Purple Macbook

This week on Vergecast, Nilay, Dieter, Adi, and Nicola discuss the legacy of Prince, the new MacBook, and the mystery of Magic Leap. Also Nilay talks with Professor Randal Picker of University of Chicago Law School to explain Google's antirust charges from the European Union. 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.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Hi.

• 0:06Nilay Patel?

  Hello, humans.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 0:07Nilay Patel?

  Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of theverge.com.

• 0:12Nilay Patel?

  The Vergecast is brought to you by Scissor Vodka, which is a vodka brand that I made up. And then I'm going to just shamelessly

• 0:18Speaker 01

  What can you do with Scissor Vodka?

• 0:18Nilay Patel?

  And cut through the night.

• 0:20Speaker 01

  You know, we still haven't opened this bottle of Scissor Vodka.

• 0:23Nilay Patel?

  Someone sent me a tweet and said, there's a, there's another beverage brand, I believe it's Sprite, that's running ads in Miami that say, "Cut through the heat."

• 0:30Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 0:31Nilay Patel?

  Which is just

• 0:32Speaker 01

  Not good.

• 0:33Nilay Patel?

  It's like, I mean, I, I recognize that everybody listens to The Vergecast, everyone in the entire world, and they mine us ruthlessly for ideas, but come on, Sprite. Anyhow, uh, this is The Vergecast, I'm Neil Patel, the editor of The Verge, joined by Dieter Bodden.

• 0:45Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 0:46Nilay Patel?

  Addie Robertson is here.

• 0:47Speaker 02

  Hi.

• 0:48Nilay Patel?

  Nicola.

• 0:48Speaker 02

  Hello.

• 0:49Nilay Patel?

  Tell the people what's up.

• 0:50Speaker 02

  Oh, it's a sad day.

• 0:52Nilay Patel?

  Well, it's, oh, it's a super sad day.

• 0:54Speaker 02

  I'm impacted.

• 0:56Nilay Patel?

  How, so if you don't know, moments, an hour or so ago, before The Vergecast began.

• 1:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02Nilay Patel?

  The world learned that, um, Prince has died.

• 1:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, celebrity deaths don't usually hit me, because it's like, I never knew you, we never had experiences together.

• 1:10Nilay Patel?

  Everyone had an experience with Prince.

• 1:11Speaker 02

  But Prince is like, one of the ones that's like, oh, it hurt, like, I feel it, I really feel it.

• 1:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:16Speaker 02

  It's sad.

• 1:17Speaker 01

  I grew up in Eden Prairie.

• 1:19Nilay Patel?

  Minnesota.

• 1:20Speaker 01

  Minnesota.

• 1:20Nilay Patel?

  Prince is from Minnesota, is what Dieter says.

• 1:22Speaker 01

  Uh, which, uh, so that's where Graffiti Bridge was located, uh, and also, uh, I hung out probably about a mile and a half from Paisley Park all through my teenage years. Uh, so like, Prince was just around, he was like, part of the, the fabric of everything. Like, if you walked in to a friend's house and like, got to go hang out in their bedroom and they didn't have the Purple Rain poster of Prince on a motorcycle on their wall.

• 1:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:50Speaker 01

  Something was wrong.

• 1:52Nilay Patel?

  Here's what, I know you're listening to this and you're in your car right now, people, but take your car, wherever you are, turn it around, go home, watch Purple Rain.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01Nilay Patel?

  That's what you need to do tonight.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  I mean, have you, you've not seen, I know that you haven't.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, I've seen that.

• 2:06Nilay Patel?

  Have you looked, you gave me the, I haven't seen it.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  No, no, the thing is that I don't know where it's available, like, I haven't looked super hard into it, but I don't think it's on, like, Hulu or Netflix.

• 2:15Nilay Patel?

  I mean, Nicola, do you want me to buy you a DVD? I have it on VHS, which is hilarious because I know.

• 2:20Speaker 02

  But like, where do you? Well, that was one thing, because I had to run to a meeting like as soon as I left to go like as soon as I found out I had to be somewhere. And I was like, well, what am I going to listen to the subway? Obviously Prince and I went on Apple Music and there's like only recent weird recent stuff.

• 2:33Nilay Patel?

  You can rent it everywhere. You can rent it on Apple and Google Play and Vudu and YouTube and whatever else.

• 2:39Speaker 02

  Paying.

• 2:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 2:41Speaker 02

  I guess I'm gonna.

• 2:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's worth it. It's worth three dollars. That's what I guess. I bet the price goes up. Do you think?

• 2:48Speaker 01

  Oh, God.

• 2:48Nilay Patel?

  That'd be a terrible way to.

• 2:50Speaker 02

  That's what I'm doing.

• 2:50Nilay Patel?

  That's how cynical I am. I'm just assuming that they're going to raise the price for it. But everyone should watch Purple Rain tonight.

• 2:56Speaker 02

  On the other hand, that was kind of the weird thing about Prince earlier that Prince was like the copyright antagonist musician.

• 3:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Well, all of Prince's stuff is on Tidal and nothing else.

• 3:06Speaker 01

  It's Fortnite. Oh, that's HD.

• 3:08Speaker 02

  That's so weird.

• 3:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 3:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, trying to find it. I was like, oh, this is a Virg story. Where are we finding from rain?

• 3:16Nilay Patel?

  Prince's history with the music industry and how it turned is actually, I think, a testament to how powerful his music is.

• 3:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:26Nilay Patel?

  Because, I mean, the reason he hated his record label, he hated Warner Brothers. He changed his name because he his lawyers decided that Warner Brothers had a contract for Prince Records. And if he changed his name to a cymbal, they couldn't enforce the contract.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  An innovator.

• 3:43Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that's genius. So then he put out cymbal records until Warner Brothers was like, whatever, I'm out. And then when the internet hit, he was like, I'm not participating in this. You, if you want my music, you have to pay for it. And he pulled, I mean, Prince hated the internet for a long time. Then he was on Twitter, which was amazing.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:02Nilay Patel?

  And then he decided that Tidal was the only service that he would.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:05Nilay Patel?

  All of that is incredible.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  It is.

• 4:08Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I mean, Charlotte isn't, I mean, like, if you think that this technology called, he was just at the middle of it the whole time, making decisions that were contrary to the entire industry.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  Well, then there was the whole PMRC, like filthy 15 Tipper Gore stuff.

• 4:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, well, you explain. I mean, that's like Prince railing against censorship in that way was also like totally forward thinking.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  Yes, it was one of the 15 songs that was cited for having violence or satanic themes, or in his case, sex.

• 4:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:40Speaker 02

  Quite obviously.

• 4:42Nilay Patel?

  Now Prince actually wrote some hard, hard death metal about Satan as well. He probably did, actually.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  Well, so all my friends who listen to hard death metal would still listen to Prince.

• 4:52Speaker 02

  That's the thing about Prince is that Prince is like the freak we all agree on. Like, he's such a weird angel and everyone, and everyone is like, yeah, I love Prince.

• 5:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:04Nilay Patel?

  And underappreciated in incredible ways because he's such a great musician. Uh, Prince, for example, amazing guitar soloist.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Yup.

• 5:13Nilay Patel?

  Just like rips him out whenever he wants.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  That's the Super Bowl?

• 5:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  Where everyone's like, what?

• 5:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  He just went, yeah.

• 5:19Nilay Patel?

  Anyway.

• 5:20Speaker 02

  I think that you should Google what's in Prince's fridge because there is an amazing, it's like, besides what Prince created for himself, it's the best Prince content ever. It's so good.

• 5:33Nilay Patel?

  I should Google right now.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  Um, it's like a local Minnesota blog for this from 2011 and it's hotly debated if it's like fake or not. Um, but he, they get permission to go through his fridge because it's like a bit they do on the blog and, um, they find like alfalfa sprouts and donkaroos. I love those crazy kangaroos. And that's what he said, Prince's words, but Prince wasn't there at the interview. He only like provided comment via email later. It's an, it's, it's like, you will be so happy. It's something you should look up.

• 6:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's an incredible combination. His persona is an incredible combination of totally raw and honest and then sealed away.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:16Nilay Patel?

  Like it, it's a very unique, the idea that Prince is completely inaccessible to you because he's so talented and basically on another planet all the time, but then he's

• 6:25Speaker 01

  That planet is Paisley Park, which is the most anonymous building you can imagine in the most white bread, white bread suburb on the face of the earth.

• 6:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  Like Chanhassen, like it has Paisley Park and like, like a pretty bad dinner theater. Like that's, that's its entire culture and like a Walmart now.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  I love when a celebrity like stays where they came from.

• 6:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:46Speaker 02

  Or like nearby, you know, there's like, he's like, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna do this in LA. I'm gonna do this in suburbs of Minneapolis.

• 6:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Prince is like a Minnesota boy through and through.

• 6:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:56Nilay Patel?

  I'm pretty sure he wears purple because he's a Vikings fan.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  He, did you ever hear the song?

• 7:01Nilay Patel?

  I can't believe I just got away with that.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  He wrote.

• 7:03Nilay Patel?

  The Deeter's like, I'm gonna roll with it.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  He wrote a, like a fight song for the Vikings.

• 7:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  It's, it's awful.

• 7:13Nilay Patel?

  Well, I think we're gonna, look, here, we can't do justice to Prince on the verge.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  No, we cannot.

• 7:18Nilay Patel?

  We can try.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  No.

• 7:19Nilay Patel?

  But the way to do Prince justice is to go home and watch Purple Rain, which is

• 7:23Speaker 02

  Pay $3.

• 7:24Nilay Patel?

  One of, yes, it's to spend $3 on the memory of a true artist.

• 7:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, what's gonna happen? That's a Smart Water. Spend a Smart Water on...

• 7:30Nilay Patel?

  Yes, spend a Smart Water. That's awful. That's how we commemorate our loved ones.

• 7:35Speaker 02

  A Smart Water, a Smart Water at the airport.

• 7:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Wait, do you buy discount Smart Water on the streets?

• 7:41Speaker 02

  No, it's just like more expensive. Like, it might be like $2.50 regular places, but it might be $3 and change at the airport.

• 7:47Nilay Patel?

  I got it.

• 8:02Nilay Patel?

  Let's talk about this MacBook that Dieter has.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  I have a rose gold MacBook in my hands.

• 8:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so this came out this week.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh, it's a spec bumped MacBook, so it's the thin one, looks and feels and acts, well, not acts, but looks and feels precisely like the old one. One USB-C port, one headphone jack, super thin keyboard, beautiful screen. So they put a Skylake class processor, but don't get too excited because it's still the Core M version of a Skylake processor.

• 8:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  Which means that it's slower.

• 8:33Nilay Patel?

  A processor that wasn't power efficient enough for phones.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:36Nilay Patel?

  That's how I think about that processor.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  That's not totally unfair, but it's still fanless, which is pretty cool. So I haven't, like, given it full benchmarks, but I've, like, I've ran some benchmarks and I've been playing around with it, and I would say it feels about 25% faster than the last MacBook overall.

• 8:52Nilay Patel?

  Do you have the M3 or the M?

• 8:53Speaker 01

  This is the M5.

• 8:55Nilay Patel?

  Okay, the middle one.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. But, like, 25% faster than the last MacBook is still, like, not as fast as, like, your average MacBook Air 13 inch.

• 9:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  But it, like, if there's, if you were, like, on the line and you're like, maybe, I don't know, this is, this is the one that'll be like, okay.

• 9:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I bought that one the first day.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:15Speaker 02

  I have to buy a new MacBook.

• 9:18Nilay Patel?

  Would you buy this color?

• 9:19Speaker 02

  I'm gonna buy the gold.

• 9:20Nilay Patel?

  You're gonna buy the gold.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  Are you ready to live that dongle life?

• 9:23Nilay Patel?

  My god.

• 9:25Speaker 02

  Please say more about that.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  You can't plug your shit into it. You need to have adapters for everything.

• 9:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I was looking on, on the apple.com this morning and I was like, I didn't realize I had so many choices.

• 9:38Nilay Patel?

  There aren't that many choices.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  There's more than I got.

• 9:41Nilay Patel?

  The only Mac that anyone should buy right now is that one. If you, that one is right for you. Every other Mac you should wait.

• 9:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, do not buy a Mac unless this one is perfect for you because everything else is coming, getting updated. If, if you, if you really want this Mac, get this Mac. If you just need to get a Mac and you're not sure if this is the Mac, you should wait.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  How long?

• 10:00Speaker 01

  At least till June.

• 10:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  Because.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  I don't know. My home computer is gonna make it.

• 10:05Nilay Patel?

  I think the Mac.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Home computer.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  A MacBook Pro from like 2012.

• 10:08Nilay Patel?

  Oh, you'll be fine.

• 10:09Speaker 03

  It's been waiting for a long time. It can probably wait a couple of months.

• 10:12Speaker 02

  So slow.

• 10:14Nilay Patel?

  I mean, so.

• 10:15Speaker 02

  It also has a cracked screen.

• 10:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's rough. That's brutal.

• 10:19Speaker 02

  Didn't know you could do that.

• 10:20Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  You can.

• 10:21Nilay Patel?

  Um, so I'll tell the story. Becky has a MacBook Air that I bought from Dieter in like 2010 or 2011.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:29Nilay Patel?

  Because she was, she had an original MacBook Air and she was rushing to go and take the LSAT in Chicago. No, not the LSAT, Jesus. The bar exam in Chicago, which is a bit more high pressure than the LSAT.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:43Nilay Patel?

  And you have to take it on a computer and her MacBook Air died like two days before she had to get on a plane. And I was like, and Dieter was like, I'll just sell you this computer. So we just, we just needed a computer. It's like bought this computer, gave it to Becky. Becky went, passed the bar exam. That's great. Proud of her. Uh, and then she just, we just kept it. That was her computer. We never did the thing that we said we were gonna do and like buy a new computer afterwards. And it's so old and the fans run full blast. Like every night I sit next to Becky on the couch and like hang out. And we just listen to her computer's fan. That's what we do. It's I, I, like the idea that I won't listen to that fan every night hasn't even occurred to me.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:25Nilay Patel?

  The house will be peaceful.

• 11:26Speaker 02

  What if it's part of your like relaxing at night, like a white noise that you've come to know? What if it gets too quiet?

• 11:33Speaker 03

  Well, it'll be like electric cars, how they have to simulate a motor noise. Eventually we'll have computers that simulate a fan noise.

• 11:38Nilay Patel?

  Exactly. This computer isn't fast enough and it's like making vroom vroom sounds. But anyway, so I didn't want to buy her the old retina one.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:46Nilay Patel?

  Because it was only just as fast as her five-year-old computer, which is depressing. You don't want to spend $1,200 on a computer that isn't any faster. So this one is like slightly faster and totally pushed us over the hump.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  It's way faster on the things that probably won't matter to her. Like disk rate speed is like 90% faster. Discrete speed is like, I don't know.

• 12:08Nilay Patel?

  Well, it's kind of like they couldn't, I said this yesterday, it's like they couldn't find a faster processor. So they're like, what about super fast SSDs?

• 12:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, they did. I mean, they did find a faster processor. And they get, it gets an hour better battery life than the other one, thanks to the processor. And Apple tells me that's about like the battery chemistry.

• 12:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  So it's the same milliamps, but it's, instead of 37 watt hours, it's 40.

• 12:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  So they're just, they like, they figured out something mysterious.

• 12:37Nilay Patel?

  For the first time in history, battery chemistry has been improved.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:40Nilay Patel?

  Well, not history.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  I don't know. They did not make that claim.

• 12:43Nilay Patel?

  That, I mean, Apple would. There's a Johnny Ive video waiting to happen. It's like him in a lab.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  When's the last time we got a Johnny Ive video?

• 12:50Nilay Patel?

  He's like, we used to add nickel to hydrates, but now I've had lithium to these ions. That's not how you make batteries.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  We haven't seen a Johnny Ive video since the Apple Watch.

• 12:58Nilay Patel?

  No, Johnny Ive has disappeared.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:00Nilay Patel?

  He's out, he's out of the picture.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  He made like a yellow iPad for charity.

• 13:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but he hasn't done a product launch event video. I think they realized that it had become self-parody.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure.

• 13:10Nilay Patel?

  You can't hear the man say aluminium and like aluminium and be impressed anymore. Anyway. So we bought this one, but the dongle life, I asked back, I was like, this is going to be super annoying for you. We have MagSafe adapters all over the house. The battery lasts longer, but now I have to use this one cable to plug it in and there's no other ports. Do you plug anything into your computer ever? And all she said was, this is going to suck when I travel because I plug my phone into my laptop to charge it when I travel. And so I like went on Amazon and bought her an anchor USB block with a USB C. So that's

• 13:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:44Nilay Patel?

  But it's like, it's, you have to like come up these solutions for a really stupid problem.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I, I carry, um, let me count. I carry one, two, I carry four adapters in my bag now. I could drop it down to three. So one is, um, USB C out to a plug that has a USB C to power in and HDMI if I want it. And a regular USB A. One is just a USB A cable. One is a, um, SD card reader. And one is another, um, I used to carry this like multi-port thing, but it failed on me. Cause it was like cheap and like not as good as they claimed. So techie, you're the worst. But because when that thing failed, I like tossed it, but I was like, man, I don't trust these devices now.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  So now I carry an extra USB adapter just in case. So yeah, I carry four dongles.

• 14:36Speaker 02

  I can't be living like that.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:38Speaker 02

  You know, I use, this is my biggest battery.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but you should buy one of the, by the way.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  You can buy a USB C to lightning cable if you want. So you don't have to care, use an adapter to charge your phone. But that cable's like 20 bucks.

• 14:50Speaker 02

  My, my PAX charges from.

• 14:53Nilay Patel?

  You gotta buy one of these anchor things. By the way, is anybody from anchor listening to this podcast?

• 14:57Speaker 01

  Anchor batteries, you can use it to charge the laptop.

• 14:59Nilay Patel?

  Where did anchor come from?

• 15:01Speaker 01

  They came from Google.

• 15:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It's a bunch of ex Google engineers. They all moved to China and now they make the best like stuff.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:09Nilay Patel?

  They just, they've just arrived on the scene. There was no anchor. And now every time I'm like, I need a battery or a plug or whatever. I'm like.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  You might say they like, they just, they just dropped it.

• 15:21Nilay Patel?

  Dieter is fired and I, I didn't want to say this earlier, um, because it is such a sad day, but Dieter, this, today will be a lot. I was fucking awful.

• 15:35Nilay Patel?

  No, seriously, if you if you work at Anchor or you have a loved one that works at Anchor, or you know anybody that works at Anchor, please tell me where they came from and like what their story is and how we can get ahold of them. We should do like an Anchor feature. How do you how do you just get into the business of being the most dominant supplier of things with USB plugs? That's like, story. That's a very story.

• 15:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, I want to know the short answer.

• 15:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, I think it's like, there are a bunch of Google engineers who had a reasonable amount of design sense and they realized there was a market for batteries and USB things. But those little USB bricks, I'm telling you, they're like revelatory.

• 16:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're great.

• 16:11Nilay Patel?

  They change your life.

• 16:12Speaker 03

  I got some thinking to do this weekend.

• 16:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, about a new MacBook.

• 16:15Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 16:16Nilay Patel?

  About the gold one.

• 16:17Speaker 03

  The gold one.

• 16:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  I went from like, thinking about buying one of these ultra-thin, not very powerful, carry-it-anywhere-you-go, battery-last-all-day MacBooks to buying a like, 20-pound laptop gaming rig in the space of about 20 minutes.

• 16:34Nilay Patel?

  Wasn't there a VR-capable laptop that came out today?

• 16:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 16:37Speaker 03

  Yes, it's the Acer Predator 17X.

• 16:41Nilay Patel?

  I'm buying this laptop.

• 16:42Speaker 03

  Cool name. Which just takes a like, normal desktop graphics card and substitutes it for the notebook graphics card that was in the original Predator 17.

• 16:50Nilay Patel?

  So is the entire bottom of this thing a heat sink?

• 16:53Speaker 03

  It's like, it's like 10 pounds, adds 2 pounds to the other one.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  This thing does look sick, but the real answer is, dude, you need to wait to see if you can get a razor blade paired with a razor core and if that'll do it.

• 17:07Nilay Patel?

  But that one weighs 10 pounds and has a desktop-class GPU bolted to the bottom.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, you could instead-

• 17:11Nilay Patel?

  It also looks like it's gonna eat you.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  You could instead get a laptop that isn't insane. It still has an insane light-up keyboard. You'll get the requisite amount of insanity, and then you just have a thing that looks like a tiny, like, old Mac Pro Tower that your graphics card goes in.

• 17:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I hear what you're saying. It is very appealing to me. But that laptop looks like it would burn a village down and then laugh while the blood of its enemies dripped from its jaws.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  This laptop is straight out of Witcher.

• 17:37Speaker 03

  Sam says that it was inspired by intergalactic battleships in his review, I believe.

• 17:43Nilay Patel?

  See, we need this thing.

• 17:44Speaker 01

  How do you?

• 17:45Nilay Patel?

  We got it.

• 17:45Speaker 03

  I mean, every laptop is, every gaming laptop is inspired by something ridiculous and terrible, like a fighter jet.

• 17:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 17:52Speaker 03

  Or a snake.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  You're, you've got a full desktop gaming rig at home, right?

• 17:56Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 17:56Speaker 03

  And it's tasteful.

• 17:59Nilay Patel?

  One of my favorite Addie stories was like the very first CES, Addie showed up to cover the trade show with a gaming laptop. It was so huge.

• 18:09Speaker 03

  And a netbook.

• 18:10Nilay Patel?

  But the netbook wasn't powerful enough. So by the end, you would see Addie and she would just be like hidden behind this like monster. What was it?

• 18:18Speaker 03

  It was an Asus. It was, I forget what year. It was like 2010 or something. I gave it to James to take apart and take pictures of it. So I'm sacrificing it.

• 18:27Nilay Patel?

  It was incredible. I mean, that was an incredible laptop and an incredible moment. And I think gaming laptops should come back.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:33Speaker 03

  But theoretically, they're gonna with VR PCs, although really they're just good for people who make games and have to cart around a VR setup all the time to show other people.

• 18:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but I don't want to buy, I don't want to buy a gaming PC. Like, I've thought about it a lot. Where am I going to put it? Like, I think gaming laptops that can do VR are the solution to the what is my VR room problem that we've talked about in the show like a bunch of times.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:58Nilay Patel?

  Right? You can just like unfold it, put it down, plug in the headset and go. And I mean, this is a ridiculous solution.

• 19:04Speaker 03

  I mean, which is great for the riff, for the vibe. It's like you already have so many plugs and so much crazy stuff that it's like, what's one more thing?

• 19:11Speaker 01

  Well, the other solution that might end up happening is your console is going to do it because PlayStation can run PSVR. There's a PlayStation Neo, apparently it's coming to be faster. And now we're hearing rumors that there's like a next Xbox 1.5 that's also maybe, maybe going to be more powerful and be able to support VR directly. Nobody knows yet.

• 19:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 19:30Speaker 03

  It would be absolutely insane if you could run the Oculus Rift off an Xbox One.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it might not be insane if you could.

• 19:36Speaker 03

  Oh, no, insane in a good way.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 19:38Speaker 03

  Like, that would be kind of crazy if that was their solution to you needing a giant gaming PC.

• 19:43Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:44Nilay Patel?

  And I keep on pointing out that Microsoft, Facebook are very, very close. A lot closer than people seem to think.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:50Nilay Patel?

  It's my belief.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 19:52Nilay Patel?

  I mean, there's an Xbox One controller in the thing. Why wouldn't Oculus go to Microsoft? And be like, look, you want it to be a Windows 10 PC. We need a really powerful Windows 10 PC. Just upgrade that thing. But.

• 20:03Nilay Patel?

  It's the Xbox One, so it'll probably just crash along the way.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:05Nilay Patel?

  I own an Xbox One, so I'm allowed to be salty about the Xbox One.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  I, um, I have to, I, I took the risk of putting the Xbox One in an entertainment cabinet. And I would say every third time I use it, I need to like, open the door, point a fan at the box. Cause it's like, there's space for it to vent, but just not quite enough.

• 20:24Nilay Patel?

  Mine has a delightful new problem where it decides that, uh, controllers no longer need to pair to it.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  Oh, that's nice.

• 20:30Nilay Patel?

  So why don't you just unplug it all the way? And, uh, you know, go have a drink, talk to an old friend on the phone, plug it back in and see if it wants to play a game.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  Xbox One only today got a HBO Now app.

• 20:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I don't know.

• 20:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:44Nilay Patel?

  Howdy, would you, uh, one to 10, how's the Xbox One doing in the market? Is it fine?

• 20:50Speaker 03

  I mean, I guess it's okay in the same way that like Windows is kind of always okay, no matter how bad it is.

• 20:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 20:56Speaker 03

  Because it's the thing that plays maybe some of the games that you want.

• 20:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 21:01Speaker 03

  And I mean, PSVR seems like it could be a really cool draw for PlayStation, but, uh, people, there will always be people who don't want a PlayStation. Or want another thing.

• 21:11Nilay Patel?

  No, and those people are very mad at you right now.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  There are more people that don't want a gaming PC than there are people who don't want a PlayStation. Right. Or, and there, there's enough people that have a PS4 that I think that, I still think the PSVR is like going by, by this holiday. We'll be anointing the PSVR as like the winner for a while.

• 21:28Speaker 03

  I mean, maybe for gaming stuff, I just, VR is so multifarious that like the Vive is announcing some kind of commercial partnership with like an architecture firm.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  Speaking of, uh, VR, I, if you didn't hear last week, I do need to disclose that.

• 21:44Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I forgot.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  My wife works for Oculus.

• 21:46Nilay Patel?

  Not yet. It's like days away.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:50Nilay Patel?

  By the time you listen to this in your car.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:52Speaker 03

  In your car.

• 21:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 21:55Nilay Patel?

  See, there's why it works for Oculus. He's hopelessly corrupted.

• 21:58Speaker 03

  But there, I do not hear anything about Oculus from him, so.

• 22:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, that is also true.

• 22:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It's just.

• 22:05Speaker 01

  Also, I just said it was gonna lose, so I don't know.

• 22:10Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it's really just this show where that issue is presenting itself. On the rest of the side, it's like, there's like, all these walls and procedures and

• 22:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:15Nilay Patel?

  Dieter knows not to do it. But then we're like, Dieter, come on the Vergecast. He's like, I can't talk about anything today.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:21Nilay Patel?

  We'll get through it. And if you, the audience, think it's such a problem, let us know. But I suspect you, the audience, are gonna come with us on this journey into ethical boundaries.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  Do you enjoy watching Dieter be uncomfortable? Tune into the Vergecast live at 4:30 Eastern on Thursdays.

• 22:36Nilay Patel?

  We also got a fair amount of work we're gonna do when you go to San Francisco.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  This is true.

• 22:39Nilay Patel?

  Let me know in the comments or on Twitter if you would die without a live Vergecast.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  Let me know if you'd prefer not a live Vergecast or a Vergecast without Dieter.

• 22:49Nilay Patel?

  There's no Vergecast. I'm not doing that. I'm not having this conversation.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 22:52Nilay Patel?

  Conversation over. Anyway, let me ask you a question about rose gold things.

• 22:55Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 22:56Nilay Patel?

  So that you, what? That's next on my list.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 23:01Nilay Patel?

  It's just here on the list.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  It's there.

• 23:03Nilay Patel?

  Several weeks ago, you came on the show and you're like, I don't understand why there's so much rose gold. It's over. Apples doubled down on rose gold. That is the rose goldest thing they've ever made.

• 23:13Speaker 02

  I got feelings.

• 23:14Nilay Patel?

  Samsung

• 23:15Speaker 01

  I can sense like rose gold signals.

• 23:16Nilay Patel?

  It's really rose gold. Samsung put out pink gold Galaxy S7s this week. Is there, what's going on? Is this gonna just keep happening to us?

• 23:26Speaker 02

  I'm, I'm so confused because this, I think, comes from Apple and Apple has, is keeping an eye on, on the trends outside of technology, obviously. Like, that's her thing. And seeing like, okay, there's a lot of rose gold jewelry going around. It's like, kind of in the ether. So then they like, go into this version of rose gold that's so pink. And it's so weird to me because it reminds me of like, the weird brightly colored like, desktop Macs and like, iPod minis of my aughts experience. And then they like, move totally to like, slick, you know, like, you don't see like, a green, there's a

• 24:07Speaker 02

  green iPhone now. And this to me is like, like cartoonish in color. And I imagine if it was the same thing, but it was blue or green, it would look weird. It's weird to me.

• 24:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 24:18Speaker 02

  It shouldn't be this saturated. It should be desaturated.

• 24:21Nilay Patel?

  One, one tick down?

• 24:23Speaker 02

  Like, three. It'd be cool if it was like a gentle rose gold, but this is just, this is dusty salmon.

• 24:32Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that's my new beach bar, the dusty salmon.

• 24:36Speaker 02

  Scissor vodka shots hour from.

• 24:40Nilay Patel?

  The dusty salmon.

• 24:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Five to, five to seven every night.

• 24:43Speaker 02

  And how do you make it salmon colored though? Cause you would need to combine, there, there's a pink scissor vodka. I don't know.

• 24:49Nilay Patel?

  Don't you just add a drop of cran?

• 24:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:51Nilay Patel?

  That's the dusty salmon at the dusty salmon. It's just a, it's a little bit of cranberry juice.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  Shouldn't there be some like, shouldn't there be some glitter in it?

• 24:58Nilay Patel?

  What kind of bar do you think I brought?

• 25:00Speaker 02

  Maybe it's Aperol.

• 25:01Nilay Patel?

  It's a beach bar. You come, you come to chill out. You don't come to get lit, huh? No, the scale, I see. Um, Addie, weren't you saying that you would buy a colorful computer today? I saw you like dropping pictures of old iMac somewhere.

• 25:12Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I've missed out on absolutely every generation of colorful Apple things. I missed out on the iBook. I wanted one really badly. I missed out on the iPod minis. By the time I was buying Apple products, they were all super brushed aluminum and I really liked the era of things that seemed kind of weird and personalized.

• 25:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 25:30Speaker 03

  Um, and I also just would love like a dark kind of emerald green one.

• 25:34Speaker 02

  I love the idea of this emerald green. I think it'd be really nice, but like super dark.

• 25:39Nilay Patel?

  Okay. Like your fern. No, darker than the fern.

• 25:42Speaker 03

  Darker than the fern.

• 25:44Nilay Patel?

  Okay. But like.

• 25:44Speaker 02

  Edging into jade territory.

• 25:46Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I see. But with that hint of metallic.

• 25:48Speaker 02

  Oh, that little flash. Yeah. That could be nice.

• 25:51Nilay Patel?

  I've never been a green person, but this is a green I can get behind.

• 25:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, I think green is on the come up. Watch out. It could be the next rose gold.

• 25:58Nilay Patel?

  Green is my least favorite color. Sorry. Addie's wearing a green shirt. Addie, your shirt's great. Green is my least favorite color.

• 26:02Speaker 03

  It's okay. I don't have a strong investment in my shirt.

• 26:05Nilay Patel?

  James Barham loves green or Creative Director loves green. He's constantly showing me green things. I'm like.

• 26:09Speaker 02

  Green in what context? What kind of green?

• 26:11Nilay Patel?

  What kind of green? Like is it? Generally not a green person.

• 26:13Speaker 01

  The problem with the internet is it doesn't show cool, like dark army or dark forest green very well. Like the only green that works on the internet is like green.

• 26:20Nilay Patel?

  You know, computer, this is, it's gonna sound like I'm fucking stoned, but go with me. Computers are very bad at colors. Have you noticed this? Like, red on the internet is a huge problem. Nothing, nothing red can exist on the internet because JPEG compression will crush it to hell, or you have to deliver like a massive PNG.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 26:37Nilay Patel?

  It's like, red's just out of the question.

• 26:38Speaker 03

  Interesting.

• 26:39Nilay Patel?

  And as Dieter's saying, green, somewhat out of the question. Just fades into black when you get it dark enough to be really cool.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:46Nilay Patel?

  It's just a real problem. We live, we live in a, we live in a color space that is tightly defined by shitty web browsers.

• 26:52Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 26:53Nilay Patel?

  And that's all the colors that you can imagine in the world are like, Netscape coded them in like 1994.

• 26:58Speaker 03

  I mean, I also have to check everything I do on multiple computers if I really want to see how it's gonna look.

• 27:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, yeah, it's a real problem. Everyone should just have a 5K iMac with the increased color gamut.

• 27:08Speaker 03

  Including on their smartphones.

• 27:13Nilay Patel?

  That's a really weird transition to the next thing.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 27:15Nilay Patel?

  Do you want to transition to the next thing?

• 27:17Speaker 01

  Uh, no, because I don't have the problem.

• 27:18Nilay Patel?

  Addy, do you want to talk about Magic Leap right away? Or do you want to, do you want to take a quick digression into Google and the EU? Which way do you want to go?

• 27:25Speaker 03

  Um, I'm, well, we can go into Google EU.

• 27:28Nilay Patel?

  Okay. The big news, um, is that the EU, uh, filed an antitrust case against Google saying that they're illegally using their Android monopoly, uh, to tie Google search in the Google Play Store. And they're tying them together and illegally using the Android monopoly in the European Union to force out competitors to Google search on mobile and force out competitors to Android, which is a weird thing to think about Google doing because they make Android.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 27:58Nilay Patel?

  So I'm joined now by Randy Picker, who is a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, who specializes in antitrust, among many other things. How's it going, Randy?

• 28:06Speaker 04

  Uh, actually, very nicely.

• 28:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, this has got to be exciting for you. There's some action in the world.

• 28:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, there's always action, but yes. So I, I woke up this morning and turned on Twitter and saw that while I was asleep, the European Union had gone off and done what people said they were gonna do. And what that was, was, as you may recall, roughly a year ago, after a very extended investigation into Google, the EU announced what they call their Statement of Objections, which is basically, we've got a case, we think, against you. And they brought that case against Google relating to Google Shopping. That case is still going on. There's actually been almost nothing public about that. At the same time, when they brought that case, they also said, "Oh, by the way, Google, we're going to launch an investigation into Google

• 28:53Speaker 04

  Android." And that was all basically in April, mid-April of last year. And today, they said, "We've investigated, and now we think we've got a case against you relating to Android."

• 29:03Nilay Patel?

  And that case is, basically, it's about two different things. It's about Google Search being preloaded on the phones.

• 29:10Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 29:11Nilay Patel?

  And then, Verge readers will probably know this, but I'll explain a little bit. There's an anti-fragmentation clause that says, "If you're going to use Google services on an Android phone, you can't then ship another phone that forks Android and some other weird one."

• 29:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, you've got great users if they understood that.

• 29:30Nilay Patel?

  So we've covered the hell out of this, actually.

• 29:32Speaker 04

  That's wonderful.

• 29:33Nilay Patel?

  So I'm desperate to hear what you think is going to happen here. But my take on it is that the EU actually fundamentally misunderstands how important that anti-fragmentation clause is. But I want to hear from you first. So tell me how you think this is going to play out.

• 29:47Speaker 04

  So Android, as you know, and Google, published something on this, on their public policy, European public policy blog this morning. They say, "Look, it's open source. That's the deal. How are we getting in trouble here?" The reality is, is I think when you look at the Android system, as it were, I sort of think of it like almost the alphabet, not Google alphabet, but the alphabet, where, let's say, 21 letters, we'll call them the consonants, are open source, and everyone's got a proprietary vowel set. And what happens here is, is there's a lot of underlying code in Android, which is open source, but key pieces of the system that you need to run a serious Android phone Are proprietary. That's what Google Play is. And so the EU's contention is, is that while anyone can use, as it were, the consonants

• 30:32Speaker 04

  here, Google's got its own special set of vowels and it's using those vowels to force you to take other Google products, including Google Search.

• 30:40Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 30:40Speaker 04

  We call that tying in the antitrust world. So if your listeners know forking, they should know tying. And tying is the idea that I am distorting competition in the second space based upon my control of a key adjacent space. So here, the allegation is based upon Google's control over Google Play, they're able to effectively force search to continue with the wrinkle here that the EU sees Google as trying to extend its monopoly on the desktop in search, which they assume to exist, into the mobile space.

• 31:18Nilay Patel?

  Right. But so my argument and my question is, didn't we have a vibrant mobile market of something like six platforms vying for control and dominance? Didn't Google just win outright?

• 31:35Speaker 04

  Yeah. So I don't know who wins. As I count them, we have two winners here.

• 31:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 31:41Speaker 04

  Yes, exactly. And it's completely fair to say that the transformation in the mobile OS space, so if I say symbian to a normal person, you have no clue what I'm talking about. You say, oh, yeah, Nokia used to be this and this and this, and look what happened. So it's completely fair to say that we had this moment of competition and that Google, in some sense, was one of the winners. That's clearly right. The EU doesn't dispute that. The EU says it's fine to have winners. It's, once you've won, what are you allowed to do? That's the antitrust issue.

• 32:14Nilay Patel?

  So is this all focused on search? Because... It seems like if you want to, if you want to take advantage of the large ecosystem of Android apps in the Play Store.

• 32:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:26Nilay Patel?

  That's the thing that's going to help you sell your phone.

• 32:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:29Nilay Patel?

  And Google's saying, well, you can have that, but it comes with these conditions. Chief among them, Google search has to be the default search engine.

• 32:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, so the EU just gave us a little window into what they're thinking is. So there's a, there was a speech by Commissioner of the State this morning. There's a press release, there's a fact sheet. I would say what they're saying is a couple of things, certainly about search, but they're also concerned, and maybe this will go to the fragmentation clause you were going to talk about, about the extent of competition in the Android space itself. Let's say the Android OS space or the Android Store space. I think the EU thinks they'd like to see more competition there and that the anti-fragmentation clause is working against that.

• 33:10Nilay Patel?

  Sure, let's get into that. It feels like magical thinking to me because if you undo this anti-fragmentation clause, one, app developers are going to have to start supporting multiple variants of Android.

• 33:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:25Nilay Patel?

  Which is very difficult to do. And in fact, the reason that Amazon's phone failed is because they could not get app developers to support their crazy ideas about what a phone should be.

• 33:36Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 33:37Nilay Patel?

  And on top of it, and this one, it's like, you know, you've got to sort of take it on faith, that Google is actually a better actor for the consumer than any phone carrier or OEM. And I say it's on faith, but I think the, the Verge audience listening to this in particular will happily tell you that they would rather have a Google phone than whatever garbage Samsung will do, or whatever garbage Verizon or Telefonica or whatever else, whatever carrier nonsense would get loaded onto some custom variant of Android that's actually regressive in many ways. And Google's power over the ecosystem is the thing that makes Android successful.

• 34:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, so you said a couple of really interesting things there, so let's take those in pieces. So one idea here is, is the, I think it's fair to say, and we saw this in the EU's Microsoft Windows Media Player case, they believe in fragmentation. So that case, if you'll recall, they were very concerned that Microsoft was effectively going to take over the media world by embedding Media Player in Windows. They were crystal clear that they understood that in fragmenting that market, they were going to push up costs, that music manufacturers and producers were going to have to support multiple formats, and that would all be more expensive. They didn't care. And they implemented a remedy that didn't work at all.

• 34:59Speaker 04

  But I think they're, you know, they're very much, from either a mindset standpoint, they're just naturally believing in the benefits of competition even at greater costs, and the costs you identified are crystal clear. The second point you made is the one that they don't talk about in any way, shape, or form. And that's sort of Google's counterweight in a world that you've got these very large, as it were, you know, mobile players. That's interesting. I, you know, I don't know what to say about that. I can't say that's wrong. I don't think that's figuring in their analysis at all.

• 35:34Nilay Patel?

  This seems like a very carrier favorable ruling, or a carrier favorable allegation, right? That Google's illegally tying search, they're using this anti-fragmentation clause to reduce competition, but the only people, the only actors that will help are telecom carriers who have historically been the most anti-consumer. And I just don't see that sense of history kind of pervading this thinking.

• 35:59Speaker 04

  Well, so I think it's completely fair to say that it's very much a hope and a prayer to think that when they, if this anti-fragmentation clause magically went away tomorrow, how much entry do we think we would see in the Android forking market? Maybe some. My guess is not a lot. So that doesn't seem like we're going to buy much there. And the counterweight point against the carriers, I absolutely see what you're saying there.

• 36:27Nilay Patel?

  Well, I mean, so Samsung right now, and I'll just pick on Samsung as but one example because they are the most powerful actor in the Android ecosystem. Samsung makes, obviously, the most popular Android phones. They also make phones that run their own operating system, Tizen. They did, for a brief minute, make Microsoft-based phones.

• 36:45Speaker 04

  Right.

• 36:46Nilay Patel?

  I mean, Samsung will do anything, right? And it's not a far stretch to say they would make some forked variant of Android, thus threatening the ecosystem. But what is actually more true, and I think much more likely, is that some European carrier would go out and commission a phone that runs its own app store, its own services, and say to the public, "This phone is much cheaper than the other phones because it uses our services." And that, that begins to do something that is very old and very familiar, which is start to lock down the consumer to a particular carrier, which is the reason that none of these ecosystems really developed in the past.

• 37:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, though, if I'm the EU, I say, "Oh, that's a different flavor of competition. Let's play that out."

• 37:33Nilay Patel?

  Interesting.

• 37:34Speaker 04

  So, so it's almost a retrograde move that way.

• 37:38Nilay Patel?

  Right. So what happens next here?

• 37:40Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, so, I mean, mechanically, Google gets 12 weeks to respond, and blah, blah, blah, blah. But, I mean, I think the real question is, and part of what we can't see is, I mean, Google, if I'm Google, I'd like to be done with, I think, between, between the antitrust fronts and between the right-to-be-forgotten fronts. And I assume most of the Google people would be vacationing in the United States this year. You know, can I, can I get a global antitrust settlement in the EU would be the question I would ask, right? Can I wrap up the Google Shopping case, which I see is quite different than this case? And really, almost a sideshow compared to this case. This case strikes me so much more important than the Google Shopping product.

• 38:23Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 38:24Speaker 04

  Which is never struck, it's very important. You know, now we've got our hands on at least a version of the future of mobile, so hugely more important. The other piece of this is... And you never can tell until you've gone inside. If Google gave up each of these contractual conditions tomorrow, what would it cost them? The market's so much in their favor at this point that I would think it wouldn't cost them very much. So, you know, handing money to lawyers for a company like Google is cheap to do. They can do that. They could fight in the system for a while. They could just settle and be done with it and maybe move forward. But that's, I certainly don't have any powerful insight into what Google wants to do.

• 39:08Speaker 04

  And think of the week they've had, right? As you know, the Supreme Court denied cert, didn't take the case in the Google Book search case. So earlier this week, the legal system has rewarded this visionary legal strategy that they applied in copying 10 million books and seeing what would happen. And now the legal system has stretched back.

• 39:32Nilay Patel?

  Doesn't it always?

• 39:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:33Nilay Patel?

  Just real quick, how does this compare to what happened with Microsoft with the browser ballot and Windows Media Player? Are they, are they of a piece or is this something else?

• 39:43Speaker 04

  Well, so, man, I hope the EU is learning something. So the EU had two important cases against Microsoft, I'll say. So one was the Windows Media Player case that I mentioned earlier. The remedy they required there was to require, Microsoft, they have a version of Windows with the Media Player, one without, same price could be charged, and the marketplace rejected that completely. They sold under 2,000 copies of the version without the Media Player. I understand why that remedy might have been sensible on paper. Indeed, I wrote a paper before they did that remedy as to why it might be sensible. It went nowhere. Then, as you just mentioned, when they got to the EU Internet Explorer case, Microsoft's getting ready to roll out Windows 7.

• 40:26Speaker 04

  They don't want to have a big fight with them, so they settle. And what they settle on is the browser ballot. And that means every time you turned on a new Windows machine in Europe, you were presented with 14 different browser choices. Yes, in fact.

• 40:44Speaker 04

  The irony of that, because the original US case was litigated on the premise of two choices was confusing, but 14 there. And that remedy seems to have accomplished nothing. That remedy got broken when they released Service Pack 1, and no one noticed for 17 months. So the point of all that event was, was two completely failed remedies, I think it's fair to say, in the Microsoft case. So that should tell them here that maybe they should, if they can cut this deal, where they turn off these contractual provisions, and say, "Google, stop telling people they can't do this. Settle for that. Don't do anything more dramatic, and let's see what will happen." My guess is, nothing will happen.

• 41:22Nilay Patel?

  Got it. Well, we'll certainly check back in with you if anything else happens.

• 41:27Speaker 04

  That would be great.

• 41:28Nilay Patel?

  Thank you for coming on the show. Randal Picker, University of Chicago. Thanks, man.

• 41:31Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  The challenge to your line of thinking here, that the EU regulators are just crazy for thinking that if they, that Google should just let there be forks of Android, and it would, like, the fragmentation's not an issue because we actually, like, Google owns it, is if they had done that from the jump, then they wouldn't have been able to build the relatively cohesive ecosystem they have underneath Google Play.

• 41:56Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 41:57Speaker 01

  It might be now, if they were to, like, if Google were to, like, say, "Okay, fine, we're gonna get rid of the non-fragmentation agreement," that a bunch of people would jump at the chance, and they'd realize that Google already has too much of an advantage in the Play Store, and they would wither, because people just want to get the Google stuff. But the question is, like, why can't Google say, "Yeah, go ahead and do whatever you want, make whatever you want, but you only get Google apps on, like, the phones that we approve?"

• 42:20Nilay Patel?

  Right. I don't know.

• 42:22Speaker 01

  That's, like, the question.

• 42:23Nilay Patel?

  I mean, the question, is Google so much more powerful? But if you're Google, you make Android, you give it away for free, and you say, "If you want the rest of our stuff, you have to agree not to screw with it."

• 42:35Speaker 01

  Although, I will say that, like, the version of, the way that most people who have Google Android devices experience it, like, a lot of the best stuff in it is the Google stuff. And I'm not just talking about, you know, Gmail and Photos and the Chrome browser.

• 42:52Nilay Patel?

  And the persistent ad tracking.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're like, they're pushing out security updates via the Google Play ecosystem. They're pushing out browser updates via the Google Play ecosystem. So the divergence between like the fully open source, do it how you want with it, version of Android and Google's version of Android is getting wider.

• 43:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, this is ridiculous. Like, the reason Android is successful is because Google exerts this control. And three years ago, the conversation was can Google control fragmentation in their ecosystem? And they figured it out.

• 43:23Speaker 01

  Mostly.

• 43:24Nilay Patel?

  Mostly. But they figured it out. Like, the worst example of fragmentation right now in the ecosystem is like.

• 43:30Speaker 01

  OS versions.

• 43:31Nilay Patel?

  OS versions. Samsung can't stop putting dumb water drop sounds on the phone.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  Oh, they did. They totally stopped putting water drops on the phone.

• 43:38Nilay Patel?

  They're still there. I had an Uber driver with an S7 the other day, and it was definitely.

• 43:42Speaker 01

  But you can turn them on if you like them.

• 43:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they're there. I mean, just as a matter of taste. Like, don't put them there. Make people work for them much harder.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:50Nilay Patel?

  It's a terrible idea.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  You can get one on your pink, pink Galaxy.

• 43:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, LG's launcher is still a disaster. Yeah, it's like, it's just stuff, right? It's like these tiny little problems, but the actual phones are fine. And like, the app, the app developers are happy, right? They can like ship an app and it works on a bunch of phones.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're happy, they're just not getting paid.

• 44:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 44:08Nilay Patel?

  Maybe we should all stop having phones. Back to laptops. Stop using your phone.

• 44:14Nilay Patel?

  It isn't Google's best remedy to just make their own phone, which all of us kind of want them to do.

• 44:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:21Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, okay, fine, Samsung, you can fork away, enjoy. We're gonna make our own phone, and we're gonna, it's gonna be the high-end phone competitor to the iPhone that everybody wants Google to do.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 44:32Nilay Patel?

  Right? I'd buy that phone. I mean, I did buy that phone. It's called the Nexus 6P.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:36Nilay Patel?

  I just wish it had a better camera.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  The camera's fine. It's good.

• 44:40Nilay Patel?

  It's not good.

• 44:41Speaker 01

  Yes, it is.

• 44:42Nilay Patel?

  Addie, what phone do you have right now?

• 44:43Speaker 03

  Uh, still the HTC M8, which is actually kind of broken. I can't use headphones with it anymore.

• 44:48Nilay Patel?

  Ooh. Well, headphones are a thing of the past.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  Are you gonna get an M10? Or, I'm sorry, a 10?

• 44:52Speaker 03

  No, I'm gonna wait. I'm buying my phone purely based on what's best for VR, which means I'm gonna wait and see if Google announces something with Tango, and then if they don't, I'm gonna get an S7, I guess.

• 45:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  The S, I mean, that is the phone to get.

• 45:05Speaker 03

  I'm on an MVNO. I'm on Straight Talk.

• 45:07Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 45:08Speaker 03

  I'll just swap my SIM.

• 45:09Nilay Patel?

  No, MVNO's are great. I actually am super pro MVNO, super pro prepaid.

• 45:15Nilay Patel?

  I think that that's the way to go. My parents signed up for AT&T U-verse, so now I have unlimited data. But they did, but they also- You're on your parents' plan? Well, I pay for them. Okay.

• 45:26Speaker 02

  Oh, reverse parents.

• 45:28Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it's not like they use any data.

• 45:31Speaker 02

  Yo, my mom and I are gonna start splitting plans. So I was like, can you just look and see like how much data you use? So I can like figure out what were, what makes sense. And she was like, I used 0.7.

• 45:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 45:42Speaker 02

  And I was like, oh.

• 45:44Nilay Patel?

  My dad has my old iPhone 5 and it's still surprising him with capabilities. Like it's adorably so. He's like, I can send text messages. I'm like, I know, I'm with you. But yeah, so they're on my plan. My mom's iPad is on my plan. They don't use any data. But then the U-verse people like showed up at the house, sold them the U-verse, tearing out all of my carefully constructed home theater setup for them. Cause that's what cable people do. Oh, man. They show them and they just fuck with stuff. No, whatever. It's like, you made your bed.

• 46:15Nilay Patel?

  But then my dad, God bless him, was like, whatever. It's a great deal. Limited data. I don't even need the limited data. What else can you give me? And they're like, we're gonna set up a complete smart home for you. So like, the garage doors are going, the locks are going, they're putting in motion detectors. Oh, my God. ADT is out. There's a new security system. There's like, and my dad calls me, he's all proud, because he should be. He's got a bunch of free shit, but I was like, he's like, and there's gonna be an app on the phone. And there's nothing more terrifying than hearing my parents say that they need to learn how to use a new app on their phones. It is, it, there is a gnawing pit of despair in my life that comes from the idea of my parents calling me and saying, we're looking at the phone and something's wrong.

• 47:01Nilay Patel?

  Can you fix it? Because there's literally no way for them to appropriately communicate to me what's on the, like, no one can do it. You cannot describe an app on a phone. No, you can't. You just can't. It doesn't matter how, like, I, we do it professionally, but if like my Nest blows up and I call you, I'm like, can you fix my Nest app? Just a mat like it would still be hard.

• 47:21Speaker 01

  You need to, you need to buy an LTE connected like drop cam.

• 47:27Nilay Patel?

  Oh my God, I'm like, I'm like getting emotional.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  It needs to be, it needs to be like air gapped away from anything that they can touch or control in terms of their internet or home server. It's just the camera and all you can do is turn it on. You'd be like, just walk over to the camera.

• 47:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and just hold up the.

• 47:43Speaker 03

  Alternately, you could just use Skype.

• 47:46Nilay Patel?

  No, because Skype happens. No, no, this is like.

• 47:49Speaker 03

  Don't they have like a Chromebook or something?

• 47:50Nilay Patel?

  On the phone. FaceTime happens on the phone. So the app breaks on the phone. They call me from the phone.

• 47:56Speaker 03

  They totally have a Chromebook or something, right?

• 47:57Nilay Patel?

  They do have Chromebook, yes. No, we could do it. It's just their instinct. It's amazing. But anyway, so I'm dreading the day that the smart home install happens. AT&T. But you can't also be like, you should turn down free stuff.

• 48:10Speaker 01

  AT&T has been trying to convince me that they are a huge power player in the smart home every CTIA for like the past five years.

• 48:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  I've never believed them and apparently I was wrong because they're selling it to.

• 48:23Nilay Patel?

  They're not selling it. They're literally just foisting it on the unsuspecting.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  They're just like, they're not paying for any of this gadgetry that's getting installed.

• 48:30Nilay Patel?

  No, it's showing up in their house. They're like, sign up for U-verse. And I was like, cool, we'll get free data. Wait, I don't need any data. My son used it, but we're fine. What else can he give me? And they're like, smart home and just like foisted it on them.

• 48:43Speaker 01

  Oh my God.

• 48:44Speaker 03

  Can they turn around and sell all the smart home stuff?

• 48:46Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. No, I think that AT&T comes in and installs it for you. So you have to like uninstall it.

• 48:51Speaker 03

  They could strip it out, sell it for parts.

• 48:54Speaker 02

  I feel like it's probably leased or something. Like you'd probably have to give it back.

• 48:57Nilay Patel?

  You almost certainly have to like rent it.

• 49:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:00Nilay Patel?

  Although I do the picture of Addie going to my parents' house with like a tool belt and just like stripping the smart home for parts. And like leaving the house as a shell and like Addie's driving way in a truck. It's like kind of amazing. I don't know. Whatever. We'll see. We'll see how it goes. Also, uh, we were, this is another story. We were looking at a house in a rural area and we were like, how do we get internet to this house? And the Verizon salesperson told us that all of the internet in the area had been used up. And if you would like to add internet to this house, we'd have to go talk to the neighbors and convince one of them to disconnect their internet so that we could hook up our internet.

• 49:35Speaker 03

  I'm fairly certain I've actually heard that at my in-laws' house.

• 49:38Nilay Patel?

  Is that real?

• 49:39Speaker 03

  I don't know if it's real, but internet there is very weird.

• 49:42Nilay Patel?

  Becky called me and she's like, I don't think this is real.

• 49:46Nilay Patel?

  She's like, I want you to talk to them. I was like, what's the threat? She's like, well, I don't think they know what you do.

• 49:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I know. Maybe Verizon workers should be in, shouldn't be on strike, should be on strike.

• 49:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:58Nilay Patel?

  They're marching in front of the office the other day, wearing shirts that said, invest in FiOS, not executive pay, which I thought was a very clever burn.

• 50:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:05Nilay Patel?

  If you want to strike deep at the heart of New Yorkers, you tell them that Lowell McAdam is taking a paycheck instead of giving you FiOS.

• 50:11Speaker 01

  I wonder if I can get Google Fiber where I'm moving.

• 50:16Nilay Patel?

  Okay. Let's all Google for internet access. All right, Adam, let's talk about Magic Leap.

• 50:20Speaker 03

  Okay, so Magic Leap, we haven't heard anything about him. And then we heard lots of things about them, but they weren't very useful things.

• 50:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, the what did we hear? So how badly are we going to burn Wired in this segment? I would say medium.

• 50:36Speaker 03

  I like Kevin Kelly. I think Kevin Kelly is a very, like, we interviewed him for my VR piece. I think he's a really good writer and I think that they probably did the best that they could with Magic Leap. It's just that Magic Leap will not reveal anything.

• 50:47Nilay Patel?

  Well, let's start with the start. So early Wired, and God bless Wired, like, we know a lot of people who were there. David Pierce works for Wired, good friend of mine, good friend of all of us.

• 50:57Nilay Patel?

  Joe Brown, Wired's managing editor, great dude, right? Great, just great staff, great magazine. Kevin Kelly wrote a piece for Wired. Kevin Kelly was the original editor in chief of Wired.

• 51:09Speaker 03

  And who also, like, wrote a ton about virtual reality in the late 80s, early 90s. Like, he's OG VR.

• 51:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. They commissioned him to write a cover story for Wired this month about a company called Magic Leap, which has $1.4 billion in investment from Google, from Anderson Horowitz, from like, rando celebrities. They're located in Miami.

• 51:34Speaker 01

  Central Florida?

• 51:35Nilay Patel?

  They're located somewhere in Florida, like, an office park.

• 51:37Speaker 03

  I think they're in Orlando, around Orlando.

• 51:39Nilay Patel?

  That makes sense.

• 51:40Speaker 03

  But I'm not sure.

• 51:41Nilay Patel?

  Michael's just making a face.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  I lived in Central Florida. I knew Central Florida.

• 51:45Nilay Patel?

  I am Central Florida.

• 51:46Speaker 01

  You don't want to, you don't, don't.

• 51:48Nilay Patel?

  Anyway.

• 51:49Speaker 01

  Fort Lauderdale, the RISF, Fort Lauderdale.

• 51:50Nilay Patel?

  Okay, Fort Lauderdale. The Orlando of Miami. Does that make any sense?

• 51:54Speaker 01

  It makes perfect sense.

• 51:56Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, so Wired writes this huge cover story about this company, Magic Leap, which is doing an augmented reality thing. Like, that's what they're doing. So you look around the room and you see computer vision stopped.

• 52:08Speaker 01

  Reality.

• 52:10Nilay Patel?

  Wired agrees to call it mixed reality and not augmented reality.

• 52:13Speaker 03

  Okay, we call it hololens. Microsoft always asks us to call it mixed reality too, and we occasionally grudgingly do. Mixed reality is the term everyone likes because augmented reality is the thing that you looked at through your smartphone and it would put Wikipedia place markers on everything.

• 52:25Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 52:27Speaker 03

  We ruined augmented reality. Congratulations.

• 52:29Speaker 01

  We're gonna call all of it the same thing. We're gonna call it all 360 Mavver.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  360 mixed augmented virtual reality.

• 52:37Nilay Patel?

  Our video team was just at NAB and they were, you know, we, if you listen to the show.

• 52:42Speaker 01

  Association of broadcasters show.

• 52:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the big trade show for video people. And they came back very depressed that they're all going to lose the 360 versus VR battle because everyone there just calls it VR. Like 360 video doesn't exist. Everyone just calls it VR. They're very unhappy about it. Like, I got a late night text from Tom Connors that was like, "I hate you, but you're gonna win."

• 53:03Speaker 03

  I mean, that's not correct. Like, VR 360 is a subset of 360 video.

• 53:08Nilay Patel?

  I don't, I can't do this again. We did, we did it for an hour on the show after the floating speech. Anyway, so magically Business Company, they're doing mixed augmented reality, whatever. Wired goes into it.

• 53:19Speaker 03

  They're doing holograms.

• 53:20Nilay Patel?

  They're doing hologra, yeah. You wear presumably a headset and you can look around the room and like, there's videos of it. And you look around the room and like, screens pop up and jellyfish float through the air and it's enhanced. It's like, what do they say? It's like you're, it's like you're dreaming while you're awake.

• 53:36Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 53:37Nilay Patel?

  Stuff happens to reality that isn't real.

• 53:39Speaker 03

  I vaguely had heard, somebody was saying that when you go in and you try it out for the first time, what they do is they like put you in a room and some things are holograms and some aren't, and they ask you to pick out which things are real and you can't. And I have no idea if that's true or not. I strongly suspect that it's not, or it's actually very easy to pick them out. But people have very high hopes.

• 53:56Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, so Wired wrote this piece. The piece is like 10,000 words long. It is.

• 54:02Speaker 01

  It's like a, it's a nice like overview and history of.

• 54:06Nilay Patel?

  It's an overview and history of VR.

• 54:08Speaker 03

  VR, NAR, which is MR.

• 54:11Nilay Patel?

  I just want.

• 54:11Speaker 03

  VR plus AR equals MR.

• 54:14Nilay Patel?

  I disagree with you.

• 54:15Speaker 01

  You might say it was like a comprehensive 360 degree retake on VR and AR and I'm like.

• 54:20Nilay Patel?

  I want to kill myself. Like, what's worse, this argument or letting AT&T install a smart home? What is a more painful way to go? Anyways, it's very long, it's beautifully written, because it's Kevin Kohn, it's Wired, you should read it. But the actual descriptions of Magic Leap Bennett are insane. There's one description, and it's like, it ends with, but Magic Leap won't tell us how it actually works. The CEO of Magic Leap is quoted as saying, "Your brain is like a graphics processor and we're hacking the GPU of the brain." Which just doesn't make sense. Like, in a very real way, makes no sense.

• 54:57Speaker 03

  I mean, it makes sense, but it only makes sense in that, like, I don't know, my GP, this screen is hacking the GPU of my brain by pretending that there's a person on it, but it's actually a video. It's like, yes, everything tricks your brain. That's what things do.

• 55:09Nilay Patel?

  Today, Addie very dramatically covered her eyes with her hand and said, "I'm hacking my brain." It's super funny.

• 55:18Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it's crazy. There's a video, the video is equally crazy, because the actual engineers of Magic Leap are like, "We can't describe what it is." And one of them's just like, "It's so real." And they all look like they are in a cult, basically. They're all talking like they're in a cult.

• 55:36Speaker 01

  I mean, have you been to Florida?

• 55:38Nilay Patel?

  I mean, Dieter did used to live there.

• 55:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:40Nilay Patel?

  How are you?

• 55:41Speaker 01

  I also lived in Miami for a while.

• 55:42Nilay Patel?

  Are you clear?

• 55:49Nilay Patel?

  And then today, oh, and then there was a second follow-up piece published yesterday in Wired.

• 55:54Speaker 03

  Which starts with, "I have such a strict NDA that I can't tell you anything."

• 55:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So it's like, I went and visited Magic Leap, but my NDA is so hard, I can't, I literally can't write about it.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  But also, another great writer.

• 56:04Nilay Patel?

  Another great writer.

• 56:05Speaker 01

  Jesse Apple.

• 56:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Fucking amazing. So Magic Leap has convinced this, like... Beautiful, wonderful publication that we love to not publish anything about their visit to Magic Leap.

• 56:15Speaker 01

  And they did a great.

• 56:16Nilay Patel?

  And they wrote, they wrote around that NDA as best as any human being could possibly write around that NDA. But then today, Magic Leap just dropped, like, how many patent filings?

• 56:25Speaker 03

  I think it's seven, and I'm, I'm never certain on what's an updated filing and what's like a thing that's just being published or whatever, but seven things were pinged in my updates today.

• 56:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 56:35Speaker 03

  Seven patents, and they're all about like optic, optical projection.

• 56:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So they revealed what the thing is today.

• 56:42Speaker 03

  Or they false flagged it, and this actually has nothing to do with it.

• 56:45Speaker 01

  Oh, they just patented it because this isn't it.

• 56:47Nilay Patel?

  Because it's actually magic.

• 56:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:50Nilay Patel?

  I think I know what it is. Because if you go back and read older coverage, when they, it's like, over time, they're getting more secretive.

• 56:57Speaker 03

  It is obviously little projectors in your eyes. It's obviously holo lens, because Kevin Kelly says it is.

• 57:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Well, no, no, no, no. This, so we, this was the argument Eddie and I had earlier today. Holo lens is like a screen in front of your eyes. I think what they're doing is this, this light field stuff, where they're actually making your eyes believe the light is coming from farther away. I mean, we're.

• 57:20Speaker 03

  They're doing that with a projected screen. It's like, it's a different method. Like, the patents, the way I vaguely interpret them as someone who doesn't know much about optics, is that it's, like, it diffuses this, it's still projecting a thing, it goes through a waveguide, which is like a bunch of lenses. But holo lens, theoretically, it's like, okay, it projects a flat screen under your eyes, it looks good, but as perspective, Magic Leap, it can project it at different angles that will trick your brain into thinking it's at different focal lengths.

• 57:48Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 57:49Speaker 03

  So it's like the same fundamental technology, it's just applied in a way that does something different.

• 57:53Nilay Patel?

  But holo lens doesn't fool your brain into different focal lengths. They, they, they project a flat, plain image.

• 58:00Speaker 03

  But they're using the same, like, fundamental method of, like, the fundamental technology, one of them's just using it to do something different.

• 58:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I, I haven't obviously used Magic Leap, but I've used holo lens, and like, things, the, the holographs don't all look like they're the same distance, right? And like, sure, they're using, they might be using different tricks, but it's. It's not fundamentally like, oh, garbage. Like, it's like, the only problem with hololens is that the field of view is too small.

• 58:24Nilay Patel?

  Right. Oh, and by the way, the CEO of Magic Leap, when the hololens came out, went and did a Reddit AMA where he was like, "The hololens will burn your brain into, into goop."

• 58:33Speaker 03

  So I was going back and reading that, and it also, like, does hololens use stereoscopic anything? Because I'm not convinced that it does, because that's the weird thing with Magic Leap, and the weird thing with Kevin Kelly's piece, is that on the one hand, they're like, "Oh, this thing, you know, there's hololens, but this is better." But every time they directly compare it to something, it's either something like Google Glass, which obviously sucks, or it's too stereoscopic VR, which is a literal screen in front of your eyes. It's a totally different thing.

• 58:58Nilay Patel?

  Mm-hmm. I don't know. But I mean, if you look at the few photographs, it seems like right now the thing is fixed. It can't move, because everyone has their head in a thing.

• 59:10Speaker 03

  So that was actually the informative piece of the follow-up thing, is that when they tried it in December, it was tethered.

• 59:15Nilay Patel?

  Right. Well, tethered to a computer. I mean, I think it's fixed in place. Like, nobody even knows if it's a headset, or if it's like, right now, a demo rack that you like, put your face in, like, you're getting your teeth examined.

• 59:24Speaker 01

  Or you're going to the otometrist or something.

• 59:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. That, who knows? I mean, it all just sounds insane. My question is, there's no ship date, and they have said they don't even have a timetable to ship a thing.

• 59:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's like years out.

• 59:37Nilay Patel?

  Um, how are they gonna, why, so why are they dropping all this hype right now? And how can you possibly, if you watch the demo videos, the demo videos are full of software that cannot exist. Like, just, it looks like you're in the world of a 1990s entertainment CD-ROM. Like, that's what it looks like. Like, I don't know how else to describe that.

• 59:55Speaker 01

  Like a, like a cool world?

• 59:57Nilay Patel?

  Huh?

• 59:58Speaker 01

  Is it a cool world?

• 59:59Nilay Patel?

  It's like an E-world?

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  Cool world.

• 1:00:00Nilay Patel?

  What's Cool World?

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  A movie from the 90s?

• 1:00:03Nilay Patel?

  No. I was thinking of E-world, the failed online, Apple online service from the 90s.

• 1:00:06Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:00:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  No, you don't, it's like cartoons that are like, live in the real world? Okay, never mind.

• 1:00:11Speaker 03

  No, I don't know.

• 1:00:13Nilay Patel?

  That's a who framed Roger Rabbit.

• 1:00:14Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:00:16Nilay Patel?

  That'd be dope, though. If Magic Leap could give you who framed Roger Rabbit, I would live in the Magic Leap.

• 1:00:21Speaker 03

  I think the thing is that everything magically people are saying, which is like, it's like magic. It would sound really great if Hololens didn't exist.

• 1:00:28Speaker 01

  Cool. Let's knock off Roger Rabbit, by the way, if you're wondering.

• 1:00:31Nilay Patel?

  Got it.

• 1:00:32Speaker 03

  Like, as much as, you know, I hate the Hololens's field of view and stuff, it already is these things. And Hololens kinda is like magic.

• 1:00:39Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 1:00:39Speaker 03

  Like, it's amazing. It's just that they keep describing this amazing thing that kinda already exists. Like, if you kept talking about this amazing moving picture thing.

• 1:00:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:47Speaker 03

  In, like, the early 1900s.

• 1:00:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think that's, that's like the problem. It's too much technology is too familiar to people. So when they are doing this, like, spirit journey vocab that they do, it's like, well, no, no, tell me how it works. Is it glasses? Is it glasses like Hololens? Is it, is it a thing like the Rift? Is it, what's the computer? What are the specs of the computer you need? And they wanna do that Apple thing. Are you watching Cool World right now?

• 1:01:12Speaker 01

  It stars Brad Pitt and Gabriel Byrne and Kim Basinger. I'm gonna watch this silently while you guys talk.

• 1:01:17Speaker 03

  Watching this.

• 1:01:18Nilay Patel?

  I just, I just think the audience is too, too familiar with how technology works to get away with that bullshit.

• 1:01:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I also just, I don't know what they can do. If I were a company that got a ton of money and had some kind of crazy idea and evolved from like a transmedia comic book company, as they did, and it was like, then three months into everyone knowing about me, Microsoft announced a thing that seemed very, very similar to the thing that I was doing. And they were actually showing it to people. I don't know, and I knew I was like two years out because I'm not Microsoft. I don't know what I would do.

• 1:01:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and I'm, and every indication is that Apple doesn't really care about VR so much as AR. So, I mean, like, all the big players are gonna show up at the store and try to make something great.

• 1:02:05Speaker 03

  And I mean, Magic Leap's thing is that it seems to be focusing way more on entertainment than, I think, Microsoft or any of the others. Like, they hired Neil Stephenson. They work with, what, a workshop? I think what a workshop. Um, and they have all of these other crazy artistic people working for them. And that all that, like, if they were just focused on making like the best holographic entertainment of all time, I think they could maybe get away with that. But all the stuff they show is operating systems.

• 1:02:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's really weird. They they show you like checking your email. They search Snapchats. It's like crazy. It makes no sense to me.

• 1:02:40Speaker 03

  It's like Google Glass promo videos, like the original ones.

• 1:02:44Nilay Patel?

  A Rough Burn by Eddie Robertson. Okay, we've got five minutes left. Let's do a lighting round. Anyway, Magic Leap, very confusing.

• 1:02:49Speaker 02

  I'm lost.

• 1:02:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, no, that's the thing. It's designed to lose you. Like, you read these pieces and they're like, everyone's like, it's like, it's like doing drugs, but you're sober.

• 1:03:01Speaker 03

  Granted, that's how people talk about VR too.

• 1:03:04Speaker 03

  That's how people talk about any VR and AR thing. It is unintentionally obfuscatory.

• 1:03:10Speaker 01

  Wow, that is the best word that's ever been said on The Vergecast.

• 1:03:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Obfuscatory, I can't ob-

• 1:03:16Speaker 02

  Obfuscatory, I think?

• 1:03:17Nilay Patel?

  Obfuscatory.

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  Man, I'm so bad at high fives.

• 1:03:20Nilay Patel?

  All right, lighting round.

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  That was my fault, not your fault.

• 1:03:22Nilay Patel?

  Lighting round.

• 1:03:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:23Nilay Patel?

  400,000 Model 3 pre-orders for Tesla. For a car that no one, no one has actually seen the real interior of.

• 1:03:31Speaker 02

  Does it hack your brain?

• 1:03:32Nilay Patel?

  It hacks your brain. When you're in the Tesla Model 3, it's like you're on drugs, but you're sober.

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  If they pull off-

• 1:03:37Nilay Patel?

  But you're dreaming while you're awake.

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  If they pull off selling-

• 1:03:40Nilay Patel?

  No one knows how the Tesla Model 3 works. Sorry, but you're in Fort Lauderdale.

• 1:03:46Speaker 01

  If they pull off selling in eight of these-

• 1:03:48Nilay Patel?

  By the end of 20, what, this thing is coming out sometime 2017?

• 1:03:50Nilay Patel?

  Do you think they're in Fort Lauderdale just to make the employees work harder at escaping Fort Lauderdale through the magic of virtual reality?

• 1:03:58Nilay Patel?

  You can only leave here if you build a completely virtual environment around you.

• 1:04:03Speaker 01

  Dude.

• 1:04:03Speaker 02

  Like an inspiration technique.

• 1:04:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:05Speaker 02

  Like a motivator.

• 1:04:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's less inspirational and more like punitive, but you know, they're the same.

• 1:04:11Speaker 01

  Fort Lauderdale's okay.

• 1:04:13Nilay Patel?

  You can only leave Fort Lauderdale if you build a complete, that's a, that's a great movie. Like a, like a hacker race movie. You're trapped in an awful environment, but you can only leave through the internet.

• 1:04:24Speaker 02

  I love it.

• 1:04:24Nilay Patel?

  And you have to turn your body into a series of bits.

• 1:04:27Speaker 02

  That's a really clear one.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, actually, it's technically the plot of Cool World.

• 1:04:34Nilay Patel?

  No one, no one can challenge, no one can fact check Dieter on this, by the way. Every movie is a plot of Cool World until someone watches the trailer. Would you order, preorder Model 3?

• 1:04:45Speaker 03

  I have built my entire life around not owning a car, so no, but if I were ordering a car and I had a couple of years to wait and I was maybe planning to move in a couple of years, maybe. It seems cool.

• 1:04:57Speaker 02

  That's crazy. You don't know what you're gonna want in the future.

• 1:05:00Nilay Patel?

  Dieter?

• 1:05:02Speaker 01

  I would not, because I don't believe that they're going to ship this on time. And that if you are preorder number 300,999, 309,999, you're not seeing your car till 2020. Unless, unless Tesla like shocks the world with their prowess at like actually manufacturing things at scale.

• 1:05:23Speaker 03

  Granted, I'm like the only one in this room who pre-ordered an Oculus Rift, so.

• 1:05:27Nilay Patel?

  And, do you get yours yet?

• 1:05:28Speaker 01

  Where are you at on that?

• 1:05:29Speaker 03

  No, I'm in, I ordered within the first 20 minutes and I'm in mid-May, I think.

• 1:05:34Nilay Patel?

  Yikes.

• 1:05:34Speaker 03

  So the point is, I'm willing to preorder things for reasons that may not be great.

• 1:05:38Nilay Patel?

  What, what's your favorite Oculus ship date conspiracy theory?

• 1:05:41Speaker 03

  Um, I like the Xbox one. The one that Microsoft forgot to allocate all of the Xbox controllers.

• 1:05:47Nilay Patel?

  Uh, you, you haven't heard this one? People are like comparing serial numbers.

• 1:05:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have. I, I should not comment. My wife works for Oculus. But I will say that, guess what?

• 1:06:00Speaker 02

  I like this.

• 1:06:01Speaker 03

  I'm not saying I think it's true, I'm just saying I like it.

• 1:06:03Speaker 01

  Microsoft's pretty good at making enough controllers. They, they're like, you can go buy a Microsoft controller pretty easy.

• 1:06:08Nilay Patel?

  No, the theory is that Oculus is going to retail stores and buying controllers, right?

• 1:06:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, their argument was that they needed like giant batches of them and that Microsoft allocated all the giant batches somewhere else. And so they had to like go and try to cobble them together.

• 1:06:19Nilay Patel?

  Is this the massive amounts of Xbox Ones they're selling to unsuspecting doofus?

• 1:06:23Speaker 01

  Right? Like, it's not like there's somebody else.

• 1:06:25Nilay Patel?

  This is a lightning round. Phones to that headphone jacks. The first wave of them came out in China. Letgo put out three phones with USB-C jacks only, USB-C headphones. I think this is a stupid idea and a headphone jack is fine. Agree.

• 1:06:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's miserable, but technically I'm making my HTC One M8 into that, so I guess I can't talk.

• 1:06:45Nilay Patel?

  Because you broke it?

• 1:06:47Speaker 03

  It's, I don't know what's wrong with it. It just, I have to turn the headphone jack really carefully so I can keep sound.

• 1:06:52Nilay Patel?

  Makes sense. Is that the headphones, the jack?

• 1:06:54Speaker 03

  Or the jacket. I probably dropped my phone or something.

• 1:06:56Speaker 01

  I bet it's the solder point to the jack.

• 1:06:58Speaker 03

  I'm pro jack.

• 1:06:59Speaker 01

  It'd be a big problem.

• 1:07:00Nilay Patel?

  I don't know anyone who doesn't want a headphone jack on their phone. I mean, like-

• 1:07:03Speaker 03

  It's just such a ubiquitous piece of technology.

• 1:07:05Speaker 02

  Why take the option away?

• 1:07:06Speaker 03

  And also for stuff that's really expensive, like you can buy incredibly expensive headphones.

• 1:07:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Apple's gonna do this on the next phone and they're gonna have some reason about how they made it thinner. And it's even better quality.

• 1:07:16Speaker 01

  Better, you're gonna get amazing sound because it's all digital all the way.

• 1:07:20Nilay Patel?

  Even though it's not. It's fundamentally-

• 1:07:26Speaker 01

  You know, you know why? Because lightning makes no sound.

• 1:07:33Nilay Patel?

  It does make a sound. It makes fucking sound. It's just, why, why do these things keep coming back in this way?

• 1:07:42Nilay Patel?

  Xbox 360 production is over.

• 1:07:44Speaker 01

  That makes me sad a tiny little bit.

• 1:07:47Speaker 03

  Makes me sad and I also, it like worries me whenever of these, whenever one of these things goes out of circulation. Like if I have a PC, I can play a game from 1980 something or emulate it.

• 1:07:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:57Speaker 03

  Like whenever something like this happens, like a little segment of games just withers and dies.

• 1:08:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Although if you talk to Chris Crain, who's a editor of Polygon, he has like a totally reworked NES, like Nintendo Entertainment System, like that is actually like crystal clear and I don't think that, it's like that generation of consoles has been reworked and redeveloped several times. I'm actually very worried about the sort of like 360-

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:21Nilay Patel?

  PS3 generation because they're just too complicated and-

• 1:08:25Speaker 03

  And we just don't have the same level of nostalgia that will drive us to do things with them. Hopefully we will develop it, but I think there's a kind of cachet to like, oh, I work with NES systems and I do crazy things with them.

• 1:08:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:36Speaker 03

  And that no one necessarily feels that way about the 360, or at least no one who is really popular.

• 1:08:43Nilay Patel?

  What was the, what's the most iconic Xbox 360 game?

• 1:08:48Speaker 02

  A Halo?

• 1:08:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. There's a war.

• 1:08:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's one of those two, right? Everything else I'm thinking of is like cross-platform.

• 1:08:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:56Nilay Patel?

  What's the most iconic PS3 game? Halo?

• 1:09:00Speaker 01

  I've never been to PlayStation.

• 1:09:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've never.

• 1:09:02Nilay Patel?

  Oh, Uncharted. Uncharted's a good one.

• 1:09:04Speaker 02

  What's their like big exclusive franchise?

• 1:09:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. But it's still, I wouldn't, I wouldn't call that on the level, I'm gonna get angry emails about this. I would not put Uncharted in the level of Halo.

• 1:09:13Speaker 01

  Oh, speaking of angry emails.

• 1:09:14Nilay Patel?

  Love an angry email.

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  If you think that, um, Google Play is superior to Spotify. Google Play is superior to Spotify, email Neelai about it because now you can listen to the Vergecast on Google Play Music.

• 1:09:30Nilay Patel?

  You can, and the icon looks like pizza. Which is very, very nice. Um, so yeah, that's a good transition. You didn't even know. Well, you did know because you might have to run it open. Last lightning round item, Kanye West. Unprecedented move, reworking his already released album on streaming services just whenever he wants. We worked it on Apple Music last week.

• 1:09:50Speaker 02

  So wild. I'm so glad I have a cassette version of the original release.

• 1:09:56Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 1:09:56Speaker 02

  On my desk, yeah.

• 1:09:57Nilay Patel?

  Do you think that's like, is that acceptable? It's kind of like a weird idea. It's some George Lucas shit right there.

• 1:10:03Speaker 02

  It's really weird.

• 1:10:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:04Speaker 02

  It's like, I don't even like know what to, it's crazy. He's doing a lot of things right now. Always talking about Kanye. Not a moment goes by. I just had a really intense interview about him.

• 1:10:16Nilay Patel?

  Really? With who?

• 1:10:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um, a music writer that I'm interviewing for a story.

• 1:10:19Nilay Patel?

  I see a question. When you publish a story direct.

• 1:10:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:22Nilay Patel?

  How long has to elapse before you don't feel comfortable updating it?

• 1:10:28Nilay Patel?

  So if I publish a story to The Verge.

• 1:10:29Speaker 02

  Oh, if there's like.

• 1:10:30Nilay Patel?

  And like, and there's some.

• 1:10:31Speaker 02

  There's like a TK or like, I'm gonna go in there. Yeah.

• 1:10:33Nilay Patel?

  Well, TK's type, I was like, I think those, you can fix those whenever.

• 1:10:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:37Nilay Patel?

  Right? I publish a story and I'm like. Oh, man, I wish I just deleted that sentence. And if it's the first three to five minutes, I'll be like, whatever, I can just like update it. Like, no one's seen it yet. It's not part of the record. It's more than five minutes. I start to feel really antsy. I'm like, if I update this story in this way, I gotta go, I gotta put an update at the bottom.

• 1:10:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:56Nilay Patel?

  There's a correction, da, da, da.

• 1:10:58Speaker 02

  I agree, like a couple of minutes. It's touchy. That's really touchy.

• 1:11:01Nilay Patel?

  Right?

• 1:11:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:03Nilay Patel?

  Kanye had that record out for like three weeks and he just went back and changed it.

• 1:11:06Speaker 02

  But he doesn't have any like, it's not like someone's asking about uphold an ethics policy. You know what I mean? Like, he doesn't owe anyone anything.

• 1:11:13Nilay Patel?

  It's just the nature of like digital media means that you can and no one in music has ever thought that they should.

• 1:11:18Speaker 03

  And so, yeah, it's the integrity of artistic, artistic work.

• 1:11:22Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 1:11:22Speaker 02

  That's why we keep talking about this man. I can't get rid of him. Cause he keeps doing stuff to talk about.

• 1:11:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. No, I think it's just crazy that the idea that he's like, this isn't a malleable thing. The idea that people are suing him because he tweeted that it would never be on Apple. And then it is, is amazing. You know, this was like at least two class action suits against Kanye West. Cause he tweeted that it would only ever be on title and never on iTunes. Uh, so everyone sent up a title and he put it out.

• 1:11:48Speaker 02

  I got fucked into that and I wanted paying for a month sucked. Cause I did cancel in time.

• 1:11:52Nilay Patel?

  If you didn't realize that after it was over and after the curve went down.

• 1:11:56Speaker 02

  But I didn't want to wait. I was like, ready.

• 1:11:58Nilay Patel?

  You didn't wait. You bought it on cassette.

• 1:12:00Speaker 03

  Theoretically, you could buy it. Every game developer then, because the, it's not coming to this platform. Oh, it is coming to this platform thing seems pretty much standard.

• 1:12:10Nilay Patel?

  Well, I've been looking to start a lucrative garbage class action lawsuit business. Yeah. It works. I can get every one of you 26 cents and 30% off your next video game purchase. If you give me millions of dollars in lawyer fees.

• 1:12:23Speaker 01

  There's really a Planet Money or Freakin' Amics podcast on class action from the past couple of weeks. You should listen to it. Go find it. You'll find it. My take is the new reason to like buy music isn't to like have a library or feel like you own a thing or whatever. It's because you don't trust, uh, streaming service fuckery.

• 1:12:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:41Speaker 01

  Like I just, I, I, I went looking for a song I wanted to listen to that was stuck in my head randomly. Uh, by, uh, Ben Lee. It's an album called Breathing Tornadoes. Terrible. Not good, but like the couple of songs I really like, uh, that were like, were important to me way back when. And it's just like not around, but I happened to have bought it and like uploaded it to like a Google Play Locker. So like I could listen to it. And I'm realizing that for stuff that I really, really like, I'm going to start buying it because I don't trust Apple or Spotify or Title or Google to like hang on to licenses for it in perpetuity.

• 1:13:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, this is the argument for piracy.

• 1:13:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:21Speaker 03

  That pirates will preserve everything forever.

• 1:13:23Nilay Patel?

  Yep. Man, I gotta find this article. There was definitely an article when I was like, when Napster first started hitting in college, I read this article about this guy in New Jersey who had set up an entire room of his house because he had become inspired by the idea that he would, he alone would preserve the world's content.

• 1:13:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:45Nilay Patel?

  And he was like running up these massive power bills and his wife was like, what are you doing upstairs? And he just had like tower PC after tower PC downloading everything that he could.

• 1:13:52Speaker 03

  Whoa.

• 1:13:53Nilay Patel?

  I gotta find it. It's like an ancient piece, but like there's like a, there's like a cabal of these people who believe this. It's amazing.

• 1:14:00Speaker 03

  Well, I think with books like this been proven absolutely worthwhile that like there are so many weird orphan works that no one is ever going to do anything with and they just disappear.

• 1:14:09Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 1:14:10Speaker 03

  Google Books is actually an amazing service for this.

• 1:14:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:13Nilay Patel?

  They won, well, they, they won by default.

• 1:14:15Speaker 01

  Default.

• 1:14:16Nilay Patel?

  Um, the Supreme, it's a really bad Simpsons reference. The Supreme Court didn't take up the Google Books case, so Google just wins.

• 1:14:24Speaker 03

  I think it's been going on for like a decade.

• 1:14:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So the Authors Guild sued Google about scanning 10 million books for Google Books. It got all the way to Supreme Court. Supreme Court said, whatever. Basically, Google's fine.

• 1:14:36Speaker 03

  Yeah. And notably, like you cannot access these anywhere. Their whole argument is like you can look at them in libraries that have the book.

• 1:14:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:14:45Speaker 03

  Or you can like get them with some kind, if the author agrees to put them up or something like that. Um, but yeah, they were upset about just the scanning of it.

• 1:14:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Um, it's funny, um, Google won their Google, well, won, default won their Google Books case the same week that the EU cracked on them for Android. I'm sure they would prefer the Android one over the Google Books one. Okay, that was Verchass. Dieter, do you want to run through our engagements?

• 1:15:10Speaker 01

  You can follow us in all sorts of places. On Snapchat, we're Verge. You should rate us five stars on iTunes. You will also find other lovely Verge podcasts. You will find What's Tech with Chris Plant. You'll find Verge ESP with Emily Oshida and Elizabeth Lopato. And you can also find other great Fox Media podcasts. Recode's got a couple of great podcasts. They've got a, what have they got? Yeah, Recode Decode, Kara Swisher. There's a Recode Media.

• 1:15:36Nilay Patel?

  That's very good.

• 1:15:37Speaker 01

  And there's also

• 1:15:38Nilay Patel?

  Too Embarrassed to Ask.

• 1:15:39Speaker 01

  Too Embarrassed to Ask with Lauren Good. And special guests on all those shows. It's always really fun to listen to. On Verge, on Twitter, we're on theverge.com. We're on Twitter, we're at Verge.

• 1:15:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:49Speaker 01

  We're in some other places, too. And we're on Google Play now. That's a podcast, so you should go check us out there if you're

• 1:15:55Nilay Patel?

  Google Play Music, the best music service out there. They did it. It looks like a pizza. Also, I'm just gonna say this. Next week on The Verge, gonna be bonkers.

• 1:16:03Speaker 01

  You are going to lose your mind. If you're a Verge class listener, you want to go check out what's happening on theverge.com on Monday.

• 1:16:14Nilay Patel?

  You're gonna like it.

• 1:16:14Speaker 01

  It's gonna be great. Just, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna give a hint. Can I give one hint?

• 1:16:19Nilay Patel?

  One hint?

• 1:16:20Speaker 01

  All right, fine. I'm buying a neon sign.

• 1:16:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's true. That's a good hint. Is that it?

• 1:16:24Speaker 01

  Paul.

• 1:16:24Nilay Patel?

  Paul. Rock and roll. Goodbye.