The Hype Council is in session

This week on the Vergecast, Joanna Stern invades to talk about the Surface Book and the Surface Pro 4 — and Tom Warren joins the invasion over Skype. And for the first time, the Hype Council of Kirsten Frisina, Loren Grush, and Kaitlyn Tiffany sit in judgement of the Nexus 6P and YouTube Red. Along with Dieter and Nilay, that's seven humans. It doesn't get more Vergecast than this. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:05Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to this disaster. This is the Vergecast. I don't even know what day it is. What is it? This is 22nd? Dieter's just pulling screens off laptops. I'm Neelai Patel. I'm, quite frankly, just super hungover. And Joanna Stern is here.

• 0:19Speaker 01

  I'm here with String Cheese.

• 0:20Nilay Patel?

  What up? Yeah, Joanna brought food and coffee to the Vergecast today. I'm happy you're here. There's a lot to talk about. And then, I don't know why this... Oh, Tom Warren is on the phone. Tom?

• 0:31Speaker 02

  Hello.

• 0:32Nilay Patel?

  Sup, girl?

• 0:32Speaker 02

  Hi, Tom.

• 0:33Nilay Patel?

  Sup, girl? And then, fuck it, why not? We have a hype council. We have three Verge people behind the desk. Kirsten Priscina is here. You may know her from previous episodes of the Vergecast. Lauren Grush is here. Hi. Hey. You may know her from previous episodes of Vergecast. And Kaitlyn Tiffany is here. You may know her from viciously subtweeting me during previous episodes of the Vergecast. What's up?

• 1:03Speaker 03

  Heyo.

• 1:04Nilay Patel?

  What's the hype situation like?

• 1:06Speaker 03

  The hype council is like 11 out of 10 on the hype scale.

• 1:09Speaker 04

  Hype council is in session.

• 1:11Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God. What are we doing?

• 1:14Speaker 02

  Is this the most people we've ever had on the show?

• 1:17Nilay Patel?

  No, I remember one time we had the entire staff, like, right when we launched the Vergecast. We tried to... And Chris, I remember Chris Sigler was... He was so mad at me because it was such an emotionally and, like, energetically draining experience to, like, have five microphones and 12 people. And we... It was bad. We've never done this.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  I figured, actually, you invited me because you didn't have enough people. That's usually why you do invite me.

• 1:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. No, I invited... Here's why I invited Joanna. Let me tell this story. As you may know, Joanna broke up with me and actually, at least two, in Las Vegas.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  I don't hear you anymore. I think I ran over my thing and I don't...

• 1:50Nilay Patel?

  Well, I'm telling a story about the time she broke up with me.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  I mean, I hear you in real life, but not in the microphones.

• 1:53Speaker 02

  You'll be able to hear Tom.

• 1:56Speaker 01

  I don't hear Tom. Tom, are you saying anything?

• 1:58Speaker 05

  I'm sitting here in silence.

• 2:00Nilay Patel?

  I think, can someone-

• 2:01Speaker 05

  Admiring the craziness.

• 2:03Speaker 01

  Technical emergency.

• 2:05Nilay Patel?

  And she's like some sort of tech expert?

• 2:07Speaker 01

  Oh, it's back.

• 2:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, see, there you go.

• 2:10Nilay Patel?

  So, I don't even recall this. But so Joanna, like I say, broke up with me in Chili's 2 in Las Vegas airport. The worst place to be broken up with possible.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  Actually, the breakfast there wasn't bad.

• 2:20Nilay Patel?

  It was fine. But then, she has now landed on her feet.

• 2:25Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 2:26Nilay Patel?

  After this betrayal at the Wall Street Journal. And today, I watched one of her videos.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  Thank you for doing that.

• 2:31Nilay Patel?

  It was great. Great video. Highly recommend it. And I thought to myself, Joanna is currently wearing a jean jacket, has a ponytail, and is carrying a gigantic laptop computer. I need that person on our show today. You should have brought, I demanded the jean jacket.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  I know, all those props are at my office, which is actually not far from here, but I was coming from my apartment.

• 2:47Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 2:47Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:48Nilay Patel?

  Excuses, excuses, Joanna. Wait, why is your denim jacket at the office?

• 2:51Speaker 01

  Peter, if you spend the whole show trying to figure out how to use that pen, that'll be fine with me.

• 2:58Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, my, this long story is to say Joanna reviewed the Surface Book this week.

• 3:03Speaker 02

  So did Tom.

• 3:03Nilay Patel?

  Tom reviewed the Surface Book this week. We reviewed the Surface Pro 4 this week. Dieter reviewed both Nexus phones this week.

• 3:09Speaker 02

  Well, just the 6P.

• 3:11Nilay Patel?

  Oh yeah, Dan reviewed the Surface Pro 4 and the 5X. Dieter reviewed the 6P. The Hype Council just reviewed our behavior generally and it removed.

• 3:20Speaker 03

  And took gorgeous snaps.

• 3:21Nilay Patel?

  And, yeah.

• 3:22Speaker 03

  Videos, and Caitlyn did tumblers and...

• 3:27Speaker 02

  Oh, this pen is a pair to this book, that's why.

• 3:29Nilay Patel?

  So there's like all of that to talk about. And then in addition to that, YouTube launched YouTube Red, its subscription service.

• 3:38Nilay Patel?

  Drake danced. That was a thing that happened on The Verge this week. What else happened? Anything else? There's so much to talk about.

• 3:44Speaker 03

  Star Wars.

• 3:45Speaker 05

  Star Wars.

• 3:45Speaker 02

  Star Wars.

• 3:46Nilay Patel?

  And Star Wars. And there was a Star Wars trailer.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  I spent my week in Laguna Beach at the WSJD Live Concert Conference. Felt like a con- there was a couple of musical bands.

• 3:55Nilay Patel?

  And Tim Cook promised the Apple TV.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  Yep. And promised that Apple will save the world, which he actually said a lot of really interesting things. And I hugged a robot.

• 4:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  A lot of fun stuff.

• 4:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  I don't know. I'm totally dazed because I just spent four days at this conference, barely sleeping.

• 4:13Nilay Patel?

  All right. Well, let's start with like the, what I think is some of like the biggest tech news of the year, which is Microsoft made a laptop. Yes. Um, that Dieter is holding you. Joanna's got one. In your car, you're driving your car, close your eyes, and imagine Dieter holding a laptop with the screen flipped around with this weird hinge. So Tom, you're on the phone. Tell us about it. You're Vida for us. Would you, you, I think, I'm like deeply positive about this, but you had some issues.

• 4:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think Joanna's had the same issues as well.

• 4:40Speaker 01

  We should be, full disclosure, Tom and I emailed a little bit last week about our, our issues.

• 4:47Speaker 05

  But Joanna emailed me saying, I'm having these issues. And I was like, oh, I'm not. And then two hours later, I had the same issue.

• 4:53Nilay Patel?

  What, what was the issue?

• 4:54Speaker 05

  And the issues, the, the blue screens and stuff. I mean, Microsoft's saying they're pre-production units. So I guess we'll see if these issues start happening next week when they go on sale. But I've definitely had a lot of blue screens with it. And actually, even after the review, so the interesting piece, the review went up and the power broke, but the power button broke on my one.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  Is it because you were holding it down too hard? Were you like, did it break when you were trying to hold it down? Cause I've had, I, I've had so many of these fail.

• 5:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, I was doing a Periscope with two of them. One of them, the power broke, button broke, and the other one, it blue screen. I was like, this is not a good.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  Did the power button break because you were holding it down to reset, do a hard reset?

• 5:36Speaker 05

  No, no, no, it was just turning it off.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  Oh, I've had to do such a hard reset this week that my, it imprinted in my finger. Like, you press the button so hard that my finger had the exact like imprint of the power button in my finger.

• 5:48Nilay Patel?

  Can I make this about the iPhone for one second?

• 5:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, that happens with the iPhone sometimes too.

• 5:52Nilay Patel?

  Well, there's that, but also, you know, when you try to scroll on a phone and it doesn't do anything and you like, push it a little bit, right? Like, that's your, now with 3D touch. Now pushing it makes you feel dumber because if the 3D touch doesn't work, it doesn't respond to you. You're like, you're just squeezing a phone, hoping something happens.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you feel like you're going to break the screen.

• 6:11Nilay Patel?

  Or like you're just a huge dumbass, like you're being trolled in literally multiple dimensions. Anyway, so Tom, so you had these issues and Joanna, you had these issues. But our Surface Book like literally has a sticker on the back. It's like, this is an FCC certified. But are they going to solve them by the time these things had come out?

• 6:27Speaker 01

  So.

• 6:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's pretty standard whenever they ship these units out. It's just to say, because they've hidden it from the SEC, it's not officially certified. So they stick that label on the back.

• 6:39Speaker 05

  But yeah, in terms of the issues, I'm hoping they're not going to have these issues like when they roll out next week. I think the issues, aside from those blue screens and stuff, is that, yeah, it's a laptop. It's also kind of a tablet. And I think in terms of the actual issues per se, it's like it wobbles, the screen wobbles.

• 6:58Nilay Patel?

  How is it, wait, Tom, I have a question. How is it possible that I'm hearing the echo of your voice on the Skype connection before you speak?

• 7:04Speaker 01

  I'm hearing him perfect.

• 7:05Nilay Patel?

  Are you?

• 7:06Speaker 02

  It's very strange.

• 7:06Speaker 03

  I'm hearing the echo after he speaks.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  I don't hear him that far.

• 7:09Nilay Patel?

  Tom, there's at least two of you. One of you is ahead of the other one. Figure out which one that is.

• 7:13Speaker 05

  I'll have a word with the other one that's ahead of me. Tell him to slow down.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  I'm doing a little bit of the wobble to show it right now, Tom. Doing, I'm doing a wobble.

• 7:21Nilay Patel?

  You're doing a wobble?

• 7:21Speaker 02

  It's controlling, but it does wobble.

• 7:22Speaker 03

  I mean, Caitlin and I, we made a, we made a little, one of the new Instagram boomerangs today with it. And Caitlin, can you speak to like that connector? What did you think of that?

• 7:33Speaker 06

  How I felt about it is that I would break it in one day from just one time. If you press on the button and it turns green and then turns ungreen and I get like pissed and rip it off.

• 7:43Nilay Patel?

  Ungreen?

• 7:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it's got that muscle lock.

• 7:45Nilay Patel?

  But what she mean red?

• 7:46Speaker 03

  It would, well, it would turn, yeah. It would turn green for a second and then it would turn red again and like not let her take it out. And it was like, I was afraid we were going to break it like the whole time.

• 7:57Nilay Patel?

  No, so I took it, I had it for a weekend and literally the whole time I was like, I'm going to break this thing. But I, in the sense that like, it's a beautiful thing, right? And I tend to break things. So I was like, oh, this thing is too beautiful for like me to have. But it's so weirdly designed that I feel like I have to have one.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  I mean, I should back up. I love this computer.

• 8:17Nilay Patel?

  Do you?

• 8:18Speaker 01

  When this was working, I loved it very, very much.

• 8:21Speaker 02

  I mean, it's.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  Like, I wanted to be with it and I, there were times I said, I'm, I'm going to get this for myself.

• 8:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  Then it wouldn't restart and I had issues and you know, those are really big issues.

• 8:34Nilay Patel?

  I mean, assuming that there's no issues, would you say that it's like definitively the best execution of a hybrid device?

• 8:41Speaker 01

  I would say it's the best Windows laptop I've ever seen. And you know, actually, what was really sad about this review is I had gotten, I'll tell the backstory here. I'd written my review, I'd spoken with Tom, he had some issues. They had sent me a second unit, a Surface Book unit, because the first one had trackpad issues and some of these blue screen things. They said, "We fixed a lot of these things in this new unit." Everything was going really well, so I felt like, "Okay, I can really write this review and talk about the great experience I've had." I had in there that this was the best Windows laptop I'd ever used and the years and years of sort of the scarring experiences I've had from reviewing Windows laptops, as many of them I had here, and I had them at Engadget and I had them at Laptop Magazine before that.

• 9:26Nilay Patel?

  I mean, you wrote, I think Joanna has written the "Why does this Windows laptop have a shitty trackpad?"

• 9:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've written it for 10 years.

• 9:32Nilay Patel?

  Like, you've just been going to that well.

• 9:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:34Nilay Patel?

  Joanna's like, "I need some beige juice today." "Let's write that trackpad piece."

• 9:38Speaker 01

  And every time they think that they fixed it. And I had written this really positive review and then the second Surface Book, I was at the conference. I'd been only using the Surface Book, my MacBook Air had not been used for about a week, two weeks about, and it would not restart.

• 9:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  And it just did the same thing as I had had, I had a Surface Pro the week before that the hard drive or the SSD completely crashed. Microsoft says, "This is not going to happen in shipping units, this has only happened in our early units." But I can't say the best Windows laptop I've ever used doesn't start up anymore.

• 10:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  And so I had to kind of dial back the review at the last minute because I am worried that some of these might make it to customers.

• 10:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  And so I will review, re-review it when I get the shipping unit. I do think the execution of this is really, really well done. I have a lot of the same issues as Tom, you know, the wobbling hinge. The battery life in the tablet, you know, why did this have to be a tablet? Why did it have to be also a laptop?

• 10:39Nilay Patel?

  But because you can dramatically take the screen away and like.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's cool.

• 10:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's it. I think that's what it and Dieter's still just drawing.

• 10:47Speaker 05

  Once or twice in the entire time I was reviewing it.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I yeah, like Tom, I felt like we really saw eye to eye on that, like as a tablet, this thing isn't great. As a laptop, this thing is really good and could be better if it wasn't a tablet, but I actually think what Microsoft's.

• 11:02Nilay Patel?

  How do you think it would be better if it wasn't a tablet as a laptop? What?

• 11:05Speaker 01

  I like in, I mean, if they're able to fix some of these things that compromise it as a laptop because it is a tablet, I think it's a home run as a tablet and probably as a laptop. But well, the battery life is an issue with the tablet, but the wobble thing is because this is a tablet. Right? It's because this hinge is unique and and I actually don't think the hinge is as ugly as Tom thinks, but.

• 11:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, wait, so you got no stuff stuck in your computer?

• 11:28Speaker 02

  You got no stuff stuck in there?

• 11:29Nilay Patel?

  Tom is like, I got stuff in this thing for days.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  What do you have in your bag?

• 11:32Speaker 05

  I already have a dirty bag. I probably need to clean it out.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  Well, I.

• 11:36Speaker 05

  I definitely get.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  I have a very dirty bag, too.

• 11:41Nilay Patel?

  I've checked Joanna's dirty bag.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  But.

• 11:44Nilay Patel?

  Just dead silence for the hype council.

• 11:46Speaker 03

  Not responding to that.

• 11:47Nilay Patel?

  Look, if we're gonna have a three person hype council, we're gonna level up the difficulty.

• 11:50Speaker 03

  Our response was silent, shaky.

• 11:53Speaker 06

  No, that was honestly the first thing I said about this hinge, too, was like, I can't own that because it'll be full of food and garbage in like a day.

• 11:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:59Speaker 06

  And like chunks of lipstick and stuff from the bottom of my bag.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  I stick it in my bag like this, so this is at the top of the bag.

• 12:06Nilay Patel?

  Your bag is stranger than everyone else's bag.

• 12:08Speaker 01

  I would tweet today about.

• 12:09Speaker 03

  It's a female bag. No, no, Eli, your bag is emptier than everyone else's. That's what we're figuring out.

• 12:15Nilay Patel?

  I don't even have a bag.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  Tom, did you stick it in your bag vertically or horizontally?

• 12:19Speaker 05

  Horizontally.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  Okay, and and weird hinge top? Top up?

• 12:27Speaker 04

  But like, the point is that you shouldn't have to-

• 12:28Speaker 02

  For the audio listener, Joanna is holding the laptop in the various configurations.

• 12:33Speaker 05

  Also, every time I put it in my bag, the pen dropped off.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, totally. I lost my pen at JFK Security.

• 12:39Speaker 02

  Really?

• 12:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:40Nilay Patel?

  But if it's gonna have this-

• 12:41Speaker 01

  But don't worry, I have five other ones, because I have five other units.

• 12:43Speaker 02

  Oh, because I kept on sending ones because the other one was broken?

• 12:45Nilay Patel?

  But wait, if you're gonna have the weird, this is why I don't understand, if you're gonna have the weird hinge, why isn't that where the pen goes?

• 12:52Speaker 02

  Oh, inside the hinge?

• 12:53Speaker 01

  Inside the hinge.

• 12:54Nilay Patel?

  Right? Isn't that like the perfect place for the pen?

• 12:57Speaker 01

  See, that's where I put my string cheese.

• 12:58Nilay Patel?

  It doesn't fit there?

• 12:59Speaker 01

  Your string cheese just sits in here.

• 13:00Speaker 02

  Don't close it, close it, do it!

• 13:02Nilay Patel?

  Well, in terms of having cheese in a computer, that's a first for a show.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  Joanna has just crushed a piece of string cheese inside the Surface Book?

• 13:08Nilay Patel?

  I know.

• 13:09Speaker 02

  My god.

• 13:10Nilay Patel?

  A, again, audio show. So, in your mind, listener, imagine that Jo-

• 13:15Speaker 02

  That she's eating this.

• 13:16Nilay Patel?

  That she's eating cheese.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  But there's like, there's gotta be so much crap in that hinge!

• 13:20Nilay Patel?

  I don't want your cheese, man.

• 13:21Speaker 02

  No, thank you.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  Come on, Dieter, eat the cheese.

• 13:26Nilay Patel?

  I'm not eating your Surface Book cheese.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Tom, do you want a piece of the cheese?

• 13:29Nilay Patel?

  Did you get the weird ridges in the cheese?

• 13:31Speaker 01

  I'm coming to you, Tom.

• 13:32Nilay Patel?

  If you can get-

• 13:32Speaker 01

  I'll be there in ten hours.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  Can, can we get a hype check on Surface Book cheese?

• 13:37Nilay Patel?

  Does that hinge get hot? Can you like, use it as like a little wafer iron?

• 13:40Speaker 04

  I really like cheese, so-

• 13:41Speaker 01

  The system doesn't get that hot. I'm super hyped on Surface Book cheese. Sometimes, Tom, does, sometimes your tablet have a little bit of a fan noise?

• 13:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I was playing games on it this afternoon, and that really gets, obviously gets the fans going. But I've definitely had the fans spin up when I've just been using it.

• 13:56Nilay Patel?

  No one else hears Tom's voice before he speaks?

• 13:59Speaker 02

  It's-

• 14:00Speaker 01

  I think Tom sounds very good today.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  It's okay.

• 14:01Nilay Patel?

  I got a tweet about it.

• 14:03Speaker 02

  Oh, we're getting tweets about it?

• 14:04Nilay Patel?

  Are you, now there's just a side hype console conversation?

• 14:07Speaker 01

  So, Tom, if they-

• 14:08Speaker 04

  We can't hear Tom, so we're just-

• 14:09Speaker 01

  I'm taking over the show.

• 14:10Speaker 04

  Talking amongst ourselves.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  Tom, Tom, if they fix some of these bugs, are you gonna buy this?

• 14:17Speaker 05

  Um, see, the thing is, I still like the XPS 13.

• 14:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm hearing this.

• 14:24Speaker 05

  I, I, that is my Windows laptop of choice at the moment.

• 14:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  Because of the battery, and because of just, what?

• 14:30Speaker 05

  Well, the battery life on the Surface Book's great, but-

• 14:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know.

• 14:33Speaker 05

  I just, I can't get over the fact that it's top-heavy, and that the hinge is wobbly. Like, when I'm using it in my lap, it just feels like it's gonna go forward.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  See, I prefer this keyboard and trackpad and screen to the XPS.

• 14:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, I, I way prefer the keyboard and the trackpad, for sure. It's just bigger, and the spacing's better and stuff.

• 14:49Nilay Patel?

  That's, that's like, really, I wanna talk about this trackpad. Is it good or is it bad?

• 14:54Speaker 01

  Well, you know, that's not as easy to be said in

• 14:57Speaker 02

  It's good everywhere except Chrome and Edge is what I read from the reviews.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  Well, Chrome, Chrome just does not work well with it. Chrome does not work well on any computer. Google needs to fix that.

• 15:08Speaker 02

  It works okay on the Chromebook.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  Good point. Good point. I'd like to edit what I just said. I had jumping cursors and stuck cursors. Another thing they said that will be fixed in the software update, but the scrolling is really good. The gestures are really good. And just like, it feels a lot nicer than the plastic ones.

• 15:29Speaker 05

  It's just basically like a MacBook one.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:31Speaker 05

  Because it's a glass trackpad and it's similar size.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  And the new Dell X PS 15, the trackpad actually works really amazingly well. So I think this is the year that the Windows manufacturers really do solve this problem.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  Because now

• 15:48Speaker 05

  Only if you're willing to spend $1,500.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  But like, look, if Microsoft can't solve this problem, why would you have any faith that Asus could?

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Oh, no, they, yeah.

• 15:58Speaker 02

  Right?

• 15:59Speaker 01

  No. No, and I mean, my, my big point here is like, this is Microsoft's first generation out the door.

• 16:04Speaker 02

  Right.

• 16:05Speaker 01

  And like, this is it. Like, they're killing it already on the first one. Yes, there are these issues and hopefully they will be sorted out, but I don't know why you would buy anyone else's computer, Windows computer at this point, other than Dell.

• 16:19Speaker 02

  If you got the money.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, if he's got the money. Right.

• 16:22Nilay Patel?

  So why would you buy a Surface Pro 4?

• 16:24Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 16:25Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  Because if you want a tablet, if, if you want a Windows tablet experience and you love the pen and

• 16:32Speaker 02

  You just super want a tablet.

• 16:33Nilay Patel?

  But wouldn't you just buy this thing? Like?

• 16:35Speaker 02

  This thing is, the, the Surface Pro was smaller and lighter and you can like carry it around and use it as a tablet. But, I mean, I don't know, Dan reviewed this, but like, basically, looking at this thing, it was, they just made a better Surface Pro 3. They didn't change anything fundamentally about it. They made the trackpad and the, the type cover bigger. They made the screen bigger. They made it faster and they kept everything else the same. It's like, it's designed for people that love surfaces and that's kind of it.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I actually think Microsoft has completely mastered now how to make a tablet, a laptop and a laptop, a tablet. Obviously there are some, there are real sacrifices that happen. I think those real sacrifices are actually coming from Windows and from the chips that they're using in here. I think

• 17:22Speaker 01

  Had Windows RT worked out for them, had, had Windows been a better tablet operating system, and Tom, I know you've written about how Windows 10 is still not great on a tablet.

• 17:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  These devices could be even more badass and be sort of what we're gonna, you know, hope the iPad Pro does.

• 17:43Nilay Patel?

  So you, I will say, Joanna's video did not just address the 80s and denim jackets. And what I will say was an amazing hair, hair moment for you.

• 17:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:52Nilay Patel?

  But you were like, this is a whole, this is a vision of the future.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, laptops are the future.

• 17:57Nilay Patel?

  There you go. Get into it. Get it, why do you think laptops are the, because that's like a...

• 18:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. He said, "I believe children are the future," and I think he meant laptops.

• 18:04Nilay Patel?

  Weird, weird laptop babies.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  I actually sing that in my head all the time.

• 18:09Speaker 02

  Is anybody at our Hype Council, Michael Jackson fans?

• 18:12Speaker 01

  Is that really good?

• 18:13Nilay Patel?

  Is he called a hype caster?

• 18:14Speaker 04

  I had that song he sang for Free Willy stuck in my head this morning.

• 18:18Speaker 01

  I believe that laptops are the future.

• 18:20Nilay Patel?

  If I just say hotline bling, does that wreck you?

• 18:22Speaker 01

  I know that song.

• 18:23Nilay Patel?

  If I just say hotline bling, does that wreck you? Does that put a different song in your head?

• 18:26Speaker 04

  No.

• 18:27Nilay Patel?

  Oh.

• 18:28Speaker 04

  Sorry.

• 18:28Nilay Patel?

  I literally played four seconds of it earlier yesterday, and Emily was like, "Fuck."

• 18:33Speaker 04

  I feel like I know more of the songs like that people have parodied the video with than I do the actual song. Like, um, the Rugrats theme, I saw that in the video, put up against that one.

• 18:44Nilay Patel?

  Wait, let me ask you guys a question.

• 18:47Nilay Patel?

  Do any of you have an iPad? Any of the three of you have an iPad?

• 18:50Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 18:51Nilay Patel?

  How often do you use that iPad?

• 18:52Speaker 04

  Never.

• 18:53Nilay Patel?

  Caitlin?

• 18:55Speaker 06

  I don't have an iPad, no. I don't own technologies. The verge gave me this laptop.

• 19:01Nilay Patel?

  I don't own technologies, I have a bag full of garbage.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 19:05Nilay Patel?

  Uh, Kirsten?

• 19:07Speaker 03

  I don't have it. I'm actually thinking about getting one, though.

• 19:10Nilay Patel?

  Would, would any of you buy a tablet at this moment in time for any reason?

• 19:14Speaker 03

  No, not right now.

• 19:15Nilay Patel?

  And you're just not gonna buy, no technologies for Caitlin?

• 19:19Speaker 06

  No.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  I believe you're working at the wrong place.

• 19:22Speaker 02

  She keeps her work at work and her non-work non-work.

• 19:26Speaker 03

  Caitlin doesn't do electricity at home.

• 19:29Nilay Patel?

  Caitlin, oddly Amish for some reason, it came out of nowhere.

• 19:32Speaker 03

  She loves it, yeah.

• 19:33Nilay Patel?

  Uh, I just think that's really interesting, because like Joanna's like laptops are the future thing. If you guys had to buy one thing, if you could pick a laptop, a phone, or a tablet, which one would you pick?

• 19:41Speaker 06

  A laptop.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  A laptop, yeah.

• 19:43Speaker 06

  Really?

• 19:44Speaker 01

  What if?

• 19:44Speaker 02

  I would pick a phone.

• 19:45Speaker 06

  I think you can do everything you can do on a phone, on a laptop, it's just like kinda awkward.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  It's but faster. What if?

• 19:54Speaker 01

  But but what if that screen on your laptop came off?

• 19:58Speaker 03

  If I could have a like, if I could have an iOS device that would flip between the desktop version, like, if I could have OS, I can't say all these things, right? If I could have desktop Mac and mobile Mac on the same device, I would do that. Like if I could, when I pulled this screen off, it became

• 20:17Nilay Patel?

  iOS.

• 20:18Speaker 03

  Uh, an iPad.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  You'd like that.

• 20:20Speaker 03

  I would love that. I would buy that immediately.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:22Speaker 03

  But right now.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  And when would you use it?

• 20:24Nilay Patel?

  But that's that's kinda what Windows 10 does, right? You pull it off and it turns into tablet mode.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 20:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, but then all of the tablet apps are

• 20:30Speaker 01

  The tablets. Both Tom and I talk about this.

• 20:32Speaker 02

  Bulky and heavy.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  The tablet is is compromised, right? The tablet has serious

• 20:36Nilay Patel?

  Joanna, Joanna. It's a digital clipboard, okay? And I would ask that you refer to it. It's proper.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  The digital clipboard is extremely compromised.

• 20:46Speaker 03

  It's too heavy.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  It it's actually pretty light.

• 20:48Speaker 03

  And it's wide.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  It's it's wide.

• 20:49Nilay Patel?

  I love it.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's really wide.

• 20:51Speaker 03

  For me, I have to be able to single hand a tablet.

• 20:54Nilay Patel?

  Here's what, here's my reality. I'm drunk with power. I walk around this place all day, pointing at stuff, yelling at people, really doing nothing of impact. And to have a giant screen and a pen that made it look like I was even more of a 1940s factory manager, that'd be fucking dope.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  You need to deal with this.

• 21:10Speaker 02

  Unfortunately, I need to deal with it.

• 21:13Speaker 03

  This is

• 21:14Speaker 01

  I feel for you.

• 21:14Speaker 03

  Veritas, not therapy, so.

• 21:17Nilay Patel?

  I don't know about that.

• 21:17Speaker 02

  I feel like this is this is where our site comes to really understand itself.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  But I think what is the future of these is that we get mobile processors in here and we don't deal with the thickness and heaviness of it. We'll probably still deal with the width because the screen is big, but maybe at some point these will like auto expand and that's gonna be my review in 20 years. But like, those two really do come together because laptops are the future.

• 21:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Tom, do you think laptops are the future?

• 21:49Speaker 05

  Well, yeah, I mean, I think a lot of it's to do with the experience in the apps. So that Windows is lacking the touch app. So like what someone said a minute ago about combining OSX and iOS. That would be a pretty good device. Because obviously you've got the iOS apps and the touch app. So that would kind of make sense. But on the Windows side, it's kind of like the Windows phone problem. You're lacking the apps on the tablet side. So converting it to a tablet isn't really something you want to do often because it just doesn't really have the experience there. And it's the same with the pen. It's lacking the total usage of the pen across Windows. I tried to write an email and just draw out, like, just literally just write an email. And the Windows Mail client doesn't support that. And it's like, just these basic fundamental things.

• 22:33Speaker 01

  You can use the keyboard. You could use the keyboard thing to do that. Oh, you mean you wanted to...

• 22:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, I just want to write an email.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  Oh, you wanted to like handwrite and like send it as an image?

• 22:43Speaker 05

  You'd think that it would know that I was using the pen and that I was trying to write.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think it's the same thing with the apps. But I only use a tablet pretty much now for two things. To read Twitter and news at night. And then when I go away, I use the screen to watch like tons of movies.

• 23:02Speaker 02

  Right.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  Those are like the two main use cases I use for a tablet. Because when I read, I use a e-reader, I use a Kindle outside or inside.

• 23:10Speaker 02

  So here's my problem with the pen stuff in the digital clipboard mode. You know, when you're typing in Word and Word starts auto formatting shit for you? And it gets it wrong every time, but like it's trying really hard to guess right? I feel like that's where they're always going to be with like doing the right thing with the pen and converting from like writing a note to writing like writing out in handwriting and converting it to text. Like, I'm going to draw now.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:35Speaker 02

  I just don't feel like they've decided on what the pen should be able to automatically do in all the apps to account for the fact that nothing like directly supports it.

• 23:44Speaker 03

  I have a question about the pen. How does it compare to like other tablets and styluses? So like... Like if I had an iPad with like a pencil.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  Okay, so I know a lot about this because I tested almost every stylus last year. And you, are you a Skecher? Your draw?

• 23:59Speaker 02

  I wrote hi mom to the audience.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  That was impressive. So maybe Dieter knows more about this too, but the current iPad doesn't have an active digitizer, any kind of active touchscreen that works with the current styluses. So basically, they suck.

• 24:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  Right? Because they aren't connecting with the screen. The iPad Pro, from what we've seen so far, has a crazy, amazing, good pen.

• 24:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  Like I.

• 24:21Nilay Patel?

  It's a pencil.

• 24:22Speaker 01

  Right, sorry, pencil, a $90 pencil, a $100 pencil.

• 24:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  Like you guys tested at the event, it was just so smooth and fast. Like I think it's, I think it'll be interesting to see how these compete.

• 24:33Nilay Patel?

  They felt the same to me.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Really?

• 24:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, like having played with this for however long I played with it, and how I've played with the iPad Pro for how long I've, like, it's still like not real. Like there's still that ever so slight, I'm drawing on some glass feeling, right?

• 24:48Speaker 01

  Totally, totally.

• 24:49Nilay Patel?

  Um, but they're both very good.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, but like, these experiences are far better than what you'd have from like any stylus you put on an iPad or iPhone, but closer to what you get on a note.

• 25:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, right. I mean, it's funny because I really, again, drunk with power. Like my dream is to like, look at a Verge article and like draw on it with a pen.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  You can do that.

• 25:11Nilay Patel?

  Well, yeah, with Edge, right? But then I just.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  They show that in the commercials.

• 25:13Nilay Patel?

  That's the only thing they show in the commercials.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  That's all they get, they show in the commercials.

• 25:16Nilay Patel?

  Literally when I demoed it to my friends, I literally opened the Verge and circled the homepage and drew the word bad. And I was like, this is my dream. Like this is all I want to do.

• 25:22Speaker 03

  Who else besides you wants to use that feature? Like, how is that useful to normal people?

• 25:26Speaker 02

  Everybody wants to be drunk with power.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:29Nilay Patel?

  It's true.

• 25:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, but like genuinely, like when would you want to draw on?

• 25:32Speaker 01

  So I actually, like, um, this week I had to prepare for this conference, right? I had four big interviews and I printed out as much stuff as I possibly could about all these people I had to interview. And I tried to do it on here at first. So I just was like, save the article about them and start highlighting on it.

• 25:49Nilay Patel?

  Ooh.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  And the highlighting is okay, but it's, it's not paper.

• 25:53Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Like it just came down to, I just want to have this stack of paper and I want to be away from this screen. But I think there's, and then I brought it to a meeting at, at the conference and the other guy was like, that's actually pretty cool because then I could just have the notes wherever I want. I wouldn't lose this piece of paper. So like there are these pluses of paper and then there are these minuses of paper and. I did a piece on it last year, nobody read it, so yeah.

• 26:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  David did a piece similar about it.

• 26:19Nilay Patel?

  No one read that either. Who's David? Is he dead?

• 26:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, David Pierce, he stole my idea.

• 26:24Nilay Patel?

  He's with Sam, wherever he is. Terrible human being.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  Anyway.

• 26:27Nilay Patel?

  I love you both, David and Sam.

• 26:29Speaker 02

  Should we talk about the pro four?

• 26:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  I just want to say, I really, I am very super impressed with what is happening with Microsoft's hardware here, specifically just with these.

• 26:41Nilay Patel?

  Tom, will you, actually, will you tell me about Edge real quick? Because you, I saw you tweeting today, because Edge is the browser, like, you have to use Edge to do all the circling stuff, right? And you were like, I can't use Edge yet.

• 26:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I can use Edge, but I really miss the extensions. And I think that's the same for quite a lot of people who use Chrome. And the extensions aren't coming until 2016, which is, which kind of sucks. Yeah, they were supposed to be here by the end of the year, they were supposed to be here next month.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  Wait, are you, since you've been using this, do you use Google Docs or Gmail in Edge?

• 27:15Speaker 05

  I don't know, because I'm pretty primarily using Chrome.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, because it doesn't work. I mean, and then I try not to use Chrome because it eats at the battery life and the scrolling so bad. But you have to for Google Docs, because you can't copy and paste on Google Docs in Edge. It just doesn't work.

• 27:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's like, I don't want to use Chrome on a Windows laptop because the scrolling is terrible.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:36Speaker 05

  And battery life is terrible, and just the performance in general is just.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  Even on my Mac, I've started using Safari. Because, because the battery life is so bad.

• 27:44Speaker 02

  I know, I know, Capitan Safari is legit, for sure.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:48Speaker 05

  Microsoft had a good opportunity with Edge to like, kind of reset the whole Internet Explorer mess. I feel like they've kind of messed it up.

• 27:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  Because of the extensions.

• 27:58Speaker 05

  It's not finished. They need to do more to it.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  I like, I do like the Mail client for Windows 10, I've been using that.

• 28:05Nilay Patel?

  You're a crazy person. Gmail for life.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  Gmail for life, yeah.

• 28:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's way better than the Windows 8 Mail client.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, here are the apps that I'm really missing to go to Windows 10 full time. A really good lightweight photo editor, not Photoshop, and like, yeah, but like, has advanced tools. A really good Twitter client.

• 28:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  And that's it, actually.

• 28:32Nilay Patel?

  Well, get ready for a flood of thirsty PR pitches from photo editing people.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  What do you feel like you miss from Mac?

• 28:40Speaker 05

  From Mac? I miss like some of the touch, the trackpad customizations? Like, I like to be just, like, especially on the Magic Mouse, where I just flick my two fingers up on the mouse and it does my volume up and down. Like, I miss being able to customize to do that sort of stuff.

• 28:55Speaker 01

  You can customize what the three finger swipe does in Windows 10, but you can't really go beyond what they tell you.

• 29:01Speaker 05

  The three finger tap.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:02Speaker 02

  Right.

• 29:03Speaker 01

  I don't know. Like, I have been super productive on Windows, using this machine.

• 29:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 29:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I like-

• 29:11Speaker 05

  I think it just misses a few things. Like, on like a work-related thing, I can't, um, there's like-

• 29:18Speaker 01

  Slack, they have Slack.

• 29:19Speaker 05

  Images and resize images.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  Right, right. Well, they need like a photo, like, I use Piximalator on-

• 29:25Nilay Patel?

  Piximalator?

• 29:26Speaker 01

  Piximalator? Piximalator?

• 29:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Piximalator. That's what it's called. Pixelmator.

• 29:30Speaker 01

  Pixelmator?

• 29:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 29:32Speaker 02

  Pixelmater.

• 29:33Speaker 01

  Pixelmater?

• 29:33Speaker 02

  Pixelmater.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  Piximalator, I think it is.

• 29:36Nilay Patel?

  I think this is a really good time to talk about Squarespace.

• 29:41Nilay Patel?

  In terms of conversation, it is not good.

• 29:43Speaker 01

  I could manage my Squarespace item at Windows 10.

• 29:45Nilay Patel?

  Do you want to read the ad?

• 29:46Speaker 01

  Sure. Go to browserinyourbrowser.com. All powered by Squarespace.

• 29:49Nilay Patel?

  Nah, don't read an ad for your own website.

• 29:51Speaker 01

  But it, but it's actually an ad for Squarespace, too.

• 29:53Nilay Patel?

  Talk about, fine. Building a website can be, we'll talk about it.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  I built browserinyourbrowser.com using Squarespace. Another column I read, wrote that no one read.

• 30:05Nilay Patel?

  Building a website can be tough, and even if you don't know anything about coding, like Joanna, creating something that looks good and which allows a time-

• 30:11Speaker 01

  I don't know anything about coding.

• 30:12Nilay Patel?

  Can be a time-consuming affair. Whether it's a business site, a portfolio, a restaurant, browserinyourbrowser.com, in this day and age, you probably need a website, much like Joanna's dog needs a website. Well, lucky for us, lucky for Joanna, Squarespace makes it easy to build beautiful websites without breaking a sweat. Squarespace provides simple, powerful, and beautiful websites that look professionally designed regardless of your skill level, Joanna Stern. No coding required. I don't know.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  It's, it's actually incredibly simple.

• 30:37Nilay Patel?

  You're just pitching Squarespace right now.

• 30:39Speaker 02

  What's this URL?

• 30:39Speaker 01

  Browserinyourbrowser.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  Browserinyourbrowser.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  I did a whole column about the easiest way to build your own website and Squarespace won.

• 30:46Nilay Patel?

  Right now Squarespace, there's someone at Squarespace, like the CMO of Squarespace is like, "Fuck yeah, it's all happening."

• 30:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're like-

• 30:51Nilay Patel?

  "It's all coming together for me."

• 30:52Speaker 01

  First of all, does Squarespace spend all their money on podcasts?

• 30:56Nilay Patel?

  Does Squarespace, well certainly this one, they provide you with intuitive and easy to use tools to create your website. Squarespace also has state-of-the-art technology powering your site to enhance your security and stability. And you know you can trust in Squarespace. I'm trying to swap side of sound.

• 31:09Speaker 06

  Browser in your browser, not on your browser.

• 31:11Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god. I'm just gonna read this sentence again.

• 31:13Speaker 06

  Should I buy that too?

• 31:14Nilay Patel?

  And, oh my god, there's-

• 31:15Speaker 06

  Just so redirects?

• 31:16Nilay Patel?

  "You can trust in Squarespace for your website need when millions of people and some of the most respected brands in the world, Joanna's personal brand, trust in Squarespace as well. Seriously, you cannot beat the ease and simplicity of Squarespace. It gives you 24/7 online support and a beautiful website, browserinyourbrowser.com. So what are you waiting for? Start a trial with no credit card required and start building your dog-themed website today." And because you are certainly interested in saving some money, when you sign up for Squarespace, use the offer code VERGE. You get 10% off your first purchase. Show your support for this show, The Vergecast, this beautiful chaotic show, The Vergecast. And thank you Squarespace, build it beautiful.

• 31:55Nilay Patel?

  Alright, so now we're back in the content zone. Yeah. But seriously, the CMO of Squarespace, when you're like, "It is good, I reviewed it." That's like the goal. That's the fusion of advertising and editorial that every brand wants.

• 32:06Speaker 02

  Hype check browserinyourbrowser.com.

• 32:08Nilay Patel?

  Are you guys all looking at Joanna's dog right now?

• 32:10Speaker 06

  What? We made a new Slack room for us.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  For people who are on The Vergecast, they're not paying attention to this.

• 32:15Speaker 06

  But secondarily.

• 32:17Speaker 03

  We have a council-specific Slack room now?

• 32:20Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god.

• 32:21Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 32:21Nilay Patel?

  Here's what I worry-

• 32:22Speaker 02

  Is it open or is it private?

• 32:23Speaker 03

  Oh, it's private.

• 32:24Speaker 02

  Okay, good. Good. I want to know nothing about what happens in there.

• 32:27Nilay Patel?

  I was talking, um, I think Slack is a problem. Here's what I believe about Slack. This, this, Slack rooms expand like fractally. Like Ezra Klein is always like, "We have too many Slack rooms at this company." Are you just watching your own dog videos?

• 32:42Speaker 06

  Yes, I am.

• 32:43Nilay Patel?

  Alright.

• 32:45Speaker 03

  Uh, no Slack is genius. Slack went down for me for like half an hour today.

• 32:50Nilay Patel?

  Can you even count, can you, can you even look?

• 32:52Speaker 03

  How many rooms or channels?

• 32:54Nilay Patel?

  Channels, I don't know.

• 32:55Speaker 03

  Channels, like a lot, like many.

• 32:58Nilay Patel?

  By the way, for the audio listener, Lauren is just squinting at her computer and saying numbers. She's like, I don't know, that looks like thirty.

• 33:04Speaker 02

  How many stars are there in the sky?

• 33:06Speaker 03

  Eventually they like stop, they like go into like the ad, the like more section, so I don't even know.

• 33:11Nilay Patel?

  Hype check your Slack room, channel number, whatever that is. Can you do it?

• 33:15Speaker 03

  I, I like it, it's good, it's amazing. Slack, Slack was down for me for like half an hour today because I like messed up my two factor and I was lost. I was, I was like, oh my God, how do I do anything?

• 33:24Speaker 06

  I hate it, I hate being spoken to.

• 33:29Speaker 03

  Every once in a while, like I, I lean across the desk to Caitlin because she sits across from me and I'm like, "Hey Caitlin, blah, blah, blah, blah", and she's like,

• 33:38Speaker 03

  she pulls out her headphone, she's like, alright.

• 33:40Speaker 06

  Because I'm busy listening to One Direction and making our Tumblr, that's all I do all day long.

• 33:46Speaker 03

  I mean, it is a pretty good Tumblr.

• 33:47Speaker 04

  I remember when Slack, Slack went down for, what, like thirty minutes that one day?

• 33:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:52Speaker 04

  And like we all talked to each other for a really long time and it was really special.

• 33:56Speaker 06

  Oh my God.

• 33:57Speaker 04

  I remember I was sitting on the couch and someone was like, "Hey Lauren", and I was like, "What?"

• 34:04Speaker 04

  It was great.

• 34:05Speaker 03

  We do, we all Slack each other from like fifty feet away all day.

• 34:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:08Nilay Patel?

  Today, um, this is an embarrassing anecdote about management. Today, we had a meeting in which we discussed how people don't talk in meetings and one of the reasons that I came up with was because Slack has stunted all of our development. Like, we actually don't know how to talk to each other unless...

• 34:21Speaker 06

  Why is Slack any different than like IRC that we used to have?

• 34:24Speaker 02

  Because everybody that didn't grow up with IRC uses it now.

• 34:28Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 34:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:29Speaker 06

  So like they don't?

• 34:30Speaker 02

  It's like, imagine if everybody used IRC, that's Slack.

• 34:35Speaker 06

  It's funny, I talk on the phone, I mean...

• 34:38Nilay Patel?

  What's that, Tom?

• 34:39Speaker 05

  That's what Dee is trying to say.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're old.

• 34:40Speaker 05

  If you remember ILC, you're officially old.

• 34:42Nilay Patel?

  Oh, we're old.

• 34:43Speaker 01

  It's not like the good old days when we're old.

• 34:44Nilay Patel?

  Dee is like fifty years old. I am fifty years old.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  Fifty years old.

• 34:47Nilay Patel?

  It's actually his birthday.

• 34:48Speaker 01

  Tom's also like fifty years old. He just looks incredibly young.

• 34:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Tom's a handsome man. He has an awesome scar. What? I know that. Yeah. Alright.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  It's my, I talk on the phone a lot. Like if I'm, if I'm, if I have like an issue that-

• 35:04Nilay Patel?

  You are old.

• 35:05Speaker 01

  I definitely am old.

• 35:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. No, I saw Sam Shepard tweet the other day that he thinks phone calls are like comeback.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  They should. That's another column I want to write.

• 35:13Nilay Patel?

  Oh, can I tell a story about- If everybody else got a pager, would you?

• 35:18Speaker 03

  No.

• 35:19Nilay Patel?

  Alright.

• 35:19Speaker 04

  Yes, great morning.

• 35:20Speaker 03

  Phone calls are not gonna come back. Phone calls are not gonna come back. Maybe video calling will come back.

• 35:24Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god.

• 35:25Speaker 03

  We're not gonna go back to just audio.

• 35:26Nilay Patel?

  When did video calling, to come back, like conceptually has to like be there?

• 35:30Speaker 03

  I guess to come into its like fullest. I mean, a lot of my friends like Skype and stuff. And like a huge portion of the way that people who are in college right now keep in touch with their friends is like super long, like two hour Skypes.

• 35:42Speaker 04

  See, whenever my parents want to Skype, I'm always like, eh.

• 35:45Speaker 01

  But do they look into the camera that whole time? I mean-

• 35:48Speaker 03

  Sometimes it depends.

• 35:49Speaker 01

  Usually it's just like there.

• 35:50Speaker 03

  You look into your camera like at the beginning, like, and then sometimes people will like do laundry or do stuff, but you're like talking to the person. It's like you're hanging out with them. But if someone can make that actually like, I know that there's like FaceTime, but like that doesn't work for everyone. If someone actually-

• 36:06Speaker 04

  You have to get ready for these kinds of calls, you know? You don't want to look like a scrub when you're on a video call.

• 36:11Speaker 03

  I don't know. At some point you get over it because it's like not a big deal. Like me and one of my cousins use Skype all the time.

• 36:17Nilay Patel?

  I don't know if you guys can see how powerfully Caitlin is rolling her eyes right now.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  I like to make sure I have-

• 36:23Nilay Patel?

  She's about to flip fully over.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  I like to make sure I have like dad hair and eye crust.

• 36:29Speaker 06

  I've been here in four years, like almost every human being alive, in my, sorry, Tom.

• 36:37Speaker 03

  I don't know what we're talking about here.

• 36:40Nilay Patel?

  Whatever, man. We're gonna talk about the Nexus phone in a minute, but I thought we'd give, you know, the hype council had a moment.

• 36:44Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  I haven't even seen the Nexus phones. I actually saw it at Google a couple of weeks ago, but not like.

• 36:51Nilay Patel?

  So we have a 6P but not the 5X?

• 36:53Speaker 02

  Right. Dan has a 5X. If he's, Dan, if you're watching, come on down.

• 36:56Nilay Patel?

  Might as well just, might as well just join the Vergecast. Everyone else has.

• 37:01Nilay Patel?

  Um, there's a guy just tweeting bad, bad screenshots of me from a compressed video stream. Anyway, so Dieter, talk about the phone.

• 37:08Speaker 02

  Uh, it is the best Android phone you can buy right now.

• 37:11Nilay Patel?

  You think so?

• 37:11Speaker 02

  I do.

• 37:12Nilay Patel?

  Why's that?

• 37:13Speaker 02

  Uh, cuz it, uh, has up-to-date, clean software. It, what?

• 37:18Nilay Patel?

  She's looking at your Google Now!

• 37:20Speaker 02

  Quit looking at my, shit!

• 37:23Nilay Patel?

  Oh, that's brutal!

• 37:24Speaker 02

  Give me my phone back!

• 37:25Speaker 01

  I'm not going there anymore. I'm not gonna go in there.

• 37:27Nilay Patel?

  It's brutal!

• 37:29Speaker 03

  This is doxxing Dieter in the middle of Vergecast. Well done!

• 37:32Speaker 02

  Good lord!

• 37:33Nilay Patel?

  I will say that I haven't, I've never.

• 37:35Speaker 01

  We need a plan for CES, too.

• 37:36Nilay Patel?

  I've never thought.

• 37:37Speaker 02

  You know what I'm gonna do?

• 37:37Nilay Patel?

  She's looking at his calendar!

• 37:40Speaker 02

  I'm locking the phone. Give me, give me the phone back.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  Here, I'll lock, here, let's do this. I'll lock it so I can't get back in without your fingerprint, okay?

• 37:46Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 37:46Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 37:47Speaker 02

  Anyway.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  Just admire the hardware.

• 37:48Speaker 02

  Um, it, it ha, it's the best software you can get on an Android phone.

• 37:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 37:53Speaker 02

  It is 500 bucks to start for a 32 gig version, which is a good price.

• 37:58Nilay Patel?

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:58Speaker 02

  It is in that quote-unquote "premium" category. Uh, it has a really good camera.

• 38:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was impressed with the camera stuff I've just seen.

• 38:06Speaker 02

  Someone came at me and, uh, the HDR is slow.

• 38:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:11Speaker 02

  The HDR is slow, but otherwise the camera, if you turn off HDR, the camera's plenty fast.

• 38:15Nilay Patel?

  Mm-hmm.

• 38:17Speaker 02

  And someone came at me and said, "No, no, the Note 5 is better."

• 38:19Nilay Patel?

  Are you receiving snacks out of a crinkly bag now?

• 38:22Speaker 02

  I would let them make that case to me.

• 38:24Nilay Patel?

  Let me see a picture of the hype council.

• 38:25Speaker 02

  But I think I prefer.

• 38:26Nilay Patel?

  Caitlin, don't look. Don't look. You're gonna kill everyone.

• 38:28Speaker 01

  But the, see, I think that I only want the 5, is it the 5X?

• 38:32Speaker 02

  5X is notably slower.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  Slower?

• 38:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  See, and also it feels like shittier.

• 38:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it's, it's hard to know, right? So like, when we first looked at the 5, everybody was like, "Oh, this is boring and dumb." And then everybody turned out over the year. Or so to like fall deeply in love with it.

• 38:49Speaker 01

  The Nexus 5.

• 38:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love that phone.

• 38:50Speaker 02

  Nexus 6, we're like, well, it's big, but everybody likes big phones. So maybe it's okay. I don't know. And then over the course of the year, we're like, man, this thing is just dumb and horrible. So it didn't age well.

• 39:01Nilay Patel?

  So Dieter's been doing that impression of Nexus 6 for like a week.

• 39:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:04Nilay Patel?

  He's like, yeah, Nexus 6. Like, because big things are funny.

• 39:07Speaker 02

  Right.

• 39:08Nilay Patel?

  That's just my theory.

• 39:09Speaker 02

  And so

• 39:09Nilay Patel?

  Do you not know those big things are funny?

• 39:11Speaker 02

  I can't say for sure that like the Nexus 5X is going to look terrible in a year from now.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 39:16Speaker 02

  My hunch is that it's not going to age all that well.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  It's more like I want that size with that build.

• 39:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  And it sounds like that speed.

• 39:23Speaker 02

  Right, no.

• 39:24Speaker 05

  Can someone hold it up?

• 39:25Speaker 02

  You want an S6 with the terrible battery.

• 39:27Speaker 05

  The iPhone 6S plus?

• 39:28Speaker 02

  It's virtually identical in size to the 6S plus. Although the 6S plus is a tiny bit shorter and ween CT bit shorter.

• 39:36Nilay Patel?

  It feels smaller than my 6S plus.

• 39:38Speaker 03

  But is it easier to hang on to the 6P? The 6P seems like it's not like a slippery

• 39:44Speaker 02

  I mean, I don't, I don't feel like aluminum phones are as slippery as everybody else on the planet seems to. Maybe I've just got like Spider-Man hands. I don't know.

• 39:53Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it's ugly in very specific ways.

• 39:55Speaker 02

  There are some specifically ugly things.

• 39:56Speaker 01

  That camera strip is bothering me.

• 39:57Nilay Patel?

  This camera strip is bothering me. The antenna connects into the camera strip.

• 40:00Speaker 02

  I don't care what camera strip.

• 40:01Nilay Patel?

  Like, there's just like a whole section in this corner where it's just like, someone was drunk. You know, like someone was drawing the phone. Like, I don't know, add some more lines.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  It's Huawei.

• 40:10Nilay Patel?

  Burn.

• 40:11Speaker 02

  It's Google.

• 40:11Nilay Patel?

  No, doesn't Huawei make one particularly beautiful phone?

• 40:14Speaker 01

  Google really designed the exterior of the phone?

• 40:16Speaker 02

  Really hard to know.

• 40:17Nilay Patel?

  But didn't Huawei make one particularly beautiful phone? Their like actual phone?

• 40:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, the Mate S, which is like similar to that.

• 40:24Speaker 01

  I just think there's no like

• 40:25Nilay Patel?

  Which is an iPhone clone. Oh, you've got an iPhone clone?

• 40:28Speaker 02

  No. Oh, we got

• 40:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Never mind, I said nothing.

• 40:32Speaker 01

  Um, but the, uh, I think there's really no other reason at this point to buy any Android phone other than an Nexus.

• 40:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, if you like, the only one that I would right now with this thing like if you wanted to get an S6 because it's smaller.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:49Speaker 02

  Go to town. If you want to get a Note 5 because you want the stylus, go to town.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  I love.

• 40:55Speaker 02

  Basically, anything else like no.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  Right. Here's the only, the reason I say that about the Nexus is because of the software updates. And also now all of the integration that they've got with the fingerprint sensor and all of the other Google goodness that happens because Google's really involved with the bump.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  Now on tap is terrible, right?

• 41:12Speaker 01

  I know, you hate it, but I like it.

• 41:14Speaker 02

  It misread an address, a perfectly formatted address. It was unable to read it, but it was able to look up a restaurant named Trey. Because I had the address sent to me by our executive producer Trey Shelhorn.

• 41:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 41:29Speaker 02

  Like it got Trey and but the wrong Trey, Trey the restaurant.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  I love it for adding calendars, like calendar stuff. It just works so much faster than like even in iOS when it's like trying to guess that you want to calendar.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  I think 3D touch is better because at least you know there's a link that'll do something.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  I think actually now on tap with 3D touch would be great.

• 41:48Speaker 02

  Where?

• 41:49Nilay Patel?

  I don't even know how that works.

• 41:50Speaker 01

  You would be able to hit what you're looking at and then you'd initiate now on tap.

• 41:55Nilay Patel?

  And they could do other things.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:59Nilay Patel?

  Right? Because they were.

• 42:00Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 42:00Nilay Patel?

  Because they're like, we can't read your data.

• 42:02Speaker 02

  Well, plus, Apple, Apple doesn't want to present you with more than one option.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  And by the way, I'm like also I'd want it to be Google. It's not going to happen.

• 42:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. But Google, I mean, I don't know, it's Android, right? Like you, you gotta think somewhere there's like a Samsung engineer and he's like, I gotta make 3D touch now.

• 42:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:19Nilay Patel?

  You know, I'm like, they're gonna do it and I'll just like make a crap version of it and like four versions of Android for now and it'll just be an Android.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 42:24Nilay Patel?

  The Android lifecycle.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you don't like it even when it's like, I mean, I just, maybe it's like more of a novelty, but it's like if you're listening to something or something's on the screen.

• 42:32Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna buy this phone. I actually already did buy this phone.

• 42:34Speaker 02

  It just, it's so rarely gives like things that I know it ought to do. It has only a 50% hit rate. And I just, that's not enough for me to be like, oh, I wonder what now on tap will do right now. That'll be interesting.

• 42:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 42:46Speaker 02

  It's just if you're, if you don't get the stuff you should get half the time, I'm going to stop using you, which is just like Siri.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  There's just like a lot of stuff in.

• 42:55Nilay Patel?

  When Dieter has a child.

• 42:58Speaker 01

  We're just gonna stop missing you.

• 42:59Nilay Patel?

  You're done, kid. You suck at math and we're not talking anymore.

• 43:03Speaker 02

  I mean, have you guys played at this phone over there?

• 43:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:05Speaker 02

  You think?

• 43:06Nilay Patel?

  Pipe check the, pipe check the 6P.

• 43:08Speaker 03

  The 6P is like, definitely the best Android phone that I've played with.

• 43:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 43:12Speaker 03

  The build is really nice. And for me, naked iPhone 6S Plus versus that.

• 43:18Nilay Patel?

  I can see the case from here.

• 43:20Speaker 03

  Because I can't hang on to it.

• 43:21Nilay Patel?

  Ah, I see.

• 43:22Speaker 03

  So for me, it's like, that phone is really cool. If now on tap actually worked like, more than 50% of the time, I would really consider switching.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  I think it works 75%.

• 43:32Nilay Patel?

  Are we iPhones down the line here?

• 43:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:34Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so let me ask you a really hard question.

• 43:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:36Nilay Patel?

  What would make you buy a Surface Book and what would make you switch to Android phone?

• 43:42Speaker 03

  Surface.

• 43:43Speaker 06

  Okay, I'm definitely buying Android phone next because I think brand loyalty is a disease. And I don't want to buy another iPhone just to buy another iPhone. I don't know anything about phones.

• 43:54Nilay Patel?

  That's great.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  That's a great answer.

• 43:55Speaker 06

  Different.

• 43:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 43:57Speaker 04

  See, I'm probably like your worst nightmare because I just don't want to worry about it. So I just stick with the same phone each time, like, and get a new update.

• 44:05Nilay Patel?

  Do you know that you have what I believe is known as a disease?

• 44:10Speaker 02

  How often do you get a new phone?

• 44:12Speaker 04

  What's up?

• 44:12Speaker 02

  How often do you get a new phone?

• 44:13Speaker 04

  Probably every two to three years. But it's like, I just don't want to make it a huge deal. So I just get the next iPhone because it worked for me in the past, so.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  Yep, that's.

• 44:25Speaker 06

  And you're used to it.

• 44:25Speaker 04

  I have, I have space to worry about you guys, so.

• 44:28Nilay Patel?

  All of space is there. Okay, so I'm gonna read, so here's the thing I'm gonna do. I'm gonna read one more ad and then I actually want Lauren to give us some space news.

• 44:34Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 44:34Nilay Patel?

  Because she's here. She's our space reporter. She should do that. And then Caitlin, you can say something else deeply depressing about being, being young in America.

• 44:49Speaker 06

  That's my beat.

• 44:52Speaker 06

  What Caitlin writes about.

• 44:55Nilay Patel?

  Well, you know what I think the teens love? It's fucking Softlayer.

• 45:01Nilay Patel?

  Softlayer's back, everybody. I don't know if you were thinking about a cloud. This cloud is built for transparency.

• 45:08Speaker 01

  Anything to say about this ad?

• 45:10Nilay Patel?

  Look, Joanna, I'm gonna address this ad.

• 45:12Speaker 02

  Do you know who owns Softlayer?

• 45:14Nilay Patel?

  You know?

• 45:15Speaker 02

  It's gonna surprise you.

• 45:16Nilay Patel?

  When I think about Joanna Stern, I think about her unique computational workload. And I think about the fact that my friend Joanna deserves cloud resources that meet her specific needs. Softlayer, duh. One of the only cloud providers that provisions dedicated servers and virtual servers, otherwise known as a public cloud, from a single seamless platform. All this is on-demand, all that's connected to the same open API, all that's connected to a global private network, which I think we all know the teens appreciate. All of this allows you to scale your workloads up and down quickly for presumably your One Direction BitTorrent server. And you have ample space for your storage and tons of tasks. Softlayer, surprise, IBM company. IBM uses Softlayer as its crown infrastructure foundation for all IBM cloud products and services.

• 45:59Nilay Patel?

  So if you're not looking for infrastructure because you're a basic, you can benefit from Softlayer infrastructure when you use platforms or software services from IBM Cloud. Dieter's just drawing on a tablet wildly now. So here's what you need to do. Figure out your life, get your business started, get on Softlayer, and then go to softlayer.com/podcast to get $500 off your cloud infrastructure. You can order bare metal servers, you can order virtual servers, you can get storage, you can get networking, you can get security services, probably get a Taylor Show CD. Softlayer has 24 data centers around the world. All these services and services are connected to the unique network of networks which connects, separates, public, private, and management traffic, ensuring the traffic to and from your cloud infrastructure travels more efficiently.

• 46:42Nilay Patel?

  You might think that I suck at these ad reads, and I do, but you are damn well listening to see what kind of car crash we're gonna get into here. And that car crash will be powered by Softlayer. Automate and control your cloud infrastructure with a granular API or with the easy-to-use Softlayer customer portal. So please, for God's sake, it has to be working because they keep buying the ads. Visit softlayer.com/podcast. Get your $500 off of servers, storage, network, and security on a cloud built for transparency. There's always some fine print here. It says "use user's discretion." I never read it because, I don't know, it probably... Anyway, whatever. Softlayer.com/podcast.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  69 people just follow me.

• 47:19Speaker 01

  For being on the Vergecast.

• 47:20Speaker 02

  Cause you're very famous.

• 47:21Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  I think it's because I was being on the Vergecast. And also, I'd just like to say a lot of people do really like browserandyourbrowser.com. So, thank you for visiting browserandyourbrowser.com.

• 47:29Speaker 02

  Oh, did your traffic spike?

• 47:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:31Nilay Patel?

  Wait, do you have like analytics on your Squarespace site?

• 47:33Speaker 01

  If I log into Squarespace, you can, actually. That's one of the benefits of using Squarespace.

• 47:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, CMO Squarespace right now, just like ripping his shirt off. And being like, "We did it!"

• 47:43Speaker 02

  During your ad read, I made effective use of the digital clipboard.

• 47:46Speaker 01

  I tested three or four different-

• 47:47Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I know. My shit's blown up.

• 47:48Speaker 01

  Website building tools on Squarespace was, in fact, one of the best.

• 47:51Nilay Patel?

  Alright, so, we've got the High Council here. Tom, I want one more little piece of Tom before we go. It's a beautiful website, China, I know. I see the dog. But Lauren, give me some space news.

• 48:05Speaker 04

  Okay. So, the fun thing is, we're getting an asteroid to fly by Earth on Halloween. That's fun.

• 48:12Speaker 02

  Did we ask it nicely?

• 48:15Nilay Patel?

  Lauren bribed an asteroid.

• 48:18Speaker 04

  Yeah. I wanted to spice things up this holiday, so I got an asteroid to come visit.

• 48:22Speaker 02

  Is it a spooky asteroid?

• 48:23Speaker 04

  Only if you want to be super cliche.

• 48:28Speaker 04

  Sorry, no, I just saw so many headlines that I were like, "Trick or treat."

• 48:35Speaker 01

  I get it.

• 48:37Speaker 04

  But, yeah, it's pretty big, and we just found out about it last week. So, that's a little scary.

• 48:43Speaker 04

  But it's not going to hit us at all. It's just going to come really close, like 1.3 lunar distances, which is about-

• 48:49Speaker 02

  Wait, what?

• 48:50Speaker 04

  So, yeah, just a little-

• 48:51Speaker 02

  That's really close, isn't it?

• 48:52Speaker 03

  That's like as close as the moon? What's a lunar distance?

• 48:55Speaker 04

  It's 300,000 miles.

• 48:56Speaker 02

  That's really close.

• 48:57Speaker 04

  It's pretty close. It's not going to hit us, though. But this happens all the time. I mean, we get near Earth asteroids like hundreds each month.

• 49:04Speaker 02

  Right.

• 49:05Speaker 04

  The only thing that's special about this one is that it's kind of big for the normal asteroids we get, and it's getting pretty close. So, but, we have nothing to worry about. But the fun thing-

• 49:18Nilay Patel?

  So, what kind of Armageddon situation are we in?

• 49:21Speaker 04

  We're not in any Armageddon situation.

• 49:22Nilay Patel?

  Do I have to try to marry Bruce Willis's daughter now, or later?

• 49:27Speaker 04

  No, you like stay away from Bruce.

• 49:29Nilay Patel?

  I'm coming. I'm coming for you, Rumor. On Halloween.

• 49:32Speaker 04

  Um, but I did learn about what different sizes of asteroids, like how much they would destroy life on Earth this week. So this asteroid, if it were to hit us, it'd only wipe out like a continent.

• 49:45Nilay Patel?

  Oh, good. So like pick your least favorite continent and just hope for the best.

• 49:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:50Nilay Patel?

  Or the worst.

• 49:51Speaker 04

  Uh, the ones we have to worry about are the one kilometer asteroids. Um, they're like, I think, sorry for the conversion. I think it's over 3,000 feet. Those are the ones if they were to hit us, they like wipe out humanity. So that's the one, those are what like NASA is more concerned with. This one is just smaller than that.

• 50:07Nilay Patel?

  It's just continent.

• 50:08Speaker 04

  Just gonna destroy a continent. So Europe, watch out.

• 50:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the crap continent. Uh, Caitlin, if, if our continent was to be destroyed on Halloween, how would you spend your last days?

• 50:22Speaker 06

  Okay, actually I'm going to see Spring Awakening on Halloween.

• 50:26Nilay Patel?

  Why are you so prepared for this question?

• 50:28Speaker 06

  It's a musical on Broadway. It's great. I've been stealthily in starting Broadway coverage into the verge.com.

• 50:34Nilay Patel?

  It's not that stealthy.

• 50:36Speaker 06

  I like to pretend that it's very sneaky. Anyway, I'm going to see that musical. Also, I'm doing.

• 50:45Nilay Patel?

  All right. Uh, we've just got a couple of minutes left. Tom, is there anything else that we need to talk about? We haven't talked about Star Wars.

• 50:50Speaker 01

  We haven't talked about Drake.

• 50:55Speaker 01

  I wish I had done this entire podcast alone with Tom.

• 50:57Nilay Patel?

  We can just leave and you and Tom can do it. Tom, what do you want us to do? YouTube, Star Wars or Drake?

• 51:00Speaker 01

  Or you'd just not like me to be on the podcast with you?

• 51:03Speaker 05

  I think Star Wars and Drake, because there's a great vine of Drake dancing with lightsabers.

• 51:08Nilay Patel?

  I like the vine of him with the like playing Wii U a little bit better.

• 51:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, that one's pretty good.

• 51:13Speaker 04

  Not YouTube.

• 51:15Nilay Patel?

  Or Star Wars. Oh, we haven't talked about YouTube, fucking fucker.

• 51:17Speaker 05

  We need to talk about YouTube.

• 51:18Speaker 04

  All right, we should talk about YouTube really fast.

• 51:20Nilay Patel?

  All right. No, we, we started late. We can, we can go a couple. All right, all right, Dieter, let's, uh, take us to YouTube.

• 51:26Speaker 02

  Uh, so there's a new thing YouTube read.

• 51:28Nilay Patel?

  I can't believe I found out YouTube.

• 51:30Speaker 03

  It's such a big deal.

• 51:31Speaker 02

  So it's 10 bucks a month and you get rid of ads and you get access to some exclusive content from YouTube, quote unquote, creators, but not that much. PewDiePie is making like a horror show or something.

• 51:47Nilay Patel?

  With the creator of The Walking Dead.

• 51:48Speaker 02

  With the creator of The Walking Dead.

• 51:49Nilay Patel?

  But that's not actually the important thing.

• 51:50Speaker 02

  The important thing is 10 bucks a month, uh, you get rid of ads and the people that make YouTube get a cut, but it looks like it's a small cut, but we don't know how much of a cut and YouTube's not saying. Is that the important thing?

• 52:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, well, the money is, I think from my perspective, it's like, uh, or the consumer perspective, it's like, you can background play the songs.

• 52:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can background play songs.

• 52:13Nilay Patel?

  You can download them offline.

• 52:14Speaker 02

  Offline is huge.

• 52:16Speaker 01

  Background play on iPhone?

• 52:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 52:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, so like if you're playing the video on your phone and you get a text message, you want to respond to the text message, but keep listening to the video, you can go to your texts and keep listening to the video and then pop right back.

• 52:27Speaker 02

  I'm actually more fan of offline.

• 52:29Speaker 01

  You've been able to do that on Android though, right?

• 52:30Speaker 02

  Sorta.

• 52:31Speaker 03

  The other, the other.

• 52:32Nilay Patel?

  Offline is the other key one.

• 52:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:34Nilay Patel?

  Like, I think this is YouTube, like, beginning to understand that they actually run a social network and music streaming service, um, and not just like a video player.

• 52:42Speaker 02

  Well, and that they, if they wanted to, they could like compete with Hulu and Netflix.

• 52:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, and offline video is something that Netflix has not done yet and is a huge deal. Like, the only other streaming video person that does download is Amazon Prime right now.

• 52:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:57Speaker 03

  And like, that's a huge deal in the city. Like, if you're gonna be on the subway, you most of the time don't have coverage. And like, as far as data, the idea that you can download YouTube videos and then go wherever you want and still play them, is a huge deal. I mean, for me at least.

• 53:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. What, do you watch, you would watch YouTube on the subway?

• 53:14Speaker 03

  I would watch so much YouTube on the subway. I have so much YouTube that since I started this job, I can't keep up with, like, people who do weekly videos.

• 53:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 53:21Speaker 03

  I have like hours to catch up on and I would watch it all on the subway.

• 53:25Speaker 02

  Huh.

• 53:26Nilay Patel?

  I guess that's not how I think about you guys. They're just, now they're just competing so you can more dramatically pull their Surface Books apart.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  Dieter's way better at it.

• 53:33Speaker 02

  No, but what you do is you, you, you put it on there and lift it up by the thing once it's attached.

• 53:37Speaker 01

  Oh, so the lap- so the laptop drops?

• 53:39Speaker 02

  No, so the, the bottom doesn't drop.

• 53:42Speaker 01

  What do you mean?

• 53:42Speaker 03

  When you're reattaching.

• 53:43Nilay Patel?

  Some, one of you is gonna break something. That's all I know.

• 53:46Speaker 03

  Let's watch the Surface Book break in five.

• 53:48Speaker 02

  It's detached and then you attach it.

• 53:50Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I see.

• 53:51Speaker 02

  And then you magically pick up the base with it. It's like playing with silly putty.

• 53:55Nilay Patel?

  I can't.

• 53:56Speaker 02

  YouTube Red.

• 53:56Speaker 03

  So YouTube.

• 53:58Nilay Patel?

  We tried. We tried so hard to stay on topic.

• 54:01Speaker 03

  Well, also, and if you do YouTube Red, don't you also get Google Play Music as well?

• 54:05Nilay Patel?

  I just, I just wanna point out that what's happening on the show right now is like, two very senior, very experienced, brilliant technology reviewers are just picking up laptops and looking proud of themselves. They're not even doing anything else. They're just, like, now Dieter's just making it talk to me.

• 54:24Nilay Patel?

  Clearly.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  Mine's a little, it's a little dirty for the string key.

• 54:27Speaker 02

  So, I don't know, I don't know if it includes Play off the top of my head.

• 54:31Nilay Patel?

  But, how sad is Google Play Music right now?

• 54:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 54:35Speaker 02

  So sad.

• 54:35Speaker 03

  It's not for me. But if it came free, but if it came, if it came free with the 999.

• 54:41Nilay Patel?

  But it does.

• 54:42Speaker 03

  YouTube stuff, yeah.

• 54:43Nilay Patel?

  YouTube Music key is turning into this thing.

• 54:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:46Nilay Patel?

  So like, the, the key thing about, so, oh, I can't believe we haven't talked about YouTube this whole time.

• 54:49Speaker 02

  Hang on, hang on, hang on. It includes Google Play Music.

• 54:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:54Speaker 02

  For really real.

• 54:55Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 54:55Speaker 02

  10 bucks a month is all music and all video on YouTube?

• 54:58Speaker 03

  Yes, that's why it's compelling to me.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:00Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  It's compelling, but I actually wonder why.

• 55:03Speaker 02

  Butts. Oh, that's, goodbye Spotify.

• 55:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, but why don't they just combine Google Play Music with YouTube? The big, the big problem I have with YouTube streaming is I don't wanna stream a video, right? That's a lot of data that I don't wanna, I don't wanna be using.

• 55:16Nilay Patel?

  No, but that's why backgrounding and offline, cuz you can, it will stop streaming the video to your phone when you get away from the thing.

• 55:21Speaker 01

  But it will still download the, like, at some point, you're using your data for video.

• 55:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but you could do that on wifi.

• 55:28Speaker 02

  No, but if it includes Google Play, are we sure about this?

• 55:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, cuz it's replacing Music Key.

• 55:32Speaker 06

  This is exactly what Ben said, yeah. Ben did the.

• 55:34Nilay Patel?

  So the, the, the, the, the story that Ben got from YouTube was they did Music Key, and you could take all the ads off of Music, and then all their users were confused, because they're like, why doesn't it take all the ads off of all of YouTube? And there's lots of music on YouTube that wasn't part of Music Key, um, but it's otherwise licensed, um, but it's not like part of the official, like, official accounts and whatever.

• 55:56Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 55:57Nilay Patel?

  So they, like, they had to figure out how to go all the way, um, and remove all the ads from all of YouTube. But, what's really interesting, and I think this is like the fascinating part, is they're like, this won't affect our advertising business at all, because YouTube is so big.

• 56:09Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 56:10Nilay Patel?

  That you could literally add every late night television viewer, which is a hundred billion people, and it still wouldn't like, be more than one or two percent of the total YouTube audience.

• 56:19Speaker 02

  Right.

• 56:19Nilay Patel?

  Which is crazy.

• 56:21Speaker 05

  So I think there's two things about this YouTube red stuff, and the first one is, is Google tapping into a certain generation, um, of people who do watch PewDiePie and.

• 56:31Nilay Patel?

  Right, right, right.

• 56:32Speaker 05

  Or, you know, like, the kids that are growing up, they're not watching live TV. They don't care about that stuff. They don't care about cable, they care about Netflix, they care about YouTube celebrities. So I think it's them tapping into that, but it's also, if you've played with YouTube over the past, like, year.

• 56:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:47Speaker 05

  There's so many ads now.

• 56:48Nilay Patel?

  Right, no, it's absurd.

• 56:50Speaker 05

  There's, there's gonna be even more ads as a result of this. And so it's YouTube monetizing in a big, big way, um, and definitely a generational thing.

• 56:58Nilay Patel?

  Well, that's, and that's why their originals all look like garbage, right? Like, the, the PewDiePie show looks terrible, the, there's another one, Lilly Singh, like, there's all these YouTube stars, and what they did was they said, well, cuz here's what's happening, YouTube stars are making it big on YouTube, and then the TV companies are showing up and saying, leave YouTube, make TV shows with us, because we're desperate for young people to watch our stuff. Um, they're making a great suite of Broadway musicals on YouTube now. I'm just looking, I don't know, I should troll you forever. You look so sad. It's like, I made.

• 57:26Speaker 06

  It's called, it's called Dr. Horrible. Everyone in this room has seen it and loved it.

• 57:30Nilay Patel?

  Wait, what?

• 57:31Speaker 06

  The internet musical, Dr. Horrible.

• 57:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I'm super aware of Dr. Horrible.

• 57:35Speaker 02

  You're gonna go see it live?

• 57:37Speaker 06

  No, I'm saying that, like, internet musicals is like, not, not a thing. Is a thing.

• 57:43Nilay Patel?

  How many negatives did you just use in that sentence? Is it?

• 57:46Speaker 02

  It's not a thing, it's totally a legit thing to say.

• 57:48Speaker 03

  We don't need to workshop my sentences.

• 57:49Speaker 02

  It's not not a legit thing to say.

• 57:52Speaker 03

  I mean, okay, we don't need to talk about musicals anymore.

• 57:55Speaker 04

  That's another merch cast that Caitlin and I will do ourselves.

• 57:58Nilay Patel?

  I think there's probably many more theater nerds on this, uh, there, something like that.

• 58:02Speaker 03

  There are a lot of theater nerds in this room right now.

• 58:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 58:06Speaker 03

  Really?

• 58:06Nilay Patel?

  Is it three?

• 58:09Speaker 01

  Are they at your desk?

• 58:10Speaker 03

  It's, well, you've got one kid that really likes spectacle over there.

• 58:15Nilay Patel?

  I do, awesome, I mean, I was, I was, I was a.

• 58:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, you got a, you got a secret theater nerd over there that you don't realize you have. Yup, yeah, alright, moving on.

• 58:25Nilay Patel?

  Final thought on YouTube, we gotta wrap. Uh, we final thought on YouTube.

• 58:27Speaker 02

  Tom had a good one.

• 58:28Nilay Patel?

  Go ahead, Tom, finish your thought.

• 58:31Speaker 05

  I know, I was just saying, it's a generational thing, the whole YouTube red stuff. It's just like, my daughter does not care about celebrities that I care about.

• 58:39Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 58:39Speaker 05

  She cares about YouTube celebrities.

• 58:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:42Speaker 05

  And that's, that's just, that's gonna be the future.

• 58:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and I, what I'm saying is like, I think this is, that's exactly right, but I think what is happening is YouTube didn't have another place, like, the only, if you're a YouTube star, there's no other revenue model for you other than like, ad impression money. And now YouTube is saying, here's another revenue model to add on top of it. Are you really, you're just cranking away?

• 59:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:05Nilay Patel?

  Okay, anyway.

• 59:06Speaker 05

  But don't the stars have to agree to it? Aren't they forced into it?

• 59:09Nilay Patel?

  No, YouTube had to run around, remember there was that big scandal, like?

• 59:12Speaker 02

  That's why, but the new deal is like, you're in or you're out with the new stuff.

• 59:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, you're either running ads and making money, or you're not. You can't do what the like, current, like, previous situation was, where you could choose to monetize and like, kind of,

• 59:26Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 59:26Speaker 03

  make more granular choices, you don't have that option.

• 59:29Nilay Patel?

  Right, well, actually, what I think is really interesting, and I watch a bunch of, um, I've been watching just a bunch of YouTubers lately. How many of them have just subtly integrated product placement and branded content into their streams? Which is not in like outside that you're not allowed to do that like YouTube's rules say like if you're gonna do it, you have to tell us when you like it's not allowed. Um, but everyone's doing it because it's impossible to monitor. So I've actually find it really hard to know on YouTube what is bought and what is not. Um, because so many people are like, I love, I don't know, whatever, like, I love this product and it's like, is that real like? There's really, there's no tracking underneath it and that has become the shadow second.

• 1:00:08Speaker 03

  It's kind of like on Snapchat, when you see someone mention a product on Snapchat, it's extremely hard to tell if they got sent it or if they actually like it.

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:16Speaker 03

  I follow a lot of fashion people.

• 1:00:18Speaker 01

  But with a lot of these, like, from what I understand from like social media influencer outreach and stuff like that, it's not always paid.

• 1:00:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  They just get the products for free, right?

• 1:00:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, sometimes you can't tell it's like, did they get the product for free? Did they buy it?

• 1:00:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:00:30Speaker 03

  Are they getting it for free and getting paid?

• 1:00:32Speaker 01

  I think a lot of it's, a lot of people get their product free.

• 1:00:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and I.

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  But you never know.

• 1:00:36Nilay Patel?

  There's just this weird.

• 1:00:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:00:38Nilay Patel?

  Where like we live, we, we all live in a world of like.

• 1:00:40Speaker 01

  We're journalists.

• 1:00:41Nilay Patel?

  Very clear boundaries.

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:00:44Nilay Patel?

  Uh, Squarespace and what I think is true.

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  I am not paid by Squarespace. I just am, I'm a journalist, happen to like their product and I actually pay for my Squarespace site.

• 1:00:53Nilay Patel?

  The CMO, like literally just like spiked a football.

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  I pay for my Squarespace site.

• 1:00:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, this, this guy trolling me. Uh.

• 1:00:59Speaker 02

  We're getting trolled in the background. It's great.

• 1:01:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Uh, anyway. Do you want, I gotta do.

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  A lot of people wearing the Fitbit, uh, big.

• 1:01:06Speaker 02

  What do you want me to do?

• 1:01:06Nilay Patel?

  If you're watching, you know what's happening? I know what's happening right now. If you're watching this, architects are walking through our, our, they're, we're expanding the company. So they're looking, so like literally they'd like, we just got looked at like fish in an aquarium to be like, and this is where podcasting happens. And like some architect was like drawing on a sheet of paper.

• 1:01:24Speaker 02

  You know what that architect needs is a surface book.

• 1:01:27Speaker 01

  Yes, architects are perfect for surface books.

• 1:01:29Nilay Patel?

  Get out there. Show them your surface book.

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  Or for iPad Pros.

• 1:01:33Speaker 02

  Oh, iPad Pros maybe.

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  I think those are really where this market is like, like that's the definite of. You will use almost all the features that this product has.

• 1:01:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, if you're an architect.

• 1:01:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. But can you?

• 1:01:45Nilay Patel?

  If you're an architect, please tweet at Joanna right now.

• 1:01:47Speaker 02

  I dread that as an architect.

• 1:01:48Speaker 01

  Actually, if you are an architect, I am looking for an architect. So I would be very interested in talking to you. I'm just working on some things.

• 1:01:55Nilay Patel?

  I'd like, I'd like a farm upstate.

• 1:01:58Nilay Patel?

  As I was talking about reasons that we want to meet an architect.

• 1:02:01Speaker 02

  Joanna, you just made me quote the Decemberists.

• 1:02:03Nilay Patel?

  That's a lot. I would like to thank Braintree for sponsoring today's episode of The Vergecast. Braintree gives you a full stack payment solution, support for all payment types your customers might want. You can start accepting Android Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal, Bitcoin, Venmo, cards, whatever's next. Uh, just the single integrations. Like, I don't know, you just type some words in your computer and you just get paid. Uh, it's, there's superior fraud protection, there's customer service, there's fast payouts. Please, my God, just visit braintreepayments.com/vergecast. Uh, that'd be cool.

• 1:02:30Speaker 02

  I think everybody at, on the Hype Council should give us one, one social follow.

• 1:02:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:36Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. You should follow The Real Verge on Snapchat because I run that account and it's pretty awesome.

• 1:02:42Nilay Patel?

  Wait, hold on, Caitlin, I got a request. Hype check Hamilton.

• 1:02:45Speaker 03

  What?

• 1:02:46Nilay Patel?

  I just came in.

• 1:02:47Speaker 03

  Fourteen at least. Come close to the mic for your hype check.

• 1:02:50Speaker 06

  Okay, okay. Hamilton will make you feel better about America, about democracy, about like, about the accessibility of, of like, great art. It will make you feel better about everything, okay? So just like, just like, go, like, hang out, wait for the lottery tickets. Do what you want to do, okay? It's amazing. It's so good.

• 1:03:09Speaker 02

  This is the only thing that you feel sincerely good about, isn't it? Everything else is dark and grim, except for this and One Direction.

• 1:03:16Speaker 06

  There's nobody who's ever been exposed to either Hamilton or One Direction who was like, I feel upset afterwards. They're like, this is a joy beam straight into my heart.

• 1:03:28Speaker 06

  Is how you feel.

• 1:03:29Nilay Patel?

  But I think that's the title of the episode.

• 1:03:30Speaker 03

  All right, what social channels should they follow?

• 1:03:32Speaker 06

  Social channel, you should go to theverge.tumblr.com.

• 1:03:35Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 1:03:36Speaker 06

  Um, yeah.

• 1:03:37Nilay Patel?

  Lauren?

• 1:03:38Speaker 04

  Uh, you should follow Verge Teens.

• 1:03:41Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  Oh, Teen Verge.

• 1:03:44Speaker 04

  It's at Teen Verge on Twitter.

• 1:03:46Speaker 01

  At Teen Verge.

• 1:03:47Speaker 04

  It's pretty funny.

• 1:03:48Speaker 06

  Somebody who runs it is really great.

• 1:03:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't know who runs it.

• 1:03:51Speaker 06

  It's my, it's my, um, conduit into like teen culture these days, which I'm like.

• 1:03:58Speaker 02

  Who runs it? Somebody in Orlando.

• 1:04:00Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god, we're screwed. Okay.

• 1:04:02Speaker 04

  Nobody knows.

• 1:04:03Speaker 02

  You can also find all of our podcasts, and we've got a bunch of them, on iTunes.com/theverge. That includes us, Verge ESP, about entertainment, science, and culture, What's Tech, and of course, Control Walt Delete. You should go there.

• 1:04:19Nilay Patel?

  This week's Control Walt Delete, which went up just before, it's really good because Walt doesn't like the Steve Jobs movie.

• 1:04:25Speaker 04

  I didn't either, and I want to talk to him about it, because I think it was terrible.

• 1:04:30Nilay Patel?

  But Walt, like Walt pulled the trump card, which is like, I really knew Steve Jobs, like, very well.

• 1:04:35Speaker 02

  Oh, he Lloyd Benson'd it.

• 1:04:36Nilay Patel?

  And he like told me a bunch of really cool Steve Jobs stories on that show this week.

• 1:04:40Speaker 04

  His column that went up yesterday.

• 1:04:42Nilay Patel?

  His column is great, yeah.

• 1:04:43Speaker 04

  I read that yesterday.

• 1:04:44Nilay Patel?

  I won't reveal any names, but a lot of very important people have responded to that column and said this is real. And also, MC Hammer tweeted it today, so that was like a fun moment in The Verge. Like, what's more Verge than Walt writing about Steve Jobs, getting promoted by MC Hammer? That's our website, everybody.

• 1:05:03Speaker 04

  MC Hammer, did he have a relationship with Steve Jobs?

• 1:05:05Nilay Patel?

  Who knows?

• 1:05:06Speaker 04

  Interesting.

• 1:05:07Speaker 02

  I would, I would look into it.

• 1:05:09Nilay Patel?

  That's actually the famous line, "Please Hammer, don't hurt him." That was Steve Jobs.

• 1:05:15Nilay Patel?

  That's our show, please.

• 1:05:16Speaker 02

  It's a really dangerous topic.

• 1:05:16Nilay Patel?

  Please, please don't blame us for anything that happened here. Please don't hold us responsible for this content.

• 1:05:22Speaker 02

  Rock and roll.

• 1:05:23Speaker 04

  Bye.

• 1:05:23Speaker 01

  Rock and roll.

• 1:05:24Speaker 04

  Bye, sorry.

• 1:05:25Speaker 01

  Rock and roll.