The state of Android, smartwatches and Twitter hearts

This week brought no shortage of topics to discuss, but one item stood out among the smoke and mirrors. Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, and Dan Seifert are joined by Nicola Fumo of Racked in the hypeseat to discuss the state of smartwatches, what might happen with Google's two operating systems, and of course, the new branded vape from musical artist The Weeknd. It's not one to miss. 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.

• 0:02Nilay Patel?

  Well, that's a good start for this November 5th, 2015, knowing that it's somewhere on the website that you love and co-create with your friends, that there's a vicious burn lurking.

• 0:13Speaker 01

  Hey, at least I didn't mention the Packers in it.

• 0:15Nilay Patel?

  I don't want to talk about that. Anyway, so Dieter is here. Hello. Welcome to the Vergecast, Dieter. I'm... He's generally here, but you weren't gone last week, so you're back. Dan Seifert is here.

• 0:27Speaker 02

  I am.

• 0:28Nilay Patel?

  Hello. And then my girl in the hype seat, Nicola Fumo from Ract is here.

• 0:32Speaker 03

  Hello.

• 0:33Nilay Patel?

  Nicola, how's, what is it, Project Overlord?

• 0:36Speaker 03

  Dude, Operation Figurehead.

• 0:39Nilay Patel?

  Operation Figurehead.

• 0:40Speaker 03

  Come on.

• 0:41Nilay Patel?

  Project Overlord. How's your hashtag slash life strategy going?

• 0:47Speaker 03

  I mean, you know I've been meeting with your staff.

• 0:50Nilay Patel?

  Yes. Nicola, this is true, so here's, I'll just want to set some scenes for people.

• 0:56Speaker 03

  Please.

• 0:57Nilay Patel?

  So we, at Vox Media, we have an office building here in Midtown New York. We have, basically, every floor of this office building contains Vox Media employees at this point. There's a guy in the basement, just desperately...

• 1:07Speaker 03

  Oh, sub-basement, yeah.

• 1:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, no, okay, SB1. He's down there, right in butt sports. And then, so The Verge is on the ninth floor, the studio where we're recording this on the eighth floor, and then Ract, and Dieter and Curb are on the 10th floor. But I've suddenly noticed that many, many, there's a lot of cross-floor pollination as Nicola has begun to weave...

• 1:29Speaker 03

  You'll catch me all over the place.

• 1:30Nilay Patel?

  She's begun to weave her way.

• 1:31Speaker 03

  You'll catch me on nine, you'll catch me on eight. I've been on five. What do you even know about five?

• 1:34Nilay Patel?

  I've never been to five. What the hell happens on five?

• 1:38Speaker 02

  You have to take a different elevator to get there. That's all I need.

• 1:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, you'll take a different elevator.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  Wait, so you can't go directly from five to nine?

• 1:43Nilay Patel?

  There's one elevator.

• 1:44Speaker 02

  There's only one central elevator that hits all the floors.

• 1:47Nilay Patel?

  This is the worst radio in history.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 1:49Speaker 02

  It's split off at the seventh floor.

• 1:50Nilay Patel?

  Here's what I want you to do.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  Let's start this all over.

• 1:52Nilay Patel?

  Now, look, here...

• 1:53Speaker 01

  Hello, welcome to the Vergecast.

• 1:54Nilay Patel?

  Let's talk about elevators.

• 1:56Speaker 01

  Greetings, mobile accomplishers.

• 1:57Nilay Patel?

  Anyhow, Nicola, you will begin to see her, the fruits of her subtle weaving, I don't know what that means.

• 2:06Speaker 03

  My Operation Figurehead.

• 2:08Nilay Patel?

  Operation Overlord.

• 2:11Nilay Patel?

  Anyhow, Nicola's here. Hi Nicola.

• 2:13Speaker 03

  Hi.

• 2:13Nilay Patel?

  I have a question for you.

• 2:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:15Nilay Patel?

  Um, since, you know, you're a style editor and all. I walked out of the house wearing this, this thing, like the shirt not buttoned, and my wife was like, "You look like a shithead," basically. Shithead or no?

• 2:26Speaker 03

  I mean-

• 2:27Nilay Patel?

  So I'm wearing, the people on the radio, I'm wearing a t-shirt with a shirt over it and then a jacket over the shirt.

• 2:31Speaker 03

  I don't really know why you did that, but I don't think you look like a shithead.

• 2:35Nilay Patel?

  I mean, she was basically like, "You can make your own dumb mistakes, Neela." And like, like, literally, like, dismissed me.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  Were those are like, exact words, shithead? They came out of Becky's mouth?

• 2:44Nilay Patel?

  Becky, I think, um, she didn't say shithead. But we've been married for some time, and I, you're married, you know.

• 2:51Speaker 02

  I, uh, yeah.

• 2:51Speaker 03

  Code words for shithead.

• 2:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, she, she said-

• 2:54Speaker 02

  Frequently, nothing needs to be said for me to hear in my head, shithead.

• 2:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, there was a, there was a grumbling noise, a series of stomping motions.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  Was it, was it one of those, "So that, huh?"

• 3:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, yeah, it was bad, it was bad.

• 3:05Speaker 03

  What is an outfit that she likes? Where she's like, "Ooh, good work."

• 3:08Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah, there's, I mean, she purchases most of my clothes, so like, that is, that's like a thing. Um, but yeah, she likes it when the shirts are buttoned and I wear a tie. That's a, that's a fact.

• 3:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You do that often.

• 3:18Nilay Patel?

  Yes, uh, again, because I'm five and I'm dressed by the woman I'm married to.

• 3:21Speaker 03

  I always figured you're going somewhere. Like, that's what figureheads do. They have to go places where they have to.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  Wouldn't it be creepy if you were five and dressed by the woman that you were married to?

• 3:28Nilay Patel?

  Well, not physically dressed.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  But if you were five and married, that seems wrong.

• 3:32Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah. Well, as a five-year-old, I married, um, a fellow kid in a garden. A lovely ceremony, recess. You, you didn't happen to? All right, whatever, this is our show. Uh, as you, as you may have noticed from this conversation, it's about technology and culture, and how they blend together. Uh, so there's a reason Nicola's here. I think an ultimate-

• 3:55Speaker 03

  Something's an accident.

• 3:55Nilay Patel?

  An ultimate Nicola moment happened this week.

• 3:58Speaker 03

  Oh, yes.

• 3:59Nilay Patel?

  Go ahead, go ahead. Tell me all about it.

• 4:01Speaker 03

  Pack vaporizer, which is the iPhone of vaporizers, to put it short. I don't get paid by them, yet.

• 4:09Speaker 03

  But they collaborated with The Weeknd, no third E, and-

• 4:16Speaker 01

  How do you, how do you denote that when saying something? Do you, like, weekend?

• 4:19Speaker 03

  Dude, my phone is like, it will not learn Weekend, Weekend.

• 4:24Nilay Patel?

  How often are you typing that into your phone?

• 4:26Speaker 03

  Too often.

• 4:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:27Speaker 03

  It's happening.

• 4:28Nilay Patel?

  It seems as though.

• 4:29Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm. Um-

• 4:31Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, so he, he, The Weeknd and Pax, the vaporizer brand, have collaborated on a, uh, tour-specific Weekend vaporizer. That's like, I think it's 325 instead of 280, but it says XO, which is The Weeknd's brand, on it. And it plays, I can't feel my face, like, when you're smoking the herbal matter.

• 4:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so it's a vape that plays pop music at you when you suck weed.

• 4:59Speaker 03

  That you can only buy at Weekend shows.

• 5:00Nilay Patel?

  Ooh.

• 5:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  I'm, I'm very confused by this tie-up, because The Weeknd sings about doing pills all the time. Like, every single Weekend lyric has a reference to pills. How do you do pills through a vape?

• 5:11Speaker 03

  Well, I think it's a different version. It's a new way to not feel your face. He's like, standing. He's got, he's like a pop artist and trying pot.

• 5:20Nilay Patel?

  I just think, I, I just think it's amazing that, like, A, well, you, we talked about this on the show last time you were here.

• 5:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:24Nilay Patel?

  Like, A, it's a gadget that has made smoking weed totally acceptable all over the place.

• 5:28Speaker 03

  Beautiful gadget.

• 5:28Nilay Patel?

  It's a beautiful gadget. B, The Weeknd's two major endorsements now are Apple in, like, a weed computer.

• 5:36Speaker 03

  And Alexander Wang. He also this week announced he's gonna be doing, like, a collaboration with Alexander Wang. So he's just, like, all over the place.

• 5:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, he's doing it. I mean, ultimate Nicola moment. Like, tell me, so when, when this happened at The Verge, like, we all, like, freaked out. Tell me what happened at Ract when this went down.

• 5:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, when I got this press release, I just, like, went into the Ract lounge and I was like, "We have reached peak Nicola. These things are happening. We have to write about them right now." And then, you know, someone did, because, figure out, I didn't write it myself.

• 6:03Nilay Patel?

  Ooh, you, you sent it out.

• 6:04Speaker 03

  I signed it.

• 6:05Nilay Patel?

  That's a, so.

• 6:06Speaker 02

  Delegation.

• 6:07Nilay Patel?

  Do you also do this dismissive hand-wave when you assign stories?

• 6:09Speaker 03

  Yes, I have, yeah, that's my Slack emoji.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  All right, well, so hang on. So he, he had a hit album, and then he immediately turned and partnered with a tech company, a weed tech company.

• 6:19Nilay Patel?

  Well, the album... The album came out and the single that was launched off the album was at WWDC with Apple.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  If he gets named as a creative director for a tech company, I am officially naming him the next Will I Am.

• 6:32Speaker 03

  But he probably can't because he's too in, he's too in bed with Apple. So he can't like, can't really go anywhere from there.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  That's, that's true.

• 6:39Nilay Patel?

  He can be the creative director for the weed computer company.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, that, that, that's acceptable.

• 6:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:44Speaker 03

  Natural.

• 6:45Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I think that's the most important story of the week in terms of technology culture.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  That's the first cast, everybody.

• 6:49Speaker 03

  This is the, this is the math stuff.

• 6:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 6:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:52Nilay Patel?

  This is, I mean, but this is the thing, right? Like here's the big musician partnering with the gadget company and the biggest tech company in the world. Like, I don't know. It's like one of those things. All right. So we got, there's other news we should talk about, although I think we, I think we could just be done there.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:06Nilay Patel?

  So some minor news, a little stuff. Uh, Google this week, last week, is this week or last week?

• 7:13Speaker 01

  It's a little both.

• 7:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Uh, well, it's announced, I think at the tail end of last week. Um, it came out in a Wall Street Journal story that was suspiciously planted.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:23Nilay Patel?

  That Android and Chrome OS would something, something.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  Canoodle.

• 7:28Nilay Patel?

  Something.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. Merge.

• 7:31Nilay Patel?

  Merge.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Come together.

• 7:32Nilay Patel?

  Kill one another.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  Right now.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  Over me.

• 7:37Nilay Patel?

  And so we put up a headline. I'm just gonna, I'm gonna reveal some inside baseball.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:41Nilay Patel?

  We put up a headline based on some reporting that we had been trying to do for a long time.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 7:45Nilay Patel?

  Uh, cause we had heard this a long time ago, that Android would quote, kill Chrome OS.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:51Nilay Patel?

  Which is basically what Google was saying, but they're trying very hard not to say.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:56Nilay Patel?

  Like five years from now, there will not be a product called Chrome OS. It's like fairly obvious.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 8:01Speaker 02

  At least not a consumer facing product called Chrome OS.

• 8:04Nilay Patel?

  Who the, who the hell knows?

• 8:04Speaker 01

  Well, so the, the question, like the, the technical question is like, what, what is it, what does it even mean to be Android or Chrome OS? And like, what's the foundation of it? And like, to me, it's like,

• 8:14Speaker 02

  That's a technical question or the existential question?

• 8:16Speaker 01

  Both. And it's like, it's, it's like the, the kernel that like, does, that makes other things happen, right? Um, so like, we talk about like TV OS and watch OS is basically fundamentally being iOS. I don't know, like, so is Android getting packed into Chrome or Chrome OS? Or is Chrome OS the pieces of it that you care about getting packed into Android? It's like, are they going to build Android up to support it? Or are they going to like, trim? I don't know that Chrome OS needs that much more trimming down. Are they going to trim Chrome OS down so it can run on other phone type things?

• 8:51Nilay Patel?

  But anyway, so the backstory is we put up this headline and said, "Kill." Because we, we had been, we had been hot on this case.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 8:57Nilay Patel?

  The story came out in the Journal. It looked very much like it had been massaged by a certain large search company. And that, I mean, whatever, if they wanted to place, DuckDuckGo told, leaked to the Journal. And I mean, I don't mean to say there's any like malice there. Like, it just looked like it had been placed, you know? Like, like you do, you get a story. Anyway, we put up "Kill." Everybody freaked out.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  Everybody being, everybody we knew at Google.

• 9:24Nilay Patel?

  Everybody we knew at Google, because a lot of people Google, uh, read the verge. Um, and so there was this like instant flurry of conversation about how everything will be fine. They're not killing it. The products will remain separate. They're still selling so many Chromebooks to schools. They're gonna sell them forever.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 9:42Nilay Patel?

  Suddenly Hiroshi Lochheimer is like.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Tweeting.

• 9:45Nilay Patel?

  Tweeting.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  Well, he's been tweeting a while.

• 9:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but, but like, if you're, the reason I brought up the "it's placed in the Journal" part is like, if you're gonna say the stuff to the Wall Street Journal.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:55Nilay Patel?

  And get the story in the Journal.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:57Nilay Patel?

  Why not just?

• 9:58Speaker 01

  Get it right.

• 9:58Nilay Patel?

  Get it right. Or why not come out ahead of that story and tell it yourself and let everybody? It's, there's like a weird sloppy messaging part where it's like, they didn't really know what they were wanting to say. They said something and now they've been scrambling to correct it ever since.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, including like tweets from Hiroshi and also finally a post on the Google Chrome blog that Chrome OS is here to stay. And if you read through the post, uh, the joke I made on Twitter, uh, is that Google is really good at parsing data and they're also pretty good at parsing words.

• 10:26Nilay Patel?

  Ooh. Ooh. Although I will say Google PR is the most notoriously disconnected PR operation.

• 10:33Speaker 02

  Yes, it is, it is a Hydra head of PR.

• 10:35Nilay Patel?

  It's like, it's like actually hard.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  You know?

• 10:38Nilay Patel?

  To suggest that they have like done some like careful arranging of words.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  I've dealt, I, I, I would say that it's about average. I've dealt, I've been, I've been dealing a lot of PR issues over the past while and I would, I would, I'd put them in the middle of the.

• 10:52Nilay Patel?

  Oh yeah, no, they're good.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:53Nilay Patel?

  I enjoy, I'm just saying, it's, it's hard to like. Well, there's some mastermind plan going on in the background.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  Because there's not at Google. Google is like, like Sergey Brin gets an idea and all of a sudden there's like a giant multimillion dollar division like a week later. And like, are we gonna tell anybody about this? Like, yeah, I guess.

• 11:10Nilay Patel?

  Now we can do that more often because he runs Alphabet.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  Right. He's got like 26 letters to play with.

• 11:14Nilay Patel?

  Did you see that story, Nikola, that Sergey Brin literally renamed the company Alphabet like on a whim? Did no focus testing or asking of people?

• 11:20Speaker 03

  No, I didn't see that, but that's very figure headed.

• 11:23Nilay Patel?

  That's what I'm saying. That's why, that's why I told you. Like, that's, that's like life goals.

• 11:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:29Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. So what do you, what do you, I think this is smart. I actually think Google needs a unified platform. I did a whole show with Walt yesterday where we talked about Google making its own hardware. Like they, Google needs to get into a different kind of game that isn't just like search.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  It's, it's, it's very odd that they've had these two separate platforms developing separate tracks and like for different purposes. Like when you think about like Apple and Microsoft, it kind of makes sense for them to have a desktop OS and a mobile OS because they have a legacy behind them. Like Google started this less than 10 years ago, right? For both Android and Chrome OS. So for them to have developed along two different tracks is kind of weird and it makes complete sense for them to eventually merge them and take the best of both and, and put it together.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  So what is Chrome OS fundamentally? Like what does it depend on as a computing platform?

• 12:18Speaker 01

  The web. Merging these two things is a hedge against the death of the web, which Google is terrified of. And they need to make sure that they are prepared to have a computing platform that can compete if the web ends up not being as important as apps in a real way that affects their business.

• 12:34Nilay Patel?

  I don't think the web is dying. Like, you know, there's all this stuff.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:38Nilay Patel?

  Like, it's hard to kill the web with a product as shitty as Apple News.

• 12:44Nilay Patel?

  You know, like, does anybody use Apple News?

• 12:46Speaker 03

  I do.

• 12:47Nilay Patel?

  Do you?

• 12:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:48Nilay Patel?

  Have you checked Apple News?

• 12:50Speaker 03

  I read the Times briefing on it every morning.

• 12:53Nilay Patel?

  So you use Apple News to bypass the New York Times paywall?

• 12:57Speaker 03

  I guess.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  I mean, that's totally legitimate.

• 13:00Nilay Patel?

  Uh, but do you use it for anything else? You use it to read Ract?

• 13:03Speaker 03

  Well.

• 13:05Speaker 03

  It doesn't update. It'll be like a day old.

• 13:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 13:07Speaker 03

  It'll have nineteen hours ago stories and I'm like, we wrote stuff since then. But it won't. And I ask people here about it and they're like, yeah, not, we can't do anything. It's them. And I was like, oh, okay.

• 13:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:17Nilay Patel?

  My.

• 13:19Speaker 03

  Just makes that noise. But somehow, but the New York Times one is.

• 13:22Speaker 02

  It's just emulating a newspaper in that respect.

• 13:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:24Speaker 02

  You're getting a surprise news.

• 13:25Speaker 03

  But the New York Times one isn't. It's like, it's the six o'clock thing is there at six o'clock in the morning. And then I'm reading about Syria when I need to. Try to stay current.

• 13:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And I gotta figure out it's gotta know. You get that call. You're like, I actually have some deep, deep ideas about Syria right now. Uh, no, I actually have heard a lot of people complain from a lot of publications that their stuff doesn't update.

• 13:50Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 13:50Nilay Patel?

  Um, cause it's like a glorified RSS, right?

• 13:52Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is.

• 13:54Nilay Patel?

  It's the backend. Um, I don't know. We should figure out the New York Times is doing that and deliver our own Syria news every day at six.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  Maybe you just have great news.

• 14:01Nilay Patel?

  Apple News gets super weird every day at six.

• 14:04Speaker 03

  But you only can catch it for an hour.

• 14:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Wait, wait, wait. So actually, hype check Apple News.

• 14:09Speaker 03

  Hmm. On a number scale?

• 14:11Nilay Patel?

  However you want to do it.

• 14:13Speaker 03

  Three stars.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  Wait, three stars or three likes? Oh, we should talk about that.

• 14:18Nilay Patel?

  That's in the lightning round.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  God damn it.

• 14:20Nilay Patel?

  The third section of the Vercast today.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  Are we gonna talk about Twitter lightning in the lightning round?

• 14:24Nilay Patel?

  Maybe.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  Feelings.

• 14:25Nilay Patel?

  Okay. The way I structured the show today, just so you know.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:29Nilay Patel?

  Is we've got this, the Google thing. Uh, we, Nicola has four hundred smartwatches over there that we should talk about. Uh, and then I've, I've added what I, what I consider to be a lightning round.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 14:39Nilay Patel?

  It's actually, I've also named it the lightning round. So it's beyond consideration.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  What else is there to say about Chromeless and Android?

• 14:47Nilay Patel?

  There's kind of a lot, I feel like. I don't know. So we, you've been reviewing tons of phones lately.

• 14:52Speaker 02

  Uh, yes.

• 14:53Nilay Patel?

  Uh, the whole site has been reviewing tons of phones lately. Um, where's Android at right now?

• 14:59Speaker 02

  Uh, I, I can't really say that like Android's in a different place now than it would have been a year ago. It's still the same, the, it's still the same thing where the best Android experience is on Nexus devices, which, uh, come with their own limitations and things like that. I will say that, uh,

• 15:17Speaker 02

  The Nexus devices of today are much better than Nexus devices have ever been before in the respect that you can go and buy a Nexus device without a huge compromise. It used to be like a year ago, or even two years ago, or however long, if you were buying a Nexus device, you were compromising the camera, you're compromising the battery, you're compromising somewhere where like if you went and bought Samsung's best phone, or HTC's best phone at the time, you got a better experience on those levels, but the Nexus gave you the best software. So now we have Nexus phones have the best software, they've got really great cameras, great battery life, et cetera, et cetera. But they're still like niche products, niche things. It's like, that's not changed. So, uh, you know, state of Android is kind of the same.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  Here's my question about this merging. If Android is not powerful like enough, or it has, I don't know, the wrong model, I think, and we haven't seen it on processors powerful enough to run full desktop class Chrome, the way that you see Chrome on Chrome OS, right? Like, that thing is a heavy beast of an app, and I don't know that Android could lift it. And that, but then on the flip side, when you look at the kind of processors and stuff that Chrome OS typically runs on, whether it be ARM or x86, is that power efficient enough to like shrink down, put Android on top of it and put it on a phone? I don't think so. So like, for me, the biggest question is like fundamentally, um, what underpinning work do they have to do to make this happen?

• 16:41Speaker 02

  Right.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  And if Android ends up being the base, uh, we need to see how it runs on like comparable Intel hardware, which is why I'm incredibly interested to see what the Pixel C does. Android also needs, uh, I don't know, windowing, or split screen, or something, uh, built into it.

• 16:57Speaker 02

  Something that works over on a screen bigger than seven inches.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  I mean, the state of Android is, um, actually not the same as it ever was insofar as like, uh, the, like Samsung's not making money hand over fist on it anymore.

• 17:09Speaker 02

  Right.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  So like, uh, who's making money on Android? Right?

• 17:13Speaker 02

  I mean, Samsung, Samsung is still making money, it's just they are making less money than before, which is like terrible for the stock market.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:19Speaker 02

  So, uh, but yeah, I mean, they're, they're, they're not selling their high-end devices like they used to, and people aren't buying them, and it's a bummer, because it's the best products they've ever made, but, um... Yeah, who's making money off of Android is an excellent question. Is Google really making money off of Android? Google makes money off of search. They might make a token thing off of Android.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  I bet they make money off Android.

• 17:40Nilay Patel?

  But that's why they should make phones.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:43Nilay Patel?

  Or tablets or whatever. Like, I don't know. Would you buy a Google laptop over an Apple laptop?

• 17:49Speaker 03

  Nah.

• 17:49Nilay Patel?

  Why? Why?

• 17:52Speaker 03

  Actually, I did use that Chromebook one day.

• 17:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 17:55Speaker 03

  Dieter saved me.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:57Speaker 03

  And it was fine experience. A little bit to get used to, but it was fine overall.

• 18:02Speaker 01

  You didn't know it had a touchscreen, as I recall.

• 18:04Speaker 03

  Oh, no. It took hours before that was revealed to me by me. Um, no, because I'm used, I don't know, because I'm used to this thing and it works good. It's fast.

• 18:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Like, I'm ready. Am I the only one? I'm like, I've had this stuff for so long. It's worked basically the same for so long.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  You gonna buy a Surface Book?

• 18:26Nilay Patel?

  Well, we found out today that Windows destroys our calendars.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's.

• 18:33Nilay Patel?

  So we, as the viewer, listener, whoever you are, however you wish to consume us, um, it's a ridiculous phrase, uh, may know, we run our app, our business on Google Apps. We have a lot of Windows 10 devices floating around. We plug them in, we plug them in, we plug them into those Google Apps, uh, and they've just been destroying our lives. Like, I don't, there's no easier way to piss off 50 people worldwide than to just change every calendar entry across three calendars.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:05Nilay Patel?

  Just move around, back and forth by an hour. When's the features meeting? I don't know. Is it 3 o'clock? Is it 5 o'clock? Is it canceled? Who the hell knows?

• 19:12Speaker 01

  Well, when those.

• 19:13Nilay Patel?

  Windows 10 does it. That's why it keeps fucking it up.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  And then other programs, and I don't know which, are randomly like sending updates that mean nothing. They don't change the calendar, but I would say two or three times a day, like a random staff member sends me an email about a calendar appointment that neither of us are actually going to. I just get the email.

• 19:29Nilay Patel?

  And then because it looks intentional, because it's emailed, people reply to the email, other snippy emails, like, literally Walt just sent Tom an email that was like, the tech meeting is not at 1pm, Tom. And Tom was like, sorry.

• 19:38Speaker 02

  I've gotten a lot of those emails, because it's, it's, because. The reality is that Tom and myself are the ones that use the most Windows devices because we're constantly testing them and reviewing them and whatever. So frequently, the calendar rearrangement appears to come from my email address.

• 19:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 19:56Speaker 02

  And I get emails back from Liz, who's ready to bite my head off the next time the science meeting moves.

• 20:02Nilay Patel?

  Literally.

• 20:02Speaker 02

  Literally.

• 20:03Nilay Patel?

  The note was, Dan has never been to the science meeting. Why did he change? Like, it's destroying our lives. Like, I think of the verge as a family, as a cohesive unit, as a team, as, you know, it's us against the world, you know, whatever. It's us against Mashable forever, you know? But we need, we need our bonds to stay strong. And Windows 10 is just tearing at the fabric of our society.

• 20:27Speaker 03

  This is so funny because we're the same company, but obviously on Ract, like, we haven't had this problem at all because everyone has an iPhone.

• 20:33Nilay Patel?

  Oh, if you want to, if you want to take over Ract, you know what you do? You divide and conquer by giving one person a Windows phone. Just literally tear it apart. People will be like, what happened to Ract? It was so promising, it was growing, it had all this talent. And you'd be like, well, Nikola introduced Windows 10.

• 20:52Speaker 03

  Nikola got interested in tech and bought this weird phone.

• 20:55Speaker 02

  Nikola had to have that Surface Book.

• 20:57Speaker 03

  She had this stupid mission, Operation Something, I don't know.

• 21:02Speaker 02

  So we have to do more research on what the hell is causing this.

• 21:05Nilay Patel?

  Sure.

• 21:06Speaker 02

  But it appears to be the native calendar app on Windows 10, which is what you sign into when you use the native mail app on Windows 10. It is having all kinds of sync issues with Google Apps accounts.

• 21:15Nilay Patel?

  But it moves, it moves, it moves appointments that you didn't create, but you are going to an hour later.

• 21:22Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 21:22Nilay Patel?

  Consistently.

• 21:23Speaker 02

  Which might be related to daylight savings time, who knows?

• 21:26Nilay Patel?

  Right, but it doesn't do it by you interacting with it, it just does it.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  Just does it.

• 21:29Nilay Patel?

  Just because.

• 21:30Speaker 02

  When it feels like it.

• 21:33Nilay Patel?

  You know, whether I'm designing, presenting, writing, or building, Dropbox makes it simple to work together on any file.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  And it doesn't mess up your calendar.

• 21:41Nilay Patel?

  Now, we're just making promises. Over 400 people, 400 people, 400 people use Dropbox.

• 21:50Speaker 03

  Like 400, 4500?

• 21:52Speaker 01

  Technically true.

• 21:53Nilay Patel?

  470 people use Dropbox around the world.

• 21:56Speaker 03

  Around the world.

• 21:58Nilay Patel?

  Who knew? Over 400 million people around the world already use Dropbox. And now, I mean, ring the alarm, there's Dropbox just for your business. Dropbox for Business helps you work the way you want to work. All the things you love about Dropbox with enterprise-grade security and administrative controls to help your team work together on any file type, on any device, simply and securely. If you could move your calendars on Windows to Dropbox, that would be great. Customizable sharing controls like expiration dates and passwords for shared links are dope. That's not a sentence, Dropbox PR people, think about it. Dropbox for Business enables your entire team to work the way they want to work, any file, from anywhere. What do I like the best about Dropbox? Do you like anything about Dropbox?

• 22:38Speaker 01

  I like a lot of things about Dropbox.

• 22:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's pretty good.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I like, I like how it automatically syncs my files and makes it relatively easy to share stuff.

• 22:44Nilay Patel?

  There you go. Yeah, it's good. Anyway, look, over 100 businesses, over 100,000 businesses already use Dropbox for Business. Dropbox for Business, it's all yours, Dan Seifert.

• 22:55Speaker 02

  Yes, we are, we are actually one of those companies that use it.

• 22:58Nilay Patel?

  We do.

• 22:58Speaker 02

  Box Media.

• 22:59Nilay Patel?

  We do, for moving files.

• 23:01Speaker 02

  Moving files? Syncing stuff.

• 23:03Nilay Patel?

  We should get Dropbox for Business.

• 23:05Speaker 03

  We have it.

• 23:06Nilay Patel?

  Oh, do we?

• 23:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, dude.

• 23:08Nilay Patel?

  See, the thing about figureheads.

• 23:09Speaker 02

  Unlimited storage.

• 23:10Nilay Patel?

  I don't do anything. I do some slacking, I do some pointing.

• 23:13Speaker 03

  I went to the Dropbox. I prioritized the Dropbox party at South by Southwest because I was like, I love Dropbox so much, I want to party with it.

• 23:20Nilay Patel?

  Wow, see, that should have been in the.

• 23:22Speaker 03

  That should, there's that.

• 23:23Nilay Patel?

  How do you party with Dropbox?

• 23:25Speaker 01

  How do you party without Dropbox?

• 23:27Speaker 03

  I, I mean.

• 23:27Nilay Patel?

  This is ridiculous.

• 23:28Speaker 02

  You sync a playlist across a shared folder.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  Guys, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna verge cast in a t-shirt. It is fricking hot in here.

• 23:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it was so nice and cool in here.

• 23:39Speaker 01

  Also, my t-shirt doesn't match my overshirt. It's gray, which is inappropriate to a red shirt.

• 23:44Speaker 03

  No, Nilay is still unbuttoned.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  I got the, I got the western buttons. I just like ripped it open.

• 23:49Speaker 03

  Dan's the only one left.

• 23:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Don't make that move, Dan.

• 23:52Speaker 02

  Nope. Stand firm.

• 23:55Speaker 01

  Wow, it's way cooler with just your buttons open.

• 23:58Nilay Patel?

  This is ridiculous.

• 23:59Speaker 03

  The case being.

• 23:59Nilay Patel?

  Let's talk about smartwatches.

• 24:01Speaker 02

  This is super compelling audio content.

• 24:02Speaker 03

  Fashion tech right here.

• 24:03Nilay Patel?

  It's, I mean, which is more, we could talk about shirts all day, or Nikola could do that fashion tech.

• 24:09Speaker 02

  Amir Frawdy.

• 24:10Speaker 03

  A lot of that.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  Amir Frawdy at The Information says, just posted an article that says that Google recently talked with some microchip makers about developing chips based on Google's own preferred designs.

• 24:20Nilay Patel?

  That makes sense. I mean, that's just like increased verticalization. Like, Apple makes its own chips. It feels like everybody has to make their own chips.

• 24:27Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 24:28Nilay Patel?

  I, I, I, there's no way we can ever, ever remember this bet, but I would bet you five years now Google's fully making its own hardware.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  They, they are now and like, we're pretending.

• 24:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's like the pixel, the chroma pixel and pixel C, great, but like, I mean, they're in the market head to head with Apple, their own phones, their own laptops, like fully, fully integrated and fully consumer.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. Did you see that story about one of the engineers for Pixel?

• 24:54Nilay Patel?

  Cause, cause that basically means that they will, Google will kill Sony and Samsung and whoever else uses their operating, I mean, like, they'll be head to head with their own OEMs, which has never worked in the history of the world.

• 25:06Speaker 03

  Why?

• 25:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, Microsoft is dealing with it right now.

• 25:10Nilay Patel?

  Why is such a really good question? It's like, because Google, well, Microsoft is actually the best example. And so Microsoft makes Windows, their business for years and years and years was selling Windows to like Dell and Lenovo and HP. And they made the hardware and Microsoft made the software. The second Microsoft started making hardware, they started outclassing their hardware vendors. And the hardware vendors were doing dumb things, like trying to make software as well. So they would like add really bad software on top of Windows. So when you bought a cheap Dell laptop, it would come loaded with garbage. Because that's how they competed to differentiate Windows. But Microsoft like now makes the Surface and the Surface Book and they are objectively better than many of the computers from their own hardware vendors.

• 25:51Nilay Patel?

  And so if you're a hardware vendor, you're like, why am I competing with the provider of my software? And you walk away. And so the most famous example of this, which Dieter can probably tell you all about is Palm, which used to be a company called Palm.

• 26:05Nilay Patel?

  Dieter's gonna get another beer.

• 26:09Nilay Patel?

  So there was a company called Palm that made the original Palm Pilot and it's split into two companies, one called Palm One and one called Palm Source. Palm Source was going to be a software company for a whole world of cool Palm devices that ran the Palm OS.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  One of which was a company in Iowa called Handango, which made a Palm Pilot that had a little expandable memory slot.

• 26:27Nilay Patel?

  Oh my, this is such a saga. And then another one, there was Handango and there was Handspring.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  Handspring created by the original founders of Palm who were mad at Palm for being bad at their jobs.

• 26:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so Palm split, the original founders quit, started Handspring. And then Palm One bought Handspring back. So the founders came back and then they recombined it with Palm Source.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 26:54Nilay Patel?

  And then somewhere along the line, they split that off and sold it to a company called Access. I mean, it was like a disaster, like at every possible level of this plan, it was a disaster.

• 27:05Nilay Patel?

  There's something important about the visor that I'm trying to think of. The Handspring visor was a really important product for a specific.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  The Handspring visor was an important product for a specific reason because it was designed to take the basis of like a PDA and show that you could modularize stuff so that you could eventually make a phone.

• 27:24Nilay Patel?

  It became the trio.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  It became the trio.

• 27:26Nilay Patel?

  Right. So when Palm wanted to go into making phones, they made some of the first ever smartphones by buying Handspring, their old founders, and became Palm.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  Right. By the way, one of the reasons Handspring couldn't stay independent is they bought too much real estate.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  They got a swank ass headquarters and they're like, oh, we need to sell more phones. This is awkward.

• 27:49Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God. Anyhow, all like while all of that is happening, like Sony is licensing the software to make arguably the best handhelds ever in the Clee, because they were the coolest.

• 28:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, they never made a phone out of that.

• 28:02Nilay Patel?

  They made a phone, but they made the coolest ones. And all of this was just a wreck, like just wreckage, like industry wreckage left and right. And somewhere in there, like many phones are made and Dieter began a career.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  Yep. Yeah, actually, I, I started my career a little over 13 years ago.

• 28:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  Writing about the trio.

• 28:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 28:23Speaker 03

  I feel like I learned a little bit about something.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  Photos, if you know what to Google.

• 28:28Speaker 01

  What's the point of the story?

• 28:29Nilay Patel?

  The point of the story was that a software vendor trying to compete with its own OEMs by making its own hardware is always a bad idea. And there's so much noise in that ecosystem because everyone's mad at each other all the time that nothing ever moves forward.

• 28:44Nilay Patel?

  And so like Microsoft is facing it right now. Like all of Microsoft's OEM partners are mad, like Lenovo is mad, Dell's mad, whatever. They're all mad because Microsoft made its first laptop.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I think Microsoft is going to solve that problem by not caring.

• 28:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  That's like how they're, that's how they're gonna fix that.

• 28:59Nilay Patel?

  Unless Google shows up and makes an operating system and says to vendors, like, hey, you can pick this one, too.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:05Nilay Patel?

  And we're still gonna make hardware, too. But now you have, now you have a choice of like, which bad deal are you gonna take?

• 29:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:12Nilay Patel?

  But if Google like starts making its own phone and marketing heavily against Samsung, like no one will buy a Samsung phone. Like they will kill Samsung's mobile business.

• 29:18Speaker 02

  I mean, Apple's already killing Samsung's mobile business. So like, Google would just like put the knife into the body that's like fallen on the ground.

• 29:26Nilay Patel?

  Poor Samsung. Body on the ground, just bleeding S apps and services. Just can't do it.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 29:37Nilay Patel?

  And the S6 and the Note 5 are great.

• 29:38Speaker 02

  I bought one. I spent hundreds of dollars on one because it is the best product that they've ever made.

• 29:43Nilay Patel?

  Case that looks like a checkbook.

• 29:45Speaker 02

  Uh, cause uh, this is my dad case.

• 29:48Nilay Patel?

  It'd be amazing if you could open it up and like write a check on the screen and then like printed a checkout.

• 29:53Speaker 02

  So I could, in theory, because I have the S Pen. So I open it up.

• 29:57Nilay Patel?

  If you guys ever wanted to hear like the ultimate in Samsung branded content, it's Dan saying, I could write a check on my Galaxy Note because I have the S Pen.

• 30:10Nilay Patel?

  We should get money for that. That was an unprompted use of the phrase S Pen.

• 30:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, unprompted.

• 30:16Nilay Patel?

  Did you see the post we did about the Ariana Grande video with the Note 5?

• 30:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, the, the Note 5 commercial slash.

• 30:21Nilay Patel?

  That is some of the worst product placement I've ever seen in my life.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  It's unbelievable.

• 30:25Speaker 02

  She also has far better handwriting on a Note 5 than I do.

• 30:29Speaker 03

  Oh my God, I can't wait to watch it.

• 30:30Nilay Patel?

  Uh, it's for Focus, the new track Focus. Have you heard or seen this?

• 30:34Speaker 02

  There's literally a shot of like her standing in a circular room and the camera goes around and she's just taking selfies with the.

• 30:40Nilay Patel?

  Well, all the people take photos of her in a circle and she's like, it's like ridiculous.

• 30:45Speaker 02

  It's like all, all pretense of a plot goes right out the window.

• 30:48Nilay Patel?

  And I would say Caitlin Tiffany's post on our side about this thing is one of the best things we've published this month.

• 30:54Speaker 02

  It's pretty hot fire.

• 30:54Nilay Patel?

  All right, all right. We.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  Smart watches.

• 30:56Nilay Patel?

  We're so far from smart watches. All right, Nicola, you've got, you reviewed the Pebble Time round.

• 31:02Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, yeah, today, actually.

• 31:03Nilay Patel?

  They make a lot of shapes, uh, squares.

• 31:06Speaker 02

  No, they make circles.

• 31:07Speaker 03

  No triangles out there. What's this?

• 31:09Nilay Patel?

  Oh, man.

• 31:09Speaker 03

  Triangle shade, octagon shade.

• 31:15Nilay Patel?

  Why have you arranged a box to display the word Samsung Gear S2? What is happening over there?

• 31:22Speaker 03

  This is my kiosk, you know? You gave me this, I brought the fern.

• 31:26Nilay Patel?

  Nicola is running a mall kiosk in the corner of the studio.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  Did we ever figure out the name of the watch mall kiosk store?

• 31:33Nilay Patel?

  No, somebody please tweet at me. There's, there's an opposite of sunglass. Is it, watches the opposite of sunglasses?

• 31:38Speaker 02

  Sunglass Hut used to sell.

• 31:39Nilay Patel?

  So there's like a pair, like there's Sunglass Hut and then there's the Watch One.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, the Watch One.

• 31:44Nilay Patel?

  And I cannot for the life of me remember what the Watch One is called. Anyway.

• 31:48Speaker 02

  I'm gonna throw out the watch connection.

• 31:51Nilay Patel?

  Just out there.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  Throw it out there.

• 31:52Nilay Patel?

  All right.

• 31:52Speaker 03

  Nicholas' watch connection. We have nine or something watches here.

• 31:58Nilay Patel?

  All right.

• 31:58Speaker 03

  And four boxes.

• 31:59Nilay Patel?

  So in addition to doing the Pebble Time, you guys also did a pair of This Is My Next, the best.

• 32:04Speaker 02

  Well, actually, Mr. Brown did both of them.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  Right. We did both for iPhone and Android rather than just doing one for both of them.

• 32:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  Because the platforms are so different. And I didn't get to include the Pebble Time round in that.

• 32:15Speaker 02

  Unfortunately, because of embargoes.

• 32:17Speaker 01

  I don't know if it would have changed my.

• 32:19Nilay Patel?

  It's not Dakota Watches. That's a brand of watches. Three people have said Dakota Watches tonight.

• 32:23Speaker 01

  It might just be Dakota Watches.

• 32:24Nilay Patel?

  No, that's like saying, what is the sunglass store in the mall? And people are like Ray-Ban. Like, that's not sunglass.

• 32:29Speaker 01

  Are you sure?

• 32:29Nilay Patel?

  I'm like, pretty sure.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  All right.

• 32:31Nilay Patel?

  Uh, anyway, so, but you said, obviously, the Apple Watch is the best smartwatch for iOS.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  I'm Googling Dakota.

• 32:36Nilay Patel?

  And Watch Station. Does that make any sense?

• 32:39Speaker 01

  Watch Station.

• 32:40Speaker 03

  Watch Out.

• 32:41Nilay Patel?

  It should be called Watch Out.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah. So of course, the Apple Watch is the best for, not of course, actually, not at all, of course. The Apple Watch is the best for the iPhone.

• 32:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  Um, and I think that, um, the best Android Wear watch is the best thing for Android. And I think for me, the best Android Wear watch is the Moto 360, the 2015 edition.

• 33:00Nilay Patel?

  Right. But then you say it might be the Pebble Round.

• 33:03Speaker 02

  No, I did not say that.

• 33:06Nilay Patel?

  Times Square. It's called Times Square.

• 33:10Speaker 03

  Ah, yes, that's so good.

• 33:13Speaker 02

  Especially if it's a square, if it's a square kiosk in the middle.

• 33:16Nilay Patel?

  DDDDDVYY emoji thing.

• 33:20Speaker 03

  Shout to you.

• 33:21Nilay Patel?

  You're good at Twitter today. Um, it's called Watch It in Canada.

• 33:25Speaker 02

  No, I agree. I agree with Dieter's assessment. I think that, uh, so much of the smartwatch as we know it today depends on the platform of your smartphone and the watch that has the same platform as your smartphone tends to be the best experience.

• 33:37Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 33:37Speaker 02

  Um, the Pebble Time round is a round Pebble Time, like.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no. It's a, it's a round ridiculously thin.

• 33:46Speaker 02

  Yes, there are like other things, but like on a user experience level, it's a round Pebble Time. Like, the experience is exactly the same, except it's now just fit to a round screen.

• 33:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 33:55Speaker 02

  And so like, all of the pros and cons that come with the Pebble platform apply to the Time Round. It's just, it's really cool.

• 34:02Nilay Patel?

  It's good looking.

• 34:02Speaker 02

  It's, it looks better. It's a, it's a step forward.

• 34:06Nilay Patel?

  What do you want a smartwatch to do?

• 34:09Nilay Patel?

  So last week I asked people to tweet at me what their favorite Apple Watch app is. And like basically everyone was like, I like notifications.

• 34:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think that's what we all know a smart watch to do. And I, I, my, uh, I was, I was thinking before we came on of like, coming up with like, what, what is the state of smart watches right now? And right now, we're still waiting, we're waiting for the next step in smart watches. So we have like Android where an Apple Watch introduced platforms to smart watches in ways like we hadn't seen before. The next step is a smart watch that doesn't need your smartphone. And yes, there have been cellular connected ones in the past.

• 34:42Speaker 01

  Can't we have a step in between where the apps don't suck?

• 34:45Speaker 02

  I mean, we can.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  I would like that step.

• 34:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, but that's just, that's just, that's just iterating on what we already have, right?

• 34:50Nilay Patel?

  Nope, like I, it's like the Apple Watch has this problem and the Apple TV has this problem. Like there, what is, what is the killer app for the Apple Watch? Beyond notifications.

• 34:59Speaker 02

  I don't think there is one. I think for me, it's the struggle for everything.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  Straight up, I, I do like, uh, voice commands. I like being able to like lead, like tell my, remind myself of little things.

• 35:08Speaker 02

  I'm, I'm gonna blow up Dieter's spot because he does this in the office and he sits two seats down from me. And he, he like holds his watch up to his face and he secretly says like, remind me to so and so when I get home.

• 35:17Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God.

• 35:17Speaker 02

  And it usually takes him three times.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  No.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  The only reason it doesn't work the first time is because I start doing it and Dan is like, oh, you're trying to do it again.

• 35:27Nilay Patel?

  Between Dieter secretly talking to his watch and secretly vaping, he's a supervillain.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  So if you watch the video for this is my next, and you watch like just the first 45 seconds of it, I'm basically talking you out of buying a smart watch. Like the first 45 seconds are, it'll give you notifications and that's cool, but the apps kind of suck and they're hard to use. And the battery life sucks.

• 35:48Nilay Patel?

  Have you picked a smart watch, Nicola?

• 35:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:50Speaker 03

  I picked one.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  You've got all these smart watches.

• 35:52Nilay Patel?

  Well, you've got a bunch that we've provided to you. Have you purchased one?

• 35:55Speaker 03

  No.

• 35:57Nilay Patel?

  Which one is, which one do you like over there?

• 35:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, what's your favorite over there?

• 36:00Speaker 03

  I like this one.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  It's Moto 360.

• 36:03Speaker 02

  So that is the, yeah, the smaller, new Moto 360.

• 36:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, I like this guy. I think it has a good ratio circle to band. It's substantial, but it's not like wildly big. Like this guy is too much.

• 36:15Nilay Patel?

  What's that one, the Huawei?

• 36:16Speaker 02

  That's an LG Watch Urbane.

• 36:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, this is way too much watch.

• 36:20Speaker 02

  I think Dieter described that watch best when he said it was a cheap watch that's trying to look not cheap, but still looks cheap.

• 36:26Nilay Patel?

  Oh, it's a fossil.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then the one next to it is the Huawei watch, which I said it was a watch only Gordon Gekko could love.

• 36:34Nilay Patel?

  Let's see, wait, hold that one up.

• 36:35Speaker 02

  So that that watch has no style.

• 36:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, this is just. It helps that they're all dead.

• 36:44Speaker 02

  Oh, so that's the other story of smart watches is that they die all the time.

• 36:47Speaker 01

  Except for the pebbles.

• 36:49Speaker 02

  Well, except for the pebbles. Right.

• 36:50Speaker 03

  The pebble looks like the pared down version of the.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, the pebble round.

• 36:55Speaker 02

  Say what you said before we were rolling.

• 36:57Speaker 03

  Oh, well, so today is the launch of H and M's latest designer collaboration with Balman. And I said that the pebble round is the H and M Balman version of the Balman. Which would be the Moto 360. Oh, I don't like that at all, but I said it.

• 37:14Speaker 03

  But no, this one just like this, just this pebble one doesn't read like it just, it looks like a toy. This reads as like a.

• 37:22Nilay Patel?

  Product.

• 37:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:24Nilay Patel?

  Not toy.

• 37:25Speaker 03

  I'm impressed.

• 37:26Speaker 01

  But the pebble manages to be thin and light and small.

• 37:29Speaker 02

  Right.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  I mean, I don't know, I'm, I.

• 37:31Speaker 03

  It also, I mean, maybe this is on purpose, I guess. It looks like a regular watch.

• 37:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. So actually I think that's a plus that it looks like a regular watch.

• 37:40Speaker 02

  Because it's, it's like, there's no tech company logo on it. It doesn't scream gadget on your wrist.

• 37:49Speaker 03

  Wait.

• 37:49Speaker 02

  I don't know why.

• 37:50Nilay Patel?

  From across the room.

• 37:52Speaker 03

  I think I turned music on somewhere.

• 37:55Speaker 02

  It's still paired to my phone.

• 37:57Nilay Patel?

  You just turned S music on.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  What?

• 37:59Nilay Patel?

  Again, Samsung Galaxy Note 5.

• 38:01Speaker 03

  Return to the moon.

• 38:03Nilay Patel?

  Hey, use your S pen to shut that off.

• 38:06Speaker 03

  I'm sorry, I'm trying to go elsewhere.

• 38:09Speaker 02

  Preview of the latest Elvai album, which came out last week.

• 38:11Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying, you can stop it with your S pen.

• 38:13Speaker 02

  I could stop it with my S pen.

• 38:15Nilay Patel?

  Try no.

• 38:16Speaker 02

  And then I will get sabotaged by Nicola across the room.

• 38:18Speaker 03

  Tomorrow at 6 a.m.

• 38:20Speaker 02

  So that's a great example.

• 38:21Nilay Patel?

  Nicola's just reading your calendar now?

• 38:22Speaker 03

  Sunrise at 6:33 tomorrow, hide 75.

• 38:25Nilay Patel?

  What are you, wait, Dan, are you wearing an Apple watch?

• 38:27Speaker 02

  No, so this is the Asus Zen watch two.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  Comes in two sizes. I think it's ugly.

• 38:33Speaker 03

  Dan doesn't have any plans on Saturday.

• 38:36Nilay Patel?

  My god. It's brutal.

• 38:38Speaker 03

  I'll stop, I'll stop, I'll stop.

• 38:40Speaker 02

  Yes, I put, I put my, uh, social events on my wrist calendar.

• 38:44Nilay Patel?

  Go ahead and change our staff calendar.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  So you, you, you, you picked your favorite out of all the smartwatches, but is that like

• 38:51Nilay Patel?

  Which is the worst.

• 38:52Speaker 01

  The things you hate and but like you still hate them all or?

• 38:55Speaker 03

  I mean, all right, it's like, no, no, no, this is totally a fine object as just an object like not knowing really the innards of this.

• 39:01Nilay Patel?

  She's holding the 360.

• 39:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, fine object. Um, I still think that like overwhelmingly they're definitely designed for traditionally male tastes and also male sized bodies.

• 39:13Speaker 02

  So I, I will say that, yes, you are totally right. The flip side of that is those are all review units that we've called into the from the companies and knowing the author that would be reviewing it was probably going to be male. So we picked the male version. So like, uh, the Pebble time round actually comes in a different version that's geared towards women that has a narrower band.

• 39:34Nilay Patel?

  As does the Moto 360.

• 39:36Speaker 02

  As does the Moto 360. Uh, the, uh, one with a tan strap, if you want to hold that one up, uh, Nicola, that is the Asus Zen watch two. That's, that's the one that's geared towards women.

• 39:46Speaker 03

  This is my favorite band color.

• 39:47Speaker 02

  I have the men's version of that on my wrist. That's the women's version, uh, which has a narrower band, smaller face, et cetera. Uh, but yeah, you're totally right. They are all really masculine looking and kind of geared towards men for the most part, unless you can get uh, an alternative women's model. The thing with even with like the Motorola and the Pebble is that yeah, then it band is narrower, but the face of the watch is still the same size. So like it's not dramatically smaller and Lauren, uh, Lauren Good, who, uh, spent some time with the, the women's version of the Motorola, found that it was still pretty clumsy and clunky on her wrist. So.

• 40:22Nilay Patel?

  I don't, I, I just, I'm still struggling to understand what they're for and like, I think that's the problem that

• 40:28Speaker 02

  I, I think they are for.

• 40:29Nilay Patel?

  Eludes the entire industry. Like what is it for?

• 40:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I totally agree. You can make, you can make a really easy compelling sales pitch for a smartphone in like two minutes. Why? Every person you know should have a smartphone and what the reasons why they shouldn't are really, really few and far between. You can't make that pitch for a smartwatch, not, not at least where they are now.

• 40:47Nilay Patel?

  Right. And I, it's just weird because. And Nick, you know, we all worked together on the Apple Watch review long ago. However, many years ago that was.

• 40:57Speaker 03

  February?

• 40:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it was February.

• 40:59Speaker 01

  So, most of the watches, all of the watches on the table have like come out since the Apple Watch.

• 41:05Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 41:06Speaker 01

  Like, that, all of those watches are responses to the Apple Watch in some way. Some of them.

• 41:11Speaker 02

  And, and you know, the biggest response is that I, I see is that they come in two sizes now.

• 41:16Nilay Patel?

  They come in two sizes now, but they're also round, like Android watches are now round, like.

• 41:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:20Nilay Patel?

  Android Wear has turned into a, a platform that's sort of headed towards round displays as a default. And Apple seems very content to push people towards a square display.

• 41:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, the rectangle is weird to me, or square. I think it's a rectangle. Um.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  A square is in fact a rectangle, yes.

• 41:37Speaker 03

  A square is a rectangle, but a rectangle isn't a square.

• 41:39Nilay Patel?

  We've done, we've done a lot of shape conversation on this show today, like circles and squares. We had a, there was a triangle moment, I believe.

• 41:46Speaker 03

  Don't bring me in if you're not gonna do the geometry.

• 41:48Speaker 02

  These are like the conversations I have with my four-year-old.

• 41:52Nilay Patel?

  Don't bring me in if you're not gonna do the geometry.

• 41:55Speaker 03

  Um.

• 41:56Nilay Patel?

  Uh, that's brutal. That's, that's some figurehead shit.

• 41:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:59Speaker 02

  So that's, that's the 42, right? That's the larger Apple Watch?

• 42:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, but I'm just like, personally, I don't care for the, um, the rectangle, like in general. To me, it's like futuristic in like a weird, bad way.

• 42:14Nilay Patel?

  Wait, so you've been, you were telling me last week, I think, that, um, like, you know, we're past the first Apple Watch moment. It's settled down. You know, Apple hyped this thing is like, that was their big new product last year, right? Like, it was supposed to be the revolution. They haven't released sales figures on it. It feels like it's not everywhere. I don't see a lot of them unless I'm working with rich people.

• 42:35Speaker 02

  I see a fair, fair amount of them, but that's also because like I notice them.

• 42:38Speaker 03

  More of them lately.

• 42:41Nilay Patel?

  Apple put them on sale. I don't know if anybody saw this.

• 42:44Speaker 03

  What?

• 42:44Speaker 01

  Sort of, yeah.

• 42:45Nilay Patel?

  They were on sale. They, they trial run, did a trial run of a sale where they're $50 off if you bought an iPhone.

• 42:50Speaker 01

  So if you spent a thousand dollars.

• 42:52Nilay Patel?

  It's like ridiculous. Um, so it's like weird, you know, and like, there's still not a lot of, like, like, we don't get a lot of PR for Apple Watches. Apps, which is a strange phenomenon.

• 43:02Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 43:02Nilay Patel?

  Right. We just did the Apple TV review. I'm getting inundated with PR for Apple TV apps. And like, who knows, like, maybe that platform will succeed, or maybe it will fail, but like, at least right now, it's in a moment of ascendancy. The Apple Watch appears in my mind to have plateaued.

• 43:17Speaker 02

  Here's a question.

• 43:17Nilay Patel?

  But then you were telling me, Nicola, that they are now starting to reach out to like fashion sites and like fashion people.

• 43:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, they definitely did a blast of freebies with the fashion ladies. Cause I like remember there was like one day on Instagram where all of a sudden, like every like other editor that I know had like an Instagram of, and it was the exact, the rose gold with the, what I've now learned is called vintage rose watch strap. And someone at Racks got one here, not myself.

• 43:46Speaker 03

  Maybe they watched the video we did in February. But um, yeah, like clearly there was like gifting involved. And then like a few weeks later, maybe two weeks later, there was the Chloe seven yay ads that they ran on Instagram, 15 second ads. Chloe seven yay, like trying on lots of different outfits and having different watches to go with them.

• 44:06Speaker 02

  That they're running those 15 second ads on TV. And it's like, I, I was just gonna say, I think that the ads for the Apple Watch have been like the worst ads that Apple's produced in two or three years.

• 44:16Nilay Patel?

  Cause they don't know what it does.

• 44:17Speaker 02

  They don't, and like, there's these super short, like 15, maybe 30 second ads that like, like don't convey anything about the product, about like,

• 44:27Speaker 03

  You know, when you see like a, like an iPhone billboard and it's just really like a sexy graphic image of an iPhone. Do you know what I mean? It's just like, it's in perspective and it doesn't show it doing anything. It just shows it as an object. And I've noticed that they don't do that with the watch. There's no advertising where it's just like, like a traditional watch ad, like for a non-smart watch, it's just like a person doing something glamorous that you want to be part of. It's like perfume ads where like, cause you can't smell it. So it's like they create an idea of like what this person is or what this life is. And it's weird to me with Apple Watch that they haven't stopped and done like, just like a, it's a sexy, beautiful thing on a sexy, beautiful person doing something sexy and beautiful. It's all this like, a mom was stressed out with ice cream. Who can pay?

• 45:15Speaker 03

  If there's no like romantic, like no one's on a yacht, you know, why not?

• 45:20Speaker 02

  They did some of that at the very beginning, I want to say.

• 45:23Nilay Patel?

  Well, there's they did in the beginning. They're like, here's what I can do. I think the problem that all of these vendors are stuck in is that these things are most useful when you're busy doing something else.

• 45:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 45:33Nilay Patel?

  Right. They're most useful when you don't have time to pick up your phone, but it's like phone advertising. The promise of the phone is it will like grant you additional capabilities, right? You get a phone and suddenly you can like book an Airbnb and go to a glamorous place or like look at Twitter and have people talk to you in curt, unprofessional tones. You know, you can like open Facebook and like.

• 45:56Speaker 02

  You can video chat with somebody across the world.

• 45:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's better than opening Facebook. Opening Facebook is like, oh, everyone I know from my school is still terrible. Um, my Facebook's weird. But it's with the watch, it's like, it doesn't grant you that many additional capabilities, right? Like it's just a.

• 46:11Speaker 02

  It tells you the time.

• 46:12Nilay Patel?

  It tells you the time and then it it connects and then it connects to all the capabilities of your phone. So like you have, all those ads have to be about how somebody else already has a better life and they're like so cool that the watch is like helping them do something that they would do with their phone. There's like a disconnect there because the watch doesn't help them get that life. The watch is like, they're so much cooler than you that they need this watch to like.

• 46:35Speaker 02

  Or.

• 46:36Nilay Patel?

  Push this button.

• 46:36Speaker 02

  They're so cool. They're Lagerfelding and they haven't even set up the watch.

• 46:40Nilay Patel?

  Lagerfelding for days, brah. Days. Ah, it's so good.

• 46:46Speaker 03

  Best. Um, really the best.

• 46:49Nilay Patel?

  I mean, do you think Karl Lagerfeld has ever set up that watch?

• 46:51Speaker 03

  No.

• 46:51Speaker 02

  Do you think Karl Lagerfeld has ever used a smartphone?

• 46:53Speaker 03

  Like a special person, like someone like specially went there and was all nervous and packed and stressed out. And you know what I mean? Like they, they went through this whole thing and then they got there and they just, no.

• 47:03Speaker 02

  They probably like put it on his wrist, took the picture.

• 47:06Nilay Patel?

  What would it take for you to buy a smart watch? Like what would have to happen?

• 47:09Speaker 03

  Uh, what would have to happen?

• 47:13Speaker 02

  Do you wear a non-smartwatch ever?

• 47:15Speaker 03

  No, but I wear bracelets.

• 47:17Nilay Patel?

  So do I.

• 47:19Speaker 02

  I mean, that's essentially what that is.

• 47:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, a longer felted smartwatch is a bracelet. And you people made fun of me.

• 47:26Speaker 03

  It would be cool if I could, sometimes, one thing.

• 47:31Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God, what are you doing?

• 47:32Speaker 03

  One thing that takes a lot of time is queuing up the song I'm in the mood for. You know what I mean?

• 47:37Speaker 02

  Why don't you play it on my?

• 47:39Nilay Patel?

  You could just talk to your watch.

• 47:40Speaker 03

  But it's on Spotify. So I can't be like.

• 47:43Nilay Patel?

  You should pay for every single music service, even the ones you don't use.

• 47:46Speaker 02

  That's what I do.

• 47:47Nilay Patel?

  Except for Google Play Music, which I refuse to use.

• 47:49Speaker 02

  I.

• 47:51Nilay Patel?

  I pay for it. YouTube Red, best one they've ever made for.

• 47:53Speaker 03

  I was on a vacation with a friend and we had a car.

• 47:56Speaker 02

  Do I have YouTube Red? I have no idea.

• 47:57Nilay Patel?

  You should.

• 47:58Speaker 02

  If you have Play Music, you do.

• 47:59Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 48:00Speaker 03

  Um, I was on vacation with a plugged in friend and he had Google Music. And I was like, oh, look at you. I've never seen this before out in the wild.

• 48:10Nilay Patel?

  I have YouTube Red. Oh, my God, if you go to youtube.com/red and you have it, it just says, straight on the first page, you have YouTube Red. It just tells you.

• 48:18Speaker 02

  And then it redirects you to a porn site.

• 48:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Uh, when do you think they're gonna release a second Apple Watch?

• 48:24Speaker 03

  Me?

• 48:26Nilay Patel?

  When's the next one coming?

• 48:28Speaker 02

  Uh, my guess would be fall 2016.

• 48:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's a long way away because they just started selling the Hermes.

• 48:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I kinda, I kinda like the Hermes. Like the basic Hermes, like as, as basic as Hermes could be with the single, uh, brown leather strap. I think that looks really nice.

• 48:47Speaker 03

  But isn't it a double strap?

• 48:49Speaker 02

  You can get the double strap or you can get a cuff, which is like his style. Or you can get the standard brown leather strap, which would make it kinda look like the Motorola.

• 48:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think they have a long, they have a long way to go before they.

• 49:01Speaker 03

  What's the pricing on that one?

• 49:02Speaker 02

  Uh, it starts at 1100, goes up to, I think, 1599.

• 49:05Speaker 03

  That's dumb.

• 49:06Speaker 02

  It's a deal.

• 49:07Nilay Patel?

  You know, it's cheaper, though. Soft layer, motherfuckers.

• 49:12Nilay Patel?

  A cloud built for scale. Your business application. Dieter is looking at me like a crazy person. I believe the Softlayer people are in love with my adder reads.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  By the way, by the way, change your tagline to Softlayer motherfuckers right now.

• 49:29Nilay Patel?

  Your business applications and computational workloads are unique. So you deserve cloud resources that meet your specific needs. Softlayer, one of the only cloud providers that provisions dedicated servers and virtual servers. Otherwise, I believe you all know this now as known as public cloud. This comes from a single seamless platform that's on demand, all connected to the same open API, all connected to a global private network. It scales your workloads up and down quickly. There's ample space for your storage intensive tasks. I mean, honestly, if you're into the cloud, Softlayer is what you're into. Softlayer, an IBM company, is, I believe everybody knows now. IBM uses Softlayer, so if you buy IBM stuff, you get Softlayer on the backend. All of our listeners have the opportunity to get $500 of cloud infrastructure by visiting

• 50:13Nilay Patel?

  softlayer.com/podcast. An additional $500 of Softlayer changes that to softlayer.com/fuckers. Think about it. You can order bare metal servers, virtual servers, storage, networking and security services from your choice of data centers. Softlayer has 24 data centers around the world. All of those servers and services are connected to Softlayer's unique network of networks, which separates public, private and management traffic, ensuring the traffic to and from your cloud infrastructure is traveling efficiently and with attitude. You can automate and control your cloud infrastructure with a granular API or with the easy to use Softlayer customer portal. Please, I beg of you, visit softlayer.com/podcast to get started with your $500 off of service,

• 50:58Nilay Patel?

  storage, network and security on a cloud built to scale from Softlayer.

• 51:03Speaker 01

  There's a hashtag, by the way.

• 51:04Nilay Patel?

  Oh, no. What have we done?

• 51:11Nilay Patel?

  Sorry. I'm trying, guys.

• 51:16Nilay Patel?

  You know, what are you gonna do?

• 51:20Nilay Patel?

  Alright, it's time for the lightning round.

• 51:22Speaker 01

  What are the rules of the lightning round?

• 51:25Nilay Patel?

  I'm just gonna say some, some things and you guys can jump in on the things. Does that make any sense? I'm gonna say some topics.

• 51:32Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 51:32Nilay Patel?

  From the week.

• 51:33Speaker 01

  But we have to be fast.

• 51:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's alright, we're gonna move, we're gonna move. I'd like to hear from all of you on said topics, but I'm just gonna throw them out there and you're gonna respond.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 51:41Nilay Patel?

  Lightning round. Hearts versus stars on Twitter.

• 51:43Speaker 03

  Love of hearts.

• 51:45Speaker 01

  Faves.

• 51:46Speaker 02

  Faves for life.

• 51:47Nilay Patel?

  Terrible. Terrible.

• 51:49Speaker 03

  Because a favorite, you can only have one. It makes no sense!

• 51:53Speaker 01

  Oh, you are validating Twitter's reasoning for changing this.

• 51:56Speaker 03

  Greatest of all time, it's the worst. I can't stand it.

• 51:59Nilay Patel?

  I, I can't. It's, it's literally a hearts on Twi- like, favoring a super, or putting a heart next to a super sarcastic Casey tweet is so wrong.

• 52:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:07Speaker 02

  Or like a super terrible AP tweet about like some tragedy.

• 52:10Speaker 01

  The hearts are treacle, right? They're, it's, it's all just like too sweet.

• 52:15Speaker 03

  A star is like a little, it's like a punch in the arm, like, yeah, but a heart is like a...

• 52:19Speaker 01

  No, but a star is like, I'm gonna look at this later. I'm gonna remember this.

• 52:22Nilay Patel?

  New iMacs. It's lightning round. Lightning strikes. Lightning crashes.

• 52:27Speaker 02

  So, new iMacs, best all ones you can buy, but if you buy the base model, you're an idiot because they give you that really crappy, slow hard drive, so you have to spend a good amount of money to get one.

• 52:36Nilay Patel?

  When is the last time you used a desktop computer?

• 52:43Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  My, my, my, uh, new iMac thing is, where the hell is the new cinema display? Come on. Come on. Come on. Cinema display, come on.

• 52:52Nilay Patel?

  Uh, the government does not know how to regulate self-driving cars in Tesla autopilot.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  Shocker.

• 52:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:59Nilay Patel?

  Do you trust self-driving cars?

• 53:00Speaker 03

  No. No.

• 53:03Speaker 03

  What's that?

• 53:04Nilay Patel?

  I totally want that.

• 53:05Speaker 03

  No way. That's terrible.

• 53:07Speaker 02

  If I could like.

• 53:08Speaker 03

  Why don't you just get on the subway?

• 53:10Nilay Patel?

  The subway is not a self-driving car. If I could get, if there was a robot arm that could like pick me up out of bed, place me in a cocoon and the cocoon like shot me down the stairs.

• 53:21Speaker 02

  Put a blazer on you.

• 53:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and like shot me into a car and I was in the car and the car drove me to work and then an arm picked me up and like shot me upstairs. And then delivered me at my desk.

• 53:29Speaker 03

  And the whole time your phone can read you scientific articles about how sitting is killing you.

• 53:34Nilay Patel?

  Uh, big Disney deal with PlayStation View, ESPN, ABC, Disney Channel, all on PlayStation streaming. Would you give up a TV for that? Give up cable for that?

• 53:43Speaker 02

  I don't have cable now.

• 53:44Speaker 03

  I don't have cable.

• 53:45Nilay Patel?

  Would you sign up for that to get ESPN, ABC?

• 53:48Speaker 03

  No.

• 53:49Nilay Patel?

  Would you ever sign up for any kind of TV package you get in your life?

• 53:52Speaker 03

  Um, I mean, I pay for Hulu Plus.

• 53:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was gonna say, you must have Hulu, right?

• 53:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:57Nilay Patel?

  You must have Hulu.

• 53:58Speaker 02

  Of course she has Hulu. She doesn't have cable, she's gotta have Hulu.

• 54:00Speaker 03

  I have Hulu Plus and I have Netflix. I'm already paying like almost $20 a month.

• 54:05Speaker 01

  I think that this View, this View deal makes this, uh, makes View more competitive with Sling TV, like, like closer.

• 54:14Nilay Patel?

  Have you ever heard of any of those products?

• 54:15Speaker 03

  No.

• 54:16Nilay Patel?

  Yep. That's the problem. They were never gonna spend the money on marketing them. Would you give up?

• 54:20Speaker 02

  No.

• 54:21Nilay Patel?

  Okay, uh, James Bond Specter.

• 54:22Speaker 01

  Why aren't you participating in the lightning round?

• 54:24Nilay Patel?

  Cause I'm the, I'm the lightning host.

• 54:26Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 54:27Nilay Patel?

  Also, hearts are bullshit. Just to be clear, the only contribution to making the lightning round is that I believe hearts are bullshit. Uh, James Bond Specter.

• 54:34Speaker 02

  Uh, there, a good Bond movie is only a Specter at this point.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  Really?

• 54:40Nilay Patel?

  Did you prep that? Have you been waiting the whole time to drop that one?

• 54:44Speaker 03

  Tweet. I think that was a tweet already.

• 54:46Speaker 01

  I just.

• 54:47Speaker 02

  I'm researching.

• 54:48Speaker 03

  I don't know anything about it.

• 54:48Nilay Patel?

  Is James Bond, is it possible for James Bond to be cool again?

• 54:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:52Speaker 02

  Totally. Even, even Daniel Craig could be cool again, but not with the scripts and crap that he's given at this point.

• 54:58Nilay Patel?

  I just think it's really hard. I think James Bond is a government agent. I think it is hard for government agents in fiction to be super cool.

• 55:04Speaker 01

  That's not the problem.

• 55:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, because that was cool in Mission Impossible with government agents.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  The problem is that James Bond is a misogynist. That's what keeps him from being cool.

• 55:12Nilay Patel?

  I don't think he is one in this one.

• 55:13Speaker 01

  I've seen it in this one.

• 55:15Nilay Patel?

  He's been doing all these interviews about it.

• 55:16Speaker 01

  Oh, he's cooler. Okay. Well, then, yeah, sure.

• 55:19Nilay Patel?

  But like, even that, like, I just like, he's an age-

• 55:21Speaker 03

  It's very out to be a misogynist right now. Very out.

• 55:24Nilay Patel?

  I'm bringing it back, though. So if you could just shut up-

• 55:27Speaker 03

  I mean, the pendulum swings, you know?

• 55:28Nilay Patel?

  If you could just simmer down-

• 55:30Speaker 03

  2017, ladies, can it.

• 55:33Speaker 01

  I haven't seen Spectre. There's been a lot of-

• 55:37Nilay Patel?

  The verge gets super weird in 2017. It's like, could you just go make me a sandwich?

• 55:43Speaker 01

  The kitchen is in kitchening itself.

• 55:45Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 55:47Nilay Patel?

  I'm sorry, that shouldn't be funny.

• 55:49Speaker 03

  It's terrible.

• 55:50Speaker 01

  There's been a lot of shades around Roger Moore in the aftermath of Spectre and all the bad reviews. And I just want to stand up for Roger Moore. I like him.

• 55:59Nilay Patel?

  Better than Timothy Dalton. I'll give you that one.

• 56:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:02Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  Not hard.

• 56:03Nilay Patel?

  I just think, I think James Bond is over. Like, I think it has reached its floor.

• 56:08Speaker 02

  As like a gadget nerd that like totally kills me. Because like James Bond was like, the movie you watch to see all these like crazy, out of this world gadgets.

• 56:15Speaker 01

  So, hang on. Did you read, did you watch the James Bond gadget supercut that we put on our site?

• 56:20Speaker 02

  I didn't see that.

• 56:21Speaker 01

  Uh, so, like, the supercut's great. It's like 17 minutes of a gadget, whatever, whatever. Uh, but, uh, James Vincent, our genius writer in the UK, uh, decided to just name five of the gadgets in this supercut. And listen to the names of these gadgets and try not to think of a disturbing sex act. Mousetrap in the pocket.

• 56:43Speaker 02

  Come on.

• 56:44Speaker 01

  Head smashing plaster cast.

• 56:46Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 56:47Speaker 01

  Fake horse ass. There's a flame- Flamethrower bagpipes. And person swallowing sofa.

• 56:57Nilay Patel?

  Flamethrower bagpipes, uh, my monster truck name. Just putting that out there. Okay, uh, running around. Time Warner showing fewer ads to attract cord cutters back to television. If you could buy cable and it would have fewer ads across the board, would you go back to TV?

• 57:15Nilay Patel?

  Yep, that's the answer.

• 57:16Speaker 01

  Time Warner took a-

• 57:17Speaker 02

  I would enjoy it as a person that still has cable.

• 57:20Speaker 01

  Time Warner took a beautiful little Greek pastry shop that was on my corner, ripped it down and replaced it with a giant, huge, 20,000 square foot Time Warner store. Doesn't need to exist. Time Warner is a phone number. It's not a store.

• 57:33Speaker 02

  What do you buy at a Time Warner store?

• 57:34Speaker 01

  Exactly. It was a lovely little restaurant and now it's like a glass cube where like you talk to a cable rep.

• 57:41Nilay Patel?

  What happens in there?

• 57:43Speaker 01

  Get the hell out of a store at Time Warner.

• 57:46Speaker 03

  There was a DJ at the bedside T-Mobile store and I will tell you, it was lit. It was lit.

• 57:53Speaker 03

  At the T-Mobile store.

• 57:55Speaker 01

  There's a point in every-

• 57:56Speaker 03

  They have store experience. You don't know what they're doing there Friday 5pm.

• 58:00Speaker 02

  There's a point in every New Yorker's life when New York dies for them.

• 58:02Nilay Patel?

  It's a DJ at T-Mobile store.

• 58:05Speaker 02

  Dieter had died when the street restaurant was taken over by Time Warner.

• 58:08Nilay Patel?

  Tony Fadell says Apple's been thinking about a car since 2008.

• 58:12Speaker 03

  We've all been thinking about things since 2008. I have no context.

• 58:15Speaker 01

  Cars, cars are-

• 58:17Nilay Patel?

  Would you buy an Apple car?

• 58:17Speaker 01

  Are an area of intense interest.

• 58:18Speaker 03

  A what?

• 58:19Nilay Patel?

  Would you buy an Apple car?

• 58:20Speaker 03

  Probably. Based on things have gone so far.

• 58:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 58:24Speaker 03

  It's not unlikely.

• 58:25Nilay Patel?

  Okay. And now, now, wait, do you have a lightning hour response to Apple Car?

• 58:29Speaker 02

  Uh, not, not especially.

• 58:30Nilay Patel?

  All right. So then I asked for questions from Twitter. We have, I would say two minutes.

• 58:35Speaker 03

  Ooh, fun.

• 58:35Nilay Patel?

  Okay. Um, Bob asks, what's your biggest tech purchase regret?

• 58:40Speaker 01

  Regret?

• 58:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 58:42Speaker 01

  Uh, there's so many.

• 58:43Speaker 02

  Google Nexus 4.

• 58:44Nilay Patel?

  Nexus 4?

• 58:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. I hated it the day I got it.

• 58:47Speaker 03

  I just bought this alarm clock that wakes you up with simulated daylight.

• 58:52Speaker 01

  Oh, I got it. Nexus 9.

• 58:54Nilay Patel?

  Okay. And you're going simulated daylight.

• 58:56Speaker 01

  Was it the Philips one?

• 58:58Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 58:58Speaker 01

  Yes, it's terrible.

• 58:59Speaker 03

  Why?

• 59:00Speaker 01

  It's so bad. I bought that too.

• 59:02Speaker 03

  I've never done a return there.

• 59:04Nilay Patel?

  Okay. Peter asks, how much would Sprint have to pay you to use Sprint?

• 59:09Speaker 01

  How much is Sprint worth as a company? That much.

• 59:13Nilay Patel?

  Would you switch to Sprint? Do you have Sprint? I bet you have Sprint.

• 59:15Speaker 03

  Verizon.

• 59:16Nilay Patel?

  Oh, well, so not the opposite of Sprint. How much did Sprint have to pay you to switch?

• 59:20Speaker 03

  I don't know. What's the reputation? It's bad?

• 59:23Speaker 01

  It's not good.

• 59:24Speaker 03

  No, I love, I love having a phone that works where I am all the time.

• 59:28Nilay Patel?

  That's so now, now we've moved right into Verizon branded content.

• 59:32Speaker 02

  Uh, I don't know. I've been kind of using Project Five lately, which is almost Sprint.

• 59:36Nilay Patel?

  It's the worst lightning round in history. It, Klement asks, if you could voluntarily replace your heart with something better, would you? I have no idea what that means, but I love it.

• 59:45Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 59:45Speaker 03

  Love my heart.

• 59:47Speaker 02

  Ah, yeah, totally.

• 59:47Speaker 03

  I think that was a heart star. Like, that's what we were supposed to go there.

• 59:51Nilay Patel?

  Uh, and then the last one, I guess, I don't.

• 59:53Speaker 03

  I think that's what you're supposed to do.

• 59:54Nilay Patel?

  I would replace my heart with a star. Yes. If that was, if that was possible.

• 59:58Speaker 02

  It's a meme.

• 59:59Nilay Patel?

  And then somehow I favorited Ellis reminding me that Tom has been screwing up our calendar with Windows phones for years. So that's where I'm at. This is your last chance. If you have a Twitter question, tweet at me now.

• 1:00:10Speaker 02

  Do you remember when Tom was like using Windows 8 a lot and would send email replies and break the entire thread?

• 1:00:16Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  Yes, that was the worst.

• 1:00:17Nilay Patel?

  Oh, if Windows is known for one thing, it's, it's, it's destroying email threads with blue text.

• 1:00:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:22Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:00:23Nilay Patel?

  But somewhere there's a designer at Microsoft who's like, emails should be blue.

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  Oh, and.

• 1:00:26Nilay Patel?

  And that person like doomed a generation.

• 1:00:28Speaker 01

  It's also known for, uh, instead of sending a smiley face in email, it turning it into a capital J.

• 1:00:34Speaker 02

  That's, that's actually Outlook.

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  The J is the worst thing.

• 1:00:37Speaker 02

  Specifically Outlook, yeah.

• 1:00:38Speaker 03

  Yes, because every PR person uses Outlook. So they'll be like, can you make it J? And I'm like, what? It took me like a year of this working in this industry to like figure out.

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  You reply and tell them that they're sending them and they're like, what are you talking about?

• 1:00:52Speaker 03

  Why don't they know?

• 1:00:53Speaker 01

  They don't know. None of them know.

• 1:00:55Speaker 03

  I hate the J.

• 1:00:57Speaker 01

  Can't stand the J.

• 1:00:59Nilay Patel?

  There's a hundred people out there just nicknamed J being like, just dying right now. Uh, all right. Uh, so that was our show.

• 1:01:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:08Speaker 03

  J.

• 1:01:08Nilay Patel?

  A good time. Brought to you by the letter J.

• 1:01:12Speaker 03

  And triangles.

• 1:01:13Nilay Patel?

  And triangles.

• 1:01:14Speaker 02

  Shape of the day.

• 1:01:15Speaker 01

  Triangle.

• 1:01:16Nilay Patel?

  Dan shamelessly shilling for his stylus.

• 1:01:20Nilay Patel?

  Many smartwatches.

• 1:01:22Speaker 02

  Let me get the tap guys.

• 1:01:23Nilay Patel?

  And also brought to you.

• 1:01:27Nilay Patel?

  Okay, it would be dope if you could open that and write a check. Like, just if you could write a check and like, print it out and hand that to the waiter at the restaurant. Like, that's a vision of the future that never came true.

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  You need a little tiny printer. But you could like...

• 1:01:39Speaker 02

  What was that little printer?

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  And then hand the...

• 1:01:41Speaker 02

  It was called Little...

• 1:01:41Nilay Patel?

  It was called a little printer.

• 1:01:45Speaker 03

  Sounds great.

• 1:01:46Nilay Patel?

  But how cool would that be if you were like, "Oh yeah, you know what? I will buy this car."

• 1:01:49Speaker 02

  Could you imagine?

• 1:01:50Nilay Patel?

  And you like, write the check on your phone.

• 1:01:51Speaker 02

  That was the future of mobile payments.

• 1:01:53Nilay Patel?

  Writing checks.

• 1:01:54Speaker 02

  Writing checks and printing out of the smartphone.

• 1:01:57Nilay Patel?

  I'm saying, there's a vision. There's probably like, an old AT&T ad where that's happening. That's the future.

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  Oh, it's too...

• 1:02:03Nilay Patel?

  All right, please, uh, follow The Verge on Twitter. We're at Verge. You can follow us on Snapchat at, uh, TheRealVerge. TheRealVerge on Snapchat.

• 1:02:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, that.

• 1:02:12Nilay Patel?

  Nicola has a captivating Snapchat channel.

• 1:02:14Speaker 03

  Nicola Fumo, all one word.

• 1:02:16Nilay Patel?

  You can also rate and review us on iTunes. Uh, you can answer any of the lightning questions. If you could replace your heart with something better, what would you replace it with? Answer that question on iTunes, give us five stars. Uh, you can also listen to Verge ESP with Emily and Liz. You can listen to What's Tech, uh, with Chris Plant. You can listen to Control Walt Delete, um, with the captivating Walt Mossberg. Uh, all of that is at iTunes.com/TheVerge. We're also on YouTube, uh, and then you can find all of us at Twitter. And I know that we love it when you tweet at us. Nicola...

• 1:02:43Speaker 03

  Nicola underscore Fumo.

• 1:02:45Nilay Patel?

  Dieter...

• 1:02:46Speaker 01

  Backlon.

• 1:02:46Nilay Patel?

  I'm reckless.

• 1:02:47Speaker 02

  DC Seifert.

• 1:02:49Nilay Patel?

  That was it. I want to thank...

• 1:02:51Speaker 01

  Brain Tree.

• 1:02:52Nilay Patel?

  Uh, Brain Tree, once again. I was gonna say another swear word, but I think that's, that's, that's, that's for Softlayer.

• 1:02:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:58Nilay Patel?

  Brain Tree gives you a full stack payment solution. You can support all the payment types your customers might want, except for a printing check side of your Galaxy S5, or Galaxy Note 5. You can start accepting Android Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal, Bitcoin, Venmo, cards, whatever's next. All the single integration across all of your platforms. There's superior fraud protection, there's customer service, there's fast payouts. My God, check this out. At BrainTreePayments.com/VergeCast. That was it. That was the show. Thank you so much. Thank you, Nicola.

• 1:03:24Speaker 03

  Thanks for having me.

• 1:03:25Nilay Patel?

  Rockin' all.

• 1:03:25Speaker 01

  Jeff Hawkins.