Business Hole

It's been quite the week, as evidenced by the fact the Dieter has been awake for a full 24 hours at this point. We've got BIll Gates, holograms, local Super Bowl ads, and a tired variation on a classic genre we like to call "lazy jazz." Join Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, Chris Plante, and his Swaggesty Sam Sheffer on a journey through time and incoherence on this week's show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:06Nilay Patel?

  Here's what I know.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  What do you know, Eli?

• 0:09Nilay Patel?

  Here's what I know. I know that if you are a TV station in Montana,

• 0:14Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 0:14Nilay Patel?

  And we want to come make a video about your TV station, you should probably say yes.

• 0:19Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 0:19Nilay Patel?

  But they, they just said no. That's what just happened before the show started.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 0:24Nilay Patel?

  I literally, like, somebody said, "Are you ready, Eli?" And I said, "I'm ready." And then my computer beeped and it was, it was KTVH in Montana and Helena, Montana, saying no to Eli Patel. That's what I know.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  Don't they know who you are?

• 0:39Speaker 02

  I wear cool bracelets.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 0:42Nilay Patel?

  Do you see that one today?

• 0:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 0:45Nilay Patel?

  Addie hit one today. It's a, it's a, it's a, like a watch bracelet made out of screwdrivers. Like Leatherman made it. Bracelets are in.

• 0:54Speaker 02

  Is that usable in all, though?

• 0:56Nilay Patel?

  Now, here's what, here's what is confusing about it to me. To use any of the screwdrivers, you have to completely disassemble it. So you're like, "I'm wearing this watch. Man, I really need to tighten that screw." That sentence you would say in your day to day life.

• 1:08Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:09Nilay Patel?

  And then you have to stop and disassemble your watch completely.

• 1:13Speaker 02

  But was it, was it actually a watch?

• 1:15Speaker 01

  Don't you, how do you disassemble the watch? Cause all your screwdrivers are on the watch. And so...

• 1:19Nilay Patel?

  Well, presumably that problem has been, they've at least contemplated that issue. Right? Like if you're the guy building the screwdriver watch, you don't, you don't, then, or the screwdriver watch pan.

• 1:30Speaker 01

  What if, what if?

• 1:31Nilay Patel?

  You're not like, "How should I attach this thing to itself?" Screws.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  Well, no, that's precisely what they did, I think.

• 1:37Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 1:37Speaker 01

  I think it all clips apart.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  Okay. But what if, what if it was attached with screws and he used a screwdriver bracelet to make a screwdriver bracelet? And then at the end, he had just one last one that he couldn't put together. Cause it was the one he was using to build all the rest of them.

• 1:53Nilay Patel?

  So what you're saying, the Leatherman factory is like an endless, it's like, it's like the worker's nightmare. You could only use Leathermans to build Leathermans. And somewhere in the history of the universe, there had to have been a prime Leatherman.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06Nilay Patel?

  The first mover.

• 2:08Speaker 01

  And that guy is revered for all time. They locked him in a tomb because he can disassemble anything. So I've been gone for a week or two or forever. It feels like forever. Is this how we introduce the Vergecast now?

• 2:18Nilay Patel?

  I've been, it's a conversation about Leathermans. Yes, from now on, we will begin every Vergecast with a story about local TV stations and other tools.

• 2:28Speaker 02

  You can hear in the distance, unsubscribe.

• 2:31Nilay Patel?

  That that chattering sound you hear is millions of people clicking their mice. No, it's actually been a crazy week of

• 2:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:39Nilay Patel?

  Verge. So you are, last week I was very sleepy after a red eye.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:43Nilay Patel?

  This week, you are very sleepy after a red eye.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:46Nilay Patel?

  Next week, we're sending, and I say, and you're just gonna fly around the country a little bit.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  All right, cool.

• 2:50Nilay Patel?

  By the way, this is in fact the Vergecast that you've been listening to for four minutes now.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  I was waiting for this to happen.

• 2:56Nilay Patel?

  It's a show about the Verge.

• 3:00Speaker 02

  Sure, yeah.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  Really?

• 3:02Nilay Patel?

  Mostly about nothing.

• 3:04Speaker 02

  Sure, yeah.

• 3:05Nilay Patel?

  It's like a combination of emotions, feelings.

• 3:10Speaker 02

  Got it.

• 3:11Nilay Patel?

  And ideas.

• 3:13Speaker 02

  And a very tertiary conversation about technology and culture.

• 3:17Nilay Patel?

  There's occasionally tech news, but mostly it's like, how do you feel about wearing this on your face? Which is basically what technology news has become.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  Just, here's a thing to put over your eyeballs.

• 3:27Nilay Patel?

  Would you wear this on your head all the time?

• 3:30Speaker 02

  Can we do like a Command F across all the Verge for, well, I didn't feel comfortable and I'm very embarrassed, but it's the best.

• 3:40Nilay Patel?

  So, Dieter, you, we should go right into that, because I think that's the big, that's the big piece.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  Bigger than the reason you were on a red eye?

• 3:49Nilay Patel?

  It's all, in the end, it's all Microsoft. In the end, their entire lives are governed by Microsoft in some way.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 3:55Nilay Patel?

  No, let's, let's do tech news. Let's start with tech news and then we can congratulate ourselves.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  So Microsoft had the Windows 10 consumer.

• 4:02Nilay Patel?

  By the way, no one challenged me on the idea that we would just congratulate ourselves.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:06Nilay Patel?

  All right, fine.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  Yay.

• 4:07Nilay Patel?

  So Microsoft had a big Windows event. You, you went with Tom.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  Yep, Tom Warren, I and Jimmy Shelton went there. We could have, we could have brought like 10 more people and still felt like we were understaffed. There was a lot of stuff.

• 4:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  So the, the purpose of the event was to talk about Windows 10 for real this time. They had done an event like last fall, I feel like it was forever ago, where they kind of did it for, just for enterprises, but we all happened to be watching, because that's what we do when Microsoft holds a press conference. But they, they showed us Windows 10 and it looks good. Like, it, it looks so good that it's almost boring to me.

• 4:44Nilay Patel?

  Windows 10.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, because look, like they, all the things that I have been asking, hoping Microsoft would do,

• 4:52Speaker 01

  that's like within their power to just fix it themselves and do it. They're kind of doing it. They're developing in the open. They've gotten rid of the mixed metaphors between the two different UIs. They are finally like standardizing the platform, even if it's only in name, but it seems like it's also in practice across lots of devices.

• 5:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I have a lot of questions.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  There's a lot of questions still to be answered about that, but nevertheless, there is such a thing as universal apps. You can develop an app and it'll work on a phone, on a tablet, on a laptop, on a giant 87 inch television.

• 5:24Nilay Patel?

  On the Xbox.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  And on the Xbox.

• 5:26Nilay Patel?

  Which is, no, don't believe you.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  But they're doing the right stuff. They're giving free upgrades for a year to Windows 7, Windows 8 users.

• 5:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  They, I don't know, they've got Continuum working, so it switches pretty seamlessly between tablet mode and desktop mode. They've still got a couple of extra ways to like Alt Tab and move around the UI that they could simplify, but in general, everything is like, yeah, thank you. Like, like the problems are like, release it, prove to me that the details aren't screwed up.

• 5:57Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  And get some apps, yo.

• 6:00Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, but, well, so that might be the most interesting thing about it, because get some apps, yo. Sure, they should do that.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:08Nilay Patel?

  Sure. But they also made a big, big investment into making Internet Explorer better, or renaming it to Project Spartan, or something. And that actually, I think, has been, like, when I get a new Windows PC, the first thing I do is put Chrome on it, right? And I like walk away from Microsoft and there's no apps. But if they can like, make that browser experience work really well, there's, there's something there that I think is really interesting.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  So, okay, that's the other thing I didn't mention is Cortana. So it's built into the operating system. Seems fine. A couple of places I used it, it was super buggy. Tom used it and it was fine for him. It's built into the browser now also.

• 6:46Nilay Patel?

  Right. And you can type into it, which is great.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  Which is how it should be.

• 6:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, right. Because you can just like, give me a thing.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:51Nilay Patel?

  Like talks to you, right? Give me a thing.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  The new browser.

• 6:54Nilay Patel?

  My dream is to yell, like, in any way I can, just yell at a computer, give me a thing.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  I need your credit card to buy those movie tickets. Give them to me.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  So Spartan is codename Spartan. We still don't know what's gonna be called, but Internet Explorer isn't going away, which is one of the things I wish they would do. I don't know, but it's like gonna be in the background as like a, like a

• 7:16Nilay Patel?

  It's the legacy browser.

• 7:17Speaker 01

  Thing, right?

• 7:18Nilay Patel?

  It's the desktop.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  Spartan is the new thing.

• 7:20Nilay Patel?

  Can Microsoft do anything in the world without maintaining its legacy software?

• 7:24Speaker 01

  No, they cannot. But so Spartan, we don't know what rendering engine Spartan uses, or like we kind of do. I don't know. It's, there's a lot of details and guess when we're gonna find out about them?

• 7:33Nilay Patel?

  Later at build. I will say, there was like a top 10 verge moment when they like revealed Spartan officially, which is they put up like, they were like, look at these crazy annotation features in Windows 10. You could just draw all over the place. And then they brought up like Tom's post about the leak.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 7:50Nilay Patel?

  And they're like, what did they say? They were like, sometimes you get it wrong, but sometimes you get it right. And they like circled the headline a lot.

• 8:00Nilay Patel?

  Alright, like I could see like Tom live blogging. I could just like emojis.

• 8:07Speaker 02

  It looks like whenever you're like really drunk and happy after you've had a nice meal and then like on the tip, you're like 20% and like a big smiley face. You're like, just so you know, I like you.

• 8:16Nilay Patel?

  Okay, you are weird in restaurants.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  I will say that Microsoft still doesn't know what to do with the stylus, other than like draw things on webpages.

• 8:24Nilay Patel?

  Sam, also weird in restaurants.

• 8:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, you write them a note. It's like, thank you for your service. It was good. Here's some money, but also here's a smiley face because I was legitimately happy with the service.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  What?

• 8:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think I relate to this. Maybe this is where I fall under hashtag teens. Like maybe this is my true millennial moment.

• 8:40Nilay Patel?

  This is it. This is how you reveal yourself.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  We were profoundly uncynical people, us 20-somethings.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  The kindest thing you can do in that situation is not require the other human to have any emotional connection to you. Just write down a number and walk away.

• 8:56Speaker 02

  Get out.

• 8:56Nilay Patel?

  This is definitely the generational gap.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:59Nilay Patel?

  The kindest thing you can do is make zero emotional connections.

• 9:02Speaker 02

  You're dad. They'll miss you too much.

• 9:09Speaker 02

  Guys, can I talk about the Microsoft thing?

• 9:11Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  From a normal perspective?

• 9:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, because you were sitting next to me. We got it, we got it, we got it, we got to finish out Windows before we get to the cool stuff.

• 9:17Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 9:17Nilay Patel?

  No, no, no, okay. Well, yes. Okay. Eat your vegetables.

• 9:23Speaker 02

  I like the Windows 10 thing.

• 9:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  I liked it a lot.

• 9:25Nilay Patel?

  Well, you haven't even talked about the Xbox stuff yet.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  Sure, oh yeah, I'll get into that. But the Windows 10 thing, here is my theory about a Microsoft press conference versus Apple's press conference. Okay? Whatever he's my pluralized apples.

• 9:40Speaker 02

  It's called arrows and speedometers.

• 9:45Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 9:45Speaker 02

  And whenever you watch like an Apple thing, it's full of fucking arrows and speedometers. It's like, hey, remember that thing?

• 9:54Speaker 02

  Now it's 18 times faster. And you're like, okay, cool. I don't know why that means anything, but I guess Safari is still not going to be used by me.

• 10:04Speaker 02

  And then, and then it's like, hey, this is that other group, arrow down. But our thing, arrow up. And you're like, yeah, yeah, I guess you're right. It's a thinner, arrow down. It's all, it's all these like ultra simplistic visuals to let you know how great everything is.

• 10:21Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  And you look at it and it hits you and you're like, yeah, yeah, that's right, that's right, that's right. And then afterwards, you think back about it and like, a normal person is like, I don't know why I gave a shit about any of that.

• 10:32Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 10:32Speaker 02

  Like, all of, all of, everything you were telling me is utterly meaningless.

• 10:35Nilay Patel?

  Here's what I want you to know about both your impression and that sense impression. So your, the voice that you chose to use.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 10:43Nilay Patel?

  And then the sense impression that you're describing.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 10:45Nilay Patel?

  All of it is a monster truck rally.

• 10:47Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 10:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  But that's, that, that is Apple.

• 10:51Nilay Patel?

  Look at this thing explode. And then you leave, you're like, why? Why? Look at that. I want to do it again.

• 10:57Speaker 02

  Apple is the Clint Eastwood of technology companies.

• 11:00Nilay Patel?

  It's just talking to an empty chair all the time.

• 11:02Speaker 02

  It's just saying really stupid, obvious things, but with a gravitas that makes you think that you're smart for liking it. So it's like, oh yeah, sure, I know so much more about World War II now. It's like, no, you don't. You just watch people shut. Like, you watch the dumb cowboy movie, you're like, get over yourself. Okay, so tell me about Microsoft.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  I like the cowboy movie.

• 11:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, lots of people like those things.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  Everybody likes the cowboy movie.

• 11:22Speaker 02

  Clint Easton movies and Apple products, and I like Apple products.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  Also.

• 11:26Speaker 02

  I'm going to be careful now that we're Microsoft Verge, not Iver. Um, Microsoft Verge are on sound.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  We really did break a lot of people today. Yeah.

• 11:33Speaker 02

  Okay, so that's.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  Hard day.

• 11:35Speaker 02

  That's one thing. I think if they were better at essentially marketing, because I don't feel like they do these things towards normal people, Microsoft.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  That, that would have been a bang up day because the features were so easy to sell to me and my pop pop and my mama. Like, it's like, you can draw and stuff? Yes. And then when the, they did the demo for HoloLens, which we'll talk about. And they drew on the wall.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 12:02Speaker 02

  That was big.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:04Speaker 02

  That, like, that, that sort of stuff, you take something that is like, I'm going to be available this year.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:09Speaker 02

  And then connect it to the future in another demo, and it's like, it's fantastic. But they didn't do that in the press conference. They kind of left people who are obsessive to figure it out on their own.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:20Speaker 02

  So yeah, I, I, I'm excited for Windows 10, which is a weird.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  Thing to say.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  When, okay.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  Because it looks usable. Like, that's what's exciting about it. It's like, it makes my life look like, oh yeah, that's definitely a thing I could use.

• 12:33Speaker 01

  It's just Windows again, honestly. It's just Windows again. And like, there's like, it's Windows with like, the extra little plugin to let you like, you know, set the divvies and like, set the, the window widths if you want to. Um, and then, but there's, there's also going to be like weird details, like some OEMs, when you go into tablet mode, will keep the status bar. Some won't. Sometimes there's a text box for Cortana entry. Sometimes there's not. Sometimes it's a button you have to click, depending on the width of the window and how the OEM feels that day.

• 13:00Nilay Patel?

  So there's like a version, there's like a whole experience for things that are less than eight inches.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  Yep. And then there's a, then there's a phone experience and there's, there's a pretty good continuity, although I do think that the actual toggles for like the, the, you know, the notification center, like the system settings in that sidebar or in the, the notification center on the phone, just are hideous. They're just white and gray boxes. They're just white and gray boxes. And I get, I get flat design or whatever we're calling it.

• 13:25Nilay Patel?

  It's just ugly. The fonts are bad, there's still, it still looks like there's a drop shadow. It's like.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:30Nilay Patel?

  They went back and they found like, there's like a one grizzled designer who has like, a bunch of like notebook sheets of what Windows XP could look like in the future.

• 13:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:38Nilay Patel?

  That he like sketched out in 1999 or something. And they're like, let's, let's use, let's use Matt's ideas. Finally! By the way, Matt, I don't know who you are, but I'm assuming you're doing a good job.

• 13:51Speaker 02

  Your entire day is just doing Linux side projects. They'll never know that I'm wasting their money.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  You can finally shave your beard off your neck because your ideas are getting implemented.

• 13:59Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  Wow, Matt.

• 14:02Nilay Patel?

  Did you see Dieter's been awake for 24 hours?

• 14:04Speaker 01

  Yes, I have.

• 14:07Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so here are my questions about Windows 10, because this is the, this is the thing. Xbox. And then we'll get there. But here's what I don't believe, because the Xbox is like the end of my questions. The end of this chain of, of ideas.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  Xbox.

• 14:20Nilay Patel?

  They're promising such, everyone stop whispering.

• 14:24Speaker 02

  Dieter's on the radio.

• 14:27Nilay Patel?

  Everyone stop it.

• 14:29Speaker 02

  Dieter's on the radio. Hey, guys, Dieter's on the radio.

• 14:32Nilay Patel?

  Just the worst.

• 14:35Nilay Patel?

  Like, Dieter is like generally the most in control here. And when you've lost Dieter, it's all over, man. Like, John just like shut down the feed, his car's going off the cliff. No, here's the thing. So, phones run ARM processors.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:51Nilay Patel?

  Tablets run any processor in the world. All the PCs run Intel processors, a little, some AMD processors. The Xbox runs a Power PC. Like, you know, like, it's not, that's an Xbox 360.

• 15:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're gonna say an Xbox one is just a PC.

• 15:06Nilay Patel?

  It's just a PC. But like, you know what I mean? But like, they're promising this thing that makes no sense if you just look at the architectures.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I don't know what the story is with phones. All we, we haven't, they didn't have the whole of Windows 10 on a phone. We can't call it Windows Phone anymore, which is hilarious and strange and good and whatever.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  But they had like demo versions of like discrete apps. So here's how the Skype integration works.

• 15:31Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  Here's how the Contacts app works. Here's how the map works. And here's the map, the same map app running on a desktop and on a phone. It's the same app, we promise. But that mean all Windows phones are gonna run on Intel in the future? Like that can't, that doesn't seem right.

• 15:46Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  So it's they're they're using, you know, other higher level stuff to get this stuff coded. And I don't know how efficient that'll be long term. And like, there's a lot of questions specifically about phones. And the biggest question specifically about phones is how dedicated to phones is Microsoft right now? Because they Terry Myerson was on stage and he like looked Tom Warren in the eye. Tom Warren who gave up on Windows phone. And he said, we are gonna launch a flagship soon.

• 16:12Nilay Patel?

  I will say this about Microsoft, and this is a tangential point. They have become uniquely focused on like calling out individual journalists.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. They do it every time.

• 16:21Nilay Patel?

  Really hardcore. They're like Joanna Stern, we made a thing for you. This time they're like Tom Warren, we're launching flagship. But it was just a very, I like it. It's feisty. It's like we're we're a hundred thousand person corporation and we're picking on you.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  So Sachin Adala, either the teleprompter was, you know, between me and him. Or he knows that I once took a horrendously bad picture of Steve Ballmer and feel nothing but guilt about it ever since. He looked into my eyes, I kid you not, like 30 times when I was taking photos during this live.

• 16:55Nilay Patel?

  No, that's just, that's just.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  Just the whole time, just, just.

• 16:58Nilay Patel?

  That's why he's such an effective leader.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:00Nilay Patel?

  Because when he manages Microsoft, he looks every employee directly in the eyes.

• 17:05Speaker 02

  At least 30 times.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  Through the eyes into the into your brain.

• 17:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, he looks, that's into your heart.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:11Nilay Patel?

  That's.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  If you had one, but I'm Minnesota, so I don't.

• 17:14Nilay Patel?

  That's how Nadella runs Microsoft. He looks every employee in the heart.

• 17:18Speaker 02

  It's really weird, just eats up most of his time.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  Pipe check, looking, looking.

• 17:22Nilay Patel?

  He doesn't do a lot.

• 17:23Speaker 03

  Something, something, Windows are the eyes to the soul. Windows, Windows, I'm, I'm excited for Windows 10.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  Really?

• 17:30Speaker 03

  I grew up on Windows.

• 17:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:32Speaker 03

  I had 95, I had 98, I had ME, I had XP.

• 17:35Nilay Patel?

  Now you're just listing versions of Windows.

• 17:36Speaker 03

  And, uh, no, I'm familiar, very familiar with the operating system.

• 17:40Speaker 02

  And.

• 17:43Speaker 03

  I I would own a a Windows tablet.

• 17:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 17:48Speaker 03

  Because I have no use for an iPad because I already have one, but a.

• 17:53Nilay Patel?

  Just self burned your iPhone six.

• 17:55Speaker 03

  It's terrible.

• 17:57Nilay Patel?

  Wait, you don't you're done with it? Too big?

• 17:59Speaker 03

  What? It's been too I I say this every week. It's been too big since I bought it. I bought it because of the battery.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  That's really funny because I remember when I exchanged mine, I got a lot of shit from people. And and now.

• 18:10Nilay Patel?

  I think what you just saw there was Chris Plant looking into your heart.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  Look, look, look what I bought.

• 18:15Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah. Dieter's in the club now.

• 18:16Speaker 01

  But this is just so big.

• 18:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:19Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I was literally like, Dieter, Dieter, you were at home in Minnesota and I was like texting him being like, here's what's happening this week. A lot of news, blah, blah. And Dieter's like, I'm in the six plus club. And I was like, basically his only response, like, he was still emotionally handling that moment.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:33Speaker 03

  No, but I haven't. I haven't used a Windows machine eh since probably two thousand seven, maybe six. And they cleaned it up. Everything is there. You can argue the apps, but I.

• 18:46Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, so that's the thing, right? And I think that's like.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  The apps is.

• 18:49Nilay Patel?

  One hundred. And that's why I think Spartan is like a big deal.

• 18:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:53Nilay Patel?

  Uh, so they cleaned it up. Like, I think it is just fair to say that A, Steven Sinofsky watches this show, which is weird because he responds to us in real time. Two, uh, Windows eight was a fail. It was just a fail.

• 19:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:06Nilay Patel?

  Uh, and so they they like walked back all the like, let's compromise stuff. They've at least made it. I still think they should split the two things, but whatever.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  Split. Well, no, they have because Windows RT is not getting updated to Windows 10. It's getting a different thing.

• 19:23Nilay Patel?

  Oh, this. Well, so anyway, but they they it's still like on the mainstream PCs, which is where most people will experience Windows 10. Right? It's still like you can have a desktop or you can push this button and turn it into this other thing. That's still there, but it's more unified. So at least they like solved this problem.

• 19:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:40Nilay Patel?

  They have tried to extend the other experience across everything.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 19:44Nilay Patel?

  But what doesn't make any sense to me, just not at all, is how apps work, how these universal apps work. And it is unclear to me, like, almost every level, and this is how we, I think, get to Xbox. The fact that you can, like, stream Xbox One games to, like, Windows PCs is awesome.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, that doesn't require, like, you to think through the.

• 20:02Nilay Patel?

  No, but what doesn't make sense to me is you can also, like, download a Steam game and play against somebody on Xbox One, and they're, like, totally different games, and none of, like, all of that, to me, is, like, very confusing.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  Oh, that's logistics. Like, I'm more concerned about the actual, like, will you be able to code apps that are, the coding language is such that it can run on different kinds of processors and still be effective. They're doing it on Android now. They've got Android and ARM.

• 20:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but every, every Intel Android device blows.

• 20:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true.

• 20:33Nilay Patel?

  Right?

• 20:33Speaker 01

  Well, the Nexus 9, if they, if Lollipop were less buggy on the Nexus 9, I think that.

• 20:37Nilay Patel?

  But right now, you'd say that it blows.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  Damn it.

• 20:43Nilay Patel?

  Like, that's the thing, like, Intel, like, Android works really well on ARM processors, particularly Qualcomm processors.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 20:49Nilay Patel?

  Even when you, like, take this step into the cheaper crap on MediaTek, it's like, huh, I can tell this wasn't made for this, right? Like, it's there, there's a problem there. I just don't know how Microsoft is gonna solve that problem. When, in particular, their phone stuff is weird and broken and maybe not worth it. And two, they're like, let's put Windows on ARM project, RT is something, something, something.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  It's basically dead.

• 21:11Nilay Patel?

  Right?

• 21:12Speaker 01

  Uh, so, but I will say that the apps running on the ARM phones that they had in the demo room were good. So I, but I honestly, I couldn't tell you if it was running on, it was on Windows 10, but like, a full Windows 10? Or was it like, some crazy thing? I don't know. And we're gonna know the actual answers to that.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  Pretty soon, right?

• 21:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, they said they have all these speeds.

• 21:33Speaker 01

  Congress is coming up, they're got, they got other, they got Build coming up. Build sold out in like an hour.

• 21:37Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  Uh, so they, they're going to explain some of this stuff.

• 21:41Nilay Patel?

  All right, we, we are, actually, we're halfway through a show.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 21:44Nilay Patel?

  Say some stuff about Xbox.

• 21:45Speaker 02

  I, I don't get it. I think, I think there's this like weird hype about the Xbox to PC streaming, because that's the thing, right? You'll, there's gonna be an Xbox app and you're gonna have like DVR functionality and you'll be able to play your Xbox games, uh, streamed to the PC or tablet inside your house.

• 22:03Speaker 03

  Can, can you explain this a little bit? I, I, I feel like it's too simple to like, what does, what does that mean? You could stream games?

• 22:11Speaker 01

  It means that there's an Xbox app on your PC.

• 22:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  And you say, oh, I've got this game on my Xbox. I want to play it on my PC right here. You click play.

• 22:19Speaker 03

  And it like turns on your Xbox.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, you got a controller paired to your PC.

• 22:24Speaker 03

  So it's just running off the Xbox and streaming.

• 22:26Speaker 02

  Coming over your wifi network.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  Super awesome.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  Eh, no.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  Wow. Wait, hang on. You are the, you were just like, I love the PS Vita fanboy in the planet, but this is the same idea with a computer you already have.

• 22:37Speaker 02

  But you're, you're missing, it's going the wrong direction. The problem is when you're making a streaming connection, it needs to be where you're going to be comfortable. You want to stream from your PC to your Xbox, not your Xbox, your PC.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:50Speaker 02

  You want it to be, hey, I have things already on my PC and I need a way to get them on my living room TV. That people, that's what Steam has been trying to like.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:59Speaker 02

  Find a better solution for. Or I have these games on my PlayStation. I can stream them to my Vita, which actually has good controls. Who the hell is going to play their Xbox One game on a tablet?

• 23:14Speaker 03

  Wouldn't you connect a controller over Bluetooth?

• 23:16Speaker 02

  Is that the point?

• 23:17Speaker 01

  I agree, the tablet thing is bonkers.

• 23:20Speaker 02

  But then with a PC, the only, the people that I can picture this serving, and, and this is like a fair group of people, uh, are families that have a, a computer, like a personal computer that their like kid plays Minecraft on already. And they're like, hey, we want to watch TV on this TV that has Xbox connected. Go off and play your games on the PC. Sure, I think it serves that, that person.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  Excuse me.

• 23:44Speaker 02

  But I, I just don't see a large audience who is like, great, now I can go play this on a smaller screen.

• 23:52Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 23:53Speaker 02

  Like in a more uncomfortable chair.

• 23:55Nilay Patel?

  Uh, but no, I can see, if I had a laptop, here's how I perceive this happening.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  You have a laptop.

• 24:02Nilay Patel?

  No, if I had a Windows laptop.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 24:04Nilay Patel?

  Right. Right. My Windows laptop right now is a Surface Pro 3.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  I haven't slept in 30 hours. It was, it was okay.

• 24:10Nilay Patel?

  More than that, I have no idea. No, but like a laptop, not a Surface Pro 3, which is, I find impossible to use in bed. Right? Like a proper laptop, right?

• 24:18Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 24:18Nilay Patel?

  Um, I would play the hell out of my Xbox One in bed. Yep. On my laptop at night.

• 24:23Speaker 02

  And here is what my, just my personal prediction, your wifi wouldn't be able to make it work regularly. Cause.

• 24:29Nilay Patel?

  No, I live in New York. At this point, I could just run cables through all the rooms and it would be fine. I would need like a six meter cable. It'd be great.

• 24:35Speaker 02

  You would be doing it directly over ethernet.

• 24:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but you think the wifi would not be good enough?

• 24:39Speaker 02

  I, I mean, any streaming experience that I've tried, whether that's the Nvidia G4 streaming thing to the Shield.

• 24:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 24:47Speaker 02

  Or the PlayStation to the Vita.

• 24:49Speaker 01

  The weed, I can't, I can't do.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  Up my stairs, like, because my house is like tiny rooms stacked on another tiny room and open stairway. And like just doing that, it's like, no, good try. You, you have 300 meg internet and a Nighthawk like router and we still can't get that to work. And like, if that's not doing it, I don't know how people who have like actual space in the suburbs can do it.

• 25:11Nilay Patel?

  This is the thing, like every, I think Xbox apps are generally bad. They're all kind of flaky.

• 25:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:17Nilay Patel?

  And it's for like the reason that I'm like very concerned about all these Windows apps, which is, it's very clear that there's like a real Xbox operating system and then like a couple of fake ones.

• 25:26Speaker 02

  And there are two operating systems.

• 25:28Nilay Patel?

  There's three on Xbox, but there's like, there's clearly the one that's the real one that the games get. And then there's the bullshit everyone else gets, right? Like, that is just very obvious to me. And I think that's like, this idea that you're going to be able to run a streaming app somewhere else and it's going to perform. Like it's going to perform well and be able to stream off. Like I have many devices that purport to stream video from my TV to anything else. That almost all of them have sucked. The only one that's ever been good is a sling box.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  Well, look.

• 25:56Nilay Patel?

  And that's like a dedicated piece of hardware for that task.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  Wait and see, like they didn't show it to us.

• 26:00Speaker 02

  The problem with all this though.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  They showed it on stage. We couldn't actually try it. They didn't have a demo for us to play with.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  What's frustrating about this, and I really try not to be cynical and that's like what I'm trying to do in general this year about like coming at these things. But it's really hard to look at an idea like this and not see what was a very good idea stripped down to the one that doesn't involve money. Like the idea would be, hey, we have all these great games that are on an Xbox. An Xbox is already a PC. We should let Xbox games be on PC. We can't do that. We need to prove that you own an Xbox and you own the game. Okay, we will have you buy an Xbox. We'll have you buy the games and then we'll have you stream those things to your PC. And, and we should have the PC go backwards.

• 26:46Speaker 02

  We can't do that because then you'll just buy the games cheaper because they are cheaper on PC and use the Xbox as a portal for your living room. I, I, I don't think those are like literally like they purposely set out to be

• 26:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 26:59Speaker 02

  Evil corporation, but there are steps along this way where it's like, well, why didn't you just do the obvious thing? Like make it so I can play Forza Horizon 2 on my PC and up res it. Or make it so like I can stream from my PC to my Xbox.

• 27:11Nilay Patel?

  No, this is like the classic.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  Streaming doesn't work in these situations?

• 27:16Speaker 02

  Oh, I agree, but they're still doing it. So they're doing the worst option of the three things.

• 27:20Nilay Patel?

  But this is like the, I mean, we're looking at a Microsoft and I think this is actually the gestalt of the event, which is we're looking at Microsoft that's finally like working together. Yeah. Right. And the thing that you're describing is a thing that I've always thought about Sony and Microsoft, which is it's like watching somebody else do a puzzle. And it's just the worst because you're like that, pick up that, pick up that piece, that, that one and then put it, come on. It's the worst and that has been basically Microsoft for like a decade.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:47Nilay Patel?

  And like finally, it's like, oh, Nadella's might be good at this puzzle. But it's still.

• 27:53Speaker 02

  Oh, no, it's still working its way out and I'm still at least excited to see them making an effort. That is just that they're making this step. It's like, wow, you get it. Xbox is your game division and that is like weird Windows Live BS and like, and it seems like you're like testing the waters and if this goes well, maybe more things will happen, uh, which would be great. So like, it's a nice step.

• 28:18Nilay Patel?

  All right, we gotta talk about hololens. We gotta get deep in, I can already tell you this show's going long. John, you never, you're never leaving.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  We, well, we can talk about hololens and just be out. Nah, that's not true. We gotta talk about other things. Hololens.

• 28:33Nilay Patel?

  Just don't, don't worry about it. We all just had a private moment with our audio engineer.

• 28:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:40Nilay Patel?

  Go ahead, go ahead, talk about hololens.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  What's it like to wear hololens?

• 28:44Speaker 03

  Dieter, what is, what is Windows? What is, what is Windows holographic?

• 28:49Speaker 01

  A phrase you just made up.

• 28:52Speaker 03

  What is Microsoft holographic?

• 28:54Nilay Patel?

  It's hololens.

• 28:54Speaker 03

  No, the product.

• 28:56Nilay Patel?

  Hololens.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  The product, the product is hololens.

• 28:58Nilay Patel?

  The platform is Windows holographic.

• 29:00Speaker 02

  I can see that on the monitor, I'm so confused.

• 29:02Speaker 03

  When they first said, the first thing they said on stage was.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  Is Windows holographic?

• 29:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  Uh, it's, I don't know, but the software is it's software that lets you put holograms in space.

• 29:10Nilay Patel?

  Right. So you wore the thing, let's be clear.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 29:13Nilay Patel?

  You're one of the tiny handful of people in the world who have put on Microsoft's headset.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  Right, so the.

• 29:18Speaker 03

  What did you, can you, can you talk about the process?

• 29:21Nilay Patel?

  Start talking.

• 29:22Speaker 03

  No, no, you're about to talk about the thing, but before you wore the thing.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:26Speaker 03

  They were like.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  There's a thing that I wore.

• 29:28Speaker 03

  No, but they were like lock up, lock up everything. I thought that was really interesting. It's sort of like their.

• 29:34Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah. Talk, talk, talk about the, the secret layer that you went into.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, so in order to go and play with the prototype, first of all, they're like, guess what? We've been testing this stuff in the Microsoft visitor center the whole time. It's in the basement of the public room. Oh, my God. Well, that was hilarious. They refused to let us bring. Cameras, audio recording equipment, phones which have cameras on them and are also audio recording equipment, computers, anything digital, not allowed. And so we had to bring notepads. And so I was, we might actually, I'm thinking about, I might like, just put my, the notes that are insane to read up on the site. Cause I would go and like, try this crazy thing and like, try and write down the experience. Cause I'm used to just tapping it out. So we go

• 30:18Speaker 01

  down there and they've got four sessions and they just sort of like, lead a bunch of journalists around to these creepy little rooms. Have you ever been like a user testing lab? They're like, it's like a weird living room. And there's like a person that's like creepily asking you to do things. And like, you know that there's cameras everywhere watching you. And like, did I sign a release to be recorded? I don't remember. And like, everything's super scripted and they, they really are like, watching your reactions very carefully. It was that. And so it, the whole thing, the, in the back of my mind, the whole time I'm like, well, there's, there's some lies happening here. And the lies are about, like, there's, there's, if I go outside, the lines,

• 30:59Speaker 01

  like, things are going to break down pretty quickly. But staying inside the lines was awesome enough that I kinda don't care.

• 31:06Nilay Patel?

  Right. And that's what that, I mean, many questions about how this thing works, right?

• 31:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:11Nilay Patel?

  But what's, tell me the fundamental experience.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  So the fundamental experience with the prototype is they hang a computer around your neck. And then they've got this thing with like, four bands across it that they ratchet, literally ratchet onto your head. There is a couple of, you know, glass panes in front of your eyes, and little projectors to project a square on it. So the field of view, I'd say it's like 50% of your vision, the center 50%, but your periphery is still open.

• 31:38Nilay Patel?

  Was it heavy?

• 31:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:40Nilay Patel?

  Cause like, I saw a diagram where it has a fan.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:43Nilay Patel?

  It like, has a real processor and a real GPU and a fan.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, all that was hung around my neck.

• 31:47Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 31:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. And the thing that you hang around your neck.

• 31:49Nilay Patel?

  No, but there's a fan on the, there's a vent on the.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  Well, the, the, I don't know. They were like exposed boards. I couldn't touch it. I can only touch like, what certain part of it. They had like.

• 31:57Nilay Patel?

  So it didn't look like the, the nice one that they showed on the stage?

• 32:00Speaker 01

  No, it, it, it, it looked like a contraption. It was, there were just straps and cables and solder everywhere.

• 32:07Nilay Patel?

  You're wearing like a netbook around your neck.

• 32:08Speaker 01

  Oh, the Oculus looked like a, the first Oculus that we tried looked like a finished product compared to this thing.

• 32:13Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  Like, that thing that had like duct tape everywhere and whatever. No, this, this thing was.

• 32:18Nilay Patel?

  Are you saying their onstage demos were faked?

• 32:21Speaker 01

  No, I believe the onstage demos were real.

• 32:23Nilay Patel?

  But they're, because you were wearing like.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  But they like, I think they had like, they have two of those headsets working. I think that's. So, anyway, you put the thing on and then they, they met, they have to measure your pupillary distance between your eyes. I guess the, the final product will do it automatically. Apparently I've got a super wide head. Cause I've got, mine was 70, which is wider than everybody else's. Paul Therat's was, I just have a big head.

• 32:47Speaker 02

  Wide pupil distance?

• 32:48Speaker 01

  I don't know. But no, because it has to like align the hologram in front of your eyes.

• 32:55Speaker 01

  And then they switch it on. And normally I think the experience is, you know, so the way it works is it's got a hollow, it's got the thing. You know, projects in front of your eyes. It's the holograms. But it also, the magic of it is it can detect your head motion, just like an Oculus Rift can, to very fine degree in space. But it has a couple of cameras on the front of it that can read the room. And so normally what you do is it, you turn it on and you like map the room out so it knows where all the surfaces are that it can put virtual objects on. That was already done before I got in there. Like it was just, it just worked. So when they turn it on, the first one I did was a Minecraft one, which was the most awesome one. You, you turn it on and you're looking at a coffee table and then there's a castle on it.

• 33:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  And it looks like a, like a Minecraft castle.

• 33:42Nilay Patel?

  Is it grainy? Is it, it was like the Oculus is like a little grainy, right? Like.

• 33:46Speaker 01

  It's a little grainy. Uh, and it's a little, it doesn't like, like you see holograms like in, I don't know, like Star Wars, like Leia. It's like, and like you see through it, like it, it is brighter and sharper than that. Like you can't see past it. Like it, it looks like a digital thing in space that blocks your vision of things beyond it.

• 34:06Nilay Patel?

  How?

• 34:06Speaker 01

  I, I.

• 34:08Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  Magic. But it's not like, it's not as sharp, especially as a demo videos. I didn't, I, you know, I live blogged the demo videos on the screen, but I was doing it through a camera. So I didn't really watch them. But watching them after the fact, like Microsoft set itself up in a bad way. They should have just done something a little bit more realistic. Like if the demo videos had just looked like what it looked like, people were like, oh, it looks kind of grainy and crappy. And then everybody who actually tried it were like, no, don't worry about it. It's cool. And instead, people are gonna try and be like, I was expecting like beautiful, polished, perfect digital objects. And it's not like that.

• 34:42Nilay Patel?

  Is there like clipping? Is it like bouncing on the table?

• 34:44Speaker 01

  No. So the, the, the most amazing thing about it is how well it tracks your head. Like when you, you know, move around a digital object, like you would expect it to, you would expect it to not be as perfectly, you'd lag, you'd expect, I'm so tired, guys. You would expect lag. And there is no lag.

• 35:03Nilay Patel?

  We broke Dieter.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  When I move my head around this microphone, the microphone stays here in space. Right? It, it acts like a microphone should. And the digital objects do the same thing. They stay where they, where you put them. They're just there.

• 35:16Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 35:17Speaker 03

  Dieter, what happens if you like stick your hand through the hologram?

• 35:21Speaker 01

  Does it go through?

• 35:23Nilay Patel?

  Did you try?

• 35:23Speaker 01

  Well, they're, they're, they're pretty, I mean, I did it, but they're pretty, they, they want to keep you step back or whatever.

• 35:29Nilay Patel?

  Right. So here's the thing that you wrote that I thought was really interesting, which is, you see all the stuff, it looks real. By the way, I think this is like, this to me is.

• 35:37Speaker 01

  I'm not even, like, the craziest part. Like, I said, you can't see through it. But they can, when you go to like, break the table, like you do, first of all, the gesture, we'll get to that, it was really dumb, the click gesture, but you like, hit the Minecraft pickaxe on the actual table. And it looks like the table broke, breaks up.

• 35:54Nilay Patel?

  That's awesome.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  And like, the table disappears and you see a hole in the table. Like.

• 35:58Speaker 03

  The physical table.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. The physical table gets covered with the digital hologram and it's gone.

• 36:04Speaker 03

  But then if you touched, if you touched the hole.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  Then you would hit a table.

• 36:08Speaker 03

  Right.

• 36:09Speaker 01

  Once you get into.

• 36:10Speaker 03

  It doesn't, it doesn't.

• 36:11Nilay Patel?

  Did you just ask if Microsoft's weird face helmet could, could remove a table?

• 36:16Speaker 03

  I'm just making sure that they were, they were manipulating the real table. They didn't like project a fake table and broke the fake table.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  No. Yeah, yeah. No.

• 36:25Nilay Patel?

  Two stagehands dressed entirely in black who run around removing tables very quickly.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  Sam makes a good point. They haven't gotten to the point where they can project a thing that looks actually real.

• 36:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  Like nothing that they project, it all looks digital. They don't, you're not, there's not like a hologram that's like, I, I think this is a real glass. No, it always looks like a video game glass.

• 36:46Nilay Patel?

  No, so what I think is like crazy, so we were joking earlier today, like the history of innovation is basically like companies demanding that you wear things on your face and failing. And it's what's funny, what's amazing to me is last week, Google like shut down the Glass Explorer program.

• 37:03Speaker 03

  Right.

• 37:04Nilay Patel?

  And they gave it to Tony Fadell and said, figure this out.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  You think he wants it?

• 37:07Nilay Patel?

  I don't think he wants it at all.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:09Nilay Patel?

  I think that this is his opportunity to gain more power too.

• 37:12Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 37:13Speaker 03

  What about, what about V2 with Intel? That's like a thing, no? I, I bet we'll see it.

• 37:17Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, of course we'll see it, right? Like, but anyway, but the problem with glass was that you would wear it on your face and it did nothing.

• 37:24Speaker 03

  And you looked like an asshole.

• 37:26Nilay Patel?

  And you looked like a jerk, but, but like you can pay the, you can look like a jerk if you're gonna get a benefit of it all the time. So if glass was like.

• 37:35Speaker 01

  Just keep the camera on Sam, by the way, if you're watching the live stream.

• 37:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, just, just keep it.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  No.

• 37:40Nilay Patel?

  No, I was saying it was awesome. John's in defiance of it. No.

• 37:45Speaker 03

  The only thing that glass was useful for, I wore it for two weeks straight. The only thing that I was useful for was sort of like what a smartwatch is useful for. You get a notification, you can leave your phone in your pocket and glass is like, oh, this person text me, oh, I'm getting a phone call from this person.

• 38:02Nilay Patel?

  It was only useful in these like little chunks, right?

• 38:04Speaker 03

  Right.

• 38:05Nilay Patel?

  But they wanted you to wear it all the time, which is crazy.

• 38:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:08Nilay Patel?

  Oculus is only useful in like little moments, but when you wear it, it's like immersive.

• 38:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, you're experiencing something.

• 38:16Nilay Patel?

  Buy into it.

• 38:16Speaker 03

  Right.

• 38:17Nilay Patel?

  I think HoloLens is basically what normal people think glass is.

• 38:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:22Nilay Patel?

  Right? They put it on and then the world around you is like full of computers.

• 38:27Speaker 01

  It's the dream of what it's whenever he talks about augmented reality, it's always garbage. And this is the first augmented reality and they didn't really use that phrase that much.

• 38:34Nilay Patel?

  That's but that's a hundred percent what it is.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  But that's what it is. And it's augmented reality that doesn't suck.

• 38:38Speaker 03

  Eli, what is Microsoft's sell? How they sell this to normals?

• 38:42Nilay Patel?

  I mean, Minecraft, Minecraft, first like video games like, you know, I think the questions are. So, well, here's how they sell it to normals. And this is what I think is really interesting. I think Emily will hopefully have this on the site tomorrow. But Emily O'Shea is psyched about the entertainment potential of of this, of Hololens. And like.

• 39:00Speaker 03

  More more so than Oculus.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, so but this is a completely, people keep asking me, is it cooler than Oculus? Is it the same thing?

• 39:07Speaker 03

  It's different.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  It's same.

• 39:10Speaker 03

  Hi, my name is Dieter Bone.

• 39:11Speaker 01

  You just.

• 39:14Nilay Patel?

  Tell us about your time running smartphone experts.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:17Speaker 03

  Dieter, Dieter ran a.

• 39:19Nilay Patel?

  What was your favorite trio?

• 39:21Speaker 01

  What was your favorite trio?

• 39:22Speaker 03

  I didn't own a trio.

• 39:23Speaker 02

  Just say Palm. It's always the right answer.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  We no longer.

• 39:27Speaker 03

  Psychic for life.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  We no longer refer to that company as as Palm. We only refer to it as Disaster.

• 39:32Nilay Patel?

  Dieter is so tired and now he's so mad. Like I just saw like he's like, he's that kind of tired where you can like see just that. His eyes are like, if I don't stay mad, I'll fall asleep. You just see the flashes of anger desperately trying to keep his brain alive.

• 39:45Speaker 03

  I think every single Vergecast, we hit Palm and it's really sad for Dieter. I'm sorry.

• 39:49Nilay Patel?

  That's how we do it.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 39:50Nilay Patel?

  No, here. So they say Hololens is coming out and I think.

• 39:53Speaker 01

  They're coming out in the in the timeframe of Windows 10. Which is like.

• 39:58Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 39:58Speaker 01

  This year. But does that mean before Windows 10 is sunsetting?

• 40:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, like what does that mean? Microsoft's operating systems last a decade.

• 40:05Speaker 02

  This is like a fine segue into my, my, my great fear of Hololens.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:10Speaker 02

  Uh, because it sounds exactly like the experiencing Project Natal, which was Kinect before it was Kinect. When they showed you a video and it was like, you're gonna stand in front of the mirror and it's gonna put magic clothes on you.

• 40:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, that never happened, right? Never.

• 40:27Speaker 02

  You put up a skateboard and it scans the skateboard into your game and then you're skating on that skateboard. With motion and I remember seeing that and then they had another very similar demo except where it was in downtown LA.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:40Speaker 02

  And we went and played, uh, we played burnout. I'm sure that embargo is meeting at this point. We played burnout paradise on, on the game and you like put your foot out and you drove. And like, because it was the first time you ever experienced something like this, it was mind blowing.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:57Speaker 02

  But awful, like unacceptably bad, uh, and, and nothing even close to what they were showing. But it felt like, oh, well, this is just proof that it can work. They're going to get to that point.

• 41:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:11Speaker 02

  And here's what Microsoft did. They took the processor out of it, uh, and they made it absolute garbage and they never fixed that problem. And it's like the, the, the big problem with Kinect was obvious from the get go. You take the power out of it and you completely gut its potential. And then you tell people like, hey, keep making beautiful games, uh, but figure out a way around this big problem. And my biggest fear, because there are some familiar faces on this team.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:37Speaker 02

  Is that something like that could happen that they'll, that they, I think the actual designers, both behind Kinect and this are some of the best people in the business. I think, uh, if they bring this to Microsoft, when it's all said and done and say, listen, this is going to cost $600, that they'll go, mm, no.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  No, I think it's $600 they'll do it. If it's a thousand dollars.

• 41:59Speaker 02

  It'll be, yeah. Um, I, I, that, but that's my concern and I cannot imagine what the processing power is to be able to like.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  It's got a H G holographic processing, an HPU, HPU. God, I'm so tired.

• 42:14Speaker 02

  Whatever it is, but to like, to make 3D graphics.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  Get the words HPU out of it.

• 42:18Speaker 03

  I have, I have questions.

• 42:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. We gotta talk about the, the, the actual interaction with it too, cause it's terrible.

• 42:25Nilay Patel?

  Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. Go ahead. That's actually the thing I was most interesting about.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:28Nilay Patel?

  Cause I, I read Dieter's piece where it's like, you see all this real stuff and you can't interact with it. You have to like do all these.

• 42:34Speaker 01

  The fidelity of, of virtual objects in space is incredibly good. Not as high resolution as you'd like, whatever, but it's incredibly good. Interacting with it is all you can do is you can move your head around to move a cursor.

• 42:48Speaker 03

  And that's really accurate, though, right?

• 42:50Speaker 01

  It's super accurate, but it's super twitchy because you know what is hard to position things with? Your head.

• 42:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  Right? Like, try, try.

• 42:58Speaker 03

  Cause your hands can do this.

• 42:59Speaker 01

  Like.

• 42:59Nilay Patel?

  No, just go ahead and just cut to Sam.

• 43:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:01Speaker 03

  Your hands can do this. Yeah. Verge Cash LOLs. Make it jazz.

• 43:06Nilay Patel?

  You just did it on purpose. You just met a gift yourself.

• 43:09Speaker 03

  I gave it to him.

• 43:09Nilay Patel?

  For the record, for our audio listeners.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 43:11Nilay Patel?

  Sam just did extraordinarily poor jazz hands.

• 43:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:15Nilay Patel?

  I mean, just like.

• 43:15Speaker 03

  That's good jazz.

• 43:16Nilay Patel?

  Uncommitted jazz hands.

• 43:18Speaker 03

  Anyway, your neck is not as dexterous as your hands.

• 43:20Nilay Patel?

  By the way, Sam, your new gamertag is lazy jazz. Putting it out there.

• 43:25Speaker 02

  Ba da, da, da, da, da.

• 43:29Speaker 03

  Was that lazy jazz?

• 43:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:31Speaker 03

  I thought you were gonna go into like the McDonald's thing for a second. Ba da, da, lazy jazz.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  But like, we know the technology exists to read hand, the only hand gesture they can read is like you, you stick your hand out with your index finger sticking straight up and then you depress it down.

• 43:44Speaker 03

  You hate that gesture.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  Hitting a letter. Blink.

• 43:47Nilay Patel?

  No, that seems awful. Oh, this seems awful.

• 43:49Speaker 01

  Blink.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  It's so dumb. And you know, like a magic leap, no, what's it called?

• 43:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's a magic leap.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  Magic, the.

• 43:57Nilay Patel?

  Leap motion.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  Leap motion. They can read like your whole hand and really tiny movements with it. Just like, buy them, strap that to the top of this thing and let me actually reach out and grab things with my hands and we're done. And I will buy 10 of these.

• 44:09Speaker 03

  How long do you think Microsoft was working on this for?

• 44:11Speaker 01

  Oh, years. Years and years and years and years.

• 44:14Speaker 02

  Well, here's my question because there seems to be so much overlap across these digital space teams. Whether, I mean, the fact that connect, digital space, the fact that the connect people are associated with it, that when we saw that, that, I don't know if it's a leaked image of the Magic living room, where it was like, there's a connect on the TV and a hologram is shooting out of the coffee table and everyone's wearing glasses. My, like, was the, the MO of this, I guess, like, Skunk Works group make as many different versions of holographic living spaces and find the one that is like practical and affordable? Like, I have, because, I know, what is it? Foxy Box has been the, making the boxle, boxes of holographic displays?

• 44:59Speaker 02

  And there had been all these rumors that Microsoft internally was doing similar things, especially around Kinect. And, and it feels like they were probably trying a lot of different things, and this is the one that they were like, "Yeah, people have to put it on their face, but it's a thousand times cheaper than like, asking people to actually buy holographic displays and keeping them alive."

• 45:18Nilay Patel?

  Well, the other one, what was the other, uh, big thing? Luminorum.

• 45:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's another thing where it's like...

• 45:22Speaker 01

  Well, we go back to 2011, we, we did this tour where they had the Kinect Fusion and Light Space in Microsoft Labs. They like, put screens on things and you could like, move the screen around to different, and the screens actually mapped to the surface. And then, so they've been, they've been playing around with detecting physical space and putting digital things on the physical space forever.

• 45:41Nilay Patel?

  The one thing about Hall of Legends that is like, the most, it's like, the most Black Mirror, is like, in the video when the guy like, puts on his headset, sits down on the couch and like, looks at nothing in reality, and like, a fake TV screen appears and he just like, watches TV. And it's like, no, we're all doomed. We're all doomed.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  The saddest part about that?

• 46:00Nilay Patel?

  This is like, this is when your life becomes like, you, your home is nothing but like, an empty white box.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  That's, that's, that's...

• 46:07Nilay Patel?

  We're in a hole in the ground.

• 46:08Speaker 01

  That's a Star Trek Will Crusher, uh, video game episode.

• 46:11Speaker 02

  That's my dream.

• 46:12Nilay Patel?

  But it's like, and then you see like, a virtual toilet, but you're really just peeing into a hole in the ground. Right? Like, it's just like, uh, and like, you see like, a beautiful couch, but it's really just a chair. And that's like, your whole world.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  Wait, that's your, your dystopia is a couch that's just a chair? That's the most horrible thing you could imagine.

• 46:29Nilay Patel?

  No, I'm saying like, it's just imagine, go on this mind journey with me. Your home is a white room.

• 46:34Speaker 01

  And, oh my god.

• 46:35Nilay Patel?

  If there's nothing in that white room.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:38Nilay Patel?

  Except a hole in the ground where you do your business.

• 46:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:42Nilay Patel?

  Your, your business hole.

• 46:43Speaker 02

  And then you click it away.

• 46:44Nilay Patel?

  You click it away.

• 46:47Nilay Patel?

  And then there's a chair. It's like a like a stainless steel bolted to the ground chair.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:52Nilay Patel?

  But what you see in your reality is like a beautiful home.

• 46:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:56Speaker 02

  You're covered in a haptic suit. Oh, is it raining?

• 46:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, right. And like you see this like gorgeously decorated.

• 47:01Speaker 01

  I'm waiting for the bad part.

• 47:02Nilay Patel?

  And like you're just like in this zone all the time and you're just like locked like that's the matrix.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  So.

• 47:08Nilay Patel?

  Like that's the matrix with the the the minor plot addition of a business.

• 47:12Speaker 01

  That's the world you live in now. It's just that your senses are made out of meat. It's the same thing.

• 47:15Speaker 02

  Every every sense of meat. So foul.

• 47:21Nilay Patel?

  I have no idea. My business hole is well.

• 47:25Speaker 02

  Business hole?

• 47:27Speaker 03

  Speaking of business holes and poop.

• 47:29Nilay Patel?

  The Packers.

• 47:30Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 47:32Nilay Patel?

  This show is over.

• 47:35Speaker 03

  That was a sick.

• 47:36Nilay Patel?

  You can't.

• 47:37Speaker 03

  Wait, so so we could segue. We could say segue one of two ways. We could talk about.

• 47:41Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 47:41Speaker 03

  Talk about Bill Gates or we could talk about. We could talk about Bill Gates.

• 47:44Nilay Patel?

  I'm so mad at you.

• 47:46Speaker 03

  Wait, Neelai, why are you mad? What happened?

• 47:48Nilay Patel?

  I don't want to talk about it. I'm never gonna talk about it. I hate Seattle. I hate the entire Pacific Northwest.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  Brought it up.

• 47:56Nilay Patel?

  Uh, I hate Matt Offord. He works here. I think he should be fired. All because.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  You hate the fourth quarter more than anything else.

• 48:05Speaker 03

  Neelai's team lost, lost their chance.

• 48:07Nilay Patel?

  Talk about it.

• 48:08Speaker 03

  In the Super Bowl. It was pretty pathetic from a person that doesn't even watch football.

• 48:12Speaker 02

  The sad thing is like it was their year too.

• 48:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:14Nilay Patel?

  Everyone, oh my god. Dieter hates Android.

• 48:19Speaker 01

  No, I don't actually.

• 48:20Nilay Patel?

  Now hell will come down upon you.

• 48:23Speaker 03

  Neelai, Neelai, talk about.

• 48:25Speaker 01

  You know what actually would be great is playing Settlers of Catan with a hololens. Playing Settlers of Catan with a hololens. Think about it.

• 48:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what I said in the editorial meeting today and everybody's like, why would you want to play?

• 48:38Speaker 01

  No, it'd be great.

• 48:39Speaker 02

  And I was like, because it's what you do.

• 48:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:41Speaker 02

  I'm I know shit about video games and board games.

• 48:45Speaker 01

  Well, you were the Minecraft thing is basically a board game.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  Okay, not really.

• 48:49Speaker 02

  I'm not gonna get into that.

• 48:53Nilay Patel?

  There are. There are some things we should talk about.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  Uh, any other, any other hololens things? Are we done?

• 48:57Nilay Patel?

  No, I mean, look, I think we will find ourselves talking about the hololens a lot. Like, I just get the feeling that.

• 49:03Speaker 03

  We're gonna do a Vergecast where we're all in the hololens.

• 49:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, we're all we're all in our pure white rooms.

• 49:08Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 49:08Nilay Patel?

  On our stainless steel chairs pretending that our meat senses have finally been dulled.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  We're doing our business in our business.

• 49:19Nilay Patel?

  Either that's a terrifying vision of the future, or it's what Dieter wants. I can't tell which one it is.

• 49:25Speaker 01

  Both.

• 49:27Nilay Patel?

  Fine. Alright, so let's talk about.

• 49:31Speaker 03

  Huge Verge announcement.

• 49:32Nilay Patel?

  Here's, let's talk about our huge.

• 49:33Speaker 03

  First of its kind.

• 49:34Nilay Patel?

  We're airing a Super Bowl ad.

• 49:36Speaker 03

  Oh, so that one's first.

• 49:38Nilay Patel?

  I don't know which one's first.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  We led with that.

• 49:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, we sort of led with it. So here is, uh, uh, uh, here's a, here's a thing that's true.

• 49:46Speaker 03

  I like truth.

• 49:47Nilay Patel?

  Now, let me tell the whole story of our Super Bowl moment.

• 49:50Speaker 01

  We're sitting back.

• 49:50Nilay Patel?

  So we are coming back from CES.

• 49:52Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 49:53Nilay Patel?

  Most of the things that happen on Verge happen when, when we are very tired. So I was watching the video that Dieter and our video team made of 257 gadgets in three minutes at CES.

• 50:04Speaker 03

  Which is awesome. You should check it out.

• 50:05Nilay Patel?

  Which is awesome.

• 50:07Nilay Patel?

  It's literally our video team just showing off at the end of CES.

• 50:10Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 50:10Nilay Patel?

  Which is great. And I was very tired. It was after we, we had partied at the end of CES. I'd gotten two hours of sleep. And I thought, man, this would make a great Super Bowl commercial. So like you do, you, you just fire off an email to the CEO of the company asking for a $4 million Super Bowl commercial.

• 50:29Speaker 03

  Only you could do that, Neil.

• 50:31Nilay Patel?

  The answer was no.

• 50:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:32Nilay Patel?

  The answer was no. Uh, but John Hunt, who is our director of marketing, said, well, why don't we buy like a local one? And then we started like laughing and thought that was hilarious. So we found the cheapest one in the country, which is $700 in Helena, Montana. And then we were like, what if we like, instead of running this, because that video is three minutes long. So we had to cut it down. So then we made what I feel is the best part of the joke that no one got.

• 50:58Speaker 03

  Right.

• 50:59Nilay Patel?

  Which is we made the world's most generic commercial about the future. It is so, it is nothing.

• 51:04Speaker 03

  There's not a, you, you can't really name a gadget in that commercial.

• 51:07Nilay Patel?

  There's no gadget. There's nothing. I wrote the voiceover. It's like, at the end of it, you could have shown the GE logo or like the Enron logo.

• 51:16Speaker 03

  It's one of those commercials that you watch and you're like, what is this? What is this afterwards? Like, what was that for?

• 51:21Nilay Patel?

  Right. Chevy, like Panasonic, like anything.

• 51:26Nilay Patel?

  Any company, you could have just shown an American flag. It would have been fine.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  America.

• 51:32Nilay Patel?

  So we like made this commercial and then admittedly, we were, what I wanted to do was run it in Montana and then like the next, be like, hey, we ran a Super Bowl commercial and then like have the reveal, be like us in Montana. Didn't work out that way, but it was hilarious that it worked out the way it did.

• 51:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:50Nilay Patel?

  Just amazing.

• 51:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:53Nilay Patel?

  Everyone thought we spent four, like the internet crazy machine just went crazy.

• 51:58Speaker 01

  Like, yes.

• 51:59Nilay Patel?

  It, it's just instantly. Uh, so that's the best. Um, and no one, and then people started critiquing the commercial for not being very good. And the Verge video team, John, got like super mad. He's like, don't they know if it was a real commercial, it would have been good?

• 52:15Speaker 03

  But it's airing, but it actually is airing.

• 52:17Nilay Patel?

  But it was just like, we did it on purpose that way. But it is airing. I think Sam is gonna go to Montana.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 52:24Nilay Patel?

  There's been a lot of, I will say the emotions of the Verge team about whether or not to go to Montana have been, on a pendulum. The pendulum swings from, no, I don't want to go, to suddenly everyone wants to go.

• 52:37Speaker 03

  Look, the only reason why I watch the Super Bowl is because it's a very social event and on that Sunday.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  To a place where you don't know.

• 52:45Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, this is, this is for work and that kind of thing. Like Neil, I watched the Super Bowl at your place last year. The year before that, I don't even remember where I was because I don't really care about the Super Bowl, but.

• 52:54Speaker 01

  But it's social and you make memories with friends.

• 52:56Speaker 03

  And literally every single person is watching the Super Bowl.

• 52:59Nilay Patel?

  I've checked the Super Bowl.

• 53:02Speaker 03

  I don't want to go corporate Sam, but that is just a money making machine.

• 53:06Nilay Patel?

  That's not, now you're like angry Gen X.

• 53:08Speaker 02

  Well, also what happened to corporate Sam? Did we lose him?

• 53:11Nilay Patel?

  He'll be here at the end.

• 53:12Speaker 02

  Okay, cool.

• 53:13Nilay Patel?

  Trust me.

• 53:14Speaker 02

  Here's how we can realize.

• 53:17Nilay Patel?

  Corporate Sam or.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  I miss corporate.

• 53:20Nilay Patel?

  Have you ever seen The Secret of My Success?

• 53:22Speaker 03

  No.

• 53:23Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 53:23Speaker 03

  I don't even know what that is.

• 53:24Speaker 02

  That was.

• 53:25Nilay Patel?

  Is it Michael J. Fox?

• 53:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:28Speaker 03

  This is another thing I should watch.

• 53:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. Standin' for Real Sam came in called Corporate Sam. Imagine Corporate Sam told us how money works. It was, it was.

• 53:39Nilay Patel?

  I get occasional notes from Sam about really great B to B tweets. It's a fact. It's true. That happened.

• 53:45Speaker 03

  Hashtag B to B.

• 53:45Nilay Patel?

  It's real.

• 53:48Speaker 03

  Speaking of things with Bs.

• 53:50Speaker 01

  What?

• 53:50Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 53:51Speaker 02

  Bill Gates is putting it up in the air.

• 53:52Speaker 01

  What are you doing?

• 53:53Nilay Patel?

  Okay, well, here, here, what I, here's what I'd like to tell the Verge audience about the Super Bowl. Hello. Hello, stranger. You can just walk, we can just walk right on by. It's gonna be fun.

• 54:01Speaker 03

  They probably also can't hear you.

• 54:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they can't, they definitely can't. But that wave, I think.

• 54:05Speaker 03

  It was hot.

• 54:05Nilay Patel?

  The thing about our studio is that this happens all the time.

• 54:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:09Nilay Patel?

  Strangers.

• 54:09Speaker 01

  The, just people walking, if you're not, you're listening to the podcast, this is not interesting, I'm sorry.

• 54:13Nilay Patel?

  Here's what's interesting.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 54:15Nilay Patel?

  I am not.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  Here's what you know.

• 54:16Nilay Patel?

  I am not sorry the internet believed that we spent 4.5 million dollars on the Super Bowl.

• 54:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:21Nilay Patel?

  I think that it is hilarious that there's so much hype around media tech companies that people think that we should blow that much money, and that is the best.

• 54:29Speaker 02

  It's not possible.

• 54:31Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it was like.

• 54:32Speaker 02

  It's just too, it's just not possible. So much money.

• 54:35Nilay Patel?

  One day it will be, but it is.

• 54:37Speaker 02

  I'm sure.

• 54:37Nilay Patel?

  It is the best. Uh, that was, it was like a Rorschach test. It was like, here's this collection of dots.

• 54:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:43Nilay Patel?

  What story would you like to tell? And the story was, your company's crazy. And it was the best. And I was thoroughly entertained. And then we immediately gave up the ghost. And the New York Times wrote about our 700 dollar Super Bowl.

• 54:55Speaker 03

  That's pretty awesome.

• 54:55Nilay Patel?

  Which is the best. So, that's whatever. That was like our fake news. Our real news, which we're finally getting to.

• 55:01Speaker 03

  But also the Super Bowl commercials happening in Helena, Montana.

• 55:03Nilay Patel?

  It's true. We didn't, we never actually lied.

• 55:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. If you are listening to this on a.

• 55:07Nilay Patel?

  As a former lawyer, I can tell you the power of never actually having lied.

• 55:11Speaker 03

  Feels good.

• 55:12Nilay Patel?

  Is good.

• 55:12Speaker 01

  No.

• 55:14Speaker 01

  If you live in Helena, email us.

• 55:15Nilay Patel?

  What? Not guilty?

• 55:16Speaker 02

  Sure. Good. That's, that's how it works. You say it, it's true.

• 55:21Nilay Patel?

  Not guilty.

• 55:21Speaker 02

  You're trying not to go to court.

• 55:22Nilay Patel?

  All right, all right, all right. The big news, the big, real news.

• 55:24Speaker 03

  Let's hear it.

• 55:27Nilay Patel?

  Bill Gates, our man, Billy G, is our guest editor of The Verge in February. Uh, so here's what that means. So, the thing about guest editors in the media is, that is a spectrum of things. It either means you do nothing at all, or somebody shows up with like, the, a print magazine the day before it's published, and you like, look at it, and you like, fake approve it. Or you edit everything, single thing to like, fit your voice. There's a wide range of things. Here's what we decided to do. Bill Gates has a letter with his wife Melinda, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, about what's happening in the future. They publish it every year. It's about their philanthropy and charity and what they want to accomplish. And this year it's-

• 56:08Speaker 01

  Bigger than usual this year.

• 56:09Nilay Patel?

  Way bigger than usual. So, the UN has something called the Millennium Development Goals, which just ran out, like they're over. They're like, what will we accomplish by 2015? So that now there's time for a new set. So his letter is basically like, what will we accomplish by 2030? So it lays out in four areas, right? Banking, health, education, and farming. Health is actually really big. It's a really big topic. He spends a lot of money donating to philanthropic causes and health. So what we said was, we'll come, we'll come talk to you. We'll have a bunch of interviews with you. We'll use the, those interviews, we'll have you narrate episodes of our show, The Big Future, which is literally a show about what, how will everything change in the longest term, right? So if you watch

• 56:54Nilay Patel?

  the show, you know, we've asked questions like, what is the future of living on Mars? What is the future of sex? Can we conquer disease? These are all Bill Gates questions.

• 57:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:02Nilay Patel?

  So perfect fit right there. So Gates is going to narrate those. And then we're going to do big features. Obviously, you guys all know our big Verge features. We're going to do a set of big features around these themes. Because Gates is our editor, we have access to his resources, but we were very clear, we're journalists, we're not just going to do what Bill Gates says. So we have access to his resources, but we're going to do our own real serious journalism against it and tell the whole story. And what's cool is that they were super excited about that.

• 57:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:32Nilay Patel?

  They're like, we feel really confident that we're on the right track. Like, go get it. Like, go tell the whole story. And we feel confident that you're going to come back thinking the way we do. So we'll see. I don't know the answer. So that's what Bill Gates is guest editor means. What's cool about it, and I think is awesome, is that if he did that for a print magazine, you'd be like, one and done, right?

• 57:50Speaker 01

  Right. This is going to live forever.

• 57:52Nilay Patel?

  This is going to live forever. And like, throughout the month of February, there's going to be a lot of Gates around the site because of the features, because of the Big Future. We'll try to do more with him. We have a bunch of stuff we haven't released yet, obviously. So I'm very excited about this. It's a first for The Verge. Please let us know if you like it. Please, if you think it's weird, if you think we're micro Verge now, then I have won. I have finally conquered my enemy.

• 58:14Speaker 03

  And you have your interview up on the site right now.

• 58:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I did a long interview. I went to his office. It's crazy how much security there like secret, like very quiet security there is around Gates. He is, I put it in the piece, it's like very hard to make small talk with him.

• 58:29Speaker 03

  Because he's

• 58:29Nilay Patel?

  Bill Gates.

• 58:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:30Nilay Patel?

  He just doesn't have to care, but super easy to engage on like really hard questions. And I think that's the coolest part about this. Like, he wants us to go deep on these issues that are important to him. And we went deep on a bunch of stuff. And I think, I think over the course of February, people are going to see some really cool stuff happening on The Verge.

• 58:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:48Nilay Patel?

  And he, I've checked Bill Gates.

• 58:50Speaker 03

  He's the man.

• 58:53Speaker 03

  I mean, he changed the world as much as Steve Jobs did, in a way.

• 58:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 58:56Speaker 03

  In a way.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  Man.

• 59:02Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 59:03Nilay Patel?

  So, I will say, no, it's true. It's, what's really cool about this is that the staff of The Verge is very excited. Our company is excited. The developers and engineers and designers who work here are stoked. This is a big deal.

• 59:16Speaker 01

  Can you talk a little bit about what it was like to hang out with him? I mean, the thing that you wrote was that you can't make small talk with Bill Gates.

• 59:23Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 59:24Speaker 01

  You can only talk about serious things.

• 59:25Nilay Patel?

  I'll tell you this story. And this is just like, it's a tiny little slice of a story. So, he comes in, he like reads the scripts for The Big Future. And we go into the other rooms for the interview. And Rondo, one of our video guys, like miking him, and he's like, hey, let me get a level. Can I, I just need to set a level. And then he asks a question that I've heard our video people ask a thousand times, which is just so that you will talk so they can set the, that he goes, what did you have for breakfast? And Gates just goes, nothing. And then there's silence.

• 59:54Nilay Patel?

  And Rondo's like, because everyone's like, nerd, it's Bill Gates, right? He's the most richest, most powerful dude in the world. So, Rondo's like, what did you have for breakfast yesterday? And he's like, I just needed a ten. Gates like, nothing.

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  I don't eat.

• 1:00:09Nilay Patel?

  And like, okay, so we like, whatever. We're just like rolling with like, we're done. Like, we're not like, two minutes later, I'm like, isn't the problem of hunger really about income inequality? And shouldn't you buy foods? And Gates like, is like, let me tell you. And it's like, how did you just eggs? Just say cereal, like, any. It was amazing. Like, that's, it's just that. He's like, really intense and really into it, really passionate and just obviously brilliant, right? Like, I say like a lot. I stammer. I say, um, like, that's what I do. That's how I talk.

• 1:00:39Speaker 01

  Now, a little bit.

• 1:00:40Nilay Patel?

  He doesn't do those things.

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:00:43Nilay Patel?

  Just doesn't do it. He's, he's just ready to go. And part of it is that he is obviously media trained. He's Bill Gates.

• 1:00:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:00:50Nilay Patel?

  He knows how to, and he is on message. But we, we.

• 1:00:54Speaker 01

  He stays on message across a wide array of topics.

• 1:00:57Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 1:00:58Speaker 01

  That he did not grow up with, that he only became passionate about since he left Microsoft. Well, he may be passionate about before. I don't know. But like, the dude's only invested, you know, deeply and personally.

• 1:01:07Nilay Patel?

  Right. And, you know, we.

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  Spending his time on since then.

• 1:01:09Nilay Patel?

  We did our best in those interviews to, you know, commit journalism. So we like, you know, we, we had our editors like evaluate his letter and find hard questions. And we asked really hard questions, like really difficult questions. And he thought about them for a second and then had real answers to them. And I think if you watch that interview, like, maybe I didn't do a good job of knocking Bill Gates off his game, but we tried and he, he managed to have, I think, good answers to all those questions.

• 1:01:36Speaker 02

  Do you think it's weird that like, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer are pretty much act the exact same? Like, they're just at the exact same emotional levels all the time?

• 1:01:43Speaker 01

  No, you're crazy. What are you talking about?

• 1:01:45Speaker 02

  It's called sarcasm, guys.

• 1:01:49Nilay Patel?

  You just trolled all of us.

• 1:01:50Speaker 02

  Guys, come on. You can't picture Gates like just rocking on the Clippers sideline being like.

• 1:01:57Nilay Patel?

  What was, what was Ballmer dancing to?

• 1:01:59Speaker 02

  He was dancing to Black Eyed Peas.

• 1:02:01Nilay Patel?

  Was he?

• 1:02:01Speaker 02

  Oh, I know it was. Because it was, they like, that series of vines had an even better vine, where, uh, what's, what's her name? The Fergie.

• 1:02:10Nilay Patel?

  Fergie.

• 1:02:10Speaker 02

  Was like going out onto the court and she like, kind of like bounced up next to the guy who sweeps the court. And he did like a full gyration, like out of nowhere. And then went right back to sweeping the court. And I was like, man, LA is a weird town.

• 1:02:24Speaker 03

  It was Fergie.

• 1:02:25Speaker 02

  The honest thing is, I want to know like how Ballmer and Gates are best friends because that would be a great TV show.

• 1:02:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it would be amazing. Like, well, here's.

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

  What is happening?

• 1:02:34Speaker 03

  Sorry, that was my volume. I'm just watching. I'm watching him do his.

• 1:02:38Nilay Patel?

  They're just like, they're like Harvard buddies. Like Ballmer is the roommate, like the luckiest roommate of all time. Right? Like, that's, that's his wow.

• 1:02:47Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:02:48Nilay Patel?

  But that's it. Like, he, well, no, it's like, I only know my wife because the housing office put her next to me in the dorm. Like, that's like a.

• 1:02:55Speaker 02

  No, sure.

• 1:02:55Nilay Patel?

  That's like a quirk of fate.

• 1:02:57Speaker 02

  I understand what you mean.

• 1:02:58Nilay Patel?

  I'm sure Ballmer is talented in his way, but like, he could have just been assigned to another dorm and maybe he would have never met Bill Gates.

• 1:03:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:04Nilay Patel?

  And I'm 100% sure that Bill Gates would have.

• 1:03:07Speaker 01

  Whoever would have been there in Steve Ballmer's room if he had been reassigned would be Steve Ballmer now? Because that's, that's, that's mean.

• 1:03:13Speaker 03

  No, he's just saying that it happened to work out like that.

• 1:03:15Speaker 02

  Well, that's just the way the world. Yeah.

• 1:03:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, no, I'm saying like, I'm, I am fairly sure.

• 1:03:20Speaker 01

  I don't know, I think they're meant to be.

• 1:03:21Nilay Patel?

  Always been.

• 1:03:22Speaker 01

  Soulmates the whole time.

• 1:03:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, Ballmer is like the vicious businessman.

• 1:03:28Speaker 01

  Uh, so Gates also incredibly vicious. I'm reading Isaacson's Innovators.

• 1:03:35Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:03:35Speaker 01

  And so this, I'm obsessed with like 1950s to 1970s computer history now. Just love it all.

• 1:03:43Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 1:03:44Speaker 01

  So I've heard a lot of these stories before, but man, Gates was just brutal when he would negotiate these contracts with Altair and then later on with these other software companies. Like, the way that he would, and even with his friends, with Paul Allen, like, he just, like, I deserve more of the company, give it to me. They're like, oh, okay.

• 1:04:02Speaker 02

  That's how you do it.

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  And he was right, but it was also, he was just ruthless with it. So I, like, the idea that, like, Gates is the crazy computer guy and Ballmer is the ruthless businessman. Like, they're pretty simpatico.

• 1:04:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, we were talking about this earlier. I mean, it's weird because Jobs obviously passed away, but the weird thing about Gates, what's so like, exciting about him, especially with his philanthropy, is it's so deliberate. Like, he's literally made a career of saving the world.

• 1:04:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:04:31Speaker 02

  And like, it's sad that it. So unusual. There are so I a thing that I think about when I walk through Manhattan essentially is how many millionaires there are next to me. Or even billionaires because to own in my neighborhood where I've luckily found a government building that subsidizes my living. To own in this place, you have to just have millions, millions of dollars that you can throw away. And there are, there's person after person doing that. And these people are not people who are going out and doing these things. It's weird to see somebody not only doing it, but be kind of the top of his field and doing it with his time.

• 1:05:09Speaker 02

  I don't know. I, I, that's, I was indifferent to him either way before this, but like, I was so thrilled to have him on our site, not because of Microsoft, but because like, as a philanthropist, dude's baller. It's like, it's like just plain and simple. He, he, it's an amazing thing to do.

• 1:05:27Nilay Patel?

  Well, so I asked, this is, if anybody, there's like two or three moments in the interview that, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna use a lot of that stuff over the course of the month, but I didn't call it out. But you watch the whole interview, it's all right there on the site. But there is one question that was like particularly, I thought, hard, right? Which is, well, shouldn't you just buy everybody food? Because that's a legitimate tactic, right? Like, you're just really, really wealthy and you have a network of really, really wealthy friends and you could just buy all the people the food.

• 1:05:57Speaker 01

  Or you could, or even just give them the money directly. That's a, that's a tactic that people are trying, right?

• 1:06:01Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  Anyway, yeah.

• 1:06:02Nilay Patel?

  But like the UN is like, another option for this is to like, it's just there, right? It's like, it, it's a legitimate strategy. So I asked him and he goes, "Well, I could have done everyone's multiplication for them too, or I could have made Excel." And it's like, oh, well, that's, that's literally how you're thinking about this. Like you're thinking about philanthropy is like, creating software and getting multiples of value out of it, which that, I think, when you're saying it's like, he's going about it like a business. He's as, just as ruthless.

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:06:34Nilay Patel?

  In this as he is.

• 1:06:35Speaker 02

  Want.

• 1:06:36Nilay Patel?

  Which you want. But I think like, that's what we're gonna, that's where we're gonna do the exploration on. Like what are we, what strategies are we leaving behind that might be better? That might not fit into this world? What strategies are different? And is this like really working? And I think we've already started doing it and we do have a lot of cool answers around it and we're gonna do a lot of, a lot of, we're gonna do some journalism here. The other moment in the interview, which is just amazing is when I was like, when you started with mobile banking and I was like, Couldn't Bitcoin solve all these problems instead of like building all these regulatory systems? And he was just like, I don't think so. And did some like Bitcoin slams. It was amazing. He's like, maybe you put your money in Mt. Gox, then it's lost. You're like, I'll go to bit whatever. And I was like, nah.

• 1:07:17Speaker 01

  Bit whatever, by the way, is where I trust.

• 1:07:20Speaker 02

  That's where I put all my dog coins.

• 1:07:22Nilay Patel?

  It was good. Yeah. Well, that interview has like a series of like very choice Bill Gates laughing at bad ideas moments, which uh.

• 1:07:30Speaker 02

  I will watch that.

• 1:07:31Nilay Patel?

  That's pretty good. Yeah, exactly. All right. We've gone over a little bit. Is there more stuff?

• 1:07:37Speaker 02

  Oh, should I talk about this?

• 1:07:38Speaker 01

  No, I was, I was making the engage gesture.

• 1:07:41Speaker 03

  Plant, Plant wrote a really interesting piece.

• 1:07:44Speaker 01

  I bet it's.

• 1:07:45Speaker 03

  You guys want to end the show?

• 1:07:47Speaker 01

  I want to go to bed.

• 1:07:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, we've killed Dieter.

• 1:07:49Speaker 01

  I'm really tired.

• 1:07:50Nilay Patel?

  Here's, here's the thing.

• 1:07:51Speaker 01

  I'm super duper tired.

• 1:07:53Nilay Patel?

  Hey, guys. Here's the thing. And we're killing Dieter. That's what, that's, that's the whole thing. And if there's one thing that The Vergecast is known for is that one.

• 1:08:02Speaker 01

  Murdering.

• 1:08:03Nilay Patel?

  Every, every week, one host will be on the brink of death while we stretch it out for additional, additional minutes. Cause we get paid by the second here at The Verge. Like AOL.

• 1:08:12Speaker 02

  Oh, gosh.

• 1:08:13Nilay Patel?

  It's the one legacy of AOL that we brought, we brought with us, per minute pricing.

• 1:08:17Speaker 01

  By the minute.

• 1:08:18Nilay Patel?

  All right. Social Sam, engage.

• 1:08:20Speaker 03

  That is our show.

• 1:08:22Nilay Patel?

  See?

• 1:08:23Speaker 03

  Thank you for watching.

• 1:08:24Nilay Patel?

  I told you Business Sam would come back.

• 1:08:25Speaker 03

  If you enjoyed what you just saw, feel free to tweet at us using the hashtag Vergecast. You can, you can get in touch with us on Twitter as well. We are at Verge. I am at Sam Sheffer. Dieter is at Backlon. Neelai is at Reckless. And Chris Plant is at Plant. We are also on Facebook at facebook.com/verge. We are also on YouTube, and I promise you will want to subscribe to our YouTube channel because 2015 is going to be one hell of a year for videos. That is youtube.com/theverge. We're also on Instagram. We have at Verge there. And lastly, you should definitely be friends with us on Snapchat, because let's get real. If you're listening to this or watching, you probably use Snapchat. And if you don't, you should. We are the real Verge there. We Snapchat shenanigans in the office.

• 1:09:09Speaker 01

  Sam, how did, how did, I know.

• 1:09:11Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 1:09:11Speaker 02

  Okay, wait, wait, wait.

• 1:09:12Nilay Patel?

  You can't corporate. Sam should never say shenanigans. Ever.

• 1:09:15Speaker 03

  Or what we snap.

• 1:09:16Nilay Patel?

  I know that I fell apart on snapping after the the actual Microsoft event.

• 1:09:21Speaker 03

  You did great.

• 1:09:21Nilay Patel?

  Running around.

• 1:09:22Speaker 03

  The lead up was good.

• 1:09:23Nilay Patel?

  The dad jokes were OK?

• 1:09:24Speaker 03

  The dad jokes were great.

• 1:09:25Nilay Patel?

  OK.

• 1:09:26Speaker 03

  If you guys saw them, you could thank Dieter for those snaps. Uh, yeah, follow us on Snapchat. We were at a rocket launch, too. Uh, I want to say that that was one of the only rocket launches that has ever been snapped. So that's a thing. Yeah, definitely follow us there. We're the real Verge.

• 1:09:40Speaker 02

  Uh, Sam, can I handle the iTunes thing?

• 1:09:42Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 1:09:42Nilay Patel?

  Oh, we have an iTunes channel.

• 1:09:43Speaker 03

  I'm gonna just toss the ball to plan really quickly.

• 1:09:45Speaker 02

  Uh, and as always, if you enjoy the show, which is a funny thing to say, uh, go to the iTunes page.

• 1:09:51Nilay Patel?

  Wait, because it's so like ludicrous as a concept.

• 1:09:54Speaker 02

  If you if you appreciate the effort that we put in.

• 1:09:56Nilay Patel?

  How about how about this? If you are still listening, then you deserve to get something out of the effort you just put into the show.

• 1:10:03Speaker 02

  And those are five stars.

• 1:10:04Nilay Patel?

  By going to iTunes.

• 1:10:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. Giving us five stars and, uh, I have gotten I've gotten some, uh, questions about this dumb idea I threw out a long time ago called What's Tech? And I have good news. It is happening.

• 1:10:18Nilay Patel?

  It is happening.

• 1:10:19Speaker 02

  We have recorded the first episode. Uh, it will be a few weeks before we actually publish it. But, uh, if you have anything in the world, but let's say the technology world that you want to know about, uh, any topic, post that in the review and then we'll like see if we can find some good things here.

• 1:10:35Nilay Patel?

  This is our Chris Plant spinoff.

• 1:10:36Speaker 02

  And we can make, this is the Chris, finally, you can get rid of me. And and and we can have that on the show.

• 1:10:42Nilay Patel?

  No, you're definitely getting a show on FXX.

• 1:10:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's on the channel that nobody has into their DVR. Um, but look forward to it anyway.

• 1:10:52Nilay Patel?

  No. Um, and I will say this, here's.

• 1:10:54Speaker 02

  I'll end it.

• 1:10:55Nilay Patel?

  OK, but I'll do it in a second. I'm gonna I'm gonna dribble. We're basically just trying to see if.

• 1:10:59Speaker 03

  Dieter will collapse.

• 1:11:00Nilay Patel?

  You guys. No, I will tell you this. What's Tech?

• 1:11:02Speaker 03

  Bye.

• 1:11:02Nilay Patel?

  Uh, What's Tech, the first of what I will I will tell you.

• 1:11:06Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 1:11:07Nilay Patel?

  Bye. I'm trying to do some news.

• 1:11:08Speaker 03

  Damn, man.

• 1:11:09Nilay Patel?

  I'm trying to break a little Verge news.

• 1:11:10Speaker 03

  All right.

• 1:11:11Nilay Patel?

  What's Tech, the first in what in 2015 will be a series of Verge podcasts. Uh, Verge Radio Network is a thing that I want to make happen and we're gonna move forward. Assuming Chris doesn't immediately blow it with our first spinoff.

• 1:11:22Speaker 02

  Which I will.

• 1:11:24Nilay Patel?

  Cool. All right.

• 1:11:25Speaker 03

  And that's our show.

• 1:11:26Nilay Patel?

  That's it? That's it? We wanted the ball back for that's our show?

• 1:11:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was gonna say, and that's our show. We'll be back next week. Have a great one.

• 1:11:31Speaker 02

  Bye!

• 1:11:32Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god.