FCC kills net neutrality, the iMac Pro arrives, and T-Mobile buys Layer3 TV

The Vergecast three-piece is back together, with Nilay leading the flagship podcast. The biggest news this week is something we’ve seen coming for a while: on Thursday, the FCC voted to repeal net neutrality rules. Nilay, Dieter, and Paul sit down to discuss the action and their viewpoints on what this means going forward for the internet. Also, the iMac Pro is now available to order and Dieter got to write about it. There’s quite a bit of talk about whether this computer is worth the price for its power. There’s a lot more in between that — like Paul’s weekly segment “The internet of claps” — so listen to the whole episode to get everything to need to know in the world of tech this week. 02:10 - The FCC just killed net neutrality 41:53 - The iMac Pro is a beast, but it’s not for everybody 57:23 - What is Layer3 TV and why is T-Mobile buying it? 1:04:16 - Paul’s weekly segment “The internet of claps” 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 Eight Mattresses. Eight is smart. Wait, how many of them? Eight. Okay. Eight, eight hole mattresses. No, the company's called Eight Mattresses. Oh. Eight is smart. It's the iPhone compared to the flip phone of mattresses. Unlike foam counterparts, the Eight Smart mattress is an innovative bed that uses real technology to help people sleep better and live healthier. Sleeping on Eight, you can discover how many hours of sleep you need each night to feel energized. You can optimize your day and night by connecting it to other Wi-Fi enabled products in your home. If you need coffee in the morning to function, you can program your Smart mattress to start brewing your coffee the minute you get out of bed and just live in that reality and with yourself at that time. The Eight Smart mattress has everything you need to meet your individual needs. Visit eightsleep.com/verge and then use code VERGE to get $125 off all mattresses plus

• 0:45Nilay Patel?

  free shipping and free returns. That's eight, E-I-G-H-T, sleep.com/verge and use that offer code VERGE to redeem this offer. Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of the Vox Media empire. Well, look at Mr. Energetic. I'm here. I'm fired up. We're gonna do a lot of things on this show. We're gonna take down Ezra. Have you listened to? Oh, I've been listening. Okay. They know what's up now. Yeah. They're aware that they got competition. Yeah. In the weeds. We're lurking. They can't see us because they're always in the weeds. They don't see us coming. I was listening to their episode on net neutrality and Matt Iglesias said, "Well,

• 1:28Nilay Patel?

  I don't want to get too far into the details." That's right. You still listen to that show? This is just a silly, fun beef, but also when you listen to it, leave them a comment in some forum saying that we're better. Yeah, but be kind and gentle. And noting that we're the flagship. Anyway, I am here, I'm Neelai. Dieter is here in New York. Hello, I am in New York. Paul Miller's here. Hello. There's a lot going on. I think I'm fired up out of anger. Hmm, not from excessive amounts of relaxation. I was on vacation for some time. Yeah. Now I'm back. We're really happy. You know, Neelai, anger, anger leads to hate. Yeah. And hate leads to suffering. Hmm, and suffering leads to higher internet prices.

• 2:09Nilay Patel?

  That's what I think. So, literally today, before we recorded the show this morning.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  Hours ago.

• 2:16Nilay Patel?

  The FCC met, and they got rid of some net neutrality. Which is, you know, you wake up, you know it's gonna happen. It's like anticlimactic. Like, we knew it was gonna happen.

• 2:25Speaker 01

  We knew exactly what was gonna happen.

• 2:27Nilay Patel?

  It happened exactly the way that we thought.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  Well, except for one part.

• 2:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  There was a thing.

• 2:30Speaker 02

  Point of clarification on climacticness.

• 2:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 2:35Speaker 02

  Right now, if I'm Comcast, can I just go crazy?

• 2:39Speaker 01

  No, if you're Comcast, you can't. But everybody else can.

• 2:42Nilay Patel?

  Okay. Right. So, if you're Comcast, you can't, because when Comcast bought NBC Universal, they signed this consent decree that lasts another year.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:50Nilay Patel?

  That basically imposes net neutrality on them.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  Disclosure, Comcast is a minority investor in Vox Media, our parent company.

• 2:55Nilay Patel?

  Just keep that disclosure close to your heart for this whole show. Just remember that the whole time. Um, so that they can't.

• 3:02Speaker 02

  Are these rules of, the rule change effective, I mean, it's not like the tax bill, like, effective 2018.

• 3:07Nilay Patel?

  No, it's done.

• 3:08Speaker 02

  Tap.

• 3:08Nilay Patel?

  FCC is a regulatory, it just changed regulation.

• 3:11Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 3:11Nilay Patel?

  Just the same as anything. They're like, you know what we don't like anymore is national monuments. And people just start peeing on them the next day. It's incredible. So, I've never seen, never so many Americans peed on national monuments.

• 3:25Nilay Patel?

  I'm, uh, I'm all over the place. I'm very relaxed, but I'm very angry at the same time.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  What's gonna happen is tomorrow, Time Warner is gonna start strip mining uranium out of your computer. That's, that's my understanding of what the regulation changes are.

• 3:35Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, so, it was the, I will say, our traffic today on net neutrality is crazy. People are so interested in this.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 3:45Nilay Patel?

  Um, it's, the comparison I used was, at its peak, about as big as sort of a not iPhone, Apple event.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:51Nilay Patel?

  Which are generally our highest sort of traffic data.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Uh, interesting piece of inside baseball. A significant amount of the traffic about net neutrality stories was coming from China.

• 4:00Nilay Patel?

  Interesting.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they're just, they're like, now you're like us.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 4:06Nilay Patel?

  Could we interest you in a firewall?

• 4:08Speaker 01

  It's funny because it's sad.

• 4:09Nilay Patel?

  It's great.

• 4:11Nilay Patel?

  That's my, that's my great file. Anyway, so the vote broke down along party lines.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:17Nilay Patel?

  So Ajit Pai, Michael O'Reilly, Brendan Carr, the three Republican commissioners, all gave stirring speeches. I have pies open on my computer. We can read some of his stuff. And then Minion Clyburn and Jessica Rosenmore, the two Democratic commissioners, issued stinging rebukes.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  I would say Minion Clyburn should have been on a horse with a sword.

• 4:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  Like rallying troops and like banging her sword on their spears. It was, it was like, it could have been the speech in the two towers right before they all die.

• 4:47Nilay Patel?

  Oh.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  Could have been that speech.

• 4:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And so basically the, the way the vote happened, and then we have like literally a supercut of Pi talking is, it has an agenda. So the meeting is like, there's a four or five things on the docket. Net neutrality was number four, really gave it prime billing. They also started, they started with Minion Clyburn. She spoke, O'Reilly spoke, Brendan Carr spoke. And then Pi starts speaking. He's the last vote. After Clyburn spoke, he goes, well, I'm, I'm going to mark you down as a no. And everyone started laughing.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:18Nilay Patel?

  Pi starts speaking in the middle of it. He's like, I'm very sorry we have to go on the recommendation of security. And then the Washington Post had its YouTube feed still up and the room was swept with dogs for a bomb.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 5:30Nilay Patel?

  So it's like that level of crazy. Someone called a bomb threat into the net neutrality hearing today, which is completely fucking unacceptable. Like, I know, I feel very strongly about this. We've said this on the show. Like, please just be respectful. It's just a policy difference. It's actually a very interesting policy difference. It's not a bomb threat. There, I can't think of a situation which bomb threats are acceptable, but this is definitely not one of them.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  You gotta at least do a declaration of independence.

• 5:55Nilay Patel?

  You've got to be all the way there. You're like, is this a Tea Party type situation? The Boston Tea Party, not that more recent one. Anyway, so Pi comes back. He finishes his speech. They vote. Net neutrality is over. All of the companies, all of the politicians are all issuing statements. The New York State Attorney General is filing a multi-state lawsuit.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  How many politicians are like, hey, good job?

• 6:19Nilay Patel?

  Uh, right? So what's interesting is that yesterday, Republicans started flipping.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 6:27Nilay Patel?

  Yesterday. So there was one. Republican in the House of Representatives, Susan Collins, Senator from Maine, another independent Senator. They all started writing letters, "Hey, delay this vote. Hey, don't do this. Hey, maybe we should have legislation ready to go."

• 6:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:47Nilay Patel?

  He doesn't care. He's not, he's not an elected official, which is, cuts both ways, right, depending on your point of view. But he doesn't have to be responsive to them. He's an independent, he runs an independent agency. So they're all like, "Hey, stop," and he just like, pff, barreled through it. So now it's, now the internet's dead. This is, I don't know how you're getting this podcast right now.

• 7:09Speaker 02

  You've received this on a CD-ROM.

• 7:12Nilay Patel?

  Great. Welcome back. Yeah, no, our CIA is working, well, he's got that unlocked.

• 7:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I, I watched all the talks and there was something that kind of stuck, stuck out to me. The, both of the opposing commissioners talked about how the FTC was really, would be really ineffectual. And they're talking about how it takes so long to do anything at the FTC and that there's a really high bar at the FTC for any action. That really, that really rubbed me the wrong way. It's like-

• 7:45Nilay Patel?

  If you ran the FTC?

• 7:46Speaker 02

  No, no, like, I don't want a government, because they also, one of the commissioners said something about like, "We're pulling our own teeth." It's like this idea of the FCC as like this benevolent dictator of the internet is not exciting to me. The idea that like, we have swift and decisive action because we can just do whatever we want because we run the internet. Like, that's, that's scary to me. And like, this idea that the FTC has rules and a procedure and standards for when it's gonna do anything.

• 8:19Nilay Patel?

  Let me, let me walk through that with you. I get what you're saying. It's not wholly wrong, right? Like- That's why it's slow, because they have all these rules. But there's a reason, and I think the reason is interesting. So the reason the FTC is coming up again and again and again is the FCC by moving back to Title I and then aggressively stripping the rules away from the internet. So Pai went farther than the cable companies thought he was gonna go.

• 8:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:44Nilay Patel?

  Which is surprising. So there's now there's no rules and there's no authority with which to create those rules. The only rule left that the FCC has imposed, that one of the commissioners today, O'Reilly, was like, I don't even, I don't even like this rule, but I guess we have to have it. It's like crazy, is it the companies have to be, quote unquote, transparent about their network management practices. So if they're blocking stuff or they have paid prioritization schemes, they have to disclose it. It is not specified the form of that disclosure. It's not gonna be on billboards, could be in the fine, you know, who knows? The disclosure could be as simple as Verizon saying, we offer paid prioritization services, and then not telling you who's paying them.

• 9:23Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 9:24Nilay Patel?

  Which we, so like, but so there's that thing.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:28Nilay Patel?

  That thing creates the opportunity for you to file a complaint at the FTC. So the Federal Trade Commission to say, this is anti-competitive, or this is fraudulent, or this is deceptive, because you've now taken a regulatory thing where you, that the FCC used to have rules and they were in charge of enforcing their own rules, and now they've turned it into a dispute mechanism at the FTC. And to get the dispute, you have to create a, you have to have a problem, right? In like a specific form. So the problem could be, like a classic example, sponsored ads on Instagram, right? Not disclose, influencers not disclosing advertising on Instagram.

• 10:13Nilay Patel?

  Well, that's a problem because now you've got like free advertising, it's deceiving consumers about whether these endorsements are real, you gotta file a thing, they've gotta go investigate, they've gotta like, mete out justice, they've, right? Like.

• 10:24Speaker 02

  Is that in contrast to the FCC being able to just say, bam, you're wrong, you're dead?

• 10:29Nilay Patel?

  Well, that's not what the FCC did.

• 10:30Speaker 02

  Like, I, but that's sounding like what they were lamenting. We, we lament having this power.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  Right, well, they had the, they had rules and they were able to enforce the rules that, the only thing that's different in form is that when the FCC had the rules, it could proactively just go and enforce its own rules. Like Zorro. Right, but like Verizon or whoever at the FCC was enforcing the rule on, the teeth that the FCC had was they could say, "Hey Verizon, stop it." And then Verizon would have to stop it, but Verizon could still like go to court and say, "The FCC can't tell me what to do." That happened multiple, multiple times. But in the meantime, from, you know, from your climate perspective, from the FCC's perspective at the time, in the meantime, they were doing a thing that protected consumers from being treated badly by the giant evil corporations that are running the internet.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  And the, the thing that, that make, that makes them sad is now the onus is going to be on us as consumers, as the people who like are beholden to these giant companies to say, "Hey, please stop it," and then file, you know, requests to the FTC, and then the FTC has to look into it, and then they have to go and yell at Verizon, and then there's another lawsuit in there, plus there might be another lawsuit that we have to file. So like, it takes the, the burden of fix the problem, and instead of putting it on the company to like file the lawsuit and like, and like begin the argument, it puts it on consumers or potentially the FTC who historically like doesn't. They're not great at it. It's like, the idea that they were like wielding this

• 12:05Speaker 01

  power left and right, like. I mean, the bottom line is there's, there's gonna be lawsuits no matter what, right? For this particular action and in general, when you're dealing with, when you're dealing with Verizon, someone's getting sued. Yeah. End of story. And so the, the, the question to me is while we're waiting for them their lawsuits to wend their way through the courts, what will the like state of affairs actually be? And up until earlier today, the state of affairs was whatever the FCC says, in the, you know, theoretically, in the interest of keeping the internet neutral. And now it's going to be whatever Verizon says in the interest of Verizon's business

• 12:47Speaker 01

  interest, and then I have to like push back on that, or you know, the FTC does.

• 12:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's cost shifting. I mean, that's the way you should think. So the problem with Title II that was expressed by the ISP, ISPs and Pi was Title II imposes costs on us to prevent innovation. Pi said, okay, we're stripping those costs, we're removing this to FTC. In doing that, he definitely shifted some costs of enforcement to like the people of America. Right? So now if your ISP is screwing you over, it's very hard to leave for a variety of reasons. Chiefly, you probably don't have another option. So to get a remedy, you now have to pay or band together, or find some public interest group to sue them at the FTC for a much narrower range of potential harmful behavior. That's like, I get it. Like,

• 13:38Nilay Patel?

  yeah, it was a formerly powerful person being like, now I don't have any power. Like, yeah, but the power was like appropriately wielded.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  You know, like, like a cop coming to your house and taking all of your assets before you've been proven guilty, like.

• 13:52Nilay Patel?

  No, but that's not what was happening at all. It was just the FTC had the power to begin a proceeding on its own, because they made the rule, and they could look at it and say, you're violating the rule. And then there was like, it's a government agency. Like, they're good at paperwork. Like, that's their power is like, they file paperwork, and the company files paperwork, and then there's a judge, and they, you know, there's like an administrative action. So like, a really good example, this comes up a lot, 2008, the FCC told Comcast to stop throttling Bitcoin. Comcast said, whatever, we're allowed to do this, took them to court and won. The end. Like, that's what happened. Right? And like, the devolution of power of from that, that means the FCC can't do that. And you now have to discover Comcast is throttling BitTorrent. They may or may not have to

• 14:37Nilay Patel?

  tell you. You have to construct, as a user, construct an argument for why that is in violation of some consumer protection principle. And then you have to file a lawsuit. And like, BitTorrent Inc. Which I believe exists.

• 14:52Speaker 02

  Yes, it does.

• 14:53Nilay Patel?

  It's not like a rich company and also like might not have standing to just stop a BitTorrent user or like they don't they're not being harmed by Comcast throttling BitTorrent for like Linux distro downloads or whatever like they're a company that like does some other product. So they who is going to stop like blocking a protocol like that? Who's gonna sue it like you need the costs to shift now to people and you gotta find the right people who are actually being harmed in the right places at the right times.

• 15:24Speaker 02

  That sounds like the right balance to me, but it makes makes.

• 15:29Nilay Patel?

  Well, just yeah, so I'm.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  You often won't find those people. So if we're talking about costs, we're talking about cost shifting. The the reason that I personally don't think it's the right balance is there's like an opportunity cost there. The the thing that Pi like Pi did a bunch of very, very, very smart like rhetorical jujitsu moves in his.

• 15:49Nilay Patel?

  Wait, I wanna I wanna follow up on you said that sounds like the right balance. How is it the right balance if you have to find somebody with pockets deep enough to fund a lawsuit? It's the right balance if you have to find somebody who's harmed. I'm with you on that, right? So we're not all just following following filing lawsuits. It's somebody who's harmed who can pay for a lawsuit. That like that throws that balance way out of whack to me.

• 16:08Speaker 02

  I guessing that I I believe there are fewer scenarios where people should be successfully suing companies to do what they want them to do.

• 16:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but the the right answer that you and I often agree on is the right solution is you just take your money and leave if the company is doing what you don't like. But if you don't have any choices.

• 16:26Speaker 02

  I have choices.

• 16:27Nilay Patel?

  All right, that's where we disagree. Sorry, I mean.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  This man did quit the internet for a year.

• 16:32Nilay Patel?

  That's true. One very aware.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  Very nuclear choice.

• 16:36Speaker 02

  One thing that stuck out to me a lot, there was a lot of talk about, you know, low income internet, you like. Let's be honest, a lot of people with low income use their phone as their primary method of internet.

• 16:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, no, it's just absolutely true.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  Right, because there is, there's no mechanism in the market for driving costs down for broadband internet because there's no competition. So they, that their only option is an even slower connection. And also, in some cases, more expensive connection, long-term, their phone.

• 17:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  But it's, it's also a choice.

• 17:08Nilay Patel?

  I disagree. I mean, like, we have to do the work of that story, but everything I've ever read is like, people will choose phones over almost anything. It's the most important piece of technology in your life slash the world.

• 17:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:23Nilay Patel?

  So you're, you're picking that over, right? People pick it over running water. Like, it's a choice, but it's not a choice that is like a fungible choice. Right? Like...

• 17:35Speaker 02

  Right, I'm saying, it's, home broadband is a lot more optional of a thing than your phone.

• 17:44Nilay Patel?

  Potentially, right? And I think that's, that's where the part of Pi's argument, indeed, we're saying, like, he did a lot of rhetorical jujitsu today.

• 17:52Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 17:53Nilay Patel?

  And I think that's where Pi's argument starts to really flail, actually. Because he's, he lumps it all together and he makes it sound like wireless is going to compete with wired in a way that isn't happening now and doesn't seem likely to happen in the future unless you open up the fiber, like, you're not going to create more wireless access unless you have enough backhaul to do it.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  His fundamental argument is there are mysterious, there are, there are things that we might not be getting because of this regulation. This mega, regulation might be hurting us as a country, and we don't know it yet because we don't live in the alternate, alternate world where there is no regulation and a million fiber connections will bloom. Right? And the thing that, we don't know whether or not it's holding it back because, you know, once you create a regulation, then you're defining the terms of what the world are, and then you're stuck in that world. That's his argument.

• 18:45Nilay Patel?

  So I'm gonna, I'm gonna read from his speech. This was the opening of his speech.

• 18:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would give anything to A B test this.

• 18:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 18:50Speaker 02

  We're kinda doing it now. Just every couple of years it flips.

• 18:55Nilay Patel?

  So this is Pi's speech. This was the opening, the opening of his speech, basically. The internet has enriched my life immeasurably. In the past few days alone, I've downloaded interesting podcasts about blockchain technology, ordered a burrito, managed my playoff-bound fantasy football team, and as you may have seen, tweeted. What is responsible for the phenomenal development of the internet? It certainly wasn't heavy-handed government regulation. So this is the shift that I think everyone makes. Yep. All of the things that he did on the internet Yep. are like at the service and apps layer. Yep. And they run on an open internet a smaller number of companies control. So he doesn't say which, by the way, I love to humble brag about.

• 19:39Nilay Patel?

  By the way, he might, he might literally be wrong that those things were enabled by either some kind of government regulation. Well, certainly, the blockchain. Yeah. Um, uh, but all of those things happen because the internet is an open playing field for those technologies to develop. Right. And he's saying, what is responsible for the phenomenal development of the internet? It wasn't heavy-handed government regulation. He consistently conflates what happens at the ISP level with what happens at the app level. And it was funny because I tweeted, none of those things are run by ISPs. But I forgot that Verizon owns Yahoo. So there's like a real chance that he's using Yahoo fantasy football. Well, but the only, the only reason why we care about the ISP level is because the app level exists.

• 20:24Nilay Patel?

  Right. If there was no app level, if there's nothing to do on the internet, then we wouldn't want to have the internet. Right. So there is some incentive for the ISPs to leave some amount of space open for innovation. But there's a much higher incentive for them to tax both sides of it. For them to say, okay, we know everybody loves Netflix. We are aware of Netflix. So imagine Brian Roberts at Comcast wakes up every morning, screams into the void. He reads a page off of his, off his daily calendar. It's still Netflix.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  He's got a magic eight pole. Does Netflix exist? He checks it every day?

• 21:02Speaker 02

  Always does.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  Why Netflix?

• 21:06Nilay Patel?

  So he can go to Netflix and he can say, hey, do you want faster access to our customers? Pay up, which they have done and Netflix has paid. And then they can say to customers, hey, we can deliver an even better Netflix experience to you if you pay us more. Right? So now you can charge rent on both sides of the equation where previously you were not really able to charge rent anywhere on that equation. So now you're making more money. You're not necessarily improving anything and you are certainly disadvantaging some other. So playoff fantasy. By the way, I cannot, I think it's hilarious that he said his fantasy football team is in playoffs.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:41Nilay Patel?

  Such a humble brag.

• 21:42Speaker 02

  Playoff bound.

• 21:43Nilay Patel?

  Playoff bound. Also like the humble brag of just like, I listen to podcasts about the blockchain. He brought up Bitcoin twice in this thing. It was choice. Anyway.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  It's so choice.

• 21:52Nilay Patel?

  It's just like you want that nerd cred and you're just going to keep saying Bitcoin until you get it. But Verizon owns Yahoo Fantasy Football. Like there is no reason for them to not make ESPN fantasy football app slower. They could just do it. And like, and all they have to do is disclose it to you.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  I get that nobody wants to shed a tear for ESPN. I get that nobody really at this point needs to shed a tear for Netflix. Honestly, they're doing okay. I'm raising my prices, but that's fine. No problem.

• 22:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  But the thing I'm like, when I, when I was trying to lead, build up to opportunity cost before, like Pi is worried about the opportunity cost of like ISP's building more broadband and he doesn't think that's happening. I think he's wrong, but fine. The flip side of that is I'm worried about the opportunity cost of the next Bitcoin, the next, the next, you know, fantasy sports, the next video streaming startup that comes into this space and doesn't have an open, you know, equal opportunity to get in front of my eyeballs because they can't pay the dual tax. I don't want to pay the tax that it costs to get it. And they're not going to pay the tax to Verizon on the other side.

• 23:02Speaker 02

  So I've heard a counter argument to that, that Twitch is a good example of a very high bandwidth, extremely expensive to deliver to the customer service that clearly succeeded.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and under open internet rules.

• 23:18Speaker 02

  Well, no, long before it opened in it.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, but they.

• 23:22Nilay Patel?

  No, no, there were open internet rules before.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:26Nilay Patel?

  They went away in 2010 because of Verizon suing and they came back in 2015. So they were there. The FCC passed the rules.

• 23:35Speaker 02

  They went away in 2010?

• 23:36Nilay Patel?

  Yes, the FCC passed the rules.

• 23:38Speaker 02

  But like the rise of Twitch is around 2010 to 2015, 16, 17.

• 23:44Nilay Patel?

  Right, so th- those companies, they were not blocking thing, they didn't know what was gonna happen. Basically. Obama got elected, one of his election plans was I will take a backseat to no one on net neutrality.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  So your argument is that it's never been this clear that there are no rules?

• 23:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, right. For, for now, a period of time where it's fairly clear that, you know, this administration's not gonna change it. Although, instant lawsuits, instant congressional moves, like, maybe it'll change again. But it was never this obvious.

• 24:16Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 24:16Nilay Patel?

  Right, so the FCC tab Title II rules on the phone line.

• 24:21Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 24:22Nilay Patel?

  And then people moved to broadband, they imposed the rules. And then Verizon sued, the rules went away, President Obama said, I will take a backseat to no one on net neutrality. The FCC assumed the rules would come back. The rules came back.

• 24:36Speaker 02

  Can I ask another, kind of, maybe this is a little?

• 24:39Nilay Patel?

  And Pi keeps dancing around that, by the way.

• 24:41Speaker 02

  In the weeds. And this is something I feel like both sides brought up, is the limitations on states. What states can do.

• 24:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 24:49Speaker 02

  And it's interesting, Wired, I think this was recently, had a piece on that local regulation is, is one of the big reasons that we don't have a lot of competition in broadband because local regulators make these sweetheart deals and grant exclusivity or charge a lot of money for rent on the poles and stuff like that. Um, yeah, what, what exactly are, the states aren't allowed to do certain regulation type things now?

• 25:14Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that, to me, like, that's the part where I'm like, well, if you're gonna like, say, F it and blow up all the rules, then it probably makes sense to not say, well, if states, if you wanna reimpose them, go for it. Because then the rules are different in Topeka than they are in New York, than they are in Minneapolis. And if you're trying to run, uh, you know, the internet, having to change your rules state by state, having to change the way things operate state by state gets pretty complicated pretty fast. So.

• 25:43Speaker 02

  But pretty easy in other sense, because you just pick the most restrictive rules.

• 25:47Nilay Patel?

  You assume.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  Do it California style.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, do it California style. So sure, I mean, if we want to do, they're trying to avoid that from happening.

• 25:55Nilay Patel?

  They don't want. They're trying to avoid California and New York passing net neutrality regulations that ever like.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:00Nilay Patel?

  But like, that's a clear exercise of power, right? Like.

• 26:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm not super comfortable with that as a smaller government person. Like, I hate what states and cities have done with.

• 26:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, but do you want sandalware and California liberals deciding what your internet should look like?

• 26:15Nilay Patel?

  While they're driving their Priuses and sipping their herb tea. I don't know. You're drinking California. If you are currently drinking something in California, please tweet at us.

• 26:24Speaker 02

  It's probably tea.

• 26:26Nilay Patel?

  Oh, Deeter's. What are you drinking out there? Is it herb tea?

• 26:31Speaker 01

  It's, it's, it's.

• 26:31Nilay Patel?

  In your Prius?

• 26:32Speaker 01

  It's even worse. It's La Croix.

• 26:33Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  We have La Croix here.

• 26:35Nilay Patel?

  But one of the commissioners, O'Reilly, again, today was like, I'm super happy about these rules that we've included to stop states.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:41Nilay Patel?

  And he said something like, we will vigorously attempt to quash any conflicts. I mean, that's like, you sound like Palpatine right now.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:50Nilay Patel?

  Like, we're gonna go through the Federation and quash any conflicts like a rhesus among Death Star.

• 26:57Speaker 02

  George Beetz is giving us a little thumbs up in the background.

• 27:00Nilay Patel?

  It's ridiculous. Uh, look, it's, it's a new moment for the internet, right? Like, we haven't been in this place where it's been so. The entire momentum of the past decade has been getting net neutrality rules. And then we had them for a minute. And I just, I keep reminding everybody of this. A lot of people thought Hillary Clinton was gonna win that election.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 27:25Nilay Patel?

  Just a lot of people, including all of these ISPs. And they were totally fine with it. And then Trump won. We get Ajit Pai. And like, all of a sudden, now they're like, well, we just can't possibly build a network unless we get rid of these rules. And now they're totally gone. Like, they're gone farther than the ISPs thought they would be gone.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Here's what I wanna see what's gonna. Who's gonna be, who's gonna act? Which ISP is gonna act first? Like, it's like.

• 27:52Nilay Patel?

  Oh, Verizon. Are you kidding?

• 27:53Speaker 01

  We're at a party and there's a giant cake that just got set on the table and everyone's like, oh, I want a piece of cake. Who's gonna go cut the cake?

• 27:57Nilay Patel?

  So here's what I think is.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  Is, is, are somebody gonna like sneak up and like have a little frosting? Or is like Verizon just gonna like run up and stick its face in the cake?

• 28:05Nilay Patel?

  Oh, eat the cake.

• 28:06Speaker 02

  To Neelai's point, if you're at a wedding.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  The bride and the groom get the first slice.

• 28:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  So it's definitely Verizon.

• 28:13Nilay Patel?

  100% Verizon. Like Verizon's so happy about this right now.

• 28:20Nilay Patel?

  So here's what I think is, is really interesting. I wrote a little bit about this today on the site. The overwhelming trend.

• 28:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:26Nilay Patel?

  In this industry right now is for big telecom companies to buy big media companies.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 28:30Nilay Patel?

  So Comcast, again, our disclosure, owns NBC.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:35Nilay Patel?

  Uh, NBC owns MSNBC.

• 28:37Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 28:37Nilay Patel?

  Which I think we can all just fairly say is a somewhat liberal news organization. MSNBC is gonna get immediately exempted from the data camps on Verizon. You wanna stream MSNBC, you wanna watch it on your Comcast connection, not gonna, like they can just do it.

• 28:52Speaker 01

  On Comcast.

• 28:52Nilay Patel?

  If you're on Comcast.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, so MSNBC rolls up to Comcast.

• 28:56Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  Right, okay.

• 28:57Nilay Patel?

  So MSNBC.

• 28:58Speaker 01

  AT&T is trying to do Time Warner, so HBO and all that stuff already rolls up to AT&T.

• 29:02Nilay Patel?

  Right, they've gotta complete that deal, which is interesting, because the Trump administration strangely being like, what if big corporations aren't great? In this case.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  And then.

• 29:09Nilay Patel?

  But AT&T will own CNN.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:11Nilay Patel?

  You'll buy an AT&T phone, it will stream CNN video for you for free.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 29:16Nilay Patel?

  Verizon owns the Huffington Post, which I think we can also agree is a somewhat liberal organization.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  They had a really good story on Millennials recently.

• 29:22Nilay Patel?

  Actually, that story is great. Um, uh, great, it looked great on mobile, it's a whole thing. Um, I mean, these are all great news organizations, they're, they're fine, I'm, I'm like, but they're all owned by telecom companies that are now incentivized to deliver. Huff Post video will now be free on Verizon. That was actually Verizon's goal in buying Yahoo AOL and collecting all these media properties.

• 29:43Speaker 01

  You know what this means? You thought that you could just laugh it, go 90 and ignore it, but now you can't. So this is, this is my new thing.

• 29:50Nilay Patel?

  But you know what isn't included in this? Because 21st Century Fox just sold its movie studios to Disney and created a new, smaller news organization with Fox News.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:58Nilay Patel?

  Fox News doesn't have this like benefactor of a huge ISP.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  They gotta go on to the blockchain.

• 30:04Nilay Patel?

  T-Mobile and Sprint aren't about to buy Time Warner or Fox News.

• 30:08Speaker 02

  What sad like fourth rate ISP is gonna buy Fox.

• 30:10Nilay Patel?

  Sprint's gonna buy Fox News. But like, that is a weird, that's a, that's an, that's not an outcome I think Republicans expected.

• 30:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:19Nilay Patel?

  Right, where suddenly the, the major cable news networks are gonna stream over various networks for free and Fox News will not, right?

• 30:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:26Nilay Patel?

  Or, we're gonna start to prioritize our own news divisions. Again, the disclosure, Comcast has huge investments in BuzzFeed and Box Media. We're probably great on Comcast, right? Like, man, we should make sure our investment doesn't suffer like, you're in the deal. Like, I don't know if that deal's gonna happen, but it certainly could. You know what's not? There is Breitbart, Daily Call, all those.

• 30:48Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 30:48Nilay Patel?

  They're gonna have to make their own deals and they don't have these benefactors. And I think that is gonna immediately cut against what Republicans thought was gonna happen, how they want it to happen. I think this is also, you know, the Washington Post did a poll, 83% of Americans, when net neutrality was explained to them, support it, including three out of four Republican voters. Republican legislatures, legislators are saying, we should have these rules. Like, this is a, this is a moment that I think is just difficult for that party to navigate.

• 31:16Speaker 02

  I have to say, living through these past months of being lied to constantly by Tinder, by GitHub, by Reddit, like, of this is what net neutrality is, because they try to put it in one sentence. And it's like, it's just always wrong. It's always wrong. And that, like, public opinion polls do not hold a lot of sway for me on this, on this issue. I, I get, like, even if people really got into it, they might still support net neutrality.

• 31:43Nilay Patel?

  I think what those opinion polls reveal most of all is that people hate and distrust their ISPs.

• 31:49Speaker 02

  Well, I hate and distrust the government. Okay, so here's, here's what I want, here's what I want.

• 31:55Nilay Patel?

  Hang on, hang on, no, no, that's a legitimate thing to say.

• 31:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:58Nilay Patel?

  Like, for sure. Do you hate and distrust the government more than you hate and distrust your ISP?

• 32:03Speaker 02

  I like, uh, uh... How many, how many? It's like, that's the debate at the end of the day. How many nukes does Verizon have? How many tanks? It's called Go90. It's coming for your family. Here's what was a here's mom. I've been watching the fallout from YouTube Rewind. YouTube Rewind this year because, because PewDiePie happened to PewDiePie. Yup. PewDiePie could obviously not be in YouTube Rewind. Right. Um, and basically, uh, there is a large, very successful, very important portion of YouTube that YouTube is just clearly embarrassed by. Yeah. Um, and then there's the whole adpocalypse, which does not just apply to people like PewDiePie,

• 32:47Speaker 02

  but just everybody on YouTube is just terrified that they'll do something wrong and get demonetized. And also YouTube creators really, really dislike YouTube's. What YouTube is doing with YouTube Red is like, we could be Netflix 2. Yeah. Uh, and they're like, no, no, dude, YouTube, you already have content. We make it. Uh, why don't you work on giving us more revenue instead of spending the profits that you make off of our content on terrible originals that nobody watches? Um, I think there, there's so much dislike and distrust for YouTube that the, the moment is right for Verizon. Oh my God, do you wait? To change the name.

• 33:32Speaker 02

  This is a slow roll reveal? Here's what you do. Change the name because Go90 is garbage. Cancel all originals. You, you, this platform is, cannot have originals. Then what you do is you say to any YouTube creator, for a year, we will match what YouTube pays for you, the revenue you get on YouTube. You don't have to pull your stuff off YouTube. Just upload also to our, to our service and then we'll also show you what you would make if, if, you know, just through standard revenue. Also like, you know, adopt some like Twitch style direct subscriptions. So people don't all like, tons of YouTubers are moving to Patreon, like very successful, regular YouTubers are moving to Patreon.

• 34:16Speaker 02

  So give, allow people to do direct donations, direct subscriptions to stuff that they like. Never have originals, subsidize your own bandwidth because you're Verizon. And uh.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  And then AT&T customers can't watch it?

• 34:30Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

• 34:31Nilay Patel?

  They just have to pay against, they have to pay their data.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:34Nilay Patel?

  But Paul, I feel like hey, two things.

• 34:36Speaker 02

  One, like this is a chance to take down the titan that is YouTube.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  I am not engaging Go90 taking down YouTube. I just can't.

• 34:43Nilay Patel?

  Well, I just wanna, we're very far.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  Oh, God.

• 34:46Nilay Patel?

  Somehow we've gone from I hate the government to let's take down YouTube. So that's a set of leaps.

• 34:51Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 34:51Nilay Patel?

  We're very far away from net neutrality.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  We are.

• 34:53Nilay Patel?

  I wanna bring it back.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 34:54Nilay Patel?

  Second, I would just, I would just remind everyone that Paul's beautiful dream implies that Verizon has the ability to code, execute and run a platform of any scale. And the last thing that they ever tried to do was, I believe, called VZ Navigator.

• 35:10Speaker 02

  Whoa.

• 35:11Nilay Patel?

  Which really took down Google Maps using the same playbook of being free to use on Verizon phones. So a lot of dreams.

• 35:18Speaker 02

  I, I do not recall.

• 35:20Nilay Patel?

  A lot of dreams.

• 35:22Speaker 01

  You know, actually, you could execute on this crazy dream.

• 35:24Speaker 02

  That does not come to my current recollection.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  Uh, Bam, MLB Bam, which is now, you know, is part of Disney.

• 35:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  Sorta, kinda, they're in there somewhere and Disney just bought a bunch of stuff. TC has a really good piece about, uh, about.

• 35:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, we talk a lot on this show about deals, theater in particular. You, as an internet consumer, as a technology aficionado, you wanna like, make decisions about what you use and how it gets to you. And like, we've lived in that world for a long time. We are now clearly in the world of deal making.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:55Nilay Patel?

  Where your connection is, there's a content company attached to it in some way. Your connection will favor the content from that company.

• 36:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 36:03Nilay Patel?

  If you wanna go to Disney, they're gonna use their leverage to like, make a deal.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I was mad about deals, but now with the end of net neutrality, now ISPs also get to make deals. Now we're living in the deals on deals world.

• 36:14Speaker 02

  Deals on deals.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, double deals.

• 36:16Speaker 02

  Double deals.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  Double dealing.

• 36:18Speaker 02

  I think it's.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  We're double dealing.

• 36:19Speaker 02

  I think it is thrilling and exciting.

• 36:22Nilay Patel?

  You are, I mean, I, look, I'm.

• 36:24Speaker 02

  There's gonna be so much weird, stupid corporate synergy that happens that is, it just, it just, it lets them take their mask off if they're really ugly behind the mask.

• 36:37Nilay Patel?

  Were you curious about whether the ISPs are ugly behind the mask?

• 36:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, you see a mask, you want to know.

• 36:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you want to know.

• 36:44Speaker 02

  You want to know.

• 36:45Nilay Patel?

  Alright. Here's what I, I think nothing will happen in the short term. I do think you're going to see, my guess is Verizon will be the most aggressive to make these moves.

• 36:54Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 36:54Nilay Patel?

  Everyone else's moves are going to look like what AT&T was already telegraphing with their Time Warner acquisition.

• 37:02Speaker 02

  Right.

• 37:03Nilay Patel?

  HBO will now be included with your AT&T subscription. It will stream for free. Comcast will like, you know, the Xfinity app on all your devices will run for free on the Comcast. Like, all that is fine. It's going to happen. It was already kind of happening. The, the next moves are going to be, how far are they going to start to push it?

• 37:22Speaker 02

  I, I, I want to pay for Fastlane for at least some of my multiplayer video games.

• 37:28Nilay Patel?

  Verizon's forthcoming YouTube competitor.

• 37:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's already services out there that promise you like a lower latency in like League of Legends. Like, I want, I'm ready to pay for, for better Overwatch.

• 37:40Nilay Patel?

  We'll see, we'll just see. It's, the thing is, it happened. Like I said, it's like a little bit anticlimactic. Like, we knew it was going to happen today and it happened.

• 37:47Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 37:47Nilay Patel?

  There's an endless array of court cases coming. There's an endless, Sheryl Sandberg today posted on Facebook, like, we're going to fight this vigorously. We're taking this to court. Like, it's coming, right? Like, the move in Congress from Republican senators in unsafe seats facing an election in 2018. They're going to say, we're going to have some net neutrality rules because it's an opportunity to do something popular. Like, it's, all of it's happening. So that, it's done for now in this way, but it's not done forever. And I think that we're just, we're just going to end up covering it for another year in this way. Tony Rahm at Recode, who's an excellent reporter, who I recommend following on Twitter because his Twitter is really funny too. He's an excellent policy reporter. He's like, this is just Groundhog Day.

• 38:32Nilay Patel?

  We are going to be having this net neutrality fight for the rest of our lives.

• 38:35Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 38:36Nilay Patel?

  Because the lawsuits are coming, more congressional action is coming. You know, maybe Trump goes away, there's a new FCC commissioner. That person will change their, like... We're gonna do this until we decide, like fundamentally decide how we want the internet to work. And it, public opinion is one way, companies are one way. Maybe Pi has it right. I doubt, I very much doubt it. If you've been listening to the show, I think you know I doubt it. But he's got a window of time to prove it.

• 39:03Speaker 02

  Okay, okay. If we get space internet in one decade, so, whatever, what's the date? December 14th, 2017. If by December 14th, 2027, we have space internet.

• 39:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 39:19Speaker 02

  Does that mean Pi was right?

• 39:20Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 39:21Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 39:22Nilay Patel?

  Okay. He was right if what the, the mechanism by which we get space internet is it?

• 39:30Speaker 02

  Paid prioritization?

• 39:31Nilay Patel?

  They, yeah, Verizon and Comcast are so aggressive with paid prioritization, and they have so much extra money, they're like, let's just put some internet in space. I, where is that? Why would they do that? Why would they build a competitor to themselves?

• 39:44Speaker 02

  Well, I would, I would think that it would come from that there's so much obvious room for competition because there's so much money to be made in delivering broadband.

• 39:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I don't know how much money there really is in delivering broadband. Here's, here's the thing I don't want. You remember how you had AOL, and then you realized, oh wait, instead of just using AOL, I could use the internet? And then after a while, you're just using the internet, and you're like, wait, why do I need AOL? And then you stopped using AOL. They're trying to go back to AOL. The ISPs want to be part of the content-serving portion of it. They don't want to be dumb pipes. And like, that's what I'm afraid of. That's, that's like, kind of the end of it, for me.

• 40:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I'm gonna read an ad, and then we're gonna come back, and then a reality fight will go continue forever and ever. While I read this ad, Paul is gonna write out his business plan for Verizon executing a YouTube competitor.

• 40:34Speaker 02

  I already wrote it.

• 40:35Nilay Patel?

  Step one, hire engineers who know what they're doing.

• 40:38Speaker 02

  I think it's seven easy steps.

• 40:39Nilay Patel?

  You're...

• 40:41Speaker 02

  No, eight steps.

• 40:42Nilay Patel?

  You're just a beautiful dreamer, man.

• 40:46Nilay Patel?

  This episode of The Vergecast is brought to you by Squarespace. Are you ready to start a new business? Why wait until the new year to set your plans in action? The future is coming. Again, always sounds like a threat, but you can make that future brighter with Squarespace. There's beautiful templates created by world-class designers. Squarespace makes it easy to turn your idea into a new and unique website. You showcase your work, your blog, you can publish content, you can sell products and services of all kinds. Just a couple of clicks, Paul, and then you pay another couple of clicks for Verizon and speed that right up. You can customize everything from the look and feel, settings and products, and it's all optimized for mobile right out of the box. You can use analytics to help you grow in real time, and there's nothing to install, patch or upgrade ever. But if you do have a question, Squarespace has award-winning 24/7 customer support to help you out. A dream is just a great idea that doesn't have a website yet. Make it a reality.

• 41:31Nilay Patel?

  Squarespace. So go to Squarespace.com for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, use offer code VERGE to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's Squarespace.com, offer code VERGE. Well, should we keep doing telecom news or should we do iMac Pro?

• 41:45Speaker 01

  Whatever you want.

• 41:46Nilay Patel?

  Let's do the iMac Pro.

• 41:47Speaker 01

  Okay. Well, I'm sure we'll find a way back.

• 41:52Speaker 01

  No fear. The iMac Pro is available. It costs somewhere between $5,000 and $14,000. It's not an exaggeration. What's your recommended spec on that? Oh, I actually haven't specced out the recommended. The recommended is like the... I saw you recommended 10 cores. You should get the 10 cores 64 gig 2 terabyte system. Because you get higher clock speed. Yeah, you don't want to go to 14 or 18 because you gotta wait longer and you don't get the higher clock speed. So what Apple did is they gave it out to a bunch of like, some like engineers and some YouTubers and some videographers. And they had it for like a week or two, and then they posted some impressions earlier this week.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  And then yesterday, as of this recording, Apple had a bunch of journalists like roam around in packs around this like studio space and talk to various developers who have made apps or other things that are optimized for use on this high-end, super professional computer. So we saw a guy with Gravity something or other, like do some really cool like 3D drawing and like vector movements with like 3D objects and like... That full fidelity of all the pixels and blah, blah, blah, blah. We saw, you know, your standard like Adobe thing where they like took a picture of a thing and that turned into a surface that they could apply to another thing that they could move around in 3D and blah, blah, blah.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  Get all the reflections just right and you don't have to wait to render anything. I saw 8K video and Final Cut Pro. I saw a bunch of cool stuff. I saw one of the best VR demos I've ever seen in my life. So it was all great. And, you know, saw the machine running. We'd seen it before in June. It looks and acts like an iMac that's darker.

• 43:33Nilay Patel?

  Why didn't they get rid of the bezels?

• 43:35Speaker 01

  So there's a lot that I don't understand about this. They completely re-architected the inside of this machine. There is no 3.5 spinning platter hard drive. They were able to like solder a bunch of stuff to the board. So you really, you can't go in and change anything, but they did all that stuff, which meant that they could like re-architect the way that air moves through it. So it comes in the bottom, spins through, shoots out the back, shoots out really hot, actually. But they're able to consistently move a ton of air so the thing doesn't have to spin up and make a lot of fan noise. But they aggressively chose to make this like millimeter for millimeter, the same as the standard 27-inch iMac 5K. Like it's, it's the same body and it's a darker color, but there, there are choices

• 44:20Speaker 01

  they could have made. If you're already going through the work of re-architecting the inside of it, like, yeah, make the bezel smaller. Or maybe they don't want to like buy new screens and like the screen has to get driven. Like the bezels actually don't bother me that much. I know it's bothering a bunch of people. I kind of don't care. But I don't know. Put a door on it to like let people change the RAM.

• 44:39Nilay Patel?

  You have to take it to a service center to upgrade the RAM.

• 44:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:42Nilay Patel?

  It's great.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  They do let you take the mount off yourself and put a VESA bracket on it.

• 44:48Nilay Patel?

  You've always been able to do that with the iMac.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  I think you were supposed, you like had to order the VESA version from Apple and like everything else was like a hack.

• 44:55Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 44:55Speaker 02

  There's already an accessory out to put some ports on the front.

• 45:01Nilay Patel?

  But it's the same, because it's the same, they probably made that accessory already for the iMac.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  No, the parts are, I think there's more thunderbolts on this than a standard iMac, and it has, it has 10 gigabit ethernet.

• 45:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  Uh, it can drive two 5K displays, it'll work, I saw it running, I saw one of the demos, it was running two external GPUs at the same time, in addition to the radyons on the inside, so that was cool. Um, like, this thing, I, I don't know, I, I don't have full impressions, because I didn't get to sit down and use it. I'm not the pro that they're looking to sell this thing to. But, to me, the question is, if you want to spend the money on this thing, I feel like you need to know exactly what you're looking for, to a higher degree of confidence than most of us do when we go out and buy a computer.

• 45:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think that makes sense, I mean, it's not for, but, first, here's my question.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:53Nilay Patel?

  Ah.

• 45:54Speaker 01

  I just,

• 45:55Nilay Patel?

  You're right?

• 45:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. I hit the microphone and it scared me.

• 45:58Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 45:59Speaker 02

  No shock.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:00Nilay Patel?

  Edit that right out.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  Fuck you, Andrew.

• 46:10Nilay Patel?

  Okay, here's my question.

• 46:13Nilay Patel?

  It's really fast, right?

• 46:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's stupid fast.

• 46:17Nilay Patel?

  Is it, so, I feel like, you know, it's a cool product, I'm glad it exists.

• 46:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:22Nilay Patel?

  But I feel like Apple is, they were so slow, that everyone's like, "Oh my god, it's so much faster." But if they had just put out new processors every year,

• 46:33Speaker 01

  It would be,

• 46:33Nilay Patel?

  it would just be incrementally faster.

• 46:35Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 46:36Nilay Patel?

  Right?

• 46:36Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 46:37Nilay Patel?

  And if they had just put a good GPU in it last year,

• 46:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:41Nilay Patel?

  it would just be incre, it's like they, they're, they held back for so long,

• 46:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:45Nilay Patel?

  that just putting modern components in a Mac,

• 46:48Speaker 01

  Well, they do,

• 46:49Nilay Patel?

  they're able to make it seem,

• 46:50Speaker 01

  By the way, they were, they're much more eager to compare it to like, the other iMac's performance, and not the iMac Pros, or not the Mac Pros performance.

• 46:57Speaker 02

  Because they, they do claim that like, if you were gonna spec out something like this yourself,

• 47:02Speaker 01

  That you'd end up spending the same or more, if you're trying to build a display machine. Sometimes minus a display, yeah.

• 47:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 47:07Speaker 02

  But I find that, A little hard to believe. I mean, Xeon's are pretty expensive. By the way, what was it? The 10 core?

• 47:14Speaker 01

  It's not, for Apple, it's not just, even if you were to build out the same thing, like get the same Radeon card, get the same, you know, ECC, whatever the hell, RAM, get the same fast SSD, get equivalent display, which by the way is very difficult to do because the display on the iMac is basically unparalleled, in my opinion. Like, do all that stuff. Buy all those pieces, put them in a box, and maybe it costs less. Apple's contention is that that still won't be as good as this thing because you need to look at a Pro system like this holistically. It's not just about, do you have the fastest RAM? It's, is the thing that controls the RAM and also controls the SSD and gets them to talk to each other, the, you know, all of that stuff, all that like subsystem stuff that runs a computer.

• 48:00Speaker 01

  Their claim is their stuff is better than something you'd go out and build yourself. And the, the central piece of that claim is this T2 processor, this T2 like unit that runs all the controllers for everything and also enables a secure, you know, enclave that keeps the whole thing, you know.

• 48:20Nilay Patel?

  Wasn't there a big rumor this thing would have like a co-processor A10 that did Taster?

• 48:24Speaker 01

  That's what, that's what this, that, that turned into this, this T2, which is basically an iteration on the T1 that's in the Mac Pro, MacBook Pro with a touch bar?

• 48:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 48:32Speaker 01

  That runs the, the, the secure Touch ID thing on it. This is basically a, a next iteration of that, but it's controlling ever more pieces of the computer. So the, the, I think the biggest part of the T2 is it acts as the SSD controller and it also acts as the, you know, fully secure place where your encryption key for your file encryption lives and it does the decoding on that chip. So you, like, when you encrypt your files on your SSD, not only is it faster because they have a custom, you know, SSD driver thing that's built into this chip to control it, it's also like the workload of encrypting and decrypting files happens on this custom chip that's designed for it, not on one of your, you know, 10 cores.

• 49:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It's funny because it's, it sounds like a specialized chip, but as it does more and more and more, it just becomes a general purpose co-processor?

• 49:24Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:25Nilay Patel?

  You can just like see it go that way?

• 49:27Speaker 02

  It's very interesting. Like, what, what else can you offload to, to these other chips? Like, what other?

• 49:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, this is like Apple's specialty, right?

• 49:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, to be honest, like, I hate them.

• 49:39Speaker 02

  But it's, I like that they're, you know, in a sense, because you buy this if you are addicted to Final Cut Pro.

• 49:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:48Speaker 02

  If you are a successful music producer and like Logic, you know, like there, or if you are just cannot be bothered to understand how to build a computer. But most people do not need this much power right now.

• 50:01Speaker 01

  But like, the other question is, there are people who do. Should the people that do in fact need this much power buy this computer or wait for the Mac Pro that's coming next year?

• 50:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think you should buy a Mac Pro.

• 50:11Speaker 01

  A lot of these, but some people really do genuinely need like just an all in one. It's just like, it's better and more convenient.

• 50:16Speaker 02

  But a lot of the demos that Apple's showing you are fanciful. Apple would like a world where people are actually doing 3D modeling on Macs.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:27Speaker 02

  That's correct. Well, I imagine.

• 50:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, I think our entire video team wants this computer.

• 50:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course, of course.

• 50:36Nilay Patel?

  They're already using it.

• 50:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, but can we afford that?

• 50:40Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. It depends on how much we have to pay to prioritize our site.

• 50:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:45Speaker 02

  So it's like, if, on the other hand, Apple had a $2,000 Mac Pro, we could probably get that for most of our video team.

• 50:53Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 50:54Speaker 02

  And it could have vastly better, vastly, vastly, vastly better performance than they have with their current IMAX.

• 51:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, we have to buy them all displays. But Apple wants to get there. I think this is not quite like the iPhone 8, iPhone 10 situation. I think you want to have a family of products that extends up this way in the two form factors. So I think Dieter's right. Some people are just gonna want a bunch of high-powered IMAX for people doing high-powered work.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 51:23Nilay Patel?

  And some people are gonna want modular workstations that can like rack mount.

• 51:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. Several times during the day, people are like, why shouldn't someone just wait for the Mac Pro? And like the, you know, the Apple employees response, I've heard from several of them is, look, some people just need this thing right now. And the pro, the kinds of like pro shops that need these kinds of computers, the video shops, the scientific machine learning, you know, think tanks, whatever, they cycle through computers like on the Regular. They have project based stuff. They they buy insane computers. They use them for a year and then they hand them off to somebody else to do some slightly lower priority tasks and get the the next latest and greatest thing. Cause they always need the latest greatest thing. And so in Apple's mind, there are a bunch of people who are going to go out and buy this thing. And also going to go out and buy the Mac Pro later and just have this be a hand me down to another project. That's so that's the job to get.

• 52:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, you should have one of those jobs. We should just put a listing on the verge of jobs to get where they always buy you the best. Oh, yeah. What job should you get if you want the best computer, no matter what, all the time? Provided to you by your by your company. That is a very good question. By the way, you said ten core. I think it's maker of Apple commercials. I think that's that's it.

• 52:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, like, usually when Apple, the last time Apple did a Mac Pro, they did the trash can. It was years ago.

• 52:43Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 52:43Nilay Patel?

  And it was a much smaller rollout and we all went to Radical Media here in New York, which is a huge post house.

• 52:50Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 52:51Nilay Patel?

  And I don't know, we sat down with their editors and they showed us how they use the Mac Pro. Like, I think video editors, animators, anybody in, like, high end scientific research, like, that does a lot of big data processing.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  Oh, big, big data stuff all happens in the cloud and they all run Linux. No, but there was a bunch of stuff that was I found really fascinating. There was, you know, this, this company that makes this architecture software. And there was another, you know, it was the 3D modeling and VR software, like, three or four of the, like, innovative things were basically like, oh, you just figured out how to use Unreal Engine and apply it to practical purposes. Like, there's a bunch of that stuff.

• 53:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I meant big data sets, not big data. Like, if you, if you're a physics researcher and you collect big data sets of things, like, these are the kinds of computers that you use to, like, do the modeling on your desktop.

• 53:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 53:40Nilay Patel?

  It's a workstation. That's the people who bought workstation.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  They're literally called workstation.

• 53:45Nilay Patel?

  That market exists, everybody understands it, like.

• 53:48Speaker 01

  In my, I, I actually put this in like the deck, uh, the, the deck, it's a sub headline if you don't understand. Uh, the, the sub headline of the piece is Pro means something different here than what you think of for most Apple computers. I wish that they had just called it like iMac workstation. Because when people like, I'm gonna get questions from like family members that would normally go out and buy an iMac. Like, oh, should I get the iMac Pro? Because they're like, when they're like, should I go buy a MacBook? Like, yeah, go get the MacBook Pro. But the MacBook Pro is a different kind of Pro than this thing.

• 54:17Speaker 02

  What about the IBM ThinkMac?

• 54:20Speaker 01

  Ooh, that's a bad.

• 54:22Nilay Patel?

  That's a good one.

• 54:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:23Nilay Patel?

  I, I, I think a lot of people are gonna buy this computer. And then I think a lot of people are gonna buy the Mac Pro.

• 54:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:28Nilay Patel?

  I, it's just the thing that gets me about it is all of the,

• 54:33Nilay Patel?

  all of the performance measurements are against older Macs and not against current PCs.

• 54:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:38Nilay Patel?

  And like, it's probably, given this, you know, the synthesized engineering of the thing, probably a little faster than like the comparable set of specs on a PC.

• 54:47Speaker 02

  Probably.

• 54:48Nilay Patel?

  But no, no one's done it yet. Because Apple's like, it's so much faster than the old Mac.

• 54:53Speaker 02

  I'm just saying, don't ask me to be grateful.

• 54:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, for a $5,000 computer.

• 54:58Speaker 02

  I think the spec you're talking about, Dieter, is $8,000.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  $8,000?

• 55:01Speaker 02

  10 core, 64 gigabytes of memory, 2 terabytes of storage.

• 55:04Speaker 01

  You might want to get one 28.

• 55:06Speaker 02

  Well, that is $9,599.

• 55:10Nilay Patel?

  Oh, man.

• 55:11Speaker 02

  To double your RAM, you add.

• 55:15Speaker 01

  I mean, 128 of this high-quality RAM is nothing to sniff at.

• 55:18Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  That's a lot.

• 55:20Speaker 02

  It's, but what pisses me off is that you can't decide, you can't decide, like, you know what? What's super important to me is the best GPU in the world, which is ob, is fucking not in this computer.

• 55:34Speaker 01

  Yes, I know, like the, the Apple AMD, uh, friendship, the, the Apple only puts AMD stuff in its computers. I'm getting tired of that, right?

• 55:43Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 55:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 55:44Speaker 02

  And so, and so maybe that's what's important to me. Because like you said, if you're gonna buy this computer, you should know exactly what you want to do.

• 55:51Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 55:51Speaker 02

  So like, maybe I know that the RAM is, is the absolute bottleneck. And I only need 32 megabyte, or 32 gigabytes of it, but I need the absolute best, fastest thing on the market.

• 56:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:02Speaker 02

  And I need it liquid cooled.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  Oh, you, yeah, okay.

• 56:04Speaker 02

  You know, like, there are, when you're in the pro world, like, you are optimizing for certain things. Clock speed, RAM speed, you know, storage rights.

• 56:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. Network access.

• 56:18Nilay Patel?

  So are you gonna buy a Mac Pro?

• 56:21Nilay Patel?

  Duh.

• 56:22Speaker 01

  Duh.

• 56:24Nilay Patel?

  All right, I'm gonna read an ad.

• 56:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:26Nilay Patel?

  And then, I think we should talk about T-Mobile buying a cable company this week. We have to. We'll just do it quick.

• 56:31Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 56:34Nilay Patel?

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• 57:18Nilay Patel?

  go to meundies.com/verge. That is meundies.com/verge.

• 57:24Nilay Patel?

  So T-Mobile announced, was it yesterday, the day before?

• 57:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:28Nilay Patel?

  That they're buying Layer 3.

• 57:31Speaker 01

  Which, we got, what is Layer 3?

• 57:33Nilay Patel?

  Layer 3 is a cable company.

• 57:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it's a cable company that no one's ever heard of.

• 57:37Nilay Patel?

  Wait, wait, wait. Just let me finish, let me finish. This is my raffle, dude. Don't step on my raffle.

• 57:43Speaker 01

  Don't cuss on my raffle.

• 57:49Nilay Patel?

  So they announced they're buying Layer 3 TV, and we're like, what is it? So I go to layer3tv.com, and there's a huge quote, like, over the Verge logo. It's like, Layer 3 TV is building a new kind of cable company that we're super excited... It's like, I'm like, I don't remember this. We were apparently once extremely excited about Layer 3. So I Google it.

• 58:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:10Nilay Patel?

  Because it's on a link. So I'm like Googling, I finally find it. And I look at the byline, and it says, "Al Pumlee." Who is Al Plume?

• 58:24Speaker 02

  Sometimes it seems like we don't take our jobs serious.

• 58:29Nilay Patel?

  And Al Plume is written a long write up of a long of a wired feature piece about Layer 3 TV. And it's like, super excited. And I remember that Al Plume was Paul's stealth name. When he came back to join The Verge before we announced his hiring.

• 58:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:49Nilay Patel?

  It's it's it's Paul Miller. It's the letters Paul Miller all all rearranged.

• 58:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:54Nilay Patel?

  Al Plume.

• 58:55Speaker 02

  I brought full copy right now.

• 58:56Nilay Patel?

  I just feel bad.

• 58:57Speaker 02

  And the great thing is.

• 58:58Nilay Patel?

  Like the Layer 3 people are like, oh, man, we gotta get a hold of Al Plume.

• 59:02Speaker 02

  No, Al Plume.

• 59:04Nilay Patel?

  Did Al Plume?

• 59:05Speaker 02

  Did the work. Al Plume reached out to Layer 3 and explained the, I think I. I, at that time, I remember I did a couple of things and I at least did one thing where I just told them I was Al.

• 59:25Speaker 02

  But I think I think I leveled with.

• 59:27Nilay Patel?

  You came, you were like, I'm actually Paul Miller.

• 59:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I found my interview notes and they're really, I didn't like write down who I was talking to.

• 59:36Nilay Patel?

  And you say Al Plume.

• 59:37Speaker 02

  It might have been like a background. But yeah, so Layer 3 was a new kind of cable company. And the basic idea is that all of their content would be delivered over IP. They would have no standard analog or digital cable going over RF. It would all be IP packets. So it's basically like internet. Like, imagine net neutrality, worst case scenario, your ISP has gone so far that they don't even have internet anymore. They only have. Fast pipes. So they were just basically making a service of only fast pipes.

• 1:00:17Speaker 02

  And they, uh, I think they started in Chicago and now they're in like DC and LA, maybe a couple of other places. Uh, so it's basically a cable company. They've got a cable box. You can, they can add like other services. So you can get like, I believe you can get Netflix, um, you can get channels and they kind of all just kind of come right into that box. They claimed that it would be an open platform. I don't know what's happened with that. So that anybody could theoretically add a service, uh, to, to their service. But that they, and, and the big efficiency they were claiming is by being a purely IP network, they, and, and being able to have a, like a more advanced technological box. They could use better compression, like HVAC or whatever.

• 1:00:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:59Speaker 02

  So it seems like they're-

• 1:00:59Speaker 02

  It's a cable company.

• 1:01:00Nilay Patel?

  They're a cable company and their secret sauce is better compression, which is-

• 1:01:05Speaker 02

  The, the, and having no leg- legacy systems.

• 1:01:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but that's like, Google Fiber had that advantage too, right? Like, they were also a cable and internet company, like, T-Mobile is out there buying, their, their specific technology that T-Mobile, if you're T-Mobile that you're interested in, is this like super high-powered compression.

• 1:01:26Speaker 02

  I think it's a standard compression algorithm though.

• 1:01:29Nilay Patel?

  No, cause the, the wired piece at that time was all about-

• 1:01:32Speaker 02

  Are we in an episode of Silicon Valley?

• 1:01:34Nilay Patel?

  See, this is where I was going.

• 1:01:35Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's just like-

• 1:01:38Nilay Patel?

  They're saying they can do HD video in, in four megabits per second.

• 1:01:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, that's just a, a modern compression code.

• 1:01:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, four megabits per second, that's enough for HD, standard HD. Well, this is what their claim is. I think this is why T-Mobile bought them. I don't think they bought them for deals or because their app looks nice or, the deals don't even usually transfer when you buy a company like this. It's like Apple bought Beats, Beats has deals and transfer, Apple had to remake the deals. What Apple bought was like a streaming, a, a software stack to do streaming music.

• 1:02:08Speaker 02

  Which hopefully they've completely rewritten by now.

• 1:02:10Nilay Patel?

  I, so I like use Apple music. The second your bandwidth like drops just a little bit, like on a plane, for example, the thing falls apart. Like you have to put it airplane mode to you. You can't like get on the wifi and then open up with music. It will try.

• 1:02:25Speaker 01

  Oh, right.

• 1:02:26Nilay Patel?

  Hmm.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  But if you go into airplane mode, you're fine.

• 1:02:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:28Speaker 01

  Great.

• 1:02:29Nilay Patel?

  Or you can click the only the music I've done. You know, this is not important to this conversation. So basically T-Mobile owns a cable company and we don't know why. I think I know why. Like I'm saying, I think their particular software expertise is lowering the amount of bandwidth they need, which is if you are a wireless company. Cause T-Mobile is not going to be out there running fiber lines to people's house. So if you're T-Mobile, you've bought a cable company and now does wireless delivery or hyper compression. They also have their own backbone. They have a 12,000 mile backbone. Yeah. I don't think they're doing a lot of their own last mile. They said something about co- cooperation. Good word. With the last mile stuff.

• 1:03:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So I, I think T-Mobile's play here is they can slice off some of their own bandwidth.

• 1:03:17Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:03:17Nilay Patel?

  Dedicate it to layer three and then roll out a TV service on the T-Mobile wireless network using whatever compression they have. If that's not their play, then you're right. It is truly a mystery why they needed to buy a company to do this because they could just do it. It's like Sony was like, we made a TV service and they just like rolled it out. There's no reason to buy a company to do this. That is relatively easy to do unless you're getting some sort of technology. I am almost positive they use HVAC. I do think they use HVAC, but I think they're doing something crazy with it. Alright. Um, what's interesting though is all the other ISPs are buying content companies. Right. T-Mobile is buying a content delivery company, which is very. And paying your Netflix bill. Yeah.

• 1:03:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:59Nilay Patel?

  You know, is Netflix off the cap too? Or is everything off the cap? What? Binge on?

• 1:04:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's part of binge on.

• 1:04:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  It's not like the only thing. It's just a whole bunch. There's a whole bunch of stuff that you can, you just binge on. You can binge on it.

• 1:04:12Nilay Patel?

  Oh my God. So we did in fact come back to telecom policy. Alright, Paul, every week. We've returned.

• 1:04:18Speaker 01

  To telecom policy.

• 1:04:19Nilay Patel?

  Al Plunlee, it's a segment. Oh my God.

• 1:04:23Speaker 02

  It's called the Internet of Claps.

• 1:04:26Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:04:27Speaker 02

  Uh, so there's a new clapper device.

• 1:04:30Nilay Patel?

  I'm very excited about this clapper device.

• 1:04:32Speaker 02

  It's called Clap Boss. You can program, I think there's like, was it six different kinds of clap patterns? So I should be clear.

• 1:04:42Nilay Patel?

  Uh huh.

• 1:04:42Speaker 02

  I owned a clapper. They used to sell them at the Duane Reade on the corner of 14th and 3rd Avenue. And I just walked in one day and I walked out with a clapper, set it up, and it was the best joke. So I just keep my apartment like relatively dark.

• 1:04:57Nilay Patel?

  Uh huh.

• 1:04:57Speaker 02

  And every once in a while, someone would accidentally clap or something and the clapper would go on or off. And everybody would laugh. It, there was so much joy brought by completely accidental.

• 1:05:07Nilay Patel?

  The stealth clapper.

• 1:05:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I hid it behind a chair or something like that. So yeah, people would just accidentally clap. And, and you'd get the lights turned on and it's hilarious. It's the least useful way of turning on and off lights. So yeah, apparently this will listen for like six different patterns. You can hook it up with if this, then that. There's an LCD on the face of it for some reason. It's, it's like a little USB powered thing, but they also sell like a, a, a plate for it to plug it into a wall outlet. I don't know why you'd want an LCD on something that's plugged into like a wall socket in the floor. But i- if you order a pizza, it will maybe show a pizza icon on the LC- I don't know. But Clap Boss, clap and stuff happens on the Internet.

• 1:05:53Nilay Patel?

  So it's if this and that with clapping?

• 1:05:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:56Nilay Patel?

  Alright, I'll take it.

• 1:05:57Speaker 02

  If clap, then that.

• 1:05:57Nilay Patel?

  How much does it cost?

• 1:05:59Speaker 02

  It's a good question.

• 1:06:00Nilay Patel?

  I'm here for the hard hitting journalism. How much does the Internet clapper cost?

• 1:06:05Speaker 02

  Thirty-nine dollars, but it's a, it's like a, it's Kickstarter.

• 1:06:08Nilay Patel?

  Ooh.

• 1:06:09Speaker 02

  Eventually retail for eighty dollars.

• 1:06:11Nilay Patel?

  Is it real?

• 1:06:12Speaker 02

  This is the people who did Free Write. You know that, um, that ink?

• 1:06:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:16Speaker 02

  Typewriter, fake typewriter for hipsters?

• 1:06:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, same people. And they ship that.

• 1:06:21Nilay Patel?

  There you go. That's a real change in ambition.

• 1:06:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:25Nilay Patel?

  Like, we're gonna reinvent writing.

• 1:06:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, we want the purest distraction-free writing. We want the next great American novel to be written on this machine.

• 1:06:35Nilay Patel?

  And now they're like, we made an Arduino with the sound sensor.

• 1:06:39Nilay Patel?

  All right, I think that's it. We've gone over, it's been a heated day. Do you have any time to talk about game of the year?

• 1:06:46Speaker 01

  No, it has to take forever.

• 1:06:47Nilay Patel?

  Let's do, let's do next week. Why don't we have the? That's a good idea. I'll look Megan on or something. Yeah, it's a good idea.

• 1:06:54Speaker 01

  Play, play, plan on that. Get ready.

• 1:06:55Nilay Patel?

  One to grow on. Yeah. Next week, game of the year conversation with our culture team that is actually good at talking about video games.

• 1:07:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, probably, no, we're good. It's just you that are bad.

• 1:07:05Nilay Patel?

  So I'm out. Vacation. Second game.

• 1:07:10Nilay Patel?

  Game of the year, Madden. That was the first cast. What was your favorite Madden that came out this year? It was, it was Madden. I bought a PS4 for that shit, man. The Pro at 4K, HDR.

• 1:07:27Speaker 01

  Did you, did you, like, do you, when you play Madden, do you try and like match your team's lineup to the active roster of the Packers?

• 1:07:35Nilay Patel?

  You do? It's been bad for me.

• 1:07:36Speaker 01

  So you, you're like, when Aaron Rodgers went down in real life, you took him down in Madden?

• 1:07:41Nilay Patel?

  It just does it. It just updates the rosters for you.

• 1:07:44Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 1:07:44Nilay Patel?

  I'd have to, what you're asking is, do I go and put him back in to like live in a fantasy world? And the answer is sometimes yes.

• 1:07:50Speaker 01

  Or there's like an Aaron Rodgers injury simulator.

• 1:07:53Nilay Patel?

  You should feel bad. You're, it's, it's, it's literally a fantasy world. It's football on a video game. I don't know, man. It's real to me. I had to buy a PS4 for that shit. Is your Madden team playoff bound?

• 1:08:06Nilay Patel?

  You know, there's a whole story mode this year where you play like a young, a young quarterback on the rise. Yeah. And like Dan Marino's in it, like randomly shows. It's like wild. It's like an RPG? Yes. You level up. You have to like make branching story choices. All of the story choices are like, will you be a jerk? Or a huge jerk? It's like all of the choices. Anyway. Game of the year.

• 1:08:31Nilay Patel?

  That was a show.

• 1:08:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:33Nilay Patel?

  We have other great shows.

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  We do.

• 1:08:34Nilay Patel?

  You should listen to, including Why Did You Push That Button with Ashley Carmen and Caitlin Tiffany. This episode this week is on text threads and what people delete them. Like, I never really think about this, but Nicola Fumo, you might remember from many episodes of our chats in the past.

• 1:08:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:47Nilay Patel?

  Former writer for Ract. She apparently has like a crazy Kim Kardashian inspired like deletion ritual. Every episode of the show, just like now I'm thinking about everything I do. Because people are like, delete their text threads.

• 1:08:58Speaker 01

  That's what happens to me every episode of this podcast is like, whatever. And then it's like, oh, my gosh, I can't stop thinking about this.

• 1:09:05Nilay Patel?

  It's great. Lauren Good hosts Too Embarrassed to Ask, Kara Swisher. It's wonderful. Kara Swisher hosts Recode Decode and Peter Kafka hosts Recode Media, which is also wonderful. All great shows on iTunes. Go rate, review them.

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  Give them, give them five stars.

• 1:09:18Nilay Patel?

  Give them five stars.

• 1:09:19Speaker 01

  Give us five stars.

• 1:09:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I'd like some stars.

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, especially, yeah.

• 1:09:23Nilay Patel?

  I've been doling out of these stars to other people.

• 1:09:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, Apple Podcasts is now like showing analytics, apparently. It's a new thing because, you know, until now, we knew, we didn't know who the hell anybody was or what anybody did. Like, go to Apple Podcasts, give us, give us some stars. Get those, get those analytics out there.

• 1:09:38Nilay Patel?

  I'm into it.

• 1:09:39Speaker 01

  I love an analytic.

• 1:09:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Yeah. All right. Rock and roll.

• 1:09:45Speaker 01

  Promo code.

• 1:09:46Nilay Patel?

  No, it's not, Paul.