FTC vs Qualcomm, Trump vs Apple, and Oculus vs ZeniMax

This week on Vergecast, Nilay, Paul, Ashley, and Dieter take on the topics in the tech world you may have missed out on this week. Trump spoke with Tim Cook about moving production of Apple products to the US; Qualcomm is being sued by the Federal Trade Commission; and both Palmer Luckey and Mark Zuckerberg take the stand in the Oculus trade secrets trial. That’s only the first half of the show, so keep listening for more on this week in tech. 3:07 - Trump / Apple 17:03 - FTC / Qualcomm 24:29 - Oculus Trial 32:36 - Paul’s weekly segment “Put this computer in that computer” 34:53 - Smart duvet 38:45 - Andy Rubin / Android 46:47 - Nintendo Switch 52:59 - Smart garden / AirPods Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:04Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to Vergecast, the flagship podcast of The Verge.com. I'm Eli Patel, the owner of a small vodka company that you may have heard of. You know, we're coming up. By the way, Paul's here. Mm-hmm. Hello. Dieter's here. Well, Dieter's in San Francisco. Hi, Dieter. Hello. Hi, how's it going? Ashley Carmen's here.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 0:21Nilay Patel?

  And her phone case is more aggressive than ever.

• 0:25Nilay Patel?

  It's super furry.

• 0:27Speaker 01

  Can Dieter see this?

• 0:28Nilay Patel?

  That is insane. It, that, I don't know, man.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  I probably have like 10 strains of swine flu on here right now.

• 0:34Nilay Patel?

  It's real bad. It's like a very fur- but it's like a furry carpet. Would you call that a carpet? It's like a blue.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  It's a shag rug situation.

• 0:41Nilay Patel?

  It's like a very 70's, like aqua blue carpet vibe.

• 0:45Speaker 01

  I'm gonna have a piece on it this weekend. Keep your eyes out.

• 0:48Nilay Patel?

  I'm excited. But anyway, what I was gonna say, not to, your phone case is great.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 0:55Nilay Patel?

  The LG G6 is gonna happen. Yeah. Right? It's that time. And the whole scissor vodka joke is because of the song "Like a G6." Wait, please refresh me the lyrics of "Like a G6." You know, the part I remember is where they say, "Like a G6." But the chorus is sipping scissor in my ride. And I always thought they were saying sipping scissor in my ride. And I assumed that there was a branded vodka placement. Mm-hmm. But there isn't. But there should be. Ah. So LG, look, I don't know how you're doing in phones, LG. I don't know why I'm addressing you as a person, because you're a gigantic corporation.

• 1:39Nilay Patel?

  But if anyone LG is listening to this, I think the G6 would be a huge success if you called me, you licensed the scissor vodka idea. Together, we create scissor vodka. And then we get- The band Far East Movement to re-record Like a G6.

• 2:00Speaker 02

  This would be great because when we do Verge Casts and we talk about LG, you'd have to do this little like Dieter style disclaimer like, oh, by the way, LG used my vodka brand.

• 2:11Nilay Patel?

  What is Far East Movement doing now? They can't, have you heard of new Far East Movement song?

• 2:16Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:16Nilay Patel?

  So they're fine. They're like available. So they re-record Like a G6. But instead of saying sipping scissor, they say sipping scissor. That ties back in.

• 2:26Speaker 03

  What's the original line? Sipping?

• 2:27Nilay Patel?

  Scissor. They, codeine. They're drinking codeine in their car.

• 2:31Speaker 02

  Syrup.

• 2:32Nilay Patel?

  And then they fly away.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  For the Verge's 10th anniversary, we will get them for you.

• 2:36Nilay Patel?

  It's gonna happen.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  And they will do this.

• 2:37Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, this is Verge Cast, cut through the night. Uh, any other frando catchphrase I need to say at the top of the show?

• 2:43Speaker 02

  I mean, I really like saying snip, snip.

• 2:48Speaker 02

  I'm trying to make that into a thing.

• 2:50Nilay Patel?

  But there were like G6 rumors. There's a reason the G6 is a phone popped up in my life this week.

• 2:55Speaker 03

  Cause NBC's coming out. They're bailing, they're bailing on modularity.

• 2:58Nilay Patel?

  Oh, right. That's it. Modular phones. And we're going to talk about modular phones because there was, there was big RAPs this week. A bunch of Google stuff happened, a bunch of Andy Rubin stuff happened. We'll talk about that later. I think we gotta start, we gotta start in the conflict zone. When you are listening to this, the day this comes out, January 20th, we're recording on 19th, but by the time you listen to this, it'll be the 20th in your car. Or wherever you are. It's inauguration day, Trump day.

• 3:23Nilay Patel?

  So there's a bunch of Trump news in the air. People are getting confirmation hearings. They're very controversial, but I want to focus on the one thing that Trump keeps saying that like, directly connects to what we do here, which is he keeps insisting that he's going to Apple to build the iPhone. In this, in the United States. Uh, so he just did this interview. Pull up the quote here. The quote is a little, it's a little strange because it.

• 3:49Speaker 03

  It's Donald Trump.

• 3:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So he met with Axios.

• 3:53Nilay Patel?

  It's a new, the people from Politico, Left Politico, started a new media company called Axios. He met with them and he says, "Tim Cook has his eyes open to moving production in the United States." And that he, and this was hard to parse, so this is what we assume he meant. He quote, "Really believes Tim Cook loves this country and I think he'd like to do something major here." So the first part of that sentence is great because it reaffirms that Tim Cook is a patriot and not like a traitor.

• 4:22Speaker 03

  Right.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  A commie.

• 4:24Nilay Patel?

  Cook is probably happy about that. Trump looked into his eyes and, I mean, he's like a fan of like Auburn football. I think he's, you know, hardcore American. But I think he'd like to do something major here. This is definitely not the first time he's said this.

• 4:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:39Nilay Patel?

  How does he keep this promise? Like of all of the promises he's made, this is, I think, the one that A is most squarely in the tech zone because it's, his whole thing is manufacturing in the United States. So he's, all the car companies are going to manufacture all the cars here. But really the move is moving, right? Like Apple's the biggest company in the world.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  But is he promising this or does he just really want this to happen?

• 5:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 5:03Speaker 02

  Are you getting the, I don't feel like I've been promised by Donald Trump that he'll get the iPhone.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  He's made some pretty like firm statements that are like, "Apple's going to do this." In the beginning during the election season, he was saying, "They're going to bring their hardware," or whatever his crazy quote was about their computers, back to America.

• 5:22Speaker 03

  But so Apple's line back then, and it's actually consistent all the way to now, isn't that the salaries cost are too much. It's actually that there isn't enough sort of mid-level engineers. There aren't enough people with just like vocational training to do like the work. It's not like, it's not straight up just hiring factory workers for really cheap. It's there just aren't enough mid-level engineers and people that have the right proper vocational training to do it.

• 5:54Nilay Patel?

  And, and actually Cook, when he met with Trump and they had that, you know, insane round table where Trump held Peter Thiel's hand awkwardly. Just every time we've mentioned that, we have to mention the awkward handholding.

• 6:08Speaker 03

  And the Tim Cook death stare.

• 6:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 6:10Speaker 02

  That was the issue that Tim Cook reportedly brought up.

• 6:14Nilay Patel?

  And it's the issue that Steve Jobs brought up to Obama way back when, right? We, I can move all the factories here, but we have, I need 30,000 mid-level engineers, like engineering management personnel to staff them. So it's really hard. The other thing Apple always says, and this is fair-ish, is that the glass is made by Corning in the United States. A bunch of like the internal processors are made around here. There's all kinds of like components that get made in America, shipped to China and assembled into the iPhone. I'm just, to me, this is the one where if this administration is going to be so focused on manufacturing in America, which is, I mean, they want to manufacture a wall, like literally

• 6:59Nilay Patel?

  everything is about building something huge. This is the one place in the tech industry where you can point to it and say, this is one of the richest companies in the world, certainly the most valuable company in the world. They manufacture billions of things. You should manufacture more of them in America. And right now, not for nothing, Trump is, you know, he's warmer towards Russia and very cool towards China, and Apple does a shit ton of business in China. All of their growth is in China.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 7:27Nilay Patel?

  So.

• 7:28Speaker 02

  Well, I, I was.

• 7:29Nilay Patel?

  I wouldn't call it a, like, it's true, is he promising it? But it's all of the lines of his rhetoric point towards the fact that Apple builds all of their stuff in China and sells an ever-growing percentage of their stuff in China is problems that Apple run face-first into. They're challenges, I don't know, problems.

• 7:48Speaker 02

  Like, would, and this is something that I, as a Trump supporter, some of his rhetoric about how we're going to make it hard for company to do X, like the, the stick part of his, bring jobs back, like the, is not as exciting to me as the carrot part, which would be reducing regulation, reducing, you just have to like make it easier to start and run and staff a company. And there's a lot of red tape.

• 8:17Nilay Patel?

  But Apple has started and run and staffed. It's just most of their staff trained, born first, then trained and educated, and then working in China.

• 8:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 8:28Nilay Patel?

  And not even for Apple, for Foxconn.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  Well, Foxconn is a Taiwanese.

• 8:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 8:35Speaker 02

  There's obviously a reason why it's better to like if you read the Times piece about the crazy machinations that like China makes these like weird like non-China areas of China and like has these like weird

• 8:51Nilay Patel?

  Economic zones, right? Hong Kong is one, Shenzhen is one. Then they have different sets of regulations.

• 8:56Speaker 02

  And then they have these like weird custom offices, customs offices so that like they like pretend to export and then re-import like the actual iPhones to sell them in China. There's like all sorts of weird stuff that they do to cut through the red tape of China even to produce there. I think there's a lot of red tape that makes it really hard to manufacture in the US.

• 9:18Nilay Patel?

  And the one, this is somewhat unrelated, but the one thing Apple does build here is the Mac Pro.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 9:25Nilay Patel?

  And there's a lot of noise around the Mac Pro, right?

• 9:29Speaker 03

  You are not allowed to say the Mac Pro without saying womp womp.

• 9:32Speaker 02

  To be honest, I think that's fair.

• 9:34Nilay Patel?

  Contractually.

• 9:34Speaker 02

  I think that's very fair.

• 9:36Nilay Patel?

  The Mac Pro, womp womp. And there's a lot of noise about why the Mac isn't gonna be updated. Who knows what the real reason is, but some of the noise is that they made such a complicated tooling for it that they can't actually update it without doing even more complicated tooling and more complicated design work. And that's harder in the United States than it would be in China. So I think it was Bloomberg Dieter that had that, like.

• 10:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think you're right.

• 10:03Nilay Patel?

  It was, they could update the Mac Pro faster if they moved it to China, but they don't want to take the optics hit of moving it, especially in this administration. So I don't want to dwell too much on D Trump, as I'm calling him. I believe that would be his Xbox username.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  D Trump?

• 10:19Nilay Patel?

  D Trump 2020.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  Is there underscore, D underscore?

• 10:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, D Trump. I don't want to dwell too much on it. Walt and I talked about Trump at length uncontrollably, so you can listen to that. There's lots of things. This is just in the news now. And I think it's gonna be a story. I don't think he's gonna stop saying it. And I think Apple is gonna have to contend with the fact that they make their stuff in China.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  I think what's up in the air for me is he's, is he gonna make it harder for Apple because they will continue to make stuff in China? Or is he gonna somehow sweeten the deal? Does he even have the ability to make it so easy to produce in the US that Apple be like, yes, this is great?

• 11:03Nilay Patel?

  Right. There's a good outcome here, a potentially good outcome, where the Trump administration decides it's going to invest billions of dollars into mid-level engineering training programs. And this country produces 30,000 mid-level engineers. And then Apple's like, they're here. Well, thank you. And they're like, scoop them all up and put them in a factory and they start making iPhones tomorrow. I don't know, I don't see that happening, but that's what, that's the necessary condition. It's not taxes are lower, it's not give us incentives, it's not, right? What both Steve Jobs and Tim Cook have said are, we could do the stuff here. The employees are not available to us. So where are the employees going to come from?

• 11:44Speaker 02

  But ultimately, no matter what, it's going to come down to a cost thing.

• 11:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the cost of like, training the employees, right?

• 11:52Speaker 03

  It's cost, but it's also like, it's not strictly the cost, because like, they don't exist. And the cost of Apple training all those things are pretty astronomical. So it's, it's not just, well, it costs more to do it here, so they won't do it even if the engineers are here. They just, Apple's claim is that because of the mid-level engineer thing, and also frankly, because of, like, the supply chains are just all there, like, the infrastructure is there. They could just pop it up and all the parts are nearby.

• 12:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, you can go into a coffee shop in Shenzhen and they will assemble you an iPhone clone.

• 12:24Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 12:24Nilay Patel?

  Ben Popper did this. I have, I have such a phone in this office, right? You can't do that here. So you're right, all problems ultimately are just cost, right? Like, if I really want that scissor vodka ad to happen, I could probably pay Far East Movement.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  And, and companies have made phones-

• 12:42Nilay Patel?

  You're just letting that ride.

• 12:44Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Companies have made phones, Motorola made a phone in the US.

• 12:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  Didn't work out great for them. You know, companies do create technology products in the US. It's not impossible, it's just typically not the right economic decision for that company. And also possibly, they can't get the quality-

• 13:05Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  -without that training.

• 13:06Nilay Patel?

  So, but the cost, to like, just focus on, the cost is a long cost, right? It's a, it's a cost over time. You've got to find a bunch of people who want to be trained for this job. You've got to train them, which presumably takes a significant amount of time. You've got to build a factory and put, move them all to the area around the factory. Like it's not, we're just gonna pay the money and build the factory, right? It's a, it's a very human cost. And so if Apple as a company commits to that, they're gonna want, maybe like you said, not a stick, but a carrot to do it. And the Trump administration is gonna have to pay for that.

• 13:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, the, the, the more interesting question to me is like, does, is there, is there, what is the reason that he keeps bringing it up? Is it because he actually hopes that, that this is going to happen? That we're gonna start building the factories here? Or is it that he wants to have this rhetoric as a stick for some other, you know, motivation, some other end? He wants to be able to draw a harder deal on like, uh, repatriation of money from Ireland? And well, you, you're not doing the factory that I keep asking for. So we're not gonna give you quite as good a deal.

• 14:19Nilay Patel?

  We'll let you move all your offshore money back to the States, but you gotta spend it on training programs and factory development.

• 14:23Speaker 03

  Like, right.

• 14:24Nilay Patel?

  All potential and potentially good outcomes, but they're all outcomes that currently Apple is not organized around. And so like, right, when you're listening to this, the inauguration lap and Donald Trump will be our president, will have been our president, will have tense issues.

• 14:42Speaker 02

  We'll have B being our president.

• 14:45Nilay Patel?

  Future perfected our president. But I think he's not gonna stop saying, like, the most important product made by an American company that affects everyone in our culture is this phone. Right? Like, that's the, the, and I, you can, I'm sure smart people argue with me about that, but it's the reason The Verge exists, and we talk about technology and culture, is these phones. So he can't look at, September will come and the iPhone 10 will come out and it will be the biggest moment across the culture, like it always is.

• 15:20Nilay Patel?

  And it's gonna be made in China. And like, some reaction.

• 15:22Speaker 02

  Called the iPhone 10 now?

• 15:23Nilay Patel?

  I'm just calling it the iPhone 10.

• 15:25Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 15:25Nilay Patel?

  That's the 10th iPhone.

• 15:26Speaker 03

  Why? Oh.

• 15:28Nilay Patel?

  Uh, that's me, by the way, that's not a real thing.

• 15:29Speaker 02

  I don't know, I feel about that.

• 15:31Nilay Patel?

  Tim Cook didn't call me on the phone and be like, let's talk about SEC football and also it's called the iPhone 10. Although that would be a fun.

• 15:36Speaker 03

  Tim Cook, huge Verge cast listener.

• 15:38Speaker 02

  But I, I also would say he's created this, this, um...

• 15:43Speaker 02

  He's created this environment where who could possibly expect Apple to move manufacturing to the US within five years, right? He's created this environment that if they do it in the next decade, everybody praises Trump for it, whether they were gonna do it or not. He's kind of created this narrative of any time a company these days says it's going to invest in a fund for something, or it's going to expand, or it's gonna build something in the US, it's all credit to Trump. He's created this wild narrative.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  I think I would more credit Trump if enough engineers were educated here. I wouldn't be applauding him for bringing the iPhone back to the US. I would applaud him for educating people to the level that they're able to create an iPhone.

• 16:26Nilay Patel?

  I hope that that's the way this goes, right? We put more money into science and engineering, education, STEM education. That's a good outcome. But it's, it's, it's the, I just think it's the first place the big tech industry explosion with Trump will come is not net neutrality. Like, those things are expected. We kind of know the shape of how they'll go. Trump is gonna dismantle the FCC. Like, that's basically what his people have proposed. They need to write that piece. I've got all the notes to do it. I think this one is, it's so hard that if he keeps saying it, eventually he's gonna be motivated to deliver it. Anyway, let's stick on this government tip, shall we?

• 17:06Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 17:07Nilay Patel?

  The FTC, Obama's FTC, not when you're listening to this.

• 17:11Speaker 02

  By the way, all of Obama's, like, little, you know, administrations, all the divisions, are definitely doing, like, mic drops on their way out the door. We're not gonna talk about it too much, like, the FCC, like, Wheeler, FCC Chair Wheeler is just, like, throwing out last-minute bombs and then walking out the door.

• 17:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It's a good move. It's the end of their era.

• 17:31Speaker 02

  Is that respectable?

• 17:34Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 17:35Speaker 02

  Professional of them?

• 17:36Nilay Patel?

  That's what you do. That's what you do. Why not? You have power, use it.

• 17:42Speaker 02

  This is why I want a smaller government. Oh my gosh. Can take you, please.

• 17:47Nilay Patel?

  So I think this one's really interesting. We have talked in the show for, I don't know, the entire time it's existed about Qualcomm. The FTC sued Qualcomm and said it's used its monopoly on LTE chips to force out all of its competitors. Most, and that's, the lawsuit is very complicated, but basically, the thrust of it is Qualcomm has most of the patents on LTE, and they would say to you, Mr. Samsung, if you want to make an LTE phone, it's fine if you use somebody else's modems, but they won't be able to make enough. So you gotta pay us a license and use our chips. And if you don't, if you use somebody else's chips, you still have to pay us the royalty on

• 18:28Nilay Patel?

  the patent for their chip. So it effectively increases the price of everyone else's chips compared to Qualcomm. And Qualcomm is the only company that makes them at scale, so you have to get chips from Qualcomm.

• 18:39Speaker 02

  I haven't read deeply on this, but correct me if I'm wrong, I thought the whole point of, if you have a patent, that you are required to, in most cases, like license it out at a reasonable rate.

• 18:52Nilay Patel?

  Frand patents. We've talked about this a lot. So I can't escape this phrase in my life. Fair, reasonable, non-discriminatory license term. So if you, we've talked about friend patents on the show. So the entire Apple, Samsung, Nokia, Motorola patent lawsuit landscape was about frand patents. So Apple sues Samsung and says, you copy the design of the iPhone, Samsung sues Apple back and says, you use these chips, Apple's response is, well, you have to license your patents to us, because your chips are part of standards. Our design is not part of standards, so we don't have to license shit to you. That was basically

• 19:31Nilay Patel?

  the push and pull of the Apple-Samsung patent case. And I once asked Tim Cook at the Code Conference directly when he was on stage, why the hell is this lawsuit still going? And he had no answers until he settled on, we wanted to make the frand environment more consistent. And I was like, that, that is a bad answer, Tim. And I wrote that later in a post. Anyway. So this friend not apply here? So friend applies. Okay. FTC says in the first, in the first claim, they set rates higher, not fair, reasonable, non-estinguentary rates. So they set bad rates that were not friend. They weren't friendly. Right, right.

• 20:13Nilay Patel?

  The second part, got a snowdaddy, second part is something called patent exhaustion. Uh huh. Which is if you make the chip. Which I get all the time. Yeah. So if you, if you make the chip, if, I don't know, whoever else makes the chip. Broadcom makes the chip. Mm hmm. They have to license the patents to make the chip. And so that's it. That's it. That's all the money you get. Right. And then when they sell it to ZTE, ZTE doesn't have to pay the license because they already, one patent royalty was already delivered. Okay. So you exhaust your patents when you collect that first royalty. Qualcomm's move was to say, you can't have our chips unless you sign a royalty agreement with us that says you're going to pay royalties on their chips too. Sounds kind of like extortion.

• 20:56Nilay Patel?

  It's a little bit of double dipping because A, Qualcomm made all the chips. B, they were getting paid twice. So that's the whole complaint. Qualcomm obviously says all this is bullshit. In this complaint, Apple mentioned many times prominently, because they make so many phones, Qualcomm paid Apple, they excused them from these royalty fees if they agreed to never make a Y Max iPhone.

• 21:22Speaker 03

  So they, they didn't touch pay Apple as took less money from Apple?

• 21:26Nilay Patel?

  Right. But like, in the grand scheme of things, Apple had more money than it would otherwise.

• 21:32Speaker 03

  Yeah. So in order to not make a Y Max iPhone, which is my favorite part.

• 21:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So Paul, you remember Y Max? Yeah. They had a bunch of garbage Y Max phones that failed. This is like the smartest deal of all time for Apple. They're like, yeah, we, uh, we agree not to do this stupid thing.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  Wimax was ahead of its time.

• 21:52Speaker 03

  The other interesting thing about the case is that the FTC is basically saying, hey, Apple is the specialist special flower in the tech industry and by making special deals with Apple and by changing Apple, the way Apple does things, you have therefore changed the entire industry. So like part of their whole case against Qualcomm is Apple is a unique snowflake and whatever Apple does, everybody else is going to do. And because Qualcomm did whatever it needed to do in order to keep its Apple business, it ended up pushing Intel and everybody else out.

• 22:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It's only of interest because A, I think the idea of a gigantic, thick, mass, like massive battery Wimax iPhone is like all of those Wimax phones are huge. There was never a small one. So I think that's hilarious. And then I also think it was never a given that LTE would just win, right? Like Sprint was way out in 4G first. If Apple was able to make a small Wimax phone, Sprint might have survived instead of being a garbage fire that it is like right now.

• 23:01Speaker 02

  I like LTE had like much more, it was part of the, it's called long-term evolution. It was part of the, it was part of the club. It was like the thing that was gonna happen in Europe.

• 23:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. But like half of the networks in America were CDMA and half of them were GSM and that had nothing to do with Europe. So it's Trump's America now. Europe is stupid. I don't care what they do.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  So now what happens? They go to court?

• 23:26Nilay Patel?

  They're going to court. And so it's, this is another thing, right? The one Republican commissioner at the FTC who voted against it says, I think this lawsuit is stupid. The FTC now has a lawsuit in the works that the administration might be against because the Democrats are moving on. So we'll see. I think it's fascinating. Qualcomm, I didn't know this. Qualcomm makes more money licensing its patents than it does making, making chips, which is not bad because they invent a bunch of stuff. So that's fine.

• 23:56Speaker 02

  Well, and they're not in Samsung phones or Apple phones typically.

• 24:01Speaker 03

  Oh, they're in a ton of, oh, Qualcomm is, yeah.

• 24:03Nilay Patel?

  This is all about the modems. It's not about the processors. Right. So they're, they're in a bunch of Apple. Intel is in Apple phones now, the iPhone 7, but only half of them. I think Qualcomm, it's much easier to have a Qualcomm processor and Qualcomm modem, unless you're elsewhere in the world. And elsewhere in the world LTE penetration is low, which is why Samsung ships Qualcomm processors in the States and does its own X and S processors elsewhere in the world. It's a real thing. Okay. Last government story, and then we're gonna, we're gonna do fun stuff after this ad.

• 24:32Speaker 02

  Then can we play the, I'm just a bill?

• 24:37Nilay Patel?

  Speaking of Dieter's disclosure, Dieter's wife works for Oculus, and Oculus is on trial this week.

• 24:45Nilay Patel?

  And I own a small vodka company, and I'm angling for a deal from LG around the LG G6.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  Can I, can I try to set this up a little bit?

• 24:52Speaker 03

  Ashley, do you have anything you need to disclose?

• 24:55Speaker 01

  I have a furry phone case. That could make me biased toward other furry phone cases.

• 25:02Speaker 03

  You've got a bias towards Muppets.

• 25:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. That thing looks like a Muppet.

• 25:08Speaker 02

  Can I set this up from what I think happened?

• 25:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 25:11Speaker 02

  Cause I don't know all the details.

• 25:13Nilay Patel?

  No one does. That's why we're in court.

• 25:16Speaker 02

  There's a guy named John Carmack, made a lot of great video games, and his company, It Software, got bought by a bigger company, because that happens with game publishing.

• 25:24Nilay Patel?

  Bigger company, terrible name.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  Zenimax.

• 25:26Nilay Patel?

  Zenimax.

• 25:27Speaker 02

  Which you possibly would see that logo in the credits of a video game, but you always skip those credits.

• 25:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 25:35Nilay Patel?

  Zenimax sounds like a low-rent rapper. What's up? I'm Zenimax.

• 25:39Speaker 03

  It sounds like they manufacture VHS tapes.

• 25:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like the sequel to Betamax, or like a Betamax knockoff.

• 25:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. We need to make a character that's like Zenimax. Anyway, keep going.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  John Carmack is, is, is, I mean, I've literally written an essay about how much I love John Carmack. He's just the best nerd. He just saw, like, someone was like making like a iPhone port of Doom, and they were doing a shitty job. So he's like, okay, I'll learn how to program iPhones from scratch, and made like this perfect port of Doom for iPhone. He's a genius programmer, and he's always trying new things. He started a rocket company, like, he's just obsessed with solving new problems. And he gets into VR, he's talking with this kid, Palmer Lucky, sharing ideas and, and...

• 26:28Speaker 02

  Resources and possibly intellectual property owned by Zenimax.

• 26:32Nilay Patel?

  Possibly the code to Doom 3 and the trade secrets behind it.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  But the what?

• 26:38Nilay Patel?

  This is what's at issue in the trial.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  And then eventually Palmer Lucky hires John Carmack and John Carmack is at Zenimax. Or is at Oculus now, not at Zenimax.

• 26:48Nilay Patel?

  And then Facebook buys Oculus for $2 billion.

• 26:51Speaker 02

  And the thing is, is this whole thing, and so Zenimax is suing Facebook for

• 26:57Nilay Patel?

  $2 billion.

• 26:59Speaker 02

  It's a lot of money.

• 27:00Nilay Patel?

  Literally the purchase price of Oculus.

• 27:02Speaker 02

  But they, I feel like what they're actually, they're not suing them for intellectual property. They're suing them for the mind of John Carmack. It's like John Carmack was really smart and he was here and he was doing stuff for us. And now that you have him, he's really smart for you and that makes it sad.

• 27:19Nilay Patel?

  I think that's part of it.

• 27:20Speaker 02

  If I lost John Carmack, I'd be mad.

• 27:22Nilay Patel?

  So the, the, the, the.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  Would you be $2 billion mad? I'd be $2 billion mad.

• 27:27Nilay Patel?

  When you put in that tape, that VHS tape labeled Zenimax, a picture of Zenny on the front. And you're expecting an adventure story about a guy who gets sucked into a video game, which is absolutely what that movie would be about. What you instead get is a sad tale of woe from Zenimax. It's like John Carmack saw Palmer Lucky at E3. He helped him make a version of Doom 3 that ran on the Oculus. Lucky showed it to a bunch of people using our code illegally because that belongs to us. And Carmack helped him make the Rift better using our proprietary trade secrets and information. The Rift wouldn't exist without.

• 28:06Speaker 02

  Carmack thoughts.

• 28:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And Carmack worked for that company. So technically his work product belongs to that company. If not for Carmack's help, the Rift would have never been good. Palmer Lucky would have never been able to make Oculus.

• 28:19Speaker 02

  I mean, our first demo of Oculus.

• 28:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  Type technology was given to us by John Carmack in John Carmack's office.

• 28:28Nilay Patel?

  Yep.

• 28:28Speaker 02

  At Zenimax.

• 28:29Nilay Patel?

  Yep. Was it Doom 3? We have this video. I don't, I don't believe so. I don't remember. But our first demo of the Rift headset was Palmer Lucky showing up at our trailer at CES. Just like knocking on the door, being like, hey, you want to see this thing? It was ridiculous.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  The first game I played on it was Unreal Tournament, it wasn't Doom 3.

• 28:46Nilay Patel?

  Well.

• 28:46Speaker 02

  But I was late to the party.

• 28:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Anyhow.

• 28:49Speaker 02

  Valve was also sharing its stuff at the time. They're just not.

• 28:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, now they have their own thing.

• 28:54Speaker 02

  They have their own thing and they decided not to sue. But it was like a big happy family. We were discovering we are together.

• 29:00Nilay Patel?

  On a message board was like, I made this headset. Can anyone help? And John Carmack was like, why? Yes, I do read this message board. Right? And like, what's happening now is Zenimax is saying, if not for John Carmack. Stop reading message boards. Stop reading. Sorry. Stop lurking. If not for John Carmack, the rift would have never existed. You sold your company to Facebook for $2 billion and what we deserve out of that is all of it. That's actually the piece that gets me. They're not asking for like $100 million or whatever value they think of Carmack's time. They're literally asking for the entire purchase price of Oculus. I think that, I don't know, we're not at the trial. Like, I don't know what they're.

• 29:41Nilay Patel?

  I think that is so ludicrous, but it's happening. Palmer Lucky hasn't been seen since he got caught paying for like Reddit trolls to shitpost about Trump.

• 29:51Speaker 02

  Apparently he was at this trial.

• 29:52Nilay Patel?

  He was, he testified yesterday. Zuckerberg testified. Zuckerberg, classic. You know, Zuckerberg's on this kick right now. He's like 12 people monitoring his Facebook page. He's like basically delivering stuff.

• 30:01Speaker 02

  Everybody's saying Zuckerberg's running for president. Is that true?

• 30:04Nilay Patel?

  Zuck's Facebook page right now is like, I've traveled all across this great land. I met a mother who needed healthcare. I met a young woman in Arkansas who had just coded her first video game and I thought we need to like.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  He's investing in Hawaii.

• 30:18Nilay Patel?

  That's his Facebook persona right now. The Hawaii thing is hilarious. Basically, the Zuck from the social network showed up at this trial and was like, I don't know, our lawyers are pretty smart. What do you, we're fine. And like, that's his whole vibe.

• 30:33Speaker 02

  One of the things that came up at the trials that they kind of moved pretty fast.

• 30:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Yeah, they saw the thing and bought it. They moved fast and broke things.

• 30:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:41Nilay Patel?

  Like, oh, too, like, just pay the $2 billion. Shut up.

• 30:48Speaker 02

  But they have John Car back.

• 30:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they got you.

• 30:50Speaker 02

  They win.

• 30:51Nilay Patel?

  They're good. It's like you don't get to make another Doom because we have John. Anyhow, lots of stuff happening in the government side.

• 30:58Speaker 02

  Although Doom 3 game of the year, Polygon.com. Not sure how I feel about that in a world where Overwatch exists. Not sure how I feel about that, Polygon.com, if you're listening.

• 31:09Nilay Patel?

  Stupid mainstream media.

• 31:11Speaker 02

  The mainstream media so bad.

• 31:14Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna read this advertisement.

• 31:19Nilay Patel?

  Today's episode of The Vergecast is brought to you by Crizal No Glare Lenses. Yes, it's true. Crizal No Glare Lenses. If you wear glasses, then you know that fingerprints, smudges, scratches, and glares can be a constant obstruction of your vision, a huge distraction. Sometimes you end up focusing more on what's on your glasses than what's going on around you. That's why I love Crizal No Glare Lenses. They give you the clearest vision possible by offering resistance to glares, scratches, and smudges. I love them. That means no more blinding glares from the headlights of oncoming traffic while driving at night, Paul. That means no more fingerprint smudges from taking your glasses on and off, or scratches from cleaning the lenses on your shirt, Ashley. And Dieter, because Crizal No Glare Lenses stay clear and reduce distracting glare, your friends and family can actually see your eyes. Oh, wow.

• 32:04Speaker 02

  Look at how nasty my lenses are.

• 32:06Nilay Patel?

  Look better, feel better, and most importantly, be prepared for whatever comes your way with clear vision. Go to Crizal.com to learn more. That's C-R-I-Z-A-L dot com. Start living life in the clear. A lot of hooks in that ad. A lot of real hooky lines.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  My glasses are like looking through Scotch tape that you like ripped off the carpet.

• 32:30Nilay Patel?

  Well, you should get some of these No Glare Lenses is Crizal.com.

• 32:36Nilay Patel?

  Paul.

• 32:36Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:37Nilay Patel?

  Every week.

• 32:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:38Nilay Patel?

  You do a segment.

• 32:39Speaker 03

  We always do this at the exact same time.

• 32:41Speaker 02

  And we never forget weeks.

• 32:42Nilay Patel?

  No, I moved it. Here's a little, here's a little inside baseball. I moved it from one part of the rundown to another, so I'd remember it every week.

• 32:49Speaker 02

  I don't think that's true. I think it always happens right now.

• 32:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, just like this.

• 32:53Speaker 02

  Next doc. Who made like-

• 32:56Speaker 03

  Wait, what's it called? What's your segment called?

• 32:58Speaker 02

  Oh, well, you know, you know, every week it's called, Put This Computer In That Computer.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  Next doc made a, I don't even know if they shipped it. They made a folio, basically, a little while back. Where like, where you plug an Android phone into this empty shell that is a laptop with a keyboard and a screen. And now you have a computer that's powered by the computer power of your Android phone. Well, at CES, Intel announced this weird-

• 33:30Nilay Patel?

  A little credit card PC, right?

• 33:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, the compute card. And-

• 33:35Nilay Patel?

  Intel just wants you to commute, compute in different shapes. Last year was the stick.

• 33:38Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, they had a stick and now they have a card.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  And also they have the NUC.

• 33:43Nilay Patel?

  Compute NUC.

• 33:44Speaker 02

  The, the NUC is the next unit of computing, N-U-C. The NUC, it's like basically-

• 33:49Nilay Patel?

  Was that a cube?

• 33:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, the cubes, like the MacMani-shaped computers like are based on Intel NUC.

• 33:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 33:56Speaker 02

  But this is the compute card.

• 33:58Nilay Patel?

  Card.

• 33:59Speaker 02

  Which has like Wi-Fi and the processor and RAM, all the computer stuff built in, but no battery, no screen, no input methods, and it's meant to slide into another device to make a computer out of it. And Next Doc was like, hey, that's what we want to do. So they made a computer with two slots. One slot is for the compute card. I have no idea if they're gonna ship this. It's like a tablet that might also have a keyboard. It's all renders right now, but one slot is for the compute card. The other slot is for this thing that could be ports or it could be an extra battery. There's like three different things that you can swap in.

• 34:34Nilay Patel?

  So it's basically like an, like an old PowerBook?

• 34:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:37Nilay Patel?

  Right, with modular bases?

• 34:38Speaker 02

  That's, that was my first laptop.

• 34:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, PowerBook 500, right?

• 34:42Speaker 02

  Mine was the PowerBook Pismo, which was the second G3 PowerBook.

• 34:48Nilay Patel?

  I had a Main Street. I'll go head to head on

• 34:51Speaker 02

  Oh, Main Street.

• 34:54Nilay Patel?

  Ashley, do you have a gadget segment?

• 34:56Speaker 01

  Uh.

• 34:57Nilay Patel?

  What caught your fancy this week?

• 34:58Speaker 01

  There is like no gadgets this week.

• 35:00Nilay Patel?

  Here's a slow. What's the CES just happened?

• 35:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, everyone showed us their stuff at CES. But at CES, I got to finally, after all of these months, try out the smart duvet.

• 35:11Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God.

• 35:12Speaker 02

  Did you? Wait, how did it go?

• 35:15Nilay Patel?

  Ashley, I've noticed you've covered a lot of bedding.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  I'm very into sleep.

• 35:20Nilay Patel?

  Like, there's a lot of pillows and blankets.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  I just come in a lot of sleep tech at CES. Just wait. Um, it actually worked. Literally, it's just an air mattress.

• 35:29Nilay Patel?

  Wait, what does it mean by it actually worked?

• 35:31Speaker 02

  The smart duvet like inflates.

• 35:33Nilay Patel?

  Kept you warm.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  Essentially, how, what it?

• 35:35Nilay Patel?

  Wait, it's a duvet or an air mattress?

• 35:37Speaker 01

  It's a duvet. So what you do?

• 35:39Nilay Patel?

  You just said it was?

• 35:40Speaker 02

  You just wait for it.

• 35:41Nilay Patel?

  All right.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  Well, it fills with air. And that's how, so if it's crumpled up, it just inflates.

• 35:48Speaker 02

  And now your bed is made.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  Because it's spread out.

• 35:54Speaker 03

  So it has like, like air pockets around the edges of it?

• 35:58Speaker 01

  Well, so they told me that when it launches, it'll have like, yeah, like little air holes. So that when you get home, the idea is you do this when you're not home. So then by the time you get home, it's all deflated and you don't even know it's there.

• 36:10Nilay Patel?

  Where, where, where did?

• 36:11Speaker 01

  You put the duvet over it, a cover over it.

• 36:15Nilay Patel?

  Okay, and you push the button. It's like, a bed has arrived.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 36:17Nilay Patel?

  And then you like leave and you push the button. You come home and you're like, where's my bed?

• 36:20Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no, no. Opposite of that.

• 36:22Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 36:22Speaker 02

  You, you're done sleeping and it's all messy, right? Well, who has time in this 2017?

• 36:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 36:30Speaker 02

  Fast paced life to make your bed?

• 36:32Nilay Patel?

  I gotta go to mid level engineer training.

• 36:36Speaker 02

  Exactly. So do you push a button or is it an app or?

• 36:41Speaker 01

  You could do it over an app or there is a literal.

• 36:43Nilay Patel?

  If it was, if it was just like a switch on a compressor like that, doesn't count.

• 36:47Speaker 02

  And then it inflates. It inflates. And by inflating, it becomes, it covers your whole bed. And so now your bed is made. But then you're saying the air goes out of it?

• 36:56Speaker 01

  Right, so they have slight pinholes that over, like as the day goes on, the air will come out of it. So when you get home, you don't even know that it was an air mattress, essentially.

• 37:05Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I get it. It's a blanket that makes itself.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 37:08Nilay Patel?

  Yes, but what other?

• 37:09Speaker 03

  It's not actually an air mattress.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  No, I just said.

• 37:12Nilay Patel?

  What other?

• 37:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:13Speaker 02

  It's duvet.

• 37:13Speaker 01

  It's a duvet cover, a smart duvet.

• 37:16Nilay Patel?

  And it's like. And then it like deflates.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  Right, but you have a cover over it, so it just looks like your normal blanket.

• 37:21Nilay Patel?

  I got it.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:22Speaker 03

  But what other than the fact, what other than the fact that the button is in an app makes this smart?

• 37:28Nilay Patel?

  Right, it's basically like a WeMo switch. The app is just the WeMo app.

• 37:33Speaker 01

  Well, the thing is, they, hopefully this isn't like I'm giving away some crazy secrets, but they hinted at future developments that perhaps could make it smarter.

• 37:43Speaker 03

  Can you, it's watching.

• 37:45Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god. Like how?

• 37:49Speaker 01

  Use your imagination, Paul.

• 37:51Speaker 03

  Pivot Circuit Breaker so that all it does is write about incremental smart duvet rumors. The same way we used to like, look at like, you know, FCC drawings and like, oh, the battery label is here and it's got this one, you know, shape on it. So we think the phone's going to look like this. I want that, but for self-making bed blankets.

• 38:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Like this one has a slightly bigger battery in it.

• 38:13Speaker 01

  Honestly, they sold me on it.

• 38:14Speaker 03

  Really?

• 38:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, it's kind of baller. You leave the house. You press a button on your app and your bed is made. And it has a fastener, so it attaches to your top sheet. So all of this can be crumbled up.

• 38:28Speaker 03

  Do you have to snap it on?

• 38:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, the fastener does seem not so great, but.

• 38:33Nilay Patel?

  That's the next iteration of improvement. Smart duvet updated with better fastener tech. All right, let's talk about a bunch of Google stuff.

• 38:43Nilay Patel?

  We gotta get through this pretty fast, actually. Andy Rubin, started Android, started Danger before that. Speaking of old bad phones, which our last episode was entirely about, has a new company.

• 38:54Speaker 03

  Those phones are great. Come on.

• 38:56Nilay Patel?

  The Sidekick, it was like, hmm, it was pretty cool. In its moment, because it flipped.

• 39:01Speaker 01

  Well, the Sidekick was the coolest phone. I cannot believe you just went eh, the Sidekick.

• 39:05Nilay Patel?

  It was super eh.

• 39:07Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 39:07Nilay Patel?

  Let's be real.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  Okay, we can talk about this later.

• 39:09Nilay Patel?

  I mean, basically when he started Android, he tried to build another Sidekick and it was like, oh shit, the iPhone and like changed the whole thing. He has a new company called Essential. They're building a new phone. A bunch of stuff about it leaked to Bloomberg. It appears to be a modular phone of some kind, which is interesting.

• 39:24Speaker 03

  What Bloomberg seems to know is it's an early prototype. They seem to want to launch it this year, but they're like still in prototype phase, which is those two things don't add up. Supposedly it has an edge-to-edge screen, a ceramic back, and it could be modular. Cause I don't know, everybody else thought it was a good idea and then walked away from it, but they, they still want to do it. I guess Motorola is sticking around with it too. The one thing we don't know for sure is whether or not it runs Android.

• 39:49Nilay Patel?

  It has to run Android.

• 39:50Speaker 03

  It has to run Android, right?

• 39:54Nilay Patel?

  It's just like, of all of the people in this industry who understand that they can't make a new operating system to compete with Android, Andy Rubin has to be that guy.

• 40:02Speaker 02

  Was the sidekick?

• 40:03Nilay Patel?

  If he rolled out and was like, it's Windows phone.

• 40:06Speaker 02

  Hip top, hip top OS.

• 40:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 40:09Speaker 02

  That's what the sidekick ran.

• 40:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. The real great OS.

• 40:12Speaker 02

  Dude, by the way.

• 40:13Speaker 03

  This story, by the way, feels like it's custom designed to appeal to me. Like old phones that every, that some, that I love, but everybody's forgotten about or given up on. Modular, third-party, you know, not straight Google, not straight Apple, and probably doomed. Like, this is right.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  Literally when I read this article, I was like, Dieter is probably freaking out about this.

• 40:41Nilay Patel?

  I, I, I hope it works. I just, I don't see his timeline. Like, you got it.

• 40:47Speaker 03

  Oh, you forgot the best part. It's got AI.

• 40:50Nilay Patel?

  Of course it does. It helps you pick what module you want to use. It's like, you look like you're taking a picture. Try attaching the camera. It's great. Other Android stuff, nougat finally rolling out on Galaxy phones and the S7, S7 Edge.

• 41:05Speaker 03

  I will say.

• 41:06Nilay Patel?

  They're promising it's coming to the S6 stuff this year also.

• 41:09Speaker 02

  I'm pleasantly surprised at the number of phones that are already able to support Daydream.

• 41:15Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah?

• 41:16Speaker 02

  Like, like there's a few phones that are getting nougat that will just support Daydream because they're getting nougat.

• 41:22Nilay Patel?

  That's pretty cool.

• 41:23Speaker 02

  And that's, that's special.

• 41:24Nilay Patel?

  The headset's on sale. It's 50 bucks.

• 41:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it's so nice.

• 41:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's fuzzy. It's great that Samsung is putting this out. I have a Nexus 7 tablet and it's like dying. I should buy another Android tablet. Uh, you know, you can go on Amazon and you can still buy Android tablets or on 1.5 or 1.6. It's like you can sort by it. You're like, what operating system you want to run? It's not like Android and iOS. It's like Android 1.6, Android 2.0, 2.2, 2.3. It's garbage. Most of Samsung's tablets are still running Marshmallow or Lollipop. It's like a real, real disaster.

• 42:05Speaker 03

  What Android tablet are you, are you gonna get? You should buy, uh, you should buy the Vizio, uh, remote is what you should get.

• 42:13Nilay Patel?

  Well, I might buy a Vizio TV just to get the tablet. Like, it kind of makes sense. Like, I don't, I, I only need this thing to like, send Netflix to my Chromecast. I might as well buy the whole TV and the tablet and get it all.

• 42:25Speaker 03

  Did Google give up on tablets?

• 42:27Nilay Patel?

  I haven't heard a peep about tablets. Wasn't Marshmallow supposed to be all good for tablet, Cedar?

• 42:32Speaker 03

  Uh, the, Google's attempt to make Android good for tablets started with Honeycomb, as you recall.

• 42:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the Zoom. That thing was great.

• 42:41Speaker 03

  Zoom and then later the ZI board.

• 42:43Nilay Patel?

  I'm obsessed with, by the way, with the Samsung Galaxy View, which runs Lollipop, but it's basically, have you ever seen this thing, Ash? It's like a 21-inch tablet.

• 42:52Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 42:52Nilay Patel?

  It has a stand. Every time I see one in Best Buy, I'm like, I should buy that. And I don't know why, like, it's basically just a small TV. The whole point is it'll run TV apps. But I'm like, what if I had a huge Android tablet? Like, the most enormous Android tablet.

• 43:08Speaker 03

  Here's what I will say about Android tablets. In order for an Android tablet to work, it has to have apps that are good at tablet screen size, and almost no Android apps are good at tablet screen size. However, there is a huge install base of Chromebooks coming that are going to work with Android apps that, uh, can be dynamically resized and newget. And if Google is actually successful with the Chromebooks, it could mean the return of, uh, an Android tablet, because it will, some people will finally start making apps that work at that screen size.

• 43:37Nilay Patel?

  But what if I had an 18-inch Samsung tablet that ran Android 5?

• 43:45Speaker 02

  There's gotta be millions of people out there. It's not like there's no install base for like

• 43:52Nilay Patel?

  It's such a ridiculous product.

• 43:54Speaker 02

  It's not like there's no install base for like Fire tablets. There's a reason to make an Android app for a tablet.

• 43:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but there's tons of reasons to make Android tablets.

• 44:00Speaker 03

  Nobody pays for apps on them.

• 44:02Speaker 02

  Ah.

• 44:03Speaker 03

  So there's not a, there's no reason to develop software for that screen size because if you want to make money on an app on Android, you need the insane volume that you get on phones. The volume on tablets is not as insane.

• 44:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 44:18Speaker 02

  But you think the volume of Chromebooks is that much higher than Fire tablets?

• 44:25Speaker 03

  I think that the, it probably is. And even if it's not, the usage of Chromebooks in situations where you'd want quality apps is way higher than on Fire tablets. On Fire tablets, you just, you get it. You open up Amazon Video or you open up the Kindle app or you maybe use a web browser. You play like some crappy bejeweled style game that you get for free from Amazon's underground app store. And then you go on with your day, right? But if there, if, if the Android stuff on Chromebooks and maybe Chrome tablets, who knows, actually gets used and people want to see more of it, that will probably have a better chance of spurring enough

• 45:06Speaker 03

  demand to get people to make decent Android apps at that screen size than Android tablets, which like honestly, like they were only successful because they were cheap and they had like medium sized screens.

• 45:16Nilay Patel?

  No, and they run Netflix and Netflix Kids, which is all people really want. That's why, that's why Amazon's tablets are successful.

• 45:22Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 45:22Nilay Patel?

  Because they, you can run Netflix on them and you can run Amazon Kids stuff on them and kids just like watch tons and tons of stuff.

• 45:28Speaker 02

  I'm into this timeline.

• 45:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 45:29Speaker 02

  Chromebooks saving Android tablets.

• 45:31Nilay Patel?

  What if I said Chromecast tablet?

• 45:32Speaker 02

  The problem with Chromecast is are you cast in to or you cast them from?

• 45:38Nilay Patel?

  This episode of the Vergecast is brought to you by Squarespace. And Paul's existential chrome cast dilemma. Whether you're planning to start a business, change careers, launch creative products in the new year, which is this year, tackle your next move, do it all with Squarespace. Widely used by all kinds of people and businesses, Squarespace gives you the ability to create an online platform from which you can make your latest goals into a reality. This ad is really tied into New Year's resolutions. So whether you need a landing page, beautiful gallery, professional blog, or online store, all included in your Squarespace website. Plus, you get a unique domain experience, not just a name, a domain experience, that's fully transparent, simple setup. You can add and arrange your content and features with a click of the mouse, and there's nothing to install, patch, or upgrade, ever. But if you do have questions, turn to Squarespace's award-winning 24/7 customer support for help,

• 46:21Nilay Patel?

  no matter how technical or trivial seeming your problem may be. So, start your free trial today at Squarespace.com. You enter offer code VERGE, you get 10% off your first purchase. That's VERGE, that's the offer code, VERGE, for 10% off your first purchase. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website.

• 46:40Speaker 03

  I love it.

• 46:41Nilay Patel?

  I want to do a whole story on the Squarespace tagline, people.

• 46:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:44Nilay Patel?

  They're just throwing them up on the wall. I love it. All right, we gotta talk about the Switch. I was wrong.

• 46:49Speaker 03

  Oh my god, oh my god!

• 46:51Nilay Patel?

  Dieter's very excited.

• 46:52Speaker 03

  Oh my god!

• 46:53Nilay Patel?

  Ashley, are you going to buy a Nintendo Switch?

• 46:55Speaker 01

  No, but I'm very excited for everyone.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  It is exciting, I like Mario. Mario is the only game, Mario Sunshine is the only game in my entire life I have played, start to finish.

• 47:08Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 47:08Speaker 03

  So, the Mario game, we just, we just need to point this out and move on as quickly as possible. It's an open world game set in a city named New Donk City.

• 47:20Speaker 03

  It's just Donkey Kong, right? Yeah, New Donk City.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  But it's not coming at launch, right? The Mario game's not at launch?

• 47:26Speaker 03

  No, no, well, that's the big problem. Like, I thought the event itself was really, really good. It was super fun to watch, it was super entertaining, it built up hype really, really well. It had really good beats. The event was so good that we, by the time we got to the end, the thing that was in the back of your mind going, huh? Should have been the thing that crippled the entire event, which is, their launch lineup is The Legend of Zelda, One Two Switch, and some stuff.

• 47:54Speaker 03

  And like, that's not a good launch lineup.

• 47:56Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 47:56Speaker 03

  Also, Paul was right.

• 47:58Nilay Patel?

  Paul, talk about the graphics. I know you want to talk about the graphics.

• 48:00Speaker 02

  Well, I do want to, I do want, I know you pointed it out already, but I want everybody to know that I was right.

• 48:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you're right.

• 48:05Speaker 02

  Last week, Nilay and Dieter were wrong.

• 48:08Nilay Patel?

  I was, I was wrong.

• 48:09Speaker 02

  And I was right.

• 48:09Speaker 03

  No, I was, I, I, I said if it was priced over such and such, it would be bad and it wasn't. So there you go.

• 48:15Nilay Patel?

  I said $400, Paul said $300, I believe.

• 48:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:17Nilay Patel?

  Came in at $299.

• 48:18Speaker 02

  All right. All right. $300, $299, March 3rd. Yeah, I mean, I'm not super mad about this and I kind of saw it coming, but I just assumed that because they reported that the console outputs 1080p. I assumed that Nintendo could make Zelda work at 1080p.

• 48:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 48:37Speaker 02

  But they can't. And it's 900p, 30 frames per second. And it's just like, this is, this is really old hardware in here. I mean, it's, it's an iPad.

• 48:49Speaker 03

  It's basically a, it's a, it's a glorified Nvidia Shield, right?

• 48:54Speaker 02

  Right.

• 48:55Nilay Patel?

  Does it, do we know if it runs Android yet? Everyone, right? The basic assumption, but no one knows.

• 49:01Speaker 03

  Right.

• 49:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:02Nilay Patel?

  It's probably Android underneath somewhere. But you're saying it's basically a tablet?

• 49:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's tablet, like, in, in, in.

• 49:08Nilay Patel?

  Because.

• 49:09Speaker 02

  It's a tablet with the most famous game developer of all behind it.

• 49:12Nilay Patel?

  Because it is a tablet.

• 49:14Speaker 02

  Also true.

• 49:15Nilay Patel?

  That's why it's a tablet.

• 49:18Speaker 03

  Wait, hang on, hang on, hang on. Why is it a tablet?

• 49:22Nilay Patel?

  It's a tablet.

• 49:23Speaker 02

  But it's not like next year's tablet.

• 49:25Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 49:26Speaker 02

  You know, and it's not an iPad Pro. I, I'm guessing if you ran like straight benchmarks, like it's probably.

• 49:32Nilay Patel?

  iPad Pro costs like $900.

• 49:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm just saying.

• 49:34Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 49:35Speaker 02

  It's not the best you can get in a tablet.

• 49:37Speaker 03

  Would I want to get the Nintendo Switch 2? Am I going to be able to buy just the upgraded tablet, but use the same dock and Joy-Con controllers?

• 49:44Nilay Patel?

  Oh, that would be a thing. I mean, that's, that's what basically both Microsoft and Sony are doing, right? They're just revving their hardware.

• 49:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. Hmm. Just saying.

• 49:56Nilay Patel?

  Hmm. What if you just stick another tablet? What if they're like, screw it, buy an iPad?

• 50:03Speaker 02

  That's a move. All right, Paul, you have other thoughts here? I mean, not a lot. The biggest news is the price. I'm extremely excited for this Mario game because like, I mean, I think Super Mario Sunshine is a wonderful game and then like, I think Galaxy's good, but it has some sort of motion gimmicks, right, that like, you know, are a little off putting to me. It's not a deal breaker. And then for the Wii U, they didn't ever make a real Mario game. They made 3D, they made a bunch of 2D games because those are just cash for Nintendo. That's just so easy for them. And then they made like 3D Land or 3D World or whatever it's called, which is like almost a Mario game, but like kind of a half a platform,

• 50:46Speaker 02

  like half of a 2D platformer mixed with a 3D exploration. It's not the real Mario experience. It's just the way Mario moves and he does the double jumps and the backflips and the wall jumps and... Are you describing jumps now?

• 51:01Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, he can jump on his hat. He can jump on his hat and move through New Donk City by jumping on his hat.

• 51:07Speaker 02

  Throws his hat forward and then it spins in place and then you jump on it. Imagine the possibilities.

• 51:16Speaker 02

  I think Mario 64, like, like, I'd love to watch like Mario 64 speedruns and I've played like most of the game. I've never finished it, but it's a really great game. But there's something like really primal about that game that like takes this physics system, basically, and it just tries everything it can with this, like, can you slide? Can you jump? Can you hop onto this thing? How can you fast, can you move through here? And it's just like, it's just so pure and delicious video game-ness. Right.

• 51:48Speaker 01

  Do you think that...

• 51:49Speaker 03

  Can I tell you that I'm worried about Legend of Zelda? Because everybody says it's basically Skyrim, but Zelda and I don't, I don't want Skyrim. I want, I want Zelda. Like I need that. I need that plot wagon. I like, I like those rails. I like that Zelda lets you go off the rails a little bit, but that whole like progression of you get this item will let you into this dungeon. Which lets you get this item will such into that dungeon. Like it's, there's something comforting about like being directed through the world that I don't know how much they're moving away from it in the new Zelda and I'm a little bit worried that I'm going to play it. I'd be like, oh, this is just like any other RPG, except it's Zelda and that's too much work. Like I don't, I don't want to learn how to like make recipes. Like that, that's some, that's some Skyrim shit. I don't need that shit.

• 52:34Speaker 03

  Like that's some elder school shit. Don't need it.

• 52:36Nilay Patel?

  If you're in the market to start a new website, grindinwithlink.com is like a great name. Or like a skater series.

• 52:45Speaker 02

  I'm, I'm actually concerned about the game for the opposite reason. I, I would like there to be more Skyrim's in the world. And I'm scared it won't be complicated enough and it'll be like Skyrim for babies.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  Well, only one of you is going to win.

• 52:58Nilay Patel?

  It's true. All right, Ashley, we're gonna wrap up, but I feel like we haven't, give me some stuff. What happened to you this week?

• 53:05Speaker 01

  I mean, this week, I was, I don't know. This week was quiet.

• 53:09Speaker 02

  Wait, I know what happened involves salad.

• 53:16Nilay Patel?

  Every now and again, it's like increasingly obvious to me that Paul and Ashley spend a lot of time together. And like code words salad just happened to this podcast.

• 53:25Speaker 01

  I'm testing a smart garden at home and I had my first harvest.

• 53:36Speaker 01

  And I made pesto and I also.

• 53:40Nilay Patel?

  You made smart garden pesto?

• 53:41Speaker 01

  I made pesto from my basil, my basil. And I also harvested lettuce and created a salad.

• 53:48Nilay Patel?

  Nice.

• 53:49Speaker 01

  And Paul saw it.

• 53:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, the pesto looked, I mean, don't look at pesto in a bag. That's my tip.

• 53:54Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. I don't have Tupperware because I'm not that much of an adult. So I put everything in Ziploc bags.

• 53:59Speaker 02

  Would you say it was good? It was flavorful?

• 54:01Speaker 01

  It was great. I felt like I learned so much about plants. This would be great for kids.

• 54:07Nilay Patel?

  All right. Fair. Uh, I don't want to tease this, but I know you're, you're writing something cool about AirPods. You wore AirPods a little bit today.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  I did. I wore them.

• 54:14Nilay Patel?

  Lightning take on AirPods.

• 54:17Speaker 01

  Okay. When you asked me if I liked them, I was like, I like these actually, because I was hating on them. And then after literally 25 minutes, my ears started hurting and I couldn't have them in anymore.

• 54:26Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 54:26Speaker 01

  I don't think it's a fit for me. I have a weird bone or something in there.

• 54:30Nilay Patel?

  I mean, the whole thing is like, you keep them in all the time, talk to Siri.

• 54:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:34Nilay Patel?

  Looks like a cool person.

• 54:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:36Speaker 01

  I wish they just had like some padding.

• 54:38Nilay Patel?

  I'm sure there's gonna be a weird AirPod accessory market. It's gonna be.

• 54:42Speaker 01

  The gel.

• 54:43Speaker 02

  But there is something about, Apple is the, the company with the temerity to believe that everybody has the same ears.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  I just don't fit Apple's prescription of a human.

• 54:54Nilay Patel?

  When they did, when they announced the AirPods, there was a Johnny I video that's like, we measured every ear in the world. And I've designed these. And if your ears had gone, then death will take you and evolution will move us forward. Like, it was like a very dark video. By the way, if we could get Johnny, I have to say, death will take you, that would be my ringtone. I don't know, it's, it's dark, I understand.

• 55:15Speaker 02

  I believe it. Do you think Apple designs for the literal compromise? Or do they design for the evolutionary perfect humans?

• 55:26Speaker 02

  Like, these are, these work great on X-Men.

• 55:33Nilay Patel?

  Uh, all right. That's it. That's our show. We'll be back next week. I want to thank my friends, the Crizal no glare lenses for sponsoring us today. For our glasses, you know, fingerprint, spot or scratches, glares, can be a constant distraction and vision, a huge distraction. Just buy the Crizal no glare lenses. Just do it. Uh, they're at crizal.com, C-R-I-Z-A-L dot com. Start living life in the clear. There's a bunch of other stuff you should listen to. Walt and I do Control Alt Delete, it comes out on Thursdays. Uh, we talked a lot about ads this week. Verge Extras heating up. We're doing a bunch of experiments. So Ashley did one with Caitlin and Lizzie about Tinder. You should listen to that one.

• 56:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 56:09Nilay Patel?

  Ben just did a new one called Listening to Machines, to understand why they break, which is really cool. So that's on Verge Extras feed. Lauren Good, who's often on the show, does Too Embarrassed to Ask. Kara Swisher does Recode Decode. Peter Kafka does Recode Media, which is one of my faves. All this is on iTunes. Go listen to them. Consume no other media. And then rate them highly. That's your assignment for this week. That's the Vergecast. Cut through the night. Rock and roll. Don't forget to vote. Paul.

• 56:52Nilay Patel?

  It's over, man. I know.