Google announces Pixel 5, Chromecast with Google TV, and Nest Audio

Nilay, Dieter, Dan, and Chris discuss all the announcements from Google's fall hardware event from this week, as well as Sonos suing Google for infringing five more wireless audio patents. Links: If you’re sick this fall, you’ll probably get two virus tests The coronavirus pandemic by the numbers Google announces the Pixel 5 for $699 Google announces Pixel 4A 5G with larger 6.2-inch display for $499 Verizon has an exclusive Pixel 4A 5G that’s $100 more expensive Google says the Pixel’s Soli radar and Motion Sense will return Can the Pixel 5 camera still compete using the same old aging sensor? The Pixel 5 and 4A 5G play it safe Google Chromecast (2020) review: reinvented — and now with a remote Google announces new Chromecast with the new Google TV interface The new Chromecast with Google TV won’t officially support Stadia at launch Google Play Movies & TV is now Google TV but it’s not the same Google TV that runs on Android TV on the new Chromecast, it’s an app New Chromecast works as a cheap but unsupported xCloud streamer The Home Depot is selling a new Google Chromecast that hasn’t been announced Sonos sues Google for infringing five more wireless audio patents The new Roku Ultra has Dolby Vision and improved Wi-Fi performance Roku is adding support for Apple’s AirPlay 2 and HomeKit later this year Roku’s Streambar is a compact soundbar with built-in streaming smarts Google’s new Nest Audio smart speaker is official, costs $99.99 A week with the Xbox Series X: load times, game performance, and more Microsoft’s new $549 Surface Laptop Go aims to compete with Chromebooks Microsoft’s updated Surface Pro X has a faster processor and new platinum color option Apple Watch Series 6 review: minute improvements The Apple Watch heart monitor sends too many people to the doctor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

  This week on the Vergecast, we talk about all the new Google news, Pixel 5, Pixel 4A, 5G, the new Chromecast with Google TV, the Nest Audio, and a little bit about the new Surface Laptop Go and Surface Pro X that's coming up now on the Vergecast.

• 0:14Speaker 01

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• 0:58Speaker 02

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• 1:25Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast with mid-range Android phones. True to our roots, that's where we started, that's where we've landed. I'm your friend Neelai, Dieter Bohn is here. I'm your chum. Chum, that's good. It's like a real fish and chips kind of relationship. Dan Seifert is here. I'm here, I'd like to keep this an acquaintance. Chris Welch is here. Hello there. Why do I torture everybody like this? That's right, Chris is just like, hello. Lots to talk about this week. We are in just the thick of gadget season, there was a A Google commercial that we all watched together as a family.

• 2:04Nilay Patel?

  Let's call it a new Pixel phones, a new Chromecast, the guy dying to hear the story of the Chromecast from Chris Welch, who just finagled one early. There was, there's new Roku stuff, there's new Microsoft stuff, just a lot going on. And then we're, we're cruising towards what we think will be Apple events. We're in October, according to October 1st, sometime this month, there's going to be Apple stuff. So the thick of gadget season, but you know, you know, we're going to start. It's been 29 weeks since President Trump intimated to the country. Intimated? Well, is it intimation?

• 2:43Nilay Patel?

  If you hold up a flow chart, suggested strongly with a visual aid that there would be a virus testing website built by, I believe it was six to seven million Google engineers and they were going to make it and you could go to the website and do some symptom checking. And if you needed a test, you would drive up to the parking lot of a Rite Aid or a Walmart or something, get a test and the website would give you the result back right away. That website doesn't exist. It's been 29 weeks since that happened. There are debates, you might have seen this disastrous Trump Biden debate that occurred. One of the things that I just, I would just ask everybody, like the reason I keep bringing up the website is it's like the best way to evaluate promises that this government makes. So 29 weeks since that happened.

• 3:24Nilay Patel?

  However, on the flip side of COVID news, if you're in New York state or New Jersey, or actually a few other states around the country, but New York and New Jersey just released their exposure tracking apps that work with the Google and Apple exposure tracking API. So I put it on my phone today in New York. You don't have to log in, you don't need a user account, you just put the app on your phone, hits the API, it starts doing the thing. Obviously this only works if everybody does it and they're using like Bluetooth low energy signals to modulate distance. You spend 10 minutes within six feet of another phone and then that somebody with that phone reports a positive test, everybody gets beeped and says, hey, you might've been exposed. So that obviously only works if we all do it. It's what we got. So if you're in New York, New Jersey, one of these other states that have the apps out,

• 4:09Nilay Patel?

  I would encourage you to download it. The privacy risks, as near as we can tell, seem very minimal and the potential upside seems very high. So that's out now. Just some two other COVID stories. We hit 200,000 deaths from COVID. Mayor Beth Griggs, our science editor, has a new. Newsletter called antivirus where she's tracking developments of vaccines, tracking the science of the virus. Her newsletter this week was about the numbers of the virus, trying to make them feel more real. As she pointed out, those numbers are getting big, but every one of those people is a person who had a life. So really powerful newsletter from her this week. Check it out, verge.com/antivirus. And then Nicole Wetman, our health reporter, wrote a story saying, you know, this fall, if you're sick, you're probably going to end up with a battery of tests, probably at least two, one for the flu and one for the virus,

• 4:54Nilay Patel?

  because those things are going to happen in parallel. So just a preview of think what's to come in the fall with COVID. Obviously, there's an election coming. Who knows what's going to happen after that. But we keep tracking it. Still the biggest story going.

• 5:06Speaker 03

  Hey, go get a flu vaccine if you haven't.

• 5:08Nilay Patel?

  There you go. Download an app, get a vaccine. You need an app and a shot. It's our new marketing. It's not great. I don't think it's going to sell well, but.

• 5:16Speaker 03

  It's a pandemic pickleback.

• 5:18Nilay Patel?

  That said, Google, Google event. This was a strange one.

• 5:22Speaker 03

  So we've seen now every big company figure out a way to do a big tech event when they can't do one live. Google's first cut at it was just not. Apple does these like swooping around their Apple Park campus and then, you know, jaunty, you know, product managers run up and present products and then the drone flies to some other spot. Samsung just kind of does a Samsung thing. I don't know how to characterize Samsung's thing. It's just, you know, fine. And then this one, Google, was very much like Amazon, where it's full of people talking to somebody who's just to the right of the camera and you're not sure who it is.

• 6:00Nilay Patel?

  One person at this event talked directly to camera.

• 6:03Speaker 03

  Rick Osterloh?

• 6:04Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 6:05Speaker 03

  No.

• 6:05Nilay Patel?

  Who?

• 6:05Speaker 03

  Selena Gomez. She talked right to me.

• 6:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, into your, into your heart. I felt that Selena was talking directly to me about how she uses YouTube Music collaborative playlists when she collaborates with K-pop groups. And I, I thought to myself, I believe this. I believe that that is actually how that works.

• 6:24Speaker 03

  Neil and I were talking that we actually like this one in particular was hard to like not slip into just just full on cynicism. I don't know why, but it was like this was the one where so, okay, sorry. Every time we do one of these live blogs for years, for a decade now, you do the live blog, you come out of the live blog and you're like, what just happened? I wrote words on a website and they meant things. And you go back and you look, you're like, I understood what was happening. I wrote it down, but you don't remember it, right? It's

• 6:57Nilay Patel?

  You had to go back and read it again and watch the thing again every time.

• 7:00Speaker 03

  This one, I've had that feeling in real time as they were talking to me.

• 7:04Nilay Patel?

  It's because everything leaked.

• 7:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:06Nilay Patel?

  Every piece of this thing leaked. So we knew the Pixel 5 was coming. We knew that Pixel 4A5G was coming. We knew this new Chromecast was coming. We knew it because it just started selling it early and Chris went and bought one, which is terrific. We just knew all the things were happening, right?

• 7:23Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 7:24Nilay Patel?

  Even so, you know what I think it was, and I felt this too. Usually Dieter and I split up. Well, it's, we think of it like a football game. We're live blogging. One person is doing play by play and one person's doing color commentary.

• 7:34Speaker 03

  Right.

• 7:34Nilay Patel?

  And usually that's to just move people along, right? Like here's all the things that are happening and here's the context and color.

• 7:41Speaker 03

  Does that make you Joe Buck?

• 7:42Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 7:43Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 7:44Nilay Patel?

  And that makes you Chris Collinsworth. I'm very sorry. This has happened to you. You walked directly into it. No, what I'm saying, these events have now turned so fully into infomercials that there's no, right? Like they're shot that way, that weird thing where they're looking at somebody else and earnestly explaining how 5G is going to make gaming faster or whatever. Like they're all doing it.

• 8:07Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 8:07Nilay Patel?

  They all, you know, they all have the problem moment where it's like, how do I move the music around my room? And it's, you know, someone like fumbling with an aux cord and they're like, now I just say here, Google. Like they all do it. Google had a moment where like, how do we explain how good sound quality is without having you hear it yourself? Mark Ronson. And he's like, I listened to my own song and I'm telling you it sounds good. I'm like, you got paid. And there's just, they're like, they've swung, the biggest word in advertising for like, a decade has been authenticity, right? How do you connect with millennials? You need to be authentic. And these things are just wildly swinging to 2 AM infomercial territory in a way that, you know, hopefully that pendulum swings back, but as we were live logging, why am I being so mean?

• 8:50Nilay Patel?

  And it's like, I might as well be like live logging the Shake Weights commercial.

• 8:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:54Nilay Patel?

  Like it to, cause that's just what it, that's what they're, it's what Amazon felt like and that stuff and what Google felt like to me.

• 9:00Speaker 03

  They should just have Sundar running around with his Android phone doing a Periscope video.

• 9:06Nilay Patel?

  No, I, I think there's like a way to, to bring back, like, I think having events be live, even without an audience, brings back an element of like, at least you know this is really happening.

• 9:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:16Speaker 04

  And they can screw it up. Like this is so polished. That's, that's the infomercial part of it. It's like, how many takes did it take for each segment there? It's so polished. It's not live on stage. It's not being presented. It's not authentic, like you mentioned.

• 9:31Nilay Patel?

  The best part of the entire thing was the credits when they just showed the outtakes of people flubbing their lines. It was like, thank you.

• 9:39Nilay Patel?

  And one of the outtakes was, we're going to review this and make sure it's good later. And it's like, nah, that's the problem. Anyhow, not to, I mean, I'm sure everybody worked hard and, you know, I commend the people who work hard and the things they work hard on. But I just think as we've gone through the sort of pandemic event, the temptation all these companies have to just make infomercials has gone over the line and that's, it's time to bring it back. Anyway, let's talk about these phones. Pixel 5, $6.99, little cheaper, little weirder. It's got some weird 5G radio stuff going on. What, tell me about this phone.

• 10:10Speaker 03

  So it's got the Snapdragon 765, which is a processor that I think is really interesting because I think it's fast enough and it had, it integrates the modem. It's $6.99 and I think it's partially that expensive because it has to include millimeter wave for Verizon because they only made one model of it. It has wireless charging, which is really cool. And they have wireless charging, even though it's a fully aluminum frame that's covered in Google's sort of resin that they do, because they just mill out a hole in the middle of the back of it for the coils. And then they, they, you know, they paint over the whole thing. So it feel, it supposedly will have to feel like, but it feels like one singular unit. Otherwise, the specs are like, they're good, right? It's got water resistance. It's got a 90 hertz screen, so it's not the full 120, blah, blah, blah. It's only 1080, which, fine.

• 10:55Speaker 03

  So it's, it's a solid mid-range phone. It is like completely respectable for a phone that costs $600, $700. The question will be, maybe I'm getting ahead of myself here, is there are other phones that cost exactly the same amount of money, but are just more compelling in certain ways? They have better specs. The other big thing to talk about here is the camera. They got rid of the telephoto and they went back, not back, they went to an ultra wide, just like everybody else, but they kept on the main camera sensor, the same sensor they've been using since like the Pixel 3, the Sony IMX 363, I think it is. We asked them about this and they just straight up said, yeah, no, like, we've been looking

• 11:38Speaker 03

  for something that works better for our algorithms and there's just nothing else out there. It was like, this is, this is the one and like, our experience with this sensor means that we can make better camera stuff happen.

• 11:47Nilay Patel?

  Maybe that means they, the algorithms are maybe too precisely tuned to one sensor. That cuts both ways. We've been looking for a sensor that works best with our algorithms. Also, we haven't changed the algorithms. Like, those are two lines that just converge with the IMX 360.

• 12:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, I can see their point, though. Like, that feels like Samsung is obviously much more aggressive upgrading the hardware in its phones, but it takes Samsung a couple of phones to figure it out. Like, we saw this with the S20 Ultra earlier this year, that big giant sensor, all kinds of autofocus issues and problems. Come Note 20 Ultra, it's the same sensor, but they kind of figured all that out and updated it and got it to work better. So like, I can see Google's points. I don't know if four years in a row is necessary. Maybe something's happened in those four years that they could take advantage of, but obviously, we're gonna have to try it out. They're promising some video improvements, which we're excited about. They're promising some other stuff, so.

• 12:43Speaker 03

  So the video improvements is actually the thing I want to focus on a little bit here because you can solve video problems with hardware much more easily than you can with software because like the hardware will just make it better and you don't have to run a bunch of real time algorithms on the thing because it takes a while to process stuff. So Google claims they've added a bunch of better improved video just with software and they did that while taking out the Pixel Neural Core. It does not have the specialized co-processor for image processing anymore. So they've done apparently a lot and so the stakes for doing better on video I think are relatively high because it's always been the knock on the Pixel. I actually think that Samsung and Apple have caught up in a lot of ways to the image

• 13:28Speaker 03

  quality on the Pixel and in certain cases are surpassing it, but in most cases it's a matter of taste rather than of quality. So it'd be nice to see Google jump ahead again, but the real question is what can they do without the Pixel Neural Core, without a new sensor to improve video quality?

• 13:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and I think those questions are wildly unresolved until we get the phone. I keep thinking about that, you know, we had Marc Lavoie on the Verchess a few weeks ago and you know, he said the thing about the sensor, like you're hitting the limit of what you can get out of a sensor. There's better ways to think about stacking images out of any sensor. So that's interesting. It definitely seemed like, you know, he doesn't work for Google anymore. Like it definitely seems like the people who make the Google camera app and the people who make the phone do not talk as much as you would think after that conversation. So like, you know, just trying to figure out what's happening there. And then he was very clear that video is much harder because you have to process so much more data and you might as well do that locally.

• 14:29Nilay Patel?

  When he asked the question of like Samsung and Apple are catching up, I think it's true. You know, the thing about Marc's iteration of the Pixel phone was he knew, they were intentionally going after a look, right? And he would call out the artists that they were trying to emulate. Apple and Samsung are way less open about whatever look they're trying to get.

• 14:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:50Nilay Patel?

  And so it always feels a little more muddied. So like in terms of raw picture quality, yeah, like Apple's gotten better at smart HDR, so on and so forth, but. This is a striking photo. I think Google is still there because of that sort of intentional set of let's make it look different.

• 15:04Speaker 03

  Hey, while we're talking about camera processing, I do want to give Google some huge credit because it put up a blog post and it is saying, we are not turning on face retouching by default on our phones anymore. By default, it's off from now on because we have done studies and gotten feedback that like it actually genuinely does affect people's self-image. And so it's off by default now. And that's great. There's going to be a question of like, where exactly does the line on face retouching sit? Because every camera seems to do some sort of semantic, you know, I see a face, I'm going to do something to it. I see the sky, I'm going to do something to it. So what exactly is Google, like, what's the line between full-on like face smoothing and just the camera recognizes its face and does like certain things automatically?

• 15:48Nilay Patel?

  Right. It more aggressively fills in the shadows.

• 15:51Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 15:53Nilay Patel?

  It's very much the thing they've been doing. I don't know. We gotta play with it. So the things that they've taken off of the phone, they're saying they're going to bring back.

• 16:00Speaker 03

  Yes. So they got rid of, there's no face unlock with Soli. They didn't, I don't know about the neural core. I imagine it will, but who knows? Yeah. I mean, they'll bring it back, I imagine, but I don't know what's going to happen with the Pixel next year. My hope, I've written this in a couple of newsletters this week, is that the Pixel 5 and the 4A 5G this year are sort of the last of this generation of pixels. It's like they've hit the plateau. This is the last time they make a phone that is like this core idea of a Pixel. And next year, I think they're going to do something, I hope, radically different. They're going to hopefully include their own processors, which everyone forgets that like, Xio's reported that they're making their own processors with Samsung, 5 nanometer

• 16:41Speaker 03

  processors. Maybe we'll see a camera jump. Maybe we'll see Soli come back. Maybe if Google Smart, they won't try and release them in October anymore. They'll try and like find someplace else in the year where it's a little bit chiller and where they're not coming out literally eight months after Samsung like beats them to the punch on Qualcomm's new processors.

• 17:00Nilay Patel?

  The Google needs to make its own process. That's not the thing that's gonna make me buy a Pixel phone, right? Like, it's, well, I actually always end up buying a Pixel phone. It's really a question like, what would make me not buy a Pixel phone? But it's not the thing that's gonna take them to the mass market that we've been asking about forever.

• 17:16Speaker 03

  Right.

• 17:16Nilay Patel?

  Right. It's marketing deals and carrier deals. These just feel like they made phones for, it's almost like they knew this moment in world history was coming. And they're like, here's just some more phones.

• 17:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:28Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, we know you don't have $1,300 in a folding phone, so.

• 17:31Speaker 03

  There was a press meeting with Rick Ostrow, head of hardware, and he had, he had this line that I was probably prepared. It was like, I don't know what the world needs right now is another $1,000 phone. And so I was like, oh, okay. So you were like, and so the question is, did you make this phone because of the pandemic? And the answer is no. Of course, we worked on these phones before. But we did expect an economic downturn this year, and so we were planning for that. And I think that is a little bit of truth and a little bit of like justification for the fact that you don't want to have to compete at the high end anymore. Or this year, anyway.

• 18:03Speaker 04

  I, I, I think that, that phrase there, that sentence that he said can probably be translated more like, I don't think Google can sell a $1,000 phone. Like, that's the reality of it. And when I look at the Pixel 5, and Dieter, you mentioned this earlier, that like, some of the specs are lower, like the resolution isn't as high on the screen. We talked about that's different processor and things like that. At $699, it seems laser targeted to the iPhone 11. It is the iPhone XR slash iPhone 11 approach. And it is, I don't think Google is really thinking about Samsung and OnePlus and others as competitors to the Pixel. It is the iPhone 11 it's going after, or, you know, when there's an iPhone 12, whatever this $699 iPhone that's sold at that time is. And you look at the iPhone 11, it's got a lower res screen.

• 18:46Speaker 04

  It's got, you know, a different design than the premium model. It's got fewer cameras. So it makes all these cuts, but the iPhone 11 also has a really big battery, which is one of the things that Google did with the Pixel 5 and, and was the big criticism against the Pixel 4. It's got an excellent camera system. It's got the performance, which is, you know, what Google is promising. So it seems like it's just like, it comes in one size, which is all you get with the iPhone 11. It's the same price as the iPhone 11. It's roughly the same size as the iPhone 11. It seems like all those compromises they made to get the Pixel 5 to $699 are the same compromises that Apple made to get the iPhone 11 to that price. And it just seems head to head to me.

• 19:25Speaker 03

  There's one more compromise, though, and that was including support for millimeter wave. There's a bunch of phones that have a Verizon variant that costs more because it includes all the millimeter wave antennas. They chose not to make a variant for the Pixel 5. And so the compromise was with Verizon to have their flagship include compatibility with Verizon's network. So it actually pushed the price up. That's like the one compromise I like, uh, don't feel great about.

• 19:50Nilay Patel?

  You know, not for nothing, the iPhone 11, that one, it's, that's the 10R. That's the one we've just told people to buy.

• 19:57Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 19:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Like, it's, it's like, I feel very confident telling people to buy an iPhone 11.

• 20:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, totally. I've been using one as I test the Apple Watch SE and like,

• 20:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's an iPhone.

• 20:08Speaker 04

  The reliable phone. It's an iPhone.

• 20:10Nilay Patel?

  It's definitely an iPhone.

• 20:10Speaker 04

  That's what you needed to do.

• 20:11Nilay Patel?

  I'm curious what Apple's gonna do with all these, all these radio machinations.

• 20:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:15Nilay Patel?

  If the next one's at 5G. I don't understand why you, I understand it's a couple hundred dollars, but the 4A 5G just seems, it seems like the ultimate cheap big one.

• 20:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, that's exactly what it is. It's the ultimate cheap big one. And actually, like, there's this, like, philosophical, like, ship of Theseus question of, like, is the Pixel 4A 5G actually just like a Pixel 5 that's cheaper? Or is it a Pixel 4A that's bigger? Or is a Pixel 5 a Pixel 4A that's nicer instead of, right? So much for a simple lineup. Well, they've got these three phones, and I think they're all made from the HTC team. And I think that it's, makes more sense to think of, like, the 4A as the foundation, and then they, like, tweaked it from there, rather than the other way around. Why they

• 21:05Speaker 03

  decided to call the 4A 5G, the 4A 5G instead of the 5XL is because they, like, they wanted to make the big cheap phone. And so they had to, like, call it a 4A.

• 21:16Speaker 04

  It's like, half of it leans towards the 5. It's got the same processor and same camera system as the 5. You can get it with the 5, it has, obviously, it's 5G radio. Verizon's gonna charge 100 bucks more, so you can pay $599 for it to get their 5G radio in it. But then it's a plastic body. You give up the wireless charging, and you give up the fast refresh screen. So it's like,

• 21:36Nilay Patel?

  And, and you get a bigger screen with a smaller battery.

• 21:41Speaker 05

  Not even that much bigger though, because I mean, the 4A is 5.8 inches, right? And the 5 is 6. And the 4A 5G, Jesus, is 6.2. So like, these aren't huge differences between these phones at all. Yeah, we're really, we're really thin slicing the size differences.

• 21:58Speaker 03

  Google Store has a chart where you can like compare all three of them next to each other. And it's like, they, they look the same. They all, they all look like they're the same size. Like, you can't really tell.

• 22:07Nilay Patel?

  Well, just to come back to that camera before we move on. One thing I thought was interesting is they're bringing some of the new camera features to the older phones. And they're bringing the, the wait on hold feature. Hold for me, which we should talk about. So there's a new portrait light mode. That is just coming to Google Photos, they made it seem like. Where you can go back in time to a portrait photo that you've taken, I think they said up to five years ago. And the Google Photos editor will let you enhance that photo in some way. We have to actually use it. I always think that, that, you know, the Pixel camera, Google Photos integration is very tight. I think that's cool. They've got cinematic pan settings, like we said, video, three new stabilization modes for smoother video. The problem isn't that, isn't that the video wasn't smooth enough.

• 22:51Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 22:52Nilay Patel?

  Right. And the problem is like, they, it shot like 1080p 30 and that was it.

• 22:57Speaker 03

  I mean, they had, they got slightly better and they are adding 4K 60 this year. But also like just at a fundamental quality level, like it wasn't, it's not there. You get more dynamic range of an iPhone than you can out of a Pixel phone. The, the question for me is like, are they going to bring all of the camera features down? Because why, why wouldn't they? Like, the Pixel 4 actually has a neural core and like a faster processor technically.

• 23:21Nilay Patel?

  And the same chip.

• 23:23Speaker 03

  And the exact same chip. So I asked about this and I'm told that Google doesn't have an exact outline of what's going to happen when. But for sure, portrait light in portrait mode, which is the thing, it's coming to 4 and 4A. Portrait light in Google Photos is going to be available on 3 and newer pixels. And combined video modes is going to be on everything 2 and up.

• 23:43Nilay Patel?

  Okay, I'll take it. And then they're bringing the call feature. Was there another feature they were bringing down?

• 23:49Speaker 03

  There's like the improved recording and I forget exactly what the deal is with that. But the call feature is actually like super cool.

• 23:56Nilay Patel?

  I spent a lot of time on hold lately, just. It's just a feature of the pandemic. Like every phone call you make for customer service, like a chirpy robot is like, due to the pandemic, we have increased hold times. And you feel like Google, like employees felt it too. So they built this exact feature.

• 24:16Speaker 03

  Tired of it.

• 24:17Nilay Patel?

  Like everyone is like, ah crap, there's a fraud charge on my credit card. I've been on hold for 25 minutes and they built this feature. So it's an extension of duplex. You call, you say, just wait on hold for me. What they did not demo is what happens when someone picks up.

• 24:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:32Nilay Patel?

  Does duplex ask that person to wait on hold?

• 24:36Speaker 03

  If it just listens for the music to change, I've been on a like, have you ever been on hold and the hold music sounds like it's coming from Mars and then somebody picks up and it just sounds normal. Like just scratchy. And or there's, there's also hold music that like stops every two minutes and then loops. Or it stops every two minutes and like a voice tells you that hang on.

• 24:54Nilay Patel?

  My new favorite is they play ads for other products and services. It's, it's all bad. But I'm saying, so Dieter, you're my, you're, you're the bank. Sorry.

• 25:04Speaker 03

  It's great.

• 25:04Nilay Patel?

  Bank of Collinsworth. I'm calling in. You, the bank put me on hold. I'm waiting. I tell, I tell my Pixel phone, let me know when the hold is over. Then you pick up.

• 25:16Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 25:17Nilay Patel?

  It's got to tell me that you picked up.

• 25:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:20Nilay Patel?

  Is it just engaging you, the bank teller in some idle chit chat? While it waits for me to pick up and engage? Is it like, thanks for picking up. I'm Nilay's duplex assistant. How are you today? Right?

• 25:33Speaker 03

  I already hung up.

• 25:34Nilay Patel?

  Are you, this call is being reported by the Google cloud? Like none of that makes sense.

• 25:39Speaker 03

  I got a call queue of 50 calls and I, my bonus, it depends on how many I get through. I'm not going to wait for a robot to like, call the human that is, you know, there. Nope. Not doing it.

• 25:50Nilay Patel?

  So I'm curious to see how this works in practice. As with duplex, actually calling restaurants, actually using the thing. It worked, but in the, the many, the reality of people answering the phone. Did not quite match up with the cell. I cannot wait for an AI to wait on hold for me. I'm very excited about this feature. I'm just also excited about, you know, the Verizon customer service person who has to issue your FiOS router return code, talking to my Google robot for a couple of minutes, like finish washing my hands. It's gonna be great. I'm excited for everyone. Is that all? Oh, we should talk about this extreme battery saver mode.

• 26:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, so it's, it's, it's a, Google loves making these modes that shut your apps down. Like, they've got variants on do not disturb, or they've got a focus mode, or whatever. This just, you turn it on and it shuts all your apps down in the background. And if you open it, then it'll work. I'm actually annoyed. Like, if you think that the solution is that your apps are running too much in the background and that's what's killing your battery life, fix Android.

• 26:55Nilay Patel?

  I'm a better way to fix Android than by shutting most of it off.

• 26:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, God. The other thing that we should mention is availability on these things was super weird. It looks like it's hitting internationally ahead of the US. And it also looks like the Pixel 5 is like, out of stock. You got a like, waitlist at this point. Except I think you can still get it unlocked, and that's still available. Yeah, so that's still there. But yeah, like, there doesn't seem to be a bunch of stock, and it seems like they're, they're having a hard time getting it into every country at the same time. They like, do not have Apple's supply chain. You know, they just can't get everything landing at stores at once.

• 27:31Nilay Patel?

  That feels like a direct consequence of the pandemic. Like, like, Google's not good at this in general, but the US is really by far the strongest Pixel market. And so for the fact that like, it isn't able to get them to the US as soon as other markets, it really feels like that is a consequence of the struggles with the pandemic.

• 27:51Speaker 03

  It's funny, because you know, what cuts against that is they're able to get the Chromecast and Home Depot several days before it was even announced. We gotta take a break. We're gonna come back and talk about that Chromecast. We'll be right back.

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• 29:29Nilay Patel?

  Chris Welch.

• 29:30Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 29:31Nilay Patel?

  I would say that you've had a tempestuous week with the Google Chromecast.

• 29:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 29:36Nilay Patel?

  Start at the start, and then let's talk about the thing.

• 29:38Speaker 05

  Start at the start. So on Sunday, I went on a 13-mile hike, and I stayed at my friend's place out in the suburbs. And I was working at a Starbucks on Monday when I saw a tweet from friend of The Verge, Dave Zatz, and he had mentioned that someone bought the new Chromecast at Home Depot, had a photo and everything. And so I realized there was a Home Depot right across the street, and so I figure, you know, what the hell, let's just go over there and see what happens. And so I did, and they actually didn't have any at that store. But the whole shelf was cleared off, so I was like, well, something has happened here, obviously. And so. It was just one of those moments where I was like, you know what? Let me just try one more store and see what happens. So I took an Uber to another Home Depot because out in the suburbs, there's a Home Depot every 15 miles. And so I got to another one and sure enough, there it was just on the shelf.

• 30:22Speaker 05

  And I grabbed it, ran to the front and like even then I was like, you know what? I'm just going to get up to this scanner and it's going to be like, sorry, you can't buy this. That happens sometimes when you find something, find something on the shelf too early. And so, but yeah, sure enough, went to self-checkout, bought it in a snap and walked out before the product had even been announced.

• 30:41Nilay Patel?

  So that's amazing. That's like one of the funniest Google hardware stories. It's so, it encapsulates so many things. So you've got the new Chromecast, the Chromecast 2020. I don't even know what we're going to officially.

• 30:53Speaker 05

  Chromecast with Google TV. That's what it's called.

• 30:57Nilay Patel?

  There's a lot to unpack there. Tell us about it.

• 30:59Speaker 05

  So the old Chromecast was a $35 stick that you would plug into your TV and it would show you like a nice photo of the ocean. And you would have to know to, you know, I've got to open YouTube on my phone or Netflix on my phone and cast it. And so that was fine several years ago. They sold a ton of those, obviously, but now you can buy a $40 Roku or a Fire TV and have all the apps you need and 4K and Dolby Vision and all this stuff. So it doesn't really work anymore. So finally, the Chromecast has an actual menu, has apps you can download, just like a Roku, just like a Fire TV, and it has a remote control to do it all with. So it's a pretty big shift. It's a lot simpler.

• 31:37Nilay Patel?

  The Chromecast was a phenomenally successful product.

• 31:40Speaker 05

  It was.

• 31:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Like people really loved that thing. And I think part of the reason I loved it is because it, you just didn't have to do anything.

• 31:47Speaker 03

  Well, there's that. And it was also relatively early to the idea that you can just have a $30 stick and plug it into the back of your TV. And so that was, that was kind of an amazing thing. I'm like, oh, I can make this a smart TV and it's not a hassle. It's, it only costs 30 bucks and it's sitting at the, you know, impulse byline at Target.

• 32:04Speaker 05

  So this is a $50 stick that now plugs into your TV. So it's a bit more expensive than the old and it runs Android TV, which I'm sure most people have never used before, but it's very similar to your typical Roku and Amazon Fire TV layout. You download your apps, run them, but on top of all that. And this is the big thing to unpack is a new software that's called Google TV. And so this is a lot like Apple TV's Apple TV app wherein it just brings in all of your services and tries to recommend shows from all from side by side in one big universal guide for streaming.

• 32:34Speaker 03

  And

• 32:35Nilay Patel?

  But it but it's the actual home screen of the thing. It's not like Apple TV's Apple TV app, which is just another app.

• 32:43Speaker 05

  This is the home screen. Yeah.

• 32:44Nilay Patel?

  It's a Chromecast that runs the Android TV operating system.

• 32:49Speaker 03

  No.

• 32:49Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 32:49Speaker 03

  It's a it's an Android TV that happens to have Chromecast capabilities.

• 32:53Nilay Patel?

  Ding. And it's called Chromecast with Google TV.

• 32:57Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 32:58Nilay Patel?

  All right, that's fine. Does it make duo calls?

• 33:01Speaker 03

  This is It totally could. Yeah, you you can sideload apps. You can plug in a keyboard to camera.

• 33:06Nilay Patel?

  Beautiful. Well, so I have a Sony TV that runs Android TV. It they made it sound at the event like this new Google TV experience would come to old TVs in some way. But that doesn't appear to be correct. It's a very confusing.

• 33:19Speaker 05

  It is confusing. There was some story yesterday saying that they're going to phase out the old Android TV over the next couple of years and use this as their main go to.

• 33:26Nilay Patel?

  Are they just gonna blow up? It's a very nice OLED TV. I don't want them to like, are the cops gonna come?

• 33:33Speaker 05

  But I think this is like a much better UX as far as like just knowing where to go and finding something to watch quickly, not having to like dig into every app one by one and search for stuff. And so I think they did a pretty good job and they have most of the apps that you would actually want, which is the actual surprising bit.

• 33:50Nilay Patel?

  So right, right before we came on, we were talking about this and it's so funny that this moment of like streaming boxes is really not about the capabilities of the boxes themselves anymore, right? A year ago, two years ago, what would we be talking about? I'd be making jokes about all of the lights. Right? Does it? Does it have all the features? Right? Now they all have vision. They all have Atmos. Their libraries are starting to fill out. I think Amazon is still pretty thin, but like they all do the thing, right? The best 4K you can get streaming. Now it's Well, AT&T's Warner Media Division is in some sort of advertising-related fight with Roku. And so you can't get HBO Max, but there's another app called HBO that might work if you have a cable

• 34:33Nilay Patel?

  subscrib- and so like, the promise of the Roku is like, lost in some deals. It's the same with Fire TV. The Peacock app, I was joking that, you know, there's like HBO Max, there's like, definitely an app that you want, and then Peacock from NBC is definitely an app that NBC wants you to want. This is true. Disclosure, obviously NBC is an investor in Fox Media, which owns The Verge. They're just never happy about what we say here, so there's a disclosure. But NBC wants Peacock to be on the Roku. They're also in some advertising-related fight, which very much tracks with like, every platform's fight with their apps. Right? Roku wants a cut of every ad dollar that gets put into these apps. They don't want to give them the cut. Julia Alexander will have her on the show.

• 35:18Nilay Patel?

  She'll talk for five hours about exactly how those dynamics works, because it's very complicated and very stressful. But, right, the Fire TV doesn't have HBO Max. The Roku doesn't have Peacock. NBC pulled all of its apps, all of its other apps from the Roku platform and like, what they say is not retaliation, but by any measure is like, obvious retaliation. But Google pulled it off. Google, the advertising company that makes all of its money in advertising, was like, we've got HBO Max, we've got Peacock, we've got every app. And importantly, the only platform I can think of that convinced Netflix to unbundle its content from its app.

• 36:03Nilay Patel?

  So what is the reason that the Apple TV app is not the interface for the Apple TV box? It's because you still have to go launch Netflix to watch Netflix shows, and it will not show you Netflix shows in recommendations, or curated lists, or up next, or whatever. Google managed to do that with a Chromecast, which is like a big deal, like a seismic shift in this industry. And I don't really know what they gave. They gave him a button. They can't be like-

• 36:28Speaker 05

  There's a button on their remote control.

• 36:29Nilay Patel?

  Everybody gives him a button. Netflix doesn't even take the meeting unless they get a button. Netflix is now in the Nest Home Hub. Is that Reed Hastings was like, finally, okay, I'll unbundle my app and my entire like, it's, it's a lot. But does all that stuff work? Well, I mean, you have it, you reviewed it. Does it all? Does it work?

• 36:50Speaker 05

  It does. Yeah. I mean, you can choose which services you have. So I've got Netflix, Prime Video, Sling TV, and it'll still show you things that are from services you don't have, like HBO Max. That's there pretty heavily. And so you'll see things from those apps and they're just kind of there. You can't get rid of them fully. So that's kind of unfortunate. But they have all the apps you want. And I think this does come down to partly that like, these are Android apps. At the end of the day, it's like Peacock is on Android. So is HBO Max. So it'd be kind of weird to have a split there where like they are on Android, the phone, but not on Android TV. That's where Google had that perk. But otherwise, I mean, yeah, they all work great. 4K HDR.

• 37:27Speaker 03

  We should say there's no Apple TV on it.

• 37:29Speaker 05

  There's no Apple TV app. So you can't watch your Ted Lasso, which people are pretty upset about, actually. There are people in the comments saying like, a few months ago, I wouldn't have given a damn. But now I do. So I guess.

• 37:41Nilay Patel?

  Is there, is there an Android Apple TV app?

• 37:43Speaker 05

  No, there's not. Although I think they're supposed to have one for Sony TVs, someone had told me. So I don't know what the situation is there. So I think maybe someday, I'm sure Apple wants one there ultimately, if they want it to be that, that big of a platform. But it's probably going to be a while. But that's really the only app that you don't have. And I mean, there's no AirPlay 2, obviously.

• 37:59Speaker 03

  There is one other app that technically you don't get, and it's just quite a, quite a thing. Stadia. Stadia does not work on the new Chromecast with Google TV. Just not there out of the box. It's coming first half of next year.

• 38:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's not quite ready, but you, but you can sideload it, which we learned, and you can also sideload the XCloud game streaming service. And that works too. And they both work well enough. I mean, they're buggy, they crash once in a while, but it proves that it can work. And yeah, it just seems like Google's kind of behind on actually getting there, which what else are you doing if you didn't have this ready? It's time for the launch of your new, brand new TV streaming box.

• 38:38Speaker 03

  If you're thinking, oh, I'm going to go buy this Chromecast instead of an Xbox, and it'll be great. I encourage you to go look at Chris's tweet where he demonstrates the latency on the current XCloud app that you're sideload.

• 38:50Speaker 05

  It's not insignificant.

• 38:51Speaker 03

  It's like a second.

• 38:54Nilay Patel?

  It's good. You want to play, play like turn-based games.

• 38:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:57Nilay Patel?

  It's, it's, it's really for chess simulators.

• 39:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 39:03Nilay Patel?

  Card games.

• 39:04Speaker 05

  Yeah. So there's no Stadia. Also, there's no Google Photos app, which I still find pretty strange on Android TV. I mean,

• 39:09Nilay Patel?

  Didn't they say there was an ambient mode that pulls from Google Photos?

• 39:12Speaker 05

  Screensavers can be Google Photos. Yeah. But there's no straightforward app where you can just like go browse your photos and like pull up videos. And I mean, you can cast all that stuff, obviously, but there's no straight up Google Photos app on Android TV.

• 39:22Speaker 04

  There's no Google Home app either, right? Like you can't visually control your.

• 39:27Speaker 03

  But it does have the assistant and so you can.

• 39:29Speaker 04

  The assistant, right.

• 39:30Speaker 03

  Ask it to do stuff and it'll do the stuff.

• 39:32Nilay Patel?

  And there's power button and volume on the remote.

• 39:34Speaker 05

  Power button. There's a volume rocker.

• 39:36Speaker 04

  Why is that?

• 39:38Nilay Patel?

  Because there's an IR blaster on there.

• 39:43Speaker 03

  The remote also, and I think this is kind of genius, has an input button. And if you hit the input button, it'll switch the input to the Chromecast's input. So you don't need to dig out your TV's remote to change the input over to the Chromecast. You just, it becomes your one remote and it's a little bit closer to being like, sort of like input one, because you can just hit that button.

• 40:03Speaker 04

  In a perfect world, CEC would take care of this. Like the Apple TV does this over CEC, Fire TV does this over CEC. But it's funny, when Dieter and I were getting briefed by Google on this, they were just like, we don't trust CEC. So we put it and put button on it.

• 40:19Nilay Patel?

  If you ever want to just hear like a pure howl of despair, ask any of these manufacturers about the CEC power commands.

• 40:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:31Nilay Patel?

  Because I think technically there isn't a CEC power off command.

• 40:35Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 40:35Nilay Patel?

  So they're, they're all just like stuck. They can't, they can't do it. They have to have the IR blaster turn the shit off.

• 40:42Speaker 05

  But CEC does work well to some extent. Like my LG TV remote actually does control the Chromecast, which is kind of neat.

• 40:48Speaker 04

  Oh, nice.

• 40:49Speaker 05

  But I can't do voice search, obviously, but you can just like navigate and browse around. So if you want to use one remote, you can.

• 40:55Nilay Patel?

  If you have more than one CEC device in a stack, that shit is like the Real Housewives. Like they are just always fighting. They're like, my PlayStation will just light up and be like, here I am. It's like, why are you here now? Well, look, the first Google TV was such a huge bet on IR control of everything that it almost killed Logitech, the company entirely.

• 41:19Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 41:19Nilay Patel?

  This is a true, so you could go read these headlines, like the previous CEO of Logitech was like, that was dumb. We shouldn't have done that. We made a bet on beta software that wasn't ready. We thought it would be great. It wasn't like he's saying it to his investors. Like, we bet the company on this, and it was a bad idea. They have since recovered, which is good for them. I think this is less of a bet on IR blasting, right?

• 41:38Speaker 04

  I mean, it's The IR blaster is there as a necessity, but it's not like the system is architected around the fact that it has an IR blaster.

• 41:48Nilay Patel?

  But I do think the notion that these remotes now need power and volume, there's a like, they almost all have

• 41:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's a, there's a period where they were like, yeah, we could, we could get away without it. It'll be fine.

• 41:59Nilay Patel?

  And I, but I think that period was reflective of, we know you have other remotes on your table. We know that we're in second place to your cable box or to your TV remote or whatever. There's some other stack of remotes on your table and you're already turning stuff on and off. We just need to do a D-pad control and whatever other buttons. And now they're, almost all of them are like, we could be the only box in maybe your game console.

• 42:21Speaker 04

  Yeah. And that's, that's really thanks to the proliferation of live over the top services. So like, Google TV is really built around YouTube TV integration with the Live Tab. And like, if you didn't have that a couple of years ago, you would have needed a cable box for live TV. But a couple of years down the road, you don't really need that for live TV services. Now this Fire TV, Google TV, Roku box is your only remote. And it makes sense in that, in that context.

• 42:47Nilay Patel?

  I would just like to point out that Google now operates, uh, Google TV, the rebranded app that sells movies and TV shows.

• 42:55Speaker 04

  Although, hey, I'm sorry, it's still Google, uh, movies and TV on non-Android platforms. So it's Google Movies and TV some places. Um, and then it's Google TV, the app on Android phones. And then it's Google TV, the interface on Android TV.

• 43:13Nilay Patel?

  Sure. So they operate Google TV in interface.

• 43:17Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 43:17Nilay Patel?

  On Android TV.

• 43:19Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 43:19Nilay Patel?

  A platform that supports an app called Google TV.

• 43:22Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 43:24Nilay Patel?

  That also supports a service called YouTube TV.

• 43:27Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 43:28Speaker 04

  And also, the Chromecast is not built on Chromecast. It's built on Android TV and it's called the Google Chromecast with Google TV.

• 43:36Nilay Patel?

  It's actually called the Google Chromecast. That's great.

• 43:39Nilay Patel?

  It's like, they're so close to this being a messaging app. Like, they're right there.

• 43:45Speaker 03

  To be fair, to be fair, Apple has this confusion with Apple TV. There's Apple TV, the Apple TV hardware. There's Apple TV, the app. There's Apple, there's the TV app

• 43:55Speaker 03

  the Apple TV. And then there's Apple TV plus the service. So, you know.

• 44:00Speaker 05

  So despite all that confusion, I mean, this thing is actually really, really good. I think, dear, you said this is gonna be your next streaming device that you go with.

• 44:07Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, this is, this is it. This is it for me. It, the remote is nicer than the Apple TV remote, because I don't lose it. And it has a real power button, instead of like remembering to hold down the right button to turn off the power. It has a YouTube button and YouTube looks great on it.

• 44:21Nilay Patel?

  Yes, that's what I was gonna call out.

• 44:23Speaker 03

  I mean, yes, it just, it just looks good. It's not the fastest box on the planet, but it's fast enough. There's not a ton of ads on the home screen, like on the Fire TV. The Fire TV is just like, I will, Amazon, let me pay you 20 more dollars to leave me alone, please.

• 44:41Speaker 03

  But, I mean, there's a bunch of promoted content or whatever, and I will be very curious to see if Google's content recommendations are better. I'll be very curious to see if they do manage to keep all of these services in line and like letting them intermix their recommendations. And the other thing is, they, they have a watch list that might actually be useful, because it works across every single service, and you can just add shit to it from your phone. You can search, someone says, hey, I want to watch this show. You search for it on your phone in Google and you tap the button and it gets put on your watch list. The end.

• 45:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm down with all that. I think not that missing that Apple TV app is going to keep my Apple TV sitting there. You know, it's like,

• 45:23Speaker 03

  Well, there's a there's a 50 50 chance your your smart TV itself has an Apple TV app. You can just use that.

• 45:28Nilay Patel?

  But then I'm now just like back to using multiple. It's hard to gain anything. I will say the Apple TV 4K YouTube looks so bad on it. Like I Dieter and I were like in a late night text session because he was so mad about how I I saw my end of it convinced him to install the beta TV S 14. And I was like, I'm such a bad friend, like destroying Dieter's Friday night. You know, that's supposed to get fixed now. You know, they're supporting the new codec, but it just I haven't seen it. And I will say this, YouTube TV is great. Like we I've, you know, we moved out of Brooklyn. We let FiOS go. I don't have a cable card in my life for the first time in over a decade. Wow. It's very freeing. And so we signed up for YouTube TV and it's great.

• 46:11Nilay Patel?

  Right. It damn well better be for $70 or whatever it is right now. There was a moment, there was, but so it got more expensive because they added the Viacom channels. And there was like a moment, I was three weeks ago, whenever when the VMAs were on. And I was like, I am paying this much more money for every single Viacom channel to show me the VMAs. Like, these, these are the most expensive cable award show in history. Yeah, you know, I wish you the pricing was better, but I can't help but feel that Apple's big investment in making original content. They could have taken all of that money and built a service like YouTube TV subsidized it with their hardware and to come out way ahead in terms of just feeling more relevant. And I think that's what Google is going to

• 46:54Nilay Patel?

  get out of this thing. Because they can say you can buy this. But we wouldn't have Ted Lasso. Ted Lasso is a Warner Media production.

• 47:04Nilay Patel?

  They didn't make it. They bought it from Warner. I think Warner could have figured out somewhere else to put it. I have an idea. I have one idea where else it could have gone.

• 47:15Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, I would just say it's it. You look at this and you look at the integration with the live TV, which is like, you know, we're in the middle of a lot of sports right now. So it's like compelling to have.

• 47:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:23Nilay Patel?

  Like that. It just feels like this is smarter in that way. Google did say that their live tab, they will let like Sling and others integrate with it.

• 47:32Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 47:32Nilay Patel?

  So they've got that little bit of openness going, but YouTube TV seems like such an advantage for Google that they don't quite know how to say out loud.

• 47:40Speaker 03

  Well, it's because it's a product that has the word YouTube in it and any, any product that has a word YouTube in it, they, they, they don't know what to do with it. YouTube Music is like, pretty good. Some people love it, but it's not a, it's not a full on, people don't really use it. Like people use Spotify or Apple Music, right?

• 47:54Nilay Patel?

  Do you know Selena Gomez uses the YouTube Music Collaborative Playlist feature to work with Blackpink on, on new songs?

• 48:01Speaker 04

  So, so Neelai, your, your pitch to Google is to call it Google TV?

• 48:06Nilay Patel?

  I mean, they should just call it Google TV. Like a device in a service, right?

• 48:12Speaker 04

  And then you could subscribe to Google TV to watch on your Google Chromecast with Google TV.

• 48:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 48:20Speaker 04

  And you're good.

• 48:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I, there's a way to bring all of the things together into one branding that makes sense. I mean, it would probably require the addition of a messaging product, just spitballing here. But there's a way to say you're going to buy the Google TV hardware and you can pay for YouTube TV and that's like this upsell.

• 48:43Speaker 03

  Yeah. Speaking of upsells with the Chromecast with Google TV hardware, did you know that there's a Netflix bundle where you can pay 30 bucks more and get six months of Netflix?

• 48:52Nilay Patel?

  They made some deal here. There's some Google Netflix deal that occurred.

• 48:57Speaker 04

  I really wonder, and this is me purely hypothesizing, but Android TV's biggest market right now is in Europe. And as we know, Europe and Google, they kind of have a lot of back and forth between antitrust things and things like that. I just wonder if this make nice with Netflix is driven in part by that. It's just spitballing. I don't know.

• 49:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but I don't know. Maybe they cut him a deal on Google Cloud or something and get him off AWS. I'm just saying there's some sort of massive, massive Google Netflix deal that occurred here that got Netflix on the home hub, that got Netflix to unbundle its content. That created a weird bundle where you get six month and Netflix for like,

• 49:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, for what it's worth, Netflix is also coming to the Alexa smart devices. So like, that's happening. So maybe we'll see Netflix unbundled in the Fire TV in the near future. Maybe it's a new Netflix that's we're seeing.

• 49:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's the thing to track because it's the story of the Apple TV is the inability to unbundle Netflix has kept the interface Apple wants to have like locked into this goofy app that no one understands.

• 50:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, that and the hardware is just super overpriced right now. I think this shows really that it's time for Apple to make some move with the Apple TV 4K. I mean, $170 when Google, Roku and Amazon are all playing down at like the $40, $50 mark is rough territory. So we'll have to see what happens over the next few months.

• 50:19Nilay Patel?

  Who hasn't wanted to pay $130 more for the world's most confusing remote?

• 50:25Nilay Patel?

  It was like Joanna's tweet. She's like, this is the only story.

• 50:29Speaker 04

  And what an indictment of the Pixel phones that a $50 TV dongle is like 10 times more fascinating.

• 50:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but I mean, that's just.

• 50:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, plus this thing's here now. Those aren't coming for a month or so.

• 50:42Speaker 04

  That's true.

• 50:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, plus Chris had to abscond with.

• 50:47Nilay Patel?

  There's a new Roku Ultra 2. I mean, again, I think this is, what's the story of the new Roku Ultra? It has all the lights, but it doesn't, it doesn't have some apps.

• 50:55Speaker 05

  Yep. So that one finally lights up Dolby Vision, whereas it didn't have that before. So this is the first Roku player to have Dolby Vision. I mean, you can buy a Roku TV that has it, but this is the first player to get it. And it's got faster Wi-Fi performance, better range and stuff like that. So it's pretty iterative and it just adds vision and it's Roku Ultra.

• 51:14Nilay Patel?

  And AirPlay 2 and HomeKit are on this device. They're on the Roku, not the TVs.

• 51:18Speaker 05

  They're coming to the TVs too. Yep. Sometime later this year, but just 4K players. So if you have like a 1080p Roku, you're not going to get AirPlay. So that's where they draw the line.

• 51:26Nilay Patel?

  No, but that I think those are the first like separate boxes that are going to have AirPlay 2.

• 51:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, I believe so.

• 51:32Nilay Patel?

  It's been Apple TV. So now AirPlay 2 is coming to Roku standalone hardware. If they get HomeKit, can they be HomeKit hubs? Do we know that answer?

• 51:39Speaker 05

  I don't believe they can be HomeKit hubs, but I can double check that. But as far as I know, you can just like use like Siri to power them on or off, but I don't think you can get the full hub experience.

• 51:48Nilay Patel?

  Cause once you get all the way there, then the Apple TV is like totally out of the

• 51:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:52Nilay Patel?

  Unless you, unless you're the one person who's playing Apple Arcade.

• 51:56Speaker 05

  I mean, the side load stadium on this thing and you're all set.

• 51:59Speaker 03

  I think the stream bar is more interesting. It's like, it's like a cute itty bitty little soundbar with Roku built in. It's like the perfect like second room, bedroom, little streaming box because you get a decent, you actually get decent sound in that other room, kids room or bedroom or whatever. And so just, you know, getting a doggone using the TV sound. And you had a Roku mode that probably has a headphone jack on it. So that's also useful in the bedroom. So like, I don't know. I think it's great.

• 52:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. The question of where does the smart stuff go continues to haunt this entire category. Like, is it in your TV? Is it a little box behind your TV? What if it was in a speaker? Like, we will come to the point when Roku is like, we put it in a ceiling fan. Is that where you want it to be? Why not?

• 52:42Speaker 05

  As I just love time story the other day, the button of the month, this month about the Roku button that does nothing and still hasn't after two years of being on the market.

• 52:50Nilay Patel?

  What is it for?

• 52:52Speaker 05

  We'll never, we'll never know.

• 52:54Nilay Patel?

  I loved that story because you managed to spin it into, maybe they will have an idea. And what is the, what is the human experience except for hope? And then it's like, you're clicking this Roku button. One last Google announcement. The whole event was colored by Sonos filing a patent lawsuit the day before. Five more patents, we get into it in a minute. And then Google announced the new Nest Audio smart speaker, $99. It's just a dead run at the Sonos one, right? What did they, what did they demo it with multi? Well, they demoed it with Mark Ronson, listening to, again, listening to Valerie and being like, I love this song. This is great. But they demoed multi-room switching, right? You walk up to it, you say, move this music over here. It does it. You say, move this music to all the rooms, it does it.

• 53:39Speaker 03

  They also demoed stereo pairing, which I think they've had for before, but that was like an important feature here.

• 53:44Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. It's much more of like a, much more of a serious speaker than the original Google Home from 2016, which was like the air freshener thing that had different colored bases. And like, that was very much like bringing the assistant into your home. I think four years later, Google is more like, this is for like, you want really good audio and it's a smart speaker. You can, you already understand what the assistant does.

• 54:08Nilay Patel?

  You know, in the context of last week's Amazon event, right? They made, they made the Echo show and they're like, you're in your kitchen. Now it moves around and like, looks at you while you're cooking. I think there's just a recognition that like, what do you do with these speakers? You ask them play music. You ask them to set timers in the kitchen.

• 54:29Speaker 04

  You turn lights on and off and the weather.

• 54:31Speaker 03

  Right. So like you see them just optimizing towards the actual use cases.

• 54:35Speaker 04

  That's what they've learned over the last four years is what are the actual use cases?

• 54:39Speaker 03

  Well, and this is why the new Nest Audio and why the Orb Echoes are now more directional because they recognize that like, nobody makes it the centerpiece on their coffee table.

• 54:51Speaker 04

  You don't love running a power cable through your living room floor to the middle of your coffee table for your smart speaker? Really?

• 54:58Nilay Patel?

  So we haven't heard the thing. Just by way of comparison, I will tell you, I mean, this is very cheap. It's $99 or I guess $99.99. So $100. Obviously, Apple tried to sell the HomePod by saying it sounded amazing.

• 55:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:10Nilay Patel?

  And that's why you should buy it. Yeah, it sounded very nice, but it was Siri, so nobody bought it. It was also very expensive. I don't know that slightly better audio is the thing that makes anybody switch, right? Like the Nest Minis and the Echo Dots are the things that sell.

• 55:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:28Speaker 04

  Well, do they sell or are they just kind of given away? Like, I mean,

• 55:32Speaker 03

  I think they sell. Come on.

• 55:34Speaker 04

  I mean, yes, people do buy them, but they are so inexpensive. They are impulse purchases or they are, I mean, like every holiday season, I buy gifts for friends and family and things like that. And I've thrown Google Minis. And so like, I literally have a basket full of Google Minis. I can't even give them away to anymore because my father-in-law is like, I have four of these already. I don't need anymore.

• 55:56Speaker 03

  Stop listening to me.

• 55:57Speaker 04

  And, and so like, they're just basically thrown out there. So like, yes, people are buying them, but also it's like a very different purchase than like a $99 thing that you are putting out, you know, a much more significant amount of money. It's larger in size. It's a little bit more dedicated. You have a bit more intent when you're buying it and when you're placing it and things like that. And I will say that like, yo, we haven't heard the Nest Audio yet, but like, there's a limit to what a mini can do. That we know. Like, it's not powering your party. There's volume limits and things like that. It's a really great interface for the Google Assistant. It's not like a super great speaker. So, you know, if you want a better speaker, the Nest Audio is there. I'm very curious to put it head to head with the new Echo, which is the

• 56:39Speaker 04

  same price and kind of the same pitch. So we'll be, we'll be looking at these a lot. And then of course, you know, compare against the Sonos One, which is a smart speaker at twice the price, looks to be about the same size. I don't know, a lot of fun in the space.

• 56:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think it's very hard to like come in on that Sonos territory of like multi room audio, because like that's their brand, that's their cachet. That's what people like walk into Best Buy and know. And so like Google has to like scream pretty much and say, hey, we do this too really well now to like, take any of that away from them.

• 57:03Speaker 04

  And they're screaming with that price. Like a Sonos is still, for a lot of people, Sonos is like a premium brand. And Sonos One is $200 unless you get it on sale. That's, that's a lot more money than $99. So they're saying it in multiple ways, but it'll be interesting to see how well it stacks up.

• 57:20Nilay Patel?

  That's the heart of the Sonos lawsuits. They're up to three lawsuits now in January. Well, you can group them in two ways. So there's three separate filings, and then there's two groups of patents. So in January, they filed the first two lawsuits, one in federal court in California, and one in the International Trade Commission. Those are different kinds of courts. The International Trade Commission can just block products.

• 57:45Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 57:45Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like you're just not allowed to import products and infringe patents. So the court proceeding, like the court, court proceeding in California was put on hold while the ITC goes through. That led Sonos. And that, that set of patents, I talked to Eddie Lazarus, Sonos's chief legal officer. He's like, think about the patents generationally. The first lawsuit was like the very basics of doing stuff with smart speakers.

• 58:09Speaker 05

  Right.

• 58:09Nilay Patel?

  Or wireless home audio. So setup, stereo pairing, keeping the music in sync over time as you're dropping frames and like, all that stuff is that first set of patents. And like, you know, I, every time we get a patent story, I'm like, is this, do I feel comfortable that this is what we've patented? And some of that stuff is very difficult, right? This new set of patents is, you know, TruePlay, Sonos's TruePlay, where you can like wave a microphone around and the microphone's built in and it'll adjust EQ for you. True plays in this set of patents, setting the volume across number of speakers from your phones in these patents. It's a little more like, yeah, a little dicier. One of the patents was only granted two weeks ago. Wow.

• 58:52Nilay Patel?

  But they said it was from work that started in 2011. But they filed this set of patents in this case in the Western District of Texas. The Rocket Docket. We call it Rocket Docket. It's funny because the Eastern District of Texas used to be the Rocket Docket. And then there was like a Supreme Court case and changed. And then they got a new judge in the Western District and that's what he wanted. So he's like, back on the march. So like, if you read like, if you're like the Texas legal news, they're like, Texas is back on the mat for patent suits. A hilarious sub story that only four people care about. I'm glad that I spent your time with it on the Veritas. Anyway, the point of all of this is, what does the lawsuit say? What is Sonus's point with all this? They keep calling it efficient infringement. They say, we went to work with Google on getting assistance to work on using YouTube Music, on Chromecast, all this stuff.

• 59:37Nilay Patel?

  They got to see all of our IP. And then they're making cheaper products with it to flood us on the market, because those products for them are lost leaders that support their search business. Right. And it's cheaper for them to just steal the IP and pay the penalties than to invent the stuff themselves. And so now you're staring at it, at a $99 speaker, that's going to have Google Shopping integration, or whatever, or play you ads for Frozen 2, or whatever, next to the $200 Sonus speaker. So I don't know how these suits are going to play out. Eddie told me, their chief legal officer, he said, I was like, how long is it going to take? He said, two years. I was like, the Rocket Docket, two years? Like, that's how long lawsuits take. Yeah. So unless they, I think Sonus is just going to keep filing and putting more and

• 1:00:19Nilay Patel?

  more pressure on Google. Because I think what they really want is for Google to come to the table and make a deal that lets them do all the things they want to do. Right. I think winning a patent lawsuit, they'll get some money, but.

• 1:00:30Speaker 04

  They're looking, they're, so what you're saying is they're looking for a licensing deal from Google, it seems.

• 1:00:34Nilay Patel?

  I think, I think they're, they're an old, one of the things that Sonos CEO Patrick Spence has told us several times is Sonos is in the lucky position of not being a startup. Right? Like they're an older company. They've patented a lot of things. They've been around for a while. They're innovators in space. They have an audience that loves them. They sell products. They make money. And he's like, we just need to, we need to get the leverage back. Whereas a startup would just sort of like get crushed. So we'll see, I mean, we'll see how it goes. But this, this product to me, I think the reason they filed that lawsuit was because they may or may not have known the Nest Audio was coming. And they're like, you're doing it again.

• 1:01:07Speaker 04

  They knew it was coming. We knew it was coming. The entire world knew what was coming at this event. Sonos knew as well. I mean, like.

• 1:01:13Nilay Patel?

  Sonos had people at every Best Buy in the country, in every Home Depot.

• 1:01:17Speaker 04

  It was like July or August when FCC leaks of the Nest Audio started happening. So Google PR just like sent down an image. Here's our next speaker.

• 1:01:25Nilay Patel?

  That's right.

• 1:01:26Speaker 04

  And we're gonna announce it in October.

• 1:01:27Nilay Patel?

  It would've been great if that was just a doctored photo of a loaf of bread.

• 1:01:33Nilay Patel?

  It's close enough, you guys. So we'll see. I mean, we gotta get this stuff. We gotta listen to it. I, I just think it's, this is a super interesting time for this category of hardware in particular. Right? Cause the hardware has gotten to a place where it's all very good. And what we're really talking about is deals, ecosystem support, interoperability with AirPlay 2. We're talking about a very sophisticated set of decisions that help you buy, that help you choose what to buy, as opposed to just, is, does the hardware exist? Are they in the market? Is the interface refined? Does it have the various standards that we think it should have? That to me is deeply fascinating. And what you, if you

• 1:02:14Nilay Patel?

  remember when the HBO Max Roku fight has been heating up, along the way, what Warner Media has been saying is when holiday buying season comes, the thing will change. They'll break. Because they, they can't sell Roku's without HBO Max. Now, whether or not you believe that, right? They're just like having access to all the Harry Potter movies. HBO believes.

• 1:02:38Speaker 04

  It depends greatly on whether your stock portfolio includes HBO.

• 1:02:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and whether HBO Max is successful, you know, hilariously in this conversation, it's like, we all have all the lights. HBO Max does not support vision or Atmos. Like, it's just, it's a weird service.

• 1:02:55Speaker 05

  Or 4K.

• 1:02:56Nilay Patel?

  Or 4K.

• 1:02:57Speaker 04

  But HBO Max does support spatial audio on the AirPods Pro.

• 1:03:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's super confusing. Like, I don't want, I don't, there's a part of me that's like, man, I would love to watch these movies, but I'm not. I got all this stuff. Why would I watch it in lower quality? Like, so they've got some, some, but that's a fight. This holiday period is a fight because that's the upgrade cycle time. These are all cheap enough to be like, Dan, instead of Nest Minis this year, you're gonna be tossing Roku Ultras at people like they're candy. And so I, I, I think we'll see actually this logjam break, but right now, I think the, the, the difference between buying a Roku Ultra and a Chromecast, to me, Chris, is what services do you want on this thing? What does it support?

• 1:03:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, and somehow Google is in the best position possible, which you wouldn't expect, but that's where we are.

• 1:03:43Speaker 03

  Especially after their history with cable companies. Like, Google TV was laid low. Before, before they had their IR Blaster Google TV, they wanted to like, make cable boxes. They were trying to just get in with all the cable companies and they got rebuffed. And they're like, well, what if we made IR Blasters and worked around all of you?

• 1:04:01Nilay Patel?

  What if Sony made the world's most insane remote? Ah, it's beautiful. Well, we're here now. We've all, everyone's learned a number of lessons.

• 1:04:10Speaker 04

  Well, one last thing on the Chromecast.

• 1:04:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:12Speaker 04

  Do we think that it took Google seven years to add a remote to the Chromecast because they were so gun shy and shell shocked after the original Google TV insanity remote?

• 1:04:24Speaker 03

  I think that there was a holy war between Chrome and Android, and it took a while for that to simmer down and everyone to chill out and then be like, okay, we'll just use Android. It doesn't matter that much. There was a great Wall Street Journal profile of Sundar Pichai, and there was this tidbit in it that I had, maybe it had been reported before, but it was like, oh, wow. And when he went in and got control of Android on his, like, march to become CEO, he went in and like, the thing that he did, Wall Street Journal said that he clipped their ambition. He went in and he said, we are not making everything Android at Google. You'd like, it's, it's gonna be too much of a fight. It's not worth it. You're not gonna be the OS that does all, all the Google things. Chill out.

• 1:05:05Speaker 05

  But Google TV will be.

• 1:05:09Speaker 05

  It can't be Android. Google TV, yeah, that sounds fine. Absolutely.

• 1:05:14Nilay Patel?

  Well, we'll see how it goes. We gotta get all the stuff. We, I mean, go to your local Home Depot.

• 1:05:20Nilay Patel?

  Read our review. Chris has already done it. It's already on the website. We got all their stuff to review. But it'll be, it's, it's that time of year. We'll be right back. We gotta talk about some of this Microsoft stuff.

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• 1:06:41Nilay Patel?

  All right. Surface Pro X has been updated. There's a new Surface Laptop Go, which is very much a netbook. Just be honest. And Tom has spent some time with the Xbox Series X.

• 1:06:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:51Nilay Patel?

  Where do you want to start, Teo?

• 1:06:52Speaker 03

  I mean, we could do Series X really quick. You should just go look at Tom's article, watch his video. It's very good. And the load times are great. And, you know, it's, it's still early. We're still looking at like pre-production software. But bottom line is like, yep, they, they've definitely made a console. It definitely does the things that they, they, you know, like, that sounds like it's whatever, but it's actually like, not a guarantee that they wouldn't have completely screwed it up. But they still could. We haven't looked at the final software yet, but they're definitely. Making the things that load in the times that they say they're gonna.

• 1:07:22Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 1:07:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, go watch the stuff. It's great. I mean, console season is also upon us, but I don't think we have enough time to go fully into it and we're gonna have reviews of that stuff.

• 1:07:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Okay, Surface Laptop, go.

• 1:07:32Speaker 03

  What I, this thing is just, it's so interesting. So it's $549 to start, but for $549, you don't get enough RAM and you get the slower eMMC storage.

• 1:07:45Speaker 04

  You don't get the biometric login either.

• 1:07:47Speaker 03

  And you don't get the biometric login, you don't get the fingerprint sensor, but you do get the core i5. So like, head to head with a Chromebook, you do get a faster processor that'll like, run Windows stuff a little bit better.

• 1:07:59Nilay Patel?

  Until you run out of RAM.

• 1:08:00Speaker 03

  Until you run out of RAM. So it's a, it's a very confusing device because there's a world in which they save money on the processor and go down to, but Dan, you tweeted about this, they like go down to like an i3 or something and that lets them improve one of the other specs and they just didn't.

• 1:08:14Speaker 04

  It's really, it's a, it's an interesting line. Like, so it starts at $550, you can spend up to like $900, can figuring this out. It's effectively a shrunk down Surface Laptop 3, little bit smaller screen, little bit smaller form factor, little bit lighter. But really what it seems like, the, the drive behind this product is to bring that price down and go head to head with the Chromebooks, like you mentioned. But in order to bring that price down, they compromised a bunch of things because they really wanted to keep this core i5 processor across the line. So now the screen is kind of lower res, mention, you mentioned the RAM on the base model's 4GB, which is really pushing it on a Windows 10 device in 2020. It's at 64GB storage, which again, really pushing it on a Windows 10 device and it's a slow storage.

• 1:09:00Speaker 04

  And you don't get the like Surface, what I, what I think of as like Surface standards, that Surface experience that you get with biometric logins and faster zoom and all that neat stuff, it really gets compromised here. You could spend more money and it will add a fingerprint sensor and you'll get more RAM and more storage, but then you're spending more money and you could just get a better laptop. So like, it's, it's kind of a weird thing and I think, look, we haven't used it yet. We're gonna be reviewing it, Monex is gonna be getting a review in of this and we're obviously gonna be testing. And seeing how it stacks up. But I think that the compromises they made to get that processor in really are kind of weird when they could have a core i3 processor is certainly capable

• 1:09:40Speaker 04

  for basic stuff, especially when you're looking at this $500 range of laptop and like what people use them for. If you're able to pair that with a little bit faster storage, maybe eight gigs of RAM, you can have a really great experience. Like the Chromebook Spin 713 is our current favorite Chromebook. It's sticker price is 629. You can frequently find it for under $600. It's got that core i5 processor, eight gigs of RAM, twice the storage and a bigger screen, and it performs great. And so in a head to head comparison, Microsoft is looking a little

• 1:10:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but they've got it. They've got to be at that price point, even if it's not the one they saw the most of, right? Like you can tell that they're going to sell this. They're going to push the $700 configuration the most.

• 1:10:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, and maybe that they also made this. I mean, they made this so that they'd have that price out in the world. But then maybe that they're going to sell just boatloads of these to schools and like the maybe there was like, I don't know, the New York City demanded that they get a core i5, you know, I don't know.

• 1:10:38Speaker 04

  I mean, but once you start specing this out, right? You start running into the problem of like a Surface Laptop 3, its regular price is 999 bucks. It's been out for a year. You can find it on discount for $800 all day long. Same with the Surface Pro 7. You can find it discounted. Those have the faster storage, more RAM. They've got facial biometric login. They've got higher resolution screens. They've got all these things that we're saying are lacking from this one. So it's kind of weird. Maybe we'll see sales on this like pretty quickly before the holiday season really kicks off. Maybe not. I don't know. It's, it's, it seems like the same conflict as the Surface Go 2 that has like a really low price at 399, but it's got that weak processor and weak

• 1:11:21Speaker 04

  storage. And maybe not everyone buys that one. The one you buy is 550 bucks or 650 bucks. But at that point, you're getting really close to what a Pro 7 costs. Maybe you should just buy Pro 7 instead. Just the same conflict as I see with the Go 2.

• 1:11:35Nilay Patel?

  But in the end, Pentos is getting your money. Never forget.

• 1:11:41Nilay Patel?

  Service Pro X, this sounds interesting, right? Because it has a faster edition of Microsoft's custom processor, which is ARM-based.

• 1:11:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, we'll see. Faster is a relative term when it comes to ARM. I thought that the original was fine for, like, you know, I had the whole thing where I use it like a Chromebook. This, I'm sure, will be fine for that as well. The big question to me is, will this faster processor mean that it can credibly run the upcoming x86 64-bit emulated apps? Because they're going to start emulating 64-bit apps instead of just 32-bit apps, which means that those, like, all the modern Windows apps, right? You can, like, for me, it's Lightroom, but there's, people are mad at that I always go to Lightroom, but there's plenty of others. You will be able to run pretty much any Windows app now, instead of being limited by what can be emulated or what has been recompiled for ARM.

• 1:12:32Speaker 03

  And that's either gonna, I mean, that could go really badly. If, like, that experience ends up being awful, it could sour people on this whole ARM experiment all over again.

• 1:12:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, you have to imagine that they've, those two announcements happened in parallel, right? We're expanding x86 on ARM support. Also, here's our new, here's our new service, like, that has a new ARM processor. One hopes that they, the left hand is talking to the right. I'm just reading this line about the SQ2 processor. "Microsoft has once again worked with Qualcomm to customize it for the Pro X. It's essentially a variant of Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon 8CX Gen 2 5G without 5G." And it's like, yep, that's what you want.

• 1:13:13Nilay Patel?

  The expensive thing that kills the battery, just delete that. Just draw a box around it and don't print that part. I mean, this seems great. We gotta get our hands on it, but I'm, I'm, like, particularly happy that Microsoft is pushing this product.

• 1:13:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:27Nilay Patel?

  Still, like, they didn't just give up on it.

• 1:13:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:29Nilay Patel?

  Like, they're pushing it forward.

• 1:13:31Speaker 03

  I bought one, I love it, I loved it. I ended up selling it so I could get a gaming PC, but.

• 1:13:37Speaker 03

  But I loved it, right? Well, look, I'm not leaving the house. I don't need an ultra portable with LTE. So.

• 1:13:42Nilay Patel?

  And that's why you should buy a $400 pixel phone.

• 1:13:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:45Nilay Patel?

  Just to, you know, hang out, have make phone calls.

• 1:13:49Speaker 03

  Well, that's it. That's, that's all the stuff. I mean, I was going to tease Dieter about the Apple Watch 6 review.

• 1:13:53Nilay Patel?

  I got it out the door. It's out there.

• 1:13:55Speaker 04

  It's out there. Go watch it.

• 1:13:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:56Speaker 04

  Go, go read it and go watch it and we'll have more Apple Watch stuff coming.

• 1:13:59Speaker 03

  If you're wondering why it was late, it was because I had lost half a day. I lost half a day to an entire shoot of the video that I had to throw away because I shot bad audio. I also lost half a day going to the doctor to get a tetanus shot because when I was trying to scout the location where I lost the half a day on bad audio, I got bit by a chihuahua. I had to go get a tetanus shot.

• 1:14:18Nilay Patel?

  Amazing. See, Chris is walking miles in the suburbs to get unannounced Chromecast. Dieter's fighting off yappy dogs. This is what we do for you.

• 1:14:30Speaker 03

  I had to test out the exercise too. So literally blood, sweat and tears for this Apple Watch review.

• 1:14:36Nilay Patel?

  And you shouldn't buy one. It's the conclusion.

• 1:14:41Speaker 03

  If you have an Apple Watch, you don't buy one. Like it's like, if you've got a series four or five, don't buy one. If you've got a three and you're unhappy with it, sure. If you've got something older, sure. If it's your first time buying an Apple Watch and you want it because it's the best one, sure. But Dan's got the SE and it seems like it's pretty good.

• 1:15:01Speaker 04

  Yeah. The SE seems like the, the one for first time buyers for sure.

• 1:15:05Nilay Patel?

  One thing to call out, Nicole, our health reporter, Nicole Wetzman, had a great story this week about a study out of Mayo Clinic saying, heart, the ECG feature has too many false positives and sends people to the doctor too often, which is all part of the story of, Apple releases the sensors, it backs into what they're good for. They're very proud of the, the ECG sensors, they should be. But now that there's more rigorous data coming out. What is it good for is getting refined every time. Read the story. It's super interesting. She goes into the methodology of the study and how it worked. And she actually talked to the scientists. Just really kind of contextualizes where we are with this tech. One of the things I'm always thinking about is like, sometimes we assume the tech works better than it does.

• 1:15:47Speaker 03

  That's the case with the blood oxygen monitor, by the way, on the Apple Watch Series 6. It just doesn't. The wrist is not a good place for it. Dave Lee did a great video where he just took it off his wrist and put it on his finger and it was like way more reliable. Yeah, so it needs it. It needs a lot of blood to like work. And there's just not a lot of blood in the top of your wrist.

• 1:16:06Speaker 04

  And it's not just an Apple problem. Since we're talking about Nicole, I'll plug her Withings Scan Watch review that went up earlier this week where Withings is trying to use it, or Wythings, whoever you want to say that, is trying to use the same type of technology to detect sleep apnea. Not super successful with it. She talked to a bunch of doctors to see if it was reliable or was a valuable thing. And they echoed the same concerns that in her report about the heart monitor is that it might cause people to call us more often. It's basically the gist. So go check that out. The Wythings is not available in the US yet because in order to claim sleep apnea detection, they do need FDA clearance approval. There's some real wonkiness with what those two words mean, but they need something from the FDA in order to sell it.

• 1:16:48Speaker 04

  So right now you can get it in Europe. They're still waiting for that from the FDA to sell in the US. And it's one of the interesting things that Apple is not making that claim. So they can sell theirs.

• 1:16:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And again, the strategies of these companies to bring health devices to market without making the claims that they would make is like just really interesting to watch, right? They're all, they're all kind of coming at it through side angles. Anyhow, that's it. Thank you so much for listening. We've gone over, which I say every week at exactly this amount of time. But you know, it's a journey. That's what we're on together. We, we've gone over, I'll say. You can tweet at us. Dieter is at Backlon. Dan is at DCFert, Chris is at Chris Welch. I got it. Those are all right. DCCFert. No. DCCFert. DCCFert. And I'm at Reckless. You tweeted us, please send me any photos you have of that ancient Sony Google TV remote. I just like to see them in the wild. With the full-size keyboard. Glorious.

• 1:17:42Nilay Patel?

  The full-size keyboard, the two joysticks. Just knowing that that product was made and shipped. It just fills me with happiness. If you got one, send me a photo. I'd love to see it. We've got more reviews coming. It's like I said, we're in it. It's coming. So we've got more reviews coming out, more news happening, more events. We are expecting an Apple event sometime this month. So lots happening. We'll see. Oh, Dieter, what you got? What's happening on Tuesday's show?

• 1:18:06Speaker 03

  On Tuesday, we have your average consumer. You may know him from YouTube. And we are going to be talking about a review of a product that you're not expecting.

• 1:18:16Nilay Patel?

  Well, festery. Let Dieter have the Tuesday show. It got all wild and wacky. Maybe go to your Home Depot and see if it's there.

• 1:18:27Nilay Patel?

  All right, that's it. Rock and roll. Vote.

• 1:18:50Speaker 08

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