Why is Offline So Hard

How do you augment reality? With music? With the Microsoft HoloLens? With insane superhero Avengers mythology? Yes, yes, and yes. All those topics and more in this week's podcast. 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.

• 0:05Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast for the week of May 4th. This is The Vergecast, the show that you are listening to right now at home, or in your ears.

• 0:14Speaker 01

  We are. Or we are on your monitor.

• 0:16Nilay Patel?

  I am Neelai Patel, that person that is talking. It's Tom Warren, who has come to us from London.

• 0:22Speaker 01

  A faraway planet.

• 0:24Nilay Patel?

  A faraway planet. To my right, seated directly to my right, is Dieter Boen. Hello. And seated directly to my front

• 0:34Nilay Patel?

  is the hype man himself. Maybe not directly to your front.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  Hello.

• 0:37Nilay Patel?

  Seated off axis. A ways off. 10 degrees to my front.

• 0:41Speaker 02

  Hey.

• 0:41Nilay Patel?

  Sammy in the hype desk.

• 0:43Speaker 02

  Hey.

• 0:44Nilay Patel?

  Uh, no, I feel like this has been a loose show. It's been like a fun week. It's been like a lot of stuff happening.

• 0:48Speaker 02

  It's warm outside.

• 0:48Nilay Patel?

  It's warm outside.

• 0:50Speaker 02

  It's great.

• 0:50Nilay Patel?

  Uh, they, they, they, uh, they fixed some like weird RSS issues we, that we even have in. So like our traffic is up. I gotta say. Idris Elba broke a land speed record in a Bentley. Yeah, James Bond went really fast in a car. Although.

• 1:04Speaker 01

  There's drones going really fast.

• 1:06Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah. Said he, she shouldn't be James Bond. Well, he should be, but he should also be Buckaroo Banzai. Ooh. Remake Buckaroo Banzai with him. You're on a real string lately of wanting to bring old things back. Yeah. I saw you last time. Last night. Everyone was real mad at me last night. About Polly Pocket? Yeah, Polly Pocket's awesome. I don't know, man. I don't, I don't know. But, uh, and then just in general, a big week. We've been breaking news on the site. Yeah. Micah Singleton, we've been basically flying him into New York like every other day. Cause he's got a new hot music news. We'll, we'll talk about that too, but Micah's been hard on the music beat. We were gonna have him on the show today, but he's out. He's out in the city. Getting, getting scoops.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  Getting the beats.

• 1:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Getting the beats. Well, no, he's not getting beats.

• 1:47Speaker 01

  He's not getting beats. He's giving other people beats.

• 1:49Nilay Patel?

  All the people who won't talk to Micah right now, the Beats people are not, not having a good mic. But we'll, we'll get into that. But, uh, and then, and then like just generally, it's like summer. Yeah. It's finally nice. This is a, I don't know if you guys follow the lunar calendar like I do, but this is the first official Vergecast of the summer. The longest. It's not. Sam's, Sam's looking at me like he just doesn't want that joke to happen.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  No, it's not the summer yet.

• 2:11Nilay Patel?

  It is.

• 2:12Speaker 02

  No, summer starts June 21st.

• 2:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. What is this period?

• 2:16Speaker 01

  This is spring.

• 2:17Nilay Patel?

  This is spring?

• 2:18Speaker 01

  What is this period?

• 2:20Nilay Patel?

  No, this is like a cool, like a, like a pre-summer. It's like summer in beta.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  This is how hot it gets in London. This is the max.

• 2:26Nilay Patel?

  This is the max? It's like 80 degrees in New York.

• 2:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's about as hot as it gets in the summer.

• 2:31Nilay Patel?

  But it's always raining in London.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  Not always, but yeah.

• 2:34Nilay Patel?

  There's also far. What is Harry Potter wear in the summer?

• 2:39Speaker 01

  Just the same, all around. He's all good.

• 2:41Nilay Patel?

  He's just, he just magics himself cool.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  Just flies around, keeps cool.

• 2:44Nilay Patel?

  Do you hang out with Hermione on a regular basis?

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Yes, cause something, Friday night, Saturday.

• 2:49Nilay Patel?

  That's my new question for all English people. Can you, do you have Hermione's phone number?

• 2:55Speaker 01

  Oh, boy. No.

• 2:56Nilay Patel?

  No, Hermione the character. I'm like, I'm not even, like Emma Watson's cool. Like, that's great. I'm sure she's lovely, but.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  The character.

• 3:03Nilay Patel?

  Hermione, it's, for me, it's actually Hermione. Like, straight up. I'm, Sam.

• 3:08Speaker 01

  No, I just, I haven't seen Harry Potter movies, so I can't really.

• 3:11Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying, you've never seen a Harry Potter movie?

• 3:14Speaker 01

  I've seen the first one.

• 3:15Speaker 03

  I'll try to.

• 3:15Nilay Patel?

  I feel like if we're gonna talk about movies, we had to talk about Avengers, but no one else in this room has seen.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  I haven't, I'm.

• 3:19Speaker 03

  Age of Ultron? No. But it is like, the fatigue is real.

• 3:27Nilay Patel?

  We have two posts on the site today, um, both massively popular.

• 3:32Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 3:32Nilay Patel?

  Like, some of the most popular stuff we've written in a long time. Um, one is explaining the Infinity Gauntlet.

• 3:40Speaker 03

  Right.

• 3:40Nilay Patel?

  Okay, uh, and Infinity.

• 3:42Speaker 03

  No, but actually, like, this is, this is relevant.

• 3:45Nilay Patel?

  Sure.

• 3:46Speaker 03

  Why this is important.

• 3:46Nilay Patel?

  It's not relevant.

• 3:47Speaker 03

  No, it's relevant to, like, the Marvel Universe is so complicated, a thing explaining, like, the basic, like, plot device of every single movie now, people desperately need it.

• 3:59Nilay Patel?

  Right, and then, so this is the other post. So Ross wrote the like, uh, what the hell's going on? Yeah, what the hell, here, what are these rocks, basically? Um, what are these rocks?

• 4:10Speaker 03

  Verge News, explain the rock.

• 4:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and then Brian wrote one that, you know, Brian's a great reporter. It's well done. It's like well-written. But if you broke down Brian's post, it's like fundamental atomic unit of what it is. It's just a list of characters that will be in the next movie.

• 4:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:29Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, and I say this not like, I love Brian and he it tremendous work, but like, I'm reading this. I'm like this fundamentally. One of the most popular posts on The Verge in a long while.

• 4:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:41Nilay Patel?

  Is just a list.

• 4:43Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 4:44Nilay Patel?

  For, I'm just gonna read the list.

• 4:45Speaker 03

  It's a list with an angle.

• 4:46Nilay Patel?

  Here's a, yeah, it's a list, a list with an angle and really isn't that journalism?

• 4:52Nilay Patel?

  It's a Captain America Civil War. We'll have Iron Man, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Falcon, War Machine, The Vision, Scarlet Witch.

• 4:59Speaker 03

  Ant-Man.

• 5:01Nilay Patel?

  No, there's more.

• 5:01Speaker 03

  Black Panther, Agent 13, Crossbones, General Thunderbolt Ross, Daniel Brule. Is playing somebody and so is Martin Freeman.

• 5:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I'm just like, are we?

• 5:16Nilay Patel?

  Okay, let me say some things and they're both gonna be controversial and I'm sure the people in our forums will start lengthy threads about how I should not talk about things I don't know about. But here's what, here's what I know.

• 5:25Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 5:26Speaker 02

  Oh, here we go.

• 5:26Nilay Patel?

  Avengers 2 is bad. It is bad.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  Age of Ultron.

• 5:30Nilay Patel?

  Age of Ultron. Isn't it called Avengers 2?

• 5:32Speaker 02

  No, it's called Avengers Age of Ultron.

• 5:35Nilay Patel?

  I mean, is there a world in which it is not the second Avengers movie?

• 5:38Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, every other movie in between the Avengers and this movie was also an Avengers movie.

• 5:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, but yes, the sequel to, the sequel to Avengers.

• 5:48Nilay Patel?

  That sound you hear is me flipping a table.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  Yes, Neil, yes.

• 5:52Nilay Patel?

  It is the sequel to Avengers.

• 5:53Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 5:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. If somebody starts a pedantic forum thread where they're like, it's not called Avengers 2. You don't know any.

• 6:00Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 6:01Nilay Patel?

  That sound you hear is me flipping a table.

• 6:03Speaker 03

  So here's the secret.

• 6:04Nilay Patel?

  It's a bad movie.

• 6:05Speaker 03

  Visit a website, webpage, look at the actual URL and you'll often see like the author's true thoughts. And the URL for this post that Brian wrote is Captain America Civil War Avengers Marvel Ant-Man. Burnout.

• 6:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 6:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:21Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying, like, we're at a place. So Avengers two, like, it it it struggles under the weight of all of the things it has to do.

• 6:28Speaker 03

  Right. It's like the worst action movie.

• 6:29Speaker 02

  Didn't it make a lot of money?

• 6:31Nilay Patel?

  It didn't make as much money as the first Avengers, and it didn't make as much money, I think, as Guardians of the Galaxy. Like, there, I've seen a couple, like, opening weekend not as big as.

• 6:40Speaker 03

  Right.

• 6:41Nilay Patel?

  Definitely not as big as Guardians.

• 6:42Speaker 03

  You know what it did make? That was a lot of money.

• 6:45Nilay Patel?

  Of course it made a lot of money. But like, there, I think we're just at the point where, like, that movie is good, and and it's it's like entertaining. Like, I went to the theater, I ate the popcorn.

• 6:56Speaker 03

  Oh, so you've seen it?

• 6:57Nilay Patel?

  I've seen it. It's great.

• 6:59Speaker 03

  But you said it was bad.

• 6:59Nilay Patel?

  It's bad.

• 7:00Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 7:01Nilay Patel?

  Like, it's it's great in the sense that, like, I had an experience, and that experience.

• 7:04Speaker 03

  Right.

• 7:05Nilay Patel?

  Didn't harm me.

• 7:08Speaker 03

  That's that's my bar for great. Was I physically or emotionally injured? Oh, no, it's great.

• 7:14Nilay Patel?

  But that's where we've gotten to with Marvel crap.

• 7:17Speaker 03

  Right.

• 7:17Nilay Patel?

  Right? It's like, this movie entertained me. And it's it's just, everyone's so thirsty for, like, comic book stuff to happen, that that's that's the bar.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  Unless you're really into it, and you follow every little thing, it's just, it's gonna entertain you.

• 7:31Nilay Patel?

  It's like, it's literally a wall of noise, and then at some point, like, Thor is like, I'm in a, I'm in a puddle. Like, I'm not even kidding. At one point, Thor is like, I've gotta go to the puddle. And then he's like, in the puddle, and like, lightning hits the puddle. He's like, I get it now.

• 7:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:44Nilay Patel?

  And it's like, what the hell just happened here? Like, I'm not a huge comics nerd, and I get that there's 15 movies that you have to set up.

• 7:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:51Nilay Patel?

  But this is dumb.

• 7:52Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:53Nilay Patel?

  Right?

• 7:54Speaker 03

  No one disagrees with you.

• 7:55Nilay Patel?

  Nah.

• 7:55Speaker 03

  No, but so the question is, how long can they maintain this?

• 7:59Speaker 02

  Years.

• 8:00Nilay Patel?

  No, so here's my theory.

• 8:01Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 8:02Nilay Patel?

  No. Well, of course, I mean, of course, they've got the whole universe happening.

• 8:05Speaker 02

  Look at, look at Fast and Furious, look at Harry Potter, look at Star Wars.

• 8:10Speaker 03

  Fast and Furious, eh, has a limited character set.

• 8:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's fine.

• 8:15Speaker 03

  Eh, and.

• 8:16Nilay Patel?

  Wait, wait, that's not entirely true.

• 8:18Speaker 03

  Eh, it's like.

• 8:18Nilay Patel?

  Fast and Furious, like, literally is like, but here's a new member of the family that.

• 8:22Speaker 03

  Dom's.

• 8:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 8:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, like, cool.

• 8:24Nilay Patel?

  Dom's like, we went, we got down in El Salvador that one time. It's like, when?

• 8:28Speaker 03

  No, no.

• 8:28Nilay Patel?

  But it's literally documented every year of your life, and it's one per movie.

• 8:33Speaker 03

  It's one per movie.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  I I just, I think that the. The road for comic book success is unlimited.

• 8:40Nilay Patel?

  No, so I disagree.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  Have you seen the X-Men movies before they rebooted it?

• 8:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Right, no, I think this is happening. I think we're about to hit a crash. Like, I think what, I think all these Marvel, it's getting too complicated. And they're about to have to like really do aliens because that's the whole Infinity Gauntlet thing.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:59Nilay Patel?

  Right, like the murder gorilla Thanos is gonna show up.

• 9:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:04Nilay Patel?

  I called him the murder gorilla today. Cause Josh rolling in his bag. Anyway, like he's gotta show up. Uh, and that's like, you're gonna just lose people. You're, you're gonna run into the Superman problem, which is like, your fun movie about like superheroes is gonna turn into an alien movie. And that is like the end of, that's the end of good stuff for you.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  Eh, I don't know.

• 9:25Nilay Patel?

  That's why, let's say Iron Man was good. The first Iron Man movie I think is my favorite of all these Marvel movies. Because there's like, it's a very much a comic book movie. It's very crazy.

• 9:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:33Nilay Patel?

  But it has like, uh, it has a scope.

• 9:36Speaker 02

  It's like contained.

• 9:37Nilay Patel?

  Like here's the world it exists in.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:39Nilay Patel?

  And now suddenly that world has expanded all the way to like, there's a blue monkey with a glove and he's gonna fuck you up. And it's like, I don't, I'm just not, I'm not going there with you. I, like, we're making up African countries now. Like, what are we, can we, can we just pull it back?

• 9:55Speaker 02

  I just think that they'll make these.

• 9:56Speaker 03

  I mean, they made a planet, so.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  They'll make, they'll make these movies and people are gonna see them. Cause comic book.

• 10:01Nilay Patel?

  That's what, that's what I'm saying. It was great. The Avengers 2, Avengers, whatever.

• 10:07Speaker 02

  Age of Ultron.

• 10:07Nilay Patel?

  Avengers colon some words was great because it caused me no actual harm. That's what, that's what they're gonna make these movies and people are gonna see them are. It's like Daredevil. Like Daredevil is fine. It's a fine show.

• 10:22Speaker 03

  I, I'm afraid to commit to it, but I just don't want another.

• 10:24Nilay Patel?

  You know what's really bad? Like much of the acting in Daredevil.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:28Nilay Patel?

  Like, much of the story is like, here's a guy who beats the crap. It's like Dick Cheney's Adventure Time. Like, how do I get information with torture? Mostly with torture. I mostly torture people and it's structured like a video game. Right? There's like, have you guys seen?

• 10:44Speaker 02

  I haven't seen one episode, no.

• 10:46Nilay Patel?

  So it just, I'm not even remotely giving anything away by saying this. It is structured like a video game. And at the end, there's like a boss battle. Right? Like, do you know what I mean? Like, there's like an escalating series of torturing. And then at the end, there's like the most torture that he can do. And it's just like, what? Like, is that all that we want out of these shows?

• 11:07Speaker 02

  Look.

• 11:08Speaker 03

  Also, like, dude banging the table, you're real mad.

• 11:10Nilay Patel?

  I'm tired of comic books. Like, I think I have total comic book burnout. Like, I don't, I don't think that understanding the biggest movies, like, at the cinema right now should require, like, reading, like, endless Wikipedia pages.

• 11:27Speaker 02

  I hear that.

• 11:28Nilay Patel?

  Someone's outfit in 1961.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  I couldn't go to the movies and just see Age Voltron.

• 11:34Nilay Patel?

  I would need to see.

• 11:35Speaker 03

  You just, like, not have a good time.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  Yes, I could. In theory, I could, yes, but I would have no idea what's happening. And that's fine, but I just.

• 11:43Speaker 03

  Me with the Entourage movie.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  I think, I think the cult, the cult is, is only getting stronger. The, the, the comic book cult, especially in 2015 with, they're just making so many movies and there's so much, there's so much to consume and they know people will consume it.

• 11:58Nilay Patel?

  Right, but like, the stakes of all these movies, the, the, it, like Batman versus Superman. Right? It's gonna come out and I'm gonna watch the hell out of that.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's gonna be dope.

• 12:07Nilay Patel?

  And hopefully Superman dies at the end. That's my personal belief.

• 12:10Speaker 02

  Ouch.

• 12:11Nilay Patel?

  I hate Superman. Screw that guy. But like, there's no stakes. There can, there can never be any stakes that are appropriate to, like, these characters, right?

• 12:20Speaker 02

  Right, yeah.

• 12:21Nilay Patel?

  Here's a guy who's really fast and here's like, the guy who's an indestructible.

• 12:26Speaker 03

  I mean, I suppose the, the ironic thing is, that was the whole appeal of Marvel in the first place is they actually added stakes. That's like why Spider-Man, it matters. Because he wasn't just like, a superhero that you couldn't relate to. He was like, a awkward, gangly teenager.

• 12:42Speaker 02

  Right.

• 12:42Speaker 03

  Right?

• 12:42Speaker 02

  The normal guys who turn into superheroes.

• 12:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. So.

• 12:46Nilay Patel?

  I mean, they all have like, basically, they all have villain problems. Like, right, like, the like, Ultron is like, they don't do a good job of making him a great villain.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 12:57Nilay Patel?

  You gotta see it, but you'll see, like.

• 12:58Speaker 02

  You seen the movie?

• 12:59Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 13:00Speaker 02

  You saw it?

• 13:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 13:01Speaker 03

  Where you been?

• 13:02Speaker 02

  And you saw the first one?

• 13:03Nilay Patel?

  I don't want to like harsh on it too much because I want everybody's.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  You see the first one too also or no?

• 13:07Nilay Patel?

  Of course, I saw the first one.

• 13:08Speaker 03

  So, okay, is a solution to the burnout?

• 13:10Nilay Patel?

  Big sigh.

• 13:11Speaker 03

  That we stop going to these movies?

• 13:12Speaker 02

  I feel like, I feel like there's, there are people that can experience these movies and just have fun and have joy with this. We like scrutinize them to death, you know? They're gonna keep making Marvel movies and people are gonna watch the F out of them. Like, that's the reality of the situation.

• 13:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but we, don't we have some like, I mean, we run a, a cultural website, right?

• 13:31Speaker 02

  No, it's fine.

• 13:32Nilay Patel?

  We care about art and culture and like, the idea that this level of, of, of, frankly, like, medium good storytelling passes for the most popular stuff that we have.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I see what you're saying there.

• 13:43Nilay Patel?

  It's like, it's, it's not good, like, here's, here's, if you're writing a story about the most technologically advanced people in the universe, and like, a high-end robot guy who wants to kill the world, like, maybe your character shouldn't say things like, "He's escaped onto the net." Don't do that. Like, you've blown it, like, you, you automatically, like, you've lost some points about, like, how well you're gonna tell these stories.

• 14:10Speaker 03

  Oh, that is a thing with the singularity is you don't want to let the computer escape onto the.

• 14:15Nilay Patel?

  Under the net?

• 14:16Speaker 03

  Yeah. The internet.

• 14:18Nilay Patel?

  At one point, one of the characters is like, "Oh, don't worry, we burned him off the net." Like, and not, it's not even a spoiler. It's not, it's not even remotely a spoiler, it's like, it's a Marvel movie, so like.

• 14:28Speaker 03

  It's a deep commentary on what they believe the nature of AI is gonna be though, that it's possible to burn it off the net.

• 14:33Nilay Patel?

  It's like, oh, like, there was a problem in the Marvel, that it could solve two minutes later because Thor has to jump in his fucking puddle.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  I think, I think they're gonna, they're gonna continue blast them out for years.

• 14:45Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah. Just like comedy books. This whole thing, and people are gonna hate me for this, I'm telling you right now, people are getting real mad at me for this.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  They'll, they'll be popular in like five years.

• 14:52Nilay Patel?

  That's why we should start talking about Microsoft.

• 14:56Nilay Patel?

  There's a, you know, there's a thread in the forums right now talking about how

• 14:59Speaker 01

  I know, you've been a bad man.

• 15:00Nilay Patel?

  How badly you and I are, or how badly you and I bungled the Microsoft conversation.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  No, you and TC were in that, I think.

• 15:06Nilay Patel?

  It was me and TC and Sam.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  And Sam.

• 15:08Nilay Patel?

  Sam, you apparently are able to hold a Surface in your hands.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  I have come to

• 15:12Nilay Patel?

  And not even say what it is.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  Rectify this situation.

• 15:14Nilay Patel?

  Tom's here to fix it.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  I've flown in an airplane across the world.

• 15:17Nilay Patel?

  But he's gotta do it with an English accent.

• 15:19Speaker 02

  Was it in Meta or was it in, I wanna find this thread.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  It was in probably the Tribe.

• 15:23Nilay Patel?

  In the Tribe. Man, remember naming these things?

• 15:26Speaker 03

  Microsoft Tribe.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  Do you?

• 15:28Nilay Patel?

  Microsoft Surf.

• 15:29Speaker 03

  Microsoft Surf.

• 15:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Yeah, it's old school.

• 15:32Speaker 01

  Back in the day.

• 15:33Nilay Patel?

  Back in the, in the day when naming was correct.

• 15:36Speaker 03

  You wanna, you wanna talk, you wanna talk, you wanna talk Microsoft or you wanna make some money? Or you wanna talk Tesla? So many, so many options.

• 15:42Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, we'll, we'll, we'll save the cash for the, through a little bit. We'll do one more and then we'll do an ad. Uh, I don't know, Tom, you're here. Let's get into Mike. We, we waited last week until the very end of Microsoft. Let's do Microsoft now, then we'll do the ad.

• 15:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:56Nilay Patel?

  Uh, then we'll do Tesla and then we'll, we'll talk about Apple and, uh, some other stuff. All right, Tom.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  What are we getting?

• 16:02Nilay Patel?

  So here, let me ask you this question. I'm basically just gonna interview you.

• 16:04Speaker 03

  You were at Build.

• 16:05Nilay Patel?

  And you have to, and you have to answer every question in an American accent.

• 16:10Speaker 01

  All right, so, wow, I'm gonna do my American accent.

• 16:12Nilay Patel?

  I'm always ready for it.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  This is the last time I'm gonna do it.

• 16:14Nilay Patel?

  That's definitely not the last time.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  And it comes from American Tail.

• 16:19Nilay Patel?

  Oh, this is your Fivel accent.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  This is my American accent.

• 16:23Nilay Patel?

  All right.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  Hello, I'm an editor in American News. That's my American accent.

• 16:28Nilay Patel?

  That, I don't know what that was.

• 16:30Speaker 02

  Tom, Tom is a, a, Tom is a secret voice actor.

• 16:35Nilay Patel?

  What just happened?

• 16:36Speaker 01

  That is my American voice.

• 16:38Nilay Patel?

  Is it?

• 16:38Speaker 03

  Is that, that we all, is that what we all sound like to you?

• 16:40Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 16:41Nilay Patel?

  Okay. Well, you two started before we started the show, these two are doing duck impressions.

• 16:45Speaker 03

  That's true.

• 16:45Nilay Patel?

  All right, we're not doing it again.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  Do it, do it.

• 16:48Nilay Patel?

  So, so Tom.

• 16:49Speaker 03

  Tom.

• 16:50Nilay Patel?

  Tom.

• 16:51Speaker 03

  I was actually doing, I was doing Donald impressions, not duck impressions.

• 16:54Nilay Patel?

  Donald Duck.

• 16:55Speaker 03

  Can somebody give me a picture?

• 16:59Nilay Patel?

  Who wants to drink a bunch and continue railing about Marvel movies? No, so you were at Build.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:04Nilay Patel?

  You were there.

• 17:05Speaker 01

  I was there last week.

• 17:06Nilay Patel?

  Where they showed Avengers: Age of Ultron.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  They did.

• 17:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:08Nilay Patel?

  Do they?

• 17:09Speaker 01

  I should have gone.

• 17:10Nilay Patel?

  Do they use Windows 10 to burn the Scourge off the net?

• 17:13Speaker 01

  No.

• 17:14Nilay Patel?

  So here, I mean, I'm just gonna ask you a bunch of questions. And the first one is what the people on the tribe think we got wrong. And I know what-

• 17:21Speaker 01

  Was that the, that was about Android and iOS?

• 17:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so I know, I know what TC was trying to say, right?

• 17:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, he was, he was being metaphoric.

• 17:27Nilay Patel?

  But he very pedantically TC, or TC said, it sounds like they're just building emulators for everything.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:33Nilay Patel?

  And very pedantically, people said, it's not emulation. So Windows 10 is going to be able to somehow do something with Android and iOS applications.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, so-

• 17:43Nilay Patel?

  What, what are the things?

• 17:45Speaker 01

  It will effectively run Android apps natively, because it has its own Android subsystem running on the phone.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  But in reality, developers will have to get their app and sort of tweak it and, because you can't just take-

• 17:58Nilay Patel?

  It sounds like the BlackBerry thing.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  It's not quite, because the BlackBerry thing was emulation. So it wasn't native code running on a device. You couldn't just bring your code across and, and package it into-

• 18:08Speaker 03

  I can tell you what it is, but you're gonna hate me.

• 18:11Nilay Patel?

  Go ahead.

• 18:12Speaker 03

  It's like the WebOS thing.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's more like-

• 18:15Speaker 03

  No, it's actually exactly because when WebOS first introduced 3D games, they basically were like, here, do this. It's called the Game Developer Kit.

• 18:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:22Speaker 03

  And all it was, was just ports of iOS games. They just like tweaked three things and ran them on the, the pre. And that's, that's what they're doing, is you, you'll take your code, and instead of using all the Apple hooks, you'll like just swap them over for the Microsoft hooks. And Microsoft's kit will help you do that, and you don't have to rewrite a whole bunch of stuff. So it's really good, good for games, but the question is, will they have enough like hooks and ecosystems and copying what Apple's got on the iPhone around it to support them? And then two, you know, will it work beyond a relatively limited set of things that like, basically don't need to know that the rest of the phone exists, right? Like, a game doesn't need to know the rest of the phone exists, other than like talking to Game Center.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  Games should be theoretically the more easy option to port.

• 19:07Nilay Patel?

  But so Microsoft-

• 19:08Speaker 03

  It's going further than WebOS did because they're doing other stuff with the UI, right? Like the other apps will be easier to port.

• 19:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, so they built their own sort of versions of Apple's, was there a UI kit?

• 19:19Nilay Patel?

  I think it's UI kit.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  Is it a UI kit? Something like that. They built effectively their own, actually they didn't build anything. Let's make that clear on the Apple side.

• 19:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  Microsoft bought rather than built.

• 19:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  So they bought in a company that used to, the guys that co-founded the company used to work at RIM, at BlackBerry.

• 19:38Speaker 03

  So it is the BlackBerry thing.

• 19:40Speaker 01

  So they kind of pitched the idea of iOS apps running on BlackBerry natively. Back in like, I don't know, like two, three years ago, maybe even longer than that. They pitched it to Samsung, a bunch of different companies, and obviously Microsoft's gone and acquired them. And effectively, I think that's the more exciting announcement out of the two, actually, because the Android stuff is only for the phones. Whereas the iOS stuff will bring all of your Objective C code and then effectively run it natively. You have to do some UI stuff on top and obviously all that sort of stuff. But effectively you'd be able to take your Objective C code and then run it on Windows 10.

• 20:16Speaker 03

  Is this a good idea? Essentially doing the same thing with Android apps?

• 20:19Nilay Patel?

  No, Android apps, it's like there's an Android phone sitting there.

• 20:22Speaker 03

  Oh, so that's like the BlackBerry?

• 20:25Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 20:25Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 20:25Nilay Patel?

  That's what I meant.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  Well, kind of. They're both very similar, but the Android apps, it's not emulating the app.

• 20:32Nilay Patel?

  It's just running the app on Android.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  It's running the app on.

• 20:33Speaker 03

  That's how BlackBerry works.

• 20:35Nilay Patel?

  That's how BlackBerry worked.

• 20:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess.

• 20:37Nilay Patel?

  It's the best of BlackBerry and WebOS.

• 20:39Speaker 03

  I mean, basically.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:40Nilay Patel?

  All right, this is a good idea.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  I think the iOS.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  The iOS stuff is more interesting because that stuff is across the whole spectrum, not just on the phone. So you could get an iPad app, of course, you could get, you know, that iPad app that people were developing could then scale up to a TV. I think all of it's interesting, but it's curious in that they can have to keep up with all the APIs and all the changes. And especially on the Apple side, Apple developers change things quite rapidly with updates anyway. And Apple changes their API set quite a lot as well. And obviously you can, you can. Um, right to older versions of iOS because not everyone upgrades straight away. But um, it's still Microsoft have to keep on top of that pretty quickly.

• 21:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  It'll be interesting. Um.

• 21:25Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, yeah, they had this problem with Windows, uh, Windows Phone seven, Windows Phone eight. Like they would get like the apps and then they would just fly out.

• 21:33Nilay Patel?

  So what's the vibe at Build? Are people excited about this? Like it seems like.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  I think people that well, in the crowd, people were way more excited about the mention of iOS um than Android. I think that probably stems from the fact that most developers still create an iOS app first and then port it to Android or think about Android second. That still kind of happens um, rather than being like fully native on both. So yeah, I think that's, that's kind of the exciting thing.

• 21:57Speaker 03

  Right.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  Uh, we're still sort of talking to developers and sort of figuring out, you know, will this make a difference?

• 22:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  Um, so I guess the vibe is it's interesting, but.

• 22:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Are you gonna, so here's my dream. Are you gonna be able to like take an iOS app and run it on touchscreen Windows tablet?

• 22:16Speaker 01

  Yes and no. You like, you can take all of the code, but then you're gonna still have to like, you, you're not gonna have. Like iOS has hamburger menus and stuff and UI controls are different to Windows. You know, they're, they're not gonna show up automatically on Windows, right? Um, so you're gonna have to, Microsoft's sort of coding kits can have to like change those for their hamburger menu. But then it might be like the way that Microsoft draws it is slightly different to iOS and they're gonna have to do little tweaks. It's not gonna be like you copy your code and you hit a button and it.

• 22:43Nilay Patel?

  No, not like that. I, I guess that's not what I meant. Like, I think the example I used with last week with Sam was like Instagram. Like, I think it would be dope to have an XPS 13 that's like my computer and in Instagram, basically the phone app is like in the corner.

• 22:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, they, they basically showed that with.

• 22:58Speaker 03

  Like Twitter.

• 22:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  I think they showed it with WeChat or one of those apps. Um, and it was the phone app running on Windows 10.

• 23:04Speaker 03

  Have you, did you just?

• 23:05Nilay Patel?

  I think it's cool.

• 23:06Speaker 03

  Well, we just go to dub, dub, dub, dot Instagram dot com.

• 23:09Nilay Patel?

  That's not the Instagram web app. Hype check Instagram web app.

• 23:15Speaker 02

  I mean, I use it.

• 23:16Nilay Patel?

  Oh, man, we did this last week, too.

• 23:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, we did do this.

• 23:19Nilay Patel?

  Everybody at the road hates the web, except for me. Let's just.

• 23:21Speaker 03

  Everybody hates the web. The web is over. The web, the web, the web is, is, is, is the past of storytelling. Apps are the new comic books.

• 23:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. That's true.

• 23:35Speaker 03

  What, so then another big news at Build was Holland. So you were there, like?

• 23:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:38Speaker 03

  Did you get to try it in Holland?

• 23:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, yeah, I tried Holland and, um, and Andy put up a good piece about it. It's pretty much my feelings as well. So we saw it in January, um, Dea and I, and it was, it was way more immersive. It wasn't like immersive in the sense of VR, but it felt like stuff was in the room around you rather than just in this space.

• 23:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, you, you had, you had, I mean, okay. Pedants, pedants, pedant. First of all, if you're pedantic.

• 24:04Nilay Patel?

  That's the one.

• 24:04Speaker 03

  One, if you're a pedant.

• 24:06Nilay Patel?

  Is that it?

• 24:07Speaker 03

  Pedant? If you're a pedantic person is a.

• 24:09Speaker 01

  Pedantic, yeah.

• 24:10Speaker 03

  Pedant. Pedant.

• 24:13Speaker 03

  The best thing about that word is that only a pedantic person would know how to say it.

• 24:17Nilay Patel?

  It's, uh, it's pronounced pedant.

• 24:22Speaker 03

  Where is it going?

• 24:23Nilay Patel?

  I don't know.

• 24:23Speaker 03

  You could see things out of your peripheral vision.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:26Speaker 03

  And then, okay, they're not, pedantically, they're not technically holograms, but like, you could see holograms move beyond your peripheral vision. So it wasn't VR because you could stall the world and it wouldn't, it didn't like completely cover, but it was there. But you, with the actual, did you use the actual production or was it still a beta?

• 24:42Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, who knows? Cause they're not really saying, but we used the actual headset rather than the crazy goggles and the thing you hang around your neck.

• 24:50Speaker 03

  The giant computer you had to wear, yeah.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  So we used the actual, the actual headset. Um, so, yeah, I guess it's production or near to like, let's just say it's near final.

• 24:58Speaker 03

  Right.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  Um, hardware. Um, and yeah, and it was like, you got the visor and stuff. And then it just felt like you had the, like you were wearing glasses, but then only like a certain section of it, you could actually see the holograms in, like a, a square. It's, I don't know. If you had a piece of paper, you'd have like a square AP for a piece of paper, you'd only be like a section, like a letterbox, like a letterbox in the middle of that.

• 25:21Speaker 03

  You could see where the screen is.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. So you'd have, so it's like the demo, it took me like 50, 50% of the time of the initial demo where we were like trying to code apps. It was literally me going like this, trying to figure out if this headset was broken. Cause I thought it was broken because I'd obviously seen it before.

• 25:37Speaker 03

  Right.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  So I was like, this is not right. It keeps clipping off and they were like, oh. Um.

• 25:43Nilay Patel?

  Good, good Microsoft impression.

• 25:45Speaker 03

  That's a great.

• 25:46Speaker 01

  It was just like one of the dudes just helping us code, but yeah.

• 25:49Nilay Patel?

  No, I gotta say like, uh, Holland seems so exciting and then.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  They still, yeah, like what it does is great.

• 25:54Nilay Patel?

  Between what they're showing on these demos on the live stream. Which is basically like people walking around in completely virtual worlds, just like doing stuff.

• 26:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, and like cute little robots that they're like.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  That kind of stuff, like, I would have said, yes, they could have done that when I saw the January demo. Cause it felt like that was kind of the way that they were heading. But now I'm like, yeah, it doesn't quite work like that. You have to kind of look to see that the hologram, like if, if you were a hologram here and I was looking over here, I wouldn't see.

• 26:22Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  And that's kind of not what they're showing. They're showing like you've got stuff on the walls. You're interacting with one over here on your left.

• 26:29Nilay Patel?

  Right, so it's just whatever. It's like whatever that screen can see, right?

• 26:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, essentially, yeah.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  But is it programmed, is it programmed? Are they all living in that virtual space already? Or is it sort of like? I, I don't really understand how it works. Cause in the previous, like I was, I did a periscope with Addie yesterday and she explained this. Um, but I still don't fully grasp. Cause when you have glass, right? It just lives in the prism, the, the thing that lives in the prism in that one spot. But with HoloLens, is the stuff programmed? So like you, you turn your head and then the screen will sort of like appear in your field? Or is it, is it there already?

• 27:05Speaker 01

  No, it will be, it will be here.

• 27:07Speaker 02

  Right.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  And it doesn't matter where you're staring. You, you will find it. So it's like an object, like, like this beer, this beer would not move.

• 27:13Nilay Patel?

  They have object persistence.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:15Nilay Patel?

  It's like top of level technology.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  I could walk around, I could walk around the back of the beer and then see the back of the beer.

• 27:20Speaker 02

  Right.

• 27:21Speaker 01

  Like it doesn't move, it's supposed to be.

• 27:22Nilay Patel?

  So the beer stays here, but unless you look right at it, you know.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  But it's not there.

• 27:26Nilay Patel?

  It like clips into your reality.

• 27:27Speaker 02

  I see. That's kind of crappy.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:32Nilay Patel?

  You know, it's like, it's like amazing, but it's also like kind of crappy.

• 27:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  The amazing stuff is just the way it interacts. Like, say, I think one of the demos was like a little ball. And if I was looking at this table and I dropped the ball, like you air tap.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 27:47Speaker 01

  Just like the coolest gesture ever.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  Dieter loves that gesture.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  It drops onto the table and then off the table. Like, it senses that the table's there and the holograms will interact with real world objects around it. Like, that stuff is like-

• 27:58Speaker 02

  Can you interact with it with your hands? Like, can you tap it, drop it, and have it hit your hand?

• 28:04Speaker 01

  No. Um, like, well, I guess you perhaps might do, but if you get really close to holograms, they kind of just sort of-

• 28:11Speaker 02

  Like what happens in Star Wars?

• 28:13Speaker 01

  They fill your entire vision, right?

• 28:15Speaker 02

  Ah, so if you get too close, it's just sort of like-

• 28:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, it kind of goes out. Yeah. You don't really see it anymore, so. But, yeah, I mean, it's cool. Like, everything that it does is mind blowing.

• 28:26Speaker 02

  Any word on consumer release at all?

• 28:29Speaker 01

  I think they're still kind of saying this year, but-

• 28:32Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 28:33Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 28:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 28:34Nilay Patel?

  Oculus finally came out with a date.

• 28:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, 2016. Sometime in the first quarter of 2016, which could be like January 1st or March.

• 28:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And Addy's piece, just to be clear, Addy's piece was great. It's all about, like, uh, which way it was around. It's like VR is for building environments and AR is for like storytelling.

• 28:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you just see Microsoft did show-

• 28:55Nilay Patel?

  Well, AR is also getting for getting work done.

• 28:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, like architecture. Addy was saying architecture is gonna be something that's, uh, very much utilized with HoloLens. Cause you can like, you know, look at blueprints and like go inside design.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  That was one of the demos we did. Like, it was, that was, that stuff's impressive. Yeah, but the field of view is not impressive, so.

• 29:17Nilay Patel?

  A first gen, first gen product.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  But that's, that's, that seems like an easy thing to fix.

• 29:21Nilay Patel?

  You know what's weird? We're in this age of first gen products. As Sam checks his Apple Watch. And, and Tom has one too. Tom has one. Dieter's wearing Android Wear over here. Are you allowed to talk about what you're wearing?

• 29:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, this is a LG Watcher Bane. Super ugly.

• 29:34Nilay Patel?

  Yep. Just gonna be, just, I will say that the LG, is it G Watcher Bane?

• 29:39Speaker 03

  It's, I think it's LG Watcher Bane.

• 29:41Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God. So miserably named product, first of all. And then it has caused no end of controversy in this.

• 29:47Speaker 03

  It's just, no, it's just one, there's one person at our office, Chris Ziegler, who thinks it looks good. And the rest of us don't.

• 29:53Nilay Patel?

  Chris is dumb. That's the answer.

• 29:56Speaker 03

  No, but it's got all the cool new Android Wear stuff.

• 29:58Nilay Patel?

  It's got all the cool new Android Wear stuff. I always say Android Wear.

• 30:01Speaker 03

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna send you a poop emoji right now.

• 30:04Nilay Patel?

  Uh, having that worn Android Wear a little bit again, and then the Apple Watch, like both, it's such a classic Apple, Google moment. Where Apple's doing what they do, which everything seems very local on the, on the Apple Watch. Like, everything is happening on the watch. All the software is there. All the smarts are there. That's where Apple puts all their time and effort. And then everything on Android Wear is like happening on a Google server somewhere. That's what, well, it's not, that's actually true, but that's how both platforms like feel.

• 30:32Speaker 03

  I will say that apps on Android Wear, they're like, straight up, this is, this is gonna be weird. There, there are a bunch, and I don't know what the exact numbers are, but it feels like there aren't as many on Android Wear. As there are on the Apple Watch, because there's more like big name apps that are just there on the Apple Watch.

• 30:47Nilay Patel?

  Garbage.

• 30:48Speaker 03

  Right. So apps on Android Wear by and large are not, like, uh, I've got a voice recorder app that is like fully native on Android Wear and it actually like works.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  I can't believe there's not a voice recorder app.

• 30:58Speaker 03

  There is where I'm, I'm recording. Like here, here we go. I'm good.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  Cause I was like, I'll wear my, I'll wear my Apple Watch whilst I go and do HoloLens and I'll record whatever I hear.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  But then I was like.

• 31:10Nilay Patel?

  The reporter's secret.

• 31:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, can't be doing that because there's no app.

• 31:13Nilay Patel?

  That's Apple's.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  I need my iPhone.

• 31:15Nilay Patel?

  Apple's culture of secrecy bites us again. No secret voice recorder app on the Apple Watch. Uh, I like, I don't know. Anyway, do you watch your bane? First of all.

• 31:24Speaker 03

  Do you watch your bane?

• 31:25Nilay Patel?

  It's ugly.

• 31:25Speaker 03

  Hideous.

• 31:25Nilay Patel?

  Your watcher bane. LG, LG.

• 31:28Speaker 02

  It's just a watcher bane.

• 31:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, you can fast access your apps. You can draw emoji and you can flick your wrist to switch between stuff. And oh, it works over wifi.

• 31:38Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:39Speaker 03

  And it works over any wifi network. So like, my phone could be at home.

• 31:42Nilay Patel?

  The physical here.

• 31:43Speaker 03

  Android Wear is, it's, you see the improvement.

• 31:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 31:46Speaker 03

  But it's still like kind of a first generation product.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  My problem with those sort of devices.

• 31:49Speaker 03

  Well, it's because all the, yeah.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  It, it needs to bleed into the rest of the device. The screen needs to bleed because.

• 31:54Nilay Patel?

  That's the best thing about the Apple Watch.

• 31:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, I don't want a bezel in the way that I'm constantly flicking.

• 31:58Speaker 03

  Right. That's like, that's why everybody likes the Moto 360 is because it has the least amount of bezel. It's just that the battery life on that thing is atrocious.

• 32:06Nilay Patel?

  Is, is, it's too big. That's what I've, that's what I've come to. All right, I gotta do an ad. Yeah. But here's what I was saying. We're in the age, this is weird. We're in a weird moment where everything cool is a first generation product. Yep, yeah. And I have never seen it like this, where everybody knows what that means and is not like ultra hype. Right. Right? Do you remember like when Android and iOS were first coming out? Like every new phone was like, "It's gonna be a revolution. It's gonna kill the iPhone." And now it's like, here's HoloLens, which is like, could be a revolution. Yeah. Oculus, revolutionary product. Apple Watch, maybe will be revolutionary product. Android Wear, same thing. And everyone's just like, "We're gonna wait. We're gonna wait."

• 32:47Speaker 01

  Did you see the picture of the Apple Watch and the original iPhone?

• 32:51Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  Side by side?

• 32:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Wait, what? The picture of an Apple Watch. Yeah. I told you it looked like an original iPhone. Been saying it since first time. All right. Money time.

• 33:02Nilay Patel?

  Today's episode of The Vergecast is brought to you by Tripcase. Tripcase helps brilliant people take over 30 million trips last year by collecting their flight, hotel, and other trip items into a single app on your phone or tablet. You get free flight notifications if you're delayed or your gate changes. You get support for Pebble and Android Wear. You'll always be up to date. To get started, just go to tripcase.com/vergecast to sign up. If you are still not convinced after that impeccable ad read, here is why Tripcase is the place for your trips. There's Uber integration. You can pick, fill in your pickup and drop off locations automatically. Uber rates are right there in the app. You just click. There's free flight alerts. Tom, that'd be good for you because you're chronically late. Is that true? Tripcase, I don't know, whatever. Tripcase automatically alerts you, changes to your trips, like a flight delay or gate change,

• 33:47Nilay Patel?

  by pinging basically everything in your life. Your phone, your tablet, your smartwatch. One day, it'll buzz your brain directly in your HoloLens.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  Perfect.

• 33:57Nilay Patel?

  You can share your trip. So when, Tom, you just show up in New York, like you've been doing lately, you can send me a goddamn note and tell me you're gonna be here. You can find out whether your flight is delayed. You can tell people how much fun you're having, just in general. Sam, how much fun you having over there?

• 34:09Speaker 02

  Too much.

• 34:10Nilay Patel?

  You should've used Tripcase to tell me. Way to blow it. You can remember this place. You can save restaurants you find on your trip. You can remember it the next time you're in town. You can show that to your friends. You can look at the weather. You can check out seat maps. You can do all sorts of stuff that is what you need to do on a trip. Go to tripcase.com/vergecast. Check it out today.

• 34:27Nilay Patel?

  And that is how you do it.

• 34:29Speaker 03

  I'm gonna use trip case.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  You would make a good salesman.

• 34:33Nilay Patel?

  I do, I do what I can. All right, we gotta talk about Apple Music. And then we gotta talk about Tesla, and we gotta talk about Google. Those are the.

• 34:40Speaker 03

  We get, we'll see, we'll see if we can get to all of that.

• 34:43Nilay Patel?

  We'll see, we'll see, we'll see. So, Apple Music, I didn't.

• 34:46Speaker 03

  This is the big one. There's like, there's just a ton happening. So, okay, I know you've got way more to say than I do, so I'm gonna set the stage.

• 34:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:53Speaker 03

  We are all expecting a relaunch of Beats Music, whatever we're gonna call it, at WWDC in early June. And it seems like whenever there's a big new streaming service, audio or video, apparently, there's a whole bunch of froth in the industry before it happens. Things get frothy.

• 35:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:12Speaker 03

  There's deals that don't get made until the last minute. There's, there's like mechanations. There's like, oh man, we gotta announce our thing before the other thing happens. And so, in the run-up to everybody knowing or believing that Apple's gonna announce a big, important, new streaming music service, a whole bunch of shit happened. Like, Groove Shark just like finally upped and was like, nah, we're dead. And then like some random person said, oh, just kidding, I backed up the whole service and here it is over here as a pirate service, we're back.

• 35:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:43Speaker 03

  Spotify is like, hey, guys, we're gonna have an announcement on the 20th. And then it, it comes out from the Wall Street Journal that it might be a video service, which is like, what?

• 35:53Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 35:53Speaker 03

  And then on top of that, Michael Singleton has been chasing down story after story.

• 35:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:59Speaker 03

  And this is, this is right, I've handed off.

• 36:02Nilay Patel?

  Michael's got, had two big scoops this week, and there are more coming. So, here, here I think is like the, the, the thing that you're saying is true, right? Everyone expects Beats Music to relaunch at WWDC.

• 36:14Speaker 03

  Right.

• 36:14Nilay Patel?

  As, you know, Apple's next generation of iTunes. They have Jimmy Iovine, they have Dr. Dre, they're like out there in the world, they're pushing for deals. And that means, and I think the music industry of all of the industries that sort of intersects with tech is the most leaky.

• 36:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:30Nilay Patel?

  So that means people are out there, people are mad, people want what they want, you know? And what is true, what is particularly true, the only two streaming music services that are like truly game changing successful are Spotify and YouTube, right?

• 36:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:48Nilay Patel?

  I wish audio was better.

• 36:50Speaker 03

  Audio.

• 36:51Nilay Patel?

  It's just like, that's the...

• 36:53Speaker 03

  I mean, I use Google Play Music, which is like...

• 36:55Nilay Patel?

  That's like...

• 36:56Speaker 03

  I'm like the nerd.

• 36:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but the closer...

• 36:58Speaker 01

  I use X-Files Music.

• 37:00Speaker 03

  Right, but like, both of those services...

• 37:01Nilay Patel?

  They're shutting that down?

• 37:03Speaker 01

  No, they shut down the free.

• 37:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 37:05Speaker 01

  Probably because they got, Apple probably beat them up.

• 37:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, and then there's Pandora, but like, none of those services are like, have, people don't see any of those services having the potential to like, fundamentally alter the nature of the music industry.

• 37:15Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 37:16Speaker 03

  But people know, Apple's done it before, and they believe that they could do it again.

• 37:19Nilay Patel?

  Right, and I would say, Google Play All Access is an interesting sort of, like, it's there, but what it, what it should be more connected to and what is more important is YouTube. And like, one of the best...

• 37:31Speaker 03

  No, it's fully integrated with YouTube's music thing now.

• 37:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but that's not, like, it is, but like, Google Play All Access isn't the product people care about, they care about YouTube.

• 37:39Speaker 03

  Right.

• 37:40Nilay Patel?

  That's what I mean.

• 37:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:41Nilay Patel?

  Right, like, the best part of Google Play All Access for me is I pay for it, and I have it, and it's cool.

• 37:45Speaker 01

  It's all about where...

• 37:46Nilay Patel?

  And then I get ad for YouTube.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  Right, it's all about wherever the teens get their music from, really.

• 37:51Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, it's also about these business models.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  YouTube and Spotify.

• 37:54Nilay Patel?

  Well, yeah, and it's, it's like YouTube is this like, massive thing. Sam, how much music do you watch on YouTube? Or listen to on YouTube?

• 38:02Speaker 02

  I use Spotify, I pay for Spotify Premium.

• 38:04Nilay Patel?

  But when you wanna share a song with somebody, where do you go?

• 38:07Speaker 02

  Uh... Depends who, but I, yes, I use YouTube for music, absolutely, and a lot of people around the world do it too.

• 38:15Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 38:15Speaker 02

  It's huge.

• 38:16Nilay Patel?

  No, I mean, like, when I, when I'm like, "Hey, you should listen to this."

• 38:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, send them to YouTube. Absolutely. Just make sure, make sure to turn on HD, but yes.

• 38:24Speaker 03

  Remember when you, remember when you used to be able to send, what was it, Lala?

• 38:27Nilay Patel?

  Oh yeah, Apple bought that. They turned it into Ping.

• 38:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, but that back in the day, it was like you could just send those links and they were just, they would just work.

• 38:34Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, so what I'm saying is like the, the state of the land.

• 38:37Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 38:38Nilay Patel?

  The state of the land. The state of the land is wonderful. It's airated. It's perfect for farming.

• 38:43Speaker 03

  You walk around and you're like, oh, poopies? Oh no, it's just airated.

• 38:46Nilay Patel?

  Are those poopies?

• 38:48Speaker 03

  Would you aerate the lawn?

• 38:49Nilay Patel?

  No, I'm with you.

• 38:50Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's poopies.

• 38:52Nilay Patel?

  That's really where I'm stuck.

• 38:54Speaker 03

  Cause they're small.

• 38:55Nilay Patel?

  They're just tiny little. I'm with you. I got it. They look like poops. A hundred percent, a hundred percent clear.

• 39:01Speaker 03

  I'm gonna send you another poop emoji.

• 39:03Nilay Patel?

  Just to illustrate.

• 39:04Speaker 02

  Welcome to the poop cast.

• 39:06Nilay Patel?

  Oh my God. Alright, so here's what's happening. So Spotify, so YouTube is disruptive because it's free. It's so popular and they have this deal with Vivo. So that's like a whole bundle of things.

• 39:20Speaker 03

  I'm gonna send you a seashell.

• 39:20Nilay Patel?

  Spotify is disruptive because they were first to streaming. They have the free service people like, they're the most well-known, they're growing. In European countries, they're enormous. In some European countries that have like massive piracy, they are the music industry, right? And so in the United States, it's not yet true. And then you've got all of these forces arrayed into the music business, like looking at this and saying, how do we fix it? Make sure we get money out of this situation. So you have artists like Taylor Swift being like, screw Spotify. You've got to buy my record from Apple. You've got Jay-Z being like, screw Spotify. I'm starting title on my own.

• 39:56Speaker 02

  Well, he bought it.

• 39:58Nilay Patel?

  But he, like, he started, the title was called, right? Like, there was a Spiro and they named it and they rebranded it and they relaunched it. Like, title is a new thing now because of Jay-Z.

• 40:07Speaker 03

  Right.

• 40:09Nilay Patel?

  And then you've got Apple with Dr. Like, it's Dr. Dre versus Jay-Z. It's like a crazy phenomenon. Apple's got Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre saying. We're beats, like what we offer is human curation, what we offer is all this stuff. And we have these industry relationships and we're the ones who are going to go in and fix the economics of streaming. And so they're out there, we know that they're out there trying to get deals for their streaming service. We've, there's the other reporting, which is Wall Street Journal says they're out there trying to get deals, they don't have the deals yet. There's our reporting saying they're being, you know, they're Apple, they're hyper competitive.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 40:45Nilay Patel?

  So they're out there in the market saying, do these deals with us. Your iTunes sales, your download purchase sales, those deals might be expiring. If you want favorable terms on your download sales, which we, we're the biggest player in the market, you gotta hit, play ball with us on the streaming deals. There's like definitely an FTC investigation, we reported it, Bloomberg reported it, it's out there in the mix. And you just see, like just totally see all of these forces arrayed around who's going to get paid when people listen to music. And what is absolutely true is that Apple controls this massive platform.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 41:24Nilay Patel?

  And they, one way or another, will be the gatekeeper to iOS users on music, right?

• 41:31Speaker 01

  This is kind of like indicative of Apple's business practices. They've always sought to thwart the competition or, you know, in their, but their own segment where they haven't had mass market and they can't be deemed anti-competitive. Whereas this, they can be deemed.

• 41:47Nilay Patel?

  We don't know, I mean, you gotta, that's like, how do you slice the market? And that's like, you know, as Mike is doing his reporting, a thing that we keep on talking about is like, Apple doesn't have overwhelming smartphone market share.

• 41:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:58Nilay Patel?

  But if you look at a different slice.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  But just, just on the music side, surely they have a good percentage of that, right? Of the sales?

• 42:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, yes, right, they own most of the download market.

• 42:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:10Nilay Patel?

  But that's across desktop and mobile. So like, you've gotta slice the market, you've gotta like, you've gotta figure out what market you're talking about and then whether Apple's into it. And so like, that first argument is about cutting the market into.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:21Nilay Patel?

  Into, just saying, here are the boundaries of the market.

• 42:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:24Nilay Patel?

  And so, Micah's first story was just revealing there's FTC and DOJ investigation.

• 42:30Nilay Patel?

  And you know, the, we're talking to a lot of people, a lot of people are mad. And then, and then the next story, which I think is like super fascinating, is the other services are really super mad about the App Store pricing. So when you've got a paid app in the store, Apple takes 30% no matter what.

• 42:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, they take 30% of your subscription.

• 42:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 42:49Speaker 03

  Costs.

• 42:50Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 42:50Speaker 03

  Right.

• 42:51Nilay Patel?

  So if you're Spotify, or your title, or your audio, if you want to sell premium in the store, you've got to either eat Apple's 30% cut.

• 42:59Speaker 03

  Which they can't afford to do.

• 43:00Nilay Patel?

  Which they can't afford to do yet, or you've got to pay, you've got to raise your price for iOS users above.

• 43:05Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 43:05Speaker 01

  And Microsoft poked the bear with that one as well, when they were gonna, so they, they tested it with OneDrive with, with Apple. And then they were trying to talk around some sort of deal for Office. And hence why Office like kind of didn't come as quick as.

• 43:20Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 43:21Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, because they were trying to test some sort of backdoor deal with them or whatever, but.

• 43:25Nilay Patel?

  And so either, so then Apple's, Apple's at $8 or $9, and then Spotify's at 12, only because Apple gets the money.

• 43:32Speaker 03

  Right. And like, and like that, that, that pricing model, yeah, Apple needs some money for like, how to, paying to run the store. But we all know that that doesn't cost 30% anymore for them, I don't think, to run the, the App Store.

• 43:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, who knows, but like.

• 43:46Speaker 03

  But like the reason, but it's about leverage, because we also, we know on the Apple TV, there are a lot of channels that are not paying that 30%.

• 43:54Nilay Patel?

  Do we know that?

• 43:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, Peter Kafka reported it, that the, the, the margins were different on the Apple TV for subscription services.

• 44:01Nilay Patel?

  Interesting.

• 44:02Speaker 03

  Than they were.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  They, they will be there, won't they, to get, to get them to develop an app for Apple TV?

• 44:07Speaker 03

  Like HBO is definitely not paying Apple 30%.

• 44:09Nilay Patel?

  Hmm.

• 44:10Speaker 03

  For, for now.

• 44:11Nilay Patel?

  That's fascinating.

• 44:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, and so, but, so, but there's, but Apple has way more leverage in the music industry. I mean, I, there could be other reasons, but that's my guess, like fundamentally, that's the economics of it.

• 44:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean.

• 44:21Speaker 01

  But the 30% thing comes in on sort of the phone side more than anything. And that's the side where they don't have, you know, dominance or control over the market.

• 44:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  Whereas on the iTunes side, they do, so.

• 44:33Speaker 03

  Right.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  It's kind of.

• 44:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 44:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a 15% fee for TV networks on Apple TV.

• 44:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, I just like, here's what I see happening, right? Like, I am personally, like, super eager for Apple to do beats right. Like, my music situation today is so crappy.

• 44:57Speaker 02

  Why?

• 44:57Nilay Patel?

  It just is. Like, I just, I'm like wistful for 2008.

• 45:03Speaker 03

  I'm wistful for Ardio and when all my friends were using the same service.

• 45:06Nilay Patel?

  No, like, that's whatever. I'm like wistful for like, that, you know, there's that one moment you had when you had like a dumb phone and an iPod?

• 45:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, and you were good at music, that one moment?

• 45:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I was good at music. I was like, my, this is my iPod, it's full of music. I'm like, I spent a lot of time on iTunes, like, curating my playlists and buying music and ripping CDs and like, it all worked in this place. Here it is. Here's my music. Like, it's, it all made sense. And then the iPhone came out and now iTunes is like this like garbage fire.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, no one uses iTunes. You should just use Spotify.

• 45:37Nilay Patel?

  So then I switched.

• 45:39Speaker 02

  Normals use iTunes.

• 45:39Nilay Patel?

  Normals use iTunes and I switched to Spotify. Spotify doesn't have all the music, so like.

• 45:43Speaker 02

  What music?

• 45:44Nilay Patel?

  Like, seriously, like, I don't know, last year the Beyonce came, record came out and like, I had to buy it in iTunes and like, the Taylor Swift record came out and I had to buy it. So now I've got like, now my iTunes, now my iTunes is a bunch of like punk rock records from the, the, like, 80s, a bunch of like new wave records, a bunch of like, 2000s era pop music that I like downloaded then, and then like Beyonce and Taylor Swift. It's a mess.

• 46:08Speaker 02

  You just import it to Spotify.

• 46:09Nilay Patel?

  But you don't, it doesn't work. The shit doesn't work.

• 46:12Speaker 03

  No, it doesn't work.

• 46:13Speaker 02

  What?

• 46:14Nilay Patel?

  No, Spotify is broken as hell, right?

• 46:16Speaker 02

  Not even close. No way.

• 46:17Nilay Patel?

  Do you know how many, how many imported MP3s I have? Like, my friends' bands from like, home and stuff that I want to listen to again?

• 46:24Speaker 02

  Says you can't find them.

• 46:25Nilay Patel?

  It breaks, it plays nothing.

• 46:26Speaker 02

  I haven't ever had experience like that.

• 46:29Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying, all of that.

• 46:30Speaker 03

  I had good luck with Google Play, uploading stuff.

• 46:32Nilay Patel?

  A mess. And then Spotify stuff comes and goes. Like, Jay-Z's just like, you know what? I don't want my record on Spotify anymore and it's gone.

• 46:37Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 46:38Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, all of that's a mess. And Spotify's UI is a mess. Their mobile app is a garbage, like.

• 46:44Speaker 03

  I disagree.

• 46:45Nilay Patel?

  It's not a good, you think Spotify's mobile app is good?

• 46:49Speaker 02

  It's fine.

• 46:50Nilay Patel?

  Hype check the Spotify mobile app.

• 46:51Speaker 02

  It's fine. It's totally fine.

• 46:53Nilay Patel?

  Everything is fine.

• 46:54Speaker 02

  I use it twice a day, every single day. I use it.

• 46:56Nilay Patel?

  One to 10, World of No Sevens.

• 46:59Speaker 02

  It's it's an eight.

• 47:00Nilay Patel?

  You think Spotify's mobile app is an eight?

• 47:02Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 47:03Nilay Patel?

  Are you crazy?

• 47:04Speaker 02

  I use it.

• 47:06Nilay Patel?

  That's that's like saying you I saw Avengers two and my body didn't get harmed.

• 47:09Speaker 03

  Like, let me let me just put like, Google's music app on iOS is better than Spotify.

• 47:14Speaker 02

  Spotify.

• 47:15Nilay Patel?

  Well, you can't just like use it. Like, I get it. It's an app that runs on your phone.

• 47:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, you have like your music, then you have playlists.

• 47:22Nilay Patel?

  You are legitimately saying that app is an eight.

• 47:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's really smooth. It works. It's got good design elements. It used to suck. It's gotten much better over the years.

• 47:33Nilay Patel?

  Let me ask you a question. You're on an airplane, right?

• 47:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:36Nilay Patel?

  How do you find a list of all the local music on your phone? Where does that live?

• 47:42Nilay Patel?

  So you're just not listing the music on a plane?

• 47:45Speaker 02

  Uh, I have local music. I have a few playlists that I've downloaded that I want on the subway specifically.

• 47:51Nilay Patel?

  But you want to do the thing.

• 47:52Speaker 02

  So then I prepare. When I prepare.

• 47:54Nilay Patel?

  Prepare.

• 47:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, you just you hit you hit the offline or you hit the offline button and it downloads all of the music to your phone.

• 47:59Speaker 01

  But it just lists all your playlists, even if they're offline or not.

• 48:02Nilay Patel?

  But you can't just look at, well, here's all the music that's on my phone right now. How do you do that?

• 48:06Speaker 01

  Also, this this is the most jankiest thing about Spotify on iOS.

• 48:10Speaker 03

  You need to switch to Google Play Music because it has everything you want and it has really good songs and recommendations.

• 48:16Nilay Patel?

  Except a good interface.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, it's fine. It's good. I've gone into flight mode.

• 48:19Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God, we're doing this.

• 48:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. And if you go into flight mode and then you go into offline mode on Spotify.

• 48:24Speaker 02

  It's called airplane mode.

• 48:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, whatever.

• 48:27Nilay Patel?

  Flight mode.

• 48:27Speaker 01

  I.

• 48:29Nilay Patel?

  Tom's ready to jam. He's like, I'm leaving my family behind.

• 48:32Speaker 03

  I'm telling you, I'm telling you, you should, you want.

• 48:34Nilay Patel?

  I know all about.

• 48:36Speaker 02

  Wait, Tom, I want Tom. It works.

• 48:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then I go into Spotify.

• 48:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  And I get this janky pop up which says, turn off airplane mode or use wifi.

• 48:45Nilay Patel?

  No, that's across iOS. Don't interrupt the American accent. Say it like a cowboy.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  No, it's like, turn off airplane mode or use wifi to access data.

• 48:53Nilay Patel?

  Why is that? That's gold coming in your ears.

• 48:56Speaker 01

  I told you it's offline mode and it pops up every time you go back into it.

• 49:00Nilay Patel?

  I'm just, I'm, everything is a mess. I will say somebody, what's it called? Radiant Player is the native Mac app for Google Play Music. There's, I've thought. About making this, I'm, I've thought about.

• 49:10Speaker 02

  There are plenty of people that will agree with me that Spotify is perfectly fine for our needs.

• 49:15Speaker 03

  Spotify is good.

• 49:16Speaker 02

  Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe you're just, you know, getting a little.

• 49:19Nilay Patel?

  It's like a subsistence level. Yeah. Spotify is the thin gruel of music apps. It keeps you alive. It's there.

• 49:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:27Nilay Patel?

  It's not good.

• 49:28Speaker 02

  What is not good about it?

• 49:30Nilay Patel?

  I, the thing I just said, you get on an airplane.

• 49:34Speaker 02

  You want to see all of your offline music?

• 49:36Nilay Patel?

  That is like, I just want to be able to look at my music.

• 49:38Speaker 03

  I hate it so much when you fight.

• 49:40Speaker 02

  No, we're not fighting.

• 49:41Nilay Patel?

  It's not your fight.

• 49:42Speaker 02

  It's not, we're not, we're not having.

• 49:43Nilay Patel?

  That's a thing that you do.

• 49:44Speaker 02

  No, you're the only person that does that.

• 49:45Nilay Patel?

  Are you kidding me?

• 49:46Speaker 02

  I really think you're the only, I, I, I think.

• 49:48Nilay Patel?

  Just want to like, be like, ah, I just want to listen to something new. What's on here?

• 49:51Speaker 02

  It's like, it's like the idea of your click wheel iPod where you go into just music and then you just have like an endless.

• 49:55Nilay Patel?

  iPod revolutionized the music industry. It was a good idea.

• 49:58Speaker 02

  Look, I, I manage my music with playlists.

• 50:01Nilay Patel?

  Manager, you're like, you manage your music by like lighting a fat blunt and like going in random mode. Like, I don't know what you do. Just like.

• 50:10Speaker 03

  Look, I think we could all agree that Sam needs to staff Neil's lawn.

• 50:15Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying, it's just not, anyway, I'm excited. The point I was making.

• 50:20Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, right here, right here. Playlists. You go on a playlist and you go to local files. Boom, done.

• 50:26Speaker 02

  Oh, but you're saying, you're saying the ones that you synced offline?

• 50:29Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 50:30Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 50:31Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 50:31Speaker 02

  Who cares?

• 50:32Nilay Patel?

  You can't, I just want that classic view back. The artist albums, here's what's here view. And Spotify is too dumb to give it to you and they're too dumb to reconcile the things you've synced to what's on your playlists. It's bad. Like underneath all of that, what you think is good design is a rat's nest of hacks and bullshit.

• 50:52Speaker 02

  Oh my goodness.

• 50:53Nilay Patel?

  It's just so obviously true. All right.

• 50:57Speaker 02

  I'm.

• 50:57Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, my point was.

• 50:59Speaker 03

  Apple's gonna fix it. Apple's gonna fix it all.

• 51:01Nilay Patel?

  Generally excited.

• 51:04Nilay Patel?

  For Apple's like situation, right? For like beats to come in, for them to roll it into iTunes, for a glorious return to the past.

• 51:11Speaker 03

  We just got schooled by Chris Welch, writer at theverge.com offline mode.

• 51:15Nilay Patel?

  No, that's not, that's not, that's just turning.

• 51:18Speaker 01

  Doesn't tell you which songs are synced.

• 51:20Speaker 03

  Only being made available for offline listening will be playable.

• 51:23Nilay Patel?

  Huh?

• 51:23Speaker 03

  And it'll just filter everything else out.

• 51:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it'll still show you all of your playlists.

• 51:26Speaker 02

  No, but they, they, Neelai specifically wants all of the music that you synced offline in one list.

• 51:32Nilay Patel?

  This happens to me like all the time.

• 51:34Speaker 02

  But like, what kind of a hype lord are you that you need that?

• 51:37Nilay Patel?

  Wait, what?

• 51:38Speaker 02

  It's like, yo, let me look at all of my music I want, bro.

• 51:41Nilay Patel?

  What I want is to be able to look at all.

• 51:43Speaker 02

  8,000 songs.

• 51:44Nilay Patel?

  No!

• 51:45Speaker 02

  No, sort by artist.

• 51:46Nilay Patel?

  People, they use 160 gig iPods because people like that.

• 51:50Speaker 02

  No, but you, I have my own.

• 51:52Nilay Patel?

  I have all of CDs in my.

• 51:53Speaker 02

  Who, who is, goes into view all mode? You, Neelai Patel, view all mode, fucking population of one.

• 51:59Nilay Patel?

  I like to gaze upon my empire, like.

• 52:01Speaker 03

  Yeah. Also, if I'm in offline mode.

• 52:04Nilay Patel?

  Music that I am.

• 52:04Speaker 03

  Don't show me music I can't play. That's just me.

• 52:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, that's what it does.

• 52:08Nilay Patel?

  Guys, I gotta read another thing.

• 52:10Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 52:10Nilay Patel?

  That was a fun conversation. I like this one.

• 52:14Nilay Patel?

  Because you love being wrong.

• 52:20Speaker 02

  Wait, do this, do this.

• 52:26Nilay Patel?

  This episode of the Vergecast was brought to you by Lynda.com. The online learning platform with over 3,000 on-demand video courses to help you strengthen your business, technology, and creative skills. For a free 10-day trial, visit lynda.com/vergecast. That's L-Y-N-D-A dot com slash vergecast. Lynda.com is for problem solvers, not Sam, a problem creator. It's for the curious, for people who want to make things happen. Maybe you want to master Excel. Maybe you want to learn some negotiation tactics. Maybe you want to know what a good music app is like. Maybe you want to build a website. Maybe you want to build your Photoshop skills. Go to lynda.com, feed your curious mind. You can take building a note-taking app for iOS 8, which you learn how to build a complete iOS 8 app from scratch with the iOS SDK and Xcode.

• 53:10Nilay Patel?

  You can create retina graphics with Photoshop and Illustrator, where you learn to create beautiful, high DPI, AKA retina graphics for a variety of screen sizes using the tools in Photoshop and Illustrator. You can also program the Internet of Things with iOS 8, where you'll explore the Internet of Things, poking at it. You discover how to program these things such as wearable tech, appliance sensors, programmable hardware, and how to connect and control these devices via apps. There's so much you can do with a Lynda.com membership. You can watch and learn from top experts who are passionate about teaching. You can stream thousands of video courses on demand. You can learn on your own schedule. The courses are structured so you can watch from start to finish or consume them in bite-sized pieces. You can use course transcripts to follow along, search and answer, skip to points and videos. You can take notes, refer to them later.

• 53:53Nilay Patel?

  You can download tutorials to watch on the go. You have access to everything on iOS or your Android device, and you can create and save playlists of courses that you want to watch to customize your learning path or to share with others. Your Lynda.com membership gives you unlimited access to training on hundreds of topics for one flat rate. So whether you're looking to become an industry expert, you're just passionate about a hobby, or you want to learn something new, go to lynda.com/vergecast and sign up for a free 10-day trial. That's L-Y-N-D-A dot com slash vergecast. Can I finish my thing about Beats? Do your thing, bro. Do it. Here's what I'm worried about. I think Apple will integrate streaming and purchases in a way that makes, like, that I am excited about. Right? Yeah. Yeah. I think that this garbage...

• 54:38Nilay Patel?

  Although, I'm not... Okay. I'm excited. I'm excited. I'm with you. Wait, wait, now I finish the thought. Huh? Keep going. No, I'm saying, like, I'm excited. I think that's a thing that I want, right? Where I'm like, I'm streaming a bunch of stuff, I'm like sampling, I'm snacking, I'm like looking at stuff. It'll be native. And then I just like, I'm like, you know, I really like this record. I want to pay the artist. Like, I want to buy it. Or, you know, whatever record comes out and like, it's not available for streaming yet, you can get it and I can push it and it's all integrated into my library. All of that sounds great to me. Sure. I think of all the companies out there, like, Apple has sort of the most intelligence about how to make that a good experience. Absolutely. Like, top to bottom, right? They've done iTunes, they've got the people... They did it already. I love the idea of, like, Beats Curation and the radio. All of this is great.

• 55:22Nilay Patel?

  What I fear is that Apple is going to get too cocky, they're going to be too aggressive, they're going to be too anti-competitive, and they're going to come out of it with, like, basically a bad deal.

• 55:34Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 55:34Speaker 03

  Like, how so?

• 55:35Nilay Patel?

  Like, it'll be

• 55:36Speaker 03

  They'll fight with titles so hard that they won't get titles artists?

• 55:39Nilay Patel?

  Right, right.

• 55:41Speaker 02

  Would that mean that the artists that are on title will pull from?

• 55:44Speaker 03

  Well, not titles artists, but you know.

• 55:45Speaker 02

  Right, but like, like Jay-Z and Beyonce and whoever else is on there, will they all remove themselves from iTunes then? Or will iTunes even exist?

• 55:53Nilay Patel?

  Streaming, or it'll be the sales.

• 55:55Speaker 02

  So you're saying you don't want them to screw up the deals, because what matters is the music at the end of the day.

• 55:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, right.

• 56:01Speaker 03

  It's all about the music, man.

• 56:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, baby.

• 56:04Nilay Patel?

  No matter how you're streaming it, no matter what jank ass playlist system you use.

• 56:10Speaker 03

  True fact, tonight's Vergecast will be played out by John Mayer.

• 56:14Nilay Patel?

  That'd be great. That's great. You know, he's one of the best artists of our lifetime.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  I'm surprised that you genuinely think Apple's gonna do this well.

• 56:22Nilay Patel?

  They did it well. There was a time when they were the best, like the undisputed best at this.

• 56:26Speaker 01

  But they don't do web services well at all.

• 56:29Speaker 02

  You're getting pretty good at that. Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.

• 56:32Speaker 01

  I personally be a little bit worried about that.

• 56:35Speaker 02

  I just, I want to, I want to, one small anecdote. This, this hoopla around the fact that, and this is not me shilling for Apple, legitimately, I added a new phone number. I got an iMessage from a new phone number on my MacBook. I added that phone number to my contacts on my MacBook. On my Apple Watch, it instantly updated the contact on my Apple Watch and did the same thing on my phone. That is pretty damn impressive to me. I had to touch nothing on my iPhone. Out of the, didn't even have to go into my iPhone. Out of the contact in the computer, showed up on the phone. Awesome.

• 57:07Nilay Patel?

  Table stakes.

• 57:08Speaker 02

  It's not, it's not. Also, like, like Notes, you have it synced with iCloud.

• 57:14Nilay Patel?

  Dude, this is like I updated a link in my browser bookmarks and Chrome fixed it everywhere.

• 57:18Speaker 02

  No, but what, why, I'm, I'm, why is Apple bad at, at?

• 57:21Speaker 01

  But you've been able to do that in corporate environments for like 10, 15 years.

• 57:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 57:26Speaker 01

  It's just, no, but you could do it.

• 57:27Speaker 02

  No, but there's, there, there is like.

• 57:29Nilay Patel?

  Sam, are you telling us that you're impressed by contact syncing and that's why Apple's music service is gonna be good?

• 57:33Speaker 02

  I just, what, what is, everyone says Apple's bad at, at online services.

• 57:38Nilay Patel?

  Apple is bad at online.

• 57:38Speaker 03

  Have you, have you loaded, have you loaded iTunes?

• 57:42Speaker 02

  No, I don't use iTunes. I use Spotify.

• 57:43Speaker 03

  Because it's a bad online web service.

• 57:45Speaker 02

  It's, it's like an app to buy music on. What else? An X example. I don't use iTunes.

• 57:51Speaker 01

  Mobile Me?

• 57:51Nilay Patel?

  Because it's bad.

• 57:53Speaker 02

  Mobile Me, that's old, that's dead.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  iCloud?

• 57:56Speaker 02

  iCloud.

• 57:56Speaker 01

  It's not exactly particularly good.

• 57:57Speaker 03

  Do you use iCloud Drive? Do you store all your files on iCloud Drive?

• 58:00Speaker 02

  No.

• 58:00Speaker 03

  Why not?

• 58:01Speaker 02

  I use an external hard drive. Do you use Dropbox?

• 58:04Nilay Patel?

  I throw it in the air every night.

• 58:05Speaker 02

  I don't use Dropbox.

• 58:05Nilay Patel?

  Every, every week Sam takes his external hard drive.

• 58:08Speaker 02

  I back up my.

• 58:08Nilay Patel?

  He puts it on a drone and he flies it to the sky. Just like, there's my cloud storage.

• 58:14Speaker 03

  All right, we gotta, we gotta like, put a bow.

• 58:17Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying. Sam, I hear you, like, they're getting better at these cloud services.

• 58:22Speaker 02

  Yes, they are. They are not bad.

• 58:23Nilay Patel?

  But like, Google is the undisputed leader of like, great cloud services.

• 58:27Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 58:28Nilay Patel?

  Right? So like, Google now versus Siri.

• 58:30Speaker 02

  Oh, there's no contest there.

• 58:32Nilay Patel?

  Right, but that's Siri's ass. A hundred percent like a cloud service, like, you build a data center, there's a lot of intelligence in it, you're doing all this, like, Apple's not great at that. Now iTunes and the App Store are like, good cloud services. Like, the App Store's a reasonably good cloud service.

• 58:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:48Nilay Patel?

  But really, all it does is like, pipe data to you.

• 58:50Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 58:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, it doesn't do, doesn't do any sort of computational.

• 58:54Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 58:55Speaker 01

  No cloud processing, really, in the background.

• 58:57Nilay Patel?

  Let's do, Dieter, you gotta pick one or two. We gotta, you gotta do Tesla in the next 10, or, uh, um...

• 59:04Speaker 03

  Well, we should talk about Tesla.

• 59:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, we should. It was a big deal.

• 59:07Speaker 03

  So, um, did you guys watch the keynote?

• 59:11Speaker 02

  I didn't, because I was a bill.

• 59:12Speaker 03

  The presentation or whatever?

• 59:13Nilay Patel?

  I actually didn't get a chance to.

• 59:14Speaker 03

  It was Elon Musk like, getting up and like, just like, giving like, a short 20 minute talk about like, why he thinks that putting a battery in your garage is a good idea. And he was very nervous and laughing, just kind of like a guy.

• 59:26Speaker 02

  And there were a lot of idiots in the audience shouting stuff.

• 59:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, and he was like, he, they, he dealt with the, the people going, "I love you, Elon!" Pretty well, he was good.

• 59:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 59:35Speaker 03

  Um, and then, you know, like, it's like, a legitimately exciting idea. It's, you can get a, I mean, seven or 10 kilowatt hour battery in your house, you hook it up to some solar panels, you're leasing both, so you don't have to outlay a bunch of money to start with. And then, the sun charges up the battery, and then you use the battery, and then you can like, eventually go off grid, or use less of the grid.

• 59:56Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 59:57Speaker 03

  Um, so that's the concept. And he like, laid it out very clearly, and he's like, actually, it turns out that, like, if you just make enough batteries, we can solve a lot of our energy problems. We just need to make more batteries.

• 1:00:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:06Speaker 03

  Give us batteries the size of like, he like, showed this thing that was like, basically a little bit bigger than the, the Oklahoma Panhandle, the little thing from Oklahoma. Like, you make that many batteries. That's a lot of batteries, but he's like, no, it's just this one little pixel, but that's a lot of batteries. You make that many batteries like solve energy.

• 1:00:24Speaker 02

  It's just done.

• 1:00:25Speaker 03

  Yeah. No, it was that many. It was that many solar panels and then like however many battery. I forget the thing. Anyway, it was a pretty good. It was a pretty good little presentation he gave.

• 1:00:32Speaker 02

  TC said it was the best one ever.

• 1:00:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, I don't know if it's best one ever.

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  That's what he said.

• 1:00:36Speaker 03

  It was pretty good. Um, but so the question then is like, you know, it's like it's a, he makes a logical case, but at the end of the day, the batteries are like $3,500, $5,000, depending on what size you get. The solar city one, you can only get the, the seven or the 10, and then that means that you can't, shouldn't actually recharge it that much. And really the economics are best for you to just sell your excess electricity back to the grid anyway. And so like the, the battery isn't really that useful, but, um, and also none of this stuff works really is really economically viable unless you're in like Hawaii or California or Arizona right now. Uh, and then also, you know, like, it's like, there's a lot of stuff, but, but they do have.

• 1:01:17Speaker 02

  They're doing.

• 1:01:18Speaker 03

  They're doing it. They do have lots of big battery centers that they're selling to corporations, which were the economics do make a bit more sense.

• 1:01:24Speaker 01

  But why do you want a battery in your house? Just.

• 1:01:26Speaker 03

  So it's, uh, instead of a generator and it's so you don't have to, you, it's free electricity.

• 1:01:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. You don't have to burn.

• 1:01:33Speaker 03

  You have, you have a solar panel.

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  There's plenty of those solutions right now.

• 1:01:36Speaker 03

  Charges the battery and then the battery, you, you use the battery when you need to.

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  Can you donate stuff back to the grid?

• 1:01:43Speaker 03

  And you can, you can donate stuff back to the grid, but the idea is the battery gets charged from the solar panels.

• 1:01:47Speaker 02

  Can you use that instead of like a gas burner or to heat your house or to power your television?

• 1:01:53Speaker 03

  Yeah. You can use it to do all of that, uh, but you gotta, you know, you need to make sure.

• 1:01:57Speaker 02

  You have to route it properly and, and have all the.

• 1:01:59Speaker 03

  Yeah. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, so like, I think like the truth is that, I don't know this, but my, my theory is basically, look, uh, you're for most homeowners. So the vast majority of homeowners is like, not a good purchase, but like there are people who are going to buy it anyway. Cause it's cool. And cause they like living in the future and they like the idea of solar panels and they want to see. And from that perspective, releasing this product instead of being like, yo, we're selling batteries to corporations was a really smart move. The, the question is, can they get enough other companies to follow along with them, making a ton of batteries to start changing the economics of powering your house?

• 1:02:37Speaker 02

  Right. And I, I just think like.

• 1:02:42Nilay Patel?

  They they have to prove that like, I mean, this only works if you have enough sun and you have solar and you're feeding back into the grid.

• 1:02:50Speaker 03

  Right. Or but no. So the deal is that you don't really need the grid if your battery setup is good enough and if you've got enough sun. So like you can set up a fully functioning households with one of these batteries and a solar panel in, I don't know, Sub-Saharan Africa and you don't need the grid.

• 1:03:05Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 1:03:06Speaker 03

  And but the the solar panels need to be more effective. The batteries need to be more effective. They need to be bigger. They need to be cheaper. Like that vision of how power and electricity works, like where the grid becomes less and less important. It makes sense if you buy into it, but there's a whole bunch of preconditions to get there.

• 1:03:25Speaker 01

  So how is it different to any solar panel solutions as they exist today, apart from it's got a Tesla?

• 1:03:31Speaker 03

  Well, solar panel solutions as they exist today, they just you you charge off them and you feed them back into the grid, but you're not in charge of storing that electricity by and large at the scale that this stores it.

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:03:41Speaker 03

  So a solar panel, you'll use it. And then it's like, you know, two days later, it's dark out. You're like, where is my electricity? Well, with this, the idea is that the battery would get you through the walls.

• 1:03:52Nilay Patel?

  Hmm. All right.

• 1:03:54Speaker 01

  And it also acts as a UPS, right?

• 1:03:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, but like, I mean, I assume, I don't know. But like, it's economically not really viable for a household. The people are probably going to be freaking out.

• 1:04:07Nilay Patel?

  Oh, no, the amount of like crazy math I've seen around these batteries.

• 1:04:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:11Nilay Patel?

  Is like crazy.

• 1:04:12Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:04:12Nilay Patel?

  It's crazy. Like, there's you have to if you are in a perfect world and you've got like a great solar panel and you're like a sunny country.

• 1:04:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:21Nilay Patel?

  There's like a whole plate like Germany is like a sunny enough country that this would like work for you.

• 1:04:24Speaker 03

  Yeah. But so the the model is so interesting that it's paired with SolarCity. Like SolarCity, I think, is the most interesting company around right now. Well, they're up there because they they went from like, the story of solar panels in America went from like, you know, Obama and so Slindra, was it?

• 1:04:42Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:04:43Speaker 03

  And like, and like, it's an abysmal failure. And all of a sudden, like, this one company's like, you know, it's actually not that bad. We're gonna start leasing them and we'll just see how it goes. And like, they're it's like, super popular. And now that, you know, they're gonna piggyback off that and do batteries.

• 1:04:58Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. We'll see. I think that realistically, like a bunch of like super fans and like crazy fun people that love nerdy things will buy them. And that'll hopefully that the idea is it'll run a hype cycle.

• 1:05:11Speaker 01

  I think for the majority.

• 1:05:12Nilay Patel?

  Hype check hype cycle.

• 1:05:13Speaker 02

  Eve.

• 1:05:14Speaker 03

  Oh my god.

• 1:05:14Speaker 01

  I think the biggest block is for like, I don't know what it's like in US, but in the UK and like our generation is like owning your own house is like almost unachievable unless you're not in a major city.

• 1:05:24Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 1:05:24Speaker 01

  So it's like when, what happens when landlords are going to steal these things and they're never gonna do that because it's just an extra expense, right?

• 1:05:33Nilay Patel?

  Right. And they particularly pass that expense on to you.

• 1:05:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:36Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. Someone just tweeted me that this is yet another 1.0 product.

• 1:05:39Speaker 02

  I was just gonna say that.

• 1:05:40Nilay Patel?

  Oh, that's a really good point.

• 1:05:41Speaker 02

  I was just gonna say that.

• 1:05:41Nilay Patel?

  We're just at this end, like it's crazy.

• 1:05:44Speaker 02

  It's awesome. It's like, it's like, it's a renaissance. It really is.

• 1:05:46Nilay Patel?

  A renaissance of 1.0s.

• 1:05:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's so many 1.0 products. You should write something about this.

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  Everyone can sort of see what the future is gonna be, but people are putting it out now because they can put it out now.

• 1:05:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:56Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 1:05:58Speaker 01

  It's interesting.

• 1:05:59Speaker 02

  It's kind of like.

• 1:06:00Nilay Patel?

  The 1.0 essence.

• 1:06:02Speaker 03

  1.0 essence.

• 1:06:03Nilay Patel?

  It's something. Do you want to do two, five minutes? We're 15 over. You want to do two minutes on I/O and then we can do close up?

• 1:06:09Speaker 03

  The schedule got released. In the schedule, Google screwed up and put Android M in it.

• 1:06:16Speaker 02

  I mean, that's not really a.

• 1:06:17Nilay Patel?

  It's not a surprise.

• 1:06:18Speaker 03

  Marzipan, meringue.

• 1:06:20Nilay Patel?

  They've got a license. Are you kidding me?

• 1:06:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, they did it with Kit Kat.

• 1:06:24Nilay Patel?

  How do you not license M&Ms for Android M?

• 1:06:26Speaker 03

  Cause meringue is better.

• 1:06:28Speaker 02

  No. Also, it's usually lemon meringue, right?

• 1:06:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:32Speaker 02

  That's what you want.

• 1:06:33Speaker 03

  So maybe it's, maybe it's a very small upgrade from L. It's not that big.

• 1:06:37Speaker 01

  So last year.

• 1:06:37Speaker 03

  It's just a little bit of stuff on top of L.

• 1:06:40Speaker 01

  They announced it was Android L last year.

• 1:06:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:43Speaker 01

  They didn't announce Lollipop until later in the year last year.

• 1:06:46Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 1:06:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:47Speaker 02

  So they're just gonna say Android M. They might announce Android M. Sorry.

• 1:06:53Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 1:06:53Speaker 02

  What's a double alliteration joke?

• 1:06:55Nilay Patel?

  Go outside.

• 1:06:59Speaker 03

  There's gonna be a new Spotlight story that is, actually Stephen Levy wrote a story about this like last November. It's live action. So you know Spotlight story, like you'd put your camera on, you see the little mouse jumping around, whatever. They're doing that with a live action chase scene with a woman in a race car and a helicopter and whatever, like actual live action. Directed by the Fast and Furious director, Jason Lynn.

• 1:07:20Nilay Patel?

  Justin Lynn.

• 1:07:20Speaker 03

  Justin Lynn. That's what I said.

• 1:07:22Nilay Patel?

  You said Jason.

• 1:07:22Speaker 03

  No, I didn't.

• 1:07:23Nilay Patel?

  Sure.

• 1:07:23Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:07:23Nilay Patel?

  He said Jason.

• 1:07:26Speaker 03

  Get out.

• 1:07:28Speaker 03

  I thought you left.

• 1:07:30Speaker 02

  Just go and play with Spotify outside.

• 1:07:31Speaker 03

  Go, go play with Spotify.

• 1:07:32Nilay Patel?

  Go someplace where there's no wifi and try to find some goddamn songs.

• 1:07:35Speaker 03

  I don't know what else is happening. There's like some other developer stuff.

• 1:07:39Nilay Patel?

  Someone just, by the way, tweeted at me that you can like click into a menu and filter all offline songs when you're that artist, that music view.

• 1:07:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:46Nilay Patel?

  But you know what that doesn't show you?

• 1:07:47Speaker 03

  What?

• 1:07:47Nilay Patel?

  Songs you've downloaded on the playlist because Spotify is garbage.

• 1:07:53Nilay Patel?

  I use it. I pay for it. It's the one I use the most because everything else is a little bit crappier. That's my endorsement.

• 1:07:59Speaker 03

  Disagree.

• 1:08:00Nilay Patel?

  When the next, if Spotify ever buys an ad on the show, that's what I'm gonna read.

• 1:08:04Speaker 03

  A little less crappy than everything else.

• 1:08:06Nilay Patel?

  Take us through the engagement zone.

• 1:08:07Speaker 02

  Um, I just want to, I, we should just tell the people listening to this, Google I O, May 28th, 12:30 Eastern. Dieter, you're going?

• 1:08:15Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:08:15Speaker 02

  We are going to live blog the hell out of that thing.

• 1:08:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's gonna be fun.

• 1:08:19Speaker 02

  Google's Live, or W W C.

• 1:08:21Speaker 03

  It's two and a half hours long.

• 1:08:23Speaker 02

  I O is one of my favorite events of the year. It's awesome. There's so much news that happens. Uh, okay, social stuff. Um, Snapchat, do it. If you watch Snapchat this, if you watched Snapchat this week, uh, Sean, uh, wrote about this, uh, self-driving like truck.

• 1:08:40Speaker 03

  A big rig.

• 1:08:41Speaker 02

  A big rig.

• 1:08:42Speaker 03

  Semi-truck, yeah.

• 1:08:42Speaker 02

  Uh, and he was at the Hoover Dam and he snapped and it was an awesome story. I hope you got to see that. It's gone now. Uh, you should add us on Snapchat, The Real Verge, type it in and find us, um, Snap every day. There's good stuff there. And you should also find us on Periscope. We are at Verge on Periscope. Uh, it ties into Twitter really well. You should also turn on notifications because when we broadcast, it's always a good time. Back to you, Neelai.

• 1:09:09Nilay Patel?

  I will say that we're getting to a place, we just brought on our third social media person, Caitlin, who's upstairs.

• 1:09:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:15Nilay Patel?

  It's her first Vergecast mention. We'll put her in a hype seat one of these days.

• 1:09:21Nilay Patel?

  But, we're getting to a place where, like, our non, like, YouTube, non-regular video stuff on Snapchat and Periscope.

• 1:09:29Speaker 02

  Off-platform video, yeah.

• 1:09:30Nilay Patel?

  It's off, they're all on a platform.

• 1:09:32Speaker 02

  I mean, off-Verge.

• 1:09:33Nilay Patel?

  Our, like, modern, our, like, post-modern videos.

• 1:09:38Speaker 02

  Our 1.0 future.

• 1:09:40Nilay Patel?

  Our, like, next generation of video stuff that we do. No, because it's all in beta.

• 1:09:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:46Nilay Patel?

  Like, this is, like, the beta of a Periscope strategy.

• 1:09:48Speaker 03

  Some of the Periscope stuff we're thinking about doing is crazy.

• 1:09:50Nilay Patel?

  So Sam is gonna be doing a lot more video stuff on these, like, other crazy... I get, I get that the offline view is available on all the views, but there's no one holistic view of your offline.

• 1:10:02Speaker 02

  There's no catch-all.

• 1:10:03Nilay Patel?

  People gotta stop tweeting me with this garbage.

• 1:10:05Speaker 03

  Google Play Music.

• 1:10:06Speaker 02

  It wouldn't surprise me if Spotify had an update, like, next, next week with this. That would be amazing.

• 1:10:12Nilay Patel?

  It would be.

• 1:10:14Speaker 03

  May 20th.

• 1:10:15Nilay Patel?

  Just to address any live. Sam's doing cool stuff on Periscope and Twitter and Snapchat.

• 1:10:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:20Nilay Patel?

  Like, it's, that stuff to me is very exciting. We're gonna, we're gonna be pushing on it. So that is actually what I want people to do. By the way, we're, like, 50 reviews away from 1,000 5-star reviews in iTunes.

• 1:10:31Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:10:32Nilay Patel?

  Uh, it's getting closer, so I'd appreciate a little push to get to 1,000 5-star reviews. So please go on iTunes, hit us with the 5 stars.

• 1:10:39Speaker 02

  What's the question?

• 1:10:39Nilay Patel?

  Tell us what you want to see on Periscope and Snapchat. Like, go on those things and let us know how we're doing, what you're, what you're interested in. Tell us, you can tell me why Spotify is great. It's from the very Spotify employees that are listening angrily tweeting me right now. And then also check out What's Tech with Chris Plant. That show is awesome lately. The line here says it's about the singularity, which has been aligned on the sheet for, like, easily four weeks now. Chris has been talking about the singularity for a month.

• 1:11:07Speaker 03

  The last one's about the Marvel comic universe.

• 1:11:09Nilay Patel?

  Oh, god.

• 1:11:10Speaker 03

  The dystopian feeling of it.

• 1:11:11Nilay Patel?

  The next one is about me murdering myself. So check out What's Tech, give that some good feels as well. I am reckless, Thomas Tom Warren, Sam. Sam is Sam Sheffer, Dieter is Backlon on Twitter. Follow us all, follow The Verge, do some good stuff. Thank you so much to Tripcase. Go to tripcase.com/vergecast, check it out today. And again, the show today was brought to you by Lynda.com. Your Lynda.com membership gives you unlimited access to training on hundreds of topics, all for one flat rate. If you're looking to be an industry expert, you're passionate about a hobby, you just want to learn something new, please visit lynda.com/vergecast. Sign up for a free 10-day trial. That is L-Y-N-D-A.com/vergecast. That is today's show. I think it was a good one. No thanks to Tom.

• 1:11:51Speaker 01

  I feel great.

• 1:11:52Nilay Patel?

  Tom, say goodbye in an American accent.

• 1:11:54Speaker 01

  Goodbye.

• 1:11:55Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god.

• 1:11:56Speaker 03

  Rock and roll. Paul.