Switch review, Galaxy S8 leaks, and iPhone with USB-C

Usually I start these posts by apologizing, but ya know... by now I think you know what you’ve gotten yourself into — unless this is your first episode. So great! Hey! We’ve got a great show for you! (This is a podcast.) Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, Ross Miller, and Paul Miller (no relation) compiled a list of things from our cherished website TheVerge.com and dug a little deeper, with different angles, viewpoints, and behind-the-scenes journalistic insight. We’ve got more time with the Nintendo Switch than we did last week (even a taste test), a roundup of MWC announcements from over the weekend, and tons of little stories. I’m sure there’s a bunch of stuff you missed because of the Amazon web server disruption since those four hours were the only time you get your news. 03:04 - Nintendo Switch review: pure potential 14:05 - The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild review 21:33 - Amazon’s web servers are back online after more than four hours of disruption 24:34 - Samsung Galaxy S8 leaks in its full glory and The BlackBerry KeyOne resurrects the keyboard with style 30:08 - Google Assistant begins huge expansion across Android devices today 38:05 - 5G: Super fast data, throttled by reality 41:10 - The next iPhone won’t switch to USB-C, but its cable likely will 49:32 - Paul’s weekly segment “Hey look at me now” 51:55 - FCC chairman says net neutrality was a mistake 58:40 - YouTube launches its own streaming TV service 1:02:20 - Amazon is working on its own home security camera 1:03:47 - Spotify is preparing to launch a Hi-Fi music tier 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.

• 0:08Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of The Verge.com.

• 0:17Nilay Patel?

  That'll be great.

• 0:23Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of The Verge.com. I think it's time that we retire the Scissor Rodka joke because LG blew it.

• 0:34Nilay Patel?

  We need a new joke. We need a new joke and we're going to spend the next hour of your life trying to come up with one while we talk about technology and culture. The good news is that we get a good joke once a year or so. Once a year and then we grind that joke into a fine powder. So don't worry, we'll come up with something. Yeah, it's gonna happen. Anyway, I'm here. I'm Neelai Patel. Paul Miller's here. Hey, Paul. Dieter Bohn is here. Hi. And Ross Miller's here.

• 0:59Speaker 01

  Hey, what up?

• 1:00Nilay Patel?

  Paul's brother.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:02Nilay Patel?

  It's great. But Ross reviewed the Nintendo Switch this week, so we're gonna get deep into his brain. Dieter licked part of the Nintendo Switch. That's a real thing. He licked portions of this device and it tastes bad. We're gonna talk about it too. But first, I have some exciting news.

• 1:20Nilay Patel?

  The Vergecast, the show that you're listening to, if you are going to South by Southwest, you can come watch us do it live, twice, at South by Southwest. We're taping two Twice? Live episodes of this show at South by. We're doing it with National Geographic. They're taking what the Vulcan Gas Company and they're like rebranding it's like South by, so a brand activation. But the Vulcan Gas Company, which is a place that you can find on a map, is gonna be like the big national geographic experience at South by. They got a stage. We're gonna be on that stage, we're doing the show live. And our friends at Recoder, we're gonna be taping some of their podcasts live there as well. So if you're at South by on March 10th, you can come watch Recode Media with Peter Kafka.

• 2:03Nilay Patel?

  On March 11th, Lauren Good, who's on the show all the time and has a great podcast, you can watch her do Too Embarrassed to Ask. On March 12th, you can come watch The Vergecast, we'll be there. On the 13th, Kara Social will be doing Recode Decode. And then on 14th, we close it all out, The Vergecast one more time. So The Vergecast, live at South by, March 12th and March 14th. If you're going down there, you come to Austin, eat a taco, you know, just get settled and then come watch our show. It'd be great. So that's the big news. We're very excited about this. It'll be fun. And then we'll put the audio of it on the internet. So if you're not at South by, you can experience it on a delay. Two in one week. That's crazy.

• 2:42Speaker 02

  The deal with seeing the Vergecast live is we have a reputation to maintain of being terrible. So all the good stuff never actually makes the internet. We cut all the good jokes out and only put out the bad jokes. So if you come see us live, we promise it'll be entertaining.

• 2:58Nilay Patel?

  It's gonna be a real situation. But yeah, if you're kinda, if you're kinda South by, come see us. It'll be fun. Okay, let's get into it. Ross?

• 3:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:06Nilay Patel?

  Should I buy a Nintendo Switch? You've got, I can see Ross on Skype, the people are just listening, but he's got one.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  I'm literally like half paying attention, half playing, also making these beautiful clicking noises into the microphone. Cause I mean, we did the video review of it. And it's seriously the one thing that Dieter and I have been absolutely obsessed with, is the sound of the audio.

• 3:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've been obsessed with when it's in kickstand mode and you push a cartridge down into it. If you push too hard, the kickstand flies off. And you need to reattach it.

• 3:33Nilay Patel?

  That's a fun little effect. Uh, so you've got it.

• 3:36Speaker 02

  It's flung across.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  I've got it.

• 3:37Nilay Patel?

  We, so explain this review situation to me, cause we have the hardware, we have Zelda.

• 3:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:44Nilay Patel?

  You have been playing Zelda, but there's like a whole software component that's happening.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  Right. So this is like, I don't wanna get too like media weedsy, but here's the basic gist that myself and every other person that did a review yesterday kinda hit with. Um, or what happened is we got the hardware, we got Zelda, some people got want to switch, like the hand wavy party game thing. But there was no internet, no friend codes, no online games, no digital shops. We couldn't play anything else either. That finally came this morning, we're recording Thursday. Unfortunately, the review embargo was the day before. And the launch of it is the, tonight. So we've done what's basically an in-progress review. There's no score. We realized there's a lot of missing pieces. We kind of had basically wait until Nintendo finished the software.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  And the hardware is great, and if you love Zelda, it's great.

• 4:35Speaker 02

  The hardware is really good.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  Okay, fine. It's really good. It's not great.

• 4:40Speaker 02

  The feel, like, uh, so here's the deal.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  Uh-oh.

• 4:43Speaker 02

  The feel of the hardware is great. The, I think the, the line that Ross put in his review, which is the smartest thing he's ever written, is that it's, it's amazing how many pitfalls that Nintendo avoided.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  Uh, by that, he means he, he actually wrote that line.

• 4:56Speaker 02

  There are a million completely obvious things that could have gone wrong in building a hybrid mobile console system with like little controllers that click off the sides. Just a million things that could have gone wrong, and Nintendo avoided almost all of them, with a couple of exceptions that are like kind of boneheaded. It, uh, it has some like framerate drops when it's connected to a TV trying to push out 1080p video.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  I mean, it does that too a little bit, like, mobile as well.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  Uh, to me, the big, the biggest-

• 5:23Nilay Patel?

  Wait, it has framerate drops when it's mobile?

• 5:26Speaker 02

  No, when it's on the TV.

• 5:28Nilay Patel?

  No, but Ross, Ross just said it had framerate drops on mobile.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  I can make that happen a little bit on Zelda, like pushing it a little bit.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  To me, the biggest problem is, you're, you're gonna laugh, um, the placement of the power jack is on the bottom, and so you can't plug it in, uh, and set it up in kickstand mode and use it. You can only like have it on your lap and use it having it plugged in.

• 5:49Nilay Patel?

  Huh.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  Um, I'm also just, just here it comes.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  You have a bitter taste in your mouth.

• 5:54Nilay Patel?

  It doesn't run WebOS.

• 5:57Nilay Patel?

  Huge, huge mistake.

• 5:59Speaker 02

  Uh, it doesn't seem to be using standard USB power delivery for power, so batteries that I know are able to provide USB PD power for fast charging only seem to trickle charge this device. Similarly, it's not using standard USB for HDMI out because standard USB to C to HDMI things don't actually do anything.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Ah. We can't use a third-party dongle to take this one to go. We have that docking connector. That's basically our only option.

• 6:26Nilay Patel?

  That is a copyright thing.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm sure there's some kind of proprietary handshake. It'll be- It'll be figured out with a

• 6:33Speaker 03

  And Nintendo's the company that doesn't want to pay for the license to play DVDs on their

• 6:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Right, that's like, they're like, whatever, we built our own, we're gonna take the margin on it.

• 6:43Speaker 03

  But it looks like USB-C.

• 6:44Nilay Patel?

  What would the copyright thing be? Like, let's play videos? I guess that's gonna be a real question. You can do HDMI capture if it's in the dock.

• 6:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can do HDMI capture, no problem.

• 6:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I think it's more of a, can we sell you a Nintendo licensed dongle later?

• 6:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Dongles are the future of the hardware industry. Right? What you do is you take the ports off and then you sell the people the ports back.

• 7:04Speaker 03

  This is something that we haven't talked much about on the show, but the Switch is a cartridge-based system.

• 7:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, correct.

• 7:13Speaker 03

  Would you, does it seem like it, or does it seem like you're getting like SD cards? Because something that's really frustrated me is install times are getting ridiculous.

• 7:24Nilay Patel?

  Oh, there's zero install.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  Well, for Zelda, yeah, for Zelda, there's no installs.

• 7:29Speaker 03

  I mean, to me, that's kind of, that's kind of fun. That's kind of exciting.

• 7:33Nilay Patel?

  But can you, but can you buy games? Can you buy digital games too, or is it all cartridges all the time?

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Oh, you can buy games. You can buy Zelda from the store. You don't actually need to use cartridges. You can have everything digital.

• 7:43Nilay Patel?

  But here's the problem. It only has 32 gigs of storage on the device, and Zelda, for example, is what, 13 and a half gigs?

• 7:50Speaker 01

  13 gigs, but...

• 7:51Nilay Patel?

  And the system itself takes up 7 gigs, and so there's no way to like, download a library of games without buying one or several big ass micro SD cards.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  If you're buying, if you're buying a Switch in Japan right now, there is one game that is 32 gigs large. Like, you can't even purchase it until like, you get an expansion.

• 8:08Nilay Patel?

  Do you feel like right now, the CEO of Case Logic is like, "We're back."

• 8:16Nilay Patel?

  He's like, called the All Hands meeting, he's like, "You thought it was over, but I told you to hold fast. We've been through some ups and downs."

• 8:24Speaker 03

  Keep your sewing machines warm.

• 8:29Nilay Patel?

  It's a good day for them.

• 8:30Speaker 03

  But just to be clear, let's say I bought Zelda in the store. Does it come in a DS case?

• 8:37Speaker 02

  It comes in a big ass DVD sized case, I think.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Right, it's not, it's not as wide as a DVD case, so if you're actually stacking it up to like your Blu-ray discs or your PlayStation 4 cases, it's gonna look awkward. It's also comically big for the size of the game card itself, but there's just no love for either side of it.

• 8:52Speaker 02

  The game cartridges are like slightly bigger than a standard sized SD card.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Give or take.

• 8:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:56Speaker 03

  So then you take the cartridge out, wait, you take the cartridge out and you plug it into the system and it just bam, you're playing a game? Like, it's like a Super NES?

• 9:07Speaker 01

  Yep, yep, I mean, there's like, I think there's a load time, I think nowhere than maybe 15 seconds at times, but.

• 9:13Nilay Patel?

  I'm just, I'm putting the, I'm putting the cartridge in the system.

• 9:16Speaker 03

  This is so exciting.

• 9:17Nilay Patel?

  And I'm hitting the home button.

• 9:19Speaker 03

  Wait, show me the screen, show me the screen.

• 9:20Nilay Patel?

  With Chris Plant's profile and the game is now launching.

• 9:24Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  There it is. For those of you listening in a car, what Dieter is doing right now is lying.

• 9:30Speaker 03

  He's not playing Zelda yet.

• 9:33Speaker 02

  It did, it did take a little bit longer, okay, there you go.

• 9:37Speaker 03

  Wait, but that's just the title screen.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I think it had to switch user profiles. The point is when you put a cartridge in, you don't have to like install a bunch of stuff locally to play the game, right? That's what I mean by there's.

• 9:46Speaker 03

  So that 32GB won't be eaten up, because like with the Wii U, there would be like day one updates for games or like, like the Mario Kart update was like 12GB or something like that.

• 10:00Nilay Patel?

  Now that, now that the Nintendo Switches out, we do not speak of that previous console. It does not exist.

• 10:06Speaker 03

  I'm so sorry.

• 10:06Nilay Patel?

  Completely gone. So there was a really interesting Bloomberg story today. It's funny how Nintendo is kind of going to different parts of its audience with different parts of the Switch story. So like Ross was saying, the nerd review sites got Zelda. Like they were like, Ross Miller, you're reviewing the Switch, here's Zelda. You, we, this was fine for you. And then like the mainstream sites that reviewed the Switch got one to switch. Like the Wall Street Journal got one to switch and, uh, you know, their piece was great, but it was all about like, this is a console for everyone. You know, it's like, it was a different audience. And then Nintendo, there's a good piece in Bloomberg. And it was all about Nintendo's investors and the future of the platform.

• 10:49Nilay Patel?

  Right. And so Nintendo's like managing this message very carefully. And the investors are pretty rattled by the Switch.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  Really?

• 10:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Like it was just a really interesting piece in Bloomberg. Uh, obviously the concern is that they've released a tablet. So that competes with the iPad. Like there's, there's this feeling that mobile gaming, that what this thing is trying to do is compete with mobile gaming. I don't have that feeling at all. Right? I think of this as a console that kind of moves around.

• 11:17Speaker 03

  I feel like they found this one specific spot that has never true, it's been attempted, but has never succeed. Like the closest equivalent to this is the Vita.

• 11:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 11:28Speaker 03

  Or on the other side, like attaching handles to an iPad.

• 11:32Nilay Patel?

  Right. Yeah. It's a chance, it's, but it's interesting how they, they

• 11:35Speaker 03

  It's right in between those.

• 11:36Nilay Patel?

  They're trying to message that thing. And I think they're having a hard time. Uh, like, uh, what I'm perceiving from all of us is a lot of excitement. We just talked for five minutes about putting a cartridge in this. Like, that's ridiculous. Like, when are we ever excited that much about a piece of hardware or software? Um, so that's like really cool. I'm excited to like buy one. Ross, you like ran around and played it. Like, did you ever think I could be playing an iPad right now? Or like, this is less convenient than my, was that even a part of your consideration of the thing?

• 12:05Speaker 01

  No, because like to me, like this still feels like a different kind of game, right? Like, I do like iPhone and iPad games, but they're also like, they're designed differently. It feels like this felt like more like a console game.

• 12:15Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  So I got that kick out of it. Um, and the thing I always come up with the Bloomberg stuff is like, and Nintendo, you know, wisely has always had that dedicated game console 3DS was sold almost 70 million. And it was created and like sold throughout the like, the lifespan of iPhone gaming. So like, I think this will do well. I think this will be fine.

• 12:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:35Nilay Patel?

  That's just interesting. The idea that this launch is happening and there's so much excitement in nerd world. And out in kind of like mainstream consumer world. They're having to show one, two, switch and like try to recapture that we energy. And then out in investor world, they're trying to prove that this is a good idea, period. Those are interesting disconnects to me. We don't usually see that. Usually when the nerds are excited, the investors are like, you're going to sell a lot of these.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:03Nilay Patel?

  Just a thing. So Dieter, you put a cartridge in your mouth. Ross, I believe you did as well.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  Well, actually, no, no. So by the time I got back to the office.

• 13:12Nilay Patel?

  The Dieter licked it clean?

• 13:14Speaker 01

  Yes, like Dieter and like half the Vox Media office had licked both cartridges to the point where like, there was just no bitter taste.

• 13:21Nilay Patel?

  The coating went away?

• 13:22Speaker 01

  Uh, I think so. It wasn't that bad when I tried it.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  That's terrible.

• 13:28Nilay Patel?

  So Polygon got the scoop, right?

• 13:30Speaker 02

  Well, no, so Giant Bomb got the scoop. Jeff Gerstman tried it last week.

• 13:35Nilay Patel?

  I meant the reason why.

• 13:37Speaker 02

  Oh, it's because it's coated in bitrix, which is like the thing that you put on things so the babies don't eat them because it tastes awful.

• 13:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 13:43Speaker 02

  Or it's like something like bitrix.

• 13:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 13:46Speaker 02

  And let me tell you, it took about four hours for the taste to get out of my mouth.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 13:52Speaker 02

  It was unbelievably atrociously bad. It was just awful.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  That's so funny.

• 13:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, it just took forever. It tasted like, it tasted like spraying bug spray directly on my tongue.

• 14:04Nilay Patel?

  Wow. It's terrible. Ross, any, anything, tell us, Zelda. That's actually the thing I want to know. Tell me about Zelda.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Right, because it's honestly, that's the only reason to get it right now. I think it's great, like.

• 14:13Speaker 02

  Great review by Andrew Webster on the verge.com.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, Andrew did a great job with it. Also, poor Andrew, who's been doing GDC here in San Francisco, managed to put 50, 60 hours in the game. Last four days, maybe five.

• 14:24Nilay Patel?

  His job sounds terrible. Oh, my God.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  Poor sleepless Andrew.

• 14:28Nilay Patel?

  I'm such a terrible boss that makes everyone work so hard.

• 14:34Nilay Patel?

  It's true.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  You know what's the difference?

• 14:36Nilay Patel?

  Because these guys are in the van, Andrew's away from his family. It's like a whole thing. But he's playing on the go.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  He's playing on the go. He can play anywhere he wants. It's great. It doesn't feel like any of the old Zeldas. It's very much, they don't kind of tell you what to do. They say, here's Link. You have a sword. That sword's gonna break, so go pick up another one. And don't die. Like, it's very much, we're gonna just let you explore. Every other Zelda game was like, go to dungeon, get a grappling hook.

• 15:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  Kill a guy.

• 15:03Nilay Patel?

  Is there a narrative to this game? Or are you just like an elf with a, with a, with a dream?

• 15:07Speaker 01

  Uh, no, there's, there's a pretty big narrative.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  No, Jesus Christ, Neely. What are you doing?

• 15:14Nilay Patel?

  He's got the ears.

• 15:16Speaker 03

  What is he? If he's not an elf?

• 15:18Nilay Patel?

  He's a Kokiri.

• 15:19Speaker 02

  Okay, Paul, you also thought Link was an elf?

• 15:21Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  I thought he was an elf too.

• 15:23Speaker 03

  What is he?

• 15:24Nilay Patel?

  He's not a Kokiri.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  He hung out with the Kokiris. He's a Hyruleian, yeah.

• 15:27Speaker 03

  But that's his nationality.

• 15:29Nilay Patel?

  When you say elf, people think of like Lord of the Rings elf.

• 15:32Speaker 03

  There's, everybody knows that there's Keebler elves, and there's Link elves, and there's Lord of the Rings elves. There's a special.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  There's a lot of different elves. Hold on. Is Link an elf?

• 15:44Nilay Patel?

  He's a Hylian.

• 15:46Speaker 03

  I, I don't want to try to sound too clever here, but I will say, from reading Andrew's review, and I have literally not touched this game, but it kind of sounds like they did the same thing where they found this like, perfect little, it's like, they played a dangerous game, because I was looking at this game, it's like, well, this looks like a dumbed-down Skyrim. And if, if I want to play Skyrim, I'll just play Skyrim, so why would I get this? But like, it sounds like they, they captured what was really great about Zelda, and captured what's really great about having open world, open-ended sort of Skyrim situation.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  Right, like, you know, you know that thing they always hit about Skyrim?

• 16:25Nilay Patel?

  Wait, just be clear, there's a lot of information on the internet about Hylians versus Hyruleians.

• 16:34Nilay Patel?

  Hyruleans are people that live in the land of Hyrule, who may be of any race.

• 16:39Speaker 03

  Are you on Zeldapedia right now?

• 16:40Nilay Patel?

  Uh, I'm on, uh, Zelda Wiki. Yeah, yeah.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 16:44Nilay Patel?

  Hylians are a race, and there's humans, Gorons, and Zoras, and Hylians. Yep. And then Hyruleans are nationality. Huh?

• 16:54Speaker 01

  Okay. What do you know, like, cause like Gorons and Zoras are different races than the Hylians.

• 16:59Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah.

• 17:01Nilay Patel?

  So Link isn't up. Like, I just want to just be clear.

• 17:03Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 17:08Nilay Patel?

  I swear to God, I'm going to quit.

• 17:12Speaker 03

  Physically, Hylians resemble humans, and the only difference appearance-wise between them is the Hylians' long elf-like ears.

• 17:22Nilay Patel?

  Dieter looks so mad.

• 17:26Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, so, Ross.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, to Paul's point, like, games like Skyrim and Fallout, they're, they always just seem big for sake of being big. Like, everything's kind of lifeless, a lot of the character models feel like kind of repetitive. This does feel like a Zelda game in the sense that you're wandering around and like, a lot of it just feels like there's a lot of touch and care. Like, I didn't feel like I was seeing the same dungeon over and over again, the same moment. Like, it felt like it was big because they just had that much to do, and I think that much to show.

• 17:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. But does it drive you through a narrative, or is it just?

• 17:54Speaker 01

  There's a, there's a large narrative, um...

• 17:57Nilay Patel?

  But it doesn't drive you, that's the thing.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, there's a very large narrative, like, the, after like, what's essentially feels like a two to three hour, like, tutorial. They kind of let you, like, open up the world, and then it's like, you can do these things, like, here are four things you should definitely do to save the world. Good luck. And then, like, they didn't, like, give you direction. Yeah.

• 18:15Nilay Patel?

  That's fun.

• 18:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, you could, you can wander around. Um, there is this one quest at the beginning, like, a small spoiler, like, five hours in, where you go to Kukir Village, and they tell you that, you know, Link, you gotta go find your elf parents. To prove you're elf-like.

• 18:32Nilay Patel?

  No, that's just a thing, that's just a thing I really didn't say.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:36Nilay Patel?

  It's like a, it's like a...

• 18:37Speaker 03

  It's an term of endearment.

• 18:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's a national holiday, Elf Parents Day.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  But yeah, I, the, the gist is like, I like the Switch. I would definitely buy it just to play Zelda, but I'm also kind of in like the minority for that. Beyond this game, like, it's kind of hard to say when the next big thing's gonna come out, right?

• 18:55Nilay Patel?

  One Two Switch is terrible.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  One Two Switch is awful. Like, we do have a copy of it.

• 18:59Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 18:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, we have a copy of it. We've been trying to play it. It's just bad.

• 19:02Nilay Patel?

  I don't think it's gonna hold my like, four-year-old niece's attention.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  And the fact that it's a $50 standalone game is ridiculous.

• 19:07Nilay Patel?

  Wow. Why is it not the pack-in?

• 19:10Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 19:11Nilay Patel?

  They really screwed that one up.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  That's, it's really bad. But the couple like, other games you can shop are pretty good. Uh, Nintendo is promising one new independent game a week. That could be great.

• 19:20Speaker 03

  Stardew, Portable Stardew Valley sounds pretty exciting to me.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  That would be fun. Blaster Master's coming out next week.

• 19:25Nilay Patel?

  Blaster Master Zero!

• 19:27Speaker 01

  Dieter is enormously excited about that.

• 19:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Okay.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, I, but honestly, like, if you're not eager to play Zelda, I would just wait a month or two, at least.

• 19:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, there have been some connection issues with the Joy-Cons.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, we've, we've not had that, but Polygod had it. Yeah, I think Wired's Chris Kohler had that.

• 19:45Nilay Patel?

  Wow. Okay. Well, I'm gonna, I mean, it's Nintendo, so you're gonna have to wait a month anyway.

• 19:53Speaker 03

  If you haven't already decided to buy one...

• 19:56Speaker 01

  That's true, that's true.

• 19:57Speaker 03

  Then you can't have one unless you spend more than the list price.

• 19:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And it's gonna be like that for a month. Maybe this is, they release it now so that by the holiday season...

• 20:06Speaker 01

  They might.

• 20:07Nilay Patel?

  They might be able to sell some.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  Possibly.

• 20:10Nilay Patel?

  That's what they did with the, uh, the little, you know, Nintendo Classic. They released it before last holiday so that they might have them in stock in time for this holiday. They didn't, they didn't figure it out. That was a much simpler product. Anyway, that's very exciting.

• 20:26Nilay Patel?

  This episode of this show, The Vergecast, is brought to you by Crizal No Glare Lenses. It's happening again. If you wear glasses, many of us do, then you know that fingerprint, smudges, scratches, and glares are a constant obstruction to your vision and a huge distraction. Sometimes you end up focusing more on what's on your glasses than what's going around you. That's why the people love Crizal No Glare Lenses. They give you the clearest vision possible by offering resistance to glares, scratches, and smudges. That means no more blinding glares from the headlights and oncoming traffic while driving at night, no more fingerprint smudges from taking your glasses on and off, or scratches from cleaning your lenses on your shirt, and because Crizal No Glare Lenses stay clear and reduce distracting glare,

• 21:09Nilay Patel?

  your friends and family can actually see your eyes and know that you're lying. Or telling the truth, whichever one it is, which you should do. So look better, feel better, most importantly, be prepared for whatever comes your way with clear vision. Go to crizal.com to learn more. That's C-R-I-Z-A-L dot com. Live life in the clear. They screwed up their tagline. It's start living life in the clear. Amazon went down. Should we talk about that?

• 21:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. So it was down for like an afternoon.

• 21:38Nilay Patel?

  Fourish hours.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  And when we say Amazon, what we actually mean is Amazon's S3 cloud services upon which...

• 21:45Speaker 03

  East One.

• 21:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, a vast majority of, I don't know, websites and apps that you've heard of depend.

• 21:51Nilay Patel?

  Do you want to explain what you mean by East One?

• 21:53Speaker 03

  Well, when you sign up for Amazon...

• 21:56Nilay Patel?

  AWS.

• 21:57Speaker 03

  For AWS, for any service that you do, you pick which region you want to host your stuff on. Now, if you really want to go crazy, you can set it up so that like it will like load balance and bounce around through all the different services. But most people, including apparently Amazon...

• 22:17Speaker 03

  Don't set up that kind of redundancy. And East One is one of the primary OG, original locations for storing a bunch of data that the internet relies on in S3 buckets, as they're called. It's supposed to be just like the static files, but so many of the dynamic operations of the internet rely on those static files. And yeah, it was a cascading problem. Amazon has up an explanation of what happened, which was a typo by a programmer. It's a pretty, pretty good one.

• 22:50Nilay Patel?

  It was like a routine, sort of like morning.

• 22:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, he's like, I'm just gonna turn off a few of these because we're gonna change a thing. But he like, maybe order of magnitude error, I don't know.

• 23:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so it caused cascading problems. Like, they were supposed to take down a few servers in a support role, and then he took down too many. And then, but he wasn't directly taking down the S3 servers, but the services that they took down, they took down a few too many. And that caused other servers that depended on that, those services to like, go down. And the whole thing cascaded out. And then it turns out that when a server goes down, you need to reboot it. And that ended up taking a long time because they needed to do all the checks to make sure that they would come back live properly.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  How do you think he's feeling today?

• 23:32Nilay Patel?

  Who?

• 23:33Speaker 01

  The dude that made the typo?

• 23:34Nilay Patel?

  Not great.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  Just like a little stressed?

• 23:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 23:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. He's, he's, he's fun.

• 23:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, like, I will say, yesterday, was it yesterday? Tuesday, it was Tuesday. Was very hilarious. Like, the people reacting to Amazon being down was actually quite funny, in my opinion.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:54Nilay Patel?

  I'm sure that huge number of companies that actually lost money because their shit didn't work, they were probably not writing funny articles about, is it down right now, being down? But Casey did, and I thought that was great. So.

• 24:08Speaker 03

  Well, so many people were down that, for a lot of people, like, I'd be mad at you for being down, but I'm down too, so I'm busy doing that.

• 24:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And like, our image service, like our asset manager, partially relies on S3. So, we just had a long conversation about whether we should publish things without images for a while. It was kind of like a vacation.

• 24:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 24:28Speaker 03

  Images are tyranny.

• 24:32Nilay Patel?

  Interesting.

• 24:33Speaker 03

  Just some thoughts.

• 24:34Nilay Patel?

  Speaking of images, the tyrannical nature thereof. There's a bunch of sort of mobile news we should talk about. I think the most important, well, interesting piece of mobile news. The Galaxy, the Galaxy S8 Evan blast just leaked the whole thing. Yeah, there it is. And that's like. You just look at it on the internet.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  You, you look at the, you look at the S8, it looks kind of like the LGS or G6.

• 24:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 24:57Speaker 02

  Uh, snap, snip, and it looks a lot like what works. Like, there's a vague sense that that's what the, you know, the, the fanciest of the fancy iPhones coming out later this year. You know, all the rumors seem to point to it being, uh, you know, curved screen bezel-less, very tiny bezels on the top and the bottom.

• 25:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 25:18Speaker 02

  That's just what phones look like now.

• 25:20Nilay Patel?

  Hmm.

• 25:20Speaker 02

  They, they have virtually or no bezel on the left and right, and they have incredibly thin bezels on the top and bottom. And that's just, that's, that's, that's what a phone is now.

• 25:29Speaker 03

  Ashley turned to me the other day and held up her iPhone and said, this is just so ugly to me now.

• 25:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 25:35Speaker 03

  Oh. The bezels are just.

• 25:37Nilay Patel?

  It's out of control.

• 25:38Speaker 03

  Now I can't look at my phone and think the bezels are just garbage. At least when the screen's off, you can't see them. You turn the screen on, it's like, oh, okay.

• 25:47Nilay Patel?

  The entire, it's, we, I think we talked about this last week, two weeks ago. The whole re-architecture of the home button and touch ID and the no more swipe to unlock. I feel like that's a big, like, user training for the next phone that gets rid of the bezel and maybe integrates it into the screen.

• 26:07Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 26:08Nilay Patel?

  But I was trying to use Apple Pay today. Even Apple Pay got slower. It's like way more confused about what I'm trying to do with the phone.

• 26:16Speaker 03

  Really?

• 26:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 26:17Speaker 03

  Oh, wait, were you trying to meet space Apple Pay?

• 26:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 26:20Speaker 03

  Oh, so I love it for like buying stuff on my phone.

• 26:23Nilay Patel?

  No, I was like buying lunch and I like waved my phone at the thing and it unlocked the phone instead of paying. Cause I had like clicked instead it didn't, it's like. They've got a, they've got a, just clean up around the edges of that interaction design. But, the S8 though, we'll actually get back to it.

• 26:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, apparently they're putting a home button on the back, or they're putting a fingerprint sensor on the back in the same way that the Pixel and the LG have been doing for a while. It's, I think that's how Samsung's handling it. That's fine.

• 26:50Nilay Patel?

  I think what's interesting to me, you did the G6 hands-on video. The S8 looks like it has the taller screen as well.

• 26:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:58Nilay Patel?

  I'm kinda getting that vibe. And I think what they're doing on the G6 with the square camera previews.

• 27:03Speaker 02

  It's genius.

• 27:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 27:05Speaker 02

  It's really nice.

• 27:06Nilay Patel?

  There's something there.

• 27:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, and also like, you've been able to multitask on Android, on Samsung forever and on Android since, um, the latest version. And I just don't do it that much, uh, cause like, everything feels a little bit constricted, but on a super tall screen, I'm, you know, more likely to do it.

• 27:25Speaker 03

  You mean like split-screen multitask?

• 27:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, split-screen multitasking. Um, I,

• 27:32Speaker 02

  I'm also, uh, I'm with Dan Seifert on this one. I think I'm more likely to do split-screen multitasking on a BlackBerry Key 1 than I am on a regular Android phone.

• 27:41Nilay Patel?

  Why?

• 27:43Speaker 02

  Because when you bring up the software keyboard, it doesn't include the bottom thing.

• 27:47Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  That's just there.

• 27:49Nilay Patel?

  But you're never gonna purchase or own a BlackBerry Key 1.

• 27:52Speaker 02

  Well, man.

• 27:53Nilay Patel?

  So you would say, so like the true percentage of likelihood gets multiplied by zero.

• 27:59Speaker 02

  Everything about the Key 1 is. Really, everything about the Key 1 is really smart, except for the price. Like, they, they kind of did everything they should have done. They've got BlackBerry software on there. I think that there's still some room to improve there. They, instead of going for the latest specs, went with the Snapdragon, I think it's 625?

• 28:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 28:18Speaker 02

  620?

• 28:19Nilay Patel?

  It's like a baby one.

• 28:20Speaker 02

  It's, yeah, but it's the one that everybody loves on the Moto Z Play, uh, because it gets just bonkers battery life. And they put a really big battery inside this thing. So, when you think of traditional BlackBerry, you think of keyboard. And back in the day, you used to think of, it was the smartphone that got better battery life than everybody else, cause it was. Um, back in the, you know, the curve bold days, people would get a BlackBerry, not just for the keyboard, but because they knew the thing would last all day when an iPhone or a Windows phone wouldn't. Um, and I think that this BlackBerry Key 1 is going to probably do that. Uh, but they just, they're charging way too much money for it, for the, the specs that are on it.

• 29:02Nilay Patel?

  Hmm. I mean, I, but they're, that's their brand, right? They're trying to, like, people who buy that phone have expense accounts.

• 29:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, I suppose.

• 29:11Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, a bunch of government types are gonna buy that phone.

• 29:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know I pivoted from talking about the SA to the BlackBerry, but I mean, we do just know a bit more about the BlackBerry. I'm still really interested to see this Dex system on the, on the, the Samsung. Is it going to be good?

• 29:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 29:30Speaker 02

  You dock it and get a desktop app. I'm really intensely curious to see if it does have a desktop class browser. Uh, what that browser is, if it's Chrome or if it's Firefox.

• 29:41Nilay Patel?

  I bet it'd be Firefox. Why would Google give them Chrome?

• 29:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:45Nilay Patel?

  Right? And that's like licensing revenue for Firefox, for Mozilla rather.

• 29:50Speaker 02

  Right.

• 29:51Nilay Patel?

  Um, I can't imagine Google's gonna give them Chrome if what they're, Google's trying to do is get you to buy a Chrome OS laptop that runs Android. Like, it just doesn't seem like the Google move. But who knows? Uh, Chrome is technically open source. They could just write their own Chrome.

• 30:04Speaker 02

  They could. Yep.

• 30:05Nilay Patel?

  That'd be a thing.

• 30:06Speaker 02

  Uh, but then it wouldn't, yeah.

• 30:08Nilay Patel?

  Other, we, other mobile news, a bunch of like Google Assistant stuff going on, right? So they, I mean, more phones are gonna get it.

• 30:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:17Nilay Patel?

  Like that.

• 30:18Speaker 02

  And that's rolling out right now. So basically anything with Android six or seven that has Google Play services should be getting it pretty imminently. It's starting with English and then it's going to other languages. There's some other random stuff. Uh, Android Police just put up a thing right before we started podcasting that multi-user for home code is starting to show up. So they're gonna fix that.

• 30:39Nilay Patel?

  Um, multi-user for home code?

• 30:42Speaker 02

  The code in the, in the, the Google Home app, the companion app for the Google Home.

• 30:46Nilay Patel?

  Oh.

• 30:47Speaker 02

  Uh, has code in it that indicates that they are actively working in multi-user, which they've promised, but now they're actually doing it.

• 30:53Nilay Patel?

  Got it.

• 30:53Speaker 02

  Um, they also stuck a-

• 30:55Nilay Patel?

  And that lines up with Amazon trying to do multi-voice recognition, right?

• 30:58Speaker 02

  But yeah, like, the Google Assistant coming to Android phones, I wanna feel like is a really big deal. Uh, but the Assistant isn't so much different than just the voice button from before that, uh, I don't get that excited about it. The more exciting thing for me is long pressing the home button on Android six phones now does something actually useful instead of pulling up the screen grab feature.

• 31:21Nilay Patel?

  There's literally nothing worse than the screen grab feature. It's so annoying every time. Cause it just, it makes like the click sound, it flashes a screen at you and then it's like, it looks like you're reading a webpage. It's like, sure am buddy. I don't know. But now it's gonna be good. I mean, look, this is Google's future. They keep saying it's their, like, this is their big future. If they don't put it on the phones, they can't get there.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  Right. And the fact that it's getting distributed through Google Play Services instead of like requiring actual firmware updates is a big deal.

• 31:52Nilay Patel?

  So I asked you about this before the show started.

• 31:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:55Nilay Patel?

  I don't think they make a big enough deal about Google Play Services. Like the, the fact that they don't need Verizon or AT&T or Samsung or LG's permission to just roll out the core thing that is their new strategy and they can just put it on all the phones. I think that's a much bigger deal for the future of Android than we're, we're paying attention to. And I, what I was asking earlier was, does Google tell people what the percentage base on the newest version of Google Play Services is? Cause I know they tell people what, who, how many people are running the newest Android. It's always like 1% of people. But if everyone's running the newest Google Play Services, that's almost more important.

• 32:34Nilay Patel?

  Deidre's just laughing at me.

• 32:35Speaker 02

  That, that's because there's a ghostly TC staring at you from the window behind you.

• 32:39Nilay Patel?

  TC's super ready to talk about neutrality.

• 32:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. The thing about Google Play Services is like, it, it's how they roll out security updates, which is a big deal. And it's also, the more that they can unbundle from the core of the, I can't do this right now.

• 32:56Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god. Hello.

• 32:57Speaker 03

  Hello.

• 32:58Nilay Patel?

  Hi. Our old producer Creighton D. Simone has rolled in to interrupt you, even though I tried to shush him. I wanted to interrupt to, uh, because the G6 was announced today. And I wanted to present you with a custom bottle of Scissor vodka.

• 33:13Speaker 03

  Oh my god.

• 33:14Nilay Patel?

  Whoa. What the actual fuck? Is this actually vodka? It is actually vodka. Alright, well, we will take some pictures and put it in the post.

• 33:22Speaker 02

  How did you make this?

• 33:24Nilay Patel?

  Uh, with love.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  This is amazing. It says best by July 2012 on it.

• 33:30Nilay Patel?

  That's fine.

• 33:34Speaker 02

  It's new.

• 33:35Speaker 03

  I will say, for people who can't see this right now, it looks legit.

• 33:39Nilay Patel?

  It does look legit. It just definitely says best by July 22nd, 2012.

• 33:44Speaker 02

  I think it says 2018, but that's fine.

• 33:46Nilay Patel?

  It's fine, it's fine. You use it to clean things. Thank you, Creighton.

• 33:49Speaker 02

  It's new vodka. It's for you.

• 33:51Nilay Patel?

  It's really nicely made.

• 33:53Speaker 02

  I lived with graphic designers. I learned through osmosis.

• 33:57Nilay Patel?

  It's funny because we said we were gonna retire the joke at the top of the show.

• 33:59Speaker 02

  Well, this is perfect.

• 34:00Nilay Patel?

  It's all because then you can wash this joke away with a bottle of vodka on the rocks. I mean, go get some cups. We'll drink some vodka.

• 34:08Speaker 02

  Great.

• 34:08Nilay Patel?

  All right, it's gonna happen. Guys, we're gonna get donked on my custom vodka.

• 34:12Speaker 02

  Okay, so, I do want to make this Google Services point.

• 34:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:16Speaker 02

  Because it is important. It's how Google is rolling out, um, security updates. Uh, it's, uh, now, it's taken a bunch of stuff that used to be built into the OS, and it's starting to unbundle it, which is, uh, great because it means they can update that stuff more often without waiting for carriers to approve it. But a little bit scary because it makes, uh, Google phone, like Android phones, Google phones more than they are, like, you know, open source Android phones, whatever.

• 34:41Nilay Patel?

  That's been a debate for a long time.

• 34:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, but Chrome is, uh, basically unbundled. Uh, they just announced that in future versions of Android, they're unbundling the SMS app. They're calling it Android Messages now, uh, rather than Messenger or Messaging or whatever the hell it's called now. Um, and that's gonna be updated through Google Play Services, and now they're able to update, you know, the Google Assistant. So, more and more, Google's solution for this problem that a new version of Android comes out and nobody gets anything, is to make the new version of Android less important than the unbundled apps that you can get updated directly via Google Play Services.

• 35:21Speaker 02

  A playbook that palmed at first.

• 35:22Nilay Patel?

  Oh, damn! The longest con!

• 35:27Nilay Patel?

  The longest con.

• 35:29Speaker 03

  I mean, isn't the whole point of apps is that you can upgrade them?

• 35:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:33Speaker 02

  Like, yeah, but like, look at, look at the iPhone.

• 35:35Speaker 03

  I don't have to like reinstall my operating.

• 35:37Speaker 02

  Every, every, every year, there's a new version of iOS and there's all these like changes that are bundled into iOS and we have to wait for the next version of iOS to get them and they have to, it has to get pushed out through this, you know, big ass iOS update. They finally started to do like skinny updates that can like upgrade some of these apps on their own directly. Um, so Apple doesn't have quite the same problem that, you know, Android has in terms of waiting for carrier approval because they've got more strength and they've got a better update system. But nevertheless, they tend to bundle a bunch of their app updates to like have a moment for the OS upgrade. And the thing that Google hasn't figured out yet is how can they create a different kind of moment surrounding these things that they're going to be able to push out to all phones?

• 36:20Speaker 02

  That isn't the thing that we, every consumer understands, which is like a new version of Android.

• 36:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 36:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's a really good point. It's silly. It's funny because it is, it's a big moment when every year, new iOS version.

• 36:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And then your phone just starts randomly restarting, your alarm clock gets fucked up.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  Battery life goes to hell.

• 36:40Nilay Patel?

  I just think it's interesting. I just generally, I think that split is interesting that, you know, Google rightfully, I think gets criticized that they can announce new version of Android and it doesn't matter to so many people. But they, I don't think they get enough credit for Google Play services. Like we're just doing this and then suddenly everything's upgraded.

• 37:02Speaker 03

  I think, I think Google could get a good hype cycle going. If they could show up on stage and say, hey, we made this new thing. Look out for it next month. And then next month, like,

• 37:12Nilay Patel?

  Everybody gets it.

• 37:12Speaker 03

  Like a hundred million people have it on their phone.

• 37:14Nilay Patel?

  That's what they're doing with Assistant. They just kind of like, in Google fashion right now.

• 37:19Speaker 03

  How many years ago was Google? I guess it was like one year ago that Google Assistant was announced? How long ago was that? It feels like, it feels like a long time to me.

• 37:27Nilay Patel?

  It was October.

• 37:28Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, that's about a year.

• 37:30Nilay Patel?

  I mean, technically that, that was last year.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  Eight, October was a different time, man. Much different time.

• 37:35Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I still don't have a goddamn Pixel.

• 37:37Speaker 03

  I don't remember anything that happened when I thought you got one. I thought you got one.

• 37:41Nilay Patel?

  No, I ordered one finally. I'm going to check the status right now. That's terrible radio.

• 37:47Speaker 03

  What are you doing, Google?

• 37:49Speaker 01

  Uh, while, while we do this break, I will let the people know that, uh, right now, according to the poll, 50% yes, 50% no is Lincoln Elf.

• 37:58Nilay Patel?

  Even sweat.

• 37:58Speaker 03

  Dead time.

• 37:59Nilay Patel?

  The country is divided. Who's gonna bring us together on this elf issue? Who will unite high roll?

• 38:05Speaker 03

  I wanted to bring, I mean, and this is on the list of links. It's not like I'm going off topic here, but James Vincent, um, wrote up something everybody should read about 5G has kind of like this religious.

• 38:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:16Speaker 03

  There's this amazing quote, "The future of all things in the creation of time."

• 38:22Speaker 03

  The name of a, of a, of a talk you could attend at a world congress.

• 38:26Nilay Patel?

  Oh, the, the.

• 38:27Speaker 03

  The transformative power of 5G. I don't know. It's exciting. I'm excited.

• 38:32Speaker 02

  The thing about, but like, there's, there's no such thing as 5G yet. There's a logo and there's a promise of speed and nobody knows which network standard it's going to use. And it's possible, perhaps likely that especially in the US, we might end up with competing network standards. And I'm just going to say this right now, don't go with whichever one Sprint chooses, because we know how that goes.

• 38:55Nilay Patel?

  Here's what I'm gonna say. I ordered my Pixel on January 30th. The ship date has now been pushed to March 16th. What are they doing? What are they doing?

• 39:04Speaker 03

  They're pulling a real Nintendo on you.

• 39:07Speaker 02

  It's a good thing they don't have any plans to make, uh, any plans right now to make new Pixel laptops, because they can't make anything called Pixel, apparently.

• 39:14Nilay Patel?

  Well, that, that Ostrow quote at MWC is very strange. So Rick Ostrow, who runs Google's hardware division, I must say, has not done an excellent job of shipping me a phone. Rick, you know, pulled a bunch of reporters together at MWC, you know, and said, I think answered a question about Chromebook laptops and whether they're going to make their own Pixel. It appears that he first said, no, we're done with it. Everybody reported it out. And then came back around. Google sent us a statement. Ostrow tweeted today, "What I meant to say is we don't have any plans at this time," which generally means we're never doing this again. But I think they were trying to deflate the Googles out of making its own laptop hardware.

• 39:58Speaker 02

  I'm, I'm telling you right now, what they're making is some sort of, uh, surface alike. They're making a Chrome tablet. I, like, I don't have any real evidence. There's no real rumors here, but you look at the work that they're doing on Chrome OS, you look at how much effort they put into making the stylus work, you look at the Android stuff that's coming, um, that is what I expect.

• 40:18Nilay Patel?

  Hmm. So they're Pixel C2.

• 40:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:21Nilay Patel?

  Which is probably what they'll call it because consumers love names like Pixel C2.

• 40:25Speaker 02

  I'm curious about if they make a Pixel C2 in that same form factor, if they'll come up with a way to have the keyboard not scratch the hell out of the screen.

• 40:33Nilay Patel?

  I just don't know what they're... I want Google to be in the game in a way that Google doesn't appear to be in the game right now. That's it. I just, they're not executing well, I think. I said this to Walt on his show. They have a lot of great ideas, and then everyone gets all excited when they have the ideas. They're like, "We made it!" And you're like, "This isn't nothing. This is a box of wires that actually hurt me when I touched it." And...

• 40:57Speaker 02

  And you can't even ship it in the first place.

• 41:00Nilay Patel?

  This is awful.

• 41:01Speaker 02

  I can't even get the box of wires that hurt me.

• 41:05Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. I don't know what they're doing. Um, last bit of mobile stuff, and then we can move on to the next thing. iPhone rumors happened this week in a really, I would like to say dumb way.

• 41:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:15Nilay Patel?

  Like a particularly dumb way. Because it, well, here's what happened. The Wall Street Journal reported, "The next iPhone will not have Lightning and switch to USB-C." But the wording in the piece was such that you could graft any hopes and dreams that you wanted on it. So everyone, instead of... They read the iPhone's dropping Lightning and go to USB-C into it. It was also worded in such a way that they're just switching the cable that comes with the iPhone to be a USB-C to Lightning cable, and they're gonna adopt some of the USB-C power delivery stuff for the phone to charge faster. You could literally read both of those things into it, and everyone read the thing that they want.

• 41:55Speaker 02

  I prefer to believe it's hinting at augmented reality.

• 42:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, of course, right?

• 42:04Nilay Patel?

  What else are they doing? Marques Bradley, our friend, MKBHD, made a video entitled "Dear Apple," which is all about switching USB-C. That is one of the nerdiest things. Like, Marques is a nerd, we're a nerd, we love his stuff. That video was trending on YouTube today because people want USB C in the iPhone so badly.

• 42:22Speaker 02

  It's not gonna happen.

• 42:23Nilay Patel?

  And then today, you know, the analysts were like, no, they're, they're obviously just doing the USB C cable. But it's just a moment, right? Where people want the standards to work. And then

• 42:34Speaker 02

  By the way, Apple switching to USB C on the other end of the lightning cable

• 42:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 42:39Speaker 02

  Uh, is gonna piss so many people off.

• 42:41Nilay Patel?

  Right, because USB C A is basically the new power socket around the world.

• 42:45Speaker 02

  Right.

• 42:45Speaker 03

  Okay, what about?

• 42:47Speaker 02

  And they're gonna, they're gonna ship it with a USB C to USB A dongle.

• 42:50Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god.

• 42:50Speaker 02

  And the world is going to explode.

• 42:52Speaker 03

  How about this compromise?

• 42:54Speaker 02

  How about this compromise?

• 42:55Speaker 03

  Apple changes the plug in the phone to be USB C. But they ship a charging cable that has lightning on the other end.

• 43:07Nilay Patel?

  Dieter, I actually don't think that it's gonna be

• 43:10Speaker 02

  They'll, they'll ship two cables.

• 43:11Nilay Patel?

  Cause I bet a USB A lightning cable

• 43:12Speaker 02

  And a USB C.

• 43:13Nilay Patel?

  Charges the new iPhone just fine, right? They can't be that dumb.

• 43:17Speaker 02

  No, but I, I bet you what they do is they ship two cables. They ship a USB C cable and a USB A cable.

• 43:22Nilay Patel?

  And the USB C cable charges it super fast.

• 43:25Speaker 02

  Right. And then if you have a new MacBook, you can, you don't have to carry around a dongle to charge your iPhone. It'll plug right in. But they have to know that not very many people have USB C laptops yet. And not very many people are excited about the idea of getting on a plane, wanting to plug their iPhone in and seeing that it, that's a USB C plug and it's a USB A port.

• 43:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 43:45Speaker 02

  And so they, I, I, they have to ship both cables.

• 43:47Nilay Patel?

  Or anywhere.

• 43:48Speaker 02

  It's like the only solution.

• 43:49Nilay Patel?

  Or, everyone's gonna laugh at me because ever, I, I'm, I'm, I'm fond of universal standards that have been widely adopted. I'm sorry, it's just one of my personal flaws. But USB C A is like literally everywhere. We just bought lamps for our bedside that have USB A power plugs in it, like.

• 44:07Speaker 02

  Do you, do you, do you live in a hotel?

• 44:10Nilay Patel?

  No, they're just like, we don't like the wires. Like we have a million wires, cause I, we charge a bunch of shit at night. So we're like, instead of buying one of those Anker blocks, we bought like very nice lamps. And they just have like little, little hidden USB ports in the back of them.

• 44:25Speaker 02

  Okay, cool. That's clever, yeah. I drilled a hole in the back. I saw a giant ass hole in the back of my nightstand and then threaded a wire in it. So I've got a, one of the multi Anker ports sitting in a drawer on my nightstand.

• 44:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 44:36Speaker 02

  And I open my drawer, put all my crap in it and close the drawer.

• 44:38Nilay Patel?

  That's like a whole movie. But like, I'm just saying, USB A ports, our desks in our new office. I will say came with USB ports. They suck because they don't offer enough power. But they're there, but it's just like they're everywhere.

• 44:50Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 44:51Nilay Patel?

  In like that transition, it'd be like if you change the regular power plugs in America. It's like Apple is like, you know what? We're just not putting a regular AC plug on our laptops anymore and just use this new one that we invented.

• 45:01Speaker 02

  Here's a dongle.

• 45:02Speaker 03

  But we're not that far down that road.

• 45:05Nilay Patel?

  We're a decade into that road.

• 45:07Speaker 03

  Are you gonna be a stick in the mud? Are you gonna go with the flow?

• 45:12Nilay Patel?

  I just love universal standards, Paul.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  Here's why I believe that this is happening. If you look at the AC adapters for all the MacBooks, the Pros and the new MacBooks, it has a USB C plug on the adapter itself. The, the cable isn't attached to the adapter in the way it was on MagSafe, which means they want you to be able to plug, uh, you know, other USB C cables into that, AKA the one that's gonna charge your iPhone eventually.

• 45:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. No, look, I, I think USB C is great and like, I, I have the, I think I've talked about this shit a thousand times. Like, I have a MacBook. I threw away, what did I throw away? I put away the adapter it came with. I bought an Anker adapter that has like four USB As and one USB C. That is the best thing I travel with regularly. It is my favorite thing.

• 45:58Speaker 03

  The other day I was, I was trying to, I forget what it was. Yeah. It was like a weird mute, a thing for making music.

• 46:05Nilay Patel?

  Mm-hmm.

• 46:06Speaker 03

  By a company that I forget the name of.

• 46:08Nilay Patel?

  Let's call it a keyboard.

• 46:10Speaker 03

  It had buttons on it.

• 46:12Nilay Patel?

  Were they in the shape of piano keys?

• 46:13Speaker 03

  Stuff like that. They were not in the shape of piano keys. And it had a little cir- a little hole in it.

• 46:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 46:20Speaker 03

  That you plug the power into and you needed like a brick.

• 46:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 46:23Speaker 03

  It was like a nine volt or so. I don't know. There's lots of voltage. So I go to my box.

• 46:28Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I have one of those boxes.

• 46:29Speaker 03

  I got that rat's nest of bricks that adapt that, you know, it's like.

• 46:34Speaker 02

  And you know in your heart that you can never throw them away because there will come the day that you need one.

• 46:39Speaker 03

  Wall plugs are a nice universal standard that every gadget that plugs into them has to adapt from it to turn it into it, you know?

• 46:48Nilay Patel?

  You should, I think what you're doing right now is you're pitching me an article called Power Bricks Are The Original Dongle? Think about it. OG dongle. The Paul Miller story.

• 46:59Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 46:59Nilay Patel?

  I'm not selling you on this at all.

• 47:01Speaker 03

  Sounds like a little word.

• 47:04Speaker 02

  Do you buy this curved screen iPhone rumor? That the screen is gonna curve around à la Galaxy Edge?

• 47:10Nilay Patel?

  I don't.

• 47:11Speaker 02

  You don't?

• 47:12Nilay Patel?

  I don't.

• 47:12Speaker 03

  I think that comes from like a weird patent that Apple did, like what if the screen went all the way around?

• 47:17Speaker 02

  It comes from the analyst that everybody believes everything he says.

• 47:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 47:21Speaker 02

  I think, yeah.

• 47:22Nilay Patel?

  Um, I think they'll probably more aggressively curve the back. But I think Apple, the way Apple thinks about screens and cameras is so purist. That introducing curved distortion into the screen doesn't feel like a thing that they will do. Right?

• 47:41Speaker 02

  Like, yeah.

• 47:42Nilay Patel?

  It just doesn't seem like they're like, watch movies under your iPhone. The top and bottom will be gently curved away from you, so just ignore that part. Which I, I like when I hold Samsung's phones, I look at that and I'm like, that is more annoying than I want it to be. So I, I, I mean, I maybe it's a way to make it thinner. They like making things thinner. But I don't, I just don't see Apple being like, here's our screen. It's partially distorted by the hardware. It's, we invented it. It just doesn't seem like their move. And also, it's also what Samsung is doing and I don't think they want to walk into that trap either. Do you buy it, Paul?

• 48:16Speaker 03

  I agree with everything you just said and I hope that you're right.

• 48:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 48:20Speaker 03

  Cause it's one reason I would not want a Samsung phone.

• 48:24Speaker 02

  But like, the, the reason I bring it up is, you know, rumor is they're gonna get rid of the home button on the, on the front. You hold, you press the whole screen, blah, blah, blah. Samsung will have released the, the Galaxy S8 by then. The G6, even though I know it's not gonna make a big impact, is like, gonna be out as well. Um, and when I said earlier that this is what phones look like now, whatever the hot shit this looks new iPhone is, looks like, will be probably a design that we've already seen for six months on Android, which is gonna be a really interesting moment.

• 48:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And it's funny that the Huawei P10, like, announced at MWC, we'd have a hands-on with it. It looks like if you made another iPhone, but like iterated the design.

• 49:11Nilay Patel?

  It just looks like the next iPhone of this lineage, like almost exactly. So, I don't know, like I don't think Apple, I think Apple's obviously very confident in this particular design. They've released three iterations on it now. But if they're gonna make a move, I just expect them to make a more, a more dramatic move than headed where Samsung's headed. All right, Paul.

• 49:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, every week.

• 49:34Nilay Patel?

  Every week.

• 49:35Speaker 03

  I do a segment.

• 49:36Nilay Patel?

  I like how you're just introing your own segment because I'm waiting.

• 49:39Speaker 03

  It's called, "Hey, Look At Me Now."

• 49:43Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 49:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:44Nilay Patel?

  What do you got? You should think about changing the name of that segment.

• 49:47Speaker 03

  Sometimes I think about it. Uh, LG came out, is coming out with a VR headset.

• 49:52Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I saw this thing.

• 49:53Speaker 03

  So it's SteamVR, right? So HTC was never the exclusive forever buddy. And so it works with the same lighthouse technology and then use the same VR technology, but it's a VR headset. But you can like slide it up.

• 50:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 50:09Speaker 03

  So you can have it still mounted on your head, but raise the visor part.

• 50:14Nilay Patel?

  Like a fighter jet helmet?

• 50:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:16Nilay Patel?

  That's pretty awesome.

• 50:17Speaker 03

  Which ever, if you've ever used VR, here's what you're doing, especially once the motion controllers were introduced. You've got two motion controllers. There's a computer with a keyboard and mouse that you have to lean over. And then you have a thing on your head that perches kind of on your forehead so that you can look at the. What always happens, it like squishes my like brow down and I'm like squi-, it is so annoying. I don't know, LG might have solved it, might have cracked the case.

• 50:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, does it, is it gonna, what platform is it?

• 50:45Speaker 03

  It's Steam.

• 50:46Nilay Patel?

  Steam.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Steam.

• 50:47Speaker 03

  It's, it's basically a Vive.

• 50:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 50:50Speaker 03

  But made by LG instead of HTC.

• 50:53Nilay Patel?

  I'm into that.

• 50:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:55Nilay Patel?

  Do we, is it like the, are the hardware specs better or worse than Vive or is it just better?

• 50:58Speaker 03

  They seem to be very, very similar as far as the field of view and the resolution. It, it, what, what Addie said is it's basically some, it's not the next generation VR headset.

• 51:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 51:09Speaker 03

  It's another one of this generation, but. With a cool thing where you can swig it up.

• 51:15Speaker 02

  It's gonna probably be a little bit cheaper, I bet. Hopefully.

• 51:18Nilay Patel?

  Maybe.

• 51:18Speaker 03

  Well, also Oculus just dropped the price $200 on the Rift and Touch together, which is great for me because it's less than a month from when I bought my Rift and Touch. I'm getting $200 back.

• 51:30Nilay Patel?

  There you go. If you're gonna spend it on this new LG one.

• 51:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm gonna spend it on LG, but not have the lighthouses. Just, yeah.

• 51:38Nilay Patel?

  Oh, it doesn't have the lighthouses?

• 51:39Speaker 03

  No, it works with lighthouses. I was, I was trying to riff on the joke that we were doing.

• 51:47Nilay Patel?

  Well, let's all just sit here quietly for a minute.

• 51:51Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so I have a, I have a, we have two lightning rounds to end the show with. If you have been reading the site, you know that Jake Castronakis and I, literally everything FCC Chairman Ajit Pai does, we believe is a story on the verge right now.

• 52:06Speaker 02

  Ajit Pai eats an apple.

• 52:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. That'd be, that'd be amazing, actually. That'd be a lot easier to write than the very complicated stories.

• 52:15Nilay Patel?

  Dude has just been on a tear. He's been doing stuff. Here's just a list. I'm just gonna list them all. I've been writing about, actually Jake has been doing the hard work of reporting out, getting the analysis, doing the work, and then I've been ruthlessly aggregating Jake into my daily news roundup. But here's just a list of headlines that Jake has published this week alone. Ajit Pai went to MWC, said net neutrality was a mistake. Advocated for a bunch of stuff, including 5G rollouts, basically yelled at a bunch of European mobile executives and telecom chiefs, because he's like, "You guys build one infrastructure and then you make people compete on it. We believe in something called facilities-based competition where different kinds of infrastructure compete with each other."

• 53:00Nilay Patel?

  Really stern warning from Chairman Pai, which is great. He said... That he has no plans to review the AT&T Tim Warner merger. Because Tim Warner isn't selling any broadcast licenses to AT&T. They actually sold off whatever they would. So he doesn't want to look at it. Just let it go. It's going to happen. Net neutrality, actually it was its second anniversary, I believe, on Sunday of the vote. And we ran, Jake ran a whole thing about industry people reacting to it. Pi said broadband infrastructure investment in the United States is at the lowest historically low levels. There's a great piece in The Consumerist analyzing that based on the public statements of telecom companies.

• 53:42Nilay Patel?

  We looked at market caps and stock prices. He's basically walking into a new kind of fight, right? Like, you can, if you, if you slice away the data and ignore certain kinds of investment, he might be right. If you just look at a whole, at what broadband companies are saying about their investments to their investors, to their shareholders, it's definitely wrong. And all their market caps are way up. Then, we're not even done yet. Then... This is more of a thunder round. Lightning rounds are like instantaneous and fast. Yeah, this is just all the shit. I'm just going to list the headlines. Just read about it on the side. We don't have to get into it.

• 54:20Nilay Patel?

  Then, he, Tom Wheeler passed a bunch of privacy regulations for internet companies, basically saying you can't share your customers' browsing data. There's all kinds of other stuff. This is important because particularly Verizon bought AOL, wants to buy Yahoo to build an ad tech network. So you, it's, it's not, like, them getting more of your data helps them serve more ads. So there's this regulation there. All the ISPs were against it because they want to sell more ads. Pi said, you know what? We're going to let the Federal Trade Commission handle this. We want to step out of it. Halted the implementation of that order in basically a rush. He announced he was going to halt it on a Friday, rolled it out on a Tuesday.

• 55:04Nilay Patel?

  Like dudes move in. And then today, it's still going. Today, the Trump administration pulled the nomination of Obama's final FCC chairman. This is like way wonky. And we don't know who they're going to nominate. It's like a whole thing.

• 55:20Speaker 02

  So now-

• 55:20Nilay Patel?

  Who's left then at this point?

• 55:21Speaker 02

  Well, there's three people left. There's a rule at the FCC of the five commissioners, no more than three can be from the same party. But historically, the tradition is the opposing party in Congress says, "You should just nominate those two." And then the president says, "Sure, whatever." And then nominates those two. The president gets to nominate the chairman, so that there's always like a 3-2 majority for the executive party. But, nobody knows if, you know, Trump doesn't have a good history of following tradition. So he may nominate a couple of independents that are, you know, basically, what's, Inos? Einos? Independents in name only?

• 56:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's a phrase.

• 56:03Speaker 02

  It's like a possibility.

• 56:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I like that. Yeah, so it's just, it's just out there. Like, I was joking with Jake today, like, the FCC, most of the FCC's votes, historically, are unanimous. There are votes on things like, "Let's spend more money on 911 services." And everyone's like, "Yeah, that's a, yeah, sure." Or there are votes like, "Let's let people use federal funds to build broadband instead of copper telephone lines." And everyone's like, "Yeah, it's unanimously passed." Right now, we're in a place where there's only three commissioners. To pass anything, the FCC has to have three votes. One of those commissioners is a Democrat, two of them are Republicans. So they don't have the votes to do anything. So they gotta get through this whole thing. And on top of it, the chairman's like, "What if we just, I've got this red pen, I'm gonna use it a bunch."

• 56:50Nilay Patel?

  It's like a cra- like, this, this agency does not usually make this many waves. It's not, I have covered the FCC for a long time. It's not usually this newsworthy on like, a day-to-day, hour-by-hour basis. And it's the one that's in charge of the internet. So, we don't have to like, get super into it. I just wanted to point out, we are covering the hell out of the FCC right now. I think it's super interesting, and-

• 57:15Speaker 02

  I think we need to move our strategy. Like, everybody's been tweeting and has a pie, and we've been retweeting.

• 57:21Nilay Patel?

  I think we should-

• 57:21Speaker 02

  It's been great.

• 57:22Nilay Patel?

  No, I emailed-

• 57:22Speaker 02

  I don't think it's working.

• 57:23Nilay Patel?

  No, it's, I emailed that, I, so, like, it's not just a Twitter-based strategy. Like, I've been, I'm in contact with the FCC. And what they are continually saying to me is, The Verge is definitely on the list. You know, he's, he's new. And we're gonna come around. So I think we should keep tweeting at him. Adipai, at Adipai FCC, just let it know. It's working. It's, it's, it's working more than you think, is what I would say.

• 57:49Speaker 02

  Hmm, okay.

• 57:49Nilay Patel?

  He definitely knows what the Vergecast is. He definitely knows who Jake is, who Dieter is, who I am. He's, he's aware of us. Uh, and I think he, from what I know of him, he probably wants to have this debate. Um, but I think he, like I said, he's in a weird political moment. He doesn't have the votes, right? Like, he needs, he needs human bodies on that commission to get the votes he needs. So I, I don't think he wants to engage some, like, huge ideological debate right now. I think he wants to, like, have a functioning agency and then move on. But we'll see. So keep tweeting at him. Okay, actual lightning round.

• 58:33Nilay Patel?

  It's actually more mobile news. Um, I'm just gonna read the things off. And Dieter, you're gonna, you're gonna respond to them, the first one.

• 58:39Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 58:40Nilay Patel?

  YouTube announced streaming TV service, 35 bucks a month to get all the networks. Uh, you don't get football because Verizon owns the rights to football on mobile, so there's some weird exceptions in there. Um, I think it's a brilliant idea. What do you think?

• 58:51Speaker 02

  Uh, I think it's a fine idea. I think that, uh, the inability to know precisely which networks you're getting is a problem that every streaming service has. Um, it's interesting to me that Google, uh, is like, yeah, whatever, that's the way it is and is dealing with it. Um, and that everybody is in that camp, except for Apple, who's like, no, no, we're gonna make the perfect service.

• 59:10Nilay Patel?

  Paul?

• 59:10Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, I, I, um, when you say the word YouTube, that seems like the place I wanna watch videos.

• 59:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 59:17Speaker 03

  But the fact that there's not gonna be everything, it's just like, I don't wanna, I don't wanna buy something that's gonna disappoint me on a regular basis.

• 59:25Nilay Patel?

  But what they're gonna have is, so I think it's, well, Ross, you go first.

• 59:30Speaker 01

  I mean, half the stuff's gonna be ended up, ended up pirated on YouTube anyway. They're just not gonna pay.

• 59:34Nilay Patel?

  So what they're gonna have, which I think is huge, we write for every live event, how to watch this online. And it's like a long, complicated post. And every one of those posts, I will just be honest with the audience, should end with, you will be disappointed by one of these things in one way or another.

• 59:52Nilay Patel?

  Youtube is gonna at least have the four big networks. So when it's how to watch the NFL playoffs online, or how to watch, well not the, fuck.

• 1:00:00Speaker 03

  See, that's what I was saying, that's what I was saying.

• 1:00:02Nilay Patel?

  Well, it's just, it's just that Verizon deal. When it's how to watch the Oscars online, or how to watch presidential debates online.

• 1:00:07Speaker 02

  Do we know it's gonna be the Oscars?

• 1:00:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, cuz the, the networks have the rights to that. It's the NFL that cuts up its rights, in like, that specific way. So the big hole-

• 1:00:16Speaker 02

  Youtube is missing a bunch of channels.

• 1:00:18Nilay Patel?

  They're missing a bunch of channels, but they're not missing the four major networks.

• 1:00:22Speaker 03

  What about like, the Olympic, I feel like every big event has specially negotiated rights.

• 1:00:27Speaker 02

  Here's why I'm switching, I had, I've tried Sling, uh, I'm currently trying View, here's why I'm switching to Youtube.

• 1:00:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:33Speaker 02

  Uh, I trust Youtube to make a good app for everything that I use.

• 1:00:38Nilay Patel?

  Right, direct to me now crashes.

• 1:00:39Speaker 02

  My Playstation, my Apple TV, my iPhone, my iPad, my Android phone, shit, my Xbox.

• 1:00:44Nilay Patel?

  Right, and they have an unlimited free, unlimited free cloud DVR, like, this is the winner. Right, and like, the thing that's held everyone back is, they don't have all the channels, but really what's held them back is, they all have bad apps and their services are a bit, a little bit flaky. Youtube is not gonna have that problem.

• 1:01:01Speaker 03

  It's such a good app.

• 1:01:02Nilay Patel?

  They're just gonna, they're just gonna build on a thing that people like, and maybe they don't offer you everything, but they will get there in some way, somehow, eventually, while everyone else is still trying to catch up to, our app doesn't crash.

• 1:01:14Speaker 02

  Like, I- Yeah, and they'll, and, you know, the, the excitement about picking this service is they're gonna change the name of it every six months.

• 1:01:21Nilay Patel?

  Youtube Green!

• 1:01:22Speaker 02

  With Google Play, All Access, and YouTube Red.

• 1:01:24Nilay Patel?

  BlueTube!

• 1:01:26Speaker 02

  Burgundy.

• 1:01:28Nilay Patel?

  Uh, I just think, this is the service, and, I will say Youtube is executing better than Google as a whole, but, this is a service, when I read about it, I'm like, this is the right idea, I can't believe Youtube is beating Apple to this service.

• 1:01:41Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:01:41Nilay Patel?

  If Apple announced this service with these restrictions, and said, "This is the new Apple TV, pay Apple thirty-five dollars a month, get these channels," I think a lot of people would cut their cable.

• 1:01:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:53Nilay Patel?

  Like, instantly.

• 1:01:53Speaker 03

  I, I used to think that, but like, Apple is like the, I like, use iTunes and it like, takes ten seconds to load each different page, and-

• 1:02:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I tried to skip ahead in a track in Apple Music yesterday on my desktop, it just beachballed for thirty seconds.

• 1:02:10Speaker 03

  Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, fast, fast forward.

• 1:02:13Nilay Patel?

  It was like, "I can't, I can't do this, man, just, you live in real time now." So why don't you just slow down? Amazon leaked its own home security camera on amazon.com. That's where the images were located. I think I found out. Do you know what do you think?

• 1:02:28Speaker 02

  Fine, whatever. I mean, sure. Go, go ahead and buy an Amazon security camera.

• 1:02:33Nilay Patel?

  And well, maybe it's like an Echo with a camera. That'd be wild.

• 1:02:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, that probably they'll, they'll stick, they'll stick that on there because why not? Be a really weird Alexa. I don't know. I'm, I, I can't get excited about security cameras.

• 1:02:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, like Canary sell well.

• 1:02:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:48Nilay Patel?

  Nest is a whole business. It's built, half of it is security cameras. I guess one third of it, if you count the smoke detector, but I don't think that's.

• 1:02:55Speaker 02

  I mean, you want a security camera to have a good app and a good like online service and like backup and all that stuff. And um, Nest has done pretty well with that. A few other Canary, I guess is fine, but like, I don't know if you've like, I haven't tried Amazon Music in a hot minute. But I kind of suspect that that'll be kind of crappy. It like, I look at this, I'm like, oh, Amazon looks at what sells well, what's actually surprisingly easy to make, but nobody knows it. And then they make a cheap version themselves.

• 1:03:20Speaker 03

  Yeah. Apple also makes $10 keyboards and $10 mice.

• 1:03:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:25Speaker 03

  And $5 cables. It's just looking at it, not knowing a lot about it. Looks a little bit more on that end than the Echo.

• 1:03:33Nilay Patel?

  I think if you are, yeah, probably, but if you're Googling to buy a camera. And Amazon's like, this one has free cloud storage. If you're a Prime member and everyone else is like $9 a month. You're just gonna buy this.

• 1:03:46Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:03:46Nilay Patel?

  This is why it's in line around Spotify, preparing to launch lossless audio.

• 1:03:50Speaker 02

  Sorry, title.

• 1:03:54Nilay Patel?

  I think this is like a ruthless move by Spotify to kill.

• 1:03:57Speaker 03

  Well, how? I would venture to guess that very little of Title's market share has anything to do with lossless. And it's all about those random exclusives that then you forget to cancel title.

• 1:04:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So I oddly disagree with you. I think a lot of like, I've been just reading stereo forums. There's a thing I'm doing lately. They're all in the title train. Cause they all, they all, right? Cause they're just being told this is better. And then their brains are like, it must be.

• 1:04:27Speaker 02

  Which is exactly how all stereo marketing works.

• 1:04:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's amazing. Today, today I looked at a $1,500 HDMI cable.

• 1:04:34Speaker 02

  What?

• 1:04:34Nilay Patel?

  Yes. It was amazing. It's covered in diamonds.

• 1:04:38Speaker 02

  Did you have a moment where you're like, maybe? Wait, wait, I mean, did, did, did you have a moment where you're like, click?

• 1:04:45Nilay Patel?

  Uh, the 50 foot version of cable, uh, $50,000.

• 1:04:48Speaker 03

  Holy fuck.

• 1:04:49Nilay Patel?

  It's an insane market.

• 1:04:51Speaker 03

  What are the radio properties of diamonds?

• 1:04:53Nilay Patel?

  I don't know.

• 1:04:56Nilay Patel?

  It's so confusing. Uh, the comments, just go, it's an audio quest HDMI cable. I encourage everyone to go read the reviews. The reviews are like amazing. The question and answers are amazing. Like, one of the questions is, why is this better than a, like a $10 HDMI cable? And the answer, or, or what makes this different than a $10 HDMI cable? And the answer is $10,000.

• 1:05:20Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, but I will say this, if you are Spotify and your business is your business, like streaming, I think it's Ogborbus files for free and some ads, and then you convert people to your pay tier, you probably incur zero or close to zero cost to re-encode into whatever lossless you're gonna do. You probably incur zero or close to zero cost in bandwidth streaming that stuff out. You can just be like, okay, you can have this now. And then people will pay you more money, so you're just getting free money. And Tidal, which their whole business is like, it sounds better. They're like, we, we have exclusives, but then Tidal has to compete with Apple, which has silly money to buy those exclusives. It's kinda like they're getting boxed in in a way.

• 1:06:04Nilay Patel?

  And I don't think the labels want exclusives to happen anymore, because they know it's bad for them. Because they don't want to negotiate with every service every time they release an album.

• 1:06:11Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:06:12Nilay Patel?

  Also, Spotify, if you just ask them, they'll just be like, you know why those Ed Sheeran tracks are at the top of the chart? Because we put them on every playlist. Like, that's their power. And I, I don't know, it's a thing. Poor Tidal, it's all over. Is there anything else lightning round that we need to talk about?

• 1:06:26Speaker 03

  Oh, I, I know what it was.

• 1:06:27Nilay Patel?

  See? I knew I just had to give you time.

• 1:06:29Speaker 03

  Personal news.

• 1:06:30Nilay Patel?

  Personal news.

• 1:06:31Speaker 03

  I am becoming a Soylent man.

• 1:06:34Nilay Patel?

  Oh, God.

• 1:06:36Speaker 03

  Bye.

• 1:06:37Nilay Patel?

  All right, go ahead.

• 1:06:38Speaker 03

  It's my middle meal of the day, one bottle of Soylent.

• 1:06:41Nilay Patel?

  Is it working?

• 1:06:42Speaker 03

  Uh, two days in.

• 1:06:45Speaker 03

  It seems fine so far.

• 1:06:47Nilay Patel?

  It's great.

• 1:06:47Speaker 03

  I mean, do you want the, like, the real?

• 1:06:49Nilay Patel?

  Everyone wants to know.

• 1:06:50Speaker 03

  Your destiny. This morning? That's like the real. This morning? Oh, God. I farted.

• 1:06:59Nilay Patel?

  And.

• 1:07:01Speaker 03

  I mean, I asked you, I asked you, did you want the real scoop?

• 1:07:05Nilay Patel?

  So did I. I didn't drink so early yesterday. That also happened to me this morning.

• 1:07:11Speaker 03

  Okay, well, here's the thing, though. Here's the thing.

• 1:07:16Speaker 03

  It smelled really bad.

• 1:07:18Nilay Patel?

  That's the show, everybody.

• 1:07:20Speaker 03

  And then it turned out that we just had a gas leak in our apartment and it wasn't me.

• 1:07:24Nilay Patel?

  There are so many other things to listen to on both The Verge and Recode side. Walt Mossberg and I have a show called Control of the Leaks.

• 1:07:31Speaker 03

  It wasn't Soylent's fault. Everything's fine gastronomically with me.

• 1:07:36Nilay Patel?

  Peter Kafka has a show.

• 1:07:37Speaker 03

  Two days in.

• 1:07:38Nilay Patel?

  Called Recode Media, which is very serious, reaches heights of intelligence and discourse.

• 1:07:46Speaker 03

  I'm saying, can we cut this whole part off?

• 1:07:48Nilay Patel?

  At this moment, we can literally only dream of Kara Swisher hosts Recode Decode, another deeply intelligent podcast about technology. And Lauren Good hosts Too Embarrassed to Ask. Also, just a, just a well-produced show. It's called Too Embarrassed to Ask, but it's never quite as embarrassing as what just happened here. All of which you can see next week's live. Just whatever you want. You can come back to this moment if you want to feel better about yourself. Anyhow, go find that stuff on iTunes, listen to it all. I will say, it's been like months since we got our review, because I've been asking people to like,

• 1:08:29Nilay Patel?

  tell a friend. Review us on iTunes. Make it, uh, don't, just review the first, the first like 50 minutes of the show. Leave the last 10 out. But in your mind, remember that, uh, and then write us a review. Tell your friends, tell your friends about all the other shows. That's great. Once again, I'll remind you that we're live at South by Southwest, if you're going to be in Austin, on the 12th and the 14th with National Geographic. That's happening at the Vulcan Gas Company, which will be rebranded and the whole thing. But if you're down there, come down there. If not, look forward to the live shows. That's going to be really fun. And I want to thank our friends at Crizal, no glare lenses. If you're glasses, you know, fingerprints, scratches, glares, constant obstruction to your vision, huge distraction. So go to crizal.com to learn more. That's C-R-I-Z-A-L dot com. Start living life in the clear. And that's it. That's Vergecast, everybody. Rock and roll. Paul.

• 1:09:15Nilay Patel?

  Link's an elf. Snap, snap.