Pixel 2 XL screen, Amazon Key, and iPhone X preorder

Nilay, Dieter, and Paul run through the news this week on The Vergecast, with a lot of heavy sighs to go around. There's the Pixel 2 XL screen fiasco, Amazon's home camera invasion efforts with Amazon Key, and Amazon's oversized new Fire TV. Plus, Paul is back with his weekly segment about water pods. And more! Listen in and lament the current state of technology with your three best friends. 02:44 - Google 'actively investigating' reports of Pixel 2 XL screen burn-in … 17:39 - Google Pixelbook review 27:50 - Microsoft kills off Kinect, stops manufacturing it 31:38 - Amazon Key is a new service that lets couriers unlock your front door 37:22 - Amazon Echo (2nd gen) review 38:07 - Amazon Fire TV (2017) review 46:00 - Apple’s Face ID struggles detailed in new iPhone X report 55:54 - Paul’s weekly segment “WATER PODS” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

  This episode of The Vergecast brought to you by Qualcomm Snapdragon Gigabit LTE. With download speeds up to seven times faster than typical home wifi, Snapdragon Gigabit LTE can turbocharge all of your connected apps. You can stream 360 degree videos in 4K resolution with minimal buffering. You can access your files in the cloud nearly as fast as you would if they were stored on your phone. You can download hours of movies or music in a matter of seconds. To learn more, visit www dot snapdragon dot com slash gigabit today.

• 0:30Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of The Verge Situation. Theverge dot situation.

• 0:40Nilay Patel?

  You know, we're doing great. I will say this, can I just, I want to call out our friends, our coworkers, Caitlin, Tiffany, Ashley Carmen, and our producer Andrew Marino, The Vergecast producer, who's also the producer of Caitlin and Ashley's shows, Why'd You Push That Button?

• 0:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, why does he make them sound so good? We sound like butts.

• 0:58Nilay Patel?

  Andrew, why don't you ever organize our thoughts?

• 1:00Speaker 01

  Andrew works very hard on this show.

• 1:04Nilay Patel?

  Which is impossible. Anyway, Why'd You Push That Button?

• 1:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08Nilay Patel?

  In the top five of the iTunes Technology Podcast section, since the entire two weeks it's been out, number one trending in Pocket Casts on Androids. Feature of Pocket Casts, thank you Pocket Casts, that was nice of you, but doing great. So if you are interested in an organized conversation around technology and culture, go listen to Why'd You Push That Button? It's great, it's everywhere you can find a podcast. It's just quickly will become one of my favorite things that The Verge does.

• 1:37Speaker 01

  Last night my mom was like, "I loved the new episode of your show, but you weren't on it." It was just these two girls.

• 1:46Nilay Patel?

  But you're like, you're like a character.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  Sometimes.

• 1:48Nilay Patel?

  You're always in the montage.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50Nilay Patel?

  But anyway, that show's doing great, please listen to it, we love it so much. Paul and I, and Ashley, and Heim, and Jake are doing a show, Circle Breaker Show, on Twitter. It's on Tuesdays, 4:00 PM Eastern. There's a replay on the site on Wednesdays, where we play with gadgets, you should watch that. I'm hosting the Mr. Robot After Show with Megan Farukmanesh and Russell Brandim. That's Wednesdays after Mr. Robot. We're just doing all kinds of things later.

• 2:14Speaker 01

  We are, what an empire we have built.

• 2:16Nilay Patel?

  What an armada. Our boats are all different sizes and most of them are videos.

• 2:22Nilay Patel?

  This podcast Armada really, really has some, some definitional issues going on. But anyway, the stuff to listen to anyhow. By the way, I'm Eli Patel. Dieter Bone is here.

• 2:36Speaker 02

  I am. Well, I'm here.

• 2:37Nilay Patel?

  Well, he's, he's in San, he's in San Francisco.

• 2:39Speaker 02

  What is time and space anyway?

• 2:41Nilay Patel?

  Paul, Paul is here.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 2:43Nilay Patel?

  All right, we're gonna, we're just gonna do it. We're gonna talk about this Pixel 2 situation.

• 2:48Speaker 02

  Oh my God, 2XL.

• 2:49Nilay Patel?

  I threatened to start the show by just saying the words Pixel 2XL and then deeply sighing for 35 minutes. And I just stepped up. That's what we're gonna do. But Dieter, I don't have mine. I still don't have mine.

• 3:01Speaker 02

  I don't have mine either.

• 3:02Nilay Patel?

  Last week and I reenacted ordering it on the show last week and it shipped. I don't have it yet.

• 3:09Speaker 02

  Mine has been in San Francisco for three days. There's a, a local shipping company called OnTrack that, um, has failed to deliver it. I've been here in my office waiting for it every day, uh, for the past three days and, uh, Zippo zilch not a nothing. But I have now looked at three different, uh, Pixel 2 XLs and they all have this issue. So here's the story. Well, over the last weekend, Alex Doby from Android Central happened to look at a gray image on his Pixel 2 XL and saw that there was the ghostly, uh, image at the bottom of the Android navigation buttons and like, uh, bar above them. Uh, and so everybody went, huh, that's weird. And then literally everybody who has a Pixel 2 XL looked at the same thing on their phones and yeah,

• 3:50Speaker 02

  I don't know. Basically, everybody has it. There are people who say they don't, but everybody who like has a review unit almost to a person has seen this thing. There's, you know, a handful that don't maybe.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  Has anybody burned in a non-bar?

• 4:04Speaker 02

  That I don't know.

• 4:05Nilay Patel?

  Can we just zoom, let's just zoom back?

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:08Nilay Patel?

  Zoom out.

• 4:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:10Nilay Patel?

  Do the Rockaway.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  I was, that's what I was gonna do, but I'm gonna let you do it.

• 4:14Nilay Patel?

  All right, together, we're gonna, we're gonna zoom back as a family.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  About this screen.

• 4:18Nilay Patel?

  Now, uh, before we fight about the screen, which I'm very willing to do. Uh, cause I, I was looking at James Barham's today, our creative directors today. The, the phone came out, you reviewed it.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  I did.

• 4:29Nilay Patel?

  You're like, the screen has definitely has muted colors. Then

• 4:33Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:34Nilay Patel?

  And the blue shift, which is real, it's

• 4:36Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 4:36Nilay Patel?

  Pretty real. Then there's the, the, the burn-in or image retention issue.

• 4:43Speaker 02

  We don't know which one it is for sure yet.

• 4:45Nilay Patel?

  We, yes, but you suspect it's more image retention than burn-in.

• 4:48Speaker 02

  I sus- I very much change my mind every time because actually Android essentially did a great video where they played, they, they played a gray screen for like five minutes and then they played a video for five minutes, then went back to the gray screen. And playing moving pixels underneath that area does reduce the, the visibility of the ghost buttons, but it doesn't eliminate them entirely. And it kind of doesn't matter. I mean, it matters because if it's burn-in, this is, so the, the other part, next part of the story is we pulled our score off of the Pixel 2 XL.

• 5:23Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 5:23Speaker 02

  Because if it's image retention, that sucks. It's a thing you're probably not going to see most of the time. Uh, but it's another knock against the screen on top of the three or four other things that are wrong with it. And even though you're almost never going to see it, it is worth noting and it's worth taking a point down. If it's actually real, genuine screen burn-in, that is catastrophic. Because if that's happening within a week or two, or even literally, I, I managed to see ghost images on a review unit that I, Google swapped out for me, that same day. If it's, if it's burning, if the screen is burning itself that quickly in a month or three, you're not just going to see it on top of a,

• 6:04Speaker 02

  you know, a gray image, you're going to see it on top of everything. The, the screen, Neil, I keep saying, the screen could literally be eating itself. Um, and if that's the case, then this thing is, is just fundamentally flawed and it's really bad. At least it's not on fire. But, um, it's a pretty low bar. So until we know whether or not this is genuine, actual screen burn-in, we can't recommend that you buy it because this, these images are either image retention or screen burn-in. It's a symptom of both. And there's enough of a risk that it's a symptom of real burn-in that it's a, it's not a great idea to buy it right now.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  Can you clarify the difference between burn-in and retention?

• 6:47Speaker 02

  So burn-in is like a ghost image. So it's, this happens on a bunch of different kinds of screens. So when you are looking at a picture and then you flip to another screen, you like see like the ghostly after image of that, especially if you flip to something that's like a relatively flat image, like a gray image. But if you move some pixels around, the screen like figures out, oh, wait, I shouldn't be showing that ghost image anymore. And it goes away. Burn-in is, you know, OLEDs degrade over time. All screens degrade over time, but OLEDs in particular are susceptible to this. Or plasma TVs actually, where the pixels that are showing, you know, a bright thing will eventually just get worse over time and not be able to show as much brightness or as much color in that zone. And so they

• 7:27Speaker 02

  literally get burned and they start showing that after image forever. So when you look at an old CRT or a badly maintained plasma TV or one of the very, very early OLEDs, you'll see, you'll see like, just like random crap that's sort of floating on the screen. Now, all phones, especially OLED phones, do this over time. And so there's lots of people who have been tweeting at me and tweeting at everybody saying, oh, you know, my Samsung does this, my blood is this, my blood is this, my Pixel XL from last year does this. Yeah, but it doesn't do it after a week or two. It does it after months, if not years.

• 8:03Nilay Patel?

  So my plasma TV, like the last Panasonic plasma ever made before they were all fired into the sun. If I play Madden for a couple hours, the score just lives at the top of the TV for like another day or two.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  But that fades.

• 8:19Nilay Patel?

  But it fades.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  So that's retention.

• 8:21Nilay Patel?

  That's retention.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  Right. Like my roommate has just the worst LCD.

• 8:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  And so you like browse Netflix for a while and then you see the Netflix UI for the first 30 minutes of whatever show.

• 8:31Nilay Patel?

  That shouldn't be happening. It's like a particularly shit LCD TV.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  But that's retention, not burn-in. So burn-in is permanent.

• 8:38Nilay Patel?

  Burn-in's permanent.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  Permanent damage. And I guess I should, as a PSA, if you see this thing, you may have heard that there are apps that you can download that supposedly fix it. And they do kind of work, but they're dangerous. They fix it by basically like burning the rest of your screen to match the burn. It flashes up, it does stuff to your screen that is like.

• 8:55Nilay Patel?

  We save your village by lighting it on fire.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:00Nilay Patel?

  I also saw apps that purport to fix the colors by shifting Oreo's color space. Like entered Oreo's color space. Which, okay, so now, now we've like entered the realm of Google shipped a broken phone, people are trying to fix it. And people are tweeting it at me and at The Verge and everybody. I'm gonna buy this phone because I know Google will fix the color issue. Or I'm gonna buy this phone because I can install this line of hacks to fix whatever I think is wrong. That to me is, that's where we start entering like fanboy mistake territory. Where you're like back justifying something. Cause I, I like firmly believe that you should never buy anything based on the promise of a feature update or a software fix.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:44Nilay Patel?

  Or any company doing anything other than like going out of business.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  What was the big thing with the original Pixel? Was like Wi-Fi or Bluetooth?

• 9:52Nilay Patel?

  Um, was there a big, acquiring it, I think was a huge problem.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  That was step, step number one was getting one.

• 9:59Nilay Patel?

  The Bluetooth on the Pixel is bad.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So my SIM right now is in a Pixel one. I'm gonna tell you right now, I love it. Because I love it.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  You got a headphone jack?

• 10:09Nilay Patel?

  I got a headphone jack, I got a screen that looks nice.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  You got like a, maybe the second best camera on the market?

• 10:16Nilay Patel?

  Second best, yeah, the camera's excellent, uh, no portrait mode, but it turns out, I don't have nothing to take portraits of. It's just sunsets for days.

• 10:25Nilay Patel?

  It's really fast, great, great phone.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  Focus on infinity.

• 10:28Nilay Patel?

  The, the, Vlad has pointed out, the headphone jack sounds terrible and it's true, but at least it's there.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:34Nilay Patel?

  Your headphone jack doesn't sound like anything.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  No, dude, my Apple, my Apple dongle is a little bit on the fritz.

• 10:41Nilay Patel?

  That's not good.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  Oh no.

• 10:42Nilay Patel?

  But the Bluetooth on the Pixel one is so comically bad. I got into my friend's-

• 10:47Speaker 01

  Which headphones are you using it with?

• 10:49Nilay Patel?

  Uh, I have a pair of Red Sony wired headphones and I have QC35s. The QC35s seem to be fine, but I got into my friend's car last weekend and I wanted to play him, why'd you push that button? And I was like, I'm just gonna pair to your, your infotainment system, it's BMW, it's iDrive. And I tried to pair my Pixel to it and it is so bad that it crashed the, the infotainment system. And we just had to like wait.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  Is that Google's fault or is that BMW's?

• 11:16Nilay Patel?

  It's, it's everyone's fault, but it works with his iPhone. Like, he's like, I've never seen this before because BMW probably assumed everyone has an iPhone.

• 11:27Speaker 02

  So we're fine with the iPhone, but like literally you just had to sit there and wait for it to like reset itself. So you plug the iPhone into it. So

• 11:35Speaker 01

  I just want to

• 11:35Speaker 02

  Almost a perfect phone.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  I just want to get a 3310.

• 11:38Speaker 02

  That's you can go back.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  $60 phone. It's got Twitter. It's got Facebook. It's got Snake.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  It's all you need.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  It has a camera.

• 11:47Speaker 02

  It's all you need.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  I'll be fine. I'm just done with all this shenanigans. Get back to me when you've got something.

• 11:53Speaker 02

  Well, Dieter, you were saying this has been a terrible year for phones.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  Like just in general, not a great year for phones. Like even Samsung phones, people are going to say Samsung phones are great. Samsung put a button that launches a dog with shoes at you. On the phone. That you cannot disable.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Also, they put the fingerprint sensor in the wrong place.

• 12:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  That's just a super wrong place. Those are, those are more matters of taste.

• 12:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, but do you ever unlock your phone? Just, is that a thing that you do?

• 12:23Speaker 01

  I have on occasion.

• 12:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  Not with a 3310 though.

• 12:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, but no, like the iPhone 8 has got the old design. People are very nervous about the notch on the iPhone 10. Um, I think the Essential Phone is probably my favorite, just plain hardware phone of the year. Um, it's so heavy and dense. It just feels so good, but the camera on it is, you know, not, not that, not good. Um, and then the Pixel 2 XL has the screen issue and even the Pixel 2 has got big dopey bezels on it and it, it feel, I've got one. It's, it just doesn't feel like a good phone. Not a great year for phones. It just isn't.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. And this is why I'm sticking with the Pixel 1.

• 13:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, but, but on the other hand, like they're faster than ever. Their cameras are better than ever. They can do all kinds of crazy AR stuff. Like the phones have never been better and phones have never been worse.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 13:13Speaker 02

  That's your headline. Assigned.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 13:16Speaker 02

  Old Vergecast trick. Back in action.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  I like, uh, James Barab's take on Twitter, like our photographer here is like, I got one. This could be the worst screen ever. I don't care. It's got a camera.

• 13:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. He's really excited.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  Like, cause if you think about the kid, the pictures are forever.

• 13:35Speaker 02

  Here's the thing about that.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  Another phone in a year.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  Here's the thing about that. I was all set to have that same feeling like, you know what? Screw it. I can live with the bad screen because it has everything else that I want. But if you take a picture, you don't know what that picture is going to look like at all on other screens. And that's true to extent on every phone. But with this one in particular, you're gonna look at it and be like, uh huh, I should punch this up. And then you'll punch it up and then you'll put it on another screen and it's just gonna look crazy town.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  That's why I only shoot in raw.

• 14:08Nilay Patel?

  I only distribute raw selfies.

• 14:11Speaker 02

  Raw selfies with Paul Miller.

• 14:12Nilay Patel?

  That's your coffee table book.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  It's just, it's like 400,000 pages and you could just, it's one selfie. You just flip through all the different slides.

• 14:24Speaker 02

  So as of Sunday night, the 22nd, or recording this on Thursday, the 26th, Google said that it is actively investigating this report. It's also actively investigating and has a fix coming for like the buzzing and crackling sounds that the Pixel 2 apparently makes. Also like a high pitched screech. I don't know. Come on. But it's been four days. They haven't come back to us with, you know, an explanation or an answer. So until they do, or until someone can definitively say that it's not burn in, I'm not putting a score on this phone.

• 14:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  And other, other, other websites have followed suit. I believe CNET's pulled their score. I believe PC Mag has pulled their score. So yeah, it's.

• 15:11Nilay Patel?

  Here's my question. Well, I have two questions. One's just a yes or no.

• 15:16Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 15:17Nilay Patel?

  Here's a yes or no question. Would you call this a fiasco?

• 15:20Speaker 02

  It's, it's definitely in the fiasco ballpark. Yeah, I'd say like it's a fiasco. There's, there's high jinks.

• 15:26Nilay Patel?

  Is it a yes or no?

• 15:26Speaker 02

  So yeah.

• 15:27Nilay Patel?

  Yes, it's a fiasco.

• 15:28Speaker 02

  Okay. So then here's my follow up question.

• 15:30Nilay Patel?

  Fiasco is not the same thing as a disaster. Yeah, I said fiasco. I think it's quite clearly a disaster. But does it rise to the level of fiasco?

• 15:39Speaker 02

  Well, I think it's fiasco then disaster. You can have a fiasco, but fiasco can be like fun and like, you know, like a madcap comedy.

• 15:48Nilay Patel?

  Fun fiasco. That's my favorite Vampire Weekend. Yeah, I think fiasco before disaster. Okay, so it's not a disaster, but it's a fiasco.

• 15:56Speaker 02

  It might be a disaster, but right now I will go so far as fiasco.

• 15:59Nilay Patel?

  Hundred percent fiasco. DEFCON fiasco. DEFCON fiasco is a great name for a roller rink.

• 16:07Nilay Patel?

  Think about it.

• 16:10Nilay Patel?

  I'm in a branding kind of mood today. Please someone make a DEFCON fiasco shirt. Anyway.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  What's worse than disaster?

• 16:15Nilay Patel?

  So, okay, the top one is catastrophe.

• 16:18Speaker 02

  Catastrophe is the worst.

• 16:20Nilay Patel?

  Catastrophe, disaster. The definition of fiasco is a complete failure. So it's a fiasco. Well, screen wise. Potential fiasco. Now you're downgrading.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  Maybe, what's one step down from fiasco?

• 16:31Nilay Patel?

  Conundrum.

• 16:32Speaker 02

  No, it's like madcap tomfoolery.

• 16:35Nilay Patel?

  Why are these all so fun? Crisis. Crisis.

• 16:39Speaker 02

  Crisis is above, ah, no, no, no.

• 16:43Nilay Patel?

  A crisis, you can get through a crisis. Alright, we gotta stop this. So, okay, so it's a, let's just say it's a fiasco.

• 16:55Speaker 02

  Who, in, it's a crisis, colon, fiasco, comma, the Bixby story.

• 17:01Nilay Patel?

  The Bixby story.

• 17:04Nilay Patel?

  This is the worst Jason Bourne movie of all time. I've watched it. Jason Bourne, Crisis Fiasco. As long as it's got Matt Damon in it. It's true. Okay, so the Pixel 2 is hissing at people. The Pixel 2 XL might be eating itself. The Google Home was always listening to you and they had to disable a button. Is it, is it possible that Google's big hardware push?

• 17:33Nilay Patel?

  Is a fiasco like in toto.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, that sounds like a toto.

• 17:36Nilay Patel?

  Well, yeah.

• 17:37Speaker 02

  So the toto. But here's the thing, I'm going to tell you something.

• 17:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 17:43Speaker 02

  The hardware in the Pixelbook. Like, I swear to God, I'm gonna, I'm the, now that I've published a review tomorrow, it's gonna, someone's gonna discover that knives shoot out of the keyboard and stab you.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:54Nilay Patel?

  Right, you love.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  Because I'm so, I love the hardware of the Pixelbook. It is my favorite laptop hardware of the past year, bar none. I'm sorry, I'm not sorry, actually, to anybody, not to the Surface Laptop with its cloth keyboard, not to a single thing that Apple has produced that has a keyboard attached to it, or could attach to it. It is, it is great.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  What's, what's the number one, one standout? Is it the, is it the, the soft silicon palm rest?

• 18:23Speaker 02

  It's the build and industrial design, like the, the basic design of it is just hard as a rock. It's super solid. You can't flex it. The keyboard is halfway between like a standard keyboard and the MacBooks, like zero key travel keyboard. It's so, but it feels totally normal. And this is the shape that laptop should be. If your laptop doesn't have a hinge that lets you flip it around to use it on an airplane, then get it out of my face. I'm serious, like, I not have, people, Windows people know what I'm talking about. Like, not having a touchscreen, once you have a touchscreen, you're like, this is dumb. It's, just put a touchscreen on it. It's fine. You're not going to get a gorilla arm. It's just convenient

• 19:04Speaker 02

  and nice to have. Just do it. Not being able to just, even though it's not as good, even though, you know, blah, blah, blah, it's not touch optimized, it's not as good as an iPad, that's all true. But it doesn't add that much thickness. It is not that hard of an industrial design problem. Just put the 360 hinge on the thing, because being able to like, sit on a plane and actually have my little like, cup of seltzer and my own laptop in front of me watching a movie is so much better than worrying about someone leaning their seat back and cracking my laptop in half, that it's dumb that you don't do it. Everybody should do it.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  The hinge on this thing looks so simple and small. Why, why does Lenovo need that crazy, like, weird mesh thing?

• 19:46Nilay Patel?

  That's a like, design element.

• 19:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:48Nilay Patel?

  The watch bag.

• 19:49Speaker 02

  But, but everyone, everyone's trying to convince you by with like crate, like, you know, Surface has the snake. You know, everyone's like, oh, it's so hard. Making hinges is so hard and our hinges better than everybody's. No, it's not. It's just put the 360 hinge on it. It's fine. Just do it.

• 20:01Nilay Patel?

  Now you are definitely guaranteeing that the Pixelbook shoots knives.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  I know.

• 20:05Nilay Patel?

  Now that you've gone this far out in the ledge, tomorrow it's gonna be like Pixelbook wakes up in the middle of the night.

• 20:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:11Nilay Patel?

  Runs off with family.

• 20:13Speaker 02

  They never comes back.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  They made the Silicon Palm rest out of whale tears.

• 20:19Nilay Patel?

  So you're, you're way out there. But I, the Pixelbook, so it's great. I'm really interested in it. I'm probably gonna return my Pixel to Excel and spend that money on Pixelbook.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  Great hardware.

• 20:30Nilay Patel?

  Great hardware.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  But there's a, a little software question mark.

• 20:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 20:34Speaker 02

  There is.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  Which is called Android.

• 20:38Nilay Patel?

  And you, you, actually all the reviewers that I read today, everybody had the same sort of set of problems with Android apps and the Pixelbook. Right? You resize them, everything goes to hell, or they run in tiny Windows, or they don't do exactly what you want.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  I, I've been thinking about this. Here's your best case scenario. You have a really great tablet operating system with really great tablet apps.

• 21:01Nilay Patel?

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  Like, for instance, iOS and the iPad.

• 21:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  Now, take iOS on the iPad and then add that to macOS. Is that a good thing? Cause that's your best case scenario. And that doesn't sound like a good thing.

• 21:16Nilay Patel?

  No, you take Safari on the iPad.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 21:18Nilay Patel?

  And you just make it Safari from the Mac.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  That. Just do that. That's the whole game.

• 21:25Nilay Patel?

  The, the, the limitation of the iOS web browser.

• 21:28Speaker 02

  And maybe put a mouse on it.

• 21:29Nilay Patel?

  Prevents me from using it.

• 21:31Speaker 02

  Maybe put a mouse on it. Cause it's helpful for a full web browser.

• 21:34Nilay Patel?

  But like, the reason I'm interested in Pixelbook is because it's a desktop class web browser, which is the app I use the most.

• 21:40Speaker 02

  Yep. I mean, this is the, like, I don't think this thing, people, most people aren't gonna really be choosing between this and a MacBook unless you're a student and like you've lived with Chromebooks your whole life. Same thing with a Windows laptop. It's, it's this and the iPad. And this is more expensive than an iPad Pro. Um, but they basically make the same case. You want a simpler computer that is easier to manage and is constantly secure, constantly updated. And is got a bunch of apps on it.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  And two versions of Slack.

• 22:10Speaker 02

  Well, that's a thing. But you, in order to make it your main computer, you've got to be an expert at either one. But with the Chromebook, you get a really good web browser and kind of shit apps. And with the iPad, you get really good apps and a kind of shit web browser, which is unfair. It's a really good web browser for an iPad. Like, it's a great web browser, but it can't do a bunch of the web apps that I kind of need.

• 22:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, so.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  But if you added a mouse and a trackpad or whatever to an iPad, that wouldn't be good.

• 22:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  It's a touch.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  It'd be fine.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  It's a touch interface.

• 22:45Speaker 02

  Life goes on. If I've learned anything from using phones with notches, that it's not that bad. It's okay. It's fine.

• 22:52Nilay Patel?

  Dieter has been defeated by the year of gadgets in 2017. It's like, everything is hopeless and compromised, but you're still gonna wake up tomorrow.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  I think we just build it for, build it for the grab.

• 23:02Speaker 02

  Just put whatever on it. It doesn't matter.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  Put, Fuchsia is the way of the future.

• 23:08Speaker 02

  I mean.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  Google's revolutionary new operating system.

• 23:11Speaker 02

  I'll tell you right now, you can take this Chromebook and you can, you can root it and you can just run Linux on it. And if you really want to, you could go crazy and you could probably find a way to get Ubuntu on this thing, Paul.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. That's what I'm thinking.

• 23:22Nilay Patel?

  I'm thinking in straight Hackintosh.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  No.

• 23:26Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 23:28Nilay Patel?

  All right. So that we, we got far away from my original second half of question, my two-part question.

• 23:38Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 23:39Nilay Patel?

  If you ask me this now.

• 23:40Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 23:41Nilay Patel?

  Second part, Pixelbook aside, because it's a pretty limited product that Google basically made for itself.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  Or is it the future of laptops?

• 23:48Speaker 02

  And, and Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix.

• 23:50Nilay Patel?

  And, and Dieter Bohn, the executive editor of The Verge. But their big consumer products, the phone and the Home Mini, both compromised in some way. Are there consequences? Does like Rick Osterloh, who runs this thing, is Sundar calling him into the office and me like, WTF, Rick? Or are they just?

• 24:12Speaker 02

  I hope so.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  But here, in my opinion, here's the worst thing Google could do.

• 24:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  Oh, turns out we're bad at this. Well, it was just an experiment and walk away. That, that is the stigma that hangs over every Google project. Well, is this another Google wave? That's what everybody's thinking.

• 24:31Nilay Patel?

  By the way, Google Wave was actually very smart, way ahead of its time, and I think about it every day.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Genius.

• 24:36Nilay Patel?

  Every time somebody sends me an email that should have been a Google Doc, I'm like, I wish I could wave the fuck out of this. It happens every day.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  How do we add a poll?

• 24:50Speaker 02

  Every time we have to make a Google Doc to like, plan out something at The Verge, I'm just like, what?

• 24:55Speaker 01

  Have you guys seen this Coda thing?

• 24:57Nilay Patel?

  What's that?

• 24:58Speaker 01

  It looks good. It's like, it's like HyperCard meets FileMaker meets Google Docs meets like, like you could take like, a document, it's like connecting documents to like, different kinds of interfaces that you can create for them. And it's like, this is like, taking like, spreadsheets, and then you could like, you could view them as like, a Trello board, or you can view them as, what, the other kinds of like, organizational boards. Like, you can like, take one kind of data and then use it with different sorts of interfaces. It's, it's very interesting.

• 25:31Nilay Patel?

  Just saying, Google Wave.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  It's very wave-esque. I, I think there was a wave mention.

• 25:36Nilay Patel?

  Would you say it's wavy?

• 25:37Speaker 01

  Which makes it basically wavy.

• 25:40Nilay Patel?

  Alright, well, I'm gonna get the phone. Dieter's got the phone. We're gonna keep looking at the screen.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  Don't give up, Google.

• 25:46Nilay Patel?

  Don't give up. Stick with it.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  Next year.

• 25:48Nilay Patel?

  Pixel one. I mean, just take this exact design, put Bluetooth 5 on it, and, and 835, and then ship it again.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  Well, aren't you gonna give them crap about the bezels then?

• 26:01Nilay Patel?

  I mean, probably, but this phone is great.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 26:03Nilay Patel?

  Um, I thought, uh, was it Sam Byford wrote the piece for us? It's like, maybe the iPhone 8 Plus is the best phone?

• 26:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:09Nilay Patel?

  A lot, a lot of people feeling that way right now.

• 26:10Speaker 01

  Maybe the right bezel was the one that was with us all this time.

• 26:13Nilay Patel?

  Maybe this focus on bezels is all wrong.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  I gotta say, I saw-

• 26:17Nilay Patel?

  Maybe focus on me.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  Heim wrote like, a how to preorder the iPhone X piece there, and just, he just used like, a random photo from, that you guys got at the, at the live event.

• 26:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  It just looks so good.

• 26:29Nilay Patel?

  Alright, we're gonna get to the iPhone X. I'm gonna read an ad, we got, we have a bunch of stuff to talk about. We're gonna talk about the iPhone X X. X10. At the end.

• 26:39Nilay Patel?

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• 27:21Nilay Patel?

  No wonder 80% of employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate through the site in just one day. That's why ZipRecruiter is the smartest way to hire. So find out today why ZipRecruiter has been used by growing businesses of all sizes and industries to find the most qualified job candidates with immediate results. And right now, Vergecast listeners can post jobs on ZipRecruiter for free. That is right, free. Just go to ziprecruiter.com/verge. That's ziprecruiter.com/verge. And try it for free. Ziprecruiter.com/verge. All right, Paul, I want to talk about the whole bunch of Amazon news, but first, I want to just get your take on this, which is Microsoft killed the Kinect. Which was, at one point, the sort of hobbyist hacker tool of choice.

• 28:05Nilay Patel?

  Prime Sense, obviously acquired by Apple. Face ID, really built on original Kinect ideas. But now Microsoft's walking away. How are you feeling about this?

• 28:15Speaker 01

  This reminds me of possibly the worst hot take I've ever written. I was at E3 when Microsoft was announcing the Xbox One, Sony was announcing the PlayStation 4, or maybe Microsoft had already announced, I forget the exact timeline. But the details about the PlayStation 4 came out and that they weren't going to bundle a camera. And so my take was like, Sony has given up on the world of motion control. If you don't bundle it, it's not something that people are going to develop for, and therefore it's dead. And what I failed to write, it required just a sentence, is like, that doesn't mean it's a bad thing to walk away from this.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  Because that was turned out a genius move on Sony's part. People were totally disillusioned by these motion control shenanigans that they just want to get back to playing video games while leaning deeply into their couches. And Sony like totally won this generation. So it makes sense. And there's, there's tons of these cameras you can buy like Intel's got one like you can, it was Acer or Asus. Like a bunch of companies have licensed the necessary technology to make depth sensing cameras. So like you use, it's the, this whole movement of like taking a Kinect and getting it working and then making some cool robotics project. Like definitely started because the Kinect was such accessible hardware.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  But like, there's plenty of hardware available now that you don't have to use a Kinect for it. And it's

• 29:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  Really straightforward, but I guess it's sad, sad, sad to see it go, but it's also, it's also example of

• 30:00Speaker 01

  just not, I mean Nintendo was doing this with the Wii U. And a little bit with the Wii where you just, you got this great idea and you just don't support it well enough.

• 30:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  And so it just completely, completely dies.

• 30:14Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I think the original Kinect, right? Kinect Sports was like a phenomenon. And then I cannot think of another Kinect game that people

• 30:23Speaker 01

  I have, I've never seen, I know Kinect was one of the, at the time Kinect was the best selling piece of consumer electronics ever.

• 30:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  Some ridiculously high rate of sales. I've never seen anybody play Kinect Sports.

• 30:39Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 30:40Speaker 01

  I have you?

• 30:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, I've seen myself.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 30:44Nilay Patel?

  Can one, can you see yourself?

• 30:45Speaker 01

  It was always about like Wii bowling.

• 30:47Speaker 02

  A mirror, yes. Unless you're a vampire.

• 30:49Nilay Patel?

  Can you, can one truly see themselves playing Kinect Sports?

• 30:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's just a thing. It's something to note, especially because the whole PrimeSense Apple thing. We're gonna find out soon if it paid off, you know, like it's probably gonna work. But it's interesting that Microsoft's like, that's whatever, we're done with this.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  Well, Microsoft like went after the for the the Connect 2, that was with the Xbox One. Microsoft went way past the technology that PrimeSense even had.

• 31:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  Like, it was much higher fidelity. I don't really know since PrimeSense has been under the the wing of Apple, I don't know how much they've advanced their technology.

• 31:29Nilay Patel?

  But made it smaller.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  It's definitely smaller.

• 31:32Nilay Patel?

  It's not a full-size Connect 1. Alright, I just wanted to flag it because it's interesting. Alright. Amazon News, like a lot of it, actually.

• 31:42Speaker 02

  I don't think we even have everything here.

• 31:44Nilay Patel?

  We don't, but the the sort of the big one that caught everyone's attention is Key, which seems ridiculous. You buy the camera from Amazon, it's a smart home camera, and you can buy it, I think it's Zigbee locks, because they're deep in the Zigbee game. As you know, Amazon's mortal enemy is the Z-Wave Alliance. Hate those guys. So you you buy their new smart camera, which is just like a camera.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  Called CloudCam.

• 32:13Nilay Patel?

  CloudCam. You pair it with your Zigbee lock from like Yeeo or whatever, there's a couple of. And then, when you get a delivery, they the delivery person like scans the package with the camera. The camera connects to the cloud, says, oh, this is Amazon package, and then opens your door. The delivery person can just go in your house, put the thing down. That seems just wild.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  And your CloudCam is recording what's going on, so then you can go watch what the delivery person did.

• 32:41Nilay Patel?

  So the logistics of that, to me, seem very confusing, because the camera needs to be outside.

• 32:45Speaker 02

  That's really common. Like, the camera needs to be outside, but they scan the barcode, they do that with like package lockers already.

• 32:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, no, but I'm saying the logistics of the cameras outside your house, they scan the barcode, they go in your house, the camera presumably can no longer see them. Cause they're on the other side of the door from the camera.

• 33:05Speaker 02

  You should get another three pack.

• 33:08Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so we've created this problem with strangers in our home. The solution to that problem is more products from us.

• 33:15Speaker 02

  Can I, can I tell you, just follow this timeline with me briefly. Amazon's like, hmm, I wonder if people will accept a speaker that's always listening in their house. And we, we totally did. And then Amazon's like, huh. I wonder if they'll accept a speaker with a camera on it. And then anybody who wants to, that you're friends with, can just turn that camera on and see what you're doing by dropping in. And we're like, yeah, nah, sure. What if we made a camera that judged the quality of your outfits? Uh, go ahead. We won't bother you. What if we took that camera where anybody can drop in and we made it into an alarm clock that you're supposed to put next to your bed? Where you sleep and do other things. And everyone's like, ugh, oh, well, it's really cute.

• 34:00Speaker 02

  And now like, what if, what if we just use our cameras and stuff to just let random people go into your house? Like Jeff Bezos, or as I like to call him now, Swole Jeff.

• 34:13Nilay Patel?

  He's Swole.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  I, Amazon is on a mission to see just how far they can push their creepiness. And like, they're like, that, that sense of like, do you trust Amazon enough to do this thing? They're building on the fact that everybody loves Amazon to see how far they can go. If Google did in, when Google does a 10th of this stuff, people lose their minds and perhaps rightfully so.

• 34:35Nilay Patel?

  No, people lost their minds over the lock. Like I did not see one tweet of our story that was like, I want this. Everyone was like, hell no.

• 34:43Speaker 02

  They finally found the line of what will we not allow Amazon to do in terms of our privacy? But the question is, if we had been okay with this, you know, lock thing and letting people into our house, what do you think was next? Like what, what is, what does Jeff Bezos, Swole Jeff secretly want to do for privacy that he was building this up to?

• 35:05Nilay Patel?

  Well, first of all, I will say other smart locks do this. So I have an August smart lock. Uh, they have, you know, a set of partnerships where like, you call for a cleaning service and it'll automatically unlock the door when they get there. So like, This idea has been there, like, what if someone else could unlock your door? Like, who would do that? And then like, the answer is like deliveries and cleaning services. And if you are renting your house, you can partner with Airbnb and Airbnb can lock your door. Right, so there's, that idea is there. I think Amazon, they're not making partnerships. They're just like, what if we unlock your door for our people?

• 35:42Speaker 01

  I, I, maybe I'm weird for not being creeped out by this. I just love, I'm creeped out by the clothes cam, not because they want to put like a, a camera in your closet or whatever, but just the idea that it's all about trying to sell you more stuff.

• 35:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  Right? Who among us has not missed a delivery? Right?

• 36:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 36:00Speaker 01

  This is a real thing.

• 36:02Nilay Patel?

  Delivery right now.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  And if you miss a delivery, there's an, and, and you miss the next one. Now you've got to make like an hour trip to like go to the actual facility or you have to like get it resent to you. Like, it's like a big inconvenience and like this, this is definitely part of like that last mile of delivery. And I love, I, I really like how integrated Amazon is in the delivery of a lot of things because it seems it's really optimized. And just the influence of Amazon in the market is really optimized. Home delivery is so much better than it ever was and it, it keeps getting better. And this, this makes it even better. I, I'm totally into this.

• 36:43Speaker 01

  It also completely non-applicable to me because I live in an apartment building, which has a front door.

• 36:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  And then I have my own door.

• 36:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 36:53Speaker 01

  So.

• 36:53Nilay Patel?

  You gotta get smart locks everywhere.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  No use.

• 36:55Nilay Patel?

  And six cameras, two locks, let's get into it, Paul. Zigbee, that shit up. Yeah, I don't know. I, I, I think this is the line, but I think they're going to figure out how to do this. I think there's a reason they don't make the locks, right? There's a reason it's cameras and like, you can pair with a lock and let you in, but really we want you to have these cameras.

• 37:12Speaker 01

  Well, they sell with a lock as like a bundle.

• 37:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, because they're a store.

• 37:16Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 37:16Nilay Patel?

  But they, they're not making the lock.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:19Nilay Patel?

  Um, okay, so that's one thing. Then, uh, the new Echo came out, Dan reviewed it. I will say this, I reviewed the Fire TV the same day, the new 4K HDR Fire TV. And our expectation is like everyone will be really interested in the new Echo and no one would care about the Fire TV except me and my rowdy band of miscreants who love home theaters. Totally the other way around. The Echo, the Echo review was like, everyone was like, "Yeah, sure, it's a new one." It's got fabric. It's real nice. It looks very nice. It's very small. Yeah. Um, but it's an Echo. Doesn't have like new features. The feature is it's cheaper. Yeah, and smaller. Yeah. It's covers. It doesn't sound radically better. It's just an Echo. Yeah, the whole Dolby processing, this is a lie.

• 38:06Nilay Patel?

  It doesn't sound any better. And then every, like the Fire TV preview blew up because I think people are buying those. That product, massive disappointment. Yeah, just, so like it is- Were you expecting too much? I was expecting it to have content. How many lights did you get? Uh, zero. Zero lights? Zero. So there's two potential lights. Uh huh. Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos. No lights? Zero lights. Uh, so- I can't believe it. Come on, man. So they announced it right after the Apple TV reviews had hit, and they're like, "We got Atmos support." It's like, great. Everybody has it. Very simple. Uh, zero Atmos content available on Amazon.

• 38:48Nilay Patel?

  So it supports it, but you can't actually play anything back. I will say this, unlike Apple, which has to downmix surround, or decode surround into discrete channels and then so they can mix Siri's voice into it, Amazon has figured out how to mix Alexa into Dolby. So if they ever get Atmos, the blocker that Apple seems to be having, which is mixing Siri into the surround sound, doesn't seem to be there for them because they've already mixed Alexa into Dolby Digital Plus. Um, who knows? And then they're, they don't have deals with movie studios for 4K HDR movies, or at least not all the studios. So a bunch of, and Movies Anywhere exists, which is awesome and everyone should sign up for it.

• 39:31Nilay Patel?

  Um, so I bought, I own a bunch of 4K HDR movies from Vudu. They're synced over. They play in 4K HDR on the Apple TV and iTunes. It's great. It's like really cool. Amazon doesn't have those deals, so they just play back in 1080p. And there's no way to rerun them because Amazon doesn't have deals or rebuy them.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  So even though you you own the movie in whichever service, Movies Anywhere is this beautiful gateway.

• 39:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  But it's not a gateway that brings the literal file from one service to another.

• 39:59Nilay Patel?

  It's just a license.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  Depends on which service you're watching it through of which encoding you'll get.

• 40:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so I it's a I think the technology that Disney based it on is called Keychest.

• 40:09Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 40:09Nilay Patel?

  Uh, so I have like software keys to unlock streaming rights. I don't actually own bits.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 40:16Nilay Patel?

  So, yeah, so because Amazon, so Baby Driver is a good example. Um, Baby Driver, I own it in 4K HDR on Vudu, play it on iTunes. It just works, does its thing, plays HDR, Amazon 1080p.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  I I've never used, uh, spent much time.

• 40:36Nilay Patel?

  I think Wonder, it's Wonder Woman. I think Baby Driver, I don't can't confirm, but Wonder Woman definitely works on the Apple TV and and like Vudu.

• 40:43Speaker 01

  I I get the impression that like Amazon, the the I mostly interact with Amazon's content library just through a web browser. It's like my last resort. And it feels like the oldest part of their tech stack. It's like it's like looking at like a like a website from like 2005.

• 41:02Nilay Patel?

  So the Fire TV is beautiful. So in the in like the the spectrum of things, the Apple TV and the Fire TV are running mobile operating systems, right? So the Fire TV runs a fork of Android. It runs at 60 frames per second. Um, it's like beautiful. There's like swoopy animations. Apple TV is obviously running tvOS, very iOS, swoopy animations. And then like the other end of the spectrum is like, well, there's the Chromecast, which I just literally know UI. But one thing about that is like the Roku, which has like basically the most utilitarian interface. It's like Soviet.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 41:36Nilay Patel?

  Like you'd fire up a steam engine, it plays Netflix at you.

• 41:41Nilay Patel?

  And then like in the middle, you've got like the shield and other boxes, right? But the the Fire TV and the Apple TV clearly have the most like well thought out interface, which is why I was excited about the Fire TV.

• 41:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:51Nilay Patel?

  Cause it's like, it's got all the support of the things I want, but uh, no lights, not enough content. And like 70 bucks, for 70 bucks, you can get a Chromecast Ultra, and if you deal with it, you get both lights, two lights.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  Do you really just let it hang like this?

• 42:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  You just put that HDMI cable and just let it hang is so.

• 42:08Nilay Patel?

  So it's a, it's a huge box.

• 42:10Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 42:10Nilay Patel?

  It's like the biggest dangly streamer thing. So the Chromecast Ultra, the Chromecast started, they're like, we're just gonna let it hang off the side.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  Right, but it was like almost the size of a USB key at that time.

• 42:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and then they, they made it so it actually dangles, cause they found people, it was weird, right? You plug in the Mac TV, you can't get it back, so it's like better to let it hang. The Amazon, it's got a 1.5 gigahertz dual core processor, does 4K, it's got its own power supply, like it's big. And so I was like, guys, this is, I plugged it into the front port of my receiver, and I was like, I'm gonna break this HDMI jack, so I propped it up.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 42:43Nilay Patel?

  So I asked Amazon, and this is like heavy, did you test it? Is there a spec? And God bless them, they came back to me with the spec. The spec is amazing.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 42:53Nilay Patel?

  The HDMI spec.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  For.

• 42:57Nilay Patel?

  For the connector.

• 42:58Speaker 01

  For dangling?

• 42:58Nilay Patel?

  For dangling. Uh, the, the, the, the precise measurement is called a wrenching force.

• 43:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:04Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 43:05Nilay Patel?

  HDMI connectors need to have a wrenching force tolerance of 40 Newtons.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 43:10Nilay Patel?

  And the, the Fire TV, with its current weight, only exerts a wrenching force of one Newton.

• 43:17Speaker 01

  What?

• 43:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Wait, so you could, you could take, wait, I don't know if the math, is it scaling?

• 43:22Nilay Patel?

  You could take 40 of these.

• 43:23Speaker 01

  Cause you.

• 43:27Nilay Patel?

  But I asked, they told me.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  It would have to be in the exact same form factor, but 40 times heavier.

• 43:32Nilay Patel?

  You glue 40 of them together, and you plug one in, you break your TV.

• 43:36Speaker 02

  But there'd be more leverage, cause they'd be, it'd be more volume and the weight would be further out, and so it's more Newtons, so.

• 43:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you need it to be like a straight downward force.

• 43:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you need to link 40 of them in a chain, mount your TV to the ceiling.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  For science.

• 43:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I thought it was greater than they wouldn't look at it. All credit to them.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  Now, where do you look on the packaging to tell if you're HDMI receiver and here's to the 40 Newton standard?

• 43:59Nilay Patel?

  They're like, we also tested it with a bunch of TVs. All that said, it's huge and it's kind of heavy. And so you plug it in and you're like, I don't feel good about this.

• 44:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:07Nilay Patel?

  But it's only 1/40th of the regulation of Newtons. Which is great. I like, all credit to them. Like, most of our people are like, it's fine.

• 44:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:17Nilay Patel?

  They like went and did the research and they're like, we tested it in the spec. That's great.

• 44:21Speaker 01

  That was the best news I've heard all week.

• 44:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the wrenching force is well within the Newton range.

• 44:30Nilay Patel?

  All right, I'm gonna read one more ad. We're gonna come back, talk about some Apple stuff right before we, right before we get out of here.

• 44:37Nilay Patel?

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• 45:21Nilay Patel?

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• 46:04Nilay Patel?

  Dieter, midnight your time on the west coast. Correct. 3am our time. On the east coast. On the east coast. iPhone 10 pre-orders start. You doing it? No. Dieter?

• 46:18Speaker 02

  I haven't decided. Like, I'm probably gonna do it, cuz, I mean, it's me.

• 46:23Nilay Patel?

  And you'll be awake. I think it's, on the east coast, it's like, that's, now you're committed. At midnight, it's like, I'm up. Beep. You know?

• 46:32Speaker 02

  Dude, I go to bed at like 9:30. What are you talking about?

• 46:34Speaker 01

  (laughing) Wait. Stranger Things is coming out tomorrow.

• 46:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 46:39Speaker 01

  Friday.

• 46:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 46:40Speaker 01

  Mario's coming out tomorrow.

• 46:41Speaker 02

  Also Mario, yeah.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  I don't know, I feel like iPhones down that list.

• 46:46Nilay Patel?

  Really? It's third on the list.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 46:49Speaker 02

  I'm very excited for Mario.

• 46:50Speaker 01

  Probably not gonna do any of those three things.

• 46:52Nilay Patel?

  I'm definitely gonna watch Stranger Things, it's very exciting.

• 46:54Speaker 02

  I mean...

• 46:55Nilay Patel?

  I don't have a Switch. I should get one.

• 46:57Speaker 01

  I guess you gotta get a Switch.

• 46:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 46:59Speaker 02

  If nothing else, I wanna sit there and look at the color temperature and viewing angles on the iPhone 10 next to the Pixel 2 XL, just for days. I just wanna spend the rest of the year just looking at those two displays side by side and just pondering them. I wanna look at the notch. I wanna look at the notch, I wanna look at the viewing angles, I wanna like, look at the grit on one screen and the bunny ears on another screen.

• 47:26Speaker 01

  Oh, God.

• 47:26Speaker 02

  I wanna, I wanna, I wanna flip them over and I just wanna consider the camera bump.

• 47:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 47:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. The size of it on the iPhone 10 and the little ring on the Pixel.

• 47:37Speaker 01

  Sometimes you gotta think about the rounded corners, too.

• 47:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, you do, you gotta think about it. You gotta, you gotta look carefully, you gotta look at the edges of the screen and see if the round curves into the straight.

• 47:46Nilay Patel?

  I'm just gonna say this. It's a bad time for phones, right? I think, did I say this to you when we were taping Circuit Breaker? Cuz we were watching Dan's hands-on with the ZTE Axon M. And I was like, all of these flagship's like, compromised. I'm going ZTE Axon M. Two screens, a flip-over, and form a huge screen. None of it looks like it works right.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:09Nilay Patel?

  But at least like, at least for all of that, you get something wild.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  That's why I'm going with the 3310. It's just like, you know, stop trying your best. Give us something interesting.

• 48:21Nilay Patel?

  Start trying your worst.

• 48:24Speaker 02

  Do your worst.

• 48:25Nilay Patel?

  Do your weirdest. ZTX, I'm telling you, that's my, that's my next. This is my next, the ZTX on M. If you don't know what it is, you can go on our YouTube channel and like, look at it. It is an Android phone with a hinge. And like, it's a screen and then you flip it open and there's another screen. And it becomes a mediocre Android tablet. And that's just the best.

• 48:46Speaker 02

  Wait, there's, Neil, that was redundant.

• 48:51Speaker 02

  There's only one kind of Android tablet.

• 48:52Nilay Patel?

  Harsh, harsh.

• 48:55Nilay Patel?

  I've been thinking about buying an Android tablet, like, you know?

• 48:57Speaker 02

  Dude.

• 48:58Nilay Patel?

  Why?

• 48:59Speaker 02

  Do your worst. What would you buy?

• 49:01Nilay Patel?

  Well, cause I use the Chromecast and you can't Chromecast off an iPhone.

• 49:06Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 49:06Nilay Patel?

  So then you have to, I have to use the TV, you have to, I have to have my Android phone there. But if I'm not there, or I left my phone somewhere else.

• 49:15Speaker 02

  Wait, what do you want to Chromecast that your iPhone won't Chromecast?

• 49:18Nilay Patel?

  Like, almost anything. Like, there's tons of apps.

• 49:21Speaker 02

  I can Chromecast YouTube.

• 49:22Nilay Patel?

  You can Chromecast YouTube.

• 49:23Speaker 02

  Netflix.

• 49:24Nilay Patel?

  Chromecast?

• 49:24Speaker 02

  Netflix.

• 49:25Nilay Patel?

  Vudu.

• 49:27Speaker 02

  NFL Game Pass.

• 49:29Nilay Patel?

  I think Sunday Tickets, kinda wonky. There's just stuff.

• 49:33Speaker 02

  Uh, I think you can do, you can definitely do Sunday Ticket from an Android phone. I don't know about an iPhone.

• 49:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think it's, it's been wonky with my phone. Anyway.

• 49:41Speaker 02

  If you want to buy an Android tablet, the only answer is, uh, buy the cheapest one you can find because they're all bad.

• 49:47Nilay Patel?

  Or I could buy the ZTE X on M.

• 49:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:50Nilay Patel?

  And have a phone that is hopelessly compromised.

• 49:54Speaker 02

  What I, what I want you to do. I want you to buy the ZTE X on M and I want to be there with a video camera when you present it to your wife. That's it. Here's your new remote control.

• 50:06Nilay Patel?

  Here's our new TV remote. I've been using this Pixel. I'm in love with the Pixel. I'm in love with Oreo. The Pixel is fine, it's a piece of hardware, great camera. Oreo is great. It's very, like, yep, super whimsical and fun and there's like, I love opening the app drawer and watching a little arrow do, it's like, little arrow anime. It's all great. Becky hates not being on iMessage with me. Literally sends me texts, they're like, I hate this.

• 50:30Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 50:31Nilay Patel?

  Hates it. One of my friends yesterday was texting me and she's like, finally a good use for, uh, live photos. And I was like, I don't have an Android phone. And she just goes, oh, I assumed you were traveling. I didn't know you were one of those.

• 50:45Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 50:46Nilay Patel?

  Like brutal, brutal response. I'm like, I'm in friend jail.

• 50:49Speaker 02

  People can be so mean.

• 50:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 50:52Speaker 02

  Do you just want to reply be like, "The vast majority of humans on the planet use this phone."

• 50:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. But I can't. Oh, I had a bunch of friends over the house this last weekend, and I had the Pixel, and we were playing like dumb trivia games, and we kept asking Google Assistant, and it has all of the answers. Just, it's so much better than Siri, and like, everyone loves the camera. And I was like, "This phone's really fun, it's really smart, it's doing all this stuff, it's all the Google stuff." We love this phone, but we'll never talk to you again. Yeah, and everyone's like, "Oh, I love that phone." My buddy was like, "I'm, you know, I'm kind of sick of this iPhone, it's got a headphone, I'm into it." And I was like, "No iMessage," and all of them were like, "Mm, nah." Like, it ended the conversation. Every single one of them. What a world. What a world. Alright, we, by the way, forgot to talk about the iPhone.

• 51:40Nilay Patel?

  Because there was a big Bloomberg report count this week.

• 51:43Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, so Bloomberg reported that Apple basically told its manufacturers that it was okay to have a slightly worse, like, tolerance for the dot projector, I think it was, one of the parts of the Face ID. Um, and so, and then everyone was like, "Oh my God, does that mean it's gonna be bad?" Uh, and then, Apple didn't just deny it, but as Jager pointed out, they strenuously denied it, outright said it was false, uh, just a very strong no to that, to Bloomberg's story. No wiggle room at all there.

• 52:15Nilay Patel?

  So the, the story, the specific claim in the Bloomberg story was, "In order to produce as many Face ID 3D sensors as they needed, they dropped one of the spec requirements." Because there was a rumor before that, that that was one of the things that was holding up production. Right, so they, in order to get enough, they dropped a testing requirement, so that, and more things would pass the test. Apple says this is completely false. I will, I, just as a totally inside baseball note, by the way, we have some people on our staff who used to work at Bloomberg, people are pointing out that like, In the Bloomberg report, it quotes by name the Apple person who denied it. And I'm like, this must be a really big deal because Apple never says anything by name.

• 53:00Nilay Patel?

  Bloomberg's policy is to always name everyone. So that's not like Apple doing it. It's literally Bloomberg's house style is to never let anyone not be named. In that, in that particular way, like if you're a spokesperson, it's just a thing. I think it's really neat. I wish we did it more, but that's like the Bloomberg way.

• 53:16Speaker 01

  I just want them to ship this phone and see how people like it and see if they can have enough of it. But I, I, I feel like this phone, there's been so many rumors about this phone for so long. It just needs to come out and, and live or die on its own merits.

• 53:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Yeah. It's like they're, they've definitely hit the point now. Like this whole little hype cycle of theirs might've like backf- like people are gonna be looking now. Right? Whereas if they had it out, right? Like the people are gonna wanna tear this thing apart now in a way that might be unfair. Cause I think having just used it for the few minutes we've used it. Like Dieter set up his face with Face ID.

• 53:55Speaker 01

  It worked great.

• 53:56Nilay Patel?

  And it worked great. So like just in that moment, if you watch our hands-on video, like I was like giddy with excitement because the thing is like fun to hold.

• 54:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 54:04Nilay Patel?

  But I think they've set up this thing now where everyone's gonna be hyper-conscious of the fact that A, you can't get it, B, it's pretty expensive. Like, is it worth waiting? Is it worth the money? There's just not a lot of info. There's all this other, like, they're usually really, there's usually, there's usually, there's the notch. Are the apps gonna work with the notch? Like, they're usually really buttoned up with this and this one feels like they're, they're coming right up against the deadline.

• 54:30Speaker 02

  I also feel, uh, this is, this is some really, this is totally tangential, but, uh, I got a bunch of emails from a bunch of, uh, people who just happened to have written stories about how some of the iPhones have an Intel modem and some of them have a Qualcomm modem. And the Qualcomm modem is superior. So I think Qualcomm is trying to seed the story and like get themselves inserted into the conversation in their ongoing fight with Apple.

• 54:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Oh, God, yeah. Qualcomm, yeah. I've heard a lot about Qualcomm recently. Um. You know, there's like crack, the Wi-Fi issue, we had Russell on the show. Qualcomm supplies a lot of Wi-Fi chips in this world, like, a lot. And their response to crack has been like, nothing yet. Like, it's kind of like weird, right?

• 55:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, what is their role?

• 55:12Nilay Patel?

  Well, they, they, it's just like Qualcomm is this entity is like, exists and they want to be in this conversation, but like, they're not the consumer-facing brand, actually.

• 55:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 55:21Nilay Patel?

  And with Apple in this patent fight, they're trying to become one so that you, you know, you think highly of them in their patent fight with Apple.

• 55:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 55:29Nilay Patel?

  But they're not. And so if you, if you want to be that, then you have all these responsibilities and you don't want to take the responsibility. It's like, they're in a weird spot. A weird spot.

• 55:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, do they, do they want to be responsible?

• 55:41Nilay Patel?

  The cucumber story.

• 55:44Nilay Patel?

  Just putting it out there.

• 55:45Speaker 01

  It's true. They're in like every single, uh, every single, uh, Wi-Fi router.

• 55:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 55:52Speaker 01

  Like, basically, basically all of them.

• 55:54Nilay Patel?

  You know what I'm really happy about?

• 55:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:56Nilay Patel?

  That we haven't forgotten Paul's segment. Oh, God. Paul. Every week, my friend.

• 56:03Nilay Patel?

  Can I just say this? It's in the rundown. It is now in like 24-point bold, all caps, in our rundown that we work off of, and yet, we just blew by it.

• 56:13Speaker 01

  Here's the thing, and this all ties back to burn-in. Our brains are designed with basically burn-in in mind. You, you, your neurons adapt to patterns they see in the world, and then those patterns become less and less obvious. And, and, and so because of that, sometimes we don't notice anomalies. And so because this is formatted in this document as an anomaly,

• 56:41Speaker 01

  you scan right past. Anyways, water pods!

• 56:44Nilay Patel?

  Water pods.

• 56:45Speaker 01

  Water pods!

• 56:46Nilay Patel?

  I saw these today.

• 56:46Speaker 01

  We did it. We did it. These are mineral water pods from a company called Mitte, I think is how you say it. It's a German company, M-I-T-T-E. It's uh, it's great. Basically, it distills the water to get all the minerals out of the water and then it uses its mineral cartridges to put the right minerals back in. I don't understand what, I don't know. I, I, I'm pretty lucky. I live in New York. We have like the best tap water in the business. So I'm fine, but I don't know. Anyways, water pods.

• 57:25Nilay Patel?

  So they add the minerals to tap water?

• 57:27Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 57:28Nilay Patel?

  Well, they take the minerals out of tap water.

• 57:30Speaker 01

  First, you gotta distill the water, get all the minerals out, then use the proprietary pod with minerals in it to inject new minerals in.

• 57:37Nilay Patel?

  We're doomed.

• 57:39Speaker 01

  One cartridge should last for 400 liters.

• 57:42Nilay Patel?

  That's a lot of liters.

• 57:43Speaker 01

  It's about.

• 57:44Nilay Patel?

  It's 10 times as many Newtons of wrenching force.

• 57:47Speaker 01

  50 bucks, 50 bucks for a cartridge, about $328 for the machine, Kickstarter.

• 57:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Go ahead and spend your money on that.

• 57:56Speaker 01

  Water pods.

• 57:57Nilay Patel?

  Water pods. We got a pitch. Are they the company that's like the first truly healthy water? We definitely got a pitch. I emailed it to some, I think I emailed it to our science team and the, the subject line of the email I got was X company. I don't remember, but I, what I remember is that the subject line was the world's first truly healthy water, which struck me as being a bit of a bold claim.

• 58:21Speaker 01

  They definitely say, create your own mineral water, just like nature.

• 58:25Nilay Patel?

  Cool. So let fish pee in it. All right. I think on that extremely depressing note, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna set an alarm for like 2:45 AM.

• 58:42Speaker 01

  And you take a pre-order nap?

• 58:43Nilay Patel?

  Take a pre-order nap. I'm gonna wake up and I'm gonna start clicking. You know the worst part of that this is?

• 58:48Speaker 01

  You're doing it?

• 58:49Nilay Patel?

  I'm, I have to do it. I'm gonna do it. Why not?

• 58:53Speaker 01

  But do you wanna do it?

• 58:54Nilay Patel?

  I don't wanna do it.

• 58:55Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 58:56Nilay Patel?

  But I have to. I wanna just be a part of the club. The worst part of this is I have to order mine from AT&T. So, uh, next.

• 59:01Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 59:02Nilay Patel?

  And it's just not gonna work. Like.

• 59:04Speaker 01

  You told me you was gonna spend your AT&T next.

• 59:07Nilay Patel?

  On the ZTE Axon M.

• 59:09Speaker 01

  Which is a AT&T phone. Are you going back on that?

• 59:13Nilay Patel?

  Wait. Should I spend my next allowance on the Axon M and then buy a $1,000 phone in cash?

• 59:22Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. What would a, what would a true ship captain do? Okay.

• 59:28Speaker 02

  Damn it, Paul.

• 59:30Nilay Patel?

  As, as captain, I'll make my decision known. The captain will retire to his quarters. Yeah, please update us. All right, that is our show. Tweet at us if you are pre-ordering this phone. If you're pre-ordering the iPhone X, I'd like to hear from you. Just help us get through your thinking. I'm at reckless, Dieter's at back lawn, Paul's at future Paul. Uh, there's all kinds of stuff to listen to if you're tired of this show and it's our nonsense. Although I will tell you, this is the only, I am confident this is the only podcast available in the world this week that discussed Newton's of wrenching force. I am making that claim and I completely stand by it.

• 1:00:10Nilay Patel?

  No other podcast at all produced this week mentioned Newton's of wrenching force. If you find one that did, you can tweet it at us, but I know you won't. We'll issue you a correction. I will issue you a correction next week, but I'm almost 100% certain.

• 1:00:24Speaker 02

  It has to specifically be about HDMI.

• 1:00:27Nilay Patel?

  No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, I'm, I opened the gates, man. Any podcast that men, mentions Newton's of wrenching force in any context. Uh, there's a civil engineering podcast out there, a podcast that's just about screws. Yeah. That'd be great. If there's a podcast just about screws, tweet at me and let me know about that. That'd be wonderful. They're like Phillips, regular, Torx is the best screw, I think. Um, anyway, other stuff to listen to that isn't this nonsense. Uh, again, I cannot stress enough how great Why'd You Push That Button is available everywhere. Caitlin Ashley, great. Our producer, Andrew, who is wonderful at producing this show, has to put up with this. Does a great job of producing that show. Uh, Lauren Good, who's on our show all the time, has a great podcast, Kara Swisher. Too Embarrassed to Ask.

• 1:01:10Nilay Patel?

  Kara Swisher herself does Recode Decode, which is wonderful. And then Peter Kafka does Recode Media. If you're a media nerd, must listen. All that's available everywhere. Our frenemy Ezra Klein, I know what he does. Don't listen to him. He's out there too. Oh, I forgot to say at the top of the show, we're part of the Vox Podcast Network. I was so excited to talk about Screen Burning with Dieter. Uh, by the way, Vox also launched an amazing podcast with Sarah Clift called The Impact, which is all about health policy. That was number one trending in all podcasts in iTunes. A nerdy show about healthcare policy. That's great. It says something about us as a people, which is that what we care about is wrenching force.

• 1:01:51Nilay Patel?

  Nation of nerds, I love it. Uh, that is the Vergecast, thank you so much for listening. We'll be back next week. It's gonna be a wild one. Cause the people are gonna get their phones on the third. So we should presumably know more about the phones. Someone's gonna know something. Wonder how much wrenching force?

• 1:02:08Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna stop it. Goodbye, rock and roll. Paul. Promo code.