Unlimited data, Galaxy Note 7, and a merch store

This week on our flagship audio experience, our cast of tech luminaries Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, Paul Miller, and Dan Seifert break down new unlimited data plans and what they really mean for the consumer. Dan also details the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 after reviewing it this week and Dieter and Paul talk about Google, including the new Nexus phone arriving this year and a new operating system Fuchsia. Halfway through the show we bring back the enlightening Nicola Fumo to give us her take on the tech world this season and what is changing in pop-up shops and tour merch. 02:25 - Data plans 25:38 - Galaxy Note 7 31:34 - Nexus phones 36:15 - Google Fuchsia 41:37 - Hangin' with Nicola Fumo 47:50 - Kanye and Square 55:35 - Apple watch 59:56 - iOS 10 1:04:05 - Paul's "Kobo hype" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Nilay Patel?

  Hello, welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship audio experience of theverge.com. The Vergecast is brought to you by a long-running joke that half of you hate. It's just a vodka, cut through the night.

• 0:19Nilay Patel?

  It's just a bag.

• 0:19Speaker 01

  This is so true.

• 0:22Nilay Patel?

  Some of you love it, others of you hate it.

• 0:24Speaker 02

  Did you know that there's a second made-up alcohol that now sponsors The Vergecast?

• 0:28Nilay Patel?

  Rock Scotch.

• 0:29Speaker 02

  Rock Scotch.

• 0:30Nilay Patel?

  That's Dieter's management for style. Crash of the morning.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  What is this voice that I hear so close in my ear? And I look to my left and I see in the flesh.

• 0:39Nilay Patel?

  It's Dieter Bone, hey, hey, I'm here in New York, live in New York.

• 0:43Speaker 03

  Those are some beautiful prose.

• 0:44Nilay Patel?

  I'm Yvette Tell, that's Dieter Bone who's here, Paul Miller is here.

• 0:48Speaker 02

  Paul, hey.

• 0:49Nilay Patel?

  Paul.

• 0:50Speaker 01

  I tried to order at Chick-fil-A today.

• 0:53Nilay Patel?

  Oh, hey.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  Chick-fil-A line has, they meet you in the line with iPads, take your order. Ask me my name, I get to the counter, I'm like, I'm Paul, and they're like, we don't have a Paul, we have a Bob.

• 1:07Nilay Patel?

  They just got it wrong.

• 1:08Speaker 01

  So the struggle continues.

• 1:13Nilay Patel?

  Dan Seifert's here. I am. Dan, halfway through the show, will magically turn into a special guest. Ooh. That's gonna be something.

• 1:20Speaker 01

  Secrets, surprises.

• 1:21Nilay Patel?

  Who's it gonna be?

• 1:22Speaker 01

  Who's it gonna be?

• 1:23Nilay Patel?

  I bet you're already guessing, I bet you already know, because you're smart, this audience. Anyway, I'm in like a feisty.

• 1:30Speaker 02

  It's Tim Cook.

• 1:30Nilay Patel?

  Cranky, yeah, Tim Cook and I are gonna, we're gonna get down, we're gonna talk about vodka together. I'm in like a cranky mood lately, I gotta, I just gotta be honest with you. Dieter's noticed.

• 1:40Speaker 02

  I've gotten yelled at.

• 1:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:41Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:42Nilay Patel?

  I don't usually yell, I'm not like a yeller, I do a good show of yelling.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  It always hurt the ones we love.

• 1:48Nilay Patel?

  I don't know, I just, we're in like the slow period in August, I feel like, I don't know, my instinct is just, just blow it all up.

• 1:55Speaker 02

  I'm mad too, I tweet stormed today, I didn't put it on the site, I put it on Twitter.

• 1:59Nilay Patel?

  What's up? Come on, man, off-platform publishing at its finest. What'd you tweet storm about?

• 2:03Speaker 02

  About T-Mobile.

• 2:04Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 2:05Nilay Patel?

  So you want, let's start with that.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  Yeah?

• 2:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, because I had a two tweet tweet storm yesterday, and you had what, like a seven, 10, 12 tweet storm today?

• 2:14Speaker 02

  It was like six.

• 2:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, alright.

• 2:15Speaker 03

  It was properly numbered and threaded and everything.

• 2:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, powers of two, did he reply to yourself and remove your own name?

• 2:21Speaker 02

  I did.

• 2:21Nilay Patel?

  Oh, threaded.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  So professional.

• 2:24Speaker 02

  Tweet Tech does that automatically now, by the way.

• 2:26Nilay Patel?

  Let's start with data plans. So what was a couple of days ago, AT&T put out some new ones.

• 2:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, so they.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  Explain these AT&T things to me.

• 2:35Speaker 03

  The biggest change with AT&T was that they are no longer charging an overage when you exceed your data plan. So if you have a six gigabyte data plan, yeah, instead of charging you $15 for another gigabyte, they will automatically throttle you to 128 kilobits, which is like half of 2G.

• 2:51Nilay Patel?

  So it's really slow.

• 2:52Speaker 02

  Verizon started doing something similar not that long ago.

• 2:54Speaker 03

  Verizon has a thing that they call like safety mode. And you have to pay.

• 2:58Speaker 02

  You pay five bucks.

• 2:59Speaker 03

  Five bucks a month for the privilege of being throttled.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  Is it really called safety mode?

• 3:03Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:05Speaker 03

  So AT&T doesn't charge you the $5 a month. Wow, good for them. And if you do want more data, you can buy it. It's just not automatic anymore.

• 3:13Nilay Patel?

  How do you buy it?

• 3:14Speaker 03

  You probably go to the app or they send you a text message and you whatever, you know, the usual stuff when you hit the end of your.

• 3:20Nilay Patel?

  The usual bad user experience.

• 3:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, it's not going to be a pleasant user experience.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  Actually, before we get it, we should also, I mean, if we're going to go through the big four, we should also mention that Verizon, there was a report this week that like Ad Age reported that they talked to a bunch of app developers and Verizon's like, yeah, if you want to get on deck, you will, you know, pay us, we'll pay you, pay us like one or two bucks a phone and we'll let you just be crapware, have fun.

• 3:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, Verizon will pimp out your phone for one or $2 per app.

• 3:49Nilay Patel?

  That's, that's actually kind of like a lot of money. Can you pick like, I'll give you $500 and like just get my app on like 500 random Verizon phones?

• 3:58Speaker 03

  According to the Ad Age article, I don't think any developers actually took them up on it. Like, it was like their strategy to try and like, they were trying to monetize preloaded crapware.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  And instead, they're going to monetize by tracking everything that we do and building that data into their new super combined ad network of AOL and Yahoo.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  What about an opt out feature that you can add to your bill called protection money?

• 4:25Speaker 02

  I would love it if Google would go to carriers and do the same thing that Microsoft does with their Windows stuff. What's it called? Windows certified?

• 4:33Speaker 03

  Uh, no, it's not certified. It's something, yeah, it's, it's like.

• 4:37Speaker 02

  You can pay an extra 50 bucks to get a Windows machine that doesn't have garbage on it if you go to the Microsoft Store. You can get the regular one or like the cool one.

• 4:43Speaker 03

  The Microsoft Experience, I must say, something like that.

• 4:45Nilay Patel?

  Windows Experience, that's what it is.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I would love it if Google would just be like, yeah, everybody who makes an Android phone has to offer that version.

• 4:53Nilay Patel?

  They tried it, nobody bought them.

• 4:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know.

• 4:55Nilay Patel?

  I had, I had an HTC one.

• 4:56Speaker 03

  I had one of those.

• 4:57Speaker 02

  So Sprint and T-Mobile.

• 4:59Speaker 03

  So, okay, well, AT&T, so the other thing that AT&T did was it raised the prices on its lowest data plans and lowered the prices on its higher data plans. So if you are on a, like, 5GB or up, you save a little money. If you're on the poor 1GB plan, you're actually paying more now than you used to.

• 5:14Nilay Patel?

  Right, and AT&T's line is, everyone just uses the bigger ones anyway. Because it's obviously, like, economically viable, like, it's a better decision. I gotta say, every time we do a data plan story, two things happen that surprise me.

• 5:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:27Nilay Patel?

  One, they blow the hell up.

• 5:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:29Nilay Patel?

  We can't write enough about data plans.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Just because they're confusing as hell.

• 5:33Speaker 03

  And they change every three months. I think that's something they're talking about with T-Mobile.

• 5:36Nilay Patel?

  Fundamentally, it's like, that's why it's surprising to me. It's, all we're doing is like, a new shell game has emerged. Yeah. Like, the carriers are hiding money from you in some new and more devious way. I mean, they're, they're all bullshit, as far as I can tell.

• 5:52Speaker 03

  They're all, they're all smoke and mirrors.

• 5:53Nilay Patel?

  And now they're more nefarious bullshit than ever before.

• 5:56Speaker 03

  Which is insane. We thought this was gonna get better when we got rid of the two-year contract, and it's just gotten so much worse.

• 6:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, right, because they're no longer, they can no longer guarantee the extra money from the subsidy, and they're trying to milk more money out of the phone. So AT&T's doing it by throttling you.

• 6:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, which is, which is, to be fair, what T-Mobile and Sprint do as well, until today.

• 6:17Nilay Patel?

  We'll, we'll get to T-Mobile. No one gives a shit about Sprint. Anybody from Sprint listening to this? Please call me and tell me why I should give a shit.

• 6:22Speaker 02

  Oh, man, remember back in the day, though, when they had all the HTC phones, and it was like, super cool to be a Sprint fanboy?

• 6:28Speaker 03

  Rev 2, Rev B.

• 6:30Nilay Patel?

  It was a big deal to be a Sprint fanboy.

• 6:32Speaker 02

  Wasn't the pre- Yeah.

• 6:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was kind of like past their good days.

• 6:37Speaker 02

  No, that was like.

• 6:37Nilay Patel?

  That was the moment.

• 6:39Speaker 03

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 6:39Speaker 02

  That was the end of the moment.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  I just remember I got a pre and I tried to call my mom on the pre and was like, I can't hear you very well.

• 6:45Nilay Patel?

  Which, which piece of this is garbage? Is it the phone? Is it the operating system? Is it the network? There's garbage in here somewhere.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  Mom, all the apps, they're just like web pages. And all your messages are threaded.

• 6:59Nilay Patel?

  By the way, no one's doing that. Okay, I'm sorry. They're all doing it somewhere. Anyway.

• 7:05Nilay Patel?

  But that's, it's consistently surprising to me that people care about data plans as much because it is a shell game.

• 7:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, like, I think people care. Data plans are like, you know, the other thing that we always get surprised at is how much interest there is in routers. Because, you know, crappy wifi and a router is something that everybody relates to. And everybody relates to the pain of paying their cellphone bill. So like, when there's new data plans, when there's new options, and people want to know what they're going to pay and how much it's going to cost them. And how much they're going to get screwed out of every month.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  I, I'm guessing, I know I have the same experience with a router and with a data plan where it's like. I, I saw the ads. It seems like somebody has great wifi. And maybe most people have great wifi and great deals on their cellphone bills. But I'm just doing it wrong. And so I've got a bad router and a bad deal. You know, like, I just didn't know how to, but I'm guessing probably a lot of people end up with bad routers and bad deals.

• 7:59Speaker 03

  I mean, because both of them are pretty much like black boxes unless you deeply nerd out into them. Because they're not like accessible. They're not like understandable.

• 8:06Nilay Patel?

  I mean, the AT&T will throttle you. Like, the fact that AT&T will make your phone unusable is not the right answer.

• 8:15Speaker 03

  Well, it's, it's like, I mean, you tweeted this yesterday, Neil, that, that about the, the fact that they charge by the gigabyte.

• 8:21Nilay Patel?

  There makes no sense.

• 8:22Speaker 03

  It's, it's, it is like the ultimate capitalist, whatever like capitalists came up with that.

• 8:26Speaker 02

  The defense here is if they don't charge by the gigabyte, people will just use it for their internet. Like at home, because LTE can sometimes be way faster. And if everybody does that, the networks will in fact not be able to stand up to it.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, what are you saying they should charge by?

• 8:41Speaker 02

  Well.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  By the minute?

• 8:43Speaker 02

  I don't know. I mean, I, all I know is like, there are people that have got legacy Verizon unlimited plans and they're like, just hanging on. And they're just, they're just using it. They're like, because, you know, story will come out, be like Verizon went after a customer that managed to use like 50 gigabytes in a month. And we're like, how did anybody do that? That's impossible. And like, a couple of quiet people, some of whom work at The Verge, quietly raise their hand and be like.

• 9:02Nilay Patel?

  I do that all the time. I think we have lots of listeners who do that stuff. Yeah, yeah. Like, people are just like, download podcasts and videos all day long on their phones. No, they watch, they like, watch TV. They use it to stream Netflix to their HD TV.

• 9:11Speaker 03

  Those people exist and we know them, but like, the, the, the percentage of,

• 9:18Speaker 03

  the percentage of people that actually do that, though, is so small on the grand scale.

• 9:22Nilay Patel?

  The percentage is huge if we got rid of it entirely. Cause this is a really good entry point in a T-Mobile. So, Paul, my point is not that they shouldn't meter something and charge you by whatever they meter. But, in fact, over time, the rational reason to meter data usage has completely fallen away. And very few people can provide, like, a great answer for why you should meter that, other than, it's an easy thing to meter. So, the cost, like, right now, you're not using your phone, but the phone network is connected to your phone. And the electricity it costs to, like, run the equipment that connects to your phone is, right? It's not like the thing is, like, there's not like a pump that's like pumping faster, right?

• 10:06Nilay Patel?

  Like, it's electricity and radio waves, and they're connected to your phone. And if you start using data, you might use some fractionally higher amount of electricity. But, wait.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  The towers don't quite work like that.

• 10:20Nilay Patel?

  No, no, but like.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  Right now, my phone knows where a tower is, and a tower knows where my phone is. And they could send a message to each other, but that's different than having, like, I don't have a full slot on their tower right now.

• 10:33Nilay Patel?

  No, I know, but what I'm saying.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  Which is how you can have, like, full bars sometimes, but not have service if all the slots are full.

• 10:39Nilay Patel?

  I get what you're saying, but it's, over time, the cost of delivering the data to you falls to zero. Right? The, the amount of investment they have to put into their network is almost on a fixed curve. Right? They know how much bandwidth we all, as a class, are using today. They can predict with some moderate level of accuracy how much we'll use tomorrow. And then, something like Snapchat will happen, and they'll have to redo their model. But like, they can reasonably predict it. So they're on this.

• 11:08Speaker 03

  All their costs are on the, the front end of the building.

• 11:11Nilay Patel?

  And so I get what you're saying about towers and slots, but it's not like, when everyone starts using the thing, suddenly the cost of running the network explodes. Like, they're still paying for all of that stuff. Right? And so. If they get more subscribers, the cost of running the network will go up. But the existing subscriber base using the network, as it goes up and down, their general amount of cost stays within a fairly fixed window.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 11:39Nilay Patel?

  And that's, it's like, so why are we metering gigabytes? There's no, there's no like rational connection to the cost of providing you an incremental gigabyte and the cost that you pay.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  Well, I, I do think-

• 11:52Nilay Patel?

  The 21st gigabyte, that's my hypothesis.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  The 21st gigabyte happens when, because you see no repercussion for watching Netflix all day, you do watch Netflix.

• 12:04Nilay Patel?

  So it's a penalty, that's what I mean. It's not, for most others, the 11th gallon of gas, you understand why you're paying the additional fee.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  Right, because it is a true-

• 12:14Speaker 03

  It's a tangible thing, yeah.

• 12:16Nilay Patel?

  But the 21st gigabyte, by the way, that's if I ever write a punk business book, it will be called the 21st gig- 21st gigabyte.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:23Nilay Patel?

  Living is a nerd in the 22nd century.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  Tragedy of the digital commons.

• 12:29Nilay Patel?

  That's it, 21 gigabytes. That's like the worst Springsteen album.

• 12:33Speaker 03

  I think you nailed it, it's, it's a penalty.

• 12:36Nilay Patel?

  It's a penalty.

• 12:36Speaker 03

  It's not a, it's not a buying something, it's, it's a penalty for using, is what it is.

• 12:41Nilay Patel?

  That's like, that's what makes me like cranky, it's like they've set up the system to make you want to use the phone more, such that they can impose penalties on you for using it as much as you want.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  And speaking of, of that, you know, I, I know, I have non-standard thoughts on net neutrality, but um-

• 13:03Nilay Patel?

  This is like one of my favorite arguments.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  What, because I don't think the, the government should be imposing a rule on carriers or providers necessarily, of how, how to run their networks. That said, I hate- The way T-Mobile.

• 13:18Speaker 02

  Right, so this is the segue.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  As, as, as a customer, and because they are by zero rating video services, but not something like Snapchat, they, they are like promoting this passive consumptions. Like, you know what you should spend all of your time on? What's safe to spend your time on? Leaning back and watching Hulu.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 13:39Speaker 01

  But don't create, don't upload.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  Don't create, be state.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  Don't be social.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  Be a vegetable.

• 13:45Nilay Patel?

  Well, that zero rating thing applies to MTV Get Off The Air by The Dead Kennedys.

• 13:51Speaker 02

  That applies like the previous however many un-carriers that they do. By the way, the un-carrier thing, this one in particular is the one that reveals that it was, there was no like revolutionary motive behind any of it. Not that we ever really thought that there was.

• 14:04Nilay Patel?

  Walk us through it.

• 14:04Speaker 03

  Okay. I believe this is un-carrier 12.

• 14:07Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 14:07Speaker 03

  Since, since we're talking un-carriers. T-Mobile announced today.

• 14:10Nilay Patel?

  Since we're using the base un-carrier system.

• 14:15Speaker 03

  Un-carrier dozen. T-Mobile announced today that it is getting rid of the tiered plans. So we were just talking about AT&T's tiered plans and how they throttle you. So now T-Mobile says it's going to be unlimited for everybody and all the time.

• 14:29Speaker 02

  They used to have an unlimited plan.

• 14:30Speaker 03

  They had an unlimited plan, but now they are introducing a new unlimited plan and getting rid of their tiered plans. So your only option is unlimited. It's unlimited data, unlimited text. Unlimited text, unlimited messaging. From the understanding that we have from the announcements today, when these new plans launch, the entry level cost to get on T-Mobile is going to be $70.

• 14:48Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 14:49Speaker 03

  Which is more expensive than their tiered plans were.

• 14:52Speaker 02

  But the, the, the reason this is like zero rating, but it's like the sneaky creepy way to zero rate is embedded into this unlimited plan are two caveats. One, you can only tether over 2G.

• 15:04Speaker 03

  Unless you pay $15.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  Unless you pay an extra 15 bucks a month.

• 15:08Speaker 03

  For 5GB of limited tethering.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  Oh, and they, they, they, they charge your rate, they charge your tethering on a different.

• 15:13Speaker 03

  Yeah. They, they, they put a data cap on their tethering.

• 15:16Speaker 02

  They, so they tier that. And then two, uh, they are putting all of the garbage restrictions on video that they put on their free video plan where they throttle down the quality.

• 15:28Speaker 03

  Unless you pay $25 per month, per line, you can get on HD video. $25 per month, per line.

• 15:35Nilay Patel?

  Unlimited HD video?

• 15:36Speaker 03

  Unlimited HD video. But that's. Per month, per line. So the pricing structure on this is kind of crazy. It starts off at like $70 for your first line. Your second line is $50. The third line is $30. And I think fourth through eighth is $20.

• 15:48Speaker 02

  By the way, John Ledger, like not eight months ago, was like, family plans are bullshit. They're just contracts by a different name.

• 15:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:54Speaker 02

  And now they're pushing everybody towards multiple line contracts.

• 15:57Speaker 03

  Yeah. So this is more, it's more expensive to start a line with T-Mobile now than it used to be. You have restrictions on how you can use that data unless you pay more for it. And you have restrictions on what quality of service you're going to get unless you pay more for it.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  For the content concept, but this flips the script for me, because now Snapchat will be unlimited and fine quality. And they'll just degrade my like Netflix and YouTube.

• 16:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, depending on your perspective, and that's how it's always been with T-Mobile's zero rating system. You know, it's either a benefit or you can look at the long game and see how you're going to end up being screwed by this. But like.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  So, but the real problem for me is if I want to start, if this thing becomes the norm, like the Kantian categorical imperative of wireless plans. Choose your actions if you want it to be a universal action. If this becomes a universal way that data works, then I want to start up Dieter's cool video site next year, right?

• 16:54Speaker 01

  Go 95.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  Dieter's, Dieter's Sweet Skateboard Tricks.

• 16:59Nilay Patel?

  21 gigabyte now streaming on Go95.

• 17:01Speaker 02

  Dieter's Sweet Skateboard Tricks.com. But I want to serve the video myself. I'm not going to use YouTube or whatever. In order to, for me to run a brand new, successful video or music streaming business. I have to start it up and then I have to make a business partnership with all of the carriers to ensure that I am part of their video plan.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  Well, wait, but isn't it the opposite of that now?

• 17:24Speaker 02

  Well, I don't know. How are they going to detect, how are they going to detect Joe's sweet video service?

• 17:31Nilay Patel?

  So let's say they can, they're just automatically all video, they're going to throttle it.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  Do they, yeah, do they downgrade all video?

• 17:37Speaker 02

  Do you want, do you want T-Mobile deciding for you?

• 17:39Nilay Patel?

  Do you want your carrier inspecting your packets and making decisions about what those packets represent?

• 17:45Speaker 02

  And what they do.

• 17:45Nilay Patel?

  And then changing those packets.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  No.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  This is why people are ultimately like net neutrality is a free speech issue.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  I think the Kantian idea, do I want everybody, every company to act like this?

• 17:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  No.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  Well, then why are we okay with?

• 18:00Speaker 01

  I want, that's exactly, I want a market where different companies can come up with different ideas.

• 18:07Speaker 02

  But like the, we're gonna get deep into like our political differences here, but like fundamentally, this is not a free and open market because it is a scarce resource called wireless spectrum that only a few large companies can get.

• 18:21Speaker 03

  Afford to get licensed.

• 18:22Speaker 02

  And so your dream of like competition of the marketplace is never going to come to pass.

• 18:27Nilay Patel?

  Also, well, that's true. But also T-Mobile, for the longest time, who was the most upstart challenger to the incumbents. So they were providing the real competition. They were the only company providing real competition to AT&T and Verizon, who have effectively the same plans and market.

• 18:45Speaker 03

  And when one does something, the other does something.

• 18:47Nilay Patel?

  Inevitably, like AT&T and Verizon mirror each other to the point where I, the FCC has actually like looked into whether they collude. So T-Mobile was the national market competitor to them. They were the upstart. And then over time, John Ledger has revealed himself to not be Steve Perry, renegade up, like rock star of the people.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  Well, that was obvious.

• 19:09Nilay Patel?

  But to be Joe Belfiore, corporate executive of a large corporation. Sorry, I'm just naming guys along here.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  A very important phone call.

• 19:19Speaker 02

  Dieter's calling Joe Belfiore to apologize.

• 19:21Speaker 03

  A couple of minor details here. So T-Mobile will throttle you if you exceed 26 gigabytes.

• 19:27Speaker 02

  Oh, 26 gigabytes.

• 19:29Speaker 03

  Fine print, fine print. And you know, the thing is with unlimited data plans, I know that we talked about the, you know, if you have a cap, you are conscious of it and you don't do things that you would do if you didn't have the cap. But the reality is, I don't think most people are conscious of their caps. I think, and they look at their average usage for what they use their phone for, and it's like three to five gigabytes a month if they're a heavy user. You have your certain customers who go way above that. But like the unlimited pitch is such a red herring and so disingenuous to like switch people over into a higher cost model that they don't need with restrictions that their capped plan doesn't have. And that's like why this is like just so icky to me from the outset.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  It's

• 20:13Nilay Patel?

  Shell game.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  Weird, weird to me. Yeah, I definitely think the companies are always going to find a way to get their existing subscribers to pay a little more while also looks to people from a different service.

• 20:24Nilay Patel?

  I think that everything you guys said in the last two minutes when I was totally in the room was absolutely right.

• 20:30Nilay Patel?

  So this is like a, what Dieter was saying about Verizon is really interesting to me, right? All of these companies are desperate. They know that the money, and this is true of like the broader tech industry. The money is no longer in mobile. There's not a growth market.

• 20:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is why, this is fundamentally why Verizon bought Yahoo.

• 20:49Nilay Patel?

  Right. They bought AOL and they bought Yahoo and they're like,

• 20:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, they're just trying to squeeze more blood out of them.

• 20:53Nilay Patel?

  Disclosure, our company is invested in by Comcast.

• 20:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:56Nilay Patel?

  Comcast was a cable provider that bought NBC and then NBC invested in Vox Media because they understood that the money and growth was not in providing cable television and wireline internet anymore. And if they could, if they could own some chunk of what traveled over their pipes, they could probably cut sweetheart deals with themselves, which the FCC prohibited them from doing, but who the hell knows what they do. They could cut sweetheart deals with themselves and eke more margin out of every additional customer on their network. Verizon's doing the same thing, only instead of buying hip new mobile companies.

• 21:25Speaker 02

  They're making Go90.

• 21:27Nilay Patel?

  They made Go90 and they bought fucking AOL.

• 21:31Nilay Patel?

  It's just like, I don't quite understand what the idea was there. But you can see like all of these wireless companies, T-Mobile's monkeying with their data plans.

• 21:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, T-Mobile's playing the squeeze more blood out of an ever shrinking stone. Like, like, it's like, they're trying to squeeze more profit out of each one.

• 21:46Nilay Patel?

  Deutsche Telekom has said T-Mobile is currently running unsustainably. So the pressure on T-Mobile is a business unit.

• 21:53Speaker 03

  And that's why we see T-Mobile with new data plans literally every three months.

• 21:58Speaker 02

  Well, but everybody, hang on, it's not just T-Mobile.

• 22:00Speaker 03

  No, but it is, it's a lot of T-Mobile.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, but everybody's been on this churn since like the two-year contract. Like we, AT&T is changing their plans every two, three months for sure.

• 22:09Speaker 03

  But AT&T is,

• 22:10Nilay Patel?

  So wait, to one, to one, just to bolster Paul, because I generally disagree with him at neutrality, but I'm throwing you a bone here, buddy. Part of this is, we got what we wanted from phones. All the phones are the same, they're all, you can buy almost all of them unlocked.

• 22:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, but you can't.

• 22:28Nilay Patel?

  And false.

• 22:28Speaker 02

  Quite.

• 22:29Nilay Patel?

  I was so sure I showed it on silent. John Ledger's calling Paul Angerly, "I heard you're a customer."

• 22:35Nilay Patel?

  You can buy them, virtually all of them unlocked, and you can put virtually all of them on every carrier. Depending.

• 22:39Speaker 02

  Eh.

• 22:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's like, it's like a little squishy.

• 22:42Speaker 02

  We're getting there.

• 22:43Nilay Patel?

  You can do it with a Nexus, you can do it with the iPhone, you can do it with a big.

• 22:47Speaker 02

  Nah, they're actually, like, some of that is regressing. The current iPhone is not, like, universal bands. Like, you need to have the band. This is why I went on my rant about, like, if you really do think that the internet is a utility, or you think that should be the goal, everything that the wireless carriers are doing is antithetical to that. They're changing the plans every three months. Imagine if your electric bill did that. Like, your electric bill plan was completely insane. They, uh, there is, in fact, lack of compatibility because of this band issue.

• 23:12Nilay Patel?

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:13Speaker 02

  And, like, it's just bonkers. And they're deciding what does and doesn't get to get treated on their network equally.

• 23:19Nilay Patel?

  So are we, is this an inflection point time, or is this the new normal? Right? Because I would argue.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  Well, that's the purpose of Un-carrier, is to distract you by thinking, "Oh, my god, revolution, this is great", without actually making you realize that it's like, they're just trying to keep it from becoming a utility. A dumb pipe. That's the point of Un-carrier, is to make you think that it's a revolution.

• 23:41Nilay Patel?

  Longtime Engage podcast listeners will know that the only shirt I ever wanted that podcast to have was "You're a dumb pipe, stupid."

• 23:50Nilay Patel?

  I will tell you that it is my dream to open a t-shirt shop at The Verge. We're gonna do it one of these days. Plans are afoot, Ross Miller, looking at you, buddy.

• 23:59Speaker 02

  Hey, Ross.

• 24:00Nilay Patel?

  It's your job.

• 24:00Speaker 02

  How you doing, buddy?

• 24:01Nilay Patel?

  Uh, and I will put that shirt in the store. Because, goddammit, you're a dumb pipe! Anyway, let's talk about the Galaxy. I have a bunch of like trash to talk about Verizon and AOL, but like in Yahoo, but I mean, that's just about owning the icons on your phone, right?

• 24:18Speaker 02

  No, it's about it's about ad networks that like the Verizon thing in particular is about ad networks. They need to build an ad network that's competitive with double click and Google. And they get scale out of both Yahoo and AOL combined to gather more data to sell more targeted ads.

• 24:34Nilay Patel?

  No, but that's

• 24:34Speaker 02

  And they want their dream is to combine that information with the information they gather about you from your phone and put all that together into like a kick ass data network that not only knows who you are when you browse the web, but also when you move around in meat space.

• 24:49Nilay Patel?

  I just wish I knew what the final nefarious purpose of that was. Is it like, and then

• 24:53Speaker 02

  It's to make you click on a Mack Weldon underwear ad.

• 24:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  Like, that's it.

• 24:58Nilay Patel?

  If only we had a Mack Weldon ad on the show today, which we do not, but great underwear, I have to say. Sponsor control, delete. Great. So, so comfortable, anti-microbeo. I don't remember the ad read. That's a free one, Mack. I don't know. Like, to me, it's just like, they're done with the phone.

• 25:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:18Nilay Patel?

  And now Verizon's trying to get on the screen of the phone and monetize what's on the screen of the phone.

• 25:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:22Nilay Patel?

  The way that Comcast was done with TV and then they got on the screen of the TV. It's the same terrible process. All these carriers are dumb. But, that said, the shit that connects to these god awful networks run by greedy corporate operatives is getting real good.

• 25:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. This is the positive side of the wireless world.

• 25:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 25:40Speaker 02

  Is things like the Galaxy Note 7.

• 25:42Nilay Patel?

  So I'm just gonna put it out there. I'm gonna say it right up front.

• 25:44Speaker 02

  Woo.

• 25:45Nilay Patel?

  And we can break into it.

• 25:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:46Nilay Patel?

  Dan scored the Note 7 higher than the iPhone 6S.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 25:50Nilay Patel?

  The iPhone, the iPhone 6S, as I like to call it, got a nine. I gave it a nine last year. The new one's obviously around the corner, but you have the Note 3 a 9.3.

• 26:00Speaker 02

  I did.

• 26:00Nilay Patel?

  Or Note 7.

• 26:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:02Nilay Patel?

  The Note 3 went back in time. Now that we know everything that we know.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  I believe, under our current rating system, the Note 7 is the highest rated cellphone we've ever reviewed.

• 26:11Nilay Patel?

  That makes sense.

• 26:12Speaker 02

  And it's an excellent device. I think it's, it's, it's very worth that praise. It's an excellent design.

• 26:17Nilay Patel?

  It's just too expensive.

• 26:18Speaker 02

  It's beautiful to look at. It's got a gorgeous screen. It's got really fast processors.

• 26:23Nilay Patel?

  This screen is so intense that it's hard to look at. You have to adjust yourself to this. It's, we have talked a lot about pixel density and screen elimination, and it's, they got all the way there where it looks like you're touching a glowing piece of paper.

• 26:39Speaker 03

  It's wild, yeah. And I mean, you're getting the best camera you can get right now on a cellphone. You're also getting water resistance, and if you want it, you also get an S pen that does some funky tricks if you're interested.

• 26:48Nilay Patel?

  The gif, the whole gif thing, where you can like, capture a video to make a gif. The fact that that requires the pen.

• 26:55Speaker 03

  Oh, and it's ridiculous that it's tied to the pen, but it's a cool trick.

• 26:57Nilay Patel?

  It is a cool trick.

• 26:59Speaker 03

  And it'll scan your eyes, which is another cool trick.

• 27:01Nilay Patel?

  Does it work?

• 27:02Speaker 02

  Nah, that's a stupid trick.

• 27:03Speaker 03

  Oh, that's a stupid trick, sure. I'll, I'll give you that.

• 27:05Nilay Patel?

  You fight with this?

• 27:05Speaker 03

  But, uh, you know.

• 27:07Speaker 02

  The thing that gets me about the Note 7 more than anything else is, I know that there's a couple people who disagree with me on this, but like, as a beautiful, well-designed object, it is so radically outclassed the last year's iPhone that I don't even know what to say about it. It's like, it is bonkers how much better Samsung's design is than Apple's design.

• 27:26Speaker 03

  And not only is it a good-looking design, it's like remarkably efficient. You put it next to an iPhone, or, or iPhone 6s Plus, or another big screen phone, and the Note 7 is like, way narrower, way smaller, but it still has the same big-sized screen. It fits in your hand so much nicer.

• 27:42Speaker 02

  Nobody's beat the 5 yet.

• 27:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's 4. Are you kidding me?

• 27:46Speaker 02

  5 is better than the 4. iPhone 5.

• 27:48Nilay Patel?

  Crazy.

• 27:49Speaker 02

  iPhone 5 is better than the iPhone 4.

• 27:50Nilay Patel?

  All of you are crazy.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  The better screen proportion.

• 27:52Nilay Patel?

  But the 4 was more beautiful.

• 27:53Speaker 02

  No, the 5 was more beautiful.

• 27:55Nilay Patel?

  You're all of you are crazy.

• 27:56Speaker 02

  You're a dumb pipe. I just love the 5 because I got mine, um, I got mine re-anodized, so it was orange.

• 28:04Nilay Patel?

  Uh, I mean, just.

• 28:06Speaker 03

  That was cool.

• 28:07Nilay Patel?

  You would, it's like, if you saw them a little bit farther apart, the 6s Plus, they kind of seem like the same size.

• 28:14Speaker 03

  Until you hold them.

• 28:15Nilay Patel?

  And then you hold them and you get them close, you're like, oh, the iPhone's a surfboard.

• 28:20Nilay Patel?

  Like, I'm gonna catch some waves. This thing is beautiful.

• 28:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:23Nilay Patel?

  But, tell me about Samsung's software problems.

• 28:26Speaker 03

  So, Samsung's perennial software problems are twofold. One, its modifications to Android are not as elegant as Android itself. And two...

• 28:35Nilay Patel?

  But they're like way less though. We should, we should sit with that.

• 28:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'll, I'll say that.

• 28:39Nilay Patel?

  Does it still make water drop sounds?

• 28:40Speaker 03

  No.

• 28:40Nilay Patel?

  Every year Samsung tells us that they've like cleaned up and made touchwiz simpler. And every year, you're like, really? And then we look and it's like, okay, yeah, a little bit. They're like, they're making small, like subtle changes to it. But it's still like fundamentally like a little bit touchwiz.

• 28:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it's not to the point where it gets in the way.

• 28:56Nilay Patel?

  A little bit touchwiz.

• 28:57Speaker 03

  Of, of like the experience of the phone. The more nefarious problem is Samsung is still in the pocket of every US carrier. And every phone that you can buy right now or tomorrow when it goes on sale will have crapware from Verizon or T-Mobile or Sprint or whatever.

• 29:12Nilay Patel?

  They won't even offer it unlocked.

• 29:13Speaker 03

  They will offer it unlocked.

• 29:14Nilay Patel?

  But not right away.

• 29:15Speaker 03

  Not right away. We don't know when. They did tell me that they're gonna come out with an unlocked version. They would not say when.

• 29:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, just scrolling on Google Maps on this screen because of the curve.

• 29:24Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 29:25Nilay Patel?

  I mean, the curve is useless, but then it's also the best thing.

• 29:28Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, so like it's, it isn't useless because it makes the phone narrower.

• 29:32Nilay Patel?

  You use the, you use the S7 Edge, right?

• 29:35Speaker 03

  I do, yeah.

• 29:35Nilay Patel?

  Somehow I am less, I'm getting fewer Edge taps on this than I did with the S7 Edge.

• 29:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, I would agree with that because the, the curve on the Note 7 is less aggressive. It's a, it's a tighter curve because, and it's, it's not as obvious of a curve.

• 29:50Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 29:50Speaker 03

  Uh, and I think they also tweaked a lot of the software.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  To just bezel-less.

• 29:54Speaker 03

  It's pretty much bezel-less. It's, it's, it's pretty much on the sides, it's virtually bezel-less because of the curve.

• 29:59Nilay Patel?

  Paul just looked up the Aza Salon.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  Oh, I did not do that.

• 30:04Nilay Patel?

  Hot new cut?

• 30:05Speaker 01

  I actually do need a haircut.

• 30:06Nilay Patel?

  You should get the, the Mr. Robot cut. I think you'd look crazy with that haircut. Like totally shaved sides and then just a really long wild hair on the top. You could do it.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  Uh, I'm trying not to go very aggressive. I'm in my 30s now.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  I want this phone.

• 30:21Nilay Patel?

  Trying to mature.

• 30:22Speaker 02

  Let's see if I can take a picture of you and Sean here.

• 30:24Speaker 03

  I don't know what the iPhone 7 is gonna be like, but if you're buying a phone today, you really can't beat them.

• 30:29Speaker 02

  Also, if you're buying a phone today, stop it.

• 30:33Speaker 02

  The Note 7 is legitimately, might be the most beautiful phone I've ever held, but the iPhone's coming out and the Nexus phones are coming out real quick. Just hang on for a month or two.

• 30:43Speaker 03

  That's not to say that there's a guarantee the iPhone and Nexus phones will be better. The Note 7 might end up being king of the hill, but at least see what's out there.

• 30:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I don't know. I just feel like we kind of know what's going on with the iPhone.

• 30:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, we do kind of know that.

• 30:56Speaker 02

  And it's just getting uglier.

• 30:59Speaker 02

  Like every new leak, it's like, come on.

• 31:01Speaker 03

  Yeah. Did you see the blue one? Did you see the blue leak?

• 31:03Speaker 02

  I didn't see the blue leak.

• 31:04Speaker 03

  Oh, it's so bad.

• 31:04Speaker 02

  And like the 6 Plus just looks.

• 31:06Speaker 03

  It looks like, it looks like if Best Buy had like a Best Buy edition color.

• 31:11Speaker 02

  It's going to be the 6SE Plus.

• 31:13Nilay Patel?

  You think so?

• 31:14Speaker 02

  They're saving that 7 for the real thing.

• 31:16Nilay Patel?

  You believe it?

• 31:17Speaker 03

  But like, what about next year when it's the 10th iPhone? They're not gonna do an iPhone X?

• 31:21Nilay Patel?

  What if they call it the iPhone 10?

• 31:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, the iPhone 10 with an X.

• 31:25Speaker 02

  You think they would go to 7 to 10?

• 31:30Nilay Patel?

  It's been, I guess, no.

• 31:36Speaker 02

  Oh, man. That's like the saddest Microsoft fanboy burned to Apple is like, you went 7 to 10? We got all the way to 8 first.

• 31:46Speaker 02

  Well, tell me about Nexus phones.

• 31:47Nilay Patel?

  So the.

• 31:49Speaker 02

  I'll buy one on this show eventually.

• 31:52Nilay Patel?

  I also do want to talk about Fuchsia.

• 31:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, it's on the list. Don't you fret. The leak came out on Android Police?

• 31:59Speaker 03

  I believe so, yeah.

• 32:00Speaker 02

  They had some photos that were like hilariously cropped, so you couldn't see what the table was. And it's like all metal. There's like glass on the top, on the back. It's got, it looks, it's made by HTC. It looks like a, like a better looking Nexus 6P.

• 32:15Speaker 03

  It looks like an HTC A9. It's a recycled A9 design.

• 32:18Speaker 02

  Looks like an A9, but.

• 32:19Speaker 03

  With a fingerprint scanner on the back.

• 32:20Speaker 02

  The big one and the small one are gonna supposedly have identical specs.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  And, you know, we all assume it's gonna be the first like full on like, yo, we're a daydream phone now. Phone. And I mean, that's kind of all you need to know. I mean, we'll see what they decide to do with the processor. But like, it, like, basically, like. Ever since, I don't know, the Nexus 4, there's been like this sense of like, I don't know if I trust that the Nexus phones are gonna look good. And then we got the 5 and everyone's like, that looks cheap. Oh wait, I love it so much. And we got the Nexus 6, which is like-

• 32:51Speaker 03

  Surfboard.

• 32:51Speaker 02

  The most insane phone.

• 32:53Nilay Patel?

  Everyone yelled at me. Like, there are still people out there on Twitter who are like, the Nexus 6 was the best phone ever.

• 32:58Speaker 02

  Oh, it was just, and then, you know, they like, they recovered and they made the 6P and the 5X and those are great. So, but there's like no guarantee that the next Nexus phone is going to be like a reasonably good looking phone.

• 33:09Nilay Patel?

  It's like HTC's last shot.

• 33:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is why, I mean, HTC just doesn't-

• 33:15Speaker 03

  So the rumor is that, you know, HTC's logo is not gonna be anywhere near this. It's gonna be branded Google.

• 33:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:20Speaker 03

  So HTC is like going back to its white label.

• 33:23Nilay Patel?

  Is HTC's camera gonna be anywhere near it?

• 33:26Speaker 03

  The camera, I'll give you what you say, you know, I was pretty critical about the HTC 10 because I don't think it did enough to stand out this year, but its camera is not, it's a problem. Its camera's fine. It's not Samsung good.

• 33:36Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 33:36Speaker 03

  It's like compatible with the G5. It's as good as the iPhone 6S camera.

• 33:40Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 33:41Nilay Patel?

  Hmm.

• 33:42Speaker 03

  Last year. Now the M9, that was a dumpster fire camera. And every camera before that.

• 33:47Nilay Patel?

  Alright.

• 33:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:48Nilay Patel?

  Hmm. I'm gonna end up buying all of these phones. I bought both the 6P and the-

• 33:52Speaker 02

  I traded my 6P 4 or 5X.

• 33:55Nilay Patel?

  You're a maniac.

• 33:56Speaker 02

  I feel pretty good about it.

• 33:57Nilay Patel?

  What do you got right now? You got a 6?

• 33:58Speaker 03

  I gotta be honest, 6P-

• 33:59Nilay Patel?

  You're wearing an Apple watch. What do you got?

• 34:00Speaker 02

  I got an iPhone 6 in my pocket.

• 34:01Speaker 03

  The 6P design has not aged well with me.

• 34:03Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 34:04Speaker 03

  It's so big and clumsy, especially now that you have things like what Samsung's doing with efficiency and size. And it's like the 6P is like, like, you know, you could describe the iPhone as a surfboard. 6P's the exact same way.

• 34:15Nilay Patel?

  I just can't believe Apple's just gonna charge into another year. I mean, they're gonna make a big deal out of the, that's my feeling, is they'll make a big deal out of the camera, right? That's all the leaks, show this huge bulky camera.

• 34:26Speaker 03

  That's because Samsung's eating their lunch on the camera. Like, since the iPhone 4, Apple has led the smartphone camera race. And in the past year, they're not leading anymore. And so like, they have to like, if they wanna reclaim that title, put all their weight in the camera.

• 34:40Nilay Patel?

  Just, what is Johnny have doing? That's all I wanna know.

• 34:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:43Nilay Patel?

  What's he up to? Does he look at the phone? Does he even come down there anymore? Is he on the basement of the spaceship being like, we made it, we made a phone?

• 34:49Speaker 02

  Trying to make a car out of glass.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  I can do it. I know it's possible. I believe in myself.

• 34:57Speaker 02

  Tweet from Rand's, I think it was like my most retweeted tweet, but I just retweeted him. Uh, he, he basically like, he took a picture of the Apple mouse with the lightning port charger on the bottom. Yeah. And he, and he said like, looking at this, it's totally possible that I will screw up the headphone jack situation. Right? Like.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  I'll admit, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna wait for the new iPhone and I'm gonna get it. That's the kind of terrible person that I am. Which one do you have now? You have a six? I got a six with a broken screen. You've got headphones plugged into your phone right now. The charging port hardly like ever works, like the lightning connector is.

• 35:30Speaker 03

  I'm confused why you have headphones plugged into your phone right now.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  I don't know. What are you listening to? I was listening to a podcast. You're on a podcast.

• 35:37Speaker 03

  You're not, you're not wearing those headphones, alright.

• 35:42Speaker 01

  Here's, here's what I wish Apple would focus on.

• 35:44Speaker 03

  Listening to another podcast.

• 35:45Speaker 01

  Battery life. I'm listening, what stack right now? Battery life, I'm, I'm using this Apple battery case.

• 35:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, I would not expect any, uh, any difference. They're gonna make it thinner, it's gonna have worse battery life.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  There's a quick charging rumor.

• 35:57Speaker 03

  There's a well, well water, I mean, we've talked about these rumors.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  Did you say there's a well water system?

• 36:01Speaker 03

  There's a water resistant.

• 36:03Speaker 01

  It has well water.

• 36:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I feel like I could get really mad in a couple of years, but right now I'd just be, I'd just be fine with getting a phone that's not old. We gotta talk about two more Google things. Fuchsia, tell me about Fuchsia and we got in Dieter reviewed Duo. I, I've been wanting another operating system from a big player for a long time. Uh, Mac OS X is at this point almost as old or older than class, the classic Mac operating system. Um, was when they switched it to 10, but it's based on Unix. Windows is old. Linux is a clone of Unix and that's what Android's on. Wow. It is. What, what do you?

• 36:49Speaker 02

  I'm not, I'm not.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  I'm not saying it's wrong. That's just like exactly why Linus built it. Yeah. To clone Linux or clone Unix. It's, they've progressed in different directions. Oh, sure, sure. I'm, but I'm just saying that. Is like that our operating systems are based on very old ideas and there's gotta be new ideas out there. So what, when is a big company gonna make a new operating system and try some new ideas? And Google, it might just be a side project, might just be a weird thing. Who knows how important this is to the company? But they are making an operating system. It's based on like a tiny little micro kernel. It's like 15 kilobyte kernel. And, and it sounds like a lot of that, a lot of the design is based on, well, kinda like based on real time operating systems.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  So it, it could run on really small, low end hardware. It could probably run in cars. It could run on a Google Glass, I bet. It's, it's gonna run on desktop and phone. So they're taking basically an operating system, a kernel called LK that was designed for just embedded devices, like doing like one-off programs. And then they're adding all the features into it to make it a full operating system that would run on phones, desktops. It's gonna be running on a Raspberry Pi pretty soon. It actually works. I compiled it and ran it on my computer, which is crazy for like a operating, like a whole operating system project to be something you can download and compile

• 38:15Speaker 01

  without too much struggle and afternoon. Like it's very minimal and slick and, and, and modern in a lot of ways, which is cool and exciting. What's it for?

• 38:24Speaker 02

  That's the $10,000, $64,000 question.

• 38:26Speaker 01

  One of the things that they're doing, you guys know React Native? No. So Facebook made this framework called React for making like web apps. But now then they made this thing called React Native where you can use JavaScript to design apps that, and use kind of very similar tools and code to write your iOS and Android app. Google is doing a similar thing with their Dart programming language that you can make apps that with very little modification will run on iOS and Android. And that platform, it looks like, is what they are building support for in Fuchsia.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  So it does seem like they are going to want iOS, Android type apps on this. So whatever that means. Also, it's being built by two people who worked on, one of them worked on WebOS, both of them worked on BOS. One of them worked on Danger, hip. So just not, I'm just saying, just not a grand history of massive success. Oh, they also worked on Android.

• 39:29Nilay Patel?

  Right, well, yeah, of course. Is it Matthias? Because he worked on...

• 39:33Speaker 01

  No, they're definitely not at the...

• 39:34Nilay Patel?

  Can I ask a question?

• 39:35Speaker 01

  They're not at the UI level.

• 39:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, they haven't even gotten to the point where Matthias would...

• 39:38Nilay Patel?

  Where's Matthias been at?

• 39:40Speaker 03

  He's been, uh, doing design conferences and like...

• 39:43Nilay Patel?

  Dude wasn't at Google I/O.

• 39:45Speaker 03

  He wasn't at I/O.

• 39:46Nilay Patel?

  But they didn't really do anything in Nougat, right?

• 39:49Speaker 03

  No, the design's pretty much the same.

• 39:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, he like invented material design and now he's on a boat. That's what I would...

• 39:54Speaker 02

  Wearing a sweet shirt.

• 39:55Nilay Patel?

  If I was, if I had been like, you know what? Material design. The entire industry will look like this tomorrow.

• 39:59Speaker 03

  I talked to Matthias like...

• 40:01Nilay Patel?

  Which is effectively what happened with material design.

• 40:02Speaker 03

  I talked to him about a year ago. There was a Google held a design conference in New York and, uh, his job now is to make sure the rest of Google understands material design. It's like what I got out of him.

• 40:13Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it, it, it is the dominant design language. It's, pieces of it are everywhere.

• 40:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:19Nilay Patel?

  Like even like Apple's stuff is starting to like do the layering thing in that way. And they obviously don't want anything to do with it. Like, they're very different. But that concept of like layered information is just appearing constantly everywhere, as far as I can tell.

• 40:33Speaker 02

  He just did a, uh, profile with Fasco talking about material design and cards.

• 40:39Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I'm saying, if you invented material design, you'd be like...

• 40:41Speaker 01

  Where do you go from material design?

• 40:44Speaker 03

  In material design.

• 40:45Nilay Patel?

  You go to a boat.

• 40:45Speaker 02

  Intangible design.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  Intangible and material design. That's good, that's good.

• 40:49Nilay Patel?

  Um, all right, we got a break for an ad. Dan?

• 40:52Speaker 03

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna turn into a special guest.

• 40:54Nilay Patel?

  Can you go ahead and just do a spreadsheet of carrier data plans for me?

• 40:59Speaker 03

  It'll be the top post on the site for a week.

• 41:03Nilay Patel?

  Go get it done, man. You stuck your own grave out of that joke. Get out of here. And now, Citibank.

• 41:11Nilay 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. Guess who's here?

• 41:38Speaker 04

  It's me, Nicola.

• 41:39Nilay Patel?

  Nicola Fumo is here. She's back.

• 41:41Speaker 04

  I'm back, baby.

• 41:42Nilay Patel?

  Gracing the presence of, gracing the office of Vox Media with her presence.

• 41:45Speaker 04

  Dropping in.

• 41:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 41:47Speaker 04

  Like a ghost.

• 41:48Nilay Patel?

  Like, literally, Andrew is like, Nicola's gonna be here tomorrow.

• 41:50Speaker 04

  I know. Well, I'm doing a project for Ract that requires a little bit of in-office time.

• 41:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 41:55Speaker 04

  So I was like, well, they're recording Bridgecast. Come say hello.

• 41:59Nilay Patel?

  I'm happy you're here.

• 42:00Speaker 04

  I'm happy to be here.

• 42:01Nilay Patel?

  The audience is crazy. They're in their cars right now, swerving all over the place, screaming. Uh, what's going on? I feel like, literally, the segment on the sheet here is titled, "Hangin' with Nicola Fumo."

• 42:11Speaker 04

  I mean, aren't we?

• 42:12Nilay Patel?

  I think it should be called "Fumo Update." Where have you been?

• 42:15Speaker 04

  Um, okay, so... Yeah, last I left you, I couldn't buy a laptop and I was leaving for a month. Now I'm back, I own a laptop, and I'm leaving for another month.

• 42:25Nilay Patel?

  Where are you going?

• 42:26Speaker 04

  Um, I'm going to temporar- temporarily relocate to Los Angeles.

• 42:31Nilay Patel?

  It's all happening.

• 42:32Speaker 04

  Um, starting in a week and a half, as of yesterday.

• 42:35Nilay Patel?

  Is temporary.

• 42:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's what everyone keeps telling me.

• 42:38Nilay Patel?

  I don't know if the listeners know this, but the, the two great axes of creative person migration in this world right now are New York to LA

• 42:46Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:47Nilay Patel?

  and San Francisco to Portland.

• 42:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:49Nilay Patel?

  And that's, and eventually the Portland people are gonna move to New York, because that, someone has to live here.

• 42:53Speaker 04

  Honestly, I'm dying to find what is the Portland-Austin right now that isn't where they are? Like, well, I don't know what that, is it Detroit? I don't know what that city is, but I really wanna find it. Like, that's where I wanna go.

• 43:05Nilay Patel?

  I, Detroit's like a great city, good Midwestern, tough town, but like, Austin is like, warm weather, cheap Wranglers.

• 43:12Speaker 04

  That's a thing.

• 43:13Nilay Patel?

  Tacos.

• 43:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:14Nilay Patel?

  I don't know what cheap Wranglers, but I, it's in my mind. That's more of like a Arizona State thing. Um, and Portland's like, beautiful scenery.

• 43:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, cuz you gotta get that nature, you gotta get that nature element in with...

• 43:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 43:25Speaker 04

  Um, okay, so where I been?

• 43:26Nilay Patel?

  Minneapolis. The nature element of Minneapolis is like, it snowed, so we built a system of tunnels.

• 43:31Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, they also refused to let anybody build houses next to the lake because they wanted it to be public land. And so all the lakes in Minneapolis have walkways and parks around them.

• 43:40Nilay Patel?

  Don't you have like 10,000 lakes?

• 43:42Speaker 02

  Actually, it's like 15.

• 43:44Speaker 04

  They under quoted.

• 43:46Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying. Why be so protective of one lake?

• 43:48Speaker 01

  15,000?

• 43:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:49Speaker 04

  I went to Minneapolis and enjoyed a lake.

• 43:52Speaker 02

  What kind of laptop did you get?

• 43:52Speaker 04

  The gold little MacBook.

• 43:55Speaker 02

  It happened.

• 43:55Speaker 04

  It happened.

• 43:56Speaker 02

  Is it, can I actually do all the things that you want it to do now?

• 43:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, we are getting along. We're getting along.

• 44:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. Alright.

• 44:03Speaker 04

  I bought it a case. You know what I mean? Did you go to church with me?

• 44:09Nilay Patel?

  Uh, cause you, you bought that computer and you gave it back.

• 44:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, and then I bought more computers than I gave them back.

• 44:15Nilay Patel?

  Which one would you buy?

• 44:16Speaker 04

  Various other iterations of the MacBook. Um, and then I bought, I bought this current one that I own while I was home in Milwaukee from a Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin Apple Store, um, which was a delight to walk into. And I saw so many moms with Apple Watches, like, and this one mom and her teenager were trying to buy a new phone and the mom was like clearly like all up on the tech news and she was like not letting the girl pick it out. It was like,

• 44:44Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 44:44Speaker 04

  It was like watching a mom not let the girl pick out her prom dress style oppression about the iPhone.

• 44:51Nilay Patel?

  Really? Which one did she end up buying?

• 44:52Speaker 04

  I don't know. I wasn't listening that close.

• 44:54Nilay Patel?

  My mom, I was just home. My mom went to go trade in her iPhone 5. And she was like, I want the 5SE.

• 45:03Nilay Patel?

  And Apple refused to sell it to her.

• 45:05Speaker 02

  What?

• 45:05Speaker 04

  Why?

• 45:06Nilay Patel?

  She's like, the Apple Store guy was like, why do you want this phone? Like if you get a new phone, you should get the 6S because it has like, it's bigger, faster, better camera. He's like, this is basically the same thing. And she's like, okay, I'm gonna go home.

• 45:16Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 45:16Nilay Patel?

  It's like, how do they blow it that badly?

• 45:18Speaker 02

  That's insane.

• 45:19Nilay Patel?

  Like you could have sold a phone. Isn't your job to sell a phone? Anyway.

• 45:23Speaker 04

  That's weird.

• 45:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So she has this like broken 5 and I just like send her back to the store and get a new one.

• 45:27Speaker 02

  But they'd sent her away.

• 45:29Nilay Patel?

  Well, she came back. I was like, do you get a new phone? She's like, the guy told me not to get it.

• 45:33Speaker 04

  That's weird.

• 45:34Nilay Patel?

  It's like Apple, though. They're building trust to sell you the more expensive phone.

• 45:37Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 45:38Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, what phone did the mom and her daughter end up buying?

• 45:40Speaker 04

  I don't know. I wasn't eavesdropping that hard. I just was like, it wasn't something I couldn't avoid. And then I was like, oh, this is weird.

• 45:46Speaker 02

  Oh, I have a question for you. Did you see the story today about Apple stores?

• 45:49Speaker 04

  No.

• 45:50Speaker 02

  They no longer call them Apple stores.

• 45:51Speaker 04

  Oh, what are they?

• 45:52Speaker 02

  It's not Apple Store with a capital S. It's like Apple the Grove. Apple.

• 45:56Speaker 04

  Oh, Apple Spring Street.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  So, yeah.

• 45:59Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 46:00Speaker 02

  And so it is an Apple Store, but it's not the Apple Store.

• 46:02Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 46:03Speaker 02

  It's Apple and then the location.

• 46:04Speaker 04

  That's very fashion retail. So call it by like the city name or the street name.

• 46:08Speaker 01

  Go shopping for an iPhone in SoHo at one of those stores. Would you say, I'm going to Apple?

• 46:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:16Speaker 01

  Or would you say, I'm going to Apple?

• 46:18Nilay Patel?

  Wait, is it the location?

• 46:20Speaker 02

  Can I just say that trying to get the headline for this story was a blast. Apple stores are still Apple stores, but they're not Apple stores.

• 46:26Speaker 04

  That's good.

• 46:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, because people on the internet really read into capitalization.

• 46:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:32Nilay Patel?

  Would you call it, the one in Williamsburg is in a formal bagel, bagel shop.

• 46:35Speaker 04

  Wait, has it opened?

• 46:36Nilay Patel?

  It's open.

• 46:36Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 46:37Speaker 04

  Oh, it just opened?

• 46:37Speaker 02

  It's very insane.

• 46:39Nilay Patel?

  And it's, I just think of it as like where the bagel store used to be. So it's like really weird to walk down the street and be like, that 100%, you can still kind of see where like the sign was.

• 46:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  Used to be Bagel, now Apple.

• 46:54Nilay Patel?

  Well, it's Apple's, Apple Bagel. Apple Bagel Store.

• 46:56Speaker 02

  Apple Bagel.

• 46:57Speaker 04

  Oh, wait, the Bagel Store.

• 46:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 46:59Speaker 04

  I used to eat there when I lived in Williamsburg.

• 47:01Nilay Patel?

  When I could buy and return any number of computers there.

• 47:03Speaker 04

  Oh, that's so weird. You know how like in, like when you're driving and you see like a McDonald's next to a Taco Bell, next to a KFC or whatever? The New York City equivalent of that is a Whole Foods, an Apple Store, and an Equinox. And all three of those opened like together, hugging in that area of.

• 47:22Nilay Patel?

  I live in, I live in New Jersey Mall.

• 47:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:25Nilay Patel?

  Like, it's like you walk down the street, there's a G-Star Raw, there's a Levi's store, there's an Apple Store, and there's like a, a very nicely done Dunkin' Donuts that makes it look more like it belongs there.

• 47:34Speaker 04

  That is the funniest Dunkin' Donuts. I call Williamsburg the West Village of Brooklyn.

• 47:39Nilay Patel?

  No, the West Village is definitely cool. Like, it's a New Jersey mall. It's, which is fine.

• 47:44Speaker 04

  You don't have to accept Williamsburg for what it is. Like, you can't fight it, and then everything's fine.

• 47:48Nilay Patel?

  It's time to leave there. That's what I know. So you've got a story here that you want to tell us about, about Kanye and Square.

• 47:53Speaker 04

  Oh, well, Kanye.

• 47:56Speaker 04

  I'm so sick of talking about merch this summer. Oh my God. I wish I'd never had to say that word again. Kanye is opening 21 consecutive pop-up shops this coming weekend, Friday the 19th to Sunday the 21st, all over the world. And the exclusive payment method, in the way that you would have like a party like sponsored by the car, you know what I mean, the exclusive is Square, which is, at first I was like, oh no, but how are like kids who don't have checking accounts gonna pay, you know, they have cash, whatever, but I emailed Universal Music Group and found out you can give them cash.

• 48:30Nilay Patel?

  What will they do with it?

• 48:31Speaker 04

  I mean, that's the thing. It's like, who is the bank, who is the monopoly bank teller? Like, who's gonna collect and store this cash at these Kanye stores?

• 48:40Speaker 01

  I've accepted cash payments with Square.

• 48:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:43Speaker 01

  Feels really weird.

• 48:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, because they need to put the cash somewhere.

• 48:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:47Speaker 04

  That's the thing, it's just like-

• 48:48Speaker 01

  I didn't have a cashier, so I just like reel a pile of cash over the lap.

• 48:52Speaker 04

  Like, are they gonna put it in a bag?

• 48:55Nilay Patel?

  Wait, was this, was this back when you were like a, like a potato farmer?

• 48:58Speaker 01

  No.

• 48:59Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 48:59Speaker 01

  No, that was-

• 49:00Nilay Patel?

  Oh, you run an art, at the art gallery?

• 49:01Speaker 01

  At the art gallery.

• 49:02Nilay Patel?

  So what you're hearing on the show is Paul's Art Gallery, there's just a stack of cash somewhere.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  Somewhere. If you can find it, let me know.

• 49:10Nilay Patel?

  Well, that's like, that's very Kanye, right? It's like very future retail.

• 49:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:14Nilay Patel?

  You wave, wave your phone at it and-

• 49:16Speaker 04

  I know.

• 49:17Nilay Patel?

  What's he selling?

• 49:17Speaker 04

  Um, I imagine like the same that has been all summer, like t-shirts, jean jackets, et cetera.

• 49:24Speaker 01

  Do people normally buy these things online?

• 49:26Speaker 04

  Well, so we're in a, a merch revitalization period. Um, so since-

• 49:33Nilay Patel?

  All of us are looking at each other.

• 49:35Speaker 04

  Meanwhile, literally yesterday I wrote like, it's over. And you're all looking at me like, huh? So-

• 49:38Nilay Patel?

  That's why you're on the show.

• 49:39Speaker 04

  That's why I have to keep talking about it.

• 49:41Speaker 02

  Can I ask a fashion question?

• 49:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:42Speaker 02

  So I want to get the Levi's, uh, commuter jean jacket.

• 49:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:47Speaker 02

  That comes with like the, the technology in it. The fabric, touchable fabric stuff.

• 49:52Nilay Patel?

  I'm 100% buying that jacket.

• 49:53Speaker 02

  So, but I'm very bad at fashion, obviously. And up to now, like my daily driver is a blue pair of blue jeans. What do I do about the jacket? Cause I don't want to be wearing denim and denim. Do I need to like, do I need to completely blow up my pants strategy?

• 50:07Nilay Patel?

  Buy the darker jacket.

• 50:08Speaker 02

  Ah, black jacket? I don't know.

• 50:10Speaker 04

  I wonder if you could get like a really dark rinse for the jacket.

• 50:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:13Speaker 04

  And/or you might need to alter your jean color.

• 50:17Speaker 02

  That's what I'm saying. I gotta, I gotta blow up my whole pants strategy.

• 50:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:21Speaker 02

  Or I could go full dad, just straight up same tone.

• 50:23Speaker 04

  Has living in SF changed your style at all?

• 50:26Nilay Patel?

  The last time Joel Johnson was here, he was full Canadian tuxedo.

• 50:29Speaker 02

  Really?

• 50:30Nilay Patel?

  Just denim on denim on denim.

• 50:31Speaker 02

  That's amazing.

• 50:32Nilay Patel?

  And then he was like, I want to write for the first, like St. Paul pitch. Like put a post, send it to projectors. Um, wait, tell me about this merch thing.

• 50:40Speaker 01

  What is a merch revitalization?

• 50:41Speaker 04

  Oh, my goodness.

• 50:42Speaker 01

  I don't know what either of those words mean.

• 50:44Speaker 04

  Merch as in tour merch as in concert merch has gotten this kind of like fashion-y makeover. So everyone from Kanye, Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez is selling like t-shirts that aren't just like a screen print. They're like a whole, like they're getting designers to design them for them and they're working with artists and they're selling like, Selena Gomez is selling jean shorts with patches on them at her show. Like whereas you used to go to a show and you'd buy like a t-shirt. Now you can buy all this, you can buy every one of Selena Gomez's tattoos as a temporary tattoo. You can, it's like kinda crazy. So it's basically-

• 51:19Speaker 01

  And are they like limited runs?

• 51:20Speaker 04

  So that's what Kanye has been doing is like each location will have a short term, will only have like what you can get there that day. And then he'll release like one shirt online. You know what I mean? So it's still, when it started out in like February, March, April, May, it was rarefied because it was like, they only sold this, I have it, like no one else has it. And it was cool because it's kinda like a low entry point, but you can still get that luxury thing where it's like, but I have it and you don't because there's only 200 or something, but it costs 40 dollars. Well, but now it's becoming so like Justin Bieber has tour, Justin Bieber's tour merch, not like Justin Bieber as a designer, is sold at Barney's,

• 52:01Speaker 04

  at Urban Outfitters and starting Monday at Forever 21. So to me, it's like, well, that's just completely diluted. You went in less than a month, you went from Barney's to Forever 21. So now, wearing like a Purpose Tour shirt doesn't, it doesn't mean literally anything.

• 52:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  You know, my dream for the Verge is to start a merch store.

• 52:19Speaker 04

  I want to run it. I want that to be my next full-time shop.

• 52:22Nilay Patel?

  My favorite.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  We can do that for you. I went, I went to a Meatloaf concert after RoboCup in Mexico City.

• 52:28Speaker 04

  Chill.

• 52:29Speaker 01

  And I've got knockoff Meatloaf tour merch. I got a black t-shirt with Bad Out of Hell on it. That's, and it's a very important item to me.

• 52:41Speaker 04

  It's a cool look.

• 52:42Speaker 01

  I feel like only at that specific moment could I have gotten that specific knockoff.

• 52:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  T-shirt.

• 52:49Speaker 04

  Yes, it means something in that moment.

• 52:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Give me one second, we're gonna come back.

• 52:54Nilay Patel?

  Did you know the single router model just doesn't work for increasingly high bandwidth world? It's simple physics, like light waves. Wi-Fi waves don't go through walls well. Imagine asking a light bulb in your living room to light your master bedroom. What you need is a distributed system. What offices have had for years? At considerable work and expense, IT guys, probably the people listening to this, putting in APs, you know, those things. But you can just buy ERO, which gives you enterprise-grade Wi-Fi system in your home in just a few minutes. You just download the ERO app on your iOS, Android device, it'll walk you through each step of the process. It's quick, easily, and painless. Actually, I just did this. I just put this in my parents' house. It was those things.

• 53:31Speaker 01

  It was amazing.

• 53:32Nilay Patel?

  It's, it's a.

• 53:33Speaker 01

  It was quick?

• 53:34Nilay Patel?

  It's quick.

• 53:35Speaker 01

  Was it easy?

• 53:35Nilay Patel?

  Is it Wi-Fi that works? Yeah.

• 53:37Speaker 01

  That's all I want.

• 53:38Nilay Patel?

  It's so much better than what they had before. Um, it's actually, they're getting all of the bandwidth out of their terrible AT&T U-verse subscription. Like, you can actually get 25 down out of their, out of their system now, which it's never before. And it's like a big, grandy house. Anyway, you just download this app, you put it, you put it in, you drop the EROs where you want, you push the button, you say, I'm adding an ERO. The Eero like looks around and the app says, "This is a good place for it," or "This is a bad place for it," and you like move it. Super simple. It's also really easy to manage. You manage network from probably your hands, so you know how many devices are connected at any given point, as well as the internet speed you're getting from your service router. You can also easily create and share guest network. There's also profiles, which I didn't use with my parents, because I don't see any reason to window their phones with access.

• 54:22Nilay Patel?

  But if you have a family, you can like set up profiles and put people's things in a profile and then set timers and limits and alarm clocks. I don't know. You can cut off your kids. That's all I'm saying. Yeah. Any way you want. Eero is protected with state-of-the-art WPA2 encryption, controls the hardware and the software of the entire network, ensures you're always secure. Traditional routers don't push software up to their customers, so they're left vulnerable to cyber attacks. Scary phrase. Feel the fear. But Eero updates automatically, so that you not only have the latest features, but the latest security all times. They also have incredible customer support. The customer is really invested in the support. You can call, get ahold of a Wi-Fi expert within 30 seconds. If you have any worries about your other connected devices during setups, Eero's experts will walk you through it. And they can also help you if you're not sure how many Eros are right for your home. So there's like the one-pack and the three-pack, but you can like add as many as you want.

• 55:08Nilay Patel?

  90 euros. So, if you have like pretty fleaky Wi-Fi, just like buy an Eero. Pretty good. If you have a big house, get an Eero. It's like the thing to do. So go to Eero.com, select the amount of Euros that you wish to buy, get ready to pay for those Euros. Right. Then select free shipping, or overnight shipping, and then enter the code VERGE, and then the shipping will be free, but you'll still pay for the Euros. But then your Wi-Fi will be better, and you'll be happy you spent the money. So you're getting a deal. You're getting a deal. On shipping. Because of your buddies at the Verge. I like it. All right. Euro stuff. Nicola, I got other stuff on this list with you.

• 55:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 55:38Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 55:39Speaker 04

  What do you want to talk about?

• 55:40Nilay Patel?

  Why is there so much stuff on the list? Well.

• 55:40Speaker 04

  What do we have time left to talk about?

• 55:42Nilay Patel?

  So, I actually saw a note today that the Apple Watch, you and I have like a long history with this watch.

• 55:48Speaker 04

  Oh, that's where it all begins, besides roller skating. With us.

• 55:53Nilay Patel?

  Yes. The Virgin Rap team went roller skating together. Nick and I became friends, but the watch is like.

• 55:57Speaker 04

  That's where.

• 55:58Nilay Patel?

  That's the moment.

• 55:59Speaker 04

  Professional relationship.

• 56:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's where, that's where it really came together. The Apple Watch, I don't think we wrote about this. I think I just saw it on one of the Mac sites. Sold out everywhere, every color, every configuration. Not available right now. It's like.

• 56:11Speaker 04

  Is that just because they didn't restock it?

• 56:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 56:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, because there's a new one coming out.

• 56:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:15Nilay Patel?

  So.

• 56:16Speaker 02

  It's gonna have the, the GPS. They wanted to put the cell radio in it and then, and decouple it from the phone, but they couldn't pull it off in time. And so that's the story with the Apple Watch.

• 56:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 56:29Speaker 04

  You sound like you're really tired of talking about it the way I'm really tired of talking about merch.

• 56:32Speaker 02

  We talked about it last week and like, I don't know, I'm having a super hard time getting super excited about it.

• 56:38Speaker 04

  I've been wearing my Apple Watch every day since July.

• 56:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, tell me about it.

• 56:42Speaker 04

  I don't know why. I was going on this trip and I don't know why I brought it with me because I famously hated it.

• 56:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 56:49Speaker 04

  And um, I started wearing it every day and I think I started to expect less from it and I treat it more like a fitness tracker that's gonna let me know about text messages and emails than I, I don't know like what I wanted from it before, but now that I expect less, it delights me more. And I tweeted this and I got so many people saying back the same thing.

• 57:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 57:12Speaker 04

  And our beloved Sam Shepard also, I think, said something similar and it's just in the air. I think the Apple Watch is in the air.

• 57:20Speaker 02

  No, I think that the expectations are on the Apple Watch when it launched were sky high. It's gonna be the new iPhone. It's gonna change everything. It will replace your iPhone.

• 57:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:30Speaker 02

  It will have apps. It'll do, and no one uses any of that stuff. And the two features that work, people sort of like.

• 57:35Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 57:36Speaker 02

  It has notifications and it measures your heart rate from time to time.

• 57:38Nilay Patel?

  Which, by the way, you can get from like a hundred dollar fitness tracker.

• 57:41Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 57:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, you used to have a Pebble Steel, right?

• 57:44Speaker 04

  I had a Pebble round, but it doesn't, um.

• 57:47Nilay Patel?

  Pebble time steel round.

• 57:48Speaker 04

  This Apple Watch guy gets more activity information than the Pebble. So that's why, even though I aesthetically like the Pebble better.

• 57:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 57:59Speaker 04

  I'm like.

• 57:59Nilay Patel?

  Which Apple Watch do you have? You have the black sport?

• 58:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, murdered out, black on black.

• 58:04Nilay Patel?

  Wait, is that the sport? No, you have the nice one. You have the stainless steel one. It's like the, the sport is not shiny. That's the thing.

• 58:10Speaker 04

  Well, I have a sport band.

• 58:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 58:11Speaker 04

  Sport band.

• 58:12Nilay Patel?

  Nice. Is that the only band you use?

• 58:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, I have a colorful one that I picked out that is a bad choice that I made. It's the purple and blue one and doesn't make any sense with anything I wear ever. And then I have the black metal one.

• 58:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 58:27Speaker 04

  But I don't really use that because I look like a businessman.

• 58:33Speaker 04

  Which couldn't be.

• 58:34Nilay Patel?

  So why do you say it's for certain? You're just seeing it everywhere?

• 58:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I started noticing it everywhere and I, I don't think it's just because I'm keeping my eyes out. I think it's real.

• 58:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 58:42Speaker 04

  I think more people are wearing Apple Watches.

• 58:46Nilay Patel?

  What, do you ask them what they do with it? Because I always ask everybody I see and now I see a lot of people with it, so I have stopped asking. But the answer that I consistently get, notifications. Everyone's like, I run around a lot at work, so I just look at my wrist.

• 58:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 59:00Nilay Patel?

  Or it's, it tracks my heart rate.

• 59:03Speaker 04

  When I was on my big trip.

• 59:04Nilay Patel?

  Fitness.

• 59:05Speaker 04

  And using a car, it was also very nice to drive a car wheel and see like a buzz and be like, oh, what's that? Okay, now I know we're not meeting anymore. You know what I mean? Like the thing has changed.

• 59:16Nilay Patel?

  Great for that.

• 59:16Speaker 04

  Because I definitely do not know how to drive and look at a phone at the same time.

• 59:20Nilay Patel?

  But, so the Apple Watch is terrible for me for driving because whatever, however I hold the steering wheel, in order to get the screen to turn on, to actually see it, I'm like. You put it on the bottom of the wrist. It's a big, it's a big move. Android Wear is really better for that. Yeah. Well, so I will buy a new one if they have it always on screen. It's not gonna happen. You don't think it's gonna happen? I don't think it's gonna happen. What, what would make you buy a new one in September when they come out the new ones?

• 59:42Speaker 04

  I probably won't.

• 59:43Nilay Patel?

  You probably won't?

• 59:44Speaker 04

  No, probably not.

• 59:45Nilay Patel?

  There's no one feature that you want from this thing to make you buy a new one? If they put it always on screen on it, I'd buy a new one. I probably would too. Instantly.

• 59:52Speaker 04

  I'm happy.

• 59:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, all right, Apple Watch.

• 59:54Speaker 04

  Happy enough, you know.

• 59:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, and then you have an iOS 10 line here. Tell me, tell me what your thoughts.

• 1:00:00Speaker 04

  Um, well, I remember, I remember when I first opened it.

• 1:00:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:05Speaker 04

  And I was excited.

• 1:00:06Speaker 02

  So you have it on your phone, you have the beta?

• 1:00:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:00:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:09Speaker 04

  And I, and I wasn't crazy, but I don't really love that notification screen. And I think it's weird how many clicks you have to do to get to where you want to go. Um, and I feel like the camera opens really slow everywhere.

• 1:00:21Speaker 02

  It's a beta.

• 1:00:22Speaker 04

  But yeah, that's hopefully not forever.

• 1:00:25Speaker 02

  So I have a problem with the notifications. I have always had a problem with notifications in iOS. I thought iOS 10 would fix it. It did not. So when you're on your lock screen and you get a notification and you want to look at it, you slide it to the right.

• 1:00:36Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:00:37Speaker 02

  And then you unlock your phone.

• 1:00:38Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 1:00:38Speaker 02

  When you are in your notification screen and you want to do the same thing with the notification and you slide it to the right, you end up in the widget screen. And so instead you tap it. And so you, and it looks exactly the same on the lock screen as it does on the notification panel. And so if you're looking at a, at a notification, you have to just know whether or not your phone is unlocked. And I am constantly like trying to do a thing to a notification and guessing wrong. Yeah.

• 1:01:06Speaker 04

  I know, me too. And it never really opens in the right place anyway. It's like, here's that email. It's like, oh, that email. And then it's like, okay, I'm on Outlook, like, let me get to that email. Um, I think the best iOS was the late, probably 2014 into 15. That's when it like, the phone was still delight. You're like, oh my gosh, it could do that. Like, that's when I remember being like, wow, like this is, this is surpassing what I think a phone can do. And now it's just kind of like, why isn't Snapchat opening? I don't think I've, I don't think I've been able to take like a speedy, like a speedy snap since downloading this thing.

• 1:01:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:47Speaker 04

  But now Instagram stories.

• 1:01:49Speaker 02

  Beta's a beta.

• 1:01:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:01:50Speaker 02

  Oh, Instagram stories.

• 1:01:51Speaker 04

  Snapchat versus Instagram stories has been, I honestly don't know what to do.

• 1:01:55Speaker 02

  I love Instagram stories. Yeah.

• 1:01:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, you've been using them.

• 1:01:58Speaker 02

  I mean, I went on a trip and I was like, I should use them.

• 1:01:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:00Speaker 02

  I haven't used it since I came home.

• 1:02:02Speaker 04

  Cheese curds in Wisconsin.

• 1:02:02Speaker 02

  I was home.

• 1:02:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:03Speaker 02

  I was back in Madison. Madison's fucking weird now.

• 1:02:06Speaker 04

  Why?

• 1:02:08Nilay Patel?

  Well, I don't want to give away this whole story.

• 1:02:09Speaker 04

  Wait, I went to Madison. Okay, yeah.

• 1:02:11Nilay Patel?

  But, this was home, it was like my 10 year law school reunion, all my friends. Madison is exactly the same, except it is basically Silicon Valley now.

• 1:02:18Speaker 04

  Tell me more.

• 1:02:19Nilay Patel?

  There is a huge- No, no, stop it. Well, it's not like, it's not like a secret.

• 1:02:23Speaker 02

  It's gonna go up a...

• 1:02:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Well, I gotta, I gotta write this whole thing. It's not like a secret. There is a major software company in Wisconsin. There's a huge software company in Wisconsin. I won't name it for Dieter, but everybody listening to this can figure it out. A huge software company in Wisconsin. Uh, they are, um, they own a huge chunk of a particular enterprise market. What, what? What? What are you doing? It's not a secret. Alright. Anyway, so I'm back in Madison, and they have exploded. They built a new campus. The architects were the guy who designed Microsoft's campus and the guy who designed Disney World. There's a working farm on the campus. It's a little bit out of Madison, but the employees, who are all software engineers,

• 1:03:05Nilay Patel?

  they're building like crazy high-rise apartment buildings all over Madison to house them. There's like fancy restaurants all over town, but they don't want to drive to work, so they run the same kind of white, unmarked buses they have in the valley that run to Facebook and Apple and Google. They run them to this campus.

• 1:03:21Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:03:22Nilay Patel?

  And it's like the whole town is like buzzing about this company. I, I want to write about it, so Dieter's not going to say what it is, but anybody can figure it out.

• 1:03:28Speaker 04

  I went to Madison, but I went to a queer dance party at night in a theater and then I went home.

• 1:03:33Nilay Patel?

  Uh, yeah, that's the thing to do. What was the name? There was a club.

• 1:03:37Speaker 04

  I don't remember where I was.

• 1:03:38Nilay Patel?

  There was like one gay bar in Madison.

• 1:03:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, this, yeah.

• 1:03:40Nilay Patel?

  One time I went there and listened to you.

• 1:03:42Speaker 04

  It was cool. Everyone had pool floats, though there was no water, but it was fun.

• 1:03:46Nilay Patel?

  Like the little arm?

• 1:03:47Speaker 04

  No, like the big circular ducks, yeah.

• 1:03:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I don't know. It's a thing. Anyway, I think that's our show. Nicola, what else is going on?

• 1:03:55Speaker 04

  LA people, hit me up. Meet some friends.

• 1:03:59Speaker 01

  We gotta do.

• 1:04:00Nilay Patel?

  Oh, he paused the gadget of the week.

• 1:04:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, every week I do a section.

• 1:04:04Nilay Patel?

  Called?

• 1:04:05Speaker 01

  Kobo Hype, where I hype up the latest news and rumors about Kobo hardware devices.

• 1:04:12Speaker 02

  You know why Kobo is actually awesome, right?

• 1:04:14Speaker 01

  Why is that?

• 1:04:15Speaker 02

  Genuine kick ass pocket integration.

• 1:04:17Speaker 01

  Ariel was talking about that like the last time we had her on. Anyways, Kobo's coming out with a new e-reader. I've been trying to make like Kobo Hype a thing in the Circuit Breaker Slack room because we got a couple rumors. We got like some teaser shots where we could just see the back of it and it was on some Pebbles and it was like, let's get excited about Kobo. And then they announced a new Kobo, uh, was it Sean? Yeah, Sean checked it out. It's got, it like checks all the boxes. It's got actually a pretty big screen. It's, um, it's got a light that changes like based on time of day, like it can change the color temperature. It's waterproof, it's high resolution. It's still made by Kobo, so you can't get all your Kindle books on it.

• 1:05:00Speaker 01

  So maybe there's no point for this to even exist, but it's cool that a company that's not Amazon can make a really good e-reader.

• 1:05:07Speaker 02

  Well, they're, they're doing the things that Amazon should be doing with the Kindle. They're making it waterproof and they're adjusting the color temperature. That's a big deal.

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. So anyways, Kobo Hype.

• 1:05:18Nilay Patel?

  Kobo Hype for real. Is there, is there a good store against the Kobo?

• 1:05:23Nilay Patel?

  Maybe that's the thing. Like the Kindle, like the Kindle always wins for me because I can just buy books.

• 1:05:27Speaker 02

  Have you been using the Kindle lately? They have turned the interface in that thing into just a confusing garbage fire.

• 1:05:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:33Speaker 02

  It is hard as hell to figure out what the hell to do on a Kindle home screen anymore.

• 1:05:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I actually buy all the books on the web. Cause that's like the thing to do is like, you're like, I want to buy some books for a trip and then you're like run around and push all the buttons. And then you, you just have to get to the library. Also, uh, my wife and I share a Kindle account somehow. I don't know how that's possible, it's just happening.

• 1:05:52Speaker 02

  You can do that, you can set up a family plan.

• 1:05:53Nilay Patel?

  But we didn't want to do that. So it just seemed like, I think she buys the books on my account. It's very confusing.

• 1:05:59Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:05:59Nilay Patel?

  The Kindle has no idea what I want to read and no idea what she wants to read. It's like, would you like this random like corporate pop psychology book? Or would you like this random chick lit lawyer book? Cause that's what she likes to read.

• 1:06:11Speaker 04

  This is happening to me on Netflix because I Airbnb'd my apartment out and I graciously left my Netflix on. And the, uh, basic bitches who.

• 1:06:21Speaker 04

  Stayed at my spot. They watched like Made in Manhattan and Friends and like all this stuff were like now it has the worst recommendations. Like I don't want to watch this Jennifer Lopez rom com.

• 1:06:33Speaker 02

  Why don't you just make a second account?

• 1:06:35Speaker 01

  Or just open up your heart to Jennifer Lopez.

• 1:06:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, maybe it's a sign.

• 1:06:39Speaker 01

  To answer your question, their store has like five million books and they also do like the library ebook lending thing.

• 1:06:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:46Speaker 01

  But as far as I can tell, you get a Kobo because you want to like download Project Gutenberg EPUBs or Steelbooks.

• 1:06:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:54Speaker 01

  Or, or you like read a lot of PDFs or Pocket.

• 1:06:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:59Speaker 01

  And you get a Kindle if you want to read real books.

• 1:07:03Speaker 02

  I'm locked in, I'm locked in to Kindles.

• 1:07:05Nilay Patel?

  That waterproof Kindle has to be coming.

• 1:07:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've been saying that for two years now.

• 1:07:10Nilay Patel?

  Don't they still have like, what was the company? Captain, Captain Seaworthy, like Spray?

• 1:07:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:15Nilay Patel?

  I wrote about this like ages ago on Engadget. There's like a company like send them your stuff and they like coat it and then it'll come back waterproof?

• 1:07:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:21Speaker 01

  I thought that you were talking about ebook company.

• 1:07:24Nilay Patel?

  Oh, Captain Seaworthy's great ebook store. That's my favorite ebook. They're on Kobo, actually. It's the best thing about Kobo.

• 1:07:30Speaker 01

  Love Captain Seaworthy.

• 1:07:31Nilay Patel?

  Good, good pirate tales. Alright, that's the show, Nicola.

• 1:07:35Speaker 04

  Just gotta be it.

• 1:07:36Nilay Patel?

  It's gotta be it, I'm sorry. I'm happy you're here.

• 1:07:39Speaker 04

  I'm happy to be here. Well, I'm gonna be far away, so see you in October.

• 1:07:44Nilay Patel?

  Screw you guys. Uh, well, if we open that merch store.

• 1:07:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm not kidding. I want to run that. I want that job.

• 1:07:52Nilay Patel?

  Everyone wants Verge merch. It's a real thing.

• 1:07:55Speaker 04

  Everyone wants Verge merch.

• 1:07:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's a real thing, I know.

• 1:07:58Speaker 01

  And I'll put this out there, some people do come back from LA.

• 1:08:02Nilay Patel?

  One person, no wait, no.

• 1:08:04Speaker 02

  A waterproof, they will waterproof a Fitbit Blaze, a iPod Shuffle, a Kindle Paperwhite. They claim to be able to waterproof an Apple Watch, but I don't believe them.

• 1:08:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Anyway, look, follow The Verge on Twitter, at Verge, on Snapchat, Verge, Instagram, at Verge. Tweet at me, at Reckless. Tell me if you like Snapchat or Instagram stories. I've been doing a lot of Twitter, collecting this information. Kitt us on iTunes, give us five stars, love that. What's Tech, our other podcast, uh, other podcast, What's Tech is on Tuesdays with Chris Plant. Control+Delete is on Thursdays with me and Walt. Uh, we're actually off this week and next week, so whatever, set that aside, come back to it a couple of weeks from now. Uh, Verge GSP is every Friday with Emily and Liz. Uh, and Paul has a new podcast. Tell them about it. Rogue Podcast.

• 1:08:43Speaker 01

  1,000 words. It's just one episode so far. I don't know if we're gonna do more.

• 1:08:47Nilay Patel?

  I think you should do more.

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  It was really fun.

• 1:08:49Nilay Patel?

  I had fun. I had fun listening.

• 1:08:50Speaker 01

  Tommy and I described pictures from the internet.

• 1:08:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:55Speaker 01

  And like binaural stereo audio, so it sounds like you're there.

• 1:08:59Nilay Patel?

  I listened to the whole thing and then I went and looked at every picture and none of them were what I thought they were gonna be.

• 1:09:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:06Nilay Patel?

  It was crazy.

• 1:09:07Speaker 01

  It's amazing how hard it is to describe pictures. But you know what was really uplifting for me? Because I just did it because I thought it was a dumb idea. So this would be funny. Someone in the comments is like, this would be great for blind people.

• 1:09:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:18Speaker 01

  I was like, oh.

• 1:09:19Speaker 04

  It's kind of like reverse Pictionary.

• 1:09:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:22Speaker 04

  I listened to it.

• 1:09:23Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 1:09:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:09:24Speaker 01

  Well, I appreciate that.

• 1:09:25Nilay Patel?

  Well, you'll be on the next episode. Anyway, I'm at recklesspauls, future Paul, Dieter's back on, Nicola.

• 1:09:30Speaker 04

  Underscore.

• 1:09:31Nilay Patel?

  Fumo.

• 1:09:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:09:32Nilay Patel?

  Hey. That's the Verge Cast. We'll be back next week. Rock and roll. Paul.

• 1:09:37Speaker 01

  Paul.

• 1:09:54Speaker 01

  Guys, still got it.

• 1:09:57Speaker 04

  That was beautiful.