. Lie back, be present, focus on real connections. Ericsson is bringing 5G to life. Breathe in and breathe out.

• 1:09:19Speaker 06

  Repeat your mantra and feel the calm wash over you. 5G is here.

• 1:09:33Nilay Patel?

  Okay, we're back. Thank you to Ericsson 5G for sponsoring the Vergecast this week. Paul?

• 1:09:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, just one second. I realized that earlier we asked people to pull over to take a poll. I don't know if we ever reactivated them.

• 1:09:48Nilay Patel?

  They're still sitting there, thinking about Mini Display 4.

• 1:09:51Speaker 03

  It's okay to drive.

• 1:09:53Nilay Patel?

  There's like a quarter million people across the world just sitting on the side of the road, being like, I hate Mini Display 4. Holding up traffic. All right, Paul, every week.

• 1:10:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, I do a segment. It's called "Type Like Nobody's Watching."

• 1:10:09Nilay Patel?

  Ooh.

• 1:10:10Speaker 03

  Because this is an ugly piece of garbage that I really want to buy. So this is the Free Write Traveler. I don't know if you guys, Free Write is like one of the original, old school Kickstarter successes. They created this incredibly, you know, you know what it reminds me of? Man, this is going to be a pretty deep reference. Do you remember the box art for the original SimCity? Not SimCity 2000, the original SimCity. It had this sort of weird. It's like, it's, it's like the hardware version of skeuomorphic design. I don't know how to describe it, but it's a very ugly product. But the idea is you have a nice keyboard, you have an e-ink

• 1:10:49Speaker 03

  display, and so you can write distraction-free. Well, so now they've made a new product called the Free Write Traveler, which is like, it's a clamshell. It's kind of like the, like the Sony V I O P. So it's got a tiny, it's the same little tiny e-ink screen, but now it closes over the keyboard. And so it's a lot more portable, which is nice. It's still just, it's got these design accents. It's got these like, I don't know how you describe, it's like kind of steampunk hinges.

• 1:11:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:22Speaker 03

  It's bad. And it's ugly. And they should, they should be ashamed of themselves.

• 1:11:26Nilay Patel?

  It's got weird curly cues around the screen, or like one of the screens.

• 1:11:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:30Nilay Patel?

  Cause it has like two e-ink displays.

• 1:11:32Speaker 03

  It's.

• 1:11:32Nilay Patel?

  Or one with a plastic bar.

• 1:11:34Speaker 03

  It's messed up. And I would be embarrassed to type on this. But it's also, in a sense, like basically my ideal product. And I'm so proud of them for making it. So I'm very conflicted.

• 1:11:44Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna get you one. How much does it cost?

• 1:11:46Speaker 03

  Well, it's, it's 269 with early bird, but it's gonna go up to 599.

• 1:11:53Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 1:11:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. So here's, here's my thing.

• 1:11:57Nilay Patel?

  You cannot charge people 600 dollars for steampunk hinges.

• 1:11:59Speaker 03

  Here's the ideal.

• 1:12:00Nilay Patel?

  It's an outrage.

• 1:12:01Speaker 03

  The ideal product for me.

• 1:12:02Nilay Patel?

  Does the hinge go beyond 90 degrees? I'm watching, I'm watching the video and the hinge is always at exactly 90 degrees.

• 1:12:07Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 1:12:08Nilay Patel?

  And that seems bad.

• 1:12:09Speaker 03

  They should lean into some of that Microsoft hinge IP. It's.

• 1:12:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, Microsoft charges 3,500 dollars for a hinge, so.

• 1:12:17Nilay Patel?

  I'm just gonna say, like, if you, just go, go, pull over your car again. I'm so sorry. We just go look at our story and look at this photo. And it's just, there's like a, there's the main e-ink display, and then another one just below it, on which is printed the word "Set Your Story Free", but it's set in like old English type. It's just, I don't, okay. We're all gonna buy these.

• 1:12:44Speaker 03

  My ideal product.

• 1:12:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, Neil, this is, this is so you write the ye olde blog posts on this.

• 1:12:48Speaker 03

  Right. You take this, you take, oh, by the way, this could like auto sync to like Evernote or Dropbox or Google Drive. But you take this, you just rip off the screen. Then you have a keyboard where you can just type things, and then they still auto sync to the cloud. That's my dream product.

• 1:13:05Nilay Patel?

  That's pretty good.

• 1:13:05Speaker 03

  Nobody's built it.

• 1:13:06Speaker 05

  So what would you be typing into? You just wouldn't see the words?

• 1:13:11Nilay Patel?

  You just wouldn't know.

• 1:13:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, you just have like a text buffer. You just have like text, you're just making a very long text document. And whenever you start typing, it's just storing everything that you type.

• 1:13:22Speaker 05

  And while you're typing, you can't see it. And then you go to your device that it's synced to and you go like, oh, that's what I wrote.

• 1:13:28Speaker 03

  Importantly, there's a little-

• 1:13:28Speaker 05

  There are my typos.

• 1:13:29Speaker 03

  There's a little light that blinks when you type so that you know it's being saved. So you don't freak out. Because sometimes I try to do this where I like pair a Bluetooth keyboard and then I put my computer across the room and type. But I keep on having to get up just to check that it's because I'm just scared that all these genius thoughts aren't being recorded.

• 1:13:47Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God. Well, we're all gonna get Free Write Travelers and then we're all gonna go down to our local pirate ship and write the way God intended. Is that like a Clippy scream? I don't, whatever. Dieter?

• 1:13:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:00Nilay Patel?

  Let's do five minutes on Google Preview and get out of here. What's going on next week?

• 1:14:03Speaker 02

  So, everything's leaked.

• 1:14:07Speaker 02

  The end. No, so, the, it's in New York, it's on Tuesday, and we know that there's gonna be two Pixel, Pixel 3, Pixel 3 XL. We know that the Pixel 3 XL is gonna have a big ol' notch to make room for what appears to be a second camera, probably a wide aspect ratio camera. Aspect wide, you know what I'm saying.

• 1:14:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:30Speaker 02

  It's probably gonna have wireless charging, there's probably gonna be a special dock for it. There's leaks about potential like Pixel Book 2 with a bigger screen. There is pretty clear leaks about a tablet that is gonna run Chrome OS, fulfilling my three-year, two-and-a-half-year, whatever rant that Android tablets are dead and Google's gonna replace with Chrome OS, they're finally doing it. Listen to, you know, what I say when I predict things because, you know, they never come true, except when they do, three years later.

• 1:15:02Speaker 02

  And then we've seen Google Smart Displays before, but only from Lenovo and JBL. But it looks like Google's going to make one called the Home Hub, which is going to take on the Echo Show. And that might be all. And we don't even get all of that. So there haven't been leaks about the fact that all this other stuff has leaked so much, especially the phones. Like, it's possible that they've got something weird with Pixel Buds, or it's possible they had something weird with Google Clips, or maybe they'll update Google Wi-Fi or whatever. But since everything else has leaked so extensively, the fact that there haven't been leaks about this other stuff makes me a little bit dubious. I'll be surprised by something, but you know, you never know.

• 1:15:43Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it would be great if they updated Pixel Buds, right? I mean, they didn't go off the way that they wanted to.

• 1:15:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, so here's the thing. It looks like they're going to be including a pair of USB-C headphones in the box with the Pixel 3. And the last I saw, they were planning on using that same headphone style with like the, it sits in the outside of your ear and then you use the little cloth cable thing to like push it through and have it fit in your ear hole better, which I didn't love with Pixel Buds, but I also prefer noise isolating headphones, so I didn't want to be too judgy about it. But I don't know how well those will hold up over time, because there were some, or there were worries with the Pixel Buds that that, like, that thing wouldn't stay, you know, within a friction over time.

• 1:16:26Speaker 05

  To be clear, though, that was definitely the least worst problem of the Pixel Buds.

• 1:16:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, basic operation. And you'd hope that they fix the Bluetooth stack on all these things. Dan, you actually just reviewed the LG V40.

• 1:16:38Speaker 05

  I did.

• 1:16:39Speaker 02

  Which has five cameras. Let's not talk about the ones in the back. It has a wide-angle lens in the front.

• 1:16:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, it has two cameras on the front. It's got a standard selfie camera and then one that is slightly wider so you could fit, like, another friend in your selfie.

• 1:16:52Speaker 02

  Are we expecting that Google's doing with the Pixel 3 what it has done in years past, where it's like reuse an LG design? Like, is this, are these things going to be related?

• 1:16:59Speaker 05

  That's a good question. I don't, you know, the one thing that hasn't leaked and correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think I've seen it. Is who is actually manufacturing these new Pixel phones. Last year, the Pixel 2 small one was made by HTC. X2 XL was made by LG. They were Google Designs, et cetera, et cetera. So it's, it's, it's interesting to see if that kind of will play out again this year. What's also interesting is all the leaks that have happened, show the Pixel 2 to not have that notch that the Pixel 2, or excuse me, the Pixel 3, not have that notch that the Pixel 3 XL has. So will it have the same front camera array?

• 1:17:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:36Speaker 02

  I think it will. I think, I think it will. Google's been pretty good about holding, holding both phones to be the same. And I, I would be shocked if they changed that. But I mean, the deal with the camera, like whatever they do with the front facing, I, if that's their selling point for, I'm more interested in what will they do to the main camera to advance it? Because right now, the Pixel 2 and 2 XL, for us and for a lot of the people who look at pictures, we prefer it to the iPhone XS. So can they push beyond that?

• 1:18:05Nilay Patel?

  Oh man, now you're wanting to be up.

• 1:18:07Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, you know, I mean, there's been rumors that they're going to integrate a bunch of lens features into the, the camera as well. So that could be a thing. Like it might have like more AI stuff going, like when you have the camera thing open. I'm hoping it's more than just like AI in the camera, over they actually improve the, the camera quality. But for me, the big question is pricing. Are they gonna, are they gonna hold steady on the, the, you know, about a thousand bucks, about 700 bucks or whatever, for the smaller one? Or are they gonna try and push that down to compete with other Android phones? Or what?

• 1:18:38Nilay Patel?

  I think they're gonna hold steady, right? I mean, they got the XR coming out right at that price point. They're cheaper than the Samsung phones. Well, not anymore. I mean, this S9 is already in discount cycle mode, right? But they're- I think that they're gonna stay right where they are because they don't want to, they don't want to go after that high end where Apple is.

• 1:18:56Speaker 05

  You don't think they're gonna go higher then?

• 1:18:57Nilay Patel?

  No, I think they're saying that's seven.

• 1:18:59Speaker 05

  So like the Pixel 2 XL was what, like 850-ish?

• 1:19:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:01Speaker 05

  Right? Um, well, it's interesting, the V40 that you just mentioned is 900 to 980 dollars depending on which carrier.

• 1:19:07Nilay Patel?

  Things are getting crazy.

• 1:19:08Speaker 05

  Um, and then we know the Note 9 is 1,000 and up, and most of the Note 9s that are selling are the 512 models, which are more than 1,000 dollars. Um, so there's, there's customers out there that will, that'll pay it. Obvi- obviously, Apple has no trouble selling them.

• 1:19:23Nilay Patel?

  Look, here's, the Chinese government gets a hold of you, starts paying you off, some extra money in your pocket. Can I rant and rave about the iPhone XS camera blogging war that is occurring right now? We have not really covered this at all.

• 1:19:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've been, I've been waiting for this to start because I, like, there's been a whole thing at Halide, Haley?

• 1:19:39Nilay Patel?

  Halide.

• 1:19:40Speaker 02

  Halide.

• 1:19:40Nilay Patel?

  Halide. Which is the camera app that I use. It is excellent on the iPhone. If you have an iPhone, you should use Halide. I don't do, and, uh, Sebastian, the other developers who make it are great. They're like incredible developers. They're very smart. They're friendly on Twitter. I don't, like, there's a lot of love in my heart for Halide and the, the Halide family. But this is actually a gate. Marques Brownlee made a video last week called like iPhone Gates Explained because there, there's always a gate with Apple. So like, you think this is all overblown because it's always silly. But basically, the front camera on the XS is super aggressive with noise reduction, and it looks like it's smoothing your skin, right?

• 1:20:22Nilay Patel?

  And so there's like a beauty gate, like, are they doing the Samsung thing where they beauty filter you? But really, these cameras, and this is all in the Halide blog post, which you go read, the cameras, they shoot at faster shutter speeds and higher ISOs. And so they're noisier, so they do more noise reduction, and then you get the smoothing effect. So that's like what, that's like one thing, which I tend to agree with because I- Ask Apple directly, "Do you do beauty smoothing?" And they're like, "No." And I don't think they lie about that stuff. But that is like bleeding over into this comparison with the Pixel, right? So I just want to read you this line, because what I'm always, what I've been saying about the Pixel is the Pixel has more detail in the photos, which is,

• 1:21:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:21:03Nilay Patel?

  If you just look at it with your eyes, that is true, right? Your, your eyes, which are ultimately the only tool that you as a human have. Anyway, "The iPhone XS merges exposures and reduces..." By the way, this is under one of my photos. They, they pulled a comparison photo from our review of the Pixel. It's a photo of Maria, actually, our, our, uh, social media producer. But, uh, "The iPhone XS merges exposures and reduces the brightness of the bright areas and reduces the darkness of the shadows. The detail remains, but we perceive it as less sharp because it has lost local contrast. In the photo above, the si- the skin looks smoother simply because the light isn't as harsh." It's there, but your stupid eyes can't see it anymore.

• 1:21:47Nilay Patel?

  Is basically where we've arrived with evaluating the iPhone XS camera.

• 1:21:53Speaker 05

  I mean, I, I get where they're coming from. There, this blog post was written by some deep camera nerds. And I think they're writing for deep camera nerds without realizing that the general populace is reading this and reading that and reading it the way that you're interpreting, which is a normal way to interpret it. But then I hear it and I'm like, "Oh yeah, local contrast, so they turned the sharpening down." So like,

• 1:22:11Nilay Patel?

  No, I'm with you. And again, this is the camera app that I use. I think if you have an iPhone, you should go spend the money on this app because it's worth it. These developers are incredibly smart. They're very friendly. There's a lot, there's an outpouring of love from me to them. I want to be abundantly clear about that. But then this, like you're saying, is being sucked away and people are like, "Oh, I, that's just, the sensors, the sensor's worse and Google's just doing software tricks." And you can just run this through Photoshop. And like, no, you cannot. You absolutely cannot. And also, At this point, claiming that these cameras are doing quote unquote "software tricks" is nonsense because they are software cameras fundamentally.

• 1:22:56Nilay Patel?

  The sensor doesn't matter because what they're doing is taking, I mean it matters, but they're taking multiple exposures and creating a synthesized image out of those multiple exposures. So you press the shutter, you are not actually capturing what is happening at that moment in time. You're capturing a range of time and it's building an image in software. So we're like, "It's software tricks." It's like, "Yeah, dog, the whole thing is a software trick."

• 1:23:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, which to be fair, is exactly what Google's doing with the Pixel 3.

• 1:23:23Nilay Patel?

  Right, so like you can't, you can't be like, "Their software trick is better or more pleasing to me," but you can't be like, "Google's lying to you." It's like, "Yeah, they're all a lot," at this point, like it's called computational photography.

• 1:23:37Speaker 03

  What is real?

• 1:23:38Speaker 02

  You know, what occurs to me is a camera. If you look at a camera lens, technically you're saying it's capturing multiple moments in time and then capturing it into that camera lens. If you look at, physically at a camera lens, it is in fact a flat circle.

• 1:23:50Nilay Patel?

  Hmm. So. Who do you believe? Reddit? Dot com slash R slash Apple? You're lying eyes.

• 1:23:59Speaker 03

  Ever stop to consider that maybe you're biased?

• 1:24:03Nilay Patel?

  Alright, that's it. Goodbye. Just by, the big story with the Pixel 3, regardless of all these leaks, is gonna be what they did with the camera. Right? And so like, that's the thing to focus on. And I just, I just implore you, when you're, when you read the, both fanboys being like, "That's a software trick. The detail is there, but you can't perceive it," which is just my favorite. It's just like, my, one of the most insane things I've ever read in the, in the context of a consumer camera review. Just remember, all that really matters is whether you like what it looks like or not. That's, at the end of the day, that is the only thing that matters. So just keep that, keep that in your heart. We're gonna end on that up note.

• 1:24:45Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:24:46Nilay Patel?

  Right there. Just, pull over on the side of the road.

• 1:24:49Speaker 02

  They're still pulled over for the last time.

• 1:24:53Speaker 03

  Pull over more.

• 1:24:54Nilay Patel?

  And just ask yourself, who are you gonna believe?

• 1:24:59Nilay Patel?

  All right, that's the end of the Vergecast. I want to plug two things. One, Dan really did review the V40.

• 1:25:04Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:25:04Nilay Patel?

  Five cameras.

• 1:25:05Speaker 05

  I want to plug Guidebook in general. It's busy season for Guidebook, so all the how-tos and reviews of every product that I've been on here to discuss, you guys have discussed over the past few weeks, are hitting Guidebook in Fast and Furious. Basically, every day we have new reviews and content, so verge.com/guidebook, please click.

• 1:25:23Nilay Patel?

  Megan Ferkman, she's an excellent reporter, has been following the end of Telltale Games, which is a studio that just up and died late in September. Go read that. She interviewed a bunch of people, including, got the CEO on the record, talking about what happened at Telltale. Why'd you push that button? It's coming back October 17th. Trailer drops next week. Thanks for, Ashley, for being on the show. You can talk to us. I'm Reckless. Paul's future Paul. Dieter's back on. Dan is DC Seifert. That's it. That's the Vergecast. Rock and roll. Paul.

• 1:25:52Nilay Patel?

  Promo code.

• 1:26:09Nilay Patel?

  This episode of the Vergecast is brought to you by Ericsson 5G. 5G isn't just a step up from 4G, it's a game-changing advancement. It's 100% faster and the ultra-reliable, low-latency network means it can connect more than phones and tablets. It connects everything. Imagine a jam session with band members miles apart in perfect sync. It's happening. Imagine an 8K entertainment system in your self-driving car that rivals your home theater. 5G will have the power to revolutionize existing industry models, or even create entirely new ones. This is just a glimpse of what the future will look like with Ericsson and 5G. Find out how 5G will transform the world at ericsson.com/5g. That's E-R-I-C-S-S-O-N.com/5G.