Stephen Elop, King of Thieves

It was a week of learning and growth on the Vergecast. Specific lessons included who actually owns Nokia, who has used an Apple Watch, what qualifies as a varsity sport, the merits of Pitch Perfect, and just how little of the 90s Sam remembers. Programming note: The Vergecast will be taking next week off, in observance of Thanksgiving, but we'll be back the following week. 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.

• 0:06Nilay Patel?

  Let me ask you a question.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Oh, God. That's pretty good.

• 0:09Nilay Patel?

  No, I think it's important to, in your heart, answer this question for me.

• 0:14Speaker 02

  Tell me.

• 0:15Nilay Patel?

  If you were to order the colors from last to first, how would you order them?

• 0:19Speaker 02

  Easy. Are you ready?

• 0:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 0:21Speaker 02

  Okay, I'm gonna start. Orange. Let's last.

• 0:25Nilay Patel?

  Let's last, orange in last place.

• 0:27Speaker 01

  No!

• 0:28Speaker 02

  No, I, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go through this, and then we can, we can debate after that.

• 0:33Nilay Patel?

  All right, all right.

• 0:34Speaker 02

  Orange.

• 0:34Nilay Patel?

  Yep.

• 0:35Speaker 02

  Yellow. Blue.

• 0:38Nilay Patel?

  Mm-hmm.

• 0:39Speaker 02

  Red.

• 0:40Nilay Patel?

  Hmm.

• 0:40Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 0:41Speaker 02

  Green.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 0:43Speaker 02

  Purple.

• 0:43Nilay Patel?

  Mm-hmm.

• 0:44Speaker 02

  Pink.

• 0:44Speaker 01

  So, you want mine? Invert that exactly?

• 0:47Speaker 02

  No, you're crazy!

• 0:49Speaker 01

  And that's mine.

• 0:50Nilay Patel?

  I think-

• 0:51Speaker 01

  Although, pink, pink goes higher up.

• 0:52Nilay Patel?

  Any, any order at which green is near the top is in that inaccurate order. Sorry.

• 0:57Speaker 02

  Are you crazy?

• 0:58Nilay Patel?

  Hello, this is The Vergecast, where we are no strangers to controversy.

• 1:02Speaker 03

  That was a good intro. I like that. It was like a little anecdote. It was good.

• 1:07Nilay Patel?

  I don't know if that counts as an anecdote. That's, that was literally just Chris randomly listing colors.

• 1:12Speaker 02

  I mean, they weren't random. I thought about it for about five seconds.

• 1:15Nilay Patel?

  Hello, this is our show, where we talk about technology, uh, the people, the lifestyles, the, the glitz, the glamour.

• 1:21Speaker 02

  Oh, man. So much glitz.

• 1:23Nilay Patel?

  I am Neelai Patel.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  I'm Chris Plant.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  I am Dieter Bone.

• 1:27Nilay Patel?

  Pipe check.

• 1:28Speaker 03

  I'm Sam Sheffer.

• 1:29Nilay Patel?

  There he is, right there, everybody. So, uh, I will say, and I'm just gonna open, I'm gonna, I wanna open the show by acknowledging the criticisms of the show that we receive. Uh, and last week, the primary criticism was that we were crazy.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  Oh, well, that's not-

• 1:45Speaker 03

  We are crazy, though.

• 1:47Speaker 01

  That's a, that's a praise.

• 1:48Nilay Patel?

  But I'm gonna try, I'm gonna try, this is true, we're gonna talk about technology news today.

• 1:53Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  For the most part.

• 1:54Nilay Patel?

  We're gonna try to do it with some structure.

• 1:58Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:58Nilay Patel?

  We will almost certainly fail.

• 2:00Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:01Nilay Patel?

  But I want you to know, the listener, that we are trying.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  Can I acknowledge a criticism too while I'm out there?

• 2:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  Uh, so I just want to thank everyone who left a comment.

• 2:11Nilay Patel?

  That is not an acknowledgement.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no, there's a criticism coming. A lot of people left very nice compliments of our show and said that you're ready for whatever the hell I'm going to make, which hopefully, we are gonna, hopefully, fingers crossed, pilot next week.

• 2:24Nilay Patel?

  Quit.

• 2:24Speaker 02

  But, but, no, no, no, no. Here's the criticism.

• 2:27Nilay Patel?

  Self-promotion, no, we're just coming from...

• 2:29Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 2:29Nilay Patel?

  This has nothing to do with it. I have a criticism for you, which is that this is not a criticism.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  I would like to thank everybody for telling me how great the next thing is.

• 2:35Speaker 02

  I want to give you the criticism.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  Alright.

• 2:37Speaker 02

  There was one compliment.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  There was.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  That said, "The show is great. I can't wait for What's Tech with Chris Plant. Four out of five stars." "What can I do to get the extra star?"

• 2:50Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. And I think that what we're gonna have, what we're gonna find out today is whether we can hit five stars.

• 2:57Speaker 02

  That's fair.

• 2:57Nilay Patel?

  Can we actually just name that show Five Stars with Chris Plant?

• 3:02Nilay Patel?

  Alright, so let's start with some news. A lot of stuff going on. I would say, this is perhaps not the biggest news of the week, but in the grand scheme of the tech industry, perhaps the most interesting.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:12Nilay Patel?

  Uh, and, you know, it will, I think, whatever. Apple released the, there's like, there's stuff to say. Apple released the WatchKit SDK. Chris, do you have some notes?

• 3:22Speaker 02

  Do you want to go right to them? Because they're not good on this one at all.

• 3:25Nilay Patel?

  Hit me.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  Mm. I don't know why I even wrote this. Verge? Oh no, it was supposed to be Iverge. Iverge, more like Myverge. I'm the captain now, which I followed with Captain Toad, game of the year.

• 3:39Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 3:40Speaker 02

  What?

• 3:41Nilay Patel?

  Uh, yeah, I don't...

• 3:43Speaker 02

  I actually have a real question for this.

• 3:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:45Speaker 02

  But you should probably tell everybody about it.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  So, okay, the, the Apple Watch SDK, if you want to make an app for the Apple Watch, it has to, with minimal exceptions, in this first moment, it has to live on the phone and like, send this little information to the watch. The watch can't really be independent with like, I think clocks are the exception.

• 4:04Nilay Patel?

  Timers and clocks.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Timers and clocks.

• 4:05Speaker 02

  On what a watch does.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:10Nilay Patel?

  We built this wrist computer. It can tell the time.

• 4:16Nilay Patel?

  Come on, that's fair.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  Someday you will be able to do standalone apps.

• 4:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  That day is not today.

• 4:22Nilay Patel?

  Nope.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  Uh, or.

• 4:23Nilay Patel?

  You can do notifications.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  Notifications, it can, you can do glances, it can do, uh, giga, I mean, whatever.

• 4:30Speaker 02

  Giga.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Gongs. Um, he gauze, not gogs, gauze.

• 4:34Speaker 02

  Sorry.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh, there's, there's two resolutions, uh, it basically, uh, follows a responsive design. So you don't lay out to the resolution of the watch. You have to have it be able to have stuff flow, which is interesting. It like flows to the upper left-hand corner, which is weird. Anyway, the, the point is you, when you make an app, you have to assume that it will come in all kinds of crazy screen sizes, which is smart.

• 4:56Nilay Patel?

  Because God only knows how big this watch will be.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:59Nilay Patel?

  And there's two sizes already.

• 5:01Speaker 01

  I mean, that's what's going to happen to the watch is the same thing that happened to phones is that everybody thought 3.5 inches was the right size. And now we're all getting 5.2, 5.6, six inch phones. And same thing is going to happen with watches. We're like, this is too big. And then the next year, like.

• 5:14Nilay Patel?

  But the, the key here, and so I think there's like three things to think about. One is it's crazy that Apple's like releasing this more publicly before the watch comes out, which is supposed to happen sometime.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  Crazy good.

• 5:29Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it's, it's, it's in the context of Apple, like giving people, like what they usually do with this stuff is they sign a bunch of NDAs with partners and then they're going to launch the watch with like 20 apps.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:39Nilay Patel?

  Like, but instead they're like, we don't know what to do. Here's some stuff.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  So are you, are you intimating that this is a sign of fear from Apple?

• 5:45Nilay Patel?

  I, I am not even intimating. I explicitly saying, I think this is a sign of fear from Apple.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  Why isn't it just a sign of the new open Apple that is happy to talk to people?

• 5:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't think they're afraid either.

• 5:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, or recognizing that leaks happen, like I, I expecting nothing. I mean, I know that they're good about leaks, but expecting nothing to come out seems.

• 6:03Nilay Patel?

  It's weird for Apple to talk, I mean, just like historically, it's weird for Apple to release this much underlying data of how the thing works.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 6:12Nilay Patel?

  As opposed to tell the public like how awesome it's gonna be.

• 6:15Speaker 02

  New Apple dog, you saw that Bloomberg cover.

• 6:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but that's backwards. Like, that's totally backwards.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  No, but this is the first gadget of the Tim Cook era.

• 6:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, this is the new Apple.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  And so it's getting run by the Tim Cook method.

• 6:27Speaker 03

  And also like.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  I will grant that there could be an element of fear here, but I think it's pretty small.

• 6:31Nilay Patel?

  The Tim Cook method looks awful like the Microsoft method.

• 6:34Speaker 03

  Which is fine, because Microsoft's doing awesome things now, too.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  It looks an awful lot like the natural way that humane technology companies release new products.

• 6:44Nilay Patel?

  Fair.

• 6:45Speaker 02

  I like the use of the word humane there. That was nice.

• 6:47Nilay Patel?

  Fair. I just think that Apple doesn't know what the killer app for this watch is.

• 6:52Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, totally.

• 6:53Nilay Patel?

  And if they did, that we would not see this. That's what I'm saying.

• 6:57Speaker 01

  It's drawing penises and sending heartbeats. That's what it is.

• 7:01Nilay Patel?

  Dong draws.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  Dong draws.

• 7:03Nilay Patel?

  So anyway, so here was.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  Oh, did you forget the... Never mind. Did you... So the other thing is, Neel, I put together the list of the different interaction metaphors you need to know.

• 7:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I just haven't gotten there yet.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 7:14Nilay Patel?

  Because there's obviously, like, Dieter and I actually argued about this post a little bit.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  I think you missed one, is what I'm saying.

• 7:20Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, so there's two sides of the watch. Native apps are coming next year. Nobody knows what they will be able to do, although developers on Twitter are kind of like intimating that this watch is underpowered.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:33Nilay Patel?

  That I've seen that around, out there.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  I don't care if it's underpowered.

• 7:37Nilay Patel?

  But like, basically, the thing about this watch, which is crazy, is that your iPhone just sends like various kinds of notifications to it. That's really what it does.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  Well, it can send complex data to a companion app. I don't get the sense that it can only send notifications like that. And that's the whole point of what glances are, right?

• 7:57Speaker 02

  Well, and how extreme is that? Like, could you theoretically make a game on your iPhone and then stream it, like you would do game streaming to your watch?

• 8:07Speaker 01

  So I don't know, video, but you could have the watch be a... You could have the watch be part of the game in some way. Like, you're playing a thing and then twist your wrist or tap your watch or twist the dial or...

• 8:19Speaker 02

  Johann Sebastian Joust is the one and only game you're gonna play with it, basically.

• 8:23Nilay Patel?

  That'd be interesting.

• 8:24Speaker 02

  That's, everybody holds up a stick and then you knock people over and then that's how you get pushed out. It's great.

• 8:30Nilay Patel?

  Alright, so-

• 8:31Speaker 02

  It's complex.

• 8:32Nilay Patel?

  That's what I'm saying, but like, the thing about releasing this now-

• 8:34Speaker 01

  It's like the cones of Dun-

• 8:35Nilay Patel?

  They, they announced this watch.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:38Nilay Patel?

  They, and I'm just like, I'm, I'm just at this point completely on the record with my extreme skepticism of this thing. Right?

• 8:45Speaker 01

  I am not as skeptical as you are.

• 8:47Nilay Patel?

  Okay, but, so they, and here, but I'm gonna read this list, and you say I missed one.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  No, I think, I, I, you got it, it's here.

• 8:54Nilay Patel?

  Uh, and I'm gonna, and this, this list is why I'm skeptical of this watch.

• 8:58Speaker 01

  Guys, get prepared for incredibly deep and nerdy arguments.

• 9:01Nilay Patel?

  This is gonna get super nerdy. And I, I wanna head out, like, I'm, whatever, I'm just gonna read the list. This is a list of things, names of interactions you have to know in order to fully use the watch.

• 9:15Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 9:15Nilay Patel?

  Short look, long look, glances, notification actions, then admittedly you don't have to know these names, they all do different things. Vertical swipes, horizontal swipes, and edge swipes. Taps, taptic engine feedback, you can use Siri, you can force touch the watch, which again, the worst name in history.

• 9:38Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:38Nilay Patel?

  You can scroll with the digital crown, you can press the digital crown's button. You can single-click the side button to open the Friends app, which is where you draw dongs. And you can double-click the side button and then wave the watch in an NFC, at a, at a credit card machine to pay with Apple Pay.

• 9:54Nilay Patel?

  Now, I just want you to try, like, you've, you are, you are wearing the Apple Watch the first time, and you walk up to a friend. Now, just to, you did this with an iPhone at one point in your life, you did it with, I did it a lot with my first iPod. And someone said, "Hey, is that the iPod?", and I said, "Yeah", and I would hand it to them and be like, "You go around in a circle like this to move up and down the list, you push this button to go back and you press that button to play." That was all anybody ever needed to know. Now, just imagine handing the watch to someone and being like, "Here's how you use it."

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Learn curve.

• 10:22Nilay Patel?

  What are you going to say?

• 10:25Speaker 01

  Play with it for two minutes, figure out how to use it. It's a new device. There's new gestures. It's fine. It's like when the iPhone first came out, it was a black slab with one button.

• 10:35Nilay Patel?

  With the iPhone, when the iPhone came out, what you said was you just scroll with your finger and you push this button to go home.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:41Nilay Patel?

  That's it. And then, and then when you were ready, when you were, when, when you were ready.

• 10:46Speaker 01

  Pinched a zoom.

• 10:46Nilay Patel?

  You were like, check out how you zoom in on a photo.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  Do you think the iPhone also benefited from the iterative process? Because like, I mean, things like copy and paste came out later.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  Months of commercials to explain that stuff.

• 10:57Speaker 02

  Sure. But like those, the things that we now take for granted came out over time.

• 11:01Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 11:02Speaker 02

  I mean, and this is coming in as like.

• 11:04Nilay Patel?

  Apple was really, really good at teaching people how to use stuff. So after all of the, the first however many years, the iPhone, the three years of the iPhone. Then they released the iPad and the iPad was right, a big iPhone. That was big criticism, but it's also its greatest strength. Cause you got one, you already knew how to use it.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 11:21Nilay Patel?

  This, this thing is like, it's not a tiny iPhone, explicitly not a tiny iPhone. It has all kinds of new interface paradigms. And all of them say to me, they don't know what it's for.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  So the other, the other problem that doesn't get into in this SDK, but we got into when it first launched is the iWatch has, I'm going to say one, two, god damn it.

• 11:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  The Apple Watch has one, two, three, four kind of zones of apps, zones of things that it does. So there's the watch face.

• 11:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  There's the home screen. There's notifications that come in. And technically you could split that into two because apparently notifications are split into short and long glances. Short and long looks, excuse me. Oh my God. And then there's glances.

• 12:11Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Which are like the like information widgets. So notifications are from the top, uh, glances are from the bottom. The watch is just an app and then, so it's not really, it actually sits alongside all of the other apps. The apps sit in the middle next to the home screen. So the iPhone has home screen apps done. And then they added Siri for search. There's also Siri on the watch too. And you said, when you talked to it, which was great. The watch has a home screen for apps done, except you know, they've also got notification. The iPhone's got that. They've got swipe up for glances. On the iPhone, you swipe up for utility crap, but on the watch, you swipe up for like other things you can look at.

• 12:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. Utility crap.

• 12:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's the best.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  But like the whole

• 12:50Nilay Patel?

  I use that flashlight all the time.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  The default home thing for the Apple Watch is the home, home screen of the galaxy of apps in that insane circular layout. Not your watch.

• 13:00Nilay Patel?

  That you scroll into using the digital. I mean, all I'm saying is from what little we know of this right now, Apple has not provided any particular reason to buy this, except Apple made it. Right?

• 13:13Speaker 01

  It's very pretty.

• 13:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And it, and some of them are very pretty.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  Some of them are very pretty.

• 13:17Nilay Patel?

  Which they will be expensive and the things that you can do with it are so numerous. Like the, here, like this list, like, you know, the commenters are like, you can make this list for a phone and they like made the list for the iPhone. You can swipe down from the bottom.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  But yeah, Neil and I got into this over notification to actions. Does that really count as a different kind of?

• 13:35Nilay Patel?

  But like you have to hear, all I'm saying is.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  It's like it's.

• 13:37Nilay Patel?

  When.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  Tapping a button.

• 13:38Nilay Patel?

  When software does something for regular people and it's not predictable and you don't know why it happened and you don't know why they do it again, it just causes panic.

• 13:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:47Nilay Patel?

  Right? And like, I see that with the iPhone all the time, like random boxes pop up in apps or like the system's like, enter your IMAP password. And people are like, what the fuck? And I hit cancel. Right?

• 13:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:58Nilay Patel?

  Like, that's a weird thing and like, it's bad because it's not predictable. You don't know how to get back to that screen. The, the, the watch is full of things like short look and long look, full of things where you can't just make it do that again.

• 14:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. Can I give you two reasons why I like, don't have interest in buying it at this point though? Other than the price, which I think is just cost prohibitive.

• 14:20Speaker 02

  Is when I hear that it's pulling from the iPhone and my iPhone battery is already so unreliable.

• 14:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 14:27Speaker 02

  I hear that and, and I'm sure that they probably have something that will make this better or at least I'm sure that's what they're thinking.

• 14:32Nilay Patel?

  Right, right.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  I would, right now I worry about getting to the end of the day with my battery, especially if I'm like playing a game on it.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  In my experience, using a smart, a pebble with the iPhone and using both pebbles and Androidware with Android phones. It's like.

• 14:48Speaker 02

  It seems more ambitious than a pebble though.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  Well, it is more ambitious than a pebble, but I would guess that you're actually, if it's more than a 5% hit on your battery, I'd be surprised.

• 15:01Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 15:01Speaker 01

  That's my guess.

• 15:02Speaker 02

  The, the other thing is.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  I'm more concerned about the watch battery itself. I'm more concerned about the watch getting to the end of the day than I am about.

• 15:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's clear.

• 15:08Speaker 02

  And, and the underpowered argument, not power, battery power, but computing power, sounds to me like, oh great, I'm gonna have to buy another one of these in a year. It sounds like there is something that this feels like. Phase one, people are gonna buy this and that'll get us to phase two. And as somebody who bought the iPod video. I know, but people, people do that. People spend that money.

• 15:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 15:29Speaker 02

  And, and they don't have to hit maximum numbers right away, right? They need to get that base audience who's gonna be really excited about it. Who spent so much money that they're gonna be thrilled to show it off to everyone. And talk to their rich friends about it.

• 15:40Nilay Patel?

  What's interesting to me is that the, the people I talk to, like in the valley, are totally polarized. Some people are like, no, it's great. You're total, you're skeptical and you're, you're wrong. And other people are like, this is a disaster. And no one is like, wait and see.

• 15:56Speaker 02

  But I mean, isn't that how people were with the iPad when it launched? I mean, I remember those early iPad reviews where people are like, oh, this is a joke.

• 16:04Nilay Patel?

  Any person who was like, like an app developer, like whatever, like they immediately saw, they immediately saw what the iPad was for. And they, they saw where it would go. And I don't think anybody predicted that it would hit that like wall of growth.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:14Nilay Patel?

  Right? That, that surprised pretty much everybody. Like they thought it was another rocket ship. But that early slope where it just like shot up in popularity, most people who were like making apps for the iPhone, like immediately saw it. It was like the wider public that was like, A, it was called the iPad, which in retrospect, all those jokes were totally wrong. Um, because nobody cares. Um, and B, it was like, this is just a big iPhone.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:38Nilay Patel?

  And what has happened over time is the iPhone's gotten bigger and bigger and bigger. And the iPad is like, oh, it really is just a big iPhone. But at that moment, that was fine. It was like a great split. Um, with this though, it's like, everybody is totally polarized. Like I, I still don't know why Apple wants you to buy this thing. And their entire, their, the way they talk about it and the way they're acting about it is they don't know either. Like I, they haven't shown any one reason that you would like go through a day with this. Or how you would go through a day with it.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  This is getting into conspiracy theory territory, but the whole health movement too. I, I know so many companies have tried to like actually monitor your body data, right? It's a whole thing. We're gonna, we're gonna create the magic thing that is going to be able to really monitor your body data. It's gonna be able to basically give you a blood reading. Uh, you know, like everything. And it's gonna tell you everything to do with your entire day. And obviously that's not ready. But we know lots of people are, they want it. Like it's the holy grail. Is this like, is this like a stopgap? Is it like, well, we thought that would be available by now. It's not. But we're still gonna release this watch. I don't know. I mean, it just, with how much people are obsessed with fitness and I mean, It's all over the people who are looking for this. I mean, I remember I can go with games.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  Being at E3 when Nintendo had that like, we're gonna put a thing on your finger. And that's gonna change your life.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  Has anything come out of Nintendo's promise to do health shit?

• 17:59Speaker 02

  No. I mean, more Wii Fitter and stuff.

• 18:01Nilay Patel?

  Does anything come out of Nintendo's promises? I think it's a total fair question.

• 18:08Nilay Patel?

  Hype check, Apple Watch.

• 18:09Speaker 03

  We gotta wait and see.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  Come on!

• 18:12Speaker 02

  That's great!

• 18:13Speaker 03

  That is a hype check.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  The whole, what hype is the, the definition of hype is like, not the thing itself, but the excitement around the thing itself, and therefore it exists and you can hype check it.

• 18:25Speaker 03

  I'm excited. I'm going to wait.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  I'm excited.

• 18:29Speaker 03

  Before I pass any...

• 18:30Speaker 02

  No, I, I... Sam saying, though, "I'll wait and see," though, could be the truest statement about what we're talking about. Like, that is, that's the hype.

• 18:39Speaker 03

  I just, I get the criticism and it's like fun to talk about this stuff because we are in tech, but like, how the hell can you really talk about something that you've never used like so?

• 18:49Nilay Patel?

  We've used it.

• 18:50Speaker 03

  Alright, you guys have used it. Okay, fine, fair. You guys have used it. You haven't, you haven't owned it?

• 18:55Nilay Patel?

  High five, Dieter.

• 18:57Speaker 03

  You guys are like fucking bullies. You haven't, you haven't...

• 19:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're the cool kids. Yeah, look at our varsity jackets. Yeah, we got the leather, bro.

• 19:08Nilay Patel?

  I've never had a varsity jacket. Called your boss.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  Oh wait, wait, wait, wait. I had, I had a varsity jacket.

• 19:15Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  Because I was the captain of the Knowledge Bowl team.

• 19:17Speaker 03

  Oh my god, oh my god.

• 19:19Nilay Patel?

  By the way, Dieter Bone, definitionally not a bully.

• 19:24Nilay Patel?

  Impossible to reconcile those two ideas.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  We were always in last place because there was an actual, there was a Quiz Bowl team that always won state, and then anybody that couldn't get on the Quiz Bowl team got on the Knowledge Bowl team.

• 19:35Nilay Patel?

  Oh, we just opened a deep, dark hole.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:38Speaker 03

  Wow. But yeah, we gotta wait and see. I'm gonna buy one.

• 19:40Nilay Patel?

  How do you feel about the Quiz Bowl team?

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Oh man, those just...

• 19:43Speaker 03

  Whatever.

• 19:44Nilay Patel?

  The Quiz Bowl team.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  Can I name names?

• 19:46Nilay Patel?

  They were the bullies.

• 19:47Speaker 01

  Can I name names?

• 19:47Nilay Patel?

  I think you should.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  I don't think I...

• 19:51Speaker 01

  Do you have like an arch nemesis? Just, all, all I'm saying, Mike, all I'm saying is...

• 19:57Nilay Patel?

  I'm beginning to understand why Dieter is so invested in the movie Pitch Perfect.

• 20:02Nilay Patel?

  Like, it's all really beginning to come together for me.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  I'm objectively, it's because the movie is just better than anything else.

• 20:13Speaker 02

  It's, I mean, we're gonna get to it, but it's aca aca.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  Let's just get to it. Oh.

• 20:18Nilay Patel?

  So, the Pitch Perfect trailer came out today.

• 20:21Speaker 02

  We are, this was like, the, the end of the thing, and it got bumped up to number two.

• 20:27Nilay Patel?

  Like, no, seriously, like, it came out today. I, I, here's a little window into The Verge office. Uh, Chris Plant.

• 20:34Speaker 02

  Published it without asking.

• 20:36Nilay Patel?

  Lightning fast posted the Pitch Perfect trailer to the website. Our copy editor was like, why didn't you let me copy it?

• 20:43Speaker 01

  Which, by the way, it needed to be.

• 20:46Speaker 02

  I'm, there we are too.

• 20:48Nilay Patel?

  For a while, one of the most popular posts on the site.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:51Nilay Patel?

  Uh, I will say, uh, convoluted and insane, uh, headline.

• 20:55Speaker 02

  Sure. Uh, also, people wanted it.

• 20:58Nilay Patel?

  Headline was, I would, I would say, an expression into what is in Chris Plant's art.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  Pitch Perfect 2 trailer reminds world Pitch Perfect is brilliant and should be seen by everyone.

• 21:08Speaker 02

  Like, what is confusing about that?

• 21:10Speaker 01

  That's what I'm saying.

• 21:11Nilay Patel?

  In terms of sentence structure, many things are confusing about that.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  No.

• 21:16Nilay Patel?

  Okay, it's in the passive voice.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 21:19Speaker 03

  Can we talk, can we talk about the trailer?

• 21:22Speaker 02

  The important thing to know about grammar is when to break the rules.

• 21:26Speaker 02

  So.

• 21:26Speaker 01

  So, the reason this breaks the rules is why it's important.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  It has, it has a beautiful alliteration, which would go well in a cappella. Two, it's a Pitch Perfect 2, the sequel, and therefore, the, the phrase Pitch Perfect gets said twice as quickly as possible next to each other. And then it ends with everyone, because everyone should watch it.

• 21:46Nilay Patel?

  We're really reverse engineering the worst headline.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  No, no, I, I, I have what's called a skill. I'm not saying it's a beautiful skill, I'm saying it's a skill.

• 21:57Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, I would say the office, like, exploded into an, like, we listened. Chris was listening all day as the music from this trailer started filtering out of laptop to laptop.

• 22:05Speaker 02

  Do you know why no one, uh, copied it also? Because I sent it to multiple people, and everybody watched the trailer before they read the damn post.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  Also, can I just say, like, I'm very excited for this movie? Pitch Perfect, the original Pitch Perfect is amazing. This trailer kinda bust.

• 22:22Speaker 02

  So, no, no, no, no. The first, there's a lot of fan service up front. You have to, you have to go through a whole song that you'd already heard from Pitch Perfect one. But after that, it gets in there and there's hints of craziness. Somebody gets sucked up by leaves.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  Dude, there's a pillow fight.

• 22:36Speaker 02

  Somebody, okay, Elizabeth Thangs is directing it and she's part of like that whole like state David Wayne group. Uh, and she's hilarious. I have no doubt that it's gonna be like much weirder than a mainstream commercial makes it look.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:49Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 22:49Speaker 02

  And that's what's great about Pitch Perfect one.

• 22:51Nilay Patel?

  No, I think, I think Pitch Perfect one was like a very like straight ahead movie.

• 22:57Speaker 02

  I think it's, I think they, it was like somebody made a straight ahead movie and they're like, eh, we're gonna actually be drunk at the wheel the whole time.

• 23:04Nilay Patel?

  That, that's cool. I like those.

• 23:05Speaker 02

  Does that make sense?

• 23:06Nilay Patel?

  But this one is like drunker. Like this one looks like an eighties movie.

• 23:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:10Nilay Patel?

  Like it really looks like a classic eighties movie.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  You keep on making our point for us.

• 23:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. Then it looks great.

• 23:15Nilay Patel?

  I'm not gonna, what I, look, my.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  You should be happy because it has a Packer in it.

• 23:20Nilay Patel?

  It does. Clay Ma- and several other Packers. Clay Matthews and, like, that's fine. I'm happy about it. Also, my team's gonna beat your team this weekend.

• 23:26Speaker 02

  Wow. Also, Neil, I asked, why did you not write that there's a Packer in this in the headline? And I, and I said, because it's not J.J. Watt.

• 23:36Speaker 02

  No, I know.

• 23:37Nilay Patel?

  All right. Let's talk about Nokia.

• 23:39Speaker 03

  The trailer's good, basically.

• 23:41Nilay Patel?

  Oh yeah, hype check. Did you just, did you just sad hype check by yourself?

• 23:46Speaker 03

  We needed to conclude the point. You guys talked about the headline more than the trailer. I'm gonna see the movie because there's great singing.

• 23:53Nilay Patel?

  Hype check Pitch Perfect two.

• 23:55Speaker 03

  Maybe seeing it in theaters.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm seeing it in theaters.

• 23:57Speaker 02

  For, oh, for hashtag teens, seeing it in theaters is a big deal. They usually win.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  What are the chances that Taylor Swift is in Pitch Perfect two?

• 24:05Speaker 02

  I would say zero.

• 24:06Speaker 01

  It's a bummer.

• 24:07Speaker 02

  No.

• 24:08Nilay Patel?

  We really need to start verge teens. It's like, the, the more I think about the opportunity for us there.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  And it can get in a fight with Raketeen?

• 24:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, well, Rak- yeah.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  Raketeen, if you didn't know, is an amazing Tumblr about teens. Teens.

• 24:23Speaker 02

  Great. That didn't make you sound like a other creep.

• 24:27Speaker 02

  No one in the government just wrote your name down in a little black book.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  It's not about teens, it's about hashtag teens. What hashtag teens think of the rest of the internet?

• 24:36Speaker 03

  They're out of teen wave.

• 24:38Speaker 02

  You know what I like?

• 24:38Speaker 03

  I'm a captain of that teen wave.

• 24:40Speaker 02

  They cut to Sam way before he said anything. You said hashtag teens and they're like, Sam.

• 24:47Nilay Patel?

  No, there's like deep media story behind Racket Teen, right? Like, they started First Look Media with Glenn Greenwald and the thing. They'd have The Intercept and they hired Matt Taibbi from Rolling Stone to start Racket. And then he left and went back to Rolling Stone. And the editor in chief of The Intercept went back to Gawker just now. And Racket Teen is like, if you take all of that mess and then wrap it in hashtag teens and put it on Tumblr, it's, that's what that is.

• 25:12Speaker 03

  We should start Ratchet Teen.

• 25:13Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  No.

• 25:15Nilay Patel?

  No. Disagree. Disagree. Just, I'm sorry.

• 25:19Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 25:19Nilay Patel?

  I love you, Sam, but disagree.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  Nokia.

• 25:21Nilay Patel?

  Let's talk about Nokia.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  N1. Nokia has made an Android, okay, I'm sorry. Nokia has designed an Android tablet and Foxconn is making it. It is a...

• 25:31Speaker 03

  Can we just, can we just be clear? This is Nokia under Microsoft.

• 25:35Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  No. This is Nokia.

• 25:37Speaker 03

  This is...

• 25:38Speaker 01

  Nokia, the separate company that we thought was just gonna do like big telecom infrastructure crap. But no, they're also gonna be designing devices because they're in a...

• 25:44Nilay Patel?

  For Foxconn.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  For Foxconn or whoever else.

• 25:46Nilay Patel?

  And then, so what, so, let me just, let me just lay out the whole timeline for you. Steven Elop is born.

• 25:56Speaker 03

  It was the year.

• 25:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, right. He is raised by a society of thieves to be a double agent. Fact.

• 26:03Speaker 03

  James Bond.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  Wait a minute.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  No, go on.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  This is...

• 26:07Speaker 02

  Let's not, let's not...

• 26:09Speaker 01

  This is the plot to Ocarina of Time.

• 26:12Nilay Patel?

  Fair, but it's also the story of Nokia. He goes to work for Microsoft, his original and true employer.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 26:20Nilay Patel?

  Right?

• 26:20Speaker 03

  Forgot about that.

• 26:21Nilay Patel?

  Where he is trained in the art of corporate deception by Steve Ballmer. Then he is sent by Steve Ballmer...

• 26:28Speaker 02

  Of the Ballmer.

• 26:29Nilay Patel?

  To become the CEO of Nokia, where he promises to turn the company around.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  But really, he was just... Just a turncoat.

• 26:35Nilay Patel?

  But he was a turncoat. And after a series of convincing metaphors involving peeing into the ocean while on fire. That's not true.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  There was no peeing. There was just.

• 26:44Nilay Patel?

  That's pee. That's peeing on yourself to keep warm. That was Anton whatever.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:50Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 26:50Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 26:52Speaker 02

  I'm not some god somebody is.

• 26:55Nilay Patel?

  Okay, right.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  Nokia got stung by a jellyfish.

• 26:59Nilay Patel?

  Nokia is at a crossroads.

• 27:00Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 27:00Nilay Patel?

  Right?

• 27:01Speaker 01

  And there's a jellyfish.

• 27:02Nilay Patel?

  There's no jellyfish.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  At the crossroads.

• 27:04Speaker 02

  Somebody's peeing.

• 27:04Nilay Patel?

  And no, and at this crossroads, what happens is that various executives tell like Finnish folktales. Right?

• 27:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:14Speaker 02

  It's the plan of angry birds.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  It involves, it involves like campfires and creepy like woodland creatures.

• 27:18Nilay Patel?

  Are all convincing arguments for why Nokia shouldn't use Android.

• 27:23Speaker 02

  Oh, right.

• 27:24Nilay Patel?

  Right? So, uh, and I can't remember Anton Varnski. What's his name? He has a name. His story is about the young Finnish boy who was cold, so he peed on himself. And that was his metaphor for Android. It will keep you warm in the short term, but then you're soaked in urine. It's true. That's, so that's, that's him.

• 27:43Speaker 02

  That's good.

• 27:44Nilay Patel?

  And, and, and Elop is like, yes, this is my opportunity. And then writes a memo called the burning platform memo. The ultimate expression. It's like everything he ever learned about being a spy.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  Nancy Van Yoki.

• 27:55Nilay Patel?

  Nancy Van Yoki. I don't know. I don't know where I came up with that name. He writes, we, we, there came a time when like this Finnish oil rig was on fire. And you had to run into the fire or jump into the cold sea. And the cold sea was Microsoft. It was Windows phone.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:13Nilay Patel?

  Right?

• 28:13Speaker 01

  So you either stayed on the platform and died from fire. That was, that was simian. No, but the problem with the metaphor is Android wasn't even included as like, there was like, oh, but by the way, there's a lifeboat right over there. You could just climb down.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  Google's like, there was a big ass boat and a helicopter, like, hey, guys, we're right here.

• 28:34Nilay Patel?

  And the other dude just peeing all over.

• 28:37Speaker 01

  Peeing up themselves, that's Yala.

• 28:42Nilay Patel?

  So after that, he switches on the Windows phone, many hilarious failures ensue. Microsoft buys Nokia.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  I promise not to get weird.

• 28:52Nilay Patel?

  This is, this is the reality.

• 28:54Speaker 02

  This, this is what really happened.

• 28:56Nilay Patel?

  This shit went down. Like, Finnish.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  Microsoft buys Nokia and then in short order is like, you know.

• 29:03Nilay Patel?

  But they only bought devices and so they bought the cellphone part.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:06Nilay Patel?

  Right?

• 29:07Speaker 01

  They didn't buy the Galosh's part.

• 29:08Nilay Patel?

  They killed the Nokia brand name. Now it's just like.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  They didn't buy the.

• 29:12Nilay Patel?

  They bought the urine soaked Galoshes.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  Cause Nokia started out making rubber.

• 29:19Speaker 02

  I got it, I'm with you.

• 29:20Nilay Patel?

  Right. The other part of Nokia, which is still Nokia, was like, we'll build the, the good stuff.

• 29:24Speaker 01

  The cell towers and.

• 29:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, cell towers, infrastructure, oil rigs that are burning, not burning, whatever, doesn't matter. And now this leftover Nokia is saying, we're going to design Android tablets for Foxconn.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 29:37Nilay Patel?

  Somewhere and Steven Elop is like, yes, my plan has come to, like, I don't know.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  No, he's at Microsoft, though.

• 29:44Nilay Patel?

  Just imagine his day to day. Like Steven Elop like wakes up every day and he's like, I did it.

• 29:49Speaker 02

  Really hard to imagine anyone not covered in paint.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  There is gonna be just like a super dark Scandinavian movie about Steven Elop, living his life after having completed his turncoat mission, just like an old spy.

• 30:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, now he like runs the society of thieves.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  Right. That's his reward.

• 30:09Nilay Patel?

  He's the king of thieves.

• 30:13Nilay Patel?

  What do you have on your notes for this?

• 30:14Speaker 02

  I mean, okay, so sometimes.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  I want to talk about the nerd specs to the tablet at some point.

• 30:18Speaker 02

  Well, I want to hear about him because I'm going to be honest with you. Sometimes I write the notes not reading the story. Like, I just like see the link. And my notes were Nokia, love me some snake, love me some granny phones, took Twitter off my phone. Now I'm all about that Nokia. Where's the beef? Right here. And then I click their link. Wait, this isn't a phone.

• 30:41Speaker 02

  And then I actually want this times a million, which is true.

• 30:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:45Speaker 02

  Because like I, I want that. Oh, man, like an Android version of the iPad mini. That's what I want.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  We haven't even gotten to that. You look at this thing and it is an iPad mini.

• 30:54Nilay Patel?

  Right. Absolutely.

• 30:56Speaker 03

  There's no way around that.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, like if you do not think that this is an iPad mini knockoff, or at least

• 31:02Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  The nice way to say knockoff is clone, whatever. You are crazy.

• 31:06Nilay Patel?

  Which by the way, makes their, their claim that like they, they want to keep their design lead in like continuing innovating, like all of the, it's like we, we tried to do everything we could. And this is what we could do.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  And so Nokia's, Nokia's excuse for this, by the way, is basically if you want to make a tablet with this size screen and high quality materials, this is what it looks like. It's not our fault. Like if you want to make a tablet like this, it has to look like an iPad.

• 31:31Nilay Patel?

  I don't think that's true.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  They could make a different color on the back or something.

• 31:34Speaker 03

  Is the Microsoft Nokia mad that new Nokia or old Nokia?

• 31:39Speaker 01

  We're not copying anyone. We are creating our own design.

• 31:41Speaker 03

  Is there some sort of like?

• 31:42Speaker 02

  Beef?

• 31:43Speaker 03

  Yeah. Are they, is Nokia allowed to make devices like that?

• 31:46Speaker 01

  There's only so many ways you can make this product is the exact quote.

• 31:50Speaker 02

  I want to know Sam's, the answer to Sam's question.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  Yes, they're allowed to do whatever they want.

• 31:54Speaker 02

  But I mean, are, is there, do they, I mean, they, they probably don't care about each other at this point. Old Nokia, new Nokia? You think there's some, oh, that's nice.

• 32:02Nilay Patel?

  No, I, I think that, I mean, they're all still in Finland. Many of them were laid off.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  And Sunnyvale and.

• 32:08Nilay Patel?

  Sunnyvale. I mean, like the, at this point, it is actually hard to see why Microsoft bought Nokia.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:14Nilay Patel?

  Well.

• 32:15Speaker 03

  Cause no one's buying Windows phones still.

• 32:17Speaker 01

  Well, we haven't, we need to wait and see.

• 32:21Speaker 01

  We need to wait and see. We need to wait and see if they're going to be able to come out with compelling phones next year. Like, and I know you're like, oh, you gotta give two years for them. No, they, they need to come out with something like

• 32:28Speaker 03

  Like at CES.

• 32:29Speaker 01

  Next year.

• 32:30Speaker 03

  Maybe.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  That would be a good time.

• 32:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I strongly suspect that they will not do anything in CES.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:36Nilay Patel?

  That's just a-

• 32:37Speaker 03

  Oh wait, didn't Microsoft pull out of CES last year?

• 32:39Nilay Patel?

  That's why I strongly-

• 32:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:42Nilay Patel?

  That was, thanks, Sam.

• 32:44Speaker 03

  I got you.

• 32:45Nilay Patel?

  That was, that's where it was-

• 32:46Speaker 02

  Am I crazy to think that I want this?

• 32:49Speaker 01

  So, it is a very compelling Android tablet, except that it's running-

• 32:54Nilay Patel?

  It has some weird launcher-

• 32:55Speaker 01

  Intel processor.

• 32:56Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  And it's hard to know if, how Android works on Intel processors from time to time. Like, we know how it runs on standard ARM stuff, anything else, like, you know, you're just not sure. Like, the Nexus 9 is a perfect example, that's ARM, but it's a 64-bit. And like, Android on a new processor is always a little-

• 33:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  The other thing is it's running that other launcher, who cares? But it's coming with an unlocked bootloader, so like, it is a completely hackable tablet, you can do whatever the hell you want to it, which is really cool.

• 33:24Speaker 03

  Do you want to talk about the specs of this thing?

• 33:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:27Nilay Patel?

  Didn't he just?

• 33:28Speaker 03

  Not really, no.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  I mean, it's running an Intel processor.

• 33:31Nilay Patel?

  That's really the spec, didn't it?

• 33:32Speaker 03

  I mean, it's same-size screen as an iPad.

• 33:35Nilay Patel?

  It's an iPad, I mean like-

• 33:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a 2048 by 1536 resolution, 7.9 screen, it's got, it's got the reversible USB connector-

• 33:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's cool.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  Which is cool.

• 33:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:44Nilay Patel?

  That will be cool.

• 33:45Speaker 01

  It's a fully laminated display.

• 33:46Nilay Patel?

  I've checked your reversible USB connectors.

• 33:48Speaker 03

  Dope.

• 33:50Speaker 02

  Can I ask you, like, a nerdy question as somebody like, who builds PCs but doesn't really know how I'm doing it? But it happens at the end? So, 2GB RAM sounds really small to me. And everybody wants like, nice shiny games and just graphic stuff on their-

• 34:07Speaker 01

  2GB RAM for Android is basically bog standard these days, 3GB is better.

• 34:12Speaker 02

  Oh, no, I mean, I get that it's standard for tablets in general, like, 2 to 3, but that still seems like, is it just because it's so expensive to go higher than that?

• 34:22Nilay Patel?

  No, I think it's literally-

• 34:23Speaker 02

  Or is there no reason to do it because the processor isn't gonna really-

• 34:26Nilay Patel?

  I, my, I think like, the iPhone and the iPad are starved for RAM.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  Safari is the worst on these devices.

• 34:33Nilay Patel?

  But with Android, I have never really run into that issue.

• 34:37Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 34:37Nilay Patel?

  Like, I think Android's actually better at memory management in that way. Whereas with the iPhone, it's like, oh, this app is gonna restart now.

• 34:43Speaker 02

  I feel like that's just the weird consumer technology thing. I, I'm kinda talking out of my ass right now, so I'll let everybody know, because I'm sure they'll let me know when it comes to PCs and everything else. But it seems like- Everybody wants shiny things that are still kinda cheap and we're seeing this with the new Assassin's Creed game came out and basically all the takedowns of this game talk about how it's the systems that are available right now aren't powerful enough to run it. Like there's all, we're already hitting this cap and it's like, congratulations, we're a year in, this is where next gen was supposed to be and like, the game's struggling. That seems depressing and the same thing happens, I mean, hearing, when I see iPad games, I look at them and I'm like, these games feel limited.

• 35:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:26Speaker 02

  I don't know, I mean, I guess it's just, consumers aren't going to pay for things that are nicer, is that the?

• 35:31Nilay Patel?

  No, I think it comes down to like, use case, right? Like.

• 35:34Speaker 02

  How many people are actually gonna use those things?

• 35:37Nilay Patel?

  Max it out.

• 35:38Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 35:39Nilay Patel?

  And I think the games are the place where you, oh, I just got corrected, Android is so not better at memory management. What I meant to say really was Android phones tend to have more memory, which is fair and I think that's.

• 35:49Speaker 01

  They tend to have more memory and, yeah, I mean, they manage it differently.

• 35:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they manage it differently and they manage it in a way that tends to maximize, like, their use of the.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  I will say that I am not forced to reload tabs on Chrome as often as I am on Safari.

• 36:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I'm really, actually just talking about Chrome.

• 36:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:06Nilay Patel?

  It's basically just like, it's, that's where I see it the most, it's mobile Safari and Chrome and Android.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 36:12Nilay Patel?

  And Chrome and Android appears to be better at that than mobile Safari.

• 36:14Speaker 02

  You really ought to hook me up with an Android phone to try out from my life.

• 36:19Nilay Patel?

  Get one.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  Here, have the Droid Turbo.

• 36:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, we should.

• 36:22Speaker 02

  Wait, is this the new one? Oh, great segue, Dieter. This is the one that like, charges forever, this feels funny in my hand. It feels like somebody's gonna snake.

• 36:29Nilay Patel?

  Here's what I'm gonna say.

• 36:31Speaker 02

  It feels like, it feels like the phone my dad had, like, you'd be like, oh, this is cool, we work at the fire department and it's got a rough egg.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  It's ballistic nylon.

• 36:44Speaker 02

  He's a fire chief.

• 36:45Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I see.

• 36:46Speaker 02

  Wow. Show some respect.

• 36:48Nilay Patel?

  So here's what I know about this phone, and I'm just gonna say it out loud. This phone is a piece of garbage. It is a piece of garbage.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  It's a huge disappointment.

• 36:56Nilay Patel?

  As the editor in chief of The Verge, I will say that the fact that we gave it a 7.7 makes me sad. Very many people will be fired. Like, the whole staff, actually.

• 37:08Speaker 03

  Got it.

• 37:08Nilay Patel?

  Like, how could you not see this?

• 37:09Speaker 01

  The reason this phone exists-

• 37:10Nilay Patel?

  Institutional failure.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  Is, so Verizon can make a bunch of money. And so the consumers can buy a thing that has a huge battery. And, um, that's it.

• 37:19Speaker 03

  Commercials, 15 minutes to get 8 hours of batteries.

• 37:22Nilay Patel?

  Well, here's what I know-

• 37:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I can do that on my Moto X. The, the-

• 37:25Nilay Patel?

  You can, cuz that's actually a Qualcomm thing. It is absolutely not a-

• 37:29Speaker 01

  It's Qualcomm's world, we're all just living in it. So, the thing is, it doesn't get, it doesn't quite achieve the battery life, and it's got a way faster processor, way more RAM, much higher resolution camera, and it performs worse than this beautiful piece of art that I have right here, made by the same company.

• 37:45Nilay Patel?

  Right, so Dieter has the new Moto X with, it's a black front and wood back. Walnut back. It is beautiful.

• 37:51Speaker 03

  So that's what I'm gonna try.

• 37:52Nilay Patel?

  You should get that.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  This camera is-

• 37:54Nilay Patel?

  I mean, you'll, Dieter will kill you.

• 37:58Speaker 03

  Went from dumpster fire-

• 37:59Speaker 01

  Dumpster?

• 38:00Speaker 03

  I know, I was just saying.

• 38:01Nilay Patel?

  That camera does suck. We, we all, Casey Newton was in town this week, and we all went to dinner last night, and we, like, at one point I came back, and I was like, "Ross, how's dinner? How are things going?" And he's like, "It's great. Dieter's been trying to take a picture for like 15 minutes."

• 38:16Speaker 01

  Accurate.

• 38:17Nilay Patel?

  You just couldn't do it. No, but Dieter was so happy when he got the Moto X.

• 38:21Speaker 01

  I am still happy.

• 38:22Nilay Patel?

  And it's a beautiful phone, except for this camera. And then you hold the Droid Turbo, and it's like, this is why, I mean, this phone-

• 38:30Speaker 01

  In here.

• 38:31Nilay Patel?

  And I will say this to you, this phone is the greatest argument for net neutrality ever made.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:35Nilay Patel?

  Right? Because this is what happens when you let Verizon do things. And they don't know how.

• 38:40Speaker 01

  It has a faster processor, and it screws up scrolling in Chrome. It has more RAM, and when you move things up and down on the screen, it like goes-

• 38:49Speaker 03

  Why? Why does that phone do that?

• 38:51Speaker 01

  I don't know. If someone, if you're an engineer and can tell me why the jelly-scrolling effect exists on this phone, please tell me.

• 38:56Nilay Patel?

  Maybe they did it on purpose, like, the back of the phone.

• 38:59Speaker 03

  Is it skin?

• 39:00Nilay Patel?

  Like, someone made this decision.

• 39:01Speaker 03

  I just like doing this haptic thing all day. The little fuzzy thing? Oh, yeah, love it.

• 39:05Nilay Patel?

  You like haptic feedback?

• 39:06Speaker 03

  I like this.

• 39:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:07Speaker 03

  Oh, I do. Pipe check, haptic feedback, I jailbreak for that shit.

• 39:13Nilay Patel?

  I think our podcast is over for the week, everybody. I think we've, we've once again, like, we're in the red. We're like, we're standing at the line. It's like, we're just at our feet. We're just staring at it.

• 39:26Speaker 01

  Better Call Saul premieres in February.

• 39:27Nilay Patel?

  That's something. All right, let's, let's move on. We should, we, there are two things to talk about.

• 39:31Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 39:32Nilay Patel?

  Uh, Chris, gambler's choice. Uh, we actually have to talk about Uber, but we can do that before or after we talk about cereal and podcast.

• 39:41Speaker 02

  Let's get Uber out of the way.

• 39:42Nilay Patel?

  All right.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  All right.

• 39:43Nilay Patel?

  Dieter, you want to do the Uber news?

• 39:46Speaker 01

  Uber has an asshole problem. Yeah. Okay. So now I saw that headline from Matthew Iglesias.

• 39:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 39:55Speaker 01

  So there was a dinner that was supposedly off the record, but, uh, nobody told BuzzFeed Reporter. And if someone doesn't tell you something's off the record, guess what? It's not. And at this dinner, uh, an Uber executive, whose name I forget, Michael, something Michael. Anyway, he intimated that it would be a great idea for Uber to spend a million dollars to dig up dirt on a reporter. Sarah Lacy from Pando Daily. And, uh, in addition, it also came out that Uber has a god mode where they can, if anybody wants to, executives at the company can go and look at people's movements in Uber when they've taken Uber.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  And so there's privacy issues. There's being a huge jerk to the press issues. There's all sorts of insane things and Uber's CEO issued a not apology apology. Uh, and it's just like, this is like par for the course for this company, which has done lots of things like this.

• 40:55Nilay Patel?

  Just broke on BuzzFeed. Uber has in recent weeks, I just exposé this one. Uber has in recent weeks sought to hire opposition researchers to weaponize facts to use against the taxi industry. According to a confidential recruiting document obtained by BuzzFeed News and confirmed by the company. So they are doing this opposition research thing, right? They hired David Plouffe, who's like the Obama campaign manager.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 41:18Nilay Patel?

  And he's running an oppo campaign against her political opponents.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:22Nilay Patel?

  Which is probably where this idea came from, right? We can run an oppo campaign against taxi, which is fair because that's a political lobby. But running it against a journalist seems like a huge dick move. And I think that's the Uber problem, right? They have no limits on their behavior. Right.

• 41:38Speaker 02

  It's also a really gross misunderstanding of what journalism is. Like, I can see how somebody who is at that company is like, well, it's game meets game. Like, you write about me and I write about you, not understanding what journalism is, or what a public service is, or like, writing for an audience that needs to hear things is. Just, I mean, that feels like it's just slander if you're going to go after a person for literally nothing but to expose dirt on them.

• 42:05Nilay Patel?

  Right, right.

• 42:05Speaker 02

  It's, I mean, it's like you said, it's gross. I mean, when I wrote down this gross, but gross.

• 42:12Nilay Patel?

  Well, the problem is that Uber is...

• 42:16Nilay Patel?

  Let me ask you a question.

• 42:16Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 42:18Nilay Patel?

  I ask you this question, Chris Plank.

• 42:20Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 42:20Nilay Patel?

  Is Uber a technology company?

• 42:22Speaker 02

  I already know your answer to this.

• 42:24Nilay Patel?

  Well, I know, I know you do, but tell the people.

• 42:27Speaker 02

  I think it has aspirations to be a technology company.

• 42:30Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 42:31Speaker 02

  I do, I think it is there right now. I mean, it is in the sense that it did the app and other people didn't.

• 42:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 42:39Speaker 02

  And the app is technology, but I think it has ambitions to be something much more.

• 42:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 42:45Speaker 02

  This is actually, I don't know if you want to do the lead-in right now, but it's leading into our podcast conversation.

• 42:51Nilay Patel?

  That's way too soon.

• 42:51Speaker 02

  Okay, well, we'll bump back on to it.

• 42:54Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 42:54Speaker 02

  But we'll bring that back up.

• 42:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Well, no, so I think Uber is kind of not, right? I think they built this backend, which is cool.

• 43:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:03Nilay Patel?

  But they don't actually do the next thing that you would do if you know where everyone in a city is going, which is like, tell drivers where to be, right? It's basically like, drivers get an iPhone, the iPhone has an app, and you push the button. If the driver happens to be around, they can come pick you up. And there's some like, rating stuff, and then some extraordinarily opaque surge pricing stuff, which is their fault, right? If they would just tell you, instead of like, making drunk people do math, which is stupid, like, a stupid design decision, if they would just tell you, this is, will cost more. Well, they, yeah, I mean, they do it now, they didn't at first, but you can get a cut, an estimate, you can like, I'm gonna go there. No, that's like, 15 clicks away. Yeah, well. Right, I mean, like, Uber just doesn't tell you how much it's gonna cost.

• 43:44Nilay Patel?

  At no point in like, the basic Uber experience is like, it predicting cost part of the flow. Right. And then when it's surge pricing, it's like, well, we haven't told you how much the baseline is, but this will be 3.7X. And it's like, yeah, okay. And they're like, but confirm the 3.7X. And that's why people are confused. They're like, that sounds reasonable. I bet this isn't going to be cheap. And then it's like $700.

• 44:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:09Nilay Patel?

  And like, that's just their problem, right? Their problem is they don't really, they haven't done the rest of the work. They've done all the work to be huge. And now they're like being really aggressive being huge. And then when people point out that they're assholes, or that the flow of their technology is like, reflective of fact, they're assholes.

• 44:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:27Nilay Patel?

  They respond by being bigger assholes.

• 44:29Speaker 02

  Right.

• 44:30Nilay Patel?

  And like, that's like, if you want to be a technology company, which I think that they do, what they should actually do is like, go to a place where their dominance is related to how good their technology is, instead of how, like, how much of a jerk they are.

• 44:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I'm just waiting for nice Uber or New York City to get an app out.

• 44:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 44:51Speaker 02

  Like, that, that's what's frustrating about this.

• 44:53Nilay Patel?

  It's never gonna happen.

• 44:54Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, but I mean, I mean, I, who, who knows? Maybe I, I'm not realistic, but like, I would rather pay the current New York City taxi rate and know like that the company is treating people okay.

• 45:08Speaker 01

  Well, that's the thing is Uber does not treat the drivers well. Drivers are assumed, like, they get told that they're going to get paid a certain amount and they don't get paid that at all. This was the stupid story about veterans. They also have been pushing drivers to take these loans for cars that were basically subprime and they couldn't afford them. It was a bad idea for to take these loans. They, they are just bad actors all around, but they have, they got to a better app before anybody else. And then they have aggressively, through these tactics, um, Operation Slog 2, uh, gotten bigger than everybody else. And so they're trying to win just by having scale.

• 45:44Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  It's like, it's like the Walmartization of taxis.

• 45:48Nilay Patel?

  Ben, it's also like, and, um, I don't know, we've been, we've been talking about this on and off. Uh, the whole staff isn't talking on and off.

• 45:54Speaker 01

  And I've stolen all of my points from the whole staff. None of these are mine. Sorry, guys.

• 45:57Nilay Patel?

  Uh, no, but like, they have like God view or God mode, right? Where you can like, look, they have parties where they put famous people up on the, on the screen and be like, here's where Britney Spears is in Uber right now. Or here's her last Uber ride. And it's like, that's crazy. Right? And like, what that reflects is an idea that the rules that govern like virtual worlds and software should also be the rules that govern real life. And it's not true.

• 46:22Speaker 02

  Which, yeah, is, I think is something that is a bigger issue that needs to go both ways, too.

• 46:27Nilay Patel?

  But that's the Uber thing. Like Uber is the ultimate expression of, we can do it, so we're gonna.

• 46:33Speaker 02

  For sure. I will. I think Twitter and other social media also have a different version of that where it's like, we're going to apply a lot of public laws and not have to, basically so we don't have to worry about shit.

• 46:45Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 46:45Speaker 02

  So, I mean, it's maybe a reverse, but I, I think-

• 46:48Speaker 01

  I don't know. I see, I see Twitter especially, but also other social media companies, at least, they, at the, at a bare minimum, they have a veneer of trying to do the right thing and having that thing's policy. And in a lot of cases, there's actually some like real-

• 47:00Nilay Patel?

  I mean, Twitter wants to be responsible for like democratic revolutions.

• 47:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:05Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, that's Twitter's aspiration. Uber like wants to make you feel like a pimp. That's like a thing that they say.

• 47:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:12Nilay Patel?

  Uh, they have like services where like hot chicks pick you up. Like-

• 47:16Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. And they partner with like people, they partner with different companies of like, here, a tank is gonna pick you up. You just Ubered a tank.

• 47:26Speaker 01

  Hype check Ubering a tank.

• 47:27Speaker 02

  That's bust.

• 47:30Nilay Patel?

  Hype check Uber right now.

• 47:33Speaker 03

  Not in a good place, man.

• 47:34Nilay Patel?

  Ooh, rough.

• 47:35Speaker 02

  It's rough.

• 47:36Nilay Patel?

  All right. Make your podcast segue.

• 47:38Speaker 02

  Okay. So my segue for this, how is it going to do it? Well, I'll start and we'll work my way there. We want to talk about Serial, but there's another podcast out there that I think everybody should listen to.

• 47:48Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 47:48Speaker 02

  That is similar.

• 47:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 47:50Speaker 02

  Uh, have you heard of Startup?

• 47:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 47:52Speaker 02

  Startup is great. Alex Blumberg, who did, uh, what is it?

• 47:56Speaker 01

  Planet Money.

• 47:56Speaker 02

  Planet Money, and now is documenting his process of starting up his own podcast network.

• 48:02Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 48:03Speaker 02

  And it's great. It's, it feels a lot like Serial, uh, in that he is telling you the through line of the story, but then he'll intercut interviews, or it'll be like, hey, here's a conversation that I recorded with my wife.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  Or here's an ad from Mailchimp.

• 48:17Speaker 02

  Or here's, here's, what's their ad company in this nerd wallet is the one they have? Mail, Mailchimp?

• 48:24Nilay Patel?

  I, can I, can I just read?

• 48:26Speaker 01

  I actually use Mailchimp.

• 48:26Nilay Patel?

  Can I, can I, Mailchimp?

• 48:28Speaker 02

  Well, you did the whole part of the ending.

• 48:30Nilay Patel?

  Uh-

• 48:30Speaker 02

  I love Mailchimp.

• 48:31Nilay Patel?

  That's great. Uh, can I just interrupt this to read a story that just went up in business inside of it? Look at the Vergecast, watch us read the internet. No, no, here we go. "Over the weekend, Business Insider's office was robbed." Feel bad for them. Oh no. "Fortunately, most of her equipment is safely locked up, but everything that wasn't nailed down, a computer, two digital cameras, a Google TV, a DSLR, some smartphones and high-end phones, was jacked." Well, almost everything. A flip cam was outlying in plain sight. Oh man. It was bright orange, the thief saw it but couldn't be bothered to take it.

• 49:02Nilay Patel?

  Wow, remember flip cams?

• 49:05Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 49:06Nilay Patel?

  Sorry, alright, carry on.

• 49:09Speaker 02

  That is something.

• 49:11Nilay Patel?

  Poor flip cams. You know, one time at CES, I got into a huge argument with Chris Grant about the size, the potential size of like, the Sony bloggy camera market. I don't remember what the argument is, we were like drunk, we were in a casino. And like, I was like, "This is why tech is so much bigger than games, man, they're gonna sell so many bloggy cams."

• 49:29Speaker 02

  I could literally smell beer on your hair.

• 49:33Nilay Patel?

  And Grant was like, "I just don't, I don't think you're right about that one, Neil."

• 49:38Speaker 02

  And here we are now.

• 49:39Nilay Patel?

  I don't think that's the way it's gonna turn out.

• 49:41Speaker 02

  Real Chris Grant.

• 49:42Nilay Patel?

  I don't think so.

• 49:44Speaker 02

  Don't see it.

• 49:45Nilay Patel?

  I was like, "You don't even know, man, people are gonna buy the hell out of..." It was bad, bad. I like to practice my arguments on other people.

• 49:52Speaker 02

  I cannot wait for my first CES, you are just really getting me hyped up.

• 49:57Nilay Patel?

  It's coming, by the way. Yeah. CES invites are going out. We've been doing lots of planning, preparing. Alright, please, please continue your podcast discussion.

• 50:04Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 50:04Nilay Patel?

  On our podcast. Yeah.

• 50:06Speaker 02

  I'm, there was somehow that it connected to Uber, I promise, but...

• 50:09Nilay Patel?

  It doesn't matter. The point is... Well, so here's, here's the news hook. Serial has been, is now like the most popular podcast.

• 50:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:14Nilay Patel?

  Ever. It's been downloaded five million times, or streamed five million times, said ass as Apple. Everyone loves it, there's podcasts about a podcast, which was amazing. We are on this podcast talking about podcasts about a podcast.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  What?

• 50:27Speaker 02

  I remember the connection.

• 50:28Speaker 01

  Go ahead.

• 50:29Speaker 02

  Okay, so in the show, and this isn't a spoiler, I think it's like the first or second episode. He's talking to a big investor and the investor's like.

• 50:38Nilay Patel?

  And the startup podcast is what it's like.

• 50:40Speaker 02

  And he's like, I think it has to be a technology company. And he's like, it can't just be a podcast. Here are all the things that you could do on top of it. And it's basically taking data or adding in a cool app or doing all those things. And what I was thinking with Uber is it hasn't had that phase. It hasn't had that like taking the data and using it for, I mean, what Google would do is like marketing. Or taking that data and using it for the extra stream of cash.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  Actually fix podcasts, which is a weird mess of files and streaming.

• 51:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, that's what startup is doing. Yeah, because it's like, this is silly. You're just getting an MP3 from an RSS feed on iTunes.

• 51:20Nilay Patel?

  Well, what I'm saying, so that's the interesting thing. And I think this actually like, you know, Uber just did like a partnership with Spotify. Like podcasts are really popular because people listen to them in cars. Like Sarah Koenig was like, we wanted something that people would listen to in their cars. Like, we wanted to make a Netflix serialized drama for commuters. Right? So we're gonna do this long running thing. And that's like a fascinating way to think about a show. But as someone who's been doing a podcast for a long time, like what's the, all of the backend of the business of this is completely up in the air. And what you're seeing right now is this like rush of innovation because there are no fixed ways of doing it. And all the ways of doing it kind of don't make money.

• 52:01Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, it's great that male kimp is probably like, now the world's.

• 52:07Speaker 03

  You said it so seriously.

• 52:08Nilay Patel?

  Uh, world's most, I literally had to think, you know, it's actually my favorite thing about T R right now is that I always listen to it at 1.5x speed.

• 52:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, me too.

• 52:16Nilay Patel?

  And so.

• 52:17Speaker 03

  Oh, that's a good life hack. Cause I listened to the first episode and it was like 50 minutes long and I was like, oh, man.

• 52:23Nilay Patel?

  You're like, I'm gonna die soon. That couldn't possibly.

• 52:26Speaker 03

  And I've only listened to the first episode.

• 52:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, everybody, everybody that listens to podcasts listens that fast.

• 52:31Speaker 02

  Uh, I mean, I like it at the pace that they make it up because I believe back in our choice.

• 52:36Nilay Patel?

  I went back and listened, but it's funny because the music is sped up too.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:40Nilay Patel?

  And I got really disoriented by the music.

• 52:42Speaker 01

  It just felt like, like slow and creepy, like you were going into like a bad horror movie.

• 52:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And I was like, oh, this is supposed to be ominous. It's not supposed to be jaunty. This is a story about a murder.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  Right?

• 52:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 52:54Speaker 02

  It all makes sense now.

• 52:56Nilay Patel?

  But the backend is crazy, like, metrics on a podcast are impossible to get.

• 53:01Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 53:02Nilay Patel?

  How many people?

• 53:02Speaker 01

  You put it on RSS feed and there's no way to track RSS feeds because Google bought Feedburner and then just let it die.

• 53:09Nilay Patel?

  Yep.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  And so they just, like, files go out and who knows?

• 53:13Speaker 03

  Guys, if you watch the Vergecast, tweet, "I watched the hashtag Vergecast."

• 53:19Nilay Patel?

  I'm being told something.

• 53:25Speaker 03

  I need to watch slash listen to Serial on 1.5X. What app do you recommend I do that with?

• 53:30Nilay Patel?

  I just use the podcast app.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  I wasn't.

• 53:32Speaker 03

  And you can adjust the time in the app?

• 53:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. This is like, I think now, like, a baseline feature of podcasts.

• 53:38Speaker 03

  I didn't know that.

• 53:39Speaker 01

  So, as long as we're talking about podcasts, I didn't know that we could tease this, but I totally can. We have an entire top shelf episode about podcasts coming out the day after Thanksgiving, including an interview with the people behind the Startup Podcast.

• 53:53Speaker 02

  What? Why didn't you tell me?

• 53:56Speaker 01

  Because I didn't know that I could, because it was a big secret, but now I'm telling everybody.

• 54:00Speaker 02

  That's great.

• 54:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:01Speaker 02

  You should listen to that podcast before you read this, because it's great.

• 54:04Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, I just think it's funny. I think that we, you know, we, last time we had this big conversation about unbundling and media. And like, I think we're just in a moment where, like, everything on the internet is like the 90s again. It's like Slack is like really popular, but it's like AOL chatrooms. Like, it's just, we're coming back around to a bunch of old ideas about media, because it turned out some of them are really good.

• 54:24Speaker 01

  Coming back around to all the good ideas from the 90s on media, except for the open web. That one, not so much.

• 54:30Nilay Patel?

  It's not coming back.

• 54:30Speaker 03

  Look, the 90s were great.

• 54:31Nilay Patel?

  Uh, I've checked the 90s.

• 54:33Speaker 03

  The best.

• 54:33Nilay Patel?

  What? How old were you?

• 54:36Speaker 03

  Uh, 0 through 10. I was born on June 19th, 1990.

• 54:41Nilay Patel?

  Like, I would like to say, like, the 80s were the best, but 0 through 10 is not a.

• 54:44Speaker 02

  Also, 0 through 9.

• 54:45Nilay Patel?

  That's how old I was in the 80s.

• 54:46Speaker 03

  0 through 9, you're right, you're right.

• 54:47Speaker 01

  I was, I was 2 through 12 in the 80s, so I, I'm good. I can, I can count on this.

• 54:51Nilay Patel?

  I have some fond 80s. Anyway, whatever. I'll say it's.

• 54:54Speaker 03

  80s are mustangs and mullets.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  What are you talking about?

• 54:57Speaker 03

  That's the 80s Mustangs and mullets.

• 55:00Nilay Patel?

  Hype check the 80s.

• 55:01Speaker 03

  I don't know. It wasn't around.

• 55:03Nilay Patel?

  How can you hype check the 90s without be able to hype check the 80s based on effectively the same amount of cultural influence?

• 55:09Speaker 03

  The 80s was like Top Gun and Back to the Future.

• 55:13Nilay Patel?

  Are you, who are you looking at?

• 55:15Speaker 03

  The people. The camera. The people.

• 55:17Speaker 02

  That was really upsetting. I mean, it's like, he's finally gone off the deep end.

• 55:25Nilay Patel?

  Sam just confidently staring into nothing and be like, the 80s was about Top Gun.

• 55:30Speaker 02

  Thumbs up.

• 55:30Nilay Patel?

  The 80s was about Top Gun and I own Top Gun and Blu-ray and it was great. That's all I'm saying. I was gonna say something, oh, podcasts. No, it's, I think it's crazy that like, radio is as a format.

• 55:42Speaker 02

  Coming back. The shadow nose.

• 55:45Nilay Patel?

  And I think it's, it's.

• 55:46Speaker 01

  It makes me mad.

• 55:47Nilay Patel?

  It doesn't.

• 55:48Speaker 02

  What?

• 55:48Nilay Patel?

  Why?

• 55:49Speaker 01

  Because I never stopped listening to podcasts. Like, everyone's like, oh, they're just on again.

• 55:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:56Speaker 01

  It's mad.

• 55:57Speaker 02

  It sucks that there's an audience that can potentially pay for more of these good things.

• 56:00Speaker 01

  Knowledge bowl, okay?

• 56:02Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, boy.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  I have deep-seated issues that are completely obvious to everybody. More than a minute.

• 56:11Nilay Patel?

  What's your relationship with your father like?

• 56:13Speaker 01

  Actually, he's really good.

• 56:14Speaker 02

  That's nice.

• 56:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's a really nice guy.

• 56:16Speaker 02

  He's really good to hear.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  Spitting image of Alan Alda, actually.

• 56:19Speaker 02

  Really?

• 56:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:20Speaker 02

  Alan Alda is a beautiful man. Saw him in, uh, Greenberg and Glen Ross.

• 56:22Nilay Patel?

  What the listener can't see is how jauntily Dieter picked up his beer and was like, spitting image of Alan Alda.

• 56:27Speaker 02

  You ever seen MASH? Suicide is painless, you see? No, it's a song.

• 56:31Nilay Patel?

  Have you ever seen MASH, Sam?

• 56:34Speaker 01

  The movie or the TV show?

• 56:36Speaker 02

  Do you know what MASH is?

• 56:37Speaker 03

  All I know is that it's branded in all caps with asterisks.

• 56:40Speaker 01

  What does MASH stand for?

• 56:43Nilay Patel?

  Hype check.

• 56:44Speaker 03

  I do.

• 56:44Nilay Patel?

  Acronyms.

• 56:45Speaker 03

  I really, oh, acronyms are, acronyms are cool, lol.

• 56:52Nilay Patel?

  Why does the show go every week?

• 56:54Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 56:55Nilay Patel?

  Uh, should we just?

• 56:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, I think we can wrap it from that. I think acronym's wall is pretty much a little commentary on everything we've done today.

• 57:05Nilay Patel?

  Here's, here's some news that just broke a little bit.

• 57:07Speaker 01

  Why does news keep breaking during the Vergecast? Stop it!

• 57:10Nilay Patel?

  Well, it broke last night, but our guys are arguing about it.

• 57:12Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 57:12Nilay Patel?

  Uh, Sony might be killing the Steve Jobs movie. Uh, but Universal might be picking it up.

• 57:17Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 57:18Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 57:19Speaker 01

  Who is the latest Jobs in this one?

• 57:20Nilay Patel?

  I don't know, but this movie has always seemed like a stupid idea.

• 57:24Speaker 02

  Wasn't this like the three different press conferences?

• 57:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you know, do you want to go through it?

• 57:29Speaker 02

  I mean, from what I know of it, it's, uh, the writer of the newsroom. And

• 57:34Speaker 01

  Also West Wing.

• 57:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, he did some other step, but let's focus on the newsroom.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  The social network.

• 57:39Speaker 02

  Also Sportsnight. Um, and

• 57:42Speaker 01

  You know what? Sportsnight? Overrated.

• 57:44Speaker 02

  Uh, with the laugh track? Yeah, sure.

• 57:46Speaker 01

  Both ways.

• 57:47Speaker 02

  Hmm, okay, we're not gonna get into it right here, but from the movie, it's like, uh, before the Apple 2 announcement, the iPod and the iPad?

• 57:58Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 57:58Speaker 02

  Is that it?

• 57:59Nilay Patel?

  And Lisa, Jobs's like other first daughter, that he refused to acknowledge paternity of, uh, is apparently the heroine, according to Aaron Sorkin.

• 58:08Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 58:09Nilay Patel?

  Insane. So I would, I mean, I just the idea that

• 58:12Speaker 01

  I mean, not necessarily. If he knows, like, they're, she's not like a public figure, maybe

• 58:16Nilay Patel?

  But how do you set?

• 58:17Speaker 01

  Maybe he knows more about her story than we do.

• 58:19Nilay Patel?

  Backstage before the iPod being announced and have Lisa Brennan Jobs be there?

• 58:25Speaker 01

  She might know, he might know more about her involvement in that thing than you do.

• 58:29Nilay Patel?

  That's fair. I just don't think she was backstage at that.

• 58:31Speaker 02

  Or it just makes great storytelling and it's just a great device to get the story of it out.

• 58:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's the Macintosh or something, something. Somebody in my ear explained it to me.

• 58:41Nilay Patel?

  It's the Mac, the next and the iPod.

• 58:42Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, those are my favorite.

• 58:43Nilay Patel?

  But if you think, like, that is not

• 58:47Speaker 01

  Have you watched the iPod reveal on video? Like it's out there on YouTube?

• 58:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 58:53Speaker 01

  It's like, it's weird.

• 58:55Nilay Patel?

  It was held on Apple campus.

• 58:57Speaker 01

  About the size of where we're sitting right now. And like Steve Jobs is like standing on a stage and it's like, like imagine like the distance from you to me and like the iPod is getting announced in front of you. That's what it looks like. It's crazy. And like, just like quiet, no giant production, just like Steve Jobs walks out in front of a room full of people. It's like, hey, guys, this thing is cool.

• 59:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. No, I mean, the thing like that, but it's not like, how do you make this movie and not have the iPhone in it? But just in any way, shape or form, how do you make this movie and not have the iPhone in it? Right? The iPhone is the thing that like transformed this business.

• 59:31Speaker 02

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna pull it back a little bit. I'm gonna guess. It's just me, even though not all the newsroom is great. Aaron Sorkin is a master storyteller.

• 59:41Nilay Patel?

  True.

• 59:42Speaker 02

  Who understands where to put act breaks and has a very specific narrative that he wants to tell.

• 59:48Speaker 01

  I have a counterpoint.

• 59:49Speaker 02

  No, do my guess.

• 59:49Speaker 01

  I have a counterpoint.

• 59:50Speaker 02

  That has nothing to do with the object. It has everything to do with the person.

• 59:53Speaker 01

  Newsroom season two, there's my counterpoint.

• 59:55Speaker 02

  I haven't watched the newsroom. But I think, I think, I think he gets how to do story. I mean, who would have thought The Social Network would be a good movie? The dude knows how to write a story.

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  Very good movie, man. You know how, you know how you save this movie? You don't make it? College kid singing a cappella.

• 1:00:12Speaker 02

  Hit it, rockapella!

• 1:00:13Nilay Patel?

  Where in the world is? Now we're done with the podcast. Now we are 100% done with this podcast. Sammy, have you ever seen an episode of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  I played the game.

• 1:00:26Nilay Patel?

  You played the game.

• 1:00:27Speaker 01

  Oh, wait, are you trolling me right now?

• 1:00:29Nilay Patel?

  No, I'm legitimately asking you.

• 1:00:30Speaker 01

  Dude, I need to close my laptop for this.

• 1:00:32Nilay Patel?

  What's gonna happen?

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  When, so.

• 1:00:38Speaker 01

  In April.

• 1:00:40Speaker 03

  In April, no, no, no, this is, this is a good story. In April, I was walking in the streets of the fine city of New York.

• 1:00:45Nilay Patel?

  I saw Carmen Sandiego.

• 1:00:46Speaker 03

  I saw Carmen Sandiego. I took a picture of this woman. I took a picture of this woman wearing-

• 1:00:53Nilay Patel?

  You took a picture of a woman that you didn't know?

• 1:00:55Speaker 03

  Yes, I, I have no shame and-

• 1:00:58Speaker 01

  You creep shot it a fictional-

• 1:00:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, and she was wearing the hat and the coat, okay? And a few days later, I submitted it to Reddit and it was number one overall. You're welcome.

• 1:01:07Speaker 02

  Surprise, a, a photo of a woman who didn't know she was getting a photo taken of her-

• 1:01:11Speaker 03

  No, no.

• 1:01:12Speaker 02

  Was number one on Reddit.

• 1:01:13Speaker 03

  No, the story, the story gets better, there's a reason-

• 1:01:15Speaker 01

  The story, the story is such you.

• 1:01:17Nilay Patel?

  Wait, wait, wait, I want to hear the rest of the story.

• 1:01:20Speaker 03

  So, so it was number one on Reddit and it was awesome and my title was, "I Found Her." And it got upvoted a lot and it was on the front page of Reddit and it was literally number one overall and I have a screenshot, okay? And just yesterday, I was looking through old photos, cause Nathan Psychert, we were just-

• 1:01:37Nilay Patel?

  Okay, I will say-

• 1:01:38Speaker 03

  No, no, wait, let me finish the story. So, so, so I tweeted, I was like, "Throwback to this awesome moment." And I was just like, total, this is a total brag, I was number one on Reddit. Then, there is a BuzzFeed story that comes out yesterday and it was like, "24 Reasons These Humans Got Out of Bed" or something. And the first photo in this list was my picture.

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  Did you get credit?

• 1:02:02Speaker 03

  Nope.

• 1:02:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Reddit, everyone. Oh, I found your picture.

• 1:02:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm looking right at it.

• 1:02:07Nilay Patel?

  By the way, this is apparently a meme of creep shotting women in hats on Reddit and saying it's Carmen Sandiego.

• 1:02:14Speaker 03

  I didn't know that, that was a meme, I submitted it to our funny.

• 1:02:16Nilay Patel?

  So, thank you, everyone. Thank you, Reddit community.

• 1:02:19Speaker 03

  It was just a wild coincidence that I tweeted about it. The author, I actually tweeted at him, nice dude, seemingly. Um, he didn't see that I tweeted and it was just super ironic. Samantha Mason, actually, uh, someone on our legal staff tweeted at me last night, she was like, "Did you see this BuzzFeed, BuzzFeed post?" And I was just like-

• 1:02:37Nilay Patel?

  Didn't we hear this story already?

• 1:02:41Speaker 03

  I'm done.

• 1:02:42Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying, like, isn't...

• 1:02:44Speaker 02

  I, I...

• 1:02:44Nilay Patel?

  It was exciting, right?

• 1:02:46Speaker 03

  It was a crazy coincidence that you brought up Carmen Sandiego and this whole thing happened in the last 24 hours.

• 1:02:50Speaker 02

  I enjoyed your story.

• 1:02:51Nilay Patel?

  I liked your story too.

• 1:02:53Speaker 03

  Look, guys, I got, I got the coin beta.

• 1:02:57Speaker 03

  Here.

• 1:02:57Nilay Patel?

  Pipe check, coin beta.

• 1:02:59Speaker 03

  It's cool, it works. It was really buggy when I was trying to like sync it and activate it, but after you get it, it just works like a credit card and it's cool.

• 1:03:11Nilay Patel?

  Alright.

• 1:03:12Speaker 03

  I left my, I've left my wallet in, on my desk today and got lunch.

• 1:03:15Nilay Patel?

  You, you should have said El Segundo. Alright, it's a different joke.

• 1:03:19Speaker 03

  What? Wow, even Dieter didn't understand that. Oh, well, yeah.

• 1:03:25Nilay Patel?

  It's a good song. But, anyway.

• 1:03:27Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:03:28Nilay Patel?

  That was our show.

• 1:03:29Speaker 02

  Great.

• 1:03:30Speaker 03

  Where, where in time is Carmen Sandiego?

• 1:03:32Nilay Patel?

  As always, it stumbled to a close. And I think that's why.

• 1:03:37Speaker 02

  Fingernails breaking off to get to the finish line.

• 1:03:39Speaker 01

  Please, please go back in time and stop yourself from listening to this. And then tell that person to rate us on iTunes.

• 1:03:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so there are many ways to communicate with us. You can tweet at us, you can leave a comment in the post. The way that we wish for you to communicate with us is by opening iTunes. Do us that favor. I know it hurts.

• 1:03:59Nilay Patel?

  Leave us a review, five stars. Give Chris that fifth star.

• 1:04:06Speaker 02

  What, what are, what are people gonna write about on iTunes this week?

• 1:04:08Nilay Patel?

  I think on iTunes, they should tell us a story of the next time Sam meets Carmen Sandiego.

• 1:04:16Nilay Patel?

  I think, I think that's...

• 1:04:17Speaker 01

  It's probably going to involve a restraining order.

• 1:04:19Speaker 02

  Fanfiction about Sam meeting, fanfiction about Sam meeting Carmen Sandiego, I think is a really...

• 1:04:25Speaker 03

  Wait, is this the Carmen Sandiego I saw in the street or like the fictional?

• 1:04:29Speaker 02

  Any, sure.

• 1:04:30Nilay Patel?

  Sam, here's the thing about creativity, alright? It's some, in some moments...

• 1:04:34Speaker 02

  You don't need rules.

• 1:04:34Speaker 01

  You, you know, you, you create a box and then that...

• 1:04:37Nilay Patel?

  You fill it in.

• 1:04:38Speaker 03

  You create a corner of hype and, yeah.

• 1:04:41Speaker 02

  You work your way out? Are you painting the floor?

• 1:04:44Nilay Patel?

  Actually, you, you can do two things. You, you, there are two, two choices.

• 1:04:47Speaker 03

  God.

• 1:04:48Nilay Patel?

  There are two, because this is a question that I actually need the answer to. Two choices. One, you can tell a story about Sam meeting Carmen Sandiego and whichever way you want.

• 1:04:55Speaker 03

  And keep it G rated, please.

• 1:04:57Speaker 02

  Please.

• 1:04:58Nilay Patel?

  I would prefer a PG 13.

• 1:04:59Speaker 03

  Oh, gee, so there's like cursing allowed?

• 1:05:01Speaker 02

  Please, gee.

• 1:05:03Speaker 03

  So like ride the teen wave.

• 1:05:05Nilay Patel?

  Or you can tell me.

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  Actually, make it, make it a.

• 1:05:09Speaker 03

  Don't do it.

• 1:05:10Nilay Patel?

  Or you can tell me what the name of the area that Sam sits should be.

• 1:05:14Speaker 03

  I like that. I like that one better.

• 1:05:16Nilay Patel?

  Because Sweatbox.

• 1:05:17Speaker 03

  Sweat Lodge, Hype Corner.

• 1:05:19Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:05:20Speaker 02

  Sweat Lodge.

• 1:05:21Speaker 03

  Teen area.

• 1:05:22Speaker 02

  13th time today in Sam's Sweat Lodge.

• 1:05:25Nilay Patel?

  All right. That's it for this week. It has always been a pleasure.

• 1:05:29Speaker 03

  Add us on Snapchat, TheRealVirg.

• 1:05:31Nilay Patel?

  Be in your brain in this way, or in your car, in your home, irritating the ones you love. And, you know, just being a family. And that's it. That's the Virg.

• 1:05:41Speaker 03

  Oh, we're not, we're not back next week because of Thanksgiving.

• 1:05:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, we will. We will be taking at least a week off for Thanksgiving.

• 1:05:46Nilay Patel?

  Next week we'll be giving thanks. Yeah, and then we'll be back again. That's it. Now is the.

• 1:05:51Speaker 02

  Bye.