Fitbit buys Pebble, Windows 10 on ARM, and gadgets aren't dead

Nilay, Dieter, Lauren, and Ashley are back! This week on Vergecast, we talk about Fitbit buying Pebble, the status of the gadget universe, and Microsoft bringing Windows desktop apps to mobile ARM processors. Lots of tech, lots of jokes, here we go. 01:34 - Fitbit / Pebble / wearables 18:23 - Gadgets aren’t dead 33:10 - Windows / ARM 53:23 - Lightning round (Westworld spoilers 53:23–55:10) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:04Nilay Patel?

  Hello, welcome to Vergecast, the flagship podcast of verge.com. It's been a long time since I've said that, like, three weeks?

• 0:11Speaker 01

  Three weeks.

• 0:11Nilay Patel?

  One week? How many weeks, Ashley?

• 0:13Speaker 01

  It's been three weeks.

• 0:14Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, I'm Neelai Patel, the editor-in-chief of The Verge. Ashley Carmen is here, Ashley.

• 0:18Speaker 01

  Hi.

• 0:18Nilay Patel?

  Dieter Bohn is here.

• 0:19Speaker 02

  Hello.

• 0:20Nilay Patel?

  Lauren Good is here.

• 0:22Speaker 03

  Hello.

• 0:23Nilay Patel?

  So close, Lauren.

• 0:25Speaker 02

  We've been practicing our Neelai hellos and we just can't nail it.

• 0:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 0:29Speaker 02

  Hello!

• 0:30Nilay Patel?

  It's a mix. You gotta... that was too friendly. Anyway, you gotta inspire and then terrorize.

• 0:36Speaker 02

  Hello!

• 0:36Nilay Patel?

  All in one salutation. Anyhow, if you've been paying attention, you know that this podcast is brought to you by a fake vodka called Scissor Vodka, which inspires you to cut through the night. Dieter and I were in New Orleans last week and I think we spent, I don't know, half a day just making scissor vodka jokes as we walked around town. It's pretty good.

• 0:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't remember any of them.

• 0:54Nilay Patel?

  No, because we were...

• 0:55Speaker 02

  Related, we were in New Orleans.

• 0:57Nilay Patel?

  It was a good day. Anyway, tons and tons of catching these... Paul, by the way, is on vacation this week and then, you know, it's gonna be... it's the holiday season here, so it's gonna be... It's gonna be a rotating cast of characters the next few weeks. But anyway, just an enormous amount of news this week, so we should get right into it. Just to give you a little, everybody, a little preview, Microsoft announced a bunch of wild new things that Windows can do, primarily based around running on ARM chips now, which is great. And then there's like sad news that Ashley managed to turn into happy news, which I think is good.

• 1:30Speaker 01

  I'm just the resident optimist.

• 1:32Nilay Patel?

  Let's start there. So, Fitbit announced that it was buying Pebble, which is the happy way of saying Pebble is dead. Motorola, or Moto, Lenovo Moto, decided that smartwatches are over for it. Lauren, you're kind of like our wearable expert. You wanna tell us what's going on with things that you wear on your wrist?

• 1:52Speaker 03

  I'm obsessed with wearables.

• 1:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:54Speaker 03

  Quite honestly.

• 1:55Nilay Patel?

  I mean, is this just like, we all knew it was not a good idea and now it's sort of spiraling down the drain?

• 2:01Speaker 03

  Well, we've been through this before. There were like, there were the very, very early smartwatches, like Microsoft made one years ago, right? And then it never really worked out. And then when mobile became a real thing, smartphones became a real thing, a bunch of companies said, okay, let's try to do this sort of wireless wifi connected, I shouldn't say wifi connected, because it wasn't wifi, but this type of connected wristwatch, right? And there are primarily two categories. There are the basic activity trackers, the Fitbits of the world, Jawbone, which also isn't doing very well. And then there are smartwatches, which generally have shorter battery life, but they serve as a platform for third-party apps, right? So it's very, it's still kind of like segmented like that. So you had Fitbit,

• 2:42Speaker 03

  right? Which is the market leader in wearables by far, who primarily makes basic activity trackers, buying Pebble, a smartwatch company.

• 2:51Nilay Patel?

  And I will say, I believe Fitbit's business model is that their shit falls apart and you have to buy a new one.

• 2:57Speaker 01

  And it's ugly.

• 2:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that part too.

• 2:59Speaker 03

  That they're, oh, you meant like the, the physical product falls apart.

• 3:02Nilay Patel?

  My wife has gone through, it's like, literally like a, like a process that we go through as a family now, where she buys a new one, and then the little chargy thing breaks, and then she like- What kind, what kind does she buy? Uh, the Charge HR, or whatever the hell it's called now.

• 3:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:16Nilay Patel?

  And then the little charger breaks, and then she goes through about a month where she has a piece of tape on the charger, because it's like a, like a magnetic clippy charger, but the, the piece on the bracelet breaks, so it doesn't connect. So then she tapes the charger around it.

• 3:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:30Nilay Patel?

  And that, that's about a month of our lives, where she complains about using masking tape, and I'm, and I say things like, just buy a new one. And that's like a conversation we have every day for a month, and then she buys a new one.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  That's why Fitbit's gonna be the last one standing.

• 3:42Nilay Patel?

  And then our loop resets.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, because everyone's doing that.

• 3:45Speaker 03

  But how long does she actually, she wears it for a year or so before it breaks? Like, how long does she wear it for before it breaks?

• 3:52Nilay Patel?

  I would say it's, it's a, it's a period between six months to a year before it breaks. Like, some of them go faster, some of them go longer. But I know, like, I am confident that Fitbit will continue to succeed, because we just keep buying, like, A, they've made a particular kind of crack for healthy people, which is numbers, like, how it- How active you are and she competes, you know, she's like, but then it like it breaks. So then like, then there's withdrawal and we have to buy a new one. It's a great business model for Fitbit.

• 4:18Speaker 03

  Yeah. And they've also, to top that off, they've also thrown a bunch of new models out there this year. They have like four new Fitbits and adding to the three that they were selling previously, you know, so they already have, they have more than half a dozen models on the market. So it's a very like throw it at the wall and see what sticks kind of approach. So consumers like go to the store or they go online and they're like, oh, I don't know. You know, the question doesn't become, should I get a Fitbit? For some people it becomes, well, should I get the Blaze or the Flex or the Charge or the, you know? And so it's like that classic sort of strategy. But the thing is too, is like-

• 4:49Speaker 02

  Is every, is every Fitbit named after a character from American Gladiators?

• 4:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the Blaze.

• 4:57Speaker 03

  The Blaze.

• 4:58Speaker 02

  Right?

• 4:58Speaker 03

  The Blaze.

• 4:59Nilay Patel?

  I never thought about that before.

• 5:02Speaker 03

  The Blaze is, is selling surprisingly well.

• 5:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, it does really well with the javelin challenge.

• 5:07Speaker 03

  I don't think it's very, I don't think it's very good looking.

• 5:09Speaker 02

  No, it's really not.

• 5:11Nilay Patel?

  Wait, hold on, I'm just looking up a list of American Gladiators.

• 5:14Speaker 03

  Oh, I thought you were going to say, hold on, I'm looking up a list of Fitbits.

• 5:17Nilay Patel?

  It's apparently the same.

• 5:18Speaker 03

  But yeah, so wearables in general, like they're having this day of reckoning, right? It's happening and it's happening now and we've sort of been saying this for a while. It's hard for some people to understand what the real value of wearables are. Unless they're like really dedicated fitness tracking devices or they're really cool smart watches. Some IDC just put out some numbers earlier this week that said that Apple Watch sales, according to their, you know, their estimates were down 71% year over year. And then Apple came out a day later and said, no, we just had the best holiday week ever. And, you know, Pebble was struggling financially. They couldn't get their products out the door. We have no idea what's going on with Jawbone. We have some idea of what's going on with Jawbone, but they've sort of like faded away.

• 6:02Speaker 03

  And so, um, yeah, I mean, and then, and then a bunch of the Android Wear watchmakers like Huawei, LG and Motorola have decided not to make smart watches this fall, which is, which is kind of a big deal. We were waiting for those and Dieter's like chomping at the bit here.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  Blaze was played by Sherri Pendleton. She was on American Gladiator from- Eighty-nine to ninety-three.

• 6:22Nilay Patel?

  I have the list open, too.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  There's also Laser, Zap, Hawk, Turbo, Nitro.

• 6:30Speaker 03

  Nitro would be a good one.

• 6:31Nilay Patel?

  You have to say the word Fitbit.

• 6:32Speaker 02

  Oh, I'm sorry.

• 6:33Speaker 03

  Nitro.

• 6:33Nilay Patel?

  There's the Fitbit Laser, the Fitbit Zap, Fitbit Hawk, Fitbit Turbo, I guarantee you will come out.

• 6:39Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 6:40Nilay Patel?

  Fitbit Ice for cold weather activities. Fitbit Nitro, sounds illegal. Fitbit Gemini for adult dancers.

• 6:50Speaker 03

  That's.

• 6:50Speaker 02

  Fitbit Diesel.

• 6:52Speaker 03

  Dancers, is that what you said?

• 6:53Speaker 02

  Diesel is gonna be like a giant, huge Fitbit with like a big battery in it. You can vape off of it.

• 7:00Speaker 03

  Fitbit Diesel would be Diesel?

• 7:01Nilay Patel?

  Oh, wait, I'm sorry. I got it wrong.

• 7:03Speaker 02

  You can vape off of it.

• 7:04Nilay Patel?

  The adult dancer one would definitely be Fitbit Lace.

• 7:10Nilay Patel?

  Or Fitbit Electra. There's a lot. All I'm saying is there's a lot. Fitbit Viper would be good, too. Anyway, Fitbit, if you're listening, there are many ways to compensate us for these ideas.

• 7:23Speaker 03

  Or American Gladiators.

• 7:25Speaker 02

  Okay, so Moto gave up on Android Wear.

• 7:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:28Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 7:30Speaker 02

  Nobody else, every other manufacturer's already given up on Android Wear.

• 7:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:33Speaker 02

  They've delayed its release, so far as I could tell, to someday, whenever.

• 7:36Speaker 03

  Microsoft gave up on the band, as far as we know.

• 7:39Speaker 02

  The band, Pebble.

• 7:40Speaker 03

  It's no longer selling it.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  I guess, it's the story of Pebble that they ran out of money, like.

• 7:44Speaker 03

  The story is that Pebble had been struggling for the past year or so, and this, this deal was the best deal.

• 7:50Speaker 02

  The Pebble Core, actually. The Pebble Core, the little Spotify thing. I was kinda excited for that, whatever.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  Pebble is definitely what everyone in our office wears. I see Pebble more than anything else, which is why it hurts so bad that they went to Fitbit.

• 8:03Speaker 03

  I know, but also, we are not like, we're like the small, sort of, technocratic sample of the universe, too.

• 8:10Speaker 02

  But the big question is, is the story that all smartwatches are dead? Or is the story that all smartwatches, except the Apple Watch, are dead? Like, it comes down to like, do you believe Tim Cook when he tells you that sales are fine? I actually don't know if you have to. Like, Apple can continue to sell, I don't know, a hundred thousand Apple Watches a year for eternity, and it will, like, it won't, it'll be fine. Like, they can afford to do that, right?

• 8:33Speaker 03

  I mean, what, what, I, go ahead, Neil.

• 8:35Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I was gonna say, I mean, they they cut the price of the thing, so it's a lot cheaper now. It's like, starts at $2.69, and the platform is a lot better. So as a product, all they have, it's, I mean, it's still just an accessory to your iPhone. So all they have to do is convert some number of iPhone owners into Apple Watch owners, and they have a way bigger business than any other platform, right? It's, and there's obviously like billions of iPhones in the world. So, Apple's opportunity is so different than everybody else's opportunity, just because if they convert 2% of iPhone owners, they have millions of sales.

• 9:13Speaker 03

  Right.

• 9:14Nilay Patel?

  And so, that's like, that's the way to think about it, in a way that Google can't address the Android installed base, the way that Apple can address the number of iPhone owners. But that said, I, I did it, and I did it again. I put on the Apple Watch, I wore it diligently for two months, and then I, the battery died, and never thought about it again.

• 9:32Speaker 03

  You didn't wear a dead one for a while?

• 9:34Nilay Patel?

  I wore a dead one, I wore a dead one for like two days. Yeah, it's fun to wear a dead Apple Watch.

• 9:39Speaker 03

  But, but the thing they have, so you're totally right in that as long as they sell a small percentage of, of watches to iPhone users, then they're doing, they're doing okay for the wearables market. Um, but, they're really the last holdout right now when it comes to wearable makers that are relegated to one platform, which is iOS, right? I mean, Garmin, uh, comes up there every, you know, every quarter on IDC's list, and they're still selling pretty well, and those work across multiple platforms. Fitbit works across multiple platforms. Microsoft Band did, um, there's even Android Wear app for iOS, although it's incredibly limited, it just means like, hey, you can technically have an Android Wear watch and use iOS. So like, basically, and maybe it's some of the Samsung wearables,

• 10:23Speaker 03

  um, trying to remember if the last band, the last Samsung band only worked with Sam- Samsung, that's quite possible. Um, but, but for the most part, Apple's really the only holdout when it comes to these things. And so even, like, think about this holiday season, when people are saying, oh, should I buy someone in my life a wearable? Do you think they're gonna buy them something that, I mean, unless that person has expressly said, I love my iPhone and I want an Apple Watch, you're likely not gonna wanna get something that only works with an operating system.

• 10:48Nilay Patel?

  Fitbit Cyclone.

• 10:50Speaker 03

  Yes, that's a good one.

• 10:52Nilay Patel?

  Sorry.

• 10:53Speaker 03

  No, I like that you're doing this, because I could get so in the weeds on this stuff for like, ever, and just, just keep making jo- it's, please lighten my mood these days of the wearable market.

• 11:03Nilay Patel?

  Lauren, I don't know if people think about platforms as much as we do, right? I think if you have an iPhone, you know, and people are like, oh, that person loves their iPhone. Maybe they do say, I want an Apple Watch, or somebody just goes into the Apple Store and buys the thing that's in front of them.

• 11:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:19Nilay Patel?

  But I think it comes down, it's like, there's two winners, right? There's Apple that's gonna own this sort of big Apple Watch-sized space. And then there's Fitbit that's gonna own activity. I think people say, I want a Fitbit. Like, I think that

• 11:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:34Nilay Patel?

  They've won that part of the battle. People actively say, I want a Fitbit.

• 11:38Speaker 02

  I mean, in two years, we're gonna be talking about, like, Apple Watch, Fitbit, and Garmin. Right? Because like, I don't think Fitbit is gonna go up into Garmin's zone of its, like, hardcore activity stuff. They could.

• 11:48Speaker 03

  But, yeah, they've kinda tried it with the Surge, but yeah.

• 11:51Speaker 02

  And I don't think Garmin is gonna be able to manage to, like, what they've only, like, made little baby steps to, like, try and become, like, something for everybody.

• 11:58Speaker 03

  Right. Well, although the Wirecutter consistently votes their Vivo Active or their Vivo Smart, some of the best activities.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  But also, but yes, but yes.

• 12:05Nilay Patel?

  That's one of those Wirecutter things where you, like, you go and you buy the one on the Wirecutter that they say is the best, and you, like, give it to somebody as a gift, and they're like, oh, what is this? Because they don't know, right?

• 12:13Speaker 03

  Like, you

• 12:14Speaker 01

  They're like, the Garmin Vivo Active.

• 12:18Speaker 02

  Thank you so much. This is great.

• 12:21Speaker 03

  Is this like a Fitbit?

• 12:22Nilay Patel?

  And they're like, no, it's the Wirecutter said it was the best one, and they're like, it's not what I wanted at all.

• 12:27Speaker 03

  They're like, can I exchange this for a Fitbit at Best Buy?

• 12:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. No disrespect. I love the Wirecutter, and I buy almost everything that I need to buy for my home through it. But sometimes, they're like, buy this really weird thing. And you're like, you know, I'm just gonna stick with what everybody else has. That's gonna be fine.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  I also feel like, though, this year, we've seen a lot of fashion brands come out with their own branded wearables and smartwatches.

• 12:53Nilay Patel?

  Everywhere.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I was gonna say, like, that feels, that is inherently different from Fitbit and Apple Watch. That is more like Pebbles market, where Pebble, I felt like, was a little bit more fashionable. That's why I liked it. But now, it's like Kate Spade, Armani, different people like that. If you love Kate Spade's look, the obvious choice is to go to Kate Spade and buy Kate Spade's smartwatch.

• 13:17Nilay Patel?

  But then you end up with, like, a weird

• 13:19Speaker 01

  But the people who buy that watch don't care.

• 13:22Speaker 03

  Although Fitbit did have a Tory Burch line that they said, they said sold really well.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, like the brand is.

• 13:27Speaker 03

  They could partner with.

• 13:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Nicola, who was on the show a bunch, she had, she bought a Pebble. She was like, it's the one I like the best. It's one that looks the best.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  It looks great.

• 13:36Speaker 03

  She got the time, the time round?

• 13:38Speaker 02

  The time round is the one that looks great.

• 13:39Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's like the only one they've really designed for women. I mean, honestly, the rest were.

• 13:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Yeah. All the other ones, and the other ones never looked great. That one actually, I thought looked really cool. So what happens now? So they're, they're laying off all the hardware people, right? And the software team is going to Fitbit and they're gonna, it's gonna be a Fitbit operating system? What's, what's the plan?

• 13:56Speaker 03

  Uh, so according to a report in Bloomberg, about 40% of the employees at Pebble were offered jobs at Fitbit. And you are correct, it is primarily in the software engineering team. Fitbit just acquired the platform. And as of right now, we don't know exactly what the plan is for how Fitbit is either going to continue to support the platform or integrate it in some way. Like my best guess would be that, um, you know, Fitbit sort of dipped its toe into smartwatch territory with the Blaze because it had this, you know, color touchscreen display and it ran a couple of apps. I mean, most notably Fitbit's own app called Fitstar that they had acquired. Um, but it wasn't really a platform for apps, right?

• 14:36Speaker 03

  So my best guess is that if Fitbit is going to get deeper into the smartwatch market, they're going to take this technology and possibly use some of it to build a platform that outside developers actually want to build stuff for that can run on a Fitbit. Or some type of fragment of an app that will run on a Fitbit.

• 14:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I think the question is, it's the same Apple question. I think the thing that doomed Pebble ultimately is Apple just didn't give them all the hooks into the OS that they needed. Like you couldn't respond to an iMessage from a Pebble, but you can definitely do that from an Apple Watch. And the question to me is, can any smartwatch survive if they can't provide a complete extension of the phone experience? Or do they all have to become replacements for your phone? Because Apple won't let them in the door. And I just, I don't know the answer to that question at all.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  I think that's right on. Yeah. Cause I couldn't text from my Pebble.

• 15:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  And that, that.

• 15:26Nilay Patel?

  Definitely want to do from.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I, I don't use my Pebble anymore.

• 15:29Nilay Patel?

  It's all over.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  It's because of me that they got bought.

• 15:31Nilay Patel?

  So you don't have, you don't have one on. I don't have one on. Dieter, do you have a smartwatch on?

• 15:36Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 15:36Nilay Patel?

  What do you have on?

• 15:37Speaker 02

  I have a Moto 360, which they're not making these anymore. And it's the. I mean, everybody makes fun of it because it has the flat tire display. I don't care. It's not a million inches thick like every other Android Wear watch. And that's like, it's not a giant watch. And like the Gear S3 also massive.

• 15:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 15:57Speaker 02

  Right? Like, we're not even talking about Samsung's smartwatch. Which, fine, I don't know, I don't care. I guess I should more. But like, they're putting cellular radios in this shit now, like, err, like.

• 16:10Speaker 02

  No, like, the thing that's really frustrating, because like, if Pebble had access to like, more money and like, like, more engineering resources. And actually, like, a bigger, like, supply chain of cheaper parts. And like, the platform, like, if they had all of these things that they were never gonna get. They had the right philosophy about what a smartwatch should be. They were focused on, you know, the right things. They knew that they weren't gonna like, take over fitness, but they had just enough to make you happy. They focused on battery life. They focused on usability. The design of the OS was, of the new OS was by Ty, who was at WebOS, and then he went to Pebble, and now he's over at Intel. And it was like, really smart. Like, they had all the right ideas.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  They had a really small, dedicated community that loved them, and they had zero chance of success. I mean, I'm just gonna say it. Sounds a lot like Palm to me.

• 17:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I knew that's where you were going.

• 17:05Speaker 03

  How did you possibly know that?

• 17:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Lauren, are you wearing a smartwatch?

• 17:08Speaker 03

  I'm not wearing a smartwatch right now. I actually have not worn a smartwatch since, um, since, like, election day.

• 17:16Speaker 02

  You know what? I don't want anymore.

• 17:17Speaker 03

  I'm just so depressed.

• 17:18Speaker 02

  Information about what happens in the world. The smartwatch is gone.

• 17:21Nilay Patel?

  So are you wearing a tracker?

• 17:22Speaker 03

  Uh, I'm actually not at the moment. I very briefly use the Nike, Nike Apple Watch.

• 17:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 17:28Speaker 03

  Which, um, I have on loan and, um, is exactly like the Apple Watch Series 2, but with some Nike stuff and some Nike colors.

• 17:35Speaker 02

  So you're, you're zero quant right now?

• 17:36Speaker 03

  I'm zero, yeah.

• 17:38Speaker 02

  No quantification whatsoever.

• 17:39Speaker 03

  I've gone back to, uh, just using Strava on my phone right now.

• 17:42Speaker 02

  Okay, well, that counts. You're not, you're not, you're not an actual non-quant. You're like, something else.

• 17:48Speaker 03

  I just, I don't know why. I just haven't in a while. But, um, this is probably the longest I've gone, about a month, in a really, in years, without wearing it, without wearing a tracker. But, but yeah, I mean, I guess this brings up the bigger question as to whether or not, not just this category, but this idea of gadgetry, gadgets in general are, are dead, as some people have.

• 18:08Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah. So this is good. So.

• 18:09Speaker 02

  That was really smooth. That was really good.

• 18:12Nilay Patel?

  So Farhad Manjoo, who's at The Times, who we love and know, he's been on the show. I'm actually going on his show tomorrow to argue with him about this.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah?

• 18:21Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah. It's me and Joanna Stern, and we've demanded that he rename his show from the Farhad and Jay Show, or the Jay and Farhad Show, to the Joanna and Neil Show. We'll see if this condition is accepted. But anyway, Farhad's a good guy. He wrote a piece pegged to the Pebble News, basically saying gadgets are over. Like, this was supposed to be a new category that supported all kinds of new companies. It fizzled out. Basically, everything's a smartphone now, and this moment of gadgetry has passed. Ashley Carmen took exception to this. I thought you wrote a great piece saying gadgets are dead. You want to walk us through it?

• 18:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, so Farhad's piece was interesting. There was a couple of core problems, not to hate on Farhad, but I'm just going to say. So he was basically bringing up this point that Pebble being acquired, me, that is evidence, as well as other companies, like 3D Robotics not doing well. These companies aren't doing well, therefore gadgets are dead, which just like that logic doesn't make sense.

• 19:20Nilay Patel?

  He also called out Nest, and Tony Fadell from Nest has been raging on Twitter for Farhad all day, which is amazing.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  Nest people are unhappy.

• 19:28Nilay Patel?

  No, in general, they're not.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  You know.

• 19:30Nilay Patel?

  It's either too hot or too cold in their house, and they can't figure it out.

• 19:34Speaker 02

  They're so angry about the temperature, they built an entire frickin' company and all these smart algorithms. Can somebody please just fix the temperature in this room? And all of a sudden, Nest came out.

• 19:44Speaker 02

  I got a sweater, I put it on, I'm too hot, screw this.

• 19:47Nilay Patel?

  I got a sweater.

• 19:48Speaker 02

  I have to build a whole new company to fix it.

• 19:50Nilay Patel?

  It's like the title of Tony Fadell's memoir, it's like, I got a sweater.

• 19:54Speaker 01

  Just buy a blanket.

• 19:56Nilay Patel?

  Ashley, keep going.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  I'm sorry.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  So, yeah, so he says these things, and then I'm saying, that just doesn't make any sense. Also, what even is a gadget? If you're saying gadgets are dead, let's define what a gadget is. And in his mind, a gadget was like the Game Boy, or a Walkman, or like these really landmark gadgets, little, you know, electronics. Like the iPod or something. Yeah, iPod, et cetera. And I'm saying, okay, well, now everything is technically connected. So at this point, how can you say gadgets are dead? Is a dishwasher a gadget? Is a connected light bulb a gadget? What is a gadget, first of all? And then basically saying... After we define what a gadget is, that there are tons of gadgets in the world,

• 20:39Speaker 01

  and that people with hobbies and interests and special needs are going to continue to buy gadgets, if you needed a built-in market. So yeah, I referenced a weed garden.

• 20:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  A garden that, for your house, that helps you grow weed.

• 20:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  Which is not for everyone, but like-

• 20:55Nilay Patel?

  But it could be.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  But, yeah, it could be. You know, people smoke weed. It's like, legal in a lot of places here.

• 21:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  So, someone out there wants to grow it.

• 21:04Nilay Patel?

  Let's talk more about this weed garden.

• 21:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, you should write a follow-up to that, that ganja is not dead.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  Ganja is well alive.

• 21:13Nilay Patel?

  Well, I think this comes up-

• 21:14Speaker 03

  Ganja gadgets are not dead.

• 21:17Nilay Patel?

  Ganja is forever. The Ashley Carbon story.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  Wow, can't wait to dedicate my life to this.

• 21:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's gonna be great. Ashley, you have a new beat? We're changing the whole site. The intersection of technology, culture, and weed, just straight up weed.

• 21:31Nilay Patel?

  But I think, so it's weird, because I think this is super cyclical, on almost a yearly basis, that the end of the year comes, we like stare into the void of holiday sales, CES looms in the distance, and everybody who writes about tech gets real sad, in a variety of ways. And they're like, "Nothing is exciting anymore."

• 21:51Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:51Nilay Patel?

  And I just, I don't know, I don't buy it. Dieter, Lauren?

• 21:54Speaker 02

  I just think that people that write these articles just don't want to go to CES, and the editor say, "No, you have to go." They're like, "Oh yeah, I can prove to you that it won't matter." And then they write these articles.

• 22:03Nilay Patel?

  But it's not gonna matter.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  I wholeheartedly agree with that.

• 22:05Nilay Patel?

  And it's not why you go, right?

• 22:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:07Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it, nothing happens there, but you get to see everybody, that's important. You get to look at all the stuff, that's important. I mean, Walt is not going for the first time in 25 years, he informed me yesterday, because he's like, "Nothing ever gets announced there, except for HGTVs, and I just bought one, so I'm good."

• 22:27Speaker 03

  Well, it was like, I'm not gonna go shopping while I'm there, so, you know.

• 22:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the way I look at it is, we go there to just like see that, basically see what they put a chip in this year, right? And where design thinking has gone. So like, this weed garden is, it connects to your phone, it has a bunch of sensors that are cheap now because of smartphones. There's an app that lets you monitor all the sensors, because smartphones exist. So it's the ancillary things that are happening away from the phone.

• 22:53Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 22:53Nilay Patel?

  But they're never gonna grow into a phone themselves.

• 22:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, your phone cannot grow weed for you.

• 22:59Speaker 03

  I have a sort of a philosophical theory about the whole gadget thing, which is, in my opinion, 2016 was the year that people in general were just way more interesting and way more interesting subjects than gadgets or technology. And that the companies that haven't really done well this year, or put out products that weren't received well, have essentially lost touch with what people actually wanted. And they have forgotten somewhere along the way that these things are supposed to serve people and do things for people and make people better. And they haven't. And that's why sometimes that's a fail.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's why, like, when I'm saying, people with interests, like, this is going to help them do what they love to do. It will make them happier, happier. And so, yeah, I totally see where you're coming from with that.

• 23:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, I think the, I mean, how many times in the show have we talked about ports in the MacBook and headphone jacks on phones? Like, those are examples of the tech industry saying, here's the future as we've decided it will be. And people saying, this isn't how we use your stuff at all.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:04Nilay Patel?

  There's a huge disconnect, just in that, there's like a massive disconnect. By the way, for all the people who tweeted me about whether I'm gonna write an angry article about the Galaxy S8 not having a headphone jack.

• 24:12Speaker 02

  Oh, we gotta talk about that, yeah, yeah.

• 24:14Nilay Patel?

  It's, uh, it's half-written, it's in the brow, it's, it's here, it's in front of me, I need to finish it. It's just as stupid, I promise you, and maybe even worse. But, uh...

• 24:23Speaker 02

  It's maybe worse, but it's also better because they're gonna switch to USB-C, which despite still being, uh, um, you know, a dangerous fiasco when you try and buy stuff off of Amazon, or anywhere else, uh, is, you know, more of a standard for audio than, uh, than Lightning.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  And at least you can wirelessly charge.

• 24:42Nilay Patel?

  Their phone.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. What I really want to do is like stick my phone to the back of an airline.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  I mean, it's not the best, but it's better than Apple.

• 24:50Nilay Patel?

  There's like radiating power magnets in the back of every airline seat. I'm just.

• 24:53Speaker 02

  It means you can.

• 24:53Nilay Patel?

  Press my phone up against it while I was.

• 24:57Speaker 02

  You can charge it and listen at the same time with wireless charging.

• 25:00Nilay Patel?

  That's what I'm saying, but you need a wireless charging pad.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, yeah.

• 25:04Nilay Patel?

  So you just install that.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  I mean, it's not convenient, no.

• 25:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Anyway, I will, I promise I'll write that. I'll finish it. But I think the bigger point about gadgets in general, and I think it has a lot to do with what Lauren is saying, which is kind of like the, that's the mass market success negative side of what Ashley is saying, which is the big companies don't know what big categories exist for them. So they're, they're making bets. We just spent all this time talking about wearables, which everybody thought was the big bet. It was the next thing. We're going to put computers on our faces and wrists and everywhere. And people, for the most part, have rejected the idea of wearing their computers so far. But then there's a flip side, which is, hey, I like doing something. Can you make it easier and automate it in some way?

• 25:51Nilay Patel?

  Can you, I like making tortillas, for example.

• 25:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Right, or like the Garmin, like the Garmin user, you know, that person who's like, I'm going to go out and run several miles or go on a hike or do a triathlon this weekend. They need that dedicated thing. And that is that hobbyist sort of mentality that Ashley is referring to in her piece. I think that's great. And there are gadgets that serve that.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  The, the, all the sous vide gadgets that came out like a year, year and a half ago, like they're everywhere now. And it's just like a standard thing that people go buy. And for a while, that was like a new thing. And that's like definitely a, like, I want to learn how to cook in this weird way.

• 26:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 26:23Speaker 02

  It's a hobby.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Yeah, I mean, the other issue too, that I was trying to deal with, with this piece was like Farhad was basically saying that because these companies didn't become the next Apple, these things failed, right?

• 26:36Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  And I'm like, okay, maybe a gadget company that solely does gadgets, this one weed garden, isn't going to be the next Apple. It's just not. So then it's like, how do you qualify success?

• 26:46Nilay Patel?

  I gotta tell you, there's a lot of stoned guys who started their weed company who are like, we're going to be the next Apple.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  I'm here to tell you all, you're not going to be the next guy.

• 26:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, they should start with LSD.

• 26:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 26:57Speaker 03

  But, uh, but no, but then the GoPro example that Farhad brought up, I think that goes back to this idea of like not actually understanding what people do, which is like sort of this assumption that this tiny little action camera is, is going to be useful or interesting to everybody. When like in reality, most of our lives are like, we just do a lot of mundane, everyday stuff. And most people don't actually need to put a little camera on their body or on their bike or whatever it is, right? It's like, I don't know, record their commutes. Like, it's just like not what people do.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  Well, and Farhad said that he wanted a GoPro, but instead bought a third-party or off-brand one from China.

• 27:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  And basically his headline was just wrong. He should have just said, "A lot of gadget companies are failing."

• 27:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  He shouldn't have said gadgets are dead.

• 27:47Nilay Patel?

  I think his headline was be like, "Behold the gadget apocalypse."

• 27:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm like, dude, it's not happening.

• 27:52Nilay Patel?

  Well, it's happened, but like, it is happening in one specific way, which is a lot of companies built on what we thought were going to be big new categories have collapsed because those categories, people got tired of them, or they bought one thing and realized they didn't need another thing. Like, you don't...

• 28:09Speaker 02

  The, uh, here's how I, here's how I see it. Um, the smartphone, especially Apple smartphones, are different from computers because the computer was the digital hub and you're going to like attach a bunch of weird crap to it via USB and do stuff.

• 28:25Speaker 02

  And the number of things that you can attach to an iPhone to do stuff with, whether it's wirelessly or, you know, via wire or a little lens over it, um, you know, it's not as broad. And if something that attaches to the iPhone in some way becomes successful as a third-party, in order to like really get big, they have to like have a deep integration to the OS in a way that Apple won't let them. And that, or Apple will just like jump into the category and push you out. So, like, that is actually a little bit the story of GoPro. I know it's a separate thing and, you know, it records on its own, its own kind of gadget, but it eventually was like gonna get superseded. It's definitely the story of Pebble, right? And so we like the gadgets that are happening now that are like interesting and like have a chance

• 29:08Speaker 02

  need to make sure that they don't become, I don't know, beholden, I guess, like a vassal of basically the iPhone or, you know, Android phones, because there's so many of them, so different, you know, have no idea how they're, you know, if it's going to work with all of them.

• 29:21Nilay Patel?

  And there's a long list of it.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  Being a, being a satellite device to a phone is a riskier game than being a satellite device to a computer was.

• 29:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, especially because you generally couldn't take the computer with you everywhere that you went.

• 29:34Speaker 02

  Right.

• 29:34Nilay Patel?

  Right, so the phone is already more useful, but the phone is already more useful to you everywhere you go. But all the gadget categories that we think are really interesting are ones that have nothing to do with your phone. So voice assistant speakers are really interesting. Virtually nothing to do with your phone. Ashley brought up Wi-Fi routers. Dan just published his Google Wi-Fi review, says he thinks it's the one to buy.

• 29:59Nilay Patel?

  I am continually shocked by the fact that we can't publish enough stuff on Wi-Fi routers.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:03Nilay Patel?

  I don't understand it, like, I don't read router reviews, but all the rest of you do, and you read the hell out of them. I mean, there's, I think there's just like a long list of that. Drones, drones have virtually nothing to do with your phone, except some of them require you to plug in the main as a screen.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  For a display, yeah.

• 30:21Nilay Patel?

  But the newest GoPro, or, I'm sorry, the newest Phantom Pro is going to come with its first controller with a screen built in. So it's just the really interesting categories are changing in ways that have virtually nothing to do with phones. And I, I think that's actually the danger for an Apple, right? If you, if you have a limited amount of money to spend a year on gadgets, and you're like, my phone is good enough, maybe this one thing is annoying me, there's all this other stuff to buy that has nothing to do with my phone, maybe your money's going to go there. And I think that's, that's like the core of what Farhad is talking about from kind of the negative side, which is here are all these ideas and none of them panned out, and they didn't turn into big companies that rivaled Apple for your money.

• 31:04Nilay Patel?

  And what we're saying is, but there are so many other ideas, and some of them are working out. Also, Wi-Fi routers are great.

• 31:12Nilay Patel?

  All right, I need to read this ad and then we should talk about Microsoft and ARM.

• 31:17Nilay Patel?

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• 31:50Speaker 01

  A studio apartment. Can you imagine the whore?

• 31:54Nilay Patel?

  Imagine you have no bedroom. Imagine everyone stands in the kitchen. But what if you could order an extra bedroom for your guests that you could remove after they leave? Just imagine that while you smoke your app weed. That's the idea behind Lenovo's next-generation data centers, built for cloud computing. See, the cloud is all about giving your company the ability to expand and contract server capacity on demand without actually adding more hardware. Lenovo understands that on-demand access can give your company a tremendous competitive advantage. "Think about it," it says here. "The faster you can scale up, the faster your development team can test new applications." And that means you can get new product features into market faster. But that kind of flexibility is worthless if your servers are down. Lenovo servers are number one in reliability and performance because you don't have time for downtime. Someone wrote that and smiled. Just-

• 32:39Speaker 01

  I don't have time-

• 32:40Nilay Patel?

  Hit the button. You don't have time for downtime. Anyway, if you're feeling handcuffed by proprietary hardware and software relationships, Lenovo systems allow you to partner with leading software providers to ensure your cloud solution is best in class. Lenovo systems can even integrate with legacy software platforms to help get your cloud solution up and running quickly. So, learn more about how Lenovo is transforming the data center at www.lenovo.com/datacenter, which, I assure you, runs on the same data center. Think about that.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  Thinking.

• 33:08Nilay Patel?

  Super fast.

• 33:10Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, Dieter, huge ARM Windows news. You want to walk us through it?

• 33:16Speaker 02

  So, Windows has demoed running full-on desktop-style Windows apps through emulation, software emulation, on ARM processors. I think it was Qualcomm 820?

• 33:28Nilay Patel?

  835.

• 33:29Speaker 02

  835 is the one that we're hoping. Yeah, okay, 835. That's like the big hot new one. Anyway, to be clear, we all understand that Windows 10, or Windows 8 at least, already ran on ARM and the Surface RT and the Windows Store apps, the Metro apps, the Windows Store Experience apps, the whatever the hell that we're supposed to call them now apps.

• 33:50Nilay Patel?

  Modern.

• 33:51Speaker 02

  No, I don't think they're modern anymore. I think it was Metro, then Modern, then like something, and then now it's like Windows Store. Anyway, they're supposed to like be able to run on both ARM and Intel on x86. But nobody wanted those computers. And so now they have got actual proper, you know, quote-unquote "proper" Windows apps, like Photoshop, running on ARM. And, you know, from their demo, which take with the grain of salt, seemed fine. The big question is like, when they actually release a computer using an ARM chip, will that emulation actually be good or not? Which, I don't know, we'll see. But if it is, it's potentially exciting because ARM chips are like

• 34:36Speaker 02

  way more interesting right now than Intel x86 chips. My general feeling is that the year-over-year improvement of x86 chips isn't really following more as law anymore. It's getting smaller and smaller, at least as we've seen them come out of Intel. So like, the brand-new Cave Lake chips, everybody's been waiting for. Everyone's real mad that the new MacBook Pros don't run on them. We've been looking at the new Windows devices that do run on them and they're like, you know, a little faster, but they're not like holy crap faster. They're not like, uh, what, what came before Skylake?

• 35:09Nilay Patel?

  Silver Lake.

• 35:11Speaker 03

  Broad, Broadwell. Oh, yeah.

• 35:12Speaker 02

  Broadwell, Broadwell.

• 35:13Nilay Patel?

  Silver Lake has the name of a neighborhood in Los Angeles.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  You remember when Broadwell came out and, uh, the new MacBook Airs like suddenly had like insane good battery life and really good speed, like, and that it was like a revolution in laptops. Like, that's the last time that Intel had a moment like that. And everything else since then has felt pretty small and iterative. But on the ARM side, I mean, shit has been getting faster like crazy. Like, the, the iPad Pro has a processor that is probably, I don't know the exact number, it's more powerful than the processor in my actual, like, little skinny MacBook.

• 35:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:48Speaker 03

  Which is a Core M.

• 35:49Speaker 02

  Which is.

• 35:49Speaker 03

  Intel Core M. Right.

• 35:50Speaker 02

  So if that trend continues, like, what our conception of Windows on ARM computers is, is like the Surface RT, and it was bad, it was like, not enough software, and it was kind of slow, we didn't feel good about it. Uh, but if ARM processors can catch up, or surpass, or get in the same realm as fast enough as like x86 processors, there ends up being a wide swath of benefits that you can't get from Intel, because Intel never really figured out mobile in a big way. So you get theoretically probably better battery life, and you get way easier cellular connectivity, and you have, uh, a much higher ceiling for growth of improvement in the future if the trends of like year-over-year improvements

• 36:35Speaker 02

  in processor speed continues. So, I've been going a while, I'm running out of steam here.

• 36:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 36:41Speaker 02

  Somebody help me out.

• 36:41Speaker 03

  I have two questions.

• 36:42Speaker 02

  But I'm kind of excited.

• 36:43Speaker 03

  I think I was gonna say, I think I have like more questions than statements.

• 36:48Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 36:48Speaker 03

  The first is, um, first off, like, how, how does the emulation actually work? And then, second of all, sec- second of off, does that even make sense?

• 36:56Nilay Patel?

  Second of all.

• 36:57Speaker 03

  Second of all, second of, second of off.

• 36:59Speaker 02

  Hey, you're a non-quant right now. You live free. You're not, you're not bound by numbers.

• 37:05Nilay Patel?

  No number system can contain you.

• 37:08Speaker 02

  Do whatever you want.

• 37:09Nilay Patel?

  The number nine is a prison.

• 37:10Speaker 03

  Reboot. No, okay, so how does the emulation work is the first thing. And second of all, like, how much better is this going to be than something like, say, the YogaBook? Because it's funny, when I reviewed the Lenovo YogaBook.

• 37:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:22Speaker 03

  Which is this tiny, little, amazing convertible laptop that has this futuristic keyboard. And it comes in both an Android version and a Windows 10 version. The Windows 10 version on, which is an Atom chip, which is a mobile chip.

• 37:36Speaker 02

  Oh, but it's an old mobile chip.

• 37:38Speaker 03

  And someone in the PC industry reached out to me after that review and actually said, you know how similar this is to the Surface RT, right? The whole idea, the form factor, how small and thin it is, but it's also running on a mobile chip, right? So like, I'm just super curious to see like, how the emulation works and how much better this actually is.

• 37:54Speaker 02

  And when you say how it works, do you mean like, the actual technical details of like, what do they do with the emulator and the software to make the software like, do the

• 38:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, like, what does that mean? Like, for laypeople? What does that even mean?

• 38:04Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I can give you the super lay thing. I don't know the technical details way deep down, but like, software is designed to run on a certain kind of processor. And if it's going to run on a different kind of processor, there needs to be a software layer in between that says, hey, I know you think you're running an Intel, but you're actually an ARM, so I'm going to act like Intel for you and be a go-between.

• 38:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:22Speaker 02

  And what that does is it slows everything down.

• 38:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but it used to slow it down way more.

• 38:28Speaker 02

  Right, they've gotten better at it.

• 38:30Nilay Patel?

  The dynamic recompile, like, that part of computer science has been accelerating for some time.

• 38:35Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 38:36Nilay Patel?

  There's like, there's just a lot of Microsoft behind it.

• 38:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:41Nilay Patel?

  Because Microsoft's entire server stack is about creating environments, this is like, way deep in the weeds, but like, there's just a lot of Microsoft computer science that's about abstracting you, the software, away from it, the chip. And like, they can do it now.

• 38:58Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 38:58Nilay Patel?

  And they've been wanting to do it for a long time. I think, to me, the question, Dieter, you brought up, uh, Apple. It's like, Apple's ARM chips are way faster than everybody else's, but they're not doing this.

• 39:09Speaker 02

  Right. Which is bonkers, right?

• 39:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, but it is a preview of a move that Apple could make, right? We're going to dynamically recompile all of our x86 stuff.

• 39:19Speaker 02

  Right.

• 39:20Nilay Patel?

  For.

• 39:20Speaker 02

  But the big question, like, I do, I find it incredibly fascinating that Microsoft, it seems, unless Apple like comes out tomorrow and is like, hey, that's two, uh, is beating Apple to the punch on this. Cause we're all sort of assuming they're going to do it with a Mac at some point. But Microsoft's beating the punch, which is hilarious, uh, for me. I'm not sure why, but I just, I can't get over it because we all just been waiting for Apple to do it. And Microsoft's like, oh yeah, we're, we're doing it.

• 39:43Nilay Patel?

  Well, so, so that's actually my big question is.

• 39:45Speaker 02

  Can, can, can Apple, does Apple have the software chops that you were just talking about that Microsoft has?

• 39:53Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 39:53Speaker 02

  In order to pull it off as well as Microsoft has.

• 39:55Nilay Patel?

  I mean, they've done it before.

• 39:56Speaker 03

  And so what you're saying they would pull off though.

• 39:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. When they did it before, when they switched to x86, there was like, there was a period where you'd run that stuff in emulation. I forget what the mode was called.

• 40:04Nilay Patel?

  Blue box.

• 40:05Speaker 02

  When you run.

• 40:05Nilay Patel?

  It was the blue box.

• 40:06Speaker 02

  Whatever.

• 40:06Nilay Patel?

  That's what it was.

• 40:07Speaker 02

  It was not good.

• 40:08Nilay Patel?

  It was fine. It was fine.

• 40:09Speaker 03

  Just to be clear, what you're, what you're wondering if Apple can pull off is actually having a, a laptop form factor, but it's running, uh.

• 40:16Nilay Patel?

  It's running one of their A series chips. Like they would take.

• 40:18Speaker 03

  It's running the A series chip.

• 40:20Speaker 02

  They could, I mean, they could do that hardware tomorrow.

• 40:21Speaker 03

  Like the A9X or the A10X or whatever it is.

• 40:24Speaker 02

  I'm sure they have that hardware right now. Like I'm sure they have this MacBook with a ARM processor in it and Mac OS 10 running, Mac OS running on it very nice and smooth and bug free. And it feels and actually is way faster than my current computer. But the question is, is the emulation layer that allows apps that weren't compiled for this processor going to be as good on Apple as we assume it could be on Microsoft? Like it all comes down to like, are these emulated apps, apps running over on the emulation layer going to be as good as you claim? Is it going to be a shitty experience?

• 40:59Nilay Patel?

  So, so I think, I think it's unfair to conflate what Apple might do with what Microsoft is doing. Because Apple, Apple controls its ecosystem. They have their own language, right? They have Swift, right?

• 41:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure.

• 41:09Nilay Patel?

  That's the day when they say everything has to be written in Swift and it can go everywhere and we'll handle it for you. Microsoft has a whole other suite of problems. The two questions.

• 41:18Speaker 03

  Didn't Microsoft do that sort of with universal apps? When they started.

• 41:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, but nobody made them.

• 41:21Nilay Patel?

  The whole point of this is Photoshop is not a universal app. It's a Win32 app designed for Intel processors. And they're building a layer that slides in under it and lets it run on ARM. So how much slowdown is that layer going to cause is Dieter's big question. My questions are a little bit different. One, if that layer isn't slow, what incentive does any developer have to make an app for Microsoft's new world ever? Because then they get the new computers and the old computers, which Microsoft is historically bad at like moving its legacy systems forward. So this could create a big problem there.

• 41:58Speaker 02

  Oh, no, you'll want to make you'll want to make it the new universal apps because they'll run on phones.

• 42:02Nilay Patel?

  But they don't sell any goddamn phones. And second, and I think this is way more, way more important is like, how bad did Intel blow it? Like this is the end of Intel.

• 42:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:15Nilay Patel?

  Microsoft is saying, well, one of the reasons we wanted to do this is because these computers will now have integrated cellular connectivity.

• 42:22Speaker 02

  And better battery life.

• 42:23Nilay Patel?

  And Intel, like, you know, two months ago is like, we put a modem in the iPhone. Right? Like, that was their big win. And they can't carry that win over to what Microsoft wants to do because they don't have the performance and the battery life.

• 42:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:36Nilay Patel?

  Where you just went on a whole long thing about how the newest Intel X86 chips are not nearly as good. Like, I think Intel's facing a crisis moment if the next generation I.

• 42:49Speaker 02

  And their response is screw it around with AR and drones and like.

• 42:52Speaker 03

  A VR.

• 42:52Speaker 02

  And VR.

• 42:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Like, that's where they're at right now. Dan wrote a thing about the Surface Pro 4. He's like, I love this. Now Microsoft can make the one I actually want with an ARM chip in it. The whole phones thing, it's a little bit of a joke. But if Microsoft can make a phone that you plug into a display and then it can just run Photoshop, it's kind of neat, right? Like, Apple's not going to let you do that. It's just. Where, what happened to Intel in this last two years? It feels like Intel has dropped the ball so hard that our MacBooks are bad. Our Windows laptops are compromised in some way. Microsoft is moving away and you're sitting there dreaming about your MacBook with a different chip in it and a software compatibility layer.

• 43:34Speaker 02

  And for anybody that says CES is going to be super boring, like Intel has the keynote. They're going to have to get on stage in this, in this new world and like talk about how they're cool and work like, they've done it now for two years in big ways and like, haven't seen a bunch of that stuff really land. Like, are you using Curie modules?

• 43:51Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god.

• 43:52Speaker 03

  Well.

• 43:53Speaker 02

  Right?

• 43:54Speaker 03

  I mean, in fairness to Intel, that's sort of what happens when you're a chipmaker and you're relying on your OEMs saying, yes, we will use this as opposed to like a Sony getting up there and showing something off. And then they're directly responsible for shipping that in that timeframe.

• 44:07Speaker 02

  On the other hand, Qualcomm did the most insane CES keynote of all time. The Born Mobile keynote with Big Bird and, uh, you know, bad Star Trek movie actress and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. On stage. I'm not.

• 44:24Nilay Patel?

  We're just gonna talk about that forever.

• 44:26Speaker 02

  These are all true facts that I'm stating right now.

• 44:28Speaker 03

  Dieter, have you been using Ashley's weed gadget?

• 44:31Nilay Patel?

  Ashley's weed app. That's actually a really good name for a weed app.

• 44:37Speaker 02

  What was the band? Who was the band with the guy or the tattoo?

• 44:40Nilay Patel?

  Well, there's two bands. It was Maroon 5 was on stage.

• 44:43Speaker 02

  Maroon 5 was on stage.

• 44:44Nilay Patel?

  They were, they were like playing Sting on the live stream or something.

• 44:46Speaker 02

  No, it was like, it was like, uh, uh, god, I don't remember.

• 44:49Nilay Patel?

  It was literally like you were watching Maroon 5.

• 44:51Speaker 02

  Dido, it was Dido.

• 44:52Nilay Patel?

  You all used Dido, but you were hearing Dido. It was very confusing.

• 44:56Speaker 03

  This sounds weird.

• 44:56Speaker 02

  Anyway, they are also a chipmaker that is fully dependent on other companies saying that they'll make their stuff. And they're doing it just fine.

• 45:05Speaker 03

  That's true.

• 45:05Speaker 02

  So like, yeah, Intel, like, it's easy to knock Intel for like showing off a bunch of prototypes that never actually make it into production. Cause that's literally their job is to make prototypes and get everybody else to adopt their chips and create things with them. But maybe they could do a little bit less showing off prototypes on stage and a little bit more showing off prototypes in back rooms. Cause that's pretty obviously what Qualcomm has been doing and Qualcomm is doing just fine.

• 45:28Speaker 03

  I mean, are ARM chips cheaper than Intel chips?

• 45:32Nilay Patel?

  It's weird because they're smaller.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:34Nilay Patel?

  And that literally depend, that's.

• 45:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, so like.

• 45:38Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  This is just all.

• 45:39Nilay Patel?

  The answer is like yes and no, right? Like they're, they both come in price ranges, but I think dollar for dollar, it's going to be cheaper.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  But also.

• 45:45Nilay Patel?

  Performance for performance, it's cheaper.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 45:48Speaker 03

  And also the pricing structure is going to be different because whoever's using.

• 45:50Speaker 01

  If it just makes more affordable.

• 45:52Speaker 03

  Licensing it.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  Windows PCs, then doesn't that make sense?

• 45:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I don't know. I, I, I don't think Windows PCs can get any cheaper.

• 46:05Nilay Patel?

  This one's $4.

• 46:07Speaker 01

  Please take it.

• 46:07Nilay Patel?

  It runs Photoshop.

• 46:11Nilay Patel?

  That, this moment for the entire PC ecosystem is the one where unless Intel gets its game back together, it, it changes into something else entirely, which is what everyone has always told us is going to happen. Like Moore's Law is going to run out and tablets become the whole thing and PCs die and on and on and on. And then I think back to, you know, a month ago when the MacBook Pro came out and everyone was like, I just wanted to have 90 ports and the biggest display and that love of PCs was still really strong, but it feels like Intel just can't capitalize on it. And that means Apple, Microsoft, Dell, whoever, they can't make exactly the thing that we want. I mean, Dieter and Lauren, you two have been testing Windows laptops non-stop. Have you found the one true Windows laptop?

• 46:56Speaker 03

  We're getting a couple, we're getting a couple more today. I think we determined that the Dell X PS13 is probably one of the best.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  Still the old default. The, the big question for me, and I haven't had a chance to try it is the Spectre X360.

• 47:07Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  That's the, that might be the one. But like, I've got the Acer Spin 7, it's not the one, it's a, it's a M, Core M. Well, they don't call them Core M anymore, which is like the most, that's, that actually, that is the perfect example of Intel's fricking problem. There used to be the Core M processor and then they decided to call it Core I. And if you wanted to know if you had a real Intel processor that could actually move things or a not real one, you had to look at like the full code name of the, the chip.

• 47:36Speaker 03

  You couldn't just say like I5, I7 anymore. Yeah.

• 47:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. So like, this is technically a Core I. i5, but it's not. It's a core i5 dash i.

• 47:45Speaker 01

  It makes gadget blogging really hard. I'm just, I'm just gonna say that. I have to go through some serious numbers to figure out which chips.

• 47:55Nilay Patel?

  You know, it's funny, on Apple's spec page, they just listed as a core M for the MacBook.

• 47:59Speaker 03

  Good.

• 47:59Nilay Patel?

  They haven't changed it. Yeah, they're like, fuck it, it's a core M.

• 48:02Speaker 02

  That's amazing.

• 48:03Speaker 03

  They don't want to confuse people.

• 48:04Nilay Patel?

  It's a 1.3 gigahertz dual core Intel Core M7 processor, which technically doesn't exist.

• 48:10Speaker 03

  And Dieter, you also reviewed the 910, the Lenovo Yoga 910.

• 48:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, which has all the right pieces put together badly.

• 48:18Speaker 03

  Yeah. And then I reviewed the Yoga Book.

• 48:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:20Speaker 03

  Which I like because it's cool and futuristic and it's relatively inexpensive, but it's not going to be your everyday computer.

• 48:24Speaker 02

  Oh, man, I want, I want the Yoga Book to be your everyday computer. Like, that, that device in particular is what I'm waiting for.

• 48:29Speaker 03

  Oh, I have an idea. I have an idea. So you, you talked about Windows and phones before, right? And like, we were joking.

• 48:37Speaker 02

  What else can you do?

• 48:39Speaker 03

  Just to clarify, that was a joke. Because unfortunately, they are. But what if, like, Microsoft has this vision for a future and the phone actually doesn't exist? Like, the phone, the phone that we know it as now, it doesn't exist because our crappy smartwatches that we're wearing now, they have the cellular radio, right? So we have our smartwatches, our, excuse me, we have our phone literally on our bodies, on our wrist, and that is your phone module attached to your wrist. And then you're carrying around a tablet-like device. And maybe that's like a Surface type thing, or maybe it's like a Yoga Book type thing, or a tiny little iPad, right?

• 49:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:14Speaker 03

  And that is your interface.

• 49:16Speaker 02

  Are you, are you ready to slap me in the face?

• 49:19Speaker 03

  You've already written this.

• 49:20Nilay Patel?

  Do it!

• 49:20Speaker 02

  No.

• 49:21Nilay Patel?

  It's an audio show, but I have a video feed and I'm ready for it.

• 49:25Speaker 02

  The, the dream you're describing was the dream of one Mr. Palm founder, Jeff Hawkins, and it's why he created the Folio. He told this exact story of like, you're not going to carry a phone around, you're going to maybe have a display, but like, your computer is going to be this thing that you like have on your belt.

• 49:42Speaker 03

  Right.

• 49:43Speaker 02

  And like, all your devices will just talk to it and it'll have all your stuff on it.

• 49:44Nilay Patel?

  Belt computer.

• 49:46Speaker 03

  Like, this is your cell, I'm like gesturing in the camera right now. This is your cell connection.

• 49:51Nilay Patel?

  On your wrist.

• 49:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, on your wrist. And it can be a relatively low power consumption device, because all you need to support is the cellular radio. You don't even need a display, maybe. Maybe you do for some interaction. And then you're carrying around this like cool tablet-y thing that you can like punch a number into if you have to.

• 50:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 50:05Speaker 03

  Right? But you're basically using it to like commute. And then you get to your office and you plug that arm-powered thing into your larger monitor, and that's your computing experience.

• 50:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think you just try something that will require Bluetooth to work.

• 50:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:20Nilay Patel?

  It's not gonna-

• 50:20Speaker 02

  Next year. That'll be fine, it'll work next year.

• 50:24Speaker 03

  Hey, Bluetooth 5 just came out, okay?

• 50:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I like the vision. It's just, I don't like Bluetooth. It's so bad.

• 50:32Speaker 03

  And then we'll all be wearing little AirPods.

• 50:33Nilay Patel?

  Alright, I have to read, I'm gonna read an ad about socks. And then we're gonna have a wee, a wee lightning round.

• 50:40Nilay Patel?

  Have you guys heard about Sock Club?

• 50:42Speaker 02

  What? No.

• 50:42Speaker 03

  No.

• 50:43Nilay Patel?

  Sock Club, absolutely the best gift solution. You can purchase a Sock of the Month subscription for everyone on your list, and they'll receive a pair of quality, American-made socks directly to their door every month. I'd like to pause here and note that socks are not just for feet. You can put iPods in them. You can, you can, you can put anything in them, really.

• 51:03Speaker 03

  All those iPods everyone's using.

• 51:05Nilay Patel?

  They're just hollow fabric tubes. Anyway.

• 51:11Nilay Patel?

  It's a fact. Anyway, Sock Club offers printable membership certificates, which is an amazing concept. So you can give subscriptions away. You can write customized gift messages. So your loved one remembers you every month when they receive their socks. I love that there's an exclamation point here. You can write whatever you want on the gift message, including "I bought you socks."

• 51:38Speaker 01

  Oh, I have so many ideas.

• 51:39Nilay Patel?

  Uh, these socks are premium quality, American-made socks. They use cotton sourced from the southeast United States, designed in Austin, Texas. They're knit in North Carolina. You can tell the difference when you put them on. Uh, each month brings a brand-new, never-before-seen sock designs specifically created for that month. They even come with a background story on the sock's name and design. Uh, everything about this is perfect and wonderful. This is a little gift with a huge impact. It's way more exciting than a one-time gift because your loved one will get a new package of socks every month in their mailbox. Sock Club offers gift subscriptions for men, women, and children. You can give Sock Club to, uh, just about anybody. I will say the ad copy says "List some people," so you can give it to Ashley.

• 52:21Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 52:21Nilay Patel?

  Dieter, Lauren, our producer Andrew. Uh, if our listeners want to throw Sock Club at Andrew, I'm sure he'll be, he'll be super excited about that. Uh, so anyway, make yourself look like an expert gift giver, uh, and me. You can buy me socks.

• 52:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, you deserve the socks.

• 52:36Nilay Patel?

  Uh, you know, every year, Becky is, one of my Christmas presents gives me Sock Reboot, where she just buys me all-new socks.

• 52:42Speaker 01

  Socks?

• 52:43Nilay Patel?

  So now we got a whole thing.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:44Nilay Patel?

  We actually call it, she won't let me call it Sock Reboot. Cause she's like, "Socks are not a computer."

• 52:50Speaker 01

  You cannot tech this.

• 52:51Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, make yourself look like an expert gift giver and check all of those hard-to-shop-for people off your shopping list today. Go to sockclub.com, get 15% off using promo code VERGE at checkout. It's a delightful gift experience, comfy feet every month, hollow fabric tubes, Sock Club this holiday season.

• 53:08Speaker 01

  Honestly, I might get this for my brother.

• 53:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, right?

• 53:11Speaker 01

  My brother hates everything in the world, but he has to wear socks.

• 53:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Hollow fabric, it's the worst Radiohead album.

• 53:20Speaker 02

  Fitbit Bronco.

• 53:22Nilay Patel?

  That's, that's really good. Do you, do you want to talk about Westworld for another hour? Do you guys finish it?

• 53:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:27Nilay Patel?

  All right.

• 53:27Speaker 02

  I did.

• 53:27Nilay Patel?

  Thumbs up, thumbs down?

• 53:28Speaker 02

  Thumbs up on the final two episodes. I know it was like a lot of like, "We're explaining everything to you now," but, uh, it, it stopped enjoying the smell of its own farts and, uh, and became a good show.

• 53:41Nilay Patel?

  Ashley, you just finished it.

• 53:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I said thumbs up.

• 53:43Nilay Patel?

  Thumbs up. So I've, I, can I, can I offer my one theory?

• 53:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:46Nilay Patel?

  About the end? That I haven't seen it printed anywhere on the internet. I have just obsessively consumed everything written about this show. At the end, right before the, spoiler alert, turn it off now. If you haven't seen it, just turn, is it off? Okay.

• 53:59Speaker 01

  What, what if I haven't seen it?

• 54:01Nilay Patel?

  Oh, D headphone. So at the end, at the end... He's like, "After all, you own the park, or at least most of it." He says it to the man in black, "Or at least most of it." And he goes and kills everybody else, implying that the man in black will not own the whole thing.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  Oh, I didn't know there's that line.

• 54:19Nilay Patel?

  Right? He says, "At least most of it." And then he's like, "Robot massacre," and the man in black gets shot in the arm, but he doesn't die. I think that means the man in black, because Ford knows that what the man in black wants is for them to come alive, now owns the park full of alive hosts.

• 54:32Speaker 02

  Nobody's written that because it's so obvious.

• 54:34Nilay Patel?

  No, I don't think that's it. I've seen it everywhere. Because what I've seen is, is the man in black alive or not? And I think the answer is, he's definitely alive because...

• 54:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. That's it.

• 54:43Speaker 02

  He's definitely alive.

• 54:45Nilay Patel?

  Wow. Cool burn, Dieter, by the way.

• 54:47Speaker 02

  Just saying. But is Ford alive?

• 54:50Nilay Patel?

  Remember when you went on a 20-minute rant about Microsoft's an arm and I didn't interrupt you? That was payback. That was reverse payback for that burn.

• 54:56Speaker 02

  I'm sorry. Okay. We could keep going on this. We probably shouldn't, though. I'm glad to have a show where I don't need to read 18 theories about it to try and understand what the frickin' timeline of the show was.

• 55:10Nilay Patel?

  AT&T Time Warner, big hearing yesterday. "AT&T is, Randall Stevenson says, 'Net neutrality is bad for the internet. We support net neutrality, but not Title II. I have thought about this, which is that is the new lie carriers tell. They support net neutrality, but not the rules that make it real.'" I think the internet's about to change forever. Dieter?

• 55:29Speaker 02

  I think this is gonna go through, and the fight has to move to trying to convince Congress to put some actual teeth on the writers to accepting it.

• 55:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Yeah. It's all over.

• 55:41Speaker 02

  I don't want to give up the whole fight in the first place, but like, yo, it's gonna happen. Doom. It's like, you know in Lord of the Rings when they hear the stomping in the distance? That's what's happening to us right now.

• 55:56Nilay Patel?

  Okay. Dieter, you had some good tweets on this. "Apple launched its iOS single sign-on for TV apps." Uh, but like, nothing works with it.

• 56:05Speaker 02

  Nothing.

• 56:06Speaker 03

  Dieter said, "Does it make a sound if you launch, what did you say? If you launch single sign on, but like HBO Comcast or Comcast?" I don't even know it.

• 56:14Speaker 02

  They have nobody. They have nobody. They have, they have DirecTV.

• 56:17Speaker 03

  All of the service providers don't support it except for DirecTV.

• 56:20Nilay Patel?

  And mostly apps don't work.

• 56:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. Like, this is the saddest launch ever. It's just like the perfect sign that like, this is like, and then like, the, the thing I said is like, the companies that could just tomorrow decide to turn this on and like, enable this feature are the very same companies that are screwing around with your cable bill and now trying to screw around with the internet. So the Apple TV is actually the perfect example. This is the worst lightning round ever. It's the perfect example of the nexus of the problems of what's happening to the internet in America today. It's the intersection of TV and the internet and how just, I'm gonna, fuckery is breaking stuff. Breaking, it's breaking what the experience ought to be for no good reason other than fuckery.

• 57:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and money.

• 57:09Speaker 03

  Dieter's exact tweet was, "If Apple TV launches single sign on in Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Charter, FiOS and Optimum are missing. Doesn't make a sound."

• 57:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 57:17Speaker 03

  That was the tweet.

• 57:18Nilay Patel?

  Okay, next lightning round one. Is it gonna be Lauren or Ashley? Who knows? Both of you, everybody ready? Amazon Go launches, it's a store, cashier free convenience store, you just put the stuff in your bag and walk away. Ashley?

• 57:29Speaker 01

  Um, I can't wait for someone to try to steal from this and then all of the security footage leaks of them getting tackled by Amazon employees.

• 57:37Nilay Patel?

  Other employees? Lauren?

• 57:39Speaker 01

  I guess you have.

• 57:39Speaker 03

  Oh, I thought I was going to the next one. Oh, God.

• 57:41Nilay Patel?

  I don't have a next one.

• 57:42Speaker 03

  Some people made some jokes about like, well, what does this mean for shoplifting? Okay, that's all well and fine. Uh, I think it's a brilliant idea. I think this is definitely the direction that retail is moving in. However, I do wonder what the automation is gonna mean for retail jobs.

• 57:56Nilay Patel?

  Okay, Lauren, I do have one more for you. Ready? "Apple blames exposure to ambient air for iPhone 6S battery failures."

• 58:03Speaker 03

  Oh my God. Okay. I am 90% certain I have one of these phones.

• 58:07Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I have one too.

• 58:08Speaker 03

  And I say 90% certain because I have not yet gone to the store to figure out if my serial number falls within this category. But it's been happening for months. It's usually when I'm out on a run and I'm like tracking the run and I'm feeling really good about myself. And I'm like, God, I got 57% battery left left or whatever the hell is left. And it just dies. And then your music stops suddenly and you can't track anything anymore. And it is honestly super frustrating. And by the way, that's not even that dire of a situation. I mean, I can't even imagine like people who are like, I need to make an emergency phone call, or I need maps really badly right now because I don't know where I am. It's a terrible thing. All we know is what Apple has told us. I will say, all we know is that it's a small number of people, which if you're thinking about the whole iPhone universe, could actually be a significant number of phones. I will say though, that Apple, this

• 58:52Speaker 03

  is not their first rodeo when it comes to this stuff. They had antenna gate, they had bend gate, now they're having battery gate. And they generally try to come out pretty quickly and offer like some technical nugget of what they think is going on, which is, as you might know, different from Samsung's approach with exploding batteries.

• 59:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 59:11Speaker 03

  That's kind of my take on it. Like, it's not a good thing. It pisses me off that my iPhone battery is doing this. It sucks. However...

• 59:18Nilay Patel?

  So it's weird that I think that they're blaming hardware problems when it's pretty clearly a software problem. Like, I've had this phone for a year, over a year. It didn't do it before. I upgraded to iOS 10.

• 59:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:28Nilay Patel?

  And now it dies.

• 59:29Speaker 03

  When did yours start doing it?

• 59:30Nilay Patel?

  Huh?

• 59:30Speaker 03

  Mine started doing it about maybe three months ago or so? When did yours start doing it?

• 59:34Nilay Patel?

  It's weird because I thought it was just like crashy iOS 10. So I didn't even think about it until people started talking about it. So I've definitely noticed for the last month or so, maybe a little bit more. But it was definitely a little bit crashier when I first upgraded to iOS 10.

• 59:49Speaker 03

  Yes. Actually, you're right. For me, it happened after iOS 10. It started happening after iOS 10, I'm thinking. You know, I'm gonna have to go back and look. I just remember like testing...

• 59:57Nilay Patel?

  What are you gonna look at? Do you have a log of every iPhone crash?

• 1:00:01Speaker 03

  No, but when I'm testing wearables, if I'm unable to complete a test because the phone died, I mark that. So I can go back and start to look at like when that started happening during my wearables testing and when it really started to piss me off and see if that may have coincided with iOS 10.

• 1:00:16Nilay Patel?

  That is some real big data analysis, Lauren. I'm impressed.

• 1:00:21Speaker 03

  We're nerds. I mean, this is just like an unfancy Google dog. It's not like I have like, you know, sheets running where I'm like building pivot tables.

• 1:00:29Nilay Patel?

  Have you thought about using an expandable cloud system?

• 1:00:33Speaker 03

  That's not an ad for that.

• 1:00:34Nilay Patel?

  Have you thought about adding a bedroom to your home for this now?

• 1:00:39Speaker 03

  That'd go over real well. So, um, well, their explanation is that this exposure to air created a faster degradation of the battery. Like, we all know batteries degrade after some time, but that would have been some like, I don't know, some serious exposure to air.

• 1:00:54Nilay Patel?

  This is just Apple forcing me to buy an iPhone 7. I feel it in my heart, right? They're like, you know what? You wrote all that crap about the headphone jack and now you have to have one.

• 1:01:02Speaker 03

  They went through, they figured out every person who ever complained about iPhone 7 on the internet and they still have them.

• 1:01:09Nilay Patel?

  This is like the fourth time I brought it back to you on this one. Her phone started doing it and it crashed really hard and I couldn't recover it. And she actively chose not to get a 7 and bought a 6S Plus because she didn't want to deal with the headphone thing.

• 1:01:21Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:01:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. She was like, this is dumb. She like looked at the dongle, I showed it to her and she's like, no. And just bought the old phone. They were gonna give her the new phone for free.

• 1:01:30Speaker 02

  Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. Just, just, just so that everybody's very clear about, about the thinking here. She will put Scotch tape on a charger for her Fitbit, but she will not deal with a dongle for the iPhone.

• 1:01:41Nilay Patel?

  She won't do it. We have AT&T next, right? Like, we just get the new phone if you want it. Like, I just get the new phone, but I don't want to deal with it. And I was like, do you just want to get you the new phone? And she, she's like, what's the headphone thing? Because she doesn't pay attention to me ever. So she didn't know.

• 1:01:58Speaker 03

  It's only my passion.

• 1:02:00Nilay Patel?

  It's only my all-consuming love.

• 1:02:02Speaker 03

  Only wrote a hot take about it. No big deal.

• 1:02:05Nilay Patel?

  I only wrote a hot take. It's my defining hot take. So, and she's like, no, no, no, no. And she's like, point to the 6S. Anyway, I think that's our show. Is that it? What else is going on?

• 1:02:16Speaker 02

  That's enough.

• 1:02:16Speaker 03

  Oh, we didn't talk about Apple car?

• 1:02:18Speaker 02

  We didn't talk about Samsung's wall-to-wall screen?

• 1:02:22Nilay Patel?

  That's a, Samsung rumor is similar to Apple rumor. It's kind of my lightning round. Anything else? Lauren, you were gonna say something?

• 1:02:30Speaker 03

  Apple just sent the strongest hint yet that it's working on a self-driving car. Andy Hawkins wrote that for us a few days ago.

• 1:02:36Nilay Patel?

  Oh, right, because they sent a letter to the government.

• 1:02:37Speaker 03

  The Apple self-driving car thing is like... I feel like, oh, this is exhausting.

• 1:02:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:43Speaker 03

  The make up and breakup thing. We're making a car, we're not making a car, we're making a car.

• 1:02:47Nilay Patel?

  You know, when the iPad came out, we were still, I was still at Engadget. No one else here was at Engadget. I was saying we, but it was just me, all by myself and Paul. But when the iPad came out at Engadget, we wrote a post that tracked the like decade of rumors of an Apple tablet. And how one image from a patent application had been in every story for 10 years about the Apple tablet. I definitely feel like the Apple car is the same thing. We're just gonna talk about it on and off for a decade. And then they're gonna release it and it's gonna be like, yeah, you made an iPhone that rolls.

• 1:03:19Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, it'll just be a really big iPhone.

• 1:03:22Nilay Patel?

  It's a really big iPhone.

• 1:03:23Speaker 02

  It's so big!

• 1:03:28Nilay Patel?

  Anyhow, I think that is indeed our show. Thank you for listening. Well, I'm gonna say something sad now. Usually, this is where I usually plug all the other shows. But one of those shows has come to an end. Ashley, you've hosted some episodes of the show. What's Tech with Chris Plant slash Ashley Carman has come to an end.

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  Done.

• 1:03:43Nilay Patel?

  It's over. Cause Chris is our culture editor now, so he's got all kinds of things to do. And he figured out what tech is.

• 1:03:50Speaker 01

  Woohoo! Mission accomplished.

• 1:03:52Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, there's a serious finale with Chris and Ross Miller, who's been on the show a million times. It's a really, it's a fun episode, so go listen to that. I obviously host Control+Delete with Walt, which is, we talked about design. We also yelled about headphone jacks on that show this week. Lauren, you have a podcast.

• 1:04:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's called Too Embarrassed to Ask, and it's available on iTunes, TuneIn, Stitcher, Google Play, also Recode's website. And this week, Dan Seifer from The Verge came on and we talked all about the smart home. It was super fun.

• 1:04:20Nilay Patel?

  Great. That actually does sound super fun. Let's listen to that. And Kara Swisher on the Recode side has Recode Decode. Peter Kafka has Recode Media, which, if you're a media nerd like me, it's one of the best. All of that is on iTunes. Go rate it, review it, give it the five stars. You can contact all of us. I'm at Reckless. Ashley is Ashley R. Carman. Lauren is Lauren Good, Dieter is at Backalon on Twitter. We're at Verge on Twitter, on Snapchat, on Instagram. Instagram, by the way, getting better and better and better. On theverge.com. Anything else, any other platforms? ALO, Peach? I love Peach. Just find us. There's still like a significant Google+ presence happening for The Verge. We just like auto-post Android stories to it. It's still, those people are still there, so they're doing it.

• 1:05:04Nilay Patel?

  But anyway, talk to us, and we'll be back next week with more Vergecast. That's it, rock and roll. Paul.