Google memo, Surface PCs reliability, and fall phones preview

This week on The Vergecast, Nilay, Lauren, Dieter, and Paul begin by discussing the controversy over the Google engineer who was fired over writing a 10-page viral memo about diversity. The story illustrates a deeper problem in Silicon Valley, which Lauren has discussed in her podcast recently, so the cast talks about the science of the claims, the responsibly of Google, and what it means in the larger tech industry. In the second half of the show, the crew runs through the latest leaks, releases, and controversies in the gadget world, including Paul’s segment he does every week, “FROYO PODS.” 01:46 - Google engineer fired over memo files labor complaint 33:09 - Consumer Reports stops recommending Microsoft Surface PCs over reliability concerns 37:41 - The new iPhone could have a resizable home button and face recognition for payments 46:22 - 4K Apple TV with HDR spotted in HomePod firmware 48:54 - Essential promises a new phone release date 'in a week' 56:19 - Another Pixel 2 leak shows the phone’s large front bezels 58:14 - Paul’s weekly segment “FROYO PODS” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:04Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of theverge.biz, our new ecommerce website. All merch. All merch. Hey, that shirt that says "emails", I want to tell you right now before we begin the show, if you go to thestore.theverge.com, you can buy a shirt that just says the word "emails" on it. I think it is the shirt that 2017 needs, more than anything. It's also Ross Miller's parting gift to me, before he left to become the Director of Programming at Polygon. It's pretty good. It's pretty good.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  Nobody go to theverge.biz, it's not a real site.

• 0:38Nilay Patel?

  Please don't go to theverge.biz. But I don't care where you fall on the political spectrum, you can wear a shirt that says the word "emails" on it, and be like a perfect ironic hipster. It doesn't matter, left or right, it's a shirt for everybody. It's a shirt that captures our moment. I can't believe we don't have theverge.biz. Anyway, hi, I'm Neelai, I'm here. Paul Miller's here in New York with me. Hello. Dieter's in San Francisco. Hello. Joining Dieter in San Francisco, the one and only Lauren Good.

• 1:08Speaker 02

  Hello.

• 1:09Nilay Patel?

  Fresh off her series concluding, now she's got time to join the whole show. Lauren, how you doing?

• 1:13Speaker 02

  I'm so excited.

• 1:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's good.

• 1:14Speaker 02

  I'm great, I'm really excited to be here. And I was gonna say that the alternative to the "emails" t-shirt would be a Slack t-shirt, since that's really what we only use. And, but then we would just look like we were wearing a t-shirt promoting Slack.

• 1:26Nilay Patel?

  Oh, 20 years from now, an election will be thrown by the Russian government leaking Slack logs. That's gonna happen.

• 1:33Speaker 02

  More like five, yeah.

• 1:34Nilay Patel?

  It's coming for all of us. Anyway, so, we have a Dent show. Dieter and Lauren, actually, on a little bit of a clock, they've gotta run to an event tonight. And I'm just gonna say this, the first thing we're gonna talk about is super heavy, it's the Google memo, the guy getting fired, the whole thing. I promise you, our audience, we will argue about Consumer Reports ratings of Surface laptops, and iPhone leaks, and the essential... All that's gonna come later in the show, in the second half of the show. The candy's coming. But, I really want everybody to just listen to the first part of the show, this Google memo. We cover so many products these companies make, and the way these companies are designed, and run, and operated, is incredibly important.

• 2:17Nilay Patel?

  And I think it's incredibly important that we're aware of the massive, like...

• 2:23Nilay Patel?

  What's the word I'm looking for? The massive discrepancy in how men and women are employed in the tech industry? It's something that we care about very deeply. Lauren actually has been covering it on her show Too Embarrassed to Ask for a while. Was it just a couple of episodes ago you did this?

• 2:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, a couple of episodes ago, we taped a podcast with Joelle Emerson, who runs a firm that's based in San Francisco that actually focuses on what she calls unconscious biases. And she works with companies to try to eliminate biases that exist in the workplace. And then we also spoke to a woman named Niniang Wang, who happens to be a CEO of an app called Evertune. You might have heard of it. She's fantastic. She's just a really unique person, but she's also of note because she recently was one of a number of women who spoke out against a prominent VC and said she was sexually harassed by him. So we had the two of them on our podcast a couple of weeks ago, and we talked about this. And this, of course, just preceded the Google stuff, and now this has come up.

• 3:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So, you know, there's a lot of information, there's a lot of opinions, there's a lot of stuff out there. But the thing that you should, about the Google memo in particular, but the thing that you should know, just going into it, is that this is a long-running conversation that's happening in this industry. And it's just, it's a wave of change that is coming through the tech industry in particular. And a lot of the conversation, a lot of arguments made in this memo are super reflective of the same conversation that's happened in other industries in the past. And we'll get into that in a minute. But first, let's just talk about what happened here. There's an engineer at Google named James Demore. He wrote a memo. It's 10 pages long. Gizmodo has it, Motherboard had it.

• 4:02Nilay Patel?

  And it basically argues, and there's a lot of argument about what he was trying to get at in the memo, but he basically argues that Google's diversity programs are not effective because they don't account for biological differences in men and women, and what men and women want. I think he leans way too hard on biological differences to explain the gender gap inside of Google. A lot of people feel that way. This memo went quote-unquote internally viral inside of Google. A lot of people inside of Google were sharing on it. Google's a huge company. It ultimately leaked. It leaked again. There was a lot of conversation inside of Google. Google's sort of head of diversity said we need to look into this.

• 4:46Nilay Patel?

  Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, released a memo to the staff saying it is not acceptable to say that, you know, your coworkers' biological traits make them unsuited for their job. And the man was ultimately fired. He has now become- I think the quote was negative stereotypes, right? Negative stereotypes. He has now become sort of a martyr. He's out there, he's wearing a T-shirt that says Gulag today on his new Twitter account. He's giving interviews where he says he feels shamed by Google's leadership. It's a big deal. I think it is currently the biggest story in the tech industry. It's a strange moment, we're in the lull before sort of fall hardware, but it's another

• 5:29Nilay Patel?

  sign of like what the verge is to, like, the thesis of the verge is that technology and culture influence each other, and this is just another one of those moments when what is happening in one of the biggest, most influential companies in the world is exploding into the popular culture because it is yet another riff on this argument about men and women and their differences in the workplace in a way that appears, and I think this is important, this memo appears to be based in all this like very valid science, but, you know, our science reporters, our enterprise reporters, there's a piece coming out, Sarah Jeong and Rachel Becker are working on a piece where they're actually diving into the science of his arguments and the nature of how those arguments play into the culture and history of Silicon Valley.

• 6:12Nilay Patel?

  And what they're finding basically is the science doesn't hold up. So like, that's the long and short of it, right? The guy wrote the memo, the memo went internally viral, people at Google freaked out for a variety of reasons. Eventually, Google had to fire him because it kind of, it creates a really negative environment for women to work inside of Google when, you know, this guy does peer reviews. There's a lawsuit against Google right now about the wage gap for men and women inside of Google, a class action lawsuit. If you have engineers doing peer reviews saying, well, biology tells me you're not suited to this job, you actually create an enormous liability to yourself. Does that sound about right, Dieter, Lauren?

• 6:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that about sums it up. The, I guess, the thing, I don't know, that's under all of this that's so fascinating, I don't know if fascinating is the right word, is, actually, this point was made over on Vox.com's Weeds podcast. If I had just come across this blog post, like, this thing as a blog post somewhere on the web, I would have been like, oh, well, there's that, and then I would have moved on with my life. But the fact that it came out from a Google engineer, and that it spread internally inside Google's internal social networks, both just the doc getting shared around, but also, you

• 7:33Speaker 01

  know, they've got their, like, internal meme social network and their internal G+ social network, that it bounced around inside that, like, social community and inside, you know, the community of Google before, like, a pinball flying out onto the wider web. And then the interactions between him and Google now and the interactions of all the women at Google that have spoken about this, that, to me, is like, the thing that makes this story the story of the moment, is it's not just about the, you know, particular ideas that James Demore is espousing and whether or not they fit in Silicon Valley.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  It is the way that, the context in which he shared them inside Google and the tools within Google that Google uses to talk to itself, supercharged that memo to a place where it has become, like, the biggest story.

• 8:31Speaker 03

  It was going around for, like, a month inside, right?

• 8:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, supposedly, Demore wrote this, actually, a little while ago, and he wrote it after he had done some type of unconscious bias training that, you know, seemed to have affected him in some way and at least partly inspired this. And the reactions to it came when the document went viral and when it hit the public and people started to become aware of its existence outside of the groups it was originally shared with. And I think it's hard to imagine, I guess, you know, a world that we live in today, an internet-based world, where this kind of thing doesn't go viral or doesn't trigger

• 9:17Speaker 02

  some sort of reaction, you know, among the people who are discussing this exact kind of thing. And Silicon Valley, I mean, to your point earlier, Neelai, about, you know, how technology and culture are so intertwined, I think it is striking a nerve because we are starting to see as technology gets more and more advanced, you know, we look at these things as kind of these entities separate from people. You know, we use technology and technology is created, but it's easy enough to say, it's easy enough to remove the human element from it, but the fact of the matter is people who are working on coding, who are working on AI, who are working on self-driving cars, who are working on, you know, filters for facial recognition apps or whatever it might be, are human beings. They're human beings. And so we all have these kind of unconscious biases that we may bring into what we are

• 10:02Speaker 02

  working on. And there are concerns, I think, in the coding world about when you have these biases that sort of exist, like what is being sort of built into the technologies we all use.

• 10:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think to me that there's a lot of arguments in this memo. There's one in particular that Paul and I were discussing, kind of at length, where his argument is, and I hesitate to even say it because I disagree with it so thoroughly, but his argument is there are personality traits between men and women. On average, men like things and women like people. And that means there's a, we can bring women into coding, but there's a limit to how people-oriented engineering can be. And we shouldn't lie to ourselves that, you know, that women are going to like it and some of our camps to like help women code are deceiving students.

• 10:56Nilay Patel?

  And I just read that and it's just such a mistake, right? It's a mistake of we're going to take these broad population-level studies.

• 11:08Nilay Patel?

  Which is what they are. Some of them are very old, and I think Rachel pointed out to me that none of the studies he cites are newer than 2011 or so. So some of them are old, some of them have been disagreed with. You know, it's scientific research, so there's a lot of studies that point, you can cherry pick whatever study you want. But we're going to take these old studies to talk about huge trends, and then we're going to bring them into our organization of, that isn't a population-sized organization. And then we're going to say, we can judge how, we can judge your individual aptitude towards a role based on these huge trends. And I think that, that to me is the exact mistake that he's trying to correct, right? Like, we're not gonna, we're gonna treat people as individuals, is what he's

• 11:52Nilay Patel?

  arguing. But then his arguments are, but I can look at population-level data and make some judgment about you without actually knowing you or knowing your skill.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, one of the biggest issues I see with this is just, listen, if you were to look at Dieter and I sitting in this room right now in San Francisco taping The Verge cast and ask, are there biological differences between the two of us? Of course, there are, you know, I'm a female and he's a male, and there are other things that our science report that we're going to be putting out shortly, they're going to get into. But to talk about capabilities in that kind of way, I think, in the memo, it was just incredibly polarizing.

• 12:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and I, to me, I think the big mistake here is understanding what all of the roles inside of Google are, and/or any big company, and being able to make blanket assertions about capability, fitness. And I think there's a lot of argument, the entire memo is couched in a lot of, sort of, I believe in diversity, but we're doing it all wrong. And then it immediately goes to, I can use a population-level trait to determine how well-suited or what the numbers will eventually be. When you could actually build an organization of, you know, all women that run a tech company, and they might be just as productive. And then if you're Google, there's as much social science out there that says...

• 13:11Nilay Patel?

  Diverse companies are more productive and have higher revenue, right? Just like, kind of one to one. And there's been a ton of research in there, too. So if you're Google, of course you want to be more productive and higher revenue. So of course you're going to do some work on diversity. And so I think all of that, this is just a bubble. And I think the bubble is related to the myth of like what engineering is. It's related to the myth of like the lone hacker in a garage who has to carry forward a vision. And that myth is just not true in like a variety of ways. So like medicine, nearly 50% of med school graduates are women. Medicine is a competitive, high-stress, scientific, technical job. When I graduated law school, which is not a very complicated job,

• 13:56Nilay Patel?

  but it's still a high-stress professional job, 50% of my graduating class in law school is women. Like, there are other fields of comparative competitiveness where these issues have not come up in the same way as software engineering and tech. And I think this memo just doesn't recognize that at all. Like, it's, it's this thing that I see all the time where people think they have an idea and they thought that, they think they're having the idea for the first time. But there's an enormous body of academics and research and scholarship and work that actually is far ahead of where they are.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. The, the other like vague counterexample that people have been citing is if you, if you look at the, the gender parity in computer programming, it's actually pretty close. And there might even be more women than men up until the mid 80s. And then, then it becomes a huge gap. And so there's a lot of, you know, what happened in the mid 80s that caused that gap. And it seems unlikely that there was a huge biological shift in our population since like 1985. It seems much more likely that there are a bunch of like cultural things that happened that disincentivized women to get into the field.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  It's also worth noting, too, that part of the memo is, you know, there seems to be a lot of, I don't know if anger is the right word, but, you know, just sort of angst expressed at Google and the way that Google is doing things, too. Like, some of these arguments are kind of couched in this idea of like, well, there are people here who don't share these views and are feeling isolated. And we feel isolated because we can't express them freely. So there is a legitimate argument to be made for people who are in any type of work environment who feel like, listen, I share an opinion that is not the same as the majority or a large portion of my colleagues, and I feel like it's an unsafe environment in which I can express them. And that's fine. But when your ideas or the things you are

• 15:54Speaker 02

  sharing sort of are, contain a certain level of toxicity or create this amount of chaos, then I think that, you know, there are going to be some, some kind of repercussions.

• 16:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and I, I want to come back to this. And Liz Lopato, our science editor, pointed this out to me today as well. Google is facing a class action lawsuit about the wage gap between men and women at their company. They have not released a bunch of data to the government about this stuff, and they're fighting this lawsuit. And they also run, like, performance reviews, like, peer performance reviews. So now, you've got a, a person who is saying things that make women feel like they, he won't, he won't judge them correctly. They definitely feel like they can't put people on a team with him because he has created this polarizing environment around himself. And they, they're giving their, the

• 16:49Nilay Patel?

  people who are suing them, evidence that they have people on their staff who are doing peer reviews, which ultimately lead to wages and salaries, who feel this way. So now, there's evidence inside the company that wages might be affected by attitudes towards gender. That is a disaster for, like, losing that lawsuit's a disaster for Google. So it is, like, there's the sort of... Philosophical argument about differences between men and women. There's a cultural argument about whether the company should be diverse, which I personally think that they should be. I think a lot of us think they should be. And then there's just like the cynical fucking legal argument of how do we reduce our liability? And I think all of those add up to this dude being fired.

• 17:34Nilay Patel?

  And honestly, if you are, if you, if you are as smart as reading this memo indicates that this guy thinks he is, you should know that before you start distributing a memo like this. And I think there's probably other ways to communicate this information.

• 17:50Speaker 03

  How, how would you communicate this?

• 17:53Nilay Patel?

  Well, look, I mean, I, I think if what you're saying, and Google's diversity programs are not doing great, right? Like, they just released some more public data and they haven't like made some huge shift in their demographics. So like if what you're saying is our diversity programs aren't working and I have some ideas why, then I, there, there's probably a more appropriate way to communicate that inside of your company than releasing this memo at like, that you wrote somewhat angrily after attending an unconscious bias workshop. And we actually have the slides. Sarah Jeong got those slides that you can go look at what the workshop that he took looked like. And if you work at any sort of medium to big size company, they, they're pretty anodyne. We have unconscious bias trainings at Vox Media that look just like this.

• 18:38Nilay Patel?

  And they're not, they're not, they're, it's basically just be nice to each other and like, stop, stop.

• 18:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're not provocative.

• 18:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, like stop, stop relying on stereotypes when you make judgments about your peers. It's like not a difficult thing to communicate to your workforce.

• 18:53Speaker 02

  I think the interesting thing now is not only to see how Google continues to react sort of from a senior management level, and of course, how other companies in the valley sort of handle similar situations, because this is not an isolated, I mean, this particular instance of the memo is, is a pretty specific, but the overall diversity problems and, and the struggles people have with them, that's like very much a, you know, widespread. But I think seeing how other Googlers are reacting internally. I mean, I, I'm just very curious. It seems as though. This guy, James Demore, is receiving a certain amount of support from people that he used to work with at Google and, of course, outside of Google.

• 19:35Speaker 02

  And then it seems like there are people who, of course, are very upset by this memo and upset by some of the reactions that they're observing. So it's like, it's a really interesting thing to observe and to report on.

• 19:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So Lauren, do the zoom out for us. Obviously, you've had these conversations on your podcast, you've talked to people about it. What's sort of the broader view right now in the industry? Is it getting better? Are people thinking about it more? There have been a bunch of scandals of VCs now getting forced out of their funds. What's your kind of bigger take?

• 20:08Speaker 02

  The broader view is that it is not good. I'll just put it that way. I mean, it's true. And Silicon Valley in general, you look at some of the larger companies, and in recent years, they have started to release these annual diversity reports. And every so often, you do see sort of a 1% or 2% increase in some area that they've been focusing on, whether it's been hiring in a more gender diverse way, whether it's been hiring more people of color, all different, whether it's creating better work environments for parents or working moms or whatever it might be. But even, I mean, there are a couple of ways to look at that, which is, okay, if a multi-thousand person company manages to make a 1% to 2% increase in their workforce in a certain area that they've been focused on, that's actually pretty significant from a numbers perspective.

• 20:53Speaker 02

  But when you look at it from a percentage increase, it's actually kind of dismal and you're wondering why it's not happening more quickly. And as you mentioned earlier, there is data that show that when you start to diversify your workforce, that it can lead to better product, diversity of ideas, women can be excellent leaders. I mean, there are all sorts of good things that can come out of doing this. So in general, right now, Silicon Valley is under a bit of a microscope and people are looking at it and saying like, well, why is it so white, male, or Asian males? Like, why are there certain groups that just really kind of, that are standing out in the workforce in terms of their numbers? And, you know, no one really has the solve.

• 21:38Speaker 02

  And then on sort of this gender level, there are like a couple of different things going on here. I mean, there's a lack of representation of women in certain types of roles. And then there are issues of sexism, which is kind of, let's go to the next level of like, what's really going on with these interactions. And then there's the next level of sexual harassment. And in the case that we saw a few weeks ago, which was when a bunch of women came out against a VC and said like, hey, we were like, very explicitly sexually harassed by this guy. And he ended up getting fired from his VC firm. And the VC firm is actually just kind of like, floundering now. So, um, so like, but the thing to think about, and this is actually based on what Joelle Emerson said on our Too Embarrassed podcast, is that

• 22:21Speaker 02

  all of these things are in some way interrelated. You know, you can look at them as these kind of distinct issues. But, um, you know, when there is a lack of representation of one type of group, then that group may be more likely to be discriminated against because they don't have the same kind of representation. And then when that happens, it can escalate to the next level, which is when someone feels sexually harassed or discriminated against, they're not actually reporting it, or they don't know where to go, and that sort of thing. So, um, so yeah, it's like, it's just a real problem in general right now in the valley.

• 22:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It seems like an ongoing issue that is just gonna, we assigned this story about this, about this memo. And one of the reactions that we got from our newsroom when we were talking about it was, well, isn't this gonna be over? And I was like, this story is forever. Right? It's this memo, or it's another memo, or it's another incident. But this question right now is, there's so much money in the valley, there's so much emphasis on what these companies do, to be the innovation engine of our country, to lead the world, to change the world, which is something they always claim that they're doing, that if you don't pay attention to this, and if they don't work on it, then what they're gonna

• 23:33Nilay Patel?

  actually, they're gonna get worse in a way that is significantly detrimental to the world. And they employ so many people who think they are so special because they're part of it, that their reaction to being told, hey, you built these companies wrong, or you designed this system wrong, and a lot of them, their job is to design systems, they're gonna react very, very negatively. And I think that's kind of what we're seeing here. But it also feels like

• 24:00Nilay Patel?

  You know, these things happen in inflection points and this moment, for better or worse, in Trump's America is one of those big cultural inflection points when people are going to start talking about it differently. And I, what I hope that we can accomplish in our coverage is make sure that we're providing coverage that both sides are reading and agreeing with and disagreeing with, but they see like, this is an inflection point. We have to start talking about this differently now, because if we keep talking about it the same way, the problem's just metastasized.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  Well, and the way that we're talking about it, or the way that we've historically talked about it, and the way that a lot of the conversation around this memo has played out, is following a lot of very unhelpful patterns that we've seen before. It's free speech versus like actually talking about the ideas versus actually arguing about the content of those ideas. And one, like, if, like, we've spent a very long time here talking about the actual, you know, quality of the science and of the content of the memo. But the, the other side that's more supportive of him is talking about whether or not he has the right to share these ideas in the first place and whether or not Google has

• 25:11Speaker 01

  a responsibility to give him a platform within and outside the company to share those ideas. And those are two very different questions. And in the middle of those two questions is what does, you know, a society or a company like Google decide when it wants to give people a voice and how it like balances that with diversity and balances that with a diverse set of viewpoints, many of which you're going to disagree with. And everybody's sort of weighing in, but then the, the complicated part on top of that, as Neil I was pointing out earlier, is like, Google isn't America. Google is a corporation that has to follow

• 25:52Speaker 01

  like laws. And so as a corporate person, it, it is slightly constrained in the way that it is going to act and operate. And so some of these like, you know, free speech replies about this drama don't necessarily take that into account or are trying to hold Google to a different standard. Google could actually live up to. And it just it's it gets so messy so fast that trying to ensure that like you're talking about one thing and you're if you're having a debate about it, you're having a debate about that thing and that doesn't slip into some other broader debate or some other culture war debate is very, very difficult. And it would be nice if we maybe this time could could do a little bit better job of it than we have in the past.

• 26:37Speaker 02

  I you know, I also want to point out too, you mentioned systems before and this idea of like people in technology who often work on sort of fixing systems or evaluating systems. One of the things that Nini and Wang said on the To Embarrass Podcast a couple of weeks ago, and I'll I'll say this, her point of view is largely sort of focused on the VC world because her experience as a founder raising capital has been dealing with VCs and dealing with her sexual harassment from them or from one in particular is, you know, if you were a company, a tech company right now, putting out a new product or dealing with a product and there were bugs or flaws, you would go through some pretty rigorous systems testing to figure out what was wrong with it. You would talk to users, you would figure out where the bugs were, you would figure

• 27:21Speaker 02

  out like where they're originating from. Same as if you were a VC and you were backing a product that was experiencing issues, you know, at launch or after launch, you would say, okay, well, we need to go and we need to talk to the users and we need to figure out what's wrong here. It's interesting that in instances where women are feeling discriminated against or underrepresented in a tech, that there are a bunch of people sort of saying, well, we need to fix this problem, we need to fix this problem, but no one's actually just taking the time to listen in some cases or talk to the quote unquote users to figure out what's wrong to how to fix it. There's just a lot of sort of blustering or or memo writing or whatever it might be without actually evaluating the problem in in that kind of organized way or a way that

• 28:06Speaker 02

  makes sense. And so if you were to look at this as a problem that Silicon Valley needs to solve, you know, there the brain power's there. Silicon Valley is a really brilliant place, but people aren't, I don't think treating this like a like the real problem that they should.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, what struck me about this memo is you can you can accept if you wish that men or women are different and at the margin, they might have different skill sets like at the if the far end of the curves, you know, I don't know.

• 28:34Nilay Patel?

  Men can drink water faster than women. I'm trying to think of something really innocuous.

• 28:39Nilay Patel?

  And I looked at a glass of water, so there we are.

• 28:42Nilay Patel?

  But you have to assume perfection in society, in perfection in the culture, in perfection in how we're all raised, before those marginal differences start to account for changes in diversity. And I think that is, that is the thought that is not, like, those thoughts feel contradictory, but they're not, right? Like, you can accept the curves are different, you can accept skillsets are different, that men on average are taller than women. Fine. But you have to also assume, before that stuff starts to weigh on the scale, that the scale hasn't been totally weighted down by some other problem. And I think everyone is refusing to acknowledge the existence of some other problem

• 29:26Nilay Patel?

  before jumping to, well, our biological difference explains how the scale is currently weighted. So, yeah, I mean, look, this story is going to be forever. We're going to be talking about it a lot. I think we're going to be seeing a lot coming out of Google, which obviously wants to, you know, contain this story, to build a diverse workforce, that's the thing they keep saying. I think there's going to be a lot of culture war back. Our managing editor, TC Sodik, today, said, "It's only a matter of time before Trump tweets about this, and then something like another wave of fury occurs." So it's, it's gonna be there, and I-

• 30:00Speaker 03

  Can I say something along those lines?

• 30:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 30:02Speaker 03

  I, I feel like, I, I realize Google is in a very hard position, because you basically have an employee saying, "I disagree with the company I work for ideologically."

• 30:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 30:14Speaker 03

  But I feel like firing him, and then realizing how many people in that company agreed with him, it, it's, especially if, if Google believes that anyone at that company who thinks like this is the problem that they're trying to fix.

• 30:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 30:31Speaker 03

  How do they fix it now?

• 30:35Speaker 03

  How do you, how do you communicate with the people that are still at the company who agree with James DeMore? How do you convince them that you will talk it through and figure it out? Or, or you do just plan to fire them? Like, what's the next step to improve that situation?

• 30:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 30:55Speaker 02

  This is a great point. Actually, I was listening to a report on this this morning, and I have to, I think it was CBS was reporting it, that there was a survey done in the Blind app. And that, I think it was pretty split 50/50 in terms of the respondents saying whether or not, and there were many, many respondents, whether or not they agreed with Google's decision to fire this, this engineer. And so, of course, I'm like citing another source and haven't, you know, done, and done reporting on this, on this report myself. But it's, and it's done in Blind app, which is like, take it with a grain of salt. But a lot of interesting stuff does come out of that. And, and so you do have to wonder, it's kind of what I was getting at earlier, you do have to wonder about the employees who remain, who in some level supported what he had to say.

• 31:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and I think, you know, Google can't just lose all those people tomorrow, right? Like, that's also catastrophic to their business. But Sundar Pichai cut his vacation with his family short, flew back, he's got it all hands today at four, that process begins. I think that's a great question. I think we're gonna see what Google does. And I can't, we're gonna, I'm gonna read this ad, I can't believe it is this ad right now, and then we're gonna come back and talk about some gadgets. Are you ready for this ad? Are you hiring? Do you know how to post your job to find the best candidates? With ZipRecruiter, you can post your job to 100-plus job sites with just one click. Then their powerful technology efficiently matches the right people to your job better

• 32:25Nilay Patel?

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• 33:09Nilay Patel?

  Okay, we're back. And we're gonna go immediately back into controversy. The deepest, most important controversy of our time.

• 33:17Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 33:18Nilay Patel?

  Which is that Consumer Reports pulled this recommendation of Microsoft Surface PCs because they did some survey of 90,000 computers and found that a quarter of Surface products broke in two years.

• 33:33Speaker 03

  That's in comparison to like-

• 33:35Nilay Patel?

  Apple-

• 33:36Speaker 03

  20% for HP, 10% for Apple, 16% for Samsung.

• 33:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So here's the thing. I'm just gonna put it out there. A couple days ago, we did the best laptop you can buy right now.

• 33:48Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 33:49Nilay Patel?

  Dieter, was it Dan Seifert picked the Surface laptop? The new Surface laptop that just came out in May?

• 33:55Speaker 01

  Yes, but to be clear, these stories are not written in a vacuum, right? Like, it's Dan's judgment, but it's my judgment. I edited him on this piece. And right now, at this moment, the best laptop to buy right now for most people, MacBook Pros are not the greatest. And the MacBook Air is pretty old, and the standard MacBook is still a little bit underpowered. And so, like, if you want the best thing for doing most things, this thing is basically a MacBook Air, but it runs Windows with the screen that you want.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  And so, that is how we came to the conclusion that we came to. There are many, many, many, many, many, many debates about whether or not Windows is better than Mac, whether or not this thing being sealed up, as tight as it is, is problematic because of the battery, you know, and on and on and on. So, like, that is some of the backstory. I could keep going.

• 35:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  But I think, yeah.

• 35:03Nilay Patel?

  That's an- I mean, the point is, right now, that's the one we picked. Of course-

• 35:07Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 35:07Nilay Patel?

  Consumer Reports pulls this label- Our friend John Guber, Tearing Fireball, calls like, puts it up, like, Surface's break. Of course, The Verge just picked, "This is the best laptop you can buy." But here's the point I will make, and I think it's important. They didn't actually measure the Surface Laptop, which is a new product in different form factor. They measured products, I think, from 2013 to the beginning of 2017, before the laptop was put out, which includes a huge array of previous Surface devices. And I think, most importantly, and I think Tom is, Tom Warren is poking into this right now, the Surface Book, the detachable hinge thing, had an enormous number of problems.

• 35:46Speaker 03

  That thing was messed up. That was, I kept on getting shocked by it.

• 35:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it was shocking people, I think, in, uh, Microsoft had a bunch of problems integrating Skylake into that, the Intel Skylake processor into that. And they, they basically said it, but didn't say it. And we tried to figure out if Skylake had a problem, and other manufacturers said, "All Intel processors have this, these kinds of problems. We're used to it, and we code against it in firmware." It was just like...

• 36:11Speaker 03

  And they had some Surface Pro 4 problems as well.

• 36:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think those two products were not, were not as great as they could have been. But using that to judge the new one, I think, is really hard. So that's like...

• 36:22Speaker 01

  Well, especially because the new one, other than the Alcantara fabric, I don't know that they're doing anything that crazy or experimental inside that thing.

• 36:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  Right? Like, yes, it's very hard to take apart. Talk to iFixit, that is true. And so it's very difficult to replace, but in terms of like, components and weird, you know, screen hinges and, you know, crazy fan stuff and like, all the rest, like, it's a pretty box standard laptop.

• 36:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And I, to me, it's just, it's a new thing, right? So like, should Consumer Reports pull the recommendation for the Galaxy S8 because the Note blew up? Like, makes no sense. Right?

• 37:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:06Nilay Patel?

  Especially looking at these historical trends. So, I don't know. We'll see. I think Consumer Reports does this with Apple all the time, where like, ding Apple, and then everyone freaks out. It feels like they might just be like, trying to ding Microsoft to see if they get an equivalent freak out. Turns out they did. But from the Apple people. They're finding new ways to troll the Apple community. But we're looking into it. Tom is on the case. He's interested in their methodology. He's interested in what Microsoft has to say. Throw a flop on it. Okay, that's enough controversy for today. Like a big, meaningful controversy and then a silly controversy. Let's talk about firmware leaks and what we know about the iPhone.

• 37:44Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 37:45Nilay Patel?

  This is all anybody wants to talk about. We made you eat your vegetables.

• 37:50Speaker 03

  We know some facts regarding iPhone 8 home button area from Stratton Smith. One, it resizes. Two, actually, these are bullet points. They're not numbered, but I'm adding numbers. Indicator can be hidden.

• 38:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:02Speaker 03

  No API to change color. Tab bars extend under. I'm so excited.

• 38:08Nilay Patel?

  Are you really?

• 38:09Speaker 03

  Yeah. There's so much that can be done in the land of home buttons.

• 38:14Nilay Patel?

  Hmm.

• 38:15Speaker 03

  You got that screen. It's a home button. It could just be, it's contextual.

• 38:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:21Speaker 03

  And I always hated, the thing that never clicked with me with Android like from day one was this idea. It's kind of like the right click, the hidden menu that's contextual and it's a surprise. But if you have a contextual button that's visually changing to be whatever you need it to be, it could be, it could be cool.

• 38:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:43Speaker 03

  Also seems like you can pay for stuff in third-party apps.

• 38:47Nilay Patel?

  You can do that right now.

• 38:49Speaker 03

  No, there's something new about it.

• 38:50Nilay Patel?

  Hmm. Like Uber has an Apple Pay integration. I use it all the time.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  Square does. I like the idea that you could automatically silence notifications just by looking at the phone.

• 39:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. How do you feel about this lack of Touch ID, Lauren? Like, it seems like it's gone and they're just gonna use this face stuff.

• 39:12Speaker 02

  I think as long as they have figured out a way to make that more secure inherently, then I'm okay with it. But Touch ID is pretty darn secure.

• 39:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 39:22Speaker 02

  But, you know, the way that Apple does security generally is they bake it into the chip at the like very, very sort of lowest level of the hardware that you could get to. And then it's just kind of activated by whatever authentication method is happening on the surface. And so I imagine that if, you know, we get away from Touch ID or something like that and there really is some type of face or iris scanning or whatever it might be, that the real security is happening at the chip level anyway.

• 39:51Speaker 02

  Zeta is like looking to weigh in here.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  No, I just like, it is a very, very, very big gamble. Unless this thing is as good as Touch ID, both in terms of its security and in terms of its speed, then that is going to be really a bad look. I've, I've used the Galaxy S8. I would say the face unlock is pretty darn good, but also pretty darn insecure. The iris scan is very secure, but very, very slow. And trying to reach up to hit the fingerprint sensor is a huge pain. So they kind of threw three not great options at there, replacing the one really solid option in order to get a full screen thing.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  And if what Apple is doing is a compromise in terms of basically unlock speed and full security. I, I believe Lord is right that in terms of security, in terms of at least like, you know, keeping the biometric data in the secure enclave. I'm sure that they've done the right thing there. But I'm less sure that it will be, you know, easily spoofed, right? If, if someone makes a 3D model of my face by, from a picture of me, will that work?

• 40:59Nilay Patel?

  Yes, I hope it does because I'm definitely doing that.

• 41:02Speaker 01

  I mean, I, we're assuming, we're assuming that it will read depth and it won't just work off a picture the way that's traditional face unlock can be, can be spoofed. But yeah, it, it seems a little bit scary like to, to take a step back in terms of securing your phone.

• 41:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 41:19Speaker 01

  Biometrically. And maybe that's fine, that's an okay compromise to make. But what they cannot do is if the interaction is confusing in terms of unlocking your phone.

• 41:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  Like that's, that's really bad.

• 41:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  Apple's already like, it's already a little bit less clear now than it used to be about what happens when you hit that home button to unlock your phone, right? It's already a little bit, nah. And if you're suddenly like trying to like position the phone or make the exact right gesture or, you know, make a duck face or whatever it is that you have to do to unlock your phone.

• 41:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, like you're paying at the grocery store.

• 41:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:56Speaker 02

  And like right now, it's actually pretty easy just to tap it if you're going to use Apple Pay or with Samsung Pay or whatever it might be. And then you enter in a PIN code or you use your fingerprint, whatever it is. It's like, it's all pretty simple stuff and everything is happening locally right at that point of cell terminal. But imagine if you. Tap and then it needs to authenticate and you have to hold it up to your face and it needs to get in proper lighting. Um, because sometimes things like Windows 11 doesn't work that great in certain lighting, like whatever it might be and then. And then you're like, okay, well that this just became a very awkward grocery store transaction.

• 42:25Nilay Patel?

  So those are all the risks, but I said this, I characterize this thing as a gamble, not as a bad idea because the reward is. If they get it right and it's secure and it's fast and it makes sense. Then everybody who's using the other biometric ways to unlock their phone and like hit the fingerprint sensor and blah, blah, blah, blah. If the phone is just magically and invisibly securely unlocked when it's me and. Uh, not unlocked by anybody else and I don't have to think about it at all. They've taken a huge step forward and that's potentially really exciting.

• 42:55Speaker 01

  How do they know you're holding it?

• 42:57Nilay Patel?

  That's the, that's the thing that gets me like the way like the, the, the, the gangs of, of kids with like square readers. Who like run up to you, take your phone, point at your face and then charge you $500.

• 43:13Nilay Patel?

  I'm sorry, like.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  Oh man, like.

• 43:15Nilay Patel?

  I'm ready for that gang to exist because it's hilarious, but like, how do they prevent that?

• 43:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:22Speaker 03

  Wait, they, they hold the, they stake, they take your phone.

• 43:25Nilay Patel?

  Here's my idea for a criminal enterprise.

• 43:26Speaker 01

  Okay, no, no, here's what's gonna happen.

• 43:28Nilay Patel?

  We roam the streets at night with a square reader.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  Your four-year-old is gonna wanna play Candy Crush, but you're gonna be asleep because it's Saturday morning and that goddamn kid wakes up at 5 o'clock no matter what.

• 43:39Nilay Patel?

  Wow, did you hear?

• 43:40Speaker 01

  And it's like, it's like 7:30 and the kid wants to play Candy Crush and buy some extra. Whatever you buy in Candy Crush.

• 43:47Speaker 02

  Candy?

• 43:47Speaker 01

  And they're just gonna pick up your phone. Tiptoe into your room, point it at your snoring ass, sleeping face to unlock it and then they're gonna go buy them some jewels.

• 43:56Speaker 03

  No, but you're gonna have your eyes closed because you're asleep. It's easier for them to do with your like thumb or something.

• 44:01Nilay Patel?

  Okay, let's leave these devious children out of it. I'm saying.

• 44:05Speaker 03

  Street gangs.

• 44:05Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna start a street gang.

• 44:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:07Nilay Patel?

  We're gonna get a square reader with NFC.

• 44:09Speaker 03

  Right.

• 44:10Nilay Patel?

  And we're gonna run up to people. The drunks leaving the club.

• 44:14Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 44:15Nilay Patel?

  And we're gonna grab their phone.

• 44:16Speaker 03

  Right.

• 44:16Nilay Patel?

  And we're gonna point the phone at their face to unlock it. And then we're just gonna hold it up.

• 44:20Speaker 01

  But it also works with the rear camera.

• 44:22Nilay Patel?

  Huh?

• 44:22Speaker 01

  According to, according to, to, according to Rambo on Twitter, it also works with the rear camera.

• 44:25Nilay Patel?

  So yeah, it doesn't even matter. I've just got your phone. I point at you and then I charge you 500 bucks and I leave. And it was authenticated transaction, and I just charged you for like some good, like Good Times Inc.

• 44:36Speaker 03

  So there's, there's, there's an indication of

• 44:39Speaker 02

  That's the name of my business.

• 44:40Speaker 03

  Multi-biometric.

• 44:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 44:42Speaker 03

  So are we 100% sure that there won't be?

• 44:45Nilay Patel?

  No, not at all. I think what's really interesting right now at this moment is there's all these leaks out of the HomePod firmware. Like every day there's more. And they're really interesting and fun to read. Feel bad for Apple. And then at the same time, there's like hardware leaks out of the supply chain that we can't really verify.

• 45:03Speaker 03

  Right.

• 45:03Nilay Patel?

  And so the hardware leaks don't have these sensors, and I think people are, they don't have a fingerprint sensor. And then people are just assuming the hardware leaks are as accurate as the software leaks. Anyway, I think a lot of people are conflating the presumed validity of the leaked firmware with the mocks that are coming out. Right? So you got these like weird hardware mocks from casemakers, and you have this what seems obviously going to happen because of the firmware. I don't think we know what this hardware actually looks like yet. That's my read on it.

• 45:32Speaker 02

  What if the HomePod was just a giant troll of a product that was put out there into the universe to, for people to develop code for it? And then leak stuff to rabid bloggers who have spent weeks endlessly speculating.

• 45:47Speaker 03

  Are you saying Apple's crowdsourcing the design of the next iPhone?

• 45:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, through the HomePod. They just have this HomePod in the middle of their, of their conference room tables every day now. And they look at it and just go

• 46:02Speaker 02

  and just love that we're all going crazy looking at all the Xcode.

• 46:06Nilay Patel?

  That's fine. It's like evil Schiller is like full force.

• 46:11Speaker 01

  You think that, that Tim Cook's wake, after this, you know, leaked out, that Tim Cook changed the wake word for his HomePod from hey Siri to?

• 46:19Speaker 03

  HomePod!

• 46:21Nilay Patel?

  He's just like, starts screaming at it. I also, there's one more leak in the HomePod firmware that I'm tremendously excited about, which is a 4K Apple TV with HDR10 and Dolby Vision. There is literally no other product that can stream Dolby Vision right now, which is like way better HDR than HDR 10. I'm gonna buy that thing so fast. It's the thing that I want the most.

• 46:41Speaker 03

  No other product than...

• 46:42Speaker 01

  I just got the firmware update on my VIZIO P series that uses like web apps, but the TV was clearly not designed to run web apps and so it's slow as hell. So, no, like, we're not using Google Cast to watch stuff because we want to look at the interface together. And so, we just keep on defaulting back to the Apple TV. Here's my secret hope for that 4K HDR Apple TV. Make a better remote, y'all.

• 47:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, please.

• 47:05Speaker 01

  That touchscreen remote, that touchpad remote is no good.

• 47:07Nilay Patel?

  I think HDR 10 looks bad. My, um, I have a Chromecast Ultra that does HDR 10 and it just doesn't look good. Like, compared to Dolby Vision running off the app. And there's no, as, I'm pretty sure, almost 100% sure, there's no external device that runs Dolby Vision yet. Like, all the Rukus are HDR 10.

• 47:26Speaker 03

  So, your Dolby Vision is built into your TV?

• 47:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. The only way to get Dolby Vision is have it built into your TV from the jump. So, I'm, I'm excited about

• 47:36Nilay Patel?

  an external box that can run it with a better interface and... I'm not, like, I'm using WebOS on my TV, man. I'm sorry, Dieter. It's just not, it's not a wonderful experience.

• 47:45Speaker 03

  And I know we talked about leaks last week too, but just, there's something so beautiful to me that this company, Apple, is so centralized around this one operating system.

• 47:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 47:59Speaker 03

  That literally everything about everything they do...

• 48:04Nilay Patel?

  Is in the HomePod firmware.

• 48:07Speaker 03

  Like, I don't know how to, like... Yeah, I don't know, I don't know a parallel for that.

• 48:13Nilay Patel?

  That's cool. Okay, I'm gonna read one more ad, then we should talk about the Essential Phone and some Pixel 2 leaks, and then we're out of here. How's that?

• 48:22Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 48:26Nilay Patel?

  This episode of The Vergecast is brought to you by Qualcomm Snapdragon Gigabit LTE. With download speeds up to seven times faster than typical home wifi. Snapdragon Gigabit LTE can turbocharge all of your connected apps. You can stream 360 degree videos in 4K resolution with minimal buffering. You can access files in the cloud nearly as fast as you would if they were stored on your phone. And you can download hours of movies or music in a matter of seconds. To learn more, visit snapdragon.com/gigabit today.

• 48:55Nilay Patel?

  Alright, Dieter, Essential Phone. What the hell is going on here?

• 48:59Speaker 01

  Nobody knows. Nobody has any idea.

• 49:03Nilay Patel?

  Well, there's a Best Buy listing-

• 49:05Speaker 01

  First of all, Andy Rubin should not have said it'll be out within a month. That was a huge mistake. There's a Best Buy listing. There's something to do with Canada, like Telus or something. I don't remember.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  I mean, here's what I can tell you what's going on with Essential. They need to release this thing because the renders of the iPhone have got a cutout. There's that random, was it like a Sharp phone? That was like, party in the back and iPhone up front. It was like, top and bottom were different. But it had the cutout. So in terms of like, the phone itself, as like, a desirable object. It is running out of shine very quickly, just on its own merits. There's still the modularity, there's still, you know, the Essential OS and the idea of connecting into this Essential ecosystem that they want to build. But, in order to like, kickstart all that, they want to start with the phone.

• 49:59Speaker 01

  And they need to release it. They just really do. That's where we're at.

• 50:05Speaker 03

  Is beating the iPhone by like, a month or two, a good goal anyways?

• 50:14Speaker 01

  That's a good question. It's not necessarily a great goal, but-

• 50:21Speaker 01

  I don't know, if they want to sell this thing in any numbers,

• 50:26Speaker 01

  they would have had a better shot of doing it a month ago than they do a month from now, I'll tell you that. I do, I am excited to try it. I do think it is a very good-looking phone. But it's also not hard to make a good-looking phone. And the things that make the phone stand out are also no longer unique. Like, when everybody first saw the Cyclops screen, or whatever we're gonna end up calling that thing, everyone's like, "Oh my god, it's got a cutout on the screen, that's incredible." And it's very quickly becoming like, par for the course. So yeah, like, they just need to release it. And again, like, Essential wants us to judge this phone not as just yet another Android phone,

• 51:06Speaker 01

  but as like, a shining example of, like, good quality hardware and software that will convince us to, you know, buy into the Essential Home later, and their whole system for an ecosystem. The other thing that's going on with Essential is they just got a big investment, and one of those investors was the Alexa Fund.

• 51:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:26Speaker 01

  Which, so far as I know, has exclusively put money into companies that use Alexa. I don't think we should read too much into that with regard to the phone and/or its delay. To me, that is, Andy Rubin has said he wants the Essential Home, and I guess maybe the phone, who knows, to support multiple intelligent assistants, and Alexa is just one of them. So, there you go.

• 51:48Speaker 02

  I have to think on some level that they just, they're in that office in Palo Alto, and they're like, "Yeah, we'll get the phone out." "We're really focused on this idea of ambient computing, that's like, next generation, post-mobile." Like, they're gonna, you know, build some solution that's... If they're looking at a future beyond the glass rectangle, then they can't, I think, be truly expecting to catch up to some of the hardware makers at this point in the mobile game. And so, like, what's the difference of four weeks?

• 52:22Speaker 03

  So this isn't like their, this isn't one plus for them. This isn't their whole idea. This is just a thing that they kind of have to do along the way?

• 52:31Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. But it's a better look if it sells well than if it doesn't. That's it.

• 52:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I mean, don't get me wrong, even if it comes out in, I don't know, October or whatever, the phone still deserves some cachet. It's got the ceramic, and it's got the cutout, and it has zero branding on the thing. And so, you know, if you were to array a lineup of a bunch of Android phones in front of me, and say which one looks, you know, the best, or which one would you want, knowing nothing about, you know, the insides or its ecosystem or whatever, it would have a real shot at being the one that, you know, I would point at, especially since the small Google Pixel, according to leaks, looks pretty dopey.

• 53:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Speaking of coming out in-

• 53:19Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, Super Does, right?

• 53:24Nilay Patel?

  Speaking of coming out in October, this leads us into the last thing. So Pixel leaks are happening. That appears to be October-ish. Can it go up against a Pixel?

• 53:34Speaker 01

  I'm assuming, I'm assuming they're both gonna have the same processor, the same specs. Like, specs aren't a huge differentiator at this scale, at this, like, high price point.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  I don't know. I mean, we'll see if Google's got some surprise extra features in Android up its sleeve that the Pixel will get uniquely. There's that.

• 53:52Nilay Patel?

  Probably like a modular 360 camera.

• 53:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 53:55Nilay Patel?

  How salty must Andy Rubin be to put out a stock Android phone against Google?

• 54:00Speaker 01

  After he basically couldn't make that happen at Google? That's gotta suck for him.

• 54:08Nilay Patel?

  Alright.

• 54:08Speaker 01

  I mean, he wants Google to buy him, right? No, I mean, he doesn't. I know he doesn't. Like, they're building a company to, like, not make that happen, but it's like-

• 54:15Nilay Patel?

  Seriously? Yeah, I think he wants to run a big tech company. That's what he says.

• 54:20Speaker 01

  Let me put it this way. Would you rather have Rick Osterloh in charge of Google's hardware efforts, or Andy Rubin?

• 54:25Nilay Patel?

  Rick Osterloh? I've seen Andy Rubin's hardware ideas. They looked like the nextest fucking queue.

• 54:33Nilay Patel?

  Like, Google's hardware is so much better now than it was under Rubin.

• 54:38Speaker 02

  Rick does have some good hardware experience.

• 54:40Speaker 01

  I'll give you that. I take it all back.

• 54:42Nilay Patel?

  And even when Rubin was in charge of hardware, Rick Osterloh was in charge of hardware at Motorola, and they made the Droid, which is the only reason Android's successful.

• 54:50Speaker 02

  Well, they made, like, the Moto E and the Moto G, and the whole line. You know, things that made Moto cool again, right?

• 54:55Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 54:55Nilay Patel?

  Wait, wasn't Rick Osterloh Moto for the Droid? That was his phone.

• 55:01Speaker 03

  I think so.

• 55:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 55:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:03Nilay Patel?

  So like-

• 55:03Speaker 02

  He was definitely there for the G.

• 55:05Nilay Patel?

  Andy Rubin going up against Rick Osterloh with Android phones, there's a history here, like, sorry.

• 55:13Nilay Patel?

  I'm just letting out all my tension from earlier on Andy Rubin and Android phones.

• 55:17Speaker 02

  Let's invite them to a podcast, the two of them, sometime.

• 55:20Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god, that would be incredible. It just-

• 55:22Speaker 02

  It would be really fun.

• 55:23Nilay Patel?

  It would just be like an hour of tense silence. And you would just have to interpret the silence as being relatively tense.

• 55:31Speaker 03

  We like the-

• 55:32Speaker 01

  We need a new podcast app that translates glares into audio. Like stone-faced silence.

• 55:41Speaker 03

  We've got some great musicians on staff. We could get like Miles to improvise something on the keyboard. Like, just basically synths.

• 55:47Nilay Patel?

  Just one of those endless rising tones.

• 55:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:49Nilay Patel?

  And that's Andy Rubin.

• 55:50Speaker 01

  Might it be like uncomfortable shifting? Like, what is the sound of uncomfortable shifting?

• 55:55Nilay Patel?

  Oh, you know, you need a podcast player that does sentiment analysis and then changes the color of the screen.

• 56:01Speaker 03

  Ah.

• 56:01Nilay Patel?

  Like, this podcast is like red right now, and then it like shifts back to a very calming blue. I think this podcast would mostly be orange.

• 56:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm gonna agree with that.

• 56:12Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. You just take that into your heart, whatever that means to you.

• 56:15Speaker 03

  I'm gonna go with chartreuse.

• 56:16Nilay Patel?

  It's like a shirt that says email.

• 56:17Speaker 02

  About Pixel.

• 56:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 56:19Speaker 02

  I have a question about Pixel.

• 56:20Speaker 01

  Alright.

• 56:21Speaker 02

  So the original Pixel got a $200 discount now. The launch of the next one is imminent. Do we know when it's going to ship by?

• 56:28Nilay Patel?

  Nope.

• 56:29Speaker 02

  So, is it worth it right now to buy a $200 reduced?

• 56:34Speaker 02

  Pixel reduced $200 in price?

• 56:35Nilay Patel?

  Nope.

• 56:36Speaker 02

  If you might have to wait several weeks?

• 56:38Nilay Patel?

  Nope, don't buy Pixel right now. Don't buy an iPhone, don't buy a Pixel.

• 56:41Speaker 02

  I just answered all of your questions, you're welcome.

• 56:43Nilay Patel?

  By the way, I put my SIM in the iPhone.

• 56:44Speaker 02

  I mean, I just asked the question.

• 56:45Nilay Patel?

  In case anyone's wondering.

• 56:46Speaker 01

  Your broken iPhone?

• 56:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I picked the iPhone 7 Plus. I didn't want to.

• 56:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:52Nilay Patel?

  I really, I didn't want to, but I

• 56:54Speaker 01

  So you went to the seven plus the same time I went to the SE.

• 56:57Nilay Patel?

  Opening the screen where you turn off iMessage and I was just like, you know.

• 57:02Nilay Patel?

  I'm not doing this.

• 57:05Speaker 01

  Two phone life, man.

• 57:06Nilay Patel?

  I'm carrying them both around. I don't know what for. They're basically the same phone. It's not like the, you know, like I'm doing the camera head to heads. It's pretty fun.

• 57:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:16Nilay Patel?

  But other than that, like, one of them isn't giving me more than the other.

• 57:20Speaker 01

  A year from now, you're gonna wonder how on earth you lived with such crazy big slabs. Like, both of those phones feel like the Nexus 6P to me now, having used the Galaxy S8 and then the S8 Plus. Like, it is ridiculous that we ever allowed ourselves to use phones that were just that massively large relative to the screen. Like, you can have a big screen and not a giant phone.

• 57:42Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 57:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. Neil, I maybe the solve is for everyone to get an iPad. Maybe that's Apple's grand plan with the iPad. They know when everyone moves to Android phones, but they want to carry something else.

• 57:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 57:53Speaker 02

  And they're like, I'm gonna buy a $329 iPad.

• 57:55Nilay Patel?

  That's a move. I will say that people just randomly come up to me now and tell me they bought iPhone 6S's because they wanted a headphone jack. It's just like, people, I'm like, thank you for this information. I will add it to my extensive database. Paul's got a dongle.

• 58:09Speaker 03

  I got a new dongle.

• 58:10Nilay Patel?

  That's a really fancy dongle. Okay, we gotta wrap this up because these two gotta go. It's a real, it's a nice.

• 58:14Speaker 01

  Paul does a segment though. Every week. We never forget about it.

• 58:17Nilay Patel?

  Oh yeah, do your segment.

• 58:18Speaker 03

  It's called Froyo Pods.

• 58:24Nilay Patel?

  Go ahead.

• 58:25Speaker 03

  That's basically the whole thing. I mean, you got the gist, right?

• 58:29Nilay Patel?

  There's a Keurig for Froyo.

• 58:31Speaker 03

  Froyo Pods. Froyo Pods. Yeah, it's a Keurig for, yeah, thank you Neil.

• 58:36Nilay Patel?

  I'm with you.

• 58:37Speaker 03

  For Froyo. You get the, the, the pod, that's, it's the yogurt-ish type stuff. And then you add the milk and then it makes it cold in like 90 seconds somehow. But apparently the whole process takes like 10 minutes and then you have frozen yogurt. So you start with a proprietary pod, add your own milk, and then you end up with frozen yogurt. Out of a $300 machine that is enormous.

• 59:06Speaker 03

  And yeah.

• 59:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Aren't you, aren't you and Ashley?

• 59:09Speaker 03

  It's called the whim.

• 59:10Nilay Patel?

  Aren't you and Ashley working on a whole what of pods?

• 59:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, thanks for blowing my spot.

• 59:14Nilay Patel?

  That's what I do on the show. It's how I get people to actually publish.

• 59:17Speaker 03

  I'm trying to do basically, you know, like, are we, are we internet, like, I don't know. There's different, like, you know, those single serving status pages that you go to, like, down for everyone, just me, or that kind of stuff. But for pods, because basically what's happened is almost all of these companies, most of the pods were announced on Kickstarter and like, haven't really even shipped. And then like, you have like a Juicero that shipped, but it's kind of failing. There was like a soda pod type thing that was different than SodaStream that kind of failed. So they're basically, other than Keurig for coffee, there's very few successful pods out on the market.

• 59:59Speaker 03

  I just want to kind of keep a little, a little tracker for them.

• 1:00:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, pod tracker.

• 1:00:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, pod tracker, something like that.

• 1:00:06Nilay Patel?

  Dot biz.

• 1:00:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, we're working on the domain name. Let me know. I, I, I kind of want to call it, where are them pods at, though?

• 1:00:13Nilay Patel?

  Okay, we're done with this show. It's come to its, it's come to its logical conclusion. Let's just start with the plug. Lauren, thank you so much for being on the show today. Lauren hosts Too Embarrassed to Ask, which we have leaned on heavily for the entire top of the show. Tell us about your show a little bit.

• 1:00:28Speaker 02

  I'm really excited because this week we talked to the CEO of Impossible Burger, or excuse me, Impossible Foods, which makes the Impossible Burger. His name is Pat Brown, and we tried the burgers on the show, so you get to hear us eating burgers, which is just the best part, if you ask me. But no, it's a show that we do every Friday. I do it with Kara Swisher of Recode, and we basically, you know, choose a topic, either because we think it's a pressing topic or because people have sent us a lot of questions about it. And we read your questions on the air, and we bring someone in who can answer them. And it's a really fun show, in my personal opinion, so check it out when you get a chance. Last week, we also talked to the CEO of Eero, Nick Weaver, about improving your Wi-Fi at home. So if you're interested in that, check that one out.

• 1:01:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Kara also hosts Recode Decode, which is great, and Peter Kafka hosts Recode Media, which is, um, media nerds, it's like my fave. All those are on iTunes. We are gonna, so go rate, download, listen to everything, they're all great. We're gonna be launching some new shows soon. I'm gonna tease a concept for one of our shows that's coming. It's first gonna come as segments on the Vergecast, get ready for this. It's called, "Why'd You Push That Button?" Whoa. I'm ready, I'm super excited about it. That's the name I'm using. I don't know if the people hosting the show are super in love with it, so we'll see. But that's my concept. I think it's gonna be good. Look out for some segments of that coming soon. We're gonna do some short segments on the Vergecast, and we're gonna roll it out into its own show.

• 1:01:51Nilay Patel?

  It's like, that's the strategy. You can follow us all on Twitter. Paul is FuturePaul. Dieter's Backlon. Lauren's LaurenGut. I'm Reckless. Give us your feedback. And I just wanna thank everybody who stuck, like, listened to this whole show. That story is really important. That Google Memo story, that diversity story. We're gonna be on it. It's not going away. It's, it's, I think it's so, so important for us to cover, for the industry to grapple with, for us all to think about. I think a lot of people listen to this show are building companies, or thinking about building companies, or aspire to build a company. Think about that stuff first. It should be one of the first things you think about right alongside your product. So, just keep looking at that stuff, keep paying attention to it. It's just so, so important.

• 1:02:35Nilay Patel?

  And that, I think, is it. That's our whole show. Rock and roll.