IFA 2018, Apple event announced, and iPhone/Apple watch leaks

This week, The Verge has been at IFA 2018, Europe’s big tech event. There are a lot of new gadgets, so Nilay, Dieter, and Paul go through their favorites on The Vergecast. Also, Apple announced its September event this week, and immediately following the announcement, iPhone and Apple Watch leaks surfaced. The crew discusses. And, of course, we have our fan-favorite segments: Liz’s “This week in Elon Musk” and Paul’s “Keyboard-in-the-front club: population 2” There’s a whole lot more in between that — like Sonos announcing a geeky new amp — so listen to it all, and you’ll get it all. 01:04 - The Internet of Garbage by Sarah Jeong 02:08 - Apple’s next iPhone event will be on September 12th 03:24 - Purported iPhone XS image shows gold color and Plus-sized display 15:03 - Leaked Apple Watch Series 4 image reveals bigger display, new complications 25:15 - This week in Elon Musk with Liz Lopatto 29:30 - IFA 2018: all the biggest news from Europe’s grand tech showcase 29:43 - Acer’s absurd Predator Thronos gaming chair is fit for a king 32:29 - Lenovo’s new Yoga Book replaces the keyboard with an E-Ink screen 36:22 - Asus’ new laptop has a touchscreen trackpad 37:44 - Skagen’s minimalist Falster smartwatch gets a sequel with fitness features 43:01 - Sony’s 1000X M3 noise-canceling headphones have an improved design and USB-C 45:09 - Paul’s weekly segment “Keyboard-in-the-front club: population 2” 48:51 - Trump lashes out at Google: all the news about the president’s intensifying feud with Silicon Valley 52:18 - The new Sonos Amp is coming to save your old speakers 59:20 - The last Blockbuster: what we really lose when video stores shut down Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

  This episode of Vergecast is brought to you by the Audi e-tron. The electric car has always raised questions. Can it contend with the elements? What's the range? With high-speed charging, long-range capabilities and quattro all-wheel drive, the fully-electric Audi e-tron can be the answer. Visit AudiUSA.com/e-tron to learn more and stay informed.

• 0:18Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to Vergecast, the flagship podcast of The Verge and also Vox Media. I gotta tell you, I read some copy that other Vox Media podcasts might have to say, and they definitely have them saying that we're the flagship. I think this joke is starting to get out of control. Anyway, I'm your friend, Neelai. Paul is here. Hi, Paul.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 0:38Nilay Patel?

  Dieter Bohn.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  Hi, how's it going?

• 0:40Nilay Patel?

  Tell him. Tell him how you feel about it.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  I'm your tech patron.

• 0:43Nilay Patel?

  Tech patron? That just sounds like you work at TechSurf.

• 0:48Nilay Patel?

  I'd like a 64-GB iPod, please.

• 0:52Nilay Patel?

  There's a lot going on this week. Apple stuff leaking all over the place.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  Google stuff leaking too.

• 0:57Nilay Patel?

  Google stuff leaking. IFA is going on. There's all kinds of laptops going on. Dieter just wrote the words "old man yells at cloud" here, so we're gonna get into that. I want to start by just plugging something we did this week, which I'm very proud of doing. Sarah Jeong, who is a great writer for us, wrote a number of incredible stories, including a profile of a judge in the Ninth Circuit, who's one of the most important judges in tech. You should go check that out. She just jumped to the New York Times and we published her book, The Internet of Garbage, or an excerpt from her book, and republished the whole book as a PDF, Amazon file, everything. Just check that out, read it. It's, we've been talking a lot about content moderation and platforms. And Sarah's point in the excerpt is, "If you focus all of your energy on just deleting stuff and using copyright law to stop bad behavior, you're gonna make mistakes and be trapped in a cycle." I think it's just a really interesting point. Check it out.

• 1:42Nilay Patel?

  It's on the site right now. It's in the Kindle Store. Just search "The Internet of Garbage." By the way, the minimum price you can set in the Kindle Store is 99 cents. We really wanted it to be free, but Amazon, Amazon doesn't believe in free things. Except for free shipping, but you have to pay for Prime, so it's not really free.

• 1:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56Nilay Patel?

  Um, anyway, check it out. I just wanna, I wanna bring it up at the top, cause uh, I have loved working with Sarah over the past year. I'm very excited for her to go to the Times, but the last thing we did with her was, was, was this book. She's been on the Vergecast a couple of times too, so check it out. It's there. Alright, let's start with Apple. Apple event.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  So.

• 2:10Nilay Patel?

  Invites came out today.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  Invites came out. It's a golden circle.

• 2:14Speaker 02

  Or circles.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  Shaped in the, the shape of Apple Park.

• 2:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it said, "Gather round."

• 2:18Speaker 01

  Gather round, which uh, has me really uh, vibing on Waiting for Guffman. Cause the play, the play within Waiting for Guffman, the, what is like, uh, what's his name? Eugene Levy comes in and he says, "Gather round for I have news."

• 2:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  So it's, uh, yeah, you know, gather, I mean, it's a reference to Apple Park is round.

• 2:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  So, "Come, join us. Gather round, for I have news."

• 2:41Speaker 02

  It also could be an elaborate cellphone, because it kinda looks like a wireless charging coil.

• 2:47Nilay Patel?

  Ooh, that's pretty good. Oh, AirPower.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:50Nilay Patel?

  AirPower's.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  That's, that's what happened to AirPower. They finally got the coils.

• 2:54Nilay Patel?

  They were like, "Oh, they shouldn't be squares."

• 2:57Speaker 01

  They've been trying to do wireless charging with squirkles the whole time.

• 3:02Nilay Patel?

  So the gather round, the invite was gold, you know, the, the fun everyone had when a new invite came out happened on Twitter. Everyone tweeted the same joke, which was, "The next iPhone is gonna be round."

• 3:11Speaker 01

  Hmm. Mine was better. I, I tweeted that they're, they're just gonna announce bagels, cause it's like a golden brown color.

• 3:16Nilay Patel?

  Oh, it's good.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  I do like bagels.

• 3:18Nilay Patel?

  I'd like to think that I was the first one to tweet the round joke, but I was not.

• 3:23Speaker 01

  Not even a little bit.

• 3:25Nilay Patel?

  And then, like, immediately afterwards, the watch, the Series 4 watch and the iPhone XS like leaked. They're just like, there they are.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  Nine to five Mac just flexed. They're like, "Oh, everyone's paying attention. Now's the time. Kaboom." They've got what looked like basically like very Apple looking, like official product shots.

• 3:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 3:44Speaker 01

  Of both devices, or all three of those devices. And I mean, what, what, what did we learn? We learned that the iPhone X thing is gonna be called the iPhone XS, I guess.

• 3:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  But it's XS, in excess.

• 3:56Nilay Patel?

  The iPhone XS would be amazing.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  That's an M G Siegler joke. I have to give him credit for that one. And then we learned that the Apple Watch looks really dope.

• 4:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, edge to edge screen. Seems like the same size.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  Although the the watch face was terrible on that thing.

• 4:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the watch face, there's like eight complications on it.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, it looks ridiculous.

• 4:16Speaker 02

  This is the time of year, every year, when I relearn what the word complications means.

• 4:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, because you're not a horologist.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  Is that a watch person?

• 4:26Nilay Patel?

  That's a.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  It's a watch person. Yeah.

• 4:28Nilay Patel?

  It's a lot.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  Visit Hodinky.

• 4:29Nilay Patel?

  Hodinky is great. I just read an article about how they built their business. And basically, they realized like, people come here to look at expensive stuff. So we just sell them expensive stuff. They'll just buy some of it from us, which is perfect. I love it. I love it. I love a good business story.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  OK, so let's let's let's start with the iPhone. I guess we have to call it the iPhone XS.

• 4:46Nilay Patel?

  I would like, so I was thinking this last week, and I forgot to say it on the show. But Apple is in a real pickle with these names.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, right?

• 4:53Nilay Patel?

  They really got themselves in a bind. So they called it the iPhone XS, but everyone calls it the iPhone X, literally everybody. Then they have to make the next one. So they're at they're at iPhone XS.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 5:07Nilay Patel?

  But it's looks like XS. Then they also have the iPhone 8.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  Well, I don't think there's going to be an iPhone 9 this year.

• 5:13Nilay Patel?

  But then there's that this rumor of this other phone. So there's the XS, the XS plus, and then this third LCD phone.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  That's also maybe that'll be an iPhone 9.

• 5:24Nilay Patel?

  So is that the iPhone 9?

• 5:25Speaker 01

  But it's going to be a big dual SIM phone.

• 5:27Nilay Patel?

  So it's it's a different product. So it can't be the iPhone 8S.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:31Nilay Patel?

  Because that blows their whole thing away, especially if it has an edge to edge screen and a notch. So like, what is that going to be called?

• 5:37Speaker 01

  Well, what about a C? Because C connotes low end. So maybe it'll and it's the low end one is supposed to have a like not beautiful steel rim, but it'll just be aluminum. So it'll be a different color. And they might do different colors on the back. So it'll be colors. So that one could be the iPhone XC.

• 5:51Nilay Patel?

  OK.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  And by the way, is S a Roman numeral?

• 5:54Nilay Patel?

  So let me just ask you a question.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  OK.

• 5:57Nilay Patel?

  Is the C capitalized or lowercase?

• 6:00Speaker 01

  Oh, God, it's got to be capitalized. They always do capitalize.

• 6:03Nilay Patel?

  No, the 5C was lowercase.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  Oh, so it'll be OK. It'll probably be lowercase.

• 6:07Nilay Patel?

  Who knows? And then, OK, so that no one like already they're in a jam. What the hell are they going to do next year? Because they can't be like the iPhone XI.

• 6:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, they sure they can.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  Vista.

• 6:18Nilay Patel?

  And everyone calls it the iPhone X. No one calls the iPhone X. So they switched to 11. They've like ruined how cool the X looks. It's funny. I know there's gonna be a better camera. I bet there's gonna be a faster processor. All I really care about is the name right now.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  I feel like 11 from Stranger Things has really revitalized the 11 brand. I feel like it's really pretty cool right now to be 11.

• 6:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but they're going XS.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  I prefer X's, like the plural.

• 6:46Nilay Patel?

  iPhone X's?

• 6:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, the iPhone X.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  So S is apparently in the medieval abbreviation, the S was used for 70 or sometimes 7.

• 6:56Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 6:56Speaker 01

  So technically, the iPhone XS is the iPhone 1070.

• 7:01Nilay Patel?

  Ooh, I like that. It's got a little trucker vibe to it.

• 7:04Speaker 02

  Well, but Roman numerals, it's, it would be the larger number minus the smaller. So it's the iPhone 60.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  Well, no, it's the plus because it's 10 plus 7. So it's.

• 7:16Nilay Patel?

  This conversation is horrible.

• 7:17Speaker 01

  It's the iPhone 80.

• 7:19Speaker 02

  No, but think about, think about Final Fantasy numbers.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  I see what you're saying. You're right. It's 60. Yeah, it's the iPhone 60.

• 7:26Nilay Patel?

  Did you just explain Roman numerals by talking about Final Fantasy?

• 7:30Speaker 02

  Use it the Olympic.

• 7:33Nilay Patel?

  Super Bowl.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  I also want to point out in this leaked photo of the iPhone 60, that they're using this wacky colorful planet. I don't know what it is off the top of my head. Like, I don't know where this image came from. It's just like a hypercolor planet rise. But they have it, like, the arc of the planet that they're using is just precisely at the spot so that you don't see the notch.

• 7:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, of course.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:59Nilay Patel?

  It's great. It's the most.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  It also looks like, if you don't see the fading away line of the phone, it just looks like a phone that's been put in the microwave. I know.

• 8:12Nilay Patel?

  Just bulging. Paul's doing some home science. What would happen if I did this? Okay, so we see that there's gonna be a new iPhone XS. Yeah. Keep it clear. One would assume the normal S stuff, right? Faster processor, better cameras, all the way around. What else can they do to this phone? There's been a rumor that they would remove 3D Touch.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we got an early rumor from Bloomberg. German and company put together their, basically, their guess of what there's gonna be. So the iPhone XS is there's gonna be a 5.8 inch OLED and then a high-end 6.5 inch OLED. But then there's also gonna be a cheaper model, whose name we don't know, which will be the 6.1 LCD and probably dual SIM. And that is the one that will have colors. And we think that's also likely the one that won't have 3D Touch.

• 9:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I don't understand why they would take 3D Touch off of these phones.

• 9:08Speaker 01

  I don't understand why they'd put it on anything ever.

• 9:12Nilay Patel?

  I like 3D Touch.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  What?

• 9:13Nilay Patel?

  I use it for exactly one thing, which is moving the

• 9:15Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 9:16Nilay Patel?

  That thing is great.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  You know, you know, you just, okay, that's fine.

• 9:20Nilay Patel?

  That is great. It is legitimately great that you can do that on iPhone.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  You can slide your finger on the spacebar on an Android phone to do the same thing.

• 9:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but you don't get that satisfying haptic. The whole iPhone, like, taptic engine thing is legitimately great. No one has matched it. And so you get clicked down, you feel the clicks, and you like move the thing. That's just like a good, it's a very Apple, very satisfying thing. Everything else about 3D Touch, horribly confusing. Not least of which, turning on the flashlight in the camera from the home screen, which more people tell me their phone is broken than not. They're like, I keep trying to turn on my flashlight and it doesn't work. I'm like, you have to click it. And they're like, why? It's like an immediate response. Okay, so that's the, we're assuming the XS, the standard 5.8, basic updates, right? Like, the thing, this is basically a spec.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  I think it's gonna be a spec bump, and I think if we go in hoping for more, we're gonna be disappointed. To me, the big question is, can they get the camera up to basically like Pixel 2 standards? Because I do think that The camera is, you know, of course, it's very, very good, but I think that if there's one place where Google and maybe even Samsung a little bit are really catching up and/or surpassing Apple, it's in just raw picture quality.

• 10:34Nilay Patel?

  I absolutely agree.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  Not like RAW, but yeah.

• 10:36Nilay Patel?

  No, I absolutely agree. We were out the other day and someone was taking a picture of our kid with a Samsung, I think it was an S8, not even like a newer phone. And the closer I look at the iPhone photos, the more I'm like, man, they're doing less smoothing, like they're doing less egregious JPG-y things, but the quality of these photos, when you look at them closely, is not there. So I really hope they bump up those cameras. And then a speed bump. And then, so then there's a larger screen, iPhone X, which we're assuming would be a XS Plus.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 11:06Nilay Patel?

  And that will have what the Plus features. It'll have split screen apps, the way that the 8 Plus and the other Plus phones supported, right?

• 11:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it'll be a 6.5 inch screen, which is huge.

• 11:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  Really big.

• 11:18Nilay Patel?

  I don't think anyone ever made really good use of the sort of like split screen app stuff the Plus models offered.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  No, I agree. No one ever uses that stuff.

• 11:27Nilay Patel?

  But I would, like, if you would let me do picture-in-picture on an iPhone the way you can do it on an iPad or Android phone, I would happily do that stuff.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, maybe, but I just, I don't think that they're, they'll sell it on the size of the screen. They won't sell it on having great picture-in-picture.

• 11:42Nilay Patel?

  But you gotta be able to do stuff with the screen. That's what I mean. Like, a huge screen is great, but...

• 11:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, do you use a 8 Plus right now? Or do you use a 10? But before the 10, did you use a Plus?

• 11:52Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. And why?

• 11:54Nilay Patel?

  Because I really enjoyed split-screening apps and the two apps that supported it.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  [laughing]

• 12:00Nilay Patel?

  That's, that's why. I loved it. It was my favorite. I loved it so much. Every day I wake up and I'm like, oh, why doesn't Notes have a split-screen view and landscape?

• 12:12Nilay Patel?

  By the way, if they do offer that split screen stuff, the notch becomes like a gigantic crazy problem.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  Yup.

• 12:17Nilay Patel?

  Right? Cause you're gonna be turning your phone and one of your two apps is gonna like get notched up.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  Yup.

• 12:22Nilay Patel?

  Okay. Well, that's gonna be fun for everyone.

• 12:26Nilay Patel?

  I can't wait for like the most pedantic Apple bloggers to start doing pixel math on how much percentage of the left app gets cut off when you rotate your phone.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:36Speaker 02

  Do you think these phones are gonna be like XS is like a thousand and XS plus is like 1200?

• 12:44Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that's where the Note is.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  It'll be 1250, I bet.

• 12:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think they're gonna come in right at the sort of like Note 9 price.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  But we're not gonna get a cheaper iPhone 10.

• 12:54Nilay Patel?

  No, I think they're gonna put out this other, well, I think the iPhone 10 will go down. Yeah. History suggests the iPhone 10 will remain and just go down in price.

• 13:04Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 13:04Nilay Patel?

  And then the, whatever this new thing is will be like the low end of the line. It will probably replace like

• 13:11Nilay Patel?

  the iPhone. Will the iPhone 8 persist?

• 13:14Speaker 02

  So many phones.

• 13:16Nilay Patel?

  It's a lot of phones right now. Like Steve Jobs came back to Apple and he like drew a square and he's like, this is how many products we make. And now it's like 45 iPads, 64 phones. I can tell you if the iPhone 8 persists, right? If they can drop the 10 to that price point.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  No, it definitely persists. They're gonna, they'll drop that even lower. They gotta do, they're, they're making this 6.1 for India. Like they're famously like the iPhone's not doing so hot in India, right?

• 13:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  They gotta, they gotta keep as much as they can around to try and find some kind of solution for, for that region. So I think they definitely do it.

• 13:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And you think that one doesn't have 3D touch, but the, the 10 model, the OLED models do.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  That's, that's my guess. And I think precisely nobody will care. I think it matters that they're, that they're, they have a low end phone that looks a lot like the high end phone because people just want the thing that looks like the top tier phone.

• 14:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I think it says a lot that 3D Touch has never made it to like the iPad. And maybe it's just like too hard, but if they thought it was important, it would be everywhere in iOS by now.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, the iPad, just ergonomically trying to do, trying to do a hard press on an iPad seems bonkers.

• 14:21Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I've tried to do it to move the cursor around. Again, the only good feature of 3D Touch. And there's other ways to do it, but I always try to do it. By the way, part of that Bloomberg piece that you mentioned, they said the iPad mini will not be updated this time around.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  No, but there's another, the mini is getting, but it's, that's later. There's another Mac story that's going to be the new mid-range MacBook Air thing. We don't know what it's going to be called, and that's very confusing. And there's going to be the Mac mini.

• 14:49Nilay Patel?

  But not the iPad mini.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  The iPad mini, yeah, no, it's gone. It's still, it continues to be sold.

• 14:57Nilay Patel?

  That really is just Apple's strategy. It's like, we'll just sell this until people definitely stop on you. Okay, let's talk about the watch.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  I mean, it was pretty shocking to me how much people were into it. How much like my, my initial reaction was, oh yeah, that looks great. Like, they have turned the watch around. People feel good about the Apple Watch.

• 15:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, because it can send iMessages and no other product can. I mean, there it is, but it looks great. I think the bigger screen makes the thing look just wildly more powerful. It looks like, again, these watch faces are going to be more complicated. I, I think a big question is, the new, we've already seen a preview of the new watch OS, right, at W W C? So is that going to change even more against a bigger display? And we just kind of don't know the answer yet.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know. And there has been, there hasn't been a public beta, I don't think, but there has been a dev beta. Uh, but we haven't seen like the kind of like close analysis of like every little piece of what's in the beta that we usually get for the iPhone. So we haven't seen a whole, that I've noticed, a whole lot of like chatter that points to new features. Yeah. And then the only other thing is like, there's apparently now, there's a new hole in between the button and the, the digital crown, which could be a microphone, could be something else, who knows? I'm sure it's a microphone.

• 16:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So you can make, make those phone calls. Walkie talkie mode is coming finally, right?

• 16:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, right. Uh, which, walkie talkie mode is technically just a phone call.

• 16:19Nilay Patel?

  It's the best.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  So, have we not talked about this?

• 16:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, we did. I remember how mad you were. It just makes a phone call.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  It just makes a phone call and silences it. That's all it does.

• 16:29Nilay Patel?

  I mean, what more do you want for a phone call? Okay. I mean, look, that's like, I'm sure we're gonna talk about it next week too, because the event will be coming. But the amount of time between invites go out, everything is leaked, was like 10 minutes.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was crazy.

• 16:45Nilay Patel?

  So, good on 9 to 5 Mac.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  But the way we're looking at this is, we're expecting this event to basically be iPhones, Apple Watch, and hopefully AirPower?

• 16:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  And then, we figure, we know that there's new iPad Pros coming, and we know those new Macs are coming. We don't think they try and cram those into this event, either one. We think they do another event in like October, right?

• 17:09Nilay Patel?

  I have a strong suspicion there's another thing in October. So, I think the way the next few months plays out is, Apple, on the 12th, we think there's a Google event in early October, and then Apple swoops in mid-October, suck all the air out of the room.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:24Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that would be, if I was Apple, that's what I would do.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  And there'll probably be like two other events too, just to screw with us, just because we won't be busy enough.

• 17:31Nilay Patel?

  No one's going to sleep. Is it just me, or is like the idea of a slightly larger iPhone? The iPhone X, my iPhone X is like, I've already broken the back, it's like a mess. But it, this is the first time that I haven't been like, oh, this phone already feels old, right?

• 17:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:46Nilay Patel?

  Like, every previous iPhone of sort of the 6th design, and maybe it was just because that design lasted for so long. I was like, yeah, I don't, this is getting old. Like, I want a new phone now. This one, I just don't feel that way.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  Something about the iPhone X or iOS 11, like, I'm not getting the sense that like, things are slowing down the way I used to, which maybe some of that was psychosomatic, maybe not. And I'm definitely not getting the sense that the battery is degrading as much as, uh, previous iPhones did.

• 18:12Nilay Patel?

  My battery is definitely not doing as well as it did in the beginning.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 18:16Nilay Patel?

  But I use, I mean, like, that's like just my fault. Right? It's like you used the hell out of my phone. So iOS 12 comes out, a bunch of iPhone 10 owners get a new OS. Are they racing to upgrade their $1,000 phone? Again, this presents like a big problem for Apple. Like, a lot of people just paid $1,000 for this phone. Are they gonna get one-year upgraders, or is the cycle gonna even longer?

• 18:36Speaker 01

  They're gonna get, they'll get enough. They might not get as many as they usually do, but I kind of don't think that it matters because they're Apple and they're a trillion dollar, or they were, I don't know if they are presently a trillion dollar company.

• 18:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. To be clear, this criticism is rooted in, this is a great phone, right? Like, the phone's really good. I don't, it's not, I don't have any problems with it. So I'm just curious what they can say to like convince a bunch of iPhone 10 owners to upgrade.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  More emoji.

• 19:01Speaker 02

  It's such a good problem, though, from a consumer perspective.

• 19:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's a great problem from a consumer perspective. I just, it's, it's just new iPhone season, right? They have to like make it better in some way. Like, they, their line has always been, the S generation is actually the bigger upgrade, and the S generation is always the one that sells even more, right? Like, they consistently have said S phones sell the most compared to their predecessor.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  But I think the 10 phones sold more than they expected.

• 19:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 19:28Speaker 02

  I'm still on a seven, right? The 10 was exciting, but not quite worth $1,000 to me, and I didn't, I didn't know if I wanted to beta test the new interactions and stuff, but you know, I've got a cracked screen, dying battery, I'm ready to upgrade. So this is the generation I'll either hop in, or I'll finally switch to the Pixel.

• 19:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. You got used to that dongle life.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  I mean.

• 19:54Nilay Patel?

  You were defeated.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  I haven't done, I haven't done a dongle life update in a while. I got, you know, I have the Beats X neck buds.

• 20:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 20:01Speaker 02

  And one, one of the ears died.

• 20:03Nilay Patel?

  Ah.

• 20:03Speaker 02

  So I only have sound in one ear right now. That's been pretty rough, but I think the, I don't know, dongle life is whatever. I'm over it.

• 20:12Nilay Patel?

  It's good. And now your choices are a series of W1 headphones, or someone else's Bluetooth implementation, which is great.

• 20:18Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 20:19Nilay Patel?

  I love it. Dieter put the Square ads of Lightning connected to its mobile card reader here just to troll me, but it's true.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  So let's back up and give some context. So Square made a new version of their card reader dongle. Previously, they had two versions. They had one that plugged into the headphone jack. And then they fixed that one so it actually encrypts the data when it goes across the headphone jack. So that was nice. They've made that compatible with iPads and Chromebooks and Windows, like just laptops and whatever. And then they've released a new version a couple of years ago that worked over BTLE and then that you could stick your card into it. But people just really liked the little dongle. And so now they have another version that uses Lightning. But in order to use Lightning, you have to make Eli mad.

• 21:06Nilay Patel?

  You have to pay an Apple tax.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:08Nilay Patel?

  What do people want? They want a consistent hardware connection that does not rely on a battery. And so the market spoke. Six years after Lightning came out and Square finally added this product that people have wanted since the headphone jack went away and they couldn't push everybody to their $50 BTLE reader. And so now they're paying a tax to Apple for every Lightning product they shipped. And I just like, if you just look at the scope of interconnects on the iPhone, headphone jack aside, it was just, it was the only free hardware interconnect to the iPhone. And now it's gone. And so your choices are Lightning, you gotta pay Apple. If you use Bluetooth and you're a headphone company, you're at a disadvantage because Apple makes W1 and they won't give it to you.

• 21:52Nilay Patel?

  So your headphones will be less good than AirPods in terms of connectivity, just necessarily.

• 21:57Speaker 01

  Wi-Fi Direct is impossible. It's slightly better on Android in some ways because you can like trigger a switch, but on the iPhone, it's pretty locked down. And so you have to like go into settings and join a random like network. So that's not an option.

• 22:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, then there's Wi-Fi, which is not good for many of these products, right?

• 22:13Speaker 01

  You know, the future of interconnects that don't require Apple taxes are QR codes, I think. I think you're just, everything's gonna communicate via the camera app.

• 22:21Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying, the most valuable company in the world and they're making their money by charging rents. And it's just, I don't know, just got.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  You should be able to beam data by having the screen flash, sort of like the way that you could beam data with infrared and palm pilots.

• 22:37Nilay Patel?

  You can do that.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  You can point two phones at each other.

• 22:39Nilay Patel?

  That's a standard called Blink.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what we should be using.

• 22:42Nilay Patel?

  From now on, Morse code for a screen flashes.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  Do you guys know the distinction of what if, what if the iPhone just read another iPhone's NFC chip? Are NFCs like not bi-directional like that?

• 22:58Nilay Patel?

  I've no idea.

• 22:58Speaker 02

  Because I'm really into Apple Pay right now. I'm Apple paying. My coffee shop upgraded to the Square Reader with the contactless payments and the chip reader. They, they paid that, the Bluetooth LE tax.

• 23:11Nilay Patel?

  The Bentley tax.

• 23:12Speaker 02

  The Bentley tax. And I've been, I've been Apple paying everywhere. And I love it.

• 23:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 23:18Speaker 02

  But if I could just bump phones.

• 23:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, just get it done. You just bump, I mean, Android can do it, right? You can, yeah, you can do all kinds of cool pairing stuff with Android NFC. Look, I'm not that mad about it. Like, I know the war is lost, but I'm just gonna be the one who keeps pointing out all the routes in and out of the iPhone. Apple's just there to make it a little bit harder for you. Okay, we're gonna have an ad. It's an audio clip. I don't have to read anything. So we're gonna read that. Then Liz is gonna do This Week in Elon, which is now a newsletter, by the way, that you can sign up for. So if you're interested in that, get on the website, sign up for This Week in Elon. Amazing, amazing illustration from Tommy Lee is the header of this. And we're gonna come back and talk about EVA. Check this out.

• 23:58Speaker 03

  Hi, my name is Carrie Byron. I'm a former Mythbuster, which means I'm a seeker of the truth. There are a lot of myths about EV batteries. Today, we're gonna debunk some of those myths with a bona fide EV expert, Stojla Freudland from Norway, where more than 50% of new automobiles sold last year were electric vehicles. He's a member of Norway's EV Association. All right, so my first question, we've heard that EV batteries die quickly. How long can I drive without recharging?

• 24:26Speaker 04

  Evermore. More cars are arriving to the market with more battery capacity, meaning range anxiety will be a thing of the past.

• 24:34Speaker 03

  Now, how do EVs perform in cold weather? I mean, I've heard that the batteries can peter out when it's really frigid outside.

• 24:41Speaker 04

  I think in general, they perform surprisingly well. I've tested so many cars doing this over and over again. Preheating the battery, preheating the car actually saves energy.

• 24:52Speaker 03

  Is it harder to reach a top speed when in an electric car?

• 24:56Speaker 04

  Well, you sure get there fast. It's like you reach top speed in terms of acceleration in a small amount of time.

• 25:03Speaker 03

  To learn more about going electric with Audi, check out AudiUSA.com/ETRON. That's AudiUSA.com/ETRON.

• 25:17Speaker 05

  Hello and welcome to This Week in Elon. I'm Elizabeth Lopato, the deputy editor at The Verge. And by the way, if you want to receive This Week in Elon in your inbox once a week, you can sign up at theverge.com. Okay, so it's been a weird week in Elon, though I guess they're sort of all weird weeks in Elon lately. I'm very tired. Okay, so you may remember that Elon Musk tweeted on August 7 that he was going to take Tesla private at 420 a share. And then last Friday, around 8:30 PM Pacific Time, a blog post went up on the Tesla site saying, hey, actually, that's not going to be happening. We're going to keep Tesla public. We're going to focus on the Model 3. And, you know, this is too much of a distraction. And that would be a pretty strong response if it didn't seem like distractions

• 26:01Speaker 05

  were still getting the better of Elon Musk. And the reason I say this is because of his Twitter account, which honestly, like, this is like a, like, I, sometimes I wonder if Elon Musk is enacting a PSA about why none of us should ever tweet. Because you may remember the share price thing started on Twitter, too. And it's not the only problem he's had on Twitter, right? Like, there was the bankruptcy thing, the jokes about bankruptcy around April 1. There's slamming the media, getting in fights with individual journalists. And then there's the sort of Thai submarine debacle where he called one of the people who was involved in rescuing the children who were trapped in a cave. He called that guy a pedo because that guy had made fun of the submarine that Elon Musk had built to rescue children.

• 26:45Speaker 05

  Just a lot, a lot. And, you know, that Friday statement could have been a really good reset. It could have been, you know, like, Elon Musk goes head down on Twitter, like, he doesn't tweet. But it wasn't. So one of the things that happened is, you know, Musk was tweeting about The New York Times, which had characterized him as alternating between laughter and tears in an interview. And he says, for the record, my voice cracked once during the New York Times article. That was it. There were no tears. The finance editor disputes this. Sure. I don't know. I wasn't there. But that sort of led to this other thing that he did on Twitter, where he essentially implied a second time that the guy he had gotten into a fight with

• 27:28Speaker 05

  around the Thai cave thing was, in fact, a pedophile. He tweeted, "You don't think it's strange he hasn't sued me?" Then Wednesday, that guy's lawyer tweeted an August 6th letter informing Musk that the lawyer is in the process of preparing a civil complaint against you. So there's that. Now, you might be wondering why Elon Musk is doing this to himself. And in fact, I am wondering too. But there's been this narrative that started with short sellers that explains it. And the narrative is that Elon Musk is erratic and desperate. That's according to David Einhorn, who is short Tesla. Now, you don't have to agree with that narrative, though you can, to see why Musk is acting out.

• 28:13Speaker 05

  Because if you don't agree with the narrative, then your impulse is to fight it. But you don't fight a narrative by arguing with it. You fight it by having a better story. But it doesn't seem like Musk has that figured out. Look at what he's doing. He's trying to justify himself, right? He's trying to justify the emotionality of the New York Times interview, saying, "Oh, no, I didn't cry." He's trying to justify calling the rescuer a pedophile. "He hasn't sued me. Maybe he's scared of discovery." He's trying to make himself look rational. But the thing that I'm not sure he's realized about a narrative about being erratic and desperate is that the more you fight it, the more it sticks to you. It's kind of like flypaper that way. So the actual way to fight this narrative is really to go heads down on the Model 3

• 28:57Speaker 05

  and log off of Twitter and focus on making Tesla profitable. But I don't know that Musk is ever going to log off. He's, to me, become the embodiment of the drill tweet about never logging off. So I don't know what next week in Elon looks like, but I am taking a vacation. And so Sean O'Kane will have to tell you about it. Because I don't know about you guys, but I just need a little break. Anyway, that's been This Week in Elon. Thank you very much. I'm Elizabeth Lopato, deputy editor at The Verge.

• 29:30Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so IFA is this week. It's a trade show in Europe. IFA stands for Trade Show in Europe.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:38Nilay Patel?

  It's like, it's basically CES for Europe. Lots of stuff going on. Do you want to talk about the throne? Can we just start with the throne?

• 29:45Speaker 01

  The throne, oh, the giant throne, the gaming throne?

• 29:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, it's Acer, it's called the Predator Throne. It weighs 458 pounds.

• 29:55Nilay Patel?

  You sit in it, the screens, like it like rotates, it's like, it's like something from Prometheus. Every time I look at it, you sit in it, a huge bank of three giant curved monitors curves around you. And then it rotates you back. So you're like in a weird prone position. And then it has haptic feedback. So as you're like, you know, shooting stuff, like the chair kicks you. It is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  They don't have a release date. I don't think it's a real product. And I wish they would stop pretending that it is a real product. They should have just said, we made this dope thing. If you want one, give us a call.

• 30:31Nilay Patel?

  I think it's a real product.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 30:34Nilay Patel?

  They're gonna sell four of them. I mean, like, it's a real product in that they're gonna sell it for like $15,000. And like 10 people will buy them. But like, it's a real product in the same way that like a Corvette's a real product, right? It's like, it's the one that makes you want to buy.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  Constantly, and it's only really purchased by people having midlife crises?

• 30:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but other people are interested in them, so they buy a Chevy Cruze.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 30:56Nilay Patel?

  That's how that works.

• 30:58Speaker 02

  All right, so people buy three monitors sometimes, right?

• 31:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 31:02Speaker 02

  So let's say people are willing to spend that much. Also, people buy these like 400 to $600 gaming chairs. So there's a market of people who are willing to spend about like $3,000 to $3,000 to $6,000 on these components.

• 31:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  So how much is the moving chair part?

• 31:25Nilay Patel?

  Right. So now we're like talking motors, we're talking LED light strips.

• 31:29Speaker 02

  We got motors.

• 31:30Nilay Patel?

  We got a bunch of buttons. I mean, if they sell this thing for less than 10K, it's so stupid. I love it so much.

• 31:38Speaker 02

  This has been my dream to live this life for forever, basically.

• 31:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so strap in, have it recline you, and then begin gaming.

• 31:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, you, yeah. Well, I, you know, I can imagine writing a novel in this.

• 31:55Nilay Patel?

  I feel like there are a number of people on the Verge staff where if I was like, hey, I'm, I'm gonna offer you the choice of replacing your fancy motorized ergonomic standing desk with a thrownos. They'd be like, yes, I will, I will immediately take the thrownos.

• 32:10Nilay Patel?

  It's great. It's super silly. Heim did a video with it. Check it out. Heim Gartenberg, who normally is not like overwhelmed with excitement in this video is like, I wish more people did insane things.

• 32:21Speaker 02

  It does point out, the Acer's pretty good at announcing things and then

• 32:25Nilay Patel?

  Never shipping.

• 32:26Speaker 02

  Eventually getting around to shipping.

• 32:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Other stuff at EFA, there's a new yoga book from Lenovo. The keyboard is an e-ink screen.

• 32:36Speaker 01

  And it's a, it's a thousand bucks. I used one. Vlad has a good hands-on video. It's a thousand bucks. The e-ink screen is, it's used for the keyboard and they do a really clever thing where the, instead of a, you know, touchpad on the bottom, trackpad, there's just this little like lozenge, this little oval. But then when you put your finger on it to grab the mouse, the keyboard shrinks down and the trackpad goes over it. You move your mouse where you want it to, you take your finger off and then it goes back to the keyboard. So you can get a full-size trackpad and a bigger keyboard in the same space.

• 33:07Nilay Patel?

  I like that.

• 33:08Speaker 02

  That sounds great. That sounds great. But like, when I'm using a laptop, I've got hand on the mouse, hand on command C, you know, I'm like stealing code from Stack Overflow. Like, it's a good, it's a two. I would like, my goal is to get really good at Vim commands and be able to just be one, just be all keyboard, but I'm not there yet. I, I don't know. That seems, it looks beautiful and it looks so clever, but like the last yoga book, it seems so impractical. So the other thing is the e-ink screen works as like a PDF reader and you could also like do doodles on it and they beam to Windows.

• 33:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it'll, it only supports PDFs now. They say that ebook and dot mobi are coming, which is annoying. You can draw on it and then copy and paste your drawings or you can write on it and then it'll do OCR and paste that into Windows. So it's like the e-ink screen isn't running Windows. You can't just take any old app and like throw it onto the e-ink screen if you want. It's running some separate proprietary thing that communicates with Windows instead of being an actual part of Windows.

• 34:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  I think that's how it works. But you can do stuff like you can, if you have a PDF on there and you like draw a square around the thing you want to copy and then you paste it. If the PDF is color, it'll paste the full color thing, which is, I don't know, neat, I guess. And yeah, it is just tiny and skinny and beautiful and really well made. It's got two USB-C ports, which is what it should have, and it's also got an Intel. I think you get an M3 or an I5 processor on it, which is what it should be. But yeah, it's a thousand bucks. Like, you really gotta want it.

• 34:45Speaker 02

  Are these the new Intel processors?

• 34:47Speaker 01

  Uh, they're seventh gen. They're not eighth gen, I think.

• 34:50Nilay Patel?

  So, Dieter, you used it?

• 34:51Speaker 01

  Like Whiskey Lake. Yeah, for like 10 minutes.

• 34:53Nilay Patel?

  How was typing?

• 34:54Speaker 01

  Better than you expect, although I was using prototypes and just like the last Yoga Book, they hadn't dialed the haptics in. And so you'd like type on it and it'd just be like

• 35:07Nilay Patel?

  This is what I'm saying.

• 35:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:09Nilay Patel?

  You can't, you can't do this stuff. This is why the 3D Touch is good, because of the haptics.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:14Nilay Patel?

  Everyone needs to steal, every, every computer manufacturer needs to look at what Apple did with the Taptic Engine and then look in the mirror and be like, "We failed." And like, compete. It's just so much better. There's not, I think LG phones have reasonably good tap, like haptics. And everyone else is like a blurry mess that makes everything feel dumb and slow.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:35Speaker 02

  Could you do the sound again, Dieter?

• 35:38Speaker 01

  No.

• 35:44Speaker 01

  You remember the rumble packs you could get for the N64, those like things that you plug into the bottom of the Wavebird? That's what, that's, that's, that's where most of the phone industry is these days.

• 35:53Nilay Patel?

  Maybe my new thing instead of headphone jacks in Dolby Atmos should be bad haptics. That's a new site. If you have an idea for what a segment called Bad Haptics should be on the show.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  You have to steal that from Sam Byford. He is our, our Bad Haptics reporter. He's very angry about haptics all the time.

• 36:08Nilay Patel?

  Oh, and he's great because he has like a delightful British accent. That's our new segment. We get Sam to just rant and rave about Bad Haptics every week. It'll be great.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  We have already got the, the intro music for it. Me, just now.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  I will say that Dan Seifert reviewed an Asus Zen book today. And instead of a trackpad, it has a screen. It just seems like Windows manufacturers are like, alright, this bottom half. What kind of nutty thing can we do with that? And he was expecting that like screen trackpad to be horrible. And honestly, just reading the description of what it can do. Where you can make it a full secondary display for Windows and put little Windows in it.

• 36:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, amazing.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  They didn't have the right idea here. But he says it's really good.

• 36:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, it does other things too, like for YouTube. There's like, there's like a Chrome extension so that you get these nice YouTube controls in the touchpad. I had to check the byline multiple times to make sure Dan was actually complimenting a screen and a touchpad.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm looking at a computer with a display on the keyboard that is completely useless. It's called the touchbar. And I hate it. And I would trade that touchbar for a little screen on the trackpad any minute.

• 37:20Nilay Patel?

  I feel like the dream has always been just like, put your phone there. And I don't know why, because I know it's a bad idea. But I'm always like, what if this was just, what if I just put my phone there? And then I 3D touch on that thing and that's like, see?

• 37:36Speaker 01

  No, but on the Mac, it's Force Touch, right?

• 37:39Nilay Patel?

  The worst name.

• 37:40Speaker 01

  I know.

• 37:41Nilay Patel?

  Uh, it's just, it's just not appropriate.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  Before we get into some of the other EFA stuff, so there are a couple of, at least two, maybe a few more Android Wear. I'm sorry, Wear OS watches. There's a new Skagen. And then there's some Diesel that's just massive. The Skagen is based on the like fossil thing because there's a new generation of fossil. I think they call them generation 2.5 or something. They're all still using the Qualcomm 2100, which is a huge bummer, but we know Qualcomm's announcing a new processor soon. Leading up to the Pixel Watch. And concurrent with all these like slightly newer generation of current, don't buy them 2100 Android Wear OS watches. Google updated the way Wear OS gets navigated. They simplified it to like, the swipes are clearer now.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  So it seems pretty obvious they're gearing up to like, put out a Pixel Watch and really try and like, save wearables from being completely owned by the Apple Watch. And yo, I don't think it's gonna happen. Like it's a very, it's a very hard thing to do, right? But there's no, there's still, I made the video about this. There's still no good wearable for Android users.

• 38:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So I, look, there's the processor problem and there's the size and weight problem. Fundamentally, I think the, the Apple Watch is becoming a much better product overall. The main thing people use it for is notifications and texting. That's, and obviously the health stuff.

• 39:01Speaker 01

  Health, yeah.

• 39:02Nilay Patel?

  But the, the thing, the reason you want that is because you get a text message on your wrist and you can reply to them from the watch, right?

• 39:07Speaker 01

  Oh, so I don't know. I use mine, I mean, I use mine for the date. I use mine for time. My, for me, it's, it's health, like, basic date and time and weather and calendar, next calendar appointment are important to me. And I'm trying to use it for HomeKit, but I'm getting really annoyed with HomeKit. Can I just say, HomeKit has a feature where like, when everybody comes home, we turn the lights on and when everybody leaves, we turn the lights off. But for some reason, the ERO or something is not talking to my phone nicely. And so the phone will drop off the network for like a half a second. And then when that happens, the, and then it comes back on. And every time that happens, HomeKit thinks I've either left or come home.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  And so my lights are just turning on and off at will, whatever they feel like. You're just like, you sit around and this, everything just shuts down. You're like, well, okay.

• 40:00Nilay Patel?

  Oh, that's perfect. How many EROS do you have?

• 40:02Speaker 01

  Uh, only two. I've got the main base station and the new plug that goes into the wall. Cause I have a, you know, a two bedroom apartment.

• 40:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I'm just wondering, cause your phone roams between them.

• 40:12Nilay Patel?

  So maybe, maybe it feels like it's dropping off and it roams between them. It's like a thing. Well, look, anyway, what I'm saying is-

• 40:17Speaker 01

  Android Wear is coming, but don't buy this. The stuff for me actually looks halfway decent, but don't buy it. Wait.

• 40:22Nilay Patel?

  But what I'm saying is, it's not going to be good until Google fills up messaging. That's why you want to buy these things. So you can-

• 40:28Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 40:28Nilay Patel?

  Send messages and you don't want to send some janky ass texts. You want to use the actual messaging client that you use. And Android Wear still quite isn't there for that stuff. And so they sort out messaging, the killer app for these is, you know, that I'm on my way right from your wrist.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  I mean, they've sorted out messaging by, I mean, we're waiting for RCS to roll out, number one. Number two, they have quick replies available for pretty much every single messaging app. Messaging on Android and on Wear OS, if you don't use the default texting app, is way better than messaging on the iPhone with the Apple Watch if you don't use the default texting app.

• 41:04Nilay Patel?

  Fair.

• 41:04Speaker 01

  Same thing with Android Auto versus CarPlay. Android Auto, like, it doesn't, it'll, it doesn't show me all the notifications in the home screen, which is good, but if I get a WhatsApp message or a Signal message or whatever, it still pops notification. I can still tap it, still hear it played, and still reply.

• 41:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  Which you cannot do on CarPlay.

• 41:24Nilay Patel?

  I'm with you. I just think, maybe this interface stuff will change it, but I mostly, I just see, I just see people using the Apple Watch, and they immediately gravitate towards notifications and messaging, because it's an obvious thing that thing does extraordinarily well. I don't-

• 41:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you're super wrong about both of those points.

• 41:41Nilay Patel?

  No, it's just like, it just does it up, like, there's, you don't have any other choices, right? You're like locked into iMessage, and like, just does the thing. And you're like, okay, I know, I understand this. Google's thing is far more powerful, but it's way harder to figure out.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  You're wrong about notifications being a good experience on the Apple Watch. Yeah, they come in, you gotta catch it right away, you gotta swipe down to see them, they take up the full screen, they're just, it's not, it's not super nice. And I think you are actually wrong about notifications being the killer app for a watch. I think more people care about health than they do about notifications.

• 42:11Nilay Patel?

  All right, well, if you agree with me, tweet it back one. If you disagree with me, tweet it back one.

• 42:20Speaker 02

  In the past six months, I've probably seen 100 Apple Watches in the wild, and I've never seen one of them light up.

• 42:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean-

• 42:31Speaker 02

  I'm, I think this is the old Beats thing where everybody's pretending to have a piece of technology, but really, they just ran out of battery.

• 42:38Nilay Patel?

  They're Lagerfelding. Do you remember this? When the Apple Watch first came out, they gave one to Karl Lagerfeld, and there was a picture of him, and he hadn't set it up, so it was just the glowy ring.

• 42:48Nilay Patel?

  It's a Lagerfeld in it. It was great. Last EFA thing, tons of Bluetooth headphones came out. It's like a little out of control. New Sennheiser Truly Wireless ones, which I think is Vlad wrote them up, says they're actually worth the wait. Really likes them. And then Sony, the thousand XM3s are out. Headphones that charge over USB-C, which is basically their killer feature. There's like lots of new things about them, but I have M2s and I like them, but they have USB-C, so I might upgrade. I might spend another $300 on these. Do you guys see my tweets about Sony's headphones app and how insane the user agreement is? Yeah. I should have like put this on the website. You gotta at me. I'll at you next time. So you can buy Sony headphones and put them, you like light

• 43:32Nilay Patel?

  them up and connect them over Bluetooth. You don't need this app. But if you download the app, it literally presents you with a privacy policy that is among the most insane things I've ever read. So you agree to waive any right to sue Sony. You agree to forced arbitration. You agree that Sony, yep, you agree that Sony can collect data about what you're listening to and send it to third parties. And if you want to opt out of all this, you have to send Sony a letter in the mail within 90 days. What? What? I don't know. Headphone firmware? I don't know. I was just like, this is insanity. I never had this problem with headphone jack headphones. Just putting that there. Anyhow, let's read one more ad and then we should, Paul, do your segment and talk about what's going on with Sonos a little bit.

• 44:18Nilay Patel?

  This episode of The Verge has brought to you by Dollar Shave Club. No matter what you do in the bathroom to get ready, Dollar Shave Club has everything you need to look, feel, and smell your best. They have amazing shower stuff, hair styling products, toothbrushes, and toothpaste, and of course, razors and shave supplies. You might shave your whole body to get ready for a bike race. Dollar Shave Club's executive razor and shave butter can help. You might do your hair to get ready for your soccer match. Boogies by DSC can help you get your style right. The thing is, no matter what you do to get ready, DSC has everything you need. And right now, you can get ready with an amazing deal on any one of their starter sets. They recommend the Daily Essential Starter Set because they love the amber lavender body cleanser, but you can't go wrong with any of them. Head over to dollarshavclub.com/verge to pick up your own DSC Starter Set for just $5. After your Starter Set, products ship at the regular price. And make sure you check out their

• 45:01Nilay Patel?

  new video too. That is dollarshavclub.com/verge. One more time, dollarshavclub.com/verge.

• 45:09Nilay Patel?

  Paul, every week.

• 45:11Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 45:12Nilay Patel?

  This one's pure, unaffected by commerce. What's it called?

• 45:15Speaker 02

  That's right. That's right. You can't buy this one. It's called Keyboard in the Front Club Population 2. So, if you have seen my tweets, I don't know. I, so Asus has that Zephyrus laptop. They put the keyboard in the front. I was super excited. Then they released a new Zephyrus. They didn't put the keyboard in the front. I was really sad. Then they went back to the keyboard in the front for the Zephyrus S.

• 45:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 45:45Speaker 02

  But now Acer has, this is part of the deluge of Acer news and general gaming laptop stuff at IFA. Acer's Predator Triton 900.

• 46:00Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God.

• 46:00Speaker 02

  So this is like a convertible, remember those, like the hinge is in the middle of the screen?

• 46:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 46:07Speaker 02

  And it always looks impractical and really fragile. But it was kind of a popular, like Sony did one, the Viado, like did a Windows 8 convertible laptop like this. But this is a gaming laptop that's a convertible or basically the screen is repositionable, but it's got the keyboard in the front, which is all that matters to me. Because I think if you have a gaming laptop, you're not going to use it in a coffee shop. You don't need to use it on your lap. You want to use an external mouse anyway, so might as well bring the keyboard forward so you don't have to reach across a hot surface to use the WASD.

• 46:42Nilay Patel?

  But isn't the whole point to have palm rests?

• 46:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you don't have a palm rest, then your keys are up. You don't have any place to rest your palms. That's why it's called a palm rest. Like, do you put a block of wood in front of it? Do you just hover your hands over the keyboard? If you're an elite gamer, you don't need to rest your palms.

• 46:58Speaker 02

  I do think they shipped the original Zephyrus with a wedge.

• 47:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they did. We had it on the Circuit Breaker show. It was wild.

• 47:07Speaker 02

  But I used it without a wedge. Now, the Zephyrus was really thin and this one looks a little high. But think about, I've used, I use a mechanical keyboard without a palm rest in front of it often. And a mechanical keyboard is hot, is higher up than a typical laptop keyboard. I think it's completely fine. If you need, and again, you know, if you need more ergonomics, feel free and put, put something in front of this. But I think this is fine.

• 47:35Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I think if you need more ergonomics, what you need is the Acer Predator Thronos gaming chair, which is the most ergonomic way to.

• 47:43Speaker 02

  Wait, so you'll, you'll just be using the Predator 900, the Triton 900 on the, on the, the pad in front of you and then all the monitors will just say no signal?

• 47:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that'd be great. No, the monitors, you know, you put up a couple of TV shows, get some Netflix going. It's like a full immersive experience. I'm in love with this. I wish I went to EFO.

• 48:03Speaker 02

  So anyway, yeah.

• 48:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 48:04Speaker 02

  How much is this thing? Club, population two, no idea. It's got a, it's got a four case. This is probably one of those like three and a half thousand. This is like one of those like statement pieces that gaming that often don't ship.

• 48:21Nilay Patel?

  No, at EFO, it's in a glass box. You can't touch it.

• 48:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:24Nilay Patel?

  So.

• 48:25Speaker 02

  It's got a 4K screen with G Sync. So it's, it's going to be up there.

• 48:29Nilay Patel?

  I feel like these companies are from a different time in gadget coverage. You know, like they just like stayed in place. They're like, I don't know, what's that? The, the fish that like everyone thought was extinct, but still there? The Silacan. And Acer still doing the like glass box at a trade show thing. And everyone else is like, yeah, we, we stopped doing that a long time ago.

• 48:51Nilay Patel?

  Real quick, before I talk about Sonos, Dieter put old man yells a cloud here, which is a direct reference to Trump tweeting about Google and saying Google and Facebook and Twitter need to be more fair to him. Again, it's a little sideways for us. You can read the interface, Casey's been writing about it at length for days now. But we're starting to do the second episodes of the Vergecast. So we had Brad Smith last week, the president of Microsoft. Next week, I actually just interviewed Tim Wu, who was the guy who coined the phrase net neutrality. He's got a new book coming out about antitrust. We actually get into that. So I don't want to, I don't want to see, seem like we're ignoring Trump and Google, like. Actually, next week at The Verge is what we're calling Monopoly Week, and we have like six pieces about antitrust law and monopoly and how you'd regulate tech giants coming out.

• 49:37Nilay Patel?

  And we have this interview with Tim Wu coming out probably Tuesday. So I just want to like touch on it.

• 49:42Speaker 01

  Would you say that that coverage is going to like completely dominate the site and push out all competing coverage next week?

• 49:48Nilay Patel?

  Yes, we're gonna tie it. If you want our monopoly coverage, you have to use our search engine.

• 49:55Nilay Patel?

  That's the way that goes. You have no choice. No other browsers will be able to use it except for Verge Browser 5000.

• 50:03Speaker 01

  Wait, wait, we have to make Verge Browser 5000.

• 50:08Nilay Patel?

  Just like whatever's left of the WebKit engine.

• 50:12Nilay Patel?

  Call it a day.

• 50:13Speaker 02

  Electron. Fork the Brave Browser. It's probably, it's probably open source.

• 50:18Speaker 01

  We should go back to Mozilla's original rendering engine.

• 50:21Nilay Patel?

  Wait, can you make an Electron app? That is itself a self-contained browser? Think about what I'm saying.

• 50:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's.

• 50:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 50:28Speaker 02

  What do you mean?

• 50:30Nilay Patel?

  Well, Electron is a web engine to web apps in. Could you, can you build a web browser that then runs a web browser?

• 50:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:38Nilay Patel?

  Can you have Electron?

• 50:39Speaker 02

  You could build a web browser. I don't know about your last step.

• 50:42Nilay Patel?

  See, it's the last step.

• 50:44Speaker 02

  There's a lot of Electron-based web browsers, right? They use the Chrome rendering engine. And they render random web pages. That's just fine. What is your last step?

• 50:54Nilay Patel?

  Can you build a web app that is a web browser? So you're running a browser inside of Chrome?

• 51:00Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 51:00Nilay Patel?

  Like a JavaScript web browser? And then run that as an Electron app?

• 51:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:05Nilay Patel?

  So you just basically take a huge performance hit for the sake of doing something stupid?

• 51:10Speaker 02

  Somebody just released the Electron app that runs Windows 95, and that's got Internet Explorer in it.

• 51:16Nilay Patel?

  There you go. That's Verge Browser 5000.

• 51:19Nilay Patel?

  IE on Windows 95 inside of Electron.

• 51:23Nilay Patel?

  And that will crowd out Netscape Navigator. And that's for browser podcast. Anyway, look.

• 51:28Speaker 01

  By the way, I need, I need to, I need to point something out real quick. I just wanted to see if anybody had done this. And so I did a very quick Google search and my Google search was browser in your browser.

• 51:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  Turns out that the person who owns browsingyourbrowser.com is Joanna Stern. It's a website dedicated to her dog named Browser.

• 51:47Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I remember she made a, she made a Wall Street Journal video about that.

• 51:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:51Nilay Patel?

  She was like, she was testing out like Squarespace and Wix and all that. Anyway, look, I don't want to ignore what is happening between our president and the big tech companies. There's a huge series of hearings, congressional hearings next week. CEOs of Facebook, Twitter, Google, they're all going to be there. We're going to cover the hell out of it. I'm just telling you, the Vergecast, we're not doing it here, but check out the interview with Tim Wu next week. Check out Monopoly Week next week. Now let's talk about Sonos. Sonos put out a new amp. I'm buying the hell out of it. Also, I've come to like really, so Sonos Amp is what you, you plug external speakers into it, like regular external speakers. They've had one for years. I have one. The new one is more powerful. You know, it's designed to be rack mounted. It's for custom installers. Most people will never buy this product.

• 52:36Nilay Patel?

  That's not what you want. You want like a Play 5 or Play 1 or Sonos 1. But here's my point about all of this stuff. The Sonos, like breadth of its product line is the thing that will save it from Amazon, from Apple. Like Apple is never making this product in a billion years.

• 52:54Speaker 01

  No way.

• 52:54Nilay Patel?

  They're never making the Sonos Amp. Amazon is never making the Alexa powered Sonos Amp. And so if you have Sonos, which is making like $200, like Sonos 1 speakers, $600 speakers for custom installers, everything in the middle, partnering with IKEA to go to the low end and sell like $40 Sonos speakers. And at the high end, partnering with the big AV companies to build receivers that work with Sonos. That, like that actually to me, like we've been talking about like, how will Sonos win? That's how they win. Like they're there at every segment of the market. I just don't see. Any other company like taking that approach?

• 53:31Speaker 02

  I have never owned a Sonos product, but this is really my ideal. Passive bookshelf speakers are not that expensive. And in my opinion, a decent pair of bookshelf speakers sounds better than any, any crazy sound engineering that Apple or Google have done to bounce. We do bounce shots and sound, you know, the bass is changes your life and leaves a ring on the table, you know, like they've worked so hard to out engineer what already sounds amazing, which is two speakers that you do have to sit in front of to sound well, that you can just enjoy music in a very clear, life-changing way.

• 54:12Speaker 02

  And this, this Sonos amp makes that very easy to pull off.

• 54:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 54:17Speaker 01

  And if you really want Alexa, you can just get a dot and it'll communicate. It'll, you have to say play it on the living room or whatever you name the Sonos room. But you can still get 90%, 80% of the benefits of buying one of Sonos' smart speakers by getting an app, plugging in the two bookshelves and throwing a dot next to it.

• 54:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but to do, you're now a thousand dollars in, right?

• 54:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:39Nilay Patel?

  Like, it's a lot of money.

• 54:40Speaker 01

  No, I get it.

• 54:41Nilay Patel?

  Oh, maybe not a thousand. You're like $800 in, like 200 bucks for a decent bookshelf speakers, a dot for 50 bucks. It's a lot of money, but yeah. I just, I don't see any of the other competitors realizing that people like have lives and that like you should build products to fit the entire spectrum of things you'd want to do. And I think this is where Sonos has a lead. They also rolled out their new like API stuff and alerts, which I'm a little less excited about.

• 55:11Speaker 01

  Well, the alerts are like, you're not going to get notifications of like a tweet reply. It's going to be if someone rings your doorbell, the doorbell can talk directly to the Sonos and the Sonos can ring your doorbell.

• 55:20Nilay Patel?

  I just don't like, human civilization is 2,000 years old. And I feel like someone's at the door is assault.

• 55:29Nilay Patel?

  Like, do I want that? Like, I think that's like, that might be where they're, they're starting to get a little fuzzy. Right? They're rolling out if this, then that integrations. So it's the same thing as Dieter. You come home. If this and that notices, like, your garage door opened and your Sonos lights up.

• 55:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:43Nilay Patel?

  Like, I think that's where it's gonna get a little hazy. But they are trying to make, like, you have 500 Sonos speakers in your house, a platform for stuff to happen. And I think that's interesting. I just think the ideas they have right now seem like, they're definitely the first ideas.

• 56:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. What's interesting, it's not just that Sonos has something for everybody, which is a really cliche way to say it. But they, they always give you someplace to go, right? So you made, you made this joke when you interviewed, uh, the CEO not too long ago. Like, the, Sonos' like, most important business value is that people on the whole tend to make more money as they get older. And they can buy more stuff. And if you have, you buy the one cheap Sonos speaker and then, you know. I don't know, you make a lot of money and you're very lucky and successful and you wanna install a home system. You don't have to leave the ecosystem and you can continue to just use Sonos. Whereas, you know, it used to be you'd have to like, go buy a Crushtron system and you'd, you know, it'd cost, you know, tens of thousands of dollars.

• 56:39Speaker 01

  And there was no, like, nowhere in between. And there's a very steady path from, I'm just gonna buy the one, like, nice speaker. To, I'm gonna have my whole house full.

• 56:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 56:49Speaker 01

  And, nobody else is, like, willing to play at all those different price points and do, and, and, and support with the same ecosystem. All those different propositions.

• 56:59Nilay Patel?

  Also, none, none of the other companies, well, I mean, Apple and Google are, but if you look at the other audio companies that support this stuff. The idea that they are a good software company that will be there for you is not true. So like, there's a lot of like, wacky Sony, Google Cast soundbars. And like, there's really high-end stuff. There's like, $5,000 amps that support Cast. And it's just like, I don't, I don't trust this to not be a botnet in a year. Right?

• 57:28Nilay Patel?

  I just get very, like, wary, like, I tiptoe around them. And like, at least, I have a little bit of faith that Sonos as a software company will, like, persist. Speaking, speaking of the same thing, like, Bose just put out a whole bunch of new Alexa-powered smart speaker stuff.

• 57:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:43Nilay Patel?

  Uh, Casey had a good tweet. He's like, their assistant should be called Bozo. And you can just say, hey, Bozo.

• 57:48Speaker 01

  One of their speakers has like a tiny little screen on it for some reason.

• 57:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, why not?

• 57:54Speaker 02

  This is the album art. Album art is very valuable to a lot of people.

• 57:58Nilay Patel?

  Innovation.

• 57:59Speaker 02

  To some people, it's a key part of the music experience.

• 58:02Nilay Patel?

  And those people should buy a record player.

• 58:04Speaker 01

  I do think their soundbar looks dope.

• 58:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I just, you know, I have like QC35s and they're like a good Bose product and every other Bose product to me is like a big question mark.

• 58:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, sharper image.

• 58:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 58:15Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 58:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. No, wasn't that, um, uh, Bang & Olufsen? That's the, that's the mall store that I coveted in my life. I actually looked at, you know, they had those huge wall mounted CD players.

• 58:26Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 58:26Nilay Patel?

  They're like a BO Sound 9000. I can't believe I remember this model number. I can't remember a face and a name to save my soul, but I remember the BO Sound 9000. It was like a huge, and I looked them up on eBay the other day because I have a problem. They still sell for entirely too much money.

• 58:43Speaker 01

  We need to go back to product names having a thousand number at the end of them, right? Like you said, I said we should launch.

• 58:50Nilay Patel?

  10,000.

• 58:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, Verge Browser 5000, iPhone, the iPhone 7000, just call it that. Why not?

• 58:56Nilay Patel?

  Go for it.

• 58:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:58Nilay Patel?

  All right. That's the end of the Vergecast today.

• 59:02Nilay Patel?

  A few things to plug real quick. Home of the Future is still going. Uh, wrapping it up, Grant Imahara. That show is doing great. I'm so excited people like it. Our video team worked on it super hard. We actually built a house with Curbed, uh, so I'm really happy people like it. That's going on YouTube. Check it out. This week we did an episode on, on securing the home of the future. Uh, Bijan Stevens is one of our new culture reporters. Went to the last blockbuster in the world in Bend, Oregon. Watch this video. It's on YouTube. He went with the manager to a big box store, uh, to buy videos for the blockbuster. And the big box store, this is like adorable. They didn't want to sign the release and be on camera because they wanted to protect the blockbuster manager. Because it's against the retailer's policy to buy videos and rent them later.

• 59:46Nilay Patel?

  So it's like this little community in Bend, Oregon is like supporting the blockbuster. I love it. Watch that video, Bijan is great in it. Uh, read the interface, Casey Newton, speaking of Casey Newton, Converge, Casey Newton. Just binge, listen to the whole thing. It's there on iTunes. Same with Why'd You Push That Button, season one and two. Why'd You Push That Button, season three. It's true. In production right now. So that's coming. It's gonna be great. You can also follow us. We're at Verge basically everywhere. I'm at Reckless on Twitter. Paul is Future Paul. Dieter's Backlawn. That's it. That's the Verge Cast. Rock and roll.

• 1:00:16Speaker 02

  Wait, wait. I had a business idea real quick. Imagine, it's called Fake Blockbuster. And you walk in and they have different, the different sections. Instead of being like horror and mystery and stuff, there's Hulu and there's Netflix. And there's just like printed out cards. And so you and your friends can wander around and debate on what to watch based on what's on the different services. And then there's snacks up front and then you walk out without a movie.

• 1:00:42Nilay Patel?

  Then you go home. No, you go home and it's about QR codes. And you go home and you scan them under your TV and it launches the appropriate service. This is great.

• 1:00:52Speaker 01

  Oh, and then the store gets a cut of the, the streaming revenue that normally would've gone straight to the, yeah.

• 1:00:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, which is like point zero zero ten cents. It's gonna be great.

• 1:01:02Speaker 01

  You know what, uh, what would actually be on those cards in addition to the QR code?

• 1:01:07Nilay Patel?

  What's that?

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  Promo code.