Juice responsibly

This week on the Vergecast, Nilay, Dieter, Jake, and Nicola review the reviews! The iPad Pro 9.7, Soundcloud Go, and the Microsoft Build developer conference; with much talk about bots. We're covering all the top tech news so if you liked what you read this week, listen in for the in depth discussion. 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 and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of theverge.com. Vergecast is brought to you by Scissor Vodka, which is a vodka brand that I made up and that I will continue pimping until somebody pays for it. Scissor vodka, cut through the night. Hi, I'm Neelai Patel. I'm here, host of The Vergecast. I'm joined today by Jake Kastenakis.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 0:23Nilay Patel?

  Dieter Bohn.

• 0:24Speaker 02

  Sorry, I can't focus right now. I'm making bot puns on Twitter.

• 0:27Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my god. Nicola.

• 0:29Speaker 03

  Hello.

• 0:30Nilay Patel?

  What up?

• 0:32Speaker 03

  I wish I had something good to tell you.

• 0:34Nilay Patel?

  No, I want to, I want to actually start with you. There's a thing I want to talk to you about.

• 0:37Speaker 03

  Tell me.

• 0:38Nilay Patel?

  And it's actually, you're going to argue with Jake. I'm setting you up for it.

• 0:41Speaker 03

  Oh, man.

• 0:42Nilay Patel?

  This morning.

• 0:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 0:44Nilay Patel?

  You tweeted something insane.

• 0:46Speaker 03

  What?

• 0:47Nilay Patel?

  You tweeted, "SoundCloud Go is the best thing to happen to me this week."

• 0:51Speaker 01

  I didn't want to respond to that, but I...

• 0:55Speaker 03

  I deleted Spotify.

• 0:57Speaker 02

  I mean, I gotta say, SoundCloud is the thing that makes me feel old, more than Snapchat, more than anything.

• 1:03Speaker 03

  Really?

• 1:04Speaker 02

  It's SoundCloud.

• 1:05Speaker 03

  It did take me a long time to figure SoundCloud out, but I'm here. I get it. I know how to use it.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  What do you listen to on SoundCloud?

• 1:12Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:13Nilay Patel?

  Let's all stop for one second. Jake, give me two sentences on what SoundCloud Go is.

• 1:19Speaker 01

  SoundCloud launched its Spotify competitor. You pay $10 a month and you get to stream, you know, music from legitimate musicians and not like the random SoundCloud people.

• 1:30Nilay Patel?

  Okay. Nicola, why are you in love with SoundCloud Go?

• 1:32Speaker 03

  Spotify, I mean, SoundCloud isn't all random, though, because like a lot, a lot of musicians, rappers and such, put music there that you can't get on Spotify. So like, there's a new song out right now by Drake, Protege, Party Next Door. I can't listen to that on Spotify. So if I'm on the subway and I'm off of any kind of network, I can't listen to that song. So, which is fine, you know, I just wait till I get to the office, listen to that song. It's the only song I listened to this week. But now, today, I listened to it on the subway like four times and it was glorious.

• 2:07Nilay Patel?

  Wait, SoundCloud didn't have any kind of offline before?

• 2:10Speaker 03

  No.

• 2:11Nilay Patel?

  I feel like I've listened to something offline on SoundCloud.

• 2:13Speaker 03

  Okay, well, maybe I never looked into it.

• 2:14Speaker 01

  No, it doesn't.

• 2:15Speaker 03

  I didn't think so.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, all the SoundCloud, like, fans I saw commenting were super pumped about offline mode. I think, like, more excited about offline than about the other.

• 2:24Speaker 03

  It's just, there's a lot of times, like, something, like, a mixtape or something will be on SoundCloud, and then it's not on Spotify. If it is on Spotify ever, it might be, like, one or two weeks. So I can be really excited about something, but I, most of my music listening time is on the subway, headphones in, underground, and I'm just like, alright, I guess I'm listening to my You What's Up Girl playlist again.

• 2:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, this is a good playlist.

• 2:47Speaker 03

  I think so.

• 2:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so you're fine. But why, does SoundCloud have the same library as Spotify?

• 2:56Speaker 03

  More bootleg.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  So, no, it has.

• 3:01Nilay Patel?

  So that's fundamentally the answer.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  This is actually a legitimate, very legitimate issue. It has half as many songs. It has, like, 15 million, and Spotify has, like, 30 million. And, like, those are two giant abstract numbers, but the important thing to know is that the 15 million it doesn't have includes, like, Kanye West.

• 3:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  So.

• 3:20Speaker 03

  But that's not true, because there are Kanye West songs on SoundCloud, uploaded by Kanye West.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  I'd like, the thing is, like, I actually 100% agree with you. I think it's super cool that SoundCloud has all these things. I think it would be really, really, really powerful if you could listen to those, like, unique Kanye tracks alongside Kanye's actual music, his studio releases.

• 3:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  But you can't do that. Like, it doesn't have Kanye, it doesn't have Katy Perry. I created a giant list. It doesn't have, like, Radiohead.

• 3:50Nilay Patel?

  But, so there's, like, there's stuff on SoundCloud that is legitimately cool and or cooler than what you can get on Spotify.

• 3:56Speaker 03

  I would say, like, you couldn't get more unique and, like, faster music. Like, if you are someone who, like, follows, like, Who follows like these things, you can get unique and more fast music on SoundCloud. Spotify is going to be like, you're reliable, like anything you want that you could buy at a CD store.

• 4:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so this is, this is why, this is why SoundCloud makes me feel old because like you have to be in the know. You have to know what's out there, what's cool, what you can go get and Spotify, like Spotify is for the Eagles.

• 4:25Speaker 03

  And yeah.

• 4:25Nilay Patel?

  And SoundCloud is for like the, the latest.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  I was using Spotify.

• 4:30Speaker 03

  I actually listened to a really funny mix this morning by this girl Unique who's like a, she's like a Jersey club DJ. Um, like a lot of like bed squeak noises in her mix and she did.

• 4:42Nilay Patel?

  Gray hairs are like appearing.

• 4:43Speaker 03

  And she did a mix for Nest, like the smart home. I think it was like, this is your girl Unique here for like Nest HQ. And then it like went into like her regular scheduled programming. And I was like, is this really like a 20 minute commissioned Nest mix?

• 4:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 5:00Speaker 03

  You all should look it up.

• 5:01Nilay Patel?

  That's this is why we have a website.

• 5:02Speaker 03

  I'll tweet it too, so everyone has it.

• 5:04Nilay Patel?

  Right. An underground SoundCloud artist performing at the Nest.

• 5:08Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 5:09Nilay Patel?

  Distributed only through SoundCloud's proprietary streaming service.

• 5:13Speaker 03

  Maybe I should have told Jamison.

• 5:14Nilay Patel?

  This is the future we deserve.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I don't know, SoundCloud, I felt like it super let me down. But I mean, when I did use the radio feature, that was really cool because then it was playing me all of these unknown artists. And I was like actually finding stuff that I really enjoyed. I don't think that would have happened on Spotify would have just played me like, you know, the normal pop hits.

• 5:35Nilay Patel?

  Right. I mean, Spotify is for the Eagles.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:39Nilay Patel?

  Spotify also just raised a billion dollars.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, Spotify is gonna be fine.

• 5:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, but a billion dollars that SoundCloud shaky, all the word is that SoundCloud is shaky. Uh, and this is their big step into the mainstream. Uh, Spotify raised a billion dollars, not because they need the money, but they want to keep pace with Apple and keep growing. And the money set with a deadline for them to IPO.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  Really?

• 6:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they've got, it's like within a year or something. So Spotify is taking the big company leaps.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  Okay, imagine this, what if SoundCloud licensed all of its like random user music to Spotify? And you can get all of that nonsense in Spotify. Wouldn't that be sick?

• 6:20Nilay Patel?

  Would that be something?

• 6:22Speaker 01

  I feel like it'd be cool.

• 6:23Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I continue to believe that Spotify's UI is garbage.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  You should try SoundCloud's UI.

• 6:31Nilay Patel?

  So I've been using this app called cesium that our old, this is true, that our old video producer, our old video producer Creighton D. Simone.

• 6:39Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 6:39Nilay Patel?

  Verchass listeners will know him as Creashawn. It's terrible.

• 6:45Speaker 02

  Hey Creashawn.

• 6:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Creashawn, what's up, buddy?

• 6:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:48Nilay Patel?

  He put me on this app called cesium, which is like a $2 app in the App Store. It is basically exactly what I want. It is local music, all my stuff, but then I can open Apple Music and it has the same interface as the old, like iOS music player. But then you can like go into Apple Music and just hit save and it shows up in cesium and plays in cesium. So Apple Music becomes the store for an interface that is good.

• 7:16Speaker 02

  Ah.

• 7:17Speaker 03

  That's all right.

• 7:18Nilay Patel?

  About that. It's all that I want.

• 7:20Speaker 02

  How does one spell cesium?

• 7:21Nilay Patel?

  Uh, C E S I U M.

• 7:24Speaker 02

  Oh, not like seizing, like you're seizing the music out of Apple Music?

• 7:28Nilay Patel?

  Yes, it's not appropriation, the music store.

• 7:30Speaker 02

  It's the chemical element. With atomic number 55.

• 7:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:34Speaker 02

  Siri, Siri searches.

• 7:35Nilay Patel?

  It costs $55.

• 7:36Speaker 02

  It's a soft silvery gold alkali metal. And you know what the melting point of cesium is?

• 7:41Nilay Patel?

  The, the 30% App Store tax?

• 7:43Speaker 02

  It's 28.5 Celsius.

• 7:45Nilay Patel?

  What good is Siri? Wait, is that Spotlight that you're using or is that?

• 7:49Speaker 02

  This Spotlight, sorry.

• 7:51Nilay Patel?

  So here's my question, why aren't Spotlight and Siri more tightly connected?

• 7:53Speaker 02

  Uh, because they aren't, uh, being very smart or careful about their search and intelligent assistant strategy like Microsoft is.

• 8:02Nilay Patel?

  So we should go into build, I think is what Dieter is telling us. I'm just, so Dieter, by the way, for you in the car, very important to us.

• 8:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:08Nilay Patel?

  Dieter, what color is yours?

• 8:09Speaker 02

  Uh, this is the silver iPad Pro.

• 8:12Nilay Patel?

  Dieter's using the smaller iPad Pro with his itty bitty keyboard.

• 8:15Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 8:16Nilay Patel?

  I have a rose gold iPad Pro.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  Cesium not available on the iPad.

• 8:18Nilay Patel?

  They gave me the rose gold one with a mint green case. It looks like a 1950s kitchen.

• 8:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:25Nilay Patel?

  It's really odd.

• 8:26Speaker 03

  Huh.

• 8:26Nilay Patel?

  I don't like it.

• 8:27Speaker 02

  And by odd, you mean hellaciously ugly.

• 8:29Nilay Patel?

  It's really unattractive, but Dieter's been using this, this has been his computer for some reason.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, like, like I said, we're not gonna, we're doing this now?

• 8:38Nilay Patel?

  No, we're doing that. We're, let's do Microsoft first and then we'll talk about the iPad. And then I've got a, I've got a lightning rad like you wouldn't believe.

• 8:46Nilay Patel?

  I prepped for the show this.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  How come our chairs don't have seat belts?

• 8:48Nilay Patel?

  I don't know.

• 8:49Speaker 02

  Cause I need to buckle up.

• 8:50Nilay Patel?

  Cut through the night. Uh, let's talk about Microsoft. So, um, Microsoft.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:55Nilay Patel?

  Surging back into relevance, doing some stuff.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. You wouldn't know that they were surging back into relevance by the first hour and a half of their two hour keynote yesterday though.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  They're not irrelevant yet. They're like, we are gonna be so relevant as soon as bots take off.

• 9:10Nilay Patel?

  What I really enjoyed about, so yesterday is build the big developer conference. Lauren Good was there. Tom Warner was there. Live blogging until they died.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:18Nilay Patel?

  They were very tired by the end. Lauren literally made no sense when she was.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  Like, we need to get them keyboards that are waterproof because they were bleeding by the end.

• 9:26Nilay Patel?

  In so many different ways, which is great. And I love it. And I love the swagger. Hate the one guy. Love the swagger.

• 9:33Speaker 02

  But they.

• 9:34Nilay Patel?

  Brian Roper is who you're.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  No, he's, he's phenomenal. I, you're crazy. He's like the best presenter of all tech presenters.

• 9:41Nilay Patel?

  Nico, did you see the Fedora man?

• 9:42Speaker 03

  I had so many pictures tweeted at me of these people. I love the Fedora man dripping in swag.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  His cuffs, man, like sleeves full of back.

• 9:51Speaker 03

  So good.

• 9:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:53Speaker 03

  I mean.

• 9:53Nilay Patel?

  If you're gonna do it, you gotta go all the way.

• 9:55Speaker 03

  Yeah. I just have respect for him.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  Well, though, like every time he goes out on stage, Twitter loses its mind over him and he doesn't back down. He actually gets more flamboyant every time he comes out on stage.

• 10:04Speaker 03

  Haters are my motivators.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Microsoft found this dude on a cruise ship.

• 10:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  That's all you need to know.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  He was a cruise ship entertainer.

• 10:11Speaker 03

  Wait, really?

• 10:12Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 10:12Speaker 03

  Oh my God. Wait, really?

• 10:13Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 10:14Nilay Patel?

  Wait, get in the backstory. Give me the whole thing.

• 10:15Speaker 02

  That's all I know.

• 10:17Nilay Patel?

  But now he's like runs product.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  Somebody from Microsoft was on a cruise and they, and they saw this dude and they're like, oh, we should hire him. And that.

• 10:25Nilay Patel?

  Just to present stuff?

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Yes. No, I mean, I think he also like teaches other Microsoft people how to present stuff.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:32Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 10:33Nilay Patel?

  Like he was like the magician on a cruise ship.

• 10:35Speaker 02

  If you want to know like how like deeply nerdy and corporate Microsoft is.

• 10:38Nilay Patel?

  Well, Microsoft has a legendary.

• 10:40Speaker 02

  They hired a.

• 10:41Nilay Patel?

  Executive cooling up program.

• 10:45Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, uh, Joe Balfiore was like a regular looking guy and they turned him

• 10:50Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:51Nilay Patel?

  Into like, uh, the guy from Journey.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  You think they did the same thing with the, the guy who runs HoloLens?

• 10:57Nilay Patel?

  The guy, the guy who runs HoloLens was very

• 10:59Speaker 02

  He had this angel shirt, the sparkly angel shirt.

• 11:02Nilay Patel?

  The, the guy who runs Holo-

• 11:03Speaker 03

  Oh, with the blazer over?

• 11:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was, it was like Tinker Bell, like, just like, like slammed into his chest.

• 11:09Nilay Patel?

  Wait, unforgivable. That's the shirt?

• 11:12Speaker 03

  No, no, the shirt was unforgivable.

• 11:14Speaker 02

  You don't think a sparkle shirt under a blazer is a good idea?

• 11:17Speaker 03

  Not the best. I like the Fedora guy better.

• 11:20Nilay Patel?

  Strong. Uh, well, so we should go into the actual answer. So they came out, biggest news, I think, by far. Uh, they're putting run to Linux.

• 11:32Speaker 02

  No, it's a big deal.

• 11:34Nilay Patel?

  It is a huge deal. And I will say our top story out of build.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:36Nilay Patel?

  By far.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  So if you don't understand, like, so the, the, the short version is they're putting bash, which is the born again shell. It's like the terminal window that lets you run the Unix command line inside Windows. Up until now, if you wanted to do command line crap, you had to use the Windows stuff, which is like DIR and CD. Oh, CD works, but like all that stuff. And Linux has a totally different set of commands. But then there's also a whole, like, set of development tools that are based on top of Linux. And so basically, if you want to be a modern app developer, you use Linux or Unix. Like, that's, that's the, the language you speak in. That's what all your environments get set up in. And if you try and do it in Windows, you end up in this hole where like you use Windows to make Windows stuff. And you need to learn something completely different to make the other stuff. And so it bifurcates the, you know, your abilities.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  Is that because of mobile that everybody is using?

• 12:25Speaker 02

  It's a whole mix of things. It's mobile and web are the main things, like web first and then mobile. So like, all the servers run Linux, right? So like, if you want to like get into a server and do crap, you're doing it in-

• 12:36Nilay Patel?

  A bunch of Microsoft IT administrators are about to call you. Sorry, guys. I don't know what you're saying. Well, so our guys, like the Vox Media product team.

• 12:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:46Nilay Patel?

  Their response to it was, we don't believe it. Oh, my God, we believe it. Oh, that's so cool. Oh, I don't have to buy a MacBook, which was a really interesting set of leaps.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 12:55Nilay Patel?

  They were like, I would like to buy a thinner laptop with an OLED screen. Like, that's where that chain led. They just started looking at cooler laptops, which was interesting.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  Which is exactly what Microsoft was hoping would happen.

• 13:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So, that big news in its way. Our engineer, Frank B., wrote a story about it on the verge. You should read.

• 13:15Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 13:15Nilay Patel?

  And he's like, when you take computer science, you're told to set up a Linux environment.

• 13:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:20Nilay Patel?

  And now you don't have, she's a Windows computer. Anyway, that's whatever.

• 13:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's huge news. What's so weird is it's whatever. It was also like the most popular thing, the most popular, like, audience thing that came out of the event, but it wasn't by far like the most ambitious thing that came out of the event. So like, Microsoft, new version, not new version, new update to Windows 10 Anniversary Edition. It's like, oh, my God, a new version of Windows, sort of. People should be freaking about that. No, lots of shrugs. Right. New Xbox stuff, all kinds of crazy Xbox stuff. Nope, lots of shrugs.

• 13:48Nilay Patel?

  Not really crazy Xbox stuff.

• 13:50Speaker 02

  New strategy for actually fixing like tablet apps on Windows. That should be a big deal. Lots of shrugs.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  When did that even happen?

• 13:56Speaker 02

  What?

• 13:56Nilay Patel?

  It was two and a half hours long, man. You probably, you just blinked.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's this thing called the Universal Windows Platform, where you can, you can make an app that'll work on tablets and desktops.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  That was how they're gonna fix it.

• 14:07Speaker 02

  Hololens and wearables and blah, blah, blah, blah. And like, it builds into all of the modern stuff that's in Windows, like Cortana can search it, and you can get notifications and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But most, most Windows apps aren't that. Most Windows apps are the old style Win32 apps.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  Oh, right, and they have a converter.

• 14:21Speaker 02

  And now they have a desktop converter that can just like convert that shit.

• 14:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 14:24Speaker 02

  And like, they can convert games. Like, they converted like Age of Empires 2. They just like hit a button.

• 14:28Nilay Patel?

  They did The Witcher 3. That's when The Witcher 3 demoed.

• 14:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 14:30Nilay Patel?

  But why would you want to play The Witcher 3 on your tablet? I mean, you would.

• 14:34Speaker 02

  I mean, I, I, I would.

• 14:36Nilay Patel?

  With touchscreen controls?

• 14:37Speaker 02

  No, you compare a control, an Xbox controller to a tablet.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  I would play Age of Empires on a tablet, though. I feel like that would work.

• 14:44Nilay Patel?

  That's the move.

• 14:46Speaker 02

  All right. With that, with that stylus, with that Surface pen?

• 14:48Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 14:48Speaker 02

  Think about it.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  Just like circle a bunch of units, throw them at some like castle or whatever.

• 14:52Speaker 02

  What's up?

• 14:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's how you sell Surface.

• 14:56Nilay Patel?

  Circles. It's always circles.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  The finest RTS from 1996.

• 15:02Nilay Patel?

  Okay, then they did some Holland stuff, and particularly with Holland's. Uh.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  Holland stuff, man.

• 15:08Nilay Patel?

  They talk about Holland's like it's already an enormous success that everybody has. And the way they talk to their developers, they're like, you can take this app, you can put it here, you can put it on Xbox.

• 15:21Nilay Patel?

  Fedora man's like, you can, ink is free with one line of code. Now everyone's drawing with a stylus. And then they're like, and then your app will even go onto hollow lens.

• 15:28Speaker 02

  It'd be cool if this iPad.

• 15:29Nilay Patel?

  And it's like, no, no one has one of those.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  Well, now, now developers who've paid $3,000.

• 15:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the only people have, developers. Soon they started shipping today, yesterday, today.

• 15:41Speaker 02

  Today.

• 15:41Nilay Patel?

  Time is a construct. Sometime in the time of me thinking that thought and you hearing it. Microsoft has started shipping.

• 15:49Speaker 02

  But usually when Holland's gets on stage, they show something crazy, right? They show like robots literally blasting out of walls and attacking the guy on stage and he's jumping around and shooting lasers at him. And you're like, oh my God, or they show Minecraft on a table and you could like dig inside the table in the Minecraft world and like, oh my God, I want that. This time around, they showed like, what?

• 16:08Nilay Patel?

  They showed the, the doctors and the, the weird body.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, they showed the weird body. That's cool. But like, it didn't hit consumers. And but the other thing is they showed the screen of all the partners and oh my God, it's a snoozer.

• 16:20Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 16:20Speaker 02

  It's like Audi is gonna do corporate training. Lowe's is gonna do, maybe you can build a virtual house. That's kind of cool. Volkswagen corporate training. There's some company called Stryker with a Y.

• 16:31Nilay Patel?

  Stryker with a Y. Uh, I'm just gonna say this, my friend in college, John Hirsch, was in a glam rock band called Pixel and the Chronic Network. And his glam rock name was Stryker.

• 16:39Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 16:39Nilay Patel?

  So I'm really hoping that's him.

• 16:41Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 16:41Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying that would be awesome.

• 16:43Speaker 02

  Saab is gonna do something with hollow lens.

• 16:45Nilay Patel?

  Who?

• 16:45Speaker 02

  Saab.

• 16:46Nilay Patel?

  Saab?

• 16:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:47Nilay Patel?

  Oh, the most exciting car company.

• 16:51Nilay Patel?

  Didn't Saab a defunct brand?

• 16:53Speaker 01

  It took me like, most of that sentence to realize.

• 16:55Nilay Patel?

  You cannot buy a Saab in the United States of America.

• 16:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:58Nilay Patel?

  There's no chance that you can cur- I'm, I'm Googling Saab. You can't stop me. It's the first time it's been Googled in a decade.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  You could totally buy a Saab. My brother, my brother, older brother had a Saab and I was pretty.

• 17:07Nilay Patel?

  Saab is a currently inactive manufacturer of automobiles. It was founded in Sweden, 1945. Saab is gone.

• 17:14Speaker 01

  I'll just, just wait for it to get those hololens.

• 17:17Nilay Patel?

  Saab, Saab, the official car of, uh, the slightly bad apples in high school.

• 17:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, right? That was my older brother.

• 17:24Nilay Patel?

  Everyone, everyone who was a slightly bad egg.

• 17:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, not like a totally bad egg, just a little.

• 17:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you got, you got good grades, but you smoked cigarettes while getting them.

• 17:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:32Nilay Patel?

  You drove a Saab.

• 17:33Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 17:33Nilay Patel?

  No wonder they're out of business. Millennials took them out of business.

• 17:37Speaker 02

  Millennials.

• 17:37Nilay Patel?

  The ultimate Gen X car. Yeah, they're like, you know what? Cigarettes are bad. We don't need Saabs anymore.

• 17:44Nilay Patel?

  Putting it out there.

• 17:47Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, Saab's gonna make a hololens app so you can pretend to smoke while you drive your defunct car.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  But like Microsoft, we are avoiding talking about the very interesting thing. We're gonna try and like lead up to it. Now we're just talking about the boring stuff.

• 17:58Nilay Patel?

  Nick, let me ask you a question.

• 17:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:59Nilay Patel?

  Would you, would you talk to a bot, like a, like a chatbot to make a travel reservation?

• 18:06Speaker 03

  Um.

• 18:09Nilay Patel?

  Do you talk to any chatbots now outside of CF Bot or Giphy or whatever we have?

• 18:14Speaker 03

  I don't think so.

• 18:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 18:15Speaker 03

  I don't think I'm currently engaged.

• 18:18Nilay Patel?

  I'm not either, for the, for the most part.

• 18:20Speaker 02

  But you are, I mean.

• 18:21Speaker 03

  You mean like typing a box like, hey, I wanna get, um, two, I wanna get two rooms, four nights in Delaware. I don't know.

• 18:31Nilay Patel?

  Strikingly unambitious place to be.

• 18:33Speaker 03

  I'm going to Delaware and I need this, like, and then they would be like, oh, yeah, we did this. But I'm such a like, I'm such a, like a spread it all out and like search through it kind of shopper. Like, I don't want stuff done for me. That's why I do the job that I do as a shopping editor. Cause I like this, I like the sorting and the, and seeing everything and finding the best stuff.

• 18:53Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 18:53Speaker 03

  So it would be hard for me to like relinquish that, but I could understand how like, uh, time strapped professional would want someone to do it for them.

• 19:02Nilay Patel?

  Right, right.

• 19:03Speaker 02

  But like, did your Echo ever come?

• 19:06Speaker 03

  No, but I did get refunded, even though it's still at the post office. And they, and Amazon, Amazon to apologize, um.

• 19:15Speaker 03

  Extended my prime one month.

• 19:16Nilay Patel?

  Oh, one month. It's uh, nine dollars. They gave you nine dollars.

• 19:21Speaker 03

  I'm on my stepmom's account.

• 19:25Nilay Patel?

  Well, the Echo is fundamentally a bot, but you would type or Siri, if you could type to Siri.

• 19:30Speaker 02

  This is the, this like, this gets into the super existential question about what is a bot?

• 19:35Nilay Patel?

  Right? Cause we're still not talking.

• 19:37Speaker 02

  No, because like the way Sachin Deli got on stage and like expounded this grand philosophy of a canvas, a bot canvas.

• 19:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 19:45Speaker 02

  Where you could go into a chat app and it could like talk to bots. And he's got this whole like three layer thing where there's humans. And then there's intelligent assistants. And then there's bots.

• 19:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 19:54Speaker 02

  And they're different things. Cause human, a human isn't a bot.

• 19:57Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  Probably. Um, and so when you talk to Cortana or Alexa or Siri, you're talking to an intelligent assistant and then it can talk to the bot. But sometimes you could talk to the bot directly, but bots are dumb. But like, at what point is a bot just like an API?

• 20:10Nilay Patel?

  Let's back up.

• 20:11Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 20:12Nilay Patel?

  Let's just zoom out. It's really hard to not get in the weeds with bots.

• 20:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:16Nilay Patel?

  Let's zoom out. Here's what happened. Microsoft completely lost it mobile.

• 20:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:21Nilay Patel?

  Facebook, one at mobile on the application layer, does not have a platform of its own.

• 20:26Speaker 02

  Right. Well, it has Facebook.

• 20:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but Facebook isn't a platform.

• 20:31Speaker 02

  Sure it is.

• 20:32Nilay Patel?

  Where?

• 20:33Speaker 02

  Well, it's not a hardware platform.

• 20:35Nilay Patel?

  It's, but the face, like, Facebook makes money selling ads to people who are like using Facebook.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, it's, it's a platform where very, very few people are successful long-term playing on that platform.

• 20:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, it's tried again and again.

• 20:46Speaker 02

  There's us as media companies. There was Zynga, but they crashed and burned.

• 20:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's it. There are no like apps that are built on top of Facebook.

• 20:53Speaker 02

  Except like every app on my iPhone, I use Facebook to log into it.

• 20:55Nilay Patel?

  But you use a Facebook app?

• 20:57Speaker 02

  Right. No, I use, I use the Facebook single login.

• 21:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but it's still, it doesn't make anything.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  It's making you real mad. You're trying to make this argument.

• 21:05Nilay Patel?

  No, it's like, there's iOS and there's Android.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  I will grant you that.

• 21:07Nilay Patel?

  Those are the core platforms of the modern age.

• 21:10Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 21:10Nilay Patel?

  Right? And there's the web, which I believe every day, every week on the show, we have a sad funeral for the web. But there's iOS, there's Android. Microsoft lost that battle. They didn't even talk about phones yet.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  I don't know. Did you try the Lumia 1020?

• 21:24Nilay Patel?

  No, my God. You know, we should have given the Lumia 900 a 10. And I regret that every single day that we didn't give that phone a 10.

• 21:30Speaker 02

  Oh my God.

• 21:31Nilay Patel?

  Such a troll. That phone deserved a one. It was piece of garbage. Anyway.

• 21:35Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 21:36Nilay Patel?

  It was, and it never got updated. And we were totally right about that phone sucking and totally right about Microsoft not being, not getting more passes about that.

• 21:43Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 21:44Nilay Patel?

  Their operating system didn't go where it needed to go. It was a good operating, many good ideas.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  So glad you derailed this.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  Well, but that makes me terrified. Like, Windows 10 is better than Windows Phone was when it launched. We loved it. Like, there's so many great ideas in Windows 10. I really hope that it succeeds because it's like, I've made the joke about, like, Spotlight and Siri being separate and Apple's being dumb about that. Like, Microsoft isn't like.

• 22:04Nilay Patel?

  Oh, everyone is, everyone is telling me what these companies are. Saab Aerospace Company.

• 22:09Speaker 02

  Yes. Stryker makes artificial limbs.

• 22:12Nilay Patel?

  Stryker makes the missiles for the jets.

• 22:14Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 22:14Nilay Patel?

  They're shaped like artificial limbs.

• 22:16Speaker 01

  Wait, a missile company is making a hollow lens?

• 22:20Nilay Patel?

  Oh, artificial. Yeah, because if you're like a military person and you're like fixing a jet, you can wear the lens, you know?

• 22:24Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 22:25Nilay Patel?

  This is like the main.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  Not for me.

• 22:27Nilay Patel?

  This is the main thing of augmented reality right now is you're gonna wear it. It's Google Glass again.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  This is, yeah.

• 22:33Nilay Patel?

  Right? You're gonna wear it while you like do stuff and it's gonna give you instructions and like see where you are.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  Why are they marketing this as a consumer product? It seems like.

• 22:39Nilay Patel?

  Because the robots are gonna burst out of the wall.

• 22:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:42Nilay Patel?

  But they're not.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  You can play Minecraft.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, that's true.

• 22:45Nilay Patel?

  Anyhow, back to bots.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  Bots.

• 22:47Nilay Patel?

  iOS and Android won. Microsoft didn't win. But now iOS and Android are entrenched. I think what we're seeing with both Apple and to a certain extent, Google, their market positions are fixed and the real action is happening on top of the screen, right? Like, on top of the, the, the operating system.

• 23:02Speaker 02

  Right.

• 23:03Nilay Patel?

  That's where Facebook has by, by far been the biggest winner so far, right? They have colonized the iOS home screen. They have Facebook, they have Instagram, they have WhatsApp, some other ones. They have Messenger. It's Messenger. They have a bunch of garbage, but then they have a bunch of huge billion user hits. Now, what Microsoft is saying is, okay, we've lost that game too.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 23:24Nilay Patel?

  Although they've been successful, they're, they're moving all their apps horizontally to iOS and Android. The next layer is you're gonna use a messaging app to talk to an intelligent service, or you're gonna use the intelligent assistant somewhere in your life and have that talk to a service for you. And I think, listening to this show, we constantly talk about the Echo, and the reason the Echo is exciting is because it, it's divergent from the phone. It's like another layer to talk to things. So Nadella came on stage yesterday and he was like, this is the next, the next evolution of the user interface. And then he said something amazing, which I encourage everyone to go listen to and really think about what this means.

• 24:01Speaker 02

  He was like, this is, this shows you the power of human language. And it's like, really, this, this 2000, this one? It's not the history of civilization. We've been demonstrating the power of human language for some time. Anyway, I mean, okay, I'm not gonna.

• 24:21Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 24:21Speaker 02

  Human language is the way that we create meaning. And if you are able to use the same tool you use to create meaning to interact with digital things, then that is in fact, actually very powerful. You don't need to learn a whole new tool. It's like putting Linux on Windows.

• 24:35Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God, really?

• 24:36Speaker 02

  Yes, really.

• 24:37Nilay Patel?

  Fine.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  I just threw my arms in the air for listeners.

• 24:39Nilay Patel?

  If you're in the car, what I want you to do is take your hands off the wheel, throw them in the air triumphantly. And you just did what Dieter did. No, I'm with you. It was one of those tech moments where they said something as though it was self evident.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it was totally like, wait a minute.

• 24:53Nilay Patel?

  But you're like, you're just, you literally ignored everyone else in the world. That is already where.

• 24:58Speaker 01

  That is how all of the greatest tech products have been launched.

• 25:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Anyhow, so that's the thing is you're going to talk to a robot.

• 25:04Speaker 02

  No, you're going to talk to an intelligent assistant. And then talk to a robot.

• 25:08Nilay Patel?

  And so the big demo was Cortana. You can talk to Cortana and it was, it's integrated into Skype, one of their canvases.

• 25:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:15Nilay Patel?

  So their canvases for all this bot stuff is Slack, Skype.

• 25:21Speaker 02

  Kick.

• 25:22Nilay Patel?

  Kick.

• 25:22Speaker 02

  Telegram.

• 25:23Nilay Patel?

  WhatsApp, down the line.

• 25:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:25Nilay Patel?

  So you were like in a voice chat in Skype and they said the name of a conference. And the woman was like, book me a room at this conference. And Skype was like, oh, the one that your friend was talking about on these dates. So like, remember the dates. It went out, Cortana went out to the web, found the Weston bot because Cortana knows that that person was a Weston frequent person. Talked to the Weston bot, the Weston bot was like, do you want these rooms? The person was like, sure. And I all got booked. And it was just like a voice or a text typing conversation in Skype. And that rolled out to Skype today, I think.

• 25:59Speaker 02

  Well, and the, the thing that was actually crazier is they didn't be like, we could do this someday in the future. Like you can do this right now. Here are all of the tools to make this happen. And then they had like Domino's come out on stage and show how it like created a pizza.

• 26:11Nilay Patel?

  Domino's will do anything to get you an order of fucking pizza. Anything.

• 26:15Speaker 02

  It's ridiculous.

• 26:15Nilay Patel?

  They're like, are you, do you like gimmicks? Here's another gimmick. Please God, order a pizza.

• 26:20Speaker 02

  Do you think they're doing okay?

• 26:23Speaker 01

  I mean, they have engineers putting Domino pizza ordering on every platform imaginable.

• 26:28Nilay Patel?

  When was the last time you ordered Domino's pizza?

• 26:29Speaker 03

  I have no idea. I'm a Papa John's girl from going that route.

• 26:33Speaker 02

  They're real, they're real bad at sausage, though.

• 26:36Speaker 03

  Interesting.

• 26:38Nilay Patel?

  Papa John's has so much sugar in it that it's addictive. That's my theory.

• 26:41Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 26:42Nilay Patel?

  Cause it's really sweet.

• 26:43Speaker 03

  You're right. Yeah.

• 26:45Nilay Patel?

  It's like eating.

• 26:45Speaker 03

  I'm a sugar freak.

• 26:46Nilay Patel?

  It's like eating Cheetos.

• 26:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:48Nilay Patel?

  Cheetos are so sugary that you can't not eat more of them. Cause your body's like, what if we don't get more fuel?

• 26:53Speaker 03

  Yeah. And also, you know, the garlic sauce.

• 26:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, there's that. What, by what method did you order your last Papa John's pizza?

• 27:02Speaker 03

  Oh, man. On their site. Um, actually, this is really funny. I missed the cutoff time because obviously I was very drunk. And the Papa John's near me closes at like three or something. And I was on their site like designing my pizza and it has like the little graphics, like the little, the little like items like drop onto the pizza. And you're like, oh, half or the whole. And I don't know what style of crust. And I was spending too much time making it. So then the order like didn't go through. But then in the morning, I got a confirmation email when they opened at like 10 in the morning.

• 27:33Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 27:33Speaker 03

  And I had to call them and was like, I don't need this pizza anymore.

• 27:37Nilay Patel?

  This happened at my birthday party.

• 27:38Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 27:39Nilay Patel?

  Yes. It was very bad. Cause it's 7:00 AM. They, Papa John's opens at 7:00 AM and they called my wife. Yeah. And my wife was like, do you, do you still want this pizza?

• 27:48Speaker 02

  7:00 AM?

• 27:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. What are they doing?

• 27:50Speaker 02

  Why, why?

• 27:51Speaker 03

  Then I'm gonna make breakfast pizza. If there was a mass market breakfast pizza, that'd be next level.

• 27:57Nilay Patel?

  What goes on at breakfast pizza?

• 27:58Speaker 01

  And this for people who are just like still drunk?

• 28:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 28:01Speaker 02

  What's the food where like they they take some bread and they crack an egg over cheese?

• 28:05Nilay Patel?

  At 7am, might as well eat some PJs.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  There's some hot, cool new food where there's like, it's like a bread bully thing. And then there you put a bunch of cheese on it that it's like wicked hot. And then you just crack an egg over it. And then the egg cooks in the hot cheese and then everybody eats it.

• 28:16Speaker 03

  Whoa, I don't know.

• 28:17Speaker 02

  It's it's like the cool eaters all over it.

• 28:19Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 28:20Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 28:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:21Nilay Patel?

  I've been reading about Dorolocos on Eater, which sounds completely insane.

• 28:25Speaker 02

  What's a Doroloco?

• 28:25Nilay Patel?

  It's a Mexicans, Mexico City, street food where they cut open a bag of Doritos.

• 28:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:30Nilay Patel?

  Like a, so I'm just getting into it.

• 28:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:32Nilay Patel?

  They cut open a bag of Doritos.

• 28:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:34Nilay Patel?

  And they put in like hot sauce and gummy bears and pork rinds. Gummy bears, key element of the Doroloco.

• 28:38Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, no, of course.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  Disgusting.

• 28:40Speaker 02

  No, hot sauce, hot sauce and Doritos and gummy bear sounds great.

• 28:43Nilay Patel?

  Dieter's stoned. I don't know. Sure. Anyway, but they've been covering the hell out of that, too.

• 28:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:48Nilay Patel?

  All right. Well, we gotta.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  Wait, how do you?

• 28:50Speaker 02

  Why are we not talking?

• 28:50Speaker 01

  How do you like go deep on whatever that street food is? Like, how much coverage can you possibly do?

• 28:56Nilay Patel?

  It's all over, man. Their headline's like, you have to try this. And then it's like 1500 words. Wow. It's incredible. They're eater. That's what they do. How do we go deep on like?

• 29:05Speaker 01

  Street cards.

• 29:05Nilay Patel?

  Linux coming to, it's the same thing.

• 29:07Speaker 03

  It's all the same.

• 29:08Nilay Patel?

  Everyone's just nervous.

• 29:09Speaker 03

  Avocado toast? We don't remember that. I mean.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it's not like some dude in Mexico on the street is like, yo, check out this way you can use Linux. We're not like.

• 29:19Speaker 03

  What are you?

• 29:19Speaker 02

  You don't know that for a fact?

• 29:22Speaker 01

  I mean, is this not what this, didn't you see this was some Mexican street food?

• 29:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's a Mexico City street food. It's like sweeping the nation.

• 29:28Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 29:29Speaker 03

  This nation.

• 29:30Nilay Patel?

  Our, our nation now.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  Okay, it's coming. I see.

• 29:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 29:33Speaker 03

  Because it's one of those like, Mexico City is like so hot right now. And people, I actually have a best friend who lives there and I send her photos of every person I know who is constantly at any given time, there's one person on my Instagram feed in Mexico City.

• 29:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 29:48Speaker 03

  So I send them to her. It's like a running bit. And, uh, yeah, so they're like bringing back the cool stuff and getting excited by it.

• 29:54Nilay Patel?

  Do they, are they super into Linux and Windows? We're totally off bots. It's funny how hard it is to talk about bots, but then how easy it is to talk about bots. Yeah. Go ahead, Jake.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  So I can imagine sometimes, occasionally, wanting to do my business by like texting some bot.

• 30:16Nilay Patel?

  Sounds like you're buying drugs, man. Which potentially safer.

• 30:20Speaker 03

  Great bot activity.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  No, but seriously, like, how often do they imagine people using this? Like, is this the like, this is the total UI of the future? This is the only thing you ever use to get stuff done?

• 30:31Nilay Patel?

  I think what it is, it's like VR for Facebook. This is why I brought up Facebook earlier. Facebook's big bet was we missed out on owning the mobile platform. We colonized the app layer. We have to own the next platform. So they bought Oculus. They think VR is the next major platform.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  How big a platform can bots possibly be?

• 30:48Nilay Patel?

  I mean, when...

• 30:49Speaker 01

  Like, mobile is like, you do most stuff on mobile, potentially.

• 30:53Nilay Patel?

  I think the idea is that to get to the next, to get most people download zero apps a month.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:00Nilay Patel?

  That's the number. So getting onto the home screen, which is the game in mobile, is impossible. And Casey actually has been, he's been writing around sort of the main story. He's been writing big stories that connect to this central thesis for a while. So he wrote the story about bots, which everybody should go read. Yes. And then he wrote a story about the economics of the app store, which are killing mid-sized developers. So if you can't get on the home screen and bots, everyone in Silicon Valley's money is going towards bots. Well, why would you spend money building apps? Because you're not going to get funded. You might not even get an audience. The dynamics of the app store are bad. You have to pay Apple 30% tax. Why wouldn't you say to every other company, every other service? Hey, come build your bot on Windows.

• 31:45Nilay Patel?

  In the Windows platform, put it in the Azure Cloud Service. And then if the person's on Kick, if they're on Slack, if they're in any of the other WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, wherever they are, you can just talk to them. They'll just be there and you can just, the user can type in the words, "I need a rental car." And an intelligent assistant will say, "I talked to Avis, Hertz, whatever, whatever." Here are the prices for all the rental cars.

• 32:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, but so all the use cases for bots that everybody demos are like that kind of thing. I need to rent a car, I need to book hotel, I need to get a flight, need to order a pizza. And like, those are all things where you want to look at the options, I feel like. And like, the people that don't, that are just like, yeah, just give me a flight, whatever. I feel like there's like, there's some sort of like, I don't know if it's like money, like I want to figure out the exact right time and the exact price. But if I'm like, too cool, or too rich, or too busy, I will let a bot handle it. But the question is like, does everybody want to think that way? Does everybody want to interact with the stuff, the services that we use that way?

• 32:44Nilay Patel?

  I mean, so the other big example that everybody else, because Slack is getting big into it. And then Facebook's F8 conference is coming up. And it's highly rumored that Facebook is going to announce a huge bot initiative at F8. Everyone is always telling me that I'm going to do my expenses in Slack by just like talking to a bot. I have no desire to do that, but.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  Just because you have no desire to do your expenses.

• 33:03Speaker 01

  That would, that would be better. I just input an expense earlier and like, I have to open Concur, Concur, so it crashed three times, then.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 33:10Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 33:11Nilay Patel?

  It's a good thing Concur is in our ads today. Concur, the most garbage software you can have.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  No, but like, if I could just message a Slack bot and be like, I spent like $12 on whatever. And then just fired that off. That would be easier.

• 33:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, well, so the way I think about it is the Echo, right? The Echo is an intelligent assistant that is connected to a wide range of bots.

• 33:33Speaker 02

  Right.

• 33:33Nilay Patel?

  But instead of typing at it, I'm always talking on it.

• 33:35Speaker 02

  But so the, the thing is, is the Echo talking to bots yet? Like, it's definitely talking to APIs. Like, if I say, hey Echo, hey Alexa, play some Eagles on Spotify.

• 33:46Nilay Patel?

  Oh, you know, I, I found the thing.

• 33:48Speaker 02

  It's going to like, it, no, Alexa figures it out. It doesn't ask a bot to figure it out. Just, it says, hey Spotify, give me this thing. And Spotify just does it. There's no like, in, like bots aren't smart, they're not intelligent, but they're, they're smarter than just like, play me this song. And so, at what point do you need more than an API? You actually need a bot that's able to like, figure out language and figure stuff out.

• 34:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, like, we use CF Bot all day long. It's a bot. It's, it just gets stuff for us.

• 34:15Speaker 02

  It just remembers.

• 34:15Nilay Patel?

  CF Bot remembers random stuff. Custom Slack bot.

• 34:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's designed to basically like, return gifts that we want to save, like grushing it.

• 34:23Nilay Patel?

  Lauren Grush interviewed astronauts while they were in space over video. She did a video chat with astronauts in the space station. Put up the video today. It's very good. You should definitely watch it. And from that, we now have the term grushing it.

• 34:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:36Nilay Patel?

  Which is great.

• 34:37Speaker 02

  And a bot can get that for you. But that's a, is that a bot activity? Is that a macro? I used to have text expander.

• 34:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:44Speaker 02

  This is why I can't talk about bots without like getting into this insane existential like crisis about what does it mean to be a smart thing that uses down a computer?

• 34:53Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 34:53Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 34:54Nilay Patel?

  I just, I am, I am enthralled with the idea of being in a world of contextual information.

• 35:01Speaker 02

  Right.

• 35:02Nilay Patel?

  Where I can just announce that I would like things to happen and automation makes it all happen for me.

• 35:08Speaker 02

  Oh, so you want, you want your job currently as editor in chief of The Verge.

• 35:12Nilay Patel?

  I would like to replace all of you.

• 35:13Speaker 02

  The rest of your life.

• 35:14Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 35:15Speaker 02

  I want this thing to happen and I go do it. You want that to apply to everything else?

• 35:19Nilay Patel?

  Yes. If I've, every computer would be as, as graceful and capable as Dieter Bohm. That would be fucking terrific.

• 35:27Nilay Patel?

  But no, like right now they're all like, here's, I challenge any, anyone listening to this. Get an Amazon Echo to play the band Night Moves. You can't do it. It won't do it. It will play the fucking Bob Seger song Night Moves at you until you are dead. Like it's awful. And then have a friend get a little drunk and try to play the band Night Moves on your Amazon Echoes.

• 35:51Speaker 02

  Oh God.

• 35:52Nilay Patel?

  It's impossible. Like they're just not smart enough. And I think what we're talking about is adding the intelligence there to like contextually know what you want.

• 36:00Speaker 02

  Well, you know, now when this, when this podcast gets released, an Amazon engineer, you know, it's, you know what he's going to be doing?

• 36:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 36:06Speaker 02

  You know what he's gonna do?

• 36:07Nilay Patel?

  He's gonna play the band Night Moves?

• 36:08Speaker 02

  He's, he's gonna be working on the Night Moves.

• 36:13Speaker 02

  That just killed the entire podcast.

• 36:14Nilay Patel?

  Building a website can be tough, even if you do know your way around coding and creating something that looks good and works well is a time consuming affair. Whether it's for your business site, a portfolio, a restaurant, whatever else, in this day and age, you probably need a website just to set up your forthcoming bot company. Well, lucky for us, Square Six makes it easy to. Build beautiful websites without breaking a sweat. Squarespace provides simple, powerful, and beautiful websites that look professionally designed regardless of your skill level. No coding required. Not only does Squarespace provide you with an intuitive and easy to use tool to create your website. Squarespace also has state of the art technology powering your site to ensure security and stability. And, and you know, you can trust Squarespace for your website needs when millions of people and some of the most respected brands in the world. Trust Squarespace as well. You wouldn't want anything bad to happen to your website, would you?

• 37:00Speaker 02

  No.

• 37:00Nilay Patel?

  You should get Squarespace.

• 37:03Nilay Patel?

  Seriously, look, you can't beat the ease and simplicity of Squarespace. They give you 24/7 online support. They give you a beautiful website. They'll probably give you a hug if you're feeling down, send you a birthday card. So look, what the hell are you waiting for? Start a trial with Squarespace. There's no credit card required. You can start building your website today. When you decide inevitably to choose the best website provider in the world, Squarespace. Just use the offer code VERGE, V E R G E. You get 10% off, you'll support our show, you'll save a little money and you'll show your, you know, that you love us. We thank Squarespace for their support of Verge Cast and encourage you to use that code.

• 37:39Nilay Patel?

  Alexa, play Night Moves. Alright, so we had two massive reviews this week.

• 37:45Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 37:46Nilay Patel?

  You reviewed the iPad Pro.

• 37:48Speaker 02

  Yes, I did.

• 37:48Nilay Patel?

  And Pukito.

• 37:49Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 37:49Nilay Patel?

  And Addie reviewed the Oculus Rift. Talk to me about this iPad.

• 37:54Speaker 02

  It is an iPad. And no, but like that, that's a meaningful statement because Apple wants to tell you that it's a full computer.

• 38:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:01Speaker 02

  And I think it's an iPad. And I think that an iPad is a different thing than a phone or a computer. That was how Steve Jobs set it up when he announced the very first one. He was very clear, this is not a phone, this is not a computer, this is a third thing. And I think it continues to be that third thing. I think it's an incredibly good third thing. I think it's a stupendously good iPad. I think it costs too much.

• 38:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:23Speaker 02

  It's $599 for the 32 gig. If you're going to spend. Like if you are only going to use this thing for very specific, like watching movies and doing some gaming or whatever, you could probably get the 32 gig. But you probably want to spend, I think it's 150 bucks more to get 128 gig.

• 38:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:37Speaker 02

  So now you're looking at 750.

• 38:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:38Speaker 02

  And if you're spending 750, like, well, if I'm spending 750, I should really get like the keyboard or the pencil. So I'm justifying like all the extra stuff you're supposed to be able to do with this thing. Keyboard's 150, you could probably get, you know, a Logitech for a hundred. You know, you're at 850, like you are full on spending two or $300 more than a pretty good Windows laptop. And you're spending like MacBook territory to get this thing up to the right price.

• 38:58Nilay Patel?

  Let me ask you the really hard question. I mean, whatever, everybody, we've been talking about it. Nicola?

• 39:03Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 39:03Nilay Patel?

  Is any, is anything about the iPad Pro, big, small, made you even remotely into an iPad?

• 39:09Speaker 03

  No.

• 39:09Nilay Patel?

  Do you think the iPad is the most exciting thing in tech? What is the most exciting thing? Nicholas sits right by us now. What's the most exciting thing that you've seen float by the office lately?

• 39:17Speaker 03

  Oh, my God. I think, I don't know. I mean, I don't know. I don't know.

• 39:24Nilay Patel?

  Well, I have some ideas. I think it's, we have a VR cave.

• 39:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's cool.

• 39:29Nilay Patel?

  That's amazing.

• 39:29Speaker 03

  It's still like baby stages, in my humble opinion.

• 39:32Nilay Patel?

  No, it's fine.

• 39:32Speaker 03

  But like, it's cool, but it's like, yeah, all right.

• 39:34Nilay Patel?

  We're like, do it, it's like over there, like Addie today put me, um, she put me another headset and like played around, like played a fun game with like a flashlight and a gun and zombies killed me. It was like, awesome. That was really cool. The bot stuff to me is fascinating. The echo stuff to me is fascinating. Apple is like, will this replace your laptop? And I don't understand it. They're not in any of these like next generation games. And that traditionally isn't Apple, but Apple is usually content to let people like fumble around. And then they, they're like.

• 40:04Speaker 03

  They swoop in.

• 40:04Nilay Patel?

  They swoop in, they're like, we, you made all of the mistakes and we're going to make the right one.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  I feel like it's very different for Apple now because in the past it had the luxury of waiting around because it was this very small company and didn't have these grand expectations. Now it is making enormous ungodly sums of money.

• 40:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 40:24Speaker 01

  And. If one of them starts to slip, which like could happen kind of at any moment, it's going to need to say, have something to point to and say like, look, we're working on this. We're working on this and that. And I feel like that's why we're starting to see these things. Like it's hoping to get the iPad to turn into this really successful laptop. It's like working on a car because, oh, why not?

• 40:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but the car, the car to me is everyone needs to be, you know, like, Apple wants to make a car and they want to make a car because they're, do you trust Apple to make a car, right? Not, I don't trust them. Not today. Yeah, I don't know.

• 40:58Speaker 02

  I've been, I've been thinking a lot about that, actually, as like in regards to like the Apple Watch. Like they had the wrong ideas about how the watch should work.

• 41:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 41:07Speaker 02

  And what like, and what they should focus on and what was important and what they should try and do. And what was the right ambition and yeah, on and on and on and on and on. And I just like, I don't know, I don't know what like, what's their big, what's, what's Apple's big idea? For the car, like they didn't have a great big idea for the Apple Watch. There's a great big idea for the iPad. There's a great big idea for the iPhone, iPod. Go down the list of everything that was great about when they released.

• 41:32Nilay Patel?

  There's a great big idea for the retina MacBook.

• 41:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. What's the great big idea for an Apple car? I don't know yet.

• 41:38Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 41:38Speaker 02

  And I'm worried that there isn't one.

• 41:40Nilay Patel?

  And I, it's, well, it's hubris. Right? It's, it's Apple. So to Jake's point, Apple had the luxury for decades of being in competition with Microsoft. And just like, think about that. Microsoft was the behemoth. They were old. They were slow. They were uncool. They were the business software company. They couldn't get out of their own way. They consistently released crappy consumer products, save the Xbox. I mean, they were a joke and they were, Bill Gates is like actively not cool. Cool now, you know, he's, he's like aged into a very, very fine cool. But like Bill Gates in that moment was, he was the evil empire who wanted to kill everybody with his henchman, Steve Ballmer.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 42:25Nilay Patel?

  Apple was the upstart. They were the cool one. They were the consumer company. They built computers for creatives. They, they had better taste than Microsoft. The problem is all the new companies were raised in the shadow of Apple. They were raised in the shadow of Steve Jobs. They have taste. They know that taste is valuable. So Apple's delta of coolness is much smaller. I don't know. Nicola, does that sound insane?

• 42:48Speaker 03

  No, I hear what you're saying. My favorite game to play right now is when I'm watching television.

• 42:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 42:54Speaker 03

  Or whatever is in that realm, you know, is seeing which computer paid to be on which show.

• 42:59Nilay Patel?

  Apple never pays.

• 43:00Speaker 03

  Wait, but they don't they have to cover the logo then?

• 43:03Nilay Patel?

  Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't bother.

• 43:05Speaker 03

  Cause on House of Cards, I'm like, I know they don't use Apple computers in the White House. I know that.

• 43:11Nilay Patel?

  No, Obama uses an iPad.

• 43:12Speaker 03

  My stepbrother works there and he definitely doesn't use an Apple computer.

• 43:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Um, no, I mean, there's Windows laptops, but like when I interviewed the first lady, I was like, oh, you have my phone. And she was like, we also have BlackBerrys. They all have two.

• 43:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:27Nilay Patel?

  She was very frustrated because my first question to her, the first lady was, your husband came into office as a BlackBerry president. And now it's like eight years later, that sounds not good. And she's like, we still have BlackBerrys.

• 43:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think I'm pretty sure my, um, I'm pretty sure my stepbrother has a work, work BlackBerry. But we, I text him on an iPhone.

• 43:45Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 43:46Speaker 03

  I message him.

• 43:47Nilay Patel?

  No, I mean, I think there's the, the, there's the cool factor. It's still Apple. They're still cool. They do the best marketing. They make tremendously good products, right? But that thing where they're going to let some bad competitor make not cool products for a while to explore the market. So that Apple can fix all their mistakes and swoop in with a good product. I don't know if you can say that about Facebook and VR, like the Oculus Rift, segueing into this next review. Early product beautifully designed, like is basically the iMac of VR headsets in this moment. Right? And it's what is Apple going to do with that concept, except slightly tweak it around the edges? They're not going to say, you made all these mistakes. They, they can't be like creative.

• 44:31Nilay Patel?

  You made shitty MP3 players for a long time and now we made the iPod. There, there isn't a, a jump to be made in that zone. That's quite as big.

• 44:38Speaker 02

  Right. Like what are they going to do? What are, what is Apple going to be able to think up and pull off that Tesla hasn't?

• 44:43Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 44:44Speaker 02

  Besides like actually manufacturing it's good.

• 44:47Nilay Patel?

  Tesla's having a launch event today and like the launch event is for a prototype.

• 44:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. Did you see that people are waiting in lines around?

• 44:54Speaker 03

  The waiting line is a pre-order car that they haven't seen.

• 44:57Nilay Patel?

  Right. And maybe you'll wait in line and I don't know. It's just when you think about the iPad, the iPad Pro, it's Apple's still just in its zone.

• 45:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:05Nilay Patel?

  They're saying, here, we make computers. The computer comes in the size that fits in your hand. It comes in a size that sits on your desk. We make every size that sits in between. And this one in the middle, well, all the people with old PCs, maybe this is the reason that you'll start to buy an Apple computer.

• 45:20Speaker 02

  Right. And like, you can get, this is the same thing we've always been saying about tablet computers. You can get 90% there. And it's the last 10% that kills you.

• 45:29Nilay Patel?

  If Apple put a good web browser on a thing, I would use that thing. If they put Desktop Safari on that computer.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:35Nilay Patel?

  Which it absolutely has the power.

• 45:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, it renders, it renders stuff faster than like most Chromebooks.

• 45:40Nilay Patel?

  But there's a reason I can sit around and say, I can use a Chromebook for all my jobs. It's because Chromebook shows me the desktop web, which is the most powerful sort of display of the web.

• 45:48Speaker 02

  Right.

• 45:48Nilay Patel?

  But that thing is like, what if, what if it was an iPhone but bigger?

• 45:51Speaker 02

  But so the, the iPad's fixed for not having that. It said, oh, there's apps. But the, the problem with apps is like, none of all of them are updated to support the iPad yet. Maybe that'll be fixed someday. But even then, like, somebody's gonna come up with something cool and like, we'll have to wait for the app to get updated on the iPad. Whereas on a computer, you'll just do it.

• 46:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 46:07Speaker 02

  And like this thing, when I say it's like, this isn't a computer, it's a computer, but it's a computer that fundamentally is limited by iOS. And to be clear, like, this is the zone where like, I am an old crotchety man who wants my file system and my windows and my desktop. And Walt Mossberg is like the young kid living in the future. He's like, yeah, you don't need that. You don't need that stuff.

• 46:25Nilay Patel?

  I was editing Walt's review and he called me an old man in the comments 100 times. He's thoroughly enjoying himself.

• 46:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:31Nilay Patel?

  Uh, Nicola, have you tried on a VR, one of our VR headsets yet?

• 46:33Speaker 03

  Yeah. Remember I played the game, I picked, I was in the office and I-

• 46:37Nilay Patel?

  Oh yeah. Have you done anything else?

• 46:38Speaker 03

  No. Oh no, I played the light, the game where you paint with light.

• 46:41Nilay Patel?

  Oh yeah. Have you seen the Oculus yet?

• 46:44Speaker 03

  I don't think so.

• 46:45Nilay Patel?

  You gotta go try it. The Oculus is, it's the one. It's the one you gotta try.

• 46:48Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 46:48Nilay Patel?

  Have you played with the Oculus?

• 46:49Speaker 01

  I haven't played with the Oculus. I thought the Vive was the one you gotta try. It's amazing.

• 46:53Nilay Patel?

  Well, Vive's amazing, but we, we have like the old Vive.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  We have the old Vive.

• 46:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the like pre.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:58Speaker 02

  Vive pre.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  How much did it change?

• 47:00Speaker 02

  The

• 47:00Speaker 01

  Pre, post?

• 47:02Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, the consumer one is gonna have the camera that works.

• 47:05Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 47:05Nilay Patel?

  Like show your hands.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  Do the see-through.

• 47:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Um, the Vive's amazing. I think the Oculus is kind of amazing, lacking the controllers. So you gotta read out of your view. You gotta look at the photos of Addie and all that.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 47:17Nilay Patel?

  They look amazing. Um.

• 47:19Speaker 03

  They're so beautiful.

• 47:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 47:20Speaker 03

  The images are so beautiful. That's all I looked at.

• 47:23Nilay Patel?

  I think that's all anybody looked at. Um, cause they, they're like astounding.

• 47:26Speaker 02

  You should read it.

• 47:27Nilay Patel?

  She also read it. It's really good. Um, but her takeaway was so close, still so far, right? Like Oculus didn't ship its controllers, which are the things, and I don't think I really understood this. You don't, can't use your hands and like have your hands in VR. You're just kind of looking at stuff with an Xbox controller in your hand.

• 47:48Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 47:49Nilay Patel?

  And the Oculus needs to get better. The other thing that I think is interesting is that the Oculus platform is already fragmented. So if you have a Gear VR, there's stuff on Gear VR that you can't get an Oculus Rift.

• 48:00Speaker 01

  Oh geez.

• 48:01Nilay Patel?

  Like crazy. That's already a problem, but it's amazing. And if you have the means.

• 48:07Speaker 01

  So Gear VR, that's, those are all just Android apps though versus Steam VR.

• 48:12Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 48:12Speaker 01

  Which is all, right? And so that's Vive. That I guess Oculus, the desktop is all Windows games.

• 48:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's very confusing.

• 48:18Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 48:19Nilay Patel?

  But like Samsung Milk VR.

• 48:21Speaker 02

  That's not an Oculus thing though. It's like just Samsung's thing.

• 48:24Nilay Patel?

  It's just Samsung's thing, but you get it in Gear VR.

• 48:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:28Nilay Patel?

  Which runs Oculus, which has Oculus branding on it.

• 48:31Speaker 02

  Right.

• 48:32Nilay Patel?

  But you can't get it on the Oculus, which has Oculus branding on it.

• 48:36Speaker 02

  Right.

• 48:37Nilay Patel?

  It's very confusing. It's already fragmented. They already kinda messed it up in that way. Now, obviously, there's games you can get in the rift that you shouldn't be able to get on the phone, but I think everyone understands that. It's the other way around that's confusing. Anyhow, that's it. That's the Oculus Rift. I got an eight out of 10 on the Verge.com. Go read the review. Alright, we have a lightning round. Ready? Ready? Oh, we already talked about SoundCloud. Oh, Jake, the Juicera Wi-Fi Connected Smart Juice.

• 48:58Speaker 02

  Oh shit!

• 49:00Speaker 01

  Wait, do I have to lightning this or can I tell you something?

• 49:02Speaker 02

  You gotta, you gotta do the whole thing. Go deep.

• 49:04Nilay Patel?

  People have been tweeting at us about that.

• 49:05Speaker 01

  Wait, am I explaining this?

• 49:06Speaker 02

  You should explain it.

• 49:07Speaker 03

  Okay, there's also a full report on this on Ract.

• 49:10Speaker 02

  Oh my god?

• 49:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:11Nilay Patel?

  Oh yeah, cuz it's, it's the, the, the Organic Avenue guy.

• 49:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  This thing is insane. It is a $700 juicer that you can't actually put your own food in. You have to buy, with a weekly subscription, you get ju- like, packets of fruits and vegetables.

• 49:30Speaker 02

  So it's like an evil, evil Keurig or espresso?

• 49:34Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. It's, it's basically like Keurig, but instead of like ground, coffee grounds, you get like fresh fruits and vegetables. And listen to this.

• 49:41Speaker 02

  Do they come in like proprietary pods or just in bags?

• 49:43Speaker 03

  Juice packets? Like, isn't it a little packet?

• 49:45Speaker 01

  They're in like packets, yeah.

• 49:47Speaker 03

  Yeah. Are they frozen, right?

• 49:48Speaker 01

  No.

• 49:48Speaker 02

  Is there DRM on the packets?

• 49:50Speaker 01

  Okay, they're, um, so listen to this.

• 49:52Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 49:52Speaker 01

  If, they, they're only like guaranteed fresh for six days. Put it in the juicer on day seven, it won't make it.

• 49:59Speaker 02

  What?

• 50:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, it won't make it for you because it's expired. It, which like-

• 50:04Speaker 02

  No!

• 50:04Speaker 01

  I, I understand like you can't look at the vegetables, so like, if it's like, you know, if you accidentally grab one that's pretty old, that makes sense. But like, I don't know, I, I bet it would be good on the seventh day.

• 50:15Speaker 03

  But these are probably non-HPP, so it's not pasteurized. So like, when it's bad, it's really fucking not okay to drink.

• 50:21Speaker 01

  Right. No, that's true. That is true. But like, I don't know.

• 50:23Speaker 02

  How much does a packet cost?

• 50:25Speaker 01

  Uh, between four and $10.

• 50:27Speaker 02

  Okay. And each packet makes one glass of juice?

• 50:30Speaker 01

  Glass of juice. Um, so it's- It's just extremely.

• 50:35Nilay Patel?

  They raised.

• 50:36Speaker 03

  It's luxury.

• 50:36Nilay Patel?

  They have raised.

• 50:37Speaker 01

  It's super luxury.

• 50:38Nilay Patel?

  They have raised a hundred million dollars in venture capital funding.

• 50:42Speaker 02

  What?

• 50:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:43Nilay Patel?

  The design was consulted on by Johnny Ive.

• 50:45Speaker 02

  No.

• 50:46Nilay Patel?

  Yes. Yes.

• 50:47Speaker 02

  No.

• 50:48Nilay Patel?

  And it turns bags of liquid into cups of juice.

• 50:51Speaker 02

  Well, it's not liquid, though. It's.

• 50:52Speaker 01

  It's not yet liquid. No, it is. It is full. Okay, it's like chopped up fruits and vegetables that they just throw in there. Whole. Yeah.

• 51:01Speaker 03

  For a similar or DIY experience, I would suggest you look into Daily Harvest, which will send you little frozen cups that are ready to go for smoothies.

• 51:10Speaker 02

  Okay. Do you have a side deal?

• 51:13Speaker 03

  No, I'm just trying to share my information.

• 51:15Speaker 02

  Do I get a piece of your Daily Harvest money?

• 51:20Speaker 03

  I just think that like they're doing the same thing where it's like you get it's organic and.

• 51:23Nilay Patel?

  Nicola, do you want your website to stay safe? Because I recommend that if you come into my show and you drop your Daily Harvest spawn con.

• 51:32Speaker 03

  No.

• 51:33Speaker 02

  That me and my Squarespace people get a cut of that shit.

• 51:35Speaker 03

  I believe in them.

• 51:38Nilay Patel?

  I believe in you too, Daily Harvest.

• 51:40Speaker 02

  When did?

• 51:40Speaker 03

  If you want to know about healthy food startups, I got.

• 51:43Nilay Patel?

  If you would like to have further mentions on the Vergecast, you can talk, contact Vox Advertising at voxmedia.com.

• 51:49Speaker 02

  When did Spawn Con become a thing that everybody knew what it meant except for me?

• 51:53Nilay Patel?

  I had to look it up. Matt, Matt Buchanan made it up on the all ages ago.

• 51:57Speaker 02

  God damn it.

• 51:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 51:58Speaker 02

  Matt.

• 51:58Nilay Patel?

  Matt Buchanan, I don't trust you. I gotta say, uh, the Juicero, amazing name, ridiculous, over the top, stupid idea.

• 52:06Speaker 02

  Juicero is a terrible name.

• 52:07Nilay Patel?

  Why does it have a Y?

• 52:08Speaker 02

  It sounds like a, a, a cut rate, like when the comic book guy runs out of like villains that he can think of to fight Spider-Man. He's like, wait, I got it. Juicero.

• 52:18Nilay Patel?

  Now Juicero sounds like a 1970s Chevy vehicle with a. You know what I mean? Oh, it's the Juicero.

• 52:26Speaker 03

  Actually, related, I'm really sick of every company having like a cute name and I think authenticity is going to come back and it would just be called like Digital Juice. Like whatever the fuck.

• 52:35Speaker 02

  Digital Juice?

• 52:37Speaker 03

  Well, it's like juice, but like.

• 52:39Nilay Patel?

  To be clear, Digital Juice is a super shitty dance band in Williamsburg. No, it should be.

• 52:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, output every Saturday.

• 52:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 52:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:50Nilay Patel?

  They've got a residency, but it's really just them from seven to 10 before the real

• 52:53Speaker 03

  No, they have the two, they have the two o'clock to three o'clock crucial end of the night, you know?

• 52:58Speaker 02

  Hype check, Juicero.

• 53:00Speaker 03

  I would call it a definitely ostentatious and I guess, I guess it's elegant, but like, what the fuck?

• 53:10Nilay Patel?

  Hype check the concept of Microsoft.

• 53:13Speaker 03

  I don't know what that means.

• 53:14Nilay Patel?

  Microsoft as a brand.

• 53:16Speaker 03

  I need like a heavy definition.

• 53:18Nilay Patel?

  Mike, just Microsoft, Microsoft.

• 53:20Speaker 03

  Practical drab?

• 53:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 53:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:22Nilay Patel?

  They're coming out of it though. They're gonna put bots everywhere. Amazon Dash.

• 53:25Speaker 01

  That's exciting.

• 53:26Nilay Patel?

  For a hundred brands, including Doritos and Trojan.

• 53:31Speaker 01

  I didn't do it. Yeah, no, it's good.

• 53:33Speaker 02

  I still think it's dumb that you have to like pick the brand to get the button. You can't just get the button and like then pick the brand. You should have a generic dash button that you can like plug it into your, plug it into your computer and be like, I want to have it do this thing.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  Where if there's a single button.

• 53:45Speaker 02

  And next week it does something else.

• 53:46Nilay Patel?

  Well, it should have an L C screen.

• 53:47Speaker 01

  And Doritos at once.

• 53:50Nilay Patel?

  The, the yum brands button.

• 53:51Speaker 01

  A random Xbox.

• 53:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's the yum brands button. It orders Doritos. It like fires Taco Bell at you.

• 53:57Speaker 02

  Trojan actually sent us the dash button.

• 53:59Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah?

• 54:00Speaker 02

  They sent us the Trojan dash button and everybody like, and then everybody in the office was like, oh my God, it's a Trojan dash button. Ha, ha, ha, ha. And they're like, oh wait, this is a really good idea. We should write about it. And then we did.

• 54:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 54:09Speaker 03

  Are you supposed to have like a, like a drawer full of these at some point in time where it's just like every brand and thing that I like?

• 54:16Speaker 02

  You're supposed to stick them next to the thing where you do the thing.

• 54:19Nilay Patel?

  Right. So you'd stick the.

• 54:20Speaker 02

  On your nightstand, there's a Trojan button.

• 54:23Speaker 03

  Wait, hold on. Just in two days, we can do this, but not right now.

• 54:30Nilay Patel?

  Could you imagine? Best first date ever. It's like you open the medicine, you know, you're like in the bathroom, you open the medicine cabinet. And you're like, ah, wow, he's a, and wow, he needs a button for that.

• 54:42Speaker 03

  This fucking responsible and also lazy nerd. That was what I would think.

• 54:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but look, if you, if you can save all that extra time.

• 54:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:53Nilay Patel?

  Then they're gonna spend more time with you.

• 54:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:55Nilay Patel?

  That's, that's a sign of a good relationship.

• 54:57Speaker 03

  Now I have more time to spend with you.

• 54:58Nilay Patel?

  Would I spend?

• 54:59Speaker 03

  I'm obviously at Dwayne Reed buying condoms in person.

• 55:04Nilay Patel?

  Well, that's the end of the dash lighting round.

• 55:07Speaker 02

  There we go.

• 55:07Nilay Patel?

  Uh, title has 3 million subscribers.

• 55:09Speaker 03

  How? Because of people like me who are accidentally subscribed because they forgot to cancel.

• 55:15Nilay Patel?

  This really is right in the next one. Kanye West going to Spotify, Apple Music, other services tomorrow, we believe. Soon.

• 55:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, his song Famous is, I was like looking at new releases on Spotify before this SoundCloud thing happened to me. And, and I was like, wait, what? I didn't know, I didn't realize I could listen to that here.

• 55:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, who's surprised by this?

• 55:34Nilay Patel?

  Zero people. Snapchat redesign.

• 55:37Speaker 03

  It's fun. Wow, it does a lot of stuff.

• 55:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, too much stuff.

• 55:40Speaker 03

  So much stuff.

• 55:41Nilay Patel?

  I was, who was in the elevator? I, I literally saw somebody in the elevator here who works a different vertical and I was like, hey, how's it going? And they looked at me accusatory and they were like, I hate the way Snapchat works now. And like walked away. I was like, I-

• 55:53Speaker 03

  Can you still, do they still have Snap Cash?

• 55:55Nilay Patel?

  No, do they?

• 55:57Speaker 03

  Cause sometimes if you start, if you start typing like dollar sign 14 or something like, it'll be like, do you want to pay? So you could like call someone, pay them?

• 56:06Nilay Patel?

  I called Sam Sheffer the other day. He picked up while he was writing.

• 56:09Speaker 03

  That's the only person you can call.

• 56:10Speaker 02

  We had a huge freak out because like you can call someone now and you need to like-

• 56:14Nilay Patel?

  Don't, don't say it. They're gonna figure it out.

• 56:15Speaker 02

  We did, we fixed it. You dig deep in the settings and you can turn off the ability to be called, but we didn't, couldn't find it right away. And so Kirsten was like snapping on the Verge account and all of a sudden like the phone just starts ringing with lots of our followers calling us up. Had to deal with that.

• 56:31Speaker 03

  Whoa.

• 56:32Speaker 02

  Can I defend the Snapchat thing?

• 56:34Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 56:35Speaker 02

  Do you want me to do it in the most nerdy way possible or the least nerdy way possible?

• 56:39Nilay Patel?

  The most nerdy way possible, please.

• 56:40Speaker 02

  Back in the days of Windows Mobile 5, the interface was garbage, but there was a company called, uh, SPB and they made an app called SPB Mobile Show.

• 56:50Nilay Patel?

  Oh, SPB Mobile Show was the shit.

• 56:52Speaker 02

  It was the bomb.

• 56:53Nilay Patel?

  It was the only thing good about Windows Mobile.

• 56:55Speaker 02

  Gave it a touch interface and blah, blah, blah. And so they started adding a bunch of like-

• 56:59Nilay Patel?

  Just like a real thing.

• 57:00Speaker 02

  Whiz bang features to it. You could like circle the cube around and like reorder the stuff and I like-

• 57:04Nilay Patel?

  You could circle the cube around.

• 57:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:06Nilay Patel?

  You could gleam the cube.

• 57:07Speaker 02

  Why is there so, why do you have so much crap? Like there's too many features on this thing. You need to go back to the old days when it was a little bit- And I said, look, we've discovered, we like, we watch, we test users using our software. We like get analytics and basically any software, when people open it, at least half of their time is spent just like plinking around and like doing stuff. It's not like actually like getting the thing done you want to get done. It's like poking around and having fun and like trying some stuff out.

• 57:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 57:33Speaker 02

  And so Snapchat, having all these crazy features, you don't think how to do them, you like, it's not a productivity app. It's not like Microsoft Word where you need to know where that bold button is or how to make a list. It's designed to like play around with. So like,

• 57:45Speaker 03

  And then you just spent a ton of time in there.

• 57:47Speaker 02

  Right. So they're doing it so that you like, just like poking around and having fun and seeing what's going on. It's not actually designed to be easy to use. It's designed to make you play around with it.

• 57:56Nilay Patel?

  I literally could not write a post about Windows Mobile for five years without somebody angrily emailing me that all of my problems will be solved by SPV Mobile.

• 58:04Speaker 02

  They were right.

• 58:05Nilay Patel?

  I mean, they were so mad at me all the fucking time. Oh, you hate Windows Phone or Windows Mobile. You're such a fanboy. Why don't you just install and configure this weird third party utility that will solve all your problems?

• 58:18Speaker 02

  It was great.

• 58:19Nilay Patel?

  Because that's what reviewers should talk about. This product sucks, but if you buy another product, this product will get better.

• 58:26Speaker 02

  It's funny how angry that made me. Instagram getting algorithmic feed, triggering thirst crisis across Instagram.

• 58:31Speaker 03

  Oh my goodness. What a thing that was. That was Monday, I think. That was a little fun start. Um, that was crazy. People were really like freaking out and begging.

• 58:42Nilay Patel?

  They were begging. They were begging to be followed on Instagram. It was a bad day on Instagram.

• 58:46Speaker 03

  It was a bad day.

• 58:47Nilay Patel?

  Instagram rolled it back there. They said it's not going to change too soon.

• 58:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:51Nilay Patel?

  But they have to change it.

• 58:52Speaker 03

  It was kind of cool to have like the people be loud though and be like, fuck, I don't want this.

• 58:55Nilay Patel?

  The people are always, here's what I will say, and I love Instagram and I love the people and I love, and if you're not following us on Instagram, please join Instagram, follow us. I love you. The Instagram user base, the, the least informed about technology, policy, anything, user base.

• 59:11Speaker 03

  Totally. You can rile them up. Seeing them like, get like, all like furious and like, say the word, like Kylie Jenner wrote the word algorithm, I'm pretty sure, on Instagram, like, that's a crazy day.

• 59:22Nilay Patel?

  Ooh, there's a sweet picture of the Hallowlands on our Instagram right now. Yeah, our Instagram's really good. You should subscribe to our Instagram. But it's a crazy day. And it's, it is the most conspiratorial of all of the social networks, in my mind. Where it's like, people post Instagram pictures and like, you know how Facebook chains are bad? They're like, "I hereby revoke Facebook's copyright to my posts, so saith the king." It's like, what are you doing? Like, please, you know, it's like nonsense. Instagram is even worse.

• 59:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:50Nilay Patel?

  But in the, in the craziest pockets.

• 59:51Speaker 03

  It's really crazy.

• 59:52Nilay Patel?

  Instagram, man. All right.

• 59:55Speaker 02

  Instagram algorithm.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  All right.

• 59:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:58Speaker 03

  I don't fear it.

• 59:59Speaker 01

  I don't follow that many people, so like, I feel like it's not gonna affect me.

• 1:00:01Nilay Patel?

  Oh, Instagram's crazy. If you fall down the Instagram hole. Speaking of which, you should follow us on Instagram, we're at Verge. You should follow us, I'm wrapping the show right now, it's just happening. You should follow us on Twitter, we're at Verge. Snapchat, Verge. Hit us up on iTunes.

• 1:00:13Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:00:14Nilay Patel?

  Give us the five stars, that'd be great. Uh, What's Tech? Happens with Chris Plant on Tuesdays. Control Alt Delete hits on Thursdays, Walt. Verge GSP happens on Fridays, Emily and Liz. There's a cavalcade of ReCode podcasts that you should listen to.

• 1:00:28Speaker 02

  Good word.

• 1:00:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's a good word. Alexa, play the Eagles. Uh, you can find us on youtube.com, you can search for the Vergecast there. Jake is Jake underscore K on Twitter. Dieter's Backlon, I'm Reckless. Nicola, what's your preferred social venue of choice these days?

• 1:00:43Speaker 03

  Wow, no, I'm gonna stick on Twitter, Nicola underscore Fumo.

• 1:00:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you can get her there. And then, I wanna tell you something, and this is why I wanted the Eagles to play. So if you're not playing the Eagles, this is the time. I wanna tell you, this is advertising now. I wanna tell you a book, about a book, called The Last Victim.

• 1:00:59Speaker 02

  The Last Victim.

• 1:01:01Nilay Patel?

  By Kevin O'Brien.

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  Kevin O'Brien.

• 1:01:03Nilay Patel?

  It's been years since they've been reminded of that horrible night from high school. A night they've been able to keep secret.

• 1:01:08Speaker 02

  Until now.

• 1:01:10Nilay Patel?

  Because someone has figured it out. Someone who's been picking off members of their old clique, one by one. Find out for the truth for yourself by reading

• 1:01:19Speaker 02

  The Last Victim.

• 1:01:20Nilay Patel?

  The latest suspense-filled thriller from New York Times bestselling author

• 1:01:24Speaker 02

  Kevin O'Brien. The Last Victim.

• 1:01:27Nilay Patel?

  Is on sale now wherever books are sold. Visit Kingsingtonbooks.com for more information or

• 1:01:33Speaker 02

  KevinO'Brien.com.

• 1:01:34Nilay Patel?

  It's KevinO'BrienBooks.com.

• 1:01:36Speaker 02

  Damn it.

• 1:01:37Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, that was our show. That was advertising, the method by which we are paid to produce this show for you. So please buy the book, sign up for our website, do whatever the hell you have to do. I know Nicholas got some fucking side deal with some juice company. Just do that. Nope, don't do that. So stay away from it.

• 1:01:52Speaker 03

  You should have good smoothies.

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  Juice responsibly.

• 1:01:54Nilay Patel?

  Goodbye. Rock and roll.