Apple rumors, wireless headphones and No Man’s Sky

This week on Vergecast, both Nilay and Paul are out so Dieter and Lauren have taken the reins and invited fellow Verge colleagues Chris Plante, Dan Seifert, and Ross Miller to the show. The group discusses Apple rumors, new video game consoles, and No Man's Sky. 1:46 – Apple rumors 25:26 – Wireless headphones 28:42 – Game consoles 47:03 - No Man's Sky 55:36 – Dan's cool gadgets for rad dudes / dudettes 1:03:11 – Lightning round 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Oh, and I have to do a cold open? God damn it. All right.

• 0:07Speaker 00

  Here are some things that are true about The Vergecast. One, it is the flagship podcast of theverge.com. Two, I am not Neelai Patel, the host of The Vergecast. He is away in Madison, Wisconsin. Three, I am joined by a million people because we're overcompensating for Neelai's absence. And I'm, you know, it's just a lot of work to do this without Neelai Patel. So I am Dieter Bone, executive editor of The Verge. I am joined in San Francisco by Lauren Good, who is not going to say hi.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  Oh, hey, I was, hi, I'm doing work.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  In New York, we have Ross Miller and Dan Seifert.

• 0:48Speaker 02

  Hi.

• 0:49Speaker 03

  Hi.

• 0:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, and we also have in Austin, Chris Plant. Hello. So you don't get Neelai, and because we don't get him, you get a million people.

• 0:56Speaker 02

  We are spanning the continental United States.

• 0:59Speaker 03

  That's how big his personality usually is.

• 1:03Speaker 00

  Here's, here's one more thing that's true about The Vergecast. Typically, Neelai starts by reminding you that The Vergecast is sponsored by a fake vodka that he made up, Scissor Vodka, Cut Through the Night. And typically, we laugh and joke about that, but let me tell you the real truth. Rock beats scissors. It just does. And when Neelai's not here, we're not sponsored by Scissor Vodka. We're sponsored by Rock Scotch. Rock Scotch, smash through the morning.

• 1:32Speaker 03

  Damn it, I was gonna do a new Scissor Tagline since he's not here.

• 1:36Speaker 00

  Oh, what's your, what's your Scissor Tagline?

• 1:38Speaker 03

  Just run with it.

• 1:43Speaker 01

  That was the...

• 1:44Speaker 02

  I enjoyed that.

• 1:47Speaker 00

  So I brought along this, this giant panel of people because there's a giant amount of stuff to talk about, but we're gonna, we're gonna try and keep it relatively focused. And I think there's really no place to start other than Apple. There has been basically a massive pile of rumors that have landed in the past week, week and a half, and I think it's time we talked about them. A bunch of stuff came from Mark Gurman, who's now over at Bloomberg. I don't know, where do you guys want to start? Lauren, where do you want to start?

• 2:15Speaker 01

  Start with iPhone.

• 2:16Speaker 00

  With iPhone? All right. So the big rumor is what?

• 2:20Speaker 01

  There are about seven.

• 2:21Speaker 00

  We'll start.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  No pun intended, but about seven.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  This is just gonna be the show of dad jokes, isn't it?

• 2:29Speaker 02

  Brought to you by dad jokes.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  Dieter's wearing a dad jokes t-shirt right now. Just kidding, I completely made that up. So,

• 2:40Speaker 01

  okay, so we've heard, let's talk about the most persistent rumor that the headphone jack's going away. But we've well covered that.

• 2:47Speaker 00

  Can we talk about the headphone jack the entire time?

• 2:49Speaker 02

  I don't know if we've actually talked about the headphone jack enough.

• 2:53Speaker 01

  Really?

• 2:53Speaker 00

  Well, so the, the new twist, the new thing that everybody's trying to figure out right now is what are they gonna put in the box? Like John Gruber's worried about this. Thomas Ricker over on Verge is worried about this. Like, what are they gonna put in the box?

• 3:04Speaker 02

  I think it's

• 3:04Speaker 01

  What's in the box?

• 3:05Speaker 00

  What's in the box? A dongle? You think it's dongle?

• 3:08Speaker 01

  A dongle, really?

• 3:09Speaker 02

  No, wait, wait, no, that's not, that's very on Apple. Let me tell you, my bet is they are going to put lightning version of ear pods in the box and then sell a dongle for $29.

• 3:19Speaker 03

  Right. And also the premium lighting earbuds beyond that.

• 3:23Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 3:23Speaker 00

  Dongle's gotta be $19.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Yes. The premium ones would be like Beats, Lightning.

• 3:29Speaker 00

  So the, the case that Thomas Ricker made is that you can make a pair of Bluetooth headphones that pass the good enough test for like 30 bucks.

• 3:36Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, they're totally commoditized.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  Sell them for 70.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  Like if you look at Amazon, they're just filthy with them.

• 3:40Speaker 00

  Bluetooth headphones into the box. They could put earbuds in the box. They could put crappy earbuds in the box.

• 3:44Speaker 02

  But I mean, they, they already do put crappy earbuds in the box.

• 3:47Speaker 00

  So let me, let me tell you something. I use those earbuds all the time.

• 3:51Speaker 02

  No.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  Why? Do they fit well in your ears?

• 3:53Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  It can't be for sound quality. So it's gotta be fit.

• 3:56Speaker 00

  Let me tell you why. I like having a pair of headphones in my back left pocket all the time. So that if I need a pair of headphones, I don't happen to have like my better headphones on me. I don't have my Bluetooth headphones that are kind of big, or I don't have my in-ear headphones that I like. I know I have a pair of headphones on me and the, the standard Apple earbuds are great for keeping in your pocket because they're plastic all the way through. There's no like rubber part to get mucked up by sitting in your pocket with lint. And so you just pull these things out, have them, use them. And they're the only headphones with a microphone reliable enough to actually work with the Max headphone jack. So like you know the microphone's gonna work.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  You don't use them for listening to music. You use it for taking calls all day.

• 4:32Speaker 00

  I use it for like emergency headphones.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  So I can attest to the fact that he's wearing them right now.

• 4:37Speaker 00

  No, these are different. These are the in-ears.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, they are.

• 4:39Speaker 03

  Wait, so what are we, even from like a design standpoint, it knows, we know it need to be like small. Why would Apple make a small wireless Bluetooth earphone that has a remote or something that lets you do that has the microphone and presumably has some way to charge?

• 4:52Speaker 01

  Oh, well, I think what we're seeing is the ones that would come in the box would be lightning.

• 4:55Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Enabled. They'd be wired, too. They'd have, they'd be neck buds, right?

• 4:59Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:00Speaker 02

  Oh, man, neck buds is so.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  Well, no, neck buds would be Beats.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, like, you can make, you can make cheap neck bud style Bluetooth ones like Thomas mentioned for like 30 bucks, right? But Apple wouldn't make neck buds. I mean, I find it really hard to believe they would.

• 5:16Speaker 00

  How could the company that designed the iPhone 6 battery case and the hockey puck mouse ever create something as inelegant as neck buds? I don't believe it.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  Collar jam.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  You didn't get, let me get to the other half of this point is that they will make a fully Bluetooth headset, whatever, whether it's like the, whatever it's called, the, it's escaping my name, the ones that don't have the wires between them that are all in rage right now.

• 5:42Speaker 00

  Earbuds, wireless buds.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  But they're gonna sell those for like 200 or 300 dollars.

• 5:46Speaker 00

  Oh, my god.

• 5:47Speaker 03

  Airbuds.

• 5:47Speaker 02

  And then you get in the box, just a cheap wired set that all they did was rip off the 3.5 millimeter jack, put a lightning jack at the bottom and called it a day. Like, there're gonna be ear pods with a lightning jack. There's just like no way that's not the case. Profit margins, man, gotta protect the profit margins.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, and also just from a consumer perspective, I think getting consumers adjusted to yet another like format change is a bit, is a big enough deal. Also, getting millions and millions of consumers to suddenly adopt Bluetooth or wireless headphones when they haven't yet already. Although, although I think in the last quarter, at least in the US, wireless headphones actually outsold wired headphones for the first time, according to, I think it was the MPD Group. But still, there are a lot of people that use wired headphones. So I think like if you're gonna change one thing, you can't change everything right away. I think consumers would freak out if Apple was suddenly like, you have to use Bluetooth or wireless.

• 6:37Speaker 04

  There's also one reason why it absolutely can't be neck buds, which is how would they put it in a box? Like, can you imagine Apple trying to design packaging? For those stupid neck buds, not, they would spend three times as much time trying to find an elegant solution for that box than they would actually spend making those headphones. It's a box, but the box has wings and those wings are where the rest of the neck bud goes. Don't question it, just fly with it.

• 7:04Speaker 02

  All right, we talked about, we talked about like the lack of headphone jacks like ad nauseam, but I want to talk about this new.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  I was trying to make, I was trying to make a joke, Dan.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  I'm sorry.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  No, it's all right. Unapologetically horseshoe shaped boxes.

• 7:17Speaker 00

  Force touch home button.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, let's talk about that.

• 7:20Speaker 02

  So the force touch home button actually makes me think of a number of Android phones that have.

• 7:24Speaker 00

  Describe what we're, what we're talking, like what we're talking about is a home button that isn't an actual physical button anymore. It's like the trackpads on the Mac where when you touch it, it's pressure sensitive. And then there's a little taptic giga that like taps back at you at the right moment. So it feels like a button, but it doesn't actually move.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  It's like 3D touch.

• 7:40Speaker 00

  In my beautiful dreams, this means that they've gotten rid of like the last moving part that is keeping them from making it waterproof.

• 7:46Speaker 02

  Keep dreaming.

• 7:48Speaker 00

  Well, we don't think it's waterproof anymore.

• 7:50Speaker 02

  I don't know. Did we think it was waterproof before?

• 7:53Speaker 00

  No, but I'm saying that like now it's on the table.

• 7:56Speaker 02

  I suppose, I don't know. And this, this makes me think that of like, you know, there's a couple of phones that came out this year, there's uh, uh, HUC's 10 and the one plus three that have a home button that doesn't move. It just, it, it senses when you touch it and it unlocks the phone and, and it vibrates, you know, so it knows that.

• 8:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, but the general like overall vibration is dumb. They've got to do the thing that they do on the Apple Watch or on the Mac where like it feels like it's, it's tapping you back in that precise spot.

• 8:23Speaker 02

  Right, yeah, no, definitely. Assuming they can, you know, miniaturize it that small or whatever, but you know, Apple's got to figure that out.

• 8:29Speaker 00

  So we're expecting this stuff to hit on uh, September 7th seems to be the date that everybody's sort of.

• 8:35Speaker 02

  That's my birthday.

• 8:36Speaker 00

  Landing on, it's like what Gorman had. The other thing he said is that the MacBook Pro is not going to be there. What?

• 8:43Speaker 02

  I know Jeb Bush won't be able to upgrade his entire fleet all at once.

• 8:48Speaker 00

  Oh, wait, we didn't talk about Apple Watch 2 either.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, all glass, but that's a 2017 rumor.

• 8:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, right? Tell me that's right.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, 2017 is when the so there was a leak, I think, earlier this week that one of the suppliers has been working with Apple to make an all glass phone. So no aluminum, just glass. Can't wait for people to shatter that thing.

• 9:11Speaker 00

  Sapphire can't get no respect.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:13Speaker 00

  Sapphire is a roddy danger field of materials.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  But there are all kinds of speculations, some of which I talked about on CNBC yesterday. It was like total speculation, by the way, about what this could possibly mean. And it could be like, it's more immersive, like we're seeing with the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge. It could be that it's good for wireless charging. It could be that it's better for connectivity, because.

• 9:36Speaker 00

  There's no way they're doing wireless charging.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  I don't know. There's like all the like, everyone's like, why would it go all glass? And.

• 9:45Speaker 02

  I don't know, maybe because Samsung makes mostly glass phones and it's leapfrogged Apple in terms of product design.

• 9:51Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean.

• 9:54Speaker 00

  We've all held like, who who who here has held a Note 7?

• 9:58Speaker 01

  I have.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  I have.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Raising my hand that you can't see it.

• 10:00Speaker 00

  Who here thinks that the Note 7 is radically better than the iPhone 6 in terms of design?

• 10:05Speaker 01

  I really like the Note 7.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  I do.

• 10:07Speaker 00

  Right?

• 10:08Speaker 01

  I really like the Note 7.

• 10:09Speaker 00

  Way better. So, yeah, they they got to do something. And if this if the rumor on the iPhone 7, or I'm sorry, the iPhone 6 SE, like, isn't that something that's floating around out there?

• 10:19Speaker 01

  iPhones. Oh, yes, it was. But now there's not gonna. I don't even know.

• 10:24Speaker 00

  Okay, so.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  So Max.

• 10:26Speaker 02

  Apple Watch? We didn't talk.

• 10:28Speaker 00

  Apple Watch, whatever you want. So it's like GPS faster processor. Yay, I don't care.

• 10:32Speaker 02

  But same design.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  Peter says yay, and I'm like, inside, like, my heart's a flutter over the idea of GPS.

• 10:37Speaker 00

  Do you think that they're going to be able to put a battery in there that'll actually be good enough?

• 10:41Speaker 01

  It's gonna have to be a pretty thick watch would be my understanding.

• 10:43Speaker 00

  The rumor is going to be like slightly thinner, but use the same lugs to hold the not lugs. What do we? What do we call the strap attachment?

• 10:50Speaker 02

  Normal people call them lugs, but I don't know what Apple calls them. Normal people call them lugs?

• 10:55Speaker 00

  It's the strap trench.

• 10:56Speaker 02

  The strap trench.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  We should call them like hitches.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  Winches.

• 11:02Speaker 00

  You yoke the thing to your wrist.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  They should create, oh, that's a great idea. They should create one that has a winch. And when you want to put it on in the morning, you just slide it towards you.

• 11:15Speaker 02

  Hitches and lugs and yolks aside, is that they're going to come out with, the rumor says that they're going to come out with a new version called the Apple Watch 2 or whatever, that'll have that GPS, similar design to what they have. But they'll also, and a faster processor, but they'll also update the old Apple Watch with the faster processor and still sell that for a cheaper price, which doesn't make a whole ton of sense to me, but.

• 11:38Speaker 00

  I mean.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  I usually think that makes great sense because look at them with basically what they did to the iPhone SE. They said, here's this phone, this old form factor, but we're going to put a faster processor in it and people went.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  But isn't, isn't the whole promise of watch OS 3 that like it is so much faster without a hardware upgrade?

• 11:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, but.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  Well, the limitations are staring us in the face.

• 11:57Speaker 00

  What I really want is a watch that has a screen on all the time.

• 12:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean.

• 12:01Speaker 00

  They can put enough battery in the thing to have, make the GPS work. Maybe they could put enough battery in the thing to, you know, make me not have to like spin my arm in a 360 degree circle to see what time it is.

• 12:11Speaker 02

  I think there's already enough battery to do that. Like if you wear an Apple Watch every day, what do you end the day at? 40, 35%? Like, when was the last time an Apple Watch died in a full day for you?

• 12:21Speaker 00

  Uh, it happens like once every couple of weeks.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  Really long workout, I guess.

• 12:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, like, I feel like there's a lot of, they, they're using AMOLED screens already. There's a lot of other watches on the market that use AMOLED screens and last all day with their watch on, with their face showing a, you know, low res display or whatever. I don't, I don't know why Apple couldn't do it and still have a watch that lasts most of the day or all day.

• 12:45Speaker 04

  I have a question.

• 12:46Speaker 00

  I'm still wearing a smart, yeah, go ahead.

• 12:48Speaker 04

  Do you, do you think the reason your Apple Watch lasts all day is because it is purposeless and doesn't like do anything?

• 12:57Speaker 02

  Because you're not wearing it and it's sitting in a drawer.

• 13:00Speaker 04

  But that seems likely.

• 13:03Speaker 04

  I mean, I don't know. I'm no tech expert. I'm just the sideshow.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  Sideshow Chris, I've got a question for you. Do you wear an analog watch or a digital watch or just non-smart watch?

• 13:16Speaker 04

  Me? No, because I have a phone. If I want to check the time, I look at like the phone.

• 13:21Speaker 00

  But how do you, how do you subtly let somebody know that you're bored with this conversation and you'd like to leave?

• 13:26Speaker 04

  I've been trying this for podcasts.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  But, but Chris, how do you quantify every moment of your life? Every heartbeat, every step?

• 13:39Speaker 04

  That is a good, that is a very good question. I have accepted that I will die young.

• 13:43Speaker 02

  I've taken 8,700 steps today. What have you done?

• 13:45Speaker 04

  I don't know. I rode a bike for 20 minutes. I'm a grown man.

• 13:52Speaker 02

  I'm not gonna make a grown man riding a bike joke. Not gonna do it.

• 13:55Speaker 00

  What, what's the joke?

• 13:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:57Speaker 02

  That's why I didn't do it.

• 13:59Speaker 00

  Okay, there's no joke there. That's a good reason not to do it. That's a very good reason not to tell a joke. It doesn't exist.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  We can talk, but...

• 14:08Speaker 00

  I'm not buying an iPhone 7, right?

• 14:10Speaker 01

  You're not buying one?

• 14:11Speaker 00

  This will be the first iPhone I don't buy.

• 14:13Speaker 02

  What if they do the dual camera on the Plus or Pro?

• 14:16Speaker 00

  Oh, so, yeah. So if the, if the Plus gets the, the super fancy camera. Describe to us what the purpose of the dual camera is on the iPhone 7 Plus.

• 14:25Speaker 02

  Uh, you want me to take this? Sure.

• 14:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:28Speaker 02

  Uh, so, eh, according to the rumors, it would take two pictures or take the same, both, both cameras would take the same picture at the same time. And then their data would be blended together for a better quality image, uh, which sounds like similar technology to what we've seen on, say, the Huawei P9, which has a Leica branded camera, but it takes two images at the same time, captures more data with two separate cameras and then blends them together into the final result. So that could, it's a certain possibility. It doesn't seem to be...

• 14:57Speaker 00

  So what, what is each lens doing? Like, what's, what's the main lens and the secondary lens doing? Like, one takes red and one takes blue?

• 15:02Speaker 02

  In the case of, in the case of the Huawei, I believe one takes a full color resolution image. The other one takes just the luminance. So it's actually almost like a black and white image. But the software blends them together and because it can capture more detail in just the luminance side of things. But that gets really deep into like camera image processing. But, but what, what I mean is, it doesn't sound like the iPhone would have a dual camera system like, say, the G5, which had a, uh, standard width lens and a wide angle lens that it switched between depending on how much zoom you wanted. Or the HTC Evo 3D, which made a 3D image because it had two cameras.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  So this isn't, this isn't like a camera that's gonna work with 3D modeling. Did you already, did I miss that?

• 15:50Speaker 02

  No.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  I was zoning out for a moment. So admittedly, I met with this startup recently that it's not fully launched yet, but it's in beta. And they're doing some really cool stuff with like 3D modeling. You know, you put your phone, you take an image of a room and then it just creates this stuff around it. And anyway, I won't get into too many details yet. But, but they said, you know, like using something like Project Tango.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  Right.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  They can do really, really cool stuff with 3D modeling. And so when I hear dual camera system, that's kind of what I'm thinking.

• 16:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  It sounds like this wouldn't be a similar use case.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  It doesn't sound like it. It doesn't sound like based on the rumors and like, you know, smoke and mirrors information that we have so far.

• 16:30Speaker 02

  It sounds like, like a Project Tango type of device would have multiple cameras and sensors and stuff like that. And can map out spaces and isn't really great for photography. It's designed for other things. I would think that Apple would just lean in really hard on the photography side of things.

• 16:47Speaker 00

  Because they certainly can't lean in on the music side of things.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  But.

• 16:52Speaker 00

  Okay. I, I'm not, I'm not gonna get it. This will be the first iPhone.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  Wait, are we missing rumors though?

• 16:59Speaker 02

  Do we talk about the MacBooks that won't be?

• 17:01Speaker 00

  No, we've gotta get like, so I gotta say, I'm using the MacBook MacBook, the little itty bitty MacBook, the most recent one. And man, I'm on like, I'm on enough video calls often enough now where it's like, I made a mistake. This can't handle it. Zoom or Google Hangouts are too much for this thing to handle. And so I'm like, oh yeah, it's time for a MacBook Pro. And apparently it's not gonna appear at the September 7th event. Don't know when it's gonna appear. And the rumor is it's not actually gonna be tapered. It's gonna be like standard block of Mac and it's gonna have that OLED touchscreen strip. Which I'm, if they do it right, I'm ridiculously excited about.

• 17:43Speaker 00

  And if they do it wrong, I'm pretty like meh about.

• 17:48Speaker 01

  If they do it right, it will be truly customizable and not I have doubts about.

• 17:52Speaker 02

  It would be like an art levit of keyboard, right? Did I say that name? What?

• 17:58Speaker 00

  No, it'll just be a strip at the top. It won't be the whole keyboard.

• 18:00Speaker 02

  No, no, but like the concept, if it was customizable, because it would like change, right? You could, the display would change based on what you set it to.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can say, I never use these buttons, but I use this one a lot. And so this one's going here and I'm putting this one here. And really, if like you'd look at the iPhone as a model, which probably isn't the best comparison. It's not especially customizable.

• 18:20Speaker 02

  I, I, I just wonder who's, who's actually asking for this? Like, I'd rather have a thinner, lighter MacBook Pro.

• 18:26Speaker 00

  I mean, how much, I don't think the OLED strip adds that much. Like, I really don't.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  No, I mean, no, I mean, not, I don't mean to say that, but like, if there was areas that I would rather Apple spend its time and focus on improving, I'd rather have a thinner, lighter MacBook Pro than an OLED touch strip on my MacBook Pro. That's all.

• 18:43Speaker 00

  I'm, I'm still team battery. Don't care. Like, if you're buying a MacBook Pro, let it, let it have a longer battery life.

• 18:50Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 18:50Speaker 00

  A little bit thicker.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  I've looked around a 15 inch MacBook Pro for two years.

• 18:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, that's, that's on you, man.

• 18:57Speaker 02

  That still has terrible battery life.

• 18:59Speaker 00

  Team 13 inch laptop forever. That's the way to go.

• 19:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 19:04Speaker 00

  I guess I have a 12, whatever.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  It's the secondary. I'm reading this now and I, I still, I guess I don't know why, why we would have an OLED touch bar.

• 19:14Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly.

• 19:15Speaker 00

  So it can show you acute Siri animation. So you can have a mix of function keys and other things.

• 19:21Speaker 02

  So you can have custom emoji. No Man's Sky.

• 19:23Speaker 00

  Dude, if it, if it lists like eight favorite emoji all the time, that'd be great.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Touch ID fingerprint reader, potentially on the MacBook Pro, which would be really cool. Cause you could just go buy stuff and be like, boop, buy it.

• 19:37Speaker 00

  Cause Apple Pay is going to be such a huge smash hit on the web. Everybody's going to use it.

• 19:40Speaker 01

  Well, there's that. Dieter.

• 19:44Speaker 00

  What?

• 19:45Speaker 01

  Dieter, the room is burning.

• 19:47Speaker 00

  Buying stuff sucks.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  Burns. We're going to have to exit this podcast taping shortly.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  Do you think that they'll get rid of the headphone jack on the MacBook Pro?

• 19:56Speaker 00

  No, there's no way.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  This is a serious question.

• 19:59Speaker 00

  There's no way, right?

• 20:01Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I still don't understand why, you know, why the iPhone, next iPhone, the one that's coming next month, doesn't have a headphone jack. If the design isn't any different, it's not any thinner. It's like, what, what, why, why, why doesn't it have it?

• 20:15Speaker 00

  You know what's ironic about the headphone jack thing? One, we can't stop talking about it. And it's just whatever. Um, I'm going to list some phones that, um, you know, were available when the iPhone came out. BlackBerry 8300 Curve. Did that have a headphone jack?

• 20:30Speaker 02

  Yes, Curve Line did. Had a 3.5 millimeter.

• 20:33Speaker 00

  The Curve got to 3.5. Okay. The N95 did, for sure.

• 20:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:37Speaker 00

  Uh, was it like the Trio 680 that was around that time? That was a 2.5 and that was a disaster. A bunch of the other BlackBerrys that were popular at the time did not have headphone jacks. So like, one of the things that made the original iPhone kind of compelling, you could just use it for music with like real headphones.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  It's, and it's also worth noting that none of those devices were great media players or experiences.

• 21:02Speaker 00

  Oh, they're all terrible.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  So like, you didn't really care that you couldn't plug a headphone set into them because you would use an iPod because that was your media experience. And the iPhone changed that whole conversation. Um, the Samsung Blackjack had a 2.5 millimeter. And then I had a, an HTC Sprint Mogul that had the HTC Dongle Adapter. What was that called? I don't remember what it was called, but it plugged into the USB port and.

• 21:24Speaker 00

  Yeah. Did the Prada? Did the chocolate? Whatever.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  You know, this is all going to be just a non-topic in the future because soon enough, we're all just going to be wearing giant face computers. And so we'll be surrounded by sound. It will be this in these completely immersive environments where sound will just be patched directly to our faces.

• 21:43Speaker 02

  I want to know how Chris Plant feels about the loss of a headphone jack. Woof. Am I right?

• 21:52Speaker 04

  I know, I, it's stupid. Here's the thing about the dongle that I'll say. I have, I, when I was in high school, I thought of myself as an audiophile, if you will. And I, I don't know, somehow I found out about Sennheiser headphones. And I begged my parents to get these headphones. And it was like, oh, it'll be my birthday present and Christmas and everything else in the world combined. And I'll throw in as much money as I can from working during the summer, yada, yada, yada. So I got these nice headphones and I've had them ever since. But the main output is like what you would plug into a speaker amp. Uh, or like a nice pair of like the stuff that I use for recording podcasts.

• 22:36Speaker 02

  So you mean with the big, the big quarter inch jack?

• 22:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, big quarter inch jack. So whenever I want to use it on normal things, I have to use a dongle. Here's the thing about that. I have bought a hundred dongles because I lose it constantly. And I only use these headphones in my house, which means like they go to the phantom zone for all I know. But they still get lost. And like, it's not like, oh, one day I fell like into a surplus of these dongles. No, they're just gone forever. I don't know where they are. And I guarantee what would happen with me and like, I mean, probably other people. I would hope that I'm not alone here is that if you introduce a dongle to normal people, they're going to lose it.

• 23:22Speaker 04

  And if the only option, at least at first, is to pay $30 or $20 or whatever absurd price Apple will attach to it. Yeah, that, that sounds right.

• 23:31Speaker 02

  There's no way they do that.

• 23:32Speaker 04

  If you, if it's more than two or $3, like what I can pay for a dongle on Amazon, it's absurd. And that, everything about that is maddening to me.

• 23:42Speaker 02

  I just, I just want to point out that the, the adapter that Apple sells to turn a micro USB cable into a lightning cable. It's like maybe half an inch long piece of plastic is $9.99.

• 23:52Speaker 00

  So yeah, so they could they could sell the the dongle for $9.99.

• 23:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, because the dongle is gonna be longer.

• 23:58Speaker 04

  I I I don't think like it's inherently bad idea to get rid of the audio jack. If there was something that was like magnitudes better. What this feels like to me is like if somebody has a Blu-ray player right now and you're like, you know what? No more options for you. It's time to switch to ultra HD Blu-ray. I would be like, why the hell are you making me do this?

• 24:23Speaker 02

  I mean, that's that. I mean, that's actually an upgrade, right? Because ultra HD is 4K. In theory, is is an upgrade. But you can't use the old Blu-rays now. But at least at least it's putting you forward. You know, getting rid of the headphone jack and forcing you to use the Lightning doesn't improve your experience.

• 24:38Speaker 04

  Oh, I thought they were pushing this.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  Well, it might improve the phone. No, the idea is like, maybe they'll fit in an extra speaker at the bottom and improve sound. Maybe they'll make the design even thinner. It's maybe I I don't know, because I don't know mechanical engineering as well as the people at Apple do. Maybe it even allows room for a bigger battery somehow. I mean, it allows room for things. That's all I know. It's like, all right, let's move this, you know, this your favorite chair out of the living room now. Because we're gonna make room for something else, even though you're like, I really don't want to get rid of my favorite chair.

• 25:09Speaker 02

  The 3.5 millimeter headphone jack is a comfortable chair. I like that.

• 25:14Speaker 00

  We were all just sitting and imagining our favorite chairs and getting real mad.

• 25:18Speaker 04

  No, you know, the chair analogy works because like if I have a favorite chair and they can't even tell me what the new thing is that they're replacing it with, then you're damn well right. I'm gonna get pissed. They're taking my chair.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  It's a bassinet.

• 25:32Speaker 02

  You're gonna replace it with one of those exercise balls.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  You're welcome.

• 25:36Speaker 04

  Classic.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  It's gonna wake you up in the middle of the night.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  You're not gonna sleep for the next 18 years. You're welcome. That's what they're making room for.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  Uh, so while we're on the uh, very engrossing topic of headphones. Lauren, you reviewed a whole bunch this week, right? Wireless ones.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  I did. I did wireless exercise headphones. They're like, they're not all exercise headphones, but that's what we were focused on for our review.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  You want me to just keep going?

• 26:06Speaker 00

  Just tell us just tell us which one to buy.

• 26:10Speaker 01

  For the question, uh, we, this was part of our, this is my next series. You can find it on YouTube and the verge.com. We voted the J lab epic twos as our top pick for the best wireless Bluetooth headphones you can use for working out. And then our runner up was the Plantronics backbeat fit. And the J labs are a hundred bucks and the backbeat fits can be found online for between 75 and 80. So, yeah, we, I mean, here's the thing, Chris, you mentioned earlier, like you used to fancy yourself an audiophile. And when we go into these kinds of reviews, we're like, we put the caveat out there in many different ways that this is not about pure sound quality. It's not like this is the best, the purest, most unadulterated sound that you're going to get from a pair of wireless headphones.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  But we just look at things like fit, durability and waterproofing and battery life and just ease of use. And say, this is what we worked out with, and this is what felt the best to us. So, um, so there you go. So.

• 27:07Speaker 00

  Uh, Lauren, I'm guessing that in the course of, uh, research and producing this piece that you worked out more than I have in the past 10 years.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I'm not gonna, I can't say how much you've worked out, Dan. Uh, but I will say that, uh, I worked out at least all three times.

• 27:24Speaker 00

  Probably not much.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh, yeah, I worked out a fair, a fair amount. I remember at one, we were actually on vacation at one point and I was, it's when I was testing the Plantronics at that point in time. And I was like getting up in the morning to go work out and use the Plantronics. And my boyfriend was like, we are on vacation. And I was like, I know, I gotta test some headphones, you know, like, pretty dedicated.

• 27:49Speaker 00

  Uh, that's how I go on vacation and work and get sand in my laptop and it ruins my keyboard. Do you guys miss Neelai?

• 27:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 27:57Speaker 00

  All right, let's, let's, let's see if we can find him. I bet you that he could take us to the money zone right now.

• 28:06Nilay Patel?

  The Vergecast, as you know, is supported by Citi Cards with Android Pay. How cool is it that we live in a world where you can use the same device to listen to the Vergecast and buy your morning coffee, groceries, and more? Did I mention that it's a super fast way to pay? Just use your Citi card with Android Pay at the register. Get in, get it, and get going. Download the Android Pay app on Google Play or visit citi.com/androidpay to get started. Android Pay is available for eligible Citi Consumer Credit and Debit Cards.

• 28:32Speaker 00

  Man.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  Money making.

• 28:34Speaker 00

  I thought we missed Neelai, but that was not that special. Maybe we're better off.

• 28:38Speaker 01

  Sorry, I didn't realize you were going.

• 28:43Speaker 00

  Could I tell you a secret, Ross and Chris? Yeah, sure.

• 28:47Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 28:48Speaker 00

  I have never owned a PlayStation. Not a single one, never in my life, not once have I ever had a Sony gaming console in my house.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  Me neither.

• 28:58Speaker 03

  It's okay.

• 28:58Speaker 01

  It's not surprising.

• 29:00Speaker 03

  You know what Splatoon is, and that's what matters.

• 29:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I've owned every Xbox for some insane reason. Not every single iteration of every Xbox, but like enough. I didn't have like the whatever the Xbox 360 Slim.

• 29:14Speaker 04

  Did you have Sega consoles as a young'un?

• 29:18Speaker 00

  No, because I liked playing video games.

• 29:20Speaker 03

  Oh, whoa, whoa.

• 29:23Speaker 04

  See, I thought that might have been the case because I, as a Sega loyalist, had kind of like a thing against PlayStation because it was like the rival.

• 29:33Speaker 02

  I'm with you, Chris. I was a Sega loyalist. I played my Aladdin, my superior Aladdin, for many years.

• 29:39Speaker 03

  Well, no, so the Loyal had a Genesis. Did you stick with them to the Sega Saturn, though?

• 29:43Speaker 02

  Oh, no, of course not.

• 29:44Speaker 03

  What?

• 29:44Speaker 02

  I mean, there's a reason.

• 29:45Speaker 03

  Why not?

• 29:46Speaker 02

  There's a reason that Sega doesn't make hardware anymore because nobody bought their Saturn and then not the Dreamcast, right?

• 29:52Speaker 00

  What was the, what was the disk-based system that Sega had?

• 29:56Speaker 02

  I will say I did, was the one person who bought the 32X and a Sega Nomad.

• 30:00Speaker 00

  Was it 32X? What was the, what was the actual like physical like CD-ROM?

• 30:04Speaker 04

  Sega CD system.

• 30:05Speaker 03

  Sega CD.

• 30:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, Sega had this like, Sega was like the original modular concept, right? Because you had the Genesis that sat on top of the Sega CD and then you had the 32X that sat on top of the Genesis.

• 30:17Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, and you can do them all at once.

• 30:18Speaker 02

  Yes, you could. It was pretty sweet.

• 30:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, I got to, I got to have that in my life when I was in college because my roommate had one.

• 30:25Speaker 03

  I believe that let me get Sonic and Knuckles in all my favorite songs of Hedgehog games.

• 30:35Speaker 04

  I was not.

• 30:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was Knuckles Chaotix was on 32x.

• 30:38Speaker 04

  Oh, that's right.

• 30:39Speaker 02

  And 32x had a version of the Star Wars arcade game, which was really, really hard.

• 30:43Speaker 00

  Okay, tell me about this upgraded PlayStation 4. Just, I don't, we're done with, I trolled Chris, it failed, you all love Sega, Sega's the best, I take everything back. Nobody could ever say anything bad about Sonic nor his sexual proclivities.

• 30:58Speaker 04

  You're right, cause Sega does what Nintendo don't.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  What's the deal with Sonic?

• 31:04Speaker 02

  I just love taking out these 25 year old video game birds.

• 31:06Speaker 00

  Wait, wait, wait, Lauren, Lauren doesn't know about Sonic's secret life.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  What is Sonic's secret life? I've played Sonic.

• 31:13Speaker 02

  As an internet sensation?

• 31:15Speaker 00

  Sensation. Just, just don't, don't Google it.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  Alright, I won't. I just tried to.

• 31:20Speaker 04

  No, Google, Google, Sonic.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  I just tried to.

• 31:24Speaker 04

  S A N.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  Just tried to find old reviews of the original Sega Genesis to see what people were writing.

• 31:31Speaker 04

  And that's not that bad.

• 31:32Speaker 01

  For like them and it's impossible to find.

• 31:34Speaker 00

  Image, oh, oh, San, yeah, I know Sonic, that's fine.

• 31:38Speaker 04

  Okay, do you need to, do you need to know about this? This PlayStation 4 project, Neo.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  Wait, Urban Outfitters is selling the Sega Genesis. That it's over, it's over. Okay, go ahead.

• 31:48Speaker 04

  You know how, you already talked about the new Xbox on one of these shows, right?

• 31:53Speaker 02

  Yes, we did, last week, actually.

• 31:54Speaker 04

  Okay, so, that, uh, but PlayStation, I guess is like how you can think of it?

• 32:00Speaker 00

  No, but the.

• 32:02Speaker 04

  It's, it's slightly different. So, what Microsoft is doing is this year it released a slightly more powerful Xbox One, which you reviewed and did an excellent job of, I must say.

• 32:15Speaker 00

  Yes, you must.

• 32:16Speaker 04

  I think you had a great edit there, too.

• 32:17Speaker 00

  You're required by your contract to say nice things about me and what I do.

• 32:21Speaker 04

  This is also a fact. Um, so next year, they're gonna release something called Project Scorpio, which is the beginning of their, I guess, iterative design philosophy that is gonna probably look a lot more like what we have with iPhones, where there'll be some kind of universal store. And everything will play on every system-ish, uh, but the newer consoles will be more powerful and games will look better on them. They might have additional features that are only possible on the newer things. And ultimately, Microsoft will have the excuse to like, try to get you to buy a new Xbox every year.

• 33:01Speaker 04

  Um, or however often they release it. So, Project Scorpio, within the context of that, sounds like it's kind of somewhere in between. It is going to be more powerful, we think, than, uh, the Xbox One S. But it's not clear if it is Sony's kind of, uh, starting point for something more iterative.

• 33:22Speaker 03

  We're sorry, Neo, Neo right now.

• 33:25Speaker 04

  Oh yeah, sorry, Neo. Neo is the code word. Thank you. Um, but yeah, it's unclear if it'll be as iterative as whatever Microsoft ends up doing. Um, it will, the idea is it'll play 4K, uh, whether or not it'll actually play 4K games. I have a lot of trouble believing. Um, it, even like the GTX. It, I mean, it might, it might play them at like, with low graphics. Quality options, I guess, is what I would say. That's not quite the right way of phrasing it, but the way I look at it is.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  Like a low frame rate?

• 34:01Speaker 04

  No, like, so if you play video games on a PC, on top of like being able to change the resolution. You could say, oh, I want like medium level quality textures, or high, or ultra, or I want this level of particle effects. There are all these different kinds of ways to, uh, stress the computer. Do you love settings? And I think. If you love settings, get a PC.

• 34:24Speaker 03

  I, you know, I don't, I don't even know if, uh, I don't know if it's gonna go that far. We're gonna, we're gonna get in a big fight over PC versus console gaming.

• 34:30Speaker 04

  I'm not, I'm not saying it's gonna offer those settings. I'm saying to get 4K to run on a consumer grade console, it's gonna have to make some other sacrifices elsewhere. Because right now, if you play a game on Mac settings on a PC at 4K. Even with the top of the line graphics card, there's no guarantee that it's going to run smoothly. And I have trouble believing that Sony, a company that makes money off of its hardware, is going to be able to sell something at a consumer price by next year that does that without making those sacrifices.

• 35:05Speaker 00

  So we're expecting this, what are we expecting this thing to actually be good for? Because like the 1S is, the Xbox 1S is like a console. It's like, if you don't have an Xbox and you want an Xbox, you should buy that Xbox. But if you have an Xbox, it will play 4K Blu-rays and HDR. It's not worth upgrading. You should wait for the real upgrade, which will handle VR. But like, I don't, I don't-

• 35:29Speaker 04

  I think it'll do that, and I think VR-

• 35:31Speaker 00

  There's no reason for the-

• 35:32Speaker 04

  I mean, I think VR is the big thing.

• 35:33Speaker 00

  Other than like, they needed to make the Xbox One not suck, and they did that.

• 35:37Speaker 03

  Right, I mean, like, it's like, that's the S model for iPhones, or even like the SE model. Here's the cheaper version that's slightly better, slightly different. We've refined, we've cleaned up, we've made it a little slimmer. We don't worry about battery life because it's always plugged in anyway.

• 35:50Speaker 00

  So convince me that I shouldn't just go buy a cheap PlayStation 4 now and not, you know, like, should I wait for the Neo? What's the Neo gonna do?

• 35:57Speaker 04

  I mean, are you the person who's going to buy PlayStation VR? Like, that is probably gonna be the big argument for it. Because powering VR is difficult.

• 36:09Speaker 00

  I guess that's my big question around this, is how does VR play into this? Because is, will VR be, work with the existing PlayStation 4? Or is, is that the big thing that this adds is compatibility with Sony VR?

• 36:19Speaker 03

  Okay, so yes, I think, I think one thing we're clarifying is like, we don't suspect the Neo is coming out necessarily this year. But PlayStation VR, like, we know that's gonna work with PS4. If you've used PlayStation VR and you've used Oculus, like, it's a world of difference in terms like technical. Like, you can tell the resolution is lower. Like, if you've not done Oculus, it may not bother you as much, but if you're going down, it definitely feels like a downgrade.

• 36:41Speaker 00

  So we think that they're gonna announce this new PlayStation 4 in a couple of weeks, but not release it.

• 36:48Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 36:48Speaker 00

  Ever.

• 36:48Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 36:48Speaker 00

  Ever.

• 36:49Speaker 04

  I, I, I would be shocked to see it on store shelves.

• 36:52Speaker 03

  I mean, I would not, like, I'll put money on like, maybe a price drop or something to like, spur demand for PS4. I mean, it's already, in terms of like, console sales beating Microsoft. But just to do something, just to like mess with them for like having a new slimmer Xbox. They may do something to boost sales for hardware this year. But Neo is not that. Neo is like, this is a tease of what's to come. Please keep with us. Don't worry about that Microsoft thing. Think you have a good night. Enjoy your rumored Apple event.

• 37:18Speaker 02

  And we're also gonna be having this on my birthday?

• 37:21Speaker 03

  Yes. Happy birthday.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 37:25Speaker 00

  Dan, what do you, what do you want for your birthday? Do you want to work for 14 hours straight?

• 37:30Speaker 02

  That's what I aspire to every year, is a nice 14 hour marathon of blogging.

• 37:35Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, guess what? Surprise!

• 37:40Speaker 04

  Happy Blog Day.

• 37:41Speaker 00

  So, in general, with the Xbox One S, it's like, a little bit exhausting. It's a little bit like, yeah, okay. You, you, you, you made a better Xbox. Congratulations. That's the one you should sell for a while. You're not selling the big old tank anymore. But we're waiting for the new one. But in general, there's not, I'm not like, sitting here like, desiring it. I'd sort of, I'm not sitting here desiring the PlayStation 4 Neo right now, which is a weird thing. I kind of expected to, like, it's like, give me some more excitement and hope. If you can, if you dare.

• 38:15Speaker 04

  Here's,

• 38:18Speaker 04

  here's, here's what I would say is good about the PlayStation 4 Neo, in theory.

• 38:26Speaker 04

  It's made by the people who made the PlayStation.

• 38:28Speaker 02

  Why, why isn't it? Why isn't it like a PlayStation 5? If it's like not coming till next year?

• 38:35Speaker 04

  But even, because it has to compete with what Microsoft is doing for one. Two, they have to have something that can better power PSVR. Right now PlayStation VR, from what we understand, uses some really interesting tricks to make it so that the PlayStation 4 can power it. I think that any issues that I have using PSVR might be because of those kind of shortcuts that it takes. And I think that they'll be remedied by PlayStation Neo. I think at the same time, like, For whatever reason, everybody feels there's this demand for 4K now and they need to get something out there that at the very least can play

• 39:18Speaker 04

  4K Blu-rays. I mean, it's Sony made them. They want to have the dominant cheap Ultra HD Blu-ray player out there. They did it with DVD a long time ago. They're gonna do it again here. They did it with Blu-ray before that. They're right now being bested by Microsoft, which is bizarre.

• 39:41Speaker 04

  And I think that, I do think there is the possibility that they will have 4K gaming and there'll be some weird workaround that makes that work for some games. Like I said, I can't imagine what that looks like yet. Because there's nothing like that. It's unprecedented to imagine games getting certified that work on two different consoles that aren't a PC game. I mean, it's just a very different thing to kind of conceptualize how they plan to do that. But the person who is in charge of that, I imagine, is going to be Mark Cerny, who is, I think,

• 40:25Speaker 04

  exceptionally brilliant and is responsible for most of the great architectural decisions of the PlayStation 4. He's also responsible in some part for NAC. So, if you remember that terrible game, we can't give him all thumbs up. Yes, it was like the terrible platform.

• 40:45Speaker 02

  Ross got it.

• 40:46Speaker 04

  No, you really shouldn't.

• 40:47Speaker 03

  It took me a second. But I think the other part is like, I think, Dan, you're asking, why isn't this PlayStation 5? And I think this is now a moment where like, if Sony and Microsoft are doing what they've been hinting at, and it seems like they are, like, we are now in an era where it's not a new console launch. It's a new iteration of the console. They used to use their own kind of custom architecture to get nerdy for seconds. Now all X86, same as PC. What they can do now going forward is a hybrid between the old console model and the PC gaming. You're not gonna get a lot of people to buy like, new graphics cards all the time. Like, that's a great market, but that's not what people do. They will buy a new phone every two or three years. Like, why not do the same thing for this? We know it's backwards compatible. We know this architecture works. You get a little bit better every time. Maybe there won't be a lot of 4K games next year,

• 41:31Speaker 03

  but if people start buying that, the one, two years from now may start saying, okay, these are exclusive 4K games. Maybe they won't call it PlayStation 5. Maybe PlayStation is just that platform now.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  Right, right. I mean, that makes sense. What that makes me wonder is that like, you know, these gaming consoles are still for $500, $600, right? How are you going to get people to buy that every year or two when they're used to doing it every five or six years? So like, will we see like, Apple's had a ton of trouble or saw, you know, ahead that people are not going to want to spend $750 on a phone upfront, so they had introduced the upgrade program where you essentially just lease your phone? You know, is that something that we could see Sony and Microsoft?

• 42:16Speaker 04

  I think, yeah, I think you actually kind of want to come at that question backwards. If you look at like, people right now already spend $1,600 to get, you know, the top of the line GPU, or like, to get two nice graphics cards and SLI them together. There are people...

• 42:33Speaker 02

  Sure, sure, but I think if you look at that market versus the console gaming market, it's like, different conversation.

• 42:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, but then, so they're the same, they're kind of the same thing in a different way than you'd think. There's, that will be there. Those people will buy that new version. But then, kind of like, the old, cheaper iPhone, or older version of a smartphone that is still sold, that will almost certainly happen with the older version of the console. So, I think their logic is, we can get people who are like our whales to buy this new stuff, but really, the money will be made on reselling the Xbox One, which, or the Xbox One S, which will be increasingly cheap to produce, to people who will now buy it at, you know, a $100 discount.

• 43:22Speaker 02

  Didn't Sony do this years ago with the PlayStation Classic? Isn't that the same concept?

• 43:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think that was a different thing.

• 43:30Speaker 02

  It was like a re-

• 43:31Speaker 01

  I think that the-

• 43:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I- Rebranded PlayStation one that was cheaper.

• 43:35Speaker 03

  Kind.

• 43:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, the goal is just to get these in people's hands, right? Like, if you can, if you can make consoles and not lose money making it and get them into as many people's hands as possible, that's a good business. And like, this system to me is designed to not necessarily get the best hardware into people's hands, but to get it into the hands of as many people as possible.

• 43:57Speaker 03

  Kind of solves the chicken and egg thing, especially things like 4K. Maybe it won't do all the 4K things, but people need to get it to go forward and then they can start including it. Or even things like, and this is completely hypothetical, this Call of Duty game works on both PlayStation 4 and the 4K. It's gonna look a lot better on 4K. In two or three years, they're gonna be like, it's only on the 4K. Now, it's the cheapest mall you can get anyway. But we gotta like, ease you into it, as opposed to like, making these huge, every six years flagship moments.

• 44:22Speaker 01

  But then that buying cycle that you're describing is really more similar to television purchases or home appliance purchases than it is to something like a smartphone. Because now it's kind of a given that people are gonna buy new smartphones every couple of years. Well, if you're lucky enough to.

• 44:36Speaker 00

  Well, they wanna do that with, they wanna do it with consoles now, is the thing.

• 44:39Speaker 01

  But I, but, but people buy a console and they essentially, you know, they buy it and forget about it. And sometimes they don't buy a new one for like, seven years. And that's how often you buy a new TV, and maybe more like five, right? But, so if people, it sounds like what you're saying is they're, they're gonna try to sell people on the future-proofing idea. Like, listen, if you buy a 4K TV now, it's great, because in five years, it's gonna be super useful. But that doesn't mean I'm gonna buy a new TV again in five years.

• 45:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think, I weirdly think it's the opposite. I think they're moving from the TV model of like, you forget to buy a new one until literally somebody comes along and is like, you have to buy a new one. Everything, like, like me having to go to my parents' house and be like, how do you still have a CRT TV? I, it's time to move forward. Versus like-

• 45:27Speaker 04

  I mean, there's going to be marketing campaigns every year about why if you don't have the new version of this, you're just behind the times. And I know like TVs do that too, but not nearly in the way that phones or anything else do.

• 45:40Speaker 02

  I might be into leasing.

• 45:41Speaker 00

  Like at the same moment that Moore's Law is like slowing down and not mattering, um, they're like, and like you don't need to get the new computer every year because it's not that much faster. They're now making consoles like flip it and try and convince you that you need to get the new one every year because they're so much better. But we know that's not true in the computer industry because like, other than I guess maybe graphics cards, things aren't getting radically faster year over year. So why should I believe that's true about consoles?

• 46:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, except for you just said graphics cards.

• 46:10Speaker 00

  It's just graphics cards, right?

• 46:11Speaker 04

  Which are like the.

• 46:13Speaker 01

  I saw, this sounds like it's just something that's really gonna appeal to really hardcore gamers, which by the way is great.

• 46:18Speaker 00

  Are graphics cards advancing that quickly? Are they like, like, are they like, oh my God, I cannot believe I ever lived this way?

• 46:25Speaker 04

  Uh, I would say the change in like the last three years for like my PC graphics card is noticeable.

• 46:33Speaker 02

  I mean, the, the, the most practical, obvious change is that they now support VR and they didn't a year ago.

• 46:38Speaker 03

  Right. And like the, the changes when you see it with VR is going to be way more noticeable than it's going to be with the flat screen iterations.

• 46:44Speaker 04

  Also video RAM is increasingly important.

• 46:46Speaker 00

  I gotta say, like, I'm at the point where I'm like, you know what I want to do? I just want to play a fun game and I don't care about these specs. Uh, I'm going to buy the new Nintendo that's coming out with the weird detachable thing. I don't know why. I don't know why I'm doing it. Oh yeah, I do. It's Zelda. Tell me about No Man's Sky, because since I don't have a PlayStation and I'm not a PC gamer, this is like the thing that is like blowing up our entire website and half the internet that I like, don't have personal experience with. I need to know, should I go out and buy a PS4 right now so I can play No Man's Sky?

• 47:20Speaker 03

  Not, not just for that.

• 47:22Speaker 00

  No? Okay, good. Sweet.

• 47:24Speaker 03

  Alright.

• 47:25Speaker 00

  There's other reasons I should go out and buy a PS4 now, that's fine. Uh, no, it's like, describe to me the experience of playing this game and if it is living up to the hype.

• 47:34Speaker 04

  Do you wanna take that last?

• 47:35Speaker 03

  I guess I've been nominated. So, I don't know, like, this isn't playing, I was like, No Man's Sky is, I'm gonna say it's a game, but it's not really, there's not really an objective to it. I mean, there's a loose objective, like, you're a person, you've got a spaceship, and you're trying to, like, you're at the outskirts of a giant galaxy. Like, literally eighteen quintillion planets, and you're trying to reach the center. Now, you're not gonna go to all eighteen quintillion, that would take literally decades and centuries of your life. But you can hop around, and you get to see these things that no one else in the world will see, because this has been a giant universe that's been created, basically using a giant algorithm. There's a lot of beautiful stuff.

• 48:12Speaker 00

  But what do you do?

• 48:14Speaker 03

  I mean, that's kind of it. You travel through galaxies, you think they're really pretty, you look at them, you take pictures. Uh, you fix your spacecraft and refuel it, and then you just kinda keep going. I, I have a follow-up question, Dieter, do you either enjoy audiobooks or hallucinogenic drugs?

• 48:33Speaker 00

  Together. Only together. Separately, I'm not interested, but together, I'm really into it.

• 48:37Speaker 03

  This is the perfect game for you, you should absolutely buy a Playstation 4.

• 48:42Speaker 00

  But they're, like, audiobooks have a story.

• 48:44Speaker 03

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 48:45Speaker 04

  He's saying that you should be listening to an audiobook while you play this game.

• 48:48Speaker 03

  Like, it's, it's that, it's that beautiful monotony, and I think, I love the exploration of it. But you're right, there's not like a strong objective, it's really meant to like, explore and like, this kind of vast space and appreciate the fact that there's just so much of it. But while you're doing that, you might wanna kill time doing something else.

• 49:06Speaker 04

  You know, like, in Cosmos, where they explain how big the universe is, right?

• 49:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:12Speaker 04

  Like, you know what I'm talking about, right? Where they're like, the, and they give you that comparison.

• 49:15Speaker 00

  The calendar, and he's standing here, and blah, blah, blah.

• 49:17Speaker 04

  Yeah. And you're like, wow, that's really compelling, and like, perspective-changing. So like, at its best, the game is like that. But like, at its worst, imagine having to go from all of those planets to the next.

• 49:38Speaker 04

  Like imagine something like, wow, now that your eyes are opened, let's see what's on each one. And you're like, I really love her not. Like, i- i- i- it's so impressive on a technical level, but ultimately, because it isn't, i- i- it's created by an algorithm, or algorithms, and they pull from this pool of art assets, right?

• 50:05Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 50:05Speaker 04

  So, a human made, or humans, made kind of the assets that then get, uh, twisted and warped and smashed back together by the algorithm.

• 50:16Speaker 00

  So they made like, a bunch of different animal heads, and a bunch of different animal bodies, and a bunch of different kinds of limbs, tentacles. It's a little more complicated, but that's, yeah, I mean, that's, that's the general idea.

• 50:25Speaker 04

  But, yeah, the basic idea. But, but the problem is, like, at the end of the day, that's still, that pool of assets, and the laws of these planets are still based off of whatever limited rules they've set for them, and colors, and so on. So what happens is, all the planets are, in theory, unique, but there is this kind of, like, pervasive sense of sameness.

• 50:53Speaker 00

  Oh, so it's like, it's like aliens in Star Trek. Like, oh yeah, this alien is totally different. It has its ridge on this side of its forehead, instead of that side of its forehead. Did you just sneak a Star Trek burn into this discussion?

• 51:07Speaker 00

  I mean, how do you not bring a Star Trek burn into this discussion?

• 51:11Speaker 04

  Did, did you ever play, this is like, I don't even know why I'm asking this. Did you ever play a game called Citizens, it was like, Citizens Kabuto on PC?

• 51:20Speaker 00

  No.

• 51:21Speaker 04

  So, I'll just say that.

• 51:22Speaker 00

  Played a lot of Dune 2.

• 51:24Speaker 04

  There, there, there is this, like, period where PC, when it, like, had some, like, I guess, high-end graphics cards at the time, had these 3D worlds that you could explore, but there was, like, nothing on them, and they were all just, like, weird angulars, like, pseudo-hills and valleys that didn't really go anywhere.

• 51:43Speaker 04

  And there's a lot of that. Like, this feels like somebody created a system that builds the world of video games from like 1999 infinitely.

• 51:56Speaker 03

  Right. So like, there's two things that I like to take away from that. One, if you're a company that makes large games with kind of so-so narratives, like a Bethesda game, you should be doing this more often. Uh, number two, like, I think the thing where this is gonna live, more than anything else, is in the, when you find that moment and you wanna share it online and everyone else can appreciate it, I think this is like, I think Chris is right. Most of the stuff you're gonna see feels kinda samey. When that algorithm works and you find the combination that's just so weird, or you find a way to tell a story about it, and you can kinda like make that your own, then, you know, at least for now, like, that's great on Twitter, that's great on Reddit. Like, I enjoy other people's experiences of Roman Sky almost more than my own, at this point.

• 52:40Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, I also feel like that's a lot of video games. Like, I agree, but like, that's weirdly, I think, kind of the appeal of streams and like gifs on Twitter and yada, yada, yada. Is it like, we're at a point now where like, an army of teenagers can find, dig through video games for their best bits, and then deliver them to me in 15-minute segments. Uh, and I can get almost as much enjoyment out of them as that. Like, I've always enjoyed video games on a theoretical level, as like, somebody reports about them and just reads about them constantly, but that's especially the case as we get into

• 53:21Speaker 04

  this period of procedural creation, where even the people who make the game don't know where the best bits are.

• 53:32Speaker 00

  I'm gonna procedurally generate this ad, right now.

• 53:38Speaker 00

  Have you ever heard of Casper? Of course you have. You listen to podcasts, so you know what Casper is. It's not a ghost. It's a obsessively engineered mattress that is sold at a shockingly fair price. And it's these mattresses that come in a box and you take them into your apartment and then you open the box and the air hits them and they go from a tiny little roll to poof, sitting around in your apartment. And it's made out of springy latex and supportive memory foams, two different kinds of materials that creates an award-winning sleep surface with, they will tell you if you listen, just the right sink and just the right bounce. Time Magazine named it one of the best inventions

• 54:19Speaker 00

  of 2015. You can order one yourself to try it out. It is risk-free. If you don't like it, just tell them and they will come and pick it up and give you your money back. They have free shipping and free returns in both the United States of America and Canada, but they're made in the United States of America, right here in the good old US. If you want to try out a Casper mattress and experience that just right sink and bounce, you can, you should, go to www.casper.com/verge and you have to use the offer code,

• 54:59Speaker 00

  the offer code is VERGE. There are terms and conditions that apply, just FYI, but don't worry about it. Not a big deal. You should just go there, casper.com/verge, offer code VERGE, and go to sleep. You should just go to sleep. You should play some No Man's Sky and then go to sleep. That's, that's what I recommend to you.

• 55:21Speaker 01

  I think we should make the term, terms and conditions apply to everything.

• 55:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, just be like, hey, I'm Lauren. It's nice to meet you. Terms and conditions apply.

• 55:30Speaker 02

  Is that like, uh, retreats are not endorsements? My, my, my views do not reflect my employers.

• 55:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:36Speaker 00

  Dan, what's your, what's your, um, you're here, you're here in Paul's stead. And so, uh, before we get back to No Man's Sky, I need to hear your, your, your weekly segment that has the same consistent name every week that Paul usually does.

• 55:48Speaker 02

  Yes. So this is a weekly segment I do every week. Uh, it's called Cool Gadgets for Rad Dudes and also women.

• 55:55Speaker 00

  I think, I think Paul already.

• 55:57Speaker 02

  And this week.

• 55:58Speaker 00

  Just roll with it.

• 56:00Speaker 02

  This week.

• 56:00Speaker 00

  Go.

• 56:01Speaker 02

  I do not know who this Paul is you're talking about. But this week, I have a gadget, just like I did last week and the week before that. Uh, and it is a new VR headset from a Chinese company. And I'm going to pronounce this or try to pronounce this correctly. Uh, Dwo Dwo. Uh, and you spell the name D L O, D L O. Um, and, uh, apparently it's a, it's a phonetic.

• 56:27Speaker 00

  Is that, is that similar to yellow?

• 56:29Speaker 02

  Uh, sure, except with a D instead of an E.

• 56:32Speaker 01

  Low, low.

• 56:33Speaker 02

  Um, and.

• 56:35Speaker 01

  I mean, this is just ripe for a typo.

• 56:37Speaker 02

  It's ripe for a typo. It's ripe for a misread. Um, and my number one suggestion to this company is maybe hire some English language consultants. But, uh, that said, they have this VR headset, uh, that looks like, kind of like cop sunglasses. So like, if you're familiar with cop aviators, uh, this is a VR headset that is almost the same size as those. And, uh, our wonderful, uh, reporter Addy, uh, checked them out this week. And they are very light as opposed to say like an Oculus or Gear VR or the other.

• 57:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, they're very light as opposed to giant, heavy ass VR headset.

• 57:19Speaker 02

  Right, like, I mean, like you could.

• 57:20Speaker 00

  They're not very light to compare to say, I don't know, eyeglasses.

• 57:23Speaker 02

  Like, they're not light compared to eyeglasses, but they are, they are small enough and sunglass looking enough that you could like walk down the street and not have too many people stare at you. Like if you wore these on the subway, you wouldn't get like all over Twitter as like, oh my God, look at the person wearing VR on the subway. That happens every few weeks. Um, but, uh, Addy tried them out and because, uh, they're, they have their lenses and stuff like that. In the front, they're still kind of like top heavy, so, uh, or front heavy. So if you move your head down, they kind of fall forward and stuff like that. Uh, and they didn't fit her head. Uh, it seemed like they were designed for a larger head, uh, and they didn't fit hers very comfortably.

• 58:05Speaker 02

  And, and that's kind of like the whole problem with them is that, uh, to make VR headsets that are work for everybody, you've got to kind of make them work for every size and shape of heads that are out there. And, and that's not an easy thing to do. The other thing with-

• 58:18Speaker 00

  What, do they work with a PC or do they-

• 58:20Speaker 02

  So yeah, so the other thing is, uh, so they have a device, uh, so they could plug into a PC, but they also have a, uh, device called a D1, which is kind of like the size of a phone, similar to an iPod Touch that will serve it content. Um, and we didn't get to demo that device, unfortunately. Uh, when Eddie saw it, they were plugged into a PC. But like with any VR system, that kind of the big struggle for this is, uh, how much content there is, and there isn't very much at this point. But in terms of hardware differentiation in the VR world, they don't look like your average VR goggle. So I thought that was kind of cool.

• 58:56Speaker 00

  Okay. I don't know. I, I think you want to do stuff in VR.

• 59:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, you want to do stuff, but like, you know, how much content is there in other VR? I mean, there's more.

• 59:09Speaker 00

  Is No Man's Sky going to be available in VR? That seems like that would be cooler.

• 59:13Speaker 01

  I like the idea of it being tethered to like an iPod Touch-like thing rather than some of the other solutions, like A, having a phone stuck on your face, B, having to be tethered via like a one terabyte connection to a massively powerful gaming computer, or D, um, I skipped one on purpose. Um, what's the other one? Oh yeah, we've seen like people putting, stuffing computers in backpacks and wearing them.

• 59:42Speaker 02

  The most similar thing to this that I've seen, uh, before is LG's VR friend. I forget what it was called. It was for the G5. Um, and those were kind of, those plugged into the phone like this does, but, uh, they didn't do a great job of blocking out light. So it's kind of like you're just looking at screens in front of your face instead of like an immersive VR experience. And, and according to Eddie's report, the Dwo Dwo, uh, I did it, uh, uh, does a good job at blocking out side light and, you know, making it a more immersive experience. They're about 550 bucks.

• 1:00:16Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:00:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:00:17Speaker 02

  Five sixty, I'm sorry.

• 1:00:19Speaker 01

  I'm not going to buy them.

• 1:00:22Speaker 00

  Well, I'm not gonna buy it. We have to do a super fast lightning round.

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  I would buy a new PlayStation 4 before I bought those.

• 1:00:29Speaker 00

  When is it coming out, the PlayStation, the Neo? Tell me.

• 1:00:34Speaker 03

  Well.

• 1:00:35Speaker 04

  We don't, we don't know.

• 1:00:36Speaker 00

  I guess.

• 1:00:37Speaker 04

  Were you listening during the segment?

• 1:00:38Speaker 00

  You know.

• 1:00:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, we don't know. No, no, it might be unveiled next month. And then we don't actually know when it's gonna come out.

• 1:00:43Speaker 03

  When is it coming out? Wink.

• 1:00:45Speaker 01

  Right. I'm thinking through the podcast.

• 1:00:48Speaker 04

  Here's what I'll say. Sometime after September 7th.

• 1:00:54Speaker 00

  Isn't Sony the company that, like, did a whole PlayStation announcement but never actually showed the hardware? Or was that Microsoft that did it?

• 1:01:01Speaker 02

  Well, I just remember the PlayStation 4 event was about 17 days long.

• 1:01:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, they didn't actually show the hardware.

• 1:01:08Speaker 03

  I don't know which one it was, actually.

• 1:01:10Speaker 02

  Wasn't it, wasn't that the?

• 1:01:12Speaker 01

  PlayStation?

• 1:01:12Speaker 02

  That was the PlayStation 4 event where they didn't show the hardware. And it was like.

• 1:01:15Speaker 01

  They didn't show the hardware.

• 1:01:17Speaker 02

  It was 17 days long. Every tech journalist died.

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:19Speaker 02

  And they never showed it.

• 1:01:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, I remember this.

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  They stood on stage and they talked about its capabilities and then they literally didn't show the box.

• 1:01:27Speaker 00

  They're gonna do it. They're gonna do it again.

• 1:01:29Speaker 03

  I mean, they might.

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  I remember that. They were mad. They were mad because I went around the auditorium afterwards snapping photos. It wasn't even snapping at the time, it was tweeting photos of like, well, that's not the box and that's not the box. And like, where's the PlayStation 4 box? And they just didn't show the console. Because they, they said, you know, arguably, the people that care about PlayStation 4 care more about what it can do and what it looks like. It's a box that's gonna go anywhere.

• 1:01:53Speaker 04

  100% right.

• 1:01:55Speaker 03

  I mean, look, it is.

• 1:01:56Speaker 04

  And that was also, I remember, I remember that.

• 1:01:59Speaker 02

  They're totally wrong because.

• 1:02:00Speaker 04

  French people were so wrong.

• 1:02:02Speaker 02

  If you look at the PlayStation 3 and you know what that looked like and then what the PlayStation 4 ended up looking like, it's very obvious that people care what their game console looked like if you just, you know, look at the changes they made.

• 1:02:16Speaker 00

  Imagine if they hadn't shown the box and then the box turned out to be as hideous as the Xbox One.

• 1:02:21Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:02:22Speaker 02

  Or the PlayStation 3.

• 1:02:23Speaker 03

  Whatever. Like, it, that's, we're reviving 3D. They're not gonna show the box. I will bet you a dollar they will not show a box of any sort.

• 1:02:30Speaker 02

  Can we do an over-under on how long the event's gonna be?

• 1:02:32Speaker 03

  If they're announcing that's like a year away, they have not designed the box. They need time to make that right. Let's give them some time to figure that out.

• 1:02:42Speaker 00

  You know CAD, it just takes a while to load. Click the button.

• 1:02:46Speaker 02

  It takes a while to load on a PlayStation 4.

• 1:02:48Speaker 03

  Guys, we did a parallelogram last time. What are we thinking this time? Pyramid, pyramid? Alright, let's do a pyramid.

• 1:02:54Speaker 00

  They should just totally straight up make it a pyramid, like not like evokes a pyramid. They should make it a literal pyramid.

• 1:03:01Speaker 02

  What was that box? Was it the boxy box that was kind of like a cube?

• 1:03:04Speaker 03

  Yes, a cube that melted into your table.

• 1:03:06Speaker 02

  And turned on its side? And of course, didn't fit in your console center?

• 1:03:11Speaker 00

  Uh, we had to wrap up, so I only have time for a couple lightning round questions. But I'm gonna ask my favorites, my favorites. Ross Miller, Jason Momoa is in talks to star in a Crow reboot.

• 1:03:21Speaker 03

  I think it's a damn shame. If Jason Momoa's gonna remake anything, it should be Big Mama's House, and he can call it Big Momoa's House.

• 1:03:27Speaker 00

  Uh, Dan, Modest Mouse Singer causes multi Subaru car wreck in Portland.

• 1:03:32Speaker 02

  This is the most Portland story ever. I mean, there's so many jokes to make here, and I feel like the internet has really done a good service in making all of them by now. But yeah, it's a pretty historical story. The Modest Mouse Singer fell asleep, hid into a Subaru. Hid into another Subaru.

• 1:03:48Speaker 04

  Pretty hilarious. A man fell asleep at the wheel and caused a multi Subaru pileup.

• 1:03:53Speaker 02

  Nobody was hurt. He wasn't charged with anything, so sometimes life turns out okay.

• 1:03:57Speaker 03

  Remember, this is the asshole that backed his car into a cop car the other day.

• 1:04:00Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:04:00Speaker 00

  I knew it. I was waiting for it.

• 1:04:03Speaker 03

  I'm sorry. Everyone has made that joke. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

• 1:04:08Speaker 00

  Lauren, HP is trying yet again to sell laptops that basically have nothing in them because they work with the cloud.

• 1:04:14Speaker 01

  Great. Well. Well, good for them. Are they also throwing in a free printer with that?

• 1:04:21Speaker 00

  Oh, God.

• 1:04:22Speaker 01

  Um, okay. Well, I mean, I guess a certain consumer doesn't care about RAM or processing power, but we don't know how that.

• 1:04:31Speaker 02

  I think they're selling these to schools who really don't care about RAM or processing power, right?

• 1:04:35Speaker 01

  Let's see. I'm reading about it now.

• 1:04:37Speaker 00

  They look cute, right?

• 1:04:38Speaker 01

  How much are they gonna charge for that? Oh, they're gonna start at $219.

• 1:04:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:42Speaker 01

  So you're talking about Chromebook pricing. Oh, yeah. Most of them are comparable, Chromebooks with similar specs. Um, are you talking about like the surface three?

• 1:04:51Speaker 02

  I feel like these aren't as fancy as the surface three. These are like.

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  These are not the processor until Solerun. I mean, I really don't have much of an opinion on this. I just don't know what to say. I'm, I don't, you know, I'm like reading through the specs now, and I'm sure that's exactly what is most exciting to our Vergecast audience is me reading through the specs of a low end HP notebook.

• 1:05:14Speaker 00

  Chris Plant.

• 1:05:14Speaker 01

  Sell the schools.

• 1:05:16Speaker 00

  You gotta end strong. You gotta, you like, I, I have not, I've not shepherded this flagship well. I've not steered it well. It's, it's been a disaster for show. You have to save it right now by saying something hilarious. Anything at all about the Olympics?

• 1:05:34Speaker 04

  I can't do that.

• 1:05:37Speaker 01

  Why? Have you not been watching the Olympics? I love the Olympics. I will say something about the Olympics.

• 1:05:41Speaker 00

  There's the green water.

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  Simone Biles. U S gymnast Simone Biles just won.

• 1:05:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:46Speaker 01

  The gold. It was just announced in the New York Times.

• 1:05:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:49Speaker 01

  She wins it live. Uh, U S gymnast, uh, Ally Raisman just won silver and a Russian woman, whose name I apologize. I don't remember off the top of my head, run, won bronze, but U S took the gold. So I'm very excited about that.

• 1:06:01Speaker 00

  Why?

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  In my next life, I want to come back as an Olympic beach volleyball player.

• 1:06:05Speaker 00

  I mean, who doesn't?

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  Because they're awesome.

• 1:06:07Speaker 00

  I want to know why NBC can't seem to get decent clips onto YouTube. They're spamming YouTube nonstop with clips and they're all like, just enough to make you mad that you're not seeing what you want, but not enough to, to like, make you mad enough that you want to like, go figure out how to actually watch the Olympics, especially on the West Coast where I theoretically, I'm supposed to be able to not see them time delayed, but in practice, it's just impossible. I'm very mad about the Olympics.

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  Chris, tell us about the gift ban.

• 1:06:35Speaker 04

  The gift, I mean, the, the Olympics, they are protective of everything and they want to make as much money as possible off of

• 1:06:44Speaker 02

  Gifts.

• 1:06:44Speaker 04

  The Olympics, even though they have almost no skin in the game because they get cities to be idiots and spend all of their money on buildings that will fall apart. And they feel like by banning gifts from the press, they can make money off that too. I mean.

• 1:06:59Speaker 00

  How do you monetize the gifts?

• 1:07:00Speaker 04

  I'm very happy. What?

• 1:07:02Speaker 02

  How do you monetize a gif?

• 1:07:03Speaker 04

  You monetize a gif by not letting anybody else use it and forcing people to watch your crummy video service.

• 1:07:08Speaker 02

  So you monetize the gif by killing the gif?

• 1:07:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, that's, that is everything about, the Olympics themselves are great, and I have never thought that there has been like a time where especially America needed them more, like, a bit of like happiness and joyful, like, communal patriotism. A plus, all about it. The idea that like, I have to deal with the IOC and NBC who are both like disasters when it comes to both of this.

• 1:07:36Speaker 00

  NBC's parent company is invested in our parent company.

• 1:07:38Speaker 04

  Damn, I was about to do that. Hey, no problem. And you wanna know what my opinion of their job is? Terrible. The Olympics are, I would say they're like painful to watch, but I'm gonna watch any sports cuz I'm always have to watch some stupid story about like, did you know this person once swallowed a quarter and he had to pass it? But now he's back and he's better than ever.

• 1:08:01Speaker 02

  That's okay. Like, it's like you don't know who this person is anyway. You need something to humanize these people.

• 1:08:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, but then I don't even watch them do the sport. Also, here's, here's, here's like my big, my big gripe, right? Like, this is our chance to like learn about all of these other amazing people from all across the world. And because all we're doing is learning like, yet again, about what Phelps or Lochte, I actually don't get to learn anything about all of these cultures. And that's what I loved as a kid, like, I remember watching the Olympics as a kid and I like, found out what Denmark is. It's a great place. But now you watch the Olympics and like, you'd be hard pressed to know that any other countries were competing.

• 1:08:43Speaker 02

  Well, I will say the United States has 10 more medals than anybody else so far.

• 1:08:48Speaker 04

  Oh, boy.

• 1:08:48Speaker 02

  So are they competing?

• 1:08:49Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:08:51Speaker 04

  Wow. Wow. Listen, I have to, I have to, I have to go do like, work.

• 1:08:58Speaker 01

  Go Katie Ledecky. Go, um, go USA. That's all I have to say. I know, some of the, so some of the, you know, media that are covering the Olympics have been making some really boneheaded comments um, that some people are perceiving to be sexist and I do not disagree with that. I think some of them are pretty boneheaded. Um, but, you know.

• 1:09:19Speaker 00

  If you'd like to see things that aren't boneheaded, you can follow us at Verge on Twitter.

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:23Speaker 00

  We're at Verge on Snapchat, or Verge on Instagram. You can follow Instagram stories

• 1:09:27Speaker 01

  from us.

• 1:09:28Speaker 00

  I am. I'm rapping.

• 1:09:29Speaker 01

  Just read Sam Byford's story about how it's better to watch the Olympics without the announcers.

• 1:09:33Speaker 00

  There it is. Chris, what's going on in What's Tech this week? The other, another podcast from theverge.com.

• 1:09:39Speaker 04

  On What's Tech, you can learn about the Xbox One S if you listen to this week's episode. I spoke with Megan from Polygon. And next week, you have to, you have to wait and see. We might, we might have a bonus No Man's Sky episode, but we'll, we'll see what we end up putting out.

• 1:09:57Speaker 00

  Lauren, what's going on? Too embarrassed to ask from Recode, two Rs, two S's.

• 1:10:00Speaker 01

  Too embarrassed to ask this week, we spoke to an Australian entrepreneur, because my co-host Kara Swisher is in the land down under. We spoke to the CEO and founder of Kenva about Photoshop alternatives, if Photoshop is just too complicated to use. And then next week, I'm really excited about next week. We haven't actually announced this yet. So you Vergecast audience are the first people to hear about it. We are going to be speaking to the creator of the Juicero.

• 1:10:24Speaker 00

  Oh, my God.

• 1:10:24Speaker 01

  $700 Wi-Fi connected juicy machine. And we're going to talk all about the Internet of Things and food tech, and why you should spend $700 on a juicer.

• 1:10:34Speaker 00

  There is also Verge ESP with Emily Oshida and Liz Zapato. I think their most recent episode had Ghostbusters in it, and Flossing, two, two things that go great together. And if you haven't heard, there's a random podcast feed from the Verge called Verge Extras, where our very own Paul Miller and Demi Lee have decided it would be fun to describe photos. And so they're, they're just doing, just talking about, talking about pictures. So you should, you should go subscribe to that and see what that's about. You can find all of it at iTunes.com/theverge, which, which is a really great place to visit and, and click some stars. I think you could click five of them. We'd appreciate that. That'd be super helpful.

• 1:11:19Speaker 00

  You can follow all of us, the people on the show, on Twitter. I am at Backlon. Lauren is at Lauren Good with an E at the end of it. Dan is DCC for it spelled EI. Ross is Odo Rosco with no E. There's not an E anywhere in there.

• 1:11:37Speaker 03

  Lauren took it.

• 1:11:39Speaker 00

  And Chris Plant is at Plant? Yeah. Plant with an E. Plant with an E. There you go. And Neelai Patel will be back next week. He's at Reckless. Please, you know, I was going to ask you to make a, make a rock scotch joke, but just, just let it go. But if you feel the need to troll him on Twitter, that's, that's the hashtag I'd recommend.

• 1:12:00Speaker 03

  Rock scotch. Just let it go.