What do you own?

On this week's show, Nilay Patel has some thoughts on ownership, Dieter Bohn offers some feelings about Google, Adi Robertson makes assertions about Ingress, and Sam Sheffer spends the whole hour downloading illegal ROMs. There's also some talk about Recode, Google I/O, and WWDC predictions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

  This episode of The Vergecast is brought to you by Desperate and Constant Fear. Those are books. Those are not emotions. Those are books by a man named Daniel Palmer. Desperate is one book. Constant Fear is not a book. Are you looking for a fantastic Father's Day read? Look no further than two new action-packed thrillers out now by acclaimed author Daniel Palmer. Available in hardcover, Constant Fear has been described as "die hard on a prep school campus." It's a story filled with breakneck suspense as a father battles the odds to save his kidnapped son. Paperback readers can look for Desperate, which follows a man who must make an unthinkable choice to save his marriage. Constant Fear and Desperate are on sale wherever books are sold and at KensingtonBooks.com. That

• 0:43Nilay Patel?

  is the best ad we've ever had. This is The Vergecast.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 0:55Nilay Patel?

  Seriously, though.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  That was a great ad.

• 0:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 0:59Speaker 02

  That's good.

• 0:59Nilay Patel?

  I mean, really. I mean, at first I did think the book was just one book called Desperate and Constant Fear.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  Which is a perfect name for a book.

• 1:08Nilay Patel?

  Or just my general situation.

• 1:10Speaker 01

  What if he decides to make it a trilogy and that's what he calls the third book?

• 1:14Nilay Patel?

  Ooh.

• 1:14Speaker 01

  Desperate, Constant Fear, and then Desperate and Constant Fear.

• 1:18Nilay Patel?

  I mean...

• 1:20Speaker 02

  Well, Ori breaks up all of it and it's four books and one of them's called "And."

• 1:24Nilay Patel?

  Oh.

• 1:26Nilay Patel?

  The last one is just called "Fear." It's good. Hello, welcome to The Vergecast. Today is June 4th, 2015. Feels comfortable to say the actual day that we're recording, uh, instead of the week, but I'm trying it out. My beer has made a little hat for itself. No one can see this, but the very strange situation of my beer, just launching, launching foam into space right now.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50Nilay Patel?

  That was excellent audio programming that I just did.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:54Nilay Patel?

  Just imagine a beer with a hat on it and that's what's happening.

• 1:56Speaker 01

  Tiny little hat.

• 1:56Nilay Patel?

  Uh, the person that is continuing to talk before being introduced is Dear Bone.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  Sorry, hi.

• 2:01Nilay Patel?

  And then to my left is Addie Robertson.

• 2:04Speaker 02

  Hi.

• 2:05Nilay Patel?

  How's it going?

• 2:05Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:06Nilay Patel?

  Your beer, no hat.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  I'm scared you're gonna knock it off the table, so I'm holding it.

• 2:09Nilay Patel?

  Oh, but I can't even get over there.

• 2:11Speaker 01

  He does just gesticulate wildly.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  That's how levers work.

• 2:14Speaker 03

  His Twitter handle is reckless.

• 2:16Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God. And that person, for better or worse.

• 2:19Speaker 03

  Hi, hello.

• 2:20Nilay Patel?

  In the hype seat.

• 2:21Speaker 03

  Hi.

• 2:21Nilay Patel?

  Sam Sheffer.

• 2:22Speaker 03

  Hi.

• 2:23Nilay Patel?

  How's it going, man?

• 2:23Speaker 03

  I'm good.

• 2:24Nilay Patel?

  How was last week? You were on the show last week.

• 2:26Speaker 03

  I was. It was good. We IO'd the hell out of the Vergecast.

• 2:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 2:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:30Speaker 03

  But there's still more I/O to talk about, because we, it was on Thursday, so it was only day one of I/O. So Dieter saw all this ATAP stuff, and not to like jump into the Vergecast, but we should jump into things.

• 2:40Nilay Patel?

  Well, actually, let me talk about why I wasn't here last week, really briefly. It's like some meta Verge stuff going on.

• 2:45Speaker 03

  Oh, yes, yes, yes.

• 2:46Nilay Patel?

  So last week, I personally bought Recode.

• 2:51Speaker 03

  With the change in your pocket?

• 2:53Nilay Patel?

  It was amazing. No, it was, it was actually, it wasn't, it was way more than change in my pocket. It was a gigantic novelty check that I presented to Walt Mossberg. God, that would have been amazing. No, our company, I didn't do it. Our company Vox Media bought Recode, which is a website that most people listening to the Vergecast, I imagine, would know. It's Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg used to run All Things D with the Wall Street Journal. Then they left about a year and a half ago, started Recode with their conference called the Code Conference. And there was a deeply hilarious moment last week where the CEO of our company stepped on stage at the Code Conference and said, "I know this is very exclusive, and I couldn't get a ticket, so I told Kara I was gonna buy the whole thing." And then I did. And then, like a room full of people, I applauded. It was, it was one of those moments, Jim Mangoff, where I was like, a second later, I was like,

• 3:37Nilay Patel?

  "How many times did you, like, on the plane on the way here, did you just, did you walk yourself through that one?"

• 3:42Speaker 03

  Major flex on his part.

• 3:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it was good. It was good.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  Tiny, tiny foam beer hat update. It's drooping.

• 3:48Nilay Patel?

  Oh, no!

• 3:51Nilay Patel?

  I don't want to tell you what it looks like right now. I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this.

• 4:00Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 4:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:01Nilay Patel?

  Well, that was a moment on the Vergecast that we'll remember forever. No, so we bought Recode, which is great. Recode obviously consists of a website that covers tech news, which we do at The Verge. So that's interesting. I'm assuming you guys might have some questions about that. So here's a simple answer. Recode right now is a very like business-focused site, right? They cover Kara Swisher, I think one of the most important journalists in all of tech. Certainly one of the most influential and one of the best sourced. But she does a lot of business news. She covers executives leaving Yahoo. She covers Yahoo, which we barely do. She covers executives leaving AOL. She covers AOL, which we barely do. But she's, and she's deep in Silicon Valley investors, VCs.

• 4:43Speaker 03

  Well-connected.

• 4:44Nilay Patel?

  Peter Kafka, who I think is one of the best media reporters in the game, covers the business of media, covers advertising. We are bad at covering advertising. So Recode is going to stay Recode. They're going to do their business thing. They're going to run the code conference.

• 4:55Speaker 03

  There's your answer, listeners.

• 4:57Nilay Patel?

  Yep, so they're going to stay right where they are. They're going to be, obviously, we're going to work together. If you've noticed at Vox Media, we're very good at our verticals, working together. We work with theater, we work with fact, we're with SB Nation. We're going to work with Recode. But then Walt and the reviewers, who review consumer tech, they're going to roll over. And Walt is going to work for both Recode and The Verge. But the reviewers are going to join The Verge and we're going to build out our review program, which is going to be really cool.

• 5:19Speaker 03

  So what you're saying is that Walt's going to be on The Vergecast?

• 5:21Nilay Patel?

  We're gonna, actually.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  That seems like a real distinct possibility.

• 5:24Nilay Patel?

  Walt and Kara both want to be on The Vergecast, which is going to be amazing. But, but the really important fun thing is that Walt and I are going to do a podcast, a Walt show. He, that veers up and down in terms of how much he wants to do it. I can tell you that it was really high until Casey Newton suggested doing that it'd be called Podberg. Then the meter went down. And soon we're building back up. But, so that is something we're thinking about. The deal is, you know, it's still, it was announced, we got to finish it. Nothing's going to happen for a long time, right? There's two staffs, we got to, everybody's got to meet each other. That hasn't happened. We have 50 people, they have 44. It's like a lot of introductions that need to happen, a lot of thinking about how we're going to work together.

• 6:08Nilay Patel?

  But it is very exciting. And I can tell you, kind of like baseline. I've known Walton Kara for a long time. We've known a bunch of people who work over there for a long time.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:18Nilay Patel?

  Ina Fried, who covers mobile there is like, I've seen her at every event for like-

• 6:22Speaker 01

  She's been beating me at scoops for literally 10 years.

• 6:25Nilay Patel?

  So there's a lot of just mutual sort of affection and respect, and I think it's gonna be really fun working with those guys. But for the most part, Recode is gonna do business stuff and we're gonna do fun consumer lifestyle stuff. And there's a ton of overlap there. Those aren't hard lines, right? We are gonna work together. But I think it's gonna be fun. And then Podberg, coming to-

• 6:42Speaker 01

  Podberg.

• 6:43Nilay Patel?

  It's never gonna be called Podberg.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Call it that.

• 6:45Nilay Patel?

  Like, literally, I think the deal is off if I say Podberg one more time.

• 6:49Nilay Patel?

  But that's the story. And if you have any questions, you can tweet at me, you can tweet at Walton, you can tweet at Kara. Like, we're excited to work together, and I think it's gonna be fun. So that is the Verge news. But we should get into like, real news.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:00Nilay Patel?

  You wanna talk about-

• 7:00Speaker 01

  We should talk about Tidal. We should just do that, I think.

• 7:04Nilay Patel?

  One D, Tidal, and then IO, and then WWDC.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  I think that order-

• 7:07Speaker 03

  That order, yeah, feels good.

• 7:10Nilay Patel?

  Hype check Recode.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  Deep in my heart.

• 7:13Speaker 03

  Now that they're under the Vox Media umbrella-

• 7:16Nilay Patel?

  Now that they're no longer a competitor.

• 7:17Speaker 03

  Right. I mean, they're, you know, eight, eight and a half?

• 7:21Nilay Patel?

  We're gonna, we're gonna take them to 13.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 7:23Nilay Patel?

  Whatever scale you're on.

• 7:24Speaker 03

  Burn it all down.

• 7:26Nilay Patel?

  We're off to do that. That's gonna be fun. And I think, I think Walt on the Verge is gonna be, that's gonna be a situation.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  Hype check that.

• 7:34Speaker 03

  It'll be Walt-tastic.

• 7:36Nilay Patel?

  That's bad. Don't say that again. That's even worse than Podberg.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  No.

• 7:39Nilay Patel?

  All right, let's talk about, let's talk about Tidal.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  T-I-D-L.

• 7:43Nilay Patel?

  Tidal, Jay-Z's music service.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  Music streaming service.

• 7:46Nilay Patel?

  Music streaming service. Well, no, it's like a music-

• 7:49Speaker 01

  Music and everything.

• 7:50Nilay Patel?

  Music everything, yeah. Yeah, it's like a music 360 service. So Addy, tell me, before, I don't know if you read Micah's piece, I'm assuming you did. Yeah. You're like, at least scrolled through it really fast. What did you, what were your thoughts on Tidal before we published this big thing? Because Micah published a huge profile of Tidal yesterday. He's been at it for weeks. So Micah, if you don't know, lives in Nashville.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  Hop out of music action. I mean, it is.

• 8:13Nilay Patel?

  I said, it's Knoxville, not Nashville.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  Oh, Knoxville.

• 8:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  Even more so than.

• 8:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. But he's been flying up and down to New York constantly. If you've seen him on the show recently, it's because he's been reporting out the stuff. So Rock Nation's offices are just down the street from us here in New York. So he's just been going over there and like reporting and meeting people. And he published this huge profile yesterday. But I think his, one of his big points was, everyone thinks this is already a failure and it's only six weeks old. So I'm curious, before you read it, what'd you think?

• 8:40Speaker 02

  I mean, it's kind of weird that it's a tiny service that already seems like the big like overdog. Like they have no, they're, they've just launched and they just seem like these big artists who are trying to destroy everyone else. But also, it's totally irrelevant to me because I'm the opposite of an audiophile.

• 8:56Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 8:56Speaker 02

  I use like eight dollar earbuds. I don't think I could actually even, like, there is no benefit in Tidal for me. I haven't gone to a concert for years.

• 9:04Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 9:05Speaker 02

  Hmm hmm.

• 9:05Nilay Patel?

  But you listen to music? What, what, what apps do you use?

• 9:08Speaker 02

  I use Spotify. I basically use exclusively Spotify because before that I only pirated music.

• 9:13Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  This is actually like a step up.

• 9:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, that is like Spotify's major argument, right? Is if people who only pirated music will just pay us a little bit of money, we'll make you a little bit of money.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  Well, I think that's argument for the free tier, right?

• 9:26Speaker 02

  No, I mean, I actually pay for it so that I can listen to stuff offline because I only listen to things on the subway.

• 9:31Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 9:31Speaker 02

  But no, it's actually streaming services have been kind of amazing at getting me off piracy. It's weird.

• 9:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And in the markets in Europe where like piracy has completely destroyed the music industry, Spotify is like, but we make a little bit of money.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:43Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, that's wild. So that's interesting. So that's Spotify. And Spotify has turned into, you know, Jay-Z like had this concert and it's quoted in Micah's piece where he's like, Apple, you like, you buy nine iPhones and Steve Jobs is rich and Spotify is nine billion, but they don't say shit. And it's like, yeah, but they, the more money they make, the more money they lose. Like, they haven't proven this model at all.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:07Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. What did you think of Tidal beforehand?

• 10:08Speaker 01

  So what I thought of Tidal beforehand is basically completely formed, not from using the service, but from their little introduction video.

• 10:17Nilay Patel?

  Oh, God.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  Where they had a whole bunch of incredibly rich, incredibly famous musicians in this like fake, like conference room that where they were like talking about how important it was that they were these, they were going to save the music industry. And it was like, oh, so Tidal is about like a dozen superstars and nothing else. And

• 10:39Speaker 01

  That like, no, like, there was a line where Madonna says, "This is about art, not tech, art." It's like, oh, man, you and I could not have more different worldviews.

• 10:50Speaker 02

  And weirdly, this kind of seems like that point where artists started giving stuff away for free.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  And then, obviously, it was these big names that everyone would pay for, like Amanda Palmer's Kickstarter.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it's exactly like, it's, it's really hard for me to have a ton of sympathy for people that are like ridiculously already wealthy, asking me to like stick it to, I don't know, Spotify, like, in a, in a fight. If, if they're trying to get me to like them because they're the underdogs, like Jay-Z and Madonna are not underdogs relative to Spotify in my mind, right?

• 11:23Speaker 02

  I mean, the thing is, I don't actually know enough about the music industry to understand if, if they get unknown artists on this platform, if they actually have a leg up over something like Spotify.

• 11:32Nilay Patel?

  Right, so their whole, there's so many threads here, and there's so much, so, I don't know, well, I want to keep it on the line. Sam, what'd you think of Tidal before we did this thing?

• 11:42Speaker 03

  I think there's a lot of, um, general negativity against it, uh, because a lot of people don't know what it is yet. And people in our industry are like, oh, it's a failure, and I just, I think, how can you peg it as a failure when it hasn't had time to like breathe yet? Like, companies don't just, I mean, companies do ignite over, do ignite overnight, but Chris has a subscription, Scott has a subscription, like, yes, we are a tech company, we're like.

• 12:12Nilay Patel?

  Sigler is a man, Scott Kellum is a developer at Vox.

• 12:16Speaker 03

  Right, so that's what I'm saying, it's like, the market that they're going for, um.

• 12:20Nilay Patel?

  By the way, I just described Chris Sigler as.

• 12:22Speaker 03

  A man.

• 12:23Nilay Patel?

  Chris Sigler is one of our editors.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  What you meant, the end of that sentence is Chris Sigler is a man who spends hundreds of dollars on USB digital audio converters.

• 12:33Nilay Patel?

  The other day, Chris Seigler sent an email to our entire staff saying, "Have you seen this cable? It's very expensive." And it was just like, it was literally a cable that went from, uh, what is it? A quarter inch headphone jack to two mini XLR cables, which is the weirdest cable in history. And I asked him what it was for, and he was like, "It's for my $3,000 headphones."

• 12:50Speaker 01

  He's, he's an audio hype beast. But I think, I, I think that we need to give Tidal a chance to, to survive.

• 12:57Nilay Patel?

  Alright, so here's what I, so this is what I think, and I, I was reading Micah's piece, and it's great, and you should read it, and like, Jay-Z called Micah, which is amazing.

• 13:07Nilay Patel?

  And then Micah, like, spent a bunch of time with a lot of people. But their whole point is, we basically, that they screwed up when they launched this thing, right? And instead of talking about what the service is, or what it can do, or what they wanted to do, they basically just had famous musicians being like, "We're changing the world."

• 13:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:20Nilay Patel?

  And then they literally showed off a product that they had purchased that had already been on the market for years.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, I mean, to their credit, like, first of all, yes, they're right, they screwed up that launch really badly, but...

• 13:32Nilay Patel?

  I think that video is an incredible document in time.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  What they had on offer, when you look at like, the, the array of streaming services that are available, Spotify, Audio, WotWot, um, the, the zombie of Groove Shark, Google Play Music, and I guess, like, Beats Music, um, and then we assume, what we assume is coming with Apple Music. What they have basically isn't feature differentiated, right? In a major way, other than like, "We've got really high audio quality," and, but the...

• 14:00Nilay Patel?

  They're making music videos.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, but I mean...

• 14:04Speaker 02

  Well, then their Bandcamp has like, the, the small artist cred also.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:09Speaker 02

  The like, actually make money cred.

• 14:10Nilay Patel?

  Right. But no, you're right, so their product, they didn't even redesign it. It still looks the same as Tidal did before.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:18Nilay Patel?

  So they, they're like, "We bought this, and because now we're associated with it, it's better." And that is like a, that's weird, right? That, that's, it's a weird thing to think or say, or... To hype. And then, when you look at the product, like, they just launched new apps. And their apps are basically like web wrappers around the website.

• 14:36Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 14:36Nilay Patel?

  Right, like, they're not, they're not really pushing out into like, deep crazy innovation. They're just doing stuff. And I think, and this is what I think is, kind of like, what everyone's point is, is we're at a place, and I think I've been talking about this show for weeks now, where the music industry is about to change, Apple's gonna do its thing next week.

• 14:53Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 14:54Nilay Patel?

  Um, YouTube is obviously like this dominant force.

• 14:56Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 14:57Nilay Patel?

  And I think people, we're at a place where streaming and distributing the music is now a commodity. So the artists are saying, "Well, you're just doing what we could do. So we're just gonna buy this thing and do it ourselves."

• 15:07Speaker 03

  Right.

• 15:08Nilay Patel?

  But, all of us, basically, know that these things are not the same. And these tiny little differences, like, matter a lot. And the one sense I got from Micah, by the way, if you ever have the pleasure of editing Micah Singleton, just know, it is a battle.

• 15:24Speaker 03

  He will wreck you.

• 15:25Nilay Patel?

  He's, he's a monster. Uh, but Mike and I, like, talked a lot, we were like, "This is a long edit." And I was like, "If we had more time, I would send you back and make you rewrite this, and the story would just be Jay-Z versus technology."

• 15:36Speaker 03

  Huh.

• 15:36Nilay Patel?

  Because you can tell that he doesn't like it. He doesn't like it. What, there's, um, what's his line? He's like, "Guns on your tumblers." And he was like, there's, he makes some crack about Instagram and Made in America. Um, and like, all through this thing, he's like, "We're not a hardware company. We don't sell advertising. We're about art, we're about music." And there's just this deep perception that I have in reading this, and then like, listening to his work, and like, his, hearing him talk about technology, that he's mad that all of these tech companies get rich off music, without contributing to the music in any significant way. And I think that's why he, like, did his deal with Samsung. He's like, "Yeah, sure, take my music."

• 16:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:15Nilay Patel?

  And spit it out to all these phones. And then the deal went bad, because no one, he didn't, it didn't occur to him that he had to make sure they did a good job. Right? Because it's, it's-

• 16:26Nilay Patel?

  It's a commodity, right? And so like if you told me Samsung is going to make an app that distributes a new album to every Galaxy phone, the first thing I would say is, well, Samsung's really bad at software.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, but make sure that they.

• 16:38Nilay Patel?

  Make sure they know what the hell they're doing.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:40Nilay Patel?

  But like, I don't, that is like, that is one level of understanding here that's gone. So when I think when our listeners or readers or audience hears Jay-Z's building a music service, the first thing I think is, well, it's probably going to be bad software. And no one here cares about bad software. And I think that's where the perception it's a failure from, came from, because they don't talk about why their software is better, or why their service is better.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  It's just the music that they have.

• 17:02Nilay Patel?

  Right, it's a commodity.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  Well, so, but that's the thing is like, there's a, there's a promise, whether implicit or explicit, that there's going to be stuff on Tidal that you can't get anywhere else.

• 17:12Nilay Patel?

  Well, there is.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  Right? With, if you want to stream it. And so is it the, then you say.

• 17:17Nilay Patel?

  There is right now. Music is just a commodity. Lil Wayne yesterday.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:20Nilay Patel?

  Announced a new single to go, right? They had a bunch of news yesterday that we timed our feature to, so they have new apps. They're announcing they have a partnership with Ticketmaster, you can buy concert tickets from.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:29Nilay Patel?

  Maybe exclusive concert tickets or exclusive events tickets. And then Lil Wayne's like dropped it, he signed up for Tidal and like dropped a, a new single on it.

• 17:37Speaker 01

  So, but the, the argument that music is a commodity means that like, all of these music services get to compete on the quality of their technology. And that's not the case that they're making at all. If they can meet minimum viable product for the streaming service, for the software, then the thing that sells you is that you can get Lil Wayne and Taylor Swift and Beyonce and whoever else, well, not Beyonce.

• 17:58Nilay Patel?

  Well, that's, that's a really good formulation, right? Is music the commodity? Or is the software a commodity?

• 18:04Speaker 02

  Well, that's exactly what video has done, because the whole point of Amazon and Netflix and everything is that they've split up everything into these little like claves that you have to go and buy a bunch of services for.

• 18:13Nilay Patel?

  Right, right. But I mean, isn't that, that was true of like broadcast channels as well at one point, but like.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  But music has been less that so far.

• 18:20Nilay Patel?

  You think so?

• 18:21Speaker 02

  I feel like, has been, yeah. Like Google Play, like obviously there will be differences, but I feel like if I switched from Spotify to Google Play, I wouldn't be like, God, I'm missing all these things.

• 18:29Nilay Patel?

  Right. But if you search from Netflix to Amazon, you would know.

• 18:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:32Nilay Patel?

  That's really, because I think. What's crazy to me, I think, and I use mostly use an Apple TV, is that I the interface differences between the services are so minimal on an Apple TV because Apple abstracts them out to sort of the same

• 18:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:45Nilay Patel?

  app aesthetic, that it's like, I don't even perceive the differences between them, really. I just know that like, the back end of Showtime is noticeably jankier than the back end of HBO. Like, I like see it. I'm like, huh, this is garbage. Um, but it's just like, that's all, it, it's like, um, you know, Apple has this WWDC is next weekend. There's been tons of rumors about whether or not they're going to do a new Apple TV. And one of their things is they're saying to the providers, like, you're responsible for streaming the video. We're not going to do it for you.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:13Nilay Patel?

  Because that's a commodity now. You can just call up MLB Advanced Media like HBO did for HBO Now and say, do it for us. But I think the streaming services don't do that. I mean, and that's like it. That's what I mean by Jay-Z versus technology, right? It's like, on one end, you have Jay-Z saying, my art is not a commodity. It can't be a commodity. You have to treat it better. And on the other hand, you have basically everyone else being like, but I can get music on all the services.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:35Nilay Patel?

  So build me a best service.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  Yep. I mean, that's where my head is at, but my, I, if we run into a world where like, I need to pick the my music, the music that I want and then pick the, the service after that. Like, I'm not looking forward to that world at all. I'd much rather pick the service with the best technology, which I've done with Google Play Music.

• 19:54Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God. If I get any more emails about Google Play Music. Uh, it's weird. We talk about, we, I think we've talked about music on this show non-stop, right?

• 20:04Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah.

• 20:04Nilay Patel?

  For weeks.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 20:06Nilay Patel?

  I'm obsessed with it.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:07Nilay Patel?

  Because it's like, it's just going through.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  It's metamorphosis right now.

• 20:11Nilay Patel?

  It's, it's just such a move.

• 20:13Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:13Nilay Patel?

  I really want to go back to CDs. You have a CD rack in my house?

• 20:16Speaker 01

  That's why.

• 20:17Nilay Patel?

  I know. You, that's exactly what Becky says to me.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  What's in it?

• 20:20Nilay Patel?

  Do you? CDs, like, just.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  Do you have anything?

• 20:22Speaker 02

  Like, like new ones that you're buying still?

• 20:24Nilay Patel?

  No, no.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  Are they, are they in alphabetical order?

• 20:26Nilay Patel?

  No, they're just a mess. It's just a big, messy CD rack.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  Do you have something that can play those discs that are compact?

• 20:33Nilay Patel?

  I guess. Yeah, I have an Xbox, I have a PS3. I mean, I have an Xbox One and a 360 so I can play. I can double up my Xbox CD action.

• 20:42Speaker 03

  When was the last time you opened a CD case, a jewel case, and played one? And does that, does that happen anywhere and ever? I mean, here's the thing.

• 20:52Nilay Patel?

  Hold on, guys. Sam time.

• 20:53Speaker 03

  No, no, no. You, you'll make fun of this in like four seconds. I recently moved and I moved in with my younger brother and he has a record player and we play records in my apartment. We don't listen to like Spotify music with like auxiliary cable. We listen to records.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, but records already, records are like their own thing. CDs are not a thing.

• 21:11Nilay Patel?

  Right. Okay. Records like this big, like.

• 21:14Speaker 03

  Records are cool.

• 21:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Like, I wish I had.

• 21:17Speaker 02

  Records also last longer, I feel like.

• 21:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 21:19Speaker 02

  CDs were really scratchable.

• 21:21Speaker 03

  Yes, yes.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  Also, I mean, the, the plastic in CDs were, were not designed to last very long.

• 21:27Speaker 02

  Which is why the Library of Congress has like a horrible time with games and any, yeah.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  There's, there's a company a few years ago that promised to make a CD or a DVD that could last, I think it was 100 years and that was like a huge innovation. No, like they did it, but nobody cared. Um, and like Facebook is really proud that it's got CDs or DVDs that can last like 50 years. And it's like, you guys. Paper is fine. It lasts long.

• 21:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, you have to feed punch cards in. Punch cards will be safe.

• 21:53Nilay Patel?

  Punch cards. We should switch everything to punch cards.

• 21:55Speaker 03

  Speaking of punch cards.

• 21:57Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 21:58Speaker 03

  Google I/O.

• 21:59Nilay Patel?

  No, not yet. No.

• 22:01Speaker 03

  I tried.

• 22:02Nilay Patel?

  No, I just like, the record thing is interesting. I wish I had room for record. I used to, when I was in Chicago, I had a record player and all the records. I just miss, like, I think there's something really valuable to like having yours. Like, these are mine and I'm gonna like pick them.

• 22:17Speaker 03

  I agree.

• 22:18Nilay Patel?

  And like, streaming has just completely taken that away.

• 22:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's so weird. I haven't thought, I, maybe music piracy did this, that like everything was transient?

• 22:26Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 22:26Speaker 02

  But I haven't thought about the idea of really owning anything since, for like 10 years.

• 22:30Nilay Patel?

  What do you own? That's a really hard question.

• 22:33Speaker 02

  No, I don't. I literally, I left all my CDs behind when I went to college. I don't, I think I lost a bunch of stuff on a hard drive. I don't own a single disc. I don't have anything that can play a disc, actually.

• 22:44Nilay Patel?

  Do you have any books?

• 22:45Speaker 02

  Um, I have books. I mostly bought them at like the Ithaca book sale, which was, everything was really cheap. I occasionally buy them. I buy reference books sometimes.

• 22:55Nilay Patel?

  Do you buy, you buy video games?

• 22:56Speaker 02

  No, I don't. I mean, not physical ones. I've, I've bought like one disc ever and it was Daikatana and it was a dollar. I, I own a million games on Steam and GOG and everything, but I download them off that service and I'm switching computers constantly.

• 23:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 23:08Speaker 02

  So like, I, I don't know. I don't have this sense that I own, like I own things, but I own access to things.

• 23:14Nilay Patel?

  Right. Sam, what do you own?

• 23:17Speaker 03

  I own my body.

• 23:18Nilay Patel?

  Oh my God.

• 23:19Speaker 03

  I mean, I bought my iPhone. I bought my iPhone.

• 23:22Nilay Patel?

  Not like that. Not hardware.

• 23:26Nilay Patel?

  Don't say your body.

• 23:27Speaker 03

  I bought, uh, I bought, uh, what the hell was that movie? The, the Seth Rogen thing?

• 23:34Nilay Patel?

  So you get, you get suckered into buying movies on Apple TV is what you're saying?

• 23:37Speaker 03

  I don't own an Apple TV. I just, I just bought that.

• 23:39Nilay Patel?

  You bought the interview.

• 23:40Speaker 03

  I bought the.

• 23:41Nilay Patel?

  What service you buy the interview on?

• 23:42Speaker 03

  On YouTube.

• 23:43Nilay Patel?

  So, but that's the thing is you, you own the access to it.

• 23:45Speaker 03

  Alright, I know I don't own the content.

• 23:49Nilay Patel?

  Owning a movie on YouTube, maybe it might be like the lowest form of ownership.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  CDs. You don't own DVDs. You can't even play them on stuff unless you get a Kodak. Half the time they're like copy protected.

• 24:04Nilay Patel?

  Oh my God. We're gonna go walk. Angry, by the way, you don't, you can't, you didn't see this in your car, in your head, but Addy just like dropped the mic and then took like an angry swig of beer.

• 24:17Speaker 03

  What is, what does owning something mean in 2015?

• 24:20Nilay Patel?

  Okay. No. So Addy has a point, right? You've never actually owned the music on the CD. You don't own the.

• 24:27Speaker 02

  You were closer to owning tapes. You're pretty close to owning records.

• 24:29Nilay Patel?

  Yep.

• 24:32Speaker 02

  I mean, they're technologically mediated, but like, there's no way that someone can take away that access.

• 24:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. You, but there's no way that someone can take away the access to a CD. If you have a hardware CD player, they can't just like drop in.

• 24:42Speaker 02

  No, software, software updates can.

• 24:44Nilay Patel?

  No, but like if you have, if you have the CD player that I had or Discman. Like Inspector Gadget isn't gonna show up and like raid your Discman.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  CD, whatever the CD codec is gone, whatever. Are you allowed, is anybody allowed to build one in a hundred years? You know, you'll, will you be able to buy one like in a hundred years? Somebody will know how to make a record player, but unless they're legally allowed.

• 25:08Nilay Patel?

  Wait, you guys are nuts.

• 25:10Speaker 02

  Only books and folk games, actually.

• 25:12Nilay Patel?

  We're about to get into a real format war. This is literally, I just wanted to point this out. This is literally a format war. That's what's happening. So, so do you own? Wait, timeout. You're completely wrong about records. Just a hundred percent wrong about records. There were massive, massive record format wars.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, and but then we waited them out and we're fine now.

• 25:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but like those are all patented. They're all locked down, right? The difference between 33 and 45 RPM is literally a format war.

• 25:38Speaker 01

  And I will feel better about CDs once we're beyond that format war zone.

• 25:42Nilay Patel?

  The first record players, like, do you know the first record players ran at like 120 RPM?

• 25:45Speaker 01

  By the time, by the time the format war is over on CDs, they'll stop working.

• 25:51Speaker 03

  Sorry, Neil and I were having like a bro to bro.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Man, welcome, welcome to cross talk.

• 25:55Speaker 02

  So is ownership just a question of technological mediation then?

• 25:58Speaker 03

  I think so.

• 25:59Nilay Patel?

  Nope.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  If you can.

• 26:01Speaker 03

  Do you own your, do you own the clothes you buy?

• 26:02Nilay Patel?

  I think, I think that if you have a physical object in your home, you are much closer to owning it. Like you are far less technologically mediated if you have a CD than if you have, if you have a bit that's flipped on a YouTube server somewhere that says you can watch the internet.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  What's the difference there though? I think Richard Stallman with an OGG file on his completely open source, free software computer is closer to owning it than you having a CD in your house.

• 26:29Nilay Patel?

  True ownership is coding your own operating system.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  Look, what about those like AR fiduciaries or something like the physical? What do you own like an amiibo? Like, do you own the content on that amiibo? Like, is it more real than?

• 26:40Nilay Patel?

  I don't think, but you never own the content. Like, that is, that's like the root issue here, right?

• 26:46Speaker 02

  A video game, do you own a video game more if somebody gives you like a trinket with it?

• 26:49Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 26:50Speaker 03

  Isn't, isn't the whole thing with like, with pirating games, you're not supposed to download a game unless you own a copy yourself? Isn't that the standard rule?

• 26:58Nilay Patel?

  No, that's not even a rule. That's like some shit people made up on Reddit.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  This is like part of the, the series of things you can make yourself do to feel better about piracy, which I do.

• 27:07Speaker 03

  If you were to go on like coolroms.com, it's like, you may only download this game if you own it.

• 27:12Nilay Patel?

  It's also illegal.

• 27:13Speaker 03

  Cool.

• 27:14Nilay Patel?

  By the way, how often do you go to coolroms.com? When was the last time you went to coolroms.com at work? Let's be, let's be real. Sam's on it right now.

• 27:23Speaker 03

  I'm on it right now.

• 27:24Nilay Patel?

  He's closing windows. Uh, no, that's all lies, right? Like it's lies. Like it's all copyright infringement.

• 27:29Speaker 03

  So then what do you own? Seriously, what, what digital content do you actually own versus like, again, I, I own the shirt. The shirt is mine. There, there's.

• 27:37Nilay Patel?

  Okay. No, I mean, like we, we'll do this and then we gotta, we gotta move on, but like.

• 27:41Speaker 03

  I want to understand this.

• 27:42Nilay Patel?

  But here's the thing, like, here's the thing for, to think about. And I think this is the difference, right? If you buy a book, like a hard copy book, um, or a paperback, whichever one you prefer.

• 27:56Nilay Patel?

  You have the book, right? You have, you have the whole thing. You have the whole copy in your hand.

• 28:00Speaker 02

  You have it unless it has like an app with it.

• 28:02Nilay Patel?

  Unless it has an app with it, or there's some sort of software lock or.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  Or an ARG.

• 28:06Nilay Patel?

  Inspector Gadget shows up to your house and takes your book away.

• 28:08Speaker 03

  Do you own the Kindle book that you bought?

• 28:09Nilay Patel?

  Right, right. But wait, hold on, hold on. So you have the whole copy and it's yours. You can move it around. We have this whole legal system of rights and fair use and first sale.

• 28:20Speaker 02

  I mean, we don't really, but okay.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  Format shifting, like format shifting took a long time.

• 28:29Nilay Patel?

  We should always have Addy on the show.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  This is the most amazing thing.

• 28:32Nilay Patel?

  No, but whatever. If you have the physical copy of the whole thing, if you have a CD, you have the whole copy. You can do stuff. You have a record, you have a VHS tape, whatever the fuck. If you have, and, and we would agree that in that economy, without digital goods, to sell one more copy, you have to make one more copy. So if I have a book and you want to buy a book, you have to make one more book.

• 28:51Speaker 03

  I see where you're going. Yeah. Yes.

• 28:53Nilay Patel?

  But that's true.

• 28:53Speaker 03

  Yes, that is true.

• 28:54Nilay Patel?

  Like if Sam and I both want books in a world of only physical goods, you probably have to manufacture one more book.

• 28:59Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 29:00Nilay Patel?

  Or Sam has to pay me whatever price I say, but ideally you just make one more book and whatever. In a digital world, I think it would be insane for us to say, well, I bought a song from Amazon. I want to stream it to my phone, but Sam wants to see, stream the same song. So Amazon has to duplicate the bits over.

• 29:18Nilay Patel?

  Right. But that is actually where the law got us to.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:20Nilay Patel?

  Right?

• 29:21Speaker 01

  Everybody's uploading their own digital locker music.

• 29:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Digital lockers were a total mess.

• 29:26Nilay Patel?

  Right. So if, if you uploaded yours, your music library to Amazon Cloud Locker, or whatever the hell it was called.

• 29:31Speaker 03

  You can only stream it on Amazon.

• 29:33Nilay Patel?

  You could only stream on Amazon, but I could only stream my songs. So if I uploaded, I don't know, Train in Maine by The Clash, and then you did it, there would be two copies on Amazon of that song.

• 29:41Speaker 03

  Right.

• 29:42Nilay Patel?

  Which is extraordinarily wasteful because it makes no sense. Because you don't need two copies.

• 29:46Speaker 03

  I see. So then wouldn't it make sense to just stream it from some sort of like mothership?

• 29:51Nilay Patel?

  Single copy. Right. Right. And so that is where it turns. Because now if you want a thing and I want a thing, we don't need more things.

• 29:59Speaker 03

  Right. Can't you just, you just pull it from the same thing?

• 30:00Nilay Patel?

  Sam's doing like a whole little dance from the corner.

• 30:03Speaker 03

  Grabbing it from the cloud.

• 30:04Nilay Patel?

  And I think that's the turn, right? That's the turn where for music and for books and for whatever, that's where the stuff became a commodity. The content became a commodity. Because now what you're talking about is how well can you deliver that stuff to all of the people faster, better, through a cooler interface? And let them see more stuff because our access is completely wide open. And I think the artists now are seeing that and they're saying, hold on. Like our stuff, the art is not the commodity. You're the commodity because you're just distributing things. And I think that tension is forever.

• 30:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:36Nilay Patel?

  Right. And I just don't, I don't think there's an answer, but I think it is the most fascinating thing that happens in all of technology. It's a total cycle, right? It's Steve Jobs saying, hey, I know how to sell music on the internet. Have you seen this thing called the iPod? And then he had all the power for a minute. And then the label said, well, this is a commodity now. We don't want you to sell all of our songs for 99 cents. So we want variable pricing. And then they want the power back. And now Spotify showed up and said, we're going to do streaming. And YouTube showed up and said, we're going to do streaming. And Apple saying, we're going to streaming. And they had the power for a minute. So they got all, everything they wanted. And now the artists are saying, hold on, that's a commodity. We want the power back. And that, I think yin and yang is like the most fascinating thing. Maybe that's why I wanted to be a copyright attorney. Unfortunately, Addy thinks everything I think is wrong.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  So here's what I, here's what I want to do.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  I think you're overly optimistic.

• 31:23Nilay Patel?

  Addy is the first person in the history of the Vergecast to call me overly optimistic.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  Addy and I are going to host a podcast with you. Where we're going to discuss the copyright implications of Packers playoffs onsite kicks.

• 31:35Speaker 03

  Oh, wreck. That is a wreck right there.

• 31:37Nilay Patel?

  It's gonna be amazing. I'm 100% reading this ad right now.

• 31:39Speaker 02

  I don't know what that even means.

• 31:40Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 31:44Nilay Patel?

  Shaving can be a pain. It can be uncomfortable. It can go as razor burn, nicks, and on top of that, it can be outrageously expensive. That's why I don't shave. I don't. I just haven't done it.

• 31:53Speaker 03

  Says the guy with the five o'clock shadow.

• 31:54Nilay Patel?

  I've had this five o'clock shadow for like five years. I'm kidding. But if I was gonna shave, I'd use Harry's. It's about half the price of the other big branded blades, and they ship for free to your front doorstep. They're better, too. The first blades are made in Germany, which just coincidentally is where Dieter was made.

• 32:13Nilay Patel?

  And they like this so much.

• 32:15Speaker 03

  Everything from Germany is quality.

• 32:16Nilay Patel?

  The Harry's just bought the entire factory there, which is coincidentally with Dieter's family. Why pay $32 for any pack of blades? It's half the price at Harry's, and with Harry's, you get a better shave that respects your skin, face, legs, and wallet, which is an incredible list.

• 32:30Speaker 02

  My skin and my face?

• 32:31Nilay Patel?

  And legs and wallet.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:33Nilay Patel?

  No more poor quality blades. No more pesky Plexiglas cabinets to unlock either. The starter set is amazing deal for $15. You get a razor, you get moisturizing shave cream, you get three razor blades. And with promo code VERGE, you can get $5 off for an amazing deal. So men, women, we all need razors that shave well and don't suck. I, again, do not shave. But I consider it from time to time, and I think to myself, where can I get a fine German razor that will take the hair off my face with respect for my wallet? And that place is Harry's. You can tie in, it's shipped to your door, there's a high quality of shave, there's the great look and feel of the product. It makes great gifts for birthdays and anniversaries. So please, go to harrys.com now, and Harry's will give you $5 off if you type in coupon code VERGE

• 33:18Nilay Patel?

  with your first purchase. That's harrys.com, coupon code VERGE, and you get $5 off, and you will start shaving better today.

• 33:26Speaker 01

  Our producer John mentioned one other thing that I have in common with Harry's. We're both just so sharp.

• 33:34Nilay Patel?

  God, it's terrible. Terrible.

• 33:37Speaker 01

  Thank you, John. Thank you very much.

• 33:38Nilay Patel?

  All right.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  Very kind.

• 33:39Nilay Patel?

  So.

• 33:40Speaker 03

  Goog, the big Goog.

• 33:41Nilay Patel?

  I almost called Dieter Google. So Google.

• 33:44Speaker 03

  Listen, Google.

• 33:46Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, there's so the loose ends to tie up on Google and I think, Eddie, this, this is a lot to do with you. It's like they're making a big push into VR.

• 33:54Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 33:55Nilay Patel?

  They're making a big push with what Spotlight Stories.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:58Nilay Patel?

  So you were there.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:00Nilay Patel?

  Dieter wrote the world's biggest Google feature. Tell us about it.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  But like, there's, there's three things that they're like, they talked about at I O. There's cardboard, there's like the new things that they're doing there. And then the promise that we've got a huge team working on something massive. There's Project Tango, which is AR and like, what's it called, Eddie? The Slam, the.

• 34:22Speaker 02

  Situational location and mapping?

• 34:24Speaker 01

  Oh, yes. So you know where you are in space in real time.

• 34:27Nilay Patel?

  I wrote that headline to confuse so many people.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  Slam Dance?

• 34:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then there's, there's the Spotlight Stories, which are, which are technically not VR. They're, they're 360 degree video. And then you like, you have this promise both from the cardboard team and from Sundar Pichai that like, yeah, we're, we've got plans for VR. So that's sort of the groundwork and Eddie, you weren't there, but like, I know that you were like, you have lots of opinions, especially about cardboard.

• 34:57Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah, I'm always torn between thinking that cardboard is actually a good idea and it's fun. And I love that people are trying VR and thinking that I really hate using it. Like I've watched music videos on it. It's fun, but I really just want to do stuff in VR. And so it's always really frustrating to have to hold it up to my face and then it's done in a second.

• 35:16Nilay Patel?

  Why don't they include straps?

• 35:17Speaker 02

  Because they don't want you to be able to use it for long enough that you'll get motion sick or turn your head fast enough.

• 35:22Speaker 01

  That's it. They don't, it's mostly the turning your head fast thing. Android phones aren't good enough to let you turn.

• 35:28Speaker 02

  Wait, how? It's like the QWERTY key. I mean, I don't think actually the QWERTY keyboard, but like the urban legend of the QWERTY keyboard that you had to make it slow.

• 35:34Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 35:34Speaker 02

  So you wouldn't screw up.

• 35:35Nilay Patel?

  Wait, so how is the Gear VR good then?

• 35:38Speaker 02

  Say the gear VR isn't good.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  If you were to whip your head around in the gear VR.

• 35:42Speaker 02

  Well, the gear VR, for one thing, only works with one phone where they can control all the software. Like, that's why Karmic went on this amazing rant about middleware like, like last year or something. So they can make things work really well and make sure everything works.

• 35:56Speaker 03

  So that's why they don't include the straps is because they, there's lag?

• 36:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, because think about how fast you can turn your head. Now, hold your hands up and hold a thing to your face and think about how fast you can turn your whole torso.

• 36:06Speaker 03

  That is interesting.

• 36:07Speaker 02

  So the things personally, I do think they're being a little over cautious. They're being just a little bit over cautious because I genuinely don't think there's that much lag. Like, I've tried other cardboardy headsets with straps.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  Part of it, like, they got, the Google people got real, I don't know, haughty, real unhappy when I kept coming. But like, I feel like not putting a strap on it also makes it feel like more of an experiment. Like, it's made out of cardboard. It's not threatening. It's made out of cardboard. It's fun. It's weird. We're just trying stuff. But like, stop trying stuff and start doing stuff. And so they insist that they're doing stuff, but what they're actually showing is cardboard, which is like inherently like seems like low stakes, low threatening. Now, the flip side of that is they've got the, you know, the classroom kit, and they say, you know, well, look, we've shipped a million of these things, so back up. We're cool. But I just don't know, like, we know, we know what Oculus is doing. I don't know if we know what Facebook is doing.

• 37:01Speaker 02

  We don't really know what Oculus is doing.

• 37:02Speaker 01

  Well, we know enough.

• 37:03Speaker 02

  We don't know the input thing that they're gonna do, which is a really important part of what they're doing. We don't know how much it's gonna cost, really. We don't know what they're gonna do with gear VR next generation, although it's gonna be a big thing.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Morpheus. Do we know anything? Not enough?

• 37:17Speaker 02

  I feel like we kind, I feel like Andrew kind of checked out the thing that Morpheus was gonna be, and it seemed maybe neat, and the move controllers are better. But it's mostly, it's basically just content now for VR.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  When, when do I get to say, okay, you guys, VR is here. This is, this is VR now. It's not like, oh, you guys, VR's coming.

• 37:34Speaker 02

  End of 2016 for me. That's when everything will be out.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  All right. Okay, so they're, so.

• 37:40Nilay Patel?

  Oculus is doing their input thing, which they have just sort of started talking about, right? Like, they've been, they've been talking about how they need to figure it out a lot, a lot.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:50Speaker 02

  I think there are, like, very strong rumors now that it's gonna be a D3, although we've heard those before, too.

• 37:55Nilay Patel?

  Right. But isn't the, so, my question is, and this is like the cardboard argument, is Oculus is gonna be, you need, like, a $3,000 PC to run Oculus?

• 38:03Speaker 03

  No, not that much.

• 38:04Speaker 02

  No, not that much.

• 38:05Nilay Patel?

  Oh.

• 38:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's only a thousand. I mean, only a thousand.

• 38:07Speaker 02

  I mean, it's a little more than a thousand, but it's around there.

• 38:10Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so you need a thousand, I thought it was three.

• 38:11Speaker 02

  No, it's like a high mid-range PC.

• 38:14Nilay Patel?

  I think I'm thinking of the GoPro rig I saw last week that was $3,000.

• 38:17Speaker 02

  That maybe is right.

• 38:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's something else entirely.

• 38:19Speaker 01

  Oh, that's the, yeah, there's two GoPro rigs, though.

• 38:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I'm thinking of the GoPro stuff. Sorry, there was a lot of pricing around VR last week floating around. So Oculus, you need a $1,000 PC.

• 38:28Speaker 02

  For the Rift, though, they have the Gear VR, too. That's their whole strategy, is that it's differentiated.

• 38:33Nilay Patel?

  Well, or you need Galaxy Gear, or, uh, not a Galaxy, Galaxy Note.

• 38:39Speaker 02

  Or an S6, I think it works with.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  Think it'll work with an S6? I think there's a version that's coming out for the S6 or something, yeah, yeah.

• 38:45Nilay Patel?

  Right, so you, but anyway, so you need one of two phones.

• 38:48Speaker 03

  Angry Android people are emailing us right now.

• 38:49Nilay Patel?

  Uh, what, or are they?

• 38:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:52Nilay Patel?

  Are they tweeting? Usually this is when my Twitter starts blowing up, when I get, when I get something wrong with this. Anyway, my point is, more broadly, you need some very specialized hardware across the board.

• 39:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:02Nilay Patel?

  For Oculus to work. But Google's point is, like, you just need this cardboard box for it.

• 39:06Speaker 03

  Phone, you have a phone in your pocket already, strap it in, you're good.

• 39:09Nilay Patel?

  Right. Is that not more powerful in some way?

• 39:12Speaker 03

  I think so.

• 39:12Nilay Patel?

  Or is that still just, like, kind of garbage?

• 39:13Speaker 02

  Well, that's the thing, is that I really don't think it's about the technology anymore. I think it's about, like, what people are gonna do with it. And I think that they could, are in a good position to maybe show really compelling stuff, but maybe not. And a lot of the stuff I've seen so far that is for just vanilla mobile is really not super compelling to me. It might be to other people, I know some of it is definitely, but a lot of it is not.

• 39:34Nilay Patel?

  The input thing is a real mess on cardboard.

• 39:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:36Nilay Patel?

  At least the current, maybe not the new one.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  Well, do you know how the new one works?

• 39:39Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  It has a little lever, and it has, uh, conductive foam. So there's a little metal mesh on the outside, and you push on it, and it pushes a lever, and then a tiny little foam metal mesh thing pushes on the screen, or pushes on the screen.

• 39:54Speaker 02

  I mean, I find that totally adorable.

• 39:56Nilay Patel?

  That's like, it's like when those-

• 39:57Speaker 01

  We've got one here, we should've brought it down.

• 39:59Nilay Patel?

  We should've brought it down.

• 39:59Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, no, I meant to bring them.

• 40:01Nilay Patel?

  It's like one of the first gloves that worked with capacitive touchscreens.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:04Nilay Patel?

  And they're just like, here's a piece of tinfoil.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 40:06Nilay Patel?

  We'll just glue it into the finger. All right, that's ridiculous. Wait, so Dieter, so you saw that stuff and then you did ATAP with Regina Dugan, who is kind of like a certified badass.

• 40:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I mean, like she calls our whole team badass pirates. Like, so we sat, you know, she walked me through ATAP's innovation model, which should be the most boring thing on planet Earth, but it's not. They're actually really cool.

• 40:29Nilay Patel?

  This is advanced technologies and projects at Google.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:31Nilay Patel?

  The one thing they kept of Motorola.

• 40:33Speaker 03

  And they're responsible for things like Project Ara.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, so they, Project Ara, Project Tango, they announced a bunch of crazy other stuff, things. They have, in fact, graduated actual projects like into Google and like into real products.

• 40:47Nilay Patel?

  Like what?

• 40:48Speaker 01

  Well, so Tango's into Google, but it's not quite real, but you can.

• 40:52Nilay Patel?

  Tango is the weird tablet.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  That's the weird AR thing, yeah. They've done some like, uh, man, what was it? They're like, there's like three other things, but they won't talk about them because they're not like public.

• 41:02Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 41:02Speaker 01

  Basically. But like, the big question is like, can ATAP make a thing that we'll all be buying? And we're not quite there yet. Ara's launching in Puerto Rico. And like, they're just working on other stuff. But the stuff that they're working on is like legit cool. And they're doing it from like, we promise we're trying to make this real product. We're not just screwing around. And so sometime in the next, you know, 12 to 18 months, like, basically, we need to cash that check.

• 41:32Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:32Speaker 02

  So I'm actually really curious. Are they gonna try to integrate Tango into phones that then you could use with cardboard?

• 41:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, I think, the plan. They, they've, they've got a reference design that Qualcomm is making that has it built into just a phone now. And that's the long-term goal is they want it to be as ubiquitous in phones as GPS is now. And, but the, the question, there's a chicken and egg problem there. Like, it won't be ubiquitous until we all want it, but we won't want it till we know what we can do with it. But no one's gonna bother making stuff to do with it until all of us have it.

• 42:04Speaker 02

  Isn't that kind of what NFC was?

• 42:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, except NFC is lame.

• 42:09Nilay Patel?

  No, NFC is, I mean, like. It was until Apple did it. Well, exactly, right? Not only that, but like, there's only one use case for NFC that really matters. And we all knew what it was. It was payments.

• 42:19Speaker 02

  I use my hand. I can't buy an iPhone because of my hand.

• 42:21Nilay Patel?

  Wait, what?

• 42:22Speaker 02

  My hand, I mean, NFC implant, because it's locked, Apple locks its stuff to payment, so I can't actually open anything on it. And I certainly can't write or reprogram to it.

• 42:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 42:31Speaker 03

  Addy, can you just explain exactly why?

• 42:33Speaker 02

  I implanted an NFC chip in my hand, and so I can read and write to it with my phone. I can't remember what it does right now. I think it opens my Twitter account.

• 42:40Nilay Patel?

  Don't you also have a magnet in your finger?

• 42:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:42Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 42:43Speaker 02

  I have a few things.

• 42:44Nilay Patel?

  Confirmed.

• 42:45Speaker 02

  So anyways, yeah, that's the problem. That's what's really frustrating about Apple. And that's what I do like about Google, is that it is willing to like, do things that it doesn't know what to do with them, because it lets other people do stuff.

• 42:55Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  Even if that stuff is mostly incredibly specialized in Tom.

• 42:58Nilay Patel?

  You like, open Twitter on your phone, and you hold your hand to the back of it, and it unlocks your Twitter?

• 43:02Speaker 02

  No, I open, I mean, I can unlock my phone with it if I rewrite it. But no, I hold it to a phone, theoretically, any phone with NFC in my Twitter, it opens in like Chrome or whatever the default browser is.

• 43:12Nilay Patel?

  Oh, wild.

• 43:13Speaker 02

  The problem is that, I don't know why, but it, like, it's really finicky, because I don't know where the sensor is. Like, I don't know where the NFC chip is on any phone.

• 43:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, right.

• 43:21Speaker 02

  So it's a bunch of like, rubbing it all over things.

• 43:24Nilay Patel?

  That's pretty wild. I will say that when I'm carrying around my iPhone with anything that has NFC on it, I'll randomly look down and Apple Pay will just be there. Oh, yeah, all the time. All the time. It's just like, do you want to pay this other phone? No. No, I really don't want to do that.

• 43:40Nilay Patel?

  Wait, when did you get the NFC implant? I feel like we should have done a whole show on this.

• 43:43Speaker 02

  No, no, I wrote a piece on it. It was before E3, so it would have been like, June last year.

• 43:47Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 43:47Speaker 02

  Had it about a year.

• 43:48Nilay Patel?

  Wow. And you just, for fun?

• 43:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. It was way easier than the magnet.

• 43:54Nilay Patel?

  I feel like the magnet thing was like, it was really out there. Like, people, you have one, Ben has one.

• 43:58Speaker 02

  They've gotten a lot more common.

• 43:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Do you still use your magnet?

• 44:02Speaker 02

  Um, I mean, it's not like a use thing as much as I just feel stuff with it still.

• 44:05Nilay Patel?

  Do you really?

• 44:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm feeling my, what I guess is my heart driver. I don't know, right now. There's something over my entery. And I can put, I'm not gonna do it.

• 44:13Speaker 03

  It wouldn't be the hard drive, it's SSD.

• 44:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I don't know what it is.

• 44:16Speaker 03

  It might be like a speaker.

• 44:17Nilay Patel?

  There are magnet sensors in here that put it to sleep and wake it up.

• 44:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know. That's why I'm really glad I got it on my right hand.

• 44:22Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 44:23Speaker 02

  Because I used to accidentally put it to sleep. My phone is the worst, because it's got a sensor on the back that looks, that like, has some kind of smart thing, and so I'm turning it off constantly if I hold it in this.

• 44:32Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah, I know. You see, it has those smart covers.

• 44:34Speaker 02

  It's terrible.

• 44:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 44:35Speaker 03

  Wow. Robot problems.

• 44:38Nilay Patel?

  Well, so the question I really want to ask Addy, and I think this is the most interesting question of this whole like time, is there is, there's definitely a divide between VR and AR, right? It's like, right, like Microsoft is doing HoloLens, but then Sony's doing Morpheus, and then Oculus is doing this, but Google's doing Tango and Cardboard.

• 44:57Speaker 02

  And glass.

• 44:59Nilay Patel?

  Glass is dead.

• 45:00Speaker 03

  No way. No way.

• 45:02Nilay Patel?

  Do you know how many, like, okay, it wasn't a lot, it was not a lot of emails, but I would say the amount of vitriol in the emails I got about why we didn't put glass in our Google feature was like through the roof.

• 45:14Speaker 03

  There was nothing to talk about. They did nothing.

• 45:18Nilay Patel?

  Also, the title of our piece was Sundar's Google and Glasses Owned by Tony Fidell.

• 45:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm holding out for another version of glass.

• 45:25Nilay Patel?

  Sundar, what do you think of Tony's project is like not a good question.

• 45:27Speaker 02

  I mean, I genuinely don't know how I would wear glass now because the like weirdness of wearing something that costs $1,500 on my face.

• 45:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  Is like, it feels like it'd just be like wearing a giant engagement ring.

• 45:38Nilay Patel?

  But glass is in AR. Glass is just a display.

• 45:41Speaker 02

  That's just terrible AR.

• 45:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. How is it AR?

• 45:46Speaker 02

  The idea that you can do navigation, like turn by turn directions, I mean, you could never really do it because the battery would go dead within like 10 minutes.

• 45:53Nilay Patel?

  Display.

• 45:53Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, but it's a heads up, it's a heads up display that it doesn't have to like touch your environment, it responds to your environment, it responds to where you are.

• 46:01Nilay Patel?

  Air doesn't have to be mapped onto the physical environment.

• 46:03Speaker 02

  If it can look at a thing and like translate it for you.

• 46:05Nilay Patel?

  I'm an AR purist, and I think AR has to map to the environment instead of just being a display in front of me.

• 46:09Speaker 02

  But it is mapping to the environment, it's just not visually mapping to the environment.

• 46:12Nilay Patel?

  Right, because it's actually a map. Okay, fine.

• 46:15Speaker 03

  Do you own?

• 46:15Nilay Patel?

  You caught me in the map loophole.

• 46:17Speaker 03

  The augmented reality objects that you see in your heads up display. Do you own your eyeballs?

• 46:22Speaker 02

  Okay, but anyways, there's a divide between VR and AR.

• 46:27Nilay Patel?

  No, I, whatever, I, let's leave glass aside. I think we can all agree that arguing about glass is a waste of time.

• 46:33Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 46:35Nilay Patel?

  But I'm just saying, I think that's split. I think there's a lot of desire to confuse AR and VR right at this moment. It's like stuff you wear on your face and look at.

• 46:45Speaker 02

  I mean Oculus really wants them to be the same thing. Lots of people want them to be the same thing. It's just that the technology is incredibly difficult.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  So I saw one demo at Tango that made me, that like actually connected those two things together in a way that I'd never experienced before. And I don't know if this is, this means anything for the connection between AR and VR, but it was a VR experience. So I like, I wore literally the seven inch tablet as a VR thing, which was nuts. It was heavy and bulky and whatever.

• 47:11Speaker 02

  That was pretty great to watch.

• 47:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, God. But it was, it did AR in the space. So it mapped the floor to the floor. It mapped like a tree to the middle of the room and I could walk around it physically. But I was in VR. I could only see VR. And then I could see little floating heads in VR, but they were mapped via AR to other actual people that were also wearing ridiculous headsets.

• 47:35Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  So I don't, I didn't know what to call it. Is it AR? Is it VR?

• 47:39Speaker 02

  I mean, those things like, like there's a service called AltSpace and the idea is it's virtual and you're wearing, you use motion controls in it and it checks, it tracks your head and you move through space with other people and you see them. So I feel like that's, it is a blurry distinction. Like is there anything that responds to your environment? Or is it something that lets you see your environment and a thing and those things interact?

• 47:59Speaker 01

  I didn't see my environment at all.

• 48:00Speaker 02

  Which would make it VR, like by that definition. But it's weird.

• 48:05Nilay Patel?

  I just think the difference to me is like VR is it takes you to another place, another environment. And even that environment looks exactly like the one you're in, which is crazy. Like that's, that's the mind explosion.

• 48:18Speaker 02

  Amazing Stanford demo where it maps, it looks exactly like the room you're in, but a giant hole opens in the floor and you have to walk and you have to like step there and fall through it and it's really hard.

• 48:28Nilay Patel?

  I keep hearing about these demos where VR makes you not able to do things. And I keep wanting to, I've never tried one. I gotta, I gotta get more.

• 48:34Speaker 02

  No, it's hard because you need like something with lots of spatial mapping.

• 48:37Nilay Patel?

  Nah, right. Well, no, but there's.

• 48:41Speaker 02

  But you're still in a different space, definitely.

• 48:42Nilay Patel?

  I was definitely reading the Oculus one where they're like, you stand on a ledge and you, they keep on insisting that you take a step off the ledge and people won't do it.

• 48:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, it's, it's generally known as like the pit demo. I've done one. It was hard the first time.

• 48:53Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 48:53Speaker 02

  Easier the second time.

• 48:54Nilay Patel?

  Cause then you're like, you didn't fall down.

• 48:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:56Nilay Patel?

  But I just think so. I think VR takes you to another place, but an AR is about like layering more useful information into your environment.

• 49:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:03Nilay Patel?

  And I think it just feels like that's gonna happen first.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  I mean.

• 49:07Speaker 02

  I think it's way easier to do stuff for, with like whole lens. I feel like I can see much more immediate applications. Not like more things that would be cool with it, but more things I could imagine people being able to do.

• 49:17Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 49:19Speaker 02

  But the field of view sucks.

• 49:21Nilay Patel?

  Does Amazon echo augmented reality? If we're saying glass is augmented reality.

• 49:24Speaker 02

  Well, no, technically any computer, I guess, is augmented reality.

• 49:27Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 49:27Speaker 02

  If it's.

• 49:28Nilay Patel?

  Why not?

• 49:29Speaker 01

  It augments your soundscape.

• 49:31Speaker 02

  Well, look, I, I mean, I guess every, like my phone, my watch is augmented reality. Okay, maybe that's a stretch, but my computer is anything that like vaguely can respond to things. Phones are augmented reality. Which, look, actually that was what augmented reality was for a long time, which was why the term sucks so much now. Because it was like you opened your phone and you were like, I can see where a Wikipedia page is.

• 49:50Speaker 03

  Speaking of Wikipedia, augmented reality is a live, direct or indirect view of a physical, real world environment whose elements are augmented or supplemented by computer generation. What?

• 50:03Nilay Patel?

  Like I just put that there to win this argument.

• 50:05Speaker 03

  You're a troll.

• 50:07Nilay Patel?

  That's my new response to all Wikipedia arguments.

• 50:10Speaker 03

  I just, I just did that actually. That was me. That put it in there. Yeah, right now.

• 50:13Nilay Patel?

  Wait, so why does the term suck? And then we gotta read now.

• 50:15Speaker 02

  Okay, the term sucks because augmented reality was a really big deal when phones were, like smartphones were first there. Google goggles was an augmented reality app. And the deal was that it would just pass through camera stuff. You always had to use a phone and stare up and the apps were just terrible. Like there was a, you know, look at aliens, incredibly crude aliens, and they will shoot something and they'll watch it.

• 50:35Nilay Patel?

  The Yelp thing.

• 50:36Speaker 02

  There was the, yeah, people would do Yelp ones. People would do like Wikipedia landmarks, like Ingress is maybe the coolest example of that kind of AR.

• 50:43Speaker 01

  Hang on, if Ingress is the coolest example of anything, then you know you're a bad.

• 50:48Speaker 02

  I thought Ingress had potential.

• 50:49Nilay Patel?

  Is Ingress, is Ingress popular? I feel like at once, every couple of months, we get like an Ingress story.

• 50:54Speaker 01

  Can we tell listeners what Ingress is?

• 50:56Speaker 02

  Uh, Ingress is.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  Isn't it Ingress?

• 50:57Nilay Patel?

  Wait, go ahead, Daddy.

• 50:58Speaker 02

  I don't know. Um, it's an augmented reality. It's a phone game where there's like energy balls around you and you have to walk real places to pick them up. And you walk to like real points and capture nodes.

• 51:09Speaker 01

  But there's teams, right?

• 51:11Speaker 02

  Okay, there's the, yeah, what are they called? Okay, there's the enlightened and the something else. The ideal is that there are smart aliens invading and you're either on the side of the aliens who want to like enlighten humanity and make it post-human.

• 51:22Speaker 01

  Or factions.

• 51:23Speaker 02

  Or the humans.

• 51:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:24Speaker 02

  Who are dumb and I don't know why anyone wants to be on their side.

• 51:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, who? No one picks them. It's a, it's a, it's a really cool thing and there's some people that were super into it. I have no idea how much.

• 51:32Speaker 02

  No, I really liked it. It just killed the battery in my phone so much that it was not feasible at that time. And also apparently like there's weird stalking stuff, like if someone can match you to your Ingress name, they know where you are all the time. And they can find you and that's busted.

• 51:46Speaker 01

  Wow. There's the enlightened and then there's the resistant.

• 51:49Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 51:49Nilay Patel?

  We're deep, we're deep in the hole.

• 51:51Speaker 02

  Well anyways, that's Ingress. Ingress was the coolest example. So the point was that AR, it just, it turned it into like a thing you look at on your phone. Or like an Ikea catalog where you look and you look down and it's on your phone and it's animated.

• 52:03Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 52:03Speaker 02

  Like it was just not fun.

• 52:04Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 52:05Speaker 02

  Like it was not futuristic to me.

• 52:06Nilay Patel?

  No. But that's what I mean. I think like Hololens is probably the best, is the best thing that I've seen out of all this stuff.

• 52:11Speaker 02

  Oh, it's, yeah, it's great. I mean, especially glass was the same kind of disappointment, honestly.

• 52:15Nilay Patel?

  No, but glass had the thing where like every, every time I wore glass, people would straight up be like, can you see through clothes? Because they thought, it was like, that was.

• 52:22Speaker 02

  Wait, seriously?

• 52:23Nilay Patel?

  Every time. It was the number one question I got when I wore glass. And it was like half a joke and half, I think like.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  What was it? What was this?

• 52:29Nilay Patel?

  People would ask me if I could see through clothes. There was just without question, half serious, half kinda like, I'm hoping you say yes. Like, just sleazy, just in general, but like, across the board, men, women, whoever. It was always like, because I think that the expected benefit of looking like that much of a nerd is that you can see naked people.

• 52:50Speaker 02

  No.

• 52:50Nilay Patel?

  Like, people just do the math in their head, they're like, what would it take for me to wear that on my face? And it's nudity.

• 52:56Speaker 02

  Man, the best was Transmetropolitan, where you could take pictures all the time.

• 52:59Nilay Patel?

  Oh, man. It was just creepy all around. But I, anyway.

• 53:03Speaker 03

  Okay, ad read, let's do it.

• 53:04Nilay Patel?

  It's time.

• 53:05Speaker 03

  Let's go in the ad zone.

• 53:06Nilay Patel?

  And the answer is nudity. Hold on. After this, W W C, right?

• 53:10Speaker 03

  Yeah. Pre-yes.

• 53:15Nilay Patel?

  You know, podcasting is all about great stories.

• 53:16Speaker 03

  It is.

• 53:18Nilay Patel?

  This is, we're into it now. You have to, you have to be good.

• 53:20Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 53:21Nilay Patel?

  It is, that's what podcasting is. It's, it's us just sitting around, telling stories, talking over each other. Addie telling us about, um...

• 53:28Speaker 03

  Talking over each other.

• 53:29Nilay Patel?

  Addie telling us about talking over each other, reprogramming her N F C chip. That's podcasting, stories. But telling great stories isn't just for podcasts.

• 53:38Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 53:39Nilay Patel?

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• 54:22Nilay Patel?

  Everything you need to simplify and scale your marketing process across your organization is all there with Newscred. And so, the first time ever, you can fully understand your audience and generate marketing return on investment in a way that you never could before. So, every business wants this. 64% of marketers say that producing enough content is their biggest challenge, so don't be one of them. Visit newscred.com/verge to learn why companies like Pepsi, IBM, Visa, and Johnson & Johnson rely on Newscred every day, and you can request a free trial. That's newscred.com/verge. N E W S C R E D dot com slash verge.

• 54:54Nilay Patel?

  I maintain a different voice. I'm gonna start doing it totally like a different register so that when I'm back, you know I'm really back.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  So when the vocal fry is back, then we're actually podcasting. Is that the rule?

• 55:05Nilay Patel?

  Yes. I'm gonna start to, what's the other one? What's the one where you go up?

• 55:08Speaker 02

  Up talk.

• 55:08Nilay Patel?

  Up talk. Can you up talk and vocal fry?

• 55:11Speaker 01

  Ooh, I don't know.

• 55:12Speaker 03

  What's up talk?

• 55:13Speaker 01

  God damn it.

• 55:15Nilay Patel?

  I can make this sound at you.

• 55:18Speaker 01

  Alright, we're recording this on, we're recording this on June the 4th.

• 55:23Nilay Patel?

  John's gonna kill me.

• 55:25Speaker 01

  On June 8th.

• 55:28Speaker 03

  What if we clapped into the microphone right now?

• 55:30Nilay Patel?

  Nope, okay.

• 55:31Speaker 03

  What if we whistled?

• 55:32Nilay Patel?

  So on Sunday.

• 55:33Speaker 01

  And Sunday, we're gonna arrive. And then on Monday, the 8th.

• 55:37Nilay Patel?

  We're gonna be at WWDC.

• 55:38Speaker 01

  We're gonna be at Sunday, Dieter and I. Worldwide Developer Conference.

• 55:41Nilay Patel?

  Dieter and I are flying on Sunday.

• 55:42Speaker 01

  Along with James Shelton.

• 55:44Nilay Patel?

  If you're.

• 55:45Speaker 01

  And Wes Reel.

• 55:46Nilay Patel?

  If you're in the air on Sunday, know that you're in the air with me.

• 55:52Speaker 03

  That was, that was deep.

• 55:54Nilay Patel?

  It was. We'll be in the air at the same time.

• 55:57Speaker 01

  So actually, I got a layover.

• 55:59Nilay Patel?

  Technically, I'm in the air right now.

• 56:00Speaker 01

  I'm gonna stop home for like a half an hour.

• 56:02Nilay Patel?

  Aren't you?

• 56:03Speaker 03

  I guess.

• 56:05Nilay Patel?

  Do you ever exist not in the air?

• 56:06Speaker 03

  What is anything?

• 56:07Nilay Patel?

  Alright. WWDC.

• 56:09Speaker 01

  So, the big news was, the big news about WWDC is everybody's hoping for an Apple TV streaming service and a new Apple TV with a fancy remote and revamped interface that isn't horrible and apparently that's all off the table now.

• 56:23Speaker 03

  The interface isn't horrible. No way.

• 56:24Speaker 01

  Yes it is.

• 56:24Nilay Patel?

  Apple TV interface is hot. Hot garbage.

• 56:28Speaker 03

  Whatever, continue.

• 56:29Speaker 01

  This from the guy who thinks Spotify has a wonderful interface.

• 56:32Speaker 03

  I never said Spotify is wonderful. I said Spotify works.

• 56:35Nilay Patel?

  You know, I hung out with the guys from Spotify at Code.

• 56:37Speaker 01

  And did they punch you repeatedly in the jaw?

• 56:40Nilay Patel?

  We were hanging out, went to parties together. It was fun.

• 56:44Nilay Patel?

  It's like the whole time, like, man, I hope you never listen to me.

• 56:48Speaker 03

  Clearly, they did it because they hung out with you.

• 56:51Nilay Patel?

  It was fun. I was just like, down there, they're like, oh, you have a podcast? It's like, no.

• 56:58Nilay Patel?

  Sorry, Peter. Sorry. Continue.

• 57:00Speaker 01

  So don't hold out hope for Apple TV on Monday, but.

• 57:02Nilay Patel?

  And Apple definitely leaked that to the Times, right?

• 57:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 57:06Speaker 01

  And Recode confirmed it.

• 57:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So it sounds like it's gonna be Watch Apps. Well, iOS nine and.

• 57:13Speaker 01

  Watch Apps, iOS nine, yeah, OS whatever.

• 57:17Nilay Patel?

  OS ten eleven.

• 57:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so. So but the thing about iOS nine that's interesting is apparently Apple's finally gonna take on predictive assistant stuff. They're gonna take on Google Now is the rumor. And then, of course, we are also assuming we'll see music.

• 57:32Nilay Patel?

  But, right, and hopefully.

• 57:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:35Nilay Patel?

  We'll see. I mean, the music thing is, we can go into that forever.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  But like, the big story leading up to it is Tim Cook, especially with, I don't know, but the predictive stuff. Like, Tim Cook, like, basically, pretty publicly, tried to lay a smackdown on Google Photos by saying, you know, the standard line of, you know, if you're not paying for it, then you're the customer and you can't trust Google with your photos.

• 57:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  He never said the word "Google," but it was pretty obvious what he was talking about.

• 57:58Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 58:00Speaker 01

  So I don't know what that means for Apple's ability to make a assistant, because the thing that makes Google Now work is that it creepily looks at everything that I do all the time.

• 58:08Nilay Patel?

  Well, Google Now is enabled by the Google ecosystem.

• 58:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 58:11Nilay Patel?

  Right, so you use Gmail both at work and in your personal life.

• 58:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:14Nilay Patel?

  As do I. You use Google Calendar.

• 58:16Speaker 01

  Use Google Search.

• 58:17Nilay Patel?

  Search. A lot of people are gonna start using Google Photos, which appears to be incredible, but I haven't tried yet.

• 58:21Speaker 02

  Google Maps is a really, Google Maps is the creepiest Google Now feature and is also kind of a major one.

• 58:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 58:27Nilay Patel?

  Yep.

• 58:27Speaker 02

  Like, how long it will take to get to the place that Google has identified as your home.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  As long as we're talking about pulling stuff out of Google Plus, uh, Google still thinks that the way that I want to share my location with people is via Google Plus. Nope. N O P E, nope.

• 58:42Nilay Patel?

  I think Google Plus is just gonna be the zombie Google product.

• 58:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 58:45Nilay Patel?

  That eventually has no limbs and no features and no brain.

• 58:48Speaker 01

  No, it's just gonna, it's just, it's just where you're gonna be to change your password for logging into Google. That's the point of Google Plus.

• 58:55Speaker 02

  Not even fun like Wave. Wave was fun.

• 58:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I miss Wave. I've been thinking a lot about what I would use Wave now in the post-Slack world.

• 59:01Speaker 01

  Remember Google Buzz?

• 59:03Nilay Patel?

  Huh?

• 59:06Nilay Patel?

  I think we're done. I think that was the entirety of our-

• 59:08Speaker 03

  Addie just backhanded me with her NSC chip.

• 59:11Nilay Patel?

  That was the entirety of our WWC preview.

• 59:15Nilay Patel?

  Addie's gonna be on the show every week.

• 59:17Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 59:17Nilay Patel?

  And I'm not gonna talk and the two of you are just gonna talk and it's gonna be the best. That was amazing. Oh, boy.

• 59:25Speaker 01

  Okay, so-

• 59:25Nilay Patel?

  Seriously, that was the best reaction to Sam I've ever heard in my entire life. Ah, it's beautiful. No.

• 59:30Speaker 01

  Wow. So, okay, sorry. So, who knows if they can pull it off?

• 59:33Nilay Patel?

  Tim Cook, Cloud Services.

• 59:34Speaker 01

  Right, you're saying? Yeah. Can Apple do what Google did with like their stance, with their inability to track everything that I do and their stance on privacy? Which is admirable.

• 59:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 59:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:46Speaker 03

  But-

• 59:47Nilay Patel?

  But, but here's no, but so the point I was making is like, I don't use Apple Mail.

• 59:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, but-

• 59:51Nilay Patel?

  I don't use Apple Maps.

• 59:52Speaker 03

  Is there, is there really privacy at all? No, there's not.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  Do you own your privacy?

• 59:57Speaker 03

  No, seriously, the NSA has everything. I don't want to hear any of these companies bullshit with me.

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no. That's, that's one, that's one, uh, screw it, probably, I don't care too far, like-

• 1:00:06Speaker 03

  No, no, no, I'm not saying I don't care. It's like, there are companies making promises to their customers that are saying, oh, we care about your data. But it's like, you gave the NSA a backdoor to this and you're lying to our faces.

• 1:00:16Speaker 02

  I don't think Apple was ever accused of, I can't remember.

• 1:00:18Speaker 03

  Yes, they were. Yes, they were. It's, it's every, every single big tech company has been accused.

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  But Apple, Apple also took, I think-

• 1:00:24Nilay Patel?

  There was more stuff today, wasn't there?

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  They had the harder reaction than anybody else.

• 1:00:26Nilay Patel?

  Weren't there more Snowden documents today?

• 1:00:28Speaker 02

  Yes, there were.

• 1:00:29Speaker 03

  I just, I have a very hard time believing that anything is really private.

• 1:00:33Speaker 02

  Well, but this is the problem, is that privacy isn't, like, there are layers. Because honestly, I care less about the government having my information than about somebody leaking my address to Gamergate.

• 1:00:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, right.

• 1:00:43Speaker 02

  Cause honestly, the NSA is probably much less likely to fucking murder me.

• 1:00:47Nilay Patel?

  The government is also better at Twitter. They're much more polite on Twitter. Just saying.

• 1:00:52Speaker 03

  That's, that's a problem.

• 1:00:53Speaker 01

  OS 10's gonna have a new font, system font.

• 1:00:55Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  We're done.

• 1:00:56Nilay Patel?

  No, I mean, like, the photos thing is real, like, the whole Google, their whole thing where they took photos out of Google Plus because that freaked people out.

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:05Nilay Patel?

  To upload all of your photos to a social network, I think is real. Where like now this is a silo.

• 1:01:09Speaker 01

  Well, that's weird though, because you know what the biggest photo archive on the planet is in history?

• 1:01:14Speaker 03

  Facebook.

• 1:01:15Speaker 01

  Facebook.

• 1:01:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:16Speaker 03

  And people don't give a crap.

• 1:01:18Nilay Patel?

  But you don't upload all of your photos to Facebook. Facebook is like a, you know, the thing about Facebook, like people worry about advertising on Facebook. It's like Facebook is advertising for yourself. Right? You curate like a very distinct to like, here are my photos. Like I had such a great time. You don't put up photos on Facebook of like, this was the bad selfie where I made a face. Like, you know, I just don't do.

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that's, that's, Facebook is for happiness and Twitter is for sadness.

• 1:01:41Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that's actually really, I thought about that one.

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  Or anger.

• 1:01:44Nilay Patel?

  I just, but I think like Apple doing predictive cloud stuff like that only works to collate it all in one place. If you're bought into all of their other services.

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:01:53Nilay Patel?

  And I just don't, that's really hard. That's like a hard ask across anything.

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:58Nilay Patel?

  I, I, I don't even have Google.

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  Amazing that Google managed to get as much of my like online life as it has.

• 1:02:04Nilay Patel?

  But that's because of your work.

• 1:02:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:02:06Nilay Patel?

  I think if you, if we worked at a bigger company or a different company that was all exchange driven.

• 1:02:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:02:11Nilay Patel?

  Google now would be basically useless for me.

• 1:02:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:13Nilay Patel?

  It's only because all of my work is in a Google app that Google now is as useful as it is.

• 1:02:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:02:18Nilay Patel?

  Because it has my calendar.

• 1:02:20Speaker 01

  I'm telling you, Microsoft is coming. Like they just bought Wunderlist. They've, they've got the best count, best mobile calendar app, the best mobile to do app. I think like Wunderlist is better on a phone than Todoist or AnyDo.

• 1:02:29Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  Which pains me to say, I could talk about to do lists for a long time. If you guys wanted me to.

• 1:02:33Nilay Patel?

  I've heard you.

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

  Do you want me to?

• 1:02:34Nilay Patel?

  Shut up.

• 1:02:34Speaker 01

  Right now?

• 1:02:37Nilay Patel?

  That's the new.

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  And they bought the best email app. You know, they bought a company. So like they're coming. I'm gonna, I'm, I'm switching.

• 1:02:42Nilay Patel?

  No, I see that.

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  Anyway, we're, we're trying to talk about Apple.

• 1:02:45Speaker 02

  That's the problem is that nothing Apple is doing is more interesting to me than speculating about like, I don't know, like Windows phone could happen. Like, I don't know.

• 1:02:54Nilay Patel?

  Addy, seriously, you're going to leave this Virg cast as the most popular person who's ever been on the Virg cast? It's gonna be amazing.

• 1:03:00Speaker 02

  Like, look, I love Apple's products. They're just, they don't have great events anymore.

• 1:03:05Nilay Patel?

  No, they don't have great, I mean, that's true. And them not doing TV at this event and potentially not doing music because.

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, if they don't do music either.

• 1:03:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  It's gonna be like, cause like the big, the big stuff for both, I think at least iOS nine and potentially iOS 10 is going to be like, we're going to fix a bunch of stuff. Cause like it's, it's a standard OS Tik Tok. Huge crazy new feature release. Uh, you know, every two, three years they go like, you know, we need to like chill out and fix it.

• 1:03:30Nilay Patel?

  But they did. That was iOS eight. iOS seven was big crazy. iOS eight was like fix a bunch of stuff. OS 10, whatever thing, whatever location it was before was like, had a bunch of features. And then this one was like.

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  Changed the look of it, but they changed.

• 1:03:45Nilay Patel?

  They changed the look a little bit, but they added continuity. They did all this other stuff.

• 1:03:49Speaker 01

  I don't know. I just like, all the way that the rumors are looking right now, the soft, the most interesting software stuff will be Apple Watch apps that don't suck from third parties. And this predictive thing, and then splits, yeah, split screen multitasking on an iPad. If they actually do that, I'll be pretty happy.

• 1:04:07Nilay Patel?

  I don't think they're gonna do split screen multitasking unless they put out a bigger iPad.

• 1:04:10Speaker 01

  Right. That's.

• 1:04:11Nilay Patel?

  That's gonna be the feature that sells whatever next iPad.

• 1:04:13Speaker 01

  Right. That's, that's what I figured too, which is why I'm a crazy person.

• 1:04:16Nilay Patel?

  What if they put out the big, is there any rumors they're gonna do a big iPad at this?

• 1:04:20Speaker 03

  iPad Pro. I mean, it's not for this event, but there's rumors that it exists.

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, they're having for a while, but they, they picked up, I want to say a couple of months ago, but I don't think that anybody has been speculating it'll come the next week.

• 1:04:32Nilay Patel?

  Well, we'll be there.

• 1:04:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:33Nilay Patel?

  I'm really hoping they do the music thing, just because if they do the music thing, that means I probably get to talk to Jimmy Ivey, who's like my favorite.

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:40Nilay Patel?

  Cause he's a maniac.

• 1:04:42Speaker 02

  I am like genuinely curious what they'll do with Apple Watch with apps because I want to see how people think they're useful now.

• 1:04:50Nilay Patel?

  We, I mean, people have, I'm wearing one now. This one's dead. I'm still Lagerfelding one. Lagerfelding is a term I made up for when you wear an unactivated Apple Watch and it just shows you the deactivation screen. Cause that's how Carl Lagerfeld wears his.

• 1:05:02Speaker 01

  We just. Since the 01 update for the Apple Watch, when they like reduced the heart rate reading, my battery life is good enough for like, I kinda wanna have the option to leave the screen on all the time.

• 1:05:12Speaker 03

  Same. Battery's good.

• 1:05:14Speaker 01

  They really need to figure out a way to leave the screen all the time, but if they add apps, it's just. No, it's all that they can do the like, the thing that Android Wear does. Just go to like a, a, you know, hibernation mode or whatever mode that like, just shows just like basic black and white colors.

• 1:05:29Nilay Patel?

  They have the faces to do it. Yeah. Interesting.

• 1:05:31Speaker 03

  I just want to interrupt this and say that we have just hit 100,000 Instagram followers like to the T right now, just happened. I've been refreshing it. Yeah, I have it right here.

• 1:05:40Nilay Patel?

  Well, now you, if only, if only we had party noises. Isn't that right, John Lager-Marcino?

• 1:05:46Speaker 03

  Which has happened right now. Like, I was refreshing when it was 99999.

• 1:05:50Nilay Patel?

  John is like, moving towards the mic with great speed to yell in my ear that we shouldn't do that. Okay, that's our show. We're going, we'll be at WWDC next week. We'll be back in time to Vergecast, I hope.

• 1:06:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:02Nilay Patel?

  I might, I might not be at the Vergecast this week. I'm supposed to be at our product conference in Philly. Will you be here? You'll be here.

• 1:06:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, how come I don't get to go to the product conference?

• 1:06:10Nilay Patel?

  We all get to go. Everybody go to Vax. We'll do some hacking. That's how.

• 1:06:15Speaker 03

  How we do things.

• 1:06:16Nilay Patel?

  That's how that works. Wait, what am I supposed to do? Sam, engage.

• 1:06:19Speaker 03

  Okay, so if you're listening to this Vergecast, that means you have just heard me say that we hit 100,000 followers on Instagram, but that is not enough. If you're listening to this Vergecast, you should follow us on Instagram because we post all of our best photos from the site on Instagram. We're instagram.com/verge. You should also hit us up on Periscope and Snapchat. On Snapchat, we're TheRealVerge. We're taking Snapchat to WWDC. It's gonna be awesome. We continue doing Snapchat shows every day. We're growing and doing fun things there. You should definitely follow us. And if you have feedback, please email me, [email protected]. I appreciate it and I read everything. And on Periscope, I try and Periscope every day in the office. You get to see us working,

• 1:06:58Speaker 03

  doing fun, cool, quirky things. We're bringing that to WWDC also. We are just @verge on Periscope. And back to you, Nilay.

• 1:07:06Nilay Patel?

  Periscope.

• 1:07:08Speaker 03

  The next beat.

• 1:07:08Nilay Patel?

  The future.

• 1:07:09Speaker 03

  It is. It really is.

• 1:07:10Nilay Patel?

  I could really, we should have Casey on the show to get deep on Periscope.

• 1:07:12Speaker 03

  I would love that.

• 1:07:13Nilay Patel?

  I'm fascinated by it. Anyway, that's it. Those are some social networks. I want you to go to iTunes right now and leave us five stars. We are so, so close to 1,000 five-star reviews. Please go to there and then tell me, I don't know, tell me why you're excited about WWDC. That's what I want to know.

• 1:07:29Speaker 03

  Tell us, and tell us what you own.

• 1:07:32Nilay Patel?

  Tell, yeah, that's it. Go to iTunes, leave us five stars, and tell me what you own. I think that's a wild question. Also, then go to the bar and just walk up to random people and ask them what they own. It might not work well.

• 1:07:46Speaker 02

  And periscope it.

• 1:07:47Nilay Patel?

  And periscope it. That'd be wild. Anyway, go to iTunes. Good as 2005 stars are so close. We launched a new podcast, which is awesome, called Verge ESP, Verge Entertainment and Science Podcast with Emily Yoshida and Liz Lopato, our entertainment editor and our science editor. It is really cool. You should listen to it. They're coming out every other week while they establish a rhythm and then hopefully we'll start going every week.

• 1:08:06Speaker 01

  The first episode was an interview with the show creators behind Hal and Catch Fire, which is on Netflix now. And if you're not watching it, you're crazy because it's great. And then you're going to watch it and you're really going to listen to this first episode of it because they're really nice guys. They're smart.

• 1:08:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And we did the interview, actually it was in the main Vergecast feed, so you might have heard that. But Verge ESP is a big thing. We also have What's Tack with Chris Plant, which is just steaming along, hugely popular, super fun. You can find all that at iTunes.com/TheVerge. You can also find us on Twitter, where I encourage you to behave yourself for once in your goddamn life. Sam is Sam Sheffer. Dieter is Backlon.

• 1:08:41Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:08:41Nilay Patel?

  Addy is at TheDextrarchy.

• 1:08:43Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:08:44Nilay Patel?

  And I am reckless. That's a thing. I'd also like to thank NewsCred for sponsoring today's episode of The Vergecast. 64% of marketers say that producing enough content is their biggest challenge. NewsCred makes it easy. Visit newscreed.com/verge to learn why companies like Pepsi, IBM, Visa, and Johnson & Johnson rely on NewsCred every day and to request a free trial. That's N-E-W-S-C-R-E-D.com/verge. That was it. That was The Vergecast. Thank you so much for listening. We'll be back next week. Rock and roll.

• 1:09:11Speaker 01

  Bye.