Brain gotta get there

This week on The Vergecast, Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn are joined by Lauren Goode and Racked style editor Nicola Fumo. 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.

• 0:04Nilay Patel?

  Hello, welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Theverge.com.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 0:09Nilay Patel?

  It's January 28th. You might notice a different vibe to the show, a different energy, a different frisson. But that's because we're in a different room today. We... No, there's a big MMA.

• 0:19Speaker 01

  You spell frisson?

• 0:20Nilay Patel?

  F-R-I-S-S-O-N. It's a French word.

• 0:22Speaker 02

  Good old frisson.

• 0:24Nilay Patel?

  I think, I don't know. Or it means like rubbing yourself against stuff.

• 0:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:28Speaker 02

  A sudden, strong feeling of excitement or fear, a thrill.

• 0:32Nilay Patel?

  A thrill. You might feel a thrill in the air today, a frisson. You learn something every day on The Vergecast. But here is why that you might feel that. We are physically in a different space.

• 0:43Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 0:43Nilay Patel?

  There's a big MMA press conference at our usual time, so we let the ESPN Nation people take over our usual studio for that. We're in a different, smaller studio. This is actually when we rebooted The Vergecast, this is the studio we started in. But Nicola is closer to us, physically closer to us.

• 0:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 0:59Nilay Patel?

  This plant, this fake plant encroaches ever closer to our space.

• 1:03Speaker 02

  Everything's getting smaller.

• 1:04Nilay Patel?

  And then, we're also virtually located, because Lauren Good is here.

• 1:08Speaker 03

  Hi, guys.

• 1:09Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, we're here. Dieter's here, as always.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  I am always here.

• 1:13Nilay Patel?

  And I am your friend, Neela Patel. I'm just in a, I'm in a mood.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  It's been a week.

• 1:17Nilay Patel?

  It's been a week. It's been a busy, crazy week. There's news breaking left and right. There's stuff happening. I'm angry about the FCC. That's my favorite thing. It just is. But there's all kinds of... Apple had a week.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:32Nilay Patel?

  Everybody was doing stuff, running around. It was one of those, oh, there's huge news to announce, which is that Ract is moving from the 10th floor of our office, the 9th floor of our office, to sit next to The Verge.

• 1:43Speaker 02

  It's absolutely huge.

• 1:44Nilay Patel?

  So, Operation Big Head, like, that's a move.

• 1:47Speaker 02

  It's... Do you know, I was offered a few seat options, and I, like, very strategically chose my seat so that I have a view of the entire room from the corner, but not all the way in the corner. But I can see everything that's going on.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  I know which seat you picked. I can tell.

• 2:02Nilay Patel?

  That's it. You picked the power seat. So, somebody walks in and tries to kill you.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  Somebody's like, "Oh, do you want to sit? You could sit, like, back to back with Dieter and Neela." "No, I want to sit looking out on everyone." This is a long game.

• 2:12Nilay Patel?

  I'd like to gaze upon all of you.

• 2:14Speaker 01

  The important thing about this move is, you know, the Verge video team is sitting out with us now. Racks is coming in. We've got other moves that are happening. For the two years that I've lived in New York, the ninth floor was like the bummer floor and the 10th floor was the cool fun floor. We're taking that.

• 2:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  Ninth floor, like, listen up Vox Media, ninth floor forever.

• 2:34Speaker 02

  10th floor is getting really sad, but we don't have to talk about that now.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  All right. Lauren Good, how are your floors?

• 2:40Speaker 03

  This all makes me very heartsick for New York, guys, so have fun and we'll just keep on keeping on in San Francisco with Super Bowl City now having taken over pretty much every area of either office that we work out of.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, what's the scene with the Super Bowl stuff? I know that like all the big tech companies are kind of like actually trying to pay attention to football this year.

• 3:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, commute wise, it's really not very fun. Part of Market Street has been shut down and other areas. But yeah, I mean, I guess there are a lot of sponsorships going on. Visa, for example, like in one of the buildings that we work out of, like they've wallpapered the elevators with like Visa. It's just, and I imagine it's going to be kind of a boon for companies like Uber and Lyft as well.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:30Speaker 03

  Surge pricing is going to be 18X at least.

• 3:33Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God. I keep sending Casey like the thirstiest pitches I get about the Super Bowl. The last one I got was, there's a Playboy party where they're reinventing Playboy with like a hallway that you can walk down that takes you from beginning of Playboy to the end of Playboy, and at the end.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  It's just articles.

• 3:48Nilay Patel?

  They just showed you, yeah, it's just articles. It's the articles and a tablet with Chrome loaded in private mode. But at the end, there was this email, there's like a list of like famous people who've been at the party in the past and it was just like the saddest. I don't want to call out any famous people, but.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  We don't want to hurt their feelings.

• 4:08Speaker 03

  The funny thing is that the Super Bowl itself is happening about 40 miles south of where a lot of these parties and party tents are being put up right now. So I kind of imagine like it's going to be this reality check for some people who fly out here and then they're in Santa Clara and they're like, oh, we're in Santa Clara. Kind of like Wayne's World, like we're in Delaware, like.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  What is Santa Clara like?

• 4:32Speaker 03

  Uh, it's a lot of corporate office parks and it's just, it's sunny, it's the heart of Silicon Valley, but it's not a ton going on there, I guess. And there's a stadium now, so.

• 4:43Nilay Patel?

  I think people think Silicon Valley is San Francisco and it's like not, right? Like Silicon Valley is terrible office parks.

• 4:49Speaker 02

  I wanna go there.

• 4:50Nilay Patel?

  We'll send you down there.

• 4:51Speaker 02

  Someone, take me.

• 4:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, you can come visit me. I live in Silicon Valley. And then we can go around and you can, you can have just a field day critiquing fashion.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  I did learn how to ride a hoverboard yesterday.

• 5:04Speaker 03

  That, that's it. The transformation has begun.

• 5:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:08Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so we gotta get into news.

• 5:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:10Nilay Patel?

  Uh, let's start with Apple, I guess. We gotta start with Apple. Apple's in the room. And we'll save FCC for the middle, but, uh, Apple had a big money day. Is that what earnings are? No, Apple announced earnings.

• 5:26Nilay Patel?

  They made more money than any company has made in a quarter in history.

• 5:30Speaker 02

  Whoa.

• 5:31Nilay Patel?

  Made a bunch of money. Um, eighteen point four billion dollars, which is bonkers. Um, even their small businesses like are huge, like Walt loves to remind me that just the five billion dollars they make a quarter on the Mac is enough to put them in like the Fortune like hundred and fifteen. Like they're just a huge company. Um, but the story is not that they made a bunch of money or sold more iPhones. It's that next quarter, they're not gonna sell more iPhones for the first time ever.

• 6:00Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 6:01Nilay Patel?

  Um, and, and their iPad sales are down and the Mac sales are down. Um, and they, Lauren, did you listen to the call? Dieter and I are both listening to the call.

• 6:09Speaker 03

  Are you asking me?

• 6:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 6:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Did you catch the same sense of like, kind of like defensiveness on the call?

• 6:17Speaker 03

  No, I caught a sense of maybe some intentional negativity to sort of set expectations. Um, well, first of all, the first part of it was a lot of macroeconomic talk. And if you don't have a degree in macroeconomics, you may as, you know, uh, Found it confusing. I'm not saying that I did or anything, but there's a lot of talk about currencies and softness in China and things like that. And then, and then throughout, even as, as Apple CEO Tim Cook was going through some of their great metrics and things that they've sold. It did seem like he was maybe trying to temper some excitement a little bit for the first quarter of the year. That was the sense that I got.

• 6:52Nilay Patel?

  Do you think that they're just, they're just done selling more iPhones than ever? Like, is it just flat? I mean, that's the question. It's the only question that matters.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  Wait, how many iPhones did they sell? Was it 75 million?

• 7:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, 75.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  Isn't 75 million iPhones in a quarter flat, like, not bad? Sorry, Lauren.

• 7:09Speaker 03

  Oh, no, I was just gonna say that's, that's kind of the ridiculous thing is that I think expectations were that it was going to be around 75 million, maybe a little over. And it ended up being like 74.8. And so that's why people were bummed out. And it's like absurd to think about because that's so many iPhones. But you, you had a point. I'm sorry.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  That was my point. And, well, and

• 7:31Speaker 02

  Wait, I have a question.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  If that's, if this is like peak iPhone, um, okay.

• 7:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Like, fine.

• 7:38Speaker 02

  What this means is that, does this, does this mean that everyone has an iPhone? And like, everyone has them and like, there's no one else left to get them. And also people are starting to like creep away from the iPhone? Is that what this is?

• 7:52Speaker 01

  They, Apple says that they, they had more Android switchers than ever and that they have a better, they do a better job of making iPhones customers stay iPhone customers and not losing them to Android. I think what it means is that, like, all of the obvious ways that Apple has to expand market share and get more people to buy iPhones, they're starting to run out of those. At some point, there's just like, nobody else to buy an iPhone. When like, every person on the planet has an iPhone, they can't sell anymore.

• 8:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  Obviously, we're well short of that. Little bit. But, like, everybody that can afford an iPhone, that has like, good plans in their country, like, they're, they're, it just gets harder. The more you sell, eventually, there's like, no obvious way to get a whole new set of customers. Now, everybody was assuming that China was going to be the thing that kept this engine of Like record huge selling numbers, record growth year over year, quarter over quarter. They just keep on selling more and it never ends. Everybody assumed China was gonna like, just like, pu- put that shot in the arm and keep that going. And it seems like, especially because China's economy is apparently not doing all that well, that that's not giving them like, they're like, fifth wind.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  They're just sort of like, they're gonna be flat selling more phones than anybody else on the planet by a factor of two or five.

• 9:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, they're enormously successful. I think that, oh, this is like my pet theory, but I, I think that they spent that year or two years promising big new products because everyone was afraid of this moment. And there was all the doubt around, can they put out a big new product because this moment is coming? They put out a bunch of new products last year and then this moment came.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:30Nilay Patel?

  And I think that, that's a, that's a bunch of stuff that's all wrapped up into, I think that, that's what, that's that tone I was hearing was like, we have a bunch of new products, they're gonna figure themselves out. We're gonna be fine. They were like, our services make thirty one billion dollars a year all on their own.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, they talked a lot about services.

• 9:46Nilay Patel?

  Right, because if you have everybody in the world with an iPhone, they're all spending some kind of money in Apple. That's like a happy thing. But I was talking to, um, I was on CNBC yesterday talking about this and John Fort from CNBC was there. And he was like, there's a big difference between a subscription customer, who's like a recurring subscription customer, and your base of people who just have iPhones spending some money sometimes. And like, Apple isn't making that distinction. You just checked your smartwatch in my face.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:12Nilay Patel?

  Like, super in my face.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:14Nilay Patel?

  This is ridiculous.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  Sorry.

• 10:16Nilay Patel?

  Our, our time, our culture is doomed.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  I saw an Apple Watch at a cool bar last night.

• 10:20Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah?

• 10:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:21Nilay Patel?

  Was it, was it like the Verge's conference room?

• 10:24Speaker 02

  No, it was out in Bushwick.

• 10:26Nilay Patel?

  What was a cool bar?

• 10:27Speaker 02

  Um, well, it was in Bushwick. I'm not gonna reveal my, I'm not gonna reveal my sources.

• 10:31Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I see. You don't want people to find you in a cool bar. It's a cool bar because nobody knows about it yet.

• 10:35Speaker 02

  But I saw one in the wild, because every time I see one in the wild. In a cool place. I'm like, oh, there's one.

• 10:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I see them all the time now. I really do. I see them much more often than.

• 10:45Speaker 02

  I started seeing them more once they went on sale at Best Buy.

• 10:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  TBQH. Like, as soon as that happened, I started to notice them on people.

• 10:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's like the Galaxy gear. For there's a minute when like everybody had a Galaxy.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  That is not true.

• 10:57Nilay Patel?

  Super true.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Not true.

• 10:58Nilay Patel?

  Actually, at the Code Conference, Lauren, did I tell you this story? We were probably really busy, like, sneaking around and pretending we didn't know each other at the Code Conference. Because that's when we were like, Box is buying Recode. So I was like, who's that? I'd like to work with her someday, but nah, probably not. That was basically how I treated it. But anyway.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  Lauren, does this match your memory?

• 11:15Nilay Patel?

  It was clandestine. They made me meet them. Walt and Lauren made me meet them for breakfast, but I had to drive my own car. We couldn't go together because somebody might suspect something.

• 11:24Speaker 02

  Wow, I love that.

• 11:25Nilay Patel?

  It's a fact. Anyhow, but we were at the Code Conference and the, all the parking valets had Galaxy gears and they were super into them. Because they run around all day. They'd all gotten them for free with their phones because Samsung was giving them.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was gonna say, did they just get them? Because buying something and just getting something is different.

• 11:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  Choosing and being given.

• 11:45Nilay Patel?

  Facts from Truma. No, but I mean, look. So what was your big read?

• 11:51Speaker 01

  My big read, I mean, the big read is if iPhone sales stay flat, like, I, I don't, like, people are gonna freak out about the stock, but like, I don't think it has huge repercussions for the future of Apple. Right? Like, the iPhone is what it is. It's a known entity. At some point, we know it's going to plateau and that's fine. The bigger question is the black box. Like, in order to understand what Apple's, like, future finances and, like, business look like, you need to become a Kremlinologist because all of their most interesting products are bundled up in other products. So the iPad Pro is bundled up with the other iPads, which are selling like garbage. The, but, but maybe there'll be an iPad 3 to come soon.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  The Apple TV and the Apple Watch are also bundled up in other. And so all the stuff that, like, are the big bets for, like, future platforms are things that you can't judge, like, on their own separately from what Apple tells you. You just kind of have to, like, hope you can figure out from analysts what the sales numbers are and how much money they're making off of it. So. Like the story of like Apple's quarterly earnings and the record profits or whatever, if that's like not gonna be like crazy rocket ship all the time, like that doesn't affect the way that tech is in culture. Seventy-five million iPhones in a quarter is a shit ton of iPhones and that doesn't like, it doesn't change anything if it doesn't become eighty and eighty-five and ninety.

• 13:11Nilay Patel?

  So here's my question, and I think this is their hardest problem. It's not, it's what you're talking about. They're the default now, right? You can buy a phone, you can buy an iPhone. A lot of people, if you're gonna buy an expensive laptop, you're gonna buy a MacBook. I mean, they're dominant market share, expensive laptops. They're, they still sell a ton of iPads, although not more iPads every year, right? Like, they are the default for a lot of people in a weird way. What happens when a whole generation of kids grows up and Apple isn't the company that like reinvents things as the upstart, but they're the default? Like, how does Apple stay cool in that scenario?

• 13:48Speaker 01

  New, new colors of the Apple Watch and the

• 13:51Nilay Patel?

  Is it?

• 13:52Speaker 01

  Milanese watch band.

• 13:54Nilay Patel?

  Nicola, do you think Apple is like the default or are they like the upstart?

• 13:57Speaker 02

  I think that, yeah, I think it's people's like default.

• 14:00Nilay Patel?

  Right. Isn't that the problem? Like, you're the, that's a great business to be in, is the default of everything, but like so much of their brand is predicated on being the upstart.

• 14:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, and also like if you're the default, then you're not like the cool thing because you're the everything.

• 14:15Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 14:16Speaker 02

  And you can't be the everything and be the cool thing.

• 14:18Nilay Patel?

  But you can be the everything and rich. And I think like,

• 14:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:20Nilay Patel?

  Is that, I mean, it's just weird, because if you look at a really macro level, they've been hedging against it this whole time by hiring all these fashion people and like building these really expensive watches and like trying to cultivate this air of exclusivity around some of the stuff.

• 14:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's almost like pulling out like micro areas within mass things to make

• 14:43Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  exclusive.

• 14:44Nilay Patel?

  Right. It's just weird. It's just like, I grew up and Apple was the upstart and like being an Apple fan was like the renegade thing to do because Windows was the default thing.

• 14:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:53Nilay Patel?

  And then now it's like the iPhone is the default thing. And I'm just, I'm actually really curious, like that changes their entire aspect. Like they're the, like Steve Jobs got the iTunes Music Store through the labels because the Mac had no market share. And he could be like, try this out with me because I want, I want to prove that I can change the world of music, but. If it fails, it'll only fail on the mark, I mean, it'll only fail on the Mac, I mean, I have 5% market share, so it won't matter. And they're like, yeah, we can do it. And then you're like, change the world. But now they're, they're the default, and they're going to the TV companies and saying, give us a deal for the Apple TV. And TV companies are like, no, you're huge. No, like, pay us.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:34Nilay Patel?

  And it's just, it's just the whole thing feels invert, like, that is the thing, I was, they made a bunch of money, they're gonna make a bunch of money, the company will be fine, they have like 216 billion dollars in the bank. Like, they can literally just last. Like, Apple can just ride it out for like a million years. They'll be fine. Um, but it's like literally a million years.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:54Nilay Patel?

  At their rate. Um, but I don't think they want to just be fine, right? I think they, they want to, they want to continue to be the, the most important, kind of like tech company out there. And this shift where suddenly all the people who have iPhones have iPhones, that's, that's the one that changes their, their place in the culture.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:14Nilay Patel?

  At least, I don't know, maybe I'm wrong.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  Well, like, you, you wrote the divergence column, where like, the, the app on the phone is no longer the thing that like, changes everything, right? It's only the most exciting thing. So, at the same time that everybody who's gonna get an iPhone has an iPhone, the stuff that you do with an iPhone has gone from like, being holy crap, Hubers are amazing, everything's different, to like, huh, we're kind of out of ideas for how to like, blow up the world with a new app on a phone, and we're gonna like, look at some other stuff. So like, and then all of Apple's big bets to watch the TV, um, and the iPad Pro from the last year, like, none of them like, grabbed culture. Yeah, nothing's amazing. And Apple Music hasn't grabbed culture. Beats One Radio is like, interesting for a while, but I don't know, like, it's not changing things. And so,

• 16:57Speaker 01

  the, I don't know if, until, until the cars start coming out, I don't know that we're gonna have another like, like, huge radical change. And like, Apple is gonna like, slowly make stuff better, slowly like, become dominant in one of these other platforms, probably TV, which we're gonna get to pretty soon with the SEC. It's exciting. I'm pointing at this guy.

• 17:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  Mr. Patel.

• 17:18Nilay Patel?

  Um, I'm sorry.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  He's just sitting here quivering. I can feel the energy rating, radiating off of him, how excited he is to talk about

• 17:24Nilay Patel?

  If the SEC.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  TV policy. Um, but.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  I guess like Apple, if Apple doesn't have another like change the culture revolutionary moment in the next five years, okay.

• 17:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's fine.

• 17:40Speaker 01

  Like that doesn't, they don't have to be the only company to do that. And maybe there's not one of those moments in technology in the next five years and like the radical change, unless it's VR, which by the way, Tim Cook says is really interesting.

• 17:51Nilay Patel?

  So I think it's VR. To be honest with you, I think that's the moment. Like I think people and headsets is gonna be a thing.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 17:57Nilay Patel?

  And like that, they're not part of that game, except for you can buy a plastic.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  It's an area of intense interest. Okay, no, that's precisely what he said.

• 18:04Nilay Patel?

  He said it's, uh, somebody, Gene Munster asked him on a call.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  Oh God, can we, Gene Munster?

• 18:08Nilay Patel?

  My boy, my boy Gene.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  I'm so happy. So there's this analyst named Gene Munster, who for 15 years, every time there was an Apple earnings call, he would get, they'd give him a question and he'd get on and be like, so how about that Apple TV? You gonna make a TV? What's going on with the TV? Tell me about the TV. Every three months for literally 10 years.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  It's amazing.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  So Apple finally, like six months ago, was like, you know, we're not gonna do it. Just stop. Like we're making this box. This is our bet. And all of a sudden, Gene Munster couldn't ask about TVs anymore. And everybody, I was really sad for him personally.

• 18:44Speaker 02

  Like they shut Munster down?

• 18:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, basically. Uh, but this, this quarter, he came and he asked about VR.

• 18:51Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  And so now he has another thing.

• 18:53Nilay Patel?

  He's in the game.

• 18:54Speaker 01

  That he can ask about every quarter.

• 18:55Nilay Patel?

  He found a new life.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  It's great.

• 18:57Speaker 02

  I like his attitude.

• 18:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:59Nilay Patel?

  I mean, he was like, so tell me about that TV. And I'd be like, no.

• 19:02Speaker 02

  Persistent.

• 19:03Nilay Patel?

  But like, he's an analyst. Like he controls a lot of money. So he gets to go visit Apple and like ask about the TV in private. But he also insisted on doing it on these calls in public, which is amazing.

• 19:11Speaker 02

  That's really amazing.

• 19:12Nilay Patel?

  Um, anyhow, but.

• 19:14Speaker 01

  So he asked about VR and Cook's answer was, in terms of VR, I don't think it's a niche. It's really cool and it has some interesting applications.

• 19:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. But I mean, he's just happy because people are buying cardboards or whatever and sticking outfits in them. I do think it's, I mean, it's gonna be the next thing. I think about it this way, it's like, what's gonna be in the local news? Like, what tech story is gonna hit the local news in Midwest? Like, that's the next thing everyone's gonna talk about. And the next thing that's gonna hit the local news is Oculus launching and people in headsets in the local news. Forever. I don't know, Lauren, do you think that Apple can be the cool company even though the iPhone's kinda like the default product? And it's what everybody's used to?

• 19:54Speaker 03

  I actually think it's less of a generational question than it is maybe a geographical one. We know that Apple has been really pushing iPhone in China. And despite the softness, the economic softness there, I think that they're probably still doing an okay job of that. I think they mentioned in the earnings call yesterday that India is one of the fastest growing countries for them. And it's certainly the fastest growing BRIC country for them in terms of people buying iPhones there. So I think it's more, like, if Apple is always going to be, if iPhone is always going to be this premium device that people with, that have a certain amount of disposable income can get. And I think the question is, will they hit that ceiling?

• 20:38Speaker 03

  Because it's not actually something that's going to come into

• 20:41Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 20:41Speaker 03

  developing, like, I guess, you know, undeveloped markets. Like, if you look at something like Africa, I was just listening to a podcast the other day. Someone said that there are going to be more than 900 million phones in Africa by the year 2019. And that's a huge amount of mobile phone consumers. So, like, if Apple's not going to sell iPhone there, for example, then everyone's saying, well, we talked earlier, can Apple, has iPhone peaked? Then, I mean, I tend to think of something like that rather than like, oh, does a 16-year-old think iPhone's cool?

• 21:14Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, so if you're not familiar, BRIC stands for Brazil, Russia, India, and China. And if that's where Apple's future growth is, if that's really where they live, if that's their home, you might, you might say that Apple is gonna become a

• 21:29Nilay Patel?

  Never mind.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  brick house. Come on, man. Come on, dude. Can we play Brick House? Can we get some Brick House playing right now?

• 21:40Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. There's something really weird about that view, right? I mean, I don't know. Maybe it's it's like

• 21:47Speaker 03

  I think what we're talking we're talking about is more of a cachet thing and what I'm talking about is like

• 21:51Nilay Patel?

  raw sales, but it's like

• 21:53Speaker 03

  numbers thing.

• 21:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I don't know. It's just like it's there's something particularly imperialistic about like, Apple's future is forcing development to accelerate in Africa so they can self. And it's like, yeah, it's a good thing, but like it's such a there's such a disconnect there between the incentives of one party and the incentives of another. You know, like that's that's what I worry about. It's like I would rather have these companies be focused on inventing disruptive and cool new like technologies for for like the consumers who can afford the stuff to use instead of trying to get other markets online to afford the expensive products they already make.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  But everything's going to turn around.

• 22:32Speaker 03

  Exactly right.

• 22:33Speaker 01

  What about the iPhone iPhone five SE?

• 22:35Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah, we should. So here are the rumors. So and I think that I think they all map to a thing and I want to hear what you guys think of these phones, but I think they all map to a thing, which is a really interesting thing Apple could do to make sure their sales start going up over every quarter is get everybody a new phone every year, which is their their obvious goal, right? So all the carriers in the United States have an upgrade program like next or edge or whatever the hell it is. I I am on next because it's just it was easier to do that than anything else. So I get a new phone every year through next. AT&T sends me a lot of thirsty text messages like time for a new phone. And then I send them my old phone. And they're like, we didn't get your new phone. We didn't get your old phone in the mail. We're just going to charge you anyway. And that's that's true. Then I have to call them and be like, did you get my phone? And they're like, we did. So anyway, um,

• 23:18Nilay Patel?

  Apple released its own upgrade program to get you a new phone every year. Like their goal is to get make you buy a new phone every year. Like that's what they want the top end of their markets start doing. That's one way to increase their sales, but I think that means the phone has to look different every year. I don't think they can do the S cycle that way. I think they have to go to sort of the iPod thing where like one year was tall and one year was fat and one year was skinny, you know, like every year the iPod looked different.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  I mean, with the iPod, if I had an iPod that was a couple of years old, I didn't mind because I like I liked the way that iPad was better than the newer iterations of it.

• 23:48Nilay Patel?

  Right. Yeah, but like the I I

• 23:50Speaker 01

  They can get past like people needing the fastest, the highest resolution, the

• 23:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think you have to be in the speeds and feeds.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  Anyway, they could do that.

• 23:57Nilay Patel?

  So that's just one theory. So that's iPhone seven, I think, is a big deal. There's rumors it's gonna have two cameras in the back.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  And no headphone port.

• 24:03Nilay Patel?

  Really great pictures and no headphone jack. And then there's other crazy ass rumor, which I think is, I think the name is false, but the product is true.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  I love the name.

• 24:12Nilay Patel?

  The iPhone.

• 24:12Speaker 03

  This is about the five F, five S E?

• 24:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the the five C.

• 24:17Speaker 03

  Five.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  It's five S.

• 24:20Nilay Patel?

  Five S E. Uh, ridiculous name.

• 24:22Speaker 01

  It's the it's the five S E.

• 24:23Speaker 03

  The five C. Uh. No, not the five C. What is it called?

• 24:26Speaker 01

  Five S E.

• 24:28Nilay Patel?

  The five C.

• 24:28Speaker 03

  Five S E.

• 24:29Speaker 02

  Wait, what?

• 24:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they're gonna.

• 24:31Speaker 02

  What if it's the five say?

• 24:33Speaker 01

  What if it's the five say?

• 24:35Nilay Patel?

  Yes, it's it's it's Spanish. It's it's clear. So their their their thing right now, they they still sell, they still sell the iPhone five S.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 24:43Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 24:43Nilay Patel?

  Um, and that's the small one. That's the smallest one they sell.

• 24:47Speaker 02

  I just found mine actually in my desk.

• 24:49Nilay Patel?

  I will say the iPhone five in black might be the prettiest iPhone. I I always thought it was the iPhone.

• 24:54Speaker 02

  Space gray.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:55Nilay Patel?

  No, the the first one was like murdered out black. It was so hot looking. Lauren, are you just, are you just slamming Cheetos into a microphone right now? What is happening over there?

• 25:05Speaker 02

  I'm sorry, eating popcorn with your cat.

• 25:08Nilay Patel?

  To bring you back and Lauren's like, I'm taking photos of my cat and I'm just gonna grind these Cheetos into a microphone.

• 25:15Nilay Patel?

  Uh, anyhow, um, uh, so they still sell the five S.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:20Nilay Patel?

  And now the rumor is they're gonna update the five S design to give it like curved glass.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 25:26Nilay Patel?

  Keep the size, um, and give it like.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  The six S's internals. It was originally gonna be the six's internals, but now they're thinking it'll be the six S's internals.

• 25:33Nilay Patel?

  They're just gonna update it.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  So they're gonna get a generation behind it.

• 25:36Speaker 03

  Support live photos.

• 25:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Would you buy that phone?

• 25:38Speaker 02

  I was such a big phone hater, like such a big phone hater. And then I got this six plus and my life's so good and I love it so much. And the fact that they're like doing a little phone again, I'm like, wait, but I just got really happy here.

• 25:52Nilay Patel?

  Well, but they're still gonna make the big phone.

• 25:54Speaker 02

  I know, but like.

• 25:56Speaker 03

  S plus or was your life or like, are they correlated? I'm curious. Cause you said you got it and your life was so good. And like, I'm wondering if they just concurrently happened that way?

• 26:06Speaker 02

  No, they like, I bought it at the Apple store, um, cause I smashed my five S, um. And I had to buy a new one. And they were like, oh, you have two weeks to return it. And I was like, okay, I know I'm stubborn. I have to get the six plus. The dude was like, you're gonna hate it. You're gonna bring it back. I'm like, okay, well, I'll just bring it back. Like, if I hate it, but I am stubborn and I have to just like, take it home with me. And it just was like, in a, in an afternoon, I fell in love and I just don't want to go back to a small phone.

• 26:30Nilay Patel?

  But you don't have to. They're still gonna make the big phone.

• 26:31Speaker 02

  I know. But it's weird. My, I don't know. I feel out of touch. You know, I don't like that.

• 26:40Nilay Patel?

  All right. Well, I'm just going with that one lie. Uh, Lauren, like.

• 26:43Speaker 03

  Well, the rum- the rumored pricing of this five SE, um, which I'm now convinced is like special edition or something like the Nike Field and SE.

• 26:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 26:52Speaker 03

  Um, but the rumored price is around $450 or maybe less. So that to me is like, you're, you're looking at what, you know, budget, not budget phone pricing, but like at least Nexus phone pricing.

• 27:04Nilay Patel?

  Right, yeah. Yeah, I just don't, I, I don't know. I, I get that they, again, like, Apple needs to increase sales. So like, there's anybody with an iPhone five who doesn't want to get a six or a six plus because it's too big. And they can convince them to just like, get a new phone. Right? That's a, because it's Apple and they just have so much scale. That's like 10 million people or whatever. And it's like ridiculous huge number of sales it can make. This is my mother. She won't get a big phone. She's like, thinks they're ugly, wants, wants that same design that she likes. So Apple could just like, they could do it.

• 27:35Speaker 01

  I mean, I would, I would consider going back to a little phone for.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  A lot of people feel emotionally connected to little phones.

• 27:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  What?

• 27:41Speaker 02

  People love little phones.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  Dude, did you ever use a Veer?

• 27:43Nilay Patel?

  No, that was a dumb phone.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  No, it was great.

• 27:46Nilay Patel?

  Can I say this? I'm not, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna reveal the big reveal, but last night I was looking through some old Engadget files. I have like 14 gigs of like Engadget stuff on my computer. Um, I have so many videos of Palm Pre and Veer hands-ons on my computer. They're just buried in an old, like the, you know, it's like an old hard drive. It's like a backup of an old laptop. I have 14 gigs of like, videos of like Engadget hands-ons with routers and like Priest. It's like crazy.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:14Nilay Patel?

  I watched so many Palm Pre hands, like various, like, we're gonna go deep in the browser. We're gonna like, play with the Veer, keep like, nonsense.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:22Nilay Patel?

  That phone was dumb.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  No.

• 28:23Nilay Patel?

  I can say this, having exhaustively researched it.

• 28:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I used it.

• 28:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Do you, that was your main phone?

• 28:30Speaker 01

  It was, it was for a while.

• 28:30Nilay Patel?

  Why do you think people love little phones?

• 28:35Speaker 02

  Pockets and yeah, pockets and being used to things.

• 28:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's fair. I just, I mean, it's just.

• 28:42Speaker 03

  Exercise, I think too.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is annoying to strap this thing on me when I'm exercising because it's quite large.

• 28:50Nilay Patel?

  But you know, my theory is they should just bring back the iPod. This is, I, I didn't do this, but I should have done. I was on CNBC and I, what I really wanted to do more than anything is when Andrew Alstark and like held up his iPhone and was like, what's their next thing? I want to be like, Andrew, it's the iPod. And I was like all queued up to do it. And they still sell the shuffle.

• 29:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:09Nilay Patel?

  They sell the weird new Nano with like a fake iOS on it.

• 29:13Speaker 02

  My friend's.

• 29:13Speaker 03

  This one is waterproof.

• 29:15Speaker 01

  If they made an iPod with some like exercise features and it worked with, uh, but it had physical buttons or the wheel and it worked with Apple Music. And it was like 200 bucks or 150 bucks.

• 29:27Speaker 02

  Yes, dude. That's it.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  150 dollar iPod that works with Apple Music and it's got some like step counting and other exercise stuff.

• 29:34Nilay Patel?

  That's the Nano with Apple Music. That's what that is.

• 29:36Speaker 02

  But can I talk to it to tell it what to do so I don't have to press anything? Okay. Yeah.

• 29:39Nilay Patel?

  Why?

• 29:40Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  That's an iPod Touch.

• 29:41Nilay Patel?

  Because we're dreaming, Neela.

• 29:42Speaker 02

  We're dreaming, Neela.

• 29:43Nilay Patel?

  I hate dreams. Oh, they're the worst.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  Lauren, what would make you buy an iPod?

• 29:48Nilay Patel?

  God, just having it.

• 29:49Speaker 03

  Um, I think probably if it made dinner for me.

• 29:53Speaker 03

  No, but in all seriousness, I do, I do love this little shuffle because it's waterproof. It was waterproofed by another company, not Apple. And it's great for swimming and it's great for just like clipping on yourself and running when you just want some locally stored music. And like, I, I dig it. I feel like, I mean, I feel like the iPod Touch is great for, you know, my niece and nephew love their iPod Touches because they play games and they like FaceTime at four in the morning and they think it's cool. Um, but like.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  You get FaceTime at four in the morning by your niece and nephew?

• 30:22Speaker 03

  They're on the East Coast. And so when they get up before they go to school, sometimes they will like FaceTime and it's four in the morning for me. And they're like, Auntie. And I'm like, oh my God, I need to teach you not just how to iMessage, but also how to tell time zone differences. But they're really cute. And, uh, but no, I mean, for me, like I, I'm either phone or bust, like phone or something that's like, has local storage and is tiny and disposable like this. I'm not, at this point, I don't think I would get an iPod without any type of cellular connectivity.

• 30:50Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. I, I would, the iPod Classic, the 160 gig, seven G, iPod Classic, right now on Amazon, how much do you think it costs on Amazon right now?

• 30:59Speaker 02

  Ooh, 169.

• 31:02Speaker 03

  Can I cheat?

• 31:02Nilay Patel?

  Lauren. You can't cheat.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  No cheating.

• 31:06Nilay Patel?

  You're cheating.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Don't cheat.

• 31:07Nilay Patel?

  Just because, you know, we should-

• 31:08Speaker 03

  I'll just, I'll just be the person that tells you.

• 31:10Nilay Patel?

  You know, we, okay, fine, Dieter, you guess.

• 31:12Speaker 01

  Uh, I'm gonna guess, I'm gonna guess, um, $305.

• 31:17Nilay Patel?

  No. It's higher. It's, it's like, literally, it's like $500.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  What?

• 31:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 31:22Speaker 03

  $509.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  But the move is you buy a busted one and then you can put an SSD in it. You can, there's a kit you could buy to put an SSD into an old iPod.

• 31:30Nilay Patel?

  This is like ridiculous. And then it's super fast.

• 31:32Speaker 03

  That sounds like a great thing to write for.

• 31:35Nilay Patel?

  The weekend. That sounds like Dieter just wrote his weekend post. Um, no, man, I'm telling you, there's, there's something, I just wrote this thing about like how record players and film camera, like, there's something about the iPod that captured the, like, the feeling of owning some music. Of like, having a physical thing that you loved.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:52Nilay Patel?

  That like you have, anyway.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  How long have we been vergecasting?

• 31:54Nilay Patel?

  Who knows?

• 31:55Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 31:56Nilay Patel?

  Um, by the way-

• 31:57Speaker 03

  That's the funny thing about all these, these, uh, like, digital media devices. Like, we keep getting further and further into the Borg. Because remember when the iPod felt, it felt like having, uh, digital music files, MP3 stored on a device was so, it felt so, like, nebulous and like you didn't own anything anymore because it wasn't CDs and there wasn't record players, I mean, records. And now, like, that feels like it's a physical, tangible thing compared to the streaming services-

• 32:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 32:22Speaker 03

  -that we're using.

• 32:23Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, cause my, well, so I said, well, no, but I meant yes. I meant to emphatically agree with you.

• 32:28Speaker 03

  No, yes.

• 32:30Nilay Patel?

  But no, yes. Um, I'm not, my, the iPod was like a single tasking object. Right? So at least it was like, this is my music.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  Oh, I played a bunch of Brick Breaker on the iPod.

• 32:41Nilay Patel?

  I never did that stuff. But like, but like, it was meant, and now your phone is like, it's every object. It, it lacks a single coherent identity, cause it's everything that you do. I don't know. Anyway, um- And I feel like we should be playing sad music and I should be talking about the loss of identity in the digital future.

• 32:59Speaker 02

  The saddest and darkest thing I think is moving the the phone app off of the main page that you use because it's just like, I'm not using that.

• 33:08Nilay Patel?

  Wait, you don't have the phone app on your main page?

• 33:09Speaker 02

  No.

• 33:10Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 33:11Speaker 02

  It's on the, well, I only have two pages, but it's on the, it's on the bummer page.

• 33:15Nilay Patel?

  It's like with stocks and like the Apple weather.

• 33:17Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  Mine's in the upper left hand corner, the corner that's hardest to reach.

• 33:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  On the main page.

• 33:23Nilay Patel?

  I'm still.

• 33:24Speaker 01

  It definitely doesn't get to be on the dock.

• 33:25Speaker 02

  I mean, who are you even calling?

• 33:28Nilay Patel?

  I call Dieter.

• 33:29Speaker 02

  You just call on the phone?

• 33:30Nilay Patel?

  That's about it. I call Dieter and I call Becky. Those are like literally the first two people. That's it. There's nobody else.

• 33:35Speaker 03

  What, um, can I ask you guys what you thought about Tim Cook's remarks about virtual reality?

• 33:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, we talked about, yeah. I think for, I don't know, I, the iPhone is going to be a part of virtual reality just because you can buy like the plastic holder for it.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, but apparently the screen is not good for VR headsets. They need to, they need to like basically like switch to OLED and change their screen approach before it'll be good to like just use an iPhone.

• 34:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but it's going to get them in that first wave.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  The first wave is here and gone.

• 34:06Nilay Patel?

  Well, you know, I mean, that, that like I think what I'm saying, the Oculus wave, right? Like Oculus is going to come out. Everyone's going to be interested in it. And there's going to be like a little cult of like VR accessories for your iPhone and apps and like everyone's going to play with it on their, like they're going to be in that because people have it and you can't, you can do it and it's not great. And then I, I think that the thing they need to do is when everyone's like, okay, this is not great, but I'm really into this. I want to try something else. Then they need to be ready with the product.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:33Nilay Patel?

  And I, I don't know, that, that's sort of my very high level read on it.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  God, I can't wait to hear Johnny Ive talk about like how you look not like an idiot wearing a VR headset.

• 34:42Nilay Patel?

  Oh my God.

• 34:43Speaker 01

  Like just imagine, imagine him talking about the design of a VR headset and how amazing it is.

• 34:48Nilay Patel?

  What I'm imagining is like Tim, like, because you know, they, they plan their products like years in advance.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:53Nilay Patel?

  So Tim Cook was like, he had his like morning, his like five hour Monday meeting. And he was like, all right, guys, we've got to do a VR headset.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:00Nilay Patel?

  And I was like, no.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  No.

• 35:03Nilay Patel?

  I'm actually just going to design the retail stores and the spaceship building and somebody else can do that shit. And he just like refused. And that's why he's like, Sir Johnny.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  That explains a battery case.

• 35:13Nilay Patel?

  He's like, fuck it. I'm out. Like I'm going to do this spaceship. Anna Lauren, what do you think of VR stuff? I mean, he said it, but like, what he says, like, he just, I think he just, I think he just said something relatively positive to not sound like a hater, right?

• 35:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. It is kind of hard to imagine everyone sitting around wearing, you know, bright white, Apple branded headsets on their faces. In the same way that we've been wearing the current batch of like really early solutions. Like hard, whether it's cardboard or gear or whatever it may be, and by gear, I mean Samsung's solution. I mean, I think Apple could potentially have a future in serving up the right kind of video content for that, especially if they're focusing more on services. And if they believe the future of like consuming content, especially TV as apps, then almost certainly some of those apps will be serving up like 360 degree video.

• 36:11Speaker 03

  So I, I see that there are a lot of potential for like, for Apple to be like a platform in VR, but I have a hard time wrapping my head around, no pun intended, wrapping my head around like an Apple headset.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  I mean, I think that Apple would much rather do what they, like, when the iPhone came out, it had amazing new technology that changed the way we thought about phones. It had a capacitive touchscreen, right? And that was like, whoa. Once you make the whole thing a capacitive touchscreen, you can do stuff that phones haven't done before. I think Apple would much rather do like some magically leap, like beam the images directly into your retina's shit than create a giant ass headset.

• 36:43Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  I think that's, that's their move.

• 36:46Speaker 03

  That's even further from accessible to consumers.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. I don't know, a light pair of glasses that shoots lasers into my eyes, I'd rather wear that than an Oculus Rift.

• 36:54Nilay Patel?

  But you know, it's Apple, it's Apple and they're, they're not classically first to market.

• 36:58Speaker 01

  Right. So they're gonna wait and they're gonna, they're gonna wait and, and hope that they've got some kind of technology they built in-house that gives them a leg up over what else is out there.

• 37:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 37:07Speaker 01

  Which is the thing they didn't have with the watch.

• 37:11Nilay Patel?

  Burn. Okay, we should talk about the next thing. Cause we could, we could go down the, they don't tell us how many watches they sold.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, forever.

• 37:19Nilay Patel?

  But they also didn't tell us how many watches sold, so it doesn't matter. Right, well, anyway, so it's true. Who knows? Who knows if that's just skyrocketing Beats headphone sales?

• 37:29Speaker 01

  I'd like everyone to just take a moment.

• 37:31Nilay Patel?

  I'm ready.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  And breathe. And just accept that somebody who cares.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  Deeply about cable boxes and the software they run is about to lose his shit on the verge cast.

• 37:44Nilay Patel?

  It's gonna happen.

• 37:45Speaker 01

  Take it away, Neil.

• 37:46Nilay Patel?

  Okay. There's no more fucking complicated insane piece of technology in your home than your television, your cable box. It is ridiculous. It is, here's what I think. It is, it's like, you know, there's like the fish in the ocean who have, who are like crazy, right?

• 38:04Speaker 02

  Wait, what?

• 38:05Nilay Patel?

  There's like, just hold, go with me.

• 38:07Speaker 02

  What, crazy looking or like crazy acting?

• 38:09Speaker 01

  You mean like the Mariana's Trench, like the ones with like the like?

• 38:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the ones with the light bulb on their head.

• 38:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, those ones. They're crazy looking, they're not like crazy acting.

• 38:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, no, the.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  I bet they act pretty crazy.

• 38:18Nilay Patel?

  But there's also like, crazy.

• 38:19Speaker 02

  I think they're totally just trying to eat and live.

• 38:22Nilay Patel?

  You know, you know, crazy Vinnie, the fucking nonsense fish?

• 38:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, nonsense fish.

• 38:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, crazy acting fish. Who kill a motherfucker, he doesn't care. Like that fish, yeah, that guy.

• 38:32Speaker 02

  Okay, that crazy fish in your TV, go on.

• 38:34Nilay Patel?

  No, so, go with me on this.

• 38:38Speaker 02

  I'm here for it.

• 38:39Nilay Patel?

  There's a fish, the, the bottom feeder is the extremophile fish, like evolved in crazy, weird shitty ways, well, great ways of your fish, but like, not, not ways that you.

• 38:48Speaker 02

  Tighten it up, okay.

• 38:49Nilay Patel?

  God damn it. Anyway, that's a cable box, right? Like, there's the ecosystem that we all live in where like, regular technology evolved the way that we're used to. And there's a cable box which is plugged into like, the deep sea vent spewing carbon monoxide, and it evolved on a different path.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  Okay, I'm here.

• 39:08Nilay Patel?

  That's cable box.

• 39:11Nilay Patel?

  There's literally every attempt the tech industry has ever made to get in or around the cable box has failed. Like, died on the rocks, almost killed company, like Logitech died on the rocks, like, the company almost failed and went away because they tried to build Google TVs to like, get in the way of the cable box. Microsoft, I was telling Lauren last night, they put out the Xbox One, they brought me up there to do a feature. Every single person that I interviewed for that feature got fired because they tried to get in the way of the TV with the Xbox One. They're like, screw it, we're like over this. They hired a new guy, Phil Spencer, and he's like, I'm not really into this cable box features and the Xbox One is a games console again. They're like, just.

• 39:51Speaker 02

  Sounds like cable's a bully.

• 39:52Nilay Patel?

  Cable's kind of a bully. It's really hard to get in there because it's like, it's like if I threw you into the ocean, I was like, breathe that weird stuff coming out of the bottom of the ocean, you would just die. And that is like literally the tech industry trying to get near the cable box. Every time they try to do it, they die. Apple put out the new Apple TV. They're supposed to get a streaming service. They couldn't do it. Cause they had to breathe the weird stuff.

• 40:10Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 40:10Nilay Patel?

  Streaming on the event. They died and they put out the regular, like literally every time. Um, so now they have to see.

• 40:15Speaker 03

  It seems to me like if I just might miss something quickly. It seems to me like when tech companies started to get into this, what we call over the top streaming video, right? OTT video. Um, the ideal solution was like, is there a way to make these boxes and maybe have them merge or blend with cable in some way, or get live feed somehow, or like basically let you plug these boxes into like your cable input one, right? But now like OTT video is it.

• 40:41Nilay Patel?

  I disagree with you.

• 40:42Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 40:43Nilay Patel?

  Like I, I totally disagree with you. Like it is like, it's great. And like people like Nicola probably don't have cable service. I think you've told me you don't have cable service.

• 40:51Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 40:52Nilay Patel?

  But.

• 40:52Speaker 03

  You like sports?

• 40:53Nilay Patel?

  No, I, I just lots of people still have.

• 40:56Speaker 01

  He did like sports until the Packers lost.

• 40:58Nilay Patel?

  This is terrible. Shows off the rails. God damn it. Everyone's fired. Um, uh, no, like people, like lots of people still watch television, right? Like Game of Thrones is widely watched and it's not just people.

• 41:12Speaker 01

  I watch it without cable.

• 41:13Nilay Patel?

  But you have like, you, you have.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  It's still on now.

• 41:15Nilay Patel?

  You have HBO, you pay cable, you pay television.

• 41:19Speaker 01

  I know. I'm, I'm, get on your train, man. You're, you're right.

• 41:22Nilay Patel?

  No, I'm not. I mean, like, there's a switch because it was so, I think the cord cutter movement is a lot driven by the fact that like buying cable boxes. Buying cable service and plugging into a cable box is an expensive, bad experience.

• 41:36Speaker 02

  It's so expensive.

• 41:37Nilay Patel?

  It's super fucking expensive. And then you get this thing in your house and everything else in your house is like a $700 iPhone. It's beautiful and does exactly what you want all the time. Or a really nice laptop that work, like everything else is evolving. And then you've got this like filter feeder that's like garbage and you're like, why is it so expensive? I don't want anything to do with it. I'm just going to use my computer. Like, that's the, that's the tension. It's not that people don't want television. And so like, the OTT services were, we're gonna deliver televi- we're just gonna bypass this cable system that's garbage, and we're gonna deliver television over the internet, and that's gonna be great. The problem is, the cable companies are still huge, have millions of customers,

• 42:17Nilay Patel?

  and have a total monopoly on sports, on like, award shows, on the last episode of Mad Men, like, whatever the hell it is.

• 42:26Speaker 02

  Things that people wanna watch in real time with each other.

• 42:28Nilay Patel?

  They have a total monopoly on real-time things with each other, and they are very good at programming, like, deep cuts of things. Like, Shark Tank would have never been a big, popular show without the money that came from the cable industry. Right? Like, if Shark Tank was a web series, it would have been a Silicon Valley web series and not a cultural phenomenon. And that is, like, just true. Um, or Survivor, like, whatever the hell it is. Like, cable companies have a bunch of monies, big networks have a bunch of money, they're great at, they're good at programming shows, a lot of people wanna watch them, marketing those shows. So, it's this monster that you can't, like, disrupt with just Netflix. You can cut away at it, and then they'll get scared and, like, do stuff. But you, you have to make that thing a better experience. It has to happen. So, there's like, two ways to do it. And the way

• 43:13Nilay Patel?

  the cable companies have been trying to do it forever is turning their cable service into an app, so that you would buy a box, you'd like, cuz you have to pay Comcast in the end, like, you, you, all of us do. Right? Like, or whatever cable service you have. Like, you need the internet in your house, and those are the companies that provide it. So, they're happy, they're gonna get paid one way or another. So, you buy a box, so their dream is, you buy a box from them, it's like your cable modem, that will, when you're in your house, that's your router, you open the app on your iPad, it knows you're in your house, connected to their router, and it turns into a TV. Or, you buy a Samsung Smart TV, and you open the Comcast or the Time Warner or whatever app on it, it knows it's in your house, on your wifi, connected to their network, and it turns in to their TV, with their guide.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 43:59Nilay Patel?

  That is what they're stumbling towards, cuz they don't wanna ship hard drives, and they don't wanna ship big boxes to your house, and like, have them break.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  And I don't want them to do that either.

• 44:08Nilay Patel?

  They don't either. They would rather just, like, be like, here's the Time Warner app.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  We should all just stop.

• 44:13Nilay Patel?

  Instead of getting there. But, twenty years, this is true, twenty years ago, before any of this stuff existed, Congress passed a law saying- The cable companies should open up the ends of their network so that any device can access video programming services. The first, and they said FCC figure it out. So FCC's first cut was cable card, which is like disaster, I don't want to get into because it makes me cry.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  Cable card's a really good idea, though.

• 44:36Nilay Patel?

  In 1998.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, 1998 was a great, great 1998 idea.

• 44:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, let's like have a big silver card, you know, plug it into a thing and like clamp a thing and like boot it up, like, yeah.

• 44:46Speaker 01

  It was a PCMCA card, right?

• 44:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it was modified.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  Close.

• 44:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but it was like, it was like total 90s.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  I was gonna make an adapter for that thing and slap it into the, the springboard module and advisor prism, and I was really excited.

• 44:56Nilay Patel?

  And then you're gonna authenticate your visor to, okay, whatever. I don't think it was called.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  I'm just trolling you.

• 45:02Nilay Patel?

  I hate you.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  Alright.

• 45:03Nilay Patel?

  Anyway.

• 45:04Speaker 01

  So.

• 45:05Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, so now, so then, so then yesterday, Tom Wheeler of the SEC, Tom Net neutrality Wheeler, lights up, comes out of nowhere, drops a bomb, says, "I'm opening up the, I'm opening cable boxes." He, he named his campaign hashtag unlock the box.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 45:20Nilay Patel?

  Which is fine. And everyone is surprised, and because the industry, the tech industry has been trying to like get in the game with the cable companies and programmers, like this would be great for Apple if all they had to do was put a box in your house and then suddenly your box is a cable box.

• 45:40Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 45:40Nilay Patel?

  That would be great for them, because in the Apple TV just.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  Apple would be great for Roku, it'd be great for Microsoft and Google, who have been desperately trying to make that box for the past 15 years.

• 45:49Nilay Patel?

  Right, but then all of them basically said nothing yesterday.

• 45:51Speaker 01

  Right, Lauren, so Lauren was like, like talking to everybody yesterday, like, no, no one like really was like overjoyed.

• 45:58Speaker 03

  No, a lot of people didn't, wouldn't comment, actually, and, I mean, my interpretation of this is that in terms of the, it depends on what, what side of the industry you're on, right? Obviously, the cable companies were bristling more at what Wheeler had to say.

• 46:17Speaker 03

  One cable company said that it was a solution in search of a problem. Another one said that they feared that the proposal would strip away the tools that would honor licensing agreements as they exist now. You know, some people are saying, "Well, we are being very innovative right now." So there's that. But on the tech company side, we've gotten a lot of no comments. And I think that in terms of like the existing businesses that tech companies have in over-the-top video or in selling set-top boxes, this proposal really wouldn't do much for them because they've been fighting this uphill battle for so long anyway. I think like if you looked at something like Apple's reported attempt to put together some type of skinny bundle of channels for people to watch, like this kind of proposal

• 47:02Speaker 03

  might help that initiative.

• 47:04Nilay Patel?

  No, wait, why?

• 47:06Speaker 03

  Because it would tear down, as Wheeler said, it would tear down the barriers that currently exist in like unlocking boxes and unlocking some of this content and making it like clearer.

• 47:17Nilay Patel?

  No, I think those are different, right? Because Apple doing a skinny bundle is like Apple going to the programmers directly and basically being a cable company, right? And saying, "Okay, we've locked up ESPN, HBO, ABC, NBC, Fox, CBS. Those are all the channels you need. We're selling to you for $19." That turns, the skinny bundle turns Apple into Comcast, right? They become your cable company.

• 47:43Speaker 01

  Right, they just serve it over the top instead of over.

• 47:45Speaker 03

  But that's my question. Like, we're talking about 20 years ago. What about like 20 years from now? Do you think that people will still be watching TV over cable and satellite? Like, the actual technology will be like cable and satellite? Or do you think people will be watching TV over the internet?

• 48:04Nilay Patel?

  Well, so, right now, half the cable companies deliver TV over IP.

• 48:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:11Nilay Patel?

  Right, the transfer, like, there's like multiple layers here. Like, there's the transport layer, and I think everybody would like to see that, to move to IP in one way or another. Unless you're a satellite company. You've got some rocks in space to deal with. And then there's the like access layer, which is what the FCC is trying to open up, which is the one that like authenticates you to the transport. And then there's the content layer. And so like the skinny bundle, like right now, everyone's sort of arguing about the access, or the content layer. So, Apple can't sign a, you know, like the rumor was Microsoft is going to sign a deal with Comcast for Xbox One, and Comcast walked away. Microsoft was like left holding the bag. The rumor was that Apple is going to sign a deal with Time Warner for the Apple TV,

• 48:56Nilay Patel?

  and then got skittish and walked away. And then Time Warner was left holding the bag, right? Like, um, like that's that.

• 49:03Speaker 03

  But it seems as though Wheeler's proposal wasn't just on the content side, that it actually was on the technology side of things, too.

• 49:08Nilay Patel?

  No, so it's not. No, so it's not. So Wheeler's proposal is, I want you, industry, the FCC is now demanding that the industry come together and form an open standard that lets you, that transmits signals to every box on your network, um, that tells you what's available, so it gives you the guide and gives you the VOD information. It sends you the copyright settings, so do not record, which is a copyright flag you can set, um, and the actual content itself.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:39Nilay Patel?

  So it's technology agnostic. Right? The proposal is.

• 49:42Speaker 01

  Make a, make a standard for sending TV to a box, then anybody can make the box.

• 49:45Nilay Patel?

  Right. All you have to do is authenticate the box and say, I am a customer of this company.

• 49:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:50Nilay Patel?

  And then however it delivers stuff to you.

• 49:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:53Nilay Patel?

  It should do that. And like most of, I think Lauren, where we're getting kind of tied up here is, most of the answers to that, like, demand, look like you put a cable modem in your house, and that turns cable into internet and then sends TV to everything.

• 50:08Speaker 01

  Right. But it doesn't necessarily have to be that. You could theoretically plug the coax directly into a box.

• 50:14Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 50:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:16Nilay Patel?

  Or you could just plug, have everything be on wifi. Like, it does, like, that, that's the part that doesn't matter. So, Apple's skinny bundle is them turning into an over-the-top cable provider and dealing with programmers directly. Wheeler's proposal is, you will pay Comcast for television, but Apple will build the interface on top of that television.

• 50:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:34Speaker 03

  Then how mu, how does that help consumers at all? Because you're still getting bundled.

• 50:36Speaker 01

  Because you don't have to. Use Comcast shitty box.

• 50:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, cuz you don't have to use a box, right? And, and, and the Comcast video content presumably in that interface will sit next to Netflix's video content. Will sit next to iTunes video content, will sit next to Hulu video content.

• 50:52Speaker 01

  All those first-class citizens in your guy.

• 50:53Speaker 03

  This is really just about boxes, then that to me is very incremental change.

• 50:57Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, I think it's more like if you.

• 50:59Speaker 01

  You won't have to rent the box, right?

• 51:01Nilay Patel?

  It's more like in the, for a long time, you could buy a TV and just like plug it into the wall. And you didn't need a cable box and you would just like get television from the cable company. Like, that's how I grew up. Like, we didn't have cable box. We just like plug the TVs in the coax jack in the wall.

• 51:17Speaker 01

  And you're done.

• 51:18Nilay Patel?

  And we're done. And the TVs could decode the TV and you could change your channels and it was fine. And no, and like, there's no innovation allowed on top of that. Because everything happens with cable box now. So you can't like get a better guide, you can't search anything. You can't like, I can't walk in the house and be like, Alexa, show me the football game. And have Amazon like tune the TV to a football.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  Well, on top of that, I don't know, the last time like I was at, um, oh my God, my mother-in-law's house, I have a mother-in-law. And using her, she's on.

• 51:47Nilay Patel?

  Dieter got married in Vegas.

• 51:48Speaker 01

  Suddenlink was the company and the guide was three lines of shows. A giant, like now playing, like, like live video box, a giant info box that presented zero information and two huge ads. And I would, I could only page through TV three shows at a time in the guide. And that's the only, like, it was ridiculous. It was the worst interface. And like huge ads, so not on top of like the joy of not having to use that crappy box and having cables. Video content have to compete directly on the same interface with Netflix and Hulu and YouTube and whatever else. There's also like the money aspect. The money of I don't have to pay Comcast or Suddenlink six bucks to rent the thing or 12 bucks to rent the thing.

• 52:29Speaker 01

  I don't have to watch them get paid for ads that I never wanted and like aren't part of the core experience of what I'm doing. Like, there's. Like, the cable, the cable companies hate the boxes almost as much as we do, but they love the money that it makes.

• 52:42Nilay Patel?

  They love that.

• 52:42Speaker 01

  And so like they're going to fight Tom, like. I think Tom Wheeler and the FCC are gonna lose. I have this gut feeling that like at the end of all of this, there will be some sort of like pretend solution that they're gonna make an open standard and it's gonna do the software version of what Cable Card did, which was fail radically and only TiVo will support it.

• 53:01Nilay Patel?

  TiVo's super into this, by the way. No, I think Google was in that mix. I've been told that Amazon has been in the mix. Wheeler's got the votes, right? There's a vote on February 18th.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:13Nilay Patel?

  He's got three Democratic commissioners.

• 53:15Speaker 01

  Like February 18th?

• 53:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 53:16Speaker 01

  He's only giving people like two and a half weeks?

• 53:18Nilay Patel?

  This is like a mic drop moment for Tom Wheeler.

• 53:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 53:21Nilay Patel?

  The election's about to go, right? Like it's about to kick into gear. All the focus is off Obama and on to Hillary and presumably Trump. And Wheeler's like, you know what? One last shot for Tommy. And like, he's literally like, fuck it. Like, I'm gonna screw with the cable companies again.

• 53:36Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 53:37Nilay Patel?

  But he's got the votes. He's got an act of Congress that says that cable companies have to do this.

• 53:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:42Nilay Patel?

  It's a 20-year-old act of Congress, but whatever. He's got it. He's got three Democratic commissioners. He's just gonna do it. And then, the problem is what you're saying, which is if Apple and Microsoft and Google and Intel and Amazon and whoever the hell else wants to make a Samsung, Samsung should be huge in this. Vizio should be huge in this, right? Like Samsung makes televisions.

• 54:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:02Nilay Patel?

  If you could buy a fucking Samsung smart TV.

• 54:04Speaker 01

  And plug the coax right into it and you're done?

• 54:06Nilay Patel?

  And that's it? And then it just like has?

• 54:08Speaker 01

  It could be your Wi-Fi router. It could be everything. It could be like the HP Hub.

• 54:11Nilay Patel?

  You don't understand. This is like my dream.

• 54:13Speaker 02

  I know. And it's really silly that it's not real.

• 54:15Nilay Patel?

  Right?

• 54:15Speaker 02

  Because it feels like, it's one of those things where it's like that if that happened tomorrow, I think every person in the world would be like, okay, I accept that that is a reality. That seems like it makes sense and I'm happy about it.

• 54:24Nilay Patel?

  Your TV should work with your cable service.

• 54:26Speaker 02

  Done.

• 54:27Nilay Patel?

  Right? Without their crappy box in between. That's the dream. The problem is that cable isn't internet, right? And the problem is that because we've had these like parallel evolutionary paths for so long, every tech company is doing what Lauren is saying and they're like, building their over-the-top solutions or... Billions of dollars invested into them, into building streaming services and working with Netflix and talking to programmers and whatever the hell that is they're doing to make the future of television, that they might not show up to the party to build the standard.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 54:59Nilay Patel?

  Which then the dream, like Samsung will show up to the party. They're like, yeah, we make TVs.

• 55:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. They'll be there early. They'll be that, they'll be those people that show up like at, at the time you wrote the invitation, like right on the dot. They'll ring the doorbell and you're really pissed that they're there.

• 55:14Speaker 02

  Oh, that's me.

• 55:14Nilay Patel?

  So here are the two nightmare scenarios on the spectrum. As far as I can see them, the two, there are two nightmare scenarios. One, FCC loses because the cable companies say, look, we're going to put an app. Comcast is like, look, we believe X1 is a platform, even though it's an iPad app, whatever. But we believe X1 is our platform and the way we're going to deliver your dream of getting rid of the cable box is we'll put an app everywhere. Right? And the FCC will say, great, you've now, to ensure competition in the market, you have to put an app on every platform because the thing that we don't want you to do is sign an exclusive deal with Apple. So if you're a Comcast customer, you have to buy an Apple TV and not a Roku.

• 55:56Speaker 01

  I mean, if that happens, I'm launching a brand new smart TV platform the week after FCC rules. So they'll have to support me, just to screw with them.

• 56:04Nilay Patel?

  So that's, so that's a nightmare scenario, right? Like, because Comcast can afford to build an Apple TV app on basically, a TVOS, which is basically iOS, that'll like run on the iPad. They can afford to build an Android app that, because Sony TVs run on Android. Then they have to build a Tizen app, because Samsung TVs run on Tizen. They have to build a WebOS app!

• 56:22Speaker 01

  The WebOS app is actually really easy to build.

• 56:23Nilay Patel?

  They still have to build it, because LG TVs run on WebOS. Then they have to.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  Roku.

• 56:29Nilay Patel?

  They have to build a Roku app. They have to build a Windows app for Xbox, like.

• 56:33Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 56:34Nilay Patel?

  Okay, Comcast.

• 56:35Speaker 02

  Sounds like a lot of job creation.

• 56:37Speaker 01

  A Wii app.

• 56:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Comcast has to. That's fine. But like, what if you are Sudden Link? And now you're screwed and like Suddenlink has to build a Tizen app and it's like that is the worst case scenario.

• 56:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:50Nilay Patel?

  Right, like that's a nightmare scenario where we're telling bad, companies who are bad at software, that they have to make more software. So that's bad. Then way on the other-

• 57:00Speaker 03

  What if they just licensed it? I mean-

• 57:02Nilay Patel?

  They still have to make it, right? They still have to get it, they still have to brand it, they still have to bring it up, they still have to support it for all those customers and all those like-

• 57:09Speaker 01

  Well, if they license it, they're gonna license it from somebody bad, right? The only company that's licensed like-

• 57:14Nilay Patel?

  Well, they might license it from like Tivo.

• 57:15Speaker 01

  -smart to be fair, like TCL, right? And like you can get, you can buy a Tivo from Suddenlink, right?

• 57:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so like they could, yes, it's true, but it's still fundamentally, these companies have to acquire-

• 57:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:26Nilay Patel?

  -or develop software and then support the software. And then that's the nightmare scenario of Tivo releases an update to the Tivo core software that's licensed to Suddenlink and Suddenlink doesn't support it for like eight years.

• 57:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 57:40Nilay Patel?

  And then it's like an internet box in your house and it has like security issues and then suddenly like the hackers are washing the webcam and your ridiculous Panasonic Plasma TV.

• 57:47Speaker 03

  Ah.

• 57:48Nilay Patel?

  It's all bad. All of that's bad, right? Nightmare scenario.

• 57:51Speaker 01

  [laughing]

• 57:52Nilay Patel?

  All the way on the other side is saying, okay, you're a video provider-

• 57:58Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 57:58Nilay Patel?

  -and we're saying every box should access your shit.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 58:02Nilay Patel?

  And Comcast is like, okay, we're a video provider and we're opening up the front end of our networks so every box can access our shit. Our biggest competitor is Netflix, they get to pick and choose their platforms, why do you make it so anyone has, can be able to build a fucking Netflix app? And, but that's also a nightmare scenario.

• 58:19Speaker 01

  Actually, that sounds great.

• 58:20Nilay Patel?

  Why, why would you randomly force Netflix to open the front end of its service?

• 58:24Speaker 01

  I would love that. As long as like you're authenticated to like be paid, put a copyright protection, do it.

• 58:30Nilay Patel?

  That seems insane to me.

• 58:31Speaker 01

  Why?

• 58:31Nilay Patel?

  Cause Netflix is like a private company.

• 58:34Speaker 01

  No.

• 58:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 58:34Speaker 01

  It's a, it's a video company. I mean, yeah, like they're a private company, but like what if Comcast were private, right? Like, just like it's not private versus public, it's like, you know, let-

• 58:44Nilay Patel?

  No, I mean, I was like, this is the thing that they sell.

• 58:47Speaker 01

  Do you believe that a third-party Twitter app should be allowed? Do you believe Twitter should be forced to allow third-party apps to access tweets?

• 58:53Nilay Patel?

  I think Twitter should just fade away. Honestly, like, I think that light bulb should start flickering and maybe like fade out a little bit. We can have like a romance period at the end where it's real dim.

• 59:02Speaker 02

  Yesterday was a beautiful day for Twitter.

• 59:05Nilay Patel?

  We should, this is another big news of the week. You know, Nicholas having a Twitter renaissance.

• 59:09Speaker 02

  It's actually my first Twitter love time. It's not new to me. Like, I joined Twitter like most people when it started and was like, okay, whatever. And then I only started using it because of this place.

• 59:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, because of Verge or Vox Media?

• 59:23Speaker 02

  Vox Media, but mostly you guys.

• 59:26Speaker 02

  Like, a year ago or whatever. And now, yeah, it's a beautiful thing and it's so funny because you keep being like, Twitter's dead. And I actually had lunch with someone yesterday who was like, I'm having so much fun on Twitter in the last month. And I'm like, yeah, I know. And then when I left the lunch, Kanye's tweet storm, which was beautiful.

• 59:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 59:44Speaker 02

  And the best. And also, like, I mean, it was great.

• 59:48Speaker 01

  We got a rap?

• 59:49Nilay Patel?

  No, we got a rap. I'm just saying, the Netflix question.

• 59:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:52Nilay Patel?

  Do you think Hulu should allow any video app to sit on the front of its server? Like, that's, I think, a radical position.

• 59:59Speaker 01

  I don't think so.

• 1:00:00Nilay Patel?

  Okay. Because that turns every video provider into a dumb pipe.

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:00:05Nilay Patel?

  So like, you're saying that Netflix should accept a future where the thing that it is is just a dumb provider of video information.

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  Is Netflix's interface or is it the video content it provides?

• 1:00:14Nilay Patel?

  That's a really excellent. That's it. Kids, tweet at @backlon. Their answer to that question, preferably in tweet storm format or with a screenshot of text that's not accessible by search engines. Dieter loves that. That's his favorite. Silo your content and send it to Dieter, please.

• 1:00:31Speaker 01

  Those are the two nightmare scenarios. I'll agree that they're both nightmares. Fine, you hate openness, that's cool.

• 1:00:37Nilay Patel?

  I don't hate, I'm just saying that is like, all of a sudden, you're so mad at Comcast that you're fucking with Netflix. Like, that is crazy town.

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:45Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, that seems like now-

• 1:00:46Speaker 01

  I mean, Netflix is dead to me because they joined Binge On, so screw those guys.

• 1:00:50Nilay Patel?

  I mean, of course they're going to.

• 1:00:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:00:52Nilay Patel?

  But like-

• 1:00:53Speaker 01

  And Binge On is better now today. They made it, you can text a short code to turn it on and off.

• 1:00:58Nilay Patel?

  I'm, I'm, I think I'm mellowing. I'm like surprisingly okay.

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  Is the short code throttle? Text throttle.

• 1:01:06Nilay Patel?

  You actually, you tweet the word throttle directly at John Ledger.

• 1:01:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:10Nilay Patel?

  And he goes, he's got a panel. And he's got a net neutrality panel.

• 1:01:14Speaker 01

  With all of his users.

• 1:01:16Nilay Patel?

  My god. Anyway, I think I'm mellowing. I think I'm fine with being John.

• 1:01:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:20Nilay Patel?

  I just have, I got one fight, one policy fight in me a year and this is when it's gonna be it. Whatever. You, you wanna be a T-Mobile subscriber and let John Ledger like slow your data down? Like, godspeed.

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  I can't tell if I'm a T-Mobile subscriber or not.

• 1:01:34Speaker 02

  What's that mean?

• 1:01:35Speaker 01

  Because I use, I use, I use, I use a, a service, I use an MVNO that, that uses T-Mobile.

• 1:01:41Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, FIVE, right?

• 1:01:43Speaker 01

  Right. So does that mean I'm, I can't tell. All right. What we get, we have no time for lightning round. We could do one lightning round.

• 1:01:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Nicola, you've got some stuff.

• 1:01:51Speaker 01

  One thing.

• 1:01:52Speaker 02

  I mostly wanna do Nicholas Kanye corner always.

• 1:01:55Nilay Patel?

  Do it. Well, yeah, get in, get in the tweet, tweet storm situation.

• 1:01:58Speaker 02

  Well, first, let's back up. Kanye renames album from Swish to Waves. Point one to no. Point two to no. February 11th. We're just gonna do this. February 11th, he will debut Waves at Madison Square Garden. He also will debut Yeezy Season 3, his fashion collection. Point three. He tweets a picture of Kim, okay, he tweets a tracklist, you should know that. He tweets a picture of Kim wearing like Season 3 like preview look and it has Adidas logos on it. But Adidas isn't, Adidas produced the first season, did not produce the second season and won't really tell me if they're producing the third season, though I'm asking. So like, what, what is their involvement with this? So yeah, February 11th is gonna be crazy. Tomorrow on Ticketmaster, if you have a, um,

• 1:02:44Speaker 02

  Amex, you can do a pre-sale thing and buy tickets to this. I don't know what they cost. They're listed at $0.00. Hope it stays at $0.00. Love the idea of doing it for the kids free. But who knows?

• 1:02:55Speaker 02

  So that's gonna happen. That's gonna be crazy and like the best and whatever. And then the tweet storm was deleted, but you can definitely read it on The Verge, right?

• 1:03:06Speaker 01

  It's ontheverge.com.

• 1:03:08Speaker 02

  Um, but basically.

• 1:03:10Nilay Patel?

  That's what Twitter is for.

• 1:03:11Speaker 02

  Kanye went, yeah, Kanye went off on Wiz Khalifa. They have a uh romantic partner in Amber Rose in common.

• 1:03:19Nilay Patel?

  Not a current romantic.

• 1:03:21Speaker 02

  No, no, no. Kanye and Amber Rose dated, whatever, and Wiz and um Amber Rose have a child. And yeah, he went off on Wiz for just like sucking and then he also was like, but you wear cool pants and I wish I was tall and skinny.

• 1:03:34Nilay Patel?

  And he had a hashtag.

• 1:03:34Speaker 02

  Like you, yeah, Wiz wears cool pants, which is just like, it's ah, it's the best. It was the best. It was.

• 1:03:40Nilay Patel?

  It was a real moment. It real, it really brought the house down all day.

• 1:03:43Speaker 02

  It really did. I got that. I had a really long lunch and I got back to the office and I sat down and like everyone just looked at me and they're like, where have you been? We have so much to talk about.

• 1:03:52Nilay Patel?

  What, he was like, I made it so we could wear skinny jeans?

• 1:03:54Speaker 02

  Yes, I made it so we could wear skinny jeans.

• 1:03:56Nilay Patel?

  It's ama- I mean, like that, of all of the things to brag about in your life, you're like, I made it so we could.

• 1:04:01Speaker 02

  Also, it's not the best album of the year. It's the best album of life.

• 1:04:08Nilay Patel?

  I know, I just love, I love the dude. I will say that I saw so many people riff on the I made it so we could wear skinny jeans yesterday that.

• 1:04:14Speaker 02

  Oh, I know. The internet got really, ah, so.

• 1:04:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it was good.

• 1:04:17Speaker 02

  Fast and beautiful.

• 1:04:19Nilay Patel?

  Um, again, another John Fort reference. He's, his tweet was, I made it so finance reporters could wear a jacket and no tie. Which is like super funny to me.

• 1:04:27Speaker 02

  I wish I had made one. Damn it.

• 1:04:29Nilay Patel?

  We got, uh, the window's still open.

• 1:04:31Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:04:32Nilay Patel?

  No, actually, no, the window's closed, but it will open again for like callback time.

• 1:04:36Speaker 02

  One of my goals is to be better at making memes.

• 1:04:41Nilay Patel?

  Twenty sixteen, everybody.

• 1:04:42Speaker 02

  Anything could happen.

• 1:04:43Nilay Patel?

  Wait, like you want to participate in the meme culture? You want to kick one off?

• 1:04:47Speaker 02

  No, no, I want to participate.

• 1:04:49Nilay Patel?

  We can't, you know, we have a meme generator at the company.

• 1:04:51Speaker 02

  I know, but my brain gotta, uh, my brain gotta get there.

• 1:04:55Nilay Patel?

  Brain gotta get there. Twenty sixteen. All right, that is our show.

• 1:04:59Speaker 02

  That's gotta be it.

• 1:05:00Nilay Patel?

  Uh, brain, brain gotta get there. That is clearly the title of our show. I don't think that there's another choice. Anyhow, that's our show. We have many more shows. Lauren has a new show. Lauren, plug your show.

• 1:05:12Speaker 03

  It's called Too Embarrassed to Ask, and it's a podcast. I do it with Kara Swisher of Recode. It is actually a Recode Radio show, and you can find it on iTunes and on TuneIn, I believe, as well.

• 1:05:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's really fun.

• 1:05:23Speaker 03

  It's available on Fridays. It's really fun. It's a consumer tech-focused show. We answer some reader and some listener questions, but we've also had some pretty cool guests in so far.

• 1:05:31Speaker 01

  Microsoft and Sanofsky was on.

• 1:05:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. And this week, we have the founder of Athos, which is a really interesting wearable tech company. They're building technology directly into clothing. And so we talked to him. That's going to be publishing first thing tomorrow morning on iTunes.

• 1:05:46Nilay Patel?

  Awesome. Then we have 1,000 other Verge shows.

• 1:05:50Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:05:51Nilay Patel?

  Every day, and you, no, just the few.

• 1:05:53Speaker 01

  ESP is back, weekly.

• 1:05:55Nilay Patel?

  ESP is back with Liz and Emily.

• 1:05:57Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:05:58Nilay Patel?

  Chris Plant, What's Tech, Rockin' Rollin'. And then Walton ID Control or Delete, which is super fun. We also talked about Apple and Twitter this week, in case you didn't get enough. And there were some sick burns at the end. Walt just burned HP and Carly Furia into the ground at the end of that show. Just went for it. Anyway, so that was good. There's a bunch of ways to access us on social media, including Twitter, which is either dying or having a renaissance, depending on who you're listening to. You can find Nicol on Snapchat.

• 1:06:28Speaker 02

  Nicola Fumo, all together.

• 1:06:30Nilay Patel?

  All together. You can find The Verge on Snapchat, or @verge. You can find us on Instagram, @verge, or else. And Facebook. Our Facebook video program, popping off, by the way. Million-view videos left and right every week. Really good time. And on YouTube, The Verge, we're really close to a million subscribers.

• 1:06:48Speaker 01

  Get there.

• 1:06:49Nilay Patel?

  I would love it if you would make your friends.

• 1:06:50Speaker 02

  What about Pinterest? Are you guys on Pinterest?

• 1:06:51Nilay Patel?

  We have 1.3 million Pinterest followers, and we don't know what to do with them. If you know what to do with our Pinterest followers, by all means, let me know.

• 1:06:58Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:06:59Nilay Patel?

  I have an email address, and you can write me an email to that address. But no, seriously, go to your friends' computers when they're not looking and subscribe them to The Verge on YouTube. Get us that 1 million mark by hook or by crook. Anyway, that was our show. Thank you for listening. Thank you for, thank you for your thoughts about the FCC, Dieter. I'm telling you, man. This is our year.

• 1:07:20Speaker 01

  Rock and roll.

• 1:07:20Nilay Patel?

  Brand better work.

• 1:07:21Speaker 01

  Damn it.

• 1:07:22Nilay Patel?

  Goodbye.