Roomba with a Knife

We're joining the enterprise on this week's Vergecast. Sony, Microsoft, Apple—we've got all your corporate backend stories covered. Plus, Dieter introduces us to the native vocabulary of Minnesota. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:06Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, brought to you by no one because no advertiser is dumb enough to buy this show. I'm Neelai Patel.

• 0:15Speaker 01

  I'm Dieter Bone.

• 0:16Speaker 02

  And I'm Micah Singleton.

• 0:17Nilay Patel?

  Oh damn!

• 0:20Speaker 01

  We brought out the proper intro for Micah.

• 0:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, no, I did. I did my best. I was gonna do a male kimp joke, but those are super planned. I use it.

• 0:31Speaker 02

  Actually, the line is "actually use."

• 0:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I do. It's great. So we're here, Sam Sheffer.

• 0:36Speaker 03

  Hi.

• 0:36Nilay Patel?

  On the hype deck.

• 0:37Speaker 03

  Thank you for announcing that I'm here.

• 0:39Nilay Patel?

  There he is.

• 0:39Speaker 03

  You did it.

• 0:40Nilay Patel?

  Hype check yourself.

• 0:42Speaker 03

  Foppish. Boom!

• 0:43Nilay Patel?

  Oh, really?

• 0:46Speaker 03

  That's it. I'm leaving.

• 0:46Nilay Patel?

  Before we started, we got into a heated debate over what the word "foppish" meant. And Sam decided it was good and applied to him.

• 0:54Nilay Patel?

  So that's where we landed.

• 0:55Speaker 02

  He's a modern day Scarlett Pimpernell. That's Sam.

• 0:58Speaker 03

  I don't know what that means.

• 0:59Nilay Patel?

  Google that too.

• 1:00Speaker 02

  Look it up.

• 1:00Nilay Patel?

  We've just been instructing Sam to Google things as we go along. But no, I'm excited. Welcome to The Vergecast, our show where we talk about the Verge. Today, Micah Singleton is here. Micah's the newest member of The Verge crew.

• 1:12Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:13Nilay Patel?

  Just pretty excited. He's visiting Nashville, visiting us from Nashville.

• 1:15Speaker 02

  Knoxville.

• 1:16Nilay Patel?

  Knoxville.

• 1:16Speaker 02

  Knoxville.

• 1:17Nilay Patel?

  I think I've been telling everybody Nashville.

• 1:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. Close. It's close. Three hours.

• 1:21Nilay Patel?

  Three hours. One starts with a K and one starts with an N, but on one, the K is hiding.

• 1:26Speaker 02

  But they're both in inville, so it's close.

• 1:29Nilay Patel?

  Knoxville. But he's visiting us in New York, which is great.

• 1:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32Nilay Patel?

  We went out a little bit last night.

• 1:34Speaker 02

  A little bit.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  I went out a lot bit last night.

• 1:36Nilay Patel?

  We might go out a lot bit again tonight.

• 1:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:38Nilay Patel?

  But it's great to have him here. And in honor of Micah, and to troll our many, many listeners, today will be the hardest of the hardcore tech Vergecasts.

• 1:47Speaker 03

  For people that don't know, Micah is like a tech nerd.

• 1:51Speaker 02

  Complete tech nerd.

• 1:51Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 1:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:53Speaker 02

  People that don't know.

• 1:54Nilay Patel?

  People don't know.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  So is everyone else in this room.

• 1:57Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, they know you and Dieter. I'm not a tech nerd. No, but Micah, you know, he knows his stuff.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  Everyone doesn't know me. They don't know.

• 2:05Nilay Patel?

  The mic is wonderful. We're very excited to have him here. And to be a tech nerd.

• 2:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:09Nilay Patel?

  But today is enterprise apps day.

• 2:13Nilay Patel?

  I don't think anybody's ready for the level of enterprise apps conversation we're about to have.

• 2:17Speaker 02

  I don't think we're ready.

• 2:18Nilay Patel?

  iTunes reviewers.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  Get ready to hear nothing but granular Salesforce features.

• 2:24Speaker 03

  Oh, no, please, no.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  You guys, we're gonna make a pivot table live on air, alright? Get your shit ready.

• 2:31Nilay Patel?

  Look, our line of business apps conversations, you know, I don't know, that's a, that's a Microsoft phrase, I think. No, actually, a huge week in news and specifically in tech news, across a variety of things that all feel super vergy in their scope and in their way. So we should actually get started with what I think is the biggest story of the week. And possibly like, it's the end of the year, but possibly of the year, based on how much is being revealed about Hollywood right now, which is this hack of Sony Pictures.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:03Nilay Patel?

  And so here's the backstory. So Sony Pictures was gonna release the interview, the movie with Seth Rogen and James Franco.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  I think they, they still are.

• 3:10Nilay Patel?

  They still are, but they were, you know, they're, they're in the middle of the promotional cycle for it. The movie is about killing Kim Jong-un, Akiva.

• 3:18Speaker 02

  Un.

• 3:19Nilay Patel?

  Un. Which is...

• 3:21Speaker 03

  You got it.

• 3:22Nilay Patel?

  Which is what, I mean, as a premise for a movie, like, fine. But so goes, uh, North Korea, obviously not so, so happy about such a movie.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  Not so much.

• 3:32Nilay Patel?

  And retaliated by hacking the shit out of Sony.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:35Nilay Patel?

  There were ominous...

• 3:37Speaker 01

  We're gonna not swear anymore?

• 3:38Nilay Patel?

  Oh, crap.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did it too.

• 3:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're past that now. Too late.

• 3:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, we're getting that explicit label on iTunes, which means all the kids will want to download us.

• 3:47Nilay Patel?

  That's, we're getting that parental advisory.

• 3:48Speaker 03

  What would you say we're rated if you had to give us a rating?

• 3:51Nilay Patel?

  We're, dude, like, seriously, it's like, it's like a soft PG-13. So we don't... There's one F-bomb every two hours and there's zero naked people? That's a soft PG-13.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  We don't yet have...

• 4:01Nilay Patel?

  But we're gonna change that naked people thing from the 80s, though. No, in the 80s, PG-13 was kinda raunchy.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was.

• 4:07Nilay Patel?

  For real, like...

• 4:08Speaker 03

  F-bombs are raunchy.

• 4:10Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 4:10Speaker 03

  You don't, you don't say F-bomb in front of mom. You could say damn.

• 4:14Nilay Patel?

  F-bombs are raunchy.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  I, I learned the F-bomb from my mom.

• 4:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, you grew up in middle America.

• 4:21Nilay Patel?

  The least raunchy place on earth.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  What?

• 4:24Speaker 03

  Look.

• 4:24Nilay Patel?

  Like the Puritans came to America, they're like, well, I don't know, there's all this water on these coasts.

• 4:30Speaker 03

  Let's move in.

• 4:30Nilay Patel?

  Inside, we're going inside. Uh, yeah, I don't, literally, I think Minnesota is the least raunchy place on earth.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's fair.

• 4:40Speaker 03

  What I mean to say is that they, they use foul language.

• 4:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, because they're too, they can't do any other raunchy things.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  We had, we had.

• 4:46Nilay Patel?

  It's their one avenue of raunchy expression.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  The Lufrans of Minnesota had to move to Minnesota to get away from those crazy, you know, Amish people. They were, they were way too out there for us.

• 4:57Nilay Patel?

  I don't know.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  That's just too wild.

• 4:59Nilay Patel?

  Carriage with four wheels.

• 5:01Speaker 01

  I have no.

• 5:03Nilay Patel?

  Uh, sorry. Okay.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  So we don't yet, we don't yet have the smoking gun for sure, for sure that North Korea did it. But the, a bunch of the header files in the hack stuff were, I don't know, header files, a bunch of the files were in Korean. And, uh.

• 5:18Nilay Patel?

  North Korea.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  The malware. It called it a righteous deed, but they denied that they have done it.

• 5:24Nilay Patel?

  Right. So, I mean, that seems to be the vector by which it came across.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:31Nilay Patel?

  But what's actually interesting now is after a period of media organization, like hand wringing, I would say there is now media organization gleeful digging through these hacked documents. Uh, because they reveal so much about the process by which movies are made and sold. And by the process by which studios talk to each other. Uh, Emily Yoshida today, uh, told me that she thought it was amazing that like billionaire and millionaire studio moguls email each other like teens.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:02Nilay Patel?

  From AOL.com email addresses.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:04Nilay Patel?

  Mostly what they use.

• 6:05Speaker 03

  They live in the, they're, they're using archaic software. I mean, think about who's, who are these executives?

• 6:10Nilay Patel?

  Mail, mail app.

• 6:11Speaker 03

  Right. Yeah, yeah, exactly. They're just like old dudes who like still use Windows 98.

• 6:17Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that is, I will say a harsh burn.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:21Nilay Patel?

  Uh, but probably accurate. Uh, and it probably explains why they got hacked. Uh, no, so I will, the FBI, um, and I think the CIA, like, they, they've begun the forensic analysis. They've said 90% of companies would have gotten hacked in this way. Life at Sony Pictures appears to be terrible. No one's taking responsibility. There's all this potential for identity theft. All of that is bad.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  And there's, there's, there's leaks coming out all the time because they stole just a huge amount of information and only a small portion of it has come out so far.

• 6:49Nilay Patel?

  Right. And so like, it's, it's a terabyte so far, right? But like, they're releasing like four gigs at a time, six gigs at a time.

• 6:56Speaker 03

  So what kind of stuff have we seen so far?

• 6:58Nilay Patel?

  Well, so here's, here's what, upstairs, this is like the funniest thing. Upstairs on the ninth floor of this office, uh, in a small room, uh, Ross Miller, Brian Bishop, who's back on the Verge team as well, she's awesome. Russell Brandon and occasionally Emily, uh, have, they've gotten out two Windows laptops, an Asus, and I think a Yoga and something else.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. But you can't tell which is which because they all look like Mac monkeys.

• 7:28Nilay Patel?

  They all look exactly, it's the funniest thing in the world. But they've gotten them out because they're like old review units and they don't care if they get viruses because they don't know what's in these torrents. Uh, and they're just like pouring through things now.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  Like everybody else at every other media organization.

• 7:42Nilay Patel?

  Everybody else, like the Wall Street Journal broke a story out of this stuff. The Recode broke a story. Gawker's been all over it.

• 7:46Speaker 03

  BuzzFeed did it too.

• 7:47Nilay Patel?

  BuzzFeed, like everyone's like, uh, uh, uh, Fusion.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. So Sony, Sony's like the guy in the bar, standing in front of the window and he's really excited. And, and then the window breaks and zombies grab him and pull him out and we're the zombies.

• 8:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, we're the, we're feasting on his flesh.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:02Nilay Patel?

  That's what's happening.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  And so who are the hackers then?

• 8:05Nilay Patel?

  Huh?

• 8:06Speaker 01

  Who would the hackers be in that situation?

• 8:07Nilay Patel?

  The hackers infected us with their zombie disease.

• 8:10Speaker 01

  No, well, shit.

• 8:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  Nah, shoot, darn.

• 8:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  Drat.

• 8:14Nilay Patel?

  Drat.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  Stop rushing it up Minnesota.

• 8:18Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, so the first stuff to come out, which was fascinating, is the disaster of the Steve Jobs movie.

• 8:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:26Nilay Patel?

  Uh, which I will say has always seemed like a disaster to me. But the arguments that got in about who should star in it, who should direct it, Aaron Sorkin, like, he offered, uh, he wanted Tom Cruise to play Steve Jobs, which was amazing.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:40Nilay Patel?

  Uh, he offered to like, give up some of his salary to keep David Fincher around because he wanted to keep the social network team together. And then just like, the basics of this script, which this movie took place in two auditoriums, a garage and like a living room. It's like, the, nothing happens in this movie. Or a cafe, it's like a diner.

• 9:03Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 9:04Nilay Patel?

  Uh, not a living room. And like this movie, so this movie left Sony, right? It left Sony and went to Universal because they couldn't get it together. And by the end, like these executives from their area well counts are just swearing at each other.

• 9:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:17Nilay Patel?

  Just totally like, super mad, being like, don't you threaten me. And it's like, I don't know. Do you ever watch Entourage?

• 9:25Speaker 02

  I, I watched a bit of it. I didn't watch the entire thing.

• 9:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, like you, you watch it for a while and you're like, oh, this can't be real. This is not how people behave.

• 9:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:31Nilay Patel?

  If you read these emails and it's like,

• 9:33Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 9:33Nilay Patel?

  This is how they behave.

• 9:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:35Nilay Patel?

  It's amazing. Uh, what do you think of the, did you read the Jobs book?

• 9:39Speaker 02

  I read most of it. Um, this movie sounds like a disaster.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  Sounds like it's gonna be a complete disaster.

• 9:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:46Speaker 02

  I mean, the storyline doesn't seem that great and they've had so many casting issues already. I don't know how they're gonna get this done.

• 9:53Nilay Patel?

  I mean, they're still struggling to find a lead. Who do you think should play Jobs?

• 9:56Speaker 02

  I, Tom Cruise to this point.

• 9:59Nilay Patel?

  Why not?

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Might as well.

• 10:00Speaker 02

  Why not? Like,

• 10:01Nilay Patel?

  He's too shrill.

• 10:02Speaker 02

  I think he can do it. I mean, later Jobs, 2000 era Jobs, but not the earlier part. I mean, the problem they're having is finding someone that can play early eighties Jobs and then early 2000's Jobs.

• 10:13Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 10:14Speaker 02

  Both of them justice.

• 10:15Nilay Patel?

  But what's amazing to me about this movie, like, I just don't get it. It's like, those were important periods of Steve Jobs.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  But they weren't the iPhone.

• 10:23Nilay Patel?

  They weren't the iPhone.

• 10:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:24Nilay Patel?

  Like, how do you make a stu, a movie about Steve Jobs that doesn't have the iPhone in it?

• 10:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:29Nilay Patel?

  At all. Like, not even like, at the end of the movie, like, maybe like the last scene of the movie is like, he's holding an iPod. He's like, what if this is a phone? And it's like literally the only way you can do this in this movie.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Well, then.

• 10:41Nilay Patel?

  Like you see him like slowly, like the shot fades out with it. He's like standing on the beach, holding an iPod. And he pulls away. He's like putting the iPod to his ear.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  It's not how it happened though.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  They started with the tablet.

• 10:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you're right.

• 10:57Speaker 02

  So I mean, like, you're missing an entire chunk, a huge chunk, an important chunk.

• 11:01Nilay Patel?

  Well, you know, so here's my, here's my thing about this movie. And it's amazing to watch it just like stumble around the studios and watch Sony just struggle to cast it and understand it. And Angela, they were in a fight with Angela and Jolie because she wanted David Fincher.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  Shut Angie down before she makes it very hard for David to do jobs.

• 11:17Nilay Patel?

  Yep.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  According to one executive.

• 11:19Nilay Patel?

  I mean, there's like crazy high school politics. They're like, we should never be beholden to a movie star.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, these emails consist of WTF and LOL from like billionaire executives.

• 11:28Nilay Patel?

  Who like angrily types the words, we should never be beholden to a movie star. And like hits enter and it's like, I said the right thing.

• 11:35Speaker 03

  All dudes, all dudes with Windows 98.

• 11:39Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, so watching this like Jobs movie stuff, which I think is so far, we have many more stories coming out of this, and I think there's a lot of interesting stuff revealed. But watching the Jobs movie stuff, what occurs to me is that their source material is so bad. Cause that book, the Walter Isaacson book is bad.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:56Nilay Patel?

  Like it's really bad.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:58Nilay Patel?

  And it doesn't make any sense, like in key areas, like they never discuss why they left Intel to go to ARM for the iPhone. It's just not in there. Like, that's a huge decision.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:08Nilay Patel?

  Maybe you should have asked Steve Jobs about it. Uh, Bill Gates is like, they didn't use any of the next technology in iOS 10. He just, it's a quote in the book. And it's like, you never, you didn't ask Steve Jobs if that was true? Cause you were the only one talking to him about his autobiography that you wrote, that you transcribed for him. Uh, it's, it's terrible. And it's just obvious that would make a bad movie.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, the book was bad, but I mean, I think Aaron Sorkin figured out a way to make the script worse. And it's not going, I mean, to cast someone in this movie is, is, is going to be incredibly difficult to find someone that can do it justice. And Fassbender, who's, I think he's the top name right now.

• 12:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 12:43Speaker 02

  I don't see that working.

• 12:45Nilay Patel?

  I was just like, what is, just top of your head, Sam, number one Steve Jobs movie of all time?

• 12:52Speaker 03

  Number one Steve Jobs movie of all time?

• 12:53Nilay Patel?

  Moment.

• 12:54Speaker 03

  Moment?

• 12:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 12:55Speaker 03

  I mean, again, I was born in 1990, so this was.

• 12:58Speaker 02

  Well, so was I, so.

• 13:00Speaker 03

  Were you really?

• 13:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 13:02Speaker 03

  You were born in 1990? So you guys can never give me crap about being young again.

• 13:06Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yes, we can.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  Suit?

• 13:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I'm wearing velour. Get at me. Foppish.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  It's not a compliment, Sam.

• 13:16Speaker 03

  Steve Jobs's defining moment was the iPhone. It was the iPhone. It was.

• 13:20Nilay Patel?

  No, it's that moment where he's like, it's a thing and a thing.

• 13:23Speaker 03

  I mean, he changed the course of history.

• 13:25Nilay Patel?

  It's an X and a Y and another one, right? Like, that's the moment. That's the Steve Jobs. He's like, are you getting it? And like, that's how you start this movie.

• 13:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:32Nilay Patel?

  And then like you do the shimmers.

• 13:33Speaker 03

  Right, and then you go back.

• 13:35Nilay Patel?

  And then he holds the iPod to his ear.

• 13:36Speaker 03

  No, it never happens.

• 13:38Nilay Patel?

  While the helicopter pulls away on a beach.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  The funny part is, everyone knows this except for Aaron Sorkin.

• 13:44Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  Everyone knows what to do, except for him.

• 13:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, I just, that book doesn't contain, I mean, I think Aaron Sorkin's limited by the fact that his source material doesn't contain enough detail about the iPhone. Like, the story of the iPad in that book is, an engineer at a party, like, said, I'm making a tablet, and Steve Jobs was like, no, I, fuck you. Sorry, I did it again.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  Forever, forever you. Forever, man.

• 14:11Nilay Patel?

  But that's not really the story.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:13Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. So that, like, seeing how that's going, I think that movie, well, if you're listening to The Vergecast, you almost certainly want to watch that movie, right? And I don't think it's ever gonna get me.

• 14:25Speaker 03

  Why are they making Steve Jobs movies? To make money, right? Like, I don't think there's a director out there that's like, I want to do this because I love Steve Jobs. It's like, no, we can, we can make.

• 14:36Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 14:38Speaker 03

  No.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  I mean, don't get me wrong, you do not need to convince me that Aaron Sorkin is, like, gotten bad.

• 14:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, I just, I just, I think it's, it's way too soon. They, I mean, the Ashton Kutcher one came out, and whatever about that one, but it's just like, another one already?

• 14:54Speaker 01

  Do you want to talk about the Justin Long one?

• 14:56Nilay Patel?

  There's a Justin Long one?

• 14:57Speaker 01

  Oh, it is incredibly.

• 14:59Speaker 03

  Wait, wait, is this Silicon Valley, like, the one from the?

• 15:02Nilay Patel?

  Is this just Justin Long, like, in his house, like, in front of a webcam?

• 15:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 15:07Nilay Patel?

  Like a YouTube series?

• 15:08Speaker 01

  It's like, it's like the whole time you're like, this is a parody. This no, yeah, no. Yeah, it is. No. It's shockingly insanely bad. You didn't know about this?

• 15:17Nilay Patel?

  I didn't know. Clearly it has not. All right. Everyone furiously typed Justin Long and Steve Jobs into their browser.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  It's called iSteve. It's an documentary.

• 15:25Speaker 03

  No. Oh, my God. He looks really bad.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  It's horrible.

• 15:30Speaker 03

  Crap. He looks like a.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  You don't remember this?

• 15:32Speaker 03

  No.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:34Nilay Patel?

  That. Oh, my God. Is that a fake beard?

• 15:37Speaker 01

  It's a fake beard and there's like the like old ghost janitor that like gives him advice right before the keynote. Like, yeah.

• 15:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  No.

• 15:44Nilay Patel?

  Funny or die.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  No. But yeah, it was a funnier die.

• 15:46Speaker 03

  This is a pile of bad.

• 15:47Nilay Patel?

  It was bad. Okay. Well, we're not, I don't want to talk about that. Anyway, so my, my.

• 15:54Speaker 03

  We all just sighed for this.

• 15:55Nilay Patel?

  We all just, we all just looked at like Justin Long and like a dime store beard and like power donut and just like haircut that he's got. It's bad. It's all bad.

• 16:06Speaker 01

  So do you know what Sony's doing now? They're finding the torrents and then they're.

• 16:10Nilay Patel?

  Suing the torrent providers?

• 16:11Speaker 01

  Well, and they're also seeding them. But they're seeding it with really bad seeds. And so the like, so the torrents are failing. They're trying to just get in there and destroy the torrents before they can work.

• 16:23Nilay Patel?

  That's how you, there's like some crazy hacker stuff beyond that.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  Well, so if you, if you change the data, it's hashed, but you, if you just like get 5,000 people that are seeding it. And then you're like, oh, this one's got a ton of seeds. This is gonna, I'm gonna download this super fast, but then all the seeds are like only uploading at a ridiculously slow speed. Then the torrent is effectively dead. If nobody can get it. That's what they're trying right.

• 16:47Nilay Patel?

  I mean, this part of it is really interesting, right? Where Sony hired like Mandiant, which is a security firm that specializes in like rapid response to hack.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  They're very serious, Mandiant. They know they're.

• 16:57Nilay Patel?

  Sure, sure. Wow. I mean, it's, the rating's gone, man. Like somewhere John Lagan Marcinho is like.

• 17:05Speaker 03

  We get five stars.

• 17:06Nilay Patel?

  It's not the five star rating.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  But I'm trying to plug the five stars.

• 17:09Speaker 03

  Give us five stars.

• 17:12Nilay Patel?

  Hype check what you just did.

• 17:14Speaker 03

  It was probably lame.

• 17:15Nilay Patel?

  Okay. But to be clear.

• 17:20Speaker 03

  Some people will give us.

• 17:21Nilay Patel?

  No, so Sony's like they're attacking the torrents. They are desperately trying to lock down their own systems or trying to understand where it came from. I mean, this is a huge, like a big deal. Like, these are billion dollar companies that have been attacked. And Sony just keeps getting it. Like, they were attacked. What's the?

• 17:35Speaker 03

  Playstation.

• 17:36Nilay Patel?

  Playstation Network just went down. By the same group that brought down Xbox Live. I mean, the, the nature of this is I think every company in America is now terrified about this. Because everyone, like, the overwhelming scope of, like, information technology is moving to the cloud. And this is Sony's, like, local. It's like, hard to tell if this is gonna push more companies to give their security away to Microsoft and Google and the cloud services, or pull it down even closer so they can keep a closer eye on it. And I think it will end up pushing things. You want hardcore enterprise tech in the conversation? You're getting it right now.

• 18:10Speaker 03

  So what I want to know is.

• 18:11Nilay Patel?

  A raunchy enterprise.

• 18:12Speaker 03

  They, they, they've been hacked to hell and back. But is there, you know, some sort of calculable damage? Like, I get that, you know, the, the social security numbers and all those things were released and these emails were released. But is Sony actually suffering?

• 18:29Nilay Patel?

  Yes. Yeah, badly. Oh, super badly. They're like, they're, they're conducting business on, like, pen and paper right now.

• 18:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, and the worst part is these hacks are, these leaks are gonna go on for a while.

• 18:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 18:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was my next question.

• 18:40Nilay Patel?

  I mean, and it's like, there's, right? I mean, it's at the point where, like, major Sony executives had to apologize for, like, telling racially tinged jokes about Obama that they thought were private. And it's like, well, you shouldn't have done that. But, but there was no expectation.

• 18:56Speaker 03

  Right.

• 18:57Nilay Patel?

  Right, you were not acting in your public persona. And like, that stuff is like, it's just gonna keep happening to them in like, the worst possible way.

• 19:04Speaker 03

  So this is just the beginning? This is the tip of the iceberg?

• 19:07Speaker 02

  It'll take a while.

• 19:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, and they're releasing it in chunks, right? There's. If they, it's like, if you have a terabyte of data and you've already released a terabyte of data, you probably have a lot more.

• 19:16Speaker 03

  And, and, and their, their motive is just screw you Sony Pictures for releasing the interview? Or is there something deeper? It's hard to tell, right?

• 19:25Nilay Patel?

  No one knows. I mean, like, no one's really coming forward to like.

• 19:27Speaker 03

  Well, that's also true.

• 19:28Nilay Patel?

  Right. So that, that's Sony, and I think you're going to see a lot of reporting, not only from us, but from basically every media organization. Because it is now easy to tell a broader story about all of the news that we've gotten out of Sony in the past. Um, I would say there is probably a great deal of hand wringing, just in general, um, about it. Um, I, you know, we waited. We, it took us a week to like, feel good about doing it. And then every, every single other media organization started doing it. Um, and at this point, there's actually more value, I think, for us, and this is how I think about it, to do good stories based on the stuff rather than re-report or aggregate or whatever, other people's stories and not have done the work ourselves.

• 20:09Nilay Patel?

  So we're doing it. Um, I will say that room with Ross and Brian and Russell bursts into laughter at mysterious intervals. So I don't know, I don't know. Like, we'll see what they get up to, but they're, they're working on it. You'll see some more stories. Uh, okay. So that's Sony. Um, there's other, there's actually lots of like media tech news.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's like, that's like the thing. So the, the next big thing is, um, you know, we, we'd heard HBO go, they're going to make it, they're going to unbundle it, anybody's going to be able to do it, that we're expecting that next year. But the next shoe is that, that rather than use their own in-house solution, which crashes anytime anything mildly popular airs on HBO.

• 20:49Nilay Patel?

  That's pretty true.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  No, it's just a good burn.

• 20:52Nilay Patel?

  It's a good burn.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  Uh, they, uh, their CTO is resigning and they're going to partner up with, uh, Major League Baseball, the people that make the MLB app and also the WWE app. And they're going to run the streaming technology behind HBO.

• 21:05Nilay Patel?

  So MLB Advanced is like the white label provider. They do WWE, they do March Madness.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:11Nilay Patel?

  ESPN. They, they're unclear.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:14Nilay Patel?

  There's a couple, I think they might've switched providers.

• 21:16Speaker 03

  Is this, is this a good thing or bad thing for HBO people?

• 21:19Speaker 01

  Uh, it's a really good. Thing that the MLB advance is a fascinating company.

• 21:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  They they power all these streams. They keep them all synced up across multiple platforms and they make apps that like dynamically show data from the games in a nice looking interface. It's up to date and synced up to the video stream that you're watching.

• 21:38Speaker 03

  And it's and it the stream loads properly.

• 21:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. And they do it for, you know, millions of people and like hundreds of games, you know, per week and just they they know it. They've got it down.

• 21:49Nilay Patel?

  We've had it down, but like, I think it's there's, I mean, I think if you're HBO, you've got a, and you know, they they hired a guy from Otto Burke's from Microsoft, like build their streaming group. They had like 60 people in an office in Seattle and they're just like walking away from it.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:04Nilay Patel?

  That dude resigned.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. He he said, and like his quote, like the memo was, uh, this is a change in direction from what I planned with HBO and the approach will not utilize my capabilities.

• 22:17Nilay Patel?

  Right. Cause if you're if you're just white labeling, I mean, that's like being hired as a software architect and they're being like, you should, you should just buy Office.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:24Nilay Patel?

  Just buy, just go to comp USA, dude.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 22:26Speaker 03

  And just buy. Comp USA. I got my first e-machines computer from there. Oh, boss, man, really? I mean, it was beef at the time, but just looking back, e-machines, it had like.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  Did you get an EPC?

• 22:39Nilay Patel?

  It was beef at the time. All right. Well.

• 22:43Speaker 03

  That just put me back in a really weird place.

• 22:45Nilay Patel?

  Are you like having emotions about your?

• 22:47Speaker 03

  No, it was, no, it was, it was my first.

• 22:50Nilay Patel?

  Fake iMac ones?

• 22:51Speaker 03

  No, no, no. This was just like a tower and I put like some lame stickers on it and I was, that was a time.

• 23:00Nilay Patel?

  A young, a young sheffer finding his way in the world.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  So here's my question.

• 23:04Nilay Patel?

  On his e-machines.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  Is HBO going to join teen Netflix in terms of teen, not teen, although that would be interesting. Teen Netflix, Netflix for teens, uh, in in the net neutrality battle.

• 23:16Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  That's a good question.

• 23:19Nilay Patel?

  So here, so here's what I think is going on with Netflix or HBO. Now HBO's core competency is not anything other than making things, making videos and selling them to cable networks.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:32Nilay Patel?

  That's the business that they're in. They're very good at that business, obviously, right? They're particularly good at making like video or their Game of Thrones, right? They're good at that.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  Fundamentally making it for that customer, like that's going to change if, unless they completely blow it or they charge too much money or HBO, I'm just, I'm wrong. HBO Go is going to very quickly become like, oh, man, this is the thing that we do now.

• 23:56Nilay Patel?

  No, but what I'm saying is like they're, that's their business. That's what they understand. And that business of we're going to make stuff and sell it to the cable networks is getting disrupted by people watching cable online.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:08Nilay Patel?

  So unless they're going to wait for Comcast to deliver it to screens, which Comcast is never going to do or Time Warner or whatever. It was better for HBO to go do it themselves.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:16Nilay Patel?

  I think that they thought they had to extend themselves and like develop that capability on their own. And I think what they very quickly learned was they could spend lots and lots of money developing that capability. But really in the end, all they're doing is like shipping bits from one place to another as fast as they can.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:33Nilay Patel?

  And you can be in the race to do that better than Netflix or you can wake up and realize it's 2014. And you can just like white label, you can just buy the software to do that and pay someone else to make it their problem. And like, there are other places you can go, like they could have, maybe they would have signed a deal with Netflix. But MLB Advance is there. Maybe it would go to Akamai, like whatever. There's other places providing the solution for them. So they don't, they can take their money that they're investing in whatever, like get rid of the guy who's like trying to build this thing. Spend whatever money they need to spend on MLB Advance and then take the rest of the money and use it to make more shows. Cause that's actually their business.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:09Nilay Patel?

  And I think if you're Netflix, actually your business is shipping bits from one place to another as fast as you can. Right? Like that's the core of their business. Like Netflix is a technology company, not a media company.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree.

• 25:21Nilay Patel?

  Right? And for them to say like, we're going to go.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  What about their shows?

• 25:24Nilay Patel?

  Right. But it's for them to say.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  They don't need their shows to be. Oh, I think they do. I think they feel like they really do. I think that they're they'll they'll become a commodity that they feel like that the the the jam is to be a media company that is better than everybody else.

• 25:37Speaker 03

  I think that's their goal. Yeah.

• 25:39Speaker 02

  VC money to lock down content deals with every major like.

• 25:42Nilay Patel?

  Right. Netflix will get whatever they want if they paid enough.

• 25:44Speaker 03

  It feels like Netflix and HBO HBO are going, you know, sort of crossing streams with each other right now.

• 25:49Nilay Patel?

  Well, I mean, the Netflix line, like the Reed Hastings line is Netflix needs to become HBO faster and HBO can become us. Yeah, I think what HBO decided to stop doing was stop trying to be Netflix. This is the moment where HBO stops trying to be Netflix and Netflix, like the road is wide open for them to become HBO. In a way that I don't think HBO like quite realizes is going to happen. Right? So like it's Netflix is the premium channel that you buy.

• 26:14Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 26:15Nilay Patel?

  Well, think about it this way, our our, look, we work at a company that also fancies itself both a technology company and a media company. Right. This is a, this is a, the reason I sound so confident when I talk about this in particular is because we live in this tension every day of our lives. So like, do we run a platform? Do we just like?

• 26:31Speaker 03

  Do we run a news website?

• 26:32Nilay Patel?

  Do we fire all the product people who are upstairs having a meeting they call the Jambo?

• 26:38Nilay Patel?

  Just an idea, guys. A cool name.

• 26:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, it is.

• 26:43Nilay Patel?

  No, I'm teasing, right? But they're the value of the company, right? Like fundamentally, like our company is powered by.

• 26:48Speaker 03

  We're disposable.

• 26:50Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, but like we're the, we're the media company, right? We're the people who like type of things and the platform like multiplies our value. And whatever way it we do that, whatever way we put product against it. That's what technology companies do. So Netflix makes the content and then they understand the value of their platform and their technology to multiply the value of that content. HBO didn't do that, right? Their their service went down. They couldn't stream it to a billion people at once. They didn't have, they weren't thinking about it in like multiple screen formats. They were just making TV shows and trying to stream them and failing.

• 27:23Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 27:23Nilay Patel?

  And so it's better for HBO to like just be a content studio. For Netflix, I think it's better for them to be the best content delivery service because they will always get more value, like differentiating against that versus MLB advanced versus watch ESPN versus whatever. So Netflix is really, they're always going to be really proprietary about wanting you in their interface and wanting you in the Netflix experience so they can always push you more bits. Because that's how they are always going to make their money. Whereas I think HBO, it's like, ugh.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:52Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, they just don't, like, they fundamentally don't understand it. And then I don't know if they ever will. And that's like a, that's the moment where it.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  But do they have to?

• 28:01Speaker 02

  No, they can pay MLB to.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, right?

• 28:04Nilay Patel?

  Right, but I, think about it this way. So if, um,

• 28:08Nilay Patel?

  like, your cable subscription, right, it's a bundle of channels.

• 28:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:11Nilay Patel?

  Right? If you come to a place where, like, we, The Verge is like disrupted print tech magazines.

• 28:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:20Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, it's better to read The Verge and, like, wait to find out what happened at, at the Apple event, in the paper tomorrow, right? So we've done that job. As you start watching more and more video online on your screens, you're gonna, we're gonna disrupt the cable networks, right? That's the next move for every internet tech company.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:37Nilay Patel?

  Shouldn't you have the core competency of, like, delivering and making video to the disc screen? Or should you farm that out so that you're commoditized and you're in another bundle with whatever?

• 28:46Speaker 01

  Okay, that's fair.

• 28:48Nilay Patel?

  And I think that's like, no one knows the answer. I'm not, I'm confidently saying that.

• 28:52Speaker 01

  Are we gonna?

• 28:52Nilay Patel?

  I have an opinion, but I don't think anybody knows that answer.

• 28:54Speaker 01

  Are we gonna demand that, or want someone to bring back the bundle? And then when we are paying for HBO Go and Hulu Plus and Netflix?

• 29:01Speaker 02

  Everyone will. I mean, it happens all the time. It's gonna happen. Because everything's gonna be fifteen dollars a month. And then you're gonna be, end up paying a hundred and fifty dollars a month and, like, cable is one twenty-five.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:10Nilay Patel?

  Right, and I actually think-

• 29:11Speaker 01

  And also music streaming on top of that.

• 29:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:13Nilay Patel?

  No, but I actually think that it won't come because of price pressure. It'll be, it'll come because of user experience. So if everything's fifteen dollars a month, that's great. You sign up for the ones you want. And then you've signed up for six of them, and they're all on your TV. And you won't want to authenticate six things.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 29:28Nilay Patel?

  You're gonna wanna authenticate one thing, and someone will show up as like, an aggregator of authentication, and they'll be like, we'll just bill everything for you. And then suddenly you're paying for a bundle. And maybe it's easier to opt in and out of things in the bundle, and they'll build a better experience. But that's like, that's actually a market opportunity, once everything becomes unbundled. Is to just be like, we make it easier to opt in and out of pieces of this bundle and authenticate to them.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  Well, that was, that was the, the dream of the Xbox, right? Like, you, in order, in order to use, uh, maybe it's not the case anymore, but there was a while where if you wanted to use Netflix on the Xbox, you had to be signed into-

• 30:01Nilay Patel?

  Oh, to live, yeah.

• 30:02Speaker 01

  Microsoft, to live.

• 30:02Nilay Patel?

  But then you still had to authenticate Netflix.

• 30:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, but the, the next time you do it, it's- Hooked up to live and so it's handled.

• 30:09Nilay Patel?

  Right. I mean, I that like the user experience of this is all broken.

• 30:13Speaker 03

  Apple television.

• 30:14Nilay Patel?

  It's never gonna happen.

• 30:15Speaker 03

  Apple television.

• 30:16Nilay Patel?

  Never.

• 30:16Speaker 03

  It's in the works.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  No.

• 30:17Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 30:18Nilay Patel?

  It's already, it's already there, but like.

• 30:20Speaker 03

  No, no, no, no, not this.

• 30:22Nilay Patel?

  What do you think?

• 30:22Speaker 03

  The, the thing. I mean, they've, they're.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  Oh, but the, the whole point of this is that the thing of the TV being central and the regular traditional model of it. You can't be good at just that big screen anymore. You've got to be good at the other screens.

• 30:37Speaker 03

  Right. The services part.

• 30:39Speaker 01

  Well, no, I'm like Netflix is better at making video for a computer or tablet than HBO is.

• 30:45Nilay Patel?

  And they're better at delivering it over the internet.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:47Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I'm just saying like, I don't know. Like, I don't think Apple will ever make a TV.

• 30:51Speaker 03

  Ooh.

• 30:51Nilay Patel?

  Wow. I mean, if you want to talk about this Jobs book, like. Ultimate, the last Steve Jobs, and I think Apple has been struggling against this. Literally since that book hit the shelves, right? Steve Jobs saying, I cracked it. We're gonna make a TV.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:07Nilay Patel?

  And they can't. They just, there's, it's not there for them. Like, Apple versus Comcast isn't a fight that Apple can win.

• 31:13Speaker 03

  I don't think that's true.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  You know what? I think, I think that we are going to see, if you're right, and I hope you are, that we will see Tim Cook say Steve Jobs is wrong.

• 31:22Nilay Patel?

  No, no, no about that. Wait.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  Think about it.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  I think after everything gets decoupled, they'll make a television.

• 31:27Nilay Patel?

  I, why?

• 31:28Speaker 02

  Because it'll be easier to deal. You don't have to deal with Comcast. I mean, that's their biggest struggle right now is dealing with Comcast.

• 31:33Nilay Patel?

  How do you, how do you not deal?

• 31:36Speaker 01

  We cracked it. We're gonna wait 20 years.

• 31:39Nilay Patel?

  How do you not deal with Comcast?

• 31:42Speaker 02

  It's gonna take time.

• 31:43Nilay Patel?

  Who's your internet provider? Who's shipping you 100 megabits a second to run all of your video streams on your four TVs in your house and your phone and your PC and your tablet?

• 31:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:52Nilay Patel?

  It's Comcast, right? And like, who is desperately fighting against Title II regulation to make sure they can prioritize the video streams to their IP devices versus Apple's IP devices right now? It's Comcast. And like, it's just not a fight.

• 32:07Speaker 03

  It's not possible that they're, that they're discussing this with all of the major television or cable providers in America.

• 32:13Nilay Patel?

  Every technology company in the world has sat down with Comcast.

• 32:18Speaker 03

  But Apple has done this before.

• 32:20Nilay Patel?

  Done.

• 32:20Speaker 03

  Apple just uprooted what the music industry was. They got deals with all of the major record labels.

• 32:26Nilay Patel?

  No, no, no. Okay, so the

• 32:29Speaker 02

  Labels are dying.

• 32:30Nilay Patel?

  Sorry, I don't mean to like totally Bigfoot you, but like this narrative is wrong and I'm gonna totally Bigfoot you. The two things you're gonna bring up, you're gonna bring up music and you're gonna bring up the phone.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 32:40Nilay Patel?

  Absolutely the things you're gonna bring up. Think about those stories in context, right? Piracy destroyed the music industry and Apple said, "We can sell songs to you and we'll do it on our platform, which has 7% market share. And if it doesn't work, nothing bad will happen to you and you can shut it down." And then they were in a fight with Sony, Andrew House at Sony. This is, this is like the best part of the Jobs book, actually. Detailing the fight, they were constantly in with the labels over pricing, over release dates, over formats, over all of it.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  Well, and

• 33:07Nilay Patel?

  Forever.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  And over DRM too.

• 33:09Nilay Patel?

  Over DRM.

• 33:10Speaker 01

  Like, Apple's getting sued right now about DRM and it's the most annoying thing because

• 33:15Nilay Patel?

  It was a decade.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  It was a decade ago and Apple wanted to do the right thing and they just couldn't.

• 33:20Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  So they did not, they, they were not putting the music labels over a barrel.

• 33:24Nilay Patel?

  Right. So even against a, a, a set of partners that had no leverage because their business was dying, Apple was in a non-stop fight, right? With the phones, Apple went to Verizon first and got rejected.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:37Nilay Patel?

  Then they went to AT&T and AT&T said yes, and then it took forever for them to get deals with other carriers.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  Actually, they went to Singular.

• 33:44Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god.

• 33:45Speaker 01

  They, I would say it took forever. They got Verizon and then they got Sprint and then it just

• 33:50Speaker 02

  Verizon was 2011, wasn't it?

• 33:51Speaker 01

  The Verizon was iPhone 4 years.

• 33:52Nilay Patel?

  Years.

• 33:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:54Speaker 01

  I think, I think they're gonna, could they could strike a deal with one major of, one major cable provider?

• 33:59Nilay Patel?

  No, you can't.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  You can't because Verizon's worldwide.

• 34:02Nilay Patel?

  It's a chorus, a chorus of people talking.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  I want, I want to believe in the Apple television. I want to.

• 34:09Nilay Patel?

  Everybody, this is what I'm saying, like it's the la, it's like the lasting troll of Steve Jobs, right?

• 34:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:14Nilay Patel?

  Believing that Comcast or, I mean, he's onstage at, at All Things D, right? Saying you can't do it, there's too many providers and none of them are national. So to, to even get remotely, we've talked about it on this show a thousand times, right? Like to get, AT&T has like 100 million subscribers. That's scale, right? Comcast has like 28 million subscribers in one region of the country. They want to buy Time Warner to expand that footprint and I I would put Time Warner right now at a 30% chance of happening for Comcast. That's just the sense I get from people I talk to. But like, even if they get that footprint, they're what, 40 million subscribers? Are you gonna build a TV for 40 million people against a partner who hates you and who everyone hates because they're like the 800 pound gorilla? Like Comcast has

• 34:59Nilay Patel?

  leverage in a way that the music industry never had leverage. In a way that for even Apple, they had the hottest phones, Verizon had to run to Google and build the Droid and do all this stuff.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  Let's step back from all of this.

• 35:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  Like, those dynamics are all true in all reasons not to make a TV. But let's let's assume that we that magically, a bunch of that stuff goes away because the internet becomes successful enough and everybody's getting video and there's everything gets available unbundled in such a way you can get the video and they and if Apple wants to, they can go all the way around all of those cable company problems because everything's on the internet and we all have to.

• 35:33Nilay Patel?

  Magic.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  If that magic, let's assume that magic happens.

• 35:36Nilay Patel?

  Tim Cook's like, unbuilds a hologram of Steve Jobs, like robot controlled.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:40Nilay Patel?

  But assume all that. This is mine for robots.

• 35:42Speaker 01

  Apple would still be really stupid to build TVs. Like, what is the purpose? Like, it is not a good business to be in.

• 35:49Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 35:49Speaker 01

  It's just not a good business. Like, I buy TVs now, they cost nothing, they're fine, people go buy the super high-end stuff. Mike is gonna yell at me because I don't own a plasma, right?

• 36:01Nilay Patel?

  What's up?

• 36:06Nilay Patel?

  It's the way to live, man.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  But it's just like the margins are thin, it's not a fast-moving, it's not a technology product, no one cares. It's a panel, it's an LCD business, not a TV business.

• 36:17Nilay Patel?

  It's, this is like really interesting to think about. So, in an office full of tech nerds, right?

• 36:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:22Nilay Patel?

  Like, the 20th anniversary gray PlayStation, whoever was excited when they looked at it and we took photos of it. Rando, like Oppo phones are here, everyone wants to play with them. Like, there's gadgets around it, people want to toy with them. There's been a Samsung 40-inch 4K TV in a box, just like sitting in our office. There's two of them. No one has even looked at those boxes.

• 36:42Speaker 01

  Are they curved?

• 36:42Nilay Patel?

  They're not the curved. No, they're just random 480.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  Screw those.

• 36:45Nilay Patel?

  Who cares? Doesn't matter.

• 36:47Speaker 01

  Super wide.

• 36:47Nilay Patel?

  No, they're just 4K TVs, but like 4K TVs are relatively rare.

• 36:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just bought one.

• 36:56Speaker 01

  He didn't just buy one, he's like, I just bought one.

• 36:59Nilay Patel?

  Which ones you buy?

• 37:00Speaker 02

  Uh, Samsung 50 inch.

• 37:02Speaker 01

  On Black Friday?

• 37:02Nilay Patel?

  You didn't go to the ZOP series?

• 37:04Speaker 02

  No, on Samsung.

• 37:05Nilay Patel?

  You're a Samsung guy?

• 37:06Speaker 02

  For TVs at least.

• 37:07Speaker 01

  Why?

• 37:08Speaker 02

  I don't know, like I have four Samsung TVs, they're always.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  You have four TVs?

• 37:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:13Speaker 01

  Why? Dude lives in Knoxville, he's got, he's got space. True, true, fair.

• 37:19Nilay Patel?

  I asked Mike the answer, he was gonna live in New York, he's like, I don't know how you live here.

• 37:22Speaker 02

  I don't.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  You don't.

• 37:24Speaker 01

  Doesn't really make sense.

• 37:25Nilay Patel?

  Straight up, I don't.

• 37:26Speaker 01

  Why Samsung TVs? Cause I, I have a Samsung and I, I got one because I was like, well, I don't want to do the research. Cause I did it and it got old and I, like my research is out of date and I said, screw it, I'll just buy a Samsung.

• 37:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  Screw it, I'll buy.

• 37:40Speaker 02

  When I did the research, the only TV I found that was better was like the Sharp Aquos at the time. And that was more expensive, so I bought the Samsung. And they've been great so far. The 4K looks great, but I mean, there's no content for it. I mean, Netflix has eight shows.

• 37:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 37:53Speaker 02

  Like, so the content's gonna be a big issue.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  Do you watch those shows just over and over again?

• 37:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:59Nilay Patel?

  I've never actually had good luck with Samsung TVs.

• 38:02Speaker 02

  You haven't?

• 38:02Nilay Patel?

  Uh, I don't, I guess I never have bought the most expensive ones. I always, I always, my assumption is always that Samsung, like in the mid-range, buying the Samsung would like be the best. I think they just, in, that's not true. Like I've been burned over and over again.

• 38:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:16Nilay Patel?

  They always look really blown out to me.

• 38:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, some of them do. Like you have to tune it, it's, yes, but if you tune it right, it looks good. But most people don't want to tune it.

• 38:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:24Speaker 02

  Pain.

• 38:24Nilay Patel?

  Because they're like, it's a TV. I'll, I'll keep the motion smoothing on.

• 38:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, don't do that.

• 38:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, no, it's bad. I mean, TVs are awful. That's why Apple shouldn't build a TV. Because the qualities against which Apple would sell a TV are not the qualities that sell TVs.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  Right. And the problems that Apple would solve are problems nobody cares about.

• 38:41Nilay Patel?

  Right, Apple would make a TV that doesn't have motion smoothing, or Apple would make a TV that has perfect color, or like, isn't blown out. And people would be like, that TV looks dim and it doesn't look like a soap opera.

• 38:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:51Nilay Patel?

  Right? And they would, I mean, it's just, that's what sells TVs in stores right now. All of the TV platforms are garbage, right? Like, that is fair. Like I, my, I have a Panasonic plasma.

• 39:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:01Nilay Patel?

  It is the most garbage platform ever created. I mean, it is just embarrassing. And if you work at Panasonic, you should be embarrassed by this television. You probably don't because you stopped selling TVs. Or you stop selling plasmas. So I'm assuming that that embarrassment has led to some dire consequences in your life. But so goes. Should we continue on?

• 39:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, we should. We should. Let's just jump ahead. We're running out of time. We should. Do we get to talk about Microsoft?

• 39:27Nilay Patel?

  You want to talk about Microsoft? Man, we had some hot Intel Internet of Things hardcore tech podcast.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  You want to go back to, you want?

• 39:33Nilay Patel?

  No. Yeah. It's the same conversation.

• 39:36Speaker 01

  It is. Basically, it's the conversation of like, computers are established. The game is done. Phones are now established. The game is done for a while. There's not going to be huge changes there. So next is like, Giga's, doodads, wearables, stuff in your car, the Internet of Things, thermostats. I don't know. Not TVs. Little random things that have circuits in them and chips and are connected to the Internet.

• 40:03Nilay Patel?

  There was a line at Code Conference earlier this year. I think it was Ina Fried said it to the CEO of BlackBerry. She was very bluntly. It was like, "Every company that's failed at mobile wants to do the Internet of Things. Why will you succeed?" And then he was like, "Nonsense."

• 40:18Speaker 01

  Oh, but, you know what? That's why, that's because he couldn't say the real reason. It's because BlackBerry owns the Cunix platform and they're killing it in cars. They just stole Ford away from Microsoft.

• 40:30Nilay Patel?

  Right. But that's not the Internet of Things. It's just another.

• 40:32Speaker 01

  Sure it is. It's a thing. It's a thing that's connected to the Internet.

• 40:36Nilay Patel?

  Hype check, Internet of Things.

• 40:37Speaker 03

  I hate that phrase with a passion. I won't even say it. I won't even say those words and I don't tweet them.

• 40:44Speaker 01

  Hang on, hang on. Hype check, Internet hashtags.

• 40:46Nilay Patel?

  Wait, wait, wait, wait.

• 40:47Speaker 03

  You're a troll.

• 40:48Nilay Patel?

  Can I just say, "I won't say those words and I won't even tweet them" is like,

• 40:53Speaker 03

  That's teens.

• 40:54Nilay Patel?

  It's incredible.

• 40:55Speaker 03

  That's hashtag teens.

• 40:57Nilay Patel?

  I won't even tweet that. Not even Twitter shall get this nonsense from me.

• 41:02Speaker 03

  I really hate that phrase.

• 41:03Nilay Patel?

  I have no idea why I'm talking like a haughty baron. Not even Twitter shall get these words. Like a southern, like a southern baron. I don't know.

• 41:11Speaker 01

  So if we, so the first question is.

• 41:14Nilay Patel?

  You're fopish.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 41:15Speaker 03

  I'll take it.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  Have you looked up the Scarlet Pimpernel yet?

• 41:19Speaker 03

  No.

• 41:19Speaker 01

  You should do it.

• 41:20Nilay Patel?

  Now, let's talk about Microsoft. So Microsoft.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  Like, there's two steps. The first step, which we need to argue about is, do you think the Internet of Things is a thing? Because you seem to be discounting it and I think it's a thing.

• 41:30Speaker 02

  I think it's a thing, but.

• 41:31Speaker 03

  What is it? What is that phrase? What does that mean?

• 41:35Speaker 01

  Giga's connected to the Internet.

• 41:38Nilay Patel?

  Minnesota is strong with you today.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  So, so this computer? No.

• 41:45Speaker 02

  No.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  It's.

• 41:46Nilay Patel?

  No, let Mike do it.

• 41:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:48Speaker 02

  Smart watches, smart things in your home, all that kind of stuff. But the question is, how are you going to control all that? I don't think people want to control it by each device.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  With your mind.

• 41:58Speaker 02

  You have 20 things in your house that are smart.

• 42:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and then North Korea can hack you, hack your entire home.

• 42:03Speaker 01

  So Intel wants to be that platform, right?

• 42:05Speaker 02

  That's gonna happen.

• 42:06Speaker 01

  Samsung wants to be that platform. Everybody wants to be that platform.

• 42:08Nilay Patel?

  Internet of Things, as far as I can tell, is like, literally, it's like executives in a room, like, pointing at things, and you're like, what if that had a Wi-Fi connection?

• 42:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:17Nilay Patel?

  Right? And like, what could you do if that was connected to a network, and that network was like, able to talk in two directions to stuff in your house, stuff in the world, infrastructure? Like, the most interesting Internet of Things stuff to me is like, vehicle-to-infrastructure communication, right? Where you're in a car, and the car is talking to like, the road.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:36Nilay Patel?

  The car is talking to the other cars. The car is talking, like, that's really interesting, right? And to do that, you need to put sensors everywhere. The sensors need to talk to each other. They need to be low-power. They need, like, there's many, many platform-level things you need to do to build that up. But do you need to do that for your toaster?

• 42:54Speaker 01

  So, like, there's a, there's a, like, an implicit assumption in all this Internet of Things talk, when, as it applies to consumers and not the big infrastructure stuff. The big infrastructure stuff is super important, but for consumers, there's an implicit assumption that we're gonna have an iPhone-style revolution pretty soon. And that, like, you need to be ready, and you want to be at the forefront of that. This is, this is basically the whole idea behind why people care about Nest, right? And why Google bought them. And like, everybody's like, Tony Fadell's got it. He's got the secret vision of how the Internet of Things is actually going to work, and he's just building the pieces right now until he can unveil the sea change. Right?

• 43:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I don't believe that's true. I mean, I like Tony.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:39Nilay Patel?

  But I, I think Tony's secret vision is, I'm gonna build really great consumer products for the home.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 43:44Nilay Patel?

  I don't think he cares about, I mean, if you ask him what the Nest thermostat is, he's like, it's an iPod Touch. We made an iPod Touch that's really good at turning things on and off. And that's and then there's a lot of cloud intelligence behind it and they hired a bunch of people from Google. Like now they work at Google like, right? But if you're like, what is this hardware? He's like, it's a cheap ARM processor, a little bit of memory and a display driver and then a web app. Yeah. And like, that's the thing that it is.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:08Nilay Patel?

  Uh, and he's very proud of it because he's like, my team is better at building iPod. Like I have the iPod team, they work at Nest. We're better at building iPods than anybody else. So they're, they're way ahead of that curve. I think if you're Intel or Microsoft or BlackBerry or whatever, you're racing to, to like, take mobile technology that you failed at developing and repackage it for another set of uses.

• 44:32Speaker 01

  Right. And Microsoft is failing all over the place. Uh, and they're, they, they lost, they lost sync, like their car platform is gone. They're, and but the bigger problem right now for them is they bought Nokia and, uh, what's going on there? Like, like the Windows phone platform is in a dark, dire place. They lost Tom Warren. He's not using one anymore. The, all the, all the best Microsoft mobile apps are not on Windows phone. They, they're very nice on Windows phone, but they're, they're now not, no longer exclusive. And in many cases, they're better on other platforms.

• 45:04Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  They don't even have a flagship phone for this holiday season.

• 45:08Nilay Patel?

  So Tom, Tom has it, right? This is a Tom story.

• 45:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:11Nilay Patel?

  The Lumia 1030.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  It came out on another site, but yeah, he, he's a, he identified and confirmed that it was a phone that was meant for this holiday season. That had a huge massive camera on it. Yeah. But at least like, make a bonkers phone, please make a bonkers phone.

• 45:23Nilay Patel?

  Doesn't look like a phone. It looks like one of the door panels in, in 2001.

• 45:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:28Nilay Patel?

  Like it looks like, it looks like it should be glowing red and then murdering.

• 45:31Speaker 01

  Sell that thing. You, I'm serious. If you.

• 45:35Nilay Patel?

  This thing reminds me of being murdered by a computer.

• 45:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. I want to buy it. What, what, what, what, what kind of phone do you have?

• 45:42Nilay Patel?

  An iPhone.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  What kind of, what kind iPhone, which one?

• 45:44Nilay Patel?

  A bent iPhone.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  Which, which, what size? Which, which, which, which one is it?

• 45:48Speaker 03

  He has a six plus.

• 45:49Speaker 01

  You have a six plus?

• 45:50Speaker 03

  No, he's got.

• 45:50Speaker 01

  If I had asked you before the six plus, you know, if I had asked you six months before the six plus came out, what do you think about that conception? You would have called it a ridiculous thing.

• 45:59Nilay Patel?

  I'm saying, I'm not saying.

• 46:00Speaker 01

  Release a ridiculous thing. If it doesn't sell, you know what? You're not doing any worse than all the other Windows phones.

• 46:06Nilay Patel?

  That's rough. That's rough. I mean, I just, this camera hump looks so bonkers. Like, it's so unnecessarily big for what it is. Right? Because the actual lens piece is so small.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:18Nilay Patel?

  I don't know, man. Anyway.

• 46:19Speaker 02

  What else can they do? I mean?

• 46:21Nilay Patel?

  Well, here's the thing, but, you know, Tom, he didn't leave because he couldn't buy a new. He gave up his Windows phone and went full-time to an iPhone 6, which he is equally frustrated with, but he's like, the apps are really good.

• 46:31Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 46:32Nilay Patel?

  And his whole line is, like, Twitter isn't updating its Windows phone app. Like, Microsoft is really good at being like, here's a bunch of money, put out an app for our phone. And then after all, it was like, yeah, we love money. And then they put out an app for the phone.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  And then they walk away.

• 46:44Nilay Patel?

  And they walk away because Microsoft isn't continually pumping money into Twitter.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:48Nilay Patel?

  Goosey app or whatever. I don't know. Are you a Windows phone user?

• 46:51Speaker 02

  No. I mean,

• 46:54Speaker 02

  it's been seven years since the iPhone was released. Everyone's invested in either iOS or Android. They have money in, apps bought.

• 47:01Speaker 01

  Do you think money spent on apps is a thing that locks you in?

• 47:05Speaker 02

  I think.

• 47:05Speaker 01

  I don't know. I don't, I'm like, unable to understand this because I bounce too much, but.

• 47:09Speaker 02

  I think ease of upgrade is.

• 47:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:11Speaker 02

  I mean, you don't have to re-download all your apps and there's things that make it easier to stay inside the ecosystem than trying to go to Windows and learn everything new. Everyone knows how to use an Android phone. Everyone knows how to use an iPhone, for the most part.

• 47:21Nilay Patel?

  You think everyone?

• 47:22Speaker 02

  If you've had an Android phone, you know how to use 98% of Android phones, except for like the notification center, which everyone changes every.

• 47:31Speaker 02

  The core, the core functions, you know how to use.

• 47:34Nilay Patel?

  All right. When you walk around in Knoxville, what are people using?

• 47:36Speaker 02

  Uh, Samsung's.

• 47:38Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 47:38Speaker 02

  Everywhere.

• 47:39Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 47:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:40Nilay Patel?

  And then, like GS3s?

• 47:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:42Nilay Patel?

  I'm assuming that's the one.

• 47:43Speaker 02

  Yep. Some notes, old notes. Yeah. Samsung's. There's Samsung and iPhone now.

• 47:49Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 47:49Speaker 02

  That's what it is. So I think that's the reason Windows is not going to work well.

• 47:54Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 47:54Speaker 02

  On phones, at least now. They have to do something different and I don't know.

• 47:59Nilay Patel?

  The thing that they're doing different is they're putting out all their apps in iOS. Right, they're like, Microsoft's like, sure, we're a software company. Like, Nadella didn't want to buy Nokia. Right? It's like, that much is blindingly obvious.

• 48:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:10Nilay Patel?

  Like, when you, when people ask him about it, they're like, he's like, I don't, I don't, let's not talk about the past.

• 48:15Speaker 02

  But he had no other choice, really.

• 48:16Nilay Patel?

  Well, no.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  Well, he wasn't, he wasn't in charge, yeah.

• 48:18Nilay Patel?

  Like, Bomber's like, hey, here's Microsoft. By the way, we, here's also Nokia. Steven Elop works here. No one knows what he's. Poor Elop. We do give him a hard time.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, we do.

• 48:29Nilay Patel?

  I will say that every time I've interviewed him, I'm like, you are the most polished executive I've ever, ever encountered. So I feel like this hard time is deserved because fundamentally in my heart, I'd like to believe it makes Steven Elop have emotions.

• 48:41Speaker 02

  What can Microsoft do to make you switch to Windows Phone?

• 48:47Speaker 02

  Like, you think about that, and there's like, nothing that comes to mind, and that's the issue.

• 48:52Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, you know, there's.

• 48:55Nilay Patel?

  No, it's like, it's hard to express like, what I'm thinking, right? Like, it's.

• 49:01Nilay Patel?

  I know what they're in for Windows Phone is, but it's, it's just gonna be really hard for them to get there. It's the fact that, like, our company is a Google shop.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:11Nilay Patel?

  And all of our, like, we are at the breaking point of, like, the Google enterprise experience. You weren't here for this, but it's been messy. We've complained about it on the show before. Right? Like, Google's enterprise tools and solutions are fine when your company is 50 people. They're fine when your company's 100 people. You hit 400 people and you want to, like, do something a little bit outside of whatever Google thinks it's gonna do. And that ecosystem of vendors isn't there. They said it. We are.

• 49:37Speaker 01

  What's weird is that it works, it works for major, it works for major universities.

• 49:40Nilay Patel?

  I promised hardcore enterprise conversation, and we're getting it right now. No, I mean, like, that's it. Like, we're at the breaking point. And so Android, for me, is really attractive all the time because it integrates into, like, my fully Googled up lifestyle. Yeah. Home and work and whatever. I think that's, right, it's like, attractive for a lot of reasons for that. I think if we switch to be a hardcore Microsoft shop, like, there's a chance if Microsoft could sell me an experience that was better against that. But they have to create an entire set of, like, lifestyle experiences across home, work, play.

• 50:14Speaker 01

  They're doing that.

• 50:15Nilay Patel?

  And then say, this platform.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  They're working on that. They're just, it's a lot of work.

• 50:19Speaker 02

  For how long, though?

• 50:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 50:22Nilay Patel?

  They just haven't gotten there. I mean, like fundamentally, Microsoft.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  Microsoft doesn't have the luxury that Apple had.

• 50:29Nilay Patel?

  Here's an idea I just had that makes no sense, but here, let's just run with it for a second. Microsoft will never win at this until Bing is better than Google search. Because everyone's front door to the internet is through Google search. Right? It's either Google or Facebook. Those are the two places that you start. Right? Most people start. I hope the people who listen to this start at the verge. Which is why we'll be selling an Android phone, skin with me. That'd be amazing if we had a phone.

• 50:54Speaker 01

  No, no, it wouldn't.

• 50:55Nilay Patel?

  Why not?

• 50:57Speaker 01

  We'd give it a six.

• 50:58Nilay Patel?

  Pipe check, V phone.

• 51:01Speaker 03

  I can't even. What would that look like?

• 51:05Nilay Patel?

  Sam's like, I don't even know.

• 51:07Speaker 03

  I can't even.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  It would have a BlackBerry Passport keyboard.

• 51:11Speaker 03

  If we had to design a phone, what would it, what would it look like?

• 51:13Speaker 01

  BlackBerry Passport.

• 51:14Nilay Patel?

  I would encourage, and I think this is, that's today's iTunes assignment. Describe the V phone.

• 51:20Speaker 02

  It would, I've heard iPhones, just buy an iPhone. You already have one.

• 51:24Nilay Patel?

  Cool. Way to be, wait.

• 51:26Speaker 03

  I'm making fun of them.

• 51:27Nilay Patel?

  You just make fun of yourself. You don't know what they're gonna do.

• 51:30Speaker 03

  They're gonna go do it.

• 51:31Nilay Patel?

  I would want Android on my V phone.

• 51:32Speaker 03

  I would want Android too.

• 51:34Nilay Patel?

  Why?

• 51:35Speaker 03

  Because.

• 51:37Speaker 01

  Let's talk about, let's talk about your jailbreak experience.

• 51:40Speaker 03

  It's good.

• 51:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:41Speaker 03

  Honestly, it's less buggy than it was before.

• 51:43Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 51:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's pathetic. iOS eight. iOS eight is so buggy, it is laughably bad.

• 51:49Nilay Patel?

  Are you a jailbreaker?

• 51:50Speaker 02

  No.

• 51:51Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 51:51Speaker 02

  I jailbroke years ago when they didn't have like multitasking.

• 51:54Speaker 03

  Wait, am I, am I on this now? Let me see. Yeah. That's it right there.

• 51:58Nilay Patel?

  And like, what are you doing?

• 51:59Speaker 01

  He's trying to show off, you know, the, the.

• 52:01Nilay Patel?

  That's not like a cool, okay, so here's what Sam is doing.

• 52:04Speaker 01

  He's scrolling, but like his, his icons are randomly coming in from different parts of the screen.

• 52:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 52:10Speaker 01

  And it's not clear why.

• 52:11Speaker 03

  No, no, it's a page swipe, Dieter. Come on, look, hello.

• 52:14Speaker 01

  Why do you need that?

• 52:15Nilay Patel?

  Here's what you just showed me. You showed me like the, the lamest of the lame Android launcher.

• 52:22Speaker 03

  Lame for you.

• 52:23Nilay Patel?

  Animations and the Nexus screen.

• 52:27Speaker 03

  Oh, I love that. That's why, yeah.

• 52:30Speaker 03

  Because I, I would want Android because I don't have to work for that stuff.

• 52:33Speaker 01

  You want Android.

• 52:34Nilay Patel?

  You want.

• 52:34Speaker 03

  I do want Android. I do because the Google experience is infinitely better.

• 52:37Nilay Patel?

  Just mic it, by the way.

• 52:38Speaker 03

  And the notifications suck on iOS. Notifications still suck on iOS.

• 52:42Speaker 01

  Notifications on iOS are.

• 52:44Nilay Patel?

  Wait, can we finish, can we finish talking about, we haven't actually talked about Microsoft.

• 52:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. What, what was the idea that you had?

• 52:50Nilay Patel?

  Oh, the the the big idea.

• 52:52Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:52Nilay Patel?

  I mean, no, here's the thing. So, uh, Microsoft is, I think.

• 52:55Speaker 02

  A really bad idea.

• 52:56Nilay Patel?

  Well, it's not a bad idea.

• 52:58Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 52:59Nilay Patel?

  Keep going. They have to win that battle, right? They have to win, I like here, I think to win an app game, right? You have to be the app that people open on their phone first. Or choose, like, you can't just, like, release an app in the world, right? You have to have, you want to be on that first home screen. Right? Like, that's a thing I think about when I think about, like, how, if we were to make another Verge app, like, what would it look like? It would have to win that first battle. That's a hard battle. So we, we killed our app and, like, made a website.

• 53:26Speaker 02

  Well, we made a website into an app.

• 53:28Nilay Patel?

  A web app.

• 53:30Speaker 02

  Think about it.

• 53:30Nilay Patel?

  Um, on Windows Phone, they, like, they have many issues with that. It seems like they're giving up on that platform. Or at least that platform is not going to get revved until Windows 10 happens.

• 53:40Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 53:41Nilay Patel?

  Uh, Sync was another platform that, like, Microsoft ran after. And it just has, it's not good. I've never used a Sync card that's good. Uh, the Xbox, I was actually pointing this out to Tom yesterday. Every, you know, we, last year we did that story on Xbox TV.

• 53:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:56Nilay Patel?

  Big story. I need to just put this on the website. Every single person in that story, except for one, is either gone from Microsoft or has a radically different job within Microsoft, which is crazy. Like, Xbox as a platform isn't happening. Right? They're just doing games. Like, the idea that Windows will be there. And I, I know, everyone's gonna yell at me and say Windows 10 is like the thing. But Windows 10 is easily a year and a half away.

• 54:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:20Nilay Patel?

  Right? And it's cool that they're developing in the open and, like, I, props to Microsoft, like, trying to be a different kind of company. But they're, they keep missing the window because they keep setting up to succeed instead of succeeding.

• 54:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 54:33Nilay Patel?

  That's my, that's, that's my Microsoft lecture for the day.

• 54:37Nilay Patel?

  I don't know, Michael, where's your, where's your head at?

• 54:38Speaker 02

  I'd rather have a BlackBerry than a Windows Phone right now.

• 54:40Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 54:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:41Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 54:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you got it, you got it. You can't just leave that. You can't, you can't just, like, drop that and walk away.

• 54:46Speaker 02

  Well, I had Blackberries before. I had Blackberries for seven years. So I'm used to BlackBerry.

• 54:50Nilay Patel?

  BlackBerry 10?

• 54:51Speaker 02

  Uh, 8?

• 54:53Nilay Patel?

  No, but you'd rather have BlackBerry 10 than Windows Phone.

• 54:56Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 54:56Nilay Patel?

  That, you're, you're deeply, you're deeply wrong. You're deeply, deeply wrong about that.

• 55:01Speaker 02

  I've used so many Windows Phones.

• 55:03Nilay Patel?

  Is it just that you want the keyboard? If you're not, if you can't have an iPhone or an Android phone, you might as well have a keyboard?

• 55:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, basically.

• 55:10Nilay Patel?

  I'm over the keyboard, man.

• 55:11Speaker 03

  I'm not over the keyboard.

• 55:12Speaker 02

  I'm not over the keyboard either.

• 55:13Speaker 03

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 55:14Speaker 02

  I was diehard BlackBerry. It took me four years to get my BlackBerry for an iPhone.

• 55:19Speaker 03

  Wow. Because of the keyboard, Micah, right?

• 55:21Speaker 02

  The keyboard.

• 55:22Speaker 03

  I'm a huge, huge advocate for the hardware keyboard.

• 55:25Speaker 02

  The speed at which I can type on a keyboard, on a BlackBerry keyboard is ridiculous.

• 55:29Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 55:29Speaker 02

  Completely ridiculous.

• 55:30Speaker 03

  I've never owned a BlackBerry, but I was a huge Sidekick person. Lightning fast.

• 55:34Speaker 01

  You know, the funny thing is, if you were to actually like go and participate in the studies where they actually test your speed and accuracy, it's not, it's, it feels faster and it feels better, but.

• 55:44Speaker 03

  That's what I'm about. I'm about the experience. I don't really care about the science. I care about when, when, when this, when, when the screen is wet or my, my fingers are numb and I can't type in the cold, like, the hardware is always reliable with hardware keyboards.

• 55:59Speaker 02

  No, that is totally not true.

• 56:00Speaker 03

  I had, I had the, the eight months I had my Sidekick LX, I was a type beast.

• 56:06Nilay Patel?

  That's Sam, Sam.

• 56:08Speaker 02

  No.

• 56:11Nilay Patel?

  I have so many things. I, I feel like Dieter's leaving. He just walked out of the room. He's just yelling and Sam in the corner of the room.

• 56:19Speaker 03

  Sidekick LX has the, was the best hardware keyboard I've ever used on a phone.

• 56:22Speaker 01

  Hold on, I need to R L R T everything, Sam.

• 56:25Speaker 03

  Dieter just walked up to me and sunned me, basically. He was like, what are you doing?

• 56:29Speaker 01

  Type, type beast.

• 56:33Speaker 01

  I'm all about the experience. I don't care about the science. Sam Sheffer.

• 56:38Speaker 03

  Micah, Micah, can you, can you chime in on this?

• 56:42Speaker 02

  The keyboard was great. I can't like lie. The keyboard was.

• 56:44Speaker 03

  Like the hardware keyboard on phones?

• 56:46Speaker 02

  Hardware keyboard was great.

• 56:47Nilay Patel?

  I never liked hardware keyboards.

• 56:48Speaker 01

  Oh, you're wrong.

• 56:50Speaker 03

  Hardware keyboards are the best.

• 56:51Speaker 02

  They were the best.

• 56:51Speaker 03

  So now you're on my, you're on our side.

• 56:53Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, no, I don't, it's like, I know, I know it's not better. I know it's not faster. I know it's not more accurate. It's just feels better.

• 56:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know if it was.

• 57:00Speaker 01

  And all, but only if it's on a vertical portrait slider.

• 57:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:03Speaker 01

  And it's running, and it's running WebOS. Then it's great.

• 57:07Nilay Patel?

  All right, quick, Dieter Bone.

• 57:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:09Nilay Patel?

  Can I ask you a question?

• 57:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, here we go.

• 57:11Nilay Patel?

  Palm Pre or Windows Phone?

• 57:15Speaker 01

  Well, the apps have been updated about on the same schedule.

• 57:20Nilay Patel?

  Oh, that's a huge burn.

• 57:22Speaker 01

  Pre.

• 57:22Nilay Patel?

  Pre, you'd go pre.

• 57:24Speaker 01

  No, I'm just kidding. I would definitely go Windows phone.

• 57:27Nilay Patel?

  Maybe you should switch to Windows phone for a while.

• 57:30Speaker 01

  Well, when the Packers are losing the playoffs.

• 57:32Speaker 03

  Yes. Is there a bet? Is there an actual bet? There's a bet.

• 57:36Nilay Patel?

  What's the bet?

• 57:37Speaker 03

  If, if your team loses, Neelai, you have to use a Windows phone.

• 57:40Speaker 01

  But in what game?

• 57:42Nilay Patel?

  In general?

• 57:44Speaker 03

  Whenever, whenever your team plays next.

• 57:48Speaker 03

  That'd be interesting to see. That'd be interesting if you, if you use the Windows phone.

• 57:51Speaker 01

  That's CES.

• 57:54Nilay Patel?

  I don't think, we should talk about CES just for a little bit. Oh, yeah. You come to CES with us, right? I don't think anything is gonna happen this year CES.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  I think it's gonna be a repeat of last year.

• 58:02Speaker 03

  No.

• 58:03Nilay Patel?

  Super quiet.

• 58:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. The internet of, the internet of hype things.

• 58:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, I love CES. I'm, I'm probably the only tech reporter in the game who loves.

• 58:11Speaker 03

  I love, I love CES too.

• 58:13Nilay Patel?

  I do. Everyone else complains. We're like, we have a, we basically have a party and it's like, and everyone in the industry is there.

• 58:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:19Nilay Patel?

  And they're a little bit drunk.

• 58:20Speaker 03

  Electric skateboards.

• 58:21Nilay Patel?

  A lot drunk. Electric ride, yeah. And Sam literally just cruises around the parking lot at convention center on different motors.

• 58:28Speaker 03

  Be prepared to see lots of electric coverage. Electric longboards, electric things.

• 58:34Nilay Patel?

  The internet of electric things.

• 58:36Speaker 01

  I think it's just gonna be the internet of things and more 4K TVs, pretty much this last year.

• 58:41Nilay Patel?

  I mean, CES is a TV show.

• 58:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, it really is.

• 58:45Nilay Patel?

  But no, this thing about internet things, like the more this, this is crystallizing in my head. Like all of these companies spent all of this money chasing mobile, right? They developed low-power processors until tried really hard to do low-power processors. They developed like embedded stacks. They did all the like bring up to do, like small circuit, like they did all the work to make things that are like mobile. And now they're like, we're never gonna win at the mobile game. What do we do with small things? Like, what, what do we do with small, low-power stuff that we made?

• 59:17Speaker 01

  Oh, and I thought as when you put it into an internet of thing, thing,

• 59:23Speaker 01

  you don't have to build a UI because you're already bad at it.

• 59:27Speaker 01

  It's like, oh, we suck at making things easy to use, but this doesn't have a screen and you don't interact with it. It's just like, evilly intelligently like doing things and just pulsing in the corner.

• 59:40Nilay Patel?

  It's just a Roomba with a knife.

• 59:43Nilay Patel?

  A knife duct taped to the front, just like pulsing at you. All right, I think that, that oddly enough, has been our show. Sam, you wanna, you wanna lead the engagement hour?

• 59:59Speaker 03

  I will. The engagement hour, I like that, but it's gonna be a minute. That's our show.

• 1:00:08Speaker 03

  All right, I'm gonna gain my composure. That's our show. Thank you for watching. You can follow us on Twitter. We are at Verge. You should definitely add us on Snapchat. And if you guys saw the Dead Mouse thing, there is a lot more of that kind of stuff coming. We are TheRealVerge on Snapchat. And it's interesting, because I can sort of tell who's watching the Vergecast and when, because for the next like week, random bursts of followers come to Snapchat. I'm like, oh, that person probably just watched the Vergecast. And then I check Twitter, and you should also tweet, I watch the Vergecast, if you watch the Vergecast, because I see you out there, watcher slash listener.

• 1:00:41Nilay Patel?

  Sam is our Roomba with a knife.

• 1:00:42Speaker 03

  I am. I'm going to keep poking.

• 1:00:45Speaker 01

  This is a lot of work.

• 1:00:46Speaker 03

  And then last, but I mean, if you like us, if you feel so inclined. And, and, and you should go on iTunes and rate us.

• 1:00:52Nilay Patel?

  No, no, no, stop.

• 1:00:53Speaker 01

  We have a mission.

• 1:00:54Speaker 03

  There's an iTunes mission.

• 1:00:55Nilay Patel?

  Everyone gets an assignment.

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:56Nilay Patel?

  So for the handful of haters last week who shut up on iTunes, I appreciate you. That's why you got a show about enterprise apps today. I hope you're happy.

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  You're welcome.

• 1:01:06Nilay Patel?

  But the rest of you should go on iTunes, leave us a good review. And here's what I'd like to, I would like you to describe the ultimate Verge phone.

• 1:01:12Speaker 03

  And don't say, don't say an iPhone, because that's not funny.

• 1:01:14Nilay Patel?

  It's an iPhone. It's an iPhone with a sticker on it that says iVerge. And it's just pulsing at you.

• 1:01:21Speaker 03

  With a knife.

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  It's an iPhone mounted to a Roomba, and the iPhone has a knife.

• 1:01:27Speaker 03

  We're also all on Twitter. Neely is at Reckless, Dieter is at Backlon, Micah is...

• 1:01:33Nilay Patel?

  Micah Singleton.

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  Micah Singleton.

• 1:01:34Speaker 03

  And I am at Sam Sheffer. And again, tweet us. I have a tweet tech column set up for Vergecast, so if you tweet it, I'll see it.

• 1:01:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's it.

• 1:01:43Speaker 03

  And I think that's our show. And will we be back next Thursday?

• 1:01:46Nilay Patel?

  Maybe.

• 1:01:47Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 1:01:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, we have, we have the party next week, right, at some point?

• 1:01:51Nilay Patel?

  I mean, we, we have the show at 4:30, so unless you're gonna start raging in the mid-afternoon.

• 1:01:56Speaker 03

  I'm trying to Vergecast for like six hours.

• 1:01:58Nilay Patel?

  Yes, yes, there is a holiday party for our company, but it does not start at 4:30.

• 1:02:03Speaker 03

  I'm just making sure I'm going to the right place.

• 1:02:05Nilay Patel?

  All you people have been raging right now. I see you.

• 1:02:08Speaker 03

  Drinking a beer, is that, that's raging? Bye.

• 1:02:12Speaker 03

  I guess that's our

• 1:02:13Nilay Patel?

  Ragecast.

• 1:02:14Speaker 03

  Goodbye.