Google's sale of Motorola, the iPod's decline, and Daft Punk helmets

The Vergecast is a discussion of all things relevant and irreverent in the worlds of art, culture, science, technology, and anything else our hosts might deem interesting. On this week's episode, Joshua Topolsky, Nilay Patel, and Dieter Bohn talk about Google's attempt to sell Motorola to Lenovo, the declining sales of the iPod, and the obvious benefits of a Daft Punk helmet. Audio: Download MP3 (34.3 MB) Subscribe to the podcast (iTunes audio) Subscribe to the podcast (iTunes video) Subscribe to the podcast (RSS) Subscribe to the podcast (Video RSS) Video: 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.

• 0:21Speaker 00

  Hey, and welcome to The Vergecast for the week of January 27th, 2014. I'm Josh Topolsky.

• 0:28Nilay Patel?

  I'm Neil Patel.

• 0:28Speaker 00

  I'm Dieter Bohn. And, uh, and yes, that's right, you've entered the Bohn Zone.

• 0:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Uh... We've sold Ross Miller to Lenovo.

• 0:34Speaker 00

  Ross Miller has been sold to Lenovo for far less than what we paid for him.

• 0:38Nilay Patel?

  (laughing)

• 0:39Speaker 00

  And, uh, but, but you know what, he's in a better place.

• 0:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 0:42Speaker 00

  Lenovo. At Lenovo factory.

• 0:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 0:44Speaker 00

  Uh, no, Dieter's here, and this is, of course, The Vergecast, where we discuss the week in all sorts of funky, exciting topics. This week, plenty to talk about.

• 0:53Nilay Patel?

  So much one.

• 0:54Speaker 00

  Nazis.

• 0:55Nilay Patel?

  Nazis.

• 0:56Speaker 00

  Google.

• 0:57Nilay Patel?

  Google Nazis.

• 0:57Speaker 00

  Google Nazis.

• 0:58Nilay Patel?

  (laughing)

• 0:59Speaker 00

  Uh, no, Google Nazis.

• 1:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:01Speaker 00

  It's gonna be amazing what you'll find.

• 1:02Nilay Patel?

  Out-of-control maniac CEOs.

• 1:03Speaker 00

  Out-of-control CEOs, uh, in-control CEOs.

• 1:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Cool, collected CEOs.

• 1:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, cool, collected CEOs. What else? What are the other topics we have?

• 1:12Nilay Patel?

  Oh, man. Facebook did a thing.

• 1:14Speaker 00

  Facebook.

• 1:14Nilay Patel?

  Nintendo did a thing.

• 1:15Speaker 00

  Nintendo.

• 1:16Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I wanna start with the biggest news of the week, which is...

• 1:18Speaker 00

  Robots.

• 1:19Nilay Patel?

  ABC has commissioned a show called Selfie.

• 1:22Speaker 00

  ABC has commissioned a show called Selfie, which will feature... I don't know anything about the show, can you tell us about it?

• 1:26Nilay Patel?

  I just literally close... I've been like...

• 1:28Speaker 00

  Is it, is it a show based on Instagram?

• 1:29Nilay Patel?

  My immediate instinct to close that tab kicked in. Hold on.

• 1:33Speaker 00

  It's a show based on the experiences of Instagram users.

• 1:36Nilay Patel?

  Hold on.

• 1:37Speaker 00

  I'm making that up, I have no idea what it's about.

• 1:38Nilay Patel?

  It's outside here.

• 1:39Speaker 00

  I'm sorry, I just need to have a drink, I'm very thirsty.

• 1:41Nilay Patel?

  It's a show based on people who have faster internet than I do.

• 1:42Speaker 00

  Mmm.

• 1:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:43Speaker 00

  Hmm. We have a little bit of a problem here in the... By the way, I hope everybody could hear that.

• 1:46Nilay Patel?

  Uh, the comedy inspired by my fair lady tells the story of a self-obsessed 20-something woman who is more concerned with likes than being liked.

• 1:53Speaker 00

  I'm sorry, did you say my fair lady?

• 1:54Nilay Patel?

  Yep, yeah.

• 1:55Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:55Nilay Patel?

  After suffering a very public and humiliating breakup, she becomes the subject of a viral video, and something has more social media followers than she ever imagined, but for all the wrong reasons.

• 2:04Speaker 00

  Classic.

• 2:05Nilay Patel?

  She enlists the help of a marketing expert at a company to help repair her tarnished image. This is the worst.

• 2:10Speaker 00

  That is some convoluted...

• 2:12Nilay Patel?

  (laughing)

• 2:12Speaker 00

  That is some extremely contrived shit that I just heard.

• 2:16Nilay Patel?

  That show immediately goes from that concept, whatever that is, to like, three attractive people who are constantly staying in one apartment set, telling each other jokes about what happened outside of the apartment.

• 2:24Speaker 00

  You mean don't trust the B in apartment 23?

• 2:25Nilay Patel?

  Exactly, yeah.

• 2:26Speaker 00

  Um, one of my favorite shows.

• 2:28Nilay Patel?

  Or Happy Endings.

• 2:29Speaker 00

  R I P.

• 2:29Nilay Patel?

  Don't Trust the Bee is a really good show.

• 2:31Speaker 00

  I know it's not, you're crazy. I watched.

• 2:33Nilay Patel?

  And here's why, there's only one reason. The startling return of, uh, to form of James Fender.

• 2:38Speaker 00

  Now he's on a new show.

• 2:39Nilay Patel?

  I know.

• 2:39Speaker 00

  With E from Entourage.

• 2:41Nilay Patel?

  That show, yeah.

• 2:41Speaker 00

  He's on a show with E from Entourage.

• 2:43Nilay Patel?

  Nobody needs that. Nobody needs the B and E. But, uh, the beak is back.

• 2:47Speaker 00

  You know what? I have no comment. I have no comment on that. But what I do have comment on is, uh, I watched an episode of Two Broke Girls.

• 2:54Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:55Speaker 00

  The other day.

• 2:55Nilay Patel?

  Why?

• 2:56Speaker 00

  Like.

• 2:56Nilay Patel?

  Did you hate watch it?

• 2:57Speaker 00

  I mean, well, it was like kinda by accident. I've never seen a whole episode. I've seen like a minute of it.

• 3:03Nilay Patel?

  Uh huh.

• 3:03Speaker 00

  Uh, like holy, holy shit. Holy shit, is that show like, it's, it's crazy bad.

• 3:10Nilay Patel?

  Well, I wanna know what this accident was. Like, did your remote call?

• 3:13Speaker 00

  It was like, no, it was like, it was like, I was watching TV.

• 3:16Nilay Patel?

  Why? I can't go over there.

• 3:18Speaker 00

  I was watching TV. It wasn't an accident. It was like, I was watching TV. I was flipping and then I just, I landed there and I was like, oh, you know what? I've never really watched an episode of this.

• 3:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 3:26Speaker 00

  And then I left it on while I was like doing other stuff. And it was so bad. So first off, it's, it's badly acted. It's badly written. It's super duper racist. Like crazy, like every character is some like racist character. Like there's like a little Asian guy who's, it's got a little funny accent. And then there's like some woman who has like some weird Eastern European accent. And then there's like a Middle Eastern cook and he's crazy. And there's like, it's just super racist. Like everybody's this weird caricature and, um, and horrible, just horrible, mean, not funny.

• 3:56Nilay Patel?

  There's definitely an article in The Guardian. It's called, "Two Broke Girls: So Racist It's Baffling."

• 4:02Speaker 00

  You know, it is, it is ba, it is baffling. It is like, it's like a show from the, it's like a show from the, um, from like the early eighties sitcoms where, I mean, literally like every character is just an insane cartoon version.

• 4:19Nilay Patel?

  It only made fifty on Complex's list of the fifty most racist TV shows of all time.

• 4:23Speaker 00

  It's also the most popular show in America, like second most popular show in America or something. It's like the third most popular sitcom in America. Anyhow, unrelated to everything we're talking about, but we were talking about Don't Trust the Bee. I mean, Don't Trust the Bee in Apartment 23 is probably like high art by comparison.

• 4:37Nilay Patel?

  It's got the beak, man. You can't.

• 4:39Speaker 00

  Anyhow, so let's talk about what's going on in the world. There's huge news in the world of technology. Uh, we have a lot of things to talk about.

• 4:45Nilay Patel?

  I don't even know where to start, but I think we should start at the obvious, which is.

• 4:48Speaker 00

  Google?

• 4:48Nilay Patel?

  Google.

• 4:49Speaker 00

  Google.

• 4:49Nilay Patel?

  Yesterday.

• 4:50Speaker 00

  Google sold. Motorola to Lenovo.

• 4:54Speaker 02

  They're trying to.

• 4:55Speaker 00

  Well, how much and how much they selling?

• 4:57Nilay Patel?

  2.91.

• 4:58Speaker 00

  2.9 billion.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:59Speaker 00

  So, so they bought Motorola for 12.5 billion.

• 5:03Nilay Patel?

  And this is like immediately now that I've said those two numbers.

• 5:05Speaker 02

  We're gonna argue on math for the rest of the hour.

• 5:07Nilay Patel?

  Android fanboys will begin tweeting at me. Various versions of where somehow that means they made a profit.

• 5:13Speaker 00

  I'm sure there's a completely fine way to justify.

• 5:15Nilay Patel?

  There is zero way to justify.

• 5:16Speaker 00

  I'm sure, no, and I'm sure you can say like, well, the patents will in the long run be X, Y, and Z.

• 5:21Nilay Patel?

  We can get into it.

• 5:22Speaker 00

  We're gonna get into it, but I think, I think there's no. I don't think there's a possibility that what would Google wanted to do was own Motorola for how many months?

• 5:32Nilay Patel?

  21.

• 5:33Speaker 00

  Was own Motorola for 21 months and then sell them off immediately.

• 5:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 5:36Speaker 00

  I don't think that was the plan.

• 5:37Nilay Patel?

  It's not the plan.

• 5:38Speaker 00

  You may, you may be able to, to, um. To define or to extract some sort of victory from this if you like have a really creative way of thinking.

• 5:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 5:48Speaker 00

  But there's no possibility that they bought them and they were like, you know, we're gonna do in like a year and a half. We're gonna sell these guys off to Lenovo.

• 5:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 5:55Speaker 00

  Cause that'll look really good for us. It'll look like we totally know what we're doing.

• 5:58Nilay Patel?

  And they, you know, they, they moved Dennis Woodside, who was like a high ranking exec to be the CEO of Motorola.

• 6:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:04Nilay Patel?

  He was allowed to recruit openly at Google. He brought over a lot of like really smart people. He brought, uh, Regina Dugan, who was on the verge 50. She was like, she used to be the head of DARPA.

• 6:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:14Nilay Patel?

  He brought her to, took her out of Google, brought her to Motorola to be like, just be smart here and like, help us make cool things. She did that project era, project aura.

• 6:23Speaker 00

  Which is, which they're apparently keeping at Google.

• 6:25Nilay Patel?

  And it's crazy that Google's like, well, that didn't work, but that's cool. Like you come back here and work for us again. She's taking your whole team back to Google.

• 6:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:32Nilay Patel?

  Like this was a plan, like they built a factory to manufacture phones, United States. Like they were trying to succeed as Motorola.

• 6:40Speaker 02

  They were doing everything right, except for cell phones.

• 6:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 6:45Speaker 00

  Well, this is awesome looking, by the way. Like, yeah, I do want the AR.

• 6:50Nilay Patel?

  It's so, I feel really bad for Pierce. Because yesterday, because they launched the wood phones yesterday, you can start buying them now.

• 6:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:57Nilay Patel?

  And this one is not so great, but I think we were just talking about the bamboo plus white combination. Josh was saying the plastic is like the wrong.

• 7:04Speaker 00

  It just feels extra plasticky by comparison.

• 7:06Nilay Patel?

  To the awesome wood. But like, they just launched this and David had a cool little story with like, great photos, but like, how Motorola is making wood phones, and then like, that happened.

• 7:14Speaker 00

  I mean, it's actually, it's actually.

• 7:16Nilay Patel?

  And then this morning, he put up a Lenovo review, and I was like, oh, Pierce. Over two, buddy.

• 7:20Speaker 00

  It's actually really cool, like, the wood thing is a great, you know, it's something really different that nobody's trying to do. I think it's interesting, but the Moto, the Moto X has been a failure. I mean, I don't think there's any other way to look at it. It sold, the last numbers we saw was something like half a million.

• 7:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:34Speaker 00

  Which is, which is garbage. I mean, how many iPhones, how many iPhones do they sell in a quarter?

• 7:39Nilay Patel?

  What was it?

• 7:40Speaker 00

  Fifty-one mil, fifty-one million?

• 7:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:42Speaker 00

  Like, listen, I mean, I don't expect Motorola to sell fifty-one million, but a couple of million?

• 7:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:48Speaker 00

  You know?

• 7:49Nilay Patel?

  They didn't even need to sell that many for it to be a success.

• 7:52Speaker 00

  It's, it's, it's got no, listen, the phones that are, look, I mean, Samsung is selling Android phones, and at least in America. When I see people, here's the two, I do see occasionally people with Droid, with Motorola Droid devices. I've seen a handful of those.

• 8:06Nilay Patel?

  It's always a Droid Max.

• 8:08Speaker 00

  I think Verizon, yeah.

• 8:09Nilay Patel?

  And it's the one differentiating feature I think we all like, it has a gigantic battery.

• 8:13Speaker 02

  I see the Droid Mini on the subway sometimes.

• 8:14Speaker 00

  I've seen it, I've seen it.

• 8:16Nilay Patel?

  I always see that, it's, maybe it's like, you know, when you like, want something, you see it everywhere?

• 8:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:20Nilay Patel?

  So I see Notes everywhere, and I see Droid Max everywhere.

• 8:24Speaker 02

  That's what you want?

• 8:24Nilay Patel?

  I want a giant screen with a huge battery.

• 8:26Speaker 00

  I get it, I mean, I think, but I think that, I, I think that you see Droids, that's sheer force of Verizon marketing.

• 8:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 8:36Speaker 00

  I don't think I've ever seen a Moto X in public. I don't think I've ever seen a random person with a Moto X.

• 8:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 8:42Speaker 00

  They advertise it. They've advertised it everywhere aggressively. It clearly has not had much of an impact.

• 8:47Nilay Patel?

  Well, you know, the missing opportunity of this was, it's, it's great that you can go online, like build one and customize it. But they actually needed to shade more towards that Project Era stuff.

• 8:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:58Nilay Patel?

  Where you could have bought like the frame and like put different backs on it.

• 9:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's exactly what they did with the Moto G.

• 9:04Speaker 00

  But don't you feel like this was the start, but, but regular consumers clearly like, I mean, I wonder, I actually wonder if-

• 9:10Nilay Patel?

  Cases are like the biggest sellers. Like the number one accessory for your phone is a case, right?

• 9:14Speaker 00

  Cases are big sellers, but, but it doesn't seem like colored phones are making much of a dent. That's what's interesting.

• 9:19Nilay Patel?

  But I think the reason cases are really popular is because you can get rid of it and your phone's still there. So if you made it, if you somehow integrated the phone with like, it has a built-in case, you know, like change it, like make it different and customize it. Like you're tired of an orange phone today, now you have a blue one.

• 9:30Speaker 00

  I think that's a, I think that's a good point. I think if it was an interchangeable like back, that's actually one of the cool things about the S4. Is that you can, the back is essentially like the entirety of the back of the phone.

• 9:40Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 9:40Speaker 00

  Once it meets the band. So it's just like the whole, you can swap it out.

• 9:43Nilay Patel?

  Moto G they got there.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, like the whole, even the rim.

• 9:47Nilay Patel?

  But that Moto G is like nasty.

• 9:49Speaker 00

  Is this the Moto G here that we're looking at? No, no, in the video?

• 9:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think this is G.

• 9:53Speaker 00

  Yeah. Um, oh, yeah, you gotta allow that. Yeah. Um, but here's the thing. I, I, uh, this is not, none of this is making an impact because they don't have the marketing budget.

• 10:05Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 10:05Speaker 00

  I mean, even with all the marketing they did, I mean, first of the marketing wasn't that good. Um, it was like, hey, it was like, we make a phone that you can get in different colors. That was the entirety of the marketing.

• 10:15Speaker 02

  They were exclusive to AT&T for a while, right? When was the last time AT&T got a phone as an exclusive and it went gangbusters? Like whenever a phone goes, it's like-

• 10:24Speaker 00

  Was it Galaxy S4 on AT&T?

• 10:26Speaker 02

  No, the iPhone. Anything, everything-

• 10:28Speaker 00

  No, no, no, but when, when the S4 first came out, I think it was only available on the-

• 10:31Nilay Patel?

  There's an all of them.

• 10:32Speaker 00

  Was it?

• 10:33Nilay Patel?

  It's always, the S3 and S4 have been always-

• 10:35Speaker 00

  That's the way you have to do it.

• 10:36Nilay Patel?

  They might've been like mildly staggered.

• 10:38Speaker 00

  But this is like-

• 10:39Nilay Patel?

  But like they announced all at the same time.

• 10:40Speaker 00

  Here's the problem. The, the differentiating factor is, is you can customize, which I think is really cool, but I think, you know, smaller screen, battery is like, okay, not the greatest. Slower resolution display, not a great display. Camera is eh. Like, it's a mid-range phone. I think a very good mid-range phone. I think an excellent choice. Like still an excellent choice as a smartphone if you're a buyer looking for a phone of this size. But, uh-

• 11:02Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I'm gonna buy, like, now it's, maybe this is just like, this is just like sadness and nostalgia.

• 11:08Speaker 02

  You wanna buy.

• 11:08Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna buy the, I'm gonna buy the one I wanted to buy.

• 11:10Speaker 02

  The second worst American phone you could buy, because now after this, the only American phone is the iPhone.

• 11:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, you guys quoted this in your, you guys quoted this in your piece and, and the thing I said about it. Their software stuff was actually really good and innovative, like really, I think really improved the experience. I just don't, I don't know that it was ever.

• 11:28Nilay Patel?

  Well, so Ben and I pulled apart the timeline, right? Like, motor, Google bought Motorola, and I have now been told this. Now that the smartphone patent wars are over, and that, you know, it's kind of like, it's at a low boil, and Apple and Samsung are just gonna sue each other on the side of the world for the rest of our lives.

• 11:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:45Nilay Patel?

  Um, and that's what's gonna happen.

• 11:46Speaker 00

  It is what's happening.

• 11:47Nilay Patel?

  But it's, like, it's, in terms of all of the big stuff that needed to shake out has shaken out. Um, I've been told this over and over again, um, which is that Google bought Motorola to try to block the iPhone from, they wanted to stop iPhone sales in any way they could.

• 12:00Speaker 00

  How? Why?

• 12:01Nilay Patel?

  Because at that time Motorola had 24,000 patents, but most of those patents were on like radio technologies, right? They were on things like Wi-Fi and GSM and MPEG-4 and like, standards, right? That's, Motorola was big in developing standards, in their old company, they've innovative company. And so it was unclear, like, the public policy was not shaken out, whether if, if you contribute to the Wi-Fi standard and someone builds a phone with Wi-Fi, can you block their product from the market? And the answer, every court in the world, every court in the United States had heard it, was no, you can't. Because you, if by contributing to the standard and saying, "Use our stuff", you've already said, "You can use our stuff", and all you're gonna argue about now is money.

• 12:42Nilay Patel?

  And if all you're gonna argue about is money, you can't keep the products off the market, because that reduces competition. That was the answer. It was the answer in Europe, it was the answer at the United States, in court, it was the answer in the International Trade Commission in the United States.

• 12:53Speaker 00

  Right.

• 12:53Nilay Patel?

  And so, Google, that answer wasn't shaken out. So Google made a $12 billion bet on, "Let's try to block the iPhone", and when Apple can't sell the iPhone because we have the essential patents on Wi-Fi and GSM, they will have to negotiate an Android license with us. And if they had won that bet, this would have been brilliant, like, just flat out brilliant.

• 13:12Speaker 00

  I mean, was it worth, was it worth, I mean, do you honestly believe they, they made a $12.5 billion bet on that one thing?

• 13:19Nilay Patel?

  I do.

• 13:19Speaker 00

  There had to be another.

• 13:20Nilay Patel?

  I've been told, like, it... At this point, the number of people and the type of people who've basically said they were trying to block the iPhone. Like that's

• 13:30Speaker 00

  Sergey Sergey Brin.

• 13:32Nilay Patel?

  It was it was some people like that. So that's what they tried to do and they lost and whatever they and the patents like they're gonna keep Motorola has 24,000 patents and patent applications. Google's gonna keep most of them.

• 13:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:44Nilay Patel?

  10,000 I think are going to Lenovo because they're about manufacturing. So who cares?

• 13:48Speaker 00

  Right.

• 13:49Nilay Patel?

  But the patents are worthless.

• 13:51Speaker 00

  Right.

• 13:51Nilay Patel?

  Like they ended up being worthless. And so you can say when when Google bought Motorola, they valued the patents at $5 billion. So they bought it for 12.5 billion dollars. We can round up. Fine. They value it at 5.5 will round up patents worth $6 billion. So they have $6 billion of value left. They sold the K-Box business for $2 billion and they sold the manufacturer, the phone business for $3 billion.

• 14:14Speaker 00

  Right.

• 14:15Nilay Patel?

  So there's still just, okay, fine. You lost a billion dollars.

• 14:17Speaker 00

  Which is now which is nothing to Google.

• 14:18Nilay Patel?

  Plus you you lost another couple billion dollars in operating costs over the past few years.

• 14:23Speaker 00

  Right.

• 14:23Nilay Patel?

  You have a failing business.

• 14:24Speaker 00

  But I mean, when you paint that picture, it doesn't sound that bad.

• 14:27Nilay Patel?

  Right. But the value of the patents is just it's nothing. It's paper. It's like it's the value of paper.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  Well, they were valuable enough to cross license with Samsung.

• 14:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 14:37Speaker 00

  Unless there's a patent.

• 14:37Nilay Patel?

  We should get that.

• 14:39Speaker 00

  Unless there's patents there that we've somehow have like overlooked the value of them.

• 14:42Nilay Patel?

  The value of a patent and this is like the this is why this deal blew up in Google's face. The value of patent is not the technology that it describes, right? Because obviously Samsung can just like make the technology and Apple can sue them. They're like you violated like whatever. The value of the patent is how much you can get from other people for it. Right? Because the all a patent is is the monopoly on the ability to make, use and sell something.

• 15:03Speaker 00

  Right.

• 15:04Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so I can I have a patent on this phone. You can't sell it. If you want if you want to sell this phone, you gotta pay me, right? Or or I can keep you from selling it and then I can get all the money from everybody else.

• 15:14Speaker 00

  Right.

• 15:15Nilay Patel?

  Well, Google has no ability to get money from people for those patents.

• 15:18Speaker 00

  Right.

• 15:19Nilay Patel?

  Right. They have like

• 15:20Speaker 00

  That's the weird thing is

• 15:21Nilay Patel?

  Even in the cases where Motorola tried to do it, they sued Microsoft. They're gonna block the Xbox 360. If you want to sell them, you got a license or MPEG patents for them. We want $4 billion. The court was like, no, you can have 1.7.

• 15:31Speaker 00

  What's weird what's weird about it is

• 15:33Speaker 02

  Million.

• 15:33Speaker 00

  What's what's weird about it is

• 15:37Speaker 00

  it it just feels like, you know, Google, I mean.

• 15:43Speaker 00

  Even they're not even they didn't even really try to utilize the I mean I

• 15:47Nilay Patel?

  Google has been running around saying we're never gonna sue people

• 15:49Speaker 00

  Right, and they kinda they kinda trap themselves where I I get that that they had the opportunity to do it and maybe to be more aggressive with it but then you see like the court cases are I mean The court cases are Apple and Samsung and Samsung is we can say Samsung's a proxy but the court case is not against Google and And Samsung can't defend itself with Google's patents well

• 16:08Nilay Patel?

  They kinda tried remember um uh Google signed over some to HTC that they licensed for a dollar

• 16:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah

• 16:14Nilay Patel?

  Um but you know HTC and Apple settled

• 16:16Speaker 00

  Right

• 16:17Nilay Patel?

  Nokia and Apple settled you know they were suing each other for a minute too

• 16:19Speaker 00

  And the funny thing is that the game is not about like consumers see it as I think Android fans are looking at it going like This is about the stuff they made and like this you know like I think that people who are who bought into the possibility of Motorola and Google creating some really awesome stuff together are like This was supposed to be about that like what happened and I think that You know it's so much it's so much not about the products anymore

• 16:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah

• 16:43Speaker 00

  That this whole the whole game right now of tablets and smartphones and like the devices we use every day isn't about You know there's really just no players there's two players there's Samsung and there's Apple and everybody else is kind of just like Pecking around for a couple of people here and there like how many Nexus phones do you think they're selling I'll bet it's fewer than the Moto X sells Cause they advertise them far less and they uh are ultimately more expensive when you buy them at a store when you if you were gonna buy them just like at face value right if you walked into a store versus going online so I like the whole thing is like what does Google do here in the sense of Apple sold

• 17:20Speaker 00

  A lot of phones they make a lot of money selling phones they you know they might not have sold as many phones as the as the street said they were going to but they did very very big numbers

• 17:30Nilay Patel?

  They did a good job

• 17:30Speaker 00

  Right and I don't think anybody at Apple's too bummed about you know the 5C apparently was a bit of a miss

• 17:35Nilay Patel?

  We're gonna get into the earnings

• 17:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah Yeah, well we will talk about it but I'm but I'm just saying like so who

• 17:41Nilay Patel?

  So in order for

• 17:42Speaker 00

  Google doesn't compete on hardware

• 17:44Nilay Patel?

  In order for Google to have like made the Moto X or Motorola phone a success it would have to compete on the same playing field that Samsung is competing on and that's

• 17:52Speaker 02

  That was a ton of marketing money and had they done that, that would have screwed up the relationship with all of their OEMs.

• 17:59Speaker 00

  I mean, this is, they are literally, I mean, somebody, I saw somebody tweet this, they're like, it's like Mike, they're like old Microsoft. And it really is, they are now, they have now put themselves in terms of this stuff in a position that Microsoft was in not that long ago. And as we can see with Microsoft, it has been a total clusterfuck. Trying to figure out how you make a product that competes directly with your partners.

• 18:20Nilay Patel?

  If I worked for Nokia right now, I'd be like, well, we're screwed. Like, it has never been done, like, Palm split itself into Palm One and Palm Source. Then they bought Handspring and they combined again, like, that was a huge fail. Apple tried to license Mac OS to the clone maker, Steve Jobs came back and was like, this is stupid.

• 18:36Speaker 00

  The only way, the only way it works is if, is if for Microsoft, is if, um, no one else makes Windows phones.

• 18:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 18:42Speaker 00

  And Microsoft, Microsoft proper doesn't make Windows phones, then Nokia is literally the, the only maker of Windows phones as a subsidiary of Microsoft. And they either collaborate on things like tablets. I mean, but at some point you start to go like, okay, but tablets, your tablets are PCs and so now you're competing with PC makers. And so if you lose those guys, you're totally screwed. Because Microsoft cannot sell the amount of PCs that Lenovo does, or that HP does, or that these other part, and they're all like, meanwhile, HP and Lenovo are like, hey, Android's pretty interesting.

• 19:14Speaker 00

  Hardware, right, they just bought like, the, yeah.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  HP is releasing phones now and, right, like, India China.

• 19:19Nilay Patel?

  They're all over them, like, the Microsoft thing is like the parable for, like, or not the parable, it's the, it's the next version of this. Google's the parable for Microsoft, you know, it's like, Microsoft's trying to desperately turn, turn into Apple, Google's busily turning into like the old Windtel Microsoft. And like, we're just switching these roles.

• 19:37Speaker 02

  But I think. So the, the parable for me is like, if you're gonna buy a phone company, you need to desperately, desperately, desperately want to win. And if you can't put everything behind it, if you're gonna tie one hand behind their back, you're going to fail.

• 19:49Speaker 00

  No, this is, this is Palm, Palm and HP is exactly the situation.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  Microsoft and the sidekick.

• 19:54Speaker 00

  Here's the thing, like, you have to, right, you have to be all in and you also have to be willing to do something that maybe works against you in the short term. I mean, like, I think if Google said, hey, we're gonna offer the open source components of Android. As a basis for your platform, but if you want to use our apps, like we will charge you because there was a story recently, which apparently was not the case, but they're they're charging licensing fees for the apps. If they had done some variation of that and said, we're going whole hog on hardware ourselves and like you can either be with us or against us.

• 20:24Nilay Patel?

  The licensing fee thing is like, you know, we checked around that story didn't check out, but we have known for a long time. And this is goes to right into Samsung and why they sold Motorola. We've known for a long time that they restrict those apps unless you do what they say.

• 20:39Speaker 00

  That's true. Right. And Google's even said it, but Google's even said it to us.

• 20:43Nilay Patel?

  I mean, the most famous story of that is, oh, God, what was it?

• 20:46Speaker 02

  It's not the most famous story anymore.

• 20:47Nilay Patel?

  Well, not anymore, but well, now the Samsung one is, but before it was, there was the Skyhook GPS company. They were going to be in the droid and Andy Rubin called Sanjay John was like, you're not shipping the droid because you got this weird wifi in it.

• 21:01Speaker 00

  Right.

• 21:01Nilay Patel?

  And you're going to use our location services.

• 21:03Speaker 00

  Right.

• 21:04Nilay Patel?

  That's like, that's Google.

• 21:05Speaker 00

  But we also know that they, but sorry, go ahead.

• 21:07Nilay Patel?

  But to get like Gmail and Maps and stuff on your phone, you've got to do what they say.

• 21:11Speaker 00

  There have to be certain requirements, Matt.

• 21:12Speaker 02

  To a certain point, but the question has always been, who has the leverage in these relationships, Google or the manufacturer? And it's never clear. And so like the, the, the thing that we're leading up to talking about is that Google and Samsung signed like less than a week before this Motorola deal, a cross licensing deal. And then there's a rumor.

• 21:29Nilay Patel?

  And I remember, and they nabbed it. And I remember Josh was like, is this important? I was like, no, because now in hindsight, that was ridiculous, but it's like, they're always on the same side, like, of course they sign a deal.

• 21:38Speaker 00

  Thank you. Finally vindicated.

• 21:41Nilay Patel?

  But like going from that to I bet they're going to sell Motorola.

• 21:45Speaker 00

  No, you couldn't have made that, you couldn't have made that leap, but, but, uh.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  But then the other part of this is that there's a rumor that Samsung is going to de Samsung eyes, it's Android phones. And it's going to start promoting, you know, Google stuff more and it's not going to be so tiring.

• 21:59Speaker 00

  I mean, I think, but I think this is.

• 22:00Speaker 02

  And that's based on the Maps app or something.

• 22:02Speaker 00

  But I think this is like.

• 22:02Nilay Patel?

  Right. It's, it's.

• 22:03Speaker 02

  From John Gruber said that.

• 22:04Nilay Patel?

  So, yeah, the story, the story literally earlier this week, I mean, why did it just even earlier yesterday?

• 22:08Speaker 00

  Wait, based on what? Based on what app?

• 22:09Nilay Patel?

  So, uh, Maps. So enafreed at recode.net, re slash code.net.

• 22:15Speaker 00

  No, there's no slash in the actual URL.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  When you say it out loud, out loud?

• 22:18Speaker 00

  You don't have to say slash.

• 22:20Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, she had a story that was like Samsung announced it's Tab Pro. It's CES, it's 12 inch screen and Google's like, cool. And they saw it and they saw that weird Windows phone fake UI that they have called a magazine.

• 22:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:34Nilay Patel?

  And they freaked out. They're like, okay, you've gone too far. You're going to come back in the fold. I assume Matthias Duarte was like, will anyone ever see my work? That's how I just imagine.

• 22:43Speaker 00

  I mean.

• 22:45Nilay Patel?

  He's like.

• 22:47Nilay Patel?

  He's like the fan of the offer at Google. Like he just like wanders around like designing things, but nobody ever sees it.

• 22:56Speaker 00

  But it's true. But here's the thing about it. Like it really does that stuff really matters. And when you use like a Nexus device versus like the Sony, I really like, there's a couple of things on it that it's still like. Sonified, which is not that big of a deal, but on on on Samsung devices. It's not just that the visual design and that the UI is like completely blown apart, which it is and bad. The guy was just messing around with the Note 3 for for a few days. It's not just that, but they disconnect all of what is like native and natural to like the ecosystem of Google. And it's like, yeah, it's like suddenly you're in, you're being asked to like be in a Samsung store for movies and a Samsung store for music and all this other crap. And it's like. Listen, there's no way in hell I'm going to use your Samsung services. Like I have no faith in them and no interest in them.

• 23:39Speaker 00

  And and and so like, but it does break the whole.

• 23:42Nilay Patel?

  Right. So the story was they saw this magazine stuff. They saw that like Samsung was even more breaking the UI and the paradigms.

• 23:49Speaker 00

  Turning into Windows.

• 23:49Nilay Patel?

  And they got them to agree that they would stop it.

• 23:53Speaker 00

  Well, that's the story.

• 23:54Nilay Patel?

  And I think that agreeing to stop it plus like, you know, the concessions were, okay, fine, we'll stop it. But Google, you have to give us all of your patents.

• 24:02Speaker 00

  I mean, do you think the Motorola deal is part of that?

• 24:04Nilay Patel?

  And then that's it. And then it's like, well, and look, why? And if you're Google at that point.

• 24:08Speaker 00

  So Samsung's like, listen, we will, we will, we will commit to making a more holistic Google experience on our devices. But we don't want to be competing against Google when it comes to hardware.

• 24:19Nilay Patel?

  Right. And I think if you're Google.

• 24:21Speaker 00

  Does that mean that?

• 24:21Speaker 02

  Shit or get off the pot, basically.

• 24:23Speaker 00

  So so does that fuel? Does that add fuel?

• 24:25Speaker 02

  What's the right?

• 24:26Speaker 00

  Shit or get off the pot?

• 24:27Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. Which one is shit and which one is get off the pot?

• 24:30Speaker 00

  I think that doesn't apply in this situation at all.

• 24:33Nilay Patel?

  No, with regard to like believing in Motorola and like pushing it.

• 24:36Speaker 00

  But here's the question.

• 24:37Nilay Patel?

  I think we all have two different, very, very different visuals.

• 24:39Speaker 00

  So does this mean, does this all fit with the narrative, the story that we've been hearing that that everybody's rumoring now that they're going to kill the Nexus program?

• 24:47Speaker 02

  I don't believe that.

• 24:48Speaker 00

  That Google's gonna kill the Nexus program? I kinda make sense. It's like, stop making like the Halo device because Samsung wants to make the Halo device. Stop trying to compete with us as a hardware maker because we wanna be the leading hardware maker. And like, we'll join, like, here's what Google needs, buy in and lock in. I just had an argument with somebody on this, not an argument, but a conversation on Twitter about this. It's like, you need lock in. Like, I was having a conversation about Apple and market share and people were like, hey, they're doing fine. They made all this money. It's like, yes, short term, they made all this money. Long term, that may be fine too. But like, what Apple needs, what all these companies need is lock into their ecosystem. Because like, once you buy, once you buy the subsidized device, like, then what? And what's, what's the next time?

• 25:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 25:30Speaker 00

  And so like, if you don't have that stuff, it becomes, your business becomes slightly less viable than it was, right? If you don't have the lock in.

• 25:38Speaker 02

  Then this is the question, in, in between Google and Samsung, who has the power right now? Who's got more leverage? Because you've got the, the patent agreements, you've got the UI thing.

• 25:48Speaker 00

  They have a real, I think they have a real.

• 25:50Speaker 02

  And then you've got Google selling off Motorola.

• 25:51Nilay Patel?

  But if you, but if you, you asked me that question earlier and I, I think it's, they both got themselves to a place where they agreed to do the same thing.

• 25:59Speaker 02

  Right. And what they agreed to do is let every, every other Android manufacturer go like, I don't know.

• 26:05Speaker 00

  Well, but who are the other? HCC failing, Motorola failing.

• 26:11Nilay Patel?

  Sony's doing well. Sony's doing really well.

• 26:12Speaker 00

  How, how well are they doing?

• 26:14Nilay Patel?

  They're third place or whatever, second place.

• 26:15Speaker 00

  Okay, so but, so Sony, so then they'll have the same conversation with Sony, but then Sony and Samsung are gonna have to duke it out. Right. I don't know how that.

• 26:21Nilay Patel?

  But here's the thing, like, if you look at that classic Windtel model, which is like kinda what I'm looking at now, right?

• 26:25Speaker 00

  By the way, Sony's making much better devices than Samsung at this moment.

• 26:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 26:29Speaker 00

  Like, if you put this phone up against the GS4, if that's its competition, it's a way better device.

• 26:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's like, Sony's great at hardware, right?

• 26:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:36Nilay Patel?

  They have their classic Sony software problems, they're great at hardware.

• 26:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's, the software is the problem, they should just literally go stock Android. It's so close now that whatever, but they can't. But they, again, Sony can't because they want you to lock into their ecosystem. They have their little PlayStation mobile store, they've got their video store.

• 26:51Nilay Patel?

  That's like a handful of apps, like, dude, if Sony shipped basically.

• 26:53Speaker 00

  They have all that to get in, in between all kinds of experiences.

• 26:56Speaker 02

  That would be.

• 26:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but they're, I mean, I'm more forgiving of Sony saying that you should come to our movie service because they own a movie studio, right? Like, they're like, they own Sony Music. Like, do you know the best way to get access to like Taylor Swift songs is? Is buy it directly from Sony? Like, isn't that what you want in like in the end?

• 27:15Speaker 00

  Maybe. Who cares?

• 27:16Nilay Patel?

  But do you want to buy it from Google Play? Like, what I'm saying is like, Sony is the creator of a lot of these things.

• 27:21Speaker 00

  But I think that's Sony's, but I think that's actually Sony's problem is that they think that that is more meaningful than it is. Like, what you're saying, I hear what you're saying, but the truth is like, I don't care where I buy my music from, as long as I can continue using the service and I know that they're reputable and reliable and they have the shit that I want.

• 27:35Nilay Patel?

  Okay, even on those metrics though, like I trust Google to stick around. I trust Sony to stick around because they've been in that business.

• 27:40Speaker 00

  I trust Sony less than Google to stick around.

• 27:43Nilay Patel?

  Well, sure, but like, but like, that's like shades. Samsung is like, well, maybe this business won't work for you and you're like, stop.

• 27:49Speaker 00

  No, I don't buy Samsung as a media.

• 27:52Nilay Patel?

  Wait, in selling music on their phone?

• 27:54Speaker 00

  Oh, music. Oh, no, no, no.

• 27:55Nilay Patel?

  Selling media? Like, I'm not going there.

• 27:57Speaker 00

  No, I don't think, I don't, I don't trust, I don't trust or desire Samsung for like media or services.

• 28:05Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 28:06Speaker 02

  No, I don't trust Sony either because Sony's going to give preference to their stuff and not to everybody else's.

• 28:12Speaker 00

  I mean, that is why, that is part of the.

• 28:13Nilay Patel?

  Been, they just have the brand weight to do that.

• 28:16Speaker 00

  I think what Eli is saying is, is like, they're at least like a trusted longstanding brand that has like done, you know, they, the PlayStation and Sony Music and all these things like have existed for a while and they're, you know, it's like the equivalent of Apple's iTunes ecosystem.

• 28:30Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I'm not saying like Sony like, they blew their opportunity to own the music space, right?

• 28:34Speaker 00

  But I think.

• 28:35Nilay Patel?

  Absolutely blew it and now they're like struggling back. But like, I'm saying, in terms of, you're right, in terms of their hardware, they've always been superior. In terms of software, Sony classically is like falling behind.

• 28:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:44Nilay Patel?

  And what if I'm, if all they did was they gave you stock Android and they added in the PlayStation Store and a better camera app?

• 28:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:52Nilay Patel?

  I'd like, you know, that's.

• 28:52Speaker 00

  No, that, that would be great, but people don't, but that's the, the problem is in what Sony, what Sony hopes and believes and I think recognizes as relatively true is that people don't, average consumers. Probably are more comfortable with the Sony Music Store than Google Play Music. Because they don't know about it.

• 29:08Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 29:09Speaker 00

  Like, they don't know it, but Sony, you go like, oh, it's Sony, you know? That's the problem.

• 29:12Nilay Patel?

  Also, Google Play Music, Google Play anything, worst branding ever.

• 29:16Speaker 00

  It's, it's not the worst ever, but it's not great.

• 29:19Nilay Patel?

  How often you add? Yeah.

• 29:21Speaker 00

  The new ads are great.

• 29:22Nilay Patel?

  Play everything or whatever?

• 29:23Speaker 02

  The Grammys?

• 29:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. They've been, they've been pushing it harder. But that's the thing, like, so you still have, like, what do you do with Android here? You've got this open thing that anybody can use.

• 29:33Nilay Patel?

  Look, I'd say, since Sundar has been in charge, what you've been seeing is the gradual, like, exertion of control.

• 29:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:40Nilay Patel?

  And they've got, so Android's open, like, it's everywhere, but like, if you actually want to compete against Apple, who is, like you said, just sitting there selling phones.

• 29:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:47Nilay Patel?

  You've got to figure out.

• 29:48Speaker 00

  And services.

• 29:48Nilay Patel?

  And services, not, you know?

• 29:50Speaker 00

  And cohesive services that nobody's questioning. You're not, you don't buy an Apple phone and go like, what will I use to download my music?

• 29:55Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 29:56Speaker 00

  You either like, if you don't subscribe to a streaming.

• 29:58Nilay Patel?

  That's a daily problem.

• 29:59Speaker 00

  If you don't subscribe to a streaming service, which most people don't at this point, you are literally still buying with no problem albums from iTunes, and that just feels like a totally natural, enjoyable experience. App Store is the same way, you know, the iBook Store, I don't think that's made quite the impact, but it's there if you want it.

• 30:16Speaker 00

  The, the other, I mean, Google doesn't have that level of security and safety yet in their, in their services. You know, in their, I mean, they do in their services like Gmail, but not in their, not in their retail services.

• 30:27Nilay Patel?

  Gmail didn't, you know, have a bug where you push the button and did stuff to your other email.

• 30:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, but that's pretty rare.

• 30:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's pretty rare.

• 30:34Speaker 00

  I mean, I'll take that over just the having to use Apple Mail any day.

• 30:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 30:39Speaker 00

  You know?

• 30:40Nilay Patel?

  This is the worst mail.

• 30:40Speaker 00

  I can't believe people use mail, like, a mail client like that every day. It's, seems crazy to me.

• 30:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 30:46Speaker 00

  It just like.

• 30:46Nilay Patel?

  Well, you don't, you don't want to get scroggled.

• 30:47Speaker 00

  It blows my mind. Yeah, I don't care about, I don't, they could scroggle me, actually. As it, like, here's the deal.

• 30:53Nilay Patel?

  Here we go. Breaking news, Google Financials, the call's happening right now.

• 30:56Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 30:57Nilay Patel?

  Uh, Motorola itself lost 384 million dollars, so they, their losses were increasing.

• 31:02Speaker 00

  That didn't work.

• 31:02Nilay Patel?

  Uh, and then Google overall, uh, made 3.9 billion in profit. Um, they made one Motorola in profit.

• 31:10Speaker 00

  3.9 billion in profit overall.

• 31:13Nilay Patel?

  Overall, up from 3.3 billion a year ago.

• 31:16Speaker 00

  What was Apple's profit this quarter?

• 31:17Nilay Patel?

  I don't remember.

• 31:19Speaker 00

  Can we pull that up?

• 31:20Nilay Patel?

  And the revenue was up to 15 points. So, Google's doing fine. Motorola was doing terribly.

• 31:25Speaker 00

  Google's doing okay. I think the question is, what does Google do in the future? But, you know, here's what I see.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  It was record revenue for Apple. Profits were 13.1 billion.

• 31:37Speaker 00

  Billion, 13.1 billion.

• 31:38Speaker 02

  What's it be?

• 31:39Speaker 00

  They have a lot more to sell than Google does, frankly.

• 31:41Nilay Patel?

  And, yeah.

• 31:43Speaker 00

  And their margins are really great.

• 31:46Speaker 00

  Here's the thing, though. There's a real mess going on. Like, things have not gotten any more organized. They've gotten messier.

• 31:52Nilay Patel?

  Apple's scale, like, you know, you don't think about, I always think of these companies as being about the same size, but their scale is just ridiculous.

• 31:58Speaker 02

  So, yeah, like.

• 31:59Nilay Patel?

  Like, Apple did 57.6 billion dollars in revenue. Google total did 15.

• 32:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:05Nilay Patel?

  That's crazy.

• 32:06Speaker 02

  And the thing that's crazy about it is, like, we've just become, like, anesthetized to it. Because every quarter, it's like, oh, record profits, record revenues for Apple. Oh, and like, it just keeps getting bigger. They're huge.

• 32:19Nilay Patel?

  Well, you know, I.

• 32:19Speaker 02

  Like, there's only, like, you look at the top 10.

• 32:22Nilay Patel?

  So, we should just go right.

• 32:23Speaker 02

  Oil companies.

• 32:23Nilay Patel?

  We're doing earnings here.

• 32:24Speaker 00

  We can run through Google earnings?

• 32:26Nilay Patel?

  Well, I mean, Google's earnings are happening live. Let's, we can talk about Apple because they're, they're happening. But, um, they happen. So, the big, there are two big stories, I think, out of the financials. So, they sold a lot of iPad Airs, which I think they deserved to. It's a great product. iOS 7 is like, um, actually, Gruber had a line today, um, where he was like, iOS 7 is the least playful. And I think that's, it like crystallizes like my problems with it.

• 32:50Speaker 00

  The least playful?

• 32:51Nilay Patel?

  Like, all.

• 32:51Speaker 02

  By least playful, do you mean most crashy?

• 32:54Nilay Patel?

  Because it's super crashy. But it's like, it's not like a fun operating system. Like, it's very like, uh, it's very utilitarian. And they just, they just took it back too far. And like, all the blurring and the swoopiness, it's like. There's something about it where they just, the pendulum swung too much, but regardless of that, I like, really like using the iPad, much more than my old iPad. So they sold a lot of iPads, they sold a lot of iPhones. The big story was Tim Cook dancing around the fact that the 5C has not sold very well. He was like, it's stronger to the 5S. We didn't expect people to be as interested in the 5S.

• 33:29Speaker 02

  The percentages weren't what we expected them to be. So he never said it sold poorly.

• 33:33Nilay Patel?

  And then this crazy thing where he's like, you know, they just really love the Touch ID sensor. That's like, dude, that's not why. That's like definitely not why.

• 33:38Speaker 00

  Also, the Touch ID sensor is terrible and works really badly.

• 33:41Nilay Patel?

  I hear so many mixed messages on this.

• 33:43Speaker 00

  I find that like, it's almost 90% of the time when using it, it does not get the correct read. And I end up having to put my passcode.

• 33:52Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I've been, I've been using a 5 for a while now and I, I need to make my own call on this Touch ID thing. Cause I'm hearing lots of people say it's the best.

• 33:59Speaker 00

  It's just very minor though. Like it doesn't, it really doesn't save that much time. I mean, you're literally talking about the difference of.

• 34:04Nilay Patel?

  If it means I don't have to plug in my iTunes password and I download an app.

• 34:06Speaker 00

  Well, that's actually the biggest, that's the best part.

• 34:08Nilay Patel?

  So there's that. And then yesterday, so then the other.

• 34:10Speaker 00

  The way they, they could just say, put your password in and like every seven days we'll recheck, like not every time you buy something.

• 34:16Nilay Patel?

  Well, you want to, anyway.

• 34:17Speaker 00

  And I guess if your annoying, horrible kids have managed to unlock your device and are buying things on it, maybe just get them their own phone.

• 34:25Nilay Patel?

  Here's your own stupid phone.

• 34:26Speaker 00

  You horrible bastard. Take this.

• 34:29Nilay Patel?

  So the other, the other piece was he said, regarding Touch ID, we have, you know, that's one of the, mobile payments is a reason we're like looking at, we built this thing. So he hinted at that. He hinted again, very, very like, it's funny how much more explicit the, we're going to have new product categories.

• 34:47Speaker 00

  New product categories.

• 34:47Nilay Patel?

  Oh, so Gene Munster.

• 34:48Speaker 00

  It was a response to Munster.

• 34:49Nilay Patel?

  So Munster goes, look, you know, like Sander all sad. He's like, you know, I just want to make sure like every, even saying you're going to have new products in 2014, is that still true? And Tim Cook was like, yes, absolutely. You just heard the glee.

• 35:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, absolutely like new, they're gonna.

• 35:03Nilay Patel?

  New product categories.

• 35:05Speaker 00

  They're gonna have an iWatch. That's everything consensus is. They're gonna do wearables.

• 35:09Nilay Patel?

  Well, it's not gonna be done. They said they built a Sapphire factory.

• 35:12Speaker 02

  Sapphire factory is gonna be a big deal.

• 35:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:15Speaker 02

  And then there's rumors about the Apple TV.

• 35:16Nilay Patel?

  The Apple TV became its own product. listing on the store.

• 35:19Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 35:19Nilay Patel?

  Uh, and then we ran a story, the iPod sales have just collapsed. They're gone.

• 35:23Speaker 00

  Yeah. The iPod, the iPod is like, let's be clear. The age of the iPod, this was our, or the age of the iPod is over. The time of the iPod where it ruled was, which is like 15 years or something. How long has the iPod been around? 2001?

• 35:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:37Speaker 00

  When it came out. Um, so not quite 15 years, but a long time. Oh, wait. What year is it? 2014?

• 35:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:43Speaker 00

  Whatever. Pretty close. Um.

• 35:45Nilay Patel?

  It was October 2001.

• 35:47Speaker 00

  It's pretty notable, like iPod sales on a pretty steady decline. Tim Cook even said, we know they've been slowing for a while.

• 35:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:56Speaker 00

  Uh, it's almost completely cannibalized now by their other products. I mean, basically everybody is getting a smartphone.

• 36:02Nilay Patel?

  Yep.

• 36:02Speaker 00

  Um, lots of people are getting, or an iPad. Lots of people are getting either one of them. They both do the same job. I mean, the iPod obviously lives on as a piece of software. You know, it's the music software inside.

• 36:12Nilay Patel?

  It is remarkable how many iPods I see on the subway still.

• 36:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:16Nilay Patel?

  Since I'm.

• 36:16Speaker 00

  Well, no, there's a lot. I see. There's a lot of legacy. I mean, people own these devices. You can use them for years, but, but the, but the moment where the iPod was this sort of defining device is over. And I think like, it wouldn't be surprising in the next couple of years to see them, you know, discontinue or severely limit.

• 36:31Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 36:32Speaker 00

  What they're making as far as iPods go.

• 36:35Nilay Patel?

  I have a weird, crazy, well, there's like a sadness there to me for that because the iPod was defined wholly by music. And it, it came at a, I don't know, just a period in my life. And I think a lot of our generation's lives where it was, I listened to a lot of music.

• 36:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:49Nilay Patel?

  And it was like, this stuff is on my iPod. It's always here. I don't have to connect to like a cell network to listen to it.

• 36:54Speaker 00

  I think it's argu-, I think it's arguable. It's saved.

• 36:56Nilay Patel?

  It saved music, you know, it saved music industry. Like iTunes, the iPod, like they did that thing.

• 37:01Speaker 00

  And not only that, but gave it a whole different, you know, gave independent artists a whole different life, gave.

• 37:06Speaker 02

  Oh, man, the original, the original commercial.

• 37:08Nilay Patel?

  Oh, this commercial is so bad.

• 37:09Speaker 00

  It's crazy.

• 37:10Nilay Patel?

  It's so ridiculous. This dude just rocking. He can't stop rocking.

• 37:14Speaker 00

  I get it.

• 37:14Nilay Patel?

  He's like got a firewire.

• 37:15Speaker 02

  Firewire.

• 37:16Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 37:17Speaker 02

  God, it's like commercial.

• 37:18Nilay Patel?

  Uh, so weird. And like that thing that he just did, doesn't happen?

• 37:21Speaker 02

  His, his head, his head swings right there.

• 37:24Speaker 00

  Oh, God. Oh, no, stop that. Hey, the 90s, this is basically 90s.

• 37:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 37:29Speaker 00

  I mean, I know it's 2000.

• 37:30Nilay Patel?

  I mean, those pants, like, what are you doing?

• 37:31Speaker 02

  Is this the dude from House?

• 37:33Nilay Patel?

  No, what?

• 37:34Speaker 02

  No, it's not, but it looks a lot like.

• 37:36Nilay Patel?

  No, this isn't the, this.

• 37:37Speaker 00

  I mean, this guy cannot leave his house. He's rocking so hard. You understand?

• 37:40Nilay Patel?

  This is the last work this actor ever did.

• 37:44Speaker 00

  Hey, you know what? It's iconic.

• 37:45Nilay Patel?

  This shit's on his reel. It's all over. It is. I mean, this was the first one. They were so proud of themselves.

• 37:51Speaker 00

  Oh, man.

• 37:51Speaker 02

  They should go back.

• 37:53Nilay Patel?

  So, you know, Dean and I were just joking. It's like every morning I wake up and I try to figure out what music service I'm gonna use. And like all my playlists are like at 50 different places.

• 38:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:00Nilay Patel?

  Nothing is as feels as contained and as smart.

• 38:04Speaker 00

  It was like somebody. I think it's very much like the iPhone where somebody finally was like, oh, you have the answer. Like, everybody's been trying to get at this. We knew it was gonna happen. It seemed like it had to happen. And you finally just gave us like this complete answer to the question. And and now it's the same way with everything else.

• 38:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:22Speaker 00

  You know, it's it's it's kind of a confused landscape. It's that you're not sure where you're gonna land. There is. I was just talking about this to somebody, you know, the idea that when people, when records were at their, at the top of their game, when everybody's buying vinyl, nobody was sitting around going like, what'll the next thing be? They were like, records are awesome, like, period, like.

• 38:37Nilay Patel?

  This is the music industry.

• 38:38Speaker 00

  When cassettes came along and started gaining popularity, I'm sure people were like, I mean, the eight-track was in there a little bit, but people were probably like, what? Do I want this? This is crazy. You know, CDs, I remember it took forever for CD adoption to become a thing, you know? And this is now, it's different because it's not about formats necessarily.

• 38:58Nilay Patel?

  It's not about quality.

• 38:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, it's about, you have a million different ways to listen to music now, a million different ways that you can take something with you, like, what type of thing you take.

• 39:06Nilay Patel?

  It's commodified, too. It's I have a million different ways to listen to the same song about the same quality.

• 39:10Speaker 00

  Right.

• 39:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Right? Like, if I wanna listen.

• 39:12Speaker 00

  There won't be another, there's not gonna be another huge shift. I think quality may get better.

• 39:17Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 39:18Speaker 00

  Storage, you know, or lack thereof, you know, networks may get better.

• 39:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but quality gets better on a service like Spotify. Quality gets better for you all at once.

• 39:25Speaker 00

  But now there's so much of it.

• 39:26Nilay Patel?

  We're upgrading our streaming quality.

• 39:27Speaker 02

  There's something about the effort of organizing your music and moving it around and like.

• 39:30Nilay Patel?

  That connects you to it.

• 39:31Speaker 02

  That connects you to it. And with the services, it's there, it's not, whatever.

• 39:34Speaker 00

  That's why, that's why I think Audio had the best idea. But then again, we might just be old.

• 39:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 39:38Speaker 00

  You know, kids these days, they just put on Spotify, shuffle or whatever.

• 39:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 39:42Speaker 00

  You know, they get on their hoverboards and put their invisibility cloak on and fly off into it, onto it.

• 39:47Nilay Patel?

  They go watch that show about selfie.

• 39:49Speaker 00

  They fly up to the club on the moon. Where there's a huge concert.

• 39:54Nilay Patel?

  Uh, we can wrap up Google earnings here, request.

• 39:56Speaker 00

  I don't know what that means. Yeah, what's that? What happened with Google?

• 39:57Nilay Patel?

  Uh, so they beat their, they beat their estimates.

• 40:00Speaker 00

  They beat the street.

• 40:01Nilay Patel?

  Beat the street. Well, no, it missed, it missed them. But, sorry. They missed the streets, but the stock went up. That's what happened.

• 40:07Speaker 00

  Great. Street wasn't that upset.

• 40:09Nilay Patel?

  Street was happy with them.

• 40:10Speaker 00

  Let me see what Twitter says about this. Uh huh.

• 40:13Nilay Patel?

  Um, okay, we should move on. I think that's enough Apple and Google for today.

• 40:16Speaker 00

  I, I, I'm tired of talking about them.

• 40:18Nilay Patel?

  I hate them.

• 40:19Speaker 00

  Let's, uh, what's next?

• 40:21Nilay Patel?

  Uh, I reviewed the Pebble.

• 40:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:23Nilay Patel?

  My wrist. It's right here.

• 40:25Speaker 02

  I thought you were gonna like lend that to me. What happened?

• 40:27Nilay Patel?

  I'm waiting for mine to get here.

• 40:29Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 40:29Nilay Patel?

  Have you played it?

• 40:30Speaker 00

  Dieter said, yeah, I played. I've seen it. I played with it at CS. You're like, I'm like, get that away from me. You want to talk to it? I, I, look, I, I really like it. I, I, I still don't really want to wear it, but as a, as smartwatches go, if you really, if you really have like a Hankerin for a smartwatch, like I wouldn't buy another one besides this.

• 40:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 40:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, that's a consensus.

• 40:46Speaker 00

  That I would buy. I mean, it looks like a watch.

• 40:48Nilay Patel?

  So do you read the conclusion of my review? Where I, this is the first Palm Pilot? No, no, Palm V.

• 40:53Speaker 02

  Palm five.

• 40:53Speaker 00

  Palm five, which is five, which actually industrial design wise has a lot in common with it.

• 40:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 40:58Speaker 00

  Cause it was like, it was metal. Remember it had like a metal housing?

• 41:00Nilay Patel?

  Mm hmm.

• 41:01Speaker 00

  Right? And it, it was like

• 41:02Nilay Patel?

  Cool.

• 41:03Speaker 00

  A graphite color.

• 41:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, maybe they had different colors.

• 41:06Nilay Patel?

  I think the Palm five in terms of design, it was a little bit better than this.

• 41:09Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, this is, this is, you know.

• 41:11Nilay Patel?

  This is the first one I would wear.

• 41:12Speaker 00

  It's, it's a, it's a decent looking watch. It's, I don't wear watches that look like that.

• 41:17Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 41:18Speaker 00

  I have been trying out the Fitbit Forest, however, which is actually also functions as a digital watch.

• 41:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 41:23Speaker 02

  But you gotta hit the button, though.

• 41:24Speaker 00

  You, you have to hit the button. I don't know why they don't just make it like a motion sensor thing. Like they have motion sensors in there, right? Should be like a certain kind of like, if I really snap.

• 41:32Speaker 02

  Why do they put, uh, old school 1980s style, uh, displays on these things like

• 41:38Speaker 00

  What do you mean?

• 41:38Speaker 02

  Big LCDs?

• 41:39Speaker 00

  Like Casio.

• 41:40Speaker 02

  Just an LCD like that is just always on.

• 41:42Speaker 00

  You can download one for that.

• 41:43Speaker 02

  No, I meant for the, the Fitbit.

• 41:45Speaker 00

  Why? They have this. Why would they do that? This is a very futuristic.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  You don't have to hit a button or do motion. It's just there.

• 41:50Speaker 00

  Oh, you mean an additional secondary display, an LCD display?

• 41:53Speaker 02

  I don't know about a second one.

• 41:54Speaker 00

  You're kind of dreaming. I think that's a weird, bad idea.

• 41:57Speaker 02

  All right.

• 41:57Speaker 00

  I think what you just suggested is horrible.

• 41:58Nilay Patel?

  For the longest time, like Lexuses had that clock still on them.

• 42:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:02Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 42:03Nilay Patel?

  You know, you'd get one of these.

• 42:04Speaker 00

  It has like

• 42:04Nilay Patel?

  Lexus.

• 42:05Speaker 00

  With the two buttons, like it just.

• 42:07Nilay Patel?

  Dude, that's an eight cent clock. Like it's a Lex, like don't do that again.

• 42:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, but what a luxurious, what the hell?

• 42:12Speaker 02

  Well, it's better than having to hit a button.

• 42:14Speaker 00

  Oh, and yeah, well, a lot of the

• 42:15Nilay Patel?

  But like a fancy analog clock is one thing, but the Lexus would like have a digital clock like in the center of the stack.

• 42:20Speaker 00

  Fancy, they're like, they are also eight cents, but they're, they have like a hand on them.

• 42:24Nilay Patel?

  It's like you're an old guy now, three year old guy clock.

• 42:27Speaker 00

  But I, I think, I think this, I think your review is fair. I think I, I.

• 42:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I talked to a bunch of people like.

• 42:32Speaker 00

  I just think if Apple, like people ever be showing this concept of the iWatch, which actually Wired did a really nice, on one of their covers recently, they did a, a mock-up of an iWatch, which was, uh, which had like a leather strap and was sort of like, had rose gold on it. It was like, actually kind of cool. Like it looked like this weird blend of mod- that's actually what I like about the Moto X with the wood backs. It's weird blend of like modern and retro.

• 42:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, until you see the front.

• 42:55Speaker 00

  If Apple does well, but if Apple does this, uh, iWatch that everybody's talking about, I mean, Pebble is just, their business is finished. Like they can just, they're done.

• 43:07Nilay Patel?

  That's what I mean.

• 43:07Speaker 02

  Your search history in this computer, Neil, is just a parade of fail.

• 43:13Nilay Patel?

  So I only use this account on this computer when, uh, when we do the verge cast.

• 43:19Speaker 00

  That's good.

• 43:19Nilay Patel?

  My search history is like, two broke girls, the word racist spelled wrong, neck neutrality, fake chart and Brave New World sequel.

• 43:26Speaker 00

  Sounds right to me.

• 43:27Nilay Patel?

  I have no idea.

• 43:28Speaker 00

  I remember all of that. I remember when all that happened.

• 43:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 43:30Speaker 00

  Um, what the hell is it? Oh, I was gonna say like, you know, Pebble just into the manufacturing, the designers, the software people to compete with Apple and nobody does. And, and as we've seen, Samsung doesn't, I mean, at least as far as watches are concerned, like they can sell a bunch of phones. I mean, there's reasons for that that are beyond design and manufacturing, but.

• 43:48Nilay Patel?

  Right. No, here's the thing. The thing that makes the Pebble good is like, yeah, okay, it's reasonably designed now. The first Pebble was also good. And I think in retrospect, the design didn't age even a year well. And it's got a bad display. Like it's kind of a little too.

• 44:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, everybody likes, everybody's okay with the display except for me. I think it's terrible.

• 44:06Nilay Patel?

  Um, well, I think it's too, if they could just make it black and white instead of this weird blue, I'd be happy. Um, but the software doesn't try to do a lot.

• 44:14Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:14Nilay Patel?

  And that's the whole game, right? Like, I just want this to, I just want this to tell me what my phone is doing.

• 44:19Speaker 00

  Right.

• 44:19Nilay Patel?

  Right? Or like, and now, and now you can send minor data to your phone.

• 44:23Speaker 00

  So I wonder if that's going to be the, I've thought a lot about this when, when thinking about Apple's potential product. Will that be the track they take where it's like, this does a couple of things like. You know, they're kind of notorious for making the limited, the versions, first versions of things very limited. I mean, I feel like if an iWatch were to come out and it was like, we have an App Store for it and it does, it can, you know, there's games you can play on and there's all this stuff. I think it would be a big mess. I feel like they're gonna do a thing that's like a really good watch.

• 44:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 44:52Speaker 00

  Some fitness tracking stuff.

• 44:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they'll do that.

• 44:55Speaker 00

  And like, we'll get notifications from your phone and show it to you.

• 44:58Nilay Patel?

  You know, there's all these rumors that they're hiring all these censor people to do like even better fitness tracking.

• 45:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 45:03Nilay Patel?

  So like, yeah, they'll do that stuff. I think for, my theory is that they'll, they will make it be able to connect to apps on your phone. But because they're Apple and they have total platform control, they will get to say something like, well, if you want to update your app for iOS eight, you've got to put in an iWatch like screen.

• 45:21Speaker 00

  Right.

• 45:21Nilay Patel?

  And like, they can just do that. The same way that right now they're saying, if you want to update your app for iOS seven, you got to redesign it.

• 45:26Speaker 00

  Right.

• 45:27Nilay Patel?

  Or you got to optimize for it. And they will be able to say like, you know, there are some apps that make no sense for them to have an iWatch screen, but they can say like, you can get it the iWatch, but to do it, you have to do it our way and in this fashion.

• 45:37Speaker 00

  Right.

• 45:38Nilay Patel?

  And that makes it more of an extension.

• 45:39Speaker 00

  What's the iWatch price, price point? $3.99?

• 45:43Nilay Patel?

  The first one?

• 45:43Speaker 00

  Feels like $3.99 to me.

• 45:45Speaker 02

  I think that's probably right.

• 45:46Nilay Patel?

  I mean, this thing is.

• 45:47Speaker 02

  I mean, are you thinking it's good touchscreen? Right?

• 45:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 45:49Speaker 00

  It has to be.

• 45:50Speaker 02

  It doesn't have to be. That's not.

• 45:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but this is.

• 45:53Speaker 00

  I don't see Apple making a device that is an iDevice.

• 45:56Speaker 02

  Color touchscreen like makes it bigger and makes the battery not great.

• 46:00Nilay Patel?

  The rumor, the rumor for a year now has been that they were having battery problems.

• 46:04Speaker 00

  Well, that battery thing seems like the biggest issue.

• 46:06Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 46:06Speaker 00

  They can, I mean, the iPhone cannot last a day.

• 46:09Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 46:09Speaker 00

  Like, I mean, I'm stunned and surprised, having just been reusing an iPhone again for a little bit, how bad the battery life is. Like, it's really, it's a terror.

• 46:21Speaker 02

  I don't want to deal with it.

• 46:21Speaker 00

  It's a terror.

• 46:23Nilay Patel?

  You need to plug in all day.

• 46:23Speaker 02

  I plug in all day.

• 46:24Speaker 00

  I imagine the battery life on this thing is ridiculous.

• 46:26Speaker 02

  Is it really good?

• 46:27Speaker 00

  It's really good. Like, it's really good. Like, I.

• 46:30Speaker 02

  We should, you should let me borrow that.

• 46:31Speaker 00

  I can't, I don't think so.

• 46:32Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 46:33Speaker 00

  I, I can't remember. I'm sort of like reinvigorated about the Z1. Like, especially after our last Vergecast where you guys were looking at pictures, you're like, oh, that's definitely the iPhone. I'm like, nope, that's the Z1. I actually feel like, you know what? It's a really good camera, but all of the other stuff is just like. Stupidly good. The worst thing about this is the screen viewing angles.

• 46:51Nilay Patel?

  No, it's a glass back.

• 46:52Speaker 00

  It's really...

• 46:53Nilay Patel?

  That's the worst thing about that.

• 46:54Speaker 00

  The glass back?

• 46:54Nilay Patel?

  Terrible.

• 46:55Speaker 00

  That doesn't bother me. What's really interesting I just discovered is that there are a few scratches on the screen.

• 46:59Nilay Patel?

  That screen is not great.

• 47:00Speaker 00

  There is a... This is a... The thing that says Sony on it, there is a screen protector on here that Sony puts on their devices that you can remove. And there's just a screen under here that also has glass on it. Like, this is a adhesive thing. It's like, really, really well attached.

• 47:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 47:17Speaker 00

  There's videos online where people are like, "Yeah, you just get a scalpel and put it under..." Not a scalpel, like an X-acto knife. You put it under here to pull it up, and then you peel it off, and it's like, it's just a protector.

• 47:26Nilay Patel?

  And then your screen gets destroyed the first time it's put in your pocket?

• 47:30Speaker 00

  I don't know. It's, um, it's... I don't know what the glass is. I have to...

• 47:32Nilay Patel?

  You just, you just open your phone, you just look directly at the screen, and just start breaking into pixels individually.

• 47:37Speaker 00

  But I don't know why, I don't know why you would take it off. That's the thing. Like, it's basically the screen.

• 47:42Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 47:43Speaker 00

  So I can't understand why. Anyhow, what were we talking about? We were talking about Apple earnings. We're done with that?

• 47:47Nilay Patel?

  So now we should talk about... We're just, we're just staying...

• 47:49Speaker 00

  We're talking about iWatch. Oh, Pebble.

• 47:51Nilay Patel?

  We did the Pebble.

• 47:51Speaker 00

  Then we're talking about iWatch.

• 47:52Nilay Patel?

  No, the next... Actually, a surprisingly big piece of news in a very minor way.

• 47:57Speaker 00

  TMNT, the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles picture from Michael Bay's movie.

• 48:00Nilay Patel?

  It looks okay.

• 48:00Speaker 00

  Did you ever see those?

• 48:01Nilay Patel?

  And Paramount flipped out.

• 48:02Speaker 00

  And then Paramount freaked out and was like, "To everybody in the world, you need to pull these or we're gonna sue you for copyright infringement."

• 48:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 48:07Speaker 00

  Or trademark infringement, whatever the hell it was. That was great. But, uh, but they're also available all over the internet. Go just Google it.

• 48:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, seriously, like, our legal people were like, "Yeah, they know they're gonna lose, and they can't take them down from everywhere. They're just making a big show out of it, so..."

• 48:21Speaker 00

  Yeah. But, um, they look... They actually kinda look like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from the movies from the, uh, from the old movies.

• 48:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you know, Michael Bay, he's gonna, you know, he's doing it.

• 48:30Speaker 00

  He's gonna have a meltdown with the Turtles.

• 48:32Nilay Patel?

  They're a little bit closer to the comics.

• 48:34Speaker 00

  Him and Shredder. What?

• 48:35Nilay Patel?

  No, never. A little bit closer. I read the comics. He is Shredder.

• 48:38Speaker 00

  Well, Shredder is even...

• 48:39Nilay Patel?

  That would be the best.

• 48:39Speaker 00

  Oh, there are also pictures of Shredder.

• 48:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 48:41Speaker 00

  Anyhow.

• 48:41Nilay Patel?

  And he looks all right.

• 48:42Speaker 00

  I hope Cranz is in the movie. Cranz is the brain inside the robot body.

• 48:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I'm aware of Cranz. Dude, I played the TMNT role-playing game, all right?

• 48:49Speaker 00

  Oh, my God. Are you serious?

• 48:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, of course.

• 48:50Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 48:52Nilay Patel?

  We should get together and play some TMNT. Do you wanna talk about Nintendo phone apps or Facebook paper?

• 48:58Speaker 00

  Paper? I think it's what you were working towards. Am I crazy?

• 49:00Speaker 02

  I can't tell.

• 49:00Nilay Patel?

  I was sort of headed there.

• 49:02Speaker 00

  So, paper?

• 49:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 49:03Speaker 00

  What do you wanna know?

• 49:04Nilay Patel?

  You did a big thing.

• 49:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, so-

• 49:05Speaker 00

  Paper is like newsstand.

• 49:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we thought it was gonna be- Well, that's the thing. It was supposed to be like flipboard. That's what we were expecting. But that's there. There's all the little news things. But on top of that, it has like the standard like Facebook newsfeed.

• 49:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:18Speaker 02

  And you can write to it, and you can do messaging, and you can add and remove friends.

• 49:23Nilay Patel?

  I thought they were just showing a video of like people playing with actual paper.

• 49:25Speaker 02

  They're, they're, they, actually, that's what that video is. But it's their commercial for the app.

• 49:32Speaker 02

  But here's the thing about it. It's really good. If, like, if you use Facebook at all, use this app and not the Facebook app. Because it's faster, it's prettier, it's nicer.

• 49:45Nilay Patel?

  This is, you know, on my Android phones.

• 49:47Speaker 02

  It's everything that you want from Facebook.

• 49:48Speaker 00

  But here's the problem. Where's the information being, where's the information being curated from?

• 49:52Speaker 02

  So, the Facebook part is just your Facebook.

• 49:55Speaker 00

  Also, is there an Android app? Cause I have not-

• 49:57Speaker 02

  And not coming, not, not on Android. It's just iPhone right now.

• 49:59Speaker 00

  Oh, cool.

• 49:59Speaker 02

  And then, the newsfeeds are curated by people that Facebook hire. And we're on it, by the way. We're one of the news sources.

• 50:06Speaker 00

  Well, that's great.

• 50:07Nilay Patel?

  There's more, there's more breaking news that Ross is literally like flashing red at me. Breaking! Pentagon announces nomination of Michael Rogers, US Fleet Cyber Command as head of the NSA in US Cyber Command.

• 50:19Speaker 00

  Oh, cool.

• 50:20Nilay Patel?

  New NSA boss.

• 50:21Speaker 00

  Great.

• 50:21Nilay Patel?

  Michael Rogers, I know you're watching this, or someone-

• 50:23Speaker 00

  Michael Rogers, we'd love to speak to you.

• 50:25Nilay Patel?

  Please, talk to us.

• 50:26Speaker 00

  About your plans for the NSA.

• 50:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And how you will further spy us.

• 50:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:30Nilay Patel?

  I mean, Ross, you can just see what you're typing right now. You might as well just tell him to call me.

• 50:33Speaker 00

  Just tell him to call. Yeah, just can you put in Eli's phone number in Google Doc that you're working from, and he'll just be able to ring us immediately?

• 50:40Speaker 02

  You wanna know what his interview was like? He walked in and like, "You think we're gonna hire you?" And he's like, "Yeah, I read that you would." And like, "You're hired."

• 50:48Speaker 00

  This is the guy, this is the rumor.

• 50:50Speaker 02

  This is the rumor.

• 50:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's a rumor. No surprises here. I mean, like- I don't know. You know, we watched the State of the Union. We're waiting for anything about that stuff to happen.

• 50:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:58Nilay Patel?

  It's like Obama gave a speech.

• 50:59Speaker 02

  The best thing about the State of the Union was Biden going.

• 51:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, that, the, I mean, what's funny, what's funny about the State-

• 51:04Speaker 02

  Do you know who he was pointing at?

• 51:05Nilay Patel?

  No, I wish.

• 51:06Speaker 00

  Somebody, somebody who, somebody who he really likes.

• 51:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:09Speaker 00

  Yeah. Um, what's funny about the State of the Union is that it was all completely overshadowed by the, by the dude from Staten Island saying he was gonna throw a reporter off of a balcony. Like, literally, if you watch the news right now, it's like, yeah, Obama and State of the Union, whatever, but have you heard about Michael Grimm and him throwing a guy over the balcony? It's like-

• 51:23Speaker 02

  That's a way to be, alright, that's cool. You think that, that he-

• 51:26Nilay Patel?

  Which was more boring, State of the Union or the Grammys?

• 51:28Speaker 00

  Ooh. Oh, well, Grammys was, started off strong.

• 51:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:32Speaker 00

  And got boring, yeah. Dude, it was like three hours and forty-five minutes. It's crazy long.

• 51:36Speaker 02

  They ruined one, more than it already had been. They ruined Metallica's one.

• 51:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 51:40Speaker 02

  By, like-

• 51:41Speaker 00

  That was terrible.

• 51:42Speaker 02

  The, the hi-hat, all you could hear was-

• 51:44Speaker 00

  Oh my god, the hi-hat was so loud, so loud.

• 51:46Speaker 02

  All the time.

• 51:46Speaker 00

  But here's the thing, here's the thing, some great performances.

• 51:49Nilay Patel?

  I'm laughing that hard because every time the hi-hat started, John, our producer, would just, like, he would just tweet like, oh my god, this makes.

• 51:56Speaker 00

  Yeah. No, no, the hi-hat was crazy. Um, uh, but the Grammys, I like how we're just segueing from, I don't know what the hell we're doing about the Grammys. The Grammys were great, okay. The Beyonce, Jay-Z performance at the top of the show, amazing, killer. The Lord performance, even though she's totally insane, was really, really- Was really cool.

• 52:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:13Speaker 00

  Dark Horse, forget about it.

• 52:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:16Speaker 00

  Awesome. The best, like, so goth.

• 52:18Speaker 02

  Look, I liked the Imagine Dragons thing, too. I did.

• 52:21Speaker 00

  No, that was terrible.

• 52:22Speaker 02

  I liked it.

• 52:22Speaker 00

  That was terrible.

• 52:23Nilay Patel?

  I always, I did a little Taylor Swift dancing.

• 52:25Speaker 00

  That was, oh my god, Taylor Swift dancing?

• 52:27Speaker 02

  It was amazing.

• 52:27Speaker 00

  The worst thing I've ever seen in my entire life. It was like my brain-

• 52:31Speaker 02

  She's the only person in the room who's trying to have a good time.

• 52:32Speaker 00

  My whole brain was assaulted. My eyes and brain were assaulted, but her moves are so like, it's like a mom. She's, her moves are such mom moves. It's out of control.

• 52:41Speaker 02

  And when, when, later in the show, when everybody was dancing, everybody was dancing like that, and it made me feel so good to know that a giant room full of the most famous, richest musicians on the planet can't dance any better than I can. It was awesome.

• 52:56Speaker 00

  I don't know. Some of them could dance better than you.

• 52:58Speaker 02

  Well, Usher was there.

• 53:00Speaker 00

  But not, but not-

• 53:01Speaker 02

  Usher was like, he's like, I gotta tone it down.

• 53:03Speaker 00

  But not Taylor, not Taylor Swift. There were a lot of bad performances. There were like, there were like this, like, Casey, Casey Underwood or something, I don't know her name, but she basically, she's basically Carrie Underwood, but she's like-

• 53:14Speaker 02

  What is going on right now?

• 53:16Speaker 00

  I don't know. Oh.

• 53:19Speaker 00

  By the way, this piano thing.

• 53:24Nilay Patel?

  Oh, they should have done a punch.

• 53:26Speaker 02

  Leave her alone on that, too.

• 53:27Speaker 00

  Oh, this piano thing, piano thing is all bullshit. That was such like theatrics and also like.

• 53:32Nilay Patel?

  No, so I have a theory.

• 53:33Speaker 00

  It's like Tori Amos called.

• 53:34Nilay Patel?

  The reason the Beyonce performance was good.

• 53:36Speaker 00

  She wants her hair flipping back.

• 53:37Nilay Patel?

  It's because all of those performers are like, screw it, turn on the auto-tune.

• 53:41Speaker 00

  Except for Katy Perry, she definitely did not have the auto-tune on.

• 53:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 53:44Speaker 00

  Daft Punk, Pharrell definitely did not have the auto-tune on. No, that was like John tweeted, like, remember when it was for singing on national television that you had to be able to sing? And it is like true. It's like, I know, like Pharrell can sing certain parts of songs.

• 53:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 53:57Speaker 00

  But like, there definitely are parts he can't.

• 53:59Nilay Patel?

  That performance of Get Lucky was the worst karaoke I've ever heard.

• 54:02Speaker 00

  And he's like, it's like Stevie Wonder's there just jamming. It's like Duke, Stevie Wonder's here, like, get it together.

• 54:06Speaker 02

  The shade in front of Daft Punk would actually never come out.

• 54:09Speaker 00

  I was like, oh, my God. Like, he's judging you.

• 54:11Speaker 02

  The shade would stay up. They would just, they just wouldn't lower it.

• 54:13Speaker 00

  They're like, yeah. No, but it was awesome when they lowered it. I mean, it was really great. The best part about Daft Punk being there was, and I took a few pictures of it, like, I literally ran up to my TV, it was taking pictures. Daft Punk just like casually being there in their, in their robot helmets.

• 54:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 54:26Speaker 00

  Just like the whole time, which I have to say is the best. Like, it's so awesome for them.

• 54:31Nilay Patel?

  And they won so many Grammys.

• 54:32Speaker 00

  First off, we don't know if it was even them. That's the first thing. Second.

• 54:35Speaker 02

  Oh, God, I didn't even think of that.

• 54:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, they could send Daft Punks all over the place.

• 54:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 54:39Speaker 00

  Um, what's so great, though, is like, I mean, you could do whatever you want inside that helmet. You can make any kind of face you want. They could be having a cellphone conversation with somebody on a Bluetooth headset. Like, you don't know what's going on inside. They could be watching a movie. Like, I don't know what's going on inside the helmet, but what I do know is it's their choice.

• 54:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 54:57Speaker 00

  Everybody else has to be subjected to reality 24/7. Anyhow, I think so. I'd like to have a helmet.

• 55:02Nilay Patel?

  And they open the curtain.

• 55:03Speaker 00

  Their faces are completely covered. So they don't have to worry that they get a zit or something.

• 55:06Nilay Patel?

  They're happy.

• 55:07Speaker 00

  It's amazing. Well, we don't know if they're happy, but that's the beauty of the helmet.

• 55:10Speaker 02

  So the question is when they're like not performing, they're sitting around in the living room watching TV.

• 55:14Speaker 00

  In the nude, in the nude with a helmet on.

• 55:16Speaker 02

  In the nude with a helmet on.

• 55:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:17Speaker 02

  I would, I would think that if I wore a helmet whenever I was in public, I would start wanting to wear it when I was at home.

• 55:22Nilay Patel?

  I can get you a helmet.

• 55:22Speaker 00

  I think they, so people do sell really expensive replicas of those helmets, which I definitely have considered purchasing at one point or another. Um, but, but, uh, I think that they, I mean, look, there are pictures of them. They used to not wear the helmets.

• 55:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 55:34Speaker 00

  Like, long before, uh, Daft Punk wore helmets, they had faces.

• 55:40Speaker 02

  Then they lost their faces.

• 55:41Speaker 00

  Their faces are all.

• 55:42Speaker 02

  Were forced to wear helmets.

• 55:43Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 55:43Nilay Patel?

  No, Chris was saying they could be the first immortal band, right? Cause all they have to do is like hand off the helmet.

• 55:48Speaker 00

  It's true. It's like, um, it's like, uh.

• 55:50Nilay Patel?

  Like Daft Punk will be here forever.

• 55:52Speaker 02

  It's like James Bond.

• 55:53Speaker 00

  Like, sort of like how, oh, here they are on eBay. Wow, this is crazy. There's some really expensive ones like that have the electronics and stuff. Look at that, $1,500 with gloves. Like seriously, if, I mean, let's see the picture of somebody with it on.

• 56:09Speaker 00

  Yeah. So here's what's crazy about it. If you do spend $1,500 on this and you're like the right height and have the right style. Pretty much you could go to like a club and people would probably think you're actually.

• 56:21Nilay Patel?

  But you need a friend.

• 56:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:22Nilay Patel?

  You can't like, I've never seen like one robot solo.

• 56:25Speaker 00

  If you're, yeah. I don't know what's going on here. Can we see the, um, other helmet? Does there somebody, I don't, this is not my favorite helmet.

• 56:31Nilay Patel?

  I prefer the. This is not my favorite helmet.

• 56:33Speaker 02

  The other thing I like about Daft Punk is they don't try that.

• 56:35Nilay Patel?

  That's a good one, yeah.

• 56:36Speaker 00

  The Guy Manuel one. This one is the, this one is awesome. Do they make a motorcycle helmet that looks like this?

• 56:43Nilay Patel?

  Maybe they have to at this point.

• 56:44Speaker 00

  This one is not exactly what he had on.

• 56:46Nilay Patel?

  You know what's funny is that record I think is not. It's a good record, has some good tracks on it, but it has some extremely weird moments.

• 56:53Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 56:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And as a whole, as a.

• 56:54Speaker 00

  Like the Paul Williams track, Touch? The worst, one of the worst songs in the world. Like it's really bad. And like, I get that they were like into a certain style that they wanted to do.

• 57:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 57:02Speaker 00

  Uh, that record is, is, I would say this, it's.

• 57:04Speaker 02

  What's, what's trying to the German dude speaking? Everything is forgiven because of that track.

• 57:08Speaker 00

  That's Giorgio Barbaro.

• 57:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:10Speaker 00

  That, that song is amazing. But it also sounds like, um, the band Zombie, if you've ever heard them. And it also kind of sounds like Trans Am, if you've ever heard them. So like, it's not, it is really good. That's my favorite song on the record. Actually, that or Doing It Right. I mean, Doing It Right is really, really like. Doing It Right is like a perfectly formed single.

• 57:27Nilay Patel?

  Oh my God, somebody just tweeted the best conspiracy theory at me.

• 57:30Speaker 00

  Let's hear it. It doesn't involve Daft Punk.

• 57:32Nilay Patel?

  Did someone die at the end? Punked everyone at the Grammys. They were in, sitting, they were in there, in the audience with their helmets off, along with the robots, like sitting behind them.

• 57:41Speaker 00

  That's possible. Wait, is there proof of that?

• 57:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, let me.

• 57:44Speaker 00

  Is there a conspiracy theory of that?

• 57:46Nilay Patel?

  I don't, I, it's like.

• 57:47Speaker 02

  You're trying to airplane to the podcast right now, aren't you?

• 57:49Nilay Patel?

  I don't know what to do.

• 57:49Speaker 00

  Just do a search, Daft, Daft Punk, you know.

• 57:53Nilay Patel?

  I don't know what to do.

• 57:54Speaker 02

  Grammy, Grammy conspiracy. Thing. He's like, oh, what do I put it? I don't know.

• 57:58Speaker 00

  I would do Daft Punk Grammy conspiracy.

• 58:01Speaker 00

  CEO and

• 58:02Speaker 02

  What are you gonna do once it's there? That's not gonna help anything.

• 58:04Nilay Patel?

  It's this one. It's a Reddit. No, it's actually this right here.

• 58:09Speaker 00

  Can we get Eli's screen up on the screen?

• 58:11Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 58:12Speaker 02

  Screen my screen.

• 58:12Nilay Patel?

  This is not helping anything. This is the thing I was just

• 58:15Speaker 00

  It's one of the best moments ever.

• 58:17Speaker 02

  Virg casters and gentlemen.

• 58:19Nilay Patel?

  These are the... I mean, they're probably wrong. This probably isn't true.

• 58:23Speaker 00

  Wait, really? Can we? Can I see this on the big screen? I want to get a look at this.

• 58:27Speaker 02

  Oh, there we go.

• 58:27Nilay Patel?

  So here's a picture of the dudes recently.

• 58:29Speaker 00

  Pump it up behind Eli, would you? Okay.

• 58:32Nilay Patel?

  And then here are some guys sitting behind them in this, like, sunglasses.

• 58:36Speaker 00

  Uh.

• 58:37Nilay Patel?

  That's like very possible.

• 58:38Speaker 02

  Oh, it's possible.

• 58:39Speaker 00

  Wait a second, wait a second. You're saying the guy in the sunglasses on the left?

• 58:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 58:42Speaker 00

  Right, scroll down?

• 58:43Nilay Patel?

  And then this is them.

• 58:44Speaker 02

  I, I

• 58:44Speaker 00

  Uh, no, those are not the same people.

• 58:46Speaker 02

  I like this theory.

• 58:47Speaker 00

  Those are not the same people.

• 58:47Speaker 02

  No, no, I like it.

• 58:48Speaker 00

  They're not the same people.

• 58:49Speaker 02

  Okay, fine.

• 58:49Speaker 00

  I mean, I guess it's possible, but I don't think it's the same people.

• 58:52Nilay Patel?

  It'd be incredible if it was.

• 58:53Speaker 00

  It would be incredible, but I don't think it's, I don't think it's correct. Does, I mean, it'd be easy to figure this out.

• 58:59Nilay Patel?

  It's on Reddit, so let's see.

• 59:03Speaker 02

  I'm being

• 59:04Speaker 00

  There you go. Okay, so there's the person who's like, yeah, here's who the people are. It's not them.

• 59:09Nilay Patel?

  Wait, who?

• 59:09Speaker 00

  There's a guy in the comments who's like

• 59:12Nilay Patel?

  No. You know, I think the glory of Zafunk is that you can believe anything you want.

• 59:16Speaker 00

  No, what's great about it is that even somebody would even suggest that. That's why the helmets are awesome. They're like, there were other people in the helmets and they were sitting casually next to them. Like, that didn't happen.

• 59:26Nilay Patel?

  Is there a way that I can transition from here to Macklemore to John Leisure?

• 59:30Speaker 00

  You mean, you mean Macklemore?

• 59:31Nilay Patel?

  I said Macklemore.

• 59:32Speaker 00

  Uh, Macklemore had a big night.

• 59:34Speaker 02

  Who apparently has a little buddy and that's like in the name of his band and I can't remember who it is.

• 59:38Speaker 00

  Ryan Lewis? He's not his little buddy. He's the guy who makes all of Macklemore's songs.

• 59:42Speaker 02

  When you

• 59:42Speaker 00

  Oh, by the way, by the way, hold on. Can we play my game? I have a new game that I play.

• 59:45Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 59:46Speaker 00

  When you see a picture of Macklemore and, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis together, imagine that Ryan Lewis has a small remote control somewhere that he's using to control Macklemore. Now, can we find a picture of Macklemore and Ryan Lewis together?

• 59:59Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 1:00:00Speaker 00

  Here we go. You ready? And you imagine he's remote controlling him.

• 1:00:03Speaker 02

  How long are we gonna wait for this?

• 1:00:05Speaker 00

  I don't know, it's up to Eli. Eli found the one site that cannot load photos.

• 1:00:10Speaker 02

  I just meant that whenever they talked about it on the Grammys, it was like, Macklemore.

• 1:00:14Speaker 00

  I think if you see them standing together, you'll begin to wonder.

• 1:00:17Speaker 02

  This picture will be particularly good for this.

• 1:00:19Speaker 00

  You'll begin to wonder.

• 1:00:20Speaker 02

  Who is this guy?

• 1:00:21Speaker 00

  I don't know who these people are. You've completely failed.

• 1:00:23Speaker 02

  I went to their website.

• 1:00:24Speaker 00

  Google image search.

• 1:00:26Speaker 02

  Right here.

• 1:00:26Speaker 00

  Okay, here we go. Great example. By the way, this picture's hilarious. Right, okay, just imagine, down, you can't see it, but in his right hand, Ryan Lewis is holding a small touchscreen remote control that operates Macklemore. Can we see another picture of them together? Here we go. This is great stuff. This is great.

• 1:00:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay, yep.

• 1:00:48Speaker 00

  There you go. Now you got it. Okay, it makes total sense here. He could easily be in his pocket, right hand. Okay, let's see another one. Can we get another picture out?

• 1:00:56Speaker 02

  It was right behind me, holy crap.

• 1:00:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, right, he's right there. I mean, would it be amazing to discover that he's a robot, right?

• 1:01:05Speaker 00

  That's the only picture you have?

• 1:01:06Speaker 02

  I got a whole bunch right here.

• 1:01:07Speaker 00

  Oh my god, his hand in his pocket.

• 1:01:09Speaker 02

  He's hiding it.

• 1:01:09Speaker 00

  See that? What else we got? You can't see his hands. Can't see his hand, right there. Hand offscreen.

• 1:01:20Speaker 02

  Maybe it's the wristband, maybe it's the smart.

• 1:01:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, okay. His hand is hiding. He does this a lot, and I think that's what spurred the thought. I don't know what's going on with these. Okay, great stuff. Macklemore sent an amazing, amazing text to Kendrick Lamar, like apologizing.

• 1:01:34Speaker 02

  He's robbing him.

• 1:01:35Speaker 00

  But here's the thing, but here's the thing. Somebody on Twitter did the most amazing... They had a picture of the text, maybe one that not everybody saw. I just need to find this, so we can show it to people, because this to me is like one of the best.

• 1:01:51Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:01:52Speaker 00

  It's one of the best things ever. Yeah, hold on, let me just, this is gonna be so hard.

• 1:01:55Speaker 02

  Is this it, that you got robbed?

• 1:01:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's another one, though. Hold on a second. This is gonna be a horrible moment where I try to find... How do you find your favorites? How do I find my favorites in the, in the, uh, uh, this is so horrible.

• 1:02:08Nilay Patel?

  Oh, on the, yeah, you're.

• 1:02:11Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. Oh, you got it? Is this it? No, there's, there's another one. Hold on. Here it is. How do I, how do I send this to somebody? How do I?

• 1:02:18Nilay Patel?

  Are you sure this isn't them?

• 1:02:19Speaker 00

  Can I share my screen with you?

• 1:02:21Nilay Patel?

  I told you, I'm on board with this theory.

• 1:02:23Speaker 00

  I'm going to.

• 1:02:26Speaker 00

  What's the best way to get you this tweet?

• 1:02:28Nilay Patel?

  Tweet it at me.

• 1:02:29Speaker 00

  If I tweet at you, are you able to get it there?

• 1:02:31Nilay Patel?

  Or send it to me in chat.

• 1:02:33Speaker 00

  Send it to you in chat.

• 1:02:35Nilay Patel?

  Oh, wait, I won't get it here.

• 1:02:36Speaker 02

  Is this?

• 1:02:36Speaker 00

  Where can?

• 1:02:38Nilay Patel?

  Retweet it right now.

• 1:02:39Speaker 02

  This is some quality.

• 1:02:40Speaker 00

  Go to my favorites.

• 1:02:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:42Speaker 00

  Go to my favorites. This is great. No, no, no, just go to my favorites. Go to Josh DePaul's, Joshua DePaulski.

• 1:02:48Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:02:49Speaker 00

  You're right there. Go to Josh.

• 1:02:50Nilay Patel?

  We're gonna find out what else you're favoring right now.

• 1:02:52Speaker 00

  No, that's okay. Now, hold on.

• 1:02:53Nilay Patel?

  I have no idea how to find favorites.

• 1:02:54Speaker 00

  Hold on, scroll up.

• 1:02:55Nilay Patel?

  Scroll up.

• 1:02:56Speaker 00

  Scroll up, it's on the left, favorites.

• 1:02:58Nilay Patel?

  Oh, weird.

• 1:02:59Speaker 02

  You didn't know that?

• 1:02:59Nilay Patel?

  That's a.

• 1:03:00Speaker 00

  Oh, you gotta be signed in.

• 1:03:01Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 1:03:01Speaker 00

  You can't see somebody's favorites?

• 1:03:03Nilay Patel?

  Come on.

• 1:03:03Speaker 00

  You can't see somebody's faves? What did you want me to do? Send it to Ross?

• 1:03:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:07Speaker 00

  Text it to him? Hip chat it?

• 1:03:09Nilay Patel?

  We're gonna see your passwords.

• 1:03:10Speaker 00

  By the way, this is not worth.

• 1:03:11Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 1:03:12Speaker 00

  Oh, my God, now we know how many characters it is.

• 1:03:14Nilay Patel?

  It's all of the characters.

• 1:03:16Speaker 00

  Here we go.

• 1:03:18Nilay Patel?

  You and Jordan are in a race.

• 1:03:20Speaker 00

  Keep going. Yeah, this is so not worth it. Is this me? There we go. Can you open that up?

• 1:03:28Nilay Patel?

  That's not worth it at all.

• 1:03:30Speaker 00

  This is a letter.

• 1:03:31Nilay Patel?

  Macklemormon?

• 1:03:33Speaker 00

  Macklemoron. Sorry, my brother, I think you deserve the Grammy. I'm totally lower shades, Macklemortified. Anyone who thinks otherwise is lower shades. I'm Macklemoron. Come on.

• 1:03:43Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 1:03:44Speaker 00

  That was totally worth it.

• 1:03:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:45Speaker 00

  Totally worth all this trouble.

• 1:03:46Nilay Patel?

  Why is there a pen?

• 1:03:47Speaker 00

  That guy deserves a lot more credit for that tweet. I just want to say, he only got 90 retweets. Can we get his number up? I don't know who he is.

• 1:03:54Nilay Patel?

  Is it still dead, Ross?

• 1:03:55Speaker 00

  Hello? What happened? Did our, did our thing go down?

• 1:04:00Nilay Patel?

  We went away for a minute.

• 1:04:01Speaker 00

  Oh, good. Then nobody saw that, right?

• 1:04:02Nilay Patel?

  Well.

• 1:04:03Speaker 00

  That's great. Perfect timing.

• 1:04:04Speaker 02

  The stream went down because of.

• 1:04:05Nilay Patel?

  We're Macklemortified.

• 1:04:07Speaker 00

  We're.

• 1:04:09Speaker 00

  See, see, anyhow, not worth it. Hopefully, somebody had a guffaw over it. It just was too much buildup. Anyhow, what were we talking about? You want to talk about Macklemore?

• 1:04:19Nilay Patel?

  I was talking about, I was gonna go from there somehow. Macklemore, John Ledger's favorite rapper.

• 1:04:24Speaker 00

  Oh, god.

• 1:04:26Nilay Patel?

  And then I was gonna do a thing.

• 1:04:27Speaker 00

  Oh, John Ledger.

• 1:04:28Nilay Patel?

  But I didn't really know how to get there.

• 1:04:29Speaker 00

  John Ledger. I mean, how much you want to, do we really want to go into this?

• 1:04:33Nilay Patel?

  People are asking me to talk about it. I mean.

• 1:04:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, but you know, we're.

• 1:04:41Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I know. Can we just put up the t-shirt? Can we just look? That was great. And I'd like to give whoever made this t-shirt credit.

• 1:04:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, like I got into a little argument.

• 1:04:49Nilay Patel?

  I didn't get into any argument. I didn't argue with anyone.

• 1:04:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, like I got yelled at by John Ledger on Twitter.

• 1:04:53Nilay Patel?

  Incoherently, maniacally yelled at. This is great. And then he deleted all the tweets. The CEO of T-Mobile deleted, like angrily, incoherently tweeted at me.

• 1:05:03Speaker 00

  We're doing this.

• 1:05:03Nilay Patel?

  That we're no good, The Verge is bad, that you should read Enafree.

• 1:05:08Speaker 00

  Recode. He's like, switch to Recode. It was really weird. Like, I don't know.

• 1:05:12Nilay Patel?

  But then he deleted it all. And all I did was tweet him a screenshot. And I was like, you're gonna like throw shade at me. Like, just know that it's still here.

• 1:05:18Speaker 00

  What's weird about John Ledger being mad at The Verge for some reason is that.

• 1:05:22Nilay Patel?

  We're on his side.

• 1:05:23Speaker 00

  And I like, I don't know. I feel like the last time I talked to him, I was like, yeah, I'm thinking about switching to T-Mobile because I like what they're doing. But, you know, I guess he didn't, that fell on deaf ears. I do think it's insane and psychotic that they put out this fake press release with fake quotes from Ralph De La Vega in it.

• 1:05:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:38Speaker 00

  It's nuts. And not nuts like, not nuts like, like, whoa, they're really sticking it to the man, but nuts like, this doesn't make sense to me. Like, the thing about T-Mobile is their ideas are actually pretty good, and I sort of respect them for what they're trying to do. And like, John Ledger doesn't have to stab somebody in the eye every time he talks to like get his point across. I feel like it's like enough already with like the you swear and you're wearing t-shirts and you're a badass. Like, you like pulled up on your motorcycle and like ripped off your leather jacket and you've got a bright pink T-Mobile t-shirt and then you put your Batman hood on.

• 1:06:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. He put up this ad everywhere. This is what it looks like when a huge corporation's wetting their pants.

• 1:06:15Speaker 00

  Yeah. I don't think that's what it looks like. What it would look like is that there'd be.

• 1:06:19Nilay Patel?

  It looks like a huge corporation is competing with you.

• 1:06:21Speaker 00

  Well, put something with, the corporation would have to be wearing a.

• 1:06:23Nilay Patel?

  Look, I'm happy that they're scaring the shit out of AT&T. Like, my entire career is built on yelling at AT&T.

• 1:06:29Speaker 00

  I like the idea of a corporation wearing itself, if you think of it as like one of their corporate buildings wearing a huge pair of pants with a wet spot in the front of it. Like T-Mobile, T-Mobile should like drape the front of an AT&T building with huge slacks.

• 1:06:44Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:06:45Speaker 00

  With a wet spot. And that's what it looks like when a corporation is wetting itself.

• 1:06:48Nilay Patel?

  We don't talk about this a lot, and we actually, we only have a few minutes left because we have to be done.

• 1:06:52Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:06:53Nilay Patel?

  Spot on time today. But, um, uh, I will say that I am firmly convinced that like, he knew what he was doing. He was playing character for a long time, and now he has like become the character.

• 1:07:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's like, um, it's like, uh, it's like when you tell a lie for long enough, you start to believe it yourself.

• 1:07:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:12Speaker 00

  You know where I heard that? An episode of Mr. Belvedere. About the, about the older son of Mr. Belvedere discovering.

• 1:07:18Nilay Patel?

  Stuck with you this entire time.

• 1:07:20Speaker 00

  About the older son of Mr. Belved- Mr. Belvedere discovering that his parents, like, he, his mother was pregnant with him before they were married.

• 1:07:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:28Speaker 00

  And they'd been lying to him about it the whole time because they didn't want him to feel like he was, you know, conceived out of wedlock. And, um, and his dad sits him down like towards the end of the episode. It's like, you know something? When you tell a lie enough, you start to believe it yourself. And I was like, whoa, that is some deep shit.

• 1:07:41Nilay Patel?

  The next time.

• 1:07:42Speaker 00

  That is some deep Mr. Belvedere wisdom. I was like eight when I saw it.

• 1:07:44Nilay Patel?

  The next time we do a John Ledger supercut.

• 1:07:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:47Nilay Patel?

  We end with this scene from Mr. Belvedere.

• 1:07:49Speaker 00

  Find that episode. It was a very special Mr. Belvedere.

• 1:07:52Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 1:07:53Speaker 00

  By the way, most of you watchers probably don't know what Mr. Belvedere is. Check it out. Check into it. I think you're really gonna.

• 1:07:58Nilay Patel?

  I actually got a lot of tweets when I wrote the Pebble review and I was like, this reminds me of the poem. And I tweeted it. I got a lot of tweets from people like, we don't know what you're talking about.

• 1:08:04Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:08:05Nilay Patel?

  And that makes me very sad.

• 1:08:05Speaker 00

  Listen, millennials, okay? We're old, we're old people.

• 1:08:09Speaker 02

  Goddamn kids.

• 1:08:09Speaker 00

  We're old. We're basically, we're basically.

• 1:08:11Speaker 02

  Vergecast in 10 years is just gonna be so crushed.

• 1:08:13Speaker 00

  It's gonna be like, it's gonna be a bunch of Andy Rooney's.

• 1:08:16Nilay Patel?

  Get off my robot lawn.

• 1:08:18Speaker 00

  That doesn't make any sense. Why would the lawn be a robot?

• 1:08:20Nilay Patel?

  Why wouldn't it be a robot?

• 1:08:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was gonna say it. If I'm gonna have a lawn, I want it to be made out of robots.

• 1:08:25Speaker 00

  The robotic lawn is built by a robotic lawnmower. I don't know.

• 1:08:30Nilay Patel?

  All right, one last thing.

• 1:08:31Speaker 00

  Definitely the end of the Vergecast. One of our worst.

• 1:08:33Nilay Patel?

  Okay, let's see.

• 1:08:34Speaker 00

  That was a good one.

• 1:08:35Nilay Patel?

  Uh, we didn't talk about Nintendo making phone apps.

• 1:08:37Speaker 00

  Oh, Nintendo.

• 1:08:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So they have bad earnings. They said they're gonna make a non-wearable health device.

• 1:08:43Speaker 02

  Which is insane.

• 1:08:44Speaker 00

  Like, no, it's, uh, okay. It's gonna be a new scale. An awesome scale.

• 1:08:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's smart, but the idea that. You know, a non wearable health device that isn't really a video game is going to save or help Nintendo in any way.

• 1:08:58Speaker 00

  Maybe it's a mirror, you don't know, maybe it's a mirror that you put in your bathroom and it tells you like whether you're fat or not.

• 1:09:02Speaker 02

  We're gonna start making profits again by 2015 because we're doing this. And it's like, okay.

• 1:09:05Nilay Patel?

  So Iwata said Nintendo will use smart devices to make connections with customers, but he ruled out releasing existing games on those platforms. Believe it or not, the company is unable to show its strength as an integrated hardware software business elsewhere, which is wrong.

• 1:09:18Speaker 00

  Well, but, but.

• 1:09:20Nilay Patel?

  It's wrong.

• 1:09:20Speaker 00

  But also, it just, it just.

• 1:09:22Nilay Patel?

  Service apps will be released this year. The company will seek to use smart devices for services for selling games that have previously confined to game consoles. Such devices are likely to provide better experiences, Iwata recognizes. Such devices are likely to provide better experiences than Nintendo's own hardware for certain features unrelated to games. And it's like, have you ever?

• 1:09:39Speaker 00

  What does that mean?

• 1:09:40Nilay Patel?

  You're a hell of a D F in your hand.

• 1:09:42Speaker 00

  You get to like manage your, your like pack, pack in a game.

• 1:09:45Speaker 02

  Shitty consoles doesn't mean that it's the right strategy to put them on other, on phones. They made bad, a bad console this generation.

• 1:09:53Nilay Patel?

  I think what they're trying to do is they're trying to do the thing Sony did with the PlayStation phone and the phone stuff.

• 1:09:59Speaker 00

  That was a great success.

• 1:10:01Speaker 02

  They're not trying to do that.

• 1:10:02Speaker 00

  No, but they're not doing that because, because they don't want to release their games.

• 1:10:04Speaker 02

  Not putting their games on phones. They're doing, they're like, they're like toying with things that are in the periphery of doing that, but they're not going to straight do it, right? That's what, that's what this is about.

• 1:10:14Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 1:10:15Speaker 02

  And like, read, you know, Sam Byford's reporting on this.

• 1:10:18Nilay Patel?

  I'm thinking more, uh, not Sony.

• 1:10:20Speaker 02

  It's not a great idea for them.

• 1:10:21Nilay Patel?

  I'm thinking more of like smart glass.

• 1:10:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:23Nilay Patel?

  Like, that's kind of what they're doing.

• 1:10:24Speaker 02

  Kind of like that.

• 1:10:25Nilay Patel?

  Only you can buy stuff.

• 1:10:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, but.

• 1:10:27Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I've used smart glass exactly once. Smart glass, uh, when you play.

• 1:10:31Speaker 00

  You're talking about the Xbox thing?

• 1:10:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, I, with the game, I use it all the time for stuff.

• 1:10:35Speaker 00

  And it worked terribly and it was not, it wasn't a great addition.

• 1:10:38Nilay Patel?

  The one place it's awesome is on Xbox One. If you play Madden, you can like do all kinds of stuff with smart glass.

• 1:10:43Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:10:44Nilay Patel?

  That's neat.

• 1:10:44Speaker 00

  I mean, that sounds cool, but, but like.

• 1:10:46Speaker 02

  Other than EA, name a company as influential and important as Nintendo that only makes phone games.

• 1:10:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, no, I mean, the argument is, I've heard it, I've heard it from everybody. I've heard from Microsoft. Like, why is an office on the, on iPhone? And they're like, well, no, there's no big company that makes real money selling software on mobile.

• 1:11:02Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:11:02Nilay Patel?

  Okay, well, that's.

• 1:11:03Speaker 00

  No, the scale doesn't, the scale doesn't work.

• 1:11:05Nilay Patel?

  I assume Nintendo's making the same argument, but.

• 1:11:08Speaker 00

  I mean.

• 1:11:08Nilay Patel?

  They're Nintendo. If they put Mario on the iPhone and they sold it for fifteen dollars instead of three, they wouldn't make the money.

• 1:11:15Speaker 00

  I mean, I think the problem is that.

• 1:11:16Speaker 02

  If they did it for fifteen or twenty or whatever, like, that could be interesting.

• 1:11:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:20Speaker 02

  But.

• 1:11:21Nilay Patel?

  But they're Nintendo.

• 1:11:22Speaker 02

  Well, they're Nintendo. They don't, they're like culturally, they fundamentally don't believe that that's the right thing for them to do.

• 1:11:27Speaker 00

  I think there's also this issue, there's, I think there's also this issue that like their, their hook was motion gaming.

• 1:11:34Nilay Patel?

  Well, that was so easily borrowed.

• 1:11:36Speaker 00

  No, but I mean, now that the Kinect exists, i- I feel like that's taken a lot of that, that fire and excitement. I think like when kids are like, oh, my God. You know, mom and dad, we want to like get a game system that does this like crazy motion stuff there. Look, the Kinect is the thing that they look at. It's not, they're not thinking about like, they're not thinking about this huge controller. Like, I played the Wii U.

• 1:11:53Nilay Patel?

  Every time I use the Wii U, I'm like, why am I using this?

• 1:11:56Speaker 00

  I played, I played one game on the Wii U.

• 1:11:58Nilay Patel?

  The zombie game?

• 1:11:58Speaker 00

  Zombie U.

• 1:11:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:59Speaker 00

  And it was really fun. I never finished it. Cause it was like after a while, I was like, okay, like it's cool. Like I get all this stuff. It's really exciting, but I just, I kind of like my, my interest waned. And then there was not another game. There wasn't another game where I was like, this seems really cool. And I get that there are things you could do. I think their biggest problem is they didn't build, they needed to do two things. They needed to build some awesome new way to interact with your games, which they kind of did. Sort of. It was like a pretty crappy experience in a way because it's a capacitive and all this stuff, but, but then they didn't build a console that's competitive.

• 1:12:30Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 1:12:31Speaker 00

  They didn't build an Xbox One. They didn't build like a hub for your entertainment. And, and unfortunately for them, things, things have moved on.

• 1:12:37Nilay Patel?

  Do you have your TV plugged in your Xbox?

• 1:12:39Speaker 00

  No, I don't, I don't because, because, uh, there's several reasons.

• 1:12:43Nilay Patel?

  I have not bought an Xbox One.

• 1:12:44Speaker 02

  I'm gonna buy the white one.

• 1:12:45Speaker 00

  I don't have it plugged in because I don't plug it in. Yeah, it looks cool.

• 1:12:48Speaker 02

  The white one looks like a crappy Xbox One.

• 1:12:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:12:50Nilay Patel?

  It looks like a stormtrooper.

• 1:12:51Speaker 00

  I think the black one looks better, but I don't have it plugged in because the sound, it, it's not passing through sound.

• 1:12:56Nilay Patel?

  I keep asking everybody if they have the TV plugged in Xbox One.

• 1:12:58Speaker 00

  And I already have enough sound problems. Like, I don't need to add one by. Like adding the Xbox.

• 1:13:02Nilay Patel?

  I mean, most people have talked to you.

• 1:13:03Speaker 00

  The interface, that interface isn't that much more useful than like Time Warner's refreshed interface. It's only slightly more useful.

• 1:13:10Nilay Patel?

  That is the weakest praise of all time.

• 1:13:12Speaker 00

  No, but I'm just saying.

• 1:13:13Nilay Patel?

  That's like, there you go.

• 1:13:14Speaker 00

  I'm saying like, yeah.

• 1:13:14Nilay Patel?

  That's like the TV market.

• 1:13:16Speaker 00

  It's the lesser of the evils, but it's not like such a revolutionary way to interact with my TV that I'm like, oh my God, I have to use this all the time.

• 1:13:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:22Speaker 00

  And that I think includes the Vergecast for this week.

• 1:13:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, we're done. We gotta get out of here.

• 1:13:25Speaker 00

  We'll be back next week. Uh, if you want to get in touch with us, you can email us, [email protected]. You can find us on Twitter, theverge is at verge. Oh, I'm sorry. You can leave a comment in the post when it goes up. You can start a forum topic.

• 1:13:35Nilay Patel?

  You can yell at me. You can tell me how much you think Android patents are worth.

• 1:13:38Speaker 00

  You can yell at me, Eli. Well, you can find us on Twitter, theverge is at verge. I'm Joshua Topolsky, Neelai is reckless, Dieter is Baklon, B A C K L O N. There's a perfectly great reason for that.

• 1:13:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:48Speaker 00

  I'm like a broken record. I can't do the same things I always do. It's really annoying.

• 1:13:52Nilay Patel?

  Huh.

• 1:13:52Speaker 00

  Um, and, uh, oh, and that's it.

• 1:13:56Nilay Patel?

  That's it.

• 1:13:56Speaker 00

  Well, we're, we're gonna be back next week.

• 1:13:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It's gonna get weird.

• 1:14:00Speaker 00

  Check out, by the way, if you haven't seen it, check out the latest 90 seconds on the Verge.

• 1:14:03Nilay Patel?

  Oh, it's amazing.

• 1:14:04Speaker 00

  Did it air today or yesterday?

• 1:14:05Nilay Patel?

  Yesterday.

• 1:14:05Speaker 00

  Yesterday, featuring, featuring Bryce Slade, who's one of our newest, one of our hot new performers.

• 1:14:11Nilay Patel?

  And nobody on YouTube understands.

• 1:14:12Speaker 00

  That we really like. And in fact, after I sign off, I'd love it if we could just run 90 seconds. I don't know if you guys are set up for that in the booth, but, uh, you find a way to make it happen. But anyhow, that's the Vergecast this week. We're back next week.

• 1:14:23Nilay Patel?

  John was more than ready.

• 1:14:24Speaker 00

  And as always, uh,

• 1:14:25Nilay Patel?

  He's like, yes.

• 1:14:26Speaker 00

  As always, frankly, look, I'm gonna just say it, you know, what, what we hope will happen with you and your family is not gonna be the outcome. The outcome is far worse. And, uh, you know, it sucks, but that's the way it is.