The perfect Swiss man

Dieter Bohn, Nilay Patel, Casey Newton, and Kirsten Frisina on the hype-seat caress your brain with knowledge about Microsoft's new confident and purposeful direction, whether Twitter Moments is useful or not, Google AMP's benefits for the internet at large, and how the Steve Jobs movie is a great film but also a castle of lies. Thought of the 'cast: If you die in HoloLens, do you die in real life? 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?

  No, no, no, no, no. I don't know any vocal exercises.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  Damn it.

• 0:09Nilay Patel?

  Casey was doing it. I know that we're live.

• 0:12Speaker 02

  Watermelon, watermelon? Watermelon, watermelon.

• 0:14Nilay Patel?

  Here's the thing about starting the Vergecast.

• 0:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 0:16Nilay Patel?

  At this point, I think that us duffing the beginning of the Vergecast is like, it makes the viewer feel, the viewer, the listener feel at home.

• 0:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, it makes our producer Jorge so happy.

• 0:27Nilay Patel?

  I just think, look, you're a person in probably America, although we have a strong international listenership as well. So you're a person of the world. You're a citizen.

• 0:35Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 0:36Nilay Patel?

  Of this earth.

• 0:36Speaker 02

  He's a man about town.

• 0:37Nilay Patel?

  Uh, you've got your headphones in, you've got your car stereo on, you're in the bathroom, I don't know, wherever you are, the speakers are blaring. And there are other tiny speakers in your ears or bigger speakers around you, uh, surrounding your body.

• 0:48Speaker 02

  Made by Bang & Olufsen.

• 0:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Yeah, you're a perfect Swiss man.

• 0:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 0:53Nilay Patel?

  In your house, and you've got those awesome Bang & Olufsen speakers, you're sitting on a perfect leather cube sofa. Uh, your vape is heating because you're about to vape the most perfect marijuana ever created by man in Switzerland. And you're like, "I'm gonna start my show."

• 1:11Speaker 02

  The first thing you hear.

• 1:13Nilay Patel?

  You say it in Swiss, of course.

• 1:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14Nilay Patel?

  Which I don't speak. Um, but in your mind, imagine that you're Swiss and you, you know what I'm saying? And you start it, and then you hear me just blow it.

• 1:23Speaker 02

  Do they speak German or French?

• 1:25Nilay Patel?

  I don't know, whatever they speak. I've been vaping a perfect joint all afternoon.

• 1:34Nilay Patel?

  And you're like, and you hear me blow it. And that is finally, when your veneer of perfection fades away, and the pressure of being a perfect Swiss man

• 1:46Nilay Patel?

  just melts. And you're like, "You know what? I'm home now. I can be a real person."

• 1:50Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:51Nilay Patel?

  And your couch reveals itself, not as a perfect cube, but as a dumpy brown leather sofa. And it's 3:00 in the morning, you've got a half box of Domino's, and you're like, "You know what? I'm home now."

• 2:01Speaker 01

  I just wish you could have given us some more details on that scenario, so we really could have pictured it. But I'll try to make do with what you described.

• 2:07Nilay Patel?

  That was basically, uh, how I think my life should go.

• 2:11Speaker 03

  Dela just wants to be a Swiss man.

• 2:13Nilay Patel?

  Uh, I don't know if I want to be Swiss. I think that I want to live a life of like, complete angular perfection, but if you know me enough, underneath it is just roiling chaos. And you're like, "How does he do it?" This is the Vergecast.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 2:30Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, look, it's a day in October now. September has faded away. Now is October. Everyone's Twitter handles are stupid because of Halloween.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, don't do that.

• 2:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, please, God, no.

• 2:41Speaker 02

  You're better than that.

• 2:41Nilay Patel?

  And I will say that we've had just a ridiculous week. So I'm Neil Patel. Casey Newton is here for some reason.

• 2:48Speaker 01

  Nice to be here.

• 2:49Nilay Patel?

  Just, he just showed up.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  Thought I would see what y'all do out here.

• 2:52Nilay Patel?

  Dieter Bone is here with me.

• 2:53Speaker 02

  Hello.

• 2:54Nilay Patel?

  And in a hype seat, Kirsten Priscina.

• 2:58Speaker 03

  Oh, you pronounced it right.

• 3:01Nilay Patel?

  Actually, I was pronounced it right. He said retconning the past four episodes of The Verge.

• 3:08Nilay Patel?

  No, we've had a ridiculous week. So Casey's in town because there was a Google event, there was a Twitter thing. Dieter and I went to the big Microsoft hardware event. Kirsten ran in the office tweeting furiously. What else happened?

• 3:21Speaker 02

  We scoped.

• 3:21Nilay Patel?

  Oh, we scoped. We saw the Steve Jobs movie last night. I interviewed Sorkin and Danny Boyle.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  And Sachin Adella.

• 3:28Nilay Patel?

  Maybe Sachin Adella. Just so much stuff.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  Wild.

• 3:32Nilay Patel?

  Wild week on The Verge. And one of those weeks, it's like, this is why The Verge exists.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, fall is primetime for theverge.com.

• 3:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  Don't sleep on it.

• 3:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Check it multiple times a day.

• 3:41Nilay Patel?

  Everyone's very busy. No one has time to go home and vape their perfect weed cigarettes.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  That's why we just fantasize about it for the first 20 minutes of every Verge podcast now. What must it be like to relax from time to time?

• 3:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, we seriously, we tried to have a drink last night after the Steve Jobs screening and all this. Like, you know what? We have busy tomorrow. We're going home.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  It's true. It's the earliest The Verge crew has ever gone home, in my experience. Tonight, the walls are coming down.

• 4:05Speaker 02

  I gotta work tomorrow.

• 4:07Nilay Patel?

  It's awful.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Here's the thing about a million tech products getting unveiled in September, October. Then they get released.

• 4:15Speaker 03

  And then Dieter never sleeps again.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  And there has to be work to be done with them.

• 4:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  I mean, that's what you say. I mean, you know, let's just, I think you can just say at a very high level, some new squares of glass will be released. Touching them, touching them with your fingers will enable certain, you know, features and capabilities and, you know, your, but your own mileage may vary.

• 4:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  I think, I mean, you know, what more does that say?

• 4:35Nilay Patel?

  There was a terrible John Chen interview. See a BlackBerry.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  With the BlackBerry perf?

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Did I pronounce that correctly?

• 4:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, you did. That's exactly right.

• 4:44Nilay Patel?

  Uh, and he was like, you know, it's got the latest Qualcomm. It runs the Google.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, it runs the Goog.

• 4:49Nilay Patel?

  And, uh, Dan Seifer was like, if I could just boil every hands-on video I ever shoot down to, it runs Google and has the latest Qualcomm. He's like, I'd be golden. Uh, so it's, uh, John Chan, uh, apparently was on stage at Code Mobile.

• 5:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. He wants to sell five million BlackBerry devices next year.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  I bet he does.

• 5:09Nilay Patel?

  Don't we all?

• 5:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:11Nilay Patel?

  And I want to be a perfect Swissman.

• 5:14Nilay Patel?

  Look, we all have dreams. Uh, so whatever. So that's happening. BlackBerry continues its slow descent into

• 5:20Speaker 01

  Madness.

• 5:21Nilay Patel?

  Madness and, and just futility. But Microsoft is back.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  They are back.

• 5:26Nilay Patel?

  They're back. Yeah.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  Great event.

• 5:28Nilay Patel?

  It was a really good event.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. Even me, like somebody who does like basically nothing but snark about Microsoft, looked at all these products and thought, hey, uh, like there are some nice things here.

• 5:36Nilay Patel?

  It wasn't, I, you know, honestly, it's, the products looked good and that made everything better. But actually what struck me about this event, and we went with this massive crew of people. And it was a big event and, you know, Microsoft can be really cheesy in a very particular way. They love like, we brought the fans out and like, you know, Apple like has a cult, but there's rarely like a standing ovation for a MacBook Pro. Right? Like Microsoft is like, we found the people in America who will stand up and applaud when we show them a laptop and they're here today tweeting with this hashtag, which is great. And usually that comes off really cheesy and false. Although, but this time it came off very sincere and like, in a, in a way that's like,

• 6:18Nilay Patel?

  Microsoft is, I've always described covering Microsoft as watching somebody else do a puzzle, which is infuriating, right? Like just that, that, right? Like, and like Microsoft can never do it. And it's like, they were finally like, we just. We put the puzzle together, guys.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  They did. My favorite moment of the whole presentation was towards the end when Panos Panay said, "You know, I'm not supposed to do this," which that's always when my ears perk up because like things go right off the rails. He's like, "I'm gonna let you guys touch these. Would anybody like to touch them?" And people just started rending their garments and hurling themselves at the man so that they could touch a lap board with a detachable screen.

• 6:55Nilay Patel?

  Which feels awesome. Also, they have to stop calling it digital clipboard.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  I agree. Every time they call it clipboard, like what could have a lamer association than a clipboard? It's like a stapler.

• 7:04Speaker 03

  You can't clip anything to it. Like, it doesn't work like a clipboard.

• 7:08Nilay Patel?

  It does look much like a clipboard.

• 7:09Speaker 03

  But no.

• 7:10Nilay Patel?

  All right, let's zoom out. So it's a great event.

• 7:13Speaker 02

  I was about to actually there because technically, when you double click the thing on the pen, it opens up the clip mode where you can clip part of the screen and then put it in the outback.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  This is bad.

• 7:22Speaker 03

  No, no, no.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  You've clipped. It's a digital clip.

• 7:25Nilay Patel?

  Let's just, let's just back up. Let's just zoom out together as a group. Dieter, tell us what happened at this event.

• 7:32Speaker 02

  Man, so much. So they announced, they started with phones, right? Or did they start with band?

• 7:38Nilay Patel?

  They started with the band and then the hollow lens and then phones.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  Band. So it started with the new Microsoft Band. I still find it an insane product. It's still awkward and weird, but this thing measures literally everything.

• 7:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:53Speaker 02

  And it's, it's not quite to the level of like the $500 GPS-enabled crazy insane smartwatch with the chest strap and blah, blah, blah, blah. But it's like half a tick below that.

• 8:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 8:05Speaker 02

  250 bucks. You know, we'll see. I'm not a band health kind of person, but it's like, it seems nuts. And it's like basically a smartphone that is really big and awkward, but not, not smartphone, smartwatch.

• 8:17Nilay Patel?

  My take on the band is that nobody knows what these are for.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:20Speaker 02

  They're for, they're for regular old, plain old, average athletes who happen to run ultra marathons.

• 8:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 8:26Speaker 02

  That was how they positioned it.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  It always winds up being like something that you give a loved one at Christmas that they wear for three weeks and then either lose or just put in a drawer.

• 8:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Or they became like insanely addicted to numbers and you're like, what happened to you?

• 8:38Speaker 02

  There are so many numbers to be addicted by.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  That's what happened to Christie Turlington Burns.

• 8:43Nilay Patel?

  She's like, "I have to run through Africa now."

• 8:47Speaker 01

  Anyway, so that's a band.

• 8:48Nilay Patel?

  That's what the video was.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  Saw HoloLens demo.

• 8:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, the thing about the band and the HoloLens is the thing I meant to say about the band was nobody knows what wearables are for.

• 8:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:00Nilay Patel?

  And so like, it is at least interesting that Microsoft isn't like, our solution is a watch. Because nobody is what they're for. So they might as well start in a totally different zone and iterate towards the final solution versus, you know, we made a watch just like everybody else. But I think they're very open about the fact that they're like, yeah, we don't, I don't know. Does he like this? Do you want this?

• 9:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. What is like, there's, there's no killer app for the wearable yet, right?

• 9:24Nilay Patel?

  The, the killer app is ultramarathons, right? It's like measuring your VO2 max, uh, I guess. Anyhow, so there's Van and then Holland's demo.

• 9:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, where the guy walked around a room very, very, very slowly in a reaction to giant killer scorpion robots invading his home.

• 9:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:43Speaker 02

  He's just like, oh, look, the walls exploded and there are robot drones flying through it that wants to zap me.

• 9:49Nilay Patel?

  But they're.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  Let me casually mosey over to this corner.

• 9:52Nilay Patel?

  But isn't that how you play video games?

• 9:53Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, that's definitely how I play Halo.

• 9:55Speaker 03

  You sit in your, you sit in your living room and you like steal cars and you like run around and like shoot people, but you don't actually like.

• 10:01Nilay Patel?

  Move?

• 10:01Speaker 03

  Do those things.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  Did you just wanna see like terror on his face?

• 10:06Nilay Patel?

  I wanted to see him die on stage. As children? Did you not like build forts and run around and like play guns and like?

• 10:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, but like we know that, we know, we're not like, none of that stuff was photorealistic. It's not like you're actually thinking that your wall is coming down.

• 10:17Nilay Patel?

  I know, but in terms of like a holographic game that is like action packed, the reaction, like you want a game where you can actually like.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  But here's the problem. If you die in HoloLens, you die in real life.

• 10:28Nilay Patel?

  That's true.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  And so you have to be very careful when you do that.

• 10:31Nilay Patel?

  But the news there was that the developer kit is coming Q1 of 2016 and I think it's like three grand.

• 10:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's 3000, yeah.

• 10:39Nilay Patel?

  Which like, real talk, we're not gonna see this thing released to consumers till holiday of next year.

• 10:43Speaker 03

  And is the 3000, is the 3000 just the HoloLens itself? And then you would have to have a really powerful computer to plug it in?

• 10:49Nilay Patel?

  No, HoloLens is a standalone. Yeah, but the, the dev kit, I don't know what it is. It could be like a crazy, just like thing in the cable to your powerful computer. Yeah.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  The HoloLens, like.

• 11:01Nilay Patel?

  They're getting to the place where the hardware is more final. But when they first prototyped it, like they wouldn't, like basically Tom was like blindfolded. And they put the thing on his face, they took it off, they're like, don't look at it.

• 11:11Speaker 03

  Well, I'm just kind of sick of the demos that they do because they're showing us in the demo something that's not realistic. Like the field of view is so much smaller than what we're seeing. And when you're watching the demo and you see all of everything that's in the room, that's not what the HoloLens is showing you. The HoloLens is showing you like a tiny little bit of it. And so I just, I, I think that we wrote a piece about that, how it's like a little bit smoke and mirrors.

• 11:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's Addy. Addy's all over the, I mean.

• 11:34Speaker 03

  I'm not into it. It's just like, show us what the actual device is.

• 11:38Nilay Patel?

  I don't think you can. There's like this weird problem, which is that like, most of the screens and video that we capture is designed for mass viewing. And then everything, in every piece of technology we cover, almost every single thing is like about more and more personal experiences. Right? So like VR, there's no way to show VR to multiple people at once, unless everybody has a hardware. AR is the same thing. Like, it's actually really fascinating. Like, how do you, how do you communicate to a mass audience the experience of something that's designed to be as intimately personal as possible?

• 12:11Speaker 03

  But you can play the video, like you can display what the person is seeing in their headset. And you can watch that, just like how you like watch someone else play a game on Twitch. Like you could do the same thing and you could see exactly what's in the frame as opposed to like, I don't know if I'm making myself clear.

• 12:29Nilay Patel?

  No, you absolutely could.

• 12:30Speaker 03

  Like you could just mirror what they're seeing.

• 12:31Nilay Patel?

  Field of view.

• 12:32Speaker 03

  Well, it would though, because it would, it would cut off, if we were seeing exactly what the HoloLens was seeing in those demos, we would only be seeing a video that's a certain distance wide. And it would actually give us an understanding of what the HoloLens is like. I just think that they're doing themselves a disservice with the demos. Because it's giving people too high of a expectation.

• 12:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but I think it's also they're desperately trying to teach people what the difference between AR and VR is. And so I think their demos are way more about establishing like, this is what it does versus this is what they're expecting. Because it's not, no one's ever made that product before and tried to give it to consumers and like try to make it exciting. I think they're desperately just trying to be like, here's our vision of this product and like what it can do. And it's better for them to like.

• 13:17Speaker 03

  Oversell it a little bit.

• 13:18Nilay Patel?

  Oversell it, make it hyper-realistic versus here's just like a picture of like cartoons on a screen. And I, and I think that tension is just real. It's like, literally, I just keep wondering, like, no one has figured out how to do video of VR experiences yet.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  Which is actually going to make the Microsoft stores like weirdly important, right? Because that like, people are going to have to see it to decide if it's something they care about. And like, who knows, if they like it, maybe the Microsoft store will be the reason why.

• 13:43Nilay Patel?

  I was at the Microsoft store, and it's funny because the headsets are there in a glass case. And it's like, this just looks like.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  It is a little strange.

• 13:51Nilay Patel?

  Like, put this on your face sometime.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  Can you imagine if Apple just like put the iPhone 7 in a glass case in like every store?

• 14:00Nilay Patel?

  They probably still sell so many. Okay, so there, those are those, those things. And then phones.

• 14:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, so two Lumias, the Lumia 950, Lumia 950 XL, and then there's a cheap 550, whatever. Uh, the big deal, these are like the first Windows 10 mobile phones, which I think is what we're calling them now, which is just the best.

• 14:19Nilay Patel?

  Kill me.

• 14:20Speaker 02

  Uh, so they run like a version of Windows 10, they run Windows 10. If like, once you get down to the semantics of it, I'm sure that like there are fistfights that happen amongst, you know, Windows fanboys and fangirls. Uh, but basically they're just Windows phones. Like, you know what a Windows phone looks like, feels like, how it acts, what it does. Except that they run, uh, the universal apps, which are the same apps on desktop as they are on the phone. They just shrink down, you know, responsively. Uh, so Facebook has committed to putting some of those apps on there. And then the other thing that they do is this thing called Continuum, which you plug it into a display and then you can just open up a bunch of apps on the display and like, like a little tiny desktop.

• 15:03Speaker 02

  And like, you can switch between the apps, so you can't Windows stuff. But they're like the full version of the apps, the same stuff you'd see on Windows 10, but running off of the phone. And like, we launched like four or five apps, plus had it had an app running on the phone. It was fine, like switching was fine.

• 15:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  It's super cool. I don't know if I really believe, like, Microsoft's claim is that, oh, in the developing world, just buy this phone, you know, buy a hundred dollar dock and then you'll just, that'll be your computer for, you know, the rest of your years or whatever.

• 15:29Nilay Patel?

  That's a long way away.

• 15:29Speaker 02

  That's a long way away. But it's like,

• 15:32Nilay Patel?

  Really cool. And then we found out after the event that these phones that are, you know, fine, they're good. They have this one cool feature are exclusive to AT&T.

• 15:44Speaker 03

  Wait, are they exclusive?

• 15:45Nilay Patel?

  The, the, one of them is. I don't know about the other one, but it's either way, it's like, but I don't think that they need to sell these phones. They need these phones to exist. They need, like, they need to just stay in there and keep that relationship with AT&T going, I guess.

• 16:00Speaker 02

  So that some other OEMs will say, hey.

• 16:03Nilay Patel?

  No, I don't think it's about OEMs. I think it's, it's about apps. Every, Microsoft's whole thing is to claw their way back into the mobile app market. And, you know, they have this big problem where nobody pays for software anymore on mobile. And the Microsoft's entire business is selling you software.

• 16:19Speaker 02

  Right.

• 16:19Nilay Patel?

  And so they, now they've moved to this model where you're gonna, you're gonna pay for subscriptions to their software on various mobile platforms, but they need to convince all the app developers to put apps on the phone so that their phone is good. So their phone needs to just exist.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 16:34Nilay Patel?

  While they like work their way towards their future of whatever Windows 10 is and whatever the new model for software sales is. But that's why they make devices now.

• 16:41Speaker 02

  Right.

• 16:42Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, and the reason they make the Surface Pro and the Surface Book and they're doing Windows 10 and they're giving Windows 10 away for free is literally to convince people to make universal apps. So that when sometime down the road, when they put out the next Lumia, they can say, oh, it has a bunch of apps because we gave Windows 10 away for free to everyone. And Facebook made a universal app for the Surface Book and it just runs on the phone, fine.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  I mean, if they're successful, the next Lumia won't be a Lumia. It'll be a Surface Phone.

• 17:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I think, and I think that's actually why it's not branded Surface Phone.

• 17:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:12Nilay Patel?

  I get, I get the real sense that they don't want to ruin that branding with a failed product.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:15Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like Surface is a successful.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  Not that that stopped them from releasing the Surface RT or the Surface 3.

• 17:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, no, the Surface, uh, no.

• 17:23Speaker 02

  All right. Yeah.

• 17:25Nilay Patel?

  All right.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  Surface Pro 3 is great.

• 17:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the Surface 3 is.

• 17:28Speaker 03

  I have a question.

• 17:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 17:30Speaker 03

  With them giving Windows 10 away for free, how is Microsoft making money like right now?

• 17:36Nilay Patel?

  Uh, well, so every time anyone sells a computer, they still pay a license fee.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:40Speaker 03

  Is that their main source of income?

• 17:42Speaker 02

  There's a limitation to the free.

• 17:42Nilay Patel?

  Microsoft has like seven or eight billion dollar businesses.

• 17:45Speaker 03

  It's about, it's more about their enterprise stuff at this point, right?

• 17:49Speaker 01

  Like SharePoint, Azure is huge for them.

• 17:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 17:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're, they're gonna continue to make money on Windows.

• 17:55Nilay Patel?

  The Surface line is like a three billion dollar business for them.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:58Nilay Patel?

  Um, so they, Microsoft makes a lot of money. And so when I was talking to Nadella, he's like, I actually need this company to stop worrying about money. Like revenue and profit are the signs of success after you've made all the bets. Um, but I need people to care about whether or not the customers love our products and whether or not they're using it. He's like, I don't really care if, um, I don't know what example he used. I think it was OneDrive. He's like, I don't really care if the OneDrive team is squeezing more profit out of OneDrive. I care if the customers are using it more and more and more and more.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  Right.

• 18:29Nilay Patel?

  Um, and that, that was like a fascinating part of the interview because I think Ballmer really cared about squeezing profit.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:36Nilay Patel?

  Out of every leverage point that he had with Windows and Office.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  And he was great at it.

• 18:41Nilay Patel?

  He was really good at it.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:42Nilay Patel?

  Um, and I think that culture is still in Microsoft where they know how to make money. You know, it's like we talk about Amazon this way, where it's like, one day, Amazon's gonna flip the switch and they're, they're gonna make more than a dollar a quarter. Right? But right now, uh, you know, they just keep investing all their money in R and D.

• 18:58Nilay Patel?

  But like, is there a switch at Amazon? Like, you know, we don't know because they've never done it.

• 19:03Speaker 02

  No, they've done it once. There was one time they did it. It was like two years ago. They're like, hey.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  When they had like an outrageously profitable quarter. We're like, see? And then they immediately spent like 800 million dollars on R and D.

• 19:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they're like, Fire Phone! Ah, we're drunk!

• 19:18Nilay Patel?

  Uh, but Microsoft, like, Microsoft has the, the switch.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:21Nilay Patel?

  You know it. Like, it's there. And I think that culture's there. And I think Nadella has spent all this time being like,

• 19:27Speaker 01

  Don't touch the switch.

• 19:27Nilay Patel?

  Stay away from it.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Don't touch the switch.

• 19:29Nilay Patel?

  Like, we need to get back in the game.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 19:31Nilay Patel?

  Uh, and that is really interesting because it means he's pissing off so many of his partners, particularly, I think now, like, the Surface Pro 4 irritated everyone. The Surface Pro 3 irritated everyone. Uh, and now the.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  Cause it was good.

• 19:44Nilay Patel?

  It's really good. Uh, although I never liked it. Like,

• 19:47Speaker 02

  There's the so here's what they did with the Surface Pro 4 to fix the things you didn't like. They've they've tweaked the keyboard again, so it's a little bit more keyboardy.

• 19:55Nilay Patel?

  Whatever.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  They've made the trackpad bigger, mostly in the X, maybe a little in the Y, but it's actually good now.

• 20:01Nilay Patel?

  I just don't buy the form factor. They can't. The thing about the Surface, like finally, like this is the computer I've always wanted for Microsoft, because it's their computer, it's integrated, it doesn't have the garbage. It's like, this is what they want Windows to be. I get it. And you're like, but why? Kickstand, like.

• 20:16Speaker 02

  Kickstand's good.

• 20:17Nilay Patel?

  Whatever. Like, it's just a bad idea. It's like they couldn't make a laptop, so they made some other bad idea about a laptop.

• 20:23Speaker 02

  They fixed the stylus.

• 20:24Nilay Patel?

  But now they made a laptop, which is very exciting, because it's a very good laptop.

• 20:28Speaker 02

  Yes, let's talk about the laptop.

• 20:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the Surface Pro is a spec bump, right? Like, if you like the Surface Pro 3, you are almost certain to like the Surface Pro 4.

• 20:35Speaker 02

  They kept the same connectors.

• 20:36Nilay Patel?

  If you, like me, thought the Surface Pro 3 was the best execution of a fundamentally dumb idea, then you will feel the same way about the Surface Pro 4.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, also shout out to people like myself who just aggressively did not care about either Surface Pro.

• 20:48Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  I think that was a lot of people.

• 20:50Nilay Patel?

  There's three of them, and then two regular ones. One of them only ran Windows ARM apps. Now is a product worth buying.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  By the time you've told me that much, I just like, my iPad's wonderful. Thank you for my iPad.

• 21:04Nilay Patel?

  Anyhow, Surface Pro.

• 21:06Speaker 02

  So Microsoft talks about how we made the best laptop ever. It's a 13.5, I think. It's like, it feels like a 14, but it's in a 13 ish form factor, basically. Amazing screen. It's got this insane hinge. And you're like, why is this hinge so insane? It looks like a snake. It's called dynamic fulcrum, something or other.

• 21:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 21:26Speaker 01

  Muscle wire.

• 21:27Nilay Patel?

  Muscle wire.

• 21:31Nilay Patel?

  Right. This is the thing about this presentation. I and I submit this to to you and to our audience. There are only two people in the tech industry who can sell names for specs in a way that I know that those names will then show up in our comments.

• 21:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:46Nilay Patel?

  It's Phil Schiller can just name shit at will about Apple products. And then people are like, well, it doesn't have a retina display. And you're like, those are just words. Whatever. And now.

• 21:56Speaker 02

  Penn is Penny.

• 21:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. He can just be like, it has a G5 optical stack. And I guarantee you, we're going to review the iPad Pro whenever we review it. And we're going to talk about the stylus. And someone in our comments is going to be, you know, just doesn't have that G5 optical stack.

• 22:07Speaker 02

  There's actually two. There's the G5 optical stack, and there's Pixel Sense.

• 22:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Well, if you don't have Pixel Sense, just get the fuck out of my face.

• 22:18Nilay Patel?

  It's a really good laptop.

• 22:21Nilay Patel?

  Got a really great keyboard. It's made out of magnesium. It weighs, I said it weighs heavy, but it's like heavy relative to like a MacBook. But it's like, you know, three and a half pounds. Like what a professional laptop at that grade.

• 22:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:32Nilay Patel?

  And then he gets to the reveal and is like, oh, and by the way, pushes a button and lifts the screen off and the thing is a tablet. Hooray.

• 22:39Speaker 02

  Like a really great feeling tablet.

• 22:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 22:41Speaker 03

  How heavy is the tablet?

• 22:43Nilay Patel?

  It's not heavy.

• 22:44Speaker 02

  Like, I just want to hold it all the time.

• 22:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 22:46Speaker 03

  So that's a good way.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  I've seen Neil like cuddling it in private moments.

• 22:52Nilay Patel?

  I mean, like it's, this is a pro, like I have never, I have not been excited about a Microsoft product in a long time.

• 22:58Speaker 02

  No.

• 22:59Nilay Patel?

  It's funny because during the event, when they're announcing software, they're so excited. They're like Windows 10 everywhere. And Deere looked at me and he was like, this is a really good event. And I was like, I hadn't yet been, they hadn't, they hadn't shown me the service book yet. My heart hadn't yet found its new love. And I was like, yeah. And so you go home and your fucking Xbox One crashes because that's my experience with Microsoft especially. It's like, I have this thing. I play the games on it and it crashes all the time. And I'm like, they haven't figured it out. And then I was like playing with a service book at the event. And I was like, I, this is, I want this experience really bad. I have this dream where I just take a pen, I write, I write on the, like literally write on the website what I want to fix.

• 23:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:40Nilay Patel?

  And like, this is finally the product.

• 23:42Speaker 02

  Oh, and the pen is so, they, they change, you can buy tips for the new pen.

• 23:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 23:46Speaker 03

  Oh, this looks so cool.

• 23:47Speaker 02

  It feels, there's more friction. They made it softer. It feels way better. And PixelSense and the G5 optical stack means that the pen is way more responsive. It has way less.

• 23:55Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God.

• 23:56Speaker 03

  Thank you, nerd Deeter.

• 23:57Speaker 02

  I'm just saying.

• 23:58Nilay Patel?

  PixelSense G5 optical system. I just like, here's the thing. And the reason I say, I'm, I'm like joking about Panos and Schiller being able to say these things. But the reason, and I think this is actually important, it's Panos. Did an amazing job of telling you why they had done the engineering of the product. And he kept on saying, this is really nerdy, but it's important. And let me tell you why. And then he would explain, this is why we engineered the hinge this way, or this is why the chips in the phones are liquid cooled.

• 24:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:31Nilay Patel?

  Whatever. He would, he was going through in extreme detail, very nerdy specs about his products. But he was saying, let me tell you why it matters, because it enables this experience or that experience. And like, we were joking last week at the Google event, that now every phone launch has to include some sort of freshman seminar about how photography works. Like, here's a sensor, here are microns, here are pixels.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:57Nilay Patel?

  Pixels turn light into electricity. The electricity rockets through your phone and assembles itself into a memory. Everyone has to do it. And Google just kind of like fell down on the job. They're like, we bought some Sony shit. It's pretty good.

• 25:08Speaker 02

  No, they had a picture with the, the size of the pixels.

• 25:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but like you have to do it, but it's like, I've never seen Google sell specs in that way.

• 25:15Speaker 02

  Right.

• 25:16Nilay Patel?

  Like, they try not to. I think a lot of the industry has been taught by Apple that the experience is what matters. So you shouldn't focus on specs. But then they miss the fact that Phil Schiller is always talking about specs.

• 25:26Speaker 03

  It's about how you talk about the specs. Like, the entire difference for me for this presentation for Microsoft was that Panos Panay? I think that's how you say his name. He was, he actually seemed like he cared about what he was talking about. Like, and like, when, when he-

• 25:40Nilay Patel?

  As opposed to Microsoft's previous zombies.

• 25:41Speaker 03

  No, but it's, it's, you can do a presentation and be like, very professional and upfront and come off fine and neutral, but he came off like extremely passionate in a way that I haven't seen someone be in a tech presentation probably like this year yet.

• 25:58Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 25:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, he, he came off as passionate. In, in previous events, he's just come off as angry. And so it was actually really great.

• 26:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, I, I'm just saying like, I haven't seen Microsoft deliver this level of understanding of why it's making the products and why the products have good specs and why it exists, which is literally the question I asked Nadella in our interview. It was like, why does Microsoft exist? And he has this line, and it's Pat, and actually- You know, if you, we, we did our interview, we're like, oh, that's great. He's so human. And then we like, watch Bill and he says all the same things. Whatever. But he's like passionate. He's like, we make things so you can make things. Which is such a great, that's it. That's the whole statement of purpose from Microsoft. Now that is very much in line with,

• 26:43Nilay Patel?

  it's funny because we watched the Steve Jobs movie yesterday and, you know, in that movie, Jobs is the, the famous bicycle analogy is recapitulated, which is humans are more efficient on bicycles, but computers are bicycles. We can give it to everybody and now we're all smarter. And it's the same idea, right? We enable you to be creative.

• 27:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:02Nilay Patel?

  But Microsoft has never known that before.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:07Nilay Patel?

  Right. They're like, usually Microsoft's statement of purpose was like, we want to put a computer on every desk because that's how we get rich. Right. And now it's like, we are a platform company that enables people. And so the Surface Book to me is like, they understand why it's there. It's not just, like, you know, the way Samsung will just like add features to a product and we make fun of them for just randomly adding features to a product.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:28Nilay Patel?

  It very much feels like the Surface Book is not just adding features and form factors. It's, we're going to make the best laptop we can because this is the best expression of our software.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  Right. There was no wave your hand over it to turn the screen on or like whatever Samsung would do with a tablet.

• 27:42Nilay Patel?

  Whatever Samsung can do. I just, I don't know. Like, I don't know what Windows OEMs are going to do to compete with this thing. And they, you know, today they tried.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  They, they're going to by making products that are cheaper because this thing starts at 1,500 bucks. That's it. Like they own the top end of the market now. They, they're competing with Apple and Tom interviewed Panos and then he basically was like, yeah, we're, Apple makes premium products, we make premium products. We're competing with Apple and I'm not afraid to say it.

• 28:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, I just have to say it was, I, we, I think you said it just a minute ago. Like, I think this was the tech launch of the year. Like we, the Google one was pretty flat and Marshmallow is pretty eh.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:15Nilay Patel?

  It seems. And Apple was like, I don't know, it's bigger and it has a stylus.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:23Nilay Patel?

  We don't have a TV streaming service yet. So it's, you know, it's like, Apple's doing the stuff it does and it's just a monolith and it's so dominant that it's just gonna keep doing stuff. That's great, but there's no, there's no sense that Apple's like has fire, right? It's like you can push-

• 28:39Speaker 01

  Well, we haven't seen their car yet.

• 28:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I had this, this thing about 3D Touch, which is, you know, when you like try to scroll an unresponsive touchscreen, it's infuriating.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:50Nilay Patel?

  3D Touch is worse because you're squeezing it, it's doing nothing. And so all you can do is squeeze harder and then you feel like a weakling because it still does nothing.

• 28:58Speaker 01

  My, uh, my rose gold iPhone 6 is currently at a UPS store in San Francisco, so I won't be able to get it until Monday.

• 29:05Nilay Patel?

  Attention UPS drivers.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:07Nilay Patel?

  Free rose gold iPhones.

• 29:09Speaker 01

  But, um, but I am really curious to try that because I enjoyed very much using 3D Touch in, uh, at the Apple event, but I'm hearing a lot from people that they're having trouble with it. And I did send the phone into jiggle mode a lot.

• 29:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 29:23Speaker 03

  I can't get mine to go into jiggle mode now. I'm having the opposite issue. Yeah. I can do force touch, but I can't get my icons or like if I try to highlight something, I have so much trouble highlighting now with 3D Touch.

• 29:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 29:35Speaker 02

  Should we go to the money zone?

• 29:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I'm gonna let you to read the ads today, uh, because I've worked hard enough.

• 29:42Nilay Patel?

  Wait, is there anything else to say about Microsoft?

• 29:43Speaker 01

  There's so much more to say about Microsoft.

• 29:46Nilay Patel?

  Well, you gotta review the products. I think that's the moment, but I've never seen a more confident, purposeful Microsoft. I think Nadella is, uh, he told me you should obviously go watch the interview, but he told me during the interview, he's like, when I became the CEO, um, and you know, he and I had this crazy long car ride. Cause he, we, we had this long conversation with them. They're like, we want to do a video interview with you. We want Nadella in front of your audience. We want to make him a human because he only, he's only done business coverage so far. Um, or like been in the Wall Street Journal and they're like, tell me about the share price. And like, I want to talk about products. I want to talk about him. Uh, and I want to get out of the venue because doing these interviews at any sucks. And like, okay. And the first idea, I'm gonna tell the story. The first idea was that basically like I would take him on a date. And I was like, we'll go to

• 30:29Nilay Patel?

  like a, they actually suggested this. They're like, go to a dive bar or like go to some cool restaurant. And I was like, yeah, actually I kind of want to do that. Like that sounds awesome. And then logistics were just too hard. So like, what if we just use our unopened Microsoft store? It's empty. We can, you can be there all day and like light it and do all this stuff. So we did all that. But the Microsoft store is not near the venue.

• 30:50Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 30:51Nilay Patel?

  And so I just like got into his Escalade. It's like sat in traffic together for a while.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  Does he have?

• 30:57Nilay Patel?

  And like shot the shit. It was great.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  Does he have one of those cars with like a popemobile with like plastics so that he can like wave at people as it goes down like Broadway?

• 31:03Nilay Patel?

  Uh, yes, no, no, it's just, it's whatever. Anyway, so we were, uh, we're in this car and he was just telling me, I was like, how's, like, how's this been for you? Uh, and he's like, the, the thing that I've learned is that my job is just to repeat myself. Like the secret to great leadership is just repetition. And he's like, you just say the vision and you say it and say it and say it. And that's like, that is the essential fact of what I do. Um, and he's like, I have like four different personas. He's like, I'm doing this today and tomorrow I'm going to Wall Street and I'm like, my Wall Street persona is out. And it was just like this fascinating, wonderful conversation. Uh, and then we got, um, to the store, we did the interview and at the end I was like, what's been your hardest challenge? And he's like, I had to figure out what my job is. And that's something that you can watch that video.

• 31:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, the end of that video was awesome.

• 31:50Nilay Patel?

  He's like, what is my job? And he's like, my job is, it's not micromanaging the products. It's creating a culture that lets other people micromanage the products and like develop them. And it was just like

• 32:01Nilay Patel?

  that Microsoft has never had that kind of clarity in its leadership before. And I don't know if the products are good, like they look great and I kind of want a Surface Book. And it's funny because I think Google's getting just irritatingly cartooning. I can't stand to look at Dieter's phone right now.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  Well, this is the Nexus 6, which is.

• 32:18Nilay Patel?

  No, when I look at the operating system and I see the Google logo on that search bar, I literally want to pick up your phone and throw it across the room. Like it's the whole thing is a cartoon and it's like, it's not, it doesn't feel serious to me. Right. It's like, it's, they want to make technology so playful that they've lost the sense of purpose. And the iPhone is like, I'm used to it. So I'm playing with this. I'm like, oh man, Windows 10 looks serious like. And I said, maybe the products are good. They seem good. But the idea that Microsoft is going to be focused is like really great. Because I think, I really think that these companies need serious competition head up as opposed to Apple and Google, which compete at angles to each other constantly. But like the idea that Microsoft will just be a straight, direct competitor to Apple and sell devices and software together

• 33:01Nilay Patel?

  with a vision of how they connect to, I don't know. It's like a thing.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  It's fantastic. As a journalist, you're always rooting for balance of power. Like there need to be five giant companies at least all competing with each other at a very high level.

• 33:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  Then we all win.

• 33:12Nilay Patel?

  Speaking of which, it's time to make some money.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  Are you, are you, are you a tech professional searching for a new company to share your tech skills with? So you should, you should probably check out Hired. They connect talent with top tech companies. On Hired, software engineers, designers, they can get five plus interview requests in a single week. Each offer, they give you the salary and the equity that they're being offered, that they're offering you upfront, before you even have to talk to anybody. They've got both full-time and contract opportunities. And they work with over 2,500 companies. That includes startups to big, huge, large, public companies. Employers are from 12 major tech hubs in North America and Europe. So here's the thing. If you go to sign up, it's free for you, for users

• 34:01Speaker 02

  looking for a job. And if you get a job through Hired, Hired will just give you a $2,000 thank you bonus for getting hired, which is, you know, good job.

• 34:11Nilay Patel?

  You got hired. Now you have enough money to quit.

• 34:13Speaker 02

  Well, so here's another thing. If you go to hired.com/vergecast to sign up, they're going to double it. They're going to give you $4,000 for getting hired. That's a good job. So, if you're not looking for a job, but you know, somebody who is, you can refer them to Hired, and Hired will pay you, the referrer, $1,337 as a bonus, if the person you refer gets hired. Casey, do you know what $1,337 spells out?

• 34:40Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  Elite.

• 34:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:43Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  Thank God I didn't fail that quiz.

• 34:46Speaker 02

  So I don't know what you're waiting for. You should just go check out hired.com/vergecast right now.

• 34:54Nilay Patel?

  Is it time to?

• 34:56Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 34:56Nilay Patel?

  Okay. So, Casey, you've had some adventures this week.

• 35:01Speaker 02

  Wait.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  Boy, have I.

• 35:02Nilay Patel?

  Hold on, we forgot to do a thing.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, we haven't hype-checked a single thing.

• 35:05Nilay Patel?

  Kirsten.

• 35:05Speaker 03

  I'm just interjecting at will at this point.

• 35:07Nilay Patel?

  Hype-check, hype-check the Surface Book.

• 35:10Speaker 03

  The Surface Book?

• 35:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:11Speaker 03

  Um, I don't want one for myself, but it makes me super excited about where Microsoft is going.

• 35:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:18Speaker 03

  I'm super excited for like, the very next Microsoft event, and like, what they will do after this. Because I feel like we're like, seeing the beginning of them becoming focused. And I'm excited to see what like, two or three years of focus looks like.

• 35:32Nilay Patel?

  Hmm, interesting.

• 35:34Speaker 02

  Hype check, Panos Panay.

• 35:36Speaker 03

  Oh, 10 out of 10. So many hearts.

• 35:39Nilay Patel?

  We're all over the place. This hype check scale is chaotic.

• 35:43Speaker 03

  I just give you numbers and hearts.

• 35:44Speaker 02

  Hang on, hang on, hang on. I got one more. Hype check, the former cruise line lounge singer.

• 35:51Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God.

• 35:52Speaker 02

  Who now demos products for Microsoft onstage.

• 35:54Nilay Patel?

  Who was that guy?

• 35:55Speaker 02

  Wearing a fedora and purple shoes.

• 35:57Nilay Patel?

  That guy needs to go. I'm sorry. I don't know who you are. I'm sure you're great. I'm sure you've thought about.

• 36:01Speaker 03

  My hype check is shruggy. That's my hype check on that.

• 36:04Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. When he was like, I'm producing like a boss.

• 36:06Speaker 02

  He's like a nice guy.

• 36:07Nilay Patel?

  I'm sure he's a great guy, and I'm sure the improv classes that he's been taking are really fun. Uh, I just don't think he should wear hats onstage. Anyway, Casey.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 36:17Nilay Patel?

  Let's, let's, let's discuss the, the state of the web.

• 36:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:22Nilay Patel?

  And media.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  Uh, some things we care a lot about. So two, at least two big media stories this week. The first one was that Twitter finally let us see Project Lightning.

• 36:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  Uh, and, uh, if you've been following Twitter's story this year, you know that they've had a rough year. They've had some uncertainty in their leadership. They've watched their stock price fall, and they've been unable to really move the needle on the number of people who are, uh, using the service every month. It's sort of somewhere around like 300, 315 million people. And so Dick Costolo, uh, decided to move on to greener pastures this summer, and right before he quit, he told the world that they were working on this thing called Project, Project Lightning, which emerged, uh, this week in the form of Moments, which is a new tab that if you're in the US has already rolled out on your phone. You tap on it,

• 37:12Speaker 01

  and you see curated selections of tweets, uh, that kind of highlight some of the big stories of the day. And those tweets are from sites like ours, uh, from everyday people, from, uh, everybody on Twitter, and they've been packaged by Twitter itself, which created an editorial team for the first time. So Twitter is now like an actual editorial product. Um, and they're also, uh, having their partners package some of these moments together. So the Washington Post and BuzzFeed, uh, and some others are putting these things. Together and the idea is that Twitter has been too hard to use for average people. Most people don't want to figure out who they should follow, who they should unfollow, what a favorite is or a retweet is. So Twitter is trying to give them a dead simple way.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  When they open up the phone, they can just tap on the central tab and they will show you the best of Twitter. And during big events like the Oscars, the Super Bowl, the big playoff game, you will get, you can, if you want to, tap a follow button and Twitter will bring you all of the best tweets from the Oscars or the Super Bowl. And then as soon as the event is over, all those accounts that you're seeing, they all just kind of disappear. So those are the two big ideas and moments. It rolled out. It's gotten, I would say, mixed to positive reviews. And, um,

• 38:25Nilay Patel?

  What do you think?

• 38:26Speaker 01

  Well, uh, I think the idea is right. Uh, I think I'm a little bit skeptical about the prospects of this being the thing that vaults Twitter from 300 million users to a billion users.

• 38:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  People like news apps a lot, but they don't love them necessarily. Like I, I, I think that Twitter is going to have to get a little bit

• 38:52Speaker 01

  better at finding and packaging these tweets and delivering them to people for it really to feel amazing. Because I was talking to Josh Jezza, one of our editors yesterday, and he says, you know, I tapped through this thing and there'll be like 10 tweets in a moment. And the first tweet is a dam broke. And then there are 10 more tweets telling me that the dam broke.

• 39:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 39:10Speaker 01

  Right? So, and that's the thing about Twitter is that these individual tweets, like they, they're not meant necessarily to, to join together. And so you have to get really good if you want to be able to tell a whole story by stringing together 10 or 12 tweets. Sometimes it's, it's easier though, like, you know, when Miley Cyrus and Nicki Minaj are just yelling at each other back and forth on Twitter, that actually is pretty easy to put together and regular people are going to love that. So I see that as being big upside, right? You just tap that moments tab and you're like, you know, Miley and Nicki are having a huge fight on Twitter. Swipe through it. That's awesome.

• 39:43Nilay Patel?

  So this is, this is, so I am definitely in the mixed camp.

• 39:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:47Nilay Patel?

  Because that is not what it can do for you.

• 39:49Speaker 01

  Really?

• 39:49Nilay Patel?

  And that's not how it's designed, right? It's designed to show you photos and videos.

• 39:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:53Nilay Patel?

  Like, that's what it wants to do. It desperately wants to show you photos and videos. The whole interface is, and it's beautiful.

• 39:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:58Nilay Patel?

  But it's like very visual and it's mostly about photographs with like, and you, it's not about tweets. Like, it's weird, because it doesn't funnel you into Twitter's product.

• 40:08Speaker 02

  Right.

• 40:09Nilay Patel?

  Which is Twitter. It's like a new product. It's like built on, it's like, it's flipboard.

• 40:14Speaker 02

  It's Meta Twitter.

• 40:15Speaker 03

  Well, it's displaying the tweets in a different way. It's not taking you away from the tweets, because every single thing that you see is a tweet. Just, they're just enlarging the images and putting the text at the bottom.

• 40:24Speaker 02

  And hiding all the things that you do to control a tweet.

• 40:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I mean, you can get to those with the three, like, button.

• 40:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you can click a menu and open Twitter.

• 40:32Speaker 03

  That's part of it is not what makes me concerned and confused about moments. I have real questions about how they're curating it. Because, like, Casey, I don't know if you can talk about, a little bit more about how they're doing that, but I opened one of the moments today, and it was about Hillary Clinton. And nine of the, like, 10 tweets that were in there were all Fox News. And then there was one that was from Hillary Clinton's official account. So I'm just kind of, I'm confused about who's curating these, who's making them. Are they meant to be impartial versions of events? Are they gonna be like, you know, stories by, all by Fox News? Like, what, who's creating the stuff that I'm seeing in there?

• 41:12Speaker 01

  So there's a guy named Andrew Fitzgerald, who's leading the product team, or I'm sorry, who's leading the editorial team. They have a small team in New York and San Francisco. And what, the way that they're finding these tweets, or at least the candidates for the tweets to put into moments, is looking at what tweets are getting the most favorites, and retweets, signals like those. And then they kind of, you know, look at this pile of tweets around a subject, and the ones that seem to be getting a lot of engagement, and that the Twitter team thinks are really relevant, they're gonna go ahead and put into a moment. Now, what they've told me is-

• 41:47Speaker 02

  There are, there are moments that are strictly, specifically from a single publication, though. So that Fox News one?

• 41:52Speaker 03

  Can you tell that?

• 41:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's a little Fox News logo above it.

• 41:54Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 41:55Speaker 01

  So they've, so they've-

• 41:56Nilay Patel?

  But, so here's my question. And this is what I mean about the tweets. Because the fact that it's not tweets, like, yes, they're displaying the tweets in a different way, but they, they're prioritizing the tweets with photos and videos, right?

• 42:08Speaker 02

  What is a tweet?

• 42:08Nilay Patel?

  What is a tweet? How are they gonna contend with Black Lives Matter? Which is something that literally was created on Twitter.

• 42:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:17Nilay Patel?

  But this product doesn't have any way to contend with.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  I think if there were to be a sort of huge moment on Twitter around the hashtag Black Lives Matter, you should absolutely expect it to see it as packaged as a moment.

• 42:30Nilay Patel?

  But that's just tweets. That's like people saying, "I support this."

• 42:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you know, right now, or you know, in a world where there's no moments, there's no way of easily finding like, you know, what is the tweet that started this latest thing? Like, who are the leaders of this movement, right? Which tweets are getting the most engagement, right? Twitter can like go, just go find that. And you as a person, you know, because the average person isn't going to like just go dig through like the source of a hashtag, right? But Twitter can sort of figure that out, package it together in a moment and deliver it to you. And then you open Twitter while you're waiting in line at Starbucks and you're like, oh, there's something going on with Black Lives Matter. And you tap it and then you just swipe through, you know, 14 or 15 tweets about it. Like, that's like, like absolutely a better experience.

• 43:14Nilay Patel?

  But that's a flattening. I have, I have many thoughts about this, but like, okay, this is gonna be crazy.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  Okay, let's go there.

• 43:22Nilay Patel?

  Uh, I, I've been vaping my perfect, my perfect cigarette. Uh, it's like IKEA.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  What?

• 43:32Nilay Patel?

  Here, just hear me out.

• 43:33Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 43:34Nilay Patel?

  Going to IKEA is an exercise in futility, in frustration. And you should never go there because everything in IKEA looks great when there's 50 of them. You're like, I do want $54 clocks because there's like a wall of clocks that are cheap. And it like, looks cool and it's visually presented. You're like, I want every color, right? It's like, it's this moment that IKEA can create through volume, right? And then you buy the one thing and you go home and you're like, this is garbage. I just bought a $5 clock. Like, I needed the other 49 for this to be the experience that I saw in the store. Twitter is about volume. It's about the immediacy of Twitter. The power of Twitter is like, suddenly your timeline explodes. And you're like, something's happening. And you take one tweet out of that and it's like, this is meaningless to me. Which is why like news coverage of Twitter is often like, either they have to fall down

• 44:18Nilay Patel?

  the hole of, let's show you 50 tweets. Or they're like, I don't know, with some other hashtag. Like, some hashtag is exploding, right? Like, Tornado is, I don't know, that's a bad hashtag.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  Hashtag blessed is exploding.

• 44:30Nilay Patel?

  Hashtag blessed is exploding. And they're like, here's one. And it's like, whatever.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  Well, they're not going to show you one. They're going to show you 15.

• 44:39Nilay Patel?

  But, but that explosion, but that's, that's the thing. But they can, they, it's that explosion in the timeline where everything else gets interrupted by a moment.

• 44:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:49Nilay Patel?

  Is actually the power of Twitter. And if you take that out of that and into a tab and it's just like, what's happening? You click on it and it's like.

• 44:56Speaker 03

  But they're not taking it out of your timeline. They're just adding another feature for people that don't have a timeline already.

• 45:02Nilay Patel?

  You don't get it. It's flattened, right? It's just another Twitter powered news reader.

• 45:06Speaker 03

  If you're a new, new user, you don't have a timeline anyway. There's, you're not flattening anything, giving someone something that they don't have.

• 45:13Nilay Patel?

  Your goal is to get people into the product of Twitter.

• 45:15Speaker 03

  Yes, and maybe the product of Twitter is evolving.

• 45:18Speaker 02

  That's the thing. That's not the goal of this. The goal of this is not to make, turn people into Twitter users. Like they've, they've decided they're done with that, I think. And that's what Moments is about.

• 45:27Nilay Patel?

  Can Jack, is Jack Dorsey the person to decide that people are done with Twitter?

• 45:31Speaker 01

  Is he the person to decide they're done with Twitter?

• 45:32Nilay Patel?

  Well, I mean, that's Dieter's claim, right? Is that Moments is actually a new product for Twitter. It's not Twitter, but it's built on their network.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  It is a new product for Twitter. I mean, or another way of thinking about it that I've heard people at Twitter describe it as it is a DVR for Twitter. Right? Like, you know, I mean, we're weird in that we spend 18 hours a day staring at Twitter. Most people might want to check it, you know, once a day tops. And for those people, there does need to be a way to say like, here are the Twitter highlights, right? Here's SportsCenter for Twitter, right? Where it's just like, here's kind of the cool stuff that happened today. Um, and, and that's what they're trying to build. They're at a, they're at 1.0. I suspect it will get better over time. I suspect you'll start seeing, um, more real, real time stuff in there like Periscopes. I suspect you'll start seeing their new instant article format that they unveiled this week alongside Google. Like, I think you'll see that in Moments as well.

• 46:17Nilay Patel?

  Interesting transition, dude.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:19Speaker 02

  We gotta go to the money zone before we transition to that.

• 46:21Nilay Patel?

  No, no, no, we're, we're gonna run long today. I can feel it.

• 46:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:25Nilay Patel?

  Talk about AMP. Whatever, Twitter moments.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:29Nilay Patel?

  Is there a final thoughts?

• 46:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, you know.

• 46:31Speaker 02

  Why, why? Okay, for new users, great. Give me a flat experience that gives me SportsCenter for Twitter for the day. Superb, awesome, love it. What about people that already follow 800 people and understand Twitter?

• 46:44Speaker 03

  Then those, those temporary event follows, no, then those temporary event following in that tab is actually really useful. Like, I used it last night for American Horror Story, because there was the premiere. And it was actually really enjoyable to have those tweets. I retweeted tweets that were from the Moments tab, because they like, if you follow an event in the Moments tab, then the tweet shows up in your normal timeline with a little like lightning next to it. And that was awesome, because I'm not going to follow all of these random people that follow American Horror Story. It was the first time I had actually really watched the show live. And it made me immediately feel like I was like, watching it with people. It immediately gave me access to that real-time Twitter, like, thing that we all really enjoy and love, and that most people kind of don't get access to.

• 47:26Speaker 02

  I think I figured out my problem is with Twitter moments.

• 47:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:29Speaker 02

  I fundamentally am uncomfortable believing that Twitter can do something good with product. Based on what they've done for like, the past year.

• 47:39Speaker 01

  They've had a rough time. What I realized about like, the reason that Twitter is my favorite thing to write about is because it was born broken, and then it became.

• 47:48Speaker 02

  Like all of us.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  Like all of us.

• 47:50Nilay Patel?

  Like Steve Jobs. Ultimate transition.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  It was, it was so broken, and yet it was useful in this way that nobody really expected. And so, everyone started using it, and it just continued to be so broken. And we all had our ideas for how if they would just do X, Y, and Z, it would be perfect. And they could never quite do it. And they're sort of just always like, ambling along in this state of like, brokenness. And yes, it is like a metaphor for all of it. Like, Twitter is us all.

• 48:18Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I want to stop the show.

• 48:21Nilay Patel?

  I don't know what to do.

• 48:23Speaker 01

  No, but I can't make a better case for it than Kirsten did. Like what Kirsten described, like Twitter is gonna, it hopes that literally 700 million people have that same experience over the next couple of years. Maybe they will. I don't know.

• 48:34Nilay Patel?

  I just think a product that doesn't, that doesn't tell you what Twitter, like the power of the Moments product is the network behind Twitter.

• 48:44Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 48:44Nilay Patel?

  Right? And so, yeah, it's another cut or filter over the top of that network, but there's nothing about it that teaches its users what the other, that the network exists.

• 48:57Speaker 02

  Twitter's happy to have-

• 48:58Nilay Patel?

  It's just a news reader.

• 48:59Speaker 02

  Twitter's happy to have 300 million users be the plumbing. You're the plumbing.

• 49:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:03Speaker 02

  And the rest of it is for everybody else.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  And also, by the way, like all you have to do to see the rest of Twitter inside Moments is to tap on a tweet. Like tap on anything in Moments and you will see the actions.

• 49:15Speaker 03

  They'll see the tweet and save.

• 49:17Nilay Patel?

  Follows a few more taps away.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  You want to be a power user? Like tap the ellipses. You can see like pretty much anything you can do on Twitter and it's all available inside every tweet, inside every moment.

• 49:26Nilay Patel?

  Fine.

• 49:27Speaker 02

  Right? It's like you're uncomfortable admitting they did something good.

• 49:30Speaker 03

  Well, they did something good, but it's not for you. That's the thing. They did something good, but it's not a power user, like. This is the argument I had on Twitter like all week.

• 49:40Nilay Patel?

  But I'm not a Twitter power user. Like I don't use TweetDeck. I think it's too much.

• 49:43Speaker 02

  You are a Twitter power user.

• 49:44Speaker 03

  You are a Twitter power user.

• 49:45Nilay Patel?

  No, I'm not.

• 49:45Speaker 03

  Sit down, sit down.

• 49:46Nilay Patel?

  I just sent some tweets. I'm tweeting right now. God, you caught me.

• 49:51Speaker 02

  How many people do you follow?

• 49:52Nilay Patel?

  Too many. I don't know what I'm doing on this place. I'm following 1,500 people. You think it's normal?

• 49:57Speaker 02

  No, that makes you a power user.

• 49:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 49:59Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 50:00Speaker 02

  How do you follow 1,500 people?

• 50:02Nilay Patel?

  With malice in my heart. I don't know. I'm like angry follow everybody.

• 50:07Speaker 01

  It's hard not to follow people too.

• 50:08Nilay Patel?

  Following you.

• 50:09Speaker 01

  There's a well.

• 50:10Nilay Patel?

  It's hard not to follow people.

• 50:12Speaker 01

  It's definitely hard not to follow me. At Casey Newton, by the way. But, um, yeah.

• 50:17Nilay Patel?

  Fine. All right, let's talk about AMP.

• 50:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's talk about AMP. So, um, one of the big trends in media this year has been the destruction of the internet.

• 50:24Nilay Patel?

  For those of you listening somewhere, wherever you are, Casey basically just did jazz hands when he said media.

• 50:31Speaker 01

  I'm trying to make this a more visual presentation over time.

• 50:33Speaker 02

  Can you turn the camera?

• 50:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. The future of media. Let's get that as a gift by the end of day, please, on my desk. So this all started with Facebook, which noticed that lots of people like to read news inside the Facebook app. But when you tap on a link, it takes upwards of 40 minutes to load. And so Facebook said, what if we just stripped out all of the advertising and the ad trackers and everything else that goes into a webpage these days? And just preloaded it and prefetched it and we'll cut some deals with the publishers so that they can actually, that they can sell ads, et cetera, et cetera. And so Facebook launched this and many think pieces are written.

• 51:15Speaker 01

  But it's just transparently true that the articles do load really fast and they look really nice. And surprise, like people are tapping on them more because they load really fast. So if you're another platform on the internet, you have to respond. And so we saw Apple respond with Apple News, which is a sort of similar product inside a news reading app. And this week, we saw a collection of companies come together, led by Google and Twitter, to show off something called AMP, which stands for accelerated mobile pages. And it works not unlike what we've seen from Facebook and Apple in that it's stripping out a lot of stuff that normally gets loaded when you load up one of our pages or a page from another publisher.

• 51:53Speaker 02

  We're partners in AMP, we should just admit it.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  And we're partners in AMP, we're co-conspirators here. The difference is that this is an open source project. So you can go onto a GitHub repository and fork it or make any changes that you like to. And the idea is that over time, this will become sort of the best and most popular way for publishers to display these instant article formats on the web.

• 52:13Speaker 02

  My understanding is like when it's all said and done, like you can go to the page and say, hey, yo, show me the AMP version instead of the regular version. Like I will be able, as a user, to be able to click on the AMP mode in my browser?

• 52:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, how does this work?

• 52:27Speaker 02

  Will I see AMP when I search for it from the web, but not when I just go directly?

• 52:32Speaker 03

  Browser thing?

• 52:33Speaker 01

  Right now, they've released a developer's technical preview, so they are not answering all of those questions. Right now, if you want to check it out, you can go to, I believe, on your mobile device, go to g.co/ampdemo and just search for it. For like news keywords such as, you know, Taylor Swift or

• 52:50Speaker 02

  You actually search the verge.

• 52:51Nilay Patel?

  You search Casey Newton.

• 52:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, and and you'll see some of these formats loading and like kind of a pretty carousel. And that'll at least show you what the reading experience is like. Now, is this something that eventually gets added to the browser? Or how do readers find these articles? That's still to be determined. I think the assumption is that, you know, eventually publishers like ours will just sort of upload everything in a format that is able to be interpreted by AMP. And so that if you're on your Android phone and you search for a news story, like, Google will find the amplified version of it and show them in search results.

• 53:23Nilay Patel?

  But so I, we have a little bit of color, obviously, because we're a partner. So I'll probably get this wrong because I'm not like building this stuff. But the goal for us as a publisher is we have a platform called Chorus. Casey wakes up every morning, types in the chorus and publishes this thing into our system. And our system will then publish to not only our website, but instant articles. It'll publish an AMP version.

• 53:46Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 53:47Nilay Patel?

  The AMP version will get cached through Google because that's the big piece of this that I think Casey didn't, you didn't talk about. Google's going to help you cache AMP.

• 53:54Speaker 02

  So whose servers do they live on?

• 53:56Nilay Patel?

  It's

• 53:56Speaker 01

  It's open. They have their own, but they're letting other people cache it.

• 53:59Nilay Patel?

  Right. So the incentive is give it to us and we'll do it for you. And presumably boost you in search results. Right? Everyone's

• 54:07Speaker 02

  But they must be saying they're not going to do that, though, right?

• 54:09Nilay Patel?

  Why would they say that?

• 54:10Speaker 02

  They're saying that they're not going to boost AMP over. Like, I think I read somewhere that like, Google says that they won't give preferential treatment to AMP stories. But it turns out that pages that load faster get preferential treatment.

• 54:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's what

• 54:23Speaker 01

  It's the same game that Facebook played with like, well, we're not saying we're going to privilege instant articles. But if like 10 times more people click on them, that will have a benefit.

• 54:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's the thing about AMP to me. And again, this is very difficult for us to talk about across the board, right? Like, Fox is going to start publishing Facebook instant articles. Fox is going to, we're in Apple News. And by the way, follow us on Apple News.

• 54:46Speaker 02

  And, you know, everywhere else.

• 54:48Nilay Patel?

  And everywhere else.

• 54:51Nilay Patel?

  We are partners in AMP. Like, we, you know, we work for Modern Media Company. The Modern Media Company has lots of people who think about partner platforms. The whole metaphor for our company is not just about, you know, our website, but it's media brands that go everywhere, like, all this stuff. So it's hard for us to be like, critical of these, like, I'm just transparently telling you, right? Like, we're partners in these products. We want to be there. That's the future of publishing. We're gonna be there. So we're participating in the ecosystem. At the same time, we have to critique them as products. And the thing that gets me about AMP is that the whole point of responsive web design was to get away from a desktop web and a mobile web, and to not have m.theverge.com, a website that was crappier than theverge.com.

• 55:36Nilay Patel?

  And AMP is just like, you know what? We did such a bet, and Google is really complicit in the ad thing, and the trackers and the slowness. They run the biggest ad network. So it just seems like Google's like, you know what? We blew it. What if we cut the web down to size and don't let you use JavaScript, and we'll find a new way? And it's like, we're just resetting the web to, like, backwards. And I just kind of don't understand, like...

• 56:01Speaker 02

  Like, whatever the thing is, there's gonna be like a extension on Chrome and Safari that'll be like, turn on the AMP switch, whatever else. And then people are just gonna browse the web with AMP, and we're gonna have to like rebuild using the tools that are available on AMP to like actually give people the full experience that we want.

• 56:18Speaker 01

  Yep. Yeah, this, so this is the question that I asked yesterday at the event, was like, couldn't you get like 95% of the benefits just by not loading so much crap in people's browsers, like when they're loading up your webpages? And then that's when they like patted themselves on the back about the magic of pre-caching and prefetching, like for 10 minutes. But absolutely, this is just resetting us to a point before we, you know, ruin the web with lots of like slow trackers and beacons and stuff. You know, trackers and beacons, which also like help pay our salaries, right? So like, we couldn't be more conflicted about any of this. But that's why it's like good to talk about.

• 56:51Nilay Patel?

  Right. I mean, it's just, you watch everybody, I mean, Facebook's doing it too. It's like everyone's just... Building the web, right? Like, what if, what if the web sucks? Like, we're done with this. It's too crappy. The ads are tracking you. Like, Apple's like, what if we build the web inside this, this garbage app? And Facebook is like, well, we can build the web too. And then Google's like, what if we build the web again on the web? And it's just, it's bonkers to me. And I get it. And like, I think AMP of all of the things is the one that feels the safest to me. Because Google's making such a big deal about how it's open and it's not proprietary. And like, that's the spirit of the web that I literally built our careers. Yep. Um, so I'm partial to it. I mean, like, there's an element to this. Like, if people listen, it's almost certainly now, like, we fought, we were activists with net neutrality.

• 57:36Nilay Patel?

  And I care passionately about that subject. There's a piece of this where the reason that we cared so much about net neutrality was because the, the democratizing effect of the internet. And you watch the walls go up on these media platforms and you're like, wait, that's not, I didn't fight for you to fuck, like, it's bad. Um, and so like my, every, like, alarm bells are going off around all this stuff. Because it's, it's, it's all like, what if we compress the web into some other box so you can take it other places?

• 58:05Speaker 03

  But like, for any of these one platforms to like, have a severe impact on the internet, wouldn't like, we all have to start using them? Like, a vast majority of us? And is that really likely?

• 58:15Nilay Patel?

  I mean, look, if, so we run.

• 58:19Speaker 02

  According to the Twitter responses to my, do you use Apple News question today?

• 58:22Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah. Nobody uses Apple News. It's hot garbage. Like, they should be ashamed. Um, and I mean that seriously. And for the number of people on the show today that I've said should be ashamed, I feel bad for you. But, um, the Microsoft guy, like, get rid of your hat. Apple News team, just like reconsider your lives. Um, whatever's next. Feel bad. Um, but no, like, Apple News is like, not a good experience, right? And what's particularly funny to me about Apple News is that it has a web browser in it. So if you click on a link in Apple News store, it just like opens on a web browser. And it's like, oh, you didn't even, even if it's a link to another Verge story, it'll just open a Verge web view, which is bonkers.

• 58:57Nilay Patel?

  But I don't think it's about that so much. It's not about like, are they gonna eat the browser, the internet? It's if you are like, we're, The Verge is enormous. Like, it has so many readers, it kind of, the traffic is from so many sources. It's just like, it's too big for any of these things like really hit us. But Facebook, for many sites, is like 80% of their traffic. So if Facebook decides, like, you have to do instant articles, or we're taking your traffic away, Facebook has an enormous amount of leverage over you. If Apple decides, um, "Hey, Apple blogs, like, we'll pay you more if you just stop publishing on the web and come into Apple News, where people who love Apple are gonna read you," they can pull that off.

• 59:42Nilay Patel?

  And I, that's the, the piece of this that like scares me. It's like, there's an incentive to create silos. There's an incentive to build walls and say, "We can build a better experience for the people we have leverage over, because we can do a better job of building audiences for you here." And I just don't want that to happen.

• 59:59Speaker 01

  I think the fact that we now have like three major players who are all building their own versions, like, is at least somewhat heartening. Even if we don't like the trend there, at least now is a balance of power, right? And I think also that generally, these platforms don't really have a great understanding of editorial businesses, and they don't really want to. And so they're going to try to keep those platforms like relatively neutral.

• 1:00:22Nilay Patel?

  I think that's why Apple News is bad.

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:23Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, um, I think they wanna have an understanding. Like, Twitter definitely does.

• 1:00:30Speaker 01

  I think they wanna, they wanna understand it, but they don't want to be like media titans, you know? I think they want attention on their platform, and they wanna sell hardware and software. Do you think that like Twitter wants to influence the next election, like in favor of a particular candidate? Okay.

• 1:00:48Speaker 03

  Wait, really?

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  And do you think they would manipulate the platform to make that happen?

• 1:00:51Nilay Patel?

  Uh, I think that they would not be sad if it turned out that a decision they made happened to manipulate the platform in that way.

• 1:00:58Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, this is really like a fascinating question. Yeah. This is a, this is a fascinating question, because certainly, they will, they now have more leverage over the media than tech platforms really have had before.

• 1:01:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:11Speaker 01

  Unless you wanna like go back in time and tell me that printing presses were tech platforms and somehow, yeah.

• 1:01:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Coming next week.

• 1:01:18Speaker 02

  Softlayer.

• 1:01:19Nilay Patel?

  Softlayer.

• 1:01:20Speaker 02

  All right.

• 1:01:20Nilay Patel?

  Do the softlayer.

• 1:01:21Speaker 02

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• 1:01:25Nilay Patel?

  Speaking of news in the cloud?

• 1:01:26Speaker 02

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• 1:02:10Speaker 02

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• 1:02:54Speaker 02

  It all ensures that traffic to and from your cloud infrastructure travels more efficiently. So again, visit softlayer.com/podcast to get started with 500 bucks off server, storage, network, or security on the cloud built for innovation from Softlayer.

• 1:03:10Nilay Patel?

  I gotta say, my chaotic ones are like, I feel like they're...

• 1:03:13Speaker 02

  Better?

• 1:03:14Nilay Patel?

  Not better.

• 1:03:15Speaker 02

  More fun?

• 1:03:16Nilay Patel?

  It's like, what's gonna happen?

• 1:03:18Speaker 01

  What is gonna happen?

• 1:03:19Nilay Patel?

  What is this drunk idiot gonna say about the cloud?

• 1:03:23Nilay Patel?

  Sorry, Dieter. No, it was.

• 1:03:24Speaker 02

  That's fine.

• 1:03:25Nilay Patel?

  We're all gonna, we're all gonna podcast ads. Let's talk about them. All right, so we're at an hour, but I actually want to do 10 minutes on the Steve Jobs movie. Let's do it. This is gonna be a little bit of a spoiler zone, but the movie comes out tomorrow.

• 1:03:38Speaker 02

  Super spoiler zone.

• 1:03:39Nilay Patel?

  And I kind of think that-

• 1:03:40Speaker 02

  I'm gonna talk about the very last scene, actually.

• 1:03:44Nilay Patel?

  It's a good last scene. Uh, but we all saw it last night. We did, I interviewed Sorkin and Danny Boyle onstage and, I don't know, we we've been kind of like talking about it all day. Like, I literally walked up to Dieter this morning and he didn't say hello, he didn't transition, he just continued saying his thought about the movie. That's where we're at, so-

• 1:04:07Speaker 02

  But you're writing for Sunday, so I'm not gonna spoil it.

• 1:04:09Nilay Patel?

  All right, don't spoil that thought. Um-

• 1:04:11Speaker 02

  Why am I pointing at you?

• 1:04:12Nilay Patel?

  So I'm gonna, so we're just gonna do a few minutes on Steve Jobs movie. We don't want to point at each other.

• 1:04:19Nilay Patel?

  So Steve Jobs movie is out. Um, we did a review, Kwame did a review. I have this theory that I've been working out.

• 1:04:29Nilay Patel?

  Yes, it's so dumb, but let's go for it. Uh, that it's basically a Batman movie? Mm-hmm. Uh, in the sense that-

• 1:04:35Speaker 02

  Steve Jobs talks like this.

• 1:04:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's very disturbing, actually, and when he fires a batarang, it was. It's so weird. Uh, no, it's, um, like, there have been many Batman movies, many Batman franchises, many Batman comic books, and in one sense, they have nothing to do with each other. Right? Like, the 60s Batman and the Christopher Nolan Batman are not at all the same thing. Literally, nothing to do with each other, except for the tropes, right? The, the, the, the elements of myth that connect the two tales, right? So like, you know Batman's parents are dead, you know he fights crime, you know he wears a mask, you know he has a car, I don't know.

• 1:05:17Speaker 02

  He's got a cave.

• 1:05:17Nilay Patel?

  He's got a cave, he has a butler. It's all these pieces of a story, and you can assemble them, those pieces into any story and call that story Batman. And it's, that's this movie, where you know that Steve Jobs, it literally demands that you know some stuff about Steve Jobs and no more. So you know that Steve Jobs, uh, was at Apple, you know that he invented the iPhone, you know that he is dead. This movie demands to have the emotional impact of this movie, you have to know that he's dead. Uh, and it is very emotional because at the end, you're like, ah, I wish he wasn't dead. But it has nothing to do with reality. It's it's the elements of Steve Jobs' life remixed to tell an Aaron Sorkin movie.

• 1:05:56Speaker 02

  And then Aaron Sorkin's stage play adapted for the screen.

• 1:06:00Speaker 01

  And that's the most important thing to, I think, well, maybe not the most, but to me was the most important thing was hearing Sorkin tell you last night, Neelai, that he always defaults toward writing plays. He likes things that take place in confined spaces where there's a ticking clock.

• 1:06:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:15Speaker 01

  And this movie is like three confined spaces and three ticking clocks.

• 1:06:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Anyway, but it has nothing to do with reality.

• 1:06:22Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:06:22Nilay Patel?

  And I'm just gonna spoil the second act because it drove me, it continues to drive me crazy. Sorry, Kirsten.

• 1:06:30Speaker 03

  It's okay.

• 1:06:31Nilay Patel?

  I know. But.

• 1:06:32Speaker 03

  Just sitting here quietly getting spoiled.

• 1:06:34Nilay Patel?

  No, it's not. It's not. It's not gonna be that bad because the movie is not about the story. The movie is about this experience.

• 1:06:39Speaker 01

  Spoil a biopic.

• 1:06:40Nilay Patel?

  But it's not.

• 1:06:41Speaker 03

  It's not a biopic, though. That's exactly what we're saying.

• 1:06:43Speaker 01

  It's a biopic.

• 1:06:44Nilay Patel?

  But the second act, and I, anybody who's listening to this podcast is gonna be just as mad about these inaccuracies as I am. The movie ends with Jobs promising his daughter that he'll make the iPod, which is insanity. And the second act, oh, and telling Scully that he killed a Newton because he's gonna make the iPod. Fuck you, that didn't happen. But then the entire second act of the movie is about Next. And like, the conflict is that the computer doesn't work before he launches it. And the reveal, the solution to the conflict is, I know it doesn't work. This is a Trojan horse, and we're gonna wait and see what Apple needs, make that, and then I'm gonna sell this company back to Apple and become the CEO. And it's like, that shit didn't happen.

• 1:07:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:29Nilay Patel?

  Like, what actually happened was he left Apple, started Next. Next was a huge failure. He didn't know what to do. He spun his wheels for a while and then started Pixar, and that was a huge success that allowed him to just like, I don't know, bumble along with Next until Apple was like, we're fucked too. And he was like, I don't know, what about this? And then there was a bidding war and like a, literally a technology bake-off between two companies. Like, there's deep, deep history there.

• 1:07:55Speaker 03

  Is Pixar even in the movie?

• 1:07:56Nilay Patel?

  No. The first question I asked, right? The first question I asked Sorkin last night was, you just made a movie about Steve Jobs that does not include the words iPhone, Pixar, or cancer. Like, they're not in the movie. It's not there. The movie ends, he walks on stage to introduce the iMac, which miraculously has already been reviewed.

• 1:08:16Speaker 02

  Crazy, like, whatever. Fuck this movie. I'm so mad about it. Like, these inaccuracies are, uh, they're crazy.

• 1:08:26Speaker 01

  And they're all in the service of telling us what? He was a difficult man, but he was a genius. Which is every Steve Jobs movie, and is like the least insightful thing that you could say about him. I have this theory that there won't be a good movie made about Steve Jobs for 50 years. I think that we're actually still too early into the world of mobile to know what was truly important and meaningful about him. Um, just to make it super weird for a second, I've been thinking about this in the context of Hamilton, the musical, uh, which like-

• 1:08:52Speaker 02

  Have you seen it yet?

• 1:08:53Speaker 01

  I haven't seen it yet.

• 1:08:53Speaker 02

  All you do is talk about why to see it.

• 1:08:55Speaker 01

  I, well, I ran out of days in New York, which happens. And also the tickets are like $350 on StubHub. But, um, here you have, um, you know, 200 years after a man dies, uh, you know, this brilliant guy, Lin-Manuel Miranda, is it? Uh, who just like went back and find out and, and was sort of like able to translate that story and figure out what was meaningful about it now. And write it in this incredible, like, beautiful and moving way. Right now, we're so early in the sort of like, you know, post-life Steve Jobs era, that I don't think we've really had enough time to reflect. And so instead, all we can do is go back and imagine, what if this man had tried to resolve all of his most personal conflicts in the last 10 minutes before three product launches? Which is insane!

• 1:09:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:37Speaker 01

  It's literally insane.

• 1:09:38Speaker 03

  Like, that's the last thing you're thinking about right before you do a product launch. Like, no!

• 1:09:42Speaker 01

  It's just structurally contrived and broken.

• 1:09:45Speaker 02

  It's magical. It's like magical realism. It's like, you have to accept that, like, that's ridiculous. And like, it's just, that's the structure he built for his story. And you accept that, like, it's dumb. It's like, when you go watch, when you go watch a Baz Luhrmann film, do you really pissed off that like, things are bombastic and crazy? No, it's a Baz Luhrmann film. When you go watch an Aaron Sorkin film, you don't get pissed off.

• 1:10:04Speaker 03

  That's like a visual style, though.

• 1:10:06Speaker 01

  Here's the problem, though. Sorkin and Boyle, they don't stylize the movie. They, it's, it's like realism, right? Like, if they had done everything in like bright, crazy colors, and there was like show tunes and tap dancing, and it was just insane, then it would probably be a lot more interesting.

• 1:10:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, magical realism, you actually have to have a-

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  Presented this simulacrum of, of the truth, and it's all just a castle of lies.

• 1:10:27Nilay Patel?

  So Casey and I didn't like.

• 1:10:28Speaker 01

  Not so much. Not one of my favorites.

• 1:10:30Nilay Patel?

  But other people that we saw last night loved it.

• 1:10:32Speaker 02

  I walked out of that movie and hated it. And today I like it.

• 1:10:36Nilay Patel?

  It's a, here's the thing, it's a good movie.

• 1:10:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:39Nilay Patel?

  If you didn't have, that's what's so weird about it. It's if there wasn't a real person named Steve Jobs, it would be like a fucking great movie.

• 1:10:51Nilay Patel?

  What? If it, if you didn't have to, if you didn't have to reconcile this movie against the truth that we know.

• 1:10:58Speaker 01

  Here's the thing, if there weren't a Steve, there weren't really a Steve Jobs, like you just wouldn't accept his cruelty to his daughter. You would just be like, this is like the most like unlikable person in the world. Who even cares about any of these like fake products that don't exist, right?

• 1:11:11Speaker 02

  Aaron Sorkin actually revealed the key to the movie to you in your interview.

• 1:11:15Nilay Patel?

  What's that?

• 1:11:16Speaker 02

  That when he died, everybody loved him. And he's like, but nobody actually knew him. They knew the products. And so the key to the movie is like, the product reveals that we never actually see. It's like, he interacts with people through the things that he makes. And so every interaction we actually see him have with somebody is broken and dumb and annoying. And he's being a dick because he doesn't know how to do it. Because what he actually wants to do is just make a product for that person. That's why he tells his daughter, I'm gonna put a thousand songs in your pocket. And like that horrible corny line, because that is what he does. And so this is the ultimate spoiler. The last scene of the movie is his daughter's there.

• 1:11:56Speaker 02

  He walks out on stage and then he turns around and starts walking back towards her as everything gets all hazy and beautiful. Right?

• 1:12:03Nilay Patel?

  I cried the first time I saw it.

• 1:12:04Speaker 02

  Right. She thinks she's walking back to her.

• 1:12:07Nilay Patel?

  A little misty.

• 1:12:07Speaker 02

  His, he's like, her daughter sees her dad walking back to her. And she's like, oh my God, we're about to have a moment. But he was never walking back to her. He was walking to go start his present, his product presentation. He was walking back to the product. And so the whole movie is about the interaction of a culture to a guy through products and how that screwed his, uh, who he is and how he relates to the people around him.

• 1:12:30Nilay Patel?

  Right. Also, one of his products is money because he solves every problem by telling people he's gonna pay them.

• 1:12:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:35Nilay Patel?

  It just keeps happening over and over again. No, I'm with you. I, my favorite theory about the movie, and like literally is my favorite theory, uh, is Ross and TC retreating back and forth each other. That you could watch this entire movie and John Sculley could be a ghost. And it would make, it actually makes more sense. Like, there's a scene in the second act where like, he walks into a hallway and, and like, it's, there's all these chairs stacked up.

• 1:12:58Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:12:58Nilay Patel?

  And Scully's just sitting there waiting for him. And he's like, this is why she gets, and it's like, in what reality did you walk into this empty ass hallway and sit down and just wait patiently for Steve Jobs to show up? To deliver this perfect line. It's like, that, no.

• 1:13:15Speaker 01

  Although I will say that I interviewed John Sculley recently and I arrived before he did and I went-

• 1:13:20Speaker 02

  He was a ghost?

• 1:13:20Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:13:21Nilay Patel?

  You stacked up all the chairs in the room.

• 1:13:22Speaker 01

  No, but I, I went to use the restroom and when I came back to the conference room where we were meeting, he was sitting there with his wife and a dog. So, I'm just saying there's precedent for Sculley turning up in unexpected ways.

• 1:13:34Nilay Patel?

  Fine.

• 1:13:35Speaker 01

  It may have been the most realistic thing out of the film to me.

• 1:13:38Nilay Patel?

  You know, it's, it, huh, I think it's, this movie is just undone by, by reality in a way that like, The Social Network was not undone by reality at every turn.

• 1:13:49Speaker 01

  That's right. Like, you could, like, The Social Network was, it was a very compelling story. And again, was compelling because it was hewing roughly to an actual thing that happened, which was a lawsuit over who founded Facebook. And they totally fictionalized a lot about Mark Zuckerberg and who he was as a person. But I just, I thought that movie like had a, had a really great tension to it. And it had the thing that I liked the most about Sorkin's work, which is that he actually writes persuasive arguments for both characters. Like, that's why the scenes are fun to watch is because, you know, and like, if you watch the Ashton Kutcher, uh, Jobs movie, it's just like, it's just, it's just Jobs being right in every scene and like, a bunch of people applauding because he was so right.

• 1:14:30Speaker 01

  It's, it's just like people losing arguments to Steve Jobs. Sorkin at least tries to balance out that interaction a little bit. And, and I thought he was particularly good at it in The Social Network where like, you know, Mark Zuckerberg is not portrayed as a kingmaker. He's like a more complicated figure and some people love him in that movie and other people think he's the villain, right? Like, Anyway.

• 1:14:47Nilay Patel?

  I don't know.

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:48Nilay Patel?

  This movie, man. Uh, you should, uh, here's the thing, and it's, it's a weird piece of advice to give about a movie that like, I don't know. One and a half of us hate, because the other part of me is like, it's a good movie.

• 1:15:00Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:15:00Nilay Patel?

  And I like Sorkin, and there's a lot of like witty dialogue.

• 1:15:03Speaker 01

  There is, there's some great lines in it.

• 1:15:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Um, so whatever, so you should, but so you should go see this movie. In the same way that like, uh, I have these friends who refuse to read the Harry Potter books. And I'm like, you had, you just have to read them, but just get it over with because they're the fabric of the culture. And you should just know what people are talking about.

• 1:15:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:21Nilay Patel?

  That's this movie, right? And this movie will be a frame in which we talk about Steve Jobs for a long time. But literally nothing about it is reality.

• 1:15:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, I don't know, I wonder how much it's really like, because I, I do think it's true that like the social network like made Mark Zuckerberg just like an incredible like superstar, right? Like, like a just enormous celebrity. This movie is like Jobs is already super famous. There's already a lot of like Jobsian lore out there. And like, how much of our memory of Steve Jobs is really gonna like, you know, come down to a fictional memory of the next launch? Like, I, I don't know. I don't, I, I'm like, I actually suspect it might like not like penetrate into our consciousness as much as the social network did. It's not as good as a movie.

• 1:15:59Nilay Patel?

  Hmm. Anyhow.

• 1:16:00Speaker 02

  The ass spender was pretty though.

• 1:16:03Speaker 01

  Good looking man.

• 1:16:03Nilay Patel?

  I will say sexy Steve Jobs. It's like a real concept now because of this movie.

• 1:16:07Speaker 01

  And it's my Halloween costume.

• 1:16:08Nilay Patel?

  Man. No, when, when like.

• 1:16:10Speaker 02

  He was so cut.

• 1:16:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, in that first act, when there's a scene where you take off his shirt and it's just like, Steve Jobs didn't look like that. There's just no way Steve Jobs looked like that. Like Steve Jobs with an eight pack is basically like what Fast and the Furious looks like in this movie. All right. Uh, Kirsten, are you ready to engage?

• 1:16:26Speaker 03

  You know, are you?

• 1:16:27Nilay Patel?

  Have you reached this point in your career?

• 1:16:29Speaker 03

  I mean.

• 1:16:30Nilay Patel?

  Is our hype checker?

• 1:16:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, I can engage if you want.

• 1:16:33Nilay Patel?

  All right, well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna read, wait, Dieter, you have to read the post troll.

• 1:16:36Speaker 02

  Well, that means that I'm gonna tell you that Braintree. Is supporting today's episode of the Vergecast. They give you a full stack payment solution. They support all kinds of payment types for your customers that they might want. They accept Android Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal, Bitcoin, Venmo, cards, and whatever else. And that means that you can accept them, too.

• 1:16:55Nilay Patel?

  Just give them your money.

• 1:16:56Speaker 02

  It's just a simple, single integration. It works across all different platforms, and there's superior fraud protection, customer service, and fast payouts. Just go to braintreepayments.com/vergecast.

• 1:17:08Nilay Patel?

  Cool. All right, Kirsten, you get three. Kirsten, you get three.

• 1:17:11Speaker 03

  Three, okay. I'll say first, you should definitely follow Snapchat, because I run it, and it's awesome, and we're ramping up the amount of stuff we do on it. So it's the real Verge on Snapchat. Follow us. The second one, you should follow our Twitter, because we tweet out really awesome gifs and videos and everything that's awesome on our site. So that's @verge on Twitter. I don't know, what else should we... I only have two. I've got two.

• 1:17:35Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:17:36Nilay Patel?

  That's crazy. Instagram.

• 1:17:37Speaker 02

  We're on like 15 different platforms.

• 1:17:39Nilay Patel?

  I just picked one.

• 1:17:40Speaker 03

  There you go. Do you know the handle for those exactly? Because I do not offhand.

• 1:17:45Speaker 02

  Bum bum bum.

• 1:17:47Nilay Patel?

  I don't know, just type the Verge into shit.

• 1:17:52Speaker 03

  Here, follow, do the iTunes. Tell them about how to do us on iTunes.

• 1:17:55Nilay Patel?

  Here's the thing, we have four podcasts now. The Vergecast, which is this one, when you go on iTunes, review it. I would like to know what you think of Casey's haircut this week.

• 1:18:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is being dramatically injured by these headphones.

• 1:18:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's killing you. Or, you know, go see the Jobs movie and let us know what you thought about that. You know, that's great. Control, Alt, Delete goes up on Thursdays before the show. So please listen to Control, Alt, Delete. Walton and I this week talked about ads. I actually really want to get him through a few of the Jobs movies for us, because he really used to do Jobs.

• 1:18:26Speaker 01

  You know he's gonna have some strong feelings.

• 1:18:28Nilay Patel?

  So I'm pushing to do that. So maybe, maybe give Walt the nudge, because I think it'd be really interesting to hear what Walt thinks about that. But Control, Alt, Delete is a great show. Verge SP with Emily and Liz, and What's Tech with Chris Plant. Actually, and the What's Tech this week is great.

• 1:18:42Speaker 01

  It's phenomenal.

• 1:18:43Nilay Patel?

  We had the CEO of our company, Jim Benkov, go on and explain how ads on our site work and how we make money and all that sort of good stuff, which is awesome. All that is at iTunes.com/theverge. You can also watch The Vergecast on YouTube if you just search for Vergecast. And then you can talk to all of us on Twitter. So I am Reckless, Casey's Casey Newton, Dieter's Paclon, Kirsten is Kirsten Fursina. You've got to come up with a snappy way of giving people your Twitter.

• 1:19:07Speaker 03

  Right, I don't know. It's like, just try to spell it. Good luck.

• 1:19:10Nilay Patel?

  We'll see what we can do. And that's it. That was our show. Thank you so much for listening. We'll be back next week and something else will happen.